Dead South Rising (Book 2): Death Row (21 page)

“Doubt it. Randy helped wrangle ‘em. I seriously doubt he’d go through all that trouble risking life and limb just to let them all go again.”

“Jessica? She is missing.”

David turned his eye to the old man, the words penetrating, cutting. Actually, Jessica freeing the captive horde made sense. She was upset, livid, probably thinking irrationally. He’d known her to be spontaneous, to act impulsively. Just like himself. Perhaps after their very vocal and heated disagreement earlier that afternoon, she’d taken it upon herself to do what she viewed was the right thing. He hadn’t attended any of the council meetings, but he believed that Jess and Luz bumped heads pretty regularly.

The last part of Gabe’s statement seriously bothered him, though.
 

Missing. She
is
missing.

Jessica
was
missing. Nowhere to be found. Maybe she’d been caught turning out the shufflers, and Luz had ordered her locked up, too. Just like the good doctor had locked up him and Gabe. But they simply didn’t have the time, the resources, to go from door to door. Besides, eventually, they’d find someone—or something—they didn’t want to find. He thought of Roy and his undead son.

“Now or never,” Gabe said.

David nodded. “Just like we talked about the other day, with an added twist. And no duct tape jumpsuit, this time.”

“No time for that. Just watch yourself. Don’t get bit, okay?”

“Sure,” David said. He tugged his pistol from his hip, held it out to the Janitor. “Here. You may need this.”

Gabriel showed his palm to the younger man. Smiling, he reached down to his ankle, lifting the jumpsuit leg. When he straightened again, he held a small snub-nose revolver in his hand.

“I didn’t know you were armed. Hell, you were carrying the whole time Luz was locking you up?”

He winked at David. “Choose your battles.”

David nodded. “Alright then. Let’s do this.”

* * *

The two men descended the stairs, stepped onto the shady concrete lot behind Alamo Assisted Living. They stood in the building’s massive shadow, which extended well past the fence and into the field. Shufflers by the gate took immediate notice of their presence. Rotten tongues licked at the breeze, teased with the taste of life.

It was a strange time to ponder, what with getting ready to flatten the lot of them, but David wondered how much of their drive was by smell, sight, and sound. Hell, maybe the shufflers could truly taste the living on the wind, the sense heightened by the demise of the others. With their puss-filled eyes and slowly decaying eardrums—rotting sinuses—he suspected the undead were pushed and punished by pure, unabated evil. What else could explain it? Well, he was about to unleash a bit of his own evil. Fight a little fire with fire… sort of.

Reaching into his pocket, David wrestled out the keys to the Dodge, jingled them in front of Gabriel. The Janitor held out his palm, and David let them drop into his hand. It was symbolic, fitting, seeing a keyring in the Janitor’s grasp again. What’s a custodian without keys?

“Need me to give you a boost?” asked David.

The Janitor shook his head, a smile peeking from beneath his push broom mustache. “Used to ride horses. I can haul my lanky ass up into the cab.”

Of course you did and of course you can.

Gabriel reciprocated. “You need me to hoist you into the bed?”

David actually returned the smile. “Think I’m good.”

Dipping his chin at David’s still-wrapped hand, he said, “You sure?
 
I know you had a couple few days to heal up some, but you still look pretty banged up.”

“I’m better. I can manage.”

I have to.

The old man pulled the driver side door open, tossed in the keys and his pistol, then reached into his back pocket, producing a plastic green tin. He pinched a brown wad, then tucked it between this cheek and gums. He held the snuff to David, who politely declined. Sliding the container back into his pocket, he said, “Gotta do this right, ya know?”

“Of course.” David eyed the rolling gate, noting the absence of a padlock. “Think it’s locked?” He tossed his gym bag into the truck’s towering cab.

“Don’t matter. Too many of them damn things congregating already. Don’t wanna risk getting bit trying to get the truck out.”

David licked his lips, hooked his hands on his hips. “You understand, Gabe, once we do this…”

“It’s a done deal. I get it, Dave.”

“No going back. Once those bars come down… the integrity of this place…” He crisscrossed his hands back and forth, over and under each other several times. “It’s over. Folks here will most likely have to find another place. You’re okay with that?”

