Dove: A Zombie Tale (Byron: A Zombie Tale Book 2)

by Wieczorek, Scott

  “Why would the police let those things live?” I bellowed in outrage. Stomping my foot and spinning in the parking lot. “Why not just kill them.”

  “They’re people. Or so the cops thought when they dropped them off. But once they wake up from the infection, they’re something far worse.”

  “We need to tell the police. Warn somebody. These things are going to get out, and people are going to get hurt.”

  A wail sounded from down the road in the direction of my car. My blood ran cold.

  I didn’t want to say the words, but couldn’t help myself at the same time. “What was that?”

  “What do you think? I told you before that these things have been getting out. They’re all over the neighborhood.”

  “We gotta get to my car, and fast. We might be safe once we get inside. Then we can drive to the nearest police station to warn them. Something has to be done before whatever this is spreads any further.”

  He nodded. “Which way?”

  I pointed the bat down the road. As I watched him turn his attention, his expression changed. Color drained from his face. His eyes grew wide with fear. Sammy’s jaw hung open.

  “What?” I asked as I turned to follow his gaze. My heart hammered and I could feel my palms growing clammy. The answer to my stupid question lumbered toward us. “Oh God!”

  I couldn’t count how many Goners walked the road. Too many for me to wrap my head around. How could so many people be infected if the infection was contained inside Saint Bonaventure? There must have been hundreds of people massed about, their eyes scanning the streets like wildcats on the hunt for prey. Emaciated, sickly, and in various states of decay. How far had the infection spread?

  “I don’t think he’s going to help us now. I think God has abandoned us, Dove.” Defeat rang clear in his voice.

  I whipped around and stared him hard in the face. “God will only help those who help themselves. And I don’t plan on going down without a fight. I need to find my aunt and make sure she’s safe.”

  He narrowed his eyes at me. “Where is she?”

  “In the city.” I paused. “Through them. Same as my car.”

  “Damn.”

  “Yup. Damn. I don’t think we have the artillery to pull off that assault.”

  “I would agree. We need a new plan.” One of the Goners on the road turned toward us, a vicious wail escaping its lips.

  “Yeah. Well I think we’ll need to come up with it on the fly. They’re on to us. And coming this way.” Like a single organism, the pack of infected coalesced and moved our way. Their wails filled the skies with the sounds of horror as other wails answered from all around.

  “This is bad.”

  I looked up the road in the other direction and my breath stuck in my chest. Another pack of Goners, even larger than the first, trotted down the road in unison from the vicinity of Fair Hill Cemetery. I tapped Sammy on the shoulder and directed his attention toward them. “No. That’s bad.”

  chapter two

  “Where else can we go?” Sammy asked.

  More wails filled the air. The cacophony reminded me of the aviary at the Philadelphia zoo. I couldn’t think with all the noise and the sight of two hordes of infected merging and swarming toward us overwhelmed me. I froze, unable to speak or to move.

  “Dove?” He waved his hand in front of my face.

  I spun, craning my neck to look up the school’s facade toward the roof.

  “Up,” I called, clambering onto the handrail surrounding the landing. A gabled overhang protected the door from the weather, and could provide our temporary salvation. I climbed the gutter pipes to the overhanging roof and reached back to help Sammy follow. From the ridge we reached the half wall surrounding the school roof and scratched our way up the brick wall. Looking back, the hordes massed and broke toward the school.

  “How do they do that?” I asked.

  “Do what?” Sammy gave me a screwy expression.

  “Act like a single organism. Like they share a hive mind. They even walk in perfect synchronization.”

  He stared out across the crowd and shrugged his shoulders. “It beats me. I’ve never seen this many of them before. I didn’t even know this many of those things existed.”

  “I didn’t know any existed,” I mumbled before turning back to scan the roof for our next course of action. This location would not provide much safety for long. Near the southeast corner, a skylight penetrated the surface. “Do you think you could handle a fall?”

