Gods of the Dead (Rising Book 1) (14 page)

Kevin holds his hammer up high as I reach for the doorknob. I hold up my fingers, count down from five, and swing the door open on one.

The smell nearly knocks us to the ground. What’s inside nearly blows our minds.

It’s a zombie, but he’s fallen. He’s on the ground on his back staring up at the ceiling with those blank, vacant eyes they have. He’s been there for a while, probably the last three years, his skin and muscle sloughing off his bones and pooling on the carpet around him like melted wax on a burnt out candle.

“What the hell?” Kevin whispers angrily.

He’s lifted his shirt to cover his mouth but he’ll never block that scent out. Once you smell it, it stays with you for days. It hunts you and haunts you. It instills an awesome sense of fear and anxiety in your blood that doesn’t leave until you force it out or you encounter it again.

Kevin glances at me nervously. “What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s a zombie.”

“Dude, not now. I’m being serious.”

“So am I.”

“He’s not a regular zombie. He doesn’t even smell us, does he?”

“No, it doesn’t look like it.” I consider his worthless body and his empty stare. “I think he’s dying.”

“They’re all dying.”

“No, they’re all undead. I think this one is actually dying.”

“How though?”

“No clue.” I glance at him sideways. “What do you want to do?”

Kevin goes into the room, grabbing a tall lamp off the nightstand. “End him.”

He smashes the heavy hunk of metal down into the pudding of the zombie’s skull. It ruptures like a rotten fruit. He leaves the lamp there in the center of what used to be the infected’s face and comes back out into the hall. I close the door behind him, locking the smell inside.

When we get downstairs we find Ryan in the living room. His face is pressed to one of the windows, his eye peeking through the tiny crack left between the frame and the board.

“Hey, you guys,” he mutters without looking up. “I figured out what the Porsche was doing.”

“Joyriding,” Kevin says, unimpressed.

“Kind of.”

I go to stand behind Ryan. “What do you mean by ‘kind of’?”

He stands up and points to the crack. “Check it out.”

I have to kneel down to get my eye in the same spot his was. When my eyes adjust and I can see the outside, I’m stunned.

The road that was clear just a few minutes ago is now swarming with the dead. It’s a slow moving herd probably thirty strong making its way up the street. The Porsche appears from the left, tearing through the herd – weaving and darting between them. Knocking some down, being pelted with hungry hands. A gun fires and I hear Kevin and Ryan hit the deck behind me as a zombie’s head explodes in a spray of black, white, and red. It falls to the ground in the middle of the street as the red car races to the end of the block and turns around, coming back for more.

“What are they doing?” Kevin asks.

I shake my head, unsure.

“They’re playing,” Ryan answers. “That herd is following them but they keep coming back to it instead of running from it. They brought it down here.”

Kevin nudges my shoulder. “Let me see.”

I move aside for him to look through the crack. He curses quietly when he sees the size of the heard.

“We should get out of here,” he says tightly. “Run through the backyard and to the other side of town so we—Oh fuck!”

He jumps back from the window. When he lands on his ass on the floor his face is ashen, his eyes wide with fear.

“What?” Ryan asks.

Moaning. Shuffled steps and moaning on the porch.

Ryan kneels down next to Kevin. “Do you think they know we’re here?” he breathes.

No on answers. We wait and we listen to the sound of the body outside the door. Then we listen to the sound of two. Three. Probably more join in but I can’t count footsteps over the sound of scratching on the boards.

“Yeah,” I mumble quietly. “They know.”

“The back door!” Ryan shouts, running for the kitchen.

Kevin scurries to his feet to go after him. “Ryan, no!”

We all arrive in the kitchen just in time for Ryan to throw the lock. Hands hit the window hard, making him jump back and stumble until he falls into his brother. There’s more than one out there, meaning the backyard might not be an option anymore.

The Porsche races down the street again. Two more gunshots and a series of loud laughs echo after it. What they’re doing is a game to them. A game that is going to get us killed.

“We’ll go the roof,” Kevin says decidedly. “We’ll find a way to get to the roof of the house next door and we’ll keep doing that until we find an opening to drop to the ground and run.”

“RV parking,” I tell him.

“What?”

“This house,” I explain. “It has RV parking. So the does the house next door. There’s thirty feet of space between us and the next house on either side. No one can jump that.”

Kevin pinches his lips together angrily. His face turns red. His eyes search the house anxiously.

The dog door opens, a hand pushing through. Then an arm. A shoulder. Finally an open mouth gnaws at the casing around it, desperate to get through. I have no doubt that eventually it will.

Ryan steps back, pushing closer to his brother. “Kevin?” he asks shakily.

A board in the living room creaks and cracks as it bows under the weight of the infected pressing against it until finally it shatters. Glass clinks to the ground in an odd melody and Kevin looks at me with anger in his eyes.

