Safari - 02 (17 page)

With the sun out in force, the snow pulled back from the road. The snow water helped alleviate his thirst, but Gus felt his midsection starting to tighten again, needing something more. Thinking about all of the great goodies back at the last house didn’t help any. He scolded himself, heated curses that stung, saying he should have kept one house prepared in the city in the very case of what was happening. It had actually happened
twice
, but mulling it over, he thought the first time with Scott didn’t really count. They hadn’t had any choice in that case.

Mid-morning, Gus stopped on a half-buried sidewalk in the shade of some pine trees, very much aware of their woodsy scent. He also became aware of something else. He turned around.

“Well, shit.”

Not sixty feet behind him, and following like puppies, were three gimps. Two were dressed for the summer, in beige dockers, button-down shirts, and rags that Gus realized were supposed to be ties. The other one was dressed for camping in a light windbreaker, hat with ear flaps, dark denims, and hiking boots.

“You fucks.” Gus seethed, not wanting any part of the undead this morning and getting them anyway. That was what he hated about dead folks. They showed up whenever you least needed them, always looking to bite off your head.

Gus stood there, watching them stagger toward him at a gait that was probably the same speed as his own.
They
didn’t suffer, however, from vodka headaches or an empty gut. Well, he reconsidered the last bit. Maybe they did suffer from an empty gut. His head pounded, and he blamed the dead for that as well. It was too goddamn early in the morning for such thoughts, and the very thought of
that
made him even madder.

He didn’t have the energy to swing the bat. He dug the Ruger from his boot, worked the slide, and took aim. The pain around his eyes made concentrating more difficult.

His hand wavered a moment, then he lowered the gun. They were sixty feet out, and he wasn’t going to hit them at that range. A sharpshooter he wasn’t. He took a breath, parted his feet, and waited for them to close the distance.

“C’mon then,” he said, glancing around for others. “C’mon, you goddamn dead bastards. You walkin’ shit-stains. Come to Papa so he can blow your goddamn heads off. Jesus, you pricks are slow.
Slow
. And stink, too.
Christ,
I thought I smelled bad. You guys shower in shit or something?”

Forty feet away, their glazed eyes regarded him as if he were a tender morsel. Moans cut the air. Each step raked on pavement and grated on Gus’s nerves. One of them wore a sneaker that had its sole detached, and every step made it look like a set of great flapping lips with toes. The summer ones had bites which were easy to see. One wore a wound on the shoulder, right through the shirt that must have soaked up every drop of blood, and the other had a hole in the thigh, the cloth around the wound shredded to the knee. The camper didn’t have any obvious wounds, and Gus couldn’t tell if he’d been bitten or not. Perhaps it was something the old guy ate. Or breathed.

Thirty feet and Gus felt they were close enough. He brought the pistol up with both hands, squinted one eye shut, feeling the thump of blood in his temples, and fired. The pistol spat, snapping a forehead back and collapsing the zombie to the wet asphalt.

The other two came on.

“That’s right,” Gus said, taking aim again at the second summer one. “What’s there to fear? Just me and this––” He fired and exploded an eyeball of the second man. The zombie fell back hard, slapping pavement in a crunch that sounded painful, meshing with the tinkle of the spent casing. “Sound-suppressed Ruger. Nothing to break your balls over.”

The last zombie smacked his lips. The thing had no nose, just two holes delving deep into its sinus cavity, below eyes that were bulbous and staring.

“Didn’t like that, did ya? Huh? Well, too fuckin bad.”

He aimed at the forehead of the creature. Its hands came up, clenching eagerly. Gus fired.

Twang!

The metallic sizzle of a ricochet startled him for a second, and he stood there, gaping at the old hunter twenty feet away.

“The fuck?” Gus aimed again, licking his lips.

The sound of the silenced bullet
pinging
off the old geezer’s head woke Gus up, and he stood there, blinking at the zombie closing the distance. The hunter’s hat had fallen off on the second shot and flaps of dead scalp skin hung off a forehead that gleamed.

“Well, fuck me.”

The dead fucker had a steel plate in his head.

