Apocalypse Atlanta (Book 4): Apocalypse Asylum (18 page)

Whitley paced him silently all the way to the house, but she spoke when they slowed a few steps from the door.  “What’s up with Smith?”

“Dunno.” Peter shrugged.  “Worry about it later.  Check the windows on that side.”

She went left while he went right, both peering through the glass.  Peter saw a comfortably appointed house with lots of rustic furniture that had the look of being well lived with.  Even accounting for the layer of dust inside, none of it looked new.  But most importantly, nothing moved within either.

“You want lead?” Whitley asked as they both stepped back from the glass.

“No.” Peter shook his head as he drew the M45.  He knew better than to fool around with a bolt action long gun like the Remington in such close quarters.  “I’ll cover you and take right.”

“Got it.” she nodded, reaching for the door knob.  It didn’t turn.  She glanced back at him.  “Help me kick it in.”

“Call it.” he said, moving up next to her.

“On three.  One, two . . .”

Peter slammed his right foot into the door as hard as he dared, like he was stepping forward in one big, high, giant step.  He was on the hinge side of the door so he could only get his foot to land about in the middle, but Whitley landed her kick next to the knob.  Their combined strike was enough.  The door burst open with a violent cracking of wood to slam back against the wall inside.  Whitley caught it on the rebound with her left hand, protecting her face and the shotgun in her right hand from being hit.

Swaying slightly as he recovered his balance, Peter waited with her for the moment they both took to reevaluate.  When nothing tried to eat them, Whitley shoved the door back and went through, pivoting immediately to the left.  Following, Peter gripped his gun in both hands and pressed forward into the house.

There was a wall directly on his right side as he stepped over the threshold, but ahead he could see a kitchen of some kind.  And a few feet from the front door was an opening for another room on his right.  Everything was still as empty and deserted as it had looked from outside.  Sliding up, Peter glanced around the wall into the right side room, then pivoted around pointing his weapon at the area.  He saw some sort of sitting room, maybe even something his mother might have called a parlor way back in the day, but except for furniture and dust . . . nothing.

“Clear here.”

“Same.” Whitley answered.  “Kitchen or full sweep?”

Peter hesitated a moment, then shrugged mentally.  “Keep lead, sweep right and we’ll circle around to the kitchen while we make a lot of noise.”

“And if nothing shows up?”

“I’ll keep covering while you strip the cabinets clean of anything useful, then we’ll head for the warehouse.”

“It’s a plan.” she answered.  Peter shifted back and aside a little to clear the doorway, and she moved past him a moment later.  After a few steps, Peter followed and kept his attention on the sides as much as he could by himself, constantly checking in either direction.  As they moved, they stomped their feet and bumped into furniture to make it scrape against the floor or fall over.

But they found nothing untoward — no problems, no bodies, and definitely no zombies — by the time they’d cleared the rest of the rooms in that half of the house.  If there were any zombies, Peter knew the bastards would have reacted to the noise and be coming.  Any that might be hanging around upstairs would make noise walking, especially when they fell down the stairs.  If there were any on the other side of the ground floor, they’d be along momentarily.

Their partial sweep finished in the kitchen when, as Peter had expected, they were able to move from room to room in a loop back to it.  As far as either of them could tell, they were the only two things moving about inside the structure.  He positioned himself where he could keep an eye on the doorway and the hall beyond while he listened to Whitley rattling and banging around among the drawers and cabinets.

“Shit.” she finally said after a minute.

“What?”

“Nothing.  Not a damned thing.”

Peter glanced over her shoulder, then swiftly across the storage spaces she’d left standing open or pulled out.  “Hmmm.”

“Not even crackers.  How’s that—”

“Suicides.” Peter said shortly, gesturing upwards with his left hand.

Whitley’s face cleared and she nodded soberly.  Peter shrugged in response as he turned back forward.  “Anything else of use?”

“Box with some matches left in it, another can opener, but unless we need to scour for some soft goods or clothes . . .”

“No, let’s get on with step two.”

“Right.  Front or back?”

“Back.  You keep point.”

Whitley nodded and headed for the attached dining room.  The back door was right there, unlockable from the inside without incident.  Peter waited while she checked through it, then stepped out and stood momentarily for another look.  When she cleared the opening, he followed and took his own survey. The area was quiet, with just two zombies that might bother them as they went from the house to the storage structure.

“Avoid or kill?” Whitley asked as she headed for the warehouse.

“Clubs.”

“Right.” she nodded, switching the shotgun to her left hand and tugging the pair of shovel handles she’d taped together into a single club out of the side of her belt where she’d stuck it like a sword.  Peter holstered his M45 and hefted the axe he’d been hauling around.

The first zombie was a good deal fresher than most of the ones Peter had been seeing in recent weeks, suggesting it was probably a more recent conversion.  The man had been in his forties and wearing camouflage clothing when he died; hunter’s garb plus a blood stained, dirty, and tattered bandage encircling his left thigh.  Pieces of his decaying flesh showed in the gap between the bandage and the edges of the huge tear in his pants.

Whatever the zombie’s story had been, he made right for Whitley.  She took no chances, and hit it in the knee with a huge windup swing like a batter swinging at a fastball down low.  From the maximum reach of her converted club, she managed to knock the zombie over.  Then, still staying as far from it as she could, she brought the taped handles down twice more on the zombie’s neck, until a decently loud crack echoed up from the ground.

As the zombie lost what was left of its motor function below the upper vertebrae Whitley had broken, Peter went past it and her with the axe upraised.  The second zombie was an older one — an early twenties guy that had lost one shoe and his shirt — that looked like he’d been stumbling around at room temperature since Labor Day.

