by Rand, Thonas
“Addaam!”
He reached up for her and dragged his breaking nails into the wall.
“Lauren!” Adam shouted in horrid pain. “Don’t look!”
His shredded legs gave out, and he dropped to his knees.
The cannibals struck and sank their putrid claws into his back, pulled him down, and he fell back into the dead pile. Dozens of decaying arms engulfed him and kept his body from touching the ground, like a crowd surfer at a concert of death, they began to tear him apart.
“No! Adam!” she screamed at the top of her lungs.
They bit into his arms, his legs, his chest, his face, his feet, and his scalp as they ate him alive. Red sprayed everywhere, on the decayed faces of the dead as they aye, and his warm blood nourished their dead skin. Coats splattered all over Adam’s face, and his wide eyes could see Lauren watching in absolute terror.
“Don’t!—Look!—Lauren!” he gurgled out in blood.
But she couldn’t stop looking, even though her tears blurred her vision, she kept looking and screaming in utter despair, but the cacophony of the dead drowned out her voice.
She didn’t notice for several seconds the two men who stood next to her. Brought outside by the noise, they’d came to check.
It was Ardent and Bear.
Lauren finally saw them next to her, but didn’t react or care about these two strangers, she was too busy watching the love of her life being killed. When she saw them, they both raised their hands, palms up, to show that they meant her no harm. Lauren saw the pistol that Bear had in his holster, and she grabbed it out of desperation. They did nothing to stop her, they just watched as she took aim at Adam’s head with the pistol, but her vision was very bad. Adam was still barely alive as he watched her aim down at him.
She fired and struck him in the chest.
She cried out in frustration and fired again—
And hit him in the forehead, ending his pain.
The dead continued to rip his body apart, and they fought each other for pieces of flesh like hyenas in a pack kill.
Lauren fired at them as she screamed in rage.
The gun’s slide locked back empty.
But she kept pulling the trigger.
Ardent and Bear didn’t know what to do, and then Ardent tried to stop her, but she pulled away from him in anger and kept firing the empty pistol.
Bear grabbed another pistol magazine from his pocket and offered it to her.
Lauren took it, ejected the empty one, and loaded the fresh one.
She continued to fire down at them…
GOODNIGHT
Lauren looked down the barrel of her AK-47, Adam’s machine gun, she really didn’t care if it was clean—it wasn’t the barrel that she was looking into—she was looking into herself, to see if she had anything left of her soul.
She knew that she didn’t.
When they took Adam from her, they took her, as well.
She was dead, like them, a soulless creature.
And like them—all she wanted to do was kill—as many of them as she could.
She reassembled her weapon in seconds with methodical accuracy, all the pieces locked into place perfectly, and she was content.
Alan had already left back to the comfort of his shop in the basement. Derek and Milla were bunkered down in a corner of the cafeteria. Ardent and Bear just finished reassembling their M-4s from cleaning, while Tom and Anthony were about to call it a night. “You sure you guys don’t wanna crash in some of the offices?” Tom asked.
“No, thanks,” Bear said.
“The offices aren’t much for sleeping, but they’re more comfortable than this cafeteria, at least.” Tom added.
“Thanks, but we usually sleep in the same area; it’s safer that way.”
“As a unit?” Anthony said.
“That’s it,” Bear answered.
“Okay,” Tom said. “I’m gonna be on first watch for our group, so that includes you, if you all wanna get some rest.”
“We’ll have someone on watch here, too,” Bear told him.
“Alright then, good night.”
“Good night, Tom, and thanks for your hospitality,” Ardent said.
“You’re welcome,” Tom answered and then him and Anthony left.
“So…” Bear said.
“So…” Ardent repeated.
“Who’s gonna get first watch?” Bear asked.
“That’s the question,” Ardent said.
“It’s between you and me, this time.”
“True,” Ardent said. “I’ll rock, paper, scissors you for it?”
“Really? You’re on.”
They were about to compete until Lauren slapped a fresh magazine into her cleaned machine gun and racked the bolt back. “I’ll take first watch,” she said.
“You sure?” Bear asked.
She gave him a definitive look.
“Okay then.” Bear said.
Ardent and Bear made their makeshift beds on the floor and laid down to rest. “Good night, Lauren,” Ardent said.
“Night,” she replied.
Most of the small candles had burned down to nothing, and the ones that didn’t, Lauren blew out. Only the emergency lighting remained on, and that barely lit the room, which was how she liked it—to be in the darkness with her weapon at the ready. She leaned against a wall and closed her eyes for a moment, and heard Adam’s last words…
Lauren! Don’t look!
She intended to kill as many of them as she possibly could…
Millions.
Outside, the lingering dead were trolling the streets in the night. Lauren couldn’t see them because of the hospital’s stone wall and they couldn’t see her, either, but she could hear their growls and moans.
As she held her weapon tightly, she heard the dead speak to her—
Pick me, Lauren! Kill me first!
No, Lauren, not him, me!
Blow my brains wide open, Lauren!
Lauren, please, put me out of my dead fucking misery!
She squeezed her weapon’s pistol grip.
Don’t worry, I’m gonna get all of you dead motherfuckers, she thought.
