“Joel, slow your ass down,” Alex said.
I was afraid to slow down. She might try to talk me out of continuing on, but I knew there was little chance of that as I heard Richard huffing away. There was no way he was stopping. I think he was just as curious as me.
We burst through a set of doors and entered a long hallway lined with doors on each side. I discovered that I was nearly sprinting to get to the next set of doors at the end of the hall.
“Slow the hell down!” Alex bellowed behind me, but I ignored her.
I hit the second set of doors three seconds later, shoving them open. That left me at an intersection, where I took a right. I rushed through a single door, ending up in a short corridor that led in a set of windows looking out on the south side of the building.
By the time I made it to the windows, I was breathing hard. Because we were five floors up, the angle wasn’t the best, but I could see the first floor of the main hospital obliquely. Five seconds after I pressed my forehead against the window, Richard fell in beside me.“What do you see?” He asked.
“Nothing yet,” I replied. “I don’t see anything by the main doors.”
“I saw the light near the doors to the right, about a half a block down,” he said.
I shifted my gaze along the side of the building until it hit a long bank of opaque windows. That’s when I saw a diffuse light splash across the windows and travel along for about ten feet before it dimmed.
“Did you see that?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Richard said. “It’s got to be someone.”
Alex slid in next to me and asked, “What did you see?”
“A light fell on the windows west of the main entrance about fifty feet or so down,” I said.
Alex paused for a few seconds, then said, “I don’t see shit.”
“Well, you’re late to the party, slowpoke,” Richard said.
“Slowpoke?” Alex asked, and I didn’t have to look in her direction to know she had one of her eyebrows arched upward. “How old are you, Richard? Eighty?”“My grandpa used to call me that when I was little,” Richard said.
“Well, retire it,” Alex said. “Geez.”
I broke in and said, “Task at hand, folks. Focus. Richard and I saw a light move across those windows down there. Since zombies don’t carry lights, it’s got to be someone.”
“Maybe it’s your girlfriend?” Richard said.
The mere mention of Kara both pained and angered me. I hadn’t even considered it could be her.
“In her condition, I doubt she would use a light,” I said, and my voice had an aloof quality to it that I didn’t recognize.
“Yeah, me, too,” Alex said.
She reached and gave my shoulder a quick squeeze. For Alex, it was a huge gesture as she wasn’t the most touchy-feely person on the planet.
The light flashed again on the windows from the inside. This time it was at a doorway twenty feet down from where we initially had seen the light. I can’t speak for the others, but I laser-focused on the entrance. The light got brighter, and a figure appeared at the door, silhouetted in the light. Since we were five floors up, it was hard to tell if it was a male or a female, but they stood in place, staring outward.
I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and flicked my eyes in that direction. Four zombies shuffled down the street, drawn in by the light.
Whoever was looking out the door stepped back, and the light snapped off.
“Shit,” I said.
The zombies continued their approach toward the door, ambling with purpose. Once they made it there, they began to claw at the glass. I could only guess they were moaning and groaning.
“There had to be at least two of them,” Alex said. “The one who came to the door and the one with the flashlight.”
I pushed back from the window and said, “We’ve got to get down there.”
“Whoa,” Alex said. “Those are deaders down there.”
“When was the last time you saw any live people in the area?” I asked.
It only took her a moment to respond. “You and your crew were the last.”
“They could need our help,” I said.
“Like we’re in a position to help anyone?” Richard asked.
I looked his way and said, “You were the one all giddy about spotting the people down there.”
“Well,” Richard said, but his mouth opened and closed a couple of times before he continued. “Well, like you said, we haven’t seen anyone. I guess I got a little excited.” He failed to make eye contact with Alex or me after that.
“You think?” Alex asked.
“These are the only people we’ve seen in months,” I said. “Maybe we can learn something from them?”
“You’re really reaching there, Joel,” Alex said.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, then said, “Come on, you guys. There are people down there. This is our turf. We know how dangerous it is here. Are you really just going to let them stumble around in the dark and maybe get themselves killed?”
“What about our safety?” Richard asked.
“What if we only look?” I asked. “Like monitor them?”
Alex held me up with a glance and asked, “And you won’t go running off like a crazy man like you did with the bulldozer?”
These were my friends, and I didn’t want to lie to them, so I took the middle ground.
“I just want to look,” I said.
“Okay, then,” Alex said. “We need to act like things will go to shit at any moment. So, we get Brother Ed, and we gear up.” She looked at me again and asked, “You good with that?”
“Absolutely,” I replied.
“And you know that to get down to street level, we have to pass by Casper, the not-so-friendly ghost. Brother Ed is not going to like that.”“Yeah, there is that,” I replied.
Chapter 15
Ghost Story
"Now, what the Sam Hill is going on?” Brother Ed said.
I loved the way Brother Ed talked. It was as if he was still living in a ‘60s TV show about hillbillies.
“There are some people down in the main hospital,” Richard said.
“So?” Brother Ed replied.
“Well, we need your help,” I said.
