Deadman's Switch & Sunder the Hollow Ones

by Saul Tanpepper

  “Hold on!” Jake hisses.

  I feel him tug at my waist to unhook the wire. I lift up for a moment, then drop with a thump to the ground.

  “Go!” he says.

  Arms reach down and yank me away. I turn because someone needs to help Jake through, but Kelly’s already there, pushing the fence up, guiding Jake underneath. I raise my eyes to the path. The bushes rustle with movement.

  But it’s just the wind. There’s nothing there.

  Chapter 27

  “Man, you should’ve seen your face!”

  “It’s not funny, Reggie,” I say, swinging my pack at him. But he dodges around a light post in the nearly empty parking lot.

  “You’re right, Jess. It’s not funny. It’s fucking hilarious!” He skips away, laughter filling his eyes and tripping off his tongue.

  I give him the finger. It wouldn’t be so bad if it was just Reggie teasing me, but Ash is trying hard not to laugh. Even Kelly is grinning.

  “Shut up, you guys.”

  Kelly leans in. “Aw, come on, Jess. Lighten up. Admit it, you almost peed your pants.”

  I frown at him.

  “Not even a little leakage?” Reggie teases.

  “You’re gross.”

  “You were like, ‘Waaa! Outta my way! Coming through!’”

  “Was not.”

  “No, no,” he says, wiping the tears from his eyes. “It was actually more like, ‘Aieee!’”

  “I didn’t say that!” I nearly shout. We all stop and look nervously around for a moment, suddenly aware of how quiet it is and how easily sounds carry. But all that greets our ears is the low whine of the breeze through the trees and the raucous songs of the cicadas in them.

  “You guys need to shush,” Ashley urges. She gives us all a stern look, even as she tries desperately to look sympathetic. All it does is twist her face up so she looks like a total dork. Laughter bubbles out of me and everyone starts all over again, though much quieter this time around.

  “They’re jerks,” Jake says, pulling up beside me. “Don’t listen to them.”

  “Thanks, but I’m fine.”

  “No, really. I’d never laugh at you like that.”

  I’m suddenly uncomfortable with his closeness, his on-again, off-again show of sympathy. He doesn’t even try to hide the contempt he has for Kelly. I hug my pack to my chest and say, “They’re just blowing off steam. Don’t worry about it. Really.”

  He frowns. It’s not the response he was expecting. I can tell he’s trying not to look hurt. He quickly sidles away again, back to where Tanya is standing. She has a guarded look in her eyes, like she’s just not sure about the rest of us. Guilt flickers through me. We’re doing it again, excluding others because they’re not tuned into how we interact.

  But then I see the troubled look on Micah’s face and the laughter dies in my throat. There’s nothing of that old carefree Micah left. For the first time I realize we may have lost him for good.

  Kelly takes in a deep breath and tells Ashley and Reggie to settle down. “Let’s just focus, okay?”

  The front doors to the sports store are locked. Of course. Reggie wipes away some of the dust from the window and looks inside. “I see a lot of…I don’t know, uniforms and crap,” he says. He shrugs, not looking very hopeful. “All the old collectible stuff: football and hockey jerseys… Bunch of useless, illegal junk is all.”

  “Illegal or not, we all need new clothes. And they’re bound to have food and bottled water inside. Energy bars, maybe.”

  “I am so tired of packaged crap. Right now I’d love a big, fat, juicy turkey drumstick.”

  “With gravy,” Ashley adds.

  “You’re not helping.”

  Kelly heads for the corner of the building. He peers cautiously around it before proceeding out.

  Everyone trails him, each of us instinctively looking for potential hiding places and routes of escape in case we’re attacked again. If there’s one thing we’ve learned since coming here, it’s that the stuff they taught us in our Physiology and Behavior of Reanimates class in school is either incomplete or patently false. Take the fact that IUs like to hide from the sun, for example. That was never mentioned.

  Nor do I ever remember being told that their brains turn into powder after a while. That was a most unpleasant discovery. The first time I blew the head off of one back in Long Island City. I thought I’d exploded a sack of flour.

  Before turning the corner, I take a quick look back the way we’ve come. Nothing moves, neither on the path we took through the fence nor on the incline to the overpass. Even the Undead seem to have given up chasing us. Maybe it’s too hot for them. Or maybe they’re just not hungry anymore. Doubt it.

  I can almost picture them turning around and drifting back to whatever holes they crawled out of, seeping away into the earth like muddy water into wormholes after a rain. I wonder if each of them has a favorite place. I wonder if they fight when another zombie tries to take it away.

  I’m about to join the others when my eyes catch movement near the top of the road, a tiny flicker, a spot, distorted by the heat off the asphalt and the distance in between. I blink and strain my eyes, but if there was something there, it’s gone now. I’m not even sure I saw anything to begin with.

  “Jess, you coming?”

  I watch for several more seconds, but the scene doesn’t change. “Yeah,” I finally say.

  We find a loading dock around back. There’s a heavy panel door with a single small, square window set in it. It’s too dark to see inside. We try the handle but, like all the other doors, it’s locked.

