The Living and the Dead

by R. J. Spears

  “How do you know the other guards aren’t coming right now?” Maggie asked.

  “We don’t know for sure, but this may be the only chance we get for the next four hours,” Russell responded, then forced their hand as he pushed down on the door handle and pulled the door open.

  “Well, shit,” Maggie said under her breath.

  After a quick jaunt down the hall, they entered a stairwell, and quietly shut the door behind themselves. The click of the door echoed down into the dark below. Russell snapped on a small flashlight that gave off a dim amount of illumination, but it was enough for them to work with and they headed downward. Two minutes later, they were in the basement standing in a long dark corridor.

  “It’s not too late to back out,” Maggie said.

  “Yes, it is,” Russell said.

  “No, it isn’t,” Maggie replied. “Until I press the button on this vest, we can still go back upstairs and call this whole fucking crazy idea off.”

  “Enough!” Russell said. “We have to do this and we have to do it now. We know the vest works.” Russell held the flashlight in one hand, splashing the beam down a dark corridor. In his other hand, he held of piece of metal rebar. It was the best he could do in terms of weaponry. He had wrapped the makeshift handle with duct tape to give it a better grip. “Let’s go.”

  Russell took the lead and they headed off into the dark. Maggie looked sullen as she followed. Water dripped from the ceiling and the corridor was permeated with dankness. The past battle had cracked part of the foundation allowing groundwater to seep in. The farther they made it down the corridor, the worse the conditions became. They were forced to climb over a partially collapsed wall. Then they pushed through a tangle of dangling insulation that was like a giant cobweb with electrical wiring grabbing at them like thorn bushes, but they soldiered on. Maggie whined a little.

  They finally reached another door with a small portal window in it. Russell paused, leaning in towards the door, listening intently. He withdrew his head and took a look into the room, but only saw darkness within.

  “I hear them,” he whispered. “It’s too dark to see anything.”

  Maggie leaned forward, straining to hear. It only took a moment, and the message was loud and clear. The moaning and stinking mass of them were there, but the wall muffled some of the sounds and the smell -- for now. They were ready and waiting. Waiting to be fed.

  “Let me check the vest one more time,” Russell said.

  “What?” Maggie asked. “There could be something wrong with it?” Her voice shifted up to a higher octave.

  “No, but it doesn’t hurt to check,” he said and knelt next to her waist, his fingers fiddling with the wiring for a moment. He brought out a small meter of some kind and plugged into a short wire hanging from the vest. “I watched Henry use this before. I think I know how it works.”

  “That’s reassuring,” Maggie said,

  He shrugged off her comment and read the meter for a moment and then said, “Everything is intact. This is an extra voltage battery. Henry said it should really kick ass.”

  “It better,” Maggie said.

  “Are we good to go?” Russell asked.

  Maggie took a moment but nodded.

  Russell grabbed the doorknob and sucked in a deep breath, “Power up the vest.”

  Maggie, her fingers shaking a little, reached down and touched a series of buttons on the vest. Electrical pops sounded from inside the complicated electronics that only a dead mad genius or a fifteen-year-old boy could figure out (and Henry only had a middling understanding of it). She stuck her tongue out of the corner of her mouth in concentration the way young children do. It took a few moments, and the popping stopped as the vest settled down into a stable hum.

  “Ready,” she said.

  “Ready or not,” Russell said as he whipped the door open. The zombies stumbled around a twenty by twenty room, bumping into each other and the equipment in the room. The room looked to have been one of the complexes mechanical rooms with large sets of pipes leading out of the room like spaghetti. A large mechanical device that Russell couldn’t define dominated the room, but a part of it was crushed by the ceiling which had collapsed on it.

  It didn’t take the zombies long to see the open door and a woman standing in it and they took notice.

  “Shine the damn light in there,” Maggie shouted. “I need to see which ones have control collars and which don’t.”

