THIRTY-FOUR

The plan was simple enough: go upstairs and shoot every last walking corpse from one of the windows. They had enough guns and enough bullets within the store to get started, but not enough bullets to finish the job. Reggie had several cases of bullets and shells in the back of his truck, but there would be no going out front to retrieve them—too risky. The old man claimed to have enough bullets for his rifle in his apartment out back, and for now, none of the dead things had found their way back there.

Cardo sat at one of the tables, sipping tepid Coke from a can and watching the old man pace. He’d taken a revolver that had belonged to one of the men who’d tried to rape Stacy, and Reggie had seemed happy to have his Colt back. Misty stood by the blinds, silently watching as the crowd of walking corpses grew. Stacy—God help him, Cardo actually thought Starshine was a pretty name for her—sat across from Cardo, staring at him with worried eyes and going back and forth between chewing her thumbnail and plucking at the crystal hanging from the twine around her neck.

He looked her in the eyes, gave her a half-hearted smile, which she mirrored before looking down. His gaze crept to her breasts, to the cloth above her nipples, and he thought that maybe he’d do just about anything to make sure she made it through this with him.

“We’re going to be okay,” he said, whispering.

“You think so?” Her voice was so low it was as if she were mouthing the words.

“I do.”

Crate walked over to the door. Misty drifted away, and the old man gently parted the blinds and stared through the opening. Then he walked over to where Cardo and Stacy sat and looked down at them.

“Well,” he said, a little too loud. Cardo winced. “Let’s do it.”

“Okay,” Cardo said, standing.

As planned, Misty and Stacy retreated upstairs, where some medical supplies, drinks and canned goods had been carried. If the dead got into the building, they’d move the fight to the narrow staircase. Cardo hoped it would not come to that, despite the fact that it could make things easier.

He followed Crate into the back room, past the door leading into the walk-in freezer and to the door leading into the back yard. The old man unlocked the door, moving slowly. Easing it open, he looked back at Cardo.

“Wait right here,” he said.

“I know,” Cardo said, annoyed. When Reggie had said that he’d be willing to go out to Crate’s house and retrieve the bullets, the old man had insisted upon doing it himself. When Cardo offered to accompany him, he’d refused. “I don’t like people in my house,” he’d said, glancing at the old lady. Nothing more had been said.

The old man crept into the trash-strewn back yard, looking left and right and creeping away from the store. They had a little less than three hours of daylight left, but dusk seemed to have come early. In the shadowy clearing behind the store, the air was cool and damp and reeked of charred wood and burnt flesh.

The ground gradually sloped upward moving away from the back of the store, and the small shack was located about one hundred feet from where Cardo stood. There was a single window on the side of the building facing him, the east facing wall. He couldn’t see the door leading into the shack, and assumed it was to the left, on the south facing wall, an assumption that proved correct: the old man reached the south side of the tiny building, there was the jangle of keys, and he slid from sight.

Cardo held his breath, stepping from beneath the doorframe and onto the bleached shells that lined the back of the store, head cocked, listening. Waiting and watching.

“Come on,” he said, checking his watch again. The old man had been in there for nearly two minutes. There were footsteps above and behind him. A floorboard creaked.

Two gunshots punched through the silence.

The unused and cluttered guestroom was perfect. Sitting on the edge of the box-covered bed, Reggie looked down through the window and at the walking corpses below.

He dry-swallowed a single Black Molly and thumbed the safety on his Colt. It was accurate, and he was a good shot, but from this high and in this light? He was bound to miss. His shotgun was useless. If he were down there, in the thick of it, then yeah, the shotgun would come in handy. But not here.

The old man’s rifle would do the trick, and the old man’s rifle was downstairs with the old man.

When the shooting started, he’d have to be accurate. The noise would no doubt draw the dead people to the building. If Cardo’s descriptions were correct, it merely took one of them to recognize the front door for what it was, a door, and then they’d follow suit and swarm the place. He had to be accurate and he had to be fast, because he’d be unable to shoot any dead folks who slipped beneath the protection of the angled tin overhang that ran across the front of the store. Once they were on the boardwalk, it would not be long before they were inside.

He leaned forward, slowly, and watched the congregation of walking corpses drift and sway in the street below. The burn pile smoldered and flickered. Save for the lower legs with shoe-clad feet that radiated from the circle of the burn-pile like spokes from the center of a wheel, the shapes in the pile were no longer recognizably human.

“They’re doing it,” Misty whispered behind him. He got up and followed her into the hall. She took his place at the window and he made his way to the rear facing window near the top of the stairs. It was located directly above the back door, and offered a clean view of the little shack the old man called home and the two-car garage beyond.

