Halverson thought about it. “Tell Burt to have the shooters upstairs stop firing and listen for my gunshots. You should be able to hear my shots without the noise of the other guns to interfere.”
“OK.”
“I need more firepower here on the stairs to slow down the zombies. See if you can get Ray and some other shooters over here to help me.”
“No problem. I’ll help too.”
Tom peeled off.
Anxiously, Halverson watched the front door. With the racket the ghouls were creating on the other side of it they might very well burst open the door themselves any second without any help from Halverson.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Halverson waited for the gunshots inside the restaurant to subside. Once they did, he could initiate his plan.
In a few minutes the gunfire ceased.
Now was as good a time as any, he decided.
From the landing he let loose a burst from his MP7 leveled at the doorknob on the shuddering door. The door held steady in its frame. He fired another burst, this time aiming at the jamb near the doorknob as well as at the doorknob itself.
The door juddered and cracked then flew open with such force exerted by the throng of ghouls jammed against it that its top brass hinge split off from the doorjamb and hung askew on the door’s edge. The hinge’s screws dangled from their holes by their threads as the door shivered on its one remaining hinge.
The first ghoul through the riven, broken door was an army soldier dressed in camouflage fatigues and a forager cap. The male ghoul looked to Halverson to be it in its late twenties. The ghoul wore large spectacles with thick clear plastic frames.
The ghoul stumbled into the lobby, precipitated inside by the creatures mobbed behind his back.
For some reason that Halverson could not fathom the zombie picked its nose with its long forefinger. Old habits never died, decided Halverson. Even after you were dead.
The mass of creatures behind the army soldier catapulted the ghoul into the lobby with the sheer force of their numbers. So great was the impetus that it caused the ghoul to trip over its own camouflage boots and fall facedown on the floor.
Halverson stepped forward. He aimed over the newel on the landing at the ghoul. Halverson double-tapped the creature in the back of the head.
The next zombie propelled through the doorway was a tall, lean fortysomething guy who looked like a throwback to the disco era with his beige polyester stretch pants and lavender silk button-down shirt with flounced sleeves. His fancy clothes were mottled with filth and hung in shreds from his body. He had probably been a swinging single when he was alive, Halverson decided.
At first it looked like the creature was grinning as it stumbled into the lobby. However, on closer inspection Halverson could see its mouth was twisted into a hideous grimace accompanied by a sneer on its emaciated lips.
The creature’s quick staggering propulsion forward by the mob behind it increased the difficulty of Halverson’s shot. Halverson waited for the creature to fetch up farther into the lobby. The creature obliged him by falling forward onto its knees. At that moment Halverson fired three single shots into the back of the ghoul’s head. The ghoul’s face exploded off onto the floor, smearing it with a mixture of jagged skull fragments and brain tissue.
Halverson heard Ray run up beside him. Halverson glanced behind him. He saw Tom, Foster, Mildred, and Rosie bearing weapons to aid him.
The rest of the zombies were now pouring through the door. Halverson and his reinforcements opened fire on them.
As the creatures tried to climb the steps, Halverson and company cut them down and sent them sprawling onto the treads.
“Did Rogers tell them to throw the ropes out the window yet?” Halverson asked Tom amidst the sporadic gunfire.
“I’ll tell him,” said Tom, darting back into the restaurant.
The stairwell resounded with the earsplitting cacophony of gunfire.
When Mildred fired her shotgun a few feet away from him, Halverson went deaf for a few moments. His ears starting ringing as his hearing came back.
Ghouls’ bodies were stacking up at an alarming rate on the treads. The stacks did not faze the other ghouls. They simply climbed over them, pawing at them with their decomposing hands.
“We gotta pull back!” Ray called to Halverson through the thunderous gunfire.
Halverson coughed on the acrid reek of cordite. “I’ll cover you.”
“I could use another clip.”
“Take one from my back.”
Halverson felt Ray pulling a magazine clip out of one of the bandoliers draped over Halverson’s chest and back.
