by Bryan James
At the mention of Canada, Kate groaned in pain; whether physical or emotional was another question.
Behind me, the door shook from the constant impacts of corpses against its frame, seeking to follow us onto our last refuge. My hand still rested on the cool steel of the door handle; I felt it vibrate in my ruined fingers. I could smell them through the thick steel; imagined or real, their putrescence was a vile intrusion into the clean, crisp air.
“I’m sorry you had to suffer so much for something I’ll profit from, but as they say in the biz, c’est la vie, right?” He seemed very amused at his reference to my line of work. Why did everyone find that so interesting and witty? Jackass.
He turned the gun on Kate, tilting his head and looking at me.
“Enough of this. You first, or her?” Her eyes were closed. She wasn’t far from the door, so I’d have to move quickly.
Not being left much of a choice, I took the only path left to me.
“Neither,” I said, and opened the door to hell.
Chapter 31
I rolled away from the door as it flew open. They poured from the opening as if someone had turned on a faucet. The wall next to me spit pieces of concrete and mortar as Fred fired at me in frustration, forced to move back by their sudden appearance. Because I had pulled the door open toward me, it proved an effective shield against their onslaught, directing them instead toward Fred, who fired at the flood of bodies in haste as he retreated, forced away from the door and the chopper, toward the low wall edging the roof.
The mass of creatures now separated us from Fred, who couldn’t get a clear shot at me, even as he saw me move toward Kate and start toward the helicopter. In front of us, Hartliss had struggled into a sitting position and his hand was now clutching his side. Having seen his movement from my position before opening the door I was banking on the chance that he was well enough to fly the helicopter off this roof. If not, we were in for a shit storm of hurt.
He had pushed himself back against the aluminum door of the cockpit, but couldn’t rise. Blood seeped through his blue uniform in copious amounts. He feebly motioned toward the chopper, even as Fred fired again toward the ghouls that still separated us from him. But he was moving parallel to the edge of the roof back toward the helicopter, and would soon have a clear shot at us as we neared the chopper. We needed to move faster, I thought, as I forced my tired legs to respond.
I moved forward as if in a dream. My feet moved but I didn’t seem to get any closer to the helicopter. Each step was agony, my legs screaming in exhaustion and my arms threatening to drop my burden. Gravel crunched under foot, and the moaning from behind us nipped at my heels like a pack of invisible, rabid wolves. Every second I moved, I anticipated the hungry bite of a zombie in my thigh, or the sharp, piercing pain of a bullet tearing through my back.
Fred was backing slowly toward the helicopter. He fired carefully, not sparing a glance away from the group of creatures still endlessly pouring from the staircase. Heads exploded in a carefully measured cadence, congealed blood becoming a misty haze through which other ghouls had to shuffle to thrust forward in hunger.
Despite his efforts, they continued to move forward. Faster than he could dispatch them, they shuffled forth. Slowly and steadily, they ate up the distance between the stairwell and the helicopter. Even in the fresh mountain air, the stench reached my nostrils as I covered the last few feet to Hartliss, the stinking reek of carrion and rotting matter almost knocking me to my knees.
I placed Kate in the passenger compartment and turned back to Hartliss. He smiled wanly as I helped him to stand and opened the door to the cockpit.
“Not much of a hero act, eh mate?” he said as I boosted him into the chair and he flipped switches, his blood making the controls slippery and uncooperative.
“Listen man, you get this bird in the air, and I’ll knight your ass myself.” Grabbing his pistol from the seat next to him, I went to shut the door.
“You’ll need a clip; the ponce tossed mine over the edge,” he said, eyes livid. “Got a spare in the back. Good luck.” Nodding, I slammed the door shut.
That, of all things, caught Fred’s attention.
He was only feet from the first wave of creatures, and had paused to reload even as he continued to back toward the vehicle. It was the pause in constant gunfire that alerted him to our location; possibly, he assumed we had been overcome by the door and didn’t realize we had evaded their grasping hands until he heard the commotion behind him. Possibly, his plan was to retreat to the chopper and fly himself out. Now, we had complicated the situation.
