by R. J. Spears
He chuckled, but Greg remained quiet as did the rest of us. Radioactive zombies were bad enough. Even considering zombies using weapons gave me the willies.
Greg made another run at them trying to convince them to come out to the Manor, but it fell on deaf ears. They changed the subject and asked how they could help us. Greg wanted to know if the library was still secure and what the situation was with the high school.
Roger let us know the library was still in good shape, and he even offered to retrieve any books we needed, while we took on the more dangerous half of the mission: the high school.
Roger warned that more than a few entrances were taken out during our battle with the soldiers. He said there was a better-than-good chance the dead were still roaming around inside.
Woo-woo, we’ve got zombies in the house. They offered to go with us, but Greg assured them that we could handle it. He also told them we’d stop back by before we left town.
My last experience in the high school hadn’t been a pleasant one. We had battled soldiers, I had killed an injured man in cold blood, and I had seen one of the best men I’d ever known die there. But if there were Geiger counters still intact inside, we had to take the risk to get them.
Greg took the lead as we entered with Chuck right behind him. A bone-chilling wind whipped out of the west, catching our backs as we stepped through the broken glass in the front foyer of the building. Snow covered the floor and drifted out into the intersecting hallways. The place was in worse shape than the last time I had seen it. Many of the windows were broken out, and bloodstains colored the walls and floors in places.
“Which way to the science labs?” Greg asked.
I shrugged because I had no idea. I had attended the old school before this modern one went up.
“Follow me,” Brandon said, pushing past Greg and descending into a dark hallway to our left. Our footfalls echoed loudly off the walls, and the place felt like a mausoleum -- cold and dead. Greg and Brandon took the lead with Kara and me watching our backs. Chuck had the middle.
We passed an alcove, and I looked in to see if any surprises were ready to jump out at us and I got a surprise. A pleasant one.
“Hold up a sec,” I said to the group members stopped in place, their bodies tensing, ready for danger. “Whoa, whoa. It’s not a bad thing.”
“What is it?” Greg asked.
“It’s a candy machine,” I said.
Greg gave me a withering look.
“It’s for Naveen and Madison,” I said defensively, and while it took a moment, his expression softened.
I walked into the alcove draped in shadows. Lying on its side was a vending machine. A soda machine lay canted at an angle beside it. The glass was broken out of the front of the candy machine from someone else’s scavenging it, but I saw several items left behind. Yeah, the contents were most likely stale, but there was candy in there, and I was on a mission. I grabbed two chocolate bars and a bag of chips. “Mission accomplished,” flashed through my mind, but that was before I saw the set of legs sticking out from behind the vending machine.
“Holy shit,” I said.
“What is it?” Greg asked, and I heard him move into the alcove with me.
“There’s a body back here,” I said, gripping my pistol.
“A dead body?” Brandon asked, “as in fully dead and not re-animated?”
“Yes, dead. I’m fairly sure.”
A beam of flashlight cut into the shadows as Greg shone it onto the wall and then down to the legs. I saw a pair of boots that looked familiar and some blood-soaked jeans. To see the body fully, we’d either have to step over or move the candy machine. We opted on stepping over.
“Cover me, Joel,” Greg said as he stepped up onto the candy machine and shot the flashlight down onto the body.
Greg isn’t the gasping type, so I’ll just say that he exhaled loudly.
“What is it?” Kara asked.
Brandon brought his rifle up into a firing position. Chuck moved up beside him with his weapon ready.
Greg took a moment to respond. “I think that is Hack’s body.”
It took us a few minutes to definitively determine that it was Hack. He was badly decomposed, but we could see several ugly bite marks in his jeans and at least two in his army jacket.
He had joined our congregation at the church after he had wandered into the town on his way to find relatives back east. We discovered him on the run from a small mob of undead in our downtown area and plucked him up. Nothing was ever declared, but after a of couple weeks, it seemed like Hack was staying with us.
During the battle with the soldiers, one of the guys in Greg’s team thought he saw Hack go down in a heap of zombies. We could only surmise that he had shot his way out of the mob and dragged himself into the high school to die. Not wanting to return like one of the deaders, he had taken the quickest way out of this world – a bullet to the head. His rifle lay at his side.
“Should we get his rifle?” Brandon asked. It was such a cold question, especially for someone who had fought and died beside us, but the world was cold now, and not one of us resented the question. I doubted Hack would.
“Yeah,” Greg said, running a hand through his hair.
Brandon jumped up onto the vending machine and down into the space where Hack’s body lay. We waited as Brandon collected the rifle and any unused ammo.
“What’s this?” Brandon said.
“What’s what?” Greg asked.
Brandon held up something, and Greg shot his flashlight beam onto it. It looked like an extra-large cell phone.
“Wow, that’s some discovery, Brandon,” I said, “a cell phone. I bet you couldn’t find a million or so of those lying about.”
“That’s not a cell phone,” Greg said. “It’s a satellite phone.”
“What’s he doing with one of those?” Chuck asked.
“And why didn’t he let us know he had one?” Brandon asked.
