59... 60... 61... Shit! It’s more than a minute now. Sheryl begins to panic. She tries to keep counting in her head, thinking it will calm her, but she just keeps repeating 61 over and over. Her mind races and her eyes dart back and forth between the door and the coming dead.
Another heavy gunshot follows. Startled, she nearly lifts out of her seat. She gasps when Willy kicks open the door and emerges from within with a shotgun on his hip. He steps over a corpse and stands beside the car. Within seconds the zombies are upon them. He unloads shot after shot over the hood of the car as they approach him, pumping empty buckshot shells into the air after each blast. He reaches for the car door but it’s locked. Sheryl fumbles in releasing the mechanism, as one zombie has its face pressed to the driver side window, smearing it with fleshy bits of stink.
“Open up!” Willy’s muddled shout fills Sheryl’s ears between the thuds of shotgun fire. She pops the lock, but Willy circles around to the last beast on her side of the car and blasts it before getting back in. Blood and brain coat the driver’s side window.
“There’s more coming,” he says as he flops a rifle into the back seat and starts stuffing more shells into his short barreled, pump action shotgun. “Inside and outside. People who turned inside got stuck in there. I guess they don’t know how to open doors. I heard ‘em through the walls, scratchin’ around in the apartments on either side of mine. Then there were some in the hallways.”
“Let’s just get out of here,” Sheryl says.
“No. I’ll help you find your husband. Remember what we talked about. If ya don’t look for him you’ll always have regret eatin’ away at yer insides.”
“Regret is better than the dead though,” Sheryl responds. Willy just glares at her, and Sheryl simply nods her head in response.
“Which buildin’ is his mistress in?” he asks.
“The first.”
As Sheryl pulls out of Willy’s lot she sees more zombies running toward them. It’s like they kicked a hornet’s nest and released a deadly fury of blood lust. She mows a few down with the car. The fleshy slaps they make as they collide with the front end of the car make her cringe as if by instinct. But she fights it, and drives over them like speed bumps. When they turn into the other lot they see more of them. The first floor windows to most of the apartments have been broken. The undead climb in and out, feeding on whatever bodies aren’t moving.
Sheryl circles around the rows of cars in the lot. Her husband never knew that she knew where his mistress lived, so if he was here the car would be in plain sight. And it was.
“There,” she points to the new red mid-life crisis. “That’s his car. He must be inside. Believe it or not I’ve been checking every one of these dead bastards to see if one is him. Unless he’s wandered off, he must be up in her apartment. It’s 3G.” She continues to circle the lot, occasionally crunching a zombie under her wheels if they get too close.
“This might get ugly,” Willy says. His building wasn’t as overrun as this one. There are at least 15 by the main door, and a handful at each of the side and rear entrances. “The G units are toward the back. Mine is a G. Small one bedroom. That’s it right there.” He points up to the third floor. The windows are draped with dark curtains. One of the windows is open just a crack. “Okay here’s the plan. We do like we did before, only this time you got to come with me. Keep the car doors closed but unlocked. Rocky stays in the car. Pray that he doesn’t bark again, otherwise we’ll have a swarm waitin’ for us when we leave. Shut the engine so the noise don’t attract ‘em, but leave the keys in the ignition for a fast getaway. Ain’t no one stupid enough to come ‘round here now but us, so don’t worry nuthin’ about someone stealing it. When we get inside, you close the door behind us. When we get into the stairwell, you close the door behind us. In fact, we go through any doors, you close them behind us. Got it?” Sheryl nods. “My key can get us in the building, but if the apartment is locked we’re gonna have to shoot our way in. That’s gonna attract ‘em to us. So we gotta be quick, in and out. Your gun loaded?”
She checks. “Yes.”
“Full clip?”
She checks. “Yes.”
“Extra ammo in your pocket?”
She checks. “Yes.”
“Safety off?”
She checks. “Yes.”
“If we get up there and they changed, you gonna be ready to pull the trigger if I can’t for some reason?” She gives a cold nod in the affirmative. Willy studies her. Part of her wants to shoot ‘em, whether undead or alive. Her fear is only matched by her anger right now. “Alright then. When you’re ready, pull up like we did last time. But ram some more with the car so they can’t move too fast with broken legs and all. And remember; if you shoot, get ‘em in the head.”
