by Won, Mark
We were in an interesting room. It was another storage container with five doors in it, aside from the trap door. If there was another eight by twenty container on the other side of the far door then the size of the whole thing must extend well under the abutting chapel. Mr. Althaus said, “Welcome to my tomb. Each of those four doors leads to a bed and bath. The other door lead into an empty hall with five more doors. Kitchen, utility room, exercise room, entertainment room, and storage area. Mi casa es su casa.”
Chapter 2: No Need for Heroics, Graveyard Dance, Mission Accomplished
The utility room had a radio which we were able to use to call Anna and Sue and everyone else back at Mr. Althaus’s estate. They were worried, of course, but we explained that we were safe for the foreseeable future. Using the shortwave, I was even able to get word to Felicia and the kids. The sergeant wanted to send out the troops, post haste, but the Old Man told him to sit tight and monitor the situation. If there were many more of the Changed about than it made more sense to guard the house, at least from his perspective.
I tended to agree. There was no need for heroics. All we had to do was wait for Mark to send out the militia. We had a problem, sure, but it was nothing a couple centuries of soldiers couldn’t take care of. Especially if they showed up with heavily reinforced vehicles.
Mr. Althaus remarked, “I wish I had waited for the weather to pass, then none of this would have happened. I thought that we were only in for a sprinkle, we don’t usually have these kinds of storms this time of year.”
I told him, “Don’t worry about it, you couldn’t know. If we stop working every time a few drops fall we’ll never get anything done.”
We spent the rest of the day looking after Luke’s injuries. The bunker was complete with numerous medical supplies which ensured that Luke would make a swift recovery. While we waited all we had to do was sit around and get fat. The exercise room was the best way to keep in shape so I made that a priority.
It was during my exercise session that I asked Mr. Althaus what the whole place was about. Most people don’t put their survival bunkers under a graveyard.
He said, “I owned the land before it was an official graveyard. Since it did have a lot of my dead family members on it I was able to sell the plot to the city for use as a cemetery. Naturally, before I made the sale, I put in a few improvements. I even got the city to foot the bill for all the on site buildings. You, know, the maintenance sheds, chapel, administration, security cameras and such.”
“You have security cameras?” I asked.
“Oh, sure. That’s how I figured I’d be able to know if it would be safe to leave the bunker or not.”
“Where are the cameras located?” Mr. Althaus truly was a man ahead of his time.
Mr. Althaus said, “I got them all over the graveyard. There’s access to all the visible cameras from the administration building, but I have access to all the hidden ones as well. The monitor’s in the kitchen, come and see.”
I got off the exercise bike and followed my host into the kitchen. He turned on an old laptop and, sure enough, we had access to numerous camera angles covering the whole cemetery.
I told him, “I’m amazed you were able to pull this whole thing off. Are those solar panels on top of Administration?”
He answered, “Well, yeah, of course,” as if there could be no other possibility. “I also got us hooked into the city power supply, not that that does us any good. We got a back up generator in the maintenance room, too, but not much propane for it.”
The view of the graveyard was moderately discouraging in spite of the fact that the rain had temporarily stopped. Somehow, a vast horde of the undead had found their way inside the cemetery wall, and now they were crawling all over the tombs. What concerned me most were the ogres I could see wandering about. Their steady gate promised a certain degree of trouble if they ever figured out where we were and what they might do about it. I knew that they had the physical strength to rip through any obstruction between us.
That seemed unlikely until I caught sight of the ghouls still leaping from the tip of one obelisk to another. There were more then just the two which I’d seen earlier, and they were clearly attempting to draw in every Changed they could. Furthermore, they seemed to be trying, by shoving and leading, to get the ogres over to the tomb which we’d taken refuge in. I wondered what they would think if they forced entry, only to find us missing.
