“I’ll pass that information on to Keller,” Tony said. He looked at the fence in utter disgust, grasped the top, and shook it. “What the hell is this? Only one of them needs to lean on this thing for things to go bad.”
We looked around us at the buildings, now tall and silent, and the empty pavement of the streets. Not even crashed cars dusted this area; Keller or his predecessor, Durkee, must have cleaned the place out at some point.
We paused in front of a bulletin board hastily affixed to a building wall. Some of the papers adorning it had faded, but I recognized the theme well enough: missing posters. People searching for loved ones. Tommy Horner, was at the hospital. Erika Mendez, lives on Bruges St., careful she has guns.
This part of the city must not have always been in the Quarantine Zone.
“I wonder if they found any of these people,” Dax said.
“Unlikely,” Tony said. “They’d have taken down the messages if that were the case.”
“Not if this place got closed off.”
Tony snorted and kept walking.
Evie bounced along, her tags jangling with each step. She usually went a little nutty when the dead came around, so I was trusting in her superior senses to warn us if some hungry fiends came calling.
Unless the dead were learning stealth. That would be just our luck.
Still. No ghouls yet, and no resistance. So far my harebrained scheme was going exactly the way I’d envisioned it.
Well, not exactly the way I’d envisioned it. In my wildest dreams, I had fantasized about having some weapons, at least; the old assault rifle I’d grown so fond of, or at least something beyond the measly pistol Keller permitted Tony to keep because he was too afraid to take it personally. Even a machete or something. Dax and I had snagged forks and severely blunted knives from the kitchen before we left. If the dead attacked, we would have to face them mano a mano.
They do call me Bone Crusher, I thought.
No they don’t, my logical side shot back. You gave yourself that nickname and you’ve never once proven you can crush anything, much less bones. They call you Bedpan Girl.
I shook off the doubt. Now was not the time to question my abilities.
Tony stopped moving. “You hear that?”
We all stopped. Aside from Evie’s panting, I couldn’t hear anything out of place. “No…what?”
“Exactly.”
“You mean it’s too quiet,” I guessed.
“Yeah. Maybe we’ve just gotten too used to Hastings, but I seem to remember there was some sort of noise even in Muldoon and Elderwood…”
“Like the shuffle of undead feet?” Dax asked.
Tony’s scowl was enough to tell me that yes, that was exactly what he thought.
“We can’t do anything about it,” I said. “Maybe the zombies left.”
Tony rolled his eyes. “And went where? Hawaii?”
“Or somewhere with more meat. I don’t know. But if they were out here, they would have attacked us already.”
“You realize the longer we sit around arguing, the more time we give them to track us down or smell our sweet, tender flesh?” Dax asked. “Or whatever it is they do now when they hunt. So will you two quit your bitching and get a move on?”
He tugged on Evie’s leash and set off in front of us.
You know you’ve made a mistake when Dax takes you to task. Tony and I followed him, properly shamed into silence for the time being.
As we moved deeper into the city, the familiar signs of destruction cropped up. Cars abandoned in the middle of the road. Belongings hanging from open windows—makeshift laundry lines, I thought, or perhaps signals to the military that people were living there. Over time, the signs grew more obvious. HELP US, someone had written on a window. PLEASE COME, said a piece of paper taped to a door.
Of course, this did make me wonder if the soldiers had come through at all. I didn’t see any faces in the windows, but that didn’t mean people weren’t there. They might have given up, might be huddled in their living rooms, hoping they wouldn’t attract the attention of the dead. They might not know we were out here at all.
I kept scanning for faces, even rotten ones.
Nothing.
It was like even the dead didn’t care for this area. How strange.
How strange, I mocked myself. How strange, you dimwit. Things have been strange since the goddamn sky fell down. Why don’t you think of some other similarly ridiculous platitude and write that down?
Ever been alone with your own thoughts for too long? They start to get obnoxious.
We passed an overturned dumpster with a brown stain emanating from beneath it. I couldn’t decide whether the stain was the blood of someone trapped under it, or the stain of all that leaking garbage that had probably congealed against the lid. Neither option was particularly appetizing.
I stopped when the hospital came into view. It was still a good ways off, lording over the city from the top of the hill it had perched on. “Behrens Memorial,” I said.
“That where Gloria interviewed Lattimore?”
I nodded. “I used to drop people off here sometimes. It’s a nice hospital…or it was, anyway.”