Among the Living (31 page)

I can’t see what happens to the kid after that as the others surround them. There is screaming as the group tries to pull the guy off their companion. This is all starting to remind me of the video we watched yesterday of the attack and the crowd’s response. One of the men reels back from the group with a long gash across his face.

They are a good fifty feet away, and I take a step forward as if my feet have a mind of their own, then Erin is there to grab my hand and pull me back. I look at her face, which is a picture of misery as she watches the men and women fight.

A couple of guards peel away from their group and approach with rifles pointed down. They are large black machine guns—I’m guessing M-16s. One of the tourists lets out a real scream and falls away with blood pumping out of a stump of his arm. The rest of the limb is in the hands of an attacker, who is chewing on it, his face contorted with insanity. He snarls and moans as he eats. There are maybe fifteen or twenty spectators on the road, staring and pointing. Then one of them screams, and suddenly there is a stampede as the onlookers realize what they are seeing.

This isn’t a staged performance! This is real.

The kid jumps off his victim, flies back as if kicked and lands on his back with a thud but continues to clutch the length of arm, blood trailing from it to splatter his shirt, his face, and the road. That kick was hard enough to break bones, and the man behind the boot is an enormous black soldier.

To my surprise, the kid leaps off the ground from a crouch and is on the other Guard in a half-heartbeat. The guy thrashes back, falls under the attack, and then his hands pummel the crazed man.

“It’s one of them!” the soldier screams, and all guns are suddenly pointed at them both.

“No,” I mutter to myself over and over. This can’t be happening.

“No,” Erin echoes my thoughts in a loud, high gasp of shock.

“NO!” screams the guy who is being attacked.

The Guard lashes out his foot in a front kick that connects with the kid’s head, flinging him to the ground. He aims his machine gun, and it spits three or four times. The attacker is driven into the concrete, then snaps up as each bullet punches into his head. Then he is still, and so is every onlooker.

A fresh scream sets off a slow exodus as the pedestrians watching the scene start backing away. I’m rooted in place, horrified and angry. The Guard who was attacked staggers to his feet. He holds his neck, hands pressed to the side where a geyser of blood squirts from a ragged tear. The Guard who just executed the attacker looks over his shoulder as if for guidance, face a mask of horror. I want to hate this man, this killer, with every fiber of my being, but the agonized look draws me up short.

He turns back to his companion, who has dropped to his knees, one hand on the ground, the other held out before him as if begging for a coin from a passerby. The black Guard shakes his head back and forth, over and over, then raises his gun and shoots the guy in the back of the head. He falls forward and is still.

The attacker’s companion has been making a beeline for the Army guys, one hand at his side, the other clutched and crooked, his hand a claw. He has a look of dread on his face, and then I see his eyes, which are blood red. Not bloodshot—they are completely red without even a hint of white.

That’s when two of the National Guard draw aim and blow the man’s head off his shoulders.

Then the stampede starts.

First a couple of bystanders turn and walk away swiftly. One man has two little ones in tow. He grabs one and presses the young boy’s head to his thigh as he draws away from the crowd with a brisk stride. A threesome of black-clad teens stare in disbelief. One has her black-lined lips open in an O while her friends drag her away even as she stares back over her shoulder.

Erin tugs at me until I turn to look at her. “We need to stay a little bit longer,” I tell her. “The paper … We are small, but this story is huge and I don’t see any news cameras here. Where the hell is the media?” I have to raise my voice for the last as the helicopter with the machine guns hanging out the side closes in on us again. The whump whump whump is so intense at this range that I can feel the ground pulsing under the gust from the blades. The wind picks up dust and detritus and flings it in every direction. I have to squint and cover my eyes with one hand so I’m not blinded by an abandoned beer can or empty Big Gulp cup.

A few of the National Guardsmen break away from the rest and approach the tourist group. The tourists move together, but they are in shambles. One holds his hand to his head to stop a flow of blood. He looks confused and falls to his knees as if dizzy.

One of the girls wears a short, bright yellow skirt. She has lost a pump, so she half-walks, half-stumbles toward a tall Guard, who motions for her to stand back.

Then she moves so fast that it seems like a blur as her legs flash, yellow buzzes across the pavement and she slams into the guard like a Mack truck. If she weighs ninety-eight pounds, I’d be surprised, yet she takes him off his feet with the skill of a linebacker. The impact should have thrown her, but she holds onto his head in a death grip. She moves like a banshee. I have never seen anything like it. She is crazy, arms flailing as she tears into his face with her fingers. She punctures his eyes, then squashes one in her hand as she digs it out and tries to eat it.

The guy thrashes beneath her, punches, drives his knee into her, and each blow is like hitting a tiny brick wall for all the good it does. She ignores his struggles, leans in and rips part of his face off with her teeth. With his cheek a ruin, one eye blinded, one gone altogether, the man howls like the damned. His pain is cut short, however, when gunfire ripples out from the soldiers. Suddenly it is a bloodbath as the people in the small group are all gunned down. Horror grips me as Erin’s hand tightens on mine so hard that it hurts. I can’t even look at her. I want to shield her from what we are seeing, but I can’t even hide my own eyes.

People turn and run away from the shots. They crowd Denny Avenue by the hundreds, all running together in an all-out panic. In hot pursuit are more of the things.

I’ve seen more than enough. I tug Erin, and we run north along the street until we reach another roadblock, this one much more orderly. A man in uniform with a big bullhorn calls out orders to the approaching people, telling them that if they are okay they should raise their hands or find some way to show that they are not infected. Some peel off from the crowd and run in different directions. Some run past the line. People bob and weave around us as if we are on a tiny island. Then I raise my hands above my head and run forward. Erin does the same, and we make it past the line.

