Chapter 17
I tried to hold it together as my mind scrambled for a way out and zombies approached us from both directions.
“We have to get outta here!” Rachel shouted.
“Let’s head out at the next manhole,” I said.
“At least up there, we have more open space and places to hide,” Ed said.
“We’re through the worst part of the city,” Steven added.
It was agreed: We would take our chances on the surface.
As soon as we reached the next manhole cover, Steven tried to heave it off, but it wouldn’t budge. He let out a few curses and tried again. “It’s not working!” Steven said. “We need a bottle jack.”
The distorted echoes grew closer, and my heart pounded. “Get down,” I said, then raced up as soon as he was out of the way. With all my strength, I pushed it, but the lid would not open, not even a crack.
Ed sucked in mouthfuls of air as he caught his breath. His green eyes bulged underneath the disheveled mess of blond hair. “There’s probably a car parked on top of it.”
Rachel peered down the tunnel, letting out a shaky breath. “They’re getting closer!”
Sweat dripped from my brow as I clambered down. “Where’s the next manhole?”
Like a madman, I followed Ed and rushed to the next one. I scurried up and pushed on it, and it moved easily. It was a relief to know that we’d be out of that nightmarish maze once and for all. As I slid it over, I could hear the gurgling moans of the infected, and their vile gibberish made the hair on my neck stand on end. A zombie dragged its tattered foot along the ground just inches away from me, its arms limp and dangling in a lifeless fashion. As I glanced out for a better look, I was mortified. There had to be hundreds of them shuffling down the street. We were smack dab in the middle of a stampede of the mangled undead, and if we crawled out of that sewer, we’d be dragged into a herd and ripped apart by reaching hands, sharp fingernails, and jagged teeth.
Rotting arms reached for me, and I frantically shut the lid with a loud hiss echoing behind me. I wished that Nick or Lucas had come with me. I never should’ve done this without them. What was I thinking? How are we gonna get outta here alive?
“Oh my gosh,” Rachel whispered. “We’re so screwed.”
“We have two choices,” I whispered. “Downtown Dodge ‘Em or Subterranean Terror Maze? Name your game.” I tried to make it sound funny, but terror seized me as we all exchanged horrified looks.
“How about…neither?” Rachel said.
“We’ll never make it alive on the streets,” I whispered. “So Subterranean Terror Maze it is.” I shot Ed a look. “Where’s the next manhole?” Shuffling footsteps splashed closer as the moans grew more intense, and I could barely breathe.
“I see them!” Rachel said. “Run!”
“The next open manhole is…well, truth is, we’ll never make it,” Ed said, then turned back the way we came. “C’mon!”
“He’s right,” Steven said, glancing ahead. “Our two guns, a crowbar, and bats aren’t gonna cut it.”
“Is there any other way outta here?” I frantically asked as we bolted down the tunnel.
“There’s a small tunnel to the left, but we’ll have to take out the zombies in front of us.”
“Their moans are farther away than the ones behind us,” Steven said.
“We can beat them,” I said. “They’re slow.”
“Follow me!” Ed said, taking off.
My breathing came in labored gasps as I sped forward, not daring to take another look back. I could hear their moaning sounds through the tunnel behind me, and it sent shudders down my spine.
As the zombies shambled through the puddles behind us, I heard more groans coming from in front of us. Ed abruptly stopped. I gasped and felt the blood draining from my face. My jaw dropped as I watched the scene unfold before my eyes. My worst nightmare had come true, and terror consumed every cell in my body.
“We’ll never beat them to that tunnel,” Ed said. He was clearly overcome with terror, intermingled with the knowledge of imminent doom.
“We’re trapped,” Steven said as a look of complete terror spread across his face. “We’re flippin’ trapped!”
My heart jumped into my throat. Shivers ran down my spine, and we all looked at one another helplessly. We were trapped, and my heart felt as if it’d burst through my chest. Their distorted echoes made me shudder.
Ed raced about twenty feet ahead, then pointed to an opening high in the wall to the left and to the right. “Take your pick,” Ed said.
Sweat dripped from my brow. “Ed,” I said, my voice wavering, “those are not exits.”
