The day had been overcast and chilly. Now nightfall descended on the lonely countryside. The zombies in the parking lot gathered around the semis that blocked the entrance to their sanctuary. In the moonlight, the creatures’ eerie moaning was like dogs baying at the moon.
Some creatures crawled under the trucks but could not enter the mall building. They pounded and scratched at the doors, but to no avail. In their nonthinking brains some instinct had triggered the impulse to smash against the glass doors, and they tried frantically to get inside.
The banging of the mob was muffled from the inside. Even though the revolving doors were locked, they seemed most vulnerable, but the crawling creatures could not quite get the leverage they needed to smash at the glass panels.
On the other side of the revolving door, the automobile offered added protection. And, as an early warning device, several of the alarm units sat atop the car, guarding against any penetration.
Like in a battlefield after a hand-to-hand-combat war, the zombies’ corpses were strewn all over the concourse. The only difference was that the bodies were from one side only. There was no mingling here of East against West, North against South, rich against poor, one culture or religion against another. Either the four humans were the victors or they were the victims. And once one of them was destroyed, it wouldn’t be long before they all fell prey to the living dead.
It was an eerie juxtaposition—the bleeding, putrid corpses superimposed against the now darkened and ransacked mall. The slumped and crushed shadows lay where happy, hard-working families had come to purchase the new and intriguing products that the great wheels of industry churned out for the unsuspecting, naive consumer. Now their haven had become a bizarre graveyard.
The band of humans appeared on the second-story balcony. Moving to the railing, they looked down into the expanse of the building. They looked like guerilla fighters, struggling in a foreign land, their weapons strapped to their backs, their faces creased with sweat and dirt, their eyes blank with fatigue and the abominable horror that they had witnessed.
They had taken the temple, and they surveyed their spoils. Even Roger seemed triumphant in his anguish as he limped to the railing, supporting himself by leaning against it.
Fran had mixed emotions as she viewed the spectacular expanse of dead bodies. She didn’t think of them in human terms, although many of them, only days before, had led their lives of quiet desperation. But it was a terrifying way to die, and she hoped that when the end came for her, she would go peacefully.
“We put the wall up here,” Peter told Steve after they had returned to the storage area. His pencil pointed to a map of the maintenance corridor. He drew a line just past the washrooms at the end of the hall near the fire stair. “There’s no door from the last office into the washroom, so nobody’ll get nosy . . . and this way we can still get to the plumbing . . .”
“Why can’t we just board up the stairway?” Steve asked. “Hell, they can’t even get through a stack of cartons.”
“I’m not worrying about them,” Peter told him somberly. He looked the younger man in the eyes. They had been through a lot in the past few days and all of them felt a bond of friendship. Both Steve and Fran felt they had proved that they were just as capable and necessary as Peter and Roger. They functioned as a team. No longer were they four separate individuals battling for survival.
Peter continued. “Sooner or later there might be a patrol through here . . . or even looters maybe. I don’t want anybody to ever know that stairway exists.”
They all looked back down at the map. On one side were the offices, with the washrooms to the right. The ducts and grille were above these. The maintenance corridor led along the rooms to the fire stair, directly across from the washrooms. It was at the point where the wall of the washrooms joined the maintenance hall that Peter wanted to build their fake wall. This way, from the outside it would look as if the hallway ended, but they would get the benefit of running water and flushing toilets as well as entrance, by way of the fire stair, to their hideout.
“The ductwork runs all the way into the washrooms,” Peter further explained. “We’ll have to get in and out that way. We’ll bring up any big stuff we want before we put up the wall.”
The two men huddled around the map. Surrounding them in the large storage area were mounds of supplies brought up from the small stores, but they were all in disarray.
Fran had been sitting and watching Roger and was quite concerned at his feverish condition. The trooper’s clothes were soaked through with sweat. His hair was plastered to his forehead, and underneath the closed eyelids, his eyes seemed to roll around. She figured he must be delirious, since his skin practically burned to the touch. She had been trying to soothe him with a wet cloth on his forehead, and tried to make him comfortable behind his barricade of cartons. Gently she wiped his face and his neck and then realized that he was shivering. Wrapping the blanket around him tightly, she gave him a reassuring pat. Then she moved toward Stephen and Peter.
