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Authors: Joe McKinney

Tags: #Horror

Apocalypse Of The Dead (34 page)

BOOK: Apocalypse Of The Dead
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Jeff looked at the gun, then at Gaines. The crowd was shouting for him to do it. Jeff let his gaze sweep over their faces, and in the crowd he found Colin. Colin was a wreck, his eyes puffy with crying, and it occurred to him then that Colin was deathly afraid of the zombies. Everybody was afraid of zombies, but Colin was out of his head with fear. Jeff suddenly felt a rush of sympathy for him. And he understood why Colin had reacted the way he did back in Barstow. It made sense to him now.

“Come on, Harvard. We’re waiting.”

Jeff turned back to Gaines. “I don’t want to.”

“You started this, Harvard. Now you got to finish it.”

Jeff looked at the gun again. He shook his head. “No,” he said. “I don’t. That’s the thing about liberty, Gaines. Give it to a man, you never know what he’s going to do with it. That’s what you meant by anarchy, isn’t it?”

He raised the gun to Gaines’s face and pulled the trigger.

The hammer fell with a click, but there was no shot.

Gaines laughed at him.

Jeff pulled the trigger again, and again, but nothing happened.

Gaines reached out and took the gun from him.

“It’s empty, Harvard. I ain’t got no college degree, but I ain’t a fool. I just like to see my message getting through to a new generation.”

He holstered the gun in the waistband of his jeans and motioned to the others. Jeff stepped to one side as the bikers lifted their injured comrade from the grass and threw him into the gazebo with the two corpses.

“Keep an eye on him,” Gaines said. “As soon as he turns, throw that one in.” He motioned at Colin. “That little pussy’s been whimpering the whole time. Let’s see how he does.”

Colin let out a feeble, sickening cry.

Men pushed their way past Jeff as the bikers moved into position along the walls of the gazebo. Inside, the injured man was pleading with the others to help him, but all he got was a pelting of beer cans.

Jeff staggered toward Colin. He was guarded by three bikers, but as Jeff got close, two others stepped in front of him and held him back.

“Colin,” Jeff said.

He was about to tell him he knew what had happened back in Barstow. Somehow, it felt absolutely critical that he say his piece, that he told Colin he understood and didn’t blame him for it, that it wasn’t his fault.

But he never had the chance.

From somewhere behind him there was the sound of an explosion.

Jeff turned and saw a fireball rising into the darkening sky. A pickup truck was on fire, and men were rolling in the street next to it. Some of them were on fire.

A figure was running from the burning truck toward the bus.

Jeff squinted, and all at once he realized it was Robin. She ran for the bus, and he expected her to keep running, but she stopped at the door and took something from Katrina.

It was a bottle of Grey Goose with a rag hanging from the neck. Even from a distance, Jeff could see her lighting the rag on fire and he thought, My God. A Molotov cocktail. Robin, you crazy, wonderful, beautiful woman.

She threw the burning bottle at a crowd of men who had advanced on the bus and it exploded at their feet. Two men caught the main part of the splash of broken glass and burning alcohol, and they caught fire instantly. One of the men ran a few steps, fell, and rolled in the street, trying to put out the flames. The other was beating at his pant legs as he staggered toward the curb. Their screaming filled the square.

Robin threw another burning bottle, then slipped inside the bus with Katrina just as the rest of the bikers seemed to grasp what was happening. Like a wave, they ran for the bus.

One of the men guarding Jeff ran with them. Jeff wanted to throw a punch at the man holding him by the shoulder, but that tingling feeling was spreading down his arms again, and it felt like his hands were a million miles away. The world was moving around him in slow motion.

But he wasn’t frozen. He recognized the opportunity and threw an elbow into the crotch of the guard standing next to him.

The man doubled over with a gut-clearing rush of air, but before his partner could move in to help, Jeff scooped up the fallen guard’s gun from the ground, turned, and put a round into the second guard’s face.

The sound of the gunshot was lost in the larger roll of gunfire that had erupted at the bus. The bikers had tried to force their way into the door and found it jammed with something. Frustrated there, they had taken to shooting the vehicle with their shotguns and their pistols, and already a thick cloud of smoke was drifting into the square from that direction.

