Dawn of the Dead (18 page)

She still didn't respond or move toward him.

“Frannie. Come on.”

Grinding her second cigarette out on the floor, she stretched out next to Steve. Tentatively, he put his arm around her. When she didn't push it off, he tightened his hold, and then began rubbing his hand up and down her body as he curled next to her. Staring into her eyes, that seemed to be focused elsewhere, he opened her blouse and reached inside. He closed his eyes and seemed to relax in the comfort of her softness. His hand moved under her clothing. Fran still hadn't spoken, and her face was set in a grim, thoughtful expression. At first she didn't respond physically at all, but then at Steve's insistence, she relaxed her body, and she brought one of her arms up around his head.

“I'm not just being stubborn,” he told her softly as his hands explored her hardening nipples under her clothing. “I really think this is better. Hell, you're the one's been wantin' to set up house.”

She continued to stare off across the barren room impassively.

In the administration corridor, all was quiet. A few stray zombies wandered among the corpses on the floor. One large and severely wounded creature came out of the fire stair, probably the one that had been pounding on the door upstairs.

A female zombie, dressed in jeans and a sweater, in her early twenties, squatted near one of the corpses in the hall. She lifted its arm and moved it to her mouth, but she dropped it quickly, repelled by its coldness. Then she leaned over and picked at another corpse, just like someone at a smorgasbord. This one was cold, too. Discouraged, the zombie stood and drifted toward the mall.

Slowly the creatures left the corridor and moved out onto the second-floor balcony. The central mall was strewn with the bodies of their not-so-lucky comrades. Here and there a few zombies squatted and finished off their dinner.

Meanwhile, the radio in the upper room droned on and lulled the inhabitants to a fitful sleep:

“. . . not actually cannibalism . . . Cannibalism in the true sense of the word, implies an intraspecific activity . . . These creatures cannot be considered human. They prey on humans . . . They do not prey on each other . . .”

On the mall balcony, zombies wandered past the stores, as if out for a Sunday stroll. Some moved down the stationary stairs onto the main concourse below. More and more zombies had been filing in from the surrounding communities, as if their normal lives continued; schools, offices and shopping malls continued to attract the walking dead.

The huddled bodies of Steve and Fran were intertwined behind the cartons. Roger was stretched out in a sleeping bag that he had found in the camping department. Only Peter slept sitting up, at his post near the fire door, his rifle slung across his lap.

The radio continued:

“They attack and . . . and feed . . . only on warm human flesh . . . Intelligence? Seemingly little or no reasoning power. What basic skills remain are more remembered behaviors from . . . from normal life.

“There are reports of the creatures holding tools, but even these actions are the most primitive . . . the use of external articles as bludgeons, et cetera. Even animals will adopt the basic use of the tools in this manner.”

At the mall entrance, some of the creatures drifted out into the night, while others entered the enormous building. Although there were not as many as there had been in the afternoon, the number was enough to be reckoned with. Several creatures continued to claw at the roll gate to Porter's. In a strange and eerie montage, the staring, painted eyes of the mannequins inside seemed to watch the zombies on the outside. The rattle of the gate mingled with the droning, fading sound of the Muzak.

“These creatures are nothing but pure, motorized instinct . . .” a gravelly voice was saying to her. She shook her head, looking about for the person who belonged to the disembodied voice, and realized that she had been sleeping and the voice that had wakened her was only the television.

Her body was stiff from lying on the thin blanket on the cold cement floor. Couldn't those wise guys have thought to steal a mattress, she thought, as she tried to rub the stiffness out of her back. The morning sunlight spilled through the skylights above. Sitting up, Fran peered into the next area of the room. The television was playing to no one. The men were gone. On the tube a disheveled man sitting in an emergency newsroom read the report:

“Their only drive is for the food that sustains them. We must not be lulled by the concept that these are our family members or our friends. They will not respond to such emotions. They must be destroyed on sight . . .”

Fran quickly glanced to make sure that the barricade was in place at the fire stair door. At least they weren't stupid enough to go on another search-and-destroy mission this morning, she thought.

