Life Among the Dead (Book 4): The End (32 page)

Lady Luck can’t shake free in time, isn’t able to hit it before her other arm is seized and she is taken to the floor. Her bat clatters and rolls from her hand. She struggles against the increasing weight being laid on top of her as more zombies join. They wrench and twist her body, looking for access to the tender flesh they crave. Resistance proves fruitless, she can’t fight them, can’t free herself. If not for the armor she had been given she’d be feeling their teeth tearing into her body, the starved dead would be devouring her to the bone. Instead she feels their mouths clamp painfully wherever they can wrap them for a bite, their jaws pinching her with crushing force.

Slowly the weight is lightened off of her, one by one the dead are removed. She is able to roll free with a groan. She’s exhausted but not ready to give up the ghost just yet. Her classmate has the bat and is using it to save her. Side by side, they shove corpses into the remaining cluster that stalks their way and make for the adjoining corridor. Doors open before them allowing zombies to stumble out in their path. Some yield only one corpse, others release a handful. Lady Luck snatches up a steel trash receptacle she sees and uses it to plow through a small cluster.

The two scan the halls they run through for a sign, something to tell them where the lunchroom is located. There’s no posted indications, no crowd to follow like a nervous freshman on the first day of school. The end of one passage is bathed in day light, Lady Luck gets her partner’s attention with a touch to his arm and utters a muffled, “Here!”

She figures the cafeteria would be among the outer rooms, as she remembers her school’s lunchroom. She also banks on it having many windows that would allow in the light they run towards. The dead are behind them, also ready for lunch.

A set of double doors are propped open by trash cans but Lady Luck can’t push them aside to seal the opening. She gives up that plan and joins her compatriot at one of many long tables. She snatches up her lunchbox just as the man she is with takes his, they forgo the pudding, the Thermos, the hand written note, and head straight to the pistols inside. From the remaining, unclaimed trove that depicts gallivanting Smurfs with Gargamel lurking in the background, Lady Luck takes the third 9mm. They have not been provided with any extra ammo, no seconds, she figures they may need every last shot.

Rather than make their stand in the open, the two move down the rows and take positions, crouching and watching the door, elbows resting on the benches. Figures watch from the kitchen area, Rubicon soldiers in armor monitor the cafeteria should their assistance be needed.

The first of the dead enters, both students fire and miss. They are too tense, reacting without thinking. Lady Luck knows they can’t keep shooting at the same corpses, they need to relax and make each round count.

“Take turns!” she says loudly through her helmet once she has her classmate’s attention. She tries to indicate her meaning by pointing to herself and then him, and then back. She makes the gesture until he nods his understanding.

She lets out a breath as she aims at the corpse. She puts a round right in its head. Her partner lines up his sights on the next through the door, dropping it on top of the first. The rhythm continues, without the need to verbalize they commence to make a wall of bodies to bar the door, a dam against the damned. Some of the walking corpses attempt to circumvent the pile, only serving to make it wider.

The pupils run out of ammunition long before they run out of targets. Lady Luck still has the left over weapon. She uses four of the rounds then slides it across the floor to her partner. She has no idea if the point of this exercise is to destroy all the zombies, or to simply escape, regardless she wants out.

A vestibule of glass and black metal leads out to the parking lot of the school to an area buses once dropped kids off. The doors are locked. Frustrated, Lady Luck slams against them. She takes her empty pistol and attempts to break the window but the safety panes won’t shatter.

There are no more shots being fired, her partner has run out and the dead are still squeezing into the space, pushing through the gap that remains and crawling over the bodies.

The light entering the large, increasingly crowded room, illuminates doors at the back. Lady Luck points as she heads toward them. Her partner arrives first but stops short upon seeing the heavy chains that lash the handles. A dozen hungry diners shuffle past the rows of foldable tables toward the students. They aren’t certain how to end the lesson and are growing stiflingly hot within their armor. The former showgirl had felt constricted before, now she’s feeling claustrophobic. She has a desire to tear open her protective garb so her skin can breathe, this urge becomes her motivation.

