by Hamrick, R M
“Kill them now!” she yelled again. The guards traded glances before continuing their stillness.
Frustrated, she turned to go inside, but the doors swung open before she reached them. She stepped back in surprise as thirty employees filed out.
“What is this?!” she called out. Steam could have risen from her diamond-studded ears.
“We all want the same thing. Safety. From the virus. You created,” said a Ukrainian woman Audra assumed to be Corette.
Audra noticed Clyde and Rosie among those standing on the veranda. Clyde’s thick sun-worn skin in soft white robes. Rosie’s black ringlets shook in anger. The crowd was angry too.
Shouts for Greenly to be killed.
“We all just want the same thing — all of us,” said Audra. She pulled the syringe from her pocket. “You can take it, and you’ll be safe for a while. Then, we can all work together to make it permanent.”
Greenly turned pale again before her eyes darkened and she spat at Audra. Muscles glistened from her cheek.
“You ungrateful bastards!” she shouted into the crowd. “I used that make-shift cure to build this place — a safe place! None of you deserve to be cured. YOU CAN ALL ROT!”
She then stood up straight and smoothed out her suit. She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry you haven’t been able to see what I’ve provided here,” she said as she reached into her pocket and pulled out a device.
Audra and Dwyn rushed her at the same time, but Greenly’s hand had already pressed and released. A smile tore through her face.
* * *
How they hadn’t noticed the smell, she wasn’t sure. Maybe the lingering scent of the half zoms and the train had disguised the smell of the herd. The wind was just right. Or, they were just all distracted by the woman on the stage.
The gate rattled and twisted with the pressing force of bodies funneling into the plaza. Fresh and long decayed alike. A thousand at least. The shock almost moved Audra’s stomach to upend itself.
This was the purpose of the corrals.
The corrals were never to keep the townships safe. They were never to cure when life improved.
They were Greenly’s contingency plan.
Plaza exits blocked with zoms pouring in, Greenly rushed inside the mansion. Audra fought the urge to give chase. It wasn’t just her now.
“Follow her! Get inside!” Audra yelled to the crowd unnecessarily as they pressed into the narrow entrance. She jumped down and helped people over the stage. Arms and legs and panicked panting.
As the stage filled with bodies, Audra fought the flood to place herself between the people and the zoms. She pulled on the arm of a woman on the ground.
“No!” the woman screamed out. “This is our punishment. We know these people. We know them. And now they’ll know us!” she babbled.
Audra let go of the woman’s arm violently. She didn’t have time for such nonsense. Her words were words Audra had repeated so often. Those healthy were not exceptional in any way except for their obligation to help those in need. But they turned their backs on them — and now their backs were probably going to be consumed.
She had never seen such a herd. Their skin dripped from their facial bones. Flesh barely clung to arms and legs. Torsos pulled apart. There was nothing to them and yet they were still moving, jagged infectious bones, claws, and teeth. Some bodies seemed to have merged, pressed together by the mob, masses moving like a rushing current.
“Do not engage! Go!” she yelled even as she sank her recovered knife into an empty eye socket. The body fell off Audra’s knife and onto the ground. There were hundreds more. One down in a sea of a thousand.
“Don’t close the doors!” someone cried. The edges of the tall doors wavered into sight as people pressed against others entering.
Audra swore under her breath. They’d all be able to escape inside if they could pull themselves together. Even staring into the depths of ripped flesh and jutting bone, she almost preferred its company to those she was protecting. She moved with the crowds as the final retreating and protective line. A bag of flesh staggered to Audra. With a swift kick from her boot, its entire skull gave way like a deflated ball. It fell to the ground and did not get back up.
Two down.
Lysent hadn’t even managed to maintain their zombie hordes. Exposure had left them soft and dying. Their bone spongy. But to these people who had been sheltered, it was a horror, stuff of old nightmares that clung to their brains in the darkest of nights.
The zoms surged over and around the stage. The podium fell and disappeared. The zoms close to her tripped on the steps, but she couldn’t risk any more kill strikes. She’d get overwhelmed.
Audra jumped onto the veranda, through the zoms, and sprinted as the last living person outside. The doors nipped at her heels, sending her flying into the marble lobby. Hallways branched off on the first floor but Audra knew all exits only led to the now-buried plaza. Marcos and Dwyn ran by, pushing Rosie’s solid mahogany desk, slamming it against the front door. Rosie stood where her desk had been with an armful of papers and a stapler. She added them to the pile atop the filing cabinet, but it was quickly whisked away as well, sending papers flying.
“I never…” she muttered. Her eyes bulged as she stood alone in the chaos.
Audra escorted the woman to the stairs, placing her paper-worn fingers onto the railing. Rosie followed the stream of people seeking higher ground. Along the edge of the stairs, a steady flow of melee weapons passed hands.
Audra slipped her wrist into the leather braid of a sharpened machete. It was a weapon too large for her, almost unwieldy, but favorable in this choke point situation. Ryder sheathed a hunting blade, attaching the belt to her waist. She held a clawed hammer in her hand.
