The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (99 page)

He nearly fell before his foot found
the floor and he regained his balance. He could smell them now
though, hear them. Just fifteen or so feet across the lobby. He
felt Beth’s hand brush against his back. A second later she pressed
up against him and whispered in his ear.

“
When I flick the light on
them, just shoot!”

“
But what if...”

“
Fuck
What if...
Just shoot. Who do you
think it would be, the fuckin' Avon lady?” Silence fell. The noise
stopped. “Goddammit,” Beth muttered.

A second later the penlight came on. It
was like a floodlight in the narrow hallway. The gate was broken,
forced part way open at the top. Another few minutes and they would
have been through. Six dead were transfixed by the beam. Two with
iridescent red eyes that seemed to glow in the light from the
penlight. Both snarled and lunged at the gate to force their way
through to them.

His pistol was in his hands, but it was
like the beam had frozen him too. He did not begin to fire until
after Beth's pistol began to fire. The noise was huge. Everything
in the closed in space. All six of the dead fell and they thrashed
on the floor. It was over fast. So fast that Billy had not even
thought to breath.

He stood, frozen, looking at the dead.
Two still moved. He walked forward and shot both of them in the
head, one by one. The beam left them and moved to the
doorway.

The aluminum door frame was buckled in
the doorway. The safety glass had been smashed out and lay on the
floor in one crystallized sheet. Two heavy sledge hammers lay just
outside the doorway. Another three were scattered among the dead by
the steel gate.

“
Son of a bitch,” Beth
breathed.

“
Jesus. You don't think
they were using those, do you?”

“
Are you fuckin' kidding
me?” Beth asked. She shone the light up and down the door frame.
“We'll need a steel door and a welder to fix that,” She
said.

Billy nodded, realized she couldn't see
it, and then spoke. “We can get one tomorrow.”

She brushed against him as she squeezed
past and walked toward the gate. His arm felt on fire from the
softness of her breast as she had slipped past him. She turned and
looked back at him. "They almost got in." She shone the light on
the steel collapsible burglar door. It had been there for as long
as she could remember, and she had lived in the building for
several years. The top was nearly separated from the steel bracket
that held the hinge mechanism. Billy got his feet moving, walked
over and examined the top of the door.

They had hit it with the sledge hammer
repeatedly. The steel had finally split, and it looked as though
they had been trying to use sheer force to rip the rest of the
bracket away from the wall where it was mounted. Billy stepped
back.

“
I think,” he began, and
that was when a zombie came through the shattered aluminum door
frame and slammed into the steel gate. Fingers shot through the
gaps in the steel and clutched at Billy's arm. The Zombie missed
the arm but got his shirt sleeve and immediately snarled and began
to pull back.

It lasted less than a full second and
Beth’s pistol roared. The zombie's head blew apart in the narrow
hallway, black zombie blood running down the walls.

“
Got you?
Got you?”
Beth
asked.

“
No... No... No, I …” Billy
couldn't find the words. Something moved outside the door, and he
opened up on it. A second later there were four more Zombies
flooding through the door. None of them made it to the gate,
tripping over the other dead, and both Billy and Beth were firing
immediately. One made it back out the door, a hole in its side that
had blown away part of its spine as it had exited. Billy could not
believe it was still able to move, but it was. Canted to one side,
legs spasming as it ran, causing it to lurch from side to side. It
disappeared into the darkness before either of them could get
another shot in. The silence came back full.

“
You have got to get your
shit together,”
Beth said
quietly.

“
I got my shit together,”
Billy shot back.

“
You never saw that one
coming through the door, if I hadn't shot it...”

“
Well, fuck!
… If you hadn't...
Never
mind...
Okay... I'll get my shit
together.”

She said nothing.

“
Okay...
Okay...
Does us no good
to get on each other... None at all... We can fix this tomorrow.”
He looked around the lobby. Her flashlight was already flickering,
causing shadows to jump and fall on the walls. Batteries were
getting tougher and tougher to find. He looked at his wrist and
cursed low. Old habits died hard. Watches were worthless now. He
hadn't worn one in a few days.

“
I don't know either... I
think a few hours until dawn,” Beth said.

“
Well I'll sit here and
wait for it... All we can do,” Billy said. “Go on back up and get
some sleep. I got this.” He settled back onto the step, sitting
with his back to the upstairs.

Beth stayed silent for a moment and
then came and sat next to him. “Got it with you,” she said. She sat
next to him and he immediately lost his words. Her arm pressed
against his own. The light snapped off, and the heat of her arm
became everything.

“
Billy?”
His name whispered from the upstairs hallway.
Jamie.

“
I'm here until daybreak,”
Billy whispered back.

Silence. And then... “It's
safe?”

“
They won't get past us,”
Billy said.

She said nothing. A few seconds later
the door slammed upstairs. Billy sighed.

“
Sorry,” Beth said. She was
aware how Jamie felt about her. Jamie and Billy were not really
together, bu Jamie felt she owned him. Billy didn't help matters by
staying with her,
sleeping with
her,
yet not making it official, and she
knew he was hung up on her too. So was Scotty. Ironically, she
wasn't interested in either of them. She didn't feel like she
absolutely had to have a man to protect her, define her. Yet,
ironically she reminded herself again, she was doing the same thing
with Scotty. Staying when she didn't feel the same,
couldn't
feel the same.
“I better go up... keep the peace.” Beth said quietly.