“He seems to be sleeping,” she said with a nod in Roger’s direction.
“Good,” Peter said softly. He was torn between running over to Roger and remaining aloof. It was a tendency of his that had developed during his youth. When things got too heavy, too emotional for him, he tried to stay as far away as possible. That way things couldn’t hurt him. He had done that when his grandmother was dying. He couldn’t stand to see her frail body becoming a parcel of bones. He couldn’t stand to see her watery eyes watching him mournfully. So he chose to ignore it. Three days before she died, he enlisted in the Marine Corps.
Fran moved to where she had stored her medical supplies atop one of the cartons. She had assembled bottles of various medicines, vials of pills, and diabetic hypodermic syringes, as well as bandages and dressings from the pharmacy in the mall.
“I don’t know what else to do . . .” she mumbled to herself glancing furtively at Roger.
Steve stood up, brushed the dust off his pants leg and walked over to her. “You’re doin’ fine,” he reassured her, placing his arm around her shoulder.
Fran looked up at him with her tearstained face. She looked devastated by the recent events. Her hair hung in limp strings across her face, her complexion was sallow, and there were dark circles under her eyes. Steve knew he didn’t look any better. They weren’t living any more—they were barely existing. He longed for the familiar tedium of his past life. Anything but this nightmare!
“His leg is awful,” Fran said somberly. “The infection is spreading fast. Can’t we fly him out of here? . . . try to find a med unit?”
Steve looked at her sympathetically for a second and then turned to Peter.
“I’ve seen half a dozen guys get bitten by those things,” Peter told them quietly. “None of ’em lasted more than thirty-six hours.”
The finality and seemingly coldhearted manner with which Peter spoke stunned Fran. She had thought the two of them were friends—true friends. But then she realized that it was only Peter’s way of preparing himself for the inevitable.
“Peter . . . Peter . . . where are you?” Roger screamed from behind the cartons.
Peter gave the couple a quick, knowing glance and answered kindly, “Right here, buddy.”
Some inner resource had allowed Roger to sit up. He was now sweating even more profusely than before, and his eyes looked very dark and sunken.
“Yeah, yeah,” he called softly. He licked his cracked and swollen lips and looked around the vast, barren room, trying to get his bearings and clear his eyesight.
Fran could no longer take it. She moved to the far corner of the room and sat down on some cartons, her head in her hands. Occasionally, Roger would call out, his voice sounding pathetic as it echoed through the big storage area.
“We did it, huh, buddy? We whipped ’em.”
“That’s right, Rog,” Peter’s soothing voice answered him.
“Didn’t we?” he asked, his voice empty and strained.
Peter’s methodical, patient voice answered him again.
“We sure did, buddy.”
“We whipped ’em and got it all!” Roger screamed out frantically. “We got it all!”
• • •
Fran, Steve and Peter had been working on the fake wall for over two hours. They had created a great network of two-by-fours, which they had braced up at the rear of the corridor. More lumber was wedged against the walls, making a frame. Stephen slammed large nails into the framework for reinforcement. They had already nailed a Masonite panel into place on one side. In the corridor, Peter carefully nailed in a molding, which made the new partition look like a finished wall.
“This must have been for a touch-up,” Fran said as she carried an old can of paint out from one of the washrooms. In her excitement, she nearly tripped over the vast array of hardware and power tools that were scattered around the gardening cart.
She held the can up to the hallway wall, matching up the paint spilled along the sides. “It looks perfect.”
Peter grabbed the can and pried its lid open quickly with a screwdriver. Then he dipped his finger into the liquid and smeared some onto the new wall where it butted against the corridor. He smiled and nodded affirmatively toward Fran.
“Anything else you want before we close it off?” Steve asked her.
