THE SAGA OF THE DEAD SILENCER Book 1: Bleeding Kansas: A Novel Of The Zombie Apocalypse (6 page)

“Homeland Security told us to make sure no one was frightened or otherwise led to believe that this situation was out of control. Well, you all saw what we saw. If you have Flu sufferers in your house, you have a decision to make. How do you want to remember them? You can either finish it now and put them out of their misery—or you can try and finish it while fighting for your life. Fighting against what has to be the devil’s cruelest trick on humanity since—”

The anchor swallows hard. “For our viewers, however many are left out there, please stay indoors like they’re telling everyone now—but
 
don’t
 trust the authorities to get this under control anytime soon, if ever. Not only are people still dying from the Final Flu, a lot have died already—and not all of those bodies made it to those burial sites. As you could see from the live feed we had earlier, most of these wandered in from—”

The screen goes to a generic blue “Loss of Satellite Feed” page.

“I can’t believe it took them that long to cut him off,” Tanner says. “This is looking to be much worse than anyone thought.”

“The people you talked to knew about all of this and thought they could contain it?”

“How hard could it be? One in every three caught the Final Flu. Not everyone died at once. Even if they did, it’s still two-to-one. You’ll notice the afflicted ones don’t move very fast, either…oh, and speaking of which, could you get off your chair and move behind me as fast as possible?”

I look over in time to see Angie. Her eyes are dry and unfocused but I’m sitting closest to her and she’s stumbling straight towards me. I jump away from my chair and Tanner
fires a round between her eyes. She falls, her arms still reaching out to take me.

Tanner slides off from his chair to stand over her. “Look at the color of her skin,” he says. “She wasn’t dead all that long. Her
lividity would have changed over time but looking at her you’d think she was just fine, if a little pale. Feel her skin, though!”

“
Er, no thanks. Her eyes were all I needed.”

“Hmm…well, yes. They can’t produce tears or blink anymore. Good catch!
Hadn’t considered that one!”

“Goddamn it, it’s obvious this has been going on everywhere else. Why aren’t people being warned about this?”

“Actually, the reanimation phenomenon started just last night Stateside. People have been dying of the Flu in Europe and Asia all last week but this business with walking, flesh-eating cadavers is a new development. I must admit, though, I’m curious. How would 
you
 explain this?”

“
How about we start with the truth?”

“Who would believe it? That’s why they were encouraging people to see it for themselves on their local channels. People
can deal with it that way. Or so they thought. The National Guard here certainly wasn’t ready for it. They didn’t fill in that trench like they were supposed to once those things started stirring.” Tanner glances towards the plate glass entrance.  “We might want to get out of sight of the doors.”

The first shadows are stumbling forth into the street from between the buildings across the avenue. They’re far enough away; we’re buffered by a wide, brick plaza anchored by a center fountain. Still….

“We should kill the lights,” I say, but Tanner has them off before I’m halfway through saying it.

Just as I’m turned to walk back to the desk the elevator door dings and opens. The light in the elevator is blocked by one, two, now five figures stumbling hesitantly into the lobby.

“Tanner!” I spring for the front desk.

“
Nnnnh-
waaaaah!
” They key in on my voice and movement and shuffle in my general direction.

“Can anyone here say his or her name?” Tanner asks.

“Unnnnh!”

“
Mmmmmgh!”

“All right, then. Good night!”

This gray, big-bellied old man wearing nothing but boxer shorts with his wedding tackle hanging out goes down, a red-black hole misting open between his eyes and exploding out the back of his skull. The man in the soiled and stinking flannel pajamas springs backward, as does the one in the gray track suit. God help us, the next one sweated out his last fever nude, his final death-shit moist about the backs of his thighs. Tanner drops him.

“Okay,” says Tanner, still grinning. “The last one’s yours.”

“What? You’re kidding, right?”

“No. You’re taking her down.”

She’s a slight, bird-boned thing with expensive hair poofed into a cloud behind her head from lying feverish in bed. She dressed in pink silk pajamas but like all God’s children, male and female, rich and poor, she voided her bowels at point of death.

“Look about
you!” says Tanner.  “Find something you can use!”

The shit-stench is eye-watering. I don’t see anything around me but various pieces of furniture.

“Come on! She’s just a woman! Not even a big one!”

I pick up the single big upholstered chair—lighter than you’d think, really—and throw it. It knocks the woman onto her back. I pick up the seat cushion, which had flown loose, and put it over the woman’s grunting, snapping face. She bites the cushion. The force of her contracting jaw deforms the cushion from the other side. Like it’s being pulled into a black hole.

Putting all of my weight into my heel I stomp down upon the woman’s head. I feel teeth break, then her jaw. But I can’t quite kill her. I start jumping up and down on her head. I lose my balance and fall backwards.

The pillow tumbles from her face as she rises. Rage flares in her undead eyes, standing one on top of the other as her broken-necked head rests with one ear flat upon her shoulder. Her face is black and blue, her teeth bloodied, but there’s enough of them left to inflict damage.

“Goddamn it, Tanner, shoot this thing!”

“You sure?”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” I roll to my feet, the woman between me and Tanner. I put my heel into her solar plexus and kick her towards him. He’s startled so the first shot misses her head. His second shot drops her.

“Are you all right?” Tanner says over the ringing in our ears.

“You mind telling me the point of this?”

“I was curious to see how you would react in extreme crisis. You handled it in a manner…quite unorthodox.”

“I finally got you to shoot it, didn’t I?”

“The question is
, should we trust you with a weapon?”

“Is that really up to you?”

“In a sense, yes.”

“In your dreams.”

