CHAPTER 9

Billy Kline stopped at the corner of a pink stucco wall and glanced inside the entrance to the Springfield Adult Living Village. There was a guard shack about twenty feet in with gates on either side. Both gates were hanging open.

So where’s the guard? he wondered.

Beside him, Tommy Patmore was almost as far gone as the infected that had just escaped.

“I didn’t mean to hurt him. Oh Jesus, oh Jesus, I really didn’t. God, there was so much blood. So much of it…it got everywhere.”

“Shut up,” Billy said.

They had seen only a few cars that entire morning. One was going by them now on Tamiami Street. Billy watched it roll by. A moment later, he heard a horn and the sound of skidding tires.

There was a crash.

He heard a woman scream.

When her screams were cut short, Billy made up his mind. “Listen,” he said to Tommy. “Hey, you hear me? Tommy.”

Tommy made a low groan that was not quite a sign of understanding.

“I killed him, Billy.”

“I know you did. But Tommy, listen to me. We are in deep shit, you and me. I need you to stay sharp and keep your eyes open. Follow me.”

“Where are we going?”

“Just follow me.”

Billy grabbed his bloody garbage spike and made for the gates. Past the guard shack he could see a wild profusion of shrubs and trees and flowers.

“Seems safe enough,” Billy said.

He grabbed Tommy by the shoulder of his orange scrubs and pulled him along.

But as they came up even with the guard shack, Billy looked over and saw something that made his guts turn over.

Inside the guard shack, seated on the floor against the wall, was the guard. His Smokey the Bear hat was on the floor beside him. His left shoulder and part of his face were dark with blood. In his other hand he held his pistol. He was watching Billy and Tommy as they went by, his eyes two inscrutable milky clouds.

He started to move.

“Ah, for Christ’s sake,” Billy said.

He reached for Tommy’s shoulder again to pull him back, but Tommy was already walking toward the man.

The man rose to his feet.

“Tommy, what the hell are you doing?”

“I didn’t want to,” Tommy said. He dropped the shank on the pavement and walked toward the guard with his hands spread wide, a sinner begging forgiveness. “Please, I didn’t want to hurt him. I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry. You’ve got to believe me.”

“Tommy, for Christ’s—”

The guard stepped out of the shack. His head was leaning to one side. His left arm hung limply. But in his right, he still held his pistol, and this came up with his hand as he reached for Tommy.

Billy saw the guard’s fingers clutching for Tommy, and he knew what was going to happen.

A moment later, there was a shot.

The bullet hit the ground between Tommy’s feet and glanced off into nowhere with a high-pitched zing.

The second shot hit Tommy in the gut.

Tommy dropped to his knees, a look of profound surprise on his face, a startled grunt stuck somewhere in the back of his throat.

Billy backed away.

The guard fell on Tommy and both men tumbled to the pavement. Tommy tried to roll away. He was groaning in agony from the gut shot, and it kept him from regaining his feet.

The guard latched onto him and took a bite of Tommy’s calf. Tommy screamed as blood began to darken his pant leg.

Billy turned to run back into the street.

Three of the prisoners from the Sarasota County Jail were coming toward him, all of them freshly turned. Meanwhile, beside him, the guard was tearing into Tommy with his teeth. He turned his bloodstained face to Billy and started to rise again.

Billy just shook his head, spun on his heels, and ran for the cottages inside the Springfield Adult Living Village.

He sprinted across the lawn and reached the nearest of the pink stucco cottages. From the shows he’d seen while frittering away his days in the Sarasota County Jail, Billy knew that loud noises attracted the infected, and once those few infected zeroed in on an uninfected person, they would begin to moan. The moans carried, drawing more of the infected into the area. All the reports of seemingly empty streets suddenly flooding with the infected weren’t exaggerations.

Billy kept himself low and out of sight. He got to cover, scanned his surroundings constantly, just like the documentaries about the quarantine zone said to do, and tried not to make any noise. His plan was to reach one of the cottages, get to a phone, call for help, then sit tight and wait for somebody with guns to come and rescue him.

But that plan went out the window when he stepped around the front of the cottage.

Just ahead of him was a narrow hallway, a courtyard farther on. To his left, just before the courtyard, was a gently rising slope of green grass. The courtyard was packed with the infected. More were coming down the grassy slope. They were headed for the doorway to a single cottage, where two old folks were trying to hold their door closed against the infected.

“Ah, for Christ’s sake,” he said.

He didn’t want any part of it. Billy turned away and stepped right into the path of the three prisoners he’d seen from the guard shack. Behind them was the guard. Tommy wasn’t with them.

He looked for the gun and was both surprised and frustrated to see that the guard no longer had it with him. He had been a fool for not picking that thing up back at the guard shack.

Billy raised his trash spike and started to run. He was going to flank the three prisoners, sprint around the shambling, slower guard, and take his chances out on the street. But before he could put that simple plan into motion, one of the prisoners broke forward in a furious sprint, crashed into him, and knocked him to the ground, landing on top of him.

Billy landed with his spike across his chest in a port arms position. He jammed it up under the man’s chin and twisted, tossing him to the side. Billy scrambled to his feet and jammed the spike into the back of the zombie’s head before he had a chance to move. Satisfied the zombie was dead, Billy put his foot on the side of the zombie’s head and yanked his spike free from the corpse.

But now he was surrounded.

Some of the zombies coming down the grassy slope had diverted in his direction, and Billy found himself checked everywhere he turned by the mangled arms and faces of the infected.

Billy jabbed his spike into every face he saw and batted at their hands with his pole as he twisted and spun away from their grasp. He rushed into the crowd and ducked away just as a pair of zombies reached for him. At the same time, he brought the pole around in a sweeping path that caught one of the zombies in its upward arc, impaling its left hand. Unable to control his arm, the zombie bobbed on the spike like a balloon on a string.

In the melee, Billy had worked his way halfway up the slope. The zombies were slogging after him in a graceless, clumsy mass, and Billy, still swinging the impaled zombie around by its arm, flung him downward, into the advancing crowd. The zombie flew off and tumbled down to the grass, where it bowled into the others like logs crashing downhill.

Billy ran around the pile and a moment later found himself standing before the old woman and the bent wreck of a man who stood behind her.

“Are you folks okay?”

They just looked at him. The woman’s eyes slipped from him to the carnage behind him and then rolled slowly back to Billy.

“Ma’am? You okay?”

She blinked at him.

“They’re behind you,” she said.

He turned around. At least a dozen of the infected were rising to their feet. Others had already gained their footing and were closing in fast.

“Can we hide in there?” he said.

“They pulled the door out of the jamb,” she said. “It won’t close.”

Just then he heard a gunshot from the courtyard. He turned that way and saw an old dude in a cowboy hat with a pair of pistols in his hand. He had just shot one of the infected and was motioning two old women and two little kids through a corridor on the opposite side of the courtyard.

The dude in the cowboy hat glanced at Billy, and the two of them made eye contact. Even at a distance, Billy could see the man’s face grow momentarily hard with recognition at the orange scrubs Billy wore. But the look faded just as quickly as it formed, and the next instant he was motioning Billy and the two old-timers with him to follow them into the courtyard.

Billy looked behind him again. They weren’t going to be able to make it to the street.

To the old woman, he said, “Okay, you two come with me.”

“He can’t walk fast enough,” the woman said.

“I’ll carry him. Here, hold this.”

He handed his spike to the woman, who took the gore-stained thing like she’d just been handed a pile of dog shit.

Billy picked up the old man, and the next moment, they were all running for the courtyard, a moaning wake of the infected trailing out behind them.