Frank looked at his watch and set his hand on the doorknob, nodding at Alex who gripped the shotgun in both hands.
Morgan squeezed the button on the walkie-talkie saying, “Ethan, Frank is about to go into the hallway. You ready?”
Ethan had crawled into an apartment on the other side of the building. His voice came over the speaker on the walkie-talkie Morgan held and the one clipped to Frank’s belt.
“I copy. Opening the door… now.”
Two doors flung open simultaneously and the hallway was filled with crossfire. The infected bodies wandering through the third floor were torn apart by bullets and the building thundered with the sounds of gunfire. Heads exploded in a spray of dead flesh and the infected bodies fell to the floor.
“Hallway is clear,” Ethan said as he crouched down on one knee. “I’m covering the doors.”
Frank made his way to the stairwell door and saw a headless body slumped over the top step, keeping the door propped open. Corpses wandered up the stairs, making their way into the upper levels. Frank stepped forward, firing at the few corpses that started running up the stairs when they saw him. He knelt down and shoved the corpse on the floor down the steps, then stepped back and watched the large metal door slam shut, locking as it did.
Frank stepped over one of the fallen bodies in the hallway and made his way toward the first apartment door.
“I’m entering 303,” he said into the walkie-talkie as he placed his hand on the doorknob. He jiggled the handle and found it locked.
“If anyone is in there, open the door! I’m a police officer!” Frank spoke with authority, but tried his best to not sound hostile.
He waited a few moments and then stepped back. With a swift kick the door came crashing in, landing against a small dresser. Frank pushed the dresser out of the way and raised his pistol, pointing it at the man hunched over on a couch. His trigger finger instinctively started to squeeze when the man turned his face around.
“Ethan, I found the other survivor.”
“Copy that,” Ethan said through the radio. Frank heard gunshots, then, “Hallway is still secure.”
Frank stepped toward the round man who was hunched over in fear, yet still held a look of anger on his face. “Mr. Peterson, where is your daughter?”
Mr. Peterson looked up at the officer with an angry look. “You sons-a-bitches took long enough! I’ve been sitting here for weeks!”
The large man started to lift himself off the couch before Frank pushed him back into his seat with one hand.
“Stay where you are Mr. Peterson. Where is your daughter? I need to make sure all the survivors are secure.”
The bathroom door opened up and Frank spun around, shoving the barrel of his pistol into Emma’s face.
“I’m right here,” she said weakly, frozen in fear.
Frank dropped the barrel, pointing his gun at the floor. He stepped back toward the front door.
“All known survivors accounted for, Ethan. But, god dammit be careful, there may be more Alex didn’t know about.” More gunshots rang out.
Emma sat down next to her father on the couch. She looked to her Dad as Frank stepped back into the hallway. She asked, “Is he a real cop? Is he here to save us?”
Frank looked back into apartment. “Sorry folks. We’re just going to help you clear out the building, make it safer if you want to stay here.” Ethan fired again. This time Frank saw two men fall down, only ten yards from his position. “I have to keep moving. We’re hoping to have things cleared out in an hour. Maybe more. Just hang tight.”
“What?” Mr. Peterson looked enraged. “What kind of plan is that? Just take us back with you.”
“We don’t have anywhere to ‘go back to.' I don’t even have a police department anymore. We're all on our own now.”
“Who the hell do you think you are?” Mr. Peterson was just spouting random questions, overtaken by his rage. Down the hall Ethan fired again, this time hitting a dead woman who came crawling out of her apartment.
“Sir, stay in your apartment until we tell you it’s safe, or you will be shot.” Frank stepped into the hallway and raised his gun. Frank turned his back to the Peterson’s apartment and looked down the hall. “Okay Ethan, let's start clearing these apartments.”
“Copy that,” Ethan said, checking to see how many rounds he had left in his magazine. He was getting better at head shots and was happy to see he still had half a clip.
