by Amber Wyatt
“I didn’t touch anything,” Friedman whispered back, hands held up. “The cells opened by themselves, I swear!”
Bourne looked at him in confusion and anger. It was true. The kid was nowhere near the desktop computer that controlled the security access systems. And then he noticed all the CCTV screens were black. Something was wrong. The system had gone down. In a flash of panic he looked over his shoulder at the door to the guardroom, before remembering a heartbeat later that it was manually closed and locked.
He was just wondering how they would know whether it was clear enough for them to make a run for it, without the security cameras to show them what was happening outside, when gunshots started booming and echoing throughout the cell block.
High above the guardroom, Sammy Pereira was lying on the walkway outside the cells, four levels above the central atrium of D block. He pressed himself as flat as possible, trying to become part of the concrete floor under his sweating palms. His immediate reflex to flee from the shower block upon seeing the first zombie had bought him precious time and he had used it well. Sammy had sprinted straight through the crowd of chatting prisoners on the D block ground floor, ignored their shouted queries and bounded up the closest stairwell all the way to the top level as fast as he could, bypassing all the cells on the way. None of the prisoners had made it up this far before the lockdown, and he was completely alone.
Sammy had seen the wave of zombies pouring into below and immediately dropped down prone, pressing his cheek into the floor, listening to the blood-curdling sounds of slaughter echoing around the block from down below. None of the zombies had strayed up the stairs this high, or had seen him during the frantic minutes of gory carnage, and when all the screaming had stopped he had laid there shivering, all of his concentration focused on trying to calm his pounding heart and to breathe as quietly and shallowly as he could.
He had no idea how long he had lain there with his nose to the floor and his bony ribs uncomfortably pressed through his thin prison shirt against the hard concrete. Minutes. Hours? And then there had been the metallic clanks as the cell doors had suddenly opened, and below him the screams had started again. Although his eyes remained resolutely focused on the grains of concrete and stray flecks of paint in front of his nose, Sammy immediately understood that the zombies were attacking those last few prisoners who had made it to safety in the cells during the lockdown.
Still paralyzed with fear he laid on the walkway for a few more seconds, invisible to everyone, but then gunshots started ringing out down below. Something’s changing. Let’s see what’s going on. I might need to move. Shaking with fear, Sammy slowly peeled his reluctant body off the floor, and cautiously craned his head over the edge to see what was going on. Almost immediately he recoiled, face blanching in horror. It was far worse than he had imagined. The brief glimpse had shown him that almost the entire floor of the atrium was coated in blood. A huge mass of zombies was swarming towards the entrance to the rec yard where a small knot of guards was shooting at them with shotguns.
Suddenly across the block from him, on the level below, a prisoner managed to burst out of the last cell still fighting against the zombies. As his cellmates died behind him, the sole survivor fled down the walkway with a handful of zombies running in pursuit. Sammy recognized him, it was Jayant, the annoying Indian guy. He had tried to score some drugs off Sammy a few times but never had anything to pay with, always trying to persuade Sammy to let him buy some product ‘on credit’, like Sammy was running a fucking charity or something. With a wide-eyed glance at the bloody horror below, Jayant reached the stairs and started pounding up them towards the top level towards where Sammy was watching.
Sammy froze for a second as a massive surge of adrenalin punched through his bloodstream. That idiot is going to lead the zombies straight to me! He rolled into the nearest open cell and peeked out with only one eye showing around the corner, so that he could only just see the stairs. If Jayant turned right at the top, he would lead the zombies away, down towards the washrooms. If he turned left, he would be heading straight towards Sammy. Turn right, turn right! Sammy urged him desperately.
Instead Jayant turned left, straight towards him. Sammy jerked backwards into the cell, stood up and flattened his back against the wall. The cells were deliberately designed to have no blind spots from the doorway, so that guards could see what was going on at all times, but if he was lucky they would just run straight past him. Jayant pounded past, belly wobbling and flabby arms pumping up and down with three zombies a few steps behind him. None of them so much as glanced into the cell.
