Dead Stop (32 page)

“Tom!” she
called over her shoulder. “Do whatever you can! I’ll be right back!” She saw
the old man rise from his work and pull the hunting knife he carried in the
sheath at his back before refocusing on the door ahead.

Things would
just have to hold together without her for a few seconds.

With the zombies
all outside, they had unlocked the door between the store and diner earlier. It
was a decision she had not been crazy about at the time, but had gone along
with in the name of quick retreat in case somebody got cut off from the
kitchen. But now, even if the zombies were currently in the diner, leaving one
of them alone in the store with nothing but an unlocked swinging door between
them and the horde was not her idea of an option.

She reached the
metal door, where it literally vibrated from the pounding of the girl on the
other side.

“I’m here,
Stacey!”

She grasped the
door handle, praying the girl didn’t fall in on her with a bunch of
death-headed horrors ripping her to pieces. On the other hand, sounds of
crashing and struggle now came from the kitchen so things might not be any
safer back here. Part of her wondered if she wasn’t about to let the girl in
just so she could die with the rest of them here in the back.

She pulled open
the door, only to have the waitress almost knock her over on her way inside.

“Deke!” the girl
screamed as she barreled past the vet and towards the kitchen. “The purse!”

It seemed Stacey
was still hale and hearty.

“You’re
welcome!” Rachel shouted after her while shutting the door.

For a brief
second she wondered if she were the only woman here who actually ran
away
from fights. At the same time, she knew there was strength in numbers and their
odds of survival improved markedly with each of them that were willing to work
or fight together. So the only real choice was to get back there and add two
more hands to their side of the fray. If nothing else, she could help whoever
was trying to hold the door shut.

Then she stopped
in horror as she realized she wasn’t going to get the choice. A knot of
combatants slammed against the rear wall of the kitchen, and proceeded to roll
along the wall in her direction. The fight was coming to her. And it was a
nasty one.

The thing must
have died in a fire.

It was charred
and blackened from head to toe. And since a corpse like this would have
required a closed coffin for the funeral, they hadn’t bothered dressing the
body. It really didn’t matter. Only its height gave her reason to believe it
might have once been male, since the monstrosity fighting with Harley and Deke
looked more like a burnt scarecrow than anything else. Its teeth showed a
startling white against the rest of the seared skull, but other than that it
was almost impossible to make features out.

At the moment
those teeth were also stained red because they had just closed over one of
Harley’s hands. He fought to free himself by slamming the thing against one
side of the hall and then the other. Blood ran down the man’s shoulder and back
where the monster clawed with its free hand.

Deke hung on to
its other arm with grim tenacity, using his weight to try and keep that hand
out of the fight. He was bleeding again as well. His shoulder punctures had
reopened, and a fresh line of blood ran down the side of his face from what
must have been a head wound under his hair.

Rachel didn’t
know how much longer he was going to manage it since the monster was slamming
him back and forth with the same ferocity Harley was unleashing on it. She
could also just make out Stacey on the other side of the thrashing combatants.
The veterinarian wondered if the little waitress had lost her mind because it
looked like she was trying to find a way to get into the fight.

Harley grunted
in pain as the monster bit down, and used his trapped hand to momentarily pin
its head against the wall. He hurled three ferocious forearm smashes against
its cranium, each one obviously intended to crush it’s brainpan against the
cinder bricks. But the blackened skull held and the monster slammed the man
back against the opposite side of the hallway instead.

If it hadn’t
already had Harley’s hand in its jaws, it could have bitten his face off at
that very moment.

But now that its
back was away from the wall, Rachel could also see the thing must have
encountered Grandpa Tom at one point. The handle of the old man’s knife
protruded from its ribcage near the spine. The monster showed no sign the
weapon bothered it in the least, which Rachel knew better than anybody else
that it wouldn’t. The vulnerable areas on this monster were small, and most
were well protected.

Most of them.