“We go out fighting, right?” he asks me heavily. “None of us has made it this far to lay down like that guy upstairs. We open the door and we fight. We find an opening and we run.”

I shake my head, my hands reaching for the rifle on my back. “No. We don’t find an opening. We make one.”

The engine is on its way back. I have to hurry. Who knows how many more passes they’ll make? Who knows when they’ll get bored with their game and go home?

I sprint up the stairs, taking them two at a time. I find an office on the second floor overlooking the street. Luckily the window is already open. I’m able to stabilize the rifle on the sill just as the car is making its way toward us again. I follow it. I feel Ryan and Kevin at my back as I sight it. Kevin asks what I’m doing as I apply pressure to the trigger. As I wait for the right moment.

They fire their guns. They hit one zombie with a bullet, another with their fender. They laugh. They’re loving this. They’re killing us.

I fire once but that’s all I need.

I put a bullet through the right front tire, sending the speeding car into a wild skid that careens it sideways. It topples over itself, flipping three times and plowing down zombies with each roll until it finally stands still. It rests on its roof on the asphalt.

It takes a moment but the men inside begin to shout. Then they begin to scream. The dead on the street are closing in on them. The men stumble out, blood on their faces and hands. Their shirts. The ground at their feet. The infected flock to it.

Even the ones on the porch.

I shoulder my rifle, stepping quickly and quietly out the window onto the roof of the porch underneath me. I motion to Kevin and Ryan to do the same until we’re all crouched like gargoyles on the front of the house. In front of us the infected have gone into a frenzy. They’re chasing the men from the car down the street. The moaning gets louder as they congregate together, but as we slip off the porch to the ground, running in the opposite direction, it gets impossible to hear.

You can barely hear yourself think over all that screaming.

Three Years Later

7 AO

Chapter Fifteen

Vin – Twenty Five Years Old

I wipe the sweat from my face with my shirt, climbing the stairs slowly. I’m dying from my workout and the unstoppable summer heat that grows inside the aquarium all day. At night when the windows are open it gets a little bit better but it never feels cool. Not until the winter hits and then it never feels warm. Part of me wishes we’d stayed in the WAMU Theater instead of coming here.

Another part of me wishes I’d never led them there in the first place.

Marlow found us at the theater before night fell on that first day in exile. He walked into the room like he owned the place and I didn’t fight him. I didn’t challenge him because I could see it in their eyes when the refugees spotted him – relief. Their king was alive and even though they’d been thrown out of their home they felt safer seeing him walk through those doors.  It was a level of devotion I couldn’t compete with. Not after only three hours of leadership.

He was quick to take us out of the WAMU and we made our home in the aquarium down by the water. Just like the Colonists who took the stadium from us, we had to take the building from the Pikes. They were a hard gang with large numbers but the element of surprise and balls of steel are great equalizers. We left the stadium with almost thirty people, less than a third of which had any skill at fighting. When we faced the Pikes we did it with an army of only eight. Just eight men going up against a gang of twenty three, but we didn’t hesitate to take it.

To, as Marlow so wrathfully stated, “Do unto others as those motherfuckers did unto us.”

“Yo, Vin,” Mike calls from the end of the hall. “Get down here, man. They’re looking for you. Emergency meeting.”

“I’ll be there in five.”

“You want me to tell Marlow that?” he asks, annoyed. “That you said to keep him waiting?”

I gesture to my naked chest, my bare feet sticking out from the bottom of my jeans. “I’m not dressed, Mike.”

“You walk around half naked all day. No one gives a shit.”

“Some of you give a shit.”

“No. No one does.”

“Are you sure?” I toss my shirt on the floor at his feet and throw my arms out wide to show off the sweat soaked muscles up and down my torso. “This doesn’t do it for you? Not even a little?”

“Shut the hell up.”

“It’s okay, baby. You can look. Just don’t touch. I don’t want the rest of the boys gettin’ jealous.”

He kicks my shirt toward me. “I’m not gonna punch you in the dick ‘cause you’re my boy, but if you don’t stop with the gay shit I’ll break your teeth.”

I laugh as I lean down to pick up my shirt and loop it through my belt. “What’s up? What’s the meeting about?”

He knocks lightly on the door to his right and Andy is quick to open it, peeking out to see who it is. When he spots Mike and me he nods and opens it just wide enough for us to slip through.

Mike casts me a solemn look before going inside. “John’s back. He’s got news.”

I follow him through the door, instantly intrigued.

There are six guys in the Hive that Marlow keeps close. Men that he gives a lot of power to because we were all there at the beginning. Either we knew him from our days under the Boss or we followed him out of the stadium when it was taken from us. He trusts us with just about everything, but we’re each responsible for at least one thing in particular.

