Among the Living (37 page)

“It was insane. And why don’t they feel pain? It’s like they’re immune to it. Some of them were missing body parts, but they kept coming in the face of all those guns. I saw one of them dragging crushed legs behind him. And what about that crazy girl with the sword? I hope I never run into her in a dark alley.”

I pause as I try to think of something to say, but all that comes out is, “She was amazing.”

Erin stares at me for a minute as if I am insane. She doesn’t speak, so I ask her if she wants something to drink.

“God, an ice-cold Coke would be great.”

“Diet?”

“One day, Mike, and you already think I need diet soda.”

“I didn’t mean ... oh, very funny. Unleaded it is.” I’m glad to see she is keeping her sense of humor with me after all the horror we have witnessed today. I hope I am able to do the same. I am learning that Erin has depths I would never have imagined.

“Good. And none of that sugar-free crap. I need my fix.”

“Liquid sugar coming right up.” This draws a grin. I feel much better with our banter restored. Say one thing for Erin and me, we are always willing to tease each other for a cheap laugh. Our sense of humor is remarkably similar.

I smile and peck her on the cheek then go to fetch my love a drink.

The house isn’t half as creepy in the light of day. Sunshine streams in through curtained windows. Most of the draperies were closed, but Les went around and tugged them back. Last night was terrifying, and he still feels a sense of fear as he ascends the stairs, but he has scoped out the entire house, so there is no reason to screw around looking for stuff. He knows exactly what he needs.

He goes straight to the room with John’s body, tears open the door and is immediately assaulted by the smell of all the potpourri lying in piles around his corpse. Chunks of wood, flowers, buds of plants and even some seashells make up a wide variety of colors—red, blue, fuchsia, pink. If it’s a girl color, it is on the floor.

The flowery crap barely stifles the stench of John’s dead and rotting body. There has to be something about the virus that adds to the foulness. He can’t imagine that anyone smells this bad after being dead for just one night.

He drops to his knees and pats down John’s jeans with his fingertips as if afraid he will get burned. John is staring straight at the ceiling with one eye; the other is missing (having been replaced with a bulging bullet hole), and the socket is puckered and bloodless, as if cauterized.

He pokes around while staring at a brown spot on the ceiling. After a second, he realizes it is probably dried blood. The closet is a horror, but worst of all, John’s pockets are empty.

He stands up and closes John’s tomb.

He makes a cursory search of the bedrooms, opening anything that is closed—drawers, jewelry boxes, closets. He runs back downstairs, where Angela is in the process of turning the house upside down. There is a loud bang at the sliding glass door, but they both try to ignore it.

“Nothing?” he asks.

“Not a damn thing. Well, I found a flashlight in one of the bottom drawers,” she shows him with a beam of white light. How do they have so many of these things and he doesn’t even have one?

“Cool, may come in handy. Did you find her purse?”

“I didn’t see it anywhere.”

“Ah hell, the keys have to be here somewhere.”

He scans the wall for any of those fancy key hook things that the affluent think to buy. Not Les, though; he prefers to hunt for his keys on a daily basis. He goes through the drawers in the kitchen and finally looks for any bowls in the hallway. He pats down Jane/Justine’s body and is horrified when his hands wander across her chest and he thinks about feeling her up. Deader tits, nothing like live ones. He starts laughing at his own joke, which earns a strange look from Angela as she turns over the cushions on the couch. Each times she tugs one out, it sounds like a loud fart as the leather slides together.

He risks a peek though the sliding glass door, and now there are a lot of them. They mill about, but the two that chased them inside are still walking into the door over and over. One meets Lester’s eyes with his blood-red ones, and his mouth opens in a big, bloody O that makes Lester shudder. He gives the deader the finger and slides the curtains shut again. The other one sees the movement and starts banging his head against the glass in frustration. He howls, and others join him, pounding on the door.

“We gotta go, babe. Those goddamn things are going to get inside.”

He has another brilliant idea, but he is afraid she will freak out when she hears it. He dashes to the front of the house and looks outside. There are a few in the street, but they are milling around in the opposite direction of the house. If he can run fast enough, he may be able to get around the side of the house, grab some of their gear and make it back.

Before Angela can freak out, he puts his insane plan in action. First he checks the locks to make sure he won’t get stuck outside, because that would be a real shame. She would probably leave him out there for being a dumbass. He opens the door as quietly as possible, checks either side of the house, lets out a long, heavy sigh, wishing he had a double shot of tequila for courage, and then bolts for it.

He runs like his ass is on fire. Around the house, slamming his shoulder into the corner as he does. Pain nearly blinds him, and he almost crashes over a water hose coiled on the ground. Vaults over that, comes down hard, flat-footed, and then he has the prize. The gun and bags are lying in a heap. He grabs the black bag and the purse and slips the AR-15 over his shoulder. He snatches up the first box he sees, not even sure if it has ammo in it, and knows his time is up because one of the deaders has taken notice of him. He would love to bring the gun up and shoot a couple in the head. He is pretty sure that would be monumentally stupid, considering the fact that gas is pouring out of the busted pipe in a steady leak that sounds like a tea kettle. He heard once that they added stuff to the gas to make it smell. That way if there is a leak, it will be easy to detect. So the entire area reeks like a pack of dogs stopped by and took a massive shit in the yard. He thinks that maybe he should be holding his breath.

Too late for that now. He runs back around the side of the house with the box clanging, almost falling over the same hose. He clears it and comes down on his other foot, which sends agony coursing up his leg thanks to the giant splinter. Brilliant, Les, think you could take the thing out before the next time you try to be a hero? Every step is agony as the wood bites deeper and deeper.

