LZR-1143 (Book 4): Desolation (28 page)

Or, I noted humorlessly as I looked around the town through the large plate glass windows in front of me, at least a five-spot and a bag of nickels. After all, this wasn’t a rich area.

The front doors were locked from within, two large turn locks on top and bottom of the double doors. In the middle, a key lock was the final obstacle, and I frowned, pulling my pistol again and putting a round right through the tumbler. Stowing the weapon quickly, I stumbled through the front doors and out into the sunlight, past the shambling masses trying to chase down the sound pouring from the back door. Several peeled off toward me as I shuffled away, but turned away quickly when they caught my smell.
 

I turned right and continued my seemingly aimless meander toward the dam.

When Kate dashed away into the thick ash, Ky had known that the only way to make sure they stuck together was by following her. After all, it had worked once before and, in her opinion, under much more dangerous circumstances. This was nothing compared to racing across the tarmac of Reagan National Airport dodging dead-heads, and trying to catch a taxiing AC-130, with only a slobbery dog between her ass and the hordes of the undead.
 

She allowed herself a moment of sadness at Mike and Romeo. She knew they were alive—somehow. But she was old enough and savvy enough to understand that people who parted ways in this world stood a much tougher chance of finding one another again.
 

Life was tough that way, she supposed. Fashioning herself as tough enough to deal with it, she tried to shrug it off.
 

But it still hurt. Like the dreams she still had of her mother, tucking her in at night when she was eight. Of her father, teaching her how to throw a football, even though all her friends said girls didn’t play the sport. Stirring memories of nights in pizza parlors, her dad’s bad jokes, and her mom’s sweet smile.
 

She never spoke of these dreams—especially since she knew that Kate would start shrinking her head about them—but they were there. They were always there. The pain and the confusion and the loss.

That’s why she wasn’t going to lose Kate. She was all Ky had left.

Kate wasn’t hard to track. Her footprints drifted off in the ash, and Ky followed them doggedly, dodging several of the women from the convoy as they moved forward to the fight.

She didn’t know what to make of this shit-show. No men? No boys? This was some straight up creepy and twisted crap, and she didn’t like the look of this Captain Starr. No sir. She didn’t need to be a psychiatrist to see that this woman had some issues.
 

As she would have said to her friends months ago, before the world was lost: bitch was hashtag fucked-up.
 

The staccato beat of popping carbines and the heavy thrumming of the huge fifty cal covered the sounds of her approach to the fence. A dozen or so zombies had flanked the group in the ash, and were clustered near the fence, pawing at the chain links. She stopped briefly, scanning the area. Behind the fence were several tall racks and some crane equipment. A few large tanks of some unknown liquid sat behind those. But there was nothing on this side that would help her get over the fence faster or easier. So she shouldered her rifle and moved further down the fence line, thirty or so feet from the cluster of zombies.

As her hands and feet hit the wire, they turned at the noise and moaned, seeing another possible meal slipping away.

She reached the top of the fence and straddled it, looking down on the other side carefully before dropping to the ground. The area closest to her was quiet, but she could hear the sounds of more of the creatures moving near the main courtyard—Kate and the crashing car had stirred them up, and it was going to make following her friend much harder.
 

Glancing up at the large crane that was poised over her head, she had an idea.

Moving furtively along the fence line, she found the ladder to the top of the crane. Briefly, she wondered why a crane was located in a winery, but then realized as she reached the top of the ladder that the massive vats and barrels in position to be loaded were all fashioned for a crane lift. They must move the raw wine to another facility for some reason, she thought. But truth be told, she knew about five percent more than jack shit about wine, and didn’t care in the least.
 

What she cared about was the vantage point, as it had much to offer.

Though the ash-fall obscured much of the distance, she could just see Kate disappearing around the corner of the warehouse. As the large building was backed by another fence, and there was no where else to go, Ky surmised correctly that Kate was heading inside.
 

The trick was how Ky was going to be able to follow.
 

More than fifty of those beasts had spotted Kate and were following her right now, pulling more from outside the fence line back in as they followed their comrades’ chase of the new prey. Meanwhile, as the battle raged outside, the fifty cal was slowly taking its toll and the women fighters knew their business. They had formed lines to keep the creatures at bay.
 

But ultimately, they wouldn’t be able to stay. There were just too many. Ky could see the progression of the battle—the humans were being pushed back. They would need to pull out or die.
 

And that would leave Kate, Ky and a couple of possibly alive kids on their own, against hundreds of the undead.

Given the crazy eyes on that Captain, maybe they were coming out on top.

She kept moving up, feet following hands against the metal frame, her focus on speed, not silence. It had to be. She had been around these things long enough to know that you were never going to win if you barricaded yourself inside a normal building. And this warehouse, with its tin shell and thin-looking doors, wasn’t going to cut it. Kate and those kids needed a way out, and she was going to have to supply one.
 

Her eyes were drawn to the derelict SUV sitting alone in the middle of the courtyard. A piece of fencing was caught under the front grill, and one of the wheels sat slightly higher than the rest, probably caught on the scrap of metal and chainlink. She stared at it for several moments, realizing that if she stole a ride in it, she’d have to back it off the broken fence, and hope she could dislodge the fence from the bumper. That would eat up valuable time, while those things took a bead on her.
 

Looking down, she saw that she was drawing a crowd. Two zombies stared up into the cab of the crane, barely fifteen feet above their heads. Incapable of using the ladder, they simply watched and mewled slightly, unsure where the smell was coming from, but knowing that there was food somewhere above. Their hands slapped against the metal, and she felt the uncomfortable sensation through her body as she hugged the crane’s superstructure.
 

