LZR-1143: Evolution Page 17

  She frowned at me as she nodded and waved toward the back door. I understood and went to the entrance, locking it quickly and quietly, making sure the drapes were drawn.

  “There now,” said Leigh, reaching the floor and pirouetting in her dress. “Doesn’t that look beautiful?”

  “Yes, dear. It certainly does. Listen,” said Kate conversationally, “We were going to run down to the corner store and get some ice for the reception,” she began, and I silently applauded her aplomb.

  “Do you have the keys to the truck?”

  Leigh made a face and brought her finger to her mouth, chewing on a dirty nail with grimy teeth. Her frown looked almost guilty.

  “Pat had ‘em, last I saw,” she said. She glanced to the back of the house, then explained. “He went out back to get some more wood and such for the doors and windows a while back. He told me to watch for those things from the back window, but ...” she laughed dismissively and condescendingly.

  “I was in my dress, and I had to get my hair right ... I just forgot.”

  She sighed and glanced to the back door, still looking slightly guilty, but voice betraying no regret. “I haven’t seen him since then. But I did get my hair just right, and he should never have left me alone while I was getting ready. Everything else could wait.”

  “Who ...?” I began, but Kate just pointed. A picture sat on the wall with a healthier visage of Leigh, beaming in a blue sweater and pointing at a large engagement ring on her finger. A large man with a seemingly resigned small smile stood behind her, looking forgotten in her excitement at the ring.

  “So Pat has the keys?” confirmed Kate, looking at me sideways.

  “Reckon so,” she said, fussing with the front of her dress and preening.

  “Do you know what’s happened outside?” asked Kate. As if to punctuate the question, several shots rang out close to the house, likely from the road directly in front of the shop. From the side of the house, a loud sound, like that of a body falling against wood siding, shook the living room briefly.

  She looked confused for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, you mean the dead people? I know all ‘bout them. The boys from town tell me ‘bout ‘em when they come by.”

  Kate looked at me quickly.

  “They come by?” she asked.

  “Sure they do. They come by and we have relations and eat the food they collect.” She made a face. “I could never hunt those things like them. I’d never eat if I was left alone.”

  I shuddered at the implications of that admission. The “relations” to which she was referring wasn’t terribly ambiguous, and I hated that society had degenerated so quickly into something so horrid. But even more disturbing was the reference to the food they ate. And that goddamned tub in the hallway.

  “Is that them outside now?” she asked quickly.

  Leigh looked at her gold watch, and back to Kate. “Probably so. It’s about that time.”

  She looked up again as Kate pulled her pistol. “Want to watch me one more time?”

  “Christ,” said Kate, running to the back door and peering outside. I followed, going into the kitchen to look to the driveway.

  “About ten of them out here,” I whispered loudly, peering through a gap in the flimsy drapes. They were shambling toward the noise in the roadway, and I hoped that it would keep their attention. I had no doubt that these people were of the same ilk of the folks we had taken out at the fuel truck, and whether they knew about that yet or not, it didn’t bode well for our chances of a peaceful introduction.

  “Only a couple stragglers in the back,” said Kate, head popping around the corner of the wall and gesturing to the back door.

  “Wait, you guys,” said Leigh, coming to the back door, her voice whiny and shrill. “You didn’t see me do my slow walk.” She frowned, actually sticking her lower lip out as she did so.

  “We have to go,” said Kate, still staring out the back window. “We need to get that ice soon.”

  Leigh narrowed her eyes and her voice rose. “I think that’s bullshit,” she said aggressively, her personality doing a quick one-eighty.

  She was angry, and quickly becoming irrational and heated.

  “I think you’re just leaving me. Just like Pat. Just like my parents. And just like those boys do every night after we’re done. If you leave, I will scream. I swear to fucking God I will fucking scream!”

  She drew in a deep breath as if to make good on her promise. I brought my hand up to cover her mouth, but Kate was faster. The butt of her pistol slammed into the greasy temple of the broken girl, dropping her quickly in a dirty white heap on the wooden floor.