Even though they were hidden from sight, the tide’s trajectory could not be changed. Bone, flesh, and death smashed against the walls and windows with increasing velocity and increasing height as bodies piled upon the building. The glass heaved and let out high-pitched complaints with the pressure. The door bulged with the heaviness. The furniture jolted.
Audra directed all those with weapons to stand adjacent to the future entryways. She didn’t have to count heads to know that the majority of her defense line was composed of Osprey Point, not Uno and most surely not Choros.
The ever-illuminated lobby went dim as the windows filled. With pops and hisses, the glass shattered. Pressure, not individual exertion brought the zombies forth. As they passed through, jagged window pieces created tangled threads of flesh. Audra brought her machete down like a guillotine parallel to the window’s frame, slicing off portions of emerging faces.
The clots and clogs of zombies multiplied and bulged. The cracking of glass, wood splintering, and the groan of office furniture signaled the impending swell. Audra pulled her group. They retreated to the next floor as the sick crept in like unwanted water.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHASING EXTINCTION
Audra had never been on the higher floors of Lysent headquarters. A large parlor met her at the landing. A mahogany desk, identical to the one in the lobby, stood adjacent to a double door with elaborate carvings. Larange Greenly’s office, no doubt. Audra weaved her way through the trembling men who hadn’t helped defend the first floor, and she slipped in to see if the CEO was in.
The rectangular office faced the plaza, filling the office with beautiful natural light that made this building a favorite of Lysent. Audra wondered if the second-story windows would also be eventually carpeted by the dead. The wall to her right had inset shelves lined with books. Old tomes of business law, calligraphic fiction titles, and everything in between, stocked to the high ceiling. Opposite, a three-dimensional map of the world hung on the wall. Thin metallic continents seemingly floated on their ocean-blue canvas. Gold pin heads scattered on the map, locations of Lysent branches, Audra assumed.
And in the center of her windowed wall, the manager of this particular branch paid her no mind. Small s
houlders over straight posture, she had remade her silvery bun. The hair swirled into itself like a nautilus. She stood at the window, overseeing her advancing infected troops as they attacked her keep.
“Did you want to go down with the ship?” Audra asked her coolly.
“You brought down this ship,” she said without turning.
Osprey Point and the townships had requested medical care, else a change in government. In turn, Greenly had unleashed hundreds of zombies to wipe out the population. How the latter wasn’t to blame for the sinking ship was beyond Audra’s understanding and she assumed, beyond even Greenly’s capacity for explanation.
“You have shepherds out there,” Audra said.
No answer from Greenly.
“They could lead these zoms out. You’ve made your point. You’re willing to see this whole place destroyed before you give up power, but is that what you really want? Do you want to die here?”
Greenly turned, wine red blossoming along the tissues of her wound.
“Yes, if it means I get to watch all of you die first. You’ve brought this on yourselves and me. You’re right. The cure is no more. You’ve sentenced me to death, and I’m carrying out that sentence.”
Audra maneuvered around the marble-capped desk.
“It doesn’t have to be a death sentence. You could clear this place out and we can go back to normal business, studying and working toward a cure.”
“For whom? Like you’d give it to me.” A muscle in her cheek twitched.
“You think I’m like you?” asked Audra, disgusted. “Picking. Choosing. Selling cures? I would gladly provide you with any available treatment. It would give you time to be tried for your crimes against your people.”
Greenly digested Audra’s proposal.
“I have the upper hand,” Greenly replied. “I have the zombies.”
In Audra’s hand, she had a dagger.
The zombies below couldn’t prevent Audra from digging a claw deep into Greenly’s bun, pulling to expose her wrinkled neck, and bleeding her out. Greenly didn’t have the zoms. The zoms had them. Soon, all of them, in hungry, horrible ways.
Greenly continued despite the nearby blade, “I had high expectations for you — fiery and angry — a great combination, one I’m intimately familiar with. But you’re weak,” she spat. “You’ve always been weak. First it was your sister. You dragged around that corpse baggage for years. And now it’s these people. Like me, you don’t need them.”
Greenly thought Audra’s connections made her weak. By wiping out the masses, the ones left standing would be stronger. But what would really be left? Dwyn believed no one should go about this life alone. Audra considered the place she stood, on a precipice overlooking an undulating sea of the dead. She’d never want to be the last. And she didn’t have to be.
Like me.
For someone facing death, Greenly was disturbingly calm. Her palms and collar dry. Her breathing deep and rhythmic. Audra followed Greenly’s eyes. She no longer looked at the masses of gray rot surging below them. She looked beyond them. Just beyond Choros.
It was quiet there.
Audra began kicking around the room, snooping for Greenly’s escape. The bookcases, although promising based on memories of weekend morning cartoons, did not demonstrate any secretive features. No trap door underneath her desk. Audra pulled the map sculpture off the wall. Behind it, a stepping stool and safety harness sat in a hidden shaft. The shaft’s built-in ladder led up, Audra assumed to the roof.
“When were you going to go?” asked Audra.
“I was going to sneak away when things got chaotic. I still might, darling. Looks like they’re coming up the stairs…”
“Chaos, huh?” Audra confiscated the safety harness then swung the office doors open. “She’s in here,” Audra called.
