Death After Life: A Zombie Apocalypse Thriller (7 page)

Quarles didn’t need the details. It was a sordid scenario and one that could easily have been avoided. He sighed, looking at the Anderson’s roofdeck love nest. There was a telescope. Barry had mentioned his interest in astronomy to Quarles.
 

“You two shoulda gone to church more,” he said, gazing at the setting sun for a moment before heading out to have dinner with his wife.
 

#

Though he had no problem supervising four burners at once, stirring a pot with each hand, when Winter looked over he saw that Nic was out of her element.

“When do I put the veggies in the coconut milk?” she asked, nervously eying the pot she was responsible for.

“Not until you see tiny, delicate bubbles. Timing is everything.”

He picked up a knife and started on the eggplant. It took about 10 seconds to produce 10 equal slices.

The kitchenette was cramped but Winter appreciated his proximity to Nic. He was trying to savor every moment of this evening. Quarles said the reassignment order would take a couple of days to process so they’d have another shift, maybe two, but it still felt like this was it.

“You shoulda been a chef,” Nic said, watching him in admiration.
 

“Not enough action.” He flipped the rice cooker's lid into the air, caught it, checked the rice, and slammed it back down in one fluid movement.

“I don’t know. You could be the Samurai Chef.” She giggled a little. He wished she did that more often. Particularly lately.

They ate their meal out on Winter’s balcony. His apartment was a studio and had few amenities, but the balcony was nice. Looking out at downtown, it was easy to think all was right in this city. He didn’t have a view of Puget Sound, but you could see the Space Needle. It was no longer open to the public but, for some reason, from time to time Winter saw the elevator going up and down. Someone rich calling in favors, or perhaps murky official business.

“God, why didn’t I let you cook for me more often,” Nic said when they finished the meal, pushing back her empty plate with a look of contentment tinged with melancholy.

“Like he said, we can still go bowling. Let’s start a league for ex-partners, whattaya say?”

She nodded, smiling, but her gaze was faraway. “Not looking forward to this. Having you there is like a tether to my sanity, you know?”

“Yeah, there’s even a few laughs, now and then,” Winter said.

“Makes me want to just say, ‘to hell with it.’ Get a desk job. If they’ll let me.”

“You do a lot of good out there.”

“Sure, like that kid today, right?”

The pain behind her sarcasm was obvious.
 

“You did him a favor.”

She looked away. “My Grandma used to tell me I should get out, before I saw something I couldn’t unsee. Something I couldn’t undo. One of my cousins was a Blood. She said one day there was just nothing in his eyes anymore. Like looking into a pit. He was that way to the day he died. Never talked about what he’d seen. Or what he’d done... But whatever it was, there was no going back from it.”

Winter was on his second beer and felt irrepressibly tender. “I don’t see that when I look in your eyes.”

She shrugged. “Maybe not. But it can happen in an instant.”
 

It pained Winter to see her so tortured. “Nic... Forget it. You only do what you have to do.”

“That’s just it. It’s easier and easier to forget. That’s what scares me. It’s like just this big old well of
bad
, and the more you pour in, the more it can hold...” A thought clearly sickened her. “It really is a pit.”

He touched her arm, just trying to provide some awkward comfort. “Maybe it’s better to forget instead of you know... suffer.”

She smiled. “Look at you. Mr. Sensitivity. You know, Quarles is right. Those sentiments wouldn’t keep you from taking a big old bite out of me.”

He laughed and sat back, finishing his beer at a swig. “Who knows? You just might like it.”

Nic giggled again but the moment was spoiled by her ringing phone. She flipped it open, checked the I.D. and smiled apologetically. Winter started gathering up the plates to take inside. Nic accepted the call.

“Hey, darlin’! What’s up?” She listened for a moment, then said, “I’m having dinner at Winter’s... I'm sorry, baby, I thought you worked late on Mondays! ...Okay, sounds good. Love you!”

She closed her phone and followed him inside. “I best fly. Thanks for dinner, my friend.”

“Always a pleasure,” Winter said, and popped a fresh beer. He had a feeling it wouldn’t be his last of the night.

