Jonathan looked to Trevor. “He’s just trying to help.”
Trevor nodded as the Huey touched down on the roof. “I know. But we can’t just go around and blow everything up. If it were that easy, Bell and the others would still be out here doing this shit instead of us.”
“Hey,” said Jared. “Did any of you guys notice that some of their eyes were different?”
Jonathan turned back around. “What do you mean?”
Jared shifted in his seat and glanced back in the direction of the airport. “Back there, the one that just stood staring at me. Its eyes, they… looked… orange.”
“Never seen orange eyes on any Zack before,” said Trevor. “You were probably just scared, is all.”
“Nah,” Jared said, shaking his head. “There was something off about that one. I mean, it just stood there and sized me up.”
“There’s something wrong with all of them,” Trevor said. “They’re dead, yet they don’t seem to know it.”
***
Trevor hopped out as the chopper wound down. He stepped up to the roof entry and studied it. Expecting to hear the dead fighting their way out, he was surprised to find the opposite end quiet. Grabbing the handle, he twisted and pulled it open. The reek of death rushed out, and he backed away.
“Smells like my ex-wife in there,” he said, covering his nose.
The mechanic laughed; the other two exchanged glances.
“It’s pretty dead in the stairwell,” Trevor said. “We’ll head down in a single-file line until we reach the top floor. From there, we’ll send three in to search and have one guarding the stairs.” He pointed to Mark. “Since you seem to like the idea of blowing shit up, you’ll keep watch. Grab a few frag grenades. If the dead make their way up…” He mimicked a mushroom cloud with his hands.
CHAPTER FIVE
Rafael had taken a turn for the worse. An hour after Trevor and the others had left he collapsed in Carol’s office. She watched over the man as he rested on her cot and wondered what else could go wrong. His breaths were falling farther and farther apart, each one so strained that it made her chest ache.
With him incapacitated, there weren’t many people left capable of keeping order. Helena, one of her helpers, had brought even more depressing news: two more people had just passed away from sickness. Carol had sent her and the Colony’s remaining security forces to quietly dispose of the bodies before they reanimated. Her stomach twisted at the thought of another outbreak within the confines of the walls surrounding her. The last time, they’d lost close to twenty denizens… including her son.
Grasping the cross on her necklace, Carol looked up.
“Guide me, Father,” she said. “Give me strength so that I may lead us to salvation when the world so clearly wants us dead.”
A knock at her door nearly made her jump out of her skin.
“It’s been done,” Helena said with a solemn expression as she opened the door.
Carol nodded, dismissed her, and shut the door. She leaned her back against the oak entry and studied Rafael. Please pull through, she thought. We need you now more than ever, my friend.
After a few minutes, she decided to head outside and look over her flock. Rafael’s fate was up to the Big Man above. She placed a security officer by the name of Briggs outside her office, with orders to check up on Rafael every so often until she returned.
***
As Mark watched over the stairwell, Trevor oversaw the ransacking of the top floor. Most of the rooms were barricaded, effectively trapping the dead inside. Who could have done this completely eluded Mark, the only thing of which he was sure was that something about this place was amiss. Outside, when they were circling the building in the helicopter, the dead seemed to have this place overrun. Now that he was inside, it seemed more like a prison than anything else.
Echoes of Trevor ordering the others rang out, and from what Mark heard, it sounded like things were going their way. The fact that not one shot had been fired was both welcome and alarming. It shouldn’t be this easy, he thought as he took a step down.
Were all the dead confined to the rooms? Why weren’t they clambering up to free him and the others of their lives?
He glanced back at the doorway to the top floor and decided to take a look on the next level. As he reached the platform that led to the next set of stairs, he immediately raised his carbine and activated the flashlight attachment. A man, clad in bloodstained doctor’s garb, came into focus. His hair was a matted, stringy gray, and his spectacles hung off his beak-like nose. He smiled and took a step forward.
“Why hello there,” he said.
Mark’s eyes went wide. He looked up the platform. “Guys, we have a—”
His words drowned in his esophagus as the icy grip of the newcomer’s hand wrapped around his throat. The carbine flew from his grip and clattered on the lower floor’s platform.
“Shh,” the man said, his breath an overpowering stench of blood and rot. “We don’t want to alert your friends just yet.”
Mark, noting that the man’s eyes were a glowing orange, tried fighting with his attacker’s vice-like grip, but it only tightened that much more. The man pulled out a capped vial that contained a brilliant pink liquid.
“What… are… you… doing?”
The man’s lips pulled back into a deviant smile. “Giving you a new life, my friend.”
He lobbed the vial up to the next floor.
Mark heard it shatter, and then his vision began fading to black as the constricting grip stole the last of his breath. Just before passing out, the clanking of countless footfalls hit his ears.
***
Trevor entered the stairwell in time to see the horde making its way up. Mark was nowhere in sight. I told the son of a bitch to watch the platform, he thought as he raised his rifle and took aim.
“We need to bail,” he yelled up to the others. “Now.”
