Death and Biker Gangs (22 page)

“Which promptly pelted us,” I finished. “I bet someone got fired.”

“And you all know what happened next.” She might as well have been in the room with us, speaking into her microphone and reading off half-scribbled notes.

Dammit, and I’d been so proud that we hadn’t managed to destroy ourselves. For all our problems as a species, humanity 
hadn’t 
dropped the final bomb, or turned loose the mutated rabies strain, or wiped ourselves out in some cataclysmic final war. I’d been very happy believing the universe had nailed us, as opposed to us offing ourselves.

Except it turned out we 
had 
pulled the trigger.

Dax let out a heavy sigh. “That’s…shitty.”

Well, there went my faith in humanity. Maybe I could become an existentialist maniac like Tony and start shooting off one-liners like they were going out of style.

“Gloria,” the male voice said again, “you are goddamn depressing.”

She sounded like she’d turned away from the microphone for a moment. “I’m sorry, shall I crack a few jokes instead?” Her voice got stronger as she returned her attention to us. “Anyway, listeners, I’m pretty sure that wasn’t meant to reach the general public. But that’s what happened, and I think we deserve to know. If any of us get out of this alive, if any of us manage to go on and rebuild, we need to know what happened.”

Tony snorted.

The rest of the broadcast was just as depressing. She droned on about motorcycle brigands preying on the few freeways that had either escaped damage or been cleared out, about the silence from Elderwood. 

“I wish I had more good news for you, folks. I haven’t talked to Bogman in about a week, so I’m hoping he’s just having some mechanical troubles. This is Gloria Fey, hanging up. I’ll see you all tomorrow.”

The transmission cut out, and Dax switched off the radio. “Hope Boggy’s okay.”

“Me, too.” Bogman had been one of her eastern contacts, keeping the rest of us somewhat up to date with what was going on outside the Cluster and closer to the big cities. Maybe this was how the world really ended: one spark snuffing out at a time. The big electrical grids were down, severing the ties most of us had with each other—apparently Facebook 
did 
do some good—and now all that was left were a few flickering candles, each one in danger of being blown out.

“Well, that was some damned unsettling shit.” Tony clapped his hands together once, startling the dog awake from her slumber. “How about a singalong? The zombie apocalypse could use a few musical numbers. I bet we can write up some holiday songs.”

“I like that idea,” Dax said. “‘Santa Got Devoured by a Zombie.’”

On any other day, that might have been pretty amusing. I slouched down further against the wall. “Pass. I don’t feel very musically inclined right now.”

“Some light reading then? Woman, fetch me my Mennonite!”

I looked at Dax. “He’s talking to you.”

“I don’t want to fetch the damned Mennonite. I’m tired of his uninspired wisdom and the schlocky action sequences. It’s not realistic.”

“Because 
this 
is realistic?” I asked, gesturing vaguely to the house, the neighborhood, the situation.

Tony transferred a hopeful look to the dog. “Evie? Fetch?”

Evie wagged her tail but didn’t move, thus sparing us another evening spent with Ezekiel.

FOURTEEN

There’s nothing quite like the sound of ammunition spilling all over the floor in the morning.

I opened my eyes, focusing on the dim figure fumbling around in front of me. I recognized the pale hair and tilted my head toward him. “Dax, what the hell are you doing?”

“There’s a goober outside. A few goobers, actually.” He tried to pop shells into the Winchester, but they clattered messily to the carpet. I sat up and forced my eyes to focus on his shaking hands. “Thought I’d take care of them before they attracted more.”

“They are 
not 
goobers,” Tony croaked from the couch. “If you must refer to them by some stupid name, call them dingleberries.”

“Okay, I have to go drop some dingleberries.”

Tony smothered a cough. “That just sounds wrong, bro.”

Dax successfully jammed in some shells. No one was sporting a nice tan after weeks without sunlight, but he looked even paler than usual. I made myself stand up, flinching as tired muscles unkinked and complained. “Dax, shouldn’t you use the silencer?”

“Need more ammo.”

Tony sat up. “How many 
are 
there, Dax?”

“There’s a lot!” Dax almost dropped the gun when Evie tried to stick her nose into his hand. “There’s a whole shit ton of them. Maybe if I thin them out a little…”

The undead are hanging out in Muldoon. 
Something clicked on in my brain, and a heavy feeling built up in my throat. “Oh…that’s what I meant to tell you.”

The boys were quiet for a few seconds.

Tony turned to me slowly. “What did you 
mean 
to tell us, Vibby?” he asked icily. “What could you have 
possibly 
forgotten?”

I took a deep breath. “The biker gang’s using the town as a body dump.”

They stared at me. “I don’t follow,” Dax said.

“They’re dumping dead bodies in the town,” I said. “You know. Dead people. Folks who died of natural or decidedly unnatural causes.”

“Oh, that thing we tried in Elderwood with the burial pit,” Tony said. “Remember how that worked out?”

Dax’s eyes got bigger by the second. “Oh…shit…that explains it…”

Tony held out his hands. “Help me up.”

We made a slow, pathetic procession up the stairs to the front bedroom, which the design firm had turned into some sort of study. From there, we had a good view of what was going on outside.

“Oh, fuck 
me
.” Tony sagged against the window frame, probably channeling Hector of Troy’s reaction when he saw the thousand black ships landing on his beach.

Except Hector was facing angry Greeks, not a horde of the undead.

A giant swarm of revenants—or were we calling them dingleberries now?—clogged the street, milling around abandoned cars and human debris. My stomach flip-flopped, then dropped down into my ankles. “Yeah, so they were dumping bodies…”

“And the bodies got up, went to work on the living still sticking around, and moved on from there.” Tony smashed his fist against the wall. “And they heard us making a ton of noise yesterday. Fuck my life.”

