by Perrin Briar
“What should I do?” Richard said.
“You stay here and watch this stairwell,” Steve said.
Steve walked with a limp. His metal arm was too heavy for him. He’d never worn it longer than a few minutes at a time before.
The soldiers gathered around the other stairwell.
Torn faces, like Halloween masks, jutted from the darkness, gruesome, grotesque. The soldiers dealt the undead swift blows to the face, stabbing them in the eyes and impaling their brains. The undead fell back on top of one another, but their lifeless bodies were pushed forward by the crowd behind.
“Form up,” Steve said. “Pairs. Line up, one behind the other. When one pair gets tired, the next pair will take over.”
Oaks and Taylor were up first. They hacked and beat at the zombies as they attempted to climb over the furniture. Blood spewed over the tabletops and chairs, pooling on the floor, their bodies going limp. It was thick, with dark lumps.
The first pair of soldiers grew tired. Steve and Susan were up next. They hammered and smashed the undead’s heads open, brain matter spilling over their destroyed faces. Susan found it remarkably easy to beat their faces in. She just had to imagine the fear on Amy’s face when Rosario had been bitten.
But the furniture was still being pushed back, and the screams and shrieks from the undead were getting the attention of more zombies on the second floor. And yet more were coming up the stairs from the first floor.
Amongst the noise, Susan thought she heard something. It was distant, weak, like a single human voice speaking…
She shivered. It was bad enough having to listen to the undead’s endless pitying groans that she also thought of them as still cognizant. But the sound continued and would not go away. Exhausted, Susan and Steve fell back. Oaks and Jericho took over.
A hand fell on Susan’s shoulder, making her jump. It was Phil.
“Can you hear that?” he said.
“Hear what?” Susan said.
“A voice,” Phil said.
“You can hear it too?” Susan said.
Phil said nothing and just listened, focusing on the whisper-thin voice. It was like a man speaking at the end of a long tunnel.
“It sounds like… like it’s coming from the corridor,” Phil said.
Susan’s eyes widened. Fear squeezed the air from her chest. She could hardly speak.
“Richard!” she said. “It’s Richard!”
Z-MINUS: 2 hours 9 minutes
Susan ran down the corridor, her lungs already burning. She ignored the shouts behind her, something from Phil and Steve. She didn’t hear their words.
She arrived at the second stairwell to find Richard holding the furniture in place with his back, his legs braced against the opposite wall. His body jolted forward under the onslaught of the undead beating at the underside of the tabletop. Each blow forced a grunt from his body. Sweat dripped from his forehead, his shirt drenched.
“They’re here!” Richard said, gasping. “Quick! Help me!”
Susan got down and held the table with him. Each zombie strike sent a bolt of pain up her back. She didn’t know how Richard had managed to hold on for as long as he had. The wood at their back splintered and snapped. Susan daren’t look for fear the zombies were right on top of them.
The table pressure released and rocked back. Phil had added his own weight to the fray. The zombie arms protruded from either side of the doorframe.
Steve, Jericho and Taylor stabbed at the infected, the number of undead dwindling.
A thick arm picked Susan up off the floor and stood her on her feet.
“Get up,” Steve said, picking Richard up too. “You’ve done enough. Go.”
The soldiers put their backs against the table. There was a split in the middle. It was going to break any second, each thud a death knell.
“How are we going to get out of here?” Phil said. “They’re coming up both sets of stairs!”
Steve looked one way and then the other, his trained mind working through the possibilities.
The zombies were already spilling out of the other staircase toward them. Oaks, who had been holding the position, moved backward, fighting, but losing ground.
“In here,” Richard said, moving into the room behind them.
They funneled into the room. It was the only place they could go. They shut the door behind them. Each of the soldiers was limping badly, drenched in sweat. The room they’d entered was festooned with small plastic containers, a museum of petri dishes.
