Before the two crashed into the stairs, Jack watched another wave of zombies come pouring over the top of the escalator behind them. It was as if someone had spilt a giant bag of marbles and now they were pouring over the lip of the second floor. The sheer weight of their undead bodies shattered the brass and glass rails as if they had been made of plastic and foam.
Jack had to drop his machetes so that he could extend his arms to help slow his companion’s descent. It didn’t work. Denise landed on Carol and the kids so that all four of them rolled like a ball further down the steps nearly knocking Jack over the edge. When he managed to get to his feet, he found Mike as he lapsed into unconsciousness, his broken leg twisted in an unnatural direction. Further up the escalator, Jack saw dozens of zombies crawling over one another as they scraped and scratched to get down to Jack and his companions.
Then the escalator shook under a dreadful impact. The tidal wave of undead moving across the mall finally crashed into the escalator shaking it at its very foundations. He could hear bones shattering with the impact of so many bodies. Jack half expected the escalator to fall apart, dumping him and his friends into the eddy of man-eaters now swirling ten feet below them. Several of the zombies above him were shook from their perches and fell in the teeming mass below.
The flood from above didn’t seem to have an end. The creatures continued to pour unhindered off the edge of the second floor to mingle with those on the first floor. The only thing saving Jack’s group from being overwhelmed from above and below was the fact that the escalator was so narrow. Jack and his companions clustered in its center suspended between the two levels.
The sound of an AR-15 firing below him let him know that Denise was back on her feet. He would have to trust that she could keep the creatures from getting past her. He was going to have his hands full with those pouring down from above him. Many of the fiends were bursting from the second level so fast that they followed the same trajectory that Mike and Denise had. If left unhindered, they were going to land right in their midst and the fight would be over before it started.
Now unarmed, Jack rolled his muscular shoulders in preparation as he followed the flying creatures with his eyes. Their faces were gross masks of snarls that looked anything but human. Instead of catching them, he tried to direct them further to the left or right causing them to fall harmlessly down to the first floor. Unfortunately, for every one he managed to redirect, more would take its place. He couldn’t prevent the multitudes of zombies from landing near or on him directly. Sometimes the impact of their bodies knocked him back down several steps.
They were pouring down from the second floor faster than he could clear them out.
Jack tossed two more of the creatures over the edge and a dozen more landed awkwardly on the escalator in a splay of arms and legs. The fiends were coming so fast that the gruesome reality hit him like a punch in the gut. He would not be able to protect the people he had come to care so much about and it burned in his throat like acid.
“Jack!” Sheri screamed.
At first, he was reluctant to acknowledge the call. He feared that her cry was one of help and that he would find one or more of the people he cared for wrapped in the deadly clutches of some flesh-eating monster.
“Jack!”
A blow to its chest and one of the creatures tumbled backward into the others. One by one, they fell into a scramble, giving Jack a brief second to look back at Sheri.
Lifted in her beautiful little hands were his machetes. She held them up to him as if she was the Lady of the Lake charging him to take Excalibur. The look in her eyes was one of such confidence that goosebumps prickled his body and a fresh sense of hope surged in his heart. He took the weapons quickly. Smiling, he winked at her.
“Come on!” he roared at the creatures now regaining their balance. He flourished the blades against their common enemy with such ferocity that the air instantly filled with an explosion of bloody gore.
The battle raged around Carol. She knelt in a huddle with her children as Jack and Denise fought to keep them from being eaten. Every time she looked out from between Denise’s legs at the monsters charging up the escalator, she was struck with a terror that left her scarcely able to breathe. Steven shivered in fright under her arm. His head lay against her breast. Sheri sat in her lap watching the struggle with morbid fascination.
No matter how she did the math, she knew this day would bring about her death and the death of those she was closest to. The sheer numbers of the creatures charging up the escalator and boiling over from the second floor above offered her the surety of that one inescapable fact.
She looked down at the straight, brown hair of her oldest child. The last time Steven allowed her to hold him like this was when he was five years old. Charlie was but an infant and Sheri still acted like a child. Carol smiled softly when she considered the fact that Steven had every reason to hate her. God had given her three precious children to care for and she had been more interested in her own success and happiness than the safety and security of her children. Her babies had paid the price for her neglect.
Steven had come to her only one time accusing one of her suitors of touching him inappropriately. She slapped him across the face and accused him of lying, of trying to sabotage her happiness, but the truth was that she hadn’t cared. As long as the men in her life loved her, she could put up with almost anything. Over the years, she suspected several of the men she dated, loved, married, and divorced of having an appetite for her children. Yet, in her mind, she told herself that it would be educational. She had been molested by men her entire childhood. She did not turn out bad. Well, neither would they, she had thought.
Carol shook her head wanting to deny that she ever allowed men to have their way with her babies. What kind of a monster am I? Tears blurred her sight. Many times, these same men had beaten her unconscious and then left her. Her children sometimes found her unconscious as she lay in the kitchen or bathroom. Steven had not forgiven her for her selfishness and neglect. He blamed her for the abuse he suffered at the hands of men who claimed to love him.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered into Steven’s hair. The boy had every right to hate her. She should have protected him.
