Part 53 (2/2)
About twenty feet from the semi, Zach cursed. The loading door was partially open, and the ground around the truck was littered with rusted and broken kitchen appliances-toasters, blenders, indoor grills-sitting among the faded and disintegrating remains of cardboard boxes. They lifted the door and peered into the trailer. The boxes near the door were weathered and rippled. Toward the back, they were intact, their contents as useless as the trailer in which they sat.
”Okay,” Zach said. None of them were surprised. ”We'll go back and check the smaller trucks, and then we'll-d.a.m.n.”
”What?”
”Here we go.” Zach nodded in the direction from which they'd come. A few hundred feet away, a lone form shuffled toward them.
”Ah, jeeze,” Ted said. He scampered onto the cab of the semi, s.h.i.+elding his eyes and scanning the area. ”Three more. Half a mile or so north.”
”No problem,” Zach said.
”Just stumbling around-they don't know we're here yet.”
”Good. Now get down before you fall and break your f.u.c.king leg. I'll leave your a.s.s, I swear.”
”I got this one,” Wayne said, leaving the dolly and walking toward the slowly moving corpse. Fifteen feet away from the thing, he stopped. He smelled it through the dust mask. In a van to his right, what had once been a small boy of no more than three years watched him from its car seat. Desiccated hands pawed at the restraints. There was no one else in the van.
The other thing was closer, but not by much. It was a slow one. Its flesh was purplish-black and swollen, and its ma.s.sive, rigid stomach was split down the middle like a tomato rotting on the vine. Its gaze rarely rose from the ground, and it seemed unable to lift its head. Its eyes lifted in its sockets and found Wayne. It tried to grunt, hands twitching at its sides and trembling upward. Wayne pushed down his face-s.h.i.+eld and lifted the bat.
Three blows, and the corpse went down, its head a lumpish black sack. Wayne walked to the van and opened the door. A dry yelp escaped the dead kid's drawn lips. He placed the blunt end of the bat to the side of the child's head and pushed. It didn't take long.
There was a Batman action figure on the floor of the vehicle. He picked it up and placed it in the child's lap. Saying nothing felt wrong, but nothing he could think of sounded appropriate. As he shut the door, he noticed two cases of water in the back of the van along with several unmarked boxes. He went around back and checked them. Each contained various canned goods, as well as several packs of pasta and ramen. Whoever had left the kid had been in a hurry.
He looked around. No walking corpses, no sign of Zach or Ted. They'd moved on, taking the dolly with them.
Wayne removed the face-s.h.i.+eld and wiped sweat from his brow. He plucked a bottle of water from the van and, pulling the dust mask beneath his chin, downed it. His heart raced, and just like that, the silence and the heat were almost too much. He felt alone and small, and he wanted to be with Zach and Ted, even if they were maybe going to try and kill him today.
Wayne tucked three bottles of water under his arm and walked until he saw Zach and Ted. They were standing at the rear of an unmarked truck that had stalled in the wildly overgrown gra.s.s beside the freeway.
Ted looked back and smiled. ”You're not going to believe this,” he said.
Wayne handed them each a bottle of water and let what he was seeing sink in: pallet upon pallet of military rations, the kind he and his family had lived off of in the weeks following Katrina.
Wayne said, ”d.a.m.n.”
”Yeah,” Zach said. ”d.a.m.n.”
There were hundreds of boxes, each containing sixteen complete meals. From what he could see, several pallets toward the back were piled with cases of bottled water. The same stuff as in the van.
”See that,” Ted said. ”FEMA is good for something after all.”
”Okay,” Zach said, all business. He hopped into the truck, ripped away the thick plastic wrap securing the boxes to the pallets, and began tossing boxes down to Ted and Wayne.
The dolly held five boxes. Wayne pushed it back to the Jeep, walking behind Ted and Zach, who each carried one box.
The first trip was without incident.
On their second run, Ted got a chance to use his bat. The thing that clambered like a lizard out of the forest was naked, creeping around on the ragged stumps of its arms and legs. No ears, lidless eyes, lipless mouth. Ted enjoyed putting it down.
”d.a.m.n,” Ted said on their third trip to the truck. He knocked back a water bottle and belched. ”Can we start the truck? Maybe move it or something?”
Zach stared at him for a moment, blinking, his face glistening with sweat. Dark stains seemed to emanate from the guns beneath his armpits. ”Yeah, Ted,” he said, half-grinning and nodding. ”Sure. But first we have to clear out all these pine trees, maybe cut a path all the way to 190.”