“We’re gonna need a lot more than this,” said Ray.
“I hear ya. Take a couple more.”
Ray withdrew two more clips from Halverson’s bandolier.
“I hope most of the passengers are out by now,” said Halverson.
“Yeah. Those things are gonna be up the stairs and all over us like white on rice in two shakes.”
MP7 in hand, Tom ran up to them. “They’re having problems getting people out the window in back.”
“What kind of problems?”
“Some of the passengers are afraid they’ll fall off the rope.”
Halverson shook his head. “It’s not like they have a choice.”
“Do they have any idea what’s waiting for them if they don’t climb down that rope?” said Ray.
“They’re also worried about what’s on the other side of the wall’s back entrance,” said Tom.
“Why worry about stuff you don’t even know is there?” said Halverson.
“They ought to be worried about the stuff we do know is here—like these things on the stairs,” said Ray.
He fired single shots from his submachine gun at a middle-aged female ghoul scrabbling over the heap of dead bodies on the steps. The creature’s face was a wrinkled mass of decaying flesh that looked more like parchment than flesh. Its big milky blue eyes glared obscenely out of its grotesque face.
One of the bullets entered the creature’s mouth with its shriveled lips and desiccated tongue. The bullet did not even slow the creature down. The bullet drilled a hole through the back of the creature’s neck.
The second round did the trick. One of the creature’s blue eyes disintegrated into jelly under the impact from the round that continued on its journey through the creature’s braincase, through the thalamus, and out the cerebral hemisphere. The ghoul stopped moving.
“Lemans is acting like a rabble-rouser, getting everybody riled up,” said Tom.
“What the hell’s he telling them?” said Ray.
“He says nobody has to climb out the window if they don’t want to. And it’s Rogers’s fault we’re in this mess, so we should all blame him.”
“A lot of good that’s gonna do,” said Halverson.
“Is there any way we can arrange it so Lemans falls from the rope and kills himself?” said Ray. “That guy is the mother of all shitheels.”
Halverson sniggered at the thought. But not for long.
He had to fire his MP7 at a ghoul in a pharmacist’s white smock. The ghoul had climbed over the congeries of other ghouls on the treads and was in the process of stepping on the next tread of the stairs. Two shots that entered the ghoul’s forehead separated the back of the ghoul’s skull from the front. The dislodged back of the cranium sailed off from the rest of the ghoul’s skull like a Frisbee with blobs of brains in it.
“We don’t have time for Lemans and his pissing contests,” said Halverson.
“What’s his problem?” said Ray.
“He needs constant attention like a spoiled little brat,” chimed in Mildred, overhearing their conversation.
“He wants to be Mr. Big,” said Tom.
“He’s Mr. Big Pain in the Ass,” said Ray.
“Just go back and tell everybody if they don’t climb out the window they’ll be ghoul food,” said Halverson.
“What’
ll we do with Lemans?” asked Tom.
“I could care less what happens to that sleazeball.”
“Maybe the rope accidentally on purpose gets wrapped around his neck and hangs him,” said Ray.
“Why does everything have to be so difficult?” said Tom in exasperation. “Why can’t we just be left alone and do our thing?”
“It’s not a pretty world from where I’m looking,” said Halverson. He shot another ghoul on the stairwell.
“But why were we the ones chosen to go through this nightmare?”
“Why not us?” said Ray.
Tom could not think of an answer to that. He massaged his chin and gazed off into space.
“There’s no use thinking about it,” said Halverson. “It is what it is. We have to deal with it and keep going.”
“I just want to see my girlfriend and get back to the way things used to be before I boarded that jinxed plane,” said Tom. “That’s not too much to ask for, is it?”
Halverson said nothing.
Tom and Ray commenced their retreat, along with Foster, Mildred, and Rosie.
“I’ll bring up the rear,” said Halverson.
He picked off another ghoul that had scaled the growing mountain of corpses on the staircase.
