“So we just go and hope for the best?” Phil asked.
“Isn’t that the plan we’ve been following our whole lives?” I asked him. “Why change things up now?”
He nodded, not looking very comforted by my version of the Saint Crispin’s Day speech. He put his hand on the doorknob and took several deep breaths—trying to psych himself up. Then he threw the door open and ran through.
I followed and nearly ran into him. He stood in the darkened basement, shotgun up on his shoulder and at the ready. More red emergency lights were the only thing throwing off any illumination down here, too, but the space was so cavernous—the same footprint as the building above—that it might as well have been full dark. All the support pillars down there threw what little light there was into all sorts of weird shadows that might hide a whole army of zombies.
“Which way is northeast?” Phil whispered.
Shit, why ask me about direction? I thought about it. What direction had we been traveling when we parked the car? Where was that in relationship to the building’s entrance, and where were we now? Ugh.
“Over there, I think,” I said and pointed in what I hoped wasn’t just a random direction.
“Stick right behind me,” Phil said. “And watch for anything behind us.”
“This isn’t the first time I’ve done something like this,” I said. But I did as he suggested.
We crept along the darkened space, every footfall sounding like a hammer blow on the concrete. We swept our guns toward the slightest noise or perceived movement. It felt like it took us a half hour just to cover ten yards.
“We need to be moving faster,” I hissed in Phil’s ear.
“I’d rather take my time than blunder into some unseen zombies, Courtney,” he said. He wiped sweat away from his eyes.
“One of Buddha’s goons told me that this place is rigged to blow,” I said. “Apparently, Buddha’s paranoid about cops or another gang taking over the place. I don’t know if it’s true, but I don’t want to stick around and find out.”
“Well, shit,” Phil said. “Okay, here we go.”
He took off at something halfway between a fast walk and a run. A jog? A trot? My much-loved vocabulary was failing me. Keeping up with him was taking too much effort to use my brain properly.
We cleared some pillars and then we were staring at the far wall. A door stood there, but it wasn’t marked. Anything might have been on the other side of its pitted white surface.
“Is this it?” Phil asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never seen it before.”
“One way to find out, I guess,” he said. He stepped forward and threw the door open. All we saw was blackness. No lights of any kind, not even red emergency ones. But there was something.
“Feel that?” I asked Phil.
“What?”
“A breeze.” I felt it against my face. Not strong, but it was there, and the smell it carried was dirt and rain and trees. Outside.
“This is it,” Phil said.
“This is it,” I agreed. “Let’s go.”
We stepped into the tunnel and for a few seconds, red light filtered into the space. Then the door closed and we stood in utter black.
Phil took point again and we moved as fast as we could in the complete dark—sort of a fast walk. As we went, I did my best to keep my brain from screwing with me. It kept wanting to serve up images of hands reaching for my face, like I was a little kid afraid of the dark all over again.
Every once in a while, one or the other of us would call to stop and we’d listen. Each time we heard nothing, but the breeze was getting stronger. We’d run on again after catching our breath.
I had no idea how long we’d been running when Phil called for us to stop.
“See that?” he said. “Ahead of us?”
I was about to tell him no when it came to me that I really did see something. If I squinted, I just made out a light.
“Let’s go,” Phil said.
Before we took off, we heard something in the tunnel behind us. The door to the basement opened and after a few seconds, closed again.
“Hello?” I yelled. “Buddha?” No answer. “Buddha’s goons?” Still nothing.
“What the . . . ?” Phil said.
“Know what I don’t like?” I asked. “This. I don’t like this. Let’s keep moving.”
And we ran on. We kept our eyes on the growing patch of light, but behind us we heard something moving. At first it was the sound of walking, then it grew until I knew there was something running to catch up with us.
“Keep running,” Phil said. “We’re almost there!”
And then something stepped into the light from outside the tunnel. Phil’s steps faltered, but I grabbed him by the arm and kept running. “Don’t stop,” I said.
So we ran right at the zombies that were waiting for us at the end of the tunnel. I fell back as Phil let loose with a blast from his shotgun. I whirled around and assumed a two-hand stance. The moment a runner came into view, I pulled the trigger. The thing’s head flew backward and its feet kept running. It looked like it ran into a clothesline.
More shotgun blasts and I squeezed off another round as a zombie, a girl, came into view. I hit her shoulder and she stumbled, but she kept coming. Dammit.
I took a deep breath and squeezed off another round. A small dot appeared on her forehead and she looked sort of surprised as she fell over.
My ears rang because the shots were so loud in the confined space. Phil grabbed me by the shoulder and motioned for me to get out of the tunnel. He slammed new shells into the shotgun. I took off. Just as I cleared the mouth of the tunnel, a zombie jumped at me from the underbrush. I screamed and swung at the thing. The barrel of my pistol gouged a huge gash in its face, but that hardly slowed it down. It was on top of me in a flash.
As I lay on my back, I looked up an embankment and saw the street. I almost called for help before I remembered that there were no people up there, just shufflers and runners.
