Moriah (20 page)

“Get up,” Riley told fox girl. “The both of you—” she moved the revolver from one to the other “—we’re going to walk back to that building. If you try and run or yell for help—” she glowered at the Harajuku girl “—I’ll shoot you both. Come on!”

They were almost to the apartment building when the companions of Riley’s two hostages noticed what was going on. A hue and cry went up and excitement turned from the zombies trickling into their midst to the drama unfolding.

“Move!” Riley urged, walking backwards now, the .45 revolver pressed to the back of the GothLoli, her free hand pulling the fox girl along. She kept them between herself and the other men and women. “Faster!”

“Kitty!” someone cried out clearly. “She got Kitty!”

A giant broke from the pack, uttering a high-pitched streak. His ratty beard was forked and rubber banded, his meaty arms jangling out of his furry vest as he raced towards them. He wore studded leather forearm vambraces and hefted a war hammer, which he looked eager to use.

The ground in front of the brute boiled up as the cracks of a rifle sounded from on high. The man stopped where he was and looked up to the sixth floor balcony. He gave another shriek—its pitch incongruous with his size—and repeatedly smashed the ground with his maul, venting his frustration on the earth.

“Don’t shoot me!” Riley called up to the ceiling in the lobby. “It’s me! I’ve got two of them.” A flashlight beam shone down on her and her prisoners.

Dee’s voice growled back from the aperture, “Get upstairs, Riley.”

* * *

“Did you search these guys for weapons?”

“No.” Riley told Bruce. She stood against the wall, her heart only beginning to slow. Kevin had slapped plastic cuffs on the two women and knelt between them, searching them. “Bruce, keep an eye on that cannon.”

The marauders were milling about outside, trying to figure out what to do. Shotguns boomed intermittently, dispatching zombies. As they procrastinated, more undead poured in, drawn by the clamor. The Howitzer continued to face away from the building.

“Garden shears?” Kevin looked at their Goth detainee. “What were you going to do with these? Trim our hedges?” He threw the shears away across the room.

“Where was she hiding those?” Bruce croaked.

When he was satisfied that they were disarmed, Kevin stood.

“Who are you?” Neither answered him.

“You with Tolman?” rasped Bruce. A look passed on the fox girl’s face. She’d affixed her canid nose back in place, her own nose and mouth bloody where Riley had kicked her. “Didn’t think so.”

A shotgun discharged outside.

“Man,” Bruce remarked, regarding the Harajuku girl. “You know, you’re a real rough looking broad.”

“She’s not a woman,” said Riley.

“What?”

“Look.”

Kevin lifted the woman’s black dress with the muzzle of his AK. “She’s not wearing underwear,” he told Bruce. “And she’s got testicles.”

Bruce uttered a
damn
. “Let me try talking to them. Riley, keep an eye on things down there.”

He came in and squatted down in front of them. “Hey, Raggedy Ann, you going to talk?” The cross-dresser looked away. “Didn’t think so. How about you? You’re not going to talk either, are you?”

“Do you think she can talk?” asked Kevin.

“Let’s take a look.” Bruce gripped her jaw in his hand and tried to pry her mouth open with his index finger. She snapped at him, nearly biting him.

“Get off me!”

“She can talk.” Bruce eyed the girl with impatience.

“She can talk,” Kevin agreed.

“You know,” Bruce told the girl, “you’d be a lot scarier if you weren’t dressed up like a fox.”

“She’s not going to tell you a thing,” the other hostage said defiantly.

“So you going to talk then?”

“I’ll tell you you’ve bitten off more than you can chew, man. Do you know who you’re fucking with?”

“No. Why don’t you tell us who we’re fucking with.”

“You’re fucking with Burning Man Tribe.”

“Whoa, Kev. You hear that? Burning Man Tribe.” Bruce did not sound impressed. “And you don’t know who
we
are, do you?”

The man dressed like a woman didn’t take the bait.

“We’re Bear’s Army.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Guys, look at this.”

Bruce and Kevin joined Riley on the balcony. Below, the brigands had secured a zombie to a ladder, its arms bound at its sides, its legs together. A dozen costumed and painted men and women danced around the thing, dousing it with fluid.

“We know you’re in there!” Speakers mounted in the trucks and on the flat bed came to life. A paunchy little man stood with a microphone. “Come out now—” He wore a white powdered wig, gold-tasseled epaulettes on a purple smoking jacket, and a pistol in a chest holster “—or you’ll wish you did.” The PA system howled with feedback.

They lifted the ladder and secured it in place. The zombie looked down on them, not comprehending. The fat man with the leather vest came forward with a torch and tossed it on the ladder. With a
whoosh
, the zombie went up in flame. Men and women began dancing around the pyre, frolicking to the undead’s distressed wails.

“Black Rock retards.” Bruce sighted through the scope affixed to his M-40. The rifle cracked and the cries from the fire ceased.

“Now you done it, man,” said the guy dressed in former Japanese alternative fashion.

“Yeah, looks like I done it.”

The short man looked up towards them before saying something to a man in a camisole and codpiece with a leather studded choker.

“I always wondered what happened to Alice Cooper.” Bruce worked the bolt on the M40, chambering a fresh round.

“Tris would have loved these guys.” Kevin took the other side of the balcony, readying his rifle. The people besieging them made no move to storm the apartment building. A volley of shotgun fire dropped half a dozen zombies.

“No, she wouldn’t. These fucks are fucking with me on the wrong day. I feel like shit.”

Kevin crouched back down in front of the two prisoners. Riley stood behind him. “Are you Kitty?” she asked the fox girl.

“I’m Kitty.” It was the man who answered.