Jeff was lost in the swirl of noise and movement. It was all happening so fast. Somewhere in the back of his head, he thought to himself that this was battle; he was in the midst of a battle. He saw men running, saw their faces distorted into howling masks of teeth and bulging eyes and rippling veins, and it just seemed so insane, so useless.

One of the bikers fired at him. Jeff dropped to a crouch and ran around the gazebo to the cattle truck where the bikers had locked up most of the zombies they’d captured. He scrambled up the ramp, pulled the truck’s back doors open, and jumped down into the grass. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw a flash of blood-soaked, rotting faces leering out from inside the truck.

He got to his feet and ran.

Colin was leaning against the gazebo, his face fear stricken. A man with a huge black wound on the side of his face was staggering toward him, his hands outstretched, his eyes milky and vacant.

“Colin,” he shouted. “Come on. Move it.”

But Colin couldn’t move. His will was gone. He just stood there staring at the shambling wreck moving closer. Jeff ran for him. He shoved the zombie and knocked him to the ground, then grabbed Colin by the front of his oxford shirt and pulled him away from the gazebo. There was a black Chevy truck, one of the ones that had guided them into town, parked along the curb on the opposite side of the street, and they ran for it. No one bothered to stop them. Those who weren’t shooting up the bus had seen the advancing zombies and were rushing that way to fight them.

Gunfire rolled through the square. Men were running in every direction. Some were injured and screaming for help. Others were hollering for more ammunition. A few had taken off between the buildings and were running north into the residential part of town.

Jeff managed to get Colin into the cab of the truck and then climbed in after him. The keys were in the ignition, and Jeff thanked God for at least that one small mercy. The truck started up the first time, and Jeff wrestled with the stick shift to get it into gear. His little Honda Accord back home was a stick, but the truck was a more cantankerous vehicle and he had to grind the gears before it finally seated into first.

They started off with a lurch. The wheel was big and hard to control. Plus, Jeff was starting to hallucinate, and the road ahead looked like a writhing carpet of ants where men ran like lunatics through a fog of gun smoke.

But the truck picked up speed. Twenty miles an hour. Thirty.

Beside him, Colin braced against the door. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Keep your head down,” Jeff ordered.

He braced himself for impact. The knot of bikers ahead of them was thick, all of them shooting into the sides of the bus. Jeff pointed the truck into the heart of the crowd and mashed down on the gas.

A few of the men turned and saw them coming and managed to jump out of the way, but most never even saw it coming. The truck hit the crowd and it was like suddenly driving off-road as the bodies got sucked down under the front of the truck, the engine straining furiously against the sudden resistance. The wheel turned in Jeff’s hand and the truck started to drift sideways. Jeff struggled to regain control but the vehicle was already spinning. They hit the rear of the bus and glanced off, the back end of the truck racing to get ahead of the front as they spun completely out of control.

The truck slid to a stop with the hood pointed back in the direction they had come from. Bikers were looking at them in shock. Men were on the ground, some dead, some still moving.

The windshield exploded, and glass rained down into Jeff’s face and into his lap.

The bikers were shooting at them now.

Jeff got the truck back into gear, popped the clutch, and peeled out, heading right back into the crowd.

This time they were ready for it, and all but two of the bikers were able to get out of the way. Jeff didn’t give them a chance to get organized, though. He backed the truck up and hit a biker who was running for the cover of a parked car. Then he pulled forward and drove down another one who was running for the sidewalk.

At the same time, the zombies from the gazebo were entering the street. A few of the bikers had run that way and straight into the arms of the infected.

Their fighting line was broken. Even in his drugged state, Jeff could see most of the remaining bikers were running for the shelter of nearby buildings. He used the confusion to back the truck into the front bumper of the bus.

To Colin, he said, “Go inside and get the girls.”

“What?”

“Break out the windshield and get the girls. Hurry, Colin.”

Then Jeff climbed out and scanned the bodies on the ground. A few of them had dropped their weapons in the street, and he ran over and picked up a pistol. A bullet hit the pavement next to him and sent up a tiny umbrella of powdered rock and dust, but he couldn’t see where the shot had come from.

He turned to Colin and yelled, “Move it, Colin. Hurry.”