Ignoring the zombie’s condition, Peter jabbed at it with the axe head like he was stabbing with a spear.  The zombie swayed back from the impact to its chest, and Peter stepped back as he went for a proper windup swing.  Copying Whitley, he hit the monster in the legs.  Even though Peter used the blunt back end of the axe, the heavy metal head still carried enough mass when swung to inflict a serious amount of damage when it hit.

The zombie’s leg shattered just below the knee, and it toppled over sideways.  Shattered explosively; jagged ends of bone erupted from beneath the pallid skin, and shards sprayed out unpleasantly to patter down against the weed strewn ground.  The zombie fell over as it stepped forward on the now useless leg.  Its knee was nothing more than some flaps of skin surrounding the jumbled carnage of disconnected bone; and the joint folded up as the skin wasn’t up to the task of supporting the creature’s weight.

Moving around it, being careful to stay out of grabbing range, Peter flipped the axe around and brought the blade down on the skull.  The crunch was sickening as the zombie’s head collapsed inward, but Peter was basically inured to it these days.  Zombies were zombies; they all needed killing.  Better them than him.

He had to stand on what was left of the cranium and neck to tug the axe loose from the bone.  Fortunately there wasn’t much gore on the axe; zombies were so desiccated that it was dusty rather than sticky after the execution.  Tucking the weapon back into the loop on his equipment harness, Peter filled his hand with the pistol once more as they got to the warehouse.

To his surprise, the normal sized door set in the front-facing wall next to the corner opened when Whitley tried it.  She pulled it all the way back, then reversed her shotgun and hammered on the warehouse wall several times to create a rattling and banging noise that would surely reverberate through the building.

“Give it a minute.” she said.

“Yeah.” Peter agreed, looking around again.  They had time.  At least ninety seconds before any of the nearest zombies could stagger over, and most of those hadn’t even really taken note of the activity at the house yet.  Glancing back to the east, he saw the several-hundred-strong horde was still trailing behind Smith.  The Guardsman was on the back end of a lap, but he waved back when Peter raised a hand and swung it several times in an exaggerated gesture.

“How’s he doing?”

“Looks like he’s okay.”

“Good.” she said.  After a few moments, she gave an unhappy sigh.  “Hope he calms down.”

“We’re all under a lot of stress.”

“Some more than others it seems.”

“Cut him some slack.  He’s holding up his end.”

“We could’ve used the house to break off again.”

“He’s got a point that they might have gotten stuck in against the warehouse here.”

“So?  It’s a big building.  I’m sure we can duck out the back door if need be.”

“Might not be a back door.”

Whitley stepped back several steps from the door before glancing at him speculatively.  “And what was your plan for if there wasn’t one?”

“What makes you think I thought of one?”

“Because you think of everything.”

“I’m not inviolate you know.”

“Not saying you are, but I’ll bet you thought of something.”

Peter shrugged.  “Warehouses usually aren’t built like houses and offices and other structures.  I figure a little work with the axe and maybe some prying action would get us out without much of a problem.”

“Hah, see?” she almost-chuckled, then she glanced at him once more; this time her expression unhappy.  “But if the walls are that thin . . .”

“Yeah, a zombie horde could probably bust through pretty easily.” he pointed out.  This close, it was easy to see the warehouse was little more than simple corrugated metal spread over the load-bearing framework.  Peter had seen plenty of buildings like it; they were cheap to build, maintain, and fix.  Which was good, since he’d seen more than a few holes get busted in them to all sorts of incidents that could require a proper contractor’s attention in a more substantial building.

“Great.” she sighed.  “Wait, isn’t this tornado country?”

“Is it?”

“I don’t know, we’re sort of in the central part of the nation now aren’t we?  Isn’t that tornado alley?”

“I don’t remember.  So what if it is?”

She gestured at the warehouse.  “Wouldn’t they want something more resilient?”

He laughed without humor, more of a grim chuckle than anything amused.  “Ah, yeah, that’s insurance for you.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Cheaper to rebuild something that gets flattened and carried off than repair something that only partially holds up.” he said.  “
Especially
something like this, which doesn’t cost that much anyway.”

“That’s fucked up.” Whitley frowned.  “And what about the house?”

“Bet there’s a really good basement we missed somewhere.  Not like we ran a full sweep.”

“I can’t figure living like that.”

“Better than what a lot of us are putting up with now.  Come on, let’s check it out inside.” he said, motioning at the door.

Whitley held the shotgun level and eased up to, then through, the door.  Peter followed, his weapon back in a two handed grip; both her and him swiveling the guns in unison with their eyes as they entered.

Sure enough, the cavernous space was scribed by evenly spaced metal I-beams that rose along the walls before bending together into a peaked roof.  The wind rattled and compressed the thin walls, making odd echoes and distracting groans fill the interior.  And even with the window panels set high up near the tops of the walls, it was dim.

“Hold.” Peter said loudly enough for Whitley to hear.

“What’s up?”

“Pulling a light, then I’ll cover you while you do the same.”

“All I’ve got is one of those cheap flashlights we picked up after Cartersville.” she said.

Peter got the tactical light that usually fitted onto the under barrel rail of his now abandoned AR and clutched it in his left hand before thumbing it on and crossing his wrists so M45 and light were held in parallel.  “See if it still works.”

Whitley fumbled in one of her pockets and produced the device.  After a few moments of fiddling, she did something to it that produced a click, and a so-so beam of light appeared.  “Shit, it still works.”

“Good.” Peter nodded.  “It had time to dry out.”

“Can’t double it up with the shotgun though.”

“Your call.” he shrugged.  “I’ve got some tape, or you can switch over to the Beretta.”