Zombies! (Episode 5): Sinners and Saints (5 page)

When their conversation was over, Heron thanked him, asked him to hang around in case he thought of anything else useful, and went over to where Culph and two others were huddled around a laptop computer on the hood of a car. Culph turned and regarded Heron as he walked up.

“The basement's pretty tight,” he said as he pointed to the schematics on the laptop's screen. “One narrow hallway and lots of little rooms.”

“What about that trap door?”

“It's not on the city plan. The building's pre-Civil War so whatever's underground could have been dug out in any size or shape. We might be standing over it right now.”

“And over a nest of zombies,” Heron completed. “Just how many missing persons have been reported since all of this nonsense began?”

“Four hundred and twelve,” Culph answered without missing a beat. “They can't all be zombies, though.”

“Can't they?” Heron moved in closer and looked at the laptop. Aside from the main entrance to the church, there was a service entrance in the back. There was also a cellar entrance which apparently went straight to the storeroom behind the kitchen. He wondered if the building was even up to code. If this was a regular police operation, he'd send people in through every entrance he could and try to pigeonhole the suspects. Not for this, though. Splitting your forces against zombies was just a sure way to get them killed.

“I want five squads,” he said to Culph. “Eight men each.”

“Don't you think you're overdoing it?”

Heron didn't answer him, just gave him a sour look. They had never faced this kind of opposition before and if he was going to screw it up, he was going to do so by throwing too many men at it. “Squad leaders are you, Henry, Spinelli, Baches, and Smith. You'll go in first, right through the main entrance. Baches will follow once you've secured the area and hold the position. We'll move zone by zone, securing and covering each one.”

He was definitely overdoing it.

But Culph didn't question him this time. He walked away and grabbed the four other squad leaders. Together, they began assembling the other thirty five people who would go into the church. As they did so, Heron studied the layout, trying to envision the interior, revising and re-revising his plan. When he was satisfied that there was nothing more he could do, he went to the tech van and entered through the back.

The tech van was a long vehicle with 2 benches in the middle of the back and rows of computer terminals and monitors. It looked exactly like the FBI vans that are seen in the movies. Smaller ones were used for stakeouts. This one was state of the art. There were ten screens, five on each side. There were listening devices of all kinds stored in briefcases that were secured beneath the benches. There were also ten shoulder cameras. The technician inside the van looked up as Heron entered, not surprised in the least.

“The cameras are ready to go,” he said, indicating each screen and the row of cameras hanging on hooks mounted to the side of the van.

Heron went screen by screen, making sure he understood how the cameras worked, well aware that every second he spent in preparation was another second that someone inside might be dying and turning. He was almost done when Culph poked his nose inside.

“You're not going to make us wear those, are you?”

Heron nodded. “Each squad leader and one other team member.”

Culph sighed but went to get the assignees. It took another six minutes to get everything set up and the squads situated for entry.

Culph's squad was, of course, the first to go in. As always, he took point himself, rifle aimed forward, face set in a grim expression. They entered the main sanctuary through the large front doors. Culph went in with Harrison at his side. The others held back five paces so as not get bunched up. It was dark inside. The sunlight filtered in through stained glass. That and the low watt yellow lights of candle bulbs were not quite enough for a search and rescue mission. They stood at the back of three rows of pews, between the holy water fonts. At the front of the church, the stage rose slightly off of the ground, the pulpit standing empty and alone as if in waiting.

“Clear,” he said into his microphone.

In the van, Heron sat and watched. If the light was bad for Culph, it was worse for Heron. He watched as they moved forward, looked into each row and under pews. Behind, he knew the others were coming in. Lorenzo, with the other shoulder cam, was part of the last pair. Heron glanced briefly at his screen as he entered but didn't see anything he hadn't seen on Culph's.

“Check the confession booths,” he ordered.

Through Lorenzo's camera, he saw Culph make a motion with his hand. Two men detached themselves from the formation and moved off to the sides.

“You've got movement, Frank,” Heron said suddenly into the mike. “Left side, behind the stage.”

The camera moved and Culph was looking at it dead on. Though unidentifiable, it was definitely a human shape. It moved slowly, but not in the shuffling gait of the zombies they had seen. With their masks, they wouldn't have been able to smell it and in the poor light they couldn't make out any details.

Culph leveled his rifle. “Police! Identify yourself!”

There was no answer.

Heron glanced at the camera and saw that the others were all fixed on the newcomer. “Keep those men alert!” he shouted into the microphone.

“Last warning!” Culph cried, motioning with his hand to break the concentration of his men. “Identify yourself!”

Then she came into the better light and they could see that half of her face had been chewed upon. One eye was ruined, the remains dribbling out of the socket like a gummy candy cane. The fingernails on her left hand were gone, just gone. They would never know that each one of them had come off as she had clawed at her attackers. All in vain.

For a moment, there was silence as she approached.

“Put her down,” Heron whispered into the mike. He heard the shot an instant later, both through the input and out in the street. The body fell and he took a moment to close his eyes and remember happier times.

Outside, in front of the church, on a cold Saturday morning, the crowd fell silent. As one, they looked toward the church. Then the chatter started again. The news people began conversing with their cameras while the newspaper people exchanged ideas with their digital recorders. Bystanders began to weep.

“The sanctuary's clear,” Culph reported. “Moving deeper.”

