The Living Dead (Book 1): Contagion (13 page)

            “Mom? Mommy, when are you c-coming? There’s no ‘lectricity. Grammy says we have to st-stay away from the windows so
they
don’t find us like they found Granddad. Granddad is out in the yard but Grammy says he can’t come in now. Mom?” The last whispered word ended with a sob that tore her heart. The stutter Anna had struggled so hard to conquer was back. She hit Reply but got a series of clicks in response. The call wouldn’t go. The snowfall continued and the wind swirled it round the streetlamps and the wandering dead. Every flake that fell trapped her here and she felt the weight on her soul. It was still a couple of hours until dawn. She stumbled over to the apse where Daniel still slept, lay down close beside him and closed her eyes.

            The electricity went out sometime before sunup. The temperature inside the building dropped rapidly and by eight o’clock, it was obvious it wasn’t just a power blink. It was not coming back on. The only bright side was that the snow had stopped and the sun came out.

            Virginia stood on the roof, somberly taking in the magnificent mountain scenery. The virgin snow softly blanketed the streets. In contrast, the dead creatures moving through them were a dark stain on the landscape, mocking the real resurrection once reverently celebrated in this old building. Their numbers had increased overnight; the streets even more mobbed than before. She left the roof and went below.

            Daniel now had a playmate. Marisol was helping him build a fort with books. The sound of their laughter was like balm. The library staff would have a fit if they ever came back to work but the activity kept the children warm in the now freezing building. All of them tried eating cold powdered soup for breakfast this morning but it was a disaster. It was time to get out. They had already let Larry’s dog run free. Over protests from Mari, the excited dog slipped through the doorway and had no trouble evading the dead. He would have been in danger if they encountered infected in the close quarters of the tunnels.

            “Virginia, you are coming?” Gabriella took her arm and steered her toward the reading room. They discussed escape scenarios. Marisol needed more insulin and soon so they plotted routes taking them near drugstores. Neither thought going back to the hospital a good idea.

            “I think we’re all agreed we have to go.” Charles looked better today but, like all of them, unwashed and hungry.  “Be sure you have everything you want to bring with you on your back. If we find a way out, we won’t be coming back here.” The adults all carried firearms and Charles had stuck the fire ax in his belt as well.

            Even colder air met them in the basement. Charles went first into the small root cellar. Boards blocked the lower portion of the opening in the wall but, rotten with age and damp, they came down easily. He stepped into the darkness and the others followed. Shining the flashlight, they saw that after a few yards the passage to the left was blocked almost to the low ceiling with rubble. They turned right and walked into the yawning black.

Chapter 15

 Thou follow me, and I will be thy guide,
And lead thee hence through the eternal place,
Where thou shalt hear the desperate lamentations,
Shalt see the ancient spirits disconsolate,
Who cry out each one for the second death

Dante Alighieri

            The tunnel sloped downward almost immediately. The walls were stone blocks; Charles thought it was granite. Wooden buttresses shored up the ceiling at intervals and looked in good shape for work over one hundred fifty years old. The smooth dirt floor was mostly unobstructed, which was good because they were using just the one flashlight, conserving the others.

            “Where do ya think this goes? I sure don’t want to walk into no zombie fest.” Carson scratched his head with the shotgun.

            “I’m hoping this connects with the storm drains closer to the edge of town where it should be less infested. We’re going in the wrong direction for that now but maybe we’ll come to a turning. “

            Just as Charles finished speaking they came to a split and took the left passage, estimating this should lead them east out of downtown and toward 531. All had agreed previously that this was their best choice. From there, Carson could get to his mother in law’s trailer where he suspected his children were. He had little doubt that Debi (his ex or maybe not his ex, Virginia had a hard time following the ups and downs of the relationship) had everything under control and the children were fine. There were also two pharmacies there, at the end of Broad Street, which should have everything Marisol needed.

            A few minutes’ walk brought them to a seeming dead end. No door in the wall, no grate or cover in the ceiling. Charles paced the tunnel floor, kicking up puffs of dust and dirt. Gabriella raised her eyebrows at Virginia, who shrugged. Charles kicked around a few more minutes until they heard a clank. He knelt down to tug on a metal ring set into the floor. It wouldn’t budge. Carson gave it a yank; the wooden plate it was attached to splintered. They picked out the pieces. Training the flashlight into the hole, they saw a concrete floored hallway with covered electrical conduits running along the walls.

