Blood of the Dead: A Zombie Novel (Undead World Trilogy, Book One) (9 page)

“We can’t turn around either.” She looked over her shoulder, checking for the rats. There were none. However, though she couldn’t be sure, she thought she might have heard a soft thudding on the air, possibly the rats having escaped Des’s apartment and now banging on the entrance door.

“Can’t see anything. He’s too dark, too far away. Let’s cross to the other side. That way, if it is one of them, we should have a bit of an edge, some distance, and can run,” Des said.

“Okay.”

The two crossed the street, neither one taking their eyes off the shadowy figure on the sidewalk. They walked cautiously along the sidewalk, eyeing the dark figure across the way. It kept walking down the sidewalk, slowly. There was still a chance it was someone out for a late-night stroll but not likely.

They kept a steady pace, neither speaking but both thinking the same thing: get ready to run in case it was one of the dead.

As the figure across the way drew closer and came into clearer view, Billie asked, pointing, “It’s an old guy. Do you know him?”

Des surveyed the old fella before answering. “I think so.” He leaned his head forward on his shoulders, as if the few inches gained from doing so made it easier to see. “Hey, it’s Mr. Shank.”

“Well, even if it was one of them” —Des’s voice suddenly took on a more confident tone— “we’d still be okay, I think. Those things move slow, remember? We could have outrun it no problem.”

“But the rats. Those guys were fast.”

“But still rats. So far, none of the dead have exhibited any sort of speed. All walk as if they have dumbbells strapped to their ankles.”

“I suppose.”

They kept walking, hoping Mr. Shank would look up from the sidewalk and see them. He never did and kept his eyes to the ground as if he was verifying his feet were in fact touching the pavement with each step.

“Get outta here. Shank’s always been a little weird, for starters. And if you think just because he’s walking slow that he’s a zombie, that doesn’t prove anything. The guy lost a foot in World War Two. He’s got one of them prosthetic things and always walks slow with a bit of a limp. He uses his ca—” Des stopped talking then stopped walking.

“A little. Usually have to talk a bit louder when talking to him, but I don’t have to shout or anything not unlike my dad, who couldn’t hear a gun go off even if you put the barrel right up to his ear.”

“Okay, anyway . . .”

Shank’s legs dragged beneath him, most notably his left foot, as if it were giving him extra trouble today. He was almost right across from them.

“Should I call out again?” Des asked.

Billie focused her eyes and took a good hard look at Shank’s face, checking for any sign of death. From what she could see from about twenty feet away, his skin was worn and weathered like any old man’s, his eyes shadowed by the brim of a gray fedora. Bright spikes of gray-white hair jutted out from beneath the hat. The gray dated suit he wore didn’t show any signs of tear or blood from where she was standing.

“Okay, just one more time. If he doesn’t hear us, let’s just move on and if he is all right, you can tell him we passed by him next time you see him,” she said.

Mr. Shank had fallen face first just before Des got to him. Des was already on all fours and had his head to the old man’s when Billie caught up to him.

“Is he . . . ?” she asked.

Des shook his head. “Can’t tell. He might be breathing, but with the way his arm is, blocking his face, I can’t get close enough to be sure.”

Koom!
Something fell over in the distance, making Billie jump. Sounded like a garbage can had been toppled over.

“Here.” She knelt down beside Shank’s body. She thought that with all the death and
undeath
she’d seen over the past year, she’d be used to the idea of being around the sick or dead. She wasn’t. Slowly, she reached out and was about to grab Mr. Shank’s wrist so she could move his arm away from his face. When she touched the soft fabric of his suit, she jerked her hand away. If he
was
dead . . . “Move his arm.”

“Fine. Here.” Des handed her the bar from his bedroom closet, then placed a pair of hands under Shank’s forearm and gently adjusted it so he could have access to the old man’s face. “You’re such a girl, you know that?”

“I can’t . . .” he said and got closer to the ground. He turned his head so he was facing her and scooted to the side with his ear closer to Shank’s mouth. “The angle . . .”

Billie’s mouth was dry. She wriggled her tongue in her mouth, trying to get some spit going. “I don’t think he’s alive, Des.”

Des closed his eyes, brought a finger to his lips, shushing her, and waited.

Putting one palm on her thighs, the other still holding the bar beside her leg, she straightened her back, took a deep breath, then checked the sidewalk for the rats again. The sidewalk was bare.

