Rise Again (21 page)

The roar of the blast continued, and Weaver flew through the air. Danny didn’t see where he landed; she was flung off her feet and smashed down on her back across the roof rack. It hurt as if her spine was broken, which meant it wasn’t.

A zombie immediately hooked its fingers into her ear, and she tore painfully out of its grasp. She got on her knees, craning to look for Weaver, but he’d already disappeared beneath the undead, wherever he was. Danny’s ears were ringing, half-deafened. She could hear a bell-like note sustained above the faint sound of roaring flames and the zombie moan that rippled through the swarm. If Weaver was down, she couldn’t even find him. He might have been knocked out by the explosion, or killed by the fall, or he might be right as rain, crawling through a forest of cold legs.

A zombie was pulling her down by the belt. She aimed over its head and fired another shot at the nearest car, a low maroon sedan.

This one didn’t explode. The shot punched a big hole through the rear quarter panel, low by the wheel well, where the gas tank would most likely be. She could smell it now, the gasoline and the burning rubber and that
rich, sweet stink of roasting human flesh. Danny fired again, and the gasoline spilling from the maroon sedan caught fire with a
whump
she could barely hear, although she felt the heat on her blistered face. The zombies shuffling through the gasoline went up like torches. Danny chopped with the shotgun at the hands that were pulling her down. She struggled to her feet. The Suburban was standing in a sea of burning, crackling bodies, their slow limbs flailing, the flames spreading from one to the next. The smoke stank obscenely and made Danny’s eyes stream.

If Weaver was lying senseless on the ground, he was going to burn. It was the worst way to go, but there was nothing else Danny could do. She wasn’t going to throw her life away without taking a bunch of these things with her, and if Weaver was already dying, she didn’t want him coming back like Larry’s wife. Danny had to move from her position; the paint on the Suburban was rising in fat blisters from the heat of the fires.

She jumped down on the hood and kept her momentum as she leaped for the car in front, a hatchback. It was a messy landing because of the blazing arms that flailed at her in midair, and she hit the hatchback badly and broke the rear window, then fell sprawling on the ground. Immediately the things were coming after her, even the burning ones. Gobbets of blazing fat and clothing were dropping all around her, and through the legs she could see the hungry flames turning the asphalt into boiling syrup. Danny crawled on her belly underneath the hatchback and kept on going, ignoring the scrape of bolts and fittings that projected beneath the vehicle. Hands reached for her, and some of the things were even down on their knees, looking for her, their eyes glittering in the firelight.

A ribbon of flaming gasoline meandered toward her from under the sedan.
She
was going to burn, too, unless she moved quickly. There had to be some avenue of escape in all this chaos. She hoped to God that Weaver had found it.

She should have given Weaver more warning before she shot the tank on that car. She didn’t expect there to be an explosion. No excuse, but she just didn’t know. Now it was time to move. One of the hatchback’s tires was burning. The panic was hitting Danny like a million tiny knives all at once.

I’m going to burn
.

A dozen cold hands had gotten hold of Danny’s legs and they were pulling her backward. In a matter of moments she would be exposed again, and
the biting would begin and her legs would be eaten first so she had plenty of time to experience some serious agony before she was ripped apart or caught fire.

From her position a couple of inches above the ground, she could see the undersides of several vehicles. Through gaps in the maddened zombies, she could see the axles, the suspensions, the gas tanks. It was worth one more try, and if she was lucky the explosion would blow her head off.

If not, she had a couple more shells in the gun. She would do it to herself.

Danny could not remember what happened next, just as she could not remember what happened when she got knocked over the side of Route 144 with the Explorer. She took aim, and suddenly the claws grabbing her legs dragged her back a foot or more, and she fired the shotgun. Her hearing cut out on detonation, that much she knew.

Then there was a jump in the chronology.

Suddenly she was standing in the middle of what looked like a butcher’s shop hit by a missile. One of her eyes was closed and she was still holding the shotgun, but the stock had broken off, leaving a sharp stump like a broken bone. Several cars were overturned within a dozen yards, and the hatchback under which she had been lying was now standing on its side behind her, resting up against the burning sedan. Huge clouds of black smoke filled the sky and the red flames were brighter than the fading daylight: The sun might not have been all the way down in the flatlands, but evening comes early in the mountains.

