Tracker's Travail

The Zombie Apocalypse

The dead man lay on his back on the gravel. He was naked, a fact that Deputy Jeter tried to overlook because this was a particularly attractive dead man. All in all a wonderful specimen of manhood, if one could ignore his lack of it. And the fist-sized hole in his forehead. His roommate, much thinner, lay a few feet away, also on his back, also naked. The hole in his forehead was much larger, in the sense that nearly the entire top of his skull had been ripped open. Jeter squatted, squinting. He tried to think of the man as a thing, for that’s all he was now, an empty vessel, a shattered gumball machine. The only light in the basement was a single naked bulb swinging on a stringy cord from the ceiling, so he pulled a penlight from his coat and shined it into the ragged hole. It was empty, totally scooped out, like a pumpkin, like a—
“Like a bowl of ice cream,” a voice behind him said.
Jeter nearly toppled over the corpse. His hand shot out for balance, landing square on its chest, then he leaped up as if stung by a bee.
“My God, man! No need to molest the dead. He’s been through enough, don’t you think, without some backwoods deputy groping him like a horny eighth-grader.”
Jeter spun around. A man in a white linen suit was standing on the stairs, stooping down to peer into the basement. He was of medium build, a tad portly. On his head sat a wide-brimmed Panama hat; in the other, he gripped a large leather briefcase. He took off his hat and held it against his chest.
Jeter would have thought him magnificent were that not so gay. Not that he, Jeter, was gay. No one was gay in Fredericksburg, not even the gays. Not even the gays at Merrimen’s, dancing all night, sweating to the incessant throb of techno music, drinking wine coolers, and dancing, oh so much dancing. Dammit!
“Who are you?” Jeter said.
The man on the stairs opened his mouth, but before he could answer, he was interrupted by a stampede from behind. A deep voice called out, “Topher! Topher! Zorn broke the bulbs in the spotlight and he was going to blame it on me but it’s not true because I was nowhere near it!”
Jeter peered up the well. The basement was at least seventy years old, and the ceiling was only six feet high, which made seeing up the steps difficult, unless, like the man in the linen suit (his name was Topher, was it?), he was standing at the bottom. All Jeter could see now, though, was a tremendous pair of legs in fur pants, and very large black boots, and very large hands, which were worrying the waistband wrapped around a very large waist.
“Not true! Not true!” another voice roared. More footsteps rattled the staircase, and another set of legs and boots and hands joined the soiree. “Gertrude was angry because he wanted to do the lights but I wouldn’t let him so he dropped the lights and stomped on them on purpose!”
“It’s my turn to do the lights!” Gertrude cried.
“No, it’s not. The schedule says it’s my turn.”
Gertrude’s boots spun to Topher in a panic. “I didn’t drop them on purpose. It was an accident.”
“And he kicked out a window and made several unfavourable comparisons about you.”
“That’s a bald-faced lie!”
“Your face is a bald-faced lie!”
“See! He hates your baldness.”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen, please,” Topher said. “Shut the hell up!”
There was a momentary silence during which Jeter could imagine the jaws of the other two men hanging agape, then one of them said, “Well there’s no need to be rude.”
Topher stomped into the basement, shoes crunching on the gravel.
“We have a job to do here, you morons.”
The two pairs of boots tromped down after him, making the steps creak and groan, and into the basement stepped two of the largest, hairiest men Jeter had ever seen. They were so wide that the first one had to get out of the way before the second could squeeze through, and they were so tall that they had to stoop at least half-over in order to fit in the basement.
“Did they build the basements like this on purpose?”
Topher set his leather suitcase down on the gravel and said, “Of course, you oaf. Southerners are naturally stumpy. It’s because of all of that tobacco they ate. And cotton. Unlike we, their robust and towering brethren to the north. And by ‘we’ I mean ‘me.’ They built these cellars in the hopes that they’d be too small for the behemoth Union soldiers. It’s where they stored their gold and unmentionables.”
“The southerners ate tobacco?”
Topher snorted and knelt next to the body.
