In the Lone and Level Sands (74 page)

“Please.” Layne looked around, but he
couldn’t see a way out of this.

“Let’s offer our new friends a
demonstration!” Jones said. The crowd cheered. Jones turned to the
man from the alley. “Walt! Bring me some examples.”

The man who had brought them in hurried off
with a few others. Layne looked around at his friends. He was
ashamed, he wished he’d never told them of his idea, that he’d
never had it to begin with. And yet, something inside of him was
still calling him to a prison cell, telling him it would be okay,
that he needed to get there, no matter what. He pushed it
aside.

“Hey,” Layne said to the nearest person. It
was the woman from the alley. “Please, at least let the women go.
We have a little girl with us, we have an old man.”

The woman looked at him. Her eyes said she
understood, but she did nothing. “I can’t. Even if I wanted to.
Nothing personal. This is how we get by.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

“Shut the fuck up, okay?” She moved away
from him.

“You can’t do this to us,” Kyle said. Layne
wished they’d leave the talking to him, so any further torment
would be restricted to him, since it was his fault they were
here.

“Oh, we can’t?” Jones said.

“We’re human beings, just like you. Maybe
you haven’t looked around outside this street, but we’re pretty
rare, these days.”

Jones laughed. “We don’t need you. We get
along just fine. Our walls are impenetrable, our numbers are
strong. We rule Los Angeles!”

The crowd cheered. Kyle fell silent.

“Here you go!” Walt said. In tow were
several zombies, chained together. “It’s really hard to get these
bastards to walk in a straight line.”

“Fuckin’ cry about it,” Jones replied.

The zombies were lined up before the
survivors, and then the chains were pulled taut. A few of them
thrashed, but the men holding the chains outnumbered them, and held
steady.

Layne almost felt sorry for the
creatures.

“You guys are fucked up,” Garrett said. His
voice barely penetrated the shouts and cries from the
bleachers.

Jones walked back and forth behind the row
of zombies. “Duck,” he said, pointing to one. He moved on. “Duck.”
He made his way down the row. “Duck… Duck… Goose!” He pulled out a
pistol and shot a zombie in the back of the head. Brain bits
splattered the ground, its body slumped, but due to the chains, it
didn’t fall. Blood poured from the body onto the pavement a few
yards before Keely. She fought the urge to throw up, and looked
away.

“Unchain this one,” Jones said. He pointed
to the zombie in front of Kyle. It was a girl who didn’t look much
older than him. Kyle was staring intently at her. While the other
zombies thrashed about, moaned, yanked at their chains, this one
just stood there, looking around, vacant.

Jones’s men unchained her from the other
zombies, but held on to the chains still connected to her, one to
each limb.

“My good fellow,” Jones said, “What was your
name again?”

“Layne.” He didn’t know why he bothered to
answer. He wished Jones would kill him and be done with it.

“Layne, I think you’ll find that we are a
good people. We don’t discriminate between zombies and humans. We
treat you just the same.”

Jones shot at the ground beneath Warren’s
feet. Warren gave out a cry and jumped, and Layne snapped out of
his daze. The crowd laughed.

“Undress her!” Jones said. The group held
the female zombie tightly as one of the men approached her from
behind, quietly. He slipped a muzzle over her mouth, and for the
first time, she began to thrash. It was of no use; the muzzle kept
her from biting, and the chains kept her from moving. Jones climbed
back into his chair and sat down to preside over the night’s
events.

“You people are fucking sick!” Kyle said.
Layne saw that he hadn’t taken his eyes off of the zombie. “You
can’t fucking do this!”

Jessi was now pleading with the woman from
before. “Cover her eyes. Just cover Kara’s eyes, please!”

The woman looked away.

“Feeling a bit sorry, Annie?” Walt said.

Annie scowled at him. “Fuck yourself,
Walt.”

“No need to. We have plenty of lovely
candidates tonight.” Some of his friends gave out a collective
“Ooh!”

“And tomorrow night you go back to the
hand,” Annie said. Walt’s face turned red and his friends laughed
at him.

“Fuckin’ sympathizer.” Walt walked over to
the female zombie and started to undo his belt.

“She’s too good for you,” Kyle said. “Don’t
you think?”

“Fuck you.”

“You would.”

Walt stopped what he was doing and
approached Kyle. “You’re starting to piss me off.”

