by Brian Keene
That was all the rest of us needed to see. We turned and fled, shoving and tripping each other in our hurry to get away. Behind us came the most awful sounds—tearing and ripping and biting. By then, the screams had ceased. We ran back into the hotel, only to learn that the shit had hit the fan inside the Pocahontas, as well. Zombies surged in through both the main entrance and the doors to the meditation garden. They swarmed through the lobby and around the elevators and were beginning to make their way down the long concourse of ritzy stores and shops that occupy most of the hotel’s first floor—jewelers, a humidor, candy stores, coffee shops, a bookstore, clothing stores and other businesses catering to the guests because none of the locals in town could ever afford to shop in them.
I ran into my buddy Mike, who worked in the hotel’s banqueting department. Looking back on it now, it’s all Mike’s fault that I’m in this goddamned situation. He reached out and grabbed my shoulders, stopping me in mid-run. At first, I was so scared that I didn’t even recognize him. I tried pushing him away, but he squeezed harder. My hands curled into fists.
“Let go of me, asshole! Don’t you see what’s happening?”
“The bunker,” he yelled. “We’ve got to get everyone into the bunker, Pete.”
And just like that, everything changed. It was like Mike had uttered some magic words. I was still scared, but my head was clearer. I started thinking about survival, rather than just running around in blind panic. My fear wasn’t ruling me. I was ruling it. It felt very Zen. People ran by us, tripping and stumbling and crying. The hallway was filled with screams and shouts. All of these things seemed distant. Remote. Disconnected from us. I suddenly felt like an island.
“The bunker…hell, why didn’t I think of that?”
“You’ve got a key, right?”
I nodded. As one of the tour guides, I had one of seven plastic key cards that would let us into the bunker. I was about to speak, when I noticed Mike’s eyes grow wide. He bit his lip but I don’t think he was aware that he was doing it. He stared at something over my shoulder. I turned around, wincing at the sudden stench. A group of zombies were shambling toward us.
“Shit.”
“Tell everyone you can,” Mike said. “I’ll meet you down there.”
“Where are you going?”
“The kitchen. There’s no telling how long we’ll be down there. We’ll need food and water.”
“Good idea. I’ll come with you.”
“No, Pete. You need to let everyone else know. I’ll take care of getting the supplies.”
“You can’t carry all that stuff by yourself.”
“I’ll load it up on a cart and use the service elevator. That opens up right into the conference center. Long as you’ve got the bunker door open, it’ll be fine.”
I frowned. “Are you sure?”
He nodded. “Positive. Now go.”
“Be careful.”
“You, too. Just make sure you keep that door open for me.”
I promised him that I would, and then he ran down the hall, easily dodging the dead. His movements reminded me of a football player charging toward the end zone, intent on a touchdown. By the time the zombies reached for him, he was already past them. I turned the other way and headed for the bunker.
The next time I saw Mike, his throat had been torn out, his nose was hanging by a flap of skin, and one of his eyes was missing. That didn’t stop him, though. He showed up at the bunker door, just like he’d said he would.
And then he tried to eat me.
***
There were two entrances to the bunker. The first one was via an outdoor tunnel on the other side of the mountain, some distance from the hotel. Normally, when we gave visitors a tour, we started from that entrance after taking them there via a short bus ride. The entrance had a ten foot high steel blast door with a big sign affixed to it that said DANGER: HIGH VOLTAGE. The sign had originally been put there to scare people away—random hikers or hunters who might have stumbled across it—but it was obsolete now. The Pocahontas kept the sign there as part of the ambience. Since the bunker was now nothing more than a museum, it added a touch of authenticity.
