Death and Biker Gangs (10 page)

“I don’t fucking know, dude. I didn’t see one. They might’ve been on foot.”

“How fucking stupid could they be?”

Tony huffed quietly.

Oh, you haven’t seen how stupid we can get, 
I thought.

“Then they couldn’t have gotten that far,” the first biker said.

“Can you hear anything?”

Silence, presumably as they listened for signs of us. I held my breath.

“Sound carries,” the third one said. “They could have stopped a street over and killed the damn engine.”

“Dude, I didn’t see a bike!”

Evie growled softly.

“Shut up,” Tony whispered to the fence. “They’ll hear…”

Evie growled again.

Tony swung around and made a dismayed sound.

I turned to look behind me, and Tony’s hand landed over my mouth to stifle my yelp.

A bow-legged ghoul rested one hand against the side of the house as it leered at us. His teeth gnashed together as he limped forward, and he had died in a checkered shirt over ratty black jeans. 

Something had chewed his lips away before we got there.

“What do we do?” I whispered through Tony’s fingers.

“Ask it to come back later?”

Oh, sure. The dead were nothing if not courteous attackers.

“Shut the dog up,” Tony whispered to Dax. “Tape her mouth shut if you have to. Vibby, stand guard.”

“Me?” I seemed to get nominated to a lot of posts I wasn’t qualified for.

Dax crouched down beside the dog, pressing her jaws together to keep her from howling.

Tony snatched up his Winchester and stormed toward the ghoul. Rather than blow its head off, he jammed the muzzle into the revenant’s mouth, effectively stifling its moans and growls. 

Nice work, Tony,
I thought.
Points for inventiveness. 

He managed to shove the dead man up against the wall of the house. The thing grabbed at him, and he slapped its hands aside. It might have been comical if it hadn’t been 
real
.

Once he had the dead guy suitably restrained, I turned back to the gate.

“We should search the houses,” one of the bikers said.

“Blow me, bro, 
you 
can search them. We didn’t check all these places. Might be some dead fucks running around.”

I glanced back at Tony. He was leaning as far away from the dead man as he could manage without actually letting the revenant go. Dax and Evie sat silently together, the dog staring at the ghoul and straining toward it.

“What’re we gonna tell Root Canal?”

Root Canal? 
Of all the biker names one could choose…

“We’ll tell him we saw a few strays on foot and to keep his eyes open. That’s all we can do.”

Their voices faded away, but I stayed pinned to the gate until the engines started, revved, and howled off down the street. I lingered a little longer, waiting for one of them to come wandering back to pick up his dropped water bottle or one of the zombie books.

“Vibeke,” Dax murmured, “turn around.”

You can do all kinds of things with a walking dead guy, provided you move fast enough to evade its crushing embrace, but Tony seemed determined to push things to the limit, swinging the ghoul around in a staggering sort of dance. “Tony, I didn’t know you could…is that the salsa?”

“More of a cha-cha mixed in with the electric slide, but thanks.” He pulled the Winchester out of its mouth and slid under the revenant’s arm, and the thing lurched around behind him. I guess it qualified as a twirl. 

“They gone?” Tony asked.

“Seems like.”

“Praise Ezekiel.” He hurried back to us, then crouched in front of his backpack to paw through it. 

The dead guy regained his bearings and shuffled after him, jaw hanging open. His teeth had turned brown and black, and as he got closer, I realized half his face had turned a mottled purple color. Decomposition really doesn’t do anyone any favors.

Tony found the gun he wanted—a silenced pistol—and turned around. “Sorry, I can’t date a guy who won’t dance.”

POP.

Down went the dead man.

Dax finally let go of the dog’s muzzle, and she responded by shaking her head vigorously. “How long did it take you to come up with that one-liner?”

Tony peered at the entry wound. “Not much of a splatter on this one. Looks like everything kind of congealed in there.”

I leaned back against the gate. “You see any bite marks on him?”

Tony gave the corpse a cursory inspection. “No. Doesn’t mean they aren’t there, though.”

Or it meant he’d died a natural death—well, as natural a death as one could get these days—and came back anyway.

Tony must have seen the thought written on my face. “Doctor Samuels would be tickled pink to hear it, wouldn’t he?”

“Probably.”

“More importantly,” Dax said, “where’d those bikers go?”

“Back the way they came. They were talking about getting into trouble with someone named Root Canal.”

Tony stuck out a hand and tugged on the back door, and after a few seconds it slid open. “Must be their boss.” He slipped inside, then tapped his gun against the glass.“Anybody home?”

After several moments of utter silence, he beckoned us in. “We’ll stay here for the day. They’ll be watching this area, and I don’t think we have enough ammo for a gun battle.”

We don’t really have the fortitude for one, either. 
I kept that thought to myself as we crept into the house, which seemed pretty much deserted. After a few moments of poking around on the ground floor, we decided we were safe enough to relax a little bit.

Tony spilled the contents of his backpack on the dusty countertop, while Dax inspected the cabinets for any leftover food. I deposited my rifle and backpack on the kitchen table. “Do you think these are the same guys that attacked the camp?”

“No. Hammond was having trouble with two gangs in particular in Elderwood. These guys seem like they’ve got a few streets. I wonder how many of them there are.”

Seriously, God? Biker gangs? Zombies aren’t enough?
 “I guess if I survived the endtimes, I’d join a biker gang, too…oh, wait.” I tugged at the sleeves of my riding jacket. “I guess I did.”

Tony pushed the guns to one side and our meager food supply to the other. “See? Survive the endtimes, join a biker gang. It all makes sense.”