  “I don’t know. What kind of fall?”

  “Not sure, yet. I’m still trying to formulate the next part of our plan.” I looked over the edge scanning the streets when the next stage of the escape leaped out at me. “This church connected to a much larger complex, right?”

  “Yeah. They had a convent, a parochial school, and a rectory for the priest. Why?”

  “Old places like this heated with steam. We could use the steam pipes to travel between the buildings and then to the sewers. The sewers could take us to the other side of the crowd and to my car.”

  Sammy smiled. “I like it. It’s a good plan. A fall like that shouldn’t be too bad.” He paused. “Okay, let’s do it. Do you think any have gotten inside, yet?”

  I shrugged. “Don’t know. Let me go check.” I peered over the half wall to the crowd of infected below. Their emaciated forms possessed an uncommon strength, as though their muscles operated with more efficiency, drawing greater power. They pounded against the walls, the door, and even the railing, but seemed to miss that we climbed up to the roof. I slipped away from the edge and approached Sammy. “They’re not too bright. They haven’t figured out we’re up here, or how to reach us. Yet. But I’m not going to wait around for them to figure it out.”

  “Then let’s crack this window and get out of here!” Sammy raised his golf club, ready to smash the glass.

  I grabbed it as he swung down. “Stop. You shatter that window and any Goners inside will come running to us. Do you really want to fight your way all the way to the cellar and beyond?”

  He shook his head.

  “Then how about we do this all nice and stealth-like?”

  He reached into a pocket and removed a small pocketknife to jimmy the lock. It opened without a sound and I slipped inside. Several handholds hung from the wall inside the opening. I climbed down and from the bottom hold dropped three feet to the floor below. Sammy followed, but slipped as he reached for the last handhold, landing hard on his side with a yelp.

  After a flurry of half-whispered curse words, he grumbled under his breath. “Hot damn, that hurt.” He nursed his arm as he performed a quick self-inspection.

  “You better get up. Your little crash there probably alerted every Goner in the area to our presence.”

  “We either need some guns, or axes, or something. A baseball bat and a golf club may be good in a pinch, but they’re not too sturdy.”

  “You know of a hunting supply store around here?” I narrowed my eyes at him.

  “No.”

  “Then I guess that’s out of the question, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. Unless we find a bit cop or something.”

  My blood froze as the implications of his words sank in. “If a cop got bit, they’d have brought him to a hospital.”

  “Oh God! They infect a hospital, or a police station and we’re all in a world of hurt.”

  My eyes popped wide. “That could spread through the city like a wildfire. I need to get to my aunt.” I shouldered my bat and popped my head out the open door into the corridor. Patchwork shadow and light lined it in both directions. Like the corridors downstairs, there were no doors in the frames. “It’s empty. It looks safe.”

  “Yeah, and it’s just a lamp, right?”

  I grimaced and stuck my tongue out at him. “Don’t be a jerk.”

  “Hey lady, you’re in my house. Don’t call your host names.”

  “House? Are you God? Last I checked, we’re in a House
of God. And you don’t look like no zombie messiah to me.”

  “Touche!” Sammy grinned. “Now let’s go get steamed up so we can play in some poop!”

  I glared at him. “You’re gross, man. You can go play in poop all you want. I’m heading out of here so I can go find my aunt and save her from the Goners.”

  Tightening the grip on my bat, I stepped out into the corridor. Examining the doorways, it became evident that one did not cast light into the hallway. Sammy stepped out behind me. I pointed the doorway out to him. “I think that door is our target. There’s no light coming from it. Should be the stairwell.”

  “You got a flashlight?”

  “Of course I do. You think I’m some kind of hack? I’ve been doing this a while now. What kind of explorer would I be without a flashlight?”

  “Do you really want an answer?”

  I mocked his words. “Mee me mee mee me me mee me? You get yourself to a library, Sammy. I’ll show you my videos. I’m a professional, not a hack.”

