“There…” Scott mutters, resting his hand on his knee to stand while Mallory looks over a three-story brick building resting at the bottom of a barren hill. Javier is waiting by an open door, silently waving them on. She gets up and trots forward, looking back to find Scott pushing Howard to his feet once again. Mallory takes a moment to catch her breath as they approach, staring into the densely packed forest to see the shadowy distortions of a dozen walking corpses shuffling between the trees. When Scott and Howard arrive, Mallory curls her fingers under Howard’s collar. “How many times do we have to go through this?! Come ON!” Wresting him by his shirt, Mallory pulls him toward the building as Scott limply jogs next to them.
When they’re within ten feet of the wooden door, Javier widens the opening, helping Mallory shepherd Howard inside moments before Scott silently closes it behind them. “Lights off!” Mallory hisses. Howard stumbles to the floor as Scott quickly finds a panel of switches and flips them down. Nothing happens. “Oh you gotta be fuckin’ kidding me…” He repeatedly switches all of them on and off in rapid succession, but the light from the fluorescent fixtures remain steady. “Give it up…” Javier mutters, brushing past him on a path to the other side of the hall. “Exit over here…” He says tamely, working the locking mechanism as he looks through the safety glass into the black field of grass outside. “Alright, we need to find out how many more we got…” Scott sighs, resting his head against the wall above the light switches. Javier trudges back to the four-way intersection in the middle of the hall, looking both ways. “Looks like just the two.”
While Javier goads Scott into checking the rooms, Mallory stands with her elbow propped against the wall a few feet from Howard, who hasn’t moved since collapsing through the door. She rolls her eyes toward the ceiling as he sobs. As his sniveling intensifies, Mallory lets out a sigh that increases in volume until she groans with rage, softly tapping her fist into the drywall before turning back to face her sedentary compatriot. She stares at the gaping bald spot covering the top of his head as she waits for him to break the silence.
“I… I… I can’t take it anymore.” Howard mutters.
“You don’t have a choice.”
“But maybe… we can…”
“We’ve been through this…” Mallory sighs, kneeling down. “You won’t kill yourself. We won’t do it for you. Even if we did, you know what happens. You accept the consequences.”
“But I’m just gonna end up here, over and over and over again…” He winces through tears.
“Hey… hey…” Mallory waits until his glassy eyes connect with hers. “We chose this, remember? I know it sucks… we have to make the best of it. I mean, would you rather be out there?”
“I don’t know…” He says, thawing at the possibility.
Mallory shakes her head while he stares at the wall as though something inscrutable were written. “Are we done with the breakdown yet?” Scott interrupts. Mallory stands, not bothering to mask her disinterest. “You gotta see this.” Scott leads her to the right of the four-way intersection toward a dead end, turning left through a barren doorway. Mallory freezes as Scott continues through. “What’s that?” She asks, staring blankly at a diagonal sheet of metal leading to a second floor before her gaze retreats to Scott’s pot belly. “The stairway… they covered it…” He replies, looking back at Mallory as she rubs her eyes.
“Is this a fucking fun house?” She screams at the ceiling. “They cover the stairs, but they can’t do anything about the smell…”
“I don’t know what it’s coated with…” Scott starts.
“…it’s like old sweat in a concrete coffin…” Mallory mutters.
“…it’s hard to get up…”
“Well, we’re gonna find a way, aren’t we?” She replies, turning back through the door.
“Mal… it could’ve been a lot worse.”
“Right… what specific aspect of this could’ve been worse?”
“…I’m tired of playing this game…”
“Yeah, so’s Howard.”
Scott remains at the foot of the slide as Mallory pushes through the doorway, bumping into Javier as he goes into the room she just left. “What’ve we got so far? Any weapons? Food? Water?” Mal asks, turning back. Javier pops back around the door frame to answer. “Not yet… straight down to the left we’ve got a darkroom door, elevator inside isn’t working and a room with the bottom of a fire pole to the right. Mal… could you do me a favor and go easy on Howard?” She takes a moment to respond. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Javier drops his head into the frame and massages his scalp against it. “I don’t ask for much…” He starts, not looking up. “We’ve all had enough of him. But now… I’ve about had my fill of you.” Mallory seems to delight in her frustration at this.
