by Hunt, Jack
Baja tapped the folder against his leg then pointed behind us. “There is no other way out. It’s back through the herd.”
“That’s a joke, right?”
“No. But speaking of jokes, an Irish man walks into a bar—”
“Shut the hell up. We are royally fucked.”
Dax and I jerked forward as we felt the brute force of them getting stronger. I could see Dax’s mind whirling as he gazed around the room for anything that we could shove in front of the door, or put between us and them.
“Sorry, guys. This is all my fault,” I said.
Dax slung me a look.
“Maybe. But we agreed to go ahead.”
I never imagined this was where it might end. Stuck inside Baja’s museum listening to his awful stand-up routine. God, I was not gonna go out like this.
“Load up. We are going to shoot our way out of this,” Dax said.
It reminded me of the Alamo. A mass of crawlers attacking. The odds were stacked against us. The whole idea of grabbing these maps was stupid. It was like entering a pool of piranhas and hoping to come out unscathed.
“Baja, toss down those filing cabinets. Grab anything you can put between us and them.”
The sound of their moans was getting louder. If we wanted to attempt to get out, we needed to do it now. They were attracting even more than were there in the beginning.
“Go. Get over there.”
“But Dax,” I said.
“Do it.”
I leapt up and went over to the other side of the cabinets. Baja had piled them two high. Dax was now jerking forward even harder as the mass pressed against the door. He held his position for as long as he could.
“On three, start shooting.”
We nodded.
“One. Two.” He then dived in our direction while shouting, “Three.”
Our guns unloaded with unstoppable velocity. It was like a heavy metal concert but with all the Z’s doing the head banging as our bullets forced their heads back and forth.
“I’m nearly out,” I shouted, jamming another mag into my assault rifle.
“Me too,” Baja added.
Right then the noise of additional gunfire rang out. Z’s were turning. I jumped up onto the filing cabinet to see over the top of their heads. That’s when I spotted Specs, Jess, and Izzy.
“The cavalry is here,” I shouted, feeling a new burst of hope, then shared it freely with the first line of Z’s by filling their skulls with more lead.
As the last zombie dropped, we made our way over to the others.
“I thought you would never get here,” Baja said.
“How did you know we were here?” I asked.
“Just followed the mushroom cloud of smoke coming from Baja’s room,” Specs said.
We slapped each other on the back. I gave Jess a long hug and then we made our way back upstairs. I bolted the door shut and breathed a sigh of relief. I was sweating. My fear had subsided and given way to a small amount of peace. How long that would last, was anyone’s guess. It was just good to see the others.
“We should have kept a few, tied them outside. They would make good guard dogs,” Baja said, throwing a can of beer to Specs. I came into the kitchen; Jess was eying me from behind her drink. She sat on the counter. Izzy kept her distance from Dax, but she was polite when he asked her if she wanted a beer.
“Where did you go?” I asked.
Specs lay out on the couch with his feet up.
“We took a drive over to where the festival was. Kind of thought you guys would sort out whatever was going on.”
“Kind of?”
“All right, we assumed you’d all be dead, and we’d have to come back and put a bullet in your head,” he laughed. “Anyway, I had never seen so many Z’s. The place was crawling with them, as far as the eye could see. There had to be several thousand.”
“Shit. I hope they don’t make their way over here. Dealing with thirty or forty is enough.”
“So what’s for supper?” Specs asked.
“Brownies?” Baja asked. “Special ones.”
“Brownies it is.”
“How about you make them?” I said.
“Hey, we just saved your ass back there.”`
“And I gave you extra cash when we played Monopoly as kids.”
The others cracked up laughing. Baja’s laughter soon ended. I could tell by the look on his face that he wasn’t looking forward to dealing with his parents.
“I can do it, if you want?” I said to him.
“No. I should be the one.”
“You know how much therapy you are going to need after this?” Izzy said.
“I don’t think there will be any therapists available. If anyone survives this, we will have lost our minds by the time it ends.”
“If it ends,” Dax added.
And there it was. The real truth. We had no way of knowing when this would be over. We were living day to day, just trying to survive. It was all about making it through the next day alive, never mind the next hour. If we got out of this town in one piece, who knew how long we would survive out there? How long would we remain together, or how we would survive if we lost each other? It was bound to happen. If our little town was swarming with the undead, the cities must have been like trying to walk through a field of bear traps.
“Why don’t we just leave tomorrow, or tonight even?” Izzy asked.
“And run where? You heard the radio broadcast. They are everywhere. At least here we have enough inside the bunker to survive for several years,” I said.
“I’m not sure about that,” Specs said.
“What?” Dax replied.
“My father stocked a lot of that food almost five years ago. He was good at stocking, not so good at checking on expiration dates.”
“Canned goods will last beyond the expiration dates. Those are just suggestions.”
“Suggestions,” Dax laughed.
“Glad I amuse you, brother.”
“I told you this idea was dumb,” Dax grumbled.
“No, this is a good thing, it means you actually might get to play Rambo. You know, go all first blood and shit. Eat wild. Hell, Jess has a crossbow you can use,” I said.
