Tunnels
It took Westlake the better part of an hour to remove the other screw, pry the access hatch loose, and descend into the corridor below. He carefully closed it behind him, not wanting to risk letting his fellow corpses get out. At least not until he had a good reason. Thankfully none of them paid him – or the opening – any mind. Which frightened him, and made him question how much human remained within him.
It took him longer than he liked to think about to get down the ladder. His joints had a tendency to seize up at inopportune moments. There was no pain, but more than once he’d come close to snapping his elbow or wrist. It was odd; he was simultaneously stronger and more fragile than he had been as a living man. There was a part of him that wanted to push himself past his limits, just to see if he could somehow walk on a shattered knee. He figured that if he didn’t notice, he might just pull it off. It was his conscious mind that was getting in the way. The bit of him that remembered being alive.
But it was getting harder to remember what that had been like. Maybe he was just adapting to his new circumstances. He’d always been good at that. At least he thought he’d always been good at it. The truth was, he couldn’t recall much of anything beyond the basics and more recent events. If his mind was a building, the lights on the top floors had gone off. He felt a faint sort of distress about that, but it was a dull ache rather than a sharp pain. Maybe a person wasn’t meant to come through the other side of death intact.
The access corridor was dark. Even the emergency lights had failed. He kept one hand pressed to the wall as he walked and tried to remember how to get back to the loading dock. He didn’t have a plan as such. At the moment, he just wanted to know more about the lay of the land, who was in charge, and what they intended. But first, he wanted to know where they’d stashed the people they’d taken from the pier. He’d seen the vans peel off and head towards the loading docks after the convoy had pulled in through the outer barricades. So that was where he intended to start.
The utility tunnels were a silent labyrinth. The only living things he saw were rats, and the only dead things he came across weren’t the type that got up and moved around. At least not anymore. Just mummified carcasses, all but withered to nothing. He didn’t disturb any of them. Just kept moving. He could hear sounds from above, but couldn’t tell what any of them were. He paused only once, near a door that led down to the sewers. Something thumped against it from the other side when he put his hand flat on the door.
He waited, but the thump didn’t repeat itself. “Yeah, you just keep waiting,” he murmured, tapping the door with his fingers. He marked it in his mind, just in case. Going through the sewers didn’t appeal to him, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
Fingers still pressed to the door, Westlake turned. It was all coming back to him now; they’d mapped these tunnels. He’d come down here with… who? Maybe Spinks, the small tech-guy from Reno. He couldn’t recall who’d been on the crew that time. Westlake pushed away from the door and started moving again. It didn’t matter, really. But remembering that might mean that his brain wasn’t completely compromised.
It took him another hour to find the steps leading up to the loading dock. The door wasn’t locked, but it was blocked by something heavy. Boxes, perhaps? He managed to get the door open a crack, and heard the murmuration of voices and the sound of a truck engine. They must’ve been backing out the trucks. He waited until the noise was at its loudest, and gave the door a strong shove. Crates skidded across the oily floor and he managed to squeeze through.
He spotted the pen immediately. It wasn’t large, but there were around thirty people inside. Most were sitting; some stood or leaned against the chain-link fence and looked out at the few guards on duty, none of them on their feet. The guards were sitting near the doors, smoking and talking. Not very diligent. Then, maybe they didn’t have to be.
The loading dock was crammed full of stuff – high shelves and stacks of pallets, most of them between him and the doors. The jury-rigged lights were focused on the front of the loading dock, away from him. Another stroke of luck. Maybe someone was watching over him. He thought briefly of Calavera and his skull-faced saint. If anyone was going to look out for a living dead man, it was probably Santa Muerte.
He didn’t have much of a plan. Plans came after you cased the joint. Moving slowly and carefully, he took a roundabout path towards the pen where the survivors from the pier were being kept. As he did so, he saw Keates approaching the pen holding a clipboard, and flanked by several other guards. Keates stopped in front of the pen, he called out, “Right, all eyes on me, folks. When I call your name, step out of the pen. Try anything funny and we’ll shoot you where you stand.”
“What’s going on?” someone called from inside the pen. A short, older man.
“None of your concern, unless your name is on the list.”
There was a murmuring at this. Keates raised his hands for quiet. “Look, it seems harsh I know. But we got to think about the greater good here, folks.” He paused, and from his expression Westlake thought the words gave him no pleasure. “It’s a matter of survival. We need every edge we can get. Every warm body, every bullet, every can of expired food buys us another day to make this place into something great. Everyone has a part to play… even if that part ain’t exactly fun.”
