Stopping the Dead (5 page)

Adam

The first thing Adam noticed was an extremely well cared for M1 Garand rifle in the old man’s hands.  The second thing he noticed was the man’s baseball hat.  Red with yellow words: Chosin Frozen.

“Marine?” the old man asked, looking down at the pack in Adam’s hands.

“Nope.  Retired Army,
but I’ve got a pair of Marine
riflemen with me.”

“No other kind,” the old man said.  “Got a safe place for us?”

“Yup,” Adam said.  “How many of you are there?”

“Four,” the old man said.  He turned away and called out in some language towards the back of the store.
  A young Chinese woman appeared, holding an infant to her breast, and the hand of a young boy.

“This is Emily,” the old man said.  “Her daughter is Susan, and her son is Michael.”

“Are any of you hurt?”

The old man shook his head.

“Need to take anything?”

The old man reached behind a bookcase and pulled out an ancient looking seabag.  “This
is
all I need, and they have just the clothes on their backs.”

“Adam!” Corey called from out front.

“Yeah?”

“We got a wave coming up from the hospital, you better haul ass!”

Adam looked back at the old man.  “Do they speak any English?”

“Not much,” the old man said.

“Okay, get them in the cab of the truck out front.  You too.  I can fit all of you in there.  Just toss your bag in the back with the twins.”

The old man nodded, then turned and spoke to the woman and her children in Chinese.

Adam went out the front door, Brian keeping a steady watch on the City Hall side of East Hollis Street, picking off the dead shambling towards them.  Corey’s fire was quicker and Adam saw the larger wave of dead moving towards them.  Patients, doctors, nurses, civilians, all of them dead and moaning.

Adam stepped out a little ways in front of the truck, tossing his pack into the bed and bringing his own rifle up to bear.  He added his fire to Corey’s, picking each target carefully, looking for the leaders of the pack.  The woman hurried out with her children, whispering to the little boy in Chinese, urging him into the cab of the truck.  She climbed in quickly behind him.  Adam glanced back and caught sight of the old man throwing his sea bag into the bed of the truck, Brian looking over at him.

“Holy shit, Master Guns!”

The old black man smiled.  “Should have known you two little bastards would find a way through.”

Corey looked back, grinning.  “Good to see you, Master Guns.”

“Help me in, Brian,” Master Guns said, and Brian did so immediately.  The Chinese woman closed the passenger side door, while Adam dropped a few more of the dead.

“Everyone good?” he asked.

“We’re clear,” Master Guns said.  “I’ll ride back here with the boys
just in case we need another rifle.”

“Sounds good to me,” Adam said.  He dropped his rifle down, flipped the safety on, and climbed into the cab.  He smiled at the woman, popped the truck into drive, and moved away from the bookstore.   The little boy sat between his mother and Adam, looking up at him.  The infant girl stared at him wide-eyed, and the mother wore a haggard expression.

Adam brought his attention back to the road.  In a moment he heard the Master Guns’ Garand join the A4s.

Fighting the urge to increase his speed Adam kept the vehicle steady, steering around abandoned vehicles and bodies.  The traffic lights were out, and the skies streaked by lines of greasy black and gray columns from burning buildings.  Occasionally the men in the bed fired, but even that tapered off as they made their way back towards Ernst’s.

Adam picked up the handheld and keyed it.  “Ernst.”

“Go ahead.”

“Picked up the survivors.”

“How many?”

“Four in all.  One female, two children, and an old Marine.”

Ernst chuckled over the radio.  “Good.”

“Did you manage to salvage the humvee?”

“Yes.  What’s your ETA?”

“Five.”

“I copy.  I’ll meet you at the gate.  Be careful, they seem to be getting a little thicker since you left.”

“Got it.”

Adam put the radio back onto the dash and avoided a large Hispanic man who was missing half of his face.  The Garand spoke, and the corpse dropped.

Adam followed the now familiar path to the warehouse, and in a moment he saw what Ernst had meant.  Forty or fifty of the dead had gathered out in front of the gate, Lee pointedly ignoring them while she sprayed down the humvee.  Ernst stood behind the gate, smoking a pipe and waving at Adam.  Adam shook his head, trying not to laugh.

Fucking absurd, he thought.  Just absurd.

He watched as Ernst brought his .22 up and began to fire.  Master Guns said something to the twins and in a moment the A4s and Garand joined in.  Adam watched, fascinated, as the bodies dropped.  Some of the dead tried to turn and face the truck, but the whole affair was over in a matter of moments.

