Chapter 19

 

With Dozer off-leash and leading the way, Tara traversed the path between the clearing and Trinity House without incident. Once she reached the trailhead across from the rear door, the smell of carrion hanging in the air was enough to make her grab a fistful of shirt and cover her mouth and nose.

“Holy shit,” she said under her breath. “Methinks somebody forgot their Axe Body Wash.”

Before stepping into the open, she paused off to the side of the trail and hailed Rose on the teal radio.

A burst of white noise, then, “This is Rose.”

Tara asked, “Where’s the rotter? I can smell it.”

“Rotters. Plural,” Rose replied. “We have three of them roaming the turnaround. Another one is standing dead still right in front of the driveway gate. And there was a kid zombie. I don’t see him at the moment.”

“Are any of them fast movers?”

“I think they’re all Slogs.”

“Think and know are two very different things,” Tara shot back. “One of those can get you killed.”

Exasperation showing in her tone, Rose said, “What do you want me to do? Go bang on the gate? Throw one of Dozer’s balls across the cul-de-sac and see if any of them take off running after it?”

“Forget it,” Tara said. “I’m coming in. Just make sure you let me know if you see any change in their behavior.”

“My eyes won’t leave the screen,” Rose promised.

Taking the discretion is the better part of valor road, Tara drew the Glock. After press checking the weapon to ensure a round was in the chamber, she did a quick turkey-peek in each direction. The stretch of open ground between the trailhead and where the east wall made a shallow left-to-right bend, maybe fifty feet total, was clear. To her right was a run of nearly a hundred feet. It, too, was clear.

She said, “OK,” to get Dozer moving, then stepped from cover. As if somehow the thing had been alerted to their presence—which was absurd as hell to even think, let alone say out loud—a child-sized zombie emerged from behind the near corner. It was head-down and staring at the ground, all of its attention drawn to the fallen leaves crackling beneath its road-worn sneakers.

Caught fifteen feet from the wall, Tara had to choose quickly between making a mad dash for the recessed door or standing her ground and confronting the threat.

Reaching the door before being seen by the zombie might be doable. Working the keys in the pair of locks without the junior rotter catching on and giving chase was not going to happen.

Tara hated seeing any kind of zombie. But the ones she hated seeing most were the kids. They should be home playing video games, out riding bikes with their friends—doing the things kids do.

This one’s days of doing the things kids do had been over for a couple of weeks. Pustules dotted both arms. An inch or two north of its shirt collar, dead center on its scrawny neck, was a golf-ball-sized hole. The blood that had flowed from the wound and soiled the collar was dried and crusty. The kid had died the first time wearing blue jeans and a DAB CAT tee shirt. On the front of the shirt was a cat performing the pose Tara had most recently seen performed by none other than Usain Bolt. God, she hoped the shirt was false advertising.

That hope was dashed when the undead kid grew tired of the noise made by the leaves, leveled a dead-eyed stare in her direction, and broke into an all-out sprint. Stick-thin arms pumping in near-perfect unison with equally skinny legs, the kid covered the first ten feet without a sound. No guttural grunts. No animalistic growling. And, of course, on account of its lack of a pulse and respiration—no heavy breathing.

Getting the Glock online to fire seemed to happen in slow motion. Tara was sticking her finger in the trigger guard and thrusting her hands out in front of her body at about the same time she heard her brother’s voice in her head reminding her the Glock’s safety was on the trigger. Which, at the moment, with sixty-some-odd pounds of hungry zombie barreling down on her, was one hell of a convenience.

Jumping the gun, so to speak, Tara pressed the trigger before she had the sights fully aligned. The first round struck the undead boy’s clavicle, shattering it in several pieces and sending him off course by a few degrees.

Still, the thing made no sound whatsoever.

At the very moment Tara had been pressing the trigger, Dozer was already halfway across the open ground. Little rooster tails of damp earth erupted as the dog’s paws found better purchase and its pace quickened.

Ignoring the furry missile vectoring in on the zombie, Tara sighted on a spot in space where she figured the zombie’s bobbing head would soon be and gave the trigger a second press.

With the dog and undead kid a half-beat from one hell of a collision, the second round, tacking on a downward angle, entered the hollow cheek facing her and exploded out the other side, dragging in its wake a spreading cloud of congealed blood and shredded skin and shattered teeth. On account of the muzzle climb, Tara’s third shot plunged into the runner’s right eye socket, the kinetic energy snapping his head back and literally stopping him in his tracks.

Coming in fast and from the left, every muscle in his eighty-pound low-to-the-ground frame gone rock-solid, Dozer launched at the incoming threat. While the dog’s aim was off, the impact with the undead kid was jarring. And though Dozer’s weight advantage further altered the zombie’s course, his bared teeth missed their mark. A good thing, considering nobody really knew Romero’s true effect on animals.

Instead of clamping down on the arm sweeping past his muzzle, Dozer got a mouthful of the Dab Cat shirt. In the next second, as the equal and opposite reaction part of Newton’s Law kicked in, Dozer was sent spinning away from the true prize, the large swatch of tee-shirt clutched in his pointy teeth the only thing to show for his effort.

The odd-looking pirouette that followed—the kid’s arms and head all jerking in one direction, entire torso torqueing in the other—struck Tara as a move she’d seen at an interpretive dance performance.

As the zombie crashed to the ground, face-down, she bellowed, “Leave it,” and motioned for Dozer to back off.

Still clutching the scrap of shirt between his teeth, Dozer backed away from the fallen ghoul. Once he reached the forest edge, he sat on his haunches and cocked his head.

Tara took another tentative step toward the prone figure, aimed the pistol’s still-smoking barrel at the back of the zombie’s head, and pressed the trigger.

Ears ringing, she plucked her keys from deep in her pocket and advanced to the door.

The radio in her other pocket emitted a soft electronic tone. After a follow-on hiss of white noise, Rose said, “I heard that. And so did they. They’re coming your way.”

No time to answer. Tara stuffed the key in the lock and drew back the first deadbolt. She was working on getting the other lock open when two things happened back to back. First, Dozer rushed over and put himself between her and the corner the kid zombie had just come around. Then, the zombies Rose had described—all of them waxen-skinned, their bloated bodies draped with torn and tattered clothing—doddered around the corner.

Though the door wasn’t to a public restroom of an inner-city gas station, the ring of keys suddenly felt as if they had a cinder block hanging off them. The perceived weight was all in her mind, brought on by the sudden emergence of the trio of flesh-eaters.

Fighting through the rising panic, she jammed the key in the second lock, rotated it counterclockwise, and shoved her way into the courtyard.

Placing her hand in the breach where the growling canine could see it, she said, “Dozer, touch,” and got ready to close the door.

Hindquarters appearing first, Dozer backed his way through the narrow opening, the ongoing low growl subsiding only when Tara had the door shut and both locks thrown.