K. T. Swartz (11 page)

Not bothering to rise, he clawed his way toward her, finger bones punching through his rotted skin. She swapped the gun for the hammer. Let his fingers close around her ankle. She dropped to one knee, puncturing the crown of his skull with the hammer’s claw. His brains sloshed like liquid in a glass. The zombie sagged to the floor, his grip easing off her leg. She stepped over him, checked the rooms in the hall. A laundry room, supply room, and a mudroom. No other zombies. She crept to the end of the hall and looked around. A table large enough to seat twenty dominated the dining room; decorations scattered the glass tabletop; a flower vase lay in pieces, the flowers dry and rotting. Movement out of the corner of her eyes made her spin.
A young woman her age stared back at her, a flashlight and hammer in her hands. She blinked; so did the woman. A reflection. Was that really what she looked like? Her clothes were almost as black as the rotted bodies in the hall. Her hair had gotten long, hanging past her ears; she was going to have to shorten it soon. She stepped up close, barely recognized the haunted features staring back at her. Dark eyes that at times refused to sleep because of the nightmares that kept her awake, or the cheekbones she never knew she had. Somewhere along the way, she’d lost weight and hadn’t realized it, making her eyes seem larger, her already small frame that much smaller. She was a skeleton playing at being human. She turned from the mirror. Maybe she’d break it after she cleared the house out.

Through the doorway was the kitchen and a life cut much shorter than it should have been. The zombie reached for her, moaned softly, almost piteously, as if lonely. She swatted the female’s hands aside and smashed the hammer into her temple, knocking the zombie off her unsteady feet. Her skull smacked into the fridge, left a trail of black blood down the side. She pushed through the swinging door, into the hall lobby. Half-eaten up to the thighs, a female body hung from the staircase. Deep tracks in the skin showed where something had clawed at it, trying to pull meat from the bones. The floor was a sticky, stinking mess of dull blood that had soaked into the wood floor. A zombie stood under the body, his hands raised, fingertips making the corpse swing lightly, but unable to reach higher.

Her grip tightened on her hammer with the surge of anger through her chest. So many people dead; so many lost hope, lost the desire to live. Alone, terrified of the monsters outside their door and inside their homes, they saw no escape. The world was beyond saving, much like this woman who had taken her own life. There was no peace, because peace – like safety – was a poison. There was nothing but the struggle, and sometimes that was too much. How long would she go before it became too much for her?

She swung on the zombie. Hit him on the back of the head. He stumbled. She hit him again. This time his skull cracked. The wet slap of his brain against bone filled the hall. She caved in his skull and kept pounding. Chunks of bone flew on impact. The end of her hammer flung liquid across the walls, the ceiling, and the staircase until his head was nothing but a rotting smear on the floor. One cloudy eye stared up at her, the last remaining identifiable part of his head. She rested her boot on it. And squashed it.

He was the last zombie on the first level. She searched the second floor, the attic, and basement. The supplies this B&B had stored up were more than enough to reaffirm her decision to stay here, although she had one hell of a mess to clean up now. The building was a defensible location, with thick outer walls and narrow doorways. She could tear up the staircase, cutting off access to the upper floors. And she found the honeymoon suite, with its kitchenette and fireplace. Perfect.

She opened the curtains on the second floor, pushed the window open to let in the warm breeze and to wash away the stink of death. She climbed out onto the porch roof. The shingles were warm from the sun, and heat seeped through her leather coat. She sat down, rested her elbows on her knees, and let the breeze tease her hair. She’d always wanted an old two story house with some history to its walls. Although she never thought it would be here in her hometown. It was a nice place to be – or it would be when she cleaned it up. And hey, the Danville library was just around the corner, so she could catch up on her reading.

Huh. The world was dying from a disease with no cure, and she was planning a cozy read by the fireplace. What
was
she thinking?

Snorting, she climbed back inside and unloaded the truck. With the rooms lit by kerosene lamps she’d found in the basement, she dragged the zombies to the garage, dumped them in a heap. Back inside, she cut down the woman’s body. With no other place for her – because burying her would only attract zombies – she hid her body under the dead, to disguise the smell. The garage door clicked and groaned as she hit the manual release. Darkness consumed the interior, was as good a tomb as she could make it.

‘Leaving the woman there isn’t a decision I enjoy. She deserves a proper burial beside her family and friends, with loved ones to mourn her. Now, there is no one but me. I don’t know her name. I don’t know what she liked to do or what reasons brought her to the B&B. Did she want to be cremated or buried? Was there a particular song she wanted played at her funeral? I have nothing for her except undignified storage in the garage. But the truth is she’s dead. I’m alive, and I can’t waste my time where it isn’t productive.’

Now to fix up the rest of the house.

The blood on the floors and walls was harder to get rid of, but that was what cleaning chemicals were for. She boarded up the interior windows on the first floor, nailed 2x4s over the front door, until nothing could push its way through. For the first time in months she felt like a normal person as she packed away her supplies, and again walked the empty rooms. This was the worst part of any new residence, the first night. But she’d get over the jitters, and learn to be comfortable here as soon as she destroyed the staircase. Step two was now complete. The blood bags no doubt had run out days ago. While certainly not fast, most of the shambling dead would eventually find their way back to town.

She hoped to be ready by the time they did, but with August coming to a close, and the most difficult part coming up, she wondered if maybe the weather would change before she’d be ready. Kentucky winters were harsh and frigid, prone to ice storms and sub-zero temperatures. While both would definitely impair the dead, they would also impair her. They always did. She just couldn’t handle being cold. She headed for the stairs and couldn’t help climbing back out on the porch roof. The sun had set, throwing its last, fading rays across the sky. Tomorrow she’d hunt up some sheet metal and maybe raid the hospital again. Maybe make a few pipe bombs. She needed to improve her explosives selection if she really wanted to fortify her new home. Or, instead, maybe she’d go to the library.