He rounds the house full tilt and runs past the garage again, but he has caught the attention of the other deaders on the street. One of them howls, which sounds to Lester like it is calling for his blood. They swarm into the yard a couple of layers thick. A ragged band of refugees dressed in the remains of clothes not torn off by the deaders that tried to make meals of them. Fucking heat or not, if I get out of here, I’m dressing in thick leather. See them bite through that shit. He jumps the two steps of the porch. Screams when he lands on his bad foot, again, and almost drops the box he is carrying. Manages to hang on, barely, because he crashes into the door with it. His hand slips on the doorknob as he tries to turn it, slides off because it is wet with sweat. He tries it again, with a grip this time, and opens the door just as one of the deaders reaches the first step. He slams the door in the thing’s face. A horrid face that is covered in fresh blood, thicker than the gore on the fucker that chased them out of the back yard.

Angela comes into the hallway and stares at him as if he is insane. She looks like she wants to throw something at him, and he can’t really blame her. What he just did was stupid; if he had been captured, they both would have been done for.

He pants, the last of his energy used up. He leans over, hands on knees, and takes shallow breaths. They wheeze in and out of his lungs, causing a crushing pain in his chest.

“Oh God, Les, what the hell did you just do? What the fuck did you do?”

“We needed some stuff, babe, a gun at least.”

“But you didn’t say anything. You just ran off. I thought you were leaving me.” And she bursts into tears.

“I wouldn’t do that. Jesus, Angela, what kind of an asshole do you think I am?”

“Just don’t do anything like that again! Promise me!”

“Fine. I promise I will warn you next time I’m about to run off and do something that fucking stupid.” His voice drips sarcasm. She stands with her arms crossed under her breasts as tears run down her cheek. He takes the step that separates them and folds her in a firm embrace. He holds her tightly as she shakes against him. She pounds on his back once with her fist, but he doesn’t feel it, since the piece of wood buried in his leg is a constant drone of pain. He breaks away and promises her once more that he won’t leave her like that again. She seems mollified and even kisses him on the cheek.

He drops to his knees and unzips his black bag. It’s small, about the size of a lady’s handbag, and much like that object, contains goodies, things without which he won’t leave home now that the world has gone to hell. While he is down there, he yanks his pant leg up and studies the piece of wood stuck there.

“FUCKING CHRIST!” he screams as he tears it out. Blood dribbles out of the wound, and he would really like to get a bandage on it. Putting the pain aside is hard when his entire body is one big mass of hurt.

He pulls out a small box of .38 shells and tosses them aside. Lot of good that will do with the gun outside. He takes out a smaller box of Glock shells and tosses them as well. There is a half-ounce of pot, a small baggie of coke, some X, a few hits of meth—not that he does meth, it’s for that ‘just in case’ scenario. Just in case he needs to stay up all night cleaning shit. Just in case he needs to trade it for something more important … like lobotomy tools, because he would have to be fucking nuts to get hooked on that crap.

The real prize is a genuine Army-issue fragmentation grenade. The latter came from a deal with some soldiers from Fort Lewis. At first they had tried to trade him some night vision goggles, but he was worried they would be too traceable if he ever tried to unload them. A grenade, though, who has one of those? So every once in a while, he hauled the thing out when his buddies came over, and they would toss it back and forth to freak out Angela.

He puts everything back in the bag and straps it over his shoulder, then checks the load on the AR-15. There are about fifteen bullets, and if it comes down to shooting their way out, they are fucked. Of course, they have been fucked since the bastards got into the house.

“Keys. We need those damn keys.” As if to punctuate his statement, the deaders start banging on the sliding glass door again. “Maybe they’re on the garage wall.”

He stands, grabs Angela by the hand and pulls her along to the garage door. He has the rifle in his other hand and is ready to draw it if one of them so much as looks at him wrong.

Les takes a deep breath and pulls the garage door open, fully expecting the space beyond to be full of mindless things howling for his blood. Weariness drags at his arms as he yanks the gun up to his shoulder and takes aim into the darkness. He clicks the flashlight on with his other hand, holding the gun awkwardly, and pans them around. In the back of his mind, he is pretty fucking sure no deaders snuck over here in the middle of the night. Not even the cat is in here anymore.

There are shapes in the dim light, but none of them moves. Faint rays stream in from the edges of the twin metal garage doors, drifting lines of yellow that penetrate the darkness. It is still murky, but at least he can see better in the daytime.

Boxes are stacked up on one side just opposite the expensive SUV. The rest of the space appears remarkably clean except for the mess he made the night before while going though the shelves. Sorry John, pardon the mess. I’ll clean it up once I come back with a shovel to bury your ass.

As if reading his thoughts, the deaders manage to figure out how flimsy their defense is. The glass door shatters, and two of them fall into the room. The same pair that chased them into the house from the back yard come scrambling to their feet. He rushes into the garage with Angela hot on his heels. No time to get a shot off now. Besides, Angela would be in the line of fire.

The two get to the garage door just as it is about to slam shut. Lester is first. He takes the steps like a pro, but Angela doesn’t expect to have to run down a pair of stairs and stumbles. One of the things is on her tail and fares no better.

The creature reaches for her as she stumbles into Les, but she reaches the bottom of the little landing without breaking her ankle. Lester nearly goes down in a heap as she collides with him, but he manages to stay upright with her pressed against his body.

They stumble forward into the back of the car, and his face smacks into the back window hard enough for him to see stars. His front teeth slash into his upper lip, tearing the flesh and drawing blood. He gets out one “fuck” as blood floods his mouth. He staggers around the side of the car and heads for the door. He grabs the handle and is surprised when something in this whole fucked-up day goes right and it opens.

“IN, ANGIE, GET IN!” he screams, hoping she is heading for the other side.