”I don't know,” Ted said, shrugging. ”I was just saying.”
”Yeah, yeah. Okay. Moving on. We need to load up what we can for now and come back tomorrow with the truck. We'll get Seth to-”
Somewhere nearby, a dead thing howled, long and mournful.
”Aw, c.r.a.p.” Ted said. ”Where the h.e.l.l is that coming from?”
”There,” Wayne said. Not far from where he'd encountered the first corpse of the day, another form stood. It howled again, louder and longer. There was urgency in the thing's voice.
”Oh, s.h.i.+t,” Zach said. Here and there, the creature's call was answered. ”Not good. Run.”
They ran, their bats raised and ready. On either side of the interstate, the walking dead emerged from within the cool confines of the forest. Soon there was a chorus.
They overtook the howler. Not slowing, Ted took a swing at it. He missed, staggered, and almost fell, dropping the bat, and then the Jeep was in sight. Zach leaned against a tree, winded. Ted bent over, his hands on his knees, panting.
”You not going back for your bat?” Wayne asked, his back to the Jeep.
”Why the f.u.c.k would I do that? There's like six more in the back of the Jeep,” Ted said, and Wayne shot him in the face, blowing away most of his jaw. Ted dropped, mewling and clutching at where his chin used to be. Blood poured between his fingers.
He should have shot Zach first-Zach was always more on the ball and now he was just gone, dropped from sight. ”s.h.i.+t,” Wayne said, and Zach appeared from behind a tree and started firing the Tauruses.
Wayne got the Jeep between himself and Zach. From all sides, the dead closed in.
You knew it was a real s.h.i.+t day when killing the cla.s.s cat was the high point.
That was the first thing Sue did in the morning, and her mood had not improved. Mr. Stripestuff had been pretty sickly for a while, was probably fifteen years old and going blind, and there was no way anybody in the warehouse would take adequate care of him after she left. She hoped they'd have a little more compa.s.sion for the kids she'd be leaving behind, but deep down she doubted it.
She let him lick the sc.r.a.ps from a can of tuna mixed with a packet of old government-issue powdered creamer and a couple of crushed Tylenol PMs. Then she laid him in her lap and petted his head for a while, then she put a towel over his face, and a plastic bag over that. She thought not about how she should just set him free, but how slim his odds were out there. She was doing him a favor, but it wasn't easy for either of them. She was gentle, gentle as she could be while getting the job done, and she laid him in his bed for the cla.s.s to find.
They were on lockdown and Sue couldn't get downstairs to the trash in the night. She had no place to stash Stripestuff in the couple of upstairs offices where the orphans lived every minute. In the daytime, the kids-the non-orphans at least-got into everything, even downstairs where they were supposedly not allowed. Might as well make the discovery foreseeable and respectful. Educational, too, she thought, wondering if maybe she was getting a little teacher in her after all. Then again, each and every one of these kids had already seen death firsthand in unimaginable manners and quant.i.ties. What could they learn from a cat? Her smile evaporated.
The cla.s.s-such as it was, twenty kids spread over ages three to ten, being overseen by a clerk and a dental a.s.sistant, whose only qualifications were that they looked looked like teachers, both being middle-aged females-found him in his bed, having pa.s.sed peacefully in the night when they a.s.sembled at eight. After a little death-lesson-c.u.m-ceremony by Sue, they interred him by wrapping him in plastic sheeting and throwing him out one of the second-story windows into the piles of red earth of the unfinished construction site next door. The plastic came partly unraveled and the cat fell a little short of the dirt, landing on the warehouse's own blacktop. What could you do but pull the shades? The kids mostly cried or moped, but not Jayson, which just confirmed everything Sue felt about him. like teachers, both being middle-aged females-found him in his bed, having pa.s.sed peacefully in the night when they a.s.sembled at eight. After a little death-lesson-c.u.m-ceremony by Sue, they interred him by wrapping him in plastic sheeting and throwing him out one of the second-story windows into the piles of red earth of the unfinished construction site next door. The plastic came partly unraveled and the cat fell a little short of the dirt, landing on the warehouse's own blacktop. What could you do but pull the shades? The kids mostly cried or moped, but not Jayson, which just confirmed everything Sue felt about him.
He was just lucky he wasn't an orphan.
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