Zombie D.O.A. (8 page)

I leveled it at Iakopo’s head and fired. Nothing. I fired again. Nothing. Iakopo was three feet away when I pulled the trigger again. I heard the click of a misfire and knew I was dead.

Then the giant’s head exploded, spraying me with blood as his huge frame crumbled to the ground like a deflating air balloon.

For what seemed like a minute but was
probably no more than a second, t
here was a deathly silence. Then Chavez was screaming, “That’s not fair! That’s not fucking fair, you cheating slime!”

“No holds barred,” I said. “You called it.”

“Oh you gonna die now, motherfucker!” he screamed, then shouted something to the crowd in a language I didn’t understand. They pushed forward, snarling and fighting each other for position. The car was to my right, but I didn’t think
I
could get to it before they got to me.

The crowd closed in
cautiously
, like a pack of wild dogs
approaching an injured quarry that they know is still dangerous. I could smell the fetid, rotten meat stench of them, could see their blood-crazed eyes and oversized, predatory incisors.

Ten feet from me a big guy in construction overalls abruptly broke ranks and charged. He’d gotten maybe three feet when his head seemed to explode. Then the head on a woman in the front row exploded
too, and then the same happened to the guy
next to her, one of the
college
kids
.

Suddenly, all hell broke loose. More of the creatures fell, while those behind continued
to push forward. Many of them w
en
t
crashing to the gro
und and were trampled underfoot
.

I took me a moment to realize that someone was firing from somewhere. I couldn’t hear any shots, but whoever was doing the shooting was some
marksman
. 

A man with half a face reached for me and was instantly dispatched by the gunman, who then turned his attention back to the crowd, where three of the things went down in rapid succession.

I could hear Bronson Chavez shouting,
alternating between English and the fo
reign dialect he’d used earlier,
but
I
couldn’t see him in the melee.

All of this happened in a split second, before I made a dash for the car. The woman had had the presence of mind to get her boys into the
vehicle
and was struggling to start the engine.

“
Move
over
,
” I shouted and she did without question. I turned the key
and heard the ignition grind.
Too fast.
The mystery gunman was taking a heavy toll on the creatures in the street below, but even he couldn’t keep them at bay. They swarmed the car, banging on the roof, the windows, the hood.

I took a deep breath and
exhaled through gritted teeth then
turned the ignition
again. This time the
engine roared into life, and
I slid the shift into reverse and gunned the
motor
.

The car accelerated backward, taking several zombies along for the ride. As I
deliberately ove
rshot
the intersection
I stood on the brake and those still hanging on to the
SUV were thrown to the tarmac
. Then
I put her into drive, turned left and raced off into the darkness.

At Lenox Avenue, I turned
right and pointed the SUV south. T
he
n
I stopp
ed the car in the middle of
the
normally busy thoroughfare
.

Tonight t
he only vehicles were
a
bandoned or wrecked
or burned out hulks
.
There were bodies too, lots of them, some half consumed, some skeletal, others afire. Here and there I saw hunched figures lurking, their shadows thrown onto shattered storefronts by the flames.

Fortunately, the path down Lenox seemed fairly clear.

“What’s your name?” I asked the woman.

“Valerie.”

“Well
,
Valerie, this is where I get off. You follow the road straight
on
and it will
bring
you to
Central Park. There’s an army base there, they’ll take you in.
Keep the car rolling, drive around obstacles if you can, otherwise push them out of the way. Whatever you do, don’t get out of the car, and you stop for nothing
and no-one, you
understand
?”

She nodded, a haunted, drawn expression on her face. “Come with us,” she said.

“I can’t. I have to get home to my daughter.”

Valerie nodded.
“My husband…” she started
.

I shook my head and the pained expression on her face told me she understood.

“Take care of your boys
”
I said and got out.
  As an afterthought I handed her Dom’s .38. “It will probably do more damage if you throw it, but you never know.”

“Thank you,
” she said
, “for everyth
ing.
”

I stood in the middle of the road and watched
them
drive away
. Then I turned and headed toward
s
home.

I tried to guess the time and figured it was well after midnight. R
uby had been alone for
hours and hadn’t been fed
since
mid-afternoon. For a normal one-
day
-
old baby that would be a problem
, but I reminded myself that Ruby wasn’t normal. Ruby was…special.

That’s how I preferred to think of
her
now. Ruby was special. Sure she was teething six mo
n
ths too soon, and her favorite meal was pureed beef, but she was my
daughter and I refused to believe
that she was one of these things.

R
ight now I had
to focus on getting back to her.
I was only a mile from the apartment, but alone in the dark, without a weapon, and surrounded by flesh eating ghouls, zombies, whatever the hell these things were.

I
needed a car and
spotted a red pickup with a bull
-
bar parked neatly at the curb on the other side of the road. I crossed towards it, noticing as I did, a man detach himself from the shadows of a building. He approached quickly, not running but walking purposefully, like an angry neighbor
intent
on a
confrontation
.

I reached the pickup, glanced through the side window and saw that there were no keys in the ignition. At that moment the man broke into a sprint and charged me, his face contorted with rage. He was almost on me when I swung the car door open and he ran full tilt into it.

But the man was not alone.
In the side mirror I saw more of the things closing in from behind
me
. I dropped to the ground,
rolled under the pickup,
crawled until I
hit the gutter then jumped up and sprinted towards the alley across the street.

I hit the alley
without breaking stride. Behind me I could hear the angry cries and running feet
of
the mob. I sprinted into the darkness praying there were none of them coming in the other direction. I didn’t see the chain link fence until it was too late and I ran at full speed into it.

I found myself knocked backward as the air was expelled forcibly from my
lungs. I landed flat on my back and felt the back of my head smash into the
concrete
floor of the alley.

Winded and dazed I heard them closing in. To my right I noticed the hulking shapes of a couple of dumpsters and started to crawl in that direction. I reached the dumpsters and managed to wedge myself behind one
,
as my pursuers blundered past in the darkness.

I heard them rattling the fence, heard angry, guttural
words
exchanged, then heard them slowly disperse. There were easier meals to be had. 

I lay in the space behind the dumpster for what seemed like hours, until eventually the cramp in my muscles became almost unbearable. Then I
crawled out
and
,
still lying on my belly, looked
around the dumpster towards the mouth of the
alley.
Nothing was moving in the street beyond and I was just about to get up when one of the creatures stumbled past the entrance to the street. He stopped and sniffed the air then moved on
.

I decided it was probably
safer
to
wait out the couple of hours
until
daybreak
. I wanted to get back to Ruby, but I wasn’t going to be much good to her dead. And if she’d been alone this long another hour or two wasn’t going to make much difference.

I
pulled myself
into one of the
dumpster
s and closed the lid
. It stunk to high heaven but
whatever was in there was soft and I fell asleep instantly
.

I woke to
the smell of burning flesh. S
hafts of light filtering through what looked like bullet holes in the side of the dumpster. I peered through
one of the holes and could see someone crouching in the alley.

The man wore a
brand new pair of jeans and a plaid shirt, with
the price tickets
still
attached to the sleeve. On his feet
he wore
a
,
similarly new
,
pair of Nike
hiking boots
, with the laces removed. The new clothes were offset by his appearance, the brick-red complexion of a long time wino, filthy graying hair and matching beard.