The first two apartments were empty, but in the third Ethan had to shoot two rounds into a six-year-old boy who jumped off the top of a bunk bed at him. The child fell to the floor and stayed there, stunned just long enough for Ethan to release one final round into the child’s skull. The young man was shaken by how easy it was becoming. He wanted to stop and mourn what he was just forced to do, but he moved on. He pushed the image from his mind easily and let himself feel the excitement of the violence.
Gunshots rang through the hallway as Frank found more infected nearby. Ethan had lost track of how many reanimated corpses he had killed so far. This floor was nearly empty compared to other buildings they had been in, but the infestation was always thicker on the ground floor. He had killed a lot of these things and he planned on killing a lot more.
“A simple sweep and clear,” he told himself. “Just like a video game. Just helping the neighbors with some spring cleaning.”
The next apartment’s door hung open, connected to the door frame by only one hinge. Daylight barely made its way into the living room through holes in a large blanket hung over the window. Ethan reached to the barrel of his pistol and flipped a switch, turning on the light mounted there. The beam of white light cut through the dusty shadows, revealing the room. Unwashed dishes were piled on the coffee table and dirty clothes nearly covered the floor.
A man snarled in the kitchen and then leapt out at Ethan. Ethan brought up his pistol in time to shove it into the man’s wide-open mouth. The corpse gnawed on the metal of the barrel before Ethan gathered his wits and pulled the trigger, splattering the man’s brains on the wall behind him. The body fell to the ground and Ethan shivered.
“A little too close,” he thought.
Ethan stepped carefully, hearing the crunch of debris under his boot. The living room and kitchen were empty, but the beam of light sliced through the air, landing on the bedroom door. His boots moved slowly and methodically, taking their time.
Scratches ran down the bedroom door, only broken periodically by dents that looked like impacts from a fist. With a slow turn, he found the doorknob locked and took a deep breath.
With a lunge, he slammed into the door with his shoulder. The door went crashing in, falling clean off its hinges. The flashlight on the pistol cut into the dark room and Ethan saw movement, a body jumping off the bed. He fired, hitting the person squarely in the chest. They reeled back, letting out a scream of pain.
Without thinking Ethan fired again and heard the same scream.
Then a thought came to him: “The dead don’t feel pain.”
The realization he had just shot a survivor slapped him in the face. He shined the light of his gun down on the body and saw a dark-skinned boy, no older than eighteen, squirming in pain.
“Oh shit man. Oh shit, you shot me,” the boy said, holding his bloody shirt.
“Oh fuck. Frank!” Ethan yelled into his walkie-talkie and crouched down next to the bleeding boy. “Frank, I got a problem.”
“What is it, Ethan?”
Ethan grabbed a hold of the blanket that covered the window in the bedroom and tore it down. Sunlight poured in, revealing the true state of affairs.
The impossibly skinny body laid on the floor in nothing but boxers and a t-shirt, bleeding onto the floor from two wounds. One was just above his heart, covering his entire shoulder in red blood. The other was in his hip and looked as though the bullet had passed clean through.
“Why the hell did you shoot me, man?” the boy said. His clean-shaven head was covered with swe
at and blood.
“Frank,” Ethan said into the walkie-talkie. “I... I shot one of the survivors. Oh shit.” He started to help the boy lay flat on the floor. “I’m in apartment 308.”
There was a pause on the walkie-talkie. Then: “Moving to your position.”
Ethan kept repeating, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry” until Frank came through the door.
“Ethan, secure the hallway!” Frank said as he holstered his gun and crouched next to the boy. “The last thing we need is one of those corpses sneaking up on us.”
Frank leaned down and checked the wound on the boy’s chest. “My name is Frank Dallas, what’s yours?”
“Omar,” the skinny boy said, a drop of blood forming by his mouth.
“Okay Omar. I’m a police officer, but before that I was a captain in the United States Army. I served two tours of duty in Iraq. I had a lot of friends get shot Omar, and I had to deal with a lot of field wounds.”
“Field wound?” Omar coughed. “Your partner shot me while I was sleeping, dude!”
Frank flipped out his utility knife and started cutting Omar’s t-shirt off. The knife sliced through the moist, bloody cloth easily, and the shirt fell away, exposing the wound completely.
