Books of the Dead | Book 9 | Dead of Winter

by Spears, R. J.

  Richard crossed his arms and slumped in his chair, properly chastened.

  “We just need to have a plan,” Alex said. “Joel, this is your show, so you’re going, but Richard, you know the tunnels since you worked down here.”

  “Oh great,” Richard said, tossing his hands in the air.

  “I can do it myself,” I spat out, but knew I sounded petulant.

  “No, you can’t, you dumb ass,” Alex said. “Unless you want to die.”“Well, dying would certainly put a crimp in my plans,” I said. “Are you going?” I asked Alex.

  “Hell yeah,” she said. “It sounds like so much fun. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  I looked to Brother Ed and asked, “You in, Brother Ed?”

  It took him a moment to answer, but he finally said, “Yes.”

  Oh, a man of few words.

  Lori raised her hand as she was in school.

  “You don’t have to raise your hand,” I said. “Just ask your question.”

  “If you’re going to be out there among the zombies, shouldn’t you take the vaccine before you go?”

  “No,” I said. “We don’t have enough for all of us. Plus, we need to hold at least one dose back for Doctor Richter to examine.”

  Richard said, “I’d take a dose.”

  “Don’t be a wuss,” Alex said, shooting him a hot look.

  He didn’t whither, but he slumped in his chair again.

  “So, it’s settled. Tomorrow morning, we leave for our reconn of the tunnels,” I said.

  “I can’t wait,” Alex said. “It’ll be like fucking Christmas.” She put up a finger and added, “This is just a proof-of-concept mission. If there’s a shit ton of zombies clogging up those tunnels, then we’re aborting.”

  I just had to place my hopes on two things. One was that the zombies were, indeed, not clogging the tunnels and, two, that whatever zombies were there were slowed by the cold. Those were two big ‘ifs,’ but you gotta have hope, don’t you?

  Chapter 6

  Reconnaissance

  “I want to go,” Naveen said, her legs spread and her arms crossed as she tried her best to block the corridor.

  “You’re not going,” I said. “And that’s that.”

  “Doctor Richter says he needs me if we’re going to help Kara,” she shot back.

  “This isn’t the real trip,” I said. “We need to see if we can even use the tunnels. We have no idea if they are safe enough.”

  “But what if you get partway and they block you from coming back?” She asked. “Then you might have to leave right then and there.”

  “That would only happen if things got really, really bad.”

  “But we have had many nasty things happen to us,” she said. “Shouldn’t we be prepared for the worst?”

  She had a point, but I just couldn’t put her through the risk. If we got down in those tunnels and everything went to shit, I’d never forgive myself if I got Naveen hurt. Sure, she wouldn’t get infected because she had the vaccine, but that didn’t mean that the zombies wouldn't tear her to pieces.

  “Final word is you’re not going,” I said, then added. “This is not up for discussion.”

  And I hated myself for sounding like a parent, but the world seemed upside down because most times, it was someone else trying to parent me.

  Her chin fell almost to her chest, making my heart nearly break, but I held my resolve.

  “When it’s really go-time,” I said, “you’re on the team, but not before.”

  Man, I hated lying.

  It was my job to get Brother Ed and I was not looking forward to it. His mood had been nothing but a huge downer lately, but I didn’t like the idea of not having him on the team. Despite being a world-class sourpuss, he was competent in most situations and had saved my ass more than once.

  Plus, he had pissed me off with his barb about Kara. I still felt the sting of it.

  It took some fortitude to knock on his door. Somehow, I found the courage.

  Through the door, he said, “Come in.”

  I pushed my way inside to find Brother Ed sitting on the edge of his bed, looking down at the floor. His shoulders drooped and his overall countenance was that of a man on death row.

  “You up to this?” I asked.

  He slowly raised his head and looked at me. There was a deep sadness behind his eyes, but also something else. It might have been resolve or it could have been resignation? Who knows, really? You know the say, still waters run deep, but sometimes rivers are full of shit.

