***
Breakfast turned into a morose affair. No one spoke. Even Rick remained quiet while being let out for the meal. While the group ate, the moans of the dead filtered in through the windows. Eventually, Cara spoke. “It might not be so bad.”
Taking the bait, the priest asked, “What wouldn’t be so bad?”
“A world without humans.” The only noise came from the dead throats outside until she spoke again. “I know it sounds like a blasphemous thought, but maybe it’s for the best.”
Eric looked at her with undisguised hate. “That’s the attitude of a fucking coward.”
“I’m not ready to give up. I was just thinking about it from a what-if standpoint. The end of the human race would end pollution, bigotry, war, genocide. Everything evil that we have done would not happen again. The world could start fresh.”
Father O’Brien stared her down. “You’re forgetting some pretty important things: art, love, music, contentment. There are so many things in the world that are beautiful that also would never happen again. The whole point of free will is to choose good or evil. Some are naturally going to choose evil but there are the others. . .”
Cara looked around at them. “Like I said, I’m not giving up. I still think we can make it. It was just a what-if.” The disapproving lull which followed set the stage for a dramatic scene.
Five days of continuous noise had started to affect them all, but Stephanie broke first. No one noticed her softly rocking back and forth. She stood while everyone glared at Cara. Then before anyone could stop her, she ran for the barricaded doors. A long wail filled the room and snapped Martin out of his confused daze. She tried to pull a chair from the middle of the furniture mound in front of the door. “Got to get out; got to go, now.”
Martin reached her first, grabbing her by the shoulders and yanking her back. The others caught up and held her down. Her arms flailed with strength no one suspected that she possessed. When the girl regained her composure, the hands slacked off and Martin hovered over her, asking her pointless questions.
“Are you okay? Please, don’t ever do that again. Promise me.”
Cara’s voice, firm and heavy, came down like an H bomb. “Rick is gone!”
Eric looked around. “He took the shotgun!” His mind raced for a second. “The rest of the guns are on the second floor. Martin, you stay with Stephanie and the rest of us will stop him from getting the rest of the guns.”
The Father, Eric, Bryant, Cara, and even Tommy (who accompanied solely because no one noticed him tagging along) ran blindly up the stairwell and spilled out into the sanctuary. Everyone froze at the sound of the pump sliding. Tommy, still on the stairs, quietly stepped up to the third floor as Rick commanded the others.
He held the barrel pointed at the center of the group, where Eric and Bryant stood. Rick spoke in a confident, steady voice. “Stop, don’t move.” He smiled like a shark. “Looks like the shoe is on the other hand now, don’t it?” He glanced down at his weapon. “It’s pretty scary, ain’t it? The barrel looks as big as a train tunnel when you’re staring down into it. Or maybe it’s like looking into a deep well right before you fall in?” With one hand, he tossed a length of rope to the group. It fell at the priest’s feet. “Start tying. Everyone tied to one pew.”
Cara tried to reason. “What are you hoping to accomplish? One person can’t hold seven others prisoner.”
“I’m not taking prisoners.” His eyes gleamed with a lack of rational thought. “I’m taking off and leaving you here as dog food.”
Cara challenged him again. “How will you sleep? No one will be with you to stand guard. At least here, you’re protected.”
“What?” His eyes bulged. “I’m supposed to be grateful for that closet full of dried blood and puke? I brought food and ammunition. What did I get for it? Locked up!” He lost control shouting the sentences with a frantic speed.
“You were locked up for rape!” Cara shouted back.
“You think you’re so smart. You’re just a dumb Yankee bitch. You can’t outsmart me. I’ve got a gun and you don’t.”
Father O’Brien slowly leaned down to pick up the rope. “He’s right. He has the gun. At least together, we’ll have a chance.”
Rick watched the old man with disdain. “You probably think that your God is going to step in, don’t you? I’ve got news for you. We are fly specks to Him. We aren’t special. He can create an entire universe in seven days. Why should he give a shit about a football player in Fayette?”
Bryant wondered if the slick sheen and drops of water on his face came from sweat or tears. Asking a maniac if he was crying could get him a stomach full of buck shot, though. They co-operated. Four people sat down and found themselves lashed to a pew against the side wall of the church.
