Dice looked at me. "What the hell Sam? He was just a little kid!" He shouted.
"No Dice, he was a little zombie. Whatever they were before, once they turn, one is just the same as another and we can't let any of them live. It's not pretty and its sad and it sucks. This kid with never get to grow up. But at least he's missing the rest of the whole world going to hell. I need to know you can do what needs to be done. If you don't have what it takes to stop me, Cat or even Goomer if it comes to that, it would be more merciful if I shot you now than let you die slowly in this shitty new world." I said, giving it to him straight.
"I know what you're saying. And I don't know if I could kill you guys. Or stop you, or whatever because you'd already be dead. Is that okay Sam? Or do you need an answer right this minute if I don't want you to kill me?" Dice said. He was freaking out still, but I could tell he had honestly heard me and assimilated what I said. So I dropped it.
"Sorry about your cousin, Dice, I really am. Do you want to swing past your uncle's house before we take off?" I said.
Several emotions crossed his face and I'm certain he almost told me to waz off, but he thought better of it and said. "I can't imagine a world where he wouldn't be answering his phone and where Mabel and Clovis would be running the streets unattended if anything was even remotely normal. Or if he was even still alive in any real way. Yeah, lets make a quick stop. It's really not out of the way and it will settle my mind. I've already tried my mom and Aunt Fergine. Goomer tried his mom. No answer anywhere we might be the only ones around."
"This early in the game, that's very unlikely. But, we definitely didn't see them around or your mom's car or we would have warned them. Just like if we'd seen Melinda or any of her kids. Or really, even creepy little Dilben. I didn't knock on any doors, I was too busy trying to get Cat out of there safely. But I would have told anyone we knew if I'd seen them." I said.
"What about Nona?" Dice asked. Which started Cat crying and I had to tell him his childhood babysitter and grandmother figure had been gunned down by cops in a case of mistaken identity.
He was almost as torn up as Cat, even Goomer started to cry. But we were only allowed a few minutes grief before another runner attacked; and we were reminded in this new world if you took too much time for the dead, you joined 'em.
It was easy for me to put a bullet in the runner, but we learned our lesson.
Back at the cars Dice asked for the nine millimeter. Which brought up the weapons sitch. We would be caravaning so we didn't need to worry about being separated. I ended up giving Dice the nine millimeter because the guns in the footlocker were chosen more for being big with a lot of stopping power. I took a snub nosed 38 revolver to replace the nine. It was similar to the 32 I'd taken for myself from the gun store except it was a bit bigger and heavier as well as being clearly older and not as nice. Also, we threw a couple grenades in the glove box just in case. But the foot locker itself as well as the rest of its contents, along with the machete box with the other five blades in it, was transferred to Goomer's car.
Cat would drive Jade's beast on this next leg of the trip and I would drill out the trigger locks while we drove. Because there was no reason to ever keep unusable guns with us. And with the triggerlocks intact they were more paperweights than weapons. But they shouldn't take more than ten minutes each, max. So we also didn't feel we needed to keep any of the other weapons with us.
Dice's uncle's place was completely empty. Closure might have been nice for the kid but I would rather he always wonder if they'd survived, then if he had to watch me plow through all his tiny cousins. Popping each one in their little head.
We hadn't even gone ten miles on the freeway before my phone rang. It turned out to be Peezy B.
"Puckett, I need ya." Peezy said. "There's dead people in the streets, Puckett. I need you to come to Las Vegas, Puckett. I'm here locked in my room, all I got here is Bunny and that Mindy girl you gave me. And they are useless against dead folks who's up walkin around. You gotta come here and save me, Puckett." He stretched my name out, whining it into like four syllables.
"Well, I don't know, Peeny. We are heading to Vegas anyway right now, but we have things we have to do and places we have to be." I said.
"You know it's Peezy, Puckett. Peezy B. Aren't we friends? Why don't you come to Vegas and save your old friend Peezy B." Peezy said.
"I'm with my friend Cat, Peez. I'll ask her and my other friends and call you back."I told him.
"Cat? That lil girl dance like a squirrel? She'll definitely wanna save ol Peezy. She loves me." He said confidently
"Naw, she doesn't Peezy. She really doesn't." I said.