Lady Luck drags one of the nearest tables closer to the door, it scrapes and squeals across the floor. Her partner catches on after she starts bringing a second table over, she’s building a barrier. He grabs a third for the cause, considering how swiftly he watched her heave her tables he’s surprised by their heft. They have a makeshift fort constructed to make their stand, it’s only going to slow the dead however, they’ll snake and squirm under and over to get at them.

From a cabinet built into the wall, Lady Luck takes a fire extinguisher. She scans the area for another item her partner can use and comes up empty, he’ll have to use the spent pistol. Side by side they wait and watch as the zombies close in on them, shuffling and moaning.

The first to the wall of tables numbly topples forward when his legs strike the connected benches. Its chest slams down on the tabletop but it grabs the edge and begins pulling itself without hesitation. Lady Luck swings the red canister over her head and brings it crashing down. The corpse’s skull is battered between the impromptu weapon and the hard particle board surface, but it isn’t stopped. The dead thing continues its efforts to get to the living, reaching and moaning. A second blow ends its craving.

The next to arrive becomes hammered by the other student, he delivers rapid fire strikes with the grip of his 9mm, holding the barrel. This isn’t as effective as the extinguisher, the lightweight weapon requires dozens of blows to make a dent in the corpse’s cranium, then a few more to drive the pieces deep.

It isn’t long before the dead are too numerous to stop, the students are unable to keep up. The dead flow like water over and under the table, flooding the space and drowning the living.

No matter how much they fight and thrash against the deceased they can’t stop them. The armored pair are grabbed and pulled in every direction by the ravenous dead, they are battered and wrenched, contorted and twisted. Starved mouths try to find sustenance only to clamp down on leather and metal. The students are at their mercy, and the dead have none. The fight goes out of them. They run out of strength and stop resisting, allowing themselves to be yanked and jerked from one corpse to the next.

“And, cut!” Brass says from the double doors.

Abby heads towards the pile, motioning for all the spectators to join him. Armored folks spill out of the kitchen to handle the dead with gloved hands and long dog catcher’s poles. The controlled horde is put away once more, the students remain on the floor. They rest feeling abused and beaten.

With the dead safely stored, Brass and the others relax their armor. The Rubies aide in the removal of the exhausted pair on the floor’s helmets. Having had a break from the mauling, the students react to the sudden presence of the helping hands by recoiling and swatting.

“Easy,” Peace Maker soothes them. “It’s over guys.”

“Nice work,” Rough Rider congratulates while helping the male pupil to his feet.

“Nice work?” he questions. “We got killed!”

“Yeah, but not for real.”

Lady Luck is in a stupor, still withdrawing from the helping hands. She knows the dead are gone but would rather not be touched. Hugging her knees to her chest she lays her head down. Her classmate is about to ask her if she’s all right, but Rough Rider stops him with a hand to his chest, “Hey, buddy, come help me pick up all your spent shells.”

“Spent shells?”

“You see,” Rough Rider says holding up an empty brass casing, “each of these represents a zombie that’s no longer a threat…”

As soon as the girls are alone, Peace Maker makes eye contact across the dim cafeteria with Brass. With a slight nod she indicates they have another case of what they’ve come to call ‘Hell Shock’, the training exercise was too overwhelming for her, or has dredged up something from her past.

The room is clearing out, the living and the dead alike, Brass is by Lady Luck’s side. He sits down with her. “I hear they no longer call this sitting ‘Indian style’, it’s offensive. Schools re-named it ‘crisscross applesauce’.”

The woman lifts her head at that non-sequitur, her eye makeup has run down her cheeks in black rivers. With a sniff she is relieved to be tethered once more to reality and pulled from the sense memory of her mauling, phantom reminders of the unyielding hands and teeth. Her eyes sparkle, reflecting what little light there is are yet to be shed tears. She is able to focus on him once more.

