Brink of Extinction

by Nicholas Ryan

Defend me from them that

  rise up against me.

  He stood back and straightened slowly. The boy came closer to read the card, his mouth moving as he silently spoke the words. The tour guide made a sympathetic shrug of compassion. “Every man, when faced with war and impending death, shakes the hand of his God,” he said.

  Up ahead, at the far end of the sandbagged trench, the man and the boy could now see a television monitor, and beside it the sealed door that was the way out of the exhibition. They shuffled solemnly towards the exit, but the tour guide did not follow. He had remained standing beside a small set of aluminum steps that were fixed against the trench’s sandbags. The steps had clearly been added after the trench had been reconstructed as a way for museum visitors to easily gain access up on to the elevated fire step. He waved the man and the boy back, and without waiting, climbed onto the parapet. The man and the boy dutifully followed, and when they were all standing shoulder-to-shoulder, peering out through the barbed wire towards the mural-painted wall, the tour guide let out a long deep sigh of breath and began to speak. The boy was next to him.

  “Imagine what it would have been like to be a soldier in this trench, standing against the zombie hordes,” Bill said, his eyes fixed on the wire, his gaze distant. “Boys not much older than you, clutching at their weapon, waiting, while in the distance a dark shape appeared on the hills – a black mass that seemed like a passing cloud shadow until you heard the distant crazed cries from ten thousand throats and you could feel the earth around you tremble from the pounding of countless feet as they swarmed down the hill and came pouring across the plain.”

  The boy and the man stared, Bill’s words painting pictures in their imaginations, his descriptions so vivid, and the surroundings so raw that it felt frighteningly real. The man shuddered and the boy became agitated. Bill seemed not to notice. The words came from him in a kind of hypnotic chant, like the reciting of a gruesome campfire horror story.

  “They reach the valley and suddenly the artillery fire begins,” Bill went on, artfully changing tense with the skill of a gifted storyteller. “Shells sail high overhead and land amongst the undead, and huge gouts of earth erupt like fountains as the hordes are shredded by high explosive and shrapnel. But still they come on, and the barrage retreats closer to where we’re standing. Sometimes a shell will drop horribly short, and clods of earth and mud cave in the wall of the trench, or knock a man down into the mire. And now – even over the deafening relentless crash of the artillery – you can hear the undead shrieking. They’re driven to madness by sound and smell. They’re at the barbed wire. Just twenty feet of entanglement separates you from ten thousand crazed, unstoppable killers… and the only way to defend yourself is to fire and keep firing until your shoulder is numb, and your senses are besieged by the noise and the cries, and the stench of corruption…”

  Bill slipped a hand into his coat pocket and suddenly the exhibition area was overwhelmed by the deafening sounds of warfare; the ‘crump’ of artillery fire landing in the near distance, the endless chatter of automatic weapons, and the high-pitched maniacal shrieks of the undead. And beneath those dominant sounds was a staccato of radio chatter, young men’s cries of panic and fear, all orchestrated into a rising crescendo of horror.

  The boy felt himself cringing away from the deafening chaos. The panic began to rise in him again, like a wave gathering momentum and curling in the seconds before it crashes upon the shore. He could feel tiny blisters of sweat across his brow and the clammy cold touch of his palms within his clenched fists. He shot a glance at the man, but he was gazing fixedly into the space.

  “Can you imagine it?” Bill’s voice was raised to a shout, and even though he was at the boy’s shoulder, the words seemed to get crushed by the clamor.

  The boy was staring white-faced towards the wall, with his teeth gritted and his jaw clenched into a grimace. He could still see the two waxen figurines tangled in the wire.

  Then, in an instant, their world went utterly black, and the sound faded until it was a murmur of background noise, never gone, but subdued into the distance.

  Bill was talking again, his tone now more urgent. “The undead had no respect for night nor day,” he said. “Their attacks were relentless.”

