Monk walked out of The Chest with his arm still around Cleese’s shoulder. The two of them headed off across the grass field toward a large building set far from the rest of the compound. It was a structure everyone here knew and knew well yet rarely visited. Cleese looked over to Monk and raised his eyebrows in surprise.
"We going where I think we’re going?"
Monk nodded. His face was now set in a grim mask, his demeanor suddenly more subdued, more reserved. After a moment, he released his grip on the younger man’s shoulder and the two of them continued to walk in silence.
Cleese grinned slightly and looked down in order to hide his smile. He felt his pulse quicken as he rolled the thought of where they were going around in his head. He knew from the direction and the change in Monk’s demeanor that the Holding Pen was their destination and he’d finally be able to get a look at what he’d be up against. It had been a while since he’d been up close to one of these undead motherfuckers. He’d almost forgotten what they were like: their smell, the way they looked, the unmistakable way they sounded. He knew the passage of time dulled any experience… and so could alcohol. Since the night he’d first run into Them, quite a bit of both had fallen by the wayside.
As the two men walked along, Cleese thought back to that day when the world had gone to shit and he’d seen his first walking corpse. He’d been working in The Tenderloin District of San Francisco—a notorious cesspool of aggravated assault, drugs, prostitution and gangs—as muscle for that fuckin’ Stolie, a low-tier loan shark who made it a habit of taking his interest out in flesh. Stolie always got his money, one way or another. He was the kind of guy who’d turn his own mother out if there was a dollar in it for him. The guy was a real piece of work, but Cleese needed the money and figured he would make his nut and once he was solvent again bail on the gig—just like always. He’d never had to push people too hard to get his point across, never had to break much to make sure Stolie’s affairs continued to run smoothly. He just made sure that promises got kept.
One night, he’d been out drinking—alone as usual—when the television above the bar abruptly clicked over to the Emergency Broadcast Network. After an hour or so of white noise, a guy in a rumpled sweat-stained shirt and skewed tie came on talking crazy.
"It has been established that persons who have recently died have been returning to life and committing acts of murder.
"A widespread investigation of funeral homes, morgues, and hospitals has concluded that the unburied dead are coming back to life and seeking human victims.
"Medical examinations of some of the victims bore out the fact that they had been partially devoured."
And then, finally, "The wave of murder which is sweeping the Eastern third of the nation is being committed by creatures who feast upon the flesh of their victims."
At that point, the steadily increasing tension in the bar broke like Waterford crystal and the bar’s denizens went completely ape-shit. The last of the hardcore drunks left the bar, stumbling off in search of family or to collect whatever it was that they held dear and try to get the hell out of town. Cleese, having no family and only a pile of useless crap back at his by-the-week hotel room, instead went behind the bar in search of another drink… and then another… and then another.
By the time The Dead broke through the door, Cleese had managed to get himself pretty goddamn drunk, thank you very much. When he saw the first of Them stumble inside, he’d already picked up the baseball bat he’d found lying behind the counter, tucked a bottle of scotch under one arm, and commenced swinging. He’d been Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, and Stan Musial all rolled up into one swinging ball of drunken fury.
An uncountable number of them had come through the door and met their maker in the form of a Louisville Slugger. Cleese dimly recalled the hollow cracking sound of the hardened wood as it ricocheted off of first one skull then another, then another and another.
Forever and ever, Amen.
When he was through, dozens of Them lay around the bar, their bodies heaped on the floor like piles of diseased laundry. Cleese stumbled for the door once he realized that whatever these bastards were they were no longer coming inside the bar to get pummeled. The things may have been dead, but that didn’t mean that they were necessarily stupid. Even their addled brains were able to reason that the only thing waiting behind the bar’s doors was certain ruin.
This would have all been well and good except for one small wrinkle: Cleese was now three sheets to the wind and still wanted to fight some more.
And if They didn’t want to come to him, he’d just have to go outside to Them.
Mountain… Muhammad… and all that shit.
