LZR-1143: Redemption (22 page)

THIRTY-TWO

So close, but yet so far.

We stood quietly in the shattered remnants of a small bistro, crouched behind the counter and watching the bodies shamble aimlessly down the street in front of us, wandering up and down Union Street as if truly directionless. This was unusual in recent days, as we had only really experienced the herd mentality. They would bunch together and move with a purpose, as if hunting together.

Now, staring out over a collection of overturned tables and rotting food under grimy glass displays, we were watching a return to previous behavior. Aimless rambling.

We had skirted into the back door of the building when Romeo alerted us to the large group ahead, masked from even Kate and my enhanced vision by a cloud of smoke from a slowly burning oil fire near a gas station. Now, we were stopped cold.

The windows of the shop still stood, an anomaly in a time when glass was a useless building supply, and shops or stores with any semblance of food—for zombies or humans—were demolished or ransacked with regularity. The downside was that it really smelled.

Fish that had been fresh months before was rotting in a pile of decay and decomposed scales. Cakes and breads were simply piles of mold, while a slow leak from a soda machine near the cash register was dripping slowly onto the tile floor, a puddle of calcified mildew and sticky ooze spreading out and under the counter.

The door was sealed shut, accounting for the lack of intrusion by animals, and the back door had been weakly latched with a small throw-bolt. No creatures inside, so the owner must have locked up and run before anyone met their end within the walls.

It was an old building, and several doors led further into the building. We made sure they were secure and spoke quietly. Artan was in the back, exploring.

“Where’d they come from?” asked Ky, chewing on a small piece of MRE cheese she had fished from a pack. She leaned against the disgusting counter, staring at the menu above the kitchen behind me, eyes hungry for the advertised hamburgers and fries.

“We checked the satellite photos before we left, but they don’t account for milling groups, or ones that migrate out of buildings. There are hundreds of thousands of these things in the area, there have to be. Seattle was a huge city, and an even bigger suburban area.” Kate reached out to share the small piece of cheese, but made a face and handed it back to Ky. Ky frowned and flipped it to Romeo, who snatched it from the air.

“Why aren’t they… You know, moving together?” Ky had turned, her head peeking slightly over the counter, and was watching the dirty, rotten creatures shamble in front of the dingy glass walls. We knew their sight wasn’t superb, and they were easily fooled by reflective glass, so we felt some safety despite the semi-transparent surface.

I turned to Kate, slightly concerned.

“I don’t know. We can’t keep up with their habits. They have been banding together for hunting purposes, but this… who knows? Maybe these guys short circuited or something.”

Artan returned to the group and squatted heavily next to Rhodes, who was slowly inserting rounds into his empty magazine.

“We may have roadway,” he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder, toward the back of the shop.

“We just came in from that way,” Kate said, confused.

“No. Other thing. Come me with.” He disappeared.

“You heard the man,” I said, “Go you with.”

She made a face and crouched over, careful in stepping, making sure to stay quiet.

I followed them both into the back hallway, while Rhodes stayed with Ky behind the counter.

Artan stopped in front of an older door, a bronze latch thrown over the handle and a historic plaque attached to the door at eye level. An inscription was carved into the bronze, and I wiped the oxidation off the plaque.

“Historic Seattle Underground. Ticket Required. Tour Hours 9:00-5:00, Every Day.”

Turning to Artan, I smiled.

Kate groaned.

“Underground? You know the underground?”

“Yes, yes. Enough. It run from here, to Pine Street, small sections. Not total.”

“Not total?” Kate asked.

“It some pieces,” he said, motioning with his hands.

In the front of the bistro, a loud noise brought our heads up, and we peered around the small corner to watch as several hands were pressed up against the glass, dirty, black streaks appearing on the already grungy surface. Several faces slammed against the glass suddenly, mouths working up and down slowly, teeth exposed by ruined faces, eyes staring and pressed on the clear glass, startling the three of us.

And then Ky made a noise.

It was barely a whimper. Almost a soft cry. Just a small sound of disgusted surprise.

It was hardly even audible; almost indiscernible as a human sound over the sound of hands moving against the glass.

