LZR-1143: Evolution (21 page)

Just as I was about to motion toward the stairs, a clear female voice rang out from the upper floor. I almost pissed myself, it was so shocking in the otherwise deserted and quiet home.

“Are y’all ready for me?”

I was confused.

I looked at Kate and she made a face, which I swear to this day was a “Fucked if I know” expression.

“Uh, ma’am?” I replied, responding to the soft, unworried southern accent in kind.

“To see me in my dress? I’ve been waiting a long time.”

I couldn’t respond. It was too absurd.

Behind me, Kate moved, whispering in my ear as she came forward.

“My turn,” she whispered. “You’ve exhausted your conversational talents.”

I gladly backed up, staring at the top of the stairwell. Two feet appeared suddenly, clad in slightly scuffed white flats beneath the hem of what appeared to be a white dress.

“Hi, we’re ready for you,” Kate said simply, lowering her gun and motioning to me to do the same.

I did so, still confused and bewildered. As the feet at the top of the stairs moved forward, I jerked my head toward the windows.

In the distance, I heard the unmistakeable sounds of gunfire erupt in a brief volley. Not close. Not yet.

“Don’t mind them,” said the young woman’s voice. “They do that every night. The pack in the woods don’t seem to get much smaller anyhow, but that’s what they do. Now show some respect. And hum the song.”

Her voice grew directive and harsh.

“I’m the bride.”

She started down the stairs and we both recognized the dress. She was wearing a long, slightly dirty and very wrinkled, white wedding dress. Her somewhat emaciated form stepped slowly down the old stairs, wood creaking unabashedly in the silent home.

Outside, the crackle of gunfire, seeming to be closer now, highlighted the incredibly odd scenario.

I also gave serious pause to her reference to the pack in the woods, anxious about the implication.

Her sharply featured face was gaunt and filthy, her long, dark hair—once lustrous and meticulously groomed, I imagined—was matted and greasy. Underneath the dirt was a thick layer of makeup, lending the prominent cheek bones and thinning lips an air of absurd expressiveness. She leaned heavily on the railing as she descended. She paused at the foot of the stairs, looking hard at both of us, agate green eyes still alert, despite the telltale signs of malnutrition and neglect.

“Well, neither of y’all hummed the song.” Her eyes drifted to the windows and the setting sun.

“But we’ll have time to try again tonight.” She looked at me hard, her face dawning in recognition. “Hey, you look like that guy ...” I lifted a hand, smiling.

“Yeah, that’s me—” I began, and she interrupted.

“Wow! Bruce Willis! Come for my wedding! Did Pat invite you?” Her expression was vapid and cheery, beneath the veneer of aggressive narcissism.

I stuttered, and Kate laughed, shooting a hand over her mouth as I frowned.

Gunfire erupted again, this time very close, maybe within a half mile. They were coming closer, probably along the roadway. We needed to find those keys soon.

I grabbed Kate’s shoulder while maintaining one eye on the woman. “We need to get moving, or find somewhere to hide. Five worthless dollars says that those shots are not from friendly folks.”

She nodded, and turned to the woman, extending her hand. “What’s your name?”

“Leigh,” she said, seemingly confused. “But of course you know that. You got the invitation, right?”

Kate just played along, feeling the press for time. “Sure thing, honey. Say, does this house have a basement?”

Leigh frowned, and petulantly stomped a foot against the old wooden floor. I could see that this was going to be interesting. I paced quickly to the window and peered through the musty drape toward the road. I shook my head slowly as I thought I saw the back of a large yellow school bus disappear to the East. I must have been mistaken, I thought, letting the drape fall back into place. More sounds of firearms, still closer, crackled in the distance. I circled to the opposite side of the sitting room, where a single narrow window looked out over the driveway and the adjoining woods. I glanced through briefly, expecting to see nothing.

At least three creatures had appeared in the driveway, and were shambling slowly toward the road. Behind them, I could see more. Many more. They were crammed between the tightly cropped trees and behind the near foliage, but there was an entire ... pack ... as Leigh had called them. More than fifty that I could count, but undoubtedly more. I cursed silently and walked carefully across the floor.

