This Dark Earth by John Hornor Jacobs Page B

budge. Locked.
    “I’m gonna have to shoot the doorknob.”
    “What?”
    “How else are we gonna get in?”
    She’s quiet for a long while. Then she says, “Okay. But do it at an angle so you don’t hit whoever’s inside.”
    “Right. But it’s a shambler.”
    “I don’t care. If it’s . . . Gus . . . I don’t want—” She wipes her eyes. “Maybe I can save him.”
    I shake my head. “How?”
    “A hospital. Maybe I can isolate the virus and—”
    “Electricity. We don’t have it. There’s zombies everywhere. You think we’ll just be able to walk into the hospital?”
    She shakes her head, and I’m getting anxious. The beating on the inside of the door is louder now.
    But it’s her child and I understand what she’s feeling and I realize I wasn’t thinking about that so I say, “Okay. We’ll capture him, keep him safe until we can figure out what to do.”
    She nods.
    I stand back at an angle and pull the trigger. The doorknob disappears. Birdshot ricochets back and pings off my clear protective glasses. It’s a good thing I’ve forgotten to take them off.
    I inspect the door. The doorknob is gone, but the locking mechanism is still in the hole, so I reach in to fiddle with it and it falls into the workroom. I shove on the door, but it still won’t budge.
    “Lemme see the flashlight.”
    She puts it in my hand, and I kneel and shine it through the hole. My heart stops. I jump backward. There’s a face right there in the space the doorknob occupied—milky eyes, mouth black and bloody and open in a snarl. The shambler isn’t a happy camper.
    I stick the shotgun in the hole, and I’m about to pull the trigger when Lucy knocks me aside. I sprawl over, dropping the flashlight.
    “Goddamn it, Luce. It ain’t alive. Whoever it is. And I don’t think there’s any others in there.”
    “I can’t risk it. It might be Gus.”
    “Well, why don’t you take a peek first? Will you be able to recognize him through the hole?”
    She looks uncertain. For a moment, my heart rips itself from my chest and goes out to her; she looks so lost. I wish I could do something, anything, to make this situation better for her.
    She dusts off her knees and kneels, pointing the flashlight in the hole.
    Her shoulders start to shake, and I can see huge silent sobs wracking her body. She stands up and moves down the hall.
    “Fred.” She’s crying now, truly crying. “It’s Fred.”
    I don’t know what to do with myself. Part of me wants to jam the bore of the shotgun in the hole, and part of me wants to try to figure a way to save the man, for Lucy’s sake.
    We both stay rooted in our own space in the dark hallway at the bottom of a big shambler-infested house in a shambler-infested city. Great plumes of radioactive smoke surround us. Now I’m positive those clouds were more mushroom clouds. And in this dark hallway, I feel very small and alone, especially since Lucy has succumbed to her fear, her shock. And her love. She’s succumbed to love. It’s her family at stake. My daughter is halfway around the world in Iraq, maybe fighting Al Qaeda, maybe fighting the undead. I feel a thin line of connection between Emily and me—the same feeling I would get when she’d stay with me, wear my shirt, and then when I put it on, her scent would linger and I’d feel her presence. I feel the thin connective tissue stretching away past the unseen horizon and right now . . . right now, I know she’s alive and I’m glad of it. And I’m doubly sad for Lucy.
    “I don’t have to—” I say, dumbly, leaving the rest of the sentiment unspoken. Shoot him .
    She’s silent. I want to go hug her, and I’m ashamed, because when she said the shambler was Fred, my heart leaped and I was glad. Glad I still had her to myself. For a little bit longer. I shouldn’t feel that way, but I do.
    “Go ahead.” She grips her arms like she’s cold. It’s impressive because she still has a pistol and the Maglite.
    I approach her. I