Haven From Hell (Book 3): A Young Man's Game

by Won, Mark

  Mr. Run started crying. Seriously, a full grown man crying! He was crying like I had when Uncle had died, except now nobody had died (except a few fake cops). In fact, we were both alive and well, about to eat some spam and peach halves, and get a good night’s sleep. It was then that I realized Mr. Run was crazy from stress. Uncle had told me about that kind of thing. I’ve always felt sorry for crazy people, they truly do need our help.

  I put my arm around his shoulder and pulled him close, you know, to give him a shoulder to cry on. When people get like that there’s really nothing to be said. We stayed like that until he fell asleep. Then I carefully laid his head on my spare pillow and covered him up. I made sure to get to bed early, myself, because I had a big day planned for the morrow.

  Chapter 3

  Before sunup I left early, while Mr. Run was still asleep. I left a note and some food and water. The note gave him instructions for how to clean the blood off my favorite cloak. When I’d cut off Big Nose’s hands the blood had sprayed out everywhere. One reason why I liked that cloak so much was that it was already a faded red so didn’t show all the blood stains as much. I’d washed it some the night before but it still had some mess on it. I hoped Mr. Run could get the rest of the blood off.

  The note also told him how to take a sponge bath. He was kinda stinky. I’d washed his pants last night, but that was only half the problem. You’d think a doctor would be more worried about sanitation. It was no wonder the fake cop he’d treated for zombie bite had croaked.

  Some time back I’d run into a bunch of bad men that I’d got to kill. I’d wondered at how they had all been left alive at the same time. It didn’t seem right that a bunch of totally independent wrongdoers, who hadn’t known each other from before the Change, would all just happen to fall in together after the Change, and get along like old time buddies. So I’d asked them. The fact was that they’d all been from the same place when the Change had happened, and anybody who they killed in that spot wouldn’t Change, either. Getting that information out of them had been fun. But messy. Very very messy. I suspected that this new bunch of evildoers had a similar origin story. I’d have to remember to ask them.

  Anyhow, I took Tracer and got on Blue. We rode deeper into the city until I came upon the hospital in question. Mr. Run had told me how the fake cops had made a big production of turning on the sirens and leading all the zombies out of town. Any that got too close they were careful to shoot dead. The way Mr. Run told it, the fake cops did lose a few cars and a few fake cops every now and again when some ogres would pop up suddenly. Overall, though, I had to appreciate how clear the streets were. Normally, I’d never just ride into town like I owned the place. That’s a real good way to run out of ammunition in a hurry, and once you’re out of ammo it’s nothing but work, work, work.

  I kept my distance from the hospital, and entered a building just across the street a ways. It was a beautiful big dark building, looking to my eye like it was some shade of dull red in the morning light. There was a fine looking golden pointy thing sticking out of the top, and it reminded me of the Empire State building. The building stood an impressive height above the rest of the neighborhood, maybe sixty floors or so. I could hardly wait to investigate the state of its fire suppression system.

  By approaching from the correct angle I was sure to remain unseen from the vantage point of the hospital. I had brought as much gasoline as I could haul, but, given the size of my fancy new sniper spot, I knew I be lucky to get enough incendiary in position before dark. That was okay, though. A hard day’s work can really build the anticipation.

  And it was hard work. Fortunately, I had a nice little hand held water pump that I could use to draw the gas out with. The real problem was getting enough containers. Eventually, I had to clear out a small corner grocery store of its zombie infestation just to get enough bottles and jugs. That, also, was okay. Abby had been feeling a little underappreciated, anyhow.

  Inside the big red building there weren’t too many zombies. I didn’t bother to try and kill every zombie in every room, since all I needed was to clear the stairwell and set up a good spot to shoot from. The most dangerous thing I encountered was a single ghoul with a quartet of zombies as vanguard. The ghoul came bounding down the stairs at me, leaping over the rail from floor to floor, and I managed to split her skull in mid-flight. The zombies were an afterthought, the way they bumbled and fell down the steps.

