by Sam Sisavath
“Retirement, kid. You keep waiting for it, thinking about all the things you’re going to do when you hit that magic number. Then it creeps up on you, and suddenly you realize you don’t wanna do half of the things on your list. So what do you do? You look for other adventures.”
“Where’s your next stop?”
“No idea. Wherever the wind takes me. A few weeks ago I got an itch to see the Deep South. And here I am. What about you? Got plans after retirement?”
“Making plans would mean I expect to live to retirement age, old timer. To be honest with you, I’ve already overachieved after last night.”
“That’s a hell of a thing to say, kid.”
“It’s been a hell of a life,” Keo said. “So, about tonight.”
“What about it?”
“What you said about the back room. You think it can withstand a prolonged attack?”
“I think so,” Norris nodded. “I saw them attacking the windows and doors last night. They kept at it for hours and hours, but they didn’t make a dent in the bars. I don’t think they’re that strong. Hell, I think they’re weaker than they used to be—”
He stopped in mid-sentence when they heard the faint pop-pop-pop of automatic gunfire coming from well across town. The source was so far away that they would have missed it entirely if they hadn’t been standing on the rooftop at that moment.
“You heard that?” Norris said.
“Yeah,” Keo nodded, looking in the direction of the gunfire.
“How many shots did you hear?”
“About a half dozen. Maybe seven.”
“It’s stopped.” Norris scratched his chin and thought about it. “Could be anything. Anyone. Maybe one of those people from the hospital.”
“If any of them are still out there, they should be making their way to us by now.”
“What were they shooting at, you think?”
“Too bad we can’t ask them,” Keo said.
*
Gillian was waiting for them in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs when they climbed down from the roof.
“I thought I might have heard gunshots,” she said.
“You did,” Keo said. “But no one showed up and we didn’t hear it again.”
“It might have been Brent and the others. I don’t understand why they’re not here yet. It’s going to be dark pretty soon.”
“I’m sure they’re fine.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I’m just trying to think positively.”
“Maybe they left town,” Norris said, hopping down behind Keo. “That’d be the smart thing to do, rain-slicked roads or not. We probably should have done the same thing. The more I think about it, the more I think we’re pushing our luck staying here two nights in a row like this.”
“We didn’t miss anything,” Keo said.
“That’s what I keep telling myself too, kid.”
“You’re just being paranoid.”
“I’ve been called worse,” Norris grunted, then walked past them and up the hallway.
Gillian looked after him, while Keo down at his watch. “We’ll get through this. We didn’t know what we were dealing with last night, but this time we do.”
“You really think that’s going to matter when they come out of their hiding places and swarm the building?” she asked.
Keo smiled at her. “Absolutely,” he lied.
CHAPTER 11
The one hour until nightfall felt like an eternity.
They gathered in the lobby and waited in silence. Keo spent the time checking the Remington while Gillian sat quietly next to him. One of the portable LED lamps glowed a few meters away, throwing a halo around them and half of Norris’s face, the ex-cop leaning nearby against a desk. The only noises were the wrinkling of bags, the crunch of chips, and the occasional sloshing of bottled water.
Keo busied himself with duct-taping the flashlight to one side of his Remington’s barrel. When he was done, he tossed the roll over to Norris, who did the same to his weapon.
“I used to love the fact that it got dark so fast this time of year,” Gillian said after a while.
“Night owl?” Keo said.
“No, it wasn’t that. I just liked the quiet. Of course, I didn’t know what real quiet was until now.” She surprised him by leaning her head against his shoulder. “Do you mind?”
“No. But let me know when my breathing becomes too annoying.”
She smiled. “Deal.”
“Remember,” Norris said, his voice practically booming in the quiet of the lobby. “We turn off the lamps in thirty minutes. We might be the only people left in this town, so let’s not draw attention to ourselves.”
Keo felt Gillian shivering involuntarily against him.
“We shouldn’t be here,” Aaron said.
It had been such a long time since he had said anything that the sound of his voice prompted Keo to look around for the source. Aaron sat on the floor next to one of the vending machines that covered up a window. He hadn’t moved from the spot even though he couldn’t look outside anymore. Keo wondered who (or what) he was looking for all those other times.
“Where else would we be?” Henry said from the front doors, where he sat on the floor with his shotgun resting between his legs.
“We shouldn’t be here,” Aaron repeated. His eyes seemed to be focused on a patch of wall across the room. There was nothing there that Keo could see. “In this place. This building. This town. We should have left when we had the chance.”
“We couldn’t,” Norris said. “Not with that monsoon earlier.”
“We should have tried. Don’t you see? They left for a reason. We should have left, too.”
“Who’s he talking about?” Rachel asked.
“The deputies,” Norris said. “The ones who were here before us last night.”
“Did we ever find out why they left?”
Norris shook his head.
