by Jeremy Dyson
“All of you, back up.” The cop holds the gun in his hand like a stop sign; the barrel pointed at the ceiling. A little reminder to everyone that he still has it. His eyes are like a couple of road flares that warn everyone away. “Just stay back. Sit down and stay calm. No one is going out there right now.”
For the time being, Marco keeps everyone under control. The people back away from the desk. A few of them huddle near the betting counter, whispering quietly and glancing sidelong at the injured cop. A police uniform is something most people are conditioned to respect. Some people already need to be reminded at gunpoint. It can’t last, I think. None of this will last very long at all.
The sound of running feet heading towards us echoes across the airy building. For a second, I worry the dead are inside. I stare down the long building and wait for the source of the sound to appear.
Frank, the security guard, emerges from behind a betting counter carrying a red bag with FIRST AID in thick white letters across the side. Another uniformed guard trails behind him that I presume to be Joey. He is just a kid, with shaggy black hair poking out from the rim of his navy blue security cap. He fumbles with a noisy, black duffel bag in one hand and a couple of flak jackets in the other. A couple of sunburnt groundskeepers in green jumpsuits and four aging cleaning women, bring up the rear.
“Joey grabbed two spare Glock twenty-ones from the security office,” says Frank, breathing hard. He pauses to gasp for air. Finally, he coughs out another sentence fragment. “About 2000 rounds of ammo.”
“Any nine-millimeter rounds?” asked Marco.
Frank hands the first aid kit to Danielle, then takes the duffel bag from Joey, drops it on the desk and shakes his head, still panting. Frank seems to scrutinize Marco after the question about ammunition for his gun. Marco just avoids his gaze. Instead, he watches Danielle as she rifles through the contents of the medical kit.
“So,” Frank asks Marco. “What’s the plan?”
“We keep everyone in here alive, and we keep out anyone that’s dead.”
“Holy shit,” blurts Joey. The kid has made his way over to the windows and his jaw drops when he glimpses the scene outside.
“Stay away from those windows, kid,” calls Marco. He unzips the duffel bag and pulls out one of the guns. The cop swiftly loads a magazine and sets the gun on the desk. He draws the sidearm from his holster and tosses it in the bag. Marco glances around at the faces of the other survivors, finally settling his focus on me. He removes another gun from the bag.
“Blake,” he says. He waves me over to the desk with the hand holding the gun. “You ever fired a gun?”
I had never even heard a gunshot until this morning, and the sight of any firearm fills me with terror. Holding that kind of destructive force in my hands makes me afraid of what I might do. I realize from the manner that he asked the question that Marco doesn’t trust anyone else here with it. I am not sure I would either. Besides, I calculate my odds of surviving the day are going to be better if I am armed.
“I used to hunt a lot,” I lie. “Rifles mostly. I fired some handguns at the range once or twice.”
Marco’s eyes twitch for a second, and then he gives me the smallest smirk. He flips the gun around, so the handle is there for me to take. “It’s you then,” he says. “Don’t let me down, Blake.”
As soon as I take the gun from his hand, the televisions go black. The power has gone out. A concerned murmur rises among the group. Some of them begin to move back toward the doors. Marco vacates his seat again and tries to urge them to stay back. The crowd entirely ignores him and swarms past the desk toward the locked front doors.
“Quiet!” Marco screams and the crowd stops.
From the parking lot, the sound of squealing tires pierces the air, followed by the sound of metal smashing into metal. Gunfire erupts outside. I hurry over to the windows to see a rusty van has smashed through the fence about twenty yards from the doors and rolled into the courtyard. Two men in jeans and black leather vests move towards the doors as they fire at the hundreds of corpses pouring in through the hole in the fence.
“Get everyone out of here,” Marco yells at Frank.
The crowd heading towards the door reverses now. They knock each other down and run straight at us. Without any idea where we’re going, I start running again. The security guard, Joey, is in front of me, hauling the duffel bag. Danielle runs just behind him, and she pauses to look back. I put my hand on the small of her back to urge her to keep moving. Marco yells at the men outside the doors. His voice falters when gunshots ring out, followed by the sound of shattered glass hitting the floor.
