by A. P. Fuchs
Better place, he thought. He had seen the other side. He had been there during his venture to the past before the Rain came down, had descended through the earth and into the bowels of Hell to witness the Lake of Fire firsthand. The creatures there, the torment they inflicted on others, the screams—the man glowing with light, the one who rescued him.
The angel.
If that man had indeed been an angel, then surely that meant there was a Heaven, and if there was a Heaven, then perhaps that’s where April was now, waiting for him.
He hoped he would see her one day.
Tracy putting a sudden hand to his arm jolted him out of his head and back onto the street. They were coming up to the Disraeli Overpass, but instead of walking over it, Tracy made her away around it, sticking to street level.
They went a little further and from what Joe could tell, there didn’t seem to be a way through the large chunks of concrete and debris, trash and massive old piping that sat in a giant pile beneath the bridge.
“Let me guess,” he said, “secret entrance?”
“Yeah, I got a special remote with me. Press a button and the thing opens up like a giant garage door.”
“Very funny.”
“Ask a stupid question—”
“—get a stupid answer. Yeah, I know.”
“This way,” she said and moved to the north side of the debris pile.
This side didn’t appear different than the rest of it. There was nothing here door-like.
Tracy went over to a slab of concrete lying on the ground, one that was around three feet long, two feet wide and about six inches thick. A piece of rebar stuck out from it in a U-shape. It was big enough for her to curl her fingers around. She pulled, bringing the slab up on an angle, then scooped one hand under the slab, keeping the other on the U-shaped piece of rebar. With a heave, she jerked it up and got her other hand underneath it as well.
“Want some help?” Joe asked.
“No . . . I got it,” she said. Tracy lifted the slab until Joe heard a metallic clunk. Tracy let go of the slab and instead of it falling back down like expected, it remained there on an angle.
She produced a key from a pouch on her belt, crouched down, and shoved the key into a lock in the center of what was clearly a trap door. Once the key was turned, she pulled it out, and opened the trap door with its handle.
“It is a secret entrance,” Joe said.
“I never said there wasn’t one.” She gave him a wink. “You go first.”
Joe went up to the door, looked down, and in the shadows saw a ladder bolted to one side. It was a tight fit, but he went onto it and descended down.
Tracy went next, and while Joe stood at the bottom of the ladder, she remained near the top. She took out a flashlight, turned it on and held it between her teeth. She pulled the trap door closed, stuck her key into a lock, turned it, then spun around on the ladder so she faced outward, and with both hands pressed against a protruding rock around the size of a shoebox across from her. The rock moved into the wall and a second later a loud ka-thoom echoed around them.
“Secure,” she said.
“The thing above—”
“—is back in place.”
Cool, Joe thought, the fanboy part of him getting a small thrill.
Tracy joined him at the bottom, and shone the flashlight to her left. “This way,” she said, moving ahead of him to what appeared to be a dead end. She crouched down, removed a metal grate resting against chunks of concrete, and crawled into a tunnel beyond.
Joe followed, going on hands and knees through a cramped tunnel that he could barely see in. Soon, Tracy moved from in front of him and dim blue light filled the portion of the tunnel he had yet to go through. When he reached the end, he came out and stood.
I wasn’t expecting this, he thought.
* * * *
The aftershock of the gunshot’s thunder still shook Billie’s innards. She was off her chair immediately only to try and stand on rubbery legs. She collapsed beside August, who lie on the floor, cradling his left shoulder.
He cursed, something she wasn’t prepared for nor something she ever thought she’d hear uttered from his lips.
She had no trouble letting Del know what she thought of him, however, and let loose a few choice words.
Del didn’t reply. Neither did May. The two looked on as Billie tried to help her friend.
“Is it . . . is it . . .” she started, not really sure what she was trying to say.
“I don’t know,” August said, wincing.
“Let go so I can see,” Billie said, though wasn’t sure what she was supposed to be looking for in a bullet wound.
August tried pulling his hand away from his shoulder but immediately clamped his palm back against his flesh the moment blood began to flow. “It’s bad,” he said.
“I don’t—”
“It’s not bad,” Del cut her off. “It’s superficial. He’s fine. May clipped his shoulder. Stop overreacting.”
Billie spun on him, got to her feet, and used the desk to steady herself; her legs were still weak. “Overreacting? Overreacting! You just shot him! I’m not over—”
May cocked the pistol.
Billie clamped her mouth shut.
“Billie . . .” August said.
“I don’t know what to do,” she told him.
“Help . . . help me up.”
She looked at Del; it was too late to realize what she was doing until after she did it, but she was seeking permission to help the old man.
Del nodded. May’s manicured face remained cold.
Billie got down beside August and gently placed one hand under him, the other pressing slightly against his chest. “Hang on,” she said. “You’ll be okay.”
