None of the zombies moved. Apparently, they knew something was there, but was unsure what or who or where it was. Shirley prayed silently that whoever had made the noise would stay hidden long enough for the crowd of killers to lose interest. She watched them lift their noses to test the air and angle their heads as if listening for a hint of the source.
The lid lifted ever so slightly on one of the barrels that stood off to the left of the others. The slight motion was enough to send the zombies trotting toward it. Shirley could see the terror in the eyes of the woman who had hidden herself in the barrel. It looked like Candice. The lid closed.
Shirley trotted along with the zombies as she considered what she needed to do. She saw the undead soldier crawling slowly across the ground while the other half of his body lay several feet behind him. Strapped to its leg was a long knife. Without thinking, she sprinted forward. The fast motion of her body caught the attention of the biters and they swept in behind her at a full gallop, ignoring for the moment their need to investigate the barrel. When she knelt to withdraw the knife, the zombies swept about the crawling zombie expecting it to be more than it was. Others followed her and surrounded her to see what she was getting ready to eat. When all she did was stand up with the knife, they sniffed her, and then move toward the barrel again.
Shirley was on the verge of tears she was so afraid. When the creatures pursued her, she thought she was dead. It must have been a natural reaction to fast movement. She made a mental note to remind herself that they have more than a heightened sense of hearing and smell. They also have a keen visual sensitivity to motion. The virus must be working havoc on their brains.
By the time Shirley caught up with the group, they were already beginning to accost the barrel. Water could be heard sloshing around inside. It made her realize how ingenious the idea was to hide in a water-filled barrel. The living scent of humanity could be concealed in water. Holding the knife overhead, she brought it down sharply against the head of the nearest creature. The sharp point slid easily into its brain and the creature collapsed at her feet. The others paused to watch the corpse fall but nothing in their demeanor signaled alarm. She brought the next one down by stabbing it through the temple. When it fell, Shirley looked at the remaining group. Apparently, they had no capacity to grasp the peril of their situation. She had seen them beat and pound on one another. Some had even been knocked to the ground. Maybe they took her aggression as being normal.
Shirley waded through the dozen or so monsters until only two remained; both were women. One was dressed in blue jeans and a pink sweatshirt, while the other was in a blue-gray jogging outfit. When she approached them, they backed away. Even when she tried to run after them, the two female zombies danced, ran and dodged out of her way, staring at her with their dead eyes. Finally, they moved off deeper into the camp and disappeared from sight.
Shirley opened the barrel to find Candice submerged in the water trying to hide. It took a moment, but she managed to drag the hysterical woman from the barrel.
“No!” Candice screamed in desperation. “No! Oh, God! No!”
“Candice!” Shirley whispered harshly. When the woman wouldn’t stop screaming, Shirley slapped her with her open hand hard enough to loosen teeth. The woman wilted in her arms.
A hollow chorus of sniffles, crying and sloshing seemed to whisper in the air around her. It was as if all the barrels were bubbling with restrained fear and sorrow. It made Shirley want to cry, especially after a few moments when she realized why.
Nicholas had hidden thirty-eight women and children in the water barrels.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Monday, October 25th, 2017
C arol’s light green Subaru Forester careened through the intersection of High and Rose streets. The vehicle looked as if it had been rolled a couple of times. The windows were cracked. The roof, doors and hood were warped. The fenders were dented so badly that something in the motor clicked in time with the dull groaning coming from where the metal fender was touching a tire.
Jack was driving and had been for some time. Every turn for the last hour brought him and his companions into contact with as many as a hundred raging undead. The creatures flung themselves against the vehicle with such ferocity that if Jack didn’t find a suitable place for them to sufficiently defend themselves, they might not survive the day.
BANG! Jack gritted his teeth as the explosive sound from Randi’s rifle filled the interior of the automobile making his head hurt. Through the rearview mirror, he watched another zombie fall off the back of the car with a fresh bullet hole through the forehead. Sheri sat directly behind him holding Charlie. The two were strapped into a single seat belt. Randi was kneeling facing backward in the middle pointing her rifle out the shattered back window. Steven hunkered down next to her with his fingers in his ears. Carol, on the other hand, was in the passenger’s seat. Her eyes were wild with terror. She chewed at her bottom lip while one hand braced against the dash, and the other was locked onto Jack’s thigh with such a vice-like grip that his leg was beginning to go numb.
The night before, Jack awoke on the top of the steps where he’d made his bed and heard concentrated sounds of growling and wailing coming from outside. Downstairs he found young Charlie Mason standing in the living room waving out the picture window. It turned out to be more zombies than he could number. The whole street had been filled with them. They seemed to be transfixed by the sight of the little boy, but when Jack grabbed Charlie and hauled him up the stairs, it set off a course of events that nearly cost everyone their lives.
Jack had just handed Charlie off to his sister when the house began to shake and shutter. The sound of splintering wood and cracking glass had chilled him to the core. It was as if the fiends were going to knock the house down. Jack had realized quickly that they were trying to get inside. For a moment, he had stood at the top of the stairs feeling helpless knowing that the windows and doors wouldn’t be much hindrance to the creatures.
