An Axe to Grind (3 page)

The Kansas wind whipped into him and nearly bowled him over as he stepped out onto the small loading dock behind the auditorium. Despite the earlier summer heat, the wind had a chill to it and John shivered. He was still wearing the same t-shirt he’d sweated through earlier, although he’d put his Kevlar vest, leather gloves, and riot helmet back on as an added precaution. The sun was obscured by thunderheads that had accumulated in the south, and occasionally cold spatters of rain foretold an impending downpour. Still technically tornado season, John worried about severe weather. There was no longer any such thing as Doppler radar. He was not so much worried about riding out a twister, because his building was built like a fortress and had a basement designed as a civil defense fallout shelter, but he did harbor major concerns about what he’d do if a tornado blew some fucking zombies in to join him.

John adjusted the straps of the fuel canister to the modified driptorch he carried and settled the device more firmly on his shoulders. Flamethrowers and napalm were the stuff of movies, but in the Flint Hills, controlled burns were common practice among ranchers and he’d had no difficulty finding several driptorches in a machine shed on the outskirts of town. He’d spent enough time working on motorcycles to have some mechanical proficiency, and it had required only minor alterations to the driptorch to enable it to spew flaming diesel in a fifteen foot radius. Although the driptorch could work with gasoline he’d found that diesel was far more effective because it was heavier and more viscous, and adhered better to the walkers. Flaming zombies posed a special challenge; since fire didn’t immediately destroy or incapacitate them, they had a tendency to continue shambling around like torches until the flames superheated the cerebral spinal fluid in their brain cavities and their skulls exploded. His AR 15 was a far more useful tool for ensuring that they didn’t get close enough to matter. In addition to the rifle, he also carried a .38 revolver appropriated from the Gun Den, loaded with hollow point Fatboy cartridges designed to fragment and expand on impact. Perfect for head shots.

An armless corpse with gleaming, exposed ribs lurched around the corner of the building. It tripped over the rotting remains of a young man in a postal uniform that John had put down a week ago and hadn’t gotten around to hauling off to the burn pit he’d created at the city landfill. Somehow the thing remained upright, and it continued in his direction until John blasted the top off its skull off with the .38, casually returning the gun to its shoulder holster. At least four more of the walkers had made their way around the building, attracted to the sound of the shot and John’s scent. Two more of the dead things had emerged from the dark underpass below the train tracks where the Burlington Northern Santa Fe had made its daily run. John clicked off the safety on the rifle, took a deep breath, and peered into the telescopic sight. He found the closest moving figure, a shambling, decaying shape that was once a middle-aged woman, centered the crosshairs on her forehead, and squeezed the trigger. The rifle slammed back into his shoulder and he grinned wolfishly as she collapsed first to her knees, and then forward onto the pavement with most of her head missing. One shot, one kill. The corpses continued toward him, rotted flesh and rotted clothes fluttering in the wind. John shifted his aim, focused on another figure, and squeezed the trigger. He aimed and fired twice more. He put a single bullet through the left eye socket of a teenage boy in a faded black Slipknot hoodie. The back of the boy’s head exploded outward like gruesome confetti, streamers of gore in a macabre tickertape parade. His second shot obliterated the skull of an elderly man in coveralls and a red flannel shirt. Both corpses stayed down, brain matter leaking unceremoniously onto the pavement of Mechanic Street. Rain had started to fall lightly but steadily. It beaded up on the shatterproof mask on his helmet, and his vision was obscured further by condensation building up on the inside. He removed the helmet and let the rain soak his hair and run down his flushed cheeks as he watched the two remaining corpses approaching the intersection about fifty yards from his vantage point. At first he thought their height differential would be a problem; one of the walkers had been a little girl, her pink skirt floating above knees skinned to the glistening bone, the right side of her face missing, the left side sadly perfect. The other walker appeared to be a twenty-something Hispanic male with no apparent wounds other than a butcher knife embedded between his shoulder blades. They approached, jaws snapping, fingers clenching and grasping, stumbling his way like drunken marionettes. John watched with satisfaction as the older one tripped over the wire he had strung at ankle height between the light poles on either side of the street. A second later, the child-thing tripped as well, and both corpses landed across the coils of razor wire John had strategically placed across the road. Hung up in the razor wire, the walkers dangled and thrashed. John approached the wire barrier in several long strides and after assuring himself that they wouldn’t be able to tear themselves free, dispassionately set them aflame with the driptorch. The corpses were dry, and they flared up so quickly that they singed John’s eyebrows. He stepped back and watched them burn, and after several moments, watched their charred corpses stop thrashing.

Having cleared the south end of the building, John turned his attention to the west. He could hear rattling and scraping against the fire bay doors where several walkers were tearing at the building. Ineffectual as their efforts might be, they had to be stopped. Despite the lack of cognition, agitation seemed to spread through the dead like wildfire. A handful of agitated zombies would draw three times their number within five minutes, and then he would have a bonafide mess on his hands.

John risked a quick look around the corner of the building to get a sense of how many more walkers he’d have to deal with before calling it a day. A balding man in bloodied hospital scrubs leaned against the fire station door, hissing and running his hands over the smooth metal as if waxing a car. Two other walkers accompanied him. All stood with their backs to John, which was good. It provided him with an element of surprise. One of the walkers wore jeans and a black t-shirt, with a slight build and shaggy hair. John decided to save him for last; the others were bigger by at least a foot and most likely stronger and faster. He aimed his rifle from 25 yards away and put a round through the base of the skull of a tall, skinny main dressed in a three-piece charcoal business suit. The bullet must have entered his neck rather than his cerebellum, because instead of dropping like a sack of shit, the corpse swung around and growled, staring at John with yellow, vacant eyes. His shot must have done some damage because as the thing began to approach, its neck flopped loosely and was canted at an unnatural angle. Disgusted with himself for sloppiness, John peevishly shot out its kneecaps and watched it drop. It began crawling toward him as the other two turned and stared at him. John sucked in a deep breath, shocked. He never expected to see anyone he knew, they were all nothing more than mindless and insatiable bags of flesh that had stopped being human years ago.

