by Brown, TW
“Because they might be alive. If we are going to hold up here until all this madness settles down, then we need to get everybody together,” Simon replied.
“Settles down?” Cedric barked a harsh laugh, but quickly quieted when Shadiyah took a step towards him. “Look, I don’t know what you have seen, but I have seen people eating each other.”
“Maybe we feed you to that lot,” Shadiyah stepped closer to Cedric and pointed to the small mob that were now less than twenty or so feet away. “Save us the trouble of having to kill you ourselves.”
“You don’t really get a choice in this, Cedric.” Simon pursed his lips and then shook his head. “That is not entirely true. You do have a choice.”
“Oh?” Cedric seemed to brighten at that prospect.
“Sure,” Simon said with a shrug as he gave the two women a nod that indicated they needed to get moving. “You can join us and try to prove you are not like your mates, or you can die at the hands of those things…if Shadiyah doesn’t kill you herself.”
“So let me get this straight,” Cedric said slowly, eyeing the man before him and then casting one more look over at the two women who had started to walk briskly to the other tower, “my choices are join or die?”
“Yep,” Simon said looking in at the several undead that had gathered on the other side of the door that opened to the main entrance to the tower where there might be people in need of his help.
“Sounds fair.”
4
Terrible Things
Shadiyah opened the door to the tower and spied a shadow moving away from her at the end of the dark corridor. Without waiting for Mrs. Raye, she took off at a jog. Her speed picked up as she drew closer until she was almost sprinting the last several feet. Bringing her blade up, she drove it into the side of the head of the zombie just as it started to turn her direction.
“Young lady, we don’t have time for this nonsense,” Mrs. Raye called in a very loud whisper from behind her.
She didn’t care. She’d been robbed of her vengeance; but that was only temporary. If this Cedric Black was going to join them, then he would be easier to find. She was certain that he was not being entirely honest when it came to his involvement in the despicable things that were committed by his little gang.
A hand grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her around. On instinct, she went to raise her scimitar, but another hand grabbed her wrist in a surprisingly firm grip. It was only surprising in that it was Mrs. Raye and it simply did not seem like a woman her age should be so cursed strong.
“I know that you are upset, but right now, we are simply trying to set ourselves up for the best chance of survival.” Shadiyah opened her mouth to protest, but Mrs. Raye shook her head and continued her lecture. “We have to secure this building. It is going to require several long days ahead that will be dangerous enough as it is. What we don’t need is for you to make this any harder on us than necessary. Your sister was abused terribly, and I know that you want the world to pay…and I am not saying that you have to forgo that forever…just for now.” The woman stepped back and made direct eye contact with Shadiyah. “I just need you to wait a little while. Can you do that for me?”
If she was hearing the older woman correctly, she was merely being asked to delay the execution. Perhaps she could allow that; after all, she did want to make things safer for her little sister. Despite being more than a tad bit annoying, Assi had suddenly and inexplicably become her life.
“Can I make one request?” Shadiyah composed herself as the two women started for the stairwell.
“Certainly, child.”
“When the time does come…it is in a manner of my choosing. There will be no vote, no stay of execution.”
“I think I can agree to that,” Mrs. Raye said with a nod.
The pair made their way up the dark stairwell, Mrs. Raye using her flashlight to illuminate the path. As they climbed, they noticed the sounds of pawing on some of the doors that opened to a few of the other floors. Sometimes they heard muffled moans, all of this was disconcerting as Shadiyah considered what it would take to actually clear the entire tower of an unknown number of zombies.
“Wait!” Mrs. Raye hissed, bringing them to a halt just as they were rounding the switchback and about to ascend to the eleventh floor. “Did you hear that?”
Shadiyah shook her head since she could not say that she’d heard anything beyond what they had been hearing all the way up the stairs. She listened, but nothing stood out for several heartbeats.
And then she heard it.
“Oh, my God!” she whispered. “Is that a baby?”
“It certainly sounds like it.”
“We have to help the poor thing.”
“I agree, but something does not feel right.”
Shadiyah cocked her head at Mrs. Raye in confusion; she honestly had no idea what the woman could mean.
“That sounds like it is coming from just the other side of the door,” Mrs. Raye expounded. “Unless there are no zombies on the floor, or at the very least, none in the corridor, then there should be no way for a baby to simply be out in the open and surviving.”
Shadiyah grabbed the door knob, but Mrs. Raye pulled her back. “You have the better weapon, dear. Let me open the door. You cover me and I will see what we have.”
Stepping back, she watched as the woman switched her flashlight to her other hand and opened the door slowly. There was a moment where nothing could be seen, but before the door had even been opened a few inches, a hand appeared in the crack. Even in the relative darkness, it was clear that the hand did not belong to one of the living.
A second later, the door was yanked open and a tall, lanky man stood in the doorway. The man reached out with both hands and grabbed Mrs. Raye by the shoulders. The woman tried to bring her cane up, but lacked any real force behind the blow and the head of her cane glanced off harmlessly.
