Billy was still rummaging around in the closet when he heard footsteps behind him. He spun quickly, raising one of the axes, but it was Ali.
She was smiling, and holding a camouflage compound bow. “Finders keepers.”
“Where was that?”
“Next to the fridge, which is pretty well stocked, but there’s blood all over everything. This poor guy must have gotten thirsty after he was bitten, and he bled on all the food and drinks. I don’t think we should touch any of it. There were only eight arrows in this little quiver, plus these four attached to the bow.” She held up the bow for Billy’s inspection, waving her hand as would a hand model, to indicate four vertical arrows held to the bow with a mini-quiver.
Billy nodded his appreciation and continued searching the closet, finding two unopened packages of broad-head hunting arrows on a shelf.
Ali took the arrows reluctantly. “I just don’t know how could you do it…”
Billy was confused. “Do what? I didn’t do anything, did I?”
“No, not you, the guy who lived here. How could he shoot Bambi?”
“Mmmm Bambi… Tastes almost like chicken except for all the deer. Don’t knock it, now we have a distance weapon.”
They searched a little more and found a flashlight, some canned goods and a jar of what looked like beef jerky. Ali had been right, there was no way to salvage anything from the blood covered food and drink in the refrigerator. Consuming something from there would undoubtedly infect whoever tried. A few minutes later, it was time to go.
The trip from the third floor apartment to the tiny lobby was uneventful. They tried the other three apartment doors on the way down, but all were locked. As the two exited the door into the lobby, which was really a small hall with some mailboxes, the stairwell door closed behind them with a snick! Ali tried it, but it was locked.
“Shit,” she whispered.
Their only remaining options were the front door, and a steel door that clearly led to the basement. The glass panels in the front door were concealed by curtains and reinforced with an ornate iron mesh for security. Billy gently parted the curtains to peek outside, and peered directly into the blood red eyes of an undead telephone repairman. Billy shut the curtains, but the damage was done. The thing on the other side of the door began to wail, and started banging on the glass, which broke on the third hit. It grabbed the mesh and started to pull for all it was worth. The curtains fell away, and the two survivors looked out upon a sea of dead faces all coming for the door.
“No. No, no, no!”
Ali started pulling on the door they had come through, but it wouldn’t budge. Panic was setting in.
“No time, we have to go down!” he told her.
“And get trapped in the friggin basement? Are you nuts?”
“Well, yes actually, but we still need to go! Now!”
Billy’s exclamation was punctuated by the snapping of the flimsy iron grate covering the window. The sheer weight of the undead trying to get in was compromising the door frame quickly. He ran for the basement door, pulling Ali behind him. The door opened onto wooden stairs disappearing down into complete darkness. He flipped the light switch and was rewarded with nothing. As he was rummaging around in his pack for the flashlight, the front door came crashing in, and the tide of zombies surged forward. The ones in the front fell with the door, and the ones behind crushed their hapless brethren as they shambled toward their prey.
Ali closed the door hard, almost knocking both of them down the stairs.
“Now I can’t see!” Billy complained as he fished through the pack by feel. Seconds later a slap sounded on the other side of the door, then thumping, then the howling started. There was an army of undead less than three inches away.
Standing on the stairs, in the dark, with legions of cannibals at her back, Ali began to cry. She screamed when a beam of light slashed the darkness and hit her in the face.
“Let’s go!” Billy grabbed her hand and they hurried down the stairs. There were boxes and assorted stuff in piles everywhere. Storage for the renters upstairs. Small casement windows were painted over, allowing no light to speak of into the subterranean room.
“Now what?” she demanded.
“I’m out of options, kid, it’s your turn.”
“What? You trapped us in here?”
“Yeah, as if there was a flying unicorn up there to whisk us away! What was your plan, huh? Fight them in the lobby with a bow?”
She started crying again. “I don’t want to die like this! They’ll tear us to pieces. Pieces!”
Billy shifted the light back and forth looking for anything to help them. As he was frantically searching, Ali tripped on something and fell sideways. He turned the light on her and she was sitting on the floor, knees to her chin crying hard. She had given up. He hurried over to try to console her when he saw what she tripped on. It was a tripod with a small powered winch attached. Billy’s eyes went wide, and he panned the flashlight around the floor with sudden hope.
Ali covered her ears to shut out the pounding and muffled noises from the opposite side of the door. She looked up and saw Billy searching.
“What are you doing?”
He ignored her, in favor of moving a few boxes to clear a space on the floor. His rearranging revealed a raised, round metal disc in the floor, with hinges and a recessed handle. He grabbed the handle and groaned as he heaved upward. It was heavy, but it came up, the hinge protesting with a shrill scream. Rusty rungs, embedded into the wall of the cylindrical opening, descended into darkness.
“Come on!”
She joined him among the boxes, wiping her eyes on her sleeve, and cautiously approached the edge of the hole in the floor, looking down. “I’m not going down there.”
“So you’re gonna what? Stay here? Now who’s crazy? Pieces remember? Not only are you going down there, you have to go first!”
She took a quick step back, her voice took on a panicked edge. “What? Why?”
“Because I need to shut the cover, now go!”
