Arize (Book 1): Resurrection Page 15

  “Well, once you find them, you better head over to Promiseland. I heard they had food, water, medicine, and some military. Plus that preacher…did you see on the TV?”

  “No,” Meg said. “I heard something about an attack during his broadcast.”

  “Reverend Ingram calmed that zombie right down. And from a different camera angle, it looked like the thing’s infection just disappeared. Like he’d performed a miracle from right out of the New Testament.”

  Meg took the man’s belief as the delusion of a desperate man. Maybe the entire crowd suffered the same fantasy. If they were all looking for miracles to save them from this plague, then they might be even more dangerous than the deaders.

  “It’s nothing demonic,” Meg said, feeling like she was losing the debate before it even began. “It’s a viral infection. I suspect it’s been dormant for millennia and—”

  “Lady, this is no time for science. Those fuckers are eating people. Whatever the cause, it’s evil. And you fight evil with good, like the Reverend.”

  “You just said we fight it with guns,” Jacob said.

  “The Lord helps those that help themselves. If Jesus was alive today, you can be damn sure he’d have a concealed carry permit and packing heat beneath his robes.”

  Someone ahead of them pointed at the skyline, where the tip of the white cross came into view. “There it is! Promiseland!”

  A murmur of excitement ran through the crowd like electricity. Meg realized these people now had hope, whereas the situation had been bleak earlier today. The church provided a sense of security where the government had failed them. The pilgrimage surged forward like a live organism twisting its way to the outskirts of the city.

  People drifted from surrounding apartments and buildings to join in, but more zombies followed them. They crossed the street where vehicles were jammed for blocks on end. Gunfire erupted above them, and Meg saw a man with a rifle and scope atop a Waffle Express. He was picking off zombies that trailed after the crowd, but more leaked from the alleys and doorways to take their places.

  “We’ll have to leave the crowd soon,” Meg said to Jacob, pointing to a two-story bank. “The clinic’s over that way.”

  When she took his hand and eased her way past the man with the handgun, he said, “We should stick together, hon.”

  “We’re not going to the church.”

  He sneered. “So you’re one of those, huh?”

  “One of what?”

  “Turning away from the Lord. Ignoring the signs.”

  She tugged at Jacob, but the man gripped the boy’s shoulder. “She’ll lead you to hell, son.”

  He shrugged violently away. “I’m not your son and my mom’s not your hon.”

  The man shouted after them but Meg ignored the asshole and worked her way through the crowd. She had better luck holding back and letting others surge forward instead of fighting against the stream. In minutes they were alone, and a few stragglers limped to catch up to the others. A couple of men, probably self-imagined stars of action movies, hung back with guns to take down any zombies that came close.

  “This way,” Meg whispered, crossing the bank’s parking lot and cutting through the overhang at the teller’s window. She’d only been to the clinic once, when Jacob had stepped on a nail and needed a tetanus shot. She pulled out her smartphone to check the city map. No text or call from Ian. While she was zooming in, a chorus of shrieks and screams arose a block away.

  “Deaders got them,” Jacob said.

  The crowd poured into the street, scattering in groups of twos and threes as they fled. Meg pulled Jacob behind an ATM and ducked, watching from between the concrete support columns. At first Meg thought the crowd had grown larger. Then she realized what they were running from.

  A wave of zombies poured from the direction of Promiseland, hauling people down from behind.

  “Those poor people,” Meg said, horrified by the slaughter but unable to tear her eyes away. If they’d stuck with the crowd another couple of minutes, she might be sharing their fate.

  “The deaders must’ve followed another group to the church and got stuck there waiting with nothing to eat,” Jacob said.

  The asshole with the handgun turned and fired a couple of off-balance shots at a pursuing zombie, and then he was taken down by one approaching from a different direction. Meg took no karmic pleasure as the man’s flesh was torn from his rib cage. Maybe he’d get rewarded in heaven just as he’d believed.

