Downfall

by Michael S. Gardner

  “I guess we’ll never know,” she said with a scornful glare. She rested the shotgun beside the sliding glass door, used her now-free arm to shift Lilly into a more comfortable position, and disappeared inside, leaving a silence hanging in the wintery air.

  “So where does this leave us?” Angela asked, unsure if she should put the pistol up or not.

  “It leaves me here to apologize,” Paul said. “I should’ve—”

  “You should have done exactly what you did,” Matt cut him off. “We would’ve too.”

  As some of the tensions diffused, they made proper introductions and huddled next to the three zombie corpses.

  “I’ve never seen any like these before,” Paul said, nudging the corpse of the barking, drooling zombie with his right foot.

  “We’ve seen ‘em,” Matt said, covering his nose. That brown liquid had an awful effect of imitating the stench of ten rotting corpses. “Back at our place, we ran into a few of them. When they make that noise, that bark, for lack of a better word, it’s like they’re trying to communicate.”

  “Communicate?” Paul sounded nothing short of shocked, and his face went pale for a moment.

  “Yeah.” Cole walked over to the two that had been dead before they’d reached the backyard. “One of these screamed. We call ‘em screamers. They draw out the horde.”

  “That was the first one I saw. Then those two popped up, and they tried to attack Lilith. That one,” he pointed to the farthest corpse, “was running; the other kinda just watched. I’ve seen the running kind before, but nothing like these two.”

  “It’s the virus,” Angela said. “It’s mutating some of them.”

  Paul nodded his head, accepting the statement. “Why don’t you three come inside and warm up a bit? Maybe tell me how it is that you know all of this?”

  The three looked to one another. Judging by the way Paul acted, and what he’d carried into battle, it might be best that they stay awhile to make sure there wasn’t a real horde out there coming for them.

  “We can stay for a quick chat,” Matt said reluctantly. Angela nodded. Cole kept his mouth shut. “But we can’t stay for long. Got a shopping list that’s chock full of stuff we need.”

  “I understand. I’ll go have Meredith put on a pot of coffee.”

  “Sounds good,” Matt said. This place had power too. That was good to know. “I’ll go move the van out front.”

  “I’ll leave the back door open for you.”

  Paul led Angela inside. Cole stayed with Matt, and they caught Meredith watching them make their way to the front.

  “You sure this is a good idea?” Cole said. “‘Cause I don’t think it is. We shouldn’t even have stopped here, man. We’re wasting valuable time.”

  “I know,” Matt replied as they passed Frosty. “I just want to make sure we didn’t kill this family. I mean, that explosion probably wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t come in here the way we did.”

  “What else could we have done?” Cole raised his arms. “It’s not like we had a choice. It was either that or scrap the idea completely.”

  “We couldn’t have done anything else, but we can make sure these three are safe. We’ll have a palaver and give them a few more guns and then get the hell on our way.”

  Cole shrugged. “If you say so.”

  ***

  Not only had the tension grown high between Mary and Tim, but the dead were now in the beginnings of what seemed to be another disorganized assault. Jeff noticed one creeper when he and Mary were on their way back inside. He’d waited outside for others to appear and gotten what he bargained for; four more showed up in the driveway. It was a test of patience to wait for the things to fall into the pit. Luckily patience was a virtue the Army had drilled into him. He didn’t have a sword, or any long blade, so he had to shoot them. There were other ways, but he wasn’t taking the risk his two companions would have. He simply placed the barrel of the .22—which Alex had brought down per his request—against their heads and pulled the trigger. The blast wasn’t as loud as the other guns, and that was the only comfort which came from each shot.

  Jeff ran to the backyard and shot three creepers as they approached. One zombie crawled toward the pit. Its left arm was chewed to a nub, which mocked its own reaching and pulling at the grass as its other limb did. Its face was pale, flaking at the forehead from a nasty laceration. As the creature levered up, mouth agape and teeth grinding, Jeff put a bullet beneath its right eye.

