Left With the Dead (9 page)

Overhead, glass shattered. Gartrell sensed movement, and he ducked back into the bedroom as shards of glass fell to the street, raining down on the ghouls below. And then a slight, wasted corpse streaked past the window, bouncing off the apartment building’s façade as it went, its white, dirty hair trailing behind it. The zombie screeched as it reached for him with hands twisted from a long battle with arthritis, but it didn’t even touch the window sill. Gartrell leaned forward and watched the corpse slam into the sidewalk with enough force to shatter its arms and, he suspected, its spine. But the body of the old woman from the seventh floor still moved. Twitching and hitching, it turned toward the apartment building’s entrance, trailing its useless legs behind it as it crawled. The rest of the zombie horde fairly trampled the new arrival, unaware of its presence beneath their feet.

Gartrell pulled the last fragmentation grenade he had from the clip on his body armor. He kissed the cold metal orb, yanked the pin free, and lobbed it toward the Cadillac. The safety spoon flew off with a metallic
ping!
that he could still hear over the undulating mass of moaning carcasses below. The grenade struck a zed right in the skull and left a good-sized dent in it before it hit the street and rolled toward the car. It disappeared beneath the shiny black Caddy.

All hell broke loose.

The explosion was strong enough to rattle windows in every building overlooking the street. The Cadillac fairly leaped into the air as the grenade’s explosion momentarily superheated the air beneath it and ignited the fumes emanating from its punctured fuel tank. A column of bright fire chased away the shadows in the street, and Gartrell slammed the window closed as the mushroom cloud of flame and smoke rushed into the sky.

“Dave! Dave, what’s going on?” Jolie shouted from the living room. There was pure panic in her voice, and Jaden was shrieking.

Gartrell hurried through the kitchen and into the living room. Jolie and Jaden were huddled together on the living room floor. He knelt beside them and touched Jaden’s head gently. He continued crying anyway.

“We’re probably going to have to leave this building and head for the subway,” he told Jolie. “There are other soldiers in the tunnels who can link up with us and lead us to safety. But in order for us to have even a fifty-fifty chance of making it to the subway station alive, I had to give us some cover.” Another blast shook the building again as a second car exploded into flames. “The second stairway, across the hall from the next apartment—where would it take us?”

“To an exit on Eighty-Sixth Street,” she said. “But Dave, I thought they would send a helicopter—”

“It’ll never get here in time. Get Jaden pulled together as well as you can.” He got to his feet and picked up the shotgun. He cycled it, testing its action—everything worked perfectly. He opened the box of .410 shells. They looked old, but Gartrell was confident they would still fire. He loaded one into the old shotgun and pumped it, dropping the shell into the chamber. He loaded another five into the weapon until it was full, then returned to the bedroom and placed the small-bore weapon in the next apartment. As he returned to Jolie’s apartment, he saw Jaden run into the entry foyer. Jolie ran after him, her eyes wide.

“
Jaden,
” she said, but her voice was nothing more than a strangled whisper.

Gartrell spun around and looked on as she caught up to Jaden and grabbed him. She pulled him away from the door, hugging him to her chest. He resisted quietly, and reached toward the door.

Gartrell almost jumped as one of the deadbolts unlocked with a startlingly loud click.

Oh please, kid…don’t say a word…

“Dah-dee,” Jaden said.

Whatever was on the other side of the door heard the small voice, and it grunted and slammed against the door with all its might. More ghouls in the hallway outside the apartment moaned, and the door shook and trembled as they added their bodies to the fray. Gartrell heard metal scraping against metal, and he knew the former man of the house was about to unlock the remaining deadbolt, which would leave only the security chain as their last defense.

Gartrell ran back to the kitchen. He grabbed the refrigerator and pulled it toward him. It rolled easily on casters, so he quickly pulled it out of its recess. He yanked the power cord out of the wall socket and pushed the bulky, stainless steel appliance into the entry foyer.

“Get out of the way!” he snapped to Jolie as she dragged Jaden away from the door. Once they were clear, Gartrell upended the refrigerator. Ceramic chips flew through the air and ricocheted off the walls as it slammed to the floor and shattered several expensive floor tiles in the process. Gartrell wasted no time and rammed the appliance against the apartment’s entry door just as the last deadbolt flipped open and the door started to open. Gartrell slammed it shut with the refrigerator. He angled the huge appliance and wedged it in place in the narrow entry hall. It wouldn’t hold forever, but it would give them enough time to retreat.

