Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (Book 3): Mitigation Book 3)

by Sean Schubert

  30.

  Walking briskly into the blistering wind was tough. Trying to track down two friends in the same gusts while avoiding becoming someone else’s hot breakfast was more than Neil had anticipated in his rush to find Emma and Jerry. He was beginning to doubt the wisdom of his snap decision until he spied the two.

  They were standing near the entrance to the much larger Begich Boggs Visitor Center as if waiting for something, the same way that the zombie had been the day before. He couldn’t discern what they were doing. Truth be told, it looked as if they were merely gawking spectators at the scene of a terrible automobile accident.

  Jerry caught sight of Neil and waved him over to them. Neil should have suspected whatever stalled their attention as long as it had was likely breathtaking. There was a shallow hope that what they saw was good news, but Neil quickly dismissed any such expectations. Emma shot Neil a warning look as he approached, stopping Neil cold in his tracks. It wasn’t going to be good and, given their recent experiences and the nature of Emma’s countenance, Neil tried to brace himself.

  In another time and in another life, Emma wouldn’t have been able to behold such a grisly scene as casually as she was now. The cruel, heartless world through which they had been struggling as of late had muted her sensibilities such that her disgust was only superficial. She seemed incapable of internalizing anything anymore. She was afraid and perhaps a little relieved that her soul was so far removed that nothing could affect her either positively or negatively. She at once felt stronger and emptier at the same time.

  When Neil stepped up next to them, he first looked down at the dispatched fiend on the concrete steps. The creature was much more sympathetic from a distance. Up close, it appeared just as ghastly as Neil remembered them to be. Jerry’s single bullet had wrecked about a third of its graying skull, though very little of its coagulated blood had escaped from the typically horrific wound.

  Inside, though, was a scene more chilling than any he had seen. The floor was literally so caked with gory mortal remains that it was impossible to determine if the floor was tiled or carpeted or both. It looked like the semi-solid surface of a bog or a swamp; a morass of death. Picked clean of tissue, partial skeletons and miscellaneous bones were stacked one atop the other in a pitiless tableau that would have gagged both Dante and Milton and put to shame their visions of Hell.

  Neil half expected the rust-hued skeletons to rise up and move toward them, but there was no movement, not even the slightest flutter, in the large building’s wide lobby area. Any clothing that was still on or near the barren corpses had long ago been papier-mâchéd to the floor by pools of sticky, drying blood.

  The walls appeared as if they had been spatter-painted by an artist who worked solely in a sanguine medium. The bottom third of the walls was layered so heavily with a combination of blood and gore that the true painted color was impossible to determine unless Neil looked toward the ceiling between the irregular rust-colored splotchy patterns.

  The air inside moved slightly as some of the wind from the storm outside found a crack on the far side of the building and forced its way through. It was like a final gasp of rotten breath from a dying animal. To Neil, it smelled of mold and mildew, like an inoperable refrigerator whose contents spoiled long ago. While unpleasant, the smell was not nearly as rank as Neil thought it could be.

  Neil was transfixed with the scene. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from it. The mixture of self-pity and self-loathing tormenting him had him wondering if that was how his soul and his heart looked if he were to gain a glimpse inside of himself. Bones and blood and rot. Was that all that was left of the person he once had been?

  Breaking the silence, Neil said flatly, “I guess it was a good decision that we stayed over there last night.”

  Jerry and Emma both agreed with silent nods.

  “What possibly could have happened here?” Emma asked. “They must have gotten trapped inside somehow. But how? Is there not a backdoor? Why didn’t any of them get out?”

  “Maybe they just lost the will to run anymore,” Jerry suggested. “Maybe they just couldn’t do it anymore. A father watched his child die...a wife watched a husband...a brother a sister...a complete stranger. People can only take so much.”

