by Drew Brown
James stumbled back through the doorway, dragging Sam behind him. Blood was matted into the Californian’s long hair, and streamed down the side of his face. Carl ran up the last few steps and hoisted Sam’s limp body over his shoulder.
“Take him down,” James said.
Carl turned and obliged, jogging down the staircase.
Andy was next through the door, his hammer gripped two-handed. There was gore splattered over his face and torso, dripping from his white shirt. “Come on, Frank,” he yelled as he retreated to the stairs.
Frank jumped backwards through the doorway, thrusting the axe-head out into the dark corridor. He tried to speed the closing of the sprung-door, but several hands appeared in the space and made it impossible. He withdrew to the stairs.
Budd led the four men in their downward escape. He rounded the first half-landing and then descended the next flight of stairs in three large strides. James was right behind him, keeping pace. Andy and Frank, who were making a fighting retreat, had still not reached the half-landing.
Rather than wait for them—and probably just get in the way—I decided it was better to head straight back to the elevator and make sure everyone was ready to go by the time Andy and Frank did arrive.
Well, that’s what I’d tell anyone who asked…
Budd pulled open the door to the storeroom and ventured into the darkness beyond. He used the glow from the open elevator door as the target for his run. He navigated the racks and shelves with care born of not wanting to risk an injury and be forced to slow down permanently.
When Budd caught up with Carl, who was encumbered by Sam’s weight on his back, he settled to his pace, comfortable to be in the big man’s light. Other than for James, who was right behind them, the staircase door had not yet reopened.
Plenty of time remained to get ready.
They reached the semicircle of candles and stumbled inside. There was tumult in and around the freight elevator, with raised voices and small arguments, but Budd could hear none of them above the sound of his thumping heart.
Juliette came to him, wrapped her arms around his neck and stepped up onto her tiptoes to kiss his cheek.
“I am so glad you are back, Monsieur Ashby. That man,” she said, pointing towards Chris, who had slunk into the back of the elevator car, “said everyone was dead and that we must leave. The doctor and I refused.”
“Thank you, sweetheart,” Budd said. He shot Chris an angry look, but before he could say anything the door from the staircase swung open, banging against the wall.
Time was short.
30
Little could be seen across the dark storeroom, except for a small rectangle of light, which was cut to ribbons behind the black silhouettes of the racks and shelves. As Budd watched, several shapes moved across the bright outline. There were certainly more than two.
Andy and Frank were not alone.
In the candle-lit space around the elevator car, chaos and panic erupted. Most of the group fled into the lift, but the doctor paused to help move Sam. His wife maneuvered the cart through the open concertina doors, while James and Carl headed off into the blackness, flashlights in hand.
Budd stayed where he was, the axe ready in his hands.
Juliette stood beside him. “Shall we get into the lift, Monsieur Ashby?”
“In a minute, sugar. I don’t want to be cooped up any longer than necessary,” Budd said. He watched the light from James and Carl’s flashlights advance across the room. The beams captured Andy and Frank weaving their way to safety, the younger man resting his weight on the shoulder of his colleague. Thirty feet further back, several figures were lurching after them, but even with Frank’s injury the pair were easily making ground.
“We should go now,” Juliette said, reaching out and touching Budd’s hand.
He turned to her, tilting his head down so that he could look directly into her brown eyes. “Go and slide the elevator doors so they’re only barely open. I’ll keep watch from here.”
Juliette nodded, let go of his hand and went to the concertina doors. From the inside, she started to close the outer door.
Budd checked that she could get the job done, and then looked back to the tableau of horror caught within the flashlight beams. Andy and Frank were much nearer and moving faster now that James had reached them and was helping to bear the injured man’s weight. Carl’s light roamed the space behind them, revealing the horde of walking dead that followed in their wake.
Budd examined the monstrosities, sweat forming on his brow despite the cool temperature of the refrigerated storeroom. Their arms were outstretched and their mouths were open in a silent cry. Their gait reminded him of seeing people walk on ice; they could move, but only very slowly and each step threatened to have them topple over. Nevertheless, the outline of the stumbling mass was terrifying simply because of the numbers; he could see at least two dozen of them coming on, each one dressed in black pants and white shirts or blouses. Even moving slowly, there were far too many to fight in such a compact group.
All that could be done was to flee.
Having seen a big group of them together, there was no disputing the word “zombie.” It was official…
Budd backed away to the elevator doors, which he reached as Andy, James and Frank crossed into the semicircle of candles. Alongside the three bunched men was Carl, who no longer used his light to show the multitude that followed. Even to Budd the effort had seemed pointless; a clear sixty feet now separated the two groups, and the distance was growing.
“Get in t’lift,” Andy shouted, but Budd ignored him and simply stepped aside to let the small band of men pass.
Behind them, a shape rushed out of the shadows towards the candle-lit semicircle, gaining ground on the party with speed that Budd could not fathom. Protectively, he raised his axe in defense and started to voice a warning, but already he guessed that the new arrival, a man, must have been a fellow survivor; he was not sprinting, but he was certainly moving at a run.