“Hey Andy, what’s happenin’?” he asked the smaller man. “Been playing much lately?”

John shook his head in amazement, smiled, raised the butt of the rifle, and pulverized the skull of the dead man crawling toward him. He appraised his old guitar player, who was lunging forward on awkward, unsteady legs. The man in scrubs had advanced and was reaching for him when John inverted his grip on the rifle, and brandishing the barrel like a five-iron, swung it in a smooth arc and teed off on the man’s head. His neck snapped back with a stomach-churning pop and most of his face caved in like a soft melon. Andy paused and glanced down before continuing toward John. The man in scrubs didn’t move.

“C’mon buddy, no hard feelings, right?” John backed up several paces, not taking his eyes off Andy, and weighed his options. He could either put his guitar player out of his misery with a single, clean headshot, or he could bring him in. Problem was, the capture pole was inside. John risked a quick look over his shoulder and scanned the intersection for walkers. Nothing but stillness at the moment. The rain had increased in its intensity and Andy’s shirt clung to him like a wetsuit. John didn’t look any better, his wet tie-dyed t-shirt was draped across his beer belly and hung from him like a sodden circus tent. He only had a moment to decide. He didn’t want to chance going back inside for the capture equipment and return to find 10 or 20 more of the things milling around. He also didn’t want to lure Andy inside unsecured. John had never been quick on his feet and had no desire to be in close quarters in a dimly lit hallway with a ravenous corpse, guitar player or not.

A sudden clap of thunder jarred him into action. John placed the rifle on the ground and, grasping his riot helmet in both hands, stepped forward and savagely jammed it down backwards on Andy’s head, obscuring his vision and trapping his gnashing teeth inside a cocoon of shatterproof plastic. The lack of sight did nothing to deter him; Andy grasped for John, who deftly grabbed the bottom of his t-shirt and roughly yanked it over his head, trapping his arms and pulling him forward and over at the waist. The neck of the t-shirt was too small to slip off over his head with the riot helmet on, and allowed John to drag him forward into the auditorium. Andy flailed and growled like a recalcitrant dog on a harness. As they entered the building through the loading dock the rain came in a torrential downpour.

John shoved Andy into the fire station ahead of him, forcing him down the ramp. He glanced at the now silent monitors, which showed no further activity outside the building. He found an additional set of handcuffs and foot shackles, and in three quick motions secured Andy to the front end of the police car. The front bumper was designed for impact and would be able to withstand any indignities acted upon it. Andy would be unable to get free or do any major damage. John left the riot helmet jammed over Andy’s head; it wasn’t like he would suffocate. Andy was still tugging and fighting his restraints when John left the room and returned to the city water department, which was now for all practical purposes a mortuary.

The girl was right where he’d left her, strapped to the table and gazing at the ceiling. She perked up as he entered the room; the chains on her ankles clanked against the steel table. John was glad he’d kept her. She was attractive, for a corpse, and he’d seen a lot of corpses. He’d put her in the front row for sure. Working quickly, he slipped a thick black leather collar he’d specially designed around her neck and buckled it tight. The collar was attached to a seven foot metal chain that trailed down to the floor. Considerably more harmless without her teeth and nails, John unstrapped her feet from the table but did leave her ankle shackles on - a measure that constricted her mobility - just in case. He next unfastened the straps securing her waist, shoulders, and arms to the table and grabbed a shorter, telescoping capture pole. As she sat up on the table and turned to face him, John slipped the noose over her head and set the brake. He tugged her off the table and keeping her in the lead, guided her out of the clean up room and into the hallway toward the auditorium. She tried to turn around but he kept a steady pressure on the pole, forcing her forward. The girl fell to her knees when her feet became tangled in the ankle shackles. The second time she fell, the skin on her right kneecap split open, revealing an expanse of raw dark maroon inside gray-blue flesh, but the injury did not bleed so much as ooze. John figured he’d stitch it back up once he’d gotten her seated and properly situated with the others.

A pair of heavy wooden doors were at the end of the hallway. An iron bar was shoved through the door handles as an added precaution. Before removing it, John glanced up at the video monitor mounted above the doorway. The occupants were restless, tugging against their chains and collars. Charlie Simmons, the one walker he knew by name, a heavyset man with thinning hair who had once been city manager, had somehow gotten his suitcoat wedged between the old wooden seats and now crouched awkwardly in front of his seat, unable to change position. The Twins, two young women with nearly identical long blonde hairstyles, anorexic figures, and tank tops emblazoned with Greek letters for some now utterly irrelevant sorority, had become tangled up in each other’s chains and now lay squirming and struggling against each other in an aisle close to the stage. John wasn’t sure if he would untangle them immediately or wait a while. Even though they were corpses, it was still kind of hot. He’d actually played a gig in this town once before in late 1998, back when Wranglers had been a strip club. Kickstart had been the opening act for a troupe of hot oil wrestlers. The tips had been particularly poor that night, John remembered. The cowboys were saving their small bills for the girls. He knew that the night would be pretty much a loss when they played Sweet Home Alabama and nobody got up to dance. He hated that fuckin’ song anyway. He was certain he would hear it in Hell.