“Were you running around, flailing your arms in the air and screaming like an idiot or something?” Gale snapped at him.
“I thought I was going to die! You don’t know what that’s like!” he yelled back. “We’ve been taking care of you while you took it easy ever since you joined this group and come to find you’re some fucking Marine officer!”
“They’re here,” Olivia said with a finger pointed at the doors. The room fell silent.
Emerging from the darkness were moaning, walking, hungry corpses, one after another like moths drawn to a light as they headed for the park building. There were at least forty in the vast, open lot and more trickled out to join them every second. Rowan had called it right. While some came directly at them from the right side where he ran out from, others trickled from the left, the parking lot directly in front of them, and even a few from around back. There were more than fifty.
“Maybe if we open just one door we can take them out one by one, control how many come in at a time,” Gale thought out loud as she gripped a long knife in her hand.
“Yeah right!” Rowan said, his voice breaking. “We’re not letting those things in here. They’ll rip us apart!”
“It’s either we let them in on our terms and try to thin the herd for a getaway, or they let themselves in, full force, and we die.”
“Lee should be on the door,” Olivia chimed in again. “He’s the strongest, so he’ll be able to hold it closed and he’ll also be protected between the door and wall. That leaves the rest of us to kill the zombies.” Olivia smiled. She raised her bat to rest on her shoulder. “It’s the best plan we’ve got.”
The bodies ambled forward automatically as their horrifying features grew clearer in the darkness. Bloody messes of gore moaned in the freezing night air, their jaws wrenched open, or in some cases torn open, to reveal rows of black, jagged teeth ready to pierce the skin of the warm flesh on the other side of the glass doors.
——
All the color drained from Gretchen’s face. She held tightly onto the pistol she found a few days ago with both hands. When she opened it there were only three bullets left inside. One of her hands moved to her waist to rest on the Bowie knife that hung from her belt. It’d proven itself time and time again.
Dan swayed from side to side as he shook his head. The bloodied wound didn’t hurt as much. Maybe the fear stifled the pain. He bounced up and down and shook out his hands, taking deep breaths before he reached into the back of his pants for the matching pistol to Gretchen’s.
On the last run they made to someone’s abandoned house they found each of the pistols in the hands of a dead man. He was in bed, his ribs pried open to reveal a hollow chest. There was a single small hole in his forehead. They figured he tried to defend himself against the dead with the two nine-millimeters and once he was bit, he knew it was over so he shot himself.
“Oh, and you know those doors have floor and ceiling locks right?” Olivia said, breaking up the electricity in the air. She pointed to the holes.
“Why the hell didn’t you tell us that before?” Gale demanded.
“I wanted to see how long it took you all to find them. You’re even slower than my last group.”
Lee walked over to the door, calm as could be, as if he were waiting for friends to join him for dinner at his house. He secured one door with the bolt locks, removed the crowbar, and put it through his belt loop.
“You,” Gale said, pointing at Rowan, “Stand on this side. “You, here.” She moved Gretchen to stand next to him. “And you, here. We’ll form an arch. That way we have full coverage. Back up a little. Give them enough room to come in so Lee can close the door.”
Everyone stood in position with their weapons ready.
“On my count, Lee,” she said. Stifling panic wrapped around her lungs and constricted them. “One…”
Gretchen’s hands shook as she clutched her pistol. Her eyes darted from the herd of dead bodies approaching outside to the knife on her belt.
“Two…”
Olivia’s bat was raised and pulled back behind her, eager to crack some heads open. She tried to stay focused, but Dan’s bouncing kept catching her eye.
“Three. Open it!”
IX.
The dead moved forward, shoving into each other as Lee opened one door a tiny crack. It took everything he had to not let them knock the door all the way back to flood in and overwhelm the group. Four got through before he wedged his foot into where the floor and wall met. With every ounce of muscle he had, he kept the rest at bay behind the glass door.
A female with torn, sagging, bloody skin, half her jaw missing to expose ragged muscles and tendons, lurched forward. Three loud shots rang out. Two hit the shoulder and one landed in the head. The body fell face first to the floor at Gretchen’s feet, its hand on her boot.
“Whoa,” Gretchen exhaled between heavy breaths.
“Your knife!” Rowan yelled next to her.
Gretchen threw the gun to the floor and pulled for her knife at her belt. It was stuck on something. She tugged at it a few times before it loosened. Her arm pulled back forcefully to punch a robust corpse in dirtied flannel square in the chest. He felt spongey, like her hand would be absorbed into him if she didn’t pull it away quickly. She sliced its decayed neck, which hung by a few red threads. Blood rushed out like a river. Its head hung to the side and down to look at the floor. That didn’t stop it from snapping its broken teeth as it continued to advance on Gretchen.
Olivia looked over. “Go ahead,” she urged as her face lifted.
Gretchen drove her knife into the thing’s soft head and remained there. It took a few good jerks to break it free. The putrid body collapsed to the floor in a jumbled heap.
“It’ll take some getting used to!” she yelled over the moans as Dan and Rowan took out the last two.
Carolyn was backed up against the glass wall with her face turned to the side and her eyes closed. Her knife was on the floor.
“Ya ready?” Lee shouted.
The multitude of hands banging on the glass to get it was maddening.
“Yeah,” Rowan said.
“Yup,” Olivia yelled.
“Go for it,” Dan called back.
Gretchen stood with her knife in her hand. Her chest hurt every time she took a breath, but she couldn’t stop from heaving. She stared unblinking at the dead hands on the door and pictured them ripping into her as they devoured her alive.
“Hey!” Lee yelled as he struggled to hold the door closed. “Ready?”
She blinked a few times. “Yeah, ready.” She tightened her grip on the handle of her knife.