The undead beat on the door, giving it its own heartbeat. Sawdust drifted down from the top. Richard gasped for air, still exhausted from his earlier exertion.
“They’re going to get in,” Taylor said in a soft, resigned voice.
“We’re doomed,” Jericho said.
Susan couldn’t accept that, not while Amy was in danger, not while she still drew breath. She turned to look at the room. There was always a way out, always something the creative human mind could take advantage of.
But all she saw were blank walls with no other doors or exits. No mech suit this time. They could jump out the window, but the fall would slam them into the concrete carpark. And then the undead would come, picking their bones clean. At least here they could put up a fight.
And then she paused.
“Of course!” Susan said.
“‘Of course’, what?” Jericho said. “‘Of course’, we’re doomed?”
Susan put on a pair of thick gloves. She input a code into a large vat in the corner of the room. Upon seeing this, Phil said, “Of course!”
“Is anyone else not getting this?” Jericho said. “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll use my guns now.”
“No,” Susan said. “Conserve your ammo. We’re not finished yet.”
Susan opened the vat, releasing a cloud of white mist that spilled across the floor. She reached inside and took out a container of green liquid.
“What’s that?” Steve said.
“Acid,” Susan said. “We’ll use it to burn a hole through the roof and climb through.”
“It’ll never work,” Steve said with a look toward the door. “At least, not in time.”
“It will,” Susan said. “We’ve been working with some highly corrosive materials recently. It was meant as a way to rapidly burn holes through reinforced concrete, metal, you name it. We added a sticky substance to make it easier to apply.”
She tossed the bomb up at the roof. It stuck.
“Get back!” Susan said.
They crowded into a corner of the room. After three seconds, the bomb exploded.
Once the smoke had cleared, they could see the roof had disintegrated and fallen away. Some of the acid had fallen below and scorched holes in the floor too. Undead were already beginning to gather underneath.
The floorboards creaked as Susan stepped toward it and peered up through the hole in the roof. Pipes and wires were exposed. There was still another layer to get through.
“Jesus Christ!” Jericho said. “I’ve only ever seen that shit in Alien!”
Crunch!
The door began to bend inwards under the undead onslaught.
“They’re getting in!” Taylor said.
“Brace the door!” Steve said.
The soldiers did, pressing their weight against it. Anything to buy just a little more time. Phil approached another vat.
“This is the sticky stuff we put on the acid bomb,” he said. “Pure glue. Get this on you, and you have to cut off whichever part of you it sticks to! Better hope it’s not your co-”
“Hurry up!” Taylor said.
Phil smeared the sticky stuff over the cracks and joins in the door. It wouldn’t make it any stronger, but it might hold for a little longer. Susan tossed up another sticky acid bomb.
Boom!
The second acid bomb went off. It immediately began to hiss and consume the roof. Susan peered through it, seeing the room above.
The door rattled as th
e undead banged and beat on it. The door was fastened tight to the doorframe, but now that too was beginning to lift away from its moorings.
“We don’t have much time,” Phil said.
A pair of soldiers dragged a table over the hole in the floor.
“You go first,” Steve said to Susan.
“It’s no time for heroics,” Susan said.
“It’s not heroics,” Steve said. He lifted his metal limb. “Climbing ain’t exactly our forte.”
“Oh,” Susan said.
She climbed onto the table, Jericho beside her. He put his hands to her waist and helped lift her. She grabbed onto some dangling cords and began to pull herself up. Jericho helpfully put his hands on her bottom to push her up. Susan swore she felt a squeeze.
Next, Jericho jumped and pulled himself up. He reached down and offered a hand to Richard. He was exhausted, barely able to move. The soldiers helped lift him. Susan grabbed Richard’s arm. It was hard work, but they got him up. Phil was surprisingly spry and seemed to leap up in a single bound.
The undead banged hard on the door. The wood splintered and a pair of hands reached inside.
It was Taylor’s turn. Phil and Jericho each grabbed one of her arms. They strained and turned red with the effort.
