She shrugged. “I dunno. At least it’ll make me feel better.”
“Feel better?” I asked.
“Look, Val, these days, whenever life knocks me down flat on my butt, knocking off a couple zombies always makes me feel a whole lot better. You’re the one who taught me that, remember?”
I let out a weak chuckle. “I did, didn’t I?”
“Yep, and it works every time. So c’mon.” Sammy walked to the bars, and when a zombie wildly reached out for her, she stuck the poker right through its forehead. It dropped to the ground as decaying liquid poured out. “It’s great for tension release,” she said. “Take your own advice and just try it. I know you’ve got a lot of anger and frustration going on. Kill as many as you can. We don’t even have to worry about conserving ammo. I’m gonna kill the things all night, take down as many as I can before I die.”
My fingers gripped the weapon. “Hey, creep,” I said, “how about a good, old-fashioned game of zombie poker?”
“That’s the spirit!” Sammy said.
I drew closer to the bars, and a snapping zombie tried to bite my face off. With a powerful thrust, I impaled it right through the eye. As soon as it fell, I took down the next one that stumbled over it. We worked as a team, letting out all our anger, screaming and yelling as we sent the demons back to Hell. It wouldn’t help us escape, but there was some release in it, and taking them down would keep them from killing someone else.
Sammy rubbed her temples. “Ugh. Don’t they ever shut up? What do they have to complain about anyway? All they’ve gotta do is roam around finding something to eat. Look at that one, in the torn dress. They don’t even have to worry about making themselves presentable, paying taxes, or going to work in the morning!”
“No doubt. Zombies suck,” I said, glancing out at the mob of walking dead. My eyes lit up when I spotted the key-holding warden again. “Look who’s back,” I said.
“Don’t hit any more of them,” Sammy said. “They’re piling up, and he won’t be able to get through.”
We began banging on the bars as loud as we could, trying to draw the rotter’s attention. I even went so far as to slice my hand on sharp, jagged metal, then waved it around, hoping it’d catch the scent of my blood. When it howled and hissed and stumbled our way, I knew that had definitely done the trick. “He’s coming,” I said.
“Hey, Warden,” Sammy said, “we’d like to make a jailbreak, but we need you to come closer so we can bash in your head.”
The warden walked closer, totally mesmerized by my bleeding hand. When he stepped next to the metal bars, I sucked in a deep breath. Don’t mess this up, Val, I told myself. It might be our only shot. Make it count. In one quick motion, I slammed the fire poker straight through its head, right between the eyes.
Sammy cheered and screamed in victory as he dropped to the ground right in front of us.
We held our pokers out and tried to free the keys off his belt loop, but we couldn’t reach them.
“All we have to do is turn his rotting body over,” Sammy said, squeezing the poker between the bars. Unfortunately, his body was so decomposed that she couldn’t get a grip; the poker just slid right through his deteriorating arm, like a knife through butter. Sammy sighed heavily in defeat, then cursed.
“We should go for his belt buckle,” I said. “Let me try.” I got a good grip on his belt with the poker and flipped him toward us.
Sammy clapped. “Yay! We can so reach him now, Val.”
“Wait. Do you hear that?” I asked, placing a hand against my ear.
“What?”
“The voice of hope, telling us not to give up.”
Her face lit up, and she rolled her eyes. “That’s cornier than Jiffy Pop, Val, but yeah. I hear it, loud and clear.”
With trembling hands, I slowly grabbed the keys and tugged them toward us. Sammy hugged me, and I breathed out a sigh of relief.
“Let’s go,” Sammy said.
“Not yet,” I said. “My blood has them all in a frenzy. We’ve got a little time before Marvin comes back, and we need to wait for them to settle down.”
“I don’t wanna stay here another minute,” she whined. “We can fight them.”
“We’ve gotta pick our battles. There are too many of them lurking around out there. We wouldn’t stand a chance.”
“I still say we go for it.”
I met her gaze straight on. “This isn’t a videogame, Sammy. There are no power-ups, no extra lives. This is reality, and they will kill us. You get one chance, that’s it. If you screw up, it’s game over.”