“What’s up, kiddo?” he asks.

“Just killing zombies,” she responds as if nothing is wrong, returning to her well-practiced demeanor.

“You certainly have a unique style,” Brass comments, ignoring her restored icy way. “I’ve never seen a person use a team member as a weapon before.”

“Sorry about that,” she says, not sounding sorry at all. “He was all I had handy.”

“It was a good substitution,” Brass must admit since the armor is designed to keep them safe. “You never know where you’ll find a good substitution. My wife loved tiramisu, so much that I learned how to make it for her. Actually, it was the only reason my store carried mascarpone cheese and lady fingers. Anyways, when she became pregnant she was concerned about the rum used in the recipe. I thought ‘what has a similar taste, but without the alcohol.’” He waits for her to catch up, gives her a pause to insert an answer if she wants. When none is forthcoming he tells her with pride what he came up with, “Maple syrup. It’s remarkably similar, and since we were never big drinkers anyway, it became the way I made it from then on.”

Lady Luck isn’t certain what she’s to do with this information. She feels much better just being able to sit and listen.

“My point is, you were faced with a split second decision, you threw him and it got you both here. The fact that you were overrun was inevitable, it was a no-win situation. The first day is always the hardest, tomorrow will be better.”

She had been fearing that her use of her teammate as a projectile, becoming mobbed by the dead, and her breakdown would have her dismissed from the boot camp. It surprises her that she will be allowed to continue. “Ok.”

“We’re calling it a day, re-adjourning in the morning,” he helps her to her feet. “I’ve talked Abby into watching horrible movies with me tonight. My wife and I loved watching cheesy sci-fi, making funny comments the whole time. There’s a secret to it, you know. You have to find a rhythm so you can crack your joke without missing too much. You can join us if you want. I’m making my tiramisu. We’ll have a bottomless bowl of popcorn. Are you in?”

The hopeful look in his eyes has nothing to do with his scheme to fix up his second in command, it’s his wife. He misses her. But, Lady Luck is far too exhausted, she just wants to get out of her armor so she can lie down and rest her soon to be sore body. “Another time.”

“Suit yourself,” he takes the rejection well. This week has been especially hard on him, Racheal’s birthday is tomorrow and an evening of her favorite things is the best way he can think to honor her. Before the plague he’d be at a loss as to what to get his wife as a gift since money was becoming an issue, it always ate him up to have to give her an IOU as a gift, promises of better times.

“I’d like to thank you for taking me in, giving me a chance to help out,” she says, letting her sentiment slip through her almost inhuman façade.

“Think nothing of it.”

“Everyone says you’re a hero, built this community by yourself, that you’re a hell of a leader.”

“I’m none of that,” he says with a shake of his head. “I grabbed a few people, created a team, from there we became a town.”

“Come on, don’t sell yourself sh…shit,” she stops herself from repeating an old saying to the man she towers over.

“Pardon? ‘Don’t sell myself
shit
’?” he asks. “It’s ok to say it. It is an expression of common usage.”

The woman is blushing. It’s a rare instance where she feels embarrassed. She smiles wider than she has in years. “It’s just that…I didn’t know…”

“It’s all right, really.” He walks ahead to open the door to the outside world for her and with what Lady Luck assumes to be phony contempt he utters under his breath, “you overly tall bitch.”

41

Rocky Roadkill returns from her quest to the coast, entering the encampment her fellow soldiers just watch as she parks and slowly makes her way to the hotel. She looks grim as she makes for the door amid whispers, behind her back comments dubbing her ‘the widow maker’. She’s alone, the two men that had left with her apparently are not coming home.

It’s been a week since the small unit of three had departed to look for a fallback position should the Rubies or military get too close for comfort. Kenny is relaxing in his office when her weak knock on his door frame gets his attention, looking at the despondent traveler he can only guess things did not go well.

