Dawn of the Dead (23 page)

They had taken the temple, and they surveyed their spoils. Even Roger seemed triumphant in his anguish as he limped to the railing, supporting himself by leaning against it.

Fran had mixed emotions as she viewed the spectacular expanse of dead bodies. She didn't think of them in human terms, although many of them, only days before, had led their lives of quiet desperation. But it was a terrifying way to die, and she hoped that when the end came for her, she would go peacefully.

“We put the wall up here,” Peter told Steve after they had returned to the storage area. His pencil pointed to a map of the maintenance corridor. He drew a line just past the washrooms at the end of the hall near the fire stair. “There's no door from the last office into the washroom, so nobody'll get nosy . . . and this way we can still get to the plumbing . . .”

“Why can't we just board up the stairway?” Steve asked. “Hell, they can't even get through a stack of cartons.”

“I'm not worrying about them,” Peter told him somberly. He looked the younger man in the eyes. They had been through a lot in the past few days and all of them felt a bond of friendship. Both Steve and Fran felt they had proved that they were just as capable and necessary as Peter and Roger. They functioned as a team. No longer were they four separate individuals battling for survival.

Peter continued. “Sooner or later there might be a patrol through here . . . or even looters maybe. I don't want anybody to ever know that stairway exists.”

They all looked back down at the map. On one side were the offices, with the washrooms to the right. The ducts and grille were above these. The maintenance corridor led along the rooms to the fire stair, directly across from the washrooms. It was at the point where the wall of the washrooms joined the maintenance hall that Peter wanted to build their fake wall. This way, from the outside it would look as if the hallway ended, but they would get the benefit of running water and flushing toilets as well as entrance, by way of the fire stair, to their hideout.

“The ductwork runs all the way into the washrooms,” Peter further explained. “We'll have to get in and out that way. We'll bring up any big stuff we want before we put up the wall.”

The two men huddled around the map. Surrounding them in the large storage area were mounds of supplies brought up from the small stores, but they were all in disarray.

Fran had been sitting and watching Roger and was quite concerned at his feverish condition. The trooper's clothes were soaked through with sweat. His hair was plastered to his forehead, and underneath the closed eyelids, his eyes seemed to roll around. She figured he must be delirious, since his skin practically burned to the touch. She had been trying to soothe him with a wet cloth on his forehead, and tried to make him comfortable behind his barricade of cartons. Gently she wiped his face and his neck and then realized that he was shivering. Wrapping the blanket around him tightly, she gave him a reassuring pat. Then she moved toward Stephen and Peter.

“He seems to be sleeping,” she said with a nod in Roger's direction.

“Good,” Peter said softly. He was torn between running over to Roger and remaining aloof. It was a tendency of his that had developed during his youth. When things got too heavy, too emotional for him, he tried to stay as far away as possible. That way things couldn't hurt him. He had done that when his grandmother was dying. He couldn't stand to see her frail body becoming a parcel of bones. He couldn't stand to see her watery eyes watching him mournfully. So he chose to ignore it. Three days before she died, he enlisted in the Marine Corps.

Fran moved to where she had stored her medical supplies atop one of the cartons. She had assembled bottles of various medicines, vials of pills, and diabetic hypodermic syringes, as well as bandages and dressings from the pharmacy in the mall.

“I don't know what else to do . . .” she mumbled to herself glancing furtively at Roger.

Steve stood up, brushed the dust off his pants leg and walked over to her. “You're doin' fine,” he reassured her, placing his arm around her shoulder.

Fran looked up at him with her tearstained face. She looked devastated by the recent events. Her hair hung in limp strings across her face, her complexion was sallow, and there were dark circles under her eyes. Steve knew he didn't look any better. They weren't living any more—they were barely existing. He longed for the familiar tedium of his past life. Anything but this nightmare!

“His leg is awful,” Fran said somberly. “The infection is spreading fast. Can't we fly him out of here? . . . try to find a med unit?”