His eyes were wide with fear. “Don’t you get it? It’s too late. We’ll never make it out of here before they come.”
“No!” I said. “It’s never too late.” I glanced around to find my own escape route. I wasn’t about to give up and die, and since he was just a kid, I would drag him out of there if I had to.
As I turned to run, Steven grabbed my jacket. “The kid’s right, man. There’s no escape. I’ve been down here plenty of times. I don’t know it as good as Ed, but I know we’re trapped.”
“If you say so, but I’m still not gonna sit here and do nothing,” I retorted. I racked my brain for an escape route and a possible battle plan.
“We can at least hide in the openings,” Ed said, “like I told you earlier.”
I studied the one to the left. It wasn’t deep, but it was long and horizontal. If we turned off our lights and stayed completely still, I thought it might work. Besides that, at the moment, it was our only alternative. I turned off my light and wedged myself into the four-foot gap just in the nick of time. A moan swept like a wave through me. The advancing monsters were coming, and I swallowed hard, my pulse drumming in my neck, and I hoped they wouldn’t catch our scent. My gut twisted. Is this a good enough hiding spot? I was used to fighting, not cowering in the shadows, but I knew we could never take on so many zombies from both sides. For the time being, hiding was the smartest thing to do.
“Are you crazy?” Rachel asked.
“Hide!” Steven said.
Rachel’s hands were shaking. “No! I say we make a run for it.”
“There’s nowhere left to run, baby,” Steven whispered.
She finally caved and squeezed her trembling body into a gap.
Ed and Steven couldn’t fit with us, so they climbed into the gaps across from us.
We’d crawled inside so quick that I hadn’t noticed that Rachel and I were face to face. She was a few years younger than me, and I was quite impressed how well she was handling the whole thing. She was brave; had she been hysterical, it would have been a severe detriment to her rescue. I gripped her shaking hand, and she squeezed mine. It was too dark for me to see her expression, but I knew I had to keep her calm. We were two strangers who became fast friends, on the run, hiding, and fighting to stay alive as a group of bloodthirsty predators pursued us relentlessly. In those unpredictable, uncertain times, we had to stick together, one fight at a time.
The breath froze in my throat as the zombies stumbled and limped by. I desperately gripped my gun, the cold concrete pressing against my back. My mind registered the sound of shuffling footsteps. I held my breath, hoping they wouldn’t spot us, but if they did, I knew I’d fight fiercely to the very end. I’d never been so scared as I watched hundreds of corpses in different stages of decomposition slog by us.
The splashing sound, mingled with their undead groans made me shudder. It was like being trapped inside an Edgar Allen Poe short story, some kind of horror film or undead nightmare. Terror cut through me, and I trembled, still holding Rachel’s hand in my clammy one. Again I wondered, How did my life get this way? What happened to the normal world I knew? The world where the dead stay dead? I fought to keep it together and stay calm. I knew that the slightest movement or any sound at all would give us away.
When I was five years old, I used to dream
about monsters dragging people into the darkness. I’d wake up screaming, and my mom would hug me and tell me everything was okay. Now I was eighteen, a legal adult, and I felt like that frightened little boy all over again. My mother insisted that there were no real monsters to drag little boys away, but now I knew better. Those zombies, those fiendish cannibals, wouldn’t hesitate to drag us right out into the watery ooze and slime and tear us to pieces. I was paralyzed by fear, and I could feel the sweat pouring from me as the thought consumed my mind.
My future had always been in question, and even when life was normal, I often had hopes, dreams, and doubts, but everything was upside down now. Instead of thinking about diplomas, degrees, marriage, and a career, I could only think about surviving the next second, the next minute, the next hour. My job would be fighting to live another day, avoiding infection at all costs, and protecting the ones I loved, and I knew there’d be plenty of overtime with very few fringe benefits and no paid leave.
The smell of rotting death lingered in the air, a hundred times worse than the feces that still stained my boots. One particular zombie sounded like a dying animal as it splashed along right past me.