  Chapter 22

  “That’s one way to do it,” I said, stepping over the crumpled form and pushing her very slightly with my foot to make room for the opening door.

  I paused, realizing that if we wanted to stay silent, we couldn’t use our guns outside. I stepped into the kitchen and grabbed the flimsy wooden chair under the table, ripping two legs off quickly and handing one to Kate.

  She didn’t waste any time opening the door. The two shambling about the weedy backyard turned toward the noise immediately and I ran to the first, a large woman in jeans and a flannel shirt. Her face was bloated and gray, her eyes dead, a large piece of glass embedded in her cheek. Her mouth opened wide and her lips pulled back over her broken teeth. My blood raced as she approached and I swung the table leg forward.

  It smashed into the side of her head, penetrating deeply into the brain cavity and lodging in the skull. I cursed as she dropped to the ground, and sprinted toward the second creature with my bare hands. Behind me, I heard Kate say my name in a harsh, loud whisper, but I ignored her. I was overtaken by a rage that I had never felt before, as if all the problems of the world could be solved by a mindless destruction of anything in front of me. My hands shook as I balled my fist and brought my arm around as if swinging a large hammer at a huge nail.

  The smallish man in front of me, clad only in a pair of Bermuda shorts and dingy white socks, now shredded at the toes and heels by the miles of cross-country walking he had likely done in the weeks since he was turned, looked into my eyes as the fist came down.

  I felt only more anger and desperation as my clenched hand forced his head down onto his spine. The eyes went completely dead and blood spat from his open mouth as I felt the head sink six inches, the brain impaled by the now-detached spine. I turned to Kate, who followed behind with her table leg lifted. Looking past her to the driveway, I confirmed that no creatures had seen us. Yet.

  There were at least a hundred of them now filtering out of the woods next to the house and into the street in front of the building. More shots could be heard from the street, but fortunately the shed we were aiming for was out of view from the street.

  The twitching leg was still visible, and as we approached, the rest of the body appeared. I turned my head slightly, revolted, even after these weeks of witnessing death and gore.

  The man whose resigned face had appeared so cheery in the picture inside lay sprawled on one side of his face, belly down, impaled on the spike of a long-handled pickax. The flesh on the sides of his spine lay open to the air, brown and black rot speckling the exposed tear while the dull white of the exposed spine twitched with each jerk of the body. His arms, gnawed off to the shoulder, leaving only broken stubs of bone to scratch against the wooden floor, were useless in the corpse’s attempt at levering himself off the rusted implement. So he writhed and twitched on the weathered and stained floor, helpless and hopeless.

  Behind me, Kate whispered, “Shit.”

  I nodded in agreement as I stepped gingerly over the exposed back, which looked to have been eaten slowly and purposefully, possibly while the poor bastard was alive and dying from the slow blood loss of the pickax through the stomach.

  I shuddered.

  That was no goddamn way to die.

  I found a shovel and quickly ended the twitching, severing the spine from the head. I wondered
at the effects of this disease on a human body, enabling it to function, even as the spine and the extremities incurred such incredible damage.

  It scared the crap out of me.

  As I threw the shovel aside, Kate leapt for his pockets, grimacing as she tried to delicately move the bloodied fabric of his torn shirt away from the jeans. I looked over her shoulder and cursed. More than twenty of the zombies from the driveway had turned in our direction and were shambling toward the shed. Gunfire was sporadic and close on the other side of the house.

  Kate withdrew her hand slowly from the right front pocket and looked up.

  “Let’s go. I’ve got ‘em.”

  She stood and turned around, following my hand as I pointed at the recent complication. She sighed, and raised her rifle to her shoulder before walking out. I followed, wondering if we could possibly reach the truck before the goons in the front of the shop followed the sound of our weapons fire.

  Suddenly, from across the back yard, the door to the house slammed open and Leigh emerged, white dress vivid in the darkening yard. Her face was livid, and she looked past the zombies directly at us.