Dax narrowed his eyes. Meanwhile, Baja was doing his best Martha Stewart impersonation. He had a pair of large red oven gloves over the top of his yellow and black jumpsuit. Truly, it was like watching Bruce Lee bake.
I took a long swig on my beer, then casually reached for the folder that we had retrieved from downstairs. The others gathered around. I rooted through the contents and pulled out a large map. It was inside a plastic sleeve, probably to keep acidity from destroying it. With complete disregard I pulled it out. It was light brown, creased and cracked, and you could see that the network of mines had been illustrated by hand. It must have taken them months to create it. Like a fine wine, aged by time itself, it reminded me of an old treasure map, or perhaps what a city subway map might look like one hundred years from now. Except it was big. Large enough to cover the entire coffee table. I laid it out. It held an air of excitement and adventure. Of a time gone by, when prospectors would have spent days deep below the earth’s surface seeking gold and silver nuggets. How many lives had perished from shafts that collapsed? The thought of venturing down and following what might just lead to a dead end, was both exhilarating and scary.
Whoever had illustrated it had drawn parts of the town and painted a compass in the top left corner, to give some sense of direction. It was almost like they had created a painting, with a blue lake, green pine trees, roads, and buildings, which defined areas that still existed today. The words Castle Rock were scribbled across the top in black.
“Right there.” Specs touched his finger in the top right area of the map.
“So we enter here,” I ran my finger across a line on the map, “and come out here.”
“That’s quite a distance,” Jess said. “You sure these mines are open?”
&nbs
p; Baja was tinkering around in the kitchen.
“My father was certain they were,” he said.
“How did he know?” Izzy asked.
Baja cracked open another beer and started chugging on it. He gasped as he finished.
“Uh, let me see. He must have gone down there as he doesn’t have X-ray vision. Well, he might now,” Baja said.
He then looked lost in thought as if contemplating his own answer.
“All right. No need to be a smart ass. It was just a question,” Izzy said.
Izzy took offense easily. I could see they were going to be good friends.
“So what time do you want to do this?”
“Depends how long it’s going to take to get over there.”
“Are you sure you want to do this? They won’t hesitate in killing us,” Jess said.
“Neither will Z’s but we still venture out,” I replied.
“I’m with Jess on this,” Dax said. “I think it’s too dangerous.”
“What do you think, Baja?”
Still wearing the red gloves, he came around to take a look. I didn’t know about the others but I was finding it hard to keep a straight face. All he needed now was a flowery apron.
“Forty minutes, an hour if we get lost,” he said.
“Probably best if we go early in the morning, before light comes up. Four in the morning,” Dax said.
“And there was me, thinking I was going to sleep in,” Specs said.
“Those days are over, my friend.”
It was hard to sleep. It didn’t matter how secure you thought you were, somewhere in the back of my head I kept thinking a biter was going to get me in the middle of the night. We all slept with our weapons beside us. We took turns in the day snoozing, while others kept watch. But since this had blown up in our faces, we were lucky if we were managing to get three hours a night.
Tonight our minds would be even more awake. Our group had dwindled in size. And tomorrow’s assault on the shelter below the earth weighed heavily on us. Tonight we smoked dope, drank beer, and tried to forget even if it was just for a few hours that the world outside had gone mad. That those who we should have been able to trust, were as deadly as the undead.
I lay back on the couch with Jess. I ran my hand through her hair. I thought about the plans that we would have had after graduating. We were going to live together. Study, get out of Castle Rock. Maybe when we were in our mid-twenties we would get engaged. Who knew, maybe we would get married. Have kids and settle down in some suburb, joining the rest of society.
Now it all seemed like a joke. Something that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now except our survival.
She listened to my heartbeat. Specs kept a watch on the skylight. Dax watched over the two entrances. The others tried to sleep but I knew that even if they did, they were probably having a nightmare. Zombies, that’s all I saw. By day and by night. I dreamt of them, I saw them attacking my father.
As I lay there, I watched Baja get up, put out his joint, and retrieve his handgun from the side table. He checked the magazine and walked off. I knew what he was going to do. I heard his room door close. I closed my eyes and winced as I heard two gunshots.
It then went quiet. Minutes later I heard the sound of gentle sobbing.
SHAFTED
The following morning I felt Dax kick me awake.
“Let’s go,” he said.
I wiped sleepy dust from the corner of my eye. Jess pried open her lids, she had fallen asleep on me and had become like a warm blanket. Baja and Specs were already up, checking their weapons and collecting the little amount of ammo together. We had exhausted what we had. Thankfully Dax had stored additional ammo in the car, from the night we’d gone over to Specs’s home.
It was still dark outside. I glanced at the clock, it was a little after four in the morning. Unless there was a problem with the mine, we would arrive at the RV shelter forty to sixty minutes from now. I chewed down on a piece of beef jerky, took a swig of what remained of last night’s beer. It was flat.
