Books of the Dead | Book 9 | Dead of Winter

by Spears, R. J.

  Childish, I know.

  I flicked on my light and wished I had left it off.

  Two zombies pushed through one of the gates at the back of the room. They were both tall and gangly. They were also quite gruesome looking. Their bodies were ravaged by decomposition, with pieces of flesh dangling off in places. The odor wafting off of them was also very unpleasant. Who knew how long they had been in there?

  Of course, time did not diminish their hunger as they shambled toward me, making expectant moans. I ducked behind one of the desks and placed my flashlight on it. Its beam blasted onto one of the zombies, bleaching it out, and casting its long shadow onto the wall.

  Thing 1, which is what I decided to call the one closest to me, lumbered around the desk. But I was waiting on him with my trusty baseball bat in hand. I

  t stuck out a long, thin arm toward me. I swung, but it shifted, and my blow struck it in the shoulder. I felt something crunch with the impact, and the thing’s arm went dead.

  Still, it had two of them, and it swung the second one at me. With a mighty backswing, I batted that arm away, and the momentum of my impact spun the thing completely around. The action knocked the deader off balance and dropped it to its knees, facing away from me. It was all too simple. I raised my bat above my head and, in a tomahawk motion, caved the dead thing’s skull in.

  One down, one to go.

  That’s when Thing 2 rammed into me, driving me forward like all All-Pro defensive lineman. Its shoulder slammed into my ribs and drove the air out of my lungs. My next impact was against the front wall. It’s sort of hard to stand when you can’t breathe, so this time, my knees did give out. They slammed onto the concrete floor, sending a jarring pain up my legs and into my hips.

  The zombie wrapped its arms around me in a bear hug, trapping my arms against my side. All the while, it tried to get a piece of my midsection with its mouth. I heard its teeth clacking closed, but somehow I had managed to twist my torso frantically away from the thing’s snapping teeth. It still held onto me like a pro-wrestler, squeezing me even tighter. I felt less and less air getting into my lungs, and the world started to dim.

  After being a smashing success, this little mission had certainly gone off the rails. To such an extent, I just might be dead at any moment now.

  I put all my remaining strength into keeping my body away from this ravenous thing’s mouth. Its teeth clamped hard onto my side, and I let out a yelp of pain. Fortunately, my jacket kept it from piercing my skin. Still, it hurt like a son of a bitch.

  To make matters worse, consciousness started to elude me as Thing 2 started to compact my midsection, pressing the air out of me like I was a balloon. It was looking like this was going to be it. The demise that I had denied too many times.

  My vision began to pinpoint down to a single point. My strength deserted me as I made one last attempt to escape, but I was all out of steam.

  The next thing I knew was a light filled my eyes, and I was sure it was a beam from heaven, ready to take me up and away from this misbegotten world.

  Suddenly, the zombie released its death grip on my midsection, and blessed air flowed back into my lungs. Along with it came consciousness. That’s when I saw the zombie on the floor with the side of its head smashed in.

  My eyes were filled with floating spots as a result of being blasted by what I perceived to be a heavenly light. That turned out to be pretty far from the truth.

  “What the hell are you doing in here? Jerking off?” A voice asked.

  It was familiar, but I was still addled from almost being crushed.

  Whoever held the light dropped it from my face, and I saw Alex standing above me.

  I choked out, “You came.”

  “I couldn’t let you have all the fun,” she said.

  In a breathy voice, I said, “Thanks.”

  “Stop fucking around,” she said. “Your crazy-ass plan worked. The way is clear for a bit, but who knows how long before those undead fuckers clog up the works. Let’s get going.”

  All I could say was, “Okay.”

  She helped me to my feet, and I stumbled out of the room and ultimately down the corridor back to Richard and Brother Ed. I wondered if they would be glad to see me?

  Chapter 11

  Door Number One or Door Number Two?

  “Richard, which one of the ways do we take up?” I asked in a hushed tone.