But they heard it.

“Ky, Rhodes, let’s go,” I said, the decision made.

Scores of hands appeared against the glass, as if a dinner bell had sounded. Faces putrefied by time and decay were pressed into the hard surface, the glass distorting the gray and brackish skin, loose and chipped teeth scraping and squealing, like nails on a see-through chalkboard.

Ky and Romeo shot past, and I heard the first crack.

I pulled my machete loose, and pressed the small button that released the recessed side arm on my thigh. With a small hiss, the gun emerged in its carbon fiber holster, and I pulled it free, checking the clip.

The crack widened, and a spider web of smaller lines shot across the glass, like lightning caught in time.

Rhodes slipped past, and the door crashed open as Kate and Ky poured into the stairwell.

The front windows shattered in a loud cascade of sprinkled glass as the guests arrived for lunch.

I didn’t bother shooting. I just turned and followed them all down the rickety wooden stairs, slamming the door behind me. A large crowbar, among other various construction tools, leaned against the old brick wall of the stairwell, and I jammed the long flat head under the crack in the door, hoping that it would jam the entrance and buy us some time.

Ahead, Artan had turned to the right, and I followed. He and Rhodes had both opted to flip up their night vision and exchange it for bright red lights, the enclosed space seeming to beg for real light.

It was dark, and the smell of must and standing water was thick in the air. I sniffed several times, trying to place something else that was familiar but unknown. It was a dirty smell, but almost animal-like. Not the smell of death, but the smell of filth.

Old wooden beams lined the cement and dirt walls on one side of the odd wooden walkway that stretched out into the earth over old cobblestones and mud. Small rivulets of runoff from the street above trickled slowly through small culverts designed to divert the moisture into drainage pipes, but the water, with no one left to man the drainage system, was backing up. It was pooling under the walkway in some places, and covered the walkway in others.

On our left, it was the underground city as I remembered it. Disused brick walls with decaying wood lining the windows and doorways; old street signs leaned artfully against the bricks; shadowed and empty windows, the interior of the old shops redone and re-imagined, with sample items from a past long forgotten. Horseshoes, old knitting tools, and an old woodsman’s axe were displayed in one dusty window.

Ky let a gasp of wonder escape as we passed a completely preserved general store, complete with hitching post. I winced as I heard the door shatter only a hundred yards behind us. Ahead, Artan had shot up a small set of steps, only to return with a grimace.

“No outside to go this place now. To go to next.”

His English was that of a fourth grader whose daily diet consisted of valium and paint chips, but we got the point.

Kate suddenly stopped in front of me, eyes searching the darkness ahead as Ky jumped slightly.

“What was that?” she asked, turning back to me.

In the thick darkness, I knew that they were behind us. But they could only move two or three wide, and they would go slowly. Their eyes were poor in the pitch black.

I had heard it, but I didn’t know the noise. It was foreign, and the only association I could make with it was impossible.

It had to be impossible.

I urged Kate and Ky forward and whispered loudly to Artan, who had heard it as well and had slowed down.

“Artan, the crash at the onramp that’s a few blocks away—what was it that crashed?”

We stopped again as we heard the sound once more. Closer.

Behind us, a metallic crash echoed in the enclosed space, and the whisper of moans was carried through the tunnel with the air of death about it.

“I do not know this. I know only that it was large truck. Had picture of animals on side. And my brother tell me something with… I don’t know English word… it is
luan
in my language.”

“We have to go,” said Kate, urging Artan forward, and pushing Ky firmly between the two of us. Behind me trailed Romeo, whose tail had been ducked between his legs since we entered the tunnel. He was beginning to balk at going forward, and I had to nudge him with my boot.

“
Luan
?” I asked stupidly.

“
Luan
,” he said, softly repeating.

The darkness ahead had lightened slightly, and in the dim light, I saw what most of the others could not, but I heard Kate gasp as she saw it too.

The body of a large man in a city utility uniform was splayed out on the floor, near a pool of gathering water. Several large piles of waste littered the open space, and I stared at the body as Artan played his light over it, cursing as he saw the scene.