As Greenly was dragged into the parlor, Audra checked on the status of the first floor. The first floor could no longer be seen. Zombies ebbed and flowed on the stairs, working their way up then being pulled back down by their own. The sounds and scents would eventually draw them up like the tide.
The townships had always traded freedom for protection. Now it was time to stand on their own. Audra directed them to protect the second floor where they currently resided. After grabbing a coil of rope from the armory, she called Ryder and Dwyn into Greenly’s office. Satomi followed tightly on their heels. The safety harness and Greenly’s speech of solo endeavors hinted that her escape was not one for the masses. But if the zombies could be redirected, they all might survive another day.
Audra climbed up the ladder first, the safety harness slung on her shoulder. She pulled on the latch at the top and light streamed through. Climbing onto the flat roof, Dwyn followed right behind her.
“Come on up,” she directed down the shaft. She heard Satomi and Ryder share a kiss before one of the women started up the ladder.
At first Audra only saw electrical cables. If Greenly was going to use them to escape, it would have been an escape of a different kind. One came from the lines that ran along the town. And there was another that reached to a lower building, as a secondary supply. No one had bothered to wire the building up to the main supply? Why not? But no, they had. The one that actually held power to deliver to the building was partially hidden from view by trees.
As Audra approached it, she realized it was only disguised as electrical. It was no such thing, but just a line anchored from building to building.
Audra walked to the edge of the roof. She looked down at the expanse of zoms that filled the plaza. It was like a slow-moving and foul-smelling fire that had them retreating to higher ground.
“Oh my,” whispered Ryder.
Audra stepped into the harness and began to pull it up when clanking steps sounded in the passageway.
Larange Greenly’s mussed gray hair came into view. She raised one of her hands in surrender as she continued her way up. Her face had drained of color except the crusting darkness that lined it.
Audra was impressed with her gall and surprised she had escaped the others. They must have been more worried about their survival than about the malefactor.
Audra felt the same. She pulled out her knife.
“What are you doing up here?” Audra asked.
“I’m here to bargain. You can have the original virus in return for allowing me over that line.”
Audra stepped out of the harness. Greenly moved to accept it and Audra kicked it to the side.
“We’re going to get the original virus anyway. You’re done,” said Audra.
“But you’re done too.” Greenly tilted her head at an almost maniacal angle, even more disturbing with the rip in her cheek.
Audra blinked in disbelief. Greenly was willing to sacrifice this entire corner of the world, just to say I told you so. There was no helping this woman. And without help, she wouldn’t be able to escape the roof. Because no matter what Greenly thought, she couldn’t do it alone.
Audra pivoted to pick up the harness. Small feet pitter pattered behind her on the gravel. Audra spun around in time to receive the small woman. Greenly hadn’t turned, but she might as well have. She snarled and snapped. Spittle fell on Audra’s face.
Audra grabbed the woman’s shoulders. They felt thin and decrepit. Muscles separated from bone. Larange really wasn’t that powerful after all. Audra threw the woman off her. She skittered on the gravel, her feet off the building’s edge.
Audra walked over to the woman who had watched the world fall then kicked it again. Larange had so many choices. She could have celebrated the fences, instead of bartering them. What if Audra had pulled her sister into town and Greenly had provided treatment? What if she had worked on a cure from the beginning, instead of doling out false hope to get ahead? Maybe, they would have survived.
Greenly scrambled to stand, but struggled to do so. Mouths below undulated in the background.
“You’ve killed us all,” admitted Audra to the woman in black.
A cracked sneer broke on Larange’s face. “Good,” she giggled.
Audra’s boot smashed into Greenly’s spotted face. With a hard push, she slipped farther off the roof. She didn’t call out for help that wasn’t coming. Greenly’s fingers dug deep into the gravel for a moment before straightening, the woman’s arms and torn face falling from sight.
The feeding frenzy roared like a wave.
* * *
Without a word to the others, Audra returned to the safety harness and stepped inside it.
It wasn’t her fault Greenly had refused to call it quits.
Satomi’s hands shook as she latched the buckles, and pulled the straps tight. Having last been tested on Greenly, the straps didn’t require much adjustment from one small figure to another. Audra tied the rope to the harness so it could be retrieved for Dwyn’s use. She then used the harness’s accoutrements to attach herself to the anchored cable.
She got close to the edge. The sea of zoms, the smell, the heights. Audra pulled in a deep breath and swallowed the bile that threatened to make itself known. Pulling herself onto the cable, she crossed her legs over. She moved her arms in the back and forth motion to carry her across, focused on the crisp blue above.
The cable sagged with her weight, but it had to be fine, right? She pretended there were no zoms below her. She pretended that she was floating through the sky. She was going down and down and the cable felt like it was falling unnecessarily low. The roaring got louder as she caught the attention of zoms.
She knew they were clawing at the air and at each other, trying to reach her. Their muscles straining tight and snapping against bones. All it would take would be a zombie with some hops, and she’d be torn from her hook. Bitten and chewed, her insides sprawling on the ground. And, as Audra remembered from so many times in her childhood, it would take forever — absolutely forever — for the person to die. She’d watch her body being parceled out before death caught up.