“Deke, Harley,
hang on…” she gasped, then stumbled as Deke was slammed into her.

Rachel managed
to recover and move back in as the monster swung the boy the other way and into
Stacey on the other side. The little waitress clutched him as if to add her own
weight to the pull on the things arm, but at the same time seemed to be
grabbing at something hanging from Deke’s shoulder. The doctor ignored them and
started to reach for the knife.

Unfortunately,
her timing was off.

Harley now
slammed the thing back across the hallway. Using his body to pin the monster’s
loose arm against the wall he used his free hand to try and pry the skull’s
jaws open. His face was red from the effort he was expending. This only lasted
for a few seconds before the mass of bodies crashed back against the other wall
again.

“Dammit, doc!”
he gritted out. “How the hell is this bastard so strong!?”

Rachel ignored
the question and tried to stay focused on her objective. A second later she saw
her opportunity and darted forward to grab the handle of the old man’s knife.
Her hand closed on the weapon and she fought to pull it free. But that was when
Harley managed to push the thing off of him again and up against the opposite
wall.

Or it would have
been up against the opposite wall if Rachel hadn’t been trapped behind it.

“Oof! No!” She
gagged, and struggled to get free. The smell of burnt flesh and formaldehyde
filled her nose and caused her to retch. With the knife trapped against the
wall with her, she decided she could at least help by using her other hand to
try and snag the arm the monster was using to claw at Harley.

It was like grabbing
a steel bar.

The power of the
thing as it ripped the woman from behind it astonished her.

They’ve been
feeding, and they’re getting stronger,
the clinical side of her brain
observed with a detachment utterly unsuited to the current circumstance.
These
things are getting deadlier by the hour.

Then the matter
at hand took up her full attention as the five of them now toppled over onto
the floor in a thrashing heap.

For a moment,
Rachel just concentrated on not getting squashed. This was pretty much
impossible since the entire group had fallen in her direction. All of their
clothes were now blackened from wrestling with the vile thing, and the
situation kept getting worse by the second. People were tiring, but this
monster wasn’t.

At the same
time, Rachel realized she now had the hunting knife free in her hand. She
wasted no time into putting it to use. She might not be a fighter, but she was
a surgeon…and by God she knew how to cut where it counted.

Bringing the
knife up alongside the monster’s head, she inserted the blade behind the
masseter muscle and started to saw. It was tough work. The corpse continued to
struggle, and the muscle seemed to be almost some flexible form of wood. But
Rachel gritted her teeth and held on, pulling on the blade for all she was
worth. She had dissected things before, but never had they put up such a fight.

Then the muscle
parted and the knife suddenly came free.

Deke gave a gasp
as the point of the blade jumped and cut his forehead, and Rachel remembered
with embarrassment how the old man had warned of that very thing before cutting
the other monster earlier. But at the same time, the monster’s jaw unhinged and
Harley managed to pull his hand free of its teeth.

Yet that was
also when the horror lashed out again, this time throwing Deke and Stacey clear
of it. Harley pushed back himself, getting his feet between himself and the
creature and using them to shove it away from him and Rachel. Having all their
combined weight off of her was a relief. At the same time, she realized they
may have just made a terrible mistake.

The zombie
lurched to its feet, now free of her and Harley and loomed over the four of
them on the floor. Its jaw now hung at an odd angle from her impromptu surgery.
But despite giving the monster an even more ghastly appearance, the damage
hadn’t made it any less dangerous. Especially not now.

With them lying
all around it, it had its pick of targets…and it wasted no time in making a
choice.

The charred
abomination turned and faced in the direction of the younger two, and once
again spread it’s talons to attack. Rachel couldn’t see the pair for Harley
laying half on top of her. She screamed a warning, knowing it was useless, and
watched in horror as the grisly creature lunged downward in their direction.

Then a
thunderous bang blasted through the tiny area, almost deafening her.