As I huddled in that hole, I began to really think; confronting death can do that to a person. I thought hard about my life as memories flooded my mind. I’d always taken everything for granted, and like the old adage said, I had learned the hard way that we don’t know what we’ve got till it’s gone. I’d never realized how great my life was until it was ripped away. Strangely enough, I’d been held in death’s clutches so many times over the last month that I’d developed a bit of a creepy but cozy relationship with the Grim Reaper. I’d managed to outsmart him the cloaked sythe-wielder every time, and I could only hope and assume this time wouldn’t be any different. Staying positive helped me to slow my breathing as the rotting corpses continued to shuffle by, singing their songs of dead groans and strangled gasps.
As I concentrated, I heard past the grotesque racket of the dead and caught the sound of a waterfall in the distance; I assumed it was water coming in from other drains and tunnels. I discovered that if I closed my eyes and tried really hard, I could convince myself that I was simply resting in a meadow, listening to a peaceful brook trickling nearby. Then I threw my beautiful Jackie into the mix. I thought about her gleaming smile and pictured us laughing back at the greenhouse. Why does that seem like so long ago?
The last undead soldier finally passed, and we waited a while longer just to make sure. Once I was confident he was gone, I crawled out of my hiding spot. My shoulders shrugged in relief, and I couldn’t believe we’d survived. Rachel fell into Steven’s arms while I quickly reloaded my gun. Ed ran up to me and hugged me and I hugged the little guy back. None of us talked, because we all knew better.
I gave Ed a nod, indicating that I was ready to get out of there as fast as possible. Without one word, he led the way, and we sloshed through the puddles to the next manhole.
Steven climbed up to open it, then delivered bad news down to us. “Won’t budge,” he said.
I wiped my sweaty hands on my pants and took a steadying breath.
“Don’t say that,” Rachel said. The blood drained from her face, which was etched with the distinct look of fear.
Ed sucked in a deep gulp of air as he gazed down the drain. “We have to stick to the main manholes, the ones I know are open.”
“We have to try them all, Ed,” I whispered. “We need to get out of here as soon as possible.”
Rachel clutched her chest. “Let’s stop talking about it and keep going. We need to find a way out,” she said.
With a nod, Ed darted in front of us and led us through the maze. When I heard the familiar death moans, I stopped. Water splashed behind us, and I turned to see shadowy figures approaching.
“There’re more coming,” Rachel said, pointing at the infected corpses.
“Screw the rules. Everybody get out your guns,” Ed said.
“And use all our bullets up in ten seconds?” I retorted. “No way!”
Garbled grunts echoed through the darkness.
“Let’s go!” I shouted. “There’re too many to fight.”
I stomped through the puddles of water as my boots clanked against the concrete. Drops of water trickled down the dark walls and through cracks in the ceiling. We walked to the far end of the underground chamber and turned into the narrow passage to the left, then continued on the path until it ended abruptly at a steep, 500-foot drop. Rachel slid to the edge, flinging out her hands, teetering and struggling to regain her balance. I skidded to a stop and grabbed her around her waist just in time to pull her back. My chest heaved with jagged breaths. Steven stared over the edge in a daze. Daring another glance down, I gulped. One slip, and we could have easily plummeted hundreds of feet. It was no bubbling brook; it was a waterfall, and I’d almost gone over it.
Chapter 18
The hair on the back of my neck rose again as zombies moaned and clumsily splashed behind us. There were too many to fight, and jumping was not an option.
“What do we do now?” Rachel asked, her eyes wide with fear.
“The ladder!” Ed yelled. “Climb down.”
Glancing below, I couldn’t help wondering what terrors would befall us at the bottom, but we certainly couldn’t stay up there with the zombies.
Gasping for breath, Steven grabbed my shoulder. “I’ll go first, in case there’s anything at the bottom, and you cover us by going last.”
I nodded and let the others climb down the rusty ladder while I covered them, firing off shot after shot at the approaching monsters. “Hurry!” I shouted, my voice echoing across the room.
Just as I was about to position myself on the ladder, a zombie with frizzy white hair and tattered green skin reached for me. I aimed and squeezed the trigger. It tumbled over the edge, fell hundreds of feet, and crashed into the water below.
