Necrophobia #3 Read online

  “There’s nobody here,” Robin said.

  I knew it, but I had to look.

  I found a crumpled pack of cigarettes on the floor. Winston’s. That was the brand Diane, my sister-in-law, smoked. It meant nothing, of course. Lots of people smoked those. It didn’t necessarily mean that she had dropped them. Yet, I was certain she had. I kept picturing in my mind the horror of her last moments. She would have died protecting Paul and Tuck would have died protecting them both.

  Enough. Christ, I had to quit kicking myself.

  I went up the stairs slowly, making sure each step was strong enough to support me before I put my full weight upon it. The last thing I needed was a twisted ankle or a broken leg. Upstairs it was dim. I stepped into a room and pulled some heavy shades aside, letting the light in. Dust motes danced in the beams. The room was empty. Robin started poking into the bedrooms so we could get this done with already, I knew. The bedrooms were uniformly dirty and looked to have been unused for some time. If my people had been there, it didn’t look as if they had stayed.

  I heard Robin grumble in the room down the hall, then there was a crash and she let out a cry. I heard her gun fire twice. I ran down there and saw she was on the floor. A dresser was tipped over. That’s what I saw in the split second I took in the scene. Then some black and twisted shape came out of the dimness at me. It was awkward and staggering almost like it was drunk. I brought the gun up, but I didn’t dare shoot because Robin was too close. Gnarled hands reached out and batted me aside. I hit the floor and lost my Colt. As I went down, I saw a fright mask of a face, the skin peeled from it. It looked like a skull covered in jellied tissue, two huge, lidless eyes staring out at me.

  It was coming for me.

  “WATCH IT, STEVE!” Robin called out.

  I saw the bloody, grinning muzzle of the zombie as it came at me. I backpedaled on my ass on the floor, fumbling around for my gun. The zombie made a low hissing sound like a leaking aerosol can, fleshless hands reaching out for me. It was snapping its teeth, already anticipating biting into me. I saw Robin come out of the doorway with the .25 Targa in her hand. She fired twice. The first bullet missed and drilled harmlessly into the woodwork. The second went into the zombie’s throat, scattering blood against the wall.

  It seemed such a slow, shambling creature, I would never have anticipated what it did next. As Robin corrected her aim, it moved at her with terrifying speed, foam and blood coming out of its mouth. It reached out and she fired, but it had her. It seized her and would have bitten into her long before I could have gotten to her, but as it grabbed her, she planted the barrel of the Targa right between its eyes and put a round right through its skull.

  It released her instantly.

  Its hands clawed at its head. It started towards Robin, then turned and came at me, then stopped, stumbled into the wall, made that hissing sound…and fell dead at our feet. I got up. My gun was inches from my left boot. I picked it up and I saw Robin glaring at me.

  “Good shot,” I said.

  “Good shot,” she said, sarcastically. “This is why you don’t go around exploring fucking places like this. This is the kind of shit that happens. You’re supposed to be the adult. You should know better. You’re fucking reckless, Steve. You’re a reckless fucking moron.”

  Yeah, she had some kind of mouth on her.

  She was essentially right. The problem was, she couldn’t understand what I was going through and the terror I lived with that Paul was dead, that Tuck and Sabelia and Diane and all the others were dead, too. That the only remaining cord that tethered me to my life, my real life before The Awakening, had been cut. I think she was too young to appreciate the parental imperative burning hot inside me to find my son or die trying. Maybe I’m not giving her enough credit.

  I checked the barn next, leaving Robin over by the farmhouse, fuming.

  It was empty. There was nothing but some old hay and lumber in there. If it had been used—maybe as a garage for the Strykers—then I saw no evidence of it. I walked back over to the SUV and sat behind the wheel, thinking, thinking. There was still the burned-out hulk of the Stryker. That’s what bothered me. That’s what I could not get past.

  Robin sat next to me. She did not speak for some time. She lit a cigarette and stared out across the farmyard. Finally, she said, “What’s it about, Steve?”

