Dead, but Not for Long (11 page)

“Never heard that one before.” Jack didn’t even try to hide the sarcasm, but he couldn’t argue with her logic.

Keith raised an eyebrow at Autumn’s comment. “We’ll just remind them that the young ones aren’t as tough and chewy as us adults.”

“If things look bad, we’ll send the two of you back up,” Jack said.

Lindsey started to protest, but stopped herself. She wasn’t normally one to run from danger,
but having a child in her care changed things. When the attacks in the hall had
happened, Lindsey’s first impulse had been to protect Autumn and she’d done
that. After sending the girl to the closet, Lindsey had crawled across the room
to the door and had locked it, keeping out of sight of the window. Once she had
made her way back across the room and was safely hidden away with Autumn, the
guilt had hit her hard. There had been muffled screams coming from the hall and
Lindsey had anguished over whether or not to leave Autumn to try to help the victims.

Now she was in a similar situation. She badly wanted to find a weapon and help the two men clear
the floor, but she had a larger obligation to stay with Autumn and keep her
safe if things got dicey downstairs. She glanced at Marla, wondering if the
woman could be trusted to watch Autumn, but decided that it would be a bad idea for many reasons.

“All right, we’ll do that,” Lindsey said, her face betraying none of her conflicting thoughts.

Decision made, they walked to the elevators. Once inside, Keith and Jack stayed to the front
with their guns ready, keeping Lindsey and Autumn behind them. When the door
opened, Keith stepped out quickly and turned left while Jack took the right. It
appeared to be clear but they checked both halls, killing a couple of zombies
that had decided to stay behind, along with some crawlers who had been too slow
to join the party. Once they were fairly certain that the floor was clear, they closed the fire exit door. The pharmacy was the last stop.

“Wonder if the local gun shops do deliveries,” Keith said, hesitating outside the door. He
checked the gun again and was not happy to see that he only had two bullets left.

“I hear you,” replied Jack. He turned to Lindsey. “I suggest you two stay back until we know
who or what’s in the pharmacy.”

“All right,” Lindsey said, “we’ll yell if we see anything coming.”

“Ready?” Keith asked.

He pulled the door open and watched for movement inside.

The pharmacy waiting area was dark so Keith flipped on the lights. One of the fluorescent
bulbs flickered as it fought to come on, casting a strobe-like effect on the
blood-stained walls. Jack scanned the room, gun raised and ready for anything
lurking in the corners. A body lay in the shadows in the far corner but it didn’t seem to be moving.

“Looks like a slaughter house in here,” Jack said, eyes traveling over the walls. After
checking all of the normal places that a person could hide, he relaxed. He
didn’t notice a creature, devoid of a body from the chest down, crawling from its hiding place from beneath an end table.

“Looks like it’s clear,” he said with a bit of surprise in his voice. “I hope
you
have a
way to get behind the counter. That’s one key they don’t even allow security to have. If not, we’ll have to be creative.”

“It’s a key card and only the pharmacists have it,” Keith said. “We normally place our orders from this side.”

They both looked across the room at the pharmacy counter. Bullet-proof glass stretched to the ceiling and there were bars as well.

“Well, this is going to be tricky,” Jack said, pondering the problem.

When a hand clamped around his ankle, Keith yelled and tried to pull away. Since the body
it belonged to was just a head and a bit of torso with arms, it was light. When
Keith tried to pull away, the partial body just moved with him. The whole time,
the dead thing was doing its best to bite into Keith’s leg. Keith quickly
switched tactics and used his free foot to stomp down on the corpse’s head,
crushing the skull with a sound that he was sure would haunt his dreams.
Breathing hard, he backed away.

“Well, lucky us, we found ourselves half a pharmacist,” he said, pulling at a bloody lab coat
that was partially under the table. He carefully searched the blood-soaked pockets.

“Nothing,” he said. He looked around the room until his eyes lit on the body in the corner.
When he walked over, he saw that it was actually the lower half of the pharmacist. Making a face, he dug
through the pockets, finally producing a key card.

~*~

The moaning became louder. Eric slowly became aware of it, but it mixed with his dream
state as his subconscious simply reasoned it away. The creature once called Mom
peeked over the bed, pulling her way up the blankets with one hand, dragging
the other meatless arm and legs behind her. She clamped down when she sensed
she was near fresh meat, but she only got a mouthful of leather boot. She
pulled on the bed sheets, slithering even closer to that thing that possessed her soul; flesh.

