“I hope they don’t die,” she thought. As soon as she thought it, though, they crumpled to the ground. Dead.
They didn’t stay dead, though. Both arose from the ground, now reanimated corpses. They looked away from one another. They paid each other no attention
Two children ran toward the walkers, a boy and a girl. They were fully dressed and wearing strange hats, although Ellie couldn’t quite make out the hats.
“Those were their kids,” she said to herself. “They’ve come to take care of their parents.”
It was true. The children gently harnessed up the walkers and led them back to a cottage. They put them in a room, all by themselves, and locked it for safety.
Then those two children grew up, married from another family, and had kids. Once these children were born their parents also fell to the ground and rose again as walkers. This happened two more times.
“W-w-what will they do with the walkers?”
They did what they should; they put the eight walkers to work. Pulling plows and carts, dragging timber, carrying loads. The walkers seemed happy to help their two remaining descendants. Then the oldest walkers, the original parents, slowed down, got weary. They couldn’t carry their loads. The last-born children were adults now, much more practical.
“No!” Ellie shouted as the children chopped off the arms and ripped off the jaws of the eldest zombies. Seeing this was good, they did it to the next oldest walkers. They then drove four stakes in the ground around their little cottage and tied the new geldings to them.
The geldings stared at the humans, hunched over.
“They’re sad! How can they be sad...?”
The four ungelded zombies looked at their disfigured lineage and then at the humans.
The zombies attacked the humans, their own family, as they slept.
After it was over, the humans turned. The zombies writhed with guilt at what they’d done, so they ran off into the countryside. In the wilds they tore up the seeds that men planted, they stole the children that women bore, and they hated themselves for every moment of it. In their wake, they left more zombies, more despairing humans, and destroyed land.
When the zombies reached the coast, after journeying for a generation, they stared with horror at the cleansing water. That water would wash them clean. They didn’t deserve to be cleansed, so they turned back and left a wake of destruction all the way back to the other coast.
Then the killers arose. Men and women with hatchets, guns, rocks…whatever implements they could find. Ellie watched as they clumsily maimed the walkers, hitting them in the chest, arms, legs. It wasn’t until they hit one in the head that they realized how to do it right.
“Can’t you hear them!” Ellie shouted out. “They’re crying! You’re hurting them!”
Ellie saw the two youngest children, now in zombie form. They were about 25 years old. A man approached them. He looked strong, confident. Ellie looked at his face. It was Obevens. He was holding a steel pipe, rusted with age.
“Stop! They’re just trying to survive!”
Obevens didn’t listen. He swung the pipe and smashed in the heads of the two walkers. In a flash Ellie saw everything those original eight walkers had seen their whole lives. Their fears, their hopes, their loved ones. All of it destroyed in an instant by Obevens’ savage blow. A whole family line eliminated. Those people would never walk the Earth again; they would have no children to carry on for them. It was over.
Obevens grabbed Ellie by the arm and forced her to kiss him. She fought, hitting his chest, but he was so strong. He threw her away and wiped his mouth, spitting. Ellie looked down and saw her belly, gently rounded. She felt the kick inside it. It was alive. It was alive!
Obevens walked back to his steel pipe, laying on the ground. He picked it up and walked back toward her, drawing it back, preparing to strike.
“No! No!”
He paused, staring sadly at her. He nodded his head, understanding what he must do. He swung the pipe on her knee, breaking one and then the other. She fell to the ground, screaming and grabbing at them, until she realized there was no pain. She could see her legs, bloody and twisted with bone protruding. It didn’t hurt.
Obevens was gone. She did the only thing she could do.
One hand in front of the other, dragging, pulling. Never stopping.
She pulled herself along the ground. Grabbing at the soft dirt to pull herself and her baby up the slight incline in front of her. She didn’t know where she was heading, but it seemed the logical direction. She stopped to rest, even though she didn’t need to, and looked around. Others like her were walking in the same direction, all up the hill. They were different, though.
“They are dead, but not me. I am still alive.” She felt the pride at her statement.
She resumed dragging herself through the muck. She saw it now, she was dragging herself through the entrails of those who’d walked before her. It didn’t bother her, though.
“That’s normal. To be expected. One hand in front of the other…”
As she reached the top of the hill, she realized that it suddenly dropped off into a huge pit. It seemed like it was miles across. She peered over the edge and down into it. It also went down what seemed like a mile. Her vision was suddenly perfect. She could see every person who’d thrown themselves into this pit. They writhed, hit each other, laughed, hugged, and feasted on one another.
“That is also normal.”
At the edge of the pit some humans still remained. They had long ropes with hooks on them. The cast the hooks down into the pit to catch a person to drag them up. The hooks tore at flesh, broke ribcages, and further maimed the already disfigured people. Once pulled up and over the side, they strapped harnesses on them, and sent them dragging boulders. The boulders were put on a large mound. The large mound was pushed into another mound for an even larger mound. A new generation of humans lived on top of the mound, safe and away from the dead.
“On top of the mound they just laugh, love, and have children… I can see it. They’re so…happy. I want that. Why can’t I have that?”