“And cotton. Stupid, I know. Why eat tobacco to make you short when you can smoke it and die of lung cancer? Which they did in droves, by the way. It’s why they lost the war.” He unclipped the lock on the suitcase and lay it open. Shining instruments sat neatly organized on a soft suede field. “No one ever accused the south of cornering the market on intelligence. Or enlightened attitudes towards France, for that matter.”
“Uh—” Jeter began.
Topher faced him.
“Ah, yes, the local Barney. Be a dear, will you, and go fetch us some iced frappuccino? I prefer mine mocha. Zorn? Gertrude?”
Gertrude opened his mouth to reply but was cut off by Zorn, who said, “No thank you” and stooped farther into the basement to have a look at the other body.
Jeter puffed out his chest.
“Just who do you think you are? No unauthorized personnel are allowed down here. Can’t you see this is a crime scene?”
Topher waved him off, grimacing in concentration at the hole in the corpse’s head.
“Gertrude? Please see to the lights.”
Gertrude clapped and ran to the stairs, pointing at Zorn
“Ha ha.”
Topher slid a long, shiny, metal instrument from the case. There was a tiny procuring mouth at one end and a complicated trigger at the other. He sat a pair of glasses on his nose, withdrew a little flashlight from his pocket, and leaned over the corpse, his tongue poking out between his teeth.
“Hey!” Jeter protested.
Topher ignored him.
“Hey!”
“This one’s naked, too,” Zorn observed.
Topher pushed the instrument around.
“Ah, yes.”
Zorn put his hands under the corpse, preparing to flip it.
“Has anyone had a look under it?”
“Don’t touch that!” Jeter barked, startling Zorn, who stood straight up and banged the back of his head on the beams above. Dust and dirt sifted and pattered all over the body.
“Zorn!” Topher snarled. “Please try not to contaminate the crime scene!”
Footsteps thundered overhead and on the stairs, and more dust and dirt sifted into the basement, and then Gertrude appeared holding a candle and a box of matches.
Topher frowned.
“Candles, Gertrude. Really?”
“I told you. Zorn broke all of the lights.”
Jeter took out his gun.
“Godammit, all of you freeze!”
Zorn laughed and resumed his work, and Jeter, who’d never experienced that kind of response, turned the gun on Gertrude.
“Put that thing away,” Gertrude said.
Topher sighed and turned his attention back to the empty skull, trying to ignore the Barney in the corner who was now shouting into his cell phone, pausing only to shout at Zorn, who shouted back. Then Gertrude joined the shouting, though he wasn’t sure why and couldn’t decide who to shout at or what to say, so he just started yelling, “I’ll break your neck! I’ll stab your guts!”
In a moment their voices faded into the background. All of his attention was pinpointed on the empty cavity before him. He was close enough now that he could smell the dead man’s cologne. He might have kissed his forehead, had there been any forehead left to kiss. The inside of his skull did indeed appear to have been scooped out like a pumpkin, but it was no spoon that performed the scooping.
Topher panned across the back of the skull with the light, twisting it to catch the corners. He’d long since gotten over the nausea that used to threaten the back of his throat whenever he did this. Once, in the early days, while investigating a case in an abandoned warehouse in Danville, he vomited directly into an empty head. The building had been turned into a punk rock squat by teen-aged miscreants, most of whom had gathered around their now dead friend. They all vomited, too, when they saw what happened, though thankfully not into the same opening.
Nothing really bothered him anymore. In fact, he found it hard to suppress the icy butterflies of excitement, for the sight of a human skull emptied of all brain matter no longer represented the gore and viscera of human biology, but the tantalizing yeti of mystery, the fantastic chimera of knowledge, the golden dolphin of adventure. He looked forward to it so much that he sometimes felt himself grow aroused by the promise of a new case, though at that particular moment he was more than aware of the inappropriateness and possible legal ramifications of such stimulation. And while intellectually he had no aversion to the idea of necrophilia, he was certainly aware of the imbalance in the relationship (what if it took advantage of him?) just as he was certainly aware of the fact that he’d just used the word ‘ramification’ in referring to sex with a corpse, “ram” reminding him of mountains and goats and curly horns and—wait a minute. The instrument had caught against something in the back of the skull.
