by Jack Hunt
“Okay, all secure. So we wait here until the morning. We can do this,” Billy said while looking around nervously. Sam went over to Tom. They had laid him out on the carpeted floor. He was still breathing heavily but Ally was stroking his head trying to calm him.
“How did you know it wasn’t one of them behind the door?” Ally asked.
“By what had been used for restraints on the door. Had that been one of them, I’m pretty sure whoever secured it would have used more than that.”
“If that’s the case, then why did we bother securing the doors with the belt?”
Sam shrugged, and then smiled. “To give us a false sense of security?” He wasn’t sure why they bothered. Instinct maybe? If they wanted to get in, they probably could as who knew how strong they were? Sure they had knocked him and Ricky down like a feather but he managed to get up from it. Perhaps they weren’t super-human strong but just physically fit, agile and stronger than most ordinary people. He had yet to see anything that indicated their full strength.
“Hey, you got a cigarette?” Billy asked.
“You can’t smoke in here,” Corey replied
“Why not?”
“It’s the house of the lord.”
“Oh please, give me a break. I think even the lord would spark one up if he’d been through the shit we have.”
“What makes you think he’s not a she?” Kiera asked.
“Great, now you’ve riled up the feminist,” Billy said before grabbing the packet of cigarettes from Corey’s top pocket and strolling off to light one.
Sam looked at Tom who was in a bad state. “Tom, who did this?”
He was breathing hard and trying to mouth the words.
“We really need to get him treated. Those wounds look septic,” Ally said, continuing to stroke his head. He was having difficulty getting his words out as a good number of his teeth had been removed. It was an absolute mess.
“Was it Bryan?”
Tom’s nostrils flared and he gripped Sam’s hand tightly. He gave a short nod and Sam gritted his teeth. “That bastard is going to pay.”
Luke was sitting off to one side still nursing a bruised ego. “We could have been safe, eating food right now if we hadn’t come out.”
“Then we wouldn’t have found Tom,” Kiera replied.
He snorted. “Look at him. He’ll be lucky if he lasts another night.” He shook his head. “We went to all that trouble for this. For someone who is probably going to curl over and die in the night.”
“Shut up, Luke,” Ally replied.
“That’s right. Take his side. Don’t listen to anything I have to say.”
“Maybe if you said something that was worthwhile, people would listen,” Sam replied.
“Fuck you, Frost.”
A silence fell over the place as the night wore on. Every so often the thud of a body slamming against a door, or the shriek of the insane put them on alert. None of them slept much that night, even though their eyelids would become heavy and for a few brief seconds they would give in to the pull of sleep.
Sam’s head jerked forward and he opened his eyes. Billy was sitting cross-legged up on a table munching away on something. Sam squinted and then shone the flashlight on him.
“Dude, that’s the sacrament.”
“I was hungry.”
“But it’s… the sacrament.”
“And? It tastes like rice paper. Could use some cheese, and maybe a dash of tzatziki,” he said before plowing down several pieces at once.
Sam looked over to Ally who was sleeping. She had perched her head on one of the carpeted steps and was in a fetal position. Her lips were moving ever so slowly as if she was having a conversation. Her eyelids fluttered. Kiera was a short distance away, peering down the scope of her weapon. She’d lower it and bring it back up again. Over the past six months she had really come full circle. Sam wasn’t sure if she was the same as before as he never really knew her or hung out with her circle of friends but at least she was speaking again.
She was also one hell of a shot with a gun.
Her mother Kate had spent time teaching anyone who didn’t know. That was one good thing about Hayden. They made sure that you were useful. They couldn’t have people just relying on others. The nation had changed and taken a nosedive down into hell itself. If the fear of radiation wasn’t bad enough, now they had to deal with out-of-control humans turning on each other. The nukes they could come back from, it would be a long process but they could do it. But this… he stared down at the ground. How could anyone come back from this?
Sam got up and went over to Kiera. She glanced at him as he got close.
“How you holding up?”
She nodded. “As well as can be, I guess.”
“You’ve become quite good with one of those.”
She chuckled. “Don’t say that to my mother, she thinks I shouldn’t even be carrying one.” She paused. “I’m not ready, I believe her words were.”
Sam smiled and breathed in deeply.
“Thank you.”
Sam cast a glance to his left. “For what?”
Kiera didn’t look at him when she replied. “For what you did back at the nursing home. Getting me out.”
“Wasn’t just me. Corey.”
“I know. I just wanted to…”
“Well… you’re welcome.”
The sound of liquid being swilled around could be heard. “Ah, the great hero,” Luke said. He was perched on the edge of a step off to one side of the altar, almost hidden in the shadows. When he stepped out into the glow of the flashlight, he was holding a bottle of alcohol in his hand. Whiskey.
“You drinking?”
“Ten points for observation. Nothing gets by you, does it, Frost? That’s why people like you. And me…” he swallowed some more.
“Put the drink down, man. You need to be clear-headed.”
“I’ll put it down when I’m good and ready, and not a second before,” he said slurring his speech.
“Where did you get that?” Billy chimed in.