A gun opens up, and one of the infected—at least I hope she is—falls backward, feet swept out from under her as a shot takes off most of her head. I am horrified when I realize it is a young girl, probably no more than thirteen. There is mass panic as more shots erupt along the line. A Humvee pushes its way over sidewalks, between cars and people.

“We should go back to my condo!” Erin yells in my ear. I grasp her hand in mine, turn and nod.

“We never should have left. I’m sorry, Erin.”

“Don’t be. There’s no way we could have seen this coming. We should get back and see what the media is saying now that this is out in the open,” she yells as we jog away from the nightmare. I wonder if we can somehow cut back across an alley and angle back to her place. More guns open up, and it is very confusing for a few minutes as blood sprays from bodies, people dive for cover, families huddle and hold each other. The Humvee, which is less than thirty feet from me, opens fire, and I feel like I am inside a dryer as the sounds rattle and ricochet around my head. My ears start ringing at once. I slap my hands over them, but it barely helps.

There are more of the things everywhere, an army of people who are easy to pick out, as they move more slowly and most have blood on their clothing, hair, and faces. It’s like they are drunk or drugged. They stumble, stagger, some fall and move on all fours. A few crawl with legs stretched behind them like a parade of the damned chasing a slow-moving river of refugees.

One takes the initiative and moves, fast. He is an old man with a gray ball cap on his head. Even at a distance I can see the age spots on his craggy face. He looks like he should be in a wheelchair, but he moves like a field runner.

He overtakes a woman with brown hair so long that it sweeps the line of her waist. She wears a Beatles shirt that says All you need is love. The man pounces—that is the only way to describe it. One second he is loping along; the next he is airborne and then on her back. She crashes to the ground, arms outstretched to stop her fall. She cries out in pain as they slam to the ground and roll across the unforgiving asphalt.

Then the man attacks her, hands striking. Tearing. Her hair comes out in bloody clumps that he tosses aside. He tears at her clothes until the white skin of her back is exposed, bra pulled up and away as she flails in torment. She screams for help, and someone tries to pull the crazy old man off of her. Her savior is a fit-looking guy around my age. He looks behind himself just long enough to see the swarm of infected bearing down on him, and his screams join hers.

I’m shaking so badly that I want to throw up. I am beyond furious. I have rarely wanted to hurt another person, but right now if I had one of the soldier’s machine guns and knew how to use it, I would open up on the attackers.

The refugees are closing in. They are at twenty feet, and some are running. The National Guard has set up a roadblock with the wooden slats that warn of danger, but they will be precious little defense against the oncoming horde.

Some Guards raise guns; others stand on top of cars and aim at the … at the monsters. There is no other way to describe them. They aren’t people to me anymore, not after what I have seen.

I feel real dread, a deep terror when I realize that the first innocents attacked are coming to their feet with the same blood-red eyes, the same hollow look and the same hunger for flesh. An Asian girl snatches a child from a running woman and bites into its back. The little girl, who can’t be more than four, howls as she is torn apart. Part of the attacker’s intestines are hanging out of her stomach, and blood sprays back and forth with the sway of her guts as she moves.

It is too much, and instead of thinking about how much it turns my stomach, I lean over, hands on my knees, and throw up.

Blood stains the street around the two corpses. The two men who gunned them down shoulder their weapons and move back to their line. The younger one glances back, and Kate is pretty sure she can see fear and regret in his eyes. He meets her gaze and looks away quickly.

“I can’t believe what I just saw. I need to get down there and put some of this shit on video and get it on the web. People need to see what’s happening here.” Bob stares at the bodies.

“No kidding.”

“I’m going to get dressed and head out there.”

“Me too. Meet me in the hallway in a couple of minutes.” She is freaked out by what she just saw, not the shooting or the blood, but the way they executed the pair. She is all too familiar with death, but that was just wrong. Or was it? What if the stuff about a virus isn’t bullshit? What if they really need to put down the infected, the deaders? What if they all need to be shot like rabid dogs? the other whispers.

She is back in her apartment in a flash. She dresses quickly: panties and loose jeans that won’t rub on her sore backside too much. She slips into a tan bra and a white tank top. She slides on a jean jacket even though it is warm. She dumps her purse on the bed and drags a larger beige bag out of the closet. It is covered in Sub Pop stickers with obscure band names. She dumps out the crap in it. Old clothes, some makeup—colors she hasn’t worn in a year (mostly black and bright reds from her semi-goth days), since back when she couldn’t decide who she wanted to be. Back before she became Kate the Killer.

She stuffs in a change of underwear, an extra bra; she grabs a t-shirt and a thicker shirt just in case. Another pair of jeans that she finds in a heap on the floor, not exactly clean, but she will deal with that later.

She takes money from a hiding spot under her nightstand. She has to turn the thing over and peel the tape off an envelope that is folded over several times. It contains her life savings. She has always suspected that she would one day end up under investigation for her nocturnal activities, and this is her escape plan, pitiful though it is.

There are ten crisp hundred-dollar bills and ten twenties. More and it would be too much to hide, less and she wouldn’t make it a week. She divides the money into several piles and hastily stuffs it into her jeans pockets.

She puts the bag over her shoulder, grabs a one-liter bottle of water from her fridge and stuffs it in the bag, jamming it down among the clothing. She thinks of Bob and grabs one for him as well—no telling how long they will be gone.

Her swords go under one arm. Wrapped in cloth, they look long and bulky, but she isn’t going out there without them. She skids into the hallway, almost running into Bob, who is stuffing the big pistol in the back of his pants. He tugs his Hawaiian-print t-shirt out and lets it fall free to hide the butt of the pistol.

“Should have bought a holster for this thing, it’s heavy as a bowling ball,” he mutters.