“Dave, I have no emotional attachment to this building. Or the people in it, save for Leonard and Taneesha.” He launched a glistening brown wad over his lips, and it spattered the cement. “My loyalties died with my friends—my people—at Anderson Retirement across town. Lenny’s pop died there. So did his mom. And everyone else I cared about. I tried to make a go of it here, to make this a place of safety. And Luz and Roy shit all over it, not to put too fine a point on it. Turning people against me.” He shook his head, silver tresses swinging around his face. He seemed to have aged ten years in two days.

David simply nodded, listening.

“Don’t you worry about your cousin or that young boy,” Gabriel added. “They’ll be fine. Luz’ll be pissed. Ain’t no getting ‘round that. But she ain’t a killer. She’s just a confused young woman, trying to do what she thinks is right, even if it ain’t. Can’t fault her for making a stand.” He stared at David hard. “That’s why I’m out here with you right now, Dave. You’re making a stand. And I think it’s the right one.”

David held his hand to Gabe, and the old gentleman took it. Shook it.
 

“You’ll be okay, Dave. Things’ll work out fine, ‘cuz they have to.”

“If they start shooting at us?”

“They won’t.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“I am.”

Pulling in a deep breath, David gave a nod, acknowledging that he was as ready as he was ever going to be.
 

Gabriel stepped up onto the Dodge’s running board, heaved himself into the cab, while David walked around to the rear of the truck, and let down the tailgate. It was still daunting, the height of the towering truck, and David reconsidered how he was going to get into the back.

The driver side door slammed shut, and a moment later, the window dropped. Gabe eyed David in the mirror on the door. “Need a hand?”

David just shook his head, making eye contact with Gabe’s reflection. Then, he turned his attention back to the building, spotting a trashcan. He held a finger to the Janitor, telling him to wait a second.

He flipped the heavy-duty plastic trashcan over, spilling its contents, then crawled on top of it. From there, he easily hauled himself onto the tailgate, rolling into the truck. He made his way to just behind the cab, slapped the top twice, and said, “Ready when you are.”

Beneath him, the burly beast of a vehicle shuddered to life, the grinding diesel engine spitting its inky hot breath through twin chrome smokestacks that protruded out of the bed. As much life experience as Gabriel had, David assumed the man had driven a stick shift automobile a time or two. No need to worry about the truck dying on the old man.

David kneeled, one hand on the bed railing. The Dodge lurched forward, rubber clawing concrete, as it aimed for the rolling door. As high as the truck stood, he didn’t expect any debris to fly at him. Might get splashed with a decomposing body part or two. Still, better safe than sorry. He ducked into the bed. He just hoped they had enough room to get a good running start.

He needn’t have worried. The iron gate wasn’t built to withstand such a brute-force collision, nor were the undead bodies just on the other side of it. Unencumbered, the brawny metal beast plowed it down as easily as a fist through tissue paper. It did make one hell of a clangor, though.

David winced, biting his lip at the pain shrieking through his body. This was the most activity his fragile frame had seen in days. He’d barely moved since the beating he’d suffered at the hands of Sammy and Gills, and he didn’t realize just how deep his bruises had burrowed. He wished he’d swallowed some pain killers or something to dull the throbbing aches and stabs that suddenly made themselves known. The adrenaline coursing through him helped, but it didn’t kill all the suffering sensations.

His fingers gripped the rail tightly, trying to anchor his body, keep it from bouncing madly about the bed.
 

Thankfully, they didn’t have far to go. Maybe eighty, ninety yards. But he’d have to act quick. The din of the Dodge surely drew some unwanted attention from the front of the Alamo, and he could just feel the Infirmaries’ breath on his sweat-slicked neck.

The truck bounced and rattled all the way to the collection of construction vehicles, which were parked near the tennis courts. Without warning, tires locked, tilling dirt and grass and weeds. A dusty cloud mingled with puffing black fumes. Momentum carried David forward, and he smacked the cab, shoulder first.
 

“Fuck,” he muttered.

“You alright back there, Dave?”