“What’s this?”
He peered closer, deeper, striving to see. There. A sliver caught in a web of gore. He pulled the trigger ever so slightly, ever so carefully, let it close around the thing, and pulled it out, triumphant.
“Aha!” he cried, holding it in the air. He twisted to show his friends, then gasped.
Four Fredericksburg police officers surrounded him, guns trained on his head. Zorn and Gertrude were on their knees, hands cuffed behind their backs.
“Can I help you gentlemen?” Topher asked.
~
The bloody fingernail sat in a clear evidence bag on Sheriff Pitts’ desk. Next to it sat a copy of The Free LanceStar. “CHINA INVADES SOUTH KOREA” the headline screamed. “United States Mobilizes Troops.” Pitts glared at the fingernail, squirming uncomfortably. He was a heavy man, possessing the build of a former linebacker gone to pot, which was ironic for two reasons: 1. he never played football, and 2. he was currently the regional champion of the Highlander Games. His specialty was the caber toss, though he also excelled in the stone put and the hammer throw. All of that flesh, seemingly loose and jowly beneath his uniform, was really a solid sheet of muscle. This only increased the embarrassment he felt at his current injury: a broken coccyx, earned two weeks before while chasing Donny Motts, a local drunk who’d stolen a cue ball and $500.00 from Spirits. He’d chased Donny all over town, somehow ending up on the roof of Sammy T’s, where they both slipped and skidded over the awning and landed in the middle of Caroline Street, Donny on his shoulder, Pitts on his ass.
“And he said they were what?” Pitts growled.
Deputy Jeter sat on the other side of the desk, fidgeting. It was he who deposited the evidence bag on Pitts’ desk, he who had to explain how he allowed his own crime scene to be contaminated, he who stammered, with as straight a face as possible, the words, “Zombie hunters, sir” as a response to his boss’s question.
“Zombie hunters?”
“Yes, sir. Among other things.”
“Other things?”
“Yes, sir. Here. He gave me their card.”
Jeter placed a business card on the desk between them. It was the nicest card he had ever seen. On one side was printed this:













On the other, this:













Pitts picked it up and read it with what could only be described as an incredulous frown. Then he tossed it on his desk, folded his hands over his solid belly. What kind of kook plants a bloody fingernail in the skull of a corpse?
“You say these idiots ransacked your crime scene?”
Jeter gulped.
“Well, yes. Sir. They kinda just showed up. I thought they were from the lab, and before I knew it they were moving the bodies, and the one in the white suit stuck a metal thing inside one of ‘em and came up with that.” He pointed at the bloody fingernail in the evidence bag.
Pitts breathed out of his nose.
“Bring these morons to me.”

He heard Topher a full minute before he saw him.
“. . . about bloody time you retrieved us from that hell hole!” he shouted from the hallway.
“Topher, please.”
“No, I will not ‘please’, Gertrude. And thank you very much! I’m unaccustomed to this kind of treatment. Bars on the windows, a single toilet in the corner. How do they expect me to contemplate the night in such primitive surroundings!”
The voices stopped right outside Pitts’ door.
“I don’t believe this is the kind of situation in which one can properly mull over the esoteric qualities of the evening.”
“But it is the kind of situation in which someone evacuates his bowels in front of his peers and enemies, no matter how egregious the effluvia.”
“Shut up!” Jeter barked.
“You shut up!”
The door opened, and Pitts saw a medium-sized man in a ridiculous white, linen suit, with a tan Panama hat clapped on his head. Behind him stood two giants dressed in furs: fur jackets, fur pants, fur boots. The man in linen stepped hurriedly into the room, clearly judging the decor. The other two had to duck to enter, and when they were all inside there was very little room for them to do much of anything else other than stand.
One of them said, “That’s not the point, Topher.”
“No, it is the point, Zorn. I, unlike Gertrude’s beloved Thoreau, view any visit to prison as an assault upon my person. I will not, like Gertrude’s illustrious pencil-maker, upon release from said assault upon my person, join a huckleberry party and repair my shoe.”
