The Last Safe Place: A Zombie Novella (7 page)

There’s a lot of them. The exhaustion evaporates off me like sweat. I get up and over the fence, run to Castle Williams. Inside the courtyard there’s a single light hooked into a generator, illuminating a group of deputies arguing over a map. Sophia is trying to maintain some sense of order, yelling at people to calm down and head out to defensive posts. When she sees me her face splits into a massive smile.

Then she sees that I’m alone. I don’t even need to explain it. She purses her lips together and nods. I get up alongside her and ask, “Sit-rep?”

“They’re coming up from the south end. Dozens of them. Same thing as the one you found. Covered in stone. We have a crew picking them off but they’re having a tough time. I’m sending security details to Upper and Lower Gov.”

“Get the civilians on the boats,” I tell her. “Nobody should take anything they can’t carry. And we need to do this quick.”

“We can’t.”

“Why not?”

“The gas barrels were empty.”

“Why?!”

“I have no idea, Sarge. But we don’t even have enough to fill up one boat.”

It’s funny how quick the answer presents itself.

I don’t even have to think hard. June being the way she is clouded my critical reasoning. That or I’m getting old and my brain isn’t connecting the dots anymore. I should have noticed as soon as I saw it.

Reginald’s lemonade.

There’s a meager pile of ammunition on a table, probably the last of our stores. I grab a box of bullets and load up my SIG. Sophia comes up behind me. “Where are you going?”

“Get a weapon in the hand of every able body. Make sure they’re aware these things need extra muscle to kill. Everyone else, get them in here. The castle has one entrance, so it’ll be easy to defend.”

“Where are you going, Sarge?”

I get the clip filled and snap it into place. “Reginald.”

Sophia doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything, and I leave her there as I cross the courtyard, nearly smack into Doc as he’s coming inside. He looks like a lost child. I pull the bottle of tetracycline out of my pocket and put it in his hand. “Get this into June, right now. Then get her here. You, personally. Get her into one of the casemates. Make sure she’s comfortable.”

Doc asks, “Are you okay?”

“In about ten minutes, I’ll be just dandy.”

*

There are three guards outside Reginald’s home. The way they come to attention means they must have known I wasn’t supposed to come back.

I don’t even wait. I make for the guy in the middle, lean back and put my boot into his stomach. He jerks back, hits the brick wall, and bounces right into my fist.

Before his body hits the ground my gun is out, trained on the one guard carrying a visible firearm. He doesn’t have time to pull it from his belt. I tell them, “The island is under attack. You’re reassigned to the south end.”

They don’t bother arguing.

I head for the window next to the door, to see if anyone else is inside, but there’s heavy black cloth hanging over the panes of glass on the inside. Which must be how he hid what he’s been doing.

The door is open so I let myself in, and I’m immediately flooded by the soft glow of artificial light. The entire house is illuminated. I can’t hear the groan of the generator. Must be in the basement.

No sign of Reginald. I cut through the kitchen, find more heavy black drapes over the windows. The refrigerator is humming. Inside there’s a pile of vegetables, a bloody carcass that probably used to be a squirrel, and a pitcher of lemonade. I put my hand inside, just to feel the cool air. Remember what that was like.

There’s a sound from the dining room, where I find Reginald standing with his back to me, fiddling with something on a table. Over his shoulder he says, “You shouldn’t come in without knocking. Someone might see the light.”

“Too late,” I tell him.

At the sound of my voice his body goes rigid. He turns, slowly, sees me standing there with the SIG up and ready. His face blanches. He says something but it comes out as an inaudible squeak.

“I’m sorry Reg, want to try that again?” I ask.

He fights for composure. “You… got back okay. That’s good.”

“Don’t you dare fuck with me right now.” I cross the room, put my hand on his throat and lift him an inch off his feet before I slam him down on the table, press the gun into his eye socket.

“The lemonade,” I tell him. “The glass was sweating when I saw you this morning. It was cold. You gave yourself away right in front of me and I'm an idiot for missing it. You’ve been stealing gasoline to power this place.”