To Sheryl it feels like there are so many instructions. Lots of things to think about, to remember; how to load and use the gun, the keys in the car, the door closing, the head shots. It seems simple enough but she’s nervous, scared. She circles the lot several more times, running down cannibal after cannibal, immobilizing them.
“Yeah that’s good, that’s good,” Willy says, boosting her confidence. When the lot is basically motionless, they pull up to the rear entrance door and leap out of the car. Willy’s key is in the apartment door quickly and they enter. Sheryl closes the door behind them, quietly. But she accidentally took the car keys with her, through routine and habit. Shit! I was supposed to leave them in the ignition. She curses herself for the mistake, for not following Willy’s instructions.
Willy takes a sharp turn and they go through another door and into the foggy windowed stairwell. The daylight from outside illuminates the metal stairs, creating a shiny white surface. Their footsteps echo, as does the click of the door when Sheryl closes it behind them. Willy puts a finger to his lips motioning to Sheryl for silence. He listens intently to the sounds. With his shotgun in one hand, Willy reaches backward to silence the hook and strap on the rifle he has slung over his shoulder that rattles with each step.
There’s a faint grumbling from above, inside the stairwell. The building has five floors, but the sound could be from any one of them. They slowly ascend the stairs, step by step, guns drawn and aiming upward to the landing ahead. They reach the landing, turn, and quietly ascend to the second floor landing. The sounds grow louder, but they continue up. Another landing, another turn, another landing. They’re on the third floor. The noise sounds like it’s right on top of them; a fleshy chomping sound, coming from on the stairs leading to the fourth floor. Willy peeks through the glass window on the door into the third floor hallway. The coast is clear. He slowly turns the door handle until it clicks. Then suddenly the chomping sound stops. It’s dead silent in the stairwell. Willy has the door open. He motions for Sheryl to pass through into the hall but she’s frozen with fear, her eyes fixed on the stairway, her gun drawn, her breath quivering, and sweat beading on her forehead despite the cold. Willy nudges her and she breaks her gaze, following him through the door. She closes it behind her as quiet as she can. They move on.
The hall is dim. Their eyes play tricks on them, and they think they see the faint glowing eyes of the undead ahead of them, at the end of the hallway. With no electricity and no windows, the only light available is behind them, creeping through the stairwell door. It flickers as shadows pass behind it, breaking the rays of light. The beast that lurks within the stairwell stirs. Willy guides them as they quietly creep to the third door on the right. The buzzer reads 3G, just below the peep hole. He turns the doorknob slowly until it clicks open. Lucky it was unlocked. He cautiously opens the door and they both go inside.
A gentle breeze blows through the dark apartment from an open window somewhere, but not from the living room. Light barely gets in from the heavily curtained windows there. A small pile of clothing sits at the foot of the couch, and a trail of undergarments leads back toward the bedroom. Sheryl sees her husband’s shirt among them. She holds back the anger, the frustration.
After all it’s just what she suspected.
Willy sweeps the living room, looking behind the couch, and Sheryl peeks over the countertops to check the kitchen. They turn toward the other rooms, where light trickles in from an open door at the end of the hall. Willy creeps up to the bathroom door and puts his ear up against it. He hears nothing, so they move toward the bedroom. The cold, gentle breeze blusters down the hallway toward them. The light ahead shifts and moves. Sheryl wonders if it’s them, or if it’s just the bedroom curtains blowing with the wind. Willy moves forward. They step quietly on the carpeted floor. When they reach the door Willy peeks his head around to see inside. He turns back to Sheryl with a finger over the mouth area of his mask, signaling quiet.