Rick gripped the knots and seemed satisfied. He looked into Bryant’s eyes and then into the doctor’s. His face wore a predatory expression as he addressed the group. “I’ve forgotten someone.” Then he stalked toward the stairwell with a grim determination. He entered the doorway, disappearing out of sight. Then the captives heard a shotgun blast.
***
Martin sat Stephanie against the wall and handed her a glass of water from the sink. He knelt down and stroked her hair. “Just sip on that.” He tried to keep his voice mellow and flowing. Secretly, he feared that Rick had gotten the drop on them all. “I’m going upstairs to help find Rick.”
Her frightened eyes widened and she reflexively grabbed Martin’s arm. He gently peeled her fingers away and kissed her forehead. “I’ll be right back.” She thought he was going to say more, and felt relieved when he did not. That would just add unneeded complexity to a dire situation. She loved him but not in the way that he wanted her to. She saw Martin as a big brother type, a protector. She watched him walk toward the door and knew that this was the end of everything.
***
Martin stepped across the threshold and looked up. He met Rick’s eyes at the top of the flight of stairs. Reflexes took over for both men. Rick raised the weapon as Martin threw himself sideways back into the kitchen. The crack of the discharge culminated in a random pattern of black pellet sized holes in the wall. Rick muttered an expletive and took the stairs one step at a time. He crept forward as if he were stalking a deer. His eyes never left the doorway below him.
Tommy watched Rick slowly descend. With the stealth only a small child is capable of, the ten year old slipped down to the second floor, tensely watching the bad man’s back. Rick, however, could not be distracted. His revenge-fueled tunnel vision had taken out all other senses.
Tommy breathed a sigh of relief when he entered the sanctuary and saw everyone still alive and wriggling around in their bindings. He quickly ran over and began pulling at the rope. Tommy’s small fingers skillfully dissected each knot, freeing Bryant first.
His first act upon being freed was to grab a gun and command the others to do the same. “Grab all the ammo you can. Some of us will search the top floor while the rest stay on the second flight of stairs and watch for movement on the ground floor.”
Cara grabbed a rifle and announced to the group, “I’ll go with Bryant.”
Eric shrugged. “As if that’s a surprise.”
Tommy ran forward and grabbed Bryant’s hand. “I want to go with you.”
Bryant knelt down and made eye contact. “It’s safer with everyone else. He might be up there waiting.”
“But he’s not!” The boy cried in earnest.
“Let’s go.” Bryant motioned everyone forward.
***
Rick stepped through the doorway anticipating an attack and was greeted with one. Tensed muscles cannot react as quickly as relaxed muscles, and a metal framed chair with a plastic seat smashed into his face. The shotgun clattered to the floor and Martin scooped it up, deftly pointing it at Rick. The former football player had recovered and sprang forward, knocking Martin onto his back. With one hand on the weapon and the other curled into a fist, Rick struck a blow to his adversary’s nose. Faced with the sharp jolt of pain, Martin lost his grip on the shotgun. He felt the gun pried free and prepared himself for the point-blank blast to the head.
Stephanie rushed the brute. Rick’s peripheral vision caught the movement and he swung the shotgun around, pulling the trigger. The blast hit her in the gut and she staggered back, her hands unconsciously covering the wound, becoming sticky with leaking fluid.
Martin jumped up, grabbing the gun and swinging Rick into the barricaded door. Martin made a guttural sound as he pumped the shotgun and pulled the trigger. The shot missed and splintered the wood on the left side of the soon-to-be dead man’s head. A ragged, decomposing hand smashed through the weakened fortification and clawed at Rick’s scalp. The fingers curled around digging into his face. The index finger scratched at his temple while the middle finger sank into his ocular cavity. Feeling warm flesh, the beast squeezed, not wanting to lose its prey.
Rick screamed in a shrill voice as milky fluid leaked out of the punctured eye. The hand kept pulling at him, edging his head closer to the hole. Other gray shriveled hands pulled at the wood, creating a bigger breach. More talon-like fingers grabbed at him and the steady force of more arms pulled his head through the hole. In his last moments of life, he looked up at the sky and saw only gaping maws descending on him. A set of teeth dug into his cheek, biting into the bone beneath it. Other mouths found the tender flesh of his neck and consumed. Severed arteries sprayed wildly while clumps of flesh and fat slid down starving throats. Hands delved into the hole in his neck pulling out chunks of bright red meat and shoving it greedily into their mouths.
