Death and Biker Gangs (17 page)

The apartment smelled like cheese, and I merrily ignored it as I tripped over a discarded duffel bag. “Be careful,” I sang out to the dog as she skittered through an open doorway. I fumbled my way to the kitchen and discovered a coffeemaker sitting on the counter. I was about to express my glee through interpretive dance, but realized that the electricity to this part of the building was also out.

Fine, God. Deny me coffee in my hour of need. I’ll just sober up the old-fashioned way.

“This is all your fault,” I said to the dog, only to realize she hadn’t come out of the offshoot room. “Hey! Puppy! Get back here!”

Evie bounced over, a brown shoe clutched in her mouth. She stopped in front me and dropped the shoe.

It was probably the nicest gift a dog had ever given me. “You wanna play? Fine, let’s play.” I picked up the shoe—heavy, good-quality leather—and tossed it clumsily from hand to hand. “Retrieve!”

I tossed it across the room, and she chased it down, scooped it up, and brought it back upside-down. “Careful, don’t chew on it,” I said, wiping my nose on my sleeve. It seriously reeked up here. Luca must’ve loved his cheeses.

She gnawed on the shoe a little bit when I reached for it.

Thud. 
Something fell out.

Without thinking, I reached out, and my fingers wrapped around something damp and vaguely leathery.

At that point, something in my brain clicked on: the only thing I’d ever seen fall out of a shoe was a sock, and it sure as hell didn’t feel like leather.

I looked down.

Oh holy shit, I’d picked up a foot.

“Evie,” I groaned, “tell me you didn’t pull this off some guy walking around.”

She wagged her tail, completely oblivious as to what she’d been chewing on.

“Evie…” I shook the foot at her, trying to pick the right words to convey my disappointment. “We don’t just chew on feet, even in the zombie apocalypse. That’s just 
wrong
.”

“Vibeke!” Tony called from downstairs, “quit thumping around up there!”

Evie barked once, then scurried down the staircase. I heard Tony yelp, presumably as she jumped on him. I didn’t bother stifling my cackle, leaning on the teal-tiled countertop to properly guffaw. Oh, hell. I was drunk. Really, really drunk.

Something scraped in the hallway. I looked up just in time to see a brown, leathery hand grasp the counter and haul forward a bloated body in plaid pajamas. One foot was still clad in a fine-looking leather shoe. The other terminated in a stump.

Oh, 
I thought, 
Luca wants his other shoe back...

“Oh, 
fuck
.”

I looked around for the dog, but she’d apparently decided he wasn’t a threat. “Evie!” I yowled, “you are supposed to be an 
alarm system!
” 

I reached for my pistol, but I’d left it sitting downstairs with the boys. Luca—I assumed it was Luca, anyway—stood between me and the doorway, and he seemed awfully mobile for a guy with just one foot. I fumbled along the counter for something to fight with, and grabbed the first solid object I found.

It happened to be the coffeemaker.

Oh, shit.

In a perfect world, the device would have become a deadly weapon in my capable hands. In reality, I staggered toward the dead dude and swung the coffeemaker at his head.

I missed.

Luca grabbed my arm, his fingers digging into my tendons. I smashed the entire machine against the side of his face, and was rewarded with an all-too-satisfying crack as something gave way. The pot came loose and shattered against the wall, but I still had the machine itself, and my drunken self thought it made quite an adequate weapon. “I was having 
such 
a nice time, you undead asshole!”

I whacked him again. He jerked on my arm, and I pitched forward, closer to the teeth and flapping lips. The teeth snapped shut a few inches from my nose, and I realized it wasn’t the apartment that smelled of cheese—
Luca 
smelled of cheese.

I got another whiff of him and gagged.

I swung the coffeemaker up against the bottom of his jaw hard enough to snap his neck back. Then I struck him again.

And again.

And again.

I kept bashing with the coffeemaker until the plastic split apart in my hands and brown-black mush ran across the tiled floor, until the dead man stopped twitching and I realized I wasn’t doing anything else besides splattering gore around the room.

I stepped back shakily, letting what remained of my makeshift weapon to drop to the floor with a wet-sounding clunk. Christ on a pogostick, I’d just taken out a zombie with a coffeemaker. It was as close to Milla Jovovich-like greatness as I’d ever get.

I needed a witty one-liner to commemorate this occasion, but nothing immediately came to mind. “You can call me Bone Crusher.”

Well, it was better than nothing.

I stared at my hands and the viscera scattered across the kitchen. My stomach lurched.

Oh damn, not again. 
The bile rose in my throat, burning its way up into my mouth. I doubled over, retching all over Luca.

I’ve really got to stop puking on dead guys.

I caught my breath and staggered past him to the sink between heaves, and hung there while I spat out the alcohol still sloshing around in my stomach. 
How did I manage to drink that much? 
It was a wonder my liver hadn’t imploded.

I slumped over the counter when I finally got it all out, panting into the sink. “Never again,” I muttered. “Never…ever…again…”

When the immediate heaves passed, I tugged on the blinds for a look outside. Might as well gauge what time it was.

It took a minute to adjust to the comparative brightness. Once I had, I leaned over the sink, pressing one cheek to the glass, then the other. I guessed it was about mid-morning.

A figure shambled up the street, tottering the way most revenants did when they were wandering alone. I formed a pistol with my fingers and mimed pulling the trigger.

The dead man dropped.

I blinked at my hand. If I’d known about this superpower while I still faced a daily commute, I would have abused it a lot more.

