Last Man Standing (Book 1): Hunger (6 page)

Nothing. No one.

The street looks like it would on any other quiet Saturday morning. No bodies. The road is free of traffic. A couple of cars are parked illegally in the no stopping zone like always, a calculated risk while the drivers run in to grab a coffee to go. My eyes scan the street looking for signs of movement but it's quiet as the grave. The front door of the old used bookstore is wide open, as is the door of the Whole Foods next door. Kate's coffee shop still has tables sat outside, with paper cups resting there as if the customers have all stepped inside to take a piss.

I walk out into the street, a little more confident now, and hurry along the row of parked cars until I reach the antique store directly opposite the coffee shop. As I approach it my pace slows, and I come to a halt out front with a sinking feeling in my heart.

The big bay window has been shattered from the outside. In the dim, dusty interior I can see shards of glass sprayed across the ground. I try the door, but it only opens a couple of inches before hitting up against some sort of heavy object.

Slowly, carefully I climb into the store through the broken window, watching out for the glittering shards still clinging to the frame, and I immediately see what happened. A heavy armoire has been pushed up against the door to form a blockade. It looks like it worked, but there was nothing large enough to block the windows.

I feel a lump rise in my throat as I imagine hordes of snarling, wailing creatures flooding in through the shattered window like water, filling every inch of the space inside and overwhelming anyone hiding within. It must have been terrifying.

I choke down a desperate sob and lean against the armoire, fishing my phone from my jacket pocket. There's no harm in trying to call now. Whatever was looking for Kate surely found her, but I don't want to give up that last scrap of hope that she might answer and tell me that she's fine. That she's sitting pretty in a chopper that arrived at the last minute to carry her to safety, and she's on her way to a safe zone outside the city. That I don't have to feel this
guilt
.

I scroll to Kate's name, hover over it for a moment with my thumb, then bite the bullet and press the screen. I don't really expect the call to connect. I have two bars, but I don't know what that really means. I've no idea if the cell network is even still working. I've -

I hear a sound. Faint, right on the edge of my hearing.

It sounds like a phone.

"Tom?" A tinny voice calls out, too loud, and I press the phone to my ear to take it out of loudspeaker mode. "Tom, is that you?"

"Kate!"
I cry, too shocked and ecstatic to keep my voice down. "Oh my God, I thought you were dead!"

"Tom, can you hear me? I can't hear you."

In the background I can hear a male voice whisper, "It sounds like it's going away. We have to move
now
."

"Kate, can you hear me?" I hear the desperation in my own voice. "Please, tell me where you—"

She speaks over me. "I don't know if you're there, but I'm stuck in the antique store across the street from work. One of them was trying to get through the door, but we think it just left. We're gonna make a break for it, OK? I'm gonna try to get home." I hear her voice waver with emotion. "Oh, please tell me you can hear me, Tom... I love you."

"I love you," I whisper, but the call has already cut out. I don't know why I said it. It just seemed like the right thing to do.
Jesus
, I'm an idiot.

I slip the phone back in my pocket, then freeze as my brain finally catches up with what the call means. Kate is here somewhere, still in the store. Still alive.

And one of
them
is in here with us. Not trapped behind a door. Out. Free.
Roaming
.

I hear a loud thump from somewhere in the back of the store and I feel my grip tighten on the bat. Another thump. Whatever it is, it's coming closer. Another, even closer this time, as if a drunk guy is stumbling his way towards me. The bat suddenly feels far too light and flimsy.

It occurs to me that it was my own voice that drew the thing away from Kate. It heard me, and now it's come to hunt me down. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, and the grip of the bat feels slippery in my sweat drenched hand.

The thing finally appears, limping slowly through the door to the back room. I pull back against the wall into the shadow of a large grandfather clock, trying to blend into the shadows as best I can.

It's an old man, maybe late sixties. Neat gray hair, and a fussy little silver beard that looks like it received loving attention each morning. As he emerges from the behind the counter I see why he's limping. He has an enormous shard of glass embedded in his bony thigh, jutting forward about six inches and buried so deep that it barely wobbles as he walks.

He doesn't seem to notice the pain, even as he bumps against a low table and presses the shard deeper into his thigh. His cream trousers are soaked crimson down one leg. His knuckles are bruised and bloody.

I hold my breath as he slowly approaches, wishing the grandfather clock was just a little bigger. In the silence all I can hear is the slow drag of feet and soft, rasping breath from the creature. He seems to be moving away towards the window, and I pray he'll climb through.