  Neil finally turned to face the other two. “Not everyone’s got what it takes to go on I guess.” He paused, inviting the questions and the doubts inhabiting Emma’s and Jerry’s eyes but none followed. He tried to find some emotion hidden in some forgotten recess in him somewhere, but he was unable. He could feel the pain but it was as elusive as an eel, slipping through his every attempt. He knew that his words would sound more authentic with the emotion he knew he should be feeling, but, again, he came up empty. “You’re both right,” he continued flatly, “I am having a hard time. No point in trying to deny it. Honestly, I don’t think it’s hit all the way yet. That’s kind of how it was with my divorce too. And when it did finally hit me, I was so far removed from it and numb from the heart up, that I didn’t even notice the pain. It just became the background noise of my day-to-day. I guess I had ample distractions then too, so maybe comparing then and now isn’t fair....”

  Neil continued to speak, like a parishioner confessing his sins to a priest. Emma and Jerry merely let him ramble on, hoping for a miraculous catharsis but realizing as he spoke that it was getting further and further away. He was insulating his emotions with his words.

  Finally, Emma said, “It’s okay to be hurting right now, Neil. But if you’re not ready, well, that’s okay too. We can say all those things that we say to each other, like We’re here for you and Let us know what we can do to help, and all the other bullshit that we say because we don’t really know what to say. Really, there’s nothing that can be said. They’re just words, however sincerely they may have been intended. What you really need to know is that you don’t have to go through this alone. You should know also that the rest of us are hurting too. It’s only been a coupla’ months, but I thought of Meghan as a younger sister.”

  Emma abruptly stopped speaking, surprised by her own comment. The realization was so sudden, so rattling that Emma lost her train of thought and her recent hard-edged expression softened slightly. The acid churning in her stomach reminded Emma that, despite her best efforts to distance herself from her feelings, she wasn’t totally immune from them.

  She resented the fresh ache in her chest as Meghan’s death was piled atop Dr. Caldwell’s. Her eyes glistened momentarily as a wave of vulnerability found a seam in her otherwise solid veneer. She looked away from Neil and Jerry as if surveying the landscape. She drew in a deep breath and held it tightly in her chest.

  When she turned back to face them, her hardened exterior had returned. The tears were still there but they were tears once again filled with anger, sorrow having already been forcefully evicted. Finally she asked, “Neil, what brought you out here anyway?”

  31.

  Neil explained his exchange with DB and the sudden worry that prompted him to go out in the storm. And it was indeed becoming quite the storm. They were all thankful for the heavy, down-filled coats, insulated boots, and thick gloves they were wearing. The snow was beginning to collect in the lower lying areas of the road and surrounding open ground. Small drifts were starting to form against curbs and the sides of the buildings. It didn’t appear as if this was going to be a dress rehearsal for winter; no, this was the start of the protracted season and all the challenges that it brought with it.

  Jerry asked, “So what do you think we should do?”

  Neil looked up at the road that lay behind the visitor center and led to the tunnel. “I think we should go check it out.”

  With the menacing M4 Assault Rifle clutched across her chest, Emma looked the part of a Warrior Babe of the Apocalypse, like she was the hardened but sexy heroine of a marginal B-movie. That was how she pictured herself as she took the lead. With Jerry and Neil in tow, she crossed the slate and stone-covered ground to the main road
. Feeling like the wind and snow were conspiring against her exposed cheeks and forehead, Emma winced and grimaced as if she were in the cross-hairs of a maniacal sandblaster.

  The road immediately gave way to a long bridge that spanned Portage Creek. The couple of vehicles still on the road were scattered haphazardly across the pavement, having been abandoned suddenly by their former occupants. Neil wondered how it all had happened here. How long was it from the initial chaos erupting at Providence until it had spread its lethal reach to Portage? There were no bodies on the bridge, though if he were to look over the edge of the span, he would have seen at least one bleak corpse lying on the rock strewn bank of the creek below. There were no lifeless bodies but, more importantly, there also seemed to be no ravenous undead either.

  Neil wondered if, perhaps, it had been a day or more before the rampage reached them. Danny and Jules had told all of them that they were at a cabin near Seward, which sat quite a ways south of their present location, so maybe the “caveman” they had encountered had wandered north, spreading his pestilence. Maybe these folks had been pinched between two spreading pockets of bad news. He doubted he would ever know.