Kyle spat in his face. Walt froze for a
moment, then took out his gun and hit Kyle in the face. Kyle
dropped to the ground. Walt hit him again and again, beat him
repeatedly on the head and neck and shoulders.

“Stop it!” Ralph said. “Leave him
alone!”

Walt stopped, blood dripped from his gun.
Kyle was hunched over, dazed, barely able to lift his head. Walt
looked around. Then, he spotted Layne.

“You,” he said. He approached Layne, grabbed
him by his hair, and ripped him from the grasp of the men holding
him. He dragged Layne over to Kyle. “You’re going to kill him.”

“Fuck you,” Layne said. He could see Katie.
She was looking at Keely, both had tears in their eyes. He saw that
a few of his friends hadn’t been cuffed, but were instead bound
with cloth, held by the men behind them. He hoped somehow, some
way, a few of them would be able to escape.

“Oh, you’re going to do it,” Walt said. “And
then you’re gonna fuck that zombie over there. And you’re gonna
fuckin’ like it.”

He handed Layne a gun, but kept his hands
tight around Layne’s, to keep him from using it against them.

“I won’t do it.” Layne relaxed, he refused
to even grip the gun.

“All right, then.” Walt turned to some of
the other men. “Spread him.”

Layne was uncuffed, and men put chains on
his hands and pulled from either end, spreading his arms wide.

“Someone get me a buzz-saw!” Walt shouted.
The crowd erupted into cheers.

“Kyle,” Ralph said from a few feet away,
“it’ll be okay. Don’t worry. We’re going to be saved.”

“No one can save us,” Kyle said through the
blood dripping from his mouth. “Not anymore.”

Layne stared up at the night sky. He felt
ashamed now that he would be the first to die, that he’d be spared
the torment of seeing his friends suffer.

Then, things moved so quickly, Layne’s brain
stopped trying to sort them out.

Garrett, who hadn’t been cuffed, broke free.
He punched one of the men in the face, and a few grabbed him. In
the initial shock, one of the men holding Layne had let his grip
loosen. Layne yanked his arm as hard as he could, and the chain
ripped from the man’s hand. Layne threw his arm back again, as hard
as he could, and the chain whipped the man across the face. He
screamed and fell to the ground.

The other man holding him raised his gun.
Layne ducked, and the oncoming bullets tore into the crowd, whose
screams turned from excitement to horror. Many scattered. Layne
grabbed his remaining chain in both hands and pulled. The man fell
forward, onto the ground.

Layne turned and locked eyes with Jones.

“Kill them! Kill his fucking friends, kill
them now!”

But Layne was already moving. He ran as fast
as he could, and didn’t have far to go. He heard bullets, and the
fear that rushed over him only fueled him more. He ran right into
the lifeguard chair, as hard as he could.

The chair tipped over, knocking down one of
the large torches as it went. The chair exploded as it hit the
ground, and Jones went sprawling across the pavement. The torch
also exploded, and a fiery basket went rolling into the bleachers.
People parted to escape the small burning heap as it dove into the
crowd.

Jones had gotten to his hands and knees when
Layne reached him. Without stopping, Layne kicked as hard as he
could into Jones’s stomach. Jones let out a pant as the wind was
knocked from him, and he fell back down.

“Kill the fuckers!” Walt said. He threw a
grenade in Layne’s direction. Layne saw Jones’s eyes widen, and if
he could get any air, Layne knew he’d be screaming.

Layne moved, still unsure of what he was
doing, his body acting before his mind could deliver a message. He
grabbed the grenade, spun, and let it fly into the stands. It
exploded, and bits of bleacher and people blasted in all
directions. The force knocked Layne down. He heard more screams,
more gunfire. All hell broke loose. People were running everywhere.
One man ran through the gaping hole in the bleachers and down the
street, toward the barrier, where a motorcycle was waiting. He got
on and tried to start it, but the engine stalled.

Layne got back up. Walt, now horrified, was
reaching for a machine gun. Kyle grabbed him from behind, wrapped
the chain of his handcuffs around Walt’s neck, and pulled. He
couldn’t get a tight enough grip to choke Walt, but he was able to
keep Walt from moving.