Sheri turned in Carol’s lap when she heard her mother speak. As she did, she noticed a pair of machetes lying under the corner of her mother’s leg. They were Jack’s weapons. The same one’s he had used in his search for her little brother. Without these two blades, they would all be dead.
“Mom hand me those,” Sheri said pointing to the machetes.
Leaning over, Carol lifted the blades carefully. She could see Jack was struggling in a skirmish that he could not win. The man was strong, probably the strongest man she’d ever known, but there was only so much one could do against the tireless undead. She handed the weapons to Sheri and then watched in fascination as the girl mustered up the nerve to crawl up the steps, closer to the fray.
Seeing her daughter move with such courage ignited something in Carol. She had always looked to others to protect her, to help her make her way and to smooth away the rough edges. When things went wrong, she turned to men who she thought would best suit her needs in the moment. Even now, she cowered behind others as they risked their lives to protect her and her children. For the first time in her miserable life, the maternal instinct bloomed in her like a mushroom cloud and she felt the smoldering righteousness of a mother whose children might soon suffer a horrible, agonizing fate. Lying beside her was the weapon Jack had given her. Even now, she could hear his voice. “Just point and shoot.”
Steven was startled out of his daze when his mother stood up in the midst of the chaos. There was a fire in her eyes. His mother’s cold loveless demeanor that he woke to every morning for the last several years was gone. He knew in that moment that something was different.
Carol lifted her rifle to her shoulder the way she’d seen Denise do it, pointed it at the top of the escalator and pulled the trigger.
The weapon burped a fully automatic spray and before she knew what was going on, the recoil caused the gun to rise. A few of her bullets hit some of the monsters, but as the weapon rose, her aim actually got better. The air above Jack was swarming with dozens of creatures as they descended off the second floor of the mall. She managed to eliminate nearly half a dozen before she ran out of ammo.
“Ahh!” Steven shouted. He was dancing around on the hot shells scattered all over the steps.
Denise’s rifle stopped firing and a chilling howl filled the vacuum. Throughout the mall, every one of the fiends had their mouths gaped open and they all made the same sound. The mournful tone was chilling and the small group was left feeling as if they were being serenaded by Death himself.
“I’m out of ammo!” Denise yelled and turned her rifle around to use as a blunt weapon. It was becoming more difficult for the zombies to get past the pile of corpses at the base of the escalator and for a moment, she was able to look out across the main concourse of what had once been a place of commercial exchange for the human race. Now their corpses would wander the building with dead eyes looking upon everything and unable to see the value in any of it. The place looked like the underworld. It was a hive swarming with undead. Every square foot of the facility was overrun.
“Here!” Jack said.
When she turned around, he tossed her one of his machetes. It was time to go to work. For the next fifteen minutes, the two of them sliced, diced and stabbed everything that didn’t live. The air became a miasma of red fog.
Carol stood between Jack and Denise refusing to cower in her fear. She held her children to her side and offered them what encouragement she could. Steven had his arm wrapped around Carol’s waist. With soft eyes, he wouldn’t stop looking up at his mother’s face. Sheri was glad to relinquish her role as the adult in favor of her mother’s current acceptance of the role.
Something caught Carol’s attention in the distance. The hordes of dead that had been coming and coming and coming, had stopped coming. The creatures in the distance were wandering around without purpose. In fact, the only creatures still moving toward the escalator were those directly below them and even they seemed more docile.
Above them, the fiends stopped spilling over the upper floor. Jack huffed and puffed, searching the rows of dead that lined the edge above him, watching for any threat. He held his machete in one hand and his knife in the other. Piled all along the length of the escalator were the unmoving corpses of former humans.
“What happened?” Steven asked.
“I— I don’t know,” Jack said as he slowly lowered his weapons. Fearing to move too quickly, he turned slowly. His eyes fell on Carol. She looked like one of the dead. She was slathered in crimson with little chunks of meat stuck in her hair. The kids looked the same. Only the whites of their eyes told the truth of their living state.
“We’re zombies,” Denise said looking up at the rest of her group. “They must not be able to recognize us as living beings.” She wrinkled her nose and then added, “We sure don’t smell like we’re alive.”
“A cloaking device!” Sheri exclaimed.
“Sweet!” Jack said and smiled. “What do you know about cloaking devices?”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Denise said. “It may not be foolproof. We need a test.”
“Right. Let me try something,” Jack said and slipped over the edge of the escalator. He dropped into the crowd of zombies, landing between two heavyset females. His motion drew a lot of attention and he instinctively fell into a defensive posture, but in the end, the creatures left him alone.
“Well, the vote is in,” Jack said smiling sheepishly. “I’m an auxiliary member of the zombie death squad.” Jack stepped up to one of the creatures and looked into its face. “I think this one’s name is Bob.”
“It’s a girl, stupid,” Sheri giggled. Steven smiled, shaking his head.
