by Shows, Greg
She reminded herself that fear was good. That if she stopped being afraid, she’d stop being careful.
Thus far she’d been careful: staying down in the creek bed, wading through the sludgy water, doing everything she could do to remain out of sight.
But now she’d reached the jumping off point. The place where she had to expose herself and risk it all for possibly no reward. The terror she’d felt on the edge of town had returned, and once again she wished she’d never driven out from under the overpass earlier in the day.
But she had.
Now she needed to make the most of it.
She climbed out of the creek, ran for the closest building, and begged the lightning storm blasting around her not to strike her dead.
The building she reached was modern—all glass and steel. Its front doors had been shattered, and the entryway was now covered in spears of glass and huge drifts of gray dust. It took Sadie only a few seconds to identify the building as the library—not the building she was looking for. But it was a building with information in it—and a wealth of paper.
Surprisingly no one had raided it. Most of the books were all on their shelves, except for the shelves closest to the door—which made sense, if you were taking the books only for toilet paper and tinder.
Sadie found the information desk and used her flashlight to find a campus map. Then she took a few seconds to browse the “End of the World” display near the information desk. A small set of decorated shelves held dozens of paperbacks and hardbacks popular in the years before the Crisis: The Hunger Games, One Second After, The Stand, Oryx and Crake.
Sadie laughed.
She wondered what her neuroscience professor would have thought about how focused on the end of the world people had become in the years before the “end of the world.” Zombies, aliens, nuclear war, super viruses, EMPs…on and on the mechanism for our end went.
“She’d laugh her ass off,” Sadie mumbled, “then say it was negativity bias.”
But Sadie knew her professor would have appreciated the irony. There’d been so many end of the world scares over the centuries humans had existed, and finally the end of the world—or at least the possible end of humanity—had come.
Sadie picked up one of the books she didn’t recognize, a paperback called The World Without Us, and slipped it quickly into her backpack. Then she was out the door and sprinting through the black rain and heavy wind and lightning strikes.
She circled around behind a building that the map identified as the Student Union Building, drawing ever closer to the smoke at the back of the campus.
The sidewalks around the Student Union Building had been covered, probably to keep them clear of snow. Now they protected Sadie from the black rain that had begun to splatter the ground.
Sadie ran along the sidewalk next to the Student Union Building, pausing when she reached a corner, then sprinting across the gap between it and the Allen Science Building.
The science building was four stories tall, and looked like a long rectangle. All four of its main entrance doors were intact, and when Sadie tried the one on the right it swung open easily.
Sadie stepped inside and looked around, noticing instantly that even through her respirator she could detect the smell of vinegar. Dust had drifted into the entryway, and Sadie paused to study the tracks in it. Most of the tracks were from work boots.
Big work boots.
At least a size twelve. There were also tennis and running shoe tracks, but they were much smaller and there were fewer of them.
It wasn’t the tracks that scared her, though. It was the drag marks. And the ropes and spatters of blood that covered the floor.
When Sadie looked closer she saw a huge spray of blood covering a plate glass window. Blood had run down to puddle and dry on the floor next to the wall, as if someone had been gunned down and died right there a few feet from her.
She peered down the dark hallway and saw bloody drag marks next to the left wall.
Her stomach clenched. Her hands shook and the barrel of her 9MM jerked and quivered so bad she doubted she could hit anything with it.
Sadie tucked the pistol into her waistband and pulled her new shotgun out of its holster. She gripped it with both hands and pointed it down the hall. She couldn’t believe she was about to scout an empty building with the full knowledge that someone had been killed here not long ago.
You better believe it.
She’d already burned gas and lost time and risked electrocution. If she didn’t find food or useful chemicals she would have wasted the effort—hardly intelligent and measured behavior. At least with the shotgun in her hands if she ran into the owner of those big boots she’d stand a chance.
Sadie stood in the entryway and listened. Hearing nothing, she walked further inside. On her right was a short hallway that lead to a pair of double wooden doors. Both doors were closed, but even in the dim light Sadie could see the rising zigzag that symbolized stairs.
Sadie continued forward. She could see light at the other end of the building, probably another set of doors like the ones she’d come through. Between one end of the building and the other were intersecting halls that led off to classrooms and offices.
As she moved away from the glass doors, it got harder to see. She waited for her eyes to adjust, then slipped down her respirator and let it rest against her chest.
Instantly the sour stink of vinegar assaulted her sinuses and she noticed that the dust from outside the building hadn’t penetrated far into its interior. Sadie stepped forward, her head swiveling constantly, her shotgun trembling. She remembered the words of the dead cop.
“Don’t forget to cock it,” she whispered, and took another quiet step.
She didn’t have to travel far to find where the bloody drag marks went. Thirty feet down the hall was the first intersection.
Sadie approached the intersection slowly, staying it the center of the hall so she could use her peripheral vision to look left and right. The hallway to the right was completely dark, but to her left a weak yellow splash of light lay on the floor outside an open door. The light illuminated the drag marks that went straight inside.
Sadie crept to the edge of the doorway and leaned forward.
She wished she hadn’t.
