Apocalypse Of The Dead (45 page)

“Jail will make you angry,” he said. “It’s easy to be that way. You can’t help it when you’re locked up like that. Part of you resents the system for controlling everything you do, but another part of you kind of likes not having to take responsibility for yourself. I think those guys who let the anger eat them up are aware of that, at least on some level. They can’t decide who they hate more, the system or themselves. That’s a hard nut to crack. But then, you already know that, don’t you?”

“I’ve never been in jail, Billy.”

“No, I know that. But you’ve been blind most of your life. You’re asking me about jail because you’re wondering if feels the same way as being blind. That’s it, isn’t it?”

She didn’t answer him, but she didn’t look away, either. That’s it, he thought. I put my finger on it.

Neither of them spoke. A gust of wind shook the awning roof over their heads and Billy felt a chill across his skin. He’d already felt several wet, icy raindrops fall on his face.

He said, “Are you cold? I’m cold.”

“A little.”

“Would you like me to walk you to the office? It’s on my way.”

Colin watched them slip into the office.

He felt so incredibly angry. He’d been betrayed by a skinny, blind, dark-haired fashion victim. What in the hell was she thinking being with him? He’d heard only the end of their conversation, but that was enough. That piece of shit was trying to use his time in jail to hit on his girlfriend. And the disgusting little whore had bought it, hook, line, and sinker.

Jeff’s words echoed in his mind. You’ve lost more than anybody. You lost all that, and it left a vacuum inside you.

“Yeah, well, fuck that,” he said aloud. “Fuck that.”

Sure, he’d lost a lot, but fuck it all. Fuck them. Yeah, that was it. Fuck all of them. Jeff had thought he’d lost it all. Well, he was wrong. He hadn’t lost it all. He still had Kyra, no matter what that piece of shit Billy Kline thought. He had her, and he wasn’t going to lose her. She was his, damn it. She was his right now, his alone, and nobody was going to take her away from him.

Nobody.

Ed Moore woke to a siren blaring.

He sat up in bed quickly and tried to focus in the dark. The other men he shared this section of the dormitory with were sitting up as well, all of them looking around for an explanation.

Ed and Billy traded looks from across the aisle.

Ed got out of his cot and forced his feet into his boots. His toes were numb with the cold, and pressing them down into the leather sent pulses of pain through his feet.

“What’s going on?” Billy asked.

“Perimeter alarm,” Ed said. “Get your coat. Come on.”

A moment later, the two of them ran out into the biting cold of the North Dakota predawn morning. The ground glittered with a fine crystalline layer of ice. Everywhere they looked, the Grasslands seemed empty, almost pristine. Only the insistent blaring of the siren and the distant sound of men yelling broke the calm.

“Ed?”

“Sounds like it’s coming from the north gate.” He let out a frustrated breath that misted before his eyes. “Damn, I wish I hadn’t given up my guns.”

“What are we supposed to do?”

The community had drilled for fires, and most of the folks in the Grasslands had taken basic CPR, but they had no public zombie contingency plans. Jasper’s only public statement on the matter was that the perimeter fence would protect them from the small number of zombies likely to make it this far north. When pressed why non-Family members weren’t allowed to keep their weapons, he said only that the Family would protect them from any zombie danger. Now, Ed was kicking himself for not squirreling away one of his guns.

Floodlights came on to their right. Ed and Billy both turned that way and saw bright white light spreading across the icy ground.

Behind them, and to their left, more and more people were coming out of their dormitories. They looked confused and frightened. Ed could hear the low murmur of their confused voices.

“Come on,” he said, grabbing Billy by the sleeve.

“Where are we going?”

“Weapons,” Ed said.

He guided Billy over to the still-unfinished dormitory number six building and the two of them chose cast-off pieces of lumber to use as cudgels. Then they were sprinting toward the main gate, the ice crunching beneath their feet. The siren continued to blare. Others were following them.

As they got close to the dirt road where the community’s trucks were parked, they could see some of the armed patrols forming skirmish lines. Up ahead, in the bright glow of the floodlights, they saw the main gate hanging open and folded over at the top as though the supports that held it upright had been shattered. And beyond the gate, moving with agonizing slowness, were the infected.