The other entrance was located inside the hotel itself, adjacent to our basement-level conference center. The conference center was a huge, open room where various organizations and groups held conventions, employee meetings, dinners, and things like that. It was a very plain room. The carpet was thin and worn. The overhead lights were too bright. The walls were a drab off-white color. I once overheard a hotel guest refer to the décor as “wholly uninspiring.” But one of those uninspiring walls concealed the bunker’s second entrance. When the partition was slid back, it revealed a second steel blast door, bigger than the door guarding the outside tunnel entrance. It was twelve feet high and twelve feet wide and weighed over twenty-five tons. Despite its size, the blast door was easy to open from the inside. Any healthy person could have done it. There was a wheel you turned to open or close the door, and all you had to do was apply fifty pounds of pressure. On tours, we always exited the bunker through this door, and it always took our guests by surprise when they emerged back into the hotel.
A shriek brought me back to my surroundings. A woman’s voice. I couldn’t tell whose, shouting about something biting her face.
The zombies flooded into the lobby and there was no time to wait for an elevator. I took the stairs two at a time and paused at the bottom of the stairwell. I put my ear to the door and listened, trying to determine if the conference center was safe or not, but I couldn’t tell. The screams from upstairs were too loud. Taking a deep breath, I slowly nudged the door open and peeked into the room. Either Mike’s warning had been heard, or others had the same idea as him, because there were a group of about twenty-five people cowering by the wall. About half of the group were folks I knew—employees of the hotel. The other half of the group looked like hotel guests or visitors. One big guy had a cable repairman’s uniform on. My friend Drew was among them, and I felt better when I saw him. I stepped through the door and hurried over to them.
“Pete!” Drew rushed toward me. “Tell me you’ve got a key to get inside?”
Nodding, I pulled the keycard from my back pocket. Drew sighed with obvious relief.
“Thank Christ. I thought we were gonna be trapped down here.”
The group milled around me, blocking my access to the partition. Behind us, something thudded in the stairwell. They scrambled out of the way, and I hurried over to the wall and pushed the partition into its recess, revealing the blast door. The sounds in the stairwell grew louder. I flashed my keycard. The lock disengaged, and I turned the wheel. The door rumbled open with a deep, ominous boom.
“Everybody inside!”
I didn’t need to tell them twice. The group hurried into the bunker, jostling one another in the process. Drew was at the rear of the procession. He paused when he realized that I wasn’t following.
“Aren’t you coming?”
I shook my head. “I’ve got to wait for Mike. He went back to the kitchen to get us some supplies.”
Drew glanced at the stairwell and elevator doors and then back at me. His eyes were wide and his expression grim. “Do you think he can make it?”
“He’s got to. Otherwise, we’ll starve. There’s no food in there. Just a vending machine with sodas and chips and shit.”
From behind us, someone asked, “What’s the hold up?”
Drew and I turned. It was the cable repairman. He stared at us in confusion. Fear had made his face taught and pale. He had a receding hairline and his forehead was slick with sweat. He smelled sour. This close, I could read the name sewn above the pocket of his uniform: CHUCK.
“We’re waiting on somebody,” I said.
Chuck blinked. “But those things…”
“Aren’t down here yet. My friend Mike went to get food and supplies. Soon as he gets here, we’ll close the door.”
“Screw that,” someone else called.
I couldn’t tell who it was. The group was standing all bunched together like sardines in a can. “If you want to hang around and wait for your friend, go ahead. But close the damned door first.”
“I’ll be honest, Pete,” Drew said. “I tend to agree with them.”
“We’re okay down here,” I insisted. “The zombies are on the lobby level.”
Then the stairwell door banged open and a corpse tumbled into the conference room, making a liar out of me. I glanced over at the service elevator. The doors remained shut and the light above them indicated that the elevator was still on the lobby level. I gritted my teeth, fighting the urge to run inside the bunker and seal the door.
“Damn it, Mike…”
The first zombie tottered to its feet and stared at us. Then it lurched forward, grasping with one hand. Its other arm hung limp at its side, obviously broken in several places. Shards of splintered bone stuck out of the torn flesh like porcupine quills. Its mouth hung open, and its grayish-white tongue dangled like a slug. It took another step. Two more corpses emerged from the stairwell and followed along behind it. Then another.
