by Sam Sisavath
“Quit yer bitchin’ and embrace the Z,” Will said.
*
Will turned off the flat highway and into the parking lot while Danny kept going up the road behind him. Ted was on the roof of the auto body shop, leaning over the edge, waving down. He waved back, then watched Ted disappear behind the rooftop again.
He grabbed the bullets they had taken from the Sundays’ cabin and took them into the garage, where he found Lara looking inside one of the weapons containers. She had changed into pants and a T-shirt and had washed her hair. She was an attractive girl. How had he missed that last night?
She looked over as he entered the garage. “You guys have a lot of guns. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this many guns in one place before.”
“Danny and I brought most of them with us, but the rest we found along the way. You’d be surprised how many guns there are out there. We could have filled a dozen crates if we had wanted to, but guns without the right bullets are pointless.”
“Silver bullets.”
“Yeah.”
“You figured that out.”
“Accidentally, but yeah.”
He told her about the Wilshire Apartments, about finding the crosses hidden inside someone’s pantry closet. He skipped the part where seven other SWAT guys had gone into the building with him, but only two of them came out.
“I would say it was a sign from God,” he said, “if I actually believed in God.”
“I didn’t use to believe in God, either.”
“You sound like you’ve changed your mind.”
“Maybe. The things I’ve seen… It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”
He was going to answer, but stopped himself. That wasn’t really a question meant for him, he realized. It was probably something she had been asking herself, struggling with the answers to. After what she had been through, he didn’t blame her. There were moments in a person’s life when he or she questions everything they believed in. Will knew what that was like. His first moment had come when bullets started flying over his head in Afghanistan. It was the first of many moments.
He gave Lara her privacy and took stock of their ammo instead. They had enough to last a prolonged engagement, but he wasn’t stupid enough to think they had enough to stop making silver bullets. No, that time was never going to come, not as long as they were up here, and the sun still set every evening.
He glanced at his watch: 11:15 a.m.
They were into the middle of December now, but this was December in Texas, and despite the chill weather outside, sunset was still around 5:25 p.m. Too fast, but it gave them plenty of time to set up for tonight.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they’re not coming after all…
Yeah, right, and maybe I’m the Prince of Wonderland.
*
Danny returned about an hour later.
Will heard his ATV approaching from a distance and went outside to meet him in the dirt parking lot. “Did you find a place?”
“I found something that could work.” Danny turned off the engine and pulled out a map. “Saw a couple of good candidates, but only one really viable option. It’s a bank. Country bank, sure, but it had solid concrete walls, two front doors, two front windows, and only one back door. No rooftop access, so that’s a plus.”
“How far back?”
“A couple of klicks, give or take. Closer to Cleveland.”
“What do you think?”
“It’s the best we’re going to find in such a short time. I say we go for it.”
Will glanced at his watch and nodded. “The bank it is.”
*
The “country bank,” inside a strip mall, was sixteen kilometers back up the highway. The bank was flanked by a Shipley Do-Nuts and a Subway to one side, and a McDonald’s and Ned’s, a mom-and-pop hardware store, on the other. The fact that Ned’s existed at all, in a world of Home Depot and Lowe’s, was an amusing anomaly.
The bank itself, a small operation called Cleveland Savings and Loans, was exactly as Danny described. It had two front doors made of thick glass, and there were no telltale signs of ghoul occupancy. The doors were locked, so Will and Danny forced them open with prying bars.
“You couldn’t have picked a place that wasn’t locked?” Will asked.
“Nag, nag, nag,” Danny said.
The bank’s interior was about 3,000 square feet, the size of a major bank’s local branch in the city. It had a teller counter to one side and a manager’s office, an employee lounge, and a vault room in the back, along a hallway that curved slightly to the right the farther back you went. The manager’s office, with its rows of metal shelves, big desk, and sofas, took up twice as much space as the vault room and employee lounge combined.
Like a boss.
There were rows of chairs lined up against the front wall inside the bank lobby, and closed-circuit cameras watched silently along the ceiling. The bank didn’t have a drive-through, so no backdoor windows to worry about. A small layer of dust had fallen over the furniture and counters, as well as the red velvet rope that snaked into three rows in front of the tellers. Other than that, the bank looked to be perfectly preserved.
Will spent some time in the office taking inventory, then walked out of the hallway to find Danny holding fistfuls of $100 bills from one of the opened teller drawers, shouting at him, “I’m king of the world!”
“Congratulations.”
“Thanks. It’s about time, too. I was starting to think serving the public good would never pay off. Goes to show you, my guidance counselor didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.”
“That’ll show ’em.”
Will walked across the lobby to the front doors. They were big and bulky, with two windows on each door that took up about forty percent of the space. He tapped on the glass and liked what he heard.
“Doors are steel and laminated glass,” he said. “We’ll still have to reinforce them, just to be safe.”
“Ned’s should have all the tools we’ll need. Maybe take apart some of the counter?”
“Some? Try all of it.”
“I was hoping for less work.”
“Captain Optimism.”
