“There you are,” she murmured, and paused just long enough to stick the nine-millimeter into her vest before hefting the heavy cylinder. She’d never used one before, but it looked simple enough—a metal handle with a locking pin, a black rubber nozzle hooked to the side. It was only a couple of feet long, but it weighed a good forty or fifty pounds; she figured that meant it was full.
Armed with the extinguisher, Claire stepped back to the door and started to take short, sharp breaths, filling her lungs. It made her feel light-headed, but the hyperventilation would allow her to hold her breath longer. She didn’t want to keel over from smoke inhalation before she’d had a chance to put it out. A final deep breath and she opened the door, crouching her way back into the now noticeably hotter corridor. The haze of smoke had gotten thicker too, extending down from the ceiling in a dark and choking fog at least four feet deep.
Keep low, breathe shallow and watch your step—
She turned the corner and felt a bizarre mix of relief and sorrow at the sight of the burning wreckage right in front of her. She bobbed her head and took a small breath through the fabric of her vest, feeling her skin flush and tighten from the heat. The fire wasn’t as bad as she’d feared, more smoke than substance and not much taller or bigger than she was; the flames that licked up the wall in orange-yellow fingers seemed to be having trouble catching, stopped by the heavy wood of a half-smashed door. It was the nose of the helicopter that drew her attention, the blackened shell of the smoldering cockpit—and the blackened husk of the pilot still strapped to the seat, the melted mouth frozen in a yawning, silent scream. There was no way to tell if it had been a man or a woman; the features had been obliterated, running together like dark tallow.
Claire jerked the metal pin loose from the handle and aimed the hose at the burning floorboards, where the flame danced in white and blue. She squeezed the lever down and a hissing plume of snowy spray whooshed out, blasting over the debris in a powdery cloud. Barely able to see through the billowing white-ness, she directed the hose over everything, dousing the wreckage liberally with the oxygen killer. Within a minute, the fire appeared to be out, but she kept up with the extinguisher until it ran dry.
At the last spluttering cough of spray, Claire let go of the handle and took a few more shallow breaths, inspecting the smoking wreck for any spots she’d missed. Not a flicker, but the wooden door alongside the helicopter’s flocked cockpit was still leaking ten-drils of black smoke. She leaned closer and saw a tinge of glowing orange under the charred surface. The area surrounding the burning wood had already been torched, but she didn’t want to take any chances; she stepped back and gave the door a solid kick, aiming for the glowing embers.
Her boot connected squarely with the hot spot, and the door flew open with a splintering crack, the
scorched wood giving way in a sparking shower of cinders. A few landed on her bare calf, but she drew her weapon before stopping to brush them off, more afraid of what might be waiting behind the ruined door than a few blisters.
A short, empty hallway, littered with jagged pieces of splintered wood and hazy with smoke, then a door at the end on the left; Claire moved toward it, as much to get to some fresh air as to see where it led. With the immediate threat of the fire over with, she had to start looking for Leon—and thinking about what they’d need to survive. If she could check out a few of the rooms along the way, maybe she’d be able to find stuff they could use.
A phone that works, car keys . . . hell, a couple of machine guns or aflame-thrower would be nice, but III take what I can get.
The plain door at the end of the hall was unlocked. Claire pushed it open, ready to fire at anything that moved—
• and stopped, feeling mildly shocked by the bi-zarre atmosphere of the lavish room. It was like some parody of a men’s club from the fifties, a large office decorated with an extravagance that bordered on the ridiculous. The walls were lined with heavy mahogany bookshelves and matching tables, surrounding a kind of sitting area made up of padded leather chairs and a low marble table, all set atop an obviously expensive oriental rug. An elaborate chandelier hung from the ceiling, casting a rich, mellow light over it all. Framed pictures and delicate vases were situated through-out—but their classic designs were overwhelmed by the stuffed animal heads and poised, lifeless birds that dominated the room, most gathered around a massive desk at the far side—
• oh, Jesus—
Laid out across the desk, like some character from a gothic horror story, was a beautiful young woman in a flowing white gown, her guts ripped to bloody shreds. The corpse was like a centerpiece; the dried and dusty animals stared down at her with dead glass eyes—there was a falcon and what looked like an eagle, their ratty wings spread in simulated flight, as well as a couple of mounted deer heads and that of a nappy furred moose. The effect was so creepy and surreal that for a moment, Claire couldn’t breathe—
• and when the high-backed chair behind the desk swiveled around suddenly, she barely held back a shriek of superstitious terror, half expecting to see some vision of dark and grinning death. It was only a man—but a man with a gun, pointed at her. Twice in one night, what are the odds—
For a second, neither of them moved—and then the man lowered his weapon, a sickly half-smile playing across his pudgy face.
