The Apocalypse Crusade 2

by Peter Meredith

  “That was this morning. Pretty soon they’ll be begging for it and in the meantime, Collins isn’t looking to harm New Yorkers. He needs the weapons platforms for Connecticut. He needs you to allow New York troops to operate outside the state line. He has permission from the Governor of Connecticut for this and one signature from you will make all the difference. You’ll be absolved from the actions they take. You can be decisive without taking a risk.”

  Again, there was quiet as Stimpson thought through his options. “I’ll need to talk this over with my staff.”

  A gun shot from the front of the building stiffened Courtney’s resolve. “No! There’s no time. You have to decide right now. Think about it! These aren’t people anymore. They’re not voters. Please, there is only upside to this.”

  He breathed out: “Fine. What’s he need?”

  As Courtney let out a sigh of relief, Deckard waited at the front door of the station, with his mask down across his nose and mouth. There had been more of the rock-handed zombies and they had put three head-sized holes in the thick glass of the front doors. These doors hadn’t been designed to be bulletproof but they were close and still they were coming apart under the relentless attack.

  Another zombie with its hands covered in duct tape was pushed through the crowd by the boy in the striped shirt. He was the evilest thing Deckard had ever seen. The way he grinned hungrily, and the way his eyes were black and hating but in a gleeful manner, made Deckard’s skin crawl. The boy had power over the other zombies. They were unthinking and usually relied either on hunger or hate to drive them but they accepted his guidance without question. Luckily, it seemed their ability to comprehend was extremely limited. They knew to bash and little else.

  Deckard stuck the barrel of his M16 through one of the holes in the door and tried to kill the boy. The angle he had to shoot the little bastard was bad; it was too high, and the bullets thudded with an ugly sound into the zombies just behind him. Then he was gone again, hiding in the pack of ghouls that surged forward. Deckard fired through the holes trying to get at the one with the rocks tied to its hands, but couldn’t find the right angle and had to wait until it made its first hole in the glass at which point he plugged it straight away through the eye.

  Unmasked and unafraid, Burke came into the foyer, pushing past the two troopers who had shied back from the proximity of the beasts. “Y’all look like ya need some hep,” he said, genially. “It’s like a game of whack-a-mole. Y’all ever play that?” John had many times. He used to take Jaimee Lynn down to the Nickel-A-Play and whack all sorts of moles with her.

  Deckard couldn’t remember ever playing the game, but he understood the analogy. Hands were constantly grabbing at the holes and ripping at them and when they did, he would step up and shoot whatever beast was just on the outside of the hole. There was diseased black blood running down the inner wall of the door and sprays of it on the outer. After only a few minutes, there was no way to look out.

  “This is getting ugly,” Deckard said, pausing to reload the M16. He eyed one of the troopers who had a Glock in his sweaty hands. “Step up, will you? The pistol is a little better for this kind of work. Don’t worry. We’ll bleach you down when you’re done.” A question came to mind: who would bleach the last man in the foyer when the door finally caved? No answer came to that, probably because at that point no one would be worried about germs.

  He had the other trooper give him and his weapon a scrub down making his eyes water with the chemical stench. When he was clean, he went into the lobby and stepped around the backup barricade Dr. Wilson was constructing from what was left of the furniture. He had the two teens along with a dead-tired looking Stephanie Glowitz helping him.

  “Maybe you should take a break,” he suggested to her. “I can get one of the state troopers to take your place.”

  She shook her head but began coughing, making a wet sound. The two teens backed away, fearing that she might have the zombie disease. Dr. Wilson put a hand on their backs to steady them. “Don’t worry. She doesn’t have the sickness you’re afraid of. She’s sick with something else. Please, Stephanie. Go take a seat. Why don’t you guard the prisoners and send me one of those two in the back. They haven’t done anything all evening as far as I know.”

  They all knew to whom he was referring.

  Cheryl had stayed as far from any action as humanly possible, which meant she was generally far from anything that could be considered work. Thuy had volunteered her to watch over the prisoners, mainly because she figured that, cuffed as they were, they weren’t going to be a danger, and it wasn’t like they were going to run away. Thuy also chose Benjamin because it was clear that he wasn’t going to leave her side no matter what. He was as bad as Sundance who sat next to Courtney Shaw and wouldn’t budge. In the dog, it was endearing; in the human, it was skeevy.