Lee didn’t wait for Carolyn to respond as she sobbed in the corner. He opened the door as a few more pushed to get in and shoved the door closed behind them. One by one the group dropped them all to the floor in a clumsy, unskilled manner. Lee’s arms shook as his large muscles tired from the constant pressure. He let out a growling cry as it became harder to keep the door sealed. The ravenous bodies piled against it, smashing the ones in the front up against the glass. The heads of the ones in front crunched as blood oozed from their eyes, nose, and mouths.
“We can’t go on like this,” Gretchen said in a high-pitched voice. “We’ve only killed seven and twenty more have shown up since!”
“Barricade the door again,” Olivia said. “I have a better idea.”
Rowan and Dan helped Lee push the door all the way closed as Gretchen and Olivia secured the floor and ceiling deadbolts. They shoved the crowbar back through the handles for good measure.
“That won’t last long so we better hurry,” Olivia said as she ran back into the lobby. She waved everyone through and then secured the second set of doors.
“What’s the plan?” Rowan asked with wide eyes.
“We bust out through the bird watching room.”
They all looked at her like she was crazy.
“Hell no,” Gale said. “They’ll hear it and come after us.”
“Yeah, but we’re quicker than they are. We can get away.” There wasn’t an ounce of doubt in her mind that she’d be able to escape unscathed.
Gretchen shook her head. “I don’t know…it sounds insane.”
“It’s either this, or we stay here and wait to die.”
The words rang through Gretchen’s head. It was exactly what she feared, exactly what Rowan said they were doing. She had to break the cycle. They had to survive. “OK. Let’s try. I mean, we have to try, right?” She looked around to everyone else.
They didn’t seem as eager to give it a go, but they all followed as the teenager made her way to the room off the lobby. She crept in. Her movements were slow and low to the ground. She peered out through the windows to assess how many were nearby and how long it would take for them to get to her.
“Rowan,” she said and turned to him. In any other life she would have fawned over how gorgeous his eyes were and how perfectly his brown hair fell into them. But in this life she saw him as a coward. It was time he proved himself to her. “Unload on that window.” She pointed at the one facing the back of the building, farthest from the side with the dead beating to get in.
“What?” Rowan gave a hysterical laugh.
Olivia rolled her eyes and cocked her head to the side. She sighed and waited for an excuse.
“It’s not going to work. It’ll take too long to break. It—”
“Give me the gun, then,” she demanded, holding her hand out.
Rowan didn’t give it to her. His hands clutched at the cold metal. There was a clanking noise at the front of the building as the crowbar fell to the floor. The doors seemed to breathe in and out as the pressure of the dead beat against them.
“Clock’s ticking. Let’s go. Do it or I will.”
Rowan wanted to make the call on his own, to prove that he could be the leader of the group. He wanted to stand his ground and go with his gut feeling on this one. But his eyes drifted to the others to read what they thought about the plan.
“Just do it, you pussy,” Olivia growled when his eyes fell back onto hers.
His head jerked back as his face screwed up. Did he talk like that when he was seventeen? He tightened his lips and stood up straight. “Fine,” he said. “Stand back.” With a deep breath, he counted down in his head while everyone stood huddled behind him.
There was a loud crash from the front as the first set of doors fell from their hinges. The dead stumbled over the broken glass, tearing up the loose skin of their feet. They had no reaction to what should have been excruciating pain as they pushed forward to the next set of doors. They pounded relentlessly, as they’d done with the first set. Their moans grew louder, more excited and urgent. The beating of hands against glass echoed throughout the building. A crack appeared between the two doors as they pushed against them. Several gray, grotesque fingers wriggled through to reach out for the flesh of the survivors inside.
Rowan looked back and decided they were at their last second of safety. He pulled back on the trigger and let the rifle do the work as he swept it back and forth. The glass shattered and fell to the ground outside, mixing in with the white snow.
“Go, go, go,” Olivia yelled. She pushed everyone through. Lee gave her a shove on the back to get her out before him.
They ran as fast as they could with Lee bringing up the rear. Gale kept up with surprising ease. Maybe she wasn’t as out of shape as she let herself believe. She didn’t dare agree with what Rowan said about taking advantage of the group. She’d been saving her energy for this very moment. Her arms pumped like they never had before.
Stragglers appeared out of the darkness alongside her, snapping their jaws and reaching out their bruised and beaten arms as she flew by without a pause to end their miserable existence. She side-stepped and dodged the dead hands like she was in the world’s most dangerous obstacle course.
The group ran strong until Gale’s lungs started to feel a sharp stab from the freezing air. Every deep breath she took felt like little, sharp needles jabbing in her chest. She slowed down to a jog and then doubled over as she tried to relieve the pain. The rest stopped with her and scanned the woods in a three hundred and sixty degree circle.
“Come on,” Rowan urged as he bounced on his feet. “Let’s get outta here.”
“There’s one,” Gretchen said, squinting into the darkness a few yards away.
“Got it,” Olivia answered. She swung her bat before she took off after it.
All anyone heard was the sticky sound of wood as it smashed in a skull. They stared at her as she walked back with a bounce in her step, shaking the black blood from her weapon.
“What?” she asked. She was taken aback by their judgmental faces, after all the times she’d saved their asses—in the last hour, no less.
Gretchen avoided eye contact. Rowan stared and then looked away when Olivia scrunched her face at him. Dan searched his pockets frantically for a cigarette, but all he found was loose tobacco and his notebook and pen. Carolyn stood with her arms wrapped over each other, her knife tucked in one hand. Tears ran down her tanned face. Gale was still concentrating on standing upright as she fought the urge to be sick. She hadn’t run that hard since Afghanistan.