The light was from a single hissing lantern hanging on a rope attached to the ceiling. The lantern was slightly above head height, and it spilled out enough light to show Sadie a sight she would never forget.
The body that had been dragged down the hallway was a girl, maybe fifteen, and she lay next to a metal table, still clothed but with a face that had been destroyed by a point blank gunshot.
Lying on her back on the metal table above the dead girl was the partially dismembered body of a young blonde woman. Her head hung upside down from the end of the table, her eyes open and staring but glazed over.
Above her chin was a long, blood-crusted gash. The woman’s arms and one leg had been cut off and stripped of flesh, and whoever had done the carving had tossed the bones into a pile a few feet away.
The remaining leg had been carved on, and was a bloody mess. Most of the muscle had been cut away, right down to the bone.
Beyond the carved-up corpse was another metal table, one side covered with empty Ball jars and jar lids and dozens of unlit candles on one side. At the center of the table were two pots sitting on bricks. One was a gray kitchen pot, the other a pressure cooker.
Two propane torches lay on their sides, wedged between bricks beneath the pots, and Sadie could hear the hiss of their flames and see steam rising from the open pot. She guessed it was full of empty bottles being sterilized and kept hot so that they could be filled with human flesh. A pair of stainless steel tongs lay next to the pot, ready to reach in and pull out a clean jar.
The pressure cooker was for the canning.
To the right of both pots were six rows of double stacked jars full of black, viscous chunks of canned flesh. There were twelve jars in each
row, and just enough room at the front of the table for another two rows. A wall shelf beyond the table was stacked with more of the filled black jars.
On the floor next to the table was an old galvanized tub like the one her grandfather had kept in his barn. The tub was full of a thick dark liquid Sadie assumed was blood and sat in front of a half-opened door.
Thunder boomed and Sadie jumped, on the verge of a scream.
She looked around quickly and saw a second table, this one covered with the tools of butchery: half a dozen medical scalpels, a meat cleaver, several long butcher knives, a hacksaw, various pairs of pliers, and a claw hammer.
Next to the table on the floor were three red fire extinguishers. Part of the wall next to the table was blackened, and Sadie guessed they’d had a fire.
Beside the tools were two gallon jugs of lab grade acetic acid, three round blue containers of table salt, a canister of slaked lime, and a big white bag with a red and black label that read “Potassium Nitrate.”
Despite the horror in front of her, Sadie felt a spike of desire. Potassium Nitrate was as useful a chemical as you could ask for.
Still, she was slow to move. The room was poorly lit and creepy and stank of vinegar and old pennies, and over in one shadowy corner was a tall, triple-doored cabinet like an armoire. It had had probably held laboratory supplies when this room had been a biology lab.
Sadie looked back at the butchered woman and the dead girl who’d been tossed casually on the floor. She couldn’t seem to make herself move, or to stop the voice in her mind from shrieking “No, no, no, no, no!” over and over again.
Her head felt thick and sludgy, and she could hear her blood rushing through her ears—a roar of white noise louder than the thunder outside.
Sadie’s hands were full on quaking, and if they didn’t stop she was going to drop the shotgun.
Once again it was her grandfather’s voice that steadied her.
“Focus,” his voice told her, “And cock the damn gun.”
The click of the hammers was loud, but the noise seemed to dispel the bubbly feeling in her head. The rush of blood in her ears subsided, and she was calm again.
“Move,” her grandfather’s voice urged her, and within seconds of hearing his exhortation she also heard footsteps, far away and unhurried, as if the person taking them was relaxed and comfortable and didn’t have a worry in the world. Next came a whistle, someone butchering an old Hank Williams song.
Sadie, who’d been frozen in the doorway now moved, rushing across the bloody floor to the bag of potassium nitrate. She looked around, then leaped for the ball jars, grabbing one up and rushing back to the potassium nitrate bag.
“Get out of there, girl,” she heard her grandfather yelling, but she ignored the voice and dipped the ball jar into the bag and scooped the powder into it. Then she set down her shotgun, twisted a cap onto the jar and tightened it in two turns.
“Lord I got ‘em,” a voice sang, and then there was a huge “Bang!” as if a door had slammed shut.
Sadie, ready to scream, rushed to the door, the jar in one hand, her shotgun in the other. Her heart was thumping again and a wad of bitter of spit flowed into her mouth.
She looked around the edge of the doorway and saw a big-bellied man in blue overalls and work boots coming toward her. He wore a holster with a pistol at his side.
“No,” she squeaked, then stepped back into the room and looked around for somewhere to hide.
She saw the half-open door behind the blood-filled tub and rushed to it. The door couldn’t open any further, so Sadie bent and pulled at the tub with one hand. It slid forward, but the blood sloshed up and over the side, covering her hand.
Sadie thought she could fit through the gap if she turned sideways, but when she stepped over the tub and tried to squeeze through, her pack stopped her. All the while the big man’s footsteps grew louder—as did his horrible whistling.
“Come on,” she said, stepping back over the tub and setting down the Ball jar and slipping the pack off one shoulder and then the other.
