| |
We climb so many flights of stairs that, when Callie finally opens the door, I expect to be surrounded by cloud cover. Instead, we step into a storage area similar to the one down in the college dining hall. I’ve holstered my Taurus and am now carrying my lever-action rifle. I know even less about it than I do about my Taurus, but I’m a pretty fair shot with it, and the lever action makes me feel like I’m starring in an old western.
I feel like I should take the lead, but Callie knows the way and I don’t, so she pushes ahead. The storage room opens into a small commercial kitchen. She holds her flashlight between her teeth so she can have both hands on her shotgun. I do the same, and together we step through the door.
Buggers are everywhere!
I take out the first one I see with a shot right through the skull. Callie fires off two blasts from her shotgun, shredding a pair undead faces.
“Callie, get out of here!” I shout. Of course, I forget that my flashlight is in my mouth, or was. It clatters to the ground, but doesn’t die. I miss the next bugger that comes at me, but get it with the next shot. “I’m serious! Go!” Pumping and firing, Callie empties her shotgun as she moves across the room. When it’s empty, she draws her pistol, and fires it point-blank in the face of the closest bugger. She even remembers to take the flashlight out of her mouth before dashing across the kitchen. For once I’m glad she doesn’t tend to wait around for me.
I have two shots left in my cartridge, and I pick off two more buggers. Callie is somewhere on the other side of the room yelling for me to come with her. I drop the rifle, scoop up my flashlight and draw my Taurus in one swift motion, and run. I see Callie waiting in the open doorway, and I’ve almost reached her when she aims her gun at my head and fires.
The sound is deafening and I stumble forward, careening into her and knocking her to the ground. Through the ringing in my ears, I hear a sickening groan and the splat of undead flesh on tile. Now I understand. A bugger must have been about to get me, so she shot it. I clamber to my feet and give her a hand up.
“Thanks.” I give her a quick hug and we move down the hallway. My nerves are at piano wire tension. I think I see buggers around every corner, in every shadow. I have enough presence of mind to put a new clip in my Taurus, thought I pocket the old clip since it has a few round left in it.
“A Taurus. Nice.” Callie smiles and looks with admiration at the gleaming silver barrel.
“What are you carrying?” Her answer won’t mean anything to me, but I feel like I should pretend I know something about guns.
“Colt 45. It was my daddy’s.” She reloads as we continue down the hall. “I don’t know the way from here. We’ll just have to figure it out.”
We pass through a hall lined with tiny bedrooms that put me in mind of a nursing home. Each contains a bed, a table and chair, and a dresser. Every pair of rooms is joined by a bathroom. There is an atmosphere of abandonment about the place, as if its residents just up and fled. That’s a relief, because a spot in which many people lived might also be a place in which many people died, and that means many buggers.
We make it through without encountering any more undead, and end up in a common area. Sofas are arranged haphazardly about the room, and the few tables are cluttered with stray newspapers. It appears the last residents of this place were following news of the bug with as much interest as everyone in the outside world. I wonder how and why they failed to keep the buggers out. This place must not be the secure fortress I imagine when I think “compound.”
A terrible sight greets us on the opposite side of the room. A decaying corpse slumps in a recliner. The back of its head is gone, a sure sign that the person ate the business end of the revolver lying nearby. Callie doesn’t even wince. She just opens the door and peers outside. She nods, signaling it’s safe, and we move on.
The next room is a chapel, or once was. Folding chairs are piled like a funeral pyre in the center of the room. At the far end is a raised platform guarded by an altar rail. Behind it is a communion table and behind that a pulpit. Set in the back wall, with curtains on either side, is a recessed area with one of those baptismal hot tubs that some churches use. A life-size crucifix hangs above it. Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to climb up there and desecrate it, carving a single word into its chest.
WHY?
Callie gazes at it, her face twisted in anger. I don’t know if she’s upset by the vandalism, or the possibility that these worshipers were asking God for answers when the cause of this disaster was right under their noses the entire time.
“Looks like a dead end.” I don’t see any other doors, save the one through which we’ve just come.
“So, we try another way.” Callie turns toward the door and gasps. Buggers are swarming into the common room by way of the far hallway where the living quarters are situated. Before I can react to what I’m seeing, she’s in motion, slamming the door and leaning against it. “There’s no lock! Find something to block it with.”
I reach for a folding chair, but immediately realize even a whole stack of them won’t be sturdy enough to hold. I look around, frantically scanning every inch of the chapel, hoping to find something that will keep them back. My eyes fall on the communion table. I vault the altar rail and heft the heavy table, and wrestle it over the rail.
“You do know there are buggers in the other room?” Callie’s voice is flush with quiet urgency. “Get your butt in gear.”
I drag the table across the room and shove it against the door. It won’t hold for long. What else can I use? I spot an American flag hanging limply from a wooden flagpole in the corner. In less than a minute I’ve used it to bust out three of the vertical posts in the communion rail. I toss them to Callie.
“Wedge these under the door! It’ll help.” I try to break off another post, but the flagpole snaps, leaving a sharp, two-foot stake. I pick it up, thinking it might come in handy if I run out of weapons. The rest of the pole, flag still attached, goes under the door as an extra wedge.
Callie has piled folding chairs atop the communion table and is now shoving more underneath. If the buggers want us badly enough, they’ll pile against the door until sheer weight breaks it down. At that point, all that will stand in their way is whatever barricade we can put in place.
“That won’t hold but for a little while.” Callie looks around. “A fine time for a church not to have stained glass windows.”
“Or any windows, for that matter,” I add. “I’ll check the walls. Maybe there’s a big vent we can crawl through.” It’s not a likely possibility, but it’s all I can think of.
“I’ll check behind the curtains. Maybe there’s a window back there.” She vaults the altar rail and vanishes behind the thick, dusty fabric. She calls out almost immediately. “Kenan!”
“I know. You’re the great and powerful Oz.” I don’t know why I’m making moronic comments when death is hurling itself at the door. Their guttural moans punctuated by the thumps and rattles of walking corpses slamming into the door. When you realize you’re about to die, everything seems... unreal. It’s like this is all a macabre nightmare that will only end when the buggers get us. Then I’ll wake up at home in my own bed, the same old high school nobody I’ve always been.
She peeks out from behind the curtain, her face angry but her eyes twinkling. “There’s a door back here, dummy! Let’s go.”
In a flash, I’m over the rail and by her side. I spare a glance at the sign that reads “Authorized Personnel Only,” and then we step inside.