“What do you want me to do?” She asks.
“I know… he’s not making this any better… treating him like a child just makes it worse…”
“…are you bringing my kids into this?”
“I’m not… criticizing you as a parent…” Javier continues. “I’m saying… you’re not his mother.”
“No…” Mallory concedes, sighing. “You’re right… sorry…”
“Don’t apologize if you don’t mean it.”
Mallory nods, letting out a sigh before she responds.
“We’re gonna have to crawl over each other to get upstairs.”
“…what?” Javier asks.
“There’s a slide where the stairs should be…” Mallory opens, nodding behind Javier. “Scott said it’s hard to get up. So we gotta lay down one at a time and crawl over each other’s backs.”
“That’s more like it.”
Mallory gives him a weak grin as she runs her hand across his cheek, and Javier smiles in response. “They’re here! They’re here!” Howard shouts from the main hall. “Get a move on…” Mallory utters, patting Javier’s shoulder as she turns back into the hallway. She rounds the corner to see Howard leaning forward, his hands perched on his knees as a gangrenous corpse staggers across the beam of light slicing through the window in the door. “That’s…” Mallory grabs Howard’s arm before he can finish, pulling him through the hall as the impact of shattering glass echoes off the walls.
“That’s… that’s…” Howard continues, pointing behind them. “I know… two minutes!” Mallory shouts, awkwardly dragging Howard around the corner toward the barren doorway. As she sweeps him inside, Javier finishes climbing up Scott’s back, ending up with both feet perched on Scott’s shoulders and his hands outstretched to the unreachable height of the second floor. “You’re next!” Mallory encourages. She peeks back through the doorway as Howard climbs up Scott, egged on by both men extended across the laminated ramp.
Howard’s arms barely reach the next floor, and as his fingers dig into the wood, Mallory bolts across the room and scrambles up their backs to the top floor. “Hang on!” She takes Howard’s wrist and he latches onto her arm with both hands. “Scott!” Mallory winces the moment Scott’s feet are off the floor as Howard desperately claws into her forearm. “Hold still!” Scott grabs bunches of clothing, pulling himself up a few inches at a time while his sneakers occasionally squeal against the slide. Mallory looks up to see a shadow wavering in the barren doorway two dozen feet away. Scott pushes off Howard’s back and Howard, freed of Scott’s weight, again tries to pull his way up Mallory. Scott reaches down to grab Howard’s other arm, but Mallory jerks her head at him.
“Check the rooms; I got ‘em!” Mallory shouts, bracing her feet against the wall to her left, trying and failing to pull them up as Scott darts down the hall. She looks up again, her breath quickening as she spots the gangrenous corpse shuffling halfway across the room with another long-dead body negotiating the doorway behind him. “Javi!” Much more agile than Scott, Javier clambers up Howard’s back, but his foot digs into Howard’s bicep as he pushes off to get to the landing, causing Howard to let go with a squeak of terror as Mallory stru
ggles to support him.
He rolls to his left side, twisting Mallory’s arm and wailing as he sees the festering carcass close in. He kicks his filthy white tennis shoes at the rotten Zombie while its arms follow his gyrations. “Javi!” Mallory screams, but Javier can’t grab Howard’s flapping right arm without putting himself at risk. Finally, he slaps his powerful right hand on Howard’s forearm, grabs Mallory with his left, and pulls the three of them back as the rotten stiff’s fingertips flitch off on Howard’s shoe. All three of them hit the wall sighing in exasperation, and surprisingly Howard is the first one to sit up and look down the slide, just in time to see the next Zombie plop down on the laminated steel surface and vainly try to claw to the top.
“That oughta hold ‘em for awhile…” Javier says, propping himself up. “Until they start crawling over each other…” Mallory didn’t need to add. “Guys…” All three of them shiver with panic as Scott interrupts, and Mallory subconsciously pushes herself toward the corner.
