Machines of the Dead aza-1

by David Bernstein

  They were outside Manhattan-had to be, yet something bad had happened here. Jack had thought Reynolds’ superiors would be in Washington, and maybe they were, but he was clearly in the bunker’s most immediate outside-operations center.

  “This isn’t good,” Maria said.

  “No,” Zaun said, “but at least we didn’t have to fight our way in here. Looks like we have the place to ourselves.”

  “This must be where Reynolds reported to,” Maria added, then excitedly, “Hey, we have a live one over here.”

  Jack turned to see her running over to the prone figure. She placed her M4 on the ground and knelt over the body. “Sir, are you all right?”

  He couldn’t believe she’d used the word “sir” but guessed it was so engrained in her, that it was a natural way of talking to someone in the military, even if that someone was part of a corrupt, underground project. Either way, a living body might get them some much needed answers.

  Maria rolled the man onto his back and let out a cry as he reached up and grabbed her by the hair. Jack saw her fighting to get away, but the man pulled her to him as he raised himself up and sank his teeth into her shoulder. Maria screamed.

  “It’s undead,” Jack yelled to Zaun, who was already on his way to her. Jack aimed his pistol at the thing, but couldn’t risk a shot for fear he’d hit Maria.

  Zaun sprang forward, dashing to her, sword out.

  Maria tried shoving the thing off of her, but like a pit bull clenching its jaws around prey, it wouldn’t budge.

  Zaun was there in moments, and sank the blade of his sword into the zombie’s skull.

  Maria scrambled from the corpse and tore her jacket off to see the wound. “Shit, it went through.” The flesh was shredded and bleeding. “I’ll be all right; just have to Taser me.”

  “Infected, here?” Zaun asked.

  “I don’t think we’re out of Manhattan,” Jack said.

  “Guess we should’ve taken the left.” Zaun cleaned his blade on the dead body’s shirt and sheathed it.

  Something stirred behind Jack. Turning around, he saw another undead coming toward him. Walking up to it, he took aim, and blew the zombie’s brains from its head.

  “Fucking things are like rats,” Zaun spat.

  “We’ll need to keep an eye out. I think it’s a good idea to make sure all the dead bodies in here are really dead.”

  “I’m on it,” Zaun said, and went around the room poking his sword into each one’s head.

  Jack told Maria there was no point in waiting to Taser her. The quicker the bots were dead, the better. She agreed and lay on the floor. Pulling out his Taser, he asked if she was ready. She nodded and he shot her, sending the electricity into her body, frying the bots. He hated seeing her spasm in pain, but it was only for a few seconds. When it was over, she felt fine, the Taser ha d little to no residual affects.

  She stood, walked over to a chair, and let Jack clean and wrap her wounds. The bots were dead, but infection was always a possibility.

  When Zaun was done with his task, he came over to Jack. “The only way out of here, besides the way we came in, is the door at the far end.” He pointed across the room. “And it requires a keycard and a code.”

  “We need to find out where we are in the city,” Jack said. “We can’t stay here for long. I would imagine it’s only a matter of time before we have company again.”

  “I’ll keep an eye on the stairs we came up,” Maria said.

  “Zaun and I will check out the door across the room.”

  Maria headed off while Jack and Zaun walked over to the door. Using the keycard and entering the code, Jack had the door open in seconds. He was surprised all the doors had the same combination, but guessed it made sense since only the high-ranking individuals had them.

  The operations room led to a small office. The place had a dark brown shag carpet, yellowing walls, a cracked leather sofa and two folding chairs. Along the right wall was a receptionist’s counter, the wood paneling filthy with stains. There was a blank sign-in sheet on the counter. Potted imitation plants hung on hooks from the ceiling and there was a beat-up coffee table with magazines on it. The whole place was a decoy, an area where interference could be run in the event an undesirable walked in. There were no signs or posters indicating a product, not even a clock. The windows were blacked out and had thick, metal mesh covers on them.

  Jack walked over to a door. He guessed it led to the outside. Placing his palm against it, the door felt chilly.

  “Door’s cold,” he told Zaun. “So, either there’s a freezer on the other side or it leads directly outdoors.”

