Phoenix (20 page)

"Why are they all coming this way? This is
just a side street, isn’t it?" Izzy asked.

Laura mumbled, "They’re trying…trying to stay
away. From twenty."

"Twenty?" Izzy made a face. "What’s twenty
and why are people staying away from it?"

Laura sniffed. Her ears felt like they needed
to pop. "Next street over. Same way."

"Psst," Brad hissed. When he had Izzy’s
attention, he elaborated. "This street and the next are short-cuts.
Twenty is the main drag. I’ve went this way a hundred times just to
miss all the red lights. It’s the fastest way to the
interstate."

Laura nodded along, having done the same
thing several times when going home from a Book Club meeting.

"They’re trying to get to the interstate?"
Izzy asked. "Don’t they know that’s crazy?"

Brad looked back out the window. "I don’t
think that’s what they’re worried about right now."

"Well they should be!" Laura’s outburst
scared them both and she rubbed her temples. Blood leaked from her
right ear. "They’ll get out there and get stuck. Trapped like
rats—"

"Laura," Izzy grabbed her by both shoulders,
"you have to lock it
down
." She leaned over and put her
hands on Laura’s cheeks, forcing the crazed woman to look at her.
"Do it now. Turn it off. Please!"

Laura sucked in a breath. The color had
drained from her face. Underneath that mask was a fragile woman,
cracking under the weight of what they were facing. She worked
through the process of doing what Izzy had said. It took longer to
‘turn it off’ than it had to ‘turn it on.’ Her consciousness fought
and clawed at her phantom self, pulling, trying to disengage it
from the outside world. She closed her eyes and took several fast
breaths, each time blowing it out her nose and pulling just a
little bit more. That grating whine faded and she felt herself
filling. Her other half was returning. She pulled harder, pictured
herself playing tug-of-war with a little kid, convincing herself
that she could win. As more of her phantom returned, more noise was
forced out of her head. Finally her entire body went limp and she
fell over onto her side.

"You’re okay." Izzy smiled. She scooted
closer to Laura and held her head in her lap. "We’re okay." She
looked to the window. "Brad?"

He gave her a thumbs up. He wasn’t ready to
panic. Yet. Though seeing Laura go through all that was enough to
make him want to rip his hair out by the roots.

Izzy nodded and mumbled something to Laura,
who bobbed her head and passed out.

"Everything is going to be fine," Izzy
whispered.

"Well…" Brad peered over at her.

Izzy scrunched her eyebrows. "Someone’s
trying to break in."

* * *

"Help! Let me in!"

The door shook in its frame. Someone was
pounding on it from outside and screaming at the top of his lungs.
Adams aimed at the door. Mort moved into the dining room and kept
his shotgun on the front entrance as well.

"I know you’re in there! Your cars are in the
driveway! Please!
Let
me
in
!"

Thumpthumpthumpthump
.

Adams swayed back and forth on his feet, his
eyes darting from the door to Mort. He lowered the barrel, then
raised it again.

Thumpthumpthump
.

"Please help me! Is someone in there?"

"Yes!" Adams shouted back, then clapped one
hand over his mouth and stared at Mort.

The thumping stopped. "What? Yes? Please, let
me in. I won’t hurt you!"

Mort held a hand up to stay Adams.

"What do we do?" Adams mouthed.

Mort shook his head very deliberately and
slashed the air with his hand.

Whoever was outside must have pressed his
body against the door, because his next question came through the
crack in the door jam. "You can’t leave me out here, man. You have
to let me in. I swear I’m not dangerous. Can’t you open the
door?"

"No." Adams smacked his forehead.

"Why not?"

"Uh." Adams glanced from the door to the
couch sitting in front of it. "There’s a couch in front of it."

"A couch! Can’t you move the fucking
thing?"

"Yes." Adams lowered his head until it
touched the shotgun’s barrel and squeezed his eyes shut.
"Goddammit."

THUMP
.

The man outside screamed. The door shook.