“I’m terribly sorry,” he said, his voice as oily and false as a bad politician’s. “I thought you were anoth-er one of those zombies.”
He smoothed his bristly mustache with one thick finger as he spoke, and although Claire had never met him before, she suddenly knew who he was; Chris had bitched about him often enough.
Fat, mustachioed, and as slick as a snake-oil sales-man—it’s the police chief. Irons.
He didn’t look good, his cheeks flushed with high color and his porcine eyes rimmed with puffed white flesh. The way his gaze darted around the room was unsettling, as if he was in the grip of some kind of heavy paranoia. In fact, he looked unbalanced, like he wasn’t all that connected to reality.
“Are you Chief Irons?” she asked, trying to sound pleasantly respectful as she stepped closer to the desk. “Yes, that’s me,” he said smoothly, “and just who are you?”
Before she could speak, Irons went on, confirming Claire’s suspicions with what he said next—and with the bitter, petulant tone in which he said it. “No, don’t bother telling me. It makes no difference. You’ll end up like all the others. ...”
He trailed off, staring down at the dead woman in front of him with some emotion that Claire couldn’t place. She felt bad for him, in spite of all that Chris had told her about his rotten personality and profes-sional incompetence; God only knew what horrors he’d witnessed, or what he’d had to do to survive. Is it any wonder that he’s having trouble with reality? Leon and I wandered into this horror show in the last reel; Irons was here for the previews, which probably included watching his friends die.
She looked down at the young woman on the desk and Irons spoke again, his voice somehow sad and pompous at the same time.
“That’s the mayor’s daughter. I was supposed to look out for her, but I failed miserably. ...” Claire searched for some words of comfort, wanting to tell him that he was lucky to have lived, that it wasn’t his fault—but as he continued his lament, the words died in her throat, along with her pity. “Just look at her. She was a true beauty, her skin nothing short of perfection. But it will soon putre-fy... and within the hour, she’ll become one of those things. Just like all the others.”
Claire didn’t want to jump to any conclusions, but the wistful longing in his tone and in his shining, hungry stare made her skin crawl. The way he was looking at the dead girl—
• you’re imagining things. He’s the chief of police, not some perverted lunatic. And he’s the first person you’ve met who might be able to give you some kind of information. Don’t waste the opportunity. “There must be some way to stop it. . . ” Claire said gently.
“In a manner of speaking. A bullet in the brain—or decapitation.”
He finally looked away from the body, but not at Claire. He turned to gaze at the stuffed creatures perched on the edge of his desk, his voice taking on a resigned but somehow mirthful quality.
“And to think—taxidermy used to be my hobby.
No longer. . . ”
Claire’s internal alarms were doing some serious jangling. Taxidermy? What the hell did that have to do with the dead human being on his desk? Irons was finally looking at her, and Claire didn’t like it one bit. His dark and beady gaze was directed at her face, but he didn’t seem to actually see her at all. For the first time, it occurred to her that he hadn’t asked her one question about how she’d come to be there or commented on the smoke that had leaked into his office. And the way he’d talked about the mayor’s daughter ... no real sorrow at her passing, only self-pity and some kind of twisted admiration. Oh, boy. Oh boy oh boy, he’s not just out of touch here, he’s on a different goddamn planet—
“Please,” Irons said softly. “I’d like to be alone now.”
He sagged down into his chair, closing his eyes, his head falling back against the padded back as if in exhaustion. As simply as that, she’d been dismissed. And although she had a million questions—many of
which she thought he could provide answers for—she did think that maybe it was for the best if she just got the hell away from him, at least for now—
A soft creaking sound, behind her and to the left, so quiet that she wasn’t even sure she’d heard it at all. Claire turned, frowning, and saw that there was a second door to the office. She hadn’t noticed it before—and that soft, stealthy sound had come from behind it.
