Empire (12 page)

    A woman's hand thrust out and slapped at him. "KIPP!!" The woman shrieked. The boy grabbed her arm, sobbing, and buried his face against the door. Other voices now. The clown was desperate. It grabbed a mouthful of the child's hair between its teeth and pulled back.

    A man thrust a metal spike out, some length of pipe, spearing the clown's eye and sending the rotter stumbling back. The same man tore the door all the way open and grabbed the boy. The clown struggled with the pipe. It couldn't see straight, couldn't steady itself. Feeling was leaving its legs. It twisted the pipe around inside its brain and moaned.

    Wendy seized Kipp from Shipley's arms, backing away from the door. The others crowded in to restore the barricade. Shipley stood silent, watching the child and his mother.

    "Wait!" Came a cry from outside. "What the fuck??" Wheeler snapped. Oates shoved him aside and pried the door back. "Hey!"

    There were three people, two women and a man, running across the street from Liberty Auto. The clown spun around and lunged at them. The blonde caved the rotter's face in with a brick.

    Against Wheeler's mad protests, Oates opened the door wide and waved them over. The clown lay on its back, fists clenched. Watery discharge pooled around its mutilated skull, the pipe sputtered dark chunks - still the thing lived.

    Oates slammed the door behind the newcomers.

    Far from the writhing clown, far from Jefferson Harbor's last pocket of humanity, Baron Tetch listened to Aidan's slurred words and nodded. "All right, I understand. Go downstairs."

    Uriel was at the study door. Tetch pointed at him. "Do you remember how to use the rifle?"

    The afterdead responded with a blank stare. Sighing, Tetch rose from his desk. "Let me show you again."

    It was time to take the city.

    Mike's radio, strapped to his belt, squawked as he was helping Cheryl carry a few boxes up to his apartment. He'd scarcely returned home and locked his door when he heard her knock upon it. Setting the box in his arms on the living room floor, Mike spoke into the radio. "Come back?"

    "Weisman. What's your 20?"

    "I'm home."

    "Good. Grab something flammable. I've got - wait for it - a damn clown thrashing around outside Holy Covenant. Need some help torching him."

    Mike acknowledged the request and went to peer beneath his sink. "I've got to leave you here for just a few minutes, Cheryl. You gonna be okay?"

    "I should be." She eyed the eight locks installed in the door and smiled wryly. Laughing, Mike grabbed a bottle from under the sink. "Go ahead and get settled in the bedroom. I've got the only set of keys so don't go and get yourself locked out. I'll make you some copies at the hardware store in a little bit."

    "Mike?"

    "Yeah."

    "Thanks."

    She touched his hand timidly, a true sign of gratitude, reaching outside a claustrophobic, barely-existent comfort zone to make contact. He nodded and headed out the door.

    When Mike arrived at the shelter, the front doors were open and Reverend Palmer was arguing with one of the bums, Wheeler. Voorhees stood by, gun in hand, watching the streets.

    Mike ignored the confrontation and emptied his bottle's contents onto the ridiculous zombie lying there. It swiped blindly at his feet, to which he responded by coolly snapping its fingers under his boot.

    "You got a light?" He asked Voorhees. The bald man nodded and fished through his trench coat for his matches.

    "Three more??" Wheeler bellowed. "You just let them walk right on in here after what happened?!"

    "They stopped the damn rotter, Wheeler!"

    "That retarded kid is the reason the rotter was a problem in the first place! Too many strangers running around this goddamn place!"

    "All right, Mister Wheeler." Voorhees said. "We've heard enough."

    "You can't tell me what to say or do! You can't push me around because I'm homeless! We're ALL homeless! I don't care where you're squatting, it's not yours! This isn't even a city anymore!"

    "You want to bring more of them?" Mike snapped. He pointed to the clown. Voorhees struck a match and held it over the moving corpse. "If that's what you want to do, Wheeler, just keep throwing your tantrum."

    It was like he didn't even hear them. "Don't burn that here!" Wheeler cried. "Not right in front of the fuckin' building!"

    Voorhees dropped the flame. The clown was bathed in seconds by fire, still kicking, still trying to grab something warm and alive.

    Voorhees pushed Wheeler into the shelter. Mike followed and helped Oates restore the barricade. "What's this about three more?"

    "Survivors." Oates pointed into the community room where the trio was sitting. Mike squinted at the blonde. "Is that..."

