“I swallowed some,” he heard Gus mutter again and again. “I swallowed some, I swallowed some, I
know
I swallowed some…”
Scott returned and pulled him to his feet. He saw with growing horror that there were fragments of flesh in Gus’s beard. “Oh, fuck.” Had Gus ever been that pale before? How long did it take to change if someone ingested a piece of the dead? Oh,
fuck!
What if he was changing right fucking
now
? Oh, Jesus
fucking Christ
.
His breath coming hard, Scott listened to the growing sounds of visitors outside, some banging against the side of the house as they approached the doorway. He could hear shuffling in the hallway again. Taking a deep breath, Scott righted Gus and shoved his shotgun into his arms. “Hold this!”
Scott took five steps back from the window and bared teeth.
Then, he charged.
He was a big man, standing at six five. In his younger days, he had been a hockey player. A forward, and legend had it that if Scott Harris was coming down the ice, the last place on God’s frozen earth you wanted to be was in front of him. The last two years had taken away a lot of his fat and bulk, and even some of his muscle, but he was still a big man. Perhaps all of a hundred and twenty kilograms.
That weight crashed through the planks covering the picture window like a wrecking ball with a full desperate head of steam behind it. Scott fell to his knees on the other side and rolled over to stare at a zombie who was probably the neighbor, a tall, lanky individual with a rotten straw moustache. Scott kicked the thing’s legs out from under it and jumped up as it fell to the ground. Roaring, Scott stomped on its head, hearing the chalky, vase-breaking clatter of shattering skull. Scott looked around and spied several dead fuckers walking in the street, drawn to the commotion.
He went back in through the jagged hole he’d made and saw that Gus had dropped his shotgun. Suddenly furious, Scott picked up the weapon, spun Gus around to face the wall, and jammed the weapon into his bat scabbard, barrel first.
“We’re going!” Scott shouted.
“My helmet.” Gus pointed. Scott bent over and picked the thing up. He held it out, grew impatient, and stuffed the protective device over Gus’s head, wrenching it into position hard.
“Come on!” He dragged a torpid Gus toward the hole and pushed him through it. A zombie closed in on Gus, but Scott cracked the wooden stock of his shotgun across its dead features, knocking it to the ground. He fired a shell into its head, the ejector flinging away the spent cartridge.
Knowing that he had only seconds before the gathering mob zeroed in on him, he manhandled the smaller man toward the van. Scott opened the passenger door and got Gus into the seat.
“Buckle up!” he shouted and spun around the front. He ran into a little dead girl, no higher than his waist, with long hair that seemed glued to her pasty white scalp. Part of her jaw was missing, but she still had teeth. Scott bowled her over and left her in the dust. He reached the driver’s side and saw that the dozen or so deadheads going into the house were turning their direction. He lunged into the driver’s seat and started the beast. The machine cranked into gear and lurched forward, crushing the back and head of the rising little girl. The van pushed through five more of the gathering dead, probably not killing them, but knocking them away and breaking bones.
Scott turned the wheel and drove back the way they had come, leaving the pack behind them. He took the next right and drove fast down the streets. Houses flashed by. Scott turned left, looking for the street that would take them back to the main highway and the house. An intersection came up, and he went right, knowing that was the direction of out of town.
“Gus, where are we?” he asked, daring a look in the other man’s direction. Gus bounced in his seat, staring ahead and unresponsive. Scott saw that he hadn’t buckled up, and that the shotgun was pointed downward in the scabbard, into the seat. He didn’t know if he should worry or not, but if he hit something hard enough… visions of Gus blowing his own ass off filled his head.
“
Gus!
”
Gus leaned back in his seat as if trying to avoid something, his eyes fixed ahead.
Scott looked back at the road.
Well,
shit
.
A wall of zombies scores deep curtained off the street. Scott jammed on the brakes in time, but the beast’s nose still bashed the foremost ranks of the wall of deadheads. One reached up and clawed at the windshield. Others pawed at the side windows. More closed in on the sides, rattling the walls of the beast.
