Mountain Man - 01 (5 page)

Oddly enough, he could deal with the horror in fiction.

The hot rum and buttery goodness slicked his throat. He’d learned how to make the drink from another friend who had once lived up in Antigonish. Taking a second sip, Gus nodded. He would head into town the next day and see what he could find. It would take multiple trips, in shorter daylight hours—not that he screwed around with the nonsense known as daylight savings anymore. He knew that the time would come when nothing was going to get off the mountain. Unless he had a snowmobile. That thought had merit.

The trench would have to wait. Tomorrow would be the beginning of the last great rush before the holiday season. The idea made him feel a little brighter. Perhaps he would grab some Christmas decorations. He never knew what he might find when house picking.

Just as long as whatever he found didn’t try to eat him.

It couldn’t have been any more than five or six degrees the next morning. He suited up, saluted the Captain in his locker, downed four quick shots, and prepped the beast. Frost had turned the lawn to crystal, and he breathed out steam for a few minutes before getting in the van and driving into Annapolis. With the heat on and the heated driver’s seat, he felt wonderful in the early morning sun, even while wearing all of his combat gear. With a scratch or two at his crotch for luck, Gus felt that the day would be a busy one. He wanted to haul ass in and out of the city before sunset, roughly eight hours away. The drive into the city took twenty minutes, all to the music of John Denver coming from the CD player. It wasn’t the morning music he wanted, but he didn’t have anything else in the glove compartment.

The beast sped by the intersection where he had run down the gimp the previous month. The dead husk was missing, but that didn’t really concern him. Crows or some other scavenger had probably finished off the thing. He wondered for a moment what would happen if a live animal did in fact feast on the carrion of zombies. He remembered the movie
Resident Evil
and how the crows that ate gimps turned into gimps themselves. Freaky shit, but he didn’t worry about crows or ravens or seagulls just yet. Seagulls. Gus smirked. What a way to die, being chased down and picked to pieces by a bunch of sea chickens.

He drove through the maze of streets and eventually found the smashed-in storefront of the
Needs
store. He slowed the beast to a stop, facing the hole he’d made the last time, and peered inside from over the steering wheel. Empty, or so it looked, and the surrounding coast appeared clear. Sniffing, he turned the van around with a three-point turn, backing its fat ass up to the opening.

He swung open the rear doors, and the sound of his motorcycle boots hitting pavement stung the air. Visor down, he kept his shotgun pointed forward. He inspected the devastated aisles and deemed them clear. Taking a breath, he proceeded to the swinging door leading into the back. He eased it open with the barrel of the shotgun, fully ready and expecting trouble, only to face a dark and empty storeroom.

“Fuck me,” Gus breathed and flipped up his visor. He studied the gloomy interior. There had been a lot of supplies there back in October. Admittedly, he’d dragged his ass in getting back to the shop, but it was still a surprise to find the placed looted.

Someone else was afoot.

The idea sent a surge of hope through him, and he hoped, for a split moment, that it was a woman, an attractive woman who would appreciate having a
man
about. He certainly wouldn’t mind having female companionship, but the question of whether she would need him was something else. Gus wasn’t the best looking guy, or the brightest, or the hardest working. In fact, even when the world was sane, the women he’d wanted didn’t want anything to do with him, and he recalled being flat out rejected so often that he just didn’t bother anymore. He often wondered how the hell he’d wound up with Tammy. She could have easily had someone better.

Images and forgotten feelings of hurt and embarrassment flooded his mind, stalling him on the threshold of the shop. He eventually freed himself of the paralysis and got back to the task at hand. Lifting his weapon, he went into stealth mode and moved shotgun-first around the dark room.

Empty.

The person, or persons, had taken everything he’d left behind. The idea didn’t bother him too much—other folks had to live, too—but he would have to be on the lookout. Then, he thought, what if they found the liquor shop? Oh, Jesus. He retreated from the storeroom and passed the counter. On instinct, he glanced behind to where the dead gimp had been mashed into the wall.