“No.” She stared down the corridor toward the mall proper thinking about Roger. He had acted like a child in a candy store in the mall, frolicking around, yelping like a puppy. And now he was upstairs dying a terrible death. Fran swore to herself that she wouldn’t go that way.
She could see the corpses that had littered the hallway piled together at the mouth of the corridor on the balcony.
“No,” she repeated, turning away from the grisly sight.
She stepped back through the unfinished partition and leaned against the framework. Suddenly, her hand flew to her mouth to stifle a gag. Steve sensed her discomfort and ran up behind her, but she felt another wave of nausea and darted for the washroom. Concerned, Steve set down his hammer and quickly followed. She had been really marvelous through all of this, never once complaining. She hadn’t mentioned the child inside of her since the time of her outburst. He had often wondered what she was thinking and how she felt about it. But he was afraid to question her. It was her private terrain, and he feared to tread upon it.
When he reached her, she was kneeling on the floor, propped up by her hands on the seat of the toilet, vomiting. He approached her quietly, his hands falling on her back.
“Leave me alone,” she said without raising her head to look at him. “It’s all right . . . It’s my problem.”
“Frannie—”
“Just get outa here, Stephen. I don’t want you here.”
She made the statement so simply and yet so determinedly that Steve was stunned for a moment. He let the words sink in, not wanting to believe them, not understanding them.
Fran saw the confusion in his eyes and reached up and took his hand. She clutched it tightly, trying to show him that she wasn’t angry, but just wanted to be alone.
“I don’t want you to see me this way—” She had barely got the words out of her mouth when she retched again.
Leaning over the toilet bowl she told him, “Please go . . . I’m all right. Please . . .”
He stood up reluctantly and then drifted out of the room.
Fran clutched the side of the toilet bowl, waiting for the next wave. Then she retched again but she was dry. She tried to swallow and take a deep breath. Then she rolled over and leaned against the wall separating the two stalls and held her stomach. She fumbled with the flush handle and depressed it, the rushing water making a gurgling, ugly sound.
She stood and looked down at her stomach, which was beginning to show. She wondered what effect all this horror was having on her unborn fetus. She had read that the child could pick up vibrations from the mother even while it was in the womb. Many times she had thought of trying to abort. If they ever got out of this alive, children would be the only salvation for earth. Maybe with this child, and others, a new generation could start, one that would not know the despair of its parents.
Stephen walked slowly out of the washroom and toward the unfinished framework.
“This place is gonna be rotten,” Peter said as he walked by. The trooper was gazing down the corridor at the pile of corpses. “We gotta clean up, brother.”
Peter walked past the staring faces of the dead creatures on the balcony to the enormous safe in the president’s office. He put his hands on the large round hatch wheel.
“They’re usually on a timer,” he told Steve. “Opened at nine, locked at four. Keeps the bankers honest.”
He spun the wheel, and the giant door creaked open.
Inside was the huge safety deposit vault of the bank. They stood in the glittery room in awe for a moment, stupefied by the clean metal walls that were lined with drawers and doors where depositors had stored their valuables. At one end of the room there were stacks and stacks of paper bills. The men approached the piles of money and stooped down.
They both had never seen so much money in one place at one time. It was ironic now, because it was really only worthless paper. They flipped through the stacks of tens, twenties, hundreds, all crisp and new.
“You never know,” Peter said with a smirk and started to stuff several packets into his knapsack.
Steve looked at him quizzically and then realized that the trooper was being optimistic. But he didn’t want to miss out if there was even a glimmer of hope. He too took several stacks and stuffed them into his kit as well. “Don’t ya wonder what the archaeologists are gonna think,” he said thoughtfully, looking around the enormous vault. “Guys in the future . . . diggin’ this place up. Imagine all the stuff’s in these boxes . . . jewelry, cash people stash to avoid paying taxes. Maybe they’ll figure it’s all some kind of offering to the Gods . . . like in the pyramids . . . a burial chamber.”
“That’s exactly what it is now,” Peter said and turned to the decomposing pile of bodies awaiting them.
