by A. P. Fuchs
She hoped that whatever room August was in had some sort of light. After all, May and Del needed to see just like anyone else.
Except they weren’t anyone else. They were zombies. It was still unknown whether or not zombies had night vision as they seemed to be more adept at finding their way around in the dark than regular humans.
She was tired, but the adrenaline pumping through her system seemed to keep her awake and alert enough to have her ears acting like a couple of radar dishes, searching the air for any sound that wasn’t her own. Surely Del must have found May by now and was on the hunt for her.
She had to find August. There was no way she could leave him here.
“God,” she whispered, “if You can hear me, I need You to get us out of here. Can You, I don’t know, fix August or something?” He’d probably know if You can or not. I don’t. “But I need You to. We’ll die, otherwise.”
A sharp squeak sent a chill up her spine and caused the muscles in her neck and shoulder blades to lock. To glance over her shoulder, she had to turn her whole upper body. Only a dark hallway stared back, with even darker patches from the rooms that ran off of it on either side.
Billie needed a weapon. There’s nothing here, though, that I can use to shoot them. She smirked. Where’s a nail gun when you need it? She cautiously went up to the next room on her left. This one didn’t have a set of windows. She put her hand on the doorknob and turned it as gently as she could so as not to make a sound. Slowly, she opened the door. The room was dark and only a little bit of dim light from the hallway seemed to penetrate it. The last thing she wanted was to go inside the room and look around only to get herself cornered in case Del caught her here.
Don’t have a choice. Let’s go, she thought and went in.
The room had a shelf bordering it about six feet off the ground. Below that was a table that did the same. Evenly spaced around the table were a handful of computers. Some still stood upright; others were knocked over on their side. Billie wondered if the Net was working here and if she’d be able to get a hold of somebody on the outside and get some help.
“No time right now,” she said.
She felt along the top of the shelf all the way around the room for anything that could be used to defend herself with. The only things up there were papers, binders and a couple framed photos with a group of soldiers in each.
She scanned the computer tables. Nothing. Just the systems.
She grunted, frustrated. “Can’t exactly throw a keyboard at him.” She thought for a moment. “Wait a second.”
* * * *
Row upon row of the undead stood before Joe, their approach having been silent. They stood there about twenty abreast, going some seven or eight rows deep. Even if he was lightning fast on the trigger, there would be no way he could blast all of them away from where he stood.
“Ideas?” Tracy said.
“Had to attract them, didn’t you?”
“Me?”
Why was he playing around with her? He hated this side of him. It had been long and buried until now, having been lost to the depths along with April over a year ago. Joe didn’t like the way his old friendly side now popped up just to say hello before retreating back into the darkness again.
Get serious, he thought. “They’re just standing there. Same with the ones behind us.”
“Some of them like to size up people before a kill.”
This is not what I’m used to. Where I come from . . . “. . . they just come for you.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” The X-09 went from one decaying head to another, but Joe didn’t fire off a shot. Not yet. “There are not as many behind us. We head that way.”
“Done.” Tracy aimed at the undead behind them. “Now?”
“Now.” The two fired, Joe taking out a couple in front of him before turning tail and heading down the same path where Tracy sent another two to their doom. Joe hopped over their bodies as they fell to the ground, whipped the X-09 into the face of another, and kicked another one in the throat, breaking its neck, before shoving through another one, aiming behind himself and firing off another bullet.
Tracy ran toward him, arms held out, guns blazing, taking out zombies front and back. The giant horde that had just stood before them now scrambled after them, arms and hands out, eager to grab onto them and chow down.
A dead hand grabbed Joe’s coat and yanked him toward a Chinese fellow with bloody lips and eyes gauged out. Joe assumed the creature “saw” by smell. The Chinese man jerked him closer and opened his mouth. Quickly, Joe put a palm to the man’s face, pushing him back, and shoved the barrel of the X-09 into the man’s mouth. He pulled the trigger and the back of the man’s head exploded.
Tracy backed into him; out of instinct Joe shoved her back.
“It’s me!” she said.
“Sorry.”
The dead encircled them.
“Keep shooting!” he told her.
“Always do!”
The two of them fired shot after shot. Joe reloaded and went back to work carving out a path through the wall of bodies that crowded into them.
“Keep wiggling,” he told her. “Don’t give them anything solid to grab.”
He was turned around so couldn’t see her and instead only heard her grunting as she presumably pressed and wriggled her way through the crowd.
Joe blasted the face off one undead, stomped on the foot of another, mashing his heel into its toes, and pushed the zombie over. Putting his arms together like a battering ram, he charged at the dead, shoving through them like a river carving a path through a forest, getting some distance. He stopped, kicked one of the undead, spun around and fired three quick successive shots into the back of a trio of zombies.
Tracy shrieked. The next time he saw her she was covered in sticky blood and stringy flesh.
At least she was alive.
Tracy kept shooting as she made her way toward him slowly but steadily.
They needed some real distance, but zombies had a way of letting you gain a bit of ground then coming in at you so that when you did worm past them, it was more like swimming through molasses than anything else.