Ten feet away, the hunter’s arms came up. His blackened jaw opened, and dark grayish fluid spilled over his lips. Gus took aim and squeezed.

Nothing happened.

The zombie closed in. Gus pulled the trigger again, but the weapon wouldn’t fire. Something had jammed it. Or he’d run out of bullets. He jerked backward, attention divided between making the pistol work and the nearing gimp who appeared pretty sure of itself at the moment.

It lurched for Gus.

He let out a yelp and ran until he was well out of its reach, the hunter tracking him while flexing its jaw and teeth. That one charge was the dead’s last trick it seemed, and it eyed Gus’s retreating figure while conveying the message of
“Son, I am
so
gonna take a bite outta your ass.”
.

“Oh, I hear you, you old bastard,” Gus said, composing himself and bending over as if about to pitch a baseball.

The hunter closed in.

Gus slapped his visor down and stuck the pistol down his boot. The deadhead’s shadow fell over him, black fingers curling into claws. The fingers grazed the Nomex covering his back, gripping the material in a bunch.

Gus straightened and stabbed the Bowie’s entire length up under the jawline of the undead, through its rotten brain. He twisted it with as much torque as he could get. The force of the jab straightened the zombie for a split second, then it dropped to Gus’s steel-toed boots without so much as a twitch.

“Weren’t expectin’ that, were ya, huh? Stupid unawares ass chewin’
fuck
..

He pulled out the blade, wiped it off on the back of the corpse, and sheathed it in his boot.
Breathe
, he told himself, and took a series of deep breaths to clear his head and just taste the air, having had quite enough excitement for the morning. The ache around his eyes didn’t seem so bad anymore.

Shaking his head, he turned and got back to walking.

“Just my goddamn luck to wake up and get the fuckin’
terminator
.”

*

Mid-afternoon, his luck changed for the better. He found an open parking area filled with cars, paint gleaming in the sunlight and snowmelt sliding off the hoods. Gus crossed the street and surveyed the area, spotting five zombies lurching around the cars. The parking area was next to a rise of small cottages which he knew were sometimes rented out to students during the academic year. Blowing away any of the five zombies might attract more. Stealth was needed.

Slipping around several large elm trees, he stayed off the snow for fear of crunching noises. He crept along the road and approached the rear of the garage, keeping the corner of the building between him and the zombies. He didn’t want a full-out bat-swinging fight. He gripped the hilt of the Bowie knife and extracted it from his boot.

From what he could see, no other zombies were moving in the area. He placed his back to the garage wall as he snuck closer. Reaching the corner, he peered around it and located the zombies. Still only five.

Even as he looked, one of the heads hissed and turned in his direction.

Gus swore and jerked back out of sight. He’d forgotten about their ability to smell. Though he was covered in Nomex, obviously there was enough of a scent for something to hook their attention.

The sound of dragging footsteps approached. A moan. Closer. Gus placed his shoulder to the wall and waited with the Bowie. He’d have to make it quick. He didn’t want to use the Benelli.

The gimp moaned again and turned the corner as Gus flashed out his hand and grabbed the back of its rotten head. He pulled the zombie forward as the Bowie knife stabbed up under the chin, through skin, tissue, and finally brain. Gus caught the corpse before it fell to the ground and dragged it out of sight of the others. He deposited the body in a nearby ditch, shivering at having made contact with the dead thing.

That was one.

Getting back into position, Gus cleared his throat as loudly as possible. He kept on until he heard number two making its way toward him. The zombie’s shoulder popped into view, and Gus again stabbed up under the jaw, snapping the mouth shut and twisting the blade hard enough to scramble its brain. The gimp dropped as if stepping onto a trap door. Gus kept low as he pulled the carcass by its armpits over to the ditch, gasping at the stench of the rotting flesh.

He put down the third one in the same way, and his confidence was riding high by the time he killed the fourth victim, grabbing the zombie in a headlock and stabbing it through an eye. He didn’t bother dumping the last one into the ditch. Keeping low, Gus entered the garage. He lay flat on the floor and spotted the bare, decomposing feet of the remaining zombie, three cars over. On hands and knees, he crawled to the rear of the garage, past the cars. Rising to his feet, but still hunched over, he moved, stalking the final zombie.