  A deathly thin head popped out from a doorway. The petite woman had once possessed that Jackie O kind of beauty, but it had faded with age and sickness. Now large bald patches covered the top of her head and gruesome sores, trimmed in necrotic flesh, exposed the white of her skull beneath. No way this woman survived the infection.

  She slid through the doorway with amazing speed, covering the distance between us in two broad steps. She bared her teeth in a feral snarl and swiped at me with her claws.

  I leaned back, away from her attack, letting the claws slice the air millimeters from my skin. Before she could recoil, I brought aluminum death to bear on her fragile skull. It popped like a high-fly ball over left field. The woman collapsed like a marionette with cut strings.

  ~ ~ ~

  “Head for the stairwell!” Sammy yelled. Two more Goners filtered through a classroom in the other direction.

  I ran, pulling a flashlight from a cargo pocket, and leaped through the doorway into the stairwell. Graffiti covered the concrete block walls. Running, I crashed into the steel railing and catapulted myself down toward the basement, taking two steps at a time.

  Sammy stomped down the well after me. “Keep going! They’re coming after us.”

  As we reached the first floor landing, another Goner snapped at me. I cracked it in the head with my bat and kept running, never slowing my pace. Sammy crashed down behind me.

  At the basement landing I slammed into a steel door, turning the handle to no effect. “It’s locked, Sammy! What do we do?”

  “Didn’t you plan for this? Aren’t you a professional? What would you do if you found a locked door in any other abandoned building?”

  “Don’t mock me,” I yelled at him while bringing the bat down onto the handle, snapping it off. I stepped out of the way, readying myself for the monsters storming down the stairs. “Now jimmy it with your knife.”

  Sammy slid past me, jamming the end of his knife into the handle opening. “I got it,” he yelled, tossing his weight against the door until it budged. The first bone-thin leg struck the landing ahead of me. Shoving my back against him, I followed him through the door, keeping my bat straight out in front of me to stave off any would-be attackers.

  As Sammy slammed the door shut, we fell into absolute darkness, thick and viscous like black paint. Not even the faint trickle of light from the stairwell could pierce the black curtain inside. I wedged my back against the door and flicked on my flashlight.

  Dust motes danced in front of the flashlight lens. Its beam illuminated stacks of old desks, piles of rags and cloth, buckets and cleaning supplies. “We need something to prop this door shut.” I focused the light on a nearby roll-top wood desk. “Think you can push that over here?”

  He crashed through some old paint cans as he wound his way around the far side of the desk. Their clatter echoed off the ceiling above. The stench of thinner stung my nostrils, making me woozy. A tortured screech fill the air as the old desk moved inch by painful inch across the floor. The door bounced against my back from the Goners’ incessant pounding. I jerked forward with each of their blows.

  “Hurry the crap up!” I shouted over the desk’s noises.

  “This thing ain’t as light as it looks, Freakshow! You want it moved faster, then get over here and help me push.” He could barely talk, winded by the exertion of pushing the heavy furniture.

  “I can’t. Until that desk gets here, I’m the only thing stopping the Goners from getting in here and biting us. So shut up and push faster.”

  Another massive thump at the door bowled me forward a few inches. I threw all my weight back and slammed hard against the door. Its slam resonated through the dark. The grinding of wood against concrete began again with renewed purpose.

  “I’m going as fast as I can. Hold onto your underwear,” Sammy complained.

  Something bumped against my hip. Swinging the flashlight beam, it illuminated the side edge of the desk. “Hey, watch it, bub!”

  “A little light here would be nice.”

  “Oh, sorry.”

  “Keep your sorries, and shine the damn light.” I swung the beam back in his direction. “Not in my eyes! Either shine it at the desk, or where I need to go.” He crossed his hands over his face, squinting and pinching it tight.

  I swept the light back to its original place. “Got it.” I lurched with another massive thud. With the edge of the desk a few inches across the opening, I jumped around next to Sammy and helped him push it into position. Each slam of the Goners against the door moved the desk away from it.

