“Didn’t think we’d see you here,” I said.
“The feeling was a bit mutual. Can’t ever tell when the stars will align,” he said, and I watched the orange tip of his cigarette flare up as he took another draw. “I didn’t smoke before the zombies. Hated ‘em.”
“The end of the world has changed many people in ways they never expected. I have a Mohawk, for example.”
“You look shit with it,” he said from the shadows. “A few years ago, I think you could’ve pulled it off. Aging punk rocker refusing to let go, still trying to be hip. Now you look like another imperialist soldier in the Middle East trying to look hard by having an edgy haircut.”
“That’s fucking harsh,” I said, and I meant it.
“Sorry. Thanks for making the trip here twice. Two nights running. You’re pretty good, for a man with a shit haircut.”
“I make do.”
“That building behind you is the parsonage. Rectory, whatever. Inside the main door there is the kitchen, and to the left inside, is the door to the basement. If you can get that bitch open, you’ll be able to give him, and a few others trapped in there some peace.”
“Is that why you asked me to come here? Alone?”
“It’s a bit queer, all of it, I know. You can do it yourself, but your mate there can help make quick work of it. Fair warning; you’re apt to be… put off a bit by it.”
“How many down there?”
“There was nine. Should still be nine.”
“You gonna help?”
“I don’t think I can,” he said, but what he really said was, “I can’t.”
I figured right then and there his wife was downstairs. We’d put his son down, so this journey made sense. Hal and I gathered up, made a quick plan, and entered the ruins of the rectory.
Burnt out, shot up brick and stone building. The main door was burnt to almost nothing, and swung inside on creaky hinges. A fire had ravaged the place, and the second floor was perforated above, as was the roof.
The kitchen had lost all its furniture, and the appliances had been scorched as black as the night sky. The door though… that door was clean, and fresh. In the green light of our NVGs I could almost feel the shine of the metal, like it was polished chrome.
The only thing marring its… ominous perfection, was a tipped-over washing machine that kept it shut. I don’t think that machine got there because of a house fire. Someone put it there to keep that basement door shut.
Historically, opening basement doors for us has been dicey business. Sometimes it’s nothing (see: meadery) and sometimes, it’s the worst possible scenario. (see: the daycare incident) So when I tell you that I was feeling a little fucking anxious to open that door… understand I mean I shitload nervous.
I tested the deadbolt on the door, and latched it before pushing the washer out of the way. It was an old model, and damn heavy. Took more than a boot, and made a helluva scraping sound on the floor. As I did all of this, Hal covered the halls and door to make sure nothing slipped in behind us in the dark. Now would be the moment the undead of Brighton would find the courage to cross into the church’s grounds. Courage or oblivion.
Scary. Real scary. Too close to Halloween for this fucking HORSESHIT.
I waited, and knocked with a light, persistent rap on the door several times. Took… five agonizing minutes, but eventually I felt and heard the pressure of someone on the other side of the door.
What to do?
Fuck it? Open the door and open fire? Shoot through the door at head height to thin their ranks? Cut a hole through the door and shoot through into the dark? Grenade? Set it on fire?
I don’t know why this idea struck me, but it did, so I went with it; I thought of my rope. In my ruck I had a thirty foot length of paracord, and I started looping it from left to right across the doorway, tied to the plumbing fixture for the water hose for the washer and around an exposed 2x4 on the other side. I left slack, and rested the rope on the knob. Pre-lasso.
I told Hal what was up, popped off ten rounds trough the door at head height, and after hearing a body hit the floor, I threw the deadbolt. They didn’t turn the knob for me, the lazy pricks, so I did, and then stepped back into the center of the kitchen with two exits behind me.