  “Only one way to find out.”

  Jack grabbed the handle, ready to turn it and pull, when an explosion sounded from the other room. He and Zaun rushed back inside the operations area.

  “Stay here,” he told Zaun. “We might need cover.”

  Jack sprinted around desks and chairs, kicking a plastic garbage can out of the way. Reaching the stairwell, he saw Maria hanging over the railing, firing her machine gun.

  “What’s happening?” Jack shouted.

  “We’ve got company. I don’t know how many, but I managed to wound a couple.”

  Jack wasn’t sure what to do. Stay and fight, or run? Heading into the city was dangerous, the undead were everywhere, but staying and fighting could prove a faster death. They’d probably run out of ammo before the soldiers did, or simply be overwhelmed by their numbers, depending on how many men Reynolds had sent after them. As crazy as it was, heading into the city seemed to be their best bet.

  “I think we should leave,” he said.

  “Agreed.” Maria leaned over the railing, fired a few more shots, then followed Jack.

  “Company?” Zaun asked as they approached.

  “Yup,” Maria said.

  Jack ushered them into the waiting room.

  “What’s the plan?” Zaun asked.

  “We head into the city. Find a building and hold up for a while. I don’t know about you two, but I’m tired as hell.”

  “You know what it’s like out there, Jack,” Zaun said.

  Jack’s mind flooded with the images he had seen when he went to rescue Zaun, the alley, the super, the stairwell with Big Zombie Man. He wondered how many undead were outside the door right now. They might be walking into a real shit storm, but if that was the case, they would have no choice but to stay and fight.

  “It’s our best option,” Jack said. “We can’t take a chance and hope to outlast Reynolds’ men. They might outnumber and outgun us. If it is a small group, sure we could fight, but then what? More might be coming. The point is, we just don’t know, but I can tell you this, Reynolds wants us, and I bet he’s pissed off to no end.”

  “He’s right, Zaun,” Maria said.

  Zaun nodded.

  “We ready to do this?” Jack asked.

  The others nodded.

  Grabbing the doorknob, he opened the door.

  Chapter 21

  The first glimmerings of early morning sunshine illuminated the sky. A parking lot stretched out before the group. A few cars took up spaces. The air was cold, a wintry wind chilling Jack’s sweaty neck and face. Looking around, he saw no one. Not a single human being. He immediately knew they weren’t in Manhattan; the three story apartment buildings across the street were too short and there was no skyline above. So they had to be in Brooklyn or Queens.

  “Where are we?” Maria asked.

  “Not sure, but it isn’t Manhattan,” Zaun answered.

  “Where the hell is everyone?”

  Jack heard nothing. Not a car, truck, plane or the simple buzz of city life. Maybe all the boroughs were evacuated, for precaution, but why? It was impossible to leave Manhattan, wasn’t it? No, that wasn’t true, as they themselves had escaped. He imagined others might have too. Was it even possible to evacuate a city the size of New York?

  To the right was another warehouse building. “We need to put as much distance
between us and Reynolds’ men as possible.” Jack wanted to head to the apartment buildings across the street, find people, but they would be out in the open, having to cross the parking lot and the street, making it easy for Reynolds’ men to see where they went.

  Instead, they headed to the adjacent building on the right, ran passed the locked entrance, and ducked around the corner. They sprinted to the rear of the place to where a back alley stood and took a right, going behind another warehouse building.

  Up ahead, a man wearing a mail carrier’s uniform was standing with his back to the group.

  The man turned around as they approached. Jack stopped and the others bumped into him. Half the carrier’s face was missing, looking as if it had been shoved under a lawn mower, the skull completely showing on one side. The zombie started forward, arms out, hungry for flesh.

  “No,” Jack said, shaking his head. “It can’t be.” He knew it was true though, his gut telling him so since the warehouse. “The bots made it out of Manhattan.” He pulled the. 45 from its holster, prepared to shoot, when Zaun stopped him.

  “That’ll make too much noise,” he said. “Let me.”