No matter how many ghouls Halverson shot, the pile was getting closer and closer to the landing, he realized. The world was closing in on him.
CHAPTER THIRTY
It was time to give up more ground, decided Halverson.
He unleashed a burst from his MP7 at two zombies clambering over the stack of corpses on the staircase then retreated into the restaurant.
He was dismayed to find that there were still passengers milling inside the restaurant. He had hoped they had all rappelled down the ropes by now.
Even Lemans was still there, strutting back and forth issuing orders. “We’ve got to get a new leader. I’m the only one here who’s fit to lead. Do you think I got to be top dog of a world-class bank by being a wallflower?”
“They’ll be pouring into the restaurant any minute now,” said Halverson, bucketing toward the rope hanging out the window. “Everybody out.”
Lemans took one look at a ghoul staggering into the restaurant and zipped toward one of the ropes. Latching onto the rope, he was over the windowsill in seconds.
“Shit,” said Tom, peering down out the window through the roiling miasma outside.
Halverson cut down the lead zombie. It fell in its tracks, its head split open by two rounds from Halverson’s MP7.
“What?” he said.
“Those things are down on the ground outside waiting for us.”
Halverson careered to Tom’s side and scoped out the ground outside. He could see ghouls stumbling around like drunkards pawing at passengers and chewing their legs as they descended the ropes.
Passengers screamed as they hung from the ropes and tried to fight off the ghouls.
Frantically, Lemans kicked the heads of two ghouls that were trying to glom onto his legs and bite them as he rappelled down a rope.
Halverson and Ray fired into the ghouls massing below. Halverson had to choose his shot well lest he hit any of the passengers caught up in the swarm of zombies.
Halverson heard a sound behind him. He wheeled around just in time to see a ghoul from the stairwell shambling toward him. Halverson bashed the ghoul’s skull in with the extended stock of his submachine gun.
Halverson slung his MP7 over his shoulder. Tom and Ray followed suit. They each grabbed a rope to begin their descent.
Halverson cringed as he saw screaming passengers who were afraid to lower themselves on the ropes getting mauled by ghouls bursting into the restaurant from the stairwell. He saw a ghoul rip an arm out of a shrieking passenger and start gnawing on the shredded blood-splattered flesh where the arm had been torn from the shoulder socket.
Rappelling down the rope he saw ghouls clawing the air waiting for him to descend into their arms. He managed to pull out his Sig Sauer semiautomatic from his waistband and plug the nearest ghouls. If he could not blow them away, he kicked their faces in.
He saw a passenger sprawled on the ground being mauled by a ghoul leaning over him tearing out his entrails and chewing them. Ten feet away, another ghoul ripped a passenger’s flesh off his chest to expose his bloody rib cage. The ghoul dug into the rib cage, plucked out the passenger’s heart, and scarfed it down.
A rotund ghoul weighing over three hundred pounds and wearing a white T-shirt and black trousers reared back on its heels and spat a wad of blood out at Halverson as it waited for him to land on the ground. The broad-faced ghoul had inch-high curly black hair, a black mustache, and a narrow beard that ran along the length of his jaw line all the way to his sideburns.
Halverson wasted the creature with two shots with his Sig Sauer to its fat head.
Halverson felt a tug on his rope from above. He halted his descent down the rope and looked up.
A middle-aged female ghoul with auburn hair was bending over and trying to hitch Halverson’s rope up, but she didn’t have enough strength. Her withered face was in ruins with flakes of skin dangling off her cheeks like chads from a punch card. Halverson could see a cheekbone protruding from one side of the ghoul’s travesty of a face.
The ghoul peered down over the windowsill for a moment then, to Halverson’s astonishment, stepped out the window and plummeted to the ground in its quest to sink its teeth into him.
The thing had no fear of pain or death, decided Halverson. But then again why should it fear death? It was already dead. It just didn’t know it.