  Ahead of them was a tunnel that punched a hole of a little more than a football field’s length through the mountain, allowing the road to continue to the much more substantial tunnel connecting to Whittier. Despite its shorter distance, the tunnel ahead was still very dark and the snow falling all around the opening seemed intent upon further obscuring any perspective deeper into the darkness.

  Peering into the gloom, barely able to discern the most rudimentary shapes of abandoned vehicles, Neil began, once again, to doubt their greater plan. If this tunnel was as murky as it appeared, how dark would the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel be given its daunting length of over a mile? Would their flashlights do anything at all? If any zekes had gotten in, would he and the others be able to respond and protect one another? The answers to his questions were as shrouded in doubt as was their ultimate destination.

  Like a curious eye, the light at the far end of the tunnel stared back at them, beckoning them on their way. And with all the doubt and the fear percolating in their veins, the three took their first tenuous steps into the passageway. Once inside, they immediately noticed the air, while still very cool and slightly damp, was much more calm than outside on the road. Amplified slightly by the walls, their footsteps echoed all around them.

  His mouth as dry as the Sahara, Neil was finding it difficult to swallow. It seemed as if his eyes and nose had stolen all the moisture to be had, as both sense organs pooled and spilled fluid ceaselessly. With their flashlights lit, they could see fairly well ahead and around them, which helped immensely in curbing their anxiety. As they neared the end of the tunnel, the light coming in from the exit helped to further ease their fears, though the wind and the weather once again increased their wrath.

  Jerry wondered aloud, “Where the hell are all of them?”

  Emma asked with a sarcastic tone in her voice, “You feelin’ lonely all of a sudden?”

  “No, but, I mean, don’t you wonder about that? We haven’t been able to take three steps without runnin’ into them and now they’re nowhere to be seen. Where are they?”

  “We can only see so far in front of us because of the turn in the road,” Neil suggested soberly. “Careful for what you wish for, my friend. Ya never know what’s on the other side of the bend.”

  Again with her wit, Emma spat, “Very philosophical, Neil. You thinkin’ about puttin’ on a toga and spendin’ too much alone time with young boys?”

  “Emma!” Neil exclaimed.

  “Just sayin’, is all. Those Greek philosophers had a reputation for a few things.”

  “Well stop!”

  “Touchy, touchy. I musta’ hit a nerve or something.”

  The humor in his voice returning though with a touch of melancholy, Neil said, “I’m in mourning, remember? Can you cut me a little slack?”

  Emma shot a knowing and equally mournful smile in Neil’s direction. “You win.”

  Jerry said, “Finally! I thought maybe it was gonna get ugly.”

  “It may still,” warned Neil, pointing down the road in front of them. There on the highway were three staggering, stumbling ghouls slowly making their way toward Emma, Jerry, and Neil.

  Neil was surprised by the rush of uncontrolled rage in his brain. He didn’t hear Jerry ask what they should do. Instead, Neil had already dropped his heavy backpack and shotgun on the road and was running toward the trio with his aluminum bat poised and ready to swing.

  Surprised by Neil’s sudden surge forward, Emma and Jerry were both motionless and speechless. Neil was moving so forcefully, there was no hope that either of them could possibly catch up with him. Jerry, instead, spotted another truck to his right and elected to climb into its open bed for a better vantage over Neil’s shoulder. Emma released the safety on the military firearm in her hands and walked confidently behind and to the left of her berserking friend who was even then converging on his targets.

  Neil plowed into them with all the fury of a tempest, striking all three at once. The bat hit the lone female zeke, pulverizing her jaw and spinning her head around so that it was facing the opposite direction of her body. She tripped and fell to her knees, unable to stand on her own anymore. Neil laid the other two onto the ground by the driving force behind his shoulders, much the same way that a running back might cut through a line of tacklers on the gridiron.