  He asked, “I’m sorry about what I said. I was out of line.”

  “Don’t think about it,” I said with a casual wave of my hand.

  He fixed me with his eyes and I could see some life in them.

  “Joel, are you still praying like when Kara was with you?”

  I wasn’t expecting that question. It wasn’t a gut punch, but it still stunned me somewhat.

  I took a long breath, let out, and said, “You know, Brother Ed, I’m not all that pleased with the Big Guy right now. Not after He let what happened to Kara happen.”

  “You know, it doesn’t work that way,” he said. “God ain’t throwing down harm on folks. We are a fallen people. We are sinful. Whatever happens to us, it’s ‘cause we are disobedient. We bring whatever pain and suffering down on ourselves.”

  I felt a surge of heat rise into my face. “Kara didn’t do anything to deserve what happened to her.”

  Brother Ed put up his hands and said, “I’m talking about a single person, I’m talking about us -- as people. Just like Adam, we turned our backs on Him.”“I’m telling you, Kara didn’t,” I said and my voice went up an octave.

  “What about you?”

  “Well, if you want to know, I’m more than a little pissed off with the man upstairs.”

  “With how He talks directly to you,” Brother Ed said. “With the visions He sends you, you’d think that you’d have a little more faith.”

  I really didn’t want to go into it, but I had a feeling he wouldn’t let up. “Let’s just say that my faith is a little stretched right now.”

  “If God were sending me visions and talking right at me, my faith would never waver.”

  “Not even if He let the woman you love get turned into some kind half-human creature that wants you dead?”

  Brother Ed rubbed a hand across his face and said, “I’m sorry, Joel. I didn’t mean to get your dander up. Just don’t let your anger get in between you and God.”

  I decided that it was time to end this conversation. “Are you going with us, or not?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got to go because you need me,” he said as he slipped on his boots and grabbed his gear.

  Ten minutes later, the “away team” was headed down the back stairwell. It was the long way, but we had our reasons. On the way down, I couldn’t help but look into the courtyard. A few dozen zombies milled about, looking like little frosty the snowmen with a light coating of snow covering them. That’s why we treaded lightly as we proceeded down the stairs. No use drawing in any unwanted attention.

  As soon as we hit the landing on the third floor, Brother Ed asked, “Do you think he’s still down here?”

  The ‘he’ Brother Ed was referring to was the ghost of Private Juan Soto. Yes, we not only have to deal with zombies, but there are ghosts in our story. (I half expected a vampire to show up any day now to complete our trinity of the undead. That would be cool, as long as they didn’t sparkle.)

  Not to belabor the point, but Soto had died here during our epic showdown with Colonel Kilgore. Some nasty shit must have happened to Soto because somehow he was bound to this building by an unholy curse or some other black magic. And he didn’t like Brother Ed at all. For some reason, Soto thought that Brother Ed was the reason he was stuck on this plane of existence.

  My biggest bone to pick with Soto was that he was the one that opened the door we had locked when we were clearing the third floor. That released the zombie
s that ultimately got to Kara, and one of them bit her, causing her to turn. So, I was no fan of Private Soto, but we had bigger fish to fry. Still, there were nights we heard him rambling around, emitting his pitiful ghostly moans.

  “Let’s just get on down the stairs,” I said.

  No sooner had I said that than we heard something move toward us down the long hallway that spanned the middle of the third floor. The entry door to the floor was just a few feet away. A three-foot by two-foot, head height, tempered glass window gave us a view into the murky darkness.

  “Oh shit,” Richard said as he backed away from the window, nearly knocking me over in his haste to get away from the door.

  “Don’t freak out over Casper,” Alex said.

  “He nearly killed me,” Brother Ed said, recounting the time Soto had knocked him senseless and left him laid out on the floor.

  “Listen, he’s in there, and we’re out here,” I said. “So, I think we’re safe.”