Ernst stepped out as the gate opened, slinging the rifle and pulling on a pair of gloves.  He started dragging bodies out of the way, Lee joining him.  They cleared a small path for the truck, Lee waving them forward.

When the gate was closing behind them Adam shut off the engine, smiled at the nervous woman and her children, and climbed out.

Ernst nodded.  “We’ll need to find a place to burn those later today.  We can’t have them there.”

Jack and Diane came padding out of the warehouse, tails wagging.  The mother and her children shied away from the dogs.  “It’s okay,” Adam said, “they’re good dogs.”

Master Guns translated, the woman nodding but still holding onto her kids.
  Adam sighed and pulled his and the old man’s bags out of the bed.

“Come on,” Ernst smiled, “let’s get out of the sun and get some introductions made, okay?”

“Lead the way,” Master Guns said, “we’ll follow.”

Ernst turned away, the old man walking stiffly behind him, the women and children close on the old man’s heels.  Lee glanced once at her humvee, then
, she
went towards the warehouse entrance as well.  Brian took the Master Guns’ bag from Adam, and Corey fell in beside him.  Adam and the dogs brought up the rear, listening to the moans of the dead echoing off of nearby buildings.

Terrence

“I live, or lived, above the bookstore,” Terrence said, holding the cup of coffee with both hands.  “I knew Sally the owner well, and I’d open the place for her when she was running late
.  My back stairs led down into the hallway where the store’s back door is.  The morning after it all started I took my rifle with me and went down to make sure Sally was alright.”  He shook his head.  “I still don’t know if she is.  When I went to the front Emily and her kids were trying to get in.  They were being chased by her husband.

“I put two in his chest, realized that he wasn’t stopping, and put the third through his eye.

“We locked the door and hid after that.”

Terrence looked at the others and asked, “What is going on?
  Do any of you know?
”

Adam, who sat on the floor of the small room on the first sub-level with his dogs, nodded.  “Did you ever see the movie ‘Night of the Living Dead’?”

“That black and white about the dead coming back to life?” Terrence asked.

“That’s the one.”

“Why?”

“That’s what happening, Terrence,” Adam said. 

The man’s eyes were steady, and there was no sign of humor in them.

“Well,” Terrence said, sitting back in the chair, “that’s a little bit of crazy.”

“No,” Ernst said, “that’s a whole lot of crazy.
”

Terrence nodded, turning his attention to Emily and
saying in Chinese, “The dead are walking.”

Both of the children were asleep on her lap as she looked at him.  “That would explain the things that we saw, wouldn’t it.”

“Yes.”

“Will the children be safe here?”

Switching back to English, Terrence said, “Emily wants to know if her children will be safe here.”

Ernst nodded.  “They should be fine.  I built this for about fifty people, if it was needed.  There’s enough food and supplies for at least a
few
year
s
, if not longer, and I made sure that it could stand against basic assaults by living people.  I’m assuming that we’ll be okay against the dead, but we’ll figure that out as we go.”

“Okay.”  He switched back to Chinese.  “It should be.  And I’ll make sure that we do our best with it.”

Emily nodded, then, is careful English she said, “Thank you.”

“So,” Terrence said, turning his attention to Ernst, “how big is this place, and why the hell did you build it?”

“Well, this main warehouse has
four floors, three of them sub.  Tunnels lead off to two more warehouses, each currently sealed off completely from outside access.  And as to why I built it,” Ernst shrugged.  “I’m a paranoid.  I thought that with all of the political insanity in the US that eventually we’d break down and rip ourselves apart.  I wanted to be ready for it, and ready to have a place for people to live safely.  Plus I have, or had, a lot of money.  I donated a lot of it, but there was still a ton left over.  I got bored.”

Terrence looked around the well lit room, recessed lights in the drop ceiling.
The chairs were high end board
room chairs, and the room even had its own coffee maker and mini-fridge.

“How do you power all of this?” he asked.

“Solar power.  The roofs of all three warehouses are actually covered in panels, plus I own most of the other warehouses around here.  Quite a few of them have solar panels as well.”

Terrence shook his head.  “That must have cost you a lot.”

“A real lot,” Ernst smiled.  “But it’s worth it.  Emily and her kids can have this room, if she wants.  I’m sorry that I don’t have any toys, or anything to keep them entertained, but we can certainly make this private and livable for them.”