Martin watched, horrified as the entire body started to disappear, yanked through the hole. Rick’s foot got caught on the edge of some debris. Another jerk, and he was gone. Then the faces peered in. The eyes were no longer quite so vacant. They gleamed with purpose, with a goal. Then the ravenous corpses began crawling through.
Behind Martin, everyone else descended, summoned by the latest gunshots. The multitude stood watching in transfixed horror as the creatures kept pulled and tore at wooden planks or chairs stacked in the way.
Martin raised the gun and fired into the face of one zombie that was half in, half out. The body drooped and more of the living dead pushed it through. Finally, under the pressing weight of so many bodies, the door gave way. Martin fired again, sending another corpse to the ground.
Bryant fired his rifle. nailing a ghoul and watched it twitch as it collapsed. Not sparing a moment to congratulate himself, he aimed at the next closest target. Cara yelled behind them. “We need to get upstairs!”
Eric took the suggestion readily and grabbed Tommy by the hand. “Come on, little man. We’re getting out of here.”
Bryant and Martin continued firing while the rest made their retreat. Bryant placed his foot on the bottom step and tried to coax Martin back. “Hey man, get in here! We’re on our way up! There’s too many!” Then he saw her.
A newly reanimated Stephanie lunged onto Martin’s back and ripped a chunk out of his shoulder. He let out a pain-filled yell, threw his elbow back into her stomach, and broke loose. He turned to face her and fired into her head.
His face contorted in emotional upheaval when he realized who he had killed. Bryant fired at the zombie closest to the wounded boy and begged him “Get up here, man!” Martin ignored the pleas and fired into the rapidly growing crowd approaching him. When he fired his last shell, they had already formed around him. He acted as if he were rooted to the spot and began swinging the shotgun like a club.
Bryant watched helplessly as the cold bodies engulfed his friend like a tidal wave. Martin’s screams reached a fever pitch as he drowned in a sea of decomposing flesh. Bryant tried to pull the door closed but a skeletal pair of hands gripped the handle and another set grabbed the unhinged end. He let go of the door and flew up the stairs as fast as his legs could carry him.
Bryant met Cara on the second floor landing and started waving her up higher. She blocked his path and spoke in a fast, excited voice. “We have to get them out!”
He looked down at the ascending horde and yelled, “What are you talking about?”
“Eric took Tommy and the father into the sanctuary. I told them it was a dead end, but he wouldn’t listen.”
Bryant swung his head into the doorway and spotted Eric trying to drag debris from the main doorway. “At least let Tommy come with us.”
Eric shouted back. “They’ll all come in through the bottom floor. So if we exit here, we can make a run for a vehicle.”
Bryant screamed in an uncharacteristic panic. “That won’t work!”
The priest looked up from dragging another pew and shrugged. “Climbing higher will trap us on the roof with no food. At least here, we’ll have a chance.”
Bryant felt Cara tugging at his shirt. Desperately, he called to Tommy. “Come with us, please.” He stressed the last word and heard a shot right behind him as Cara fired down the stairs.
Eric grabbed Tommy’s wrist and held him in place. The boy’s eyes grew moist and he waved goodbye. A growl forced Bryant to look to his left and see the horde just a few steps below. He sprinted up the stairs, trying not to tangle his feet in Cara’s just ahead of him. Slamming through the third floor passage, the pair ran to the office with the ladder leading up to the roof.
***
Eric turned and fired. He screamed at the priest and Tommy to keep clearing the door. The two non-combatants threw broken pieces of furniture and pews to the side in a flurry of hands. Without warning, the doors gave way. Instead of a passage to freedom, it became an entry point for more zombies. The priest swiped at one with a table leg, but the villain had already grabbed Tommy. Eric spun around seeing, that the trio had no escape. The boy’s anguish-filled cries pierced his ears and he watched the demon digging out the sought after meat. Eric swallowed and pointed the rifle at the boy’s head. Another crack of air being forced out of the way of a speeding piece of metal sounded the end of a ten-year life. Eric looked at the priest, aimed his gun again, and saw that the old man understood why. He pulled the trigger, splattering the old man’s skull. As the rough hands seized him, Eric put his mouth around the barrel, tasting the metal and gun oil before pulling the trigger.