by Matt Handle
“What’s wrong with you?” he demanded in a harsh whisper. “You wanna get yourself killed?”
Jesse turned to face his friend and Sam let go of his shirt. “We might find something we could use in here and for all we know, one of the guards could have made that noise. Maybe he’s holed up inside waiting for backup.”
“Ain’t you never seen a horror movie?” Sam asked in exasperation. “Whatever’s in there is probably one of them zombies waiting to eat your ass as soon as we split up.”
Jesse shrugged. “So stay close and we’ll all go look.”
“Fuck that!” someone growled from the crowd at Jesse’s back. He couldn’t tell who said it.
Sam shook his head. “I got nothing but love for ya, but I ain’t going in there.”
Jesse looked at Pike for advice. “Sam has a point,” Pike admitted. “On the other hand, if one of the zombies is inside, we’d be better off facing him now than possibly letting him sneak up on us from behind later.”
That was all Jesse needed to hear. He quickly slipped inside the doorway and into the gloom before anyone else could change his mind. He was grateful when he felt Pike follow at his heels. The noise sounded like it had come from the back of the room, but both men moved slowly, inching along the lockers as carefully as they could. They tried each locker door as they came to it, but all of the six-foot-tall storage units were either locked or empty. They’d almost reached the far wall when Jesse’s fingers crept past the edge of the row that stood in the center of the room and found a golf club propped up against the last locker. He grabbed it and held it up so Pike could see it in the dim light.
“Fortuitous,” Pike said with a smile.
Jesse was pretty sure that meant “good” but before he could ask, a shadow disengaged itself from the back wall and threw itself at them in the darkness. Jesse caught a split second glance at what had once been Wilson’s face and then the former guard was upon them. One side of Wilson’s head was a bloody pulp. The ear had been chewed off and a white patch of skull showed through the undead creature’s matted brown hair. It howled as it attacked, flailing its arms as it grabbed hold of Pike and bit deeply into his shoulder.
Pike shoved at the monster as he yelled out in pain and disgust. He managed to get enough leverage on the zombie to peel it off of him and then Jesse hit the creature across the back of its head with every ounce of force he could put behind his swing of the club. The zombie fell to its hands and knees in front of Pike, but tried to get back to its feet almost immediately. Pike kicked it hard in the face and then stumbled away as the monster blundered toward him in another attempt to feed. Jesse raised the now bent golf club and slammed it back down atop the zombie’s skull a second time. Wilson’s head split open with a sickening crack and the monster slumped to the floor dead.
Jesse poked at the body a couple of times to make sure it wasn’t going to rise again. Once he was satisfied, he looked at Pike who was gently probing his wounded shoulder with his other hand. “You okay?” he asked.
Pike grimaced but nodded. “I think so,” he answered. Then he kneeled beside the corpse and removed the pepper spray canister from the former guard’s belt. “At least we got something for our trouble,” he added.
They didn’t find anything else of value inside the room. When they returned to the main hall, the men gawked at the blood that was now splattered all over Jesse’s uniform and seeping from Pike’s shoulder.
Sam whistled softly. “So was it Billy?” he asked.
Jesse shook his head no. “Wilson,” he replied. “Next time I don’t take your advice, feel free to punch me in the face.”
Sam grinned. “Got more balls than common sense, man.”
They made it to the metal staircase that led from the main floor up to the offices about ten minutes later. They were just starting to climb when Billy stepped from the shadows. He grabbed one of the inmates by the arm and yanked him around backward. The inmate screamed as he looked into the dead eyes and bloody face of the giant zombie and then Billy bit into the top of the man’s skull like a ripe apple. Blood gushed down the unfortunate man’s face and chest and his screams quickly turned to a wet gurgle as he died.
Jesse, Pike, Sam, and one other inmate were far enough up the stairs that they just kept climbing. It was obvious that there was nothing they could do for the man Billy was eating. The rest of the men were caught between Billy’s impromptu meal and the path upstairs so they turned to run in the other direction. And they ran right into Alvarez. The dead guard had finally caught up to them. With a snarl, the backward-headed zombie grabbed the nearest two inmates and wrestled them to the floor where it began clawing and trying to bite them as they fought to wriggle away from its grasp.