  Russell shone the light onto the approaching undead mass coming their way. There was nothing new about this group. They were standard undead; limbs missing, gouged out eyes, massive wounds on their arms or torsos. And he could sense their the insatiable hunger. He had seen too many times the way they looked when they saw food, ready and waiting.

  From his perspective, he saw quite a few control modules, but he noticed nearly an equal amount that had none. There was no telling how many of the control modules were working.

  He guessed they had the possibility to control fifty percent of them.

  “Is the vest working?” he asked.

  “We’re about to fucking find out,” she pressed a few buttons and a set of zombies froze in place. Another set headed for the main course which happened to be her.

  “It’s working, but let’s see what I can do,” she said. The olds skills hadn’t been lost as her fingers danced across the buttons on the vest. Anthony had always said she was one of his best pupils and she put her lessons to work.

  The frozen zombies broke free from their spell and shot forward towards the backs of the approaching zombies. Instead of shambling like most zombies, they moved with great urgency, pushing forward like All-Pro offensive linemen. It was almost as if they didn’t see the zombies in front of them and smashed into their backs, knocking them face down onto the floor. Russell and Maggie could literally hear the bones cracking on the hard concrete as the zombies marched over their downed bodies, grinding them into the floor with no regard. It wasn’t a pretty sound even if they were dead.

  “Holy shit,” Russell said.

  “Yeah, I’ll double that and give you the whole shit-house,” Maggie said as her controlled zombies came to rest right before her. She pressed a couple of buttons and they pivoted around like soldiers performing an about-face, forming a wall in front of the door where she stood with Russell. The rogue zombies came at the wall of dead flesh, pawing over the shoulders of the controlled zombies, trying to get at Maggie, but the controlled zombies gave up no ground. In fact, other controlled zombies surged forward sandwiching the rogue zombies between two groups of controlled zombies. The controlled zombies shoved through the rogue zombies, knocking them aside or down to the unforgiving concrete floor. Driven by Maggie’s electronic commands, they trampled the rogue zombies and made their undead wall even deeper.

  “What the hell did you do to this vest, kid?” Maggie asked.

  “Henry said the battery is double the power of what was originally installed. He also said he replaced a couple of the capacitors.”

  “Well, whatever he did, this thing is jacked up,” Maggie said. She was almost giddy as more controlled zombies smashed their way through the rogue zombies, either knocking them aside or onto the floor where they were trampled. The floor quickly became slick as whatever type blood that was inside the zombies oozed out like toothpaste.

  Maggie tried to count the number of controlled zombies and thought she had around twenty, which was more than she had estimated.

  “We’re going to have some party tonight!” Maggie yelled.

  “Don’t get too far ahead of yourself, we don’t have any guns.”

  “We may not need any with these sorry bastards on our side,” she yelled.

  While Maggie’s mood had shifted to almost exuberant, Russell held his enthusiasm back. He knew the zombies could be used as weapons, but they were really poor ones when it came to facing down automatic weapons. Kilgore’s men had plenty of those.

  “Okay, okay,” Russell said,
“we need to get them into the hallway and upstairs. If they create the chaos we think they can, then we may be able to either make a break for it or grab some guns.”

  Chapter 12

  They Came, They Conquered

  Sleep was out of the question, but I was exhausted. Marlow was going to make a move on Naveen and I was utterly powerless to do anything about it. Whether it was tonight or tomorrow, Brent could only guess. He let me know that Marlow built up to it like it was some sort of fever that overtook him.

  He said Marlow came without warning, beat him senseless, and took Chelsea. It was the longest night of his life and he really thought he would never see her alive again.

  The only thing that made Marlow give her back was that Brent dug in his heels and refused to treat anyone. It came down to a battle of the wills that Brent knew he couldn’t lose. If he did, he knew his life was over. Even after Marlow threatened to break Linda’s arm, Brent stood firm. Linda said her arm was worth the sacrifice to get their girl back.

  The problem was that Marlow held all the cards. Both Brent and Linda knew he could take Chelsea back at any time.