Then, in a heartbeat, he turns into the room and swings the butt of his shotgun around, using it like a club. Sheryl follows him into the room where she hears the meaty thwack of Willy’s gun crack the back of a head. A girl falls to the ground. Sheryl knows she’s one of them; she can see it in her eyes. But it doesn’t matter anyway, even if she’s still a human. What Sheryl does is more out of hatred than survival or self defense. Without hesitation she begins to kick her over and over. In the body, in the head. The girl growls and squirms, trying to grab and claw at anything she can. Sheryl tries to remain quiet but the anger is overwhelming. She stomps on her head, furiously grunting with each blow until finally there is no movement beneath her heel. When she lifts her foot a string of bloody goo stretches up, connecting the bottom of her sneaker to the mess of brain matter under it.
Then they hear pounding from outside the room, from the bathroom. Someone or something is inside, and is now trying to get out. Sheryl wonders if it might be her husband, still alive inside, hiding from his mistress. But the door isn’t locked; it locks from the inside and opens inward. She knows he's turned.
“We can leave him,” she says to Willy. He shakes his head no. He knows she needs closure. She needs to face him head on and confront him.
“We have to be quick about it. The rest of ‘em are gonna come at us,” he says, motioning to the gun in his hand. Sheryl nods.
Willy fires the shotgun at waist level, pumps it to reload, and blasts off another shot before kicking the door in with his boot. The door is riddled with buckshot holes and nearly falls apart after he kicks it. Sheryl’s naked husband stumbles back and falls into the tub, taking down the shower curtain, a piece of crappy wall art, and some scented potpourri jars with him. A gaping chasm in his stomach pours blood, and his dick is completely missing, as if bitten off. Sheryl steps in and points his own pistol at him. She squeezes the trigger and hears a whiz past her ear. She missed, and the bullet hit the tub, ricocheted off the tile and nearly ended her own life.
He scrambles to get up but Sheryl kicks him back into the tub. She steps closer and fires another round. This time it hits right between his yellowed, bloodshot eyes. She stands above his corpse, looking down at the blood as it pours from his head and begins to spiral down into the drain. She belts out a maniacal laugh that makes the hair on Willy’s neck stand on end.
“We gotta go,” he says to her calmly.
Suddenly tears begin to fill Sheryl’s eyes. Thoughts of all they had been through fill her head with confusion. She stares at her dead husband, but as soon as the first tear cools her cheek in the winter breeze she balls the fist of her bad arm in anger. “Why’d you have to do it!” she yells at her dead husband. Willy steps back out of the bathroom. “Why’d you have to fuck it all up!” She growls and screams with rage as she fires shot after shot into her husband, emptying the entire magazine of bullets into his dead body.
Willy waits to speak until she calms down, and even then he’s hesitant. I’ve seen this kind of emotional break before, on the battlefield. Hell, even I’ve felt it. “Reload,” he says plainly.
Sheryl does as he says. The process takes some special positioning and leaning, since her bad arm isn’t at full capacity yet. The soreness must mean it’s on the mend, she thinks. She hears noises through the walls all around them, even above and below. The grunts and growls grow louder from outside the apartment. Just then Sheryl realizes, but it’s too late: I forgot to close the apartment door behind us. They’re inside.
Willy runs out into the living room, firing at the undead as they enter the dark apartment. Sheryl follows him, waiting for a lull in the swarm to close the apartment door. But she’s grabbed from the side as one of them gets past Willy. She instinctively shoves the grotesque beast away and it topples over the couch. She pulls her gun to eye level and fires a poorly aimed shot into the darkness that grazes the zombie’s shoulder, knocking it back into the entertainment center. The flat screen television shatters and falls to the floor, and the cannibal takes down the rest of the shelving that surrounds it. Sheryl fires again and hits the zombie in the neck. A stream of dark liquid sprays all over the room, coating everything with a layer of blood. The zombie keeps coming.
Suddenly Willy turns, pumps, and fires across the room at the beast, taking its head off and splattering it onto the curtains. Stray buckshot shatters the window behind. Willy kicks the door shut and spins the dead bolt into place, locking out the rest of the corpses.
The wind blows the brainy curtains around, letting light into the living room. It illuminates the dark crimson blood to a bright ruby red. Sheryl’s senses are numbed with adrenaline, but after the deafening ring of gunfire fades from her ears, she can hear Rocky furiously barking in the car outside.
CHAPTER 21
“They can’t patrol every inch of ground,” Amy says.
