“After all that she better not die,” Patrick said, and heaved again.
Danny didn’t die. It had been four days since she bit herself free of the Mustang. She was feeling much better. Damn good, even. The fever broke, the black clouds that raged and stormed inside her mind cleared away, and despite the gleaming pain she began to ask questions in earnest. That was the men’s best proof that she was going to survive. She wanted to know what the plan was.
The men had come to this place only an hour or two after they were banished. The junkyard was located behind a butte of rock at the base of the mountains, separated from the airfield by a foothill upon which the airfield was backed. If you scaled the butte, which was not difficult because the stacked cars made an effective stairway up its flank, there was a flat place from which you could see the airfield with binoculars—or better yet, the Celestria eight-inch telescope they’d set up for that purpose. As Topper enthusiastically explained, because the bulk of the plan was his, they were currently beefing up a 9C1 Chevy Impala, the police car they’d found abandoned down the road. Danny remembered it: There had been an old, wizened zombie in the back.
“She looked like fuckin’ King Tut, but she was still kicking,” Topper chuckled. “I made Ernie do the braining on that one.”
They had made some modifications to the basic police package that Topper thought Danny would like. In addition, they had an old Ford pickup running, not to mention Patrick’s fire truck, and there were a couple of adequate Harleys that didn’t need much work to be roadworthy. The plan was to creep up on the airfield at night, lights off, then all of a sudden ram the fence from the side behind the terminal building—not at the gates, where the grenade launcher and the 20mm cannon presented an obstacle, let alone about four hundred zombies. The rest of them would get in there through the gap and start killing anybody over six foot.
Along with her health, Danny’s memory had returned. Not all of it, but she could now remember the early part of the confrontation she’d had with the Hawkstone men. And that the Mustang had gone to Pony Heaven.
“Their leader is five-nine at the most,” Danny said, remembering Murdo.
She heard the plan out. It was suicidal, violent, and likely to result in civilian casualties, failure, and death, in that order. But it was a hell of a plan, nonetheless. Something bothered Danny, though.
“They were leaving when I got there. Where were they going? Did they say?” Danny asked.
“Their command was supposed to be in Potter,” Patrick volunteered.
Danny tossed her good hand in the air. “It isn’t. Do they know that?”
Patrick shrugged. “They don’t know anything.”
“Potter is a deathtrap,” Danny barked. Something was bothering her, some fact that didn’t fit the picture. “Wait a minute,” she eventually said. “It’s four days later. How come they’re still at the airfield?”
Topper took off his greasy Kenworth gimme-cap and scratched the thin, scraggly hair underneath.
“That’s where old Wulfie come in,” Topper said. He looked uneasy. He clearly knew Danny might not approve of this part of the plan. But he bravely continued.
“See, Wolfman lit out right before those fuckwads showed up, right? He just disappeared the way he does. And he was like livin’ on jackrabbits in the brush, because there weren’t that many zombies around at the time. Watching the airfield. Never more than five hundred yards away and them twats didn’t even know he was there. And he had his rifle, too. So when we got tossed out on our asses, he followed us here and we met up and told him the deal, and I already had this idea going, right? And he said he’d keep ’em there long as he could until we had ourselves set up.”
“You guys,” Danny said, shaking her head.
“So days are going by, right?” Topper was warming to his narrative. “Wulf is down there watching and he comes and briefs us on the intel from the field. He hears shouting sometimes. Then a few mornings back he hears a gunshot and that black chick with the little baby gets carried out dead. Those cocksuckers left her on the ground and ran. Once it was dark, Wulf buried her with rocks. By that time the zombies were showing up by the dozen, so he had to retreat to high ground, but that rifle of yours got a real good fuckin’ scope on it. Wulf could see just fine. He sees they’re pulling out. So he come back here and tells us about it and I says to him, shit, we’re not ready. So he says he figures he can slow ’em down.”
“Slow them down?” Danny said, and Topper heard the disapproval again. But he pressed on.
“Well, see that’s where you come in. We were gonna put our plan in action—when all of a sudden the long-lost Sheriff Adelman pulls up to the airfield in a fine example of vintage American iron. Then those pricks blew you off the map. We’re all real sorry about the ’Stang, incidentally. Wulf was right there. He saw it all happen not two hundred yards away.”