They braced themselves and started to shovel the corpses into the cart. They each used big snow shovels and lifted one corpse from opposite sides and threw it into the cart. They wore elbow-length industrial gloves and had tied handkerchiefs around their noses and mouths, but the stench was still terrible.
They wheeled a cart filled high with bodies across the lobby to the bank. Then they guided it into the vault and unceremoniously dumped the bodies on several others that had already been deposited. The corpses lay askew, their arms and legs protruding as if it were a giant centipede that they had come to bury. Stacks of money were knocked off the shelves and mingled with the extended limbs. When the last body was disposed of, Peter and Steve shut the vault door and the automatic timer clicked on. Then the two of them silently and slowly walked back across the concourse to the maintenance corridor. Peter went over to the controls for the Muzak and reactivated the switch. Steve was grateful that they didn’t speak. He was too choked up, and he knew that if he opened his mouth, it would only be to wail.
While Roger slept fitfully, Fran, Steve and Peter ambled through the barricaded building, drifting in and out of the stores and dropping various items into their shopping carts. Understandably, the novelty of having anything they wanted just for the taking had worn off. Like sleepwalkers, they moved through the aisles. Fran rummaged idly through the cosmetics department. Peter looked through a bookstore, picking up paperbacks and hardly noticing the titles. Stephen played the pinball machines in a huge games room, but his heart wasn’t in it.
Soon, Fran motioned Steve over to another corner of the store toward a big mechanical barber chair. She trimmed his hair in silence, both of them avoiding each other’s eyes in the mirror.
Then Fran brushed the hairs off Steve’s shoulders, and he got out of the barber chair. She put the scissors away and wandered over to the pet store to play with the kittens and puppies. She changed the soiled newspaper and kitty litter, filled the water bowls and gave them all fresh food. She watched with a wan smile on her face as the little animals lapped up their food joyfully, oblivious to the desecration around them. Then she ambled over to the tall cage in the concourse and threw bird seed to the tropical birds that fluttered and flapped about, screeching loudly.
A half an hour later, the team regrouped on the upper balcony. They still had their weapons and survival kits, but Peter was wearing a wide-brimmed hat and Fran sported a new mink coat. They looked wearily down the main concourse to the deserted and ransacked stores. It was empty of corpses, but they could still hear the moaning and pounding at the main entrances. It was extremely dark outside, and so the group could not see the creatures there. But their persistent sound was evidence enough of their presence.
“They’re still here,” Fran said wearily, scanning their realm.
“They’re after us,” Steve replied. “They know we’re in here.”
Peter fiddled with the brim of his hat. It looked outlandish with his trooper’s uniform.
“They’re after the place.” He turned to Steve and Fran. “They don’t know why . . . they just remember . . . remember that they wanna be in here!”
“What the hell are they?” Fran’s eyes darted nervously. The noises at the entrance seemed to rise to an eerie crescendo pitch.
“They’re us, that’s all,” Peter droned on, his voice barely above a whisper. “There’s no more room in hell.” His face was set in a grim expression, his eyes downcast.
“What?” Steve spun around, not believing what he had just heard uttered.
Peter took the wide-brimmed hat off his head and wiped his forearm across his sweating brow. He leaned against the railing and gazed long and hard at the couple.
“Somethin’ my grandaddy used to tell us. You know Macumba? Voodoo? Grandaddy was a priest in Trinidad. Used to tell us, ‘When there’s no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth!’ ”
The room spun around Roger. He reached his arms out for some stability, but they only thrashed about in the air—there was nothing to hold onto. He felt as if he were in a madly tilting Ferris wheel. His mouth opened and he emitted an urgent scream, which came from deep within him and seemed to echo long after his mouth clamped shut. He felt clammy and wet, as if he had been immersed into a pot of cold water and left to dry in a draft. His face, which was ashen, contorted in pain as the needlelike stings traveled up his black and swollen leg. His arm, which was wrapped but oozing, was all but numb.
A distant voice reverberated through his pounding head.
