Books of the Dead | Book 9 | Dead of Winter

by Spears, R. J.

  I heard Richard make a gagging noise.

  “Hold your shit together,” Alex said. “Do not toss your cookies on me.”

  Richard had battled zombies before, but the tight confines of the tunnel seemed to amplify the stench of the dead.

  Two dozen bodies littered the hallway. Some had been torn apart, being barely more than bones with dried pieces of meat on them. A few had obviously been zombies that someone had dispatched, but they were long dead.

  “It’s clear enough,” I said. “We need to get moving.”

  I strode down the hallway, hoping my enthusiastic momentum would pull the rest of the party with me. I made it twenty feet when I turned around and looked back at the rest of my intrepid ‘away team.’ Their faces held dumbfounded expressions as they stood just outside the door.

  “Are you coming?” I said. Notice I did not add, “Or not?”

  Alex was the first to start moving, but not before she reached back and tugged at Richard’s arm. “Come on, asshole.”

  The two of them moved toward me, and Brother Ed fell in behind them, his shoulders slumped. My infectious confidence didn’t seem to be spreading.

  Chapter 8

  The Nest

  I probably got a little cocky after our first encounter. Facing off with a single zombie was just too easy, and I knew better. That didn’t prevent me from forging ahead with unfounded gusto, skirting around corpses, and doing my best to avoid any of the gooey messiness oozing away from the bodies. It was not a pretty sight, so I kept my eyes up and scanned ahead.

  Like we had done before when we came down the stairs, I placed my fingers over the front of my flashlight to hopefully not announce our presence. This left me at a disadvantage because both my hands were in use. In hindsight, we should have come up with a better system, but I was overly eager to get this plan in motion.

  The rest of the team had almost caught up to me as I approached a corner. We were nearly down to crawling speed, though. I could practically feel Alex’s breath on my shoulder as she crowded in behind me.

  We came to a complete stop, and I eased my head around the corner to get a peek at what was ahead. What I saw was a long tunnel spanning off into the darkness, but that wasn’t all I spotted. A group of figures stood about forty feet down the tunnel, standing still, reminding me of mannequins. But I knew they weren’t mannequins.

  I dropped the nose of the flashlight down to the floor and put out my hand to tell the team to hold up when Alex bumped into me, knocking me off balance. I took a fumbling step into the new corridor, and my foot hit something slick and wet. I let out an involuntary gasp as my foot slipped forward.

  The only thing that kept me from sliding headfirst into the new corridor was Alex wrapping an arm around me. She must have gotten my earlier cue that we needed to proceed with caution and yanked me back.

  “What the hell did you see?” She asked in a whisper after she pulled me to my feet.

  I lifted my flashlight, and it cast a dim light on our faces as the others gathered around me. The light bathed our faces in ghoulish Halloween shadows. Brother Ed looked the most ghostly with his already gaunt face and sharp cheekbones.

  “I think we have a nest,” I said.

  “A what?” Richard asked.

  “That’s what we called them down south,” I said. “It’s when a group of zombies gather into a group and just stay there.”

  “Why the hell do they do that?” Richard said, his voice betraying some frustration.

  “No one knows, but we had some theories,” I responded. “Like I said before, with food scarce, they went into a sort of hibernation or stasis to conserve energy. It could be that, or they are waiting for some kind of cue. We mostly saw it in the winter months. Maybe it’s like bears hibernating?”

  “Okay, Mister Science, what the hell do we do about it?” Alex asked.

  “We pull back and retreat to where we came from,” Richard said. “That’s what we do.”

  “No, no,” I said. “It looks like there are only a dozen of them. We can take them.”

  “Is that a good idea?” Richard asked.

  I saw Alex reach for the assault rifle dangling from a gun sling off her shoulder.

  I put up a hand and said, “No, we can’t shoot. At least not yet. We have no idea if there isn’t a lot more down that way. Shooting will be like ringing the dinner bell.”

  “So, you want us to go hand-to-hand with a dozen or so zombies in a near pitch-black tunnel? Well, count me out.”

  Richard did have a point, but I had done stupider things in my short life.

  “Well, this intersecting tunnel goes in both directions,” I said as I pointed back to the corridor with the nest. “When you described it, this is a long tunnel. What if someone drew them down away from the intersection and got them out of our way?”

  “Who would be dumb enough to do that?” Richard asked.

  “Me,” I said. “There are rooms off these tunnels. I can go so far, duck into one of them and let the zombies pass by.”

  “How do you know if any of that will work?” Alex asked.

  “It’s a dang dumb and dangerous idea,” Brother Ed mumbled out.

  “I’m with him,” Richard said as he pointed a thumb toward Brother Ed.

  “Listen,” I said, putting as much steel in my voice as I could without talking at full volume. “We’re going to have to do this eventually. It’s my theory that they tend to go into this hibernation state more in cold weather. If we have a thaw, then we will be screwed. So, I say we do it now.”

  “And this wouldn’t have anything to do with your crazy-ass plan to save your girlfriend?” Richard asked.

  I took in a deep calming breath then replied, “I’ve laid it out. You can decide whether you want to give this a try, but with or without you, I’m giving this a shot.”