Danielle keeps slowing down, looking back over her shoulder at the sounds behind us. “Go,” I tell her. We run past the betting cages, a food counter, a set of elevators, and another betting counter.
“Hold on,” yells Frank. I stop and look back. By now, I am more than fifty yards ahead of the struggling security guard. He waves us back with an arm. “Everyone in here.”
Frank fumbles with a ring of keys and unlocks a door to one of the betting counters. The cleaning ladies and groundskeepers push through the entry. The line of other survivors forms behind them. The glass is bullet proof. It’s practically a vault in there. There is not much chance of anything breaching the room. So, it isn’t a bad idea. Except for the slim chance of anyone ever coming back out.
The dead are inside the building now. The crowd of people presses toward the betting cage door. People begin shoving each other aside, fighting to get inside. They can’t all possibly make it into the room in time. A few people split off from the rest at the betting cages and run towards us. Joey runs back towards Frank, but I hold out my arm to stop him.
I look back, and I see Marco, rounding the corner near the information desk. He holds his abdomen and hobbles on one good leg. The dead are right behind him. He doesn’t have a chance. A dozen bloodstained hands haul him to the ground, and he screams and unloads his gun into the mass of dead bodies that swarm around him.
“Forget it. We need to go somewhere else.” I grab Joey by the sleeve of his shirt to ease him around. He shrugs my hand off but turns and heads away from the cages. A tall black guy in a navy tracksuit catches up to us and glides past. The short-haired blonde woman pulls off her heels and runs in her bare feet. The short guy with all the tattoos on his arms moves behind her, urging her on. I wait for Danielle, who stares at the spot where Marco vanished.
“Come on,” I urge her. “There’s nothing you can do.”
The six of us are split off from the rest of the group now. It’s too late to go back. So, we keep going. Behind us, the hall fills with the sound of people screaming and the moans of the dead. The sound echoes off the airy marble interior of the building. It keeps us moving as fast as we can.
Before rounding the grand staircase, I take one last look back. No one is coming behind us. The door to the betting counter is still open. The dead that aren’t ripping apart people on the floor outside are pouring into the room. Most of the corpses seem not to notice us now, but a few pass the mayhem at the betting cage with their eyes fixed on us.
After we pass a row of slot machines, quiet and dead with the loss of power, we cut through a food court. Eventually, we reach the flights of motionless escalators. Joey scrambles up the unmoving stairs. I check back to be sure none of those things are getting too close.
“Hold up,” I insist. “Where are we going, Joey?”
“Upstairs?” he says.
“We’ll be trapped up there,” I say.
“We need to get the fuck out of here,” urges the black guy. “We need an exit.”
“Where is the security office?” I ask Joey.
“Far,” he says. “Outside. Past all the stables, by the other entrance. I had to drive the truck to get here from there.”
“We go there then,” I say. “We’ll take the truck.”
We follow Joey to the end of the apron level of the grandstand, and out the entra
nce on the opposite end of the building. Through the windows, I see a few dozen more dead people walking around in the courtyard. We file out the doors and head for the gate. The corpses don’t notice us as we make a run for the security SUV parked at the curb. Joey turns the key, puts the truck in gear, and hits the gas before I get the passenger door closed. He takes a right turn into the rows of long white stables. The horses hang their heads out from the stall windows, chewing without interest as we speed past.
I tell Joey to pull right up to the door of the security office, in case we need to leave in a hurry. He parks just far enough from the security office that we can open the truck doors and slip inside. Here, on the opposite side of the park, it still seems quiet. The white entrance gates are closed, and the street beyond is empty except for a single car wrapped around a telephone pole across the road. I scan the area for signs of trouble as the group makes their way inside. Through the air comes the distant popping of an automatic weapon firing. I glance down at the gun in my shaking hand. I had forgotten it was there all this time. It wouldn’t have mattered much back there anyway. There were just too many of them.
