As Cold As The Dead

by R. M. Smith

  Phelps turned, bent down and lifted his wife’s hand. The fingernails had all been filed down.

  Doc put his hand to his chin, thinking.

  “This is sick,” I said. “Would you please cover her up?”

  “Of course,” Phelps said quickly hurrying again to the other side of the bed. He grabbed a blanket off the floor and covered Belinda. He was out of breath by now.

  She watched him with her yellow eyes.

  Sighing, Wendy asked, “What did you want to show us?”

  He reached to the low table again and picked up a flashlight. He clicked it on. Immediately, Belinda began to thrash on the bed. Her eyes bulged toward the light. She whipped her head back and forth, knocking the blanket off. She fought, yearning to get the light. Phelps covered her again with the blanket and clicked the flashlight off. Belinda calmed down, even let out a quiet whimper when the light went out.

  Doc stood staring, perplexed. “It drives them mad,” he said.

  “No,” Phelps said breathing heavily. “They want it. They are attracted to it. Now watch this.”

  He put his hand in front of her mouth. She stretched her neck forward to bite it. Phelps clicked the flashlight back on. Belinda completely ignored the flesh in front of her and began to thrash and fight to get the light.

  “She isn’t interested in me,” Phelps said with a weary smile. “She would rather have the light.”

  “We can use this,” Doc said slowly. “We can use light to attract them. And once they are all gathered around the light, we can eliminate them.”

  “Exactly!” Phelps shouted, exalted, out of breath. He clicked the flashlight off again. “Now, let’s go back to the house. I can tell you more.”

  Back inside the warm house with the fire blazing behind us in the huge fireplace, Phelps offered us more sun tea before we sat down. None of us wanted any. We wanted to hear what he had to say.

  “Alright,” he said, again pacing the room, beads of sweat on his forehead. “The attraction to the light became evident to me when Hexin told me he had been using a night scope to shoot zombies. The scope shines a red light at great distances, just a small circle of light. When Hexin aimed at the zombie’s head, it lit up the zombie’s face and made it react. At first I thought it might be a coincidence. Perhaps the zombie had seen Hexin and wanted to attack him. But I watched and Hexin even admitted he was aiming at the zombie’s eye; a skill he learned while playing Call of Duty on the Xbox.”

  Call of Duty I thought. Learning how to kill zombies by playing Call of Duty. Jesus.

  “So it got me thinking,” Phelps continued. He pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his brow. “Where could I find a light bright enough to attract hundreds of zombies or even thousands of them? And then it came to me: a lighthouse!”

  Wendy said, “But there aren’t any lighthouses around here.”

  “Ah, but there are. Or is! One is on Stony Point on the north shore of Battle Lake. It’s been unmanned for years. I went down there four days ago with Hexin and Belinda. It was all quiet. No zombies were around and no people were there. I broke in, climbed to the top…and I must say the lighthouse is in very bad shape. I believe it may have been condemned long ago, forgotten, left to rot in the weather. Needless to say, I climbed up to the generator room. It is on the top floor, right below the light beacon room. I fueled the generator, tinkered around with it a bit, and got it to start. The beacon illuminated, ran for a few seconds and then died.”

  “Four days ago?” Wendy asked. “What time?”

  “It was later at night,” Phelps said. “Not sure of the time. Why?”

  “I saw it,” Wendy said. “We were driving through Battle Lake. I saw the light from the lighthouse!”

  “Maybe that’s where all the zombies went,” I said. “Remember, they were gone when we came back outside!”

  “Yea! I remember,” Wendy smiled. “You saved our lives, Mr. Phelps! You saved us!”

  “Please, just Phelps,” he said kindly.

  “What caused the lighthouse to stop?” Doc asked.

  Sighing, Phelps said, “I believe it may have been the cogs. They were badly corroded. I’m not sure when the lighthouse was last operating.”

  “Did you try and reverse the engine?” I asked.

  “No. Belinda was attacked. I carried her down the steps inside the lighthouse. That’s when my chest started aching. My heart was beating terribly. By the time I got back here, I could barely breathe.”