I tried counting them but lost track after the first few dozen. No way were we just going to mow a neat path through them. “Um, Dax? What were you planning on 
doing 
with your handful of rifle shells?”

“Go out with a bang?” He seemed calmer, though his finger still twitched around the trigger. “What do we do?”

Tony shrugged. “We’re probably going to die, so we might as well work through the bucket list. Vibby, let’s get busy.”

My middle finger has gotten quite a workout since the apocalypse happened. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Impending death doesn’t make me horny.”

He looked mildly disappointed, but swiftly moved on to his next item of business. “What’s the situation in the back?”

“Clear for now,” Dax said. “It’s fenced in, butts up against the house on the next street over. There were a few ghouls there yesterday, but I cleared them out.”

I sent him a startled look. “I didn’t hear gunshots,” I said. “When did you do it?”

Dax shrugged. “When I ditched the truck.”

So that’s what he was doing while Tony was lecturing me about our cause. 
I pressed my face against the glass, studying the hungry masses. The ghouls pawed at whatever their hands came into contact with—whether it was a car or each other—but then quickly moved on, shuffling in ever-expanding circles. Overall, though, this crowd seemed mellow. “They don’t seem all that eager to get inside yet. I thought they’d be banging on the door.”

“Maybe they figure the buffet will be open soon enough?” Tony hobbled closer, his hand resting on his pistol. “What’d Doc Sammy have to say about their hunting habits?”

“Not much,” I said. “He didn’t see them up close beyond watching them reanimate.”  

Tony rolled his eyes. “What do 
you 
think?”

“I don’t study them!”

“They might not know we’re in here for sure,” Dax said. “A few heard us come in, started loitering around, and more joined them. But they aren’t 
sure
.”

Tony clapped him on the shoulder. “Way to go, Boy Scout. Put that hunting badge to work.”

Great. So we had a pack of suspicious zombies on our asses. 

I pulled the boys away from the window, unwilling to risk being spotted when some undead asshole inevitably looked up. It only took one to sound the alarm, and if they all started banging on the door…well, the door wouldn’t be around much longer, and neither would we.

“I picked up a lot of ammo yesterday…” Tony began.

I entertained a brief fantasy involving Tony simply mowing down all the zombies in town, then chased it away. “Not enough for all of them.”

“I’m aware. We’re going to have to wriggle out of this another way.” He eased himself into a dust-covered leather chair, bowing his head to cough into his hands. “At times like this, we need to ask ourselves the proper questions. What would Ezekiel do?” 

Ezekiel? What did Ezekiel have to do with anything?

Tony pointed out the door. “Dax, fetch me my manual.”

“Your manual?” Dax looked at me. “He has a manual?”

God help us. 
“He means get him
 
his zombie book,” I said.

His face visibly fell. “We are so fucked,” he muttered, but dutifully trotted down the stairs to retrieve the book.

Tony drummed his fingers against the armrest. “Why isn’t the dog reacting?”

I looked at Evie. She smiled and wagged her tail, and otherwise seemed wholly unconcerned with the growing pack of flesheaters outside. “Her sense of smell is better than ours, so I’m betting she knows something’s there. But maybe it’s line of sight?”

“She also doesn’t seem to sense them when they’re not actively pursuing us.” Tony scowled at her. “You’re useless. You hear me? 
Useless
.”

I tried to recall previous times Evie had spotted the undead before us, but my neurons refused to cooperate. Conscious thought was actually starting to hurt. “I don’t know,” I muttered. “I don’t know anything anymore.”

Evie rolled onto her back and twisted her head around, peering at Tony hopefully.

“No, I am 
not 
going to give you a belly rub!” Tony jumped when 
Dead Mennonite Walking 
landed in his lap, but quickly regained his composure. “Dax, your dog is useless.”

Dax didn’t dignify that with a response. “Why are we taking orders from a novel about an Amish zombie fighter?”

“He’s not Amish, he’s a Mennonite.” Tony flipped to the last chapter he’d read. “I think we left Ezekiel and Thrash Johnson in a tight spot. How’d they get out of it?”

Considering he was only a quarter of a way through the book, I was guessing Ezekiel and Thrash had quite a few tight spots ahead of them. Thrash was proving useful in an awkward sort of way; he didn’t seem to believe that people were actually undead, but that didn’t stop him from ripping them to shreds in creative—and schlocky, according to Dax—ways when Ezekiel was in trouble.

Damn, I’d absorbed more of that stupid book than I’d thought.

“Okay, so Ezekiel and Thrash are trapped on top of the farmhouse…”

“It was his worst plan yet,” Dax sad.

“And Ezekiel opened his mouth to yawn, and lo, it was good, for the hand of the Lord had touched his mind again.” Tony flipped to the next page. “Eh, two paragraphs of God stuff, chosen by heaven, defeating the minions of evil…and he decides to fight them with…” He licked a finger and turned the page, and his expression deadened considerably, if you’ll pardon the pun. “Fingers of flame.”

It was quiet for a moment.

“Fingers of flame,” Dax repeated. “That sounds like a sex move. Come here, my darling, and feel my 
fingers of flame!
”

It did sound mildly pornographic, and not at all useful against real-life undead. Tony closed the book, disappointment plain on his face. “Well, that’s a downer.”

I dropped to my knees and crawled over to the window, sticking my head up just far enough to peer a little ways down the street. “Okay, they’re mostly coming from the left. That’s downtown, if I remember the layout right. So all we have to do is draw them off to the right.”

Tony sent me his most ball-shriveling stare. “No, the right is our escape route. Unless you want us to go 
deeper 
into zombie downtown?”