The Living Dead Series (Book 2): World Without End (10 page)

“A little light-headed, very cold. My hand feels almost numb now and is cold to touch. I can’t use it to steady the rifle anymore.”

“What do you need? Is there anything we can try?” Bea asked.

Mac opened his mouth to respond but Sylvie laid a finger across his lips. “We need to get to the Gallery as soon as possible. Those papers we discussed could be crucial. Mac and I disagree but I’m right on this. We have to try everything we can.”

Mac spoke. “She’s a stubborn and bossy woman. I fought my way through a city of zombies to get over here to her and all she does is tell me what I can and can’t do. I don’t want to turn into one of those things and I think my best bet-”

“I don’t want to hear this again.” Sylvie gathered the empty cups and carried them into the kitchen.

Mac finished. “-is a headshot.”

“I
put some water on for tea in case anyone wants something else warm to drink. But for now I want to brainstorm. Let’s share what we know about the virus.”  Sylvie set her laptop on the coffee table and spun it around toward David. “This is all I have on the subject.”

He looked through her files but he had already read all of it from Bea’s flash drive. “Not too long ago I found a set of papers dealing with a 15
th
century Portuguese missionary to Africa and an account of an incident involving the Marines in Haiti in the early 1900’s. The missionary concluded (and if you read the account you can see why) that the disease comes directly from Satan. As for the Marines in Haiti, the two divisions involved were disbanded after the incident and not reinstated until several years later. Their official histories were scrubbed of anything zombie related.”

“Any mention of a cure?” Sylvie asked.

“No.”

“Well then, we just pursue the path the British documents
seem
to indicate. I wonder if they experimented and found a cure or if the Nazis did. There has to be an answer to this! Think of all the scientific advances made in medicine in the last few years. There have been outbreaks throughout history and it didn’t go pandemic. What did they do to stop it?” Sylvie’s voice rose in frustration.

Bea answered reluctantly. “Isolation. Quarantine that naturally occurred in a world where transportation was slow and laborious.”

Mac said tiredly, as if he had argued the subject before with no success. “Sylvie, there are indications but no guarantee of a cure.”

Sylvie didn’t respond, just set her jaw in a hard line Bea had never seen before. She mentally applauded her stubbornness. We never give up on the people we love.

“I’m pretty sure it’s a virus,” said Brian. They all nodded but Bea thought they were just humoring a precocious child and she cringed a little. At a recent teacher conference his English teacher let her know that Brian corrected the teacher’s grammar in front of the class. That evening Bea had a talk with him about respect as well as tact. She listened to and gave credence to almost everything he said but he was still just an eleven year old boy.

He seemed to think they were humoring him as well. “I’m serious. There is still a big debate about whether viruses are alive or not. They don’t actually grow or reproduce or do most things that we think of living things doing. But what they do really well is steal live, genetic material from their host and use it to make copies of themselves. That’s the only way they can spread around.”

David nodded slowly. “You know, that makes sense. They need something living to feed on and use to reproduce. The virus, inside an infected but dead individual, senses that their host is already decaying. They foster the hunger that makes them attack something living so they have fresh, living cells to replicate. It kind of explains why they seldom finish a meal, so to speak. They sense the life is gone or going and they need to move on to a fresh source of cells.”

“We can all agree this disease has been around for a long time. It’s probably highly adaptive to various environments.” Bea said.

“I’ll bet it’s loving its latest environment, the whole world. We did this; it’s our technology that sent it around the globe.” Sylvie said almost bitterly.

The crack of splintering wood echoed down the hallway outside the door. Everyone rose in alarm and scrambled for a weapon then stayed still, listening. Slow, dragging footsteps came down the hall and Bea found she was holding her breath, her whole body tensed and waiting.

Just at that second the tea kettle on the cooktop whistled, rising to a shrieking crescendo before Sylvie could get in the kitchen to pull it from the burner. A slow banging on the door began almost immediately. At first it sounded like just one but the original fist was soon joined by more and in minutes the door shook in its frame. It was a sturdy door but who knew how long it would withstand the assault. They were five floors up with no back door exit.

