Apocalypse - Keith R. A. DeCandido [15]
Captain Henderson had taken her badge and her department-issue weapon, but that didn’t leave Jill unable to defend herself. She walked over to the closet on the wall with all the trophies and pulled out a shoulder holster and her trusty automatic.
It was the same weapon she’d used to kill one of the monsters in the forest, after her official weapon ran out of ammo, and after she realized that the only way to stop the things was a head shot.
Luckily, Jill was good at head shots.
Holstering the automatic, she grabbed the TV remote, and switched off Sherry Mansfield’s face.
She went outside and saw only chaos.
Jill owned a brownstone that she’d inherited from her uncle. The rec room was in the basement and had its own exterior door. As she exited and locked the door, she saw, on the sidewalk in front of her stoop, a woman biting a man on the arm, the man screaming.
Unholstering the weapon, she shot the woman in the head. She fell to the ground.
The man, still screaming, took a look at Jill and ran down the street.
Jill considered shooting him, too, but he was moving too fast, and she didn’t want to waste a bullet in case he wasn’t infected. The woman had bitten him on the sleeve of his shirt, so it was possible that the infection wouldn’t pass on.
Of course, somebody else was likely to bite him before long.
As she walked down the street toward her Porsche—like the brownstone, a gift from her now-deceased uncle—she saw Noel in his usual spot in the alcove between the brownstone next to Jill’s and the bodega on the corner.
Normally, Jill would toss a quarter into the hat Noel kept in front of his cross-legged self. Today, though, the hat wasn’t there, and Noel seemed to be asleep.
“Noel?”
The homeless man looked up. His normally blue eyes were a milky white.
He also had a bite mark on his left cheek.
Without hesitation, Jill shot him in the head.
“Yo, bitch, whadjoo do that for?”
Jill turned to see some punk kid wearing a wool cap even though it was ninety degrees outside. His eyes were normal, and he was talking, so he wasn’t infected.
Yet.
“He was already dead,” Jill said. “I was just finishing the job.”
“Bitch, you fuckin’ crazy.”
“That’s what they keep telling me.”
She pulled the keys out of her pocket and beeped the alarm, unlocking the doors to her flame-red car.
After getting in, she started the engine and checked the rearview mirror.
The kid in the wool cap was going through Noel’s pockets, looking for change.
“Grave robber calling me crazy,” she muttered as she pulled out into the street. “This keeps up, I’m gonna start talking to myself.”
Raccoon City was falling apart. One minute, she’d see a scene of total chaos; the next, the streets were as empty as a ghost town. Here, a sidewalk café being overrun by undead waiters trying to eat their patrons. There, a zombie shuffling through a bus that had crashed into a storefront. Over there, a gaggle of the living dead wandering through an office building lobby.
Jill made a decision.
She had left the apartment intending to go to the station house in order to help out.
But this city was beyond help.
They’d called her crazy. They’d disregarded her testimony. They’d told her she couldn’t do her job anymore.
So fuck them. They didn’t want her to serve and protect, then she was out of there.
However, she still pulled into the RCPD’s main HQ parking lot. She had to get a few things.
Inside, the squad room was a disaster area. Desks overturned. Perps and cops alike running scared. Zombies everywhere, some in handcuffs, some in uniform. She saw Duhamel and Cooper attacking Borck and Abromowitz. Some old drunk was attacking Fitzwallace. The sarge had managed to stay alive so far, but Quinn was presently beating off a fat man who was trying to chow down on him.
Shaking her head, Jill pulled out her piece.
Ten very loud seconds later, all the undead creatures in the room had fallen to the floor, bullets in their skulls.
Quinn looked down at the fat man’s corpse, then up at Jill. “Glad to see you back on duty, Valentine.