by Drew Brown
Sanders appeared from the truck’s passenger side with his MP-5’s butt tucked into his shoulder. “Right,” he said, looking at Budd. “Lead the way.”
Not even a please...
“Sure thing,” Budd said. “But you first.”
“Come on,” Sanders replied, marching towards the steps and the large front doors with Budd in tow. Andy and Sam followed a few paces behind, their handguns at the ready.
Sanders reached the top step and placed a glove-covered hand over the knob. He turned it and then pushed the door inwards. Six inches in, the door stopped on a brass security chain.
“Fuck it,” Sanders whispered. He peeked into the large hallway beyond the door, observing as much as he could through the narrow gap.
“Anything in there, buddy?”
“Seems clear,” the soldier responded. “Get ready. We go on one.”
“We’re ready,” Budd said.
“Three. Two. One,” Sanders said and then he brought his foot up and kicked the door with the sole of his boot, exactly in the spot where the brass chain was attached. The small screws snapped from their holdings and the door shot inwards to bang against a stop. Sanders stumbled, momentarily off balance.
Nothing moved inside the wide lobby.
Budd gazed around. There was no immediate danger; the vast entrance hall was empty. All of its doors to the connecting rooms and corridors were closed. He edged after Sanders, but despite his efforts to remain quiet, his footsteps seemed loud upon the polished wooden floor.
To the left was the mansion’s reception desk. All the papers on its surface were in tidy stacks and the computer terminal was neatly arranged: the keyboard was in line with the screen and the mouse sat in the center of its mat. The empty receptionist’s chair was pushed up to the desk. There had been no one at the post when the end had come.
Next to the desk was a massive wooden door that Budd knew opened onto a hallway that led to the bar and restaurant. At its furthest end, the hallway also gave access to the clustered sleeping accommodations.
If the mansion guests hadn’t wandered around too much after they’d turned—and, let’s face it, what the hell do zombies do when they’re not trying to eat people—I figured that most of them would still be located in the bedrooms. Which was fine with me.
We were going the other way…
The other doors on the room’s left-hand side opened into several offices that the staff had used to carry out their day-to-day administration work.
“Which way?” Sanders asked.
Budd pointed to the right. There was a wide, curving staircase. Its blue-carpeted steps led up to a mezzanine that overlooked the lobby. Along the wall below were three doors. “The middle one.”
“Follow me,” the soldier said, heading towards the doorway. Budd kept close behind. Further back, he could hear Andy and Sam’s footsteps on the floorboards.
A large NO ENTRY sign was printed on the surface of the door, but there was no lock, simply a heavy spring to close it automatically. Sanders pulled open the door, finding the hallway beyond narrow and windowless. He flicked the switch of his MP-5’s light and the beam flooded the long corridor. The soldier crept onward, his submachine gun at the ready.
Budd followed him in, reluctant to swap the bright lobby for the dark corridor. The white-painted walls were broken by closed office doors and well-filled notice boards.
Besides their footsteps, the place was silent.
Sanders disappeared around a left-hand turn, and suddenly Budd was plunged into darkness. He jogged a few paces to catch up with the soldier; behind him, he heard Andy and Sam do the same.
The spring-loaded door clattered shut behind them.
“Which way now?” Sanders asked. He didn’t lower his guard.
Budd looked over the soldier’s shoulder. There was a fork in the hallway: one way led straight, while the other veered to the right. He pointed down the fork. “That way will lead to the staff cafeteria, and from there we’ll take the stairs. The generators are in the basement next to the boiler room.”
Sanders gave a long look ahead and then went to the right. Budd kept close behind him, not wanting to linger near the mouth of the other route as, with Sanders gone, it was nothing more than a gaping black hole.
“Dude, how do you know where you’re going?” Sam asked. His voice was a whisper.
Budd smiled in the gloom. “The head of maintenance had a tasty secretary. I, well, had a relationship, of sorts, with her for a while.”