#

As she drove home from the Center, Lena mulled over the day’s events and listened to classical music. She felt a bout of depression coming on and regretted not grabbing a pick-me-up before she left. A little mood enhancement, nothing she’d take regularly, just something to help her get her emotional bearings straight again.

She irritably escaped some gridlock with a bold move and turned onto her street. The 25-story tower she called home was the largest on the block and only a few streets from the waterfront.

Lena pulled up to the security kiosk and handed her identification through the window. As she waited for the guard to scan it, behind her the garage door closed the ramp to the street. She was cleared for entry and piloted the VW into her parking space.
 

An elevator lifted her to an entrance hall under 24-hour guard. Recognizing her, a doorman let Lena into a baroquely furnished lobby with mirrored walls, brass fixtures and a multi-tiered chandelier. She carried her Safeway bags past the front desk attendant.

“Evening, Dr. Gladden. Long day?”

She greeted him with a smile. “Hiya, Tommy. They all are.”

Another elevator would take her to her floor. This one was mirrored and appointed like a luxury hotel’s.

Lena’s elderly neighbor, Izhak Carmel, hurried to join her as she entered. She held the elevator for him.

“Thank you, thank you,” he said. He seemed in a sour mood.

“No problem. Haven’t seen Felix lately, is he all right?” Felix was Izhak’s Pomeranian.
 

“The building bastards made me give him away.”

Lena was shocked. “What? Why?”

Izhak’s voice dripped with contempt. “Security! Some residents passed around a petition. A dog can bite, you know. And they don’t live forever.”

“Well, I didn’t sign anything.”

He shook his head. “That’s what everyone says. Amazing how the management claims that 250 of you signed it. That means about half the people I see in this building, every day. Why, there’s a better than fifty-fifty chance that you signed it.”

“I didn’t sign it,” Lena said, and got off at her floor. Izhak said nothing.

There were workmen trooping through the hall. They wore windbreakers emblazoned with the logo of “Chambliss Home Security.”
 

As she progressed toward her unit, Lena saw that the workers were heading that way. In fact, her door was open and an electrician was installing wiring in the threshold.

“Excuse me,” she said, slipping past him into the kitchen/living room area. Workers, tools laid out on the carpet, were installing components in the ceiling.

Slightly disconcerted, Lena transferred her groceries to cupboards and fridge.

Someone suddenly cupped their hands over her eyes and Lena felt an instant of alarm. But she recognized the gentle, familiar touch, and her concern turned to delight.

She covered the strong but delicate fingers with her own. “Let me guess? Is that…. Nicolette Ann Waters?”

“Dammit,” Nic said, releasing her with a broad smile. “What gave me away?”

“I think it was just your irresistible lifeforce,” Lena said, and kissed her. She thought she surprised Nic with the length and intensity of her kiss.
 

“Wow,” Nic said, afterwards. “Hi honey, I’m home!”

Lena embraced her loving wife. She caught one of the workers watching, not judgmentally but with prurient interest, and whispered, “What’s with this crew?”

“Oh. Building is paying for a security upgrade. I figured, why not?”

“No cameras, I hope?”

“No. Just motion detectors, alarm activation points. Automated 911 connection. If a breach is detected, should be a police response in two minutes.”

Lena nodded. She felt a wave of fatigue hit her. “You should know better than anyone if that’s going to work.”

Nic’s laugh was brittle.

“Better give them fifteen.”

Lena slumped onto the loveseat and switched on the TV. A local anchor read copy in clipped, self-important tones.

“Attorneys for Baldwin argued that he shot Foster out of concern for the neighborhood children and not because of their dispute over property lines—”
 

Lena changed the channel to CNN. A correspondent on Capitol Hill spoke gravely into the camera.

“The Supreme Court decision does set a clear precedent, Anderson, and I think we’ll see a glut of these cases in the legal system, most ending in acquittal or mistrial.”

Anderson Cooper was listening from the studio. “Is there a feeling on Capitol Hill, Frank, that legislation will be proposed to prevent murderers from misusing the euthanasia defense?”
 

Lena flipped back to local news.

