by Hunt, Jack
“You think we got ’em?”
We heard three people.
As their voices got louder and closer, Dax detonated it. The walls shook. We didn’t even hear anyone cry out. It occurred so fast, they wouldn’t have known what had hit them. Without wasting a second Dax jumped up and went to the door. Outside there was no one alive. There was a big fucking hole in the floor. A cloud of drywall smoke. There were several body parts scattered all over. Blood sprayed against the walls. Close to the door we spotted Jason. He was choking on blood.
“Who the fuck are they?” Dax shouted in his face.
He looked as if he was about to say something but then he died.
“Shit. Where is Baja?”
One of them was still alive. He was on the stairs. He must have been approaching the door at the time it went off. The blast had knocked him back. Dax didn’t see him raise his gun, but I did. I fired several rounds into him and he collapsed.
“That was close.”
“Too close,” Dax said.
As we passed over the dead body, he just looked like anyone else. A guy in his twenties. I don’t know what I expected to see. We had no way of knowing if that was all of them. We figured the same people at the RV must have sent these guys out. That Jason knew about it and had alerted them to our little setup. We didn’t know what his connection was, but he must have known someone in the group. Killing someone who wasn’t a Z wasn’t what I thought it would be like. I didn’t go into shock. If I hadn’t killed him he would have killed Dax.
This had all reached a new level of insanity.
We were careful exiting the building. There was no telling where Specs had gone, or even where we could go next. Staying there wasn’t an option. If any of these goons had survived, they would have returned to tell the others. They would be back and who knew how many they would bring.
We were also missing Baja. Had they killed him?
“Where now?” I asked.
“Baja’s home.”
The noise had caused a new flood of Z’s to appear. We were both low on ammo. I tossed my assault rifle over my shoulder and yanked out my Glock. Moving fast, doing our best to dodge as many of the undead as possible, while keeping an eye on the roofs for any more of the group who had attacked us. We ran in the direction of Baja’s place. Once we were about four blocks down, we ascended a fire escape. Our boots banged loudly as we went up the metal stairs. Peeking over the top it was clear.
His parents owned a home across the street from us. It was above the museum. They had run it for as long as I could remember. We figured that Baja might have gone out by himself. In which case that had provided the opportunity for Jason to turn on Scot and call in the others. Their home had a skylight. It was pretty spectacular. It looked directly down into their living room. When I slept over at Baja’s house as a kid we would place our sleeping bags beneath it. Specs, Matt, Baja, and I would gaze up into the night sky. We’d take turns trying to pick out shapes. More often than not it turned into adolescent conversation about women, that only a teen would have found funny. It was good time. Baja’s parents had always given Baja what he wanted. He was a single child. The only one of all of us that seemed to be able to get what he wanted. Christmas, he had the best presents. Birthdays, his dad bought him a car on his sixteenth. For having a family that was wealthy, he didn’t flaunt it. He could have easily fit in with the crowd who lived in the suburbs. The ones whose parents had more money than sense. But that wasn’t him. Baja shared everything he had.
His parents once bought him a pair of Air Jordans. The things were stunning. The latest ones that had just hit the stores. He handed them to Matt. Brand-new. We couldn’t believe it. He then opened his cupboard and showed us four pairs that he had of previous Nikes. You couldn’t fault the guy. Even though he was a little wired most of the time. But I notched that up to his obsession with Bruce Lee and smoking weed. He loved his weed. Specs had built him an air filtration system that he used for smoking weed in his bedroom. It was hooked directly into the wall, right beside his bed. He would turn over and pretend he was going to sleep. Then, flip a flap and there was this hole just big enough for a joint to go inside. It even had a lighter built into it. The joint rested inside a tube-like container. A fan then sucked out all the air and funneled it out through a simple tube in the wall.
I would often look over at his place from my bedroom window and see trails of smoke shimmering under the light of the moon. Those were the nights I knew he was having a toke.
Staring down into this living room, it looked no different than it usually did. Magazines were in the rack. The television was switched off. Pillows on the couches were neatly organized as if no one had sat down. I unlocked the latch and pulled at the window to open it.
“Lower me down.”
“First,” Dax banged on the window a few times. We waited to see if any Z’s were inside. Nothing. No movement. Not a sound. I then lowered half of my body down and Dax held onto my wrists. I dropped to the floor and pulled my weapon. I looked up. Gave Dax the all-clear and he jumped down.
“Baja?” I said his name softly as we moved through the house. We saw blood on the walls. The hallway split off in two directions. Dax went down one. I went down the other. I kicked open the door to the bathroom. Empty. Dax did the same with his parents’ room. He went in. I waited. He came out and shrugged.
When we got to Baja’s room, I turned the handle slowly, then pushed it open and came in with my gun at head level. Lying on the bed smoking a joint was Baja. He had on a pair of headphones. No wonder he couldn’t hear us. He also had on these crazy goggles that he sometimes wore. Like what a diver might use. He said it was all trippy and shit.
“Oh hey guys. Pull up a chair. Have a doobie.”
