Orpheus

by DeWitt, Dan

  The guard saw it all but registered none of it. He just kept screaming. In between screams, he noticed a strange tickling in his throat.

  * * *

  The three Gen Y-ers watched the horror unfold beneath them with frightening speed. JD kept screaming for security, even though the only two security guards on staff had already been savaged. They would soon be back on their feet, of course, but they wouldn't be any help at that point. Rachel mumbled something about having to help them and moved to the door, but Ethan shot a hand out and locked it around her upper arm. The contact seemed to help anchor Rachel and realize the futility of attempting to render any aid right now. "Absolutely not," he said. And to JD: "Dude, call someone else and have them bar those doors or something. We can't let those fuckers make it to the street!"

  JD switched the channel on the radio to the manager's but got no answer. He was just as successful on the channels for concessions, the ticket booth, and maintenance respectively. He held up the radio and looked at Ethan with a lost look in his eyes. "There's no answer," he said in a small voice that was a far cry from the star quarterback barking out his cadence. "Nobody's answering..."

  "JD, are there security cameras?"

  "Huh?"

  "Security cameras. Does this place have them?"

  "No."

  "Shit. We need to know what's going on."

  Rachel stepped to the projector and killed the power. The theater itself was cast into darkness, mercifully obscuring the now relatively dormant scene below them. Everyone was either dead or reanimated at this point, so there was really no benefit to watching.

  But as soon as Rachel turned off the movie, the scope of this crisis began to sink in. They could hear screams coming from the other theaters and the general direction of the lobby. None of the individual screams lasted long, but this was a Saturday night at the movies: there were a lot more people to go.

  "Oh, God, I'm not hearing this."

  "It's okay, babe, it's okay..."

  "How the fuck is it okay, 12? We're sitting in the house of 1000 corpses!"

  "Not helping, JD." Ethan spoke calmly but was scared shitless. Panic wasn't an option; JD was already on the edge. Rachel was amazingly together, but if Ethan lost it, she wouldn't be far behind. If that happened, they'd all be as dead as everyone in Theater 4. He tried to imagine what his father would do. Their relationship was never perfect, not that any father/son relationship ever was, but his dad was great in a crisis. Granted, none of those crises had ever involved murderous...flesh-eating...zombies?...but Ethan thought that something this big would turn his dad into Captain Fucking America.

  "Can we make it up to the roof, JD?"

  JD nodded and pointed. "Take a left in the hall. Door on the end."

  All three jumped when Ethan's cell phone rang. "Dad!"

  "Thank God! Are you okay?"

  "We're okay, we're okay. But people are going nuts here, Dad!"

  "It's happening there, too?"

  "Yeah, yeah! Where are you?"

  “Weaving through traffic on Main. The neighborhood became a madhouse in the span of about three seconds. There are accidents everywhere. Where's your mother? She didn't pick up!"

  Mom.

  "Getting her hair done."

  "I'll keep trying. Stay where you are."

  "Dad...how far are you?"

  "Ten miles or so." He paused. "No. Don't even think about it."

  "My car's only a few blocks away. I can get her."

  "No, you can't. Stay there like I told you."

  "You're too far, Dad!"

  "I said stay there! I'm not screwing around, Ethan!"

  He pulled the phone away from his ear. His father was shouting loud enough for Rachel to make out every word. "Hold on a sec," he said as he slowly opened the door to check for anything in the hall. He didn't see or hear anything, so he made his way to the roof access door. "I have to see something."

  "What are you doing?"

  Ethan ran up the short flight of stairs that led to the roof. He burst through the door and ran to the edge that faced the street. He inched forward enough to see exactly what he didn't want to see, and what he saw was the horrors of Theater Four, only on a much larger scale. Hundreds of figures, fewer and fewer of them alive by the second. The ranks of the undead grew just as quickly. The scene replayed itself in either direction.