Adams jerked his head around and saw figures
moving past the window. He pressed himself as tightly to the wall
as he could and hugged the shotgun. Mort crouched until he was
almost on his knees. He waited and watched the dining room windows,
expecting the same figures to soon walk by. They didn’t. A new
sound came from the door. It was lower, toward the ground, and
scraped more than it thumped.

Adams whimpered and Mort glanced over. The
younger man was biting his own lip to keep still.

The bottom of the door rattled against the
couch. Adams opened his eyes and chanced a look through the crack
in the curtains. "Oh, Jesus…"

Mort fixed him with a look, willing him to
stay calm. Adams’ breathing became rapid, his lips parted, and Mort
was sure the man was about to let loose. He crept forward, moving
slowly so as not to startle Adams. When the younger man caught the
movement, Mort held out a hand to stay him. He patted the air,
trying to comfort him, and kept moving closer to the nearest dining
room window. Mort held a finger to his lips, held Adams’ stare, and
gave him a smile. Every little thing he could think of to keep his
friend from flipping out, he did. Finally Adams nodded to him. The
acknowledgment was a little more frantic than Mort would have
liked, but it would do for now. As long as Adams stayed quiet.

Once to the window, Mort lifted the corner of
the curtain back just enough to see outside. The street was in
chaos. Desperate people ran without watching where they were going,
sometimes running into each other, sometimes running into parked
cars, and more often simply tripping over the curb and
face-planting themselves onto the sidewalk.

Why
are
they
running
?

It seemed like a stupid question. From the
corner of his eye, Mort could see what they were running from.
Three dead people were eating the man that had been beating on his
front door. Tearing him to pieces, right there on his porch. If he
were out on the street, he’d run from that, too. He understood that
it was a common reaction to fear.

Run. Just run.

If those people out on the street could look
past their fear, they’d see that the dead things following them
were slow and clumsy. Mort watched the corpses move. They fell down
more often than the people they were chasing. The only reason the
live ones were being caught was because they weren’t thinking, they
were just
reacting
.

At a house across the street, he saw a man, a
woman, and two small children. The man was trying to kick in the
front door. The woman was keeping watch, which seemed smart to
Mort. They weren’t panicking like everyone else. The man moved
quickly, surely knowing that each kick caught the attention of more
and more corpses. Finally the door sprung inward, and a blast
caught the man in the chest and sent him flying backwards.

The woman screamed and jerked the two
children behind her. The man hit the sidewalk and rolled out of
view behind a car parked on the street. Mort’s jaw dropped and he
looked down at his shotgun. He heard another scream and looked
back. A hand shot out of the open doorway and grabbed the woman.
Whoever it was tried pulling her inside. She fought back. The owner
of the hand was yanked into view. Mort didn’t know him, though he
remembered the day the guy moved in. He had a nasty feel, and Mort
decided then to avoid him.

The woman and the nasty neighbor struggled so
long that the children slipped away. They ran between the houses
and disappeared. The woman screamed for them. The man slapped her
and tried again to pull her inside. A group of corpses stopped him.
Mort watched them both fall under the weight of dead flesh. They
kicked and shrieked, trying to fight off their attackers. Mort felt
the woman’s raw horror. It was distorted, but his internal picture
of her was wrapped in black and red. The interference may have been
strong, but what he was reading from her was even stronger. It only
took seconds for the colors to translate into a fear he’d never
known. The pair’s cries went on and on until they became hoarse
gasps, then they just stopped.

Mort glanced over at Adams. He was staring
back, still biting his lip. He breathed hard through his nose and
sweat coated his forehead. Mort pleaded with his eyes for him to
just hang in there a little while longer. Whether the younger man
understood or not, Mort wasn’t sure. He was distracted by the
sudden lack of noise coming from outside. He checked and saw that
the street was clearing. There were a few bodies left, but they
weren’t alive. The zombies on his front porch staggered to their
feet and joined the parade. What was left of the man they’d been
eating was spread out over the indoor-outdoor carpet that covered
the decking boards.