“I still don’t see your point.”
“My point is that if I choose to muse upon anything anywhere at any time, I should not be hindered from doing so by some iron symbol of tyranny, or the rancid stench of feces.”
“Mr. Bill,” Pitts said.
Topher held up a finger.
“I will not be hindered—”
“Mr. Bill!”
Topher shook his finger.
“I will not—”
Pitts grabbed the wiggling digit and bent it back. Topher cried out and sank to his knees.
“You listening now?” Pitts said.
Zorn’s eyes bulged. Gertrude held his own finger in sympathy. Topher pressed his lips together and nodded.
“Good. I’m going to let go of your finger, okay?”
Topher nodded again.
“And when I let go of your finger, you’re going to do two things. Would you like to know what those two things are?”
“Yes,” Topher squeaked.
“You’re gonna sit down. And shut. The fuck. Up.”
He released Topher’s finger and leaned back in his chair.
Topher slid up into one of the three chairs on the other side of the desk. Pitts eyed Zorn and Gertrude, who quickly scuttled into the other two, the latter shoving his hands deep into his pockets.
“Deputy,” Pitts said. “I’ll handle this from here.”
“How dare you,” Topher grumbled as the door shut “My hexing hand is permanently damaged.”
“Hexing hand?”
Topher threw up his arms in disbelief.
“Yes. My hexing hand.”
Pitts frowned.
“They’ll be none of that here.”
“Says the expert on the supernatural.”
“Didn’t I tell you to shut up?”
“Just don’t come looking for me the next time you need a vampire heart staked or a squid monster red-eyed.”
Pitts rolled his eyes.
“Lord Jesus.” He picked up the evidence bag containing the bloody fingernail and shoved it at the trio opposite him. “What the hell’s this?”
Topher said, “A bloody fingernail, of course.”
“Did you plant this in that victim?”
“What?” Topher looked to Zorn and Gertrude for help.
“Er,” Zorn coughed. “We’re Trackers. Suggesting that we planted evidence is an insult.”
“Unless one were Reinholdt Smythe-Webly,” Gertrude said. “Remember the time he set that pumpkin on fire and shot it through that poor old woman’s window?”
“Mmm. Tried to tell her she had a poltergeist. Dropped a hand-grenade in her parlor.”
Gertrude pointed at Pitts. “Now Reinholdt. He’s a fraud.” “Wouldn’t trust him with a dead kitten.”
Topher reached for the evidence bag, but Pitts snatched it away.
“Sheriff Pitts, I’ll try to explain this without sounding too crazy,” Topher said. “That fingernail is broken off of a Class IV Zombie. Judging by the state of those poor young men, you’ve got a pretty nasty one on your hands.”
“Or two pretty nasty ones,” Zorn corrected.
Pitts shook his head.
“Smythe-Webly? Class IV Zombie?”
“Well,” Topher said. “He’s no Jerry Irons, granted, but I wouldn’t go so far as to rank him among the filth of the supernatural.”
“Mr. Bill. You just interfered with a criminal investigation.”
Topher leaned forward. “You’ve got a lethal flesh grinder loose in your city. And a possible infestation under 312 Hawke Street. You better act soon before it turns into an all-out attack.”
“You’re aware that tampering with evidence is a felony?”
“Mr. Pitts. Sheriff. Please. If you don’t allow me to eradicate the meatcicle that is probably at the moment wandering around your fair town, a trumped-up felony charge will be the least of both our worries.”
“Jesus H. Christ on a crutch. You’re as crazy as a shit-house rat.”
“A shit-house rat?”
Zorn leaned toward Gertrude.
“Rats live in houses made of shit?”
“Oh yes. Positively filthy creatures, them.”
Pitts adjusted himself on his donut. He breathed out of his nose.
“I know what you are. I’ve seen your kind before. Grifters. Travelers. Some other horseshit title you give yourselves to feel important. But I got one name and one name only for piss-ants like you.”
