by Megan Berry
Watseka looks like it’d been a nice little town before the zombies. A large Welcome to Watseka sign greets us as we pull into town, and in the distance I see a really weird tower with a smiley face on it that seems very out of place in the apocalypse. It’s not a city by any stretch of the imagination, but it isn’t a one horse town either, so we will have to stay vigilant.
“I don’t suppose you have any idea where the cop shop is?” Silas asks as he steers the truck around a group of ten or so zombies staggering around in the middle of the street.
Natalie pulls her eyes away from the gruesome bunch and digs in the pocket of her pants, pulling out a torn and ragged piece of paper. “I have the address,” she confirms, passing it along to Silas.
Silas glances down briefly to read it, and the truck smacks loudly into a zombie on the road. “Shit,” Silas growls as he cranks two wheels up onto the curb to avoid more of them, and my stomach flips at the idea of the truck breaking down right here in the middle of zombie-ville.
“Do you think the truck is okay?” I ask anxiously, and Silas nods.
“I wasn’t going very fast, it probably didn’t even leave a dent,” he assures us. Sunny has her face pressed into Ryan’s side to avoid seeing all the terrifying things outside the window, and I feel awful that we had to drag the little girl into danger. Part of me wanted to leave her with the trailer, but that wouldn’t be any safer, even if one of us stayed with her. We only have the one vehicle, so anyone who stayed at the trailer would be trapped there if something happened to the rest of us, or if, God forbid, a hoard came along.
“It’s inside the municipal building,” Natalie points to a nice looking brick building up ahead, and my palms start to sweat. It feels like we arrived at our destination way too fast.
There are a lot of zombies around, and more are being drawn by the movement of the truck. I have no idea how we are going to get close to this building with all of these assholes staggering around out there.
“Are you guys ready to go?” Natalie asks, breaking the silence, her hand on the door handle, and Silas shakes his head.
“Hold up. You’re not going,” he tells her point blank, and I watch her angrily cross her arms over her chest.
“Like hell,” she argues, and I see a pissed off look cross Silas’s face.
“Look outside at all those things,” Silas argues, pointing to the flesh-eating monsters that are starting to gather. “Do you really think you’ll be able to outrun them in your condition? Can you run or jump, and do you even own a gun or know how to shoot one?” he demands, making Natalie look even angrier.
“I’ve made it this far,” she points out, but Silas isn’t having any of it.
“You accept our help, the way I say, or you’re on your own,” he says with finality in his voice, and Natalie turns pale at his threat. The zombies have reached the truck now and are starting to bang their fists against the glass, clawing and moaning. Silas hits the gas and easily outdistances them, parking further up the block. I look back and see that they are doggedly staggering after the truck.
“If those doors are locked, we might have to climb in through a window,” Ryan says from the backseat. “We will be in and out much easier than you would be, you need to think about the baby,” he continues with far more diplomacy than Silas, playing on her new mommy hormones, and finally at last, Natalie nods her head stiffly.
“Do you have a picture of this guy…what’s his name?” Silas asks.
Natalie reaches into her coat and pulls out a worn photo of Natalie and a pretty good looking guy, smiling into the camera with a Christmas tree in the background. “Hank,” she says, passing the picture over to Silas. “His name is Hank.”
“Now we’re talking,” Silas says as he double checks his ammo supply. “Jane, you stay here with Sunny.” Silas instructs, making me purse my lips in annoyance.
“No!” Sunny shrieks from the backseat and starts bawling as she claws desperately to hold on tighter to Ryan. “I want Ryan to stay,” she cries.
“Jesus, Jane. What did you do to that kid?” Silas asks me, and I can only shake my head.
“Sunny, I have to help find Natalie’s husband,” Ryan tries to comfort her, but Sunny just cries louder.
“Okay, new plan. Jane, you’re with me. Ryan’s on babysitting duty.” Silas says, making a snap decision.
Ryan looks furious, like he wants to argue, but Silas motions for me to get ready. I pull my gun from my hip and hold it in my trembling fingers.