Bits of skull
and brain splattered across the ceiling, and the corpse stiffened and stood
straight up. Rachel watched in shock as the horrid corpse teetered there for a
second. Then, as if in slow motion, the thing fell backwards. Rachel and Harley
just managed to role away from each other in time for the monster to land
between them…with most of the back of its skull missing.

Rachel scrambled
to her hands and knees and looked over to see Stacey lying on her back with a
snub nosed pistol still pointed where the monster stood a few seconds earlier.
The girl’s eyes were wide and showing lots of whites, and her breathing came in
short gasps.

“Is it dead?”
Stacey panted. “Doc, is it dead? Make sure it’s dead!”

All it took was
a glance over at the cavity in the back of the thing’s skull for Rachel to know
this monster wouldn’t be getting up again. What little brain it had to work
with now clung to the ceiling in clumps. This particular cadaver had rejoined
the dearly departed in a very final way.

“Oh, it’s dead,”
she reported.

Rachel pulled
herself over against the wall and leaned against it with a sigh. She glanced
across at Harley who had done the same on the opposite side of the hall. Blood
smeared on the wall behind him, and he held his hand protectively under his
arm. She realized she would be playing doctor again shortly.

“Are you sure?”

A glance back
over revealed the little waitress to still be holding up the gun. Deke was just
starting the process of laying his hand on the girl’s arm and trying to get her
to lower the weapon. He looked as surprised by the firearm’s appearance as the
rest of them.

“I’m sure,”
Rachel soothed. “It won’t be getting up again. So, tell me… where have you been
hiding
that
little gem all evening?”

“Oh, this?” The
girl refocused on the gun in her hand, then handed it over to Deke. “Deke found
Gladys’s purse in the store, and I just remembered that Gladys carried a gun in
it. I’ve never shot a pistol before.”

They all looked
at the girl in astonishment.

“Well,” Harley
groaned as he started to struggle to his feet, “you sure made that first shot
count. You blew this bastard’s brains everywhere.”

“Yeah,” Stacey’s
pale face matched her shaky voice. “I sorta noticed that. Yay me…and now we’re
going to celebrate by Deke taking me to the little girl’s room, because I’m
about to be really, really sick.”

That motivated
them to move.

The three of
them managed to get up and hustle the small waitress down the hall, before
sending her and Deke into the darkened store beyond. Then, shutting the door
again so no light would show into the store beyond and attract unwanted
attention, they slumped once more against the walls. But only for a second…

“Que paso?”

They both looked
over to see Marisa standing at the end of the hallway, regarding them with
folded arms and a dour expression. Rachel realized with a guilty start she must
have been dealing with the door, with nothing but a sick old man for help. She
must have done a good job of it, because they were all still alive.

 “Grandpa
and I have the door blocked, so we’re okay,” Marisa answered her unasked
question. “But there’s about a dozen of them in the restaurant.”

The girl walked
over and prodded the dead monster with her bat.

“So, who’s back
here shooting up the place?”

###

Treating Harley
was as distracting as it was a relief.

On the one hand,
the man never made so much as a sound while she cleaned the long lacerations on
his back. On the other, she couldn’t help but notice the physique that went
along with the handsome face and felt an uncharitable stab of resentment
towards the two other women in the room. Being the odd woman out in this little
group was beginning to bug her, and Rachel decided if she survived this it was
time for her to get back out into the world.

The time for
mourning was definitely over. When she found civilization again, she intended
to hit the first dance floor that crossed her path.

On the other
hand she couldn’t help but chuckle inside at the way the taller waitress
studiously ignored the process. Marisa was in the act of removing her raincoat
from an excursion to the roof, and gave every sign of being absorbed in doing
that and finding a place to put her wet umbrella. But to Rachel’s experienced
eye the girl may as well have been wearing a sign that read, ”I am sooo not
paying attention to the gorgeous hunk of man in the room.”