Apocalypse - Keith R. A. DeCandido [27]
She proceeded gingerly down the stairs to see if the Figlias were all right.
Inside was a disaster. The six tables were all overturned, the chairs strewn about, many of them broken. The photographs of Italy on the wall were askew, knocked down, many of them damaged. Worst of all, the painting of the Ponte Vecchio in Florence that was the restaurant’s centerpiece was covered in blood.
Alice saw no bodies. She wondered if that was a good sign or a bad one.
Then she heard a noise.
The kitchen door opened and four people came shuffling out.
Anna Figlia, the old woman who served as the restaurant’s maître d’.
Her son, Luigi, and his wife, Antonia, who did all the cooking.
Luigi and Antonia’s teenage daughter, Rosa, who was the main server.
As one, they moved toward Alice, their eyes milky, their mouths hinged open exposing black teeth that seemed almost to be aimed at Alice’s neck.
Once, the sight of these four faces had been a refuge. Coming to Che Buono had been a safe haven from the growing frustration with working for despicable people who asked her to do despicable things for despicable causes. She had deliberately brought Lisa here because she knew it would bring out the best in her, and show Alice if she was truly to be trusted. She cherished the memory of the look on Lisa’s face when she first tasted the veal parmigiano, claiming it was the finest she’d had since she was a kid eating in one of the many Italian places she and her family had gone to in New York City.
Tears welling in her eyes, Alice raised her shotgun and squeezed the trigger four times.
Then she turned and left Che Buono for the last time.
She bumped against the door frame as she exited. A sliver of pain shot through her forearm, and she realized that she’d cut it.
Ignoring the wound, she moved on through the streets.
One storefront eventually caught her eye: SURPLUS AND MORE. It was a good old-fashioned army/navy surplus store—just the place to go for one-stop postapocalyptic shopping.
If nothing else, she was almost out of shotgun ammo.
As she moved through the store, mentally calculating what she’d realistically need versus what she could easily carry, she suddenly convulsed. A spasm of pain swept through her entire body.
Her arms felt especially strange, and she looked at them only to see a peculiar rippling effect—like there was something moving under her skin.
With horror, she remembered where she’d seen such an effect before: on Matt Addison’s wounded arm, right before they were taken by Cain and his goons at the mansion.
Then she noticed something else: the cut on her arm had completely healed.
Another wave of pain slammed into her, and she almost stumbled to the floor. This was worse than the pain she’d suffered when she woke up in the hospital, worse even than when she’d pulled the leads out of her flesh.
God, what was happening to her?
The pain started to subside. She looked around the store for a mirror, found one, and ran toward it.
Her eyes widened in shock.
The patches of hair that had been shaved off to allow the leads to be placed on her head had grown back in, the wounds from those leads also healed.
She looked down at her feet. Since leaving the hospital, she’d been walking barefoot on broken glass and shattered pavement, yet there wasn’t a cut or bruise on her soles.
The bastards had most definitely done something to her.
Then she heard a noise.
Raising her shotgun, she turned around to find a gaggle of zombies shuffling toward her through the front door.
But before they got too close, they stopped.
Stared at her with their watery eyes.
Alice had her shotgun aimed right at the lead zombie’s forehead, ready to shoot if she or any of the others attacked.
But she didn’t.
Neither did the others.