Dead, but Not for Long

by Kinney, Matthew

  Lindsey chose one of the creatures that was shambling her way. She took careful aim, fixing the cross hairs on one of the dead man’s milky eyes before pulling the trigger. The zombie never even broke its stride as the arrow punched a hole through its shoulder.

  “You flinched when you pulled the trigger,” Wombat said. “Squeeze it gently, keeping your eye on the target when you do it.”

  She tried again, this time following the biker’s advice as she took her shot, never letting her gaze leave the target. She pierced the eye of the infected man and he crumpled to the ground. Knowing that she needed to save as many arrows as possible, Lindsey went to get them, trying to ignore the horrible sound as she retrieved the one from the dead man’s eye.

  “Nice shot Xena!” Snake yelled, smiling. He turned to see Helga scowling in his direction. As their eyes met, she turned and swung her crowbar full force into a slow-moving zombie’s head. The head came off the body and flew several feet across the parking lot as the body slowly teetered over. She turned toward Snake again, this time with a mischievous grin on her face.

  “Uh, you too, Helga,” he said, trying to get on what was left of her good side.

  Lindsey jumped when the rolling head came toward her, wondering if she would be next.

  “Did you see that?” she asked Wombat in a whisper.

  “Yeah, didn’t think it was possible to knock a head off like that.”

  “Maybe his neck was already broken.”

  “Maybe,” Wombat said. “I’d try not to piss her off, just in case.”

  “Too late,” Lindsey said, loading another arrow. She stepped a little farther away from her next target. She missed twice but finally planted the arrow in the middle of the zombie’s face. She hoped that it would make Helga think twice about coming after her, but she doubted it.

  Snake was a little unnerved by the competition but his attention was soon turned toward the streets where more of the infected were making their way into the parking lot. Unfortunately, they were coming from several directions. He thought it might be time to get moving, but driving the bikes through a horde of zombies wasn’t going to be easy. Might as well thin the crowd a bit, first, he thought. He readied his bat and joined in the fray.

  Lindsey was getting faster with the crossbow, and it was a good thing, because she had more targets than she could handle. Fortunately Wolf and Wombat were nearby and they took out anything that got too close. She concentrated on the ones that were near the edge of the parking lot, shooting away from the others so she wouldn’t accidentally hit one of them. It seemed that for each one she put down, there was suddenly another in its place.

  “We need to get out of here,” Snake finally said. It seemed like they had been fighting off the growing horde for hours and there was no sign of let-up. The parking lot was piling up with bodies, though some of the men had been dragging them off to the side when they had a free moment or two.

  “Load up, boys,” he yelled as Wombat locked up the back of the truck.

  Helga fell into line with the rest of the bikers and Snake jumped into the truck, starting it as even more of the dead made their way into the parking lot. He had a hard time dodging bodies on the way out and he winced as he had to go over a couple of them. He glanced in his side mirror to make sure he hadn’t lost anybody off the top of the truck.

  As they made their way to the next stop on the list, Lindsey pointed into the sky where several jets were flying by. Within a minute, explosions could be heard across town.

  “I hope that wasn’t as close as it felt,” Snake said.

  “Other side of town, from what I can tell,” Lindsey said, checking the mirror.

  ~*~

  “Keith?” Shanelle’s voice came over the phone. “I’m back in my apartment with a couple other people but what are we going to do now? We’re out of food.”

  She and a dozen of her neighbors had worked the previous afternoon to clear a path to the roof. They had gone back up in the morning, planning to spend the day up there in hopes that rescue helicopters would be by to pick them up. When Keith had heard the news about the military pulling out of the city, he had called her at once with the news. She and the others had gone back into the building, disheartened.

  “I’m going to talk to the pilots the minute they get here in the morning,” Keith told her. “If they can evacuate the hospital, there’s no reason they can’t pick up a group from your building, too. I’ll call you once I talk to them but plan on being up there early in the morning, even if you don’t hear from me. My cell reception is getting worse all the time.”

