ZWD: King of an Empty City (19 page)

             
The alarm in the house finally stopped and a moment later Ashley and the third kid came out of the front door. The kid had an axe in hand and he rushed into the yard with the axe held high. I had to roll on top of one of the zombies to see what happened next. He planted the axe into the last zombie’s collarbone. If he’d been a man instead of a boy, that arm would have come off. Instead the zombie grimaced and looked confused, like he didn’t know whether to go for the kid as his next meal or deal with the axe that was sticking out of his shoulder. He tried to pull the axe out with his good arm and the kid darted around him, trying to find an open spot to shoot his potato pistol. With a quiet
foosch
the dart sailed into the zombie’s chest and disappeared. With the axe still lodged in him, the zombie gave all his attention to the kid. Donny jumped up from his zombie and looked around, taking in the situation. “Behind you,” I pointed, and the movement sent pain all through my side. I just fell over next to my dead buddy there on the ground.

             
Donny, pipe in hand, spun around on his heels and gave a roundhouse kick into the kidneys of the zombie who staggered forward. Had he been alive, I think the kick would have brought him to his knees. Instead he staggered straight into the kid who was trying to re-pump air into the chamber of his potato pistol.

The zombie had grabbed the kid and was doing everything he could to take a bite out of him. The kid, for his part, was fighting back with everything he had and not making a sound aside from a few grunts and groans at the strain of pushing away. My girl grabbed the axe handle and pulled it till the zombie was facing her. There was a look of surprise on the thing’s face as his dead eyes settled on her. I don’t know if it was surprise that another larger morsel of food had just presented itself to him, or what, but he loosened his grip on the kid, who scrambled away. With his eyebrows still up and jaw dropped, she punched him in the nose. I suppose it was just a remembered reaction, but he threw his hands up over his face, covering the bloody nose. She gave him a quick kick to the gut that doubled him over, and then with a roundhouse swing she brought the blunt end of the axe down on his head, cracking it open like a watermelon on concrete. It was beautiful.

             
The three boys, who were watching, were amazed at her. Donny, who was bending over resting his hands on his knees and breathing hard, stood up and clapped. Ashley came down from the porch gushing with excitement. She ran over and hugged her. I could tell my girl was just a little annoyed at the show of affection, but when one of the kids—the one this zombie had gotten hold of—rushed over and threw his arms around her as well. You could see her melt a little with her stiffness. “A little help here,” I said through clenched teeth, my face in the mud and snow and with pain shooting through my hip.

             
After they looked me over, they discovered it was my screwdriver. The one I used to manipulate the mechanisms of locks after I knocked off the doorknobs had twisted on my belt in the fight and when I did my drop kick I managed to stab myself with the damned thing. It didn’t appear to have gone through any major organs, but it was sticking in my hip, threaded through a group of muscles like a needle, and the tip was sticking out the other side like some big tribal piercing. It turned out Ashley was a nurse here in town, and she said I’d be fine, sore but fine. They helped me to my feet, leaving the screwdriver in, and we all limped and shuffled back to Ashley’s house. The thunder had picked up and before we made it to her house we were walking in the rain, again. My girl and Donny supported me as I grimaced at every step. We had to stop a few times to let me rest and at each stop one of the kids would ask her some question about how she did some move and if she could teach them those cool moves. Even Donny, whom she chastised for kicking the zombie into the kid, seemed eager to learn from her.

Back at Ashley’s house, I was given a cocktail of pink and green capsules to help me sleep, two white pills to stop inflammation, and a big yellowish pill she claimed was an antibiotic. I washed it all down with a shot of Grey Goose mixed with water and two cubes of ice, the Russian way to drink vodka. They pulled the screwdriver out and put a few stitches in me with needle and thread, then the cocktail kicked in and for the rest of the evening and most of the night I catnapped on a daybed in the living room, where I was surrounded by a bunch of pillows and various stuffed animals.

             
Every now and then I’d wake up and see or hear bits of conversation. They played Candyland for most of the night, it seemed. The two girls sitting on the couch, the kids on the floor surrounding the coffee table. Donny was sitting in a chair he’d pulled up to play.

             
The conversations went from the kids trying to impress the two women with stories of their fighting skills and the zombies they’d killed to Donny sharing all he knew about the people in the neighborhood. At some point, I woke up with one of the kids curled up in the bed next to me. I smiled groggily at my girl as the smell of coffee lulled me back to sleep.

The last time I woke up, I had to untangle myself from two boys and stagger to the bathroom. I’d planned on joining in the conversation but after staggering back I realized it was a bad idea to try to stay awake. I fought sleep as long as I could and just listened to the two girls talking while everyone else slept. I crawled in behind the two boys on the daybed. My girl came over and kissed me, then tucked a light blanket around my shoulders. The last thing I heard was her saying, “Ever since the first fight at the base house it’s been a struggle for him, but he’s making progress. I just wish he. . .” and I drifted off to sleep fighting as hard as I could to hear those next words, but it was no use. I was out.
 

ZWD: King of an Empty City Chapter 22

ZWD: Dec. 18.

Hot-wiring cars, the Izard Street Baptist Church burns, and zombies are stuck in the sewer.

I woke up with Donny slapping my face lightly. “We got to go move cars, remember?” he said. I sat up groggily and looked around. My side where the screwdriver had pierced me hurt like hell. Everyone was up and milling around, waiting on me. Donny had sent one of the kids out early this morning to Trinity Church to tell Eddie where we were and what had happened yesterday. Eddie was now here at the house talking to Ashley at the kitchen table while my girl brought me dry clothes. During the night, they’d thrown everything in the wash and it felt great to have dry, clean clothes again. There were several kids there I hadn’t seen before, and against one wall leaned eight or nine potato cannon rifles. For breakfast, I had Oreo cookies and a glass of sweet tea. That wasn’t going to last, but everyone was ready and waiting on me. Moving was a pain, literally. The bandage they’d put on me consisted of a big gauze patch and an ace bandage wrap that felt tight but comforting.