  Thirty minutes later, at least eighteen creepers had been downed. Jeff dispatched the last one with a headshot, some teenager girl wearing the grayest skin tone he’d ever seen. He waited five more minutes before reconvening with Mary and Alex on the porch.

  “That won’t be the last of them,” Jeff said.

  “How do you know that?” Alex asked.

  “Just got a gut feeling.”

  Alex stared at his feet.

  Jeff turned to Mary. “The vehicles are packed. We’ve got weapons, food, and water if we need it. But I don’t want to leave unless there are no other options.”

  “But…” Mary urged.

  “I think we need to start preparing ourselves for a battle, Mary. The pit is our only line of defense. If it’s breached, we’ll have to use our escape route from inside.”

  Mary put her hands on her sides. “What are you suggesting?”

  “Get everything combustible together—paint cans, pesticide bottles, whatever is nonessential. We’ll need gas ready.” He handed Alex the rifle. “We also need you on lookout. Shoot anything that’s not us, okay?”

  Alex apprehensively took the rifle while looking at the dead in the pit. A moment later he was on his way upstairs.

  “Why are you acting like this?” Mary asked. “We’ve only seen a few of them.”

  He looked to Mary and grabbed her shoulder. “Listen. I don’t think we’re dealing with a few wanderers. I’ve killed nearly twenty in the last half hour. I have a feeling there are going to be a lot more than this.”

  “Where the hell would they all come from?”

  “Didn’t Cole say the highway was clogged with them?”

  Mary nodded.

  “Well, maybe our little friend with the teddy bear attracted them when she was running through the neighborhood.”

  “Yeah, but the highway’s a few miles out, Jeff.”

  “Which would explain why we’re just starting to see them. Dead eyes are watching us in these woods, Mary. I can feel it.”

  Something snarled beyond the tree line. A moan followed, floating on a brief gust of cold wind. Jeff and Mary turned to see a runner coming from the left side of the house and a creeper making its way from the front.

  ***

  This family was lucky. By all accounts, they shouldn’t be alive. Their house, every window and every door, was uncovered, inviting those living and undead. Their weapons, the .38 Special and the Remington .12 gauge, had barely any ammunition left. Paul hadn’t had much to begin with: a box of fifty for the revolver and a box of twenty for the shotgun.

  Paul and his family hadn’t left the house since the beginnings of the outbreak. They had stayed inside while the world around them unraveled from the core. They mentioned how neighbors shot at other neighbors, stole their possessions. Occasionally they’d had a knock at the door, a possible intruder peering in from the outside. Nothing came of those tense moments. Since then, the family had been waiting. Waiting for the government to come and help them.

  Matt pitied them. Help, at least in the form of the government, wouldn’t be here for them or anyone.

  Matt kept an eye on the bay window beside his seat on the couch and took a sip from the coffee Meredith had made, contemplating the pros and cons of telling them about Facility Six. Angela, sitting next to him on the couch, cleared her throat and looked to the couple sitting in front of them.

  “I’m not sure,” she leaned in, “that help is coming.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Mere
dith.

  “Remember that scientist and the soldier we told you we’d rescued?” Matt said.

  Paul and Meredith nodded.

  “Well,” he continued, “they seem to think that the government’s gone into hiding in these underground facilities.”

  “Sounds like something you’d see in the movies,” Paul weakly joked.

  “Those ideas gotta come from somewhere, right?” Cole said.

  Paul nodded, sipping his coffee. “That where you three are headed after you get your supplies?”

  “No,” Angela said. “At least not yet.”

  “We’ve made a few modifications to our home that help against the undead,” Matt said.

  “You haven’t had any problems with those… those things out there?” Meredith asked.

  “Actually, we’ve had our fair share of dealings with them in the last week or so,” Matt answered, thinking of Anna and Kristin. “We were attacked a few days ago and lost two of our friends. Just a run of bad luck, really. I’m sure once the snow really starts falling, we’ll be all right.”