“What happened?” he asks, slipping the magazine he was reading into the middle of a stack of gun periodicals. Had Rocky walked in a few minutes sooner she’d catch him sniffing a perfume ad in his copy of Cosmopolitan from Kelly Peel’s fragrance line. He’s still searching for Miss Right but is abandoning hope of ever finding the girl of his dreams, like a girl from one of his nudie mags who is half his age. Now he’s willing to settle for someone in the middle. While smelling the sweet bouquet he contemplated leaving his kingdom to go to Los Angeles, be some celebrity’s hero and let nature take care of the rest of the work.

“We found a place,” she opens with the good news. “A shipping yard in North Carolina.”

“That far north?” he asks having to consult a map. “Florida is all coast.”

“And, thick with Coast Guard ships. We figured we should scout along the ocean until we didn’t see them,” she explains. This part of her tale to Kenny is true.

“Good thinking,” he nods, pondering the hypothetical ramifications.

“The yard is secure. Place is nothing but large steel boxes. We thought it would be safe since there was no movement.”

“But, it wasn’t,” Kenny concludes.

“The boys popped open one of the containers,” she leads into her story. “Out spilled twenty or so zombies. All chicks. I’m guessing it was a part of the sex trafficking industry.”

“I’ve heard of that,” he responds, disheartened.

The truth is, they found no such place. “They got overrun before I could help them. I had to bail. The place is still locked tight and safe, aside from the dead chicks running around, the containers more than likely are full of surprises; food, guns, drugs.”

“Everything we need!” Kenny says, brightened by the silver lining.

“How have things been here?” she inquires, though only cares if Killer B is all right.

“Quiet,” he tells her. “No run-ins with the Rubies, but they have taken a farm in Harrington. This brings them even closer than I like. I don’t know if we should wait it out here, or just head to this shipping yard.”

He’s asking for her opinion without actually coming out and saying so. He silently rocks in his swivel chair and waits for her two cents. After a moment of pretend deliberation, a spell of time she feels appropriate, she comes to the only logical conclusion considering one of the options is fictitious. “I think we should stay the course. Wait and see what the Rubies do. Leaving this place will just invite them to take it over.”

That strikes a nerve with Kenny. He sits up straight at the thought of his enemies taking over their home, even if they do abandon it. Convinced that he is too pig headed to make the call for them to head to the coast, she leaves him to check on Killer B.

There might be no shipping yard, but Rocky and her team did head north due to the presence of cutters along the shore. They came to a quaint little sea side town devoid of movement, not a living soul nor rotting corpse. It was a nice relaxing place that reminded her of home, Massachusetts. Personal crafts bobbed lazily moored to old weathered piers. Larger vessels floated neglected further out.
KB would love this
, she had thought. She wants to get the two of them away from Kenny and the others, if not to Rubicon, perhaps to a place like this.

The three toured the silent streets and reconvened at the large pier that juts out into the ocean. After each confirmed what the others turned up they shared a satisfied smile.
This could work,
they thought.

Feeling a sense of relaxation they haven’t felt in a long time, they gazed out at the water, the horizon to the east where the water meets the sky became invisible, slowly swallowed by shadows. The setting sun behind them cast gold and red shimmers far across the gently rippling surface of the Atlantic.

“I see something,” Cole said, pointing out one of the larger yachts.

There was movement aboard the ship, definitely alive. A better look through binoculars showed them a woman on the deck near the aft, pulling something up from the water.

The three lingered until the sun was gone and the woman was below deck, the two men watched her hanging clothes on lines. Rocky could see what they wanted even though they hadn’t uttered a word to one another, not even in secret. They just watched, salivating.

A row boat from the pier was placed in the water. As covertly as possible the men propelled them to the yacht. Two motorized vessels were tethered to the larger one like baby ducks following their mother. The row boat joined the procession as the three made up the ladder.

