Zombie Waltz (Book 1)

by Lynn Main

  This time, he put the scope to his eye. Chris had forgotten the expense his dad had paid for this scope. The lengths he went to get it. ‘It was declared the best deep woods scope on the market’ he bragged to Chris the first time he looked through it. He said it had advanced imaging optics or something like that for low light situations. Chris quickly lined the scope up between Becca’s eyes -the formerly brown eyes- and fired.

  He wanted to jump on the bike and push it straight out through the kitchen but he knew that would be a mistake. As the tears freely flowed, Chris sat on the floor of the garage and released the empty magazine from the Remington’s stock. He pulled over Brad’s backpack and pulled out the first box of bullets his hand found. He carefully and methodically reloaded the magazine until it was full and then pulled the bolt back. The casing that took Chris’s sister down flew free and landed on the concrete floor of the garage, making a clinking noise. Chris wondered why he hadn’t heard any of the other casings hit the floor.

  He slid the magazine in place until it locked and then pushed the bolt forward. He pulled the bolt out again, with dry determination and loaded the next round. He clicked the safety on, slung the rifle over his shoulder, picked up the bike, and successfully secured the pack. Then he pushed the bike out the kitchen door.

  He put it on the stand and opened the kitchen door to an orange and red Florida sunset in his backyard. He took the bike around the house on the sidewalk and leaned it against the gate while he unlatched it. Once through, he jumped on and started pedaling. He hadn’t even slowed down until he rounded the curve past Bayshore Dr. and the tall hospital came into view on Tamiami.

  Chris grins but it is not the same kind he would have used yesterday, or even this morning. He is happy when he pedals up to the Emergency Entrance and sees the blue Cadillac but he does not have a big goofy smile on his face. His grin is one that may have previously been a stranger to his face; one of satisfaction. He leans the bike up against the red and white sign and starts up the drive towards the tall and somewhat intimidating building. Yesterday or this morning Chris would not have been able to do this. He doesn’t know what has changed, just that it has and now he can.

  There is a shotgun blast and shouting and then out from under the awning, the doctor lady, Faith, comes running straight at Chris. He panics, seeing the crowd of zombies chasing her. He jumps back and ducks beside the entrance sign, hoping she won’t call out for him.

  Something funny happens then. Chris sees the lead zombie stop inches behind the doctor and turn. A second later, Chris realizes it is the Dead Boy. He smiles again; his new smile. Chris pulls the rifle around and looks through the scope. The enhanced optics isn’t good enough to pick Dead Boy out from the regular zombies in the fray and he pulls the scope away. He goes to the bike unsure why. He needs to distract those zombies away from Dead Boy but has no idea how.

  He sees the lady doctor pointing her gun at the huddle of zombies surrounding him but she looks as unsure of when or who to shoot as Chris had been. Chris stands there, looking into the pack for a second, only certain without pulling it out which object is the bag of weed and then he remembers his Black Cats.

  He reaches to the bottom of the pack and after digging for a second, he has his fingers on the small dry paper tubes. He grabs out a handful and runs up the drive, veering into the parking lot. He sees a black Ford F-150 sitting about three rows away with its tailgate up and towards the entrance. Chris runs to the back of the truck, kneels and starts twisting the Black Cats together in groups of 3 and 4. He keeps stuffing them in the pipe until the opening is covered almost completely, and then climbs over the tailgate into the bed of the truck.

  Chris gingerly sets down his father’s rifle and then gets half of his body back over the tailgate and dangles down with his Bic in his hand. He strikes it and the flame holds and then he reaches it the last few inches to the closest twisted wicks. He will only need to get one lit to make them all blow…he just hopes that the bed is thick enough to shield him. He lights the wicks and jumps back as sparks fly from them. There is a huge pop, but not a bang.

  Just a scratch

  Once I get past them all and the only one in front of me is Faith, I turn. Before I do, I take a long look at her as she bounds away. I think more than say, “Go….”

  One grabs me and yanks an arm toward its mouth. It is saved by another pulling me in a different direction and two more charge in. One of the first two that caught me, pulls the side of my hand just into his mouth and slams his jaws shut. I see red and turn on them like a dog.

  I stab my hand into the man’s neck and rip his throat out. I pu sh my fingers in and the flesh is soft. Not fall apart soft but soft enough to break and I grab around the tubes of his wind pipe and whatever else is in there and yank. Black blood spews out of him and his head collapses forward and I get my other hand free.

  He is not down but I don’t have time to deal with him because another one hugs me and bites at my neck, so I head-butt him. I turn around as far as I can and another woman has my arm in her mouth but I yank it away just as she snaps her jaws and she is chewing on my sleeve. I shake frantically to get her loose but she hangs on and then there is another woman grabbing the one holding me, and I swing my head back and knock his head into the other one and they both go down.

  I am free again, except for the woman latched on my sleeve, but there is a whole circle of them around me. I look left and there is one that is hobbling on nearly destroyed legs. It looks as if something has eaten most of the meat off of both of them, between the knee and ankle. I push the woman towards him and bring my bitten hand around and crack her as hard as I can in the jaw at the same time. Another man tries the same thing on my other sleeve, but I get around him entirely. Pushing off the toppled woman, I get behind him and twist his head around. The sickening crunch is audible, even in the din.