“In the rectum. I mean the rectory. Yeah, you got to hand it to those priests. They love to give it the big one on a Sunday but when the doors are closed, and the curtains are pulled they love a good drop of the rum-tiddly-um-tum!” He burped and did a little dance as though he was reenacting a Fred Astaire dance number.
Billy hopped down off the table and ambled over to Luke and tried to take the bottle but he pulled it away. “Get your own.”
“I think you’ve had enough.”
Luke pulled out his handgun and pointed it at Billy’s head. “Like I said. I will tell you when I’ve had enough. Now fuck off.”
Sam scrambled to his feet.
“Ah that’s it, Sam. The lone ranger. The hero to save the day. What are you going to do, eh?” Luke moved his gun back and forth between Billy and Sam. “I could shoot you where you stand and it would all be over.” He made a gun sound with his mouth. “No more pain. No more suffering. No more dealing with this world.”
“Put the gun down, Luke,” Sam repeated himself. By now Ally had woken up and she was wondering what the hell was going on.
“Luke. What are you doing?”
“Deciding. Maybe we should play a game of Russian roulette. Huh? How’s that sound?”
Sam went to make a move and Luke fired a round near his feet. Within minutes they heard in the distance a screeching sound.
“Luke, okay, okay. You keep the gun, let’s just talk.”
“Don’t psychobabble me, you asshole. You pretentious little prick. If it wasn’t for your fucking kind, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“My kind? You’re drunk.”
“Oh, I’ve never been so clear in my life.”
He went to move down the steps and stumbled a little. “Funny, isn’t it, when the shoe is on the other end of the boot?”
“On the other foot,” Billy mumbled.
“What?”
“When the shoe is
on the other foot,” Billy corrected him.
“Ah, who cares?” He chugged back some more of the bottle until it was practically empty, and then tossed it on the ground. The noise as it smashed along with the round he fired was stirring up a hornet’s nest outside.
Suddenly they heard the sound of feet across the top of the building. Sam looked up and saw the silhouette of the insane moving back and forth. Some of them stood on top of the stained-glass windows that had been embedded in the roof.
“Huh, how the hell did they get up there?”
“I don’t know but I’m going to fucking kill those bastards.” Luke raised his gun.
“Luke, no!” Sam yelled just as a round erupted.
The stained-glass window shattered and the insane dropped in, one by one.
12
Gunfire echoed as bullets ricocheted inside the church. Sam raced over to protect Tom who was unarmed and laying near the pews. Chaos erupted as more of them dropped in. At first he expected them to break their legs, but they landed with all the prowess of a jaguar. But how could that be? They were human. His mind was processing several lines of thought all at the same time, the way any soldier might when coming under attack. Was this what Stigers meant by evolving? How do we get out? How many are there? Where is Ally?
“Luke, get that door open,” he shouted to him but he wasn’t paying any attention. He was too busy mowing down the insane as they ran at them.
“Corey!” He hollered and motioned towards the door they had secured. He understood and dashed towards it. It didn’t matter how many they killed, they just kept dropping down. Their psychotic screams reverberated.
Bullets tore through skin sending blood everywhere. Sam had one hand on his gun shooting while trying to get a dazed and confused Tom off the floor. It wasn’t like he could ask the others for help as they were holding back the ever-increasing tide. One leapt in the air off the top of a pew towards Kiera while she was shooting in another direction. Sam shot it in the head but it hit her and knocked her to the ground. Ally screamed as she ran out of ammo. Billy tossed her an extra magazine and she slapped it in. It was safe to say that they were going to die here if they didn’t get out. By now Corey had managed to get the door open and was motioning for everyone to follow him. He fired as the rest of them backed up and exited the sanctuary. There was no time to secure the door on the other side, they all made a beeline for the rear exit. They untangled the belt, and pulled away the pipe to get out. When Billy kicked the door open, there were even more outside. He slammed it closed.
“What now?” he screamed but his words were lost in the eruption of gunfire. Luke was practically useless because he was so damn drunk that he had zero aim. He moved his AR-15 from side to side and squeezed the trigger, sending bullets out haphazardly in every direction.
“We need to get out of here now.”
Billy was beside himself with fear, all of them were.
“There’s too many.”
Sam had enough; he kicked the rear door open. If he were going to die, he would damn well make sure he went out fighting. He unloaded several rounds in consecutive bursts and motioned for them to get outside. They scrambled out; even Tom seemed to find the will to live despite his injuries. Sam handed him a Glock and he joined the fight.
“Head towards Brooks Hotel. There’s a fire escape on the back.”
No one questioned him. He wasn’t telling them what to do because he knew what was best; it was the closest building to where they were. They would have to race down Cedar, take a left on Fifth Street and cross a parking lot to get to the back of the old, run-down, two-story hotel that had been in operation until the attacks.
It wasn’t an easy task getting there, as the streets were filled with even more freaks than there had been in the day. The insane would run at them from multiple directions. Some of them would leap in the air with unfounded strength. These weren’t like the ones they had seen by day. Corey reached the back of the hotel first, he scaled up the side of that fire escape like a jackrabbit. Their only saving grace was when the lunatics were hit, they went down like any human. They suffered the same way, and could be stopped the same way.
