Zombie Fallout 9 (40 page)

“Give me a sec, you can feel the heat of my anger around your throat.”

I reached for the dial. Tommy grabbed my hand.

“That would not be wise,” he said softly.

“Yeah? When have I been known for my wiseness?”

“Wiseass, maybe. What the hell is going on?” BT asked.

“Apparently, we're having a party and the vamps are crashing,” I told him.

“They're here?”

I nodded.

“What do they want?”

“I was about to find out before you two came along.”

“He was about to open the door,” Tommy ratted me out.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” BT asked. “They aren't the welcome wagon. They don't have an apple pie with them.”

“The welcome wagon? What is this, 1973? In Kansas? When's the last time someone brought a neighbor an apple pie?”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, I don't. The last time I moved, my neighbor's dog shit in my yard. That was my greeting.”

“Well, that should tell you something about yourself.”

“Ahem.” Tommy cleared his throat and pointed to the steel door.

“You're lucky,” I told BT.

“Yeah, sure.” He bumped into me with his chest, driving me into the wall.

“Real mature.”

“You gave me your word no harm would befall Sophia.” That came through loud and clear. So much so it even interrupted BT's retort.

“I meant to. Keep my promise, I mean.” I told her honestly. “That was until I found out she would be able to, and most likely would, kill us remotely. I couldn't let that happen. Breaking an oath seemed the lesser of two evils.” I wanted to laugh at my own words, didn't figure it was the right time. Maybe I do have some sage like qualities. Killing Sophia had rid the world of an evil. If anything, I was doing the planet a favor. “I'm going to take your silence as an admission of guilt.”

“Her life was not yours to take.”

“That's where you're wrong, Payne. I'll take anyone's life that threatens the safety of my friends and family. No questions asked.”

“There are consequences.”

“Of course there are. There would have been consequences had I chosen to let her live as well.”

“Perhaps. Or maybe we would have left you all to your own devices.”

“Doubtful, but if planting seeds of falsehood makes you feel any better, go for it.”

“We've found that the living dead ones are very susceptible to suggestion.” Payne said.

That I did believe, and wholeheartedly. Eliza had mastered that particular power, Tommy had some skill, and I could have a zombie pet puppet if I tried hard enough.

“I can feel you wondering right now whether or not this latest attack was caused by us or not. I can assure you that we are in complete control of the zombies.”

There was at least some truth to her words or she would not be on the other side of that doorway.

“Have them eat Charity, and then I'll know you're telling the truth.”

BT smacked my arm so hard I thought it was going to fall off. “Egging on a vampire. You need help, man.”

“Michael, you cannot stay in there forever.”

I knew she was right. “So what would you have us do?” I sighed. Not that I was going to do anything she suggested, but it would at least be nice to know my options, or lack thereof.

“I want to make you immortal, Michael, to have you by my side as we rule this world together.”

“And what of the people here with me?”

There was deep silence before she spoke again. “I believe that you already know the answer to that question.”

“So I come out, you convert me over, and then we dine until our heart's content? Something like that? I mean it's tempting, especially with this big goon hovering over my head, that's for sure. Is there like a signing bonus or something? Just a taste of what it's like to be called up to the major leagues? You know what I mean?”

BT's head shook back and forth.

“Do not make me regret my decision to even offer you this.”

“What could you possibly do that would be worse than what you have so generously
offered
?” I spat out that last word.

“Oh Michael, how naive you are. There are things much worse than death. I could erase all that you and your family are and replace it with anything of my choosing. I could torture them for millennia while you watched helplessly. I could easily make them go insane and then change them over. They would stay demented forever. Of all the things that our condition can heal, those of the mind are mysteriously absent. How would you feel, Michael, if your beautiful wife merely screamed constantly for hundreds of years? Or possibly one of your sons could not help but repeatedly stab himself? I have done these things merely for my amusement. Imagine what I could dream up as restitution for Sophia's death.”

“Can she do what she says?” I asked Tommy, and he nodded sadly. “I think we'll just take our chances in here,” I told her.