Grunting, Scott slapped the van into reverse and got its metallic ass away. The beast flew backward, the zombie wall falling away, and Scott realized in fright he didn’t know
where
he was driving in reverse as he had no mirrors.
“Oh, Jesus!” He slowed to do a ninety-degree turn. The ass of the beast smashed into something unseen and grated a metal squeal when Scott put the van back into drive. Something scraped the underside of the rear as he pulled ahead and swerved to the left. A side road loomed, and he took it, hoping beyond hope that he was right and the road led to the highway.
He slowed to forty and forced his breathing to calm. He drove down a long throat of a road, noting how the houses were the townhouse kind, built together in narrow plots with very little space between them.
Then his heart sank, and his jaw dropped.
The side street he had driven onto emerged into a fishbowl swath of pavement, hedged in by large houses built close together, with fenced-off backyards and deserted cars in some of the driveways.
A cul-de-sac.
“Sweet fucking monkey!” Scott jerked the wheel to the right, feeling the van ride the curve of the turn and circle back to the road leading out. He drove back the way he had come, revving the engine in his growing panic.
“Oh, fuck me…” he trailed off.
Just ahead, the concert crowd of undead shifted and oozed into the street like a massive carnivorous amoeba, sensing the entrapment of its prey. Scott slowed and stopped, glanced left and right. There was no way to drive the beast through the narrow walkways between the houses. In some cases, huge dead elms blocked any exit for the beast, unless he dragged Gus out and made a run for it. One look at Gus’ dead man’s stare killed that notion. The beast couldn’t penetrate the thing bearing down on them. They would plough into the first few ranks and stall against the press of dead bodies, perhaps even spin out on the corpses underneath while the remainder bashed and thrashed against the metal hull, until they broke through the windows or even rolled it over. It all ended badly for him and Gus.
The mass slid toward the beast.
Shaking his head, Scott did a ninety degree turn up over a small front lawn and turned back to the cul de sac. The van stopped in the middle of the pear-shaped dead end, and Scott focused on one two-story house. He saw the garage, the doors, the flimsy-looking windows. He looked around at all of the houses, seeing most were two-story, indefensible death traps. He had no other choice. No other choice at all.
“Fuck.” Scott head-butted the steering wheel with his lightning bolt helmet.
Then he reversed the van and backed it up in front of the front doorway of the house opposite the mouth of the cul-de-sac. He got up, went to the back, and locked the rear door. Gathering up four boxes of shells from where Gus had stowed them under the seats, he unzipped his coat and plopped them all inside, tucking the front of his jacket down the front of his jeans.
When he got out of the van, the advancing dead were spilling toward the mouth of the cul-de-sac. Scott raced around the front, shotgun in hand, and dragged Gus, still clutching at the tablecloth, out of his seat. With anxious glances over his shoulder, he dragged Gus to the front door and tried turning the knob. Locked,
of fucking course
, Scott seethed. He drove the butt of the shotgun through a pane of glass set into the door, then reached in and unlocked it. Grunting, Scott threw open the door and shoved Gus inside. He looked over his shoulder again and saw the mass of walking corpses coming into the far end of the cul-de-sac, beginning to fill up the bowl.
Hunting
, his mind whispered.
He slammed the door and locked it. Scott looked about for a chair. He ran down a short hallway and entered the kitchen, swearing to the Lord above that if he walked into another nest like the last one, he’d shoot Gus first and then himself. He grabbed a wooden chair, carried it back to the front door, and shoved-wedged it under the knob. It didn’t feel secure enough.
High ground
. Grabbing Gus by the shoulder and directing him forward, he pushed the man up a staircase to the second floor. They turned down a narrow hallway, and Scott found what he had hoped.
A trapdoor for an attic.
