Empire

33 Silent Running

"I thought that tunnel was sealed off." Voorhees muttered into his fist. "What tunnel?" Palmer asked, studying Thom's ragged form.

"There's a security tunnel running from the PD to City Hall. Few people outside the mayor's office knew about it. Of course, that was before the mayor jumped." Turning to Thom, Voorhees asked him, "I've never seen anyone going in or out of that building. Every door's barricaded to the max. How many people are over there?"

"Oh, it's just me." The man's voice was timid, quiet. He was used to speaking in whispers, or perhaps not at all. His hands trembled excitedly as he described his situation. "There were other staff staying there, but some left…and others…"

"Others what?"

"They just didn't make it. There's no food, not much water except what leaks in when it storms like it is now — do you have any food?"

"Not much, but we'll get you something." Voorhees replied. The man, hugging his emaciated frame, smiled gratefully. "I was a clerk in the mayor's office. The mayor was writing a biography, you know. I've spent the last few months proofreading the manuscript."

This guy was just a little mad. Palmer offered him a cigarette, and he refused it with a wary look. "Terrible for you. Can't fight or run with emphysema. Some of my colleagues were heavy smokers. That's what got them in the end. It eats you from the inside out. Cancer, I mean. It's like a rotter growing inside you. Makes you ashy." Thom grimaced.

"How did you know we were in here, Thom?" The reverend asked.

"I saw you going in. They saw you too, I think. That's why I came over, through the tunnel — thought you ought to come with me to City Hall."

"Wait, who's 'they'?"

Thom gestured toward the lobby entrance. Hefting the shotgun in his arms, Voorhees climbed onto the barricade and peered through a paper-thin slit, through the damaged doors.

"Christ Jesus."

Jenna clambered up beside him. He directed her to another crack looking out onto the city plaza.

Dozens of rotters were pouring out of the suburbs that lay beyond Greeley Park. They must have broken through the east gates. But why so many at once — why a horde? She could see why they were congregating around the plaza: if some of them had seen the survivors going into the PD, the rest would follow that group's frenzied activity. Still that didn't explain why they'd entered the city in such numbers to begin with. The undead population was said to be sparse around the Harbor…

She thought back to the radio broadcast she'd heard, the senator claiming that zombies were migrating to coastal cities as the military withdrew their forces. It didn't make any sense. This many rotters had no way of knowing that military support was gone; it wasn't like they were camped out in the badlands, watching the city. Even if they were picking up federal radio frequencies in their fucking fillings, they couldn't understand the transmissions.

Could they?

Mark was beside her, making an effort to prop himself up. "How many?"

"Too many."

"It's the smoke." He slumped down on the barricade. "I've seen mobs of them drawn to fires before. Burning trash or bodies always requires extra security…those explosions all over town caught us off-guard and they saw it for miles around."

Grabbing Jenna's hand suddenly, Mark sat up. "What were you going to say back in the construction yard? About the fires?"

"You mean before you cut me off? Told me I was grasping at straws?"

"Yes, before that."

"Don't start this that again." Voorhees yelled. "It doesn't matter right now, we just need to get the hell out of here. Thom, you're sure that City Hall is clear?"

"Absolutely, Officer."

"Lead the way."

They went to the rear of the lobby, to a small room adjacent to the defunct elevators. Thom opened a hatch set into the floor and started down the ladder there. "Be careful, it's pitch black in here."

"Great." Lauren pressed herself against Jenna, who embraced her. "We'll go together."

Thom was telling the truth; the tunnel was absolutely dark. His voice echoed off the damp walls. "Just walk straight ahead, keep your arms out — there's some crud on the floor so be sure of your footing. Easy to slip. Plus it smells."

"We noticed." Voorhees grumbled. He was bringing up the rear. Shutting the hatch and securing it as best he could, he dropped into the passage. "Everyone all right?"

"I felt something! On my leg!" Cheryl cried. "There's nothing down here but us," Thom assured her, but his frenetic tone didn't help to calm anybody.

There was a dull thudding overhead. "What's that?" Lauren asked. They group stopped moving.

"I think they're in the PD." Voorhees said softly.

"We've almost reached the end of the line." Thom called. "We can seal the hatch once we're out, keep 'em from following us. Just have to keep moving. It's not like they even know-"

A shaft of light appeared at the PD end of the tunnel.

"RUN!!" Voorhees dropped into a crouch, facing the PD, and the others rushed toward City Hall. Screams bounced off the walls and into Voorhees' head, rattling him, but not as much as the silhouettes interrupting the shaft of light.

The undead began coming down.

He fired a shotgun blast straight down the tunnel, briefly illuminating the gray-and-green forms of the rotters. It did nothing to slow them down. Voorhees turned and ran.

Thom threw open the City Hall hatch and pulled himself up into a room almost as dark as the tunnel itself. He knelt to assist Cheryl, and they in turn each took one of Palmer's arms. "HURRY!!" Lauren cried from below.

They were dropping into the tunnel at a horrifying rate until the light was no longer visible. Voorhees fired another shot. A rotter scant yards from him was caught and thrown back into the horde; they swallowed him and kept coming. Voorhees pumped and fired again, this time at an upward angle. Curdled brains sprayed the tunnel ceiling.

He lunged for the ladder and the others yanked him up, nearly tearing his arms from their sockets. The hatch clanged down and Thom dragged a shelf over it. "We need more!!" The rotters beat on the underside of the hatch. Locked as it was, it still jostled in its frame.