Eric’s mind could no longer give excuses for the moaning at the foot of the bed and the occasional bounce of the bed springs.

The duct tape must have come off Cheri’s mouth, he thought to himself, now starting to
awaken. But the movements on the bed didn’t make sense. He was sure he’d securely fastened her to the chair.

Any last remnants of slumber were jarred from Eric’s body as teeth clamped onto his leg,
sending pain shooting through to his brain. Instinctively, he kicked, sending
the crawling cadaver flying off the bed. Cursing, he pulled up his pant leg and
examined his leg carefully. It felt like he had been bitten with such force
that the bone had been severed, but the thick cloth of the security uniform had
kept her teeth from penetrating the skin. He could tell already, he was going to have a massive bruise.

His thoughts were interrupted by another moan. He looked over the side of the bed and saw
that the creature in his mother’s body had overcome its minor setback and was
again inching toward the bed. Eric grabbed his bloody sword off the floor and walked toward the aberration that had once been his mother.

“Mom, don’t take this personally,” he stated calmly as he ran the sword through her right eye,
causing her to spasm for a couple of seconds, then relax. He turned to Cheri
and removed the tape from her mouth. He offered her what little blood and tissue
was on the sword, but she didn’t seem interested, instead focusing on Eric.

“Now you’re just being picky,” he said. Cheri responded by having some sort of spasm. Her body
jerked and her jaw began to thrust forward, her head still held firm to the
chair by the duct tape. A glob of undigested flesh mixed with green foam spewed
from her mouth and down her gown. Eric stood back and pulled his shirt up over
his mouth to try to mask the stench that followed the vomited mass.

“I take it you’re full,” Eric said.

Cheri replied by staring at Eric, jaws open.

“You may not be hungry, but I am. Surprised I’m not in a coma because of my blood sugar.”

He would have liked to stay in his little world that he had created for himself, but his
hunger once again overrode his emotion. He started upstairs, but the chorus of
moans coming from behind the door told him that he would be in for a major
confrontation. He wasn’t sure he felt up to any heroics in his state of near starvation.

The door separating the apartment from the upper floor was metal, in compliance with
fire code. Eric had argued with the inspector at the time, thinking the extra
expense of a metal door was unnecessary when they had a perfectly good hollow
core door in place already. It hadn’t been his money, of course, but he had
known that the budget was tight and he had been concerned that there wouldn’t
be enough left for him to have internet installed downstairs. Now the metal
door was the only thing between him and several hungry creatures. Since it
would not offer him an escape route, he would have to go out the window.

~*~

Jack looked at the crushed corpse on the floor.

“Guess I missed that one. Good thing you weren’t wearing slippers.

“We both missed it,” Keith said, glancing down at the body. “I’ll bet we won’t make that mistake again.”

“Suppose we could get Ernie to come down here and clean up before this place becomes a
health hazard?” Jack asked, knowing the answer already.

Keith laughed, wiping the gore from his shoe on the deceased man’s clothing. “Maybe, if we
promise him the time and a half he asked for.”

Jack stuck his head out into the hall and told Lindsey and Autumn that it was safe to come in.

Pulling out the list, Keith flattened it on the table so that they could all see it. He put a
pen next to it and said, “Just mark off anything you find that’s on the list.
Everything should be alphabetical except for the stuff in the refrigerator and the narcotics.”

Keith started to get the things on the highest shelves, since he was the tallest.

Jack reached into his pocket and again pulled out his reading glasses and looked at the list, then began to look for bottles on the shelf.

Autumn headed to the refrigerator. “I know what I need.”

They filled the cart with a two day supply of the items on the list.

“I wish we could clear the bottom floor, too,” Keith said as he started to push the cart out the
door. “It would be nice to take in other survivors but it would be tough to get them up to the second floor.”

“Not to mention, that’s where the food is,” Lindsey reminded him.

“Unfortunately, our Follow the Leader trick wouldn’t work on the first floor and we’re just about out of ammo,” Jack said.

“Maybe we could convince Eric to bring us some, if he’s still alive, that is,” Keith replied.

“It’s worth a shot,” Jack replied, as he keyed his radio.

“Eric, you copy?”

