Waiting to Die ~ A Zombie Novel (16 page)

Instantly becoming sick, he
holds back the urge to wretch. Countless bodies line the stairs. Haggard,
disheveled cadavers lay in the last throws of death. Dry and rotten, the bodies
are stacked in piles. The window at the first landing is broken out, letting
the elements in to finish off the task nature has set to eradicate the dead.
Swarms of flies buzz around the corpses, feasting and propagating in every
husk, adding to the larva that finish of the remnants of rot.

“My…” she manages to say over
Johnny's shoulder before feeling the sickness rise in her stomach. She swallows
the urge to throw up again and clenches her jaw. “It was a massacre,” she says,
turning her gaze away from the sickening scene.

“And we have to go through it,”
Johnny replies as his shirt falls from his face, ushered by his slack
expression.

“There has to be another way.”

“Well we could go back up to the
roof and try for the rope again if you’re willing to run past a few dozen
corpses,” he replies, looking down at her ankle.

“I fucking get it. I'm a liability.
You don't need to remind me.” She scowls.

“That's not what I was getting
at,” he says. “Calm down, it was just a joke.”

“But that's what you were
thinking, right?” she says, coming within inches of his face. “Would you leave
me the way you left Sarah?”

Stepping back, Johnny turns
away, shocked. “Listen. I've only done what I've
had
to do. I didn't
want to leave her behind...”

“But you did it anyway. She was
only a little girl. She didn't have any way to defend herself from those...
things
,”
her voice quivers.

“She was already dead, April!
She was fucking bit. Would you rather I clubbed her to death? Is
that
what
you would have wanted?!”

“You know damn well what I
wanted.” she spits out between clenched teeth.

“That wasn't a fucking option.
If we had waited there any longer, the dead would have been right up our asses,”
Johnny takes a deep breath and tries to calm himself. “I loved Sarah too, but
we didn't have a choice. It was either leaving her there to die, or kill her
ourselves. You saw those bites; it was only a matter of time before...”

“And now she is one of those
fucking things out there,” April points, motioning outside, “dead and
wandering, no different than all the other sacks of shit.”

“Goddamn it, I tried,” Johnny
shakes his head. “I really tried. How was I supposed to know those things were
out back? We had to run,” his voice shakes. “We had to.”

“I...” she trails off at the
thought, scrunching her face up at the edge of tears.

The intensity of his expression
subsides as he watches the first tear escape the corner of her eye. “I'm
sorry,” he says. “If there had been any other way, anything at all, you know I
would have...”

April hangs her head in sorrow
before finally looking up at Johnny. Tears stream down her face and she replies
through sobbing breaths, “I know... I just feel so guilty.”

“I do too, but right now we have
to think of ourselves.” Johnny looks down at the floor in thought and closes
his eyes. “That's what this all comes down to. We either survive, or we wait
here to die.” He motions toward the stairs. “And right now, this is all we can
do.”

Johnny carefully steps over
bodies, negotiating through broken limbs and torn flesh as he descends the
stairs. He tiptoes over the dried blood and through the insects that scurry
from one corpse to the other and holds tightly to the railing as his knuckles
whiten from his grip.

Tight mouths are opened wide
from decay as if the dead are screaming out their final pleas. Their faces
never become mundane, never seem to lose the impression of horror, no matter
how many Johnny has seen. He imagines what their lives were like; the picnics
they must have attended, the birthday parties and other social gatherings
they've gone to. It is too much to bear when he really considers them as having
once lived, having the same hopes and fears as himself, the same dreams, all
torn away in an instant. Above everything else, he wonders why he was spared,
why he should live when so many others have fallen to such a cruel fate. It is
times like this when he sees the fallen, the people who never rose, who never
had a chance to hunt the living that he wishes the same for himself and all of
the people he has ever loved. To die and never rise would be the greatest gift
of all.

Behind him, April limps down the
stairs, trying her best not to slip on the remnants of the dead, on the maggots
and other filth that feed upon them. She tries to imagine herself stepping
through a field of flowers, but the smell of decay quickly diminishes the
fantasy and she is brought back to the hell at her feet. She holds firmly to
the railing for support as she makes it to the next landing. The number of
bodies begins to dwindle as she takes to the next flight of stairs as she tries
to catch up with Johnny.

“Fuck!” Johnny exclaims as he trips
and falls over a body.

At the very last moment, he
twists, desperately trying to land on his back rather than his face and comes
down with a terrible thud. He moans through the pain and grits his teeth. He
tilts his head to the left and opens his eyes, confronted by the rotten visage
of a bloated corpse. Instantly, the smell overwhelms him. Wrinkling his nose,
he turns and covers his mouth, fearing another round of vomiting.  

“Are you alright?” April asks,
kneeling down by his side.

He sits up with a disgusted look
and tries to shake the pain in his side. “I'll be fine. Give me a second.”

·12

Upon the next landing, they make
their way over the last few bodies and move beyond another broken out window.
Rain pelts them through the broken out pane, driven by the furious winds that
have accompanied the storm. Lightning snaps through the sky, electrifying clouds
that drift like dirty cotton outside the window. It is as if April could reach
out and touch them, feel the wetness of the storm with the vapors that make up
their gloom. Her face tingles as the spray hits her face, activating senses
that she hasn't felt in a long time. The dirt and grime rinse away as she wipes
her face on the sleeve of her shirt.

“Come on, let's go,” Johnny
urges.

April turns to Johnny, “I was
just...”

“I know,” Johnny empathizes.
“There's no time.”

