Fire Birds (36 page)

They opened Tim’s door to drag him out. Laney produced a revolver from under her dress, leaned across the seat, and shot one of the men in the face. He collapsed straight down. She fired again at the second man. The third man came around his truck with a shotgun.

“Out!” I yelled. “Out! Get out!”

Laney spilled out of the door. I heard another shot. I made my way toward the driver’s door. I saw Tim and Laney run toward a little red house. One of the men was chasing them with a machete in his hand. There was another shot. I heard yelling. I climbed out, stepping over the dead man’s body. A shotgun blast exploded the window of the van.

“Where the hell is Dan?” I said as I ducked.

I moved, hunched over, to the rear of the van. Laney screamed. Then there was the sound of glass breaking. I wasn’t quite sure from which direction the third man would come. Then gunfire erupted some distance away. It was steady and fast–Bruce’s AA-12.

I got down low to see if I could see the third man’s feet. I saw them right away, inches from my face. It startled me, and I rolled away from the van. He was standing right over me. The barrel of his shotgun lowered to my head. Then his own head gave a violent jerk to the side, and he dropped to his knees. I looked up to see Dan on the tallest grain bin with his rifle. I lifted my hand in thanks, then got to my feet.

I ran south on 9th Street toward the sound on the AA-12. Here and there, the monsters were moving toward the noise of the horn and gunfire. I was faster than all of them. I drew near to the little red house on my right. There was the sound of struggle inside. Tim lay outside on the ground under a broken window. His arm and face were bleeding. He was either unconscious or dead. Just past him, at the rear of the house, a creature was crawling toward him.

I went to him and quickly knelt to check for a pulse. I heard the back door of the house open. Then there was Laney bounding away across the backyard in a full sprint. The back door opened a second time. The other man from the black truck was in pursuit. I snatched up Tim’s rifle and put it to my shoulder. I tracked the man then just before he caught up to her, I fired. He landed on his face and rolled. Laney kept running.

“Laney!” I yelled. Then I dropped the end of the gun down and sighted up on the creature that was crawling in. I put it down.

“Laney!” I yelled again.

Tim had a cut on his cheek and a piece of glass sticking out of his left arm near the shoulder. He had a pulse but he wasn’t awake. I got behind him and lifted him up under his armpit. The AA-12 went quiet.

Then Laney returned. The sleeve of her yellow dress was torn away at the shoulder. There was blood splatter on the front.

“Oh, God, Tim! They were fighting, and he pushed Tim through the window.”

“Get his legs,” I said. “We’ll take him in the house.”

We carried him up the porch and into the front room, placing him on the floor.

“Are you still armed? I asked.

She looked around on the floor then pointed to a revolver on the other side of the room.

“I’m going to take Tim’s rifle,” I said. “Use his sidearm if you need to. Keep the doors shut on this place and stay put.”

“He’s bleeding,” she said, distressed.

“Check the bathroom for first aid supplies. I have to go.”

I stood and went to the door then stopped.

“Is the house clear?” I asked.

“We didn’t look,” she replied.

“It might be a good idea if you did that.”

I left via the back door and ran through the yard toward the railroad tracks.

The horn of the Firebird continued to wail, but the AA-12 was silent. I hoped that meant Bruce Lee was dead. After climbing over a short chain link fence, I skidded down a short hill then out onto the tracks. There was a silver pickup parked in the crossing at West Broadway facing east. Several zombies were walking past it on their way to the Firebird. I didn’t see anyone except the undead. I turned and looked up at Dan on the grain bin. He pointed toward the tobacco warehouses. I lifted my hand in acknowledgment then ran toward the buildings.

There was no actual tobacco in the warehouses at that time. It had all been auctioned and moved at least a month prior to the outbreak of Canton B. However, the wonderful aroma remained. There were nine tobacco warehouses and auction houses on this street. Some of them hadn’t been used in years, yet they never lost their distinctive smell.

