Containment (27 page)

He and Emma made their way back across the top floor of the parking deck. They stood there for a few more minutes, hoping for any sign at all that the two men were still alive. There hadn’t been any gunshots in quite some time and the mob of creatures down the street had moved out of sight. A few stragglers, primarily undead beasts whose bodies had been mangled enough in dying as to impact their mobility, were still lingering in the now largely empty street. They seemed lost and confused, like sheep that had been separated from the flock.

“I think we should go talk to Meghan,” he said to his companion.

From behind both of them, Meghan, who was walking up the ramped driveway, asked, “Talk to me about what?” She was still holding the radio, which was singing its static-filled tune, firmly in her right hand. At every slight interruption in the empty atmospheric white noise, Meghan’s eyes would not too subtly cast themselves down toward the device and then look back up hopefully.

Dr. Caldwell looked into her eyes and was about to speak when Meghan interrupted him. “Don’t even suggest that we’re leaving him. None of us would have ever made it this far without him. We owe him some time.”

“I know how hard this is to hear, Meghan, but we have to deal with reality. We both know that we can’t stay here indefinitely. We have to face the facts. I don’t like it any more than you do.”

“Then give him more time. He’s still out there. He can make it back. We wouldn’t be here without him. How far do you think...?” The tears welling up in her eyes and the heated pain in her chest robbed her of voice. She crumpled down against the concrete wall and let the powerlessness and the desperation take her. She hung her head and let her eyes be raging storm clouds to the pavement below her. She forced out, “We can’t. He can’t.”

Dr. Caldwell found in his reserves of past training the capacity to remain calm and reassuring. He said as soothingly and honestly as possible, “We can’t let his sacrifice be meaningless. We have to keep moving. Even Neil would agree with that. Wouldn’t he?”

Not looking up at him, Meghan shook her head. Dr. Caldwell, though, could tell that she wasn’t denying it; she was merely struggling with accepting it. She managed to say, “Not him. Not him too. I don’t think I can take it.”

“Maybe we can help each other, because I’m having a hard time too,” Dr. Caldwell admitted.

“You? Why?”

“With Neil gone, who do you think everyone is going to expect to have all the answers and ideas that are supposed to keep us alive? And I don’t think I’m nearly as qualified for the job as Neil, or even Jerry. And hell, I was an officer in the military. I commanded troops in the field. Well, not really. I was a surgeon, but I was in command. In this situation I’m totally out of my league, but that doesn’t matter because everyone is going to look to me regardless. What kind of weight do you think that puts on my shoulders? Christ, if I thought we could wait here for those two, do you think I’d be in a hurry to bug out? We just have to think and do what’s best for the group...for all of us...for those two kids. We have to think like Neil.

“The next step in Neil’s plan was to get across the bridge and onto Elmendorf. Maybe we should stick to Neil’s plan.”

All at once, Meghan stopped sobbing. She sniffled a couple times and took a deep, calming breath. “Doc, would you look one last time please?”

Without betraying the sense that he was just doing it to placate her, Dr. Caldwell agreed. “Of course. I do think we owe them and us that. Wish me luck.”

Emma leaned down and rubbed Meghan’s shoulders and back. This led to a warm sympathetic hug and more tears. She said into Meghan’s ear, “C’mon, we can get through this if we work together. I know it hurts honey.”

“I can’t believe this is happening...again,” Meghan sobbed, “These damned zekes are really putting a harsh on my love life.” She let a painful laugh escape, followed by a couple more sniffles.

Without taking the binoculars from his eyes, Dr. Caldwell leaned forward as if to get a more focused look and said calmly, “I think I see them.”

When Jerry and Neil had been separated from the rest of the group with both a proverbial and literal city’s worth of zombies fast on their heels, Neil was afraid his nightmare was going to finally catch him and drag him into the darkness. There were moments when he didn’t see how the two of them were going to make it out of the predicament alive.

