Just inside the Macy's storefront, Tal pushed back Columbus, while two deputies held his arms. "You can't help them!" Tal said, with tears in his own eyes. "Look, I- I love them too. But we have to let go. It's what she would want!"
With a searing curse, Columbus pulled free of one of the deputies and clocked Tal. Then, shaking him self free of the last guard, he shouted, "She's my wife! I promised to be with her, as long as both of us are alive! And it's not just her. She... she has my baby inside her. If... if she isn't... gone... and we get to her in time... she could still carry it to term. It could be healthy... It could happen, damn it! Women with AIDS have babies all the time!" He turned the key to the barricade. "I'm going out there. So are you going to shoot, or stand there, or act like you give a damn?"
"Wait!" someone shouted. From a knot of ashen-faced fighters standing subtly apart from their comrades, one stepped forward, raising his bandaged arm. "I'll go."
"Count me in," said the slender man with the huge gun.
Tal sat up. "Okay... Let's think this through... how fast can you get your makeup on?"
"Fifteen, twenty minutes," Columbus said, "if I just do the basics."
It was done in ten.
Little Rock knew it had been her fault. She had looked back when Tal fell off, and when she looked forward they were a split second away from hitting the escalator. As the zombies had moved in, she had done the only thing she could: scream.
"How many are there?" Wichita said.
"Too many," Little Rock answered. She drew back from the corner of the second-floor walkway, and they jogged the other way. They could see the Neiman Marcus entrance beckoning from across the mall, but a swarm of zombies stood in the way. Behind them, a curving passage led to the Cloud courtyard, but it led through a restaurant first.
"They're following us," Wichita warned.
"I know," her sister answered. Ahead of them, a walkway offered a clear path, except for one zombie in the middle. A snap double tap sent it tumbling over the edge without a cry, but with a spray of blood even before it hit the bottom. As they ran across, Wichita's boot skidded in a pool of blood.
On the deck outside Neiman Marcus, glass vibrated with the blast of the slender man's shotgun. Columbus and the party of the wounded sallied forth over the bodies of a pack zombies. "Now that," Tal said to Bruce, "is what I call a boom stick!" Bruce only scowled. Turning to the thin man, who had introduced himself as "Q", he asked, "What is that gun, anyway?"
"It's a working replica of a late 1800s 4-gauge shotgun," he said. "Technically, more like 6 gauge."
"What did they use it for?"
"Shooting birds... many birds at a time."
Dozens more zombies milled about in the court, and they immediately began orienting toward Columbus and his wounded companion. A pack on the balcony moved to intercept them. . "If she has a boy," the other man said to Columbus, "name him Sam." At that, he tore off his bandage and rushed at the pack, shouting, firing randomly and shaking his rancid wound at the zombies below. The rest of the group ran for the entrance. Behind them, the shots ended in a shout, a chorus of snarls and a crash of broken glass.
Little Rock froze in her tracks at a snarl. Directly in front of her, a tremendously fat zombie clad only in a pair of gym shorts lifted its head from feeding on a slain zombie. After a moment's hesitation, she responded by baring her teeth and hissing. The zombie roared back, and then withdrew into a store front, dragging its meal behind it. She peered inside, and when she saw the zombie known as the White Whale crouching with its back turned, she waved for her sister to follow, quickly.
They had come within sight of the mall center. The midway was on the other side of a smaller, circular open space, and on the other side of it was the carnage of the balcony. A bridge crossed the nearest pit, but it was blocked by scavenging zombies. She shook her head in hopelessness. She started and almost screamed when Little Rock touched her shoulder. Mutely, her sister pointed down the escalator. They could go down, cross the midway and go back up- if the zombies on the floor didn't kill them first.
Columbus jostled his way through a pack on the walkway to Neiman Marcus. Not for the first time, he had the feeling that the zombies were not truly deceived into accepting him as their own, but only confused enough to tolerate him. As they pressed toward the crowd barricade, they threatened to drag him along like driftwood with the tide. With one last shove, he broke free of the crowd. Then, behind him, he heard a hiss. He looked over his shoulder, straight into the shadowed face of Andy Cap.
Krista had reached the base of the second escalator when she heard an especially loud zombie scream on the upper floor, then the sounds of the chase. She almost fired her weapon at the figure that appeared at the top of the stairway. Then her sister shouted, "Austin!" The pair met in an embrace at the bottom, in a moment of euphoria before ice cold terror returned.
It was from Macy's lower level storefront that the nearest zombies came, and then- deliverance. A huge gun thundered from both barrels, and a score of zombies fell. Then from under a barricade scarcely raised to waist height, the Isetta raced out. Columbus heaved up his bride and deposited her through the open roof. Then he and his young sister-in-law leaped onto the back. He ducked his head just in time as they drove back in; behind them, a pack's worth of zombies knocked themselves senseless on the crowd barricade.
The garrison swept forward in jubilation. Whether by accident or design, Columbus dropped off the car first, to take the brunt of their adoration. She started to stand up, when a hand gripped her wrist. "Tell them I was driving," Bruce said, shaking his spike, "and I'll shove this up your nose."