Hellifax (29 page)

He felt his skin crawl when he saw the flow of gimps moving up the street,
away
from the waterfront. Even the zombies that were bleeding out into the main drag from side avenues weren’t heading toward the waterfront. They shambled in the same direction as the rest, almost as if some unseen barrier prevented them from turning toward the harbor.

They’re tidal
, he’d heard Gus say, but this struck Scott as something else. This
had
to be something else. The street resembled a mass of bomb-blasted refugees fleeing their homes before the next wave of shells hit.

Amy tugged on his hand and this time he relented. They turned back into the stream and moved with it. Vick and Buckle were far ahead, but Scott stood tall and spotted the two men doing their best to blend in. He watched Moe from the corners of his eyes, wondering what was going on in those black brains. What was spurring them on to apparently mass evacuate an area? Did they possess a sense to detect impending disaster, like dogs seconds before earthquakes? Did that mean that, on some microscopic level, the creatures were still alive?

Scott prepared himself for the worst. One thing was certain—he dared not do anything to appear remotely
alive
amongst the horde.

To do so would get him and Amy ripped to pieces.

While four of the living retreated from the Halifax waterfront, Tenner marched down the white slope of Citadel Hill, making no bones about the fact that he was alive. Arrogant? Perhaps. Stupid? Hardly.
Defiant
was more like it. This was his world. Here, he was God. The corpses were beneath him, little more than dogs gone wild. He feared the undead no more than houseflies.

He trudged over the hill, seeing corpses lurking around car wrecks and abandoned vehicles. Upon reaching a low metal fence, he lifted one leg and then the other and dropped six feet to the snow-covered sidewalk. His head held high, Tenner reached Duke Street. The roof of the Halifax Metro Center had been devastated by artillery fire. Around him, the wearisome, all too familiar moans sounded in his wake.

If they truly wanted a taste of him, they’d have a fight on their hands.

He drew his Glocks, having already racked their slides. On his right, a woman staggered into daylight from an open door of the Metro Center’s parking lots. Beyond her, more shadows followed. The woman opened a mouth that looked stretched. She fixed onto him with eyes that had been gouged from her face and left crushed on her cheeks.

Tenner casually took aim and put a round into her forehead, snapping her head back and jerking her off her feet as if abruptly clotheslined. She landed with a clatter as he walked on, mindful of the side streets and any potential threats lurking there. He marched past the Scotia Square Mall, not bothering to go inside. Such places were ripe with Moe. Perhaps even more than that, he thought, remembering a tunnel swarming with ragged rats.

A zombie rose up from behind an SUV parked under a dead streetlight. Tenner blew its black brains out, splashing a wall as white as porcelain. Corpses slapped their limbs against the glass doors leading into the mall, trying to attract his attention for just a few more seconds. The crosswalk ahead of him was empty one moment, then a handful of zombies skittered into view, slipping on ice slicked pavement. A boy of perhaps fifteen got within an arm’s length of Tenner when the Glock cracked and sheared away a chunk of skull and scalp. He shot another gimp at close range, the front and back of its head exploding instantly.

The others he allowed to follow him—if they dared.

Above him loomed a pedway connecting two business buildings, their signs blasted away by gunfire. Two empty machine gun emplacements were up there, pointed at the sky. Tenner proceeded under the concrete connector. Something crashed into the streets behind him and he turned to see a soldier, encased in full combat gear, pushing itself up from the pavement. The dozen or so zombies following were almost upon the soldier. The armored corpse got to its knees, black viscera hanging from a hole that was once a mouth. Individual teeth gleamed like oily pearls.

As long as they were behind him, all was fine. If they got in his way, he’d ruin them with extreme prejudice.

He turned right at Hollis Street and aimed himself at Purdy’s Wharf like a laser. No zombies sought to stop him. He halted and glanced around. He remembered putting down a few Philistines on this street, but their unmoving husks were nowhere to be seen.

The soldier zombie dragged itself in pursuit, rattling something off the street. Tenner turned around and switched his firing modes on both guns. The sound would no doubt alert anyone around, but he didn’t care. He’d kill them as well.

