by Tufo, Mark
“Sir, I can’t pick up the church.” Winters had his radio in his hand and was fiddling with some of the buttons. We had no comm outside of this area. We had light for another ten hours, no food to speak of, low ammunition, and no viable exit. All in all, it wasn’t looking like the day had got off on the right foot. I didn’t want to be the next set of mummies when some other hapless victims sprang the same trap we had.
Chapter 4
Mike Journal Entry 4
BT had dragged me to the far end of the room. He motioned for me to turn off the radio. “That pipe looks good-sized,” he said.
My gaze had been drawn to it from time to time, but by “good-sized,” if he meant an infant could crawl through it easily, then, yeah, it was good-sized. Anything adult-shaped, not so much.
“Harmon will fit,” he said. My gaze immediately went over to the private, who looked like she was having a difficult time holding on to the fraying edges of her resolve. The pipe was cast iron; couple of rounds would open it up.
“You realize that’s most likely a sewer line, right? You bust that and it’s full, we could drown in shit, BT.”
He turned away from me, ripped his cap off and ran his hand over his head. “FUCK!” he yelled so loud I must have heard it a dozen times as it echoed back and forth. When he calmed down somewhat, he turned back to me. “You got anything useful in that mind of yours?”
“They’re in,” Tommy said as he pulled his head back through the door and threw the lock. All of our attention was directed to the door; we were all expecting a mad rush and the attempted twisting of the handle. What we got was worse, in its own way. We could hear what sounded like wet cardboard being rent. I think maybe my psyche was doing its best not to piece together what was happening; it was Winters who brought it to the forefront.
“Are they eating the mummies?”
The sound was nauseating; allowing the mind to create visuals the eyes could not see was infinitely worse. It provided a subconscious opportunity to be distracted, as my people began to talk quietly amongst themselves, just loud enough to drown out the slurpings and chewings but not loud enough to draw the attention of the enemy.
“What are the odds they finish their meal and head on out?” BT asked, I gave him a look he usually reserves for me. “Forget I asked.”
The eating went on longer than any of us expected. Seemed to me the smarter zombies had kept this small prize secret from the waiting horde; it appeared that some zombies were a little more equal than others. I was starting to think it was a little like Animal Farm out there.
I did some tapping on the pipe, as did BT. We both concluded that yeah, there was fluid in there, but no, it wasn’t full. That didn’t necessarily mean anything because if it was running water, it could still fill this chamber up. It had been an hour since the zombies had tucked into their impromptu feast.
“How long does it take for them to eat?” I asked.
“What’s your rush? We’re dessert,” BT replied.
“There’s that, I guess.”
Spirits were understandably low. We had no reason to think any help was coming and we were stuck fast; our seemingly only avenue of escape involved a shitty pipe and a Marine on the verge of losing her shit. Somehow it was fitting. Just when you think things can’t get worse, they somehow do. We could hear movement outside the door; we would find out soon enough why.
It was Tommy who bent over first, holding his left ear, then the sound swept over all of us: shriekers, and a few of them, too, by the sound of it. They were out there singing their discordant notes. I’m not a frequent migraine sufferer, but like most, I’d gone through a few over the years. This was like those times, only some inconsiderate asshole kept manually forcing my eyelids open so they could flash a 15,000 lumens light into my corneas, thus burning imprints into my tortured brain. I was fearful I was going to snap my teeth off as I gritted down on them.
“Stenzel! Get the door!” I couldn’t even consider opening my eyes wide enough to look through my red dot.
BT had grabbed Stenzel’s rifle and was by my side, his pain so intense he was shaking. Stenzel cracked that door wide open. I don’t think they’d been expecting that particular maneuver. BT and I opened fire; shriekers registered surprise as we fired into their heads, reciprocating their pain in spades.
“Karma’s a bitch,” I managed to get out as the pain abated. The other zombies began to crowd to the door while also letting the shriekers move away. We cut through them; the carnage enough that neither the aggressors nor the escapers could make progress. After I was through my second magazine and there didn’t seem to be any viable targets, I had Stenzel shut the door.
