Death Row Apocalypse

by Mackey, Darrick

  In his haste to stand, the young cameraman managed to knock Joe’s bar, which rested on the table beside him. In horrified silence, everyone watched as the bar rolled across the table and started its descent to the floor. Joe tried to reach for it in an attempt to avoid the inevitable but only managed to feel it brush his fingertips as it defied his will. In the seemingly infinite gap of time it took for the bar to fall, everyone in the dining room held their breath. The resulting clanging as the bar met with the hard surface was to the zombies a call to let them know dinner had been served. At least we’re in the right place, I thought as the irony hit me. We were about to have guests, and we were in no way ready for the unwanted company.

  Looking to the double doors, I noted quickly that they had looped handles, and so I grabbed the closest chair to me and hooked one of the chair legs through them, then bent and twisted the leg so that it would provide at least some resistance to the zombie threat.

  As I headed back to the kitchen, I spoke to the group as I passed them. “Someone get over there and prop yourself against the doors. Hurry, people,” I shouted.

  Henry was already out of his chair, heading toward the doors.

  “Not you, Henry. I need you to protect the girls,” I said, then handed him a rather large cleaver. “I know I can trust you.” I gave him a grim smile.

  “You got it, son,” he said, then turned to Lucy, then Violet. “Stay close by me, ladies, and don’t worry: I got you covered.”

  I could already hear the howling zombies approaching. Their ability to literally sprint without effort or exhaustion was a major problem. Compared to them, we might as well have been cattle. There was no way we would be able to outrun even the slowest of their horde, and I considered this while walking to the kitchen racking my mind for ideas. I entered the kitchen knowing we could not outrun the zombies, which gave me an idea of how to disable their speed and mobility. We obviously could not speed ourselves up, but there were certainly ways we could slow them down.

  I could make out the shouting from the dining area just above the horde’s howling and roaring. Joe was ordering the men of the group to stand fast and hold their position.

  “Blaine . . . Blaine. Where the fuck are you? Need some help in here!” Joe said with a hint of sarcasm.

  “B-Blaine . . . Hurry the fuck up. We can’t hold the door much longer!” he screamed.

  I stood by the folded corpse of Mike. I concentrated on listening to the noises beyond the kitchen door, but there was very little that I could detect. Initially on my arrival, I heard literally dozens of zombies pelting past the kitchen door. The noise of bare feet slapping against the tiled floor was now Withd with only the echoes of the horde attacking the dining area doors further down the diverging corridor. Grabbing Mike’s broken body, I pulled him from the gap and pushed it to the side. Then, with all the strength I could muster, I lifted the refrigerator. It wasn’t the weight of the appliance that challenged me, it was the sheer size that made the task one that even Samson would have struggled with. Nevertheless I managed to raise it off the floor and move the monstrosity enough to allow the door to open.

  At the door’s foot, several sets of fingers lay and were kept company by several forearms that for whatever reason still twitched from time to time. I opened the door slowly so as not to draw unnecessary attention to myself. Careful not to be seen, I lent through the gap and checked the corridor in both directions. Unable to determine whether it was good luck or bad, I found the corridor completely void of our zombie’s friends. As quietly as I had opened the door, I closed it once more.

  “Blaine!” several people called out.

  It was game time, and the next few minutes would prove to be almost fun, I thought, as I walked through the kitchen, picking up and carrying with me several heavy objects that I’d noticed during my first visit.

  The dining room double doors were parting now, just enough so that zombie limbs were being thrust through, searching for their lunch. The small group holding back the horde was straining against the dozens of zombie inmates and guards. It should be noted that in a maximum security prison the average guard and inmate are not insignificant in stature and likewise the applied pressure against the double doors was not insignificant either. Joe and his small cohort had wrapped several leather trouser belts around the handles, tying them together, while one of the team worked at hacking away whatever limbs were exposed through the door gap. They would not last much longer. Time was running out. Leather and steel could stretch and bend only so far before breaking.

