Among the Living (32 page)

She tosses him the water, and he hands her a couple of protein bars. They are only neighbors, but she is impressed with the teamwork. He smiles at her, and suddenly the distance between them seems smaller.

Gunshots call out below—hot, fast and furious. There are screams, but it sounds like they come from inside. Doors slam, and the other tenants start shuffling around so loudly that the old building seems to be alive. More gunfire and a long, loud scream that sounds like something from a horror movie. Someone else shouts out on the street, and Kate doesn’t need any more encouragement. A doorway opens at the end of the hallway, and a man and woman of Hispanic descent emerge. The man carries a young child; the woman holds a plastic grocery bag that swings around her body ponderously as she whips the door shut. She locks it, then heads for the exit, a stream of Spanish going back and forth as if they are in a heated argument.

There is pounding on the floors above as people flee. More gunshots echo, and Kate doesn’t wait around any longer. Stuffing the bars in her bag, she whips it over her shoulder and takes the bundle of swords in her right. Bob shoulders his bag, which looks light as well, and then they are pounding down the hallway. They take the stairs two at a time as the other residents start to stream down them. Bob is right on her heels, and the flood of residents is just as hot on his.

“It’s too early for this bullshit,” a guy calls from above, but no one laughs. Nervous energy seems to ripple thought the tenants. It’s palpable, and she can almost taste it.

They fly down the last set of stairs, into the dilapidated lobby, which almost turned her off the place the first time she set foot in it. The walls are brown, old, peeling, but the super had promised he would redo it when summer was over. Of course, he has been promising this since Kate moved in. She doesn’t really care; it’s easy enough to ignore the decor, which is decidedly seventies.

Past the mailboxes, and she has an urge to check hers.

Bob grabs her arm and steers her out the front door. Her first impulse is to knock his hand away, because she is a fiercely independent woman and doesn’t need a man’s help. Only his hand is firm, warm, and it brushes her breast as he guides her down the short set of stairs. She tries not to show it, that she is excited by the danger, that she likes how his hand feels on her and would like to explore the feeling more. That might not go well for Bob, so she pushes the feelings aside.

He lets go, and she almost pouts, but another Army truck comes tear-assing up the street. Men pour out before it even comes to a complete stop, men in green fatigues armed with large guns and grim faces. She follows as if she belongs with them, long strides in her sneakers, no clacking of high heels today. She rounds the corner and thinks that she has suddenly left the main street and entered Hell.

There are dozens of them walking with hands at their sides, vacant eyes that even from a distance show bright red. Most are drenched in blood—red and angry, some dried to a rust patina as if it has been there for a while. They are all shapes and sizes and in various states of dress and undress. There is a well-built man who looks like he is from Jamaica. His dreads hang down his back and one side of his head. He wears just a t-shirt with an old picture of an El Camino on it. His dick dangles free, but it is shriveled and drawn up just like his balls. Her eyes are pulled there automatically, because she has been taught from the time she was a child that it is a naughty area. Now she is just sorry she looked.

An older man with a bullhorn cranks up the volume and shouts at the approaching people, who are still a good twenty or thirty feet away. “Identify yourselves or we will open fire. If you understand us, then raise your hands over your head and drop to the ground. Lie flat, and when we clear the area, we will come for you.”

He repeats a variation of the same address once more, but the people keep coming. Some signal is passed, something Kate doesn’t see or hear. Guns start firing along the line the men have set up. Most lie prone on the ground, but a few are on one foot with a knee on the asphalt.

Shells eject and hit the ground, a tinkle that is barely audible over the sound of the gunshots. The blasts assault her ears, and she tries to cover them with her hands, but her eyes don’t flinch away.

People jerk and fall as bullets slam into their bodies.

A large man dressed like a cowboy takes a shot in the leg just above his knee. Then one hammers into his side. He spins to the left from the impact, but recovers and keeps moving. Another shot hits him in the center of the chest. This stops him. He is pushed back, but his only reaction is to stare down at the sudden bullet hole. He stands in the mass of bodies as if listening to something, then a blast of automatic fire rips across one shoulder, almost separating his head at his neck as it zips past.

The guy goes down at last, and when he hits the ground, his head nearly shears off from the impact. She should look away; that’s what normal people do. She is aware that Bob has been standing next to her, that he cried out as some of the folks on the street were struck, screamed when some of them fell. She risks a glance at his face, and it is ashen, as pale as the walkers that just fell under withering gunfire.

She knows what she is doing. She is aware that it is not at all in her character, and yet her hand finds itself reaching across the vast gap that separates them and taking his hand in hers. It is no longer warm. It has gone cold as if his blood is frozen. He turns to her and squeezes her hand tight. His eyes are two great pools of sorrow. Who knew that Bob the collector had a heart, or a soul?

One of the shooters turns to them. He looks young, barely out of high school. His voice wavers and his hands shake visibly. “You should get out of here. There’ll be more of them soon, and if they get behind our lines, we can’t protect you … or ourselves.” The last is muttered as he turns around to pick off another one but not before she gets a good look into his eyes, which bear wounds, things he is not proud of. There is sorrow there; it calls to her for help, but she has no idea how to answer.

She doesn’t remember what sorrow feels like.

“You just shot them. American citizens. You shot them like they were animals.” Bob moves close so he can scream in the guy’s face. His hands are up in front of him, and Kate wonders if he is about to attack the soldier.

The guy stands unmoving under Bob’s tirade. His face is blank, and when Bob stops shouting, he doesn’t yell back. Instead he wipes his mouth with a trembling hand and looks Bob in the eye. He even offers an olive branch in the form of a hand placed on Bob’s shoulder.