  This goes on for quite a while. The second I put one down, a few more come and I am starting to feel more and more exhausted. The only things I can see are the zombies between me and the entrance to the hospital. No matter how my muscles burn or how bruised and bloody my hands get, I just keep swinging, grabbing, kicking and fighting like a lunatic for what seems like hours, but is probably closer to about three minutes. There comes a point when I don’t think I can keep on and I can feel my quaking legs ready to buckle. I am still bound to the blood oath of war. I can’t stop fighting them…don’t want to. But I don’t see an end to it. They are everywhere.

  I hear a loud discharge from behind me somewhere. A gun I think. I turn but am immediately distracted by two more zombies that have a hold of me. I feel disoriented. I keep pushing…fighting. I hear another explosion. It is also behind me but not like anything I had imagined an explosion to sound like. It is a loud pop and then there is a faint crackling sound.

  There is another shot right as I slam my fist into a woman’s open mouth and snap her head back. I have time while she falls to watch the man behind her fall into a heap, with a perfectly round hole in his head. There is no blood coming out of it but a small amount of what must be smoke. I think sluggishly, that was gunfire from a different gun…there is someone else here!

  The remaining group had already started drifting away through the parking lot. The explosion pulled all but the ones right on top of me away. Now there are a few lying on the ground, trying to claw or bite at anything they can but there is no more real danger.

  “Les…” It is Faith. I spin and she is standing not ten paces behind me, her shotgun drooping; she never left. She watched the whole thing. She is looking at me in a way that she never has before. I smile for her but it falls away and then I take a few steps toward her. Then she does the oddest thing. She takes a step away from me. She lifts the shotgun. I freeze solid from sheer horror. When I can break them loose, I throw my hands up and ask. “What are you doing?”

  She shakes her head like a person coming out of a trance then asks, “How…bad is it?”

  I look at my han
d, “Really…just a scratch.” I say chancing another step towards her. The shotgun drops to her side and she takes a step towards me and I walk to her with the last of my useful energy.

  Chapter 7: Rifleman Empty

  “It’s empty” Faith says laughing, indicating the shotgun when she breaks the embrace.

  “I wasn’t worried for a second.”

  “That was too close, Les. They were everywhere in those operating rooms and in the stairwells…I…I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I am fine, really.”

  “Hi…um…doctor, Dead Boy.” Anothe r voice joins in from behind Faith. I look around her and there is the blond kid from the mortuary standing right in the middle of the driveway. Faith turns to look with me. Then she smiles and takes a step towards him.

  “Chris! Isn’t it? How did you get here?” I ask.

  “I had to leave that place. The same as you did , I guess. I couldn’t be there any more after what he did.” The kid responds, looking at his feet.

  “What Mr. Petrova did? You mean shooting Levi?” I ask. “I thought maybe you had to shoot Levi to get the keys to the doors from him.”

  “I didn’t shoot Levi, Chris.”

  “But what did he do?” Faith asks.

  “Oh…no I mean what he did to Nick.” He answers.

  “What did he do?” Faith demands, her smile melting into a stern scowl.

  “Beat him up pretty bad. I thought h e was going to kill him; still may, I guess.” Chris says with a dry cool expression. There is something different about his face. “He thinks Nick was in on the whole thing. He said Nick was working with you. Was he?”

  “I guess.” I say, “But he didn’t do anything wrong. It isn’t like that man’s rules actually apply, except for the fact that he has the power and the will to enforce them.”

  “Thanks for helping us, Chris.” Faith says, smiling again meekly and then turning away from the would-be hero.

  “We are hea ding into the basements for medicine.” I say. “We could use some backup.” Chris nods to me and then walks to us. Faith turns back to him and then as if overcome, jumps at him and squeezes him tightly.

  “Thank you” she whispers again.

  Going down

  Walking through the darkened parking garage, Chris pulls out his rifle and uses the scope. “You can see through that thing?” I ask.

  “It was my dad’s. It is a good scope.” He pans left and then right and takes the gun away from his eye. “Look’s clear.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s over there.” Faith says.

  We walk over to a chain-link gate mounted to the wall. Several corpses cling to the fence. Others are just lying in a festive pile on the stairs. There is a padlock on the gate. Faith has keys that she pulled out of several of the lockers. There are several different sets and in this much gloom, it is hard to see how she can tell the difference between one key or another. I become hopeful every time she tries a key in the large lock on the chain. But again and again, the key will not open the lock.

  I am trying to be quiet and patient. Faith fumbles with keys for several minutes while I sit, a silent vigil over her. Chris pulls his gun up and looks through the scope over and over again. I wonder silently how the worried looking kid from the mortuary got all the way out here by himself; Chris has changed. She finally throws the last bunch of keys at the gate and pulls the shotgun up and sits the end of the barrel against the lock.

  I scream, “Faith, no wait!” but she pulls the trigger. The hammer just clicks against the already blasted cap.

  “I used my last shell on that crowd. I’m out. Remember?” Faith says, smiling ruefully.