He opened fire with the Glocks, and brains pollinated the air in violent puffs of inky white. He brought the twin hand cannons side by side, exploding heads like lines of cheap light bulbs overloaded with electricity, then spread them apart once more.

The soldier staggered back until it fell, and Tenner saw that the helmet protected its head. He stepped forward and jammed one barrel underneath the destroyed chin of the infantryman. When he pulled the trigger, the sound of the shell ricocheting off the inside of the helmet reminded him of the muffled clanging of pots and pans. The soldier dropped dead in the street, and Tenner waited for anything else to come at him.

Nothing did.

He listened and heard only the diminishing buzz of the Glocks. Once again dead bodies lay splayed out in the street, and something odd occurred to Tenner. Certainly there were a few zombies lingering in the zone the Army had established, but there were large bodies of roaming corpses just beyond Citadel Hill. Amy had even reported that sections of Barrington had been swamped with the reanimated dead. How many soldiers had been in the area? The numbers made him question the true population of Halifax at the time the virus broke out.

However many there had been, they had
not
returned to this area. They kept clear of the waterfront almost entirely. Was the reason for this aversion the devastation wrought by the Army fortified here? Possible, but that would mean the things were capable of thinking—not that that meant anything to him either way.

Then he considered the rats.

Could they have anything to do with the undead avoiding the area?

Or be responsible for the disappearing corpses?

The memory of stumbling in the tunnel and feeling their claws upon him made him contemplate the rats once more. Did they pose a bigger threat than what he was allowing for? He placed his back against the stone wall of a historical building and peered across the street at Purdy’s Wharf. Time was a-wasting.

The floor and room designated as the meeting area could be seen from the street, and Tenner had no trouble seeing the bullet holes he’d made earlier. He intended to do a lot worse. Checking the area once more, he holstered his side arms and got out the AR-20. He trained it on the window. He took a breath and bolted out from his position, racing across the open space while keeping an eye on the building’s face.

The front entryway to Purdy’s Wharf came into view and he went through, ran to the stairway, and chugged upward in relative darkness, keeping one shoulder against the wall for both guidance and support. The heavy armor slowed him noticeably.

Moments later, he entered the floor where the others had set up their base camp, half-expecting to meet Bowman once again. He dropped to a knee and pointed his rifle down the dark corridor, the gloom pierced by light from the windows inside the rooms. He couldn’t hear anyone, but his helmet and hood restricted his hearing somewhat. A draft made a notice on the wall flutter ever so slightly. Tenner watched the paper for a while before getting to his feet, proceeding with extreme caution.

He paused for a second at each open doorway before swinging inward barrel-first, ready to fire or grant mercy––for a little while, anyway. Tenner noticed he was sweating. Excitement coursed through his person, and he struggled to control his breathing. He remembered a time back in Windsor, Ontario, in an old house he had converted into a private little abattoir, where he’d deposit unconscious prostitutes after hiring them and finally chloroforming them. He wasn’t sure how the police found the house, or who had tipped them off, but the OPP were there in force on a Friday, busting both doors and charging in like human trains armed with submachine guns. Tenner had arrived perhaps twenty minutes later, on his mountain bike of all things, opting that day to leave behind the car he usually used. He watched the home invasion from behind the police lines. There hadn’t been any guests in the house at the time of the forceful entry, but Tenner knew there was probably plenty of evidence.

But what he’d wondered about, from an officer’s point of view, was the
rush
of invading a house, the adrenaline high from not knowing what might be lurking inside. He suspected it was probably almost as good as the release he got from tenderizing his victims with a sledgehammer.

Now he knew. Potential danger lurked behind every corner. He checked each room before proceeding to the next. A couple of times he thought he heard something and pulled back to the corridor to wait, only long enough to calm his warning tingles. He reached the main office where the others had slung their gore-soaked outerwear, then the rooms of each individual. Equipment was missing. Food was missing from the MRE storage area. By the time he got to the office where they’d held meetings, he knew his prey had vanished. Poor old Sam lay stiff and cooling on the floor, covered with his own coat.

