I Zombie I

by Jack Wallen

  Although Sally wasn’t impressed with the piece of history we now held in our hands, she was at least hopeful. That ray of positive energy was one of the best pick-me-ups I’d had in a while. Right now, anything positive was going for a premium.

  But the biggest positive was standing right in front of us. In big, bold letters a sign read MUNICH TRAIN STATION in numerous languages. I wanted to drop to my knees and kiss the ground, but I knew the minute I did fate would turn a dirty trick and do me from behind.

  Ah dirty, dirty fate.

  “So what are the chances the trains are actually running?” Sally asked with more skepticism in her voice than I really cared to hear at that moment.

  “I don’t care if it’s only one percent, so long as there’s a chance of us getting out of this place.” Our very own Miss Sunshine beamed as she and the other girls took off for the entry at full-tilt.

  I caught up with the gang at the entry to the building. We held our collective breath as Bethany pulled the door open.

  When the doors opened, the sounds of moaners spilled out. That sound was the sound of fate once again having its way with my back side. We all sighed at the same time, utterly defeated.

  “Before you get all gloom and doom, remember we have the Obliterator.” I had no idea where I was hiding my inner cheerleader, but there it was in all its glory.

  “He’s right. We go in there, light it up, scare off some zombies, and see to it these trains are running.” Bethany surprised me with a little rah! rah! of her own. Bethany’s plan was elegant and simple. All we had to do was suck it up and brave the cacophony of the zombie symphony pouring out of the building.

  “It must be zombie central in there.” Susan said with her eyes the size of pies.

  “It is that for sure. And we are going to go in there and wreak our own very special kind of havoc.”

  ” ‘Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war,’ ” Sally whispered.

  “Shakespeare. I’m impressed.” Bethany was giving Sally the up-and-down. Great. Not only do I have to deal with the zombie onslaught, I have to deal with catty women. Maybe it’s time I gave in and joined the rank and file before the girls go full-on with claws, slaps, and hair-pulling. Some might find that hot. Not this one. Although…

  “We should probably get to a centralized location before we fire up the Obliterator. Once those bad boys start to scramble, the last thing we need is to paint ourselves into a corner.”

  “Good call,” Bethany chirped, as she pulled open the door to peer inside again. “I see a central-ish open stairwell. That should do the job.”

  “…ish?” What do you mean ish?” I didn’t mean to come off like some prepubescent girl, but there it was.

  “I mean, I can’t see the entire first floor from this vantage point. Would you like me to track down blueprints of the building so I could triangulate the precise center?” Bethany smart-assed her last comment and punctuated it by flipping me off. She winked at the same time, so I didn’t worry she was seriously pissed. How does that woman know me so well?

  “Fine. We make our way to that staircase, climb it, and release the wall of sound. The zombies will leave in a panic, and then we can check the status of the trains.” I finalized a plan that did seem sound. But still, why was I so fucking nervous? Could it be that we had no idea how many Zs were in the building? Could it be we had no idea if the Zs would actually make their way to and out the doorways? It could be. It could be many things. Ultimately though, I just didn’t want to see any of us become the snack du jour for an army of teeth-gnashing zombies.

  “Are you sure that thing is going to work?” Sally was even more nervous than I. At least I could place a modicum of faith in something. Sally, on the other hand, had nothing. She had only known us for a brief period, and our plan probably seemed, at least to the sane, insane. But that was our reality.

  There was, of course, one small detail Sally had to completely understand. “The most important aspect of this plan is silence from here to that staircase. If we can make it to that staircase in complete silence, our chances of reaching our goal grow exponentially. That means the heels will have to come off.”

  “Oh, shit! I was really hoping it wouldn’t come to that.” Sally kicked her right foot up and pulled off an expensive-looking high-heeled shoe. She repeated the action with the other foot, and then stood there holding the shoes. When she saw what had to be astonishment on my face, she looked at me as if I had just lost the remains of my mind. “These babies cost me a week’s pay. They stay with me.”