“
Yeah... I'm good here,”
Billy said. He wasn't though. He wanted her to stay; he just didn't
know what he could do to get her to stay. Nothing, he supposed.
“I'll be good. Morning's not far away.” Her arm pulled away, and a
moment later he heard her soft footfalls on the stairs as she
ascended them. Billy sat quietly, waiting for his eyes to adjust to
the darkness, his machine pistol in his hands.

March 10th: 618 Park Avenue: Seventh
floor. 2B

Donita's Notebook:

March 10th: Warming up; days are
longer. It feels like spring. It's early March. No way should it be
this warm. My watch is working again, no rhyme or
reason.

Donita stood now, overlooking the city.
It seemed that everything had changed in the last few days. Her
watch said it was somewhere past midnight, if it could be trusted.
It had quit, started again, and she had set it for 9:00 PM at
sunset. The days were longer, but she had no idea how much. It
should be close. But so many strange things had happened that she
wasn't sure it could be trusted. The days seemed longer. What good
was a twenty-four hour watch if the days were all screwed up?
Longer? And everything else was bad too. Her own life was falling
apart, and she couldn't even bring herself to tell Bear about it,
or how much it scared her.

The old woman, Alice, had taken her dog
Ge-Boo out a few days before, and she had not come back. Donita had
opened the door a crack as she had been leaving and warned her
again about how bad it was outside, but Alice had simply pretended
not to see her, or hear her, when she had spoken. She had walked
off down the hallway, smartly dressed, Ge-Boo wearing a small, pink
sweater, and Donita had not seen her since.

Bear had called the elevator back up a
few hours later, locked it down, and then jammed it open with a
chair from Amanda Bynes' kitchen. It was clear that if Alice was
not back, she would not be back. The streets had suddenly been
crawling with the dead. The daylight meant absolutely nothing to
them at all. An hour or two into the darkness the electricity quit,
and the building, most of Manhattan with it, had gone dark. Now
this.

Donita looked out on the city now. The
fires were everywhere. Twice, a few days back, the planes had
overflown the city. Bear had been down in the park trying to find
out what was going on. She had been alone, jumping at every sound.
The planes had swooped low, blue-tinged mist spraying from the open
cargo holds: military planes, jets. She had seen them clearly from
the seventh floor. Soldiers in gas masks stood in the open bay
doorways and directed the thick hoses that sprayed the city. Three
men crouched in the open cargo holds of each plane.

She had slid the glass balcony doors
closed, fashioned a rag around her mouth and waited for Bear to
come back. He had not been long. They had been able to smell
something on the air, a thick, cloying smell that reminded Donita
of old perfume. It had left a nasty taste in their mouths, but it
didn't seem to do anything to them other than that. A few hours
later, they had ventured back out on the balcony, the rags tossed
aside. If it had been something to kill them, it would have already
done that, they had both reasoned.

The city had fallen quiet. That night
the recently risen from the dead were dead once more. They had
fallen, sprawled into the streets where they had stood after
crawling from their hiding places. Dead again. They had thought it
was over. Hoped it was over.

Donita stood now and
looked at the city. They weren't dead any longer. Whatever it had
been, it had not been able to kill them, if that had been what it
was supposed to do. In fact, it had seemed to make them even
stronger once they had come back the second time; stronger
and
smarter
. She
could see them in the streets below now. They walked purposefully
from doorway to doorway, testing the locks, stopping at every
shadow. Investigating. A car here, a doorway there, looking up to
catch her eyes. Maybe just to let her know that they knew she was
still there. And Bear slept behind her in the bed, unaware of it
all. Oblivious to it.

And there was irony here. Irony,
because she was dying. She was dying, and she was sure that they
knew it. She was sure that was the reason they kept looking up at
her where she stood on the balcony, judging the time between now
and when she would be one of them.

She blinked away tears as she looked
out over the night darkened city: the fires that burned, the dead
that prowled the streets. She had popped her last nitro the day
before. It had taken the pain in her chest down, but it had not
stopped it. Too much excitement. Too much damage from the drug use
that had ravaged her body. She hadn't touched a thing in two years,
but it had still killed her, just as she had known it would. It had
just taken its time. Twenty-three and a bad heart. It thundered and
trip-hammered in her chest. Out of sync. Out of beat. Out of time.
And the dead knew it. They were only waiting for her to stop, keel
over, and...

She wondered about
that
'and'
as she
looked out over the burning city.
And
what?
She would raise back to life? She
didn't think so, but she didn't know. She was sure they had to bite
you for that to happen. Even so, if you did come back on your
own... She stood brooding, feeling the pressure build in her chest
as evening came on and the fires continued to burn.

She couldn't make Bear do it, she
decided at last, and there probably wasn't much more time for her.
If she intended to go, she should.

She turned and looked at Bear's outline
on the bed. She couldn't chance waking him either to say goodbye.
And that hurt too, but it would probably not hurt for long. He
would stop her, possibly read her mind. He had done it before; just
seemed to know what she was thinking. She turned a few minutes
later, walked quietly across Amanda Bynes' plush carpet, eased open
the door and stepped out into the hallway.

Lenox Avenue

She slipped from the shadows and ran
along from building to building until she reached the end of the
block. She had expected to hear gunshots behind her. Expected to
find herself falling to the ground dead, a bullet in her back, but
the bullet never came. They must have stayed asleep.

They,
were four guys who had come around a few days before. She had
opened the door to her apartment. Stupid. If she could have gone
back and undone it she would have, but she had been so scared. She
had been so alone. The kid at the peephole had seemed so
young.
Scared
himself. All she had done was open the door an inch or two,
just slipped the chain, and the other three had slammed into it.
The four of them had easily broken the chain and pushed past her
into the apartment. She had given in. There had been no sense in
fighting them. What could she do?