The Dead Series (Book 3): Dead Line (6 page)

He was right. The lurker would spot them, groan out in that annoying way they were inclined to, and they would have more than just the one to worry about. There might appear to be only a few, but that was never the case. A horde was always just around the corner.

They had learned that the hard way.

'I'll take this one,' Terry said. The way his voice cracked suggested he wasn't sure what he was volunteering for.

'You sure?' Shane said. It wasn't the time to start arguing over who got to do what; the easiest way to keep the peace was to delegate, but if people were kind enough to offer . . .

'I need to check this thing's as sharp as it looks,' Terry said as he pulled the sword from its sheath. It came out with a tinny
shing!
which made Shane eyeball their surroundings, just in case anything had heard it. 'I'm pretty sure I can take
that
one. Wall Street zombies, from what I've heard, are pussies.'

River sniggered; Terry apologised silently for the slight malediction. It was difficult to regulate his language around her considering she was so mature, and brutal, and it was something they would all have to work on.

Though River didn't mind.

'Okay,' Shane said. 'We'll be coming up behind you. We get to the road, we keep moving. No stopping.' He was talking to each of them now, and they nodded frantically, heeding his orders like soldiers about to go over the top into No-Man's Land.

'Remember, Terry,' River whispered. 'Clean slice, straight through the neck. Cuts off any noise it was thinking about making and severs the spinal-cord.'

Terry nodded. 'Believe it or not, kid, this won't be the first one I've killed.' He looked to Shane, half-expecting him to maintain his alleged lurker-dispatches.

'But it'll be your first one with
that
,' River said, gesturing with her miniature hand towards the sword. 'It's a little bit different to shooting one in the face.'

Terry sighed, shook his head. To Shane, he said, 'I'm ready.'

'We're right behind you. Don't stop. Finish it, and keep heading for the road.'

Terry turned. The road looked a long fucking way away from where they were standing. It was clear, though, which made reaching it a lot easier.

He stepped away from the museum's façade and was instantly lit by the rising sun. Stepping back into the shadowy cold safety was an option, but not one that he would take.

He began to move towards the hunched creature; the sword in his hand felt heavy, much heavier than it had during the practise yesterday afternoon. He was a hundred-feet away from the creature when something stopped him in his tracks.

A woman . . .

The female lurker had screeched.

He snapped his head across to where she had, until a moment ago, been stripping the bark from a tree, harmless, oblivious. She was no longer facing the oak, or peeling it with savaged fingers; she was facing Terry, and warning the stockbroker-thing of unfolding events.

'Terry! Stick to the plan!'

It was Shane, and he had emerged from the shadows, his arm outstretched, the pistol trained upon the female's head.

Terry rushed for the male – the banker, or whatever the hell he once was – and reached it just before it managed to clamber, listlessly, to its feet. He whipped the sword through the air, the accompanying whoosh was far less satisfactory than it should have been, and hit the creature perfectly on the neck, just like River told him to.

Only the head didn't roll away or shoot off like the ones the little girl had only just killed.

The blade was stuck.

Wedged somewhere between the lurker's collarbone and jaw. Arterial spray filled the air; Terry made certain his mouth was shut tight, fearful that one drop in his mouth would be enough to infect him.

The lurker grabbed the sword's handle as it thrashed around, snarling and snapping at the air in front of its face with broken, discoloured teeth. Black goo dripped from its gaping maws as it tried to get a purchase on the weapon sticking in its throat, but it was no use.

Terry, with one sudden movement, yanked out the blade. Tarry fluid spilled out of the lurker's cleaved gullet, but it wasn't dying . . .

Not by a long-shot.

Terry swung the sword again; this time he heard a crunch as the blade chopped through bone. The creature's head lolled backwards, its neck wide open to the elements. A geyser of obsidian sludge shot into the air, raining back down on that shirt-and-tie combo with a disgusting pitter-patter.

A gunshot reminded Terry about the other one – the tree-scratcher. As the head of his lurker dropped slowly to the grass, the female was following suit behind and to the left of him.

'Terry! The
road
!' Shane was already running alongside the girls, heading through the thin row of trees onto the path.

