The Apocalypse Crusade (Book 1): War of the Undead Day One

by Peter Meredith

  When she was satisfied that it wasn't going to be able to get at her anytime soon she tried to figure out where the hell she was. The room was just about as black as it could be. Splaying her fingers she swept the walls next to the door, looking for a light switch, but not finding one. The dark was impenetrable and the smell, nasty. She had no clue what sort of room she was in until her shin barked up against a solid object. “Ow!” She bent down and found something hard and smooth. Tracing its outline, she discovered it was a toilet. Even though she still wore latex gloves, she pulled her hands back in disgust.

  Now that she had a point of reference she discovered the dimensions of the small lavatory: six by four. The light still eluded her until she felt something in her hair. Thinking it was a spider she did a gross-out dance until she heard the chain above her head clink sideways against the light bulb suspended from the ceiling.

  “Well, shit,” she said, feeling stupid. She reached out to paw the black air until she found the string. With a yank she had light, but no hope. The bathroom held an ugly little toilet and a sink, both of which were so filthy it was hard to believe they were as new as they were. Other than a mirror on the wall that showed Anna she was no longer the fairest of them all and a single roll of toilet paper, there wasn’t anything in the little box of a room.

  She was trapped.

  In despair, she slid down the door, which thrummed against her back as the zombie beat on it, relentlessly. Ten minutes went by with nothing changing other than the conviction that she was screwed. The zombie wouldn’t stop until either the door came down or the police would show up in large enough numbers to “rescue” her from it and put her in jail.

  Since patience was her only option she clicked off the light and sat down again, and waited, and waited. In the world above, the families were being rescued from their cottages and General Collins, having just been debriefed was sitting in his pajamas studying a map of the

  Hudson Valley and realizing that the units of the 42nd infantry division from New York weren’t going to be enough to sustain a quarantine of the magnitude that was being asked of him.

  Almost above her head, Von Braun was busy filling the wide lobby with every zombie within reach. Already there were over a hundred and fifty wandering around the lobby, knocking into each other. Further up on the fourth floor, one of the hinges gave out on the central door and Deckard found his hand being held in a tight, cool grip. It was Thuy displaying the full extent of her fear. It was there behind her breastbone, a point of pain that had been building with each passing minute.

  “It’ll be alright,” Deckard breathed into her ear. “I won’t let anything happen to you.” She didn’t believe him. Logic dictated that she would be killed in the same manner as the others: eaten alive.

  Anna sat through all of this, waiting patiently, barely breathing as minute after minute ticked on by. No prayer crossed her lips. It seemed blasphemous to even consider a prayer when she was hoping to kill twenty-three people…not that they didn’t deserve it, she thought to herself for the hundredth time. They were the ones judging without proof, sentencing her simply because they didn’t know who the real…

  A sudden touch of cool air at her wrist cut across her thoughts. She felt at the bottom edge of the door and found there to be a gap of at least an inch where cool air was slipping in. This little thing triggered an idea. Her greatest hope had been that the beast would stop its incessant hammering and go away. Only it never would on its own; it would need the promise of something else to lure it away.

  She dug in her pocket and found two coins, both quarters, change from the vending machine on the third floor outside the cafeteria. Carefully she took one and set it rolling beneath the door. She heard the tiny clink as it hit the floor and for a second she heard the tread on its edges at it wheeled away. After that, nothing. The zombie, who hadn't heard anything, kept up its ceaseless banging.

  Anna bit back a curse and produced the second coin. This time she got on her hands and knees, but instead of rolling the coin she slid it beneath the door as hard as she could. She could hear it skitter across the floor and then came a little sound: tink.

  Immediately, the zombie stopped and turned. She could hear its heavy breathing retreat and then a slapping noise that she couldn’t place came to her. It went on for some time and unfortunately it wasn't all that far away. Using her good hand, she undid the buckle on her one shoe and then stood, deciding right then she was going to make a break for it, no matter how close the zombie was to the door.

