Aghast at this impossible development we carried poor Lady M (who had fainted) out into the desert evening leaving her in the care of our guides. Returning to the tomb we found the door enlarged by removal of stones and our workmen, armed with their picks, destroying the creatures as they emerged one by one from the dark. Nine in all were destroyed in such fashion. We found more lain on stone slabs struggling against their bindings and these were destroyed as well.
Lord C enraged at the destruction. What information could these preserved creatures, alive for thousands of years, reveal to us? Workmen oddly uncommunicative on subject, only repeating that the ghuls must be destroyed. More than just killed, they insisted on completely obliterating the skulls.
We are left with many questions but few answers. Government officials feign deafness or inability to understand English when the subject is broached. The treasure inside the tomb was beyond expectation and with pleasure I inventoried the golden throne, the obsidian leopards, the finely carved chairs but nothing we found was of any help in explaining the aeons-long existence of those creatures. I hesitate to publicize their existence for fear that ridicule and disbelief would cast doubt on the authenticity of our magnificent find.
Lady M, recovered from her faint, did come back to the tomb the next day and made an astute observation. Traditionally the brain is removed during the embalming process but the ghuls’ skulls contained leathery lumps that must have once been brain tissue.
Perhaps future excavations will offer some clue that will allow us to solve this mystery.
-Journal of Howard Carter
Researcher’s note: For additional information on this phenomenon see records from the liberation of Bergen-Belsen in Folio V, cached entitled “Practical Application and Research”
David kept scrolling but could not pull up any other documents. Bea went back to the beginning but also found nothing. She pulled up the original email but the folder held only the two incidents. Attempted calls didn’t go through and Sylvie didn’t respond to her texts.
“Maybe she didn’t have time to scan the rest of them, or maybe that’s all there is.” She was disappointed. “I’m sure she’ll tell me tomorrow if I can just get to her place.”
The words, “Infection and Research” at the end of the document were tantalizing and Bea fell asleep pondering the possibilities. David, watching the two of them sleeping and keeping watch on the infected outside, pondered it as well. He fell asleep shortly after the broken church clock ran down and went silent.
Chapter Seven
Bea woke just as the sky brightened into dawn. Brian and David slept on. Outside, as the sun continued to rise, ice crystals sparkled on trees and bushes as well as the dead still roaming the street. She had hoped they would wander off during the night once the clock stopped chiming. Finding her toothbrush she made for the bathroom and as she showered, wondered how much longer utilities would work with no one to maintain the systems. Her upper lip was still swollen and the hot water stung.
Brian was next in the shower while she fixed a makeshift breakfast of toast and canned fruit gleaned from the cupboards. There wasn’t much food in the house but she didn’t want to break into what they carried in their backpacks yet. David wandered in and ate breakfast but spoke little. A layer of dark stubble covered the lower part of his face.
Calls to Evan now went straight to voicemail. Bea kept calling, hoping to arrange a rendezvous point before they actually got to Dupont Circle but now she wondered if she would ever see him again. She left a final voicemail before turning the phone off. They didn’t need it to start ringing while they were out in the streets.
They left through the back, squeezing through the prickly hollies and emerging onto Dumbarton. The breathtakingly cold wind carried a smell of smoke. It picked up Bea’s hair, blowing it across her face. She wished she had thought to retrieve her hat from the attic where they had been attacked.
Dumbarton appeared deserted except for a few dead trapped in cars. The continuous call of the broken clock tower must have drawn most of the dead in the area over to Olivet. The streets and sidewalks here were treacherous and they stepped carefully on the shiny, icy sections. A sprained ankle or broken leg or arm could be fatal now.
They were almost to 27th Street before they ran into trouble. A good-sized crowd of dead surrounded a house on fire. Flames licked around the windows and loud pops and shattering glass sounded as items in the house exploded from the heat. The noise excited the pack and they gibbered shrilly. Many walked into the conflagration, completely heedless of the flames.
There was no way to get past them so they backtracked and took N Street. Here undisturbed snow lay in deep drifts. Brian and Bea were light enough to walk across the thick, icy crust on some of them but David had to fight his way down the whole street. Bea stopped and waited while David ploughed through an exceptionally deep mound. Brian bounded on ahead.
David emerged from a drift and stopped, hands on his knees, breathless from the struggle. Bea walked ahead a few steps; she couldn’t see Brian anymore. Just as she turned around she felt the brittle crust give way and she sank into the drift landing face-to-face with one of the dead.
Eyeless and with his nose chewed off he struggled to bring his hands forward while the torn mouth emitted bubbling moans and the broken teeth clicked together. Bea screamed and dug frantically to get away but only succeeded in loosening the snow around them, helping the thing free itself. It grabbed her painfully by the arm and bit down on the thick padding of her coat, hissing in frustration when it failed to bite into living flesh.
Bea kicked out and gained some traction when her boots hit its chest and got her head above the ice. Kicking again her boots sank into the black mush of the creature’s open abdomen. Just as she went under she felt someone grab her hair and pull hard. She screamed again, this time in pain, but David managed to grab her coat collar and pull her out. The dead man still thrashed about in the drift but couldn’t climb out.