“We need to get higher,” Joe called out over the moans of the dead.
“Whatever you say,” she replied.
Joe reached in between the bodies of a few zombies, grabbed Tracy by the arm and yanked her through. One of the zombies grabbed her other arm and was about to bite down on her biceps, but Joe shot it down before it could. Tracy jerked her arm away and dropped her gun hand on his shoulder, sending off a bullet into a zombie that was closing in behind.
“Run and shoot,” Joe said, reloading.
Immediately, the two set their guns forward and fired shot after shot as they ran away from the dead, trampling over the bodies of those they disposed of, dodging and weaving between others.
They managed to break free of the zombie horde. The mouth of an alley was about ten paces away.
“Down here,” Tracy said.
The two ran into the alley.
“There.” Joe pointed up toward a fire escape.
They gathered underneath it. The bottom of the ladder was too high for either of them to reach.
The undead rounded the corner and poured into the alley.
* * * *
It took three keyboards to get it right, but Billie was able to hold the keyboard lengthwise and bring it down along the edge of the table hard enough to snap the bottom of the board. Flipping it over, she did the same to the other side. Upon inspection, both sides of the keyboard were now cracked down the middle. Gripping it lengthwise, she placed it on the edge of the table, and pushed down. The side with the keys snapped; the circuit board within bent. She turned it over. Keys fell to the floor. She pressed again, snapping the back of it, the board inside bending once more. With a hard pull, she yanked the top and bottom halves apart, then jerked out the circuit board. The remaining keys clacked against the floor like marble
s.
Billie crouched and hid under the desk, hoping Del hadn’t heard the racket. Satisfied he hadn’t, she came out from under the desk, put both keyboard halves by her heels, and drove her foot down on the edge of each of them. Their ends cracked, splintered, creating jagged points on each.
She picked up the keyboard halves and had herself a couple of sturdy stakes.
“You can do this,” she said and headed back toward the door. She peeked out. The hallway was clear and she didn’t see any movement near the patches of shadows.
Stakes ready, she proceeded down the hallway, ready to drive them into anything that moved.
Every room was empty. There was one more door up on the right. The sign in the middle of it read stairs. Billy cautiously opened the door, cringing when it squeaked on its hinges. Cement steps went upward against the right wall, a small platform at the top, leading to a set of stairs to what was presumably the next level.
I hope you’re up there, August, she thought. She held her makeshift plastic stakes ready and with the other hand gently closed the stairwell door behind her.
She went up the steps, listening intently for movement. Del definitely had to be onto her by now. It was difficult to tell precisely how big this place was. He could be on her in a matter of seconds; but it could also be a while yet.
She made it to the second level. Another set of stairs went up to a third and a part of her was tempted to try them. No, one thing at a time. She opened the second floor door and checked both ways around the doorframe before stepping out. Up here were tiled walls, once white but now stained with dirt. In the dim lighting, she made out streaks of blood running up and down some of the walls.
How many people had been brought here only to be served up as meals? Was that what happened to August? Was he already dead? Or had he just been bit and would soon reveal himself as a zombie and come after her?
“They’d keep him alive,” she whispered. “He saw the angel, too. He knows about Joe. He has information.”
She went down the hallway. Once about halfway down, she stopped short when a low groan came from around the corner up ahead.
12
Stuck
Joe glanced up at the catwalk again. Tracy fired off a few rounds as the undead got closer.
“I got an idea,” Joe said and holstered his gun.
“What are you doing?”
“Here.” He bent forward and folded his fingers together, making a sling with his hands.
“Right,” she said, holstering her weapon and placing both hands on his shoulders for balance as she put her foot on his palms.
“On three.”
“’Kay.”
He counted it off swiftly. Joe simultaneously straightened and hoisted her up with his hands. Tracy reached high above and grabbed the bottom of the escape ladder.
“Hurry!” he shouted as a zombie wrapped its arms around his waist.
“Got it!”
Joe let go and pulled the dead man’s hands off of him. He yanked the X-09 from its holster and fired off a couple shots into the heads of the nearest zombies. Joe made a dash for the far end of the alley, the idea to thin out the zombies a bit before making his way back to Tracy. Plus, it’d give her more time and get their attention off her and onto him.
Man, gonna have to be fast, he thought.
The undead shambled toward him. Joe blasted the legs out from under one and blew away the arm of another. Blood sprayed. The zombies growled. A few just blankly stared at him, their vacant gaze still giving him a chill even after all this time.
Joe ran to the far wall, shooting any zombie that got near him, punching others, anything to get a foot or more distance between him and them as he doubled back toward the ladder, the concentration of zombies gathered at its bottom less than it was before. He’d still have to plow through, though.
“Just move, move, move,” he told himself. He quickly pulled out of his trench coat. Tracy was above, fiddling with the metal latch on the side of the ladder, probably in an effort to let it drop to the alley.
“No, don’t!” he shouted and began heading toward her. “They’ll climb up.”