I look at him, he at me. He holds the Glock up just so. I turn and walk back to the bar. Shoot me in the back while I’m going for a beer. I can think of worse ways to go.

“Okay, let’s stop this!” Tanner says. “We’ll find you a weapon, if only to double our firepower! There’s this one thing, though.”

“What?”

“Guns seem to attract them.”

I look out the front. The shadows of a dozen or so once-living people lean against the glass by their foreheads. Most of the men are dressed in suits, but barefoot. The women are in nightgowns or simple dresses.  Some have dirt down their fronts where they clambered over the other bodies to get out of their trench. Maybe half have that wide streak of red-brown blood around the mouths and down their middles.

“We need to get out of this lobby,” says Tanner.

“Ya think?”

It’s not like they can really see us, with those dryin
g and unfocused eyes. But their slackjawed heads follow us as we back slowly into the darkened lobby. “I’d suggest the stairs,” I say as I reach Tanner’s position behind the desk.

“Aren’t you on the 15th floor?”

“What if five of these things are waiting at the door on the 14th? Even if I had a gun I’m not sure I could get enough shots off at once before I got bitten.”

“No, what I’m saying is I have a card for the express elevator to the presidential suite. You could walk down five flights instead of climbing 15.”

“Oh. That’s what we’ll do, then.”

We walk to the express elevator and get in. “I expect the presidential suite is fairly large. Why don’t we just move our stuff up there?”

“Until when?” says Tanner. “Until all those police and National Guard we’re not seeing get all those carnivorous walking corpses under control?”

“Point.
So what do we do, Mr. Security Consultant?”

“I don’t know about you but I’m going home to Colorado.”

“Tonight?”

“Oh no.
  First thing tomorrow I need to scout the area. Make sure the National Guard is really down. Then we make a run for it.”

“We?”

“Sure. I thought you might wanna come with.”

Come with?
Right. “What about those bandits you were talking about?”

“Nothing the two of us can’t handle. If we leave early enough we should be able to blow through the worst areas without incident.”

“Of course.”

“See you at breakfast, then.”

The doors open. I can tell he’s already made camp here. Sly bastard.

“The emergency exit stairs are here,” Tanner says.

I raise my hand in acknowledgment as I push through the door.

“Make sure you’re wearing sensible clothes in case we have to abandon the vehicle,” he calls after me. “We have to be ready for anything.”

Going down the stairs I realize I never did get my beer. I should probably just raid the fridge in my room. If I ever see a bill I’ll laugh until I stop.

7

On my way down the hall to my room I’m startled by the
 
whump!
 of a body throwing itself at the other side of a door, roaring and snarling like a frustrated predator behind the glass at the zoo. Thank God that thing hasn’t figured out how to work the latch. Thanks again for being many doors down from mine. I don’t want to have to try and sleep with that thing’s angry, hungry yowling in my ears.

I open the door to my room, this same room I woke up in this morning.
The same room on another planet, where the hotel staff is dead or food for the same. I close the door behind me and secure the latch.

The sun edges below the horizon, its orange-yellow beams blazing like a silent scream through the window. I look down onto streets that were completely empty this morning.
Still no cars or trucks rolling about. Just…people?

It’s like Mardi
Gras, wall-to-wall bodies and not one of them walks a straight line. I see no cars or trucks, armored or otherwise. No muzzle flashes of rifles or sidearms. All you see are these erratic, atomized little blotches, every one a stone killer.

I could get a view of the park from the other side of the building, see if the National Guard vehicles are still there, what the police are doing, if anything—that is, if I had the master key.
 I could take a quick trip downstairs and look. Run down the stairs, find a weapon I could use…no. Couldn’t find one in the lobby to save my life earlier.

But in the kitchen?
All those knives and tools!

Christ, it’s a long way down. Why not wait for the morning? We’re leaving then, anyway.
Me and Tanner. He’s got that Glock…

…with how many bullets left in it?
Besides, the blasts attract others.

And Tanner?
 

I’m pounding down the fire stairs, the heavy base of a floor lamp cradled in one hand. Going round and around down the concrete and steel flights, the reality slams home: I’m in a 20-story convention hotel with absolutely no staff on duty. The only traffic on the street
are mobs of flesh-eating pedestrians. Law enforcement and the military have been neutralized, if not eliminated altogether. There’s no one left alive but people with severely morbid luck—like me—and smooth-talking psychopaths like Tanner. And I expect the rest are plain psychopaths who don’t have Word One to say whatsoever.

The 15 flights go quickly. I take deep breaths to steady myself at the door into the lobby.

I push it open.

Cool, damp stench washes over me in a wave of climate-controlled air. God only knows how bad this would be if the power were out. I listen for movement while my eyes adjust to the darkness. I notice the curious dead have left the windows and doors about the hotel. Most of the traffic is concentrated on the streets and sidewalks. Our fountain-centered plaza outside of the front doors gives us a good buffer.

I hear noises from the back area.  I spare a glance at the bodies on the floor so I can step around them. The old man in the boxers is on his back, his junk still hanging out the flap. Mercifully, all I see of the woman whose face I’d ruined are her pale, blood-and shit-streaked legs. I walk past the front desk and Angie’s still on the floor. Poor Angie. I step behind the desk, stop short when I see her face.

God!

There’s no way Angie could have made a face like that when she was alive. Not on tequila, not on angel dust, not on a dare. Her teeth are dry like her eyes; they don’t glisten so much as glow with unworldly menace. This is a monster’s face. I realize now the worst wasn’t leaving her on the floor like a pair of dirty socks. It was letting this dutiful, sweet daughter of the paved-over prairies to turn into
this
.