  “All right,” she said, sounding relieved. “The city looked pretty messed up from the roof. All I could see for as far as I looked was those dead things. Didn’t see a sign of a living person anywhere, not even in the windows of the other buildings.”

  “Maybe they got out,” Keith said. Still, the choppers had only brought in about sixty survivors in all, out of a city of over a hundred thousand. It made him wonder just how many living people were left in Lansing.

  “We couldn’t find any paint to put an “S” on the roof, like you said we should do, but I guess it doesn’t matter now anyway,” Shanelle said with a sigh. “Besides, there was already a red cross up there, so maybe they knew we needed medical help. One of the guys was up there earlier, waving a sheet around, and he thinks that they might have seen him.”

  Something about the statement nagged at the back of Keith’s mind as they continued to talk. When he heard jets, he went to look out a window.

  Shanelle screamed and it sounded to Keith like she had dropped her phone.

  “Shanelle?” Clouds of smoke began to fill the sky.

  “I-I’m here,” she said after picking the phone up again. “Keith, they’re bombing buildings right around us!”

  Keith closed his eyes for a moment, feeling helpless.

  “Hang on, baby, don’t panic. They’re just supposed to take out the buildings that are overrun,” Keith said. “You should be all right.”

  The nagging feeling grew stronger and he hesitated, wondering what it was that he was missing. The answer hit Keith suddenly and he felt his blood run cold.

  “Shanelle, get under a table or something,” he said, trying to remain calm. “Hurry.”

  Depending on the angle, the sign on the roof might well have looked like a red cross and who wouldn’t think that it meant that aid was needed? But Keith knew otherwise. He remembered standing on the roof earlier and seeing the red Xs on the buildings that were totally infested.

  “I’m under the table,” she said after a short pause. “Keith, you don’t think that . . .”

  She was cut off.

  “Shanelle!” Keith yelled into the phone.

  Moments later, he heard the next group of bombs hit.

  ~*^*~

  ~32~

  It took another two hours for Snake and his crew to finish getting everything they needed. They even managed to fill the empty tank in the back of the truck with diesel fuel and cover it for the ride home. The whole time, bombs were falling on the city. It was almost dusk by the time they returned but the sky was already dark with dust and debris. Several of the men were coughing as they got off their bikes.

  Snake was pleased to see that the wall appeared to be finished. He got out and approached a man in a surgical mask who was dragging a body to a growing pile of dead undead.

  “We’ve been trying to keep the parking lot clear for you, Boss,” the biker said, after pulling down his mask. “Hasn’t been easy.”

  Snake yawned and stretched his arms. “We brought something back that might help.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A gate. We’ll just need to be able to keep the area clear long enough to install it.”

  “The wall of cars helped. We just had to move a few of them so you could get back in. We can move them back when it’s time to start on the gate.”

  Moose walked over and Snake talked to him about the gat
e.

  "You know, Boss, the grout in these pilasters isn't going to be totally cured for a month. Better not hang these gates yet."

  Snake slowly turned and glared at Moose.

  "But, we should be able to hang them in a day," Moose said, backing up, "if we're careful."

  “How about tomorrow morning?” Snake asked.

  Moose thought about it and said, “I guess that’ll be okay.”

  “I’ll talk to Gunner about starting first thing in the morning,” Snake said, stifling a yawn.

  Helga looked disappointed when she got off her bike and looked around. Her eyes lit up when she saw a lone ghoul heading their way. She made quick work of it with her crowbar then looked around to see if there were any more.

  “I think I’ll go check in with Dr. Doune and see how Autumn is doing,” Lindsey said after helping to unload the truck.

  “Alright, Sweetheart,” Snake said, giving her a wink. “You have fun with Dr. Doom and I’m going to grab some grub then get some sleep. Wake me up if anything interesting happens.”

  Lindsey shot him a look and mouthed the word, “coward.”

  “You’ll need to clean those arrows and the quiver,” Wombat told Lindsey, leading the way to a corner of the room where the others were disinfecting their weapons with bleach. “You wouldn’t want to scratch yourself with an arrow that’s got infected blood on it.”