  She would have to be fast and her escape would have to be all or nothing.

  Pausing only to make sure her mask was square on her face, she threw open the bathroom door in a quick move and saw immediately that her escape was going to be very, very close. The beast was nine feet away, staring down at a pipe, with its hands raised. It had been faced away, but at the sound of the door it had begun to turn. Anna surged forward, seeing she’d have to pass within arm’s reach of it. Speed was her only defense.

  As she ran by, a diseased hand slapped down on her back, grabbing her lab coat, and checking her momentum. With a shrug of her shoulders she let the coat go and then she was speeding down the hall, racing on bare feet for the elevator, her soles slapping on the cement. The doors came up so fast that her momentum threatened to carry her beyond them. Skidding to a halt she bent, grabbed her shoe from the crevice and then leapt in. "Come on," she hissed in a panic as she repeatedly jabbed the button for the third floor. She tried to will the doors to close faster; they seemed to take forever.

  With a thunk they closed in the zombies face. “Thank God! Oh, thank you, God!” she cried not caring that she was on her way to commit mass-murder. She bent over at the waist, panting, “Almost done. I’m almost out of here.”

  As slow as the doors were, the elevator seemed to speed to the third floor the elevator. Before she was really ready the doors opened. Nervously, she peeked her head out of the door just in case there were still zombies around. The only light came from the elevator, making it difficult to peer into the dark, but as far as she could tell there were none. She started for the cafeteria and was halfway between the elevator and the double doors of the cafeteria when the central stair door opened and a zombie stumbled out.

  It was Von Braun. To him, she was nothing but a splash of white in the dark and the erotic, exotic aroma of a hot woman. He could smell the sweat of her fear as well as her pussy and he was after her before he could think.

  “Von Braun! Stop!”

  Hearing his own name made him blink, her face coming into focus. “You! You left me. You were supposed to cure me and look at me. Look at me, bitch!” He looked just the same to her—gross.

  “I have your pills. Remember the pills make you better.” She had the bottle out and was rattling it again. At the same time she was backing away because he looked on the verge of losing it. “Here they are, like I said. I also have the cure right upstairs with Dr. Lee. Remember her. Remember how you were going to kill her.”

  “I was going to kill you,” he seethed.

  “Then do it,” she challenged. “Go ahead kill me and see what happens to you. There won’t be any cure for you, and no more pills and…”

  “And no gook,” he said. It was all coming back to him. He ground his teeth, not even feeling it when one of his molars broke; he only chewed on the splinter and felt his hate grow. “Give me the fucking pills, bitch-whore-shit!”

  “Here you go.” She poured ten of the pills into the cap, which she held out to him. The pills clicked off each other as her gloved hand shook. It was clear to her he was on the cusp, seconds away from going full on zombie. His limited control was fading. “Here. Take them," she said.

  A part of him wanted to just let go and eat her, but his head was killing him and he had a vague memory about the pills. They helped the pain. They helped everything. “Gimme,” he said, taking the cap. Watching her, he ate the pills.

  “There,” she said. “You’
ll start to feel like your old self any time now.”

  He stared at her for a full minute, his eyes dripping black crap onto the floor; she didn’t dare look down at the twin puddles, afraid he would attack her if she broke eye contact.

  “It’s not working,” he growled, taking a step at her.

  “I said it would take a few minutes, ok? Maybe we should finish up with our plan.”

  “I already did my part. Those fuckers are all down stairs. What the fuck have you been doing?” He took another step at her. When she took a corresponding step back, he grinned, showing his broken teeth. “What’s wrong? You been going behind my back? What were you doing all this time?”

  “I was busy hiding from one of the zombies you were supposed to have moved into the lobby,” she snapped right back. She wasn’t easily cornered but when it happened her claws came out.

  Von Braun’s grin widened. Once he got his cure, he would kill this girl and eat her. He was going enjoy ripping her open. Without realizing it he stepped into the elevator where she had her back to the wall. “Get out!” She held up the opened bottle. “I’ll throw it, I swear.”