“They had a reason,” Aaron said. His voice cracked a bit and his eyes drifted down to the floor. “We should have left when we had the chance. We shouldn’t be here…”
All eyes had turned to Aaron, not that the young man seemed to notice. He looked lost in his own world, staring at a wet spot on the floor.
“We looked everywhere,” Norris said. “Every room. Every nook and cranny. There aren’t any other ways in here.”
“He’s right,” Keo said. He wasn’t sure if Norris actually believed what he was saying, but he had said it with just enough conviction that Keo could see the others almost buying into it. He thought he’d help out. “There aren’t any other ways in except through the windows and doors, and we covered those up. We’re good in here, guys. They’re not getting in.”
Daebak. I almost convinced myself that time.
“Just remember,” Norris said, “lights out in—” he glanced at his watch “—twenty minutes. We don’t make a peep and they won’t know we’re here.”
*
The unmistakable sounds of doors opening and closing could be heard up and down the street outside the police station. It was followed by the growing cacophony of bare feet against hard concrete and splashing puddles from this afternoon’s rain. All of it flooded across the silent town of Bentley without any resistance.
They’re coming.
If the noise outside was impossible to ignore, the quiet inside was deafening. Keo wasn’t sure if Gillian was even breathing next to him. Or Norris nearby. Or anyone else. Even little Christine was clutching her mother’s waist, the two of them sitting next to Lotte’s wheelchair. Rachel was holding the teenager’s hand, though Keo couldn’t make out who had the tighter grip in the pitch-black darkness.
It didn’t take very long for all of them to accept that the creatures knew exactly where they were. Keo realized it right away when the stampede of footsteps grew louder and louder as they got closer and closer.
“They know we’re here,” Gillian whispered next to him.
“I kn
ow,” he whispered back.
“What now?”
“I don’t know. The doors and windows should hold.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” he said.
He put his hand over hers and felt her tense at first, surprised by the contact, before relaxing a bit when she realized it was just him. He couldn’t see all of her face in the darkness, just the soft green of her eyes.
Norris was to Gillian’s left, sitting with his back against one of the desks. Taylor and Aaron had moved away from the windows and were now somewhere inside the sheriff’s office to their left in the back. He didn’t know what they were doing in there. The idea was always to retreat to the back room with its steel door if they lost the lobby. He hoped the two of them remembered that.
They waited for something to happen because the noise outside was growing, getting louder and somehow more intimate at the same time. Thoughts (doubts) swirled around in his head, making Keo question everything.
Did we miss something?
We must have missed something.
Why did the deputies abandon the station last night?
Did we miss something?
Maybe crazy Aaron was right.
Fort Damper’s looking pretty good right about now.
Did we miss something?
There was a click! to his left. Norris, thumbing the safety off his shotgun. It was a tiny sound, unnoticed by everyone else in the room except him. Keo took his hand away from Gillian’s and did the same thing to his Remington.
“Remember, the back room,” he whispered to her.
“What?” she whispered back, leaning closer to hear him better.
“If anything happens, go to the back room. Where the lockers are.”
“Like we planned.”
“Like we planned,” he nodded, though of course she probably couldn’t see him in the darkness.
Did we miss something?
No. We didn’t.
Right?
“Can you hear that?” Gillian whispered.
“Outside?”
“No. Something else…”
“Where?”
“I don’t know, exactly.”
He stopped moving and breathing entirely and listened, but he still couldn’t hear anything. “Where?” he asked again.
“It sounds like it’s coming from inside the building,” Gillian said, her breath catching a bit as the words came out.
Keo glanced up at the ceiling, expecting to see something, but only saw the dirty tiles visible against a small sliver of moonlight that had somehow managed to invade the room through one of the vending machines stacked in front of the windows.
He was going to ask her again when he heard it.
Clack-clack-clack…
“What is that?” Norris whispered, just loud enough to get their attention. “What’s that sound? Where’s it coming from?”
Clack-clack-clack…
The noise was getting louder, but Keo couldn’t quite pinpoint its exact location. It seemed to be moving. At first it sounded as if it were coming from outside, but the more he listened, the more certain he was it was originating from inside the police station.
But that couldn’t have been possible.
Did we miss something?
Keo stood up to better track the sound.
Clack-clack-clack…
Norris was moving somewhere else in the room. “Where is it?” he said, just the hint of panic in his voice.
The others were standing up too, the sudden explosion of movement overwhelming Keo’s focus and forced him to abandon it. He put his hand against the wall instead and could feel the vibrations. Slight, but they were there.
Clack-clack-clack…
“It can’t be from the roof,” Norris said. He sounded out of breath for some reason. “There’s no way up there from outside.”
Clack-clack-clack…
Keo took a step away from the wall. Gillian, standing next to him, mirrored his movement. “Keo?” she said breathlessly.
“The wall,” Keo said. “It’s coming from the wall.”
“Where?” Norris said, almost shouting out the question.
Clack-clack-clack…
“I don’t know,” Keo said.
Did we miss something?
Shit, we must have missed something.