Ed saw several hundred ruined faces, more than he had seen in one place since coming to the Grasslands. They were funneling toward the open gate. Several bodies already lay within.

As the patrols formed their lines, the sounds of yelling gradually died off, replaced by the rattle of sporadic gunfire.

One man was trying to yell orders to the patrols. Ed saw him waving wildly to somebody, but his features were lost in shadow and his voice drowned out by the roll of rifle fire.

Ed turned again toward the approaching zombies, but his gaze lingered on three of the corpses just inside the gate. There clothes were different from the other infected, newer, not soiled.

And then Ed was able to make out the face from the shadows, and he recognized Tom Wilder.

“Billy,” Ed said.

Billy was staring at the zombies pouring through the gate, but at the sound of Ed’s voice, he looked where Ed was pointing.

“What?” he said. And then he saw it. “Oh, shit.”

The gunfire was growing steadier.

Billy turned to Ed. “Ed, that’s Tom. What’s going on?”

Ed didn’t get to answer him.

The man who had been yelling and waving at them suddenly appeared in front of them. “What the hell are you doing?” he demanded. “You think you can do anything with sticks? Get back!”

And before Ed could protest, the man was pushing him back behind a makeshift cordon with the other members of the Grasslands.

Amid the sound of gunfire and people shouting and the constant, low vibrating moan of the infected came the sound of a truck approaching. Ed turned as the crowd of people around him zippered apart to let one of Jasper’s black Chevy Tahoes glide past.

The Tahoe stopped, and Jasper and Michael Barnes got out.

Barnes had an AR-15 slung over his shoulder. He wore a light black jacket and jeans over brown work boots, and he moved casually, like one accustomed to this sort of thing.

Immediately, Barnes took charge. He took up a point position and motioned for six other members of the patrol to form up in a V behind him.

Ed raised an eyebrow as they advanced. He had worked crowd control in the wake of the L.A. riots back in 1992 and he knew that a unit didn’t just fall into a fighting echelon position. It took lots of practice, lots of dress rehearsals. And even then it was hard to get right.

But Barnes and his team moved out silently, effortlessly. Barnes himself did most of the shooting. They advanced into the knot of zombies coming through the gate, their shots measured and precise. They made it look easy, and a moment later they had cleared the gate and were standing outside it, shooting at their leisure at every zombie that came within range.

Less than ten minutes later, with the echo of gunfire still sounding across the prairie, Barnes stepped back in through the gate. His AR-15 was slung over his shoulder again. There was a look of unflappable calm on his face.

Jasper was clapping, and a moment later, he was leading the crowd in cheers as he slapped Barnes on the back.

Ed watched it all with a growing sense of unease. Things were definitely not right. Not at all.

Later that afternoon, after lunch, Billy Kline was making his way through a crowd of people returning to their work when he saw Kyra Talbot slipping around the corner of the office building. He hustled after her.

But when he rounded the corner, she was gone.

He stood there, confused, looking around.

He saw her again as she came around the far side of the office. She was wearing a red blouse and blue jeans, her hair down over her face, not her usual ponytail. It looked like she was in a hurry not to be seen.

“Kyra,” he called after her.

She ducked her head and walked faster, feeling the wall with her fingertips for guidance.

“Kyra?”

Their last conversation had left him eager for more, and he broke into a trot and went after her.

“Kyra, wait up,” he said. He was coming up behind her now. “It’s me, Billy.”

She wouldn’t let him see her face.

“Kyra?”

He put a hand on her shoulder and she flinched.

“Sorry,” he said, pulling his hand away. “Kyra, it’s me, Billy. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I’ve got to go, Billy.”

“Hey, wait,” he said. He put his hand on her shoulder, and though she flinched again, he left it there. He turned her gently around to face him. “What’s wrong?”

But he could see what was wrong. She had her hair down over her left eye and cheek, but he could still the shiner and the busted lip. The wounds stood out on her pale and slender face.

“What happened?”

“Nothing,” she said. She touched the wall and turned away.

