Hellifax (30 page)

Shaffer started speaking again, but Tenner left him. Truth be known, he couldn’t stand the man’s guts, either.

Tenner took a few steps into the street and studied the ground. He chuckled. The jig would soon be up, he supposed, knowing what the remaining foursome might find if they stuck to the roads. He’d told them not to venture into
that
part of the city. It was for their own good––or so he’d said. It was all for him. They’d soon discover Bowman. Tenner wished he could see their faces when they did. No doubt they were making good time with those shit-rags they’d peeled off the dead and wore like suits. The very thought made him curl his lips in distaste. No one would catch him wearing such filth.

Tenner started walking and glanced at the skies. It would be dark soon.

And oh how he wanted to get his hands on the living.

Walking like he was death cooked over by an industrial-grade torch, Buckle didn’t feel so good. In fact, he felt like shit. His nose was broken, and what was worse, the gobs of blanket that he had stuffed into his nostrils had become saturated with blood again. He’d changed the wad when they’d returned for their gear at Purdy’s Wharf, but he feared the replacement had long since reached its capacity. Thinking on it further as he walked down a street filled with dead things out for a late afternoon stroll, he decided that his nose
had
to have stopped bleeding. Except he was
tasting
it when he breathed through his mouth. Moe smelled like cold shit, even with the mask on, but this mix of his own blood and decaying flesh was getting to him. He figured it must’ve started bleeding during the last fight, remembering something popping in his nose when he swung his pipe. He wanted to swap the wad of blanket around his nostrils for another strip he had in his pocket, but he certainly couldn’t do it here. The thought of even attempting something so stupid almost made him chuckle.

Then he saw the body in the street.

Well, shit.
No doubt the others had seen the corpse. There wasn’t any way to miss it; it was right there. Tenner had been busy. The interesting thing was, they had come to Halifax to see if they could find a number of things in the city. Vick and Amy had thought it a good idea to risk it, and he liked listening to them far more than that shithead Shaffer. Buckle didn’t mind taking orders. He’d made a career of taking orders while he was with the RCMP in Clarenville, and he’d carried on with it willingly enough when he transferred over to Halifax. Besides, after living in Halifax for almost twenty years, Vick had become his oldest and best friend. What made things even easier was that Vick knew what was what.

But he had to admit, both Vick and Amy had messed up when they’d allowed Tenner to join the group. Twenty-five years on the force counted for something, and his age had only sharpened his bullshit detector. That was one thing that had stayed intact when the dead started pulling themselves up from the grave.
Oh, yuh
. That piece of equipment worked just fine, just like the twelve gauge dangling between his legs. When Tenner had heard he was a cop, Buckle had caught the sudden tensing around the man’s mouth, the subtle narrowing of his eyes, and the smallest of pauses followed by long-winded bullshit answers to the most innocuous questions. Buckle wondered if the others had noticed how Tenner would leave the room after just a few inquiries. Even when he’d gone to bring Tenner back to the main office there, just before Scott pulled the Ruger—he’d recognized the make right away, but had no idea where he’d gotten the silencer, unless it was a custom job—he had tried too hard to be cool.

No, sir. It had once been Buckle’s job to sniff out bullshit, and Tenner was a walking pile of it.

Trouble was, Buckle had made the mistake of underestimating the scope of Tenner’s crimes. He’d thought the man was a criminal in the old world, maybe with gangland connections or a jacker of sorts, even. He couldn’t have proved anything, but he’d decided he could keep an eye on the man.

But a goddamn
killer
?

Moe walking about wasn’t the only way the world was still fucked up.

And now this.

There was a dead man in the middle of the street. He wasn’t one of their group. In fact, if Buckle had to guess, he’d hazard Tenner’d been lying out of his ass when he’d spoken of not finding any other survivors in the city. There was at least one person left, and woe to him that the likes of Tenner had found him.

Vick didn’t slow down, and that was all right with Buckle. He’d seen worse. Once, as a first responder back on the island, he’d come across a poor bastard who had run into a moose on the highway in the dead of night. Moose crossings on the highways were always a danger, and the driver—a young guy in his twenties out of Gander—had driven his sedan right under the tall spindly legs of the animal, taking two of them clean off and plowing into its seven hundred kilogram wreaking ball of a body. The moose had crashed through the driver’s windshield and mashed the youngster’s face and head into a bloody pulp. The worst part was that the man’s face, flattened and blackened as it had been, could still be identified.

