Inside
The door closed with a hiss of its pneumatic hinges. Westlake heard the electronic lock beep softly, the tiny lights on the handle going from green back to red. The access corridor was composed of white tile, now largely marked by bloody handprints and smears of offal. Flies buzzed thickly on the recycled air. Westlake swallowed a sudden surge of bile.
For all intents and purposes, it appeared a massacre had taken place in the narrow corridor. Not just the walkers the robot had gunned down. Heaps of mutilated meat stretched the length of the passage, as if a crowd had been trying to escape and failed. Westlake tried not to imagine what it must have been like. He glanced up and saw the glass eye of a camera tracking them. He hoped Vinnie enjoyed the show.
“God,” Ptolemy choked. He pressed his hand to his mouth, and Westlake wondered if he was going to throw up. He turned away from the carnage, and Ramirez patted his back in sympathy.
Westlake shook his head. “They must have tried to get out, but Vinnie must’ve locked the building down. He always was a weasel. Soon as he popped a cap in Sal, he probably booked it for the outside with whoever he could get. Everyone else… he left.”
Calavera sank to his haunches beside a red mass that might once have been a person. “Whatever did this, did so quickly and brutally.” He pointed out a series of deep grooves cut into the tile. “And see there? Blades of some sort.”
“Claws,” Westlake said. “The thing on the camera – Sal – it had claws.”
“What sort of zombie has claws?” Hutch muttered, as he accidentally trod on something that uttered a sickening squelch. He grimaced and leaned against the wall in order to check the sole of his boot. “I mean, the mess I get – zombies ain’t exactly neat eaters. But this is something else.” He looked at Westlake. “What the hell have you gotten us into?”
Westlake ignored him and picked his way through the debris, moving slowly towards the end of the hall. “See if they got any guns on them. If there are any more walkers nearby, they’ll be on the way.”
He stopped at the end of the hall. A set of stairs rose ahead of him, bending up and around, leading to the next floor, as Vinnie had said. A set of glass-topped double doors were to either side of him. Left was the kitchens, right was–
Westlake jerked back. A walker stared through the glass at him. Ragged fingers scratched at the pane as the dead man beat his head against the door frame. Bushy white mustache, nice hair – or it had been – and a pinky ring that scratched divots in the glass. Westlake didn’t recognize him, but wondered if he’d been somebody important. He looked down and saw that someone had shoved a broken broom through the handles, securing the door, at least temporarily.
The walker grew more agitated the longer Westlake stared at it. The sound of its thumping filled the corridor. The noise would bring more of them. Westlake wished he had his knife, but Carl had taken it. His big hands flexed uselessly as he watched the thing flail at the door. “Ugly sonnuvagun,” Hutch said, startling him.
Westlake glanced at him. “Yeah. Find anything?”
Hutch held up a revolver. He popped the cylinder. “Three shots left.” He slapped it back into place. Westlake took it from him.
“That’ll do.”
“Hey!” Hutch protested. Westlake ignored him and thrust the gun into his coat pocket. He started for the stairs. He had a job to do, one that was solely his.
“Where are you going?” Ramirez called.
“Upstairs, obviously.”
Ramirez caught up with him. “Why?”
Westlake paused on the bottom step. “I have a feeling that thing will find us. In the meantime, I’m going to do what I came here to do. Now, you can come with me, or you can wander around aimlessly. Your choice.”
Ramirez stared at him. “You know, just when I was starting to think you weren’t an asshole, you pull this shit. You’re not going anywhere.” She made a clutching motion at her side, reaching for a gun that wasn’t there.
Westlake couldn’t help but smile. “Sort of a tradition for us, wouldn’t you say?”
Ramirez threw up her hands. “Jesus Christ. Whatever happened to having your crew’s back, Westlake?”