“Three hundred,” Ernie added.
“Three hundred,” Topper amended. “You fucked up my story, Ernie.”
“Sorry, Topper.”
“Mind if I continue?”
“Please.”
“So Wulf is right there under a quarter-mile away,” Topper went on. Danny enjoyed simply hearing their voices, being among people she knew. They shared something. They survived together.
“He took a chance and crawled to your position,” Topper said. “Fuckin’ zombies were right there on you, practically. You’re hung up under the car, then you’re doing something, and before he gets to you you’re free. He thought you were a zombie for a minute on account of what you done. Them cuffs was a good idea. He said your hand didn’t bleed hardly at all. The Wolfman took out the zombies and carried you off a safe ways. Calls us to come quick, no lights.”
“How are you communicating this whole time?” Danny asked.
Ernie produced a toy plastic walkie-talkie in a magenta case with stickers of a cartoon girl all over it.
“We got these at the store,” Ernie said. “Toy department. You couldn’t talk from one end of the trailer to the other with them goddamn toy radios we had when I was a kid, but these new ones got a good range on ’em. But the range ain’t so good you can hear the whole way. So we done relays with ’em.”
“That was Ernie’s idea,” Topper said. “He ain’t as stupid as he smells. We set up a daisy chain with the radios: Wulf talks on the first one, we got a man halfway back gets Wulf’s message, and he talks on the next one to send the message to our lookout, up top.” Topper gestured to the butte, where Martin the skinny college kid was crouching above them.
“Go keep watch, for chrissakes,” Topper shouted, catching sight of Martin. Martin walked away out of view across the top of the butte.
“Man, we’re as bad as those pukes down at the airfield,” Topper added, then went on, “Tell you the truth, Wulf was real mad about what happened to you. He shot one of those fuckers in the head right after he found you,
just outta spite, and that give us all the idea to keep ’em where we want ’em. Any time one of them peckerwipes shows his self, we shoot him. Shit, they keep peeking out the windows, they might run out of men before we’re even ready to move on the plan.”
Having heard the whole story, what Danny meant to say was:
What an extraordinary series of actions. What an unprecedented situation. It is thought-provoking. I am impressed, and I am compelled
.
What she said was, “Fuck.” And again, thoughtfully: “
Fuck
.”
They knew what she meant.
Danny ate for the first time in days, and ate well. Macaroni and cheese from a box, followed by cocktail franks from a jar. Then she felt sick, but it stayed down, and the next thing was thirst. She wanted beer, something cheap and American if they had it, but no light beer. Patrick brought her three large bottles of sparkling water. She complained, then drank all three bottles inside forty minutes. A while later she belched with such force that Ernie came to see what the noise was, a welding mask propped up on his forehead.
“Nice one, Sheriff,” he said, and went back through the piles of wrecked cars to report the occasion to Topper.
Danny was back under the old car hull. It was a 1939 Buick, she had determined. Patrick was on radio relay duty at the listening post out in the desert, a spot relatively zombie-safe because it had an eight-foot cliff on one side and an old cow pen with heavy wire along the other. Still, an anxiety-producing place to be. Easily surrounded.
Topper came by to visit Danny; he was reeking of ozone from the arc welder in the shed. They were going to move her to the living quarters next, but they wanted her to be able to walk on her own. She thought she probably could. The men were shacked up inside a corrugated iron Quonset hut around the corner, where the interior parts and upholstery were kept by the previous owners; the men were sleeping on bench seats scavenged from old trucks. It was a bachelor’s paradise, except for the absence of good-looking ladies. Pardon the implication, Topper added.
“I dunno how you survive all this,” Topper mused.
“It’s got me stumped, too,” Danny said, and waited. When Topper didn’t laugh, she prodded him with her good elbow.
“That’s just wrong,” Topper said.
Danny cawed with laughter. It wasn’t a pretty laugh—it sounded like
somebody sawing a sheet of tin, in fact—but then again, she wasn’t accustomed to laughing.