  That’s when we heard the first door slam open. It was the first in a succession of doors flying open on both sides of the hallway. Each one of them slammed against the wall, sending sprays of drywall dust into the air on impact. It was a furious cascade coming straight at us like a wave.

  “Let’s make a run for it,” I said.

  No one needed to be told twice as the pounding impact of the doors swelled toward us. We were off and running at top speed in seconds. Air whooshed out into the hallway as the doors slammed shut, rushing over us. When the air touched my body, I half-expected it to turn into a hand, and then it would jerk me into one of the rooms, never to be seen again.

  Well, that did not happen as we sprinted along, each one of us ready for the Olympic trials.

  We were past the next landing in what felt like milliseconds, and I could swear I heard an unholy sound that was a combination of wail and tortured scream. It was so loud, it nearly covered the sounds of our footfalls.

  Needless to say, I didn’t look back and doubted anyone else did either.

  We made it to the first floor quickly, where it was delightfully quiet and zombie-free. No small amount of effort went into it. In fact, we had cleared it twice. Once before Kara’s attack and once after. It was a lot harder the second time around, but we scavenged some materials from the rest of the building to fill in the broken floor-to-ceiling windows that had been blasted in when Kilgore’s helicopter crashed into the courtyard. The second time was when Kara smashed her way in with her zombie herd following on her heels.

  Still, there were open spots with clear views into the courtyard to the west and the two-lane street to our south. When I spied out through these openings, I sometimes spotted small clumps of zombies shuffling along. Their normal grayish skin looked almost off-white, which must have been a by-product of the cold temperatures outside. Inside, our breaths puffed out from our mouths as we exhaled. There was no heat below our floor. Even though the solar panels on the roof had been damaged, we were still able to harvest enough of the sun’s energy to give us a modicum of heat. It wasn’t plentiful. Just enough to cut the edge.

  The Medical Center at the university was like a small city in and to itself. There was the main hospital building, which stood twelve stories. On either of its sides were the cancer building and the brain and spine center. There was even a dental school. Basically, if it was medical-related, this place was your one-stop-shop. There was even a Wendy’s restaurant in the hospital. Just thinking of a juicy hamburger made my mouth water a little, but I had more important things on my mind. Like not drawing the attention of the zombies plodding around outside.

  Their numbers were much less than in the past, and the ones out there walked with the stiffness of a geriatric. This supported my working theory that they were slower in the winter. We had seen this the previous winter, so I was still collecting data to support my hypothesis.

  Alex had a point and led us to the door to the tunnels. It was a nondescript metal door that looked more like an entryway to a janitor’s closet. There was no window in the door to give us any preview, so we were going in blind.

  “Should I stop to listen?” Alex asked while leaning her head close to the crack in the door.

  “Looks like you’re already doing that,” I whispered.

  She narrowed her eyes and said, “Shut up.”

  Richard said, “Just open the door.”

  “Do you want to do it?” She asked toward Richard, who put up his hands in a gesture of surrender.

  “Okay, everyone shut up and let me open this damn door,” she said.

  She reached down, grabbed the handle, and slowly cracked the door. Too bad for us. The door creaked open like a crypt door, which certainly didn’t keep us in stealth mode.

  Alex pushed her head toward the opening. She twisted her head slightly, turning her ear toward the crack. It was plain to see that she was concentrating on listening.

  We stood there, stacked up like planes, ready to taxi at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. Alex closed her eyes tightly, focusing intently.

  Apparently, the suspense was killing Richard because he asked, “What do you hear?”

  Alex opened her eyes and slowly turned to look back at Richard, then said, “Fucking zombies. What do you think I’m going to hear? The Mormon Tabernacle Choir?”

  Chapter 7

  First Encounter

  Alex carefully opened the door, doing her best to keep the screeching down to a minimum. I was certain every zombie trolling around down in the tunnels knew we were up there. A dank smell wafted up toward us with an undercurrent of something sickeningly sweet. It was like something that had gone bad. Very bad.