The anchor droned on. “Smith and Wesson has declared huge fourth quarter profits for the third straight year. Their products are still a favorite of holiday shoppers... ”

Nic sat down beside Lena. “Don’t you think those Sudanese masks I showed you online would look nice on this wall?”

“Only if I can get rid of those bookcases you’ve had since you graduated from UMass.”

They laughed for about a nanosecond. “How was dinner with Winter?” Lena asked.

“Nice, but sad. We got reassigned today. It’s not going to be easy, for either of us.”

Lena felt a note of concern. She knew that Winter and Nic had a nearly symbiotic relationship. A new partner meant new risk.

“God. Are you sure Quarles can’t keep you together?”

“Yeah. He’s the only person who could fight it, and he’s not going to. Already let us go six months over.”

Lena nodded, troubled.

“Hey, baby. It’s going to be okay. Don’t worry about me.”

“Let’s go to bed,” Lena said, suddenly aware of the surreptitious glances from the workmen. “I’m exhausted.”

Nic nodded gratefully. “You ain’t the only one.”

She stepped into the living room and turned on her voice of authority. It was an impressive display.

“All right, gentlemen, clear out,” she said, addressing the room. “I don’t care where you go, but you can’t stay here.”

Lena smiled at that bit of bartender humor. The workmen obediently filed out with their tools. When Nic had closed the door behind the last one, she pressed her back against the door as if against an attack.

“Thank God they’re gone,” she said with mock relief.
 

“You’ve still got me to contend with,” Lena said, sidling close for a tender kiss.

Nic’s hand slipped under Lena’s clothes and found its way to her stomach, fingertips caressing her bare skin. The belly betrayed no swelling yet, but it soon would.

She would have to tell Nic that she’d made some big decisions of her own.

#

The armored wheels rolled slowly, just faster than a brisk walk. A powerful engine’s basso growl couldn’t entirely drown out the moans, grunts and occasionally plaintive cries of the living dead. Their shuffling feet slapped the pavement in sufficient numbers for that sound to register with Murphy as well. Even in his haze of pain and despair, he felt their frustrated desire.

From his vantage point, essentially crucified on the wheel lift at the back of the vehicle, Murphy could watch the hungry feeders watching him. They were desperate for his flesh, desperate to rip and bite and tear, although devouring him would only give them the briefest respite. But their biological imperative was strong and he knew they would never give up.

“Too bad, fuckers,” he spat hoarsely. “Till you learn to run!” He cackled at that, again struck by the dark hilarity of his situation.

The bastard had made sixteen incisions on his body, eight above the waist and eight below. The slow trickle of blood from these cuts had him a bit light-headed, but he felt confident that it was coagulating. He wouldn’t bleed out back here, even if he could smell the coppery bouquet of his own spilled plasma as well as the dead could. It had saturated his clothes and still left a trail he could sometimes see glistening in the taillights of the monstrous tank, like the slime left behind by a snail. Its progress was so ploddingly methodical that the comparison felt apt to Murphy.

He chuckled, blood loss making him loopy perhaps.
So this is what a snail feels like.
He knew he was dead no matter what, unless the stranger fucked up somehow AND Murphy found some reserve within himself from which to draw strength. Two broken arms would be tough to overcome, but he could still kick and head-butt and bite.
 

For now, though, all he could do was watch the pack of feeders follow them, eternally just a few steps behind. Occasionally shots would ring out and they would pass crumpled, fetid bodies on one side or another. But the driver was doing a masterful job of preventing the dead from heading them off and getting at Murphy from either side of the tank.
 

His diabolical gambit was working all too well. The ranks of the dead would swell every time he put the siren on for awhile, but none of them could claim the cheese in the trap.
 

Me
, Murphy thought with a crazed giggle. The steak the dogs would never get their jaws on. At least until his abductor decided to stop tormenting them. Until then, he would keep swelling their ranks.
 

To what end, Murphy didn’t know. Why he was chosen, he didn’t know. Sure, he was road scum like almost everyone else out here. But he didn’t think he was really on the radar of anyone important.
 

I’m just a scavenger
, he thought. And yet he knew he’d been watched, he knew the man in the military helmet and mask must have been monitoring his activities for some time. He’d been chosen.