I got off the line with him and talked to my girl. Then we called Dice and Gooms and put them on speaker so we could all discuss it. I was the only one voting to leave him to his fate. Cat had no love for the selfish rude star, but she couldn't bear to stand by when someone she could help needed her and Mindy was her friend and Bunny was just an innocent employee. We couldn't hold Peezy's behavior against him. The guys were star struck enough that it really didn't even matter whether he was a good guy. He was just so cool and famous they wanted to do anything they could for him.
So I called him back and told him to sit tight and we'd be there in about two hours, then went back to sorting out the locks on the guns.
Luckily, the roads were flat enough and straight enough I was comfortable using a powerdrill as we drove along. It turned out I didn't need to worry about running out of battery power. However a triggerlock will wear through a drill bit in moments so I only managed to get three out before I had to give up out of lack of appropriate sized bits. I got Cat's handgun, the rifle shotgun, and one of the pistol grip shotguns.
I figured my revolver and the other pistol grip shotty could wait since I had the 38. Although I did only have one box of shells for it.
It was pretty much a straight shot right on through. Up until we were about twenty miles from Vegas, even in the new 'panic on the freeway' world we lived in, it wasn't any worse than rush hour for a medium sized city. We rarely needed to slow under 50 and didn't need to stop at all.
About thirty miles outside Vegas we started seeing gridlock on the other side. But it didn't affect us for another ten miles as things started to really thicken up.
I called Dice's phone to give us a chance to discuss what we were going to do. We both put our phones on speaker again, so the four of us could all participate.
"Alright guys," I said. "Now you've had a chance to think about this afternoon, and we're getting close to Vegas and Peezy.
This is a new world. You have the guns for a reason. You have those machetes for a reason. And it's not to look cool, or to feel like The Crushinator. It's to kill. specifically the dead. specifically to stop zombies permanently.
But it's not just the deadheads, guys. Can you kill anyone who is not one of us who stands in our way?"
Dice sounded nervous when he asked, "What do you mean Sam?"
"I mean this is still in the early panic stages. we are going in to fetch Peezy, Bunny, and Mindy. There will be zombies who must be stopped. But there's probably going to be more people who have bad intentions and a pulse. Especially in a place like this. This is a everyone for themselves, kinda shady place. A place where people are nervous and scared. A place that is not the safest place on earth on the best of days, in the middle of the initial freakout of the dead coming back to attack and bite the living it's going to be chaos. And violent dangerous chaos at that. I don't know whether they are eating us as well or if the runners are eating the living while the shufflers are just biting. I'm guessing the bacteria or virus or tiny aliens or whatever this is just wants to spread. I think they are much more likely to bite than eat.
But, I'm babbling. What we need to know is are you ready and willing to kill? Kill the dead and kill the living to get in and out safely.
This includes security, cops, and military. This includes anyone. Women, children, little girls. If they are in the way and you tell them to move you do not give them a second chance. If they are armed and threatening you, do not give them a first chance.
I need your honest opinion. Your honest commitment on this. Because I do not want to bring you in there if you are just going to freeze. That would endanger you and it would endanger us. I'd rather you circle around the city and wait in some rest area on the other side than come with us if you're going to just endanger yourself. It's really gonna burn my chizz if just Cat and I have to go to save this guy after you guys being a big reason why we took this on at all."
Goomer sounded really weird. Haunted and about to cry. "I am not killing any living people. I killed a man once. That still gives me nightmares. I'm so ashamed."
Dice clarified. "Goomer killed a man in the ring. He almost quit fighting. He was in grief counseling for six months. It was during, and possibly because of, one of his self abusing emotional turmoils that his last manager said he was too stupid to manage. But I know he can kill zombies and kill them well. He has hunted alligators and pumas in the swamp as well as deer, squab and pheasant. We've been discussing it a lot as we drove." Dice said.
I motioned with my hand for Cat to listen closely.
Dice continued. "I get it that you're nervous. But think for a second about how nervous we are. You have been killing zombies and perhaps others all day. We haven't. So I will say this. Goomer is your man as long as they were dead first. As for me, I will try. Deaders and live enemies both. I believe I can do it. But I just don't know. No guarantees. Is that good enough?"