  In truth, one was a door, and the other was actually a wide opening, spanning fifteen-feet wide. The door was closest to us, and the opening was twenty feet further down the tunnel.

  Before arriving at this choice, we had cautiously worked our way through two sets of corridors and found ourselves standing beside a wall with a door and a wider opening that led into darkness. Richard thought one of them would put us in the building’s foyer where the bulldozer was parked. The other one led to only God knows where. Richard thought the door was another tunnel that led to the main hospital, but he wasn’t sure. It could be the way up.

  Our dilemma was that we didn't know which one was our best option.

  Open the wrong one, and you could release untold terrors upon us. Well, in all honesty, we know what terror could be there. The options could be a shit ton of zombies ready to chow down on us or a throng of zombies. Neither sounded appealing. Of course, we could get lucky and find the way up.

  Fat chance of that, though.

  Richard responded appropriately, saying, “Hell if I know.”

  “What?” I asked. “You’re our guide. Our subterranean expert.”

  “I don’t have a fucking photographic memory,” he said. “I might have come this way twice in my time working here.”

  I raised a rigid finger and pointed at him, starting to say something nasty, but Alex cut me off.

  “He doesn’t know,” she spat out. “We’ll just have to check both ways. One will be the right one.”

  “And one could unleash a horde of the undead on us,” I said.

  Alex tilted her head, and one of her eyebrows drifted up in an arch. “You getting a little tense there, Joelly? Do you need to maybe count to ten or take a deep breath?”

  I said, “But we counted on him to--”

  “Calm the fuck down,” she said. “We’ll check the first door, then we’ll know. There’s no other way to do it. You with me?”

  I took her advice and sucked in a deep cleansing breath, then let it out slowly through my nose. I don’t know how much it calmed me, but I said, “Let’s do it.”

  “Which one?” She asked.

  “Ladies choice,” I said.

  “Asshole,” she said. “But you’re checking with me.”

  So much for getting out of it. I motioned for Richard and Brother Ed to take a few steps away as Alex, and I eased our way over to door number one. Maybe it led to a room of gold and treasure? Somehow, I sort of doubted that.

  Once we got outside the door, I whispered, “You open the door. I’ll look in.”

  Any of the playful tone from before was gone, and Alex’s face had become as hard as stone. She just nodded and reached for the doorknob as I positioned myself to look in. Sweat popped out on my forehead, and I felt my pulse quicken.

  She glanced at me and nodded her head again. I brought up my rifle just in case an onslaught of the undead was ready to flow forth.

  She turned the knob and cracked the door. To get the best view, I leaned in toward the opening while I held my flashlight pointed at the floor. The diffused beam flowed into what I had hoped would be a stairwell but turned out to be a large open room with a corridor at the far end. What stood between us and the corridor was about fifty to sixty zombies.

  The sight sucked my breath away, and I expected them to surge toward me at any moment, but instead, they stood still.

  Well, mostly still. Just like the ones we encountered earlier, they swayed back and forth as if listening to some silent chorus that held them in a trance.

  Alex must have seen my expressi
on and whispered, “What is it?”

  I pushed the beam of my flashlight toward the wall behind us, and the light flowing into the room dimmed. I lowered my rifle and mouthed the words, Close the door.

  Alex must not have been able to read my lips.

  I let out the quietest of whispers, “Close the door. Slowly.”

  She must have gotten the message because I’ve never seen anyone close a door so carefully. It made almost no noise at all when it fell into place. She even turned the doorknob glacially slow. Instead of a sharp snap as it fell into place, there was a slight click.

  She whispered, “What did you see?”

  I put up my hand to tell her to wait a moment as I pressed my ear against the door. I listened so hard that I thought my ear might just go through the door. I had no idea if I could actually hear anything, but I felt I had to try. From what little I could hear, there was no movement in the room.

  I withdrew from the door and whispered. “A nest. A big freaking nest.”