  With adequate explosive incendiaries in place, I waited the final few minutes until sundown before taking up my sniper position on the twenty-fifth floor (climbing all those steps all day was exhausting). Once night had finally fallen I kept my eye open for the roof sentry that Mr. Run had told me all about. Eventually, he came onto the roof of the hospital to relieve some other fake cop (those fake cops really loved wearing the uniforms). I took that opportunity to break out a window and shoot him dead. That action cost me one of my last two bullets in Ginger, and it took a Herculean effort of will for me to not kill the other sentry as well. I had to remind myself that I needed him alive, at least for the moment.

  It was funny to watch the survivor gawp at his dead buddy. Then he started to look around. Things were starting to get embarrassing. It was like assassinating the handicapped. I leaned out the big hole in the window that I’d just made and waved at him. Then I started yelling, holding Ginger up and pointing to her. Finally, he noticed me and started doing some shouting of his own. He even took up his shotgun and began blazing away.

  I laughed so hard I almost fell out the window. That clown actually though he could hit me with a 12 gauge at that range. Maybe if he actually took time to aim, and really knew what he was doing, and was firing slugs, he would’ve had a chance. As it was I just stood there and drank some sport beverage I had with me, watching him waste shells.

  All that noise finally brought up some of his buddies. The first dummy pointed me out to all his fake cop buddies and they started shooting at me. It was quite a light show for a while there. I made sure they could see me carefully aiming with Ginger, giving them every opportunity to take some cover (I was starting to feel sorry for them, and wanted them to really feel like they were giving things their best effort, before I sent their souls screaming into Hell). Then I shot one of them in the head with Ginger’s last bullet.

  That caused them to realize the difficulty of their situation, and it was about time. I was beginning to worry that they’d use up all their bullets before they caught on. Truly, it was a wonder how they’d survived as long as they had. They finally fell back, retreating into the hospital’s top floor, hopefully to plan a counter attack. Preferably sometime that century. I didn’t have all night, and my enemies’ plan seemed to be to kill me with old age.

  That’s when my Team Justice walkie talkie began to stutter its static, thus alerting me that someone (I wonder who?) had come through a ground floor stairwell door. When I was little, Uncle had taught me how to take my toys apart, and join them together in new and exciting ways. Like, for example, how to combine a Super Fun Meal prize, in the form of a tiny cartoon hippopotamus equipped with a motion sensor, and a walkie talkie. The intriguing new configuration was a poor man’s alarm system. Once the motion sensor beam was broken, instead of some stupid fake cartoon hippopotamus proclaiming its irritating and pointless greeting, the walkie talkie would send an empty message, a stutter in the static. Neat!

  This was more like it! Obviously all the roof top shooting had been a distraction intended to keep me occupied, until the enemy had snuck up behind me. They had even managed the whole thing with radio silence (of course I’d brought my own broad band radio, just in case they’d forgotten I knew how to use that particular piece of technology). Awesome! Now we had a game!

  I ran back to the stairwell door and closed the padlock I’d affixed to it earlier, and waited with my ear to the door. I had to wait a while (twenty-five floors is no joke even if you’re in a hurry). During that time I was reminded of something Uncle used to say,
‘The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step’. No, that wasn’t it. ‘Flee from thy enemy, make him haughty by pursuit. Then, when he is exhausted, turn and face him on the ground of thine own choosing’. That wasn’t it either. Oh yeah, ‘If, after a journey of a thousand miles you finally meet your enemy, the one thing you should be certain of is that your enemy is the one who made the journey’. I knew I’d remember.

  Anyhow, I laughed to hear them hit the door to my floor (I was too short and smart to look through the little glass window). Then I lit the homemade quick fuse that I had set up when I’d added the padlock. One second later the stairwell was a flaming deathtrap and the screams from beyond the door were like an angelic choir singing me a hymn straight from the throne of God. It was transcendental.

