Стефани Перри: City Of The Dead

A child of late-night creature features and campfire stories, her mind accepted it in the split-second it took for her to think it; she wasn’t an idiot. He was deathly pale and ripe with that sickly-sweet scent of decay she’d noticed earlier, his eyes cataracted and gleaming white.

Zombies, in Raccoon. I never expected that. With that calm, logical realization came a sudden rush of absolute terror. Claire stumbled backwards, feverish panic turning her guts into liquid as the cook continued to turn, rising from his crouch. He was huge, easily a foot over her 5’3”, and broad as a barn—

• and dead! He’s dead and he was EATING her, don’t let him get any closer!

The cook took a step toward her, his stained hands clenching into fists. Claire backed up faster, almost slipping on a menu. A fork clattered away from beneath one boot.

GET OUT NOW.

“I’ll be on my way now,” she babbled. “Really, don’t bother to show me out—“ The cook staggered forward, his blind eyes glowing with dumb hunger. Another step back and Claire reached behind her, felt air, felt nothing—

• and then the cool metal of the door’s handle. A shot of adrenaline triumph bolted through her as she spun, snatched at the handle—

• and screamed, a short, sharp cry of horror. There were two, three more of them outside, their disinte-grating flesh pressed to the glass front of the diner. One of them had only one eye, a suppurating hole where the other should have been; another had no upper lip, a ragged, permanent grin scrawled across its lower jaw. They clawed mindlessly at the windows, their ashy, ravaged faces awash with blood—and from the shadows across the street, dark shapes shambled out into the open.

Can’t get out, trapped—

• Jesus, the back door!

From the edge of her vision, the glowing green exit sign shone like a beacon. Claire spun again and barely saw the cook reaching out to her from a few feet away, her full attention fixating on the only hope of escape. She ran, the booths whipping by in a flash of unseen color, her arms pumping for speed. The door opened out into the alley, she was going to hit it running and if it was locked, she was screwed.

Claire slammed into the door and it flew open, crashing into the brick wall of the alley—

• and there was a gun pointed at her face, the only thing that could possibly have stopped her at that second, a man with a gun—

She froze, raising her arms instinctively as if to ward oflF a blow.

“Wait! Don’t shoot!”

The gunman didn’t move, the deadly-looking weap-on still aimed at her head—

• gonna kill me—

“Get down!” the gunman shouted, and Claire dropped, her knees buckling as much from the com-mand as from the cold fingertips suddenly groping at her shoulder—

Boom! Boom!

The gunman fired and Claire snapped her head around, saw the dead cook falling backwards from directly behind her, at least one massive hole now in its forehead. Sluggish spurts of blood jetted from the wound, the white eyes filming over with red. The fallen corpse twitched, once, twice—and stopped moving.

Claire turned back to the man who’d saved her life, and his uniform registered for the first time. Cop. He was young, tall—and almost as terrified-looking as she felt, his upper lip beaded with sweat, his blue eyes wide and unblinking. His voice, at least, was strong and sure as he reached down to help her up. “We can’t stay out here. Come with me, we’ll be a lot safer at the police station.”

As he spoke, she could hear a closing chorus of gasping moans from the street, the wails of hunger growing louder. Claire let herself be pulled up, grip-ping his hand tightly, taking small comfort in the fact that his fingers were as feverish and shaky as hers. They ran, dodging dumpsters and heaps of flat-tened boxes, chased by echoing, haunted cries as the zombies found the dark alley and started after them.

FIVE

LEON RAN ALONGSIDE THE GIRL, DESPER-ately racking his memory for the city’s downtown layout. The alley should let out on Ash, not far from Oak, the RPD’s street—but the station was at least another fifteen blocks west; unless they could find transportation, they weren’t going to make it. He was on his last clip, four rounds left, and from the sounds reverberating through the alley, there were dozens, maybe hundreds of the creatures at either end. As they reached the mouth of the alley, Leon held up his hand and slowed to a jog, scanning the dimly lit street. He couldn’t see much, but from where they stood to the next streetlight, there were eleven or twelve of the creatures to the right, staggering and reeling their way through the stinking darkness. There were only three of them to the left, not far from—

• hallelujah!

“There!”

Leon pointed at the squad car parked across the street, feeling a flush of wild hope. There were no officers in sight, that was too much to ask for—but the front doors were standing open, and the three moaning things that roamed nearby wouldn’t reach it before he and the girl could. Even if there were no keys, there was a radio and the windshield was bulletproof. They could probably hold out against the walking corpses until help came—

• and it’s the only chance you’ve got. Go!

He hesitated just long enough to see the girl nod, her brown ponytail bobbing, and then they were sprinting for the black-and-white, the pavement a blur beneath their feet. Leon kept the handgun half-pointed toward the creatures closest to them, fifty feet away; he wanted to shoot, to keep them from getting one step closer, but he couldn’t afford to waste the ammo.

God, let there be keys—

They reached the car at the same time and split, the girl running around to the passenger’s side, and Leon realized with a new kind of horror that she probably thought the car was his. He waited for her to slam the door before jumping behind the wheel, a small, deeply frightened part of him screaming that this was his first day as he yanked his own door shut. A prayer answered; the keys were in the ignition. Leon dropped the Magnum into his lap and grabbed them, feeling that wild hope once again, like there were options besides dying.

“Buckle up,” he said, barely hearing her assent as he turned the keys and the flashers came on. Ash Street and the creatures that stalked it were bathed in blue and red swirls of pallid color, shadows changing form and thickness. It was a vision of hell and he hit the gas, desperate to get away from it as fast as he could.

The car spun away from the curb with a squeal. Leon pulled the wheel right and then left, narrowly missing a lurching woman whose scalp had been torn half off. Even through the closed windows, he could hear her frustrated howl as they sped away, joined by the cries of many more.

Backup, call for backup—

Leon fumbled for the radio, not taking his gaze off of the road. The creatures were scattered but persis-tent, dark and shambling monsters that staggered out into the street as if drawn to the sound of the speeding car. As the black-and-white rocketed across Powell and continued on, he had to dodge several

The girl was talking, staring out at the desolate landscape as Leon hit the com button on the radio, his sense of helplessness rising. No static, no nothing. “What the hell’s going on, I arrive in Raccoon and the whole place is insane—“ “Great, the radio’s out,” Leon interrupted, drop-ping the radio and focusing on the road. The entire city seemed like an alien world, the streets strangely shadowed. There was a dreamlike quality to it, but the smell kept him from believing that he was asleep. The stench of diseased flesh had permeated even the interior of the squad car, making it hard to concen-trate on driving. At least there was no traffic and no people. No real people . ..