While he spoke, the guards pulled the gate open. Keates started reciting names. One of them – Saul Blum – happened to belong to the older man who’d spoken. Ten people in all were selected. A mix of young and old, men and women. Their hands were zip tied by the guards and they were pushed towards the doors that led into the casino. No one protested, though there were some loud complaints from those left behind.
Westlake wondered where they were being taken. He strained to hear as Keates turned to one of his subordinates and said, “Go tell Brewer he needs to get some of his zombie freaks ready. St Cloud wants to celebrate.”
Westlake’s eyes narrowed. Brewer. That had been the name of the old guy who’d been with Keates earlier. The one who’d noticed him. Some sort of doctor – or mad scientist? What was going on here? Brewer had said something about being downstairs. What was downstairs? Sludgy memories stirred. Utility rooms. The laundry. So, what was happening in the laundry? And what did Keates mean by zombie freaks? Only one way to find out.
Westlake turned and crept back the way he’d come. He felt oddly satisfied. His mind had something to chew on, a problem to solve. Maybe that was all he needed to stay human for a bit longer.
He hauled the door shut behind him as quietly as he could and headed back down the corridor. Not quietly enough, as it turned out. The cattle prod took him in the chest as he rounded a turn. Everything locked up tight and he went down, jerking and spasming, unable to control his limbs. Two guards stood over him, both of them armed with cattle prods and catch poles. They tapped him with the prods again for good measure.
Zombies weren’t fans of electricity. Westlake recalled that much from his time in the mountains. The Saranac Lake survivor camp had used an improvised electric fence to keep the zombies at bay – at least for a time.
For a moment, he was back there, feeling the wind, smelling the trees and the stink of burning meat. He heard a dog bark, and a woman’s voice – Ramirez? No, someone younger. Moments from the past and present jangled in his head like shards of broken glass.
There was no pain, thankfully. Just annoyance with himself and the inability to get back on his feet. Obviously, they’d have someone patrolling the access corridors. It had been stupid to imagine otherwise.
“I told you I saw it,” one of the guards said.
The other grunted and nudged Westlake with the toe of his boot. “Yeah, yeah. What I want to know is how the hell it got down here.”
“Might be a sewer entrance open somewhere. Who cares? Get it looped and let’s get it out of here.” Westlake didn’t struggle much as the noose from a catch pole looped over his head and tightened about his neck. Just like last time, he let them haul him up and shove him forward. “What do you think?” the first guard continued. “Throw him in the parking garage with the others?”
The other guard shook his head. “Nah, too much effort. Let’s just take him to the arena. They can always use another walker. Even a vanilla one like this.”
The arena, Westlake thought. What the hell was the arena? He pushed the thought aside and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. He made a few half-hearted lunges at his captors and made groans that sounded more pitiful than menacing, just to stay in character, but mostly he listened while they talked. They talked about the casino, and Keates. They talked about someone named St Cloud.
The name rang a bell in his head. Did he know this St Cloud? The answer came to him as they took him out of the tunnels and into the casino proper. The foreign investor. The one who’d financed the casino job. He’d found out the guy’s name afterwards, wanting to know just in case the job came back on him somehow. He never imagined it would happen while he was one of the undead.
So, this St Cloud was in charge. That was interesting. He wasn’t sure this information was useful, but it might be in the future. The march was slow going as well, and he had time to map out the route, which hadn’t changed much since the last time. A few extra fire doors, but no substantial differences. Memories of his last visit percolated to the surface. Sketchy, still, but things were starting to settle back into place. The more he used his brain, the better it seemed to work. Like working the kinks out of a sore muscle.
He paid special attention to the armed guards who stood sentinel over the elevators and fire doors. St Cloud had plenty of security people. He’d spotted more than a dozen of them on the walk up from the tunnels. They roamed the halls in small teams of two or three, watching everything and everyone.
Besides the guards there were plenty of other people. None of them were armed. Only the guys and gals in black got to carry weapons. In other survivor camps, everyone carried a weapon. But that didn’t seem to be the case here. Another fact filed away for future consideration.
Finally, he was brought to a room off the main drag of where the casino floor had been. The door had been reinforced and barred. One guard opened it, while the other shoved Westlake inside and hastily retrieved the catch pole. The door slammed and he was plunged into darkness. He smelled rotting meat and spoiled blood. For a moment, there was silence. Then he heard the scrape of metal on bone.
A moment later, something hissed next to his ear.
“Ah shit,” Westlake said, out loud.