THE SAGA OF THE DEAD SILENCER Book 1: Bleeding Kansas: A Novel Of The Zombie Apocalypse (24 page)

Marta runs over and taps him
on the forehead with her spear. His head snaps back and she thrusts the spear through the soft underside of his jaw. He falls to the street.

“Swear to God, I’ll only be a minute,” I say.

Another walker approaches. A patient in a hospital gown. He’s got the bloody VanDyke about his face and his pale mottled ass to the wind.

Marta scowls at the thing.
“Dammit, you better come back is all I can say!”

“Promise!” and I
screech off down the lane. Brandon thuds into the tailgate with the acceleration.

I see a few more hospital characters as I
ride down the block. The citizens advancing along the next block are more of a mix of random street people. The homeless veteran, his beard clotted with who knows who; one of the pale chubby women you see at the bus stop, a chunk torn from the tissue flapping about her arm.

They thicken the further down I drive.
The furious-looking woman with the wild hair, her entire front a stiff bib of dried gore turns her head my way as I pass. The young man in the baggy shorts lifts a grasping hand. The trick will be to get as close as I can to the middle of them, bring them all together. After a while I feel I have no choice but to stop. If I keep going the mob behind me will be too thick and I’ll never get back.

Of course, I could just keep on going. Fuck Marta and all those people.

I wish I had just a little more time to think about it but…no. No.

I stop the
Big Yellow Truck. I leap from the cab. The ones closest already sense me through the vibrations of the truck’s engine and are beginning to close in. I vault over the lip of the flatbed.

“Hey, man,
whutchoo doin’!” Brandon squeals.

“You brought over guests, son. It’s your responsibility to feed them.”

“What?”

As before, I pick him up by the hair and the back of his pants. A group of teenage boys who look a lot like him, maybe a little younger, are homing in on the back of the truck.
All wear fresh bibs. The eatin’s been good today.

“
Krystal’s not gonna like this!” Brandon says. “She’s not gonna like you anymore if you do this!”

That gives me the adrenali
ne spike I need to duck with my knees and clean-jerk his body over my head. The mouths of the approaching dead fall open as if they know what I’m about to do. Bending my knees again I raise and hurl Brandon at them.

They fall back a few steps
. Save for one dangling foot, though, Brandon doesn’t even touch the pavement.  His screams barely cut through the
“ooooooh!”
and
“mmmmm!”
of the mob as they take his arms, his legs, and as many clawed scoops into his ghost-white belly until the packaging breaks and they can get to the good stuff.

I
jump out of the flatbed and for a panicked second I can’t get the door open to the truck (apparently it locked after I closed it). I end up bumping a 30-something mom type in the face with the door, dropping her in time for me to climb in.

I start the engine and pull away fast,
making a wide arc right to circle around the gathering crowd.  I wish there was a sidewalk for me to drive down but the broadness of the avenue serves just as well. I cut around the edge of the mob, clustering like ants about the gobbet of living flesh dropped in their midst. The ones closest to the hydrant have already turned around to see what their fellows are making yummy noises about. Bless her heart and that ridiculous spear of hers, Marta has widened the margin enough for this to happen. The men at the hydrant are free and clear and already working the blazes in the lawns along Oak Blossom Lane.

Marta
has this look on her face when I pull up, though. “You all right?” I say.

She looks down the street at the massed dead.
“Did you really do what I think you just did?”

“Take out the son of a bitch who came here to kill us? Use him to draw off the undead killers he brought on us in the first place? Yeah, I did.”

“What are going to tell Krystal?”

“If I ever see her again—which I won’t—I’ll tell her I did her a favor.
You got a problem with that you can stay here. I’ve got one more thing to do before I go, and I doubt you’ll like that either.”

My foot is halfway off the brake when she says, “Wait!
Let me in.”

I jerk back to a halt.
She runs around the front of the truck and climbs into the cab. “All right, then,” I say. “Let’s save this little piece of paradise and we’re out of here.”

“Why?
”

“Marta,
if you want to continue riding with me you’ll shut up. Now.”

I pull into the
driveway of the house where Brandon’s crew is kept. One is laid out on the grass, dead or the next best thing. Two more sit next to him, holding their torn shirts to the wounds in their arm and chest respectively, their faces contorted in agony. The remaining three sit on the driveway, their legs out, their hands bound behind their backs. A man with a shotgun stands over them.

I stop just in front of them. “You have any plans for these?”

“What are you looking to do?” says the man with the shotgun.

“You’ve got a herd moving into the neighborhood. If we can hang them off the fire truck as bait we can lead them back out of here.”

The boys’ eyes widen. I nod towards them. “We don’t have to feed these to them outright, just tie them to the side rails—”

The man with the shotgun delivers a swift kick to the boy near
est him. “The hell with that! I’m all for shooting these white trash filth anyway!”

“We’ve got to
move fast, though.”

“You’re not feeding me to those motherfuckers!” says the boy next to the one who got kicked.

The man with the shotgun aims at his legs. “You can get in yourself or get carried in. Me, I’d just as soon shoot every last one you for what you’ve done! This way you
just
might get out of it, depending how fast Mr. Paulson drives!”

The three
young men on the driveway get to their feet. They march obediently to the tailgate. When the man is done helping them up into the truck he goes to the boys on the grass. They struggle to their feet and with much more time and effort than we can afford he too takes his place in the flatbed.

“What are
gonna do with that one?” I say, glancing over at the boy laid out on the grass.

The man gives a look to his young charges.
He steps over the grass at the boy’s feet. He drops to one knee, tucks the stock into his shoulder. He squeezes off his round. The spray at this range pulps the boy’s skull. Red, living blood pumps from his neck, pooling blackly in the dark green Kentucky bluegrass.

