LZR-1143: Redemption (12 page)

Behind me, I saw the movement that Kate had warned of, and I pulled the shotgun from my shoulder reluctantly, watching the end of my handiwork. In a final moment of calm meditation, I reached into my concealed cargo pocket for a small, contained charge grenade. Pulling the pin and pressing the actuator, I tossed it gently into a small puddle under the destroyed wing, and turned away.

I even whistled softly to myself as I gently extended the middle finger of my left hand, holding it up to the wreckage as I walked into the next building, where the others waited.

“What were you doing?” Kate was annoyed, and her eyes flashed to the street.

“One.” I grabbed her by the shoulder and pushed her inside.

“What?”

“Two.” I pulled Ky and Rhodes out of the lobby of the abandoned apartment building, and through the hallway to a windowless dark corridor near the back.

“Why are you counting, you demented freak?” Ky’s voice was curious, while also abusive. Great qualities.

“Three.” I smiled once and extended my arms out straight, palms to the floor, gesturing slowly to the ground. Confused, they complied.

The explosion started small, with a sputtering blast like that of a small firecracker.

Then it got serious.

The walls shook and the ceiling near the front door fell to the ground. Chunks of concrete sprayed into the lobby and shot past the window. The secondary and tertiary explosions of the cars near the crashed plane punctuated the sound of glass shattering and falling to the street from several stories high.

On the street outside, nothing moved. Dust was in the air, and flames reflected in the haze, making visibility nearly opaque.

Next to me on the floor, Rhodes lifted his head, spitting dust out of his mouth and wiping it out of his beard.

“Nice,” he said simply, and smiled.

SIXTEEN

The dust and debris worked like a smoke grenade that covered the entire block. We left the building from the rear door, which emptied into an alleyway. My head no longer hurt, and I knew that it was our special condition that allowed this. I just wished I could slow my racing heartbeat long enough to be thankful for the gift.

The alleyway was packed with garbage and sewage, and I glanced up once expecting to see survivors peering from an upper floor. But I knew that they had long since left—many of them probably with the remnants of the Western Army at the station.

We stopped at the entrance to the narrow street, between a fence on one side and the apartment building on the other. The cross street was cloudy with dust, and nothing moved. Rhodes gestured silently forward, and we bolted across the dusty street, dodging a pile of zeds on the corner, the smell of rot and decay sickly, their headless corpses simply left to rot where they had been piled.

The next alley led between two commercial buildings, and at the end of the short road, the dust was clearing. A large cross street intersected our alley, and we emerged across the littered street from a department store. Scraps of paper and trash littered the sidewalk. The doors were chained shut, and the glass intact. No other streets intersected this one for several blocks in either direction.

“It’s a goddamned mall,” said Rhodes, looking at the sign hanging from above the store’s facade.

Kate looked up and shrugged.

“I could use a new pair of shoes.”

I looked down both directions of the street, noting the shadows of movement far in the distance that neither Rhodes nor Ky could see. We had to go straight through if we were going to make our train. We didn’t have time to go around.

“Yeah, well, honey… I think it’s time I bought you something pretty.”

A small charge from Rhodes’ pack took the chain from the door, and a smoke grenade lobbed into the street concealed the door. The shatterproof doors remained intact, and I pulled them closed behind us, using plastic zip ties to keep them shut, hoping the smoke grenade would cover our tracks.

The lights were out inside, but dim red emergency lighting still glowed faintly around the doorways. Clothing hung neatly from the shining, skeletal racks and the heavy, choking scent of perfume was thick in the musty air. I snorted in disgust, and I watched as Romeo padded off into the darkness, turning a corner near the handbags and watches.

“I could use a new watch,” said Ky, reaching a hand into a display of high end, designer jewelry with some sort of fancy French name on them.

Rhodes grabbed her hand suddenly, simply standing there, immobile. Ky squirmed once, not understanding. Then, the head rose up from the floor where the zombie had been laying, immobile. One whispered shot from his suppressed carbine put it down, and he released her hand.

“Thanks,” she muttered, rubbing her arm.

He stared at her, then reached down into the display and grabbed a watch encrusted in diamonds and gold.

“This one,” he said, and walked away, toward the doorway into the mall.

“Stay alert,” I said as we moved through the eerily deserted and oddly quiet menswear section. A large picture of a particularly douchey looking jackass peered at me over a display of tank tops on hangars.

“Coulda been you,” said Kate from behind me, and I groaned.

“I never did those types of ads,” I said defensively.

“Yeah, I know. Just the ones that involve you and a woman in a bikini with billowy curtains in the background, and a strong male voice speaking French doing the voiceover.”

Shit. She had seen the cologne commercial.

That was manly, damn it.

That chick was in a bikini, for Christ’s sake.

And I looked really good in a black silk robe.

But I didn’t think those arguments would work.

“Yeah, well. I… it… shut up.”

Slick.

“Witty, McKnight. Really.” Her voice was amused.

“Got movement in the atrium,” said Rhodes over the comms.

