by A. R. Wise
“Hands up!”
“Weapons down!”
There were several voices screaming at them.
“You’d better get on the ground now, mother fucker!”
“Hands up!”
“Get out of the vehicle!”
“Get out of the vehicle!”
“Are you deaf, asshole,” said a man that sounded impossibly close to Billy. “I said get out of the vehicle, now!”
He searched for the source of the voice when a white light blinded him. As if emerging from the night itself, a soldier was suddenly beside the Humvee’s door. He grabbed Billy’s shirt and jerked him off the seat. He fell on his face to the pavement as the soldier put a boot on his back.
Billy cried out involuntarily as the pain overtook him.
“Get off him,” said Hero. “I said get off him.”
“Back off, or I’ll blow your head off,” said the man standing over Billy.
“Get off my friend!”
“I’m not going to warn you again,” said the soldier as he pressed his foot even harder against Billy’s brace.
“And I’m not going to warn you again either, mother fucker,” said Hero. “Get your boot off my friend’s back.”
Billy couldn’t see what was happening, but hoped that Hero had a gun and wasn’t just trying to act tough with nothing but the best of intentions as his weapon.
“Hold up, everyone,” said a new, deep voice. “No need to get violent. We saw what you folks did out here, and I’m willing to bet you ain’t military. That makes us friends, cause we ain’t military neither. At least no more. Okay? So how’s about we all calm down a bit? What’cha say? Huh?”
“Tell your boy to get his boot off my friend,” said Hero.
“How about you put your gun down, boy,” said the commanding officer. “And realize that you got caught out here with your pants down. We got everyone else dead to rights, pal. You ain’t in no place to be making any kind of demands. If you play ball, then you’ll walk out of here in one piece. All we came here for were the weapons. Okay?”
Billy squirmed to get a view, but the man talking was on the other side of the Humvee. All he could see was the man’s boots and what appeared to be another man on his knees. Billy realized that the commander of the new group of soldiers was standing behind Reagan, apparently having snuck in when they were loading the weapons. While Billy couldn’t see much, he was able to watch as Reagan pulled his favorite knife, the same that he’d been carrying the day the apocalypse started, out of his boot.
“Put the gun down, kid,” said the commander again. “Don’t get yourself killed over…”
There was a quick struggle and then an M-16 clattered to the ground. Billy could see that Reagan had moved to stand behind the commander, and he could only imagine that the blade was now at the stranger’s throat.
“Settle down!” Reagan pivoted, using the commander as a shield to prevent the others from shooting.
“Who the fuck?” The commander tried to struggle, but then his voice changed pitch and Billy knew Reagan was choking him.
“Shut up, little man,” said Reagan. “I’m the one in charge now.”
“You’re going to get your friends killed, asshole,” said the commander.
“Like hell I am,” said Reagan. “We’re all going to have ourselves a nice discussion and talk this through. Okay? But there’s one problem. I get real nervous when people have guns pointed at me and my friends. In fact, whenever I try to have a rational conversation with a group of people like you, I just can’t get comfortable unless I’m the only one with a weapon. So why don’t you all just put your guns on the ground. Okay? I don’t want to have to pop this guy’s head off.”
Hero put his gun down.
“Not you, Hero.”
“Oh, sorry,” said Hero as he bent to pick it back up.
“Now hold up, hold up,” said the man in Reagan’s grip. “We’re not the enemies here. We watched you guys blast the soldiers to kingdom come so you could steal their stuff. We’ve been planning on raiding this place for days now. It’s only fair that we share. Hell, maybe we can even work together.”
“Depends on who you guys are,” said Reagan.
“Some of us used to be military, and others were police officers, and a few were fire fighters,” said the stranger. “Found out that these guys were responsible for the disease, and we figured we’d get a little revenge. We call ourselves The Department. My name’s Jules.”
* * *
August 24th, 20 years after the apocalypse
Billy has gone back into the church even though the High Rollers are leaving.
