Hellifax (27 page)

Amy, on the other hand.

Amy was special. Even better, the female was still alive.

There weren’t many women left in the world, and certainly none as physically and intellectually appealing as Amy. He’d watched her at times, quietly sizing her up, measuring her strengths; he had to admit, he’d been impressed. He’d be even more impressed when he was strapping her arms and legs with duct tape, rendering her helpless, while he worked his magic with his knives. The possibility of impregnating her, creating a brood, had entered his mind. A
superior
species of man. A mutant, even. Tenner believed he was superior in every way to those around him. An alpha male’s alpha male. He eventually discarded the notion of creating more in his mould, however. Keeping a female alive and docile until she came to term would be a hassle he didn’t really have time for. There was also the risk of siring a daughter. Having a female would only force him to reset Amy in another attempt at a male offshoot. Even then the odds of success were only slim as, by that time, Amy would no doubt be in rougher condition than when he first impregnated her.

Still, he had to admit, having her around for even a short while would entertain him in ways the sport would not.

The sport—his
game
—had gone on quite well and would have no doubt continued going on well until the appearance of the mystery man.
And who the fuck was he, anyway?
Nothing came to him. The face drew a blank. But the new meat knew
him
. Knew
of
him.

Didn’t matter.

Whoever he was, he was only an extra piece of meat to slaughter.

Tenner pulled up the body armor he’d found in another part of the fort from yet another storage container with several suits of different sizes. He selected the biggest one that would fit over his winter coat and brought it back to the room with the weapons and ammunition. The black plates went on with an ease that suggested Tenner was
born
to wear such gear, shackling them around his thighs, lower legs, chest, and arms. Wearing his coat underneath was tight, but he didn’t mind. He strapped on twin thigh holsters for Glock 18s, then filled a backpack with extra magazines for the guns and the AR-20 he’d chosen. He was lucky to have found ample ammunition for the Glocks, as he had nearly run out. The assault rifle had a cache of extended magazines. The rounds were of a size unknown to him, but they looked incredibly large and lethal. He lashed a death vest to his chest: eight egg-sized grenades attached to the front of a vest of synthetic material, semi-protected by pouches of Velcro, that allowed him to use the explosives one at a time, or he could undo a wire cord and, with one yank, detonate them all at once. The vest also had several loops and pockets for extra magazines. A dark hood covered his mouth and nose. A combat helmet with tight-fitting goggles went over his head, giving him the appearance of a secretive Special Forces soldier. His bush of hair made the fit a little awkward, but it was his pride and joy, and so he put up with it.

Finally, his precious knives went into sheaths that hung off his belt at the base of his back, overlapping each over with hilts outward so that if he had to reach behind and grab them, they’d be in his hands in a flash.

There was a box of MREs nearby, and Tenner took four as well as a jug of water and made room for it all in his backpack. Once that was done, he stopped and looked around the room. He’d thought about taking two assault rifles, one as a backup, but carrying the pair would be too cumbersome. If he somehow lost one, he’d assess the situation and consider coming back for another. The light machine gun was also an option and he had to admit it was tempting, but there was no sport in that. He would’ve taken his hunting rifle, the Bushmaster, but he’d nearly depleted the ammunition. His AR-20 possessed a scope as well as three modes of fire—single shot, semi-automatic, and full electric
rock n’ rolla
.

The best his prey had were handguns. However, he did seem to remember a gun barrel slung over the shoulder of the mystery man—a shotgun probably, or a hunting rifle, and no doubt limited ammunition. There was also the mystery man’s handgun, but that didn’t bother Tenner. He thought about sniping the bastard from a distance, just blowing his head off in the middle of a street somewhere, which would lay to rest the man’s puzzling existence, as well as scare the living shit out of the remaining targets.

Then something occurred to him, an image that brought him up cold and abruptly speechless.

The rats.

What about them?

Replaying the chase in the tunnel left a disquieting image in his head. Was the appearance of the rats some sort of tragic foreshadowing for him? Or were they merely another lowly physical manifestation of the virus to be dealt with while he went about his true purpose? Where would they play out in the cosmic scheme of events? Was it safe to assume they couldn’t breach the fort? He didn’t have an answer to any of those questions.

