by Mike Leon
sentence.
The shapes outside have become a crowd of shambling human bodies. Flesh clings to them only in patches. Pointed skeletal fingers reach straight ahead. Empty sockets appear like big black eye patches in the dark. They wear tattered, muddy gray army jackets like ones she’s seen in museums.
“Civil War reenactors...” Dominique says.
“Civil War veterans,” the stranger says, looking out the window.
“There must be a hundred of ’em. They got the whole building surrounded!”
The stranger picks up a tall lamp stand from the floor and swings it against the wall to smash the shade free of it. The light bulb inside goes out with a crunch. He slides the stand between the handles of the old double doors to bar them shut.
“You!” the attendant exclaims. “We’re taking all of this damage out of your deposit!”
The stranger pays no mind to her. He snatches Dominique’s wrist and tugs her away from the door.
“Come on!” he says. “That’s only going to hold them for about ten seconds.”
Dominique follows as he pulls her along down the hall away from the lobby. As they pass each of the old colonial windows looking out over the front lot, she can see the army of shapes growing closer and closer outside.
Wind howls into the building with the sound of shattering glass and the screams of the desk attendant now left far behind them.
Dominique looks back and sees the poor girl being pulled into a crowd of the dead. Her screams rise sharply and then end abruptly as she is lost in the moving swarm.
“Where are we going?” Dominique asks, snapping back to realty—to her only chance at getting out of here alive now.
“Other exit’s down this way,” the stranger says. “We can lose them in the woods.”
He turns a corner and halts so suddenly that she slams into his back. Dominique curses.
“What?” she says. She doesn’t need to wait for him to answer. She can see with her own eyes that the exit down the hall ahead of them is already overrun. The walking dead flood into the hallway, silent except for their boney footsteps and the dragging of their torn rags on the carpet behind them.
“Fuck,” the stranger says. “Elevator. Now.”
He turns about face and runs back around the corner for an elevator door they passed only a few yards back. Dominique idles for a second, unable to follow at his pace. Then she joins him as he punches the elevator’s call button repeatedly.
“Why are they doin’ this? How?” Dominique asks him as they wait for the elevator.
He shrugs as though she’s asking him if the galaxy is round or why so many things taste like chicken. “Black magic, forbidden knowledge,” he replies. “The usual bullshit.”
The elevator doors slide open on the face of a confused looking gentleman wearing a maroon bathrobe. The stranger shoves him into the back of the elevator as he steps aboard. Dominique takes one last glance back down the hallway before she steps through the doors and sees something she almost doesn’t believe, even in the midst of this madness.
The skeletal horde advances slowly down the hallway from the lobby with fingers outstretched and dangling jaws drooling mud from the storm. Leading the charge is a tall male figure, brown skinned and strong. He strides along smoothly where the others hobble and limp. His muscular form is clad in a dark smoking jacket and trousers. His face is hidden under a tall stove-pipe hat at first, but then he tilts his head upward to look at her and a vicious chill runs all the way down her spine. His face is painted into the milky white visage of a human skull. His mouth forms a smile beneath the cheap sunglasses that conceal his eyes.
Suddenly, the stranger pulls her into the elevator. She barely clears the doors as they shut behind her.
“What the fuck is your deal?” the stranger growls. “You got a death wish?”
“No... Ah saw... Something?” she says, not sure what to call it, if it was anything at all.
“Please help!” shrieks the man in the elevator. He sits now on the floor, his oily bald head glimmers in Dominique’s eyes under the fluorescent lights. “Someone attacked us upstairs! He bit my wife!”
“Get up,” the stranger says. “What floor?”
“Two!” the man shouts. “He was insane, like he was on PCP or something! I put his eye out with a corkscrew but he just kept coming!”
“They do that,” the stranger sighs.
“What are you talking about? Who does what?”
“Here we go again,” the stranger shakes his head. He reaches down and picks the bald man up from the floor by his collar with one hand. “There are fucking zombies here. Zombies are a thing. Deal with it.”
“Is this some kind of joke?” the bald man says.
