Prison of the Dead

by Brian Berg

  “Would you like to bash someone's head in?”

  I gave it a thought. Surely wouldn't be the first time I had dealt someone damage like that. “No, not really. I'm fine with this. Anything I should know, Mister Expert?”

  “Yeah. Aim for their fucking head.”

  I did have other questions for Eddie, but I didn't think it was the right time to ask them. I followed him out of our cellblock area of the prison, keeping my eyes open for things like what he had just beaten to death behind us. As we walked, I caught sight of a wall clock above us. I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

  Breakfast time was around nine in the morning.

  It was now just past noon.

  All of this had just happened within three hours.

  Chapter Five

  “Eddie, you gotta tell me what's going on here.”

  “I know, kid, I know,” Eddie looked around the corner of the corridor, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the pipe in his hands. “This place is just so screwed up, I don't know if anyone else is still around or if it's safe to just stay still for a time.”

  I looked around the corner as well, then looked back the way we came. There were no sign of those things coming up from behind. “Then let's find a spot, secure it and then you can tell me before we get any further ahead.”

  He nodded. “Sounds good. Any ideas where?”

  “I think-”

  A scream ripped through the air, scaring the bejeezus out of the both of us. He and I stood back to back, weapons at the ready, half-expecting to see more of those things any second now.

  “Jesus!” My trigger finger was shaking. I made sure the safety was off, just to be sure. “Where'd that come from?”

  “The library's the closest room, come on!” He moved away from me so fast, I just about lost my balance and nearly fell over when he pulled away from me.

  “Eddie, wait up!”

  I was never exactly a big reader, but I did enjoy a book now and then. I found a sort of odd sense of safety in the prison library. I don't know what it was, but it was there. Unfortunately, when Eddie and I came through those doors, I discovered that it was no longer a kind of sanctuary.

  Those things were in there, five of them, and they were gorging themselves on an inmate who was still screaming at the top of his lungs. At least, until those lungs were pulled out of his ribcage and munched on. I nearly threw up again.

  “Jesus Christ...”

  “Don't just stand there! Shoot them before they notice us!”

  I quickly checked to see if the safety was off (it was) and then I took aim at the flesh-eating fucks in front of us. I fired off a shot and missed. I fired off another shot, but that one landed in the shoulder of the one closest to us. It didn't seem to do any damage to it. In fact, I don't think it caused it any pain at all. There was no cry of pain, no nothing. That thing just stopped eating and turned to us.

  “Oh shit.”

  “Aim at the goddamn head, I told you!”

  The third shot went right between the eyes. The thing's head snapped back and it fell over onto the floor. It didn't move anymore. Without hesitating, although with a sick feeling still in my belly, I plugged the rest of them with a single shot to the head as well. I didn't miss any one of them this time.

  Fucking lucky.

  “Good shooting, Tex.” Eddie clapped me on the back. “Very good shooting.”

  “Thanks...” I moved slowly to the bodies and what they were just eating. The carpet of the floor was already soaking up the blood that had been spilled out from the open cavity in his body. I looked at the ones I had just killed and then at the one that they were devouring. One of the questions I had to ask before was finally coming out. “Eddie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “These things. Are they...what I think they are?”

  He didn't answer.

  “Eddie?”

  “Keep your eyes open, kiddo. You've got work to do yet.”

  “Wh-” I felt something suddenly grab onto my ankle. It felt like a bear trap had just closed around my leg! It was strong, really strong! I felt my leg get pulled out from under me and I hit the floor hard, the back of my head banging on the floor. Head throbbing, I saw the lungless corpse latched onto me, trying to pull me towards its snapping jaws.

  “Get the fuck off him!” Eddie suddenly appeared at my side and clocked it good upside the head. It released me and I managed to crawl away from it while Eddie finished it off. His repeated bashing sent blood flying onto nearby shelves and furniture.

  “That's a zombie!” I heard myself screaming. “That's a fucking zombie! They're all zombies!” I looked at Eddie. “We just killed zombies!”

  “I know, I know!” He wiped the blood from his pipe and walked over. “You okay?”

  “Y-Yeah...” I pulled myself to my feet, holding my head while hanging onto a table. “Eddie, you've got to tell me everything you know.”

  “I will, but we have to wait.”

  “Why the hell do we have to wait?!”

  “We don't know if there's anymore in here. If you want time to talk freely, we'll have to sweep through here and make sure nothing can get in. Once we do that, I'll tell you all I know.”

  We made a quick run through the library. I ended up spending the rest of that first clip in the Glock on some that I had run across. I still couldn't believe that we were actually doing this sort of thing, but I have to admit, I felt better after we made sure that we were the only ones left inside the library. I helped Eddie push some tables against the doors afterwards. I had no idea if that would hold anything back, but it was better than giving anything an easy way in.

  “Alright, now you tell me right now!”

  The two of us sat at the check-out desk, pipe and Glock laid out in front of us. I looked at Eddie. I could tell he was scared before, but I could also see that he didn't want to believe what he had seen or done anymore than I did.