  The trick to a trap like that is to keep everything hidden until it’s fun time. My method involved a lot of duct tape (you can do anything with that stuff) and a number of gallons of gelled gasoline. Nobody looks up and to the side when entering a stairwell, and when they reach the switchback the payload is out of sight, under the stairs. It helps if the potential victims are in a terrible rush. I used black tape to hide my fuse (it’s important to run it in very straight lines so that it looks like it belongs), and some low explosives added to the mix to help with dispersion (anyone can make black powder if he has access to a proper lawn care center). I had to make sure to drain the fire suppression system while I set everything else up, but that was easy enough once I found the tank (it was on the roof). To top it all off I soldered a bunch of stairwell access doors shut.

  Well, it was time for me to leave. I would have liked to have had Tracer with me for all the fun (who doesn’t want to share good times with a friend) but I figured he’d have trouble with my escape plan, so I’d left him with Mr. Run back at the gas station. He’s such a good dog, he knows the drill and would never hold it against me.

  Getting together three hundred feet of reliable rope on short notice is not as easy as it sounds. Lucky for me Uncle included that in the training regimen. I’d knocked out a bunch of windows opposite the hospital earlier, so that all I had left to do was rappel down thirty feet at a time. Then I’d climb in the next window and do it all over again. It’s a lot safer that way. With ropes made out of bed sheets, extension cord, and (of course) duck tape, you don’t really want to put the whole height of the climb to the test all at once. Too much weight. I had been real careful to minimize the noise I’d made when I broke the windows earlier in the day by not just bashing everything all at once. Also, I swept up after myself so the fake cops wouldn’t see the mess I’d made when they came in. Uncle would’ve been so proud.

  Even though I’d been prepared for the fire I was still almost caught in my own conflagration. My last drop was made with the insulation of my ‘rope’ on fire. From there I began a short circuit around to the parking structure on the near side of the hospital. It took me less than two minutes to reach it with no chance of being seen from the hospital.

  From then on I had to go slow. All the fake cops had to do was leave one guy on guard in the right place and it would ruin my whole plan. I carefully climbed the levels until I reached the overpass linking the parking garage with the original hospital building. According to Mr. Run the fake cops had not bothered to clear it out, being confident that the sealed doors would hold. So I knew that I was in for a fight, and I had to make it a quiet one.

  On the other side of the overpass the door was locked but not in any meaningful way. More of a suggestion from my point of view. I began my journey through the halls, moving quietly but quickly, Polly and Abby in hand.

  Trying to hide in a hallway is real hard. All someone (or something) has to do is peek out the door and you’re seen, just like that. I heard a moaning behind me and knew that was exactly what had happened. I didn’t turn around. Instead I ran full tilt for the stair access that I’d been moving toward.

  Zombies came pouring from out of their rooms, looking for a quick bite, but by then I’d reached the stairs and had already begun taking them downward three at a time. Once I’d reached the ground floor, I quietly opened the door and slipped into the hall. It seemed that the excitement exhibited by the zombies from up above had not caught on down below, so I was able to stealth my way around using standard anti-zombie infiltration tactics.

  Naturally, it took about ten seconds before I was spotted again and that time I knew I was in for a fight. There were too many of them stumbling along for me to out maneuver in such close confines. That was when Polly and Abby got to shine. They moved me through the crowd like the amorous dancers I knew them to be. We began with a beautiful bravura: arabesque cut, allonge thrust, tour en l’air slice, en avant, en arriere, pirouette, pirouette, pirouette, and pause. They love me like no others.

  Before I knew it, the dance was over and I was left standing in an ocean of bloody goop. That was the only part I didn’t like about dancing with the girls, but I can’t blame them. It’s not their fault everything that wants to murder me is full of mess.

  Covered in gore from head to toe, I made my way to the adjoining corridor (it was a confusing layout, all put together over time, so I got lost a little at first) and from there to the main hospital building. Again, the door was locked but not really, so I made my way into the main hospital building with no further ado. The way was clear, with no one on guard, so I crossed the ground floor level until I reached the main stairs. That’s where I found a fake cop on guard.