“Sorry… firepole runs through this room…” Scott starts, nodding to his left. “Looks like the first floor’s empty in case we need to get out…”
“Can’t do it…” Mallory interrupts. “We walk straight outta the room with the pole; we get the darkroom door and the busted elevator. We turn left; we gotta go through the main hall where they’re piling in…”
“Mal, can I tell you the options before you cut me off?”
“Of course…” She scoffs.
“We got the elevator on this floor, doesn’t work… got another darkroom door, but the room inside’s empty. There’s a dumbwaiter hatch in the hallway, but I didn’t see one on the first floor, so that’s a crapshoot….”
“Anymore stairwells?” Javier asks.
“Didn’t see one…”
“That’s it!” Mallory says, leaping up. “Three floors, yeah? One set of stairs, and an elevator that doesn’t work… take the dumbwaiter up to the third. We get up there, they can’t touch us…”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions… we didn’t see what the rest of it looks like…” Scott adds. “Did you see a fire escape? A ladder? Is there something we’re missing?”
“They don’t climb ladders…”
“They did once…”
Mallory looks down at the slide to see the familiar gangrenous corpse, his skin a wrinkly jade, his pupils a watery turquoise floating on a sea of brownish veins. “So we agree on the dumbwaiter?” Mallory asks quietly. Javier takes initiative, getting to his feet first before extending his hand to Howard, who is only just catching his breath. Scott removes his wire frame glasses to clean the sweat off before he stumbles over to the tiny door in the wall. He hesitates, then pops it open to reveal a square box barely large enough to hold two people with a rope pulley system laced through two holes in the top and bottom. “Who’s first?” Scott asks. Everyone looks at Howard, who seems almost embarrassed at his presumption as he steps inside. Javier looks at Mallory and Scott, then gets in with Howard and operates the pulley, taking them up to the third floor.
“Looks like we can get through…” Javier’s muffled voice reverberates from the dark shaft. “Good…” Mallory sighs. “Send the car back down.” She continues, waltzing back toward the slide. Scott stares at her hard, barely realizing that the dumbwaiter is back. “Lookin’ at him ain’t gonna make it any better.” He offers. Mallory is unshaken by this. “It’s like… going to a viewing… and having someone work ‘im with marionette strings…” She mutters. The gangrenous corpse rubs his fingers into the slide as the next decaying body climbs over his shoulder. Mallory shakes her head. “Like someone who doesn’t understand Larry is trying figure out how he used to move. How did he get in here?”
Scott looks back at the dumbwaiter, then down at the floor again. “They’re figuring it out.” Mallory’s statement arrests Scott’s attention, but he doesn’t move. “They’re already halfway up.” She continues softly as a dozen corpses pile up at the bottom of the slide, each seemingly unaware of the others as their arms repeatedly stretch out to pull closer to the top. “So… maybe we get moving?” Scott intones.
It takes Mallory a moment, but she finally nods and walks back over to Scott, stepping inside the dumbwaiter. Once inside, Scott shuts the door behind him, trapping them both in darkness. A few pulls of the rope introduce them to the light of the third floor, where Javier is waiting to intercept them. “What’ve we got?” Mallory asks, stepping out first. “Gave it a look… only two doors… got another darkroom cylinder, and…” A door opens to their left, arresting Scott and Mallory’s attention. After a moment, Howard steps into the hall, looking back into the room as he speaks.
“Got food in here… and there’s a slide.”
“To where?” Scott asks. “The basement?”
“I think so…”
Mallory leads the rest inside the room, diving to her knees to open a small refrigerator full of unspoiled walnuts, farmer’s cheese, sliced cantaloupe wedges, bread, iced coffee, and sports drinks. She distributes the contents to her buddies as they all lasciviously tear into the food. Scott takes a moment to prepare some bread in the toaster perched above the fridge. “Don’t drink too fast…” Mallory cautions, taking a deep breath after finishing off a bottle of iced coffee. The golden-brown bread bursts out of the toaster and Scott spreads the cheese across it with his finger, taking a big bite and leaning back until his shoulders touch the floor. He keeps his eyes closed as he chews slowly. “So, now that we have a moment…” Javier starts, eliciting relieved chuckles from the rest of the group. “…who’s been in a situation like this?” Mallory chews thoughtfully for a moment, wiping some cantaloupe juice off her chin before she responds.