Zombie rodents
. He sighed mentally.
What would be next?
As Buckle so often said,
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus
.

Tenner hefted the backpack and strapped it on. He looped his assault rifle over a shoulder by its strap. He took one last look around the chamber and believed he had everything he needed for the hunt. After it was over—he figured a day at the earliest, four at the most––he’d come back and plan his next move. Perhaps he could actually convert the fort into something liveable. Or maybe he’d move back to one of the higher floors of Purdy’s Wharf and enjoy the view. Mexico could wait a few months.
Hellifax
had so much to offer, and with the newfound stores of supplies, it would be stupid of him to leave so soon—even with the knowledge of zombie rats in the city’s metal guts.

Hefting the AR-20 and placing the skeletal butt stock firmly against his shoulder, he turned and started walking toward the door, wondering where he should start hunting.

The words
at the beginning
popped into his head.

It was as good a place as any.

The four of them left Purdy’s Wharf and quickly made their way back toward the main wall. The snow squeaked underneath their boots, and the cold wormed itself into their limbs. Scott thought of how he’d wished he had been able to see Halifax under different conditions. Buckle was about a dozen steps ahead of him, seemingly staring straight ahead. Vick walked across from him on the right. The older man looked around, studying the stone corners and listening to the sound of their march, the only noise to be heard. Scott glanced at Amy to his right, who finished the wide box the four of them made.

They moved along without speaking, approaching the killing fields as Scott thought of them––that second line of machine gun nests spread out in front of the parking lots. Vick produced a pair of spiked knuckles that almost made Scott balk. The spikes looked to be at least a fearsome three inches long. Vick quietly fitted them on one hand and then the other, trapping his steel bar underneath an armpit as he did so.

“Scary, aren’t they?” Amy asked. She had noticed him gawking and stepped in close. “Most of the items from his shop weren’t the best thing for putting down Moe. But he took a liking to those.”

Hearing her, Vick turned and raised his fist in a grim salute. A tattered hood made from a T-shirt covered his battle helmet, but Scott guessed there was a ready smile hidden underneath it all.

“That where you got your sticks?” Scott asked her.

“They’re tonfas,” Amy corrected him. “And yes, that’s where I got them. And the chest protector. All sparring gear.”

“Havin’ a nice chat back there?” Buckle asked over his shoulder. “Why not a little louder, eh?”

“Sorry,” Amy said and lowered her voice. “He can be cranky sometimes.”

Vick looked over at Buckle and said, “You
can
be cranky at times.”

The Newfoundlander didn’t comment.

“Any more of that around?” Scott asked her in a much quieter tone.

“Tonfas?”

“And spiked knuckles.”

“You know how to punch?”

“Huh?”

“Throw a punch. You know how to throw one properly?”

Scott had never thought of it before. “No.”

“Then it’d be kind of a waste.”

“Thought they were for people who couldn’t throw a punch.”

“Oh, they are,” Amy said, stepping in closer until she was only an arm’s length away. “But on someone like Vick, they’re lethal.”

With spikes like that, anyone’s lethal
, Scott thought darkly.

The bus and the ramp of corpses came into view. As they drew closer, Buckle slowed to a stop and surveyed something that caught his attention.

“What’s up?” Vick asked.

Buckle shook his head. “That one corpse there… I remember it ’cause it’s a soldier.”

“Yeah? So?”

“I was sure it had legs before.”

Vick and the others stopped and studied the dead body for a moment, perched on top of the rest and partially covered by a thin dusting of frost. The legs were gone at mid-thigh, leaving only ragged chunks of frozen meat.

“Looks… gnawed on,” Amy observed. “Not like the others.”

“Dogs, maybe?” Vick suggested.

“Haven’t seen a dog in a year. Sure as hell haven’t seen one around here,” Buckle said.

“What else could it be, then?” Amy asked.

“We got other things to worry about right now. Let’s keep on,” Vick said. “Get moving. Don’t like just standing here wasting daylight.”

