Running as fast as he could down the steps and back into the building, Joe did the only thing he knew to do. He started shouting. It wasn’t like he needed to be quiet. The dead already knew he was inside and were working their way toward him now.
“Noel!” He shouted, kicking the door open at the bottom of the steps. “Noel… Where are you? We need to go!”
Not sure why, but he darted back into the cell hallway. She wasn’t there.
“Shit. Where the hell are you? Noel… Noel!”
Trusting logic, she definitely wasn’t toward the front of the building. At least, he hoped like hell she wasn’t. Otherwise, she was minced meat for the hungry mob. And if he didn’t hurry, he’d be in that boat too. He ran to the back of the building. The back door was still closed and the cabinets still were in place. Thankful that the barricade had held, he scanned the room.
“Noel!”
Something shifted in his periphery. It was Noel. She jumped up and into his arms.
“Oh, dear God. I thought you’d left me!” Noel said, holding tight to the Hispanic policeman. “I got lost. I tried finding the roof, but I got turned around. I didn’t know where to go, Joe. I’m so scared.”
“Me too, Noel. But we don’t have time for this. We need to go!”
He grabbed her by the wrist, yanking her away from the door and back the way he’d come. Just as he started to round the corner leading to the door that would send them to the roof, the first of an endless horde crashed in. Joe’s heart stopped. As they poured into the room, the lead zombies collided with the desks, as the zombies behind pushed them forward. Their bones broke and shattered under the pressure. Dust billowed out in a thick cloud of rotting decay. Joe covered his nose and looked around for something, anything to use as a weapon. His pistol wasn’t going to be enough. There were too many of them. He could easily take down the lead creatures, but they would just as quickly be replaced by those behind. Rustling protest filled the room as the zombies shuffled in with outstretched arms.
Going against his better judgment, Joe fired into the crowd as they started blocking the path leading to the stairs. The sound of crackling bones filled his ears as each shot enveloped the room. The gun clicked empty.
“Shit.” He said, throwing the gun at them.
The bullets had done nothing to slow them down or lower their numbers. Neither did throwing the pistol. The heavy gun smashed into the face of one of the zombies. A loud thump and the crunching of bone echoed out as the thing’s face caved in. If fell to the ground, worms spilling out all over the floor. But that didn’t matter, because before it came to full rest on the floor, another ghoul had already taken its place.
“We’re going to die here!” Noel gasped, watching the dead fill the room.
“Don’t say that.” Joe pushed her back and scanned the room for something, anything. “We’re going to make it. Have faith.”
“Like Tom?”
“Yes… like Tom.”
Noel trembled in his arms. Between the chaos and the sound of stuff being knocked about, Noel started praying. Her words were faint. Joe tried to ignore her. He frantically scanned the room for anything that would help their situation. The path they needed to take to the stairs was blocked. There were only three or four zombies on that side of the room, but not for long. Joe looked around, scanning for something to use as a weapon, while pushing Noel back. With each slow step backward, he caught a few of her mumbled words.
“Please… God. Tom… anyone up there. If you really are there. If you really are listening. Please help us.” Noel’s eyes were shut tight.
Joe felt something come over him as he heard those words. Then he spotted a tall aluminum lamp to his left. Letting go of Noel, he reached over, taking it in both hands. He held it like a spear and yanked the cord from the wall. The light in the room diminished as the bulb blanked out, no longer surging with electricity.
Joe charged forward.
“What are you doing?” Noel shouted, reaching out for Joe to pull him back.
“What I have to,” he shouted, holding the long lamp horizontally. With it out in front, he screamed. “Ahhhh…” and collided with the rancid mob.
Expecting their resistance to be much greater, Joe almost lost his footing as the zombies buckled under his weight. The lamp was just wide enough to pin a line of more than six of the undead ghouls. Their brittle bones folded under the pressure as he shoved them back. His lungs filled with the dust and decomposed particles. He pushed back the thought of bone clouds entering his lungs and pushed forward more
“Move!” Joe shouted, trying to get Noel to run down the hall, as he pushed the mob back. “Move, I said!”
That’s all it took. Noel bolted forward. The space that Joe had provided with the makeshift weapon wasn’t much. As she ran past, she felt undead hands pull at her hair. She screamed, not looking back.
“Keep going,” Joe groaned, still trying to hold the dead at bay.
As she stepped past the dead opening the door to the stairwell, one lone zombie’s hand pulled free a lock of her jet black hair. She grimaced, feeling her neck pull forward, as the hair came loose.
Luckily for Joe, the undead, as rotting as they were, were uncoordinated. Despite their many attempts to lash out at him with their teeth, he prevailed at keeping them at a safe distance. If he was going to make it to the door, he needed make more space. He pushed forward even harder. Sending the horde against one of the desks behind them, bones broke and separation occurred. Snapping at the waist, hips broke and spines split as they collided with the desk. As more of the undead spilled into the room, they started reaching around his makeshift handheld barricade. He was becoming overrun.
