Cage The Dead (11 page)

It was all lost to her in this very moment.

She couldn’t remember anything at all!

It was then that a shadow appeared in the doorway, casting the stairwell in gloom.

And then she saw a familiar boot come to rest on the top step. Her heart sank, as she knew what was coming for them.

Chapter 9

Suddenly, all the training that Adam had taught Gaia about guns came rushing back to her. She inspected the gun, switched off the safety and pointed it toward the stairwell.

A loud crash ensued as the zombie, her former friend, Nick, tumbled down the steps. When he hit the bottom, his right arm below the elbow was hanging at a very peculiar angle, clearly snapped at the joint, as the undead creature clumsily regained its footing.

“Get behind me,” she said to Justin, keeping her eyes on the zombie, as the boy did just that, hiding behind Gaia.

She pointed the gun, held her arm steady, and waited.

The Nick-zombie began to run toward her and she fired.

A loud sound rang out in the area, echoing throughout the basement. And then, the distinct sound of a body slumping to the cement floor followed.

Gaia covered her mouth in disbelief. It had all happened too fast. She could not believe that this undead creature slumped on the floor before her was only a few moments ago, chatting with her about their respective lives, as well as someone she’d recently considered both a friend and colleague.

“What should we do with him, Miss Gaia?” asked Justin, startling Gaia from her reveries.

“Well, I’d like to bury him,” she said, thinking about how difficult a task that would be, considering that the grounds outside were complete with both animal and the living dead wandering about. One of the two scenarios would make the task difficult, let alone both. “But I am not sure what we can do right now.”

“We should definitely bury him. He was really nice to me,” Justin said, trying to stem the flow of tears. Gaia actually admired his mask of bravery and courage, perhaps not wanting to cry in front of Gaia for fear of her getting upset. Whatever it was, the boy was showing valor well beyond his years for sure.

“Well, for now we’ll wrap his body in something and put him out back,” Gaia reasoned, more for her own sake than the boy’s. She surveyed the basement, spotting excess chicken feed, crates of supplies, including some fruits, lending credence to Nick’s earlier assertions. And that perhaps this excess food had been dumped in here because it didn’t fit in their appointed spaces in the storage shed and freezers outside. She was pretty sure she’d overheard some of the staff mentioning that in the recent past, though until now, it was nothing on her radar.

“What about this, Miss Gaia?” Justin asked, holding up an opaque cover of some kind that when she inspected, was a plastic sheet for protection against rain. She quickly removed a few items and personal effects from Nick’s body, including his wallet, keys, jewelry and binoculars that hung around his neck. Then she and Justin went about wrapping Nick’s body in the plastic cover and the two of them went about taking the body upstairs. Several minutes later, Gaia and Justin had the body upstairs and the pair took a moment to catch their breath.

“That was…a lot harder…than it looked,” Gaia said, doubled over, hands on her knees. “So much for being in shape.”

Justin simply shrugged, clearly not catching her sarcasm. It was then that she gave thought to the boy. He was quite big for a nine year old and seemed stronger than most boys she’d ever seen. As a matter of fact, she wondered if he really was older and didn’t even know.

“Okay, let’s just drag the body near the door,” she said, pushing those thoughts away for another time and gesturing to an open area in the foyer. They did just that, the two of them dragging the body in unison to the designated area.

“What kind of gun is that?” Justin asked out of the blue. “I’m not sure, honey. It’s got writing in French here,” she said, squinting at the words, but she was unable to read them clearly under their current lighting. “Fabrique Nationale, something or another. Anyway, what I do know is that there are,” she paused and ejected the clip, “thirteen rounds in this clip, which should be more than enough bullets I would hope.”

She looked all around and realized that they hadn’t really explored the house except for the long hall that leads all the way through the first level. There was an upstairs, too. But, in her estimation, that gunshot should have attracted any lingering zombies that remained in the house toward the sound.

“Will you teach me how to shoot it?” he asked with excitement in his eyes.

“I don’t see why not. But first, we need to assess our situation and see what the area outside is like.” She paused, thinking of a way to try to explain getting to see Solomon and the gorillas that were still outside in the pen on the far end of the zoo grounds. “Hey, Justin. I have a good friend who‘s a gorilla.
Friends
, really,” she said, emphasizing the plural, “a whole family of gorillas. “And I really need to go check on them all. There are babies there that may need some help. You wanna come with me?”

“Sure,” he said with a nod.

“All right, then. Let’s see what the food situation is first,” she said, heading into the kitchen and checking the pantry. Gaia methodically went over the food in the cupboards, which seemed to be quite a bit, and in the refrigerator, which again seemed to be a bit of overflow as there was some frozen food in there—some that could be for people and some not so much meant for human consumption—that she could see.

There were a good deal of preserved foods like noodles, protein bars and whatnot, which Gaia attributed to the staff or the help stashing for their own uses, along with some things that hadn’t been removed since Charles’s death. And Kristen was good that way, allowing the staff to store food, as long as they cleaned it out whenever appropriate.

“I need to check the upstairs, okay hon?  After that, we can go visit the gorillas,” Gaia instructed. Then she scanned the area, seeing Maye sitting atop the refrigerator still. “Grab that banana in the fruit bowl and give it to Maye. She’ll love you forever.” Justin smiled back at her and did as he was bid. “Now you stay here. I’ll be back.”

Gaia crept away and scanned the entire lower level. The living room, den, storage closets, and lower level bedrooms were unscathed. After securing the lower level, she checked the pistol again, making sure that there was a bullet in the chamber, and took her first step up the stairwell.