She could. The dead climbed the boulder pile. Jealousy drove them on. Ellie pulled herself up, slowly but steadily. At the top, she saw the homes they built. She saw the happy mothers, the happy children. They weren’t so happy, now. Ellie found a woman who had fallen over and began feasting on her through the woman’s screams. A hand grabbed her and threw her off.
“Obevens!” she cringed as she expected the finishing blow to her head. It never came. Instead, he rushed to the bitten woman, kissing her head while rocking her in his arms. He was crying. The woman was younger than Ellie had at first thought. Obevens much older, too. She pulled herself forward on the ground to get a closer look. It was easier now that the bump in her belly was gone.
Wait.
“You!” Obevens shouted at Ellie. “You killed our baby!” he stood, picked up a nearby rock and lifted it over his head.
Ellie realized what she’d done. A rolling feeling of revulsion tremored through her body. She could still taste her daughter’s blood in her mouth as she frantically spat it out. The rock came down. She instantly left her body and was somewhere up in space, looking down on herself from above. She was seeing her body from an imaging satellite.
“Ellie!” Sal’s voice cut through it all.
“NO!” she threw off his hand, which had been prodding her shoulder. She bolted upright and looked around. She was back under the trees. It was still dark. The others were looking at her. Her heart thumped in her chest and the image of her maimed daughter burned in her vision.
“You were having a nightmare.”
She breathed heavy, her breath sending fog from her.
“It was just a dream,” Ellie repeated, reassured.
“Yeah. Now shut up.”
Chapter 21
IS THERE ANYONE OUT THERE? ANYWHERE?
Cable from Cheyenne Mountain - 7 A.Z.
Hog and the Martyrs hudd
led near the entrance to Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station. A bitter wind howled around them. They shuddered under its might. The entrance was partially collapsed, and most of the letters spelling out the name of the facility were missing from above the opening. Rusted shells of vehicles sat in the parking lot. The Martyrs couldn’t stay out in the cold much longer, but were also reluctant to enter the deep cavern.
“We’re not getting any younger, folks, or any warmer,” Hog finally announced. “It’s time to go in. Light the torches. Cecil, Jamed, get on it.”
The two men deployed the prepared torches and lit them one by one. There were enough for everyone to have one torch with three spares for the group.
“Hopefully we don’t have to use our spares. In and out, that’s the goal. Like I said, I don’t know where the antidote is. Heck, I wasn’t even sure it was true until I saw John…” Hog trailed off.
“It’s cold. Let’s get moving,” Carla said.
“Lead the way.”
Carla took the lead and picked a path through the rubble at the tunnel’s open-air entrance. Once they were inside, their torches cast light a short way ahead, playing wicked tricks on the craggy walls. A few hundred yards in, the debris thinned out and walking became easier on the aged asphalt. It was completely silent except for their footsteps echoing down the tunnel, and the sound of water dripping from the ceiling. There were strange metal plates a couple feet across placed intermittently along the walls, dubiously attached now, and all rusted over. It was still cold, but at least there was no wind.
“Keep an eye out,” Hog whispered. Carla acknowledged. They hugged the wall as it curved to the right.
“If there’s trouble we turn and run. We’re not ready for a fight,” Carla instructed quietly.
“We’ll see,” was Hog’s response.
After what seemed like an eternity they reached a turn in the tunnel with a sharp, ninety degree turn. As they turned, they encountered a small, musty chamber with a dead end – the closed blast door. Sealed, they assumed, for the last hundred years.
“Well, let’s go back,” Jamed proposed.
“Hold on.” Hog walked up to the blast door and began inspecting it closely.
“I don’t think there’s a bell.”
“I’m not looking for a bell. I’m looking for the mark.”
“Mark?”
“I was told there’s a mark on the door.”
They brought their flickering, smoky torches over and held them up to the door, joining in the search.
“Nothing,” Hog spat. He cursed and threw his torch to the ground, sending sparks flying. Lee picked it up and handed it back to him.
“It’s been a long time, it might have worn off.”
“Nothing wears off in here. No one comes in here! It’s only death. This is a mountain of death, with the cure buried in it, out of reach!” Hog’s angry voice echoed in the small room.
They sat down against the walls. This room was warmer than the tunnel, presumably from being so deep within the mountain. It was almost comfortable, except for the pitch-black darkness that would never end.
They talked amongst themselves, considering their next move. Jamed was laying on the ground near the blast door, trying to get some sleep. A torch flickered, throwing reflected light off the door into his face. His eyes opened briefly. He started, then shook his head.
“No…” he groaned.
He rolled over and tried to close his eyes again. He squinted them shut for a moment but opened them again. He pursed his lips, then stood up and began pacing back and forth along the tunnel.
“Sit down, Jamed, you’re making me nervous,” Carla said.
“Nope. Not gonna sit down. Arrggh!” he growled.
“What’s the matter with you?”
Jamed pulled at his hair in frustration.
“I saw it! I saw it, ok?”
“Saw what?”
“The mark.”
Hog was instantly standing again, the whites of his eyes shining in the torch light.