  “Okay then. Let’s try door number two.”

  We tip-toed down the hall and rejoined the others. Richard looked poised to make a run for it, but Brother Ed stood bent over with his shoulders slumped. It seemed to be his default position as of late. I’m not sure he would even care if zombies swarmed over him. That kind of attitude made me wonder if he had a death wish, and that was a recipe for disaster.

  “What happened?” Richard said in a voice too loud for the situation.

  I batted the air with my hands to shush him.

  “Keep it down,” I hissed out. “Behind the door we just left is about sixty ravenous zombies. You need to keep your voice quiet.” I paused, then added, “You said that door led to a set of stairs?”

  “Hey,” he said, “I’m not a freaking cartographer. It’s been a year or two since I’ve been in this part of the complex.”

  “We can’t make these kinds of mistakes,” I said, leaning into Richard’s personal space and not caring. “It could get people killed.”

  “Get out of my face,” Richard said, his face filled with color. “I can either punch your lights out, or I can always walk.”

  “Go ahead,” I said in a low growl.

  “There is nothing I’d like to do better,” he said, matching my intensity. “Then you can find your own way out of this maze yourself.”

  Alex stepped in between us and said, “That’s enough of that fuckery. We just need to take the next way.” My better angels took over, and I felt the anger that had flooded my body wash out to sea. But did I apologize for getting in Richard’s face? Of course not. I’m not that big of a man, I guess.

  Alex grabbed my arm, gave me some kind of cop pressure point squeeze, and I felt an electric shock of pain run up my arm to my shoulder.

  “Calm down, little man,” she said as she leaned close to my ear.

  “I’m calm, I’m calm,” I whimpered. “You can ease up on the Vulcan nerve pinch shit.”

  “Fucking nerd,” she said, rolling her eyes. She turned attention to Richard and said, “Get us to the opening.”

  Richard led us toward a wide opening in the wall ahead. It looked to be twenty feet wide but was masked in dark shadows.

  We stood at the edge of it and went through an elaborate listening routine again. Richard seemed like he wanted to convene a blue ribbon fact-finding committee to study the opening. Getting fed up, Alex finally intervened and stepped into the opening, weapon up and ready to let loose.

  It turned out to be the way to the first floor, with a wide set of stairs leading up. Much to our delight, there was not one single zombie in our way.

  A sense of hesitation hung over our little quartet, though, but the interlude was broken when Brother Ed surprised me by elbowing past me. He proceeded to the stairs and started to ascend without saying a word.

  I broke from my spell and rushed to follow him upward. Like him, I didn’t look back to see if Alex or Richard were following, but I heard their footsteps on the stairs as I headed up.

  Chapter 12

  My Little Surprise

  As soon as we passed through a door at the top of the stairs and entered the first floor, I felt a bracing wind hit me in the face. Ahead of us and across an expansive lobby was a two-story set of windows, but many of them had been smashed inward. Broken shards of glass lay strewn across the floor along with other debris. Dark stains I took to be dried blood dotted the floor in places as if some garish abstract painter had gone a little crazy there.

  Sitting dead center at the front of the lobby sat an entrance kiosk made of wood positioned between us and the windows. Someone or something had done a real number on it as splintered wood shot out from its sides, making it look like a porcupine. During the early days of the Outbreak, chaos reigned. I had seen my share of it as the dead tried to take down the living.

  Outside the window, the objective of our mission sat looking as dead as the rest of the world. Past ths said objective were some zombies shuffling along, seemingly without a care in the world. Well, I would imagine that they felt what they always felt -- hunger.

  “There it is,” Brother Ed said.

  “You know, Ed, you have a gift for stating the obvious,” Richard said. He started to say something else, but Alex cut him off.

  “Shhhh,” she hissed out as she pointed toward the broken windows. “Look.”

  All eyes went to the courtyard outside the window. A group of a dozen deaders strolled along, looking aimless and without direction. We all knew if they spotted us, they would quickly find a purpose, and that would be us.