  “No you won’t.”

  “And you won’t attack me,” she said, forcefully. “So back off. I need you to go down stairs to the lobby. It’s time to release the zombies on the police. Do you understand?”

  His black eyes gleamed. “Yeah, it’s time for a pig roast.” The idea excited him and wearing an evil grin, he left her, and headed for the stairs.

  “Thank God,” she said again and hurried through the cafeteria to the kitchen where she stood in front of the six ovens. In the dark, without their usual gleam, they seemed old and dead. But they weren’t, not yet at least.

  Anna went to each, checking for the little blue flame that would indicate a burning pilot light. They were all dark. She tried to start one of the burners, without success, but she could hear the hiss of gas; it was surprisingly loud. “Alright, alright,” she said as she dialed all thirty-six burners to high. The smell of the gas was immediate and overpowering.

  Now, she was stuck with the dilemma of how to start the fire without blowing herself up in the process. A number of labor intensive and farfetched ideas came to her: a fuse made out of Wesson oil soaked sheets that she could run all the way from the first floor, a flaming zombie, enticed to wander up the stairs using strategically placed cell phones to draw him on. She discarded these ridiculous ideas and decided to use a primitive drone: the elevator.

  She took the elevator down to the second floor where, after a quick search of the nurse’s station, she found a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a lighter that was stashed in one of the desk drawers and a heavy sweater—everything needed to start a fire.

  “Now all I need is that dumb fuck, Von Braun to come through.” She went to a window that faced the front and saw that the entire lawn of the facility was covered in people…zombies, actually. They were everywhere. There must have been two-hundred of them. They milled around for about ten minutes and then suddenly the pop, pop, pop of gunfire reached her ears. Coming through the glass it was a soft sound. Outside it was loud enough to attract every single zombie. As one, they began marching through the gates.

  The gunfire picked up and Anna felt a stab of queasiness. People were going to die, hell, they could already be dying and it was all her fault. She could blame Thuy, but deep down she knew better. She was trading the very likely chance of her going to prison for all the lives that were going to end that night.

  “They made me do it,” she said, trying to convince herself. “They set this all in…” The smell of gas caused her to stop her blame shifting. It was just a whiff, still it was shocking how quickly the air in the building was being infused.

  “I better hurry,” she whispered, heading for the elevator with her little bundle under one arm. She took the elevator down one floor and again paused to see if there were any stray zombies. There were two of them. Fortunately for Anna they had their faces pressed against the glass and were staring out at what was beginning to sound like a major battle going on beyond the gates.

  With little choice, she turned her back on them. She piled the heavy sweater into an ugly pyramid and then doused it with the alcohol. Then she reached up and pressed the button for the third floor and as the doors were closing she lit the sweater. It blazed merrily and then the door closed and she was running to get out of the building before it was too late.

  Chapter 15

  //11:40 PM//

  1

  Two minutes earlier, Stephanie was sitting in the hall with Chuck, lazing her head upon his broad shoulder, trying not to think about the drumbeat from hell that the zombies had kept up all this time or that the central stair door was a millimeter from losing another hinge. She had kicked all this out of her mind and was simply breathing in this man with whom she had found such a connection to, when she smelled the gas.

  After being confronted with her looming death for so long, alarm over the smell was not her initial reaction. Curiosity was. “Do you smell that?” she asked Chuck. “It smells like gas.”

  “It wasn’t me, I swear,” he drawled out, grinning at her.

  She shoved him, unable to help her own smile. “No, I mean it. I smell gas. Should we be worried?”

  He took a big sniff. “Well, hell, I smell it, too. Maybe it's nothin' but to be on the safe side, I should mention it to Dr. Lee.”

  “No, I’ll do it,” Stephanie said, getting up. “I’m feeling much better.” She’d been sitting for the last few hours and had regained much of her strength. With barely a cough, she walked down to the central door where most of the scientists were sitting. They had given up hope and for the most part they were doing little besides waiting for the zombies to break through.

