Double Dead (31 page)

Ebbie wanted to know why they needed a vehicle, and for Gil, that answer was easy: outside the base was nothing. Crossing that dustbowl would not be an easy journey, and he didn’t feel like recreating The Grapes of Wrath. Besides, with him being all beat to shit and Leelee still (and likely forever) limping, they needed to get a ride.

Easier said than done, as it turned out. Base had plenty of vehicles lurking around, but most of them were junkers. Any time they found an old Jeep or a Humvee, it wasn’t gassed up—it was as if these clowns were treating them like single-use items, like a road flare or a juice box. Run out of gas? Leave it where it died. Pretty astounding that these clueless apes managed to hold onto a whole Air Force base with that kind of attitude.

As the sun fell, and they crossed the base on foot looking for something,
anything
, to get them out of Dodge, he found what he thought was the holy grail: a garage. With a fueling station on the side.

“There has to be a working ride in there, Daddy,” Kayla said, and he smiled and said yes, yes there probably was, little girl, and she held his hand and he held hers and for a moment, everything felt like it was finally coming together.

Then the garage became like a hive of bees that got kicked over. The doors rolled open. Thuglow’s ‘soldiers’ swarmed into the garage wearing ill-fitting body armor and carrying armament. The Humvees all revved up and started ejecting from the garage like popped zits, one after the other—hell, two drivers managed to smack into each other and treat it like it was nothing.

The vehicles all sped away. Gil’s heart fell, and then as he heard the discordant howls of the hunters in the distance, his guts rose to meet his wilting heart and he thought he might throw up the contents of his stomach (which at this point wasn’t much more than a shallow pit of acid).

Cecelia’s face wore a grim mask. “Oh, god. Is that what I think it is?”

“I suspect so,” Gil said. “I don’t think running is going to do much good. I think it’s time to hide.”

The first zombies had started to trickle in. And the howls had come again, and this time, they were much closer: somewhere on the base. Out there. In the darkness. Coburn wasn’t one to be afraid of the dark; after all, that would be like a great white shark being afraid of the ocean. Even still, he heard that sound, and the blood inside his body went chill and he felt a shiver grapple up his spine. The dog felt it too, tucked in his football grip: from Creampuff’s throat came a long, low whine.

The golf-cart—really a decked-out urban camo four-man transport with ruggedized tires and all-wheel-drive—whizzed down the main avenue that cut through the heart of Altus AFB. Thuglow drove, but he sure wasn’t keeping much focus. Two zombies held down a girl, chewing into her still-kicking legs like they were a pair of boneless chicken wings. In the distance, machine gun fire and the screams of men dying, swiftly followed by the sound of an explosion. A dead man lay in the streets. Zombies clawed at windows. They began emerging from the shadows on all sides; the avenue was still open, but for how long?

“It’s all falling to shit, man,” Thuglow said, wide-eyed, barely watching the road. Coburn could see it on the man’s face: he was watching his kingdom crushed like a child’s wagon under the tires of an 18-wheeler. “Game over.”

Coburn was about to smack Thuglow’s head hard enough to either knock some sense into it or knock his brain out of it (both represented a certain improvement), but then, down the way about a quarter-mile, the avenue lit up with headlights and the growl of engines as a convoy of trucks and cars came rounding the corner at breakneck speed.

“Those aren’t our trucks,” Thuglow said, and then, from the back of one of the trucks, a heavy caliber gun opened fire. Bright starburst flashes from the barrel: a guttural
chug chug chug
of bullets. Lead bumblebees dug into the street around them. One of the golf-cart’s tires popped. Bullets punched into the front of the vehicle, started taking off the roof in a way that called to mind invisible rats chewing ever-swiftly. A bullet clipped Thuglow’s arm, sending up a spray of blood, and another popped a hole in the back of his seat’s headrest where he’d been a fraction of a second before. Coburn, seeing that Thuglow was like a deer in headlights, had already grabbed him and was yanking him out of the cart and dragging him bodily toward an austere brick admin building.

