To his right was the highway, and across that the vast expanse of the airport runways, and to his left the industrial area that dropped off into a large flat area, airport land bulldozed for future projects. Straight ahead was a seemingly endless number of long-term parking spaces.
If it weren’t for the shambling corpse about thirty feet in front of him, Cooper would be walking alone. He followed the corpse, keeping pace with it. He tried to do this, study the dead when he could, partly to learn about them, but also because he usually chose stealth over any other tactic. He’d learned to stay downwind so they couldn’t smell him, even though that meant smelling them. He’d learned to walk quietly by watching where he placed his feet. He made sure everything on his body was silent. He tried to learn what triggered them and what confused them, and he had a few ideas and tactics that seemed to work.
He sounded like an expert, but it had only been a few days since he’d left his home and walked among the dead. Maybe he
was
the expert on the dead, given the state of the world. In any case, the dead seemed to have several ways of detecting the living. A lot had to do with the condition of the corpse, it seemed. But many other factors appeared to affect them as well, such as light and dark, whether they had eaten or not, and sound. Sometimes they didn’t react when he thought they should.
Cooper had noticed that on several occasions panicked survivors rushed to attack the dead without reason. He always watched and waited, avoiding a noisy dangerous fight if he could. On a couple of occasions, he could have sworn the dead saw him from a distance, but didn’t move on him. They seemed to watch him as he moved on. They tilted their heads side to side as a dog might when confused by something. Maybe they weren’t sure if he was living, since he moved so cautiously. Maybe they weren’t sure he was there, since he was so quiet. Cooper thought they seemed to need more stimulation to act if they were freshly fed.
But for all of his caution when dealing with the dead, it was still the living he was most concerned with. The living were always the greater threat. Always. The dead were dangerous, sure, but they were slow moving and consistent. He knew where he stood with the dead, but the living, they were tricky. To the dead, he was food; they would mindlessly attack until he dropped them. The living were full of deception and deceit. In these desperate times, when the living should be banding together and cooperating, many people used the situation completely to their own advantage. He had already seen looting, rape, and murder. He had been robbed already and almost killed a few times. Grateful he hadn’t died yet, he continued his ever-evolving routine of vigilance and caution.
He habitually scanned his surroundings as he followed the corpse, listening to the rhythm of the dragging foot, the hushed shuffle of the other foot, the faint
clink, clink, clink
of the belt buckle dragging along the rough blacktop. He actually felt sorry for the dead, or more accurately, the former person and their loved ones. He could imagine the horror of seeing someone he loved in this condition. Lucky for him, everyone he loved was gone, well, almost everyone. The indignity of the situation was often why he took the trouble to put down the dead at all. This corpse seemed to have been a middle-aged man in life, but now his hair hung limp and his pants were all but gone, shredded and mud soaked, the belt caught around his ankle, his body a mess of hanging flesh and grime.
The wind shifted, and the corpse stopped. Cooper thought they could smell. It let out a low, rattling moan as it slowly turned. He didn’t panic and run, nor did he attack. He put his right hand on his pistol and simply walked silently around the corpse, staying out of its range of sight. It stopped turning when it lost the scent of human and stood still. The dead seemed to operate like machines on some level. Sometimes after they were triggered, they kept moving, and sometimes they stopped altogether. Once he was downwind, the corpse stopped pursuing and stood slowly swaying.
Cooper waited for a while, deciding what to do. He watched the shock of gray-brown hair flutter in the breeze. He could see the teeth, cracked and stained, as the cheeks were torn away. It had the look of a leering jackal. He noticed something else as he pondered his options. The muscles, as thin and dead gray as they were, seemed wet in an odd fashion. Somewhere between this observation and weighing his options, which were to quietly walk off and leave it be or to put it down, he was distracted by a high-pitched whine that rapidly grew louder. The dead heard it too and started after it.
