The City Series (Book 1): Mordacious

  “Sacred Heart of Christ Church?” I ask, and Guillermo nods. “There were zombies out front when I passed a while ago.”

  “Still there,” he says. “They went into the side entrance. We found the ones who got shot on the way back. All in the chest, no bite marks. Don’t know who attacked who, or if they had anything to do with it. Eli, Indy and I are going up to talk to them. I came by to see if any of you want to come.”

  “I’ll go,” Paul says.

  Jorge puts a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll go, or I’ll stay with Maria while you go. You decide.”

  Guillermo, for all his residents, doesn’t have a lot of people who are comfortable on the street. People to man the roofs and follow directions, sure, but not people he trusts to be self-sufficient. Plus, there’s always the chance the group at the church might have seen Sylvie and Grace. There’s always the chance they’ve hurt them, and I want to see their faces when I ask.

  “Let me get changed,” I say.

  ***

  We take a route through the houses and then walk the final block to the stone church. It’s as large and imposing as I remember. The two front staircases that ascend to a wide stone landing are still gated and now locked with chains, with Lexers roaming behind them.

  Guillermo points down the block at the side entrance—a stone staircase to a second story walkway and arched wooden door. A few bodies meander on the grassy area beside the church, kept in by a low iron fence, and even if we wanted to sneak past, between the ones in front and these, they’ll clamor until we’re noticed.

  “We walk out like we’re friendly and want to pay a visit,” Guillermo says.

  “Are we not friendly?” Indy asks.

  “We’re as friendly as they allow us to be,” Eli says. Indy nods, mouth set. With that expression, she and Eli couldn’t be taken for anything but twins.

  Everyone I’ve met along the way has been friendly, but it can’t last. New York has a lot of assholes, and even if only thousands of people remain out of millions, the ratio of assholes to decent people means we probably have more than our fair share.

  We turn the corner. The tall gate at the base of the side stairs is latched but unlocked. Guillermo knocks on the door several times, but there’s no answer. The zombies on the grass are now at the stairs. They don’t have a chance in hell of climbing up, but they’re making a lot of noise. We head back to the sidewalk and pass the rectory set back behind a small lawn, all window blinds drawn.

  The next building is newer brick, with a tall fence that encloses each bank of first floor windows in a gated rectangle. It would keep zombies away from the windows and offer some protection to the occupants, except for the half dozen Lexers that occupy the spaces and reach for us through the bars. It can’t be coincidence, and I don’t see how they could’ve wandered in there themselves. It could be they were put here to stop people entering those windows, or to alert those inside, or both.

  I hold my pistol, as do the others. A muffled bang comes from around the building’s corner. Sacred Heart Elementary School sits at the top of the block, and its rear connects to this newer brick building. The whole block must be church property, and likely all connected inside.

  The fence becomes a gate, behind which a tree-lined concrete walkway leads to glass doors at the junction of the buildings. The entry gate is wrapped with chains and locked. Paul wiggles the metal. “Go over?” he asks.

  Another thump comes from inside. It could be zombies or it could be people, and there’s only one way to find out. Eli answers by jumping the fence in a swift motion. Guillermo shrugs and the rest of us follow. As we near, one door opens and a man exits, followed by two men with rifles. We come to a halt five feet away.

  He’s in his fifties, with gray hair and a gray mustache, and dressed in a blue polo shirt and jeans. A cop’s belt and holster is threaded through the loops, same as Paul wears. “Help you?” he asks in a strong Brooklyn accent. His expression is one of someone who’s just tasted something terrible.

  “Name’s Guillermo. We’re from Sunset Park. Thought there was someone over here and wanted to introduce ourselves.”

  The man waves at the two men, and they lower their weapons. Guillermo holsters his and we follow suit. The man’s cool blue eyes move across our faces, down to our feet and then back up. The fine lines around his eyes tighten and his lips pucker under the mustache.

  “Joe,” he says. He points his thumb at the two men behind him. “Emilio. Kirk.”

