by Jack Hamlyn
I saw a darkness pass over Sabelia’s face. She was suspicious of this entire set-up and it was plain from the look on her face. If you didn’t know her, then it simply might look like she was emotionless, not reacting to anything anyone said. But I knew better. Her back was up, but given her background, she wasn’t about to let anyone know that. She was noncommittal.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Jeggs,” Pratt said. “Let Steve here borrow your weapon for a moment. It’ll be easier to see what I’m talking about with the scope.”
I got into position and he handed the M107 to me. I put my eye to the sight and adjusted it. What I saw out there beyond the berms and wire was zombies. Hundreds and hundreds of them massing out there as if they knew there was food to be had but they did not know how to go about getting it.
“We’re locked in,” Jeggs said.
I handed his weapon back to him. There was a circular corridor in the bunker that connected it to each firing port. Pratt had me check out the outer perimeter on each side. It was the same everywhere: zombies. I can’t say there were more than I’d ever seen before because I had seen thousands of them in New York City, but there was enough to make my knees feel weak.
Pratt said, “All the fighting in Baneberry has attracted them like flies to shit. All those corpses out there. It’s like a buffet and now, as you see, quite a few of them are zeroing in on us here.”
“So we’re trapped,” I said.
“Yes. But we’re safe. Very rarely one or two will make it into the inner perimeter but they never get through the mine fields and none have ever made it past our snipers.”
“So we just sit here and rot?” Sabelia asked.
That took Pratt back some. He looked confused for a moment or two as if no one had ever asked him such a question. “No, no. If it goes on for any length of time—and trust me, it won’t—we’ll go out there and clean them out.”
He said it had been done before and it would be done again, if necessary. The military man in me wanted to know how they went about it. Pratt told me they first saturated the area with grenades and RPGs, then it was a shooting war from atop the berms. When the dead were culled to acceptable levels, teams with flamethrowers marched out and lit up the rest.
“Sounds like you got it all planned out,” I told him.
“I like to think so.”
I was trying to give him the impression that I had complete faith in him and his bunker. I didn’t, but I didn’t want him to know that. Keep your enemies closer, as they say. I didn’t know who my enemy really was inside the bunker, but I was getting more than one bad vibe about the place.
We went back to where Jeggs and another man watched the perimeter. The wind out there changed direction and then we could smell the mulling dead out there. Pratt said he had some business to attend to and that left us alone with the snipers.
I had a cigarette with Jeggs and started asking him a few questions.
“What’s the worst you’ve seen here?”
“Shit. That would have been before we got the barriers and wire up. The dead used to come at us in waves. We had machineguns up here then. We’d drop wave after wave of them and then we’d go out and mop up.” He shook his head. “That was something. Crawling over hills of corpses and body parts, putting out hundreds of rounds and still they kept coming. It was plenty bad.”
I imagined that it was. I sympathized with him because I had been through things like that myself.
“But now it’s not so bad,” he said. “We rarely have to even shoot. We’ve got a pretty good thing going here. The Doctor watches over us and keeps us healthy. Thank God for him.”
Thank God for him.
Which was exactly what Pratt had said.
Maybe it meant nothing, but I saw it had registered with Sabelia, too. Pratt returned and took us down to the lower level and showed us some of the old biocontainment areas and an immense iron blast door that was locked at the end of the corridor.
“That used to lead to Baneberry. There was a passage that’s flooded now.”
“No way through at all?” I asked.
“Not unless you have a boat.”
Later, we went back to our room and we didn’t leave it. We passed on dinner that night because if it was made by the same people who ladled out the soup, then I had a feeling it would be barely digestible.
“Everything’s bland here,” Sabelia said. “The food, the people, everything.”
After we had taken a shower, we went to bed. Lying there, entangled in each other, she propped herself up on one elbow in the dark and said, “He’s lying, you know.”
“Pratt?”
“Yes.”
“I know. I’m just not sure about what or why.”