That had been the worse incident in Buckle’s twenty-five-year career. Not even the people he’d
shot
had looked as bad as that dead man whose head had been squished by sixteen hundred pounds of freefalling meat.

But this one was bad.

A transport truck had rammed into the base of a power pole, bending the whole thing over another car. A corpse hung from the pole at an awkward angle, which was painful to look upon. Extension cords and duct tape kept the body in place. Moe had ravaged the poor bastard’s lower extremities, eating him right down to the grisly bones. There wasn’t even any flesh on his face
.
The footprints on the car hood suggested Moe had got up there to finish chowing down. The frost and snow on the remains informed Buckle the man had died a while ago. Tenner had done whatever to his victim, probably gagging him—or worse—then left him in the street. He and his fellow officers had learned never to ask for details. No good ever came of it. Right, ready, and served up for Moe. And Moe had partaken. Buckle had to consciously refrain from opening his mouth and cutting loose with what all cops eventually acquired––very morbid humor.

Buckle eyed the remains as they slipped into his peripheral vision, then finally slipped away behind him. He restrained himself from stopping in the street, amongst innumerable undead, and investigating the body just a smidgen longer. Even the thought brought a mental rebuke that he deserved. He hadn’t even been an investigator at the end of the world.

Just ahead, not ten feet away and closing, Moe was studying him.

In fact, Moe––a dude decked out in what looked to be a power linesman’s neon yellow work suit––was standing right in front of Buckle. Worse—never ask how worse—the thing regarded him as if it was out for a just
loverly
stroll along the graveyard and suddenly remembered something. Only it hadn’t just remembered something, it seemed to have recognized Buckle for what he was. This particular Moe had its scalp removed right down to its Cro-Magnon brow. One ear hung off the side of its head like a fleshy, albeit shrivelled, decoration. And its eyes, grey and blazing with bright recognition, were locked onto Buckle.

It knows!
his mind shrieked, despite the T-shirt hanging over his riot visor.
The blood. It smells the blood!

When the creature was five strides away, Buckle angled the Halligan bar, held in both hands, so he could spear the thing through the skull.

One of Moe’s hands came up, only it wasn’t a hand; it was a creamy knob of bone where a hand should have been attached to the wrist.

Buckle pulled back his Halligan. Perhaps if he stabbed the zombie under the chin and left it there, he might still be able to––

Phewp
.

The Moe’s head exploded, and Buckle knew it had just caught a bullet. The zombie crumpled to the ground, and the march went on without him. Buckle resisted the urge to look behind him because, if he did, there was no doubt he’d see an arm still stretched out, holding onto a silenced Ruger.

Donny Buckle reminded himself to thank Scott the first chance he got.

The current of undead carried the four survivors past the graveyard, a parking lot full of snow-covered cars, the Canadian Cancer Society building, the IWK Health Centre, and several apartment buildings. As daylight diminished, they shuffled past Robie Street, and Scott thanked God when Vick began to alter his course, turning toward Buckle on his left. The Newfoundlander caught the movement and stopped in his tracks. Deadheads moved by in an ever present stream, but the four of them made their way to a two-story house on the left, situated not seven feet off the main drag. It was white with a short railed fence surrounding a deck right on the doorstep. Vick stepped to the front door and, very carefully, tried the knob. It opened with a click.

Vick stepped inside. Buckle placed his back against the frame, standing guard until Scott and Amy entered. Then he backed inside and closed the door, shutting out the trailing voices.

Once inside, they did not immediately relax. They crammed inside a short entryway filled with shoes and sneakers. Vick went further into the house, disappearing from sight. Amy pointed to a set of stairs, and Scott nodded. Bringing up the Ruger, he took the stairs two at a time as quietly as possible, pausing once when he heard the clatter of metal on bone coming from the kitchen. Scott reached the landing and rapped his fingers on the wall, then waited. Nothing. He quickly searched through an upstairs bathroom and three empty bedrooms. He came out of the master bedroom and saw Amy standing guard on the landing.

“Clear.”

Scott joined her and saw Buckle pulling the curtain across the window by the front door. Once that was done, he did the same to the living room curtains, covering up a picture window facing the street.

“All clear,” Vick stated below. Amy slouched and descended the stairs. Scott followed her. They both dropped onto a huge sofa, which squeaked under their weight. Buckle sat down in a nearby matching chair, while Vick simply collapsed and stretched out on the floor.

