The Living Dead Series (Book 3): Dead Coast (16 page)

Virginia matched her pace to Mei’s. “Why are you going out on this, Mei-Mei? We need you back in the infirmary.”

Mei shrugged. “Connie was supposed to go but she was killed last night. No one is willing to leave their children anymore; not after what almost happened to the little girl. Then that attack last night. I can’t say I blame them. If I had children I would feel the same.”

Virginia reflected a moment. “I can’t blame them either. If Ian weren’t back there with them, I would never have come.”

At first, progress was slow. The adults consciously flanked Brian and Moshe, keeping them protected against surprise encounters. All of them spoke as little as possible and when they had to, they whispered. The area here contained several luxury apartment complexes and the dead residents were numerous and mobile. Nail boutiques mixed with sushi restaurants dotted the lower floors street side. They encountered ambling corpses every block or so and Cam took them down with the heavy-duty meat cleaver. Every time he smashed it in a decaying skull the dead slumped to the ground like sacks of rotting meat.  Wrecked cars littered the pavement, doors left open when they were abandoned, seats drenched in pools of now-dry blood. They passed by several gated communities with dead pressed against the elaborate, scrollwork gates, reaching out yearningly for fresh meat. They moaned and chittered as the team walked by.

Appalled by the sheer numbers of the dead, Virginia said quietly, “I hope those gates hold.”

“They will. If not, we’ll find another way back. This should be a short mission,” David said.

“They all should be but sometimes things don’t go as expected. I’ve been on some really long short missions.” Cam tucked his cleaver in his belt loop and strode on.

Brian peppered David with questions about their escape from the city. He was especially interested in the flooded Mississippi.

“Were you in Memphis? Did you see that glass pyramid?”

“No. We made it to a little town above Memphis.”

“Bea didn’t drive, did she?”

David gave him a quick, amused glance. “Part of the way.”

“You’re lucky you’re alive. She’s a terrible driver.”

David didn’t comment.

Office buildings now predominated and soon these thinned out and became warehouses surrounded by razor-wire. They glimpsed a few dead in the distance, some still stumbling along, others lying heaped and rotting on the pavement. A strong wind swirled litter and plastic bags around and blew sand and grit into their eyes.

A building, single-storied and flying a large American flag, stood just beyond a block of self-storage units at the end of a dead-end lane. It backed up to a low, rocky series of hills. Though it was surrounded by razor-wire topped security fences, the gate stood open and two corpses, dressed in military fatigues, staggered about, performing a ghoulish sentry-duty even after death. They attacked immediately, careening toward them, blackened mouths dropping gobbets of flesh as they gnashed their teeth. After Cam took them down, David searched their pockets while Virginia and Mei slid the gate closed.

Two Humvees flanked the entrance and a tank rested halfway between the gate and building. The front entrance glass doors led to a lobby that ended in reinforced metal panels that looked capable of withstanding a bomb blast.

“There’s no point in breaking through here. The noise would just draw more corpses and we still wouldn’t get where we need to go,” David said. “Let’s look around.”

A concrete walkway wound around the side of the building to a patio with a picnic table outside a narrow, side-entry door. Though they tried, none of them could do anything with the biometric reader which looked still functional, a soft, red light still glowing on the side.

“All these locks have their own battery back-up so I’m not surprised it’s still functioning,” David said.

“What about trying to get in through the roof? There are two AC units up there.” Cam backed away from the building, trying to see more.

David replied, “I don’t think we’ll find a way in there. I’m sure it’s hardened.”

“I’ll try to scout it if you like. Boost me up there.” Virginia adjusted the .38 in her belt. Cam cupped his hands and practically tossed her up onto the flat roof.

“Sorry, love! You don’t weigh enough,” he called in a stage whisper. Virginia stood and dusted herself off before giving him a thumbs up and heading for the nearest roof vent. They heard her kicking then the clang of metal. Footsteps came back to the edge.

“I can’t get in through the vent; it’s too narrow. Did anyone bring tools?  I might be able to remove a piece of the air unit and see how big that opening is,” Virginia whispered, leaning down over the edge.

