by Drew Brown
But uglier.
It was useless. I knew it was going to come down to him or me.
And I didn’t want that. But like all good cowboys, I know when it’s time to head ’em off at the pass…
“I ain’t leaving Juliette,” Budd said. He got up from his chair walked over to where Juliette and the doctor’s wife were tending to the male honeymooner.
The banging on the wooden doors had increased again, becoming an almost constant tirade of sound. Andy looked towards the noise and stood up. “Two’ll have to be enough. We need to hurry.”
25
Budd listened as the others thrashed out a plan of action. Frank was to organize the group for the journey to the restaurant, while Andy and Sam would venture into the basement to find weapons and anything else of value. When they returned, the group would leave.
Kneeling next to Juliette, Budd watched as Sam and Andy, accompanied by Frank and the doctor, walked around to the cargo-lift’s entrance on the other side of the bar. A few minutes later, following the whirring of a motor, Frank and the doctor came back alone.
Budd tapped Juliette on the shoulder and when she turned to look at him he gave her a smile. “You okay?”
Juliette nodded. She stood up, straightened her leather jacket, and then led Budd into the shadows, away from where she’d been helping to tend to the male honeymooner.
“He told us that he saw his wife killed,” Juliette said once they were seated at a table on the fringe of the candlelight. “He said that those things bit and scratched her.”
“Yeah, that jerk says the same thing,” Budd said, pointing at Chris.
“What do you think they are?”
“Zombies.”
“Really?”
“I don’t know,” Budd answered, his voice trailing away. There was a short silence between them where they could hear the hushed voices of others around the barroom.
The beating of hands against the oak doors continued.
“Do you have family, Monsieur Ashby?”
Budd considered the question, guessing what the point to Juliette’s words would be. “None I’ll miss.”
“No one?”
Budd shrugged his shoulders. “My folks died a few years back, and I haven’t spoken to my brother since then. And who’d miss a string of money-grubbin’ ex-wives?”
“A string? You must have loved them once, Monsieur Ashby.”
“Yeah, but hell, when I was a kid, I even had a thing for Captain Kirk. Things change.”
Luckily…
“Do you have children?”
Budd scratched at the stubble on his face. “Well, none that I know of.”
Juliette’s hands came up onto the tabletop and she stroked one with the other. “I am worried about my family. I wish I could talk to them.”
“Hey, sweetie, whatever’s happening here,” Budd said, reaching out to place his own hands on hers, “we don’t know for sure how far it goes. I mean, let me take a wild stab in the dark. Where’re your folks? France?”
Juliette nodded. “Monaco.”
“That’s a long way off, and, if you think about this place,” Budd said, waving his arm around the room, “things can’t get any worse.”
“You are right, Monsieur Ashby. What should we do?”
“Long term, I really haven’t a clue. Stick with these guys; wait till things sort themselves out. But short term, I’ve gotta take a nap. I’ve hardly slept.”
“A nap? How can you sleep, Monsieur Ashby?”
Budd took off his rucksack so that he could slouch in his chair. He pulled his Stetson down over his eyes. “Trust me, it ain’t gonna be a problem.”
I felt bad for ending the conversation so swiftly. But I wasn’t lying; I really was tired.
And somehow, despite what I’d said, part of me did worry ’bout what’d happened to my ex-wives. I mean, they’d been a hideous pack of bloodsuckers before this, but could they now be brain-eaters as well?
That’d be too much to deal with, even for a laid-back guy like me…
When Budd woke, it took him a few seconds to remember where he was and what was happening. He lifted the rim of his Stetson and looked around. Not much had changed, except that the group had spread further out, drifting away from the well-lit center to take refuge in the shadows. Sitting beside him, Juliette was still awake. She was sipping at a bottle of water and had placed a candle in the middle of the table.
“How long did I doze?”
“I am not sure, Monsieur Ashby. An hour, perhaps.”
“Are Andy and Sam back?”
Juliette shook her head. “No, but we have heard some noises.”
As if on cue, there came the sound of something heavy falling over, followed by the crashing and banging of smaller objects clattering against a hard floor. The noise was close by, Budd thought, probably on the floor below.
Evidently, Frank thought the same. “Right, can everybody come over to the cargo lift? We have to be ready to go,” he said, calling out above the knocking on the oak doors.
Budd winked at Juliette. “Ready?”
“Yes.”
“Stay close to me, sweetheart.”
“Always,” she replied. There was a glimmer of a smile on her lips.
Budd looked into her wide eyes, wondering what would have happened if the world had not taken such a strange turn. “I’ll keep you safe,” he said.
She’d have run off with a younger, fitter guy with a six-pack and wads of moolah, that’s what…
Juliette’s smile grew wider. “Monsieur Ashby,” she said, teasingly, “I did not know you really cared.”
Budd stood and hung his rucksack over his shoulder. His left eyebrow hooked upwards and he grinned. “Well, like I told you, sex always gives me nightmares, but this is much, much worse than usual. Baby, you were amazing.”
“You two ready?” Frank called.