Danny wanted very much to get into action. Her friends were down there. She couldn’t remember what directly preceded her getting blown up and performing the self-amputation, but she knew Amy was in trouble. Danny remembered that she had seen her friend alive, but not what she saw. There were the stories of what had happened before, as well. The mercenaries from Hawkstone had beaten Patrick almost to death, and killed the young mother. For all Danny knew the baby was dead, too. According to the reports from Wulf, three Hawkstone men were dead or wounded, although one of them might have been somebody else dressed as a soldier, he had to admit. Danny admired the old man’s candor. He might have shot a noncombatant; his bad, he accepted full responsibility.
He also knew there wasn’t a working jail or courthouse on the West Coast.
Later, Danny tried to figure out how to eat with one hand. There was no physical rehabilitation anymore; she would have to invent new ways of doing a lot of things. Patrick knelt beside her and produced a rumpled plastic bag from his back pocket.
Inside was Kelley’s note.
“You had it on you. Your uniform is cleaned up, too,” Patrick said. Danny was touched. Only he would have bothered.
“I heard they beat you up pretty good and left you down at the airfield,” Danny said. “How come
you’re
here?”
Patrick drew invisible circles on the pavement with a piece of automotive trim.
“Those guys, those fake soldiers,” Patrick said. “Murdo, the boss? He hated me. I think he was latent. He chose me for his special enemy. They all kept fucking with me. It was so obvious they wanted to make an example out of me, and I was so like, no way. Not happening. But even that upset them.
“I don’t remember getting my ass kicked, thankfully,” Patrick continued. “I don’t even remember the next like three or four days.”
They sat in silence for a while, then Patrick made a couple of false starts at speaking. He wanted to say something, but couldn’t find the right way to put it.
“Why did you go?” he finally said.
Danny shook her head. “My sister. I was crazy to find her. I had to try. If it had been Weaver—you know what I mean?”
“You went out to look for her.”
“All the way to San Francisco. She’s gone. It’s all gone. I realized out there, there’s nothing left. Each other is all we got. It sounds gay, I know. I mean—”
“I know what you mean.”
“Anyway, I shouldn’t have left you guys.”
“I guess you didn’t have a choice.” Patrick didn’t sound convinced, but Danny knew she didn’t have the right to insist on understanding. What had happened to him—and to all of the survivors—was as much her responsibility as it was the mercenaries’.
Out of her emotional depth, she changed the subject. “So what happened?”
“I woke up the next day. I was marinating in my own pee, but I was all bandaged up, so I know Amy was taking care of me. What happened was I was staring at this godawful spray-on acoustic ceiling material, and then one of them comes in, one of these Hawkstone gangsters. The Italian one. He takes one look at me like I’m worthless, and then he peeks out the window. Half an hour later he comes in and does it again. This time the boss is with him, this guy named Murdo. He’s such an overcompensator.”
“Was he the short one?”
“Total Porsche driver. He tells me I’m lucky I’m even alive, which is debatable based on the state my beautiful face is in. Then he tells me somebody is shooting at us, and he wants to know who. He thinks it was Topper. Of course I hadn’t the foggiest, and I told him that. He comes over to smack me some more and just then Amy arrives and tells him if he hits me, I’ll die. He says, so fucking what. I kid you not, his exact words.
So fucking what
. And right then, the window breaks. I thought the Italian Stallion broke it, but he’s going like this—”
Here, Patrick pantomimed pressing his stomach with the heel of both hands.
“—And he falls down. And I had no idea that much blood could come out of somebody. It was unbelievable. He got shot, right then and there, just like Murdo said. Amy did whatever she was doing, tried to stop the bleeding, but she said it must have gone through his liver or something. He kept trying to fight her off. Then he died.”
“So how many of them are left, as far as you know?” Danny was caught up in the narrative, but she was also building up her calculations, adding in factors, trying to come up with a way to spring the others out of captivity that didn’t involve making a big hole in the fence for zeros to get through. Patrick shrugged.
“Murdo. Parker, this guy with a neck like this. Reese and Flamingo. Don’t ask where he got his name. There’s this psychopath called Ace, Amy told me he killed Cammy, the one with the baby? And there’s Jones, this wounded one that Amy patched up. That’s what started the whole thing.”