  “No, that would pretty much ruin my whole day,” Lindsey agreed. She’d wiped the blood and gore from the arrows onto the clothes of the dead but she realized that probably wasn’t enough.

  “We weren’t even sure if the bleach would kill the virus,” the biker added, “but Dr. Doune did some testing once he got his microscope and he thinks that it works.”

  When they were finished with the arrows, Wombat took the quiver over to a mop bucket full of bleach and water. From the water, he pulled something out that looked like a miniature mop, made from a wire coat hanger and a rag. He swabbed out the inside of Lindsey’s quiver as well as his own sheath and set them out to dry on some newspaper.

  “Now we have to get checked before going into quarantine,” he said.

  They walked over to one of the guards and Wombat pulled up his leather pant legs as far as he could to let the guard look for bites. When Lindsey did the same with her jeans, the guard took an extra long time to look over her legs, causing Wombat to slap him on the head.

  “Hey! I’m just doing my job,” the man said, rubbing his head.

  “Yeah, well, you’re doing it too well, Mate,” Wombat said, taking off his leather jacket and long-sleeved shirt. He turned around so that his arms and torso could be checked.

  “Um, wait a minute,” Lindsey said.

  “Don’t worry,” Wombat grinned at her. “They just need to see your arms and make sure there aren’t any rips in your shirt.”

  When they were deemed free from bites, Lindsey asked, “Can I skip quarantine if I stay in the lab?”

  “Sure, as long as Dr. Doune is there to keep an eye on you,” Wombat said, taking off the bandana he always wore when they were around the infected. His hair was almost shoulder length and would be easy to grab if he didn’t keep it tucked safely away.

  “Great,” Lindsey said, having no desire to spend a couple of hours in the ER. They’d been fairly relaxed about the rules though there was some talk of changing that since the infected infant had been brought in.

  “Good job today, by the way,” Wombat said to her. “You’re pretty good with that crossbow. You’d be a good addition to the team if you decide to stick around.”

  She gave him a smile but said, “You know, I haven’t even decided yet, but if I do, I’d love to keep helping with the supply runs if Snake will let me. It was the most excitement I’ve had in a long time.”

  Wombat laughed and squeezed her shoulder briefly before heading to the ER to find a place to sleep for a couple of hours.

  Theresa heard that the group was back and had meals brought to them, along with coffee and homemade pie. Once Snake was done eating, he made his way to a small room adjacent to the ER waiting room. It had once been a Physicians’ lounge, complete with a coffee maker, a small fridge, and a couch that looked extremely comfortable to Snake. He fell face first into it and started to drift off.

  ~*~

  “Can’t you find something for Eric to do?” Dr. Sharma asked Jack, exasperated. They stood outside of the closed door of the patient room where Cheri and her children were staying. “Cheri doesn’t want him around and he just won’t listen to me. He’s come here to her room a dozen times today alone.”

  “I’ll talk to him again,” Jack said.

  Moments later, Eric peeked around the corner then ducked away quickly when he saw them both looking his way.

  “There he is again. That’s the third time in the last twenty minutes or so. There must be something we can do to keep him busy,” Dr. Sharma said. “He has tried to sneak in, dressed as a CNA. He has tried telling me that he is there to see her on official security business. It is almost comical, except that he is hindering the poor woman’s recovery.”

  Jack sighed. “Snake said he had to stop the other bikers from throwing him out a window. I’m not sure if he was serious, but I don’t want to take that chance so I can’t have him in the Crow’s Nest or doing guard duty. I had him helping to do repairs and maintenance but he broke more things than he fixed. Let me ask around a bit more and see if anybody needs his help.”

  Dr. Sharma thanked him and opened the door to check on her patient. Jon and Marie were taking turns reading a book to their mother, who was at least making an attempt to act interested. Cheri had made some serious progress and Dr. Sharma wasn’t about to let Eric ruin it.