John he put in charge of security, including patrols and scouting. Bennett got the Stables; the pros. The prostitutes. Hector is his accountant, keeping the books on everything from money to the Hive headcount. Dennis and his team sell Honey, the Hive’s own special brand of drug. Neil is sort of a butler, overseeing the entire house. The kitchens, the little rooftop garden, the laundry, the doc’s office. Hector knows exactly how much of everything we own but Neil is the one who knows where the hell it is.

And then there’s me. I run the Arena and the gambling. Fight nights at the Hive are a big deal, bringing in people from every gang all over Seattle to try their luck inside the cage, make some money on a bet, get a taste of Honey, or even better – get a taste of a Hive girl. It’s not that different from the old Underground and a lot of people still call it that, even though I wish they wouldn’t. It makes me miss the old days.

Inside Marlow’s large office Mike and I find him standing around a long table covered with maps. Eight other men stand with him, including John – an older guy with a scar down his left cheek and a permanent scowl on his face. I like him. He’s a sour old dude but he’s good at his job.

I scan the rest of the faces in the room quickly. With myself, John, and Hector, three of the six are already here.

“Are we still waiting on Bennett?” Marlow asks Andy.

He nods his dark head of hair, his eyes squinted slightly like he’s looking into the sun. “He said he’d be here soon, but that was ten minutes ago.”

“Well, we can’t wait forever. I’ll have a talk with him later. John,” Marlow addresses his scout, “what’d you find?”

“Colonies,” he says dispassionately. “To the north and the south.”

Marlow’s face doesn’t register his surprise but his momentary silence does. “Two of them?”

“Yes.”

“Is one in the mall?”

“No. They abandoned that base entirely after they took over the stadiums. They’ve never gone back. There’s one in the south like you thought. We were watching the shipping vehicles coming and going from the stadiums to it when we caught sight of several heading north. That’s when we discovered the second building.”

“Where?”

“Here.” John points to spot in the northern half of the city. “It’s the old MOHAI. It was a science museum up by the water. It sits with its back to it just like we do.”

“Well defended?”

“Not yet. It’s still being set up. Guards are there keeping watch over it but it’s not populated.”

“And the south?”

“A fortress,” John confirms with a grim shake of his head. “They built a wall on the weak sides and we saw evidence of digging around the outer rim.”

“Landmines,” Mike mutters.

John nods to him. “Exactly. I wouldn’t walk within half a mile of that place. Their only weakness is the trucks coming and going.”

Marlow stares at the map without moving. He breathes in and out slowly, his eyes scanning every inch of the city, and I know what he’s thinking. It should be his. It should all be his. It’s something he’s never been able to let go of and
that
, not the Colonies, is the reason we live the way we do now.

If the Colonists had come in with a hundred men holding guns and shouting things would have been different. I really think Marlow would have started over with whoever he could save. He would have been the same man with the same plan. With goats and gardens he didn’t like. But losing it the way he did – betrayed from the inside – that messed with him. It made him bitter, and when we burst in and took the aquarium from the Pikes, we didn’t do it gently. Men died. Women screamed. Choices were not given. The only ones who survived were the ones who ran.

I don’t know what we were inside the stadiums, but in the aquarium we became a gang. No doubt about it. Marlow named us the Hive and he demanded full allegiance – no exceptions. He had Asher give us all tattoos on our necks, branding us as his Hornets. Ignoring the outrage from a few of his followers, he hired his first whores. It was the Honey that really lost him his people, though. He stole a chemist from another gang to start selling the drug along with the girls. The Underground became the Arena, a cage made of the old bones of the busted out dome fish tank in the middle of the aquarium. He put me in charge, banned me from going inside, and demanded one big change; men don’t fight men. They fight zombies.

It was a descent into the old days before the fall, and Asher and I watched as the money came pouring in and the group fell apart. People ran in the night, afraid to face Marlow and tell him they weren’t interested in living his lifestyle. The nurse, all of the farmers, and even a member of the guard bailed within the first year. Others left later on but Marlow didn’t care or didn’t notice because his numbers were growing faster than they were shrinking. Men willingly left other gangs to join the Hive and even a few women came looking for work in the Stables. But no matter how many people join the Hive, we’ll never be as big as the Colonies. I don’t think we’ll ever even get as big as we used to be in the stadium.

And that makes Marlow blind with rage.

“Watch them,” he tells John quietly. “Keep an eye on the building in the north. I want to know when they start bringing people in.”

“Do you want to try to take it?” John asks him.

He shakes his head. “No.”

“What do you want us to do?”

“I want you to watch it,” he reminds him impatiently. “I want you to wait, and when the time is right we’ll make our move.”

He turns his back on all of us without further explanation.

I want to play it cool and let him walk out like it doesn’t matter, but it does. If he plans to take the building, it’s the baseball stadium all over again. It’s my chance and I can’t handle it.

“What’s our move?” I call after him.

He heads for the door. Andy opens it for him and stands there like an obedient statue as Marlow passes through. His words are cast over his shoulder, faintly falling in the room and nearly impossible to pick up.

“We’ll destroy it.”