by catt dahman
“Or we can tie a knife onto the ends,” Juan said.
“Yep, that may be easier to slide in,” Julia agreed.
“That’s sick; are you raiders, too?” Karen sat, her jaw hanging open with disbelief.
“We’re the good guys,” Conner promised, “we just fight back really hard and don’t like these games.”
“Would you rather just hold hands with the zeds and pretend they won’t attack you? You really want to go out on your knees and not fight back as hard as you can?” Johnny asked.
“Not me,” Alex said.
“No,” Karen finally admitted.
Julia and Johnny both grinned as Julia showed them the small snub-nosed revolver she had stashed in her pack. “Worth the weight I bitched about.”
Conner directed them that when Crystal opened the door, he and Julia and Josh would step outside the door to look around with flashlights while the rest kicked the door, breaking it. Alex was ready to sharpen spikes.
“Oh that’s nasty,” Josh said as they stepped out the door, but no one knew if he were referring to the vile scent or to the scene before them.
A female zed, in tattered jeans and no blouse or bra, sat on the floor with her hands buried in the rotting, mushy corpse of a man, his flesh, and fat a thick, viscous liquid that pooled beneath him and her. His face and legs were already bare of meat, his arms skeletal.
The woman sat in her own feces, hardly pausing her feeding to look up at them. Her face was covered by rotting soup and maggots, which dripped and squirmed down to the dead man.A body, more bones than flesh, shuddered and moaned close to the wall. Conner place kicked the woman’s head as hard as he could, and it cracked sideways and then fell off of her neck with a thud.
Josh leaned over and vomited while Julia and Johnny stomped both her head and the head of the thing against the wall, which was hardly moving. Conner stomped the dead man’s skull several times, until it smashed inwards, just in case it decided to get up again.
Karen, Mark, Tim, and Crystal had stopped to puke now.
“How can those things digest food and shit it out?” Josh asked, causing them to all vomit again.
“How can they exist at all?” Johnny countered. “Maybe Hannah would have an idea, but I don’t know.”
Johnny came back to hand over her jar of Vicks Vapor-Rub that she carried in a pocket, “Put some under your nose.” She pulled out her bandana and gave it to Crystal. Julia, Conner, Juan, and Alex shared their bandanas, too.
“How do you stand it?” Crystal asked, gagging as she tied the bandana. “I have never smelled anything so horrible in my life, and I have been with some nasty, stinky men in some nasty, stinking alleys.”
“We can’t really…it’s bad; you never get used to it, but you learn to survive it little by little,” Johnny told them. “Use the Vicks as you need it and the bandanas, and try to breathe through your mouth, not your nose.”
“I think we’ve even smelled worse.” Julia pointed out, earning looks of shock and disbelief.
Alex and Juan held up the pieces of boards they had gotten from the door, handing them around. The rest found boards to arm themselves, testing the poking motions for themselves. Crystal went a little greener as she imagined poking one of the things in the eyeball. Before, they had used bats and axes; this was barbaric.
“Keep quiet; stay in the middle of us; don’t look very hard at the bodies in the next area; keep alert.” Conner realized that he sounded a lot like Len.
It was unnerving to be leading civilians like he would a squad. He felt helpless in some ways, scared of someone under his watch being hurt or killed, and proud of them when they did a good job, and pleased that he was trusted to lead them. He had never really stopped to think about how much they all depended on Len’s decisions and leadership; he saw a whole new side to this.
He noticed that everyone waited for him to announce who would lead off into the corridor. “Johnny and I will be on point. Julia, Josh, and Crystal, cover the rear. Juan, don’t screw up those ribs, but hang close to point with Alex; I think we’ll need you.”
Johnny had gotten used to being accepted and depended on for her hard work, strength, and no-nonsense attitude, but she still felt a wave of pure pride that she was trusted and valued enough to lead with a military-trained man such as Conner.