“That man… he is not…”

“No, he wasn’t killed by any of those creatures,” I said. Long gashes, including one across his throat that was so deep that it shattered his spine, crisscrossed the face and neck. The abdomen was torn out, viscera splayed over the dirty floor. A small collection of dirty clothes was bundled loosely on the other side of the pool, and similar gashes ran across the red brick wall behind the body.

“Artan,” I asked, pushing Ky close to Kate and peering into the darkness ahead. “Where do
luans
live?”

He screwed up his face, thinking.

Rhodes was in the rear now, and he flipped his night vision goggles down, peering to the back.

“Shit, Mike. Danger close, man.”

I heard them and smelled them already. I knew they were there. They were always there.

“Where, Artan?” I wasn’t being careful with my voice.

Kate groaned; she had guessed what I hoped I was wrong about.

“Africa and some others,” he said, and before I could answer, his eyes opened wide, “They have movie with
luan
in it for childs…
luan
is the king.”

You have
got
to be kidding me.

I remembered, then, my brother’s most enduring contribution to the wisdom of ages, most likely drawn from extensive military experience: Life is like a bag of dicks—you never know what you’re going to get… but you can be sure it is gonna wanna fuck you.

Rhodes was allowing his carbine to speak, now. The whispered shots were careful and I heard the bodies fall.

“We need to move, now, man. What’s the holdup?”

I could see them now, and they were hungry. Many in the front ranks had vicious cuts on their faces from the glass windows, thick black blood congealed in the wounds.

“The hold up,” I said, listening to the movement of something large ahead of us, “is that we’re quite literally standing in what I’m fairly sure is a lion’s den.”

THIRTY-THREE

There were a lot of things that I was mentally prepared for during the apocalypse.

I knew the dead were walking, they ate the living, and if you got bit, you died and came back. No problem.

I knew that a good weapon was better than a great screw. Check.

I knew that you never stopped moving, and you took food where you could find it. Sure.

And I knew that people were at their most base and elemental at times when hope had kicked them in the stomach, split their lip, and abandoned them by the side of the road. This was a hard lesson to learn.

But I have to admit. I was not prepared for lions.

Zombie monkeys? Been there, done that.

Penguins, maybe. You can’t trust penguins. All dressed up like some sort of James Bond of the animal world. Creepy little craps.

But lions? Lions were new.

“Everyone stay tight,” I said, “It’s moving around up here somewhere, but it’s moving away. We might be scaring it.”

“Ky!” Kate yelled, watching as Ky shot away from the group and to the body at the pool. She winced at the gore and the smell, but grabbed the heavy boots of the large man and started dragging the body.

“What do, girl?” Artan rasped.

“If we give them an appetizer, maybe they’ll slow down,” she said, the sound of bodies slamming into one another behind us was heavy in the small space. They were only thirty feet away, and Rhodes was trying to place shots carefully into the fastest ones.

Kate flew to Ky’s side and grabbed the feet, throwing the body handily into the small space. It landed with a loud noise, and the first of the creatures fell on it instantly.

“Move!” I said, and started forward.

As my eyes adjusted to the increasing light, Artan spoke again.

“Up left,” he said. Only twenty meters to the door.

I nodded, eyes still scanning.

My hand raised my blade quickly as I saw a flash of brown and gray near the now-visible ladder up to what must be a hatch above.

“Ears!” I shouted, and pulled the trigger on my pistol in quick succession. The sharp crack of the gun was loud in the small space, and I heard a massive up swell in the hungry moans from behind us, activated by the noise. Many continued to feast, but many more stumbled past, falling and slipping in blood and water as they moved toward us steadily.

I watched another flash of brown as the animal moved away from the ladder, further into the tunnel ahead. I ran to the bottom of the ladder, gun pointed into the murky tunnel, eyes scanning for movement.

“Go!” I yelled, and heard the rush of feet as the group pounded up the ladder. I heard the frightened yip of Romeo as Kate virtually tossed him up to Rhodes and her feet stopped near my head.

“Come on,” she said, eyes glued to the tunnel.

But it was too late.

I was lost in the eyes of the hungry predator.

