by Thonas Rand
“How do you like that, you dead filth?” Lauren said under her breath and then gave Bear his detonator. “Thanks.”
“No problem.”
Derek looked at the ugly water that he stood in. “You know, I knew that we’d be walking one day, but this is ridiculous.”
“No time for chitchat,” Ardent said. “That hospital should be that way.” He pointed.
“Yeah, that’s it,” Milla said.
Lauren put her hand under the fire drops and one hit her gloved palm, shattering into micro droplets that shimmered like starlight.
“I’ll take point; Bear, bring up the rear,” Ardent said.
“Got it,” he answered.
Ardent led them through the dark sewer and Bear turned his weapon flashlight on to watch their backs. Lauren was still under the manhole watching fire drops break on her hand and she was transfixed.
“Let’s go, Lauren,” Bear said.
She either didn’t hear or ignored him.
“Lauren?”
She closed her fist over her burning glove. “Yeah, I’m coming.” She checked her weapon, which was an AK-47 with a collapsible stock, and moved on.
As they ventured away, deep into the sewer system, the waters at the manhole settled back into stillness, but then, they stirred.
Air broke the surface as something moved underneath.
Something big…
The group reached a four-way tunnel junction.
Ardent pointed. “Okay, the hospital should be this way.” He took the left tunnel.
The water in this tunnel became deeper and reached their waists.
“Great.” Milla said as the water reached her navel.
“Well, at least my dirty chonies are finally getting a badly needed wash,” Derek joked.
“Keep it quiet,” Ardent whispered.
They pressed on with the putrid water sloshing around them. Their flashlight beams didn’t reach very far before being swallowed by infinite darkness. Derek hit something that was under the water and a bloated corpse floated to the surface in front of him. He screamed like a little girl and almost fired his weapon at it, until Milla stopped him short.
“No, it’s already dead for real,” she said.
But his scream echoed long in the dark tunnels of the unknown; it came back at them, streamed to the other side and faded as it passed them again.
They all froze in the wake of his scream and listened very carefully for any response.
And they got one.
“Goddamnit,” Ardent said.
Somewhere behind them, screeches and growls of the undead answered his scream.
And they were coming…
“Move!” Ardent ordered.
They marched down the tunnel and reached another junction, Ardent looked left and saw a basement access gate of a building.
“This way!” he shouted.
The water level dropped in this tunnel and the ground was thick mud, they could barely breathe because of the raw sewage stench. They realized that they weren’t stepping in mud.
“Shit,” Derek said matter-of-factly as he looked at his feet.
They reached the gate, which was made of bars like a jail, and it was locked tight with a thick chain and heavy padlock. It was also a dead-end. They scanned their lights inside and up the flight of stairs—it was the lower basement of the hospital, they saw a sign on the wall that told them so. Somebody had converted this sewer access gate into a restroom. There was a wooden structure at the top of the stairs that looked like an outhouse; the piled high trail of dried, old excrement that led underneath it to their feet confirmed that fact.
“Get it open,” Ardent said to Bear.
“I’ll shoot the damn thing open!” Derek said.
“No, that doesn’t work,” Bear said and reached into his bag of tricks.
He took out a small explosive charge; one designed for a door breach, and began to attach it to the gate chain.
Down the tunnel, they heard them getting closer; it sounded like several of the undead, the group kept their eyes and weapons trained at the tunnel junction that was about a hundred feet back.
“They’ll be here soon, hurry it up, Bear!” Lauren whispered intensely.
Bear finished connecting the device to the gate and then took out his remote. “Ready.”
A voice called to them from inside the gate. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, friend,” it echoed from the darkness at the top of the stairs.
Ardent and the group snapped their weapons at where the voice came from, their flashlights saw one, maybe two men hiding behind the outhouse.
“Okay, we’d like to come in, if you’ll let us?” Ardent said diplomatically.
“I’m afraid that’s out of the question. You’ll have to find somewhere else to go,” the man said.
Bear pointed his weapon down the tunnel where the incoming corpses were getting louder. “You hear that? Going somewhere else isn’t an option, so let us in! Pretty please,” he said sarcastically.
They heard the man load a weapon, and then the second man loaded his, and after that—
A third click-clack came from an unseen third person. “Sorry, friend,” the voice said.
“Yeah, so am I,” Ardent said. “We’re coming in and if you fire on us, then you’re a dead man, you, the one doing the talking, you think that wood shithouse is gonna protect you from the 5.56 rounds that I’m gonna spray all over it. You better think that one through, friend!” he turned to Bear. “Blow it!”
Then the first of the corpses appeared at the tunnel junction, the rotting dead saw the group and charged in their direction.
“Here they come!” Lauren said and she began to fire in bursts of fully automatic.
Milla and Derek joined her in the defense.
“Fire in the hole!” Bear shouted.
They moved away from the gate and then Bear pushed the detonator. The small charge ignited and blew the chain off the gate. It also damaged the bars, making it impossible to close them again.
Ardent and Bear cautiously entered the damaged gate with their weapons ready.
“So what’s it gonna be?” Ardent said to the darkness at the top of the stairs.