“I’ll bet that passage isn't flooded at all.”
“Maybe not.”
She laid back down. “I tell you one thing, Steve, we better start thinking of how to get out of here.”
Which is exactly what I was thinking.
CONFINED
It had been a long day and I fell asleep in Sabelia’s arms—at least, I think I did—and when I woke, I was alone. I couldn’t feel her next to me. But even so, it didn’t matter because I knew she wasn’t there.
I tried to move and I felt sluggish.
I tried to cry out and my mouth felt numb like I’d been shot up with Novocain. For the life of me, it felt as if there were thirty pounds of bricks on top of me. It was a dream. I knew it had to be a dream. That’s what I told myself. One of those crazy dreams where you can’t run even though someone is chasing you like your shoes weigh a hundred pounds or you’re mired in mud.
Then a voice, the crystal clear voice of reason, in my head said, You’re not sleeping, dumbass. You’re not sleeping at all.
But if I wasn’t sleeping…
The first thing I realized was that I wasn’t even lying down. I was sitting with my back up against a wall. The room didn’t have that medicinal smell I’d gotten so used to, the after-odor of medical disinfectants. It smelled…metallic. Like steel and rusted rivet heads. And dankness.
I wasn’t in the room with Sabelia.
I had been taken somewhere else.
As I sat there, working my limbs so I could get some feeling in them, weird thoughts flashed through my brain. The weirdest of all—and probably the most prosaic—was that I had an absolute, overpowering craving for McDonald’s. I wanted, hell, I needed a Quarter Pounder with Cheese and a large fry. A chocolate shake, too. And maybe a Filet-O-Fish and some Chicken McNuggets. It was insane, but I could almost taste the Quarter Pounder. I hadn’t had fast food in many months, of course, burger joints being in short supply since The Awakening, but I could have killed for some at that moment. I kept seeing the image of the golden arches in my head and my mouth was watering. Christ, I could smell the fries.
Then, as quickly as it had popped into my head, it was gone.
Like a faucet being turned off. Not only was it gone but the very idea of a burger and fries made me physically ill. The food paraded through my head and bile came up the back of my throat. I gagged and spit it out. The inside of my mouthy tasted like cold grease.
Then that, too, was gone.
Maybe this is what Pratt meant by an after-effect of the fear gas. And maybe I was just losing it. Regardless, that didn’t explain where I was or how in the hell I’d gotten there. And it didn’t explain how I’d gotten dressed. I knew that when I fell asleep I didn’t have a stitch on. Neither had Sabelia.
My sense of reality was fractured.
It had been to a certain extent even since I was gassed. And as I sat there, I doubted everything in the blackness of that unknown room.
That’s when I heard something.
It was a wet slobbering sound like a dog lapping from a bowl of water. Then a moist tearing sound. It sent fingers of fear through me. There was silence for a moment or two and then I heard a gnawing sound like a hound working on a meaty bone.
&nb
sp; And I smelled something awful. Something I had not been aware of before—the dark, corrupt odor of decay. I knew that odor too well by then. There was a zombie in the room with me and it was feeding. It could have been something else, another animal, but I knew better.
The fear became terror that settled deep into me as I listened to teeth scraping on bone.
By then, the numbness was almost gone. I moved my legs and then my arms. I shifted a bit and bumped my elbow against the wall behind me which gave out a sort of hollow noise. The gnawing stopped immediately. I froze, holding my breath.
Wait.
Just wait.
The gnawing started again and I relaxed a little.
I was in a real shitty situation anyway you cut it. I was in the dark with one of the living dead and maybe more than one for all I knew. In general, I knew they usually wouldn’t attack as long as they had something to eat…but not always. I didn’t have any weapons or any way to get my bearings. My only hope was that my possible immunity to Zombpox was still working. Regardless, the idea of dancing in the dark with a ravenous corpse was not exactly appealing.
The gnawing went on unabated.
What the hell now?
