The Coalition: Part 1 The State of Extinction (Zombie Series) (6 page)

They were ready to take their chances in the bad old city rather than in the good old countryside. Live and learn, he thought.
He
knew that the more he learned, the better able he was to continue to live.

He had exactly six places stocked and secured that he considered as his homes. They were all apartments and offices that
he had
converted to the needs of any well-intentioned survivor of the death of modern society. Each of his refuges
was
above ground level, but none higher than the third floor of any building. Higher than that and he got too nervous about finding himself completely backed into a corner from which there might be no escape at all. Third floor he could always rig up and rappel down if the situation called for it. A couple of times
,
he had
been in such a fix. Of all of his houses, though, this one was his favorite. The fact that he could see his old workplace from here—only two blocks away—was just a coincidence. In fact, he’d never been back to that place since the day he’d left it. You don’t go anywhere you don’t have a reason to go, he’d learned. And everyone knew the old saying about curiosity and the cat. He damned sure
didn’t want
to be a dead cat.

Peering up at the sky, he saw that it was clear and the only clouds were high ones. There would probably be no rain at all today, so it was definitely going to get pretty hot with no cloud cover at all to cut the heat.
He would
have to take plenty of fresh water with him. Three quarts
should
do it. Ron had a mesh cap that he wore on days like this. It let out at least some of the body heat produced by his scalp, and
he would
just have to grin and bear the discomfort of the earflaps that he knew
he would
have to cinch tight around his chin, which would also be protected by a plastic cup. It was going to be
hot, humid,
and nasty, but there was nothing to do about it.
He had
been waiting three days for cool weather
,
before he went out scrounging,
but
cool weather did not seem to be in a hurry to get there.

On the gravel roof that served as his front
porch,
he stopped and went over his outfit. His high-top boots were securely tied and his gaiters were tight to his knees. He had on his pair of Kevlar pants that could stop a chain saw blade going 9000rpm, so zombie teeth were no match for them. He had on layers on his torso in the form of breathable long underwear and good old flannel, a bland washed-out blue that didn’t draw too much attention to his movements. And a pair of gloves that had been intended as liners, but which did a fair job of protecting his hands and fingers
,
but allowed free movement and decent flexibility. He had his prescription sunglasses on—the only thing that had made him return to his old apartment. The only part of him that was largely unprotected when he went out on a day like this one was his face from the cheeks down to just above his chin.
He figured that someday
, some deader would bite him there, but so far
he had
avoided that possibility.

Once his clothing was secure
,
he checked the pistol he kept in the leather shoulder holster that had the weapon riding high and tight above his left rib cage.
A Sig-Sauer .357 caliber pistol
that
was loaded with original ammo
was his gun of choice
. Ron had learned to reload his own cartridges and even how to make his own gunpowder, but he’d never had to repack the ammo for this, his favorite pistol, so he liked to husband that ammunition carefully.
Other
options
were available
that he used to keep from blowing those charges.

Chief among those reasons was his rifle of choice, the .220 Swift that he had slung over his back with a good padded sling. Sometimes it made the going a little hotter than he liked, but that gun had been his favorite type since he was a kid. And everyone who knew dick about firearms was aware of the speed and accuracy of the 22.220 cartridge. Ron could fire it at a bobbing geek at 300 yards and its head would explode before he could so much as chamber the next round. It was that good a weapon, because Ron was only a halfway decent shot.

On
his hip he kept a little Saturday
night
special .22 pistol that held six rounds in its reliable chamber.
He had
used that shitty little pistol on a hundred different occasions and only twice had it misfired.
That
had been because of poorly packed ammo before
he had
figured out how to do that right. Since then,
he had
shot maybe forty of the walking dead folk with that little gun, and each time he’d put them down for the count with single shots. It was what helped him avoid wasting the precious ammunition for his Sig-Sauer .357.

As he got ready to descend to the streets, he checked the knife in its sheath on his right shin, the Buck knife with its four-inch blade in his left pocket, and his weapon of almost first choice when it came to close combat—his reliable and very blood-soaked 16-ounce ball peen hammer. If there was a better hand-to-hand weapon against the geeks, he had yet to discover it.
Of
course,
it was perfect for smashing stubborn window and damned locked doors that he encountered almost every time he had to go out shopping.

“It’s Miller Time,” he said to no one but himself.

Turning, he locked the door of his favorite safe house. It had been a simple twenty foot by
twenty-foot
workroom
on the roof of this office building.
Once
upon a
time,
it
started
as a kind of penthouse
,
before the building thought better of that
,
and never quite finished it. Thus, when he’d first come upon it, the blocky space had been just three spaces
;
a big open room with a concrete floor, a small space that he’d made into a bedroom that could be locked from inside, and a simple bathroom that had a toilet and a shower. There was no water pressure these days, but Ron had rigged a rain catchment and big plastic containers that served as a series of cisterns. He never drank that water, but it was good for washing and for flushing the commode. Best of all, it was high above the wandering deads, but not too high. He could get down if he wanted to or if he had to.

