by Brown, TW
Mickey opened his bloodshot eyes. The blackness stood out against the white. It reminded Madeline of dark, spidery tendrilled roots from a weed fresh out of very rich soil.
“Maddy.” His smell made her want to gag, but she fought her rising gorge and smiled. “Do I look as bad as I feel?”
“Yeah, but not as bad as you smell.”
Mickey laughed, breaking down into a wheezing cough. Dark blood trickled from his mouth. A light spray of it flecked the respirator mask. His hand tightened on hers, whether in pain or recognition, she couldn’t tell.
“Take care of Rick for me.”
“I’m right here.” Anguish filled Rick’s voice, and he looked up for the first time. “Don’t talk like I’m not…or like I’m some invalid that needs tending.”
“Then knock off the guilt and self-loathing crap!” Mickey turned and locked eyes with his grief-stricken friend. “What’s done is done. You guys have to watch out. Never make the same mistake twice. For the last twenty-four hours it has been tough to tell which of us is the one dying.”
“But—”
“Nothing,” Mickey interrupted. “That thing coulda wandered up or down from any floor and gotten caught in that closet. Whatever the hell is going on is just getting worse. You need to let go and move forward.”
Rick tried to talk, but a soft cry was all he could manage. Madeline came around and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. Together, they stood vigil over Mickey’s death. When he sat up, Rick was the one to put him back down.
Pressing the gun to the bluish-pale forehead, he pulled the trigger. Like all the others before, the body was disposed of in an incinerator located in the basement. Outside, more of the walking dead continued to converge on the hospital. Madeline estimated their numbers to be over two thousand.
***
Juan Hoya stood on the hood of his car. Resting the stock of the 30.06 firmly against his shoulder, he closed his left eye and peered through the scope. The head that filled his view was in full profile. One squeeze, and a bullet would explode the temple of this guy’s head.
He took a deep breath, and his finger began to tighten on the trigger. A tremor began in his left arm. With a gust of air, he exhaled. “I ain’t cool with this.”
“Well ya better get cool with this,” Tracy Miller snapped.
With a flick of his head, Tracy tossed his long, straight, blonde hair back out from where it had blown into his face. Juan glanced over to see those dull blue eyes glaring at him. He gave a once over to the skinny, six-foot frame and considered what a well-placed jab with the butt of a rifle would do to it. Tracy must’ve seen something in Juan’s eyes, because his expression changed. Juan took pleasure in seeing that look.
Fear.
“Travis is waiting for your shot to signal the charge, man,” Tracy whined.
Juan had met up with Tracy Miller, Travis Reynolds, and Dennis Thompkins three days after all the crazy shit had kicked off. They had all been looting the same grocery store. With everything so intense, it made sense to join up. Safety in numbers.
Juan regretted his choice two days later. As was the case every evening, they had looked for a dark house to hole up in for the night and plan the next day’s raids.
The house hadn’t been empty.
Tracy and Dennis had roughed up that old couple pretty bad. All night, Juan could hear the soft whimpers of that old lady. The next day when they left, Travis made it clear that the old folks would remain tied up, “Just in case!”
The cops—the few remaining—were barely enforcing martial law. There was no way they’d respond to some call about a home invasion. What was the sense in leaving those two tied up to experience a slow death? Juan snuck back that afternoon when he was supposed to be out scouting for a store that hadn’t been too gutted and cut them loose.
A few days ago, Travis came up with what he called his master plan: The Clackamas Jail. They would see if it was still manned. There might be a bunch of guys in there that would join up. They would be like an army. One big, bad-ass, convict army.
“Couple of my bros are in County right now,” Travis had announced. “Good dudes. We bust them out and we could do whatever the fuck we want…when we want!”
For the past several hours, they’d been scouting the jail. Nobody alive had come or gone. With binoculars, they could see some occasional movement inside. The cops, at least those who hadn’t vanished one way or another when all this shit broke, were trying to run the jail like things might get back to normal. Juan had news for ‘em. He’d seen some real crazy things in the past week-and-a-half.
