The Sword of Saint Michael

by D C P Fox

  The male anchor spoke:

  What do you mean by the term “compartmentalized?”

  Ebert said:

  I mean not everyone with a top secret clearance had access to the information—only those with the need to know.

  Now Pete was back on the screen.

  We want to thank Carl Ebert of the CDC from less than an hour ago with some harrowing news. More harrowing than that, however, is our predicament here at PNN.

  “Can we watch something a little less biased?” Vin asked.

  Alexander got annoyed. “Shhh. We’re trying to listen here.”

  “I’m the only one with a gun here.”

  Alexander tried to ignore Vin.

  Pete Littleton was still anchoring.

  Let’s go back to the live shot outside, shall we?

  Carnegie Plaza was on the screen.

  As I stated earlier, there are no zombies or dead bodies of any kind. All the zombies have either moved on, or they have entered buildings, hoping to find . . . brains to eat, we assume. Our last report has the zombies overrunning the tenth floor of our building, slowly making their way up. We are trapped on the thirtieth floor, but we are not completely doomed in that . . . hold on, I’m being told . . . it looks like there is a person running in the plaza.

  The camera panned and brought into focus a disheveled and panicked man in his forties, wearing khakis and a collared shirt, dressed much like Alexander.

  Uh, oh. Coming out of one building—I believe that’s ours—is a zombie running toward him. Oh, my god, he’s so fast—

  The camera angle widened, and a figure chased down the man and tackled him.

  —Oh my gosh! Now he’s bashing the person’s skull—

  Jize gasped as they all stared at a zombie cracking the victim’s skull open.

  I’m sorry folks if you had to see that. Live television and all that . . . So I was about to say we here at PNN weren’t all doomed because we thought we could take the elevator down and bypass the zombies altogether.

  Alexander had never seen Pete so frightened.

  Now it seems we have no means of escape. We at PNN are truly trapped here, folks. I think all of us—all of us in this room—anchors, cameramen, producers, panelists, all of us will soon become zombies or die.

  Now tears started flowing out of Pete’s eyes.

  If not today, then tonight. If not tonight, then tomorrow. I’m being told something—one of our producers has done the math—my god, he has calculated the zombies will be here very soon. That’s because—

  Pete paused, finger holding his ear piece.

  —because of geometric progression. Simply put, the number of zombies grows as they go up the tower. And with more zombies, the rate of infecting more grows higher and higher—

  Pete paused again, still holding his ear piece.

  —I’m being told the zombies are now a mere two floors below us. That means they’ll be here any minute. It would appear this is it, folks—what’s that? You want to do what?—Ladies and gentlemen, I will honor an odd request from my producer. We will film him becoming a zombie, on live TV. In fact, I will join you, sir. Come here, Jim. Sit beside me at the anchor’s chair. Everyone else on the set, GO. Take the elevator up to the observation deck. I have been told they don’t use the elevators for whatever reason. Everybody—OUT! NOW! Cameramen, EVERYBODY! Just leave the cameras pointed at me and RUN!—Ladies and gentlemen, the crew is fleeing to the top floor. It may delay the inevitable, but who knows?

  Vin turned off the TV. “We’ve all seen this, right? No sense it making Emily relive it.”

  Emily buried her head in Vin’s thigh.

  Everyone was silent.

  “We could turn on triple N,” Alexander said. Triple N was the Neutral News Network. “See what’s happening in Atlanta.”

  Vin turned the TV back on. The stoic anchors just stared into the camera.

  Nobody wanted to relive this, Alexander thought.

  Vin flipped the channels: an infomercial selling exercise equipment; an old Super Bowl, the Denver Broncos leading the Carolina Panthers; a veterinary hospital show; The Golden Girls; Seinfeld; M*A*S*H; The Andy Griffith Show.

  “This is good, right?” Janice asked. “These stations haven’t been overrun.”

  Alexander didn’t have the heart to tell her these channels operated on auto-pilot for the most part.

  Then there was a green screen, and at the top right was a display that said this was channel 643, NNN.

  Atlanta, it seemed, had gone dark.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Day Zero

  They were ghostly white, they all had ugly sores, and there were hundreds of them. What did Kevin say about the dead coming back?

  Marty recognized one of them—Margaret, a cashier from the market. She was such a cute young thing, or had been. Now she had a misshapen skull with blood dripping down her mouth and onto her clothes.

  Was it really Margaret?

  As he watched the zombies—he couldn’t believe he called them that—walk by the back of his house on the four-lane road, he remembered they were impervious to the police’s weapons.

  Maybe a shotgun would fare better? His hands shook as he searched through his key ring to find the one for the gun cabinet.

  He found the key and hurried to what would normally be a coat closet but instead housed the cabinet. He opened the closet door, then the cabinet’s steel doors, grabbing the shotgun he’d bought a few years earlier when he upgraded from his double-barrel. It was a Remington M-870 Police Magnum, a 12-gauge slide action with an extended magazine tube. He grabbed the ammunition box of shells and opened it, accidentally spilling the contents onto the floor of the cabinet.

