The King of Clayfield - 01 (20 page)

The doors were unlocked, and we went inside. There was a round desk
 
in the middle of the room that acted as an information center. There were some potted plants here and there
 
and big, poster-sized photographs of how Clayfield looked in the 1890s, 1920s, and 1950s. I had similar, smaller prints at the museum.
 
The police station section of the building was to the left, and the city offices were to the right. I saw a closed door with a placard that said OFFICE OF THE MAYOR.

The office
 
was in the front of the building, with a view of the court square. There was a window that
 
looked
 
into the interior of the building, too, but the blinds were closed.

"First, let’s go in here so we can look out the window and
 
see
 
how big the crowd is
 
over there," I said.

I tried to open the door but it was locked. I was about to forget it and go to the police station when I heard movement in the office.

"Someone is in there," I said.

I knocked. The blinds moved.

"Are you okay in there?" I said.

"The mayor is probably infected," Jen said. "Let's just go. It'll never figure out how to unlock it."

Then I heard the lock clicking. The door stayed shut. I looked at Jen. She shrugged and held up the rifle.
 
I tried the knob again, and the door swung open. I stepped inside, and the last thing I saw was a black blur coming at my face.

The next thing I saw is Jen looking down at me. I had a horrible pain across my right eyebrow.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"What happened?"

"This
 
jerk hit you in the head with the butt of his shotgun."

Another face came into view. The man had a white and gray beard, neatly trimmed. He grinned down at me.

"Mr. Somerville?"
 
I said.

"You know him?" Jen said.

He held out his hand to her.

"Hi, I'm Nicholas Somerville."

She just stared at him.

"He's on the city council," I said, sitting up.

There was a dawning on her face.

"Oh yeah," she said.
 
"Saint Nick. You dressed up like
 
Santa for that thing."

"Every year for ten years," he said.

Somerville wasn't dressed like Santa this time.
 
He was
 
in full camouflage. He had a rifle with a scope slung over his right
 
shoulder and a shotgun in his
 
left hand. There were binoculars hanging around his neck.

"How's the noggin?"
 
Somerville said.

"It hurts," I said. "You could have
 
said something before you clubbed me."

"You're lucky I didn't shoot you," he said. "What are you two doing in here?"
 

"Looking for guns," Jen said bluntly.

"Won't get any here," he said. "They're still locked up. I tried getting to them myself."

"What are
you
doing here?" I said, rubbing my head.

"Well, right now, I'm the acting mayor," he said.

"Says who?"
 

"Says me," he laughed,
 
"but I'm not sure having a mayor matters anymore."

He
 
turned toward the window and put the binoculars to his eyes.

"There's someone in that building over there," he said. "They're on the second floor. I just get glimpses of them every now and then.
 
I don't know what they're up to in there, but they sure do have a fan club."

"We were coming to get guns to help them," I said.

"I've been thinking about helping them, too," he said, "but I couldn't do it by myself. You know, if we get enough of us together, we might have a chance of putting Clayfield back together again. The three of us could start up city government and get things organized."

"The hell we could," Jen said. "I was just starting to
 
get comfortable
 
with anarchy."

CHAPTER 20

Somerville noticed the pistol in my waistband.

"How many rounds do you have for that?"

"None," I said. "I found it in the parking lot."

"All we have is a twenty-two," Jen said, "with a little over fifty bullets."

"Oh," Somerville said, frowning.

"It's not like we're going in there shooting everybody," I said. "We just need to lure them away like you did with the car alarm."

"Did that work?" Somerville asked.

"Oh yeah," Jen said, "but it also attracted a bunch more."

He put his binoculars to his eyes again, and looked out.

"There are probably three or four hundred of them over there."

Jen was looking around the office.

"Have you been in here all this time?" she asked.

"No," he said, sounding distracted. "I got here
 
early this
 
morning. I shot one of them in the street in front of my house the night before last. I noticed it was gone yesterday afternoon, so I thought the mayor had a crew working. I thought I'd come up here and help out any way I could."

"No cleanup crews," Jen said. "They're just walking away."

Somerville laughed. "Not this one. I shot him with my thirty-aught-six. He was stone cold dead."

"I'm telling you, he walked away."

“She's right," I said. "Either they're not dying, or they're coming back to life."

"Nah," he chuckled. "There's a cleanup crew. They're probably just operating from another location. I'm thinking the fairgrounds or one of the high schools."

"Whatever," Jen said. "If we're going to help the people over there, then let's do it. There's a house out on Bragusberg Road that has someone in it, too."

"There are two police cars outside," I said. "Why don't we just turn on a siren?”

