The Gathering Dead (8 page)

Finelly turned back to the major finally and leaned toward him. “Sounds like someone banging on a door,” he whispered. “Not real close, but definitely above us.”

McDaniels moved forward and slowly pressed his way up the stairs past Finelly. The rawboned sergeant didn’t protest, but McDaniels knew he wasn’t happy with McDaniels taking the lead. To mollify him, McDaniels stopped on the next landing, which was a no-reentry door.

“If that’s what it is, it’s not a human doing it,” he murmured to Finelly. “Too regular. Too mechanical.”

Finelly didn’t know what to make of that. “You think it’s a machine?” he asked, and McDaniels almost laughed at the comical expression of confusion on his broad face.

“No, sergeant. I think it’s a zombie.”

“Oh.” Finelly leaned to his left and slowly looked up between the hand rails. McDaniels did the same, and mentally kicked himself for not doing it sooner. They saw a small slice of the distant ceiling, still ten stories away, and other than being able to tell the lights were on, there was not much else to see. McDaniels looked down and saw pretty much the same.

“So what’s the plan?” Finelly asked. “I gotta tell you, major, I’m not too keen about getting into a firefight. If we open up on these things in here, every freaking zed in the building will hear us.”

“Understood. Let’s keep moving. Maybe it’ll turn out to be something else.” McDaniels looked up the stairwell, then back at Finelly. The soldier didn’t look happy.

“I’ll lead,” McDaniels said.

Finelly shook his head. “No, sir. I’ll do that.” He shouldered his MP5K and advanced up the stairs, keeping the weapon ready at all times now. If anything happened to pop out in front of him, it would get a face full of nine millimeter steel jacketed rounds. He kept his back to the far wall as he ascended, and McDaniels did the same. At the landings, Finelly would halt, and McDaniels advanced to the base of the next stairway and secure it before Finelly pushed past him and continued on.

The banging sound grew louder as they climbed. Its rhythm did not alter.
Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

At the 25th floor, McDaniels grabbed the back of Finelly’s uniform blouse and brought him to a halt. The big enlisted man looked down at the major and waited for him to tell him what’s up.

“You smell something?” McDaniels whispered.

“I think I smell a deadhead,” Finelly whispered back.

“No, not that. Something else. Cigarette smoke.” As a reformed smoker, McDaniels could detect cigarette smoke at what seemed like one part per one hundred billion. It drove him mad, because the scent almost always triggered a bout of craving before revulsion could make its appearance.

Finelly glanced up the stairs. The banging sound continued unabated, so the zombie
—
or whatever it was
—
hadn’t heard them just yet. He looked back at McDaniels and just shrugged. McDaniels motioned for him to stay put, then retreated down the steps to another landing.

“Gartrell, this is McDaniels, over.”

“Terminator Six, Terminator Five... are we going dress casual with the commo? Over.”

“There’s no one on this frequency to hear us, though I’d love for us to be proven wrong. Listen, we have a deadhead up here on twenty-seven. We haven’t put eyeballs on target, but if I’m right, we’ll have to go to guns on it. Over.”

“Roger that. We’ll keep an eye on things down here, over.”

“Roger. McDaniels out.” McDaniels took a moment to put yellow foam hearing protectors in his ears. They were good for preserving one’s hearing during gunnery practice and while riding helicopters; McDaniels hadn’t put them in before as there just hadn’t been enough time before the Black Hawk crashed.

“Hearing protectors,” he whispered to Finelly, then took up a guard position while Finelly dropped back and did as instructed. The Atchisson AA-12 assault shotgun was heavy in McDaniels’ hands. Above, the rapping noise continued unabated. Finelly joined him again, and McDaniels waved him to the rear.

“I’ve got more firepower. I’ll take the advance.”

Finelly looked appropriately stressed that a field grade officer should be leading him into danger. “Uh sir, I know you’re Special Forces and all, but maybe I ought to be the guy who does this? A lot of difference between our pay grades.”

McDaniels shook his head. “I got this one, troop
—
you’ll just have to owe me one.” He handed over the sat phone. “But you can hold this.”

Finelly accepted the phone with a shrug.