They crouched on the deck until all were on, then tip toed toward the ladder well below deck to take the woman by surprise. Rocky had never been on a mission where women were brought into camp, none that were successful anyway, rescued from the apocalypse for a life of chores and arranged marriage. She felt sick to her stomach but she couldn’t protest.

The woman gasped at the sight of the armed trio that appeared in the home she had made for herself and her two boys. Rocky gauged their ages to be seven and thirteen, the oldest was quick to grab his rifle and aim it right back at them. He pointed the barrel at each in turn, not sure where to keep it trained.

Rocky lowered her pistol, her teammates did not. They laughed as the young man got himself between the marauders and his family.

“Put it down, kid,” Zack ordered. “We’re not gonna hurtcha. We just want to have a little fun, that’s all.”

In that, Rocky knew these guys weren’t going to capture the family and bring them back to the others. They weren’t at the head of the line to get the woman as their bride,
why buy the cow when you can steal all the milk you want
, she figured.

“This is a nice place,” Cole said approvingly. “I think we’ll keep it.”

“We need to get back to the others,” Rocky reminded her team.

“Fuck the others,” Zack retorted, spitting on the deck. “You can go back to that hot little wife of yours, Rocky. Cole and I will chill here with ours.”

“Get off my ship!” the youth screamed, his voice cracked robbing him of any authority he was going for. He aimed his assault rifle with conviction.

Again the men laughed at him, figuring he hadn’t the stones to fire. They were wrong, the second one of them attempted to take a step closer, he pulled the trigger, and nothing happened. Again and again he pulled the trigger to no avail, just a weak click.

The weapon was snatched away in the blink of an eye. The boys were shoved into the booth seat of the dining area and given a warning. “Ain’tcha seen Wild Kingdom? When a lion takes over a new pride, he kills the spawn of the previous king. Don’t piss us off.”

The other man sauntered up to the woman, he tenderly reached for her, an off-putting familiarity that made her cringe. She shied away from him, tried to make herself as small as possible but he wouldn’t let her. He grabbed her by her shirt, about to remove it as she cried. He would have had her disrobed and ready for who knows what if his head hadn’t suddenly exploded in a shower of blood and gore all over the terrified woman and the walls.

Zack turned to where the shot came from and saw Rocky standing with the smoking gun. He became enraged, torn between shock and anger. She eased his conflict with a bullet between the eyes.

The family was puzzled by the surprising turn of events. It wasn’t until the pistol was lowered that they united, huddling in the booth. The oldest boy again raised his M16 at the intruder, regardless of her actions she still didn’t belong there. His mother laid a hand upon the weapon and eased it off their savior.

“Sorry for the…everything,” Rocky said. “Can I see your gun a sec?”

“No,” the young man replied flatly.

“You gotta pull out the thingy near the butt, then hit the button on the side to return the bolt. I learned how to use one recently.” They watched as she dug through the pockets of her fellow raiders, most of her findings she kept for herself, but tossed ammunition they could use towards their feet. Once her scavenging was complete she dragged the men in turn to the ladder well then commenced to heft them topside.

Seeing the woman struggle with the weight of the first body, the mother wordlessly assisted her by taking his feet. Together they heaved the men over the side of the yacht.

“I’m Susan,” the mother offered as Rocky watched her teammates sink to the bottom of the ocean.

“Rocky.” The men she had travelled with disappeared, she continued to look down at the water without emotion. “See ya,” she said suddenly, and headed back the way she boarded.

“Wait,” Susan called to her. “Would you like to stay with us?”

“I can’t,” Rocky said without looking back.

“Can we come with you?”

“The place I’m going to is full of men just like this,” she explained. “You’ve got a good thing here. If you cruise south, the Coast Guard will take care of you. Or, if you ever have to return to shore there’s a town called Rubicon in Georgia, go there. The folks seem decent, at least decent enough.”