I reached into the cabin and grabbed a spare clip from a duffel bag strapped to the floor. Shoving the clip into the gun, I turned to Hartliss, who was igniting the engine. The blades started to turn slowly over my head, the air displaced by their motion driving away the putrid stench of the creatures.
“Get this thing in the air as soon as you can! Don’t wait for me. If I’m not on board when you’re good to go, get in the air!”
He nodded weakly, and turned to the dash, checking the gauges. I slammed the cargo bay door shut as a bullet hole appeared three inches from my right hand. Diving to the ground, I felt the hard stones cut my face and neck as I rolled toward the rear of the helicopter. I heard Fred’s voice. Hoping he hadn’t seen the pistol, I kept it out of sight behind me as I got to my feet.
“Give me the god damned vaccine, Mike! You can’t win. I’ll shoot your pilot right now, so help me! Give it to me now and we all leave. You don’t, and it’s just me!” He was shouting to be heard over the noise of the rotor blades, which were now ramping up to full speed. I moved out from behind the chopper, hands behind my head, hoping that he couldn’t see the pistol held low behind my neck. Zombies shuffled forward, not far from Fred, who was almost to the cockpit door.
“Now or never!” he shouted, and realizing how close Hartliss had come to getting the helicopter into the air, aimed his gun at the cockpit door. The rear of the aircraft lifted off the roof by inches and Fred jerked his head to the side, giving me the distraction I needed. I pulled Hartliss’s pistol from behind my head. The kick from the weapon jarred my injured hand and a lighting bolt of pain flashed up my arm.
Fred had caught my activity and had instinctively moved aside at the moment I fired, firing at me as he took my own shot in the shoulder instead of the chest.
His bullet took me in the right thigh, burning and tearing through cloth and flesh. I could feel the projectile lodge itself in my bone as I fell to the ground, crawling to the side instinctively as the tail of the helicopter rose into the air and swung about.
Small stones, kicked up by the rotors, flew into my face and hair and I closed my eyes against the debris momentarily. I opened them again as the tail swung out over the grounds and the helicopter lifted further into the air, and saw Fred rise to his feet slowly, closely pursued by the pack of creatures now further stimulated by the activity that had taken place. He stumbled forward and raised his gun.
I had no time to duck as the two, almost concurrent flashes of light from his muzzle left dizzying bright spots in my eyes. My shoulder and my injured arm exploded in agony, bullets tearing through the flesh of my bicep and my deltoid.
He continued forward, gun still trained on me but no more shots being fired. In the haze of pain it took me moments to realize his gun was empty. But still he came forward.
I lifted my own gun hand and moved to pull the trigger, noticing as I did so that Fred’s shot to my arm had caused me to drop the gun.
There was no time to pick it up as he barreled into me, forcing me back to the ground. Creatures moaned and shuffled forward, not twenty feet behind us as we rolled, punching and kicking, toward the cinder block raised edge of the building.
My arm and leg groaned in agony as I struggled to throw him from me and to reach the gun that I knew lay tantalizingly close. I landed a fist on his ear, causing him to howl in pain as his foot unwittingly kicked the gun closer to me
. I twisted sharply, throwing him off balance, and he tumbled to my left. Lunging for the weapon, I felt the composite grip slide into my palm as the wind was driven out of my lungs by his tackling body. Keeping my grip on the pistol, I rolled with him further away from the approaching creatures, which were now ten feet closer and gaining quickly.
Without the benefit of the rotor blades, their stench again sought to rip my nose from my face and drive the smell of living death deep into my brain.
Realizing quickly that this altercation needed to end, I had a flash from “the scene”-the one that had made my career. The one that had made me; that had defined me in the eyes of so many. The one that had pushed me into the mold I now realized I would forever struggle to break.
He was on top of me, his hand on my throat, his other hand clutching my gun hand with tenacious strength. His face was contorted in pain and aggression, the eyes that had seemed so simple and unwitting before were now narrowed in a hateful fashion.