As the male, an office worker, pressed on into the candlelight, only a few paces behind the others, Budd realized the truth; it was one of the things. The office worker’s eyes were wide, his lips were pulled back around his teeth and his hands were outstretched like claws. Blood stained his white shirt.
If I’d have been writing a dictionary right then, I think I’d have gone insane. No sooner had I settled for the word zombie—you know, which casts images of the slow-moving, stupid-acting living dead—than this one starts running around and messing things up.
Now, I guess you’d have to call this one a beast. Of course, at the time I wasn’t actually thinking this.
No, I was thinking “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…”
“Get down,” Budd shouted, but his warning was far too late and the office worker/beast crashed into the back of Frank, hitting the center of the small huddle and knocking the three of them to the ground. Carl stepped away from the tangle of thrashing bodies, but Budd stepped forward, the axe held high above his head, ready to fall given the first opportunity.
He hesitated.
Andy, Frank and James fought to escape the beast’s clutches, rolling and writhing on the linoleum floor, making Budd’s blow as likely to decapitate them as it was the snarling office worker. He cursed, glancing occasionally into the shadows, frightened that another of the approaching zombies could move as fast as the one at his feet, but also because he knew that the rest of the horde would soon arrive.
With a shove from Andy, the beast was on the edge of the group and Budd saw his chance.
The axe sailed down and its heavy blade lopped off the office worker’s left leg, striking a little above the knee. Red blood pumped from the stump of the leg as the beast turned towards Budd, howling in pain. The thing clawed its way across the linoleum, reaching for Budd’s boots.
“Get bent, stumpy.”
There was a perverse smile on Budd’s face as he embedded the axe blade into the top of the beast’s head,
sinking the metal deep into its skull. He placed his left boot on the office-worker’s shoulder, pinning the corpse down, and then worked free the weapon’s tip. Blood welled up from the wound the instant the blade was removed.
“Come on,” Andy shouted, already back on his feet and helping Frank up.
Budd took a final look around the darkness and then squeezed into the elevator.
It was time to go.
31
As soon as everybody was inside the freight elevator with the doors closed and the latches attached, Andy pressed the button marked with an upward arrow. A mechanical tremor reverberated through the floor and walls and the car began its journey. There was a collective sigh of relief.
The elevator was easily big enough to hold the twelve of us. Heck, it was bigger than most of the apartments I’ve lived in. But I still felt cramped. I didn’t like being hemmed in. Especially because we were being railroaded to the next stop: according to the control panel, the eighty-five-odd floors between the basement and the restaurant didn’t exist. If things went bad at the top, the only place we could go was back down.
And I didn’t fancy that. Not one bit…
The doctor had laid out his three patients along the rear wall of the elevator. De was sitting upright, wounded but healthy enough to talk. Sam was in the recovery position, unmoving and quiet, with a large swelling across the top and side of his head, a blow from something that had rendered him unconscious. Even so, his breathing was steady, his airways were clear and he appeared to be sleeping rather than suffering from something more serious.
Frank’s injury occupied most of the doctor’s time. He had what looked like a broken, or at least fractured, wrist. The young hotel worker was sitting up, his back against the elevator wall, his left arm clasped to his chest. His face was pale, deathly white, and his watery eyes flickered between the doctor and his wife as they knelt with him, offering what little help they could.
Juliette left Budd’s side and settled next to them. She touched Frank’s right hand and gave him a smile. After that, she turned to keep a vigil over Sam.
Budd looked on for a moment and then wandered forward, seeking Andy. “Wasn’t there meant to be a couple more of you?” he asked, speaking the words he was sure the others were thinking. “Those two nice hotel workers from the Zombie Protection League?”
Andy nodded his head. “They’re dead,” he said with enough volume for his words to seed a hushed gasp around the lift. “One of t’office doors gave way. Those monsters overwhelmed us before we had a chance to react. We couldn’t fight our way through to save them.”
“What about that last one? It was running,” Budd said, his left eyebrow raised quizzically as he thought about what he’d seen. “It was definitely running.”
“The others were slow,” Andy said. “If they were all that quick we’d have had no chance.”
I tried not to let my expression give away my own opinion on the matter. I already had my money on the zombies…
“Now then, everybody, I didn’t want it to happen this way,” Andy said, addressing the entire party from the front of the lift. “I was expecting to be able to leave some of you down in t’basement while t’stronger of us came up to check t’restaurant. Sadly, that couldn’t be. When t’lift arrives on t’top floor, myself, Budd, Chris, an’ - would you two mind?” he asked, looking to James and Carl, who both immediately nodded their acceptance. “We will head outside to examine t’area. Father McGee, once we’re outside, I want you to close t’outer door an’ wait inside with t’rest. Leave t’inner door open, though, or t’lift might get called back down.”
“Of course, my son,” the old priest agreed. He tugged at his white beard.
“Hey, who said I was going to help?” Chris said. He folded his arms across his chest. “I’ve seen those things and I’m staying in here. You can go play hero if you want to.”