Sweat beaded his brow. His lower lip trembled. She could only imagine how he felt right now: humiliated, in pain, and maybe even embarrassed that despite how strong he had demonstrated himself to be, he had been brought down by a simple flesh wound.
“On three: one, two, three,” she said, and helped him sit up. She readjusted her grip on him and helped him back into his chair, all the while August still pressing his hand against his shoulder. Blood covered his fingers, ran down his sleeve, pooled on the floor. The color was quickly leaving his face.
“Finished?” Del asked.
“What?” Billie said. “Wh—no. Of course not. He’s bleeding pretty bad. He needs help. Help him.”
“No.”
“Please—I’m sorry, I can’t remember your . . . your name—please, I beg you, please help him.”
“No.”
“I’ll do anything. Just say it. Just help him. Please. Please. Pl—”
“You won’t do anything,” May said.
“Yes, I will. I promise. Anything.”
“Billie, don’t,” August said.
She almost got mad at him for using her name but then remembered these people already seemed to know who they were anyway. “You need to get better.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”
“Here’s how it will be,” Del said. Billie snapped her attention back to him. “You will be honest with us from now on. I will ask you a question in a moment, and if you don’t answer truthfully, May here will pull the trigger again and Mr. Norton will not suffer from a mere flesh wound, but will sit there beside you bleeding out from something far more serious.” His eyes bore into hers. “Do you understand me, Billie?”
Her heart raced. Her throat was dry. August bled beside her. When she spoke, it was barely a whisper. “Yes.”
“Louder.”
She cleared her throat. “Yes.”
“Louder!”
“YES!”
7
Hidden Rooms
Joe rarely showed outward reaction anymore. Too many long nights on the streets shooting the undead had robbed him of the normal human ability to see something and show awe with sound and expression. The dismembered heads, bleeding bodies, torso’s with their guts h
anging out of them like limp spider legs—those images were burned in his mind now, at one time the triggers of breakdowns, now each the acceptances of fact and the solemn knowledge that the life he once hoped for would never occur.
Numb.
Even dead.
“Most folks at least say something, Joe,” Tracy said.
He didn’t respond, but instead took in his surroundings. It appeared the inside of the heap of debris was hollow, the underside of the bridge the roof, just like Tracy said. Though they were a little difficult to see thanks to the dim lighting from Coleman lamps hanging here and there on the walls, suspended just beneath the roof were two cages, each big enough to contain a chair and the men who sat on them. Their faces were locked against makeshift periscopes.
Immediately in front and to either side of Joe ran an oblong catwalk that bordered the interior. He stepped up to the edge of it. Just beyond, there was no ground and it clicked that the majority of the debris and rubble and rebar that surrounded this place outside had been taken from a hole dug deep in the ground beneath the bridge. It was fantastic. A straight, build-on-site-with-what-you-had job.
The hole ran at least three stories below, each level lit with the same gas-powered Coleman lamps as above.
“We call this place the ‘Hub,’” Tracy said.
“It’s brilliant,” Joe replied. “How many people live here?”
“A couple hundred at any one time. Those levels below” —she pointed over the railing to the lower catwalks beyond— “branch out, making way for hallways and rooms carved out of the earth then covered with cement. We know it won’t last forever, but it works for right now. The undead haven’t found us here yet and, due to the lower levels, should they get in, it gives an advantage and we can shoot from beneath them rather than on level ground.”
“Is there a . . . system, or—”
“Enough of one to keep everyone safe. We tried running it tight like the army. Failed pretty quick though. Between you and me, I personally think it was that rigidness that caused the authorities to fall to the undead to begin with. Remember, when we first started fighting them, politics and egos and all that sort of stuff were still major players in the world.”
At least our worlds have that in common, Joe thought. “So where to?”
“Down.”
Tracy led him to a ladder on the left. They climbed down to the bottom and were greeted by new faces. Joe expected them to comment about him being the new guy, but no one said anything. Instead, they just walked past him and kept up their conversations. He suspected this place was rather transient in nature and newcomers were a regular sight. Only a couple looked his way, but that was just normal human eye contact and nothing more.
Tracy moved rather quickly and Joe had to pick up his pace to keep up. When he did, he grabbed her by the arm, causing her to stop.
“What?” she said.
“There’s one thing you haven’t explained to me yet.”
She dipped her chin and looked up at him, blue eyes wide and questioning.
“Why were you out there alone?” he said.
“Is there something wrong with that?”
“I’d say so, yeah. A young woman, a ton of the undead. Doesn’t make sense.”
“You were alone.”
“I was with friends. We got separated.”
“I wasn’t alone either.”
“Then who were you with?”
She sighed then pressed her lips together as if she’d said too much. She shook her head slightly then walked away. When Joe went to go after her, she looked back and raised her hand, signaling not to follow.
“Great,” he said. “Now what?”