  A zombie in a tweed jacket and jeans waded in and plucked a toddler from its mother. The zombie looked like a hipster professor gone postal, its lumberjack beard clotted with gore. The deader’s eyeglasses hung from one ear, and Meg guessed it was operating on smell more than sight. She covered Jacob’s eyes as the zombie dug into the toddler’s flesh while the mother ineffectually beat on the creature.

  The zombie munched the toddler as if it were a raw turkey drumstick, eating the soft parts first. It yanked a string of pinkish-gray intestines from the ruined body cavity, stifling the child’s screams. The wailing mother tried to climb onto its back but the zombie barely noticed her weight. When he’d eaten his fill, he tossed the carcass aside and grabbed the mother for dessert.

  Jacob tried to tear Meg’s hand away, insisting that he could take it, but the same sick carnage was multiplied as more people fell prey. The deaders weren’t exactly fast, but the victims bumped into each, stumbled, and ran in circles. Most of the two dozen or so zombies were already feasting, and the few remaining ones spread out giving chase in all directions.

  More shots rang out as others joined the rooftop sniper in fighting back. Meg debated using one or two of her remaining three rounds, but she was too far away to do any good. Some of the stray gunfire hit innocent people, and they fell moaning and groaning, waiting for the ravenous teeth and tongues of the zombies.

  “Come on,” Meg said, leading Jacob around the side of the bank and away from the screams. A few people fled down the block ahead of them, apparently trying a new route to Promiseland. The tree-lined street looked familiar. She could hear another crowd in the distance, with more screams, gunfire, and the whoop of a police siren. Farther in the distance was the white cross of Promiseland.

  “The clinic’s that way,” she said to Jacob.

  “Where the zombies are,” the boy replied.

  “The zombies are everywhere.”

  “Do you think that girl could’ve gotten her motorcycle through that mess?”

  “Well, she had a shotgun. And she seemed pretty tough.”

  “Looks like the cops are keeping people out. Doesn’t that seem weird to you?”

  Yes, it was weird. Hannah wouldn’t have been able to shoot her way past the cordon of police that defended the emergency entrance. The officers stood on tops of bumper-to-bumper ambulances, gunning down the deaders that shambled from the side streets and shadows. But here the zombies outnumbered the living, and corpses were strewn across the parking lot and landscaping.

  Meg and Jacob hurried across the street, shielded by an SUV and a Sprint van. They came upon a body face down in the street, and Meg instinctively knelt to check for a pulse.

  “Don’t touch it, Mom,” Jacob said. “You might get infected.”

  “I’m already infected, honey.”

  She lifted one shoulder to look at the woman’s face. She was maybe ten years older than Meg, her red, crinkly hair hanging over her forehead. The body was still warm. Meg rolled the woman onto her side, not seeing any visible wounds.

  “She’s dead,” Jacob said.

  “No. I felt her move.”

  The woman’s fingers twitched and her eyelids fluttered. Meg slid a gentle hand along the woman’s cheek to comfort her. The woman’s eyes snapped open.

  Something was wrong.

  The woman grabbed Meg’s wrist, squeezing with a manic intensity that seemed impossible given her size. Jacob shouted a warning just as she made the realization herself: “It’s a deader!”
>
  Meg drew back but the woman rose with her, still clinging to Meg’s wrist. Her mouth parted in a wet snarl. The red-streaked eyes burned with hunger, staring at Meg but not seeing her. At least not as a person.

  Nothing more than food.

  Meg swung the pistol in her free hand, clubbing the thing in the neck, but the snapping teeth only drew closer. Meg could feel the cold saliva spitting from that vacuous mouth, but there was no breath behind it, only the foul wind of putrescence venting from deep inside her body.

  This woman had died and been resurrected as a monster.

  “Shoot her in the head!” Jacob cried.

  Meg was afraid he’d rush in to help and get bitten as a result. Even though he’d already been exposed to Meg’s infection, she suspected direct viral contact with his bloodstream would overwhelm whatever immunity had protected him thus far. Not to mention whatever bacteria swam on those jagged teeth.

  She jammed the tip of the pistol’s barrel against the woman’s forehead, pushing as hard as she could. The metal dug into flesh and Meg squeezed the trigger. The bullet penetrated the woman’s skull and the back of her head blew out in a spray of red and gray. Bits of bone slid across the pavement. A few drops of blood spattered Meg’s face.

