4POCALYPSE - Four Tales Of A Dark Future

by Brian Fatah Steele

  Thirty against one hundred may not sound like much of a challenge, but most of our numbers were children or adults who were not fighters. They were office clerks and waiters and website designers.

  One man stepped forward and the others watched him with reverence. It was Haise. He was no longer dressed like a cop.

  “Open the doors and let us in,” he shouted. “We deserve to be protected too.”

  “We have rules here,” I shouted back. “If you abide by them, you are welcome to stay. We help each other. We share with each other. We—“

  “We’ll take whatever we want,” Haise said, his face darkening with rage. “Let us in or we’ll find a way in!”

  There wasn’t much chance of that. We had reinforced all the doors and ground-floor windows, and most windows had large signs on them reading Attempts to enter will be met with Deadly Force. No one was getting into the fortress of the Palace unless we wanted them to.

  After a few hours the crowd moved on. We had no idea that Haise already had a plan of attack in place.

  * * * * *

  Renfield was spending almost all of his time on the roof now. As another day drew to a close and the evening air grew cool he stood and took a few paces away from a folding chair and a small worktable. His wrists and fingers were stiff from hours of sending code and writing down replies. He walked, stretching his legs and loosening the kink in his back, turning when he heard a muffled thud near the edge of the roof.

  There was nothing there.

  It had been a week since Haise and his mob had made their threats, long enough for any worries to seem unfounded.

  Renfield heard voices and wondered if they were coming from the street. He walked over to the Market Street side of the roof and looked over the edge. The silent street was still filled with cars.

  To Renfield’s left were narrow Annie Street, and a building that housed stores on the ground floor and offices above. The building across the single lane of Annie Street was a few stories higher than the Palace Hotel.

  He went back to his seat. He sent another message. He received another message. He read what he had just written down, and stared at his radio in disbelief. He sent another message asking if what he had received was true.

  He read the reply and stood, fighting panic.

  Renfield looked up just as a body was flung into the air, the arms slowly flailing as it soared over the gap of Annie Street and slammed face first onto the roof of the Palace Hotel. He looked up from the body in time to see a loop of material, some kind of cord, hanging over the edge of the building next door. The silhouettes of two men appeared as the cord was pulled up and out of sight.

  Renfield moved closer to the unmoving body lying near his work area. He used one outstretched foot to roll the body over and saw a ravaged face. It was one of the infected. His body tensed and he was about to run, when he saw the angle of the shattered neck and the thick dark blood oozing from the nose and mouth. The grin was dead.

  “What the hell?”

  Another body was flung over the gap, landing on its side near the edge of the Palace roof. It was another grin, and it was getting to its feet, one arm hanging uselessly.

  Renfield reached for the two-way radio and shouted the code word for grins inside the Palace Hotel.

  “Breech! On the roof! Breech! Breech! Breech!”

  The grin was coming closer. Renfield didn’t have any weapons at all. Why would he have needed them? He was on the goddamned roof!

  He grabbed his radio as another grin was launched from the roof of the building next door. This one hit the raised edge of the Palace roof and slid out of sight as it fell down into the street. Renfield ran for the door that opened on a stairway down into the hotel, thinking, bungee cords, they must be using bungee cords or something like that to catapult grins across Annie Street. He heard another thud and looked back, seeing a grin lurch to its feet, one leg dragging behind it.

  Both grins were bloody from their falls, and deadly to anyone who was not immune.

  He stepped into the stairway, tried to pull the door closed, and cursed. The door and the jamb were covered in layers of duct tape to stop the door from latching shut when closed. It was one of the doors that had been opened with a master keycard weeks ago and had been rigged to stay open— who could have anticipated an attack from the roof?

  I was already running up a flight of stairs at this point, holding a two-way, listening to Renfield as he screamed into his radio and wishing I was in better shape as young men and women in the Wrecking Crew raced past me.

  By the time I reached the roof, Renfield was standing back from the door and protectively cradling his radio as he watched the Wrecking Crew get to work with pry bars and long handled axes. The rest of the crew reached the roof a minute later and then all ten of them were fighting to put down five grins when Renfield pointed to the sky and said, “Oh no.”

  It looked like a huge balloon arcing up and then down toward us. I saw Haise look over the edge of the roof next door and grin down at us triumphantly, his short blond hair glowing like a halo.

  The heavy-duty garbage bag struck the roof of the Palace and burst open, showering Renfield and me and every member of the Wrecking Crew, our most fit and aggressive fighters, with the blood of grins.

  I heard the Wrecking Crew coughing and gagging and heard a few of them cursing, and then they began to twitch and snap at the air as the parasites in the blood invaded their brains.

  As more grins were catapulted onto the Palace roof I shoved Renfield toward the stairs and keyed my radio, shouting, “Emergency evacuation!”

  Evacuating the hotel was something we had discussed in weekly meetings among the entire group, but we had not yet carried out any drills since going out into the street as a group was deemed too risky.

  As we ran down the stairs Renfield told me about the message he had received.

  We aren’t ready, I thought, realizing we had to get out of the hotel, out of the city, as soon as possible.

