Oh, yes. He
liked
.
“That’s right, fuckers,” he shouted, hurting his ribs and breaking the graveyard silence. “That’s
right.
.
Nothing moved.
Gus descended the ladder and walked unhurriedly back to the garage, holding his ribs and wincing. Ignoring the unmoving zombies around the front of the bay, he entered the dark cave, made a beeline for his locker, and found the rum on the top shelf. He drained it in two heartbeats and cracked open his spare. The fiery goodness made him gasp and lower the bottle to study the label with newfound fondness. He’d have to bring more up from the basement.
Sniffing only slightly to spare himself the pain in his ribs and nose, he grabbed a gas container and, with both hands, lugged it back toward the bodies lying inside the wall. Halfway there, he stopped to rest, swearing a few inspired words at his gimpish invaders. After a moment, he continued to the spot where he intended to burn the whole goddamn bunch. Some of the dead were splayed out away from the main pile, and he grabbed the stragglers by pants, legs, and arms. Holding his breath so he wouldn’t have to smell the worst of them, he dragged the gimps into a low pile, one at a time, and doused the works with gasoline. Each movement made his ribs ache, reminding him of his recent asskicking at Roxanne’s hands. He didn’t have the energy to go over the wall to get at the rest outside or to retrieve the pickup. That would be something for another day.
He fished out a pack of matches while taking shallow breaths that still hurt.
“Y’bastards came here to die,” Gus said as the snowflakes thickened and turned his Nomex gear white. “Know that now. And I’m the one who put the whole goddamn mob of you down. On this mountain, I’m the man. I’m the
king
. Dead fucks.”
He hunkered down and shielded the match as he lit it. The flame hissed into existence, and he held the match for a moment, appreciating its pureness. Before it burned out, he dropped it onto the mound of bodies, and a sheet of flame flared up, high and crackling. The fire flashed over the unmoving figures with ravenous intent, and the stink of roasting flesh accosted him. He lifted a hand and almost touched his nose before he remembered it was busted. Making a face, Gus backed away from the growing blaze, but the flames mesmerized him. The wind fanned it from the north, and the snow thickened even more. He figured on winter coming in earnest for some time, but he had mixed feelings on its early arrival. He had no snow tires on the beast.
The fire burned, devouring skin and cloth alike and turning the bodies into blackened lumps that crackled and sizzled. The warmth felt good on his face, and that heavy weariness came back, causing his shoulders to slump. Gus felt exhausted from the day’s killing. The sky continued to darken, and snow pelted his face. He took a breath and felt the sting in his stitched gums and chest.
Work
. Still had a lot of work to do. It wouldn’t be soon. All he wanted was to eat something, get drunk, and sleep. Or at least just get drunk. He’d need to be good and shitfaced to take off his goddamn helmet.
The cold took a hold of him as he left the fire. Grunting with each step, he made way back inside the house, leaving the dead to burn.
*
Gus woke up in an even harder condition than the one he had gone to bed in. His upper jaw ached dearly, and he made a face upon prodding at his gums. The booze he’d consumed the night before had numbed the pain enough for him to wrench off his helmet and eventually get to sleep. His arm dropped away from his mouth, and he simply lay there, tangled in the blankets, still dressed in his Nomex pants. He eventually swung his legs out over the bed. At some point, he had gone to bed fully clothed, not giving a shit.
He took a shallow breath to test his ribs. Still hurt.
“Roxanne…” Gus rubbed his legs. Women would be the death of him. Probably faster than the alcohol, which was another cause for concern.
“Not now, brain.” He staggered to his feet. Realizing he still had his boots on, he clumped toward the piss bucket stationed in the corner. He assumed the position and let go, sighing in morning relief and wondering why he didn’t keep the bucket in the bathroom. With a lingering scratch at his balls, he wandered out into the hallway, breakfast occupying his mind. Nothing crunchy and nothing cold. Soup it would be. He needed to eat, needed to keep up his strength, so he could heal.
Gus smacked his lips. He also needed a drink.