  “You sons of bitches!” she screamed, standing at the top of the concrete steps and allowing the door to close behind her.

  “I knew you were going to side with him! I told him not to go. I told him I needed him, and he should never have left me alone inside! I told him to stay here, and now you’re leaving me too!”

  She walked down several steps, fist raised to the night sky.

  Almost as one, the twenty creatures turned their heads.

  Slowly, in unison, they turned from their slow plod toward the shed and toward Leigh’s furious form. She started screaming again, and they quickened their shuffling pace.

  “You came for my wedding! Mine! Not his! If you think that I’ll ... Hey! Get the fuck back, you sick ... shit!”

  She had noticed the en masse redirection and was backing up the stairs, frightened and furious.

  “Run!” I shouted to her, realizing that her avenues for escape were narrowing, even as Kate and I ran toward the truck. Neither of us took a shot, afraid that we might hit her if we missed.

  Instead, she backed up, eyes staring at the creatures approaching, transfixed; her hand searched blindly for the doorknob behind her. The first of the creatures had reached the foot of the stairs, and was stepping forward, hand reaching out hungrily.

  Leigh’s hand scraped against the wood until it reached the knob, and she quickly turned to the door and twisted it.

  Suddenly, she screamed in rage.

  The door was locked.

  She turned to the closest creature, just as its head snapped forward, blood erupting from its skull. Kate was staring down the barrel of her rifle, lining up another shot and firing at the next closest creature, missing and sending a bullet into the wooden siding of the house.

  She had taken the chance and gotten lucky.

  But now we were on the clock. Half of the zombies turned toward us as we closed the distance, and I heard surprised yelling and the revving of several engines from the front road. We sprinted the last few yards, and I tore open the driver’s side door of the Ford, as Kate yelled at Leigh to run. They were thick around her now, and she stood, frozen at the top of the steps.

  I slammed the door and hammered the key into the ignition, intending to plow into several of them if I had the time to reach her.

  But I didn’t.

  The first creature reached for her dress, tearing a large swatch from the long train. She heard the tear, screaming in rage as she pummeled the upturned rotten face with a small fist. The creature took the blow in the face but raised a dirty hand, seizing the fist as it returned and shoving the hand into its mouth quickly and urgently. She screamed in pain as it took her fingers with yellowed and broken teeth, blood spraying thickly against the creature’s face.

  Several others grabbed the dress from the rear and tore down brutally, tearing it from her body and causing them to fall forward into her. The top of the garment fell uselessly against the intact waist, and the creatures from the bottom step fell into the extensive train, tearing and shredding in their search for flesh.

  Those at the top of the stairs had found it.

  Her exposed torso revealed the extent of her malnourishment. Her ribs were tight against her pale skin, and her breasts limp and sallow on her chest. Hands tore at the white flesh, and she screamed. Whether in pain, or fury at the destruction of her dress, I wasn’t sure.

  I turned the key in the ignition and the engine roared to life.

  The first zombie tore into her wrist, rotten hands separating the two bones of the arm with a loud crack, then slowly moving up the arm with exploring hands and a hungry mouth.

  I shifted the gearshift to the drive position, and released the brake. The radio poured static into the cabin.

  Three zombies slid their fingers into the exposed flesh of her back and quickly and violently tore her open from behind, ripping her skin along the spine and digging hands into the cavity of her torso. She screamed again.

  This time, the scream was one of pain.

  Kate slammed her hand into the radio’s knob, killing the noise. I pressed the accelerator.

  Four creatures rose from the bottom steps and ripped the dress from the bottom up, exposing scarred and dirty legs. They pulled the legs toward their open mouths, and the wrenching crack of breaking bones shattered the night. She screamed again as she fell to the cement, and it ended in a wet cough, even as another hand reached for her face, covering her mouth and drawing her head down in the cruel semblance of a loving embrace.

  A small tear escaping from my eye, I drove through the creatures in the back of the crowd, sending them careening forward and crushing several beneath the oversized tires.

