Cities of the Dead: Winters of Discontent by William Young Page B

them
out. ”
    Dexter nodded. It was almost dark. There were only a
few minutes of light left.
    “ We have to go now,
Dex. There ’ s no way to know how strong that gate really is. It was only
ever meant as a visual deterrent. ”
    “ I know, I know.
Get the other men out with the spears and stuff and
we ’ ll
go down and do what we can. ”
    “ Everyone ’ s already
ready, ” Carl
said.
    “ You and the others
get down to the gate, I ’ ll be there in a
sec, ” Dexter said,
turning back into the house and closing the door behind him. “ Honey! ”
    He rushed through the house into the
living room and picked up his rifle, quickly slinging it over his
back. He strapped his machete to his hip and picked up the spear he
had crafted in the fall. “ Honey! ”
    “ What is
it? ”
    “ We have a hundred
or more dead ones at the gate, pushing on it, and the rest of the
guys and I are going to down there and try and hack them down as
best as we can. Get the kids ready for a run and have the backpacks
filled with some supplies in case we have to get out of
here. ”
    Carly stared at him aghast. “ Is it that
bad? ”
    “ Not yet, but
it ’ s
better to be ready to split, ” Dexter said, picking up his pistol and sliding the
holster onto his belt. He pulled a knit cap on, shrugged into his
winter coat and headed for the gate, the other men already there,
chopping and stabbing the undead.
    Alongside Carl, Jeff hacked at the outstretched hands
of the zombies with a fire axe while Peter poked at them with a
re-purposed rake handle, the tip filed into a sharp point and
hardened by fire. Dexter strode up and shoved his spear tip through
the eye socket of a formerly middle-aged woman with a bob haircut,
the flesh on her right cheek peeling off and exposing her blackened
molars. After ten minutes, the pile of now-dead undead bodies at
the foot of the gate had made it impossible for the rest to get at
the gate, and the zombies growled and murmured from a few feet
away, occasionally falling onto the pile of their fallen friends
and struggling back up.
    “ Well, I
hadn ’ t
expected that, ” Peter said as he stepped back from the gate and looked around
at the horde on the other side.
    “ What ’ s that? ” Jeff
asked.
    “ That
we ’ d
reinforce the gate with their bodies. ”
    Dexter watched with curiosity as one
of the dead separated from the horde and began turning its head
across the four men as if it were sizing them up, an undead man who
resembled a skeleton in a deteriorating business suit. Just in
case, Dexter turned around and scanned the cul-de-sac behind them,
wondering what the zombie might be trying to figure out. What could
it figure out? It was a … reanimated corpse.
    “ Now,
what? ” Carl asked
as he back stepped away from the fence, his eyes on the walking
dead.
    A few minutes later, Dexter drove a Lincoln TownCar
down the lane and parallel parked it so that the passenger side was
only an inch from the gate. It had been left in the garage by
whoever had owned the house before he and Carly had taken it over
(a fortyish couple with two boys and a girl, judging from the the
photos on the walls in the living room). He turned the car off but
left the key in the ignition and popped the door open.
    “ Someone ’ s going to have to watch the gate
all night, so we ’ ll have to take
shifts, ” Dexter
said. “ I ’ ll take first watch until ten. Jeff, you go from then till
two, Pete next until four, then Carl until dawn, when
we ’ ll
all be up. If they ’ re still here in the morning,
we ’ ll
figure out what to do next. ”
    For the next few hours, Dexter watched out the window
of the house closest to the gate, a house none of them lived in
because it was so close. He shivered inside his clothing and wished
for an electric heater. Or, a propane one. Anything to warm the
bedroom of the teenager who had lived in here before the
apocalypse. He looked around the room at the video game posters on
the walls,