Izzy Maitland. Gorgeous-looking girl, she had slept in a La-Z-Boy chair. I’m pretty sure she had OCD as she would keep checking her weapon to make sure that it was loaded with ammo. Not that that was a bad thing, it was always best to be on the safe side. But pulling the mag out, slamming it in, only to do the same thing again a few seconds later was a little odd.
“You doing OK?” I asked.
She glanced up while doing another check and nodded.
I had never really spoken with her, she was the same age as Dax. I had to wonder if they would ever sort through their shit. If there was ever a reason to put the past behind them, it was now.
Now there were lots of ways into the mine, but only two in the town. One could be accessed through the Black Dog Saloon, and the other was at the back of the museum. Yes, odd places to begin tours. My father had banned the city from using the one inside his saloon, so most tours happened inside the museum. The fact was, the mines ran beneath the buildings. They had literally built a town on top of the entire network.
We had already cleared the downstairs of Z’s and locked the main entrance. The idea of going through a group of undead wasn’t appealing. It had downright scared the shit out of me yesterday.
Baja gathered up what flashlights he could find from the cupboard and his room.
“Right, guys. We all know the plan. Once we get over there, we have no way of knowing how many of them there are. So no hero bullshit.” Dax glared at me. I just rolled my eyes.
“Remember, without that ammo, we don’t stand a chance beyond this town. So if any of you are having second thoughts about this, tell me now. There’s no problem if you hang back. But we could sure use your help here. We are stronger together,” I added.
They all looked at me and shrugged.
“Good. Let’s move out,” Dax said.
* * *
I had never been one for enclosed spaces. When I was six, Dax had locked me in the closet after the power went out. I don’t think I ever recovered from that. I had a wild imagination and it was prone to think of the worst that could happen, even if the worst would never happen. We stood there for a few seconds looking at the rusted steel doors. A silver chain hung in front. It was hooked to the wall on the other side. The words BAKER & ROWLAND MINING COMPANY were stenciled on the doors in a wide arc. This was the original doorway. To the side a white sign on the wood reminded everyone there was to be no smoking, food, or drink allowed in the tunnel. Above the door a brown sign said: UNDERGROUND MINE TOURS.
“This feels like we are about to journey to the underworld. It’s like the doorway to Hades,” Specs said.
“Last chance to hang back,” I said.
“Who’s got the map?” Baja asked.
I pulled it out from inside my jacket. Cracking the door open, it was dark inside. Baja flipped a switch and small lights that were wired to the ceiling lit up one after the other. They were battery-powered.
“Watch your step, guys.”
Inside there were beams of wood for as far as the eye could see. Most of it was the original beams. They were posted vertically and horizontally. In between was rock, and the ground was exposed rock. In several places, as we made our way inside, you could see slats of wood that had been positioned against the rock. Baja told us they had done this because the surface was just above us. When the snowplows came by in the winter, it shook the ground and the walls started to break apart. Seeing so much wood holding everything together didn’t exactly inspire confidence. But then again, it must have been even worse back in those days. At least now they had tried to secure the walls. It was still dangerous.
Moving further and further down the tunnel, we saw modern and antique drilling machines. We passed by several small shafts that went deep. A hoist was used to mine material that was even deeper underground. As we shuffled our way through the mine, Baja led the way telling us about how the walls were made up of granite, diorite, and andesite. Th
e kid knew this place like the back of his hand. He’d helped his father back when he was younger with tours on weekends. It was how he earned his allowance each week. It was only twenty bucks, but back then that was a lot for him, especially when we were doing paper routes every day of the week for ten bucks. He was getting the better deal. The tunnel we were in went on for about seven miles and to a depth of four thousand feet. Thankfully we were only going to travel two miles.
“Damn, the air down here is as stale as crap. This better not get any worse.”
I held a rag over my mouth, Jess put a bandanna around her face. Each of us found ways to stop the dust from making us cough. At first it hadn’t been so bad, but once we got beyond that point that tours went to, it was another story.
“Mind your step,” Dax yelled as he nearly toppled into an unseen mineshaft that dropped down into darkness.
The further we went, the darker it became. Eventually the lights no longer worked and we had to rely on our flashlights. Ten minutes later, we had to have been halfway there, the air was hard to breathe. The idea we could die down here was starting to freak me out. If these tunnels collapsed we’d be fucked. There would be no one to rescue us. There would be no way out. When I thought things couldn’t get any worse, we heard the sound of moaning. Our flashlights swept across the faces of Z’s heading in our direction. They staggered forward staring at us, with milk-white eyes, sunken cheeks, and blood-soaked clothes.
A bullet rang out. I didn’t know who shot it, but the walls around us started to rumble.
“Don’t shoot! You will bring this whole place down on our heads.”
“Sorry, it was me,” Izzy said.
“Should we go back?”
“Are you serious? We have come this far, I’m not turning around.”
In the dark it was hard to tell how many there were. Two, three? We each pulled out our knives and readied ourselves. It was like being stuck in one of those haunted houses, where everything was dark and you had no way of knowing what was coming at you. The only upside was there were none behind us, and they couldn’t get at us from the sides.