“What’s that?” I asked, looking at one little square on the screen. Old Man Althaus enlarged that section. An external camera was showing us our semi rolling up just outside the cemetery. It’s grill was covered with the earthly remains of countless corpses, blood and gore stretched around the front until it painted both doors of the cab. The windshield wipers had clearly been used to sweep the gore from the front window, leaving red streaks of viscera. Another camera view showed us the rear of the trailer. It too was covered with the splattered remains of the slain. The whole thing reminded me of how the rescue buses would sometimes look after seeing hard usage. My guess was that the driver had been spending his time clearing the neighborhood of threats.
The cab door opened and a human head came flying out, directly into the teeth of an approaching ghoul. Immediately thereafter came Gideon, covered from head to toe in blood, guts, and gore. Although we couldn’t hear him, we could see that he was laughing as he plunged out of the truck and split the skull of his closest target. His ugly scarred mutt followed him, wagging its tail like it was having the time of its life. Lightning flashed across the sky and the downpour renewed in earnest.
With that lightning flashing all around, Gideon stood still for a moment with his head raised to heaven and his arms outstretched. He had a rapturous, grateful expression on his face, and it took me a second to realize he was praying. Then in another flash of lightning he was gone.
The kid left his barking dog behind as he jumped up to the graveyard wall and then to the top of the nearest tombstone. As one would expect, all the zombies round about began to focus on him. At first I thought that he’d be forced back the way he’d come, but Gideon had a different plan. He kept up a running battle, moving from stone to stone cropping the tops of his enemies heads as he went. When an ogre smashed through a stone to reach him, the kid did a somersault over its head, slicing its skull in mid leap. It looked almost like he was still dancing.
A couple of ghouls broke off from their little group and attempted to engage the kid, or at least slow him down. Gideon saw them coming and hid behind another small mausoleum. From our more extensive vantage point Mr. Althaus and I could see the two ghouls sneaking up on his position from opposite sides. The kid looked busy cutting down a number of zombies in his immediate vicinity. He seemed too busy to pay attention to his approaching foes.
“That boy better move,” Mr. Althaus remarked.
Almost as if Gideon had heard the comment, Gideon performed a somersault up to the top of the tomb, followed by a hand spring down behind one of the approaching ghouls. The ghoul didn’t seem to notice.
“How’s he doing that?” By then John had joined us and was taking in the show. We all watched the kid decapitate first the one ghoul followed by the other as soon as it rounded the corner to investigate.
“Look at that,” pointed out Mr. Althaus.
The ghouls remaining in the cemetery were keeping together, now. Whenever Gideon came close they’d back off like they were being cautious, and trying to get the rest of the horde to do all the work. Their behavior reminded me of that of officers.
Meanwhile, Gideon danced around, taking cover whenever possible, drawing the enemy out, killing them in groups of threes and fours. Then the ghouls must have given out some kind of call, because all the remaining zombies turned about and moved right up to the vault we were hiding under. They seemed content to stand guard.
I remembered that I kept thinking that the kid should just back off and wait for reinforcements. We were perfectly safe right where we were. I had
a hard time believing that the ghouls could organize the ogres to the point of having them tear up the cover of our bunker. Surely they weren’t that smart. Gideon had no intention of retreating, however.
One of the ogres seemed to finally understand that the ghouls wanted it to knock our little mausoleum down. As it stepped up to pound on the wall, the top of its head was crushed by a flying rock. That move caught both Old Man Althaus and I by surprise, we had to cast about a while to find the source.
It seemed that Gideon had managed to climb up on the roof of the chapel and was using a sling to chuck rocks at any ogre that happened to get too close to our location. I got the impression that maybe he thought we were just on the other side of the tomb’s door instead of safely concealed beneath his very feet.
I had no idea what Gideon was saying up on the roof of that chapel but he surely meant every word of it. By then he was drenched to the bone and most of the blood and gore had been washed away. His sling spun for an instant and down went another ogre, then another.