“This Sal is not here,” Calavera said, joining them. “But Santa Muerte walks these halls. I can feel her presence. She will watch over us.” He studied the walker through the glass, then craned his neck to peer past it. “I count five more in the hall beyond. There will be more soon, and these doors will not hold.” He tapped the broom with a thick finger. The walker gave a groaning snarl that they all ignored.
Ptolemy offered Ramirez a battered Glock. “I found it in a shoulder holster. Full magazine. No spares.”
She took it gratefully and checked the magazine for herself. As Ptolemy said, a full clip. Whoever its owner had been, they hadn’t had time to get a shot off. “Anything else?”
Hutch shook his head. “Nothing useful.”
“Might be more upstairs,” Westlake said, in a gently wheedling tone. “Sal was a big fan of gun safes. Had one in every room of his house. I don’t see why here would be any different.” He gestured. “Shall we?”
Ramirez stared at him, and for a moment he thought he’d pushed it too far. Then her pragmatism kicked in and she gave a grudging nod. “Fine. But remember what we talked about.”
Westlake nodded and started up the stairs. They took it slow. The stairs and the walls were stained with blood. No bodies – a bad thing. That meant they were walking around somewhere. Their footsteps and breathing sounded loud in the cramped space. Westlake rested his hand on the revolver in his pocket.
At the first landing, he paused. “Right. The rooms are laid out in American hotel standard. Tight corridors, bad carpeting, all extending out from a central space. If you need them, there are access stairs like these on the opposite side of the building.”
Ramirez nodded slowly. “Fine. Everyone take a room. We’ll meet back here in five.”
They took the rooms as slowly as they’d climbed the stairs. Westlake took the first one, and then, when the others were checking theirs, he slipped out, closed the door gently so that it made no noise. He trotted down the hall, heading back for the access stairs they’d come up before anyone spotted him. Ramirez would figure out where he was once she noticed he was gone, but if his luck held, he would be done by then. If she wanted to yell at him, she could. He didn’t care.
He was too close to care. He went up to the next floor, his hand on the revolver in his pocket. It was quiet upstairs. He’d known it would be. People would have been going down to get out, and the zombies would have followed. There were always a few stragglers, but he figured he could handle them.
There was blood on the carpet and bullet holes in the plaster. And more than in the plaster – big holes in the ceiling and the floor, like a bomb had gone off at some point. Only there was no scorching, only a black, tarry residue staining the edges of each hole.
He didn’t stop to wonder about it, and instead made for the largest office, at the end of the hall. His man inside had told him where Sal’s office was, and Vinnie had confirmed. Apparently, Sal had had an en suite toilet installed.
He stopped upon hearing a shuffling in one of the rooms. A thumping. He decided to leave it be. So long as it didn’t get in his way, there was no reason to waste the bullet. He pushed through to the office.
The office was big and tacky; just like Sal. Wooden bookshelves held false front books – glued together covers with gilt spines and nothing else. The pictures on the walls were pool hall chic, and the desk was too clean. The far wall was nothing but glass, overlooking the courtyard below. The bathroom door was closed. Blood covered the knob. Westlake studied it for a moment, then turned his attention to the safe.
Sitting against the wall, between the bookshelves, the big, old-fashioned, black safe seemed straight out of a Poverty Row gangster film. It had probably been in the Bonaro family for decades. It was funny; Sal had never struck him as the sentimental type.
Westlake checked the drawers of the desk, looking for a code to open it. Sal wasn’t the sort to have memorized that kind of thing – he had people for that. He found it taped to the underside of the uppermost drawer and felt a rush of discovery.
He went to work. He’d never been much of a jugger – a safe-cracker. It was always better to have the code, when you could get it, by guile or force. Whatever did the job. As the tumblers clunked, he kept an eye on the door. But when the safe popped open, he had eyes for nothing else.
The money was there. Not his money, necessarily – but somebody’s money that was owed to Westlake. He reached out, traced the first brick of cool green currency with a finger. He’d been dreaming about this moment for months, and now it was here. He felt vindicated.