Opening the door that led out of the room, Jenna found herself in a narrow hallway with offices on either side. She seized a file cabinet just inside one of the offices and wrestled it down the hall. Voorhees helped her throw it atop the shelf. "More!"

They grabbed a second file cabinet and a desk, shoving as much furniture as they could into the tiny room. Then Thom locked the door and they began to pile more things in front of it. "Follow me to the fire stairs." Thom said when they had run out of barricading materials.

"The top floor's the most secure," he said breathlessly, taking three steps at a time. The others could barely keep up. "The other floors are bad. People died there, I haven't been able to get 'em out with the windows all boarded up. You'll notice the smell." It was like a guided tour of Hell.

The fourth-floor corridor was lit by candles. "Not a safe idea," Voorhees commented. "Oh, I hardly ever leave. I just had to get you guys." Reaching the end of the hallway, Thom moved a shelf away from a window, and they were able to look out over the plaza. "See, this is how I spotted you. I just sit here most days." He gathered a pile of papers and shoved them into a box. "That's the mayor's book."

"What sort of supplies do you have here?" Voorhees peered down and watched the rotters cram themselves through the doors of the police department. Pieces of the barricade spilled down the stairs and were stomped to bits.

"Well, candles and matches, obviously." Thom was pacing around the others. It made Lauren uneasy, and she sat down on the floor. "Lots of paper. Pencils too, plenty of stationery in general. Weapons — well, there are scissors and letter openers, things like that. The guards took all the guns when they deserted us. They left even before the Army did, but the mayor refused to leave."

"Yeah, then he threw himself off the roof." Muttered Voorhees.

"That was a terrible day." Thom nodded solemnly to the others, as if he weren't the only one that cared. "His secretary died that morning. I think they were in love. He told me he was going to do it, too — 'the only place where the dead no longer outnumber us', he said, 'is on the other side'. It was a sad moment, but as far as last words go…I'm going to include that in the afterword of the book, I think."

"There are runners down there." Cheryl said. She pressed her face to the glass. "Stand back," ordered Voorhees, but Thom laughed idly. "They can't see us up here, especially on this side of the building with the way the light hits it. Besides the barricades here are better than the PD's — no offense Officer. Oh God, I can smell rot coming up through the vents. I'm going crack a few windows, all right? Nothing they'll notice down there." Without waiting for an answer, he left.

"He's more than just a little mad." Palmer thought aloud.

A lot of the running dead were poorly coordinated, stumbling about, some of them moving sideways like crabs. Their muscular constitution gave them an edge over the walkers, and getting to the meat first kept them healthy, kept them fast, superior to the other rotters — but their faces remained dull and lifeless. There was no primal aggression, no snarling or baring of teeth. They were just as blank and silent as the rest. To be chased down by them was…Cheryl saw her brother's face, covered in bloody bites, telling her to go, to leave him with the runners.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

Runners clambered over the backs of slower zombies and into the PD. Palmer took Cheryl away from the window.

Lauren covered her nose and mouth with her left and left the hallway. The odor of decay in the stairwell was even worse. She could see a door standing open on the next landing. That must have been where Thom had gone. She wanted to offer him some help with the windows, but she couldn't bear to see any bodies.

Do it, Lauren, she told herself, snap out of this. She began descending the stairs.

Thom emerged from the doorway with a severed hand in his mouth. He glanced up at her and stopped.

The hand had been removed with surgical precision, and bites were already missing from it. Thom's lips were dark red.

He said something through a mouthful of meat. Lauren screamed and turned to run.

He caught her ankle and hurled her down the stairs. The hand fell on her face, and she screamed louder. "No, no!" He cried. "It's not what you think — BE QUIET!!!"

A long pair of scissors plunged into her abdomen. Her scream bubbled away.

Voorhees ran into the stairwell and saw Thom trying to pull the scissors free. "She fell! She fell!" The man was yelling, stringy bits of muscle falling from his mouth.

Voorhees didn't think. He only saw what he saw, and reacted.

The shotgun blast tore Thom's arm off and peppered his chest, his shirt opening up and flesh splitting. Flying into the wall, Thom sank wordlessly.

Voorhees dropped the shotgun and ran to Lauren. She was in the grip of abject horror and crippling pain, blood pooling rapidly around the scissors. The cop pressed his hands over the wound, around the blades.

Jenna shrieked from the top of the stairs. She grabbed the shotgun. Mark wrested it away.

"I'm not, I'm not a zombie." Thom whispered. "I didn't even kill them. I just needed to EAT." The blood pulsing from the stump of his arm diminished. His face was bone-white, and he shook as he spoke. "I told him, the mayor, I told him it wasn't her anymore, it was just meat. I told him we could eat her together and the rotters would never have her. He'd see her on the other side…"

Thom shrugged and died.

"She's still alive. Help me." Voorhees kept one hand on the wound and slipped the other beneath Lauren. "HELP ME."

Jenna came down and blinked her tears back to look into Lauren's eyes. "You'll be okay. She'll be okay, won't she?"

Voorhees said nothing.

Outside, the faintest of screams had caught the attention of a few rotters. They looked around hungrily. Others were exiting the PD, having found no sustenance; one of them gestured toward the street with a moan. The others in the plaza shuffled to follow its gaze.

A man on a horse was galloping toward them. A scythe glistening with rain swept over his head, and they realized that, in fact, he was no man just before he cut them all in half.