Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (Book 4): Resolution (43 page)

He figured he should probably intervene and
offer to help, but he couldn’t bring himself to get up from the
couch. Instead, he chose to finish his drink. It was some kind of
scotch with a fancy Scottish name. He felt the alcohol in his lips,
his cheeks, and his eyes all at once. His legs too felt as if they
weighed thousands of pounds each. He wasn’t going anywhere and he
knew it. He had no choice but surrender his consciousness to
Hypnos’ will.

Neil drifted in and out of sleep, always
waking to feel more tired than when he had originally closed his
eyes. He couldn’t shut his lids without visiting some horrible
image from his memory. The sad reality for him was that even his
recent happy memories were tormenting to him.

At one point, he opened his eyes to see
William walking away from him. Neil looked around and saw that his
glass was full again. Like a good patient taking his medication,
Neil rose up and emptied the glass. The liquor was smooth with an
after-burn that reminded Neil of summer. It must have been tequila.
Returning the empty glass to the table, Neil rested his head
against the pillow again.

The next moment he recalled was when he
noticed he had a blanket covering him. He could also smell the warm
air wafting up to him from the wood stove burning on the level
below him. He was about to go back to sleep when he realized he
heard someone else breathing in the room.

Neil propped himself up on his arm and tried
to adjust his eyes to the darkness. There was someone asleep on the
floor. Neil couldn’t see the person’s face but as he looked he
realized it could only be one person.

“Danny? Danny is that you?”

Rolling over, Danny answered, not a hint of
sleep in his voice, “Yeah. You looked cold, so I brought you a
blanket and made them put more wood on the fire.”

“Thanks, Danny. You can’t be comfortable
down there. This is a big couch. If you want to move onto the other
end, I’m sure I could make room for you.”

Danny didn’t even think about it. He hopped
up and curled up like a puppy at the far end of the couch. Neil
watched him get comfortable and close his eyes. Neil laid his head
back down but this time his eyes didn’t close. He stared for a long
while at the ceiling but couldn’t fully grasp on any specific trail
of thought. They were all rabbit holes, which only led to more
trails and darkness. He found some comfort in Danny’s restful
snoring, which bordered on squeaking.

Neil was caught off guard by the smile
spreading across his face. How could he not smile? For that brief
moment, Neil was content watching Danny enjoy his peaceful slumber.
The house was quiet but alert. It wasn’t a house that had fully
embraced the night’s calm but it had settled into a nearly silent
vigil.

After a few moments, Neil carefully rose and
stepped away quietly in his bare feet. Creaking down the cold
wooden stairs, Neil was abundantly aware that he was still feeling
his drinks. His legs felt weak and rubbery with each step.

When he heard the voices coming from the
kitchen, he stopped and listened for a moment, trying to decide if
he wanted to be involved. It sounded like several others were
planning. He thought for a second that he would join them but
decided that the others had things well in hand.

He turned on the balls of his feet and
walked slowly back upstairs. He crept into the den and found his
place once again on the couch. At the opposite end, Danny hardly
stirred in his slumber.

Neil conceded that perhaps the boy was on to
something and went in search of it himself. Knowing that the world
would turn without him involved in it, Neil felt much more at ease,
as if a ton of weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He eased
into sleep without realizing it had happened.

In no time at all, there was a duet of
snoring filling the room, like a pair of dueling banjos playing
over one another.

“What did the Colonel say he wanted us to
look for?” asked Stuart “Town” Townley.

Having already answered this question
before, his partner, Foley Armstrong, looked over at Town to make
certain he was both heard and understood. He said impatiently,
“We’re looking for any evidence of the murderers. The ones that
killed Sullivan and sent all them skins against us back at
Skyview.”

Town wasn’t stupid and he wasn’t trying to
be difficult; he just wanted clarification. “No. I mean what
exactly
are we looking for? We don’t know
what they look like, how many of them there are, or even if they
came this way at all. We’re just goin’ offa’ what that kid said
when he was being questioned. How will we know?”

“Will it matter?” Armstrong asked. “If we
find some unlucky folks here in Whittier, we’ll just pretend that
it was them that killed Sullivan. And we’ll take everything those
people got, including their women.”

Town understood what they had been told, but
he didn’t understand how they were to go about finding people,
well, living ones anyway. They’d already almost run headlong into
two different groups of zombies but had thankfully avoided any
direct contact. They were everywhere. Living people, on the other
hand, were in very short supply.

Town had never tracked anything or anyone in
his life. He’d been hunting a couple of times in his life but those
occasions were usually drinking trips more so than hunting trips.
To his knowledge, Armstrong wasn’t much better equipped than Town
was to find a trail and follow it, especially with the day fading
quickly and an eager evening trying to express itself. Trying not
to sound like a complete idiot, he asked again, “But what are we
looking for? Do you know?”

There were several seconds of quiet before
Armstrong looked over at Town and admitted, “I don’t know, but we
aren’t going back there until we find something. Where do you think
we should start?” He was worried about the gathering darkness as
well. He didn’t want to be out here any longer than he needed to
be. He didn’t like the dark and never had.

They were standing in an alley between two
small buildings. There was a chain link fence at one end and a
closed dumpster, behind which they were standing, at the other end.
They looked into an empty street lined with forgotten, dormant
buildings. Down the street a bit, in front of a drugstore, there
was a pile of skin bodies, which seemed slightly out of place, like
they had been dispatched and left there recently. Despite the
darkness, it was easy to see that the bodies were those of the
flesh eaters.

Was that the kind of evidence they needed to
find? Town wondered. He pointed toward the corpse-filled street and
realized Armstrong was already looking at it.

“Okay, so now what?” asked Town.