“That apartment. There are two people on the lease but the building committee didn’t investigate them enough. People come and go night and day. There’ve been complaints but- anyway what it amounts to is I have no idea how many infected are out there.” Sylvie looked anxiously at the door.

“Don’t worry. We’ve got enough ammo to take care of them.” Mac hefted his rifle in his good hand but even that one trembled a little. He was growing pale and there were gray shadows around his eyes.

The attack on the door never let up and it was just a matter of time before they broke through. Sylvie disappeared into the bedroom and came out wearing jeans and a pair of leather, Prada boots. More practical than her previous outfit but the boots had spike heels. They were probably the most sensible shoes she owned, though. Bea realized with a jolt that Brian still needed boots. What was she going to do? Mac and David were waiting in the living room, holding their rifles at the ready.

“Here’s how we’re going to do this. When we open the door they’re going to come through but probably not more than one or two at a time so taking them down shouldn’t be a problem. Everyone needs to be ready to go.”

Brian said, “Bea, what can I-”

The door knob popped loose, the inside shaft was the only thing keeping it hanging. Fingers came in through the now open round hole, searching and probing, finally loosening the face plate enough for the door to swing free.

Their smell came through first, strong enough to make eyes water and stomachs heave. But even that was so much better than what came through next.

Two small, blond children in torn, blood-soaked blanket sleepers shambled eagerly through the door. They were followed by a teen-aged boy missing most of his throat and with no ears, nose, or eyelids. He was unable to moan or make any sound but the younger children emitted high-pitched, excited gibbering. Mouths open wide, with looks of vicious hunger that were obscene on the tiny faces, they zeroed in on Bea for some reason and she reluctantly kicked them away, unable to bring herself to shoot them. Undeterred, they crawled toward Sylvie next who, in trying to avoid them, accidentally stepped on the girl, spiked boot-heel penetrating the putrid skull and releasing a black, clotted mess onto the floor. The little body collapsed.

A man crawled through the door next. White, broken bones jutted through the skin on his legs and his left arm had been torn off at the elbow. David fired a single bullet through his skull.

That left the two boys. No one wanted to finish them but what choice did they have?  Bea pierced the eye socket of the older boy with her iron bar. He was already so rotten that his skull fell apart like an over-ripe melon. David kicked the last child into the bedroom and closed the door firmly.

No one spoke for several minutes. Sylvie wept briefly then abruptly stopped, knelt beside the body of the teen and began unlacing his tennis shoes. Brian, who had stood back from the killing, stooped to help her. The shoes turned out to be a good fit.

“Ok then, I think it’s time to leave.” They all followed Mac down the hallway, to the brass elevator.

Bea’s knees were weak and she held onto Brian’s shoulder as they descended. The smell of the dead children clung to her and she felt she was still breathing it in, coating her nostrils and throat with an oily miasma.

Sylvie walked confidently into the lobby only to stop at the sight of the seething crowd of corpses filling Dupont Circle. They couldn’t go out this way. Turning around and going down a short flight of stairs took them to a service entrance in the back. There was no way to know what was waiting for them outside the metal door. Bea pulled Brian close and held her bar ready.

David looked amused. “What are you now? Samurai zombie killer?”

“It works better for me at close quarters than a gun. Again, it’s quieter too.” Bea stepped in front of Brian as Mac put his hand on the bar handle and turned around to look at everyone.

“Ready? Good, here we go.”

Except for a dumpster the brief alley was empty and they picked their path carefully across the ice-covered pavement, Brian limping a little. On a normal day they were about a thirty to forty minute walk from the Mall. Today was not a normal day, not even close and Bea estimated they had about three hours until sunset. She wanted to be inside somewhere high up with four walls and a strong door long before that. The Gallery was not secure, she already knew, and wondered how many of
them
they would have to fight through to get to Sylvie’s office.

Mounting a slight rise they looked behind them at the plaza. The afternoon sun broke through the clouds and shone briefly on the sparkling center fountain, the ice-sheathed caryatids holding their ice-filled basin as solemnly as ever, staring blindly at the hideous, dragging figures circling them. Then snow began to fall again.