“Oh!” Gertrude piped. “Is this a regional title?” He beamed at Zorn. “You know how I love colloquialism.”
“In Massachusetts, they call us Spookers,” Zorn said.
“Oh yeah? Here in Fredericksburg, we got a special title for people like you.” Zorn and Gertrude waited, eager and expectant. “Shit stains.”
The smiles disappeared.
“That’s right. Shit stains. You can’t come into my town, jilt a few gullible old ladies out of their savings by getting rid of some imaginary spooks you cooked up for them. Bang on a few pots. Have your friends moan in the basement. Call it what you want, but you’re all the same in my book. Frauds. And fraud is a felony.”
Topher glared.
Pitts said, “I’m going to tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to run your name through our database here. See, it’s a national database. And if you’re wanted for anything, and my gut tells me you’re wanted on a load of charges, then I’ve got you. And you’re screwed. And you’re going to prison. Not jail. Prison.”
Topher snickered.
“We’ve seen worse.”
“I doubt it.”
Pitts grunted as he pushed his chair away from his desk and rolled towards the computer behind him. Zorn shot Topher a panicked look. It had been over twenty years, but was the warrant for their escape from Raleigh’s still out? Had Stoneman even issued one?
“You won’t find anything,” Topher said.
Pitts put a pair of glasses on and squinted at the monitor.
“Uh huh.”
“Maybe a traffic violation or two.” The keyboard clacked. “Just ask Bob Sewell.”
Pitts stopped typing. He turned around and peered at them over the rims of his glasses.
“Are you trying to tell me that you know Bob Sewell?”
Topher sat back, satisfied, and crossed his arms over his chest.
“I’m telling you that I know Bob Sewell.”
“Sheriff Bob Sewell?”
“Of Danville, VA.”
“Bob Sewell. Bob Sewell?”
Topher spread his hands. Zorn’s terror-stricken stare remained fixed. Gertrude smiled like an idiot. Pitts swiveled in his chair. Left right. Left right. His eyes never left Topher’s.
“You’re clearly acquainted,” Topher said. “Why not give him a jingle.”
“I will. But if you expect me for one second to believe that this is anything other than a stalling tactic, that Bob Sewell would vouch for a slime ball like you, you’re sorely mistaken.”
“Vouch for me? Vouch for me? My dear Mr. Pitts. Who do you think recommended this place to us in the first place?”
Pitts stared at him long and hard. Topher couldn’t tell if he were angry or constipated. Finally the sheriff, keeping his eyes firmly fixed, reached into his upper right-hand drawer and withdrew an aged, brown, moleskin address book. He licked his thumb and flipped through it, found the number he was looking for, plucked the receiver from the cradle of the landline on his desk, and punched at the numeral pad.
“Hello?” he said after a moment. He spun all the way around so that his back was to the trio. “This is Tucker Pitts. I’m the sheriff up here in Fredericksburg. I’m doing fine, thanks. Listen, is Bob Sewell in?”
When it was clear Pitts was no longer paying attention to them, Zorn pinched Topher’s arm.
“Ouch!” Topher hissed.
“You idiot. Sheriff Sewell hates us!”
“So?”
“You told him he recommended us!”
“Not really. I said he recommended this place to us.”
“You mean after he kicked us out of Danville?”
“Now you’re thinking. Look, Sewell hates us so much that he’ll say anything to keep us out of his little city.”
Topher cut himself off as Pitts swiveled back around to face them.
“Bob! This is Tucker Pitts. I’m the sheriff up in Fredericksburg. You might not remember me, but we met down at the sensitivity training in . . . Yeah, yeah, that’s me. Everything’s going fine, thanks. Still got my fill of drunks and druggies. You know the deal. Danville still a ghost town? Not no more, huh? Well, good for you! Uh huh. Uh huh. Listen, Bob, I’m not one for beating around the bush, so I’ll get straight to the point. I’ve got this boy up here, name of Topher Bill, and—”
The shout on the other end of the line was so loud that even Gertrude winced. Jeter suddenly opened the door.
“Sheriff? We got a lot of phone calls coming in all the sudden.”