Gartrell ran to Jolie and Jaden. Jaden had retreated inside himself again, and he stared at the ceiling with blank, vacant eyes. Jolie hugged him to her tightly, half-crouching in the living room, staring at the apartment door as it opened an inch and slammed into the refrigerator. Her face was frozen in a rictus of terror. Gartrell reached out and cupped her chin in his hand and forced her to look at him.

“Jolie…stay with me, God damn it!” He was done treating her as a helpless civilian; the only way to get through to her was to treat her like a soldier.

“Yes,” she said, her voice small. “I’m here.”

“Then listen to me. Do everything I say. Don’t think about it, just
do
it. If you stop to think, they’ll get you. If you act when I tell you to, you and your boy will get out of this alive. I guarantee it.” Her eyes turned back to the door, and he shook her roughly. “Are you
with
me, Jolie?”

She looked back at him, and the fear in her big blue eyes receded a fraction. “Yes. I’m with you,” she said, and her voice was stronger this time.

“Do you have your gun?”

“Yes.”

“Was all the ammunition for it on the table?”

“Yes.”

Gartrell nodded. That meant he’d put all of it in the backpack. “Take Jaden to the next apartment. Put on the backpack, and get the shotgun. Take Jaden into the kitchen there and wait for me.” The door banged into the refrigerator again and again, and the racket was getting louder. Gartrell heard metal slide across shattered ceramic, and he turned. The door was open several inches now, and as he watched, arms reached in and flailed about crazily, searching for something to grab. Something warm.

“Time’s up. Remember, do as I tell you, and don’t stop to think about it—just do it. Do it for Jaden.”

“All right.”

“Then get going!”

Jolie carried Jaden into the rear bedroom, moving as fast as she could. Gartrell ran to the bookcase and dumped all the books onto the floor. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a book of matches emblazoned with a small pig next to the legend
The Barbeque Hut
on the cover. He struck a match and held it to one of the paperbacks. Once it caught, he struck a second match and lit another book on fire, then another, and another. Once the blaze started going strong, he tossed cushions from the couch onto it. Foul, black smoke rose into the air. The zeds in the hallway crashed against the door, and the refrigerator slid another few inches. Gartrell retreated to the back bedroom, pulled the pocket door shut, and shoved the bed against it. He darted into the bathroom and pulled the box of cotton balls off the medicine cabinet shelf, then bolted into the closet. He closed its cheap, flimsy door behind him and crawled through the hole into the next apartment.

He looked up to find Jolie had him covered with the shotgun. Jaden lay on the floor beside her, sobbing softly. Gartrell nodded to Jolie approvingly.

“Exactly what I want to see,” he said. “Be aggressive, and always be ready to shoot. That’s what your life is right now, you understand?”

“That should be obvious,” she said. She’d pulled herself together, and she’d donned the backpack like he’d told her. She slowly lowered the weapon.

Gartrell pointed at the shotgun. “You have six rounds in that, and it’s loaded with birdshot. You need to fire at their heads when they get close. Don’t shoot at anything more than twenty feet away, the shot isn’t big enough to do enough damage. Inside of twenty feet, fire right at their kissers. Get it?”

“Got it. Do I smell smoke?”

“Yes you do. We’re not going to be able to stay here, so I’m making it a little tougher for them to track us. Where’s your revolver?”

She lifted her jacket and he saw the butt of the .38 sticking out of the waistband of her jeans. Gartrell would have preferred she kept it in a holster, but he’d forgotten to ask if she had one. He told her to try to carry it in her jacket pocket. She did as he suggested, and it fit fine. He then walked behind her and pulled the pistol ammo from the backpack and put it in her other pocket. He loaded up the jacket’s breast pockets with shotgun shells, and ejected one shell from the shotgun and described how to load it. He then handed her the expelled shell and watched her load it into the shotgun.

