Dead South Rising (Book 2): Death Row (18 page)

“Did Lenny give you an ETA?”

Taneesha shook her head. “Just said hide back here ’til they could get the others rounded up. Him and Randy’s supposed to be on watch now, said they’d sneak down here when they could. He had to be really worried to have us come out here, where the rattlers wander.”

And it was that last statement that resonated with Jessica, that made her realize just how dire things had very suddenly become at the Alamo.

Lenny pushed through the back doors of the Alamo, Randy on his heels. “So I told ‘em to go to the—”

They stepped onto the loading dock. And just stared, jaws unhinged.
 

“Holy shit,” Randy said finally.

Lenny’s chest heaved a heavy breath, eyes rolling over bodies that once claimed the tennis court cement as home. Now, those same bodies staked another claim—the palisade fence surrounding the Alamo. Pressed up against it, they resembled a writhing second fence of sorts. A fence that comprised slowly decaying flesh and bone and blood.

The bodies blocked the gate. Teeth gnashed. Jaws snapped. Groping hands waved between the bars. The growls. The groans. It was a mesmerizing sight. One neither man hoped that they’d have to lay eyes on again so soon.

“All that work… How’d they get out, ya think?” asked Randy. “The Infirmaries?”

A shallow head shake. “Don’t know. Just… don’t know. But I don’t think them Infirmaries would do this. They’s the ones made us put ‘em in there to start with.”

They just gazed for another disbelieving minute, neither man ready to face such a malicious mob.

“Luz?”

Lenny glimpsed Randy. “Doc G.?”

Nodding, Randy said, “Think she turned them loose? Let ‘em out?”

“To stretch they legs? Go for a stroll?” Another shallow head shake. “I don’t think so, my man. Turning ‘em loose… that’d just put ‘em in more danger, ya know? Risk ‘em wandering off… getting killed. According to her, anyway.”

“Then who…?”

The thought seemed to cross their minds at the same instant, an understanding of three young druggies wronged, their only recourse of revenge to let the dogs out, as it were. Make a mess they’d never have to clean up, because they’d be long gone.

“Damnit,” Randy muttered.

“Uh-huh.”

“It was locked up, wasn’t it?”

“Must’ve picked it or sawed it somehow.”

Randy studied his friend’s face, looking for and finally finding that light bulb of realization.
 

Lenny said, “One of ‘em was walking awful funny.”

“Like how?”

“Like… he had something stuffed off in his britches. Like…” Lenny slapped a massive palm to his forehead, rocking his head back.

“What? Like what?”

“Like bolt cutters.”

Eyes darting about, Randy thought on it, finally nodding in understanding. “TJ managed to get a pair of bolt cutters down his pants?”

“Had to. That punk thought he was gangster. Baggy-ass pants. Plenty of room for something like that. Damn.” He made a fist, prepared to pound something, realized there was nothing around to punch. Unable to vent his vexation, he dropped his fist to his side, flexed his fingers and popped his joints instead. “Oughta check up front. See how far these things done wandered.”

With heavy legs, they descended the steps, started slowly around the building while hazy eyes beyond the steel watched. Followed. Anticipated.
 

Finally ripping his own gaze from the hungry horde, Randy said, “So Taneesha and the kids are by the stock pond?”

“Mmm, hmm. Waiting for us on the south side by the service road. Infirmaries ain’t gonna look there. Not at first, anyways. Told her we’d take off from there.”

“What about just bailing in one of the cars? Or the Dodge? Could pile everyone in the bed of the truck and it’s full of gas…”

Shaking his head, Lenny said, “Naw, too chancy. Wanna slip out tonight. If they sees all the vehicles still here, take ‘em longer to suspect we’s gone.” He curled his fingers around the hatchet blade holstered on his hip. “Your friend…”

“David?”

“Yeah, David. Ain’t he leaving? Business to take care of?”

“Jess said he was.”

“Change his mind?” Lenny asked, tossing his head back toward the Dodge still parked near the loading dock.

Randy shrugged. “Didn’t think so. I’ve never seen him so… angry. Just so… I don’t know… I don’t think there’s a word to describe how pissed off and upset he was. I’m honestly scared for him. I think he’s seriously willing to die going after this guy.”

“You blame him? I mean, that’s just evil—chopping off his wife’s hand like that…” A visible, massive shiver went through the muscleman.

