Revenence: Dead of Winter: A Zombie Novel (17 page)

     It was half past eight when the group, minus the Professor, left the radio building the next morning.  The smell of burning rot still hung in the air from the previous day, permeating the city.

     "Fuck," Phoebe croaked as they set out, zipping up her hoodie and using it to cover her nose and mouth, "is this the smell you guys were dealing with?"

     "Oh, yeah," Anthony said.  "It was especially fun when I would hit one of the really rancid ones--you know, where some of the meat is already falling off of the bone, like a good pot roast.  The smell was unreal."

     "Sorry I wasn't there," Phoebe said.  "But I'm glad you enjoyed the weapon I crafted."

     "Wait," Hugo said, tapping Phoebe on the shoulder, "you made that flamethrower?  You know how to do that?"

     "Yeah, why?" Phoebe demanded, placing her hands on her hips.  "'Cause I'm young and I'm a female, you assume that I don't know how to do anything, let alone anything cool?  Is that it?"

     Hugo made a face, perplexed.  "No," he said, "I just think that's awesome.  I've made some explosives, some flash grenades, stuff like that."

     "Ha," Phoebe said.  "I was making stuff like that back in junior high."

     "Whoa!" Hugo gushed, visibly swooning.  "Really?"

     Phoebe nodded.  "For real," she said.  "You guys stick around long enough, you might learn a thing or two from me."

     Hugo stopped in his tracks for a moment as the rest of the group trudged onward, happily contemplating the notion.  "That would be awesome," he said as he picked up his pace to catch up with his companions.  Shari noted his infatuation, smiling a little and rolling her eyes.

     "So how far away is this stadium?" she asked.

     "'Bout a half mile," Anthony replied.  "I'd say we should start to smell it soon, if it is still full of undead, but--"

     "But that was before we barbecued hundreds of rotten zombies, polluting the whole town?" Shari asked.

     "Yeah," Anthony said, "before we did that."

     Daphne and Shari were in the rear of the group, and Daphne leaned in close to whisper into Shari's ear.

     "So how close did you and Anthony get?" she asked.

     Shari spun her head toward Daphne, caught off guard by the question.  She noted that her friend was smiling, but she was fairly certain that she detected a hint of bitterness in her voice.

     "Not close," she said, her tone flat and her gaze deadpan as she looked Daphne squarely in the eye.  "Why?"

     Daphne shrugged.  "Just asking," she said.  "I can sense a certain attraction between the two of you."

     "Maybe," Shari said.

     "Just saying," Daphne said.  "Not trying to get into your business.  And I know relationships are important, especially these days.  All types of relationships."

     "Yeah," Shari said, putting her arm around Daphne's shoulder and tapping her on the head playfully.  "And you'd be one of the ones at the top of that list."

     "Aw, thanks," Daphne said.  It was apparent to Shari that she was trying to inject sarcasm into her voice, but Shari could see that she was beaming.  She knew that she was one of a small handful of people whom Daphne had ever been able to call her friend.  Likewise, for Shari, Daphne was like the little sister she never had.

     Within five minutes, the group was approaching the parking lot outside of the stadium. 

     "What the hell are we looking at?" Phoebe blurted, referencing a crane situated somewhere to the opposite side of the stadium.  Suspended from the crane, and dangling just above the middle of the stadium, was a propane tanker trailer.  It was situated lengthwise, more or less parallel to the side walls of the building, by a four-point harness. 

     "Jesus," Anthony muttered, "they meant business."

     "This is going to be like something out of an action movie," Hugo breathed, his eyes wide with awe.

     "If we can figure out how to do it, it will be," Shari said.

     They made their way toward the front entrance, where a short, rectangular section connected to the stadium itself.  The entire facade of the entrance was sealed with steel shutters.  As they looked down to the end of the lot, they saw that a tanker truck full of gasoline had been backed up to within about two feet of the building. 

     "What is it with this place and fuel tanks in weird places?" Daphne muttered.

     "They wanted to spray the place down," Hugo said.  "They needed an excelerant to make sure that when the tank blew, it would set the whole place on fire.  Look where the semi's parked--it's parked where you can get onto the roof of the place from the top of the truck."  He climbed the ladder mounted on the rear of the gas truck, pulling himself onto its roof.  "And there's a ladder on the roof of the building," he called down.  "This gas was meant to go inside the building," he said as he hopped down from the ladder to the ground.  "We need to figure out how they were going to do it."

     They approached the building, and it became clear that the shutters were badly bowed from the weight of tons upon tons of undead attempting to force their way out over the last few months.

    
The fuckers have the patience of Buddha,
Shari thought.  She watched as the undead inside pushed the steel out visibly farther.  One of the undead stuck a hand out through the space that was created.  After a moment, physics won out and amputated the hand as the metal resisted the force and closed around the limb.

     "Shit," Daphne breathed, "they just might make it out of there."

     "Not if we can help it," Anthony muttered.  "We're gonna finish what that settlement started."

     Phoebe approached a metal bench surrounded by sections of overgrown garden.

     "It would be nice to know what their plan was," she said, picking up a hunting knife, damaged and dulled, from the bench.  "Because at this point, I'd say we're pushing our luck being here."

     "Guys," Daphne called from the cab of the truck, "you might want to come look at this."

     The rest of the group made their way to Daphne, congregating on the drivers side door of the cab.  Daphne hopped out and pointed to a very large hose mounded up in the rear space behind the front seats.

     "Is that what I think it is?" Shari asked.

     "Fire hose," Hugo replied. 

     "And nozzle," Daphne added.

     Hugo peered in more closely.  "Help me get that thing out, guys."

     Anthony climbed into the back seat, scooping out armfuls of hose in heavy heaps.