I thought for a minute. I knew what I wanted to say. But I had to be honest. "No. I wish it was Dice, but I cannot put both mine and Cat's life on the line."
"Stop Momma," Cat said, laying her fingers on my wrist. Interrupting me with a gentle touch. "We do not have the luxury of sending Dice and Goomer off someplace safe. There is no place safe. I'm having second thoughts about putting our lives in danger for Peezy B of all people. But it's a lesson. While I am not going to vote again to risk those we love for people we barely know. I do believe that once we say we're going to help we have to do it. Which means all of us.
But Sam is right about one thing boys; if you choke, the best we'll be able to do is kill you quick so they don't get you. We can't lose two of us trying to save a third who is frozen into an anchor dragging us down. I love you boys. Dice you've been like a... I don't know, little cousin to me. Ever since Nona started babysitting you when you were one. But we just can't. It's worse than a jungle out there, it's a zombie jungle."
I pulled up the Vegas strip on my pear phone. It took me a few minutes to find a traffic site that was completely computerized, naturally none that had a human element had been updated since this morning. But the one that just showed by color code the amount of traffic I knew was just hooked up to sensors on the street so it automatically updated in real time.
I was pretty sure Peezy said they were in the Imperial Suite at Uncle Puffy's new place The Puff Palace. I was able to sort out a way that would get us there without touching any of the gridlocked sections.
I was honestly concerned that in a city this size, dealing with this kind of apocalypse level chizz, those streets that were totally locked down would remain locked down until long after mankind loses its hold as the dominant species.
I gave Peezy a call just to be completely certain we were going to the right place before we committed. I was also thinking just because they weren't locked yet any of these streets could become a parking lot in moments.
Peezy answered with a scream. "Aaaahhhooh, Puckett you gotta save me. They got Bunny, Puckett. They stabbed him in his belly an' he died. Oohh Puckett, where are ya?"
"We're just about to get to the Puff Palace and I need your room number." I said.
"Oh, we aren't there Puckett. You see I drank all the jonjer ale in the minibar in my room. And room service said they were gonna be two hours. Didn't they know I'm Peezy B? That's what I say to them. I say, 'Don't you even know I'm Peezy B?'. Uncle Puffy is my actual uncle. But they didn't care. They said Uncle Puffy said I was stupid and he wishes his sister, my mama, never even had no kids. So I hung up on them to teach them a lesson. But then when I called back they didn't even answer at all."
"Cool story, Peezy. But where are ya?" I said as soon as I could get a word in.
"We left the hotel and there were dead folks walking around Puckett." Peezy B said.
"Like I said there were, Peezy. Like you said there were when you called me the first time. You knew exactly what was out there." I said.
"And there were live people going around with guns. Ya see, Bunny had a gun and I have Bunny's gun. But I don't know nothin about shootin no guns, Puckett." Peezy whined.
"But you said you knew everything." I said. Peezy was constantly talking about how he knew everything there was to know about guns.
"I lied, Puckett. I lied." Peezy said, clearly crying.
"Yes, okay. I can see that. But where are you?" I asked, hopefully for the last time.
"We're under the city, Puckett. Bunny led us down here. He said it'd be safer then he got bellystabbed and left me to manage by myself in the damn sewer. I don't know where I am." I heard a girls voice. "Wait, Puckett. Mindy said to go on Zapface and pin my location. Go on Zapface, Puckett. I'm gonna pin my location. Then you come get me, Puckett. I'm not kidding you now."
"I'd be getting you now, if you had stayed in your room like I told you." I said.
"That's not funny, Puckett. Come get me." Peezy said and hung up.
When I went on Zapface it had Peezy at Fort Broadway. The new megahotel complex whose investors thought a mashup of wild west frontier and all the big musicals of the last century somehow went well together.
Of course Peezy and Mindy would be under the hotel in the catacombs of storm drains. Lucky for them, and us, it wasn't sewers no matter what Peezy thought. The sewers were huge pipes even farther down.
When we rallied on the side of the road, beside a manhole Goomer had pried open; Cat brought up some bad news. "Things just got worse gang, but we have to stay strong. Stay hard."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"The people down there are even more likely to still be alive then the people up here. So we probably won't be dealing with zombies. But they are desperate people who through bad luck and poor decisions have ended up having to live in the storm drains. These are mostly good people pooped on by circumstance. For many of them the downfall of civilization is a blessing. Anarchy is the great equalizer. Some of those people will be leaving the tunnels in a day or two and moving into houses, apartments, homes of some sort anyway. Maybe here in the city or more likely some adjoining unincorporated area.