  “Blaine, where the fu— ?” Joe yelled, then stopped midsentence once he saw what I carried.

  “Nice!” Joe said, and grinned, understanding at once what I planned on doing.

  “Ladies, make your way back through the kitchen to the door, then wait for me. Henry, can you manage this?” I passed him the heavy two-gallon bottle of cooking oil.

  Henry lifted the bottle and turned a healthy shade of red with the effort.

  “Yeah . . . I think so, son. Could ya take the cap off for me? Hands aren’t what they used to be,” he said with a hint of embarrassment, reflected in his face.

  I could see he wanted to take a more active role in our survival, and dare say he would have been a good right arm to have back in the day. Sadly, though, for the group, his input was minimal, but having said that, he’d been more reliable than some of the other guys I could mention.

  “Splash it around all over the right side of the room,” I said to Henry. “Leave enough space so we can walk around the outer edge . . . but only just enough space . . . I’m going to do the same on the left side.”

  “No problem, son. Be my pleasure,” Henry said.

  “Good man!” I patted him on the back as he turned and walked toward the double doors.

  Violet picked up a large knife and handed a cleaver to Lucy.

  “C’mon, honey, this way,” she encouraged Lucy, and they both headed for the kitchen.

  “Henry, you be careful, you hear?” she called over to him before leaving the dining room.

  We splashed the large containers of cooking oil over the entire dining room, save for the outer edges. This was left for Joe and the guys to make good their escape from the entrance. Though the zombies were ferociously fast and lethal, they were dreadfully inept when off balance or on slippery surfaces. From time to time I looked over to Henry. He seemed to be doing okay. As he progressed across the room, so his bottle became lighter, and with that he visibly became less taxed with the weight.

  The howling, growling, and thrusting of the zombies from behind the door was enough to make anyone literally run from here in the first place. Being so close to them now in such a confined area could probably cause long-term hearing damage as well, I thought. God, it was deafening. As I watched, several zombies in their free-for-all fury tried with every ounce of strength they had to make their bodies pass through a narrow gap that could only accommodate a single head, leg, or arm, but certainly not a complete body. But still they tried, unswerving, unresting, and indefatigable in their pursuit of their next meal. The pressure they applied was unrelenting. With the perpetual forces being applied from their rear, the foremost zombies were gradually being squashed like overripe tomatoes. Dark, almost black, was the color of blood and bodily fluids that now oozed steadily from under the double doors and into the dining room.

  The small group holding back the horde had slackened their attention and allowed one very mean-looking inmate to poke his head completely through the gap between the doors. His shaven head was covered with gang-style tattoos, along with a dozen or so holes from the studs that once adorned his forehead, eyebrows, nose, and ears. The three-letter word tattooed across his forehead would I’m sure make any woman proud to be his ‘Mom’ and added a degree of levity to what would normally have been a dire situation.

  The growl that came from him shocked the nearest of Joe’s small team, but not as much as the shock of pain that Stefan felt as the inmate s
ank his teeth into the cameraman’s hand. Blood poured from the bite as the inmate thrashed his head from side to side, much like a crocodile would do with its prey. From its mouth flowed a stream of saliva, bringing with it the green ooze that would eventually turn Stefan into that which he now fed. Stefan screamed in agony as almost half of his hand was ripped away, including his ring finger and pinky. He grabbed his wrist with his free hand and stared at the bloody, mangled mess that was once a hand and backed away from the doors, screaming his head off.

  “Stefffaaan!” Joe yelled. “Look out!”

  But it was too late. Stefan had backed up to, and on, the cooking oil. He slipped, crashing to the floor amongst the chairs and tables, still screaming in agony.

