Hellifax (28 page)

But the one who truly made Scott stand and gawk in utter zombie fashion, the one who ripped a swath of destruction through the moldering ranks of Moe, was Vick.

Wielding the pipe as if it were a sword, Vick ducked and weaved, cranking his weapon and smashing faces, the sides of skulls, even taking a head completely off at the shoulders. Steel and armored arms batted aside limbs that reached for him. One Moe had its arm twisted up and torn from its socket a second before a spiked fist knocked it off its feet. Vick jabbed his pipe between legs, upending corpses and building a barrier between himself and the deadheads. He crunched three heads in the span of two or three seconds with all of the grace of a samurai, then he was killing
more
.

But Moe didn’t falter.

Moe advanced.

Vick suddenly went down, and a wide group of undead collapsed a second later as if the entire front ranks had tripped. Then the man’s armored form loomed up from the ground, somehow trapping limbs with his own and snapping them like kindling. The pipe started humming in the air loud enough that Scott heard it through his helmet. He understood then why Amy had kept him back.

It wasn’t for safety.

It was to
watch
.

The length of steel split air and decaying flesh. Zombies attempting to get over their brothers on the ground had their heads bashed in. Vick stomped on the skulls of anything moving at his feet and speared the cut end of the pipe through brainpans in startling crunches of bone that reminded Scott of cracking eggshells. The last corpse reaching for the martial artist had its arms pushed aside before being tripped. It fell to the ground, and Vick drove his boot through its face.

“Jesus,” Scott whispered in awe. “The man’s Bruce Lee.”

Amy tugged on his wrist, leading him out of the street and into a parking lot that had once been empty, but was now full of bodies—all gone in no more than a minute. Buckle crouched over one and scooped out black innards. Scott only gave him a second’s attention before switching back to Vick.

“What the hell was
that?
” he asked, remembering at the last moment to keep his voice low.

“That was Vick keeping the peace,” Amy informed him.

“Time to get covered up now,” Vick huffed in a strained voice. He gestured to where Buckle stood, his hands full of dark viscera.

“Come and get it ’fore I throw it out,” Buckle said. Amy stepped up, and Buckle wasted no time splashing her front and back.

“Go on,” Vick told Scott. “Get some on you. Moe won’t be picking up on you with a fresh coat.”

Scott did as he was told, catching an unholy whiff of raw guts and marvelling over how smell could stop a person in their tracks. Buckle retrieved more guts from another unmoving deadhead and, with one last flourish, slapped an oily gob on the side of Scott’s head. He felt the impact through his helmet. He hadn’t known the man for long, but he thought Buckle was taking his work a little too eagerly.

“You wanted the guts?” he asked.

“Uh-huh,” Buckle said. “Needed the fresh stuff. Although it’s really kinda chunky with the cold and all.”

Scott saw the plan. “You guys lured them back here, off the main road. Got them out of sight to butcher them.”

“That’s right,” Buckle said, motioning him to step aside so he could touch up Vick’s protective coating.

“Vick’s been teaching and doing martial arts for thirty years,” Amy informed him. “Third degree black belt Tae Kwon Do, Second Degree Kempo, a little Black Dragon Kung Fu, a touch of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and exotic weapons training.”

“How do you know all this?” Scott asked.

“He’s my teacher,” she said simply. “I got all the goods on him. I’ll tell you about him sometime. It’s interesting stuff. If you like MMA, that is. You should see him when he has a pair of Sai in his hands.”

“Your teacher?” Scott blurted, computing the rest.

“For twenty years.”

His voice didn’t work anymore. “How old are you, again?”

“Not supposed to ask a girl her age, nerd.”

Scott balked at that, but before he could say anything, he noted that Vick was ensuring that Buckle got zombie guts on his back.

“Stunnin’, eh?” Buckle asked Scott.

“Not the words I’d use. I didn’t even see you after… that.”

“Just as well. I’m not near as graceful as the man here. Deadly Vicky.”

Vick stopped for a moment, regarded the Newfoundlander, and shook his head before continuing painting him, a little more aggressively this time.

“What was it you do again?” Scott asked Buckle.