  “What’s what about?”

  “Well, you want to find your kid and your friends.”

  “Right.”

  “Then what?”

  I found myself at a loss for an answer. For so long that’s all that had been keeping me going, I just hadn’t really, seriously looked past it. “Um…well, make some kind of life for ourselves,” I said. I filled her in on the plan behind Bobby Hughes’ farm; a self-sustaining, agricultural existence, living off the land, going back to our roots, so to speak. “That’s the beginning. That’s how we start.”

  “And ARM? The other militias?”

  “Hopefully, we’re remote enough that they can’t find us. But if they want to fight, we hit them hard. It’s us or them.”

  “And the zombies?”

  “Eradicate as many as we can. Kill them in droves. Eventually, that problem will take care of itself. They can only last so long. They’re rotting. Falling apart. One day, there won’t be anymore. And if there is, it won’t be like now where there’s millions.”

  She pulled off her cigarette. “Okay, say ARM and the other fuckhead militias are killed off. The zombies are gone. You just sit around and farm until you die?”

  “No, we won’t be alone. We’ll take other survivors in with us. Other farms will spring up. Eventually, there’ll be communities. Villages. Maybe real towns someday. Civilization will be put back together.”

  “Ah, I get it. Back to the way we were.” She laughed. “That’s a good idea. Pretty soon, we’ll overpopulate and run the fucking maze again like rats. Crazy assholes will get guns and shoot up schools and movie theaters. Dipshits will crash planes into buildings. We’ll fight and hate and fight some more. Yeah, I really want that back.”

  I sighed. “Just because it was rotten last time, doesn’t mean it’ll be rotten again.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure it’ll be better. People won’t shit on each other and assholes won’t grab power and the rich won’t suck the blood of the working class.”

  I laughed. “You’re very socially conscious for someone your age.”

  “I have an old soul. My mom told me so. I’ve seen the same rich trash ruining this world again and again. While other kids my age were buying into it, playing lame video games and listening to recycled music and going to see one shitty movie after another so the rich fucks could fatten their wallets, I just sat on the sidelines and got sick to my stomach.”

  “So you like this?”

  “I like the fact that the human race got exactly what they fucking deserved.”

  “You can’t mean that.”

  “I do.”

  She was quite a kid. A tough street kid on the outside, a closet social activist and reformer on the inside, and an angry nihilist to boot. It would have been interesting, I thought, to dig deeper, to know her pain and understand the awfulness that made her so hateful. But, she was young and more than a little naïve. Or…maybe I was just old and out of touch. Regardless, it didn’t much matter now. Whether we were meant to survive by the hand of some higher power or we were just a bunch of cunning animals with delusions of godhood, we’d keep scrambling to stay alive until there was none of us left.

  The world had shit its pants and all we could do was wave away the stink and keep the flies down. That was our inheritance.

  “There’s other farms down the road,” Robin said. “We might as well check them out.”

  But I could tell by the way she said it that she didn’t believe for a moment that there would be anyone alive at them.

  ROAD RAGE

  We drove on another five miles or so before we heard the motorcycles. They came on
with a roar like a Panzer army was coming up behind us. I was shocked into inaction initially…what the hell was this? I didn’t figure the deadheads were riding hogs, but for one moment the possibility occurred to me and a cold chill spread up my spine.

  But these weren’t the dead.

  They were bikers.

  And not the yuppie kind trying to look cool on the weekends with their leathers and bandannas, living out road warrior fantasies, but the real thing: outlaw bikers. I looked over at Robin and she looked not only concerned, but scared. And she wasn’t one to look that way for no reason.

  “Steve,” she said, “we better get the hell out of here and fast.”

  “Who the hell are these guys?

  They had not overtaken us yet. They were just hanging back, bikes roaring and snarling like beasts hungry for good red meat.

  “Death Angels. A biker gang.”

  “Jesus Christ…a biker gang? Now?”

  It seemed inconceivable to me. The world had fallen, the dead had risen from their graves, and crazy militias were swarming about like flies after the same turd…but bikers?

