The Dark Knight (Apocalypse Weird 2) (3 page)

“It does?” said Dante still hiding behind his fingers.

“Sort of.  But there are some holes in those walls.  All we
need to do is patch those holes and these things can’t get in here, once we
shut the gate.”

Dante wiped tears and snot from his eyes and nose.

“What kinda holes?” he asked, his bloodshot eyes glaring at
Frank.

“Oh...” Frank stood with a groan.  They heard his knees
pop.  “Bedroom windows.  Front windows.  Spaces between the buildings and the
main entrance.  The doors facing outward are all dead bolted and locked.  But
once we fill in those gaps we’ll be pretty safe.  I promise.”

“You can’t promise that,” mumbled Dante.

“No.  I can’t.  But it’s the best we can do for right now. 
And... it’s all we got.”

After a moment, head down, Dante lifted his massive arm, the
bicep and shoulder muscles stretching the business shirt he’d worn all week
back at Green Front Technology.

“Alright, then I vote for that.”

So did everyone else.

Ash stood over Skully.  She’d just
used the last of her morphine and now she watched the scrawny, shaven-headed
boy’s chest slowly rise and fall.

“That’s it buddy,” she whispered.  “After this, you’re going
to have to get by on Anacin, or whatever it is they have here.”

She put two fingers on Skully’s wrist and raised her silvery
watch into a morning sunbeam.  She stared at the watch, finding the heartbeat. 
Watching the red Hammer and Sickle on the watch’s face.  It helped her focus on
the slow rhythmic pulse.

Low.

She stood back, watching him.

His eyes fluttered.

He was thin.  Too thin.  Bony.  Small.  Hollow cheeks and a
shaved scalp.  A small, strange tattoo on his wrist.

The bullet had nicked the bottom of the rib cage and she’d
had to chase down bone fragments to clean the wound.  But the bullet had missed
the liver.  The round was practically pushing through the small of the kid’s
back and she’d toyed with the idea of just making a cut and popping it out. 
But she couldn't risk another incision site.  It would increase the likelihood
of infection.  So she’d moved the liver aside, gently, and gone in after the
bullet with Frank holding a flashlight over her shoulder and someone else
holding the retractors.

Now the recovery room that was once the dining area was quiet. 
The townhome, Frank’s, was empty save her and the boy.  Distantly she could
hear hammers pounding nails into plywood on the other side of the neighborhood.

“More painkillers and antibiotics,” she mumbled to herself. 
“An autoclave... if it’s possible,” she added in a whisper.  Frank had found
her an empty townhome they could set up as an “aid station”.  That’s what guys
from ‘Nam called a Casualty Collection Point.  She’d known old Sergeant Majors
that still used the term.

She watched the boy and listened to the distant sound of
construction, echoing out across the quiet neighborhood and the dead silence of
the world beyond.

Frank, Dante, and Ritter carried another sheet of plywood
into the third house they’d fortify before lunch.  Two stories above, Candace
watched from a rooftop, holding the sniper rifle and Frank’s binoculars.  If
she saw any of them, any zombies coming, she was to use the whistle Frank had
given her.  But she wasn’t to shoot unless it was absolutely necessary.  They
only had three bullets left for the large caliber rifle Holiday had taken from
the downed helicopter. 

She scanned the surrounding hills, homes, and empty spaces
of field and road.  It was dry and quiet across the suburban wasteland
withering under another day’s blanket of sun and heat.  The sky was hazy, but
any of the distant fires they’d seen down in the valley below had burned
themselves out.

The surrounding quiet was unreal.  Thick.  Like a blanket,
or even a living animal that smothered its victims with its heavy weight.  Or
like something waiting out beyond the perimeter, something waiting where it
couldn’t be seen.

“When we gonna make a run up to the store for more food and
y’know... stuff.  I need some smokes, bad.”  Ritter was shirtless, his body
muscled yet pasty, slick with sweat and grimy with dirt.

“Let’s get this finished up,” grunted Frank as he pushed the
plywood board up into place, covering a window, with Dante matching his
movements on the other side of the board.  “And then we’ll make a run.  There’s
a store nearby called the Market Faire.”

Holiday maneuvered in through the tight doorway with three
heavy two by eights on his shoulder.  He set them down on someone’s faux
leather couch underneath a picture of a family posed in matching khaki pants
and white button down shirts, as waves and a Southern California sunset
completed the portrait.

“Find the studs and anchor to that,” said Frank, breathing
heavily.

“Yes sir, boss man,” said Ritter and dragged a hammer off a
belt loop while reaching into his pants for more of the long iron nails.  Dante
was already placing one into the two by eights.