Another zombie missing a big chunk of its chin opened its mouth and snapped like a wild animal as it limped toward me. I fired off another shot, and it fell backward. I clambered ten feet down and stopped suddenly when I realized zombies were stupidly walking right off the edge of the waterfall, without me shooting them. “Crap!” I shouted, knowing that meant we’d have to face them at the bottom. “A few of these idiots are doing swan dives! You’re gonna have company down there!” I yelled to the others. “Be careful!” I couldn’t let all of them jump to the bottom, so I began shooting them, hoping to create a blockade of dead bodies, like the two that had saved us before.
I fired shot after shot, and the zombies tumbled every which way. More arrived, but they just walked into my blockade, too dumb to climb over. Once I was convinced that they were trapped, I slipped my gun into my waistband and gripped the cold, wet, slimy ladder. The smell of decay was overwhelming. Cascading, cold water splashed on me, soaking my clothes. Taking another breath, I continued my descent and finally caught up with the others.
Shots echoed from below. Glancing down, I saw Steven, Rachel, and Ed taking out any zombies that stumbled their way. I hurried down to help them as fast as I could, but it was a treacherous climb.
“We’re farther down,” Rachel’s voice echoed. “How are the oxygen levels down here?”
Ed pointed to a cockroach scurrying down the wall. “They need oxygen too. If they’re fine, we will be.”
“Not true,” Steven argued. “Those things can survive a nuclear winter, and we can’t.”
“Well, I’m not suffocating yet, are you?” Ed retorted. “And I don’t think the zombies have any weapons of mass destruction.” When I jumped off the ladder, Ed gave my coat a yank. “Let’s go!”
Everything was a blur as I followed my new friends through the dimly lit tunnels. Ed stopped for a moment in front of two tunnels, as if debating which one he should take.
“Not the left one,” Steven said.
“But zombies won’t be able to follow us through the rushing water,” Ed replied. “And it’s only to
our ankles.”
“We don’t have a white water raft or a jet-ski, man. That undertow will just sweep us away.”
“So we’ll get a little wetter, dude,” Ed argued. “It’s the only way to get the zombies off our back.”
“I say we go for it,” Rachel said. “C’mon, boys. Surely you’re not afraid of a little swim.” She pushed in front of us and scrambled down the drain.
About half-mile into the tunnel, a surge of water crashed against my legs from another connecting tunnel. The current suddenly picked up and grew rougher, but we continued to forge our way through the cement labyrinth. I clung to the slime-covered wall, holding back a grimace.
“Incoming!” Steven shouted.
Glancing behind me, I saw a zombie rushing through the water. Its poor balance had caused it to topple, and it was now being swept down the long, narrow drain by the current, flailing like a piece of driftwood. As it whooshed past us, it reached out its hands at a last attempt for a meal. Ed whacked it with his crowbar, and the zombie faded out of view and was swallowed by the darkness ahead.
I struggled not to fall, but the water was too strong. With the next step, the bat shot out of my hands, and I slipped, spiraling downward through the dark passageway, like some waterslide I didn’t want to be on. The shock of cold, tumbling water ran over my body, jolting me. My back bounced painfully off the slippery, uneven concrete as the current carried me helplessly along. I reached out my hands and desperately tried to grab the edge or anything to stop my momentum. Pebbles, bottles, trash, sticks, and pieces of metal flew up from under me, and debris slapped my face, arms, and legs. Out of nowhere, my head hit something hard, and the jolt sent shudders through me. I drew in a sharp breath and reached behind me, running my fingers along the form of a person, assuming it was one of the others. When I looked, I was shocked to see a big, fluffy beard.
I stared straight into the face of Crazy Jim. His eyes were closed, and his skin was rotting. I noticed the fresh wound on his head, so I could only assume Rachel or Steven had hit him. If the man had had a heart, it was gone—literally; in fact, he was nothing more than a hollow torso, because the zombies had made a feast of him. I’d grown accustomed to corpses, but I couldn’t help feeling sorry for that old, lonely man. His grief over his dead wife and family had, quite literally, eaten him alive, and the zombies took advantage of him losing his sanity.
The Zombie Chronicles - Book 5 - Undead Nightmare (Apocalypse Infection Unleashed Series) Page 17