At the foot of the stairs, I balked as I heard Kate humming the wedding march softly and watched Leigh walk down the stairs like a queen on parade.

“Company outside,” I said softly to Kate and her humming faltered slightly. “It is definitely time to leave Crazyville.”

She frowned at me as she nodded and waved toward the back door. I understood and went to the entrance, locking it quickly and quietly, making sure the drapes were drawn.

“There now,” said Leigh, reaching the floor and pirouetting in her dress. “Doesn’t that look beautiful?”

“Yes, dear. It certainly does. Listen,” said Kate conversationally, “We were going to run down to the corner store and get some ice for the reception,” she began, and I silently applauded her aplomb.

“Do you have the keys to the truck?”

Leigh made a face and brought her finger to her mouth, chewing on a dirty nail with grimy teeth. Her frown looked almost guilty.

“Pat had ‘em, last I saw,” she said. She glanced to the back of the house, then explained. “He went out back to get some more wood and such for the doors and windows a while back. He told me to watch for those things from the back window, but ...” she laughed dismissively and condescendingly.

“I was in my dress, and I had to get my hair right ... I just forgot.”

She sighed and glanced to the back door, still looking slightly guilty, but voice betraying no regret. “I haven’t seen him since then. But I did get my hair just right, and he should never have left me alone while I was getting ready. Everything else could wait.”

“Who ...?” I began, but Kate just pointed. A picture sat on the wall with a healthier visage of Leigh, beaming in a blue sweater and pointing at a large engagement ring on her finger. A large man with a seemingly resigned small smile stood behind her, looking forgotten in her excitement at the ring.

“So Pat has the keys?” confirmed Kate, looking at me sideways.

“Reckon so,” she said, fussing with the front of her dress and preening.

“Do you know what’s happened outside?” asked Kate. As if to punctuate the question, several shots rang out close to the house, likely from the road directly in front of the shop. From the side of the house, a loud sound, like that of a body falling against wood siding, shook the living room briefly.

She looked confused for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, you mean the dead people? I know all ‘bout them. The boys from town tell me ‘bout ‘em when they come by.”

Kate looked at me quickly.

“They come by?” she asked.

“Sure they do. They come by and we have relations and eat the food they collect.” She made a face. “I could never hunt those things like them. I’d never eat if I was left alone.”

I shuddered at the implications of that admission. The “relations” to which she was referring wasn’t terribly ambiguous, and I hated that society had degenerated so quickly into something so horrid. But even more disturbing was the reference to the food they ate. And that goddamned tub in the hallway.

“Is that them outside now?” she asked quickly.

Leigh looked at her gold watch, and back to Kate. “Probably so. It’s about that time.”

She looked up again as Kate pulled her pistol. “Want to watch me one more time?”

“Christ,” said Kate, running to the back door and peering outside. I followed, going into the kitchen to look to the driveway.

“About ten of them out here,” I whispered loudly, peering through a gap in the flimsy drapes. They were shambling toward the noise in the roadway, and I hoped that it would keep their attention. I had no doubt that these people were of the same ilk of the folks we had taken out at the fuel truck, and whether they knew about that yet or not, it didn’t bode well for our chances of a peaceful introduction.

“Only a couple stragglers in the back,” said Kate, head popping around the corner of the wall and gesturing to the back door.

“Wait, you guys,” said Leigh, coming to the back door, her voice whiny and shrill. “You didn’t see me do my slow walk.” She frowned, actually sticking her lower lip out as she did so.

“We have to go,” said Kate, still staring out the back window. “We need to get that ice soon.”

Leigh narrowed her eyes and her voice rose. “I think that’s bullshit,” she said aggressively, her personality doing a quick one-eighty.

She was angry, and quickly becoming irrational and heated.

“I think you’re just leaving me. Just like Pat. Just like my parents. And just like those boys do every night after we’re done. If you leave, I will scream. I swear to fucking God I will fucking scream!”

She drew in a deep breath as if to make good on her promise. I brought my hand up to cover her mouth, but Kate was faster. The butt of her pistol slammed into the greasy temple of the broken girl, dropping her quickly in a dirty white heap on the wooden floor.