  “They work for ARM,” Robin said. “They get people for ‘em. Collect ‘em up for the Farms.”

  That was a new one on me. “The Farms?”

  “Shit, Steve? Don’t you know anything? The Farms, man. The fucking Blood Farms.”

  I increased speed and the Death Angels stayed right with me, riding in formation.

  “All right. What the hell are you talking about?”

  Robin just sighed and shook her head. “Where have you been? You never heard of the Blood Farms or the things that run ‘em? Jesus Christ, man. You need to get out more. Booger-eaters like the Death Angels collect people for the Farms.”

  It made no sense. I had never heard of Blood Farms or any of that. ARM was the top echelon militia. I knew that. The Death Angels worked for them. Okay. But what did she mean by things? Zombies? But there was no time to throw fifty questions at her. Things were heating up.

  “C’mon, Steve, pour it on!” Robin said. “They’re…I think they’re going to make their move!”

  She was right. In the rearview, the Death Angels were getting closer, closing the gap. I stomped down on the accelerator, leaving them behind. It seemed like it might work, too, for a few seconds, but it was only a catalyst. They came roaring after us and the closer they got, the more I heard not only the growl of their bikes but the wild, whooping yells of the pack itself.

  That’s when they started shooting.

  The first few rounds glanced off the rear of the Toyota. By then, I could see the forward riders aiming pistols at us and firing at random. I couldn’t see what they had, but my guess was 9 mils, maybe .45s. They were gaining, but I kept pushing the SUV faster, keeping a good five or six car lengths between us. Trying to fire handguns from those jarring, rumbling bikes and at that distance, chances were slim they’d do any real damage. But all it took was a crazy ricochet or a ruptured gas tank.

  That’s when I saw that one of them had a rifle and he was balancing it on his handlebars.

  “GET DOWN!” I shouted at Robin.

  She did just as a few slugs drilled into the truck, taking out the rear window. Another couple glanced off the bumper and one of them took out the rearview mirror, spraying shards of glass through the cab. It was a lucky shot. It had to be, though I had no doubt that guys like the Death Angels might have been more than a little practiced at shooting from their bikes. Regardless, one of them was going to drill me right in the head.

  The main pack—I guessed about twenty riders—were hanging back now, but a smaller group were pushing forward, getting on up close to us. They fanned out over the road, and all of them, I saw, had rifles. This was where things not only got ugly, but deadly. Both Robin and I were belted in. That was good with what I had in mind.

  “HANG ON TIGHT!” I told her.

  The forward riders had their rifles balanced on their handlebars. They began to shoot. Slugs tore through the cab. Bullet holes appeared in the windshield. Gripping the wheel tightly, I waited until the bikes were less than two car lengths behind and I jammed on the brakes. The tires squealing, we laid burnt rubber for twenty feet.

  The bikes couldn’t stop.

  One of the Angels did some fancy trick riding and whipped past us, another piled his bike, flipping end over end with it. The other two smashed right into the back of the Toyota. The impact was devastating for them. One guy bounced off the back of the SUV and went down shrieking. Another bounced right over the cab and fell onto the hood in a bloody, tangled mass.

  The main pack geared up and came at us full throttle before the bodies even stopped falling. I jammed down on the accelerator, fishtailing over the pavement, and driving right over a downed Death Angel. I opened the Toyota up and we went flying back the way we had come, zooming in on the pack like a rocket. They started pulling off the road, many of them going right down into the culvert. Two and then three riders couldn’t clear in time and I knocked them aside and just kept rolling. A few rounds were fired at us, but we were already out of range.

  I was proud of myself.

  I thought I handled it all pretty damn slickly.

  “You’re fucking nuts!” Robin told me, but I could see that she was not only impressed with my driving skills—or lack of common sense—but that she had enjoyed the ride. “Absolutely fucking whacked!”