Mort motioned for Adams to stay put and
crab-walked to the back door. He peeked through the curtains and
checked the backyard. It was clear. He snuck back to the dining
room and saw the stragglers moving farther up the street, away from
them. He snapped his fingers, got Adams’ attention, pointed to his
eyes, then pointed outside. Adams looked through the curtains and
breathed an audible sigh of relief. He leaned against the wall and
wilted to the floor, the barrel of the shotgun resting against his
forehead. Mort breathed a little easier as well.

He waited until the street was completely
clear for as far as he could see before standing and walking over
to Adams. He helped the man to his feet.

"You okay?"

"No."

"Are you going to be sick?"

"No."

"Good enough. Let’s check on the others."

Adams nodded and followed Mort upstairs.

The city was burning. They could see columns
of smoke rising in the distance. Brad heard sirens blaring, some
seemed close and some seemed to be as far away as the smoke. The
setting sun cast a red hue over everything, and Brad found himself
constantly searching the sky for those six spectral figures from
his dream. The ones who always seemed to be hovering above, looking
down on them. His precognitions were coming true and he fought to
stay away from the bottle of whiskey he knew Mort kept tucked away
in his bedroom.

"Just like our dreams," said a small voice
next to him.

Brad looked down and saw Izzy had joined him.
"Everything’s red."

"Mhm." Her fingertips picked at a loose
string on her shirtsleeve. "What are we going to do?"

"I don’t know." He sighed and returned his
attention to the window.

"We don’t have enough food."

"I know."

"And the water will only last until the power
goes out."

"I know."

"That fire is going to spread."

Brad unfolded his arms and draped one over
her shoulder. "We won’t be here when that happens."

Her shoulders sagged. "I know."

"What?" He squeezed her arm. "Isn’t that a
good thing?"

She pulled away instead of answering and left
him alone. His gaze followed her to the living room. The rest were
gathered there, discussing their next move. Brad glanced once more
out the window, shook his head, and joined them.

"It’s too dangerous to go outside right now,"
Laura said. She paced back and forth between the TV and the far
side of the room. She seemed to be completely recovered from her
episode earlier. "We need to gather what we can from the houses
here and hole up."

"And then what? What do we do when the food
runs out?" Adams was perched on the edge of the coffee table. "Or
when another bunch of those things passes through here? You think
our luck is going to hold out forever? Eventually they’ll get
in."

Izzy sat down on the floor next to Mort and
drew her knees to her chest. Mort kept quiet throughout the
exchange, only glancing up when Brad entered the room. He jerked
his head to the side, gesturing for Brad to come closer.

"What do you think? Stay or go?" he
murmured.

Brad knelt and leaned close. "I might be
wrong, but I say we go."

Mort nodded as though he’d expected that
answer. "So do we. Especially Adams. He’s adamant about leaving.
But she," he indicated Laura, "thinks we should stay and has been
arguing about the best way to do that for the last half hour. She
can’t see past her fear. I don’t know what the hell happened up
there," Mort turned his eyes to the ceiling, "but it did a number
on her."

Brad dipped his chin. "Yeah it did."

Mort took a deep breath. "So I’ll break the
bad news, then."

"Yep."

"Dammit."

Brad smiled and helped Mort to his feet.

The old man moved forward to break up the
argument. "Alright, alright, everyone quiet down a second." He
waited for the chatter to die, and when all eyes were on him, he
continued. "You all know what happened earlier. Laura, you make a
couple good points. Say we scavenge enough to last awhile.
Eventually another group of them
will
pass through, and
eventually they
will
get in." He walked to the window and
held out a hand. "And if we didn’t have the dead to worry about, we
have
that
." Mort pointed toward the burning town.

"That’s miles away." Laura was digging in her
stubborn heels.

"And the wind is blowing this way. Think the
fire department will contain it?"

Adams snorted. "No."

"Exactly," Mort said. "So we’re looking at
fire, zombies, starvation, and eventual dehydration once the power
goes out if we stay here."