“Well, yeah, kind of, I do. I mean, his wife left him before this whole mess started. Didn’t even have the decency to tell him to his face. Wrote him a ‘Dear John’ letter.”

“That’s cold, bro.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said. But David loves—loved—Natalee. I’d go as far as to say he’s obsessed with her.”

“Or obsessed with the
thought
of her. Sometimes, when someone thinks they love someone that deeply, they’s in love with a fantasy, not the actual
person,
ya know? Someone they made up in they head.” Lenny tapped a finger to his temple. “Ain’t the real person. Never was. And that other person can’t live up to that fantasy. Both of ‘em get frustrated and mad. Then, when one finally leaves, the other tries clinging onto something that was never there to begin with. If they’d just open they eyes, see what’s in front of ‘em. Usually they’s someone else out there for ‘em, but they never know ‘cuz they too obsessed with ideas of people and what they
thought
they had, and not what they actually had. Ya know?”

Randy nodded deep nods. “Yeah, I think I actually get what you’re driving at.” A grin etched itself into his thick beard. “Were you a counselor at one time?”

Waving off Randy, he said, “Naw. Just big brother advice to Taneesha when she’d drag them losers home. ‘Course, them losers see her big bro, well.” He flexed a bicep and actually smiled a toothy grin. “She used to think they’s the world and I’d let ‘em know…” He trailed off, soles grabbing the grass. And he stopped, eyes hitched to the front fence. “Oh, hell, naw.” He ripped the hand axe from the loop on his hip, and started trotting toward the front gate, toward familiar faces.

* * *

Lenny slowed his gait as he neared the front fence. He gripped his hatchet tightly, preparing for a confrontation that he’d successfully avoided earlier, but now looked as though might happen, after all.
 

Randy guessed intimidation and deterrence, not actual dissection and dismemberment, was Lenny’s intent. At least he hoped that’s all Lenny was going for.

Struggling to keep up, Randy called behind him. “What are they doing back here?”

“I’m ‘bout to find out.” He raised his hatchet high for the trio of troublemakers to see, a sharp double-edged stop sign. His deep voice boomed. “You three’s awful brave coming back here. Especially after turning them rattlers loose on us and…”

As the two men had made their way around the building and to the front, several of the shufflers had followed them along the gate, like predatory zoo animals pacing the bars, stalking the spectators, anticipating a break in the barrier. To pounce through. To take a bite. To feed.

Lenny halted, accusing his own eyes of telling lies. He almost started to rub them, to clear away an image that was surely not there. Something was wrong. Bad wrong. A scared look crossed his face like passing clouds, replacing the scowl he wore only seconds ago. “You… y’all’s gonna get bit if… You all’s gotta death wish?”

A new urgency mobilized him, launching his massive frame at the gate.

Randy had just caught up to him. And he now saw and understood the desperation in Lenny’s actions.

“What the hell…?” Randy pushed himself forward despite fatigue and fear. He finally caught up to Lenny, who was fumbling with his keys.

“Wait,” Randy said, laying a hand on Lenny’s arm.

“We gots to get ‘em inside.” He looked up from his keys. “Why ain’t y’all fighting? Why’s you just…” And then Lenny accepted what Randy figured out only seconds before.

“It’s not… it’s not them… Lenny. Not anymore.”

Lenny just stared through the steel bars, his mind rejecting what his eyes were screaming at him.

Randy was right. Laura, TJ, and Mallory were all outside the fence, shuffling right along with the rattlers. And the rattlers were treating them like one of their own. Because the trio now was.

“Jesus,” Randy said.

Lenny’s finger trembled as he pointed to the fresh corpses standing and swaying before them. “They… they gots… signs… on ‘em.”

Randy squinted through thick lenses, a surreal sickness starting through him. What were the chances of all three losing out to a group of shufflers? They were young, healthy, and fast. And armed. Maybe they were too high or messed up on whatever they were snorting, smoking, or injecting to defend themselves adequately. He just couldn’t believe it.

But Lenny was right. All three had what looked like sheets of paper
 
duct taped to their chests. And on each sheet, a word, in black marker.

“David,” said Lenny, pointing at Laura. “That one says, ‘David.’” She also had a box taped to her torso.

Lenny swiped at his brow. He looked shaken, upset.

“TJ’s says, ‘Deliver,’” Randy said, though he was sure Lenny had already read it. “Mallory’s says, ‘To.’”