“You’re Kitty…” Kevin looked to the girl, who was visibly frightened. “Look, your sense of fashion and company aside, you’re not a dumb girl. You can’t be to be alive out here. You can see we’re outnumbered. But you can also tell we’ve got better guns than your side. And your guys can’t seem to get their act together. You know it’s true, right? Sure you do.”

“Don’t listen to him, ‘chelle. They’re not Bear’s Army.”

“Who are you?” Riley glared at the man. “Her father?”

“‘
chelle
?’” Kevin kept his focus on the girl. “Your name is Michelle? Is that it? Well, what if we walk you downstairs, Michelle, let you go? You go back and tell your people out there, they let us leave, we’ll go. They pull back, we walk away. It’s as simple as that. Otherwise this is not going to go well for your side.”

“It’s as simple as that,” Bruce watched the men and women on the ground.

“You’ll do no such thing, ‘chelle!”

“Shut up!” Riley yelled at the man.

Someone was screaming down below.

“What happened, Bruce?” Kevin asked, unruffled.

“One of them got bit.”

Kitty was eyeing the door to the apartment.

“Don’t get any ideas,” Riley warned him.

“Come on, Michelle,” Kevin said to the girl, “let’s go on down there, you tell them what we said. We’ll even let Kitty go once we’re clear.”

“Yeah, right.”

“What do you think,” Riley asked Kitty, “we want to keep you?”

Before the girl could make a decision and answer, music blared up to them.

“What are they doing now?” Kevin and Riley stood with Bruce on the balcony.

“They think they’re softening us up,” Bruce smirked. “Psychological warfare.”

“They’re going to make us listen to this for how many hours?”

“Exactly.”

“What is this crap anyway?”

“I think its Richard Prior.”

“No,” Riley corrected him. “Eddie Murphy.” She knew the song from the 80s-themed parties popular in New Harmony.

My girl wants to party all the time, party all the time, party all the time
.

“Look down there,” Bruce pointed. “Another one of them got bit.”

“Is Dee all right?” asked Riley.

“Dee’s fine,” Kevin reassured her. “Anyone who tries to come in through that lobby isn’t.”

“We can’t stay here all day.” Bruce selected targets through the scope. When the shooting started, he’d decided, the Napoleon-guy or whatever he was died first.

“Why not?” Riley thought maybe that was what they should do. “Let them deal with things.”

Dozens of zombies were milling around about the raiders below as more staggered in from the road.

“Bruce is right. When those things are done dealing with them, we have to deal with those things.”

Riley looked at the mobile artillery piece mounted on the flat bed. She imagined a weapon like that could blow holes like Swiss cheese in this building. The Howitzer’s barrel remained pointing back up the road. “They’re not too bright, are they?”

The giant with the oversized hammer was braining zombies, screeching at a near falsetto as he did so.

“No,” Kevin agreed. “They’re not.”

The music suddenly cut off.

“Get ready.” Bruce crouched down, lining up his shot.

“What should I do?” Riley looked for direction.

“They go to move that cannon, waste them.”

The short, wigged man barked into his microphone. “Burning Man, hear me!” The men and women that comprised Burning Man Tribe let out a cheer. “Burning man charge!” They broke off from the zombies they fought, running towards the apartment building. “Burning Man onward!” The giant was in the forefront of the rush, screeching his own shrill battle cry.

“Okay,” Bruce centered his crosshairs on the leader’s epaulettes. “Here we go.” His first shot knocked the wig off the man’s head in an explosion of red. Bruce worked the bolt on the rifle and chambered a fresh round. He looked through his scope. “Next.”

* * *

Dee sat in the dark, looking down into the lobby below. There was enough ambient light from outdoors that he could see down into there better than anyone there was going to be able to see up to where he was. He would have rather been waiting with Riley, but he knew she was safe upstairs with Kevin and Bruce.

Muffled shotgun blasts reached his ears. He chalked those up to the people outside tangling with Zed. If something was going on upstairs he needed to know about, someone would come down and tell him. With his limited mobility and the FN FAL .63, he thought his current position the best place for him. Anybody who wanted to get up inside the building had to come by him. The other entrances were blocked with rubble. He could imagine that this was not the first time the perch he manned had served a purpose similar to his own.

When the music started, Dee figured they were getting
really
stupid outside. If they’d played it smart they would have circled the tower, kept quiet, and waited them out. They’d have still had to deal with the zombies coming in off the road, the ones drawn by wounds like his own. But now they were out there blasting some bullshit tunes that could probably be heard for a mile around. And before that they’d been making a racket, attracting who knew how many scads of the undead.

Dee sat where he was, his legs out in front of him, the barrel of the FN covering the hole. He was used to waiting. Waiting didn’t bother him. Soon enough the music stopped and the real shooting started.

He listened to the gunfire, imagining Bruce selecting a target, firing, racking the bolt, choosing his neck target, firing. Kevin fired short, controlled bursts from his AK-47. Riley’s AR chimed in less frequently. She’d be keeping an eye on their captives. He knew he wouldn’t hear the cannon fire as long as Kevin and Bruce were alive on the balcony. If he heard the cannon fire they’d all be in some real trouble and there wasn’t much he could do about it here.

They weren’t trying to be quiet when they came through the lobby. It sounded like Kevin was on a full auto tear and then there were voices beneath, excited and scared, jostling into the lobby. He looked down his barrel and waited until they showed themselves, their footwear scraping across the floor. They came into view bunched up like he’d hoped they’d be, like they shouldn’t have been, completely unaware of his presence. He mowed them down, the Belgian rifle booming in the hallway, echoing through the lobby. One or two managed to look up and the last thing they saw were muzzle flashes licking down from the dark.

They were lying there, unmoving, when Dee heard a quad start up and race out of the lobby. Dummy was trying to take their ride. Bruce’s rifle cracked and the sound of the quad died.