Danny grunted.
“There’s just one back door,” Will said. “So we’ll have to reinforce that, too. The manager’s office is big enough to put everyone inside.”
“What about the vault? I always dreamed about living in a vault.”
“Power’s out, and it’s electronically controlled. Can’t open it without blowing it up.”
“You and your fucking facts,” Danny said. “By the way, did I mention? I’m rich!”
He watched Danny running along the teller counter, snatching money out of the drawers and tossing it into the air.
He smiled, but it also made him slightly sad. Was it that long ago that they were all putting so much of their blood, sweat, time, and tears into the acquisition of what were essentially just green rectangle pieces of paper?
Money. What the hell were we thinking?
*
They gathered all the tools they needed from Ned’s, transferring them back to Cleveland Savings and Loans before heading back to the diner, where the others were waiting for them. Having ridden over piggyback on one of the ATVs, Will now rode the ATV back while Danny drove a Ford F-150 truck from the strip mall parking lot, the car keys abandoned on the driver’s side floor.
Kate met them outside the diner. “Is this going to work?”
“It should,” Will said.
“Should?”
“It’s just a precaution. Chances are, we won’t have anything to worry about tonight, and tomorrow we’ll be in Starch by noon.”
“I thought Danny was the optimist,” she said with a wry smile.
“He is, but I like to pretend I’m Danny every now and then.”
They loaded Luke and the couch he was lying on into the back of the F-150. With Lara and Kate sitting in the back with Luke, they headed to the bank,
careful to avoid bumps on the road.
By one in the afternoon, Will, Danny, and Ted were breaking down the bank’s counters into thick slabs. They chopped what they could with axes, cut the rest with handsaws, and tossed the useless pieces into the parking lot. Vera and Lara sat with Luke, while Carly and Kate scoured the stores around them for supplies, food, and water. They found plenty of all three and, like Will and Danny earlier, didn’t run across one ghoul.
They’re gathering. For tonight…
They barricaded the back door with a thick slab of countertop that covered the entire frame, then nailed two more across for good measure. They pulled heavy metal shelves from the office and stacked them against the door as a secondary barrier. In all, there were at least 500 pounds of resistance, though he didn’t think they would need it. If they came at all, the ghouls would come through the front doors, which provided a wider berth and allowed them to use their greatest strength—their number.
“Ted,” Will said, “you’ll take the back. There’s no point in having everyone in the lobby. That means swapping the rifle for a shotgun.”
“Okay,” Ted said, though he looked a little pale.
“You’ll do fine, Ted. Trust yourself.”
Ted nodded, looking unconvinced.
They used up more of the teller counters on the two front windows. Then later, on the two front doors once everyone was inside and settled. They checked, doubled checked, and triple checked that everything they needed from the trailers was inside with them, or where it was supposed to be. Most importantly, that meant Danny knew where all the C4 were.
Will and Danny spent a few minutes outside the bank going over just that.
“Everything in place?” Will asked.
“It’s a big strip mall,” Danny said. “But everything’s where it’s supposed to be.”
“How much did you have to use?”
“Most of it. Got a little left, though.”
“Maybe we won’t need them at all.”
“Look who’s playing the part of Captain Optimism now?”
They retreated back into the bank, where they stripped the rest of the office and employee lounge, moving shelves and desks to the front and piling them against the thick slabs of countertop already plastered over the two front glass doors. Everything not nailed down was used to strengthen the barricades.
By four, they had hung portable LED lanterns along the lobby, the curved back hallway, and inside the office. Using screws, they attached the lanterns to the ceiling and walls for maximum coverage. Powered by rechargeable lithium batteries, there was no danger of spilling fuel. Soon it was intensely brighter inside the bank than outside. The LED lights didn’t make it any less cool though, and the temperature began to drop noticeably.
“Time to break out the thermals,” Danny said.
Will already wore a thermal sweater underneath his assault vest, and he was carrying so many shells and magazines in a half-dozen pouches that when he moved, he jingled. Danny looked similarly bloated when they took up positions on either side of the front doors, the boarded-up windows over their shoulders. They leaned the M4A1s against the wall and kept the Remington 870 shotguns in their laps.
Kate and the others had quietly settled around the bank. Vera and Carly, along with Lara, were watching over Luke in the office.
The plan was to retreat into the office if the front doors fell. That was unlikely, but Will liked having backup plans. All their ammo, weapons, food and drink, along with their other supplies, were already stored in the office. Their last stand. The vault, of course, would have been ideal.
“It would have been nice to have the vault,” Danny said.
Will smiled. “I was just thinking that.”
“Because of the money inside, right?”
“Um, no, not because of that.”
“I bet there’s a lot in there,” Danny continued. “Millions, maybe.”
“Paper isn’t going to do us any good, Danny.”
“I’m just saying. It’d be nice to be a millionaire for once. Even if the only thing money’s good for now is to wipe my ass.”
“Thanks for that visual.”
“I’m just being practical. Toilet paper isn’t going to last forever. We’re going to need a substitute sooner or later. How long does toilet paper take to break down, anyway?”