The door pushed outward, but caught on the rope I strung across it, limiting their movement. We had an immediate rush of six undead. Each unburnt, and almost pristine in physical condition. How they died… I wasn’t sure just then. They pressed forward in a surge, but the first two tripped over the dude I dropped on the other side of the door, so they went down. Hal and I gunned them down with a couple shots each as the four behind them stepped up and over with alarming coordination. The dead ran at me, teeth snapping, slathering and furious, white-eyed and murderous. But, they ran straight into the now-taut cord, and they were jerked to a stop just a few feet from me. I dumped my magazine into their faces and Hal joined in as an insurance policy. We quietly called out that we were changing mags, and I did a body count. Seven. Each with slightly blackened noses and mouths, each smelling of that same chemical I smelled when Bell End wasn’t smoking. No visible injuries otherwise, so I concluded it was smoke inhalation that ended them. First guy down was the rector.
If Chief Sketchy-Ass had a good count, there were two still in the basement.
We waited a few more minutes, and I realized they brought that chemical smell with them. Maybe it wasn’t smoke they inhaled. Maybe it was toxic fumes. Not sure.
Hal and I decided I would do into the basement alone while he kept the doorway safe for me. When I say decided, I mean he wanted to, argued to, and I said no.
NVGs on, I stepped over the dead reverend, and descended down into the bowels of his sanctuary.
Stairs rain straight down, then made a sharp turn left. The basement was smaller than the footprint of the house, but that’s normal in really old structures. I came down, back to the wall, slow and careful, keeping my weapon on the open area below.
Loot before violence? Adrian, tsk tsk. Talk about the violence first. If you’re not writing about your gun, you need to be writing about your dick.
Mr. Journal does not sport a boner over old cans of spotted dick.
Or does he?
Then it got weird. In the back of the basement there was a door with several safety signs on it. Employees only kinda shit. I saw markings for the boiler beyond, and when I put my ear to the steel, I could hear, and feel a slight vibration as something rubbed up against it. Not quite shoving, or pushing, but… pressing.
Then the weirdness really started.
“Are you ready for this?” Bell End asked me, from like, five feet behind me. I nearly shit myself as I spun and swore at him. He was so green in the NVGs. Glowing.
“The FUCK are you doing here right now? I could’ve shot you.”
“Are you sure you’re ready?” he asked me, almost like he didn’t hear me. “Once you open that door, there’s no shutting out what you’ll discover.”
“Fucking Jimmy Hoffa back there? Aliens building a pyramid? Nessie stroking his cryptozoological hog? Speak plainly to me, or skip up those stairs like Mary fucking Poppins right past Hal.”
“Have it your way. Thank you again,” he said, and something about the… final tone of the thank you chilled me.
I looked back at the door, and had second thoughts. He had actually spooked me. I felt it. A little tingle in my fingertips... at the back of my neck. Was something watching me? There was too much space behind me. Too much room for something to be there. Watching me. Crisis of confidence in full swing, I looked back to him, and he was gone.
Fucking gone.
I panicked, snapped on my flashlight and lifted my night vision. Gone. Nowhere to be found. I ran back to the stairs and stopped at the corner. Hal had his back to me, and was taking up the entire doorway.
“Where did he go?”
“Who?”
“Fuck off with that. Bell End. He was just down here with me, and
I told him to leave and he fucking teleported away. Scotty beamed his ass up. You didn’t see him?”
“Naw,” Hal said, and he was serious. “Nothing past in either direction.”
“Well what the fuck?” and then I remember the door. I ran back down, flipped my NVGs on, and extinguished the flashlight. We were gonna do this in the dark.
I had to pry the door open. It was locked, and a heavy door to boot. The halligan did work, and after just a minute or two of me going ape shit on the door’s frame, I got the thing popped out. I backed away behind the door, hiding behind it as a dark haired woman about my age, maybe a little younger erupted out into the main room, legs bent, arms bent, nails bared like she was a werewolf ready to tear into flesh. Her teeth clicked together in the black. Only sound she made.
I didn’t give her the gift of any time to turn around. I stepped back, made a few inches of distance from the door giving me cover, and blew her fucking brains out. A… chill went through the basement, and I swear that if there was a candle, it would’ve flickered and gone out.
One left.
I heard crying coming from the other room. A survivor? A dude, for sure.