  He told his father what he saw as coherently as he possibly could, then added, "You'll never make it to her in time."

  "Yes, I will. Now stay there!"

  "This time I can't, Dad. I'm sorry."

  "Goddammit, Ethan, where-"

  The line went dead. "Dad? Dad?" Ethan had a pretty good idea of what his father was going to say, anyway. He was just trying to protect his wife and his boy, but he refused to admit that he couldn't possibly do both. Or either, for that matter.

  "So what do we do?" Ethan whirled and saw Rachel. He'd been so focused that he'd never noticed her following him to the roof.

  "We? You barricade yourself in with JD while I go hop some rooftops, and get my car and my mother."

  "Not happening. We stay together. I can probably make those jumps easier than you can."

  "Listen to me, Rach. Please."

  "Like you listened to your father?"

  Ethan's mouth wanted to retort, but there was none forthcoming. Six words. She beat me with six simple words.

  "Time's wasting, baby."

  Ethan clenched his jaw until it hurt. "Fine. But we can't just leave JD by himself."

  When they returned to the room, they discovered that JD believed that they could. He kept shaking his head. "No, no, I can't do that."

  "What the fuck, JD? You can make those jumps on one leg."

  "We're safe here, guys. Let's just wait for help to arrive."

  "I don't have that option. I have to get to my Mom."

  "Please don't leave. We're okay here. We have," he swept his arm in front of him to highlight their surroundings, "...food, drinks, we can even watch movies 'til help arrives!"

  Rachel had had enough. "Oh, quit being such a pussy, JD! We don't have time for it. Are you coming or not?"

  JD looked from her to Ethan to a spot on the floor between his knees.

  Ethan's spirits dropped considerably when he said, "Then goodbye, JD. Good luck."

  Rachel moved to kiss JD on the cheek, but he winced as if afraid that she was going to slug him. She insisted, and planted a gentle kiss on his suddenly flushed cheeks. Satisfied, she grabbed Ethan's hand and followed him to the door.

  "Guys?"

  The young couple turned, each silently hoping that their friend, once faced with the possibility of being the only living person in a building overrun by hungry zombies, had come to his sense and reconsidered. "Take these." He reached into a toolbox and pulled out a spare flashlight and a nasty-looking combination hammer and crowbar. Ethan took them and nodded. "Good luck, 12."

  Those were the last words passed between them, and the young couple heard a click behind them as JD locked the door.

  A few moments later, Ethan and Rachel stood on the precipice of the roof, gauging the jump. It was only about eight feet, but it was the first of many they'd have to traverse to get to the car, and it looked like a chasm under the circumstances.

  "Ready?" she asked.

  "Yeah. You?"

  "I think so."

  Ethan stared into the alley below them. Zombies were starting to hunt in there for new victims. They were everywhere. He didn't take his eyes from the alley as he said, "Rachel?"

  "Hmm?"

  "I love you."

  The girl laughed a short, genuine laugh. "And all it took was the apocalypse." She leapt lithely to the next rooftop, an "I love you, too" trailing behind her.

  * * *

  "Goddammit, Ethan, where are you?" was what Cameron Holt said before he realized he was speaking to dead air. He redialed and got...nothing. No recording informing him of an error, no busy signal, nothing. He tried his wi
fe again and got the same result. "Fuck! Fuckfuckfuck!" He pounded his fist against the truck's roof, hoping to feel a little better. He didn't.

  His wife and son were somewhere downtown, surrounded by murderous monsters. The phones had just died, so he couldn't contact them. And his son had directly defied him. Why would he do that, now of all times? Because they'd raised him right. How was that for a kick in the ass?