“I know what we did, and it will haunt me for the rest of my life. I’ll tell you the truth, man, because they can’t keep this shit secret much longer. Those things are dead. It’s like someone killed them and then they reanimated or some shit.”

“That’s impossible. What kind of sick fuck comes up with a story like that?” Bob steps back, knocking the soldier’s hand off his shoulder.

“Did you see those things?” the guy pleads. “You can shoot them fifty times and they don’t go down. Try it. Take that gun out of your pants and shoot one in the chest. He’ll smile an evil fucking grin and then try to take a bite out of you.”

Bob turns away and throws his hand in the air.

“More on the way, sir!”

“Go hot, go hot!” he shouts, then picks up the bullhorn again and starts yelling his previous orders. “Show your hands in the air or run IN another direction!”

More of them shamble into view, and Kate understands that the guy isn’t crazy. They are monsters, nightmares of walking flesh. A woman has her arm blown off, but she keeps walking. It’s insanity! Gunfire pops along the line, and the things drop like rag dolls, then more come until they fill the street. There must be a hundred, two hundred!

“Left flank!” one of the soldiers screams, and all heads pivot in that direction. As sure as shit stinks, there are twenty or thirty of the things, and they are much closer.

Kate will say one thing for the military guys: they have their shit together. Five of them detach from the main group and move to form a new firing squad. Then the guns sound again and Kate is deafened.

Bob rages against the injustice, pounding his fist against his leg in frustration and begging the men and women to stop firing, but they can’t hear him over the gunfire … or maybe they choose not to. She tugs at his hand, drawing him after her. He follows dumbly, and once they come around the corner of the building, he seems to recover, to snap back to himself. Bob is trying to be a man about the situation. He wants to be the alpha dog of their duo, but he has no idea that he’s dealing with a strong alpha cat with a few deadly secrets.

“I’m sorry, it’s just such bullshit!” he says furiously.

She extracts her iPhone from a pocket, turns on the video camera and hands it to him. “There you go, Mr. Cameraman, document away.” Maybe giving him something to do will focus his anger. He snatches the phone from her hand and rounds the corner again. He holds the camera up at the firing squad, then pans it over the bodies on the ground and over the approaching people as they fall in bloody heaps.

“See what they are doing in Seattle? This is real, people, this is real shit happening right now, and we are powerless to stop it. Our government wants you to think they are saving us, but what they’re really doing is slaughtering innocent people. Why aren’t they gathering them up and putting them in trucks or something? Huh? Why aren’t they …” and he sputters out as several of the walkers manage to elude the storm of bullets and close on the line of fire.

A deader howls and jumps on top of a soldier who is shooting to the left of the main line. The soldier collapses beneath the bloodstained man, a guy in a bathrobe who is spitting blood. His eyes are livid, filled with rage. Blood-red rage. He snaps his head down and bites into the soldier’s arm, then rips his mouth upward in a furious pull that manages to break through the heavy fabric and find skin.

The soldier goes crazy! Dropping his machine gun, he fights to stand but ends up flipping the thing off his back. It clutches his arm as if holding on for dear life and takes another bite. The soldier screams as cloth and flesh are torn; both hang in strips below his elbow, and his green sleeve turns crimson.

The soldier kicks the attacker in the chest with one heavy boot. Then he takes a large step forward and kicks the guy’s head like it is a soccer ball. The blow should put a normal man down, but the guy hardly misses a beat. He leaps to his feet and snaps at the soldier again. This time the man in green is better prepared. He throws one hand in a big hooking punch that pops the attacker’s head around. Then he kicks him in the chest again, this time with more force. It knocks the deader back a few feet.

The soldier’s ruined arm hangs useless at his side, so he reaches across with his left hand and removes his gun from his holster. The others still fire, but some have stopped at the spectacle in front of them. One turns and fires a quick shot at the walker, hitting him high in the shoulder. Then he turns and trains the gun on the approaching horde again.

The distraction is enough. The soldier aims his gun, cocks it carefully with his damaged hand, and then shoots him in the head. The biter falls, and the soldier steps forward and shoots him a few more times, which finally does the trick. The deader’s head turns into spaghetti as blood and gray matter splatter in every direction.

The soldier stares at the mess and looks like he wants to puke. Then he studies his arm like he is looking at a science experiment. Behind him, the deaders advance at a steady rate, and it doesn’t seem like the soldiers will be able to keep up. Some eye the rear, probably trying to find a suitable place to which to retreat.

The injured guy stares at his arm for a few more seconds, then jerks as if hit by lightning. “Oh fuck, they got Ramirez!” one of the young female warriors shouts over the gunshots.

Ramirez pulls the gun up and tries to put it under his chin, but he is shaking and can’t seem to lift it. He looks at his companions in dread, horror etched all over his face. Then he looks up at the sun, almost smiling, rips a pin out of one of the grenades at his waist and falls on top of it.

Kate is standing ten feet away when the explosion rips through the air.

They have lain in bed for a few hours in silence, studying the ceiling as the temperature rises. Unlike yesterday, there is no desire to have sex. They stare and consider, and Lester takes the time to go over the plan in his head again and again, but what he is really waiting for is the alcohol to leave her body and for her to come down from her high.

“More water, babe?” he asks, holding the bottle out. He wishes it were ice cold and sweating in the heat like he is, but they have to settle for room temperature.

“No, I’m good. I want to take my purse with me. That thing was a lot of trouble to get.”

“The Coach thing from Marlene?”

“Yep.”

“Sure, okay. We can put stuff in it. When you’re on the other side, I will toss the bag to you. Just drop it, grab the rope and pull it tight so I can slide down. You may have to wrap it around your arms and then sit down, pull it away from the fence and brace your feet against it.” He sits up and demonstrates what he means.

“I got it, babe.” She smiles, but he wonders if, inside, she is ready for this.