  This was one of those big risk moments. Lay it on the table and see how the cards play out. More than once in my life, these moments ended in a dull and climactic thud of rejection, like the time I tried to ask out a cheerleader in high school. She swatted me down faster than she would smash a fly. Boy, that still stung even after all these years.

  “I’m in,” Alex said, then added, “I guess.”

  It wasn’t a sterling endorsement of my plan, but I’d take it.

  “I think it’s dumb, but I’ll give it a try,” Brother Ed said.

  Can you feel it? That’s what I call optimism.

  “What if you duck in a room full of sleeping zombies?” Richard asked.

  “Then I’ll deal with that when it comes,” I said.

  “Okay, but I’m not risking my ass down here if things go south,” Richard said.

  “I don’t expect any of us to do anything risky or crazy down here,” I said.

  “Except you,” Alex said, looking directly at me.

  “Well, that goes without saying,” I replied, trying to smile but not really pulling it off. With the garish light filling our faces from below, I’m sure I looked more like a ghoul from a 1920s German silent movie.

  We cautiously moved down the corridor until we were just a few feet from the door to the stairs. That was when I laid out my master plan.

  It wasn’t as complicated as the D-Day invasion at Normandy, but it had some twists and turns. I only hoped it worked for my sake and theirs. Kara was somewhere in those hopes, too.

  Chapter 9

  The Waiting Game

  I cautiously glided to the corner and took another quick peek at the nest of zombies. Just like the ones I had seen in the past, they stood tightly packed together, slowly swaying back and forth. Also, like before, they emitted the lightest of dissonant moans. It sounded like guttural humming, but there was nothing melodic about it. In fact, it made my skin crawl.

  They remained oblivious to me, but I knew better than to disturb them. From my past experience, I knew loud noises broke their trances, so I vowed to keep as quiet as I could.

  Tip-toeing, I slipped around t
he corner and headed down the intersecting corridor, heading away from the zombies. Once I got into the corridor, the distance between the intersection and the first room seemed a lot further than I had estimated. Like a mile or two, but maybe the fact that there were a dozen or so zombies in a trance not that far away.

  The left side of the hallway was lined with what looked like lockers. They were painted a dull yellow, and a few still even had combination locks dangling from their latches.

  I put the lockers out of my head because they were inconsequential. As before, I had my fingers blocking the beam of my flashlight. Diffuse light spilled out, giving me about ten feet of tepid illumination. Every three or four steps, I stopped to listen to make sure I wasn’t walking into a swarm of zombies. The only thing I heard was a slow drip of water.

  My light splashed on a door just ahead on my right. It was the heavy wooden type with a window at head height. As I got closer to it, I hoped like hell that it was unlocked. With my light dimmed, I couldn’t see another door ahead.

  As I got close to the door, I took a look over my shoulder to make sure that the baker’s dozen of zombies weren't shuffling my way. All I saw was darkness behind me. There was no sound of moving feet or zombie’s groans and grunts.

  My hand hit the metal doorknob, and it felt almost chilled in my grip. Of course, it was winter, and the place was rather cold. When I breathed, I saw my breath puff out.

  This was the moment of truth. Time to turn the knob.

  The gods shined down on me because it did turn. Unlike the door at the top of the stairs, somebody must have oiled the hinges on this one. It opened with only the slightest of whisper-like creaks.

  I stepped inside and took my hand off the front of my flashlight, splashing the beam around the room. Two heavy metal desks sat at the front of the room. Paperwork and tools littered one of them, while the other one was quite neat. My light hit the wall on my left, and I saw a pegboard filled with every sort of tool, ranging from screwdrivers to hammers to drills. My brilliant deductive mind deduced that this was a janitor’s office. At the back was a cage-like structure with a criss-crossing metal fence, pinning in heavier equipment ranging from industrial sweepers to floor polishers.

  Inventorying the room was low on my priority list. I knew every second I was in here and away from the group was a second that Richard could get squirrely on me. He was barely on board with this mission, so I knew I had to act and do it fast.

  I turned back to the door and cracked it open wide enough for me to get my head and one shoulder outside of the opening. It was time to get this show on the road.

  I let my flashlight blaze down toward the nest of zombies. I purposefully took the brightest flashlight we had, and its beam was like a laser. It did lose some of its intensity over the distance, but still, it splashed over the zombies, making them look like grayish-yellow people napping standing up.

  At first, they didn’t seem to notice, so I decided to double down.

  “Hey, you undead assholes,” I said, my voice echoing down the hallway. “Time for wakey-wakey.”

  That got their attention, but it was as if someone were slowly turning up the current to reanimate a robot. They moved languidly as if in slow motion. Their eyes fluttered open and closed, still looking sleepy.

  “Breakfast is served,” I said. “Come and get it.”

  That seemed to be the deal maker. The zombies shifted almost in unison and started my way. My question was what to do next. My plan only went as far as getting them headed down the hall in my direction. I had accomplished that, but the real trick was to get them to pass me by.

  That’s where my second flashlight came into action. In my limited time in college, I took a spelunking class. (No, it did not help my flagging GPA at the time.) One thing our instructor drilled into us when we went into a cave was to never just have one flashlight.

