ZWD: King of an Empty City (29 page)

             
Joseph was with me in this room and he talked to her in a quiet, kind voice. His smooth black skin and sculpted beard made him look angelic, especially when he smiled. With his baking pan shield in hand, he squatted down beside her and said,
“Miss, it’s alright, you’re safe now. Let go of the knife and come with us.” The woman grunted at him, then growled like a leery dog at the vet’s office. “No one is going to hurt you, miss, we’re here to help you,” he cooed to her. “Guys, make yourselves small,” he instructed us and we all squatted down to her level. She backed into the room a little more.

             
“Miss, miss, do you have a name? My name is Joseph. I was named after my grandfather. What’s your name?”

The woman gave him a snarled response and a whimper.

“That’s ok, miss. I know you’ve been in here a long time. You’ve been away for a long time and nobody thought of you. Miss, we’re here now. We’re here to help you. To do that we need you to put down the knife and tell me your name.”

             
Down the hall, kids were opening doors and killing whatever came out. The banging and sounds of struggle were fading as they were getting ready to go down to the next floor.

             
It wasn’t till they’d finished and it became relatively quiet that she let go of the knife. I’ll give Joseph credit, he never took his eyes off her and he never stopped talking to her in that soothing voice. He told her how his grandfather was a preacher. He told how he was part of the youth ministry at his church. He told how the snow was cold and beautiful outside. He told how there was food, hot soup just waiting, if she’d only come out. And he kept asking her what her name was. When the S.O.L. had finished with this floor, out of curiosity, they started to gather around her door till I ordered them back to the stairwell to wait for me to take them to the ninth floor. We’d all made ourselves more comfortable and were sitting with our butts on the floor, trying to coax her into any form of trust. Joseph, me, and a kid named Marcus, who I ordered to stay near and keep a watch for any zombies that may not have completely died. He sat against the wall a few feet away from us down the hall.

             
Because of the long delay of dealing with this woman, my girl sent up one of her troops to see what was taking so long. When the survivor saw the young girl who was sent to check on us, her demeanor changed. She seemed curious about the girl and crept closer to the door again.

             
“That’s right, miss, we have girls too. Lots of little girls. Her name is Nancy and she’s fourteen. Do you have a little girl, miss?” Miss had crept halfway through the door, never taking her eyes off Nancy.

             
“That’s right, miss, Nancy and all of us will take care of you, just come with us.” Joseph had started to stand when Miss darted towards him and bit him on the ankle. He fell back to the ground and on reflex kicked her in the head to get her off of him. The kick knocked Miss out. She lay there prone on the floor unmoving, not breathing. I checked her pulse. She was dead.

             
Her bite at Joseph’s ankle never made it past the thick hiking boots he wore, but it shook him up badly. I was at a loss for words to comfort him, so I went the other direction and said, “Come on, we have a lot more floors to clear, we’ve wasted enough time here.” Joseph pulled out a gold cross from his collar and kissed it, then said a prayer over Miss’s body, kissed it again, and stuffed the cross back under his shirt. As he got up he laid a palm on her back and said quietly, “I’m sorry, Miss.”

             
We moved on to the next floor in silence. The girl Nancy was shaken up by what she saw, and looking at the faces of all the kids in my command, you could tell they were tired and affected by all the zombies and the killings, accidental or otherwise. Earlier in the day, when we were still in the basement, I’d asked Donny to give me Jr. and another kid for a special project. It was a surprise I was planning for my girl later, after this mess in Paris Towers was over. Now, looking in their faces, I could see they all were going to need it more than I realized.

             
The ninth floor was our stopping point before my girl, Shaun, and Andy took over and we acted as backup. The plan was that when we got to eight we’d show her group what we’d found to work well while both groups cleared the floor, and then we’d become support for them on the rest of the way down. I turned to the kid with the boom box and asked if he had “Born to Raise Hell” on that thing. He cued it up and we burst into the hallway with Lemmy singing.

I’d challenged them to see if they could clear this floor in ten minutes, and they went in like a firestorm. We were probably more than halfway down the hall when these two little kids, Augie and Roland, opened the door to a room and waited for the zombie to come out. Augie and Roland were probably eight and both were smallish for their size. As planned, the zombie wandered out and this one must have been the biggest I’d ever seen. Determined, though, Augie and Roland sprang from the door’s edge as this six-foot-something zombie wandered out the door and they wrapped the silk catcher around him.

Roland grabbed the zombie’s legs and tried to take him off-balance. Because of this guy’s height, they couldn’t get the upper part tied on the silk catcher, so when he fell over his arms were free and he started to crawl out. Augie jumped on his back and started stabbing him in the shoulders with little effect while Roland held on to his legs and tried to tie him in there better. They were losing control of this big guy.

             
Steve was one door down from them and he’d just turned the doorknob to the room he was going to clear when he stopped to watch these two tackle the fallen giant. The door opened a fraction.

             
He walked over to Augie and stepped on the zombie’s hand, crouched down over it, and brought a two-pound hand-held sledgehammer down on the giant’s head. It stopped moving instantly.

“When you get one this big, call one of us over, Augie. It takes more than two people to take these big suckers out. Let me see that knife.”

             
Augie handed him his knife and he examined it with care. “This will never do,” he said, holding the four-inch folding blade up. “You see, the blade is too short, for one,” he pointed out, “and see this connection here?” He pointed to the locking blade hinge. “This is a cheap blade.” He tossed the blade aside and pulled a long medieval replica stiletto blade from a belt much like the one I wore. He held up the jeweled stiletto to Augie, his fingertips at the blade’s end so they both could see the entire blade. “This is what you need. It’s long enough to go through the skull and into the brain.” He flipped it in the air and caught it by the blade, then handed it to Augie. “Feel the weight? It has a good weight to it. You know you have it in your hand at all times. That’s good with your size. Now this blade is strong enough that you can press your body weight against it and drive it in, but it’s sharp, makes it do your work for you. It’s all yours, Augie.”

