The Decline

by Jessulat, Christopher

  A low growl emanated from the ghoul as it tried to pull itself onto Daniel.

  Daniel’s boot must have connected with whatever remained of the thing’s face; he thought he could feel the ghoul’s nose and front teeth buckle under the weight of his heel.

  Its grip remained firm as it continued to paw for him.

  The commotion spawned more stirrings.

  Anders scanned the jumble ahead of him and moved towards the source of the sounds. Isaac did his best to pick the same path as Keeley amongst the ruined bodies and grabbed the creature by the collar. Its stubborn grip on Daniel’s ankle did not yield until Sullivan delivered a climactic blow that separated the rotten limb from its torso. With the sudden drop in resistance, Keeley and Daniel both tumbled backwards and Isaac tossed the thing aside. Anders finished it with several fierce stomps.

  Daniel’s adrenaline dumped and he struggled to find his breath. Still gripped by the arms of Keeley, he thanked her between gasps.

  As Keeley and Daniel came to their feet, the group became sensitive to the restless dead sprinkled throughout the terminal.

  ‘Fuuuuuck,’ Sullivan droned as he scanned the darkness.

  There was sporadic rustling all around. Against the backdrop it seemed to come from all directions. The vast majority of the corpses were merely corpses; only a few seemed reanimated, but their numbers and their position couldn’t properly be assessed.

  Their exit was still a fair distance away. They had barely crossed half of the floor.

  ‘We need light,’ Anders begged, ‘I can’t see shit.’

  Keeley gripped Isaac’s arm tightly.

  ‘I dropped my flashlight,’ Daniel conceded as he surveyed the darkened floors, ‘help me find it…’

  ‘Leave it,’ Isaac interjected.

  Sullivan clicked his flashlight on.

  Any relief the group felt to not be in the bitter dark of the terminal was short lived. Several ghouls at various distances now reacted to the disturbance and reached for them. Their dead voices groaned and some began to rise.

  A moment after the beam was lit, the faint report of rifle fire echoed from behind them. A burst of rotten flesh and bone exploded from the back of one of the misfortunate souls who lay unmoving on the tile.

  ‘Fuck sakes,’ Sully spat, as he turned the light away from the middle of the room.

  There was no time. Sullivan led them on a wild run, alternating illuminating the floor at their feet, the monsters stirring throughout the room, and the path before them. The beam of the flashlight pierced the long darkness, but offered precious little comfort in their frantic dash.

  Knowing he carried the only light, Sully tried to ensure the others behind him could match his pace and have a fair read on the obstacle-laden floor. He spent far more time lighting the path behind and checking the distance of the ghouls than the obstacles before him.

  It was only a matter of time before he tripped.

  He sprawled to the floor but maintained his grip on the flashlight. Those that followed behind didn’t hear the fall but had little trouble in deciphering it as the beam from the flashlight now jutted into the darkness awkwardly at floor level. They took particular note to how it revealed a ghoul as it dove into the source of the beam.

  The creature’s pestilent jaws snapped at his flesh. Sullivan was able to frame himself against the attacker, inserting his knee between its pelvis and his torso and an arm against its clavicle. The ghoul’s fingers dug at his clothing but found no hold as he struggled against it.

  Anders rushed the corpse and recklessly tackled it headlong, hitting it flush with his shoulder and brutally spilling it sideways. Still wet from the rain outside, Anders slid a short distance before he thudded against an overturned set of bunk beds.

  Keeley gave her hand to help Sullivan regain his footing as Isaac stood guard over them. As the tackled ghoul began to rise, Daniel sped past them and viciously struck the thing in the head with such savagery its neck snapped. Its head swiveled violently as the ghoul crumpled and lay still.

  Anders was still trying to come to his hands and knees when he felt something gripping him. Unable to shake the fog from his senses, he resigned himself to his fate.

  As he was lifted off the floor he scarcely recognized Daniel’s beaming smile.

  ‘You’re a madman!’ the Nigerian belted with a buoyant laugh, slapping him on the shoulder.

  Several shapes yet shuffled towards them, a mournful chorus of hunger and torment.

  With the group now together and organized anew, they hurried for the exit.

  Thus began the mad dash into the night.

  Chapter 20

  The pain was tremendous.

  Jacob sat upright and held a makeshift compress against the back of his head. For fear of being concussed, he struggled against his body’s ache for sleep.

  The back of his shirt bore a significant stain and his collar was soaked through from the wound; it clung uncomfortably against his skin. Even if he couldn’t see the gash, he had little doubt it needed to be stitched to properly close. With nothing but food in his pack, he resorted to fashioning a compress out of the cleanest fabric he could find in this apartment, which happened to be some patterned chocolate brown curtains that hung preposterously long for the windows they covered.

  His path was erratic as he ran from his earlier encounter, but he picked his footfalls as best he could so as not to leave a track for any pursuers. Once the rain started to fall, he believed his course would have been sufficiently muddled that he could afford himself some rest. Regrettably, by then the twilight had deepened to the point that he had no choice but to find somewhere to hole up for the night.

