Gunner pulled his gun and pointed it directly at Flynn's head. One minute Flynn was there, a horrible nightmare come to life ready to take all meaning out of the world, and the next he was gone, a twitching corpse lying in the filth with most of its head blown clean off. The smell of the smoke lingered in the air around them, an acrid and sickly sweet cloud of spent gunpowder. The booming echo rolled through the tunnels and off into the distance. Max's ears were ringing. Everything grew silent again--too quiet, as if people were waiting in the darkness to make their move. Max realized she'd been holding her breath. She let go a rattling exhale. Her bladder screamed at her and she suddenly understood just how close she'd been to pissing her pants in that moment of fear and panic.
“I thought we were out of ammo,” Parker said.
“We are now,” Gunner said. “I always save one bullet just in case I need to use it on myself. Figured saving your pretty little girlfriend was a far more worthy cause. That okay with you?”
“Thank you,” Max said, holding her ringing ear.
“How did he get in here?” Holt demanded. “Are we back underneath Thunderdome?”
“How should I know?” Gunner countered. “All any of us can do at this point is guess.”
“Okay, then guess,” Parker responded.
“Maybe he wandered out behind the apartments and found the run off that leads to the sewers,” Gunner said. “He'd have to climb down in to get here. I know that. Maybe he was chasing some poor victim.”
“Damn,” Parker said, looking down at the now still corpse. “He was a good guy. He didn't deserve to die like this.”
“Like any of us deserve this?” Max sounded tired, worn down. She looked sick with fear. Parker turned and stared at her, but didn't respond. What could he say? She was right. They didn't deserve this hell.
“Wait a minute,” Holt said, pacing back and forth. “These tunnels could literally be swarming with zombies by now. Think about it. That old guy with the beard said they get a lot of traffic, workers coming and going all the time.”
Parker took the flare from Gunner's hand.
“Hey,” Gunner protested.
“I need to borrow this,” Parker said.
He turned and hurled the flare behind them like he was chucking the ball around at practice to an outfielder. The glowing stick toppled end over end for over a hundred feet. It came to rest with an echoing thud and rolled to a stop at the foot of a large, angry looking man in an Arizona Diamondbacks jersey who was missing most of his lower jaw. There must have been at least twenty of them, packed tight in the darkness, thrashing and clawing around him, some hissing, some moaning. The baseball fan screamed and the undead behind him swarmed past him toward them. Max let out a loud gasp.
“Run!” Parker cried out. They turned and fled in panic. They were trapped in a never ending network of concrete tunnels. If that horde caught up with them there would be no way to fight them off.
Gunner stood his ground, pulling the magazine and confirming it was empty. He didn't need the quick search he conducted to tell him he was out of ammo, but as a force of habit he did it anyway. He'd have to do this the hard way - hand to hand. A wiry girl with glasses hanging from her torn right ear ran past him, hissing. Gunner turned and ran at her, kicking her legs out with one quick sweep. She flailed and crashed head first into the wall with her momentum. Gunner was on top of her in seconds, holding her by the head to keep her gnashing teeth away from himself.
“No you don't!”
His right hand came free as a tangle of her dirty hair ripped free from the scalp. Gunner leaped up in surprise as she twisted her neck almost a hundred and eighty degrees, snapping at him in frustration. His boot came down on her face, smashing in her cheek bones and nose. He could feel the sickening crunch under his foot and it gave him a warm feeling inside. He brought his foot down on her face several more times as hard as he could, until eventually he felt her skull give. Looking down he could see her brain matter made of writhing gray foam and oily, black slime leaking out the back of her cracked head like a rotten egg. She stopped fighting. Her arms fell limp to her sides.
“Gunner!” Parker cried somewhere off in the distance. “Hurry!”
The others were almost on him. For a split second, Gunner had the urge to stay and fight them, one on one, until he'd killed every last one.
You could do it, a little voice told him. This is what you’ve been trained to do--to protect and kill. He was fully aware that he couldn't just leave those kids alone and unprotected. Who knew what horrors they were already stumbling upon without him?
Gunner bolted up and ran at full speed down the tunnel, praying he wouldn't catch on anything and fall or run head first into a wall, the way the zombie he killed had. In less than a minute he’d caught up with them. They were at a locked gate, fumbling, trying to pick it.
“This is the one,” Parker said frantically. “This leads up to the Strip.”
“Get out of the way,” Gunner said, out of breath. “I got this.”
“You gonna shoot it off?” Max asked.
“No,” Gunner said, fishing around in his pocket with his left hand as his right hand examined the lock. It was a Master Lock 5. Perfect, he thought. He pulled out two thin strips of metal.
“I told you. I'm out of bullets so we're going to have to work fast,” Gunner said.
“Mister Apocalypse is unarmed? Unbelievable.”
“Mister Apocalypse?” Gunner chuckled as he fed one strip of metal into the keyhole and pulled it hard to the left. “I like that.”
“What are you doing?” Holt asked as Gunner shoved the other strip of metal into the lock and began shimmying it back and forth.
“I'm popping this lock,” Gunner said. “Should take me about three seconds with this brand.” Gunner turned his head to look past Max. The horde was closing in on them.
