Among the Living (39 page)

The deader’s head snaps back from the impact, and then he is down. The last bullet had punched through the entryway, shattering the glass, and we can see people rushing to the entrance.

“Grab the gun!” the guy yells at me. I lean over and pick it up, but I don’t know how to fire it. A howl echoes across the room as two more come in. The soldier backs up, firing, so I raise the gun to my chest and try to figure out how the damn thing works. There is a slide on the back that I assume chambers a round. Then I look near the trigger and find the safety, so I pop it in the opposite direction. I raise the gun to my shoulder, shrug it tight and pull the trigger when the deader comes into view. I expect the recoil to smash into my shoulder, and I probably squint my eyes at the last second. I am not prepared, however, for the sound that greets my ears.

Click.

Oh shit!

Lester sits in the dark car. It is closed up and as hot as an oven. He stares at the passenger-side mirror where he last saw Angela, but he can make out nothing but indistinct shapes in the dark.

Lester can’t seem to make the dots match up in his head. When he started the day, he had no idea he would be fighting for his life. He had no idea he would lose Angela to those fucking things, and he certainly had no idea he would be contemplating suicide. It’s like he drew the lines, but somewhere along the way he missed a few numbers.

They didn’t really have a chance anyway. He had no keys, no destination in mind, just the assumption that if they managed to get out of the horror they were in, they would reach some wondrous place of safety and freedom.

Now everything is lost. He is stuck in the car, in the dark, and if he steps out in the garage, he is dead. So he will do the one thing he can.

Les maneuvers the rifle onto the floor and sets the stock against the floorboard. He leans forward and slides his hand down the stock until he finds the trigger guard. He checks the safety and then leans forward so he can put his mouth over the gun barrel.

Movement to the left draws his gaze to the window, where one of the deaders stands, mouth gaping open, bloody drool dripping from his teeth as he claws at the window. Lester gives him the finger and turns away.

Just a quick squeeze and it will all be over, one less meal for the deaders. He won’t end up a mindless shambling thing. Not Les, he plans to go out in style with his brains painting the ceiling of a fifty-thousand-dollar car. He looks in the mirror on the passenger side again, looking for some sign of his girl. Is she now making her return to life? If she is, there isn’t much he can do about it.

He shifts his foot back so he can lean into the barrel and make sure the bullet goes straight through his head. He would hate to fire the gun and have a bullet go astray. Hate to have to lie in shock as he bleeds out in a slow painful death.

As his foot moves back, it hits a lump on the floor that clinks a familiar song. Lester knocks the gun aside, reaches down between his legs, feels around the carpeted floor that doesn’t seem to hold a speck of dirt, and closes on a ring of keys. He places the gun on the floor, tilted up so it leans against the seat.

He lifts the keys to his face as if he has discovered the holy fucking Grail itself. His hand trembles, setting the keys jangling. He feels each one until he finds an oversized key that he tries to slip into the ignition.

It doesn’t go in, so he tries another key. After that doesn’t work either, he reaches up and feels around until he finds the overhead light. It clicks on, flooding the car with bright white light that forces him to close his eyes. Of course an expensive car like this has a floodlight in it.

Shapes move around the SUV but are just as hard to make out in the wake of the interior light as they were in the dark. They bang their heads on the car, one so hard that it trails a line of blood down the window on his side. Lester locates the key with the Cadillac symbol on it and slides it home. He turns it so hard he worries it might break off. His hands shake with a combination of exhaustion, anger, loss, and misery.

The SUV roars to life. He revs the engine a couple of times just for the reassuring sound. He fumbles with controls until he finds the right one, and the garage is flooded with bright lights. One of the deaders is standing in front of the car, and another staggers just to the left.

Well, only one way out of here. He aims for the deader with the center of the hood and punches the gas pedal to the floor. The big V8 roars and tires spin as he drives straight into the deader, smashing him into the metal garage door. Then he is through with a rending crash. He spins the wheel to the left and hits the brakes as he comes out of the garage and drives over the door, which flops ahead of the car. Let’s see what this bitch can do!

The Escalade bucks as it keeps pushing the big metal door ahead like a giant bulldozer, so he slams on the brakes, but the garage door’s forward momentum continues after the car stops, smashing into the deader and several others that are feasting on various body parts. The smell of burning rubber permeates the car. He drives into yet another deader, ramming the thing before he can hit the brakes. The balding guy was chewing on an arm, blood staining his hands, shirt and chin when Lester rode him down.

He screeches to a halt again and looks back for Angela, hoping against all hope that she was not bitten but instead escaped and hid in a corner or behind a box. His fears are quickly confirmed, however, when she stumbles into the light, her shirt ripped open to reveal one of the perfect breasts on which he’d sucked happily just yesterday. The other one is torn and hanging by threads of skin. Her face is a nightmare of damage. Bite marks and open wounds leak fluid down her chin, and one of her hands is completely missing.

Les can pull his gun and put her down from where he sits, but it would be dangerous to lower the window, aim and fire. There is a chance he will miss and have the window open for too long, giving the other deaders a freebie to make mincemeat of him.

He has a better idea. He unzips the black bag around his shoulder and extracts the fragmentation grenade. It’s green with the pin set in the angled arming device. He remembers the guy who traded it for some weed telling him how to arm it. Pull the pin and hold down the latch, because there is only a four- or five-second delay before it goes.

He does so now, then hits the button for the automatic window so it slides down, mechanical motor a steady whine. He holds his left arm out, releases the lever and is greeted with a click from deep in the heavy shell.

Then the smell hits him.

“Oh fuck!” He slings the grenade into the garage and is already hitting the pedal. The car lurches forward, shimmies a little—probably damage from driving over the garage door—then seems to straighten, and he is off like a shot.