“Where?!”
Jamed sighed, then walked back to where he had been lying and knelt on the ground and pointed. Down, near the bottom of the door, only about an inch tall, were etchings in the steel door. They were faint, nearly impossible to see unless someone knew where to look, even though the creator had clearly gone over each line multiple times. One x, then a space followed by three x’s. Then another space, then two x’s. That same pattern repeated three times. In front of the sequence they saw the man’s mark. They read it, clear as day. It said, “LtCol Taylor.”
“That’s it. It’s true.” Hog stood, swallowing hard and staring with wide eyes into the darkness. He composed himself. “Let’s knock.”
“Each ‘X’ is a knock on the door,” Hog explained. “It is the knock to get inside the doors. When they built this facility, it was understood that if the occupants sealed the doors from the inside, they would perish after a month or two. There was no other way out, and no way to reopen the door from either side. The story I’ve heard, the story I’ve paid nearly everything I’ve got to hear, is that a failsafe exists within the door. A mechanical ‘ear’ that responds to a pattern of sound. It was written on the outside of the door by a single man. It was an act of treason, really, as he left the compound. The combination was beyond Top Secret. He wasn’t even supposed to know it, but the end of the world has a way of loosening lips, I suppose. The government and military he swore allegiance to was wiped off the face of the planet. If you were inside this tomb, with your family and the world outside, all destroyed, what’s left that’s worth protecting?”
Hog went to his pack and removed a small sledgehammer. He walked up to the door and paused, taking a deep breath. The others looked at one another. Hog swung the hammer as hard as he could, slamming the head into the door. He paused, then hit it three times. Then twice. He repeated the pattern three more times and then stopped. A faint hissing sound came from the other side of the door. Hog shut his mouth and took two steps back and motioned to the others to back up. The hissing turned to a metallic grinding sound that screeched and echoed in the chamber. They covered their ears as the door creaked and slowly began to rotate on its gigantic hinges. The 20 ton blast doors were opening.
Light streamed out from the other side of the door. They all fell back, covering their eyes, temporarily blinded.
“What the..?!” Jamed exclaimed at the brightness.
“Those lights probably haven’t turned on for a hundred years. They must be a part of the failsafe,” Hog guessed.
Everyone squinted, trying to make out what awaited them inside.
Another room.
Once their eyes adjusted they were able to make it out. It was the same size as the room they were in. At the end of it was the second blast door. It was standing wide open onto a smaller hallway.
“I would get your weapons ready. Who knows what’s in here,” Carla said.
Once through, the first blast door began to scream shut behind them, metal scraping slowly on metal.
“You want me to wait outside?” Jamed shouted over the din.
“No. We need you in here,” Carla replied.
They moved warily toward the brightly lit hallway. It turned a corner to the right. They peered carefully around the wall.
“Keep your torches. Who knows how long this light will last,” Hog said.
The hallway had multiple pipes running down the center of the ceiling, following every turn of the path.
“This place is like a maze,” Lee quietly observed, gripping a hammer.
“Stay together, we’ll figure it out,” Hog said.
“So where is it? Where’s the antidote?” Cecil asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t even know what it looks like.”
The hallways were relatively immaculate. There was no dust, no debris, and only occasional puddles of water from the intermittent drips coming off the ceiling. The air smelled musty, stale, and with the faint hint of�
��
“Food.” Cecil and Jamed said at the same time, looking at one another. “Cooking.”
They were totally still. There was a door further up the hall on the left, about twenty feet ahead. Hog was studying the door, trying to get any clue about what might be inside. Carla pointed to a sign on the wall.
“Exercise room,” she whispered, pointing to the sign saying just that with an arrow pointing ahead of them.
They moved slowly down the hallway. Hog peeked through the glass portal on the door. He saw strange pieces of equipment. Things that looked like bikes with only one wheel. No people.
About that time everyone became aware of a faint whirring sound, emanating from above, ahead, and around the corner. It was getting louder.
“Get ready,” Hog said through gritted teeth, gripping his hammer with both hands.
Amongst the pipes running along the ceiling was a small, single track. A tiny box, about the size of a loaf of bread, came zipping around the corner at the end of the hall on it. It stopped abruptly. A section at the bottom rotated out and down and pointed something that looked like a telescope at them. A red light shone from it. After a moment it began moving along the track toward them, about walking speed. It stopped five feet from them, analyzing the five figures in the hallway.
“What?” a tinny voice came from it. Hog started and almost swung his hammer, but took a step back.
“Uh…hi?” Cecil said.
“You are not in any of my records, please introduce yourselves,” the box requested.
Hog looked at the others and then cleared his throat. “This is Carla, Lee, Jamed, and Cecil…and...”
“And you are?”
“…and I am Hog.”
“Yes, Hog. You are on the list. Please follow me. Do you mind if I dim the lights? We are using more power than necessary right now.”
“Um, no.”
The overhead lights dimmed. On the floor small pinpricks of light appeared along the walkway, illuminating the path. The red light on the talking box glowed brightly in the dim light.
100 A.Z. (Book 3): The Mountain Page 16