He was leaning over the railing outside the interior entrance to the department store from the main mall. The stores inside lined the walls, all facing the center of a circular atrium with skylights on the ceiling. A now-dead garden was at the very bottom, two stories down, surrounding a murky pool of water that had been a fountain.

“Multiple bodies,” he said softly as I joined him near the metal rail. He was staring hard into the darkness, and I noted that he didn’t have night vision with him. It must have been in the plane.

If he had, he would have realized that he was understating things slightly.

The entire bottom floor of the atrium was swarming with the undead. There were hundreds of them milling around, slowly knocking against one another, bumping into glass store fronts and against the small wall that separated the garden from the walkway. A large doorway with sliding glass doors was located at the end of the slightly oval shaped bottom floor, and it was clearly shut. The lines of a parking lot were barely visible beyond.

“What’s the plan?” asked Kate, taking in the situation, and looking around apprehensively.

There were no exits on this level, but I saw a faintly glowing red sign on the next level down. The power was out, so we had to take the single, large main stairway down to the next floor. But there was nothing that kept them from coming up as we went down.

Between our location and the stairway fifty yards away, we were covered by the three-foot cement wall. We weren’t visible from below. When we reached the marble stairway, though, nothing would hide us from them.

“Someone is going to need to distract them,” I started to say, getting ready to volunteer for the job. But then, Romeo solved our problem.

His snarling and barking from inside the department store echoed into the atrium, and we stared, helpless, as the entire group from the bottom floor looked up, almost as one entity.

Romeo came bounding out of the department store, turning as he reached us, snarling again. Ky backed away, scared. She couldn’t see what was inside.

I could.

“Run,” I said softly to Rhodes, and Kate was already grabbing Ky and pushing her toward the stairs.

Hundreds of undead were streaming through the menswear section toward the atrium. There had to have been a main stairwell or escalator inside that we had missed.

I fired into the crowd, explosive rounds cutting into the front ranks. They fell hard, bodies demolished as the rest trampled them from behind. We backed up as we fired, as a group of teenagers, oddly grouped together, surged forward, skater shoes and ratty t-shirts soaked in blood, teeth askew and hair matted with gore.

Beside me, Rhodes froze. The quiet sputtering of his weapon stopped, and he stared at the teens.

I turned to him, yelling.

“Keep firing, man! We need to keep these things back!”

But he was locked up, his weapon still held in front of him, loaded and ready, but mute.

“God damn it,” I muttered, slinging my gun and grabbing him by the chest, shoving him in front of me toward the stairs. He shuffled forward, eyes wide and staring.

“Down!” I yelled, pushing him and drawing my machete with the other hand.

Below us, the flood of creatures from the first floor were halfway to the second, while Kate and Ky followed Romeo off the stairs and into the promenade on the second floor.

Rhodes stumbled, falling on the landing below and grabbing his leg. I spun into the first rank of creatures, taking the teenagers with a forehand blow. A head spun into the air as I lashed my leg forward, pushing one back with a booted foot and grabbing the next closest by the throat. I reached to the back of the neck and found the spine, then lifted the body up and threw it into the crowd, locking several more to the ground and slowing those in the rear.

The blade whirled in the air, and I slashed and moved, trying to create a distraction that slowed their advance.

Below, Rhodes stumbled to his feet and down the last few stairs, following Kate and Ky.

As I moved forward to follow, I realized too late: the first of the creatures from below had reached the second floor.

I was cut off.

SEVENTEEN

They pressed in, violent and close. I had only seconds before I would be overwhelmed by more than a hundred of them, and I had no illusions about the effectiveness of my magical condition if a hundred hungry ghouls had me pinned in a small space.

I decided quickly, and knew that I was crazy.

The mall had been advertising a big sale, and large banners were hung vertically on two sides of the atrium, stretching over the four floors. Anchored somewhere on the top floor, likely by gang wires attached to the handrail, the banners were only five feet wide.

And one was hanging right in front of me.

Sheathing the machete as fast I could, and straight-arming a nearby creature like an all-pro running back, I bolted for the edge of the floor, jumped to the edge of the four-foot wall, and directly into the thick canvas of the banner.

My stomach lurched with the weightlessness of the leap, and my hands grasped the thick fabric for purchase, even as I heard the howls of hunger and madness from the walkway I had just escaped. The heavy gear on my back pulled me off balance as my right hand found a handhold in the folds of material, and I jerked to a stop, the straps from my bag digging into my shoulders. From below me, I heard a fierce volley of shotgun fire and the wild barking of a near-maniacal Vizsla.

“Mike!” Kate’s voice was frantic and scared.

I pawed for the transmit button on my comm wire, even as two bodies flipped comically over the edge of the wall above me, cart wheeling to the atrium below and smashing messily into the tile floor—a floor that was now mostly vacant, as the creatures had left it empty in their rush to the second floor.

“I’m okay—go now, I’ll meet you there. Go!” I yelled the last and reached up with my free hand to stabilize my position.

Three more bodies cart wheeled past me, and I looked up to see the myriad of rotten, pitted and lined faces, gray and bloodied, staring at me as I hung precariously from the banner between floors.

