Death and Biker Gangs (8 page)

A dull, steady throb began pushing at my temples. “You’re mixing up your genre movies again.”

For a long moment, no one said anything. Liquid dripped in a far corner, and wind howled outside, making something on the roof rattle. I pulled my jacket closer around myself. We needed to find some blankets if we intended to survive out here for any length of time.

“Maybe the revenants will fall into the acid puddles and melt,” Dax said. I suspected that was as close as he’d get to a peace offering.

I couldn’t say I’d mind stepping outside the next day to find out all the undead had been reduced to puddles of pungent primordial ooze. Yeah, it’d be a bitch to scrape them off my boots, but they’re easier to clean than kill.

Not that I’ve ever scrubbed down a zombie. There’s some things you just don’t try.

“So we’re all going to Hastings?” I asked, since no one else seemed willing to suggest it. “Maybe their radio just broke.”

“I’ll check the camp tomorrow. If Hammond can clean up the mess, I’ll drop you two back there and go on to Hastings alone.” Tony picked at one of the little welts on his face. “But since our luck usually turns to shit, I think we need to assume you’ll be coming with me. Hammond thought he was getting the bikers under control, but I think they just stayed quiet until he was distracted.”

Great. First the undead, then angry bikers. All the red dots on the map started to blur together, and another thought occurred to me. “Why were there so many military detachments in the area? The Midlands Cluster isn’t all that geographically relevant…maybe the farmlands, but…”

Tony shrugged. “Don’t know why they all descended on us, but Hammond talked about bringing all the communities together and cleaning up the cities one by one, then fanning out. I don’t think he realized the air quality would choke off most attempts, pardon the pun.”

“I see what you did there,” Dax mumbled. “Clever.”

Hammond’s idea had probably made sense on paper; the man had always struck me as being a meticulous planner. Hell, I liked the dude—he even managed to keep morale in camp high to the very end. But had his efforts reflected any sort of real military oversight, or were they all his doing? “How much of this grand scheme came from the Franklin base? Weren’t they running the show?” I asked. “Before they went silent.”

Tony shrugged again. “I didn’t eavesdrop 
that 
much. From what I’ve heard about the rest of the country, Hammond did pretty damn well by us.”

“And things fell apart anyway.”

No one had a response for that.

Tony leaned closer to the map, running his thumb along what looked like a main thoroughfare. “We can try to cut through to Hastings this way. Parker Street dead-ends into Adams Way, and if we hook a left there, it should take us straight through.”

It didn’t look all that far on the map, but I’ve never been good at extrapolating inches into miles. “How far is that?”

“Not sure. Looks like we have to pass through some kind of park area to get there…maybe ten miles?”

“Are the big streets a good idea?” Dax pointed at Adams Way. “Remember what happened in Astra? Everyone got stuck trying to get out and we ran into their…bodies.”

The dripping water overtook the conversation again. From what we’d managed to establish, some sort of warning 
had 
gone out, at least in the few minutes before the meteors started vaporizing everything we knew. We’d come across a massive jam in Astra’s main thoroughfare, one that likely stretched for miles. People had gotten stuck, had inhaled the ash, had been cooked alive…

As an EMT, I’d known there were all kinds of ways for people to die. The years following that gig—the good years, the comparatively 
cushy
 years at the magazine—made me forget about all the terrible things that can happen to a body, and how fragile we really are.

Armageddon brought all of that back.

Maybe that’s not a fair assessment. Armageddon implies some sort of Biblical final battle, and I still don’t believe God was behind all this. Besides, I like to think I’d recognize an epic showdown between good and evil, as opposed to the dead tangling with the confused and the stupid.  

I leaned closer to the map. “Let’s just make a left turn here, at Verity, and see how far we can get.”

“We’ll need to stop somewhere for food,” Dax said. “I only have crackers left.”

I looked at them in confusion. “But you guys were bragging about all the food Tony kept from the last scavenging trip.”

“I got hungry,” Tony said, conveniently not meeting my eyes.

I stretched out and kicked his ankle. “And you say 
I 
lack survival skills.”

FIVE

If you ever find yourself on the run, pursued by ravenous undead cannibals, remember to bring binoculars.

In the early hours of the next morning, I paced back and forth a few feet away from the gas station, rifle at the ready, squinting in the direction of Elderwood Refugee Camp. A late-night rainfall cleared out some of the haze that crouched over Elderwood, but I still couldn’t see very far down Parker Street. Tony had trudged off twenty minutes prior to take a look, and ostensibly would come back to retrieve us if Hammond had managed to secure things.

Dax had raised an eyebrow at that, but I figured that Tony had already stuck his neck out pretty far to get us out of the camp—why ditch us now? We hadn’t become more insufferable overnight.

Then again, I wasn’t sure how well Dax and Tony got along when I wasn’t around. Maybe Tony couldn’t wait to get rid of him.

I switched the rifle’s safety on and off, then turned around in a circle. Nothing on Parker Street moved. I don’t know how much binoculars would have helped, but I would’ve felt better being able to scope out the far-off crevices of town.

Tony hadn’t mentioned what we should do if he became an early breakfast for some of the area’s less savory inhabitants, but I figured if Tony got devoured, I was screwed anyway.

A cold wind blew past my face. I longed to pull my hood up, but the thing screwed with my peripheral vision, and that’s one thing you don’t want to give up when you’re constantly under siege. I hunched my shoulders and hugged the gun the way a kid hugged a teddy bear. Snuggling up to a World War II-era Nazi contraption seemed all kinds of wrong, even at that point, but you do what you have to when things go to hell.