Terry pushed the sword back into its sheath and ran after them, the groan of a dozen lurkers behind – alerted to the sudden noise on a silent morning – enough to keep him moving until he caught up with the others.

*

The shotgun erupted, decimating the nun's face in an instant. He
loved
this; this was what he had been born to do. Before the shit hit the fan, he'd only killed two people, and one of them didn't really count because she'd fallen from the building after he'd chased her up to the seventh storey.

Hardly classed as a kill he could justly add to his tally, though he'd enjoyed it all the same.

'Lukas, behind you!' Abi screeched in that nefarious voice of hers. Lukas whipped around just in time, cocked the gun and blasted the approaching creature. It's scalp lifted, flapped back and forth a couple of times before resetting on the thing's skull like an ill-fitting toupee. The second blast tore through the creature's forehead and it flew back through the air, landing with a thump against the convent wall.

'
Whoooooo
!' Lukas howled. 'Something fucking awesome 'bout blowing nuns away!'

The girl, who was wearing high-heels, a short tartan skirt and a white blouse that was knotted at the front in a manner that went out of fashion back in the nineties, rushed across to Lukas and threw her arms around his neck. He lifted her, whirled her round in a manoeuvre that would have made Patrick Swayze jealous, and kissed her so hard on the lips that he felt her jaw crack beneath his.

When they finally broke the embrace, and Abi was safely back on the ground, she said, 'We showed them cunts, didn't we?'

'Sure did, baby,' Lukas said as he reloaded the shotgun. 'Did you see the way that bitches head came away? I fucking love it when they do that.'

'How many's that, babes?' Abi took out a notepad and waited for Lukas's response, licking the end of the pen in a way that she knew would drive him wild with lust.

He watched, licked his own lips. 'Erm . . . I make that eighty-six to me,' he said. Watching her, chewing the tip of the pen, sucking it, he could feel himself getting hard.

She scribbled the number down in the pad and pocketed it. 'Not bad. Not fucking bad at all.' Leaning against an overturned car she lit a cigarette. Through the smoky haze, she said, 'Where to next? This place looks fucking
dead
.'

Lukas walked across, snatched the cigarette from her lips and took a drag. 'Makes no difference.
Everywhere's
fucking dead.' He turned away from Abi, whistled through two fingers. 'Oi! You little fucker, get your ass out here!'

Across the road a car door opened. Saul – the mute kid they'd picked up in Canton – stepped gingerly out of the car and started walking towards the couple.

'What the fuck's the matter with you?' Abi asked, lighting a cigarette of her own. 'You look like you're gonna fucking cry.'

'Ahhhh, little dummy gonna cry over a couple of dead nuns.' Lukas erupted with laughter; Abi joined in. When he was close enough, Lukas slapped the kid round the back of the head. 'Took your time getting over here. Next time
run
.' God he hated the sight of the little dumb bastard. He had his uses, but they were few and far between, and Lukas wasn't sure whether it was worth it having to stare at his miserable, retarded face all day long just for a few hours of fun at nightfall.

It would be so easy to shoot him. Be doing him a favour, really. He doubted the kid actually enjoyed what they did to him after dark.

Fuck him; he didn't have a choice.

Abi slapped the boy hard around the face, then leant in and licked it, as if this might somehow alleviate the pain from her strike.

'Oohhh,' Lukas sneered. 'That doing it for you, Saul? That giving your little maggot a fucking heartbeat?'

The boy didn't speak, or respond at all. He hadn't said a word since they picked him up, and he had the look of someone who once rode the short bus to school. The way he didn't react to pain, the way he just glared at the sky all day, it wasn't right.

Lukas lifted his clenched fist. 'I fucking asked you a question, dummy. You saying my woman ain't good enough for you?'

'I'm the best
you're
ever gonna get, you fucking orphan,' Abi said, looking mortally offended at being unable to elicit a response from the kid.

'We know you ain't deaf, so you can at least nod or shake your dumb fat face. Shit, kid, I'm starting to think we made a mistake in bringing your sorry ass along for the ride.' Lukas lifted the shotgun and jabbed the barrel towards Saul's face.