     "There," he said as the end of the hose slipped out of the truck and onto the ground.  "That's all of it."

     Hugo studied the fittings on the end of the hose opposite from the nozzle.

     "There are some fittings on here," he said, picking up the end of the hose and carrying it over to the unloading valve on the side of tank.  "I don't know how to actually begin the process of unloading the fuel through the hose, but if we could figure that out, we'd be good to go."

     "I just want to make sure we're on the same page," Shari said.  "The plan is to get up onto the rim of the stadium, spray down the inside with gas, then blow up that propane tank?"

     "That seems to be the plan," Hugo said.

     "Alright," Shari said, "just making sure I understand."

     "I never thought I'd have to burn up half the town's population," Anthony said.

     "Yeah," Shari said.  "There's literally still a black cloud hanging over the town from what we did yesterday."

     "We don't technically have to do it," Phoebe mused.  "But then again, everything is set up and waiting for someone like us to come along and finish the job."

     "Speaking of which," Shari said, "I wonder what happened to whoever drove this truck out here."

     "I don't know," Hugo said, looking inside the cab, "but maybe it had something to do with the blood in here."

     "Blood?" Shari echoed.  "Where?"

     Hugo pointed.  "All over the inside of the passenger door," he said.

     "Huh," Shari said.  "No body, so...."

     "So everyone be on the lookout," Anthony concluded.

     "Is it ever okay to
not
be on the lookout anymore?" Phoebe countered.  "I can't even take a dump anymore without being plagued by the irrational fear that something's gonna come up out of the toilet bowl to bite my ass."

     Shari laughed.  "Irrational, unless we're talking about an outhouse or portable toilet or something.  Then all bets are off."

     "Strange times we live in," Phoebe lamented.  "And I never even got the chance to grow up while the world was still normal."

     "Who are you kidding?" Anthony teased.  "You were never in any danger of growing up, normal world or not."
     "Ha-ha," Phoebe said, rolling her eyes.  "I was grown-up enough to make that flamethrower, wasn't I?"

     "What about the tanker?" Daphne asked.  "You have any technical knowledge, anything to give us a clue as to how to start the unloading?"

     "Not my
forte
," Phoebe said.

     "I can have a look at it," Hugo said, "but I can't promise anything.  I don't even know whether or not we'll need to start the truck."

     "Have a look," Anthony said, "and I'll take the nozzle end up to the roof.  That's where we'll need it if the gas does start to flow."  He climbed up, hose wrapped around his forearm.  "Keep an eye on the hose," he called down to Shari, "don't let it kink up."  Shari flashed him a thumbs-up.

     Daphne and Phoebe looked around the interior of the cab, scavenging items and trying to find clues as to the operation of the tank.

     "So," Phoebe said, "how exactly did you two get lost, anyway?"

     "Lost?" Daphne repeated.  "Who said we got lost?  We got surrounded, trapped--not lost."

     "Oh," Phoebe said.  "Okay.  How'd you get trapped, then?"

     "Shit happens," Daphne mumbled.  She sounded defensive, and Shari thought that was perfectly understandable.  Phoebe tended to be confrontational.  Shari tended to the hose, helping to untangle it as Anthony climbed higher, while Daphne continued her defense.  "Keep in mind, we came from Kentucky.  That's a lot of distance to cover, so all in all, I'd say Shari and me have a pretty good track record."

     "Whatever," Phoebe said.

     Shari stood sipping coffee from her thermal cup while Hugo checked hoses and valves.  Daphne and Phoebe conversed, mostly on Phoebe's end.  Anthony crossed the roof above, returning to the truck to descend the ladder.

     "How's it going?" he asked Hugo, who shielded his eyes as he peered outside from the interior of the truck's cab.

     "Good news, I think I know how it works," Hugo replied.  "Bad news, it turns out I do need the keys to start the truck."

     Anthony rubbed his face.  "Fuck beans," he hissed in frustration.  "I guess we're done here, people."

     "Unless anyone here knows how to hotwire the truck," Hugo said, looking at Phoebe hopefully.

     Phoebe shook her head.  "Nope," she said, pointing to the shuttered entrance.  "And if we're aborting this mission, we should probably hurry up and do it.  I'm pretty sure our presence is agitating them."

     The group started the walk back to the radio building, heading east.

     "At least we can say we tried," Shari said.

     "Yeah," Hugo agreed.  "It's a shame.  They had a pretty epic plan."

     "Can't we still try to blow up the tank?" Shari asked.  "Wouldn't it be better than nothing?"

     "How do we do that?" Daphne asked.

     Shari shrugged.  "I don't know.  Shoot at it?"

     "Would that work?" Anthony wondered, his gaze doubtful.

     Phoebe shook her head.  "Most likely not, or at least not as well as you'd think.  And the gunfire has the chance of just putting a hole in the tank and leaking the propane out, instead of sparking enough to blow it up.  Then the tank and its fuel is wasted."

     "Renders the tank useless," Hugo concurred.  "If we were to try to do this, we would have to spread the gas around inside the stadium.  It's the only way it'll work."

     Anthony gazed back behind them, at the crane with its cargo dangling just above the packed stadium.  "This sucks," he said.  "I really hate to walk away from this."

     Hugo's gaze seized on something down the street, roughly 300 feet ahead of them.  He narrowed his eyes, peering more closely through his large, dark sunglasses.  His head spun around to regard the tanker truck, then back down the street.

     Daphne frowned.  "What are you looking at, Hugo?" she asked.

     "There's a body down there," Hugo said, pointing.  "His hat has the Smithgas logo on it, same as the tanker."

     "Jesus," Shari said, shielding her eyes to look where Hugo was pointing, "you can see the logo on his hat from here?"