The hair on the back of my neck prickled, and I turned around.

A pale face pressed against the window of the diner across the street.

I snapped the rifle into proper firing position—at least, what I accepted as proper firing position. I glanced around once more, just to make sure nothing was sneaking toward me, then edged closer to the diner.

The face didn’t move. I had no doubt that it saw me; I felt its stare, and its head moved slightly when I threw in a little two-step to the side. A ghoul would be pounding at the glass or halfway out already in an effort to get me; this figure just stared at me, unmoving, seemingly unblinking.

Maybe he’s alive?

I lifted a hand and waved. The thing didn’t move.

Crap.
I looked back toward camp and could just make out a speck of darkness down the street, which probably meant Tony was on his way back. I kept glancing at the creepy thing in the window, half-expecting it to come smashing through the glass to chow down on me, but it just stood there, staring.

Ugh.

Tony jogged up to me a few minutes later. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but instead doubled over, coughing.

This air is gonna be the end of us.
Tony put his hands on his knees and wheezed for a good minute or so. I patted his back, not sure it did any good, but feeling some bizarre urge to comfort him.

He paused to take a wheezing breath, and I gingerly rested a hand on his shoulder. “Anything?” 

“There’s a whole swarm trying to break in through the southern gate. Boy Scout was right; they heard the fighting.” He stared at the ground, breathing as deeply as any of us dared. “I picked off as many as I could. Heard a lot of single shots from inside, so Hammond might well have a hold on things, but going in there would have been…”

He didn’t need to finish the sentence. 
Going in there would have been stupid. Dumb. Suicidal. 
Even if he shot the lock off, he’d have to get 
through 
the gate, and while most of the undead might have moved slower than my grandmother, they sure as hell dogpiled quickly. In other words, Dax and I were not about to get back into camp.

I nodded, trying to ignore the nip in the air. “So we’re going with you to Hastings?”

“Unless you want me to just leave you here.”

“Um…pass.”

He straightened up, resting his hands on his hips. “Hastings is further out in the boonies. They might not have had as much trouble with the old folks. Might just be the radio gear.”

Some of the soldiers on base had called revenants 
old folks, 
I assume because of the slow, shuffling way the ghouls moved. Or maybe they just couldn’t bear to admit the dead had gotten up and walked…which suggested mowing down a geriatric ward was easier than handling the dead? I still couldn’t work that one out.  

Tony, stout as he was, didn’t look like he could handle much more bad news, but I felt compelled to point out that we weren’t entirely alone. “By the way, there’s something in the diner.”

We started walking back toward the station. “Something?” Tony asked. “Or a few somethings?”

“Remember those cars we saw in Astra? The ones with…with just the people?”

“Yeah.” He didn’t sound like he wanted to remember it. Those still, staring faces had done a number on all of us.

I tipped my head in the direction of the diner. “Well…there’s one in there.”

He glanced at the diner, but didn’t head that way just yet. “Just standing in there?”

“Just staring.”

I still couldn’t decide which was worse: the covetous stares of the undead, or the intensity of the other things. Tony produced one of his pistols and started for the diner, and I hurried along beside him. He stopped abruptly. “Where’s the dog?”

“I left her inside with Dax. She kept wandering off to sniff things, and I didn’t want to keep an eye on her.”

He turned to face the little shop and waved his hand in the air.

The station door opened, and Dax and our resident golden came bounding out. 
See, 
I almost said to Dax, 
he didn’t ditch us.

Evie darted around our legs, her tongue lolling out of her mouth. I reached down and rubbed her back, my fingers catching in her knotted fur. “You need a bath, little dog.”

“She also needs some kibble or something.” Dax looked between the two of us, his brow furrowing slightly. “What’s the matter? What’d you find at Elderwood?”

“Think they’re managing, but I couldn’t even get at the back gate.”

Dax nodded slowly, focusing his gaze on the dog. I didn’t blame him; it was much easier to stare at a grinning, happy canine than at the bleak gray surroundings we’d fallen into. “So what do we do?”

“We hit up Hastings,” I said. “It’ll be fun. The three of us on the road again, dodging the undead and jackasses on bikes…”

“Sweet.” Dax pumped his fists in the air with exaggerated enthusiasm. “
Road trip!
”

An answering groan sounded from somewhere behind us, and a zombie in a flowered housedress came limping around the side of the building. She had a shower cap perched atop her matted gray hair, and clutched a half-eaten head in her left hand. Most of the fingers on her right hand were gone, and something white squirmed between her toes. 

She had probably been dead at least a couple of weeks. I was stuck on the head. Had she been snacking on it and then forgotten to drop it? Was it someone she’d known?

Evie snarled. I managed to grab her collar before she could take a flying leap at the shuffler. “First one of the day,” I said. “Let’s get out of here before she calls her friends.”

Tony glanced at his pistol, then at the dead woman. “Dax, you woke her up, you can put her back to sleep.”

Dax felt around for his holster, then flushed as he realized he hadn’t put it on. “Uh…Vibby…can you…?”

How was it that 
I 
ended up ready to deal with the freaking undead? I tugged out my pistol and handed it to him, then had to watch him waste three shots before he nailed the bitch in the head. I swear the gun felt lighter when I holstered it.

Tony pointed at the store. “Pack up the stuff and let’s get out of here before her pals show up.”

“But the thing—”

“It’s not 
bothering us
,” he hissed.

When Tony hisses, it’s usually time to do as he says. Besides, there was probably plenty of bizarre stuff waiting for us on the road.