“I should’ve known, man. She was one of your lady friends, right?”
“Yeah, she was one of my lady friends,” Budd said. Up ahead, Sanders reached a door with large, toughened-glass panels. “And so was her sister.”
“That’s so cool, dude. I just can’t wait to get to France; I’m totally heading for Paris to live it up with some classy European girls. You guys should join me, my treat; I’d love to take you all out. It’d be totally awesome.”
“Sounds like fun to me, buddy. You’ve got yourself a date,” Budd agreed.
Sanders pushed open the door at the corridor’s end and walked into a large room. He scanned around, then beckoned for the others to follow.
“Budd,” Andy said. “I think Sam deserves to know t’truth. And I’d like to hear t’rest.”
Inside the staff cafeteria were several large windows that granted enough light to see comfortably. The plastic chairs were stacked on the polished tables. Budd turned to face Sam with an apologetic expression over his stubble-covered face.
Sam looked back at him expectantly. “Like, what truth?”
“France hasn’t done any better than we have.”
“Oh, jeez, dude. But that scientist said it had.”
“He lied.”
“Then, like, what are we going to do?”
“Fly somewhere safe. That part was true.”
“Somewhere safe?” Sam asked.
“Yeah, a research station in the Arctic. It’s where Deacon worked.”
“The crazy scientist?”
From the center of the room, Sanders shuffled his feet. “Keep up,” he barked, his voice strained.
“Sorry,” Budd called as he crossed the space after the soldier.
Sam stayed close behind but Andy hesitated, trying to close the glass-paneled door faster that its heavy spring would allow.
“Oh, yeah,” Budd continued, “Deacon was crazy all right. It’s a long story, and I’ll tell it all when we’re safely in the air, but Deacon said that he was from the future and that he’d been sent back to stop this virus, infection-thingy, from spreading. As you can probably guess, things didn’t go according to plan. Before he died, he gave me a code to give to the science geeks at the base. He wants them to get their time machine working and to go back even further to try again.”
“Dude, do I look stupid?”
Budd glanced at Sam for a second, letting a smile form in the corner of his mouth. “Well, your hair’s a bit long. Is it naturally that greasy, or do you use some sort of special shampoo?”
Sam shook his head. “Are you, like, telling me you believe his story?”
“All I’m saying is that, on the day before the world went loony, when I first met Deacon, he looked a good decade younger than when he showed up at the hotel.”
“No way, dude.”
“And, I bet you, on the night all this started, at say, one o’clock in the morning, you were doing something exciting, something that got your juices flowing. Am I right?”
“Not really, I was just in my room, like, watching TV.”
“What was on?” Budd asked. He realised that Sanders had given the three of them a few seconds to talk, having moved over to one of the windows to look outside, examining their surroundings.
Sam thought about his answer for a moment. “A movie,” he answered.
“Was it the sort of movie that, shall we say, helps a man express his love for a tissue?”
“Hey, that’s totally not your business,
dude. But, like, how’d you know?”
“I didn’t. But Deacon told me the reason we survived was that we all had high levels of adrenaline when the virus-thingy infected us. I was just testing his theory. What ’bout you, Andy? What does a nightshift maintenance man do when no one’s looking?”
“I was down in t’car park,” Andy said, his voice quiet. “With a woman.”
“Bingo,” Budd said. He looked at the gold band on Andy’s wedding finger. “I take it this woman wasn’t your wife?”
“My wife divorced me a couple of years back. She took my little girl to live in Spain.”
“Bummer, dude.”
“So, t’woman I was with survived?”
“I guess so. Wasn’t she with us at the start?”
“No, she left after we were done.”
“Oh,” Budd said, raising his left eyebrow. “I’m pretty sure everyone in our merry band was up to some sort of mischief.”
There was a short pause as the three of us thought over what’d been said. The story wasn’t new to me, but the discovery that Deacon was right ’bout what we were all doing when his electromagnetic pulse spread the virus was very unsettling. It made the rest of his nonsense sound more plausible.