Together Bea and David scrambled, half crawling, half digging and reached the end of the street where they found Brian sunk into a drift, happily zombie-free. They pulled him out and trudged on, avoiding the drifts when possible. Reaching the corner they turned left.
Elaborate wrought iron fences and gates surrounded the townhouses along this street, making them seemingly secure from attack. Manicured boxwood nestled in carefully raked beds of white gravel. Bea wondered how many of the homeowners were hiding inside, afraid and waiting for rescue. How long could they hold out? Most people didn’t stock huge amounts of food or supplies. Who had room in the standard, compact D.C. dwelling?
Glancing up at a window she saw a face, stripped of flesh, resembling the dead man she had just escaped, pressed against the glass. Even here the virus had gotten inside. She shuddered and took Brian’s hand, wishing they were back home, secure inside their little walled compound. For the duration, however long that might be, they had no home.
Her face felt numb with cold. She lost her gloves during the fracas in the drift and she hadn’t thought to bring a spare pair. They passed a section of ground floor shops, some with shattered fronts and Bea called for a halt.
“I’m freezing, guys. I want to duck in here and see if I can find gloves and a hat. Five minutes, that’s all I need.”
David reluctantly helped her remove some glass shards from the window so she could climb through and then he waited outside with Brian, keeping an eye out for the dead.
Inside the store she found most of the aisles still well-stocked. She stuffed nuts and cheese crackers into her backpack and added some Tylenol, toothpaste and gum. Cases of bottled water lay near the door but she could only carry so much weight. The pharmacy in the back had been hit hard and those shelves were practically empty. Someone either needed a lot of meds or else was taking a chemical vacation. On a rack near the make-up she found a black, knit beret and black gloves. Delighted she donned them and left. The whole detour had taken less than five minut
es.
“Anyone inside?” David asked, looking at her in a new light. The contrast of the black hat against the dark blonde hair tumbling around her shoulders was striking.
“Not that I saw. I think I have frostbite on my ears.” She pressed her gloved hands against the sides of her head and rubbed vigorously then reached into her backpack, pulling out the iron fleur-de-lis bar.
“It’s not cold enough for frostbite. I see you saved the rail.”
“Yes, I know we have the guns but this is quieter and conserves bullets.” She hefted it as if to check the weight and then grasped it firmly in her right hand before moving on.
Once they reached 27th Street the snow was more manageable. Even so they proceeded carefully, constantly looking around them for movement. There were a few cars parked helter- skelter in the street but nothing writhed inside them. In the distance dark figures stumbled about, occasionally falling in the icy streets.
“Did you see the pictures of New Orleans?” Brian asked David.
“I heard something about the tsunami but no, I didn’t see any film. How did it look?”
“Gone. Just water washing over houses and bodies floating. The roads were still full of people trying to get out when it hit.”
“That place has been a disaster waiting to happen for decades. Nature will have its way eventually,” David said grimly.
“If global warming is real the city was probably doomed anyway,” Bea remarked. “The tsunami just sped the process along.”
Darkening clouds banked in the western sky and the wind picked up again. The relief from the glare was welcome but the threat of more snow was not. David’s phone buzzed and he stopped for just a moment to read the message, nodded, and then moved on.
“Anything important? Are the military coming? Are we going to be rescued?” Brian asked.
David laughed grimly. “No rescue. Not much military left. This thing spread through the troops like you wouldn’t believe. No one was willing to leave their wounded brothers-in-arms behind initially and they had entire wards of soldiers dying then reanimating and attacking en masse. The text was just a notice of a rendezvous point change. We just lost the rest of the Pentagon.”
Bea thought of that massive structure, full of the hungry dead. She interviewed for a job there once, as an assistant to one of their historian/archivists. She had gotten lost and finally found her way to the proper office ten minutes late. They didn’t offer her the job.
David saw her brow wrinkle then relax and she forged on ahead, making sure the boy stayed close. The two of them seemed to have no real plans for getting out of the city and their odds of survival were not good. Neither were his for that matter and he had no idea if he would make the rendezvous in time or if he would get out of the city successfully.
Ian, who had texted him the location change, was not going out to California with him. The first leg of the journey would take them to Atlanta where, for now, a small, private airfield remained operational and he would take off for the west coast from there. Some of the DHS scientists were on their way to the Centers for Disease Control to fill the thinned ranks of researchers trying to get a handle on the epidemic. They were dropping Ian off before that, near his hometown where he hoped to find his family.
David put one finger to his lips and they all walked slowly to the corner and peered around to the entrance to the Ritz-Carlton. The sidewalk and street here crawled with the dead.
Back-tracking, they found an alley with a gate to the next street. Before they could climb over, a dead postman staggered out from behind the trashcans and grabbed David’s arm, blood-clotted mouth opened wide in that desperate hunger they all seemed to possess. Before David could react, Bea turned, and with an oddly graceful overhand thrust, drove the tip of the iron rail into that gaping mouth. They had to pry the dead fingers from their clutch on David’s arm and Bea had to stomp the dead man’s head before her weapon came out. She tried to clean it in the snow. Neither Bea nor Brian was particularly shaken by the encounter and David mentally raised their survival odds. But only slightly.