As of this morning, news reports were saying that this was like some historical thing called the Black Plague, but completely global. He didn’t know just what that meant, but he knew it was bad. Some doctor-guy on one show estimated that the ‘Blue Death’ eclipsed AIDS on the third day! He might not have finished eighth grade, but Juan knew how serious this was, and he had a good idea as to how much worse it would get.
“C’mon, take the shot, man.” Tracy elbowed Juan in the ribs.
Juan turned his head and stared into the watery, bloodshot eyes of Tracy Miller. “You lay hands on me ever again, and I will beat you down and feed you to one of them deaders. You feelin’ me?” At over two hundred and sixty pounds, Juan looked almost twice the size of the meth freak at his side.
The ghostly, skinny, greasy man turned even paler if that were possible. He raised his hands and eased back a few inches. The hood of the car protested with a metallic pop.
“No problem, man.” Tracy slowly extended his arms and inched back a bit more.
Juan returned his attention to the building across the way. He sighted down the scope to get a better look at his target. A man inside the jail was moving a metal framed couch with ugly, orange, vinyl cushions up to the large, tinted picture window, that currently, only a few of the deaders had pushed up against.
Two men wearing dark-blue jumpsuits came into view. Juan had spent a few nights in this particular county jail. He knew the color code. Normal inmates wore blue, dangerous and violent wore the black-and-white stripes like in the old movies, and the crazy ones wore a reddish-pink. The two inmates were carrying another metal frame. This looked like a bunk bed, but without a mattress.
Using his scope, Juan took a better look at the front desk and lobby area. It was a jumble of metal framed beds, chairs, desks, and couches. Whoever was in charge had done some thinking. The clutter would be a challenge for a normal person to crawl through. These deaders were not very agile. They would become trapped in the maze of metal, and that would make it easy for somebody to kill one with minimal danger.
“Tight,” Juan breathed as he re-directed his scope. “Tight like a tigah.”
The shot rang out. It sounded so much louder in the relative quiet that had fallen upon the world. The cop, who moments ago had been directing everything, seemed to freeze in place. His hands came up as if he would grab his head, but, before they completed the action, the man fell back.
There was a flurry of activity, like ants angry at whatever force had just kicked apart their hill. The two guys in blue stood rooted in place for a few heartbeats as three other officers rushed to their downed comrade. Slamming another jacketed round into the chamber with the bolt-action, Juan took aim on a second cop and fired.
Another body fell.
The two inmates finally reacted, dropping the bunk. One of them dove into the back of one of the remaining cops…the other ran through a door and out of sight.
A few deaders began to shamble Juan’s way. The sound of a roaring engine caused everything, living and dead, to pause and look for the source of the noise. A big, red truck burst from some hedges kitty-corner to the jail from where Juan and Tracy were posted.
“Here comes Travis!” Tracy shouted with a mixture of relief and simpering reverence.
Juan glanced sideways at the frail excuse for a man at his side and considered, not for the first time, smashing his he
ad in with the butt of the rifle he held. After a deep breath, the feeling passed. Besides, there was safety in numbers. He didn’t like the thought of having to try and make it all by himself. Those damn things never slept. They moved in packs that just grew like those snowballs in the cartoons rolling down a hill. Small at first, but in time...
***
An explosion, followed by the chatter of automatic weapon’s fire, jerked him back to the situation at hand. Travis had driven up to the entry doors of the jail and lobbed a homemade bomb that one of the guys had put together into the cluster of those things that stood pawing at the door. The explosion cleared away a nice section for the truck to back up into.
Dennis Thompkins, Travis, Boris Johnston, and Tony Adams—the guy who made the explosives—waded through the carnage of their own creation and began single-shot dropping the few deaders that remained standing, as well as finishing off the few on the ground that had been blown up, but were still managing to move.
Tony ran a chain through the handles of the jail’s lobby doors and clapped the other end to the truck. Travis and the rest continued to pick off everything in the area that was still moving. Tony jumped back in the driver’s seat and stomped on the gas. The truck rocketed forward, tearing the doors out of their hinges.