Skylights in the first building I entered showed a giant empty room except for a few wooden pallets here and there and rows of support columns. I immediately left the building and ran to the next one. The next building was like the first. I was about to go to the next building when I heard several shots of different calibers.

I cautiously stepped out onto 12th Street. I ran toward West Broadway, almost two blocks away, staying close to the buildings. There were more shots. Straight ahead was the bus station, where Nicholas Somerville was supposed to be, but I didn’t see him. As I got closer to the last warehouse on the street, I could see the door was hanging off kilter on one hinge. The lock facing and the door handle were gone, nothing but a jagged hole. Above the door, there was a tattered vinyl banner that said: DAILY FLEA MARKET: FEBRUARY 5 – APRIL 30 BUY-SELL-TRADE. I crouched low and peeked inside.

Immediately inside the door, there was a foyer. It had a corkboard on the wall full of business cards and homemade tear-off advertisements. A little gumball machine was beneath it, covered in dust. A little farther ahead was a staircase going up to the second floor and a closed door, and to the left was another door, which led to the main warehouse floor. The smell of tobacco mingled with the smell of death. I stepped inside and looked through the small, diamond-shaped window in the door and into the warehouse. There were tables and booths of items for sale, mostly junk. Several vendors and shoppers were still inside. They had been in there since February. I looked up at the staircase. Then a hand grabbed my shoulder.

I let out a yelp and spun around. Nicholas Somerville was behind me with a finger to his lips.

“Shhh,” he whispered. “They’re upstairs.”

“How many?” I asked.

“Two,” he replied. “Andrew and Gail are up there too.”

Quietly, I climbed the stairs to the door. I had no idea what was on the other side of it. I didn’t know if there were multiple rooms. I didn’t know if Bruce Lee would be there with his automatic shotgun waiting to turn me into sausage. I looked back at Somerville, hoping for a little instruction. He looked back with an expression of expectation. I put my ear to the door to listen.

“Let’s take her with us,” a man’s voice said. “It might be a while before we find another one.”

I handed Somerville the rifle and motioned him to step back. Then I pulled out my pistol, took a deep breath, and turned the knob.

I took in the scene as the door swung open.

The room was approximately fifteen feet wide by twenty long. A wall of windows to my right provided natural light. To the left, the room was open to the auction/warehouse floor below. There was a desk under the window, a round table in the middle of the room, and five straight-back wooden chairs scattered around. On the desk, next to a computer, was the AA-12 and Bruce’s messenger bag.

Andrew was seated in the floor in the far corner, propped against the wall. There were bullet holes in his chest and forehead. Gail was on the table. Her shirt was ripped open, and the man was attempting to get into her pants. Bruce, dressed once more like The Punisher, stood at the railing, looking over the balcony down at the ghoulish flea market.

Immediately, things happened.

Bruce turned, reached up, and pulled his sword. The man at the table backed away and his open pants dropped around his ankles. He fell back as I fired, and I missed him. He landed on his butt then tried to get up. I didn’t miss the second time. Gail sat up, and Bruce went for her. I fired a third time, striking him in the upper chest. He took two steps back, stopped at the railing. His sword went down, point in the floor, and he leaned on it like a cane. He bent there a moment, swaying in place.

Somerville entered the room with his gun raised. Bruce straightened up and frowned at us. His dark sunglasses were crooked and on the end of his nose. He moaned then coughed.

“The tits,” he said. “The tits in the yellow dress–that was like Uhura’s trap in The Final Frontier. Did you think I wouldn’t notice that?”

“What’s he talking about?” Somerville said.

Then Gail stepped up beside me. She lifted the AA-12 to her hip. She was crying. Bruce opened his mouth to speak, and she squeezed the trigger. In less than a second, four spent shells ejected from the side of the machine, and the spray of shot tore through Bruce’s forearm and opened up his belly. The katana fell to the floor with his hand still gripping the handle. His entrails spilled down his lap. He teetered there then his body bent backward and fell over the railing into the warehouse.

