The Apocalypse Crusade Day 4: War of the Undead

by Peter Meredith

  He slowed, moving past a dinged-up Sedona. Glancing in, he saw that it was trashed, filled with old McDonald’s bags, empty liquor bottles and a thousand cigarette butts. A rust-bucket like this was the last vehicle he would want, or so he told himself, but then his right foot kicked something that jangled.

  On the ground was a set of keys, with a heavy emphasis on the plural. There had to be thirty keys on the ring. Stopping, he picked them up and singled out the longest; it was stamped: KIA. This was a lucky break of sorts. What would have been luckier was if the RAV4 had been in view.

  “She’s gone,” he said, and let out a long sigh. “She met up with the guy who drove this piece of crap and took off.” In his mind, he had a picture of Jerry Weir and other than an imaginary mullet and leather jacket, he wasn’t far off.

  “But she would have left a note.” He was sure of that, only he didn’t know where. Back at the football field would have been the most likely, only there hadn’t been one and she wouldn’t have hidden it. Glancing at the school made him think twice about going in. It was eerily quiet. Still, it was the most promising spot and he figured that he would find a hastily scrawled note at the front desk or maybe taped to the front doors.

  Walking past the Sedona, he went to the side door of the school and found it open. Another lucky break, he thought, but then paused. Two blackbirds stared down at him from a tree; they had blood on their talons. Although they did nothing but stare, it gave him the willies and he wanted to pick up a rock and whip it at them. It was an urge he resisted. The morning was too still to be broken by him. Someone or something else would have to do it.

  The school was dim but not dark, and as quiet as the morning. He could see almost to where the hall bisected another at an angle. It made sense to jog down there, hang the left which would undoubtedly lead to main section of the school, find the note and get the hell out of there—but something warned him to be cautious.

  Going on cat’s feet, he slipped down the hall, making almost zero noise. Thirty steps in, something metallic echoed in the school. It might have been a locker closing or a drawer of a filing cabinet thumping shut. Deckard ducked into the nearest classroom and paused, listening. For half a minute, he waited but when nothing else happened, he kept going, making it to the intersecting hall, where he glanced in both directions.

  To the right, the hall was empty and clean, the doors all shut. To the left, the hall was littered along the edges, but by what he couldn’t tell. Wishing he had some sort of weapon, he crept to the left, walking somewhat hunched over, fully expecting the worst. A sheen of sweat on his forehead had nothing to do with the temperature of the morning, which was cool; he was simply afraid, something he found strange. He was almost never afraid and here he was afraid of what? The dark? The fact that he was alone? He didn’t know and he didn’t like it.

  The mess in the hall turned out to be broken ceiling tiles. Looking up he saw that there were cracked and holed tiles on both sides of the hallway. Perplexed, he glanced into one of rooms and saw more of a mess. An entire panel was missing and there was white dust on the floor beneath the hole.

  No zombie had taken down the tile. A person might, but why would they want to? The oddity of the missing tile only unsettled him further, but he shook off the desire to run away and pressed on. At the front desk, he found himself in the geographic center of the building. What he didn’t find was a note.

  “Son of a…” The curse froze on his lips as he caught sight of an open cardboard box behind the front desk. There were piles of clothes around it and to the side was a torn white blouse, a pair of black slacks in a crumple and a pair of dirty high-heeled shoes. They had been Thuy’s.

  “Okay, she changed into something a bit more appropriate for a zombie invasion. Good. But where did she go?” To the left of the receptionist’s desk was a short hall and an open door. There was more ceiling dust here, another missing tile and broken glass. It was the principal’s office. A baseball bat sat on the desk. Deckard gladly picked it up. He hefted it as he looked around, trying to piece together what might have happened by the presence of the bat, the holes in the ceiling and the window, and the dust on the filing cabinet.

  “She found a bat, maybe down by the field. Came here. Got changed, but zombies came and she climbed up into the ceiling. She made her way outside and found there was someone there. Someone with a KIA. They joined forces and left…without leaving a note. Probably because there wasn’t time.”