The four remaining ghouls couldn’t abide the taunting they were getting and decided that they’d had enough. In unison, they jumped up at him, a maneuver he was clearly prepared for. As they crested the chapel’s eves the kid had dropped his sling and drawn his swords. In one smooth blow he decapitated his first attacker before engaging the rest. The ghouls had no perceivable difficulty climbing the slope of the roof, even as slick as it was. Gideon, for his part, remained balanced on the ridge of the chapel like a monkey. Keeping his back to the steeple, Gideon fought the ghouls like he was thinking about taking a stroll in a garden, his mind clearly elsewhere. As I zoomed in the camera view, I saw he had his eyes closed. I had no idea what to make of that.
Once the ghouls were destroyed, Gideon grabbed ahold of the steeple and raised a sword on high as if asking God to send down a lightning strike on him. Then the crazy kid climbed down the far side of the chapel and began dancing around again. Without the ghouls offering direction, such as it was, the Changed spread out seeking their elusive prey.
It was obvious by then that Gideon was just playing with his enemies, having some fun before finishing them off. During his play time, Gideon managed to draw three zombies to his position and tripped them one by one so that their faces appeared to be smashed right up against a camera lens, before finishing them.
To Mr. Althaus, John said, “I guess he wanted to put on a show for us.”
Mr. Althaus replied, “That camera’s one of the hidden ones. It’s peeking out from under the ornamentation of an outbuilding.”
Once Gideon was finished killing the scores of undead, he called his dog over to him and they strode up to the entrance of our tomb. There he winked at another hidden camera before we saw him knocking on the door. With his other hand he was pointing back toward the rig.
Even Luke had stumbled out to the kitchen by then. He said, “I guess he’s telling us it’s time to go.”
Mr. Althaus asked me to go let him in so I did. Once I opened the door to the mausoleum Gideon took a brief look inside and asked, “Where is everybody?” His confusion was comical.
When I pointed out the secret trap door to him he gushed a childlike enthusiasm and insisted that he open and close it a couple times before going beneath to ‘explore’. He greeted everyone, shook Mr. Althaus’s hand, hugged Luke, and told John, “Wow, you’re like, super strong! How were you able to carry Luke all the way here?”
John answered, “Lots of practice,” which led to a session of tale telling involving bandits, snipers, and extensive injury. The kid seemed to have completely forgotten about leaving.
I was more curious how Gideon had survived. “The last we saw you, kid, you were zombie bait. How did you survive?”
“Well, I had to get all my stuff, remember? I couldn’t just leave it there. So I grabbed it up, did a little dancing, and ran over to one of those support columns along the mall. You remember, the ionic style ones by the pet store.
“That reminds me, we need to go back there and see if we can pick up some doggie treats for Tracer,” Gideon said while motioning to his mutt.
“I thought that you’re dog’s name was Frank,” John said. I’d been wondering the same thing but didn’t want to distract the kid. He seemed to have trouble staying in the here and now.
“What? No, Frank’s the name of my axe, see, ‘cause it’s a throwing axe. Anyhow, I climbed up the pillar to the pet sign, then climbed up the big letter ‘E’ until I reached the roof.” As if that was the end of the story.
“What happened then?” inquired Luke helpfully.
“I waited an hour until they got bored and left. Then I went back down, got Tracer, finished loading the trailer, and started listening on my radio to see if you guys made it back home safe. As soon as I heard that you were in the tomb here I got in the semi and began to clear the area of monsters. It was fun. Then I came here and got to work. Real nice place, by the way. You sure do have a lot of cameras, huh?”
“You finished loading the truck? Why?” I asked.
“I figured that my attacking the zombies would either give you enough time or not. By the time I got on the roof you guys were out of sight, and I didn’t know which way you went. Then the gunshots stopped and I knew you guys were probably okay. I couldn’t track you, and I couldn’t go get Tracer until the interest had died down some, anyway. By then I figured that you’d either made it or not, so there was no sense in not finishing the job. Also, Tracer can’t trace too well in the rain. Then I remembered the radio. As soon as I heard you talking I got on the move.”