Jesse watched the awkward struggle between the pretzel-like undead Alvarez and the two inmates it had tackled from a spot atop the second floor landing. The other four inmates left downstairs managed to escape down the hall. He thought they might go back toward their cells, but they kept going straight, in the same direction Peterson had disappeared. He wanted to yell out to them, but before he could, Pike yanked on his arm.
“There’s no time!” the older man warned. “Let them go. We need to find the guns!”
Pike led the way down a narrow corridor past a pair of restroom doors and toward what he assumed would be the warden’s office. Jesse, Sam, and their remaining follower were right behind him.
Meanwhile, Cathy was on his butt and wailing miserably as he tried to scoot backwards on the floor away from Billy. The big black zombie had finished gnawing on the inmate he’d grabbed and had dropped the corpse at the bottom of the stairs. Cathy had tried to run away in pursuit of the other inmates, but his feet had gotten crossed up in his panic so now he faced his former boyfriend alone.
“Please, Billy…” he whimpered. “Don’t hurt me. Wasn’t I always good to you?”
The zombie advanced on him, its face devoid of any recognition. Cathy’s gaze dropped down to Billy’s crotch and he saw the same huge and vulgar bulge that the warden had noticed just before his own demise. Cathy forced his self to smile and then he looked pleadingly back into Billy’s dead eyes.
“I’ll never forget that big cock of yours,” he whispered. “Don’t you remember what I used to do to that sweet thing?”
As Billy reached down to grasp Cathy by his shirt collar, the little Mexican held out one last sliver of hope that the zombie might still have some small part of Billy’s mind left inside somewhere. Then the zombie opened its bloody maw and moaned hungrily. Gore oozed down off its chin and into Cathy’s upturned face. Cathy screamed. The sound was still echoing along the hall when Billy tore his throat out and then proceeded to eat the mouth and tongue that had once been so good to him.
Somewhat miraculously, Pike, Jesse, Sam, and the Hispanic inmate that had come along with them found the warden’s office unlocked and empty. Jesse had been sure the zombies would be waiting for them, but when Pike quietly turned the doorknob and inched the door open enough to peek inside, all they saw was a modest wooden desk, a well-worn leather chair on rollers, two metal bookshelves stuffed with books and other mementos, and in the far corner, a stout-looking gun safe. He led the men inside and went straight to the desk while Jesse checked out the safe. The other two men stood watch at the door.
“Shit!” Jesse cursed as he kneeled in front of the safe and tried to open it. “It’s locked.”
“Of course it is,” Pike said without looking away from the desk drawer he was pawing through. “Did you really think the warden would leave guns in an open safe?”
“You going to tell me you know where he keeps the combination?” Jesse asked irritably.
“I imagine in his head,” Pike replied. “Not that there’s any chance he remembers it now.”
“So what next?”
Pike pulled out a stack of used Post-it notes and starting thumbing through them, placing each atop the desk after he looked at it. “Now we hope he wrote it down and pu
t it here in his desk as a back-up. If not, I think our time may be running short.”
“Uh, jefe, tenemos problemas.”
Pike looked up from what he was doing to the inmate that had just spoken. He didn’t speak Spanish, but he didn’t need a translator to understand what the man meant either.
“Sam?” he asked.
“The warden and the suit are at the top of the stairs,” the big man told them with fear in his eyes. “We got about one minute before they’re on top of us.”
Sam and the other inmate stepped inside the door and closed it. Then Sam locked it behind them. “Think it’ll hold them?” he asked dubiously.
Jesse was on his feet by now and he shook his head as he stepped behind the desk to look over Pike’s shoulder. “Not for very long,” he replied. “Even shorter if Billy joins them.”
Pike tossed the pepper spray he’d lifted from Wilson across the room to Sam and then went back to the pile of notes he was skimming through. He’d almost looked at all of them. Jesse thought there couldn’t be more than half a dozen left. “What’s your name, my friend?”
