The Zombie Whisperer (Living With the Dead) (11 page)

Of course, we had the second, first and ground floors, as well as the basement to go. I’d been in awesome Montana so long, not having to deal with this shit that I just wanted to sit down and take a nap. Which I’m sure Lisa would have been all judgy about. So I sucked it up and followed her down to the second floor of the HUB building.

“What was this floor?” I asked, scrambling my brain to remember my college days.

“Um, ballrooms and some student activity offices,” Lisa said as she flattened against the wall and peeked around the stairwell into the main hallway. “Huh, don’t see anything.”

I pursed my lips. “You know, I keep thinking maybe there
was
some kind of evacuation set into motion. As the top floor people moved down, they bumped into the student zombies that were waiting for them.”

“Could be. After all, the first, ground and basement floor had a lot more come and go with their banks and restaurants and services,” Lisa admitted. “So let’s clear this fast and get to the floors that are going to make us sweat a little more.”

I nodded and the stupid gas mask shifted on my head, conking my nose on the front. “Shit, this thing is annoying,” I muttered as I followed her into the first ballroom. Empty.

“You look awesome,” Lisa offered. “Straight out of a video game.”

I shuddered to think which one, but didn’t argue as we moved into the hallway and secured the door behind us. We moved on to what were labeled ‘pre-function’ rooms, warming rooms (whatever the hell those were), the bathrooms, securing doors and thanking our lucky stars that we weren’t finding anything ‘interesting’ to contend with.

Finally the only room left was an international student office. I cracked the door and we peeked through the spot we’d made.

“Looks dead, quick clear,” Lisa said as she pushed inside. She took one side of the room, I took the other, checking under desks, clearing corners. We were almost back together in the middle of the room when Lisa paused behind a desk.

“This is the easiest floor clear I’ve ever made,” she said as she opened a couple of drawers and looked through them.

“What are you doing?” I asked, peeking into a storage cupboard. “There aren’t going to be zombies in the desk.”

“Once we clear the area and fence it off, another team comes through looking for any useful items. If I can make a note for them on where to look, it helps.”

I shrugged and was about to respond when the vent behind Lisa burst outward. She spun toward it, but before she could fire off a shot or even bolt out of the way, a zombie arm darted out and grabbed her, yanking so that she flipped backward and landed hard on her back. Her gun flew from her hand and out of reach.

“Fuck!” she squealed as the zombie dragged her toward the vent, growling and snapping its teeth at her ankles.

I dove over the furniture to her side. The zombie in the vent was ragged, skinny and obviously underfed. Except now it had dinner and was progressively hauling Lisa into the vent with it, despite her kicks and attempts to hold herself back.

I looked for a shot, trying to get around Lisa’s kicking feet, but every time I lined one up in the tight spot, she moved and blocked it.

“Girl if you don’t want me to blow three of your toes off, hold the fuck still.”

She glanced up at me and I saw the fear in her eyes. The disbelief that I would be able to help her. But she did as I asked and froze, clinging to a desk leg and pulling back against the zombies super-strong grip, but not kicking her legs anymore.

“And…” I said, lining up the shot.

I pulled the trigger. Perfect shot. I hit the zombie between the eyes and it slumped forward, its mouth on the steel toe of Lisa’s boots where it drooled out black sludge into a pool on and around it.

For a long moment, she just stared at the zombie still shoved in the vent, then she looked up at me. “Do you think there are more up in there?”

I motioned her to move aside. “Only one way to find out,” I responded and yanked the zombie out of the vent.

Behind him… her? It was hard to tell, the thing was so rotted and broken down. Anyway, behind
it
was an old fan that circulated the air in the building. Nothing could fit behind it.

I wiped my hands off on my jeans. “It probably climbed in here after it was bitten, while it was still human and just never had a reason to come out until it smelled you. Aw, you denied it its first meal as a zombie.”

“You denied it that,” Lisa said as she shoved to her feet. She collected her gun from across the room and glanced over at me. “Um, we’re even.”

I blinked. “Huh?”

“I saved your life the day we met,” she explained. “So we’re even now.”

“Do you take back all your implications that I’m an idiot who could barely tie her shoes, let alone get through the apocalypse?” I asked.

She considered that for a minute. “Maybe. Your shoe is untied, by the way.”

I glanced down and she laughed. “Made ya look. Come on, we still have the next two floors to do.”

I shook my head as I followed her out of the room and toward the staircase that would take us to the main floor of the HUB. The one where all the zombies had been waiting for us earlier. Now we would see how great that grenade and its cocktail of zombie killing chemicals was.

Chapter Ten

The most important thing when dealing with kids is consistency. Same is true with zombies.

When we got to the bottom of the stairs back on the first floor, I have to admit, I was ready to fire off a million shots to kill a bunch of zombies. And yet, as we peeked out into the main floor, mostly silence greeted us. Silence and a shit ton of bodies.

“Are they dead?” I asked, looking at the piles of zombie corpses draped all over, including ones that were reaching toward the stairs as if they’d died trying to chase us up the first time.

“Should be,” Lisa said. “But we’ll check anyway. Stay sharp. Sometimes there are some stragglers.”

I watched as she started nudging corpses with her rifle, finger on the trigger and ready to blow a head off if anyone dared to move.

Obviously this was a girl who didn’t get caught unaware twice. I shrugged and started doing the same, poking at the zombies with the greatest of care.

Lisa waved to catch my attention and motioned toward a zombie over on the other side of the room. It was half on the ground, but kept trying to get up only to fall on its face again and again. It muttered to itself constantly, making those gurgling sounds they sometimes did. Only these were a little more… coherent.

“What is it doing?” I muttered.

“The closer they are to being a fresh zombie, the more human they get when exposed to the chemical,” she explained as she motioned me closer.