  Sammy’s eyes grew wide as the desk wandered. “The desk is not enough to hold them,” I stated the obvious.

  “Then let’s move a few more. Set your light on this one and point it to the ceiling, it should give us enough to see by.” He scrambled to another heavy wood desk and started pushing. With a couple bookends, I propped the flashlight upright and shoved my weight along beside him. The additional weight seemed to stymie the door’s movement.

  “Let’s do one more for good measure,” I said as the pounding continued in earnest.

  Sammy rubbed his shoulder, then straightened his back. “Sure thing, boss. I can move these all day.”

  I shot him a hairy-eyeball. “Listen, you want to be Goner food, go right ahead. I want to stay alive, thank you very much.”

  “Ain’t gonna be much of a life if those things have spread through the city. In fact, I reckon it would be damn near hell on earth.”

  “Reckon?” I slogged over to another desk and shoved with all my weight. “Come on, Pardner.” I laid on my thickest Texas accent. “Let’s mosey on up to the desk and move her on out!”

  He narrowed his eyes at me. “You’re a pain in my neck.” He rubbed his shoulder again. “Literally!”

  “Hey, I’ve got to play to my strengths. You know how many years of cultivation it took to be this annoying? If they’d had a program in bugging people, I would have actually stayed in college instead of dropping out.”

  “Why does that not surprise me? A college dropout.”

  “Yeah. A college dropout who makes a nearly six-figure income by walking through old buildings and taping them.” I tapped the camera on my head, then remembered it still rolled. “Reminder—edit that last part before final post.” As the third desk slid into position, I grabbed my flashlight.

  “Do you think there are any Goners down here?”

  “I don’t think so, Sammy.”

  “Oh, and why not, Miss Professional?”

  “Because with all the racket we just made moving those desks, I think we’ve woken the dead over in Fair Hill Cemetery.”

  “Nah. Them Ol’ Quakers don’t wake for nothing! They enjoy their afterlife.”

  I gave him a smile, then pointed the beam into the dark to seek out what we came here for—another way out.

  ~ ~ ~

  We tried as much as we could to silence our footfalls, but the debris accumulated on the concrete floor made it impo
ssible. The cellar appeared much larger than I expected, seeming to extend beneath the entire parochial school.

  “Where do you think we are?” Sammy piped up beside me.

  I tried to chart our location in my head. “I’m not sure, maybe underneath the road.”

  “You know, you might be right. I used to pester Father Thadeus all the time about this place and how it was built. Usually he’d loosen his lips after a little of the sacramental wine. If I remember what he used to say, there are tunnels connecting the church to the convent on the other side of the road. I always wondered how those nuns got about without anyone seeing.”

  “We may be in one.”

  He looked around. “Not much of a tunnel.” One eyebrow popped up as his face turned back toward mine. “You think they have another flashlight down here?”

  “You kidding me? I wouldn’t doubt it. I’m actually surprised they left all these desks, blankets, cots, and other things down here. Let’s look around.”

  As we continued through the wide tunnel, we crossed a threshold into a plain, open room with tables scattered about. “Looks like a cafeteria,” Sammy blurted.

  “You’re right. It does. And in a basement cafeteria, there is probably a kitchen. That might be our best bet to finding a flashlight. Cooks need to see in case of a power outage.”

  “Good point.”

  We drifted off our course toward a doorway standing next to a counter. The wall above the counter had been cut away to provide a window for passing food through. “Looks like where I used to have coffee hour at church as a kid.”

  “You went to church?” Sammy sniped. “Was the chapel smote by lightning, or something.”

  “Don’t be a jerk.”

  We riffled through cabinets in search of another light. “Is that the best you got? Smart-mouthed girl like yourself ain’t got no better comebacks.”

  “I’ve learned that my mouth can get me into more trouble than it can get me out of.”

  “Oh, ho,” he chided. “Sounds like someone with a past. Maybe a juvie past?”