Two more came through the doorway, side-by-side. They were the terrible twosome, both in various states of decomposition. Fortunately, for me, they were weak from being barely more than walking skeletons. As soon as they were in, Alex slammed the door shut.
My bat broke them into pieces and smashed those pieces into mush.
“Holy shit!” Alex said, stepping out from behind the door. “You are one zombie killing son of a bitch.”
I brought the head of my bat close to my face and was about to kiss it, but thought better of it as a dark reddish-black ooze dripped off it.
“Hey, don’t get overconfident, slugger,” Alex said. “We’ve got more inbound.”
Three more zombies shambled onto the landing and headed for the door.
“You want some of this?” I asked.
“Hell, yeah,” Alex said. She hefted a long piece of rebar we had pulled from one of the damaged areas on the fifth floor. To make it easier to manage, she had wrapped the handle with duct tape. In my opinion, it wasn’t going to be as good as a baseball bat, but it would be good enough.
“Don’t get fancy,” I said. “Just go for the heads and yell if you get into trouble.”
I took the door this time and looked out at the hideous faces peering in at me. Oh, what a sight.
I told Alex to get some separation between us, and she planted her feet, ready to do what she had to do. I opened the door and they came through the threshold.
Even though she projected confidence, I could see how nervous she was. One deader was coming right for her, ambling forward in that way the undead do, slow and easy.
She took one step toward it, and I could tell she was deliberating whether to go on the offensive or to wait for it to come to her. I also watched as she raised the rebar over her head, then lowered it to her side, trying to figure out the best approach.
“Any way works,” I said. “I like coming in from the side. Just watch their arms. If they get them up, your attack could get deflected. If they have both arms up high, you have to come in from the top.”
I lifted my bat above my head to give her an idea of what I was talking about.
“Got it,” she said as she raised the rebar over her head with both hands.
As it turned out, she must have decided to go with the ‘baby come to momma’ approach and waited for the zombie to come to her. I shot a little prayer up skyward and hoped I didn’t get her killed.
The dead thing bore down on her, and she locked in on it. I saw something come over her face. It went hard is the best way to describe it as her eyes went flat. She was a trained cop and had probably seen some hairy situations. I would guess that all the training and experience kicked in.
The zombie got within five feet of her, and she launched herself forward, bringing the piece of rebar down onto the creature’s head. There was a sound that was both soft and hard as the rebar broke through the skin and cracked into the zombie’s skull.
It collapsed at her feet. She stepped back and got ready to hit it again.
“It’s dead,” I said. “Save your strength for the next ones.”
I was far from being a coach, but I added, “Good job.”
“Fucking A,” she said, and her face lost some of the hardness as she gave me a slight smile of accomplishment.
The zombies cooperated fully, streaming up the stairs and into the room, usually in pairs or threes. We used the door to control their flow inside. I figured we could take on four at a time, but it never came to that. Still, it quickly got exhausting as they just kept coming.
This went on for about an hour. We bashed, slashed, and battered our way through close to fifty zombies. My arms ached, and the bodies started piling up. It got so bad that we had to drag a few of them into the stairwell or down the hallway.
When the stairwell was clear, I radioed back to Kara and Richard to let them know we were okay.
“Oh, thank God,” Kara said.
“How many deaders do you guys have down there?” I asked.
Richard must have grabbed the walkie-talkie from Kara because he came on next. “There’s still a lot of them. Maybe sixty or eighty in the stairwell and they want at us in the worst way.”
Alex made a motion with her hand that said she wanted to say something. I pressed the talk button and held the walkie-talkie close to her. “We knew we weren’t going to clear the place in one day, but I think this worked.”
“Should we come to you?” Richard asked.
“Yes,” I said. “We can regroup and get ready to do this all over again.”
“Okie-Dokey,” Richard said. “We’re on our way.”
I let out a long sigh of relief. “You did good.”
“What are you saying? That I would punk out?” Alex said.
“No, no, I had full confidence in you. All the way.”
“That was some nasty shit,” she said and her face went slack, lost in the memory of what we had just done. “I don’t know how you’ve done that as many times as you’ve said you’ve done it.”
“I have done it -- too many times. And yes, it is.” I leaned over and put my hands on my knees, feeling a heavy blanket of fatigue fall over me. “But it does take it out of you.”
“I’ll second that,” she said, with a satisfied smile.
“Guys!” Richard screamed over the walkie-talkie speaker. “We’ve got trouble.”
I snatched the walkie-talkie from my pocket and pressed the talk button while feeling a sense of dread sink into my midsection. “What is it?”
“Someone snuck in behind us and opened the door!”
Chapter 6
Disaster
“What?!” I shouted.
Richard didn’t answer right away, but he must have pressed the talk button on his walkie-talkie accidentally.
“Run!” he yelled, but I could tell that his mouth was away from the microphone. I heard the rustling of his clothing and even his footsteps as he ran. There was no disguising the panic in his actions.
“Where’s Kara?” I yelled into the microphone on my walkie-talkie despite knowing full well that he couldn’t hear me.