“Get more morphine in him,” Steve determined as Fran fumbled with one of the hypodermics. In her haste, she dropped the vial of serum, and it shattered on the floor. The sound was like thunder to Roger’s ears.
“Get another one . . .” Steve urged, struggling to hold the wildly thrashing Roger in place. “Come on . . .”
Fran rushed into the other room to the medical supply area, which had been organized with little cabinets and a small refrigerator. She took a new vial of serum from the refrigerator.
After the crew had built the fake wall in the maintenance corridor, they had decided to give each other more privacy and built separate rooms.
The huge storage area was now arranged so that there was a central living room in the middle, with three bedrooms and a general room, which contained the medical supplies and a workbench with tools, surrounding it like the spokes of a wheel. They had managed to drag up fairly large pieces of furniture, including mattresses, tables and chairs, lamps, and a few sectional pieces that formed a couch in the living room area. This was in addition to the television, the microwave oven, and other large electronic pieces that they had brought up earlier. Although there were still many cartons scattered about, it was beginning to look more like a home—or at least a college dormitory—than a storage area.
Downstairs, Peter was intent on checking the covering at the floor base of the fake wall when he heard the violent screaming emanating from above.
He ran into the far office and climbed up a rope ladder that dangled from the ceiling. Scrambling through the grille-work in the ceiling, he entered the duct. Then he pulled up the ladder and closed the grille. Wriggling through the tight space for a few feet, he came to another opening and dropped through that grille into the washroom. Then he moved around the back of the finished partition, and through the wooden framework, into the fire stair. It was a circuitous path, but one that would not be detected by unwanted intruders.
As he rushed up the stairs, several steps at a time, Roger’s screams became more and more agonized. As Peter charged into Roger’s makeshift bedroom, he could see Fran withdrawing a hypodermic from Roger’s good arm. The man kicked his legs and whipped his arms around with abandon, striking anything or anybody within reach. Steve tried to wrestle the man still, but even in his sickness, Roger was exceptionally strong. Peter ran over and clamped his big hands onto the other trooper’s shoulders. Whether it was his powerful arms pressing down, or simply his presence, Roger miraculously relaxed. Fran watched for a moment with tears in her eyes and then drifted out of the room.
“Go on,” Peter said to Steve after Roger had settled down enough to allow the drug to take effect. “I’ll stay with him.”
Steve gave him a long, hard look, as if to say, “I know what you’re going through,” and left the room.
In the living area, Fran was sitting in an inflatable chair, which was molded to her body. She felt safe in that chair, as if she were in a womb, and often found refuge in it when things got rough. Steve came up to her and put his arms around her neck from behind. She cupped his hands with hers and held them tightly. He rocked her gently back and forth as she sat staring off across the room.
In Roger’s room, a heaviness fell over the air. He caught his breath and looked up at Peter.
“You . . . you’ll take care of me, right, Peter?” he asked, feeble and childlike. He licked his lips and tried to speak coherently. “You’ll take care of me . . . when I go?”
Peter stared directly ahead, his eyes focused on a nail in the temporary wall. “I will.”
“I don’t wanna be walkin’ around like that, Peter . . . not after I go . . .” Roger tried to sit up to better make his point, but Peter merely applied slight pressure and the blond trooper lay down again. “I don’t wanna be walkin’ around like that . . .”
Roger’s eyes were terrified. Like a frightened deer, he looked this way and that at the walls, the ceiling, at Peter—but he couldn’t focus. The spinning started again and he felt nauseated.
“Peter? Peter?”
“I’m here, trooper,” Peter said, almost mechanically.
The man’s face was impassive. He was prepared.
“You’ll take care of me . . . I know you will . . .” Roger pleaded.
“I will.”
“Peter?”
“Yeah, brother?” his voice softened. His eyes glistened and the lines around his mouth tightened.
“Peter, don’t do it . . . till you’re sure . . . sure I’m comin’ back. Don’t do it till you’re sure . . . I might not come back, Peter.” Roger’s voice weakened, and a shudder passed through his body. “I’m gonna try not to . . . I’m gonna try . . . not to come back . . .”