I couldn’t move now. He was watching. If I turned, he’d take me in the back.

I was strong, and I healed quickly. But I didn’t want to test my body’s resistance to a six hundred pound man-eater with a bad attitude.

His eyes were two glowing yellow orbs, teeth visible under the snarl of hunger and thinly veiled malice.

In the passage behind, the creatures were approaching, the tide slowed by the body and the meal, but not stopped. Never stopped.

“Go. I have an idea,” I said softly, backing into the ladder and lowering the gun.

“Like hell,” she said, starting back down, but I grabbed her foot without even looking.

“No,” I said, “Go. It’ll be fine.”

With that, I holstered the pistol and put the machete into the sheath and stepped out into the tunnel, toward the zombies, turning my back to the massive lion crouched in the dark tunnel.

“What the —” her voice was drowned out by the massive roar from the lion and a unified moan of triumph as the creatures reached out for me.

Hands brushed my legs as I pushed off from the ground with as much force as I could, my gauntleted hands reaching for the iron bars crisscrossing the ceiling above me, girders and supports exposed by time and construction.

The massive lion, a huge male with a thick, dark mane, flashed past me below, unable to adjust its course before barreling into the crowd of zombies, their mouths and hands thrusting and searching.

But this prey was no easy meal, and the ruse had the desired effect. I dropped to the ground seconds later, narrowly avoiding the thrashing bodies, and rushed up the ladder several rungs at a time. Below, a confused lion met with a group of very disappointed undead; the former and the latter both robbed of what they both desired—fresh blood. The lion had no taste for undead flesh, and it knew that these things—these objects that appeared human but were so far from it—were not to be consumed. The undead recognized this creature as a living being, but they had no taste for this sort.

But the lion wasn’t happy.

Claws and teeth shredded the disinterested group of rotting humans.

Sharp feline claws and razor teeth flashed in the dank space in a shocking display of ferocity, as bodies were pushed to either side, torn from the middle, and rent to pieces as the large cat, feeling angry and trapped, whirled in a razor-sharp melee of destruction.

Those creatures that hadn’t been stopped by the body in the hallway, were now compelled to slow as one very angry kitty beat the shit out of their friends.

It was purely awesome to watch—nature at its best.

And I didn’t mind having someone else do my work for me.

“What the hell?” Kate whispered harshly as she flipped onto the street above, the ladder emerging into a small recess along a sidewalk. Rhodes knelt on one knee, scanning the distance for movement, and Artan paced silently, a cigarette dangling from the side of his mouth. Ky and Romeo were behind Rhodes, and Ky breathed out loudly when we emerged. I looked around for a hatch or a doorway or something to close the hole behind us. That cat was going to be really hungry after this.

“What? Win-win, right? They both wanted us for dinner, now nobody’s happy. Except for us.”

I spotted the thick metal plate that fit the hatch, and pulled it over, listening as the moans and the cat’s cries continued below, then slamming it shut over the entrance. A small plaque next to the ladder announced the entrance as part of the underground tours, and I kissed my hand and pressed it to the cold metal. Just one more reason to love the touristy shtick.

“You have a messed up definition of win-win,” she said, “But definitely some style.” I smiled as she grinned at me suddenly and turned away.

Across the street, a large sign read “Westlake Center” and Artan gestured us forward. The street was clear here, and I looked up to the large concrete overpass that stretched from above our heads, three floors up, over the street and toward where I knew the Space Needle extended into the night sky.

The monorail station was on the third floor of the building, and was accessible through the main promenade of another mall. Several large stores were scattered throughout the Center, and we passed their embossed signs, some cardboard displays inside the sealed doors still advertising sales with large red lettering.

“What’s the play, Artan?” Rhodes asked as we reached the double doors leading into the mall. A large chain was looped around the handles inside the entrance leading to the main escalators. The open, seemingly empty lobby was barely visible, even to my enhanced eyesight.

“Station on third level. We in go, then up escalator there. To right, then up some stair. Then, boom, like eagle we will fly on rail line. Easy peezy.”

Easy peezy?

This guy was like a cross between Balki Bartokomous and the Beav.

“Doors?” I asked.

