Ground Zero: A Zombie Apocalypse (3 page)

Jesus!
Tammy cringed.

“Most guys cruising for sex are looking for a sixteen year old girl who looks like she’s twelve,” Margie explained. “You can’t compete with that, so you
gotta offer something different. You gotta be the experienced confident score.”

“How can I possibly do that?”
Tammy fretted. “Margie, I’ve only had one boyfriend – and that was three years ago. I can’t do experienced. I can’t –”

“Just wiggle your ass and walk like you own it,” Margie said. “And be confident. When a car pulls up at the curb, you saunter over, lean in the window so they can get a good look down your top, and ask in a real sexy voice if they want to party. It’s easy.”

“Easy for you, maybe.”

Margie rolled her eyes. “Honey, the rule in this game is that you
gotta fake it until you make it.”

Tammy
’s hands were bunched into anxious fists. She took one last look at herself in the mirror and cringed. She threw her handbag over her shoulder and tried to keep her balance on the threadbare carpet.

“I don’t want to make it,”
Tammy said. “I am just doing this to make ends meet.”

“Make it… make ends meet… its all the same thing, honey. That’s why Angelo is going to meet you in the alley,” Margie said. “Tonight he’ll take you to your corner and keep watch.”

“I told you I don’t want anything to do with Angelo!” Tammy hissed. “This isn’t a career, Margie. It’s… it’s just for a few nights until I can replace the rent money. I don’t want to be one of Angelo’s working girls.”

“You
ain’t got a choice,” Margie said. “You struck out two nights in a row on your own. Angelo has connections. It’s worth the cut he takes.”

“He’s a pimp, you mean.”

“He’s protection,” Margie insisted.

Tammy
sighed. It was probably Angelo who had smashed her apartment window and robbed her, for all she knew. “Fine. I’ll meet him in the alley. Then I’ll decide.”

Margie made another face. “Just don’t piss him off,” she said. “I know what you can be like. This is business. So keep your thoughts to yourself. It
don’t matter if you don’t like him. It only matters that he protects you and makes sure you get paid. Remember, whatever you do – don’t get him angry.”

“Your boyfriend is an asshole,”
Tammy said.

“Be that as it may,” Margie said primly, “but he’s
my
asshole, and he’s
your
bodyguard. We both need him.”

Tammy
bit her lip. She looked around her tiny apartment bedroom one last time and then picked up her keys from the bedside table.

“Will you still be here when I get back?”

“Where else would I go?” Margie asked.

Tammy
kissed Margie on the cheek and tottered through the door, down the dark rickety staircase and out through the building’s side exit.

The alley was narrow, walled on either side by dilapidated high-rise apartment blocks.
Tammy glanced up through the crisscross maze of rusting fire escapes and curtained windows to the night sky. There were no stars. The night was black and she could smell smoke in the air.

T
he alley wasn’t dark. City lights filled the narrow backstreet with a flickering glow as traffic snaked past garish neon signs. Tammy stepped past piled plastic bags of trash and wheeled dumpsters filled to overflowing.

There was a huddle of dark shapes
in the alley, their bodies silhouetted. Tammy tugged self-consciously at the hem of her denim skirt and walked towards them. Her heels echoed loudly on the ground and the group of figures changed shape as they turned toward the sound. Then one man broke away from the others and swaggered towards Tammy.

“Well now,” the man’s face appeared from the shadows as he neared. “Don’t you look fine.
”

Tammy
stood still and sighed. “Hi Angelo.”

He was a tall broad-shouldered man with Latino features and a hawk-like nose. His long dark hair was pulled back behind his head in a greasy ponytail. He wore a white t-shirt and dirty jeans. He gazed at
Tammy with piercing dark eyes and rubbed his chin as he circled her.

“You’ve certainly got it going there, girl,” he smiled wolfishly. “You certainly do.”

Tammy folded her arms and stared at Angelo listlessly. “Are you finished?”

He laughed. “Well actually… I’m only just starting. You see, I
gotta taste the goods before I put ‘em on sale, Lilly. So how about you and I go somewhere more comfortable, and you can show me what you’re offering?”

“No chance,”
Tammy sneered. “And I don’t think Margie would like to hear what you just said either.”

Angelo pointed his finger
. “Girl, I am serious,” he said suddenly. “None of my bitches goes on the street until I get to sample her wares. That’s the way it was for Margie when she worked, and it’s the way it is for every other bitch I protect. You ain’t special.”

He closed the space between them, his expression dark, his eyes menacing.
Tammy took an uncertain step backwards. She heard a police siren wailing somewhere close by, and the night seemed alive with frenetic noise and bustle. She blocked it all out and focused on the menace in front of her.

Angelo’s raised voice had drawn the attention of the two other men. They started down the alleyway.

“Bro? You got trouble?”

“This little bitch
ain’t a good sharer,” he called over his shoulder. “It’s nothin’.”

The two men exchanged sniggers of laughter and turned away.
Tammy watched them retreat into the shadows. When she flicked her eyes back to Angelo, there was a leering smile on his face, and a short-bladed knife held low in one of his hands.

“What the –?”

“I ain’t got time to play with you, girl,” Angelo said. “Every minute you’re standin’ here and not on your back is costing me money. Now my boys think you’re giving me lip. That ain’t good for my business. Now I know you got a mouth on you. I want to see it go to work.” With his free hand Angelo began to tug at the zipper on his jeans. “And if you ever tell Margie I got a free sample, I’ll come back with this knife and cut out your tongue. Business is business. You wanna be on the game, you gotta play by my rules.”

Tammy
’s eyes widened. She took another step away, and felt cold damp bricks against her back. Angelo saw the startled expression in her eyes.

