The Drumhead

by Richard Correll

  “Brett, its not gonna work.” The voice was tired and at the end. Symons turned and saw Esterhaus. He had an axe in one hand and cradled his M16A3 in the other.

  “Got any other ideas?” The words came out fast, coated with irritation.

  “Yeah,” Esterhaus’ voice was huskier, it seemed to come from deep inside. “I hold them.”

  “That’s suicide.” Brett stepped closer. He had a point to make and not a lot of time to do it. Esterhaus leaned forward and looked him in the eye.

  “It’s not suicide if you’re already dead.”

  Brett froze and his mouth dropped open to disagree, argue or raise another point. He felt like he had just walked in a room where only half of it was revealed. A conversation where nothing was said but what was on the surface. How can you be already dead?

  Esterhaus knelt down and carefully placed his M16A3 and the axe on the unforgiving pavement. His pant leg was slowly rolled up by careful fingers. There, in the infinitesimal light lay a dark, egg shaped gash. It looked like a mouth had opened up through his skin.

  It was a mouth. Brett observed with a spreading coldness. The edges of the laceration looked like an impression of dental work laid over the skin. At the centre of the wound, Esterhaus’ skin had taken on a yellowish, bulbous shape. Puss colored veins stood out from the contours of his leg and stretched up and out of sight. It should have been just a scratch or a tetanus shot and antibiotics for a week. Now……

  “How…..?”

  “I guess it happened at the bus.” His voice was distant, like he had seen a horizon that the rest of us could not perceive. “I just noticed it about 2 hours ago.”

  “Jesus.” Brett whispered. Just a few hours ago and it looks like this. There was a feeling that rose up, a sense of desperation, hope or a way to keep going. “Look, maybe they…” He began to offer.

  “Hey, we’re all adults here.” Esterhaus rolled down his pant leg smoothly and carefully. It was almost like every motion had to be perfect now. All of it. This is the last time I will do this, ever. “You know what this means.”

  “I’m one of them now……”

  “Carl…” Brett shook his head slowly and kept thinking: we don’t have time for this. They’re coming. Is this the way it is? They pursue to the end of time. A moment of respite, a second to catch your breath before you hear them again. It’s a game of mathematics that you’re never going to win. One less of us, one more of them.

  “but, maybe we could…” Brett tried again.

  “No,” Esterhaus cut him off and then abruptly looked at the floor. He took a deep, sorrowful breath and looked up again. His eyes glistened like a window pane after a heavy rain.

  “I can’t really explain it to you.” Carl placed a hand on Brett’s shoulder. “But, I just need everyone else to be safe.” A slow, wise smile began to take over his features. Yeah, it’s funny how things are getting clearer now. “I need to know there was a reason for this, a purpose.” He paused to try and think before making a slight shake of his head. “I know, it sounds kinda stupid, doesn’t it?”

  “No. No, it doesn’t.” Brett nodded slowly before speaking again. “Private Mason?”

  “Yes sir,” A shadow became substance out of the darkness.

  “Sergeant Esterhaus will need your grenade launcher and all the ammunition you have.” Brett ordered without taking his eyes off his friend.

  “Yes sir,” Brett’s right ear heard the gear being unclipped, the metallic chime of grenades being rubbing together.

  “Sir.” Mason handed it all over to Esterhaus who clapped Brett’s shoulder and withdrew his hand to accept the gear with a slow nod of his head to the private.

  “Let’s start moving people out.” Brett turned to Mason. “See to it. I’ll join you in a minute.”

  “Yes sir,” The private nodded and was off, swallowed whole by the darkness.

  “Hey…..” Brett tried one more time.

  “It’s okay, really.” Esterhaus picked up his axe and passed it over to Brett. He had the grenade launcher in his hands in the whisper of a second. “Get out while you can.”

  There was nothing left to say or do that would not sound foolish or sad in the circumstances. This was another last time in a series of last times. Was it all really coming to this? He walked away, head down as if bracing for a storm. He did not turn back.

  “What’s wrong?” It was Pinder. The bastard was intuitive as hell. Maybe, just maybe you’re just easy to read. The thought crossed his mind like a creeping billboard for a second.

  “There’s been a ….” Brett searched his mind for one of those vanilla flavored words the Pentagon uses to describe the horror of their business. “…..a development, sir.”

  “Explain.” Pinder crossed his arms and eyed him coldly. In a second, Brett realized he had the wrong approach. Pinder was an office jockey. Chances are he had heard his fill of Pentagon speak.

  “We tried slowing them down but its’ not gonna work, sir.” Brett made eye contact and looked down in dejection. “Sorry, sir.”

  “Okay.” He waited for more. Pinders eyes permanently on him like rivets to a machine head.

  “Sergeant Esterhaus has volunteered to remain behind with the grenade launcher to buy us some time.” Brett reported the situation as he felt an ocean of anger growing in the pit of his stomach.