  In the oppressive terrifying darkness, a white light glowed for a few seconds, simulating the arc of a flare across the night sky, illuminating the battlefield and shunting dark jagged shadows across the wire. The boy felt the chill down his spine turn to ice cold fear.

  Another light flared and then died, but in the few brief seconds of floodlit respite, suddenly a flicker of distorted running shadows rushed across the far wall of the exhibition space. The man felt himself clench, the shock like a fist to the guts. He narrowed his eyes and tried to peer through the blackness. Another light glowed, this time phosphorous and red. The man recoiled in shock. The space ahead of them seemed to be teeming with dark disfigured shapes, each a hideous shadow, swarming forward, and the noise in the speaker system became a sound like a million swarming bees – a deafening buzz interspersed by snarling shrieks. The boy cried out, swore bitterly with frozen fear – and then the lights came back on, the projected shadows disappeared, and the boy and the man stood gasping and shaken.

  “They came in the night like a black tide of death,” Bill said gravely. “It was the ultimate horror that our young men could never be prepared for. Some of the soldiers killed themselves. Others fled. Some cowered in the mud and cried. No one who survived a night attack by the zombies was left unscarred.”

  They came down off the fire step like survivors of a disaster, ashen faced and shaken. Bill went to the exit door and paused. He turned, and now his eyes were suddenly sad, overcome with a grief that darkened his gaze.

  “The military is steeped in traditions, and here at the museum we have one of our own,” he said softly. “No one who enters this exhibit leaves the room through this door without first paying their respects to our soldiers.”

  He dropped one hand in his coat pocket and discretely operated the remote control he was carrying. The monitor beside the door blinked into life. A black and white photo of a young soldier’s face filled the screen. The soldier was staring directly into the camera; his face caked in mud, his cheeks and jaw still too smooth to be shaved. But within his ancient haunted eyes reflected all the horror and despair of one who had fought on the front line.

  A lone bugle broke the silence, the image overlaid by the soundtrack of ‘Taps’ being played. Each plaintive note seemed suffused with sadness and loss, rising and then falling into the solemn silence, the twenty-four notes expressing the profound gratitude and glory that words could never capture. The last note filled the room, faded into haunting silence, and then the screen went black, and the door opened quietly for them to leave.

  * * *

  “The people who chose to stay in their homes, or those who could not be evacuated in time before the apocalypse spread, did not try to fight off the zombies,” Bill said in the threshold of the doorway. “There were no sieges – no epic examples of resistance like at the Alamo,” he explained. “Rather, people tried to hide from the undead by barricading themselves in their homes and living in a world of constant fear and apprehension. The undead were incensed by sound – so sometimes even the smallest noise was enough to attract them. Surviving the apocalypse meant living a silent life of stealth, and whispered prayers.”

  He led them into the next exhibition area and incredibly the man and the boy found themselves standing inside an enclosed space with a sense that they were surrounded by walls and dark furniture.

  “What is this?”

  “It’s a replicated home,” Bill spoke quietly. “Remember the film sets from Hollywood movies? It’s much like that… except more sinister.”

  The man looked around him quickly, his mind trying to grapple with the elements of his new environment.

  It was very dark, the walls around him just distant shapes so that he felt a
s though day had become night. He could feel the presence of the boy beside him – sense him rather than see his outline clearly, and he could smell the tour guide; the faint scent of soap on his clothes.

  “Where are we?” the boy asked, his voice made instinctively hushed and cautious.

  “Inside a typical house during the apocalypse,” Bill too spoke in a whisper. “This will give you some idea of what it was like to hide from the undead, and the hardships people were forced to endure in the hope of surviving unnoticed.”

  Suddenly a match flared in the darkness, casting the tour guide’s drawn features into a glowing ghost like mask. He held the burning match in front of him so that the tiny yellow flame cast the sockets of his eyes into deep skull-like shadows.

  “Here,” he handed the burning match to the boy. “There is a candle on the cooking stove to your right.”

