General Masters, his arm around the sergeant’s shoulders, nodded at the armor. “You’ll melt in that can if the napalm hits, and you won’t be able to run through the brush.”
Jeremy ignored him. He barely knew the guy, but it was obvious the “general” was off his rocker.
They managed to draw the attention of a few dead police officers who scuffed their feet over the pavement. Their navy blue uniforms had become black where the blood dried, their nametags unreadable, and their faces expressionless.
Legions of the undead had collected from miles away, clustering in front of the retirement center. The garbage-dump smell was difficult to ignore, but he couldn’t let the opportunity pass him up. Father Joe helped him pry the armor off the corpse and put it on. The man had died from a clean shot to the head, so it wasn’t difficult to remove. With so many corpses concentrating their lust on the nursing home, the streets were empty, save for the handful of dead cops who followed the general and the sergeant.
At last, Jeremy felt like a badass.
And there was the issue of Stacy’s death. That jackass, Griggs, shot her in cold blood. Even if she was bit, Jeremy was supposed to be responsible for her. It was up to him to protect her, and he failed. He never expected another man to have the ability just to walk up and shoot someone. He heard about it in the news, studied it in serial killer novels, but didn’t understand the idea. All of his training was supposed to show him how to protect himself, but he might have to test his morality.
Yeah. Griggs had it coming to him. He might kill others just for the fun of it. There was something wrong with the guy, and Jeremy had to use his abilities to defend the weak. To defend others from people like Griggs.
The next time he saw Griggs, he would get what he deserved.
It was hard to believe Stacy was gone. He wasn’t sure how to deal with it; he was numb from all the death around him, and it wasn’t sinking in. Not yet.
The sky was starting to brighten with the threat of daylight behind the storm clouds. Distant thunder rumbled and scraps of money floated on the cool breeze. The humidity might break soon, good news, at last.
Thousands of people barely made any noise. The silent multitude of the faceless.
He thought about the Advanced Algebra test he took at Wayne State University just five days ago. A crowd of people who were deathly silent, their pencils scratching furiously; Jeremy was back in school after a long break, and he knew what was at stake. He could tinker on the computer at home and design his own video game applications, but he wanted the piece of paper that said he could do it; he wanted to prove it to his girlfriend and to his family.
But they were all gone, and in the silence, clad in plate mail with a battle axe in his hand, there was only one thing left to do that could make him proud to be Jeremy.
***
Parking the cars near the police barricade was drawing the attention of the crowd, which was a good thing.
Father Joe moved quickly, but his thoughts continued to wander. Try as he might, he couldn’t shake the images of the people he couldn’t save, the people who died in front of his eyes. With each igniting engine, with each rumbling motor, he berated himself. Could he lead a pilgrimage to Selfridge? The soldiers had said the base was already lost, but he made a promise to Macon’s father. He made a promise to Kathy, to Rose, and to Frank. They depended on him, and he wouldn’t let them down.
There wasn’t a plan beyond this. When he was a boxer in Mexico, he didn’t see anything else beyond the fight. He trained for his opponents, but couldn’t see beyond them. He focused on an objective and saw nothing ahead or behind him. Like everyone else, he was running from something.
Until he discovered the truth. Until he discovered Him.
Every day he relived that moment in the ring when God spoke to him, the moment he made his promise to Heaven. He didn’t have the power to question God’s will; he was alive, and he would do whatever it took to keep others alive.
Of all the survivors he met, there were two who didn’t quite seem to fit into the puzzle. Although he didn’t ask, he had a sinking feeling that Mina wasn’t a churchgoer, though the undead stayed away from her as much they did him. He couldn’t forget when she raised her voice at them and they obeyed.
Rose was also a challenge to figure out. A pretty girl who was running around on the street instead of hiding like most people, and for what? She acted like an observer, someone who was content to listen and watch while accepting the world for what it was. She was deathly afraid of the dead things, but who wasn’t? She hung on every word he said but offered no opinions. It wasn’t anything too out of the ordinary, but something about her posture unnerved him.
He found a Budweiser delivery truck and was thankful he knew how to drive one from his days delivering bread in Ciudad Juarez. There wasn’t anyone to rob him this time; the zombies weren’t interested in beer.
A sizable crowd was gravitating toward both sides of the barricade. It wasn’t until he stood outside of it that he understood what Sergeant John Charles meant to do.
He sighed. The soldier believed himself already condemned, but he couldn’t let General Masters and Jeremy get dragged into it.
A dead police officer stood beside the priest. A dozen or so corpses stood around him, watching him. Were they confused? Did they wonder why they couldn’t touch him? What went on behind those dead eyes? Father Joe had a good idea what these creatures were, but who would believe him?
Something from Hell.
Father looked at the police officer’s nametag: S. Ninkovich. The same officer who gave his life to protect the dead people who stood with him now. His head leaned against his right shoulder because the large chunk that had been ripped out the left side of his neck unbalanced his head. The man’s lips were blue, his uniform crusted with dried blood that was mostly his.
“Whaddya say, Ninkovich?” Father smirked and stared back at the dead man. “You did all you could, and I thank you. I can perform one more miracle for you, as a token of appreciation. I only wish I had time for everyone here, because it sure seems like a lot of people could use my help.”
He reached for the dead man’s arm and gently pulled him close. The officer hardly responded to the priest’s touch; Father grabbed the man’s jaw with one hand and the top of his head with the other and wrenched it around. The sound of dry twigs cracking underfoot was followed by the corpse slumping backward. Father let the man drop to the ground like a crash test dummy being pushed from a skyscraper’s window high above the city.
Now Sam Ninkovich could rest.
Ciudad Juarez and the boxing ring seemed far away, a story written in a children’s book.
