Entombed (18 page)

“Susan? Chuck wants you to come back. I thought I heard—”

He stopped, gaping at us both. His gaze kept darting from Susan to me and then back down to her again. When he opened his mouth to shout, I charged. I clamped my left hand over his mouth, muffling his cries, and shoved him against the wall. Phillips tried to knee me in the groin, but I sidestepped his attack and thrust the screwdriver deep into his stomach. It made a farting sound as it punched through skin and fat. His eyes went wide and he took a deep breath through his nose. I felt the air rush over my fingers. Phillips tried to scream again, but I mashed my palm tighter against his mouth and stabbed him again. Phillip’s moaned through my hand. His teeth grazed my skin. They felt dry, like the scales of a reptile. His skin, by contrast, was slick with sweat, and I had trouble holding him in place as I stabbed him a third time, plunging the screwdriver into his abdomen again. Phillips shuddered against me. Warmth flowed over my knuckles as I pulled the screwdriver free. Phillips’ legs buckled and he started to sag forward. Grunting, I shoved him back against the wall.

“Where is she?” I asked. “Where’s Alyssa? What did you guys do with her?”

He mumbled through my hand and tried to shake his head. I squeezed his mouth harder, digging my fingernails into his cheeks.

“Don’t try to deny it, Phillips. I know she’s here. Now where is she, you son of a bitch? Tell me.”

Phillips moaned.

“I bet Chuck has her, doesn’t he? The sick fuck is building himself a little post-apocalyptic underground harem. And you were going to help him, weren’t you?”

Eyes-wide, Phillips tried to shake his head. I rammed the screwdriver into his stomach again. He whined. I liked the sound of it. His voice was no longer strong. He sounded like I felt.

“But now I’ve fucked up your plans, haven’t I? Killing Susan like this. But that’s your fault. You guys tricked me. Made me think she was Alyssa. Tried to pull an old switcheroo, didn’t you? Well, I’m wise to you now, and I’ll find her. You just watch, Phillips. You just watch.”

It didn’t take much effort to hold him there against the wall. I could feel the strength draining from his body as I spoke. I raised the screwdriver and twirled it in front of his face. The fluorescent lights sparkled off the crimson tip.

“You just watch.”

I jammed the screwdriver into his eye. Phillips jittered and bit through his tongue as spasms rocked his body. I stood there, relishing the feel of the tremors running through his body and into mine. They were like electrical currents. Fluid pumped from the ruined eye socket. Most of it was blood, but there was clear stuff that looked like water. His fingers drummed the wall. Then he went limp. His full weight pressed against me. If he hadn’t been half-starved, he’d have probably knocked me over. I could feel his ribs rubbing up against me through the fabric of his shirt. Pushing him away, I yanked the screwdriver free. Phillips dropped to the floor, dead.

I stood there for a moment, catching my breath. I wondered if anybody else had heard our struggle, but the corridors remained quiet. I debated hiding Phillips and Susan’s bodies, but I was too tired and there wasn’t enough time. I had to find Alyssa and save her. I had to save us both. I had to save our marriage and make things right again. In truth, I was worried. I hadn’t heard her voice since killing Susan. What if I was too late?

I stepped back out into the corridor, and passed by the incinerator room, media room, lounges, dorm rooms and the pharmacy. My nerves were taught with tension as I crept along. With each step, I expected Chuck, Emma, Nicole, or Damonte to leap out at me, brandishing clubs or knives or bricks. The overhead fluorescents reflected off the white linoleum floors like sunlight on the ocean, and made my head throb. The drab, gray concrete walls seemed to shimmer and move like heat mirages. I stared at them, convinced that the walls were breathing. Maybe the bunker was alive. Maybe I was in the belly of the beast.

My stomach growled again.

NINE

Muffled voices drifted from the dining room—a gruff male and an apologetic female. I couldn’t tell what was being said, but their tone defined the conversation clearly enough. The argument was punctuated by the sound of flesh striking flesh, and then the woman’s voice turned to sobs and whimpers. I ground my teeth and gripped the screwdriver so hard that my knuckles cracked. The pounding in my head grew louder. Each throb brought a fresh jolt of pain. My vision blurred again, but I kept going. That was a mistake. My knees got weak, and when I reached for the wall to support myself, I bumped my forehead against it. The wall seemed to push back. I ducked into the infirmary, intent on hiding there until this recurring dizziness had passed.

