That was part of the reason why she found herself alone at the front of the station. She needed to collect her thoughts. She was tired of the cascading emotions. One minute, she was freaking out of control, the next a mini-Rambo pushing her friends to keep moving. Then after that, she returned to freaking out again. She favored the warrior in her most and yearned for it to resurface. This emotional roller coaster was tearing her up inside more than the carnage ensuing all around her.
She rubbed her eyes, taking a deep breath. Her heartbeat slowed more to normal. She found herself regaining control. She focused on how she felt when pushing those cabinets into place at the back of the precinct. That was the person she needed to be. Not a frail little girl who desperately wanted her father to rush in and save the day. Noel didn’t really know her dad, because he was so busy with his own life. That was beside the point. For some reason, she just felt like dear old Dad showing up, would fix it all.
He wasn’t going to show up tonight and she knew better than to hope for it. He never showed up when it mattered, and now when nothing mattered, why would he?
She let out a deep breath. Just before Joe and Chelsea disappeared to hassle Watts, Joe sent the pilot to the roof. He had been sent up to make sure the helicopter was ready to make flight. Noel could tell the pilot liked that. Hell, he was even more ready to skip town than she was.
She had tried to talk Joe into giving her one of the guns, but he had brushed her off in his impatience to start the interrogation. She wondered how it was going. But more than anything she felt tired and was curious as to what time it was. She loved guessing games, like headcounts at a show, or what time it might be. If she had to guess, it was probably close to four in the morning, by now. And if that was right, then the sun would be up before too long.
She looked around the room, but the clock on the wall looked like it hadn’t been working for quite some time. For no real reason, she picked up an empty shell from the ground and tossed it at the broken clock. She had watched Joe dispense them from the revolver earlier. The shell missed the clock, ricocheting off the wall to the tile. The hollow metal tinked as it bounced and settled on the floor. She picked up another one to throw, but before she could lob it at the broken device, the storage closet rattled. The creature on the other side moaned out in protest. The sound of the shell must have stirred the ghoul that was locked away inside.
She jumped, dropping the shell from her hand. It wasn’t until then that she even remembered that thing was in there. Her heart raced for a moment from the adrenaline and then began to calm. No longer comfortable with sitting alone in that room, Noel walked down the hall toward the back of the precinct. The further she got, the louder the banging at the back doors became. For some reason, although louder, it was a lot less eerie and stressful.
She walked through a set of doors, and just when she could have sworn she heard Joe yelling off in the distance at Watts, June walked up.
“Hey there.” June tried to smile. She still looked pretty shaken up. “How are you?”
“All right,” Noel said. “You?”
Honestly, Noel didn’t care. She was too tired to care. Her mascara was running down all over her face. She had to be covered in blood more than she realized. She imagined she looked about like Dane did right before he died.
“You look like you could use a bathroom to clean up in.”
“You read my mind, June. I look that bad, huh?”
“I hate to admit it, but yes, child. You look like you could use some cleaning up,” June said, showing Noel the way to the bathrooms.
“Your name is, June, right?”
“Yes, dear. That’s right.”
“Cool,” Noel said, thankful to be getting a chance to clean up a little. “I’m not the best at remembering names and I can’t honestly say my mind has been all here tonight.”
“Can’t say that I blame you.” June patted her on the back after walking her through a few doors to the restrooms. “Here you go. I’ll be right outside if you need something.”
“Thanks a lot,” Noel said, glad to have June come to her aid.
Noel sized up the large woman, like a guessing game, and started to wonder how much she really weighed. She couldn’t really see how someone could let themselves go like that, but June was really nice. Although the heavy set woman didn’t look anything like Mr. Rogers from the TV show, she kind of reminded her of him. June just had that quiet innocence that screamed won’t you be my neighbor. Noel flashed back to her childhood and how much she used to love the Mr. Rogers show. The times had changed since then. Her views on life had too. Mr. Rogers just seemed like a creepy old man that liked little kids. She laughed at herself as she made her way to the sink. Maybe June liked little kids too.