And I didn’t like that one bit…
Sam chewed the tip of his thumbnail. “Dudes, like, what were the three old priests up to?”
“Mister Ashby,” Sanders said before the conversation could continue. He pointed to a set of double doors that had the words MAINTENANCE PERSONNEL ONLY stenciled across them. “Is this the way?”
“You got it, chief.”
Off to their left, the sound of metal pots and pans falling to the floor ripped across the room. The four men turned, covering the area with their weapons. The noise had come from behind the serving counter and, as they watched, something shot out from behind it, small and close to the ground.
The fright was too much for Sam and he squeezed his handgun’s trigger, firing off a shot that gouged into the wooden floorboards. The bullet missed the saucepan lid, which rolled on before finally settling on the floor.
“Damn it,” Sanders said as the gunshot echoed away. “Lower your fucking weapons. We’re trying to do this without attracting any attention.”
“Sorry,” Sam said, his voice quivering. “I’m sorry, dudes. I just panicked.”
“Did you see anything?”
“Nothing,” Andy said.
Budd and Sam shook their heads.
“What’s behind there?” the soldier asked.
Budd scanned his eyes over the twenty-foot wide serving counter. Other than the glass sneeze guard, the actual top was only waist-high, enabling them to see the wall behind it. There was a large, window-sized hatch with both its shutters firmly closed, and a swing-door that was perfectly still. Nothing had disturbed it. “The door leads to the kitchen. There’s nowhere else to go.”
“So whatever knocked over those pans is still in here?”
“Yeah,” Budd said. He looked from one end of the counter to the other.
“Dudes, perhaps it fell over on its own.”
“Maybe,” Sanders said. “But I’ll check it out.”
At the time, all I could think to say was “Go ahead, brother, you do that!”
But, as it wasn’t the most team-spirited thing to say, I decided to keep it to myself…
38
“I’ll go right and flush it out to you,” Sanders said.
Andy and Sam nodded at the soldier’s instruction and then edged to the left-hand side of the serving counter.
With his MP-5 at the ready, Sanders paced towards the right-hand side, moving in small, measured steps.
Budd watched the three men go, wondering which way he should choose. His right hand rested on the chainsaw’s ripcord.
There was no contest.
Not only did Sanders have the bigger gun, but he was also much better trained than the wrench-monkey and hippie…
Sanders got level with the counter and leant forward to see into the space between it and the wall. After a moment, he stopped. “We’re clear,” he called out.
Budd felt the tension ease from his body.
It was enough to know there were hordes of monsters somewhere in the mansion; I didn’t like the idea of them being in the same room as well…
“Do you hear that?” Andy asked, carefully walking behind the counter. He held his handgun ahead of him.
“Hear what?” Sanders said.
Budd listened for whatever sound had so intrigued Andy. All he heard was the anxious shifting of their feet. “Come on, let’s go.”
“There, didn’t you hear it?”
“No,” Budd replied, but he watched as Sanders adjusted his grip on his MP-5 and Sam’s tongue slipped around his lips.
I guessed I was in a minority of one…
“It came from that cupboard,” Sanders said, pointing with his MP-5’s muzzle.
Andy nodded.
“Let’s just go, dudes,” Sam said, stepping back.
“I’m with Sam on this one,” Budd said. “We’re here for the power. Not hide-and-seek.”
Finally, Budd heard the unmistakable sound of sobbing. The pathetic noise was coming from behind the serving counter. Andy rested his handgun on the floor beside his feet and knelt down so that Budd could only see the top of his head.
“What are you doing?” Sanders said. “Get away from there.”
It was too late; Andy didn’t listen.
Instead, he opened the cupboard in front of him.
Budd heard a rustling of clothes, a few knocks and bangs, and then Andy stood with a small girl clasped in his arms. She was wearing a pink track suit and a pair of white sneakers. Her limbs thrashed as she fought to escape Andy, kicking and pushing, but the maintenance man held her tight to his chest and gently stroked her blond hair, whispering into her ear. “It’s okay now, you’ll be fine.”