  The woman’s body went limp and Meg stepped away with trembling legs, stunned by the attack. She had killed someone. Never mind that the woman had already died once—Meg had sent her from deader to deadest.

  “You did it,” Jacob said with pride.

  That made her sick with guilt. She’d raised her son to be compassionate and to view violence as a last desperate resort. But maybe this was the last resort—the final line of humanity.

  She wiped the blood from her right hand onto her thigh, wondering if the virus could survive even as it cooled. Two bullets left and a long way to go.

  “She was dead,” Meg said.

  “But she came back and became a deader.”

  “You don’t understand. She wasn’t just infected and turned into a zombie from there. She came back from the dead.”

  “That’s how this works, Mom.”

  “But that’s not how science works.”

  “Maybe science is broken.”

  Meg had no answer for that.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “Is it safe?” Arjun asked, cramped into the front floorboard of a Prius.

  Sydney, who was piled above him on the passenger seat, lifted her head to look over the dash. “I wouldn’t exactly call it ‘safe,’ but most of the deaders are, uh, occupied.”

  “Feeding, you mean.”

  “At least they’re not eating us.”

  When the zombie horde swarmed the crowd, Arjun and Sydney had been lagging behind, comforted by those with guns who served as a rear guard. The guns did nothing to slow the attack, because the zombies didn’t know they could die.

  The two of them had taken refuge in the Prius, fortunate to find the doors unlocked. But now they were trapped.

  “We can’t stay here,” Sydney said.

  “Why not?”

  “No food, no beer, no water, in that order, and I have to pee real bad.”

  Arjun tried to untangle himself from her and found her butt was pressing down on his back, holding him in place. “Well, at least go in the back seat.”

  “So we’re supposed to wait for the army to show up and save us?”

  A few sporadic shots rang out, probably from the snipers on the surrounding roofs. But there wasn’t enough firepower to clean up the street, since the noise and the smell of blood would probably attract more zombies. “We can wait until dark and then try to sneak out of here.”

  “Can zombies see in the dark?” she asked.

  “Who knows?”

  “You’re supposed to be the expert.”

  Arjun’s pulse jumped in anger. “I never said I was an expert. I just wrote a few gaming scripts. And I copied ideas from all the other game designers, who copied it from screenwriters, who copied it from book authors. That’s what we do.”

  “Boy, I sure know how to pick them.”

  “If you hadn’t gotten drunk, we would’ve already reached the church.”

  “I wasn’t drunk, just a little buzzed. If you want to get me drunk, you need Scotch.”

  “Never mind. Can you…do you mind shifting a little bit? I can’t breathe.”

  Sydney slid over into the driver’s seat, cramped beneath the steering wheel. Arjun rose between her parted legs and found himself looking down on her as if they were about to make love. He immediately drew away until his back was against the passenger door, but the nearness of her body heat was almost overwhelming despite the circumstances.

  He swallowed a dry knot. “This is awkward.”

  Sydney rolled her eyes. “Dude, I think you’re cute, but we’re not on a date here. I want you to keep me alive, not give me babies.”

  Arjun blushed but his dark complexion concealed the blood rushing to his cheeks. “Let’s figure out a way to get to Promiseland, and then we never have to see each other again, okay?”

  Sydney gave him a playful nudge with one foot. “Take it easy. For a game geek, you got no game at all.”

  Arjun dared a look outside of his own. A zombie was feeding not ten feet from the car. He didn’t see any route where they could conceivably run through the gauntlet of living dead.

  “If we could coordinate with the snipers, maybe they could clear us a path,” Arjun said. “But they don’t seem to have very good aim. They’re getting some hits but not very many head shots.”

  “Okay, Mister Smart Guy. Let’s assume this was a video game you were scripting. How would the protagonists escape?”

  “Well, first, they would have guns. Or they would discover an Easter egg that would give them the keys to the car. But the keys wouldn’t do much good in this traffic jam.”