It could have been the sudden movement that did it, but suddenly Billie’s eyes were drawn to Shank’s other arm, the one she couldn’t see when she had studied him from across the street. A moist, dark red patch was on his biceps, the gray material ripped, as if something had bit into it and torn it away.

“Des!” she screamed, dropping the bar. She grabbed him by the shoulders, tugging him back, trying to free him from the old guy’s hold. The man wouldn’t let go. “Get off him, you . . .” She kicked Shank in the underside of the forearm, sending the arm up and loosening its grip on Des.

A dozen undead stepped slowly toward her, some dragging their feet, others managing fairly well considering they had no life in their legs.

She and Des turned around and both stopped short when they were met by fifteen more coming from the other side.

Billie could scarcely breathe.

A soft scraping sound signaled Mr. Shank was getting to his feet. The old man straightened, dropped his shoulders as if they were too heavy for him, and started moving toward them, one arm out, the other trying to extend but not seeming to get past stomach level.

Not far behind the old man’s feet was the bar from Des’s closet. She was closest to it.

She checked the zombies; she had maybe three seconds before it’d be too hard and too late to move. Carefully, her eyes on Mr. Shank’s white ones, she crouched down, and duck-walked closer, reaching for the bar. Shank stumbled a step to the side, blocking it from her. She didn’t know if the move was intentional or not.

7

In a Swarm of Death

Des tried to swallow the cotton ball at the back of his throat. The tissue back there was so dry that he coughed and had a hard time catching his breath. Billie, so transfixed on the mass of zombies surrounding them, didn’t look his way to see if he was all right.

Should he tell her how he felt about her? If this was the end, what could it hurt? It’s not like it would matter in a few moments anyway.

I love you,
he said to her in his mind.

He wished she could hear his thoughts. He wanted her know, wanted her to understand that despite the world nearly at its end, despite all the loss she’d suffered in the past year, despite the hopelessness that plagued each and every day, there was someone who cared about her.

Deeply.

I can’t . . . I can’t say anything. Not like this. It’d be selfish of me, if I did. It could also backfire and confuse her and I don’t want her last thoughts to be something like, “What do I say back ’cause I don’t feel the same?”

The zombies moved closer, their white eyes filled with hate. Their mouths hung slack, eager to taste fresh meat, so raw and still filled with fresh blood.

“I have to try,” he said quietly.

“What?” she replied softly, her eyes settling on a middle-aged woman with short blonde hair. A part of the woman’s cheek was missing as was a chunk of her right hand. Her pale skin was the same washed-out gray as the rest of the dead.

Des screamed and lashed out, swinging his right arm up in a wild arc and bringing it back down on the side of an elderly zombie’s face, clubbing him on the cheekbone. The dead man’s head angled to the side, lolled for a second, then was brought upright again. Des kicked him in the groin then moved for the undead teenage boy beside him, knocking aside the kid’s arms. He brought his forearm across the teen’s throat, whacking it in the neck. The kid fell back. The other zombies drew in, their arms swinging out. Billie shrieked and disappeared beneath a mass of smelly flesh, rubbery arms and claw-like fingers.

“Hey!” Des tried moving toward her. He was shoved back as three dead women cut him off and pushed him away into the waiting arms of a large black zombie who, judging by the smell and decay of his skin, must have been dead for the better part of the year. The big fella’s blood-caked mouth opened wide, his once-pearly-white teeth now faded to yellow with black marks like burnt corn. Des wriggled himself to the side within the man’s grasp just as the guy’s teeth were about to take a chunk out of his shoulder.

Tears sprang from the corners of his eyes. He hadn’t meant to cry; he just couldn’t help it. Panicked instinct and preparation for death took over and no matter how hard he resisted the black guy’s hold, the more he found himself entangled within his enormous plaid shirt-covered arms.

Billie’s cries went from loud to quiet to loud again as she struggled to get out from under the three undead on top of her. Des couldn’t see her; he could only hear her.

“Help!” she screamed.

“Bill—” Des was cut off when a chubby, blood-slicked finger stabbed into his mouth. It tickled the uvula at the back of his throat and he immediately threw up, warm puke gushing out of his mouth like cruddy water out of an overflowing toilet. Gravity took over and the puke splashed back to the rear of his throat, cutting off his air.

Something firm and hard gripped his legs. Someone tugged on his arm and yanked so hard he thought he was going to be torn apart.

BOOM!

Cool liquid splashed on Des’s face.

BOOM! Crchk. BOOM! BOOM!