  Despite the peril to Naveen, neither one said they would stand up to Marlow. Frankly, I didn’t blame them. They had only known us for a few hours. I doubted whether I would risk Naveen to save their daughter if the tables were turned. Still, it was disheartening to know that we were on our own.

  I counted the seconds and minutes as I listened to the heavy breathing and stirring of the people in the room. The only light was the cool blue, but diffuse light of the moon streaming through the glass block windows at ceiling level, leaving the room mostly in darkness. Inky patterns moved in the shadows of the corners of the room in that way it does when your mind starts working in overdrive. A formless mass of black shifted into the hulking outline of Marlow but broke apart. My mind drifted from different ways I could defend Naveen, but every plan collapsed like a house of cards as I considered the reality that I had nothing.

  I even tried praying (something I wasn’t good at despite being God’s information conduit), but the words became muddled, turning back in on themselves, becoming repetitive pleas for help that borderlined on begging. I had no pride in begging. For Naveen, I would crawl across broken glass on my hands and knees.

  Then I did the unthinkable and drifted off to sleep. I said I would rest my eyes, if only for a moment and I was gone, the exhaustion of the past day catching up with me. It was a restless sleep with no dreams or nightmares, just an overarching sense of doom lurking at the edges. I had no idea how long I dozed, but it left me totally unprepared for what came next.

  My murky dreams ended when the door burst open and dark forms rushed in like a SWAT team, prepped and ready. There was no hesitation in their movements. They came in with a purpose and a plan and before I could even get to my feet, they were upon us.

  Linda let out a startled scream and one of the forms told her to, “Shut the fuck up.”

  In the dim moonlight, I saw Jason jump up and come at the forms. He only made it two steps before an arm that looked more like a steel girder shot out of the darkness. The next thing I knew, Jason was airborne -- with his short flight ending with a grunt as he smacked into the wall. He bounced forward and collapsed onto the floor. He didn’t seem to be moving.

  Groggily, I finally made it to my feet just as the whole mass of them passed by me on their way to Kara and Naveen. Just as they made it in front of Kara, one of the dark forms flipped on a lantern. The light was on the front side of the men and gave them a ghostly halo. I could see four men with Marlow in the middle, standing above the other three. One of the men faced out towards me. He held a nasty looking pump action shotgun and his finger played over the trigger as if daring me to move.

  Kara was barely visible through their legs, but I could see her looking up and shaking off sleep. I only saw Naveen for a moment as her eyes snapped open, then her face was blocked by the men’s bulky legs. I’ll never forget the sheer terror in her eyes.

  “What do you want?” Kara said.

  Marlow spoke, “We’re here to teach you all a little lesson about where your place is and what the new world order is.”

  “We didn’t do anything to you and we don’t mean any trouble,” she said.

  “Now, does that really matter?” he asked, but it didn’t seem like he wanted an answer.

  “Why can’t you just leave us alone?” she asked.

  “We’re too far past that. You’re in my territory and I claim anything and anyone in it,” Marlow said.

  I could tell she didn’t want to ask, but she did. “What do you want?”

  “You’re holding it,” Marlow said. “I want the girl.”

  “She’s barely a girl,” Kara nearly shrieked. “You can’t have her.”

  “I can have whatever I want,” Marlow said.

  I could tell the momentum was building and I couldn’t see any way to slow it down. It was all moving too fast and out of control. I thought I would have some time to formulate a plan or someone might happen along and rescue us. That was just magical thinking. Reality was hard, cold, and cruel. I had screwed up and Naveen was going to pay for it.

  Almost before I knew it, I had launched myself across the room with an animal’s growl in my throat. My speed surprised the man with the shotgun. Almost.

  He didn’t shoot me, but instead, drew back the barrel and flipped the butt back out in a whipsaw motion. The impact was spectacular, connecting with my sternum. I thought I heard something crack and all the air left my body as if it were in full retreat.

