Double Dead (38 page)

He wrapped Kayla’s hand around the gun. He waved Gil over.

“Danny,” she said, wiping away tears. She reached for him, almost as if he were there. Coburn could feel the heat radiating off her. The fever was tearing her up. He pulled her gaze back toward him.

“Kayla,” he said. “Listen to me. The monsters are coming. There’s too many of them. We can’t take them on. And there’s nowhere for us to go.”

“Please, Daddy, Danny, please…”

“I think I know how to make them go away,” Coburn said. “But you have to listen to me. Are you listening?”

Gamely, she nodded.

In his head, he replayed a voice from his dream.
“It’s one of those old immutable laws,” Blondie said, making a face that might’ve been a grin, might’ve been a sneer. “Kill the maker and you kill the monsters he made.”

Kill the maker.

Kill the monsters.

Easy-peasy lemon-motherfucking-squeezy.

“I need you to shoot me,” Coburn said.

“No,” Kayla said, eyes tearing up. “What? No!”

“Yes. In the head. Here.” He helped her lift the gun, tapped the barrel hard against his forehead. Now the screams of the damned were louder. The floor began to visibly shake, and Coburn could see that even Gil noticed it. The fact they weren’t hearing any gunfire outside made it clear that whatever remained of Brickert’s convoy had been taken apart in short order. “You need to hit the brain. You hear me? The brain. Destroy the brain, destroy me.”

“I can’t, don’t make me—”

“I can’t do it. I won’t. It doesn’t make sense.”

He heard the stairwell door on the thirty-seventh floor crumple inward. Heard the elevator doors banging, then bending, then wrenching out of their mechanics. The duct work below groaned; he could sense it through the floor.

They were almost in.

“I can’t do it,” he said. “I don’t think I’ll let myself. I’m a survivor. The monster inside of me wants to live but
by God
, I want it dead. You’re a girl of pure heart, as pure as I know, so pure your blood wipes away the stains of evil and can turn a real asshole like me into someone worth having around.”

Shrieks filled the lab. They were here.

“Shoot,” he said, steadying her hand.

“No,” she wept. “Please.”

“
Shoot
.”

The damned entered the room. The Bitch Beast at their fore. Claws out. Jaws wide with their needled teeth. The ground shook. The air stank.

“Coburn,” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks.

He felt the air move behind him. Gil started shooting.

“Shoot!”

She whispered, “Thank you.”

Then she pulled the trigger.

Gil found the hammer on his gun falling on dry rounds,
click-click-click
, but they kept coming, kept swarming, a room full of rotten, leathery flesh, of glistening mouths and blood-red eyes—

Then the gun went off in Kayla’s hand.

Coburn tumbled backwards.

The hunters all felt it at the same time. Some careened into cubicles, others merely fell onto their knees or curled up on their sides. Their flesh began to smolder and pop like the sound of water drops flicked into a pan of boiling oil. It was as if they’d all just taken a hot bath in bubbling acid: their flesh began to blister and erode, black blood erupting like motor oil. They disintegrated with sputters and hisses until all that was left were foul stains and the moldering bones—and teeth, and claws—collapsed atop of them.

Gil went and hugged his daughter and felt the heat coming off her in waves. She cried. So did he. They held each other like that for a while.

Eventually Kayla looked up and put her hand on her father’s chest.

“You got shot.”

“I’m okay,” he said, though he didn’t really know how true that was. If the world were back together again, he’d say it wasn’t a killing shot. But this was a lab, not a hospital. Infection would set in soon enough. “Are you okay?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “I don’t feel good.”

“We’ll get you all taken care of. Get you out of this place come morning. We’ll leave the city and…” His voice trailed off. He didn’t know what else to say. Gil didn’t have a plan. Didn’t even know if she was going to be okay.

Kayla smiled, then, a surprising gesture, and one that made him feel a little bit better. She reached up and kissed his brow. “You’re a good Daddy.”

“Thank you, baby. You’re the best daughter.”

“I guess we won’t ever make a cure, huh?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “Not today.”
Not ever
.

But then—from across the room, a cough. Gil looked in that direction, saw that a woman with a lab coat lay there, shot in the chest, but there she was, lifting her head up. Blood coming from the corners of her mouth. For a second he thought,
shit, she’s turning into a goddamn zombie
, but then she spoke.

“This isn’t the lab,” she said, spitting up blood onto the floor.

“What?” Gil asked.

“Sorry, this isn’t the”—another cough—“
only
lab. Certainly not the main one. Other one’s in—” A coughing fit this time, and with it came a deep rattle that made Gil certain she didn’t have long before she tap-danced off this mortal coil. “Other one’s in San Francisco. In the bay. On one of the ferry boats.”

Gil’s heart fluttered. They still had a shot. He laughed. Kissed Kayla. “You hear that, baby? They got another lab! This isn’t even the
main
one. On a boat! Genius. Just genius.”

“Dad. I’m not gonna make it.”

“What? Baby, no, shhh, don’t say that.” He looked to the woman, said, “Doc, tell my daughter that she’ll be okay.” But it was too late. The woman’s chin was to her chest, and she wasn’t moving. “You’ll be okay. Shhh.”

“Okay, Daddy.”

“You believe me, little girl?”

“I believe you, Daddy.” She tried to stand. “I want to say goodbye to them, if it’s okay.” He didn’t understand at first, but she was looking in the direction of the vampire and Danny. He petted her hair, told her it was okay.

He watched as she crouched by Danny. Pressed her forehead to his. Kissed him on the cheek. The very act damn near broke his heart. Danny was a good kid. Saved their lives more than once. All for nothing. Or maybe it was for something: maybe it was for her, his baby girl.