A man in a patient’s outfit was the first to fall; his clothing slowly dropped, revealing pallid, pocked skin. The next three were dressed in similar attire and served as an obstacle for their brethren. As a few tripped over them, Trevor used this as an opportunity to down the ones behind the fallen. The stairwell below, from what he could see, was packed with the dead. And he knew that Mark was somewhere down there.
Jared and Jonathan cleared the hall and booked it up the stairs to the roof.
“Come on,” Jonathan said in between Trevor’s shots.
Trevor barely heard the shout. He emptied his mag and let the assault rifle drop to his side, where it hung by its strap. He pulled free one of the fragmentation grenades from his vest, yanked the pin, and tossed it without a second thought.
Both Jonathan and Jared were guarding the entry.
“Keep them at bay until we’re just about airborne,” Trevor ordered.
“Where the hell is Mark,” asked Jared.
Trevor shrugged, shook his head, and made for the cockpit. As he began the startup sequence, the thought of leaving these two crossed his mind more than once. But they were successful at keeping the dead back. In a matter of minutes, a wall of corpses blocked the entryway.
“Let’s move,” Trevor yelled.
Seconds later, the Huey was in the air, less one survivor.
“What the fuck happened back there,” Jared said.
Again, Trevor shook his head. “Heard something break in the stairwell, went to investigate it, and Mark wasn’t there.” He looked back to Jared. “You know the rest of the story.”
CHAPTER SIX
A shrill scream sounded from somewhere near the front of the Colony. Kimberly grabbed Alicia’s hand and told her that she had another game they could play. She took a tentative glance behind, saw a group forming around the detached garage, and pushed her sister forward.
“We’re not playing hide-and-seek again, are we?” Alicia looked up with a grimace. “We just played that.”
“No, no, sweetie. We’re gonna play a new game.”
Kimberly looked back once more and wondered what had everyone gathering. Was there another death? She could count on both hands how many folks had passed this month. Sickness, be it a cold, the flu, or a fever, usually spelled death for those who contracted it. In the slums, where people lived is such close quarters, any kind of sickness usually spread fast.
A little over two years ago, things had been different. But now, most were malnourished with shoddy immune systems. The only thing Kimberly and her sister had going for them was their youth, and she would be damned to spend any more of it in this doomed society.
For well over a year now they’d been living in the Colony. Before that, they’d lived in seclusion out on a mountain range not unlike the one outside the walls. Not once had they encountered the infected, until the day their aunt hadn’t returned from foraging. A man by the name of Mathew Ryland had shown up that night, said that he’d met with their aunt—even called her by her name—and promised her that he’d get the sisters to safety. An hour later their cabin was under siege. Three weeks after that, they’d arrived here, at the Colony. Mathew then chose to leave, chose to live a life in the open. And he refused to take the sisters, saying that it was much safer in here than out there.
Kimberly had resented him since the day he left.
Carol, the so-called leader, wasn’t a bad woman; she was just unfit for her position. Now, with the marines gone, her attitude was visibly deteriorating. The only thing worth staying for Kimberly was Rafael. With him it wasn’t just about the sex; they would often talk for hours. He would go on and on about how life had been before the end, how he had just enlisted in the army and was looking forward to a career traveling the world. How everything was on the up-and-up. Kimberly would simply lay in his grip, staring up at his square chin and brown eyes, and tried to sound like she could relate, though she was plainly too young to understand much about what he was saying.
To her, it didn’t matter. As the world around her fell apart, she’d found love. As survivor after survivor succumbed to death, be it from sickness or just the lack of will to carry on, she’d found someone, other than Alicia, to live for.
Kimberly sighed, wondering how Rafael was doing. The last she saw him, he’d been sweaty and pale. A pit formed in her stomach at the thought of him being sick. But as Alicia tugged at her arm, those thoughts fizzled away. More important things were at hand.
***
Mark’s eyes shot open as something stabbed his shoulder; the limb violently trembled, and a surge of pain shot throughout his entire body.
“Ah!”
He went to move, but found he was strapped down.
“What the hell?”
“Calm down, survivor,” a soft, male voice said from his left.
Mark squinted as he focused to the blackness of the room. A silhouette liquefied into view. “Who… Who’s there?” Visions of a pale man dressed in a bloodstained doctor’s outfit flashed in the back of his mind. His stomach tightened as he remembered the cold hand around his throat the echoes of a horde before losing consciousness. “Where are the others?”
“They’ll be here soon enough, my young friend.” The doctor stepped forward, three steps echoing. The shadow of the strange man was now inches above his face.
“How is your shoulder feeling?” asked Mark’s host.
Flinching, Mark again tried moving. He was only able to slightly twist his neck. He squeezed his eyes shut, took in a deep breath, and tried to remember the events leading up to his current predicament. They’d been at the hospital scavenging for… for meds. That’s right. Three faces popped up in his head like snakes in a can, and he flinched. Who were they, and why were they looking for the—
A thunderous clap brought Mark back to the world of darkness.
“My dear boy, I asked you a question.”
