by Stevie Kopas
“Well, I wouldn’t say filled. That would be the east wing. But nothing could have wandered into that building and nothing would have been able to wander out. East wing is too high risk, there is no way we’d be able just shoo them on in there. We need them dead and there’s no better time like the present. I’m taking back what’s mine.” He looked at the faces in the group expectantly.
Ben cracked his knuckles and nodded at Gary. “If that’s what we gotta do to stay, then that’s what we gotta do.”
“Alright, that’s the spirit! What about the rest of you lot?”
“Yeah, yeah. Let’s do this.” Clyde put his hand out and Ben slapped him five nonchalantly.
Juliette looked nervous as Andrew also agreed to the plan. He reassured her with a kiss to her forehead. “This will be good for us. It’s safe here.”
“Samson?” Gary’s pleasant demeanor was overwhelming.
He leaned forward on the couch and propped himself up on his elbows, “I suppose I don’t have a choice.”
VI
“This is stupid and I’m pissed off.” Veronica glared at Samson on the breezeway outside of Gary’s condo.
“I know you are. I agree with Andrew though, Juliette can’t be left alone and it would be best for you to stay up here with her.”
“And so what if you all go in there like a bunch of over confident jerks and end up getting killed? I’m stuck taking care of Mrs. Boohoo in there? That sounds perfect!” She threw her arms up and began shouting at him. “You know perfectly well I can handle myself and exactly what I’m capable of. I can’t believe you!”
Samson sighed. He couldn’t remember a moment in his life where he enjoyed temper tantrums. He looked up when Ben exited their unit and joined them.
“What’s the matter with her?” He threw a thumb in Veronica’s direction and smirked, exacerbating the situation. Samson shook his head.
“Are you kidding me?” She turned to him, hands on her hips.
“Chill out. We’re gonna be gone for like an hour. Juliette will probably sleep through the whole thing and you won’t even know we’re gone. What’s the worst that could happen?”
“Great question.” Samson walked off toward the stairwell door. “I’ll meet you downstairs. Hurry up, we need to be done before it starts getting dark.”
Ben coughed and spit over the railing. “Look, I know for a fact you’re tougher than any of us. But there are those of us who aren’t and need taking care of.” Veronica stood silently, picking at her nails. “This’ll be good for ya. We got a good thing here, take advantage of it and relax for a change. Alright?”
She shrugged and looked up at him, he grinned at her. “Whatever.”
He tapped his baseball bat twice on the ground and nudged her chin before walking off. She watched him disappear and waited for the door to slam before going back inside. Juliette sat on the couch with her knees pulled in to her chest, she didn’t raise her head or speak when Veronica walked in. Veronica stood there for a moment, just staring at the skinny blonde, wondering what she could even talk to her about. A few weeks ago the two women were completely different people. Veronica would have sat down across from her and cheerfully babbled about running track and ask Juliette what kind of music she listened to. Juliette would have invited Veronica to the gym she worked at, offering a free fitness consultation and inquire about which colleges Veronica was thinking about going to. But now Juliette was lost in her own mind, incapable of dealing with her current situation and Veronica felt useless holed up in the luxurious condo.
Ben exited the stairwell on the 11th floor and joined the rest of the men on the sky bridge that connected their building with the central tower.
“Alright,” Gary started, “the layout of Central is different than the other two buildings. The stairs run up the middle and everything is completely enclosed. No breezeways and no doors to the stairs so that means these bastards could be roaming anywhere. There’s no need to check the rooms unless the doors are open but there aren’t a lot of windows in the halls so be extra careful and make sure you don’t lose these.” He passed out LED flashlights to everyone. “Try to keep gunfire to a minimum, you don’t want to end up cornered and you don’t want to end up deaf.” He motioned for the guys to follow him as he set a trash can aside and grabbed a hefty set of keys from under it. “Once I unlock this door, these keys go under the trash can on the other side and we lock ourselves in. Keep your wits about you and we meet back here.
“Wait, so we’re splitting up?” Samson asked nervously. “Isn’t that what always gets everybody killed in movies?”