Steve looked at her sympathetically for a second and then turned to Peter.

“I've seen half a dozen guys get bitten by those things,” Peter told them quietly. “None of 'em lasted more than thirty-six hours.”

The finality and seemingly coldhearted manner with which Peter spoke stunned Fran. She had thought the two of them were friends—true friends. But then she realized that it was only Peter's way of preparing himself for the inevitable.

“Peter . . . Peter . . . where are you?” Roger screamed from behind the cartons.

Peter gave the couple a quick, knowing glance and answered kindly, “Right here, buddy.”

Some inner resource had allowed Roger to sit up. He was now sweating even more profusely than before, and his eyes looked very dark and sunken.

“Yeah, yeah,” he called softly. He licked his cracked and swollen lips and looked around the vast, barren room, trying to get his bearings and clear his eyesight.

Fran could no longer take it. She moved to the far corner of the room and sat down on some cartons, her head in her hands. Occasionally, Roger would call out, his voice sounding pathetic as it echoed through the big storage area.

“We did it, huh, buddy? We whipped 'em.”

“That's right, Rog,” Peter's soothing voice answered him.

“Didn't we?” he asked, his voice empty and strained.

Peter's methodical, patient voice answered him again.

“We sure did, buddy.”

“We whipped 'em and got it all!” Roger screamed out frantically. “We got it
all
!”

•  •  •

Fran, Steve and Peter had been working on the fake wall for over two hours. They had created a great network of two-by-fours, which they had braced up at the rear of the corridor. More lumber was wedged against the walls, making a frame. Stephen slammed large nails into the framework for reinforcement. They had already nailed a Masonite panel into place on one side. In the corridor, Peter carefully nailed in a molding, which made the new partition look like a finished wall.

“This must have been for a touch-up,” Fran said as she carried an old can of paint out from one of the washrooms. In her excitement, she nearly tripped over the vast array of hardware and power tools that were scattered around the gardening cart.

She held the can up to the hallway wall, matching up the paint spilled along the sides. “It looks perfect.”

Peter grabbed the can and pried its lid open quickly with a screwdriver. Then he dipped his finger into the liquid and smeared some onto the new wall where it butted against the corridor. He smiled and nodded affirmatively toward Fran.

“Anything else you want before we close it off?” Steve asked her.

“No.” She stared down the corridor toward the mall proper thinking about Roger. He had acted like a child in a candy store in the mall, frolicking around, yelping like a puppy. And now he was upstairs dying a terrible death. Fran swore to herself that she wouldn't go that way.

She could see the corpses that had littered the hallway piled together at the mouth of the corridor on the balcony.

“No,” she repeated, turning away from the grisly sight.

She stepped back through the unfinished partition and leaned against the framework. Suddenly, her hand flew to her mouth to stifle a gag. Steve sensed her discomfort and ran up behind her, but she felt another wave of nausea and darted for the washroom. Concerned, Steve set down his hammer and quickly followed. She had been really marvelous through all of this, never once complaining. She hadn't mentioned the child inside of her since the time of her outburst. He had often wondered what she was thinking and how she felt about it. But he was afraid to question her. It was her private terrain, and he feared to tread upon it.

When he reached her, she was kneeling on the floor, propped up by her hands on the seat of the toilet, vomiting. He approached her quietly, his hands falling on her back.

“Leave me alone,” she said without raising her head to look at him. “It's all right . . . It's my problem.”

“Frannie—”

“Just get outa here, Stephen. I don't want you here.”

She made the statement so simply and yet so determinedly that Steve was stunned for a moment. He let the words sink in, not wanting to believe them, not understanding them.

Fran saw the confusion in his eyes and reached up and took his hand. She clutched it tightly, trying to show him that she wasn't angry, but just wanted to be alone.

“I don't want you to see me this way—” She had barely got the words out of her mouth when she retched again.

Leaning over the toilet bowl she told him, “Please go . . . I'm all right. Please . . .”