The man stepped out from behind the outhouse with his rifle aimed down at them, and then the other two men stepped out into the open, weapons ready. It was a Mexican standoff.
Lauren, Milla, and Derek were still in the tunnel dealing death to the undead.
“What the hell is the hold up?” Lauren yelled back at them in between machine gun bursts.
“Look, I’m loving the good, the bad, and the ugly scene that you guys are doing, but we kinda don’t have time!” Derek said.
The leader at the top of the stairs was a tough-looking white dude in his forties; he had short hair covered in a baseball cap that had Hardened Construction embroidered on it. “Well, the gate’s open,” he said as he pointed his rifle at Ardent.
“Yeah, it is.” Ardent answered.
“No point in all of you staying outside in the cold,” he said calmly. “Might as well come on in.” He lowered his weapon.
“Let’s go, it’s clear,” Ardent shouted to Lauren and the rest.
But they were still firing at the dead and then more of them appeared.
Dozens more.
“We got a problem here!” Milla yelled.
“Pull back!” Ardent told them.
One of the other men at the stairs was an uptight Italian guy in his fifties, bald head, bad attitude. “That’s perfect! How are we suppose to keep those things out now?” he yelled.
The third man was the sniper from the hospital roof, armed with a compact machine gun now.
“Charge the tunnel, Bear.” Ardent said.
Taking a bigger explosive package from his bag, Bear said, “Already on it.”
Bear went back in the tunnel. “Move out!” he told the fire team.
Milla and Derek ceased fire and went into the gate with Ardent, but
Lauren kept firing as she finished the magazine in her weapon. She had the butt stock against her shoulder firmly and it kicked her with every well-placed shot. She was hitting necks and many heads with her volley.
The dead were dropping like flies.
Permanently.
Her weapon clicked empty, and she calmly turned around and walked past Bear as he was placing the explosive on the tunnel wall. “Look alive, you got thirty of them coming your way,” she told him casually as she locked a fresh magazine into her weapon.
Bear took a quick glance and she was right—the tunnel was full of them and they were running straight for him. “Okay.” He finished attaching the bomb and said to it, “Saved the best for last.”
He ran back inside the gate.
“Up, let’s go, we need to be farther away from this!” Bear shouted and all of them climbed the stairs, they took cover at the top and Bear got his detonator.
He armed it…
The dead got to the gate, it was many of them, and they began to run inside.
“Fuck! Do it now!” Derek shouted.
Bear pushed the button—
The charge went off and pummeled the tunnel in a precise blast—running corpses disappeared into pieces and were engulfed in concrete and dirt debris. The tunnel collapsed and the explosion displaced dust and pieces everywhere, including a lot of excrement from the outhouse pile.
Up top, in the front courtyard of the hospital, the ground shook from the eruption below like an earthquake and then settled. The courtyard was large, there was a parking lot with about fifty parking spaces near the front of the building and a driveway that led to the front gate, which was closed, locked, and blocked off by the fifty-five-passenger bus. The gate wasn’t normal, either—someone reinforced it with a layer of railroad ties and plate steel. The dead were held at bay outside. There were a couple abandoned cars in the parking lot, but most notable was the eighteen-wheeler truck that was parked, its trailer was locked with secrets. Manicured landscaping ran along the walls all the way to the gate, but all the roses, shrubs, and trees, were withered dead or dying. At the spot in the ground where the explosion took place, no one was around to see the ground give way and sink a few inches.
It stopped, leaving a twenty-foot oblong depression in the dead lawn.
Back down in the sewer, the dust cleared, and the tunnel was completely caved-in, tons of dirt and concrete blocked the route. One corpse was pinned down at the edge of the cave-in and was trying to free itself from the large concrete chunk that was on top of its legs. The construction man shot it clean through the head. Derek was out in the open when the bomb went off and he was covered in dust and shit.
“You know, it wasn’t that bad when my balls were floating in shit water, but now I’m soaked and covered in shit,” he said.
“Sorry,” Bear said with a grin.
“Uh-huh, sure you are.”
The construction man turned to Ardent. “Okay, you’re in and you all can stay if you help out and don’t give us any trouble.”
“Agreed,” Ardent said.
“And one other thing—“
“—You’re in charge,” Ardent said.
“That’s right. We’re gonna get along nicely.”
Ardent extended his hand. “I’m Ardent Keller.”
The man took his handshake. “Tom Rebollo.”
Ardent introduced the group. “This is Bear and that’s Lauren, Milla, and the one covered in shit—that’s Derek.”
“Funny,” Derek noted.
Tom introduced the ones with him. “The angry Italian is Joe Centeno, and that’s my brother, Anthony.”
Some of them exchanged handshakes, but nobody wanted to shake Derek’s hand or be near him, for that matter.
Tom said to Derek, “You’ll excuse me, Son, if I don’t shake your hand.”
“Nah, I understand, nice to meet you.”
“Well, let’s all go up top so you can meet the rest of us,” Tom said.
“There’s more of you?” Milla asked.
“Yup.”