He didn’t answer, but I could still hear him running, but he was now panting. I could only guess that was mostly from fear because he hadn’t run that far.
“Richard, what is your status?” I asked as Alex walked over beside me.
“Don’t waste your breath,” she said. “He’s panicked, and he’s holding down the talk button.”
We continued to listen, with each passing second, I felt an icy spike of fear pierce into my gut. “I’m not waiting.”
“Wait,” Alex said, reaching out a hand to grab my arm. “They’re coming to us.”
I whirled on her and said, “I don’t know where Kara is!”
She must have seen something in my face because she released my arm. That was good because I was ready to jerk it free.
This floor didn’t have a long, straight hall running the length of it like the one above. A large grouping of offices and small research rooms dominated the middle portion of the floor, blocking any chance of seeing what was happening at the other stairwell. Getting into that mess of rooms would be like being in a maze.
There were two ways to go. One was a hallway on the front of the building with windows overlooking the courtyard between our building and the next one. The other way was to take the back hallway, but I knew it was broken up by several doors and turns. With no light at all back there, it would be like traveling in a cave.
I opted for the front hallway and started for it when Alex asked, “What if Kara and Richard come the other way?”
I turned back to her and said, “Then you take them back to five and keep them safe. Take this.” I tossed the walkie-talkie across fifteen feet, and miraculously, my throw was true, and she caught. “Tell them to come to you.”
“What about you?” she asked.
“I’ll meet you up there.” I turned, ran around a corner, and sprinted down the front
hallway. Sunlight streamed in the windows, seeming bright and airy, incongruous to the turmoil inside.
I made it about a third of the way but had to slow up to navigate around some wreckage from the attack made by the soldiers weeks ago. Pieces of glass littered the floor, and the sunlight caught its edges and made it sparkle like diamonds. Jagged pieces of broken metal stretched from the outside wall, reaching inward like raking claws.
I jumped and dodged, determined that I would find my way to Kara and Richard. After getting around the wreckage, I dead-ended into a set of sturdy double doors, and I hoped with all my heart that they were unlocked. The first side I tried to open was locked tight, but the next set wasn’t.
The door creaked loudly, sounding like a crypt opening, revealing another long hallway, but there were no windows in this corridor. The only light came from random cracks and holes that resulted from the soldier’s attack. It was better than the pitch blackness of the back hall, but not by a lot.
“Kara!” I yelled. “Richard!”
I didn’t hear anything, so I plunged full speed ahead. In the mostly dark corridor, that was a bad idea. After about ten steps, something caught my ankle and spilled me across the hall. Sections of flesh tore away from my elbows as I rolled across the floor, but I jumped back to my feet, cursing like a sailor and slowing my pace to keep from breaking my neck in the dark.
I came by a door on my right, but bypassed it, not wanting to get lost inside all the twists and turns of those offices. I kept going and made it to another door. When I opened it, I heard Richard shouting. “Kara, where are you?”
That wasn’t a good sign. They were separated.
The next thing I heard was the guttural moans, groans, and grunts of the undead, rising in a dissonant chorus. The walls muffled the sounds, but it told me that there was enough of them that we were in trouble. Kara was in danger.
“KARA!” I shouted.
Three gunshots boomed through the walls, and I started in that direction but stopped when I heard two more shots. These seemed more distant. They were coming from inside the maze of offices and research rooms.
“Dammit,” I said. Getting in there with all the undead on their way wasn’t something I was looking forward to, but I’d fight through a horde of zombies to get to Kara.
I searched for a doorway to work my way inside and saw one about ten feet away. Just before I made it to it, the door burst open and Richard stumbled out, facing away from me, his rifle up as he fired back in the direction he had come from.
The muzzle flashes lit up the corridor like chain lightning with the noise of each shot booming like thunder. When he let up, I heard the moans of the undead filtering out of the darkness.
I moved in beside him, and he jumped in the air and whirled toward me with his rifle.
“It’s me, it’s me!” I shouted.
He relaxed just a little but quickly turned back to the doorway and blasted off two more shots.
I grabbed the door and flung it open, so I could see. What I saw chilled me to my core. Zombies crowded a small hallway from wall-to-wall. Three or four of their kind were down on the floor in bloody masses, but the others didn’t care. They just surged over the downed bodies of their brethren in death. We caught a break because the fallen bodies caused the leading zombies to trip and stumble, clogging the hallway. That would give me a few seconds as it would take them some time to untangle themselves.
“You can’t go in there,” Richard said, his voice ragged and nearing hysteria.
“Where’s Kara?” I asked.
He went to shut the door, but I held it open.
“You cannot go in there,” he said. “We got separated. It was crazy. She went the back way. I stumbled into the offices and ran toward the front.” He wiped a hand over his sweat-soaked face. “It’s crazy in there.”
“How can I get to her?” I asked.
“Can I shut the fucking door, please?”
I let him push it shut, and he placed his back against it.
“Help me find something to block it,” he said.