Gary chuckled. “Well it’s unfortunate, but this isn’t a movie and we’ve got ground to cover. We all know how to handle ourselves. Everybody ready?” They all looked at each other and nodded. Gary turned the key in the lock and it clicked loudly. He pulled open the heavy glass door and the putrid smell of rot slowly met their noses. “Ah, yeah, forgot to mention the smell. We should probably air the place out once we’re done.” He stepped aside and let everyone through and then locked the doors behind them. Everyone jumped as he put his hand up to his mouth and whistled loudly.
“What the fuck?” Clyde shoved Gary hard and pointed his gun down the hallway.
“Had to wake them up mate, get them moving. I don’t know about you but I’m not in the mood for hide and seek.”
Clyde grunted and moved forward slowly, stopping when he heard the faint wail of an eater on a floor below them. “I’m headin’ upstairs, who’s with me?” Ben raised his bat in the air.
“Alright, I’m going to need the other two then. Got the recreational rooms and lobby downstairs to deal with. My best guess is they’re all congregating down there.” Gary lead the way to the steps, Clyde and Andrew clapped each other on the shoulders and the men silently parted ways.
Samson and Andrew followed Gary and repeated the same process on each floor. They were lucky that each level had no more than about three to four eaters at a time, a simple number for the three men to take on. Some floors had none at all. They were more worried about being cornered than anything else. They finally made it down to the recreation level on the second floor. A fitness center and an indoor pool were off to the left and a small theatre and arcade were on the right.
Gary whistled again, trying to draw the eaters out. Low moans began to rise from the right and the men circled around, preparing themselves for the attack.
“I don’t understand.” Gary remained standing still while Samson and Andrew went to work on the eaters that had emerged from the theater.
“A little help would be nice!” Andrew shouted as he swung his club at one eater while dodging the attack of another. Gary just stood staring at them, bewildered by something that the other two men didn’t understand. Samson pulled his knife from the back of one eater’s head and grabbed the other eater trying to take a bite out of Andrew, slamming it to the ground. A once chubby old lady, her glasses still somehow on her face, writhed underneath his weight, her jaws snapping nonstop. Samson buried his diving knife in the center of her forehead and her eyes rolled off to one side, movement ceasing. Samson was back up on his feet and face to face with another eater for barely a second before Andrew caved the side of its hideous face in and the thing dropped like a pile of bricks.
“Last one, you take the honors” Andrew tossed the gold club to Samson and in one fluid motion Samson took a bow followed by his best golf swing, one that the pros would have been proud of. He smashed the club so hard into the final eater’s head that they heard its neck break.
They two men looked around, panting, astonished that Gary had simply stood there and not helped them whatsoever. “What’s the deal man?” Andrew stood directly in Gary’s line of sight but Gary still didn’t look at him. “Yo! I’m talkin’ to you, what’s your problem?”
Gary suddenly shoved him back. “This is my fucking problem!” He pointed to the minimal amount of eaters that they had just put down. “Where are the rest of
them?! You two weren’t exactly quiet just then, were you? So that means there aren’t any in the lobby, if there were they would have been up here by now.”
“Maybe they’re just that damn slow, Gary.” Samson cleaned his knife off as he spoke.
“Jesus Christ, don’t you get what I’m saying? We’ve put down what, twenty of the bastards? Half the lower levels were empty. That means I was wrong. For whatever reason the majority of them went back up, not down.” A string of muffled shots rang out somewhere above them.
“Ah shit! Clyde!” Andrew went running for the stairs in a panic. Samson and Gary followed close behind him, guns now drawn.
VII
“I’ve climbed more steps today than I have in my whole damn life.” Clyde trudged up the stairwell from the 11th floor followed by Ben.
“Feels that way, don’t it? Probably wouldn’t be half as bad if it wasn’t so hot.” Ben wiped the sweat from his face with the oversized t-shirt he’d changed into earlier that day. The back of the gray shirt was already drenched in sweat. “Really glad Gary had some extra deodorant.”
Clyde agreed as he adjusted his bandana around his thick braids. “Alright, let’s wake these bitches up.” Clyde tapped his gun loudly against a wall on the 12th floor. “Come to daddy!” Down the hall to the left of them a lazy eater in a dirty dress struggled to pull itself up from the floor.