Moshe had a pocket Leathermen tool and Cam lifted him up, sending him sprawling on the asphalt roof surface. They managed to unscrew a large piece of sheet metal, peeling it away only to find a metal box unit recessed and screwed between rafters. Underneath that they found more riveted metal and a small electrical conduit. This was proving to be impossible.

“What we really need is some of the good stuff they have inside to blow this door to hell, yeah? But we don’t so what shall we do?” Cam queried.

David replied, “We dig. The back of the building continues right into that hillside. They did it that way just in case of some sort of malfunction, the land itself will absorb and damper the force of any accidental explosions. Once we dig through we might be able to break through the wall.”

Virginia and Moshe climbed back down.  They all walked to the back of the building and surveyed the scrubby hillside. The rocky, clay soil was unyielding and painful to dig through. They made a search for any sort of landscaping tools but found nothing. David tried dislodging one of the bigger rocks stuck in the dirt, hoping to start a small avalanche that might reveal a wall.

Meanwhile, a growing horde of corpses gathered outside the fence. Searching hands and arms reached yearningly through the chain link. Even though they had been as quiet as possible, the dead, surrounded by buzzing, black clouds of flies, found them. To Virginia the moaning sounded as if they were in terrible pain, constant and driving.

She realized with a jolt that Brian was gone. Hurrying back around the building she saw him in the front parking area, crouched beside the soldiers’ corpses. He had Cam’s cleaver and was using it to hack at the bodies. He stood and walked back to her, holding something in the palm of his hand.

“Hey! I got something we can try. I got their index fingers. Let’s go tell David and give it a shot.”

Virginia nodded but headed back toward the Humvees. “You go ahead. I want to look for something.”

Brian found David still digging in the back and showed him the fingers but David shook his head.

“Even if they haven’t decayed too much for the reader to recognize, they’ll still be too cold to work. It reads temperature as well as fingerprints.”

“But can’t we at least try?” Brian pleaded.

David shrugged and led the way back to the patio.

“Let me have them.” Cam took the fingers and held them in his massive hands for a few minutes. “I have the warmest hands in Londonderry. Now give it a go.” He handed them back then wiped his hands on his pants disgustedly.

The reader clicked and the light flickered to green briefly before changing back to red. Moshe whooped
sotto voice
and hit Brian on the shoulder.

“I told you it wouldn’t work.”

“Shut up. At least I tried,” Brian countered.

Virginia walked around the corner, carrying a car jack. “Can we jack the door frame?”

Eventually they separated the frame enough that the door could be pushed aside. Stepping inside, they found the building only dimly lit by the small amount of light the narrow windows admitted. The power was out and whatever back-up lighting they might have had in the early days of the outbreak was long gone. David fished through several desks before finding a mini-mag flashlight. He flipped it on and the beam shone brightly. There were signs of a struggle. Overturned computers and smashed chairs lay scattered about the room. Beyond the office space/entrance area, dark shapes loomed in a room of indeterminate size.

“The ammo won’t be stored with the weapons. Plastique will be in a section off by itself. Everybody keep an eye out. Although if any of
them
are in here, we’ll probably smell them before we see them,” David whispered.

Mei split off to the left with Cam, David stepped away on his own and Virginia kept the two boys with her. They moved deeper into the shadows of the room beyond. A few cubicles divided up the area at the front. A drinking fountain hugged the wall near the restrooms and before Virginia could stop him, Moshe darted over, pressed the handle and leaned down expectantly. The air-filled pipes in the walls banged in response.

“If they didn’t know before, whoever is in here knows we’re here now,” said Brian.

Moshe returned sheepishly and they continued on, stepping around cables and other items that lay tangled on the floor, stopping every few moments to listen. This area felt colder and despite that- Virginia sniffed- something back here was rotting.

The boys pulled their shirts up over their noses and mouths and got a good grip on their rifles. This is what they had trained for. They kept a tight formation, the three of them carefully assessing the area front and back.

The thing came at them from behind a desk. Dragging itself forward along the floor with dead arms, it chomped down first on Virginia’s boot then pulled her to the ground, knocking the breath out of her.