“Dennis, Boris, you come with me,” Travis barked like a drill sergeant to a couple of raw recruits. “Tony, you stay here and watch for deaders. You got plenty of ammo, and Juan is on that little ridge with Tracy. Shouldn’t be no problem picking off any stragglers. Ain’t seen none of those packs up in this neighborhood so just be...what’s that spic Juan always sayin’? Oh yeah! Be tight like a tigah!”
“Sure thing, Travis,” Tony said with a curt nod.
The three began shoving aside the pieces that made up the twisting, strangely inter-connected barricade of metal. Meanwhile, the inmates had overcome the one surviving sheriff, holding him face down at gunpoint.
“Any of you dudes know Gary Messer?” Travis called out over the erratic sound of gunfire from outside as Tony—and Juan from the varying loudness of the shots ringing out—came and went.
“Yeah, I know him,” one of the inmates, the one with the gun pointed at the head of the subdued officer, answered.
Finally, Travis and his small band of liberators made it to open floor space. Three uniformed county cops lay sprawled in pools of blood, all headshots from the looks of it. Damn, Travis thought, that Juan is a helluva shot. “Can you take me to him? And, how many cops are holding this place down?”
“Yes, and there are two back in the intake office. Prob’ly gearin’ up for you since all this is playin’ on their closed-circuit monitors.”
Travis walked up to one of the cameras mounted near the ceiling in a corner of the lobby. He waved, smiled, and then shot the camera lens.
***
The sounds of lifeless hands smacking the windows at the front of the building echoed through the practically empty grocery store. As was the case with more and more of the nation, the power here had failed within the first week and a half. The smell of rotten food tried to compete with the unique stench of the dead. It was a close contest.
“You think if we headed to a town like Boise, we’d find more living people?” Ian took another bite of his apple and wiped the rivulet of juice that threatened to drip from his chin. He noisily slurped the juice off the heel of his hand, not wanting to miss even a drop.
“I ain’t anxious to be ‘round any people, living or dead.” Dillon rummaged through his bag and produced two bottles of water. He tossed one to Ian, popped the top of his own, and took a long draw. “Besides, it prob’ly means more of them damned things.”
“Still can’t say the word can ya?”
“Nope.”
“Well I can. Zombies. The undead. That’s what they are. Is it weird? Sure. But it is what it is,” Ian said.
The sound of shattering glass caused both men to jump. Each grabbed his shotgun, instinctively checking to see that it was loaded and the safety was off.
“That is why we can’t stay here.” Dillon nodded up the aisle at the handful of zombies stumbling towards them. One of them clutched a baseball bat. He wore a jersey that read Reedy Transmission Tigers.
Dillon smiled and shook his head. The theory that these things were simply driven by some sort of primitive urge might be true, but on the radio there was a lot of talk about former ingrained habits being demonstrated.
He thought back to when all the doors on the cell block had popped open on the fourth day. He had been totally caught by surprise. It was a good thing it happened in the middle of the day. Two of those damn things had been standing just outside his cell door…
Dillon had made a stake from the neck of his acoustic guitar on that first day. So far, four of those things lay dead in front of his cell. The remaining two appeared to learn from their predecessors’ mistakes. They just stood on the tier...staring at him twenty-four/seven.
Those two lunged in like racehorses leaping through the starting gate. Dillon had heard Ian scream in surprise, but he didn’t have time to worry about any ass other than his own. He quickly dispatched the two and escaped from his cell.
What he saw, the death up and down the tier—several of the cells were unleashing men literally ripped open—made him shudder. But, it was that one...thing...at the officer’s control station that stood out. The guy was obviously dead. Missing most of his face and a good portion of his chest, he was a bloody mess. Yet, he stood at the station like he was on duty. Dillon swore that the damn thing raised an arm at him like it was trying to issue some sort of order, just like a correctional officer would if a convict came out onto the tier. That damned, dead son-of-a-bitch had unwracked the cell doors!