“Omar, do you have any alcohol in the house?”
Omar squinted his eyes in pain, groaning out his answer, “I don’t know. I’ve been in this room for… for days. My dad always had vodka on top of the fridge, but my dad was the one I was hiding from.”
“What about tweezers?”
Omar groaned at the thought. “I think… I think there's some in the bathroom.”
Frank got up and walked into the filthy kitchen, stepping over the body of Omar’s father. The room looked like a murder scene from a movie. Blood was sprayed across everything in thin streams, ending in large stains of blood, sometimes still accompanied by hunks of human meat.
Frank had seen worse, but was still taken aback by the gross display. He scanned the top of the fridge and found a bottle of half empty vodka.
The bathroom was nearly untouched, looking as it did before the infection. It took him longer to find the tweezers, digging through the many drawers next to the sink.
“Now, I need you to lie perfectly still,” Frank said as he walked back into the bedroom. Unscrewing the cap he poured the alcohol over the wound. He leaned in close to Omar’s chest, trying to peer inside the entry wound.
“It’s not bad, Omar. You’re lucky.”
“I don’t feel lucky.”
“I can see the bullet. It looks like it bounced off your collar bone, but didn’t break it.” Frank smiled into Omar’s face, trying to keep his spirits up. “You’ve got strong bones, buddy!”
Omar gave him a weak smile and more blood trickled out of his mouth.
“Now,” Frank said, his face becoming serious. “This may hurt a bit.”
Morgan and Alex sat in their living room, their bodies jumping every time a gunshot went off. The walkie-talkie sat in the middle of the coffee table, letting them listen to everything that was happening.
A voice finally spoke from the box. “Alex! Morgan!”
Morgan grabbed the walkie-talkie and held down the talk button. “We’re here!”
“We almost have your floor clear, but I need to get Omar here somewhere we can keep him flat and change his bandages. Make sure to clear some room and get some clean cloth ready for him.”
Morgan looked at Alex and he nodded, looking surprised she would ask his approval for something like that.
“Okay, we will right away.” Morgan tried to use a tone to assure Frank, and then asked, “Is he going to be okay?”
There was a long silence before Frank answered back in a whisper: “I don’t know.”
Hearing there was another survivor in the apartment alone, locked in his bedroom for weeks, made Morgan feel horrible for her selfishness and hoarding. Branching out and helping other survivors was the right thing to do. And while danger may be more present in her life after that day, overall she felt better about the new direction.
Alex opened his apartment door, gripping the shotgun tightly, still expecting a dead person to leap out at him from the hallway. Ethan knelt outside the door, his pistol stretched out in front of him. He scanned back and forth, trying to watch both directions, but said nothing.
Less than a minute later, Frank came shuffling backwards into the apartment, dragging the wounded Omar on a sheet behind him. He set him down gently on the kitchen floor.
“Cut up whatever clean cloth you can find. Keep his bandage clean and keep pressure on it.” Frank spoke to Morgan, then slung his shotgun off his shoulder and stepped behind Ethan in the hallway.
“Let’s move, Ethan. I want to finish this.”
“But Frank.” Ethan took one hand off his pistol, lowering it, and turned his head toward Omar. “Should I-
Frank grabbed Ethan’s face by his jaw, turning it so he was looking into Frank’s eyes.
“I want to finish this.”
The men moved away from the door and Alex heard gunshots only moments later.
Alex and Morgan took care of Omar, who was fast asleep and had finally stopped bleeding. They did this while listening to the gunfire that echoed down the hall and the screams of commands that emanated from the walkie-talkie. They spoke very little, consumed with their own anxiety and their own anticipation for the men to be done.
Frank let out a heavy breath as the last corpse in the last apartment fell to the ground. “That’s all we can do Ethan. We’ll use all our ammo if we try to clear another floor.” He looked at Ethan, who stared at the floor, unresponsive.
Frank frowned, asking, “What is it?”