Gasping and fighting to inhale she kicked, snapping the corpse’s head back and knocking several teeth to the floor. The woman wore a dark-stained white blouse with some sort of insignia on the sleeves, a skirt and low heels. Whitened eyes shone blindly in the rotting face and the cold, freakishly strong hands never let go of her leg, drawing her nearer to the insatiable, rancid mouth. She clung to a desk leg and kicked again but hit nothing. The knife in her boot slid out and clattered to the floor and she felt for it, barely drawing back in time to avoid a bite.  She kicked again with no result.

“Be still! I’ve got it,” Moshe spoke near her ear.

She froze in terror, sure she was going to lose a leg or worse. Just as she opened her mouth to tell him to stop, he fired.

Cold stinking chunks of flesh splashed on her as she closed her eyes and mouth tightly. She pulled her legs up to her chest, holding her knees and touching her shins. Still there.

Cam waded across the strewn floor and stood looking down at her. “What the bloody hell is this?”

She got off the floor and sat down on top of the desk. Drawing deep breaths, she kept her head down then pushed away and picked up her knife.

“We’re fine. Moshe just saved my life. Let’s go.”

Everyone closed ranks again as they approached the very back of the building. So far they found nothing useful and they feared going home empty-handed when they came upon the entrance to a small room off to the right. A heavy, steel door stood ajar. The massive hinges moved easily and silently and they swung the door wide and stepped inside.

E
mpty shelves lined the walls. Spilled shells from open boxes were all over the floor and they took care not to step on them and slip. Clearly someone had taken everything they could before leaving in a hurry and not bothering to lock up.

David turned on the flashlight and moved amongst the mess, peering intently at the few labeled boxes on the floor. Mei exclaimed and picked up a pair of night vision goggles, wiping them off and stowing them in her pack. The rest of them filled their pockets with shells from the floor.

Virginia gathered what she could then went back to the door, watching and listening. Was that something moving over by one of the window slits? She kept watching but didn’t see any more movement. She wanted to get out of here and was concerned about the dead clustering around the armory fence. Again, she was amazed at how the dead always found them and dismayed that there were still so many of them able to move around. They should have decomposed faster in the heat here.

Worry about the children consumed her. The incident with the child molester kept her awake for two nights, checking on the children to be sure they were still safe in the tent with her. But a tent was little real protection against a determined abductor with a gun, not to mention hundreds of thousands of ravenous dead. She and Ian desperately wanted to get back to their little mountain-top town but she wondered if they ever would.

She knew what was approaching from the east. The radiated dead were exactly what everyone who fought against Operation Clean-Up had feared. They were faster and better coordinated than any infected seen before. The few survivors who escaped them said their attacks appeared almost planned. One man, who later died of his injuries, said they were hunting in packs. And helicopter pilots confirmed that vast herds of them were headed west.

David growled, startling her. “There’s nothing here. If we don’t find a way to make those bastards stop shelling us, we’ll never get the wall built. Without some sort of barrier in place those irradiated corpses will-”

He stopped talking and turned to go. If they didn’t leave now they would be trapped here overnight. It was too dangerous to travel, especially on foot, in the dark.

“Let’s go back and take a slightly different route, shall we? You never know, we might find a construction site with some interesting explosives. One always seems to find blokes working on the roads here,” Cam said.

“Good idea. Let’s go.” David led the way and they all followed, jingling a little as they walked.

The day had warmed considerably while they were inside and the sun was high in the sky. Which made the crowd surrounding the compound easy to see and -she gagged- smell.

Dead in every imaginable state of decomposition waited for them outside the fence, moaning and shuffling, clawing at the chain-link. The metal groaned under the strain and bulges appeared at the weakest spots. Virginia stopped counting at seventy. More and more filed into the little street, no doubt attracted by the noise the rest were making.

There was no way they could get past a crowd that size. None of the team knew how to operate a tank and the batteries in both Humvees were dead. The only way out they could see was to climb the fence on the roof and try the area beyond the armory. Virginia went up first to take a look. The fence here too was topped with razor-wire and she climbed as high as she could without getting tangled in it. It looked like the hill ended in a block retaining-wall, also topped with razor-wire, a double barrier back here. The only thing visible past that was the top of a street sign that said
Cedar SW
and a dead traffic-light swaying in the breeze. She climbed down.