               I quickly went over my tools and made certain I had everything I’d need to hot-wire the cars. As a precaution, I had two of everything, and when I explained to Eddie why I did, he insisted we send some of the kids to get more, three of everything—wire strippers, screwdrivers, electrical tape, everything. The kids who went scavenging were to meet us at the bus stop or on the bridges as soon as they could once they got their stuff. We left the house twenty strong. I’d known that the kids’ group had more members than the original seven we met the other day, but this was a lot, and who knew how many were still at the Trinity Church? There were even more kids outside armed with potato cannon rifles and we all started walking to the bus stop.

                  At the corner, ten of the kids split off and headed back to the house with the alarm. Their scouts had found that still more zombies had gathered during the night and were standing there staring at the place like they expected something to happen. These kids were going to finish them off, then join us at the bridges later.

                  So our merry band of misfits walked along in a freezing rain. For the most part, we were scattered out a block long just in case we had to hide in a hurry. There wouldn’t be a lump of us gawking at whatever threat we’d face. I walked in silence as she talked to Eddie about the kids. My mind was on my dreams of late. They were surreal and at the same time real, vivid and fuzzy, filled with the dead. I wished to god I could remember them in more detail, but try as I might to remember, I just couldn’t recall them very well or figure them out.

                As I thought about all this, I heard Eddie say to her, “Is he always that quiet?”

              “No, only when he’s almost been killed, or hurt badly.”

              “I heard about yesterday.”

              “Try all month.”

              “All month?”

              “Something has tried to kill him almost every day, it seems. He has a right to be broody.”

              “I think we’ve all kind of been there,” Eddie offered with a big smile, sounding more grown up than a thirteen-year-old should. And he was right—if you were walking around alive today, you had a right to be broody. And if you were alive, you had a bigger right to be happy that you were still alive because that meant that you were a bigger badass than the thing that tried to kill you. At least that’s what I was telling myself, that I was a badass. But here were ten kids who’d been doing the same thing for just as long and the oldest were fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds. Top it off, they were led by Eddie, a kid younger than them.

             
“Now when we get to the bridges, I want to set up defenses in three stages,” she said, like a commander on a battlefield. Eddie whistled and waved for Donny to drop back and join us. Soon we were five abreast, Eddie and myself on the outside while she went over her ideas with Donny and a kid named Steve. While my group of drivers and I hot-wired cars, she’d set up a two-part defense on the bridge, one part covering the ramps we were blocking and the other the area around the cars we were moving. Each had to be ready to move at a moment’s notice.

             
“Do Bobby and Jr. have their stuff ready?” Eddie asked Donny.

              “They said they’d be there and ready.”

              “”What have they got?” I asked, just assuming that they were more of the S.O.L.

              “Oh, you’ll see,” grinned Donny, “
If
they get it working.”

A minute or two later, we found Shaun and another man at the bus stop on Chester Street. The other guy was bigger and darker. He had on duck waders covered by a thick waist-length jacket covered in pockets. Draped over his arm was a Mossberg shotgun and a bulge in one pocket that I guessed was a pistol. Shaun had a gun tucked in his belt. In greeting I pointed at it and asked if it was loaded this time. “You know it,” he grinned. “This is ‘And,’ my uncle.” The big man stretched out a hand and I shook it. His strength was evident. That grip was like a vice.

             
“And?” I asked.

“Short for Andrew.” His voice was Barry White deep. His face was marked with acne scars and his beard and hair showed gray at the temples and chin. I pointed at each member of the party and introduced everyone.

             
“So what’s the plan here?” Andrew asked. I briefly explained their role in the operation and pointed to the S.O.L. and said they’d be covering us in case zombies got too close.

“You probably shouldn’t use that shotgun. The quieter the kills, the better for us all; loud noises will bring them out of the woodworks. The last thing we want is a zombie fight.”

             
Andrew patted the shotgun on the barrel and said, “Baby is staying right here with me. Don’t worry, she’ll only cry when I want her to.” His voice was so deep my chest actually vibrated.

“Where we going to start?” asked Shaun. One of the kids with a potato rifle came up and whispered in Donny’s ear and pointed across our circle to the far side of the Chester Street Bridge.

                There at the old gas station on the corner next to the dumpsters was a single zombie. I recognized him as a homeless guy who had lived in the alley behind the gas station. He’d been turned. Donny sent two kids across the bridge and as they got closer the zombie seemed to get excited and came out to greet them. The kids split up and divided his attention. When he was looking at one of them, the other moved closer. When he turned to the closer one, the other moved closer. I don’t know if the freezing rain helped with this, but the zombie was confused as to whom to go for. When he reached for one of the kids, the other stepped up behind him with a long knife and grabbed the zombie by the forehead, pulling him back to his chest, then drove the knife blade up through the chin and into the zombie’s brain. There was a short struggle from the zombie, and then he went limp. The thing that disturbed me the most was the casual way the kid removed the knife and tossed the body to the side—like he was throwing away garbage. This was all a well-practiced routine for kids who should have been playing baseball.

             
They went through the body’s belongings and took whatever they thought was useful, then disappeared into the alley. Eddie said they’d be close and out of sight. Their job was to stop any threats before they became a threat. Great, we had our own SEAL Team 6 Zombie Squad.