The Hispanic inmate looked at Sam and then to Pike. “Que?”
“Tu nombre,” Jesse clarified.
“Jesus,” the man replied in his thick accent as his eyes darted from Pike to the door at his back.
Pike snorted. “Fitting,” he muttered under his breath. Then a little louder, he said to Jesse, “Tell him to keep them outside that door no matter what.” He glanced up again, spearing Sam with his gaze. “That goes for you too, Sam. I’m counting on you two to give us time. Spray that can right into their faces. If we don’t get that safe open, we’re all dead.”
Jesse translated what Pike had said as best he could for Jesus’s benefit as Pike went back to shuffling through the little yellow sticky notes. Before he got to the bottom of the pile, the door rattled loudly on its frame as the zombies beat on it from the other side. Sam and Jesus both had their backs pressed up against the wood, but it still visibly shook with every barrage of fists from the monsters trying to get in.
“Not gonna hold!” Sam warned.
“Found it!” Pike exclaimed as he held up the last of the Post-its. Jesse snatched it from the older man’s grasp and ran to the safe.
A terrible snap followed by a loud ripping sound came from the door just as Jesse kneeled down to give the combination lock a spin. Although focused on the four numbers printed on the sticky note, Jesse heard the growl of the zombies as they breached the door and began reaching through the large crack that had appeared in the wood. Sam and Jesus did their best to fend off the monsters by pummeling their arms with their fists and shoving on the door to try to keep what remained of it in place.
“Hurry up!” Sam yelled as one of the zombie’s bloodied hands curled around his wrist and tried to yank him through the broken door.
Jesse turned the wheel back and forth, stopping at each of the four digits that were printed on the small piece of paper. His heart was thundering in his chest and sweat was dripping from his hair and into his eyes. When he thought he had it, he gave the door a firm pull, and nothing happened.
“Shit!” he called out.
Graxim managed to get his head and shoulders through the ragged hole he and the warden had torn out of the door and he grabbed Jesus by both wrists. Sam tried to aim the pepper spray at the zombie, but he couldn’t get the can between Jesus and his attacker. Jesus frantically struggled to get away and then the senator, with his terrible undead strength, pulled him forward, his arms spread wide and his feet dragging on the floor. Jesus voiced one anguished cry and then the zombie senator cracked open the Hispanic man’s skull as he dashed it on the edge of the splintered wood.
Sam backed away and screamed in revulsion. Pike, now standing but still behind the desk, yelled “We’re out of time, Mister Cavanaugh!”
Jesse desperately spun the wheel again, doing his best to stop at exactly the right places when he came to each of the four numbers. The sound of Sam’s screaming and the sickening slurp of the senator gobbling up Jesus’s brains had Jesse’s nerves on edge. It was all he could do to keep his hands from shaking. With the hole in the door now nearly big enough to walk through, Sam pointed his pepper spray at the warden and unloaded it right into the creature’s eyes. The zombie thrashed and howled in pain as it tried to ward off the burning chemicals. As Sam pressed his attack, Jesse got to the fourth number of the combination. He took a deep breath and yanked on the safe’s handle again as he let it out.
With a slight metallic groan, the door slid open. Inside was a rifle, two pistols, a flare gun, and a box of ammunition. Jesse grabbed one of the pistols and immediately raised it to point it at the zombie that was still eating Jesus’s mutilated head. He took two steps toward the monster and pulled the trigger. The first shot was deafening. Jesse’s ears began to ring immediately, but as he watched, a small red hole appeared in the former senator’s forehead. The zombie staggered backward, letting go of his meal as he uttered a pained “Urrrk!”
Jesse took another step toward the wounded zombie and fired again, putting this bullet right into the bridge of Graxim’s already ruined nose. The monster abruptly fell silent and slumped to the ground dead.
The warden didn’t seem phased by this turn of events in the slightest. He just kept pawing at the burned and gooey remnants of his eyeballs as he shrieked at the top of his lungs. Jesse swiveled to point his gun at the remaining monster, but before he could settle his aim, Pike fired the other gun three times in rapid succession. Jesse hadn’t even seen the older man retrieve the weapon from the safe, but the undead warden flopped backward, the legs of his corpse getting hung up on the two feet of wood that still clung to the hinges of the frame.