Denise kicked over the mound of corpses in front of her so that they fell like soggy logs, skidding across each other. She and Carol Mason hauled Mike off the escalator. He was still unconscious.
The companions settled themselves in a small lounge area just outside the Food Court. Denise reset Mike’s leg before he could wake up and complicate the whole ordeal by screaming, and then splinted it with the supplies she snatched from the pharmacy further down the way. Carol seated herself in the middle of a long couch and allowed Steven and Sheri to rest with their heads on her lap. She gently stroked their hair, looking at them with sad bloodshot eyes as they quickly dozed off.
Jack was not comfortable lounging with so many of the dead wandering about them, and so he paced the perimeter of the area. Why didn’t he think of this before? He’d seen dozens of zombie movies. Zombie goo equals zombie-cloaking device. It’s basic zombie training.
He looked back across the mall for the umpteenth time. The creatures continued to remain oblivious to their presence. Well, except for one. There was a female zombie standing about ten feet from him that acted slightly different. Most of the creatures stumbled along without any particular agenda or interest. They simply were. This one, however, stood there staring directly at Jack.
When he stared back, it smiled.
A cold chill ran zigzags across his back and shoulders making the hair stand up on his neck. Jack drew his machetes and took a step toward the creepy thing, when he suddenly realized that its eyes were not those of the dead. Her eyes were those of the living.
“You’re alive,” Jack said.
“Yes, we are,” the woman replied. “And glad to be so.”
Her voice had a warm quality to it and seemed vaguely familiar. She hung her head in relief. After taking a deep breath, she placed her hand against her breast and offered Jack a slight smile.
“We?” Jack asked.
“Yes,” she replied and then turned slightly and said in a louder voice, “Come on, guys. It’s okay. They won’t mistake us for being dead now.”
Behind this woman, a large group comprised of women and children turned around to face Jack. They had been pretending to be zombies, except their eyes told another story. Of course, they had to be careful. The last thing they wanted was for some other living person to mistake them for being dead and kill one of them. The group moved forward to huddle close to the woman. Jack could see from the way they looked at her that she was greatly revered.
“My name is Doctor Shirley Baker,” the woman said. “These are my charges.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“I know who you are,” Jack said and ran a hand through his hair. “In fact, you could say that you are the reason I’m here.” The blank look on her face prompted him to continue. “I heard your cry for help over the HAM radio. I just couldn’t reply. When the military responded to your plea, I wanted to be there. I packed my belongings and drove my way towards the hospital. I eventually ran into some difficulty (that’s another story) and found myself on a roof not far from the hospital.”
Jack’s mouth started to dry and so he swallowed hard and continued. “I watched helplessly as you were kidnapped while others were thrown from the roof of the building. I’m sorry that your patients weren’t counted valuable enough for the cost of a bullet.” Jack started to put a comforting hand on the doctor’s shoulder but stopped himself when he saw her practically flinch at his words.
“Thank you . . .?” She paused, waiting for Jack to fill the blank.
“Oh! My name is Jack Wages,” he said. “Sorry, ma’am, my manners seemed to be left on the other side of the apocalypse.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “We’ve been living for over a week with monsters that make these things look like angels.” She nodded to the undead around them. “It just feels good to hear someone willing to call me ma’am, again.”
Behind the doctor, Jack watched some women nodding in agreement. They seemed so fragile and many of them had eyes that looked like Denise’s eyes — hollow and pain-filled.
“Let me in
troduce you to the rest of my group,” Jack offered, hoping the women would find it easier to connect with Denise and Carol. He couldn’t help recalling Denise’s reaction to Mike’s presence and her irrational fear of men.
“Before we do,” Shirley said, putting her hand on Jack’s arm. “I need to ask you a question.” She waited for Jack to look her in the eyes and said, “Are you missing someone from your group?”
Jack looked around him. Carol and the kids were where they had been resting. Denise sat next to Mike watching over him. “No,” Jack concluded. Everyone else that had been with him died on the way. Old man Davis was in the ground behind his daughter’s house and little Charlie Mason met his end in the parking lot outside.
The reminder of Charlie’s death rang like a church bell in his mind. It was his greatest failure since his release from prison over a month ago. Had it really been over a month? The only failure that came close to Charlie’s death was losing Randi in a city full of the dead. At least, he had some hope that she still lived.
Thinking of Randi gave him a start. He was talking with Randi’s mother! Randi’s nose and facial structure was similar to her mother’s, though her eyes were her father’s. How could he tell the doctor that he had lost her daughter?
“I think you’re mistaken,” Shirley said. “Alexandra?” she called to a red haired woman behind her.
The woman was short and plump. Her eyes were kind and motherly. Slathered in fresh zombie goo, she looked shiny and wet. In her arms was a small bundle. It almost looked like a large potato sack. She held it as she might hold a child who was sleeping.
“Hey, baby,” the woman said softy to the bundle. The object in her arms squirmed a little. She slowly approached Jack, peeling back the blanket that covered . . . a child! “He says the moon is made of stinky cheese.”
Dead World: Hero Page 29