He returned his attention to the here-and-now. Daydreaming can getcha killed these days, he reminded himself. Deciding not to waste any bullets, or draw any more attention than already was being done when that front window shattered, he pulled a three-foot machete from the leather sheath strapped to his right thigh. Ian already had his out and was moving in on what looked like it used to be a waitress from a small diner.
Dillon took a few steps back to draw Baseball Player out into the aisle intersection. It lumbered forward, arms outstretched and mouth open, white-filmed, black-bloodshot eyes staring ahead vacant...expressionless. “Little closer, buddy.”
Baseball Player barged past the full grocery cart, still moving as directly as it was able towards Dillon. Once it stepped all the way out into the aisle intersection, it paused for just a moment. Its head jerked first one way, then another, as if it were crossing a street and watching for cars. Then its head snapped back towards its intended prey, and in an instant, lunged forward.
Strange, Dillon thought as he swung two-handed with the three-foot long blade, the only time those things are truly quick and almost graceful is when they lunge at you to attack. The machete came down on the crown of Baseball Player’s head. The resulting crunch and reverberation up the arms was becoming strangely familiar. The body dropped as if it had been suddenly unplugged from an invisible power source.
Clutching the machete and ensuring that there were no more immediate threats, he glanced over to see Ian swing, cutting deep into Waitress’ head from the temple to the bridge of the nose. Black fluid oozed down its face. With a foot to the chest, he pulled his weapon free and gave it a cursory wiping off on the soiled apron.
“We need to move. Those things are coming in, and who knows how many are outside in the lot.” Dillon began up the—at least for the moment—empty aisle. “Shift to your .45. Once we reach the front and the register area, noise ain’t gonna matter much.”
Ian slid his machete into the leather sheath and drew his pistol. He grabbed the cart he had filled and pushed over one aisle. Two coming down. The next aisle was empty and gave a good view of the broken window. A few of the things were jostling each other as they tried to climb through the jagged hole, oblivious to the multiple cuts and gas
hes they took in the process.
As he reached the end of the aisle, Ian slowed and let go of the cart. It rolled on its own as he moved to the right and pressed against the shelves. Nothing accosted the cart as it cleared the end of the aisle and rolled out into the open area near the row of checkout stands. The grunt and distinct sound of steel embedding in a skull meant Dillon had company.
“You okay?” Ian hissed, keeping his voice low to attract as little attention as he could.
“Just one,” came the reply. If nothing else, they’d gotten proficient at minimal conversation.
Together, they pushed their carts toward the exit. A pair of zombies were struggling through the broken window. Ian paused, raised his gun, and fired. The bullet entered the forehead clean and blew out the back in a spray of greyish-black matter. The body did just what he hoped; it slumped down in the window frame. He sighted on the other and fired again. The shot was low, blowing a hole in the throat. The creature bobbled just a bit and then resumed its attempt to climb through. As it man-aged to force one leg in, with one still outside, Ian fired again. This time he nailed the thing in the temple. The head rocked sideways, and the body fell over the already slumped form next to it.
He watched a handful of others trying desperately, but with so little coordination, failing to climb over the impromptu barrier. The few stragglers that had already made it in were heading for Dillon who was shoving the caravan of empty carts, which had been their makeshift barrier, away from the door. Pushing through the doors and into the parking lot, Dillon shifted to a shotgun and began blasting at the closest threats between the door and the still idling pick-up truck they had liberated in the prison employee parking lot.
Ian remembered the feeling of running outside of the prison that day. He, Dillon, and a handful of other inmates on the block had burst out like a bunch of kids on the last day of school. They stood in a small cluster in front of the entrance and stared at each other for a moment. Then, with nods of silent agreement, they walked away. Some just headed down the two-lane road on foot. Others, like he and Dillon, found a way to the parking lot and commandeered their own vehicle. Dillon wanted a metallic-blue sports car, but Ian preached the sensibility of a pick-up.