Sammy poked his head out of the cell door. There was nowhere for Jayant to go to, that end of the walkway was a dead end. Not that Sammy particularly cared about him, but he was already rapidly assessing what options he might have if the zombies came back down the walkway towards him.
Jayant reached the end of the walkway and whirled to face his pursuers as they raced towards him with hands outstretched. He looked over the railing at the sixty-foot drop, and then back at the oncoming zombies. There was no escape. With a wail of terror Jayant threw himself over the railing and disappeared. Without hesitating, the zombies dived after him.
Downstairs the CRT guards fired their shotguns into the crowd of zombies as fast as they could pump the slides. Sergeant Ang was still running on pure adrenalin, but was surprised to feel that he also felt some confidence returning. At most he had been expecting to come across the two or three zombies he had originally been briefed about, but when the CRT had entered D block, he had been dumbfounded to see the entire block full of hundreds of zombies. Fortunately, the first few CRT guards through the door had managed to get their riot shields up into a shield wall just in time, as the zombies had surged towards them, and the more the zombies pressed upon the interlocked shields, the more solid a barrier they became.
The entrance to the recreation yard narrowed deliberately to funnel the inmates through one at a time, and the impromptu shield wall blocked the funnel from side to side, four shields wide. Behind the shield wall, Ang was cycling the rest of the CRT through with their shotguns. Three men at a time poked their shotguns over the shields and emptied their magazines into the solid mass of flesh and gnashing teeth on the other side. Then Ang rotated them backwards to reload their weapons and pushed a fresh detail of armed guards forward to continue firing.
“Keep those shields steady!” Ang shouted at the cursing, sweating guards in front of him. “Aim for their heads! Aim for their heads!” He screamed at the shotgunners. “Change over, quick, quick!” One of the shooters pulled back, shotgun pointed up, and Ang grabbed the next man waiting and pushed him forward. Shotguns roared, deafening the guards, and zombie brains and blood sprayed backwards across the walls. The air reeked with the mixed stench of cordite and blood. There must have been twenty to thirty zombie bodies already piled up in front of the shield wall and the flood of zombies behind them were slowing down as they crammed into the narrowing funnel and had to climb over the mound of bodies.
Although the adrenalin was still pumping in everyone’s veins, they had reached an equilibrium of sorts and as he quickly got the CRT shotgunners into the rhythm of shooting and reloading, Ang started to feel optimistic. They could hold this chokepoint all day with the shield wall, and as long as the ammunition held out, they could probably shoot all the zombies that D block could throw at them.
Ang’s mind was just starting to wander on to more mundane details, like wondering if he was getting permanent hearing damage from the relentless, head-splitting booming of the shotguns, when suddenly he heard a scream from above and looked up just as Jayant landed directly on top of him. He never stood a chance as the falling prisoner hit him at close to sixty miles an hour, hammering him into the ground with bone-crunching force. A second later the three zombies who had also jumped off the top balcony slammed into the guards in front of Ang, flattening the shield wall to the ground. The zombies crowding down the hallway immediat
ely flooded forward snarling and snapping at their bodies, and the remainder of the CRT broke and ran, firing behind them as they fled into the recreation yard.
In the narrow lane leading into the recreation yard two men made a brief attempt to block the undead horde with their shields, but without Ang to coordinate their efforts, the other guards ran off and abandoned them. After a few seconds the sheer momentum of the zombies pouring down the lane simply pushed them down and the chase continued.
The survivors ran out into the recreation yard and some of them stopped and turned to fire back down the lane, but their magazines were emptied in seconds. As they reloaded, zombies poured out of the confines of the lane and spread across the yard, quickly engulfing them. The only guard who made it into B block were those who had kept running without looking back. Any guards who had had any appetite to turn and fight were busy dying back in the yard, or had already turned into zombies and were chasing after their former colleagues.