He’d stormed out of the bar and stumbled to a halt on the sidewalk. It took a full minute for him to gather his wits amidst the swirling chaos. The first thing to hit his senses was the smell. The air had the odor of something between a fish market and an abattoir. Breathing in, his gorge rose and he had to choke it back or puke.
Once his stomach settled down, he raised his eyes and looked around. In all directions, the city streets were deserted like something out of one of those end-of-the-world disaster movies like
The Stand
or
The Day After
. Along the road, cars sat idling—doors thrown open. It was as if the drivers had either been yanked from their seats and dragged off or they’d just decided to get out and walk away. Innumerable radios spewed a swirling, cacophonous din as different styles of music and excited talk all clashed like drunken birds in the air.
The store fronts along the street were smashed; shattered nuggets of glass lay like glittering gemstones across the greasy sidewalk. Periodically, a person’s foot or a gnarled outstretched hand protruded from under a pushed-over counter or toppled display. Beneath the sound of the city slowly dying, a low baritone moaning could be heard. It started as what seemed to be a single voice, but as more and more joined the chorus of The Dead, the sound grew louder and stronger.
Cleese stood for a long time, cradling his bat and silently cataloging all of the commotion going on around him, trying to make some sense of it all. It looked like it had a few hours ago when he went into the bar. Only now, it was as if some psychotic set designer from the movies had come in and arranged a scene to look like something out of Armageddon. As he gazed around and his eyes slowly became accustomed to the lighting, it was then that he saw the bodies. There were dozens of them. Some lay between cars, as if the person were trying to stuff himself into the smallest possible crevice in order to avoid the probing hands and snapping jaws of their attackers. Others… lay open and exposed like Death had come upon them unsuspectingly. All of it was enough to make a grown man weep.
Then from behind him a small, soft shuffling sound came to his ears.
He turned to see a young girl about thirteen, her face a tattered and twisted mess, come lurching toward him with arms outstretched and mouth drooling. Her shirt had been torn open at the neck and a bloody wound splashed its way across her throat and upper chest. As she approached, she opened her mouth and let out a soft, almost plaintive moan.
Cleese smiled a wicked little smile and then choked up on the bat.
After that, things got a little hazy. The next thing Cleese remembered, it was morning and he was walking out of the City and across The Bridge, still holding the remainder of the now-splintered, blood-and-brain-covered bat over his shoulder. His arms felt like rubber and his legs burned from the exertion of fighting his way clear of those things. But as painful as his body might have felt, it was nothing compared to the fuck-all hangover that raged like a wildfire in his head. He figured he must have abandoned the scotch bottle somewhere in the night, undoubtedly right after it had given up the last of its pungent goodness.
As drunk as he was, there must have been ample opportunity for things to go very wrong, really fast. It was a testament to either his natural fighting ability or blind luck that he hadn’t been bitten… or worse.
As he looked back now on the way the whole thing went down, it seemed as if it happened a lifetime ago.
Time flies…
The two men got to within a hundred yards of the Pen when a stomach-turning odor slapped them both in the face. Cleese’s attention was roughly ushered back to the present.
"Ugh…" Cleese choked, "what is that?"
"Charnel Number Five," replied Monk with a wry grin.
The odor was sickly sweet and nauseating. It smelled a lot like the training hall, only far more condensed. The stench bore a greasy aspect which threatened to invite Cleese’s lunch up for a second tasting. The entire area around the Holding Pen reeked like a mass grave; a dumping ground awash in excrement, spoiled meat, and rampant disease. Even if he hadn’t had a clue as to where they were going, one whiff would have been all he would have needed to figure it out.
"Here," Monk said as he handed over a small round tin of ointment which he pulled from one of his pockets. "Vicks VapoRub. Wipe a bit of it on your upper lip, under your nose. It’ll cut the smell some."
Cleese took the tin and dutifully applied the greasy mentholated gel. Monk was right: it did make it a bit better, but the air out here still smelled like five miles of unwiped ass. Only now it was menthol-scented unwiped ass.