“To do what?” Brother Ed asked.
Brother Ed was being more irritable than normal, breaking from a recent string of days of outright apathy.
“We haven’t seen anyone here in a long span of months,” Alex said. “Richard here thinks we need to see what these people are up to.”
“They could be trouble,” Brother Ed said.
I cleared my throat and said, “I don’t want to reach here, but what if they’re our people from the Manor? A couple of them knew our ultimate destination. Maybe they decided to check to see if we made it here?”
That piqued his curiosity and was beyond a reach. I wouldn’t call it an outright lie, but it was running on the edge of wild speculation. (Wild speculation that not even the craziest oddsmakers in Las Vegas would take, so sue me.) Brother Ed bit at the hook and leaned forward on his bed.
“You think it could be?” He asked.
I felt terrible for what I was about to say, but we needed all the able-bodied people we could get on this mission. “It could be, but we won’t know for sure if we don’t check it out.”
“Then, I’ll guess I’ll go,” he placed his feet on the floor and reached for his boots. It took him another minute to suit up. Once he was ready, we were off, but we only made it to the end of the hall before he realized that path we were taking.
“Why are we going this way?” Brother Ed asked.
By this way, he meant that our intended path would take us across the third floor. This was a place that Brother Ed dreaded.
“It’s the quickest path down,” Richard said as he plunged ahead, but Brother Ed had almost come to a stop.
“But he’s down there,” Brother Ed stammered out.
Althoug
h I was hot on Richard’s heels, I stopped and made my way back to Brother Ed.
“It’s going to be okay,” I said.
“But why can’t we take the other stairwell down?” Brother Ed asked.
“Ed,” Alex said, “You gotta get a grip. Casper’s not going to get you.”“That’s easy for you to say,” Brother Ed replied. “He seems to have some kind of grudge against me. And my name is Brother Ed, not Ed.”
Brother Ed was right. There was something boiling inside the ghost. A burning fury and that anger had been turned against Brother Ed, more than any of the rest of it. (Not that it found any of us cuddly and cute.)
During my long nights of the soul, I contemplated this, and the only thing I could come up with was that Juan Soto kept some sort of ledger. In this accounting, Brother Ed had lived while he had died, and that did not sit well with Soto. There was some cosmic imbalance that he must have felt needed set right. What we could do about this was beyond me. All I wanted to do at that moment was to get downstairs to see if my friends might be at the hospital.
“Brother Ed,” I said, “we’re just passing through the third floor. Quick and easy.”
“There ain’t nothing quick and easy about that ghost,” Brother Ed replied as he shook his head back and forth.
“Okay, then. Do you want to sit this one out?” I asked. “If you do, you can head back to your room, and we’ll forge ahead.”
“No, no, dang it,” he said. “I’ll come. If it is our friends from down south, then they deserve our help.”
I was starting to regret that I had dangled that hope out there when there was a snowball’s chance in hell that it was our friends, but whoever these people were, they did deserve our help. Right?
A couple of moments later, we stood outside the door to the third floor. That was where we heard the unholy moans at night, making me think of Marley’s ghost from a Christmas Carol. Only, I think this ghost wasn’t going to warn us of what was in the past or the future. It wanted to put us in the past, as in dead.
Alex placed her hand on the door handle to the threshold that would take us into the suite of offices and lab spaces. We had no idea if Soto was in there or not, but there was more than an even chance that he was. Alex looked back to us, and nodded her head and pulled the door open.
Stale air whooshed out of the hallway and wafted over us, tickling my nostrils. I fought off a sneeze because that was the last thing we needed. That would be like saying “Yoo-Hoo,” to Soto if he was in there.
Alex made hand signs that told us that we would go in two-by-two. She and I would be in the lead, with Richard and Brother Ed following. There was a momentary sense of hesitancy in our little quartet, but Alex broke the inertia and headed inside. I felt I had no choice but to follow since this little trip to check out the interlopers was my idea.
Stepping inside, I could swear that I felt the temperature drop by at least ten degrees, but then again, it was the dead of winter, and there was no heat on this floor at all.
Ahead of us was a long and wide corridor that stretched on for about seventy-five feet, ending at a set of sturdy double-doors. In places, paper lay strewn about as if someone had a little oopsey, dropping those important papers on the way to an even more important meeting.
The corridor was lined with doors on each side. From our earlier explorations, we discovered that these were labs, offices, and conference rooms. One of the conference rooms was small, set up for little scrum meetings. The other room was expansive with a long executive table, looking ready for the big-wigs to conference over world-changing issues.
Alex moved to her left a full step, and I did the same. I moved in an opposite direction to give us a slight separation as we started down the hall in slow, deliberate steps. I didn’t look back but heard the soft footsteps of Brother Ed and Richard on the carpet behind us.
We moved forward, guns up, ready for anything, while also knowing that bullets had no effect on ghosts. But when you face the irrational, you try to balance it out by acting logically. Whether that worked or not was beyond me. I can just say having my rifle ready gave me a small sense of comfort.