A small dark shape raced into view. A radio-controlled car sped right up to the corpse, turned, and slowly drove in another direction, leading the corpse toward the airport and its long runways. Cooper stopped and looked around, trying to see who could be controlling the car. He kept a wary eye on the corpse as it was led away and noticed the car heading toward a large hole dug right into the blacktop. Large chunks of asphalt and dirt were piled next to it. The hole was at least twenty feet wide. A wide aluminum extension ladder spanned the hole. On top of the ladder was a flat, eight-foot-long board. The car slowly drove across the board as the unseen operator carefully navigated the obstacle. The corpse took a step onto the bridge, dragged its other foot forward, and only found air. It disappeared into the hole with a thud and a growl then went silent. The car backed up and came back at Cooper. It stopped in front of him and drove back and forth a few inches as if to acknowledge his presence. Then it fishtailed and sped off toward the large parking garage at the far end of the lot.
With the immediate threat gone, Cooper studied the six-story structure, still a ways off, and could see the small silhouettes of a handful of people atop the roof. He looked around the lot and noticed nothing else of significance. There was no seeming threat. He didn’t feel the people atop the garage were a threat either, as they announced their presence in the course of helping him.
He looked into the hole. It was black and seemed bottomless. There was no sign of the corpse. He thought about giving the structure a wide berth or visiting the people. He decided to stick with his plan and move on. The sun was still low in the morning sky. He’d just started his day and planned to make his way into the northern end of San Jose. He only had a few miles to go and could reach his destination before sundown, with time to spare for scouting and then setting up for the night, depending on his findings.
The figures atop the parking structure seemed to be waiting and watching as he passed on. He walked across the open development space and toward the highway, always wary of dead ends. He’d learned the hard way it was easy to get boxed in by both the living and the dead.
He was making good time and expected to reach his sister’s place well before sundown. He started walking through neighborhoods, amazed at how clear they were. He saw few of the dead, and the couple of living people he saw were looking from windows with madness and fear in their eyes. There was so far no evidence of the orgies and madness that had happened in the course of the virus.
He got comfortable, too comfortable, and ended up taking a few steps into a schoolyard filled with swaying corpses. Many clumped around the back door of the school. Some were only yards from him. He stopped short. None seemed to have noticed him, so he walked backward very slowly and cautiously.
He tried another route, and as he walked quietly between two houses he heard the rumble of an engine. He took a few steps back to the street so he could see who and what was coming. A pickup truck rumbled past, two people in the cab. It turned right at the end of the street. Cooper knew the truck must have attracted some of the dead and walked to the street to check it out. It seemed to have attracted
all
of the dead.
Down the street, still a few blocks away, he saw an enormous crowd that stretched back as far as the eye could see. He would get stuck in this massive swarm the idiot had created if he didn’t get moving quick. As he walked, he realized the dead were being attracted, not only after he passed, but also before he arrived. They were slow moving, so they came out after the truck passed. But on foot and staying in one location for a few moments, Cooper could see that the dead were starting to come out from all around and would soon surround him. He sprinted to clear the area.
He came to the end of the street and looked right. The slowly cruising truck was about two blocks away and pulling off the street. He started to run at an easy pace, still trying to keep relatively quiet. He made it to the truck and got ahead of a majority of the dead.
He stopped behind a large shrub. Several corpses were teetering from between houses. The massive swarm was still a few blocks back. He peeked around the shrub and saw the truck parked in front of a liquor store. The truck was empty, but he heard crashing from inside the store. Its door was hanging open. The place looked like it had already been looted. Suddenly, a guy appeared in the doorway and locked eyes with Cooper. It was a redneck.
Cooper didn’t have time to duck away unseen, so he came from around the shrub. He was reaching for his pistols, but before he got his hands around the grips the guy was waving him off, his eyes wide. Cooper ducked back behind the shrub, confused. A corpse was only yards from him. He silently extended his baton. He took a few steps and dropped the corpse with a quick crack to the head. He looked back, and a second man was emerging from the store behind the first. He literally almost wet himself. It was the redneck he had knocked out to save Ana. He didn’t know why, but the first redneck had probably just saved his life. He heard the two talking.
“So now what?” Dale was glad the guy he’d just seen was quick enough to heed his warning and duck away. He wondered if he were still in earshot.
