by Rick Chesler
Alex, meanwhile, headed to a far corner of the room that had been partitioned off with what looked like plywood crates. At first, he thought it formed an uninterrupted walled-off area, but then he found a small gap where one side didn’t quite reach the actual room wall, which was itself carved directly from the volcanic stone. He felt something liquid splash on his scalp and looked up to see water dripping from the ceiling, having percolated through the soil above.
He passed through the narrow opening into the walled off section of room, and caught his breath.
“We’ve hit the jackpot.”
Bombs.
Lots of them. Old-looking ones, with big bulbous metal bodies and little stabilizing fins, stacked not just ceiling-high, but in actuality even higher than that. A circular opening had been bored into the floor and Alex could see that the bombs were stacked well down into that, farther than he could see, deep into the volcano’s innards. Even more troubling, an assemblage of wiring and little metal boxes was integrated among the bombs. Alex was no explosives expert, but even to him it looked suspiciously like a trigger mechanism.
“What the hell is DeKirk planning with all this shit?”
“What do you—?” Xander was there in a flash, looking over his shoulder, eyes scanning, taking everything in. “Holy…” He whistled, and then looked up and around the chamber. “I wonder if he’s planning a little failsafe of his own…”
“Guys!” From behind them, Veronica’s voice was fraught with worry. “I hear them coming down the tunnel!”
Xander threw a case of 50-cal machine gun bullets down on the floor in aggravation. “This old ammo isn’t going to fit our guns. Gimme some 9mm rounds. Shit!” He looked around the room in desperation, eyes alighting on a metal gas can against the wall. He went to it and hefted its weight, feeling liquid slosh inside. Unscrewed the cap and sniffed, recoiling at the sharp tang that assailed his nostrils. Satisfied it was some kind of fuel, he picked up the can and carried it to the doorway, where Veronica’s eyes grew wider by the second.
The sound of the zombie horde grew louder, their feet scraping the floor as they transited through the tunnel toward the munitions room. Xander eyed Veronica. “Got a light?” She shook her head. He looked over to Alex, who was still out of sight behind the walled-off area.
“Hey, kid, what’re you doing over there? Find anything else we can use? Because it’s decision time. Make a stand here or run for it to the unknown at the other end of the tunnel. Could be a dead end for all I know. Literally.”
“I’ll go check.” Veronica dashed from the room out into the tunnel.
“I’m still thinking about this.” Alex said, staring at the bombs.
“Kid, that’s not helping now—”
“No, really. I think we can use this…”
Xander unscrewed the gas can cap and dumped the liquid out into the tunnel, opposite the direction in which Veronica had gone. Shining his light down the passage, he spotlighted a sea of red eyes moving his way, glowing orbs sunken into heads that gasped, moaned and screamed senseless utterances that reverberated around the tunnel, making it sound like a carnival funhouse on Halloween. He ducked back inside the room and ran over to Alex.
“Lemme see again.”
Alex withdrew from the bomb space and pointed inside. Xander slipped through and Alex heard him take the lord’s name in vain several times as he took in the inventory in more detail. “So DeKirk was probably thinking, set these off… maybe start a volcanic eruption in the process…the volcano has been getting hotter lately. An explosion could really disturb the geothermal stability of this thing...” Xander let a smile form. “If we can blow this place up—and escape—we’ll take out a lot of those freaks in one fell swoop.”
Alex backed up. “I like it, but if something’s wrong with the trigger system, we could die right here.”
“Kid, there’s no time to sugarcoat it for you. We’re probably either dying quick, like this...” He stared up at the mountain of antique incendiary devices, then down into the bored hole full of more bombs, before cocking his head out toward the hall, where the jarring cacophony sounded like it was about to reach them. “Or die relatively slow, out there, and become one of those things.” He focused some more. “This mechanism here has got to be the timer.”
Suddenly, Veronica burst into the room. “What the fuck are you guys doing? If it wasn’t for your gasoline slip’n’ slide out there those things would already be in here!”
