The Undead World (Book 2): The Apocalypse Survivors (26 page)

Step one was to get the door open. The first attempt, gripping the seam with both hands and pulling with all her strength, failed when her right index nail bent back nearly in half. Focused as she was, she didn’t even notice. Next she pulled the seven-inch hunting knife from her belt. Everyone carried them, though until this moment hers had been more decorative than useful.

She jabbed the
sharp blade deep into the seam and pried the doors as far apart as she could—three inches. It was just enough room for her to get her shoe wedge in the gap. Then it was just a matter of hauling on doors that hadn’t budged in seven months. She found it impossible to use even a fraction of her strength with Eve across her torso. Still with her foot wedged, Sarah gently laid her down, resting her head on the backpack, hoping the baby was asleep. She wasn’t.

Eve stretched in her cocoon and made tiny baby noises. In another time or another place it would have been adorable, now Sarah could only pr
ay that Eve would not start babbling.

“
Sshh,” she whispered. “Go to sleep.”

Eve did not stir again and so Sarah turned back to the elevator doors which were slowly crushing her foot. Bracing herself she heaved, using the muscles of her legs and
shoulders. The doors ground back a few inches, the metal squealing as though in pain as it did.

Sarah froze and Eve said, “
Ba-da?” into the strained silence that followed.

The silence lasted only another second before the zombies forgot the diaper or whatever they were doing and again made mounting the stairs their main focus. Many had been close to
the top to begin with and now Sarah could see the crowns of their heads over the partition.

She bent back to the cold steel of the elevator doors and heaved as hard as she could, causing a torturous scream to erupt from the metal as it slid slowly back.
Every zombie in the building was heading up the stairs now.

Finally she had the door fully open and was somewhat gratified to see that the elevator car was not there. It wasn’
t anywhere as far as she could tell. The shaft was almost physically dark, as though her hand would go through something wet and inky if she was to reach outward only a few inches.

Swallowing her fear, she pawed at the blackness, growing bolder with each swipe and yet not finding a thing. Her mind pictured a cable somewhere just out of reach. She had to cling to the wall and stretch as far as she could before she found it.

How the hell was she going to get a grip of it with it so far away? With the zombies nearly to the top of the stairs she began a blind sweeping search of the walls of the shaft nearest to her, hoping to find a ladder. There wasn’t one; it was bare concrete without a single handhold.

She turned back as the moaning grew louder. A zombie had managed to climb the last of the stairs, while more were only seconds away from the top.

“Crap!” she cursed. Leaving the baby and the packs, Sarah ran at the zombie, pulling her Beretta as she did. With little ammo to spare she hadn't practiced much, thus she closed to within six feet before pulling the trigger. The undead thing lost most of the top of its head with what looked like a black cloud of bees flying up and out.

It toppled and before it struck the ground with a forgotten thud
, she was past it, looking down at the stairs, gripping the partioning wall as if no other force on earth could hold her upright. The stairs were carpeted in a grey mass of bodies, writhing slowly upwards. There must have been hundreds fighting to get at her.

Panic threatened to erupt within
Sarah, however it was then that she heard Eve sniffling in fright. Any other baby would be bawling over the sound of the gun, but not tough little Eve who was so much like her big sister: brave.

“I can be brave too,” Sarah said, trying to pump herself up. She had to be brave
because the only way out of her dire situation was a mad leap into the dark elevator shaft. “I can b-be brrrave,” she said and this time the fluttering in her chest had worked its way up into her lips. They wouldn’t stop jack-hammering up and down. It grew worse when she ran back to the shaft and tossed one of her backpacks down into the void—it seemed to take a crazy long time to land with a soft thud. Sarah turned away.

“There has t-to be a d-different way,” she said. There wasn’t. Already three zombies had cleared the sta
irs. They were gaping all about, though not seeing her just yet. She slunk down and looked at her baby.

Her greatest fears kept her from moving: What if I don’t catch a hold of the cable? What if I just fall straight down? What will happen to Eve
, then?

“She’ll die,” Sarah said.

From beneath the blanket, Eve turned her head toward the sound of her mother’s voice and said, “Ba-da, ma-ma.”

Now there were eight zombies stumbling about
on the thirsd floor, with two heading around the partioning wall towards her, regardless Sarah found a moment in her panic to smile. “Love you,” she whispered and then gently slung Eve onto her back. It wasn’t the normal position and Eve immediately began to squirm.