The first time they found a choice in direction, they went left, ending up at a dead end, with rotting boxes that were wet with fungus and mold and stored from ceiling to floor amid a set of old metal chairs.
Tim tried part of the chair legs, but they were flimsy, light, and rusted. “Old library books, magazines, junk.” He kicked at boxes of magazines from years back. Another box held plastic lids from bowls and another held paper towel spools. There was no sense in the mess of boxes that had been saved.
Johnny stared at old jars in a box, the lids beginning to rust. She wondered why anyone would have saved all the trash. It would take plenty of work to move all the trash out if they needed this space.
Backtracking, Julia made a mark on the wall so that they wouldn’t go back that way again. Conner and Johnny jumped aggressively at a zed blocking their way, Conner kicking it in the knees and toppling it, so Johnny could stab it.
On her first stab, she shoved the stick through its filthy mouth, not pinning it, but being pulled along as she refused to let go. Johnny went sprawling as two more walking dead zombies shambled out from an open doorway, leading to a storage area.
Juan ran forward to kick at the drooling zombie that Johnny kept hold of like a fish caught on her line. At least this way, its mouth and teeth were at a safe distance from her.
Conner shoved the point of his stick through an eye, roaring as he did it and pushing it back until its body hit a mold-covered wall behind it. He put his weight into it and felt the wood sink into the eye socket, popping the milky socket open with a little plinking noise as fluid washed its dirty cheek. He kept at it until the end of the stick hit the brain so that he could jiggle the stick and could move it around until the thing stopped wiggling and moaning. He took out all his fury on the zed.
Behind him, Alex poked at a large zombie, managing to dodge its snapping teeth as Tim rushed forward. Tim quickly grabbed it around the neck from behind to pull it away from Alex; Crystal got in close and scrambled to get her stick positioned right.
All four ended up on the floor, rolling around as the obese creature dragged them down with him. Arms and legs flew.
Before Conner, Johnny, and Juan could help, they, and Mark, Karen, and Julia were facing another half dozen. “Get to stomping and kicking,” Conner yelled as he kicked the knees out from under the first one. When it fell, they all kicked angrily and used their boots to smash at the zed’s skull.
Johnny did the same as Conner who took out a second one, allowing the rest to attack them with their feet and poke as they got targets.
Alex, Tim, Josh, and Crystal began helping them, and with a final growl, Conner snapped the last zombie’s head to the side, breaking its neck. When it fell, he watched as the others destroyed its head.
“Way to go,” Julia cheered, “hot damn, we got us some zed ass kicked.”
“With sticks and boots.” Johnny laughed, hugging Alex.
They heard nothing so they took a few minutes to rest. The extreme physical exertion and adrenaline rushes tired them out quickly.
Conner, after checking on each of the team, shared some concerns with Julia, and she listened and then nodded, going outside to the storage area where the zombies had come from.
Conner took in several deep breaths, trying to come to terms with the position he and the rest were in. He looked at Julia with questioning eyes, and she shook her head negatively.
“Wonder why they were in there?” Conner asked.
“Want me to check it?” Johnny asked.
“We have it.” Conner motioned Tim to go with him, shooting Johnny a look with his eyes. Juan caught Julia’s expression, and moving to the wal
l, he leaned against it with his back, rubbing absently at his sore rib cage. Johnny checked bandanas and offered more Vicks.
The storage room door slammed shut behind Tim and Conner.A gunshot sounded loud in the storage room before they heard a thud. Karen and Mark, Crystal, and Josh looked surprised, staring at the closed doors.
“What?” Karen moved towards the door.
Johnny held a hand up, halting her.
Julia said, “He’s bit…Tim is bitten on the arm…very badly.”
Conner walked out, closing the door again.
Karen slid to her knees, crying, “Why? Why? How could you?”
“He was infected and already beginning to run a fever and discolor; he would have changed…with his faster heart rate from fighting…within minutes; he was infected.”
“You could have told us,” Mark said.