A second zombie was directly behind this first one, and an open door immediately to the right gave off enough light for it to be clearly seen that this one was missing its left arm. It tried to push forward to join the other in the attack on Mrs. Raye and opened its mouth.
The sound that came forth caused Shadiyah to stagger back. Even Mrs. Raye, who was obviously terrified and fighting for her life, paused in her struggle at that sound.
A baby cry.
With a hard shove, Henrietta Raye sent the zombie that had her by the shoulders tumbling back into the one that had just let loose with that chilling baby cry. Shadiyah shook off her dumbfounded stupor and lunged forward with her scimitar. The point slid into the open mouth of the lead zombie that was already recovering and lurching forward once more in an attempt to get at Mrs. Raye.
“Straight to hell with you, you unholy bastard!” With that curse uttered between clenched teeth, the older woman drove the pointed tip of her cane down into the middle of the face of the one-armed zombie that had lured them in with its baby cry sound.
Several more of the undead were now stumbling into the hallway. The women retreated back to the stairwell and were about to shut the door when a voice called from somewhere close.
“Hello?” the voice squeaked. “Is somebody there?”
Almost as one, the zombies in the hallway turned, reorienting on the voice and heading towards the third door on the right. Shadiyah paused, torn between her desire to get back to her sister and the fact that there was somebody here and now that needed help. From the sounds of it, this person was alone.
“How many are with you, child?” Mrs. Raye called out.
“Just me!” was the plaintive reply.
Once more, the zombies halted their advance and began to change directions. They were actually bouncing off each other in their seemingly confused state. One tripped and tumbled to the floor causing two more to stumble over the downed figure.
“How did these things get the upper hand so quickly?” Mrs. Raye said to nobody in particular.
Shadiyah briefly recall
ed her mother’s helpless response to their father as he came for her and began to tear her apart. These things were not initially successful because they were so strong, fast, or coordinated, they were taking out humanity because they looked too much like us, she thought as she took in everything.
Mrs. Raye moved to the first downed zombie and spiked it. She turned to Shadiyah with a scowl. “Are you going to help, or will you continue to stand there and make sure that the floor does not float away on us?”
The two women made surprisingly short work of the half dozen undead in the hall and then arrived at the door. The sounds of sobbing could be heard on the other side.
“Open the door.” Mrs. Raye gave a short rap with her cane. The sounds of the locks being turned sounded and the door opened up just a crack to reveal a single puffy, red-rimmed eye staring out at them.
“Are they all gone?” a quiet voice hitched.
“All?” Shadiyah snorted. “Hardly.”
“The ones in the hall seem to be handled.” Mrs. Raye shot a nasty look at Shadiyah and then knelt down to be more on the same level as the frightened child on the other side of the door. “Are you in there all by yourself?”
The girl opened the door another inch or so and shook her head no. “My mum is in here, but she is sick like the other people on television…until the television shut off.”
“You say that your mother is in there?” Mrs. Raye put a hand on the door and started to apply just the slightest pressure in order to get the little girl to step back and open the door.
“She is in the loo. She told me that I needed to leave her in there no matter what.” The little girl stepped back to allow the women inside.
Shadiyah guessed her to be perhaps nine or ten. She had dark hair with the hint of a slant to her eyes that implied Asian heritage somewhere in her family tree. Her skin was amazingly pale in stark contrast, which only emphasized her delicate features. She was wearing denim shorts, sandals, and a tee shirt with a picture of a female singer, the name “Shari” in sparkly letters just above the image.
“Stay with the child,” Mrs. Raye said, moving past the little girl and disappearing around the corner.
A moment later, the sound of a door opening was followed by the start of a moan and then a sharp crack followed shortly thereafter by a thud. The little girl jumped at the sound and tears welled in her eyes.
“My mum’s gone, isn’t she?” The little girl looked up at Shadiyah and her hand seemed to unconsciously snake into hers in an attempt to find some semblance of comfort.
“I’m so sorry.” The words tasted bitter on Shadiyah’s tongue and she wanted to offer more solace, but there was a chill beginning to form in the core of her soul and she could not shake the feelings of detachment that were growing by the second.
“Would you like to come with us?” Mrs. Raye asked as she came around the corner, wiping the end of her cane with some piece of cloth and then stuffing the stained square of linen in her pocket.
“How about you take us to your room and we pack a few things just in case you need to stay for a while.” The girl nodded and the three of them headed up the hall and to the bedrooms.
“What’s your name?” Mrs. Raye asked as the girl pulled clothes from a small dresser and placed them with surprising neatness and care into a small travel case of red plaid.
“Annie Sun,” the girl replied.
“Pleased to meet you. My name is Henrietta and this is my friend Shadiyah,” Mrs. Raye said with cheerfulness that Shadiyah knew she could not have managed. Ten minutes later, they had a small suitcase packed and were ready to go.
“Can I bring my iPod?’ the little girl sniffed after closing her dresser drawers and turning to face the two women.
“I don’t see why not?” Mrs. Raye shrugged.