* * * *
August was barely lucid. All he knew was Del and Billie had been exchanging words for the past while. Right now, he found it difficult to open his eyes. No, scratch that. His eyes were open, but the black clouds rimming his vision made him instinctively keep trying to flex his eye muscles and open them even more in an effort to fight the clouds of unconsciousness.
His head pounded. An ever-present cool seemed to hover just above his skin though he knew better and was aware the chill emanated from within instead. He thought of his wife, Eleanor, kids and grandkids. Thought of his time at the family cabin with them. The night his son went missing. The night the dead came. His life without them, their bodies kept beneath the cabin’s floorboards. He thought of the night he left and destroyed the cabin by blowing it up with a propane tank and a bullet.
August hadn’t expected any of this to have happened when he came to the city. Didn’t expect to meet up with anybody never mind three young people who most certainly didn’t mesh and instead were more rag-tag than anything else.
He hadn’t expected the storm, the trip to the past, the angel—with all that was happening, he nearly forgot about him. Not that the angel had been completely erased from his mind, but rather more of an afterthought than something more prominent. Nathaniel, for that had been the angel’s name, rescued them when a host of dem—
“And the man you left behind,” Del said, “what was his name?”
Billie cleared her throat. Tears thickened her voice. “Joe.”
“Joe.”
“You should . . .” August started, “. . . you should . . . already . . . know that.”
“Quiet, Mr. Norton, Miss Friday is talking,” Del said. “Joe who, Billie? Joe who?”
A chill went through August’s body, this time pushing him over the edge. He now trembled, and he couldn’t stop.
Billie spoke very softly. “B-Bailey. Joe . . . Bailey.”
“Joe Bailey,” Del said. “Thank you. And do you know where he would go if he somehow survived?”
Billie started to cry.
“He’s . . . he’s dead,” August said. “Leave” —he shook— “leave her alone.”
“We can try and find him, Billie,” Del said, ignoring him. “Just tell us where he might be headed.”
August forced himself to glance her way. The poor girl’s eyes were bloodshot, tears streaking clean lines down her face. This wasn’t the same plucky girl he had walked and talked with not too long before. She was beaten, and it was his fault for being weak despite having been shot. “Don’t . . .” He suspected the trauma he underwent from the helicopter crash was far worse than he thought.
She peered his way, hurt and pain in her gaze and nothing more. She faced Del again. “I don’t . . . I don’t know. Maybe—” She seemed to have stopped herself.
“Yes?” Del said.
Please God, seal her lips, August thought.
“Winnipeg Square, I don’t know,” she said. “Probably the safest place right now.” She covered her face with her hands.
August looked Del square in the eye. Happy? You won. You used me and you won.
Del returned his gaze, pursed his lips in consideration, then spoke to May. “Take August here and fix him up.”
May was at August’s side rather quickly, gun pressed against the side of his neck. “Let’s go.”
August sat there. He didn’t want to leave until he knew what they were going to do with Billie.
Del added, “And when you’re done, meet me in U-3. Miss Friday and I have much to discuss.”
“I will,” May said and grabbed August hard underneath the arms. “Up.”
August pushed his feet into the ground, stood, then nearly fell over, but May caught him.
“Put some effort into it,” she said, “or I’ll just shoot you and drag you to where I need you to go.”
“It’ll be okay . . . Billie,” August said. “It’ll be . . . okay.”
Billie looked at him as May helped him out. The old man’s heart broke at the thought of what Del would do to her while he was away.
* * * *
Joe had hung around where he and Tracy parted company for a good half hour, thinking she’d wisen up and come on back. But she didn’t.
Figuring he might as well take this opportuni
ty to explore, Joe proceeded down the same corridor Tracy had gone—partly in an effort to catch up to her, especially if she was the type of girl who wanted you to go after her when she got all aloof and off-kilter—just to see what he’d see.
People milled about, many folks in jeans, worn sweatshirts and hoodies, all with weapons strapped to their waists. A few guys had rifles strapped to their backs like Robin Hood would his bow. Joe wondered if all of those weapons worked or if some of them were for show. In his world, when not just the army but people in general tried to fight off the undead, they were overcome. Many of the weapons left out on the streets, in forests and elsewhere had been damaged thanks to the cold. The more delicate ones, anyway. Others had merely ran out of ammo and specific bullets for a specific gun were usually not easy to find.
Many of the women who walked about looked more like the men they hung out with, their hair cropped short, faces dirty, clothes big and bulky. There was a hardness to them that Joe hadn’t seen too often. Very few of the women were as beautiful as Tracy or as outfitted in something so complimenting. It made him wonder if Tracy and the few women he saw dressed like her were part of some special unit, despite her saying there were no hard and fast rules.
Joe checked the faces around him hoping to see Tracy’s. Only one girl looked similar to her, but this girl was too short and a little on the heavy side comparatively.