He reaches the glass and pauses, as if his slow, broken mind is processing the best way to negotiate the window frame. I can almost see his mind tick over like an idling engine, and once again I wonder what's going on in there.

He seems to come to a decision. Slowly - too slowly for my bursting lungs - he lifts his bad leg clumsily over the lip of the window. He moves to set his foot down in the street, and—

—And the minute hand of the grandfather clock beside me ticks over, breaking the cloying silence with a loud, dull
tock
.

The creature whips his head towards me and locks eyes with mine. I freeze in place, shocked by the cold, mindless hatred in those eyes, and stifle a cry as he pulls back into the store and suddenly runs -
sprints
- towards me with terrifying speed.

I know I don't have the space to swing the bat. I don't have the time to think straight, but I instinctively know I'll still be on the back swing by the time he's on me. There's only one thing I can do. As he barrels towards me I thrust out the heel of my left hand, still clad in the heavy leather mitt, and drive it forward and up into the man's chin, my arm locked at the elbow. I watch in slow motion as he opens his mouth to bite, and I cringe as my blow forces his mouth shut, catching his tongue between his teeth and cleanly severing the tip. I imagine I can feel the tiny chunk of wet flesh spit against the palm of my hand as the man falls backwards, stunned.

Now I'm working on autopilot. No conscious thought passes through my mind as I lift the bat and step forward to take my first heavy overarm swing. I swing like I'm chopping wood, bringing the aluminum rod over my head and down hard onto the man's forehead. He seems to react with anger rather than pain, snapping at me and trying to lift himself back to his feet, but I move too quickly for him. I swing again, sending him back to the ground with a fresh gash in his cheek, and again. Again. Repeating, over and over, his face caving in deeper with each blow until he isn't recognizable as a man any more. Now he's just a mass of swollen flesh, as misshapen as a Picasso portrait, one cheek sunken and caved, the other exposed, raised bone.

I keep swinging long after he's stopped struggling to stand. Long after he's stopped moaning. I swing until I can't tell the difference between head and floor. Until he's just a body cut off at the wrinkled, sinewy neck, ending in a glistening pink and white jellied mass of flesh and bone.

"Tom!" A voice cries out to my left.

I swing the bat toward the sound instinctively, my arms barely connected to my mind, and the aluminum crashes against the dark wood of the grandfather clock.

"Tom,
stop
!"

The voice finally breaks though. The red mist starts to fade, and I feel myself regaining control. I blink a few times and try to make sense of what I'm seeing.

It's Kate, her face just inches from the end of the dented, bloody bat. She looks down at the mess twitching at my feet then back up at me, and slowly, carefully reaches out to pull the bloodied bat from my hand.

"I think you got him, babe."

I stare at my reflection in the curved, mirrored surface of the cappuccino machine, and I barely recognize the face looking back at me. It's the same face I was wearing when I visited the coffee shop yesterday, but now a thin crust of brown blood dries quickly on my cheeks. My hair is matted, clumped together and stuck to my forehead. I reach up and run my fingers through it then stare dumbly at my stained hand. The hand I just used to murder a fellow human being.

I flinch when I feel Kate's hand on my shoulder, then look down and see that my clothes didn't escape the blood spray. I look like I've spent my morning painting a room red.

"Don't touch me!" I yell, shying away from Kate's hand.

She steps back in surprise. "What? Why?"

I tug my jacket off and drop it to the ground. "Look at your hand. I'm covered in this shit. Here, give me your hands." I pull her to the basin by the register and twist open the faucet with my elbow. "We have to keep ourselves clean. Who knows how this thing spreads? Maybe a single drop of blood in your eyes or mouth is enough to fuck you up. We can't take any risks until we know what's going on, OK?"

I wait for Kate to clean herself off, then dunk my head under the tap with my eyes closed and my lips pressed shut. After a minute I risk cracking open one eye, and I see the water swirling down the drain is running clear.

Next comes my jacket. I grab a towel from the stack by the basin, soak it wet then wipe down the waxed cotton until the worst of the blood seems to be gone. Death by contaminated jacket would be a really dumb way to check out.

Kate watches me as I dry myself off. She reaches her hand to her mouth and moves to chew her thumbnail, a nervous habit, but catches herself in time and forces her hand to her side. "Shit, this is really happening, isn't it?" she says, with fear in her voice. "All that stuff you used to say about Bangkok. This is it, right? Sons of the whatever, zombie plague, end of the world shit. It was all true?"