  “There won’t be a helicopter,” Eng said, suddenly, and to no one in particular. The prisoners were sitting on the bare floor of a storeroom that sat just off the loading dock door. No one had spoken much. Anna had tried to nap, laying her head on Meeks’ lap. He hadn’t said no to this but not because of a sexual reason. She seemed to have had a rough time of it. Her hand was mangled and swollen, her face was bruised and cut in places. Supposedly, she’d had a hand in the tragedy that had befallen them, but Meeks had a hard time believing it.

  The two men who had come in with the now dead Mexican had been shunned by the others and sat as far from the rest as possible. One was named Bob and the other, Allen. They glanced at each other and then at Eng. “What are you talking about?” Bob asked.

  “Just that there won’t be a helicopter. Where will it land? You heard them, there’s no roof access. That means we’ll have to go out there. We’d have to fight our way through a mob of zombies.”

  “Not if we take the back door,” Benjamin said, jerking his thumb toward the loading dock. “There aren’t any zombies out there.”

  Eng smirked at this. “No zombies and you’re still sitting here? Wow.”

  Cheryl’s dull eyes sparked at this. “What do you mean, wow? Are you saying we should go out there? That’s idiotic when there is a helicopter coming.”

  “Oh, you are so young and naive,” Eng said, shaking his head, wearing a rueful smile. Anna gave him a sharp look that no one saw but him. There had been a question in the look and he answered, warning her to keep quiet with the tiniest shake of his head. “You don’t know these people like I do. Lying is second nature to them just as backstabbing is. You should ask them how they managed to get out of Walton when so many others died or were infected. You better believe it that, if there is a helicopter, I won’t be on it and neither will Anna. We know the truth and they can’t let that get out.”

  “Well, that sucks for you,” Benjamin replied in his usual abrasive fashion.

  “It sucks for you as well,” Eng said, easily as if he hadn’t heard the pettiness in the man’s voice. “Even if there is a helicopter coming, do you think you’ll be on it? They take care of their own inner circle of friends, which I can tell, you’re not a part of. Besides how many people are here? Thirty, forty? And how many will fit on a helicopter?”

  “Eleven, I think,” Meeks answered. His face was suddenly the color of curdled milk.

  “Maybe they’ll make a second trip?” Cheryl suggested.

  “Will we last that long?” Eng asked. “There’s no way. You can hear them coming through the doors.” They all paused and sure enough, the banging and the shooting intensified. “If I was you, I’d hightail it out of here as fast as you could. I’d rather run or try to make it to the cars than just sit here waiting until you’re left behind.

  Benjamin and Cheryl shared a look. “What do you think?” Cheryl asked, her face close to Benjamin’s as if she was sharing a secret.

  “Wait here,” he said and then slipped out the door. He tiptoed down the hall to the call station and saw the fear on everyone’s faces. He saw the barricades that were being set up in
side the lobby area and he heard the crash of rocks on metal and on glass. What he didn’t hear was the thrum of helicopters. They were minutes from death and where were the helicopters? One look at Dr. Lee and her oh-so-superior eyes and Benjamin turned back to where he had left Cheryl.

  “We’re getting out of here,” he said, breathlessly to her, pulling her to her feet. “The doors aren’t going to hold. The zombies are almost through and there’s no sign of a helicopter.”

  She made a whining sound in her throat as she nodded. Cheryl had a measly .38 and she wasn’t even comfortable with that small of a weapon. Benjamin had a shotgun that held three shells in the chamber. He had felt tough with it when the Lieutenant Pemberton had given it to him, now he was starting to second-guess the weapon. Three shots wasn’t much, not compared to the thirty in an M16. He had been thinking for some time that they had cheated him and now with the seed planted in his head that once again he was only a nerd in their eyes, a second-class citizen, he was sure the gun wasn’t top of the line.

  But it would have to do.