“Pull me up!” Taylor said.
“We can’t,” Jericho said. “You’re too heavy. Jesus, Taylor. You could do with losing a few pounds.”
Taylor gave Jericho the finger.
“It’s not her,” Susan said. “It’s her prosthetic. It’s too heavy.”
“What’s the use of new limbs if they’re too heavy?” Jericho said.
“They’re early models,” Susan said. “We were going to make them lighter.”
“That’s a great lot of use to us right now, isn’t it?” Jericho said.
“Hope you’re coming up with a solution up there,” Steve said, eyes fastened to the door.
“Take your prosthetics off,” Susan said.
“Are you crazy?” Oaks said. “We’ll be sitting ducks!”
“We already are,” Steve said. “Once they get in here, what chance do you think we’ll have of holding them back?”
He loosened the clasp of his prosthetic arm and let it hit the floor. The others followed suit. Taylor, with a shake of her head, let her leg go too. She stood on her real leg and handed her prosthetic up to Jericho, who laid it to one side. He reached down, seized Taylor by the hand, and pulled her up.
“Not so heavy after all, huh?” Taylor said.
“I wouldn’t say that,” Jericho said.
The door splintered open at the top. The undead behind it peered inside and growled in excited rage. The door finally broke. The undead spilled inside, flopping to the floor in their haste.
Only Steve and Oaks were left.
“Go on!” Steve said. “You next, Oaks!”
Oaks looked from Steve to the undead, who were getting to their feet.
“You go,” Oaks said. “I’ll hold them back.”
“No,” Steve said. “Climb up! Quick!”
“There’s not enough time!” Oaks said.
He hopped down off the table and swung his prosthetic arm around, smacking the undead with it.
Steve hesitated.
“Steve!” Susan shouted.
She reached down. Steve grabbed her forearm. Jericho, Phil and a couple of the other soldiers helped pull him up too. The moment Steve was up, he spun around and leaned down through the hole.
“Oaks!” he shouted. “Grab my hand you bastard! Now!”
Oaks spun his arm around and smacked another undead across the face, sending it sprawling. Oaks turned and crawled onto the table. He reached up with his hand. An inch short.
“Your arm!” Steve shouted.
Oaks raised his prosthetic arm, to give him the extra height he needed. He met resistance. An undead had hold of the shoulder straps. Oaks’ face screwed up. He knew what was about to happen.
Three undead were on him before he moved a muscle, biting into his soft flesh with blunt teeth. They wrenched hungry mouthfuls free. Oaks’ blood dribbled down their chins.
“Oaks!” Steve screamed.
He reached farther down the hole. Jericho, Susan and Taylor held him back, but still he stretched. His fingers found a strap on Oaks’ prosthetic.
Oaks beat ineffectively at the monsters with his fists. The undead bit hard at the soft parts of his arms, at his joints. Another dug its fingers into his soft belly and set to tearing out his entrails.
The undead slurped and supped on Oaks’ flesh. The iron tang of Oaks’ blood filled the survivors’ nostrils. Oaks’ screams were muffled by a zombie that covered his mouth, suffocating him.
Oaks’ body went lax. His eyes stared up at his comrades on the next floor.
“No!” Steve shouted. And then, weaker: “No…”
The table shifted under the zombies’ combined weight. There was a loud creak, and the floorboards snapped, giving way. The undead fell, along with Oaks’ body, into the hungry mass of snapping teeth below.
Z-MINUS: 1 hour 47 minutes
The zombies picked the flesh from Oaks’ body until there was nothing left but bones. And then they chewed on those, sucking out the marrow. No chance of him becoming one of them, at least. Small mercies.
The survivors were on the fourth floor, surrounded by a dozen bleeping life support machines. Comatose patients lay in permanent sleep, silent as the grave.
Taylor reaffixed her prosthetic leg. Her skin was raw where it had rubbed against her thigh. She got to her feet.