Ali studied the opening, then glanced back through the gloom to the door at the top of the stairs. Already there were thin slivers of light streaming through the top and side of the door. It was starting to give way. In moments, dozens of ravenous undead would flood down the stairs and rip into her.
She passed Billy the bow, and resolutely began inching down the slippery rungs. He passed the weapon back to her when most of her was below the basement level.
Following quickly, he shined the light below, but couldn’t see past Ali’s slowly descending outline. He reached up and grabbed a second handle on the bottom of the round cover. It wouldn’t budge.
“It’s wet down here!” Ali called to him.
Billy put the light in his front pants pocket, and hung all his weight from the handle of the iron cover, his legs dangling into space below. He started wiggling, banging his knee on one of the ladder rungs before the heavy metal lid started inching forward. Suddenly the cover completed its fall all at once, slamming closed and breaking Billy’s grip on the slimy handle. He fell, landing with a splash in shallow water at the bottom of the shaft. Hot shivers of agony splintered up his leg, but the pain was brief as his backpack hit another obstacle and propelled him forward. His head connected with something solid and he was out cold.
“Billy! Billy are you OK? Oh shit…”
Ali didn’t relish being down in this wet, slimy shaft alone, but it would be infinitely worse if Billy was dead. Then she would be down here with a zombie. She pulled the still lit flashlight from his pocket and shined it on him. In the murk, she couldn’t tell if he was breathing, so she felt for a pulse, and was rewarded with a strong thud-thud under her fingers. She heaved a sigh of relief, and panned the white beam in both directions down the egg-shaped brick-and-mortar corridor they were in.
The passageway went both right and left as far as the flashlight illuminated. As she was turning around to check behind her, she whacked the lig
ht into one of the ladder rungs and it went out. If she thought it was dark in the basement above, then the black down here was absolute. There was a fleeting moment of panic as she hit the flashlight with her palm, but it came back on.
She could barely discern shuffling footsteps scraping across the manhole cover a few yards above her. The basement was no longer empty.
18
Commander McInerney radiated authority as he addressed the citizens of Alcatraz. He had already discussed the fate of the world, and the pros and cons of using the island as a base for his sub and troops. A few pertinent questions were asked by the group, but one man was proving difficult. Yes, Mr. Martingale was definitely going to be a problem.
“So now we’ve gone from a police state to a military dictatorship?” Martingale demanded peevishly.
“I assure you sir, there will be no dictatorship. I will not attempt to force you into anything, or steal from you, but each person here will need to contribute if we are to survive. If we—”
“Contribute what? Will we be forced into slave labor?”
“Sir, I just told you I would not be forcing anyone…”
“Yes Commander, but what assurances, other than your word, are you willing to give?”
“I’ve given orders for a complement of weapons and ammunition to be given to the police who were here when we arrived. There will be training for these weapons for anyone who desires it. In addition, this man,” the commander indicated a sailor to his left, who stepped forward, “is Lieutenant Commander Pitt. Pitt is an expert on military history and tactics, and is in charge of Hammer Platoon, Detachment Bravo while their OIC and the rest of the platoon is otherwise engaged. Lieutenant Commander, please tell them what you told me about Alcatraz.”
Pitt stood tall and addressed the room with his hands clasped behind his back. “You folks had an excellent idea to get away from the city. There was really no other option. You chose this island because even though the proximity to the mainland isn’t as far away as you would have liked, you have a distinct barrier between you and the Lima Deltas, the undead. It was a good plan, but there are issues. This is a partly cold weather climate near the sea. You’ll eventually need to grow food here, but I’m guessing you don’t have the resources, and maybe not the know-how. In addition, the cold weather and rocky soil on this island could defeat your crops before you start growing. You’ll need to run forays into the city to get supplies, which is a huge infection risk. Then there’re your defenses. For right now, the distance you’ve put between yourselves and the Limas is good, but you have no walls at the beaches. What happens if ten thousand Limas decide to walk across the bay and onto the shore here? They’re dead, so they don’t need to breathe. Did you see Pirates of the Caribbean? Once they figure that out, they’ll come across the bottom and you’ll get invaded. You’re going to need walls, gun emplacements, buttresses, battlements, etcetera. But the most important drawback of the island is that it’s an island.”
This last was met with confused stares, including from Meara and Barnes.
Pitt clarified, “You came here because it’s an island, but you didn’t take into consideration, or didn’t have time to think about, where you could run if you had an outbreak. Eventually, somebody here’s going to die, and there’s no place to run if the Limas are already on the island. You’ve done great work, but there’s still a lot to do, and we are willing to help.”
“But you’ve still parked a nuclear submarine next to our living quarters!” Martingale shrieked.
One of the commandos that had caught Martinez by surprise leaned over to him and whispered: “Is this dude for real?”
“You have no idea…”
Martingale continued: “Now that we’ve learned there may be no spare parts for your reactor coming, how can we be sure we all won’t die of radiation poisoning, or any other nuclear factor?” He stabbed his index finger at McInerney, bypassing Pitt altogether, “You’ve said we can use your help, but you really work for us anyway! We are the American people, and you swore an oath to protect our way of life, from all enemies, both foreign, and DOMESTIC! If you think for one second that we…”
“Mr. Martingale, SHUT UP!” McInerney was incensed. “You seem to think that some agency is going to sweep in and make this all better! Well, all the people manning those agencies are stumbling around looking to cannibalize the folks they were sent to help! They’re dead! All of them! The country you knew is GONE! We are here because we, just like you, have no place else to go.”