Stay calm, he reminded himself. In a life or death situation, the people that panic are always the first to die.
Gunner felt a sharp click as the shackle was released. He yanked down and the lock popped open.
“You are never unarmed when you have a strong mind,” Gunner said.
Max gave him a sneer as she passed. Parker and Holt quickly followed. Gunner went last, pulling the gate shut just as the remaining swarm arrived. Cold fingers scratched at his skin as he clicked the gate into place. The Diamondbacks fan screamed in anger as he threw himself head first at the steel, marking his gray skin with a waffle pattern from the bars. Gunner wasted no time administering a well-placed kick that caught the big guy square in the face full force and sent him tumbling back with a splash.
“Not today, hombre,” Gunner said with a grin. He turned and followed the rest of the gang up the embankment that lead to a trickle of daylight.
CHAPTER THIRTY
For a short while, it seemed like they had locked themselves into a concrete prison with no escape. The only way out to the street above was through a tiny grate cemented in place. Parker cursed at himself freely for taking them all to what appeared to be a dead end, and no one came to his defense. In the end, it was Max who realized that a small tunnel set in the side of the boxy room, originally intended for the engineers, was large enough to crawl through on their hands and knees and eventually lead to a runoff ditch. They came out in a cluster of red berry bushes down from the Luxor, emerging from under the world to a nightmare landscape of unimaginably hellish proportions.
Holt spoke first.
“You're looking pretty hot right now,” Holt said. “And you're not even my type.”
“You're a guy,” Max chided him. “Every girl is your type under the right circumstances--and I would say the end of the world as we know it is the right damn setting.”
“He's right though,” Parker said. “You kinda look amazing right now.” He expected her to lash out at him the way she usually did, but instead she smiled wider.
“Thanks,” Max replied. “You're not so bad yourself, stud.”
&nb
sp; “Look alive, people,” Gunner yelled. “We've got incoming,”
They came out from every direction. It looked like the line of undead stretched all the way down to Treasure Island.
“Looks like you're zombie walk was a big success after all,” Parker teased. “Record turn out I'd say. I kinda wish Travis could see this. He'd be so impressed.”
“We need to get someplace safe fast,” Max said.
Gunner glanced across the way at the wedding chapel. There was a clear path right to it. If they ran now, they might be able to make it before the dead swallowed them up like the rising tide.
“The chapel. Over there. We can still make it,” he said, “if we hurry.”
“This is gonna be close,” Holt warned. “Let's go!”
Without another word they all took off running, breaking off into a mad dash for survival. Max was the first to pull ahead. Holt and Parker followed behind her. Gunner hung back to make sure they weren't picked off.
“Keep moving,” Gunner yelled as he saw Max slow down.
There was a work truck in the middle of the street. Max stopped and pulled a machete off the back of it. A fresh zombie raced out in the street to greet her, but she hacked off its head with a wide, sweeping blow from her right hand. By the time Holt and Parker reached the corpse there was nothing left to do but kick it over.
“Pick up the pace, people,” Max screeched as she blazed a path up the front walkway of the chapel. She turned and saw the door to the chapel swing open. Fat Elvis was waving them in. Max wasted no time running into the safety of the inside. Holt followed without looking back. Then Gunner.
Parker turned back to the street. He was the first to notice there were still actual living people out there. A woman in a red dress with long blonde hair ran screaming across the street at the sight of them.
“Wait!” She cried out. “Please wait for me!”
A small cluster of the living dead were right behind her. There was no way she was going to make it. Parker paced back and forth in front of the door in anxiety. If he went back for her they might all die, but how could he leave her to this terrible fate?
“Come on!” Parker shouted. “Hurry!”
“We need to get inside and lock the door,” Fat Elvis pleaded making the sign of the cross over himself. “Now.”
“Just a minute, King,” Parker said. “Run lady, you are almost there!”
Just then the woman tripped on the curb and fell into the grass. The dead were on her in seconds, like vultures feasting on a fresh carcass. The woman's loud screams rang out down the street, like a dinner bell for the ghoulish fiends. They came from every direction in numbers too large to be believed.
“No!” Parker cried, but he knew it was over. He allowed Fat Elvis to pull him in and lock the door. The woman was gone now, and nothing he did could change that.
Parker unleashed a slew of obscenities as he kicked the last row of chairs in the chapel. Max's eyes filled with tears as she watched his impotent outburst. Still Gunner's plan had worked. He had saved their lives, for the moment at least.
“Dear Lord,” Fat Elvis said. “You need to calm down son.”
“Thanks for letting us in,” Gunner said, slapping the man on the back, before turning and walking toward the altar. It was covered in Elvis memorabilia from every period of the singer's life. The word GRACELAND formed an arch under which the betrothed were meant to be joined in the sight of God and any witnesses they'd scraped together in a drunken stupor before taking the plunge.
“What are you doing?” the impersonator asked. Gunner didn't answer. Fat Elvis turned to Max. “What is he looking for?”
“His sanity,” she replied, turning and walking over to Parker. She put her hand on him and he shook it off. She didn't flinch. She put her hand back on his arm, slowly.