“Shoot shit.”

“Oh.”

“When I have the equipment, that is.”

Vick slapped Buckle’s shoulder, letting him know all was done. They gathered up their weapons and stood in a loose square for a moment, very much aware of the stillness.

“Buckle comes from a long line of professional snipers. Ain’t that right?” Vick asked.

“Yeah,” Buckle said, indifferent. “How you feelin’?”

Vick shrugged. “Not bad. Still getting my wind back. Getting old’s shitty.”

“Vick’s not as young as he used to be,” Amy stated.

“Don’t have to be young to kick the shit out of Moe. Just got to be careful, is all.” Vick looked at Scott. “You hear me?”

“I do,” he answered. He remembered Amy’s words from not so long ago.
Well, you’re one of the lucky ones. Which is to say, very lucky
.

He didn’t realize just
how
lucky he’d been up to this point, especially to find these people, until now.

“All right, listen now,” Vick directed at him. “You’ve done this before with Amy. Ain’t no different today. Got that?”

“Got it,” Scott answered, suddenly bursting with respect for the older man.

“You stay in a box formation. Buckle and I will be in the front. We’ll head straight through the city, back to where you parked, and not one of those fuckers will know the difference. Just act dead. Or like you’ve just downed a case of Moosehead.”

Beer.
Scott suddenly wished he had a bottle.

“You ready, smartass?” Vick asked Buckle.

“Born ready, me son.”

“How about you, hell-child?”

“Ready,” Amy said.

“All right, then,” Vick said with satisfaction. “The walk in the park is over. We’ve done this before, and we’re doing it today. Got a ride to catch, a city to leave behind, and an island resort waiting for us. And if I have my way, I intend on getting shitfaced on cocktails with little umbrellas in ’em. Let’s
do
this.”

With that, Vick marched back out into the street, and the rest of them followed.

Freshly coated with Moe’s slushy innards, the four of them reached a
South Street
sign. Old fashioned brick and mortar buildings stood on the right, somehow eluding the fire show the Army had laid down in an effort to subdue Moe. A white unblemished field of snow with a few lonely swings and slides lay across the way from the houses, the centerpiece an artsy aqua-green statue. Scott was taken by how the city might have once looked in the summer. If only.

Ice glazed the slope they marched up, slippery in places, causing them to stumble. Drifts had been visibly beaten down by gimps no longer in sight. A yellow Victorian-style three-story building came into view on the right, perhaps a hotel. A short stairway led to a wide porch, complete with green lawn chairs. The soft squeals of metal and wood joints gave them pause.

Scott blinked in surprise.

A gimp, dressed in a formal grey suit and sporting a resplendent red tie, sat on the porch in a lover’s swing. The thing rocked itself gently, facing the street, baring the leering, lipless smile of a ghoul that might have just fed. Black eyes, which Scott wasn’t entirely sure were there, stared off into space, ignoring them as they shuffled past. The creature remained rooted to the chair. Scott believed the dead man would soon stop rocking, get to its feet with all the elegance of someone clawing their way out of a grave, and bellow at them. Except it wouldn’t come out as words, it would only come out in that frightening hiss of frayed vocal chords.

But it didn’t.

The well-dressed zombie stayed in its summer swing, rocking itself while staring over their heads. The creaking of the rusty joints stayed with them as they passed in front of the porch, then gradually died away.

They continued walking, leaving the watcher in the swing and passing through an intersection. The grade of the road increased, and Scott thought for a moment of the hills back in New Brunswick and the thrill of sliding over them in the wintertime. The memory faded as quickly as it had popped into his mind. In ones and twos, deadheads wandered around discarded cars parked on sidewalks, heedless of the disguised living passing by. Keeping in formation, they crossed over Barrington Street and continued to plod up the incline. Scott felt a light trickle of sweat down his back and armpits, not entirely the result of walking. Gruesome displays of reanimated flesh caught his attention, and he struggled for a moment to keep his head pointed straight ahead. The dead came in all shapes and sizes, and he didn’t think he’d ever get used to them. Scott was ever so thankful for the visor and ragged T-shirt concealing his face.

He focused on the hill.