The elevator doors slide open and the creature is already waiting on the second floor. It gazes coldly at them through one undamaged eye as it begins to move. The other eye is gone and an oozing socket remains in its stead. Its skin is pale but mostly unbroken and it wears a jacket embroidered with the fleur-de-lis of the New Orleans Saints. The stranger lunges out with his big knife and hooks the creature through the jaw. He pulls it into the elevator with very little difficulty and mashes the hold button. The bald man yelps as the stranger pushes the snarling dead thing against him.
“Zombie,” the stranger says. “See it? Got it?”
“Oh God!” the bald man cries. “Get it away from me! Help me! Help me!”
Dominique presses herself against the corner of the elevator as far from the monster’s grasping hands as she can. The stranger shoves the monster to the floor and drives his knife through its neck to saw its head free from the body.
“They can’t be killed because they’re already dead,” he says. “Severing the head or destroying the brain won’t stop them either.” He plunges the knife into the creature’s shoulder and begins cutting at the arm. Gore dribbles on the elevator floor, but does not spray from the wound like it would from a living thing. It has no blood pressure. Its blood doesn’t pump.
The writhing creature smears more and more gore around the bottom of the elevator as the stranger carves its arms away. He leaves the legs, though even with them attached, the monster is still not able to do much more than roll around the floor aimlessly.
The stranger punches the hold button again and the doors slide open. He leans out into the hallway and looks both ways.
“Which room?” he asks the bald man.
“Two-fifteen,” the man replies.
Dominique’s stomach turns. It’s only two doors from their—the stranger’s—room. What if he goes back in there to grab his money? He’ll know for sure she took it, and there is no question in her mind now about how he would deal with her. She imagines the tip of that big black knife sticking through her throat. She chokes for air as her life’s blood runs into her lungs.
“Come on,” the stranger says. He steps off the elevator and into the hallway ahead of them. The bald man goes first. Dominique follows cautiously, convincing herself along the way that the stranger still does not know her secret. She’s safe from him for now.
The hallway is devoid of any movement from the living or the dead. Dominique follows the stranger down the hall to room 215, where the bald man taps gently on the door.
“Sheila, it’s me,” he whispers.
The three of them wait there for a moment as no one responds. Dominique pictures the horrors that may await them inside. Sheila may have already bled to death from some gaping throat wound. She probably lies prone on the floor in there, floating atop a lake of crimson gore.
Baldy knocks on the door again. This time, only a few seconds pass before someone turns the knob and pulls the door inward. The stranger wastes no time pushing his way into the room. Sheila makes a half effort to hold him up, but is quickly defeated.
The stranger immediately flips the light switch mounted near the door and the room goes dark, except for the glow from the little adjoining bathroom.
“Who are these people, Ronald?
” Sheila asks.
“I brought help,” the bald man says. Ronald. His name is Ronald.
The stranger takes one last peek into the hallway before he pushes the door closed behind them.
Ronald’s wife is a middle-aged woman wearing cloth pajamas with tanned skin that is spotted brown and curlers in her dark hair. She isn’t torn from jaw to chest and hosing arterial spray around the room like Dominique pictured at all. She appears slightly battered with some bruising on the face and she holds a blood-soaked washcloth up to her right forearm near the elbow.
“Let me look at that,” Dominique says, reaching for Sheila’s arm.
Sheila looks to Ronald for approval and the man nods at her to do as they say. She steps into the light of the bathroom and pulls away the washcloth to reveal a leaking crater in a pattern that was obviously made by human teeth.
“It don’t look like it hit anything important,” Dominique says. “Keep pressing the rag against it harder and the bleeding should stop.”
“Are you a doctor?” Sheila asks with innocent curiosity.
“Uh, no.” Dominique lingers, bracing herself for awkwardness. “Ah’m an exotic dancer.”
The stranger chuckles at her.
“What?” Dominique yaps back. “Ah used to be a volunteer firefighter.”
“Ronald?” Sheila asks. “Who are these people?”
“Yeah,” Dominique says, eyeing the stranger accusingly. “Who are these people?”
“I don’t know, honey,” Ronald says with a look of confusion replacing the mask of absolute terror he has worn since they