  “It happened sometime after you passed out in your bunk,” he said, slowly. “The block heard screaming, some gunfire, and then the loudspeaker system went blaring on. At first, we just thought it was another riot going on, carrying from breakfast. Well, in a way, we were right.

  “The doors opened up and everyone else practically spilled out. I guess they were wanting in on the riot. I only stepped out because I just wanted to see how bad it was. I was expecting some of the guards shooting bean bags or gas at the people in the riots, but then I saw people were biting and eating each other like at breakfast, except that it was worse.

  “It was exactly like you'd imagine from one of those horror movies! I saw people get eaten, I saw them die and then I saw them get back up and start eating other people! I don't know what happened exactly after that. All I remember was seeing red everywhere, and killing anything that came my way. I don't even remember moving around all that far, but when I finally came to my senses, I had to run back to the block and see how you were.

  “Thank God I saw you still alive. Amazingly, you were still asleep, but you were still alive,” he looked at me sadly. “I couldn't just leave you there, man.”

  I stared at him. Now, I know Eddie was a sort of bodyguard for me and that he said he had liked me, but I was surprised to hear that he had done all that just to make sure I was okay. If I didn't know any better, I'd say that Eddie didn't just like me, but he loved me. Not the kind of love you'd imagine from a guy in prison where you'd have to bend over and take it, but the kind of love that a brother would give to another.

  I cleared my throat. “So, uh...Eddie. You don't have any idea why or how this is happening?”

  He shook his head and scoffed. “Then again, no one can figure that out in the movies, right?”

  He had a good point.

  “Reload the Glock, kid. Don't know when we'll run into company again.”

  I reached for the gun and popped out the empty magazine. As I was sliding one of the spares in, another thought came to mind. “Eddie.”

  “Wha
t?”

  “How are we going to get out of here?”

  “Beats the hell out of me.”

  “You think anyone else is still alive? Aside from us?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “We're not going to find out if we stay locked up in here.”

  He sighed. “Yeah. I know.”

  Chapter Six

  I don't really know how long we were in the library, but I know it was still light outside when we decided to go through those doors again. We managed to find a map of the prison compound on one of the walls in the work area, no doubt put there so staff would know where to go in case of emergencies.

  “Okay, Eddie, you said you were out more than I was-”

  “Yeah, but it's kind of a blur, really.”

  “Well, we'll do what we can.” I pointed at the layout on the wall. “Any idea where we should go?”

  Eddie looked at it for a long moment. “There's a lot of them out there. That's easy to guess. We only have one gun between us and two clips worth of ammo. That's thirty rounds. Even if you get a clean shot, that's not nearly enough.”

  “So you think we should find some more guns?”

  “That and some more people, if any. Safety in numbers and all that.” He ran a hand over his stubble. “Then, once we do that, I'd say we should head for the garage. If we're lucky, we won't find much trouble there and find a ride.” He looked at me. “You used to be a trucker right? One of them big rig guys?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You think you can drive one of those buses?”

  I shrugged. “I guess I could give it a shot, yeah. Why do you want to drive out of here?”

  “For two reasons: one, I'm sure as hell not going to be running out in the open with those things trying to reach and grab me for a bite. Two, if there's a chance there are still any snipers on the towers on the wall, I'd much rather have some kind of steel layer between me and a bullet.”

  I couldn't argue with his logic. “Any idea where we can find more stuff?”

  “If we come across any bodies of the guards, we can see if they have anything on them.”

  “I thought you said when the shit hit the fan, that the guns on the BWs were the first things to go?”

  “Maybe we'll get lucky then. If we don't,” he tapped an area of the prison map, “then we should be able to find some toys in the office area.

  “I used to do some work in that area a couple years back. I found out that the main locker rooms for the guards in that area. It's close to the civilians and those trained to keep us in and for us, it's damn hard to get to. Normally, anyway. Now, I didn't see any big time toys stashed in the lockers as I passed by, but it's better than nothing, right?”

  Again, I could not argue with his logic.

  Once we had a plan (and the nerve), we tore the map down and removed the barricade. Eddie knew the prison well enough, but he thought it'd be a good idea to take, just in case. Soon as the barricade came down, we took a quick look in the halls outside. We didn't see anything or anyone.

  “Looks like it's our lucky day.” I smiled at Eddie, but it soon disappeared when I saw the grim look on his own face.

  He took the lead again, map in one hand and pipe in the other. “Let's hope that luck doesn't run out.”

  For a while, our luck did hold. We ran into only a few of the zombies here and there. Sometimes, we just had to kill them as we passed by or just snuck right by them. We even managed to find some survivors other than us.

  That's when our luck turned bad.

  Real bad.

  Chapter Seven

  Our bad luck started in the infirmary. We were passing by when we heard another scream, but Eddie and I separated when a small group of zombies came into the area. He told me to go and help whoever it was while he took care of business. When I entered the hospital area, there was another group of them inside, about ten of them or so, and they had two people cornered: a doctor and a guard.

  The guard was a woman, one I had seen here and there during my time here. She trying to beat the closest one to them with the butt of her shotgun. She was a looker this one; she had one helluva body with blonde hair. I had heard a couple of the inmates call her “Officer Barbie”, because that's what she looked like, one of those Barbie dolls that little girls play with.