“I could have, but why drag it out, and have you and him suffer? Tim never knew a thing. I hit him and shot; it was over in seconds. Would you want him to stand here, talking and getting sicker…begging…hoping, and then either attacking or having me shoot him as he begged?”
“It’s better when it’s faster,” Julia said.
“I’m sorry. It sucks; it’s never any easier, either, but we have to keep moving, and I can’t risk anyone infecting the rest of us or suffering one second longer than he has to.”
Conner didn’t say another word, turning his back and motioning for Johnny to again take point. He knew how Len felt, and it was a horrible thing, but he had accepted the responsibility, and he would honor it as best he could.
Mark pulled Karen to her feet as they moved down the hallway again, kicking aside random pieces of trash.
The next section offered three closed doors. In the first room, they found more boxes of old, musty books; large worn rugs rolled up and leaning precariously; several broken, chipped toilets; bean bag chairs of every color by the score moldering on the floor; and piles of old clothing stacked to the ceiling. Plastic milk cartons filled several boxes in a corner. Behind the stacks of boxes of trash were closed doors that they couldn’t get to, even if they wanted.
The basement of this dorm had to be enormous.
“Dude was a serious hoarder.” Alex kicked at a pile of clothing, jumping back when he uncovered a squashed cat carcass that was mostly bone and flattened fur. “Jeez…it’s a dead cat,” he said and then shuddered.
“Yuk, poor cat,” Julia said.
There was more tossed furniture and boxes in the next storage room, as well as stacks of sneakers and clothing and squares of thick rubber. Conner looked at this, head cocked. What tickled at his mind?
Juan tossed a baseball at the wall, “Can we throw balls at them?” He chuckled, “Whole boxes of old balls.”
Johnny pushed past Juan with a yelp, “Where there are balls…”
“There are bases.” Conner realized what the squares were now.
They began ripping tape off of the boxes to dig inside and look in each.
Julia vaulted up onto the old furniture to rip into the trash, “Hold my legs,” she demanded as Conner held her while she leaned far down into the other side of the pile, finding what she wanted. Laboriously, she handed one bat back at a time until they had a pile; they cheered as each one was handed back.
“Now we’re cookin.’ ” Alex stood in a batter stance while Johnny tested swinging two at a time. The aluminum bats were solid and felt great as she swung them at a mock target. The others experimented with swinging them, too.
Conner noted how the team members were all smiles now that they had something better to work with, and it had been sheer luck to find the bats.
In the next room, they found four zeds: a woman, two children, and a man, all with ripped throats and fingers missing, arms swollen with pus, bloodied, and torn open.
Horrifying with their dirty mouths and starving, filmed-over eyes, the children hissed as they reached for prey. The children were the most bloodily battered.
Makeshift beds had been made with clothing; tossed sticks, canteens, flashlights, and other trash were tossed all around like a campground of cast off supplies.
A fifth walking dead, a teen girl, was slightly apart from the others, with a blackened, filthy bandage on one arm, a bloody mouth, and a bloody shirt from where it had been bitten. It had a broken-open head that had leaked a little, but the wound didn’t seem deep; its fingers and arms were shattered, hanging crookedly.
With their new weapons, these were put down quickly, albeit sadly as three were young. It was always a nightmare to deal with children: sickening when it was a very small child or a baby.
“I knew them,” Mark said, “a nice family lived here with us: lived here and were members… They didn’t want to go with brother Pope.”
“That’s sad,” Karen said, “I knew them, too, had seen them around, and spoken to the mother.”
“And they came in here to sleep…had weapons…closed the door away from the zeds, but the girl was infected and turned.” Crystal guessed the story. “She must have attacked her family after she turned, maybe when they were asleep.”
“And they weren’t as violent because she was family,” Alex said, thinking. “But why are they down here?”
“Would those nuts have sent an entire family with kids down here for their game?” Julia asked. “That’s really sick, if they did.”
“I suddenly want to see Julia gut them all,” Josh said, furiously. “I’ll even help.”