  “We have until midnight,” Renfield had whispered fiercely behind me as we came down the stairs.

  Fifteen minutes later I was opening a door and stepping onto New Montgomery Street. I was holding my sword. Benjamin and Randall were on either side of me with their handguns. Benjamin had four rounds left. Randall had a full clip of fifteen rounds. There aren’t any places to buy bullets in the city of San Francisco.

  Most of us were also carrying go-bags, large and small. At minimum each contained a few pull-tab cans of food, two bottles of water, a disposable flashlight, a warm sweater or sweatshirt, and a jackknife. Jillian had been an absolute bitch about keeping go bags handy. Just in case. Most of the adults in decent shape were carrying larger bags, with more food and water, extra clothing and blankets, and first aid supplies.

  More than half of the people in the hotel refused to leave; they were convinced they would be safer in the hotel. The fact that night was coming probably fed their fear. One of them had one of our three guns.

  I was relieved to see that Dr. Anders was with us. I would have taken her by force if she had decided to stay behind.

  As I ushered the crowd out onto the street, a small group of Haise's people rounded the corner and ran at us.

  I held out my sword and let a man run into it. The old steel blade sank into his diaphragm and he looked at it curiously. I pulled the blade free and swung it at the arm of another attacker who was swinging a length of wood. The sword cut into flesh and bone and made a sickening sound when I pulled it free.

  It was a melee. People were swinging weapons, fighting with fists, and inside the hotel I heard the first screams as the grins made their way down the stairs. Standing to one side was Renfield, hunched over and cradling his radio as he stayed clear of the fight.

  A woman screamed behind me. It was Rose Lubisch. Kalife Montagne was dragging her away by the hair. Before I could move a grin darted out from the hotel. I heard Soledad Morales scream and realized the grin was Ed Mariano, t
he leader of the Wrecking Crew. He opened his mouth and bit into the back of Montagne’s neck. Montagne wailed and his people scattered, half of them running down the street and the rest running into the Palace, to their doom.

  Now most of my people began running in fright, men and woman and children moving in twos and threes down Market Street in the direction of the Ferry Building.

  Benjamin stepped forward and raised his gun, trying to get a clear shot at Ed. Montagne let out a series of wet coughs and before I could pull Rose away from him Ed Mariano leaped at me. I was knocked into Benjamin and all three of us went down. Benjamin got to his feet, kicked Ed in the face, and then I slashed Ed’s neck wide open.

  I turned and saw Rose lying on her back, her hands cradling her huge belly. Montagne was standing over her and . . . I literally had to shake my head to clear it, and look again. Montagne was furiously jerking off on Rose. He was spitting blood and saliva and phlegm and pulling a flaccid cock, all in a desperate mindless drive to spread the parasite. I brought my sword up and over and cleaved Montagne’s head like a gourd. It took some effort to pull the blade free.

  Rose was using a shirttail to wipe her face and hands clean. “Am I sick?” She asked it again and again as I helped her to her feet.

  I looked at her closely. “No,” I said. “You got lucky. You’re fine.”

  We caught up with the rest of our group a block away, and I told them part of the plan I had worked out with Renfield and Randall some time ago.

  “We’re heading for Pier 39 as quickly and as quietly as we can,” I said. “There should still be boats there, sailboats, dinghies, anything that can get us out of the city.”

  There were a lot of people who lived on Pier 39, and other piers, year-round. They rented boats or rented the slips for their boats, and aside from the aggravation of gawking tourists and occasionally damp quarters it was like living in a studio apartment. There were also privately owned small watercraft there . . . the last time I was down there, but that was a few years back. I hoped there would be something, anything that could get us out of the city.

  I didn’t tell anyone how little time we had. They would panic. I didn’t tell anyone where I hoped we could land. I let them assume we were heading for Marin or the East Bay. And I didn’t tell them what I had learned from Renfield recently; that there were armed patrols from an ambiguously-named Unified Containment Task Force patrolling the shoreline from the Pacific Ocean to San Francisco Bay.

  Benjamin and I did a quick head count. There were forty-five of us. I formed up a traveling unit. Six senior citizens went to the back of the group. I felt like an utter bastard doing that, but I had no choice. They would slow us down. So would three adults who were overweight and out of shape. They went to the rear as well. Conaghan barely made the cut, and he gave me a shrewd look and a grateful nod. There were twelve children, and only a few with their parents. The children went inside a moving circle. There were eight teens including Benjamin. They would form part of a defensive wall around the little ones, along with fifteen fit adults, and me.

  Our weapons were pry bars, axes, baseball bats, and my sword. A couple of the older children had cans of pepper spray. The effects of pepper spray didn’t last long, but a good burst really messed up a grin for a minute or two, leaving them struggling for breath and hacking up copious amounts of phlegm.

  “You keep heading for the pier,” Randall said. “I’m heading in the other direction.”

  Benjamin shook his head. “Dude, are you nuts?”

  I had told Benjamin and Randall what Renfield had told me earlier on the stairs.

  Randall gave him a bitter smile. “There’s a Police Station at Eddy and Jones. I’m hoping that I can get there, get inside, and find anything left behind—weapons, ammunition, batons, anything—and then catch up with you.”