Another zombie? Or maybe somebody hiding. . . ? She looked back at Irons, and saw that he hadn’t moved. Apparently he hadn’t heard anything, and she’d ceased to exist for him, at least for the moment. He’d gone back to whatever private world he’d been in before she stumbled into his office.
So—back the way I came, or do I see what’s behind door number two?
Leon—she needed to find Leon, and she had a pretty strong feeling that Irons was a creep, whether he was crazy or not; no great loss that he wasn’t up for joining forces. But if there were other people hiding in the building, people that she and Leon could help or who might be able to help them. . . .
It would only take a moment to check. With a last glance at Irons, sagging next to the corpse of the mayor’s daughter and surrounded by his lifeless ani-mals, Claire walked to the second door, hoping she wasn’t making a mistake.
ELEVER
SHERRY HAD BEEN HIDING FOR A LONG TIME in the police station, for what must have been three or four days, and hadn’t seen her mother yet. Not once, not even when there had still been a lot of people left. She’d found Mrs. Addison right after she’d gotten there—one of the teachers from school—but Mrs. Addison had died. A zombie had eaten her. And not long after that, Sherry had found a ventilation shaft that ran over most of the whole building, and had decided that hiding was safer than staying with the grownups—because the adults kept dying, and because there was a monster in the station even worse than the zombies or the inside-out men, and she was pretty sure that the monster was looking for her. That was proba-bly stupid, she didn’t think that monsters picked out just one person to go for—but then again, she’d never thought that monsters were real, either.
So Sherry had stayed hidden, mostly in the knight room; there weren’t any dead people there, and the only way to get in—besides the ventilation shaft behind the suits of armor—was to go down a long hall guarded by a giant tiger. The tiger was stuffed, but it was still scary—and Sherry thought that maybe the tiger would scare away the monster. Part of her knew that that was dumb, but it made her feel better anyway.
Since the zombies had taken over everything in the police station, she’d spent a lot of time sleeping. When she was asleep, she didn’t have to think about what might have happened to her parents or worry about what was going to happen to her. The air shaft was pretty warm, and she had plenty to eat from the candy machine downstairs—but she was scared, and even worse than being scared was being lonely, so mostly she’d just slept.
She’d been asleep, warm and curled up behind the knights, when she’d been awakened by a tremendous crash somewhere outside. She was sure it was the monster; she’d only caught a glimpse of it once before, of the giant’s broad and terrible back, through a steel grate—but she’d heard it screaming and howling through the building many times since then. She knew that it was terrible, terrible and violent and hungry. Sometimes it disappeared for hours at a time, letting her hope that it had given up—but it always came back, and no matter where Sherry was, it always seemed to appear somewhere close by.
The loud noise that had ripped her from her dreamless sleep was like the sound a monster would make tearing the walls down, and she’d huddled in her hiding place, ready to dart back into the shaft if the sound came any closer. It didn’t. For a long time she didn’t move, waiting with her eyes squeezed shut, holding on to her good luck charm—a beautiful gold pendant that her mother had given her only last week, so big that it filled up her whole hand. As it had before, the charm worked; the loud, terrible noise hadn’t been repeated. Or maybe the big tiger had kept the monster from finding her. Either way, when she’d heard gentle thumping sounds in the office, she’d felt safe enough to creep out of the case and go out into the hall to listen. The zombies and inside-out men couldn’t use doors, and if it was the monster, it would have come for her already, clawing down doors and screaming for blood.
It has to be a person. Maybe Mom ...
Halfway down the hall, where it turned right, she’d heard people talking in the office and felt a burst of hope and loneliness mixed together. She couldn’t tell what they were saying, but it was the first time she’d heard anybody who wasn’t yelling for maybe two days. And if there were people talking, maybe it was because help had finally come to Raccoon. The army or the government or the Marines, maybe all of them . . .
Excited, she hurried down the hall and was next to the big snarling tiger, right by the door, when her excitement faltered. The voices had stopped. Sherry stood very still, suddenly anxious. If people had come to Raccoon to help, wouldn’t she have heard the planes and trucks? Wouldn’t there be shooting and bombs and men with loudspeakers telling everybody to come out?