They ran north on E Street, which tilted slightly downward toward the Hilton Hotel. The front windows and large glass doors of the luxury hotel were shattered and blanketed the floor with a million little prisms. Jerry led them into the hotel and beckoned Neil to follow.

“If we can get them into the hallways, maybe their numbers will slow them down. We can put a little distance between us and them.”

Neil nodded and said as he struggled for breath, “Yeah, but we can’t lose them entirely. We need them to follow us so that they don’t follow the others.”

Jerry nodded and took a right in the lobby. In the hotel, the walls amplified the ghouls’ groaning. Jerry ran up some stairs, down a hallway, and then back down some other stairs. Some of the walls were ashen black like the coals in the bottom of a barbecue grill. Other walls, especially down a particularly cluttered hallway, were fouled with smeared rust colored handprints. Down this corridor, some of the guestroom doors had been forced from their frames and were lying uselessly on the floor. Left to his own devices, Neil was convinced that the maze into which they were running deeper and deeper would merely swallow him into its seemingly endless depths. He felt like a Dickensian child who inadvertently wandered into a Nineteenth Century manor’s shrub maze and was lost forever. As it was, Neil was thankful that his partner knew his way around, but was a little worried that they might be heading toward a dead end.

Jerry, seemingly sensing Neil’s reservations, said as he ran, “I used to work here before I went to school for nursing. I did room service for a bit and then maintenance. Got to know the place inside and out.”

Neil nodded again and felt much better about their prospects. Soon, they were back out on the street. The streets all angled down, pointing toward the industrial park, which got its name—Ship Creek—from the fish-rich waterway that cut down its middle. The area was home to the main depot for the Alaska Railroad, a fairly new hotel, and several support businesses for the Alaska tourism industry. On the far northern edge of the area was the once bustling port of Anchorage, and above it all was a bridge that connected Anchorage to the Government Hill area and the main gates of Elmendorf Air Force Base.

They rounded a fence and ran through a large staging yard with several box vans still awaiting cargo that would never be loaded. Using one of the vans as a stepped vaulting aid, Neil and Jerry lifted themselves over the ten-foot high chain link security fence into an adjoining parking lot. The mass of zombies packed into the yard were cornered and fairly well tethered into place by their own single-mindedness. They reached and clawed through the hundreds of fence openings, trying futilely to close the distance between themselves and their prey.

Of course, there were still hundreds more of the ghouls to offer chase, so any sense of satisfaction was fleeting and gone as soon as it appeared.

“Hell, about another ten yards like that,” Jerry quipped, “and we’d have them all locked up.”

Neil tried to laugh, but was finding it more and more difficult to take in enough air to be able to breathe let alone laugh. His legs too were starting to feel weak and rubbery. Exercise had not been a priority for him before this cataclysm and now he was regretting it. Maybe that would have made a good selling point for the Alaska Club: “Come work out and stay in shape. You never know when you might be chased by zombies.” Regardless, he was starting to worry their pace was unsustainable. If they got caught out of steam and out in the open…if they were overwhelmed…. They needed a different plan.

“Jerry, I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up,” he huffed. He looked over his shoulder and was somewhat comfortable with the distance that was growing between themselves and the band of followers behind them. Most of the creatures were moving at a slower, shuffling pace, but they never slowed and never tired. Neil was reminded of the pursuit scene from
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
and Paul Newman’s line, “Don’t these guys ever give up?”

The younger Jerry knew that Neil was right and was feeling the burn himself. His breathing too was becoming shallower and shallower as they continued. He pointed to another long building and suggested that they head for it, hoping to perhaps lose their pursuers and maybe even catch their breath for a few moments.