            “Service tunnel. But for what building I don’t know. This is something like a sub basement just for utility connections. It
could
be a way out. But we’d likely have to go through the building first.”

            “Perhaps we will find food?” This from Gabriella.

            “Or we might
be
food.” Virginia crouched by the hole, looking down. “Put it to a vote?”

            Hunger won out. The service tunnel terminated in a short flight of steps leading to a metal door. They eased it open, cringing as the hinges squeaked, to find more inky darkness on the other side. Moving cautiously, swinging the flashlight side to side they saw no evidence of violence but Virginia thought she smelled- something not right. It wasn’t until they turned a corner and Mari slid in a puddle of it that she identified the smell of urine. The hall widened at this point and they saw hospital beds with IV drips, tubes and bags neatly arranged along the walls. They stood still, listening, and heard labored breathing. Charles cautiously shined the flashlight on one of the beds onto the face of an elderly man, hooked up to various machines that no longer functioned. He was not conscious. The next bed revealed another man, younger, in the same condition. All the beds held unconscious patients. They were in the coma ward of the hospital.

            “We do not want to be here. I say we turn around and leave right now.” Virginia whispered. “We can’t help any of these people and the rest of this place is crawling with infected.”

            “Wait. I think I know where we are. The cafeteria is in this wing and just outside is a storm drain grate.”

            “How do you know that?”

            “Because I bussed tables there one summer in high school. There’s a covered stoop off the cafeteria and the drain grate is just to one side. We used to throw our cigarette butts in there after break.”

            “You smoked?”

            “Yes, Virginia, I was a teenaged hoodlum. Can we discuss my past another time? That grate was loose too. Every time a truck drove over it, we had to kick it back into place. I‘m sure I can get to the kitchens from here.”

            They moved on. The corridor grew lighter as they went above ground. There were windows now and they saw the sun still shone blindingly on the snow. The glass doors to the cafeteria were just ahead and they saw they had company waiting. Two infected stumbled around the tables. Another, in a motorized wheelchair, was jammed up against the salad bar. Moving in quickly, Carson took out the two walkers with close range headshots. Gabriella belatedly covered the children’s eyes but they didn’t react. Ignoring the wheelchair bound ghoul, Charles led the way to the double kitchen doors.

            “These used to operate on independent sensors so that no one would try to go in the out door or vice versa and crash into each other. They probably locked when the power went out but if I slide the bolt out of this slot then- presto!” He pulled the door back.

            Hell spewed out. The overwhelming stench of dead, rotted flesh poured out first with the dead themselves seconds behind. An enormously fat woman with metal sutures hanging on flapping skin lunged out first. Rotten chunks of black flesh fell out of her opened chest and onto Charles as she took him to the ground. He held her snapping mouth inches away from his face and Virginia couldn’t get a clear shot. She tried to position herself better when she felt a hand close on her calf and pull her off balance. A white coated doctor gnawed on her booted ankle.

            “Why would so many be in the kitchen?” she shouted over the moans and gibbering filling the air.

            “How would I know?” Charles sounded indignant. 

            The doctor pulled her to the ground and she found her shot, taking off the top of the sutured woman’s head. Charles got to his feet and buried the ax in the biting doctor’s skull. Black ichor clung to the blade. They looked up. Carson had both children slung over his shoulders and Gabriella stood in front of him, firing shakily. There had to be forty infected surging around and more still in the kitchen. Getting out the kitchen door wasn’t an option now. They ran back the way they came. The dead followed.

            Most were still slow but the less damaged ones were fast and never more than a few yards behind. A particularly fast one in blood soaked scrubs and tennis shoes seemed fixated on Marisol and made clumsy grabs at her as he ran. She screamed. The corridor grew dark again at basement level. Virginia switched on her flashlight. The dark didn’t slow the dead at all.

            They sprinted past the coma patients. The entrance door to the service tunnel was just down the hallway. As close as the dead were, they would be on them before they could open the door and get out.

            “It’s stuck!” Virginia tugged hard. They put their backs to the door and shined their flashlights down the hall, braced for the attack.

            “Move!” Charles pushed her out of the way, pulled hard on the handle and wrenched it open then turned to face their pursuers.

            Something was wrong. Their searching flashlights revealed no dead close on their heels. The corridor was empty. They listened.

