Books of the Dead (Book 1): Sanctuary From The Dead
Page 10
My mind didn’t like the reality and horror of my role in this senseless killing of a child. I wanted to be back in a world where my parents were still alive, where I could pick up a coney dog from the Second Street Dairy Creme, and where I could download the latest indie music on iTunes. Most of all I wanted to be where the dead didn’t walk the earth and where the living hadn’t turned against the living for the last scraps of what was left.
My senses became dulled for a few seconds, my vision narrowing down to a dark tunnel with only the faintest of light at the end. My hands felt cold and damp. Blackness swirled around the edges of the tunnel, threatening to shut off the dim light in the distance.
I failed to hear those first few shots, but it was screaming that brought me back, yanking me back to reality so forcefully that my mind felt whiplashed. The screams were ones of horrible anguish and pure fury. Screams of wrath. They were getting closer with every second.
When I looked down the hall I saw someone coming, handguns in each hand -- firing shot after shot towards the room where Frank was hiding. It was a woman, and in brief glimpses I caught in the muzzle flashes, her face was contorted in rage. I couldn’t see Frank returning fire, but I did hear a couple shots come from his direction. I got the sense that he was falling back from the hail of shots.
The woman stopped outside Frank’s room. “You killed my boy, you son of a bitch.” Then she started firing into the room and I heard the clatter of desks as Frank dived out of the way.
I was dealt a shitty hand, but it was one of my own making. I didn’t have to come with Frank. I could have turned around at any time and escaped to the safety of the church. The walkie-talkie was in my pocket the whole time, just waiting for me to make the call back to Greg, but I did none of these things. That made me just as complicit as Frank in this nightmare of shitty decisions.
Frank was one of us and if I didn’t act, like in the next two seconds, there was a good chance he would be dead. So, I did what I had to do, raising my gun and aiming. The woman was so transfixed on her son’s assassin that I don’t think she even saw me.
For the briefest of moments I considered shouting for her to stop, but more than likely she would have turned and fired on me. My choices ranged from bad to worse, and I chose the only real action I could. My finger squeezed the trigger twice. I was a bad as a shot, but I couldn’t miss from this distance. The first shot caught her in the upper shoulder spinning her around. My second shot hit her in the center of the chest, a large splotch of red forming there immediately. The force of that last shot lifted her off her feet, sending her toppling backwards down the hall, her hands releasing their grip on the guns.
One part of me thought that would be the end of it, but of course it wasn’t.
I heard something moving down at the far end of the hall. Several shots rang out but they seemed random and badly aimed. Several of them went into the ceiling, knocking down ceiling tiles. After about ten shots, they stopped all together and we waited. And waited.
Frank must have gotten restless. He came out of his room and slipped back into my room.
“What the hell are we doing?” I whispered, trying to keep my voice down.
“Protecting what is ours,” he said.
“That’s a dead kid and woman out there. Is that worth protecting our stuff?”
He leaned into me, his face barely visible and said, “Grow up. It was us or them.”
We faced off, both of us breathing hard. “Listen up, little man,” he said. “This didn’t play out the way I wanted, but it went down like it went down. There’s somebody down there still trying to kill us. I’m going to circle around the back hall like they did and see if I can take care of that. I need you to cover my ass. Can you do that?” he asked, leaning even closer to me.
I wanted punch him. I wanted to leave. I wanted to be anywhere but there.
“Yes,” was all I said.
“If they fire, you return fire -- make them think that we’re still holed up here. Okay?”
I nodded. He held me a moment in his stare, then turned and moved off back down the hall from where he came. I was able to see him pass through the streams of moonlight filtering in through the windows until he turned the corner.
A shot rang out from the others, but didn’t come anywhere close to me. I fired without aiming, and my shot slammed into the wall just a few feet down the hall.
My eyes couldn’t make anything out of the inky shadows at the end of the hall. Nothing moved my way, and I heard no other movement. Our stand-off stretched to a minute without a shot from either side. Part of me wondered if they had made an escape down the back stairwell. That’s when I heard three shots come from the other end of the hall.
Again, I waited. A light flickered on down there and then it came around the corner. I aimed carefully this time, but held off depressing the trigger for a moment.
Frank’s appeared around the corner and moved toward me holding a Coleman lantern. I left my hidey-hole and headed towards him. As I closed the gap, I noticed that he was smiling.
“I got that old bastard. He didn’t have a clue.”
I felt no sense of triumph. We had killed a woman, a child, and now an old man. This wasn’t an invading horde. Something in me wanted to shoot Frank myself, but since we were on the same team, it seemed like a bad idea.
That didn’t stop me from seething with anger. I started towards him. I was about fifteen feet from him when another shot was fired. It came from behind him.
I dropped to the floor, and rolled toward the wall, lying flat against the floor, holding my gun in front of me, in both hands, and aiming into the darkness.
