The Coalition: Part II The Lord Of The Living (COALITON OF THE LIVING Book 2) (11 page)

But, now, this time, there were dozens of the damned dead things on the roof. The door that opened up on the top was standing wide and even as he watched
, there were shamblers coming out of it to stumble around on that roof and mill about as if looking for something they had expected to see, but which surprisingly, had been taken from them. There were zombies of every shape and size and state of decay. New ones with the clothes they’d died in still on their backs, and deaders so far gone that the fabric they’d once worn had been peeled slowly off by a thousand little violent acts, until all you could see was a map work of wounds covering their darkening, wattled flesh.

“Must be forty of fifty of them,” Oliver said. He was actually on the roof counting them, using one of his fingers to tick them off as he went along,
and whispering the numbers under his breath.

A few of the things had turned to look across the space between the two buildings and noticed Ron and his little crew. Over the wind that was growing in strength with each second, he could hear their cries and moans as they saw the three humans as just that: living humans.

“I’ll never be able to figure out how they can tell we’re alive,” Jean said. The wind was picking up and her fine hair was being whipped around, covering and uncovering her piercing eyes. “One guy told me once that they can smell our sweat. Or can tell that we’re not rotting. But I don’t believe that. Not for a second. There’s something else going on with them.”

“They can see our souls,” Oliver said. Ron and Jean looked down at him, meeting his eyes. “That’s what my mom used to say. She said that they could see our souls in us
, in a way that we can’t see them ourselves. Like there’s a light inside of us that comes out of our eyes and that’s what they see, and that’s why they hate us and want to kill us. They think they can eat us and get their souls back.”

The two adults stared at one another. It was something neither of them had ever heard.

“It might be that,” Ron said. “I guess it could be that.”

“That’s what I think, too,” Oliver said. And as he said that
, the message seemed to go through the crowd of deaders.  They turned as one and migrated to a point along the rooftop that took them as close as they dared to the living. Over the keening wind, they could hear the zombies growing ever more agitated.

“We should shoot them all while we have the chance,” Ron said. But as if to answer him, the wind suddenly came with a fierceness that was actually savage. The clouds that had been a quarter of a mile
distant, were directly overheard. Lightning flashed. Thunder almost immediately followed the flash, letting them know that the electric bolt had struck down very close indeed.

“Inside,” Ron yelled. Together they rushed to the blockhouse and he unlocked the heavy door and pulled it wide. As one, they tumbled into the house and locked the door securely behind them
and just as the door was locked up tight, the wind slammed like the fist of God onto the north walls. The little fans in the vents went wild, whirring at such a speed that he could imagine them coming free of their mounts in the concrete block and be sent whirring like miniature blades through the house.

Then the
rain began to slash down, raking the roof and the outside walls like millions of tiny bullets.  They could hear something like rocks striking again and again atop the roof and on the sides of the house.

“Hail,” Jean announced. “Now it’s hailing out there!”

“Red sky at morning, sailor take warning,” Oliver quoted. He was not laughing about it, and he was not smiling.

Around them
, the house all but shuddered as the wind became more and more powerful and ever more violent with each second that passed.

“Hell of a storm,” Cutter said to them. No one replied. He looked at them. Both were staring at the ceiling, as if expecting it to be pulled off to leave them exposed to the wind and rain.

“Look,” he finally said. “I’ve been through worse than this up here.” He was lying, but it was a white one. He had to make them feel better. “We just need to sit tight and go about our business.” He smiled and pulled at the bag of leaves that Jean had brought with them from the streets. “The poke salad! You’re supposed to show us how to cook poke salad,” he reminded her.

“Yes, you’re right,” she sighed. “I’d better get busy, because you have to wash the heck out of it.”

“Why is that?” Oliver asked.

“Because if you don’t wash it and boil it right then
, it’s poisonous.”

“Poison?”
Ron and Oliver reacted in unison, and although she eventually set heaping spoonful’s of boiled poke salad on their plates, neither did more than pick at the stuff.

**

During the night, the storm continued. It roared at them, and even Ron was worried that the walls or roof might not hold up. The building he’d chosen was as solid as any, but it was exposed up there to the full force of those winds. Moreover, he was worried about the shed he’d put together where he poured his molten lead, made his bullets, and kept his gunpowder. What if it was pushed down? What if all of his propane, burners, and chemicals were tossed over, turned to trash and muck? If those things happened, then he’d be forced to find replacements for it all, and he didn’t want to think of what he’d have to go through to put that collection of tools back together.

As the hours passed
, they all tossed and turned, sleeping together in one big bed on the floor of the main room. Jean had thought it best that they huddle together as long as that storm raged, and Ron figured she was right on that count. Oliver had almost regressed in many ways from the stoic, almost-adult he’d been when they’d brought him in, to something akin to a very young boy, now that he was safe among a pair of foster-parents. In the dim shadows, Ron would open his eyes occasionally to see Jean hugging the boy to her, or running her hands through his hair. He smiled.

And then, very early in the morning, when it seemed the storm had finally vented, the winds had become even more powerful. Ron had not thought that possible. But there it was, the sounds of the winds like a vast machine roaring all around them, like a monster gnawing at the fabric of the place, trying to consume all matter.

They were all sitting up. Ron almost reached for one of his guns, but realized that was a stupid gesture and did his best to get a grip on his emotions. “I think it’s a tornado,” he decided to tell the others, to face the truth. His words were almost muffled beneath the earthquake screaming of that wind. They could hear things being torn, being tossed. Heavy things were tossed solidly around, some of them striking the walls of the house, landing like heavy fists battering against those walls, trying to get in. Ron hoped that he was not losing his propane sources. It had taken him a long time and a lot of effort to scrounge those heavy bottles of liquefied gas. The stuff was precious to him and he wished he had been able to bring at least a few of them inside.