As soon as she stepped onto the first of the stairs, it creaked, and she flinched at the noise, almost firing the gun into the wooden step.

She began to slowly ascend the stairs. Several moments later, sweat beading on her forehead, she made it to the second floor landing. She took a deep breath to steady herself again, wiped the sweat from her palms, refitted the gun in her hand, and began down the long hallway. Every other step she took provoked a creaking sound from the floor.

She passed several open doors on either side of her, including a bathroom and a walk in closet, until she stood before one that was closed. She listened and heard nothing behind it, paused in silence, and continued listening for several more minutes thankful that the creaking sound ended.

Finally, attempting to back away, she shifted her weight to her back foot and the floor beneath her creaked.

She barely had time to register the sound of footsteps coming toward her from behind the closed door.

A heartbeat later and that very door exploded into wooden shards.

Emerging from the shattered and flimsy material of the door was a pair of hands followed by the rest of a zombie. It was dressed in similar garb as she wore, indicating it to have once been an employee of the zoo, as it barreled into her. The sheer surprise and ensuing impact startled Gaia as the zombie slammed into her, the pistol flying from her grasp, bouncing down the stairs.

Their momentum took them through the stair supports, shattering the wooden banister and stunning Gaia for an instant, the pain from the old wound on her forehead rudely reminded her of its presence with a throbbing pain.

She looked in horror as the gun plummeted away, the impetus of Gaia’s arm action taking it further down the steps. But she could not focus on that for long as the zombie bit and clawed at her, trying to rend flesh.

Gaia fought with all of her might as the sheer weight of the creature—a large man in its life before it had transformed into one of the living dead—easily pinned her to the floor.

In her struggle, she noticed one thing. The creature was incredibly strong. It took everything she had just to keep its one arm from—
it only has one arm!—
pinning her down.  Then she finally stared into its crazed face, its eyes grayed over and its mouth dripping blood

It was someone she knew after all.

He was a very kind one-armed man in his former life, Hank, that had worked here doing whatever he could to help out, but was mostly used as a consultant. He’d worked at many zoos in the past, losing most of his right his arm in a terrible incident with a grizzly, leaving behind only a stump.

As the creature sat atop her snapping its jaws, her fighting with every ounce of her strength just to keep it at bay, Gaia knew that these undead creatures never tired, but she soon would—
very
soon in fact. She managed to maneuver its remaining arm in between them, using it to keep those teeth from gaining purchase in her flesh.

She had one choice here, and that was to try to wiggle out from under—no, she realized, as she felt something hard and thin under her head as the zombie snapped at her repeatedly—she would try something else. She shifted again in order to allow herself one brief instant in which to grasp what she hoped might save her life.

She grasped the rigid cylindrical item, and brought it forward with force, jamming the wooden spindle through the zombie’s head.

She suddenly felt its entire weight upon her as it collapsed completely. She couldn’t even breathe. Shifting from beneath it with all of her might, she managed to take in a deep breath, but then it rested on her uncomfortably once more.

She was beginning to black out, when she felt the things weight shift again. She was overwhelmed with panic now, believing that the undead creature was somehow still alive and ready to kill her once and for all.

It rocked back and forth on top of her a few times before it finally rolled off her completely. Where once the zombie occupied her line of sight, Justin stood above her now, looking down at her with concern.

“Did he get you, Gaia? Are you—“

“I’m…good, Justin! Thanks…to you!” she said, in between labored breaths.

“I brought you this,” he said, handing her the fallen weapon. As the weight of the gun rested in her hands, she caught sight of movement from the hall directly behind Justin.

”And it’s a good thing you did.”

She kicked out with her boot, catching him sharply in the lower shin as hard as she could. The ensuing look of surprise coupled with pain made Gaia feel bad about it initially. Then she fired the gun at the onrushing pair of zombies that were racing toward them. She hit the mark truly on the first, missed the head of the second one with the first try and then hit it perfectly with the second.

Justin stared up at her again with confusion. That is, until he looked back at where Gaia now signaled, seeing the target of her gunshots.

“Get behind me,” Gaia instructed, making to her feet and preparing for more zombies to come running out of the adjacent bedrooms. After half a minute, however, nothing more happened. She quickly went from room to room with the gun at the ready, but each room was empty. She entered the hall again and looked at the dead zombies that stained the hardwood floor. “We need to get rid of these bodies.”

“Whatcha wanna do with ‘em?” Justin asked, scratching his nose. Gaia thought about that for a little while.

“We could drag ‘em down the steps,” Gaia said aloud, as if working her way through the issue. “Or,” she added, moving into the next room, “we could toss ‘em out the door there. That seems like less of a strain, right?” Justin shrugged and then nodded, pointing at the door leading outside to a balcony. Gaia stood over one of the three, the big man’s corpse, and grabbed its hands and tried to move the thing. It barely budged. “Well, this could be a problem.”

“Can your friend help? Gorillas are strong, right?” Justin asked, causing Gaia to consider that question. She had been teaching both Solomon and Molly rudimentary sign language, with which the pair responded very favorably. They had been working on that for over a year now, and she had seen Solomon flip a tire back and forth across their pen with relative ease. So, he could certainly move these bodies, too.

“It’s worth a try, hon,” she said to the boy, impressed with his ability to think along those lines. Gaia slid the safety in place on the gun, tucked the gun in the front of her belt, and waved for Justin to follow.  “Are you sure you’re only nine?”