Holiday waited for Frank to tell him what to do next.  But
Frank hadn’t.  Wouldn’t.  For every job that needed someone to do something,
Frank had just picked someone else.  At times he would even look at Holiday,
but he wouldn’t see him, or at least that’s how it felt to everyone. 

Holiday wondered if they were all in on it.  If everyone
else was counting him out too.

They were sealing up the front wall, or what Frank had
called “the Southern Wall of the Castle”.  The defenses he’d put up with Ash
and Frank seemed almost flimsy to Holiday compared with Frank’s new plans.  But
the work was slower.  Right now they were just trying to seal the ground level
outward-facing windows in the townhome units.  Eventually they’d have to seal
the gaps between the building with more than just wire and fencing.  Flimsy
wire mesh wouldn’t hold up against a crowd of zombies like the ones that had
surrounded the Green Front Headquarters, or so Ritter declared and Candace and
Dante silently agreed.

The Fence would stay.  It would be a guide for their future
wall, said Frank.  But how to get the materials for a wall that was worth
putting up was the question that pulled at the back of Frank’s mind that whole
hot sweaty morning of a seemingly endless summer, even though the calendar read
mid-September.

The Southern Wall was the wall that contained the main
entrance and faced the rest of Viejo Verde and the neighborhood across the way
where Holiday had hopped the fence to rescue Ash.  If there were more zombies
coming, they’d come from that direction.  So that, as Frank pointed out, was
where they needed to start the work of building defenses.

At noon they broke for lunch which consisted of sandwiches
at Frank’s house, and an hour later they piled onto the flatbed truck and drove
slowly up to the Market Faire.

“There’s at least two of ‘em in the walk-in freezer back in
the meat department,” announced Holiday.  No one said anything and that made
Holiday certain that Frank had told them he was not to be trusted.

“Let’s clear the store as a group.  If it’s safe, we’ll
split into teams and shop for half an hour.  Produce and meat are bad by now so
don’t even think about it.  We’ll have to get some crops started eventually,”
announced Frank.

“Crops,” said Ritter under his breath.  “Sure thing, boss
man.”

“What about frozen?” asked Candace.

“Good point.  For some strange reason the electricity is
still working,” answered Frank.  “So why not until it goes out.”

Holiday cast a glance at the shopping cart full of booze
he’d left out in the farthest reaches of the parking lot when he’d drunkenly
fled from a mass of walking dead people in his middle of the night
misadventure.  When he turned back to the rest of the group, Frank was watching
him.

They went inside and cleared the store.  There were no other
zombies besides the two locked away in the butcher’s freezer and a half hour
later, with stuffed bags and shopping carts, they left the store.  Frank gave them
the rest of the afternoon off to get their houses sorted.  They’d start back to
work on the Southern Wall again in the morning.

That night there wasn’t any fog and Holiday stayed home.  He
could hear them down by Frank’s townhome, barbecuing some frozen chicken Frank
had picked up from the store.  Later, he walked down the street a little way
and stood watching them from the shadows of the kiddie park.

Just get drunk, Holiday told himself, feeling the thought,
testing it out to see if it could hold inside his head.  “Forget it and let the
dice fly,” he whispered.

The words felt odd in his mind.  Familiar, and yet, out of
place.

Let the dice fly.

He walked forward out of the dark and found the other
survivors sitting on folding chairs around the glowing coals of the barbecue. 
Ritter was finishing the story of how they’d all survived inside the Green
Front Technology Headquarters for more than a week.  He left out none of the
suicides or poorly planned escape attempts that ended in the deaths of others.  

He did leave out a certain briefcase which was now stored
under the queen-sized bed of the townhome he’d decided to occupy up near the
main entrance and the front gate.  Frank called it “the Gatehouse” because the
townhome sat next to the entrance.

Frank got up and pulled some chicken skewers off the grill,
set them on a plate and handed them to Holiday without a word.  Holiday looked
at Ash who smiled only politely, then turned away to her glass of wine and
someone else.  Then he sat down.

“So what’s your story?” asked Dante.

Holiday looked up from his skewer.  He’d been hungrier than
he thought.  He hadn’t drank.  The bottle was still waiting on the front steps
of his townhome.  He hadn’t eaten much either.  Now Frank’s chicken skewers,
yellow with spices and smelling of charred onion made his mouth water.

“I mean,” continued Dante.  “How’d you come to be out that
way and run into Ritter?”  It wasn’t hard to notice the way the big black man
spat out Ritter’s name.