I had to remember that this wasn’t the man I thought it was. My memories of his awkward looks, those expressions that seemed ever so slightly out of place in his eyes, came back to me. My anger flared anew, enraged by the deception.
In a last desperate act, taking pages from a script that had been written and choreographed years before, I feigned a roll to the left, causing him to over adjust to his right. I brought my uninjured knee up quickly and solidly between his legs and simultaneously arched my back, causing his weakened shoulder to buckle under the new pressure. The hand on my gun arm faltered and I brought it around with all the strength that remained to me, cracking the grip against the side of his head.
He fell to the ground hard, kicking up pebbles and dirt as he rolled away towards the approaching creatures.
I didn’t waste any more time with him. I knew I didn’t have to.
I crawled to the edge of the roof as the creatures reached his barely moving form. At the first of their touch, he started groggily, bleeding head jerking up, realizing what had happened. Realizing that he was doomed.
Before he could get to his feet, they were on him. Four, five, six…then too many to count, hands plunging in, heads darting forward. His hands could be seen moving under the pile of rotting corpses, flailing about in a futile mix of desperation and agony. He screamed once - a pitiful, wailing, heart-breakingly painful scream. As it ended, his face appeared between the backs of two ghouls that were bent over his now open torso, streams of intestines spilling out from his body. Hands moved forward surprisingly fast to grasp them and pull them this way and that: dogs fighting over scraps at a table. His face was agonized, his eyes pleading. He mouthed the request I knew was coming.
In response, I raised my gun hand, pain still shooting up my arm into my shoulder. I aimed carefully at his head.
And then, remembering the deception and the hate; the death and the inhumanity, I dropped my arm to my side once more.
Even in his pain, his eyes narrowed in anger one last time, and he was gone, covered in writhing gray bodies, blood seeping between their twitching feet.
I stood on the ledge, and I looked down at the grounds. Four feet below me, hands clambered for my flesh, deadened rotting arms reaching up from the ground, from a nightmare of hellish proportions. Hundreds of creatures packed the grassy yard, an undulating carpet of decayed flesh and grinding jaws unrelieved by anything living. I looked back to the roof. The mass of creatures from the stairwell had moved past the remains of Fred’s body, leaving a mass of wet, red flesh open to the light of day as they approached me slowly. What used to be Fred was a carpet of gore. Their dead, dirty feet moved past his corpse, tracking blood across the stones.
Their eyes, as always, were red and hungry. Their mouths, as always, moved in anticipation of their next feeding. Their legs, as always, shuffled forward slowly but surely, death an inevitable companion to their inexorable approach.
Again, my last film came to mind. This time, the fight scene choreography would avail me little. But in the end, I thought, why fight your own identity? Why battle against who you are-who you were, perhaps, meant to be? In the public mind’s eye-at least, what was left of the public-I was never to be, could never be, exonerated of this crime. The television and radio, the internet and the email; everything that had so efficiently broadcast my guilt, were no more.
From above me, the sound of helicopter rotor blades and from the corner of my eye, a flash of color descended and was gone again. I thought I heard voices, but I was beyond that, beyond their help. I looked down at my hand and I laughed. Go figure, I thought, remembering Maria’s final gift to me before her death; recognizing the humor of my condition despite all odds. A last minute reprieve at the knowing hands of a dead wife, and you die in the end regardless.
I raised my gun hand for the last time, speaking with an unsuppressed glee the line that had made me who I was today and firing steadily as the gun spat my defiance to the last.
“Eat me, mother-fuckers!” I shouted each time the gun spoke, noting with a detached amusement the incredible irony of the situation, but beyond caring. The gun fired too many times to count; heads exploded before me, gray and red mist coloring the clear air. But still they came. There were always more.
As the last shot left the chamber, I looked bemusedly at the gun as if it were a funny thing. Suddenly, the gates to heaven opened, and a rope ladder-the self-same rope ladder that had plucked us from the maws of hell on the rooftop in Long Island-fell to my feet. The voice of God spoke to me.