“Then how will you—”
“Get on the catwalk. Go!”
Tracy moved to the catwalk’s ledge on her right.
Joe shot the face of a zombie child, a little boy probably around five years old. A dead lady grabbed him, her long fingernails broken and cracked, creating jagged shards that dug into his skin. He hoped she wasn’t carrying the infection beneath her nails otherwise he’d no doubt be one of them before the day was through.
“Catch!” he shouted and threw up his coat as hard as he could. She caught one of the sleeves. Joe held onto the base of the coat. “Pull!”
“I can’t!”
“Do it!”
He kicked another zombie and shot another. “Hurry!”
Tracy yanked on her end of the coat. A zombie shoved Joe at the same time and the end of the coat was jerked clear from his hands. It hung dangling over the ledge of the catwalk.
Joe punched an undead old man in the mouth. His dentures ripped through his decaying cheek and clacked onto the ground. With a quick shot, Joe punched the X-09’s barrel into the old man’s eyes, puncturing the creature’s eyeballs, temporarily blinding it. Another shove and the zombie backed away. Joe ducked low and shot upward, nailing an undead Filipino teen between the eyes. The Filipino dropped, causing a couple of advancing zombies behind to trip and fall over it.
“Try again,” Tracy called from above. She tossed the coat back down to him. Joe grabbed the end.
“Yank hard. Just need enough to grab the ladder.”
“One, two, three!” she yelled, and pulled on the coat.
Joe jumped at the same time and it was enough to get him that extra few inches needed to grab hold of the bottom of the ladder. But he still had the gun in his hand and it made it difficult to keep a strong hold on it.
“Catch,” he said and tossed her the X-09. He rearranged his fingers and held fast to the bottom rung, lifting his legs when a few zombies tried to grab his ankles and pull him down. Keeping his knees high, Joe pulled and made his way off the ladder far enough until his feet were more or less level with the catwalk ledge where Tracy was. He planted his feet down; his coat went slack.
Gunfire echoed throughout the alley and Joe smiled when he saw she had both guns going: hers and his, the dead below getting their skulls blown open, sending blood and brain onto their brethren.
Joe got beside her, threw his trench coat back on and took the X-09 from her hands. He squeezed a few shots before saying, “You realize, of course, we’ll eventually need to get down.”
Tracy stopped shooting, looked at him, smiled, pulled out her other weapon, then resumed her focus back down the barrels of her guns and began firing again.
* * * *
Billie held her breath in an effort to slow her fast-beating heart. She put her back to the hallway wall good and tight, extra careful that her feet didn’t make a lot of noise when walking. She held a keyboard stake at the ready.
Another groan, soft, wheezy.
How do you breathe when you’re dead? she wondered. If anything, the undead’s ability to groan, growl and wheeze proved their otherworldly origin—assuming that’s what they were: otherworldly. And after the encounter with Nathaniel, what else could she expect them to be? Where was the angel, anyway? Was his job just to show up, introduce himself then take off and leave them to fend for themselves? Surely wandering around an abandoned military hospital, hunted by the undead, and looking for a hurt friend demanded some sort of supernatural intervention.
August’s words from that night in Winnipeg Square came back to her, ones assuring her that, yes, bad things happen to good people—but not because God made it happen to them. The difference was He let it happen so that later, if you sought Him, He could reveal Himself to you.
Okay, she thought. I’m seeking You now. In a jam here. Got a zombie abou
t to come up on me and—
The zombie rounded the corner, arms out. It wasn’t Del, but a female, a new face. A dead one full of holes as if a hundred crows first had their way with it before the zombie came to this place. Her clothes hung in hole-filled tatters on her body, each hole rimmed with dried blood.
Billie backed up a few steps as the creature came toward her. She steadied her footing, then like a sprinter dashing off the starting line, she bolted toward it, clutching the keyboard stakes. She delivered the first one into the zombie’s gut, stabbing it deep and hard, the force enough to cause the zombie to stumble back a step. The next she brought and plowed it into the zombie’s face. The zombie fell over and remained on the ground a moment before slowly getting to its feet.
“Crap,” she said, noticing the second stake had lodged itself in the soft spot under the cheekbone but hadn’t made its way in far enough to hit the brain.
The first stake protruded out of the zombie’s gut like a skewer, dry intestines slipping out around it, falling to the floor like a string of shriveled sausages.
The dead girl came toward her, arms raised again.
Billie wound up and socked the zombie across the face, her knuckles accidentally scraping against the jagged edge of the keyboard stake sticking out from under the cheekbone. Hand bleeding, she pulled her fist back and struck again, this time dead on. The zombie fell backward.
Billie jumped on top of it, yanked out the stake from the thing’s face. The zombie beneath her howled, but not from pain. From need. The dead woman grabbed Billie by the shoulders and pulled her in, the woman’s mouth open. Billie brought the stake up and used it as a spacer between her and the woman. Quickly, she got the pointed end into the woman’s mouth and with a quick push shoved it up through the roof of the zombie’s mouth and into the brain.