“Thanks. You might have saved my life.”
She shrugged. “No problem.”
The next street over was clear except for an abandoned ambulance. They were now only two blocks from Dupont Circle. The area was heavily residential and very trendy so David expected a lot of infected would still be there. Popping sounds in the distance brought them to a momentary halt. Someone was shooting in fairly rapid succession although it didn’t sound like machine-gun fire. When they reached the corner of P Street, they pressed against the wall and looked around the edge of the building.
The center fountain was frozen, fluted basin supported by stone caryatids encased in sparkling, icy chitons. The entire street teamed with infected. A small girl, wearing the dark-blue pleated skirt and white blouse of the Catholic Prep school for girls, still clutched her mother’s hand while both of them staggered along the icy street. It must have been a reflexive grip as both of them were obviously dead and constantly trying to pull in different directions. The mother was only partially dressed and her abdomen gaped wide. David heard a pop and a neat hole appeared in the mother’s forehead and she fell, dragging her daughter down with her. Another pop and the child stopped struggling.
A sniper. Whoever it was, they were good and several more dead fell, lying prone in the snow, dark stains on the landscape. They looked up at the building rooftops but couldn’t see anyone.
“We can’t go out there,” David whispered. “The sniper won’t know we’re uninfected and might shoot. We’ll have to go around.”
Bea shook her head. “Sylvie lives right over there.” She pointed. “On the corner of Massachusetts Avenue. I’m calling her now.”
Sylvie picked up on the first ring. “Bea! Where are you?”
“I’m close to your building but there’s a sniper. We can’t get across the street.”
“I’ll take care of it for you. Give me five minutes.” The call ended. The sporadic gunfire continued.
Bea was bemused and stood wondering what to do next. How was Sylvie going to “take care of it?” David looked at her and she shrugged. Minutes passed. The gunfire stopped. Across the plaza someone draped a red shirt across an apartment balcony railing and waved.
“How are we supposed to get up there?” Brian wanted to know.
David looked through the scope on his rifle. “Looks like there’s a set of concrete steps probably leading down to a basement door, right beneath the shirt.” He lowered the gun. “We can make it. Let’s stay together and do it fast. Ready?”
They sprinted across the street, dodging and weaving through the dead who reached for them with withered, blackened fingers. They were halfway across and the fountain was behind them when Brian stumbled across a bicycle abandoned under the snow, catching his shoe in the wheel spokes and going down hard.
David realized Bea and Brian were no longer with him and looked back. Bea knelt beside Brian, struggling to free his foot. The dead closed in. David smashed the brains out of two with the hammer but they kept coming. The hunger or whatever it was that drove them was relentless and they knew no fear. Stupid but fearless.
He dropped to his knees and fired in short bursts. They were not difficult targets but the bodies piled up and they would soon be hemmed in. Bea finally pulled Brian’s foot out of the shoe and together they limped toward the building. They reached the door and Bea pushed Brian inside just as a dead man grabbed her ankle and pulled her down. She grabbed the edge of the doorframe with both hands and kicked his hands until the skin peeled off, showing bone underneath. He still wouldn’t let go. David hammered the thing’s wrists until the bones broke off and the fingers released, pulled Bea inside and firmly shut the door. A relentless assault on the door punctuated by moans faded as they moved deeper into the dark basement, David holding the hammer ready.
Walking past bags of road salt and used paint cans they heard light footsteps coming closer. Sudden
ly a super-bright flashlight blinded them and David lifted the hammer defensively. A woman’s voice said, “Who the hell are you? Thor?”
Bea laughed. “Sylvie, this is David Chambord. David, Sylvie. And you remember my brother, Brian.”
A flight of steps took them to a marbled lobby and an old-fashioned brass cage elevator that rattled up to the fifth floor. Just to the right of the elevator the door to apartment 53 shuddered as something inside pounded it repeatedly.
“Ignore that.” Sylvie cut her eyes toward the shaking door and she paled a little. The white wainscot along the hallway was splashed and smeared with blood that had also soaked into the carpet. She led them to an apartment at the end of the hallway and opened the door.
They walked into an exquisitely decorated living room with French doors opening to a wrought iron balcony offering a spectacular view of the plaza. A man, wearing dark camouflage and black ski mask stood outside near the rail, firing deliberately into the noisome, shuffling mass. He had an experienced shooter’s stance and Bea recognized Mac McKlasky. So he had made it after all.
Sylvie wore black wool, designer trousers with a cream cashmere sweater. She looked ready for an evening dinner date, complete with kitten heels and a string of pearls. Bea almost laughed. Sylvie was always pulled together and exquisitely groomed and she wasn’t about to let the zombie apocalypse cramp her style. Brian limped across the pale Oushak rug, leaving red spots of blood with each step. Sylvie looked over and exclaimed.
“Brian, what happened?” She led him to the armchair by the windows, propped his foot on the matching ottoman and carefully peeled off his bloody sock. A deep cut sliced across the fleshy part of his heel.
The Living Dead Series (Book 2): World Without End Page 9