"Or better yet," Somerville said, "let's turn on the emergency siren--the one the city uses to warn people about tornados.”

"That one is really loud, though," I said. "I've been out at Blaine's house and heard it way out there."

"Who's Blaine?" Somerville asked.

"That'll be too loud," Jen said. "We don't
 
want to draw
 
them in from everywhere do we? Besides, wouldn't it run on electricity?"

"I don't know," Somerville said, "but I've always wanted to be the one to turn it on."

"Feel free," Jen said. "Just wait until we are out of town, okay? Right now, I think the siren on the police car will do."

"Okay,"
 
Somerville said, turning toward a map of the city which was hanging on the wall in the office. "Where do we want to sound the alarm? Which way do we want them to go?"

"There are three groups that we know about," I said.
 
"The best thing would be to put the siren where they would all come together without coming into contact with us."

I marked the house on Bragusberg,
 
the building behind the courthouse, and
 
the First Christian Church.

"It looks like Walnut Street might be a good spot," Somerville said. "It's a couple of blocks
 
from all three groups, and away from each other.
 
Too bad we couldn't contain them there."

"They should stay for a while," Jen said. "We'll have plenty of time to get into the buildings and get out."

Somerville retrieved the keys for the police cars from the other side of the building. Then he
 
put his
 
.30-06 into the cab of
 
a black
 
pickup in the parking lot.

"I'll drive one of the cruisers," he said, still holding his shotgun. "One of you follows me in the other one.
 
One of you
 
stays here with
 
my truck. We'll set a siren off at the corner of Walnut and 9th, and then we'll pull down the block and see if it works--"

"It'll work," Jen said.

"If it doesn't, we'll have a second cruiser as a
 
backup. If we need
 
the
 
truck
 
to come pick us up, we'll honk our horn three times."
 

"Then what?" Jen said. "If it doesn't work, what good will a second cruiser do? And how is honking three times going to let anyone but the monsters know where you are?"

"We'll stay on Walnut. How about that? If you hear honking, drive
 
down Walnut Street until you find us."

"Fine by me," I said. "Give me the keys."

"To the truck," Jen said. "I want to drive one of those
 
cop cars."

"No," I said. "You're not
 
going out there. It's too--"

"Don't you dare say it's too dangerous," she said.
 
"I'm going."

Somerville
 
tossed each of us a set of keys. I got the truck.

"I'll leave you the binoculars," he said, "so you can watch them and see when they've all gone. If you can get in there and get them out, then do. That rifle is loaded. It's bolt action."

I watched them pull away. They went back the way we'd come in. When they turned left onto North Street, I took the opportunity to run over to my wrecked car. I thought I might be able to drive it out of there, but I'd left it on and not only was it out of gas, but the battery was dead. I grabbed the bag of supplies I'd packed a few days before and ran back over to Somerville's truck.

I could not
 
see the building from where he was parked, so I had to start the truck and pull it around to 6th Street. When I got to the intersection with Broadway, I killed the engine and waited with the window down. A
 
few of them noticed
 
me and started toward me, but halfway there, they seemed to lose their way and eventually returned to the mob.

I was intrigued by what could be in that building that had them so interested. The movement in the window was rare and brief. I couldn't hear any loud noises coming from it, but I was a block away, and there might have been sounds I couldn't hear at this range.

It might have been a situation where a few of the infected stopped there because of the movement in the window,
 
then others stopped because of them, then others
 
until they reached a sort of critical mass where they were there because of each other more than anything else.

I opened up my salami sandwich--my lunch from Thursday. It was a little stale, but good.

Then I heard the siren.

The crowd began to move toward 7th Street. First it was just the ones on the western side.
 
Some of them seemed torn between staying and going. I looked through the binoculars.

There were a few that were jogging away toward the siren, but others were only shuffling along. I hadn't
 
given it much thought, but I'd been avoiding paying attention to their faces as much as possible.
 
Like Jen, I was trying not to think of them as people anymore, and
 
looking at their faces didn't help with that. Also, on some level, I was afraid of seeing people I knew. I wondered how it would affect me when I had to point a gun at one of them.

There was a difference between the slow ones and the ones that were moving faster. Something in the eyes was different. I noticed they could
 
all move
 
fairly quickly when they wanted to, but for some, it
 
took a little more encouragement.

There was a couple having sex in the street near the corner of the county jail. It
 
didn't look
 
consensual.
 
Is it ever consensual with animals?
 
It was probably best that Jen wasn't there
 
so she wouldn't feel the need to do something about it and screw up our plans.
 
The man, naked from the waist down,
 
stood up and walked over to the others. The woman lay there for a
 
few seconds
 
then followed.