As the CRT survivors sprinted into B block, they shoved aside startled inmates and hammered on the door of the guard station demanding to be let in. Zombies poured in behind them and the screaming started as teeth bit into flesh, ripping apart skin and muscle, and spraying blood across the floor. After casting one horrified look over their shoulders, some of the CRT guards redoubled their efforts to get into the guard station, the remainder took off running towards the hallway leading into A block and its own population of unsuspecting prisoners and guards. They were followed by a mob of panicked prisoners, and a dozen slavering zombies broke off from the main group to pursue them.
Forty-five seconds after Jayant had dived off the top balcony, A and B blocks were full of men backed into corners, fighting desperately for their lives. Within two minutes the entire prison was overrun. Only a handful of prisoners or guards were still alive, locked into whatever rooms or cupboards they had managed to find.
In D block Bourne cautiously rose up and looked up over the counter of the guard station into the atrium. Most of the zombies were gone, although there was still a mass of them plugged into the hallway leading to the recreation yard at the far end of the atrium. All their backs were turned towards the guard room.
“Okay guys. CRT distracted them sure enough. This is the only chance we are going to get. Let’s get the hell out of here. Everyone follow me and don’t make a fucking sound,” Bourne glared around at the white faces in the guardroom. Then he unholstered his pistol and made his way to the door, his mouth suddenly too dry to speak any more. His heart thudded heavily in his chest and as he reached for the door handle his hand was shaking. Bourne hoped none of the others noticed.
He cracked the door open as quietly as he could and stepped out into the atrium, pistol raised up and scanning left and right. Nobody was there. Outside the guardroom the smell of blood was overpowering and he felt his gorge rise up in his throat. Then Friedman crept out next to him, weapon gripped tightly in white-knuckled hands, and they both pointed their weapons at the zombies at the far end of the atrium. The undead monsters all still had their backs turned towards the guardroom as they mindlessly shuffled forward, tripping over bodies, trying to follow the rest of the zombies out into the recreation yard. So far so good.
Then both men froze as voices came from behind them. Hitchings was complaining that he could not get up because of his knees and was asking one of the others to help him. The other guard was telling him to shut up before the zombies heard them, but in an even louder voice than Hitchings.
Bourne stared at the zombies in terror, not daring to breathe. But it seemed that they were too far away to have heard anything. Fucking Hitchings! Bourne could not even turn around and tell those two morons to shut up in case the damn zombies heard him. He had already decided that he was going to survive this nightmare no matter what, and if that meant leaving behind the weakest members of the group, so be it. He stepped off quickly and quietly away from the zombies, towards the hallway leading to the showers and then beyond them to C block. Friedman followed. Both men trod as quietly as possible, their boots sticking wetly to the floor. The entire block was covered with an almost unbroken film of coagulating blood. Behind them the other three guards slowly crept out of the guardroom, trying to be as stealthy, but failing miserably.
Suddenly a shadow flitted out of the darkness from the stairwell towards him and Bourne nearly shot at it instinctively, before he realized it was a live prisoner frantically waving its hands high above its head. Jesus Christ it’s Sammy Pereira! The slim inmate silently mouthed “Don’t shoot” as he darted past them and ran silently ahead to the hallway in front. Bourne had no idea how he had hidden himself away during the slaughter but the tricky little man was obviously a born survivor.
Hitchings came out of the guardroom hobbling. His arthritic knees were locked up after having to crouch down behind the desk for all that time he could barely move. He stared in terror at the dwindling number of zombies at the far end of the hall and hobbled faster. Then he stopped and stared. One of the bodies on the ground behind the zombies was trying to stand up. Maybe it’s a survivor? Hitchings thought to himself.
The creature that had been Sergeant Ang came back to undead life, and lurched to its feet. It was still facing the direction it had died, so when it stood up it was facing Bourne and the tableau of frozen guards at the far end of the hall. Unbearable hunger filled its brain and it lunged towards them. Bourne looked around quickly for something to use as a weapon. He could not use his pistol, it would make too much noise. None of the other zombies packed into the rec yard tunnel had noticed them, so they needed to kill this charging zombie quickly and quietly. There were six of them against one, but the zombie was going to be hard to kill. It looked big and strong, and it was wearing full CRT riot armor and a helmet.
