Dead, but Not for Long

by Kinney, Matthew

  The biker’s curiosity turned to nervousness as one of the creatures turned his way. Soon, it seemed that every eye was upon him as a thousand ghouls swarmed in his direction. He knew that they were pretty lousy climbers, but he wasn’t very high off the ground it would only take seconds to claw their way over each other to reach his open cab. Pulling a lever, he surged forward.

  The first few ghouls in Moose’s path disappeared beneath the giant roller, their expressions never changing as they were pulled under. They’d barely disappeared from view before more were there to take their places. Moose felt the giant piece of machinery shift slightly as it moved over the bodies, pulverizing them into a mass of red sludge. The crunching of bones was accompanied by a symphony of moans to make an unearthly sound as the biker continued to grind the dead into the cement floor.

  ~*~

  “Oh, no,” Lindsey whispered, hearing the moaning now that the biker was holding his breath. The hallway to her right sounded like it was filled with the undead. Snake shone his light that way just as Smiley let out his breath and gasped for air. The hallway was packed with the dead and when Snake moved his light around, the reason was obvious. It appeared that someone had made a last stand, leaving at least twenty corpses littering the floor between the infected and the stairs. The bodies were heaped two and three high and had held the crowd back so far, but now that the infected saw prey before them, some began to climb over the pile of bodies.

  “Get that door closed,” Snake said, trying to remain calm.

  “I can’t,” Wolf said. “Something’s stuck.”

  Lindsey and Smiley hurried over to help him. It looked like the clothing from one of the bodies had gotten stuck in the hinge somehow, preventing the door from closing.

  Snake held the light while Lindsey and the big biker began to take out the dead that were making their way toward them. While the guns made far too much noise, they had little other recourse. A couple minutes passed before Wolf finally lifted a piece of cloth triumphantly and said, “Got it!”

  The group hurried out the door, slamming it closed just before the dead began to smash their bodies against the other side.

  “That was close,” Lindsey said. The portly biker just nodded, completely winded.

  “We’ve got three more floors to go and I’m guessing the gunshots have been heard,” Snake said. “We need to hustle.”

  ~*~

  Moose was amazed at how easy it was to flatten the creatures into pan-corpses. The ones that chased him could not catch up. The others were simply rolled under, their arms still grasping and teeth still gnashing as their bodies were pressed under the weight of the roller. He laughed at their inability to reason as they continued to come, oblivious to the fate of their flattened friends. Some had fallen to the side, only partly crushed. Moose glanced down to see a man, flattened from the chest down, still clawing at the air with one arm while stuck to the floor.

  The job would have been easier if the infected weren’t moving. He had to make several passes in lawn mowing fashion, yet many of them managed to evade the crushing roller time and time again. He glanced back to see them following. Looking down at the controls, he found reverse and backed up. As soon as he did, the crowd began to grow in front of the machine so he shifted it forward again, taking out more of them.

  With about half of the mob incapacitated, Moose noticed that the floor was becoming slick. He felt a moment of panic when the barrel spun freely on the cocktail of blood, guts, and brains. He quickly switched to reverse and backed his way out. When it happened the second time, he was able to free himself again, though it took a bit longer. The third time he wasn’t so lucky.

  ~*^*~

  ~38~

  Moose’s heart sank as he felt the drums continue to spin on the gooey mixture. He helplessly watched as the remaining dead gathered around the machine. The cab was high enough off the ground that they couldn’t grab him easily, but it was open. He could foresee a grisly death if the zombies managed to climb on top of each other and drag him off the machine.

  The other bikers had successfully exited the office and closed the overhead door. Twenty or thirty of the infected had lingered outside the building, and the men dispatched them with ease. Through an upper window, one of the bikers had been watching Moose grind the ghouls into the concrete, and he noticed his friend’s current predicament.

  “We’d better do something, fast,” he said, after letting the others know what was happening.

  “Yeah, but what?” another asked. Anybody got an idea?”

  ~*~

  The threat on the fifth floor had barely been dealt with when Snake heard a loud thud and turned to find a moving corpse at his feet.

  “Did he just roll down the stairs?” Wolf asked, using a sharpened metal pole to put the creature out of its misery.

  “I forgot to mention that part,” Lindsey said. “When I was in here earlier, some of them were doing that. It caught me by surprise, but I guess they don’t always realize they have to step down stairs.”

  A couple more of the walking corpses made their way down and were quickly dispatched, but it was becoming obvious that many had stayed in the building rather than follow the others.

  “It’s hard to believe there are so many still left,” Lindsey said. “It seems like half of Lansing must have been in this building.”

  “It explains why there weren’t too many in our parking lot this morning,” Snake said. “They must have figured out there were living people in here and told their friends about it, too.”

  On the next landing, the group once again had to work to get the door closed, though this time it was just a matter of moving bodies out of the way and killing a couple of stragglers. Snake was well aware of the time that was ticking by, and when they had to wage another battle to get to the seventh floor, he was seriously starting to worry. Not only did they need to get the survivors back to the hospital, but he needed to go check on his men at the warehouse and see how they were doing.

