Safari - 02 (2 page)

The living—once killed—did not.

Or at least, not yet.

Gus gently rubbed his forehead, very careful not to touch the bandages straightening his broken nose. He took a deep breath and grimaced upon expanding his rib cage. Sparkles of pain caused him to straighten, and he paused, a shaking hand to his chest. Broken ribs. Had to be. Just fucking great. Roxanne had been one helluva dancer. Too bad her stage had been his face and body.

In the darkness, he spied a glint of metal—the Ruger. He picked it up from the sofa and shambled into the kitchen. He retrieved a two-liter jug of water from the fridge. The chill of it on his broken teeth would kill him, but he would want it later.

He climbed the stairway to his bedroom. Once there, he placed the water near the bed, kicked off his boots, and without bothering to undress, crawled underneath the thick blankets. Like some great wounded bear about to hibernate, he closed his eyes and let the dark roll in.

The last thing he heard was the comforting creaks of the house settling.

*

Buried in blankets, Gus woke up in darkness the next morning, lips smacking in want of water. Pushing back the covers, he swung his legs off the bed and reached for the jug on the floor. With his eyes squinting at the daylight, he drank straight from the bottle, stopping when the pain of his teeth became too great.

He’d have to do something about them.

Plopping the jug back on the floor, he gingerly fingered the empty sockets in his mouth, drifting to the two places where only stubs of enamel remained and stung like live wires. He wondered if the nerves would eventually die, which brought on another question: Should he leave the roots in his head?

“You wouldn’t happen to know a dentist, would you?” Gus asked the bottle of Uncle Jack perched on the nearby nightstand. “No? Well… shit.”

Gus emptied his bladder in his room’s bucket, then wandered into the upstairs bathroom. He stopped in front of the mirror and beheld a reflection that showed a bruised and bloody fright of a man, complete with swollen, bloodshot eyes and nasty-looking cuts. He inspected his wounds, hissing at the amount of damage he’d sustained. He bared his teeth and thought he looked like an old style hockey player who had stopped one too many pucks with his face. He poked a finger at the raw edges of white enamel just barely visible below the gumline, and hissed.

“No dentist,” Gus said with a sigh. Those jagged nubs couldn’t possibly stay in his mouth. The pain would kill him each time he drank or ate something. And who knew how long it would take for the nerve endings to die, if ever. He was no dentist. In a moment of dark clarity, he figured on what had to be done and left the bathroom.

Minutes later, he returned and, on the white granite countertop, placed the half empty bottle of Uncle Jack, a full bottle of Captain Morgan dark rum, his Bowie knife, two pairs of pliers—one needle-nose and the other the regular stubby kind—a bottle of peroxide, and a threaded needle. He spread a dark towel next to his makeshift surgery kit.

Gus shook his head. He couldn’t believe what he was about to do. There weren’t any painkillers stronger than aspirin in the house, and he didn’t know what kind he should use if he went looking for some. That left the old-fashioned, plain stupid-assed way. Dry-mouthed, he took a pair of steadying shots from the whiskey bottle. He glared at his reflection, thinking of Tammy, Scott, and Roxanne. Another shot of booze and he focused on his terrible eyes, bloodshot and miserable-looking. He thought he heard Roxanne whispering from beyond the grave, her voice teasing him in the back of his head. After another shot of whiskey, the whispers seemed louder.

Gus didn’t want to think about Roxanne. Not ever again.

Three more swallows of whiskey went into his belly, and his senses began to swim. He picked up the Bowie knife and considered its formidable foot-long length. He sprinkled some peroxide along the tip of the blade, hoping it would do the job of disinfecting it. Heating the knife occurred to him, but in his current state, the notion vanished, and the peroxide seemed to be enough. The booze started to hit him, and he struggled with a drunkard’s senses to stay cognizant of what he was attempting. He would make the initial cuts and then shave back the gums just enough to get a grip on the enamel knobs with either the needle-nose pliers or the stubbies. He figured he’d try the stubby pair first. The surgery was going to hurt. It was going to hurt like unholy
fuck
, but he didn’t see how he could leave the roots of the broken teeth in his mouth to torture him with every breath.

The tip of the knife gleamed.

Gus wondered if he would pass out.