The floor creaked beneath his feet, and when the shots came he did not move. Instead, he took a single step away from the window and stared, watching. Gun drawn, Cardo ran across the yard toward the little shack.

Reggie took the stairs two at a time.

Someone cried out in pain, cursed and gasped. It did not sound like the old man.

Gun raised beside his head, Cardo stood with his back to the small building, breath held, listening. The sound of hammering feet caught his attention, and Reggie appeared within the store’s back door. Cardo waved him back, brought a silencing finger to his lips. He cast a quick glance to either side of the building. From where he stood, he could not see down the right side of the building, but his view of the left side was relatively unobstructed. So far, the coast was clear.

There was another pained gasp. Cardo moved along the building, rounded the corner, and nearly bumped into Crate as the old man stepped out of his shack.

“Jesus fuck,” the old man said, slamming the door behind him, the pistol in his right hand twitching toward Cardo. A cloth sack hung from the old man’s left hand.

“Shh,” Cardo hissed, baring his teeth. “What the hell happened?”

“Come on,” the old man said, setting down the bag and advancing along the side of the shack, toward the rear.

A man lay curled beneath a tree, both blood-slick hands pressed to his stomach. Cardo shot a quick glance back at the old man’s shack, tried to get a read on what had gone down. The lone window on this side of the building was shattered. The old man had seen movement from inside and had opened fire.

Crate took three quick steps toward the man and kicked at something. A gun spun away from the fallen man, who looked up at Crate and Cardo, his face pale and twisted.

“The fuck you creeping around back here for, son?” Crate said, and then he stiffened. “Oh.”

“What?” Cardo said, standing beside the old man. The kid on the ground was a filthy and battered mess. From the look of his face, Cardo figured he’d taken quite a beating. There was a hole in his left forearm, which was livid with infection.

“He was here a few days ago,” The old man said. “He and his friends. Damn.”

“Help her,” the wounded kid said. “They’re crazy.”

There was a footfall behind them, and Cardo whirled, raised his gun. It was Reggie.

“We need to get inside right now,” Reggie said, looking past them and to the kid writhing on the ground. “The hell?”

“Crate knows him.”

“I didn’t know,” the old man said. “I saw something moving and—”

“Save it,” Reggie said. “We got to get back.”

While Cardo hadn’t been looking, two dead men had crept along the right side of the store and now advanced toward them.

“Take care of them,” Reggie whispered, and when the old man moved toward the two dead men Reggie slapped a hand onto his shoulder. The old man shot him an ugly glance, looked down at his large brown hand as if maybe it was a smear of shit on his shoulder.

“No shooting,” Reggie said, and recognition drained into the old man’s eyes.

“Oh,” Crate said. “Right.”

Crate vanished into his shack, closing the door behind him and locking it. Reggie looked at Cardo, frowning.

“He said he doesn’t like anyone in his house.”

“Oh,” Reggie said, dropping to his knees beside the fallen man, the smell of a fresh gut-shot filling his nostrils and threatening to drag him into the jungle.

“You know how crazy old people can get.”

“Hey,” Reggie said, tapping the wounded kid’s cheek.

“Yuh,” the kid said, looking up at Reggie, pale lips quivering.

“We’re going to move you.”

“Christ.”

“It’s going to hurt, and I need you to bite down on something, okay—” Reggie thought for a second, pulled his leather wallet from his pocket. “Bite down on this, okay? Don’t scream.”

“Don’t scream,” the kid said, sucked air through clenched teeth. Tears raced across dried blood, cut clean little tracks through the dirt on his swollen cheeks.

The old man emerged from his shack wielding a hammer. He stomped over to meet the first walking corpse, and with three quick whacks the thing crumpled to the ground. The second one took only two whacks, and the old man looked back at them, gasping, the wiry thicket of his beard rising and falling upon his heaving bony chest.

Reggie squeezed the wounded kid’s hands in his own, and it was as if both of them were trying to break bones. He found his eyes darting toward the kid’s neck in search of dog-tags, and he wondered if this is where it would all come to an end.

“What’s your name?”

“Ruh,” the kid said.

“Rick?”

“Richard.”

“Okay, Rich,” Reggie said, letting go of the kid’s hands. “It’s almost time, man.”

“Heads up,” Cardo said, and the old man turned, watched as the third corpse—an elderly woman whose breasts hung from her ribs in a wet fold of torn flesh and yellow fat—walked toward them. He took her down with one swing.

“Okay.” Reggie held his wallet before Richard’s face. The kid looked at it for a few seconds, as if he couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing. Then he opened his mouth, and Reggie slipped a corner of the wallet between his teeth. Richard bit down hard, and Reggie looked up at Cardo.

“Let’s go.”