Chapter 22

“That’s one way to do it,” I said, stepping over the crumpled form and pushing her very slightly with my foot to make room for the opening door.

I paused, realizing that if we wanted to stay silent, we couldn’t use our guns outside. I stepped into the kitchen and grabbed the flimsy wooden chair under the table, ripping two legs off quickly and handing one to Kate.

She didn’t waste any time opening the door. The two shambling about the weedy backyard turned toward the noise immediately and I ran to the first, a large woman in jeans and a flannel shirt. Her face was bloated and gray, her eyes dead, a large piece of glass embedded in her cheek. Her mouth opened wide and her lips pulled back over her broken teeth. My blood raced as she approached and I swung the table leg forward.

It smashed into the side of her head, penetrating deeply into the brain cavity and lodging in the skull. I cursed as she dropped to the ground, and sprinted toward the second creature with my bare hands. Behind me, I heard Kate say my name in a harsh, loud whisper, but I ignored her. I was overtaken by a rage that I had never felt before, as if all the problems of the world could be solved by a mindless destruction of anything in front of me. My hands shook as I balled my fist and brought my arm around as if swinging a large hammer at a huge nail.

The smallish man in front of me, clad only in a pair of Bermuda shorts and dingy white socks, now shredded at the toes and heels by the miles of cross-country walking he had likely done in the weeks since he was turned, looked into my eyes as the fist came down.

I felt only more anger and desperation as my clenched hand forced his head down onto his spine. The eyes went completely dead and blood spat from his open mouth as I felt the head sink six inches, the brain impaled by the now-detached spine. I turned to Kate, who followed behind with her table leg lifted. Looking past her to the driveway, I confirmed that no creatures had seen us. Yet.

There were at least a hundred of them now filtering out of the woods next to the house and into the street in front of the building. More shots could be heard from the street, but fortunately the shed we were aiming for was out of view from the street.

The twitching leg was still visible, and as we approached, the rest of the body appeared. I turned my head slightly, revolted, even after these weeks of witnessing death and gore.

The man whose resigned face had appeared so cheery in the picture inside lay sprawled on one side of his face, belly down, impaled on the spike of a long-handled pickax. The flesh on the sides of his spine lay open to the air, brown and black rot speckling the exposed tear while the dull white of the exposed spine twitched with each jerk of the body. His arms, gnawed off to the shoulder, leaving only broken stubs of bone to scratch against the wooden floor, were useless in the corpse’s attempt at levering himself off the rusted implement. So he writhed and twitched on the weathered and stained floor, helpless and hopeless.

Behind me, Kate whispered, “Shit.”

I nodded in agreement as I stepped gingerly over the exposed back, which looked to have been eaten slowly and purposefully, possibly while the poor bastard was alive and dying from the slow blood loss of the pickax through the stomach.

I shuddered.

That was no goddamn way to die.

I found a shovel and quickly ended the twitching, severing the spine from the head. I wondered at the effects of this disease on a human body, enabling it to function, even as the spine and the extremities incurred such incredible damage.

It scared the crap out of me.

As I threw the shovel aside, Kate leapt for his pockets, grimacing as she tried to delicately move the bloodied fabric of his torn shirt away from the jeans. I looked over her shoulder and cursed. More than twenty of the zombies from the driveway had turned in our direction and were shambling toward the shed. Gunfire was sporadic and close on the other side of the house.

Kate withdrew her hand slowly from the right front pocket and looked up.

“Let’s go. I’ve got ‘em.”

She stood and turned around, following my hand as I pointed at the recent complication. She sighed, and raised her rifle to her shoulder before walking out. I followed, wondering if we could possibly reach the truck before the goons in the front of the shop followed the sound of our weapons fire.

Suddenly, from across the back yard, the door to the house slammed open and Leigh emerged, white dress vivid in the darkening yard. Her face was livid, and she looked past the zombies directly at us.

“You sons of bitches!” she screamed, standing at the top of the concrete steps and allowing the door to close behind her.