  The howling and groaning increased in volume yet further, if such a thing were actually possible, while the pressure on the doors was now enough to bend the steel handles. The bald inmate with the tattoos was still chewing on Stefan’s hand. His pinky partially poked out the side of the zombie’s mouth, pointing first upwards, then down as he munched on the bony digit. The combined mass of zombies was crushing the bald inmate and the left-hand side of his chest was gradually compressed. The mom-loving zombie’s chest bones flexed a few inches in-wards, whereupon his breast bone cracked in half, emitting a sound that was audible even in this festival of zombie X Factor wannabes. The left side of the zombie’s chest imploded with a crunch and a pop, forcing congealing blood to erupt from its mouth. With unswerving dedication, he didn’t even pause in his munching and continued to chew on Stefan’s bony fingers.

  As for Stefan, it was all over for him now. There was no point even trying to save his sorry behind, as the bite alone would turn him into one of these monsters in only a matter of minutes, or perhaps even less.

  “Run,” I yelled to Joe and the news guys. “Get to the kitchen.”

  Joe and the remaining two cameramen ran for the kitchen. Careful not to tread on the oil, the three of them made it to where Henry and I now waited.

  “Wait for me by the kitchen door,” I said to them. “Go!”

  All but Joe left. He stood by me, with the adjoining door open. Apparently, he too wanted to see what happened next. Sometimes it’s not enough to lay a trap and trust that it will trigger as intended. Sometimes you just gotta know firsthand. We both watched as the leather belts creaked to breaking point and the door handles bent to their extremes.

  Without turning to me, Joe spoke. “What’s going on with you?” he asked.

  “What d’you mean?” I responded, unsure what he was getting at.

  “C’mon, man. You move too fast! When you killed Mike, I barely saw you move. Then later you took out those two inmates in the kitchen. Don’t deny it, man. I seen it with my own two eyes!”

  The doors were about to burst open with the irresistible pressure that the zombie horde placed on them. The bald zombie inmate at the front had somehow managed to get his shoulders through the stretching gap, giving me a very weird mental image of a zombie birth as he tried to claw his way forward and drag himself out of the birth canal like restriction.

  “I’m just really fast,” I lied.

  That was the extent of our conversation, as the dining room doors flew apart, whereupon over fifty, maybe even seventy, zombies ran into the room, seeking living tissue on which to feed. Joe began to back through the doors while I stood my ground and watched as the vicious, unthinking killing machines flooded into the dining area making a beeline for Stefan. Within the first two yards of their charge, they hit the slick oil that coated almost every inch of the floor’s surface.

  To say they slipped on the oil would be accurate. However, that statement would be the grossest understatement of the century. Imagine now the great comedy classics of old—Laurel and Hardy, The Three Stooges just for starters; any one of those used slipping on soap or oil for comedy effect. There was now a mass of undead killing machines, totally ill-equipped in dealing with a slick surface. No matter how hard they tried, they ended up on their backsides. It took no small amount of effort to keep from laughing, though both Joe and I were grinning from ear to ear.

  The double doors swung back into place, bent and twisted, but in every way that counts they retained their functionality. No more zombies entered the dining room, and so it was now time for part two, I thought. I followed Joe through the adjoining door and back to the kitchen, where the others waited patiently.

  “Follow me, and be very quiet,” I instructed the group.

  “Where’s Stefan?” Lucy asked.

  “He’s dead. He was bitten,” Joe responded.

  “He was a nice kid. Poor boy,” Violet added.

  “Come on, we got to go. Follow me and close the door behind you,” I said, and led the way out of the kitchen.

  So far the zombies had not displayed any ability to open closed doors by manipulation of the handle. The only method they employed was one of brute force or sheer mass of numbers, so closing our exit behind us would, I hoped, keep the zombies trapped in the kitchen, ensuring that for at least the immediate future they would not be able to pursue us. We crept along the corridor, then took the first right turn, leading us to the dining room entrance. My wish was to now seal this door.

  “I need some string, a belt, or anything I can use to keep the doors closed. It doesn’t have to be strong. We just need to make sure that the zombies don’t accidentally open the doors from the inside.”