  I turned up the driveway and toward the road.

  Chapter 23

  There were two trucks and a large, older model American car in various positions at the end of the driveway. The car’s roof had been removed to accommodate a shooter, and the trucks each had reinforced roll-bars, with machine guns mounted to the apex. At least twenty men stood in a rough line across the driveway, slowly moving toward the back yard.

  As we turned the corner into the driveway, the men scattered, yelling at us and each other. The car and trucks were parked far enough apart to allow us to roar through, and I did just that, skidding slightly in the gravel at the end of the road as we turned west again, toward town.

  Behind us, the crackle of gunfire exploded and we both ducked our heads as bullets slammed into the bed of the truck, and several shots shattered the glass behind us; a second volley shattered the windshield. Specks of shattered glass rained into the cab as I drove by instinct until we were out of range and I couldn’t hear any more shots.

  I raised my head and slowed slightly, taking the time to drag my pistol over the remnants of glass in the windshield and keep any more shards from flying in as we sped toward town.

  “Check the map,” I yelled to Kate over the rush of air through the exposed front.

  “We need to get around the town! Clearly these assholes are not going to be forming a welcoming committee!”

  She leaned forward, peering at the map on the floor to keep the wind from tearing it from her grasp.

  She looked up several times and back to the map. Behind us, lights had appeared on the road from following vehicles. Reluctantly, I switched the lights of the truck off to conceal us if we made a turn. As I slowed to accommodate the lack of light, the pursuers started gaining on us.

  In the distance, ahead of us, two lights ignited on the narrow road.

  Headlights, coming toward us.

  “Shit,” I said. “We have company coming from the front. Anything?”

  She slammed the map into the floor and looked up. “No side roads coming up. Either we stay on this one into town, or we take our chances with small roads that might not be on the map.”

  I slowed even more, squ
inting into the darkness for the outline of a road sign, or a stop sign, or anything distinguishable. In the thick darkness of a moonless night, it was impossible.

  “We’ve got to ditch the truck,” I said, pulling to the side of the road. Behind us, the pursuers’ lights were bright on the road. In front of us, the headlights were gaining fast.

  Kate agreed, realizing that we didn’t know the area well enough to find a way out, and it would be easier to hide without the truck. I cursed at the delay as we were forced to abandon the wheels, but had no alternative. We couldn’t outshoot twenty men in three vehicles.

  I turned the truck into a corn field, plowing through dead stalks until we had gone fifty feet. Hoping that they would miss the gap in the dead crops when they drove by, we hopped out and moved west, away from the truck, but continuing to parallel the road.

  We heard the oncoming vehicle drive by first. It was moving slowly, and roared by going east. It had the sound of a large engine and vehicle, and my mind flashed to the school bus I thought I had seen earlier.

  It was slow going, moving through the corn in the dark, but we were fairly sure it would be more difficult to follow us and find us on foot than it would be by truck.

  The convoy from the house drove by soon after the large vehicle, but at high speed. They hadn’t noticed the tracks into the corn, which meant that we probably had until daybreak before they retraced their path and found the truck.

  So we had that much time to find a way around the town.

  We stopped briefly to check the map. We were still at least a mile outside the town, but were going to start reaching populated areas soon. To avoid the bulk of the town, we would have to detour roughly five miles to the North, on foot. Although the best option would be to find another vehicle, we didn’t think it wise to conduct that search in the dark, while angry townsfolk were combing the area for us. So we resigned to find a safe place to sleep after several hours of walking, then resume the search for transportation in the morning.

  The corn seemed never to end. Acre upon acre, sometimes divided by ditches or fencing, stretched into the night air. I still shivered at the memory of Leigh’s demise, and renewed my personal vow to stop this madness if I could. I listened to Kate behind me as we picked our way through the tall stalks and marveled again at her strength and beauty. If I had a child on the other side of the country, under these circumstances, I was sure I wouldn’t be able to function. Yet she was a rock in the midst of chaos.