“They are sick enough, the bastards; they sent us down here with no weapons,” Johnny said.
“We have weapons, now.”
“We better keep moving,” Juan suggested.
Ahead, they heard water. A large metal grate was set into concrete, blocking the exit of a tunnel. From there, they could see the little river that flowed along the bluffs and big boulders, but as hard as they tried, it was impossible to get through the metal grate.
Juan and Conner both kicked at the grate a few times to test it, but there was no way it would open.
“Back track and move,” Conner said, resigning the idea of that as an escape route. It was frustrating to feel fresh air, with escape so close but unattainable.
In one of the rooms they searched, they found molded mattresses stacked, and in another, they found old VHS tapes, with suggestive titles, which several of them smashed with their boots as Conner told Mark and Karen about the child porn that had been found in Norman Pope’s bedroom. ‘Everything would have to be burned once they got out of this and took over the compound,’ Conner thought to himself.
Juan crossed himself. “I hope God sends him to hell for that.”
“I’d be glad to help him on his way to hell,” Julia said.
Julia noted a mark on the wall. “Okay, We’ve been here, so turn right this time.” She didn’t add that they had wandered in a circle. How big was this place?
In another room, they found boxes of old kitchen equipment and computer monitors and keyboard and a second door set into the far wall that they could get to and through to a dirt-floored room with shovels standing against the wall, more weapons. This, by far, was the most unusual find they had come across. Johnny almost fell as she tripped while she walked around the room.
Curious, she pointed the flashlight down to see what had tripped her. “Conner, come here; look at this.” She knew she might be wrong, but she had a cold, sinking feeling in her stomach.
They took a few minutes to scrape at the dirt, finding what had caused Johnny to trip: a clavicle that peeked from the ground.
After a little while, they had discovered several bodies, all children, buried for at least months, if not longer. The smell was almost as bad as zeds, but the idea was far worse as they saw crushed skulls; the children had been killed and buried right here, and they couldn’t help but wonder if the tapes featured these kids and maybe even their murders.
Karen cried against Mark’s shoulder, “We followed a pedophile? A child killer? What were we t
hinking?”
“You believed in him; he was a good liar, and you didn’t know. Now, you do,” Conner told her. He even sounded more like Len, and while his own words chilled him, he knew why Len spoke that way.
‘If you ever let it get to you, it will be all over’; he knew if he thought about it too long, he would start crying and screaming in frustration and anger and would find himself in a killing rage that he could never contain.
“I hope I run into him and he isn’t a zed; I would love to rip his fingernails off and cut his fingers off slowly,” Alex spat.
“We can give them a decent burial when this is all over,” Conner promised.
They went back to the hallway again: to find a way out. Juan put the light on the floor and motioned them to look at what he saw.
Johnny ran a boot over the floor where words were painted. Stage 2. “Ideas? Wonder who painted this? Normie or the raiders?”
“I can only guess that our captors are signifying that we are now going to face worse. Why would Norman have painted that? It had to be them, right?”
“You think it’s a message to us, then? Why? Is it part of their game?” Johnny kicked at the painted words. “Do they really get off on this that much?”
“Obviously, they do,” Alex said. He flashed the light around the hall, and they walked down it toward something set in the distance against a wall. “What in the hell is that?”
Several bottles of corked wine, boxes of cereal and canned fruit, along with a hand-held can opener, sat on a metal table against the wall.
“Wine?”
Conner waved them back. “Corks…maybe they injected something into the wine; don’t touch any of it.”
“Inject?”
“With a needle...like poison or a knock-out drug...anything.”
“Why?”
“That would incapacitate at least one of us, maybe more and make this more difficult or maybe just to screw with us.”
“You think like a crazy,” Johnny chuckled, “but I agree, the corks just make me think of what they could have put in there, too.”
“How would they inject canned food?” Mark asked, reaching for a can. Lifting it to read the label, he had time to glance upwards as deep thunder rumbled far above him.