She opened a bottle of water, grabbed some fruit to munch on. As she watched the sun set, as twilight pulled its blanket of stars across the sky, she lay back and let evening’s chill work its way under her skin. The day had been a good one, all things considering. She was comfortable here, more relaxed than she’d been in a long time. Maybe now she’d be able to sleep for more than an hour or two.

She stood outside the Public Library on West Broadway and considered the broken pane of glass in the door. The shards were long gone, giving her no hint of whether something smashed its way into the library or out of the library. Nothing moved inside – at least, not in the few minutes she’d been standing there watching the front entrance. The building, by all appearances, was empty, forgotten. But they all looked that way. As she stood there, watching the darkness, nostalgia wiggled its way up from the depths of her mind.

She’d spent so many years as a kid in the library. Her arms full of books, she’d wobble up the steps from the children’s section and carefully slide them across the counter, where one of the librarians – Ms. Mallory – would scan each book’s barcode and restack them for her. Her mom had constantly enrolled her and her brother in the library’s summer reading programs, and the room these events took place in had a two-way mirror; she remembered putting her face up the glass and looking inside the room. Sometimes people were behind it, but most times not. If she really thought hard, she could remember the library before its second renovation. Its third incarnation stood before her now. She’d outlived the building, and that was an uncomfortable thought.

There were no more people left to pull books from the shelves, no more people to absorb the overwhelming amount of knowledge – a timeline of humanity’s growth and creativity – captured on paper. And this was only what could be referenced. What about what existed within each person’s mind? How much was lost of this world and how much would never be recovered? The thought made her stomach roll. Earth would never be the same. It couldn’t, because there weren’t enough people to support the knowledge it once had. No library should be empty, left to rot were no one could appreciate its wealth.

She glanced up and down the street. Further up, a solitary zombie loitered by a tree near a two-story brick house converted into a small-town lawyer’s office. The sign out front still hung from the lamppost: Crawford & Crawford. Brothers. They used to go to her church years ago, when she lived here, but that was well over ten years ago. Were the Crawford brothers among the other dead wandering Danville’s streets? Had she already killed them? How many other people had she killed that she knew?

She shook her head. What a dangerous train of thought that was: empathy for the dead. Foolishness like that would get her killed. She pulled out a baseball bat she’d found at the B&B and walked inside the library. Clicked on her flashlight. Movement behind the counter had her light swinging toward it. A shifting shadow. Clear eyes dilated with the bright light. The zombie didn’t flinch; instead moaned. The librarian was still in uniform, with her nametag displayed on her lapel: Angela. Angela had long blond hair that hung halfway down her back. Her ponytail was too tight, and the rotted flesh of her skull was unable to hold up to the pressure.

Her barrett swung by her left ear, her ponytail thin and greasy with liquefied skin. May put away her bat, took out the bow. The counter was too high for the zombie to crawl over, not when its simple brain told it only to pursue lunch. Long arms reached for her, left black smears across the green countertop. She pulled her arrow back; let it fly. The zombie pitched backward, an arrow through her forehead.

In the sudden silence, she listened for the sound of shuffling feet on carpet. Behind the counter, through the glass windows in the adult fiction section, a figure jerked and swayed. She put her flashlight on the bench beside her. Strung another arrow, stretched the string back to her ear. The blind zombie paused in the doorway, swayed on its feet as if listening to music. A collared shirt, pleated slacks, and a nametag on his collar: Jimmy. His thin frame betrayed him as a high-schooler, probably a part-timer here. Black spiky hair stuck out in all directions, though when he turned his head, glossy and slick patches of his skin showed. She let the arrow fly. His head snapped back. His feet slipped out from under him and he sat down hard, head lolling forward.

She strung another arrow. Listened as silence again intruded. It was always so quick to show, as if on her heels. Everywhere she went, it followed like a pet. But unlike a fuzzy dog or a purring cat, it offered no comfort. Because the silence only ended when dragging feet moved across the floor. This time the library stayed quiet. She eased the tension from her bow, pulled out her new baseball bat and grabbed her flashlight. Section by section, she combed the sprawling building. All open doors she closed – after she checked each room, venturing into areas she’d never been. She found the room with the two-way glass, shined her light inside. There was no one behind it.

She kept going, walked down the steps to the children’s section. Let her light play across the stacks. She picked an aisle for elementary-aged kids. At the very end, she knelt; let her light shine off the plastic covers. Her finger tapped each one, her eyes searching. Until a familiar title caught her attention. Her favorite book as a kid. She slipped it free from the shelf. The cover was still as she remembered it, of a little boy living in a world with two suns, where one sun turned him human and the other into an animal. She stuck the book in her pack before searching the rest of the stacks. Finding no lingering dead, she headed back to the lobby.

Well, now that the building was clear, she could get on with her research. She headed for the topmost level but stopped. Looked over the railing to the counter below, to the body she knew was behind it. She trotted down the steps; hopped the counter to sit on it. As far as she knew, there were only two types of zombies. But no cure. And no cases of surviving once bitten. She had largely ignored the news reports that flooded the airwaves with panic and the biased stories designed to generate sales.

And the reporters named the disease as a mutated strand of the Bubonic Plague. All it took to transmit the disease was fluid exchange, which meant the disease traveled through blood and saliva. No one bothered to further study it; they were too busy trying to keep everyone from dying. The Bubonic plague – what she knew of it – didn’t addle the mind. It created painful swelling around the joints. Necrosis set in while the body still lived. During the Dark Ages, it had spread through fleas and rats, other vermin and unclean living conditions.