Looking up, she realized that the men must have gone up on the roof through the open skylight.

At the edge of the roof, Peter looked through binoculars. To the untrained eye, it would have looked like a lovely countryside, the mist rising as the sun climbed higher in the sky. But Peter knew better. About a quarter of a mile away, he saw the large warehouse of a food-processing chain. Probably owned by old man Porter, he thought to himself. And considering the state he's in now, he certainly wouldn't mind lending the survivors a hand.

In the yard and in the large open garages of the building, Peter noticed a fleet of enormous trailer trucks that were parked in rows. A plan was forming in his mind. He had explained the germ of it to Steve and Roger over their breakfast of lukewarm instant coffee and Spam.

“You sure we can start 'em,” Steve had asked.

“You haven't spent enough time on the street,” Roger chimed in. Starting cars, especially these big semis, was Roger's specialty. He had practically learned it at his daddy's knee. When his daddy was home from the road, that is.

“Well, let's get it up,” Peter barked. He was never one for idle chatter, and for all the time they had been together, Steve and Roger still felt that Peter was a stranger. He hadn't opened up once or said anything personal except for the few short minutes of conversation in the chopper.

“There's not too many of 'em around yet this morning,” Peter continued, looking at the parking lot below.

The parking lot was dotted with the lumbering figures. There were fewer than there had been the day before and they wandered aimlessly, spread out rather than in clusters.

The men walked toward the skylight. In the storage area below, Fran examined the maps in the manual. The TV droned on. It was a familiar sound now, almost like white noise. They didn't hear it when it was on, but if it were off, they'd notice it.

“Hey, Fran . . .” Roger called in a friendly tone as the men made their way down into the room.

“I would have made coffee and breakfast, but I don't have my pots and pans,” she said bitterly.

Roger laughed, thinking it a joke, but Steve could sense the tension in Fran's face and waited for her to explode. Peter seemed preoccupied with his equipment and hadn't even acknowledged Fran's presence.

“Can I say something?” she asked.

“Sure. What do you mean?” Steve said gently, hoping to forestall any argument.

She looked at the three men, who had stopped their fiddling around and stood waiting for her to go on. “I'm sorry you found out that I'm pregnant, because I don't want any of you to treat me any differently than you'd treat another guy.”

Steve blushed and looked around at the other men.

“Hey, Frannie, come on . . .”

“And,” she went on, shooting Steve a deadly look, “I'm not gonna be a den mother for you guys.”

They all looked at her now, even Peter, giving her their undivided attention.

“And I want to know what's going on. And I want something to say about the plans. There's four of us, OK?”

“Jesus, Fran . . .” Steve bellowed, putting his hand to his head. She was really blowing it now. They probably thought she was a hysterical female, Steve decided.

“Fair enough!” Peter chimed in, a smile on his face.

For the life of him, Steve couldn't figure that one out.

“Now,” Fran went on, picking up confidence. “What's goin' on?”

“We're goin' out,” Peter said, but this time he wasn't smiling.

Fran started to say something, but at this point he cut her off.

“. . . and you're not coming with us!”

Fran started to turn red and protest. Peter had made believe that he agreed with her, and now he was back to being his same overbearing male chauvinist pig self.

“You will not come with us until you can handle yourself,” he said slowly and deliberately, as if he were speaking to a child. “That means you learn to shoot and learn to fight.”

He turned, not even waiting for her reply, and started back up the pyramid. Roger followed, his head down. He couldn't look Fran in the eye.

“Something else.” She said it with determination. She wasn't going to let Peter step all over her as he did to Roger and Steve.

They all turned to look at her again. This time she faced Roger and Peter directly, without giving a second glance to Stephen.

“I don't know about you two, but I wanna learn how to fly that helicopter.”

Stephen's mouth fell open, and he looked at Fran in disbelief. She glared at him and then lowered her eyes.

“If anything happens . . . we've gotta be able to get out of here.”