Wincing with almost every movement, he boiled water and made coffee, ignoring the shaking of his hands. He opened a tin of vegetable soup with a contrary can opener and emptied the contents into a small pot. Once he got that going, he settled down with his cup of instant and put in two fingers of rye whiskey just for taste. He ignored the dead men splayed in various poses on the floor of his kitchen. The time for dealing with them and their smell would come after breakfast. He sat down at the island and slipped into a morning death stare. Minutes later, Gus managed to get down his food, snarling from the pain of his extracted roots and gasping at how good the soup tasted. Afterward, he wandered into the living room, picked up his Nomex coat, and struggled into it as he went out into the garage. At his locker, he grabbed the bottle of Captain Morgan he’d started the day before and gulped down two swallows of confidence.
Then, he got to work.
Dark clouds continued to cover the sky, flicking snow at Gus, as if daring him to say something or pick a fight. He dragged all the bodies from out of and around the house to a red wheelbarrow, which only held one body at a time. He stopped often, favoring his aching ribs, nose, face, and jaw. By afternoon, he had dropped a total of fifteen bodies over the railing and cliff, piling them on top of Roxanne and the others.
He held onto the last body for a moment, taking out his Bowie knife and slicing off a long strip of denim from the dead man’s leg. Gus eyed the pale white limb, feeling sour inside, before pushing the corpse over the railing. He lugged a gas container to the deck and dipped the length of cloth inside, soaking it with fuel. He poured the rest of the contents over the railing onto the lump of corpses forty feet below his deck.
He looked down and thought once more of Roxanne lying under the whole bloody bunch. Then, conscious of the time and his pain, he struck a match, lit up the length of denim, and let it drop to the mound below. A ribbon of flame came to life as it fell, writhing in the air like an exotic snake. The cloth landed on a belly of one of the raiders and the gas did the rest.
Gus watched until the smoke irritated his senses, then he turned away.
*
Gus positioned two ladders against the wall: one to take him up and one to take him down the other side. Climbing up took longer than he expected, and swinging his legs over the top made something twist in his torso which momentarily froze him on the wall. Once the sensation had passed, he climbed down the other side, stepping on the very last rung before letting go of the ladder. With a huff, he lifted the Benelli and turned about, feeling somewhat exposed while standing outside of the wall. He strained to listen, but heard only the white-line buzz of silence in his own ears. He paid attention to where he stepped, wary of the defenses he’d set long ago––the planks studded with nails. The nail-studded strips of wood had claimed three cars in front of the wall, puncturing their tires and no doubt surprising the hell out of the drivers. That thought brightened an otherwise gloomy Gus. Looking past the cars, he eyed the far-off treeline and the road that sloped down and out of sight.
All empty.
“Hey!” he called out, Benelli at the ready with his fingers flexing on the pistol grip. “Hey! Dead fuckers! Yeah! I’m fuckin’ here, man! I’m fuckin’
waitin
’! Come on!.
Nothing stirred from the shadows. Nothing slinked from behind the cars.
Gus grunted and stalked to the mess of zombies piled against the gate and over the black pickup. Just behind the truck, a perfectly good motorcycle lay on its side, the noisy bastard that he’d heard cutting through the city. He pulled the thing upright and inspected the body. He knew nothing about bikes, but he recognized an electric starter. He patted the gas tank and, for a moment, just admired the crumpled curves of the machine. Bruised and dented, the outer shell reminded him of the beast. The name
Kawasaki
lay over the fuel tank in scratched chrome. The number
900
was stamped on another part of the lower engine. According to the speedometer, the thing could reach a hundred and eighty kilometers an hour. He depressed the starter button on the right handlebar, and the machine growled into life. He had the presence of mind to keep a grip on the clutch of the bike. He thumbed the button a second time, and the bike powered down.
Not bad
A bike could be helpful in the summertime, but he’d have to take the time to learn how to ride it, which was something he wasn’t keen on. A cousin of his had broken his neck on one of the things, prompting Gus to swear never to ride one. No, he’d stick to four wheels if he could, and a bicycle if he couldn’t. He pushed the motorcycle to the side of the road, mindful of the nailed planks hidden in the snow. He couldn’t see a kick stand, so he laid the bike on its side again.
He regarded the truck and the dead around it. The snow covered everything in white fluff, filling open mouths, empty eye cavities, and the nooks and crannies among the tangle of limbs. Gus walked to the rear of the truck, noting suitcases were piled in the back. The Ford hybrid had a four-door extended cab. When he opened the driver’s side door, he saw that the keys hung from the ignition.