God sounded like Kate.
“Come on. They’re almost here! Move!”
My vision blurred and my head swam but I somehow managed to wrap the rope of the last rung around my good arm. A gentle tug from the heavens and an anxious voice yelling to be heard over the rotor blades came close to snapping me out of my reverie as I was pulled toward the edge.
The hungry bastards had reached my perch, and were grasping for me in earnest. Dead paws with rotting skin falling from their bones clutched at my clothing, my face, my hair. I realized I hadn’t left a bullet in my gun for myself. I must not have intended to die today.
And I fell off the ledge, flailing into space and away from my adoring fans.
I had lost a lot of blood, and don’t know how I managed to reach the cabin. But I did. Kate was there, her face flashing in front of mine, tending to my shoulder, which was numb. I was in and out of consciousness, sounds and sights meant little to me. Light and darkness played across my mind. Sounds that I barely recognized. Reassuring tones from Kate for a short time, confused and excited words from Hartliss. In bits and pieces I could piece together what happened next.
A trail of smoke and a flash of light. A shuddering sound from the main rotor compartment and a sickening lurch. A shout of confusion and a cry of dismay. Kate’s face above my own, worry streaking her beautiful visage. Hartliss’s anxious words, his weakened tone, his confused shouting.
In the haze of pain and confusion, the voice spoke once more.
Ironic, isn’t it, that she would go to all that trouble of inoculating you, and this is how you die?
But this time, it was detached and resigned. It wasn’t angry or bitter, or even mocking. It was simply stating a fact drawn from our shared memories of where it all began. It was in this moment that I realized that this voice, this detached and haunting presence, wasn’t the malevolent conscience trying to take me over from within that I had imagined. It wasn’t an alter-ego, nor was it an insanity-induced figment of my own schizophrenia. It was the nagging, persistent voice of my own self-doubt.
Suddenly, a dizzying and rapid loss of height, and Kate was gone, disappearing into the lack of gravity and direction. I hit the bulkhead, and my world was again pain and darkness. I gave in to the blanket of peaceful black and ignored the world.
Chapter 32
I opened my eyes. Or my eyes opened of their own accord. One or the other.
I was staring at white; nothing but unrelieved white. It was the
white of a blank computer screen or of a newly painted picket fence. Turning my head to the side slowly, I realized there was no pain. Given what I had been through, this seemed unusual.
My head felt fuzzy and disoriented, like it was packed in cotton. My tongue was covered in fur, and my hands and feet moved substantially slower than I asked them to. And that’s why it took me so long to realize where I was.
Rather grungy white walls, complete with a low, stained white ceiling surrounded my narrow bed. Off-white sheets covered a lumpy mattress and a thin pillow, and a door with a small inset window stood to one side of the tiny room. The smell of mildew permeated the small space.
A nightstand stood next to my bed, a plastic cup full of pills neatly arranged next to a full glass of water. I turned, putting my feet on the floor and standing up, bracing myself against the frame of the bed to keep from collapsing in disorientation.
Something wasn’t right here.
I carefully felt my shoulder and examined my hand, expecting a sharp stab of pain. Nothing; no pain, no bite wound.
I rolled up my sleeve, exposing my bicep. I tore at my pant leg, searching my thigh. My heart started beating faster. The blood that was pounding in my aching and swollen head was a kettledrum in an empty room. No wounds, no blood, no scars.
This couldn’t be. Panic shot through my body and adrenalin chased away the daze. Where were Kate and Hartliss? Where the fuck was I? The room that my mind told me I recognized was familiar, but it was also impossible. I moved to the wall housing the window, set far above my head. I reached for the sill, but it was too high. I needed to know where I was. I needed to know that this wasn’t possible.
Moving to the door, my hand paused above the handle.
Or did I? Did I really want to know the answer to this question? My hand hovered above the handle as my mind paused and the kettledrums quickened their pace. If what I had been through-or what I had imagined-had taught me anything, it’s that knowledge for the sake of knowledge isn’t always the safest thing.