She did call me ‘child,’ Noel thought, looking at herself in the mirror.
Noel’s hair was a mess. Had anyone seen her on the street, they probably would have thought it was how she wanted it to look. But it wasn’t. She looked like a disheveled mess. The ungodly amounts of hairspray, she’d put in her hair earlier that night, had only helped create the tangled mess. Looking in the mirror, she had guessed right. Her mascara was smeared down her cheeks in thick black streaks. Her eyes had swollen bags under them from being both tired and emotionally overwhelmed. She had done a good bit of crying tonight. Pushing her thick black hair back, Noel ran the water until it warmed and she started scrubbing her face with her hands. It took some effort, because she was one to overkill the eyeliner. She used a few napkins to dry. The runny mess of her makeup wasn’t fully cleaned off, but Noel thought it was good enough. It looked a lot better than before. It felt a lot better too. Like the weight of a thousand horrifying nightmares, the dreams were washed away, as she watched the water and black makeup swirl down the drain. She wiped the dried blood from her arms and neck. With her skin no longer sticky, her clothes felt all the more grungy and stiff from the matted gore and grime. Her shirt felt heavy on her shoulders
She sighed heavily, looking at herself in the mirror for a while.
Maybe that’s all this was. A stupid nightmare. And tomorrow, when the sun came up, it would all be gone. Just a distant memory that she would never have to relish in again. She thought of Jared and what he would think of the dream. He would probably laugh at her and say the dream sounded awesome. What a jerk. She was starting to question what she had ever seen in him.
“You doing all right in there, sweetheart?” June’s voice was muffled between the door as she called out from the hall.
“I’m fine,” Noel replied. “Just need a minute.”
“Take you time, dear.”
“If you’re letting me take my time, then what’s the rush…,” Noel mumbled softly.
She tossed the damp napkins into the trash and used the bathroom. It felt good to finally release her bladder. She hadn’t even realized she had to go that bad. It was as if she’d just sat through three movies back to back without taking a pee break.
After cleaning up, Noel stepped back out into the hall to greet June, feeling a little fresher, and a lot lighter.
“See… Now isn’t that better?” June asked.
“Yes… lots.” Noel grinned. “On our way to the bathroom, I thought I heard Joe’s voice. Are the cells close to here?”
“Yes, honey. Just through those doors there. We don’t need to bother them though.” June fidgeted against the idea.
As much as Noel didn’t want to be anywhere near the walking dead or seeing Tom no longer dead, she wanted to know what the hell was going on. And more importantly, how much longer all of this was going to take.
“You don’t have to come,” Noel suggested.
“And you don’t have to go. Let’s just wait here till they’re done, dear.”
“As much as I don’t want to go in there…” Noel said. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to go see if we can’t speed this thing up. I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to go.”
“Amen to that, child.�
��
Noel smiled, not because June was so nice, but because the obese woman just reminded her of Tom. She nodded, leaving June in the hall. Stepping through the door that they had come through to get to the restrooms, Noel could hear Joe and Chelsea having it out with Watts. She followed the voices as they grew louder. With only two turns down a narrow corridor, she found Joe and Chelsea standing in the hall. She was surprised at how many doors and hallways this place had for such a small police station.
“That’s not good enough, Mr. Watts!” Joe slammed his palm into the holding cell door. “I’m not letting you out until you tell me what’s been really going on at that factory of yours!”