  When it becomes clear that’s all Joe is planning to give us, Guillermo says, “We heard some shooting real early this morning. Found five people dead, two of them teenagers. And someone’s shot at us a couple times. You know anything about that?”

  “Nope. Don’t know anything about that.”

  More thumping noises come from inside, along with voices. It’s a lobby, but it’s dim inside and impossible to see anything while standing in the sunshine. I edge to the shade for a better look.

  “Who’s in charge?” Paul asks. “Is there someone who would know?”

  “The Reverend’s in charge,” Emilio says, and grins under his dark, bushy beard. Joe glowers and Emilio’s smile shuts down fast, though he smirks when Joe turns back to us.

  “You have a priest here?” Guillermo asks. “We know of another in Brooklyn Heights.”

  “No, there’s no priest,” Joe says. “We’re all in charge. And we didn’t shoot any teenagers or anyone else. Heard the shots, that’s all, didn’t see who did it.”

  From my new angle, I get a glimpse into the lobby. To the left is the wide entrance to a school gymnasium, in which people cart boxes around. Plastic-wrapped pallets sit in front of closed bleachers, waiting to be unwrapped. In the lobby, stacked boxes are printed with their contents: cereal, energy bars, and canned goods, to name a few. Another large stack is printed with Chinese characters, making their contents a mystery, and other boxes are an open jumble of items that must have been cleared from houses and stores.

  Guillermo moves for a better look inside and then frowns. A man comes from the right, rolling a hand truck of boxes. He nods at us and continues on his way. The garage I passed on my way to Paul’s would be underneath the buildings to our right, which means what I heard from inside could’ve been them.

  “How long have you been here?” I ask.

  “Not long,” Joe says. “There were people here before us. Don’t know where they went.”

  “How many people do you have?” Guillermo asks, obviously as frustrated with Joe’s terse replies as I am. I can hear Paul’s teeth grind beside me.

  “Couple dozen.”

  “That’s a lot of food for a couple dozen people.”

  Joe shrugs. “It’ll last a while. I have things to do, so if that’s all…”

  “Why the bodies out front?” Eli asks.

  “Keeps more zombies away.”

  I have a feeling it’s to keep people away, or to announce their arrival, and Eli looks skeptical as well. Joe’s eyes narrow, but he shrugs. Either he has something to hide or he couldn’t give a shit whether or not we’re on good terms. Both options make him dangerous.

  “Did you see two women yesterday or last night?” I ask, though I’m not banking on a truthful answer. “Late twenties, one with short dark hair and the other long and blond.”

  Joe shakes his head. “Nope.”

  Emilio watches me for a long moment, and I think I see a small bit of sympathy in his eyes. He lifts his chin. “What are their names? If we see them, we’ll tell them you’re looking.”

  “Sylvie and Grace.” Joe’s head swings my way as if startled, but, when I meet his eyes, he wears the same hostile expression. “I don’t think they came this way, but I figured I’d ask.”

  Joe folds his arms across his chest. “Like I said, we didn’t see them.” I search his face. I don’t think he’s lying, but I do think he doesn’t care enough to even feign sympathy the way any normal person would.

  “We didn’t say
you did,” Eli says in a quiet but menacing tone. “We only asked a question that needed answering.”

  “And I answered.” Joe draws himself to full height, which is still inches shorter than Eli, but his stance says he’s used to people backing down. “I hope you find your friends,” he says to me tonelessly.

  Maybe it’s his complete lack of concern, but I’m filled with the desire to rip into his face and stomp his torso until he gasps for air. Paul steps up, shoulder barely brushing mine and jaw tight. He doesn’t need to know my reasoning—he’ll help pound the shit out of Joe if I say the word. I fucking love Paul.

  Joe’s hand grazes his holster. My hand moves to my side and the others do the same, eyes skimming our surroundings. The barrels of Emilio’s and Kirk’s rifles rise a few inches. The people in the gym continue with their work, but we’re seriously outnumbered if they decide to jump in.

  Eli has been shielding Indy with his body this whole time, much to her obvious annoyance, and now she pushes past him with a small laugh. “Relax, little brother. I’m sorry, Joe. I think we forgot our manners back at the park.”