  “Are you in much pain now?” Doc asked.

  “I take my aspirin. The bottle is nearly empty.”

  “We need to get you to a doctor,” Wendy said.

  Phelps said, “We won’t be able to find one. There’s no time for that I’m afraid.”

  Wendy asked Doc, “Do you think there might be something in the truck for Phelps? Whittridge had a bunch of vials in there and stuff.”

  “We could check,” Doc suggested.

  Phelps held up his hand. “Please, don’t worry about me. If you don’t mind my asking, would the three of you take Hexin and go back to the lighthouse to see if you can get it running again?”

  I said, “In California I used to run a crane unloading ships at the dock of L. A. Some of the older cranes we had got stuck sometimes due to corrosion. To temporarily fix it we ran the engines in reverse and then ran them forward again. The corrosion either crumbled off or we hacked it off with a hammer. They were just quick fixes, but they worked for an hour or two. We weren’t allowed to run them longer than that. We had fill out maintenance request forms, you know, to have them serviced.”

  Phelps nodded, “Yes, reverse the engine on the lighthouse. Good idea.”

  “Ok so once all the zombies are there, then what?” I asked.

  “You saw Belinda’s reaction,” Phelps said. “The light house…the light….it will attract them to it. They will stay there, surround it, and not leave.” He called out, “Hexin!”

  Hexin came running down the steps. “Yeah Dad?”

  “Get your coat on, son. You need to take these people back to Stony Point. I’m not feeling well enough to go.”

  I grabbed my shotgun out of Whittridge’s truck. Wendy got her pistol. Doc went through the vials in the tackle box. None of the vials were labeled. He didn’t feel right offering them to Phelps since he didn’t know what they were. He also loaded a knapsack with ammunition for our guns and Hexin’s rifle.

  Doc drove. I road shotgun. Hexin and Wendy sat in the back.

  Phelps stood in the cabin’s doorway waving as we drove off.

  It was twenty miles to Stony Point, a short peninsula on the north shore of Battle Lake. The road there had not been travelled since Phelps came back with Belinda. If it had, the tire tracks now had been blown over by snow.

  The landscape was serene. Snow had piled up and drifted against any north/south tree line or fence line. Drifts were easily fifteen feet deep, the tops curling over like spun ice cream. Fir trees looked like giant Christmas trees.

  Doc handled the roads well listening to Hexin’s directions. It was a straight shot east from the cabin and then south down a less travelled highway. Hexin pointed toward the west as we got closer. Lisping, he said, “If you watch through the trees you can see the lighthouse.”

  It popped through the trees occasionally, a tall weather beaten lighthouse with fading red and white stripes. Below, another building, the keeper’s quarters sat next to the lighthouse. The keeper’s quarters contained living quarters, a fuel house and a boathouse. A walkway connected the keeper’s quarters to the lighthouse on the second floor.

  “There’s windows you can look out when we climb up to the top of the lighthouse,” Hexin said. “They’re good vantage points for sniping zombies.”

  “What grade are you in now, Hexin?” Wendy asked.

  He gave her a crooked grin. “I don’t go to school, Whinny.”

  She sat back in her seat. “Please don’t call me that.”

  He sm
iled.

  “Yeah it’s not nice calling people names,” I said. “Especially not adults.”

  Hexin shrugged. “I don’t care.”

  “Well you should care, Hexin,” Wendy scolded him. “None of us like to have our feelings hurt.”

  He smiled showing teeth rotted to the gum line.

  Pulling up to the base of the lighthouse, Doc shut off the engine. Hexin pointed to a stack of firewood near the entrance to the cabin below. “That’s where Momma got bit.”

  Doc got out and pulled his crowbar out. He brandished it like a farmer stalking his henhouse looking for foxes.

  It was nearly four o’clock in the afternoon. Overhead, clouds ran past. On the horizon, darker clouds had gathered. A storm was coming in.

  I got out followed by Hexin. He headed for the cabin, his sniper rifle tucked under his arm, the snow up to his hips.

  Wendy got out and came around to my side. She held her pistol. I had my shotgun.