“If only we had an actual bike,” I said.

Tony glared at me, then went back to taking stock. “If you hadn’t insisted on taking the damn 
dog
…”

“Cabinets are cleared out,” Dax announced, breaking up what might have turned into an actual tense moment. 

My stomach chose that moment to make a most unladylike sound. I covered it, trying not to imagine going the next sixteen or eighteen hours without any food at all.

I’d never known real hunger before this. Oh, sure, there were the days when I worked late and skipped dinner, but I’d always had 
access
 to food, whether it was a trip to Denny’s or a snack machine. We’d been on reduced rations in Elderwood, and my clothes were starting to sag, but even then, there had been food.

And now there wasn’t any.

We split up to scavenge, just in case the previous owners had squirreled emergency supplies away in weird places, like the upstairs linen closet. I found a bottle of ibuprofen sitting on a bathroom counter, and after determining it was almost full, I stuck it into a pocket. After a moment’s hesitation, I gathered my nerves and looked in the mirror.

I ran out immediately afterward. It’s probably a sad commentary that I could stare down the undead, but not my own deteriorating appearance.

Human beings aren’t meant to go without sunshine, even naturally pale Norwegian types like me. Over the last few weeks, my pallor had started to resemble deathbed illness—to say nothing of those hive-like marks on my face—and now I had giant dark circles under my eyes. I half-heartedly pushed my black hair back into a slightly neater ponytail. If I couldn’t look good, I could at least look tidy.

Whatever. 
It wasn’t like I was participating in any post-apocalyptic beauty contests, anyway.

I came back downstairs empty-handed, but Dax had turned up a box of cereal that had probably been purchased during the Clinton administration. We ate it sparingly, trying to make it last the night.

Is this the way it’s always going to be? 
I was pretty sure I wasn’t cut out for running and hiding from one foe or another, then scavenging for leftovers from the world before. I used to wear spike boots and dark eyeliner, dammit. Shoot ’em ups weren’t my thing.

When the sun finally went down, plunging the Cluster into a moonless, starless void, Dax pulled out his little transistor radio and switched it on. Gloria Fey no longer started her show at specific times, since no one really seemed to know what time it was anymore, anyway, and had resorted to “Every morning when it’s light gray, and every evening when it’s darker gray.” 

It seemed to work.

Soon enough, her voice rang out of the speaker. “Good evening, Midlands Cluster,” she chirped, still sounding entirely too perky for the whole endtimes situation we had going on. Dax fiddled with the dial, but I suspected the reception was about as good as it was going to get. Some days she came through loud and clear, other days she battled static. I figured it had something to do with the crap in the air.

“I hope your day went well,” Gloria went on.

“It was shit, Gloria, but thanks for asking.” I lay on my stomach, using my rolled-up jacket as a pillow. Evie stretched out on my other side, snoring lightly. I hoped we weren’t inadvertently poisoning her with our out-of-date cereal.

Gloria went through her usual list of bad news. “Nothing from Bogman today. I did hear from Calcutta George, and he says things up in Kansas are going as well as can be expected.”

Dax frowned at the radio. “Calcutta George in Kansas? What the hell?”

“Her sources always have weird callsigns,” Tony said. “I think they just do it to fuck with us.”

“I also heard from Cherished Fire, and she says motorcycle brigands have expanded their reach throughout the edge of Elderwood and into much of Muldoon.” All of our sniggering stopped when she got to that information, and Dax turned the radio up higher. “There’s several groups, and some of them are vicious as all hell, so you might want to steer clear of them.”

“Now she tells us,” I muttered.

Tony stifled a yawn. “What kind of a biker name is 
Root Canal,
 anyway? Not exactly awe-inspiring.”

I had to agree with him there. If I ever started a biker gang, I’d change my name from 
Vibeke 
to something more appropriate, like 
Throat-Slitter 
or 
Wildebeest 
or 
Bone Crusher.

Gloria went on, although she didn’t have much more to offer. “I’m sorry I don’t have better news for everyone, but it’s been a slow few days…”

She issued this apology just about every other day. I half-expected her to start apologizing for other things, too. 
I’m sorry the world ended—I miss eating real food, too. I’m sorry the dead got up and walked, it’s a terrible inconvenience. I’m sorry the electricity isn’t working; my iPod won’t recharge, either. I’m really sorry about all of it.

I guess this is how the world winds down. We cling to what we can, listen to our favorite fluff reporter-turned-newshound, and wonder what’s going to go wrong next.

The radio faded into dead air, and the sudden silence unnerved me. “You guys should start calling me Bone Crusher,” I announced. “You know, to inspire fear in our enemies.”

“And non sequitur of the night goes to Vibeke, better known as Bone Crusher.” Tony twisted onto his side to look at me. “Can I call you Boney for short?”

I stuck my nose in the air. “It is unwise to mock the Bone Crusher, for obvious reasons.”

“So is it like a 
bone 
crusher, or do you crush 
boners
, or what?”

I deepened my voice as much as I could. “Come over here and let’s find out.”

Dax snickered, turning off the radio. “How’s that supposed to work? ‘We don’t want to fight you—here, deal with Bone Crusher?’ And then we just sort of let you…what? Interview them to death?”

“Hey, I ask the tough questions.”

Evie snored. I’d considered her small, as far as golden retrievers went, but she had a real motor in there.

Tony switched on his flashlight. When I looked over, I saw he was hanging onto 
Dead Mennonite Walking
, which he flipped open to the first page. “Who wants to hear about Ezekiel versus the zombies?”