“Can’t tell you how much I appreciate that, sir,” she said, leaning up against the wall.
We were all drained. I had my hands on my knees.
“What if they get more?” Harmon asked.
“From what I know, they’re fairly rare. We dealt them a killing blow.” BT handed the rifle back to Stenzel; she hardly looked like she was able to support its weight. I had a few of the flashlights turned off to conserve battery life. If it was depressing beforehand, now it was downright disheartening. My claustrophobia was beginning to make its presence known in full; it didn’t help that BT stayed within an inch of me at all times. If that was how he reacted to his fear of tight places, it sure was a strange response. We were sitting with our backs against the wall; I was continually circling the limited options we had. Basically, they all involved opening the door and attempting to blast a hole through the zombies and escape to freedom. Unfortunately, the success percentage meter kept stopping at zero.
“Movement.” Winters had his ear up by the door. We waited long minutes for an update. “Sounds like they’re removing the bodies.”
“Probably to get bulkers down here.” BT had stood, but I noticed he did not step away. If we got out of this, I was going to need to have a private talk with him regarding personal space. He motioned to his headpiece; this was our signal to go to a private channel. He grabbed his radio and flipped it open to get to the embedded keyboard.
“If we die down here, no one is going to know.”
“We will,” I responded. He was less than amused. In fact, he made it over to the anger spectrum.
“Any ideas?”
I shook my head instead of responding.
“It’s got to be the pipe. There’s nothing else.”
“I’m not sure she can fit, and if there is any significant bend, she won’t be able to traverse it,” I replied.
“Don’t even tell me you’re thinking of giving up.”
“Just looking for something with at least some sort of odds we can hang a hat on.”
“Why now?”
“Ha ha,” I responded aloud, which sounded funny in the silent room.
“Whatever they’re doing, it sounds like they’re done.” Winters looked over to me.
Was expecting to hear and feel the coming of the immense ones; I even hazarded the thought of letting one in to see if it could crash through a wall like the Kool-Aid man. Wonder how much property damage that thing had done over the years? That’s how desperate I was; thinking about letting a six-hundred-pound behemoth into our small lair. I could imagine that going wrong in a dozen different fascinating ways.
“Come out,” was whispered in my head–well, everyone’s head. That was easy enough to tell, as all of us were looking around at the other, wondering what had just happened and who had said it. All of us still sitting, stood, as if choreographed. I placed my hand up to halt all the obvious questions I was about to be bombarded with and for which there was no possible way I could answer. “Come out,” was repeated again and another five or six times on top of that. It was a soft insertion, without the harsh urgency of the shriekers. This coherent yet terrifying sentence was followed by a jumble of words that didn’t fit together quite so nicely but still conveyed a powerful message:
“Eat.”
“Hunger.”
“Feed.”
“Food.”
“They fucking talk now?” BT could not contain himself any longer.
“Not coming out,” I said aloud and thought it. I knew my track record; I could, on a limited basis, reach out and give them a message if they were close enough.
“Feed. Must.”
Tommy was looking over at me; he could hear the dual messages I was sending.
“We’re prepared to die in here. No chance we’re going to let you eat us.” This I kept on the mostly private party line.
I was convinced the zombie speaker sighed at the notion of us becoming wasted food.
“Starving.” It was more of a feeling; I could feel its stomach cramps. If he was trying to elicit sympathy, not only was he barking up the wrong tree, he wasn’t even in the right forest. I was about to tell it to fuck off, when something even stranger than what was already happening, happened.
“Half,” the zombie said.
“Half what?” BT asked, but he was looking at me with his brow arched.
“Half eat, half go.”
“Wait…we give you half and the rest of us are free to go?” I asked.
“You aren’t seriously negotiating with them, are you?” BT might not have been the most distressed, but he was the one showing the most visual cues.
