Ground Zero: A Zombie Apocalypse (12 page)

Cutter turned away from the ghouls.

And ran.

* * *

The heavy glass entry doors to the apartment block were twenty feet away. Cutter leaped over the body of the dead zombie girl and slammed his fists against them. They didn’t budge. The glass was darkly tinted and he pressed his face against it. The doors had been barricaded with jumbled furniture.

He turned and glanced over his shoulder. The ghouls were swarming across the street, and more were shambling along the sidewalk towards him, teetering and unsteady, but remorseless. He stepped back towards the gutter and looked up urgently.

“The fire escape!” that man in the dark coat was shouting down at him, crying out, his voice hoarse. Cutter looked left. There was a narrow alleyway beside the building, choked with large steel dumpsters filled with rotting trash. “Down the alley!” the man flailed his arms.

Cutter clenched his jaw and tucked the pistol down the front of his jeans. The figure of a ghoul appeared suddenly to his right. It was a woman. In life she might have been quite beautiful. In death she was
a shrieking, howling nightmare. She was wearing a blouse and skirt, and as she drew within just a few feet of where Cutter stood, her body began to writhe and undulate. Her arms came up, her fingers splayed into claws, and her eyes snapped wide and red through long brown tangles of hair that hung down over her face. The woman had been bitten on her shoulders and arms. Cutter could see the horrendous savagery of the wounds, still oozing in thick brown gore.  Around each gash, her skin was covered with angry puss-filled sores. The woman took a shambling step closer and then suddenly vomited bloody gore that heaved from somewhere deep within her guts and gushed down over her chin and throat.

Cutter shifted so that his weight was on his right foot, ready to kick out. The ghoul pressed forward. Cutter waited, knowing he had only seconds to spare. All around him the undead closed in, reaching for him, howling and hissing at him. He glanced past the undead woman’s shape and guessed it was fifteen feet to the alleyway. He could still make it.

And then suddenly he felt an icy claw wrap around his ankle. He looked down in horror. The zombie girl stared up at him, its lips drawn back in an inhuman wail of triumph and its tongue flicking hungrily, as though already anticipating the taste of him. Cutter could see the lethal malevolence in the zombie’s eyes, and he felt himself shudder. The girl was leaking brown gore from the side of her face where Cutter’s bullet had ripped away part of her cheek. Suddenly the air exploded with the sound of the undead girl’s triumphant scream.

Cutter
went cold with dread. He moved instinctively, jamming the heel of his boot down hard on the girl’s arm and heard brittle bones break. The undead girl hissed and rose to her knees. Her other bloody hand clawed at his jeans.

Cutter snatched at the pistol and fired three shots into the zombie gi
rl’s head. The skull collapsed, and the body was flung backwards.

Without hesitating, Cutter turned and fired twice more at the woman in front of him. Her head snapped back against its neck and then it dropped to its knees and fell sideways to the sidewalk. Cutter leaped over her and ran for the alley.

He reached the dumpsters and stole a final look over his shoulder. The horde of ghouls was like a solid wall before him. He saw some of them teetering and swaying. He saw others knocked aside – and then from the back of the group came a man dressed in an immaculate dark suite, wearing a blue tie and a crisp white shirt. He was running, his gait awkward and uncoordinated, but cleaving a swathe through the undead horde, heading directly for Cutter. He burst through the front rank of the group and came at a run. Cutter hesitated. The man looked…. like a man.

He raised the pistol
slowly. The man’s mouth snapped open. Cutter took his finger off the trigger and paused in an instant of numb confusion.

And the
n the man roared in rage and its eyes blazed with infected fury. Cutter flung up the pistol and snapped off a shot. The bullet struck the man in the forehead, punching a hole between his eyes. He stopped – spun round in a circle – and Cutter saw the terrible gouged wounds that had been ripped into the man’s back, exposing his spine and organs. The zombie collapsed to the ground. Cutter aimed and fired again, and heard the hollow ‘click’ of an empty magazine.

“Shit!” Cutter swore. He jammed the useless pistol into the waistband of his jeans and
scrambled up the side of a dumpster and over the piles of rotting refuse.

* * *

Beyond the dumpsters was more garbage, stacked against the brick wall of the apartment block. Cutter dropped to the ground and swept the alley cautiously.

The wall of the building opposite
was covered in colorful graffiti painted around the dark shapes of two doors. They were brown timber things with bolts and padlocks on them. Cutter kicked aside black trash bags and scrambled over an old sofa, its fabric worn and faded. The dark shape of a rat scurried out from under a bag of rotting garbage and Cutter stomped down hard on the rodent. It squealed its agony – a sound like a newborn baby in pain – until he crushed it into mush beneath the heel of his boot.

The alley was about forty feet long and he followed the wall of the building to the end and glanced around the corner. There was a fire escape in front of him. He looked up. He could see the boy. The bottom extension of the ladder
dropped down and Cutter began to climb. He was trembling, his body still filled with surging adrenalin and fear.

But he h
ad made it.

He
had leaped from the frying pan – back into the fire.

* * *

Cutter waited while the boy wordlessly hunched to retract the extension steps of the fire escape, and then followed as he was led onto the top landing and then into a dim passageway.

Cutter’s stood still for a moment and let his eyes adjust to the gloom. The passageway ran from right to
left, and at each end was a dark door. There was another door opposite him. It was a heavy timber piece with three shiny brass locks. The boy was ahead of him. He knocked on the door it was flung open by the man Cutter had seen at the window. He had a gun in his hand and a fraught, fearful expression on his face. The boy brushed past him and disappeared into the apartment beyond, leaving Cutter face-to-face with the man.