  Cursing himself, he bent over to pick them up and stuffed a bunch into his pants pockets. He picked up more and started the slow process of loading the gun one shell at a time into the tube.

  He pumped the slide action and chambered a shell, replacing it with one more. Now he had seven rounds.

  He got down on the floor and kneeled, peering over the window sash. It appeared the zombies had not noticed him yet. He went to the front of the house and four approached his house from down the street. They were large albino men, all bald but one with enormous beards.

  They spotted him.

  He opened the door, shotgun at the ready, and stepped onto the porch. The zombies were running up to him now, about thirty yards away and closing fast. The wind carried their stench.

  He fired once and missed and almost lost his balance as he wasn’t accustomed to the recoil. He pumped the slide action and fired again, better braced for the kickback, hitting one from twenty yards in the chest.

  It slowed down but didn’t stop.

  Maybe if he got closer, the shotgun could kill them. How could they survive a massive, direct hit to the heart? Or the brain?

  He pumped again and walked steadily toward them, off the porch and onto the lawn. He fired and missed, then pumped and fired and dropped that one, this time in the head, exploding blood and hair into the air, leaving a crater where its left ear and part of its skull had been.

  Someone screamed behind him. Amanda’s scream. He turned around to see Amanda in the doorway.

  “Daddy!” she cried, clearly scared for him.

  Oh, shit. When did they leave the basement? Why?

  The distraction was enough to give the zombies the advantage, and by the time his gun was ready, two of the zombies had run around him toward the doorway. Amanda screamed again. The other zombie that remained upright closed so fast that Marty had no time to go after his daughter. He fired at the zombie just before it was about to overtake him; its skull exploded just above the bridge of the nose, and it dropped onto the driveway. Karen’s scream replaced Amanda’s. Marty turned in horror as a zombie bashed the head of his little girl against the corner of one of the concrete steps, her mother a mere two steps behind the gruesome scene.

  The other zombie crossed the threshold of the door
and propelled Karen back into the house. Tears streaming down his face, Marty aimed into the back of the skull and dropped the zombie attacking his sweet little girl. He stepped over Amanda and the zombie—both covered in blood, bone, and brains—into the house. The zombie was smashing his wife’s head into the hardwood floor. Marty aimed and dropped that zombie also. He thought that was his last chambered round, but he wasn’t entirely sure.

  With his free hand, he pulled the zombie off of his wife and was about to check her for a pulse when he heard rapid footsteps behind him.

  Hadn’t he dropped all of them? Maybe more were coming!

  Without even taking the time to look back, he got up and ran to the basement door. He opened it and fled inside, slamming the door on a zombie’s arm.

  Marty turned, ran downstairs, and, hands shaking, struggled to reload the rounds that were in his pockets.

  The zombie slammed the basement door open.

  Mercifully, Vin shut off the TV again. Janice wasn’t sure what effect it was having on Emily, but it sure couldn’t be good.

  Emily grabbed onto Vin’s leg and asked, “Charming, are my Mommy and Daddy dead?”

  Vin looked around the room for help, and his eyes settled on Janice. Janice nodded and gently took Emily’s hand.

  “Emily, I’m Ms. Fernley, and he is Mr. Scoggins. Emily, I can answer that. Come with me.”

  Emily looked wide-eyed at Janice, then turned to look up at Vin.

  “It’s okay,” Vin said. “I’ll stay here in this store. I won’t leave you. Understand?”

  Emily nodded.

  “Come, Emily,” Janice said in a soothing voice.

  “Can I help?” Jize asked. “I lost my mother when I was eleven.”

  Janice smiled and looked at Emily. “What do you say, Emily, can Mr. Chen come and talk with us, too?”

  Emily looked at Jize, who smiled.

  “Okay,” Emily said sheepishly.

  Janice led Jize and Emily to a table off toward the side, away from the others. Emily must come to terms with the fact that she couldn’t go home again, and she guessed the best approach was a direct one.

  “I’ll go see if I can find a radio,” Vin announced. Janice assumed he wanted an excuse not to deal with Emily at the moment, if ever.

  Once they had sat down, Janice held one of Emily’s hands, and Jize held the other. Emily looked down at the table as if depressed. She probably was, and she probably understood what was coming.

  “Emily, you know what death is, right?” Janice asked.

  Emily nodded, keeping her head facing downwards.

  “And where do people go when they die?”

  “To Heaven,” Emily said with all the enthusiasm of a root canal. Her eyes hadn’t moved.

  “Yes, that’s right. Emily, your parents and your brother have gone to Heaven. How do you feel about that?” Of course, Janice didn’t believe in Heaven, and even if she did, she wouldn’t believe they had moved on, because they were most likely zombies. But Janice focused on the task at hand—Emily couldn’t go home, and she needed to understand that. Plus, they needed to learn if she had any other family.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You feel sad, don’t you?” Janice gave Emily’s hand a gentle squeeze. So did Jize.