Then Hitchings screamed, “Oh my God, it’s one of them!” and started to raise his revolver up into firing position.
Bourne and the other guards could only watch with their mouths open in horror as a few of the zombies turned around at the sound of Hitchings voice, and noticed Ang sprinting across the blood-stained hall towards the previously unnoticed humans. Then Hitchings started shooting and the spell was broken. In the blink of an eye the atrium was full of zombies running towards them. As the gunshots rang out behind them, the zombies inside the narrow hallway to the recreation yard reversed their flow and ran back into D block towards the noise.
Hitchings emptied all six shots in his revolver at Ang without hitting him once. He started to turn to run when the powerfully built zombie hit him like a train, throwing him to the ground like a rag doll. Hitching’s howl of agony was cut off abruptly as Ang’s powerful jaws ripped through the nape of his neck, severing the old man’s spine. Ang lifted his dreadful lifeless gaze towards the other guards, blood dripping messily from his mouth, and they panicked and started firing too.
Bourne fired the first round, hitting Ang in the face, blowing out the back of his skull and the heavy CRT sergeant dropped like a stone on top of the still twitching body of Hitchings. Bourne and Friedman fired a couple of shots each, dropping the closest zombies to them, and then turned and ran. The other guards did not notice them running away, and stood their ground firing wildly until their pistols were empty. The zombies quickly swarmed over them, biting and clawing and they went down screaming under a pile of bodies. Then all was silent. The guards’ guns and noisy deaths had totally absorbed the attention of the zombies in D block, and none of them remembered nor followed Bourne and Friedman, who had fled down the narrow corridor towards the showers.
Up in the operations room Lamoureux had come up with a plan which the warden, Milea, reluctantly agreed seemed to be their only viable option. Tense and often panicked radio conversations with the guards locked into their guard rooms in A and B blocks had confirmed that basically the entire prison was overrun with zombies. C and D blocks were not replying to radio calls, so Milea assumed they were gone, as were the CRT.
The security system was d
own, but one of the operations room staff, Belkin, told Milea that they still had control of the fire systems. They would try to draw the zombies away from A and B blocks by setting off the fire alarms in C block. Once A and B guardrooms reported that the zombies had left their blocks, all staff, including Milea and the men in the operations room, would rendezvous in A block. From there they could reach the front courtyard of the prison and exit through the main gate. They had reached the same conclusion that Bourne had, that out of sight was out of mind as far as the zombies were concerned, and Milea ordered the guards in the guardrooms to all crouch down and hide behind their desks so that the zombies could not see them from the windows. When they radioed Milea that they were ready, he turned to Belkin and nodded.
“Turn on the fire alarm in C.”
Yes, sir, turning it on now,” said Belkin, clicking his mouse and bringing up the fire alarm system on his laptop screen. Distant bells started to ring and Milea and Lamoureux looked at each other.
“Let’s hope this works,” said Milea.
Outside the back gate of the prison, Sergeant Brown from the Florida National Guard paused from laying out ammunition belts on the top of his Humvee, and looked up at the grey, concrete building in front of him. His Humvee and three others were parked two hundred meters away, covering the back gate of the prison, which led down to the underground carpark. It sounded like a fire alarm had just gone off inside. Brown listened carefully. Yes, he could definitely hear bells ringing. He shrugged and continued laying out the belts carefully. God knows what was going on inside there. With a full-on zombie apocalypse taking place inside the prison, a fire was probably the least of their problems.
The National Guard company commander, Captain Wells, had actually had quite an easy job in deciding where to deploy around the building, to contain anyone trying to get out. Being a prison, it was already well supplied with walls and fencing to prevent egress, and there were only two exits, the main entrance, and the back gate. Wells had sent Sergeant Brown and the bulk of his platoon to the back gate, kept two platoons at the main entrance and sent two of Brown’s Humvees right around the other side to observe in case anyone tried to climb down the walls facing the highway.