Drew, Dave and Kran
tz were waiting for me.

Or maybe I should say that
what was left
of Drew, Dave and Krantz were waiting for me.

I smelled the blood and shit from the moment I walked in the door. The room’s ventilation system kicked in, swirling the stench around in the air. It was like walking into a wall of offal. All three corpses were laid out on metal hospital beds. One of the beds had once held a battered department store mannequin that we’d used to display during bunker tours. The mannequin now lay in the corner in a tangle of artificial limbs. Whoever had tossed it there had been more gentle with the three dead men than they had with the mannequin.

The door swung shut behind me. I stood there, still dizzy, staring down at the grisly remains. All three of them were in bad shape, but Drew was the worst of all. His blackened skin was covered with bubbles and blisters which popped and oozed under the fluorescent lights. His mouth hung open. His lips had been burned off, and his tongue was a shriveled, burned thing. Even his teeth were black. They’d cracked from the heat, and looked like jagged shards jutting from his charred gums. Standing this close to them, the stench was nauseating, but that didn’t stop my mouth from watering or my stomach from growling louder. The pain in my abdomen fluctuated—dull to sharp and then back to dull, but it wasn’t going away. I clutched my gut, wincing at the sensation. I’d always wanted to get rid of the pot-belly I’d acquired during marriage. Now, at last, I had.

The dizzy spell passed again, and I was just getting ready to leave when I heard a strange rustling sound from out in the hall. I flattened myself against the wall to the immediate left of the door, and held my breath. A moment later, the door swung open, nearly bumping into me. When it swung shut again, I was staring at Damonte’s back. He held a long butcher knife in his right hand. I assumed he must have retrieved it from the kitchen. The explanation for the rustling sound I’d heard became clear when I saw what he was wearing. He’d wrapped his body in black garbage bags from the neck down, and taped them securely with gray duct tape. They made noise with each step that he took.

Damonte walked over to the tables. His back was still to me. As he stood staring down at Krantz, he sighed heavily. His shoulders slumped.

“This is some bullshit. Why do I have to be the fucking butcher?”

Even though he was muttering to himself, his voice was thick with revulsion. He raised the knife and let the blade hover over Krantz, as if unsure of where to begin. Then he pressed it against the slick, waxen flesh covering Krantz’s chest and made a hesitant cut. Shuddering, Damonte let go of the knife and turned away, retching. His back was still to me. The knife jutted from Krantz’s chest. The stench of vomit now coalesced with the other odors in the room, and my stomach stopped hurting. I closed my eyes. The dizziness passed as abruptly as it had begun.

When I opened my eyes again, Damonte had turned his attention back to the task at hand. He was still turned away from me, and was hunched over, cutting with one hand and tugging on strips of flesh with the other. It took me a moment to realize that he was trying to skin Krantz—and doing a horrible job of it. Rather than pulling it away in sheets, Krantz’s skin came off in hunks. I wondered if Damonte had never seen a deer butchered growing up. Had he been from around here? I could no longer remember. Fatigue and hunger had sapped not only my physical strength, but my mental alertness, as well. Damonte didn’t seem to be faring much better. He kept retching and gasping, and his entire body quivered in disgust. As he yanked off another strip of flesh and laid it aside, he continued whispering to himself—nonsensical utterances of revulsion and despair, interspersed with the occasional sob.

“Just ain’t right,” he moaned. “Fucking bullshit. I can’t take this anymore…”

I decided to put him out of his misery.