He clicked on the flashlight duct-taped to the side of the Remington. Norris and Jake did the same with their own flashlights, though Jake hadn’t taped his to his weapon. They took another step back and ran their beams along the wall, spreading the three halos from the top to bottom, then side to side.
Clack-clack-clack…
“I don’t see anything,” Jake said. Tori was clutching his waist from behind.
“Where the hell is that sound coming from?” Norris said, on the verge of shouting.
Keo pointed the shotgun at the spot where the wall joined the ceiling. He moved his flashlight beam from left to right until something metallic and soft-white gleamed in the pool of light.
It was a ventilation grill, held in place by two hinges along the left side.
Clack-clack-clack…
Keo took a step toward it, angling the light to look through the elongated, curvy slits that made up anywhere from ninety to ninety-five percent of the grill. He expected to see a box-shaped air filter on the other side through the louvers, but instead there was a pair of lifeless black eyes glinting in the flashlight beam.
“They’re in the vent!” Keo shouted. “They’re in the fucking vent!”
CHAPTER 12
The ventilation grill was 24x24 inches, big enough to pour as much cold air (or heat, in the winter) into the police station from a large air conditioner unit somewhere outside. The grill itself was made of sturdy solid steel construction. That was the good news. The bad news was that it was fastened to the wall by two simple hinges and could be easily loosened by twisting two latches in the right direction.
Or, failing that, slamming really hard into it.
And that was what the creature did. The first time it smashed its entire body into the 2x2 feet grill, the result was minimal. If it had given up then, things would have been fine.
But it didn’t give up.
It crashed into the vent again and again and again, and each time the latches moved a little bit more. Ventilation grills were meant to be opened easily so that replacing air filters wasn’t a chore. Not that Keo thought the creature slamming its entire body into the grill knew that. Just as it didn’t know—or seem to care—that it was skewering itself against the louvers, cutting its flesh with every impact. Pools of black wetness had begun to spread and drip down the wall.
Norris’s flashlight beam lit up the creature as he stumbled back in shock. “Fuck!” he shouted, and aimed his shotgun.
“Wait!” Keo shouted.
Norris glared at him. “What the hell for?”
“It can’t get through yet! If you shoot it—”
Loud rattling sounds from behind them cut him off. He spun around along with everyone else and saw the walls around the windows and doors shaking as the creatures outside began attacking the security gates and burglar bars. The desks in front of the doors shook and the vending machines vibrated against the two-pronged assault.
Keo wasn’t too worried about the doors and windows giving way, though. Even if the creatures could pull off the metal bars, there were the barricades to keep them back. No, he wasn’t worried about the things attacking the entrances. Despite the tumultuous rattling, it was all sound and fury, signifying nothing. He was worried about the ventilation system and the creature behind it. Because if there was one of those undead things back there, there were probably more.
“The back room!” Keo shouted. “Everyone into the back room now!”
“Lotte!” Gillian shouted and ran off somewhere into the darkness.
Keo tracked her with his flashlight until he heard the screeching of metal and knew the ventilation grill had finall
y surrendered. Before he could turn, a shotgun blast ripped through the lobby and something sticky and wet smacked him in the legs.
Norris was walking toward him, firing into the creature that had fallen out of the hole in the wall and was now flopping on the floor between them. Keo stumbled backward to keep from catching stray buckshot from Norris’s weapon as another blast tore just as many holes in the floor as it did the creature’s body.
And the damn thing didn’t stop moving.
Keo aimed at its head, the beam of his flashlight lighting it up in all its blackened and malformed glory. The undead thing scowled at him, one side of its face already gone, the jagged outline of its shattered skull torn apart by Norris’s buckshot. Keo fired and the rest of the thing’s head exploded like a ripe melon, leaving behind just the bottom half where the nose and mouth were.
And it still didn’t go down.
Norris had kept moving forward and he was almost on top of the thing when it whirled to confront him, “looking” at him with eyes that it no longer had. The sight of it, with the top part of its head shorn off, what’s left of its brain scattered over the floor like clumps of goop, was something Keo didn’t think he would ever forget.
Then Norris shot it almost point-blank in the chest, and the concussive force of the blow at such a short distance sent it sliding across the lobby and into the wall in a tangled mess of bony arms and legs. It lay against the wall for a second or two before it began unfurling itself and rising up again.
“Back room!” Keo shouted. “Get into the back room now!”
He turned in time to see Gillian racing across the lobby, pushing Lotte’s wheelchair in front of her. Rachel and Christine also ran past him, Rachel holding onto her daughter’s arm as the girl struggled with the suddenly slippery floor covered in pools of blood (and flesh and brains) the creature had left in its wake.
“Henry, Jake!” Norris shouted. “Get the fuck over here!”
Henry and Jake had Tori between them and they were rushing over from the other side of the room. They hadn’t gone more than a few feet when the creature turned its torso in their direction and launched its headless body at them. It slammed into Henry’s legs, bowling the older man off his feet, and took Tori right along with them.