“Thank you,” Terrence said.  “I’ll tell her,” and he switched to Chinese, relaying Ernst’s offer to her.  Emily nodded, looked at Ernst and bowed her head.
 

“So,” Terrence said, “what’s our long term plan here?”

“Really don’t know,” Ernst said. 

“Well,” Terrence said, finishing his coffee, “let’s figure that out.”

Ernst

Ernst sat in front of the laptop, flipping through the images that were still being fed in by cameras.  They were down to about thirty images, generators already dying in some places, or stolen.

Ernst relit his pipe.  The warehouse was quiet, but different.  The fact that there were others with him was odd.

He flipped the screen over to the security cameras around the warehouse.  A score or so of dead walked around the walls at various places, but none tried to get in.  At the gate though,
thirty three of them pressed against it, arms trying to push through the bars, mouths open.  Ernst could hear them in his head.  Just at the far end of the front camera’s range he saw a pair of dead moving towards the gate, one walking, the other dragging itself along, legs missing.

They’d spent most of the third day burning bodies, using machetes to kill the occasional one that stumbled on them.  They were trying to avoid noise, to attract any more of the dead to them.

Or anyone else that might be listening.

Earlier in the evening, at dinner, Emily – through Terrence – had told them that they should use spears instead of machetes to kill the dead that got too close.  Adam and Terrence said that they’d fabricate a few in the machine shop in the morning, figure out what was best.

Ernst stifled a yawn and flipped the screen back to the city’s cameras.

Nothing.  Just more images of the dead, and the undead.

Shaking his head he turned his attention to the Ham radio he’d brought out and set up beside the laptop.  He picked up the headset, fit one earpiece on snuggly, and turned the radio on.  Soft static filtered into his ear as he picked up the mic. 

“Does anyone copy?” he asked.

He looked at the clock on the laptop.  Five minutes, Ernst thought.  I’ll give it five minutes.

“Does anyone copy?”

He looked back at the laptop as the camera on the back of the Elm Street garage flickered out.  He jotted the location down on a notepad.

“Does anyone copy?”

The static broke.  “I copy,” said a woman’s voice.

Ernst sat up straight.  “Where are you broadcasting from?”

“Hollis.  This is…this was my husband’s.  Where are you?”

“Nashua, just on the edge of town.  Do you have anyone else with you?”

“No.  Just me.  John had a heart attack running from the neighbor.  Now they’re both standing on the front door step.  They’ve been there for two days.”

Ernst sighed.
  “Will you be able to get out?”

“No
…and I don’t want to get out.  I don’t want to be without Joh
n, and I am.”  She paused, adding
, “He loved this damned thing, you know.  Talked to people all over the place.  You might be able to find more people, if you really want to.”

“We can try and get you,” Ernst said.  “We’ve got plenty of supplies, and there’s nine of us here.”

“No.  No, thank you.”  Glass shattered in the background, and moans broke into the background.  “And there’s no reason, not now.  He’s in the house.  I did get one piece of information that may help you, the government shut down all the cellphone towers.”

“What?”

“They shut them down,” she said again, “they didn’t want news of it spreading, they wanted to contain it in the city.  But that didn’t work.”

The moans grew louder behind her.

“I have to go now.  John’s here,” she said, “and I don’t think that you want to hear this.”

Static filled the headset, and Ernst
put
down the mic. 
He relit his pipe and sat there for a long time, simply smoking and looking at his kitchen cabinets.

The sound of boots on the warehouse’s concrete floor rang out and Lee walked into the kitchen
, yawning.  She nodded to Ernst
then paused.

“You okay?”

“No.  Not really.”

“What’s up?”

“Just listened to a woman kill herself.”

Lee looked at him sharply.  “How?”

“The radio,” he said, gesturing towards it with his pipe.  He explained what happened, and why the phones still didn’t work.

“What the fuck,” Lee sighed, pouring herself a cup of coffee.  “That’s just screwed up in every way I can think of.”

“Yes it is,” Ernst agreed.  He saw the time and said, “Time for your shift already?”

“Yeah,” she said.  “Anything going on in the city?”

He shook his head.  “Lost a few more cameras, but that’s it.  I’ve kept a list.  Once things get settled we can get out there and get those generators up and running if we want.  Keep an eye on things.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Lee said.  “Now go get some rest.”

“I’ll try,” Ernst said, standing up.  “But I’ll see you in the morning, regardless.”

“That you will, Ernst,” she smiled.

Ernst gave her a small smile in return, and walked to his room.