THE HOSPITAL
In the basement of the hospital, they emerged in the engineering section, where the building’s boilers and other large machinery were at, all off and quiet for months now. A man stood guard, waiting for his comrades to return, he had a shotgun in one arm as he took a swig from an alcohol flask. He looked in his thirties and had a seedy quality to him, a little creepy, and an obvious loner. This was Alan Parks and he was the hospital’s building engineer. The group came his way and he saw people that he didn’t know. He didn’t like it. “What’s going on? I heard an explosion,” he said to Tom.
“We had to seal the sewer tunnel.”
“What? Why? With what?” he asked angrily.
“The new guys were being chased by the stenches, so they used a bomb.”
“And you let them in?”
“I kinda didn’t have a choice, Alan,” he said as he passed him by. “New guys, this is Alan, the building engineer. Alan, new guys.”
Alan didn’t give them a second look as he walked back to the sewer for a look.
Once Alan was out of earshot, Tom said under his breath, “Building asshole.”
Anthony spoke into a pocket radio. “We’re coming up, and we got company,” he said to somebody.
On the first floor of the hospital, in the reception area was where most of this group lived. They turned the offices there into their quarters. The front doorway of the hospital consisted of two double doorways on the inside and another set on the outside for added security. The main corridor was long and went down the middle of the building; it ran from the front doors all the way to the backdoors, which led to the employee parking lot and the loading dock for shipping and receiving, which was also protected with a stone wall.
The group arrived in the reception area, and it wasn’t a warm welcome, the others looked at them with suspicion and slight contempt. There was a man in a white lab coat, thirties, dark hair and moustache, nerdy glasses gave him that perfect doctor look. This was Dr. Richard Ceraulo, and he looked a little on edge, which was understandable since all his patients were dead. Not far from him was Donnie Harris, an odd looking white guy in his late forties; he still wore his janitor uniform, even though he wasn’t carrying a mop anymore. He had a semi-automatic rifle now. He stood there and quietly eyed the new group; he didn’t much care for them or anyone else, for that matter.
Across the hall was an attractive older woman and a nine-year-old girl, it was obvious who they were as Joe Centeno joined them. Maggie was Joe’s wife, she had long wavy, blonde hair with frost-blue eyes and she was strong, she had to be as her daughter Corina clung to her jeans. The littler girl was wearing a blue summer dress that was once pretty, now it was dirty and in need of washing, but that was difficult without an abundant water source. The little girl herself was clean, kept that way by her mother. Her short blonde hair was across half her face as she looked at the new people walk in.
“Everyone, these are the new people,” Tom said to his comrades. “Guys, these are my people,” he said and pointed them out. “That’s Doc Ceraulo, our resident head shrink. That’s Donnie, our building janitor, but he’s been neglecting his duties lately, so please excuse the mess,” he said with a smile. “And that’s Maggie and little Corina, Joe’s family.”
“Is this all of you?” Ardent asked.
“Yeah, this is it.” Tom answered.
Ceraulo pointed to the front of the hospital where all the undead were in the street. Hundreds of them could be heard in a frenzy to find food. “We have all of you to thank for that, I suppose?” he said to the new group.
“No, you have me to thank for it,” Ardent said. “I’m the one that chose this place, and I’m the one that ordered the blasting of the sewer gate to get in.”
“That’s what we felt,” Maggie said.
“Yeah,” Joe said to his wife. “They sealed the tunnel with a bomb and destroyed our only working bathroom.”
Derek gestured to his shit-soaked clothes. “I really wouldn’t call it a ‘working’ bathroom.”
“So what are we going to use as a restroom now?” Donnie asked.
“We can still use it, for now, we’ll figure something out later,” Tom told them.
“I don’t like going down there, anyway, gives me and Corina the creeps,” Maggie said under her breath.
“Why couldn’t you have gone somewhere else?” Ceraulo told Ardent.
“Look, we were being chased by thousands of those things, and we needed a place to hide!” Bear said. “We’re here, so deal with it.”
“Yeah and I guess you’ll be wanting some of our supplies, too, right?” Alan said as he returned from the basement hotheaded.
“No, we have our own supplies, and we won’t be staying long.” Ardent answered.
“They’re my supplies, Alan, and I’ll give them to who I see fit,” Tom said.
“Whatever, Tom, but this is my building, I worked here! So what makes you think that I want them here! Huh?” Alan said and raised his shotgun at Ardent.
Bear and the others reacted with their weapons but Ardent waved them off.
“Jesus, Alan, put the gun down!” Tom said.
Alan ignored him. “I want all of you to leave!” he said to Ardent as he put the shotgun barrel right in his face.
“Sure, we’ll just leave out the front gate.” Ardent replied coolly. “We’re stuck here, for now, whether you like it or not.”
Alan thought about it for a moment and that’s when Ardent moved in a flash and snatched the shotgun from him. Now he put his own weapon in his face.
“You need to relax, you’ll live longer,” Ardent told him.
“We were doing just fine, until you got here,” Alan answered defiantly.
“Alan’s right, there were just a few out there before you got here; now there’s hundreds of them,” Ceraulo added.
“No, there’s thousands out there,” Bear said. “But if we’re quiet, they’ll lose interest after a while and most of them will leave.”