They left the corpse, but Scott lingered. Something about the missing legs disturbed him. Eventually, he turned and saw Amy waiting for him. They walked through the half-pipe of wrecked and gun-blasted flesh, and Scott was once again amazed at how much damage the zombies had absorbed, yet they had still been able to advance to the inner defenses.

But the body with the chewed off legs continued to bother him.

It brought up another mystery, one unsolved, back in the valley. In Annapolis.

He stepped in close to Amy as they passed through the mess of frozen dead. “I need to talk to you about something.”

She half-turned. “Can it wait?”

He supposed it could. “Yeah.”

Then they were through it all. They didn’t stop at their demolished van, nor did they turn up what a sign declared as Morris Street. Scott kept quiet as they marched toward a T-intersection and what looked to be a huge building that had taken an explosive round right through the front. The rooftop was charred and blackened. Not a window in the place was intact.

A choice loomed up as the road came to an end—left or right. Another sign read TERMINAL ROAD.

Underneath his motorcycle helmet, half of Scott’s face hitched up in a sorry smile.

To his surprise, Vick and Buckle turned right and headed up Terminal Road. Scott and Amy followed at a comfortable distance.

Then he saw the dead, about forty or so. Stragglers compared to what he had seen before, but more than enough to be a problem.

The men stalked them as if they were a couple of gunslingers instead of virus survivors, not disguising their movements in the least. Their heads flicked right and left, studying the perpendicular street. Amy’s right hand fluttered in a
come on
gesture, and he followed. Together, they closed the gap between the pair of men.

“What are they doing?” Scott whispered.

“Picking a fight,” she murmured.

On cue, Buckle’s Halligan bar came up while Vick raised his length of steel pipe. There was a gap between the walking corpses, delivery men and hotel staff still in their decomposing uniforms. Some of the white clothing had turned black from wounds that no mortal could have survived. Huge chunks of flesh were torn of out some of the zombies, while others had been disemboweled and feasted upon until only a black cavity remained. Scott glimpsed backbones, shifting as the dead shambled about without direction.

Buckle and Vick went into dead mode, adopting limps and shuffling through the forty or so gimps filling the street. They waded into them as if crossing a deep river, heading toward an open parking lot across the road surrounded by three buildings. Scott and Amy entered the small mob just as the men reached the lot. Why were they heading into what looked to be a dead end?

Something bumped into him, and Scott rolled with the solid connection as if drunk. Another hard hit and he pulled away from it, alarm creeping in. A zombie had paused and seemed to be considering Amy’s form just ahead.

A hand came down on Scott’s arm.

The deadhead reached out with all the gentleness of a grandmother’s touch, and Scott had enough of an angle to see a woman, stick thin and wearing the remains of an exercise suit. Two huge, seemingly cracked cue balls filled her orbital cavities, and Scott saw she had no eyelids. Or cheek flesh, for that matter. Black skin tags festered around a mouth that badly needed to be wiped.

He brushed her aside, but a moan chased him. Other gimps turned. Something was wrong, he realized with surging fright. They weren’t buying the act. Moe
knew
there was something about him, and some primitive intelligence urged them to bump him, to touch him, to see if there was a reaction.

Ahead and well inside the parking lot, Vick and Buckle turned around and stood like a two-man wall. Amy pushed ahead, still walking like a corpse and trailing three curious souls. Something tugged on Scott’s poncho, and any moment he feared he’d hear the jogger behind him shriek
“Meat!”
and that would be that.

Vick dragged the tip of his steel pipe across a strip of bare asphalt, making a death rattle that startled Scott.

Suddenly, the hand on Scott’s poncho was gone. Moans and hisses cut the air from the zombies around him, alerting the rest of the pack. Zombies lurched toward the two men, who were no longer imitating the dead. Amy slowly held out an arm until her hand touched Scott’s padded midsection, making him slow all the more and keeping him out of the parking lot. His fingers clenched his bat. Scott wanted to ask what was happening when Vick’s steel pipe crashed down on a gimp’s skull, a second before Buckle whipped his Halligan bar across the face of another. The deadheads clattered to the ground, and the two men swung again. Buckle thrust with the claw of the firefighter’s tool, taking the tops off decomposed skulls like they were old aluminum cans.