  I really didn’t care how much Sally’s come-fuck-me’s had cost. I just cared that they didn’t get in the way of our making it to safety. I held out my pack and opened it for her. “You can stow your shoes in here so they don’t accidentally fall and draw attention to us.”

  Before Sally could place so much as a toe of one of the shoes in the bag, Bethany grabbed them and tossed them as far away from the building as she could. I thought for sure a girl-fight was about to break out. Instead, the two women stared hard at one another as if to say ‘Wait until you’re sleeping.’

  As you can imagine, there was a bit of tension among us. How could there not be? We were about to walk through the gates of Hell with nothing more than a noisemaker for protection. We had no idea if we were going to live to see another day.

  “Is everyone ready? We’ll stay in one tight group. Walk slowly. Take deep, slow breaths. And no matter what, do not panic. It’s only fifty or so yards to the staircase. As soon as we’re all on that case, everyone get behind me and Bethany. We’ll crank up the Obliterator and watch the chaos from safety. Everyone ready? Here…we…go!”

  As soon as the doors opened, the sounds and smells of the rotting, walking corpses hit us full-force. It took every ounce of restraint we collectively had to keep from screaming and running. But as soon as we were all inside the building, we stopped moving and held our breath.

  Nothing. Not a single zombie turned our way. This could work.

  I took the lead and slowly led the group to the stairs. As we walked, the moans of the zombies rose and fell like a chorus of cattle searching for one another in complete darkness. The distance to the stairs seemed to not be growing any shorter, thanks to the incredibly slow pace we were using. We had to be overly cautious.

  But then a noise bounced off the wall behind us. Maybe it was one of the zombies tripping over a can or knocking over a chair, but the sound frightened Susan, who let out a small squeak. That squeak was all it took. One zombie turned our way and let out a low, growling moan. That moan scared the shit out of Susan, who upped the ante of her squeal with a full-blown scream. At that point, all hell broke loose.

  “Run, everyone! Run now!” I yelled.

  The screams and moans mixed together, creating a sound-scape perfectly suited for nightmares and horror films.

  We scattered.

  “Bethany…now!” I called out.

  “But we’re not –”

  “Now’s the only chance we have!”

  “Okay. Ready?”

  The sound of the Obliterator filled the room. Like an undead ballet, the zombies all moaned in pain and grabbed their heads.

  “Run for the stairs!” I called out.

  Bethany yelled for me to help her with the Obliterator. I ran to her, grabbed the machine, and started cranking. The device released its glorious sound…and then stopped.

  “Why’d you stop cranking?”

  “Shit! I didn’t. It’s not working.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  The zombies returned to their previous action of searching us out.

  “It is possible. See? I’m cranking. It’s not working.”

  “Oh, my God!”

  “Up the stairs, everyone.”

  “To where?”

  “I don’t know! Just go. Fast!”

  I didn’t know what had happened. One minute, it looked like we were actually going to beat those fuckers back, and the next, we
were running for our lives. And now we were hiding in what looked like a women’s lingerie shop. Just our luck. We couldn’t have found our way into a gun shop or general store. No. We had to find the polar opposite of anything that would do us any good.

  At least it was a place to hide until Bethany could figure out what was wrong with the Obliterator.

  “I don’t think I can fix it.” Bethany’s timing was exquisite.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I see what’s wrong, but I don’t have the necessary tools to fix it,” Bethany answered with way too much finality.

  “What do you need?” Sally asked, as if she were going to pull the exact tools out of her magical, million-dollar handbag.

  “I could make do with a soldering gun, but it would have to have a very small tip, some solder, and a magnifying lens. But if you will remember, we’re in a train station, not a Radio Shack.” Bethany was quickly losing her temper.

  “A train station that has an attached mall,” Susan chimed in with a dollop of wisdom that shut us all up. “Didn’t you see all the stores we passed on our way here? Music stores, clothing, shoes, sporting goods, books, electronics.”