Tenner crouched near the dead man’s head and pulled back the death shroud. He inspected his handiwork and smiled slowly. Ol’ Sam had got off easy. If he’d had the chance to do what he’d
wanted
to do to him…

“You hear me?” Tenner whispered, peering into the destroyed face. “You got off lucky. Damn lucky, Sam my son. You’ll see. When I send the others over. You’ll understand.”

“They’re wise to you, Joe,” Sam whispered, causing Tenner’s forehead to knot. It wasn’t often his victims spoke back to him, but it happened sometimes. Sam wasn’t a zombie, just a lingering shade drawn to the power of the Almighty, hoping to get a few last words in before traveling on to oblivion. Or so Tenner suspected.

“I know that.” Tenner
pshawed
. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

“They’re getting out of Halifax, Joe. They’re leaving the city to you. Want no part of it.”

“Really?”

“Figure you’ll die here. Chewed up like a dog’s toy.”

Tenner smirked. These dead fuckers got mouthy in the afterlife.

“You hear me, Joe? You might’ve got me, got me good, but you won’t do them. They’re too smart for you. Too quick. Too dangerous, now. You really think you could take on Vick bare knuckle?
Amy
, even?”

That wiped the smile off Tenner’s face. Without a word, he placed the mouth of the assault rifle to Sam’s face.

“Killing me a second time won’t––”

He squeezed the trigger and disintegrated Sam’s head. Sam didn’t speak after that, which suited Tenner just fine. He lingered a few seconds more, idly studying the mess on the floor. He got to his feet and looked at the window, examining the spidery dots ventilating the room. He remembered that shot. Took it on the run and still got it right. Didn’t get anyone else apparently, but that was fine by him. Tenner didn’t want to shoot them all.

Not if he could get his knives on them.

They’re getting out of Halifax
, Sam had said. That meant by van. Tenner smiled. The van was beyond the wall. It felt right. They’d gone there first thing, no doubt.

“Take it easy, Sammy,” Tenner said and left the room. Minutes later he was walking briskly down Water Street. He kept the AR-20’s stock braced against his shoulder, ready to pull up and blast something if needed. When he reached the bus barricade and the ramp, he noticed the body with the missing legs. Could the rats have been responsible for that?

His boots clattered on the top of the bus and, for a moment, he considered the street of corpses ahead. There was an awful lot of meat in this area, an awful lot of meat that had been around for a while. Aboveground no less, which meant the rats were no doubt crawling to the surface to feed. Holding onto his rifle, Tenner suddenly had a very bad feeling about the place. Underground, left unchecked, with a readily accessible food supply, how could the virus
not
have jumped from the corpses to the rats?

“Well, well,” Tenner breathed as he completed a full three-sixty. “Might just be something worse than Philistines in town.”

With that, he chugged down the other side of the barricade and along the street, no longer wanting to be anywhere near such a large stockpile of frozen dinners.

Minutes later he arrived at the wreck of the van. The booby-trapped hood had gone off just the way he’d hoped. Brown boxes of clearly-marked MREs lay in the back, untouched, and that was fine by him. He’d get them later. Looking around, he spotted tracks leading to a car. There he found a charred Shaffer.

“Hello, Mr. Shaffer,” Tenner purred, gazing down at the burnt body scrunched up on the back seat. “Best not to lay around this neighborhood. Think we got a rat problem. No… I mean a
rat problem
. Hm? What’s that? Sure, stay here if you like. Not me, though. I got some business with your buddies.”

He paused for a moment, allowing Shaffer to speak. Unlike Sammy, Shaffer was exceptionally quiet. Perhaps he somehow knew about Sammy? The dead liked to blab.

“No friends of yours, eh?” That made Tenner smile. “I knew there was some friction between you and Buckle there, but I kinda got the impression you liked Amy, in your own way. And that ass? Oh
my
. Well! You’re dead now, so…” he shrugged dramatically, “what the hell, right? What’s that? Get them? Wow.”

Tenner chuckled. The dead were also out to fuck up the living.

“Spiteful bastard, ain’t ya? Just so you know, I do intend to get them. And I fully plan to send them your way, piece by piece. So you just relax. Stay comfortable. Tell you what––you watch my back and, when I get back this way, I’ll make it so the rats don’t get you.”