“I got her.” Ben jogged up to the eater in the pink dress and swung his bat hard from the right, smashing her head in. Gore splattered the wall and she fell forward with a thud, bloodstained blonde hair covering her hideous face. “Piece of cake.”
Clyde was checking out the other end of the hallway. “All the doors are shut. We’re clear on this floor.” They made their way up, the next two levels were empty, not even any lazy ones hanging around. They continued one more level up and found a single open door at the end of the hall.
“Yoo-hoo! Anybody home?” Ben called out. He looked at Clyde and shrugged, they walked briskly toward the door. The light hurt their eyes as Ben pushed it open all the way. He covered his nose and mouth with his shirt and coughed. “Jesus Christ.” The half-eaten body of a woman lay sprawled out on the couch, she had a bullet hole in her head. Ben guessed the rotted corpse on the floor with the back of its head blown off was the thing that had feasted on her. He kicked it over with his foot and a lump of decaying flesh fell from its mouth. Maggots and other bugs writhed about inside of the eater’s half missing skull and Ben gagged.
Clyde vomited in the corner of the room near the window onto the dead body of a man with a gun in his hand. “I’ve seen some nasty shit.” He wiped his mouth and spat on the blood stained carpet. “But this is fucked up.”
“Nice way to pay your respects to the dead there, pal.”
Clyde looked down at the dead man who had eaten a bullet. “My bad, dude.” He turned away and started walking toward the door but then stopped. He crouched down, the crook of his arm covering his face, and pried the gun from the dead man’s hand. He checked the chamber, “Empty.” Shaking his head and dropped it in the man’s lap. “Sad ass story.”
Ben returned to the living room after checking the rest of the condo. “Let’s get out of here, place is empty.” They stepped back into the hall and although the building itself didn’t smell very pleasant, it was like a breath of fresh air to leave the room of death behind.
Clyde spat on the floor again, looking at Ben. “I don’t get it, Gary said this place needed to be cleared out. Where the hell are they all at?”
“Probably downstairs, you heard how them things started hollerin’ when he whistled. We lucked out man.” He pulled out his pack of cigarettes and held it out to Clyde.
He shook his head. “Nah man, my stomach couldn’t take it right now.”
Ben lit his cigarette and smirked. “Good, I’m runnin’ low anyway. Let’s get to it, I’m ready to get out of this oversized coffin.”
The two men nonchalantly continued on to the next level, they neared the landing and a putrid smell, worse than the one they’d encountered in the condominium on the previous floor, hit them in the face like a ton of bricks. “What the fuck.” Clyde rounded the corner and stepped into the hallway, his disgusted expression turned to horror when he was met by a huge group of eaters making their way to the steps. “Fuck! Get out of here, turn back!” He screamed back at Ben. Clyde scrambled to get back to the stairs.
Ben flew around the corner to make his way up the building but was blocked by an equally large group of eaters coming down the stairs. “Holy shit! Get back downstairs now!” He slammed into Clyde on his way back around the stairwell and the two men went tumbling down the stairs. Ben cracked his head against the bottom step of the floor below them and Clyde landed on top of him.
Clyde hurried to get up as the first of the many eaters made their way down the stairs. “Ben! Man, you alright? Get up!” He struggled to help Ben to his feet. Ben groaned and put a hand up to his head, his fingertips came back with a small amount of blood on them. “Come on man, we’ll patch you up later.” The surge of eaters from the back of the horde pushed the ones in front down the steps. They flowed down the stairs like lava, landing around Ben and Clyde’s feet, snapping their jaws and grabbing at their ankles. Clyde lifted a leg and smashed his foot down on one of the eater’s heads. “Ben! Get a fucking move on!” He shoved him forward and into the hallway. Clyde tripped over the grabbing hands and rolled onto his back, kicking the moaning faces that clawed their way toward him. Ben grabbed Clyde under his arms and pulled him back and away. One single eater clung to Clyde’s leg and was pulled with him.