Gail put the weapon on the table then turned to Andrew. Somerville and I went to the railing and looked over. Bruce Lee was on his back on a table of used comic books. The zombies from the flea market, hungry since February, swarmed in for a meal.

I moved over to the window. The crowd around the Firebird had doubled in size. More moved toward it like metal filings to a magnet.

“Do you have a car nearby?” I asked.

“I did, but it’s blocked now,” Somerville said. “We’ll have to find another.”

“Tim is hurt,” I said. “I left him and Laney over on ninth. We should go before too many of those things gather. I don’t want to get stuck in here.”

I picked up Bruce Lee’s messenger bag and looked inside. There was one more loaded magazine canister for the AA-12, another box of 12 gauge shells, an MRE, a bottle of water, a small bottle of vodka, and a few Star Wars action figures. I put the strap over my shoulder and grabbed the big gun.

My eyes fell on the 500 year-old Japanese sword. The museum director and history-lover part of me wanted to take it to preserve it for another 500 years. I wondered how many lives had been lost on that blade during those five centuries; I wondered how many lives it had protected. The last life it had taken, so far as I knew, belonged to Sara. Originally, it had been an instrument of honor, but now it was a murder weapon. I couldn’t stand to look at it.

“Grab Gail and let’s go,” I said.

Gail wailed that she wouldn’t leave the pastor, so Somerville scooped her up and packed her out on his shoulder. Once we were outside, he set Gail on her feet and grabbed her wrist.

“Pastor Andrew–” she cried.

“He’s dead, darlin’,” Somerville said in a sympathetic tone. Then he pulled her shirt together to cover her bare breasts. “We can’t take him with us. I need you to run for me now, okay?”

We set off north on 12th. Before we could make it to Depot Street, we had to duck into another warehouse to avoid an approaching cluster of the undead.

“We can go through and out the back door,” I said in a hushed voice. “I was in this building earlier. It’s empty. It’ll put us out right by the tracks. Once we get on the tracks, follow them to the grain company.”

Our footfalls echoed around in the big empty building, but the zombies outside didn’t notice. They were too focused on the Firebird’s horn. We went from front door to back door in a straight shot. Once out on the railroad tracks. Gail saw Dan out on the grain bin.

“Oh no,” she said, tugging her shirt together tighter. “He can’t see me like this. I don’t want him to see me this way. I don’t want him to know.”

“He’ll understand,” I said.

“That ain’t what she said, is it?” Somerville shot back. Then he took her wrist again and pulled her from the tracks and toward a house.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“Pit stop,” he said. “It won’t take but a minute. We’ve got a minute to let this girl keep her dignity don’t we?”

We ran down the gravel embankment, into a shallow ditch, then back up to a white board fence that separated the railroad property from the backyard of the home. Somerville helped Gail over the fence then climbed over himself. Once I was over, we went to the back door. Somerville kicked it in, and we went inside.

We were greeted by a pair of taut, brown corpses dressed in rags. Somerville clubbed them down with his rifle then stomped their heads until they quit moving. Then he moved clumsily around the house until he found a bedroom closet. Gail and I followed him in. I didn’t see him. All I could see were clothes flying out of the closet onto the bed. Then he came around the door with a shirt.

“Here,” he said. “This will do.”

“It’s nothing like my shirt,” Gail said. “He’ll notice.”

“It’s blue, ain’t it? It’s checkered, ain’t it?”

“Yes, it’s plaid, but–”

“He’s a man, ain’t he?” Somerville said, shoving the shirt into her hands. “Darlin’, he won’t notice. Trust me on this. Now get dressed so we can go.”

She stared at the shirt a moment then looked at me. I nodded. She smiled through her tears and stood on tip-toes to kiss Nicholas’ cheek.

“You really are a saint,” she whispered. “Thank you.”