            “No!” Virginia was agonized. The sounds were unmistakable. Satisfied grunts and moans echoed down the hallway. The dead had found easier prey and now fed on the bedfast comatose patients. She began to cry, silently. They all slipped through the door into the service tunnel. Daniel reached for her and she held him close. He was shaking and hiccupping; his face wet with tears. She rubbed his back until the shaking stopped. “Ok?” He didn’t answer, just buried his face in her shoulder.

             They backtracked to the original entry point. This time they climbed the pile of rubble and removed enough of the stones and debris to squeeze through. This side of the tunnel narrowed quickly and soon they were reduced to crawling. Claustrophobia took hold.

            “Charles, I am uncertain I can do this.” Gabriella sounded panicked.

            “Please, everybody, hang in there. This is the way I wanted to go in the first place and I think we’re close.”

            I can’t do this either, Virginia thought. The roof of the tunnel scraped her head as she crawled forward with her elbows tucked under her chest. The blackness closed in, and it was hard to breathe. She stopped. Waves of panic buffeted her and she fought down hysteria. The musty, earthen smell of the tunnel was suffocating. I can’t die here in the dark, as if I crawled into my own grave. She started to back up, drawing protests from Carson behind her. She couldn’t go back; she was afraid to go forward. Rocks now scraped her shoulders as the tunnel tightened more. She reached for Charles ahead but he was gone. Hearing a shout, she struggled forward and suddenly fell into a shallow pit of stinking, cold mud, with empty space all around her. Stumbling into a surprised Charles’s arms, she kissed him hard on the mouth then turned around as Carson and Daniel emerged from the hole in the wall, followed by Gabriella and Marisol. Through the metal grate above, a shaft of sunshine poured down like a benediction. They were in the storm drains.

            “Let’s get as far as we can before going topside. The farther we get away from the center of town the better.”

            Trudging through the drains was a relative walk in the park. They heard the dead above them in the streets for a while but the moans and shuffling faded as they left downtown. Thirty minutes later the drain ended under an old bridge next to a creek. Carson kicked out the metal screening; they splashed through the shallow creek bed and climbed up the snowy bank. Filthy and cold, but happy to be alive and out from underground, they assessed their surroundings. For the moment, there were no dead in sight.

            A CVS Pharmacy and a Rite Aid, once fierce business rivals, faced each other across Broad Street. Both had clearly been looted and sported broken windows and doors. A grocery store, also looted, was to their right. The snow was deep, maybe two to three feet. A city park and the municipal pool just down the road marked the eastern boundary of the city. Beyond that lay the mountains.

            Charles spoke. “It looks safe but that doesn’t mean it is. We should get what we need and move on ASAP.”

            “Mom, I’m cold. Can we go home?” Marisol shivered.

            “Soon. First we get the medicine.” Gabriella took her hand and fought through the snow toward Rite Aid.

            “I‘ll go with them. Do you guys want to scout out a vehicle? Four wheel drive will be best.” Charles set out for the drug store.

            Several automobiles remained parked near the stores, up to their bumpers in snow. There were a few abandoned in the street as well. Carson, Virginia, and Daniel waded through the drifts, wiping windows and peering inside to see if any had keys in the ignition. They were almost to the grocery store when they found an old Ford Explorer, keys inside and driver door open. Fearing the battery had run down, they turned the key. The engine turned over on the third try but the gas hand was near empty. They let it run for a few minutes then pocketed the keys and went into the grocery store.

            Emptied shelves and freezer cases greeted them. Even the magazine racks were cleaned out. Drifts of snow lay on the floor under the smashed windows. A dirty, stepped on, and torn bag of bread was all the food they found. At the very back of the store, a pharmacy looked untouched. Behind the counter, a white coated body lay on the floor. The woman’s face was peaceful but her body had begun to bloat in decomposition. Climbing over the counter they found an empty bottle of pills and an overturned can of Diet Coke. They pulled her coat up over her head.

            “I’m assuming insulin needs to be refrigerated. Let’s see what we can find.” Guns held at the ready, they searched. Behind the main room, they found a refrigerator, still running, and full of meds. They located the insulin and took all they could fit in their pockets. Virginia loaded up on children’s antibiotics and shared them with Carson. The only things they found to eat were Altoids and cough drops.

             Emerging from the store, they saw the others in an enormous Toyota Sequoyah parked, with motor idling.

            “What’d you find? Any food?”