As they reached the door, a nearby explosion rocked the building causing a few things to tumble from a shelf in the living room. Annie screamed and flung herself against Mrs. Raye, her arms wrapping around the woman’s legs. The sounds of moans echoed up and down the corridor as the three living residents currently on this floor all sort of stumbled out while trying to catch their balance.
“What the hell was that?” Shadiyah moved ahead of the other two and hurried to the door that led to the emergency stairwell. She gave it a push and discovered that the door seemed to be stuck. Stepping back, she gave a hard kick. There was a slight screech, but the way was still barred. Looking over her shoulder, she waited impatiently for the other two to join her. “Help me get this door open.”
Mrs. Raye put her shoulder into it as Shadiyah kicked again and again. After the fifth or sixth attempt, the door creaked open about an inch. That caused both women to renew their efforts until they managed to get a gap wide enough for all three of them to slip through.
“Good thing none of us are fat,” Mrs. Raye gasped as she followed the other two into the dark stairwell.
At last, they reached their destination and once again had to force the door open. Shadiyah peered through the opening first. They were fairly confident that they had put down any of the free-roaming walkers on the floor, but she was growing cautious as her jangled nerves began to get the best of her. As expected, the hall was empty of anything moving.
She rushed to her door, pulling out her keys as she did. When she opened the door, an acrid stench assaulted her nose and it took a moment to realize that there was a steady breeze blowing inside her flat. She ran to the living room to discover the large window had been obliterated. Her first thought was that it had something to do with the explosion…then she realized that there was almost no glass inside the flat around where the window had once been.
She approached the gaping hole, her feet moving like they were mired in a thick, viscous mud. When she finally reached the far side of the room and looked outside, her eyes refused to look down and instead drifted to the oily black smoke that was wafting skyward and carrying on a stiff northeasterly breeze.
She did not know what had happened exactly, but she could tell that it was coming from the direction of the train tracks to the south of the Clyde Court Towers. She could see walking dead converging from all over. It almost looked like they were coming right for her building, except they had just enough of a deviation in their approach to make it clear they would pass down by the train tracks.
At last, she looked down. Her eyes almost seemed to be able to shift to a telephoto mode as they locked onto a single figure sprawled in the courtyard. It did not matter that she was several stories above the figure…she knew with certainty that it was her little sister. Beside the ruined body were the twisted remains of the chair that used to be at her father’s desk.
Assi had jumped to her death, and in Shadiyah’s mind, it was all her fault. She had failed her sister. Yet, underneath that thought was something else beginning to bubble and seethe from the recesses of her mind.
Anger.
***
“Bloody Americans are probably all doing fine,” Simon snarled as he brought his baton around and jabbed it into yet another eye socket.
They had only a few more steps to go and they would be in the stairwell. Hopefully there were not as many zombies to be found as there were in this corridor. He had lost count after putting down seven of the infernal creatures. He had also discovered that beating a skull until it shattered was nearly an impossibility. All the books, movies, and television shows where people simply swung once or twice and busted in a zombie’s skull were rubbish. He hoped that anybody who had ever helped propagate that myth had gone down under a swarm of the undead with an impotent club in their hand.
“Why do you think the Americans are doing any better than us?” Cedric gasped.
“They all have bloody guns. Most of them probably own three or four.”
“How do you know that?”
“Seen it on a documentary once about how well armed the Americans are and how their freedoms to own such things have led to them being the murder capital of the worl
d.”
“I seen a documentary about how they have the corpses of aliens from some flying saucer that crashed back in the Fifties or Sixties…don’t make it true,” Cedric huffed as he grabbed the corpse of an old man by the throat, pinned him to the wall, and jammed his gore-coated knife into the man’s temple.
At last, Simon reached the door to the emergency exit and threw it open. The first floor landing could be seen, but looking up, it was an inverse abyss of blackness. He suddenly realized that Mrs. Raye had the only torch.
“We need to move,” Cedric said, giving Simon a bit of a shove in the back. “I think a dozen more of those things are coming in the main door.”
“If we pull that door shut, we’ll be blind as bats.”
“No,” Cedric nudged past Simon and clicked a button on something he pulled from his pocket, “we won’t.”
The man had a large, powerful flashlight in his hand that seemed to light up the entire stairwell in a dazzling blue glow. He pulled the door shut behind them and then took a position just ahead of Simon.
“I already had to make this trip a few times, and I was actually in the stairwell when we lost power. Thought that we had emergency lighting, but I guess the maintenance staff sort of let that slip,” Cedric said quietly, his voice still echoing a bit in the cavernous space. “It probably took me two hours to get the rest of the way up.” The man laughed uncomfortably as the two started their climb. “Probably not that long, but it sure as hell felt that way.”
They had just passed the ninth floor when a terrible explosion sounded. It shook the building violently, causing both men to grip the railing to avoid falling. When the shaking ceased, Simon swore his ears were still ringing; also, it suddenly felt a bit warmer.
“We need to pick up the pace,” Simon panted.
The two men hurried and finally made it to the floor where Cedric pulled up to a halt and pressed his ear to the door to listen for anything that might be on the other side. The man switched off the light and plunged them into near perfect darkness.