Xander’s voice came from behind the partition.
“Veronica, is there a way out from that end?”
“Yes. There’s—”
He cut her off. “All I need to know. You ready to run?”
The first of the zombies made its way into the munitions room.
“Hell yes.”
“Yeah.” Veronica’s and Alex’s responses overlapped.
“Go! Go! Go! Five minutes to boom!”
Xander exited the bomb area, now wearing a heavily loaded canvas backpack, and saw the zombie, still wearing a white lab coat with a stethoscope around its neck. Veronica held her trusty Ka-Bar at the ready, still hoping she could slip past the threat to the tunnel outside the room. Alex followed her.
Xander picked up one of the smaller warheads, maybe eighteen inches long, with a skinny end and a fatter, spherical one. He gripped the thing by the thin end like a club and made his way to the exit. The zombie followed, almost cat-like in its movements while in a burst of speed, but then slowing once again to an uncoordinated, rambling walk as it neared Xander for a bite. Xander swung the warhead and caved in the side of the zombie’s skull, forcing its grayish tongue far out of its mouth in the process. He let go of his impromptu weapon and sprang for the door just as three more zombies reached the munitions doorway.
He heard Alex shout, “Look out!” then saw the spark of a Zippo lighter in Alex’s hand. As if in slow motion, he watched his arm wind up for the pitch and release the weighted flame. It flew over Xander’s head and landed with a click that was drowned out by the whoosh of erupting flames as the gas went up. In a tunnel of flame the advancing zombies shrieked, thrashed, and caterwauled while the three still among the living sprinted down the unlit portion of the subterranean passage. Almost as an afterthought, Xander stopped, shrugged off his newfound World War Two backpack and tossed a handful of 50-cal rounds into the fire.
By the time he shouldered his pack and was running down the tunnel again, he heard the snapping pops of the shells being forced from their projectiles, knowing that the brass casings were flying around inside the fire. When he reached the end of the tunnel where Alex and Veronica had already made the left turn—the only available option—he turned back for a look down the hall.
A zombie completely engulfed in flames from head to toe continued to walk toward him, arms outstretched, screaming, screaming, wailing as though it were in unfathomable agony. Yet still, it kept coming, driven through its fiery anguish by the insurmountable urge to consume raw human flesh. Others like it burst forth from the flames.
Xander felt palpable relief when one of them toppled and thudded to the ground, its brain having been boiled inside its skull, its cranial lining drooling from its charred mouth. They could be killed by fire. Then it was trampled over by a procession of burning zombies, a few dropping as their brains cooked, but many still forging ahead, alight, shrieking hopelessly out of their shapeless, melted faces.
Xander turned the corner and ran into another room—a cavernous area serving as another storage zone, full of crates and boxes. There ahead of them…Veronica was behind the wheel of a lone Jeep, turning the key, letting loose a little holler of joy as the engine cranked to life. Alex was hefting a rocket launcher and lugging it over to the Jeep, followed by one more. He stuck them in the back of the vehicle like they were a couple of snowboards for a weekend trip. He found a luggage-sized case of extra rockets for the launchers leaning up against a wall and tossed that in the Jeep, too.
“Not long
before it all blows, if it’s going to blow.” Xander checked his watch.
Suddenly, a charred zombie staggered into the room from the tunnel, still smoldering.
“Little help here!” Xander called. He faced off against the zombie, preparing to fight it hand-to-hand. Veronica left the Jeep idling and stepped out while Alex went to a roll-up door and reached down to pull it open.
The zombie lurched but Xander evaded it. Veronica circled around the dead one’s backside, blade at the ready.
Two more smoldering zombies entered, one leaning over to chew on the other’s burnt shoulder meat despite multiple swats to the face as they walked. Xander continued to circle until he was between the Jeep and the zombie he squared off with. There was a rushing sound of metal on metal as Alex threw the roll-up door open. Veronica slashed at the first zombie with her Ka-Bar, missing its neck and slicing it under an armpit. The creature pounded a blistered hand that was missing all of the fingers onto her back, knocking her to the floor.