Armstrong thought for a moment. He knew they
didn’t want to spend any more time in the middle of the street than
was absolutely necessary. He whispered, “Go check out what’s on the
other side of the fence. Be careful though. Sullivan’s murderers
could be anywhere.”

The fence was chain link but had narrow
slats of wood laced through the links, making seeing through it
exceptionally difficult. He tried to see through but found it next
to impossible. There was a wooden shipping crate discarded in the
alley, but Town knew better than to try it as he would certainly be
too heavy. He didn’t need a broken ankle.

He was trying to decide what to do when
Armstrong made a clicking sound between his cheek and his teeth. It
was a signal to Town and one that he had heard many times in the
past. He was backing away from the end of the alley and moving
toward Town. His body’s attitude was one of alarm, like he was
retreating from a bear.

Armstrong shouted, “Go! Now!” as a massive
group of zombies pressed themselves toward and into the narrow
alley. Town was only able to see multiple pairs of hands and slowly
appearing arms before he leapt over the tall fence. He didn’t need
to see any more of those things. Like jumping into water of unknown
depth or temperature, Town prepared himself and held his
breath.

He was standing in a nearly empty storage
yard used primarily by boat owners in the winter. At present, there
were only two boats in obvious disrepair and several trailers used
to transport boats to and from the water. Luckily, Town could see
that the gate on the far side of the yard was still closed and
secured with a lock.

From behind him, he heard Armstrong
struggling up and over the fence as well. The other man hit the
mixed gravel and paved surface breathless and wide-eyed and ready
to run. Town pointed at the gate.

There was no time to rest, however. The
fence behind them bowed with the weight of their pursuers, the
wooden slats complaining and then cracking. The fence was not going
to hold indefinitely. They needed to get out of there quickly.

Already running toward the gate and the
rickety control shack next to it, Town asked, “Now where
to?”Armstrong was out of breath and finding it hard to speak and
run at the same time. “Any...where...but here.
Try...and...get...back...if we can.”

Luckily, the door on the guard shack was
unlocked on this side of the fence. They got into the building just
before the fence finally failed, and into the lot piled a hungry
and growing gang of demons, hell-bent on devouring Town and
Armstrong. Most moved slowly and stiffly, but there were those able
to move much more fluidly. Those few darted across the parking lot
with furious desire putting fire into their eyes.

The shack wasn’t wide enough to accommodate
both of them comfortably, but they squeezed themselves in tightly
enough to close the door. It wasn’t much of a door, so they both
knew it wouldn’t work as a barrier for any longer than the fence
had.

Regardless of what lay ahead, they had to
move. The street outside the storage yard was empty, thankfully,
but its path didn’t take them back toward the hotel. They were
momentarily beset with panic, like lost children separated from
their parents in a giant amusement park. They had to find their way
back.

From behind them, the little shack was
rocked on its foundation, promising to fail and collapse at any
moment. The hotel was to their right, but the only way forward was
to their left and so in that direction they ran. In their
desperation, they barely noticed the swirls of flittering, heavy
white flakes in the darkening skies.

They were on the downtown side of Whittier,
up away from the water and where most of the residents of the city
had once lived. The buildings were sturdier, but they also produced
longer, deeper, and darker shadows.

They ran. They had no particular destination
in mind, but the road took them up toward the dominating Begich
Towers perched over the rest of the city. They ran into the
snow-laden gusts, both beginning to doubt their decision, and
looked back over their shoulders.

The handful once pursuing them had grown to
a clutch of close to two dozen. The demons didn’t notice the
worsening weather as they continued their hunt. The winds blowing
into their faces carried the scent of prey on it and only excited
them all the more. Their bodies quaked with spasms as the fiends’
legs began to move quicker, the infection driving them with
reserves of energy.

The two men were struggling to breathe as
their feet propelled them forward. They passed one cross street
which headed left but elected not to venture down it when they saw
a group of undead loitering in the street outside another building
the color of a faded and weathered school bus about a city block
away. It was then that both men noticed the snow for the first
time.

The twisting spires of white wreathed the
wretched creatures in undulating waves of glistening flakes. Moving
languidly, like statues slowly coming to life, the granite colored
beasts spied the two men and turned to march toward them.

Instead of going that way, Town and
Armstrong pressed forward, which also led them up the hill further
away from the Inn. Town’s worry was growing. He didn’t know how
much longer he could keep running. If he knew where they were
heading, he might be able to trick his body into pushing itself,
but without a clear goal in mind he didn’t know if he could
maintain his pace. He was thankful the creatures were only moving
at a speed slightly faster than an excited walk. He wasn’t required
to sprint but he was running a lot more than he wanted to. Town
thought back on his days playing youth football and the running he
had to do then. He hated it as much in his youth as he did right
now.

Armstrong was faring no better. His chest
hurt and felt like it was tightening with each step. He both cursed
his lifetime of smoking and longed for a cigarette at the same
time.

Town was able to squeeze a question in
between his panting breaths. “Why don’t we shoot?”

“Only draws more to us,” Armstrong said
breathlessly. “Keep running. We can hide in that big building.”

At the next intersection, they both looked
left. This road led them to the front entrance of the large
apartment building to which they had been running. The narrow road
was teeming with skins, like a summer stream full of spawning
salmon. Seeing the two men, the horde turned and started to move
toward them, the same raw hunger in their eyes as that burning in
the eyes of those behind the men.

Armstrong and Town, their worry reaching a
crescendo, shared a frightened look with one another. They had no
choice now. They had to keep running. The road bent to the left and
skirted between the school on their right and the back of the
Begich Tower on the left. As before, the road was choked by
corpses, some motionless and lying in the street and others
drifting toward the two men. They were running out of options.