by Mike Leon
met him in the elevator.
“How come you know so much about them things out there?” Dominique says, glaring into the stranger’s deathly black eyes. “They the reason you’re here? Or the other way around?”
“Anything’s possible,” the stranger says.
“We don’t even know your name,” Dominique says.
“I don’t know your name. Didn’t ask. Don’t care.”
“I’m Ronald Herzfeld,” Ronald offers meekly. “This is my wife Sheila. We’re staying here for Mardi Gras.”
“Dominique Delacourt,” Dominique offers, waving the fingers of one hand at them all. “Y’all know what ah do. Ah’m here cause he ordered a dancer.”
She points at the stranger and the Herzfelds both turn their gaze to him. The three of them wait for a response—anything at all. He looks annoyed.
“I thought strippers all use fake names,” the stranger says.
“Well ah use mah real name,” says Dominique. “Now what’s yours? An’ who are you?”
“I’m Sid,” he says. “I kill things. That’s all you need to know.”
“Them things what gave you all them scars up and down your arms?”
“No,” he says. “I got those from something much worse.”
“Remind me not to go into his line of work,” Ronald says.
“Okay, Sid,” Dominique says. “You got a plan to get us out of here?”
“Maybe. If I had better weapons, I could probably fight the zombies.”
“Um,” Dominique says. “All of the zombies?”
“Yes.”
Dominique wonders if her strange new friend is delusional.
“You mean like a machine gun or somethin’?” she says, incredulously.
“Nah. Not a man-portable one. These things have to be completely dismembered. That means explosives, deuces, real artillery. We’ll be lucky if we find some power tools around here.”
“There are lots of power tools in the shed by the pool,” Sheila says. She taps Dominique on the shoulder. “And Esteban’s not usually far away.”
“Sheila…” Ronald says, showcasing his annoyance with a sharp tone.
“What? We’re talking about a serious mandingo here, Ronald. I’m allowed to look.”
“How many of those mojitos did you have?”
“I’m an adult, Ronald. We talked about this.”
“The hallway is still clear,” Sid says, pressing his head against the door. “I’m going to run down to my room and grab a few things--”
“No!” Dominique squeaks, almost involuntarily.
His head lurches back to look at her, as do the others.
“I…um…” Dominique fidgets for a reason to keep him out of that room. “You can’t leave us here alone. What if those things find us?”
“I’ll be twenty feet away,” he says, turning back to the door. “Now stand here and hold this thing for me while I go.”
Dominique reluctantly grasps the door knob as he swings the door inward and creeps out into the hall. She watches in abject horror as he strides down to room 217 with his room key in one hand and his knife in the other. She worries that he will turn back the very second he opens the door, seeing that the briefcase is gone, and returning to lunge at her with all of his wrath. She quakes with fear.
“Are you gonna be okay?” Ronald asks, waiting behind her in the dark.
She is not going to be okay. She needs to escape. She needs to run now. She could do it. If the monsters haven’t raided this floor yet, then they probably aren’t upstairs. She could run and look for a closet, or if she can find an unlocked room she could hide under the bed. The stranger won’t find her there and neither will those things—not if she stays quiet.
She halts her breathing as the stranger pushes open the door to his room. He vanishes into 217. He sees, she thinks. He knows. He’s turning around right now to come finish her.
Dominique runs. She rips the door back and flies out into the hallway. She hears the whispered calls of Ronald as she dashes along the corridor as fast as her legs will carry her—away from all of them.
“Wha—Where?” Ronald rasps.
Dominique doesn’t look back. All she can feel is her heart pounding in her chest and her bare feet slapping against the floor. She passes the elevator and keeps going. She wants the stairs at the end of the hall. She just wants to reach them and be out of sight. She glances back down the hall as she lays her hand on the stairwell door. There is no sign of the stranger. She presses through the door and into the claustrophobic little staircase, fearing she will run face-first into a horde of those monsters.
The stairs are quiet and empty. Dominique marvels at her good fortune as she continues on. She cannot stop. He will be after her soon. She pounds her way up the stairs, turning on a tiny landing to look up at the doorway to the third floor corridor.