The hallway to the holding cell was wide. The walls were white cinder block and there were at least five doors on each side of the hall all the way down. Noel assumed that each door led to a cell. The doors were white with dollar-sized windows at near eye level. Below that, at waist height were round metal screens that allowed communication. Noel noticed that, because Joe seemed to focus on the metal screen, when yelling into the door at Watts. Below the screen was what looked like a six inch slit just big enough to pass a food tray. The door Joe was standing at was the third on the left. Noel’s heart fluttered just seeing him as she silently walked up. The feeling reminded her of a middle school crush. She brushed the idea off and walked up behind him and Chelsea. She didn’t consciously think of him that way. She wasn’t even attracted to him. And even if she were, she would beat herself senseless for dropping Jared so easily. Sure, he was dead now… but their relationship had meant a lot and had been her longest one yet. Chelsea was standing beside Joe, still holding tight to one of the three guns. She didn’t realize it, but she was blushing when she called out to them from behind.
“Hey, Joe.” She interrupted his rant at the cell door. “Any luck?”
Before Joe could turn to address her, the door behind her jolted with a simultaneous bone crushing thud. Her heart sank, and then leaped into her throat as she swallowed hard. She spun around to meet the door behind her. Goosebumps ran up her arms, making her body flash from hot to cold.
“Oh shit…,” she said.
Dane’s snarling face and blood covered fingers pressed against the small dollar sized window in the cell door. Blood smeared across the glass as he beat against it in protest. Noel stepped back, bumping into Joe. Her eyes scanned the other doors to see Tom in one and the old black man in another.
“Oh, my God. They’re all dead.” Noel gripped the chest of her shirt, her muscles tightened in fear.
“Well… yeah.” Chelsea said. “I thought you had already figured that one out.”
“I did,” Noel scorned, stiffening to her full height and turning to face her friends. “Still… they startled the shit out of me!”
“Sorry about that,” Joe said over the noise of their fists pounding against the cell doors. “Should have warned you.”
Noel smiled and then pulled it back the moment she realized Chelsea had seen it.
“So… Any luck with the Mr. Watts dude? If not, let’s go already,” Noel groaned.
“I’m working on it!” Joe insisted.
“What the hell do you plan to pull out of this dude anyway?” Noel asked. “Even if he did tell us something, what the hell would you even do with the information, once you had it, huh?”
“Well… I…”
Noel cut him off. “Like seriously, Joe. Let’s say just for shits and giggles that this dude talks. You get what you want out of him and boom! We have someone to point the blame at. Awesome. Well… guess what. As soon as we get out of all this and people get sent in to clean this shit up, not only is it getting cleaned up, it’s getting covered up. This is America. That’s just how it works.”
From within the cell, Watts started laughing. “Thanks… at least one of you realizes this is a big waste of time. Now let me out!”
“No!” Chelsea shouted, slamming the barrel of her gun into the cell door. “I don’t care. I’m tired of people like him getting away with this type of crap. This is my hometown for crying out loud. He’s not going to get away with what he’s done. You hear me! You are going down for this, Benjamin.”
“Wow… Hold a grudge much?” Noel lifted her hands at Chelsea. “Look… I’ve got just as much right to go all hell fire and brimstone. This is my hometown too. Hell, I’ve lost some people tonight. But pointing the blame right now’s not going to solve anything. We need to be focused on getting out of here alive. Not slapping somebody on the hand.”
“Amen, sister.” Watts chanted from behind the door.
“Hey, fuck you, pal. Nobody asked you.” Noel said. “And cut the holy crap!”
Unlike when June had said it, he made her blood boil just hearing that word.
“Look,” Joe said resting his hand on Noel’s shoulder. “We just need some time with him. I know you’re ready to go. You’re not the only one that’s made that very apparent, okay. You want to know why I am doing this? I’m doing this, because you’re right. This kind of stuff always gets pushed under the rug. And my first day on the job or not, I don’t aim to let that happen. Somebody needs to tell the world, and if that somebody is going to be us, then please… just give me some time so that I can figure out what the hell it is we need to tell. All right?”
