The way Saylor’s arm was almost pinned, there wasn’t much more he could do. Without bullets to destroy the brains, simply slitting a throat or stabbing them repeatedly was as useless as blowing a hole in their chest with a shotgun. Had to stop the head, the brains, because all other efforts were pointless.
My feet fought for traction. The cold muddy ground was like ice. As I made my way toward him, I watched the second zombie, bite the lobe from Saylor’s ear. It tore at the flabby flesh and tugged at it. The chewing is what disgusted me most. It gnashed teeth on Saylor’s lobe, tongue licking at its lips to swipe at spilling blood.
Saylor screamed and screamed. Partly from the pain of the bite, I assumed, but mostly from anger. Angry he’d been bitten, and angry he couldn’t do shit to get the zombies off him.
I dropped to a knee in front of it. The thing looked up at me, let out a guttural roar and hiss. I saw a small flab of lobe on its tongue, sloshing around inside its mouth. I stuck my blade into its mouth until the tip poked out of the back of its head.
The milky white eyes stared at me. No way had they seen me. Not anymore. I’d stabbed the fucking life out of it for good, for real, this time.
Saylor managed to kill the one he’d been struggling against, the one that had distracted him while the other ate his ear.
“It bit me, man. It bit me,” he said. He was on one knee, the injured leg extended.
“You’ll be all right,” I said. No idea why. We both knew he was fucked.
He didn’t even humor me; wasn’t interested in being passive. He was military. He took action. What I never expected was the action taken.
He started to growl.
I thought, ah fuck, he’s changing into one of them already? Was it that fast? How fucked was I being this close to him. I need to get up, get away, and keep moving.
I had been wrong. He wasn’t changing. He was working up courage or strength, or both. All at once, he grabbed the top of his bitten ear with one hand and then with the knife in his other, severed the ear off. It wasn’t a clean cut. It bled profusely. Blood just seemed to leak from the side of his head.
Saylor held his ear in front of his face. His jaw set, mouth open. Muscles bulged on his neck. His arms shot to his side. He looked up into the fiery night sky.
“I’m not going to turn into one of those things, McKinney. I fucking ain’t, I just fucking ain’t.”
Spade came over and looked at the ear Saylor held in his hand. “It fuckin’ bit you and you chopped your ear off?”
“Fuck yeah, I did.” He was charged with energy with muscles tense all over his body.
“Fuck yeah!” Spade matched tempo. Had to be a military thing. Reminded me of a football team encircling each other on the sideline before the game, jumping up and down. Psyching each other up and out. Comrades. Buddies. Brothers.
They both howled. Except this time when Saylor looked to the sky like a wolf, Spade punched the heel of his hand into Saylor’s face; drove the nose bone into the brain. Saylor fell over, flat onto his back. Mud splashed out around him.
“Can’t risk it,” Spade said. Not sure he was talking to me.
I stood up. Looked around. The carnage was everywhere. The dead finally dead and we’d lost one, which was too much. The guy had cut off his own ear to live. “Now what?”
“We get back to the ship; we get the fuck out of here.”
“Lieutenant Marfione’s holed up in one of these,” I said. I used the radio on my sleeve. The bud dangled, resting on my chest. I lifted it and stuffed it back into my ear.
“Anything?”
“Nothing. But after the explosion we couldn’t hear anyone earlier, just him, Just Marf.” I tried reaching the L.T. again.
“The radios are crap. It’s that simple. Government issue. The moisture, the distance – short as it is – could be a million reasons why it doesn’t work. Ours, mine anyway, cut out right away.”
Had Allison or my kids tried reaching me or tried to find out what was going on? Where or how we were doing?
We needed to find Marf, yes, but we needed to get back to the ship. I hadn’t forgotten the shooting I’d heard earlier coming from their direction.
While I still wanted to know what happened to Vitale and Chatterton, I figured now was not the time. Guess I didn’t need an explanation. It was kind of self-explanatory. Zombies were everywhere. Explosions. There was no need to ask. My imagination worked fine. They were dead. With Spade, I had no doubt, if they’d been bitten, they would not return as a zombie, either.
I yelled into my sleeve in one last attempt. “Marf!”
“I think it was the apartment back here,” Dave said. “That one.”
The one he pointed at could very well have been the apartment Marf was in. Had it of been, he would have seen us out the window. If he saw us from the window, why didn’t he join the fight?
“Let’s check,” Spade said. He went forward and as he passed Palmeri, he hesitated long enough to touch her shoulder. Maybe there had been something between Palemeri and Saylor. More than I’d picked up on. I hadn’t seen it but Spade’s gesture revealed much, much more.
She didn’t meet my eyes as I followed Spade. Silently, she fell in behind me. I heard the sloshing sound of her boots in the mud. I wished I could think of comforting words to share. Something I could say to ease her pain.
It was a new world. A different one. I got it. Gone were the days of comforting one another, if we ever really did that before. Pain was in surplus. Kind of like you didn’t mind saying God Bless You when someone sneezed, but when the person lets out three or four in a row, you’re like, fuck man, I’ll just wait until he’s all done.
That’s where we were. In the midst of it. No point saying, “Sorry for your loss.” Not now. Not yet. Not until it we were all done.
Chapter Twenty
0554 hours
“It was this one, had to be this one.” Dave pointed at an apartment.
There were no zombies there, like last time, if it was the right one. Perhaps we’d just killed them all. Very likely. “Why didn’t he come out and fight with us?” I said.
Spade stared at the apartment. “We’ll go in and check it out. If he’s not there, the search is over. We’re done. We’re going back to the boat and leaving this shit stain harbor. Understood?”
No one argued.
Palmeri stayed behind me, I stood behind Dave, and Spade took point. He waved us on to follow.
Staying low, we crossed between apartments. We reached Marf’s and put our backs to the building. Spade held up a fist to tell us we were to wait.
My breath spewed out in visible vapor. My nose was cold, dirty and the tip was numb. I closed my eyes for a moment and sucked in a deep breath. I exhaled and looked to my left.
Crouched, Spade slid along the side of the apartment toward the door. He had his pistol in one hand, hunter’s knife in the other. He signaled with his head, so we advanced.
“Open the door on three,” he said.
Dave nodded. Hand on the knob.
It was a silent head-bob count. On the third one, Dave pulled open the door.
Spade didn’t move. Didn’t charge in, nothing.
We waited as seconds ticked by.
I counted them off with the speed of my heartbeat.
Four. Five. Six.
“Marf?” Spade said. It was the softest I’d heard him speak. “Marf?”
Nothing.
“Stay,” Spade said. He took a step up and into the apartment.
I looked right, left, right. It felt like we weren’t alone. We weren’t, just it seemed like things were all around us, closing in and encircling us. I didn’t like it.
Spade came back out and tucked the knife into the sheath on his hip. “He got out. No one is in there. Floorboards are torn up. He went out through there.”
I sighed. Good for Marfione. He’d made it out.
“So where is he?” Palmeri said. “Why didn’t he come to fight with us?”
“Might not have known,” Dave said.