Among the Living (10 page)

The shape moans and slides forward, and as it comes out of the blinding light, he sees it’s a two-hundred-twenty-five-pound kid with tattoos on both arms. Lank greasy brown hair hangs in front of his face, creating a curtain over a mouth that opens wide when he spots Lester.

He lowers the gun for a half-second.

“Ronnie?” Ronnie is a good kid. He helps out when he can. Sometimes he mules boxes of weed from the post office. Sometimes he buys from Lester, and sometimes he gets some for free.

This doesn’t look like the Ronnie he knows. This one has a blood-red eye fixed on Lester, and the other is obscured by hair.

Lester steps back but raises the gun again. Ronnie moans and opens his mouth, coming toward him on feet that are suddenly much faster than remembers. The fat kid used to take a couple of tries to get off his couch. He would rock forward then back, and on the next heave he would come to his feet like a pumpkin dressed in black. Now he moves like someone is holding a blowtorch to his ass.

Lester takes a step toward the front door. He likes Ronnie and doesn’t want to hurt him. But Ronnie isn’t himself today; he’s a deader. Lester trembles, scared, he hits something with the back of his leg and a bubble of horror brushes past his lips. He nearly falls, and in the process, the gun fires. He has his finger on the trigger, but he doesn’t mean to shoot Ronnie.

The fat kid stumbles with a moan and falls backwards. There is no spray of blood out the back, and for a moment Les wonders why the hell not? There is always a satisfying spray of blood in the movies.

He steps off the patio and approaches Ronnie’s body. It isn’t moving, but he knows how this shit works. As soon as he gets close, Ronnie’s arm is going to reach out and grab his ankle, sweep him off his feet and then it’s goodnight sweet prince.

There is a little hole in the kid’s chest, but his shirts obscure it. A ridiculous Hawaiian shirt hangs open over an old Morbid Angel t-shirt that would cover two Lesters. As sure as shit stinks, Ronnie’s eyes open, and he sits up and reaches for Les’s leg. Can I call ‘em or what, folks? Lester’s mind giggles wildly. Les likes his legs. He is attached to them, and when he thinks of losing one of them … well, he sort of giggles again. He is still a little high, and the image of him hobbling around with a pirate’s peg leg is pretty fucking funny.

Ronnie’s eyes are bright red like he is more stoned than anyone has ever been in the history of the world. Like someone punctured his corneas and poured blood in them. He moans and tries to sit up, mouth opens wide, and the hiss of escaping air from his chest sounds like a balloon with a slow leak.

Lester has reached his quota for weird shit today, so he fires three times at his old buddy. Night, night, Ronnie boy, see you on the other side.

One punches into Ronnie’s head just above the bridge of his nose. His head bounces back from the impact. One smashes into his cheek, and the other misses entirely, but they seem to do the trick, because Ronnie isn’t moving anymore. Once again, Lester wants to know what happened to his satisfying spray of blood. There is blood all right, but it oozes out like congealed black grease.

Lester pops the magazine and checks it again. He tries to do the math in his head, but the numbers keep slipping away. Instead he grins as he reloads and grins as he considers how many of the filthy things in front of the house he is going to take out. Grins at the number of headshots he is going to pull off. Grins as he thinks of the pile of deaders that will soon litter the road in front of the house.

In fact, if he gets enough of them, maybe they will catch on and stay away. Sure they are dumb, but even a puppy learns not to piss in the house if you smack it with a newspaper enough times.

He fumbles the box open and jams shells into the automatic’s magazine. The deaders stare at him, pushing against the fence. They shamble forward, some fighting to the front. His initial count of twenty may be high; it’s more like ten or maybe a dozen. Where are those Army fuckers now? Sure could use a platoon of the guys in white to mop up this neighborhood, because it has gone to hell.