They soon arrived at a large steel door set in the side of a building that looked like the others only much, much bigger. Monk immediately banged against the metal with the flat of his fist. A hollow booming sound echoed within.
"Open up! Open up! Let me in…" he shouted, all the while grinning like the Big Bad Wolf.
He paused, took back the tin of ointment and applied it hastily. He then struck the door again with the side of his fist.
"Adamson! Answer your fucking…"
Abruptly, the door ground open on squealing hinges, as if the metal was heavy and very, very tired. Its cries were an indication of how few visitors were accepted here, nor were they ever really wanted. Out of the Cimmerian shadows drifted a man’s face, long and lean, with cheekbones on which you could probably cut yourself.
"Monk…," the man sighed, exasperated. His emaciated face floated in the oily darkness. Its features were hidden by strands of greasy hair hanging before his face like oily drapes set in a ramshackle window.
Monk smiled broadly at the man, but Cleese noticed he didn’t offer to shake his hand.
"I want to show my new man here around your little playpen."
Adamson looked at Cleese with that now familiar air of appraisal.
"You bring him in here and he’s your problem. I take no responsibility."
"Yeah…yeah… I know. Fine. Just let us in, ok?"
Adamson pulled open the door a few more inches and then disappeared back into the gloom without a word, much less a backward glance. Monk stepped inside and led Cleese through the entryway. Once they were past the threshold, he secured the door behind them with an echoing sound.
It took a minute for Cleese’s eyes to adjust to the sparse light, but once they had what he saw laid out before him was mind blowing. He could see, even in the limited illumination, that the building was nothing more than four walls and a ceiling, like an airplane hangar only a little bit smaller. Walkways extended along the perimeter and in the center was a huge square cattle pen about seven feet high and at least the size of a football field. Off to the right was a convoluted series of chutes and gangways which were all governed by hydraulic gates. These could be raised and lowered as needed in order to move the UDs toward either the training pit or to the transport trucks. Beyond that was a long passageway which slanted abruptly into the ground. Set at specific intervals, guard towers overlooked the pen. Inside each tower the shadowy forms of men could be seen manning large belt-fed guns.
Cleese recalled visiting the Chicago Stockyards with his father back before the old man left him and his mom to attend Casino school in Florida or some such nonsense. They’d never seen him again. These pens—with their slatted fencing and mazes of corridors—reminded him of that slaughterhouse. The putrid stench reminded him of his dad.
"These…" Monk interrupted, moving his arm as if he were on a game show presenting some fabulous prize, "are your opponents. The tunnel over there leads underground and to another holding pen located under The Octagon."
Cleese stepped forward and looked between the corrugated slats making up the pen’s walls. Inside, in the dim light, he saw hundreds of ghostly figures milling about without purpose or reason. They shuffled and careened, oftentimes running into one another, as if their feet were held down by weights. Their heads drooped from the stalk of their necks like sacks of fetid meat as their eyes searched the shadows for something—anything—to eat. The air hung above the pen, undisturbed by any breeze or draft. It was as if even the atmosphere of this place wished to remain dark, dead and poisonous.
He leaned in closer to the fence in order to get a better look. Despite his revulsion, there was something inherently sad about the place. Each of The Dead had once been a person. They’d had family, harbored hopes and dreams, and just wanted to live. Instead, for whatever reason, they’d gotten themselves infected and all of it came crashing down around them. As Cleese looked the pen over, there was a part of him that felt a twinge of sadness for that loss.
Abruptly, something slammed itself against the space between the slats of the pen directly in front of him. Cleese jumped back, shouting out, his fist suddenly drawn back instinctively. Pressed against the railings, its features pinched into a rictus snarl, was what had once been a human face. Yellow-green teeth gnashed ineffectually against the metal and saliva dribbled down its chin, coating the fence and giving the metal a sheen that glimmered in the half-light. The thing’s right eye socket was nothing more than a cavernous hole that had been punched into its skull. The other eye’s pupil was clouded over, its tear duct wept a sticky, whitish fluid.