  He was blessed to have avoided detection. As his head swam from the pain of the compress, he realized now he likely wouldn’t have had the strength to fight.

  It was all a blur.

  He would attempt to return to Madison and Emily in the morning; now came the enormous task of resisting the urge to succumb to exhaustion.

  Jacob propped himself up on a stained forest green couch with some ratty throw pillows, struggling to stay awake. He initially tried to occupy his time by canvassing the apartment, but resigned himself to the sofa when his knees began to weaken. In any event, whoever had been here before him had tried to hold out until they exhausted their supplies – the food was all gone, there were no pills or bandages, the only potential weapon some cutlery and assorted kitchen implements. The bathroom had nothing but a bucket mostly full of waste.

  Thinking he could in the very least change out of his bloodstained clothing, he rummaged through the drawers and closets, but to no avail.

  Nothing here would fit his frame.

  So he sat in an apartment that reeked of piss, in clothing half soaked with his own blood, body throbbing with cold and pain, unable to sleep it all away.

  Knowing his battered body would need to refuel, he afforded himself a bottle of water and some tinned tuna.

  He would save the canned fruit for the reunion.

  With little to occupy his time, Jacob picked through the bookshelves for something to read. The combination of absent moonlight and the terrible pain in his head made reading a daunting task.

  In any event, the books here were all shit.

  Decent collection of movies, though.

  Not that it mattered.

  Jacob needed to find something to stave off the terrible quiet until dawn.

  It was the quiet times that the ghosts could infiltrate your thoughts, those memories best left forgotten.

  A cruel parade of faces danced before his eyes.

  Faces from the world before.

  The terminal.

  The barracks.

  All dead.

  Jacob’s eyelids grew heavy. He shut them momentarily and he drew a long, sullen breath.

&nb
sp; Unable to chase them away, he started recounting their names.

  Most fell easily from his lips, but there was one he still struggled to pronounce:

  Samantha.

  Jacob worked as a mail carrier pre-outbreak, and Samantha was a teacher’s assistant in one of the neighbourhoods where Jacob delivered. When news of the quarantine broke over the radio, he rushed to get her from the school.

  Jacob chuckled to himself, thinking how absurd it must have looked rolling into the shelter in his postal uniform with his fiancée and a load of people in the back of a mail truck.

  At least it didn’t go to waste; cube vans were a valuable commodity.

  His days carrying mail meant he knew the streets better than most. He knew the demographic each area served and a significant number of the little hard-to-find shops sprinkled throughout the various subdivisions.

  He used to think it a boring job, delivering bills and flyers for shit people didn’t need.

  He’d trade anything for that carefree monotony again.

  He pressed firmly on the compress, driving it into his wound.

  The shock caused his vision to swoon and redden.

  Anything to chase those ghosts away.

  ***

  They wound through the city streets, their passing announced only by the erratic thrashings of a single faint beam of flashlight. Their path was arbitrary – a few blocks south, a few blocks east, alternating at irregular intervals.

  The temperature was falling as the night deepened around them. The heavy drops of rain were being replaced by sleet and ice pellets as it transitioned into flurries.

  Daniel kept pace with Sullivan, but he grew worried.

  Sweat clung to their bodies beneath their clothes, and the stinging rain lashed and coated their exposed skin. They were running a very real risk of hypothermia, and when coupled with the general state of exhaustion and malnourishment, he knew inevitably their strength would give out.

  They’d be running on fumes soon.

  As the group approached another intersection, they fell in and huddled alongside a corner lot building. Sully leaned out, shielded his eyes from the rain to peer ahead. In the sleet and darkness, visibility was shit – but surely that would impair the sight of the infected, as well.

  Isaac scanned the faces of their cohort; exhaustion was obvious on all of them. Their breath was ragged and laboured. He knew Keeley would be too tough to be the first to ask for rest, and Daniel was focused on leaving that sinister place far behind. Neither would suggest they stop.

  His thoughts turned to Anders’ recent, but as yet incomplete, recovery.

  Isaac could tell that Sully wanted them to push on. He understood, and had to agree to a point – the more ground they covered, the less likely they would be followed. Any pursuit would need to consider every building along their chaotic path as a possible hiding place. But in their weakened state, the group could only handle one or two ghouls at a time – if they were swarmed, they wouldn’t have the strength to fend them off.

  Just a little further…

  Isaac hadn’t counted how many blocks they had put behind them, but even through the blighted and burnt out landscape he had a sense they were making good time. He and Keeley had always lived along the outskirts of the Uptown area; they were somewhere deep in the core of it now. They’d probably walked these streets a hundred times, but none of the buildings seemed familiar.

  Memories of a life, long since faded away.

  With Sully’s signal, the group emerged and slipped through another intersection.

  Their path was blessed and they encountered little in the way of resistance. The occasional ghoul was spotted but easily evaded; one of the benefits of only having a general direction in mind in which to flee.