I looked back outside. The dead man didn’t get back up, but something else moved about a block and a half down. I shoved my nose up against the glass, holding my breath so I wouldn’t fog up the window. Through the haze, I could just make out a large, truck-shaped object, surrounded by smaller vehicles. Motorcycles. People with guns. Damn, my superpower had a logical explanation.

They stopped in front of a building and ventured inside.

Scavengers. 
A whole crew of them.

Graybeard had warned us that the living people in this area weren’t particularly friendly.

I headed back for the door, nearly tripping over Luca in the process. “Sorry, man,” I muttered, somehow making my way downstairs without breaking my neck. I shambled through the kitchen and burst back into the main restaurant, then had to flatten myself against the wall when Tony snapped upright and pointed a gun at my head. “Dammit, it’s me!”

He dropped the gun. “Why the hell are you skulking around?”

“There’s a truck and bikes down the street.”

He rubbed his eyes. “Huh?”

“There’s an apartment upstairs. Through the kitchen.” I gestured behind me. “Go look.”

He got to his feet, tripped over the dog, and staggered past me. “My head hurts,” he said.

“Watch out for the dead guy,” I called as he made his way up the stairs. His footsteps paused, and I decided I ought to clarify the statement. “He really is dead. Not getting back up.”

I picked up a bottle of water and proceeded to guzzle half of it, trying to rehydrate what remained of my working organs. Tony’s footsteps thumped loudly overhead, and I pictured him stepping over Luca and peering out the window. Had I walked around that loudly? It sounded like an elephant doing the conga.

No wonder he’d been ready to blow my head off when I raced downstairs.

I’d made my way through a second bottle of water when Tony came back downstairs, looking even less jovial than before. “Vibeke, do me a favor? Next time 
warn me 
when I’m going to step into a puddle of your vomit?”

“Sorry.” I watched him deposit his socks into a trashcan. He pulled a fresh pair out of his backpack, then walked over to give Dax a nudge in the ribs. “Wake up!”

Dax swatted at him. “Go away.”

“We gotta bounce. Big truck and some bikers coming our way.”

“Lock the door.” Dax turned onto his side and curled up into a ball. “I don’t feel well.”

Tony’s lips curled into a snarl. “You’re gonna feel a shitload worse if these goons decide to make us into a stir-fry. Vibeke, see if you can find some Gatorade or some shit in the kitchen. Maybe electrolytes will help.”

I didn’t come up with any Gatorade, though I did swipe a first aid kit and as much of the preserved food as I thought we could fit into our backpacks and pockets. When I came back out, Dax was hunched over a table, looking more dead than alive. “How much did we drink?” he groaned, hiding his face in his arms.

“Too much.” I dumped the cans into our bags and stuck the first aid kit on top, mournfully noting our meager ammunition supply. “At least you were drinking water. I feel fucking horrible.”

He nodded. “You look it.”

Tony pulled a couple smaller bottles of JD out from the counter and tucked them into his backpack. “For trades,” he said when he caught the looks Dax and I were giving him. “Dax, you look like you could use a bathroom.”

Dax grunted and began the slow trek to the back.

Tony zipped up his backpack and then sent me a considering look. “So, Vibby, did you puke on the dead guy after you bashed his head in, or did you find him there and just vomit for the hell of it?”

Dax stopped walking. “There’s a dead guy?”

The restaurant spun crazily around me, and I had to drop into a chair. Damn, I’d picked a crummy time to start drinking again. “He had it coming.”

I’m pretty sure Tony was side-eyeing me, but he didn’t comment. “Why didn’t we hear him shuffling around last night?”

“I don’t think he 
was
. The dog brought me his foot and he followed her.”

It must have made sense on some hungover level. Tony nodded sagely and stifled a yawn. “So he was just lying around? He must have been, if she got his foot off.”

I grunted.

“They must have a sleep mode or something...”

That didn’t make me feel any better about things. At least the undead were always 
undead
, so to speak. They lumbered around and tried to eat you. They didn’t lie in wait like a good predator, luring you into a false sense of security about the dead body on the floor. If the zombies had a stealth mode, humanity was better off calling it quits.

We couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

***

A few minutes later, three drunk people shambled down the street. We probably looked like zombies ourselves.

Dax leaned a little too hard on me, his head hanging. I poked him in the chest, but he didn’t respond.

“Dude,” I said, “Dax is sleepwalking.”

“Good for him,” Tony groused.

The ground trembled slightly, and my stomach lurched. “Tony, I feel 
really
 sick.”

“Suck it up, Vibby,” he slurred, wobbling slightly. “Whose fucking idea was it to drink, anyway?”

“
Yours!
”

His left hand slammed down on my shoulder. I think he meant to slap it lightly, but I ended up toppling forward, landing on my knees in the ash and taking Dax down with me.

“Tony, this isn’t 
helping
.”

Tony made an exasperated sound and ushered us off the road. I staggered over to the gnarled remains of a tree and retched on it, clinging to the stripped branches for support. I heard Dax making similar noises not far away.

Tony sighed loudly. “You are 
weaklings
. You can’t hold your liquor at all.”

I held up my middle finger in his direction as I barfed. Good grief, how much could I possibly have left in my stomach? Some rational part of me knew it wasn’t all booze; I was bringing up bile and something…something gray…

Ash? Is that all the ash I’ve been sucking in?

The thought of it made me puke even more.

Dax collapsed in a heap and flatly refused to move. I swayed from side to side, watching Tony attempt to drag him to the sidewalk. Tony finally gave up and kicked a clump of ash aside. “
Fine!
 You guys can snooze for an hour. I’ll keep watch. But after that, we find somewhere to crash for the night.”