  “Looks like we’re out of lu—” Kelly starts to say, when we’re all startled by a quick, loud squeal of metal on metal.

  Jake’s holding the handle of a rolling metal door, frozen in the process of pulling it up. There’s a space of a couple inches at the bottom. He winces. “I think we might be able to get in through here.”

  Kelly goes over. “Yeah, but can we get it open enough for us to fit through without announcing to every IU on the island that we’re here?”

  Jake peels away a scab of dead leaves and ancient plastic wrappers that have blown against the door over the years. Then he gets down on his stomach to peer through the crack. “I can’t see anything inside.”

  “Jake, be careful,” Tanya says. She shakes her head warily. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “Aw, isn’t that cute,” Reggie teases. “Jake’s got an admirer.”

  I see Jake stiffen and his face turns even redder than it already is from the sunburn. Ashley yanks Reggie’s arm and tells him that to stop being such a prick. He protests, and the two of them start arguing in whispers.

  “Just keep it down,” I warn them.

  Four of us get to work on the rolling door, slowly inching it up while Jake keeps watch underneath. We manage to get it open about a foot and a half without making too much noise.

  “Who’s first?”

  We all look at each other, all thinking the same thing: Hell no; not me.

  “Fine,” Jake says. “I’m down here already. I might as well. Give me five minutes or so to do a quick inspection.”

  “’Bout time he took some initiative,” Kelly murmurs, as Jake slides his way through. He obviously already forgot that it was Jake who held up the fence back there.

  “Can we stop with the bickering for a few minutes?” I say. “All of you. What is it with you guys?”

  “She’s bickering, too,” Reggie says, pointing at Ash.

  I roll my eyes.

  Five minutes comes and goes.

  Then seven.

  Then nine.

  Nearly eleven minutes after entering, Jake returns, popping his head out through the side door and telling us, “All clear.” One by one, we enter. Once more, I’m the last.

  “Red Bull?” Ashley says, handing me one the moment I’m inside.

  “Figures you’d be the first to find them,” I tell her, but I gratefully accept
it. I dust it off on my shirt and pop the top. I’m so thirsty that I chug the whole thing without stopping, even though I know it’ll give me a headbanger of a rush in about ten minutes.

  After we’ve drunk our fill of bottled waters and flavored drinks, stuffed our brand new sports-themed backpacks with energy bars and packaged nuts, the others go off to find new clothes. Kelly and I sit down with a couple bottles of water to clean his leg.

  “Seems like a lifetime ago the last time you helped me take my pants off,” he says, joking.

  It does seem like that.

  I reach up and kiss him on the lips, once, real quick. He looks surprised, then leans in for another.

  I feel the faintest stirring of passion inside of me, but it’s quickly doused by the stronger feelings of homesickness and longing for a past we can no longer have. Intimacy with Kelly in this place seems like an alien concept. The knowledge of this makes me sad.

  We have to wet his pants down and slowly peel them away before I can finally see the gash on his thigh. He winces and curses under his breath. Finally, his jeans drop to the floor.

  “Damn, Kel. That doesn’t look good.”

  The gash is roughly four inches long and at least a half inch deep. He places his thumbs on either side of the cut and pushes. A hiss of air enters his mouth. A thin stream of blood pulses out, but it’s mostly stopped.

  “Pour some of that water in there to clean it up,” he says.

  I rinse until the wound is clean, stopping once when I think he’s going to cry out. His knuckles are white on the front of the chair he’s sitting in, but he doesn’t utter anything louder than a hiss and a grunt.

  “This really calls for stitches.”

  “Check my pack,” he tells me. “The medical bag from the tram is in there.” He blots it dry, then picks at the dried clots. I slap his hand away.

  There aren’t any sutures, which is probably for the best anyway since I sew about as well as a drunk walking a tightrope. Instead I find some skin-closure tape and antibiotic ointment. I do the best I can, finishing with a fat bandage. “That should hold.”

  “Anything in there for pain?”

  I shake my head and hand him a bottle of aspirin I’d picked up at the cash register. “It’s only expired seven years.”

  “Better triple the dosage then,” he tells me, smiling weakly, and he shakes a half dozen into his palm.

  “Wimp.”

  “That I am. Don’t forget to wash your hands.”

  After that, we wander off in separate directions to find new clothes for ourselves. Kelly returns wearing a pair of loose workout pants and an old-style New York Giants jersey. The whiteness of it seems to make him glow in the gloom.

  “They’ll see you coming a mile away.”

  He grins and reverses it.

  The other side is dark blue.

  “I also found this,” he says proudly. “It’s an autographed Tom Seever baseball bat.”

  “Who’s Tom Seever?”

  “Beats the hell out of me. More importantly, this’ll beat the hell out of zombies.”

  “It’s not the IUs I’d like to beat,” I say. “It’s the people from Arc. Did you bring me anything like that?”

  He reaches behind his back.

  “A golf club? Really?”

  “It’s called a Big Bertha. It’s light but packs a powerful punch.”

  “It has a name?”

  Kelly laughs. “A Big Bertha for my badass Jessie. And did you see the price tag?”

  I whistle.

  “Come on. Let’s go find the others.”

