The Dead Won't Die (8 page)

Jacob didn't see the round hit the side of the man's head. He was too punch-drunk for that. One minute, he was looking up through a bloody screen at a steady roll of punches, and the next he was looking at a headless corpse, the man's fists going slack.

The man rolled off of him, landing in a clumsy heap on the floor. Through a haze of blood, Jacob looked up to see Kelly holding one of the pistols with both hands.

She was shaking.

“Jacob?” she said.

He groaned. He lifted a hand to her, but it fell to the floor. He couldn't stand up. His head was reeling, his vision blurry.

She tossed the pistol aside and knelt down next to him.

“No,” he said. “Keep the pistol.”

“Jacob, I hate guns. I can't.”

“Might need it,” he said.

“Jacob? Jacob, stay with me.”

“I'm okay,” he said. He tried to stand, but his arms felt like dead weight and he couldn't even feel his legs.

“Let me help you,” Kelly said. She ducked under his arm, and somehow managed to lift him. “Jacob, can you put any weight on your feet? I can't carry you like this.”

“Trying,” he said.

She stiffened. “Oh crap. Somebody's coming.”

Right on cue, he heard the sound of running footfalls coming from around the corner.

“Gun,” he said. “Get your . . . gun up.”

“Jacob, I can't do that again.”

In his mind he formed the words:
Just do it. Don't think. Just pull the trigger.
But he couldn't speak the words. His mouth was a mealy mess, and he was still zoning in and out of consciousness. It took all the strength he had just to stand.

“They're coming,” Kelly said.

“Shoot.”

But it was Chelsea who came around the corner, the notebooks tucked under her arms like a student bringing home a satchel of books. She let out a whimper of surprise when she saw the gun pointed at her face.

Kelly lowered her weapon. “Oh God.”

Only then did Chelsea seem to notice the bodies on the floor, the blood spattered all over the ceiling, all over the walls, all over Jacob's face.

“What happened?” she said.

Jacob and Kelly said nothing. They just looked at each other, both of them still in shock.

“Are you guys okay?”

Kelly nodded. “You said you knew how to get us out of here.”

Chelsea pointed toward the nose of a blocky-looking freighter visible through the main corridor's windows.

“That way,” she said. “That's our ticket right there.”

C
HAPTER
7

Flying wasn't that bad, Jacob decided. Takeoff had been a little rough. The freighter had climbed to altitude in a rush that had pressed him against the wall and set his heart racing. He hadn't been able to clear his ears. Chelsea showed them how to hold their nose and blow, forcing their ears to pop, but Jacob couldn't do it. He'd taken a pretty hard beating back at Scholes Field that had left his eyes almost completely swollen shut, his mouth a pulpy, bloody mess, and his nose filled with drying blood. It was probably broken. It hurt like it was broken. Still, despite his discomfort, the flight hadn't been that bad. At least his nerves had settled to the point he didn't need to vomit.

But going down was bad.

Really bad.

First, the quiet was broken with an alarm, three short bursts from a siren, and before Jacob had a chance to ask what it was, the bottom dropped out from under him. His stomach rose into his throat. He groped at the walls, at the floor, desperate for something to hold on to, but there was nothing.

“What's happening?” he said. He heard the fear rising in his voice, but he couldn't hold it in check.

Kelly grabbed his hand.

He squeezed back.

The two of them huddled together, their backs pressed flat against the wall, both too scared to breathe.

“Chelsea, what's happening?” Jacob said again. His voice was cracking, but he was past caring.

“Settle down,” Chelsea said, sounding thoroughly bored. “We're on final approach. We'll be landing inside of a minute.”

Kelly squeezed Jacob's hand hard, but when he looked at her, she wasn't looking at him. She wasn't looking at anything. She had her head back, eyes shut tight. He couldn't tell if she was trembling, or if she was just being jostled by the buffeting of the aircraft. But he was trembling. No doubt about that.

Kelly and Chelsea had been forced to carry him in order to get him onboard. He'd barely been conscious. They'd led him down into the freighter's hold and propped him up against the wall, in the corner. Kelly sat down next to him, but Chelsea had positioned herself several feet away from them, near the stairs. At first Jacob thought it was because she didn't want to answer any more of their questions, but he could see plain enough why she'd done it now. She was holding on to the railings, nice and secure, not getting jostled around at all, like she knew this would happen.

“Is it always like this?” Jacob asked.

“Is what always like this?”

“Landing.”

“No,” Chelsea said. “This is supposed to be an unmanned freighter. If there were people onboard, the aircraft would be coming down in a soft landing. But, right now, with El Paso on lockdown, they don't have the time for soft landings. Don't worry, we'll be fine.”