  She lightly punches Eli’s arm, and he lets it drop to his thigh, though his teeth remain gritted. Indy’s eyes sparkle as she smiles at Joe, who doesn’t exactly smile back but doesn’t give her the same scowl. His stance eases slightly, and I force myself to do the same. This is escalating quickly, and we don’t have the upper hand.

  “We just wanted to give you a heads up that we’re here,” Indy says. “You don’t want to be shot at and neither do we, right? Can we agree not to shoot each other?”

  “If we see you out there, we’ll back off. That work?”

  “That’s more than fair,” Indy says. “Thank you.”

  “We don’t want any trouble. You leave us alone, we leave you alone. You tell your people that.” He directs the last part of his statement my way, so I nod and hold his stare until he turns away. “Emilio, get the gate for them.”

  Emilio strides down the walkway. Joe gives the five of us a single nod and goes inside, allowing the door to close without a backward glance. Apparently, this meeting is over. Kirk holds his rifle aloft as we head for the gate.

  “It’s all clear,” Emilio says, and swings open the gate. “Reverend Joe could use some better people skills, but he does what he says.”

  “He’s the Reverend?” Guillermo asks.

  Emilio grins. “That’s his nickname. He hates it. We call him that ‘cause he’s always in the church.” He closes the gate once we’re on the sidewalk and re-wraps the chain. The lock clicks shut. “Maybe we’ll come down to Sunset Park sometime. Boring as shit here.”

  “Anytime,” Guillermo says. His handshake is friendly enough, but if you know his usual outgoing demeanor, you’d notice the tightness in his jaw and the lack of friendliness in his dark eyes.

  We head for the corner, and I turn just before we’re out of sight. Joe has come out to stand at the gate with Emilio and Kirk. I can feel his cold stare blasting through the warm May sunshine from here. I don’t like our new neighbors. I don’t like their weapons or their food or the fact that they have a complex the size of a city block that’s more fortified than ours. And I absolutely don’t like Joe.

  We stop in a house five blocks away, after we’ve made sure we’re not followed.

  “You trust them?” Guillermo asks.

  “As far as I can throw them,” I say, and Eli and Paul murmur agreement.

  “I couldn’t wait to get out of that place,” Indy says. She stands beside Paul, arms crossed, and shivers.

  “I thought you and Reverend Joe were besties now,” Paul says.

  “That’s why they call it acting.”

  “I knew you couldn’t be that dumb. You deserve an Oscar.”

  Indy punches him and then points at the four of us. “You all need to learn how to sweeten people up. If we’d kept going the way we were going—”

  “You need to stop calling me little brother,” Eli says. “You were born four minutes before me.”

  “Four minutes is four minutes,” Indy says, and stands on tiptoes to pat him on the head. “You are, and forever will be, my little brother.” Eli shoves her away with a smile.

  “Did you see all those boxes with Chinese writing on them?” Guillermo asks. “They could be different ones, but they had a lot of those over in Chinatown, and those guys didn’t let shit sit around. If there was food anywhere in their neighborhood, they had it.”

  “I heard something in the church’s garage when I passed that time,” I say. “They could’ve been there for longer than they say. Obviously, they’re not broadcasting their location.”

  “Right now, we act like we’re friendly and think they are, too,” Guillermo says. He walks to a window and looks out at the street. “But I’m thinking they’re not.”

  The assholes have finally come out of the woodwork, and they live less than a mile away. It’s a sobering thought that makes me want to leave everyone behind in the city even less. Paul and I return home, where Maria and Jorge still wait for Sylvie and Grace. The sun goes down without their arrival, and my heart sinks along with it.

  Chapter 77

  We wake to a droning sound and follow the noise to Fourth Avenue. We stand in an apartment that overlooks the wide street while the windows vibrate with the crowd of a thousand Lexers that marches past. I spend an hour viewing the procession before I can’t take the bodies or noises or the thought that if Grace and Sylvie ran into this, or people with guns, there’s no hope for them.