What if the rest of them figure out how to get in the yard? It’s unlikely they will come through the back; that fence is over six feet high. Of course, if enough of them press against it, the thing will probably fall over. Maybe Ronnie was an exception. Maybe he remembered that they were friends and some part of his brain told him it was okay to pay a social call. That must be it. I bet the rest of them won’t figure out how to get over. They are like children. Just look at those fucking brainless things.

He jams the full magazine into the rifle pretty sure there is one in the chamber. He raises it and watches the deaders as they push against the fence. His first target comes into view; it’s a guy he thinks he has seen at the other end of the street from time to time. A man who always gives him a dirty look as he whips his expensive sports car around the corner and roars toward home. The neighbor must suspect Lester isn’t exactly an outstanding member of the little community. Those judging eyes have caught his one too many times.

Now the asshole’s eyes aren’t so judgmental. They stare straight ahead, not even fixed on Lester. Here ya go, buddy, a nice ‘fuck you’ from your friendly neighborhood drug dealer. The gun’s roar is a reassuring blast that resonates in his pot- and booze-addled hearing. The guy drops without a sound as the bullet takes him just below one eye. He falls without a twitch and is still. The others push over his body. A young girl in a bathing suit who is all of twelve if she is a day, with curly black hair and one lone flip flop, drops to her knees and starts to chew on Mr. Judgmental Eyes.

“... the fuck?” Les mutters out loud. He has seen it all today.

The smell of gunpowder is reassuring as it competes with the smell of death in his front yard. The sulfur smells like burned eggs. The oil that he uses on all the parts so the guns work as advertised. He loves to strip them when his friends are visiting. He shows them how the parts fit and how to load the magazines. It’s something he is good at besides getting out a scale and measuring a gram or three of coke.

The door clicks open behind him. He spins around abruptly and scares a squeal out of Angela. She has donned a short robe that is barely closed in front.

“Hey, babe.” He grins at her chest.

“Oh my God, what are you doing?”

“Goddamn Ronnie got in the yard, and I had to put him down. He was banging around, and I think it called a bunch of them over. Then I dropped one in front, sort of a warning to others passing by.”

“Won’t the soldiers see the bodies and wonder if someone is in the house?”

“Ah crap, I didn’t think about that.”

“Maybe you can drag him and the black dude’s body to the back. I bet the things will wander off.”

“I don’t know, look at the little one.” He points at the child, who is chewing on Mr. Judgmental Eyes’s leg like she is a dog. There is blood all over her face as she tugs a tendon out of the hole she has created, sucking at the chunks of flesh that stick to it. Then she rips a fresh piece of leg off, which makes a tearing noise like ripping the sleeves off a t-shirt. Lester gets a chill.

“Let’s go in, babe, this is too gross.”

Angela follows him inside, and they wander to the couch in the living room. Light pokes in from the closed blinds, and the room is still dark and murky but bright enough for him to go over the machine gun and Glock for a good cleaning.

She runs back upstairs and then comes back with the bag of pot and their long glass pipe. She hasn’t bothered to close her robe in the heat, and Lester wouldn’t think of complaining.

“This cool?” she asks.

“Sure, but I’ll skip it for now.” He is still dizzy from earlier and wants to get his mind straight in case more of the things come into the yard.

He reloads the rifle as the smell of pot drifts near. He starts salivating and wants a hit.

“What do we have to eat?” she asks.

“Some canned stuff. A few protein bars.”

“God, how can you eat those gross dry things?”

“Just do. If you eat a couple and we open some fruit, it will be like real food.”

“Fruit is real food, babe.” She smiles. “But I want a burger and fries or a steak. That would be so good, a fat juicy steak cooked on the grill.”

“If we had steak, I would go out back and start the grill. Oh damn, we’re out of gas.”

“That sucks,” she sighs and hits the pipe again. “Don’t we have a generator we can use to power up the house?”

“Nope, but John next door does. Or he did.”

“Is he around?”

“I don’t think so. I bet they piled into their car early on and got the fuck out of town.”

“Maybe you can go over there and see if the door is open, just borrow it. I’m sure he would understand, and if he gets mad, I can always flash him,” she laughs then kicks her legs up on the coffee table.