Then she crawled over to the vampire. Gil decided he wasn’t going to watch—he’d seen goodbyes enough for a lifetime. Instead, he stood up, figured he’d go looking around for some kind of medication,
anything
. Antibiotics for him. Ibuprofen for her, to bring her fever down. Any pills he’d had prior were left with the caravan. She needed something now.

Gil went over to a desk, started rooting through drawers.
Lucky day
, he thought with more than a single serving of irony, because there in the drawer he found both a bottle of Tylenol and a bottle of Advil. Both good for dropping fevers.

He turned to his daughter, started to say, “Kayla, I found—”

But his words devolved into a breathless cry.

Kayla knelt over Coburn’s body, over his ruined head.

A letter opener stuck awkwardly out of the side of her neck.

And her blood poured into his unmoving mouth.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Metempsychosis, Transubstantiation, and Other Big Words

It felt like being pulled backwards through the Devil’s asshole. Up through the hot coals that lined his colon. Into the sulfur pit of his stomach. Up an esophagus lined with razor wire and broken glass. And then back out the Devil’s own mouth, over his rough tongue, past the blackened teeth.

The bones in his face reknitted.

His tongue popped free from his swollen throat.

His brain reformed, one screaming synapse at a time.

And before he knew what was happening, Coburn was lurching to his feet, staggering drunkenly about. His blood felt hot. His mind felt white, clean, an open expanse like a snow-covered hill or a winter sky. Holy fuck, he felt
good
.

He laughed. Until he saw Kayla. Laying still.

The blood on his lips
tasted
like her. Like the way her hair smelled. Like cotton candy. Like lambs-wool.

And then, before he could say anything or do anything, there stood Gil. Brickert’s gun—the Colt Python that ended Coburn the first time out—was in his hand.

“Why?” was all Gil could muster.

Before Coburn could answer, Gil shot the window behind him, then shoved the vampire through the open window.

As he tumbled out, Coburn said words he never expected to say:

“Daddy, wait.”

Then he fell thirty-seven floors.

He hit a BMW. His body folded the car in enough so that both ends lifted up on each side a little bit. The windshields popped with a sound of a cannon going off and rain coming down after.

The car alarm started to go off.

All the bones in his body felt like they’d just been shattered. They felt about as put-together as a bucket of loose LEGO pieces.

A voice inside him said,
Don’t worry. We’ll get you fixed up right
.

Except, it wasn’t the monster’s voice. Wasn’t his own voice, either.

It was hers.

“Kayla?” he asked, but no voice—internal or external—answered.

Inside, he felt his bones start to knit. He didn’t even have to do anything about it. No effort at all. That was new.

Then he felt something wet on his cheek. First he thought,
I think I’m crying
, but then he smelled the gamy gust of dog’s breath and found himself face-to-muzzle with Creampuff, who seemed awfully happy to see him.

And then he felt it: a warmth on his arm.

The street around him started to brighten.

Morning rose, the sky a kind of nuclear pink, with fingers of orange shot through it. The sun wasn’t up, not yet, but it would be soon.

And Coburn decided to meet the sun head-on. He didn’t deserve to live. Didn’t matter how good he felt. He wasn’t going to hang around this endless life anymore with Kayla’s death on his hands.

He stood atop the ruined BMW and waited for the sun.

It rose. His skin grew warmer and warmer.

And now the fire comes
.

But it never came.

What did come was Kayla’s voice again, and this time it spoke at length inside the echo chamber of his skull:

You can’t leave this world yet, silly. You’ve still got work to do. Got bad things to make up for. You have my blood.

It’s yours now, forever and ever. Carry it with you. Give it to others. Now you’re the cure, Coburn
.

Now, Coburn did weep, his cheeks slick with blood.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

I Left My Heart in San Fransico

The zombie’s head snapped back, the crossbow bolt going in through the eye and sticking out the back. It coughed up a little black mist when it did so.

“Nice shot,” Coburn said.

“Mm,” Gil said. He went back over, planted his shoe on the rotter’s head, withdrew the bolt. He wore a pair of diving gloves that looked almost like chainmail. Were good in case you got bit by a moray eel or something, but were
also
good to make sure you didn’t get bit by some wayward rotter.

The rotters were still around, after all. Coburn’s death—his first death, or shit, maybe it was his second—ended the hunters who had been born on his blood. But though the entire zombie epidemic came from his own DNA, even still, it was never a blood-to-blood thing. At least, that was how he figured it.

“Speaking of a nice shot,” Coburn said, “that one there would be a pretty nice shot if I had a camera. That’s some picturesque shit, pops.”

“Don’t call me Pops,” Gil said. But he agreed just the same. “It is awfully pretty.”

Down there, San Francisco lay quiet, shrouded in fog. The spires of the Golden Gate Bridge peaked out of the mist, too. South of the city lay another army of cannibals and a whole lot of zombies; so they’d taken the long way and come at the city from the north.

It started to spit rain. Even still, Coburn could see a little sun up there through the pendulous cloud cover.

The sun didn’t bother him much anymore. It itched a little. Maybe that was normal. At this point, normal was meaningless. He was still dead. No heartbeat. Could still do all the things a vampire could do. But he felt stronger. And while his body still sustained itself on the blood of the living, he didn’t need to drink as much and the hunger had lost some of its teeth, so to speak.

Convincing Gil of what had happened wasn’t easy. Kayla had given herself up because she knew she couldn’t make it on her own. Enter Coburn, a vampire whose body was an undead water jug that could carry her blood or her essence or whatever-it-was with him. Gil didn’t like that. Shot Coburn a few more times. Hit him, too—the old man knew how to throw a punch.