  They started for the door and Anna pushed herself up. “Hey! What about us? You can’t just leave us.”

  “I think I can,” Benjamin said.

  “I’ll scream,” she warned. “You won’t get too far if I do.”

  He brought the shotgun up to his shoulder and walked right up to her so that the fat bore of the gun was shoved into her throat. “I’ll kill you if you do,” he whispered. “I’ll say you were trying to escape. I’ll kill all of you.” His eyes displayed the panic in him and Anna saw she had made the wrong play.

  “Ok, Ben. I won’t scream. Just take it easy.”

  “Easy-peasey,” he replied and then backed away with the gun still pointed at her. He walked into the wall, checked behind him and then backed out of the room.

  Cheryl was dancing from foot to foot, her face was screwed up in fear, making her ugly. “I don’t know about this, Ben. Maybe they’ll let us on the helicopter.” She was actually thinking that maybe they would let her on the helicopter, but she didn’t know for sure. Normally, because of her looks she would’ve been a shoe-in for the first ride out, only things were all sorts of weird. She had tried to break away from Benjamin’s clinging grasp when they had first arrived at the station, but the cops had acted strange. They had kept to themselves and spoke only in whispers. She guessed that they had done something, or perhaps many somethings evil.

  The other men weren’t all that open to her advances, either. Deckard and Chuck had their eyes on other girls, Dr. Wilson was old, Burke was sick, Max was married and Johnny Osgood was weak and she didn’t trust him. This just left Benjamin, and now she felt she was stuck with him. So far, at least, he had done his job; he had kept her safe. She was sure he would give up his life for hers. There wasn’t a chance in hell she would ever return the favor.

  “We don’t have a choice,” Benjamin told her as he tugged her to the door. “This could be our only chance and I don’t want to bet my life on the kindness of those strangers. We’ll just make a run for the Juke and find a better place. Remember what that Asian chick said about hiding in a bank? It isn’t a bad idea. No one’s getting in a bank. Now, get your keys out.” As she dug in her pocket, he leaned his ear to the door. Up from the cool metal came the vibrations shaking the building. They hummed down his ear canal and right into his soul. The station wasn’t going to last. It made opening the door into the unknown that much easier—that and the fact there wasn’t a whisper coming from the other side of the door.

  “Let’s go,” he said, taking Cheryl’s hand and holding the shotgun out—there was no way he’d be able to shoot the weapon like this, one handed, but he thought he looked cool. Luckily for him, there wasn’t anything to shoot. The back of the building was dark to the point they couldn’t see the woods twenty yards away. To their right was a green garbage dumpster; to their left a short wall that led to the single reinforced loading door that was in the down position and locked with a heavy Yale padlock. In front of them was a ramp that led to a back street.

  They went down it hand in hand—his was wet with sweat, as was his face and hair. Under his arms were dark crescents that were spreading quickly. Cheryl was chilled and she shook. Half her attention was on Benjamin; she was worried he would just run away at the slightest hint of danger, and there were many hints. The back of the station might have been free of the zombies, but there were things moving in the trees. Branches snapped and leaves crackled. They could hear ugly moans that weren’t human.

  “This way,” Benjamin said in voice so high that he sounded as if someone had his balls in a vice. His contorted face expressed something similar. He pulled her along, hurrying for the side of the building, stopping just shy of the corner. He actually thought it was a secret that he was petrified with fear, even though he was almost hyperventilating. “W-we j-just have t-to get around the next s-side of the b-building and we’ll be in the clear.”

  Finally, he decided it was time to let go of her hand, only his fingers were confused by the concept and they tangled momentarily until they both snatched their hands back. He took the shotgun in a tight grip. “Ok, here we g-go. No matter what you d-do, don’t drop the keys. Girls always drop the keys in the movies.”

  “I’m not going to drop them,” Cheryl replied, angrily. “I’m not an idiot.”

  He gave her a look that suggested he didn’t quite believe her. With a final shaking breath, he went around the corner, leading with the shotgun. What he saw caused him to stop short and when Cheryl bumped into him, he nearly pulled the trigger.