One of the men holding Garrett gave up, and
Garrett tore away from the other two. He dove for Walt’s rifle and
picked it up. One of Walt’s friends took aim at Garrett, and
Garrett took aim in return. Both fired. A stream of little bursts
of skin and blood worked their way up the man’s body and toward his
head, a large chunk of which exploded off of him. His remaining eye
was wide with terror as his body dropped like a rock. A bullet
grazed Garrett’s side, and he dropped to one knee, but kept firing,
trying to pinpoint anyone with a gun.

“Nobody move!” a man said, though few heard
him. He had a pistol, and he grabbed Lacie by the hair and yanked
her to her feet. He put his arm around her, held the gun to her
head.

“Let her go!” Dex said. He was still being
held tightly, but the man holding him didn’t have a gun.

Layne turned his attention back to Jones,
who was drawing his pistol. Layne kicked it out of his hand, and
then kicked Jones in the head. Layne ran for the gun and picked it
up. Jones looked at him, put a hand up. He gasped for air to beg
with. Layne pulled the trigger, and Jones fell to the ground.

“Don’t use that, you dumb fuck!” someone
said. He was too late. One of the men had picked up an RPG and
fired. Layne ran.

There was a loud explosion. Layne’s ears
rang, his vision was blurred. When the fog from his head cleared,
he realized he was lying on a pile of rubble.

Around him, many of the torches had fallen.
Fires were breaking out in several places. He heard more gunfire,
and he heard a motorcycle start up. Then, Layne saw movement. He
realized he was looking at Kara. No longer bound, she was walking
very slowly, a few yards away from him.

“Mommy?” she said.

The motorcycle went rushing by, the driver
paying little attention to anything. It ran straight into Kara. Her
little body launched forward with the bike as it turned upward, the
driver flung from it. The bike crunched into the ground, twisted
and contorted as it slid across the pavement, trailing sparks and
metal behind. Kara’s body did the same, but left a trail of a
different kind.

A relentless noise filled Layne’s ears, and
only when his hearing started to clear up did he realize that the
noise was coming from him, that he was screaming at the top of his
lungs. He stumbled to his feet. His side and leg hurt, he found it
difficult to walk.

Layne saw Kyle. He was getting up, and
approaching him was the female zombie from before. Kyle noticed
her, stared at her. She walked toward him, mouth open, arms
outstretched. The image would be burned into Layne’s mind for the
rest of his life. Kyle had saved this monster, and all she wanted
was to eat him. Kyle looked at the ground. He reached forward, took
the pistol from where Walt lay, and aimed at the approaching
zombie, but she didn’t stop. Kyle closed his eyes and fired. She
stopped.

Lacie was lying on the ground, the man who
had been holding her hostage trampled by his own companions. She
didn’t move. Dex rushed to her side and tried to shake her, hardly
able to move his hands.

“Layne,” Garrett said. “Layne, are you
okay?”

Layne didn’t say anything. He continued
walking.

Walt stirred. He looked up and saw Annie.
She was pointing a pistol at him.

“We never should’ve done it,” she said. Walt
looked confused. “We never should’ve followed them.” She pulled the
trigger, splattering Walt’s head. Then she put the gun to her
own.

“Don’t—” Layne heard Warren from somewhere,
but it didn’t matter. Annie’s lifeless body hit the ground, like so
many others.

“Where’s Kara?” Jessi said. She was looking
around. She spotted Layne, ran to him, nearly knocked him over as
she grabbed his shoulders. “Where is she?”

Layne couldn’t look at her.

“Don’t… Don’t say…” Jessi started to cry.
She fell to her knees.

“Lacie, wake up,” Dex said. Lacie’s eyes
opened. Dex’s widened, full of tears, and he hugged her.

“Help,” a weak voice said. Ralph was
reaching out from beneath a pile of broken bleachers. Kyle and Dex
hurried over and started lifting the junk off of him.

“Jessi,” Layne said. “I… I’m sorry.”

Jessi fell to her knees, crying. Layne
looked around for the others. He saw Katie helping Keely stand up.
A few of their captors were left, but they were fleeing. Their
focus had shifted to their own survival. While a part of Layne that
didn’t often come out wanted to hunt them down and kill every one
of them, the better part wished them the best as they scrambled
down the streets and out of their makeshift mini-city.

Garrett had collected the key to the cuffs
from the man who had been holding him, and started uncuffing the
others.