Repeating the words, Lenny said, “Deliver… to… David. Oh, God. Not again. Surely not again. And not now.”

Randy glanced around, his substantial stomach frothing with fear. “What if he’s out here? Doc? What if Doc’s out here, aiming a rifle at us?” He curled his hand around the bandaged gunshot wound on his left arm, remembering the feel of hot steel in his skin.

Lenny shook his head. “Don’t think so. His beef’s with David. He wants to be sure he gets that box.” He sounded as though he were trying desperately to convince himself.
 

Again, Lenny pointed at Laura, who was now reaching through the fence, grasping at his extended finger. Her mouth was wide, jaws snapping, her eyes dull, but skin still surprisingly radiant for the recently deceased. She hadn’t been dead long. Not at all. Death had found her only a short time ago.

“Ya think Doc killed them?” asked Randy.

Lenny just shook his head, shock sticking to him, smothering him like soaking wet clothes. “I don’t want to believe it, but…”

“Seeing is believing,” Randy finished for him, answering his own question.

More rattlers were making their way to the front, following the fresher scent of the living and the commotion caused by them being there. They’d begun to engulf the newly dead trio, like water surging, swallowing anything and everything indiscriminately. Drowning in the dead. Eventually, everything would erode away, including the water itself.

“Should we…?” Randy asked, adjusting his glasses.

Slowly, Lenny slid his hand axe back into the loop on his belt, then stared down at the keys in his other hand. For the first time since Randy had met ‘The Lumberjack,’ the former pro-wrestler looked like he simply didn’t know what to do or say. Or think. Didn’t know how to proceed, like he was stuck in time, waiting for someone to punch a button or wind up the clock again. He stood there, deliberating, eyes flicking from keys, to fence, and back. Over and over.

As the seconds ticked by, more of the undead arrived. More of them pressed against the bars, their collective weight challenging the integrity of the fence. The steel emitted creepy creaks and metallic squeaks, cries for help.

I can’t hold them back forever. Do something!

“Lenny?”

The Lumberjack now had his tense gaze focused on the mob before him. Randy noticed his jaws clenching, his breathing deepening, shoulders heaving.

“Lenny,” Randy said again, “are you okay, brother?”

Something was happening inside the towering man. Something more than just
clicked
inside of him, it actually
clanged
. Randy swore he could hear it. A shift of sorts. The normally docile, easygoing giant of a man about to do something very much out of character.

“Lenny, don’t. Don’t do it. Let’s get some help and—”

It was as though Randy knew he wouldn’t be able to stop Lenny, so he didn’t try. Well, didn’t try very hard. Better the dead suffer than him. And it looked as though they were about to. He actually backed away in anticipation.

Lenny’s massive shoulders rose and fell, his lungs pumping the essence of the moment into every corner of his being. He squeezed his hand until it trembled, then he opened it. In the next second, he’d yanked his hatchet from his hip.

Randy thought his friend sounded just like a snorting bull, and he stepped back again, farther, determined to avoid becoming collateral damage in the inevitable rampage. If the Infirmaries were pissed about what David had done to Roy and Scotty, they sure as hell weren’t going to be happy with Lenny in about ten seconds.

And then it happened, as if on cue, just as Randy’s mind had predicted. The Lumberjack’s heavy frame, now lubed and charged with resolute emotion, moved with the grace and balance of a wrecking machine. He raised his hatchet high, as though he’d hooked the sky itself, then pulled the cerulean expanse above down on top of everyone and everything. After mere seconds, rattler arms that once groped for them through the bars littered the ground inside the fence, so freshly cut that the fingers still flexed.

Without a word, without a scream—but plenty of grunts—Lenny hacked at the encroaching arms until no more protruded through the gaps in the steel, and he was tripping over them. Then he started in on the undead still trying to push through the palisade, his flashing blade finding skulls and necks and chests and then more skulls. Almost as often, the axe found metal bars instead of flesh, clanking and ringing, sparks showering as though he were trying to light the dead on fire. But he was quick to correct his aim, find his true target.
 

Randy stood mesmerized by the mayhem machine unwinding in front of him. It was unlike anything he’d ever witnessed. Ever. Maybe in a movie he could witness such carnage, but movie magic simply couldn’t capture the real-life rawness unfolding before him. And he just couldn’t turn away.