The gimp stood beside the last car in the lot, and when Gus reached it, he tapped the fiberglass rear, attracting the thing inside the garage. He waited until he heard the rustling against the length of the car, and at the last possible moment, tripped the creature. The zombie clattered to the cement with a hiss. Gus sprang on its back, twisted its head completely around so he could see the face, and stabbed it through the face with the strength of both arms. The creature seized up with a snap of cartilage and bone before slumping.

Exhaling, Gus went to work on the cars.

He located a red Kia two-door compact with the keys in the ignition. On the third attempt, the motor turned over, and Gus saw that the car had a quarter of a tank of gas, more than enough to get him home. He pulled out of the garage and onto the main road.

Snow still covered the highway in places, and twice, going uphill, the tires spun, seeking traction. But in the end, it got him to the base of the mountain. The road leading to the house looked icy and lumpy, and he doubted the little car would get him up the slope. He parked the vehicle on the far shoulder, got out, patted the roof in thanks, and started hiking.

The sky had deepened into a dark blue by the time he got home. When he staggered through the open gates, he felt the urge to weep, but suppressed it. It wasn’t his fault things had gone into the shitter while he was in the city. It was the fault of the three he’d killed.

With trembling hands, he went to the front door.

14

For the next few days, he stayed close to home, recovering, eating, drinking, and doing little things to improve his defenses. He unjammed the Ruger and made more firebombs in the garage. One afternoon, he went out in the truck and harvested gasoline from the cars on the highway. All the while, the ghostly images of the three men he’d killed in the street haunted him. Especially the boy. That one bothered him. Just as he thought he’d forgotten the whole incident, that wall of hungry gimps came back and pounced on the youngster in agonizing slow motion, making Gus pause in his work and wince.

One evening, with his work done and feeling good about it, he relaxed on the deck and sipped amber rum with the captain in the other chair. Both faced the dark, moon-scarred surface of Annapolis. The last two days had been warm, and much of the snow had disappeared. Moisture laced the air and made it smell fresh. Spring approached, but instead of thinking of romance and open fields finally blooming, Gus leaned back in his chair and mulled dark thoughts of fucking up every last zombie within the city limits.

“A missile strike is what I need here, Captain,” he said to the duct-taped bottle.

The captain agreed.

“Fuckin’ A,” Gus growled and practically inhaled a quarter of the rum. “Fuckin’ A,” he muttered again. The bottle stayed nestled in his lap for easy access.

“Trouble is… I don’t have a fuckin’ missile. Wish I did, though. Something non-nuclear, but with enough pop to clear the surface down there. And then, and then something like the Americans’ daisy cutter. That’s the one that… that penetrates the…” He belched. “’S’cuse me. Penetrates the ground. Get down in there and scour the drain system. That’d be best, but I don’t got anything like that.”

Gus stopped and mulled some more, fingers playing piano on the bottle in his lap. “I ain’t goin’ down there, either. Not the storm drains. Too damn tight. Never have a chance. Haveta be able to get them above ground to kill ‘em all, and then there’s just so… goddamn
many
of the little shits.”

Can’t be that many
, the captain muttered.

“You didn’t see ‘em, man. You didn’t. If you did, well…” He trailed off, chortling and nodding emphatically that the captain would very much be impressed by the new foe. “I could leave here. And just go. Pack up the beast and fly.”

But that idea didn’t sit well with Gus and even as the words left him, he knew he wouldn’t do it. It was
his
problem—his responsibility—because there was no one else. He supposed he was expendable. After killing living people in cold blood, perhaps it would be an equalizer if he took care of the rats. Something like that couldn’t be allowed to go on feeding and multiplying in the valley. He had to do something. Maybe it would tip the scales back for him, bring him back on better ground spiritually.

Why do you care?

He didn’t know. Couldn’t answer, but it felt like a good thing to do, the
right
thing to do. If he left and drove west, the rats would just… what? Stay there? Follow him? He chuckled at that, shook his head, and took a sip of rum.