  I lit a cigarette, channeling a cool James Dean, and had a few drags. I think we were both feeling pretty good about ourselves. There’s nothing that can beat the rush you get after action like that. It’s pure endorphin-fired brain candy. I had felt it in the war and too many times since. I felt like I was skating on a cloud. Christ, I owned that cloud and Robin was skating with me. These were the images in my head, sewn from some crazy yarn balling up at the bottom of my mind.

  “We might want to get off the road,” Robin said after a few minutes of bliss. “Those assholes won’t give up. They’ll be coming for us.”

  Of course they would. Did I really think it would be that easy? Only in movies was anything that clean, that smooth, that simple. We came around a bend in the road and I caught sight of an armored vehicle. Not a Stryker, but a Marine Corps LAV-25. I had about enough time to register that and then the world was turned upside down.

  Something hit the SUV with such force that the wheel spun out of my hands.

  I heard Robin scream.

  The Toyota was in the air. The impact of what had hit us—they had opened up with 25mm chain gun, I realized later—had pretty much ripped the vehicle from its frame and we were airborne, pointed up at the sky like a missile in flight.

  Then we came down, smashing, crashing, bouncing and rolling over again and again. Finally, we thudded to a halt. The cab was filled with smoke and debris, a sheet of spiderwebbed glass covering my face. I frantically clawed it free. The cab was upside down and I vaguely saw Robin hanging from her seat belt harness like a loose-limbed rag doll.

  “Get ‘em out of there,” I heard a voice say. “If they’re breathing, take ‘em. We can use as many as we can get.”

  That’s what I heard as I swam in and out of consciousness. I felt numb from head to toe like I had snapped my spine. I couldn’t seem to orientate myself. I tried to make my hands fumble at the seat belt catch, but it was hopeless. It was like trying to play piano with boxing gloves on.

  I could hear my voice moaning as the passenger side door was finally worked free with a great creaking.

  “Not Robin,” I managed. “Not…her.”

  I saw men taking hold of her. They didn’t bother with catch of her belt. They had knives in their hands and they cut her free. She fell into a heap amongst the wreckage and they dragged her out.

  Then they were coming for me.

  I think I swore at them right before everything went black.

  LAV-25

  Type: Armored Vehicle

  Weight: 12 tons

  Length: 19 feet


  Operational Range: 410 miles

  Armor: Modular

  THE CAGE

  A breeze.

  I remember feeling a fresh breeze and it soothed me, calmed me, because I knew I was back in Yonkers and The Awakening had never happened. It was all some terrible dream. It was a summer morning and I was upstairs in bed. The window was open; we always slept with the windows open. I hadn’t gotten up with the alarm, so that meant it was a Saturday or a Sunday and pretty soon I would smell bacon frying from downstairs as Ricki made breakfast.

  Nice.

  Very nice.

  But the smell of bacon wasn’t coming and my eyes opened, the horror of reality insinuating itself. I wanted to close them again, but I didn’t dare. My vision focused and unfocused and I saw men standing around me. They were dirty and ragged, but they weren’t zombies and they weren’t militiamen.

  I remembered the SUV crash. “Where’s Robin?” I asked, looking around. “Is she okay?”

  “You need to take it easy, man,” a voice said.

  “Just relax. You’ll be all right,” said another.

  “That’s the way,” said still another.

  Then my eyes snapped open and I jumped up. “Robin!” I cried out with sudden terror as I remembered the crash. “Where’s Robin? Where the hell is Robin at? Is she all right?”

  The three men with soothed me, told me I had to calm down. They didn’t know anything about Robin. We were in an ARM encampment, they informed me. If Robin was alive, she would be with the women on the other side of the compound. ARM did not let their prisoners mix.

  I sucked in a few deep breaths, calming myself.

  Sitting up, I saw we were in a cage. It was an area about the side of a two-car garage enclosed on all sides by ten-foot chain-link fences topped by tangles of barbwire. It was climbable, I saw right away, but you’d have a hell of a time navigating the barbwire up top without ripping yourself open or getting snagged in it. I could picture myself snared up there, dangling, ARM pukes taking potshots at me to knock me clear.