“The rest of you, drive the truck around and keep those things off our back,” Silas says, interrupting Ryan’s protest. Then he jumps out of the truck, and there is nothing left for me to do but take a deep breath and follow him.
He runs quickly to get behind a small copse of landscaped trees, and I dive in right behind him, my head turning in all directions for any sign of danger. My heart hammers so loudly in my chest that I almost don’t hear it when a zombie growls right beside us, apparently he was just hanging out behind these trees too. Silas swings his axe hard and gruesomely splits his skull, dropping him. He wipes the goop off on the zombie’s shirt and turns to me, handing me the picture of the guy we are here to find. I take a quick look at the guy, who looks a little preppy, and then tuck it into my pocket for safe keeping.
I peek out at the truck and see that a couple zombies have started to break off from the main group and head in our direction. The truck starts to move suddenly, Ryan must have gotten into the driver’s seat, and the shrill beep of the horn makes my pulse sky rocket. The zombies’ attention is riveted back to the truck, and Silas turns away to scan the area behind us, confident that Ryan can handle his part.
There is a lot of open lawn and flower beds between us and the building, and I hear Silas let out an annoyed huff as he takes off running. I grip my pistol and start after him. One of these days, he’s going to regret always running off and leaving me—I’ll probably be dead, but at least Silas will be sorry.
We reach the building without too much trouble, though there are a couple zombies hanging around the front. Silas raises his gun and takes them out, never missing a shot even though he’s still at a dead run. The front door is made of glass and is covered in zombie crud. They’ve obviously been pawing at it for a while, which is hopefully a good sign that the guy we came for might still be alive.
Silas tries the handle, but it’s locked. “Do we smash it?” I suggest to Silas as he scans the rest of the building. It’s all brick and stone walls, but there are a lot of tall, waist-high windows. Silas shakes his head and motions for me to follow him as we slip around to the side of the building. It still feels pretty exposed, so he carries on until we are at the rear of the building. We try the back door, but it’s locked too. There isn’t much out here other than lawn, so it feels more protected from prying zombie eyes.
Silas curses as he walks up to the first window and tries to peer inside. I do the same, but you can’t really see anything. I spin around to protect our back from any incoming unfriendlies, but thankfully, the only stirring is the breeze.
Silas uses the head of his axe to smash in the window, and I wince at the noise. We both freeze, waiting to see what will happen. After a few thundering heartbeats, where a flesh-eating zombie doesn’t poke his head out through the glass and snap its teeth at us, Silas cautiously pokes his head inside.
“Empty office,” he whispers, pulling himself carefully through the window before reaching out to give me a hand. “Watch out for the glass,” he warns me, even though I don’t need to be told. My heavy duty boots crunch on the glass, and I’m glad, not for the first time, that Silas made me trade in my flimsy running shoes.
I land inside, my feet soundless on the grey office carpet, and I relax a bit when I see that the door is closed and the office looks undisturbed. “Is this the police station?” I ask, looking around, but Silas shakes his head.
“This is also the municipal building, we might be in that area,” he creeps forward an
d listens hard outside the door before turning back to me. “Ready to go?” he asks, and I’m actually a little touched that he’s checking with me first. I nod, and he cautiously turns the door knob and peers out. It’s a little dark. Even though there are a lot of windows, most of them are covered over with shade blinds. Silas clicks on his flashlight, and I do the same. Then we creep out, together, into the main room.
The air doesn’t smell rotten in here, but we are still on high alert. It’s eerie to be in a place that is completely foreign to you when something could jump out and attack you at any minute.
There are a bunch of desks with computers in the immediate area, and further towards the front of the building there is a large counter, most likely to service the community when they come in to pay their water bills and such.
“It’s probably on the other end,” Silas says, motioning to where the wall is sectioned off to divide the building. I nod, even though Silas isn’t waiting for my confirmation, and we head in that direction. I stumble over a chair leg and let out a squeak of surprise, causing Silas to spin around and aim his flashlight right in my face.
