by Ray Wallace
The church had been quiet, immersed in darkness except for the flickering of a lone candle burning atop the altar, the pews filled with sleeping people. Anyone still awake—he hadn't known the exact time only that it was very late—would have been outside standing guard, keeping an eye out for zombies or any humans who might have less than noble aspirations in their heart.
Groaning, Pastor Lewis had gotten to his feet, legs protesting all the while. When he’d felt certain he wouldn't fall over, he’d reached out and taken the brass candle holder in his hand then leaned his rather sizable bulk against the altar, trying to move it, wondering if he'd be able to in his weakened condition. Eventually, it had moved, inch by inch, had threatened to sap the last of his reserves along the way.
"Pastor?"
He’d turned to see Miles, one of the young men who'd attended his church over the past few years, standing behind him.
"Do you need assistance?"
Pastor Lewis had smiled. "Why, yes, brother Miles, I could us your help."
Together, they had pushed the altar a couple of feet toward the rear wall of the building. When they'd finished with this task, the square door set into the floor could be plainly seen as well as the hinges and the metal ring that served as a handle. The younger, more rested man had opened the door, revealing a ladder disappearing into the deeper darkness below.
Miles had gone first. Once he'd reached the floor below, Pastor Lewis had handed the candle down to him.
"Oh, you're not going to believe this!"
A few moments later, the two men had stood next to one another, taking in the sight of the small, square room around them and the treasure trove it contained.
The walls were lined with shelves, the metal kind found in office storage spaces. Instead of ink cartridges, staples, and boxes of paper, however, these shelves were lined with guns. More guns than Pastor Lewis had ever seen before, had ever even imagined seeing before. Shotguns. Handguns. Semi-automatic rifles.
There has to be a hundred of them. Maybe more.
One entire set of shelves held nothing but boxes of ammunition.
"Looks like someone was preparing for the end of the world," Brother Randall had said when he got a look at the place. “Someone who didn't make it back in time before it happened.”
Standing in the corner of the room was an ornate silver cross about four feet tall. When Pastor Lewis had lifted it, the longest section slid free. A scabbard, he realized. And hidden within: a double-edged, gleaming blade.
"A holy sword," said Miles, eyes wide with wonder.
The weapon had been well cared for, its edges sharpened, glinting in the candlelight. The pastor had held it out before him, enjoying the feel of it in his hand, like it had always been meant to be there.
In the days that followed, he put it to use.
“You know, there are more efficient ways of killing those things,” Randall had told him the first time he’d used the sword to lay one of the demons low.
“The Lord will guide my hand,” the pastor had replied.
Each subsequent killing seemed to prove the veracity of this statement.
As he stood in front of the church, he stared at the decapitated demon lying at his feet for a little while longer. Then he pushed the blade into the scabbard that hung at his side before turning and walking back into the holy building.
Soon, we will have to leave this place, he told himself. There had been a recent increase in zombie activity. Also, Brother Randall and those who accompanied him found themselves venturing further and further afield each time they went in search of supplies. Before they made a move, though, Pastor Lewis would pray, would seek guidance from the Lord.
And by doing so, he knew the way ahead would be revealed.
Saturday, August 1st
With each passing day, Trevor's anxiety grew. The dream had continued to visit him, a vision of blood and the hungry dead, his father-in-law's house the set piece for this gruesome scene.
“We have to go now,” he'd tried to convince Larry on numerous occasions.
He knew the older fellow thought he was nuts, that he'd never really believed the story about the dream that had gotten his daughter out of the city. Whenever Brenda would assure him it was true, her father would just shrug and say, "I'm sure a lot of people have been having bad dreams in recent weeks. It doesn't mean they're the result of any sort of psychic powers. Just the subconscious's way of dealing with stress. If it was a dream of his that brought you here... Well, then, whatever works, I suppose. But that's all it was, just a regular old nightmare. Nothing more.”
The last time they’d had this conversation, Larry added, “With all that’s going on, you seriously want us to just hit the road? And where would we go, by the way?"
Trevor didn’t have an answer to this question. Sure, they seemed safe enough out here, away from the mayhem consuming most of the country. All one had to do was turn on any of the news stations—the ones continuing to broadcast—or go online to see how bad things had gotten by now. This did nothing to ease Trevor's concern, however. He'd long since come to accept the reality of his visions. They'd proven their accuracy too many times before. He saw no reason to start doubting them now, especially when the message they contained was of such a personal nature.
It had become obvious, though, that he was wasting his time on Larry.
To hell with him. If he wants to stay here and die then that's his prerogative.
The problem, though, was that Brenda wouldn't leave without her father. Trevor knew she did not make this decision lightly. She believed the stories he'd told her of his childhood, had obviously been impressed by the dream that had brought the two of them to North Carolina. But when it came to the prospect of abandoning the man who'd raised her, leaving him to fend for himself, of heading out into the world and the myriad dangers it presented, she'd convinced herself it would be better to stay right where they were.