The creature landed on its chest on the ground with a thud. Suspended from his rope, Halverson wondered if the ghoul was still alive. As if to answer him, the creature set to squirming on the asphalt pavement.
Halverson sighted his automatic on the creature’s head. The swaying of the rope didn’t help his aim. Luck was on his side for once. One round was all it took. Now the thing was dead as a doornail.
The report of Halverson’s gun seemed to annoy the other ghouls swarming under him.
Halverson knew he had to get off this rope as soon as possible. He was the last passenger still descending. He was a sitting duck hanging in the air like this. The creatures could bide their time waiting for him to fall into their clutches.
He caught sight of two ghouls below him feasting on a dead passenger below. The passenger’s face was smeared with blood, pulped, and unrecognizable. The creatures clinched his partially consumed head, hiked it, and ripped it off his neck.
One of the ghouls ripped an ear off the decapitated head and munched the ear like a potato chip. Halverson could hear the crunching sound the ear made in the ghoul’s mouth. Blood trickled out of the ghoul’s mouth and down its neck.
The other ghoul, an obese thirtyish female, grasped the head with two hands and bashed it against the pavement trying to crack the head open like a coconut and get to the brains.
Sickened by the sight as well as by the thumping of the head against the pavement, Halverson could not wait to get out of the charnel house awaiting him below.
He lashed out with his feet and kicked the heads of two zombies standing bobbing drunkenly below him at the end of the rope waiting for him to land. The zombies staggered backwards. One of them windmilled its arms as it fell back. Neither of the creatures, however, was dead. They had simply been delayed in their attempts to get at Halverson.
Just then another zombie took a nosedive off the window ledge above and come crashing to the ground less than three feet away from Halverson. This ghoul wasn’t as lucky as its precursor. This one hit the ground headfirst and dashed its brains in.
Halverson hit the ground running.
He shot at zombie heads until the ammunition in his Sig Sauer ran out. He still had to deal with two more zombies before he reached the rear entrance in the wall. He was fixing to grab his MP7, but decided in a split second that it would take too much time to shrug it off his shoulder and prepare i
t for firing. By the time the MP7 was within his grasp, the zombies would be upon him.
Instead, he clubbed the first creature, a female ghoul, in the forehead with the butt of his Sig Sauer semiautomatic. The creature was a slight blonde with a thin face with nondescript features. It wasn’t a face that would have garnered any second looks when she had been alive. Now it was a rotting, shrunken face that turned stomachs.
The creature’s filmy white eyes that had once been blue seemed to bug out of its head in befuddlement as the creature staggered backwards reeling under the impact of Halverson’s blow.
The other creature charged at Halverson. This one was a short, sixtysomething male with white hair that fell in tufts over its ears. The creature was wearing a black gimme cap, a white polo shirt, and blue jeans. Halverson reared back his foot and kicked the thing in its paunch.
The kick stood the zombie up. The zombie stood rooted to the spot for a moment. Halverson took advantage of that moment to line up his shoe’s sole with the creature’s chest and deliver a bone-crushing tae kwon do side kick to its rib cage that launched the creature six feet back into the wall that surrounded the restaurant.
The kick slammed the creature’s back into the cement wall and snapped the creature’s head back into the wall.
Halverson was through the wall’s entrance before the zombie had a chance to recover from the impact of the blow to its chest.
Of course, once he was outside of the wall, Halverson whirled around and could see there was nothing to keep the ghouls from following him into the parking lot where he now stood.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Halverson saw more ghouls stepping out of the restaurant’s paneless window and plummeting to the ground through the swirling smog, indifferent to the compound fractures and broken bones they received as a result of their falls.
The only thing that mattered to the ghouls was food. They lived and breathed food. They needed to get their hands on living human flesh and devour it.
As soon as they realized there were no more living humans in or around the restaurant, Halverson knew they would exit via the rear entrance in the wall in pursuit of the rest of the passengers.
Zombie Apocalypse: The Chad Halverson Series Page 14