  The boy took the small flame, shielding its fragile wavering light with the cup of his palm. A puddled yellow glow spilled around his hand. He found the stump of a candle within a chipped enamel mug, and put the match to it. For a long moment nothing happened and the three of them stood quietly hushed until the flame grew, and the soft light pushed away the near shadows so they could see.

  They were standing in a small kitchen area, dark and shadowed. The boy picked up the candle and held it high over his head.

  There were cupboards above the stove and on one of the opposite walls. One of the wooden doors was open and he could see a stack of canned food. Beneath the cupboard was a sink and another stump of candle. The boy touched the flame to the wick and the light in the kitchen grew strong enough for them to move about slowly.

  In every detail the kitchen was typical of a small American home at the time of the undead plague. There were four small, framed images, of fruit hanging on a wall, and beside it a window that was heavily darkened. The man went closer and saw that the drapes were drawn tightly together and a blanket had been nailed over the window, shutting out all light. He reached a curious hand out to twitch the blanket and heavy drapes aside but the tour guide’s voice made him freeze.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” Bill said quietly. The man turned. Bill was pointing to a small sensor box that showed dimly above the kitchen’s doorway. “That box detects both light and sound,” he said. If you make enough noise that zombies would be attracted, an alarm will sound. If the room fills with light, the same alarm is triggered. The exhibition is interactive. The objective is to explore the house and it’s contents without sacrificing stealth.”

  “Is there a prize?” the man asked wryly.

  Bill shook his head and allowed himself a moment of grim mirth before becoming serious once more. “There was a time that the prize was survival,” he said pointedly.

  Behind them the boy was creeping around the kitchen quietly, lighting the way with the candle still in his hand. The sink was filled with plastic cockroaches and there was a realistic replica of a rat on the kitchen counter. The boy touched the vermin with his finger, mildly surprised that it didn’t scamper away into the shadows. The air in the room was heavy and warm. The boy ran his fingers along the countertop and they came away coated in a sticky layer of cooking grease and dust.

  On the stovetop was a steel pot and beside it two cans of soup.

  “It all looks so real…” the man said quietly.

  Bill nodded. “When you’re ready, you can step into the living room,” he gestured through the open door. “There is more to see in there.”

  The first thing the man and the boy noticed was the monitor on one of the walls, it’s little green light blinking. A cluster of monochrome family portraits surrounded it, and canvas landscape paintings hung in dusty gold frames.

  The man stepped deeper into the room, his feet silent on threadbare carpet and rugs that had been haphazardly strewn across the floor to muffle footfalls.

  There was a large window above a dark wood china cabinet that was stacked with an eclectic collection of curios and more photographs. The window had been boarded up and the cracks between each slat wadded with crumpled newspaper and shreds of cloth to block out the light. Beside the cabinet were a sagging old sofa and a stuffed chair. There was a faded yellow newspaper on the cushion of the sofa. The man crept closer. The front page had a headline that screamed ‘The End of The World!’ in huge block letters that stretched across the whole seven columns of text. Under the headline was the image of a city burning in the background and people fleeing with fear in their eyes and their mouths open wide in panicked screams. The man glanced over his shoulder.

  The boy was drifting around the room lighting more candles. There were two flickering on top of a dining table, and a row of four more burning on the shelf of a cabinet so that now the room was bathed in soft subdued yellow light.

  The man turned a slow full circle of the living room. Wallpaper was peeling from the walls and the cover of the lampshade in one of the corners was strung with silver cobwebs. Furniture crowded the edges of the room so that there was a sense of cramped suffocation.

  The centerpiece of the living area was the dining table where the boy was standing beside a chair, lighting another candle. The table had been set for six, with plates and dusty glasses arranged. It was as if the occupants would return at any moment.

  The man glanced around and found the tour guide still standing in the kitchen doorway, as though with him in the room, it would be too crowded.