    "Jenna O'Connell, in the flesh." Oates grinned. "She is something, isn't she? Even all roughed up like that."

    Mike murmured something in response and surveyed the rest of the community room. "Where's our friend Shipley?"

    "Dunno. He saved that slow kid, though." Oates replied.

    "I want to talk to him."

    Voorhees already had Shipley cornered in the restroom. He'd found the ex-con zipping up at the urinal. "That thing even work?" The P.O. asked. Shipley shrugged. "Who cares?"

    "You know, Shipley, the police station's in decent shape. Rotters can't get in. No one can. I've even got some food down there, if you care for coffee beans."

    "Not interested. I'm not gonna let you lock me in a cell."

    "I'm not giving you a choice."

    Voorhees produced a pair of handcuffs. His other hand was on his gun. His grim smile was dark from eating coffee.

    "I don't have enough room at the station for all these people, but I do have a room just for you. It'll be better for everyone. No harm will come to you."

    Shipley, under any other circumstance, would have given up. But he didn't.

    "I can't leave here."

    "Why, pray tell, is that?"

    "That kid..."

    In the community room, Wendy stroked Kipp's hair and kissed his forehead. "I'm so sorry. It's my fault." He shook his head in the crook of her neck. "It was my fault, Mom."

    "No. It's never your fault. You don't..." Her voice trailed off. She sat up slightly and brushed the hair back on Kipp's scalp. She saw the bite.

    "Hey," Isabella said from a window, "I think I see another one out there. Hey, Voorhees!"

    The boards over the window exploded, throwing splinters into Isabella's eyes, and before the pain had even set in, before she knew what had happened, a gray claw tore through the opening and grabbed her by the jaw.

    Fingers stabbed down her throat and she bit into them. Her jaw was torn away with a wet crunch. Wendy screamed; Oates uttered something that was both profanity and prayer, and Mike Weisman yanked out his pistol and chased it as it clattered across the floor.

    Hands, several of them, grabbed Isabella's tongue and hair and shoulders and dragged her out the window.

    Oates ran to the front door and threw himself against the barricade. A half-second later, a rifle blast tore through the door and threw him into the opposite wall.

    Mike gaped at the smoking hole in the door. A rotter crouched to stare back at him.

    "Christ," Mike breathed, and around him, every covered window in the community room warped and groaned under the weight of a single, unified assault.

    "How are there so many?!" Miss Palmer was saying to the bald cop, but before he could answer Miss Palmer ran over to Kipp and his mom and took each by the hand.

    It sounded like they were in the middle of a thunderstorm, caught up in a dark cloud somewhere. Kipp briefly felt weightless as he was pulled across the community room and he imagined falling, helpless, from the thundercloud. Perhaps into the waiting arms of a hundred, a thousand dead men, all with blood-red painted smiles.

    Wendy glanced back at him as the two of them were pulled along. He realized he'd wet himself and started to say something, but she interrupted him. "It's okay it's okay it's okay," she said breathlessly. Her grip was tight on his shoulder. Miss Palmer's fingers were interlaced with his. Miss Palmer opened a small door and pushed Kipp and his mom inside.

    "The chapel," Miss Palmer said. She stepped back and shut the door behind them and darkness flooded the room. Kipp screamed.

    Hands slapping on the walls; his mom's hands. She found a switch, and soft lights came on overhead.

    Kipp turned to look around the room while Wendy ran to the door to ensure that it had a lock. It didn't.

    The chapel had four rows of long wooden seats. The walls were wood-panelled, floors swept clean; Kipp felt oddly detached from the rest of the shelter. He thought it might be a secret room. Then, as his eyes adjusted, he saw the effigy: the dead man nailed to a crossbeam, his face sallow and streaked with blood.

    Kipp threw himself gibbering into Wendy's arms. She pulled him down behind a pew and tried to calm him, but he wasn't hearing her words anymore as she assured him that the dead man in the chapel wasn't supposed to be like the things outside, that he wasn't really there.

    And he wasn't, was He?

    She had taught Kipp prayer, but Wendy didn't herself keep the habit up enough to set any kind of example. She didn't think much about God anymore. It wasn't that she questioned how God could let bad things happen to good people; she accepted that He did so, and hated Him for it.

    Wendy crossed the aisle and pushed one of the other pews in front of the door. The reverend had whispered as she pushed them into the chapel, "Don't open it for anyone." Through the wall she could hear the others arguing and pounding, trying to drive back the attack.