  “Hexin’ll clean out the keeper’s quarters,” Doc said leaning against the hood of the Blazer.

  Hexin entered. Moments later a shot rang out in the quarters. Wendy grabbed my arm. I felt like shaking her off but didn’t. I had to trust her now more than ever even though I still had my doubts about her.

  Another shot from the cabin.

  And another.

  A window on the second floor opened. Hexin popped his head out. “It’s clear now. I got em all.”

  “Alright,” Doc said. “Let’s go in.”

  Inside, fading sunlight shifting through cracks in the walls gave us enough light to see that the lighthouse keeper’s quarters were in shambles. Deep wood rot crept through all of the walls and support beams. Spider webs crisscrossed the room. Unmatched furniture sat here and there some pieces lying on their sides or broken. When we walked across the floor, large creaks and snaps echoed under our feet. The quarters had been looted long ago. Nothing of value remained. The lighthouse was abandoned.

  Hexin showed us to the stairs. Again, the wood creaked under our feet. More furniture sat askew in the room. A large pile of moldy trash sat in once corner. Most of the windows on the second floor were broken or missing glass. He led us down a long hallway to a door which led out onto a walkway between the lighthouse and the keeper’s quarters. The lighthouse towered above us. Large cracks ran up the side. Most of the paint had pealed. We went through a squeaky metal door on the side of the lighthouse and went in.

  The entire inside of the building was sparsely lit. Windows between floors were the only light sources. Spider webs strung side to side. A low hum echoed continuously inside from the howling wind outside.

  The interior of the lighthouse had three floors, one at the bottom, one half-way up, and the third at the top directly under the beacon. Each floor had been built in a half-circle. In other words, each floor at its position in the lighthouse didn’t completely fill the floor but only half of it. A six foot round cylinder responsible for turning the beacon overhead could be viewed from every floor. The length of the cylinder ran the entire height of the lighthouse. A set of metal stairs curled around the inside of the building connecting each room to the one above.

  Hexin said, “The generator’s on the top floor under the beacon. Follow me.”

  We went up, Hexin in the lead followed by Wendy, me and Doc. Doc slipped his crowbar back into the loop of his pants. Ascending the stairs the crowbar occasionally hit the side of the building causing a loud bonk which sounded like a drum in a barrel. Every time it hit, Hexin giggled.

  Going up the stairs I looked up at the inside of the lighthouse. It struck me strange that it had been built this way. Why put three half circle floors on the same side of the lighthouse? Wouldn’t it cause the lighthouse to lean?

  The second floor, built for storage, contained many waterlogged cardboard boxes. Most of them had been emptied of their contents. Some still held outdated bottles of used machine oil. Whether empty or not, all of the boxes had been stacked along the round edge of the lighthouse. Two work benches caked with dust sat along the straight edge of the room facing the cylinder. On the other side of the tables a rusted metal railing stretched from the stairs we had just came up to the other side where they continued upward. I looked over the railing. It was a long way down to the base of the lighthouse. I spotted three zombie corpses smashed on the concrete below.

  Hexin’s kills, I thought to myself.

  We continued up, following the stairs circling around the blank side of the lighthouse, passing an open window on our way up to the third floor.

  Wendy quietly said, “It sure is a long way down.”

  “Don’t look down,” Doc said, his breathing labored. “We’ll be at the top in a sec.”

  No one mentioned it, and I’m glad they didn’t, but hadn’t Phelps told us that he thought this place was condemned? I kept hoping that the steps wouldn’t collapse under our weight.

  Reaching the third floor we spotted the lighthouse generator. It sat at the far end of the half-circle room by another work table sitting next to the railing. Painted green, ancient and rusted, the generator had several push buttons on a side panel. Most were cracked or shattered from not being used. Each button had rusted nametags above them. One controlled cylinder direction, one its power; another jogged or inched along the cylinder and one was set to maintenance mode.

  A ladder positioned in the center of the curved wall led up to the floor containing the lighthouse beacon.

  I set my shotgun down on the table next to the generator. Wendy set her weapon down, too. Doc set the knapsack down by his feet. Hexin kept his rifle shouldered.

