Stephen Knight: Left With The Dead

“Gartrell! Terminator Five, is that you? Over.” As hyper-alert as he was, McDaniels’ voice sounded louder than usual in Gartrell’s ears.

Gartrell keyed his microphone button. Click. Click. Two clicks for yes, one click for no-that was how they’d been trained to communicate when voice contact wasn’t possible. And with a thousand zombies advancing on the area where Gartrell lay, having a nice easy chat with the major wasn’t going to happen.

“Five, this is Six. Can you speak? Over.”

Click.

“Five, this is Six. Are you somewhere on 79th Street? Over.”

Click.

“Five, are you injured? Have you been bitten? Over.”

Click.

“Five, stand by.” The radio fell silent, and above the distant pounding artillery, Gartrell listened to the moans of the dead. He heard their footfalls as they shuffled along the street and sidewalk, and from the corner of his eyes he caught vague glimpses of them as they shambled past the car. So far, so good.

Something grated nearby, metal on metal. Gartrell turned his head toward the sound. One of the ghouls had kicked his AA-12. The weapon lay on the street only a few feet away, but the zombies ignored it. Of course, how could they know one of the keys to his continued survival lay at their feet?

“Five, this is Six.” McDaniels didn’t sound happy. “The Coast Guard won’t allow us to come ashore and rescue you. You have to find a place and hole up, over.”

Gartrell shook his head. Are you fucking kidding me?

Click. Click.

“I’ll be back, Gartrell. As soon as I can get some fellow legionnaires or even lightfighters, we’ll be back for you. Over.”

Click. It was stupid for anyone to come back to New York City just for him. If Gartrell couldn’t find his way out, then there was no way anything less than an entire Army Corps was going to be able to rescue him.

“Five, this is Six. We’ll be back for you. I’ll bring you back to your wife and kids. I swear it.”

Apparently, McDaniels didn’t see things the same way. Gartrell hit his microphone button once. Click.

“Gartrell…we’ll be back, Gartrell. You know the code, we never leave our own behind.”

Well, you’re going to have to this time, major. Gartrell knew McDaniels would continue preaching the party line and espouse Gartrell not to give up hope. Then and again, McDaniels was apparently safe and sound on the Coast Guard cutter, so he could spout those kinds of platitudes and not really know just how ridiculous they sounded to someone on the receiving end. To avoid that, Gartrell switched off his radio.

He flipped down his night vision goggles and slowly checked the territory to either side of the vehicle. Dozens of legs stalked back and forth as the zeds cast about in the darkness, looking for him. Gartrell was completely surrounded, and as soon as the sun came up…

He looked at the Mk 23 pistol in his right hand, and wondered when he would finally have to use it-on himself.

Three loud, long horn blasts cut through the air. The stenches all turned as one to the east and faced the East River. Gartrell wondered what they saw, but his feet were pointed toward the river, and there just wasn’t enough room under the car to turn around. But over the rumble of the distant artillery, he heard something else-the rhythmic throb of big diesel engines. The horn blasted again, and the zombies shuffled toward the river. Gartrell knew it was the Escanaba getting underway. Had the horn blasts been intentional on the part of the Coast Guard, or McDaniels? An attempt to draw as many stenches to the shoreline as possible, and give Gartrell a chance? Or was it just Coast Guard procedure?

Whichever, it didn’t matter to Gartrell. The horn blasts kept sounding, and the zeds practically fell all over themselves trying to get back to the river. Soon, Gartrell saw no pacing feet on either side of the car. He was, for the moment, alone.

He crawled out from under the vehicle and picked up his AA-12. Keeping to a crouch, he took a moment to make a long scan of the immediate vicinity. He was half a block from Second Avenue, and perhaps four blocks from East River Drive. Looking in that direction, he saw the Escanaba was indeed underway; she’d turned around and was heading back to the sea. All along East 86th Street, apartment buildings and small shops stood silent watch over the dark street. It would be dawn soon, and Gartrell knew he had better find some shelter or risk becoming something’s breakfast.

Or, more likely, forced to eat his gun and put a bullet in his own brain.

A Starbucks was across the street. He hurried across the traffic-clogged artery, keeping to a crouch, avoiding contact with the zombies wherever possible. Indeed, they were quite fixated on the Escanaba ’s bleating horn, and that was curious. It seemed anything that might lead them to a food source was worthy of 100 % attention.

The door to the Starbucks was, miraculously, unlocked. Gartrell stepped inside slowly, panning his AA-12 from side to side as he walked down the flight of three steps to the main floor. The coffee urns sat silent and cold behind the counter. Pastries were still inside the refrigerated display case, though it had stopped running quite some time ago. Gartrell eyed what he thought were cinnamon coffee cakes with some intent, regretful now that he had abandoned his rucksack and the several Meals Ready to Eat it contained. Not that MREs were even remotely palatable, but a man on the run from the zombie horde needed something to keep him going. The offerings from Starbucks would make a suitable substitute, even if a trifle stale.

And Lord knows the coffee cake’s gonna taste better than Meals Rarely Edible…

He turned away from the display case and took a long look around the shop. The NVGs revealed everything in stark, green-and-white detail. To his right, a short hallway that led to a single restroom. Beside that, another door-probably to the utility area. Next to the door he had entered through, an elevator for disabled patrons-not that anyone would be using it in the near future. To his left lay the dining area. Moving slowly, Gartrell stepped around the counter and looked down its length, toward the barista’s area. He raised his AA-12 immediately when he saw a figure crouched on the floor there.

It was a woman. A live woman, not a zed. He doubted she could see him clearly, but she must have heard him enter the store; while Gartrell had moved as stealthily as possible, the coffee shop was as silent as a tomb, and even the small noises of his movements stood out. She was dressed in clean, faded jeans, Nike running shoes, and a long-sleeved black T-shirt. Her hair was on the short side, short enough for Gartrell’s NVGs to pick up the glitter of the diamond studs in her ears. Her eyes scanned from right to left as she tried to separate his outline from the dark background of the wall behind him. Gartrell cataloged all of these details automatically, but filed them away as tactically irrelevant under the current circumstances. Only one aspect of the sudden encounter commanded his complete attention.

That was the fact she had a gun pointed right at him.

“Lady…do not fire that gun. You’ll bring every zombie in the neighborhood right to us.”

She started at the sound of his voice but didn’t scream, didn’t make a sound other than a sudden gasp. She clasped the gun in both hands. Gartrell didn’t move, kept as still as a statue. When he spoke to her again, he kept low, just above a whisper.

“Relax. I’m a soldier. I’m not going to hurt you. But you have to be quiet, and be calm. There are hundreds of those things right outside.”