LZR-1143 (Book 4): Desolation (25 page)

It leaned forward again, meeting the same resistance.
 

As it smashed its face against the gleaming stainless steel a third time, it finally realized that it had been trying to eat itself in the reflection.
 

Grunting once in hungry frustration—lacking the basic decency to be even the slightest bit embarrassed by its idiocy—it turned back to the gathering herd behind it.
 

Several others blindly followed him into the same empty space, looking momentarily confused before returning to the herd. Moans filled the warehouse with a desolate ring of disappointed hunger.
 

Somehow, their prey had vanished.

***

“You know, when I was in college, this would have been a dream of mine,” Kate whispered softly, trying to make out the details of their hiding place. “Of course, I was a little bit of a lush in college, so …”
 

She trailed off, realizing who her audience was.

“What’s a loosh?” the younger girl asked. By her voice, Kate guessed she was barely five.
 

“It’s
lush
,” said the older girl, her voice condescending as she moved slightly, sending the sound of displaced liquid echoing through the space. “And it means that you like to drink a lot of beer, like momma.”

Kate smiled and shook her head.

Liz had always surprised her like that, coming up with the meanings of words or phrases that she had been certain the kid had no right to know. Children were such sponges.

“Oh,” said the younger child. “I get it.”

But she didn’t really.

Kate and the two girls were standing inside one of the large vats used for storing wine. This vat, along with two others inside the warehouse, had been emptied only days before the infection, and held only six inches of wine in the bottom. The industrious girls had located the small hatch where Kate hadn’t, their desperate hands pulling the door free and squeezing through.
 

Kate had barely made it, her hips, of all things, hanging up on the edge of the hatch. She rubbed her left hip self-consciously. If she had had one more of those damn cracker MRE’s Mike so jealously guarded, she might not have made it.
 

“What are your names?” she said, holding back on the drinking jokes.

 
There was a short pause and then the younger girl answer quietly.

“I’m Annie and my sister’s name …”
 

“I can tell her my name myself,” the older girl said quickly, before adding. “But why’d you come after us like that? We don’t even know you.”
 

Kate’s hands were on the walls of the vat, searching for a ladder or another way up. From the walkway above, she could see that there were hatches on the top of the vats. But the curvature of the inside of the smooth walls wouldn’t allow them to access the top unless … ahh, there it was. Welded metal rungs spaced roughly two feet apart.
 

“I saw your … car … get attacked,” she said, replacing ‘mom’ with ‘car’ at the last minute. “I followed you in to see if I could help.”

“We didn’t make it very far. Stacy can’t drive too good,” said Annie, her voice amused. “We used to play video games and she would …”
 

“Shut up,” said Stacy. “You cheated. And besides, that car was too big. I shoulda practiced on a smaller one first.”
 

Outside the vat, a loud echo intruded. One of the creatures outside had slammed its hand against the metal.
 

“Shush,” Kate said absently, pulling on the rung in her hand to test its strength. “I’m going to climb up and see if the hatch on the top will open—can you girls stay quiet for me? I don’t think those things can get in here, but if they know we’re here, they’ll never leave us alone and we won’t be able to escape. I’m just going to try to open the hatch to see if we can get out that way if we need to.”

Stacy muttered an okay, despite continuing on a quiet argument with her sister about who was better at the video game
Drive It Like You Stole It
—Kate found it to be a refreshing change of pace from the normal conversation of the end times.

The rungs were awkward, ascending as they did at an inward angle, but she reached the top carefully, being sure to place her hands and feet quietly and softly on each rung. At the center of the vat, a circular hatch—no more than two feet wide—was firmly closed. With great difficulty, Kate managed to hang with one arm from the rungs, and pull steadily but forcefully on the lever that opened the hatch from the inside. A slight squeak escaped the metal mechanism as the lever started its rotation and she stopped immediately, grimacing in the dark and waiting for the sound of more hands against the metal.
 

Outside, the creatures looked up absently, searching briefly for the noise but spending little time trying to locate its source. In the months that had defined their existence as mindless ghouls, they had learned basic information—at the top of that list was which noises were mechanical, and unlikely to result in food, and which noises were promising. Squeaky metal often fell into the latter category.

Kate made her way quietly to the floor and sighed, deciding that the hatch would open, but that it risked being too loud. Glumly, she realized that this left them with a predicament. They were safe inside this vat, but would eventually die from hunger and thirst. They could leave the safety of the metal container, but in exiting they would alert the creatures outside that they were there and compromise their escape. And worse yet—if the creatures outside did eventually decide to leave, the humans trapped inside would have no way to know.
 

Leaning back carefully against the metal, she allowed herself to slide down the wall, sitting in the two inches of liquid at the bottom of the vat as the girls whispered softly to each other on the other side.

What was a little swamp-ass when you were on death’s doorstep, anyway? She chuckled at the thought, and seriously considered taking a snort of the wine that was sloshing happily around her ass.
 

And that’s when she heard the roar of the engine outside.

The plan was simple.

Step one: don’t die.

Step two: get shit done.

I thought I had explained it sufficiently to my jolly friends, but they kept nagging me with questions. As if details mattered.
 

So annoying.

“Yes, they respond to sound and they will cluster together. Why do you think they’re all still in town? For some reason, they like to stay together. When the noise starts, they will move toward it.”

But how did I know that? What experience did I have with large herds?

“Because I’ve seen it happen over and over again. With more herds than I could count. They used to be more individualized, but we’ve seen lately that they’re staying together—we think it’s an instinctual tendency or some innate developing awareness that food is easier to take down as a group. But we’re not zombologists, for Christ’s sake. I can’t tell you why, for sure.”

