Moriah (34 page)

“Now it’s—”

The booker burst in from outside, barreling into Chase’s legs. The two of them hit the floor, wrestling.

Riley did not wait to see what happened next. She ran into the first darkened room—the parlor—and then the dining room, circling the shadow she knew to be the table, aware that something was laid out on it. She pulled a curtain away from the window, flooding the room with daylight.

What was left of Kevin lay on top of the table, inglorious and dead. As she stood there she watched with fascinated horror as his blood dripped from the table to puddle on the hardwood floor below. She clearly heard it
plop
.

Kevin
.

The ruckus from the mud room was over. There was movement. Riley looked up, and Chase was standing in the dining room with her. He did not look happy.

She let the curtain go, taking most of the light from the room.

Maybe he was thinking about what had happened to him when he’d come across the kitchen island at her, because instead of rolling over the dining room table towards Riley, Chase disappeared under the floor-length tablecloth. Riley didn’t wait to see where he reappeared. She hopped up onto the table, getting to her knees beside Kevin’s corpse. Chase stood beneath them, heaving the heavy table onto its side, flinging Riley to the floor.

She landed as she’d been trained, rolling from her shoulder to her feet, sprinting through the darkened rooms, leaving Chase to maneuver around the obstacle he himself had created, the overturned table blocking him from her. The zombie from the basement stepped into the vestibule just as Riley did, reaching for her, arms stretched out from its COLLEGE t-shirt. She deftly side-stepped it and darted up the stairs.

Her gun. She had to get her gun.

She found it in the bedroom on top of her pillow, right where she had left it. The cylinder was open and empty. Where would he have put the bullets? Another room? Somewhere in this one? The window was cracked open a few inches where it hadn’t been earlier. Chase had thrown the bullets out the window.

Riley heard him barrel into the entranceway and up the staircase, where he ran into the zombie.

What had Kevin said to her last night?

There was the sound of struggle, grunts and a low moan, a tumbling down the stairs.

He’d said:
Hey, I put your speedloader
—

She hastened to the hall, to the top of the stairs. Riley looked down in time to see Chase straddling the zombie, its bearded head in both his hands. The zombie saw Riley, groaned, and Chase looked up at her. He sneered at her, savagely wrenching the zombie’s head, its neck audibly snapping. He continued to twist until he had torqued its head completely around to its back.

* * *

He let it drop and the zombie continued to work its greedy mouth. Ignoring it, Chase mounted the stairs. A door slammed above him. In his hands he welded the woodchopper’s maul he’d pulled from the stump outside. The same axe he had finished the man on the veranda with, the man whose body he’d dragged through the house and set on the table.

Chase was breathing hard and he was in agony. She’d been smart to bring the zombies into this the way she had, the way
he
had. He gave her points for that. And she was tough. She’d hit him and hurt him and he could still feel that knife she’d put in his back. He’d asked her if she’d wanted to play and she’d given it to him good. Yeah, she was tough. But now, Chase decided, stepping from the stairs to the hallway, enough of this bullshit. The game was over. It was time for the woman to die.

Ignoring the first doors on either side, Chase trusted his ears. The second door to his right was open. She’d hidden in the bathroom in there before, let him walk right past. That was slick. She wouldn’t do it again.

The second door on the left was shut. He tried the knob and found it locked. Yeah, this was where she’d gone. Chase raised the axe before reconsidering. He knocked on the door and waited a moment. When she didn’t reply, he called out to her, “You can either let me in”—yeah, she was tough, but he had her running scared, and he pictured her huddled somewhere within, crying and shaking—“or I can let myself in.” He punched the door, rocking it on its hinges.

“Let me in!” he demanded, bringing the axe into play, hacking at the door.

“Let—”

The axe broke through the door and he lost it, hearing it hit the floor in the next room.

“—me—”

Chase grasped either side of the frame, his knee rising and falling as he drove the naked, singed sole of his foot into the door

“—in!”

A panel splintered and he found himself stuck in the door thigh-deep.

A woman’s cry—more a roar than a scream—and Chase, trapped there, looked up as Riley set upon him, a fireplace poker raised above her head, the door to the connecting bedroom open on the hall. He raised his arm and absorbed most of her first blow, a gash opening up on his forearm. He made to grab the poker and snatch it from her hands but she had already drawn it back a second time and swatted him in the head. Chase grunted and attempted to free his leg from the door, but couldn’t.

“Bitch!” he cursed her as she split his scalp open, the poker bouncing off his skull.

“Look at me, you motherfucker!” Riley raised the poker above her ear like a baseball bat. “I’m not running any more.”

Before he could reply she brought the poker around and down, the blow shattering his cheekbone and knocking him off his feet, his thigh freed from the door frame. Chase rolled onto his stomach and then his hands and knees, the woman beating him about the head and shoulders the entire time.

He lunged and managed to take her down at the knees, but no sooner had she landed on her back than her bare foot snaked out and caught him in his broken face, dazing him. She tried to stick him in the face with the poker, but luck was on his side and Chase managed to knock the implement from her grasp. It clattered across the hall and down the stairs.

Her counterattack relented. When Chase’s head cleared, Riley had disappeared into another bedroom.

“Looks like you’re running to me!” Chase shouted after her, back on his feet, unsteady. “Yeah—
run, bitch
!”

Let her run, let her run anywhere she wanted in this house or on this island. He’d find her. He’d find her—

“
Run
!”

He’d find her and he’d—

She came out of the bedroom with the revolver in her hand. He laughed at her until he saw the look on her face. A look she shouldn’t have had. He’d thrown her bullets away.

