Revenence: Dead of Winter: A Zombie Novel (34 page)

     "Navy Pier!" he spat out, the words tumbling out of his mouth in his haste to end the torture.  When Shari threatened to persist, he continued.  "The bigger group is at Willis Tower.  And take it from me," he said, his lips spreading to bare his teeth in a deranged grin, "you guys will have zero chance against them."

     "Huh," Shari said, grabbing him by the hair and turning his head to look into his eyes.  "Then you guys must be pretty disposable, if they sent you when they'd have done a better job themselves." 

     The sadist glared at her until she released his right arm, standing.  His left hand immediately went for his right coat pocket, producing a .38-calibre pistol.  Shari gripped the titanium drywall hammer on her left hip, lifting it free of the loop from which it hung.  She swung the blade end in a sideways motion, swinging at hip level into the temple of the sadist, still seated on the ground.  On contact, the blade burrowed through skull and brain, causing the sadist's eyes to roll lifelessly upward in their sockets, blood pooling at their inner corners. 

     Shari wrenched the blade free, her eyes wild and gleaming with the madness of survival as she stalked toward the next of her prey.  She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the intact windshield of an overturned car, wielding her blood-drenched drywall hammer with a faint smile on her blood-spattered face.  The whites of her eyes showed all the way around the dark brown irises.  In some remote part of her consciousness, she was vaguely disturbed by the image before her, but her smile only widened.

     "In my opinion, Princess," said Kandi's reflection beside her, "you've never looked better."

     "I should say the same for you," Shari said, her tone light and musical, while a childlike smile broke out, full-fledged, across her face. 

     "Let's dance," Kandi said, a seductive smirk spread across her face.

     Shari nodded.  "I
love
to dance."

     She felt almost giddy as she sprinted across the snow-frosted lawn toward some of the few remaining sadists.  There was a lively spring to her step as she turned and stepped, swinging her hammer into the nearest sadist, catching him from behind.  He never knew what hit him, his brain stem severed by the blade end of the hammer.  She yanked it free without pausing, never missing a beat.  She was mimicking Kandi's motions, as if it were a dance number.  She palmed the crowbar multitool on her opposite hip, procuring it as she pivoted on her heel.  She jammed the nail-pulling end in a horizontal motion through the eye of another sadist who ran up behind her, attempting to subdue her with his machete.  As she pulled the nail puller out of the eye socket, the mangled eyeball came out with it, dangling from its tethers as the sadist crumpled lifelessly to the ground.

    
It's like a carnival ride,
Shari thought, gazing deeply into Kandi's eyes as her limbs continued to do their work, spinning and whirling, swinging and jerking.  She saw Kandi use a crowbar multitool identical to her own, using the sharp, four-inch long foot opposite the hammer-head end on a female sadist.  She used it like the manual can openers used to open cans of juice, puncturing a triangular hole in the crown of the woman's head with ease.  Shari mimicked the action on another sadist, a large, unsuspecting male who had his back turned to her.  A light fit of laughter bubbled up from from within her as she marveled at what her body was doing, almost as if it were of its own volition.  She kept her eyes on Kandi, slashing her way through the melee-armed sadists as McCormick snipers helped, taking head shots from their perches on the roofs, high above Lake Shore Drive.  Of the ground troops, the majority remained and aided in eliminating the last of the sadists, though a good amount were lost.  Shari wasn't trying to think too hard about how many, but she knew it numbered at least in the dozens.

     Shari knelt and pulled the thick wedge of her blade free from the forehead of a bald male sadist, grunting and jamming the spiked end of her crowbar upwards through the open mouth of another, all without pausing.  As the implement sunk in, her left hand threw her drywall hammer like a tomahawk, surprising her as she watched it flip through the air and into the forehead of a female enemy nearby.  Shari panted as she stood, pulling the crowbar free, and looked around her.  The right corner of her mouth inched upward into a deeper smile, the left corner cautiously joining it as she spun to check the full three-hundred-sixty-degree view around her.

     "Shit," she whispered, "are they gone?"  The loud whisper echoed through the quiet road, where a leisurely snowfall persisted, although the weather had died down quiet a bit.

     "I think it's over," ventured a female voice from near the building.

     Shari and Kandi, both spattered in blood, raised their fists into the air, uttering loud, guttural victory cries.  Shari's fellow McCormick compatriots, though at first reluctant, joined her after a moment, the cacophony of their thundering, life-affirming cries roaring and echoing through the snowy city.  Some of them laughed, hugging those near them.