I couldn’t just play dead and hope that the creature went away. And I wasn’t about to sit there in the dark without knowing where I was. I stood up as silently as possible. There was nothing in the pockets of my pants. But in my shirt pocket, cigarettes and a disposable lighter. They hadn’t been in there earlier. Somebody had put them in there. The last thing in the world I wanted was a smoke, but the lighter gave me ideas.
The gnawing stopped and I heard a tearing sound again.
The zombie was probably tearing off a new piece of flesh to eat. I heard a crunching sound that reminded me of someone chewing on a chicken wing.
I had to do something and I knew it.
DEAD FRIENDS
I brought the lighter up and flicked it.
The first thing I saw was a body.
It was spread-eagled on the floor, laid open from crotch to throat. It looked like rats or wild dogs had been eating on it, biting out chunks and gorging themselves. But I knew it wasn’t rats or dogs. The body was that of a man and it looked like he’d been shot through the head at close range. The pattern of blood on the wall told me he’d been standing up when it happened. It was a disgusting sight, but it wasn’t the most shocking thing.
That was its identity.
Because I knew who it was.
It was Seppy. And if he was here, then I was pretty certain Scott and Sandy wouldn’t be too far away. The lighter started burning my fingers so I let it go out. I could still hear the gnawing. It went on uninterrupted.
Where the hell was I?
In the glow of the lighter, I saw steel bulkheads which meant I could have been just about anywhere in the bunker…unless I was still in bed, still tripping out on fear gas. But I didn’t think I was. The walls were maybe fifteen feet apart. Feeling my way along the one nearest me, I moved away from the gnawing. I kept going until I came to a flat wall with a steel door set in it. I felt around, but there was no knob or latch.
I flicked my lighter to be sure.
There was nothing.
I was sealed in with that gnawing thing.
I moved back along the wall until I came to the corpse of Seppy. Before I got there, I bumped into something. A table. That’s what it felt like. An ordinary little table on wheels that rolled when I pushed on it.
I flicked the lighter again.
There were two things on the table. Two things I suppose I was meant to find: a flashlight and a K-Bar knife, a fighting knife. This entire thing had to be a game or a test. It was all arranged too conveniently.
But I did have a weapon.
And a light.
I moved along the wall until I reached Seppy’s body. I nearly stepped on it. The knife in my right hand, gripped tightly, I decided not to use the light until I had to. No sense alerting my position. I moved around the body, feeling my way forward by instinct and instinct alone.
I could hear the chewing of the zombie very clearly.
Its smell was rancid.
I could hear it ripping into cold flesh, the chomping and biting sounds, teeth against bone. When I was sure it was only about ten feet from me, I turned on the light.
I saw it.
It saw me.
The zombie was a girl, a teenager, and the body she was feeding upon had been mutilated to the extent that it looked like a mass of raw hamburger. Blood had flooded out from it in a sticky puddle, loops of entrails cast about like dead snakes. I saw a severed hand, a leg that had been twisted off at the knee, bits of flesh and organ meat that looked like they had gone through a meat grinder. There was no way to tell the corpse’s sex. Its genitals were gone, eaten down into a bloody trench, the skin peeled from its flesh. Even its face was gnawed down to the red-stained skull beneath.
The zombie cast aside a femur pitted with bite marks.
It stood up to face me.
I put the light full on it. In life, it had been a slender, tall girl with long blonde hair. In death, it was a livid nightmare. She was naked and spattered with gore, her fingers looking like they’d been dyed in red ink. One eye was huge and white, threaded with scarlet vein tracery. The other was a lidless, scarified pit.
But it was her mouth that drew my attention.
It was like a bloodstained bear trap, the teeth pink and filed to sharp conical points. Blood oozed down her pale chin and strings of meat dangled from her chomping jaws. There was no way in hell any of the risen had even the rudimentary smarts to file their teeth like pulp horror cannibals. Someone had done it for her and most likely to heighten the instinctive terror she inspired.