Frantically, Scott looked around. There was a linen closet nearby, and he opened it. Right inside was a long pole that ended with a hook. He grabbed and used it on the metal eye hanging from the ceiling. Scott pulled the door down to expose a folding stairway. He unfolded the stairs, the springs protesting loudly.
“Up!” Scott whispered and pushed Gus up the stairs. The wooden joints groaned at the weight, but held.
Scott thought he heard something down below.
Gus stopped halfway up the stairs, and Scott jabbed him in the ass with the pole, propelling him forward. On impulse, Scott glanced back into the linen closet and saw it stuffed with towels and blankets. Not thinking about why, he grabbed armfuls and threw them up into the attic.
Below, glass shattered.
Something crashed against the outside door. Wood squealed.
“Holy shit.” Scott climbed the steps to the attic. Darkness surrounded him, pierced only by light from a metal vent in a nearby wall. The attic had flooring in the main area, but bare black loaves of insulation lay beyond. Gus lay on a thick plank with his hands still holding the tablecloth to his chest.
Placing the shotguns to one side along with the ammunition, Scott got flat on his stomach. He stretched his arm over the edge and hooked the stairs. Grunting, he slowly folded the lower section into the middle part.
More glass shattering below. He wasn’t certain if the moaning was coming from Gus or the advancing fiends.
Grimacing, Scott hauled the stairway up into the attic, the springs squealing softly. Laying down the pole, Scott carefully moved over to Gus and covered him with blankets. He snatched the tablecloth away and gave him a clean towel for his face and beard.
“Shhhh,” Scott warned and looked around in the dark. There were boxes and suitcases stored in the attic, as well as books. He dropped to his hands and knees, and listened at the ceiling door.
Sounds of banging, followed by crunching of glass. Thudding. Wood squealing. Another crash of glass. Moaning. Moaning that, even as Scott listened, seemed to swell as voice after voice joined in, until a dreary river of sound filled the lower levels of the house. Sounds of crashing and wood being shoved aside punctuated the growing cacophony.
Well, fuuuuck
, Scott’s mind stated in awe and became silent.
Then, the noise began to rise.
Coming up the steps
, Scott thought.
Behind him, Gus whimpered softly.
Scott crawled over to where Gus lay. The man’s face was almost dead white in the dark, his black beard a mound of fresh ash. Gus squeezed his eyes shut as the fingers on one hand did a crab-like river dance on the flooring. Scott grabbed the twitching digits and covered them with the tablecloth.
“Listen to me,” Scott rasped, putting his mouth close to Gus’s ear. “Listen. They’re coming up the stairs. They’ll be here any second. You
have
to be quiet. Can you do that? You
have
to be still. Hold it together, okay?
Okay
?”
Eyes still closed, Gus nodded once.
Scott looked around the attic space and found an open box full of blankets. He quickly spread two dark ones over Gus before the moaning and hissing below became louder. The smell of the zombies’ approach reached his nose and made him screw up his face. Scott crouched down and lay on his belly, placing an ear to the edge of the trapdoor. Through the wood, he heard the river of corpses. They thudded into the walls and wailed a graveyard’s chorus. They passed under where Scott lay listening for any sign of being detected. Behind him, Gus remained quiet. For all he knew, Gus could be transforming into one of the dead. If that happened, Scott made the decision to finish him first and, if necessary, try and take his own life if escape proved to be impossible.
Scott didn’t want to end it in an attic.
The wailing continued, filling the whole upstairs. It sounded like a goddamn convention, and he struggled to control the impulse to do something. Something crashed, the sound muted by the attic flooring, then more glass broke. The stomp and shuffle of the unliving surged through the upstairs, until it seemed walking corpses filled the entirety of the upper floor.
Clenched fists near his face, Scott listened to the bodies moving around under him. His own heart threatened to beat its way out of its cage, and still they shambled along below. He glanced back at Gus and saw only a dark lump in the scant light.