Tug shrugged.
“Hey, man, if I’m going to be your partner in crime, you have to tell me what’s going on. We have to coordinate our attack, talk about plan B and all that.” Dale was speaking a bit louder. He was hoping the guy he waved off was listening and would pick up on his message. At a glance, he seemed like a decent guy.
“Huh?” Tug was somewhere else.
“I mean the parking garage. Back there. You saw the folks in it. I could see your wheels turning. I know you were dreaming of a real party. I want to help make that party happen.”
“Dunno.” Tug had a way of looking at people without facing them directly. He kind of faced away from them but looked sideways with his eyes. He always had that faint smile on his face as if he’d just heard something mildly amusing. “Guess we can go back and check it out, see how many there are.”
“Then what?”
“I dunno.” Tug was sounding bothered.
“Sorry, I thought you had a plan. I hoped you had a plan. I really wanted to see you in action, you know, to learn from a master.” Dale was building him up. “I get the feeling you’ve done this before, thrown a party. I tried a time or two, and it didn’t work out.”
“No plan really.”
“Sure, I get it. You’re like an artist who follows his inspiration.” Dale cursed himself for bad word choices. He spoke a little too fancy for Tug. Tug looked confused.
“OK, say you had all the people from the parking structure in front of you right now, what would you do?”
Tug cut his eyes to the side, kind of smiled. “I’d blow the guys heads off. Get ’em out of the way. Whoever’s left, page eighty-two.”
“Page eighty-two of…?”
“
Tighter
.”
“Ah, nice. See, I knew you were planning a party.” Dale went to the stack of magazines on the bench seat of the truck. The magazine
Tighter
was on top of the stack.
“Page eighty-two, let’s see what’s on page eighty-two.” He was turning pages slowly but stopped. He could use this opportunity to reach him. “Wait, let me see if I know what my friend Tug would do. Umm, start with a harsh strip-down, restrain them while they cry and beg, then go straight to the good old hog-tie. Then the fun really begins. Am I close?”
Tug’s smile was a little wider. His eyes sparkled a bit.
“Yeah, I think I’m getting to know old Tug’s tastes. OK, I bet on page eighty-two there’s some bitch tied up tight. She’s hurting, she’s swinging from a rafter tied like a hog, and she looks scared. Her eyes are just pleading with you, ‘Tug let me go, let me go.’”
Tug was nodding, his smile growing.
Dale flipped to page eighty-two. “Ahh, close enough, huh? I get credit for this for sure.”
“Sure.” Tug was smiling and nodding. He was blushing.
Dale knew he had just started forging a bond with Tug, who enjoyed the exchange and would crave more. Dale looked at the magazine again. Page eighty-two was almost exactly as he described it because this was the hog-tied issue of
Tighter
magazine, as was prominently announced on the cover, and virtually every picture in the sick stack of paper was the same.
“Page eighty-two!” Dale slapped Tug on the back and instantly regretted the intensity of the physical contact. Tug winced a little but seemed to like the show of affection.
“Page eighty-two.” Tug smiled and nodded. He decided not to kill Dale.
“So, my friend, we are in a world where we can go anywhere, eat and sleep when and where we want, and do anything we want to anybody. What’s next for Tug and Dale, the hog-tie team?”
Tug was smiling and nodding constantly, and after a few seconds Dale thought he was stuck that way or having a seizure of some sort. Then Tug stopped and looked up at nothing in particular.
“Not sure. I had thoughts about mansions and such, just finding a big old house and doing nothing. Maybe have parties.”
“Well, let me know what you want to do and when. I am on board, Master Tug. Until then—warm beer. Want one?”
“Yup.” Tug nodded in the affirmative, smiling.
Tug seemed so empty, so devoid of any ability for forethought or planning, that Dale didn’t expect a response.
“There is one thing. The reason I’m all the way up here.”
Now that Tug was opening up to Dale, he would probably start telling him everything he was thinking. All Dale needed to do now was sit back and listen, but Tug could be infuriatingly slow. Finally, he spoke.