  ~*~

  Back at the warehouse, a couple of the men ran to the back of the building, looking for some more heavy equipment.

  They radioed the others, moments later. “Get ready to open the door, the cavalry’s coming!”

  Rounding the corner was a backhoe with a fully enclosed cab. The mood among the men improved significantly when they saw it.

  “These tires should grip just fine,” the driver radioed.

  The biker who was riding on the step jumped off as the machine approached the slowly-opening doorway. The others picked off the escaping zombies then closed the door behind the backhoe.

  Spinning around quickly, one of the bikers took out a couple of strays that had taken a little longer to get to the warehouse. “Awww, sorry boys,” he said to them as he took his shots. “You missed the party.”

  As the ghouls clawed their way over each other to get to Moose, he finally moved out of the cab to climb onto the roof, stabbing at the zombies as they piled up on the machine. Their jaws were precariously close to his legs as they snapped like hungry dogs. He was relieved to see the door open and the backhoe plow toward him, pushing piles of undead, along with pulverized remains, out of the way as it went. The operator lifted the scoop over the cab of the roller and motioned for the big biker to jump in. Moose began to climb into the bucket, but quickly jumped back onto his perch, making a gesture to the operator with his wrist. The backhoe driver pushed a lever and the bucket tipped, spewing guts and body parts onto the floor. Tilting the bucket back up, he waited for his friend to get in. Slightly disgusted, but thankful at the same time, Moose jumped into the bucket, trying to find a clean spot to hold on to as his friend raised him high above the surviving mass of infected. Turning the machine around, the operator released the hoe apparatus and used it to claw at the fuel tank of the roller. After a few minutes, a hole appeared and the diesel fuel gushed to the floor. He radioed to those that were outside and the door opened.

  Once the backhoe and i
ts occupants were outside, the door was quickly shut and the undead escapees were finished off.

  “Anyone got a match?” the backhoe operator smiled. “Those tires should burn real well.”

  ~*~

  “End of the hall,” Snake said, pointing. “That’s where the survivors are holed up.”

  They closed doors as they made their way down the dark hall, having to stop and exterminate three more of the dead along the way. When they reached the large room at the end, Snake banged on the door.

  “Hey, you guys in there?” he asked.

  The survivors were ecstatic, letting out a loud cheer from inside the room. There was the sound of furniture being moved away then the door was opened to reveal a group of anxious-looking people.

  “We are so glad to see you,” one man told them, shaking Snake’s hand. “My name is Jackson. I don’t know how much longer we would have lasted up here.”

  “Snake,” the biker said, grinning. He quickly introduced the others in his rescue crew.

  “Do you have any flashlights?” Lindsey asked. “We’ve only got one with us and it’s very dark in the building.”

  “Claire’s got one,” he said, nodding toward a woman with straight, black hair.

  The woman lifted up a tiny flashlight and turned it on, surprising Lindsey when she saw the powerful beam.

  “It’s an LED flashlight,” the woman said.

  “Thank God we had it or we’d have had no way to signal for help,” Jackson said. He nodded toward a teenager standing toward the back of the group. “Dustin had it, but he got trapped in a room down the hall when we finally made it up to this floor. The room he was in had a window on the opposite side of the building from the hospital.”

  “How’d you make it to this room?” Snake asked the teen as they moved out into the hall.

  “I called Jackson on his cell phone and told them I was making a run for it and they needed to get the door open,” he said with a shrug.

  “We tried to tell him that it was a bad idea,” Claire added, “but he opened the door and started fighting his way down the hall. We grabbed anything that we could find that could be used as a weapon and came out to help him. Between all of us, we got him here in one piece.”

  “In hindsight, it was a good move, though I sure didn’t think so at the time,” Jackson said as they stepped into the stairwell. “I think we made enough noise to draw every deadhead for miles around.”

  “That’s explains why there were so many,” Lindsey said. “The building was filled with them.”

  “Just to let you know, we need to move fast,” Snake said, starting down the stairs. “The military is going to be bombing the area starting at dawn.”

  “That’s what Keith told us. We saw the jets flying past yesterday,” Jackson said, hefting a backpack onto his shoulders. “The guy in the penthouse said he put a sign on the roof for us, so I don’t imagine they’ll hit us, but still, we were kind of holding our breath.”

  Snake stopped and glanced up the stairs.

  “There’s someone else here?” Climbing four more flights of stairs was going to put a big crimp in their schedule, but he wasn’t about to let anybody die. He’d go alone if he had to.

  “We’re pretty sure he died,” Claire said, sadly. “We haven’t heard anything from him for days. Even if he is still alive, he already told us he’d never leave the building. His dad built it and I guess he’s got some sentimental attachment to it.”

  Snake debated a moment longer, but finally kept on moving down the stairs. He couldn’t justify risking the others in the group for someone who wasn’t going to join them willingly, if he was even still alive.

  “No point in climbing up there, then,” Snake said then added. “You guys will be safe at the hospital. The military promised to leave it alone.”

  “We saw the helicopter land on your roof,” Jackson asked. “It looked like they were dropping people off.”