  “When are you planning on telling them?” I ask.

  Kelly stops for a moment. He gathers his pack and bat without looking at me. Then he walks off.

  We find everyone already sitting or lying on exercise mats in the middle of the store.

  “We’re not leaving,” Ashley declares. She’s rubbing her sore feet. “Not until we’ve had a chance to rest first.”

  Kelly checks the time on his Link. “It’s a little after three o’clock. If we rest for an hour, that’ll leave us about five hours of daylight. But we need to be out of here by four, no later, so we can get in at least three hours of walking before we hole up for the night. I’ll set my Link to ping in an hour.”

  “Already did it,” Ashley says.

  “Someone should keep guard,” I say.

  Reggie cracks an eyelid. “It’s just for an hour. And I set up a bunch of stuff around all the doors. If anyone—or anything tries to come in—we’ll hear them.” He raises something that glints in the gloom. “And I’ve got this.”

  I shake my head. At least he found a knife. It still doesn’t quite make up for the Anaheim Ducks jersey he’s got on, but it comes close.

  I lower myself to the floor, groaning from the stiffness and aches. As soon as my head hits the mat, I’m out.

  † † †

  The sound of falling objects doesn’t fully wake me. Not right away, anyway. I hover in that in-between vacuum that isn’t quite awake, but not quite asleep, either, where breathing is impossible. And so is screaming.

  I’d been dreaming of our escape from Long Island City, the dive through the Midtown tunnel. We’d made it halfway through when we were blocked by a mound of storm wash. After the boys cleared a way through it, most of us managed to make it to the other side before the whole pile collapsed. Jake was stranded, but we couldn’t afford to stay and dig him out because our air rebreather cartridges were quickly dying.

  I remember the hollow-sounding racket the pile made as it shifted behind us. The sound outside of me in that store only pulls me further into that old memory rather than jarring me from it.

  “Jessie?”

  I jolt awake. There’s movement around me and my skin prickles. I hear the rustle of clothing, the sound of feet running. Then there’s a crash somewhere in the darkness and someone cursing. A struggle.

  “Jess? What the fuck is going on?”

  It’s Ash, whispering beside me. I’m already on my feet, but she’s pulling me down.

  “Why the hell is it so dark?”

  “It’s night.”

  “What? I thought you—”

  “Shh!”

  I pull out my Link and groan when I see that it’s well after midnight.

  “Shut it off!”

  “I thought you set an alarm.”

  “Quiet!”

  More footsteps, then another crash and more cursing, muffled this time. There’s the sound of something soft being hit, an “Ooof!” and a cry of pain. Then a beam of light stabs the darkness.

  “Damn it, Jake,” Kelly whispers. “Turn that thing off!”

  The harsh glare of the flashlight is replaced by the soft glow of a Link, then the boys’ faces appear in the gloom, Kelly first, followed by Jake, finally Reggie. In the middle of them is another figure, his head held down, hidden in the shadows.

  “We caught him in the doorway,” Kelly says.

  Ashley gasps. “Micah? Was he trying to leave?”

  But it’s not Micah. It’s Stephen. And he’d been trying to sneak in.

  Chapter 28

  “He’s hurt,” Kelly says.

  In the wan glow from Reggie’s Link, I can see the dark, sticky sheen spreading over Stephen’s arm and down his side, bubbling up on his bare skin, forming a rough, blackened crust. As they pass us, I see that the back of his shirt is also darkly stained.

  “He’s been bitten,” Jake cries. “Get him out of here! He’s infected.”

  “It’s a scrape,” Kelly hisses, “not a bite. Now be quiet.”

  He gestures to the dressing room. “Get him in there where we can use the flashlights. Try and block the opening with something, a blanket if you can find one. We don’t want to attract the IUs.

  “Light alone won’t draw them,” Stephen says, grunting as Reggie pulls him. “Shit! Take it easy, man. That side’s sore, too.”

  “Think I give a crap?”

  “You should
.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “What happened?” I ask. “How did you escape?”

  Kelly bars me from getting any closer. “Let’s take a look at his wound first,” he tells me. The look in his eyes contradicts the assurances he was just giving to Jake a moment ago. He’s trying to protect me in case Stephen is infected. “I’ll see how bad it is.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  His eyes drift past me toward the windows at the front of the store. “Just keep an eye out. Check the doors.”

  “You think Arc is out there?”

  He shakes his head. “They’d have to stop, too, once night fell. No telling how close they are, but they won’t come after us until the zoms crawl back into their holes.”

  He turns to Ash and opens his mouth to say something, but then he thinks better of it and turns away. He’s disappointed with her for screwing up with the alarm. But even in the darkness it’s easy to see from her body language that she’s deeply sorry. I feel bad for her, but Kelly’s right to be angry. All the time we might’ve gained running from Arc yesterday has now been completely erased.

  After checking the doors, I go and look out through the front windows. But it’s completely dark outside. No street lights. No starlight. I stand there a moment trying to understand where the stars have gone, when suddenly the sky flashes, igniting the thick storm clouds for a moment. And my heart nearly stops when I see the figures shuffling around in the parking lot. There are at least a dozen Undead.