  This all seemed very likely, except for the bat. It was pitted like a kid’s bat, but it was sticky with what might have been steering fluid, and it smelled like…well, he didn’t know what the smell was, but it was unpleasant.

  On a hunch, he pulled the chair from behind the desk and stepped up on it to peer into the crawl space. Right away he saw a matching hole in the ceiling across from him. “What the hell? Two holes?” That meant the person with the bat had been in the school with Thuy. With the dull light gleaming up through the holes, Deckard could see the trail left by the two of them as they had progressed across the tops of the walls.

  As he was staring, he saw a quick shadow from one of the holes. It was as if someone or something had walked beneath the hole and had momentarily blocked the light. Then there was another shadow, this one slightly closer. Whatever it was, it was getting closer, moving down the hall. Now, there were more shadows and the sound of moans.

  “Shit,” Deckard whispered. They were zombies. He dropped down and hurried to the door, shutting it as quietly as he could and turning the lock. The door was far from heavy duty. It would take them only minutes to get in, but that’s if they heard him…or smelled him. Zombies had a surprisingly good sense of smell. He crossed to the couch, pulled up two of the cushions and laid them in front of the door as he considered his options.

  They were very limited: Sit there and hope they went away or go out the broken window. The window, its jagged edges black with zombie blood was a last resort. It would be too loud and there was a chance that…

  An ugly face suddenly emerged from the shrubs peering in at him. Perhaps because he was standing still, Deckard wasn’t seen at first. It wasn’t until a second zombie joined the first that they saw him. At the same time, the door’s handle began to twist back and forth. “Fuck,” Deckard whispered. They didn’t normally use the doorknobs. This meant that there was a “thinking” zombie in the hall. It was either a child or a zombie on an overdose-level of pain meds, and this meant that Deckard had wandered into a trap.

  Since luck had abandoned him, he had to rely on speed to save him. Quick as a monkey he was up on the chair, then the cabinet and then into the rafters. Balancing on the top of the wall was much harder than it appeared, and it was killer on the knees. Still, crawling was the only way to go.

  He had passed two classrooms before the office he had left was breeched and the beasts poured in. Suckers, he thought as he scurried.

  Another classroom passed below him and as he came up to the next, the tile behind him unexpectedly burst upward, breaking into pieces. He glanced back thinking he would see a zombie, instead he saw a gleaming brass eagle the size of his hand. It was set on a pole and beneath it was white-dusted American flag.

  It disappeared and then came blasting up again almost directly behind him, scraping the wall as it came through. Deckard wobbled, but managed to hold on. He was on a T section of the walls. If he went right, he’d trap himself. Going back was useless and going forward was suicide. With no good option, he stayed in place. Thirty seconds later the tiles in front of him began to explode.

  “Where are you?” a high-pitched guttural voice asked. Deckard was sure if a jackal could speak, it would sound like this child-thing. He could just see the creature, a bloody-faced boy, below him. Thankfully, he was staring up into the next hole. “You can’t hide,” it said in its high-dog-like voice. “It’s not allowed. It’s not allowed at breakfast. No playing at breakfast.”

  The kid was right. There’d be no hiding
for long and when Deckard was found he’d be treed like a cat. The boy would use the pole to knock him down and if that didn’t work, he would, no doubt, use fire or throw rocks, and one way or another he’d get to Deckard.

  Another man might have frozen in fear, but Deckard had already survived too much to be killed by this little thing. He dropped down out of the ceiling, bringing three tiles down with him in a great plume of billowing dust. His sudden appearance shocked the zombies. Although the hall was crowded with them, there were only two in the room: the child-thing and a small adult that had been so chewed up that it looked as though it had been run over by a lawnmower and Deckard couldn’t tell if it had been a man or a woman back when it had been truly alive.

  Regardless of its sex, it was dangerous just being within proximity to it. Before it could fully recover, Deckard picked up a desk and used it as a battering ram to drive the beast out into the hall. He shut the door behind it and turned, just as the child attacked, trying to spear him with the eagle-headed flagpole.

  Deckard snatched the pole right out of its hands and then jabbed the blunt end into the child’s stomach. Although the creature was half-demon, it had the flesh of a child and Deckard had the strength of a linebacker. The pole drove through the thing’s soft skin and came out its back. It didn’t even blink.