  “They’ve been dropping off survivors and supplies,” Snake said, “but now they’re evacuating the hospital to a shelter out in the country. Some of us will be staying and you guys can figure out if you want to stay or go.”

  “So you know what’s going on out there?” Jackson asked. “We’ve had no way to get information. My satellite based system is on the sixth floor and I couldn’t get to it.”

  “You can get online with that even if the internet is out?” Snake asked as they reached the seventh floor and kept going.

  “Yes,” Jackson said. “It doesn’t use the local systems. I suppose we don’t have time to stop by the sixth floor and get it?”

  Snake hesitated as they reached the next landing. “What time is it?” he asked.

  When Jackson answered, Snake debated for a moment.

  “If we can do it fast,” Snake said. “Once the Coast Guard helicopters leave today, we won’t be getting any updates. It would be great if we could get information when we want it.”

  “I agree,” Jackson said.

  “I hope you guys don’t mind riding on the back of a Harley. We didn’t bring our truck,” Snake said then turned to Wolf and Smiley. “Why don’t you two start shuttling these guys to the hospital? I’ll stay and help Jackson here to get what he needs.”

  “I’ll wait in the lobby with the rest of the group,” Lindsey said, checking her gun. “I’ve got this, just in case the infected start coming back.”

  Snake nodded. “If you run into trouble, yell and we’ll get down there as fast as we can.”

  “We could just walk,” Dustin said. “It’s not that far.

  “It’s not far,” Snake said, “but you’d have to walk past the park and it’s not lit. I wouldn’t advise it.”

  The two bikers and Lindsey began the trek down the stairs with twenty survivors in tow. When they reached the lobby, Wolf and Smiley checked to make sure the parking lot was clear. Once they deemed it safe, Wolf said, “We’ll be taking you over two at a time.”

  He pointed to two of them. “You two are going with us. We’ll be back for the rest of you. Decide who goes next before we get back.”

  He got on his motorcycle and a woman climbed on behind him. Dustin sat behind Smiley.

  “Hang on,” Wolf said. “The dead will try to grab for us, but I can avoid them easily enough. Just don’t panic and throw us off balance.”

  He started the motorcycle with a loud roar and Smiley did the same. The two bikers shot out of the parking lot, knowing they had little time to transfer all twenty survivors to the hospital before sunrise.

  ~*~

  Snake and Jackson started down the sixth floor hallway, taking out the dead along the way and closing doors. When the floor was secure, Jackson unlocked one of the doors and they stepped inside. Snake checked the room quickly but there was nobody, living or dead, inside. As Jackson hurried to get his equipment, Snake took a call from one of the men at the warehouse.

  “We’ve got them trapped inside,” the voice said over the radio. “There's a bunch of tires inside and we're trying to get them lit, hoping they'll help torch the building, but we can't seem to get them burning. Should we just leave it? Maybe they’ll hit the building with bombs.”

  “Did you throw some gas on it?” Snake asked.

  “Sure did,” the biker answered. “We soaked the place in diesel fuel, but when we dropped a lit rag in there, nothing happened. Just went out.”

  "Guys! Gas and diesel ain't the same thing. Anyone ever hear of a glow plug?" Snake asked sarcastically. "Diesel has to be heated up pretty good to ignite. Throw some gas on it. That should get the diesel burning."

  ~*~

  At the warehouse, the dead were beginning to pound on the metal doors which were starting to visibly bow.

  “Hey! Someone needs to siphon some gas out of a couple of these cars,” the biker with the radio yelled, pointing to the parking lot. “Now!”

  “I saw a garden hose in back,” someone said. “Buckets, too.”

  Within minutes, they had two fiv
e-gallon buckets full of gasoline and were lifting them to the window. The zombies below ignored the shower and continued to press against the metal door. This time, the fuel ignited. Within minutes, the floor, the tires, and the horde of undead were all aflame. The men retreated to a safe distance to watch the thick black smoke billow from the roof.

  “I just hope they all burn before the building collapses,” one of the men said. “I’d hate to see a bunch of zombies running around in flames, spreading fire as they go. Guess we should stick around a bit and make sure?”

  Moose imagined his friend’s scenario of a sea of burning zombies coming after them. “I was kind of hoping a roof collapse would crush most of them, or at least the ones whose brains weren’t baked.”

  The other biker stared at the building. “I guess we’d better stick around to see who’s right. For once, I hope it’s you.”

  One of the others listened as the two men pondered the fate of the zombies.

  “I’m thinking you’re both gonna be right,” he said. “We can plan on some of them getting out alive, or at least moving. We’d better surround the building and wait. Anyone see a swarm of those things coming out, yell for backup.”

  The men dispersed around the building, watched, and waited.

  “You know, if someone would just run and get some marshmallows, we could follow a couple of the burning ones around,” one of the men said, but the biker next to him silenced him with a look.

  “Hey, man, I was just kidding.”

  “I know,” the other biker said, “but you’re making me hungry.”

  ~*~

  Jackson quickly packed up two cases, nodding toward a nearby table. “I’ve got my laptop but there’s another good one there if you want to bring it.”