When Damonte returned to the job of butchering, I crept up behind him and clamped one hand over his mouth. At the same time, I jabbed the screwdriver into the back of his neck, just at the base of his spine. I’d seen it done in movies before, but let me tell you, it’s a lot harder in real life. I had to push hard to get through the skin and cartilage, and Damonte fought, although weakly. His struggles quickly turned to jerky, spasmodic movements as the screwdriver slipped in all the way to the handle. When he stopped moving, I released him. He slumped to the floor, and the garbage bags gave one final rustle. The screwdriver still jutted from his neck. I grabbed the handle of the butcher knife instead, and yanked it free from Krantz’s chest. It felt good in my hand. I bent down and stabbed Damonte a few more times with it, just to be sure he was dead, and to get a feel for the knife’s weight. Then I wiped the blade and handle on Damonte’s bags. Then I straightened up again and saw something that startled me so bad I nearly screamed.

A little girl stood before me, just inside the closed door. She wore a blue cotton dress with a pretty floral print pattern. The color matched that of her eyes. Her blonde hair was done up in pigtails, and her white stockings and black shoes seemed brighter and cleaner than anything else in the room. Maybe it’s because they weren’t coated with blood and gore, the way my own feet were. Or maybe it was because she seemed to radiate.

“I know you,” I whispered. “You’re the little girl who is supposed to haunt this place.”

I wasn’t scared. Maybe I should have been, but I wasn’t. Once I’d gotten over the initial fight of unexpectedly finding someone else in the room with me after I’d just killed Damonte, I found her presence almost soothing. It was reassuring to know that I could now see a ghost, because it reconfirmed what I’d been suspecting for the last hour or so.

“I’m dead, right? I knew it. I fucking knew it! That’s why I can hear Alyssa’s voice in my head, and it’s why I can see you. I’m dead, and this is Hell. I’m trapped here. Right?”

The apparition didn’t say anything. She merely stared at me with those impossibly big blue eyes. They seemed to grow larger by the second. The illusion didn’t scare me, but it did leave me unsettled.

“So if I’m dead,” I continued, stepping toward her, “then none of this matters anyway, right? The things I’ve done here. The things we did to each other. None of it matters because none of it is real. I wonder, was I ever even down here, really? Did I die up top, when the zombies first came, and everything since then has just been another part of Hell? I mean, I know I didn’t go to Heaven. Not after what I did to Alyssa. Or Hannah, even. There’s no way I’d get into Heaven after hurting them both like that. So it would stand to reason that I’m in Hell. Why are you here though, I wonder? Are you in Hell, too?”

The little girl still didn’t respond. Her eyes had grown even larger, shadowing out the rest of her face. As I watched, they converged into one and swallowed her nose and mouth. Her bangs now served as eyelashes. Her entire face was gone, replaced by one giant, staring pupil.

“Jesus,” I whispered. “What the fuck is wrong with me? What is happening here? I just want to go home. I want things to go back to the way they were before. Please?”

The ghost pointed to the door. The gesture seemed accusatory.

“Why don’t you talk? I mean, I know you don’t have a mouth anymore, but why don’t you speak inside my head or something? I don’t understand. What do you want me to do? What are you trying to say?”

She waggled her finger as the eyeball continued to grow, absorbing her entire head. Then she stepped aside, still pointing. I brushed past her and placed my hand against the door. When I turned to look, the girl was gone. Not even the eyeball remained.

“I’m not crazy,” I said.

I’m not sure who I was talking to. Krantz, Drew, Dave and Damonte didn’t respond. If they had, I wouldn’t have been surprised. If this was indeed Hell, then they weren’t really dead. I’d seen the proof myself. Watched it spill into the hotel. Watched it consume our world. Watched it displayed on the video monitors. There was no death. Things didn’t die here. People and animals didn’t die. They came back, to torment the living.

I patted my pocket and felt Jeff’s wooden coin rub against my thigh. I thought of the slogan emblazoned on the token—IT IS WHAT IT IS. That was good advice. It worked for me.

I pushed the door open and strode out into the hallway. I didn’t care anymore about being heard, because it didn’t really matter. I wanted Chuck and Nicole and Emma to know I was coming. I wanted them to be afraid. I wanted my wife back, and they were the key to finding her. If they were fearful, then maybe this would go a lot quicker.

I shoved the dining room door open, took two steps inside, and saw Alyssa and Hannah standing against the far wall. They looked as surprised as I felt, but they also seemed terrified.