“We need a way to get over the razor-wire, pieces of carpet, heavy-duty floor mats, something like that. Once we’re over we should be on southwest Cedar if that means anything to anyone,” she called down.

The boys pulled the large floor-mats from the two Humvees and threw them across the razor-wire before climbing up and over. Soon they all stood surveying the street below the block wall. A commercial area, store-front windows smashed and doors open, lay below. A corner gas-station was a burned out shell and the fire had spread, engulfing one corner of an electronics store before it burned out. Purloined big-screen televisions lay abandoned as people perhaps realized they weren’t going to be watching a whole lot of television in the near future. Scattered cars, abandoned as well, blocked the street, but they didn’t see any infected.

Sliding down the slope to the street, they headed south. The sun was now well past the meridian and the shadows grew longer.

Mei said, “This will take us west until we turn left on Verity then we need to turn right on Sausalito to go back to the compound.”

“How much farther do you think?” David asked, casting a worried glance at the sun.

“I’m terrible with guessing distances and I was always in a car before. Two, maybe three miles?”

They trudged on and took the left onto Verity. The buildings became less commercial and thinned out a little but they didn’t see a sign for Sausalito. Once they encountered a snarling dog, legs splayed and shoulders hunched below its raised hackles. Mei thought it might be rabid but it didn’t attack, just continued to growl until they edged their way past it. The sun began to dip in the western sky.

Distant
booms
sounded somewhere to the south. They stopped briefly and examined the horizon. Brian thought he saw smoke blowing out in the direction of the beach. They all shuddered at the thought of another artillery assault on the camp, but Virginia looked stricken and her shoulders slumped visibly.

They walked faster but the road was not taking them where they thought it would. The sun’s rays were now slanted, creating deep shadows in alleyways which they avoided, never taking their eyes off them until they were several yards away. A dead dog, stiff-legged and belly bloated in decomposition, lay against the curb.

The road led them around the 700 block of Verity then ended abruptly. Orange barrels and caution tape marked the beginning of a road project that would never be completed. They stopped and contemplated the scene.

Mei spoke, “Sorry, everyone. I was wrong about where this would take us.”

“Don’t worry about it. The street sign for Sausalito could be down for all we know. We need to start scouting a place to spend the night. It’ll be dark soon and though it doesn’t bother the corpses much,
we
are definitely at a disadvantage,” David said.

Virginia still had a haunted look in her eyes. “I’d like to go back tonight if we could.”

Cam said gently, “I would like to go back tonight, too, but we are out of time. Your babies are safe with their dad. Don’t worry, little mum.”

Virginia nodded but she lowered her eyes as they turned to retrace their steps. Cam had noticed a bank a short distance back that looked secure if they could just break in somehow.

“A bank though, Cam. They’re going to have that pretty locked-up. I don’t like our chances of getting in,” David said.

“Yes, but if we do we’re safe for a bit. There are other shops in the building. Maybe those entrances won’t be quite so difficult.”

“Okay, I’ve got nothing better,” David conceded. He looked tired and the dark circles beneath his eyes were more pronounced than before.

The Third National Bank and Trust building stood just across the four-lane. A few of the dead from the armory followed them and were less than fifty yards away. Experience told them that where a few corpses gathered, many more would soon follow. They had to get inside somewhere before nightfall.

The bank’s main entrance at ground level had thick, plate-glass revolving doors. Breaking through that would be noisy and they wouldn’t have a way to secure the building afterwards. The bank’s parking garage next door should have less conspicuous entrance doors off of the various levels leading to the other businesses the building housed.

They entered the garage with weapons drawn. Several cars remained parked, encrusted with dust and sand that must have blown in from the shore, almost a mile away. Menacing shadows lay between the cars and they hugged the walls until they found the parking garage stairs. The wind increased in the partially open stairwell and bills in twenty, fifty, and one-hundred dollar denominations blew around, trapped in the air currents. Delighted, both boys grabbed and stuffed them into their pockets until Cam caught their eyes and frowned.