Chase lunged at Riley as the handgun fired, pain searing across his torso. He grabbed her and pushed the Taurus away from his person, the weapon discharging into the wall of the corridor. They struggled close against one another, Chase gripping her wrist, attempting to break it. Riley brought the flat of a hand against the side of his neck and he grunted but would not let go. She snapped her foot into his stomach once, twice. The third time, he scooped her up by her leg and ran her across the hall, the two of them bouncing off the walls. They pitched together down the stairwell, the revolver barking.

Though Riley landed on top, her ankle screamed and she knew it was broken. She rolled off Chase, maintaining her grip on the Taurus. The bearded zombie, immobile, its head twisted around, snapped at them. Riley pushed herself across the entranceway floor, away from the undead, away from Chase. His hand had closed around the handle of the poker and he brought it down—barely missing her—cracking the wood floor, the tool bouncing free of his grip.

Riley straightened the revolver and fired, her bullet tearing through Chase’s cheek and teeth, splattering part of his head on the door and umbrella stand behind him.

He wouldn’t give up.

Yanking the zombie by its hair, an arm around its waist, Chase brought it up close to his body as he rose and made for the door. Riley tracked him with the pistol but he had the dead thing between them like a shield.

He abandoned the broken zombie on the veranda and bounded down the stairs towards the trees. A round burrowed through the back of his thigh, a spray of bright blood showering the earth ahead of him.

He stopped running because he no longer could run.

Chase turned, panting.

* * *

Riley stepped around the zombie Chase had dumped on the veranda, careful of its mouth. He was standing out there, a bloody, burnt mess, facing her. Riley hopped down the veranda stairs on one foot, landing wrong and falling on her ass, banging her back. She kept the revolver on him as she pulled herself back up, his smile a ghastly leer, half his face missing where she’d shot it off.

Riley covered the distance separating them on her one good foot, stopping when she was a good three meters from him.

Chase glowered at her.

“Believe me,” Riley said sighted down the barrel of the pistol, “I feel the same way.” She squeezed the trigger.

The hammer fell on an empty chamber.

Riley looked at the Taurus in her hand, a five shot revolver. She’d fired it out without being aware.

A scowl on his distorted face, Chase growled at her.

Riley threw the pistol away and growled right back at him.

They’d each taken a step towards the other when the remainder of Chase’s head came apart, chunks of his skull disintegrating. The rifle’s crack echoed in Riley’s ears a moment later before being drowned out in a fusillade of gunfire. Chase’s body jerked in place, blood misting the morning air, until gravity drew it down to the dirt.

Riley looked over and couldn’t believe it. Her father, her Uncle Brent and Dee walked towards her with a fourth man she vaguely recognized. Brent was lending Dee a hand. Smoke curled up from the barrel of Dee’s Python, from the Model 7 Brent tensed on its sling, from the 9mm Beretta in her father’s hands.

“Fleshy-headed mutant!” the man Riley hadn’t recognized yelled. “Are you friendly?” It was Gary, the autistic guy from the hospital. “No way, eh.”

“Daddy? Uncle Brent?” She stared at them in disbelief. “Where’d you…”

“Oh—you hoser!”

Her father embraced her, pressing Riley close to his body so as not to part with her again.

“Daddy!” Riley cried between breaths, overwhelmed. “Daddy—Daddy—
wait
!” She tried to push him back—

“Why did Canadians say
eh
?” Gary rubbed the sides of his head. “What does that mean?”

—but her father held her tight. When he put her at arm’s length he still didn’t let her go, looking his daughter over from behind his mirrored sunglasses. “You’re okay?”

“Daddy—”

“You’re okay?”

“I’m okay.”

“Thank god.” Steve’s voice was gentle, encouraging, “Then what is it? What is it, baby?”

“Daddy.” She couldn’t bring herself to tell him what she needed to.

Brent shot the zombie on the veranda in the head.

“Anthony.” She barely managed to say his name.

Steve pulled her close again. “I know, I know, I know,” he whispered. “Dee told us. I know—I know all about it.” His voice broke.

“This is sad,” Gary observed. “Isn’t this sad?”

“Yes, it’s sad,” said Brent. “But it’s happy, too.”

“Why is it happy?”

“Daddy, you stink!” Riley sniffled and smiled through her tears at her father. “Gosh, do you stink. I don’t understand—how did you get here?”

“Your Uncle Brent and I—”

“Uncle Brent!” Riley latched onto her father’s best friend and hugged him tight.

“Hey there, Rye girl. It’s all going to be okay now.”

Riley stepped back from her uncle and held his hand, held her father’s in her other hand. “How…?”

Her uncle explained. “We got Grimaldi—the helicopter pilot? Guy who dropped you off in the Outlands? We got Grimaldi to take us. He’s on the other side of the island with the chopper—” Riley remembered the feint mechanical noise that she thought she’d dreamed “—and Alex.”

“
Alex
?”

“Yeah,” her uncle Brent continued. “Fool got it into his head to come looking for you guys. Almost didn’t make it.”

“Huh?” Riley didn’t understand.

“He fell,” said her dad. “Hurt his ankle.”

“His ankle? Me, too.”

“He’s okay but he can’t get around too well. And he got himself sprayed by a skunk.”

“Were Bob and Doug KcKenzie really brothers?” Gary asked no one.

“I still don’t…”

“He brought us to this house,” Brent said of Dee, who was standing off by himself, observing the reunion.

“Dee.”

He smiled at her. “Riley.”

“Dee, he got Kevin—” Dee was nodding as though he suspected as much “—he killed Kevin, I’m so—” Riley noted the fresh blood on Dee’s arm “You’re hurt.”

She went to him.

“I am.”

“You’re…” She took him by the wrist and held his arm out from his body, studying his wound. She looked at him, a question in her eyes.