I sliced the pie as I came around from behind the door, and when I went into the old boiler room, the heart of the building, I fully expected to see a guy behind some kind of barrier, someone who’d just witnessed me shooting a loved one who’d been trying to kill him for a good long time. That person was who Bell End wanted me to save. This was a rescue mission.
It was, of a sort. Not the kind I could’ve expected.
The smell of chemicals was strong. Same… burning kind of scent from before. Inside the room on the right hand side was the boiler; huge. Way, way bigger than a house of this size needed. Place was a hotbox when it was occupied. On the left hand side was all the bullshit you’d expect to see in a basement; water pumps, hot water tanks, pipes, racks with toilet paper, paper towel, soap, jugs of chemicals, whatever. Industrial bullshit.
In between the two sides I saw a rather large man sitting on his back, one arm lashed to a pipe. Crouched near him, just out of reach, was his identical twin. The twin faced away from me, and his body trembled. I froze, and kept my weapon pointed at the two of them, ready to dump my whole magazine.
“I owe you a few things, Mr. Ring,” Bell End said as he looked over his shoulder to me. “So bear with me, and I’ll explain as best I can.”
We talked for a long time, Mr. Journal, but I’ll cover the bulk of it. I’m sure I’ll miss parts, so forgive me.
“Back in June, few years ago when this began, my wife volunteered here at the church. She worked part time at a local bakery as well, and we had a good life. Our son was a shining star, and we both loved what we did, and where we lived.”
His voice was… low, and sad. The zombie tied up beside him, him, in fact, steadied out, and almost forgot I was there. Almost as if it were listening to his story.
“She phoned me just before the first calls came in. Said there was a parishioner who’d been bitten. Wanted me to come and help. So I did. Grabbed two of my boys and we put in the proper call to show we were dealing with the issue. It was fast, and it was furious. You saw where we parked the ambulance, yeah? Well, my wife ran to us, dead man on her heels. My men were out, tackling him to the ground, but one of them got bitten in the process.” He drifted off a bit.
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too,” he said. “I pushed my wife out of the way, and punched the old fella who’d bit my man several times in the face, trying to knock him out, but nothing. He just kept on trying to bite everyone. I tied his face off with some cloth, but he kept fighting. He was strong, too. He didn’t care about hurting himself, just trying to bite us. We bound his hands and feet, and by then, our man was turning. He… he was bad. Big lad, almost my size, and when he came at us, I had to put him down with the halligan in the ambulance.” He looked at me then, eyes flooded. “My own man.”
“You did the right thing and you know it. That doesn’t make the pain go away, I know.”
“It does not, no. My firefighter bit three people before I got to him, and by then, I’d put it together. I knew what was coming. So we took shelter. Hid in the church. I lost my radio in the scuffle, so we couldn’t call for help on the network, and within a few minutes, there were enough sitting up and approaching from the area around us that we couldn’t stay out. It all happened so fast. I don’t know why.”
“I do, but that’s beside the point.”
“Time will tell on that, yeah? We tried calling with phones inside, but the circuits were engaged. No getting through. Planes started flying overhead at that point. Helicopters too. Felt like a warzone by dinnertime. Sunset on the world.”
“What the fuck is going on, Wiltshire?”
“Time passed. We took in some survivors. One night, when my wife and I were in the rectory, a fire started in the church. Looters, I think. People trying to strong arm their way in. I can’t say for sure, and I’ve tried to figure it out several times, but there’s just no way. They’re probably dead anyway. Look, so we were in the house, and I saw the fire, and when I went to leave, the door was barred. You saw the windows? They’re covered in iron bars too. We tried to find a way out, but the other doors were barred too. Locked or sealed somehow. That’s why I think it was the living who did it. They separated us. Locked one group in while they robbed the other.”
“So the fire spread to the rectory we couldn’t get out. Look outside, you’ll see broken glass all over the place. Smashed every window we could. Finally, we had to take shelter in the basement. That’s when we heard more noise. Scraping. Then we couldn’t get the door open.”