“Second squad, move in,” Heron ordered, turning his attention toward Spinelli's camera. Then, as an afterthought, “Frank double check that kill.”

Culph's camera tilted down as he passed the body. Pulling his knife, he plunged it once into one eye socket, angling it toward the other. Then repeated the process from the opposite side. Both he and Heron knew that they wouldn't have that opportunity if they were swarmed. Heron began to wonder what it meant, a swarm of zombies. He shuddered.

Inside the church, Culph moved back behind the stage. Here there was a short corridor and a series of small rooms. There was an office for the priest as well as a small library. There was a conference room, small, and a door that led into a basement. All of the doors were closed except the basement's. That meant that those rooms were probably empty but they needed to be checked anyway. The basement was a different issue entirely. Based on Dominguez's story, the zombies had been downstairs. The one Culph had killed had probably come through this door.

He signaled to Harrison and Rollins that they should flank. Harrison stepped forward and crossed to the other side of the open door. Culph swung around and positioned himself with his gun pointing down the stairwell. The lights were on; that was good. He had a clear view right down to the bottom. Along the stairs were two zombies. The closer one was one of the four officers sent in a couple of hours before. It was all he could do to restrain himself. The zombie was no threat. He clung to the staircase, about six steps down, with his gloved hands. His mask was ripped but his face looked mostly intact. So intact, in fact, that Culph could see the fearful expression with which he'd died. He was like that, mostly intact, right down to the waist. His belt was still threaded through the loops of his pants and buckled. Everything seemed to be there except his gun, which he must have dropped while fleeing. Below the waist, he was a mess. About halfway down his ass, there was nothing but tattered fabric and chewed up meat. Bone and blood trailed the stairs below him where the second zombie sat gnawing on the cop's legs.

“Are you seeing this, lieutenant?” he whispered.

“Yeah,” Heron whispered back, barely able to find his voice.

Reaching into the stairwell, Culph took hold of the knob and closed the door. “Keep it covered,” he ordered Harrison.

Then he went to check the other rooms. They were all empty. The closed doors had been closed before the zombies invaded and remained closed during the invasion. Still, they did a thorough check of each room. When they were done, Culph turned his attention back to the basement.

“Are we saving any today?” he asked Heron.

“No,” Heron said back.

Culph opened the door and pointed his gun down the stairs. The cop zombie had managed to come up a couple of steps. Given another forty five minutes he might have reached the top. Culph fired once and put it to rest. The shot alarmed the one at the bottom. This one was a kid, a teenage girl in a sweatshirt and black stretch pants. She wasn't much to look at anymore. Culph put her to rest also.

“Don't bunch up,” he ordered the squad as he moved into the stairs.

It was narrow in there and they couldn't feasibly stand two abreast. Harrison moved in behind Culph and Rollins after Harrison. With four more men between them, Lorenzo brought up the rear. As they moved down, Heron ordered the second squad into the back of the church. He told them to make sure the dead stayed dead. Then he ordered the third squad into the sanctuary.

The lighting at the bottom of the stairs was bad. Culph could see the flickering shadows even before he moved out of the stairwell. It was pretty clear that power wasn't the problem, though. Nor was it the positioning of the fixtures. The area wasn't meant to be dim. The lights themselves had sustained physical damage. It must have been a hell of a fight.

The hallway at the bottom stretched left and right. Through the doorway, he could only see a square patch of it. What lay on either side was a mystery. As he reached the last step, he halted and pulled his torch from his belt. It clipped to the front of his rifle. He did that and ordered the others to do the same. As he was fastening the light, a shadow appeared in front of him. Heron called into the mike, but the warning was too late. Hands gripped at his arms and pushed him backwards up the stairs. The officers above brought their weapons forward but couldn't fire for fear of hitting Culph. Still, Culph was a force to be reckoned with. As the thing pushed down on him with its considerable weight, trying to bring its teeth into range, he levered his right so that the barrel was pressed up against its head and fired. The shot went up, hitting the light fixture at the bottom of the stairs and shattering the bulb. But the concussion from the blast stunned the monster. Its grip loosened and it began to fall back. Culph kicked it out of the stairway and into the corridor. Then he quickly brought his rifle forward and fired two bullets, the second one because the first only hit it in the chest.

As it slid to the ground, its head oozing black ichor, the men held their breaths and waited for more to come.

“Are you okay?” Heron breathed into Culph's ear.

“Yeah. You?”

“No. This is the scariest goddamn movie I've ever seen.”

“Why aren't they attacking?”

“Don't take anything for granted.”

It was dark in the corridor now. Culph could see some flickering lights coming from both directions but he wasn't hopeful about visibility. He was also worried about getting attacked from both sides. If they were bottlenecked inside, they'd be slaughtered. Even under the best of circumstances, they wouldn't be able to get more than two men, maybe three, firing in either direction. Too much delay. Time to take the plunge.

Stepping into the flickering hallway was like submerging into a tank of dark cold water. Even Culph, who had been craving the action, felt the fear that went along with stepping into this narrow cage. He knew he wasn't alone. Why they hadn't come shambling forward at the sound of his gunshots he didn't know, but they were definitely there. He could hear the macabre moaning that passed for their breathing. He could smell them. Even through the face mask, he could smell them. That meant there were a lot of them.
A lot of them.