I held up my hand. “Hear it out,” I told him. “Four. I’ll give you four.” It was either Winters or Harmon who gasped. “Not one more.”
“Which four you planning on giving?” BT asked.
“I’ll volunteer.” Harmon raised her hand.
“Stop, everyone stop. I’m not looking for volunteers and I’m not ordering anyone. We already have our takers.” I pointed over to the four by the wall. It distressed me to no end to potentially use them so callously, but I had to believe that their higher essence was long gone from this place. There were long moments of silence interspersed with labored breathing from the stress we were all feeling.
“Four,” was all it said; I was not sure what to deduce from this. “Open.”
I looked around at my squad.
“Don’t do it, Talbot.” BT beseeched. “We can’t trust zombies now any more than before they could talk. They’re mindless predators.”
Right now, mindless didn’t seem fitting. “Open, then what?”
“I can’t believe this is happening right now,” he said, turning away.
“That makes all of us,” I told him.
“Rest go. Eat later.”
“Bird in the hand.” Tommy was looking at the door.
“Open,” it urged.
“We ready? Do not fire unless necessary. BT?”
“I’m cool man, I’m cool.” He took in two big breaths of air then blew them out slowly.
I opened the door. I more than expected to be pushed back from the onslaught of zombies pressing through; there was just one. If I had to peg a label, I’d say it was a lawyer, once upon a time. His short hair, which was unkempt now, had probably been well cared for. He was wearing a suit that looked like it might have cost more than my entire wardrobe, such as it was. Not sure what that meant, as most of my clothes back in the day consisted of shorts, t-shirts and jeans. But still, even five-dollar Star Wars shirts from Walmart begin to add up. The dry cleaner was going to charge him an arm and a leg to get the blood, brain, piss and shit stains out of them, but it still might be serviceable. The zombie snarled at me as I moved aside.
“Four,” it said in my head and attempted to vocalize. Sounded like a hissing snake might. It was sniffing at the air and occasionally sticking its tongue out like the reptile it seemed to be. I stiffened when it moved a step closer to me. It hissed again when I placed the barrel of my weapon square into its chest. The advantage shifted to him in the close quarters; all he needed was the smallest of nibbles to effectively win. There was something hugely different about this zombie, though. He had more than a survival instinct. I could feel it in his thoughts–again, nothing verbalized; it was a part of his being. He did not want to die. He would not be one of the mindless horde that sacrificed bodies for position. He looked over each and every one of us. There was a ravenous leer to his gaze; he looked like a serial rapist in a downtown bar who had just got in a large shipment of Rohypnol.
The lawyer licked its lips as it surveyed the menu. It sounds funny when I write it down; at the time it was terrifying, but when his gaze hit BT, he looked like Bugs Bunny when Lola Bunny strolled on by, eyes popping out, heart pounding hard in his chest, kind of thing. He growled at me when I pushed against him with my barrel, directing him toward the deal. Neither of us liked being this close. I was reminded that man’s turn at the top was at, or already had come to, a crashing demise, and he didn’t feel he was getting the respect he deserved as the usurper.
The zombie moved past all of us to look at his treasure. “Dead.” There was displeasure in its voice. Got a feeling he would have preferred something more of the rare prime-rib variety.
“Them or nothing.” I motioned for the door. He looked from us to the dead and back again. And then even once to the door. I had a feeling he was contemplating calling in for reinforcements. “Do it,” I told him, the end of my rifle no farther than three feet from his head. “Might be the end of us, but you aren’t getting any parting taste.”
“What the fuck you doing, Talbot?”
“What part of you thinks I have a playbook for what is happening right now?” I answered him without ever taking my eyes off the zombie. Instinctually, I knew that if I was in any way distracted, it would take that as an opportunity and roll those dice in its head. And I didn’t like that one bit. Yeah, this one was a self-preservationist; odds were it was friends with Deneaux.