“Great,” he said. He glanced again at Kelly, her breaths coming fast and shallow, eyes still shut tight, and squeezed her hand.

The aircraft shuddered. There hadn't been any sound through most of the flight. He'd heard a low muffled roar as they took off, but that had faded into the background once they made altitude. Now he was hearing it again, only this time, there was a high-pitched whining sound behind the roar.

“What is that?”

“The morphic field reactor,” Chelsea said. “Would you please relax? We're fine. We're almost on the ground.”

The aircraft shook again, and then went still. No falling, no sense of movement. The freighter hung in the air, then gently touched down with a soft bump.

Chelsea jumped to her feet. “See? What'd I tell you? Nothing to it.”

She started to climb the stairs toward the exit.

“Hey,” Kelly said. She stood up, balanced on unsteady legs. “Where are you going?”

“To find my aunt Miriam.”

“Just like that?” Kelly asked. “We're just going to walk right out of here and head to your Aunt Miriam's place?”

“Yeah. Why not?”

“Why . . . ?” Kelly glanced at Jacob incredulously. “Chelsea, are you serious? This city is on lockdown. How are we supposed to walk across a city on lockdown? Especially when we're about to be overrun by the biggest herd of zombies on the planet?”

“We're not going to be walking through the city. I told you, we'll take the tunnels.”

“The tunnels?”

Chelsea stepped off the stairs. “Really? I told you, there's a whole network of tunnels underneath El Paso. The city was chosen as our construction yards because of that. Anytime there's a lockdown, everybody goes underground. It happens all the time.”

“And you know this how?” Jacob asked.

“My aunt Miriam,” Chelsea said. “She's like an expert on it or something.”

Jacob grunted. “What do you mean,
or something
?”

“I mean, it's like her hobby. She told me all about it last time I was here.”

“That was seven years ago,” Jacob said. “You were ten.”

“I remember it just fine.”

“You remember this place well enough to get us to her lab? Is that really what you're telling us?”

“There'll be signs. There's a whole rail system. It'll take us anywhere we need to go. Honestly, what is the big deal?”

“The big deal is, I don't want to get killed,” Jacob said. He hooked his thumb at Kelly. “I don't want her to get killed. We've been with you for less than a day, Chelsea, and so far we've almost been killed twice. Now, I'm sorry if this upsets you, but we need a fucking plan.”

“I have a plan,” Chelsea said.

“Which is exactly what?”

Chelsea looked from Jacob to Kelly. Her anger seemed to ebb, replaced by uncertainty. “There are maps at all the rail stations,” she said. “We just follow the maps.”

Jacob waved her off and turned away in frustration.

Kelly let him go. She climbed the stairs and took Chelsea's hands in hers. “Look, Chelsea, you haven't thought this through, and that scares the hell out of us. We need to have a plan.”

“You want a plan?” Jacob said. “We have to figure out a way to get back home. We can't stay here. Staying here is stupid. She's going to get us all killed.”

“I will not!” Chelsea said. “I know the way.”

“Bullshit,” Jacob said, wheeling around to face her. “You don't know shit. I've followed you halfway across the fucking continent because I didn't have any choice, but now I've got a choice. You hear me? I have a fucking choice. And I say you're full of shit. You're a goddamn ignorant teenager without the common sense God put in the ass end of a goat, and I for one have no intention of getting myself killed because your people are fucking lunatics.”

“My people?”

“You heard me. Your fucking people.”

“My fucking people don't kill their best friends,” Chelsea said.

That stopped Jacob cold. “Who the fuck do you think you are? Nick was my best friend. He was my friend!”

“And you fucking shot him in the face, you bastard!”

Chelsea turned away. He could hear her sobbing.

“He was my friend,” Jacob said to Kelly. “She has no right.”

“Jacob,” she said, whispering. “Please. This isn't helping.”

“But what fucking right does she have? Look, you can coddle her all you want, but this dumb kid is going to get us killed, and Kelly, I can't do that again. I can't bear that kind of responsibility again. I already hurt enough.”

“You're not the only one hurting.”

“I know that,” he said. “Don't you think I know that? I just can't be the one who leads us into death. Not again.”

“No one is asking you to lead, Jacob.”

Kelly turned away before he could answer her, which was probably just as well. He was totally lost, and he always managed to say the stupidest things when he was lost. It was what had ended what they had seventeen years earlier, and he couldn't go through that again, either.

“Chelsea,” Kelly said, “can you come down here, sweetie? We need to figure this out.”