“Hey!” I complain.
After he’s assessed the situation and seen that my foe is actually just a chair, he turns away with a shake of his head. I blink a couple times to clear the spots away from my eyes, and then take off after Silas.
It feels like we reach the ominous door much too fast. Silas tries the handle, and it’s actually unlocked, possibly because it’s already locked inside a secured building, but more likely because there are going to be zombies inside wearing policeman uniforms.
I take a deep breath and blow it out to calm my nerves, and Silas gives me the ‘get ready’ look before he swings the door open and steps back. We find ourselves staring into a black hole. It’s obviously a hallway of some sort, but there are no windows. Silas brings his flashlight up just in time to illuminate rotting, pale skin and chipped, chomping teeth as a zombie comes stumbling out of the darkness and takes a swipe at Silas.
Silas doesn’t have enough room to really raise his gun or swing his axe, so he rams his axe handle up against the zombie’s throat and uses it to hold him off. I start towards Silas with my knife out to give him a hand, but another zombie comes lurching out of the hall. My stomach gives a sick flop when I see that my assailant is only four feet tall.
The little boy is missing a large chunk of skin from his neck and hands, and he comes at me with exposed skeleton fingers, the bones clicking loudly together. I feel bad for the boy, but that doesn’t stop me from ramming my knife down, as hard as I can, into the top of his skull. Usually I’m not tall enough to pull off a move like this. I feel a lot of resistance and realize, belatedly, that the top of the skull is probably one of the thickest parts of bone, but my knife is huge and razor sharp and my muscles burn until it sinks into the squishy brain beneath. The boy zombie stills instantly, and I pull my knife from his head with a surge of guilt just as Silas finally gets enough room to bring his pistol up and press it underneath his zombie’s chin.
The snarling of the zombie is silenced when the bullet blows out the back of his head. “Shit,” I hear Silas cuss, and my heart skitters.
“Were you bit?” I ask, dreading the answer.
“Nah,” Silas replies. “Just got covered in brains,” he tells me, giving me the willies when I think about all the germs floating around in that mess.
Silas holds his flashlight up with his gun, just like I’ve seen people do in the movies when they’re sweeping rooms. I try to mimic him, but it feels awkward, so I give up and grip my pistol at my side in my predominant hand and hold my flashlight up with my left.
“Looks clear, but keep an eye out,” Silas murmurs as he takes the lead. The hallways is super creepy, and the various puddles of blood and ooze we pass don’t help set my mind at ease. We pass by several closed doors marked Interrogation room 1, 2, and 3, which I am quite sure hold zombies. I press my ear up against the jam and hear a lot of shuffling feet mixed with moaning growls.
A zombie wearing a policeman’s uniform comes wobbling out of an open doorway, spots us, and growls loudly as he switches course to come at us. Silas hits him with a vicious swing of his axe, and he goes down twitching. I aim my flashlight into the room as Silas takes a final swing, and I see a female zombie also wearing an officer’s uniform. She’s standing in the corner next to a coffee pot and a box of moldy unfinished donuts, almost like she’s gone dormant. When the beam of my light catches her attention, she swings around and lets out a hiss. Her once tidy bun is pulled out in disarray, and her nose has been completely chewed off! I aim carefully as she draws closer, my hands shaking only a little, and I actually manage to take her down with a single shot.
I sense Silas’s approval, though he doesn’t actually speak as we carry on down the hallway of horror. “Do you think we should be looking in some of these rooms?” I ask the back of Silas’s broad shoulders, but he shakes his head at me.
“I’m betting there will be something at the end of this hall,” he says, and I’m confused.
“Why do you think that?” I ask, causing Silas to look back impatiently. “None of these little side rooms would be big enough for the holding cells, or the bull pen,” he says, shining his light down the hallway to the blue door at the very end of the hall. “That door,” he says, increasing his pace. We can see from here that the rest of the doors down this hallway are shut, thank God!