Sam had stepped away from the door when the shooting started and he was still plastered against the wall, staring in wonder at his two gun-toting partners. Blood was pooled all over the formerly beige linoleum between them.
“Fuck me,” he muttered as he surveyed the destruction.
“Indeed,” Pike agreed. He spun the gun around in his hand and offered it grip-first to the heavy-set black man. “Why don’t you take this? I’ve never been a big fan of guns.”
Sam gingerly plucked the weapon from Pike’s outstretched hand. “You could have fooled me.”
Pike smiled and then walked over to the safe. He retrieved the remaining items, handing the box of rounds to Jesse before stuffing as much of the flare gun as would fit into his pants pocket. Then he checked the rifle’s chamber and slung the weapon over his shoulder. “With any luck, I won’t need these,” he said. “I’d appreciate it if you two gentlemen would do most of the shooting until we make our way out of here.”
Jesse looked dubiously at him. “Just how do you propose we do that?”
Pike walked over to the warden’s corpse, kneeled down beside it, and fished through the dead man’s pockets. A few seconds later he stood back up and jingled a set of keys that had magically appeared in his hand.
“I propose we make our way to the front door and if Peterson didn’t already do it for us, we open it and proceed outside to the main gate.”
Sam smiled and Jesse found himself doing the same. For a minute, it felt like they had a real chance. The three of them stepped over the bodies and headed for the staircase. Jesse worried that they’d run into more zombies when they got there, but the place was empty. There was quite a bit of blood splattered on the stairs and the floor below, but no bodies and no monsters.
They took the stairs as quietly as possible and headed in the direction of the facility’s main entrance. They got past the intersection that led back to their cells and about half-way to their destination when they ran into the rest of the zombies. All of the prisoners, save for Jesus, were there. Billy, Money, Cathy, Peterson, and the other eight that had done time together on Death Row all stood dead but on their feet. Some were nearly unrecognizable due to their injuries, but they all wore the bright orange jumpsuits that desi
gnated them as Jackson State convicts. Alvarez and another of the night guards named Cruz stood with them too. The guards’ uniforms were a less conspicuous khaki brown, but their faces were no less bloodied and their eyes were no less empty of any signs of life or thought.
Sam raised his gun and yelled at them, “Just back the fuck off!” But of course, none of them listened. Peterson made a hungry mewling sound and Alvarez, its head still twisted around backward, mumbled a confused combination of vowels. They advanced slowly, none of them in any kind of hurry, but all of them clearly intent on finishing off the last living humans on the block.
Jesse, Pike, and Sam all started back-peddling. They didn’t dare take their eyes off the encroaching monsters, but they weren’t confident that they could shoot them all fast enough either. Sam fired first. He dropped a zombie that had stepped out in front of its peers, seemingly hungrier than the rest. It flopped on the ground for a minute like a fish out of water and then went still.
Pike flipped his rifle into position and aimed it at Billy who stood in the middle of the pack. The three survivors had backed up about 10 feet when Pike pulled the trigger, putting a bullet in Billy’s chest. The black giant stumbled at the impact but kept its feet. Cathy limped out in front of it, hissing like a cornered housecat. Jesse shot the diminutive sissy straight in the face. The Cathy zombie was already missing its lower jaw, but Jesse’s bullet ruined the rest of its features, its head exploding like a rotten watermelon before the body hit the floor.
That was all it took. The remaining zombies surged forward. Pike fired at Billy once more, this time hitting the big monster in the cheek. The bullet tore a hunk of flesh from its face, but that still didn’t stop its advance. The three men turned and ran for the corridor that led back to their cells. The zombies followed, but at a much slower pace. Even at a jog, Jesse could hear Sam’s labored breathing as they passed the cafeteria and the big man stumbled and fell before they reached the showers. Jesse and Pike stopped to help him back up, but Jesse thought he saw defeat in the man’s eyes.