  “You three have a wonderful and strange outlook on things, you know.” Meredith smiled. She had calmed down after the fiasco in the back, and had apologized for her rudeness, though the three assured her it wasn’t necessary.

  “It’s kept us alive so far,” Cole said. “Honestly, it’s hard to believe that there are others out there doing what we’re doing.”

  “You mean surviving?” Paul inquired.

  Cole nodded.

  “We’re blessed,” Paul said, looking to the crucifix hanging on the wall over the entrance to the kitchen. “And we thank God every day for it.”

  “Have you ever thought about leaving?” Matt said, still watching the window.

  “No.” Meredith’s answer came quick and short. “Out there, the devil runs free.”

  “What about supplies? What will you do when the time comes to get more food and water?” Angela didn’t even think to mention the inevitability of the power failing.

  “We’ll manage when the time comes,” Paul said in a calm, comfortable voice. “The Lord will watch over us for as long as He can.”

  “Hey,” Matt said, “more power to you. We count our blessings every day as well.”

  “I’m glad to hear that, son,” Paul said.

  A moment of awkward silence passed.

  “Well, guys, this is where we split paths. I’m afraid we’ve stayed longer than we’d intended to.” Matt finished his coffee. “But I’d like to offer you this bit of information: One of those facilities we’d mentioned earlier, Facility Six, is located somewhere in Mount Airy, North Carolina. I’ll not tell you that it’s safe, and I’ll not ask you to go. You take the information and do what you want with it.” He stood up and extended his hand.

  Paul took it and said, “I’m glad we met.” He looked to Angela and Cole. “It’s an inspiration to see there are still others out there.”

  Meredith stood up and showed the three to the door. Paul followed and shook Angela’s and Cole’s hands as well.

  “Never thought we’d be saying goodbye to houseguests again,” Paul said, opening the door.

  Cole smiled. “A little surreal, huh?”

  Paul nodded and grabbed his wife’s hand.

  “Wait here,” Matt said on the threshold. He ran to the van, searched the cache of weapons, and took out a nine-millimeter Smith and Wesson and two boxes of ammunition—one for the handgun, the other for Paul’s shotgun. “Just in case.” He handed them to Paul and bid him and his wife a good day and a good life.

  “Thank you,” Meredith said, lips trembling.

  “Best of luck to you and yours,” Matt responded

  They had stayed for no more than twenty minutes—enough time for any nearby horde to discover them. Nothing had happened, and for that each person was grateful.

  Matt entered the van, started it up. “It’ll be their faith that gets them killed.”

  “I know,” Angela said.

  Matt looked at his friend in the rearview mirror. Cole was reloading the spent magazine from his pistol, and asked for Matt’s and Angela’s guns so he could reload them as well. “They won’t last long, but that’s on them. Not us.”

  Matt put the transmission in gear and took off. He couldn’t help but feel that their grand entrance into the neighborhood, not to mention the gunfight in Paul’s backyard, had probably sealed the family’s fate.

  CHAPTER 27

  Matt brought the van to a stop in the middle of Jefferson Avenue, watching as the first of the milling dead caught a glimpse of the vehicle.

  “There aren’t that many of them,” Cole said. “And the store is just up ahead.”

  Matt looked back. “What if they’re there too?”

  “You scared?”

  “It’s not like we’re driving a dump truck, Cole.” He turned to Angela. “What do you think?”

  “Well, at least it’s not a bunch of cars this time. I say the hell with it and go.” Her smile revealed a bit more than her voice told, as did her eyes.

  “Fuck it.” Matt dropped the van in gear and brought it up to fifteen. He’d seen the movies, the television shows, the video games. Those characters always ran down the zombies with no remorse and barely a scratch on the vehicles afterward.