If they can defend those homes and make a life, they can truly change their fortunes. But that day is not today. Today they are down in the drains with my friend Mindy and also Peezy B. They are probably panicking just as much as up here. Or more because down there it's a bit scarier, certainly darker and because it's underground tunnels, chock full of blind alleys and places someone could get trapped. Now we all go in there guns clearly visible. We get who we came for and get out. If they see four of us in a group, all holding guns, I hope they will realize we aren't bothering anyone who isn't bothering us. And we are immediately killing anyone who does. It is not hard to decide which side you want to be on."
Cat and Dice both carried shotguns because in point blank range their blast to recoil ratio was incomparable. You also didn't need to be the best aim to be able to take someone out with them. Goomer found a Remington pump action rifle in the foot locker it used 30-06 ammunition and could probably kill five zombies in a shot if you could get them to stand in a line. I just used the revolver. It had almost the stopping power of Goomer's rifle and I wanted to get more practice with it.
I took my pickhammer in the other hand. Cat had her spear and the boys each had a machete. I grabbed the 9 mil at the last second and tucked it into the back of my pants. Just in case an extra was needed. and if not Peezy had said he had Bunny's gun. But Mindy needed one.
At least until we were less likely to run into hostile living people than dead people, everyone in our party carried a gun. Guns existed to make killing easy and that was the priority in the post-apocalypse chaos we were traveling through.
Once we were in the drainage tunnels, the first time we went around a corner we were met by two guards with rifles. "You can't bring weapons in here." One said.
Cat replied. "We don't want any trouble. We've come to collect my friend and her employer who ran down here to hide. If you just allow us to pop in and pop out we will take care of business and be gone, easy as you please. However, if you don't allow us to do what we need to, you will find it's the two of you against the four of us. And we are quite prepared to let this get out of hand."
The guard smiled humorlessly. "Do you honestly think in these tunnels that we would only post people where you could see them?" But then he thought better of his attitude I suppose because he sighed and said, "Who have you come for?"
"Peezy B." Cat said, as the guards burst out laughing.
"More like Pussy B. 'Do you know who I am?' 'Do you know who my uncle is?' 'You're gonna be sorry when Puckett gets here.' Never have I heard a grown man whine so much." The other guard said.
"Well Puckett's here now." I said. "So it's up to you. Do you let us collect our Pussy Boy. Or do we prove Peezy right and I make you sorry." I was at the end of my rope and I was already kinda wishing I had just shot them immediately, like I had with the cops this morning.
But I didn't have the excuse of they would never believe the truth and listen to reason. Plus I really felt I at least needed to experiment with reasoning with people for Cat's sake. She had something in her that had an issue with my version of self preservation that didn't take the value of an outsider's life into consideration at all. So I was trying it her way, once. But this wasn't a game, this was for the safety of the woman who was my life; and to a lesser extent myself and our friends. If these two balked for another thirty seconds I would open a hole in each of their heads and not even try it this way again for a good long time.
They used up twenty of the thirty more seconds I'd given them and then they tried to push their luck still further. "You say you're no danger to this place or the people who live here. You say you just want to get your friends and leave. And I believe you, mostly. But we need collateral. You leave the kid with us and he gives us his gun and sits quietly. The rest of you do what you need. You leave here peacefully, pick him up on your way out and it's a done deal."
"No. Followed by fuck no. This boy is my friend and my I am not leaving him unarmed at the mercy of strangers. The world doesn't work like that anymore." I said
Dice looked shocked. "Sam, what's it matter? In the time we've argued it could be done and we could be done and on our way back to the cars. I'll wait with them. It's not-" and the entire side of his head disappeared in a red cloud of chunky mist.
Goomer's face went some weird mix of dead and determined and he lifted his rifle to his eye and shot in the direction where the shot that killed his little buddy had originated. I didn't see his target because of the dim halls of the tunnels and because it was behind me and to the left. By the time I turned around it was obviously long over. But since he didn't take another shot I assumed he hit it.