More creatures were flowing back into the courtyard now. As the ash-fall slowed, she could see the convoy moving out, pushing forward through the zombies, who were now sufficiently strung out over a distance to allow the cars to push them aside without jamming them on crushed bodies.

The creatures were keying in on other sounds and sights too—including the mob of creatures following Kate inside the warehouse, and the sounds of Kate’s flight. They were pressing into the courtyard now, streaming past the stranded car toward the large building.
 

Kate would soon be trapped in there with more than she could ever hope to fight.
 

Looking up, Ky knew how she’d get to the SUV quickly. But she didn’t have to like it.
 

When she was a little girl, she had begged her father to build her a treehouse.
 

Every kid in the neighborhood has one, she had pleaded.
 

I want to have my own club, she implored.
 

He had eventually caved, but on one condition. That she be exceedingly careful, and only use the ladder he had painstakingly crafted to get up and down from the structure that was eight feet from the earth of their backyard.

Merely two hours after the last nail was hammered, she had broken her collarbone.

How?

By attaching a thin nylon rope to a branch outside the window, and attempting to swing down to the ground. As she lay writhing in pain on the cold dirt that afternoon, she couldn’t understand where she had gone wrong.

Ky remembered this keenly as she worked the controls of the crane clumsily. Luckily the engine was gas powered and still half full. It coughed to life at her press of the ignition button, and she grimaced as more of the creatures were now pulled to the base of her perch.
 

She shook her head slightly in exasperation as she worked. I always have to be the one to save these stupid adults, she told herself as she pulled in the hoist and grabbed the edge of the large hook.
 

When she was younger, her mistake had been that the rope was too long. She had reached the ground before the rope had pulled tight. Hence the injury. She remembered this well, and took the time to ensure that her measurement of this line was correct.
 

If she had gotten it right, she would swing high enough over the crowd below to clear them by twenty feet. The SUV would be another ten feet away, she would land clean, jump in, back it up, hopefully clear the fence, and saunter over to the warehouse.

More than half of the original herd had now filed back into the courtyard, bullet holes and ghastly wounds fresh from the melee outside. They shambled in droves, some to the warehouse, some to the base of her tower, some shuffling aimlessly through the empty space below. She listened as the roar of the convoy’s engines disappeared into the small town ahead, and shook her head once.

This was crazy, she realized.
 

But necessary.

Taking a deep breath, she launched herself from the platform, plummeting down toward the mob of undead below.

The line went taut suddenly, and her body jerked with the abrupt jolt, as she pulled up her feet to her chest, watching the upturned faces below with comical looks of both hope and confusion. As she sped past above their rotting shells, she tracked her height and speed. A hand reached up, barely grazing the back of her thigh and she cursed, the minor contact putting her into a soft spin. She was now angled slightly further away from the car, and facing to the side as she turned and began the upward swing of the arc.
 

No matter. She had to release. Praying that there was no zombie directly beneath her, she let go of the thick cable and flew into the air, the sensation of falling pulling the air from her lungs from behind her belly button until her legs hit the concrete awkwardly, and she rolled forward on her shoulder.

Coming up fast, she yelled as a single creature pawed at her shoulder. Her hand went to her hip, pulling the long blade from its sheath and taking the zombie across the throat. The stroke was powerful, and it severed the head from the body as the vibration shook Ky’s arm to the shoulder. Wanting to cry with the anxiety of it all, she bolted forward, seeing the car only fifteen feet ahead.
 

Behind her, the pack that had assembled at the foot of the crane surged forward, arms outstretched and legs shuffling loudly on the ground. She shifted abruptly to the left as a creature stumbled around a small pile of wood pallets, reaching for her arm. Ahead, the long line of zombies waiting to proceed up the stairs and into the warehouse was staggering—and a little weird. It was like one of those lines in an amusement park, where everyone wanted to ride that one special ride.
 

The open car door was in front of her and she grabbed the frame, skidding to a halt and using the car to slow her sprint. Swinging inside the vehicle, she reached for the ignition and her heart dropped into her throat.

The keys weren’t there.
 

A hand slapped against the rear window and she glanced in the mirrors. At least a dozen creatures were nearly on top of her. Frantic, she pulled her rifle forward, pulling the charging lever and preparing to make one more run.

A face pressed itself against the passenger window and she recoiled, at the same time feeling something against her foot. She looked down.

There!

The keys were on the floor mat, dropped by the kids as they bolted.
 

She stuck the largest one in the ignition and heard the engine roar to life.

A hand snaked into the driver’s seat and she screamed, throwing the gear shift into reverse and plowing her foot onto the accelerator.

The wheels churned against the concrete, spinning for several seconds before rocketing the vehicle back. The loud ‘twang’ of the metal fence pulling free of the front bumper and grill was lost in the cacophony of bodies thudding against the back and sides. Another arm snaked through, a rotting hand actually grabbing the steering wheel before she could run her knife across the wrist, severing the appendage.
 

She was moving too fast, she realized. Her foot flailed around on the floor, seeking the brake. In front of her, a vast crowd was gathering, filling the space she had vacated. She needed to move forward now, or they would cut her off.

The SUV skidded to a halt, the rear slamming into a stack of empty plastic crates and sending them into the sky. She found the large ‘D’ on the gear shift and slammed her foot down again, this time aiming the vehicle for the hole in the crowd with the fewest undead in front of her. The sounds of heads splitting like ripe melons against the steel hood made her cringe, but suddenly she was free of the group and the warehouse was ahead of her, the loading bay doors looking large and imposing.
 

God, she hoped Kate was alive in there.
 

If not, she was jumping directly from the frying pan into the goddamned fire and would have nothing to show for it but a scorched ass and the memories of a bad, bad day.