  “Interesting,” the man said, forgetting for a moment about the monitor. The little green light blinked rapidly and then subsided back into a slow pulse. “Thanks for showing us. Can we move on now?” He presumed the closed front door of the stage set was the way through to the next exhibition and he went towards it preemptively. The tour guide hadn’t moved.

  Bill looked bemused. He shook his head. “You can’t leave the house,” he said seriously, straining to keep his voice in a low whisper and still be heard. “Like most other exhibits, this one too is interactive.”

  The man frowned, and from the corner of his eye he saw the boy’s head lift in sharp surprise.

  “What do you mean we can’t leave?” the man became wary.

  “Just that,” Bill said. “There is a gun concealed in this area somewhere. You need the gun in order to move on to the next exhibition. With the weapon is the code for the door you are standing in front of. If you don’t find the gun, you don’t leave the room.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes,” Bill said. “During the apocalypse a family living in a house like this would most likely have a couple of weapons – maybe a rifle and a pistol. They might even have a bow, or perhaps something like a baseball bat in case the situation became life-or-death. In this instance, to replicate the need for stealth at all times, you must find the concealed weapon, without triggering the monitor by making too much noise.”

  “And if we do set off the alarm?” the boy asked.

  “You fail the test, but you get to live,” Bill’s smile was wintry. “In the apocalypse, if you failed to remain silent – and if the area you were living in was infested with zombies – you would be dead within a matter of minutes.”

  “What if we don’t find the gun?”

  “You will,” Bill assured the boy. “Because you can’t leave here until you do.”

  The man blinked. The boy was staring at the tour guide with his mouth open and his eyes widening. He shot a quick glance around the room as though he expected to see the handgun, and then went quickly across to the sofa and thrust his hands impatiently down between the soft cushions. The man watched the boy, shaking his head, and then he gave an indulgent sigh. Together they began searching.

  The man and the boy quartered the room, working separately but methodically. The boy dropped to his stomach and waved a candle under the legs of the furniture and then stood up, the smell of the musty carpet thick in his nostrils. His eyes were narrowed, his brow creased into an expression of frustration and concentration. He saw the man crouched bef
ore a low cabinet, inspecting the gloomy contents and he pushed past the tour guide and went into the kitchen. He opened the cupboards, closing each door with slow soundless care before opening the next one. The gun was concealed behind the stacked cans of food. The boy withdrew the imitation weapon and clutched it triumphantly in his hand.

  He came back into the living area brandishing the mock weapon. “I found it!” he said – too loudly.

  Above the kitchen doorway and on the living room wall, both monitors suddenly flashed an evil red light, blinking like a silent alarm. The tour guide’s voice rose in warning.

  “Get to the door!” he told the boy. “You’ve got ten seconds.”

  The boy ran. The man reeled, alarmed by the demand of the guide’s voice. The boy brushed past him and flung himself at the door. Engraved on the pistol grip of the weapon was a four-digit code. The boy stabbed his fingers at a control pad on the doorframe, just as a sudden sound of maniacal screeching filled the air. The tour guide was shouting suddenly, creating panic. The boy felt his heart leap in his chest. Over his shoulder he could hear the sounds of rising confusion as the tour guide screamed instructions and warnings. The man found himself caught up and swept away by the clamor. He knew it wasn’t real – he knew it was part of the museum’s unique experience – and yet still he felt the chill of terror tingle electric fear down his spine. He reached over the boy’s shoulder and began tugging at the handle of the door.

  The sounds of undead screeching became a riot of snarls and hissing. Then the walls around them seemed to shake with the pummel of fists. The boy’s fingers fumbled and then he heard the sound of shattering glass. He punched the numbers into the keypad again – and the door before them flew in on its hinges so that they both stumbled against each other. Bright light blinded them, followed by a rush of cool sweet air. They stumbled out through the exit, blinking and gasping for several seconds, into a bright white-walled area.

  The tour guide followed at a leisurely sedate pace, a hand thrust deep into his pocket. He closed the door to the stage set display quietly behind him and then gestured a wry apology.