Ethan shook his head. “I shot that kid. I mean, I was trying to help and I-”
Frank cringed. He hated this part of his job. It was hard enough for him to keep his own emotional armor built up, he didn’t want to have to help Ethan do the same.
Frank gritted his teeth and leaned in close to Ethan. “Listen, I asked you… we all asked you to shoot these people. We asked you to shoot almost everything in this building. Your actions may not have been perfect, but you still did good. If that boy up there dies, you cannot let his one death outweigh all of the deaths that you wanted to cause. The good deaths.”
Frank looked at Ethan, knowing the young, overly-sensitive man didn’t understand his logic. He would need to harden him more if he was going to make him an effective partner. He grabbed his walkie-talkie and called it in.
“Looks like we’re done here, folks. We have the floor.”
Day 15
10:59 am
Mr. Peterson stood in the corner of the room, his thick, hairy arms crossed over his sweaty chest. He watched his daughter Emma reapply the bandage to the boy on the ground. For a moment, a feeling somewhat like pride came over him. It lasted for only a moment.
“Emma,” Mr. Peterson said under his breath. “Get over here. Let somebody else take care of him.”
Emma looked up at her father, surprised. When she saw the look on her father’s face she stood up and handed the cloth to Ethan, keeping her eyes on the floor. She slowly walked over and stood next to her father.
Only Alex understood why Mr. Peterson wouldn’t want his light-skinned daughter to help the dark skinned boy. Alex caught himself wondering why someone like Mr. Peterson was spared.
“Have any of you heard from family or anything?” Morgan asked, handing out cans of soda to everyone.
“I was in contact with the station up until 2 days ago,” Frank said, popping open a can of root beer. “I never heard from my wife.”
“My cousin called me when this all started happening,” Mr. Peterson said. “But he was going to the FEMA camp in Hudson. I doubt he’s still alive.”
“My Dad e-mailed me from Wisconsin,” Alex offered to the conversation. “He said he was fine. That was about a week ago. There aren’t many people around where he lives, so I’m still hopeful.”
&nb
sp; Eyes darted around the room, everyone waiting for someone else to continue the list, but no one else spoke. The room was depressingly quiet. The murmur of the dead outside filled the emptiness.
“That goddamn noise they make is going to drive me insane,” Mr. Peterson yelled out the window, as if passive-aggressively asking the zombies to be quiet.
“It’s become like white noise to me,” Morgan said, staring off into space. “I don’t even hear it anymore.” Just as quickly, her eyes snapped back to reality and she took a deep breath.
“We need to talk about what we do next,” Frank said, stepping forward and hooking his thumbs on his belt. “First of all, we need to stay away from that blood until we figure out a way to clean it up.” Frank sipped his soda, thinking. “We need to get rid of those bodies before they rot any worse.”
“I have a good pair of gloves,” Alex said. “I can start searching the apartments for tools, and gloves, and… what? Bleach?”
“Yeah.” Morgan shrugged, unsure. “Any cleaning supplies would be good.”
Alex stood up to start digging in his closet for his gloves.
Mr. Peterson frowned. “So we’re just gonna start stealing from our neighbors?”
Frank stepped forward as soon as Mr. Peterson started talking. By the time he had finished his question, Frank was in his face. “We are going to do whatever it takes to survive.”
Mr. Peterson huffed out a breath from underneath his mustache and leaned against the wall. Looking back and forth for someone to take his side.
No one did.
Alex slipped his gloves on and stepped into the hallway. “I’ll let you know if I find anything.”
Alex heard the group start to take stock of what food they had as he walked down the hallway, trying to reassure himself that Frank and Ethan had killed all the corpses.
The rotting bodies slumped against the wall, crumpled heaps underneath splatters of blood filled with bullet holes that smeared down to the spot they lay. The corpses were almost unrecognizable, the skin mottled and blue with greenish pustules covering their bodies. Bones jutted out from torn away flesh. Organs hung from the gaping holes, draped across the floor in a bloody mess. The inside of the bodies looked hollow, like they were liquefying from the inside.
After Life Page 8