Pressing to his feet, David nodded, flipped a weak wave. Gabriel had stopped right in front of the heavy soil compactor. This was the closest David had been to the machine since he’d first laid eyes on it three days ago, when he’d arrived at the Alamo.
 

It was an imposing contraption, construction yellow with a large knobby drum for a front wheel. It reminded him of an off-road version of Fred Flintstone’s car. He guessed the cylinder probably towered five or six feet. He could just imagine making the world’s largest waffles with one of those things. The two rear wheels were more like traditional tractor tires. Two bars wrapped the open cab. Already, weeds and vegetation were creeping up the vehicle after only a month of neglect.
 

He glanced at the other heavy construction vehicles parked near the compactor, and wondered if one of the others wouldn’t be a more suitable choice. But they appeared more complicated in their operation. The drum compactor seemed much simpler, with no blades or buckets to contend with. Besides, he’d never piloted a bulldozer or a road grader or a back hoe before. And he certainly had no desire to do so now. He could handle forward and backward, left or right. Already, he could envisage the blood-covered drum, brutally rolling out a dough of bone and blood and flesh and—

“Dave?”

“Yeah.”

“We gonna do this?”

“Yeah.”

He studied the safest way to dismount the pickup, eschewing injury and the very few dead ambling about. He preferred not having to jump to the ground, then turn around and conquer the drum compactor like some metal Mount Everest.

“Dave?”

David huffed.
 

Give me a fucking second, will ya?

“Yeah, Gabe?”

“Better get some pep in your step. Looks like company’s coming.”

David pivoted on his heel. Gabe was right, as usual. The frenzy from the dually demolishing the gate—not to mention the heavy metal song of the engine itself—had definitely drawn attention, just as he’d expected it would. And it was attention of both the living and the dead.

Damn.
 

Gabe had managed to sidle up close to the compactor, so David chanced it. Hiking a leg over the bed, he balanced himself as best he could and set himself up for a tricky transferal. He glimpsed the building again, noting that there were at least four men heading his way in a hell of a hurry. They appeared armed, but no shots had been fired. Yet.

He eased the rest of his body over the side of the truck, like a retreating child who had just stolen a cookie from the jar on the counter, and let himself down, feet dangling, feeling for the drum. They found it, and he pushed off from the truck, his arms pinwheeling for balance. He was in the zone.
 

I’m in the fucking zone.

A gunshot whip-cracked the air, and he reflexively tried to duck, almost tumbling from the machine.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

No shooting. That’s what Gabe said. They wouldn’t dare shoot.
Well, Gabe, they’re sure as hell shooting. Calm the fuck down. Just a warning shot. Only a warning shot.

Time was grinding now, slowing, things around him becoming surreal. He just knew at any second he was going to awake from some cruel, messed up dream. Maybe he’d eaten a bad brisket. Spoiled potato salad. That was it. He’d just been sick. Slept all night, except for the times he had to get up and puke his ever-loving guts out. He’d wake up in the morning, kiss Natalee, have her help him tie his tie, while they both sipped their gourmet dark roast coffee. He’d sit at the kitchen table with his iPad and see what was newsworthy on Yahoo! and MSN and CNN. Then, his teenage daughter Karla would interrupt his healthy but shitty breakfast, begging for a new smartphone because
all the other kids have one and it’s just not fair that they all get one when I have this antiquated POS…
 

Antiquated. She’d actually used that word with him. POS—piece of shit—he expected. But
antiquated
… Two weeks before she’d died in that unfair, shitty automobile accident, she’d used the word
antiquated.
Such a smart girl, if not a spoiled one.
 

Thanks, Nat. Thanks for spoiling our daughter rotten. She’d’ve made a man proud and happy, had she lived long enough. Spoiled rotten, I tell ya. She’s surely rotten by now, innocuously tucked away inside that goddamned ten-thousand dollar box we bought to stick in the ground and cover up with dirt
—

A stupid tear slipped down his cheek. He couldn’t fucking believe it. Of all the inappropriate times to lament her untimely death.
 

Now ain’t the time for an emotional meltdown, El Jefe
.

Another gunshot rang, spanking the tree line across the way, the echo mimicking the sound of two shots. The jogging man had the rifle’s barrel pointed at God, and not David.