  The floor came up at my face and I was down and out, sucking desperately for any oxygen I could find.

  “Joel!” Kara yelled, but her voice seemed far away and muted as blackness started to swamp my vision. I fought for air. I fought to stay conscious. I willed my arms and legs to move, but they refused entirely. My body was so stunned by the blow that I barely felt anything. It was as if I were paralyzed. I couldn’t even grunt out a sound.

  The shotgun toter slammed a heavy boot down on my back pressing me onto the unforgiving concrete floor.

  “Any more of that and I’ll have my boys kill every last one of you,” Marlow growled.

  “Marlow, you don’t have to do this,” a voice I recognized as Brent’s spoke. “They look like good people. They don’t mean any harm.”

  “If you hadn’t noticed, I don’t like good people,” Marlow said. “Now, hand her over.”

  “No, I won’t do it,” Kara said.

  Atta girl, I thought, but that was about all I could do. Lack of oxygen suppressed almost all other actions. In reflection, I was amazed I had any cognitive functions at all.

  “We can take her and we won’t hesitate to break anything on you or her to get her away from you.”

  “Please, Marlow.” It was Brent again. “Just leave them alone. I’ll take care of anyone you bring to me. I promise.”

  “You’d do that anyway,” Marlow replied but stopped for a moment. “I can always take your little girl again. She was sort of sweet on me.”

  Linda screamed, “No.” Her scream came out in a pitiful and fierce quality, all at once.

  I could imagine her clutching Chelsea tight, the way that Kara was holding onto Naveen.

  “Okay, that’s settled,” Marlow said. “Hand over the girl. This is your last chance.”

  “Take me, instead,” Kara said.

  A voice in my mind screamed, “No,” but no sound came out. None at all.

  “You’re a little old for my taste.”

  “But I know things,” Kara said. “Naveen doesn’t know anything. I can do things for you.”

  “But she’s so pretty. Those dark eyes and that brown skin,” Marlow said and his voice oozed out, nearly making my skin crawl -- if it could move at all.

  “Take me,” Kara said. “Please. I’ll do whatever you want.”

  “Whatever I want?” Marlow said and his tone seemed to be pondering that question.r />
  I felt air coming back into my body, but it was coming achingly slow. I simply had no power to move.

  A few seconds ticked by and then Marlow asked, “Whatever I want. You promise?”

  In my worst nightmare, I saw Kara nodding her head.

  “Okay, it’s a deal,” Marlow said. “Boys, grab my princess for the night.”

  I willed my body to move and I could see out of the corner of my eye, the index finger on my left-hand twitch, but that’s as much as my body would give me. An unholy scream echoed inside my mind. I had never felt more powerless in my life.

  The men’s feet pivoted, and I saw Kara’s boots join their sad parade as it started to move out of the room. The parade stopped by me and I could tell it was Marlow’s massive boot only a few inches from my head.

  “You need to learn quickly that there is no other way than my way,” his voice sounded from miles above me. “Consider this an object lesson. It goes my way or the highway.”

  Air was moving more freely into my body by then and I felt strength ebbing into my arms a little at a time. With whatever I had in me, I pushed my palms flat against the floor and gave a shove. The man holding me down with his foot met all my effort with equal effort. It was a mighty gesture that delivered such small results. I might have lifted a millimeter off the floor.

  “I see you have some fight left in you,” Marlow said. “That’s a bad idea, son. Fighting me will only get you heartache and suffering. That or dead. You need to convince yourself that is the wrong way to go.”

  A half second after he finished that sentence, his boot flew at my face like the side of a mountain and that’s all I remembered.

  Chapter 13

  Inside

  “Bring her to me. Do it now!”

  The soldier, a twenty-year old-private named Newman, looked back at Kilgore with a vapid stare, caught between competing orders. One was to find one of the civilians named Jo and bring her back to Lodwick. The other was to retrieve the little girl who had just wandered up to the complex. He fidgeted back and forth, feeling torn to go in two directions at once.