We both looked around, but there was nothing at hand we could use.
“Shit, there’s nothing here,” he said. “We’ve got to run for it.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“Kara and I left the door at the stairwell and started your way. I saw something out of the corner of my eye, and some dark figure was heading for the door. I shouted at him or whoever it was, but they ignored me and opened the stairwell door. It was fucking chaos after that. They were inside.”
“Where’d the guy go?”
“It didn’t matter. The place was full of zombies. We just ran...which is what we should be doing right now.”
“Wait,” I said, grabbing him by the shoulder. “How can I get to Kara?”
“You’re going to need to double back and find a cross corridor or something. Going that way is nothing but suicide. You can’t help her if your ass is dead.”
It took a couple of moments for the rational part of my mind to take in what he said. Me dying would be bad for both of us. The smart play was to do what he said, but that terrified part of my mind that wanted to get to Kara didn’t want to listen. In the end, the zombies made up my mind for me as one slammed into the door, jolting Richard six inches into the hallway.
“Holy shit,” he said, his voice rising in pitch.
“You’re right,” I said, “we’ve got to go.”
“How are we doing this?” He asked. “They’re right behind this door.”
I looked back the way I had come and then said, “You hold them for a few seconds. I’ll run to that door and hold it open.”
The zombies started to batter the door, each impact pushed the door further open, but Richard did his best to hold it closed.
“Shit, shit, shit,” he said. “Go.”
Not wasting any time, I sprinted toward the door and flung it open. “Come on,” I yelled.
He didn’t need to be told twice, but he pushed back against the door as hard as his legs would let him, then sprung from the door. His effort paid off because the zombies pushed doubly hard against his resistance. When he finally let up, the door flew open, spilling their bodies into the hallway in a giant, stinking pile of pickup zombies. Arms, legs, and bodies were hopelessly intertwined, giving us some additional getaway time.
Richard blew through the door doing eighty and did not look back. I took one last look, wondering if that was my best path to get to Kara, but had to concede that it wasn’t. That simple logic told me that a ‘dead me’ could not help Kara.
The door slowly closed on the ball of zombies struggling to get free of each other, and I started after Richard, who had a good head start on me. He was fifty feet ahead of me at the double doors when he slowed down and looked back my way.
“Come on,” he yelled.
My legs, my body, and the rest of me wanted to go, but my heart was saying something different as I ran toward him. It wanted to turn around and blast my way through every stinking, rotting undead thing back there.
My legs won the battle by default as they carried me onto Richard. He opened the door for me to pass through this time and quickly followed. I made it about ten feet when I remembered the door into the office suites and veered off toward it.
“Where are you going?” he asked and I heard disbelief in his tone. It was as if I were going to invite the zombies to brunch.
“I need to find a way to Kara,” I said.
“Man, that’s a bad idea. Those things are in there.”
I turned toward him as I grabbed the door handle. “So is she. You get back to Alex. Stay or leave, but I’m getting Kara out of there.”
“Joel!” he practically screamed in frustration.
“I don’t have a choice,” I said as I flung the door open and went into the darkness.
Chapter 7
Worst-Case Scenario
I heard three quick gunshots as soon as I entered the labyrinth of c
entral offices. A moment later, someone released a long rip of bullets. The several layers of walls muffled the shots, but I still shouted Kara’s name so loudly my felt raw.
Nothing came back, so I ran through a small suite of offices into a narrow corridor. It seemed like these office suites had been put in after the building had been constructed. There was just something makeshift about them as if someone failed to account for all the people who would work there. I could hear someone saying, ‘Oops,’ it looked like they had to shoehorn in a whole set of offices. Everything was cramped with sharp angles and hard edges.
Critiquing office design was not on my radar, though. Getting to Kara was.
The interior of the building was blocked from any sunlight, so the darkness forced me to pop on my flashlight and I discovered I was within another set of offices. I felt as if I were in the Russian doll equivalent to office design, with one office suite just revealing another one. I shined it around the space and saw the typical set-up. A reception desk sat in front of a free-standing wall with two offices just behind it. One of the offices had an open door, displaying a desk and a bookshelf. The other door was closed tight.
There was nothing to be gained here, so I ducked out a door at the back of this suite, which placed me in a narrow hallway. I stopped there to listen intently for a few seconds. The muffled sound of zombie moans and groans came from somewhere in front of me, but there was no way to tell if they were to my left, right or center. I could tell that there were a lot of them, though, because their groans made it through several sets of walls that stood between them and me.
Four quick shots broke through the indistinct murmurs of the zombies, and those shots came from my right. Whoever had fired let off another set of shots, but this time it was as if they were really letting loose. I cut up the hallway and scanned for an exit door in the direction of where the shots came from and spotted another exit door.
Once I left that suite, I found myself in a proper corridor, wide enough for four people to walk side-by-side. The sounds of the zombies were more prevalent here, their groans seemed more distinct and closer by. I could even hear the sloppy shambling of their feet.
Books of the Dead (Book 8): The Living Dead Girl Page 4