“Naughty girl.” He can’t help but smile. John would probably have a fucking heart attack. “Hmmm, I don’t even know how heavy the damn things are. I don’t know if I can move it by myself.”

“So you’re thinking about it? I want to take a shower and dry my hair. I don’t like the way it frizzes out when I use the towel.”

Her speech is slurring and slowing down. Taking a shower sounds great, but the water is freezing. The hair dryer is probably out of the question. The power has flickered more than once when she fires up the big thing in the bathroom. He can’t imagine a generator powerful enough to keep up with that beast. She is quiet for a minute. Then she hits the pipe and holds it in for a long time, so long that when she exhales, there is barely any smoke. Her lids grow closer together, and her eyes are once again bright red but not the same blood red the deaders have, thank God. He would hate to have to put down the stoners while taking out deaders. That would be really fucking bad for business.

“Maybe, like, I could help. I mean we can take turns with the gun, just go in from the side, open the door and slip over there when it’s dark.”

“Maybe.” He wonders if he is really thinking about doing this. It’s a pain not having electricity; they can’t cook shit. He could always build a fire in the fireplace and heat cans of food, but the house is too hot for that.

Ah hell. You only live once.

“Okay, stop smoking that stuff, though. We’ll go over when it’s really dark and drag the damn thing back.”

“Cool,” she sighs and closes her eyes.

“Cool,” he echoes, pretty sure he is getting a contact high. Oh what the hell, one more hit before nightfall sounds like heaven right about now.

Afternoon arrives with a blaze of sun that sucks the early morning clouds right off the cityscape. Kate’s tiny air conditioning unit chugs away at full speed, barely keeping up with the humidity. It sits in a window, and its ass end hangs out over the back of the building. When she rented the place, it wasn’t quite what she had in mind.

She wears a t-shirt and nothing else, because her skin is still sensitive, throbbing with a dull ache that leaves her strangely satisfied. And the rush she got when the pain started, there were times when she felt like she was about to orgasm because the agony was so sweet. She isn’t angry with old Walter for doing this to her, how can she be? She had the ultimate revenge when she sliced his dick off just as pretty as you please.

She lies on the floor on her stomach like she is thirteen again, except she is sipping beer from a straw down the long neck of a Red Hook. She loves how fast the bubbles go to her head and how fast she gets a buzz. She has a movie channel on, and it’s a romantic comedy, but she isn’t really paying attention. Instead, she is thinking of Bob and her fantasy earlier. Good thing it is a fantasy. I’d probably chop his cock off when he got done with me, and that would be a real shame for old Bobby-boy, because he’s a nice guy.

It’s been three weeks since she last killed—well, before last night—and that was her fifth victim. He had also been the dullest. Very little chitchat, just Yes, sir. No, sir. Harder, sir. I can take it. He had a hard-on the entire time, and when she dared to look back at him, he was usually stroking himself through the thin fabric of his boxers. There was a point where he ordered her on her knees before him, told her to take his cock in his mouth and suck on it. Suck it, bitch. Why couldn’t these guys get a little more creative when requesting a blowjob? Hell, her third victim had been almost romantic about the whole thing, and she had felt sorry for him at times. However, he was just a little piggy like the others, and they always went along with her plans when she begged off by asking them to punish her some more, aim for my inner thighs, please make me a good girl again. And the sadist in the bastards couldn’t resist.

She can’t believe she is covering her tracks so well. Some nights she lies awake waiting for the knock on the door that will bring the police or FBI. Will she go out in a blaze? Grab her two best friends and take a few of them with her before they gun her down?

The papers have made note of the murders, but no one has connected them in the media yet. Sometimes there is great detail and speculation, other times there is almost nothing, the barest mention of “a brutal slaying in a Seattle hotel room that left one man dead and the suspect at large.” Hah, at large. If they ever get ahold of her tiny frame, they will never use the word ‘large.’