“Come on, Pete.” Drew tugged at my shoulder. “We’ve got to go.”
“We have to wait for Mike.”
“He’s obviously not coming,” another man said. I found out later that his name was Jim Mars. “We wait any longer, and we’re dead.”
“He’s right, Pete,” Drew said. “Come on!”
I shrugged free of Drew’s grip and glanced at the elevator again. The light had gone on, indicating that it was moving.
“We go in there without food,” I said, “and we’re dead anyway.”
“We’ll make due. We only have to wait a few days. Sooner or later, when we don’t come out, they’ll get bored and wander away.”
The zombies crept closer. Behind us, the group in the bunker echoed Drew’s sentiments, urging me to close the door. Then Chuck stepped forward.
“Look,” he said, “fuck this. If you don’t want to come, then that’s your own business. Stay here and get eaten. But we’re closing the door.”
I started to get in his face, but then the elevator dinged and the doors opened. We all turned to look. Mike stepped out of the elevator. Even if he hadn’t been so obviously mangled, I’d have known something was wrong with him right away because his movements were jerky and halting. I cringed, unable to turn away from the damage he’d suffered in the short time since I’d last seen him. In addition to his missing eye and throat, and his nearly-severed nose (which dangled by one flap of skin and banged against his cheek each time he took a step), the crotch of Mike’s pants were a bloody mess. I wasn’t sure, but it looked like his dick had been ripped off.
He wasn’t alone in the elevator. There was a wheeled cart inside, just beyond the open doors, loaded down with canned goods and boxes of dry food and cases of bottled spring water. A first aid kit sat atop the supplies. There were also five more zombies milling about the cart. They trailed after Mike, staring at us with blank expressions. Their mouths were crimson and shiny. The lights in the conference center flickered and dimmed, then grew bright again. It made the blood on their faces seem that much more garish.
With the dead converging on us now from two different directions, there was no way to get to the cart. Even as I considered it, the elevator doors slid shut. The zombies didn’t notice. They were focused solely on us. I glanced around for a weapon, but there was nothing. Sighing, I turned to Chuck.
“Come on then. Get inside.”
He did. Drew followed along behind him, leaving me standing alone. Mike’s shoes squeaked on the tiled floor as he closed the distance between us. I stared into his eyes, wondering if there was any shred of consciousness left.
“Mike?” My voice cracked. My throat felt dry and swollen. “You still in there, dude?”
He reached for my hand, and his teeth snapped together. Flinching, I turned and ran inside the bunker. Behind me, Mike moaned. It was a hungry, mournful sound.
“Hurry up,” Chuck shouted. “They’re going to get in!”
I slid the blast door shut behind us. It rumbled, slipping into place and then clicked as it locked. A hissing sound faded as the door sealed.
“Will it hold?” A woman pushed forward through the crowd. “Can they get inside here?”
I shook my head, and explained the blast door to them, realizing as I did it that I had slipped into my tour guide speech. When I was finished, I asked them if they had any questions. Turned out that they did. Lots of questions. I spent the next twenty minutes answering them. I gave them the whole spiel, including an abbreviated version of the bunker’s history and how it benefited us in our current situation. When I was done, we stood there for a while. Nobody spoke. The sound of our breathing echoed softly in the hall. Beneath it was an even quieter sound, barely noticeable unless you concentrated on it—a steady, monotonous drumbeat.
“What is that?” Drew whispered.
“The dead,” I said, “pounding on the door.”
Chuck frowned. “And you’re sure they can’t get in?”
“I’m positive. They can’t get in, but as long as they stay on the other side of the door, we can’t get out this way, either. We’ll have to use the other entrance.”
“What if there are zombies around it, too?” Drew ran a hand through his hair. His eyes were wide and wet.
I shrugged. “Then we might be here for a while.”