  Well, this was real life, and they had to contend not only with this horde of zombies, but with the still-falling snow sticking to the ground. He had to keep telling himself that he needed to exercise caution, even though he himself had downed a few dead by running them over. The van was their only vehicle out in these parts, and if they had to search for another, it would be best it didn’t happen in the middle of a horde because he’d been feeling jumpy.

  Matt kept the van at a reasonable speed and swerved around each corpse, anticipating the next. He imagined the farther they went the more zombies would appear, but the crowd eventually thinned out to the point they were mere specks in the rearview. Only thing was, these specks were now following them and would no doubt be lumbering in the general direction they’d seen the van go. They never faltered; once prey had been spotted they would keep going in that direction, following it until something else grabbed their single-minded attention.

  “All right,” Cole said. “We’re almost there.”

  “Keep an eye out for any vehicles we could use,” Angela said as she looked out the window.

  “How about any of those?” Matt pointed to the car dealership to the right as he turned. The road split the dealership from its lot and took them to the backside of their destination.

  “Works for me,” she said.

  Matt turned into the home improvement store’s parking lot and sighed with relief when he saw that this part of the store seemed untouched. He drove around to the front to see the parking lot was barren of life and undeath. There were a few vehicles parked in random spots, probably abandoned by their former owners: a few work trucks, a van, a truck with a wood chipper attached, a dump truck similar to the one Cole had wrecked, and some cars well beyond usefulness.

  “You think some of them are still inside?”

  Matt turned to Angela. “Let’s hope not.” He brought the van to the backside again. This was the area to which the store’s shipments were taken, and the tall bay door that was supposed to be down wasn’t. Matt backed the van into the opening, stopping it at the entryway.

  “Still saying ‘fuck it’?” Matt looked to Angela with a grin he knew didn’t conceal all the worry flowing through him. There were bound to be a few undead in there, but hopefully not too many. By the cast of her face, Angela was having the same thoughts.

  “We’re wasting precious time,” Cole said. “The longer we wait, the greater chance we have of those things catching up to us.”

  Matt tried looking inside from the side mirrors and the rearview, but the lights were off. If the power was out, things would be even more difficult, not to mention dangerous. Matt felt the words coming to his lips: “We should j
ust scrap it,” but he fought them down. They’d come too far today to let everything go to waste just because he’d been a little frightened.

  He glanced to the weapons cache and felt a little reassurance knowing they had plenty of toys with which to play. It was the time constraints, he guessed. The added pressure.

  Cole opened the back doors and jumped out with an assault rifle. “Clear.”

  Matt killed the engine, grabbed his Sig 556, and followed Angela out, admiring the curves of her round ass in those tight jeans. Faint traces of death lingered in the air of the store, but not so much that it was unbearable.

  “We need to clear the entire st—” Cole looked up.

  A clanking thud sounded on top of the aisles. Then the shuffling of feet.

  “Hello?” Matt said, his voice echoing.

  The footsteps sounded once more, coming closer.

  “We’re human, uninfected. We just want a few supplies and then we’ll be gone.” Angela lifted the barrel of her rifle to the aisle, which housed a variety of lumber.

  The footsteps stopped.

  “What the hell?” Cole said under his breath.

  Then the drip-drip-drip of some fluid leaking came from a few feet in front of them.

  “Hold on,” Matt said, racing to the van to retrieve one of the flashlights. He returned, activating the light, and swept its beam across the concrete floor until he found the source of the dripping.

  Cole and Angela had their assault rifles pointing upward, anticipating the worst.

  “Oh shit,” was all Matt got out before the thing above them growled and leaped at them.

  ***

  Mary lifted her pistol and fired at the two runners heading toward the back door. Three shots, two kills. She targeted the creepers making an attempt to climb out the pit. Some of them gained purchase on the ground with dead hands steady pulling themselves up and out.

  Alex was upstairs making rounds in each upper room while Jeff and Tim secured the front door. Most of the zombies were coming around the front, and from what Jeff had just yelled to her, they were pouring in between the two vehicles, advancing where the pit didn’t exist.