“Where’s Laura,” asked Billy.
The church was hazed by pervasive smoke from the fire outside. Billy saw someone walking between the pews, but it took him a moment to recognize who it was.
“Billy?” asked the man.
“Yes, it’s me. Where’s Laura?”
Harrison coughed and braced himself on the back of one of the pews. His head was bandaged, as was his arm, side, and leg. When he advanced, he seemed to hop from one pew to the next, heavily reliant upon them for support.
“She wanted Ben to try and talk to the fucker that claimed he was his brother.” Harrison and Billy continued to move toward one another, each of them hampered by injury. It would’ve been a pathetic sight to behold, these two addled men stumbling down the aisle, bracing themselves against the pews. “The guy was having seizures, so Clyde had him taken to the basement to keep from upsetting the survivors.”
“Where are you headed?” asked Billy.
“Ben told me to take get his dog on the caravan.” Harrison looked down at the pug cradled in his arm.
“You’re too late,” said Billy. “They’re already moving out.”
“What are we supposed to do?” asked Harrison.
Billy continued past Harry down the aisle as he shrugged. “Do our best not to die. What else?”
“For fuck’s sake,” said Harrison. “You hear that Stubs? We went and got ourselves into another shitty situation. I think you’re bad luck, puppy.”
The pug whimpered.
“You got a plan?” asked Harrison as he turned to follow Billy back to the room behind the altar.
Billy let out a chuckle, paused, and then laughed again as he glanced back at the old man. “Nope.”
“I’m glad one of us finds it funny,” said Harrison. The two men moved along beside each other, using opposite sides of the aisle for support as they went.
“Shit,” said Billy. “We’ve got an entire town on fire around us, a military general with a vendetta sending attack helicopters after us, and an army of undead popping out of the ground trying to eat us. Doesn’t sound too bad to me. Just a regular Saturday night.”
“Remind me to stop hanging out with you guys on the weekend,” said Harrison as they neared the altar. He pointed to an arched doorway behind the dais. “Ben and Laura are back that way.”
They both stopped at the first row of pews, still using the wooden seats as support. Billy looked at Harrison and smiled. “Is this how you thought you’d go out?”
“Limping into a church as hellfire raged all around me?” asked Harrison. “Yeah, that’s pretty much spot on.”
“Well, let’s at least fight our way to the finale.” Billy reached across the aisle to hold the old man’s hand. They stepped away from the support of the pews together, and helped each other up the steps and past the podium to the stairs hidden behind the massive crucifix.
The stairs led to a bland room with a set of cabinets and a desk in it. The room was surprisingly nondescript, in stark contrast to the decorations that adorned the rest of the church. It was like stepping into the back room of a grocery store, where all the expertly marketed displays are left behind in favor of efficiency. This was where the priest kept his communion wafers, wine, vestments, and other tools of his trade, and it looked similar to any other business office, devoid of opulence.
There were a series of wooden chairs pushed together in the center of the room, forming a makeshift bed that the pilot was laying on. Ben stood over the man, staring at him as if searching for an answer in the pilot’s eyes.
“He’s dead,” said Ben suddenly, without looking at Harrison or Billy.
“Sorry,” said Harrison, but condolences seemed unnecessary.
“Laura found a transmitter sewn into his collar, and then I found this.” Ben pointed at the dead man’s neck, near his shoulder blade, where a definitive scar stretched down over his clavicle.
“A scar?” asked Billy.
Ben nodded and then pulled his own shirt down. He had to move a bandage out of the way to reveal an identical scar.
“I don’t understand,” said Harrison. “What’s that mean?”
“I got this scar when I was seven years old. I was training with my father, in the woods, and fell down into a river. I cut myself on my own knife.”
Billy was uninterested and about to ask where Laura had gone when the ramifications of Ben’s discovery came to him. “So then, why does he have the same scar?”