“But Mr. Sicko will be back soon,” she said.
“I know, and we’ll be gone by then. We just need to be quiet and still and let the horde calm down and disperse like they did earlier.”
“Ya know, Marvin will actually be risking his life just to walk through those things to get to us.”
“He’s a narcissist, and that makes him cocky and stupid. He thinks he’s invincible, and it’s that kind of thinking that will eventually get him killed.”
“Just like he deserves, if you ask me,” Sammy said.
I smiled at her, unable to argue, because I basically felt the same way.
“Anyway, I’d feel a whole lot better walking into zombie madness with my gun,” she said.
“Me too.”
She let out a long sigh. “You know what it’s like to fight zombies without a Glock or rifle.”
“Please enlighten me.”
“It’s like eating beef broth with a knife. It’s pretty darn messy.”
“Well, I’ll put up with a little mess if it means living one more day,” I said.
“A little mess? Don’t sugarcoat it.”
“Meh, it might not be so bad.”
“Seriously?”
“You know, if we can mimic what we did to get out of the museum, we might have a better chance,” I explained.
“You mean…”
“Yep. Smelly zombie guts. It might be our only shot.”
We went to the back of the cell and sat down. It was so frustrating knowing I had the keys in my hand that would let us out the door, but just waltzing out there among the festering feasters would be suicide. So, we sat down in the back corner of the cell and waited.
After a few minutes, they started to disperse.
“It looks doable now,” Sammy said. “We’ll get through those man-eating maniacs one way or another.”
The flashlight Marvin had left on the counter began to flicker.
“No, no, no!” Sammy said. “We can’t lose the flashlight.”
“Well, I guess we couldn’t expect it to keep going and going and going. I’m sure Marvin doesn’t feel we deserve name-brand batteries,” I said. With my shaking hands, I looked for the right key.
“Hurry,” Sammy coaxed. “Please.”
“I’m trying, but none of these keys are working!”
She clutched her chest. “Please tell me that was the warden we took down.”
I jumped, startled, when a zombie shrieked not too far away. I vowed to do serious damage to anything that wanted to take a bite of me. Tuning out Sammy and the zombies, I continued fumbling through the keys. I fought to calm myself down, and when I finally found a key that fit, I bit my lip hard in anticipation. I turned it slowly, silently praying. The door clicked, and I let out a long breath. “Well, one thing down, a whole herd of them to go,” I said, staring out at the flesh-eating abominations we’d have to fight without our guns. The heavy steel door swung wide open on rusted hinges, and we scurried out, stepping over dead zombies.
“Remember, no matter how bad things get, don’t scream. Silence is your friend.”
“Got it,” Sammy whispered.
I gripped my fire poker tightly and fought back a shiver as I took another step over another dead zombie, then another. I tried not to think about the flesh-eaters as my boots squished into their rotting corpses. Goosebumps pimpled my neck, and I ignored the little voice telling
me that I might be on the precipice of my last day on Earth. I could think of no worse place to die than inside a cold, strange place, never to be found.
I momentarily stopped when a few zombies started grunting like angry apes. Glancing ahead, I watched their every move. They spun in a slow circle as they wandered aimlessly around. They hadn’t noticed us, so I let out a trembling breath as I forced myself to walk forward.
Something stalked closer. I could hear the debris crunching underneath its dead, rotting feet. My gut clenched. A spitting screech cut through the air, and I about jumped out of my skin. I raised my fire poker high, ready to use blunt force on anything that got in my way. In a blur, claws lashed out at me. I whacked the ghoulish freak’s head clean off. Zombies were our enemies, and even if they used to be human, I had no sympathy or feelings for them; they most certainly had no feelings for us besides hunger pangs. Before I could even take another breath, another came at me with hallow eyes. I swung repeatedly, bashing its head in. A sickening crunch filled the air, but that didn’t deter its buddy.