“More importantly, who did he have to call?” Greg asked.
“What do you mean?” Kara asked.
“You only have a sat-phone to call someone who can take a call from you,” Greg said. “We used them in Afghanistan all the time. If Hack had one and was calling someone, my best guess was that it was someone in the military.”
“You’re saying that Hack was communicating with someone in the military,” Chuck asked. “And he didn’t let us know? That would mean that he was with us for a reason, like a plant.”
“Maybe, but playing the devil’s advocate, he could have just had one of his own. Or he found it and just carried it along with him.”
“Then why didn’t he tell us?” I asked.
“We really didn’t know him that long,” Greg said, “so maybe it didn’t even work.”
“Let me check it,” Brandon said as he started to fiddle with it. After a moment he said, “It looks like the battery is dead. Should we just toss it?”
“No, bring it along,” Greg said, “maybe we can come up with a battery. If we can, the phone should have stored his last call; then, we’ll know for sure what he was up to. Until we find a battery, it’s an unsolved mystery, and we have a mission right here and right now.”
We hit an intersecting hallway, and Greg put out a hand to stop Brandon’s forward progress. He turned his head to listen down the hall and must have found it safe. Brandon once again guided us along. My feet kicked something in the dark, and I heard the clinking of metal bouncing out ahead of us. Greg shined a flashlight at the floor, illuminating over a dozen shell casings. My mind went back to when Kara, Mike, and I were running for our lives in these halls. Zombies and the soldiers were both tracking us, wanting us dead. Kara and I made it. Mike didn’t.
We continued on, crossing another intersection as we made our way deep into the building. We ended up at a set of stairs, one going up and one heading down into the basement. Greg put out a closed fist, and we all stopped. We were away from the sound of the wind at the fron
t of the building, but something was making a noise back here, a slight hum, low and base. It was hard to identify its source, but it sounded as if it were coming from below. Greg motioned for us to back down the hall.
“Where are the science labs?” he asked in a whisper
“Up on the second floor, just above us,” Brandon replied in a soft voice matching Greg’s tone.
“Did you guys hear that noise?” Greg asked.
“That low hum?” Chuck asked
All of us nodded. “That’s coming from below. Here’s what I want to do. Brandon, Chuck, and Kara, head upstairs and find the Geiger counters. Joel and I will head down to check out the noise.”
Chapter 14
The Nest
Greg and I readied ourselves as the others headed upstairs. We agreed that we wouldn't use flashlights. He had the foresight to pack a pair of night vision goggles. I, unfortunately, did not. I wasn't planning on any subterranean exploration, but that's the trouble with limited planning; it doesn’t cover the unexpected. Then I wondered how Greg had been smart enough to bring a pair of NVGs. I guess that's why he gets the big bucks.
The temperature dropped as we descended, a chill seeping into my bones, and the hum got louder. It wasn’t as if it were overwhelming, but more of a background noise, something I wouldn't pay attention to as a guide of a zombie apocalypse, but now the normal rules didn't apply. Now, I paid attention to everything, or else I could end up dead.
A combination of odors wafted up the stairs, a deep dank smell mixed with an undertone of the sickening sweet smell of decay. All-in-all, it was not the inviting smell of freshly baked cookies at Grandma’s house.
Greg led with the night vision goggles, and I followed closely, nearly breathing in his ear. Initially, there was enough ambient light for me to see, but the deeper we went, the darker the basement became. My eyes did their best to adjust, but it was getting pretty damn dark, and I wished that I had been a better planner.
I tapped Greg's shoulder, and he stopped and turned my way. In my best mime, I gesticulated enough to convey that I couldn't see much of anything. He got it and stood thoughtfully for a moment, then leaned in, and whispered in my ear. "Put a hand on my shoulder, and I'll lead. If things get hairy, we'll back out, but give some time for your eyes to adjust. I think there's enough ambient light that you'll be able to see."
I did as instructed, and he turned out to be right. Or, at least, somewhat right. My eyes did adjust, but I was still caught in a murky world, ranging from slate gray to charcoal to pitch black.
We hit a wide landing and moved across to more descending stairs. He slowed dramatically, allowing me to navigate to the stairs cautiously. He moved deliberately down with each step, each of his delicate footfalls barely making a noise while mine sounded like drum beats in my ears. I followed so closely that I wondered if Greg thought I might want to be intimate with him. If he had any of those thoughts, he kept them to himself.
Step-by-step, the process repeated. Down into the blackness and closer to the source of the noise.
Then we hit bottom. A single light spilled in through a broken window at the top of a wall across from us, giving me a better source of light than I had during our descent. I was able to make out large dark shapes. Something mechanical with pipes leading out of it. Along one wall was a caged room with dark objects leaning against its side. Past the mechanical thing, I could make out several dark forms. If I wasn’t mistaken, they were swaying slightly back and forth. And they were humming.
It was a dissonant sound, low and guttural, and would never be mistaken for music in any way, shape, or form. Sometimes it pitched up slightly, and then it would dip back down, sinking down to a low drone.