The burn seeped into his calves like hot poison trying to slow him down. The others marched on without any visible effort, and he strove to keep pace. Coming into Halifax had been easy, he realized. It was all practically flat or downhill, with only a few exceptions. Escaping the waterfront was something different. They passed houses, some still in livable condition, others suffering. Three houses in a row had gone up in a fire and lay covered in snow, the remains of structural beams sticking out of the main floor like charred spears.

Ahead, Buckle bumped into a zombie and knocked it to the ground. The thing fell flat on its back and, when Scott reached it, it flailed its withered arms and legs about as if puzzling over the best way to stand. More zombies filled the street, drifting into sight from driveways like sea mines pulled free of their rusty moorings. One gimp, a business man, walked toward Vick, its dead hips swaying as if it were working the hell out of an invisible hula hoop. It missed Vick by inches, and Scott noted Amy slowed her pace just enough to allow the zombie to walk in front of her. More zombies appeared on the crest of the hill, their vague, grey shapes slowly coalescing as they drew closer. Another gimp had half of his neck chewed into, right down to the segmented bone. Two grandmothers pulled themselves along the ground with feeble tugs, and one was near enough to Scott to graze his ankle with a spider’s touch. More horrors came into view, some hanging around the doorways of the houses lining both sides of the street, while others simply walked past.

They plodded to the top of the hill and continued walking. Amy slid toward him, closing the distance between them just as he saw the graveyard on the right through a fence of iron bars. The dead shuffled amongst snowcapped headstones and elaborate marble crosses. Hundreds of the things took halting steps, seemingly headed in no real direction. A barrier of cars and trucks lined the streets, cocooned by snow drifts not yet beaten down by the meandering dead. A row of brown brick apartment buildings stood on the opposite side of the street. Scott’s breath caught in his throat when a figure fell ten stories, rags fluttering savagely in the descent, to burst upon white concrete with the sound of a dried-up watermelon.

They walked by the gimp and saw it was a boy. It whimpered once like a lonely dog.

Scott felt his breathing increase. His anxiety swelled. Halifax started to close in about him. The gimps knew who he was. They
knew
. And they were making a beeline for him. He slowed in his tracks and grimaced against the rising panic in his lower legs and chest.
Not again…

Something bumped him on his right.

Amy’s hand closed about his and squeezed. Her shoulder felt firm against him. Like a soothing rock, the contact brought him back. He closed his eyes a few times, only opening them to ensure Vick and Buckle were still ahead. Forcing slow breaths into lungs that wanted much, much more, he squeezed her hand back. A silent
I’m okay
.

Neither of them released the other.

Bonded, they crept along the street, walking as stiffly as anything just risen from the grave. Scott took a few moments to compose himself, closing his eyes and allowing Amy to guide him. A weight brushed against his side, but he ignored it. The smell of the dead seemed to penetrate his every pore until each breath was an invasion. But he kept walking and did not let go of Amy’s hand.

After a few moments he opened his eyes, defeating the panic attack for a second time and wondering why the hell they were happening to him
now.
After so long living with the dead, the day-to-day survival and risking his own life, why
now
? Then it hit him. It was as obvious as the bodies moving about him.

He was
amongst
them, trying to keep his life a secret from an army of predators—a goldfish swimming in a river full of piranha. He watched Vick and Buckle as they eased through the zombies. Some bumped into the two men, but they absorbed the impact or rolled with it. Neither stopped.

The memory of Amy’s voice came back to him.
You’re one of the lucky ones
.

Two years of being on the run from these things. Two years. Scott felt a touch of chagrin then, which burned away any lingering anxiety. He had stayed
alive
for
two fucking years
. That wasn’t luck.

That was skill.

With that realization, he mentally armored himself against any further panic attacks and let go of Amy’s hand.

To his surprise, she didn’t let go of his.

He didn’t dwell on it and closed his fingers upon hers. Around them, the zombies moved in the same direction.

That last thought stayed with him and sunk into his brain.
The zombies were heading in the
same
direction
. Scott slowed and eventually stopped, pulling Amy to a questioning halt. He turned into her, bumping her with his chest, and looked back the way they had come.