The smell!

He forgot about the pipe they knocked loose earlier, the one that fed gas into the house. He zips up the street past at least a dozen deaders who stare after him as if they are about to wave goodbye. He is almost fifty yards away when the already bright daylight sky turns brilliant orange. The sound washes over the car and is gone. He stops and turns to look at the orange ball of fire roaring into the sky. Then he puts the house behind him and sets his destination for downtown, because Lester is going to find a bar and get good and fucked up.

The soldier drops a deader with a shot from less than ten feet away while I fumble around with the gun like an idiot. Erin has retreated behind a set of chairs with the injured girl. The woman has a pistol in hand, but it’s her left and it looks very unsteady, like the gun is hard to handle. She aims it at the door nonetheless while Erin crouches next to her.

“Like this!” the soldier yells then mimes pulling back a mechanism on the back of the barrel. I notice that his nametag says Nelson in white letters that are covered in blood.

I pull, but it won’t slide back. I notice a small button on the slide, so I push it in and the thing finally pulls back. “Thanks. I have never fired one before.”

“No shit, Sherlock. Just pull it real tight against your shoulder, tuck your arm hard like you are hugging that bitch with the crook in your arm—like it’s your girl.” He demonstrates with his arm out, then at his side. “When you get one in your sights, squeeze the trigger with a light stroke. You don’t want to hold it down. Don’t waste ammo if you don’t have to.”

“Okay. How is it out there?”

“Fucked. The virus is spreading like wildfire. We were supposed to contain it, but we lost the city in the first five minutes. The things are too fast, and the virus is mutating. It seems to get stronger with each generation, which means those fucking things are stronger than the ones we fought half an hour ago.”

“Is there a plan?”

“Yeah, fight until they take you down, then off yourself. That’s what I’m gonna do.”

He moves to the door on light feet and peers out the shattered window. A fresh pair of deaders gets wind of him, so he falls back firing. There are more behind those, and I know we will lose the terminal if we don’t stop them.

I raise the gun like he showed me and peer down the barrel. How hard can this be? Just like a video game, right? Line up the back sight with the front and squeeze. One of the things is in view, and it is a young kid no more than eleven or twelve. His mouth is covered in blood, and he snarls. I shift my aim to another deader, a man who could very well be his father. His blood-red eyes meet mine, and I fire the gun. It punches into my arm and makes me stagger back. The guy is still coming; the bullet might have struck his shoulder.

“HEAD!” Nelson screams, so I raise the barrel and fire again. Bingo, a hole appears in one eye, and he flops to the ground. I just shot a man. I can’t believe it. I just aimed down the barrel of a gun and shot him like he was a dog. I don’t have time for shock right now, so I push aside the feelings. I will deal with them later, something I am very good at.

Nelson takes out a woman with a cast on one leg, then shifts his aim and blows the kid’s head off. Another one stumbles in, and I drop him with a mere three shots. If I can figure out how to aim, I might be dangerous in a day or two.

Nelson looks outside and runs back. “Listen up, everyone. They’re all over the place, but a couple of Humvees just arrived, so we are moving the fuck out of here. If you have weapons of any kind, get them out. If not … fucking improvise. Above all, do NOT let one of those things bite you. If you do, I will drop you myself.” He stares from face to face, and some of them nod, others look away.

I’m impressed with how quickly he takes charge. The sliding glass door pops open again, and more of the things arrive. We fire at them, dropping bodies as they enter. I don’t know how many shots I take, how many times I kill. Each one makes me feel sick.

“Get everyone out of here, down the side,” Nelson roars, shooting his hand toward the Bremerton side where the deck leads to stairs to the street. The forty or so people are already in a panic, and now they move like the place is on fire. They push and jostle but somehow avoid a stampede.

More of the things are coming in, probably drawn by the screams and gunfire. They howl like banshees, and some of them actually lope like weird werewolves without the fur. I get better at killing them, but before I know it, the gun clicks dry.

Nelson pops one between the eyes, a kid with a baseball cap on backwards. Then he runs to me and hands me his gun; we swap quickly. “Keep ‘em busy, man!” he yells while he hits a release on the bottom and changes magazines. I provide backup for him, and before I know it, he switches guns with me again.

“We need to get the fuck out, man; we don’t have the firepower to stop them here forever. Start falling back with the others.”

Erin is helping the injured National Guard to one of the side doors, and as I move in that direction, a warm blast of summer air hits me hard.

The room we are in is quite large and could hold three or four hundred people, but it has become a claustrophobic nightmare as the bodies pile up at the main entrance. The normally salty air is livid with the reek of fired gunpowder, blood and human waste.

Nelson backs up a few steps and pops two more as they come in, then he hits the release and the magazine clatters to the ground. He reaches for his belt, but it looks like he is out. He turns the gun around and uses the barrel like the neck of a bat, swinging the stock into the face of one of the deaders, smashing it to the ground with a sound I don’t want to even think about.

He draws his pistol and shoots it in the head. The doors are wide open, and the deaders rush in. He shoots the first few, and when his partner sees he is in trouble, she rips loose from Erin and moves with purpose to his side. She reloads on the run and starts firing, then the two of them are side by side and the swarm is on them.

The woman who staggers through the door is enormous; she must weigh close to three hundred pounds. Part of her face is missing, leaving a horror of bone and muscle that leers like a cadaver used by medical students. She barrels into Nelson and knocks over his partner in the process. I shoot at her but only manage to catch her cheek.

Nelson screams louder than the pack and falls back, rolling out of the way. They are on his partner, however, and he looks like he is going to dive in and haul her out, but a single gunshot comes from the mass of bodies, and then her legs are no longer kicking.