The Coalition: Part 1 The State of Extinction (Zombie Series) (16 page)

“You guys made it back? You got back to Brevard?”

“Took us three weeks,” Jean said, wandering around the place, looking at the world Cutter had set up for himself twelve floors above Hell. She halved the distance between them while he watched. “We didn’t just get back to Brevard; we made it all the way home.” Jean sighed, her eyes closed.

“What happened?” Cutter asked. He almost didn’t want to ask it, but he needed to know. Ron wasn’t sure just why he needed the answer, but he did.

“My dad had neighbors. Couple of families who lived down the road a ways. Half-mile in either direction. The Lincolns on one side, Keeners on the other. They weren’t like my dad. Not prepared like he was. I mean…who was? Who else you know sets up a wind turbine? Rigs up a wind-powered water pump? A freaking bunker, for Christ’s sake?” Jeans voice was rising and so Cutter walked toward her.

“The neighbors? They…”

“Yeah, those goddamned neighbors. The ones who had smiled in my father’s face for twenty years or more. When we got back, they had taken over my father’s place. My family’s place. They wouldn’t let us in to our own house!” She was yelling it out. Cutter took her in his arms, then.

“They killed him!” She was screaming, and her words soon degenerated into cries and sobs. “They killed him!”

**

They were out on the roof again. Ten days had passed since she’d fallen in with Cutter. The two of them had finally gone into the building below them to scavenge for some decent clothes for Jean, and they’d taken the opportunity to clear out the deads that they’d found wandering the hallways and rooms. Cutter wasn’t sure that they’d gotten them all, but they’d made a real effort. The two of them had even gone to the most obvious places where the shamblers could get in and had done a passably good job of patching up those weak spots.

All
the
while,
they had waited for the streets to clear of the horde of dead that had chased them into hiding. It really had gotten worse over the preceding weeks. The zombies were trickling into the city out of the countryside. Maybe
the tall buildings looming on the horizon attracted them
. Or maybe they smelled fresh meat. Cutter didn’t know. All he could say was that it had taken more than a week for the streets to clear and for the masses that had gathered around his place to subside and finally vanish.

The day was bright
,
but not terribly hot, and so they just stood at the wall around the edges of the roof and looked down at the city. “Look,” Cutter said, pointing at a tendril of black, greasy smoke winding its way into the heavens. “That fucking fire bug is at it again.”

“How do you know that’s intentional?” she asked. It could be spontaneous.

“Hell, no. I can tell that he’s at it again. I mean, look. It’s starting at the point where the last fire stopped. Whoever it is, he’s got something up his sleeve. I mean…he’s burning down the old neighborhoods around the downtown area. All of the old traditional places that were suburbs back around the turn of the century. They’re all going up in flames, out toward what was farmland back when our grandparents were babies.”

Jean pulled the baseball cap over her head and squinted into the daylight. They’d found the Charlotte Knights cap in an office below and she’d immediately nabbed it for her own. “Wonder what he’s up to?”

“Damned if I know
, but
if that neighborhood goes up in flames, I’m going to lose a good safe house I have over there. I’ve got some good stuff in there, too. Some ammo. Couple guns.” He slapped at his thigh. “Goddamn it.”

As they watched, the tendril of smoke grew and was joined by a couple more that seemed to appear simultaneously. Within half an
hour,
they could see that a line of flames had been penciled onto the landscape, obviously following the line of streets. “What did I tell you? Fucker’s up to something, but I can’t say what.”

“You think he’ll try to burns us out here?”

“Goddamn,” Cutter whispered.
”
Like we don’t need one more thing to worry about.”

**

Eleven days had passed since Jean Crump had landed in Cutter’s lap. He was enjoying life for the first time in years
, and
it wasn’t just the companionship and the sex—there was something else
to
it. For the first time since the hell had descended on Earth, he felt a fire burning in his heart that hadn’t been there for quite some time.

They had been standing on the roof again, looking down on the city
,
when they saw something moving out of one of the burned out plots and down the wide way that had once been
Tryon Street
. For long
minutes,
the couple had just stood there, staring in disbelief at what they were seeing.

“Is that what I think it is?” Jean stared, her jaw hanging open at the sight.

The enormous forms plodded down the ruin of the thoroughfare, pausing from time to time to examine its surroundings.
Periodically,
it would
stop, reach out and feel at the things to its right or left.
As
they watched it, they saw another come out of the tangle of brush and new forest to its rear.

“Elephants,” Ron said. “It’s a herd of Indian elephants!”

“Must have gotten out of a zoo,” Jean said, standing beside Ron and putting her arm around his waist, pulling him close. “I wonder which zoo.”

Cutter shrugged
, and then he
laughed. For the first time in so long that he couldn’t recall it, he was laughing. “I’ll be damned. I’m not sure where they came from, but there they are. Could have come from anywhere. The
North Carolina
Zoo? Maybe. There was a zoo in
Columbia
. Maybe someone went in and released all the animals in all of the zoos. I mean…I never thought of that. Or maybe they just broke out. Maybe it was just a big jail break.” He was laughing and pointing at the herd. No less than two dozen of the huge animals had emerged onto the street.

Jean was laughing, too. “Where does a three-ton elephant go?” she asked.

“Anywhere it fucking well wants to,” Ron answered, and soon they were locked together in a mutual hug, their laughter echoing around the rooftops.

Suddenly, Cutter stiffened and stood straight, his gaze still locked on the slowly plodding herd of pachyderms. “He has to see this. It’ll be perfect. He has to see this, and then we can get him to stay. He can stay with us.”