  Zaun stepped forward and removed his sword from its sheath. He met the zombie halfway and sliced off its head. After wiping the blade clean on the undead guy’s shirt, he re-sheathed his weapon.

  Jack felt his legs want to give out. He was exhausted. The bot epidemic had spread, hopefully just to the Long Island-Brooklyn-Queens area and not to the mainland. Of course, that was ridiculous, but he still thought there was a chance it could be true.

  “I need to sit,” Jack said. “Rest.”

  “I think we all do,” Maria said. “And we need shelter; it’s too cold to stay outside and hope to catch some shut-eye. There might not be many undead around here now, but that could all change in an instant.”

  “Yeah,” Zaun said. “They might all be in the buildings, but one sound and we’ll have them coming after us.”

  They all agreed that shelter was the most important thing. The warehouse they were currently behind was most likely empty, where as the apartment buildings across the street were probably crawling with undead. Jack didn’t like being only a block away from the operations center, but getting off the street was essential.

  They worked their way along the rear of the building, coming to a one-way street, with a large, factory-like building on the other side. It had no windows and a large mural of people working in a lavishly green-painted garden.

  Jack peered around the corner, saw the way was clear, and ushered the group onward. They worked their way toward the front of the building, the frigid wind causing Jack’s eyes to tear up.

  A zombie came ambling down the street from the main road that ran adjacent to the apartment buildings. Everyone froze, and Jack knew they were all thinking the same thing-please let it be alone.

  The zombie saw them and picked up its slow pace, shuffling a bit faster. Jack grimaced at the sight, the thing’s jaw distended, hanging low from its face like a huge rubber band. The fingers on its left hand were gnarled stumps of flesh.

  “Let it get closer, then take it out,” Jack told Zaun.

  When the bot-controlled thing came within a few feet, Zaun quickly and quietly, sliced off its head. With no other undead showing up, they moved on.

  At the street’s corner, Jack saw they were now on 4th Avenue. He looked up and down the street and saw no sign of any undead, only numerous vehicles either parked along the curb or stopped in traffic. If people had escaped the city, he imagined many took mass transit, hoping to avoid the overcrowded roadways.

  Jack and the others ran to the building’s entrance, only to find its metal gate was down too. With no other options, they ran across the street to the closest apartment building.

  The entire row of houses looked decrepit, with exteriors appearing as if they hadn’t been painted since the 1970’s. Security bars covered almost every first floor apartment. Jack thought it a shame that people couldn’t live in a house and look out a window without feeling as if they themselves were locked away, but for now, he was glad to see the steel bars.

  He pushed open the badly scuffed front door, the glass having been replaced by non-transparent Plexiglas. Inside, were a small foyer and another door about ten feet away. It was covered in wire mesh; breaking in would be extremely difficult. Jack tried the door, finding it locked. Along the wall were six mailboxes, indicating the building held six apartments, most likely two on each floor. He began kicking at the door, taking turns with the others, surprised at how sturdy the thing was.

  “Cover your ears,” he warned, then readied his shotgun and blasted the lock apart. The noise was deafening in the small room, leaving a slight ringing in his ears. With nothing holding the door closed, Jack easily pushed it open. He cocked the shotgun, and entered the hallway.

  “Hey,” Zaun said, holding up a piece of mail. “We’re in Brooklyn.”

  The building’s interior wasn’t any better than the exterior. The air was stale, with a mixture of rot and sewage. The walls were filthy, the color of a smoker’s tobacco-stained teeth, and marked up. The black and white patterned linoleum tiles were cracked and worn, revealing the dullness of the wooden floor beneath. An overhead light was on, indicating the electricity was still flowing.

  “Let’s clear the building,” Jack said. “It’s only three floors, two apartments per level. Shouldn’t take us long, then we can get some rest.”

  The first apartment, 1F, was on the left. Jack tried the door, but it wouldn’t open. A single lock was all that kept the place secured. Most doors in the city had two locks, one on the doorknob part of the door, the other about a foot above it, usually a bolt-action of some kind. He stepped back and gave it a good kick. The door flew open, colliding into something solid, followed by a crash as if someone had fallen.