Stephen was speechless. Not only was Fran humiliating him in front of the two troopers, but she was implying that he was dispensable. He looked at her and then at the others. He could feel a flush spreading up from his neck.

“She's right, Flyboy,” Peter chimed in. “Come on, let's go.”

“And you're not leaving me without a gun again.”

Stephen started to protest, but then he changed his mind.

Dejected, he set his rifle down on the cartons and fished in his pocket for a fistful of shells, dumping them next to the gun. He stared at Fran, as if he were a beaten dog, both angry and hurt.

“I just might be able to figure out how to use it,” she said as she picked up the weapon and shot a glance up at Peter.

The two troopers disappeared through the skylight. Stephen seemed frozen to the spot, focusing on a speck of dirt on the floor.

“I'm sorry, Stephen,” Fran said, moving close to his side. But it wasn't an apology.

“I know . . . I know . . . it's all right.” He started up to the skylight.

“Stephen,” she said soothingly.

“Yeah?”

He stopped and turned to look at her. She seemed to be crying out for understanding, but he was incapable of running to her. She had damaged him in front of Peter and Roger, and he had tried so hard to gain their respect. Now, by standing up to him, defying him, and showing the troopers that she wanted to be on her own, they probably thought less of him.

But Fran's intention wasn't to hurt his masculine image, and this was something Steve couldn't fathom. Fran could see in his eyes that he didn't understand the necessity of her actions. She shrugged off whatever she was going to say and sighed with exasperation.

“Be careful,” she said tonelessly, as if by rote.

“Yeah, we'll be all right.” He disappeared through the skylight. Fran stared down at the weapon in her hand and then stepped over and clicked off the television set.

It was ironic, but this situation was teaching her more about Stephen than she could ever have imagined. It was sad, too, that with their lives on the line they had to deal with such pettiness. The experience was also teaching Fran a lot about herself that she hadn't realized before. It was teaching her that she had a lot more strength than she had ever thought and that she didn't always need a man to lean on.

Stephen entered the pilot's seat of the chopper. He was really upset by Frannie's actions. He started the controls, and the sudden loud noise of the chopper engine made him jump. Roger and Peter ran over, ducked under the whirling blades, and got in. Slowly, the bird lifted off the rooftop. The plan was for Steve to fly the chopper over to the tractor-trailer parking field and let the troopers off. Once in the big trucks, Roger would hot wire the motors and they would drive the trucks over to the various entrances to the shopping mall and park them flush against the doors, preventing the outside zombies from entering, and the inside zombies from leaving—alive.

As Steve hovered above, Roger worked on the wiring beneath the dashboard of one of the big trailer trucks. His fingers moved nimbly, as skilled and trained as a surgeon's.

Peter was in the cab of another rig already started by Roger. He tried the complicated shift mechanisms and fidgeted with the other controls. Then he pulled the big semi out of its parking space and stopped his cab just abreast of the cab Roger was working in.

“How about it?” he called over the roar of the engine.

“Gettin' it,” Roger called back.

Peter looked around the mall parking lot and out to the mall in the distance. On the ground there were a few zombies scattered about in little clusters, but none of them seemed to present any imminent danger. So far, they hadn't noticed the activity going on over by the garage.

Roger sat up and the truck vibrated steadily.

“I'll just ride pickup,” Peter shouted across the gap between the two trucks. “I'm not too sure of this thing . . .”

“I grew up in one of these,” Roger returned, his eyes lighting up like a child's. “Let's go!”

The huge vehicles pulled away from the warehouse. They rode across the little loading lot and down a ramp toward the roadway. Stephen hovered overhead in the chopper, following the trucks as closely as he could. It was difficult, since they had to ride a while before the trucks could gather any speed up a slight incline. But once the giant trucks picked up speed, there was no stopping them. Fran was up on the roof of the mall, clutching the rifle to her chest. She could make out the big trailers in the distance and watched them roar over the hill, the helicopter wavering above them. It was a strange-looking convoy speeding toward the shopping center.