It was a strange feeling as if the baby was trying to get her little arms out to hug her from behind. Sarah reached back, patted the baby’s bottom, kicked the second pack down into shaft, and then
, without hesitating, she leapt.

It was all faith and literal blind hope.

She aimed for the center of the elevator shaft where something jumped up and smacked her on the side of the face. With flailing hands she grabbed at it in a mad rush as she fell and was able to catch a grip with her left hand. The cable bit into her flesh, searing it like fire, causing her to lose her grip almost instantly, but her legs found the steel and squeezed while with her left forearm she crushed the cable to her chest.

Again the fire was immediate; now it was a line of raging pain up her body. She refused to let go. Instead she gripped tighter and fumbled with her right hand…she missed and there was no time to try again. Instead she hugged the cable with
both arms and fairly flew down the line like an out of control fireman; there was a hissing all around her as her clothes added to the friction.

And then with a thud and a sharp pain zinging into her knees she struck the top of the elevator.

“Ow,” was all the expression she allowed herself before she crumbled to her knees and attempted to see the pain in her left hand. For all that she could see, she may as well have dropped to the center of the earth. Around her was black like she had never experienced.

“Eh-
heh,” Eve said in a half cry of fear.

“We’re going to
be ok, sweet…” Sarah began to say, but stopped as above her a moan echoed down the shaft.

There was light after all. Thirty feet above her was a grey gloom that pushed feebly at the black. It was just enough illumination for her to see the outline of a zombie. It glanced down once, saw nothing but black and then turned as if to leave, only just then a second zombie appeared. He too made to look into the shaft and in the process knocked the first in. With a rushing wind it dropped straight at Sarah.

Chapter 26

Neil

New Eden, Georgia

For just the barest fraction of a second Neil considered slamming on
the gas instead of the brake. After all he was clearly outgunned by a group of men who had, in all likelihood, kidnapped his daughter.

Then hope sprung up. Maybe they had
n't kidnapped. Maybe they had rescued her instead. Maybe she was sitting up in the silo with a bag of ice on her ankle and nibbling on hillbilly stew—in the brief instant he saw the men, he noted they had a hillbillyish air about them.

Instead,
Neil hit the brakes, kicking up a cloud of brown dust through which four of the men advanced on them with their guns locked and loaded.

“Didn’t know anyone was home,” Neil said, getting over his shock quickly. He would describe his fear level at “Mild”. In his experience, people threatened with guns but only rarely used them. “We knocked, but I suppose you took us for Jehovah’s Witnesses. Ha-ha.”

Though the joke fell flat, the men behind the guns lost the dirty edge of their scowls. They still advanced however and not a one relaxed the grips on their weapons in the least. In seconds Neil and Mark were pulled from the Range Rover, disarmed, and made to kneel in the light rain.

“
Whatchu boys want,” one of the men asked in heavily accented Georgian English. He was a stout man, robust through the waistline, which was something of a rarity these days.

Mark jerked out a feeble shrug, irritating Neil.

“I think you know why we’re here,” Neil replied for them both. “I’m looking for my daughter. She’s about my height with black hair and dark eyes, dresses kind of Goth-like. Have you seen her?” Instead of denying that they had in any way, the men glanced back and forth at each other—a clear admission of guilt in Neil’s eyes. “So you have seen her.”

The bigger man nodded pleasantly. “Oh, yeah and we’re very ‘cited bout
havin’ her stay on with us.”

The calm way in which he said this sent Neil’s fear level close to “Pants Wetting.” After swallowing loudly, he said in a quavering
, indignant voice, “You can’t hold her against her will. There may be no real government, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any laws. It doesn’t mean morals are thrown out the window.”

“That’s funny,” the man drawled. “I’m
gittin’ a lect-chor on morals from a northern carpetbagger. Seems nuthin’ ever changes.” He came closer and spat in the dirt not an inch from Neil’s hand. Clearly his aim was such he could’ve spat square in Neil’s blue eye if he had a mind to. “Just a bit a warnin’ boy, we answer to a higher moral authority than you know, so you may wanna keep your ten-cent bible thumpin’ to yourself.”

“What authority would allow kidnapping?” Neil demanded.

Just then a man that Neil hadn’t noticed with all the guns pointing his way emerged from the silo. He was tall and dressed in white linens and wore sandals on his feet. His most striking feature was a beautiful mane of silver hair that came to his shoulders. He stepped around the gathered gun-toters and smiled benignly down so that his blue eyes twinkled.