I nod solemnly.

"Well...
damn
." She lowers herself to a stool by the counter. "I always just assumed you were a little weird when you talked about that stuff. You know, like someone who thinks they faked the moon landings. It never occurred to me that you might actually be right."

I manage a hollow laugh. "Well thanks, honey. It's nice to know I can always count on you for support."

"Oh, you know what I mean. It's just... Jesus, I mean this is really
it
. No more coffee shop. No more McDonalds breakfast. No more... oh shit, no more
Game of Thrones
."

She sees my expression.

"Come on, don't look at me like that. I just mean... you know, it's
over
. All that day to day shit we took for granted, it's
done
."

"Yeah, pretty much," I reply, shrugging my jacket back over my shoulders. "I just wish I'd done more to prepare for it. I don't have a plan. I have no clue where we go from here, Kate. Shit, I don't even have a damned gun. How am I gonna protect us?"

Kate smiles for the first time. "Oh, I don't know. You were pretty good with that bat."

I look down at the bloodied aluminum bat resting on the counter. "I guess. It won't last long, though. It's already dented to shit. Couple more skulls and it'll be worthless. That reminds me." I grab the bat and start to run it under the tap, letting the blood circle around the drain.

We both jump at the sound of the coffee shop's security shutter lifting from the ground, and I cringe at the loud rattle of the metal as it rolls up. That noise will carry all the way down the street.

"Quiet!" hisses Kate as a figure ducks under the half open shutter. It's Arnold, the retired firefighter who holed up with Kate in the antique store. It's no time to bring it up, but if I saw him in the street I'd probably ask for his autograph. He's the spitting image of Danny Glover. It's just uncanny. I swear, if he tells me he's too old for this shit I'll start looking for the hidden cameras.

"Sorry 'bout that," Arnold replies meekly, rolling it back down behind him much more carefully. When it reaches the ground he turns to us and grins. "Got my gun."

Kate smiles, relieved. "And the radio?"

"Police scanner," he corrects, shaking his head. "It's wired up to the car. Couldn't bring it along without lugging the battery with me, but I managed to pick up a little chatter before the signal dropped. It's just like I said, alright. They took down the bridge. Smart motherfuckers."

I look from Kate to Arnold, confused. "What are you talking about?"

Arnold walks to the open chiller cabinet, grabs a Coke and cracks it open with a hiss. "Brooklyn Bridge, son. They took it down, right in the center. That's why it's so quiet hereabouts." He shakes his head in wonder. "I tell ya, I never thought they'd go through with it."

I feel like I'm missing something, like I'm only hearing one side of a conversation. I turn to Kate with a questioning look.

"Tom wasn't here earlier, Arnold, remember? Why don't you catch him up?" Kate speaks to him like she'd speak to a senile grandpa, and I wonder if Arnold is quite all there. He looks at me blankly for a moment, as if he's forgotten I'm here, then the brightness returns to his eyes.

"Oh, right, right. Sorry, senior moment." He lowers himself to a stool and sets his Coke on the counter. "You remember Bangkok, right?"

I nod. "Of course I remember. Millions of people died."

"Sure, sure. OK, well, after Bangkok the government started planning contingencies in case of an attack. You know, crazy blue sky shit they never thought they'd really need, like what to do if aliens invade and whatnot. That was how they came up with... Oh, what's it called? That old fairy tale with the guy who lured all those rats and kids away with his... what, like a magic flute or some shit?" He creases his brow for a moment, deep in thought. "Pied piper!"

I shoot a worried glance to Kate, but she shakes her head almost imperceptibly.
Don't worry, he's cool.

Arnold continues, growing more agitated and jittery with each word. "Operation Pied Piper, they called it. See, they figured these things, you know, they're probably pretty dumb, right? Not too much going on in the old brain box, so they must be easy to trick. They figured they'd probably be attracted to sound, so they came up with this plan to clear the city after an attack." He runs his hand across his stubble. "God damn genius, whoever came up with it."

"What? What was the plan?" I ask, impatiently.

Arnold grins. "Blow the bridges. Wash the fuckers down the river like flushing a gutter. You get it?"

I shake my head. Am I just being dumb, or is this old guy making no sense at all?