  “I guess.” Emily looked up at Janice. “I’m supposed to feel happy, right? We want to go to Heaven, right?”

  Jize spoke in a soothing voice. “It’s okay to feel sad, Emily. Your family is in a better place, but you can feel sad that you won’t see them for quite some time.”

  “Emily, we talked about your brother that attacked you. Do you have any other brothers or sisters?” Janice asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Do you have any relatives in the area? Uncles? Aunts? Cousins?”

  “They all live in New York. It’s far away.”

  “Emily,” Jize said, “this isn’t your fault. None of this is your fault. Understand? No matter how you’re feeling, or what anybody says, this is not your fault.”

  “If it’s not my fault, then why did my brother attack me?”

  “Honey,” Janice said. “He suffered from a disease. Do you understand what a disease is?”

  Emily nodded. “It makes you feel icky, and you stay home from school, but it doesn’t make you attack anyone.”

  “This one does,” Janice explained. “All diseases are different.”

  “When can I go home?”

  “You can’t,” Jize answered. “I’m sorry, Emily, but with your family in Heaven, you need someone to take care of you.”

  Suddenly Emily looked happy. “I have Charming! Charming can take care of me!”

  Janice gave another gentle squeeze. “Yes, you have Mr. Scoggins, and you have me, Ms. Fernley, and you have Mr. Chen here. Promise me you’ll stay with one of us at all times. Can you do that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” Janice said. “Emily, do you like ice cream?”

  The zombie leapt—almost flew—down the stairs.

  It was the zombie Marty had dropped first, a crater on its left side where its ear and some skull had been.

  There were only two rounds in the shotgun when he fired at the head of the zombie, or what remained of it. The zombie’s body struck him with great force, sending them both down to the floor in a heap.

  Another zombie—the one he’d hit between the eyes—flew down the stairs, and Marty had just enough opportunity to raise his gun and shoot.

  Not even waiting for the result, he rolled out from under the zombie, toward the bathroom door. He got up, fled into the bathroom, and locked the door. Right away something slammed into the door, weakening it and the lock.

  Shaking, adrenaline pumping with fury—Marty had never fired at a person until today—he reloaded his gun while a zombie tried to break the door down.

  He had just finished loading and pumping the gun when a zombie—he couldn’t tell which one, all of them had significant chunks of skull missing—crashed in. Marty aimed and blasted its head, dropping it.

  Silence.

  He noted he had shot three zombies in the basement a second time in the skull. Two he last shot—once each—upstairs.

  Oh, no.

  Guessing the zombie in front of him would re-animate, he shot it again in the skull, this time pulverizing what remained of its brain.

  He hoped three times had done the trick.

  He crept out of the bathroom and shot the zombies lying at the bottom of the basement stairs twice each at their skulls.

  He pumped his last shell from the magazine into the chamber. He felt in his pockets. Only three shells left. He hurriedly re-loaded them into the magazine as his heart raced. His awareness flashed to the blood and zombie brains that covered his body. Now he ran up the stairs, pivoting, expecting a zombie.

  And there it crouched, about ten feet away from him in the hall, with some missing skull, eating his wife’s brains.

  He shot the zombie in the head twice, driving it back away from his wife. Knowing she was dead, he ran to the front doorway only to find another zombie eating his daughter’s brains. He shot that one twice in the head, too, making sure neither zombie had any intact brain matter.

  He scampered back to the still open gun cabinet, jumping over his wife’s body. He pocketed more shells from off the floor, and placed one shell into the magazine, pumping it into the chamber.

  Out of the corner of his eye, a zombie stood up and snarled.

  It had little skull but with one eye intact.

  He aimed and fired, pulverizing the rest of the skull as it flopped to the floor.

  Tears streaming down his cheeks, he ran outside and looked around. No more zombies outside. He turned around and saw his daughter get up, turn her bloody head, snarl, and lunge at him.

  She was a zombie.

  And there was no more ammo in his gun.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Day Six

  Their names were Kate, Aaron, Nickolas, and
Zachary. They were all in their early twenties.

  Her victims.

  She meditated and met them in her Inner Temple, where they appeared to her as normal people. Her grandfather said she could communicate with the dead, just as she had with him, but only when touching their physical bodies.

  “I’m sorry. I’m mentally ill, and I don’t have access to my medication. I had a psychotic break. I thought you were aliens come to kill me.”

  “I understand,” Kate said. “I forgive you.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes, I do. I am going to the Kingdom of Heaven, where I will be reunited with my parents, rather than struggling for survival in a nightmare.”

  “I see. Do all of you feel that way?”

  “Yes,” they all said in unison.

  “You are the one I feel sorry for,” Kate said.

  It was as if the crushing weight of a building lifted off her. Her guilt subsided, though not entirely, but enough to ask the next question.