“God’s authority,” he informed Neil. “Deuteronomy 24:7 states if someone is caught kidnapping any of his brethren and treating or selling them as a slave, the kidnapper must die.” He had an easy southern twang, gentle and rich like a story teller.

Neil looked up at the man, shaking his head. “I don’t get it. If that’s your law then whoever took Sadie must die. Though to be honest, I’m not looking for revenge. I just want my daughter back.”

“You don’t ‘get it’, because you are ignorant,” the man said easily. “That is a natural state that can be remedied. God’s laws are beautiful things and not only do they state what they state clearly, they state what they do not state with an equal measure of that
same clarity.” Again Neil shook his head and the man squatted down to his level and asked, “Are we brethren? Are we kin?”

“No,” Neil replied and then he blinked in realization. “And so you think it would be within God’s laws to kidnap me
and sell me as a slave?”

“Yes, my son. The law could not be any more clear. However, you have the misfortune to be the odd man out.
He created them male and female
. It is the way to achieve harmony through balance. We do not accept nonbelievers save only in pairs:
They went into the ark to Noah by twos, male and female, as God had commanded
.”

“So…I can’t come in unless I bring my wife?” Neil asked. “Is that what you’re saying? What about Mark, here. He is…um…they are a pair. Sadie and Mark, they’re a pair.”

“It’s an interesting question,” the man said, rising easily.

“
Dear Abraham, he’s an unbeliever,” one of the men cried. Neil would’ve laughed at the man’s theatrics if it weren’t for all the guns pointed his way.

Abraham
put out his hands. “Is it your covetous nature or your hypocrisy that wields your tongue, Lenny? I sincerely hope that it is the beam in your eye which is causing you to see things so imprecisely. This gentleman, Mark, is not an unbeliever, yet. For now he is only ignorant. One day, the good Lord willing, he will be a
believer
and then we will welcome him. Give me an
Amen
, Lenny.”

Dutifully, and with down swept eyes, Lenny recited, “Amen.”

“About the question of Mark?” Neil prompted

Now Mark came alive. “What about Mark? Don’t I get a say? I don’t want to join this
bunch of…” He stopped just in time. The eyes of the men around them had gone to squints and Neil’s guts began to crawl into his chest.

“I will answer
the question of Mark,” Abraham said. “Our numbers are even and thus in harmony. Either of you may
join
, as you put it, as long as you come two by two. A man and a woman.”

“But how do I get my daughter back?” Neil asked.

Abraham looked up to the rain in silence until they were all soaked down to their skin. None dared to speak. Finally he smiled. “You are married? And Sadie is your daughter; that is good.”

“We have two daughters,” Neil said, hoping to create some sympathy. “The youngest is a baby. She’s at home with my wife. We’re very close as a family.”

“A baby? How fantastic. How old is she?” Abraham asked with genuine interest.

“Eve is
about six months. We don’t know for certain. Her real mother died shortly after she was born.”

For some reason the man found this invigorating. He laughed aloud shaking his head like a dog might shake its body to dry it. Though in this case it only sent his silver hair whipping. “Eve, what a beautiful name. Come, stand up. There you are. What’s your name?”

“Neil.”

“I know your skepticism, Neil. It’s shared by your daughter. I haven’t met anyone so head strong as Sadie! Which is why I fear for her so.”

Abraham had been leading Neil into the silo which was surprising empty. It held only a ladder that went up to a platform high above their heads. At the word
fear
, Neil pulled back.

“What does she have to fear?” he asked in a manner a pitch away from being surly, which
was dangerous around people who were clearly deluded with false religious awe.

The man grew sad and said, “What we all have to fear: sin. And that which goes with sin, eternal damnation. Let me explain while we walk.”

Neil glanced around, wondering where they were going to walk to. They were in a steel structure with but one door and they were currently facing away from it.

Then one of the men bent to the ground and heaved up what Neil had thought was just part of the
floor. A wide set of stairs led down into a tunnel—not a tunnel where the ceiling cascaded dirt as it threatened to cave in, nor a tunnel that was rough hewn and black and smelled of human refuse—this tunnel was warm and well lit by even-spaced light bulbs. The floor was perfectly poured cement. The air smelled of rain.

“Where are we?” Neil asked. His first thought was that
it was some sort of military facility.