The loud beat of a helicopter blade pulsed somewhere in the gray clouds hanging low above them, quickly fading to silence as it passed. Bea strained to see it but it never dropped below the clouds.

Progress was slow. They had to detour when they came upon groups of infected. Fires burning throughout the city gave off a strong smell of smoke and gray ash floated through the air and lay like dark feathers on the snow. Some house and car alarms were still going off and this invariably attracted the dead and they gibbered excitedly even when no humans were present. If asked, Bea would have assigned them an IQ level close to that of a jellyfish. They obviously still had a strong instinctive hunger but little else. They didn’t even seem to be aware of each other in any recognizable way.

Brian’s purloined tennis shoes were already soaked through although he didn’t complain. They both kept an eye out for a clothing or shoe store but this area was heavily residential with only an occasional corner market that was usually already looted. They didn’t come across anyone else alive out on the streets but Brian pointed out faces at windows from time to time. The faces looked either frightened or infected. To Bea the city felt dead.

She knew David planned to peel off once they made it to the Gallery in order to make his helicopter rendezvous. He had checked his phone twice and nodded to himself before putting it away and moving on. She desperately wanted out of the city and knew that the only way now was by air but David wasn’t offering and she wouldn’t ask. She knew they only had so much room and she and Brian were unimportant to anyone but each other. Focusing on getting the docs Sylvie wanted so badly was as far ahead as she could think right now. Once they found out what they could do for Mac they would figure out the rest of their plan. If Evan would call her back maybe he could join them. There was definitely strength in numbers, especially if everyone was armed. Brian surreptitiously patted his coat pocket from time to time, seeming reassured by the deadly weight of the revolver resting there. They reached the corner of Constitution Avenue and stopped.

Hordes of the infected littered the white grounds, stretching into the distance. An incredibly strong taint of rot and smoke filled the air and swirled with the falling snow. Something, a small plane or a helicopter, wreckage still smoking, had crashed into the Washington Monument, causing it to break off at mid-point, toppling the pointed tip to the ground. The fire-blasted, severed base loomed over the landscape, accentuating the total collapse of the city around it. Several creatures still fed on someone partially inside the wreckage.

Mac said, “We need a distraction, something to draw them off so we can make a run for it.” He leaned forward, hands on his knees and his breathing was labored. His color was worse and Bea wondered if he would even be able to run.

David un-shouldered his rifle. “Consider it done. I can’t promise I’ll draw all of them but I'll give it my best shot.”

“Which way?” Bea asked, a little surprised he was leaving before they got to the Gallery.

“The helicopter leaves from the south lawn of the White House. I’ll be early but I have a few things I need to do anyway before I leave.”

“I thought the White House was overrun.”

“It was but they’ve re-secured sections.”

“Oh, good bye then and thanks, David. Good luck.”

David clasped Mac’s good hand. “Same to all of you. Hang in there, Mac. Better days are coming.”

David took aim at a parked limo near the Metro. The windshield shattered and the car alarm shrieked to life. The dead turned slowly and appeared to listen. David shot the window out of a red Mini farther down the street but the alarm didn’t sound. The next car he hit, an enormous Armada, gave off an ear-splitting, continuous blast. The dead, not all but most, began a slow shuffle down the street. David ran ahead of them, dodging and weaving his way through and finally breaking free of the crowd, sprinting in the direction of the White House.

With the ghouls’ attention drawn away the little group ventured around the corner. They had no cover now and had to rely on their own speed and the dead’s slow clumsiness. Mac was dragging and Sylvie stayed with him, holding a Glock from his collection. Soon the dead sensed living flesh moving in their midst and began to coalesce around them, making awkward grabs. One of them managed to grasp Mac’s arm and Sylvie screamed but shot it full in the face. They limped on.

Brian was faster than any of them and Bea called to him to slow down. They were too far apart and the dead began to fill in and cut them off from each other. She saw him pull the revolver from his pocket and then the infected blocked her view just as she heard the gun fire.