Hello, pain, my old friend.
He drew back his lips, snarling at himself in the mirror. He gripped the gums he wanted to cut, found them slippery, and rubbed the corner of towel around them for a better hold. He panted and brought forth the Bowie. He inserted the blade and felt it prick his flesh. The angle had to be just right. If not, he could picture himself driving the tip of the blade through his upper lip. Once he angled it appropriately, a part of his mind, that disbelieving sober part that realized he was truly going to go through with it, screamed,
No, no! Don’t! Dear Jesus, don’t!
.

He dug in.

2

When morning arrived, Gus found himself face down on the bed, his head resting on a towel soaked with blood seeping from his tortured mouth. During the night, when the ferocious aching had awakened him despite draining Uncle Jack and half of the rum, he’d swished water and spat it onto the floor. He’d eventually stopped spitting and simply downed the bloody water, cringing at the oddly metallic taste.

With a groan he sat up, swayed on the mattress until finally stabilizing, and hesitantly tongued the stitches in his tortured gums. Wrenching those two stubborn knobs of white from his head and stitching the holes up afterward had been the single most painful and time-slowing experience of his entire existence. He wondered if the booze had even helped any, remembering how his mouth had felt as if spiked rockets had detonated inside it. The blood had made things not only slippery, but difficult to see as his gums had oozed constantly. Sometime during the process, while he was huffing and practically squealing with pain, Gus was certain a piece of his sanity slipped. He’d started giggling at himself in the mirror, pausing at the sunspots of agony in his head and the wide, dark droplets of blood dappling the porcelain sink. The endorphins his laughter released were perhaps the brightest part of an otherwise very dark and long process.

In the end, he’d stayed conscious throughout the entire surgery, not wanting to ever do such a torturous procedure again and wanting very much to shake a dentist’s hand.

Gus got out of bed and used the bucket in the corner, not daring to brave the chill outside. His mouth ached like fingers being repeatedly slammed in a door, but once the bleeding stopped, that would be it. At least he hoped. He finished his business, picked up his boots, and plodded down the steps to the living room. Corpses still littered the floor, and a distinct smell lingered on the air. There was a lot of work to do after breakfast.

With dark thoughts, he wandered into the kitchen and fixed a bowl of cinnamon oatmeal with brown sugar. He warmed it up and consumed it with the utmost care, glad that he didn’t have to bite anything. There was going to be a lot of soft food in his future for the next little while. After breakfast, he wandered back into the living room and put on his boots. The morning light shone in from the ruined sliding door, and Gus paused on the threshold, gazing out over the snow-covered lawn and deck. Roxanne’s body lay out there, face up and seemingly staring at the sky.

Under the glare of the sun, Gus marched over to Roxanne’s body. Snow partially covered her face, sparing him from looking at it. He grabbed her ankles and pulled her to the edge of the deck. Without a word, he flipped the body over the railing. Roxanne fell forty feet to land with a muffled thud at the bottom of the mountain, her limbs splayed out at awkward angles and her blood staining winter’s first snowfall.

She was only the first. He went back to the sliding door and lugged one of the raiders onto the deck. He propped the man atop the railing, dumped him over the edge, and watched where he landed. The body half-landed on Roxanne, and it made Gus glad that an arm partly covered her face.

Staring down at them, Gus realized he was moaning. He straightened and frowned.
He
wasn’t moaning.

“What the Jesus…?” he trailed off and walked toward the house. Footprints circled the house and trailed away to the outer wall. He followed them and, with each step, heard the moaning even more clearly. Stopping at the corner of the house, he peeked around it, becoming increasingly aware of the horrible cacophony of sound from beyond the wall.

“What the fuck?” He ran through his living room and stopped in the kitchen to gaze out one of the windows. All was still clear within the wall, but the moaning droned on. Lurching back into the living room, he gathered the Benelli shotgun where he had discarded it the day of the attack and checked the magazine of his sound-suppressed Ruger. He went about the house, arming and armoring himself as quick as his aching body would allow. The Nomex coat and pants he had taken from the fire station went on over his frame. Elbow and knee pads were hauled into place. When he put on his helmet, he shivered in pain from the nudge against his nose.