Coburn carried Thuglow and the dog around the side of the building in a small alley, and threw the stoner behind an oversized metal dumpster on which one of the King’s cronies had spray-painted a pair of cartoon breasts and, above that, the word
Tits
.

By now, the golf-cart—still in sight, about fifty yards off—had turned into a smoking wreck of bullet-riddled junk. The truck convoy barreled up to it, brakes squealing and gravel crunching under tires.

The vampire and the King of the 66 States ducked behind the dumpster.

“They shot me, man,” Thuglow said, pulling his hand away from his arm and seeing the palm wet with red. “I’m feeling dizzy.”

“That’s because you’re high as a Jewish holiday,” Coburn growled. “You got shot in the arm. Man up, Jennifer.”

“Am I going to die?”

“You are if you don’t shut that bear-trap you call a mouth.”

Then, Thuglow did the unthinkable—he stuck his head out from behind the dumpster. Instantly the machine gun barked bullets, and they
spanged
against the side of the metal trash-bin. Coburn grabbed the King by a fistful of hair and reeled him back in before one of those .50 cals ejected his brain a half-mile outside his skull. “Fuckface! What are you doing?”

“We’re invaded,” Thuglow said, shaking his head, looking genuinely sad. “I never thought they had the stones. Shoulda known. Shoulda known, bro. They sent that guy and we fucked with him, fucked with him real good, oh, hell.”

“Invaded? Guy? What guy? Who’s here?”

But Thuglow wasn’t answering. He had checked out. His brow heavy with sadness and regret, head shaking like he didn’t want to believe any of this, like he just wanted to go back to his hangar, roll a joint, and play pinball forever.

Which meant Coburn had to get a look on his own.

He wished he hadn’t.

The sign painted on the door of the lead pick-up was a symbol he’d seen before, though back then he’d seen it stitched on a patch on the shoulders of denim jackets and sports jerseys like they were fucking Boy Scouts earning badges for killing vampires. A hand spread open, palm out, and in the center of the hand, a blazing sun.
The Sons of Man
. Goddamnit.

And there, manning the .50 caliber bolted into the truck bed was the man himself, Benjamin Brickert.

Coburn tucked his head back behind the dumpster just as a flock of bullets tore the corner of the trash-bin to frayed metal ribbons.

Now, the question: did Brickert see him?

The answer came fast. He heard Brickert yell out, “Not our target. Don’t waste any more ammo. Go, go, go!” Engines revved, and the convoy of vehicles moved on, disappearing down the street toward the hangars and airstrip.

Brickert didn’t see him. Or, at least, didn’t identify him. Such was the joy of having a vampire’s night-vision: what Coburn could see, others often could not. That also meant Brickert hadn’t identified King Brutha Thuglow, either.

Small favors.

“I gotta get to my chopper, man,” Thuglow said. “I gotta bail. It’s over. The whole thing is over.”

“Chopper. What chopper?”

“I got a Bell Twin-Huey UH-1N.”

“Yeah. Great. You’re telling me you can actually fly that thing?”

“Shit yeah. I can smoke a blunt, drink a box of wine and
still
thread a needle with that bitch. I used to be a pilot.” He stared off at a distant point, maudlin. “Once.”

“Where’s the helicopter now?”

“Back near the hangars. Just off the first airstrip.”

Wonderful. Exactly where Brickert was going, by the looks of it. Still, an airlift out of this place? He didn’t know dick about helicopters, but he knew one could get them a lot further than hoofing it.

“Needs fuel,” Thuglow added. “I… kinda forgot to refuel last time.”

“Jesus Christ. Fine. You go and do that. Don’t fuck it up.” He handed him the dog, who growled. “Take Creampuff with you. You hurt him, I hurt you. Play nice, you two.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to find my herd.”