“Get her the fuck off of me man!” Clyde tried desperately to kick her free but the dead woman tightened her grip on his flesh, breaking the skin. Clyde cried out as she buried her nails into his leg. Ben pulled his gun out and shot her in the head. His ears burned from the shot and added to the agony of the already throbbing pain in his head. He shot three more rounds into the closest eaters and pulled Clyde to his feet. They ran down the hallway toward the open door at the end. Clyde ignored the pain in his leg as he ran backwards, firing into the group of the dead and putting a few more down.
“Get in here, come on.” Ben pulled him inside and slammed the door shut. He turned around and saw Clyde on the floor, his pant leg pulled up. “Are you bit?” Ben brought his gun up and pointed it at him.
“No! Fuck no! Get that fuckin’ gun off me!” Clyde had his hands up, “Seriously, I’m not kidding. I wasn’t bit!”
Ben hesitated but brought the gun back down to his side. He knelt down and inspected Clyde’s leg. He could see the deep punctures, where the eater had grabbed him, but that was all, no bite marks. Blood ran down Clyde’s leg from the wounds. “Go in the bathroom and see if there’s anything in there to clean that wound up. Those things are full of disease and I’m not feelin’ much like watching you die from an infection.” Clyde disappeared somewhere in the condo and Ben stood in the middle of the living room, staring at the door. The dead pounded and growled, trying to get in, but they never would, the doors were too strong.
Ben kicked the dead eater on the floor angrily and threw himself onto the loveseat, staring at the dead woman on the couch across from him. “This is just great.” He closed his eyes and put his head back, wondering if this was the room he would die in.
Samson, Gary and Andrew flew up the stairs in a panic, the three men stopped when they reached the 15th floor. The group of hungry dead were gathered at the end of the hallway, trying their hardest to break through the reinforced door. The men went unnoticed by the distracted horde, even as they panted loudly, trying to catch their breath.
Samson pointed at the horde and pointed at his shotgun, raising an eyebrow. Andrew had both handguns ready to go, he nodded and looked to Gary. Gary shook his head no and ran back into the stairwell. The other two followed him.
“What the fuck are you doing man? My brother’s in there!” Andrew angrily whispered at the Brit.
&
nbsp; “Be quiet. Do you really think we have enough ammo to put them all down?” Andrew blankly stared back at him. “We need to get to my stash now, while they’re still interested in that door. Now come on, let’s move it.”
The tired men pressed on. They didn’t stop to check any of the floors, there wasn’t any time for that. They made it all the way up to the 24th floor and Gary pulled his set of keys out. Fumbling on the large ring for the right key, he finally slipped it into the heavy door and pushed it open. “Grab some shit and let’s go. I’ve got to find something.”
Andrew looked around in disbelief at the amount of weapons in the living room before him. “Where did you get all of this?” His mouth hung open at the boxes of ammo, the stacks of guns, the bladed weapons piled on the couch.
“That doesn’t matter right now.” Gary snapped at him and fished around in a cabinet under the dead television set.
Andrew holstered one of his own handguns for a .357 Magnum sitting alone on the coffee table. “Shit, it’s as if you were waiting for me.” He turned the gun over in his hand, admiring it.
Samson shook his head and smirked as he loaded up a second shotgun. “Gotta love a cop and his guns.”
“Better than a lawyer with a gun.”
“I’ll second that.” Gary called out from the floor, pulling out three pipe bombs.
“You’ve gotta be shittin’ me.” Andrew had seen and confiscated many a homemade explosive device before. “Let me guess, doesn’t matter where you got that from either?”
“You’re catching on. Now let’s hope our friends downstairs haven’t lost interest in what’s on the other side of that door.”
They quickly made their way back downstairs and crouched in the stairwell. Gary poked his head out, pulling a lighter out of his pocket. The eaters were still pointlessly beating on the condo door, a few of them just stood around growling at one another, growing bored with the task at hand. Gary pulled his head back and held one of the pipe bombs up in front of his face. “The good man that put his skills to work on this right here is probably standing over in that group over there. So, it’s a little ironic if you ask me, but, never the less, I am grateful for it.” He looked at Samson and Andrew, “This is going to be very loud and quite jarring, but as soon as the dust has cleared. We go in guns a-blazing. Alright?” The other men nodded and sat back on the steps. Samson covered his ears as Gary lit the short fuse.