She came at me, her feet slopping through the blood, her hunger insatiable.
I was going to have to fight her.
I would have to kill her with the knife.
I stepped back. “Please just go away,” I said, knowing it was hopeless. It was like trying to talk an axe out of splitting your skull. “Just go away…I don’t want to do this, Sandy.”
Because it was Sandy.
Necrophage had made her into this monster, but it hadn’t done it alone. Judging by the filed teeth, it had had help.
She lunged at me and I sidestepped her.
She came around fast for one of the living dead and I nearly didn’t get out of her way. I dropped the flashlight, but thankfully it didn’t go out and I had light to fight by. When she attacked again, I slashed her remaining eye, blinding her. It split like a sliced grape, yellowish ichor bubbling from it. She seemed to barely notice, vaulting at me again and this time I got behind her and away from those teeth. I hooked an arm around her throat, pulling her head to the side and sliding the blade of the K-Bar beneath her right ear and up into her brain pan. It was no slick, fluid sort of kill like a commando on TV. No, it was sloppy as all hell and the first two times I botched it, stabbing her in the ear and the neck.
But then I had her and she knew it.
I held onto her, twisting the knife, blood spurting over the back of my hand. She bucked and fought, her nails laying my forearm open as she frantically scratched at me. But I kept twisting the knife and finally I felt her go rigid. She made choking, gurgling sounds and vomited out a black bile that smelled so foul I let her go and hit the floor. She moved around in drunken, uneasy circles, trying to paw at the knife buried in her head.
But it was too late.
She went to the floor on her knees, making a shrill sort of pained sound in her throat and then face-planted with a wet, splatting sound.
Breathing heavily, feeling like I was almost hyperventilating, I picked up the flashlight and panned the beam around. The room was almost like a tunnel, as I suspected. I got to my feet and followed along the wall until I found another door. Like the other one, it had no knob. I tapped on it with the butt of the flashlight and it rang out. I could hear the noise echoing out on the other side.
“Hey!” I called. “I killed her, so let me out!”
I waited for a few more minutes, but there were no sounds. Nothing at all. No voices. No approaching footsteps. I sighed and dug out a cigarette. As I pulled off it, relishing in the odor of tobacco smoke that cancelled out the pungent and sickening death smell, I was more certain than ever that this was no trip, no chemically-induced nightmare.
“All right!” I shouted. “The game’s up, okay? I performed for my fucking supper, so let me out!”
Still nothing.
There was nothing to do but wait, so I waited. Twenty, thirty minutes later I heard a key in the door and I stood up, ready for freedom. The door swung open and a blinding light exploded in my face.
I thought I heard a hissing sound like an open gas valve.
“Hey!” I said.
Then I felt blackness rushing up at me and I went out cold.
COLD CUTS
When I came out of that madness, I was down on my knees, but in a different room entirely. It was maybe fifteen feet long by fifteen wide, lit by a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. Like the other room, the walls were gray steel, institutional-looking. I came out of it slowly as before, hearing a voice singing in a droning, squeaky sort of voice. It was a song I recognized from childhood. Was it “Puff, the Magic Dragon”? I think it might have been. The voice terrified me for some reason until I realized it was my voice.
I blinked my eyes.
I had to come out of it.
My first real sensation was that I was starving. I felt hungrier than I had ever been in my life. Images kept drifting through my mind—juicy roasts of beef, well-marbled steaks smothered in mushrooms, thick-cut pork chops striped with grilling marks, barbecued chicken and glazed fat hams. As these things went through my mind, filling my belly with sharp waves of hunger that bit so deeply they seemed to have teeth, I realized I had a hand braced against the wall. I looked down and I was wearing only fatigue pants. My body was horribly emaciated. My stomach was sucked in and my ribs jutting out. Even my arms were spindle-thin. I touched my face and there was a bristly growth of beard. But I knew I had shaved yesterday.