He started to really cry then, and the zombie of him went… still. Enthralled with his emotion. Invested. I still hadn’t put it together.
“We stayed down as the fires above raged. Smoke got thick, and people were scared. I tried to keep the peace, I did. But fire… it frightens in a way nothing else does. Maybe drowning, but dying in the water is like going to sleep. Dying in a fire… hurts. We tried to climb out, but the smoke and heat kept us from the windows. The reverend went to the shelves behind me, and he tipped up a jug of something you shouldn’t drink. He died. Foaming at the mouth, convulsing. No one else followed that route, but within minutes, we started dropping. The people who kept upright first, those of us staying low, last. I saw the people starting to twitch, those that had died, and I knew then that it wasn’t the bite causing it. Anyone who died. I tied my hand to that pipe there,” he said, then pointed at… himself, still tied to a pipe, “and as I watched my wife start to tie herself next to me, she blacked out. I screamed to her, and that was enough to do me in.”
He stood up, and the zombie of himself at his feet came to, no longer hypnotized by his story. Its jaw worked reflexively, chewing at something it desired, but didn’t have.
“I then remember waking up, upstairs, wandering around, lost in the ruins. It took me… I guess a week or two of that before I broke free enough to leave the grounds. I wandered. The first few people I met told me I smelled. And I do, you can smell it here, now, can’t you? The chemicals? The burning? The smoke? I can’t shake it. I can shower, I can bathe, lord fucking knows I sat in the surf for hours trying to wash it off me, but… but I can’t. It’s part of whatever I am now.”
“Are you… are you saying you’re a ghost?”
“I can’t find a better word.”
“That’s fucking crazy,” I said, trying not to look away from the zombie who’d now turned to face me. The man I was talking to, beside him. But a dead version. A physical dead version. What the fuck? I can’t even begin to tell you how creeped out I was in that moment, in the dark of the night, in the basement of a burnt out church, in a room with a dead guy, and what appeared to be the ghost of that dead guy.
“I said it would be strange,” he muttered, full of the certainty of his words. “And here we are, at the final moment, I hope.” He looked at the sa
d state of his zombie-self, lashed to a pipe in the room where he died. Forever… lost.
“You want me to put you down? You think that’ll release you?”
Then he turned to me, and… the heartbreak in his eyes, Mr. Journal… Tears just flooding. Silent tears, not even wracking sobs, or fury, just… just crying. He licked his lips, and tried to talk but couldn’t, eventually he gathered himself.
“My boy is at peace. My wife is now as well. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for those gifts, and now, stranger from a strange land, if you’d just do me one more step, I think I could be with them. And that would be… Well, that would be worth all the suffering.”
“Before… what about your people? Mutual Aid?”
“I told them I might leaving permanently through no fault of anyone’s. If I do… disappear, then they’re set. You’ve already done so much here in the Brighton area to stabilize things, and with the mead they’ll be able to make, plus the bees, they’re well-to-do. You met Mata. You should know she’ll be a capable leader. She spoke well of you. Part of why I sent her that day. Better to test your patience and get a second opinion than rush to judgment. She’ll bring you the stuff for the truck.”
“You’re smarter than you look,” I joked, deadpan.
“You don’t look that smart at all, and judging by how easy it was to get you into the ruins of a torched church all alone with a ghost and a zombie, to me it appears the pages match the cover.”
“You can literally fuck yourself right here and how,” I said, gesturing from his ghostly crotch to his zombie face. “You can be the hero of a hundred thousand lonely, horny teenagers. Reach for the stars, Wiltshire.”
“You saw my name?”
“Your picture is in the firehouse. You sent us to your home, of course I know who you are. What I can’t figure out, is why you’d keep your people from that information.”
“I don’t know why, fully. I had fear that… that they’d see something, and I’d come undone too soon. They needed more help before I could go. I can’t explain it. I had to keep that secret, to keep the real secret. I can’t touch people, did you figure that out?”
Dead Cities: Adrian's March. Part Four (Adrian's Undead Diary Book 12) Page 14
