The City Series (Book 1): Mordacious (11 page)

“Where are you going?” Maria asks me and Grace.

At our answer of Brooklyn Heights, she gives us the same disbelieving stare she gave Bart. It’s far, but it’s not as if we have a plethora of choices. And it isn’t nearly as bad as Bart’s plan.

“Maybe we can find a car,” I say.

“You’ve seen the streets,” Maria says, throwing my own line back at me. “I’m going to my daughter’s friend’s apartment. There are things in the basement—food, camping gear, water. I don’t know what’s left, but it’s not far. Come with me. Anyone who wants to come is welcome.”

Grace pulls at her bottom lip. Maria leans in. “It’s not thirty days, but what if it’s only a few months? We don’t know. If I were your mothers, I’d want you to find somewhere safe and stay there.”

Obviously, she never met my mother. I decide to throw her own line at her. “Why do you care what we do?”

“I hope that someone would help my girls if they needed it.”

Grace’s eyes have been ping-ponging between us, and now they settle on me. “Maybe we should go there first. We can always leave.”

“Are you sure?”

I keep my face impartial while I wait for her answer. I don’t want to try for Brooklyn Heights. Then again, I don’t want to go somewhere unfamiliar. All I want is to go to my apartment, pull the covers over my head and wake up tomorrow in a normal world.

Grace nods.

“I’ll come with you, if that’s okay,” Jorge says to Maria. “I didn’t keep a lot of food in the house. I don’t know where my son’s living now or I’d go check on him.”

“Of course,” Maria says, then turns to Clark. “You get your wife and bring her to us, okay? I can help when she has the baby.”

Clark’s blue eyes moisten. “I will, thank you.”

Kearney declines Maria’s offer. I can’t say I’m disappointed. Dawn sniffles and wipes her nose with her arm. “I don’t want to stay here by myself,” she says.

“You know you can’t stay here,” Maria says, gentle but firm.

Dawn nods as if she’s been waiting for someone to direct her next move. “I have go to my son’s. He didn’t answer the phone, so I don’t know if—” She rubs at her small eyes that have turned to puffy slits. “I don’t want to die.”

Neither do I. We have that in common, if nothing else. She looks so wretched that I can’t remember why I disliked her. She’s human and, in contrast to zombies, that’s pretty great. “We’re not going to die,” I say.

Her eye slits almost close in suspicion. I do my best to look friendly. After another big sniffle, she says, “Okay.”

“We’ll go when it sounds like they’ve moved away from the door,” Bart says.

It’s something to hope for and something to dread at the same time.

***

Bart’s watch says it’s after lunch, but the bathroom is a black hole devoid of time. I’ve finally peed—with the help of a running faucet—and thanked my lucky stars I wasn’t very hungry last night. Pee I can do, but poop is a whole other story. I’m famished now, though. I go through my bag and pull out a bag of chips, the other Twix, a package of gummy bears, and Twizzlers.

I open the chips. “Everyone good with splitting them?”

I sort them onto paper towels I lay out on the bathroom counter. They’re barbecue, my favorite, and we each get the equivalent of a few potato chips. I split the gummy bears evenly, but I make mine all orange flavor. I take my pile and bring Grace hers. The others follow suit.

“Thank you,” Jorge says, his chips already gone. “How much crap do you have in that bag?”

“A lot,” I say. “But, unfortunately, no more food. We can eat the Twix whenever everybody wants.”

“Let’s save it for later.”

Night comes. Dark streets filled with zombies will be next to impossible to traverse, so we settle in for morning and eat the Twix and Twizzlers. Grace swallows the final bite of her Twizzler and whispers, “Well, if we die, at least your last meal was candy.”

I didn’t think I’d find a reason to smile before we made our escape, but one comes anyway. “Sorry I didn’t have any raw nuts or nutritional yeast in there.”

She chuffs and then lays her head beside mine on my bag. “If I die, promise that if you find Logan you’ll tell him I love him.”

I stare up at the lights and will them to stay on for a few more hours. That’s all we need, or we won’t have a shot. “Grace, you’re not dying.”

“Okay, but promise.”

“I promise.”

She breathes out and rolls on her side. “Thanks.”