“Go,” it said. Out of the corner of my eye, I looked to Harmon; thought I might have to tell Winters to grab her if she decided to bolt, but she was holding steady.
“Then?”
“Eat later,” it said again.
It didn’t elaborate, and that was open to entirely too many interpretations. Maybe he’d let us get topside then they’d start the hunt again? Or maybe they get us out of this room then surround us? I was all about the former and the fighting chance it afforded us, not so much the latter; we’d be in a prison made solely from zombies.
“We’re taking you. I think you’re going to be our golden ticket out of here.”
“Talbot, we’re taking zombie hostages now?” BT wanted to know.
“Most definitely. This one is all about himself.”
“Go,” it reiterated.
“Tommy, turn its shoulder.”
Tommy roughly forced it to face our exit. I traded weapons with BT and took my 1911 back. I placed the barrel firmly against the back of the zombie’s skull. “We get out of here alive, so do you.” I pushed it forward with the gun. It snarled. “Stay close.”
“Um, sir, no disrespect, but no fucking way,” Stenzel said.
“I’ll take that under advisement. Now get the fuck over here, Corporal.”
If we’d got packed any tighter, we would have been able to tell each other’s preference for boxers, briefs, or commando status. All was fine as we got out, and even the stairwell was clear, but the exit door was jam-packed with zombies. The eye shine they produced bobbed around as they jockeyed for position.
“Tell them to move.” I forced the zombie’s head down, I was pressing the gun so tightly up against his skull.
We had a dozen or so theories about the zombie intellect, ranging from mindless brain eaters to a collective hive mind. “Dewey” here from Dewey, Cheatum, and Howe, well, he was a revisionist. He was going to force us to rewrite all the rules. Or so I hoped; I was banking our lives on it. If he was part of a collective, then his individual life meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. Survival of the colony was of utmost importance. It wasn’t lost on me in the slightest that it would be a lawyer who was placing himself above all others.
“Live or die, Dewey. The choice is your
s.”
“Dewey?” BT asked.
“Tell you later.”
“Live.” A murderous clown born of hell, bent on rending the souls of the damned, would have had less malice in its tone.
I could feel a “push” order emanate from it. Nothing was happening–nothing that we could tell. It was all due to how congested the zombies were; there was no room for them to shift, like an emergency vehicle attempting to get to the scene of a particularly gruesome accident through the densely packed vehicles that had the misfortune of trailing behind. I’d been in some binds with zombies, but this time was the worst. We were pressed into single file; the zombies were as tightly packed as a Christmas toy encased in styrofoam. You know the kind. Ever open one of those things up only to realize its broken and not only is your kid bummed out, now you have to try and get it back into the box to bring back to the store? It’s like the fucking thing grows once it’s exposed to the air. I’ve had better luck telling my wife I was going out with the boys on our anniversary. Just so we’re clear, that’s an analogy and not something I’d ever be dense enough to try in real life. Not twice, anyway.
Every part of me was brushing up against something or someone. I’d never felt so personally compressed or compromised since my tunnel travails with Trip. Felt like ketchup frosting being piped through a squeeze bottle. I was barely holding on. I got progressively intense sensations from the zombies, not that they were going to break and run, but rather: “Fuck Dewey’s orders, let’s eat.”
We were crawling along, a verb I wished I had steered clear of, as I could swear I had things creeping on me from the close proximity to the zombies. My skin itched and it was all I could do to not rip through it. Staying quiet and not doing overtly human things like scratching, coughing, sneezing–that was what was keeping us alive in the precarious position we found ourselves in.
Dewey was the boss, or a boss, at least, and he’d not be the first that had to suffer through a mutiny. The zombies begrudgingly yielded their space, and the farther we went, the more begrudged we were each inch. Our small steps were rapidly shrinking to shuffles. Harmon yelled out; I saw a wet tongue wrapped around some loose strands of her hair. I shoved Dewey’s head so far down he was looking at his double vested buttons; we felt the slightest shift in pressure.