“Sarge, please, you don’t understand…”

“What don’t I understand?” I press the gun into his eye harder. “Do I not understand that you’re a privileged asshole?”

“These people would be dead without me.”

“They’ll be dead either way, turns out. And anyway, what do you do, exactly? You don’t tend the water farm. You don’t work with the garbage or make sure we’re fed. You just stand there and watch other people do it and you yell at them. So tell me, what do you contribute?”

He pauses. “Logistics?”

I put my face close to his. “So you’re a tactician now? Did you realize that if you used all the gas to power your home, then we couldn’t get anyone off this island? There are kids here. My wife.” I squeeze his neck tighter. “Is that why you tried to kill me?”

His voice is a rumble at the back of his throat. “It was only a matter of time before you found out.”

“Wonderful. Now we can all die together.”

“There’s not enough for the ferries?”

“No, there is not.”

He smiles like he wants to convince me we’re friends. “No, we can get off. I have a little extra gas in the basement. There are a few smaller boats. We can take one of those. Get your wife. You and your wife can come. C’mon Sarge, we can leave here. No one has to know.”

I pause. His smile gets wider and the sight of it makes me angry, so I smack the gun across his face. Something cracks. He looks back at me with a mouth full of blood and broken teeth. I tell him, “That’s for being a dick. If I didn’t need every strong back I’d put a bullet in your head. You better believe we’re going to revisit this if we’re still alive in the morning.”

When I let go he falls to the floor. He puts his hands up over his head, blood streaming from his mouth. He’s crying now. “I’m so sorry.”

“You’re just sorry you got caught. Find a weapon and head south. If I don’t see you out there fighting, I’m going to hog-tie your ass and leave you in a field. Let them chow down on you while the rest of us regroup. Understood?”

He nods, not even lifting his eyes to look at my face.

*

The clouds have drifted away and the sky has opened, the wet grass sparkling in the moonlight. Gunshots are still slicing the air on the south end of the island, but they’re more spaced out. Either they’ve got this under control or they’re running low on ammo. I pray for the first but assume the second.

Reginald’s proposal itches at the back of my skull. If I could get June I could bring her to one of the smaller boats. We could leave this place together.

But there would be no hiding that from June, and she would never forgive me.

Which really might be the only reason I don’t do it.

Someone stumbles in the dark ahead of me. I crouch and wait. Can’t tell if it’s a rotter or someone who’s hurt. Then the wind shifts, choking me with the stench of death.

It doesn’t hear me coming. I build up a little speed and swing the bat. This time I put a little mustard on it, and the skull cleaves clean in two.

Another hundred feet and the gunshots have stopped. They’re replaced by screams.

I steel myself, expect to see something bad when I crest the final hill that’ll lead me down to the apartments. What I find is worse than I would have guessed.

There’s a fire spilling black smoke from one of the upper floors of the south building. Must have been a lantern got knocked over in the confusion. The flames are casting a flickering light onto the field behind the building, where there’s a mix of rotters and islanders, running and stumbling into each other. Bodies writhe on the ground. It’s hard to tell who’s dead and who’s alive.

I hold the bat in my left hand, the SIG in my right, charge into the middle of it. I yell for the people who aren’t dead to head for Castle Williams.

Steve from the commissary swings a 2x4 at the head of an approaching rotter. The wooden board splits over the creature’s cragged skull. They’re too far away and I can’t reach them before the rotter reaches out and grabs Steve’s face, digging a petrified finger deep into his eye socket, probably right into his brain, considering how quick he stops shrieking.

The flames are creeping up the side of the building, charring the brick. It’s getting so big it’s distracting the rotters, some of them stopping to stare up at it. I aim for their legs. I don’t have time to make sure each one is dead. I just need to get them on ground, immobilized.

A woman screams somewhere close to me. I find a freakishly tall rotter wearing a tattered basketball jersey bearing down on Miss Olsen. I swing down, break its kneecap. The thing falls like a tree and as soon as it hits the ground I split its skull. I give Miss Olsen a hand, pull her to her feet.