His body gave a final heave, and his eyelids fluttered but remained opened. Peter reached across the still chest and closed the lids. Then he sat very still, the tears streaking his dust-covered face.
• • •
Moonlight filtered down through the skylight in the living area, a pathway to heaven. The path to freedom through the skylight was now a sturdy wooden ladder, that had replaced the pyramid of cartons. Someone had superstitiously left a derringer pistol on the top step.
Stephen was huddled over the huge twenty-one-inch color console television that they had lugged up to replace the first one. He had wired the set to a makeshift antenna that stretched up through the skylight. Now he fiddled with it, but only a faint signal came in. Nearby, a table lamp sat on a small end-table, shedding some light on the darkened room. Its cable was patched into a network of wiring that stretched about the room.
Fran unpacked in the dining alcove. She had chosen a pale wood butcher-block with four rush-seated chairs. Nearby was a matching breakfront, which she had filled with dishes and silverware. It was something she had always wanted, and she felt foolishly like a newlywed. She was trying very hard not to think about what was going on in the other room. For quite some time now, Roger had been silent, but neither she nor Steve had the nerve to investigate. At every sound, she turned to see if Peter was coming out of the room.
Steve was intent on the television. At first he had turned it on to get his mind off Roger, but now he was seriously listening to the two men who were talking. One was a commentator, the other a government official. It amazed him to see others who were still alive. He felt so isolated here. It had only been about three or four days, but since their total existence had been disrupted, all time had lost its meaning.
“I’ve got to . . . be careful with words here . . .” the scientist was saying. He was dressed in a suit, but his tie was rumpled and his shirt open at the collar. His face was unshaven and his eyes drawn, with dark circles under them. “We haven’t been able to study their habits. We’ve repeatedly asked for a live capture so we can have controlled studies . . .” he seemed to stutter on the last word and his cheek twitched nervously. “We need s-s-supply-and-demand ratios.”
The commentator was also dressed in a rumpled suit, but he wore no tie. He, too, looked as though he hadn’t slept in days.
“You mean,” he questioned, “their need versus—”
The scientist cut him off. “Versus the amount of food available. Let’s be blunt.” He pulled his folding chair closer to the camera. There was a commotion in the TV studio. The noises and shouting reminded Steve of the confusion at WGON before they had escaped.
“Jesus Christ,” he mumbled, thinking how far away they were now from that scene, and how much they had gone through to be here now.
He squatted near the set, his eyes transfixed. Fran came up to the screen from behind him.
The scientist continued, his eyes growing wider and darting nervously.
“Project their rate of growth. There’s a critical balance. And it’s the waste that kills us, literally. They use . . . they use maybe five per cent of the food available on the human body. And then the body is usually intact enough to be mobile when it revives. There’s an ecological imbalance, and they’re incapable of understanding.” He finished his sentence, and wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket. The stains on his sleeve were noticeable over the air.
“What are you proposing?” The commentator had gray hair and an unshaven face as well. He wore rimless glasses, which kept slipping off his nose. The hot lights from the studio caused him to perspire.
“We have to be unemotional,” the scientist replied. “We have to provide countermeasures or we’re all . . . they can’t control the rate of growth and consumption. We have to control it for them.”
“You’re suggesting that we help them?” the commentator asked, horror-stricken.
“By helping them in this case we save ourselves.” The scientist looked around at the studio audience, hoping to get some support for his radical idea.
A great outcry greeted his words. The image on the set bobbled around as if the camera were being jostled by an irate crowd. The speaker fumbled for the right words to describe the situation.
Steve watched with fright in his eyes. “Good God,” he uttered.
The scientist’s whining words reached Peter in the other room. His face was impassive and expressionless. His eyes, however, were pinpointed on something straight ahead of him.
“I’m proposing that certain . . . necessary measures be put into effect at once,” the scientist continued. “Measures applying to all official search-and-destroy units, while they’re still operative . . . Hospitals . . . rescue stations . . . and any . . . private citizens . . .”
