“So what then, we just sit? I may not agree with Momma and her crazy search and rescue idea, but sitting here for another week isn’t much better.”
“I haven’t figured out our next move yet; still working on it.” I spy three of them through the binoculars, dragging their feet as if there are bricks attached, open mouthed and drooling as they move slow and steady towards the city. “I’m plotting this out alone. Kinda feels like I’m scrambling around in the dark. I guess I’m still getting used to not having Lee around to keep me on track, at least he could read the map.”
She lays a hand at my back. “You don’t have to explain, Tim. But if it helps, you can always bounce stuff off me, you know, if you ever feel like you need someone. Not sure how much help I’ll be, but I’ll listen.”
I return her smile. “You know,” the binoculars clang against the railing as I lean over, “there was this one time where Dad took me out on one of his hauls up North; Ohio, or maybe it was Pennsylvania or something, I don’t remember. What I do remember, is us stopping over in Kentucky.”
“Did you do the tourist thing and grab some chicken while you were there?”
“No, we should have though. Anyway, we stayed at this hotel, pretty decent hotel actually. We could have stayed in the sleeper, but we needed a shower, and the beds are always better at a hotel. This place had one of those indoor pools with a hot tub next to it, you know?”
“Like the one we stayed at in Tennessee for Christmas that one time?”
“Yeah, just like that, only the one in Tennessee was a little bigger.”
“Still, lucky!”
“Well, we get there like an hour before the pool area closes and I beg dad to let me go down there and swim, and of course he says yes, right, cause you know dad, he hardly ever said no. So here I am swimming around this pool in my boxers at nine at night, because of course, I didn’t pack any swimming trunks because neither one of us knew we’d be staying at a hotel with a pool. So I do the pool for a half hour, and then I decide to try out the hot tub. Now, this place wasn’t the Ritz or anything, but it was swanky to a kid from the country. I see that there are these two old guys in the hot tub as I’m going to get in. They don’t pay me much mind, but here I am feeling like a million bucks, lounging around in a hot tub with adults and all. Out of nowhere, one of them leans over to me and goes, you know who this fella right here is? He’s pointing to his friend, who I now notice has this unlit cigar sagging from his mouth, and he’s sporting this joker style grin. I’ve got no idea who his friend is, obviously, so I tell him that. He’s taken back by my answer and accuses me of being a tourist, which I was—obviously—we were staying in a hotel for God sake. I don’t say that too him, but looking back on the exchange, my tourist status should have been obvious to anyone looking. He goes on to inform me that his friend is the Governor of Kentucky. Now I don’t know if he was putting me on or whatever, but I do remember being unimpressed.”
“Well, I mean, isn’t Governor pretty high up? It’d be pretty cool to hot tub with the Governor of wherever.” Bethany hugs my arm, curling herself up against the breeze.
“You’d think so, right? But all I could think was, here is the Governor, and the guy is sharing the same recycled chemically enhanced pool of bubbles that I am. You look out, you see all this stuff going on, and position doesn’t matter. Rich or poor, governor or janitor, position doesn’t mean anything when it comes down to the end.”
We watch the sun set across the city, its final rays bounce vibrantly against the glass towers of gold and silver dotting the skyline. Shadows creep over the parking lot below, extinguishing the tubes of orange light seeping through the bullet holes spread across the side of the church van.
“We’re gonna have to go into the basement tomorrow?”
She turns out of my embrace. “What? No, c’mon, Tim, we don’t need to go down there.”
“Do you want to risk going further out? We need to replenish some supplies, the coffers aren’t exactly overflowing. It’s our best bet.”
“It’s padlocked for a reason…to keep something in, or to keep something out.”
“Yes, and we’re hoping for the latter. We’re going down there, unless you want to go further out, but with the Rabid presence and all, personally, I’m voting basement.”
She sighs, stamps her feet slightly, and chews nervously at her fingers.
“You scared, sis, I thought you’d kicked fear in the balls?”