“Just was,” said Holiday after a long silence.  Then he
shoved a thick piece of tasty chicken into his mouth and began to chew.  No one
probed any further and dinner, or them watching Holiday finish the last of the
chicken, resumed.  Someone got up to refill everyone’s glass and Holiday
noticed they didn’t offer any to him.

So Frank’s talked to them, thought Holiday as he chewed the
last of the tasty chicken.  Telling them he’s a drunk.  A risk and incapable of
being relied upon.  Incapable of being trusted.

“How we gonna fill in them gaps between the buildings,
Frank?” asked Dante.

Frank sighed.  “I don’t know just yet.  But something’ll
occur to me.”

“Better be soon,” mumbled Dante.  “Cause ain’t no use all
this other stuff if them things can just walk on in here.”

Dinner finished shortly after that and everyone drifted off
into the night, heading back toward their new townhomes.

Holiday heard Ritter ask, “Walk you home, Candy?” in the
darkness that surrounded the still-glowing barbecue.

“Candace and no, thank you,” she replied.  The monotone “thank
you” emphasized the obvious flatness of her rejection.

“Whatever, girlfriend,” said Ritter and they were all gone,
even Ash who’d left to check on Skully.

Frank was organizing the last of the trash.

“Thanks for the chicken, Frank.”

He turned to face Holiday, smiling.  “Sure thing, buddy.  No
problem.”

There was an awkward moment.  As though something more
should come next.  “I thought...,” began Holiday, stumbling.  “I thought I was
persona non grata.”

“Not at all, buddy.  I’ll still feed ya.  You can live
here.  It’s your house.  You can even try to help out like you have been.” 
Frank paused and stuffed some paper plates into a trash bag.  Then then he
turned and looked straight at Holiday.  “But I’ll never trust you.  And, in
case you’re wondering, I’ve told everyone else not to trust you.  Just so you
know.  It’s safer that way.  For us.”

“Just so I know,” repeated Holiday after a short silence.

“Yeah.  Just so you know, buddy.  And soon, it’s just a
matter of time really, trust me, you’ll blow it again and then they’ll see I
was right about you.  Matter of time, kid.”

Holiday remained silent, then, “That’s important to you,
isn’t it Frank?  Being right about me?”

Frank’s face blossomed with surprise.  “Yeah, why wouldn’t
it be?  I mean I... we, we all want to go on living.  And right now, being
right’s all we’ve got and maybe that might not even be enough.  But you don’t
understand that.  You don’t get it.  You know why?  Because you don’t care
about anyone but yourself.  And life, or whatever it is that’s happened out
there, it’s gonna make you pay if you’re wrong.  So, yeah, being right is real
important to the rest of us right about now.  Ought to be.  You’d know that if
you weren’t so busy killing yourself with the booze.”

“So... what if I don’t drink?”

“So what if you don’t?  So what if you do?  I don’t care
anymore, kid, and neither does anyone else.  You had your chance and you chose
the booze over your friends.  Over me and Ash.  We woke up to a street full of
those things because you left the gate wide open on your little booze run.  We
could have been killed and you couldn’t have cared less.”

“But you weren’t!” Holiday shot back.  “And oh, by the way,
I rescued some people while I was out.”

Frank shook his head in disgust.  “If that’s the way you
need to see it, fine.  But all that... all that “us not getting killed” and you
“helping” those people... hell kid, that’s not even the point.  You walked out
on us ‘cause you got thirsty.  You chose it over us and mark my words, you’ll
do it again.”

A glare, filled with hate and contempt and a small amount of
pity, stared back at Holiday.  It was the pity that stung the most, thought
Holiday who shrugged, then looked off into the night.  Frank smiled, cleared
his throat and smiled again.  “Listen, kid,” his voice was warm and low.  “I
don’t hate you.  Yeah, I was disappointed in what you did, but I realize you’ve
got a problem with the hooch.  Fine.  But I can’t help you right now and I
can’t trust you ever.  I wanna go on living.  I need to go on living.  I...” 
Frank paused. 

Holiday saw a sudden tear form in one of Frank’s eyes.  The
older man bent down quickly to pick up a stray wine glass, then rose again to
face Holiday.  If there had been a tear, it was gone now.

“We all need to go on living, kid.  And... I just don’t
think you’re good for this community.”

Holiday walked back toward his townhome.  The streets were
dark where the street lights didn’t cast their light.  In his mind, he could
see the bottle and knew it was still there, waiting for him.  Right where Frank
had left it on the front porch.  Ahead, he could see the small gate leading
into the small yard and the steps to his house.  He knew the bottle of top
shelf liquor, probably whiskey from Frank’s cabinet, was waiting there, still,
just out of sight, waiting in the shadows.