“Get out!” Pitts snapped, and Jeter nodded and shut the door.
“You have the spare van keys, right?” Topher whispered to Zorn.
“So you know him?” Pitts continued. Sewell’s voice yammered away on the other end of the line. “Uh huh. You don’t say? A sewer creature? In a public toilet?”
“One of our dirtiest jobs,” Topher said.
Zorn and Gertrude nodded solemnly.
“A swamp monster? Digging tunnels underground. Suckin’ people down through the . . . uh huh.”
“The mole-rat,” Zorn whispered.
Gertrude shuddered.
Pitts glanced up at Topher, baffled and weary.
“Well, yeah, it does sound kinda crazy. Comes highly recommended, huh? No, no need to apologize for not calling. We’re taking care of this right now. Okay. Okay, you too. Thanks for the intel.”
He set the receiver gently down in the cradle, leaned back in his chair to think.
After a moment, Topher said, “So, Monsieur Sewell confirmed?”
“Not another word,” Pitts growled. He stood up, wincing, and swept the evidence bag off his desk. Gertrude leaned forward, staring at the headline of The Free Lance-Star.
“Oh dear,” he said. “Look at that.”
Pitts buckled his utility belt.
“We’re taking a ride over to Hawke Street. You’re going to explain this happy horseshit to me.”
Topher stood up, too, ready and eager.
“I will explain the happy horseshit until the cows come home.”
~
Pitts drove through the streets of Fredericksburg squirming like a cat with a hernia. He moseyed down Route 1, then took a right on Stafford and wandered around the streets of College Heights, eyes constantly scanning the tree-lined sidewalks. He turned onto College and headed to William, passing DuPont and Secobeck. Topher sat in the passenger seat, counting the money in his wallet, eager to pick a fight if even one dollar was missing. Zorn and Gertrude hulked in the back, staring gloomily out the windows. The rearview was so filled with their heads and hair that Pitts didn’t even bother to look in it. Jeter followed in his own cruiser. The radio crackled with dispatch calls, and Pitts turned it up a little.
“Something’s going on.”
Topher widened his eyes and nodded. Duh.
Zorn stared out the window at the passing college campus.
“Mary Washington looks very pretty.” He saw a large group of students running around an open commons. “Do the students often gather there?”
“That’s Ball Circle. They’re out there all hours. Playing hacky sack or some other shit. While we’re on the way, why don’t you boys explain this zombie crap to me. Not that I believe it for a second, but Bob Sewell’s a friend of mine, and Bob Sewell swears by you, so spill it.”
“Er, this is a textbook Class IV Zombie Attack,” Topher replied.
“Uh huh.”
“As opposed to a mere Class I Zombie Infestation. Class I’s are placid, subservient, usually subject to some kind of curse from a priest or a priestess.” The leather upholstery on the seat squeaked as he, like a professor at lecture, relaxed and settled into the comfort of his subject. “Some say the television, the ‘electric teat,’ is a modern version of the zombie priest; in recent years the Interwebs, and now Facebook, seem to have supplanted the teat in that role, and . . . forgive me, I digress.”
Pitts sighed, already exhausted. Topher continued, oblivious.
“Class I’s aren’t dangerous at all, at least to others. The concept is fairly laughable. Class II’s are nomads, either set free by their priest or priestess or subject to some kind of familial curse. Non-flesh consuming, of course. They expire within a few days.”
Pitts rolled to a stop at the William Street intersection and put his blinker on. His radio squelched, and a female voice said, “Unit 9, unit 9. 101 in progress.”
The light changed, and he turned left. The bleak, iron fence that surrounded UMW intrigued Zorn, as did small groups of people who were gathered on Sunken Road, just standing there, staring. A few others ran in the opposite direction, shooting frightened glances over their shoulders.
“Class III zombies are the one you really need to worry about,” Topher continued. “Fully reanimated, usually coffin-bound, extremely hungry. They’ll usually claw their way out before they attack, but for some reason, they won’t bite.”