As Johnny takes the next flight
of stairs, April looks back, dreaming for only a moment before following him
again. She shakes the fancy from her mind with a sigh. She can't help but to
think of being clean, of washing herself in the downpour, of feeling fresh if
only for a fleeting moment. Her heart aches for the way the world once was.

“Damn it!” Johnny's anger rises.
“It's locked,” he says as he pushes on the door.

Slamming his hands on the door,
he reserves himself to resting his forehead on the obstruction. He takes a deep
breath and turns without a word and begins making his way to the next set of
stairs. In his mind’s eye, he can remember this place from before, how it
bustled with people running through their lives trying to make it to their next
appointment. He can envision how each new client walked through the door of his
office, sad and forlorn, only wanting to get out of the debt they had
accumulated from years of living off of credit cards. The amount of burden was
often times beyond his level of number crunching. More often than not, he would
recommend bankruptcy and watch their faces slacken in disbelief.

He was intent on getting to the
cafeteria that he had spent so many hours, year after year, wasting time on
undercooked food and the poorest quality meals that came out of a can. Having
rationed their food supply to the point of near starvation, he felt it fitting
to have one more meal and a place to sleep for the night before continuing to
the dock; that is if the food hadn't already been looted. If he had known that
there were so many of the dead waiting, he wouldn't have bothered signing his
death warrant by coming here.

After finding every entry point
locked on the way down, Johnny falls against the wall at the first floor access
and lowers himself down until he is sitting on the dirty floor. “I'm so sorry,”
he says and holds his head in his hands.

“There's still another floor,”
April replies, lowering herself down on bended knee next to him.

“That goes to the basement,”
Johnny shakes his head. “The only thing down there is a furnace and...” he
looks up as a thought arises.

“And what?” Aprils asks.

“And a manhole that leads to the
sewers,” Johnny states, rising to his feet. “Let's go.”

Skipping stairs, Johnny runs
down into the darkness, slowing as the dim light fades from the upper windows.
Moving to the far end of the landing, he feels for the door. The protrusion
juts out above hip level, and he cradles the knob in the palm of his hand.
Smooth metal greets his skin, cool to the touch and warms slightly as he
caresses it. Holding his breath, he begins to turn the mechanism, waiting for
the inevitable clicking sound that comes when the fastener has retreated to the
inner workings of the door. With an exhale, he pushes the door inward. A damp
mildew smell hits his senses with a hint of oil from the old furnace beneath
the surface. There’s nothing but darkness as he steps over the threshold.

Fumbling through his pack, he
searches for his flashlight. A faint shuffling ensues as he grasps for the
object. He turns the end of the light until the telltale glow emits from the
working end, blanketing the hallway before him in a yellow radiance.

Turning the light towards April
at an angle and away from her face, he says, “Don't follow too closely. We
might have to run.” He peers down at her foot and asks, “How is it?”

“I think it is better, but it’s
still a little sore.” She moves her ankle and twists her foot in a circular
motion, showing him that it still works. “I think I'll be alright.”

“I'm sorry about earlier.”
Johnny glances off to the side, ashamed. “I didn't mean that you were a
liability.”

“I know. I was being stupid.”
April looks his eyes when he finally looks up. “I know you would never leave
me.”

He smiles at her and turns back
towards the hallway, shining the light to and fro along the tight, narrow
passage. He lets out a breath of determination and tries to steady himself as
he watches the beam of light nervously twitch across the walls from the
unsteadiness of his hand. Pushing forward, he suddenly stops.

“Here, you take it.” He hands
April the light. “Shine it ahead of me. If anything comes out, I want to be
ready for it.” He pulls the pry bar from his pack and wields it out in front of
him, glancing around nervously.

April takes the light and angles
it over his shoulder. Her grasp is steady, but she can still see the beam
jostle with every beat of her heart. She feels like she has walked into a
haunted house, nervously waiting for a monster to pop out. With every movement
Johnny makes in front of her, an echo of scraping dirt beneath his feet sounds
out in the dank silence. Between the sounds, she swears that she can hear
something else, faint like breathing, malicious below his footfalls, coming
closer in the darkness.

Placing her hand on Johnny's
shoulder, she motions for him to wait. She places her index finger over her
mouth, telling him to stay quiet.

Drip... drip... drip.

An echo of water leaking from
some unseen pipe inundates their senses as they wait in silence.

Shrugging his shoulders, Johnny
looks at April, questioningly.

“I thought I heard something,” she
whispers in response.

The pair turn back, greeted a
shrill howl as a decayed face snarls out a cry that sends the pair recoiling
from fear. Erratically, the beam from the flashlight sways as Johnny lashes
out, swinging the pry bar at the corpses face. Its head turns slightly from the
impact before it screams again and launches itself forward.

Thrown to the floor, the corpse
struggles with its mouth wide, thickened streams of fluid cling to its teeth
through open maw as it strains to get up. Gas escapes through on open, rotting
wound at the creature’s throat, bubbling up puss and mucus as Johnny holds it
down with his foot. The milky white of its eyes turn a shade of blackened red
as the pry bar enters its cranium, splitting the monsters skull in two. An
almost indescribable smell wafts up from the opening in its head like iron and
sewage struggling for dominance over an already rancid odor.

Johnny turns and gags, letting
loose a torrent of empty bile from his already cavernous stomach. He lurches in
on himself, guts twisting as the muscles of his abdomen wrench out the
digestive fluids and he quakes with convulsions. He begins to breathe through
his mouth, taking in large gulps of air as April holds him from behind, rubbing
his back.  Through his mouth, he can taste the stench, feel it lingering in his
lungs like the residue of a garbage can. Tears grace his eyes, and he wipes
them away along with the snot that has formed on his upper lip.