"He was just a little boy." Goomer said softly as his intent emotionless eyes scanned the shadows. He fired another shot and followed it with an echo of, "Little boy." And then with a final shot, uphill into a tunnel that ran up and to the left he made a final reiteration of, "A little boy."
While Goomer made his first shot. I opened a hole in the one closest to me and Cat fired her shotgun near point blank range into the crotch of the guard who'd done most the talking. Not an instant kill but I think she got both femoral arteries. He'd bleed out fairly quickly. And it should have come as no surprise that Cat was a 'shoot 'em in the junk' kinda girl.
Goomer started walking off in the direction the original guards had indicated we would find Peezy B.
It became quite a different scene then originally thought or planned. Goomer seemed to be mumbling 'Just a little boy.' Over and over to himself in a sad, soft, lost, little voice; as he walked along looking at the world past a rifle sight.
Cat, who was weeping silently, was also shouting, "Drop your weapons. Turn and face the wall if you want to live. If you know where Peezy B is point in that direction as you face the wall. If you look at us, we will kill you. If you have a weapon in your hand, we will kill you. If you move suddenly in any direction. We. Will. Kill you."
And they did, her and Goomer. Everyone who so much as glanced at us was shot. I picked up Dice's gun and put my pickhammer in my belt.
The two of them had things covered. I didn't fire my gun again. Although Goomer killed five people and Cat killed four. The worst I did is a little girl about eight came running at us with a butcher knife and I laid the barrel of Dice's gun across her face. Nowhere near as hard as I could, not even enough to crack her cheekbone or knock her out. Just an offhanded flick, enough to split her cheek and knock her to the ground. "Someone stop her," I said to no one in particular. "If she comes at me again, I'm gonna shoot her.
She didn't come at me again. In fact there wasn't a whole lot more excitement.
At least until we heard Peezy calling me and followed the whining to find Peezy on the ground and Mindy standing on his hand saying. "I have tried to be respectful of you Mister B. I put up with a lot of foolishness. Because you are clearly a spoiled child. But just as clearly a spoiled child who honestly wants to be nice and have people like him. Your insistence that you know best, when you clearly don't, got Bunny killed. Now hand me Bunny's gun so I can actually protect us versus you who will either get us killed or kill us yourself."
"Give her the gun Peezy." I said.
Peezy was struggling. Struggling awfully hard to have a hundred and twenty pound girl on his hand and be unable to shake her. "You're fired Mindy, that tea you gave me wasn't even very good. Until I had the idea to drink it cold and put sugar and lemon in it."
"Iced tea with sugar and lemon; you really are one of the great minds of our time," Mindy said.
Goomer pulled his machete out. "Just hold his hand there with your foot Miss Mindy." He said. "I'll have it off at the wrist in just a minute. Then you can have the gun and we'll leave Mister B here to bleed out or whatever he wants to do."
"That's cruel Goomer. You know he couldn't make it on his own. Especially without a hand or a gun. Just shoot him." I said.
Peezy was looking really scared and just when he was starting to stammer out an offer of money he didn't realize was now useless, a louder voice drowned him out.
"Attention squatters. You are in violation of Nevada State ordinance. This area has been identified as a high risk area due to it's abundant cover and multiple access points. Once inside the area the infection would spread exponentially faster. Any individuals that do not depart immediately, peacefully with your hands in clear sight will be assumed to be infected and will be destroyed. All of you who depart as stated, I guarantee you will not be harmed. File out peacefully and onto the buses that are waiting for you. You will be transported to a secure location where you can be quarantined and observed. If you show no signs of infection after 48 hours you will be released."
"Okay now we all enjoyed threatening Peezy." I said. "But time for that is gone. Peezy you take Dice's gun. You don't need to aim a shotty. Give Bunny's gun to Mindy and it looks like we are fighting our way out." I said.
Peezy started to argue and I said. "Shut up. You are not the boss here. It goes me, Cat, Goomer, Mindy, you. It shouldn't be hard to remember that. You are the lowest. The least. The last. That's got a good rhythm to it maybe you can write a song about it when this is over."
I led them back to the main tunnel and discovered that the army men, or whatever, were actually not in the 'main' tunnel we'd entered through, but an even larger one that ran parallel.