  He made himself trust that his family could fend for themselves until he got to them. He wasn't joking when he'd told Ethan that he was weaving in and out of traffic, although calling it "traffic" didn't really paint the whole picture. It seemed that every inch of roadway and sidewalk was clogged with stalled or abandoned vehicles, panicked people running around, lumps of what Holt assumed used to be humans, and those...things. He couldn't believe how fast it was spreading. Just ten or fifteen minutes ago it seemed that the humans outnumbered the zombies 50-1. But whatever was causing it was unbelievably contagious, and that ratio was almost completely turned upside down. The only positive was that he had to be less and less careful with his driving; the brush guard was getting a great workout, at least.

  At one point he was nearly run over by a large military-style truck with a flat black paint job. The huge flatbed was mostly hidden under a flapping tarp, but the mass of arms and legs suggested that it was crammed with people who were wisely getting out of Dodge.

  He was so preoccupied with moving forward that he was unaware that the zombies he'd already passed were closing in around him, and that slowed him down even more. They climbed all over the truck, obscuring his vision. Their insistent pounding threatened to shatter and eventually break through even the tempered safety glass. His son had been right when he told him that he was too far and couldn't make it in time. Holt couldn't even attempt to deny it.

  All at once, his own survival was very much in doubt.

  He needed to get inside someplace safe to regroup and reassess his rescue attempt. He knew that he was only a few hundred feet away from the hospital. They'd have food, medical supplies, and hopefully an idea of what was going on. The thought that many more people might have the same idea and could potentially turn the hospital into a powder keg passed through his mind, but he thought that the virulence of the contagion was actually a small blessing in that regard. He didn't think that there was really enough of a gestation period between the infection and the reanimation for someone who was stricken outside to get inside before they became a Romero extra. There was a chance that someone might become infected within the hospital itself, of course. If that happened, he was walking into a slaughterhouse. But that was an if scenario compared to the definite when of his current situation.

  He gave the truck some gas and began to push his way through the mass of bodies. He wasn't worried about hitting innocents anymore, because nothing could possibly still be alive within that mess. The way these thing swarmed over flesh, and even his truck, which contained more flesh...They're like human-sized locusts. Or piranha.

  He accelerated some more and pulled his wheel from side to side to shake off his unwanted passengers. They didn't seem all that bright, thank God. They didn't make any even rudimentary attempts to hold on. They just clawed at the glass on the way down, before getting up and pursuing again.

  Once the windshield was clear, he could see the hospital in front of him. It seemed to be clear of zombies, and he soon saw why. The local police force (what there was of it, anyway) had formed something resembling a cordon around the hospital's entrance, utilizing their own patrol vehicles as well as several other civilian vehicles. Holt supposed that they were either donated to the cause by the owners, or, more likely, the police had found them abandoned but still running and utilized them.

  The uniformed officers, all ten of them, seemed to be augmented by off-duty cops as well. From what Holt could see, they were holding their own, but every time one of them had to stop to reload, which was often, given the numbers of targets, they lost slightly more ground. Holt checked his gas gauge and saw that it was below an eighth of a tank. He decided that the area was so congested that, once he ditched his truck, it would be useless to him, so he was determined to make it count for a few minutes.

  Now if I can only do it without getting shot.

  He started honking his horn and gunned his engine, aiming for the center of the mob. He roughly followed the shape of the cordon, throwing some zombies aside and crushing a lot more underneath his big tires. When he got to the other side of the cordon, he reversed direction and did the same thing. He was just stalling the inevitable, really, but the cheers he heard from the police with each pass were worth it. He'd bought them some more time, and because of that, a few more survivors made it through the gaps they'd jointly created.

  He was done fishing, and it was time to cut bait.

  One more time and I'm done.

  The "one more time" turned out to be, as it often did, pushing his luck too far. Midway through his last pass, his felt a jolt underneath him and his truck stopped moving forward. He pressed the pedal; the engine revved, and he felt that the truck wanted to move forward, but it just made a hellacious noise and stayed still. And the smell...

  I think I have zombies jammed in my wheel wells. You've got to be kidding me.