  “What?” Pinder’s eyes flared as he found a spot to concentrate on. Symons held up his hand, a mute request to explain.

  “Sir, the Sergeant was bitten back at the bus.” He turned to one side and briefly focused on the huddled forms against the wall. “He knows the ……..situation.” Another Pentagon word, fuck!

  “No hope?” Pinder paused and his eyes seem to take on a warmer color. “None at all?”

  “I’m sorry, sir.” Brett shook his head. The words felt insignificant to tell the story. “I’m sorry, he’s gonna be dead and he knows it.”

  Pinder nodded and unfocused his eyes from Brett. They seemed to almost gaze inwards, lost in the moment. Brett looked down the tunnel and felt rage well up inside of him. It was directionless, like an unexpected explosion. He focused on those sitting comfortably against the tunnel wall. He saw them differently now. They looked like impatient patrons in a restaurant café, caught up in their day to dramas without a thought beyond their own skin. Hey fuckers, his eyes raged. You’ll be happy to know a good man is about to give his fucking life for you. Do you understand? A film of moisture clouded his vision and he tried to wipe it away. I know you think it’s his fucking ”duty” and all that shit. A second wet film replaced the first. But

  ……goddamnit………..

  “Sergeant Symons?” It was Pinder , the riveting gaze was back with a tinge of curiosity. It was clear he had spoken a few seconds before and Brett had not heard him. “Are you alright?”

  “I’m fucking angry, sir.” Brett’s voice was low and terse. “I’m fucking angry that we got left behind, I’m fucking angry that Brenda, Chalmers and Maggie aren’t with us, I’m fucking angry at all of this.” He sighed for a second and finished. “I’m fucking angry that Carl is about to give his life for these people and they don’t give a shit about him.”

  “No one’s said that.” Pinder stated matter of factly. “But, I hear what you’re saying.” Pinder shifted his weight and his arms uncrossed and found refuge in his pockets. “I had an uncle who was a cop, he felt like you did sometimes.”

  “Yeah?” Brett was listening but not backing down.

  “He handled it by going out the next day and finding something positive to hang on to.” Pinder cocked his head slowly, the steely eyes took on a deeper hue. “Sometimes it worked.”

  Brett sighed for a long minute. The fire had consumed his rage but the angry embers still burned. “Sir, I don’t see how….”

  “You respect Carl. We all respect Carl.” Pinder was starting to move down the hall to the people Brett had scornfully stared at just a few minutes earlier. “We respect him by getting
these people to safety.”

  “Yes sir.” It wasn’t perfect. But it was something to hold on to for now. Brett moved toward the hole in the wall.

  “Where are you going?” Pinder’s voice followed him.

  “A little recon, sir.” Brett shined his flashlight through the hole in the wall.

  “Do you need some company?” Pinder clearly meant himself.

  “That would be violating a trust to someone we both know, sir.” Brett’s tone was low and resonate.

  “Of course.” Pinder’s face became a respectful smile.

  “Back in a minute, sir.” With two steps, Brett was in total darkness.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  His flashlight played slowly across the room. A drab place lost in the color of grey. Grey, cinderblock walls with piping that played across the ceiling. Tools, chairs and boxes lay about in a casual fashion. A place of forgotten things in the day to day that now had a touch of mystery to them. Is this the way it always is? Did they leave in a panic? The flashlight continued to search for clues.

  Brett walked over to a steel pillar in the center of the room. They seemed to be spaced carefully to provide support for a building that had been added onto more than once. He raised the steel of the axe and struck the pillar with the flat side.

  CLAAAAANG!

  He paused and listened while primal instinct took over and heightened his awareness. He carefully played the flashlight around like it was a talisman. His ears tuned in to the frequency of breathing and movement. You’ll only get a few seconds warning. Listen, listen carefully. Brett tried to tune out the imagination of his mind. It took nothing and made it into something creeping, getting closer. He took a deep breath and made another slow sweep.

  Closer…..closer.

  CLAAAAAANNNNG!

  “We’re clear, sir.” Brett finally said at the top of his voice.

  “You didn’t really have a good look around, did you?” Pinder admonished as he poked his head through the hole in the bricks.

  “Begging your pardon, sir.” Brett began to search for the stairs. “We don’t have a lot of time.”

  “Agreed.” Pinder nodded his understanding and the head disappeared back into the tunnel. His voice was louder when he spoke again. “Alright gentlemen, let’s move these people through.”

  “Yes sir.”

  *

  It was their one weakness. You always heard them before you saw them. Esterhaus had time to let the thought linger. Why? The tactic of stealth had always been an attribute of any hunter. Perhaps stealth was an instinct learned over generations and passed on through the echoes of time. There simply had been no time for the lesson to manifest itself in this new species. Or perhaps they were smarter than we thought. They had done the math, weighed the odds and watched them tip in their favor. They didn’t have to be quiet. Wolves never hide from sheep.

