Part 15 (1/2)

Ricki stopped what she was doing and looked at me. Just for a moment. I knew without a doubt that she wanted to warn me against playing hero, but on the other hand we couldn't reach her mother or Carty, who was one of our best friends in the world. As much as I wanted to hide out with them-and as much as Ricki wanted that too-I couldn't abandon the people we loved. I had to check on them. There was no other way around it.

”Yes, son,” I told him. ”I'm going out to check on gramma.”

”You need me as a backup?”

I didn't smile because he was serious. ”No, stay here. Protect your mother.”

”She's pretty tough. She doesn't need me.”

Ricki was carrying another box down to the bas.e.m.e.nt. She was out of earshot. ”She needs you more than you'll ever know,” I told him. ”When I leave, you lock that door down there. Don't let anyone in.”

”What about you?”

”Well, yeah, me,” I said, noticing and maybe not for the first time the platinum highlights in his hair he had gotten from his mother.

”Zombies can't reason much, Dad. All they are is stupid eating machines,” Paul explained to me, an expert on the subject from all the zombie comics and paperbacks he devoured. ”We're going to need a pa.s.sword. They can't think. If you get zombified, you'll never remember it. That's how we'll know you're okay.”

Kids are amazing. Absolutely amazing. I knew d.a.m.n well that just about every adult (save the crazy ones) were scared s.h.i.+tless at that moment and I was, too...but kids, man, they reorient themselves so quickly it can be frightening. I was willing to bet that while most adults were ready to p.i.s.s themselves, their kids were rising up to the challenge of the undead. Maybe that sounds silly, but I believed it. Kids are tougher and much more resourceful than adults. They are not so anch.o.r.ed to the physical reality of their world, they can adapt and improvise at the drop of a hat. You can spin their world 360 and they'll come up standing. We adults would be thrown on our a.s.ses.

”What do you suggest?”

He scratched his tawny head. ”Hmm. Didn't you guys use pa.s.swords in Iraq?”

”Yeah, sometimes.” I thought it over. ”Zulu Foxtrot.”

”I like that!”

I explained it was military phonetics for Z and F, in other words, Zombie Free.

”Okay,” he said. ”Watch it out there. Aim for the head.”

I gave him a hug which he did not appreciate-there's no tougher soldier than a ten-year old fighting man-and went over to Ricki. I gave her a kiss and, surprisingly, she slipped her tongue in my mouth. ”Give you a good reason to hurry back,” she said.

Paul had the TV going. ”I'm setting up the comm center, Dad,” he said.

”I'll keep in touch with my cell. I should be back in half an hour,” I told them.

”Then what, Steve?” Ricki wanted to know.

”Then we hold out until this is sorted out.”

I wanted badly to tell her about what I'd seen in Iraq. But there wasn't time and I didn't want Paul knowing about it for some reason. Though, again, being a kid he would have probably just shrugged and said, ”Gotta start somewhere, I guess.”

”Please be careful,” she said.

Then the door was closed and locked.

I wondered if I'd ever see them again.

I went up the steps and got my gun and went out into the world of the dead.

IMMEDIATE THREAT.

In the thirty or so minutes I'd been in the house, the war-if that's what you can call it-had not slowed down nor even taken a breath. In the distance I could hear gunfire, sirens, people shouting, and even a few thumping concussions like some real firepower was being used. The sound of it brought back memories of the war. I saw no zombies in the streets. Maybe they had pushed on. Not that it gave me much hope, because what I saw was devastation, minor maybe, but ugly for America. There were bodies everywhere. Bodies of zombies. A couple half-eaten dogs. Cars were stalled in the middle of the avenue, doors opened. Their drivers were nowhere to be seen.

What else was nowhere to be seen was the body of the mailman.

All I found was a single blood-spattered shoe which was being investigated by a couple flies.

Could he have risen so fast?

I scanned around looking for trouble.

I had my old man's gun, a Browning Hi-Power he had carried in Vietnam. I hadn't used it in a couple of years and then only for target practice. But it would do the trick. As I moved up the sidewalk, I heard someone clear their throat.

”Where you going, Steve?” Jimmy LaRue asked. He was hanging out of a second story window with his .22.

I looked up at him. ”I'm going to check on Carty.”

”You need me?”

”No, I can handle it,” I told him. ”I got Ricki and Paul barricaded in the bas.e.m.e.nt. Keep an eye on my house, will you?”

”You got it. I'll cover you.”

Jesus, it was insane. In a matter of hours our peaceful neighborhood was like something out of Fallujah. Here I was patrolling the streets with a sniper above keeping an eye out for unfriendlies. Hour by hour the entire thing was becoming more and more surreal. And scary. My natural paranoia was whispering in the back of my head and it kept saying things like: What if this situation is not containable? What if this zombie plague keeps rolling until there are no people left? I had to force that stuff from my head. When I was in the war, we'd go out on these mounted patrols to see if we could draw fire from insurgents so we could hunt them down and kick their a.s.ses. The Army called it ”Pacification” but the bullet-eaters and grunts on the ground called it ”p.u.s.s.ification”. p.u.s.s.ifying the enemy. Our officers called it ”movement to contact” and what it consisted of, basically, was exposing your a.s.s to fire. Creep around in Stryker vehicles and see if any RPKs or RPGs opened up on us. Baiting, that's all it was. Like hanging your d.i.c.k in a piranha tank and seeing if you got any nibbles.

And that's what it felt like I was doing right then: baiting the dead.

Like I was a hooker or something, trolling my wares and seeing if any righteous zombies wanted to take a bite.

It was insane, yes, but it was only the beginning of the madness. Just a delirium fever compared to where it was all going.

I made it over to Carty's house. She lived next to Rommy Jacob, whom I knew was dead. I did a quick reconnoiter of Carty's yard, made sure no bad boys were hanging around out by the garage or under the shade of the sour apple tree picking maggots from their teeth. There was nothing. That was good. But what was bad is that Carty's back door was wide open.

Carty wouldn't allow that.

Carty hated flies.

Swallowing, I entered the house silently.

Like a mouse into a shoe, I moved with stealth and silence. My throat was dry. It felt like it had been powdered down with beach sand. My heart was hammering, my knuckles white on the grip of the Browning.

Carty was laid up after knee surgery which was one of the reasons I thought I better check on her.

Years back Carty owned a saloon, but had sold it off after her husband died. In her eighties, she was very spry, full of wit, off-color jokes and salty metaphors. She could cuss like a sailor and took her bourbon in a water gla.s.s. She had an ongoing battle with old Mrs. Hazen and her G.o.dd.a.m.n flowers-her and her G.o.dd.a.m.n flowers, Steve, you know how f.u.c.king sick I am of hearing about those p.i.s.sing flowers of hers? b.i.t.c.h called the cops for chrissake because my leaves blew into her flowerbeds last fall, you believe that s.h.i.+t? You don't hear Rommy b.i.t.c.hing about it. Green G.o.dd.a.m.ned thumb...I'd like to stick it so far up her a.s.s she'd get a tickle in her throat-yeah, that was Carty.

I loved her like a mother.

She, along with Bill DeForest and his wife, had sort of adopted us when we moved into the neighborhood. I could remember the day we moved in. Bill and his wife had come over. Not to be undone, Mrs. Hazen had followed suit and brought us an apple pie. Very nice, I thought. But as I'd gotten to know her I realized the only reason for the kindness was to get a look at us so she could make some rash judgments as to the sort of people we were. Carty had brought no pies. She'd invited me in for a few fingers of Jim Beam. Told me if she were forty years younger, Ricki would have been in trouble, big trouble, because she would have stolen me away.