A hand fell on his shoulder, startling him. He spun with a muffled cry. The walker behind him groaned and clutched a handful of his jacket. Judging by the toilet paper on the bottom of its wingtips, it had come out of the bathroom. He’d been so preoccupied by the money, he hadn’t even heard the door open. He cursed himself for ignoring the thumping.
It hauled him up and flung him onto the desk. The zombie was big and had been big in life. A goon in a three-piece suit, with a hole where his throat should have been, and a face like raw meat. His large fists came down as Westlake rolled aside and groped for something – anything – he could use. He found a letter-opener, nice and sharp.
The zombie scrabbled towards him, reaching to get him. Westlake slammed the letter-opener down, pinning the dead man’s hand to the desk. Then, for good measure, he slugged it in the face. The zombie tried to free itself, but to no avail. Westlake circled the trapped walker and made for the safe. “Now, where was I?” he murmured, ignoring the zombie. He began to stuff bricks of cash into his jacket. Not all of it. Just what he was owed.
A guttural sound filled the room. Westlake froze. “Shit,” he muttered. A wave of primal fear passed through him as he turned to take in the thing that now stared at him with red, dead eyes.
Sal Bonaro grinned at him from the doorway. Or, rather, the thing that had been Sal. It was a hulking nightmare now, a mass of swollen muscle and contorted limbs. Shards of bone jutted from its ravaged flesh, and it flexed clawed hands as it studied him.
Westlake looked up into the thing’s eyes and read his death in them. Unlike the walkers, there was a lot going on in Sal’s head. None of it was good. The thing’s jaws split open like a flower, revealing a maw of interlocking teeth. Tarry drool dripped from a slick gullet, plopping onto the carpet.
“Hey Sal, how’s it hanging?” he said, in a cracked voice. It was better than screaming, but not by much.
Sal screeched in reply and Westlake threw himself aside as a talon slammed down, smashing through the desk and the pinned walker. Westlake scrambled to his feet and bolted for the door as Sal surged after him with a deafening roar.
Westlake ran for all he was worth, heading back towards the stairs, the monstrous zombie loping after him. The calcified extrusions that emerged from its swollen flesh tore gouges in the walls to either side of the corridor as it ran, filling the air with dust and plaster chips. Sal bellowed again, and answering groans echoed from up ahead – walkers, alerted to the prospect of a meal. Westlake didn’t stop. Instead, he dropped and slid beneath the feet of the first of the zombies to appear out of a room.
He stayed low as Sal hit the walkers like an express train, slamming them against walls or stomping them flat. He saw the stairwell door and went for it, Sal’s howls pursuing him. A thud behind him alerted him to a new player – a runner, clad in a red tracksuit and with sunglasses firmly fixed to its cadaverous face.
It came skidding out of a room to his right and bounded after him. Westlake reached the stairs just ahead of it and, thinking quick, hit the door and grabbed the rail, swinging himself over even as the runner pounced. The world seemed to slow as he held on tight.
As a blur of meat and muscle, Sal crashed into the runner in midair and both zombies tumbled down the steps, growling and moaning. Westlake waited until they hit the next landing before making to swing himself back onto the stairs. Only the walkers beat him to it. They crowded forward onto the landing, groping for him.
He hesitated, but only for an instant. Then he leapt. The landing below was a mass of broken inlay and torn carpeting. The runner had been flattened, but still had a bit of twitch left to it. Sal, on the other hand, seemed in fine fettle. The creature heaved itself up with a grunt, piggy eyes fixed on Westlake. It lifted what was left of the runner and casually popped the zombie’s head off with a flick of one clawed thumb.
“Well, that’s one way to handle it,” Westlake muttered, as he pushed himself to his feet, fumbling for the door to the next floor behind him. He hoped the others had found something useful. Sal followed, drool hanging in glistening webs from his jaws. There was a glint of something that might have been amusement in its eyes as it took a step towards him.
“Down!” someone screamed.