  It stood there grinning as black blood dripped down Old Glory. Deckard thrust the eagle away and picked up another desk, fifty pounds of metal and wood. He brought it crashing down on the demon-child, breaking the arm it flung up, snapping its clavicle in two, and taking off half its face. With the first desk contaminated with diseased blood, Deckard picked up a second desk-chair and finished the job by caving in the child’s head.

  Feeling a moment of disgust, mixed with strange compassion for the child, he said, “Shit,” which was an apology of sorts. It was all he had time for. He had to get out of there before the door came down. He used a clean chair to bash in one of the windows and then he was out in the sunshine and running for the KIA as zombies flocked in from every direction.

  He was quicker and made it to the minivan, which stank of weed and old, congealed milk. He inserted the key he had picked up from the driveway and backed away from the school. Which was worse, he wondered, as he cranked down a window, owning a car that smelled like this or stealing one that smelled like this. “Of course, maybe whoever had this hadn’t stolen it.”

  With a wild hope, Deckard opened the glove compartment and, after letting two empty whiskey bottles fall away, he dug through the piles of paper for the vehicle’s registration. “Jerry Weir, 211 Maiers Road. Where the hell is that?” Just as he was saying this, he saw a gas station ahead with a sign that read Xtra Mart. He grinned, knowing the little gas station would have a map. He was on Thuy’s scent and his heart was filled with the idea of seeing her.

  Maiers Road was three miles away and Deckard pushed the Sedona for all she was worth—it wasn’t worth much and it rode choppy, spewing blue smoke out the back whenever it changed gears.

  Jerry Weir heard the mis-firing engine and knew it immediately. It was why he had frozen with his hand over Thuy’s mouth, his breath pent up in his chest. It seemed like the Ghost of Christmas Past was coming for him. Guilt robbed him of strength, and if Thuy had fought him then, he wouldn’t have been able to stop her from running out of the mobile home.

  But then the minivan slipped on by and, too late, Thuy had fought back, uselessly.

  Deckard knew nothing about any of this. He drove on by, missing his turn into the overgrown drive. It wasn’t until he saw the next mailbox that read 412 Maiers RD—Troutman, that he realized he had missed the Weir residence. He turned the rusted Sedona around with growing excitement, thinking that Thuy was safe up in one these farmhouses.

  “Probably napping. Oh man, I sure could use a nap myself. Or an actual real night’s sleep.” He found the turn off and right away started to get a sick feeling in his gut as he saw the RAV4 and the ugly mess in the yard. He knew what sort of low-rent trash he would be dealing with and he knew that if the people in the mobile home had guns, he would be in a world of hurt. But that didn’t stop him or even slow him down.

  Inside the mobile home, Jerry grabbed the half-naked Chinese chick and dragged her back to the kitchen, where he fished around in the drawers for a knife. At first, he found a steak knife, but as Deckard got out of the car and came crunching over broken glass to the canted stoop there was a strange menace in the air and Jerry knew that a steak knife wouldn’t do the job. He found a seven-inch boning knife that looked sharper than it really was and stuck it up under the woman’s throat and waited.

  When the knock came it came softly and for a moment Jerry felt a touch of hope as he pictured a woman on the other side of the door. The second knock was louder and shook the door on its frame, killing that hope.

  “Tell him to go away,” Jerry whispered in her ear. “Tell him I have a gun and I’ll shoot you if he tries to come in.”

  Thuy didn’t know who this was but she said a silent prayer, begging for it to be Deckard. If it was him, he was Thuy’s only chance and she wasn’t about to send him away. She cleared her throat, forcing herself to remain calm. “Deckard? Is that you?”

  “Yeah,” he growled through the door. “What the fuck is going on?”

  As Thuy sagged in relief, Jerry cried, “I have a gun! So, get your ass back in the car and get out of here if you know what’s good for you.”

  For the last few hours, Thuy had been living in a state of fear that rivaled her fear of the zombies, but now as she felt Jerry’s confusion, her courage perked up. “He’s only got a knife,” she said. “You’ll be able-glaug…” Jerry had pulled the blade tight against the skin of her throat.

