Byron : A Zombie Tale (Part 1) (9 page)

With my weapon in-hand, I slowly made my way around the counter. There was nothing there. And then, I heard the sound over by the walk-in refrigerators and the cutting room. I slid the clear plastic vertical slat curtain aside as I made my way into the meat cutting room. There was dried blood all over. I was sure that at some point early point during the whole ordeal the place must have driven some creature mad with bloodlust! Apparently, the workers never had the opportunity to clean up after their shift ended. There was a slight smell of fresher blood, but this too had lost much of its potency. It was almost as if someone had cut themselves passing through many hours ago.

I signaled John to stay out of the room. At least as far as I was concerned, I was as dead as anything that could have been hunting us and had a better chance to survive an encounter. What the hell – I was already undead, what did it matter if I got bit again? Just like at the police station when that beast tore into my arm.

The cutting room looked pretty much as I had expected it to. In the dim light that was allowed through the viewing windows on the store-side of the room where customers could watch the butchers at work, I could see that the room was fairly simply arranged. Along two walls were banks of refrigerator doors. Along the third wall and under the viewing windows were long counter tops covered with plastic cutting boards. The third wall also contained the entrance to the butcher’s counter where I had just been. Several individual cutting tables were situated within the center of the room, creating meat processing islands.

Upon each of the counters were knives. Lots of knives! I picked up a couple of them for a little extra protection and slipped them into my pack.

While I was putting the knives in my pack I could hear something move in one of the refrigerators.

I shouldered my bat and approached the door with caution. Slowly, I opened the latch and pulled the heavy door open. Something moved fast, coming forward.

I tightened my grip on the bat and wound up, ready to unleash a death-blow. However, my strike would never come. Before I could react a broom handle came swinging right for my head.

I threw my left arm up to deflect the blow. The weapon broke as it struck my bone and sent a piece of the broom flying. Without realizing what was happening a figure had leapt from the room and shoved me to the ground with fists pummeling at me.

I knew at once that this could not be an undead beast attacking me. “Stop!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “Get off me!”

As blows rained down on my head I could heard more movement from behind me. And then, “Tim! Stop! Get off him!” It was John yelling.

Wait! Tim?

I pushed the figure off me with all the force I could muster. The effect was that he was physically lifted from the ground, rose up several feet, and fell prone to the floor landing on his face. I turned aside and rose to my feet. The man who had been beating at me was dressed like one of the undead. His clothes were a shambles, dried blood coated them, and John was now rolling the figure onto its back.

“Dammit, Byron. I hope you didn’t just kill him!” I could hear that John was worried, but also a little perturbed.

“Hey, he attacked me!” I said defensively. “What was I supposed to do? Let him kill me?”

John didn’t answer and instead only shot me a glance. How the hell was I supposed to know that Tim would be flying out at me trying to bash my skull in? I tried to put my anger aside and came over to make sure that he was okay.

“Stay back,” John yelled at me holding his hand up. “I don’t know if he’s bleeding or not.”

“Yeah,” I retorted, “well I do!” I took a deep whiff of the air. “He ain’t bleeding. He’s just probably knocked out from hitting the floor. Serves him right!” I grumbled.

Tim was stirring within a few seconds. But, I could hear from outside in the supermarket that other things were stirring as well. I looked out the viewing window and could see several creatures shambling their way toward us. My yelling must have attracted them. And then, I heard the tell-tale shriek as one of the beasts caught sight of us.

“John,” I said with excitement, “we’ve got problems. Looks like we weren’t alone in here!” I pointed out the window to the growing number of creatures making their way in our direction.

He nodded. “We need to get somewhere safe!” Then to Tim he asked, “are you okay? Can you walk?”

Tim nodded.

John and I helped Tim up to his feet and then made our way into the refrigerator. “Be careful,” he said, “this is how I locked myself in before! You have to…” The door slammed shut before he could finish his sentence and I knew at once the gravity of our situation. None of us were in a position to stop the door from slamming shut and we all were at fault. However, knowing this did not save us from the cruel truth that slammed in our faces: we were screwed with a capital ‘S’!

I was not as worried as my two frat brothers. The funny thing about a large industrial refrigerator like this is that there should be a release on the inside of the door which could be used in cases such as these. I’d had the fortunate (unfortunate?) experience in high school of working in a fast food restaurant with two such units – one that was a refrigerator and the other that was a freezer. Both units, however, had safety releases on the doors so that workers could not accidentally be locked inside. “There’s a safety release,” I said, “all of these units have them.”

“Correction,” Tim replied calmly, “this unit used to have one until it broke off in my hand!”