“This is my home,”
Abraham stated, heading down. “It all started ten years ago. The Lord our God came to me in a dream. He spoke like the wind and I was blown this way and that, much like a ship in a tempest, however my ship flew to scrape the heavens. From high up I saw the world beneath me, green and blue as simple as a marble. It was so insignificant that I turned my back on it, but then Our Lord Father showed me the riches that this world possessed: acres of gold, rivers of silver, pearls that fell from the sky in a storm of white snow. Every luxury was to be mine. Every woman as well.”

As
Abraham spoke he became animated, his hands describing as much as his words and his face alight from within as if he truly believed everything he was saying. The men around Neil and Mark were equally believing. They stood with their guns and their prisoners forgotten.

The man went on:
“Take it all
, the Lord our God said. Though he spoke in the speech of humans, his voice held such power that no ear could withstand it; I was deaf for a month. The next day I awoke stunned so that I laid in my bed for hours as the sun crossed all the way to the west. To me, even at the height of day the sun was nothing but a dim little disc. For I had seen! Compared to the original light, the sun was nothing more than a candle on a birthday cake. It shed its paltry light as if it were a wicked, greedy little miser.”

Here he laughed
loudly and clapped Neil on his back. They started walking again down the long tunnel.

“I was happy for the sunset
," Abraham continued. "The jealous sun was like a false king. It was all for show and stole the world’s attention to itself. When it fled the skies, the vast creation—the entire universe of the Lord our God was displayed to me and revealed just how pathetic we truly are.

“Yet
in all that universe I had been picked. Why. For what reason? I was to be given riches. Everything I could possibly want would just be handed to me. As I walked along that night a shred of paper, blown by the wind slapped against my chest and clung there. It was a lottery ticket. I stuck it in my pocket and without once glancing at the numbers I went to collect my winnings the next day: Forty-three thousand dollars.

“Needless to say I was now doubly happy
, for here was physical proof that the Lord our God had chosen me. I was to be given everything and it was all true! That night I fell on my knees and thanked him, and then, still on my knees, I slept. Again the Lord our God spoke to me, only now his words weren’t an exhilarating wind that lifted me close to the heavens. No! Now his words were a hurricane of fire. It roared over my riches destroying everything: melting my gold so quickly that it boiled away and disappeared into the air, while the river of silver went a dead grey and became a river of death, and the marble of the earth shattered like bitter glass leaving behind green and blue shards.”

He smacked his hands together sharply and turned to Neil in a froth. “Do you see what he did?”

Neil glanced back to Mark—the big man looked as though he didn’t have a drop of blood in his head. Not only was he white he was sort of tilting as he walked.

“I…I don’t,” Neil said. So far they had walked over a hundred yards and now they came to an intersection
. There had been many just like it, all identical in every way except this one carried with it the smell of cooking food. They turned left and the smell grew.

“Let me tell you,”
Abraham said. “This wasn’t about money. It was about learning a lesson. The Lord our God showed me that a gift, even a gift from God, is wasted if you don’t put your faith in that very God. Tell me, how many of us were given the world? How many of us were born here in America, the greatest country on earth; to a stable, affluent, loving family, and how many of us possessed greater than average intelligence, perseverance, and imagination? And how many of us pissed all that away?”

Neil didn’t know what he meant by pissing it away. In his mind, what a person did with their life was their business. If they enjoyed sitting around watching TV all day then good on them, as long as they didn’t simultaneously complain about their life. In retrospect there were plenty of people who did just that.

“A lot?” he ventured.

The man smirked. “Try almost all of us.” They began passing doors of heavy iron, left and right.
Abraham let his long fingers trail across them as he walked. “And we didn't just piss it away, we sinned it away. Sin is what turns the beautiful into the ugly. The pure into the diseased. It was sin that brought us to this point where we are today. The sin of arrogance in the face of a higher power. The sin of gluttony in a world where people starved in the streets. The sin of apathy in the face God’s love!”

“But…” Neil said timidly, hoping to steer the conversation without being offensive. “But my daughter. She is none of these things. She’s not a glutton, or apathetic. She is very loving to her family, and dotes on her sister.”

“Are you saying Sadie is without sin?”

“No, I’m not,” Neil said, blanching a bit.
Abraham had stopped and put his large hand on Neil’s shoulder and squeezed to the point of pain. “But if she has sins they’re really minor. Little things, you know?”