“Who’s next?” he says to the boys in the flatbed
as he walks back to the truck. He steps up from the tailgate. I back out down the driveway. We need to move faster. There wasn’t that much of Brandon to go around. Not for that many “guests.”

As I back out into the street
I can see the assembled mob four blocks down the lane. They’re breaking up, stumbling about. Their heads are back as if sniffing the air.

I pull up
to the hydrant and kill the engine. We should be as quiet as possible to buy ourselves maximum time but the man with the shotgun is jumping out of the flatbed and yelling at his fellows working the wrench on the hydrant. “Don’t cut that water off yet, we’re gonna need it for cleanup!”

“What the hell is going on here, Frank?”
his companion says, eyeing me and my truck.

“Mr. Grace and I are trying to save the Oak Blossom Lane Homeowners Association. Now who had the duct tape?”

“Duct tape? For what?”

“To fix our zombie problem, you idiot!”

Mr. Paulson walks up. “What’s going on?”

I get out of the truck. “
This is my idea. I figure the fire truck brought them in, it can lead ‘em back out. We tie these boys to the handrails on the back of the truck and between the noise and the promise of fresh meat they’ll follow.”

“Why can’t we just let them walk on through
to the other end like they did last night?” says a younger man by the hydrant.

Mr. Paulson
turns abruptly to him. “You do
not
want these things getting used to walking through here! And if their scat gets on the ground anywhere out here, that’s it! Dr. Hearn figured out that’s how they mark their territory! You’ll never get rid of the smell—and you’ll never get rid of
them!
”

Mr. Paulson turns to the men at the hydrant. “Get those boys taped up to
the back of the fire truck! We gotta go.”

Frank already has two
duct-taped to a rail, including the injured boy. It’s slow going because there’s only one roll of tape to go around.

Mr. Paulson looks down the street to our approaching guests. A few loud grunts and moans can be
heard as they catch traces of our scent. “Now what I’d like to know is how we’ve going to get this truck through the thick part of that mob. This isn’t an all-terrain vehicle; we can’t afford to ruin the tires and undercarriage on a bunch of rotten flesh and bone.”

“How far can these men pull this fire hose? How far does the spray go?”

Mr. Paulson’s face lights up. “Mr. Grace, I must say I have underestimated you. You are indeed Evans’ superior. I will be sorry to see you go.” He turns to the men at the hydrant and shouts orders. He indicates Frank with a nod of his head as he binds the last teenage vandal to the fire truck.

The men get to work pulling the hose while Frank stands by on pressure. “How’d you know I was going?” I ask as Mr. Paulson turns back to me.

“We all know your story, Mr. Grace. We’d all do the same thing.”

“Thanks for understanding.”

“Let’s get you on your way,” he says, and turns to go to the fire truck.

“Uh, wait!” I say. Mr. Paulson stops. I can tell by the look on his face he’d really rather I was on my way.

“You don’t have to actually feed those boys to the walkers,” I say. “It’s best you use them to draw them along as far as you can until you circle back.”

Mr. Paul
son’s eyes narrow. I shrug. “After all, they did bring the fire truck.”

“Which we may yet need
,” Paulson says, nodding slowly. “If Brick did his job Kerch is out of the picture. With him gone I wouldn’t be surprised if all the other crews weren’t getting a little overly jubilant.”

I
hardly know what to say in the face of this confession. Fortunately the roar of water rushing from the hose changes the subject. A loud
hrrrrrrrn!
erupts from the herd as the force of the water clears a path down the middle of the lane. Any deader who doesn’t get out of the way is pushed bodily across the pavement, the smear of his road rash washing up behind him.

“Let’s go!”

Mr. Paulson turns away to climb into the fire truck. I spare a glance for the boys trussed to its rear before I get into the Big Yellow Truck. Only one meets my eyes, and with blazing hatred and defiance. The rest lean against the tall chrome rails, looking at nothing in particular, their faces empty and waiting. I try and remind myself of the ugly smirks and laughter from those same faces as they sought to turn Natalia’s sole shady oasis into an inferno. Besides, Paulson doesn’t have to kill them. Just ride them through the mob and put the fear of righteous upper-middle-class retribution into them.

I settle in and turn the key.
The fire truck’s big diesel matches the roaring water decibel for decibel and I have to look at my gauges and test the pedal to make sure the engine in the Big Yellow Truck turned over. I put the truck in gear and drive towards the cleared area, a wall of wet, angry dead on either side.

The hose is directed
to my left, pushing back the dead on that side. I power down the window and hang my panga out to take swings at random citizens who somehow miss the wrath of the Oak Blossom Lane Volunteer Fire Department. The hose lifts over us and the water rains down on us in fat, splatting drops before being directed into the flailing, furious dead on our right.

“A shotgun like that Frank guy had
would be really nice right now,” says Marta.

“Yeah, it would. Where do you want me to drop you off?”

“I got a shotgun at my place.”

“So that’s where I’ll drop you off.”

“No! I want to—I want to get out of town. Like you. Drop me off next town over. In Salina.”

“
Sure, no problem. If we ever get out of here!”

I see shreds of Brandon’s clothes
cupping eddying pools of water in the street. A leg bone rolls and bounces along the weakening flow, the flesh red and furry on the knobs.  Mr. Paulson sounds the air horn and run the sirens. Marta and I both jump when we hear the horn. It’s more than enough to wake the dead. Based on what I’m seeing in the mirror former citizens pushed over by the hose are getting up to stagger after the big knocking diesel, the skull-rattling honks of the air horn.