“Oh!” was all I could think to reply. Then after a few moments of stunned silence I added, “well, look at the bright side – at least the creatures are out there!”

Tim shot me a nasty glare. “Great, make jokes! We’re stuck in here with nothing but rotten food and mold and out there is a horde of the undead looking to sink their teeth into our flesh. And, you’re making jokes.”

I smiled at him and said, “I take it you mean ‘our flesh’ in the Royal sense?” But his only reply was a curious expression.

“What are you talking about?” He asked indignantly. “You saw those damn things out there. They’ll find their way in eventually and then tear the flesh from our bodies!” He was become panicked and crazed. I could tell he had seen some bad things over the last few days. It was a little much for his mind to handle.

I put my hand on his shoulder, “Tim. I don’t know how to tell you this…” He looked at me expectantly. “I’m dead!”

“What? No way! You are Not!” He said in complete disbelief.

It was John’s turn to talk next. “Tim, you didn’t happen to notice that his right cheek is missing, did you? Evan blew it off with a shotgun earlier. Byron
is
dead. But, he is also
undead
.”

It took several minutes for Tim to respond. “You’re one of them?” He yelled at me. “How? How could you be one of them?”

“Hey,” I said to him, standing my ground, “I may be dead but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have feelings.” I shot John a smirk.

John started laughing! Tim didn’t know how to react. It was obvious that I was actually a walking corpse, but he couldn’t understand why John wasn’t concerned.

“What’s going on?” Tim asked.

“Well, you hit the coffin nail on the head,” I mused. “I am the walking dead. But, as you can obviously see, I am not
one of them
. I am something different – I am me! My body is dead, but my brain never went over to whatever those things are. I retained my
self
. You, on the other hand…”  I was going to make more wise cracks, but as I raised my left arm to point at him I noticed that it bent at an odd angle.

My arm was broken! The flesh had torn and I could see that the bone was shattered. It must have broken when Tim attacked me with the broom stick.

“Dammit, Tim! Now look what you did. How the hell do I fix this?” I was angry. But I also noticed that my throat was beginning to get raspy.

There was no more fresh blood nearby! My body would start its slow shut down again. Dammit, and double dammit!

John could hear that my voice was beginning to falter. “Byron, are you okay?” He knew that I wasn’t. But, given our current predicament there was little that we could do about the situation.

“I’ll survive,” I rasped out to him. Though, deep down, I was afraid of the unknown. I didn’t know how long I could sustain without the stimulus of fresh blood, or what would happen if I did not have it. All I knew is that before Pam had stabbed that cop there had been absolutely nothing! No motor function, no thoughts, just blackness.

Tim looked at John. “What do you mean, ‘are you okay,’ and ‘I’ll survive’? He’s dead. He won’t survive anything! He’s one of them and he’ll turn us as soon as he gets a chance!”

John rolled his eyes. “Tim, shut up! Byron will do no such thing! He’s fought off every impulse to become one of those things. In fact, he’s been fighting them with me! The whole purpose I came out here was to find you…” He paused, feeling the stare from my eyes boring into his head. “Sorry, Byron. I know I said this was a raiding party, and it is! But, I also had to try and find Tim. I couldn’t say that in front of Pam and Evan without getting arguments from them. I didn’t think you would mind trying to save one of your brothers.”

He was right. I didn’t mind. But he also could have said something earlier about the true purpose of his raiding party. Yet, I couldn’t blame him. We had found Tim and he was still alive! The ends justified the means.

I nodded to John. Then, when I didn’t speak as he expected me to, I tapped my throat at him.

“Already,” he said in astonishment? “It can happen that quickly?”

“Sss..tiii” I rasped at him. My body was shutting down faster than it had before. Perhaps on the outside of these air-tight doors, there was still enough residual fresh blood in the air to help sustain me for longer periods. But, in here, nothing.

John pulled a knife from his pocket and looked at Tim. Tim’s jaw dropped open. I could see that he didn’t know what John was going to do. Without a moment’s hesitation, John pricked his thumb with the tip of the knife blade.

The effect was instantaneous! The saliva and burning were back. After getting a strong whiff I held my breath in my chest.

“Okay!” I yelled. “Cover it up!”

Tim watched as John elevated his hand and pinched his thumb to stop the bleeding. After a few minutes he tore a strip of cloth off his undershirt and wrapped it around his thumb. “I hope that’s enough to keep you going for a while,” he said with a grin.

I nodded and gave him a thumbs-up, not wanting to waste any of the air I had breathed in imbued with the rich, delectable aroma. He nodded in understanding. “Good!” He told me.