Turned out I was right. There were more zombies around the other entrance, and that was how we ended up trapped inside the bunker. It takes forty to fifty days for the average human being to die of starvation, provided they have water to drink. We’ve been here for a little over a month now. What little food we had—stuff from the vending machine and breath mints a few survivors had in their purses—ran out in the first week. Even if we’d done a better job of rationing it, those supplies wouldn’t have lasted. We’ve got plenty of water. I’m not thirsty, but I’m fucking starving. I’m as hungry as the persistent dead still lingering around outside the doors.
TWO
I was still sitting in the movie room when Drew rushed in. Much like the day when we’d first entered the bunker, his eyes were wide and his expression was panicked. He was breathing hard, and when I asked him what was wrong, he held up a finger, indicating that I should wait. He bent over, put his hands on his knees, and gulped air. He sounded like he was dying. His face was red from exertion and sweat lathered his forehead and cheeks. I waited for him to catch his breath.
“What’s wrong?” I placed a hand on his shoulder. He was warm, and his shirt was damp with perspiration. “Are you having a heart attack or something?”
He shook his head and gasped. “They just voted…Chuck and the rest.”
“So it’s finished, then? Well, thank God that’s over with. Now we can get back to figuring out an alternative. Come up with a real plan.”
“No…they voted…to do it. They voted yes.”
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. I was too stunned. I’d been scoffing at this insanity ever since Chuck had first proposed it. I hadn’t taken it seriously, and I’d figured most of the others wouldn’t either. Well, none of the sane people in our group, at least. A few might consider it—those who were cracking from the strain of our situation. But I’d always assumed that in the end, clearer heads would prevail. I’d been positive that the majority of us wouldn’t vote for something as totally fucked up as cannibalism via lottery. That’s why I hadn’t even attended the group meeting with everyone else. I’d figured the others would tell Chuck they were voting ‘No’ and that would put an end to the whole crazy idea. After all, who in their right mind would actually vote for allowing themselves a one in twenty-six chance of ending up as dinner for the rest of us?
Apparently, quite a few.
“They voted in favor of it?” My voice was barely a whisper. “In favor?”
Drew nodded. “Yeah. It was unanimous—except for me. I voted agains
t it, of course.”
“Nobody else? Not even the Chinese guy?”
“He voted in favor, too.”
“But he doesn’t even speak English. How did he know what they were voting on?”
Drew shrugged.
“So, you and I are the only sane motherfuckers left down here?”
“It sure seems like it. What are we going to do, Pete?”
“I don’t know, brother. I don’t know.”
Eisenhower watched us, his bronze face expressionless. Aqua Teen Hunger Force still played on the big screen—Master Shake and Meatwad were singing a song about zombies. The irony made my stomach churn. I idly wished that I’d watched Reba instead. If I was going to die, it would have been better to go out jerking off to Joanna Garcia rather than watching a bunch of cartoon characters, no matter how funny they were.
Drew stood up. I was happy to see that both his complexion and his breathing were slowly returning to normal. It would have been a hell of a thing if he’d died of a heart attack before our fellow survivors had a chance to kill and eat him properly. He glanced out into the hallway and then quietly shut the door
“Jesus…” I shook my head in disbelief. “I can’t believe this shit.”
“There’s more, Pete. It gets worse.”
“How can it get any worse?”
“Since you didn’t attend the meeting, Chuck and the others decided…shit, I don’t know how to say this.”
“Decided what? Just tell me what the hell is going on.”
“They decided…they decided that you should be first. They…they said that was only fair, since everybody else was willing to vote even though it might be them that got picked. Chuck said that since you didn’t have the balls to show up, you were being disrespectful to the rest of them. They all agreed. Well, maybe agreed isn’t the right word, but they all went along with it. So, instead of a lottery to decide who feeds the rest of us, they’ve picked you to be the first.”
“Fuck you.”
“I’m not kidding. You’ve got to get the hell out of here, Pete. They’re coming.”