“It's okay,” Max said in a low voice.
“It's not okay,” Parker raged. “Did you see what they did to her? That could be us at any moment now. All of us!”
“I know,” Max said, the tears still streaking silently down her face. “I know.”
Parker fell to his knees and began sobbing in dry heaves that wracked his body.
Max bent over and wrapped herself over him.
Holt turned to Fat Elvis.
“It sure is quiet in here, King,” Holt said.
“You can call me Frankie,” he said. “I'm not really the King you know.”
“All hell has broken loose out there, King” Holt replied ignoring his request. “How is this place still standing?”
“I like to think Elvis is watching over us from heaven,” Frankie calmly replied. “This building is like a small piece of Graceland set adrift in Vegas. They wouldn't dare defile that. No sir.”
“No shit,” Holt said. “You really believe that?”
Gunner gave out a loud cry and then there was a thunderous crash as he used all his strength to shove a huge statue of Blue Hawaii Elvis over. It smashed into the first few rows of chairs as it broke into pieces. Frankie looked alarmed for the first time since they'd met him.
“Jesus H Christ on a pogo stick,” Frankie hollered. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Sorry,” Gunner said. “I was looking for supplies.”
“And just what made you think they'd be under a fucking statue that weighs hundreds of pounds? I'd love to hear the fucking reasoning behind you demolishing a priceless piece of art. I mean, why not just let those creatures outside in, let them have a run at everything?”
“John F. Kennedy,” Gunner said. Parker, Max, and Holt walked forward in silence, stunned by Gunner's answer.
“Excuse me?”
They gathered around him waiting to hear his answer.
“When he was elected, a lot of people were worried about his faith affecting his policy making,” Gunner said. “They were worried that the Pope and the Catholic Church would have carte blanche in directing Kennedy's decisions regarding the governing of the nation.”
“Please tell me he's joking right now,” said Fat Elvis.
Holt shook his head no.
“After the Cuban Missile crisis, Kennedy secretly ordered sophisticated state of the art bomb shelters built under every major Catholic Church in America, an order Johnson oversaw after the president was killed.”
No one said a word. Gunner continued uninterrupted.
“They called it the Noah’s Ark project,” he said. “Kennedy chose Catholic churches as a payback for all the controversy over his faith during his presidential bid.
“Only true leaders of pure faith and high ranking Masons were supposed to know about them. According to my sources, the shelters are supposed to be able to support twenty people for up to a hundred years while the earth returned to normal after nuclear war. They’re stocked with food, alcohol, seeds, medical supplies . . . everything we'd need to start over. The Urban Survivalist says the combo was either Kennedy's birthday or the date he died.”
“So enlighten me here, GI Joe,” Fat Elvis sputtered in disbelief. “Even if there was one tiny little shred of truth to that insane theory of yours, and that is a huge if, you thought the Chapel O' McLovin was a substitute for a real Catholic church somehow?”
“Is it true, King?” Holt asked. “Is there really a secret bomb shelter hidden under the chapel?”
“Does that sound true?” asked Frankie, producing a silver flask and taking a deep drag from it. “Don't you think I'd be in it right now with the fucking door locked tight? I mean, I've heard some crazy shit in my day but this tops all of it. Where the fuck did you find this lunatic? Please tell me he hasn't been in charge the whole time.”
“He's kinda been leading us yeah,” Holt admitted while rubbing the back of his neck and avoiding eye contact. “A lot of strange stuff he's said has been dead on though, if you'll pardon the bad pun.”
“Did you find a secret door hidden under there?”
“No,” Gunner said. “I didn't.”
“Of course you didn't
you jackass,” the impersonator replied shaking his head. “You can't believe everything you read on the internet.”
That’s the first time he’s been wrong, Parker thought. He remembered Travis telling them to trust him. Maybe they should have stayed down in the tunnels with him and Gemma. Life underground was starting to look better by the minute.
“Seriously,” Parker said, burning a hole through the priest with his unrelenting stare. “How have you not been attacked by the zombies like everyone else on the Strip?”
“I was attacked,” Fat Elvis said. “Right here, in this very chapel this morning. One minute I was giving this guy directions back to the 15, a greasy looking salesman from North Dakota who'd gotten turned around, and the next thing I know, his five year old daughter came flying at me teeth first.”
“So you were bit?” Max asked gingerly.
“No I wasn't,” Fat Elvis said. “I kicked that little girl square in the face with my boot and locked the door...thankyouverymuch!”
He smiled at his impersonation of Elvis but no one else did.
Max jumped up and pointed her machete at him.
“He's lying. He's infected,” she yelled. “He's one of them.”
Fat Elvis didn't seem concerned by her show. He chuckled.
“I've never lied to a lady before in my life,” he said with a smile. “I assure you, I am not one of them.”
“You're going to have to strip down buddy,” Holt said. “Let us check you for bite marks. No one is just going to believe you've been sitting in this unholy shit storm drinking your last hours on Earth away until we got here.”
“Is this some kind of joke?” Elvis began looking surly. “Let me get this straight, I open my hiding spot to you nut jobs and you threaten me? Get the fuck out!”
The Rising Dead Page 23