Xander looked over at her, beneath the zombie with two more undead a few steps away, and then out the roll-up door to the outside. The view surprised him. It wasn’t merely the inside of the volcano, but actually led outside to the rest of the island. The way out.
Alex, now carrying a tire iron he’d picked up somewhere in here, ran over to the melee. He cracked the zombie falling over Veronica in the skull, dropping it on top of her. She yelled for him to get it off her. While he did, Xander slid into the driver seat of the Jeep and quietly put it into reverse. He rolled the vehicle out of the garage and put it in park, got out and walked to the entrance.
Alex and Veronica had dispatched the first zombie but now battled two more, and Xander could see a whole gang of them—some still on fire—about to pour into the room from the tunnel. He reached up and grabbed the handle on the roll-up door just as Alex looked up from the fracas.
“Help us!”
Xander smiled back at them—a devilish grin. “Actually, I’ve got a better idea!”
He proceeded to pull the door down, slamming it hard. Then he took a chain he’d seen in the Jeep and used it to wedge into one of the tracks just above where the wheels were on the track, fastening it tight, effectively blocking the door from rising. Trapping Alex and Veronica inside the bunker. There was no way in Hell they’d be able to fight their way back through that burned-out tunnel.
Smiling at his ingenuity, Xander hopped back into the Jeep, honked the horn, and sped off.
40.
Alex’s watch beeped and he looked up from kicking a zombie in the head to glance at it.
“Time’s up! Brace yourself, it’s gonna blow!”
Veronica tried lifting the roll-up door but it was jammed.
“Goddamned, Xander!” She hurled herself against the metal barrier in frustration, bouncing off of it and back into the zombie melee, where she jammed the tip of her Ka-Bar into a bloodshot eye. Then, seeing Alex ducking for cover, she crouched and covered the sides of her head with her elbows, bracing for the impact...
Which never came.
“I thought you said time’s up?” She looked up at Alex, who had dispatched another zombie by shattering its skull with the tire iron. He backpedaled away from two more as he continued to consult his watch.
“I guess that old stuff doesn’t actually work. We lucked out!”
Veronica glared at him from the bloody floor. “Lucked out? Oh yeah, locked in here with these monsters that want to have us for dinner. Oh, and a T. rex roaming around out there if we do manage to get out. We lucked out, all right.”
Alex sighed, looking around. “There’s got to be a way out of here. Plus, you never know, those old bombs could go off at any moment.”
“We’re not getting out through that tunnel. Too many of those things.”
Alex had piled a bunch of oxygen tanks, munitions, spare tires and other random objects in the doorway, slowing the progress of zombies into the room, but they still crawled and climbed in one at a time. Three moving ones occupied the room presently, one with half its face burned away, the other half a normal zombie pallor, as if it had fallen on one side onto the burning floor and been held there for some time.
“Need some help here,” Alex said, casting about for a weapon of opportunity, his tire iron having bounced out of his hand when it glanced off a zombie skull. Veronica got up, brandishing her knife.
“You look for a way out, I’ll hold them off.”
She walked up to the closest zombie and feinted left, then stabbed right, plowing the blade up through the neck of the undead monstrosity all the way into its brain cavity. She withdrew the slimy, black metal and eyed her next victim as the first dropped to the floor, dead for good.
Alex tried the roll-up again, almost dislocating his shoulder with the effort. He kicked the door repeatedly, checking to see how it would give. Maybe he could ram something heavy into it, but no. It was stout. More trademark DeKirk quality—or a holdover from Korean wartime engineering.
He glanced over at Veronica to make sure she was handling herself okay. A flood of zombies were bottlenecked at the barricaded entrance, fighting and biting each other while occasionally one made it through. Veronica was battling them one and sometimes two at a time, becoming brutally efficient with the Ka-Bar, learning how to distance herself from the threats, only going in close when a high-value target, such as an upturned chin, presented itself.