“Nowhere else to go,” he said softly. “So it’s time to get down and party. Only now, we don’t do it comfortable – we do it nasty. I’m just
gonna throw you down on some trash bags and do you. ‘Cause... that’s what you are now, right? White trash.”

Tammy
couldn’t take her eyes off the glinting silver blade. In Angelo’s hand it weaved slowly from side to side like the hypnotic dance of a deadly snake. The taste of her fear was thick in her throat. She could feel her heart racing, pounding hard against the cage of her ribs.

Angelo
drifted closer. It was just one more step, but he was so close now he was within striking distance. Tammy heard him growl at her and she glanced up at his face. His teeth were bared in a malicious snarl.

Tammy
slowly eased the strap of her handbag of her shoulder and held up her hands in resignation. “Alright,” she whispered. “Alright…” Her handbag splashed into a muddy puddle. She brought one of her hands down to the front clasp of her bra, and as Angelo leered at her, she suddenly lashed out with a vicious kick.

Tammy
’s heel socked into Angelo’s crotch with a meaty thump. All her anger and fear was behind the blow and she felt the instant satisfaction as it landed heavily between his legs.

For a moment Angelo froze, and then he slowly toppled sideways like a felled tree, his hands clutching
low at his stomach, his face twisted into a rictus of agony.

Tammy
turned and ran.

The darkened alley was a dead-end.
Tammy knew her only chance of escape was to get past Angelo’s two minders. It was the only way out of the alley. She started to run, screaming as loudly as she could.

“Help!” she shouted at the two dark shapes. She waved her arms and then doubled over. The men ran towards her and when she stood up again she had her heels in her hands.

“It’s Angelo!” she said breathlessly, her eyes wide. “I think he’s been shot.”

The two men looked at each other, their expressions stunned. On the ground
, deeper into darkened alley, they could see Angelo writhing on the pavement.

Tammy
raced past the men. As she got nearer to the corner, the light from the city and the noise of passing traffic grew louder and more chaotic. A police car flashed past at high speed, and then she heard a woman’s chilling scream and a screech of brakes.

Tammy
ran out of the alley and turned left without thinking.

Then froze.

The world was on fire. The Laundromat and a Chinese restaurant on the corner were ablaze and there were scattered groups of terrified people running in all directions. Some were carrying suitcases. Others were carrying guns. Their faces were ghastly white and filled with manic horror. She saw one man swing a baseball bat at a car’s window, but the sound of the glass shattering was drowned out by the panicked screams of three women who were running straight towards her. Tammy’s stared in confusion and sudden panic. The frantic fear on the women’s faces, and the chilling sound of their shrieks above the clamor of wailing sirens and alarms was infectious. She felt herself overcome by an ominous sense of dread.

Then, from a dark alley across the road,
Tammy saw two blood-drenched figures emerge onto the sidewalk. They were big, bulky shapes, moving briskly towards her, lit by the bright orange glow of the burning buildings. Tammy screamed. A surge of panic filled her. One of the figures was naked. Tammy could see the man’s chest had been torn open. Its entrails hung in long twisted slimy ropes as it moved, and its face was a mask of dripping blood. It hissed at Tammy, and there was an enraged murderous frenzy in its eyes.

She turned to run, but suddenly a figure crashed through the glass front of the Chinese restaurant. It was a man – and he was on fire. He lumbered across the sidewalk and onto the street, twisting and turning
and squealing in a blazing pyre, like a human torch, until it seemed he could go no further and finally collapsed to his knees in the middle of the road.

Horns blared.
Tyres screeched. And then a dark colored SUV came hurtling past at high speed and crashed the burning man to the ground. Tammy screamed again. Headlights blinded her, and panicked voices shouted violent abuse. She turned to flee, jinking past a middle-aged man who was carrying a television set in his arms, then stepped out onto the road.

A
nd lost her footing.

Tammy
staggered – whirled round in terror – and fell directly into the path of a swerving, speeding car.

* * *

Jack Cutter survived because a wall fell on him.

He was
running – running for his life – sweat staining the front of his t-shirt, his breathing labored. All around him the world was going to hell.

And he didn’t know why.

It had happened within a matter of moments. One minute he was parking his pick-up and walking towards the center of town under a clear blue sky – and the next he was struggling to stay alive as the street filled with hordes of screaming, terrified people, and the air overhead thumped with the heavy vibrating beat of helicopter rotors.

The windows of a department store exploded outwards in a fireball of searing hot flame and deadly shards of glass. The shock of the blast was so fierce that the ground around him
trembled and the sidewalk seemed to heave beneath his feet. A woman in front of him tripped and fell, and Cutter stumbled over her. The concrete smeared skin from his hands, and for a stunned moment he could only lay still, covering his face from the scattering feet and legs all around him. The noise was deafening; the panic-stricken screams of office workers, and mothers who clutched desperately at their children – all overlaid by the constant thump of the helicopters and the plaintive wail of car horns as horrified motorists abandoned their vehicles and fled the madness on foot.

Cutter heard a sporadic volley of ragged gunfire
from somewhere close behind, and the sound was enough to galvanize him. He struggled to his feet, bumped and jostled by the mindless horde.

The scene was chaotic. Thick s
moke was billowing from the upper stories of the burning department store, and he could see a woman in a white blouse at a third floor window. She was screaming, flailing her arms in a desperate plea for help. Then she just disappeared – violently jerked out of sight by a strong clutching arm.

Overhead, two army helicopters were circling the madness, tilting in
a series of sharp turns, and weaving above the city’s rooftops. Cutter heard a ragged burst of machine gun fire and saw the winking red flashes of light – and stood frozen and appalled as he realized the choppers were firing into the confusion.