Ben looked up at Billy. “I’ve been asking myself that same question.”
“All right, well that’s a mystery,” said Harrison. “But it’s one we’ll have to figure out another time. Right now, we’re stuck up shit creek, if shit creek happened to be a town on fire and the water was full of zombies. Right, Billy? That’s my metaphor and I’m sticking to it. We’re fucked.”
The sound of the Roller’s trucks was louder here than Billy would’ve anticipated. There were two halls leading away from the room, one that went back toward the front of the church, and another that headed the opposite direction. He heard the trucks from the hall to his right, and guessed that there was an exit that way.
“Let’s get Laura,” said Billy. “Where is she?”
“We heard someone banging around down there.” Ben pointed to the hallway to their left that ran under the sanctuary, back toward the front of the church.
“Laura?” Billy screamed out to her.
“Billy?” she called back, clearly surprised to hear his voice. “You should come see this.” Her voice was distant, muffled by the various rooms beneath the church.
“We don’t have time,” said Billy. “We’ve got to go.”
“Trust me,” said Laura. “Come here.”
“God damn it,” Billy cursed low so she didn’t hear. Then yelled so she could hear, “The caravan left without us. We need to get out of here.”
She was quiet for a moment, and then yelled even louder than before. “Well then, if we’re already fucked then just get over here and look at this.”
“She’s got a point,” said Harrison.
They heard footsteps above them. A single person had come into the church, but the number quickly increased as the horde swarmed in above them, their bare feet slapping on the wooden floor.
“I know what that sound is,” said Billy. “Let’s get to Laura and try to find a place to barricade ourselves in.”
“What about the fire?” asked Harrison.
“One problem at a time,” said Billy.
They headed down the hall to find Laura. Ben went first because he seemed the least hampered by his injuries, but even he moved slow and with a limp. His mid-section was tightly wrapped to support his broken rib, and every now and again he would cringe as a step hit the wrong way. Harrison and Billy continued to help one another along, moving slow and steady.
The hall beneath the church was unlit, but the room where Laura was calling them from had a bright light within. She leaned out to look down the hall and Billy saw that she was carrying a rifle that had a light under the barrel. “Hurry up,” she said and went back into the room.
“We’re moving as fast as we can, darling,” said Harrison. “We’re all pretty banged up here.”
The footsteps above were frantic, and the zombies’ bellows carried into the basement. It wouldn’t be long before they wandered down the stairs and found this hallway.
Ben went into the room first, and cursed when he saw the reason Laura had called them in. “How did that get here?” he asked before Billy and Harrison reached the room.
“Jerald must’ve put it here,” said Laura from inside. Billy pushed past Ben to see.
The rooms in the basement of the church were mostly bland, with the dank scent of earth and mold being unfettered by the usual church smells of burned coffee and rose perfume. The church members had tried to mask the concrete walls with pictures inspired by the bible, but the past two decades had allowed moisture plenty of time to decay what it could.
Everything that wasn’t illuminated by Laura’s light was pitch black, which allowed Billy only a glance of the macabre spectacle in the room as she turned to face him. Her gun’s modular flashlight shined in his eyes for a brief moment before she remembered that she was providing the only illumination in the room. She turned to point back into the room.
The light reflected off glass, and Billy’s vision was already hampered by the direct light from when Laura had turned to him. He saw reflections in the glass, and then the distinctive flash of metal as he began to discern what he was looking at. The room was wide and deep, but the majority of the space was dominated by a row of cells.
This had once been a lounge of some sort, but the sofas had been pushed against the wall that the door was on so that the metal and glass enclosures could be built on the opposite side. The cells nearly reached the ceiling, and there were several, each built immediately beside the next, filling the room from one side to the other. Within the cells were human bodies, all piled on top of each other and slumped against the closed doors.
“What the fuck is this?” asked Billy.
