At first light the next morning, they all rose and headed out the door. Charles and Moe walked them out across the Park Strip and into the edge of downtown.
Neil and Charles shook hands. “You look out for them and everything will be all right,” Charles said as he looked over Neil’s shoulder into the deserted streets of downtown Anchorage. “If you get into a fix, make your way back here. Moe and I will keep an eye out for you.”
Neil nodded and said, “Thank you so much for all that you’ve done for us. You’ll never be forgotten, and if we do find a way out of this mess, we’ll be sure to come back for the two of you.”
“You just worry about getting yourselves to safety. Ol’ Moe and I will be just fine. Won’t we old boy?”
Jules left Emma’s side and ran to Charles. She wrapped her little arms around his legs and hugged him tightly. He placed his palm on the top of her head and stroked her soft blond hair. “Now you run along, Jules, and keep an eye on these folks for me and Moe.” She looked up at him but didn’t say a word. He looked back down at her and smiled. With that, she ran back over to Emma and took her hand.
As they walked away, Charles and Moe turned themselves about and headed back to their home. Neil wondered if maybe they were making a mistake by leaving. There was a sense of security back at Charles’ house. He knew, though, that the security was more than likely a mirage that could be shattered at any given moment; like the security that all the residents of Anchorage who had lived and worked in the buildings to either side of him had embraced for so long.
The air stirred as they made their way into the city proper. There were large professional buildings to either side and the empty cavernous barn of the new convention center in front. Whatever isolation or desolation any of them had felt in the suburban sections of the city paled in comparison to wandering the stark emptiness of a city as large as Anchorage. The grey city streets, typically packed with walking pedestrians and driving motorists, were as vacant as a tomb.
Neil was careful to put them on a course to detour them around the Transit Center, the public transit hub of downtown Anchorage. He didn’t know if they should suspect pockets of zombies anywhere, but he figured it just made sense to play it safe and avoid places to which people might have fled and then been trapped. He was only guessing though. There were no sounds or smells or anything really to help his decisions; only gut instinct.
Marching in a single file line down the middle of the street like a claustrophobic parade, the column of survivors kept a vigilant watch on windows and doors and alleys and cars and.... There just seemed to be an endless list of threats and traps all around them. Neil was concerned that the farther they went, the deeper into danger he led them.
A flutter of movement from a recessed doorway caught all of their eyes. They gathered themselves into a tight circle while Neil and Jerry went forward, weapons at the ready, to investigate.
Neil suggested as they walked forward, “Use your scope and see if you can make anything out.”
“I already looked through,” Jerry replied, “but there are potted plants and walls in the way.”
Breathing deeply and letting it out slowly, Neil nodded and continued ahead. There in the doorway was a group of ravens. He remembered that a group of crows was called ‘a murder’, and wondered about the name applied to a group of ravens. The two species of birds seemed to share so much in common. It was of little consequence that Neil didn’t know a group of ravens was called ‘an unkindness’ because both names seemed fitting under the circumstances. Whether it was a murder or ‘an unkindness,’ the birds, black as nightmares, were picking away at something on the ground that was still out of view.
“What is it?” Meghan asked from back in the group, startling both Jerry and Neil.
Neil raised his hand as they cleared the last of the obstructions. The brown, blood-stained and shattered bones of a corpse, mutilated and dismembered, were being picked clean by the fluttering scavengers. There were tiny bits of clothing on the ground around the body but, other than a blizzard of bird droppings, not much else was present.
Again Meghan asked, “What is it?”
Neil and Jerry jumped again at hearing her voice. They looked at one another for just a second and then Neil said, “It’s nothing. You guys just keep moving on up the road. Just some birds getting into some old trash.”
Jerry said quietly, “I think maybe we should get away from these birds. If they’re carrying the infection, there’s no telling how it could affect them. Remember the dogs.”
Suddenly very concerned, Neil raised the shotgun in his hands toward the birds and then backed away with Jerry. And this is only the first block, Neil thought to himself grimly.
And thus began the not-so-enthusiastic journey through the barren remains of a city ravaged and claimed by a plague.
Chapter 30
Have you ever been somewhere that you could have sworn you’d been before, but try as you might, you can’t seem to make anything about it seem familiar? That was happening with every step as the group of survivors marched slowly into the heart of Anchorage. To Meghan, it reminded her of the time she came home from school and found a man in their kitchen who sounded like her dad, was wearing her dad’s clothes, and acted like her dad but was missing his trademark mustache. It was the weirdest thing. She was set completely off balance by the alteration. It actually took her a couple of days to truly get used to the new look. She wasn’t sure that an entire lifetime would afford her enough time to get used to the “new” Anchorage. Only thing was, Anchorage’s mustache hadn’t been shaved off; it had been ripped viciously from its face. The mangled mess remaining could never again look as it once did.
Walking in a generally northerly direction, Jerry suddenly stopped when he caught a whiff of an unfortunately familiar stench. “I think I can smell ‘em. Yep. It’s definitely them. That’s an odor that sticks in the memory.”