Every thud or bump or brushing sound makes me stiffen, until my entire body is rigid with tension. I’ve always envied Grace’s ability to sleep. I’ve tossed and turned many a night while Grace snores away. I can tell she’s drifted off when she plants her butt in my side. It’s oddly comforting and I close my eyes, although I’m sure I won’t sleep with what’s outside the door.

***

Maybe all circuits were on overload and I went comatose instead of slept, but when I come to in early morning the banging has tapered off. It’s possible they’ve forgotten about us. Maybe we can get a head start before we remind them with our presence.

Bart presses an ear to the door. “We should go now. While we still have lights.”

My phone is almost dead, not that I would want to depend on my phone to provide the light to escape a dark room full of zombies. I’ll need both hands to push them out of the way or whatever insane thing it is we plan to do. I tell myself I’ve got this. I’ve killed them, so I know to go for the softer spots. They’re slow and can be outrun. They’re stupid and can be faked out. If I get up high, they can’t follow. All helpful bits of information that make me feel no more prepared.

Jorge inspects a stall door. “I can use the door like a shield if we can get it off. A screwdriver would help.”

I go into my bag, find the little pouch that holds lotion and tampons and toiletries, and pull out my Swiss army knife. “Will this help? It’s got a screwdriver on the end of the nail file.”

Jorge takes the two-inch knife and pulls out the file with its tiny flathead tip. “Better than nothing. This isn’t what you were talking about when you said you had a weapon?”

It’s a puny thing, even more so in Jorge’s big hand, and I almost laugh at the idea someone could consider it a weapon. I show him my kitchen knife and he says, “That’s more like it.”

It takes a little while, but with the help of my dinky screwdriver, two stall doors are off their hinges. Bart agrees to carry the other, and we all move to the bathroom door.

“Stay close,” Jorge says. “We’ll get up on the tables on the right wall ‘til we get near the registers, then we run for the kitchen. Everyone got that?”

“Stay with me,” Maria murmurs to me and Grace.

She’s given us the address of our destination, but I don’t plan to stray from her side. I loop my bag across my chest and clutch my knife. Calming breaths elude me. Calming
anything
eludes me. Living out the rest of my life in the bathroom with Dawn is beginning to sound like a truly delightful state of affairs.

Jorge and Bart step into the hall first. The rest of us stick close to their backs, with Clark and Kearney bringing up the rear. Jorge swings his door on a woman in a torn blue dress. The thwack of metal on meat is necessary, but the hallway fills with hoarse sounds in seconds. Most are in our path to the cafeteria, a few are behind us, and all are moving this way.

Bart and Jorge pick up speed, though it’s not as fast as I’d like. My heart drums in time to the way my feet itch to pound the floor. The noises ramp up. There’s a bump here and there when Bart or Jorge uses a door to shove a zombie away. Fifteen feet later, multiple bodies ping against our defense.

“Here they come!” Jorge yells.

A wave hits. Dirty hands reach over the metal and grope their way around the sides. Capillaries and veins run like black rivers up pasty forearms. Bart and Jorge steamroll forward with matching grunts, and the downed zombies grab at my ankles. I jump to narrowly escape a rising mouth, come down two-footed on another’s stomach and use it as a springboard. I skid in entrails on the smooth tile. Grace leaps them two at a time. I don’t use my knife. That would involve stopping, and I’m not stopping, ever.

One of our former patients—a mid-sixties post-surgical bowel obstruction with grandkids and a golf habit—slips past our improvised wall with an unsteady gait. Her torso sags to one side above the missing half of her abdomen. A second wave blasts a space between the doors. Dawn screams. Clark shouts. A plan is good until it isn’t, and this one isn’t anymore.

“Go!” Jorge yells, and throws his door at the crowd.

I pull Grace after him. We can make it if we stay in his shadow. In the cafeteria, Prisha, now a small, gnashing zombie, blocks our way. Jorge tosses her aside and motions us onto a table, just out of reach of rotted fingers. We shuffle sideways, backs against the wall. They moved these tables to make room for the gurneys, and now it’s saving our lives. But only five more tables and then we’ll have to cross the floor of the serving area.

At the end of the line, Jorge points at the twenty or more infected between us and the kitchen. They’re gathering, becoming denser, and the ones from the hall will join them. We have to move. Jorge jumps into the throng. One meaty arm shoots out and sends three to the floor. His cleaver takes down Igor. He’s clearing a space.

“Now!” he shouts.