It was absolutely silent: no ringing in the ears, no screams, no crackle of flames. Fire was everywhere, and the grotesque shapes of bodies with no limbs and limbs with no bodies. Strewn in the wreckage were heads, black and red, with the ears and hair burnt off them so they looked like huge roasted thumbs. Danny tried to walk, but her feet wouldn’t move, and she looked down and discovered she was ankle deep in human intestines. She looked at her own body and didn’t see any big holes. The intestines belonged to somebody else.

Outside the ring of twisted metal and fire there were still hundreds of zombies, although the first few rows of them were scorched and torn up to such a degree that they were impeding the forward motion of the ones behind. They couldn’t see or hear or smell. Some of them couldn’t bite, either, because their faces were torn off. Danny wondered briefly what she
had done to cause all this destruction.
It worked pretty good
, the voice observed. But Danny seemed to recall she was supposed to be dead. Maybe she was. Maybe she was one of the zombies now.

Then she saw Weaver.

He was dragging his left leg, and it looked like the knee might be broken. The foot faced almost backward. He was moving away through the zombies. They ignored him. He was pretty beat-up looking and Danny thought maybe she, too, was in such bad shape they’d mistake her for one of their kind.

Weaver
, she tried to say, but no words came out. She didn’t know if it was because she couldn’t hear or because she couldn’t talk. But he was headed toward the gymnasium, so she followed after him, marveling on some level that her legs continued to work at all. The zombies couldn’t catch her. She was a superstar, and so was he, and they were going to
make it
—all the way back down Main Street, together, after which she could explain to Weaver why she’d risked setting him alight.

Danny reached him in front of the Quik-Mart and tried to call his name again but could only croak. Still, Weaver turned around. And Danny saw the milky eyes and the waxen skin and the windshield wiper arm protruding from his chest with a waterfall of blood spilled down below it and she knew that Weaver was dead before he hit the ground after that first, surprise explosion. So whatever brought people back, it was accelerating. There wasn’t any down time, any more. She fired the shotgun almost casually—after all, she knew him a little, no need for ceremony—and Weaver’s head blew apart.

Danny made it halfway down Main before the zombies came for her. But when they did, they were as enthusiastic as ever, while Danny had lost her zest for everything: life, hope, love, even the sacred absolution of death. Still, force of habit—she fought back.

A couple of zombies reeled back with smashed faces, one she definitely killed, because she hit it clean on the temple and the broken butt of the shotgun went in like a cake knife, and a couple she shot the legs out from under. But the last shell, the one she knew was there for sure, was for her. She didn’t figure it would hurt, and if it did, it would only be for a moment, and even then, would she know it? Pain traveled through the nervous system at three hundred feet per second. All those pea-sized nuggets of metal (number four buckshot, twenty-seven balls) would pass through her
brain at
thirteen
hundred feet per second. It wouldn’t hurt, but it would permanently change her hat size.
Sucks to be me
, Danny thought. She was concussed now, that was for fucking sure.

The only thing intruding on her perfect well of self-pity was Amy. Her friend’s voice was coming in high and fast, cutting through the deafness, shrill as always when she was worked up.
Incoming!
But Danny could definitely hear Amy calling from somewhere. From right about here, Danny realized.

Amy was beside her.

“Jesus, Danny, you look awful.”

They were surrounded.

“Why are you here?” Danny asked, although she couldn’t hear if it came out of her mouth. For that matter, she couldn’t hear Amy. But she could read the shape of her mouth.

“I told them to go,” Amy said. “The motor home is leaving.”

“Why?” Danny croaked. She wanted to understand how, despite all this effort, she had failed to get Amy, of all people, out of this nightmare.

“You,” Amy replied.

Danny fired that last precious shot and blew a zombie down. It was coming at Amy. Instinct took over. Danny cursed. Last shot wasted. Now what was she going to do, stab herself to death? Then she saw the highway patrolman, Officer Park, the corpse shambling along toward them, arms half-outstretched as if it didn’t quite believe it had found prey. Danny strode forward as well as she could with a pair of half-working legs and pulled the automatic out of the highway patrolman’s holster. He didn’t mind. He wasn’t interested in guns anymore. He was all about the teeth.