Colin climbed into the bed of the truck and then through the broken windshield. Jeff could hear him yelling inside. A shot whizzed past his head and this time he could trace it. Gaines was across the street, surrounded by zombies. His men were fighting them, but Gaines was ignoring them, focusing his shots in Jeff’s direction instead.

Jeff fired back at him, but missed. It was hard to hold the gun steady. Aiming was impossible. The front sight kept floating off the gun.

“Jeff!”

He turned and saw Colin and the girls climbing through the windshield. Colin was carrying Kyra in his arms like she was a child. Robin had an arm around Katrina’s waist and looked like she was supporting most of her weight.

Jeff ran to help them. Colin handed Kyra down to him and Jeff took her weight. Then Colin was beside him, taking Kyra back into his arms. The girl was like a rag doll, no resistance. She could barely hold her head up.

“Is she okay?” Jeff asked. He had to yell to be heard over the gunshots and the screams that were filling the square.

“Unconscious,” Colin said. “I don’t see any wounds.”

“Where are Sarah and Tara?”

“Dead,” Colin said.

“What?”

“Shot. Both of them.”

Colin steadied Kyra in his arms, then carried her to the passenger seat and helped her inside.

“Jeff!” It was Robin, calling to him from inside the bus. “Behind you.”

A man in denim coveralls, his white, chest-length beard crusted and stiff with dried blood, was staggering along the length of the truck. Jeff pulled the revolver from his waist and fired point-blank at the man, hitting him in the chest right below the nape of his throat.

The man fell back against the truck and coughed and gagged, but he didn’t go down.

Jeff took aim again, sighting the weapon this time squarely on the man’s forehead, and fired. The bullet hit its mark with a loud, wet smack, like a raw steak slapped on the kitchen counter. The man’s head jerked back and he tumbled to the street in a motionless heap.

Jeff looked over to the square and tried to find Gaines in the throng of bikers fighting with the zombies, but he couldn’t make him out.

He turned back to Robin and took Katrina from her.

“Careful,” Robin said. “Her stomach.”

The inside of Katrina’s shirt was soaked with blood. He could feel it as soon as he touched her. She groaned with the pressure of his hands on her midsection, but she didn’t cry out. In shock, probably, he thought.

Her head lolled onto his shoulder and he could hear her breathing, a wet, raspy sound mixed with whimpers of pain.

“Easy,” he said. “I got you.”

“Here,” Robin said, jumping down into the bed of the truck beside him. “I’ll take her.”

Robin put her arms around Katrina and slowly lowered her down to the bed. She turned so her back was against the cab wall and pulled Katrina into her lap, cradling her as best she could.

“Get us out of here, Jeff,” she said.

Jeff jumped out of the bed and climbed behind the wheel.

“Everybody hold on,” he yelled.

He got the truck in gear and mashed down on the gas. The back tires chirped on the asphalt and the truck leaped forward. In front of them was a knot of people, both bikers and infected. Those bikers lucky enough to find an opening through the infected were running for their lives, while others not so lucky had resorted to hand-to-hand fighting, using anything they could to fend off the zombies.

Jeff scanned the crowd as they accelerated, looking for Gaines. He saw him running toward the street from the gazebo, on an intercept course with Jeff and the others.

Jeff jogged the wheel to the right and went up on the curb. He was aiming right for Gaines, mowing down bikers and zombies alike when they couldn’t get out of the way.

Gaines stopped running and pulled his pistol.

He took slow, measured aim at the approaching truck and fired.

The rear windshield behind Jeff’s head exploded, and Jeff instinctively veered to his left. More bodies disappeared beneath the front of the truck and the vehicle bounced over them before landing back in the street and straightening out.

As they sped away, Jeff looked back at Gaines. Gaines was standing in the middle of the crowd, zombies all around him, though he didn’t give them even a passing glance. Instead, he leveled his pistol again and fired at the truck.

Robin screamed.

Jeff immediately hit the brakes and looked back. Robin’s face was splattered with blood. Beside her, Katrina’s head was blasted open on one side, a yellowish-gray mass of tissue visible through the huge hole in her skull.

BOOK: Apocalypse Of The Dead
2.53Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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