  Spinning on his heels, Neil brought the bat down so hard onto one of the supine monster’s skulls that it produced a ringing peal as it struck the pavement also. Ignoring the resulting vibrating buzz in his hands, Neil arced the bat down onto the remaining creature’s head with a less noisy but equally damaging thud.

  The female creature, her head still twisted around awkwardly, was still on her knees, her tenuous balance lost due to her offset perspective. She padded the ground in front of her uselessly like a stunned animal while her wrong-facing head sagged and bobbed on her broken neck.

  Neil, apparently unaffected by the horrible display, nudged the thing onto her side and finished her off with another violent swing. He wiped the crusty gore from his aluminum weapon onto the dirty rags wrapped around the dispatched zeke that were once a colorful, thigh length cardigan sweater.

  His chest heaving with both exertion and emotion, Neil turned to see Emma and Jerry pointing excitedly beyond him. He wiped the sweat from his brow and turned slowly to see another pack of abominations appearing through the curtain of snow still raging around them. He counted at least eight, but there were multiple ranks so he wasn’t certain how many there actually were approaching him.

  Jerry wasn’t willing to wait. He sighted the first head moving languidly forward through his scope and pulled the trigger without hesitating. He didn’t wait to see if the bullet had found its mark, choosing instead to trust his aim and chamber another round.

  Emma fanned out further to the left, nearing the natural looking rock formations forming the border along the mountain side of the road. She wanted to get a better angle from which to shoot around Neil. She was ready to shoot, but Neil was still in the line of fire. She thought to herself, Fucking move! I can’t get a shot!

  Neil was, however, already going to work with the automatic pistol taken from a dead police officer some time ago. He fired three quick shots, bringing down two of the oncoming wretches, though one was able to regain his footing and start forward again. The recoil from the powerful handgun rekindled the pulsing vibrations in Neil’s hand that were just beginning to fade. It wasn’t a comfortable sensation, but it was a comforting sense of power to have the loud pistol continue to bark and growl. Regardless of the pistol’s capable fury, feeling pressured as they continued to close on where he was standing, Neil began to give ground, which is what Emma needed him to do.

  Emma positioned her feet the way Dr. Caldwell had instructed her and then began to pull the trigger on the M4. That firearm
’s snarl was much more metallic and industrial sounding than Jerry’s hunting rifle. It was an instrument of war and produced music commensurate with its role.

  Flinching slightly and wincing her eyes with each pull of the trigger, Emma’s initial few bursts were rushed and uncontrolled, the bullets missing their targets as much as hitting.

  It occurred to her that she was holding her breath and tensing up in exactly the manner about which Dr. Caldwell had warned her. Hearing his voice and his admonishments, she let out her breath slowly, reset her firing stance, and then started again. The bucking rifle created a rhythmic beat against her shoulder that helped her to concentrate. With more control, her shooting became more accurate and more conservative. She was using fewer bullets but bringing down more targets. She allowed herself to drift into a mental zone not unlike that to which she would wander when she did transcription at Providence Hospital before the world had come to an end. She had found her groove.

  Soon, the roadway began to fill with motionless carrion remains. Neil backed away until he was next to the truck in which Jerry was standing. Neil had stopped discharging his pistol as the distance between him and the thinning herd in front of him continued to grow. Jerry reloaded his rifle at least twice while Emma continued to pound shells at the beasts. The effort and time she expended in reloading her rifle was much quicker so she was able to keep up a more consistent rate of fire.

  Neil took that time to return to his backpack and retrieve it and, more importantly, his trusty shotgun. By the time he walked back up to Jerry’s position, the shooting had ceased. It was all over, at least for the moment.

  32.

  Standing amidst the carnage they had wrought, Emma, Jerry, and Neil took a moment to survey their surroundings. The tunnel behind them seemed like a portal to some other place...some other time. The other side was so much quieter and peaceful. There wasn’t a coinciding pile of bodies starting to collect miniature snowdrifts in the twisted angles formed by lifeless limbs and torsos. There wasn’t the stubborn acrid aroma of spent gunpowder lingering despite the wind and weather.