“Okay, we’re going to get out of here now. We’re going to leave this apartment and go straight across the hall to the stairway. We’re going down until we hit the exit, then we’re going directly to the subway station. When we get there, I want you to grab onto my belt and hold on, because it’s going to be pitch black and I’m the only one who can see.” He touched his night vision goggles to make his point.

“How will we get there?”

He patted the AA-12 hanging at his side. “By fighting our way through.”

She swallowed. “But what about Jaden?”

Gartrell reached into one of his pockets and pulled out several white plastic quick ties. “We’ll have to tie him to my back, and we’ll have to go like bats out of hell. Not my first choice, but we’re pressed for time.”

“You intend to tie up my son?”

“Like I said, not my first choice. But this is where we are. Unless you have any other ideas? I don’t think we want to take a chance with him running off, or slowing us down. Right?”

“I…I don’t have any other ideas, but…”

Gartrell handed her the box of cotton balls. “Stuff your ears with those, then help me with Jaden. Once he’s on my back, put cotton in his ears too. Things are going to get loud.”

Her expression quiet and resigned, she did as he asked. Gartrell turned away from her and knelt beside Jaden. He gently touched the boy, and Jaden looked at him. Gartrell felt a twinge of guilt; the kid looked miserable, and beneath the heavy veil of his autism, there was no way to make him understand what was happening. He was 100% Victim to everything that was going on.

“Hang in there, Jaden,” he said softly, brushing the boy’s red hair away from his face. “Be strong for your momma, okay?”

“Momma,” he said, and sobbed some more.

“Momma’s right here,” Jolie said. She knelt beside him, and he reached for her. Jolie took him into her arms and hugged him tightly, her eyes closed. Tears ran past her eyelids, leaving glistening trails on her cheeks. Gartrell realized she was basically hugging her child goodbye. He wanted to say something to her, something encouraging, something motivating…but there just wasn’t anything to be said. Jolie had never been schooled in the art of warfare, but she wasn’t stupid. She knew their chances were pretty piss-poor, no matter what Gartrell might have said.

Gartrell got to his feet and stepped away from them, giving the mother and her child a last few moments of privacy. He slipped the quick ties back inside his pocket, then depressed the push-to-talk button on his radio. “Falcon, this is Terminator Five, over.”

“Terminator, this is Falcon. Go ahead, over.”

“Falcon, Terminator’s danger close and we have to leave the building. Unless you have some great news and can tell me that Chinook is on its way. Over.”

“Ah, Terminator, Falcon. Negative, Chinook is still refueling. The aviators won’t leave without full tanks, they don’t want to leave anything to chance while over zed country, over.”

“Roger that, Falcon. We’re going for the subway station. I’ve got NVGs, so it’ll at least even the odds a bit. You’ve got troops in the T line tunnels? Over.”

“Terminator, Falcon. Roger, we have an entire company moving down the line, clearing it out. Like I told you, one platoon is moving ahead of the rest of the company, over.”

“Falcon, give me that frequency for that platoon, over.”

“Terminator, Falcon. Stand by.” As Gartrell waited, he could smell the smoke from the apartment next door. He walked toward the hole in the wall and knelt before it. He definitely heard something going on over there as well—the zeds were breaking down the door and forcing their way inside. He hoped the cushions emitted enough smoke to keep them dumb and blind for a little while longer. “Terminator, Falcon’s back with you. Frequency is one two seven point eight gigahertz, and Delta Company’s call sign is Destroyer. The detached platoon is Pathfinder One. Over.”

“Roger that, Falcon. I can make that frequency. Have you been in contact with Pathfinder? Over.”

“Negative on that last, Terminator. Waiting for them to report in, and will advise them as soon as they do of your plan, over.”

“Roger that, Falcon.” Gartrell heard something slam against the bedroom door in Jolie’s apartment. He dragged a heavy coffee table over and upended it against the hole in the wall, then shoved a chair against it, dragging it around Jolie and Jaden as they clung to each other. It wasn’t much of a barricade, but it would serve to delay the stenches for a minute or two. “Terminator’s got to pull out now, Falcon. I’m rolling over to the company frequency of one two seven point eight, would be appreciative if you could switch over with me and give me a radio check, over.”

“Roger, Terminator. Switching over now.”

Gartrell switched his radio over to the new frequency and transmitted his identity. Falcon wasn’t there, but he did get Summit Six.