  Maybe the shots from the compound had cleared a bit of a path for them, after all.

  Nevertheless, their luck could run out. Believing the distance they’d put between themselves and the enclave to be sufficient, Sully began turning his attention to the buildings themselves. He used the flashlight to illuminate the doors and windows of the structures they passed until one caught his eye.

  It was a squat building, cedar shingled and set back from the road a little ways. In conjunction with the recent rain, its position relative to the neighbouring structures meant its front door and windows weren’t entirely iced over and looked reasonably accessible. It had a quaint little wrought iron fence which framed the front walkway and barely poked through the snow.

  It almost appeared welcoming.

  With weariness setting in, the group approached the entrance.

  Sully ran the lone flashlight over the structure but saw no sign of movement. He clicked the flashlight off.

  He gripped Isaac by the arm as he passed.

  ‘Get everyone upstairs,’ he began and scanned the window again. ‘We’ll settle in here for the night.’

  ***

  Quinn was awoken by a knock at his chamber door.

  Actually, ‘awoken’ was a bit of a misstatement; Quinn seldom slept of late.

  Staring at the ceiling from his cot, Quinn had heard the muffled gunfire from the compound. He had divined its purpose long before his sentries brought the news of it.

  He listened to the hurried speech of his underling as he recounted the defection.

  Quinn stared into the soldier, watched intently at how his mouth formed the words and syllables of the report.

  It all drowned out under the subtle drone of Quinn’s cold arithmetic.

  He wasn’t pleased his snipers had opened fire into the night. Ammunition was a precious commodity; a few errant rounds could easily conjure a stack of infected at their doorstep.

  Quinn was – at least partially – grateful for having fewer mouths to feed. But the news he had lost two trained infirmary staff, coupled with two experienced scavengers, was not received so kindly.

  Nor was a physical attack on one of his soldiers something he could abide.

  Despite the ancillary benefit of a lesser strain on the compound’s inventory, Quinn needed to weigh the implications of its reflection upon his command. His hold over the compound was tenuous. If he allowed their desertion, he could be perceived as weak – seen to be losing control of the situation.

  And perception is reality.

  Though he had stopped listening to the report several moments past, Quinn remained silent until his sentry finished the briefing.

  Quinn smiled and thanked the soldier.

  ‘Advise the nests they are to hold fire; I want them to spot only. Double the presence at the fences overnight and find another patrol to walk the perimeter.’

  The soldier saluted; Quinn offered a solemn nod in response.

  As the young man turned to leave, Quinn gestured to him.

  ‘And soldier,’ he began.

  The sentry froze midstride and spun on his heels to face his commander.

  ‘Please wake the corporal; send her in.’

  ***

  Jacob’s head swam.

  His eyelids were heavy as they fluttered open.

  His mouth was parched and tasted of stale cotton.

  The room was wholly unfamiliar.

  Christ, how long was I out?

  As Jacob tried to straighten his posture and sit up, a splitting pain seethed at the back of his head. He swooned from the effort and slumped back into the couch. Instinctively, his hand probed the source of the pain and fumbled over the wound still struggling to properly scab over.

  A faint ringing persisted in his ears, something signaling alarm.

  Slowly, Jacob sat forward and tried to steady himself.

  A dull ache emanated behind his eyes.

  He fought vainly to peel back the layers of fog in his head.

  The room was immersed in a watchful darknes
s; rain gently rapped against the roof above him. It remained pitch black outside – he hadn’t slept the night away.

  Jacob cursed himself for falling asleep, but simultaneously counted his blessings.

  There could have been any number of reasons for not waking.

  Images from the day slowly began to filter into his mind, though it seemed a confusing movie. He remembered fleeing the strangers and his efforts to evade pursuit. He saw the faces of Emily and Madison and their little hermitage.

  As he recalled his earlier successes foraging, a thin grin pierced the pain.

  Recognizing he remained feverishly thirsty, Jacob slowly attempted to sit up anew and reached for the straps of his pack. He loosened the drawstrings on the main compartment and fished inside for water.

  Something caught his ear.

  Something beneath him.

  The crack of a door breaking free from the shackles of frost that bound it.

  Footsteps.

  Panicked, Jacob reached for his hatchet. His fingers groped the plastic loops on the hip supports of his pack, but found them empty.

  Jacob turned his head sharply and his vision faded from the effort. It returned slowly as his hands pawed at the couch cushions, searching for a familiar handle.

  The footsteps below were muddled; he could make no sense of their number or intent. Their trespass echoed all around him.

  Realizing how valuable the treasures in his pack would be, he nearly toppled over as he forced himself to his feet.

  Jacob fell sideways back into the couch and shifted the furniture several inches on the floor before he managed to catch himself between the arm rest and the coffee table.

  His vision darkened and his stomach knotted.

  Refusing to succumb to unconsciousness, Jacob clenched his teeth and fought to set his legs beneath him as the apartment door swung open.

  Chapter 21

  The room spun in a haze of pain and shadow.

  Goddammit..., Jacob cursed himself.