From the window, Cutter had guessed the man to be middle-aged, but now they were facing each other across the short width of the passageway, he changed that assessment. The man was probably in his mid-forties. He had big fleshy features: a huge bulbous nose and heavy jowls. His mouth was wide, drawn into a grim line, but his eyes were bright and sparkling, as though lit by some kind of secret joy. He was short and broad – and carrying most of his weight around an ample fleshy stomach.

“Bless you, Samaritan,” the man said. The gun went into his pocket and his arm went out to Cutter. Cutter shook hands with the man and let himself be drawn into the apartment. He heard the door close and the ‘snick’ of security locks behind his back while he stood and studied his new surroundings.

He was standing in
a small living room that opened to a kitchen. Beyond the kitchen Cutter saw a short hallway with a polished board floor. There were three doors: bathroom and a couple of bedrooms he guessed. That was all. It was tiny. The place smelled of smoke and stale coffee. He could see a clutter of dishes in the sink, and a dozen candles of assorted shapes and colors on the kitchen bench. Nearby where he stood was a three-seat sofa that had seen better days and a new flat-screen television. There was a lamp, a coffee-table, and not much else. The window opposite was wide open and sunlight and sound streamed into the room. Cutter went and leaned against the sill. Looked down.

There was about a hundred undead zombies gathered around the front doors of the apartment building, moaning and wailing, but without the frenzied edge to the sound that he had heard when they were attacking him. His eyes drifted to the entrance of the alleyway where another group of undead were milling around the heavy steel dumpsters.
Cutter turned quickly to the man.

“Are the doors downstairs going to hold?”

The man nodded. “They’re solid enough,” he said. “And the things can’t climb. We’re safe.”

“What a
bout the rest of the apartments? There are three stories. Have you barricaded the stairs? The place could be full – ”

The man shook his head. “It’s clear,” He said. “There’s only us and Mr. Walker in 3B. The rest of the building is vacant.
Has been for the last month. The owners are re-developing.”

Cutter stopped. His body was still pumped full of adrenalin and fear, so that his mind raced
, looking for threats and danger. “What about this Walker guy? Have you seen him?”

The man nodded. “Just a few minutes ago, down on the street. He was the ghoul in the business suit you just shot.”

Cutter nodded, then paused. He held out his hand again. “My name is Jack Cutter.”

The man crossed the room and took Cutter’s hand in a double-fisted grip. “I’m Robert Davidson,” he said. “But everyone calls me Father Bob.”

Cutter felt a sudden jolt. “You’re a priest?”

“A pastor,” the man said and shrugged. “But in these troubled times, son, you can call me anything you want. Priest – pastor … I’m a man of God, regardless of your faith.”

Cutter felt a creeping cold numbness. He stared into the man’s twinkling eyes for long silent seconds trying to make sense of the sudden turmoil of his emotions. Cutter wasn’t a superstitious man, but somewhere in the dark distant recesses of his mind he felt fate’s ironic touch. He shook his head. Everything had altered in an instant.

“Are you okay, son?” Father Bob asked.

Cutter backed away. Nodded curtly. But he wasn’t okay. He turned and looked around the room again, then realized the television screen was black and blank. “Is the power off?”

The pastor nodded. “Just a few minutes ago. Just after Sam saw you on the street.”

Cutter nodded. His mind reeled, distracted and confused. He frowned, trying to force himself to think in the moment. “Do you have supplies? Do you have plenty of water and food?”

Father Bob nodded. “We have cann
ed food to last a week if we’re careful, and we filled the bathtub with water yesterday. We have candles – and I have this gun.”

He fetched the pistol from his pocket and held it up to show Cutter. “I have plenty of ammunition too.”

It was a revolver. It had Smith & Wesson stamped on the short stainless steel barrel. “It’s a 44 Magnum,” the pastor said. He held the weapon out to Cutter but he shook his head.

“You’re a pastor – and you have a gun?”

Father Bob smiled wryly. “You know what they say,” his voice suddenly took on a broad southern accent, “A bible in one hand, and a gun in the other…”

Cutter pulled the
Glock from his jeans and held it out. “Do you have ammunition for this? It’s empty.”

Father Bob shook his head with slow regret
but then made a sudden curious face. “I don’t,” he said. “But Walker might. We could raid his apartment. He’s bound to have food and supplies – and he might have a gun.”

Cutter nodded. He was trying to think the situation through, looking for dangers. He frowned and thought back to the bunker below the bookstore.

What would Hos do?

Suddenly the silence was pierced by a series of
shrill and terrified screams. Cutter spun back to the window and leaned out.

A group of people suddenly burst from the shade of the
sidewalk, out into the bright sunlight. They were running in terror, scattering in all directions. Cutter recognized the lumbering shape of John Grainger and several of the women. He swore bitterly.

“Get to the cars!” he shouted, his voice
indignant with futile rage. “This way! Run towards the intersection!”

It was no use. They had been driven from the
bookstore’s bunker by the sudden darkness, and they ran in scrambling terror. Some fled across the street, dodging between abandoned burning cars and disappeared into the buildings on the opposite side of the street. Others ran east and Cutter lost sight of them. Grainger and three of the women ran blindly out into the middle of the road and spun around as though disoriented. Cutter saw one of the women trip and fall to her knees. She cried out in pain and panic, but the others had run past her, weaving and jinking as though lost in a giant maze.

The zombies came for them. The undead spilled from the buildings, and the swarm of dark undead shapes clustered around the apartment block’s doors below suddenly turned and began to hunt the fleeing survivors.

Cutter could only watch helplessly. He felt the press of Father Bob’s bulky shape in the window frame beside him.

“Do you know them?”

Cutter nodded. “I was trapped with them last night in the bookshop.”