I did my best to hold the zombie at arms’ length, but the damn thing moved like a monkey or something. I had time to notice it wore a letterman’s jacket, but not from any high school I recognized.
“Phil!” I shouted.
I heard two more shotgun blasts. How many shots was that? I hoped Phil was keeping count.
I kept trying to get the pistol in position to do some good, but the monster on top of me refused to hold still. Just when I thought my arms were about to give out, a foot lashed out and connected with the thing’s head and it flew off me. Phil stood over me, then aimed his riot gun at the thing thrashing on the ground. Its thrashing days came to an abrupt end.
Phil gave me his hand and helped me up. “We have to get out of here,” he said. I agreed.
We ran up Twentieth for a few yards, then ducked behind an overgrown shrub. Looking back down the street, I realized that unless you knew what you were looking for, you’d never see the entrance for the tunnel. No way the zombies just happened to be standing there.
“I got two more that had been behind us,” Phil said. “Sorry about the one that jumped you. I thought I’d cleared the entrance.”
“It was waiting for me,” I said. “It was trying to trap me. The whole thing in the tunnel was a trap, you get that, right?”
“I guess I do,” he said. “There’s no way it could have been anything else.”
That was the very first time someone had ever agreed with me when I talked about zombies laying traps. Usually people looked at me like I needed some new medications. I felt a strong urge to kiss him right then, but I put it in check.
“We need to keep moving,” I said. “I think we need to work our way up past the apartment complex, then up the street where we left the car.” God, I hoped they hadn’t found the car.
We moved off as fast as our feet were able, stopping whenever we thought we heard something that wasn’t us. It took us a good fifteen minutes to make it around the apa
rtments. Somewhere in there it started to rain and we were soaked and freezing. I was worried I’d be unable to squeeze the trigger anymore as cold as my hands felt.
Pretty soon we were running up a street that ran parallel to the one the car was on. We just needed to find a cross street, then we’d be able to cut over. The sun was starting to go behind the Portland hills and it’d be dark soon. I wanted us on the freeway before that happened.
We found a connecting street and ran for all we were worth. There it was. God, never had I been so relieved to see a stupid Subaru. Phil climbed in and I was about to follow suit when I stopped.
“What is it, Courtney?” Phil asked. “What’s going on?”
I looked down the street, the way we’d originally walked to get to the apartment building, and I saw a lone figure standing there watching the carnage at the bottom of the hill. Brandon. Brandon stood there like some sort of slack-jawed general watching his troops.
I walked away from the car and from Phil, and walked calmly down the hill toward Brandon. As I walked, I raised my pistol and fired a round. It didn’t hit him, but it got his attention. He turned and looked at me. For a second, I thought he was about to wave or something, then he hissed at me. I fired again. And missed.
“Come here, you shit!” I yelled at him.
A handful of zombies, boys and girls, but all young, came running up the hill toward me. I stopped walking and started aiming more carefully and picked off three of the things. Then there was a pair of strong arms around my waist and Phil was carrying me back to the car whether or not I wanted to go.
“Put me down,” I shouted and thrashed in his arms.
“We need to get the hell out of here,” he shot back.
I slammed my head back in frustration, and through the back of my skull, I felt something give way on Phil’s face. It wasn’t enough to get him to let go. We got to the car and he threw me in the front seat. When he leaned in to make sure my legs didn’t get shut in the door, I saw that blood streamed out of his nose and down his face. That calmed me down. I’d done that to him. Hell.
He turned and unslung the shotgun from across his back. He let off three or four volleys from the scatter gun and the rest of the zombie pack fell down dead, or near enough. He walked around the front of the car and climbed in.
“Go,” he said.
I did as he said. I swung the car in a tight U-turn and got us headed in the opposite direction.
“I think the rumor about the building being rigged to blow was bullshit,” he said.
Just then from behind us a huge fireball filled the darkening sky. It felt like someone shoved the rear end of the car, and I fought to keep it under control. I slammed on the brakes and we turned in our seats to look. Orange flames threw everything into shadow. Brandon stood down the street, silhouetted by the explosion. I couldn’t tell for sure, but I thought he was still watching us—me—rather than the destruction of his zombie army.
We sat forward in our seats, both of us too tired and freaked out to say anything about what we’d just seen. I put the car back in drive and got us the hell out of there.
The guard who let us back on the freeway asked if we knew what had happened.
“We seen a big ol’ fireball,” he said, “but we’re not sure where it come from.” He might have asked us because both Phil and I looked like we’d been in a war. The hundred dollars I slipped the soldier shut him up, though.
We’d been on the road for a while when I said to Phil, “Sorry about your nose. Is it broken?”
“Don’t think so,” he said, touching it gingerly.
“I wasn’t really thinking straight,” I said.
“I gathered.”
“You saw who I was shooting at, right?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Phil said. He wiped his nose with his sleeve and grimaced. “And before you ask, yes, I know just who orchestrated that little surprise party at Buddha’s.”
I didn’t know what to say. Again, I’d expected some push back for thinking that zombies planned and orchestrated anything more complex than walking.