Alex spotted a tarp-covered object in the corner and ran to it. Something he could use? He ripped the cover off and stared at a green-painted forklift. It looked like it might be operational—and gas powered, most likely used recently by the looks of it. His eyes traced a path from it to the door, making a connection. He’d never operated one before but how hard could it be? He heard Veronica grunt with the effort of stabbing another zombie, looked over, saw her drop the thing, and back off. She looked back at him, made eye contact that said, please do something, and turned back into combat.
Alex pulled himself into the forklift with a handhold and studied the controls. Key in the ignition, thank God. Turned it, and the engine rumbled to life. Yes! He lurched forward, tentatively rolling ahead. Realizing he needed speed for this to work, he floored the gas pedal and was surprised at how much acceleration the vehicle had to give.
He pressed the button to raise the forks off the floor so that they would hit the door higher up, and then steeled himself for the impact. The lift rammed the door at an angle, causing the machine to turn violently to the left when one fork poked through the metal before the other one. Alex was jolted from his seat and almost thrown from the vehicle but grabbed the seatbelt strap (that he hadn’t bothered to put on). He dangled from the side of the forklift as it punched through the door, taking Alex through a jagged rip in the metal sheet that tore at his left arm and leg, flaying his skin.
He could see sky! Sky that was filled with volcanic smoke, and a fine black ash that now rained down upon them, but still. How good it looked after being underground and inside for so long. How sweet it was, to breath the open air, even filled with volcanic ejecta as it was. He dropped off the lift and was turning to run back inside for Veronica when he saw them.
Zombies.
A dense gathering, fanned out into a more or less horizontal line that advanced on the garage, faster than usual. Some of them, Alex noted, looked as if they were of South Pacific islander descent. How many damn employees were on this island? There was no time to speculate, for the pack approached, gaining speed when they saw new prey.
“Veronica! More outside, let’s go!”
He heard the ring of metal on metal followed by a guttural yell—he wasn’t sure if it was Veronica or a zombie—and then the agent came crashing through the gouged-out door, eyes widening in abject horror as the phrase out of the frying pan into the fire draped over her consciousness like a shroud of doom.
She was bloody.
Sheets of crimson washed down her right arm and leg.
“Veronica! Wer
e you—?” He couldn’t bring himself to say it.
Were you bitten?
She read the anguish on his face. “Negative. It’s from the door on the way out. Could have left me a bigger opening. I have to say, your vehicular skills do not impress me thus far. I hope you can fly a plane better than you can use a forklift or a helicopter. “
“Get me to a plane, I’ll fly it,” Alex said confidently. Inwardly, he flashed on his arrival to Antarctica in the chartered plane from Chile—the sketchy landing and how Tony had questioned his abilities, too. He shrugged the thoughts off. “What about this?”
Alex looked back at the nearing throng. Behind them, two zombies pushed through the ripped door without any care whatsoever for sharp edges, one of them cutting itself so badly in the process that a sizable slice of flesh unfurled from its side, flapping obscenely as it bounced along toward the pair of humans.
Veronica whirled around, head on a swivel, knife at the ready.
Alex tried to see through the oncoming wall of zombies, to see past them to what lie ahead. He registered some trees on the right and no sign of Xander, that bastard...But there, on the left! Something leaning against a boulder. Something black and chrome...
A motorcycle!
He pointed it out to Veronica, but to get to it, they’d have to force their way through the horde.
She took one more glance back at the garage, where another burnt zombie was grating itself though the ruptured door, and then set off at a jog toward the bike. “I’ll fight ‘em as long as I can, you get through to the bike and get it started. Trusting you not to leave me behind like Xander.”
She reached the first of the zombies and exploded into a fury of slashes and jabs, parries and thrusts, nearly decapitating the lost soul. She quickly realized that she’d put too much energy into that single encounter, however, and then found herself having to deal with three of the creatures simultaneously. She inflicted quick but deep face and neck wounds to each of them before whirling around into an open pocket for some running room like an NFL player looking for a first down.