“Wait,” he said. “Who did this to you?”

“Nobody. I fell.”

“Bullshit,” he said. She flinched again, this time at the anger in his voice. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Kyra, please, who did this to you?”

Then it came to him.

“It was Colin, wasn’t it?”

She didn’t speak, but she gave a quick, almost imperceptible nod of her head.

“That bastard. Where is he?”

“Billy, please, you’ve done enough.”

“Me?”

“He heard us talking. I told him it wasn’t nothing, but he got so mad. The more I tried to make him understand, the madder he got.”

“Oh, God,” Billy said. “When did this happen?”

“This morning.”

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened them again, Kyra’s sightless eyes were pointed right at him. They were shining, but no tears had fallen.

She was scared. He could tell that. Surviving Van Horn had brought her out of her shell. That was what he had seen in her that first night in Emporia, Kansas, and that had attracted him to her. But her first attempt to trust somebody had gotten her this, and the injustice of it made him want to kick something.

“I think your eye’s gonna be okay,” he said. “But we need to put something on that lip. If I go get some ice, will you let me help you?”

She nodded her head slightly, and her hair fell down over her face again.

“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Will you wait for me here? I promise I’ll be right back.”

She nodded.

Kyra listened to his footsteps fading away in the grass and thought of running. She could probably make it back to her dormitory before he caught up with her, and she could spend the rest of the day in bed. If Aaron came looking for her, she could tell him she wasn’t feeling well. She had a stomachache. Her eyes were hurting. Hell, she could tell him any damn thing, just so long as they would leave her alone.

She hadn’t felt this helpless in a long time. It was worse than walking the highway after escaping Van Horn. Even, in a way, worse than losing Uncle Reggie. Since coming to the Grasslands, the world had grown brighter. She was contributing to the effort. She was making a difference. And then this, two hard slaps from someone she had trusted, from someone she had given her virginity to, and suddenly she was that scared and isolated four-year-old little girl all over again, alone in her head and alone in the world.

“It went smoothly,” she heard a man say. “Just like I said it would.”

The voice came from around the corner to her right. As quickly as she could, she ducked back around the corner to her left and pressed her back into the wall.

“That’s good, Michael. Very good. You did good work, getting the bodies out of here.”

Jasper’s voice! Kyra sucked in a breath.

“It wasn’t hard. We put ’em with the zombies we shot this morning and burned them.”

“Good.”

“But Jasper, our house isn’t clean yet.”

“Yes, I know. Those men had help.”

“That seems pretty plain, yeah.”

“Do you know who?” Jasper asked.

“Not yet.”

“But you’ll find them out.”

“Yes.”

“I cannot abide a traitor, Michael. Even that man who sins in his mind against me has betrayed me, and I will not abide a traitor.”

“No, of course not.”

“You’ll begin searching the village for the missing radios?”

“Immediately.”

“Very good,” Jasper said. “I’ll see you this afternoon then.”

Kyra heard the door to the office creak open, then slam shut. The second man’s footsteps faded away in the opposite direction. She stood absolutely still against the wall, listening, unable to catch her breath. She felt like the ground beneath her feet was shaking.

The whole world, it seemed, was shaking.

“Nate.”

A distant gunshot, somewhere down the hall.

“Nate, damn it, get up.”

More gunfire, three or four shots. Closer now.

From Nate, a mutter: “Get off me.”

Kellogg gave him a hard shake. He pulled the blankets away and saw the blood pooled under Nate’s thighs and under his buttocks. He saw the deep, ragged cuts up Nate’s left wrist.

“Nate, Jesus. Oh, Jesus. What did you do?”

“Fuck off. Lemme die.”

“Oh, crap, Nate.”

Kellogg threw the covers off the bed and scooped up one of the sheets. He tried to tear it with his fingers and couldn’t. He used his teeth until he felt the fabric give, and then he tore it into strips. “Here, give me your hand,” he said, and yanked Nate’s wrist into his lap. Working fast, he wrapped the strips around the wound, keeping up the pressure.

“Christ, you lost a lot of blood. What the hell were you thinking, Nate?”