Below me, the creatures in the walkway didn’t know what hung merely feet above their heads, and in the atrium, the remaining creatures shambled aimlessly, as if wondering where everyone went.

My hands flew as I climbed down quickly, one after another, feet hanging uselessly in the air. Breathing heavily, I landed hard on my feet at the very bottom, near a lingerie shop and a pretzel stand. The red emergency lights above the exit to the parking garage glowed weakly, and I pulled the shotgun to my shoulder with a fluid motion.

No time for stealth.

The zombies turned to me immediately, the largest of them meeting me as I came down from the dead foliage surrounding the mold-covered pond. Quickly, I kicked a creature back, off the small rise of the interior garden as I changed the magazine in the Pathfinder back to normal rounds, and slapped it home. The stench of flora and fauna decaying in unison was sickening, and I swallowed the urge to vomit, even as I pulled the trigger of the shotgun and felt the reassuring thump of the stock against my shoulder. The large man who must have been the fattest and male-est lingerie salesman
ever
, exploded as the discharge took him from his feet and into the fetid water.

The blast echoed in the large space, and I heard the groups join together on the stairwell in a chorus of moans, and flood downward again.

The doors were sealed shut by some manner of electronic bolt, and I didn’t have time for an explosive charge. The shotgun bought me passage again, and I sprinted into the dimly lit garage.

As I reached the concrete floor, I flashed back to King’s Park and our wild run from the psychiatric prison. I remembered Erica and No-Name, and Fred. I wondered what the fuck I was doing in a lame-ass mall in lame-ass Idaho.

Life was really a bag of crooked dicks, sometimes.

The parking lot was mostly empty, and I didn’t bother with the cars. I turned hard to my right, following the closest wall until I reached the elevator shaft and stairwell, and flew down the first flight, changing my nearly empty magazine and finding the transmit button on my comms.

“Kate, you there?” I whispered softly, despite the heavy clatter of my unavoidably loud footfalls.

“Yeah, we’re… heavy numbers on the… making our way…”

The static was thick, and I transmitted again with no response.

My blood was pounding as I reached the street level and slammed the rusty metal door on the bottom floor open, swinging it into the street.

The popping sound of gunfire was thick in the air, and I saw the movement of a large machine in the distance, lights briefly flashing at the end of the street. I turned to my right, trying to find where the exit from the other side of the mall would have been, but the heavy report of a machine gun fired from a rooftop high and to the left made me dive instinctively for cover.

A sandbagged nest of militia was perched on the roof of the building across from the mall, and a car burned fitfully fifty meters ahead of me, outside what must have been the exit that Kate and the others had used. The mall, located on a slight hill, rose up and to the right of me, and I knew that the train station wasn’t more than three blocks away—past the machine gunners.

Moving quickly, I tried to roll out from behind the cover and make it to the other side of the street, but a spray of bullets tore the concrete in front of my hand, and I flew back behind the cover of the overturned food truck.

I slammed my hand on the ground in frustration and tried transmitting again.

No joy.

I knew they’d have their guns trained on me so I didn’t try to put my head above the cover. Instead, I mentally inventoried my pack and my weapons.

I didn’t have anything that could help right now. My shotgun was useless at this range, and the rest of the explosive charges were with Rhodes. My strength didn’t help, and my time was short. Looking around the ruined scene I had a sudden thought.

I tore into the food truck through the ventilation port that was on the top of the vehicle—now the side closest to me. Inside, it was dark and smelled horrible—more rot and mold. I couldn’t fit my whole body inside, but I didn’t need to—I grabbed what I was looking for, attached to the wall with a thick canvas strap and connected to the portable stove with a thick rubber hose. Snapping the hose, I pulled it out with a loud metallic clatter.

Turning around in triumph, I cursed loudly.

My friends from the mall had followed me.

Hundreds of creatures, now released from their commercialist captivity, were shambling along the street, pouring from the small parking garage and directly toward where I squatted, pinned down by the machine gun fire.

I heard the indistinct yells of the men on the roof and saw a stream of bullets whip into the first row of the creatures.

This was my chance.

I rolled into the street from behind my cover as the next volley of gunfire ripped into the corpses, and held the propane tank in one hand as I sprinted toward the far wall.

The building was only four stories high, and I knew I had at least two stories in me. I reached a position directly below the machine gun nest even as I heard them shouting and waving the gun to reposition.

I threw the tank as hard as I could, straight up.

Before they could react, I brought the Pathfinder to bear and fired.

The explosion shattered the windows above me, and glass rained down on my face, small cuts slicing open my exposed cheeks.

A large shard of metal from the propane tank bounced forcefully off the thick metal plating of my chest, and another smaller sliver embedded itself in the thick fabric of my left gauntlet.

But above me, they were screaming. The tank had gotten nearly level with the sandbagged redoubt, and the propane tank had created an effective incendiary and anti-personnel device.

With no time to claim victory, and with hundreds of creatures behind me, I crossed the next street, and headed toward the sound of gunfire.