“Are you sure it’s safe to be holding her, dude?”
“Of course it is.” Andy said. He turned his head to the little girl and lowered his voice. “Where are your family? Are they here?”
The little girl didn’t answer the question, but she did lessen her struggles. Tears rolled down her cheeks.
“We should leave,” Sanders said.
As if responding to his words, the distant thudding of feet pounding against floorboards reached the cafeteria. Budd glanced to the door they’d entered through; the sound was not the staggered noise created by one or two people running, but the rumble of a whole group of people on the move. “They’re coming this way,” he said, backing away from the entrance.
The noise grew louder.
“Let’s get out of here,” Sanders ordered, running to the double doors marked MAINTENANCE PERSONNEL ONLY.
Budd stayed right on his heels.
Sam and Andy, the little girl held tight in his arms, were close behind.
Sanders pushed into the two doors and discovered that the left-hand one was locked. He slipped through the other and scanned his MP-5’s light along the new corridor. “Come on,” he said, stepping aside.
Budd followed the soldier into the corridor and turned to watch as Andy and Sam came through.
Sanders took a set of handcuffs from his pocket. His eyes were fixed on the vertical, twelve-inch long chrome-plated bars that acted as handles to pull open the doors.
Through the narrow panes of glass above the handles, Budd saw the door on the far side of the cafeteria burst open. A group of men and women, some dressed in business suits and others in their nightwear, spilled into the room.
In Andy’s arms, the little girl screamed.
Sanders applied the set of handcuffs to the chrome handles, securing them a fraction before the first suit-wearing monster crashed into the door. The soldier raised his MP-5 and edged back as the free door pushed inward of the locked one, allowing a small gap to expand between their edges. Arms penetrated the opening to their elbows, clawing at thin air, while s
narling faces flattened against the glass as more and more of the beasts thumped against the doors.
The handcuffs held.
That was too close…
39
“We have to keep moving,” Sanders said, turning from the scene. “Come on. Mister Ashby, once we’re done, you’ll have to show us another way out.”
“I think you’re right. The generators are down the stairs and around a few corners. Not far.”
“Good, let’s go,” Sanders said, moving to lead the way.
The new corridor was six feet wide and unlit, other than a faint glow of natural gray light that came from somewhere ahead. The walls were crammed with notice boards and schedules, as well as a chart for the maintenance personnel to sign in.
“What’s your name, little girl?” Andy asked.
The girl had reacted badly to the flight from the cafeteria; more tears were streaming down her face and her breath was sticking in her throat. Andy hushed her further as the small group began to walk, quickly distancing themselves from the grunts and groans that chased them through the gap in the doors. The guttural sounds followed them as they rounded the corner and laid their eyes upon the downward stairs.
“Are these the ones?” Sanders asked over his shoulder.
“Yeah, that’s them.”
“Quickly, then,” the soldier said. He started down the staircase, his feet tapping against the concrete steps. “We’ll have no chance if those doors give.”
At the back of the group, nearest the corner, Sam was the first to notice that the noise from the monsters had stopped. He poked his head back around the corner, holding his handgun at the ready. “They’re gone, dudes,” he called out. “They’re, like, all gone.”
Budd looked uneasily towards the young Californian. “Does anyone else have a bad feeling?”
“Let’s hurry,” Sanders said, his pace matching the apprehension in his words. He reached the staircase’s half-landing and continued on.
Budd hurried after him, the chainsaw heavy in his arms. He had one hand on the starter cord. As he followed the white-painted walls down the stairs, he wished he’d kept hold of a flashlight. The illumination from the nearby window did not penetrate into the basement, and he was forced to look along the narrow beam of the soldier’s light. They reached a sturdy wooden door, metal-plated and hinged with springs that self-closed in case of a fire. After they were all through, the door closed behind them.