How would we avoid them after we sounded the alarm?

“I told you. You will wait up here. I will go down there. I’ll make some huge-ass noise, and make my way through them somehow, and we’ll meet at the entrance to the dam.”

How would I get through the herd safely? Didn’t I realize that I’d be swimming upstream?

“I’ve got a plan.”

What plan?

“A good one.”

Do you have any more of the peanut butter and jelly MRE’s?

“No.”

How about the cheese and crackers?

“No.”
 

I was lying about that one.
 

Those were the best, and I was hoarding them.

What do you want from me? I’m not Mother fucking Theresa.
 

While it was a simple plan, those were the ones that I had found had the highest probability of success. I would dip down into the town, find the town fire station—no big challenge, since I was staring at it from our perch right now—and sound an alarm. The locals would come shambling toward me, I would flank them in some clever method, then join up with Ethan and Rhi to pull their friends from the dam.
 

How would I get through the crowd of hundreds of zombies?

Don’t rush me. I work best under pressure.

I managed to convince Romeo to stay behind, and took the ammunition and a few of the MRE’s with the cheese and crackers, and left the rest of my pack. I needed to move quickly. My leg was still sore, but the hole had already healed over, and the pain was lessening by the hour. I could risk it. The leg was usable, despite the pain.

Ethan scanned the town again and squinted at me.

“Boy, you’re either stupider than a retarded bull dog, or …” he drifted off, then just nodded. “I reckon that’s it. You’re just stupider than a retarded bull dog.”
 

Not much to say to that, I supposed.

“Okay then,” I said. To Rhi I said, “Take care of the dog. He doesn’t like to listen but he’s good to have around if you need something slobbered on.” Romeo wagged his tail once.

“I figure it will be thirty minutes down, thirty minutes to rig the sound, and another thirty to get to the rendezvous. Plan to meet me in an hour and a half. If you don’t hear anything within the hour, you can assume I was eaten.”
 

It’s amazing the new phrases our lovely world had normalized.

Rhi nodded and crossed her arms in front of her chest.

“You be careful. There’s children depending on you. And you’re not gonna find your friends if you die down there.”

Iron clad logic and a stellar pep talk to be sure.

“You always did know what to say to a guy,” I muttered, adjusting the strap on my rifle and turning on my heel. “I’ll see you in a bit.”

The rocky path descended slowly into the valley, trees rising to greet me as I approached the valley floor, obscuring the view of the town. The path crawled along the low foothills until it spit out into a small state park near the end of the main road into town. I stopped at the tree line, peering into a small playground surrounded by a low chain link fence, sad and pathetic in its rusted and dilapidated state. A single swing hung from a rusty chain, the other side having broken long ago. A thin layer of ash had accumulated on the ground, and I checked it for prints. It was clear of recent activity.

Beyond the park, and lining the road, were a number of low, middle-class houses with faded shingles and worn paint. The yards, having long since been overrun with weeds and tall unkempt grass, were all fenced in with the same low chain link fencing—more effective for keeping children and dogs in or out than any real security purposes. Beyond the blocks of houses, a modest commercial district lined the street, vacant restaurants, banks, and drug stores staring into the zombie-filled boulevard.
 

And at the end of that commercial district sat the firehouse.

I was aiming for the firehouse because I was looking for the loudest noise in town and because the church was on the other side of the river. I figured it had a siren inside, or I’d borrow one from the truck. Not a certainty, but a decent bet.
 

I crouched low in the small playground, moving furtively toward the fence. The road was quiet, with maybe forty zombies between me and the edge of the commercial district, all of them slow and seemingly sleepy, as if merely minutes from hibernating.
 

Reaching for the rusty gate, I stopped my hand above the release, realizing that it was probably squeakier than a neutered mouse.

Jumping quickly to clear the low fence, I squatted down again, scanning. Several cars were still parked along the street and clearly hadn’t been moved since the outbreak. One had a shattered driver’s side window, but the other looked abandoned. I didn’t even bother with trying for them. The batteries would have died months ago, and the pack with the starter was lost upriver with Kate and Ky.

I allowed myself a moment of concern, even as I watched a group of five creatures shamble around the corner of the nearest house, their feet kicking clouds of ash into the air as they crossed the mundane yard of the claptrap one-story home, mindlessly searching for food.
 

I had seen them land safely. They were armed, and they were fast. I heard the gunfire. I knew they were fighters.
 

They would survive.
 

My challenge wasn’t to mourn their loss—it was to find them in the earthquake and tsunami-devastated Northwest and get to Vancouver. Not an easy task, but better than the alternative.

I broke from my position for better cover behind a large pile of trash bags on the other side of the street, as the group of five neared the road, pushing through an open gate and shuffling onto the sidewalk.
 

They were now across from me as I moved up the opposite side of the street toward the center of town. I stopped again as another group—this one of more than ten—emerged from behind a house ahead of me. Without better cover, I only had one alternative. I crawled to the nearest fence and half-jumped, half-rolled over the barrier and into the front yard of a small brick home, half of which had come crashing down in one of the earthquakes.
 

Red brick and mortar littered the yard, amidst the ash and other debris of the collapse. I cursed briefly as I kicked a hidden plank of wood, but managed to stumble into the meager protection of the remaining walls in time.
 

The two groups continued their meandering course, moving toward town and away from my position.
 

Checking my watch, I realized my timing was tight. But I had underestimated the difficulty of moving to the station with the smaller groups still roaming the city. For some reason, these zombies weren’t herding together as aggressively as most. And this was a problem—it didn’t leave me room to maneuver.