“Do you not think I can find people that will be able to open this door?”

I knew she could. It wasn't really a bank vault.

“We'll deal with that when it happens.”

“Your family will die violently.”

I could tell she was turning away.

“Wait!” Tommy said loudly.

I looked at him questioningly. He said nothing for a second as he seemed to be collecting himself or gathering courage.

“You are wasting my time,” she hissed.

I felt like telling her, “What's the rush?” It wasn't like she was on the clock or something.

“What if I were to give myself up?”

She laughed. “What makes you think I care anything for you, Tomas, the sister killer? There is already too much broken within you. Your fall would not nearly be as enticing as that of Michael's.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I put my hand on Tommy's shoulder. “And stop looking so sad; you look like you just received a rejection letter from Harvard.”

“I want to try and prevent any more suffering.”

“I appreciate that. We all do. But we'd no sooner let you out than I would anyone else here.”

“That's the truth,” BT chimed in.

“I've got this under control,” I told him, placing my hand up.

“This is what you call under control? Man, I would have loved to have been one of your kids. They must have run roughshod over you.”

“Anyone want one of these?” Trip said, coming up to us holding tin foil hats.

“I don't want your damn hats!” BT was about to swat them out of Trip's hands when we all reached our hands up to our ears. I'm not sure how everyone else felt, but judging by their reactions, I would say it was pretty close to what I was experiencing. Knitting needles shoved into and through my eardrums would have hurt less. The pain was sharp and severe and seemingly lasted forever. I was under the impression Payne was unleashing some sort of psychic event in my skull, maybe giving us all multiple aneurysms. I was reaching over to Trip and one of his hats when it stopped as suddenly as it had started. He was smoking a bone and had been completely oblivious to our suffering because, of course, he was already donning his.

Tracy looked over to me when it stopped. She was trying to comfort the kids. The pain did not linger, but the remembrance of it had.

“I don't know.” Tommy answered before I could ask.

“Payne?” BT asked.

“She's leaving, and in a hurry.” Tommy said.

“
I
need
to stop for the night.” She was leaning against a sign that said “Searsport.” Night was coming quickly, and she was wholly uncertain about exactly where she needed to go. A used book and antique store was not more than a hundred yards up and on her right. She could hear the sounds of battle, but it was far away and she certainly was not going to come up on it in the middle of the night not knowing which side, if any, she should be on. After a quick but thorough examination of the building, she found no one either living, dead, or undead, and for that she was grateful.

Tiffany read a lot those next couple of weeks. Foraging for food and water had not been difficult, as the store had a five gallon water dispenser with three untapped containers and the owner was apparently a fan of nut bars—he or she had an entire drawer stuffed full of them. An old bed that creaked loudly every time she moved had been the most comfortable thing she'd ever slept on. Even still, she couldn't stay here forever. She just had no direction to go in; the battle she'd heard previously had long ago ended.

“Maybe I should just get back to my car and go.” Her hand was on the door handle when she heard the approach of a truck engine coming from her right. She moved away from the door and ducked down by a window. The truck rolled past quickly, so she couldn't be sure, but she thought it was the same people from the day she saw the heads on the road. She didn't know why, but she was glad they were still alive. Less than an hour later, a bigger truck rolled by, going back the way they'd come, the large man behind the wheel this time. She did not see the one with the goatee.

She'd got back on her bed and had been reading a first edition print of Moby Dick when she heard another engine. “Lot going on today,” she said as she got back to her window. The same white truck as earlier was heading back, the man with the goatee driving. “I wonder if I can trust you?” she asked before going back to her book. It was another two weeks before she was forced to make a decision. Even with some serious rationing, she was down to the last of the candy bars and she was officially sick of the wild blueberries she'd been harvesting in the back.

“Forwards or backwards, what are you going to do Tiffany?” She was standing on the “welcome” mat looking up and down the street for some sort of sign. It was the prehistoric cry of a loon up ahead that made her move forward and helped shape Michael Talbot's fate. She'd wished she'd started off sooner in the day; by the time she figured she was in the center of town it was already getting dark. It seemed this part of the world had a penchant for losing light at an unnatural pace.