Noel screamed down for him from the stairs. He tried to look back, but couldn’t. A zombie fell on him from the left. He tried to shoo it away, he couldn’t let his guard down from the horde he was holding back. It clawed at him. Its boney skinless fingers tore through his police uniform. He winced against the pain as it tore into skin.
“Go to the roof, Noel!” Joe shouted, trying to keep the dead from falling on him.
If he were to turn for the door, the dead would be on him before he’d get to the stairs.
“Go, I said.” He shouted, trying to look over his shoulder.
The stolen moment came at a cost. The ghoul at his left dug into his shoulder trying to sink its teeth into him. Joe jumped back, trying to kick it while keeping the others at a safe distance. It took shouting at her again, but Joe finally heard the sound of Noel’s steel-toed boots tromping up the stairs. He didn’t hear the door close behind her as her footsteps faded. Joe cringed.
Why didn’t she close the damn door?
He had no choice. If he was going to make for the stairs, the longer he waited, the less chance he would have of making it out alive. He couldn’t hold them back much longer. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
Giving the lamp one last heavy push forward, he let go and turned toward the door to the stairs. As he saw them come into view, the fleeting hope that he’d actually make it passed through his mind. First days on the job were a bitch. Hands grabbed at him from behind. He clenched his fists, biting down hard on his lip. Blood pooled in his mouth as he reached the first step.
Then… then the sharp burning heat coursed through his legs. Warm and wet, his calf burned with the sensation of what at first seemed like an overworked muscle. Surprised, Joe watched himself fall forward, the steps slamming toward him. It wasn’t until the teeth that were sunken into his leg let go that he realized what was happening. Countless arms and gnashing teeth fell on him within moments. Had he been screaming when they started to feast, he couldn’t tell. A surge of bodies and the sounds of their satisfied groans filled his ears like the hum of an active hornets nest. What he found more shocking than the darkness engulfing him by the aggressively piling bodies was that he felt no pain. Only warmth and the burn. It was all over his body like sunburned skin. He looked up momentarily, able t
o see past the darkness. His intestines and visceral insides stretched out before his eyes in undead hands. Joe felt fear. Not of death, but of himself. He heard laughter and fear gripped him when he realized it was his own.
EIGHTEEN
Noel and the pilot waited for Joe as long as they could. But even that wasn’t very long. Not even half a minute after Noel jumped into the helicopter, Joe’s painful cries reached the roof through the beat of the chopper’s propellers. His scream faded. A horde of hungry undead shambled out onto the roof. Freshly covered in blood, some carried visceral gore and intestinal muck. Instead of the brave policeman, the pilot could wait no longer.
Before the first zombie had time to touch the helicopter’s landing skids, it lifted into the air. Amidst the chaos, Chelsea woke from her blackout. The three watched in horror as the roof filled with animated corpses. As they lifted higher into the air, the scene in the parking lot became more apparent. Droves of the dead were still working their way toward the station from the street. At least, four dozen were clustered at the front doors, still slowly pushing into the building. A group of ten ghouls, not nearly as rotting or grotesque, were still at the back doors banging endlessly to be let in.
With the rising sun at their backs, the helicopter drifted through the air away from the small town. They had enough fuel to get far away from Clarksburg. And that is what the pilot intended to do.
All of that had happened more than three months ago.
Not long after that horrifying night, Chelsea showed up on the scene, determined to blow the lid off everything that had happened. It didn’t work. No one listened, and like most things in life, money fixed everything. Chelsea was incarcerated and admitted to the Bloomington Mental Health Association against her will. She was never heard from again.
Speaking of not being heard from ever again, the pilot disappeared shortly after. Last Noel heard, he gathered up his family and disappeared to some secluded island or something. She couldn’t blame him. As for her, she was happier than she had ever been, despite the constant night terrors. She hardly ever slept these days. But who needed to sleep when you were as busy as she found herself. Sadly, it had taken the death of her friends and family to find her true calling, but she was thankful that in the end she had found God. The monastery needed her now, and that was where she intended to stay. On the nights when she could sleep, she dreamt of Joe and how she longed to one day be just like him. She felt like Tom would have approved.
Across America, the Virginia Power Plant explosion was devastating news. An entire town left in devastation. The presidential speech regarding America’s great loss ended on a positive note. At least, the population of Clarksburg was much smaller than a city like Atlanta or New York. Cleanup crews had been sent in to deal with the ‘so called’ hazards and damages left by the tragic plant explosion.
That’s when Beth Lena Mae found herself clapping happily at the news. She and her husband of over forty years lived in Weston, which wasn’t that far south of Clarksburg. News of the plant explosion was a big scare for her. She was always keeping up with the catastrophes of the world. Her husband, Mark, had told her time and time again not to watch CNN. That crap only stressed her out, which in turned, stressed him out. They were getting too old to worry about that type of thing.
But this… this was different. This was close to home. Too close. With nearly three months of constant updates about the cleanup and potential radiation, Beth was so grateful to not have any power plants like that around Weston. With the news switching from the Clarksburg explosion to some high school shooting in Florida, Beth changed the channel.
