Love in an Undead Age, A.M. Geever [best contemporary novels txt] 📗

Miranda shifted her weight off her injured knee as she dry-swallowed a Percocet and three more ibuprofen.

Doug said, “The pill popping doesn’t inspire confidence.”

“I’m fine.”

Fifteen minutes of helping Doug herd zombies had taken a toll, but she would never admit it. She could do it. It was just going to hurt.

Miranda, Doug, and Jeremiah, the latter gagged with hands bound, stood close together where Raymond Street ended in a “T” intersection at Beach Street. Raymond was one of those roads that didn’t have normal blocks because of the curve of the San Lorenzo River, which emptied into Monterey Bay at the east end of the boardwalk beach less than half a mile away. Behind them, a hundred zombies were contained behind a hastily erected temporary barricade of chain-link. More zombies arrived every minute. Ahead of them, another barrier stretched across the four lanes and grassy divider of Beach Street. On the other side of Beach Street, across from where they waited, the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk wafted in and out of view in the patchy early morning fog.

The boardwalk hugged the coast for half a mile along the wide beach. The main entrance to its rides, games, and attractions welcomed visitors one block west of their location and was where they figured the invaders would try to enter town. The buildings that blocked any view of Raymond Street from the boardwalk’s westerly entrances made it ideal for staging the first part of Doug’s plan.

They were hiding by a restaurant with large picture windows that wrapped around the building’s front corners. They could peer through to Beach Street without exposure.

“D’you think the trucks blocking the boardwalk’s main entrance will be enough to get them to move down to the next one?”

Doug shrugged. “We’re about to find out.”

Miranda looked to the boardwalk building across the street. Its bright-orange paint popped against the leaden sky. Scattered zombies, in ones and twos, wandered along Beach Street. A few had approached the trio but were always repelled by Jeremiah. Their captive sat on the ground near Doug’s feet, a mutinous gleam in his eyes.

“Here we go,” Doug said. He ducked low, his head eye-level high with the bottom of the picture window.

Miranda edged closer, peeking past the edge of the window from where she stood. She wasn’t going to bend her knee to crouch unless her life depended on it and right now, it didn’t. Below the towering skeleton of the roller coaster she saw flickers of movement, heard the ebb and flow of soft voices near the vehicles that blocked the main boardwalk entrance a block away.

Then nothing.

For five long minutes, nothing seemed to happen. She was beginning to worry when a helmeted, black-clad figure appeared at the next entrance, five hundred feet down the boardwalk. He was joined by three more figures, similarly armed and wearing body armor. Miranda watched as they began to scope out their surroundings, moving forward, slow and methodical.

Jeremiah lunged toward the corner of the building, attempting to crawl away on his elbows and knees. He tried to yell through his gag, but only managed muffled moans similar to the zombie he believed he had once been. The sound he made wasn’t a problem because of the zombies wandering around, but any movement that caught the eye of an invader might give them away.

Doug scrambled after him. He pulled Jeremiah back so fast that all Miranda saw was a blur, followed by a thud. Jeremiah’s head snapped back from Doug’s receding fist. He shoved Jeremiah to the ground against the building, his knee on the madman’s chest.

Adrenaline flooded Miranda’s system. About thirty men were now in the street. Half of them wore body armor, which might drag things out. They began to fan out. Most headed up Pacific Avenue which paralleled Raymond a few blocks west. Miranda still thought it was dangerous to try and repel these attackers when they could have slipped out of town, but it was too late now. All she could do was help Doug’s plan succeed.

Five armed men started down Beach Street toward their location. Miranda and Doug grabbed Jeremiah and fell back to the fence, holding back the zombies.

Doug looked up at the sky. “What are they waiting for?”

The moans of the zombies behind the fence grew louder, their movements more agitated with food nearby. Miranda shifted her weight off her injured knee, trying to ignore the feeling of hundreds of spiders creeping over her bare skin. Picking zombies off because you had to did not phase her. Standing still just inches away while they hissed and moaned, straining against the fence, set her nerves jangling, even with Jeremiah as a shield.

Doug looked at the sky again. Miranda watched the end of the street. She could hear voices now. In another minute the enemy would be in sight and they’d have to go, whether the others were ready or not. She heard a hollow pop and looked up. A bright-red flare hung suspended against the gunmetal sky. A voice from Beach Street, its owner still out of sight, called for others to hold up. The zombies, hearing the voice, moaned even louder.

Miranda looked at Doug, then slipped one of her arms through Jeremiah’s. Doug did likewise. The metal of the chain-link barrier burned cold against her fingers. She and Doug tugged the edge of the section of chain-link loose. Hugging Jeremiah between them they walked backward, pulling the fence with them. It opened like a door on a hinge. The zombies, their forward movement no longer frustrated, spilled out, staggering and limping past them toward the voices coming from Beach Street.

As soon as the pack of zombies reached the end of the block, Miranda heard the order to fall back. She, Doug, and Jeremiah sidled out from behind the chain-link and hurried back to the restaurant at the end of the street. There were more men along Beach Street than before, but they were falling back. When gunfire started a few blocks west, the retreating men all looked that direction.

“There’s Pacific Avenue,” Doug whispered.

Miranda saw a flicker of movement on the roof of the boardwalk’s arcade. “Here we go.”

Bright flashes of muzzle fire winked along the roof of the arcade. Armed men in the street began to fall, then dived for cover once they realized they were taking fire from behind. The zombies that Miranda and Doug had released still bore down on the men, some dropping as bullets hit their mark, but now Miranda could see the leading edge of a wave of zombies coming from the other end of Beach Street, on the far side of the besieged invaders. The pincer began to close on the pinned down unit as more of their comrades suddenly appeared, falling back down Pacific from where they had been ambushed by Philip’s squad.

From a strategic standpoint, Doug’s plan had executed flawlessly. Zombies were overwhelming the enemy from two sides. Hostile gunfire from the boardwalk arcade prevented them from falling back to the beach to escape, and they could not move forward up Pacific Avenue for the same reason. They were trapped.

From a human standpoint, the scene that played out before Miranda should have been sickening. Men were being ripped apart, blowing their own brains out rather than become the monsters that were attacking them. But she did not, she would not, allow herself to feel sorry for them. The men dying down the block had picked this fight. Now they were losing it.