Budd was pleased with the interruption; Juliette’s expression had turned into a frown. “Yes, we are,” she replied, turning from him. She hurried over to the counter.
“That was a compliment, honey,” Budd said, stifling a chuckle.
26
The group converged around the entrance to the small room in the center of the bar. Frank was ahead of the rest, propping open the spring-return door with his foot. He shone his electric flashlight into the room, and the light reflected from the elevator’s metal doors. A red bulb above the elevator indicated it was on its way.
“Shall I gather some of the candles?” Father McGee asked.
“Leave them here in case we come back in a hurry,” Frank said over his shoulder. “I’ll blow them out once we know there’re no problems downstairs. We can’t risk a fire.”
The mechanical sound of the elevator’s motor stopped and the doors opened. Unlike the ones designated for customer use, there was no bell. Bright light spilled from the lift car to reveal Sam with the fire-axe gripped in his hands. The blade dripped with blood and the sleeves of his green top were stained with the dark liquid. “Right, dudes,” he said, “Andy’s downstairs waiting. We’ll go, like, in groups of two or three. Who’s first?”
Juliette stepped through the door into the small room. There was a narrow desk cluttered with papers and several stacks of cartons on the floor in the corner, all of which were loaded with different varieties of alcoholic beverage. “I will go first,” she said, and then she turned back to Budd, who’d stayed in the darkness of the bar. “Monsieur Ashby?”
“Yeah, I’m coming,” he said.
Slowly…
Sam moved to the side and beckoned for them to enter the cramped elevator car, which was designed for a single person and a trolley of goods. With one hand across the doors to stop them closing, he looked out to Frank. “It’ll take about five minutes to get to the main lifts and back, dude. Make sure there’s another two or three ready to go by then.”
Frank nodded. “We’ll be ready.”
Sam pressed a button that was shaped like a falling arr
ow and the doors closed, sealing with a gentle thud. Above them, beyond the ceiling tiles, the motor kicked into life and the elevator began its downward journey.
“We found the security room; there were some batons and some pepper spray, nothing totally exciting.” Sam said as they travelled between the floors. “We got more flashlights and a couple of two-way radio sets though, and we gathered up a few more axes and knives as well.”
“Did you see more of those… things?” Juliette asked.
“Zombies,” Sam said, nodding. “Yeah, we did.”
The elevator juddered to a halt and the doors opened. The light fanned out across a large storeroom. Andy was standing in the center of the room, next to a wide, four-wheeled cart that was piled high with three duffel bags and several crates of bottled water. He had a flashlight in one hand and his hammer in the other; his white shirt was splattered with gore. “You’d better take one of these,” he said, gesturing to the handle of an axe that was sticking out from the cart.
Budd walked forward and took hold of the makeshift weapon. He swung it up so that the head rested on his shoulder. “Which way, boss?”
“I’ll lead, t’two of you go in t’middle an’ Sam will bring up t’rear. We think we’ve cleared out most of those things, an’ we’ve tried to block t’doors an’ corridors. But let’s still be careful.”
Like I needed telling to be careful…
“Okey-dokey,” Budd agreed.
Juliette slipped her hand into his as a shiver ran through his body. Although the basement was much cooler than the barroom above, he was sure that the temperature had nothing to do with it.
Andy reached into one of the duffel bags and took out a flashlight. He flicked the switch to check the battery and the beam shot into the distance. “Here you go, my girl.”
“Thank you.”
With a smile to accept Juliette’s gratitude, Andy wheeled the cart across the storeroom towards a set of open double doors.
The small group followed.
Budd let his eyes chase Juliette’s circle of light as she moved it up and down, side-to-side, illuminating different areas of the storeroom in turn. There were tall shelves stacked with crates of alcoholic drinks, every type that Budd could think of, as well as boxes of bar snacks, cleaning products and spare chairs. The walls and ceiling of the room were painted white, and the white floor tiles glimmered with polish in the darkness.
Walking further, nearing the doors, Juliette’s light settled on a tall section of shelving, which had been deliberately toppled over, spilling its load of boxes and crates, so that its heavy weight was propped against a metal door, holding it closed. The door had a round porthole and, on the far side of the glass, one of the things had its open-mouthed and dull-eyed face pressed against the clear surface.
“He won’t get his ass outta there, dudes.”
The four climbed a small ramp and rose through the double doors, which were held open against their springs by wedges knocked in at the door’s bases. They entered a long white corridor, but there was much less to grab Juliette’s attention, so she directed her flashlight ahead of them, illuminating Andy and the cart. The doorways they past had only vacant darkness through the glass portholes.
“Watch your step,” Andy said as they neared a corner. He let his flashlight’s beam display a pool of dark red blood that covered the white tiles. “We had to kill one of those things here. We locked t’body inside one of t’rooms.”
Budd and Juliette skirted around the puddle, but Andy had gone right through it and left bloody footprints as well as tracks from the wheels of the cart in his wake.