"What if this time it really is only a dream?"
"You don't think I've considered that possibility?"
"No, actually, I don't."
But he had. And he wished he could explain the dream—no, the vision—away. It was accompanied by a feeling of certainty, though, one he'd experienced so many times in the past.
He took to sleeping with a loaded gun under his pillow. Not that he was sleeping all that much anymore, not when every noise had him up and wandering the house, convinced his fears had become reality.
And so it came as no surprise when he found himself awake once again, lying in bed next to his wife, listening to the slow, steady rhythm of her breathing.
Then:
The shattering of glass from somewhere in the house.
Wordless shouting.
Gunshots, three in a row.
His wife stirred. “Trevor?”
"Stay here."
After removing the handgun from its hiding place, he got out of bed and left the room, headed down the hallway toward the source of the commotion.
Larry lay on the living room floor, screaming while several zombies crouched over him, clawing and biting at him. Fragments of the sliding glass door lay scattered across the carpet, reflecting the overhead lighting. Trevor took aim, ready to squeeze the trigger just as the front door burst inward and more of the undead creatures spilled into the house. He turned and opened fire on the new arrivals, kept shooting until the magazine was empty. By then, several of the red-eyed monsters lay unmoving just inside the door. But there were plenty more to take their place.
“Trevor!"
More glass breaking, this time from where the bedrooms were located. Moaning figures filled the hallway, blocking the way back to the room where he'd left his wife. She screamed for a few impossibly long seconds before falling silent.
"Brenda!"
He looked around wildly, unsure of what he should do. More zombies approached the broken sliding glass door from the porch behind the house. The ones in the living room continued to feed.
They'll get you next if you don't do something fast.
A hand fell on his shoulder, breaking his paralysis.
He ran, into the kitchen and through the doorway that would take him downstairs to the basement. Once there, he turned on a light and grabbed one of the three backpacks—“In case of an emergency,” Larry had said half-jokingly—hanging from wooden pegs along one of the walls. They'd been filled with canned goods, dried meat, and bottles of water. From a shelf, he took several boxes of cartridges, used the ammo to reload the gun in his hand, placed the rest in one of the backpack's pouches. He found a pair of Larry's boots on the floor to go with the t-shirt and shorts he'd worn to bed, pulled them on even though they were a couple of sizes too small.
Just then, a zombie came tumbling down the stairs, hit the floor with a wet snapping sound as something inside of it broke. It lay there moaning and reaching toward him with grasping fingers.
Time to go.
He headed for the door at the far end of the room. Beyond it lay a tunnel that would take him more than twenty feet out behind the house. With a last look toward the stairs, he shook his head then went through the doorway. As he followed the tunnel, he started to weep, cursing himself every step of the way.
Sunday, August 2nd
Dear Diary,
Aaron wants to try and break out of here, says he's tired of being a guinea pig.
"We have rights, you know. They can't just imprison us like this."
He's always going on and on about our rights. And under normal circumstances, I doubt they'd be able to keep us locked up in here like this, sticking, prodding, and probing us whenever they feel like it. But these are far from normal circumstances. When I mentioned this, when I asked him if we shouldn't be doing our part to try and beat this thing, to help out in any way we can, he sneered and said, "What do you know, little girl?"
Yeah, so, in case I haven't made it clear, Diary, I don't like Aaron a whole lot. And it's obvious I'm not the only one who feels this way. Luke told me not to worry about him, that he's just a "stupid a-hole.”
“If I was bigger, I swear I would have knocked him out by now.”
I have a feeling that if it wasn't for the soldiers always keeping an eye on things, Roger would have already done it. Despite how much he dislikes arguing with Aaron, he can't seem to help himself. The last time they went at it, Gina told them they needed to have their "dick measuring contest" somewhere else. I couldn't stop laughing about that one. Not surprisingly, Aaron didn't think it was very funny. He said some pretty nasty things, then stormed off. When he was gone, Roger apologized and said he didn't know why he let the other guy get to him like that.
"He has a talent for getting under my skin."
So, yeah, none of us care for Aaron a whole lot. Although, his idea about getting out of this place seems to be catching on. At first, everyone was against it because, really, were our alternatives?
"So you just want to stay in here forever?" Aaron would say.
"No, just until things get better out there," Mandy told him.
Apparently, here was something he did think was funny.
"Come on. You can't be that naive. It's never going to get better. They can take every last drop of blood we have, run every test they can think of and they're not going to figure this thing out. There's no cure for the flu or the common cold. A disease like this? From freaking outer space? It's just not going to happen."
In the courtyard a little while ago, Luke sat down next to me and surprised me by saying, "You know, he may have a point."
"About what?"
"Finding a cure for this thing."
“And, what... You think we should try to escape?”
He shrugged, didn't say anything. I knew what he was thinking, though.
"And how would we do that exactly?" I asked him.
"I don't know. That doesn't mean it can't be done."