“How did you learn to climb so well,” was all Luke could think to say.
“Uncle always said I was spry,” came the proud response.
Chapter 3: Another Job, Highwaymen, Townies
The forces of Haven appeared shortly thereafter and did another clean sweep. There had been a huge group of the enemy which had moved through the area some years back. The general consensus was that a number of them must have moved on through and had now decided to wander back. None of that explained how come there were so many ghouls, though. In any case, the remainder of the enemy were hunted down and destroyed.
Once that was done we cleared out two more underground caches. One was located right next to a population sign and another was underneath the floor of a hardware shop. We had no untoward troubles.
Mark got the idea in his head that we could use another outpost, this time much farther west, in Kansas. Luke had originally hailed from there so he could act as guide and mapmaker. As soon as Gideon heard about it he gushed an enthusiasm at the opportunity for another road trip, as long as we could still call Haven on the radio. He had a girlfriend back on Flat-Tail Island that he wanted to stay in touch with. I think her name was Andrea.
So, once Luke was fully mended, the three of us headed out. I decided to drive while Luke rode shotgun and the kid and his mutt took up the space behind the seats. Originally that area was supposed to be used as a bed for the driver on long hauls.
Luke was the worst navigator in the history of cartography, he had no idea how he’d gotten to Old Man Althaus’s house. Gideon began singing in the back seat. Christmas carols, folk music, old time Irish ballads, and whatever else came into his head. When that was done he pulled out a harmonica and did a passable imitation of classical music. I hate to admit it, but the kid wasn’t bad. The kid’s dog, Tracer, had an annoying fondness to putting his paws up on the top of the seat in front of him and trying to stick his nose out the window. At least he didn’t slobber (much).
We had just crossed the state line and were traveling through a wooded byway when we had to take a bit of a turn as the road curved. Hidden just to the other side of the bend was a long spike chain someone had placed across the road. I didn’t have time to slow down much before we drove right over it and blew out half our tires.
From behind me, Gideon began chanting, “A trap a trap a trap a trap a trap,” as he struggled to get by Luke and ou
t the door.
I understood his sentiment perfectly and yelled, “Bail!” as I threw open my own door and dove to the pavement.
Luke finally managed to make his exodus with Gideon close on his tail. That’s when the zombies broke from the tree line and through the underbrush, stumbling onto the road.
My first thought was echoed by Gideon’s exclamation, “Zombies know how to set traps?” Then I brought my gun up and began shooting every Changed in my path. Luke brought his M-16 up to do the same but was too late. Gideon had decided to engage in personal combat. Again. I was going to have to have a talk with that kid about tactical discipline. At least we were saving on ammunition.
I kept moving as I fired my own rifle. There were only ten zombies coming from each side of the road so I had no problem killing all the threats nearest me. I saw that Gideon and Luke had destroyed the last of their assailants as well. Thankfully, they were all the slow bumbling kind without an ogre or ghoul in their midst.
As I looked over to the others I saw Gideon looking down at his ugly mutt. They seemed to experience a moment of silent communion. Seemingly satisfied, Gideon declared, “That’s the last of them, no humans close by, neither.” I had a real problem trusting the mutt of a lunatic with my life.
I told the two of them, “Take cover over here with me.” They hastened to obey, Luke looking over his shoulder with a well considered fear, and Gideon making haste like a little kid playing cops and robbers.
Once hidden in the trees, Luke asked, “What the hell, man? What the hell! Since when did zombies figure out how to lay down a spike chain?”
I put my fingers to my lips to shush him while I took in the situation. I could see the chain in question had a cord tied to either end and running off into the woods to either side of the road. Gideon had already plunged farther into the forest to inspect the oddity.
He brought back the end of the cord along with a jury-rigged radio. He said, “The cord opened up a big metal cage as soon as you ran over the spikes. I’m guessing the zombies came toward the nearest noise- us.”