  I gave Randall a nod. I knew I wouldn’t be able to talk him out of it.

  “I’ll need a volunteer,” Randall said. “If I do find anything . . . guns are heavy.”

  A sturdy Latino named Ayala agreed to go with Randall. Ayala’s wife and little girl would be coming with me to Pier 39.

  “On a normal day it’s a fifteen minute walk,” Randall said.”

  I gave him a grim smile. “On a normal day.”

  He had put a leash on Clyde. He handed the leash to me. “If I don’t make it back, take care of him.”

  He squatted and gave Clyde a hug, and then turned and trotted down Market Street, with Ayala right on his heels.

  * * * * *

  We went straight down Market Street to the arc of the Embarcadero that ran between city and shoreline. Night was falling and the streetlights had gone dark long ago. This wasn’t the quickest route, but it was the safest. Market Street and the Embarcadero were wide. With a little luck, we would see any attackers coming. Cutting through the city would mean edging around cars, navigating close sidewalks, narrow streets and pitch-black alleys where anything could be lurking.

  We passed the Ferry Building, the clock tower looming over us silently in a shroud of chilling fog that was rolling in off the bay.

  I looked up, knowing that if the fog descended to street level we might as well be walking blind.

  We passed silent piers on a walkway that was once a favorite of tourists and locals. All that remained of the sun was a red-gold glow ahead of us. I hoped we still had a couple of hours to get out of the city.

  We had just passed Broadway and were coming up on Pier 9 when I heard the slap of boots on the street. A grinning firefighter whose skull was mostly exposed bone was loping toward us. Two men in our group stepped up and took the thing down with pry-bars. I looked at the dead grin’s hands and was reminded of the young boy killed after I set Jillian’s body into the bay. The man’s hands were huge, his fingernails like rough blades of polished stone. Was the smiling sickness physically changing people?

  The group was moving at a pace that I thought was agonizingly slow. Soon we were passing Pier 33, where tourists used to embark on ferries to a location very much on my mind. At the end of Bay Street, not far from Pier 39, Renfield laughed and said, “Hey, I’ve seen that little guy before.”

  A long gray and white cat was running hell for leather from the opposite end of the Embarcadero.

  Clyde pulled on his leash, and I pulled back.

  The cat worked its way into the center of the group and huddled among the children.

  “Something spooked it,” Benjamin said.

  We walked another few blocks and were in sight of the pier when we heard the noise.

  It was like the boom of the surf out at Ocean Beach, and the murmur of an excited crowd watching a Giants game at AT&T Park. Within that vast susurration, that soft roar, were stark popping, snapping sounds. A flare was fired into the sky, the light stark and intense.

  Then we saw the grins. There had to be hundreds of them, running and shambling and stumbling. At first they were running blind, running from something, and then they saw us, and began making desperately greedy noises as they ran toward us.

  Many of the grins appeared to be fresh, for lack of a better term. Aside from the terrible rictus and filthy or torn clothes, they looked almost normal. Grins that had been infected for a longer time appeared to be undergoing some sort of physical change. Their hands were bigger, huge clawed weapons intended only for tearing. Some of them had larger jaws and their teeth were longer and sharper. Their faces and torsos were thin and wasted, the skin pulled brutally tight over the bones, as if something had been taken from those emaciated areas and used to build up the hands and jaws. The older grins now looked more adept than ever of achieving their singular purpose—tearing open a wound in a new host and spreading the parasites even further.

  Behind the horde of grins were two green army vehicles with mounted guns. The guns were firing. The grins were being herded right into us.

  I turned and shouted for everyone to run as fast as they could, for the pier, for the docks on the east side.

/>   We ran. It was madness.

  I heard cries behind me. An older gentleman stumbled and fell. His name was Tom and he used to be a mutual fund trader. A heavyset woman with a red face was struggling to keep up. I turned away from them. They were too slow. Too damned slow. A little boy was lagging behind. I scooped him up, still holding Clyde’s leash, and ran.

  The grins fell on the old man and the heavyset woman.

  My people disappeared behind the Aquarium of the Bay building.

  I felt but did not hear the shot that tugged at my go bag. I looked in that direction and saw that one of the vehicles had stopped and a soldier was pointing a rifle in my direction. I waved my arms and he fired again, and my left collarbone was chipped, the bullet tearing a channel through the top of my shoulder. The pain was excruciating. The soldier must have seen only the left side of my face. He must have thought I was a grin.

  Either way, the soldiers would probably slaughter all of us if they still thought of San Francisco as a quarantine zone. We had to move.

  I ran.

  The commotion was scaring away the sea lions that had taken over a few of the docks more than twenty years ago. To tourists and businesses that made a buck off of the sea lions they were living landmarks. To people who lived on the docks and eventually had to move, the big mammals were stinky and loud—so loud that on a quiet evening their characteristic ork-ork could be heard as far away as Pacific Heights. Now they were awkwardly rolling and crawling off of the docks, and the moment they hit the sea they were graceful and fast, disappearing from sight.