  Sydney let out an acidic belch. “What about a distraction? Maybe draw the deaders away so they could make a run for it.”

  “We already had a distraction. It was called ‘other people,’ and it didn’t work.”

  “If the deaders are attracted to noise, maybe we could blow up the car or something.”

  “That’s a really stupid idea,” Arjun automatically replied, but then he considered it. “We’d need a lighter and something to stick in the gas tank.”

  “The lever to open the gas-tank flap is right here,” Sydney said, reaching down beside the driver’s seat. “And I’ve got a lighter in my pocket.”

  “What are you doing with a lighter?”

  “I thought you’d have some weed. Hope springs eternal.”

  “I must be a real disappointment to you, huh?” Despite her attractive features and shapely figure, with her exotic slanted eyes and pouty lips, he wished he’d never opened his apartment door to her.

  “Not at all. We’ve kept each other alive for hours. But if you let me get gnawed on, then I’ll be disappointed.”

  “Okay,” Arjun said. “We’ll have to find something to stuff in the gas tank to act as a fuse. That way we’ll have enough time to get away before it goes up.”

  “No prob.” Sydney began pulling up her T-shirt, showing her pale waist and dainty belly button. Arjun saw it was an inny with a little silver hoop in it.

  “Stop,” he said, his mouth dry. He muttered a curse and began pulling off his own Polo shirt. He was ashamed of his soft, hairless chest and felt vulnerable with his nipples exposed. She glanced at him but didn’t show any disapproval.

  “Give me the lighter,” he said.

  “The tank’s on my side, and you got a zombie by your door.” She plucked his shirt from his fingers and smelled it. “You need new cologne. I hope this stuff burns.”

  “It’s cotton. If it wicks down to the gas, it will.”

  She was already opening the door before he could formulate a plan. He crawled across the seat to the opening, keeping a lookout as she removed the gas cap and began threading the shirt down into the tank. “I sme
ll fumes,” she said in a stage whisper. “That’s a good sign.”

  She touched the Bic lighter to the wad of cloth protruding from the tank. Arjun scooted out of the car, scanning warily for zombies. One, an old hag who sported maybe four teeth in total, looked their way with a red grimace, but then returned to feeding on a boy in soccer shorts, having a hard time tearing into the muscular flesh.

  “Do it,” he said, but she’d already applied the flame. A wending black rope of smoke danced into the air, followed by a blossom of orange heat.

  “Which way?” Sydney asked, backing away from the roiling fire.

  “Toward the church,” Arjun said, not so thrilled with their options, but he didn’t trust any of the surrounding buildings and he wasn’t ready to hole up in another vehicle.

  They sprinted toward the white cross, which was barely more than two blocks away now. Arjun was acutely aware that they were the only living humans on the street. He felt as exposed as a turkey in a pen at Thanksgiving. If he survived this, he definitely was going vegan again.

  Arjun slowed down so he wouldn’t leave Sydney behind. The gunshots increased, which Arjun took to mean the snipers were laying down cover fire for them. Somebody shouted encouragement from a rooftop, but the words were swallowed by the whoosh of the Prius going up in a fireball. Arjun braced for an explosion, but none came. Maybe that only happened in movies and videogames.

  A few zombies turned toward them and gave chase. The closest, a bald man with a tattoo on his skull, let out a wet growl as they passed. He abandoned the raw meat before him and went after fresh kill. Arjun wondered if deaders ever got full or if their hunger was bottomless.

  The bald zombie tumbled to the pavement, his head striking the fender of a pick-up truck. It must’ve been hit by a bullet, because it rose, staggering, with turgid blood oozing from a hole in his pants leg. A sharp shard of bone showed through the cloth, but the zombie limped gamely along after them. It was slowed considerably, though, and Arjun and Sydney soon left it behind.

  They reached the end of the block without incident, turning the corner to see the brick promontory of Promiseland at the end of the street, hedges and maple trees lining the surrounding walls. Bodies were scattered by the dozens, including some that bore the characteristics of the living dead. The gunfire here was more intense, and soldiers were arrayed along the tops of the church walls.