So we might be able to sneak down our tunnel and not have to fight at this point at all. I pulled up a map of the storm drains on my pear phone. I could see where if we took a left and cut across we would hit the upward slope one that Goomer had shot one of the guards in after they killed Dice.
If we walked up for about a block it would lead us to an offshoot where if we were slick and sneaky we could just walk along seven feet below the sidewalk and just peek out of the drainage gap next to the corners.
The first one we found with no military presence we would sneak out and come back to the cars on surface streets. Probably walk through the hotel's parking lot so no one would get suspicious.
Once we were up just below surface level it was quite a nice walk. The tunnel was like a concrete hallway, just a little wider than the sidewalk, it broadened into a little concrete room at every intersection with four foot long six inch high slits; one at each corner that would let the rain in.
Rain, when it came at all in a desert, tended to come all at once. The ground, unused to absorbing it, tended to flood. It was even worse in a city where most the ground was paved over. So they needed storm drains to take it away. The tunnels were dry most of the year, cooler than the surface and surprisingly clean. I could definitely see why people with few other choices would see living down here as the best option.
At each intersection, Goomer as the tallest would stand on the bottom rung of the ladder and peek out of the drainage slits. It was only about a quarter of a mile when he said he saw nothing. It was at an intersection with another tunnel so just to be on the safe side, we walked another block down that way. To avoid a straight view if there was a soldier stationed with binoculars watching the street.
We didn't know how far the observation net might be spread so when I suggest we send Peezy up first to look around, Mindy said she didn't trust him not to just run for it and volunteered.
She just grabbed the lip of the drainage slit and shinnied up and out.
A moment later she shouted down. "Finally some luck gang, This isn't even really a street, it's the delivery entrance for the Metropolis Hotel. No visible traffic, the only visible people are at least five hundred yards away. The only drawback is there is no cover whatsoever we're coming out of a storm drain in the middle of a giant driveway with nothing else around. But it's worth two minutes of conspicuousness, I think."
We all agreed. Since Goomer was very possibly too big to slip out the drain and would have to lift the manhole cover anyway, we decided to just let him do it and we all just followed him up the ladder.
When we reached the top we saw what she was talking about. The huge hotel across a sea of asphalt. Cars and even some visible people surrounded it. There were some palm trees planted along this road, but none really anywhere near where we were. Safe it seemed. No one near or seeming toi pay any attention to us. But definitely conspicuous.
As Goomer replaced the manhole cover a hotel shuttle turned onto our road and flashed it's lights at us.
"We all have guns, even if he does as well I don't see any reason not to see what he wants." Cat said. "even if we ran or whatever, there's nothing around here, he can easily catch up to us."
It ended up being a young guy in an empty shuttle. He wore cheap badly fitting suit and his long hair was pushed up into a plain black baseball cap. "I knew it, I knew it. It's Peezy B. What's up Peezy? What you doin' way out here?"
"Trying to get out of this God forsaken place before I end up Zombie chow, my brother." Peezy said, trying to turn on the charm. "Now any chance you can give us a ride over to Fort Broadway. That's where we left our cars before we went into the drains to get away from this gang of deadies. Must have been a hundred of them or at least twenty or ten. We were able to shoot them all once we got them in a small place down there. But now we gotta get back so we can blow outta this popstand."
I would have thought that he looked like a fool, but I knew him. This guy looked pretty starstruck. "Of course Peezy. Absolutely. You guys get right in."
We loaded into the van. It didn't even take five minutes even with traffic. When the driver saw the military was stopping everyone he told us to stow our guns under the seats and we'd get right through. He'd say we were guests of the hotel and he was taking us to the airport.
We waited our turn in line. It didn't take long. I don't know what they were checking for. Maybe the bureaucracy hadn't worked out that zombies lacked the muscle control to drive a car. Even the runners. Not to mention the mental competence.
Then it was our turn and the driver rolled his window down, letting the desert wind steal our air-conditioned cool.
"Afternoon officer," The driver said, although I was pretty sure you called military men 'soldier' when you didn't know their rank. "I heard over the radio you were looking for Peezy B and his entourage, who were reported as potentially hazardous by homeless rounded up out of the drainage tunnels."