  “Is this really necessary?” Richard asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “And we’re not going over the reasons again.” I crowded in behind him to block any exit and said, “Let’s go.”

  Richard took in a deep breath for resolve and nodded his head.

  With that, we started down the stairs into the darkness. It was just as creepy as descending into a cave full of vampire bats. The temperature definitely dropped with each step, or maybe than was the tendrils of icy cold fear permeating my body.

  Below us in the dark, the sound of shuffling feet and low moans filtered up the stairs. As we had planned, we held our fingers over the fronts of our flashlights, dimming the light, to hopefully prevent tipping off the zombies in the tunnels. We knew there was no way we could get down there and move around without them noticing it, but we wanted to put it off for as long as possible.

  We hit the landing between the two floors, and Alex paused, slowly turning back to our little adventure group. In a low whisper, “Just to confirm; once we get down there, we take a right, then head left where we will find an intersection?”

  Richard whispered back, “Yes. If that way is clear, we have two more turns. Then a straight away and another intersection. It’s been a while, but I think that will put us below the building with the bulldozer. There are a couple of fuzzy parts in there.”

  “Fuzzy parts?” I asked.

  “Hey, it’s been over two years since I’ve been down in these tunnels,” Richard said. “I sure as hell didn’t make a map, and I know for damn sure there were no zombies down there back then.”

  “You getting wrapped a little too tight?” Alex asking, looking right at Richard.

  “Maybe,” Richard said, looking down.

  “Well, from the sounds coming up from below, we know it isn’t going to be clear,” Alex said, “so, be ready. We go with hand weapons first.”

  She held up a crowbar, waving it back and forth. I held up my trusty aluminum baseball bat. Richard had a piece of metal pipe. He had wrapped the end of it in duct tape to provide a better grip. Brother Ed didn’t even try to lift his long-handled hand ax, not caring to play in our reindeer games. (See Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer to understand that reference.)

  “Let’s get down there,” Alex said.

  While heading down the last set of stairs, I couldn’t he
lp but notice that Richard slowly let me slip in behind Alex. Chicken shit.

  Alex hit bottom, and when I edged up next to her, I saw a partially open door ahead. Alex splashed her light at the crack, and I could swear I saw a shadow drift by the opening. Of course, whatever made that shadow took immediate notice of the light beam spraying out into the corridor.

  The shadow passed by the opening again, and I knew we were at a make or breakpoint. We all knew what that shadow was. All Richard needed was an excuse. Brother Ed had given up before we even started. Alex was on the fence.

  “Hold on, folks,” I said as I pushed by Alex. “I got this.”

  “What the hell?” Alex said.

  I shoved the door wide open, and lo and behold, a zombie stood before me, blinking at the brilliance of my flashlight. I knew that wouldn’t last, so I took the initiative.

  “Shine your lights on it,” I said as I stuffed my flashlight in my coat pocket.

  The zombie got over being blinded by our lights and started toward me with a low, hungry growl. I was way ahead of it and planted both my feet and turned my body, putting myself in a batter’s stance. It kept coming toward me, and I timed my swing perfectly.

  The zombie stuck out its right arm and reached for me. That put it within my zone, and I started my swing, uncoiling my tensed-up muscles, going for the fences. My bat connected with the side of the zombie’s head with a bone-crunching sound, and I felt the impact in my arms. It felt good.

  The zombie whipped sideways as if it had been yanked away by a power winch. Its body rolled across the hall and hit it with a dull thud.

  Richard whispered out, “Holy shit.”

  I jerked out my flashlight and shined it down the tunnel in both directions. That’s when the smell of decay washed over me. It was dulled by the cold, but it was still there, filling my nostrils.

  When I say tunnel, I’m not talking about some rough-hewn cave-like passageway. The tunnels that connected most of the buildings in the complex had concrete floors, and the walls were yellow brick that were coated with something shiny. In some places, the walls spanned uninterrupted by locked doors, and in other areas, doors led off into rooms with different sorts of purposes. Most of them functioned as labs or maintenance.