Dead Mann Walking

Score one for the zombies.

A hairy ginger with more freckles than skin kept hakking even when there was nothing left but limbs. When the chak pieces didn’t stop moving, he freaked.

“Stay dead!” he screamed. “Stay dead!”

Hey, pal, we would if we could.

The ginger wasn’t the only rattled hakker. That was the second man they’d lost. No one goes on a chak attack without thinking he might cash it in, but might is a long walk from really believing it. They weren’t just grieving their fallen comrades; they were grieving their own mortality.

Knowing how quickly that grieving could turn to rage, I pulled at Boyle again.

“Come on! Now!”

Ignoring me, he steered a few more chakz down the hall. I don’t usually try reasoning with a chak, but I figured it was worth a shot.

“Boyle, do the math. Get cut up here, you’ll never build that sanctuary.”

That did it. He turned and we ran. Between us and the basement door were about seven uncoordinated bodies, stumbling around as if they’d only recently discovered they had legs. Ashby was beyond them. He had the basement door open, but instead of going down, he stood on the top step, waiting for Boyle with a wimpy grin plastered on his face.

Despite the obstacle course, we moved fast. I thought we’d all make it until a roar rattled the walls. It was an engine, but not a wussy rice-grinder whine. This was guttural, an all-American putt- putt.

Some buried masochistic streak made me turn for a quick look, not that you could miss a hairy monster astride a gleaming Harley Softail Fat Boy. No grungy thug, the rider was nice and clean, a wash-and-werewolf decked out in impeccable studded leather. He and his machine were pointed down the hall, right at us. He flashed a grin, gunned the engine, and my chest rattled like a space shuttle was taking off. Boyle summed things up nicely.

“Shit!”

We picked up speed, pushed the others hard. Still at the door, poor Ashby found himself faced with a pack of oncoming bodies. Looking as if he was about to say heh, he fell backward and disappeared. Seeing his buddy vanish, for the first time Boyle shoved ahead of the others.

By the time I neared the doorway, I couldn’t see Boyle or Ashby, only an Escher-like maze of heads, torsos, and limbs rolling down concrete steps into a musty, dark basement. Unlike the mess left behind, I assumed these body parts were all still attached.

I was about to dive into the pile when the wash-and-werewolf put the Harley in gear. The rear tire screeched against the linoleum. The bike flew forward.

If he kept his mean machine straight for about fifty yards, Lon Chaney Jr. would fly down the stairs, crushing everyone and everything, including me. Judging by all the flailing on the steps, nobody was thinking about getting out of the way.

I went into a lightning round of Trivial Pursuit: How many seconds does it take a Softail Fat Boy to go from zero to sixty? Five? How long was the hallway? Fifty yards? How fast could I go from zero to sixty? Fast enough to reach the knob and pull the door shut? And if I didn’t get it exactly right, what would it feel like when that thing rammed into me?

After wasting a precious two seconds on that crap, I grabbed the silver knob and jumped, yanking the door with me. As I flew, still in midair, I swear Chaney got close enough for me to see his eye color. Dirt brown.

That, I remember.

The door was half-closed when his front wheel caught it. The fire-resistant slab of gray slammed into me so hard I not only stayed airborne, I played Superman, up, up, and away as the door crashed into the frame. When gravity caught up, I fell onto the pile of scrambling bodies at the base of the stairs. A Twister game of the dead. Patent pending.

Shaking off the vertigo, I extricated myself and looked up. There was a big wheel-shaped dent in the middle of the door. The hinges were bent. The cement around the frame had cracked, but held. I doubted Mr. Chaney looked nearly as good.

We were safe, but not for long. It wouldn’t take much for the Livebloods to pull the bike out of the way. Then they’d come for us.

I looked around for blunt, heavy objects, but it was too dark to see anything. I was trying to remember how many bullets I had left in my Walther when a flash of light got everyone’s attention. Boyle was standing in the center of the wide, shapeless space, holding a cheap plastic lighter with a tiny flame. Ashby stood behind him, looking like an accessory, but none the worse for wear. Other than the half shapes of nervously shifting bodies that reminded me of cattle stuffed in a railcar, I couldn’t make out much else.

A community organizer to the end, he spoke softly. “Everybody stay calm. We don’t need anyone going feral.”

But something else, even harder to ignore, competed for our attention, a loud . . .

Crunch.

All eyes shot to the door at the top of the stairs. They were already trying to move the bike.

Turned out Boyle wasn’t the only one who could talk. Some genius announced, “They have to come down on foot, one at a time. We can take them.”

Ashby repeated the last two words. “Take them. Heh-heh.”

Creak.

A more resigned voice spoke up next. “Then what? If we make a pile of bodies, they’ll burn this place to a cinder in the morning.”

“I’m ready for it,” another said. “It’s better than going on like this.”

That was it for intelligible speech. Hisses and grunts followed, most sounding like they agreed.

Boyle, for whatever ridiculous reason, turned to me. “Got any better ideas?” The equivalent of asking, “Excuse me, buddy, can you stop the rain?”

Crunk!

Back up at the door, cement drizzled from the cracks. It came down so freely, I looked around for an umbrella. We couldn’t go out. We couldn’t fight them if they got in. What was left?

“Barricade,” I said. “We pile shit against the door. Hakkers don’t have a big attention span. Keep them out long enough, maybe they’ll get tired and go home.”

I thought it wasn’t a half-bad idea, but Mr. Last Stand chimed in. “Barricade it with what? Cardboard boxes? How do we brace them? They’d just push them down the stairs.”

One of the smart ones. Asshole.

Clank!

That last one sounded like the whole doorframe was coming loose. Everyone shifted like a bunch of cows. I thought I heard a few low moans.

Boyle heard it, too. “Stay calm! We’ll be fine!”

He didn’t sound like he meant it.

Unlike having my back against the wall and a chain saw in my face, it was quiet enough here to pray. It was one of those desperate moments when you hope an angel appears and you don’t particularly care if it’s from heaven or hell.

That’s exactly what happened, sort of.

From somewhere out in the dark, a wispy, boyish voice nervously said, “Don’t worry. I called the police ten minutes ago.”

At least it broke the tension. Everyone with a mouth laughed.

I knew the voice. “Turgeon? You down here? Where are you?”

“I’m sitting on some sort of crate. I think I have a splinter.”

That earned him another laugh. I couldn’t tell if he was relaxed or in shock. If he was relaxed, I’d have the pleasure of telling him, I told you so. If he was in shock, what would be the point?

“If you’re on a crate, better crawl inside it and kiss yourself good-bye, Mr. Turgeon. There’s no way the cops would bother showing up to save a bunch of chakz.”