I’m beginning to think this hallway is a cake walk when Silas stops abruptly before we reach the door on the end, and I accidentally run into his back. “What’s wrong?” I hiss in the dark, checking nervously behind us with my light.
Silas turns to me and grins. “For once something is right,” he tells me, motioning to the door in front of us.
“Armory?” I read out loud, not exactly sure what that is.
“It’s the guns,” Silas tells me with a small snort of distain. “Geez, Blondie, were you raised under a rock?” he can’t resist adding, and I bite my lip to keep myself from arguing with him. This isn’t the time or place.
Silas presses his ear up against the door and listens while I keep an eye on what’s going on behind us. “Okay, I have good news and bad news,” he tells me, stepping away from the door, and I look at him expectantly.
“What?” I ask, curiosity getting the better of me when he doesn’t reply until I’m forced to ask.
“We found the guns, but there are zombies in there too,” he tells me, and I swallow.
“Can you tell how many?” I ask, having some faith in Silas’s abilities. Silas shrugs.
“Maybe five,” he estimates, and I really want to ask him how he came up with that number, but, again, it’s not the time or place for chit chat.
“Guns blazing?” I ask, knowing Silas better than I probably want to. He nods, and I wince but slap a fresh mag into my 9mm—just in case his guess is wrong.
Silas tries the door knob and it turns. I’m kind of surprised they would leave the armory open like this, but I guess since the zombies are inside, someone probably ran in and didn’t make it back out.
“Ready, Blondie?” Silas asks, and I make an agreeable sound come out of my constricted throat. Silas and I stand shoulder to shoulder, probably because he doesn’t want to risk having me accidentally shoot him in the back. Silas takes one more look up and down the hall and then throws open the door and raises his gun.
Two things occur to me at once. One, we are lucky. This room has a barred window so we can actually see what’s going on, and we don’t have to use the flashlights. I throw mine down to the ground to free up my hands. And two, Silas was wrong. There are a lot more zombies in here than he thought.
I hear Silas’s pistol fire in quick succession, and it wakes me up a bit. I aim at an ugly bastard with flaking skin, wearing a cop uniform, and I fire into his face as he heads towards me, teeth snapping. He drops and another one instantly takes his place. The zombie behind him trips over the body
of his fallen comrade, and Silas moves in quick to strike him with the axe. I force myself to follow Silas deeper into the room as we make a push towards the zombies. “Watch out!” Silas calls, and I feel a bullet rush by my face to plant into the skull of a zombie that was just about to take a bite out of my shoulder.
“Shit, thanks,” I mutter as I raise my gun and fire at the next rotting corpse. I miss and hit him square in the chest.
“A little higher, Blondie,” Silas grunts as he swings his axe and splits a zombie from forehead to nose. I readjust my aim, and this time my bullet hits true.
I’m breathing heavily, and a cold sweat is rolling off my body as I take out another two zombies, and Silas takes out four.
I lean against the wall panting and wipe my forehead with my sleeve. “What happened to five?” I demand, and Silas shrugs, not even bothering to look apologetic.
“It’s not an exact science,” he tells me, making me frown. I glance around the room and am surprised by the body count littering the floor. I’m also a little leery that some of them might not be completely dead and could spring up to bite me in the leg.
“Do you think they are all dead?” I ask, hating the whine in my voice, no doubt Silas will laugh at me.
He actually doesn’t, and it surprises the hell out of me. Silas bends down and quickly examines each corpse before he nods. “They are all dead,” he confirms, ignoring the bodies again as he heads over to a locked gun rack.
“Awesome, this place hasn’t been picked over,” he tells me with excitement, emphasizing every word.
“There are a lot missing,” I point out all the open lockers, but he just shrugs.
“That’s probably from the cops. If it had been hit up since then, these shelves would be picked clean.” he explains as he walks around. He finds a set of keys hanging out of one of the open locker doors and tries them out on a couple of the other locker doors.
“Jackpot!” he exclaims, pulling several small black handguns from the locker. He sets them down again and glances around, spotting a large black canvas duffel bag against the far wall.