  On the east side of the building there was a tall tree that grew not far from the station. It had long, dipping branches that were constantly in need of pruning and during the afternoons, they threw down a soft shade over the building. Now it was psychedelically shadowed beneath the tree. There was no wind, but the shadows moved and swayed…and moaned. There were zombies beneath the tree, a strange line of them. They stood shoulder to shoulder but didn’t advance.

  Benjamin didn’t stop to question why. Foolishly, he assumed the beasts couldn’t see in the dark. Why else would they just stand there? With this erroneous thought guiding him, he pointed to the forest, because what was darker than that? Cheryl shook her head and mouthed the word: ‘No.’ For her the forest was just too frightening.

  “They can’t see in the dark,” Benjamin whispered in her ear. “Let’s go.” She was resolved not to do something as stupid as going into the forest at night, however a little thing caused her to hesitate; Benjamin’s breath smelled of decay and onions. It was ghastly. She’d been smelling it all day, but when he coated her with it directly like that, her face squinched up and she waving a hand—but she didn’t say ‘No” to his plan, and worse, he was already creeping away from the building.

  Cheryl had to hurry to catch up. The .38 in her hand was shaking as she had it pointing toward the forest. She reached out with her free hand to grab the back of Benjamin’s shirt; a part of her thought that he would run away from her if she didn’t hold on.

  For his part, he hid behind the shotgun, holding it far out in front of himself, not bolstering it against his shoulder as he should have. It was as if he didn’t trust the night or his eyes, or he feared that there might be invisible creatures just in front of him that he would be able uncover with the tip of the gun.

  The forest immediately at hand was loose in their vision; the trees were not straight and proper as they were in the light. They were amorphous in their structure, seeming to grow or shrink depending on the movement of one’s eyes. Thirty feet from the forest, halfway between the abstract nature of the forest and the literal concrete of man, Cheryl stopped and pulled back on Benjamin’s shirt, untucking it and gagging him at the collar.

  “Something moved,” she hissed. “Right there.”

  “It was just your eyes playing tricks on you,” Benjamin replied. “You’re being hysterical.” He started edging forward and despite his words, he
shied away from the area to which she had had pointed. At twenty feet away, she pulled on his shirt again. There was no need for whispering this time because the movement had been accompanied by a grunt and a snort, and Benjamin couldn’t chalk that up to an over-excited woman.

  The pair froze as a dim shape materialized in the dark. It was a zombie, tall and gruesome. It had only one arm left to it and even that wasn’t completely whole. It reached for the pair, straining, but not moving forward. Another one was just next to it and it too was reaching with the tips of its fingers curling and uncurling in desire. And it too was held back by an invisible force.

  Only when Benjamin shifted to his right, in the direction of the loading dock, did he see the ropes around their necks. Someone had tethered the zombies in place. There were more of them along the wood line. Benjamin and Cheryl slowly backed away confused and more frightened than if the beasts had simply charged them. They had no clue what was going on, however they both knew on a gut level that there was something sinister about the way the zombies were roped in place. It felt like a trap had been set but neither of the pair was keen enough to realize that it had been sprung already.

  They backed away with guns pointed out at the forest and it wasn’t until a grunt sounded behind them that they turned. Now, zombies were charging from around the other side of the building cutting off all escape. They were strange, silent zombies that ate up the distance between them and their victims, quickly.

  Benjamin felt his bowels turn to water and with a scream on his lips, he fled, leaving Cheryl who had frozen in fear. She managed one shot with her pistol before they were on her, grunting and making a noise that sounded like: “Mmmph,” over and over. She screamed a note that was similar to a train’s whistle: high, long and piercing.

  Her one-time hero didn’t get very far. When he had turned to run away, he saw the entirety of the trap. The forest was lined with tethered zombies as was other side of the building. The whole perimeter was probably surrounded by the horrible creatures all caught up by the neck. They probably formed a solid wall. The thought caused him to hesitate, which caused him to die. Near silent zombies rushed him. He fired the shotgun and the recoil was so great that it nearly leapt out of his slack hands. His grip was much firmer with the second shot and he turned a zombie’s head into mulch with it. His third was equally as effective, taking down another.