Right
now,
he wanted to get down; it was time.

**

Cutter always exited this particular safe house
,
the same way
; by a rooftop door
that
opened into a very narrow and very steep stairwell. Although
he had
pondered it over the months, he’d never figure out why the architects had put that set of stairs just where they had. He was glad of it, but damned if
he had
ever figured it out. Just another access point, he supposed. It was the one that he kept open; having successfully blocked the other stairs with debris that none of the zombies had been able to pierce.

Sometimes the shamblers did get into the main section of the building, but they never stayed for long and none of them had been able to advance beyond the second floor. Ron had scattered the stairs with all manner of metal debris that wouldn’t burn
,
and with barbed wire and razor wire that he’d scavenged from different places around the neighborhood. It wasn’t pretty to look at, but so far it had proven to be effective.

He unlocked the door and shined an LED light into the well. The stairs plunged down at an alarmingly steep angle and the first couple of times Ron had stood at the top and looked down he’d actually felt vertigo.
Once
you got used to them it was no big deal. He just had to make sure that the narrow confines were free of the roaming dead. None had ever figured out how to force their way in, but if they ever did
,
the space was so confining that
,
a single man could stand at the height and pick them off one by one with gunfire or even with something as simple as a hammer. In no
time,
the shaft would become so plugged with dead flesh that nothing could push through. It was a good defense point, he knew.

Quietly, he descended the stairs until he was at street level.
In addition to the stout lock that he had installed himself, the
steel door at the bottom had a good, old-fashioned metal bar that held it closed. He had also put in a peephole and he used that now to peer out. He could see straight down the street for about a hundred yards. There was a deader mucking about. Something had obviously upset the thing and it was searching for prey
, but
its back was to him so Cutter figured it was all right to unlock the door and step out.

He slipped the bolts and pulled the door open
slowly
. The well-oiled hinges didn’t make a sound as he stepped out and locked the door behind him. All the
while,
he kept one eye on the dead thing that still had its back to him, and as soon as the door was
secure,
he moved off to his left and if the shamble ever turned around to look toward Ron’s escape route, he wasn’t there to see it.

Stuffing his keys into a thigh pocket of his pants, he buttoned them up securely and moved off. Ron knew exactly what he wanted to achieve in the way of scavenging, and
he
wanted to check up on some of the local citizens in what
he had
begun to think of as his turf. One of them, a bit of a smart ass, had started referring to Cutter as The Mayor. Others had picked up on the nickname and there were any number of the living
,
who eked out an existence in this part of downtown
Charlotte
,
who called Ron by that term. He let it ride.
A part of him
liked it. Despite his general demeanor of his loner existence, he had gotten to a point where he cared about most of the folk who—like him—were trying to survive what was going on.

At some
point,
it would come to an end, right? It would run its course and the ones who were left would pick up the pieces and move on. That’s what they all seemed to be hoping for. The main thing was just to live through it.

Coming to the intersection, Cutter hunkered down low to the pavement and looked around. Off to his right there was any number of deads milling around. To his left
,
the streets were completely clear of any obvious sign
,
except for a few stragglers who weren’t doing much but stumbling around near the walls of the old
Union
Tower
. Once upon a
time,
that place had been one of the biggest banking centers on the planet.
Now,
it was just a place where some of the living held out and the dead wandered around, raving for someone to kill and eat.

He knelt down very low, ducking his head until the scruffy weeds and shrubs that had grown out of the pavement and sidewalk in the intervening months broke up the lines of his body. What he needed were some small canisters of propane. He knew where some were stored in a small trucking firm about four blocks away.
However,
to get there he was going to have to make a move, and the
clot of shamblers to his right was
probably going to see him.
They
were going to get agitated and make some
noise, that would get a lot more of them in a state,
and
they would
zero in on him.
He would
be left to make a series of dashes to get to where he
needed
to be, but that was just something he’d have to do. Already the heat and humidity were getting to him. Sweat was tracing down his face, down his neck, down his back. It was going to be a long day, he knew.

In addition, he wanted to check on Old Lady Hartwell
and the kid
who lived two blocks west. How either of them had survived, he didn’t know.
In
the case of the old woman, it had to be either pure blind luck, or maybe there really was a God and he was watching over her. Some of the things
he had
seen her get away with just didn’t make any sense at all. She didn’t have a gun, she couldn’t fight, and she couldn’t even walk fast. In fact, she didn’t quite seem to know what was going on, but somehow there she was every time Ron encountered her
;
still alive.

However,
someone else
was out there that
Ron wanted to see first, so he stood and began to move quickly off to his left as fast as he could without actually running. The crepe soles of his combat boots made hardly a sound at all. Glancing back, he saw that the scores of dead folk had yet to spot him at all and there was a possibility
,
he’d get down to the next corner without them seeing him.