No gimp.

That put wrinkles into his forehead. He eased around the counter and searched, but the body wasn’t there. There wasn’t anywhere to go. The thing must not have been dead then, he concluded, just somehow pinned behind the counter. When he’d pulled out, the bastard had probably dragged himself along the floor and out into the open air. Gus studied the ground, but saw no indication of anything crawling away.

Thinking on it more than he should have, he got in the van and closed the doors behind him. He plopped down in the driver’s seat and looked ahead, remembering the path he had taken a month ago. The engine started when he turned the key, and he eased away from the
Needs
shop. The road was empty. He knew he had struck a few of them in his escape, but he didn’t think he hit them hard enough to outright kill them.

“Aw, fuck it.” He eased up to thirty and headed toward another part of the city. He knew of another area where he could do his house picking, a continuation of where he had left off a while ago. His original plan was to move from subdivision to subdivision, mentally checking off the places he’d been to, but sometimes he deviated. Houses were the best stops, and he never went into apartment buildings. Those were too dangerous. Houses could be dangerous as well, but not nearly as much as the potential nests of apartment buildings. Realistically, any building could harbor a number of gimps. Schools, office buildings, and he already knew about hospitals. He wouldn’t go back to a hospital unless he was desperate.

The van oozed exhaust as it moved through the sunlit, empty streets. From his driver’s window, he spotted gray figures stumbling out from between houses. They shambled in his direction. He turned a corner and saw more of them coming out to fill the road. He drove up over a yellow lawn to avoid where they were thickest, but it was impossible to avoid them all. A thin line of them led by an ashen-fleshed woman wearing a one-piece bathing suit shambled in front of the beast. Her left arm was missing, and her jawless face turned as the van passed. The grill guards split the line of undead, and as he drove through, arms thrashed and thumped against the sides of the van, rattling his nerves a little more. Gus took a breath and wanted a shot of booze.

Turning the steering wheel to the right, he knocked four more zombies on their asses, glimpsing an executive-type guy and one dressed in only a pair of walking shorts. He turned right and then left, giving the van a shot of gas to escape the clingers. Without windows in the rear, he had no way of knowing what was behind him.

He turned the van onto a larger road and wove through the derelict cars. He drove through a series of main streets, passing mom-and-pop shops—how they ever survived among the chain giants amazed him—until he eased the van to a stop in another subdivision. Placing the van in drivereverse, he backed up to the open front door of a white split-level house. Once the beast was in place, he killed the engine and took a quick look around to ensure the coast was clear.

Gus rattled his way to the back, opting to leave his shotgun behind, and threw open the rear doors. He jumped onto the front steps and glanced inside the house. Seeing and hearing nothing, he entered, closing the door behind him.

Two flights of worn-looking hardwood stairs greeted him on the landing, one heading to a hallway and kitchen above, the other down into the gloom of a basement. Sunlight came in from upstairs, and Gus flipped down his visor. He pulled his bat from his back scabbard, bringing it to guard. Armed and ready, he crept up the stairs, noticing that the air smelled fresh. A good sign.

He stepped into a modern kitchen filled with steel appliances, granite countertops, and a dark wooden finish.
Nice place
, he thought and went to the double-door fridge. He opened it, got a whiff of the remains inside and quickly closed it. He opened the cupboards and found a bag of flour as well as an unopened box of raisins. Going through the rest of the kitchen, he realized that this particular family had grabbed whatever food they could before running. Smart bunch. He moved around the island table in the center of the kitchen and peered into the combination dining and living room, undivided except for a floor of carpeting underneath the sofa furniture. A flat-screen TV interested him for a moment, as did a stereo system with an actual turntable. A picture window covered in drapes gave a gauzy view of the outside.