THE NEXT DAY
The dead sun had just broken the flesh of the horizon, it rays weaved across the land like the infected veins of a corpse’s eye. The undead were fewer now outside the hospital and instead of four or five thousand; it boiled down to three or four. Without something to kill, they wondered as ants did without a chemical trail to follow. The mental facility was quiet at this early hour; most of them were still asleep, except for Ardent and Bear. They were in the back of the hospital as they worked on the boat motors.
They had the first motor disassembled and the parts spread out on a folding table as they cleaned all of them meticulously. They had a bucket full of used motor oil to lubricate the parts as they finished cleaning each one. The source of the oil was one of the nearby employee cars that they liberated the precious lubricant from. They had just finished an inventory of all the parts. “How we looking, Captain?” Bear said.
Ardent gave him a serious look. “Don’t call me that.”
“Yes, sir,” Bear said, and he knew why. “But how we looking?”
“Well, so far, so good. I don’t see any missing parts. Except for this accelerator cable that’s frayed, but we can replace it from one of those cars.”
“Yeah, I saw that,” Bear said and produced a cable in his hand. “So I already got one.”
“Good, so everything looks ready,” Ardent said as he scratched the back of his neck. “Let’s put it back together and pray that it works.”
They got to work on the reassembly…
• • •
An hour had passed, and then Tom and Anthony showed up to see how Bear and Ardent were doing. “Good morning,” Tom said.
Tom had his own set of the PVC pipe armor on.
“Morning,” Bear said. “You got Alan to make you some armor, too, huh?”
�
��No, sir, made it myself,” Tom answered.
“It does look nicer than ours,” Bear noted.
“Tom, thought you’d still be asleep after taking watch last night,” Ardent said to him.
“Nah, give me a couple hours sleep and I’m right as rain,” Tom replied.
“How’s it going with the motors?” Anthony asked looking at the first motor that was almost completely put together.
“It’s coming along,” Bear said. “We should have this one finished by lunchtime, if everything goes well, then we’ll start on the second one.”
“That’s good news,” Tom said. “But I wanted to talk you about the escape plan.”
“Okay, what about it?” said Ardent.
“The way I see it, the most important aspect of it is getting through that back gate as quickly as possible,” Tom said as he pointed to the rear gate of the employee parking.
“Yeah, that’s true,” Ardent agreed.
“So the best way to do that is to blow that gate to Hell,” Tom said.
“Great idea, but I’m all out of explosives; I used the last that I had to blow the shit out of your sewer tunnel,” Bear said with a smile.
“I have some,” Tom said.
Bear’s smile widened.
At the front of the hospital, in the courtyard, as Tom, Anthony and Ardent’s group were at Tom’s eighteen-wheeler truck. Tom unlocked the heavy padlock on the trailer doors and opened her up. Bear smiled even harder at what he saw inside—the entire trailer was a doomsday prepper’s wet dream—it was converted into a survivalist’s workshop filled with dozens of weapons of various shapes and sizes that sat in racks in the walls, along with a couple hundred military boxes of ammunition stacked under the guns, and equipped also with machines for working on metal and various other tools. In the very back of the trailer were what looked like dozens of boxes of food and some sleeping compartments. Tom pushed a hidden button on the trailer and a set of stairs extended out for them to enter.
“Mi casa su casa,” Tom said.
They climbed aboard for a tour.
“Wow, would you look at that,” Lauren said
“I have over eighty-five weapons and 60,000 rounds of ammo in here,” Tom said proudly. “I have just about every tool a gunsmith would need to fix or make a weapon from scratch, two sleeping compartments, a toilet and a shower, but no water to spare for the shower, unfortunately, so I have ammo stored in it. There’s a two-year food supply, not counting the shitty MREs that are in the very back of the trailer. I have six months’ worth of fresh water, give or take. I’ve got a couple hundred batteries, solar panels, including some on top of the trailer that powers it, and plenty of rechargeable batteries. Uh, that’s about it, I think.”
Bear sang, “And a partridge in a pear tree.”
“Goddamn, where’s the Xbox?” Derek joked.
“In my room,” Anthony said.
“No?” Derek said.
“Wanna play ‘Call of Duty?’” Anthony offered.
“Dude, yes! I will own you!” Derek said.
“Let’s go,” Anthony said.
Derek followed him into his room and they were out of sight, a moment later—the sound of the Xbox powering-up was heard.
“Sweet!” Derek exclaimed.
“A little paranoid, are we?” Ardent said to Tom.
“Shoot, there’s people that thought they were prepared and then there’s ‘prepared,’” Tom said as he pointed to his supplies with both hands.
“God bless you,” Bear told him.
“The construction business has done you well,” Ardent said.
“Yes, sir, it has and when this shit blows over, and we build the world again, I’m gonna be there,” Tom bragged. “Oh, Bear, the explosives are in those cabinets.” Tom pointed.
Bear walked over to them. “Locked up, Tom. Can you open it?”
“The combination is kaboom,” Tom said.
“Dash or no dash?” Bear asked.
“Dash?” Tom wondered.
“You know, between ‘ka’ and ‘boom,’ dash or no dash?”