“There's nothing to figure out,” Chelsea said. She charged down the stairs. “Why can't you two hear what I'm saying? There's nothing to figure out. I'm going to take these notebooks to my aunt Miriam, and she's going to figure out how to save my father's name.”

“But you don't even know whether your aunt will help you,” Kelly said.

“She has to. She has to, don't you see? She has to.”

“Chelsea, please, don't shriek at me.”

“I'm not shrieking!”

Chelsea stopped there. Kelly tried to put a hand on her arm, but Chelsea pushed her away.

“Don't you see? She has to help. If she doesn't, I've got nowhere else to go. I'll be ruined. She has to help.”

Kelly frowned. “What do you mean, you'll be ruined? I thought you said you had your father's fortune to fall back on.”

Chelsea was crying, not even trying to hold back the tears. “I lied, okay? Are you happy with that? I lied. They've locked up my father's accounts and seized the money. I got a few thousand BCs out of the bank before it happened, but not enough to live on. They destroyed my father's name, and now they've left me with nothing.”

Kelly looked confused. “But, Chelsea, why would you lie about something like that?”

“Because I didn't think you'd help me otherwise.”

Kelly glanced back at Jacob for just a second, and in that moment he saw so much of the girl he'd known way back in their younger years. He saw her kindness, and her ability to adapt, to forgive, to make bridges out of blasted roads. It was strange, he thought, how he'd been forced to travel halfway across the continent, and across two decades, to see that girl again. But that was the way of things, wasn't it? You had to go far afield to remember where you lived.

Kelly went after Chelsea. “Oh sweetie,” she said. “Come here.”

But Jacob had had enough of the touchy-feely crap, and he didn't trust himself to speak again. Not without starting up the screaming match all over again. He went to the rear of the compartment and sulked. Let the two of them work their shit out, if they could.

He doubted it, though.

In the meantime, he'd sit in the dark and figure out how in the hell they were going to get back home. Texas was eight hundred miles across from border to border. That meant eight hundred miles, on foot, while fighting their way through the Great Texas Herd.

Wasn't going to happen.

And they couldn't just go to the authorities. The authorities were the ones looking to kill them.

Which left—

The door at the top of the stairs hissed open, breaking his thoughts off clean. A man appeared there, wearing yellow overalls with blue sleeves and a blue hard hat. He was holding a wrench in his hand, and looking like he had every intention of using it to bash somebody's head in.

“What's going on in here?” he demanded.

Kelly and Chelsea put their hands up and started backing down the stairs.

“What are you doing in here?” the man said. “Who are you people?”

Goddammit, Jacob thought. Was this really how it was going to be? Was this really how his luck was going to run?

He pulled one of the pistols from behind his back and hustled toward the stairs. The man was still coming down the stairs, the wrench held low.

“Who the hell are—”

He didn't finish the rest of his sentence. Jacob stepped between the two women and pointed the pistol right between the man's eyes.

The man made a startled, strangled sound.

“You don't have to die today,” Jacob said. “But I will kill you if you don't cooperate.”

The man nodded.

“Good. Drop the wrench.”

The man tossed it away.

“Where are your keys?”

“Keys?” the man said. He looked genuinely confused.

“To get underground. This place is on lockdown. Where are your keys to get underground?”

Real terror had crept into the man's voice now. “I don't have any keys!”

Jacob pressed the barrel of the weapon right between the man's eyes. “I am not playing with you. Give me your keys now!”

“I don't have any keys,” the man said again.

“Jacob, wait!”

It was Chelsea. “How do the doors open?” she asked. “Do they key off your Life Alert?”

The man nodded.

“Then take us to the doors.”

“Please,” the man said. “I have a family.”

Jacob pushed Chelsea out of the way and stuck his weapon back in the man's face. “Then unless you want to be sent back to them in a bucket, I suggest you get your ass back out that door and take us underground.”

“Okay,” the man said. “It's this way.”

They followed the man outside. Hot desert air hit them in the face, carrying with it the smell of dust and a faint, lingering reek of decay. The evening sun was low over the buildings of downtown, coloring them with shadows. In the far distance, a line of black mountains shouldered up against the sky.

“Lead on,” Jacob said.

“Okay,” the man said.

They were on the ground level of a large port. Their freighter had docked at what looked to Jacob to be a huge open-air hangar. There were a dozen more freighters like the one they'd just climbed out of sitting at stalls up and down the rows. He saw trucks and robots parked in stalls in the center of the hangar, but none of them were moving. Must be parked for lockdown, he thought. The zombies were attracted by movement, even that of machines.