  Esterhaus slowly stood and hobbled in to the center of the tunnel. A slight sting was now coursing up his leg from the infection. It was like vinegar in an open wound that minute by minute was creeping farther up his body. A constant reminder that he was a dead man walking. There was no cure. No hope. There was nothing. Perhaps he was lucky. If the world is going to come crashing down in the agony of slaughter. Now, would be a good time.

  He carefully slipped a grenade into the M320. It was so important to get it right now. Everything he did would be for the very last time. It was like carving your own tombstone, writing your own epitaph or leaving your foot prints in the sand for others to follow through the journey of eternity.

  He saw the silhouettes appear first as darker shapes betrayed only by their movement against the coal colored background. There seemed to be no purpose to sounds that came from them. There was no set language or crude communication. Just a hunger that fed the urge to consume, feed and continue to create contamination.

  THOOOMP!

  The M320 was an easy weapon to load and fire. The recoil was negligible. It almost sounded like a toy going off. Esterhaus averted his eyes just before the first grenade went off. The grenade sailed through the black mosaic of dust to land on the back of a crawling child. As she clawed forward on torn fingers the spheroid rolled away to land in front of a shadow that was upright with shoulders hunched like a wolf on the prowl. He looked up briefly to see a second grenade sailing his way. The object barely registered as it came closer. The mind of the thing was concentrating on prey and nothing more.

  The blast sent shrapnel into and through his bowels and stomach. The skin stretched and began to surrender to the intestines as they uncurled themselves and fell at his feet. He slipped and became tangled in the rubbery tendrils and fell on top of the body of a woman whose left arm had been picked clean before she had revived. The second explosion was a foot from her skull. Hot metal shards cut through the top of her head as the last shreds of her blond hair caught fire. The fingers of the left arm twitched once, then a second time. Termination.

  THOOMP!

  Debris filled the air like confetti. Pieces of grit and dirt fell to the ground only to be disturbed by countless slow moving figures. It would re-circulate through what was left of the air and finally come to rest on faces that could no longer feel. It clung to the inside of lungs that no longer could breath. A brick dislodged itself and tumbled to the floor, a second loosened by the shockwave of the grenade followed suit an increment later. The dominoes had found their nudge. Gravity would soon take over.

  THOOMP!!!

  A third grenade sailed through the air and struck a tall man in the face. His head snapped back on impact and surprise registered for a minute as he looked down curiously at the metal sphere spinning in place like a toy on the floor. His jaw dropped and the teeth protruded to allow a howl of anger. The explosion cut him short. His body was pitched off his feet as it rode the edge of the shockwave for a few calamitous seconds. The skin sizzled and peeled back, the jaw cracked under the force of the blast and now hung at his chest and the eyes blackened over and succumbed to eternity.

  Esterhaus could feel his whole life being measured in seconds now. It started when he remembered the birth of his first baby daughter. The tears, relief and love that welled up inside and became more important than life. His second daughter coming into the world was equally etched in emotion. Among the grit, cordite and destruction he swore he sensed the fragrance of his daughters new born skin and the antiseptic background of the hospital. He was laughing with his ex wife in the backyard of their first house. Love, it was a taste in his mouth that was too sweet for words.

  His first daughter recited slowly and carefully : “London Bridge is falling down, falling down. London bridge is falling down…” A horrific crack extended through his new reality but did not dislodge it. A large chunk of masonry and earth suddenly poured into the room like a tap had been turned on. Two squat figures in silhouette disappeared in the earthen rainfall. A tall, gangly woman remained for a second with her left arm outstretched in his direction. She slowly began to sink under the gathering weight of mud and wreckage. “London Bridge is falling down…..falling down, falling down.”

  There was no water. Just a trickle from a broken pipe could be heard on the other side of the cave in. Esterhaus collapsed against the tunnel wall, coughed hard three times and felt gritty air wheeze through his lungs. He could tell by the pain in his leg he could not walk any longer. It was just the end of time. Nothing to see here, just the end of time. He managed an almost impish laugh.

  More dirt, rocks and shattered bricks trickled down the massive pile from the ceiling. He watched their dance down to the floor with detached interest while remembering the shrieks of delight his daughters made when discovering how fast their sled could go down a hill. The tiny cascades seemed to have a life of their own as they started and stopped. A final few trickles of earth after a flood of debris.

  His attention on the earthen wall was little else than marking time. Just waiting for the…, he paused for a second. The right time. Yes, that would
be the best way to put it. The right time. A bit more debris began to fall from the center of the earthen obstacle.

  And then a bit more…..

  Then, a brick started to roll to the ground.

  Then, more earth. Larger and larger clods became unstuck from their final resting place.

  They passed through the earth into the musty air like ghosts through a wall. At first fingers, then hands that scraped and clawed at the air looking for something, anything to hang on to and consume. The hands wiggled back and forth to become wrists and elbows. There were dozens of them. Esterhaus watched them slowly as his eyes widened. He did not move.

  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” He whispered through cracked lips.