Frank staggered forward a few feet, listed to the left, and brushed against the wall. He took several more steps, came back to the center in the hall, and dropped the lantern. He stood there for several seconds, staring down at the lantern, a look of astonishment on his face. It was if he couldn’t comprehend why he dropped it, his hand grasping repeatedly at the air as if he could snatch the thing back up without bending over.
I tried to get a look past him, but his bulk blocked my view. The lantern cast a long shadow against the ceiling, stretching it down the length of the hall in an elongated fright figure.
I held my aim. Frank buckled at the knees and fell forward, but shot out an arm, catching the wall, preventing himself from falling forward. With his other hand, he tried to reach around to his back as if he had some painful itch back there that just had to be scratched. He gave up on this effort and lowered to one knee. In several jerks and shudders, making me think of one of the buildings that had been demolished with hundreds of little charges, protesting the inevitable collapse about to come, he fell forward onto all fours.
A pained expression came across his face and he let out a loud groan. He looked to me for help, but there was nothing I could do. He pitched forward onto the floor and didn’t move again. I heard his breathing slow and then stop.
A young boy stood just a few feet behind Frank’s body with one leg in the doorway and one in the hall. He must have been hiding in that room the whole time. He was younger than the other dead boy. This living boy, no more than eight years old, stood motionless, his arms out in front of him holding a gun that looked entirely too large for him. His aim still held in the air where Frank had just stood. Like Frank, his face was lost in a total lack of comprehension.
I had him dead to rights, but I didn’t shoot. Couldn’t shoot.
We held these positions for an eternity, the hands of time slowing down as if each tick cost in blood. Maybe it did. Eternity ended and the boy blinked several times, coming back to reality. He saw me and lowered his aim toward me.
“No,” I said. There was no urgency or malice in my voice.
Neither of us pulled the trigger. I had the distinct advantage and could have ended this any time but didn’t.
A voice came out of the dark, “David, put down the gun.” The boy still held the gun pointed in my direction.
“David, please put the gun down.”
The boy blinked some more and let the gun drop to his side. He slowly turned to the woman as she rushed forward, scooping him up. The gun fell from his hand and slid across the floor.
She held him in her arms and looked at me, backing up. “There’s been enough killing, right mister?”
I nodded and relaxed my arms, letting the gun butt slip to the floor. They disappeared into the dark. I heard a door close and footfalls descending on the stairs. I lowered my head to the floor and listened as they made their way out of the building. About thirty seconds later, I heard a car engine roar to life. I stood up, my legs felt rubbery and insubstantial, but I willed them to move and rushed around to a window just in time to see a set of tail lights slip around the Health Sciences Building. A small group of zombies milled around the parking lot, probably drawn in by the sound of the gunfire. I continued looking as the car reappeared further down the street, moving down Front Street which ran along the city’s extensive flood wall system. The car turned north and disappeared from view.
A part of me wanted to get in a car and head out of town, too. Another part of me wanted to lie down, go to sleep, and never wake up but those were only wishes, because I would go on living. I had no choice. I was too big a coward not to.
Several minutes passed as I watched over the city, and then looked over the river to Kentucky, wondering why any place in this messed up world was any better than any other? Why was our little town safer than any other place? Maybe it wasn’t. It certainly wasn’t this night.
I also knew I was stalling again. I finally worked up the courage to call back to the church. The cavalry did come, but way too late.
CHAPTER 17
The Eighth Circle
I know I said that hope was the worst thing to have in the zombie apocalypse, but let me revise that. Self-pity was worse and I took a bath in it. No, make that a sustained, marathon-style swim.
The next couple of weeks were some of my worst times after the Outbreak, and that’s saying something since I was, in fact, living through a zombie apocalypse. Someone might ask, how can it get worse than that? It could.
People treated me like I was a leper and I felt like I was living in Dante’s Eighth Circle. The true believers shunned me because I had gone out on an unsanctioned mission without letting anyone know. The warriors were openly disgusted that I’d let Frank get killed. The lost didn’t trust me because I was now unpredictable and there was nothing they desired more than predictability. The poseurs looked for an angle to use me for their gain. If they could turn someone against me, then that person might turn to them. If they acted sympathetic, then maybe I’d trust them and get others to trust them.
Along with the general shunning came a very specific backlash. Kara barely looked at me. When I’d try to strike up a conversation, she was polite but always found somewhere else to be as soon as she could. Mrs. Gergan avoided me completely giving me a wide berth whenever she saw me. To top it off, Greg removed my name from any duty rosters. So, I had very little to take my mind off my troubles. My thought process turned in on itself and I began to reflect what I was seeing in those around me, distrust and antipathy.
The only person who talked to me without reservation was Naveen, but I distanced myself from her because I didn’t want her tainted because of me.
I began eating by myself and spoke to almost no one. A wall went up around me like an invisible force field. No one would enter and no one could enter.
This went on for days, and I began to consider my alternatives. Since I wasn’t really welcome here, I had little or no choice but to strike out on my own. I began to compile a small hidden stockpile of items. This was a real no-no because we shared everything, but I needed some supplies for the road. My little cache of items included the .45 Frank had given me and several boxes of ammo, along with medicine and maps of the area. In my new every-man-for-himself world I had to have some sort of back-door escape plan, and this was the best I could come up with.