“Oh, no dash.”
Bear typed the code into the keypad and opened the cabinets and his jaw dropped—there were every kind of explosive that you could think of for war.
“God bless you,” Bear repeated under his breath.
“Take what you need for the back gate,” Tom told him.
Bear collected a couple pounds of plastic explosives and a few remote-activated blasting caps; he was as happy as a kid with firecrackers and sang a little as he picked items from the cabinet. “Heaven…I’m in Heaven!”
“You’re part of our group now, right?” Tom asked Ardent. “What I mean is, is that we’re really gonna leave here together, correct?”
“Yes, we are, Tom,” Ardent said genuinely. “You have my word on that.”
“Okay then,” Tom said and seemed more at ease. “How’s your group doing on ammo?”
“We’re okay.”
“That didn’t sound very convincing, Ardent,” Tom stated. “So why don’t all of you help yourselves to my supplies and stock up.”
“That’s very generous, Tom, but are you sure?”
“I wouldn’t have said it otherwise,” Tom answered.
“Okay, thank you,” Ardent said and then addressed his group. “Hey guys, Tom here is nice enough to give us some of his ammo, so go ahead and restock your personal supplies.”
“Thanks, Tom,” Milla said.
“Appreciated, Tom, where are the AK rounds?” Lauren asked.
“Second stack from the back,” he told her.
Bear gathered the explosives that he needed, but then he saw some grenades, he couldn’t resist, so he grabbed one and put it in his pocket. After which, he left the trailer. “Very cool, Tom. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I’m gonna go rig the back gate,” Bear said to Ardent.
“Alright,” Ardent answered.
Bear left some tunes as he walked away. “Heaven…I’m in Heaven…”
They all got ammunition for themselves and didn’t waste any time reloading all their empty magazines right there and then.
“Tom, you wouldn’t happen to have some batteries for my weapon’s red dot sight, would you?” Ardent asked.
“Uh…yeah.” Tom said and he looked at Ardent’s riflescope, it was battered from hard use. “But I got something better.”
Tom went to a drawer, pulled out a brand new scope in the box, and handed it to Ardent.
“Brand new military-grade scope, it’s the newest generation of optics,” Tom said.
“I can’t take this, Tom; you’ve already given us a lot.”
“Sure you can, I have twenty-six of ’em. The batteries are in the same drawer.”
“I’m grateful.”
“No problem. You need a tool to install it?”
“No, I have one, thanks,” Ardent said.
Milla looked toward the back, where Anthony’s sleeping compartment was, she heard the telltale sounds of Anthony and Derek playing Xbox. “Derek?” she called to him.
The game paused and Derek popped his head out. “Yeah, baby?”
“I need your help, come here, please.”
“Baby…I’m Xboxing here.”
She held up a box of ammo and shook it. “Fresh bullets.”
“Ooh!” he looked back to Anthony. “I’ll be right back.” He went to Milla to load up.
THE THIRSTY BIRD
Downtown L.A. was a place of petrified towers—ruins frozen in time and atop a forty-story sliver was Hayward’s Black Hawk. It had landed on the helipad of the luxury residential building during the night. The building was in a pricey part of Wilshire Boulevard that was now a not so pricey piece of dead real estate. The undead wandered all over the streets around the building; it was business of death as usual. The building lobby was barricaded with furniture and anything else that could be used to make a wall, so maybe there were still some surv
ivors inside. No one was on the roof with the dormant helicopter; they were down in the building somewhere…
The tenant parking was located directly beneath the residential floors, above ground and on the fifth level of parking, was where Hayward, John, and the three soldiers that hitched a ride with them had gone. Briggs and his two companions had commandeered one of the vehicles, a truck, from one of the many in the circular parking levels. The three rogue soldiers were in the middle of siphoning gas from the tanks of the other cars to fill the truck’s tank. Fifty feet away, by the elevator landing—John and Hayward were talking with three tenants from the building, two men and a woman. The younger man had a small revolver in his hand. They didn’t like what was going on. “Look, I really don’t care about the truck and the gas you’re taking—” the older man said.
Hayward cut him off. “No, me and John aren’t with them.”
“But they came in the helicopter with you,” the woman said.
“I had no choice,” Hayward told her.
“Okay, fine, you’re not with them,” the older man continued. “But your friends are gonna get all of us killed! It doesn’t look like there’s that many outside, but the moment they hear noise—hundreds of them will come out from everywhere!”
John and Hayward knew this.
“Briggs?” John called to him, but he didn’t hear, as he was too busy plundering for gas. “Briggs!” John called louder.
“What?”
“I don’t think that this is such a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“Why do you think? If you drive down there—you’re gonna make noise. If you open the gate to leave—you’re gonna make more noise, and noise attracts those things.”
Briggs was frustrated. “Then what do you want us to do, man? Wait around this fucking place? These people have no food or water for all of us! They’re already dead, and they don’t even know it!” Briggs pointed to the tenants, especially the one with the gun. “Yeah, you! So what, John? What’s your big plan, huh?” Briggs pointed up to the roof. “The bird is low on fuel, there’s probably not even enough to take off again with all of us onboard!”