A thought occurred to him. He withdrew his pistol and bounded back down the steps, into the living room, and then down into the basement where he’d seen a large wood ax. He ignored the smell of rotting flesh. The ax was laid against the hot water heater. He had tried not to look at the shadows of the two corpses that lay sprawled on the floor next to the steps.
Jack had just managed to step into the living room from the basement when the first handful of creatures came through the front windows. They were pretty messed up. The glass had worked its magic on their tendons and ligaments leaving it impossible for them to grasp their prey. Six shots from his pistol and he was headed back up the stairs.
“Listen up!” Jack had yelled. “We’ve got about thirty seconds before an entire neighborhood of creepy-crawlies comes up these steps. I have a plan, but I need you to help stall them.” Jack paused for a second to look everyone in the eye. “Throw as much furniture as you can find down the steps. Be quick about it!” He handed Sheri the pistol and a box of shells and said, “Reload this for me.”
In less than minute, dressers, beds, nightstands and tables had crashed into a heap at the bottom of the stairwell temporarily blocking it. Jack ripped the carpet from the top of the steps and tossed it down onto the pile. The ax made quick work of the ancient wooden steps, so that when Jack finished, a gaping hole replaced the steps that had once given them access to the lower floor. There was a large pile of kindling at the bottom of what once had been a stairwell. There was no way for the zombies to get to the second floor. And, Jack had thought to himself, there was no way down from the second floor either.
BANG! Randi dropped another zombie as Jack steered the car through a maze of automobiles that had been left abandoned in the street. He looked to the dashboard in front of him. They were almost out of gas and out of options. He’d had similar thoughts the previous night when he considered the fact that they had been trapped on the second floor of a stranger’s house with very little provisions. If it hadn’t been for that
pack of dogs running down the street . . .
Jack shook his head. The way he had it figured, they had about a half an hour before they would need to refuel. The only problem with his estimate was that he wasn’t sure the car would hold out that long. To emphasize the point, another raging zombie slammed into the front right side of the Forester, causing Jack to compensate to keep from veering to the left. Out the back window, he could see the creature take up the chase as if nothing had happened. Its right arm flopped limply at its side.
“Jack!” Randi yelled and pointed over Jack’s shoulder.
Jack had been so preoccupied with the zombie sprinting behind them that he’d taken his eyes off the road. Ahead of them, not more than a block away, the street was completely blocked by the dead. It looked like a crowd at a rock concert. They were so packed together between the buildings that the metal light poles wobbled at their tops.
“Between there!” Carol screamed, pointing at a narrow alley between two buildings off to the right.
Jack cut the wheel sharply and inertia pulled everyone to the left. The front tire that had been rubbing precariously on the fender finally surrendered to the friction and burst. It was all Jack could do to keep the car from careening into the building. He passed into the alleyway like thread through the eye of a needle and bounced between the brick walls, slowing.
Panic surged from his stomach into his chest and threatened to spew onto the steering wheel. The car was finished, which meant that they were finished as well. No one had the strength or endurance to outrun the creatures and Randi was already low on ammo.
The doors wouldn’t budge. The act of pin-balling through the alley effectively sealed the doors. Jack figured that it was a good thing that the windows were nearly busted out.
“Everybody out!” Jack hollered when the car ground to a stop at the back exit of the alley.
“Where are we going?” Carol cried as she slid out the passenger side window. As soon as she was out, she ran around the front of the car to stand close to Jack, her children forgotten.
Jack looked back down the alley. The horde was surging through like barbarians taking the city of Rome. Their screams and cries filled the air so that Jack could almost smell the fear coming from those standing around him. The alley dumped into a second alley behind the buildings. There were large dumpsters lined sporadically down each side of the lane, but the plastic lids wouldn’t keep them safe.
Carol ran to the nearest door and found it locked. After pulling the kids from the car, Randi climbed on the hood and put her rifle to her shoulder. Jack wanted to tell her that there were too many, but he didn’t want to waste the time it would take to speak the words. Right now, they needed a miracle.
“Jack?” It was Sheri. She was pulling on his jacket; her eyes seemed wiser than her years. She was pointing at something on the ground beside the left front tire of the ruined car. It was a manhole cover. A manhole cover!
The holes in the cover were large enough to get his fingers through, but the cover was too heavy to lift like that. “Get the crow bar!” he told Steven.
“We’ve got about thirty seconds, Jack!” Randi said as she pumped three rounds back down the alley.
With the crowbar, Jack was able to pull the cover back far enough to allow them to squeeze down. Time was running out. They didn’t even have time to climb down the ladder. Carol pushed past the children and nearly knocked Jack off his feet as she climbed down into the hole. As soon as her head dropped below street level, he picked up little Charley and dropped him straight through the hole onto his mother.
“Jump or die,” Jack said to Steven and Sheri. The look on his face left no room for discussion. The kids jumped blindly into the hole. Jack heard Carol swearing as the children landed on her before she could get to the bottom. There was a splash.
“Randi, come on girl,” he said.
