The Coalition: Part 1 The State of Extinction (Zombie Series) (12 page)

Cutter unlocked the door and opened it. The only thing that met him was fresh air rolling
in, beyond him,
and down the deep stairs. It was almost heaven. Bringing the gas canister out, he set it on the rooftop and then
,
once more locked a door behind him. He looked around. There were buildings that were higher than this one, but they were blocks away, and he doubted anyone would ever take the effort to shoot at him from any of them.
Nevertheless,
if they did,
they had
better shoot straight. Once again, it was just a risk he had to take. You couldn’t rule out every bad thing that might happen. Especially when it came to other people.

He now just gripped the propane tank by the handle and walked it across the roof to what amounted to his front door.
However,
before he went in
,
he set it
down, strolled over to the edge of the roof,
and looked out over the city. He liked doing this whenever he could. Around
him,
the streets were growing more crowded with new growth.
Grass, shrubs,
and even trees had sprouted up in sidewalks and in the asphalt
everywhere,
you looked. The wind brought all manner of things in from every direction. There really was no way anyone could drive the streets of downtown
Charlotte
anymore. It was that damned crowded with runaway vegetation by that point.

Cutter stretched his tired
muscles, crept to the south-facing side of the building,
and stared down. He leaned against the strong concrete abutment and looked over its edge. Directly in front of him was the burned over acreage that marked the boundaries of the latest fire. Those were worrying him. He’d had a little safe house in that sector. More like a panic room than a house, but
he had
hated to
lose
it. There had been a couple of good guns in there, some ammo and canned food.
Looking
ten degrees to the east of that burned patch was another immolated piece of real estate.
Another one
was a
few degrees east of there. There was almost something planned in the way the fires had been burning. If he could think of a good reason for it, he might suspect someone of doing it intentionally
, but
it just didn’t make a lot of sense.

Below, he could see some movement. Most of it was zombies, but there were some furtive shadows that told him that
,
they were made by the living. People were rushing about down there, hunting for what they needed to survive. Cutter closed his eyes on that and turned his back. He couldn’t worry about others right now. He had to clean himself up and get some rest.

And he had that tank of propane to store securely.

**

Two
days
later,
he came upon Colonel Dale again. That was some bit of coincidence, he reckoned.
For
Dale’s sake, he hoped that it was coincidence. If the man
were
stalking him or even casually following him,
there would
be hell to pay.

“Hello, Mr. Cutter,” the Brit greeted.

“How are you, Colonel?”

“I’m well,” he said. “And you?”

“Look,” Cutter told him. “Let’s go sit down.” He indicated what remained of an outdoor café below a bank tower. “I want to compare some notes.”

“Very well,” the Colonel agreed. “I’d like that. I need to tank up on some water anyway.”

In a few moments
,
they were seated at a little cast iron table
and
sitting on cast iron chairs. Cutter was facing east, looking toward the intersection
,
while Dale was facing west, looking toward another street and the interior of the restaurant and the bank building to which it was attached. No other diners, dead or living, made any obvious moves. The sky was clear, the day was not yet hot, there were no biting insects around, and if you could ignore the darkness of every door and window and the shabbiness of the streets you could almost imagine it for a normal day in a normal world.

Cutter sipped at the hydration tube on his pack. Dale had opted to pour himself a draught of clear water into a metal cup that
he had
produced from a jacket pocket. Dale peeled his gloves off for this effort and sat there, drinking his water.

“Did you know that the Lunds lost their oldest son?” Cutter asked.

Dale set the cup down. There was a minor clink of the cup’s metal against the table’s cast iron. “I didn’t know when we last spoke, but I discovered it the next day. From the old woman who lives on
Graham Street
. Linda Jarman, if you know her.”

“The old woman who walks around with that wire cart like she’s just going to the store like in the old days.” Cutter shook his head. “I can’t figure out why she’s not dead. I swear to God I can’t.”

“It is indeed a strange thing,” Dale agreed. “The Lord watches over children and madmen,” he muttered.

“What did she tell you? I wish
I had
known before I spoke to
Lund
. I bumped into them, you know.”

“No. I didn’t. Did you…”

“Did I bring up Oliver? Damned right I did.” He sighed. “I think I was lucky to walk away from that.
Lund
’s about to snap, I think.”

“I should think so.”

“What happened? How’d they lose the boy?” Cutter saw a shadow move
,
but figured it for the wind moving something in a looted store and did nothing more than keep his eyes tuned in that direction.

“It was that bastard over on
Tryon Street
,” Dale said.

“Fifty-two,” Cutter muttered the number.

“Yes. Old Fifty-two.”

They called him that because of the guns he had stationed on the 25
th
floor of one of the taller buildings in center city. There was a trio of 52-caliber machine guns up there, solidly placed in windows facing out at different angles. The fellow could see anything moving for blocks in a 180-degree arc. Anything that so much as flinched along that panorama was in his line of sight.

“You telling me that crazy motherfucker shot
Lund
’s little boy?”

Dale just nodded.

“Didn’t we tell him what would happen if he did something like that again?”

The Colonel nodded once more.