Nothing.

Didn't he care if he went the way of the nuns? Was he really so fucking stupid that he didn't even realise how close he was to having his teeth shot out?

'Do you want me to do it, kid?' Lukas asked, and part of him wanted the idiot to nod, to fall to his knees and accept it was over. Another part of him – the deviant that liked to do things, things that the kid would enjoy if he ever lived long enough to grow pubes on his shrivelled-up little balls – wanted Saul to shake his head, to admit that he was wrong, that Lukas was in charge and that he was sorry for being such an annoying, useless little cunt-rag.

He did neither; just stared into the barrel, his bottom lip quivering ever-so-slightly, the corner of his eye twitching as the cold morning breeze flicked dust into it.

Lukas sighed and lowered the shotgun. 'You
wish
I was good enough to end it,' he said. 'Well, I ain't gonna. I ain't gonna do
anything
you want me to. Abi and me are taking you wherever we go. You see, you're the kid we never got around to having. Only dumber, and a helluva lot uglier. So like it, or not, we've got shit to do, and you're gonna be part of it.'

Abi must have felt excluded, for she whipped Saul across the ear and screeched, 'You hear that? You ain't going nowhere . . .
nowhere
, and you've pissed me off, right now.' She folded her arms the way a petulant child might after being reproached.

Lukas chuckled. 'Arrrghh, baby, he's just a
dummy
. I don't hear him complaining when he gets it.' He brushed Abi's arm with the barrel of the shotgun. She pushed it away.

'You didn't answer my question,' she said, to Lukas. 'Where the fuck to next?'

He shrugged. 'Shit, baby-girl . . .
any
-fucking-place. Don't suppose there are any more convents, or . . .
churches
around here? I got me a stiffie blowing those penguins away.'

'Check the map,' she said. She turned and headed for the black Oldsmobile from which the mute kid had stepped. It was theirs, the only car either of them had seen moving since the thaw. It was the only car they were likely to see moving . . .
ever
. Survivors were scarce, now. It was like living a movie, something with Vincent Price or that pile of shit with Will Smith as the last man on earth who talks to fucking mannequins all day long.

Finding the kid had been pure chance. If they hadn't stopped for booze at that particular seven-eleven in Canton two weeks ago, they would have never seen him hiding among the rubble like a discarded teddy-bear. He was filthy then, and he was even dirtier now.

Lukas hadn't tried to clean the little fucker, and it sure as
shit
wasn't Abi's job.

She retrieved the map from the car and unfolded it on the bonnet. It was almost unreadable; a thick crust of blood and dust covered the majority of it.

'What's in Baton Rouge?' She poked at the point on the map to which she referred.

Lukas walked across and stared blankly down at the map. 'The same as here,' he said, slapping Abi on the ass. 'Nothing, and a whole heap of it.'

'It's as good a place as any.' She refolded the map and tossed it onto the back-seat of the car. 'Always wanted to see Louisiana.'

Lukas turned and whistled through his fingers once again. Saul – who had been fixated on the bodies of the dead nuns – turned and ambled slowly towards the couple. When he reached them, Lukas grabbed him and tossed him into the back of the car as if he was nothing more than a human-shaped balloon.

He weighed about as much.

'Baton Rouge oughtta have some fucking convents,' Lukas said, lowering himself behind the steering-wheel of the jet-black Olds.

Abi lit a cigarette and climbed in. 'I bet it does.'

As the car sped away, screeching as the wheels moved to fast for road-purchase, Abi howled out of the window. And in the back seat, a mute boy said a little prayer for the creatures of the convent that lay, brutalised, in their wake.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The monolithic structures of three steel cranes towered over them. They hadn't moved in a long time; their operators either infected or mauled beyond recognition. It always frightened Marla to stand so close to something so big. She had an unnatural feeling, as if the gargantuan objects would suddenly sprout legs and chase after her. Wind-farms were her worst nightmare, and she tried her hardest to avoid them, if she could. Such things didn't need to fill the skyline, to take up space on the shore.