At night, I had taken to sleeping on the third floor away from the congregation. Sometimes, if the weather permitted, I’d even go to the roof. Since there were no cars moving around and no industrial activity, the skies were free of pollutants and clearer than I had ever seen them. I guess even a zombie apocalypse has an upside, although I’m sure there were people still concerned with global warming.
In my seclusion, I’d taken up stargazing. Since the library was only a block away, I’d taken a book on astronomy and studied the constellations. Each night I’d look for the different stars. I’d let my eyes fill in the dotted lines between the stars in Orion. I’d trace imaginary lines between the stars of Sagittarius. I wondered if the stars were brighter on the other side of the world and if they had it worse than us.
One night I fell asleep charting the sky again but awoke feeling wetness on my face. Raindrops fell lightly through the layered blackness. Half asleep, I grabbed my sleeping bag and headed downstairs.
I crept down as quietly as I could, not wanting to wake anyone, even though only a few people slept on the third floor. Most people setup their cots on the first floor or basement. Safety in numbers was the theory they subscribed to, I guess. The free spirits, like me, had moved to the upper floors, but we were few in number.
My sleeping cubbyhole was tucked away in the corner of what used to be the teen worship room. Half asleep, I made my way through the dark when I heard someone emit a long gasp, followed by a yelp. This brought me to full wakefulness. A small voice cried out. In the dark, it was hard to make out where the noise was coming from, but I stood and listened intently trying to locate it.
I didn’t have to listen all that long because the next thing I heard was a blood curdling scream from an adult woman. That was followed by shouting.
“Get away from them! Get away,” the voice yelled.
I dropped my sleeping bag and ran towards the shouts and smacked into a chair in the dark, nearly falling. As I stumbled along I could tell the commotion was coming from the young adult classroom at the end of the hall. I slammed open the door to find a woman facing off with a hulking figure of a man, but it was no longer a man. It was newly risen zombie. She had nothing but a small stool to fend him off. Behind the woman were two young kids. One of the kids, a boy of around six, was wailing in pain, holding his arm.
The zombie looked familiar. Dave, no David. Bloom or Bloon was the last name. He and his family had come to the church about a month after the Outbreak. He had been a state trooper before the Outbreak and fit in with the warriors right away, getting into the foraging and clearing party routine nearly immediately. I had only been teamed with him once on a foraging party and he seemed nice enough, but was a bit of a blow hard. That didn’t matter because now he was full-out dead and ready for supper.
The zombie moved in on her, batting at the stool nearly knocking it away. Blood dripped down from its chomping mouth. The best weapon at hand was a small school chair. I picked it up and jumped in beside the woman, attempting fend the zombie off like a bullfighter tries to fend off a charging bull.
She startled some when I appeared, but dropped back to pull the kids away to a safer distance. I stepped in front of her using the chair like a battering ram, slamming it into the zombie’s midsection, knocking it backwards. It hissed and grunted, wanting to get at me. It grabbed one of the chair’s legs and tried to wrest the chair away. We ended up in a macabre game of tug of war as I pulled at the chair’s backrest and the zombie clutched a leg.
Footsteps pounded our way, but they’d never make it in time. I knew I only had seconds before the thing got by the chair and was at me so I made a fateful decision -- if it wanted the chair, it could have i
t. Instead of pulling, I pushed forward, jamming the zombie backwards pistoning my legs with a ferocious effort. I was totally improvising, but I angled the thing the best I could, using the chair like a tackling sled aiming for the window behind the zombie.
The thing hit the window, smashing through the glass, and out into space. I held onto the chair a moment too long and felt myself being carried by the momentum out the window. At the last moment, I let go of the chair and shot out my hand to grasp the side of the window, teetering perilously into the dark. Rain splattered against the back of my head, and I watched as the zombie, still clutching its blood soaked hands on the chair, fall towards the pavement below. The impact wasn’t pretty.
My hand, wet from sweat, slipped off the wall, and I leaned further into the darkness. Just before my hand gave out and I went tumbling after the now deceased Mr. Bloom, I felt someone grab my shirt, and pull me back.
A little girl surged past me and looked out the window, then screamed, “Daddy!”
The mother sobbed behind me as the room filled with people. Greg ran forward and pushed me away from the window to look out.
“What happened?” He asked.
I caught my breath and said, “He turned. David Bloom. I heard the woman screaming and he was trying to get her and the kids.”
“Why didn’t you get some help?” he asked.
“It was act then or he takes out the entire family. My only play was to push him out the window.”
Greg’s face was a portrait of frustration. “This should not have happened. This cannot happen.”
Each foraging and clearing party had a strict protocol. If there is a zombie encounter, each member is checked for bites or scratches. Somebody missed it. Bloom must have hid his wound thinking that he was tougher than the virus. It was that or he knew it was his death warrant, but didn’t want to admit it.