He couldn’t wait to see the look on Frank’s face when he bailed them out of the nursing home. His promise would be fulfilled. The old man, along with Kathy, Macon, and Rose, would be saved at last.
***
Moving around in the armor was a pain in the ass, but he also felt invincible.
Jeremy was anxious to play with his new toy. While the general was singing patriotic songs and loading up a shopping cart inside the store, Jeremy prowled around the aisles for a clean shot. While corpses staggered toward the priest’s barricade-construction, or hung out around the nursing home, there were only a handful of zombies left for him to play with.
With the emergence of morning was the advent of new light; absolute darkness had been overthrown, and Jeremy could see the zombies. When the Festival of Flesh had been crashed, he didn’t see them because he grabbed hold of the nearest person he could find and tried to hide. Stacy had been bit and bled everywhere, but Jeremy wasn’t going to leave anyone behind if he could help it. Trying to help someone was the decent thing to do.
A woman stumbled into the glowing blue light of a cloud-depressed morning. He waited at the end of the aisle with both of his hands gripping the axe tightly, the weapon poised over his shoulder so he could swing it like a baseball bat, even though he knew it was probably the wrong thing to do. What if he couldn’t sever the head cleanly? He couldn’t trust the blade, but he could trust his strength. He’d practiced with an assortment of martial arts weapons at the dojo, and though he wasn’t an expert, he knew how to keep his balance and swing with purpose.
He could see her waxen complexion and the vast, black hole where her stomach had been. Her breasts had been ripped away and one of her eyes was missing. It was almost too much. This used to be a living person; all of his skills had been acquired so he could use them for good, to defend himself or anyone in trouble, almost like a superhero, although he never had that kind of courage.
She wasn’t real. She was dead. Not alive. Dead.
No more being nervous, or afraid. It was time to act.
The swing of the axe and the immediate disconnect of the head from the shoulders didn’t register right away; his disciplined mind helped him keep his balance without over-swinging the blade and making a bigger mess for himself. He stood over a fallen body and waited for it to get back up. The head was sitting on a shelf among bags that were half-filled with air and half with potato chips.
The damn thing was dead. For good.
Jeremy tried to refocus his mind. It was only one zombie kill, his first, sure, but there would need to be more.
When he walked back outside after slaying two more zombies, his arms already felt rubbery, his shoulders sore. The general and Sergeant John Charles were waiting with the shopping cart full of bottles and rags.
General Masters had already created rivers of gasoline in the street after siphoning it through a hose and letting it spill out. The street was a mixture of rain and petroleum, bullets and clothes, scraps of flesh and shards of glass. Flies floated around charred pieces of humanity that had been neglected for whatever reason by the zombies; Jeremy didn’t want to look any closer at them to make a better guess what they were.
Sergeant John Charles’s eyes were closed while he leaned against the general. He coughed up a wad of blood and pushed his fingers down his throat to relieve himself of more blood that poured out of his mouth. He wavered on his knees and nearly fell until the general caught him.
“Shit,” was all Jeremy could say.
“It’s already working,” the general pointed to the barricade, where hundreds of zombies gathered. “We got to move quickly.” He glanced at Jeremy as if gauging whether or not he could trust him.
“I’m ready,” he declared, “but what’re we supposed to do, exactly? Father’s supposed to be waiting with a pickup truck, right? How do we get John on top of the barricade…?”
Both men looked up at him, and he finally understood what they already knew: John was going to draw corpses to the barricade and blow it himself.
A blue pickup truck with rusted doors and the door panel missing from the bed pulled up in front of the store. The priest sat behind the wheel, his hands and face smeared with blood.
“Sorry about that,” he said, “had to crack a few heads and got a bit carried away.”
Father Joe leapt out and helped them throw everything into the back of the truck, along with the weak sergeant and his big-ass rifle. Jeremy spied blood on the seat inside the cab and on the dashboard—someone had been killed in the truck. He tried to clear the vision from his mind. He climbed into the truck bed, a difficult feat with the heavy armor.
The sergeant lay in the back of the truck with his eyes half-closed. How could these people be so brave? Jeremy didn’t have what it took to keep his shit together like the sergeant or the bat-shit general, but he could hold his own now that he had the armor and a weapon he could use. He might move clumsily, but at least those things couldn’t bite him.
“You gotta stay awake,” Jeremy said to the sergeant over the roar of the truck’s old muffler.
John smiled weakly and tried to open his eyes. “You worry about yourself. I was always supposed to go out like this.”
“Come on!” Jeremy tried to perk up the guy’s spirits. “You can’t say that crap. Nobody knows what’s going to happen to ‘em. You can’t just give up and think you’re going to die some kind of hero. You’re already a hero, man. You saved my ass.”
John sat up among the bottles. “Anybody can be a hero. You don’t need a gun to help people. And what d’you think you’re doing? You’re going to slay a dragon in that getup.”
He knew what John was trying to tell him, but he wasn’t ready to think that way. This wasn’t about being a hero, but it was about doing whatever he could to make a difference when all his life he’d done nothing but wait for the world to come to him. Nobody was promised anything, except for death.
“Thank you for what you did,” Jeremy reached out with his gauntleted hand and put a hand on John’s shoulder. “Not just for me.”
John Charles sighed. “I wanted to help Stacy, too. I really did. I didn’t forget you. I came back to help. God, she was just like Katie. So alike. Katie didn’t wait for me or give me a chance... just to see her again, to save her…”
The truck pulled up next to another pickup that was in the center of the barricade. There wasn’t a lot of time to move; the general and the priest hopped up and transferred all the goodies to the other truck. Zombies dragged their nails across the vehicles, fingertips shredding with all the fury of screws drawing circles on a cold chalkboard.