“I guess the question,” Phil went on, “is, what do we do?”
“You’re asking me that?” I asked.
“Yep,” he said. “You’ve been thinking about this longer than anyone, Courtney. So, I’m going to look to you for some sort of answer.”
It was one thing to go from being a lone nut whom no one believes to being looked at like some sort of expert whom folks look to for leadership.
“I’ll have to get back to you on that,” I said.
“Great,” Phil said. “Until then, I’m going to close my eyes and hope this pain in my face goes away.”
He dropped off to sleep, and I still didn’t have any answers by the time he woke up.
We went to my place as soon as we hit Salem to let Phil wash his face. While he was in the bathroom, I started to cook an actual meal. Sure, most of it was frozen stuff that just needed to be opened and thrown in the oven, but it was better than calling for takeout.
When Phil came into the kitchen, the blood was all gone, but that just made it easy to see how swollen his nose was.
“God,” I said, “I’m so sorry.”
He waved it off and went to call his aunt and uncle and tell them he’d be having dinner at my place that night.
Later we sat down to a dinner of chicken strips, tater tots, and formerly frozen peas. It felt very domestic and grown-up. We talked about a few things, school and Cody’s goofiness, but we kept coming back to what had happened earlier that day.
“Do you think Buddha made it out of the building?” Phil asked.
“No,” I said. “I just hope he let it fill up with as many zombies as possible before pushing the button.”
“I keep thinking about that girl,” Phil said.
“Precious.”
“What a stupid damn name,” he said.
“She should have gotten out with us,” I said.
“She didn’t know us,” he said. “She wanted to be with someone who made her feel safe.”
“I know what you mean,” I said. “That’s why leaving with you was the only choice for me.”
Phil put down his fork and leaned across the table. I met him halfway and we kissed. After so much death and destruction, it felt like a jolt of life. I felt just the barest twinge of guilt about having kissed Warren a couple of nights ago.
“That was nice,” I said.
“It was,” he said.
“I wish you’d stay the night,” I said. I covered my mouth with my hand. I hadn’t expected that to come out of me. I’d just been thinking it.
“I don’t know,” Phil said.
“No funny stuff,” I said. “I swear. It’s just that after today, I need some closeness, you know?”
He seemed to really consider that. “Yeah, I do know what you mean.” He got up to call his aunt and uncle again.
“Thank God my uncle answered,” he said when he came back into the kitchen. I’d started cleaning up and he joined me. It reminded me of cleaning the dishes with Gene, his uncle.
“What did you tell him?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” he asked as he took a dish from me and started to dry it.
“Did you tell him you were staying over at Cody’s or something?”
“Why would I do that?” he asked. “No, I told him I was staying here for the night.”
My mouth fell open and I nearly dropped the plate I was holding. “Phil!”
“What? My aunt and uncle trust me,” he said. “I’m not going to lie to them about what I’m doing.”
“Do you tell them everything you do?” I asked.
He thought about that for a moment. “No,” he finally said, “but I don’t actively lie to them unless I have to.”
“So you just said, ‘Hey, Uncle Gene, I’m going to shack up with Courtney tonight,’ and he was okay with that?” I asked. I couldn’t wrap my head around this.
“I would never
say ‘shack up,’ ” he said. “Otherwise, yeah. He grilled me about protection and stuff.” He had the good grace to blush at that, and I did, too. “I told him nothing was going to happen.” He gave me a significant look.
Fine, dammit. Though to be honest, I wasn’t sure why I wanted something to happen so badly. Sure, Phil made me think impure thoughts, but things were more complicated than that. Part of it felt like it might make up for what I did with Warren. Maybe that was reason enough to just let it go if Phil wasn’t ready.
“Nothing will happen,” I said. “Scout’s honor.”
“You were never a scout,” Phil said.
“True,” I said, “but I always thought I’d look good in the uniform.”
We decided to watch a movie, and I let Phil choose the DVD this time. Watching him go through the process of picking something was sort of terrifying and fascinating at the same time. He dug out literally every film we had and started making piles. First by genre. Some genres got discarded immediately—good-bye, comedies; farewell, musicals. Then he went through the piles that were left and made discard and keep sub-piles. On and on it went until he’d finally settled on something he wanted to watch.
“Black Hawk Down,” he said. “I get war movies, you know? The motivations and objectives all make sense to me.”
“I knew you were going to choose that the moment you laid your hand on it,” I said. “The look you got in your eyes.”
“Maybe,” he said. “I still needed to go through the process.”
I didn’t have the heart to point out that it had taken almost as long to pick something to watch as it would take to actually watch it. We put it in and snuggled together and I fell asleep almost immediately. When it was all over, he woke me up and I tried my best to dry the huge drool spot that I’d left on his chest.
“Ready to hit the hay?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll take the couch again.”
“Nope,” I said. “You’ll sleep with me in the big bed.” When he started to protest, I put up my hand and stopped him. “Listen,” I said, “I promised you no funny business, and I meant it. But after the day we had, I want some snuggle time, and I’m not going to argue about it.”
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