“I left that girl tied up in a sack,” a croaky voice sang from just outside the lab, and Sadie nearly screamed. She swung her pack in front of her and pushed it through the gap between the door and the door frame, but this threw her off balance. Her injured back and hip screamed at her, and she nearly dropped the pack. She stumbled forward, her foot splashing down in the tub.
Cold, thick blood rose up to her ankle, seeping almost instantly into her sock through gaps in her leather boots.
“Ullllllll,” she moaned.
“She gonna die when I get back…”
Sadie set the pack behind the door and stepped through the gap. She bent and reached back for her shotgun and pulled it into the darkness with her just as the big man came around the corner and into the room.
She went rigid, waiting to see if the man would spot the jar she’d left sitting on the floor a few inches away from the door.
He didn’t.
“Got the cannibal blues,” the big man sang. “Got the cannibal blues.”
Sadie remained as still as she could, crouched halfway between squatting and standing, and listened to the hissing of the burning propane and the crazy giant on the other side of the door.
“Well, Lord I got ‘em,” he sang with a yodel. “I got the can-nee-annuh-bull buh-looooz.”
Soon Sadie’s eyes adjusted and she saw she was in a supply room. A completely raided and destroyed supply room that stank worse than the boiling pot of vinegar water next door.
The cabinets were all open or had had their doors wrenched off and carried away. There was trash all over the floor—broken glass slides and plastic lab tongs, smashed microscopes, and a pile of blackened, mold-covered frogs and fetal pigs she guessed had been freed of their formaldehyde prisons for some unknown reason
Sadie wanted to shove her respirator over her face so she could filter out the stench, but she didn’t dare move. The giant on the other side of the door talked to himself as he went to work at his canning job, slamming down the meat cleaver with a heavy “thunk!” and then pulling apart the meat and gristle of the girl’s leg.
“How you doing in there!” the guy suddenly yelled, and Sadie felt her head get light. She wondered if she shouldn’t just step out and blast the guy. But she wasn’t sure he didn’t have friends around.
She didn’t want to get into a gun battle. She’d never been in one. She didn’t see how she’d have an advantage if the guys she went up against had. So she remained where she was, barely breathing, looking around the supply room for the best possible escape, and waiting for an opportunity to reach inside the room and snatch the potassium nitrate she’d risked her life for.
After a few minutes, Sadie had developed a mental picture of what she thought was happening in the room. The giant freak kept up a steady pace of chopping up the dead girl’s body, then clanging the tongs into the boiling water to pull out a fresh ball jar to fill. After packing the goopy, freshly deboned meat into several jars, he would screw the lids on.
Sadie guessed that if she was quick and silent, she could succeed. If she failed and he saw her hand, that would be too bad for him.
After taking several nerve-steadying breaths, Sadie reached forward through the gap between the door and the door frame, being careful to keep her hand low and next to the bloody tub. When the giant didn’t notice she reached further until she could get her fingers around the jar.
Slowly, she lifted the jar and began to pull it back into the room.
She had almost cleared the door with the jar when a tremor in her hand knocked the jar into the edge of the door.
Quickly she snatched her hand into the darkness and held her breath. A second later, something hard smacked against the door and dropped to the floor.
“Goddamned rats!” the giant freak said. “You’d think they’d have all died off by now, wouldn’t you, sweetie?” he said.
A hard, loud “thunk!” made Sadie
jump, but she realized the giant had gone back to his butchery.
Sadie stood and straightened up and looked around.
The door slightly behind her looked inviting. It was partially open, and the room beyond it was quiet. So Sadie lifted the ball jar until her hand was next to the deep pocket of her parka. She worked it down inside the thick fabric.
A clang sounded inside the slaughter room and Sadie jerked in sudden fear. But then the giant began humming.
“Gonna take a lotta blood,” he sang, and Sadie lifted her pack one handed and stepped back from the door of the slaughter room, moving slowly, lifting her leg and easing it backward, putting her toes down softly and hoping her heel wasn’t about to crush an unbroken glass slide or vial.
After several anxious backward steps she reached the door. Still holding her pack in one hand and her shotgun in the other, Sadie eased into the darkened room.
She stood and waited for her eyes to adjust, but they didn’t. There simply wasn’t enough light spilling in from the supply room. She was in the dark, unsure whether she should risk the flashlight or try to navigate by touch.
She took a few quiet steps, keeping the back of her shotgun hand against a wall. But the pace was too slow. It would take her an hour to get out of there, and that was too long.
Sadie knelt and rested her pack on the floor. She unzipped it slowly, wincing with each seemingly explosive click of the metallic teeth. She brought out her flashlight and turned it on, then shoved the potassium nitrate down next to the Radex box.
She was in another biology lab, with its work table islands spread around the room. She shined her light around, careful to keep it pointed away from the door she’d come through.
The room was nearly empty, most of its useful items destroyed or carried away. So Sadie left, taking quiet steps that took her out to another hallway perpendicular to the long main ground floor hallway.
Seconds later she’d reentered the main hallway and was ready to sprint for the exit. But her grandfather’s voice came again.
“You’re safe for now,” he said.
Sadie stood where she was and took several deep breaths—each one a vinegar-laden horror. Then she walked away from the doors she’d come in, stepping softly until she got to the other end of the building.