He went out through the front door, the length of the stone wall filling his vision. The barrier lay ahead, ten feet high and surrounding the house from mountainside to cliff’s edge. Gus thanked God above for whoever had built the thing. He walked past the bodies he’d shot two days ago. The thin snow layer concealed the gore. Shotguns lay near the bodies, and Gus made a mental note to gather them up later––if he was able.

The gate shuddered, but the beams bracing it held firm. The sight and sound of the gate trembling stopped him dead in his tracks. He placed the skeletal buttstock of the Benelli against his shoulder, fingers flexing on the pistol grip. The moaning rose in volume, and he even heard something hissing.

How did they find me?
He had no answer. He also had no way of looking up and over the wall. Thoughts of what to do zipped through his mind before the answer became obvious. With a huff, he turned and ran for the garage. Five minutes later, he parked the beast as close to the stone barrier as possible. With a thump, he jumped out of the rear and hauled the ladder from the back. He placed the ladder against the van and climbed with shotgun in hand. He had perhaps less than a foot of clearance between the side of the beast and the wall.

What lay beyond took his breath away.

“Holy shit,” he whispered.

Though he had to lean forward to discern what was piled against the gate, he had no problem seeing what occupied the grounds in front of the wall. He stood on the roof of the beast and beheld a solid, writhing mass of corpses pressed firmly against the stone. Cars and trucks were trapped in the tide of reanimated flesh. A dark pickup was parked closest against the gate. Deadheads in the rear of the mob mashed up behind the ones against the walls, while stragglers from the road stumbled forward, drawn to the pitiful howling. Many of the unliving somehow sensed him above the wall and raised their arms accusingly, their voices rising in urgency. Faces in the horde turned up, and mouths split open. Some immediately attacked the section of the wall below Gus.

“Well…
shit
,” he breathed. The scene resembled a huge mosh pit, but if he had to jump into it, he knew he’d be torn apart like so much greasy leftover chicken. He guesstimated at least two hundred, perhaps even as many as three hundred, were just outside his wall, laying siege to his home. The question reared up in his head again as to
how
so many found their way to his secluded house.

As he watched, the zombies crowded around the pickup parked in front of the gate and began squirming up onto the hood of the truck, as if they
knew
that was the best way to get to their meal. Some slipped and fell back, but the dead were so tightly packed that the more determined ones managed to get onto the hood and stay there. Others used the initial bodies as handholds and gripped legs to pull themselves to the top of the heap. Some of the dead were beaten back, but the rising swell of corpses did not relent. Three zombies eventually got to their feet and faced the gate. One wearing jeans and a t-shirt moved unsteadily forward and placed its feet onto the many shoulders wedged between the front of the pickup and the gate. The zombie fell forward, but his hands caught the brim of the gate and held on.

Gus brought up the Benelli, sighted the corpse through the scope, and fired. The shell punched the zombie through the midsection with enough force to fling it back onto the press of bodies, where it thrashed as if floating upon a stormy sea.

Others stepped up onto the hood of the pickup.

“Mother…
fuck
…” Gus took aim and promptly exploded the heads of two besiegers. Their bodies fell and were absorbed by the mass. Gus didn’t like that either. By attrition alone, a ramp of unmoving bodies would soon allow the others to breach the wall. And if he did nothing, they would eventually scale the top. A spike of dread made him straighten his back.

Setting his legs wide and picking the next target, he commenced firing at those on the hood of the truck. A woman with a ponytail had her face sheared away. A teenager in a collared shirt lurched over from a head shot. An overweight business type took two shells before his skull popped from his shoulders and his body slumped to the hood, oozing over one side and out of sight. Each shot bucked the shotgun against Gus’s shoulder. The jolt travelled down his side to his broken ribs and gave them a punishing grind, forcing him to take frequent, shallow breaths. The Benelli soon emptied, and he stepped back to shove more shells into the weapon. Eight rounds went into the shotgun, and Gus took a steadying breath to control his mounting fright. He blew the head off a priest and winged a teenager. A blast took the face off another businessman. Another round bent a woman’s head back over her shoulders as if she’d been kicked in the chin. The bodies continued to fall, and Gus believed some of the zombies closest to the wall were actually getting
taller
.