Another zombie hobbled toward Sammy from the right, but she didn’t even hesitate to hit it like a famous baseball player. “Taste my pain!” she shouted at the zombie with the mangled face. She shoved the fire poker down its throat, then pulled up, splitting its face in half and splashing gore everywhere. “No guts, no glory,” she said, shrugging at me.
A corpse in a bright yellow shirt reached for me and released a feral snarl. I hit the creepy mutation across its jaw. Another to my left snarled like a rabid bulldog. Its malicious gaze told me it needed to die. In one swift blow, I bludgeoned the thing, and it fell at my feet. Two more approached in a hurry. I stuck the fire poker through one’s nasal cavity and dropped it, then stuck its pal through the left eye socket. It crumbled to the ground with one last moan.
I reached for the flashlight on the counter, and it flickered and dimmed as I held it. I shook it, desperate for light. Dust swirled in the wavering beam. Gripping my weapon, I took more nervous steps as Sammy clung to my arm. The cries of the dead filled the air, and I could hear them dragging their feet along as they shuffled in the looming blackness. I swept the flashlight around in front of me, but it wasn’t much help since the cheap batteries were failing. Shadows roamed and shifted ahead of us. Precious time was slipping away, and I knew we had to keep moving.
Heavy footsteps came closer, and silhouettes emerged. I sucked in a sharp breath. I dreaded those lurking shadows, but I vowed to fight like a machine and take down any cursed thing in my path. A scratching sound caught my attention, like fingernails dragging across a chalkboard. I stopped in my tracks and held my breath when I heard a ghastly growl in my ear. I spun to face my attacker, kicking it in the chest and bashing its skull in as adrenaline surged. Liquid splashed all over my shirt and face. Swallowing hard to force the bile back down my throat, I suppressed the urge to puke.
Sammy and I took out zombies left and right, whacking, bashing, and smashing over and over again. “You were right, Val,” she said, breathing heavily.
“About what?”
“This not being a videogame. I’ve never been this out of breath playing Left 4 Dead.”
“No!” I shouted when the flashlight faded away. I shook it and banged on it for a few seconds, and it came back on just in time for me to see a haggard face lurching for me. A shudder rocked through me when it bared its teeth at me like a ferocious animal. I whacked its skull, then slammed it to the ground, where my foot stomped on its deteriorating head.
Sammy attacked the one behind it, hitting it until it stirred no longer.
A crunching sound echoed, like something caving in.
“The floor! It’s caving in!” Sammy said.
My foot also slipped into a rabbit-sized hole. As if the floor was made of quicksand, the more I wiggled, the deeper my ankle sank into the petrifying wood and concrete. I pulled and pulled, but my foot wouldn’t budge. “Darn it! I’m stuck too!” I said. “The whole floor’s as rotten as these zombies.”
Bony fingers wrapped around Sammy’s wrist, and she gasped. Through a long, narrow gap in the wall, a zombie with a protruding ribcage reached for her, stretching as far as it could with its other hand. I reached over and delivered a blow so hard that I dismembered the thing, but the wrinkled, black hand still clung around her wrist. Sammy flung the dead hand off and drew a shuddering breath. Her foot finally wiggled free from the hole, and she let out a sigh of relief. She ran to prop-open the door and shut it so no more zombies would filter in while I was still stuck.
A zombie with a withered, grayish-black face reached for me. My heart thudded in fear. Its jaws clacked and snapped, but when it leapt at me, I poked it straight through its forehead. Luckily, the thing was rotted enough that I could easily retrieve my weapon from its deteriorating cranium. Two more stepped clumsily from opposite directions. Sammy bravely fought the one on the left, and I delivered a power kick to one’s knee. When it fell, I stabbed it, then went after its groaning buddy. Its gaping jaws went straight for my neck when my fire poker shot through its head like a torpedo. Needless to stay, it bit the dust rather than me.
“Pull your foot as hard as you can!” Sammy said.
With my fists clenched, my lips pursed tight, and my eyes squeezed shut, I pulled harder, but nothing happened. I let out a frustrated grunt and tried again. Sammy wrapped her hands around my leg and yanked as throbbing pain raced up my thigh. Despite her frantic efforts, my foot remained wedged in. Beads of sweat dripped down my face as I pulled with every ounce of strength I had. I closed my eyes and exhaled, and my foot finally loosened enough for me to break free.