  I asked Hexin, “Your Dad put fuel in here?”

  “Yep he filled it all the way to the top. He lugged the gas cans all the way up here by himself.”

  “He wasn’t healthy enough to do that,” Wendy said.

  Hexin shrugged.

  She asked, “You don’t really care about him do you?”

  “Not really.”

  “He’s your father,” she said. “You should show more concern for him.”

  Hexin shook his head.

  Doc didn’t say a word.

  “Alright,” I said trying to change the subject. “I see a jog button but no reverse.” I unlatched a keyway on the side of the generator. The inside was covered with rust. Several different cogs the size of my head had frozen in place. Next to the cogs a large handle had been pushed into an UP position. On the top in stenciled letters it read FWD. Down near the bottom, the letters REV. I awkwardly reached into the generator cabinet and grabbed the handle. I had to twist my back to get a good grip. Once my grip on the handle was tight, I pulled it down. The handle, the central cylinder and the cogs moved very slowly.

  Hexin said, “Dad brought oil up from downstairs, too.” He held an open top oil can with a long spigot.

  I said, “Bring it over here.”

  He handed the oil can to me. I poured some on the cogs. “This ought to do it.” I moved the handle up and down working the oil into the gears. Shoving it down, I stepped back from the generator. “Alright, let’s try it.” I hit the power button. The lighthouse began to creak. For a second I thought it was swaying. Loud bangs echoed up the center of the building. I hoped the cylinder wasn’t going to crack. I said, “I wonder how long it’s been since this thing ran in reverse…or if it ever has.”

  No one answered. Doc went back over by the steps. Wendy leaned against the railing on the other side of the work bench with her hands in her pockets.

  I pressed the jog button. The cylinder stopped moving. “Alright that should be good enough,” I said. “The cogs should have smashed the rust down far enough.”

  When the cogs inside the generator had all stopped moving, I reached back in to reverse the engine. Twisting my back again, I grabbed the handle and shoved it up into the FWD position.

  I hit the jog button. The generator began to hum loudly. I felt a smooth vibration under my feet. Everyone looked around, surpris
ed that such a building would have a pulse. The cylinder turned.

  Doc smiled. “That’s the ticket.”

  “How about the beacon?” I asked. “Where’s the power for it?”

  “Over here.” Hexin said walking over to a power junction box on the wall next to the ladder going up to the beacon. He brushed off dust and cobwebs. “Right here. It says beacon.”

  “Flip it on,” I said.

  He pushed the handle up. Above us a loud bang sounded. The beacon was lit.

  It didn’t take long for zombies to notice. They started appearing out of the woods around the lake shore. Hexin told us to look across the lake. Hundreds were coming out of the woods.

  “Ok now we need to get out of here,” Doc said. “There’s going to be too many soon. They’ll come up the stairs.”

  “I thought they didn’t like flesh and all they wanted was light,” Wendy said.

  “If we’re in the way, they’ll eat us,” Doc said. “Remember, Belinda didn’t have any teeth. These do.”

  “Shit, go Doc,” Wendy said.

  Hexin stepped in front of her. He pointed his rifle at her.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “I saw you kill your Dad,” he said.

  “What?” she asked. “No. No I didn’t.”

  “You used a switchblade. I saw you. I was right below the window when your Dad shot it out after you stabbed him in the neck.”

  She backed away from him moving closer to the workbench where her pistol sat. Hexin poked his rifle into her belly.

  “Whinny killed her Daddy,” he said with a silly laugh. “Whinny did it.”

  “I told you not to call me that,” she said.

  “Whinny, Whinny, Whiney Whinny,” he sang.

  She grabbed his rifle by the barrel and yanked it out of his hands. “Quit calling me that!”

  “Wendy calm down,” I said stepping closer to her.

  Angrily she threw Hexin’s rifle over the railing.

  Hexin yelled, “Hey! That’s my gun, Whinny! You stupid retarded bitch!”

  Doc stepped forward trying to get between them. He didn’t want her to throw Hexin over the railing, too.