Peter’s eyes fluttered and he looked down at the rifle stretched across his lap. The TV droned on from the living room:
“In cooperation with the mobile units of the O.E.P., the corpses of the recently dead should be delivered over to the authorities for collection in refrigerated vans . . . they should be decapitated to prevent revival . . .” The words rushed out of the scientist’s mouth, as if they were distasteful.
When he had finished, he took a deep breath, as if anticipating the outburst that followed.
Peter’s eyes went from the rifle on his lap to the floor, where twenty feet away lay Roger’s corpse. His face was covered with a blanket. A slight breeze from the fan in the living room wafted over the inert form, lifting the corners of the blanket.
“This collection . . . this collection,” the scientist shouted over the voices clamoring in the studio. The staff was now on stage, protesting vigorously. Emotional and foul language was being thrown around with no concern for the FCC regulations.
“This collection could be . . . stored . . . rationed . . . for distribution among the infected society . . .” He could barely be heard over the angry shouts. “In an attempt, in an attempt to curb the senseless slaughter . . . the senseless slaughter of our own society . . .”
Peter blinked his eyes. He wanted to make sure of what he saw. He wanted to be certain that it wasn’t his imagination playing tricks on him. But now he knew it to be true—Roger’s foot had definitely moved under the blanket. He tightened his hands on his weapon.
He tried to shut off his mind from the scientist’s insistent, rasping, high-pitched voice.
“The dissection . . . the dissection of the corpses can be carried out . . . carried out with respect for the dignity of the human body . . .”
Roger’s arms seemed to move and were now twitching slightly. The blanket started to slide down his face.
“The heads . . . the heads and the . . . skeletons . . . whenever possible . . . could be identified and . . . buried in consecrated grounds . . .”
All hell broke loose in the studio. Chairs were thrown on the stage and the picture wavered.
Peter stared with fascination mixed with disbelief as the blanket continued to creep down Roger’s face. Soon, his vacantly staring eyes were visible . . . the drooling mouth . . . the pasty, green-tinted face. A putrid stench filled the air. Peter couldn’t believe the transformation. He almost expected Roger to jump up as if it were a joke.
Suddenly, the figure tried to sit up. Peter snapped back to reality and clicked a shell into his supergun.
Then, the corpse sat all the way up. It stared blankly at Peter, then with recognition. It struggled to its feet. Peter calmly sighted the center of its forehead through his rifle. He, too, rose.
“We’ve got to remain unemotional . . . unemotional . . . rational . . . logical . . . tactical . . . tactical!” the scientist pleaded above the raging commotion in the studio. Nervously, he once again wiped his brow with his sleeve.
“They’re crazy,” Steve muttered, staring at the tube, disbelief written all over his face. “They’re crazy.”
“It’s really . . . all over, isn’t it?” Fran asked, mournfully.
From the other side of the room, a sudden blast roared through the wall. Fran jumped and fell into Stephen’s arms, shaking and hysterically crying.
Steve closed his eyes tightly and started to tremble uncontrollably. A few seconds later, the TV was clicked off. Steve opened his eyes and saw Peter standing by the set, the rifle still in his hand. The man’s eyes were blindly staring at the blank screen.
Without speaking, Steve untangled Fran’s arms from around his neck, rose, and walked over to Peter. Gently, he took the rifle from the immobile man.
A little while later the two of them dumped Roger’s corpse on top of the stack of bodies in the bank vault. The whole time, neither man had uttered one word, nor exchanged one sentiment, but went about their work purposefully. The dead man’s eyes stared at them with a puzzled expression as they placed him in the huddle of arms and legs. Blood oozed from the familiar gunshot wound in the center of Roger’s forehead.
As the heavy door of the vault closed with a metallic slam, Peter thought the whole image was one of hell itself.
As the clanging sound resounded throughout the mall, Peter uttered a long-forgotten prayer of salvation for Roger’s soul, just in case.