The next room was filled with many dead zombies, but movement suddenly caught my attention. A still-living one was flailing its hand through the same gap in the wall where the zombie had grabbed Sammy’s wrist. “It can’t fit through,” I said. “Just don’t stand over there, and you’ll be fine.”
I saw a dirty pile of sheets and blankets in the corner, next to a backpack. Clearly, someone had holed up in there, but I feared that person was one of the zombies we had slaughtered. I went through the backpack, hoping to find a knife or even a gun, but there were only mismatched gloves, a short piece of rope, and a torn-up map ripped out of a phone book. Still, the sheets gave me an idea.
“What are you doing over there, MacGyver? Gonna build us a tank with some chewing gum and a few pipe cleaners?”
“We’re on the fourth floor,” I said. “I remember climbing that many flights of stairs.”
“And how are dirty sheets going to help?”
“We’re gettin’ outta this place Hollywood prison break style.”
“Through the window?”
“Yep. Help me out over here.”
“How?”
“I’m tying all these sheets together to make a rope. We’ll tie the corner in a sheet bend knot.”
“And how do I make one of those?”
I quickly showed her how, and we put our makeshift rope ladder together. We rolled it up, and Sammy carried it as we bolted to the door.
She glanced up at the square window and gasped. A face-eater was pressing its black, slimy lips against the glass. She looked at me, wearing a horrified expression that mirrored my own. “Now what?” she said.
“We’ve still gotta open that door,” I softly urged. I didn’t really want to, because countless undead creatures who wanted nothing more than to dine on our still-beating hearts waited outside, but staying in that room was a death sentence all its own; our pill-popping executioner would be arriving anytime.
She let out a trembling breath. “You know what’s on the other side, right?” she whispered. “I’m pretty sure we aren’t gonna like the welcoming committee.”
“We’ll have to take them down,” I said.
“Val…” she whispered.
“Yeah?”
“You know as well as I do that…well, we might not make it.”
“Don’t think like that. We have
to make it…period.”
She pressed a trembling finger over my lips. “Shh. Let me finish. I just wanted to tell you that you mean everything to me. You’re a beautiful person, inside and out, and I’ve never had a friend like you before. I just…well, thank you for believing in me. If we die out there…” She paused as a tear streamed down her cheek. “If we don’t make it, I’ll see you on the other side. If you survive and I don’t, I’ll be waiting for you there.”
It was so emotional, so heartfelt of a farewell speech that I couldn’t stop a tear from sliding down my own cheek. “We’re not gonna die,” I said.
“I know that. That was…well, just in case, okay?”
“Just fight with your instincts and everything you have. Let’s look for a window. I don’t care if we have to climb down a few stories. It’ll still be safer than trying to walk through this zombie-infested building with no guns.”
“Not to mention we have no idea where were going,” she said. “We could easily get lost.”
“Are you ready?” I asked.
She nodded, holding her fire poker tightly, ready to swing.
My fingers wrapped around the handle, and I opened the door. The zombie’s mouth opened, and it let out a loud screech. I stabbed it right in the eye and kicked it in the chest, knocking it back against two others just long enough for the two of us to run by them.
I nervously shined the light around the corridor. Zombies shuffled around about 200 feet away. We tried to open every door we saw, but they were all locked. When the group of corpses started to stumble in our direction, I motioned Sammy down another hall. We kept moving, desperately seeking a window so we could escape the zombie-infested rat-hole where Marvin had left us.
When our faulty flashlight finally went out, I didn’t think things could get any worse. It was pitch dark, and I couldn’t see anything in front of me. Dread and fear engulfed me. I could hear Sammy’s labored breathing next to me. She didn’t scream or freak out, and I was thankful for that; too much noise would have attracted more zombies, and we would have been goners for sure. The undead had the advantage, because all we could do was stumble around in the dark.
Val: Prequel to The Zombie Chronicles Page 17