The first door they reached had bullet damage but was still closed tightly and wouldn’t open. One more level up, they found a strongly secured, metal door standing partially ajar.

Cam put a finger to his lips and eased the door open revealing nothing but an inky blackness. Nodding to David he moved aside and David went in front, holding the mag-lite high. Virginia tried to pull the door closed once they were all inside but a protruding deadbolt wouldn’t allow it. Cam tried but the bolt wouldn’t budge. Giving up, they left it and moved on.

They were in a tiled hallway with a multitude of doors on either side. The area smelled clean with no tell-tale odor of decay. Passing by an open office door they caught the ghost of a whiff of coffee. Virginia inhaled deeply. She hadn’t realized until now just how much she missed coffee.

The rooms down here were devoted to storing office and cleaning supplies. There was also what appeared to have been a company daycare. Construction paper, crayons and markers were scattered on the miniature tables. Toys were neatly stored in labeled bins. The whole floor seemed untouched by the disaster that had overtaken the city.

At the end of the hallway, they found the stairs next to the elevators. David stopped. “We can hole-up here if we want and keep a watch on that door. I’d prefer to look a little more; it’s always a good idea to have another way out if needed. What do you think?”

Everyone agreed to push on. The stairwell was pitch-black and their footsteps echoed alarmingly. Virginia took the rear and held tightly onto the rail, behind Brian and Moshe. At each landing they stopped and listened before trying the door. The first one was firmly locked but on the second landing they found another open door. Someone had wedged it with a rubber door stop. They stepped inside.

The hair on Virginia’s neck prickled. The smell was faint but something or someone had died in here. David’s mag-lite illuminated a lobby area with dead, wilted plants, a row of chairs, and two candy machines. They were looted but candy still lay on the floor. They sorted through and found a few intact goodies. The mag-lite went out and they all froze in place. David shook it and the light flickered back on.

Underneath a desk Moshe found a shopping bag from The Archery Outpost containing a bow and several arrows, still in their plastic packaging. He exclaimed and tore into the package, shrugging the bow onto his shoulder and securing the arrows in the snap-on quiver. Whoever was the intended recipient was probably not counting on getting it anymore.

Two training rooms led off the lobby. In one they found the decomposing body of a woman, propped against a wall. Her wrists were slashed and her blood had pooled and dried on the tiled floor. Her skirt must have hiked up in her death throes and Virginia pulled it back down, re-arranging it more modestly, trying to give her dead body a semblance of dignity.

Suddenly the woman’s eyes opened, milky-white and blind. She hissed and jerked forward, teeth clicking together as she just missed tearing into Virginia’s arm.

Startled, Virginia jumped back and Cam split the woman’s head with his cleaver. She slumped to the floor, this time really dead. Black gobbets of brain matter fell with to the floor with a wet
splat
.

“What’s the first rule of Zombie Fight Club, sweetheart?” Cam asked, wiping his cleaver on the woman’s skirt.

“I know. It’s just that I know she wouldn’t have wanted anyone to see her like- never mind.”

Another staircase took them down a level to a hallway that led to the bank lobby. The area was vast with teller windows, a fountain which now contained only green scum, and deeply-tufted, leather sofas.

It was brighter in here with the last of the daylight. The entire front was of glass with glass revolving doors facing west. Several dead roamed outside.

“I say we stay here but near the back. I don’t want those things to hear us and begin to congregate. We can leave tomorrow the same way we came in or, if we have to, we can shoot out the glass here and run for it. There will be a fire door leading back to the garage stair, too,” said David.

They sat, eating the candy and watching the fading light. The sunset was incredibly vivid. Brian said it was so colorful because of all the smoke in the air.

“Never thought about pollution being pretty before. There’ve been so many fires I wonder if they’ll have an effect on the weather. If it’s smoky or cloudy enough it could block the sun and cool the entire planet down. It happens sometimes after a really big volcano eruption.”

“Mount Tambora did that. After that one blew up, it snowed in July. There were massive crop failures, too,” added Moshe.

“Mates, let’s take it one step at a time. It’s all I can do to handle surviving the living dead; don’t throw climate disaster at me as well. I came to America for the sunshine. Don’t take it away,” Cam pleaded.