“Let’s go,” McDaniels said, and he pushed himself up the stairs. The muscles in his thighs were burning, and he had no doubt he would be feeling some pain tomorrow.

Up the stairway leading to the landing below the 27th floor. McDaniels flattened against the wall, AA-12 trained up the last remaining stairway that led to the final landing. Sure enough, someone stood at the gray fire door, dressed in a still-pristine blue pinstriped suit that looked expensive even from where McDaniels stood. It banged on the door with a hand that was nothing more than a mass of bruised, split flesh that suppurated viscous fluid; the door was smeared with gore. As McDaniels watched, the figure slammed its right fist against the steel door again and again, totally ignorant of the damage it was doing it itself.

It was a zombie, and it grunted every time it slammed its hand against the door.

Kind of whistling while you work, zombie-style,
McDaniels thought.

He glanced back at Finelly. The big soldier stood next to him with his back pressed as flat against the wall as his packs would allow. He looked up at the zombie with a vaguely sickened expression, and McDaniels knew why. This zombie must have turned a few days ago, as it was getting pretty ripe. He slowly advanced up the steps, keeping his right shoulder against the wall while training the AA-12 on the zombie’s head. The zed continued pounding on the door, oblivious to the two men creeping up behind it. McDaniels mounted the steps one at a time, moving as quietly as he could. With each step, more of the zombie came into view. The suit was indeed doubtlessly expensive, as were its Gucci loafers.

McDaniels stopped three steps from the landing and aimed at the zombie’s head. At the last moment, the ghoul must have sensed his presence. It pivoted, turning to face him with milky eyes that had once been pale blue. Its dark hair was a mass of tangles, and in life, the suit had probably been one of those well-coiffed metrosexual types that knew nothing beyond business and the phone numbers of the five star restaurants stored in its PDA. It moaned when it saw him, and lurched toward McDaniels with outstretched arms. McDaniels suddenly reached up to his helmet, found his goggles, and yanked them over his eyes. He then firmed up his aim, and pulled back on the AA-12’s trigger.

The sound and muzzle flash were tremendous, almost overwhelming the hearing protectors and the light polarization of the goggles. The 12-gauge antipersonnel round did its job quickly and efficiently, and from McDaniels’ perspective it seemed that the zombie’s head simply disappeared into a smear of gore that was plastered against the gray cinderblock wall behind. McDaniels was pelted with pieces of cinderblock, and he looked down at his body as the headless corpse collapsed to the landing. He was revolted to discover his uniform was peppered with bits of dark gore.

A small stream of blackish liquid flowed from the ragged stump of the zombie’s neck. McDaniels stepped to one side as it trickled past his feet and down the stairs. Finelly did the same, and leaned against the metal handrail as he looked down the center of the stairwell.

McDaniels’ radio crackled. “Major, this is Gartrell. You guys all right up there? Over.”

“Roger that, Gartrell. One shot, one kill. Zed is down on the 27th floor landing. Over.”

“Roger that. Situation remains the same down here, no change. Stenches still hanging around outside, but no longer actively trying to get inside. Not sure what that’s all about. Over.”

“Roger. I’ll get back to you in a bit. McDaniels, out.” To Finelly: “Let’s get this thing out of the way, and watch your step.” He let the AA-12 hang from his shoulder by its patrol strap and mounted the landing, stepping across the rivulet of ichor that ran across the painted concrete. Finelly did the same, and they each grabbed the zombie’s ankles and dragged it across the landing and set it parallel to the wall.

“Wonder what the hell the thing was doing here,” Finelly asked.

McDaniels looked around. Above the stench of the corpse on the floor and acrid odor left by the AA-12’s discharge, something still tickled his olfactory system. And there they were: three crushed cigarette butts, lying in the corner next to the fire door. McDaniels grabbed the gore-smeared door’s knob. It moved easily enough in his hand, but when he tried to open it, it would move only a fraction of an inch.

“Locked?” Finelly asked.

McDaniels shook his head. “Negative. Held back on the other end, somehow.” He pointed to the cigarette butts. “Someone’s still alive up here. Probably on the other side of this door.”

Finelly looked in the corner and nodded. He then looked at the placard next to the door. McDaniels followed his gaze. The placard read CAFETERIA.