“Who? What are you talking about, Ron?” Jean’s eyes were now on Cutter and she was puzzled.

“The day I met you
,
I was trying to make it to see someone. A kid who lives alone. All alone in a freaking tree house, for God’s sake. I could never get him to leave that place. He’s stuck there
and
he won’t leave. But now…I can get him to leave it.” He had turned to look into Jean’s confused face.

“Go with me. If you help me, we can go up
there, get the kid down,
and bring him back. He’ll stay with us, I know it.”

“A kid? How old is this kid?”

“I don’t know. Twelve, maybe.”

“There’s a little boy out there living by himself?” There was horror on Jean’s face.

“It’s complicated. Some of us watch out for him, but the only way to get him out of where he is would be to drag him out. And once any of us got him out…well, you’d have to tie him down to keep him with you.” He couldn’t hide the guilt he was feeling. “Well, anyway, that’s where I was headed when we met. I was going to try to talk
The Kid
—Oliver—into coming here. Hell, I was of half a mind to force him.”

Jean looked back down at the street, at the elephants that had seemed to pause in their march, questing with their trunks at the air of this strange place into which they’d come. “Then let’s go get him,” she said. “Let’s go now, before the movement of those big animals attracts the deaders.”

**

The streets were eerily silent as Ron and Jean made their way across the blocks. As quietly as
possible,
they walked from point to point, doing their best to remain hidden, flitting from the hulks of abandoned trucks to collapse awnings to the spilled contents of looted stores.
As
always,
they were tense, on the alert for the marauding zombies. They spoke not at all, and they stayed close, using only hand signals to communicate. Jean followed Cutter’s lead.

Off to the north they could feel, rather than hear, the low rumble of the elephants’ movement down the streets. The animals seemed to move very slowly, almost as if they were blindly feeling their ways through the city. At the pace they had set
,
it would take them hours to move through the downtown area, perhaps longer.
However,
their presence would certainly attract the attention of the shamblers, and eventually they would arrive in numbers, searching for people to kill.

Cutter kept expecting to run into someone he knew, or at least to see other people, but no one appeared. From time to
time,
they noticed a dead shuffling along a side street or through an alleyway, but they were able to stay clear of the dark, rotting figures. Twice, they saw cats bouncing merrily down the street, each with a fat juicy rat clamped tightly in their jaws. Jean pointed them out to Cutter each time, and he seemed to think she was hinting that he might think of bringing home a cat or kitten to his place. It probably wouldn’t be a bad idea, he figured.

Finally
, they were within sight of Oliver’s tree house. Ron and Jean hunkered down low to the street as he pointed it out to her. They were hiding behind a Lexus that was sitting on four flat tires, frame to the earth, leaves and trash plastered to its formerly red and lustrous paint job. One window had been shattered out, and the leather interior had gone to musty dissolution.
Finally,
Ron chose this point to speak, albeit in a very low whisper.

“We’ll go to the edge of the razor wire,” he told Jean. “If he’s there, we’ll see a rope that he
uses
to get down. It’ll be tied up beside the poplar trunk. If it’s not there, that means he’s not at home and we’ll have to head back. But if he’s at home I’ll have to call out to him. He’ll lower a rope ladder for us. We’ll go up and get him.”
With
that
,
he stood, checking the area carefully, and headed across the intervening distance.

Cutter risked a quick call of Oliver’s name. He waited for only a second and was ready to call again when the boy’s head appeared at the edge of the overhanging porch. Without a spoken reply, the ladder unfurled at Cutter’s feet and without
sparing
a split
second,
he and Jean were clambering up the length of it. At the top, they quickly pulled it after them and retreated into
The
Kid’s house, leaving the dead and silent street behind them.

“Oliver.” The boy’s back was turned to them and he seemed not interested in them at all, and there was no reaction to the fact that Cutter had brought a companion along. “Hey, Kid. I brought someone for you to meet. And we want to take you and show you something. Something amazing. You’ll get a kick out of it. I promise.”

At that, the boy finally turned and faced his visitors. He looked immediately to Cutter and then his eyes fell on Jean. She was not dressed now as when Ron had found her. Despite being covered in several layers of solid fabric, it was obvious that she was a woman, and a beautiful one. Oliver’s eyes fell on her and lingered for a moment and he nodded.
However,
no smile cracked the sun-browned features that were heavy with depression.

“Oliver, this is Jean Crump.”

“Hello,” the boy said. “I’m glad to meet you,” he added.

“Jean’s staying with me, now. We’d like for you to come and visit us. At my place. There’s something amazing happening. You have to see it.”

“What? What’s happening?” the boy asked.

“It’s a surprise, Kid.”

“What kind of surprise?” There was something of suspicion in his words, and nothing of wonder at all.

“Please,” Jean finally spoke up. “You’ll like it. We promise you will.”

The boy seemed to wilt at Jean’s voice. It was as if he had not heard the voice of a woman since the death of his mother. For all
,
either Jean or Ron knew,
that
could be the truth of it.

“Come on, kid. You can come back here later. We’ll bring you back.”

“I don’t need any help coming back here,” he said, his back stiffening.

“Then you’ll come with us? Okay?” Ron stepped up to the boy and put his hand on the youth’s shoulder, feeling bone and not much else through the cloth of his shirt.

“It’s something really cool?” he asked.

“Yeah, Kid. I promise. Like I said, you’ll get a huge kick out of it. You’ll be glad you came with us.”

“Okay, then,” the boy agreed. And his eyes kept falling on Jean Crump, and he was remembering his mother, her touch, her voice.