“Blake,” Danielle says.
I raise my eyes to find her looking at me.
“I’m coming,” I say. I turn away from her gaze and scan the area one more time. Once I am sure she has left the doorway, I turn around and head inside.
Three
The heavy duffel bag thuds down on the office desk and Joey rifles through the contents desperately until he finds a two-way radio. “Frank, come in,” Joey pleads. “Frank… Frank, Jesus, Frank.”
“He’s gone, Joey,” I tell him. “They never got the door closed.”
Through the thin walls of the security office, bleeds the muffled sounds of distant, sporadic gunfire, and the persistent siren of a squad car abandoned nearby. I flip the light switch on the wall, but there is no power. Subdued daylight filters through the window blinds above the desktop. The windows run the length of the building to provide a clear line of sight of the entrance. There are sliding glass panels along the sides of the building to allow the guards to check the vehicles coming and going. The place is hardly a fortress, but it’s better than nothing.
In the back of the office sits an empty holding cell with a thin wooden bench mounted on the wall. Adjacent to the cell, the black guy searches through several gym lockers. There isn’t much else. A bathroom. A mini fridge and microwave. A folding table and chairs in the middle of the room where the blonde woman sits down and digs through her purse. Danielle picks up the phone at the workstation and checks for a dial tone, and then she sighs and places the handset back on the base.
“This is bad,” moans the guy with the tattoos. “This is real fucking bad. We’re dead, man. What the fuck are we going to do now?”
The blonde woman lights a long, thin cigarette with a shaky hand and leers at the guy with the tattoos that is pacing anxiously around the table. He rubs his hand over his shaved scalp and rattles off an endless list of complaints about the situation. Just watching him makes me feel even more anxious.
I stare at the slow, steady movements of the second hand of the clock on the wall. Over an hour has passed since I heard from Amanda. Instead of thinking about what we have to do to stay alive, I just keep thinking about what could be happening to my wife and daughter at each passing moment.
The blonde woman sighs loudly as she exhales a plume of smoke.
“Will you sit down?” she snaps at the tattoo guy. “You’re making me anxious.”
The man stops pacing to shoot an annoyed look at the woman.
“Lot of good you are,” he grumbles. He waves the cigarette smoke away from his face and resumes his pacing. “Why don’t you put that damn thing out and help think of a way out of this?”
Danielle leans over the desk and lifts a blind to get a look at the road.
“It seems like it might not be as bad over here,” she notes. “Maybe we should get back in the truck and get out of here while we still can.”
“The chick has a point,” says the guy with tattoos. He finally stops pacing and looks around the room. “What are we waiting around for anyway? We should get the hell out of here.”
“And go where?” I sigh. “The roads are a mess. We don’t even know if anywhere is safe.”
“He’s right,” agrees the black guy. I look up to see him leaning against the lockers with his arms folded across his chest.
“Look, I only live a few miles from here. Just drop me off at my house,” the tattoo guy pleads with Joey. “Then you can all go wherever the hell you want.”
“No one is taking the truck,” I say. “Not right now.”
“It’s not your goddamn truck, is it?” the tattooed guy spits back at me. He steps toward Joey and reaches for the keys, but the young security guard puts them back in his pocket. The tattooed guy continues to hold his hand out expectantly. “You want to give me the keys or what, kid?”
“Don’t give him the keys,” I insist.
The tattooed guy lets his hand drop and turns away from Joey. He moves slowly toward me and jabs a menacing finger at my chest. “No one is talking to you, man,” he growls.
On a good day, when things were normal, this guy would still be an asshole. Somehow you can just tell. It seems like he is trying to decide whether or not to throw a punch at me. Instead of waiting around to find out I shove him back and level the gun at his chest.