  “Excuse me, Dr. Lee,” Steph said, coming to squat close to where Thuy and Deckard were sitting. She felt bad for interrupting them. They’d been holding hands, but now Thuy quickly pulled her soft ones from his callused paws.

  “Yes?”

  “There’s a gas smell down the hall. You know, like natural gas. That sort of thing. I thought you should know.”

  Thuy’s brows came down as she gave a tentative sniff to the air. “You can smell it from down there? That doesn’t make any sense.” She jumped up and hurried down the hall toward Chuck. Over her shoulder, she asked, “Deck, can you check the control room? If there’s a leak, it would be coming from there, not down…”

  She stopped, struck by an urgent feeling of déjà vu. A memory was shifting in her mind, trying to come to the surface: it was the first time she’d come to the Walton facility. She’d been standing pretty much right where she was now, staring about at her half completed lab and wondering how all the work was going to get done on time. Then Deckard had come in. He had stood right where he was standing now…but he hadn’t remained there. He had walked past her and right around the hole in the floor where he could see right down into the cafeteria.

  “The kitchens are down there,” she said to herself. Gas could only be coming from two sources: the huge industrial sized kitchen ovens below her, or from the lines Thuy had pulled out from the walls—except the lines were shut off. “Von Braun,” she hissed. It had to be him behind the gas leak, which meant… “Chuck! Get over here. Everyone move to the south end of the building. I think Von Braun is up to something with the gas.”

  Stephanie watched Chuck slowly get to his feet. Nonchalantly he put his fists into the small of his back and stretched. “Damn it, Chuck!" she screamed. "Stop playing it cool!”

  A heavy hand grabbed her arm. It was Dr. Wilson, sweat lining his brown face. “Come on, Ms. Glowitz. We can’t wait on him.” The smell of gas was heavy in the air. The scientists started to run and Wilson ran with them, pulling Stephanie along with him.

  Thuy counted them as they ran past. “Twenty-one…who are we missing?”

  “Riggs and Milner,” Deck said. “They’re down in the last lab.” Thuy started running. In her mind, she s
aw herself running down there, getting them and running back, no problem. She made it three feet before she was pulled up short by Deckard. “Don’t be stupid,” he growled in her ear.

  He had her by the arm with one hand and in the other he had his cell. It took two second to find Riggs’ number. “This is Deckard. You and Milner have to get out of there.”

  “Did the zombies get through?” Riggs asked. He was already hurrying for the door.

  “No. There’s a gas leak,” Deck yelled into the phone. “We think it’s been intentionally set. Grab Milner and get down to this end of the building, quick.” After a second as he felt a strange fear ripple the air, he added, “You better run.”

  Deckard thumbed the off button and looked up. Chuck was just passing the elevator and glanced at it—he thought he’d heard the machinery going. Riggs and Milner came fast walking around the corner at the far end of the hall. On the floor below, the elevator, with the sweater burning and puffing out black smoke, let out a pleasant ding! The doors opened about a foot and a half, just far enough to allow the methane to come swirling in.

  A fraction of a second later the gas exploded with an indescribably, deafening roar and a shock of light. In a blink it turned night into day for miles around. Every window on the third floor blew out, sending shards zipping through the air for hundreds of yards.

  The explosion rocked the building, shaking the floors and cracking the support structure in a hundred places. Water pipes burst sending thousands of gallons water cascading through the interior walls to flood the basement. As a crescendo the glass walls of the labs came crashing down in a noise like raining thunder.

  One second, Thuy was looking at Riggs and screaming for him to run and in the next she was knocked off her feet. She slapped up hard against the linoleum. With her cheek pressed to the floor she was in a perfect position to see the hall undulate like a low wave, like water. Then her vision was filled with clear crystals and sharp glass so that it seemed like she was looking at the world through a kaleidoscope.