One by one they took to the roof and scrambled for cover. Cedar Street ran north and south of the church and came around in a loop connecting with multiple streets. The section of town they were in had eight buildings, four were attached to each other, and then there was a short gap to the next four buildings. On one end was the hotel, on the other end was a branch of the U.S. Bank and in between were clothing stores and a bar.
As soon as Sam made it to the top he crawled over the edge onto the gravel roof and then turned to fire several rounds at the lunatics coming up the ladder. One dropped onto the next and it had a domino effect as they fell.
“Sam!” Corey shouted to him. He was standing by an open door on the roof. Off to the right of that was a skylight. The glass was shattered. The others rushed into the stairwell, and Sam was the last one inside. They slammed the door closed and used the chain that was hanging from the handle to tie the door off. Outside they could hear screeching and feet on the roof.
“That isn’t going to hold them. For all we know this place could be full of them. Did anyone else see the skylight?”
They jogged down the stairs that smelled of blood, piss and shit. The handle to the next floor was covered in blood. They had no way of knowing if it was from those things or someone who wasn’t infected. Ally tore a piece of her clothing and wrapped it around the steel handle to pry the door open. Once in the hallway, they stood there for a moment trying to catch their breath. Luke wasn’t saying anything, he knew better than to open his mouth. Sam wanted to beat the shit out of him for what he had done but there was no time. Right now they needed to find a safe spot, somewhere they could hide so they could get through the night.
“Who’s got that light?”
“I thought you had it?”
They were in complete darkness and though their eyes were adjusting, it didn’t make it easy to see. There were rooms either side. Furniture had been tossed out and was clogging up the hallway. It looked as though someone had tried to block off a section of the hotel. As they moved on, Sam stopped abruptly and put his hand back to let the others know something was up. He’d heard movement. It was subtle at first but then it got louder and then a screech.
“Shit! Go, go, move!”
He turned sharply and plowed into Billy who was directly behind him. From out of two of the rooms, fifty feet away from them, came four of the insane. One of them dropped to its hands and scampered along the ground like an ape. They raced back to the stairwell; all the while Sam and Corey were providing the others cover by firing at the mass of dark silhouetted figures heading their way. The closer they got to the stairwell the more that emerged from the rooms. As fast as they were taking them down, others appeared.
Sam slammed the door behind him and pressed against it. Corey and the others did the same. From the other side they felt the pulse of bodies hitting against the door. They jerked back and forth knowing that the moment they let the door go the insane would burst out.
“Get downstairs to the ground floor.”
Ally, Kiera, Luke and Tom headed down while Corey, Billy and Sam held the door.
“It’s locked, or something’s pressed up against it,” Ally shouted up. It was the worst thing he could have heard. Their options were running out. The second floor was full of these things, the roof had more.
“This is it,” Billy said. “I knew it would happen eventually.” Tears formed in his eyes. “I don’t want to die.”
The fear was palpable and yet some part of him wouldn’t give up.
“Fuck off!” Corey shouted through the door as if swearing at them was going to do anything. It only riled them up even more. They slammed against the other side and with each hit they were pushing their way in. It was hard to tell if it was one or several behind the door. As much as Sam didn’t want to resign himself
to the thought that they were going to die, he was also a realist. The odds were stacked against them. The town was full of these creepy fuckers. If they didn’t beat them to death, they would be turned into one from the gunk spewing from their lips.
Just when they thought things couldn’t get worse, they heard the sound of the door on the roof being torn open and screams fill the staircase.
Ally came rushing up but she wasn’t alone. There were now two strangers with her. Older men and both of them were packing. In light of the shit storm they just heard above them, to say that Sam was pleased to see survivors would have been an understatement.
“Come on.”
Billy shot Sam a look. “On three?”
“Fuck that. Let’s go.”
All three of them pushed off from the door jumping several steps in the process. The door burst open. As Sam landed he jumped again, this time even further. The insane streamed behind them, screaming, only to be met by a flurry of bullets from automatic rifles. Sam and the others squeezed by and then they all retreated fast. Everything happened in the blink of an eye. One moment they were being chased down the steps, the next they were in a hallway. The men slammed the door and then squeezed between the handles a thick steel bar. There were more of them. How many? It was hard to tell in the dark. Beyond the door the sound of nails scraping, and fists thumping grew louder. Once they had secured the door, they shifted into place a large steel cabinet. It took three of them to move it. The entire thing took up most of the hallway itself. Once it was in place, they breathed hard and bent at the waist, to catch their breath.
“You’re safe now. They can’t get through that.”
“You sure?” Billy replied.
A flashlight came on and that’s when Sam got his first look at those that had come to their aid. He squinted and then recognized one of them. It was Aaron Rivers. He had been a hunting buddy of Brett.
“Aaron?”
“Yeah, still alive.” He put a hand out and Sam shook it and leaned in. Aaron patted him on the back.
“Where’s Brett?”
He shook his head.
“I’m sorry. He was a good friend. Come on, we’ll introduce you to the others.”