“Well, if they have any gumption, at least they won’t starve to death. And whatever they have in there probably tastes better than our MREs.”

McDaniels nodded, then turned. Behind them was one more set of stairs, which terminated at a heavy, green door. Painted on the door was the message:

ROOF ACCESS

AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY

“And here we are,” he said. He bolted up the stairs and pushed on the door. It was locked. McDaniels sighed, but with the AA-12, he was prepared for this eventuality.

“I’m going to have to shoot the door off its hinges,” McDaniels explained. “I could use a grenade to do it, but for all I know, there’s a gas main in one of these walls, and I don’t want to get blown into orbit. So I’m going to shoot it off instead.”

“Guess you Jedi Knights have a lot of fun on your gunnery range days,” Finelly said. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the entry door to the cafeteria behind him. “What about whoever’s still in there?”

“Later. We have a call to make. You better step back. This is going to be pretty freaking loud.”

Finelly retreated to the lower staircase and took position there. McDaniels lowered his goggles and shouldered the AA-12. He fired two shots. The first round tore through the locking mechanism in an explosion of sparks and shredded metal that ricocheted off the cinderblock walls. The second round blasted the remains of the latch assembly into oblivion, and the roof door flew open as if it had been kicked. The tepid remains of daylight entered the stairwell.

“We’re good,” McDaniels said to Finelly. He reported the current events back to Gartrell, who informed him the situation near the ground remained static, but that the zed count seemed to be increasing.

“They might have heard those last shots,” the first sergeant opined. “HE rounds can be pretty loud, you know.”

“Got that, Five. Time to make the call, I’ll get back to you.”

McDaniels edged out onto the roof. Finelly was right behind him. The building they were on was by no means the tallest, but there weren’t many huge skyscrapers this far from midtown; Manhattan’s Upper East Side was mostly residential. The two men checked the rooftop for any ghouls, but they had it to themselves.

Glass shattered in the near distance. Both men looked toward another office tower on the opposite block. This building was mostly dark; apparently, it was without power. It was also completely infested with zombies. McDaniels and Finelly watched as one zombie pushed itself through a plate glass window, reaching toward them as it did so. Of course, it fell thirty stories to the ground below. Another zombie replaced it, then another, and another. They boiled out of the building like a sudden rush of maggots, moaning and writhing as they tried to walk across thin air to the neighboring rooftop. If it wasn’t so gruesome, McDaniels thought it would be hilarious.

“Those things are pretty stupid,” Finelly opined.

McDaniels felt the mindlessness of the zombies was frankly horrifying. There was no chance they would ever give up their pursuit of human flesh. They were already dead and had nothing else to lose. He walked to the edge of the roof, watching as the zombies kept walking out of the shattered window. How many of them were there?

A chorus of moans from the street below rose up to meet him. McDaniels looked down from his vantage point over the corner of Lexington Avenue and East 79th Street. What he saw took his breath away.

Below, thousands of zombies milled about. The ones falling from the building landed on those walking on the sidewalk and street below, but the fall didn’t kill them. Even though a great many of their bones had to have been turned into pulp upon impact, they still twitched and shuddered and tried to return to the building they had fallen from. One, a half-naked woman, rose from the ground with a horribly mangled arm and severely fractured leg. But more horrifying was the fact her head hung backwards over her shoulders, so her face was pointing backwards. The zombie merely turned and hobbled toward the building... backwards.

No stopping these things,
McDaniels said to himself.
No stopping them at
all...

He turned and faced downtown. Fires still raged there, casting a ruddy orange glow across the skyline. The smoke was just as thick and heavy as before, and even on the roof of the building, he saw its taint hanging in the air. It was like looking out over Los Angeles on a smoggy day. At least half of the city was dark now, and many of the tall, elegant skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan stood a dark, silent watch over the burgeoning walking dead. In the distance
—
was it from uptown?
—
McDaniels heard sirens, and the occasional gunshot. But other than the whisper of the wind, the moaning of the dead, and the whirring of the building’s HVAC systems, the city was as quiet as it likely had ever been over the past two centuries.

And the dead. There were
thousands
of them. As McDaniels watched, they slowly marched mostly uptown, away from the flames, toward the still-lit horizon. They were hungry, and they were following their food source.