  The creatures began to close around his truck again, and he had no time to think. He pulled the handle and kicked the door open. The door smashed the nearest zombie in the face, and he heard something crunch. Holt wanted to make a run for it, but the path from his truck to relative safety was closed. Seeing no other options, he dropped to the ground and rolled beneath the truck. He got dead center and made himself as small as possible, which wasn't all that small, considering his frame.

  It was only a matter of seconds before he was accosted from all sides by flailing arms. The zombies hadn't yet figured out that they could easily overwhelm him if they got down on their bellies and slid under the truck. That was a blessing. However, he caught glimpses of the faces of the more enterprising ones who still remembered how to hunch way down, and he kept having to fight out of their clutches. His legs, his arms, his head...he was getting it from everywhere, often at the same time.

  What horrified him more than anything was that he'd been correct about his truck stalling because of zombies in the wheel wells. Each of the front wheels had a misshapen lump of bloody flesh shoehorned into them. The one on the passenger side probably could have been mistaken for a load of gory laundry by someone who didn't know any better.

  But the one on the driver's side...

  ...it was still alive.

  Its left arm was gone; the rest of it was mashed together like several lumps of molding clay, but its head and connecting tissue was intact enough to keep trying to bite him. It was, without a doubt, the most gruesome thing that Holt had ever witnessed.

  The amount of punishment these things can take is ungodly. There wouldn't be enough ammo on this island to bring them all down even if they were standing still.

  The sound of bullets piercing the metal body of his truck and only protection interrupted his thoughts. He heard a voice amplified by a megaphone: "Driver! Get ready! On three move your ass and stay low!" The man behind the voice started a slow count. "One!"

  Pause.

  "Two!" Another volley of gunfire, and Holt saw several zombies drop to the ground in front of him. They were in his way, but they were also, mercifully, dead. He could push his way through them if he had to, and he definitely had to. He planted one foot on the pavement and another on the undercarriage of the truck. He also put his arms ahead of him, ready to shove with everything he had.

  "Th-"

  Holt was moving before the word was complete. He pistoned his legs forward and shot between two of the dead zombies. The effort cost him some skin off of his forearms, but he was out and up quick enough to run. Not that he had anywhere to run, because the zombies seemed to be against that.

  The man said to stay low. Trusting his new unseen friend, Holt went
into a running crouch just before he heard, "Fire!" More zombies dropped to the ground, dead from good head shots. Others weren't instantly killed, but were knocked off of their feet by sheer firepower. Holt stayed crouched and moved forward as fast as he could. There was another volley, and he saw real daylight. Believing that speed was superior to stealth, he sprinted towards the cordon and dove across the hood of the nearest vehicle. He hit the ground and rolled as best he could. His head hit someone's steel-toed boot, and it dazed him for a few moments. He felt hands on his shoulders, and he let himself be guided into the hospital.

  He was surrounded by other survivors. He scanned the crowd for his family. He yelled out, "Jackie! Jackie Holt! Ethan Holt!" He got no answer, nor did he expect one. Neither one of them was anywhere near the hospital the last he knew. As his head cleared, he only began to understand the magnitude of the situation they were all in. Those thoughts were fleeting.

  Now that he was no longer fighting for his own survival and had found some semblance of safety, he grew angry. A bit with himself, but mostly at what deserved it: the monsters that were, even now, conspiring to take his family from him. He had no idea if they had any motivation beyond death. He didn't care. The only thing that mattered to him was that they, for whatever reason, wanted a fight, and he had nothing better to do than give it to them.

  He looked around for a weapon. He knew that at least one hospital security personnel was armed at all times, just in case a really volatile situation broke out. He also knew that they had an armory around somewhere, and he was going to get in there. His eyes settled on a security guard in the far corner. He was busy breaking up a scuffle, so Holt walked directly to him. He got close enough to read his nametag before taking Officer Salmon's gun and pointing it in his face.

  He'd apologize later.

  Chapter 14: Ethan and Rachel's Excellent Adventure