But, almost as quickly as those monstrous winds had appeared, they tapered off until there was nothing but a small patter of rain on the roof. The winds were gone.

“Oh, thank God,” Jean said. She turned to Ron and kissed him on the lips, then leaned and kissed the top of Oliver’s head. “Thank God,” she repeated.

“I’m glad that’s over,” Ron whispered, afraid that if he spoke too loud the wind might hear him and come back. “Now, let’s get some real sleep,” he told them.

Finally, they were able to close their eyes, and sleep and exhaustion met them in agreement and sent them into soft, cool dreams.

**

“Who wants country ham and pancakes?”

Ron opened his eyes and blinked the sleep from them. He sat up and peered around, seeing Oliver just stirring and rubbing at his own eyes, groaning in complaint at having been awakened.

“Sounds good to me,” Ron announced. He realized that they were down to the last little bit of pre-mixed pancake batter. When it was gone…well, it would be gone. They’d have to think about finding seeds to grow wheat, cows to tend and milk, and gathering up lost chickens to put up in pens and harvest the eggs. Maybe the mysterious Colonel Dale could help them do all these things in the coming months. Someone would have to do it, or it was going to be a primitive life of hunting and gathering for a long time to come.

“Why don’t you sit and watch me cook?” Jean said. “You guys look really ragged out. So just relax and I’ll have us eating in no time.”

“Well, I just want to do a couple things, first,” he told her. He was thinking of his work station out on the other side of the roof. He was certain that he’d heard the debris from its destruction being slammed against the walls of his house. To just satisfy his curiosity and to set in stone how much work he’d have to do to replace it, he would first have to get a look at what kind of damage the storm had cost him.

“I’m only going to stroll around the roof and see if my
ammo kits made it through. I doubt it, but I need to see,” he added.

Without so much as pulling on his boots, standing there in his stocking feet, he unlocked the door and opened it.

A dozen zombie hands were already reaching for his face as he pulled the door open. He immediately recognized one of them as having been on the roof across the way just before the storm had chased them inside. It snarled and pushed in, three more behind it.

He’d fucked up. He kept repeating that to himself as the weight of the
deaders drove him back. Always, at the back of his mind, he knew that eventually he would do something stupid and die from it. All he’d had to do was look through the peephole and see what was outside. But he had not done that. Ron had been so self-righteous that he knew in his mind, those dead things could not get through his locks and doors and up his staircase to his rooftop home. Not even if they could see him from below, and not even if some had watched him from adjoining towers. Ron was too good, and now he’d done something stupid. It would, he realized as the dead, cold, grasping fingers reached for his face, be the death of him.

He wasn’t even wearing gloves or boots, and no helmet or ski mask protected his face. They would push him down and begin biting him and feasting on him. Then they’d do the same to Jean and Oliver. And, as if he’d already predicted the outcome, he fell back as three of the monsters got their hands on him and pushed him down, tumbling on top of him, growling, gnashing their yellow fangs rooted in black and scarlet gums.

Somehow, he got his feet on the gut of the one directly on top of him and he used all of his strength to shove it off. The energy of the movement caused the pair of others to fall aside.

Then the shots rang out. A .45 roared and the pop of that damned .22 in Jean’s deadly hands began to sound. The deader he had shoved with his feet went down, its head a mass of darkened paste when the slug from the .45 in Oliver’s hand sent it to Hell.
Another pop and Ron did not even have to look to know that all three of the things were down for the count.

Standing, he ran to Oliver and did not even have to look for his pistol as the boy shoved it into his hands. Without a word shared between them, he turned toward the door.

The oblong doorway of light was full of shamblers. They had packed up tight in the threshold struggling with one another to gain entrance all at once. And they’d clogged the door with their stupid, rotten mass, trying to get in to eat the family inside. Ron had no doubt that each of them had done something very similar in the past. Well that was all right, because they’d never get to do it again.

His pistol roared.
Although he knew they’d all regret it later when deafness temporarily claimed their hearing, they begin to fire in unison, filling the enclosed space with the sound of gunfire, the spark of fire, the wonderful sharp tang of gunpowder.

Ron was not afraid. Jean was full of nothing but determination. Oliver was not
alone and did not fear the dead things that he knew were going to fall and die for good and never bother them again.

They fired and paused, reloaded and fired again. They repeated the process until the doorway was clear and nothing else followed the initial rush of the
deaders to gain entrance. More than a dozen of the stinking creatures lay forever down on the floor of the house and on the rooftop yard just outside the door.

“Is everyone okay?” Ron asked. He was gasping, short of breath. Sounds were muffled to him, but it was not as bad as he’d feared.

“We’re okay,” Jean said, as if from a distance. “Are…are you bitten?”

For the first time Ron had the presence of mind to look at his hands, at his arms, to see if he
was bitten. It happened, he knew. People could be wounded and then not feel it until the adrenalin rush was over. The skin of his hands and arms were unblemished. Then his left hand went to his face, his throat, his fingers went along his ears and scalp, feeling for cuts made by questing, slimy teeth. “Any bites on my face or neck?” He asked, examining his fingers and finding no blood on them.

And then Jean was on him, her arms around him, holding him close. “You’re okay,” she said. She repeated it again and again until Ron could feel the pounding of her heart against his ribs.

“We have to check the door and stairs,” Ron said. “I think we got all of these, but there might be more coming up the stairs. And there might be more on the roof.” Thinking of that, they all were quiet, listening for the shuffle of dead feet, of the clatter of dragging soles across the gravel on the rooftop.