“Sure they can. They can use those predator drone things. They already use them on the border, don’t they? And who knows where else.” Michael asks.
“We need to find food and water. Something.” Amy looks around at the storefronts. “The grocery store is close, but it is probably overrun with looters and emptied by now.”
“There’s a mom and pop pharmacy. Not one of those chains. Let’s try there.” Michael points to the small store. It’s locked, but the windows are already broken from previous looters. Amazed at what’s left, they grab some water, medicine, lighters, batteries, a flashlight, and dry foods, shoving everything into a few plastic shopping bags from behind the counter. They even grab extra bags from beside the empty register. Amy feels around underneath the counter for something. These kinds of places always have a weapon back here for protection. Her fingers find a metal baseball bat. She takes it with her.
The old PATH entrance is boarded up with blue painted plywood and padlocks, but it isn’t secure enough to keep anyone out if they wanted to get in. There are no guards around, not even on the rooftops where they saw some military snipers just a few blocks away. Michael begins to jab his heel at the wood near the bottom. It’s weak and rotted from older water damage. The board begins to flake apart with more and more blows. Amy alternates with swings of her bat, and soon there’s a hole big enough for them both to crawl through.
“Shit!” Amy shouts once she gets through. The stairway down into the old PATH station has barred gates, closed and padlocked at the bottom. Michael tries to squeeze between the two gates, but the chain between them doesn’t allow enough space for him to fit through.
“The lock is rusty,” he says. “Try to break it with the bat.”
Amy slams the bat down over and over, smashing the lock with everything she has. The chain rattles noisily, echoing through the tiled corridor. She hits the chain, the gate itself, and the lock again. Nothing. Michael examines the links closely, looking for a weak one, or one that has more rust than the others. They’re all strong. But the lock is slightly bent. Amy sees it too. She quickly pulls a few lighters from her bag. She sets one on top of the lock and cracks it with the bat, covering the lock with lighter fluid. She ignites it with a second lighter and keeps the flame hot underneath it. Michael joins her with another.
“Keep it going as long as you can,” she instructs him. “Maybe something inside will get weak and po
p open if we heat it up enough and hit it some more.”
After several minutes of finger burning agony they pull their calloused thumbs away and begin to hit the lock again and again with the bat. The metal is bending more, but still locked in place. They go at it with the lighters again, this time emptying two in the process, leaving them with only one in their bag. The lock is glowing hot as Amy beats it again with the bat. After a few dozen swings the lock finally pops, hissing with steam as it hits a puddle on the tiled floor beside them. Michael unravels the chain from the gates and they pass through into the darkness.
Amy puts some batteries into the flashlight and they begin their walk. They make an uneasy jump down into the subway tracks against all their better judgment. Dirty, muddy, wet, and foul. Every step requires looking down. You never know what you are stepping on when you’re in the subway tunnels. Once their socks soak with sludge, they decide to tie some bags around their feet so they stay dry, but soon it doesn’t matter. The water is too deep. They climb out of the tracks and onto the narrow ledge on the side of the tunnel. By the time they’re about halfway through the tunnel, the tracks are submerged in waist high shit water.
“The subways are all getting flooded. I read once that in just two days without power the subways will start to flood. I guess it was pretty accurate,” Michael comments. “I hope the other end is clear. What if we get all the way through and it’s closed up better than before?”
“Let’s have some faith,” she says.
They begin to walk slightly uphill in the tunnel, and the water collecting in the tracks is not nearly as deep as before. They’re past the halfway point.
“Hey what’s that up there?” Amy asks.
“What?”
“A light. Flickering up ahead, like a fire,” she explains.
“Yeah I see it. Maybe it’s a bum or something,” Michael says.
As they get closer they can tell it’s across the other side of the track from them. A campfire of some kind, set in a nook along the tunnel wall. Amy turns off the flashlight, cautious of what might be lingering ahead. Soon they hear the gnawing, the profuse eating. One vagrant hunches over another, tearing at his stomach with both hands, biting and ripping at the intestines between his teeth. Amy’s face contorts with disgust, and Michael’s jaw drops open in shock.
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