“That’s what I like to see.” He threw the Benelli into the passenger seat and got aboard. A foul smell lingered in the interior, and torn instant noodle wrappers littered the floor. The door to the glove compartment was missing, and a great set of fuzzy dice dangled from the rear-view mirror. He checked the rear-view mirror and blinked. All clear.
“All right then,” he muttered and started the truck. The dead shuddered and slid off the hood, their frozen limbs tipping upward as they fell, reminding Gus of dark jagged ice. He twisted around in the seat to see where he was going, and once he had enough space cleared between the log jam of zombies, he stopped and placed the truck in park.
He got out of the vehicle and studied the mound of dead and the ones littering the ground. Mulling it over, he finally decided to burn what he could of the pile at the gate. The ones around the wall didn’t concern him so much, but he needed to get rid of that ramp of flesh. With that intention, he climbed the ladder, perched atop the wall, and pulled the ladder up after him as he climbed down the other side. The effort made his ribs scream and left him bent over and wincing for seconds.
He scuffed through the area where he’d burned the corpses. The fire had eaten well, ravaging most of the bodies down to stark, soot-spotted bone. His ribs continued warning him with bell-like chimes of pain as he labored with the gate, taking down the wooden beams bracing it. He took several breaks—saying,
“Goddamn it”
—every time until he was able to open the gate. He doused the corpses on the other side with gasoline and readied a match. He sheltered the flame with his hand and dropped it on the bodies. A huff and the fire quickly spread, feeding on the dead with a focus as single-minded in purpose as the corpses had been when animated.
Gus straightened and watched the funeral pyre as it grew, lighting up that section of the wall and pushing back the encroaching gloom of the storm. Larger flakes of snow swirled, dancing on violent air currents. Shreds of black ash joined in above and around the growing blaze. He looked up at the darkened sky and wondered where the day had gone. He figured there was no way to close the gates, not with the fire going, so he would leave it to burn away as much as possible and close the gates in the morning.
If anything, dead or alive, found him during the night, he’d let his new best friends, Benelli and Ruger, do the talking.
*
Gus woke up to discover two inches of snow had fallen during the night, and the heavy cloud cover suggested more was on the way. He got up and sleepily checked his wounds. Everything still hurt. The holes in his gums had stopped bleeding and, while looking bruised, didn’t seem to have any signs of infection. He thanked God for that, but cringed at the face in the mirror, still battered and bruised in a harsh display of red, purple, and yellow. Long lines of blood-crusted scabs marked the trenches Roxanne had clawed in his face, and Gus wondered how the hell she hadn’t permanently blinded him. The woman could fight.
He rinsed his mouth with an antiseptic and went about the rest of his morning routine, feeling how cold the house had become from the broken door.
That, and the lack of human company.
After breakfast, he suited up. He studied the motorcycle helmet and thought of his nose. Missing that important piece of armor didn’t set well on his nerves, but he shuddered at the thought of trying to get the helmet over his nose again. He tried slipping on his ninja hood, but the pressure on his nose made his eyes water. Swearing, he elected to go without anything on his head. The wind chilled him as he wandered out to the gate, his bootprints marking the way in the snow. The fire had died during the night, and the mound of bodies still hadn’t burned completely. A light coating of snow covered the remains, and knobs of charred bone and bent knees rose above the mess. Gus arched his back, feeling the creak and crack there, and adjusted the Nomex coat. He had to do two things. He had to get building supplies—planks of wood and sheets of plastic in particular—and seal up the ruined sliding door in the living room. Then, he had to clear the gate and seal the wall. The scale of the assault wasn’t lost on him—he’d shot hundreds—but others could arrive at any time. The cold would slow them down, but wouldn’t stop them. The wall was the first and best defense in keeping them at bay, and he needed to secure it.
Periodically muttering to himself, he hauled out another gas container and doused the leftover dead. He lit the pile once more and howled at the height of the flames. Gus peered over the fire, through the gate, and saw the dark husk of the pickup. He didn’t want to chance driving down the mountain road with the beast. The beast was a summertime animal. The pickup was his best bet in winter.