  My brain took a brief side-trip trying to remember which Romero film took place in a mall. Was it Dawn of the Dead or Day of the Dead?

  “Where were the electronics and the book stores?” Bethany asked, her voice calming with every syllable.

  “Right by the stairs, right across from each other.”

  Bethany and I looked at each other. We didn’t have time to say a word. I started to slide the shelf away from the door.

  “What are you doing?” Sally’s voice was brimming with fear and accusation.

  It didn’t take long to convince the girls they would be okay for a moment, and that it was best that only two of us go. I instructed them to hide behind the register counter and not to put on anything sexy. Once again, my attempted humor fell flat.

  We finalized our plan. I would hit the bookstore for a magnifying glass while Bethany hit the electronics store for her tools. I suspected I would find my booty first and would join her on her quest. We would have to be as silent as possible. Enough noise had already been made. If we brought any more attention to ourselves, we might as well just welcome the z-men with open arms.

  Before we left the room, I found a couple of steel-ish rods to use as crude weapons. Anything was better than nothing to keep biting jaws from tender human flesh. And we’d already seen that a few swift dashes to the skull would render zombies null and void.

  I only hoped Bethany had it in her to spill blood if necessary. I handed her a shaft of doom. “Let’s go.”

  We both slipped out of the lingerie store and made our way to the shops in question. As soon as we made it to the doors, we went our separate ways in search of everything we needed to bring the Obliterator back to life.

  The inside of the bookstore was creepy. The darkness and silence were foreboding. Normally, I was a big fan of bookstores. Now? Not so much.

  I assumed the magnifying glasses could be found by the register, so I made my way there. As soon as I reached a lazy Susan filled with magnifying glasses of varying strength, I heard that all-too-familiar sound.

  “Shit! Oh, fuck…how did you…? Back off! Son of a…” The moaner had snuck up behind me somehow. I turned and swung the steel pipe down. The pipe made an eerie humming sound before it crashed down on the zombie’s head. After the first hit, the zombie moaned louder than I had heard one moan before. It was almost as if the thing was calling out for help.

  “Shut the fuck up!” Another crack of steel on the thing’s skull.

  The damned moaner wouldn’t go down. No matter how many times I introduced it to my steel, it remained standing and moaning.

  “You have got to shut up!”

  Hum.

  Crack.

  Moan.

  I backed away from the beast and noticed a cup of pencils at the checkout counter. I grabbed the sharpest of the lot.

  “Fine. Your head won’t split open, but what about your eyeball?” I jabbed, and the pencil found its mark. There was a sickening popping sound, and then a sticky fluid poured out onto my hand.

  The zombie stumbled backward, which gave me plenty of room to get a good swing. I cocked my pipe and brought it down hard on the moaner’s skull, splitting it open. It finally dropped to the ground.

  My heart was racing faster than I could ever remember it beating.

  “If this were a horror movie, you would have already sprung up for one last attempt to get me. Good thing this isn’t a horror movie.”

  Yeah, good fucking thing.

  I exited the bookstore to find Bethany waiting for me in the hall.

  “What took you so long?”

  “Uhhh…stopped to read a book? You get everything?”

  “Yes…let’s get back.”

  I debated whether or not to tell everyone of my battle in the bookstore. Ultimately, I decided not to. There was no reason to scare them any more than they already were.

  “Thankfully, the electronics store had exactly what I needed and then some. Once I get this baby repaired, we’re going to make another trip back to that store. I found a complete setup so we can record this sound and play it on a loop through a fairly significant loudspeaker. We’ll clear this building in seconds. Of course, that also means Jacob will need―”

  Bethany almost gave away the one secret that would send Sally sprinting.

  “We’ll all need ear protection. It’s going to be loud.” Bethany recovered gracefully.

  “That is the best idea I’ve heard in… well, my entire life, I think.”