He pointed to Roland. “Big man, take this and use it.” He picked up his two-pound sledge and handed it handle-first to Roland. “Grab that thing up there by the head, now hit him with it.” Roland brought the hammer down on the giant’s body. “Feel that, do it again just to make sure.” And he did. “Now grab it near the back of the handle. No, not at the end, up a little. Yes, like that. Now bring that sucker down on him.”

Roland swung the hammer down and it landed with a definitive thump on the giant’s body. “There you go. You feel the difference?” Roland nodded with a look of amazement at the difference in the grip placement. “You keep that, man. Use it like Thor’s hammer. Use it on the knees to bring them down. Then you,” he said, turning back to Augie, “you take that blade and don’t be stabbing them in the body. That gets you nowhere. It’s the head. The head’s a hard thing, so you have to go for the soft spots. The eyes, the ears, or the temple are the best. And once you get it in there,” he explained, taking the knife back from Augie and driving it into the dead giant’s skull through the ear, “scramble it around a bit.” He wiggled the handle of the blade in the giant’s ear. “Fight on, brothers,” he said, pulling the blade out and handing it back to Augie.

             
“Now, go get the next one,” he ordered them as he stood. He went back to the door he’d been at when they lost control of the giant. He watched them as they got the next silk catcher ready, stiletto and hammer proudly displayed in their belts.

             
As he pushed the door open, he was still looking at Augie and Roland when the zombie inside the room lunged at his extended arm. Steve was fast and swung into the room, spinning on his heels and bringing his other arm up in an uppercut motion. He was too fast and whizzed past the zombie’s head. The zombie was too slow in her lunge for Steve and came in under his arm. She bit Steve in the chest. Steve brought his elbow down on the back of the thing’s head and at the same time brought his knee up and caught its head between elbow and knee. He then pushed it away from him into the room. Slapping his chest and looking at his palm, he grimaced and stepped into the room, pulling another stiletto from his belt.

             
When I got to the room, they’d knocked over a gold wing-backed chair and a small table with a lamp and some pictures on it and were now on the other side of the bed against the wall struggling.

This zombie was a woman and he had her hair in his left hand holding her head down towards the ground and was punching her in the face with his right. His fist was bloody and his face was in a scowl as he hammered away on her. He felt around his belt and pulled out a claw hammer, then started caving her face in. She’d stopped moving long before he got the hammer out, but I could see he was in a rage that needed to be let go, so I let him hammer away at her face. When he slowed down I tried joking with him. “I think you got her,” I said with a chuckle.

             
He rocked back on his heels and stood up straight. His head tilted back and he was breathing hard. Augie and Roland were in the room with me now. When he opened his eyes, he looked at them, then at me, and held up his bloody hand. “She got me,” he said evenly. There on his arm just above the wrist was a clear bite mark. A chunk of skin was missing and blood streamed down his arm. Augie and Roland’s faces turned white. My stomach tightened into a knot. We all knew what it meant if you were bitten.

             
Steve came from behind the bed and walked up to me, then leaned in close and in my ear said, “I don’t want to die in here. Take me outside. Do me outside.”

“Do you. . .” I trailed off as it dawned on me what he was asking. I turned to Augie and Roland.

             
“Get to one of the baby monitors and tell them downstairs that we have a man bitten and I’m bringing him down.” They just stared at Steve; their new hero had just fallen, taken from them too soon. Steve gestured with his chin for them to go and slowly, reluctantly, they left the room and ran down the hall to the stairwell where the baby monitor was and announced into it that Steve was bitten.

             
We wrapped his hand in a pillowcase after he washed up in the bathroom. At the stairs several kids had gathered and they all gave him a hug and said goodbye. Donny grabbed him by the back of the neck and pressed their foreheads together. Tears were streaming down his face. Joseph hugged him like a bear, his face buried into Steve’s shoulder. Eddie tried to stay back and be calm, but finally he threw his arms around Steve and bawled.

             
We made our way down to the eighth-floor landing where my girl was waiting with Shaun, Uncle Andy, and a bunch of kids who were getting ready to go in for their first kills. The reality of what they were facing just walked down to them wearing blood-splattered clothes and a forced smile. Andy and Shaun said quiet goodbyes, shaking his good hand. My girl broke down and wept all over his shoulder and covered his face with kisses.

             
She gave me a last kiss before we continued down the stairs. “You be careful,” I said to her as we left the landing. She nodded and wiped tears away from her face. As we got to the next landing, I heard her say in a commanding voice, “Now listen up, everybody, we just lost one of our best, so follow my instructions and work together and we won’t lose anyone else.” I could tell she was trying to control her voice, but it was evident that she was upset.

             
People all the way down the stairs were saying goodbye to Steve. When we got to the ground floor, a small crowd had gathered. From that crowd a cute girl with black hair came running up to Steve and threw her arms around him. She jumped up into his arms and wrapped her legs around his body and wailed. Later, I found out she was his girlfriend, Jamie. I didn’t even know he had a girlfriend.

             
On the ground floor where Ashley had an emergency medical station set up, more people were gathered. Personally, I thought a medical station was pointless. If you got bitten, it was a death sentence, but she felt good about setting it up and insisted, so I went along with it. As Jamie, Steve, and I walked down the hall to the main lobby where everyone was waiting, I saw in the crowd a lot of faces I didn’t know and a few from the old neighborhood. The majority were gathered around the baby monitors listening to the events that were unfolding on the floors above us.