Noel nodded, shrugged, and sighed all in one. No matter how convincing Joe made it sound, it was a waste of time in her eyes. The dude in that cell probably had enough money to clear his name and any other person’s name he wanted to when this was all over. Yes, Watts was a complete ass for letting his factory dump countless amounts of waste into the river; a river that apparently had underground streams that happened to somehow infect an entire cemetery. He might be a prick, but it wasn’t as if he knew something like that was going to happen. He sure as hell seemed clueless from what she could tell. Hell, this guy thought that the man in the supply closet was still alive.
“Yeah. It’s whatever,” Noel said.
“Okay, good!” Joe said. “We’re going to figure this out.”
Chelsea smirked. It looked sarcastic in a way. Noel didn’t know it for sure, but it looked like Chelsea was a major part of the driving force behind the idea to interrogate Watts. Noel didn’t like that one bit. Didn’t like her being alone with him. She brushed it off and left them to what they were doing.
In the hallway by the restrooms, Noel was surprised to find that June was no longer there. She wondered where she could have gone. Maybe, she was back in the office right outside the lobby at her desk. But what for?
She made her way back to that part of the police station, blood still all over the cold tile floor and a deader than dead zombie agitated in the supply closet. She looked up at the broken clock, still wondering what time it was. The curiosity getting the best of her, Noel opened the lobby doors and walked inside. June was nowhere in sight. Ahead was a double door with one large desk leaning against it. There was blood on the floor. It looked as if someone had been dragged through the room, smearing the blood in a straight line, through the door she had just opened. Unlike the rest of the precinct, the lobby floor was carpeted and the blood had soaked into the fabric.
Chairs and a few tables, covered with magazines, lined the walls. On the wall to the left was a poster of missing people. She scanned the black and white photos, but didn’t recognize anyone. On each side of the double doors, there was a window as tall as the door. The glass was about as wide as her body from shoulder to shoulder and reached from the top of the doors to the bottom. She stepped around the desk barricade to look outside. A light breeze filtered through giving her chills. With it came the stench of the dead. The rotting putrid odor reminded her of the cemetery. She glanced over to see that the door was opened just a crack letting the air in. She was instantly glad that they had corralled the dead to the back of the building. There was no telling how much longer this barricade would have held. The desk didn’t even look that heavy.
Noel looked out the window to
see a few cop cars lining the parking lot. Two large yellow vans, the ones they had seen when they drove in, still sat there. In the distance, the night sky looked as if it was starting to break into lighter grays. The sun was getting ready to break for sure. Man, she wished she knew what time it was. There were ghouls still lingering out in the streets and even a few in the parking lot. Aside from that, everything seemed pretty quiet.
Suddenly, a man with green hair popped out from behind one of the vans. He was there one second and gone the next. That couldn’t have been Jared. It just couldn’t. That would be ridiculous. Then again, everything about tonight had been really messed up. And to confirm her initial thoughts, the man appeared again.
Oh, thank God. It is Jared, she thought tapping on the glass with her knuckles.
Instant regret.
The thing that was Jared jerked hard to the right facing the precinct entrance. Its neck was twisted. Bone jutted out from the side. Red and black dried blood soaked the area around the wound running down the shirt. It was Jared all right. Noel grimaced upon reading the band name on the shirt. August Burns Red was clear as day across the front, even with the bloody mess. Had Jared’s favorite band not given it away, the beard would have. No one else in Clarksburg had a beard and green Mohawk. Jared’s reanimated corpse jittered and jerked with excitement as it examined the double doors across the parking lot. The side of his head looked like it was smashed in, making the memory of his attacker tackling him to the ground flash in Noel’s mind.
Noel swallowed hard and felt something crack inside her throat. Her eyes went wide with fear. Her feet felt like they were welded to the floor. Her knees buckled. Although she had already gone to the bathroom, Noel felt something warm and wet begin to run between her legs and down onto her steel-toed boots. The smell lingered for a moment, before she realized she had just pissed herself. And rightfully so. It wasn’t the sight of Jared that had her shaking in her boots. It was all of them that had her frozen in fear.
Rancid: A Zombie Novel Page 18