He offered it to us. I shook my head and looked around his room. It was like nothing had happened. I wished this shit hadn’t gone down. I was about to take a seat, when I heard a thump from inside his closet. I turned instinctively with my gun and started edging towards the door.
“You don’t want to open that,” he said and then let out a chuckle.
“What’s in there, dude?”
For a second he got all serious, then shook his head and let out an intoxicated laugh.
“My parents.”
I looked at Dax. He returned the same confused look.
“Baja. Scot is dead, so is Jason.”
He burst out laughing. Oh, he was two sheets to the wind.
“Well?” I asked.
“Ah, leave them in there. At least until he’s had time to come back down to earth. Then he can decide what he wants to do with them. It’s not for us to say,” Dax said.
I nodded. We helped him up and carried him out of the room. I don’t know how strong that shit was he was smoking. But I could use some. Anything to forget what I had just seen today. Anything to forget wasting that guy. We would sleep here tonight. Dax and I boarded up the front door that went down to the museum. We closed the window on the skylight, and went into the kitchen. It had marble counters. Four stools were pushed up against a breakfast bar.
Baja sat on the floor in the kitchen, giggling to himself every so often. I turned the tap on and it let out a noise like the water was stuck in the pipes. When it finally burst out, I filled a glass and drank three of them. I thought about Jess and the others. I hoped they were safe.
ENTER THE DRAGON
Once Baja pulled his head out of the mushroom cloud, we brought him up to speed on what had gone down over at Matt’s apartment. According to Baja, Jason had seemed fine. He told us he’d left to come here a little after we had headed out to the RV. He just had to know about his family. When he entered the museum he nearly got bit.
“They are everywhere down there. It’s a smorgasbord of the undead. Funny really. In all the time my old man ran that museum, he has more visitors strolling around in there now, than he ever did when they were alive. Pity they are all Z’s.”
He took another deep tok
e on his mammoth joint and offered it to us. We passed it around like a pipe of peace. For a brief few minutes of our day we allowed ourselves to relax. Even Dax didn’t object, which made a change.
Baja shoved a handful of Cheeto chips into his mouth.
“Munchie?”
“Don’t mind if I do,” I said. Honestly I just wanted to forget about what had just taken place. The image of shooting that guy was stuck in my head. His brains splattering over the wall. My first human kill. It was difficult, knowing he was one of the living, even if he was insane.
I knew we weren’t going to be able to wait around long. But maybe one night.
“Shouldn’t we be out there searching for Specs and the others?” Baja asked.
“It’s too dangerous right now. We don’t know how many more from that group are out there.”
“Wouldn’t you think it would make sense if they had us on their side?” I asked Dax.
“Nothing is logical in war. People do crazy shit. And anyway, the more people, the less food. They know it. We do too.”
“Yeah, but we wouldn’t have killed them over it.”
Dax’s eyes met mine.
“Maybe not today. But a week, a month, or a year from now. You might think differently.”
“But they’ve been out there as long as us.”
“You don’t know that. We have no way of knowing when this shit started. For all we know they might have thought Castle Rock was safe.”
“But Jason. He was a local.”
“Perhaps he was the one that brought them here. Told them about Specs’s parents’ shelter.”
I nodded. It made sense. Preppers were notorious for not telling others about where their underground shelters were. They knew that beyond the dangers of a chemical attack, a killer pandemic, or a nuclear bomb being dropped, humans were just as much a threat. They would be the first ones to loot, riot, and kill so they didn’t starve. Hunger changed a man, they said. I had a feeling we would know soon what that meant.
While Baja and Dax continued to talk, I visited the washroom. I hadn’t given much thought to it. But I remembered Specs’s father going on about staying sanitary. If humans didn’t kill you, or whatever else had hit the fan, disease from not staying clean could. He was big on sanitation and hygiene. I peered down into the shit bowl as I flushed. Water was working now, but with the power off, it wouldn’t be long before it wasn’t. Alan Rudd had shown us a luggable toilet. It was a glorified bucket. It could hold up to six gallons of piss and shit. He said when this isn’t available you just create your own latrine by digging a trench about eighteen inches deep. The idea was not to have it any lower than that, otherwise it doesn’t break down as fast. I don’t know about that. The idea of squatting in the forest gave me the chills.
I had done it once, and my ass got eaten alive by mosquitoes. It wasn’t a pretty sight.
I passed Dax on the way out.
“Shit, dude, what have you been eating? I’ve smelled better Z’s than that.”
I chuckled and strolled into the kitchen.
“The mines. Do you know if any of them run up to Specs’s RV?” I asked.
The main focus of the museum run by Baja’s father was history of the mines. In all the years I had lived in the town, I had only been through the museum twice. Once on a school trip and the other when the entrance to their apartment was being renovated. There were two ways into their apartment, besides the skylight. But that wasn’t exactly an entrance. Anyway, in all that time I hadn’t paid much attention to the history. Most who grew up in this town knew there was a vast network of silver mines directly below us. But that was about it. As kids we were surprised that the town hadn’t collapsed into them. One of the first mines was found in 1859. They ran all over the place. Up into the mountains, down into the valley. The tours never took you deep, usually around forty feet. The whole tour lasted about twenty-five minutes in and out. No one could handle being in there any longer than that. Besides, it was too dangerous. Many of them had caved in over the past fifty years. It was kind of boring. You only got to see tunnels, old timber, rock drills, and some ancient ass equipment.