“We make big sound. So need be ready,” he shrugged and took the last draw from his cigarette, crushing it under a boot. His dark eyes were truly unconcerned, as if he made a trip like this every day.

Perhaps he did.

“Okay, Rhodes, you got it?”

“Yep,” he said, taking a small, bubble gum sized wad of plastic explosive from a small pouch and sticking a thin rod into the gummy substance. He placed it on the handle and we stepped back.

“Go boom now,” he said, almost disinterestedly mimicking Artan.

With a loud pop, and a small flash, the reinforced glass near the handle shattered, and he pulled the metal and chain away, forcing the door open to the inside. Artan went in first, scanning the interior quickly with his goggles down, slowly panning from one side to the next.

“Okay,” he said, turning toward us as Rhodes stepped through the doorway to follow, “Is all—”

A hand pulled his head back in the middle of the sentence, and I jumped forward, pushing aside the shattered glass that still hung from the frame. He turned his head to the side, struggling against the grip. Another hand shot out and grabbed him by the thick hair. His hand moved quickly with his pistol, firing blindly, as the body pulled itself up from the large collection of potted plants near the door.

Rhodes swung his weapon around, and I dove for the body, my hand reaching the large arms of the decaying security guard too late, as the head shot forward and the teeth tore into Artan’s neck. Blood sprayed out as if from a hose, as I pulled the creature down, flesh still jammed between its teeth, jaws working slowly and concentrating on the meal.

Artan screamed loudly, his pain echoing in the cavernous chamber, bouncing from the tile floor to the glass walls, and out amongst the shuttered stores.

I fell to the ground, arms wrapped around the wretched ghoul, who chewed hungrily even as it lashed its head out to try to bite me. Slamming my head forward in a vicious head butt, I didn’t bother with the machete, activating the long blades in the sleeves and pushing one into each eye quickly. I needed the chewing to stop.

The body convulsed once and lay still.

Ky and Kate were through the doors, and Rhodes was applying a compress to the neck wound, but it failed to stop the flow of thick, red blood. The man was cursing, his hand repeatedly slamming against the floor in pain and anger. Outside, the first zed was poking a curious head around the corner of the adjoining building, letting out a vaguely serpentine hiss as it stared into the broken door.

“We have to move,” said Rhodes, his hands working quickly to secure the compress.

“Artan, you need to stand up,” I said, but he simply waved me off. His hand flew to the floor next to him, searching for his pistol.

“I go no place,” he said, finding the grip and pulling it in. “I make sons of bitches cry for mothers before I die.”

Rhodes looked up at me and I nodded.

He was already dead. We all knew that.

Ky started to cry softly in anger as she raised her crossbow, taking the creature that was crossing in front of the shattered doors through the head with a thick bolt. It passed cleanly through the temple, and the zed fell silently to the ground, as it someone had cut the cord connecting it to the sky.

I stood, collecting her and ushering Romeo toward the escalator.

Artan stood shakily, an extra clip in his hand. Rhodes slid a large umbrella stand from the doorway over, putting it under Artan’s free hand for support, then taking three more zeds as they pushed toward the door before joining us on the escalator.

“I take care,” he rasped, voice weak. Blood was pooling at his neck and his face was pale. “They will pass not me.”

I nodded once.

“Thank you, my friend.”

“Go, man,” he said, turning to the door.

We ran up the slatted metal steps, hitting the second floor before he started to fire. Bodies were jammed into the doorway, and his voice carried into the large space.

“Come for Artan, mother fuckers,” he shouted, anger animating his weakened body.

“I show you where to eat me, you shits of mothers of goat asses!” The gun popped steadily, and I turned once, etching the picture of a man standing alone, supported by a rack of umbrellas, cursing in broken English as he died.

“You come for me, shitheads, I show you what to eat. You eat my bullet. And you too, and you! You like? Eat, bitch!”

I turned away as the press of bodies got thicker, and I knew what was coming. Ahead, Rhodes’ gun whispered twice as two bodies rose from a reclined position near a metal bench.

One last shot echoed below, and the hall was silent, but for the footfalls of the undead. Always behind. Always coming.