  Pushing the door open all the way, Jack saw what had made the crashing sound. What had once been an elderly woman-now a member of the undead-lay on the floor, attempting to get up. Its arms were covered with open sores. She was still wearing her glasses, but the knock she had taken had knocked them askew as they rested crookedly on her face. The air was putrid, a mixture of mold and rot. Not wanting to waste a bullet, Jack asked Zaun to take care of it.

  Zaun stepped forward and put his sword through the zombie’s left eye and into its brain.

  Jack and Maria went in and checked the place out while Zaun stood guard at the door.

  In the bedroom lay the corpse of an elderly man, his flesh almost completely eaten away, leaving mostly grizzled bone and bloodied clothing.

  There were no other dead or undead bodies in the apartment and not much in the way of supplies, at least not anything worth taking.

  They moved on to apartment 1R, finding the door unlocked and no one inside, alive or dead. Clothing drawers were left open in the bedrooms. The cupboards were open and bare; toiletries were missing too. It appeared whoever had lived there had left in a hurry. All in all, the place was clean and seemed like a good place to make camp, but the group agreed that living on a higher floor was safer.

  Next, they made their way up the creaky stairs, and with each step, the odor of rotting meat grew stronger. As Jack broached the landing, he saw a dead man’s body, wearing only underwear, lying in front of apartment 2R. Its left arm was stripped of flesh, leaving only bone and a few stringy tendons. The legs were missing chunks of meat in various places, as if the zombie hadn’t been able to find the right spot to begin chowing down until it got to the arm.

  Jack walked around the body and saw that it had no face, appearing to have been blown off, the nearby wall splattered with gore. He stepped over the corpse and entered the apartment.

  “Gross, man,” Zaun said.

  The place was filthy and stunk of dead animal. Litter boxes with more shit than sand in them lay in the hallway and in the bathroom. Newspapers and magazines lay everywhere, as if the man had been a collector-no, a hoarder. As they went t
hrough the place, Jack heard gasps and other sounds of displeasure from the others. No one wanted to remain in the apartment any longer and the group quickly left to check on the apartment across the hall.

  2F was void of life. The place was somewhat clean, the beds made, kitchen garbage empty. There was a television, a couch, a bookcase filled with hardcovers and paperbacks, mostly appearing to be romance in nature. Jack checked the bathroom, finding a small shower radio. Overall, the place was decent, a good spot to set up camp, but first they had to check out the rest of the building. They left the apartment and headed to the third floor.

  Upon reaching the top of the staircase, Jack heard the eerily familiar sound of fingernails on wood coming from behind 3R’s door. Images of his wife clawing at the bedroom door sprung into his mind.

  Approaching the door, the scratching grew louder and Jack knew there was some thing on the other side. He tried the doorknob and found that it turned. He called Zaun over and together on the count of three, they rammed the door. The zombie fell back and landed on the floor. It was naked, bald on top with long dark, straw-like hair, and a large, bulbous nose. Zaun stepped up and put his sword into the thing’s head.

  From inside, Jack heard the sound of chains rattling. He stepped passed Zaun. The sharp scent of pine filled his nose and he saw numerous green air-fresheners in the shape of Christmas trees hanging on the walls.

  As the group moved forward, they came upon another dead body laying chest down, head to the side. It was female with long blonde hair, appearing to have been no older than eighteen. She was naked except for a pair of handcuffs on her outstretched wrists. A black tribal tattoo of the sun took up the area of skin just above her ass crack. All along the body’s arms and legs were small cuts, and what appeared to be burn marks, possibly made by cigarettes and a curling iron.

  The rattling of chains hadn’t let up. Jack and the others moved forward, nearing the source of the sound. Coming upon a room on his left, Jack looked in to discover a bathroom where an undead female sat handcuffed to a radiator. Upon seeing Jack, the undead thing reached out for him, but the chains kept her in check. She had cuts and burn marks along her arms, legs and face, some oozing yellow puss. Her eyes were milky white, and her mouth opened and closed, biting at the air. She had long, bleached-blonde hair and was wearing a red satin bra with matching garter and panties. She looked to have been around the same age as the other dead female.