Jolie shoved the pistol into her fanny pack. “I’m out.”
Zombies stepped over the bodies of their comrades. Those on the floor wiggled toward us.
I reached into a pocket. Also empty. I had the flare gun and a couple of shells and that was it.
The zombies plugged the exit with their bodies.
I shoved the pistol in its holster. Jolie and I backed up until we hit the end of the hallway.
Now it was undead versus undead at its most primitive level. Our talons extended to maximum length.
The stupid thing would be to charge into them. Of course, the more stupid thing was that we had come down here in the first place.
I reached for my cell phone.
When the bomb exploded, it would drop the gas tank right-I glanced to the ceiling-on top of us.
There had to be another way, but I couldn’t see it. What I had, to paraphrase Albert Einstein, was a failure of imagination.
Jolie shielded me with her body. “Do it, Felix. Do it.”
I worked the phone’s keypad.
No time for good-byes.
The zombies advanced relentlessly in one colossal mass.
I pressed SEND.
Time hovered like the big clock of the universe had stopped working. The zombies, their blank eyes expressing only the cold-blooded determination to destroy us, showed nothing of their-our-impending obliteration.
My mind’s eye could see the screen on the cell phone outside light up; the calling number displayed. The electrons would whir through the circuits. The signal would trip the logic switch: Ring or Vibrate?
Vibrate.
The electrons would pulse through the electric fuse, which in turn would spark the detonator. The resulting compression wave would initiate the combustion of the dynamite and blast apart the metal strut holding up the gas tank. We’d be drenched in hundreds of gallons of gasoline.
I could feel the nanoseconds pass by, as tangible as the air flowing around me.
A lot could have gone wrong. Maybe the cell phone didn’t receive the call. Maybe the fuse had worked loose. Maybe the battery had gone dead.
Maybe, if and when the bomb went off, the gas tower fell the other way…or the tower dropped in place.
A mighty concussion slapped through the hall. Plaster dust shot from the ceiling. Jolie stumbled against the wall.
I blanked out all fear and watched the event unfold as if it were the end of someone else.
Wood splintered and creaked. The ceiling broke open and the cylindrical tank of the gas tower crashed through the joists and ceiling plaster. The tank came to rest upside down. Gasoline splashed from around the lid and saturated the air with its vapor.
A wave of surprise broke across the zombies. Their eyes understood their doom just as the tank broke through the ceiling, flattening them like a gigantic hammer.
Pieces of the floor above funneled into the large hole made by the falling tower. Debris skittered through the hole and pinged off the metal tank. The smashed bodies of zombies writhed under the tank, broken plaster, and shattered wood.
Jolie lunged off the floor. “This way.”
She jumped on the tank and up through the hole. I scrambled after her and climbed onto the splintered floor of the main level.
Zombies lumbered toward the stairway, still on autopilot to destroy us and ignorant of the disaster that awaited.
Jolie and I sprinted for the front door.
A zombie lurched across the threshold from the porch. Jolie clawed him with her talons, sinking them into his shoulder and snagging bone. I punched him in the head and leaped clear of the house.
Jolie and I tumbled off the porch and rolled across the sand and dirt. I came to my knees and waited for the house to explode. The twisted legs of the gas tower stuck out from the torn roof. Embers and sparks whirled against the legs.
“Where’s the boom?” Jolie yelled.
“Right here.” I pulled the flare pistol from my pocket and cocked the hammer. I aimed through the open front door and fired. The flare shot into the house, a red streak leaving a smoky tail.
The flare thumped as it ricocheted inside. A yellow flame flickered.
Fire whooshed through the windows and doors. A gigantic flame twirled out the torn roof. Explosions loud as artillery boomed from within. The fire licked under the eaves, and within seconds, flames rolled up the siding and gnawed along the outside walls. Debris fell across the windows and doors.
Zombies crawled from the exits. They emitted ugly gasps, like air venting from rotting tires. Tentacles of fire spiraled around them. The zombies sputtered and crackled and I took the same ghoulish delight as I had in the army when we plucked lice and fried them on a hot tent stove.
The main floor gave way and the house collapsed upon itself in a roaring cloud of embers and billowing smoke. The smoke cleared and left the burning roof trusses looking like a rib cage inside a roasting pit.
Zombies staggered out of the gloom toward the burning house. They must’ve been summoned by that collective consciousness, from their immolated undead comrades crying out for help. They halted on the edge of the inferno, confused by what to do next.
Jolie shot from the darkness on the BMW. She herded the zombies toward me.
I found one of the steel poles and used it to jab the zombies over the edge of the foundation and into the pit.
It was burn, baby, burn. I hummed “Disco Inferno.”
Zombies tumbled in, only realizing their fiery destruction at the last second.
Jolie and I patrolled the area for evidence of zombies and our fight. We tossed zombie parts and spent ammo shells into the pit. We destroyed all the clues we could find, including parts of the cell phone I’d used to trigger the bomb.
The fire burned hot as a crematorium. Flesh and wood would be reduced to ash, and metal-especially the psychotronic diviners-into one pool of slag.
Jolie asked, “What are the authorities going to say about this? Was it mass murder, suicide, an accident, or all the above?”
“Who cares?” I answered. “Anything as long as it’s not about zombies and could be traced to us.”
Satisfied that we’d destroyed all trace of zombies, I climbed on the BMW and we rode around Ghoul Mountain.
The fire bathed the facing hills with a yellow light. A glow illuminated the quilt of smoke hovering over the house.
Daybreak was another two hours away. Dogs barked at the rumble of the fire and the smell of smoke. Porch lights came on. People silhouetted themselves against windows and doorways.
The first of the red and blue emergency lights flashed up the road from Morada. Sirens yowled in the night and the dogs barked harder.
Two police cruisers zoomed by on the dirt road, the second car enveloped in the dust from the first. A minute later, fire trucks trundled by at high speed.
We joined the confused parade of vehicles barreling up and down the road between the fire and Morada.
Cops in reflective vests guided those of us coming down the hill to side streets away from the convoys of fire trucks and ambulances.
Abundance Boulevard was a carnival of red and blue lights and emergency vehicles going east, west, and in circles.
Minute by minute, we drew farther away and I relaxed. Jolie dropped me off at my Toyota.
Her aura bubbled in pleasure. “That was fucking amazing. Who knew killing zombies could be so much fun.”
“We were almost killed.”
“Adds to the spice. We get major bragging points for this fight.” Jolie gunned the BMW, popped a wheelie, and circled my Toyota.
We drove west and onto the forest road toward Phaedra’s hideout. Nguyen’s Buell motorcycle was still parked where he’d left it.