  “So, you’ll be able to fix that?” Susan spoke softly. It was obvious her age lent her a fear no one else in our group could comprehend.

  It was all too easy to forget we had a child in our midst.

  “Good as new.”

  Bethany’s three words did more for Susan than anything to date. All the girl needed was an assurance we were all going to be okay. And three simple words did the trick. Good as new. Wouldn’t it be grand if three words could, in fact, make everything better? What about: I’m only dreaming. Yeah, that would do it for sure.

  While Bethany focused on fixing the Obliterator, the rest of us took a moment to fuel up. The energy bars wore out my jaw, but filled up my tank.

  “So, Jacob, I noticed the digital recorder. What purpose does it serve?” For some odd reason, Sally’s voice was dripping with suspicion.

  “I’m a journalist. I’m doing what I do best.”

  “He’s keeping a recording of everything that happens,” Susan chimed in with a glow of pride about her cheeks.

  “Thank you, Susan. That’s about it.”

  “What’s the purpose of this diary?”

  I wasn’t ready to let Sally in on every truth we had up our sleeves. Trusting everyone was not a luxury I currently enjoyed. “Well, just making sure this story is remembered.”

  “And in the end you can make a buck?” Sally dropped a personal bomb between us. “Isn’t that the reason writers write? If there wasn’t a penny to be made, why bother?”

  “It’s not always about money. To many, the written word is sacred.”

  “Now, you sound like an old lit professor I had at Yale.”

  “Yale?”

  “Yes, Yale. How else do you think I got where I am? Good looks? Talent? No. Connections. And if you play your cards right and work your connections, that notebook of yours could make you a fortune.” Sally was about to make some enemies at a most inconvenient time.

  “Look, I said this isn’t about money.”

  “Wait. You’re a journalist? Your name is Jacob? The Times? Wow! You’re practically royalty. I mean, we don’t usually give newspaper geeks the time of day, but you do great work.”

  “Thanks. Hopefully, this won’t be my last.”

  “Let’s hope not. If the news world lost you, it would be lesser place.”

&nbs
p; I had to admit the conversation had taken a turn I wasn’t expecting. That turn was making me a wee bit uncomfortable. I was never one to take praise well. It never really mattered in what form. I’d won awards and accolades but never really knew how to handle it. And Sally was certainly laying it on thick.

  Fortunately, Bethany put a halt to the pedestaling I was receiving.

  “Done,” was all she needed to say.

  “So, we’re ready to hit the electronics store one more time?”

  Bethany thought for a second before she continued, “Actually I think we should all go. The fewer trips we make, the better. Besides, we won’t be moving the rig I’m going to assemble. So we should all head out together.”

  No one argued. For some reason, being with Bethany just seemed like the wise thing to do. A tiny part of me hated that. I was the―

  “Oh, no.” It hit me. Of all times, why now?

  “Jacob?”

  “Not now. Bethany…it’s happening again.”

  “Shit, Jacob, you have the worst timing!”

  The scream that issued from my mouth startled everyone in the room to nearly bolting.

  “It’s okay. Let me stick you again. We’ll build the machine and come back for you.”

  “Noooo! Oh, God…Bethany…this feels different.”

  “What? What’s different?”

  “It hurts!”

  “What’s happening to him?”

  “Here, Jacob…this will calm you down.”

  “Bethany…what are you doing?”

  “Beth…any…don’t…let me stay…like…”

  Chapter 28: The promise broken

  ~

  I’m alone. My head is killing me. It feels like my skull is in a vise and Thor’s own hammer is striking my cranium. Every blow brings a shock of pain and brilliant white light behind my eyeballs.

  But beyond the pain, what is bothering me most is being alone. With everything that has happened, the last thing I can imagine as far as being able to survive is having to do it by myself. Even if my companions aren’t a pillar of security, they bring me a purpose and a hope. And with what is brewing inside of me I need as much of that precious commodity as I can get.