Danny pulled the patrolman’s Smokey hat down over his eyes and fired the automatic through his head. The hat caught fire at the muzzle point and the trooper fell down, a curlicue of smoke following him to the ground. Sound was returning. A horn was honking somewhere. Amy had her fingers in her ears and her eyes shut.

“What are you doing?” Danny said.

“What?” said Amy.

Danny grabbed Amy’s arm and pulled her finger out of her ear.

“I said…” Danny couldn’t remember what she had said. The world was falling upward, very slowly. She could stay on her feet, but she was eventually going to fall into the sky. Amy took Danny’s gun.

“You take the gun,” Danny said. That way she was still in charge. Danny pointed at a zombie. “Shoot that one quick.”

Amy fumbled around with the weapon. Danny swiped the gun away from Amy, who was obviously not going to manage such a simple task, and shot the zombie. Its teeth shattered on the pavement an inch from Danny’s boot. Lord, were they ever about to get bitten to death, eaten alive. All
kinds
of zombies coming in. There was a high, gassy lightness to Danny’s state of mind, a shakerful of hysteria and blows to the head.

“Danny? You got another plan?”

“There’s too many.”

“Two bullets,” said Amy, “is all we need.”

Amy took Danny’s gun hand and guided it to the middle of her forehead, the end of the barrel pressed into the skin. She looked into Danny’s eyes, and Danny understood why Amy was beside her, instead of tooling up 144 toward Big Bear. Because, even after she was gone so long in the desert at war, or maybe for that reason, Amy needed her more than she needed herself. If not Kelley, there was Amy. If not Danny, Amy didn’t want to live.

Danny was touched. She pulled back the action on the pistol. Amy closed her eyes.

Bang

Danny looked around. She hadn’t even pulled the trigger. What was the gunshot? Amy opened her eyes, staring at the zombie behind Danny that had just puked its brains out of its ear.

Bang

It happened again, and a zombie went down with its head emptied out like a piñata, close behind Amy.

Bang

Sniper.

Danny almost hit the deck, but then she remembered: They were in America. No snipers here; not many, at least.

Bang
.

Another zombie flew off its feet, and Danny swiveled around to look in the opposite direction from where the zombie’s brains had gone.

“Run, you dumb shitheads!”
Wulf bellowed.

He was up on the roof of the Quik-Mart with the Winchester 70, working the bolt action and firing again. The zombie that clutched Danny’s shoulder snapped clear out of her field of view with a hole in its head.

“You old son of a bitch,” Danny said, and grabbed Amy’s arm.

“Danny? Let’s boogie,” Amy said. Amy had to help her stay upright, but Danny ran as best she could.

Wulf kept up a steady fire for at least a minute and a half. He was slipping those shells into the gun like a lover: pop the trigger smooth as silk, another zombie in the scope gets its card pulled. Squirt of black oatmeal and down. Nothing to it. Reload. Pop. Down. Wulf’s eyes stung with perspiration. He experienced the rush that he’d not felt since he left Vietnam, all those years ago. Decades. He’d been asleep, drunk, pissed off, ruining marriages, half-raising crooked kids who didn’t give a shit about him, kids who told their lovers he was dead. Maybe grandkids by now. All he knew was the old fighting machinery—that infernal engine with only one use on this godforsaken earth, given him by the U.S. government in return for anything else he ever could have been—was running again like he’d last topped up the battery and oiled the cylinders with Marvel Mystery Oil this very morning, not forty years earlier.

He rocked the bolt back and chambered another slim, sharp round and there was the head in the scope and he blew the skull open, another zombie out of the sheriff’s way. Wulf was going to see that tough little gal lived. He’d seen everything she did, from up on the rooftops. He’d watched her draw the enemy out, take stupid risks, and he’d even thought about popping her through the head a couple of times, to save her the trouble of dying underneath all those bloody teeth. But she kept on going, outmaneuvering death at every turn, so he kept on letting her, and when he saw that crazy veterinary come along, Wulf could have thrown up it was so damn touching. But he figured the time had arrived. He sighted on the sheriff’s scorched, half-scalped head, crosshairs intersecting at the vein jumping in her temple.