  The next day, the mob has passed. Maria yanks at the gold cross around her neck and peers out the parlor floor windows twenty times an hour. I make excuses to go to the roofs. Once to show Leo, another time to check out Manhattan, again to make sure the downspouts aren’t clogged. The streets are quiet. No gunshots or voices, but I feel a steady pulse coming from the church blocks away.

  I rip every finished page off the calendar up until the day they left. Sylvie might be angry when she returns, since she didn’t want to disrupt anything or leave her mark. But she has left her mark, and I’m tired of the calendar looking as though she hasn’t.

  Leo has taken charge of feeding Cat, who’s come inside a few times. He gets nervous when the door closes behind him, but he’ll sit on the couch, paws tucked and giant eyes surfing the room. At first he flinched when I pet him, but now he melts into my hand and purrs while his dark eyes entreat me to be kind. When I think of what Sylvie said to Leo in the yard—that Cat wanted love but wasn’t sure he could trust us—I realize she could’ve been talking about herself. Maybe she was.

  They didn’t come yesterday or this morning. Maria has stopped checking out the window and now stares into space in the kitchen. She’s barely sipped her coffee. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s because when you meet people in a situation like that you make a bond. Maybe it’s because they remind me of…” She turns her head away.

  Jorge steps in from the yard and watches Maria wipe her cheeks. His natural jolliness has been replaced by sorrowful eyes and a downturned mouth. He pulls something from the pocket of his jeans that might be a lump of tin foil.

  “Sylvie made this for me, for my tenth year sober,” he says. Maria and I look from the foil to him, confused. “It’s my ten-year coin. I had my anniversary a little while ago. You get a coin for every year you’re sober and, when I told her, she held a meeting and made it for me.” He tucks it back in his pocket and turns to the window.

  “I don’t think they’re coming back,” Maria says. “We should stop waiting.”

  Now that she’s said it aloud, my chest constricts more. Maybe it’s absurd, but it feels like grief for something I almost had before it slipped away. Something I could’ve had if I’d only said or done something different. I thought I’d learned my lesson from Rachel: say the goddamn words when they come to you, before it’s too late. But I dropped the ball again.

  Maria’s right, whether the reason is that they didn’t want to come
back, or they couldn’t. And she’s right that we should stop waiting—waiting here. I’ll search Brooklyn Heights block to block until I find out what prevented their return. I’m about to say as much when Maria pushes back her chair and walks outside without a word. A minute later, a scraping sound comes from the yard. We find her at the compost pile.

  Her shovel plunges into the mound, then she throws the scoop onto the concrete and digs through it with her fingers. “We might’ve composted the note they left last time. It was yellow. Grace wrote it on a yellow Post-it note.”

  Jorge shovels a quarter of the pile onto the concrete. We don’t have much to compost yet, so it hasn’t had time to generate enough heat to eat away paper. I crouch and sift through the muck of plant odds and ends, old coffee grounds and other assorted items.

  Thirty minutes later, Jorge stands, carefully smoothing a soggy yellow square with a missing corner. He squints. “There are two addresses on here.”

  “That’s it!” Maria jumps to her feet, wipes her hands on her pants, and peers at the paper. “Grace’s apartment and her parents’ house.”

  A steady rhythm of hope beats in my chest, and I see the same optimism on Jorge’s face when he turns to me. “Want to go for a ride?”

  “Do I ever.”

  He disappears to get his gear together. I move through the living room for upstairs.

  “I’ll be ready in ten minutes,” Maria calls from her bedroom. I stick my head in to find her throwing clothes around. The color has returned to her face, and she looks ten years younger again. “Yes, I’m going. Paul can stay with Leo. You might need someone to boss you around out there.”

  Chapter 78

  Sylvie

  We came back to Grace’s. It’s where Logan and her parents should be; where they’ll come if they can. They weren’t among the zombies we killed. Maybe it would be better had they been. Now we’re in limbo—or maybe it’s purgatory—sitting in an expensive apartment where Grace won’t speak to me. I sleep on the couch and she stays in her bed, although I hear her leap for the windows at every noise from outside.