  “There has to be another way down there…” I start to say. “I can open it.” Chris says from behind me. I turn around and his rifle is pointed at the padlock. I take a step away, pulling Faith with me by the arm.

  Chris takes a step back as well and then kneels down on one knee. He sits perfectly still for a long time then just as I am going to ask if he is okay, he fires. I jump and Faith squeezes on my hand. We all three walk up to the gate together but for a moment Chris has his rifle stuck through the chain-link. He takes it out and looks at us with that changed look of his, “All clear.”

  There is a perfect hole bored through the side of the lock and it hangs open from the gate latch. Chris takes the barrel of his rifle and knocks it away and then I reach up and open the latch. The gate falls open and several bodies spill out.

  A thin elderly and almost shrunken looking lady is at the back of the pile. She looks as if she has been flattened. Her face is swollen from the rot and her skin discolored on her head and neck but the rest of her looks black and smashed like an animal that has been ran over on the highway.

  I think she was being led up to the fence, which had been locked only moments before she arrived with her caretakers. All that is obvious about her to me is that she was most likely crushed against the fence and under the feet of the rest of the people that were trying to get away from something down here. I step over several of the bodies.

  Faith and Chris follow me down. There are bodies strewn everywhere. There are more bodies in this single section of stairway than probably out in the pile in front of the Cadillac. It is impossible to not stand on the dead. I step on a man’s head and the loose skin on his cheek tears and I slip. I go flying down to the next level and land face first in another pile of bodies.

  I scramble to get up. Faith and Chris both move quickly as possible over the pile of bodies to get to me but their progress is slow. I try to push myself up but keep slipping and start coughing and gagging when something wet and terrible tasting gets in my mouth.

  “Are you okay?” Faith says when she finally arrives and reaches down, grabbing my shoulder and starts pulling me up with both hands under my armpits. It stinks much worse down in this confined space. I have smelled so much human death in the last few days that it alone with fresh air won’t make me very queasy. However, I am literally praying we get back to some clear passages soon.

  We descend to the second subbasement as quickly as we can. Slipping and sliding on bodies the whole way down.

  When we get to the metal door with the small glass windows in it, there is another large pile of bodies in front of it. It seems to me that they blockaded themselves in here to avoid the zombies, but someone must have been bitten and turned because they didn’t avoid anything. All of them are dead; all of them are piled in a mass grave, mixed in each other’s blood and entrails. I jump up on the pile of corpses and start savagely pushing them off of the door. When it is cleared enough, I try the handle but it won’t budge…locked.

  I push by Faith to a corner and vomit. My eyes are closed when I do it but I open them while wiping my mouth. There is a 7 or 8 year old girl in the corner. She is dead already. I stay leaned over her for a long time. I am staring in this little girl’s pretty face. She must have outlasted most of them down here; hiding under bodies or something. She doesn’t even look dead, only sleeping.

  I feel Faith’s hand softly stroke the back of my hair. I take the corner of my shirt and wipe the girl’s face over and over until it is pristinely clean, and no evidence of my vomit is left on her. I take her over to an emptier cleaner corner -behind where the flight of stairs ascends up to the next level- and I lie her down. I lay her hands across her chest and make a small cross with my finger on her forehead. It leaves a slight red smudge but she looks like an angel, even in this stairwell of blood.

  Basement Cage

  Faith takes the keys off the belt of what used to be an orderly in a formerly white uniform. She pushes one in the lock on the door and turns it. The door pops open and more of the pile of dead in the stairwell spills into the hall. We climb out over them.

  At least there are not huge piles of bodies in front of the door . It’s not hard to see why the people locked in the stairwell went in there. Everywhere that can possibly be spattered is covered with blood. It drips from the ceiling
. The hall is long with concrete walls and ceilings the same as the floor and the older blood has turned to a pale pink, soaking into it.

  It is disgusting to walk through; hearing every step go down with a wet smack and come up with a syrupy slurp, but at least I can breathe without gagging. We walk down the hall and there is a window on the left that has wired plate glass over it with a strange caged door just beyond it. I look inside and see all kinds of medical equipment thrown into a pile on the floor. Several bodies lie motionless.

  Faith steps in front of the locked cage. The fence is not like the one in the parking garage. It is part of a proper door and the handle is made of solid steel. There is an electronic number pad next to the door and as soon as Faith is close enough she takes a small cylindrical key from her pocket, turns it in the number pad’s box and begins dialing. When she is finished there is a loud buzzing. I turn the handle on the door and the cage opens. I grin at Faith, happy we have made it.

  We all enter and then I let the heavy fenced door close behind us. We take several large black duffel bags and Faith looks around and starts grabbing everything. It seems like she is taking at least two of each item in the room, but I just keep shoving the equipment she hands me in my bag and keep my mouth shut.

  We are in and out of the basement in a few minutes and are soon running full tilt across the parking lot loaded, down with duffel bags full of what I hope are very useful medical supplies. We start to run right past the caddy but Faith stops and turns to look at it. She decides we only need one bag with us up in the lounge and after looking through all three, she moves some supplies around and then pulls one back. “Put the other two in the trunk.”