Randi jumped from the car and then reached into the backseat to retrieve her skateboard. She dropped it on the pavement and said, “Nope. I’m not going with you.”
“What? Yes you are young lady,” Jack said and reached for her.
With a push, she was rolling away on her skateboard. “Jack, they’ll just follow us down the hole. If I can keep them distracted, you can get them safely away.”
“That’s ridiculous—,” Jack started when a thump on the car behind him startled him. The mob had arrived. Randi fired slowly and precisely, dropping the first few to come over the Forester.
“Go! I’ll be fine. This is what I am good at!”
Jack couldn’t spend any time arguing with her. He climbed into the hole and after staring at her with tears in his eyes, he manhandled the cover back over the hole. The darkness that engulfed him seemed to touch his heart. The only illumination came from the holes in the lid. Several small shafts of light dripped down into the darkness. He tried to listen for the wheels of her skateboard rolling away, but the growling and moaning of the creatures above him drowned everything else out. He did notice that she was no longer shooting her rifle.
Gradually, Jack climbed down the narrow ladder until he was standing in ankle deep water. By the smell of it, it wasn’t sewage. The concrete pipe was high enough that Jack stood fully erect. The children huddled around him leaving Carol standing alone. She glared at the kids and shivered. She was drenched from head to toe.
“Where’s the girl,” Carol asked.
“Running interference,” Jack replied, scowling.
The small group stood in the narrow streams of light. The darkness of the tunnel beyond was enough to taint the imagination with horrid imagery. It meandered off into the shadows in two directions. The metallic taste of the air made Jack think of rust.
“I’m scared,” Charlie said and hugged his sister tighter. Sheri put an arm around him protectively, while Steven rolled his eyes.
“I’m scared, too,” Jack said. He knelt next to the kids and offered them an affectionate pat on the head, which Steven managed to dodge. He stood and looked at Carol. Her lips spread in a smile that wasn’t a smile.
Ahead of him, the tunnel followed parallel to the route they were originally travelling. The contour of the concrete pipe was such that he instructed the children to walk on the upward curve so they could keep out of the water. The dripping sound in the distance coupled with the occasional splash of an errant foot around him made him want to use the bathroom. The thought made him smirk.
Jack led the small group into the darkness. For most of the way, he had to move along by feel. It wasn’t until they passed below another manhole cover that they could see well enough to look at one another. The gentle light streaming down from above them revealed a smaller pipe-like tunnel that intersected the larger one they were standing in. It was too small for Jack and Carol, but the kids could squirm through if they needed. It gave Jack a moment to consider.
“Hey, guys,” Jack said to the kids. “I need you to remember where to find this little tunnel. If things go wrong — and I’m not saying they will — but if they do, you can escape the monsters by crawling into this tunnel.” He looked at their faces and could tell they didn’t like thinking about the prospect of crawling into a dark tunnel alone.
“What about me?” Carol asked raising her eyebrows. “I can’t fit in there. What am I supposed to do if ‘things go wrong’?” Her hair was matted to her head and she stood with her arms crossed reminding him of when he’d first seen her as she stood in the rain complaining at her undead boyfriend.
“‘Things going wrong’ means that you and I are no longer around to protect your children. If that happens, they will need to find a place to flee.” Then, pointing with his finger at the smaller tunnel, he added, “That tunnel will afford them a chance of survival.”
“Oh,” she said and swallowed hard.
They moved slowly through the tunnel stopping at every manhole cover to rest. Occasionally, they passed other tunnels leading to the left or right, but Jack kept them moving down the same direction. He stoppe
d now and then to listen for sounds other than dripping water. His hope was that he would never hear splashing coming from anywhere except his immediate vicinity.
After about an hour, Sheri gasped and pointed. They had been in the dark for so long that their eyes had adjusted. They could make out slight smudges in the dark that were identified as floating debris, a small cave in, and a trash bag filled with garbage. Yet, what caught Sheri’s attention was a pinprick of light coming from far up the tunnel and was reflected in the shimmering water in front of them.
“It may be a way out of this nightmare,” Carol said.
“Maybe,” Jack said, “but that just means that the nightmare would look different. As it stands, we are relatively safe.”
“I’m hungry,” Charlie said.
“Me, too,” Sheri added.
Jack looked down at the children. In the darkness, they seemed like ghosts standing around him. The thought chilled him. This is not a world for children, and yet, what hope for the future do we have without them.
“Be patient. We’ll try to scrounge something up once we get out of here. Okay?” Jack said, hoping the light tone of his voice was encouraging.
“Besides,” Carol added. “We don’t need to hear you whining all the time. Shut up and we’ll eat when we eat.”
Jack squeezed his lips tight and guided the group toward the light at the end of the tunnel. He chuckled at the metaphor. The little pin prick of light steadily grew until it appeared that the tunnel ended a couple of hundred feet ahead. The water slowly dried up until they were walking on gravel.
There was enough light now to see the faces of those who stood around him and he smiled reassuringly. He pulled his pistol from its holster and counted his remaining shots. Three. They wouldn’t make it far if they had to fight their way.
Dead World: Hero Page 19