     Shari retrieved her drywall hammer from the female sadist, then started toward the hole in the north building, where Hugo and a few dozen others made their way outside to confirm that the conflict was truly over.  To her left, Shari saw Daphne headed in her direction.  As she reached Shari, she held out two .500 Magnum long-barrel revolvers, like the one Shari had seen on the sadist back on the highway, the sadist she had seen Daphne stalk, kill and loot.

     "He had
two
of those?" Shari breathed, her tone incredulous as she took the two revolvers gratefully.  One was black with swirling, raised gold accents, stylized in a way that was reminiscent of ancient Greek artwork.  The butt of the grip was slightly bulbous, somewhat like a hammerhead that was a half-sphere  in shape.  It bore an engraving,
Phobos.
  The other was engraved with the word
Deimos. 
The end of the grip was capped with rows of low, sharp spikes like those on a meat tenderizer.  It was a solid silver color, but with the same raised swirls present on its black and gold counterpart.  They were both equipped with rail systems ready to receive scopes, flashlights or lasers.

     "Hell's bells, those things look like they weight ten pounds apiece!" Kandi noted.  "What sort of genteel psychopath had
those
custom-designed?  Good thing you're developing a proper athletic bulk to your figure." 

    
Yeah, no shit,
Shari thought, holding the set of revolvers, one in each hand, and appreciating the heft of the ornately carved weapons.  She raised her arms as if she were making a snow angel.

     "Yeah," Daphne said, handing Shari a box which was partially full of cartridges.  "This is all the ammo he had, so you'll have to find some more.  Merry Christmas." 

     Shari hugged her around the neck.  "Thanks," she said.  "Merry Christmas to you.  And a white Christmas it'll be, huh?"  She turned her face upward to catch snowflakes on her tongue.  She nodded toward the wounded building, where a cloud of smoke and debris continued to waft outward.  "Guess we won't be using the north building much anytime soon."

     That evening, most of the adult residents drank, smoked, danced and laughed, thereby medicating themselves from the traumatic effects of the day, and the past several months in general.  They had worked into the afternoon, until just before sunset, to collect the bodies.  Those of enemies had been thrown into the lake after their brains were determined to have been neutralized.  Those of friends had been wrapped and gathered, awaiting their burials over the next several days, as McCormick survivors were able to carve graves into the frozen Earth one at a time.

     The south commons pulsated with low bass tones as Shari navigated the crowd.  She made her way to a corner, where she found a microphone for the P.A. system.

     "Good evening, survivors," she said into the microphone, Kandi beside her.  A hush fell over the crowd.  "When I first took over as head of security, I really didn't know what to expect--not from myself, and not from the rest of you.  But, after today, I have full confidence--in myself and all of us--that whatever the world throws at us, as a community, we'll come out on top.

     "We didn't make it through unscathed.  We lost 36 men and women today.  They were good soldiers, and they were good people.  They were good soldiers because they made it this far, and they did their part to help others.  They were good people because they wanted to do what's right.  They wanted to live and let live, and to
help
live.  If any good is to come of everything that's happened since Easter of this year, then there have to be people like us to shelter and incubate that goodness.  And sometimes, that comes down to a zero-tolerance policy for those who would lash out, unprovoked, at other living human beings.  What I saw out there today was our people, good people, working together to protect the just.  To protect the innocent.  To protect those whose only crime is trying to survive to see another day.

     "And so tonight, we revel in our survivial, as a community.  We don't, and we won't, forget those who were lost."  She looked out over the crowd, a sea of faces.  She saw Hugo and Daphne close by, near the front.  Hundreds of survivors stood behind them, focused on Shari's words.  "But we honor and cherish the sacrifices that they've made.  Those of us who are left standing will live to see tomorrow."  She paused, raising her plastic cup.  "To them and to us.  To our heroes."

     The crowd murmured and cheered in agreement, clinking cups with one another as the music resumed.  Shari joined Daphne and Hugo, the three of them starting toward a comfortable booth to relax their bodies and their minds after the events of the day.

     "You've earned a title," Kandi said, sliding into the U-shaped booth beside Shari.  "You're an Angel of Death."

    
Maybe so,
Shari thought, lighting up a smoke. 
But I'd rather be an angel of life.