Kayla remembered how it was when the plague first took hold of the nation, and not long after, the world. She remembered long nights in her bedroom, holding a stuffed pink bear that was almost as big as the real thing and staving off nosebleeds with a box of Kleenex. It was bad enough that she’d only recently received the diagnosis of multiple myeloma—in effect, a death sentence. But now the rest of the world had its own walk down death row, and a much faster walk it was, too. At the time of diagnosis, they told her she had six months,
maybe
nine, but suddenly the world was going to Hell—or rather, Hell had come to the world—and just like
that
her six predicted months became a whole lot less.

It was the sounds outside their house in Raleigh, North Carolina, that told her the gig was up, that life in America was officially a thing of the past. Outside, she heard people screaming. Cars smashing into one another. Single rifle pops and later, the chatter of machine gun bullets—those accompanied by squelches from radios, police sirens, even helicopters overhead.

And in the distance, explosions. Gas mains, her father had said, but even she knew it was something far worse. The military were ‘quarantining’ in their own special way: with munitions, armament and big scary bombs.

This, now, was like that. They’d holed up here in the mess hall, a long building that had been subverted by Thuglow’s crew and turned into something that looked more
carnival
than
cafeteria
. Outside, bullets and bombs, the screams of men, the moans of the dead. And worse: the dissonant howls of the hunters that followed them here. But even in that, Kayla found a small modicum of hope: she believed that the hunters were not hunting them but, rather, Coburn. And if they were here, that might mean
he
was here, too.

It was a strange place to be, mentally: she’d written him off and put him aside as traitor to them all. And yet, was that fair? He’d always come through for them. He helped them get through the cannibal roadblock. He’d found them at the farmhouse. Why had she lost faith so quickly?

She wanted to believe. In no small part because Leelee believed. The veterinarian-turned-nurse had changed in these last days—maybe even weeks. Leelee showed bright eyes and a small smile. Like she knew something nobody else knew. Like she believed—no,
knew
—that things were going to work out just fine even if she was the only person who knew it. The look in her eyes, puckish, almost playful, said,
I am the only sane person in this room
.

Occasionally Leelee would reach over, stroke her hair, offer her a tissue. Because now, like before, her nose was bleeding something fierce.

Danny helped, too. He had his arm around her. He kissed her temple.

It felt nice.

Outside, the howls of the hunters grew in intensity and volume. They were closer, now. Everyone tensed. Hands seeking weapons. Just in case.

Just then: a sound above. Someone—
something
—on the roof. Crawling.

This is it
, she thought. In the roof was a square of dirty plexiglass that served as a skylight: it had long been covered in dust and debris. A shadow appeared at the skylight, darker than the night beyond it. Gil settled in next to Kayla, gun in hand, taking careful aim—

A hand swept across the skylight, wiping a path through the greasy dust.

Coburn’s face pressed against the glass. Nose and lips smushed.

The smushed lips twisted into a grin. Kayla couldn’t help but smile herself.

“Is that…?” Gil asked. She nodded and eased the weapon down; the skylight lock popped and it swung open.

The vampire dropped down from the darkness.

“Hey now, brown cows,” he said, dusting himself off.

Kayla hurried to meet him but then stopped, mustered courage and spite, then stuck her chin out and crossed her arms.

“You
left
us,” she said.

His smile faded. “Did not.”

“Did too.”

“Did
not
.”

“Then where
were
you?”

“Under the Humvee. Sun was coming up. Didn’t think it’d be a real hot idea if those clowns caught a whiff that a vampire was among them.” He paused. “Though, thinking about it, those loons probably would’ve thought I was cool. Wouldn’t have been hard to depose that dope Thuglow and become the vampire king of Route 66. Well, fuck it. Roads not taken and all that.”

“Oh,” Kayla said. A pang of guilt struck her. She didn’t believe. Didn’t have faith in their shepherd. Leelee had faith. Why couldn’t she? “You were here all along.” Gil and Danny came up beside her. Her two men. Cecelia and Ebbie stayed back, uncertain.

“True that,” the vampire said. “But if we don’t move soon, we’re going to end up as either zombie chow or prisoners of the Sons of Man.”