  The doctor, well what a guy he was! He was young, probably just starting out in his twenties or something, with red hair and a pair of round glasses. I could tell he was a doctor because he wore those medical scrubs you'd see in a normal hospital, and boy was it bloody! I have no idea if that was the blood from these things or patients, but I knew I couldn't stop to ask. He was on the floor, crying his eyes out and trying to hide in a corner while Barbie defended him.

  I lifted the Glock and took aim. “GET DOWN!”

  She dropped to the floor just as I put a slug through the head of the zombie she had just been beating on. At the sound of the gunshot (or my voice, I can't be sure), the rest turned on me. Thankfully, they were pretty slow and stumbled around on the mess inside the infirmary, falling over the equipment and turned over beds and tables. This let me put the rest of them down without much of a problem.

  I kicked the bodies after I dropped them, just to make sure. “You guys okay?”

  “Drop the weapon, inmate!”

  I looked up to see the barrel of Officer Barbie's shotgun pointed right at my face. “WHOA! Hey, hey, I just saved your lives, lady!”

  Her finger seemed to curl around the trigger guard. She was about ready to fire. “I said drop the weapon, inmate. If you don't, I'll blow your head right off!”

  “Okay, okay!” I let the Glock hit the floor.

  “Kick it away, towards me.”

  The pistol slid across the tiled floor and came to a stop after hitting her boot. “Can you get that boomstick out of my face now?”

  She bent down and picked it up. “What are you doing here, inmate?”

  “What the hell do you think, I just came in and saved your ass, lady! You and doc over there!” I nodded to the blubbering kid in the corner. “I heard you screaming and-”

  “I didn't scream.” She jerked her head to the kid. “That was him.”

  I blinked. The scream I had heard sounded like a woman in trouble. You know those old movies where ladies scream in horror when a killer monster is coming to her, or when she's a damsel in distress and some villain's got her at his mercy? It was that kind of scream. “He...screamed?”

  She lowered the shotgun and backed away from me, pistol in one hand, shotgun in the other.

  “Look, lady, I'm not a bad guy, alright? If I was a bad guy, I would have either let you die, or I would have killed you myself, but I didn't.”

  She placed the shotgun on a nearby bed and checked the Glock. “Is this all you have?”

  I thought of the one magazine left in my pocket. She must not have seen the bulge from the item. “Yeah, that's all I got.”

  “Where'd you get this?”

  “Off one of those things. I was in trouble and I knocked it down. I found the gun still on the belt, so I took it and shot it.”

  “Not many rounds left,” she observed. “Damn!”

  “What do you care?” I looked at the shotgun. “You got that boomstick there, you could-” I suddenly stopped and realized something. I hadn't noticed it at first due to the excitement, but now things were calmer and my brain was working again. When I had come in to see who screamed, she was beating them away with her shotgun.

  Beating them.

  Not shooting them.

  “Oh, you've got to be shitting me!” I hung my head, embarrassed that I had fallen for a trick. I looked up at her, meeting her cool, blue eyes. “You're out of shells, aren't you?”

  “Yes, I am, but now I got something to make up for it.” She slammed the magazine back in. “Thanks for that, inmate.”

  I had thought about going off and screaming, but I decided against it for a number of reasons: I didn't want to attract
any more noise, in case other zombies were nearby; I didn't want to give her a reason to shoot me; and I didn't think that me yelling would get the wuss in the corner to keep from crying anymore.

  “Hey, doc! You okay over there? What's your name?”

  He looked up at me and took a long sniff. I could swear I saw his upper lip shining with snot. “My name's Johnny, but I'm not a doctor.”

  “You're not?”

  “No.” Another sniff. “I'm a medical student.”

  “What the hell are you doing here and not a hospital? A real one, I mean.”

  “I had to come here and do some volunteer work. I had to do it for a week, and wouldn't you know it, the first day I come here, it...” he trailed off and shook his head. “I can't be here. This isn't real, this isn't real!”

  “I was coming through here a while ago when I found him.” Barbie was looking at Johnny, though the pistol was still trained on me. “He was about to die when I came in. I managed to kill a few before they overwhelmed us, before you came in.” She sighed. “The fuck is going on here?”

  “Isn't it obvious, lady? They're zombies!”

  “That's not possible.” She looked to me now. “Are you alone? Is there anyone else with you?”

  I was about to say: “No, I'm totally alone and have been trying to find a way out when I found you”, but that went out the window before I could open my mouth when I heard Eddie call out from the hall.

  “Hey, kid. You find anyone?” His voice was calm, but loud.

  Barbie raised an eyebrow and I swore every word I knew in my head.

  “Kid?”

  “Yeah, I'm in here, Eddie. I found two people in here.”

  “Are they armed?”

  I looked at the Glock pointed at my chest. “One of them is.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Eddie step slowly into view at the doorway. Half of him was obscured by the doorway. He saw Barbie and the kid from where he stood.

  “She...” I tried to keep what pride I had. “She knocked the gun out of my hand.”

  “She the one who killed them?” He gestured to the dead at our feet. “Or was that you?”