The Dark Knight (Apocalypse Weird 2) by Nick Cole Read Free Book Online Page A

quiet
initial porticos and first streets, one found only the dead.
    Why? He asked himself.  Why would I think of such an image? 
I’ve never been to war, much less the Middle East.
    But the knowledge of such images remained in him and he
could not let them go.
    Then a realization came on the heels of those images. A
stark truth.  He knew the shapeless, once-living humans now corpses, would in
time, turn to bones and bleach in the thousand suns that followed.  He heard
himself whisper, “Why?”
    And there was no answer in the silence of the night.
    He turned due west and followed the street under an
overpass.  The wide and spreading toll road above.  Approaching the overpass
made him feel that any moment they, the zombies, would come after him out of
the shadows.  Up from the weeds and unkempt nature preserve along the sides of
the road, out of the shadows under the bridge where the abutment met the toll
road above.  As though they had been waiting for him all along.  Keeping some
promise only they understood from the last time he’d escaped them.
    I need to bring weapons every time I leave, he thought.  But
he’d been so angry when he left Frank’s garage that he’d been blinded by his
determination to prove himself.  He’d left the Guy Fieri flame-handled knife in
the kitchen at home.
    He crossed the shadowy darkness underneath the overpass and
emerged into moonlight on the other side.  He turned right at a small street
and found the equipment rental yard along its length.  The place consisted of a
medium-sized concrete warehouse painted Navajo white, now resembling a large
tombstone in the faint moonlight, fronted by dark tinted windows and a small
entryway.
    Most likely the rental office, thought Holiday as he
surveyed the place from the road.  Up the driveway, beyond the warehouse, lay a
gate and a darkened guard shack.
    He tried the entryway door.  It was locked.  Waiting, he
listened for any sounds coming from within the warehouse.  He listened for the
sandy scrape of dragging footsteps.  Or a low, husky groan.  A thump, even.  He
heard nothing and moved on to the gate. 
    Beyond its diamond-shaped mesh he could see yellow tractors
and backhoes, bulbous cement mixers and gawky cranes.  Cargo vans and bucket
lifts were parked over in another section.  There were other pieces of
equipment but he was unsure what purpose they might serve.  He heard a loud thump and then a brief groan.  Turning back to the guard shack, he saw a man wearing
a uniform slapping weakly at the glass from inside.
    It was one of them.
    The guard bumped himself into the glass again as he
mindlessly beckoned to Holiday.  And again.  Blood and grease and drool left
ghostly ink blot images on the smudgy plastic window.
    Holiday climbed the gate-fence as it shifted under his
weight.  At the top, he hauled himself over and dropped to the other side. 
Crouching, he waited.
    “Why didn’t you take out the guard?” he asked himself.  He
had no answer and that was when the voice, the grizzled hectoring bark he’d
heard inside his head back in the alleyway when he’d rescued Ritter, Candace,
Dante and Skully, spoke up. 
    “Never leave an enemy behind you, maggot.”
    He waited. 
    If they come, if they’ve been watching me, if those things
can somehow communicate with each other, they’ll come now and I’ll get back
over this fence before I’m surrounded.
    If you blow this...
    “Be quiet,” he told himself. 
    He thought instead of how Frank might treat him if he could
figure out a way to keep everyone safe.  On the other hand, his relationship
with everyone... Ash included... would be beyond repair if he somehow failed
tonight. 
    Better to do this or die trying, he thought.
    But Holiday still didn’t have any idea, any firm idea, what
he was doing out here in the dark and the quiet of night.  He knew a piece of
construction equipment would help matters, but he couldn’t think of anything
other than