Retreating to the kitchen, he quickly went through the drawers. Nothing of interest, as he possessed enough cutlery at home. Next, he went to the bedrooms. In the drawers of the master bedroom, he found a flesh-colored dildo hidden underneath some clothes. The sex toy was almost the length of his arm––the things that got left behind. He started to throw the thing back, then reconsidered and tucked it under his arm. Wondering who had lived in the house, he rummaged through the rest of the drawers and closets, and even checked between the mattresses. He pulled out two skin magazines featuring twenty-something co-eds on the cover and a pair of fuzzy handcuffs, which he almost took, but couldn’t find the keys. A box on the top shelf held a leather mask with a zipper mouth and eyes, as well as a one-piece bathing suit with the crotch and nipple areas cut out.
Who were these people?
Gus shook his head as he stuffed the mask back into the box and left it on the shelf. He moved into the second bedroom, which appeared to belong to a little girl––pink walls, small bed immaculately made, and a collection of stuffed animals. God help the kid, he thought, with parents into the leather scene and dildos of mass destruction.

Moving on, he found an empty hockey duffel bag in the basement and several pieces of old furniture. A second storage room contained a box full of old paperbacks, military fiction and erotica titles, but the rest of the area lay bare and coated in a layer of dust. He began to wonder if the house had already been looted. He took the duffel bag and books back to the landing, throwing in the dildo, the box of raisins, and the flour. The odd mixture made him smile. What would happen if he added water? He also found eleven rolls of toilet paper, which saved the place from being a total loss. But that was how it went. Sometimes he found something of use, and more times he didn’t. He slung the duffel bag over his shoulder, went outside, and crashed into a hissing gimp.

The fright of colliding with the undead woke Gus up. He dropped the bag as the creature swung both arms around him, its yellow-black teeth fastened onto his shoulder for only a second before Gus pushed the thing back. It staggered, off-balance, and hit the front steps with a smack of flesh on wood. Three others hissed, lurching around the open doors of the van and hurrying as fast as their stiff limbs could carry them.

Taking a breath, Gus drew his bat.

Swinging with bad intentions, he crushed the skull of the first zombie, a gray-skinned man dressed in a jeans and a T-shirt. The connection drove the thing off the steps and onto the front lawn. Gus retreated to the open door of the house while two gimps stumbled over their fallen friend. He checked the clearance for the bat. Plenty of room.

The first zombie coming up the stairs got its skull bashed in, the bone shattering like a thick mason jar. As that one crumpled, the next gimp, a woman with her long hair hanging over her face, pawed its way forward. Its hands reached out for him, and he saw that it had no fingers on the right hand. Not even a thumb. Bringing the bat down from overhead, he smashed the gimp on the crown of its head. It collapsed. Gus looked up and saw his first attacker get up, baring its winning smile. It took a moment for him to realize the thing had no lips. Something had chewed them off.

He stepped to the side and swept the dead thing’s legs out from under it with his bat. The zombie crashed to the ground, and Gus took two steps to get into position before bludgeoning its head. He straightened up in case there were others. Seeing the area was clear for the moment, he scooped up the bag and plunged into the van, slamming the doors behind him.

“Shit!” He dumped the contents of the bag into a bin. It should never have surprised him. He knew how damn quiet the things could creep along. Gazing down at the treasures collected from the house, he saw something out of the corner of this eye that made him glance toward his windshield.

There, a dozen more of the creatures, spread out like a fucked-up offensive line, shambled toward the van. Gus snarled and gripped his bat. Anger surged through him. Why couldn’t he get a break from the things? Why couldn’t he house pick in peace?

Stupid
…

He ignored the inner voice.

Drive away
, it said.

But he didn’t feel like driving away. He’d been driving and running away for the better part of two goddamn years. Fury took hold and his inner voice shut up.

He moved to the back, opened the rear doors, and jumped out. Visor down, he walked with purpose to the front of the van, his rage building.

“You fuckers want something?”