  I threw Polly and caught him right in the skull. She has such a wonderful balance, but she likes to pretend that she hates to be handled that way. I retrieved my girl and hauled the fake cop corpse into a nearby office. Then I climbed up to the twentieth floor (I was quickly growing to hate stairs) and moved into the main corridor, with my liberated cop gun held in a weavers stance.

  Mr. Run had been emphatically clear that the fake cops liked the twentieth floor due to it being a zombie free zone. That way they could kill prisoners with impunity, not needing to worry about anyone Changing into a ghoul or ogre. Eventually, I came across a couple fake cops standing guard in a small lounge-like area, and I decided that it was time to make a little noise.

  I could tell right off that both of them were wearing body armor, but I didn’t let that deter me. One shot in the forehead of each got the job done well enough. It helped that they were more interested in keeping an eye on their captives than on keeping a look out for anyone sneaking up behind them.

  Before any of the prisoners could do anything foolishly self destructive I said, “Don’t worry, Mr. Run…er...Dr. Donaldson sent me. I’m here to rescue you.” That sounded so silly I gave out a little giggle.

  They were all staring at me with weird expressions, and I remembered I was covered with blood. I said, “Hey, don’t worry, none of this blood is mine. So, you,” I pointed to a smart looking old lady, maybe forty or sixty years old, “how many fake cops did they send over to the big building I was in?” I could tell at a glance that they all deferred to her. Uncle had taught me how to read a crowd for leaders on my first day of sniper training.

  Smarty said, “They sent eight men. Led by Lars.” That was good. Lars was the name of the boss.

  So I said, “Who’s left in this building, then?” I had to figure no one on that floor because they hadn’t come to investigate the shooting.

  She replied, “There’s one guarding the stairs and one guarding the emergency entrance.”

  Darn, darn, darn. I was going to have to climb down those darn stairs again to kill him. Then I’d have to climb back up again to tell everybody about it. And then I’d have to climb back down to get back to Tracer and Mr. Run. Forget that.

  What I said was, “I’m going downstairs now, see ya tomorrow, bye.”

  As I turned to leave, Smarty called out after me, “What should we do, young man?”

  “Look, I got places to go and people to kill. You all just hang out here and I’ll be back if I live. Maybe tomorrow or
the day after. Until then grab some guns and keep watch for the enemy. But don’t shoot me. Take a radio but remember it’s an open line, anyone can listen in. I’ll be on channel three.” Inspiration struck. “The danger code word is ‘super’, okay? If you use that word I’ll know things are bad.”

  Smarty seemed to understand. A couple of them sort of half waved at me as I made my way back to those darn stairs. One more to kill (assuming everyone who went to ambush me had got burned up in the fire). Just one more.

  Once on the ground floor I poked around until I overheard someone trying to use the radio. That really helped me sneak up on him. I’d known the general area that he was supposed to be in, but that place was huge. The poor murderer was freaking out because nobody was able to talk to him. I had to give him credit though, he kept right at it. I turned the corner and opened fire. It had been a long day and I was getting tired so I must have shot him ten times, just for fun. The idea was to see how many holes I could put in him before he fell. With the body armor he held up real nice, for a while. My last shot was right between his eyes. Frankly, it wasn’t as satisfying as I’d hoped. I needed sleep.

  I made my way outside from the emergency entrance and immediately noticed the remains of hundreds of dead people littering the street outside. They were in various stages of decomposition, which led me to believe that I’d discovered the bandits’ corpse dumping ground. My assumption was that all the oldest bodies had been the zombies which the bandits had cleared out. Which meant the rest of the remains were what was left of the various doctors, nurses, and patients which had been murdered since then. It was quite a pile.

  I jogged around to my bike and rode back to base. Tracer was ecstatic to see me, as always. I collapsed onto my sleeping bag.

  Mr. Run said, “I saw the fire. I thought you were dead.” That brought a smile to my face just before I made my way into the land of Nod.