Anyway, Baja’s old man knew all about the history. It was a pity he hadn’t survived. Baja said he found them still inside the apartment. There were several other Z’s inside when he entered. He killed a couple and then stashed his parents inside his closet. He couldn’t bring himself to put a bullet in their heads.
“Earth to Bruce Lee.”
“What?” he replied. Baja was spaced out.
“Dude. The mines,” I repeated myself.
“Right. Eh. I think, I can’t be certain, we’d need to go down and pull out one of the old maps of the tunnels. Anyway, why?”
“These guys are going to be keeping an eye out for us. They have all the weapons. We are running low on ammo. Right now, they have the advantage. But if we can find a tunnel that leads up there, we’ll have the element of surprise,” I said.
Baja dropped his chin.
“Dude, you OK?” I asked.
He didn’t need to even reply to that, his eyes said everything. It had been the first time I had seen him serious in a long time. Everything was a joke. He got that from his mother. She always had some off-the-cuff remark about how we spent our time. She was clued into our shenanigans, but let us be kids. His father was a different case entirely. Straight-faced, always harping on at Baja over grades. But Baja was one of these kids who didn’t need to study, or at least that was the way it appeared. He just understood complex shit. He could break it down and put it in simple words. I swear if my teachers hadn’t sat me beside him, I would have flunked most of my classes. Not that it mattered now.
When Dax returned, his eyes darted between us.
“I didn’t interrupt a moment, did I?” He smirked.
I shook my head. “Listen, it’s possible there is a mine tunnel that heads up to Specs’s RV.”
“What, you think he’s gone there?”
“No. But if we’re going to get out of this town, or even survive longer than a few more days, we are going to need more ammo. Now we can’t go driving on up there. They are going to be keeping an eye out for us. So… we sneak in.”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“And staying here doing nothing isn’t?”
“You are suggesting we walk into a trap?”
“No, I’m saying we at least try to do something.”
“I don’t like it.” Dax said. “But tell me what you had in mind.”
“Well, there’s only one problem,” I said.
“What?”
“Maps of the tunnels are down in the museum,” Baja added.
“And?”
I smiled. “Yeah. There’s also a shitload of Z’s down there.”
“There you go. End of plan,” Dax said, just about to turn away.
“Have your balls shrunk? Oh right, you don’t have any.” I let out a laugh, retorting with what I imagined Dax would have said to me if it had been his idea. He glared at me.
* * *
Once we checked that our weapons were loaded, Baja led us up to the door that led down to the museum. He crouched down on his hands and knees and peered under the door.
“Checking for odors?”
“If you want to call them that, yes.”
He gave us the thumbs-up. He backed up and Dax unlocked the door. The staircase wasn’t lit up. With no power, there were no lights. Only the small light on the end of our guns. We stayed tight. As usual Dax wanted to go first. He’d always been like that. We’d visited Disney World when we were kids. He had to be at the front of the ride. We did rock climbing. He had to be the first to go up. Everything was a competition. Now, he wanted to be the first to pop a Z in the head. We stayed close to the wall as we went down. Baja had given us a rough idea of where the maps were located. Unfortunately they were right at the back, which meant we were going to have to plow our way through the undead.
“You’d think t
hey would have this online,” I said.
“Seems odd to say it. But anything that does exist, isn’t as accurate as these,” Baja said.
Before we had even reached the bottom step a snarling shuffler came around the corner. He didn’t even have time to look up. Dax popped him in the head. Suppressor or not, any noise was going to attract more.
The dead stumbled over their fallen comrade as they honed in on us. There was no time to count how many. I fired off two rounds into two small child Z’s. As we came around the corner our eyes widened. There must have been at least twenty, or thirty of them. The glass in the door had smashed. Glass crunched beneath our feet as a wall of odor assaulted our senses. Baja came up front and led the way. One by one we fired at them. There was no way we were going to be able to drop all of them, there were just too damn many.
“Quick, move it.” Baja broke into a run as Z’s pushed forward, their hands grasping the air, their jaws shutting and closing like a fucking fairground attraction. So many were coming at us, we were blowing them back, while kicking and punching them at the same time. Baja directed us towards the main office. By the time I made it in, Z’s were pushing against the door. There was saliva and blood dripping down the glass panel. Dax and I shouldered the door, while he pulled out a machete and hacked at their arms and legs. When the door clicked shut, I could still feel the force of the mass pushing.
“This isn’t going to hold.”
I had visions of them breaking the glass and toppling over me. My fear was riding at an all-time high.
“Hurry up, Baja.”
“All right, all right.”
Baja was tossing the drawers from the metal filing cabinet onto the floor. Folders and paper scattered all over the place. He rifled through the papers until he held one up.
“I got it. I got it.”
“Right. Now you wanna tell us how we get out of here?”