Most of the doors were closed, but some were open, looking like dark maws ready to suck us in. I resisted the urge to reach out and close the ones we passed on my side of the corridor. Something about having those doors closed would have made me feel better, though.
Step by step, we made steady progress toward the double doors at the end of the corridor. The only sounds were the soft thud of our footfalls on the carpet and the slight whistle of the winter wind outside.
We were ten feet from the double doors when I released some of the tension I had been holding. We had made it. No encounters with anything, living, dead, undead, or somewhere in-between.
Alex looked over her shoulder as she reached for the door handle, and I did the same. Both Richard and Brother Ed were wide-eyed, scanning to their left and right, looking for anything. Her hand touched the door handle, and I thought, ‘we made it.’
Famous last words.
The door to Brother Ed’s right burst open, slamming against the wall with a tremendous crash. Then it looked as if someone had lassoed Brother Ed around the waist with an invisible rope and yanked him inside the room. He didn’t even have time to scream, but the expression on his face was like a gut punch.
Chapter 16
I Am Afraid of Ghosts
It happened so fast that I didn’t have time to react. One moment, Brother Ed was there. The next, he was not.
Richard was so shocked that he stumbled backward until his back collided with the opposite wall.
Alex was the first of us to make a move as she jumped toward the doorway. Her motion broke me from my trance, and I rushed to follow her. As I moved, Brother Ed let out an unholy scream. It was the kind of noise you felt in your bones and even resonated across time, echoing in my mind years later.
Alex made it one step into the room and flicked on her flashlight, but I stopped in the doorway. Something twisted in my guts, and I knew it was fear as I took in the scene in the room.
The beam of Alex’s flashlight fell upon a man standing over Brother Ed. Brother Ed was splayed out on the ground looking like he had been hit by a truck. There was no doubt in my mind that it was Soto. He was wearing his Army uniform just like before.
Soto screamed over Brother Ed’s wail, “Why did you do this to me?”
It was clear to me that Brother Ed was scared out of his wits. Who wouldn’t be? A ghost was getting ready to send him off into the next life.
Apparently, Alex’s patience had run out as she fired off three quick shots. Just like before, they passed through Soto’s form to no effect. Each of the rounds punched into the wall on the other side of the room, kicking off small explosions of drywall dust.
Soto wheeled toward us, and his face seethed with unspeakable fury.
I shot out a hand and batted the barrel of Alex’s rifle away. She fired a single shot that cut along the left wall.
“Joel, what the fuck?!” She shouted.
I couldn’t respond to her. My focus had to be on Soto.
“Private Soto!” I yelled. “What are you doing?”
Soto spoke in a chilling tone as he pointed down at Brother Ed, “He is the reason I’m stuck here. Had he died, I would have been released. I can’t stay here any longer. I’m in agony.”
I knew there was no way to fight a ghost. If Alex’s bullets did no harm to it, could I even move it physically?
A thousand different thoughts whirled through my mind. If it could knock Brother Ed down, then it had to have some physical presence. I wondered if I could rush it and push it away, or would it attack Brother Ed again? In pondering that question, I knew it was more of a question of when, not if, because I had no doubt that Soto would do some serious harm to Brother Ed.
“What are we going to do?” Richard said in a soft voice as the standoff continued.
“How do you fight a ghost?” I asked.<
br />
“An evil-ass ghost,” Alex added.
Soto must have had enough of waiting because he bent over and extended his hands downward toward Brother Ed’s neck.
That’s when Richard made a short step toward Soto. “I command you to be gone. May the power of Christ compel you. May the power of Christ compel you.”
Soto paused, looked up, but then started his hands back toward Brother Ed’s neck.
“Richard, really?” Alex asked. “You’re trying the Exorcist routine on him?”
“Well, it worked in the movie,” Richard replied weakly.
Private Soto focused his full attention on Brother Ed and wrapped his hands around his neck, and began to squeeze. Brother Ed weakly batted at Soto’s arms, but it was easy to see that all the fight had ebbed out of Brother Ed as his body went limp. He was surrendering to his fate.
While Richard’s gambit hadn’t paid off, it did push a question into my mind. Since fighting Soto in the physical realm was a remote possibility, maybe Richard was on the right path. How could we fight it on the spiritual plane? Since I was mostly clueless in that area, I had to ask myself, what would Kara do? At least, when she was fully human.
That’s when it came to me, but she had been the true believer where I had been the chief waffler when it came to faith. Prior to the fall of the world, I had been a fence-sitter when it came to God, faith, and all that stuff. I had one foot in the agnostic camp and one tip-toeing into the realm of belief. Now, that attitude had certainly changed when God started sending me His crazy visions. When God talks directly to you, you have to accept it or accept that you are completely and totally insane.
While few would classify me as stable, I had faith and knew what Kara would do. I only prayed I had enough faith to pull this off.
I started forward, edging toward Private Soto, and in a soft voice, I said, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside the still waters.”
Books of the Dead | Book 9 | Dead of Winter Page 7