  “I’ll kill her!” Jerry yelled. “I swear I’ll slit her throat if you…”

  Deckard didn’t wait. He could hear the uncertainty in the man’s voice. It was pathetic. He opened the cheap door and strode in. To his right was a dinky kitchen with a two-burner stove and a refrigerator that came up to his shoulder. Leaning against it was a slob of a man holding Thuy by her silken black hair with one hand. In the other was a long knife that had sparkles of rust along its edge. It was tucked up under her chin.

  “I’ll slit her from ear to ear,” Jerry said, sneering. “What do you think about that?” Jerry couldn’t help the sneer. The man didn’t have a gun. He didn’t even have a knife. The fear Jerry had been feeling left him. It was replaced by embarrassment and a sharp headache that was beginning to come over him like an express train. It was a fucked up hangover that stemmed from drinking too much crappy whiskey and even crappier gin.

  It made him mean.

  “Then slit her throat,” Deckard said. “Go ahead. That way there’ll be nothing between you and me. I just have to warn you that if you hurt her, I’ll take that stupid knife right out of your hands and I’ll use it to take your eyes. Then I’ll call some zombies I saw wandering around out by the road and watch while they eat you.”

  “Yeah right,” Jerry said, growing in confidence. “I got all the aces dipshit. I got a knife and you got nothing. I got the girl and all you got are empty threats, and you better believe me, I’ll slit her wide open, because unlike you I don’t give a rat’s ass about her. Now get the fuck out. You can have what’s left over when I’m through with her.”

  Deckard didn’t budge. “You won’t slit her throat because if you do, you and I are going to come to blows. And let’s say you win, what do you have? Two dead bodies stinking up your kitchen. And if you lose, well you’re just dead. So, do the smart thing and let the girl go and we’ll forget about this little incident.”

  The knife didn’t budge. “Fuck you,” Jerry said, but with less emphasis. Thuy could feel the cold edge of the knife against her throat going back and forth, see-sawing in conjunction with his indecision. She closed her eyes and waited, hoping that he would just let her go.

  But he wasn’t that kind of guy and this wasn’t that sort of world
anymore. In his head, everyone was dead and that meant everything left was up for grabs and that included chicks. Holding the knife close, he shoved her down to her knees and forced her face into the greasy door of the oven, all the while he watching Deckard. “Stay there, bitch. I’ll just be a moment.”

  Deckard shook his head, not really wanting to fight. He was tired, deeply tired. After four days of action and just snatches of sleep here and there, he knew his reactions were slow; he knew he could lose. He had hoped to bluff his way out of this with his calm demeanor, but Jerry had his pig-sticker and a nasty attitude.

  “Fine,” Deckard said, and rolled his head on his shoulders, trying to loosen up as Jerry got into an awkward crouch.

  There were three basic attacks with a knife: the overhead stab, the slash along a horizontal plane, and the straight forward thrust. Jerry ruled out the overhead attack because of the low ceiling, and the slashing attack, which was useless because the knife wasn’t all that sharp. That left the basic thrust.

  The point was deadly sharp and it came at Deckard hard and fast with Jerry’s enraged face behind it. Deckard jumped back, reaching with his right hand for whatever he could grab as a weapon or a defensive tool. His hand found Thuy’s mug full of gin and he threw it. It hit Jerry in the chest, doing little damage, but it did cause him to blanch long enough for Deckard to grab the second mug. He threw that too. It missed completely exploding with a rain of gin and mug shards. Jerry flinched back, but now stabbed out at Deckard, the tip of the blade missing him by a fraction of an inch.

  The blade was so close that it snagged in his shirt for just a brief moment. It was a wasted opportunity.

  Deckard had trained for this, but never under these narrow, obstruction filled conditions, with not just his life on the line, but also the life of the women he loved, as well. Jerry had left the knife hanging uselessly in the air, his arm extended for a fraction of a second too long, but Deckard was out of position, slightly unbalanced, his left foot on a stack of empty tv dinner trays that slid beneath him.