“Hey,” Buckle said, his mask turning in Scott’s direction. “Thank you for out there.”

“You’re welcome. What happened, anyway?”

“Figured it smelled the blood from my nose. Just zeroed in on me.”

“Saw that, too,” Amy added. “It was scary how it did that. Lucky there weren’t more. You better get that taken care of before we go back out there tomorrow.”

“I’ll do it right now,” Buckle said and got to it.

“Tomorrow?” Scott asked, looking at Amy.

“Tomorrow,” Vick said. “We’re not going anywhere at night. Here’s where we board up, rest up, and in the morning, ship out.”

“Did you see what was happening out there?” Scott asked, feeling his tension slip away. It felt good to be able to let his guard down, even if it was just for a little while.

“You mean Moe? Walking the other way?” Amy asked.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Vick stressed. “What’s up with that? That was freaky. And I’d thought I’d gotten used to freaky––after seeing dead people eat people and all.”

“They were walking away from the waterfront,” Scott said. “Just walking.”

“Still are,” Buckle reported. He had hooked the curtain back a little and peeked out at the road. “Like there’s a town meeting somewhere.”

“Where’re they going?” Vick asked.

“I think the more important question is why?” Amy stated. “They’ve never done anything on a scale like this before, and I agree with Vick. It’s creepy. I mean, they’re usually drawn by noise and smell, but I didn’t hear anything.”

“Then there was that poor bastard in the street,” Vick said and looked at Buckle. “And that flesh-eating banana that almost took a run at you.”

Buckle grimaced and dabbed a fresh cloth about his nose.

The sofa was seductive and, with one weary effort, Scott pulled off his poncho and headgear and plopped it on the floor, wrinkling his face.
Nasty business
, he thought, and got even more comfortable.

“We’ll have to keep an eye on it,” Amy said. Her voice sounded distant to him. “Because I don’t like it in the least. If they’re moving away from the waterfront, there has to be a reason. That’s
a lot
of Moe out there. Lots of shit can happen in a crowd that size. If we’re unlucky, if something happens and we get separated, we need someplace to link up. I say we meet up at Scott’s house on School Avenue.”

“Agreed,” Vick said.

“Right on,” Buckle added.

“Scott?”

But Scott was asleep.

Amy studied the blond giant for a while before settling back into the sofa, the faintest of smiles on her round face, her blue eyes reflective. Vick smiled inwardly. He’d known that girl since her father had first brought her into his Tae Kwon Do academy when she was ten, and though he would never say it, he thought of her not only as his finest student, but the daughter he’d never had. He figured he knew her just as well as she knew herself, and certainly as well as her parents had, if not better. He knew the side of Amy that her mom and dad didn’t get to see—the competitive side. The work ethic. The intellect she’d certainly displayed with her university schooling. Vick knew firsthand how quick she was to pick up on things, how voracious her appetite to learn. She had learned her first forms in a week and earned her yellow belt in two months. Orange in another two, all culminating in a black belt at age twelve, and that was only because he’d intentionally slowed her progress. She’d come into a young man’s school that was barely making ends meet and stayed with him for years to learn all that an aging Vick Tucker had to teach. He knew that Amy didn’t get frustrated easily; she flowed with events as supple as water.

He also knew when Amy liked something.

And he could see, just by the barest of pauses that so many people would misinterpret as nothing at all, that Amy Jenner, Little Amy as he privately thought of her as, was starting to take a shine to the new guy, Scott. He wasn’t sure what he thought about that or how he felt. Scott hadn’t been around long enough for Vick to get a solid read on him, but he believed he was a good man. He’d taught enough students, kids and adults alike, to see the ugly side of human nature. He could tell the ones who learned martial arts for exercise, for relaxation, for self-defense, and to be able to kick the living shit out of their fellow citizens. Vick didn’t like those, and over his years of instruction in the various arts, he’d given walking papers to nine people—men and women who’d used too much power during practices and sparring sessions, who treated their classmates like dirt. They were the ones who would sometimes look to Vick to see if he’d caught an over vigorous body flip or repeated strikes that were much too hard. They knew Vick knew. He saw most of the garbage that went on in his school, and three strikes were enough to jettison the ones he didn’t like or who wouldn’t conform to his rules. Violators were warned twice, then told to leave on the third, always behind closed doors.