Grace jumps down. I leap before I can think better of it and push at one coming on my left. It tangles with another and they land on the floor. There’s no time for my knife. If I stop for anything, I’ll be cut off.

Just ahead, Jorge doesn’t bother with his cleaver. He grapples with arms and kicks out legs and throws one into the next. He’s the reason we make any headway. Maria grunts behind me, Grace shoves to my right, and I push at anything that gets close. A hand grips my shoulder and I’m eye to eye with Nancy. Her neck is torn open and abdomen a hole. I rear my leg back and crunch her brittle knee with my sneaker, then push her down with a ferocity that might have once scared me. But I want to live. I’ll fight like a panicked animal in a trap; I’ll chew off my own leg to be free.

We make it behind the food counter, disheveled and panting but alive. Jorge pushes a metal rack into the open space, enters the kitchen and leaves the door swinging behind him. I know Jorge well enough to know he didn’t leave us to fend for ourselves. Sure enough, by the time we catch up, he stands over two bloody heads.

“No more,” he says, chest heaving. He hurries to the knife block and hands Grace a long, thin blade. Maria grabs what looks to be an ice pick.

Bart, Clark and Kearney burst through the swinging door. “Is everyone here?” Bart asks, and then answers his own question with, “Where’s Dawn?”

All eyes shift to the cafeteria door.

“She didn’t make it,” Kearney says. Clark opens his mouth but closes it at his partner’s sharp look.

Metal screeches and shadows move at the door window. They’ll be in any second. We race up the sloped hall to the outside door. Jorge rests his hand on the push bar. “Ready?”

No one is, but the door flies open and we fall into daylight.

Chapter 16

Wind blows off the water—the chilling New York City wind that slips through sweaters to reach your bones and whips your hair into your face. The smell is worse than expected. On the roof we were above the masses, but on the concrete it’s a whole new olfactory experience. We’ve come out near dumpsters that reek of spoiled food, into zombies that smell of rotten teeth and shit, and, underneath it all, the fishy, brackish water of the bay.

It takes a moment to get our bearings. An offshoot of the hospital to our left, dumpsters to the right, street straight ahead. If we can get past the zombies in the narrow loading area, we’ll be able to dodge the ones on the street.

Kearney shouts from where he wrestles with two zombies by the dumpsters. Jorge bends one of them, a zombie doctor, by her hair and slams his cleaver in the base of her skull. The other’s hands dig into Kearney’s face from behind. I cover the five feet and yank it away by its filthy jacket.

It turns with a growl. I draw back my knife, but Kearney fires under its chin before I can strike. Chunks of brain rain down. The sound echoes off buildings and ricochets in my skull. The zombies in the street, who were minding their own business, fixate on us, and the closest crank up their speed to form a pack in our narrow exit. Clark moves to one side with his gun. “Go! I’ll keep them over here!”

Kearney jogs forward and shoves his partner between the shoulder blades. Clark stumbles, arms pinwheeling, and hits the first of the pack. A squat woman with short hair drags him in. Jorge moves to help, but the bodies circle around, heads lowered to Clark’s shoulders and neck and arms. His upturned face is open-mouthed agony, and his sharp screams are chilling until they cut off abruptly and the infected follow him down. The sudden silence might be worse.

We watch in shock as Kearney disappears through the gap that formed when they veered for the bait. Maybe he’s headed home or back under his rock, but Clark isn’t going home to his pregnant wife, and Kearney gets off scot-free. Jorge recovers first, motioning to the gap with his hand. They’ll be done eating soon, and a few are already coming. Clark is gone. There’s nothing to do except use his death to our benefit, even if it feels shitty to do so.

We slink past the eating crowd to the asphalt. Bart turns toward Bay Ridge, while Maria, Jorge, Grace and I round the corner for the upper avenues. The first block is empty but for industrial buildings and blown trash. On the next, ten zombies stand outside a vinyl-sided house. We keep low on the other side of the street. The breeze still blows, but I’m immune to its chill. Skin soaked and mouth dry. Lungs burning with every breath.

The overpass of the Gowanus Expressway looms above Third Avenue. Even from below, I can see it’s blocked with cars and crawling with zombies, as is the avenue beneath. I search for a safe route through the sea of metal that reflects back the spring sunlight. Nothing looks promising. We have a few blocks over and almost two avenues up to travel, and as the avenues rise in number, so does the population.