“It’s human?” I repeated in shock as I stared at the struggling creature in horror.

She shook her head. “No. Once you’re fully turned into a zombie, we don’t have a way to come back. The serum can only prevent turning from a bite, whether administered at the point of a bite or as an inoculation. The brain damage done after a turn is instant and permanent. It’s still more than half a zombie and it’s dangerous.”

I flinched as she raised her gun and fired, dropping the poor thing in a pool of blood. Not goo. Blood.

“Good thing is, that sound will bring any other stragglers.” She reloaded and smiled at me. I couldn’t return the expression and her brow wrinkled. “You okay?”

I shrugged. “It’s just different if there’s even a tiny bit of something human left in them, isn’t there?”

Lisa pursed her lips. “That thing I just shot? He was one of our guys, taken because he wasn’t paying close enough attention about three weeks ago. I didn’t like killing him, but you have to set your mind, Sarah. They’re already dead. Just like when you got over killing the zombies the first time. This is no different.”

I glanced at the man-zombie laying there a few feet away. His face was bloated, but the grey tones weren’t as dark as a zombie corpse, his eyes were glassy, but clear, not red.

It sure felt different.

But there was no time to debate as a few of Lisa’s stragglers did, indeed, come at the sound of the dinner bell that was gunfire. Again, these were clearly fresher zombies, damaged by the serum bomb, but not completely wiped out thanks to whatever small part of them retained their humanity. Lisa shot them down while I stood there, staring and filled with discomfort and a sick feeling in my gut.

Finally there was only one left and she glanced at me. “You have to do it, Sarah. Get it out of your head.”

I flinched. “Right now?”

“It’s a zombie, look at it.”

I did look. The last one was a woman, dressed in fatigues, boots all cockeyed since her ankle had been broken and now stuck out at a weird angle. That was definitely zombie of her. Her skin was grey, her teeth were black with sludge, she reached toward us with clawing hands. Zombie, zombie, zombie.

The difference was that somewhere deep in her red, blood-lusty eyes, I saw something. I saw… pain. Pain inside the levels of zombie rage that made her want to eat my brains.

An animal in that kind of pain used to be put down for its own good. And as I lifted my gun and fired off a shot, I realized I was doing the exact same thing. I couldn’t fix that girl, so it was best to put her out of her misery. I certainly wouldn’t want my humanity retriggered in any way if I had been zombie-fied. I couldn’t think of a worse kind of hell, honestly.

“Good.” Lisa reloaded. “Let’s clear the basement and get back to the base before it gets too dark, okay?”

She walked away and for a moment I hung back, still looking at the poor dead zombie I’d just shot between the eyes. She had the same color hair as David’s sister, who I shot almost a year ago as she turned into a zombie.

“Come on, Sarah,” Lisa said, her voice sharp as she blocked the stairs and climbed over to the basement floor side.

I shook my head and followed, trying to swallow back my discomfort and my concerns with every step. The basement stairwell was way darker than the others had been. There was less sunlight downstairs, fewer windows and the afternoon was starting to wane, adding a bit of desperation to our charge. Nighttime in the world of zombie infestation was terrifying and super dangerous. You just didn’t want to risk getting caught off guard.

It was as if my thoughts triggered a reaction because Lisa’s spine straightened and she started walking faster toward the bottom of the stairs and our last duty for the day.

“All right, I’m going to throw a grenade,” she whispered. “We’ll let the gas dissipate and cover the stairs like before.”

I shrugged. Seemed like as good a plan as any, though I didn’t look forward to the remnants of more human-zombies, thank you very much. Still, it was preferable to a roomful of zombie-zombies.

She pulled the tab and tossed the grenade. We both backed up and readied our weapons as the metal canister clanked along the linoleum flooring below. There was a pop and I held my breath as the hiss of gas filled my ears (though muffled by that stupid, sweaty helmet).

“How long do we have to wait?” I asked. “Last time we sort of went and took care of some errands, so is it a minute, ten minutes?”

“Gas will clear in about five and that tends to wipe out the general population pretty well,” she said. “We’re still working on the timing, to be honest.”

“Great,” I muttered as I leaned against the bannister.

There wasn’t to be any thumb twiddling, though. Out of the fog below us, a zombie appeared at the bottom of the stairs. It was making a wheezy noise and had a bowling ball still attached to its swollen fingers. It swung the thing around, crashing into the wall and leaving a huge hole in the drywall.

Lisa sniffed and fired off a shot that dropped the thing.

“Oh yeah, the bowling alley,” I said as I fired another shot at a zombie that peeked its head around to look up into the stairwell at the noise.

This one was in some kind of cheer uniform and had her stringy hair in a high pony that flipped as she jerked back from the bullet to her brain.

“There are a lot of benefits to clearing this area,” Lisa said with a tiny smile that seemed pretty real.

“Are you thinking date night?” I asked.

She glanced at me. “Seriously, Sarah? I’m not answering that.”

“Just curious,” I chuckled.

She rolled her eyes. “Follow me, let’s do this thing.”

She stepped out into the main hallway. There were signs directing us to the bowling center, billiard and table tennis room and a couple other entertainment venues (including a movie theatre, though I doubted we’d waste electricity on that).

“It’s so closed off,” I said as we looked around.

She nodded. “Yeah, I’ll toss one in the billiard area and one in the bowling alley, then we’ll clear the rest. It should cover a majority of the space.”

“Outbreak was in the mid to late afternoon,” I agreed. “I doubt they were playing movies then. That space may have even been locked.”

“Thank God for small favors. Now let’s go.”

She pulled the pin on another grenade and tossed it into the billiard room. She pulled the door shut and did the same for the bowling alley. With an exchange of smiles, we headed off the clear the rest of the floor and declare our mission to reclaim the student union building a rousing success.