Arnold swells his chest proudly. "I was a firefighter. Marine Company One. Twen'y eight years on the
John D. McKean
, and six more on
Three Forty Three
. We were part of all sorts of crazy plans, but Pied Piper jumped out at me more than most. See, in the event of an attack it was the job of
Three Forty Three
to drop anchor right between the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges after they were blown.
Firefighter II
would go to Williamsburg, and
Bravest
would head up to Queensboro." He notices my blank expression. "Those are the names of our fireboats, son."

"We had these, you know, huge speakers, like you get at a music festival. Big, bulky things. Good and loud, so the sound carries. We were supposed to rig them up and play all sorts of shit to lure those things out to the edge of the bridge and get 'em to jump in. Didn't really matter what, so long as it was loud. Looks like they went with the fireworks track."

It takes me a minute to figure it out. "You mean that noise about an hour ago? That was the boat? I thought it was gunfire."

Arnold shakes his head. "Nope, that was a recording of July 4th. 2011, if I remember right. Personally I would have gone with Springsteen, but I guess it doesn't matter, so long as it worked." He sits back and takes a smug sip of his Coke, as if he came up with the plan himself. "So you see now, right? That was the plan. Blow the bridges, then draw those bastards into the water with the noise, right off the edge into the middle of the East river. Hey presto, you got an empty street outside instead of a million homicidal bastards trying to break in through that shutter."

I frown. "But what about everyone downstream? What happens to them when thousands of those things float ashore?"

Arnold chuckles. "A net, son. A really big goddamn net. Last year, just before I called it a day, we helped set up one of those huge things they use on fishing trawlers. You know the ones, those massive factory ships that drag them back for miles and just hoover up every fucking thing? We got one of those bad boys running right across the Narrows a couple of miles downriver. You just winch that up to the surface and you got yourself a nice little barrier."

I can't help but be impressed. "That's... OK, that's really damned clever. So, do you know what comes next? Is there a second part of the plan, or did they stop at the big net?"

Arnold gives me a toothy grin. "I'll tell you if you hand me one of those cigarettes." He juts his chin towards the pack of Marlboros resting on the counter. I chuckle, slip one from the pack for myself then slide it over to him. "Help yourself."

He lights up, and closes his eyes as he takes a long, blissful pull. "God
damn
, I miss that." He holds the cigarette up and looks lovingly at the smoldering tip. "Marcy - that's my wife, Marcy - she made me quit when I retired. Told me she wanted to keep me around until I'd finished repainting the kitchen. I don't suppose it makes much difference now, right? Chances are none of us will be around long enough for a little smoke to hurt us."

He takes another long drag, coughs and winces. "Looks like I'm out of practice." He sets the cigarette down on the lip of the counter and takes a sip of his Coke. "Prospect Park. That's what's next." He turns his eyes up to the ceiling, trying to summon his memory. "Prospect, Lincoln and James J Braddock. Oh, and the Bronx Zoo. That's where they'll set up rally points for the city. They've all got fresh water, and they'll bring in generators, food, tents and what not. Gotta keep the city empty until the army can sweep it clean, so I guess we'll all be sleeping on camp beds for a while." He shrugs his sleeve up and takes a look at his watch. "That's where Marcy will be waiting, God willing. We live a few blocks from Prospect, and she knows to head there when everything goes to shit." He stubs out his cigarette on the table. "On that note, kids, I think it's high time we mosey."

I turn to Kate. "You good to go?"

She nods and grabs her jacket, but I sense some hesitation.

"What's up?" I ask.

"It's nothing," Kate replies, lowering her voice. "Just... let's talk just the two of us when we get out, OK? There's something you should know."

I nod, and I'm about to reply when Arnold grabs his gun, tucks it into his jacket pocket and lifts himself from his stool with a sharp gasp. "You OK, Arnold?"

"Yeah, yeah," he replies, waving away my concern. "Nothing to worry yourself about."

Kate shoots me a wide eyed look, as if to draw my attention to something. She nods towards Arnold, but I don't get it.

"OK, let's move, kids. Time's wasting."

That's when I see it, as Arnold turns from us towards the shutter. He's bleeding. The back of his right thigh is stained red where he put his weight on the stool. The blood has seeped through his gray trousers, and the sodden material clings to his leg. He doesn't have a limp, but from the look of the blood his injury is more than just a little cut.

Kate takes my arm as Arnold raises the shutter, and she silently mouths the words to me.

He got bit.