  Lucy looked up to me. “You guys, turn around.”

  I immediately guessed what she wanted to sacrifice and refrained from saying to her that she had nothing that I hadn’t seen before. Her bra would be ideal, preventing any zombie attack to our flank. Within only a few moments, I heard her speak quietly once more.

  “Here you go.”

  I turned, expecting to see her outstretched hand holding her bra. Instead, she handed me her stockings. I was glad that I never suffered from embarrassment; otherwise, that would certainly have caused me to flush good an’ crimson. While I tied together the door handles with the still-warm stockings, I motioned to Joe.

  “Yeah, what’s up?” he asked.

  “We need to get to the roof. Which way?” I asked.

  We were now in a part of the prison that his little drawing had not included, and I was hoping there would be an alternative route to the roof.

  “There’s only one way . . . Back the way we came, then take a right by the washrooms,” he said.

  “What about weapons, or even some of that riot gear I saw the guards use?” I whispered.

  “Yeah, near the stairs to the roof. The whole area is for us guards. It’s sealed from the inmates, and we have that stairway as an emergency exit. Sorry, man, but there’s shit between here and the stairs to the roof.”

  “Okay, then let’s get away from here and to the washrooms first.” I added, “I want you nearby to guide, and the other guys to watch our backs and look after the old couple and Lucy, okay?”

  Joe passed the plan on to the others, and then we started for the washrooms. We were only about halfway down this corridor when the lights began to flicker. Once, twice, three times they flickered and then stayed out. We were then placed in pitch black. I stopped immediately, causing Joe to walk straight into my back, and Lucy made a small yelp as she bumped into Joe’s back. She and Joe whispered apologies, while the two remaining cameramen, Dil and Max, whined quietly.

  Dil had worked for Channel 42 News for some fifteen years. With literally decades of broadcast engineering experience, he had been given the task of training up Max. Taking advantage of his new responsibility, Dil was not slow in ordering Max around, especially when there was manual labor or any other unsavory task to be carried out by the crew. Dil was approaching his fifties, balding, and grew his remaining hair to shoulder length for the sole purpose of using it as a wrapover in an attempt to hide his shiny dome. Now, after twenty-four hours without any hair spray, he was indeed a sight to behold. Unfortunately, he now resembled some hippie monk with a s
weaty dome.

  Max was in his early twenties, six feet four, and had long shoulder-length hair, which he tied in a pony. He loved the glamour of working for Channel 42 News. Initially taken on as an intern, he was soon offered an initial six-month contract after showing not just enthusiasm but also a willingness to carry out the jobs no one else wanted to do. For Max this was a dream job, and he used it to great effect in bedding as many of the local girls as possible. Usually taking only the promise of a tour and a personal introduction to the network news anchorman, his conquests would often pleasure him orally before even stepping one foot onto the premises. In fact, on occasion they were so excited about being invited for a “job interview” they would do him a second time straight after meeting the news channels boss—a role that Dil certainly did not mind playing, as he too would benefit on occasion and would refer to the girls as his “eager beavers.”

  “Aw, fuck no. Why me?” said Max. “I need to pee!”

  “Shit, we’re fucked,” Dil said.

  “Keep quiet. We need to wait a few minutes. See if there’s any light at all,” I advised. Though in absolute darkness, I thought I could make out some of the details around us. Like looking through fog at night, I got an impression of surfaces, and when I turned my head, the impression moved, convincing me that I could indeed see, albeit barely.

  From behind me I heard a zipper being unzipped, followed by the sound of water hitting the floor.

  “What the fuck?” I said in disbelief. “Couldn’t you wait?”

  “Told you, man. I couldn’t! I just needed to—” Max said.

  He was interrupted by the approaching roaring that now echoed throughout the corridor. There was no way to know from which direction the noise was coming, but one thing was for sure: they were coming our way.