  ~*~

  Lindsey walked into the lab and noticed that Harold was gone, but there was a jar on one of the counters. When she stepped closer, she could see that it was a brain – Dr. Winston’s, no doubt. She turned to leave, almost bumping into Doune and Autumn who were returning from dinner. Before Lindsey could say a word, there were sounds of yet another confrontation coming from the ER.

  ~*~

  Snake had just entered a deep sleep when he was shaken awake by Mouse.

  “Boss!” the small biker whispered so loudly that he may as well have shouted. “Helga’s been bitten and she won’t go into quarantine.”

  Snake sat up and looked at his nervous friend. Rubbing his eyes, he mumbled through his fingers, “This had better be a nightmare.”

  Snake entered the ER to a scene of chaos. Dr. Martinez was trying to reason with Helga, who was not cooperating.

  “It was not one of those dead things!” Helga yelled.

  “I’m not sure I believe that,” Martinez said. “Why would some random person come up and bite you?”

  “We were fighting over the last bottle of whiskey,” Helga said. “It happens to me all the time.”

  “Right,” the doctor said.

  Helga erupted into a vulgar string of Ukrainian and Dr. Martinez was glad he didn’t understand what she had said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he told her. “Even if it seemed like a normal person to you, the man may have been bitten himself and he could have passed the virus on to you. We don’t know enough about this disease to take any risks.”

  Helga towered over the doctor, her lip curling up into a sneer. “You want me locked up? You better be able to put me there.”

  Grabbing the metal tray from one of the bed sides, Snake slowly crept behind Helga. While she was preoccupied slandering the doctor in her native tongue, Snake carefully lifted the tray above her and slammed it into her head. The tray bent around her head like a sombrero and fell to the floor. To Snake’s horror, Helga didn’t follow it to the ground. Instead, she slowly turned around and stared at him with narrowing eyes. He hadn’t seen that look since he had entered her mother in the local dog show.

  “Not nice,” Helga said, taking a step toward Snake. “You should know better. You want to hit
me, you better hit me hard enough to knock me out.”

  She pulled her arm back for a punch but stopped when she felt a sharp pain in her shoulder.

  Snake closed his eyes and braced himself for Helga’s wrath, but the punch never came.

  Standing behind her, Dr. Doune released the plunger on the syringe and then pulled it out, stepping away from the woman.

  Helga growled at the doctor and took two steps before her eyes closed and she began to sway. Dr. Martinez tried to catch her but she landed on him, pinning him to the ground.

  Snake opened his eyes in time to see Helga falling on the wide-eyed doctor. The sight reminded him of a Hindu goddess as she appeared to have four arms.

  “Somebody get her off of me!” the doctor squeaked, unable to breathe.

  Snake went to pull her off but hesitated when he saw her finger twitch. “Are . . . are you sure she’s out?” he asked Doune.

  Dr. Doune looked down and nodded. “She’s out. I gave her my own special cocktail and it’ll keep her out for a while.” His concoction was highly illegal but he doubted that anybody was going to arrest him for it.

  A couple of the bikers struggled to lift Helga off of the doctor then half-dragged her to a gurney.

  “You’ll need to strap her down,” Doune said. “I would recommend using the four point restraints. I doubt that she’ll be in a good mood when she wakes.”

  The other doctor lay on the floor for a moment, gasping for breath before he finally managed to get to his feet.

  “You know,” Snake said to Martinez, “the only respectful thing you can do after that is to marry her.”

  “Marry her?” the young doctor said, paling. He glanced over at the woman and shuddered. She wasn’t bad looking except for the unibrow, but she looked like she could bench press about a thousand pounds. “I’m, uh, married or not into women or something, just in case she asks.”

  Doune walked over to where the other bikers were finishing up with the restraints. He looked the bite mark over, taking measurements and reading them to Autumn, who jotted down notes. The skin appeared to be broken in a couple places but just barely. Doune had seen plenty of bites in his days as an ER intern. Most of them had happened during a bar fight or domestic dispute, but they had always been done in anger and had been meant to cause pain, not tear flesh. Helga’s bite appeared to be that sort of a bite.