“I’ll go, okay. Never said I wouldn’t. I just said I didn’t want to.”
37
The padlock hangs ominously before us, fastened around a thin slice of metal nailed into five wide slats of white plank wood. There is no sign of rust on the lock, the metal skirt around the bottom is still supple and unmarred by time or touch; whoever placed it, had placed it recently.
“They could have just put it here to protect their supplies from looters; maybe they planned on coming back.” I offer. I’d emptied the duffle bag from the church and now wear it loosely across my chest in anticipation of the treasure that lay below.
Bethany stands behind my right shoulder, breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth. She’s got a pistol in one hand and a foot long mag light in the other, switched on and ready to go, the beam mushrooming against the tile at her feet. “Just do it already before I puss out.”
“You sure you’re ready?”
“Oh, my God, just do it!”
I raise my M4 above my head and come down on the crown of the assembly. I expect a shower of splintered wood and the groan of the old cellar door as it withdraws on the back of its burnt bronze hinges. Instead, my rifle slips from its target as if it’s coated in baby oil and the tops of my knuckles are instantly scalped by the jagged metal slat jutting beyond the lock face. “Oh, ow, shit! That hurts, shit!” I let my weapon swing against my belly as I wrap my healthy hand across my wounded fingers. They’ll be leaking blood any second. The initial sting has turned into a scorching numbness that coils up and around my wrist.
“Real smooth there, Tim, real smooth. If there is something down there, our chance of surprise is out the window. How do you miss something that close to your face?”
“You know what…just...it’s not the time, Bethany, okay. You can poke fun later, but right now, I’m liable to slap you.” I check the damage, the blood is minimal, but I’m absent skin, and the pain is still tremendous.
“Whatever, Tim, we survive hoards of the Rabid only to have you felled by tetanus.”
“You pop the lock smart ass.”
She shrugs. “No problem.”
The gunshot startles me. I jump back against the wall as the door catapults into the shadows with a hole the size of a fist where the lock used to be. “Was that necessary?”
“I’m not skinning my knuckles.”
I step into the opening, Bethany filling in the void with the beam from the flashlight. “Try not to shoot me if something jumps out.”
“I’ll do my best, no promises.”
The path down is a narrow corridor made of water logged two-by-fours. Rafters hang low with rusty nails clinging to them like bats, clawing for their next careless victim. Each subsequent step down into the opaque pit breeds an ever-mounting uncertainty. The smell of mold and damp clay grows stronger the deeper we go.
“Feels like the building is going to come down on top of us, doesn’t it?” I whisper as my feet come to rest on the ground floor.
“Please don’t jinx it, Tim.”
She squeezes her body to mine, the flashlight now resting on my shoulder, the beam tracking with the muzzle of my M4. We move forward by fractions of an inch, our shoes scratching against the hand packed dirt floor. Cobwebs cling to the far corners of the room. Broken picture frames, empty crates, and foggy old soda pop bottles litter the floor.
Move. Scan. Move. Scan.
It’s like changing channels on an old television, each new station bringing a square of blue and white static while
waiting for some monstrous face to appear. My heart is pounding against the walls of my chest. Any moment now, the beam of yellow light will land on some animated corpse with milky eyes, it will pounce, and that will be the story of us.
The three wooden shelves reveal themselves slowly as Bethany moves the curtain of light deliberately along the west end of the southernmost wall. They are constructed from the same plank wood used to pack in the walls and build the door. Basic l-shaped brackets hold them up and they are loaded with canned goods.
“Jackpot, told you, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, you’re right, I’m wrong, go Tim. Please load the bag so we can get out of this cave.”
I don’t even bother reading the labels as I sweep armload after armload into the gaping duffel. Expired, not expired, it doesn’t matter to me. At this point food is food.
“Tim, look,” There’s another door at the back of the room fastened shut with the same assembly and fresh-from-the-box padlock as the one we’d entered through upstairs.