Mark opened his eyes and felt a wave of fuzziness wash over him. “I-I… don’t… feel right.”
The doctor laughed. “Looks like it’s taking effect sooner than I thought. This is good, my friend. Very good.” He leaned in. “Can you feel your arm?”
Sensing a rush of saliva dripping out the sides of his mouth, Mark snickered. He opened his eyes as wide as they could go and blinked rapidly. “I-I can’t feel… anything.”
“Good, good,” said the doctor as Mark passed out.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Jesus H. Christ,” Jonathan said as the Huey touched down on the roof of a long-since abandoned pawn shop. “This… this place is completely—”
“Man, we are fucked.” Jared chambered a round in his carbine and stepped out.
“Don’t get too cocky, kid,” Trevor said, resting his aviators in place with a smile.
“Really?” replied Jared. “This ain’t the time for your attitude, man.”
Trevor hopped out and raised his arms high above his head, cracking his back. “Ah, damn that felt good.” He put a hand on Jared’s shoulder and motioned to the city with his other. “Hey, it’s not like I landed us on meteor with some snake-like monster trying to eat us.”
Craning his head, Jared eyed the man. “Yeah, you just landed us in the middle of the city with thousands of people-like monsters that want to eat us.”
The pilot looked down to the streets. “Yeah, but at least we can kill these ones.”
“Don’t get too cocky.”
Trevor leaned his head back and held his stomach as he laughed. He slapped Jared on the back. “Now you’re getting it.” Turning to Jonathan, who was walking up to the two, he said, “We’re going to hold up here for the night and fight Zack and all his rotting relatives. There should be plenty of ammunition in the pawn shop. I want you two to head down there, look for some twenty-twos and ammunition, and bring those up first.”
“Why don’t we just start scavenging?” said Jonathan, taking a look over the edge. His eyes went wide.
“That’s why,” Trevor answered.
***
Blinding light burned Mark’s eyes. He opened them to see swirls of dust shifting in the air forming various images. Blinking hard, he found his vision had come back to normal. His right shoulder throbbed, but was still numb.
The doctor walked into view. His pale skin hung from his cheeks, and his eyes were still a burning orange.
“Glad to see you survived the first stage,” he said with a smile that bared yellow and black teeth.
Mark raised a brow. “First stage?”
Footsteps echoed in the distance. The doctor turned and smiled again.
“Ah, Corporal,” he said. “You have impeccable timing. Our patient could use the comfort of a familiar face, I’m sure.”
“That so?” Corporal Payton stepped into view. “Hey there, bucko.”
“P-Payton?” Mark said, blinking his eyes. “Spence said you… that you died out here.”
Payton glanced to the doctor. “I guess you could say that.”
“What?”
“Where’s your C.O., corporal,” said the doctor.
“He’ll be here in a moment with the specimen,” Payton said.
Mark looked from one man to the next, and he noticed that Payton’s eyes had the same orange tint as the doctor’s. A further glance revealed that the back of the corporal’s neck had been torn open. Dark crimson and black liquid surrounded the wound.
“Payton,” said Mark, “what happened to you?”
“Is that Goodman?” said another familiar voice.
The corporal stepped aside and revealed a recognizable face, only it was maimed with lacerations and bite marks.
“S-Sarge?”
***
“Why aren’t they back yet?” William North asked, holding his
emaciated wife in his frail arms.
“Yeah,” said Mr. West, who was standing next to the Cunningham twins. “They’ve been gone for nearly seven hours. It’s never taken that long before.”
Carol looked to the waning sun and sighed.
“Maybe they’re… they’re dead,” said an elderly woman whose name escaped her said.
Carol raised her hands as the growing crowd speculated on the fate of Trevor and the rest. “Calm down, people. Those men aren’t trained like Bell and his unit was. They’re likely taking their time and avoiding any unnecessary risks.”
“We’re starving here,” a male voice yelled in the backdrop.
“I-I know,” said Carol. She turned to Helena. “Break out the emergency rations.” Then she made for her office, unable to stomach the sight of all the colonists.
As several of her people raised their voices in protest, Carol felt her eyes watering up. There was nothing she could do, she knew. The Colony was a dying horse in a barren, arid pasture, and she was the helpless tender to those who weren’t even able to help themselves now. She looked up to the gray sky and prayed that her Father would bestow a blessing of… hell, anything.
The first tear escaped when she realized that He may not be listening anymore. After all, how many people had prayed to their deities and had been left to fall prey to those abominations beyond the walls? That thought forced her eyes shut as she made her way into the house, abandoning her people as her god had abandoned her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Rafael’s eyes fluttered open, and a labored breath blew past his cracked lips. His lungs strained as he pulled in a short gulp of air which made his throat feel as if it had been coated with finely ground glass, and sat up. The strength it took to move upright made it feel like his body was weighed down by some ethereal force that sought nothing more than to keep him incapacitated. His forehead was on fire; rivulets of sweat poured down at an alarming rate. Glancing back to the cot, he could make out his outline in perspiration.
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