Popping sounds echoed in the night. Topher looked out the window to see what they might be. They passed Hurkamp Park. Families and elderly couples were sitting on the grass watching a folk trio perform. There were more gathered in the trees in the distance, seeming to shuffle forward into the darkness.
“Music in the Park series,” Pitts said. “Kids bring firecrackers.”
He turned left onto Prince Edward. The houses were stately and well-maintained.
“So,” Topher went on. “Class IV zombies are the real worries. Active, mobile, hungry and violent. Many live underground for long periods of time. Metro or subway tunnels, ancient catacombs, crypts, tombs. Sometimes, like we saw last night, they hole up in a basement. They surface when their hunger is too much to bear. They’ll attack anybody in the immediate area before going back to ground. We call it a ‘base site’. They can exist that way for decades, sometimes centuries, before their bodies finally fall apart or someone like me kills them. Since their main diet consists of brains, most of the time an infestation won’t occur. But every now and then one will get it in its head leave the base site, and then . . .”
Suddenly the street was filled with people running in all directions. Many were partially dressed as if they’d been forced out of bed. A woman in a red nightgown limped by, crying, her hand covering a bloody gash in her neck.
“You have a full-on Class IV Catastrophic Zombie Event.”
Pitts braked and put the cruiser in park with a thunk, blocking the road about two hundred yards from Hawke Street. More popping sounds emanated in the night, only it didn’t sound like fireworks this time. A black man in a wife beater and boxers ran up onto the sidewalk to their right, pursued by a handful of lurching teenagers. He stopped, turned, and fired a handgun at them.
“Holy shit!” Pitts snarled. He unbuckled his belt, but before he could reach for the door, Topher pulled him back and held him against his seat. “Get your goddamn hands off me!”
A woman slammed into his window, moaning, smearing her mouth blood all over the glass.
“Ungh.” Her hand swatted feebly at them; her eyes were blank and gray. “Ungh.”
Suddenly she was yanked away, and Deputy Jeter appeared.
“Sheriff Pitts, we gotta get outta here! The streets are full of ‘em!” He was tackled from the side and went down screaming, firing several times in rapid succession.
He stood up, blood spraying from his neck. Three shuffling bodies converged upon him, swallowed him in their bulk. Another shot. Gore splattered over Zorn’s window. The group fell in a mass of twitching limbs. Pitts watched, horrified.
“What the hell?”
Topher rolled his eyes.
“Good God, man.” He grabbed Pitts’ shotgun off the rack behind them.
“Hey!” Pitts pulled his Glock from his holster and stuck it in Topher’s gut.
“Sheriff Pitts,” Topher began but was cut off by a young man attacking the windshield with his head.
“Topher, calm down,” Gertrude said.
“Why? He’s more concerned with us killing them than he is with them killing us.”
Jeter, his neck nearly severed in two, his face and chest coated with blood, sat straight up off the ground. He opened his mouth and, of course, blood poured out.
Pitts lowered his weapon.
“Thank you!” Topher sang. He popped open the glove compartment, removed a box of ammunition, and opened the door.
Jeter saw the door open and rose shaking to his feet, stumbling toward the car, his right arm extended. Calm and sure, Topher raised the shotgun to his shoulder, aimed, and fired. The former Deputy’s head exploded in a shower of blood and bone. Topher slid across the hood of the car to escape the grasp of one of the lurching teenagers and fired another round. A couple of wobbling bodies down the street fell to the ground. He reloaded and blew the head off an undead teen, then sprinted into one of the yards off to the left, crying, “Hokahey!”
Pitts twisted around to look out the back window, muttering, “the fuck does that mean?” Shadows in the distance lurched down Prince Edward.
Zorn’s face hove into view.
“Do you have any more weapons? Rifles, perhaps? Maybe a pickaxe?”
Gertrude’s face inserted itself in front of Zorn’s.
“A grenade launcher would be preferable. Though any sort of decapitating device works just as well.”
It was the little girl who snapped Pitts out of his stupor.
She was running up the street, crying and hysterical, a small cluster of monsters staggering behind. He shook himself into action, opened the door, and, as fast as his broken tailbone allowed, pulled himself out of his cruiser.