He stood up reluctantly and then drifted out of the room.

Fran clutched the side of the toilet bowl, waiting for the next wave. Then she retched again but she was dry. She tried to swallow and take a deep breath. Then she rolled over and leaned against the wall separating the two stalls and held her stomach. She fumbled with the flush handle and depressed it, the rushing water making a gurgling, ugly sound.

She stood and looked down at her stomach, which was beginning to show. She wondered what effect all this horror was having on her unborn fetus. She had read that the child could pick up vibrations from the mother even while it was in the womb. Many times she had thought of trying to abort. If they ever got out of this alive, children would be the only salvation for earth. Maybe with this child, and others, a new generation could start, one that would not know the despair of its parents.

Stephen walked slowly out of the washroom and toward the unfinished framework.

“This place is gonna be rotten,” Peter said as he walked by. The trooper was gazing down the corridor at the pile of corpses. “We gotta clean up, brother.”

Peter walked past the staring faces of the dead creatures on the balcony to the enormous safe in the president's office. He put his hands on the large round hatch wheel.

“They're usually on a timer,” he told Steve. “Opened at nine, locked at four. Keeps the bankers honest.”

He spun the wheel, and the giant door creaked open.

Inside was the huge safety deposit vault of the bank. They stood in the glittery room in awe for a moment, stupefied by the clean metal walls that were lined with drawers and doors where depositors had stored their valuables. At one end of the room there were stacks and stacks of paper bills. The men approached the piles of money and stooped down.

They both had never seen so much money in one place at one time. It was ironic now, because it was really only worthless paper. They flipped through the stacks of tens, twenties, hundreds, all crisp and new.

“You never know,” Peter said with a smirk and started to stuff several packets into his knapsack.

Steve looked at him quizzically and then realized that the trooper was being optimistic. But he didn't want to miss out if there was even a glimmer of hope. He too took several stacks and stuffed them into his kit as well. “Don't ya wonder what the archaeologists are gonna think,” he said thoughtfully, looking around the enormous vault. “Guys in the future . . . diggin' this place up. Imagine all the stuff's in these boxes . . . jewelry, cash people stash to avoid paying taxes. Maybe they'll figure it's all some kind of offering to the Gods . . . like in the pyramids . . . a burial chamber.”

“That's exactly what it is now,” Peter said and turned to the decomposing pile of bodies awaiting them.

They braced themselves and started to shovel the corpses into the cart. They each used big snow shovels and lifted one corpse from opposite sides and threw it into the cart. They wore elbow-length industrial gloves and had tied handkerchiefs around their noses and mouths, but the stench was still terrible.

They wheeled a cart filled high with bodies across the lobby to the bank. Then they guided it into the vault and unceremoniously dumped the bodies on several others that had already been deposited. The corpses lay askew, their arms and legs protruding as if it were a giant centipede that they had come to bury. Stacks of money were knocked off the shelves and mingled with the extended limbs. When the last body was disposed of, Peter and Steve shut the vault door and the automatic timer clicked on. Then the two of them silently and slowly walked back across the concourse to the maintenance corridor. Peter went over to the controls for the Muzak and reactivated the switch. Steve was grateful that they didn't speak. He was too choked up, and he knew that if he opened his mouth, it would only be to wail.

While Roger slept fitfully, Fran, Steve and Peter ambled through the barricaded building, drifting in and out of the stores and dropping various items into their shopping carts. Understandably, the novelty of having anything they wanted just for the taking had worn off. Like sleepwalkers, they moved through the aisles. Fran rummaged idly through the cosmetics department. Peter looked through a bookstore, picking up paperbacks and hardly noticing the titles. Stephen played the pinball machines in a huge games room, but his heart wasn't in it.

Soon, Fran motioned Steve over to another corner of the store toward a big mechanical barber chair. She trimmed his hair in silence, both of them avoiding each other's eyes in the mirror.