I zip the duffel bag shut and step to the mystery door as Bethany tracks me with the flashlight, her pistol following along. I study the padlock on two fingers before letting it fall back in place against the frame. “May as well check it out, we’re already down here.”
“That’s pressing our luck a bit, don’t you think?”
“I’ve been pressing my luck since I dug you out of the classroom supply closet. Could be the good stuff in here, you never know. What’s the worst that can happen?”
“You really want me to answer that?”
“I suppose there’s no need.”
“So, are you going to make another go at it?” She wiggles the flashlight over the lock.
“I think I can handle this one.”
“Just looking out for ya.”
“Thanks, but I’m a fast learner.” I blow the lock assembly apart with a single round sending loose dirt and flaking wood sprinkling down atop our heads.
The flashlight beam flails wildly as she dances around amidst the shockwave.
“Hold it still.” A curtain of dust hangs over the rectangular opening where the wooden door is slowly inching back on its hinges like a jungle cat. “Bethany, the light...oh, just give me the damn thing.” I grab the flashlight from her flapping arms and focus in on the mystery chamber. The dust is rolling away towards the ceiling. Two milk crates supporting two metal buckets sit against the back wall of the small space. Upon first inspection, aside from the crates and pales, it appears to be more of the same; hand packed clay, dilapidated plank wood, and cobwebs.
“Give me back the light,” she’s at my side, leaping, pulling, and pushing me aside.
“Stop, stop, look!” Another detail catches my eye and the urgency in my voice gives her pause. She follows the trail of light to the two buckets; they are coated in dark red blood.
“Tim, let’s go now, please let’s go.” She’s tugging me along by the back of my collar.
“Okay, let me go so I can actually move.”
We turn to run towards the stairs. We don’t get far before the hungry gurgling growls fill the air around us, ping ponging against the walls of the small cellar. They surround us before I can register the movement. They don’t simply move through shadows, they are the shadows.
Three of them.
Children.
No older than ten, maybe eleven.
The boys wear polo shirts and tattered blue jeans. The lone girl in their group still has two dirty blue ribbons tied at the end of a pair of scraggly ponytails. They walk a slow circle around Bethany and me as we stand back to back, weapons at the ready. They hunch at the waist with their shoulders rolled forward and their knees cocked, gazing us over, snapping out at us like wild dogs, and licking their lips. Their skin is loose and sallow, the bloody underside of their eyelids exposed against the cloudy marble protruding from their skulls.
“They’re just kids, Tim,” Bethany is trembling at my back, switching from target to target as the merry-go-round slowly picks up speed.
“Kids that are about to rip us apart unless we do something.” One bite and we’re done.
“I know. Plan?”
“Shoot and pray.”
“There are three of them.”
“I’ll take two, you take one.”
“How?”
“Just shoot when I say.”
“Okay, Tim.”
Their silhouettes cross in and out of the barrier of light casting demonic shadow puppets on the wall. Their movements are rhythmic and synced, feet-together-feet-apart, and are picking up speed with each passing second. They are spaced precisely, twelve inches separating each of them. The noise they emit rises to a snarling crescendo, the three satanic verses culminating into one hellacious melody.
The girl is passing before me, her head swimming in an S pattern as she flickers her tongue and retracts her lips across punch stained gums. Her pigtails, stiff with filth, stand high above her head like antennas. A blue flower dress falls above a pair of shredded knees, the white spaces separating the patterned foliage has been intermittently filled by gore and muck from the cellar closet; it’s probably the dress she wore to school the morning the world ended. She lunges, snapping at the barrel of my rifle, her arms pressed to her side, her fingertips digging her palms bloody.
The boy that follows her has shrapnel from his broken glasses embedded in his right eyeball. There is a tiny lightning bolt of dried blood just below the crippled eye, running in wild dashes and slants down his cheek and coming to an abrupt stop at his jawline. The wound doesn’t appear to be setting him back any, nor does the way his spectacles hang curiously across his lips, his tongue cutting itself against the jagged pieces still clinging onto the frame.