Andy looked at the man for a while, oblivious to the silence that had befallen the lift. With his face blank of emotion, he unhooked his hammer, still sticky with blood, and then looked Chris straight in the eye. “T’way I see it now,” the hotel worker said, his strong body rigid beneath his blood-soaked white shirt, “there are only two kinds of people in t’world: those with us, an’ those against us. Which are you, Chris?”
Andy looked on the verge of snapping. I didn’t have one iota of doubt that he’d carry out his threat…
Chris held up his hands, shaking his head. “I’m with you, and I’ll help, I just don’t like being volunteered. I speak for myself.”
“Good,” the hotel worker said, and then looked away, searching out the weapons inside the elevator car. Besides his hammer, Budd had one axe and another lay next to Frank.
Carl followed Andy’s eyes to the weapon and he scooped it up one-handed. “I can manage this,” he said.
“Okay,” Andy replied. “There’s another fire-point to t’right of where this lift opens, so one of you two,” he said, looking to James and Chris, “can grab an axe from there. Apart from that, we’ll be coming up in t’kitchen. I’m sure we can find something to use.”
Chris nodded.
“No problem,” James said, his thumb poised over the switch of his flashlight.
Andy looked at the object. “T’kitchen has plenty of windows. You won’t need that. Those of you not coming had better get to t’back of t’lift; we’re nearly at the top.”
Juliette came and stood alongside Budd. “I want to come with you. I can help, Monsieur Ashby.”
“I know you can, but stay here anyway, sweetheart. Understand?”
“You can be a great help to t’doctor,” Andy added. “He needs a caring hand, my girl.”
Juliette looked between the two men, but there was only sturdy resolve on their faces. “Good luck,” she said.
Budd turned to the door, the axe held across his waist. Carl was beside him, Andy ahead and James and Chris a footstep behind. In his body, Budd felt the elevator slow its ascent. His stomach churned. Andy reached for the latch, getting ready to tug the handle. The rumble of the elevator’s motor sounded close.
With a shudder and a thud from above their heads, the elevator stopped.
“What happens if there are more of the fast kind, boss?”
“We’d better hope there aren’t.”
32
Andy pulled back the inner door wide enough for them to pass through in single file, and then he shuffled forward and slid open the outer one. He stepped outside, vanishing into the room beyond, turning from the door.
Budd followed the hotel worker.
The kitchen was big, airy and open-planned; he guessed that it totaled about a quarter of the level’s floor space. Andy had been right about the visibility; large skylights were installed at ten-foot intervals and cast an even light across the room. With an upward glance, Budd saw the sky above was filtered grey by the thick clouds.
The kitchen floor was covered in pale blue ceramic tiles, and standing upon them was line after line of stainless-steel worktops with cupboards beneath them. Scattered every so often along the worktops were a wide selection of cookers, hot plates, griddles, spits, grills, sinks, dishwashers and refrigeration units. There were also neat stacks of plates, bowls and dishes. In one place was a selection of wicked-looking, long-handled knives.
On the wall was a large white clock, but the black hands did not move. The time displayed was three minutes after one. When the disaster had struck, Budd was sure that the tidying up from the night’s meals had already finished; the kitchen was too immaculately laid out for anything else to be true.
It was also too sparsely populated.
Budd counted five of the walking cadavers in the kitchen; each one dressed in the traditional whites of a chef, except that they lacked their tall hats. Turning slowly, the zombies began to meander towards the freight elevator, but there was plenty of time to deal with each one separately.
Best of all, Budd saw that none of them were moving with any
speed.
Following Andy, Budd headed to the left, skirting around the outside of the kitchen as they aimed for the most isolated of the former chefs. The zombie, his arms outstretched and his mouth open, lumbered forward to confront them.
Andy clambered onto the left-hand countertop, keeping the hammer in his right hand, nearest to the aisle. Budd realized what the hotel worker was planning and stopped. He lowered the axe to the ground and waved his other arm, trying to attract the monster’s attention.
The ploy worked; the chef-zombie staggered towards him.
Andy smashed his hammer into the top of the thing’s head, embedding the weapon up to its shaft. When the deadly tool was retracted, if left a perfectly round hole behind. The chef-zombie crashed to the floor at Budd’s feet, still writhing on instinct, his ability to think, to act of his own desire destroyed.
Bit by bit, the body became still.
With a relieved smile, Andy jumped down from the worktop.
Budd stepped over the corpse, being careful to keep his boots away from the oozing blood. He looked around the kitchen to find that two of the other zombies were already down. One had fallen to Carl’s axe, while James and Chris had dispatched the other. The pair, working together, had killed it with a combination of a smaller fire-axe and a heavy, powder-type fire extinguisher. Budd watched as the two of them confronted a second chef-zombie, amused by the way Chris filled the zombie’s face with the spray of fine powder, stopping its advance and almost toppling it over, before James dealt it a blow with his single-handed axe.
The honeymooner had to chop down on the zombie several times before it was dead. Each swing sent an arc of blood into the air, which splattered the cupboards and worktops, and even splashed drops across one of the skylights.