As I sit here, Diary, alone in my room, writing this down, I'm not sure what to think. We're protected in here. We are prisoners, though, no matter what they say. Out there...
It would be dangerous, sure, but we'd be free to do whatever we wanted with our lives. And unlike most people, we wouldn't have to worry about getting sick. I guess it would be the one thing among the millions of others we wouldn't have to worry about.
Monday, August 3rd
And, just like that, the plague made its presence known in Castle Creek.
Rachel would watch as various people came into the diner, coughing and sniffling, smiles plastered onto their faces, overhear their conversations: "It's only a cold. I'll be fine."
As the days passed, fewer and fewer people showed up for breakfast. Many of them, she supposed, too sick to leave the house. The others would be afraid of catching what might be going around—the terrible disease that had afflicted so much of the country.
On this hot and humid Monday morning, she stood in front of the cafe, knew before she even tried the door that it would be locked, that no one had come by to open the place. It dawned on her that she may have had her last blueberry pancakes for a while.
Maybe forever.
Following the sidewalk, she hung a left at the end of the block, made her way toward a group of tiny houses surrounding a circular drive off to the side of the road just ahead. Normally, she knew, there would be a good number of pedestrians out and about by now. So far, though, she'd passed a grand total of two other people since leaving the motel, both of whom had kept their heads down and their eyes averted.
After reaching the circle, she made her way to the third house on the left, followed the short walkway cutting through the front yard past clusters of multi-colored flowers and up to the front door. She stood there for a moment, finger hovering less than an inch from the doorbell button, afraid of what she might discover once she pressed it.
Go on...
She pressed the button, listened as the doorbell rang inside the house, took a long, deep breath just before the door opened.
"Rachel?" The voice of the young woman standing in the doorway sounded hoarse and strained. Rachel watched her blink a few times, as though making sure her eyes weren't deceiving her. “Sorry. Come on in."
A minute later, they sat in the living room, Rachel on a chair close to the TV, the young woman half sprawled on the couch.
"How are you feeling, Alex?"
The air inside the house was warm and stuffy. Two half empty bottles of over-the-counter flu medication stood atop the coffee table.
"Not so good. How do I look?"
Rachel smiled. "You look fine."
Alex gave a low, gravelly laugh. "And you're a terrible liar."
In the days since Alex had waited on her that first time at the diner, they'd become friends. They'd hung out a few times—twice at Rachel's motel room and once over here—had thrown back a few drinks and talked about their lives, their interests.
And the plague, of course.
"I just came from the diner," said Rachel. “It's closed.”
Alex nodded her head, seemingly unsurprised by the news.
"Listen, Rachel. Remember what I said the other night? About how..." She started to cough, had to wait for the fit to pass before she could continue. "I said that if I got sick, I didn't want to become one of those things. Those zombies. You told me you wouldn't let that happen."
"Yeah, well, we were a little drunk."
"You promised."
Rachel swallowed past the lump forming in her throat.
"You're not sick. Well, not like that. It’s just a cold."
"You gave me your word, Rachel."
After that, it seemed neither of them had anything to say for a while. Rachel thought about the gun in her suitcase, the one she'd used on her neighbor Mrs. Custer once she'd changed. Sitting in her friend's living room, she couldn't help but wonder how many more times she might end up using it.
With a sigh, she got up and went to the couch, sat next to Alex and put an arm around her.
> "You're right. I did give you my word. And I'll keep it if it comes to that. I'm telling you, though, it's not going to come to that. You just need to rest."
She could only hope she was right. If not...
She'd keep her promise. After that, though...
No more promises, ever again.
Tuesday, August 4th
Dominick knew they couldn't stay in the building forever. They would run out of food, sooner or later. And what if the water stopped working? Surely, it was only a matter of time. It wasn't as though he had only himself to look after anymore. He had Lisa and Eddie to worry about, too. More so Eddie. He was the younger of the two siblings, and a bit of a crier on top of that. At least once a day he'd start to whimper and say he wanted his mother, something that obviously wasn't going to happen. The one time Dominick had asked about her, Lisa told him she'd gotten sick.
"And she turned into one of those..."
Dominick had nodded his head. "Yeah, one of those."
"She came after us but we ran and went down the hall to Ms. Ellen's apartment. She used to watch us whenever momma was gonna be out late. She wasn't home but the door was open. We decided to stay there until she came back but she never did. Then you showed up."
The three of them stood on the rooftop, looking down at the zombies wandering back and forth fifty feet below. Dominick wished he had some more cinderblocks as he felt like taking out a few more of the undead creatures, but he'd already dropped them all.
In the distance, thunderclouds gathered along the horizon, a thick, roiling gray wall threatening doom. He figured there would be a heck of a storm within the next few hours—something he definitely did not look forward to. But he'd have to put on a brave face for Eddie. The last thing the kid needed was to see that Dominick was afraid.
Lost in thought, he didn't notice the zombie as it emerged from the doorway leading back into the building until he felt Lisa tugging at his shirt, telling him to "Look! Look!"