A month after that tragic night, Golden Arch Co. had come out with chicken nuggets that were guaranteed to be a healthy weight loss substitute to their already famous greasy nuggets. Beth laughed at the idea as she watched the commercial advertising the new food. Those nuggets probably tasted like cardboard. The new food options quickly caught on and all of the other fast food chains shortly followed suit.
Nothing happened. No one got sick. No one died. More importantly, no one turned into crazed, zombified cannibals. In fact, the opposite happened. The new food did exactly what was said it would. People were happier and they were losing weight. The fast food industry regained its financial momentum and plunged into a new future of heavily processed food. But that was nothing new. Chemically altered food was a thing of the past and all G.A.C. managed to do was prove that it would also be a thing of the future.
Just as the commercial ended giving way to one of Beth’s favorite talk shows, Mark sauntered in the living room door. With rod in hand and boots dripping wet, Beth grimaced.
“That’s new carpet, Mark. Take it outside!”
“This ain’t new carpet, Beth. This carpet came out of Margret’s old house.”
“Well, it’s new to me and you’re soaking wet. Take it outside,” she said, looking away from the television toward the door.
“Oh, all right, honey.” He said, smiling ear to ear.
“What are you so happy about this time, Mark? Where have you been all day anyway?”
“Turn off the TV, honey and get the kitchen ready for dinner. We’re eatin’ good tonight.”
“Oh, is that right?” Beth rolled her eyes. “That new fishing spot that you and Buck been raving about all week?”
“Yes!” He said with excitement.
For only a moment, he stepped outside the door and returned with more than two dozen fish hooked to his catcher’s net.
“Wow, Mark. Looks like you had a hell of a time.”
“You can say that again,” he agreed, still lingering in the doorway.
“Well…,” she insisted. “What are you doing still standing there? You’re soaking fish water into my new carpet!”
His smile turned to a frown, as he stepped off the carpet, and he went back outside. Before the door closed, Beth heard him say that he was going to Buck’s house to help him clean up his share of the catch.
“There’s more?” she asked.
“Sure is.” Mark peeked his head back into the door. “Buck caught twice as many as this. And we weren’t even out there more than an hour!”
“That’s amazing, dear.” Beth boasted. “So… where is this new fishing spot anyway?”
“I’m not tellin’. It’s a secret.”
“Oh, come on, Mark. Like I’m going to tell anyone.”
“The Elk River!” He said, closing the door as he went on his way to Buck’s with the days catch.
The End
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Other Published Works by
P. A. Douglas
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Epidemic of the Undead
The End: A zombie Novel
Horror Stories and Terrifying Tales
1
Betrayal of a Brother
Eight years ago...
“I don’t like it. Something doesn’t feel right.” The whisper came from one of the three figures, each shrouded head to toe in black burqas.
“Doesn’t feel right? They give you a thong to wear, too, Webb, when they handed you the burqa?” Sanderson chuckled at his own joke.
“What’s the concern?” Mason casually asked. “We passed through the market unnoticed, and the key opened the door to the room directly across from our target. The mission is right on schedule. Soon as the marks enter the apartment across the street, we blow ’em to hell, and then get out of here.”
Mason pulled the field glasses from his eyes and looked away from the window. Three stories down, an alley separated the two apartment complexes. There was nothing much to see other than overflowing dumpsters and trash scattered about. If the INTEL report was accurate, and he prayed it was, one of the top masterminds responsible for the IEDs that took numerous American lives would soon be dead and gone. Mason had already lost a few close friends to cowardly roadside attacks. He’d be damned if he lost another comrade.
“Okay, guys, hand them over.” M
ason reached his hand out and snapped his fingers. Webb lifted his burqa and removed one-half of an assembly that had been taped around his leg. It was one piece to a puzzle that would launch a rocket-propelled grenade. Sanderson followed suit and peeled off the other half.
“That thing started to rub me raw ten minutes after we hit the street. I’m glad to be rid of it,” Sanderson said.
“At least you didn’t have a damn grenade inches away from your nuts.” Mason removed the tape from the RPG snuggled against his thigh.
His fingers slightly tingled when they met the steel casing, in awe of the power harbored within. The single-stage thermobaric projectile was designed specifically for antipersonnel and urban warfare. The contents of the warhead would scatter on impact in aerosol form and then ignite. A high-pressure blast wave equal to 2kg of TNT would obliterate any object inside the apartment. At least if the thing had pre-detonated, Mason wouldn’t have lived to regret accepting the mission.
Using a hex key, Sanderson assembled the stock and trigger components. The finished product was a steel tube with a flared end wrapped in wood around the middle. The wood protected the user from heat, and the flared end would aid in blast shielding and recoil reduction. He checked the paint marks he inscribed earlier on the optical sights to ensure it was still aligned.
Webb stared at the weapon. The grenade was more than half the length of the launcher.
“The projectile is initially launched by a gunpowder booster charge and is powered thereafter by a rocket motor,” Mason said, explaining what they all already knew. He talked too much when he was nervous, and though he did his best to remain cool and calm, at the moment he was tipping his hand. Mason continued to hold it with both hands and waited for Sanderson to finish.
Rancid: A Zombie Novel Page 21