Greg popped me in the arm, and I almost jumped a foot in the air. He gave me a hard stare for a moment, and I don’t think it was meant to commend my manliness. He pulled me along the wall to give us an unencumbered view of the figures.
Once we were in position, he pulled off the night vision goggles and handed them to me. I pulled them into place and almost gasped. Once again, proving my fearlessness.
There were twenty of them. Maybe twenty-five. They stood rigid, yet relaxed, swaying gently from side-to-side. The night vision goggles made their eyes glow a bright shimmering shade of emerald.
That’s what was the freakiest thing about them (besides being dead and walking around). Their eyes were wide open as if they were awake, but there was no sense that they saw us or even sensed anything around them.
Were they in some sort of stasis or some sort of hibernation? What would cause them to do this? Was it the cold weather or were they conserving energy because food supplies were low? These and dozens of more unanswerable question flitted through my mind. I wanted to talk to Greg, but thought better of it with a small horde of zombies just a few feet away.
If only Brandon had known better than to shout down the stairwell, “Guys, we have the Geiger counters. Let’s go!”
They didn’t immediately jump to action, but more gradually ramped up to full consciousness. I estimated it took about fifteen seconds. In that short span of time, it took us a good five seconds to recognize what was happening and another ten to get back to the stairs.
They had stopped humming and had gone back to their customary moan. I didn’t miss that moan. Not at all.
The back of my foot hit the bottom stair, and I nearly fell over backwards onto them. Greg had his assault rifle up and aimed into the mass of zombies. He put out a hand towards me and did a little flipping wave gesture towards me that I figured meant he wanted his night vision goggles back. Being childish, I wanted to say how come you think they’re yours; do they have your name on them? But I kept that to myself and handed over the goggles.
The zombies started to move. Some shambled deeper into the darkness of the room while others came our direction. It was only a matter of seconds before we were spotted.
Greg motioned me up the stairs, and I complied but stepped slowly and quietly. Things were good until Brandon got impatient.
“What’s up down there? We don’t have all day.” His voice boomed down the stairwell like baseball game PA announcer.
That’s when the zombies started in double time in our direction. Greg brought up his gun and fired. The shots sounded like canon blasts in the stillness of the basement. I saw three zombies go down, but the rest surged our way. Their moans escalated to guttural groans and grunts.
Footfalls echoed off the stairs above, and I shouted, “Don’t come down here. We’ve got a small herd coming our way.”
“Move,” Greg said as he fired another barrage of shots. I turned and started up the stairs as fast as my legs could carry me. By the time I hit the landing, I saw Brandon and Chuck heading down.
“No, don’t come down,” I shouted as I waved them back, “they’re coming.”
Greg was about halfway up the first set of stairs when the zombies hit the bottom stair. He turned and fired into them, and several fell, but more than a few got back up. The ones that did fall thankfully tangled up some of the others. He pivoted and headed up the stairs.
“Move, people,” he shouted.
Brandon, Chuck, and I started up the second set of stairs when we heard a gunshot from above. When I looked up, I saw Kara standing at the top of the stairs, firing down the hall at something I couldn’t see.
That was not good. If there were a lot of things up there, we were going to get sandwiched between groups of zombies, and that wasn’t a sandwich any of us would enjoy.
Kara looked down the stairs at us, and her face looked on the edge of panic, but she kept firing. I pushed by Brandon and Chuck and sprinted up the stairs as shots echoed up from below.
When I hit the hallway, I turned to look past Kara and saw a dozen of the undead shambling our way. Three were down and out, and that was good. We had about a twenty-foot gap before they got to us. I joined Kara in shooting at the oncoming zombies, dropping several more. We were thinning the ones in th
e hall, but the ones left would overrun us soon if we didn’t get moving.
The three guys made their way up beside us, just in time to discover that another, but smaller, group of zombies were coming down the hallway from the opposite direction. They had us boxed in, cutting off all our exits.
“How many were down there?” Brandon asked as he took shots into the group coming from our left.
“At least twenty,” I said.
“Great,” he said.
“Chuck, stick with me for the ones coming up,” Greg said as he positioned himself for the zombies below.
Chuck took the other side of the stairwell and knelt for the best firing position. I stuck beside Kara and fired, going for headshots. For every two shots, I KO’ed two zombies. My aim was getting better, but it wasn’t time for an awards ceremony.
Brandon took on the smaller group. I could hear him blasting away with on automatic.
“You may want to conserve ammo, Brandon,” I said.
“Why?” he shouted back.
“Because we don’t know how many more there are,” I said.
“There can’t be that many,” he said.
“But our shots will always bring more,” I said. He ignored me, ripping into his group.
Greg and Chuck opened up on the group coming up the stairs. The smell of cordite permeated the air, and my ears were ringing from the concussions of our shots.
Kara shouted, “We’ve got more coming in from my way.”
I saw in the distance the hallway filling with undead. Where had they come from? Were they in the basement in nests like the ones we just flushed out? Did we just get lucky and get a wandering horde? It didn’t really matter because they were here, and so were we -- stuck in a press of undead on all sides.