The maintenance man reached a T-junction in the passageway. On the wall opposite them was a sign with arrows pointing in the two new directions. One way was marked LOADING BAY and the other was labeled OFFICES. Andy veered to the right, heading for the offices, which was a much narrower corridor, barely wide enough to allow the cart to pass down it. “Up ahead,” he said, shining his light onwards, “it gets a bit more lively. T’corridor has rooms on both sides, an’ they were manned twenty four hours a day. They’ll be a lot of noise, but we locked all t’doors. Nothing can get out.”
Juliette hesitated, tightening her grip of Budd’s hand.
He squeezed back.
Andy continued on and reached the first in a series of doors. A thud reverberated into the corridor; there was something on the inside, pounding against the wood.
Juliette shone her torch at the porthole. Several faces were pushed up to the glass, with open mouths and bared teeth.
Seemingly unperturbed, Andy moved along the corridor, passing more doors, setting off the things in room after room. The knocks echoed down the white-painted walls, accompanied by the want-filled groans.
Some of the things scratched their fingernails against the wood and glass.
Turning sideways to keep as far away from the doors as possible, Juliette and Budd continued on.
Between you and me, I was scared. And not just a little bit. I was terrified…
Juliette swung her flashlight around quickly, illuminating the rooms through the portholes as they progressed, the light showing the ghastly human-things within. For an instant the monsters turned away, blinded by the light, but soon they ignored their discomfort and continued their assault on the doors.
After a while, her hand shaking inside Budd’s, Juliette took to pointing the flashlight up and down the corridor. Budd was relieved; he no longer wanted to see what was trapped within the offices. They were people, dressed in suits and ties, but they were different; they had died, and yet they were walking.
For lack of a better word: zombies…
Andy reached the end of the section, arriving at a door marked FIRE ESCAPE. The big green letters glowed in the dark. Behind the door was a small landing, which accessed two flights of stairs. The one on the left went up. The right one went down. As it was an emergency exit, the lights in the staircase shone from the floor and the instant contrast from the darkness of the corridors forced Budd to squint.
“Could you give me a hand to get this down,” Andy said, tapping his hand on the cart’s handle.
“Down?” Budd asked. All of the exit signs pointed up.
“T’entire lower level is a storeroom for t’restaurant. There’re cargo lifts that run straight up to t’kitchen.”
Budd and Juliette exchanged nervous looks.
“We’ve already, like, cleared it,” Sam said, finally coming into the stairway and switching off his flashlight. He pulled the door shut, muffling the knocks, bangs, and groans that chased them.
“Let’s do it then,” Budd said, handing his axe to Juliette. She accepted the weapon with reluctance, resting the head of the tool on the ground because of its weight.
Budd reached beneath the cart and grabbed hold of the axle. Carefully, he and Andy descended the stairs with Sam leading the way. The small group rounded the half-landing and continued on.
“Thanks,” Andy said when they reached the bottom.
Budd lowered the wheels back to the ground. “No problem,” he said, adjusting his rucksack. He retrieved his axe from Juliette. Once again, she took hold of his free hand.
“Let’s go, dudes,” Sam said. He opened the door out of the stairway.
Cold air tumbled in.
The room beyond was refrigerated. It was also in complete darkness. Sam switched on his flashlight; the light burst outwards but faded away long before it reached the far side of the giant storeroom. All it exposed were towering racks filled with food and consumables.
The group moved off through the network of racks and crates, the soles of their footwear quieted by the linoleum floor. The wheels of the trolley squeaked.
Budd saw a sign that read FROZEN GOODS off to his right, at the edge of Juliette’s light, but they instead headed down a long aisle that was stacked with bottles of expensive wine and champagne.
In the center of the aisle was a pool of lumpy, dark liquid. More was splattere
d up onto the shelves.
“This place was always occupied by loading staff,” the hotel worker said, explaining the marks on the floor. “We locked their bodies in t’freezer.”
Budd and Juliette looked at each other in the flashlight’s soft glow, but chose not to speak. The aisle came to an end. Ahead of them was the quadruple-width concertina door of a freight elevator.
“Now then,” Andy said, wheeling the cart to a halt. “You two stay here an’ look after this. We’ll head back an’ bring over a few more of t’group. I don’t think it’s worth t’risk of taking too many people through that office corridor at once. Someone could panic.”
“It is very unpleasant,” Juliette agreed. “We will wait here.”
Budd examined the elevator, thinking back to the ones he’d travelled in earlier. “Have you tried this? I mean, what if something’s blocking the door?”
“When t’doors are open,” Andy said, “a red bulb lights up on t’control panel. It flashes if the car is stuck. There’re no lights, so I know it’ll work. I used to maintain them.”
Budd nodded his understanding.
Andy pointed into the darkness. “There are two more lifts that way, one for staff an’ one as a spare, but they’re not on t’back-up circuit.”
“Only one way up from here, then?”
“I’m afraid so.”
I crossed my fingers that he’d been good at his job…
The maintenance man scooped down next to the cart. He unzipped one of the bags and took out a couple of flashlights, both of which he handed to Sam. He then found a pair of two-way radios. After switching them on, he gave one to Budd. There was a hum of static. “We’ll keep you informed of our progress. There’re some candles an’ a lighter in t’holdall. Try an’ brighten this place up a little.”