“We have to block the stairs again, otherwise those things are going to come up and knock next time,” she said.
Steve nodded, not much in the mood to issue orders. Taylor’s movements were slow and agonized. Steve didn’t move a muscle, didn’t even put his prosthetic back on.
Jericho put a hand on his shoulder.
“Some of us have to get unlucky sometimes,” he said. “It’s the way of the world.”
“Help Taylor,” Steve said.
He clearly wasn’t in the mood for chat or commiseration. Jericho pursed his lips, nodded, and then left.
Steve leaned his head back, resting on the wall behind him.
“He shouldn’t have had to die,” he said. “It should have been me.”
“It shouldn’t have been anyone,” Susan said. “None of this should have happened. But there’s more than just Oaks. There are millions of people out there going through exactly the same thing we are. He died for the cure, for a good cause. That’s what we’re all putting our lives on the line for. We have to make his sacrifice mean something. I’m sorry for him, really I am. But we have to keep defending ourselves. That cure, it’s all that matters right now.”
Steve just sat there, staring into space.
“He still didn’t have to die,” he said again.
He reattached his arm and flexed his metallic muscles, forming a fist. He used the hydraulics to push himself forcefully up onto his feet.
“Let’s get this floor buttoned down tight,” he said. “I’m not losing another one of us to those things.”
He left.
That left Susan, Phil and Richard. Richard lay on his side, pale as a ghost and panting for air. He was covered in a layer of sweat. It’d been a traumatic experience for them all. Apparently it had hit Richard harder than Susan had expected. Phil sensed the atmosphere.
“I’ll, uh, go check on Archie,” he said.
He left too.
“How are you holding up?” Susan said to Richard.
“Not bad,” Richard said. “A little sore.”
“Holding back all those undead,” Susan said. “That was pretty impressive.”
Richard shrugged.
“Not like I had much of a choice,” he said.
“Still,” Susan said. “You did well to last so long.”
They were silent a moment.
“Do you think Archie will manage to make the c
ure?” Richard said.
“He’d better,” Susan said.
They were silent again, letting the reality sink in.
“You know, I haven’t been with anyone else since we… split up,” Richard said.
“Split up?” Susan said. “No need to be shy, Richard. It’s hardly secret. We got divorced.”
But it had been painful. Friends suddenly felt they had to choose sides. Susan should probably have looked for a job elsewhere, but she had co-founded this project. She wasn’t about to leave it now.
“That doesn’t make it any less hard,” Richard said. “What I’m trying to say is I’ve been thinking, a lot, about us.”
There was a time when they would have been words to Susan’s ears, but that time had passed. Hadn’t it? A voice inside her, distant with time, screamed at her to say no, to listen, that it wasn’t too late. Susan stifled it immediately. He might hurt her again, might hurt Amy. Not again.
“Not now, Richard,” Susan said, her voice soft and whisper-thin.
“If not now, then when?” Richard said. “It’s the end of the world. Before long they’re going to get in here and we might never see one another again. I know I’d rather tell you how I truly feel than to die without letting you know.”
The world had changed. It was no longer the safe haven they knew. It was a world where they could become someone else and do whatever was necessary to survive. There was safety in numbers. Two adults could protect Amy better than one. That explained how she was feeling, didn’t it?
Susan nodded.
“Okay,” she said. “Tell me.”
Richard blinked in surprise. He hadn’t considered she would let him be open with his emotions. His eyes scrubbed left to right, thinking through what it was he wanted to say, putting his emotions into words. Human language was an incredible thing, but it was a poor medium for describing emotions. That was why people so rarely spoke about them, instead choosing to express them through actions.
Richard nodded, and then nodded more aggressively. He breathed through his teeth until his whole body vibrated. He wheezed, like an old man who’d been smoking forty a day. He collapsed to the side, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. He gasped through lips that were turning blue.