“How the hell should I know?”
“You seemed like someone who would know.”
“Ten years?”
“Are you just guessing?”
“Yup.”
“Useless,” Danny grunted.
Will watched Ted across the room, fidgeting with the Remington shotgun in his lap. He looked uncomfortable, staring at the weapon like he was afraid it might bite him if he held it too tightly.
Kate was staring off at the window over his right shoulder, lost in thought. She must have sensed him watching, because she turned her head slightly and their eyes met. She gave him a small smile, and he smiled back.
She hadn’t really been the same since yesterday, since Luke got shot. In so many ways he pitied Kate and the others. They weren’t prepared for this. Not that he and Danny were, but it was easier for them. As long as he thought of this as just another war, he could treat it as just another tour of duty to get through.
He wanted to reach out to Kate and tell her that everything was going to be okay, that tonight would be uneventful, and tomorrow they would get Luke to Harold Campbell’s facility in Starch, Texas, and everything would be all right.
But he didn’t, because he didn’t trust himself to be that good of a liar.
*
“We’re officially at sundown,” Will announced when his watch ticked to 5:30 p.m.
They sat and waited.
He checked the Remington, then the M4A1 for the fifth time in the last hour.
At 6:15 p.m., Danny said, “Looks like we got dressed up for nothing.”
“Captain Optimism,” Will smirked.
“I’m just saying. It’s dark outside, and they’re not here yet. Maybe we were both wrong.”
“Anything’s possible.”
“Not that I mind the waiting. I love waiting.” He licked his lips. “That, and cheesecake. You know what would be great right now? Waiting while eating cheesecake.”
“Good to know, good to know.”
So they waited.
At 7:16 p.m., Danny said, “Reminds me of a joke.”
Will groaned.
“Shut up, you’ll love it. A guy goes into a bank—” But Danny stopped suddenly and glanced over at Will for confirmation.
Will nodded back at him.
There was a slight change in the way the wind moved across the parking lot outside. With the change came the vibrations. A minor tremble, easy to miss if you weren’t looking for it.
Will guessed there must be at least a dozen, possibly more, gathering outside.
As they listened, it seemed as if the dozen were joined by more until there were so many of them out there that the ground moved slightly with them.
Across the room, Kate said, “Did you guys feel that?”
Will said, “They’re here.”
He and Danny stood up and went to the windows, most of which had been covered up, but they had left space for peepholes. They looked through these now.
“What do you see?” Kate asked anxiously.
“Nothing,” Will said.
“Butkus,” Danny chimed in.
Will stood still and let his eyes adjust to the darkness.
He saw them. Their thin frames were positioned from one end of the parking lot to the other. It was a moonless night, and the ghouls stood almost invisible in the pitch blackness. Even if he hadn’t been able to pick them out, he would have still felt them. He knew with absolute certainty that there were more of them out there, not just in the parking lot, but beyond, spilling out into the streets.
“Fuck me,” Danny whispered from across the door.
“Are there a l
ot of them?” Ted asked. He sounded out of breath.
“If by ‘a lot’ you mean a fucking army of them, then yeah, there are kinda a lot of them out there,” Danny said.
One of the creatures suddenly appeared in front of Will’s peephole, slate eyes staring back at him for the split second it took Will to pull his head back. A moment later the ghoul was gone, and Will could see the parking lot again.
“What happened?” Kate said behind him.
“One of them came in for a close-up,” Will said.
He heard them moving on the rooftop, their footsteps light but noticeable. It grew louder as more climbed up. He didn’t worry about the ones up there. There was a ladder up to the roof, but no ways to gain entry into the bank itself. Both he and Danny had gone up to make sure.
“Ted,” Will said, “time to go watch the back.”
Ted hurried off, his big frame making a ruckus as he moved. Will didn’t think the kid could help it. It was part of who he was. Big.
Kate had walked up behind him. “How many are out there?”
“A lot.”
He stood aside to let her see, and as she peered through the peephole, her body tensed in front of him. “There’s so many of them…”
“Four hundred easy,” Danny said. “And growing. They’re filling up the damn parking lot. I can’t even see the cars anymore. You don’t think they’re going to steal our ATVs, do you?”
“There’s a thought,” Will said.
“I just fixed the engine and everything.”
“I know. It’s purring now.”
“Damn straight.”
Kate took an involuntary step back. She looked at Will, fear in her eyes. She opened her mouth to say something, but stopped, and instead walked back to the far end of the lobby and sat down on the floor.
She clutched the M4A1 tightly to her chest and stared off at nothing.
“Kate,” Will said, “Ted needs some backup in the hallway.”
She looked up at him and shook her head. “You’ll need me out here when they start coming through.”
“When they start coming through, we’re fucked. Right now, I need you back there to watch Ted’s back.”
Kate looked uncertainly at him, and for a moment he thought she was going to argue. To his surprise, she nodded and stood up, one hand on the wall for support as if she didn’t trust her own legs, and hurried into the hallway.