One of those horrible things is there blocking her way. This one is like the others from the woods, rotten and destroyed from a century’s decay. It stands now, little more than a skeleton with withered limbs in a loose hanging grey jacket and shredded pants circling its knees. It reaches out for her.
“Oh no!” she cries. She slaps a hand to her mouth as quickly as the words come out. No. No. Not this close. She stands there, eyes wide in terror, unable to decide what to do next. Up? Down? It doesn’t matter. Death awaits her on every floor of this place.
She turns to run from the creature and finds herself looking into the eyes of evil itself. The man with the stovepipe hat is there next to her, his skull-face smiling wide as he takes her by the arm and raises an open palm to his chin. He blows, as if to blow her a kiss, but the colored powder that leaves his hand is anything but loving. It sticks to her face and hangs in the air around her like a miasma. The skull-face fills her vision and for a moment she thinks she sees something moving in those hollow black lenses over his eyes: teeming masses of the dead, laughing and screaming and crying all in one raging cacophony.
Then she’s lost to the blackness.
III
Sid steps out of 217 and grimaces at the situation developing in front of him. Ronald runs down the hallway his direction with Sheila tagging along behind him. A swarm of the limping dead follows behind them from the stairwell at the opposite end of the hall.
“Where’s the girl?” Sid asks.
“She made a run for it,” Ronald says. “Ran right into them.”
Sid grunts. He collected his pants and boots from his room, and a little something extra.
As Ronald dashes past, Sheila looks back at the mess of creatures tailing them.
“Oh Jesus,” she shrieks. “What’s wrong with those people?”
“Sheila, we went through this,” Ronald says. “They’re zombies. The reanimated corpses of the recently deceased.”
“They don’t look that recently deceased.”
She’s right about that. The condition and literal uniformity of the zombies is an odd detail that stuck out in Sid’s mind since he saw the first of them. He has little doubt the whole army was raised in the same place, with a few fresh standouts picked up along the way.
Sid pulls the pin from a standard M67 fragmentation grenade and tosses it underhand into midst of the collection of zombies working their way down the hallway toward him. He yawns as he waits for the grenade’s three-second fuse to tick away. It goes with a POP that reverberates down the old hallway, blackening the walls around it and quickly filling the corridor with a cloud of black dust. A wriggling arm lands near Sid’s feet. He advances into the smoke with his KA-BAR and butchers three creatures that remain standing. Another six were rendered incapable by the blast. Curiously, no more of them come through from the staircase doors.
Sid turns back down the hallway and walks toward the Herzfelds. They’re crawling on the ground coughing from the smoke.
“What happened, Ronald?” Sheila says. “There’s so much smoke.”
“I think it was a bomb,
Sheila,” Ronald chokes. “How am I supposed to know?”
“The zombies are retreating,” Sid says.
“You mean they’re leaving?” Sheila says. “Did you hear that Ronald? The zombies are leaving.”
“Wonderful.”
“It doesn’t make sense… unless whoever is controlling them got what he wanted,” Sid says. “You said there are tools in the shed by the pool?”
“Yeah. All kinds of tools: shovels, clippers, chainsaws. Oh, you should get a chainsaw! In the movies they use chainsaws on the zombies!”
Sid has no use for such a thing. Chainsaws are terrible weapons. Aside from being uncomfortably heavy, they require prolonged and consistent pressure to saw deeper than a flesh wound and have a tendency to clog and jam when used on anything that isn’t wood.
“Are there any cemeteries nearby?” Sid asks.
Ronald shrugs. “We’re not from around here.”
“There’s a little Civil War cemetery up on the hill over that way,” Sheila says. “Esteban waters the plants up there. Very scenic.”
“Damn it, Sheila,” Ronald says.
Sid grunts.
“You two should leave now,” he tells the Herzfelds. “I have unfinished business with someone.”
“Ya wakin’ up now, sweet thing?” the dark one says. “Dat be good. Ya wakin’ up jus’ in time.” He lets loose a booming belly laugh that echoes through the warped trees all around.
Dominique tries to move, but her ankles and wrists tug hopelessly against a rough hemp rope. She feels cold stone against her back and opens her eyes to find herself tied to the top of a stone sarcophagus. She is naked under the moonless dark—all except for the strings of plastic beads that