“Hopeless, you mean?”
“Well… yeah, I guess…”
“Howard County jail.” Scott starts, swallowing. “Armed robbery.”
“Really, you?” Mallory asks sincerely.
“Falsely accused, wrongly convicted. DOJ always uses people like me. Took ‘em three years to figure it out.”
“But you got out.”
“Yeah…” Scott says, not opening his eyes. “You get fifty grand for each year in the can. But they can’t give back what they take from you.”
“I overstayed my work visa by a week.” Javier volunteers. “I renewed it… got tied up in some bureaucratic ICE nightmare.” He pauses. “I got the feeling… it was part of something bigger… you’re right about getting used, Scott… but it pales in comparison to this. You’d think Zombies would put us on an even playing field… but somehow, someone always gets the short end of the stick. How about you, Howard?”
“I wanna go home.” He replies without hesitation.
“…uh…”
“I never did anything wrong… never did anything wrong…”
“…neither did we…” Javier growls.
“Let’s… forget about it, okay?” Mallory interrupts.
“How ‘bout you, Mal?” Scott asks. She takes a moment to think it over.
“I dunno, yeah… ever lived below the poverty line?”
“In Venezuela.” Javier says with a smirk.
“More to it than just being broke… having kids… Christ, just makes it that much harder…”
Javier shakes his head while retaining the smile, content not to explore Mallory’s cryptic response. He swipes some crumbs off his hands while standing up, walking over to the window. “So, what next?” he asks, surveying the treetops of the surrounding forest. “Shut up, I’m enjoying this.” Scott mumbles with his mouth full. “We wait…” Mallory insists, taking another big bite of cantaloupe. “We’re safe here.” Javier stares at her as she continues chewing. Once she notices his gaze, Mallory shakes her head in confusion.
“I don’t accept your premise.” Javier continues.
“…excuse me?” Mallory mutters, swallowing.
“…are you even thinking about where here is?”
“Don’t start with that…”
“It’s a game, Mal… and winning isn’t an option…”
Scott stops chewing as they go on.
“It’s not about winning…” She counters.
“But you think we’re safe?” Javier continues. “How many more go-arounds do you need…?”
“Oh, my god, will you shut up!” Scott bellows, finally opening his eyes. “Can I enjoy this moment!? Nothing is gonna happen to us!”
“Tell that to Larry.”
This quiets all of them, and the silence allows them to hear shuffling in the corridors beneath. A thud arrests Howard’s attention. “That’s on this floor…” Mallory leaps to her feet and is the first out the door, followed by Javier and Howard. Mallory turns right into the hall, then left in a four-way intersection simultaneously with another bang. She glances at the darkroom door on the right as she goes forward, slowing down as she spies an opening on the left wall at the very end of the hall. “What…” Javier gasps. Mallory holds her finger out, turning the corner to find a wooden door on the left side of another short hallway.
“Javi, what the hell?!” She asks.
“That wasn’t there before!”
“What do you mean before?”
“Like, now… a few minutes ago!”
“You’re saying it just appeared?!”
A thunderous slam blasts the door off its hinges as three rotten Zombies tumble through the wreckage, instantly clawing their way toward Mallory as a fourth staggers in behind them. “Move, move, move…” She gasps, pushing Javier back toward the intersection, catching sight of the tail end of Howard’s leg as he disappears around the corner. “Does the dumbwaiter go the roof?” Mallory shouts ahead of her. “Can’t wait around to find out!” Scott shouts back. As soon as Mallory gets through the door, Javier slams it shut and Scott pushes the fridge toward it, ripping the power cord out of the wall. “I shouldn’t be here… I shoulda stayed outside…” The three of them turn to find Howard crumpled into the corner with his legs jutting out, muttering to himself as he stares into space.
All Things Zombie: Chronology of the Apocalypse Page 28