  I decided these tunnels were just like a cave. Ergo, I had a second flashlight.

  What I did was flip it on. Then I leaned down to floor level and laid the flashlight on the concrete surface. I took one last look at the zombies and saw they were still just stirring to life.

  I clicked the light on the second flashlight, then grabbed the front end of it. Now came the tricky part. I slid it forward along the floor, and then with as much force as I could muster, I flung it down the hallway away from me and the door, away from the intersection where the rest of my group were hidden.

  It slid along the floor perfectly at first, its light shining back down the tunnel toward the zombies, but then it began to wobble. The wobble became a spin, and then the flashlight bounced off a wall and rolled perpendicular to the wall. This frenetic roll went on for another twenty feet before it collided with the wall, and the light winked out.

  I was of a double mind on whether it stayed on or went off. A part of me had hoped it would have remained on to draw them away. The other part of me feared that had it stayed on, the zombies may have clustered upon it. They are not the sharpest knives in the drawer, and like moths, they may have just decided to stay by the flame.

  With it off, I’d find out if having it off worked for or against me.

  By my estimates, my second flashlight had ended its journey nearly forty-feet away from my door. I just hoped it was far enough to draw them away. My secondary desire was that they would just continue down the hall and maybe, (if God shined on us from above) take the T-intersection and just keep on going in search of food. (Food was me, by the way.)

  I clicked off the beam of my remaining flashlight and said, “Get’em before they're gone, hot tasty humans.”

  Now, all I could do was listen.

  Like in almost all of my past encounters with the walking dead, they really didn’t make all that much noise, but the tunnel amplified it. Their footfalls and shuffling noises echoed my way, along with their grunts, groans, and moans.

  I pulled myself back inside the room further, leaving only the side of my head in the opening, listening intently. My whole plan depended on their limited intelligence. They had seen the beam of that second flashlight go down the hallway and heard my voice. Without anything else to go on, they would head toward that noise. By walking in the pitch-black, it was my hope that they would just keep heading down the corridor and past my door, drawn away by my ruse.

  If for some reason, they had gotten smarter and decided to camp outside my door, then I was up shit creek without a paddle.

  I closed the door down to just a narrow crack and focused my entire being on listening. They were getting closer by the second. In the dark, I heard them bounce off the walls, but they kept coming. Their moans got more insistent, and for a moment, I was absolutely certain that they would stop outside my door.

  Just as I sensed they were about upon me, I carefully pulled the door fully closed. It made the slightest of thuds as it shut. I was sure it sounded like a bass drum being pounded.

  The shuffling footsteps and moaning got closer by the second, and I could hear my own heart beating in my ears. Seconds ticked by, and I could barely hear them outside over my breathing.

  Step by step, they got closer and closer. Their moans sounded just outside the door. My mind whirled and spun. What if there was another smart zombie out there? Or even one with half a brain? Even a quarter of a brain, or just enough brain to turn a doorknob?

  I reached up and grasped the doorknob in my hand, holding it tightly. If one of those dead sons of bitches decided to grab that doorknob, then I sure as hell was going to do my best to keep them from getting inside.

  My hand felt like it was about the break from the pressure I was applying. My palm started to seep sweat, and I was sure it would slip off. I was equally certain it would prove to be my undoing.

  Then they passed the door and moved down the corridor. It seemed like every one of my muscles uncoiled at that moment. I even felt my knees go weak. If it weren’t manly, I was sure I would swoon.

  Again, I waited, but this time I played the patience gam
e, counting to a hundred. Just to be safe, I counted to one hundred a second time as I listened to the zombies slowly ambling away from the room.

  When I finally felt they were far enough down the tunnel, I braved opening my door. Without turning on my light, I stepped into the corridor and listened again. The sound of the zombies shuffling along began to decay, transitioning from sharper footfalls to dull thumps. Then it slipped down to gentle brushing sounds, and after a while, it was gone entirely.

  Score one for Joel. My crazy dumb-ass plan worked.

  Well, almost. That was about the time I heard something clank behind me.

  Chapter 10

  Out of the Cage

  Greg’s number one rule was: Always clear the room.

  Greg had been our leader back in Portsmouth, and he had taught me everything I know about surviving the apocalypse. He had taken me under his wing and nurtured me while I’m sure I frustrated the shit out of him. That was until he died.

  Because I ignored one of his basic tenets, I was sure I was about to join him in the afterlife.

  A second clanking noise sounded behind me. That was followed by a guttural groan, and I knew I was in trouble.

  My hand went to my rifle, but I knew if I took one shot, that little conga line of zombies would undoubtedly turn around, and then I’d be trapped in this room until I either starved to death or made some kind of wild attempt at an escape. I tended to think the wild escape plan would be my only option, but once again, that would involve lots of shooting. That would mean the whole plan of getting to the bulldozer would be just as dead as the zombies wandering outside.

  My first question was whether to turn on my flashlight. There was a chance that the light would spill under the door and into the hall, but it seemed a low risk. Another part of me didn’t want to turn on the light. What I couldn’t see couldn’t hurt me, right?