Tim, on the other hand, was trying to figure out what was going on. “What the hell just happened?” he asked.

John looked him up and down. “Byron is undead. But, for some reason, he has retained all of his identity. His mind seems to be unaffected by whatever catalyst has been turning living humans into flesh-eating creatures. Though, as you can see, he’s not completely unaffected. He still needs the smell of blood to keep him moving. Whatever the catalyst is, it desires fresh, living blood. So, it reanimates his flesh when he smells blood. That’s why I cut my finger – to give him a little bit of blood. Obviously, Byron also understands that this same act can draw a horde of these beasts after us, so he has decided to hold his breath and conserve it so that he can survive without advertising free food to the beasts outside.”

I nodded and gave another thumbs-up. I was impressed. John was always the quiet one. He never really spoke up in classes and always seemed aloof when it came to his studies. But, he was really much more attentive than I had ever realized. I gave him a quizzical look.

“What,” he responded. “You think that you and Evan are the only smart ones in the Frat? I carry a 3.94 GPA – I think that’s higher than Evan’s even. I only ask him for papers to keep up the illusion of being a slacker. But, I always submit my own papers.” He smiled. I had to admit that John was truly full of surprises.

Tim looked at John, “okay, so now we have a pet-zombie. Now what?”

I saw red. Without thinking I reached out to smack his arm him with my left hand. But, instead of delivering a blow, the lower half of my forearm simply bent downward at a nearly 90-degree angle. We all looked at the limp limb.

“Oh shit,” Tim said, “sorry about breaking your arm, Byron.” After a few moments he added, “does it hurt?”

I shook my head. No, it didn’t hurt. In fact, now that my body was dead none of my nerve endings relayed pain information beyond the constant burning of un-death.

I gave Tim a thumbs-up to signal that it was alright. Then, I began to look all about the inside of the refrigerator to find some means of egress for us. It didn’t take long, because I soon saw a glimmer of hope on the back wall. The refrigerator was an older model that had a large pair of fans set on the back wall. With my right hand I started pulling on the box containing the fans. John and Tim quickly understood what I was doing and pushed me aside as they made short work of pulling the fans off the wall.

Behind the fans was a large air duct which appeared to be big enough for each of us to fit through. Tim, who was the thinnest of us, volunteered to go first. We boosted him up to the opening and he quickly wriggled through into the ductwork beyond.

We waited several minutes, listening to Tim make his way through the ducts. His banging seemed to be concentrated only on the hole in the wall and never once sounded like it went past us overhead.

“Hey guys, Tim called through the ducts. “Come on up! The ducts go to a condenser unit on the roof. I was able to get out through there!” Just follow it straight up!”

As we heard Tim’s voice echo down the shaft there erupted pounding at the refrigerator door. “Oh crap,” John said, “they must have smelled my blood, or something.”

I inhaled and shook my head. “No. That’s not it.” I pointed to the air duct, “the smell is coming from there. And, it’s very strong.” I had to hold my breath again in order to not lose control of my body.

John shouted up the shaft, “Tim, are you okay? Did you hurt yourself?”

Tim’s voice was a little strained as it came back down, “yeah. It’s just a little cut though, I’ll be okay.”

The pounding on the door suddenly increased from about two or three sets of fists to more; many more! The beating was becoming so bad that the door shook on its frame.

I was about to speak when John must have read my meaning in my face. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I’m going. I’ll get up and out as quick as I can. With any luck, I can stop his bleeding!”

I nodded and crouched so that he could climb up my shoulders to escape.

“Tim,” John shouted up the shaft, “I’m coming buddy!” In a few brief moments he was gone up the shaft. With my left arm broken, I couldn’t lift the fan unit to stop any of the creatures from following. I knew that it was only a matter of time before they would break through the door.

And, apparently I didn’t have to wait long. Only a minute after John had shimmied himself up the air duct the door came off its hinges. The creatures worked diligently to slide the obstacle out of their way and rushed into the refrigerator.

A handful of creatures entered the room expecting to find something to tear into. However, they were dismayed when all they found was a lifeless corpse leaning against the shelves. After about ten minutes of trying to figure out where the smell was coming from, the creatures decided to leave. And, I followed them.

As soon as I thought it was safe, I broke away from the pack of creatures and filled up my pack with some provisions. Afterwards, I made my way outside to look for a way onto the roof. However, it didn’t take a great effort to find where Tim and John had holed up – there was a congregation of creatures on the ground below them.

Well, at least we had escaped the refrigerator. Now, I just needed to figure out how to get them down off the roof and back to the Sanctuary.