The commander took a deep breath and seemed to visibly calm himself. “What we are doing here is discussing options that will be mutually beneficial to all concerned, and your constant interruptions and outrageous accusations are not helping. If you have any intelligent questions or anything intelligent to add, by all means do so. If not, please do not waste our time.”
Not giving Martingale time to interrupt, McInerney turned to the Lieutenant Commander: “Lieutenant Commander Pitt, if you would conclude please?”
“Thank you, sir. As I was saying, it’s almost July. If we want to survive past September, we will need to foray into the city and get some things. Specifically growable foods, tools, and construction supplies. We need to make a wall around the scalable portions of the beach. It won’t need to be huge, just something we can use to hamper the progress of the Limas, maybe six to seven feet. Also, and this is tremendously important, we will need to fashion weapons, probably pole-arms of some sort.” Pitt held up his hand to alleviate the oncoming questions, “Ammunition is a finite resource, especially as there aren’t any more factories in production. We should only fire our weapons as a last resort, conserving as much ammo as possible for any crowds we may encounter, in an attempt to alleviate getting swarmed.”
Pitt continued, “I believe that the first thing we do should be to isolate people to the cells, with a mechanism—”
Martingale went berserk. “I KNEW IT!” he screamed. “We’ll all be slaves to their agenda!”
He carried on for a moment longer before Anna Hargis stepped up and punched him in the face. Martingale staggered back, holding his assaulted nose.
“You’re going to get us killed and I won’t have it,” Anna yelled. “We all almost died getting here, and now you want to spit in the face of the best help we could possibly have? Are you an IDIOT?” She raised her fist as if to give him a second wallop, and Martingale cringed, but Dallas grabbed her by the waist, lifting her effortlessly as if she were a child.
Dallas held her up as she struggled momentarily. Everyone looked between her and Martingale until she regained her composure. Dallas gently allowed her feet to touch the floor again when he was certain her killing mood was gone. “Ya made yer point, kid. He ain’t gonna be mouthin’ off for a spell.”
Sporadic hooting and applause went through the crowd, and a slew of children, Rick’s daughter Sam among them, came from the next room to see what the hubbub was about. Sam was engaged in an imaginary conversation on her now useless cell phone.
Rick stepped up and quieted everyone with his raised hand. “Alright people, this is exactly what we don’t need. Fighting amongst ourselves is how we die. We need to work together. All of us. Please, no more fighting, and if anyone wishes to be heard, I’m sure the Commander and the Lieutenant Commander will take constructive questions at the end. Lieutenant Commander?”
Pitt was not smiling.
“As I was saying, and please let me finish before you interrupt, I think that putting people in cells by family is the best way to contain an outbreak here on the island. We can construct simple locking mechanisms that a human could figure out but not a Lima. This way we can each egress the cells when needed, but a potential infection risk is already quarantined. Nobody is locked in but the Limas.”
Nods of agreement and some small banter went through the crowd. This guy seemed to have it all figured out.
“Are there any practical questions?”
A little boy, who had wande
red into the meeting holding the hand of a young woman, stuck his hand in the air.
Now Pitt did smile. “You in the front?”
“Can I go in the submarine?”
Pitt glanced at McInerney. “That could be arranged.”
The rest of the children’s hands shot up instantly.
“I think we can take everyone aboard who would like to visit,” said McInerney, “perhaps in small groups.”
Sam stepped forward and spoke to her father. “Daddy, Mommy wants to talk to you.”
Rick smiled. “We’re almost done here, honey, we can play in a minute.”
“No Daddy, she said it’s important.” She held the cell phone at arm’s length toward Rick.
Rick took the phone and put it to his ear listening. There was nothing. Frowning, he looked down at Sam, holding the phone out for her to take.
“That isn’t funny, Sam. Try not to do that again, OK?
Distressed, Sam took the phone. “But daddy!”
Rick was beginning to respond when the phone rang.
19
Doc Murda contained his rage as best he could. A United States nuclear attack submarine? Obviously that was difficult to contend with. The momentum had shifted, and not in the direction he wanted it to. Murda had lost quite a few soldiers to misfortune, or perhaps due to his anger. Would the outcome of the battle have been different if he hadn’t let the cat out of the bag prior to the attack? Probably. Sour grapes though. There was no re-do on this one, his soldiers were dead.
In addition, as he grilled the occupants of the boat that had not been sunk, he couldn’t come up with a plan on how to take Alcatraz with it being guarded by one of the deadliest weapons of modern warfare. Yes, this would take some thinking.
“So it just exploded?”
“Yeah,” Masta G answered, “there was this warning from a guy named McAllister, or McNamara or something, but we all thought it was the people on the island talkin’ shit. Then the other boat just blew up. That same guy told us to leave, and we did.”
Run: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller Page 15