She runs off without thanking me, which is not at all surprising.

At the entrance to the building there’s a rotter holding onto one of my deputies. The adipocere makes it look like a statue come to life, but still able to move at the joints. It can’t unhinge its jaw far enough to bite so it’s jamming its face against the deputy’s neck. Its hands are dug into the skin, the artery in his neck severed, blood pumping out in tune to the beat of his heart. I smash the rotter with the bat and they both fall to the ground, motionless.

Right inside the lobby is Doc. The contents of his stomach are ripped out and stretched across the dirty tile. The pill bottle is lying on the ground next to his open hand. I reach down, grab the bottle, keep moving.

The stairs are clear. At the third floor I stop, peek around the edge, listen. I can’t hear anything. Maybe they didn’t get this high. I’ll get to June, give her a couple of pills, get her down and across to the east side of the building. It looked relatively clear. If there’s not too many of them I can carry her. This can still work.

Something crashes in the general direction of our apartment. I hold the bat out, creep down the hall. I don’t want to call her name, afraid it’ll flush something out.

When I get right outside our apartment I can hear something rummaging. I glance around the door jam. Nothing. I whisper June’s name. No response. I step in, sweeping back and forth, then swing into the dining room and stop.

Everything stops.

There’s a dead rotter on the floor, its head caved in with my favorite cast iron skillet.

And June is standing over the body, her front covered in blood, staring at me with those milk-white eyes.

She bares her teeth and launches herself at me, her body having forgotten the sickness that whittled it down to gristle. I don’t even have time to get my arms up. We topple to the floor, her on top of me. I get the bat between us.

That beautiful face that I used to wake up early for, just to look at it for a few minutes, is grinding and gnashing toward me. The stench coming from its mouth blocks out the air in the room.

For a moment I consider letting her sink her teeth into my neck. Just to get it over with.

At very least, we’ll be together.

Instead I take my SIG, shove it into her mouth, dislodging teeth until it reaches the back of her throat, the barrel right up against her brainstem.

This is a kindness, I tell myself.

I pull the trigger, and so much of my life comes to an end.

6. THEN

There were three of the milk-eyed things wandering the street between the shoreline and the house, eradicating any hope that what I saw in Manhattan was an isolated incident.

Worse is when I got to the house and the front door was hanging open. I crossed the lawn and put my back against the red brick, found a body lying just inside the door.

It was a man from the sports bar around the corner. A regular who would sit in the back and drink mint juleps and watch baseball. I didn’t know his name.

I stuck my head into the living room and a piece of the doorframe exploded. I squeezed my eyes shut against the shards of wood. A quivering voice called from inside, I have a gun.

That voice. As soon as I heard it, everything in the world was just fine.

I called in to June, told her it was me, grabbed the dead body by the leg and dragged it onto the walkway, then jumped inside and pushed the door closed behind me.

She was standing in the middle of the living room, lit from below by a lamp that tumbled to the floor. Her skin smooth and flush in the soft yellow glow. She was wearing a white tank top and black pajama pants, like she always wore to bed. Barefoot, her hair wild, the off-duty gun I kept in the shoebox in the closet dangling from her right hand. She dropped it to the carpet and it landed with a dull thud.

I crossed the space and picked her clean off her feet, pressed my face against hers until neither of us could breathe. When she pushed away from me enough to see my eyes she asked me why I was crying. I said it was because I was worried.

It wasn’t exactly a lie.

I turned on the radio and the television while we were packing, was met by static and dead air. We stood in the living room after making sure the house was locked up, and she asked, Where do we go now?

Whatever was happening, it was spreading across the city. We’d never make it out. The roads would be jammed for miles. We’d be out in the open and barely protected, sitting in a car that wasn’t moving.

We settled on the watercraft. I didn’t tell her how I got it, just that it was there. We ran for the water, and within moments we had a dozen rotters following us. We jumped on and pulled out, watched as they scuttled after us, tripped on the rocks, disappeared beneath the waves.

June said, We should go to Governors Island.