~*~

Eric thought about the best way to satisfy his hunger. He hoped the city would be in enough
chaos that he could walk into a fast food restaurant and take all he wanted
without anyone, live or dead, stopping him. As he planned his escape, Jack’s voice sounded on the radio.

“Eric, you copy?”

Eric thought about ignoring it, but the temptation to sound important was too strong.

“Loud and clear, Boss.”

“How’s the outside world look? Seems as if we’re going to be stuck here for a while.”

“Looks like these things are all over, Jack, but I’ve figured out a way to dispatch them
pretty efficiently. I can deal with them, piece of cake,” Eric said confidently.

“Good,” Jack replied. “You need to see if you can fetch us some ammo.”

Eric cursed himself for answering. He tried to come up with an excuse but couldn’t think quite fast enough.

“W-well, I was going to get something to eat. I guess I could cruise by the gun shop.”

“Fill your pockets. I know you can’t carry much on that sorry excuse of a bike,” Jack laughed.

“No worries, Boss,” Eric replied. “I haven’t seen any cops but I’ve got a squad car.”

He waited for the opportunity to explain his heroics, but Jack never asked.

“I don’t want to know. Get here as soon as you can,” Jack ordered. “Call when you’re in the
parking lot. We’ll figure out a way to get you in.”

“10-4, Boss,” Eric answered confidently. “Piece of cake!”

Keith stared at the radio in amazement.

“He should have been dead by now,” he said, almost grudgingly. “I just hope he makes it to the gun store.”

“If he gets us the ammunition, he may even get a raise,” Jack said. “He seems to finally be getting his act together.”

“True. I’ve got to hand it to him, he’s managed to get out of here and keep himself alive,”
Keith admitted. “Let’s get the meds upstairs so we can pass them out.”

“Sounds good,” Jack said. “We can come back down when Wapowski shows up.”

~*^*~

Eric turned his radio off and mumbled, “Fat chance, Jack.” He grabbed his sword and blew Cheri a kiss.

“You hold down the fort, Baby. I’ll get something to eat.”

Eric’s apartment had two windows and since it was a basement room, the windows were high on the
wall, putting them barely above ground level. He stood on a dresser to peek out
the front window but quickly decided against that one as the street seemed to
be filled with the undead. Going to the back window, he placed a chair on a
coffee table, enabling him to see outside. Moving aside the curtains, he
spotted a pair of bloodstained legs and quickly closed the curtains again as he
tried to decide what to do. When he peeked out the window again, the legs had
moved farther away, giving him hope that he might be able to make a run for it
soon. He continued his vigil, silently urging the legs to keep moving, which
they did, but slowly.

It was almost a half hour later when the back yard
finally seemed to be clear. The window wasn’t a big one, but Eric had climbed
through it hundreds of times as a child and even once or twice as an adult,
when he’d been locked out. Granted, he’d put on a few pounds since then, but he
wasn’t too worried about it. He quietly opened the window and jumped up,
centering his midsection through the opening and effectively wedging himself
there. As he jumped, he managed to knock the chair off the coffee table. He
cringed as he heard the clatter it made when it fell to the hard floor.

The reaction was almost instantaneous as the sound of moans began to fill the back yard.
Frantically trying to pull himself through or push himself back, Eric was
making little headway and he could see the infected begin to move into the
yard. Sucking in his breath, he dug his fingers into the grass outside the
window and pulled. Slowly he began to ease out through the small opening as the
lumbering figures in the yard moved closer. There was one not a dozen feet away
by the time Eric finally finished scrambling to his feet. He ran through a
group of the dead and hurried around the corner. Slowly, he tiptoed through the
side yard and positioned himself behind a bush near the front of the house.
Several forms wandered aimlessly about the street but the path to the car
seemed clear for the moment. He reasoned there was time to reach the vehicle
and get in before any of the walking ghouls could reach him, as long as the
door was unlocked. Holding his breath, he ran toward the car, his feet slapping
the ground loud enough for every zombie within a mile to hear. As he reached
the car, he prayed it would open. It did. He quickly climbed in, slammed the
door, and locked it. Eric smiled with gratification as the undead gathered
around the car and began to slap and claw at the windows. He even went so far
as to taunt them as they bit at the glass. His actions seemed to make them more
agitated and some of them even began to climb up onto the hood in an effort to
get at him through the windshield. His smile disappeared when he reached into
his pockets, realizing he’d forgotten the keys.