“This is how they must’ve stocked the town with the Greys,” said Laura. “They obviously built them under the church along with other stores in town. These just didn’t open for some reason. Each of the cells are connected to that white pipe up there.” She aimed the flashlight near the ceiling to reveal a white plastic pipe that ran the length of the cells. “Over there it looks like they accidentally disconnected the pipe when they were building everything. It’s blowing out air, and I heard it bouncing around down here.” She guided their eyesight with her light to the far end of the room where the white pipe ran down to the ground and stopped at a valve.
Ben went to inspect it and the others followed. He put his finger on the metal circle at the end of the pipe and tried to push it, but it wouldn’t budge.
“The other side is by that couch.” Laura showed them the detached portion of the pipe that was beside a dingy yellow couch.
Ben pulled the seat forward and the detached portion of the pipe was jostled. It seemed that the couch had been pushed back after the pipe had been installed, and unbeknownst to the builders the system had been broken.
“There’s a good amount of air coming out of it,” said Ben as he put his hand in front of the disconnected pipe.
“Are you sure it’s just air?” asked Billy.
Ben lifted the pipe and breathed in the gas that was escaping from it. “Just smells like stale air to me. Want me to put it back together again?”
“Fuck no,” said Harrison. “That’s the worst damn idea I’ve ever heard.”
The zombies that had invaded the church seemed to answer with a chorus of groans that sounded much closer than before.
“We’ve got bigger problems to deal with,” said Billy. “We’ve got enough firepower to take out a good amount of Greys, but if they hear us shooting then we’re going to get overwhelmed pretty quick. Not to mention this whole damn place is about to go up in flames.”
“Can we get into one of these cells?” asked Ben.
“That is a fucking horrible idea,” said Harrison. “Am I the only one that thinks that?”
“Well, they sure did a good job of keeping these things in there,” said Billy.
“Whoa,” said Harrison as Stubs writh
ed under his arm. “You’re not seriously considering this, are you? Newsflash guys, cells are usually built to keep things inside. You’re looking at a cell filled with folks that weren’t able to get out, and your first inclination is to climb in with them? Are you stupid? Am I standing here with a group of stupid people?”
“They’ve got handles on the inside and the outside,” said Laura. “I’ll try the door.”
Harrison cursed again but a zombie’s close wailing silenced him.
Laura pulled at the handle of one of the cells, but it didn’t budge. “No luck. I think they’re all locked.”
“They’re vacuum sealed,” said Ben. “Look.” He stayed knelt as he moved over to where one cell met another. He pointed out a curved white tube that came out of the front of one and went into the next. Each cell was identical, and they were attached to one another by the same type of port that the white tube connected to on the far side of the wall. “I bet the doors aren’t locked, but are air tight. This tube just puts air back into the cells, and that causes the doors to open.”
“Don’t you dare even think about it,” said Harrison. “Don’t you open those doors or I’m going to…”
A zombie’s guttural cry from the hall interrupted Harrison. They could hear the creatures shuffling nearby, coming closer by the second.
“Okay, do it,” said Harrison in a hushed voice. “Open the doors. Fuck it, do it.”
Ben looked at Billy and Laura for approval, and then went back to the disconnected pipe. He pulled the pieces together and then rotated the white connector until a metal latch in the pipe was forced open. Then the pipe jerked out of Ben’s hands as the air flow pulled it tightly into place.
The cell doors clanged as they came unlocked, one by one, as the oxygen was pulled into the cells. Laura opened the first cell but the door was still partially jammed because of the lack of air within. She tugged and the door emitted a high pitched whistle as air flowed in. It finally swung open just as a Grey wandered into the room, attracted by the noise.
They rushed to get into the cell as Laura held the cell door open. Ben tried to usher her in, but she cursed at him and forced him in first. Billy went in after Harrison and stumbled over the corpses on the floor. The pug in Harrison’s grip started to bark, which it hadn’t done at all until now.