“I know that his rig up there has cleared out a good part of the town of zombies. But he’s killed…well, now he’s murdered seven living people that we know of.” Cutter clenched his gloved hands into fists and tensed
,
because the movement
he had
noticed before was repeated, and in a few
seconds,
one of the walking dead was easing out of the wrecked building and onto the street.

“Something needs to be done,” the Colonel said. “I mean, we warned him. And I don’t think he should be…terminated or anything. But certainly we should take out his capability of repeating such an offense.”

“We’d have to kill him to dig him out of there.” Cutter said it. He believed it. In a way, he knew it.

Before Dale could respond to that statement, Cutter was suddenly on his feet. “Zombies,” he whispered. “Looks like it could be trouble.” Indeed, where one had appeared from the looted storefront, now there were six of them
.
Enough
noise and movement from the interior of the place
hinted
at many more.

“What do you want to do?” The Colonel asked, putting his cup away and drawing his Glock from its holster on his hip.

“I’m not in a herd-thinning mood today, Colonel. I’d just as soon we each go our separate ways. For now, at least. I want to visit with Oliver and I don’t want a crowd of these dead fucks following me to his place.”

“Agreed,” Dale said, moving away very quickly. He paused for just an instant and addressed his companion. “But we really should speak again. About doing something with our 52-caliber friend.” As he began to pick up the
pace,
he turned back one more time and raised his voice. “And if you want to save Oliver, I suggest you do whatever it takes to get him to allow you to take him under your wing. Else I fear we’ll lose the child.”

“Yes, indeed,” Cutter nodded.
Then
he was racing off as soundlessly as he possibly could before the zombie could get a bead on either of them.

**

What was it that Cutter told himself every stinking day?

He tried to draw in a breath and found it difficult to do, but he kept trying.

What was that again?

Arms were locked around his torso. Legs were tangled in his own, trying to bring him down. The stench of the dead was all over him.

Oh, yeah. Now he remembered
.

Never let your fucking guard down
.

There were two zombies latched to him. One had him in an iron grip around his rib cage. The zombie itself was attached to him at an oblique angle and Cutter couldn’t punch, shoot,
or
grab. The second of the creeps had him by the legs. It was completely behind him, and while he wasn’t sure, Cutter suspected that it was a partial—that is, most of its trunk had been destroyed so that it was now composed of the rotting flesh that remained from the waist up. At least, it hadn’t stood to make his acquaintance with the back of Cutter’s neck. He thought about screaming for help—but he knew that generally
just
made the deads more anxious.
Anyway
, the only person he’d seen in the past hour had been Colonel Dale and he was probably very far away by then.

Cutter’s neck was exposed.
He had
taken that fucking bandana off to mop his brow. He could see the blue bandana on the littered street, lying bright and damp on the hot concrete. The weight of his attackers twisted him around and almost felled him. He got a view of the sky, the nearby office tower with its shattered windows, then parking meters and wrecked and abandoned automobiles lining the avenue, and back to that freaking bandana.

“Fuck!” He rasped it out and struggled. His left arm was in the grip of the standing zombie. Try as he might, Cutter could not free that arm to get to the pistol on his hip.
Every
time he tried to reach his hammer with his right hand, the zombie’s body prevented it.
All
the while the thing’s teeth kept clacking together, and all Cutter could envision was those yellow fangs clamping shut through the skin of his neck.

The other member of the pair was grasping at his boots. He tried to look around, tried to see out of the corner of his left eye for any kind of view. For some reason he needed to see them. He wanted to see what dead fuckers had so completely surprised him.

That’s when they were the worst, he thought. When they were so quiet and so patient, just being part of the real estate until you walked past them. Then they were something else entirely
,
all teeth and rage and hunger.

The sun came into view again as he struggled with his undead assailants.
The
sun was hot and as unforgiving as the
zombies were
. It was just there to watch the proceedings impassively. Stupid humans. You can’t avoid extinction, it seemed to be saying to Cutter.

Finally, he caught a movement down the street and to his left, far beyond the thing that was fighting to take him down. He looked for a moment and what he saw were more of them. Maybe two blocks away
,
they were streaming into the street, attracted by the noise of the battle. If he didn’t cut himself loose in a minute or two
,
he was as good as dead.

To Hell with it, he thought. And he just relaxed and let himself fall.

When he breathed out, the release of the contents of his lungs gave him a few precious millimeters so that he was able to twist around.
For
the first time
,
he could look his attacker straight in the eyes.

He hated it when they looked like that. Sometimes there was more than just hunger there. Sometimes there was a spark hiding in those lidless orbs that told him there was still something of human evil hiding in there, buried in that pudding brain. That’s what he saw now.
A
cold, reptilian intelligence
was
at work that told him this zombie was going to put an end to Cutter once and for all.

“Hell, no!” Cutter yelled. Screaming at them never seemed to do any good, but it made him feel better. As he said it, Cutter and his giant leeches hit the sidewalk together. Even more breath was knocked from Cutter’s lungs and he actually rolled free of the damned thing. Before it could react, and even as the one on the ground was crawling up his legs toward his face, Cutter had his hand on his trusty ball peen hammer. He freed it from its Velcro straps and swung it fiercely at the taller of his attackers.