She was literally at a crossroad as she stared upon a small grocery store called Tozier's. She could either take a left onto Mt. Ephraim road or stay straight on Route 1. Whichever way she went, it would have to wait until the morning. The grocery store looked entirely too dark and foreboding to go in there. She figured the laundromat to her immediate left was the better choice. Not many people cleaning clothes during the apocalypse, whether like her, they really had wanted to. Two of the large floor to ceiling windows had been broken out. She could see in about halfway. Rows of washing machines were on her right and dryers on her left. Besides a small pile of discarded clothing and some shattered glass, the place looked as if it could open back up for business tomorrow morning. She entered. Tiffany pulled and pushed three of the large washing machines in the middle of the row away from the wall, far enough that she would have enough room to sleep and be safe; in theory, no zombie would be able to get to her while she did so.

“Oh, gross.” At first, she thought she was looking at dead rats on the newly cleared space. Her view of the matter didn't get much better when she realized that they were dust bunnies bigger than actual rabbits. She brushed some of them away, then started checking machines, finally getting a better idea as she looked upon the hundreds of garments of clothing hanging in plastic wrap. She grabbed armloads of the cleaned clothes and lined the bottom of her makeshift bed, hiding the dirt and debris while also giving her a comfortable place to sleep. She felt relatively secure in her hidey-hole, although as tired as she was feeling, she thought she could have laid down on the street and fallen asleep. It was pure blackness out when she awoke. She felt as if she'd slept for a fair amount of hours, yet she was not completely caught up. She was uncertain as to what had disturbed her. When she realized what it was, she could not help but to hold her breath.

There was no sound. No crickets, no birds, not even the wind had the fortitude to stir. She had been convinced that the vacuum of space would be louder. She stirred just enough to grab her rifle, and even that sounded like a fire alarm in the stillness. She wished she'd checked her inventory of bedding a little better; one of the jackets was made of a nylon type substance, and every time she shifted, it sounded like the rustling of a large pile of leaves. She moved slowly at first, sitting up and then slowly rising so that her head was up over the lip of the machine. She could see nothing outside, although her other senses were letting her know that the danger was real. The smell was first, then the sound of clothes moving—of feet walking. The occasional soft moan of the dead as they passed. Zombies were walking by, hundreds, maybe thousands. She wasn't even aware when her knees began shake. She had to rest her elbows on the machine top to keep from collapsing back down.

A half-hour passed, an hour, and still they moved past. From time to time, a sliver of moonlight would break through the cloud cover and illuminate the nightmare. The zombies were within feet of the entrance to the laundromat. They were cutting through the parking lot and heading down Mt. Ephraim road as they got off the main drag. She did not believe her terror could get much sharper, then she realized just how wrong she was. Just as the zombies began to tail off, she saw two vampires walking in silence behind. She dug down for enough courage to sight one of them in, hoping that she would have enough time to kill them all before they could return the favor. She was applying pressure to the trigger just as the moon was blanketed over. The last thing she saw was the eye shine of one of the vampires as she turned her head to peer into the inky blackness of the laundromat.

Tiffany didn't know if she could handle any more adrenaline surging through her system. The vampire had somehow looked directly at her, somehow seeing her. But she knew that couldn't be the case or she'd already be dead. She waited until her heart had stopped beating like a hummingbird's and crawled over the machine to go outside. She didn't venture far before retreating back to her spot in the hopes she would ever be able to fall asleep again. She awoke to a small sparrow looking down upon her. After the horrors of the previous night, the inquisitive stare of the bird was welcome. She wondered if perhaps this was the bird's first glimpse of a human and it was trying to determine if the rarely encountered beast was dangerous. The bird flitted away as she arose. A quick glimpse of the roadway showed that she was alone. She could almost believe that last night was a dream if not for the bloody footprints along the roadway.