The final boy in the trio is missing three fingers on one hand and bears a gaping wound to the sternum, judging by the scorch marks on his skin and clothes, and the smaller entry points situated around the big bang in the center of his belly, it was a shotgun blast. Self-defense? An absolute act of love committed by a terrified and confused parent?
Whoever left them down here couldn’t finish the job. They’d tried, failed, and ultimately lost their nerve. It was cowardice, to lock them up and forget about them, to push them aside, or to try to pawn them off on some hapless survivor looking for supplies. You handle your business. You don’t kick the can down the road. Momma or Bethany gets bit, you can bet your last hot meal that I’m going to take care of the situation. It’s an awful thought, and I don’t know exactly how I’d react when it came down to the trigger pull, but I can say without a doubt that I wouldn’t lock them in a cellar closet with two metal buckets.
One more second.
Two more steps.
The girl is before me once more. Her ponytails flapping at me, chips of debris flaking off and across her shoulders to the dark floor below. Her jaw parts expectantly, mucus stained blood bridges the gap between her teeth. Her hands rise towards me, the back of her palms riddled with lesions leaking light red fluid with a motor oil consistency.
“Do it,” I shout.
We fire milliseconds apart.
I feel Bethany fall against me, pushed back under the recoil.
The girl with the pigtails is scalped by my shot. The top of her head flies in one direction as she falls in the other.
From the corner of my eye, I see the boy with the porthole in his belly rushing in, tearing through the shadows, the gurgle and growl sounding his advance. I spin sideways and catch him on the ear with my rifle butt. He sputters and topples out of sight into the darkness. “Bethany, the light, move the light over!” He’s pressed back against the wall by the food shelves, crouched down, his ass against his heels, like a runner itching to get off the blocks, a ball of blood thirsty potential energy. Before he can press off, I put a bullet below his right eyebrow, destroying his eyeball in the socket, and ending his suffering.
***
“Bethany, wait up, you want to carry some of this?” I’m soak
ed in sweat by the time I’m at her heels. We’re rounding the south side of the building, moving towards the rear parking lot where the van sits.
“That was stupid, Tim, you know, it was just stupid.” She tosses her gun to the wilted grass at her feet and punches at a row of browning rose bushes intermittently lining the outside wall of the hotel.
“Oh stop it, now is not the time for a hissy fit. If it were just another Saturday afternoon where Momma wouldn’t let you finish your cartoons, I’d say go for it, but in case you haven’t noticed, we’re in the middle of the apocalypse. So please, pick the gun up.”
“In case I haven’t noticed? Really, Tim, really? I said we shouldn’t go down there in the first place, and I did it anyway because you pressed it. Then that wasn’t good enough, you wanted to see behind door number two. For someone so worried about our safety, you sure look for any chance you can to get us killed. You yell at Momma for being reckless and look at you, you’re just the same.”
“We’ve got to eat. We need water. We need supplies. You want to venture out in the middle of this, then be my guest. Just make sure you bring some hot sauce along, maybe you’ll get lucky and find the one Rabid with a sensitive stomach.”
“I don’t want to venture anywhere, I want to keep moving. You’ve got us sitting here in the middle of flesh eater central, just camped out with a giant target on our backs. We need to get somewhere less populated, it’ll be safer, supplies will be easier to get. No more shooting it out in the street, no more death cellars.”
“This is probably the safest we’ve been since we left Georgia…”
“Really, then what’s that?”
He’s wearing jogging pants and half of a pull over sweatshirt with a mostly detached hood. He’s walking with the same awkward gait that the rest of them do when they’re between meals and absent a target. He’s just made it to the back of our van and doesn’t seem to notice Bethany and me standing at the bottom of the stairs. I shoot him in the left side of the head. He bounces off the van and twirls to the ground, twitching once before going still. “Feel better now?”
The Rabid (Book 1) Page 23