  Collectively, we knew better than to jump away, but we slowly stepped backward, drifting into the shadows as we monitored the small herd of zombies outside. They stumbled along, swaying back and forth as they were buffeted by the frigid west winds. Since they were moving slower than normal, it seemed to take forever for them to pass by the front of the building. We stayed on pins and needles, waiting for one of the deaders to spot us, and then the group would turn toward us. That’s when the real fun would begin.

  I felt the cold seep into my bones as the wind swept in through the jagged glass. As the final lagging zombie passed out of view, I let out a long-held breath.

  “Well, we’ve done it,” Alex said. “We know how to get here. It’s time to head back.”

  “Wait,” I said, “We should check the dozer out.”

  “No, no,” Alex said. “This is just a reconn. Going out there could draw the attention of the deaders. Besides, we’re not ready to go anywhere.”

  Well, that had been their plan, but I had other ideas. Little did my colleagues know, but I had lifted two doses of Doctor M’s miracle vaccine, and they were stuffed in the bottom of my backpack. We had all agreed that there would be an away team to take on the mission of getting the vaccine to Doctor Richter in Cincinnati, but I didn’t want there to be a team. I just could not stomach them taking on the risk of saving Kara. It was my mission. My risk to take. Losing another friend on a Hail Mary mission was something I was going to avoid at all costs.

  “Let me just go to the windows,” I said. “To check out the bulldozer.”

  “It’s there. What else do you need to know?” Alex asked.

  “Well, we can only see the front of it,” I said. “Maybe its back is damaged.”

  “Come on,” she said. “We saw it from our building. It’s fine.”

  “But we couldn’t see the cab,” I said. “It’d be nice to know if it is big enough to fit us.”

  “We can find that out when we go,” she said. “That’s when we will be stuffed in there like sardines, it’s a short trip. We’ll pull it off when we have to go.”

  Her logic was unassailable, and I didn’t want to over-tip my hand. “Okay, we’ll take that on when we have to.”

  With that, I slowly turned as I waved my arm for the team to head back to the stairwell. Richard was more than happy to get back to the research building. Brother Ed wavered for a few seconds, but the momentum
of the moment seemed to pull him along as he fell in behind Richard. Alex hesitated, waiting for me to join the others, but I nodded my head and implored her to follow them with a sweeping arm gesture. I put on my biggest chivalrous smile. She shrugged and started after Richard.

  Richard and Brother Ed opened the door and entered the stairwell. Alex slipped inside, too, but I grabbed the door and slammed it shut. I grabbed a piece of the broken kiosk from the floor and jammed it between the floor and the doorknob.

  It wouldn’t hold up for long, but it would give me enough time to make my getaway. Sprinting full out, I made it to the front of the foyer, but had to slow down. The jagged glass of the windows would be unforgiving if I collided with a piece. That would end my little caper before it started.

  The chilled wind hit me as soon as I stepped outside, but I ignored it. There was a light covering of snow leftover from a dusting we had experienced a couple of days ago.

  I hated snow. As a kid, my friends loved sledding and making snowmen. That was not for me. I was a summer lover. Give me eighty degrees and the sun every day. That made me consider why I ever stayed in Ohio. It certainly wasn’t sunny Southern California. But I digress.

  Before I charged the bulldozer, I swept my eyes over the courtyard, looking for any signs of the dead, but saw none. That cleared me to climb up on the huge mechanical beast. It took two approaches, but I found a pathway up on the back treads. I climbed inside quickly.

  I discovered the cab was roomier than I had earlier estimated. Still, it would be a tight fit for two. Fortunately, the windows were intact and cut the chill of the winds down. As I settled into the seat behind the controls, I suddenly realized that I knew almost nothing about driving a bulldozer. Certainly, it worked like a car, but when I surveyed all the levers and gears, I felt clueless.