They ran from pavement to grass and back to pavement. Upon hitting the pavement for the second time, Neil’s feet were momentarily confused by the surface changes and sent him sprawling to the ground. His right hand hit hard, opening a nice road rash on his palm and wrist. He banged his right knee on the hard ground too, sending a desperate message of pain through his nerves to his brain. He got himself up but the pain made walking difficult and running all but impossible. He limped forward, looking over his shoulder at the horrible mass that was getting closer to him with each step. He could feel the impact point on his knee throb. He forced himself to keep moving forward and motioned to Jerry to get himself to safety. Jerry, of course, ignored him and instead got his shoulder under Neil’s right arm and hand and then helped Neil. They were moving much slower than they had been previously but were still staying ahead of the relentlessly pursuing predators.

At the building, they went around back and found an open loading bay. Luckily, the bay was up high to accommodate loading and unloading cargo and pallets from trucks. The stairs leading up the bay were fairly well blocked by a stack of boxes that had fallen on its side. From the bay’s loading platform, Jerry heaved over some empty heavy wooden pallets and further blocked the stairs. He realized that the front of the building held many windows, but if the things continued their mindless pursuit and just followed them to the back then perhaps they would have enough time to move to the other end of an internal hallway without being detected. Perhaps.

From the loading area and the attached warehouse section of the building, the two men retreated deeper into the structure passing through a threshold into a well-kept office area with soft-carpeted floors and lightly colored walls. Seeing that there were windows looking out from the offices to either side of the hallway, Neil and Jerry dropped to their knees and crawled, careful not to be detected.

“How’s your knee?”

Grimacing slightly, Neil answered, “I think it’ll be alright but this crawling around shit isn’t helping.” Sensing Jerry’s worry, Neil added, “Of course, I’d just as soon endure a little pain as opposed to the alternative.”

They came to a set of stairs and decided that going up might work to their advantage. They crawled slowly upstairs, avoiding the stairwell windows as they went. Pausing to look through one such window, Neil only verified what he already suspected. As a reeking, grey wave of rot, scores of the beasts shuffled around to the rear of the building. Mindlessly, they followed the surge, which was becoming penned tighter and tighter into the already packed loading area.

Once upstairs, the two men were back on their feet and trying to find an open room or office in which to catch their breath. Thankfully, they hadn’t seen any of the telltale signs of the struggles that they had seen in other buildings and houses all over Anchorage. The edifice had the appearance of an office closed for the weekend.

The relative peace that the hall engendered supplanted the misgivings and the chaos that seemed to grip everywhere else the two men had run. The men’s pace eased somewhat, as did the nervous looks around. Not since they had left Charles’ house had they felt so comfortable. And then Neil remembered regretfully that they had just departed Charles’ residence earlier that morning. It had already been a long, arduous day, and it was only going to get longer and harder. Hopefully, their haven would not become a trap.

From his backpack, Neil produced bottles of water for himself and Jerry while Jerry found some pepperoni sausage sticks and small packages of lemon sandwich cookies.

Chewing hungrily, Neil said, “Ya know, I never liked these damned Slim Jims before, but I don’t know that I’ve tasted something so good as these little bastards right at this moment. Delicious little foul creations.”

Jerry was chewing on a second sausage stick. He nodded but then gestured with his chin toward Neil’s pocket. “Maybe now would be a good time to give them a shout and see what’s up.”

Still trying to catch his breath, Neil nodded and reached into his right hand jacket pocket. It was empty. Then he reached into his empty left hand pocket. He patted himself front and back, becoming increasingly frantic as the seconds passed.

He sighed and hung his shoulders, shaking his head as he did. “It’s fucking gone. It must have dropped out...hell, it could’ve fallen outta my pocket anytime.”

“So, there’s no way that we could possibly know where they are and they have no way to know if we’re still breathing?”

“Pretty much.”

“And the hits just keep rolling in. So, we’re on our own.”

“For a time anyway.”

Jerry wadded up his Slim Jim wrappers into loose balls and tossed them across the hall. Looking at the wrappers as they slowly unfolded themselves, he said, “They’re not gonna wait around for us. Why would they? They needed to put some distance between those things and them and that just meant making a getaway. Didn’t it? They’re long gone.”