“Follow the red stained asphalt,” she sang in mockery of the
Yellow Brick Road
song. “And then what, Tiffany? What the hell are you going to do when you get there? As if two vampires weren't bad enough, now there are a thousand zombies. You owe Pappy. You don't owe him that much, though.” She was convinced now that the earlier truck she'd seen filled with people was the target of the vampires. It had to be. Where else would they be going? “Screw this.” She turned to go back to the Mustang. “But.” She paused. “If that much evil is gathering to oppose them, just how good are those people? No, you can't think like that. Odds are the vampires and the zombies are going to join up with them.” She thought back to the inhabitants of the truck; there had been women and children and none of them seemed in distress. In fact, some were laughing. “The devil laughs. Get a grip, Tiffany. I'm just going to leave, find myself some little house to call my own.” She was about to turn and go when the sun burst through the clouds and perfectly illuminated the roadway the zombies had gone down.

“Could you be any more obvious?” she asked the heavens as she followed the light. An hour later, she heard shooting. Sounded like a full-scale invasion. “I guess that answers the question about them being on the same side. Doesn't mean they're necessarily good, but they're enemies of my enemies, so that's at least good.”

She stood in the middle of the roadway for a few minutes, figuring out exactly what she was going to do. She wanted to stay where she was, but the exposure was too great. “Awesome.” She said as she looked into the thick Maine woods. “I just got my hair done.” Tiffany hiked roughly a mile, in a more or less straight line, to get closer to the sounds of battle. She'd had to make a few detour adjustments around a small body of water and an impregnable briar patch. She thought she was getting close, but she couldn't see much more than fifteen feet in any direction. The concussion from an explosion nearly knocked her off her feet. Her ears were ringing when she stood.

“I think this might be close enough.” She was in a small clearing under the umbrella of a large pine. The battle waxed and waned as the day wore on. Hunger, thirst, and the constant waving off of biting insects were beginning to take their toll on the girl. “Should I stay or should I go? And I definitely need to stop singing small snippets of songs.” She stayed, gathering up as much of the pine needles as she could in an attempt to build a bed. She sat back and tried to rest while a battle ensued, then fell asleep just as it was dying down. She awoke hours later, once again to an unnatural stillness that blanketed the area. The fight was over. There had been multiple explosions and more bullets fired than at any time she figured wasn't a World War, yet still, she did not think the humans survived. Her first, second, and part of her third instinct said she should just leave, turn around and go. In fact, never even think upon this place again.

It was the damn quiet that got her moving. Unlike the previous night, the sky was cloudless and the moon bright. Within five minutes, she was at the edge of a clearing. She could see a house not too far off, and much like she figured, it was still completely surrounded by more zombies than she had ever seen in one place.
There's nothing I can do here except die
, she thought, looking out upon the field covered with zombies. “Why am I still here then?” she breathed out quietly. Movement on the deck above the zombies caught her eye. The being walked slowly along the length of the structure, sometimes pausing and looking skyward. “That's no zombie, that's for sure.” Of that, she was convinced. She rested her rifle on a small branch. She had the being lined up perfectly in her sights. What she wasn't completely sure of was whether or not the person was an occupant of the house or not. All she could tell with a fair degree of reliability was that the figure was a female. That wasn't enough. She could not risk the chance of killing an innocent.

“Just give me a sign; you've been doing it for the last two days, so why stop now?” She was not expecting her request to be express delivered quite so quickly. The figure on the deck whipped her head around and stared directly at her. The moon had reflected off the creature's eyes, giving off a pale red color that nearly froze Tiffany's blood in mid-transit. It was eerily similar to what had happened the previous night. Tiffany didn't hesitate as she pulled the trigger. Tiffany thought she saw the bullet impact the vampire's head but she couldn't be sure as a blinding white spoke of pain bore its way through the center of her skull. She dropped the rifle, and in the process of falling to the ground, struck her head against the trunk and a large rock. She was unconscious before her head came to a complete rest.