“No one is taking that truck.” I form each word slowly and steadily as if I were communicating with someone who speaks a different language. For several long seconds, he looks at the barrel of the gun and says nothing. Then he smirks and locks his scornful eyes with mine. Maybe he’s trying to decide whether to take me seriously or if he should just try to grab the gun out of my hand. I have never pointed a gun at anyone before. I don’t know how to hold it to seem threatening. I am not even sure if I would really shoot him.
The black guy unfolds his arms and clears his throat. He casually approaches, and he positions himself in the middle of us. “How about we all just calm down and talk about this shit reasonably?”
The tattooed guy rolls his eyes and scoffs in disbelief. He turns and shakes his head and moves himself to the other side of the room. A long moment passes before I lower the gun. Even though I avoid making eye contact, I can feel the nervous stares from everyone in the room as I walk over to the desk. I really don’t want anything to do with these people. The only thing I want to do is keep them from doing something stupid that gets me killed.
“I know we all have people out there that we want to get to. I do too,” I admit. “This is the last place on earth I want to be right now. But Marco, the cop, he told me this is happening all over the city. We don’t have a chance if we go running around out there right now. We have to be smart. We have to have a plan.”
“So, what, are you going to hold us here at gunpoint?” the blonde woman gripes. She stamps out her cigarette in the ashtray, squishing the filter like an accordion, then drops the butt on the floor and flattens it with her foot.
“No,” I sigh. “I am not holding anyone hostage. If anyone wants to leave now, go ahead. Otherwise, we wait until it’s safe. The gates are electric, and the power is out so the only way to get the truck out is to crash through somewhere and then those things are going to be all over here, and there’ll be no going back.”
For a long minute, everyone looks around at each other, saying nothing.
“This is bullshit!” the tattooed guy yells. “If you all want to wait to die here, fine. I’m getting the fuck out, though.” He heads toward the door, muttering as he passes me. He reaches for the handle, then turns to see if anyone is going with him. When he realizes no one is following he says, “I’m not going to wait all day for you idiots to make up your minds.” His voice quavers slightly. It seems pretty obvious he is afraid to go out alone, but the man is too arrogant to turn back now. He shakes his head and leaves without closing the door behind h
im.
When it’s clear he won’t be coming back, the black guy walks over and closes the door and slides the deadbolt. I am relieved not to be dealing with the tattooed guy anymore, even though I am certain he has no real chance out there.
From the windows, we can see the tattooed guy running over to the gate and watch as he struggles to climb. He drops down into the street and twists an ankle as he lands. He collapses on his back, gritting his teeth and clutching his leg.
“Oh no,” cries Danielle. She turns toward the door, but the black guy latches onto her arm and shakes his head. Joey and the blonde woman hurry over to the window now to see what is happening too.
While the tattoo guy struggles to get to his feet, several corpses stumble into view from the edges of the pavement. He notices the dead body in a slate gray suit and tie coming at him from his right. The tattooed guy punches it in the face, then grabs it by the tie, pulls his fist back to hit it again. He doesn’t see the corpse approaching from behind him until the zombie grabs his arm and bites down on his bicep.
“We can’t leave him out there,” says Danielle. She shrugs her arm free, but the black guy moves in between her and the door.
“You can’t help him now,” he says.
“Yes, I can,” Danielle insists. She steps around the tall black man, but he puts a hand against the door to keep her from opening it.
“If you go out there,” he says. “They’ll know we’re in here.”
Danielle looks back at me, her eyes pleading with me to do the right thing. I don’t know what that means right now. As horrible as it is, we watch the tattooed guy screaming for help, and we do nothing as they fall on him less than fifty feet away. The corpses rip out pieces of his face with their teeth. His eyes open wide with terror, as he kicks and swats at them with his limbs. He twists his body away from their grasp and nearly makes it to his feet before they bring him to the ground again. A dark-haired corpse in a blood-stained flower-print dress claws a chunk out of his calf. The others find his abdomen, they bury their hands in his stomach, oblivious to his weakening fists pounding their heads. The hands of the corpses emerge entangled in his intestines, which they gnaw at as the man finally passes out.