Dr. Caldwell asked, “Coming from where?”
“I don’t know but it’s not that strong. Either there’s just one of ‘em or they’re not too close.”
Claire almost cried, “I fucking hate this. Why didn’t we find a car first?”
Jerry said over his shoulder, “We’re gonna be okay. Just...”
At that moment, from the building to their right, a window several floors up shattered into a thousand glistening shards of glass and rained down on the street next to them. And quickly on the heels of the glass, three of the undead beasts fell to the pavement with a horrible wet slapping sound. The three were piled one atop the other and still writhing, tangled and mingled like worms in the bottom of a can.
Claire did cry this time, “Oh sweet Jesus.”
From the top of the pile, the first of the zombies finally got its hands under itself enough to raise up to its feet. Its movements were stiff and seemingly inorganic, like a living statue...a golem come to life. Its skin, an ashen, lifeless grey, was drawn tightly across its facial features, starting to recede slightly from its eyes. It didn’t look real and it certainly didn’t look like it was once a human being. When its jaw lowered, it exposed a mouth utilizing a hit or miss approach with teeth. There was a molar missing here and an incisor missing there. This incisor was cracked in half while that eyetooth had been honed into a threatening point. Its first steps were no more fluid or natural than any of its other movements.
As it stepped forward, the second one from the pile arose in much the same fashion as the first, though this second one had been a woman, under better circumstances. The third didn’t seem to be moving at all. Perhaps the fall had crushed its skull and ended its misery.
Malachi stepped forward and fired two shots in quick succession into the closest one. The first shot took off its still lowered jaw and the second shot caught it just below the eye. The impact from both rounds hurled the beast tumbling head over tail backward where it came to a motionless rest, looking more like an abandoned pile of rags and trash than a body.
The
second one, wearing a dress and one high-heeled shoe, didn’t seem to even notice that its accomplice had been dispatched. It just came awkwardly forward with its emaciated arms extending out toward them. Its horrible, hunger-filled moan reached out with its own icy fingers to tickle their spines. Neil, firing from his hip like a Hollywood action movie hero, hit her across her right upper chest and shoulder. She spun and twisted to the ground, but with a grunt and a series of audible pops and clicks from her shifting bones, she rose back to her feet and continued forward apparently unfazed.
Without a word, Malachi brought her down with a single pull of his trigger, the bullet finding its way through her forehead and out the back of her skull.
“Thanks, Malachi.”
“Don’t mention it.” He wanted to say that he hoped that those three bullets would start him on the path toward trust again. Malachi, however, would never have been able to fully verbalize that sentiment. It wasn’t that clear even for him. How could he possibly be able to communicate it to someone else?
Jerry said, still leaning back on his heels, “That’s not what I was smellin’ and I can hear them now too.”
“Them?” asked Claire, a grimace spreading across her face like a very aggressive rash.
“Yeah.”
“How many Them?”
“A few...at least.” Claire moaned.
Dr. Caldwell said, “So maybe this isn’t going to be as easy as we’d hoped.”
Art sneered under his breath, “I knew it. Now we’re fucked.”
Forgetting the acid that was building in her stomach like a toxic storm, Claire shot him a look and very nearly growled at him. “Don’t worry, Art. I’m sure you’ll find a way to get yourself through this.”
“Stop it goddamnit!” Neil spat. “We don’t have time for this.”
Meghan asked, “So now what? Do we wade into there and hope that Jerry’s “few” is really just a few? Or do we go back around and just hit another pocket somewhere else?”
Art interjected, not even attempting to disguise the contempt in his voice, “Or we could just go back.”
Neil repeated, “Or we could just go back.”
Everyone looked surprised and a little confused.
He shrugged his shoulders and said pointedly, “Folks, mine aren’t the only ideas here. Going back is definitely an option. I personally think that going back to Charles’ now would be selfish of us and draw the damned zekes right to him. I think it’s nice to have that refuge behind us if we need it, but I think it should be a last resort. We can go back to another house and board it up like we did before. But also like before, I think it would just be a matter of time before they sniffed us out and then we’d have to escape again but this time on foot. At least now, we’re moving on our terms. I will say though, that the longer we sit here debating it, the more danger we’re in.”
“Why don’t we go into one of these buildings and see if we can get a better view of our surroundings?” Emma suggested. “Maybe then we could choose a way through town.”
Dr. Caldwell smiled. “Now that’s a great idea.”
She smiled doubtfully. “It is?
Neil nodded and replied, “I think it’s a helluvan idea. I’d say the one where our friends here came from is off the list, but what about one of the others nearby?”
Meghan asked, “How do we know which one?”
Malachi said, without changing his expression or looking away from the road ahead, “Locked doors.”
“What?”
“Look for locked doors.”
Dr. Caldwell, again beaming, said, “You’re a genius, Mal.”
Without any further delay, they ran across the street to a tallish, nondescript, giant rectangle of a box with a door on the front building. The big glass door was locked and looked unmolested.
Jerry suggested, “We could go around to the back of the building. I think there’s a parking lot, another entrance, and some office windows on the ground floor back there. I think we should go in one of the windows. Even if we break it, we can close and bar the door of the office the window is in. Regardless of what we do, I think we need to do it now. They’re probably just around the corner up the street.”
Meghan said, “Then why the hell are we still standing around talking about it?”
Just a few minutes later, they were climbing the stairs to the top floor and a possible view of the streets and open spaces around them. There was a certain sense of security about being back inside but none of them were fooled into believing that they were actually safe.
Even with flashlights and the scant light coming in through windows, it felt like they were journeying deeper and deeper into a cave. Appearing to be both following and preceding, their footsteps echoed the entire length of the stairwell, prompting them on more than one occasion to pause and determine that they were still alone in the building. The silence that ensued each time they stopped was worse than the cacophony of sound that preceded it.
Out of breath and sweating, they arrived at the top floor to find the door was locked. To make matters worse, there wasn’t a window on this door as there had been on the doors behind them.
Claire asked, “So now what?”
Neil leaned his shoulder into the door and pushed as hard as he was able but there wasn’t even so much as a shudder by the door on its hinges. He and Jerry stood back away from the door and threw themselves against it with much the same result. They were about ready to do it again when Malachi’s hands found their shoulders and restrained them.
“Why don’t all of you go back down the steps a couple of flights and let me have a go with this,” he said, holding up a shotgun.
Neil, smiling in the dark, said, “Now why didn’t I think of that?”
“I’ll need someone to hold a flashlight up here but everyone else can wait down there. You folks might want to cover your ears. It’s gonna be loud in here.”
He was right. It was loud. Their footsteps were nothing compared to the roar from the gun. Luckily, however, it worked. Malachi and Dr. Caldwell kicked the door, which swung back and forth on its hinges, trying to mimic its rustic cousin, the saloon door.
The hallway into which the door opened led to several larger conference rooms that were positioned on each corner of the building’s top floor.
Dr. Caldwell said, “I think we’ve got pay dirt here.”
Emma mused playfully, “What, you a miner now?”
“Ya gotta have a hobby.”
“And yours is mining?”
“No.”
“Okay, now I’m totally confused.”
“I prefer to think of it as suspense rather than as confusion.”
“Whatever it is; I’m there.”
“I watch a lot of History Channel and lately they’ve run some shows about the history of mining.”
“Lately?”
“Well, you know. Before, when GCI cable wasn’t on permanent hiatus.”
From down at one of the conference room doors, Jerry said, “I think this is the one. Door’s still locked. Malachi, you want to do the honors?”
Malachi stepped up and eyed the door for a second or two. He took a deep breath and exhaled loudly as he pounded the bottom of his foot hard against the door just above and to the right of the door handle.
The door flew inward heavily, slamming with a thud against a comfortable looking chair parked a little too far away from the long, heavy, dark table that sat in the middle of and dominated the room.
Jerry shrugged his shoulders and said with a smile, “Ya gotta give it to him. The man’s got a way with doors.”
Neil smiled and entered the room. It had a solid two walls of windows looking out over much of downtown Anchorage. As he approached the window he said over his shoulder, “You guys have gotta see this.”
If he didn’t know any better, he could have mistaken what he was seeing for a very well attended but subdued rally for grey people. There were hundreds of the ashen skinned monstrosities loiteri
ng in and around an intersection at which sat an open parking lot on one corner. The mass of ghouls didn’t move much. Every now and again, the crowd was collectively affected with tics and spasms that sent arms into the air and heads turning and twisting. It was one of the most inorganic things he’d seen them do to date, aside from the killing and eating of anyone and everyone around them that is.
As Jerry and Malachi stepped up, Neil said, “I guess it’s a good thing we looked before we leapt, huh?”
Jerry dropped himself into one of the very soft looking plush office chairs situated around the table. The chair swiveled awkwardly as he turned himself to get a look out the window. Now seeing the spectacle, Jerry leaned forward in the chair to truly take in the scene below.
The few seconds of awed silence was cut when Jerry remarked, “How did anyone get anything done having a meeting with this view? Jesus, I don’t think I’d be able to concentrate on a thing being said up here.”
Leaning back and with just the slightest hint of a smirk on his face he asked, “Did you say something, Neil? What about jumping?”
“Funny. So now that we can see better, I guess we won’t be heading that way. Better to learn that from up here than down there. What about that way?”
From behind them Meghan asked, “What’s down there?”
Jerry said, “I think it speaks better for itself than we ever could. Come hither.”
Neil laughed and said with a warm smile, “Boy, that chair has really had quite the affect on you. Hasn’t it your majesty?”
“Let’s just say, my good man, that I could get used to having the finer things in life.”
“You don’t say.”
“You could too if only you worked as hard as I did when I was a young lad. I started out with nothing...and yet here I am today...at the top of the world. Well, at the top of this building anyway.”
Neil rolled his eyes and started to step away. He asked Meghan, “Where is everyone else?”
“There are clean bathrooms up here with toilet paper and water in the bowl. Where do you think everyone else is?”
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