Entombed

SIX

The bunker’s sprinkler system was fairly advanced. Only the sprinklers in the stairwell were activated. The alarm bleated for several minutes, though. The shrill wail was audible even over the generators. I knew that Jeff and Mike would hear it, so I hid behind one of the tanks and waited for them to arrive.

I didn’t have to wait long. Jeff came hurrying along at a trot a few minutes later, looking bewildered. There was no sign of Mike. I wondered if perhaps they had already reached the bodies, and decided that Mike should stay with Clyde while Jeff investigated the source of the alarm.

In his hurry, he didn’t see me hiding behind the tank. I waited until he’d gone past me. Then I slipped out from behind the tank and sneaked up behind him. I didn’t have to worry about him hearing me. Between the fire alarm and the generators, there was no chance of that. The extreme heat in the power plant had already dried most of the water the sprinkler system had sprayed me with, so I also wasn’t worried about him seeing puddles.

Despite my caution, Jeff paused. He raised his head slightly and sniffed the air. His back was still turned to me. I assumed he’d noticed the smell coming from the stairwell. Before he could move again, I pulled the box-cutter from my pocket, extended the blade, and rushed up behind him. I looped my arm around his forehead and slashed at his throat with my other hand.

Cutting someone’s throat isn’t at all like it appears in the movies. When you see Rambo or Michael Myers slit somebody’s throat, it’s always quick and easy and arterial blood immediately starts spraying from the victim’s wound. It wasn’t like that at all with Jeff. I don’t know if I cut too low or too high, or not deep enough, but there was no crimson geyser. He screamed, more from surprise than pain, I think, and tried to pull away. I was surprised that he was still able to make noise. He slipped my hold on him, got free and spun around. There was a thin, red line on his neck, almost like the indentation from a necklace chain that had been worn too long. I don’t think he was even aware of it at first, but then the pain must have kicked in. He reached up slowly and touched the wound with his fingertips, probing it gently, experimentally. When he pushed on it, a few red drops leaked out. Jeff pulled his hand away and looked at his fingertips. More blood began to flow, but it was nowhere near what I’d imagined.

“You cut me.”

I couldn’t hear him, but I understood him just the same. I leaped at him, slashing with the box-cutter. The razor sliced him just below the shoulder. When he reflexively reached toward the wound, I swiped the blade across the back of his hand. Jeff tried to turn and run, but I jumped on him, stabbing again and again with the box-cutter. He thrashed and kicked beneath me, but I managed to stay on top of him. I just kept jamming the blade into his back and shoulders and neck and head. Sometimes, the razor got pushed back up into the sheath and I’d thumb it out again, even while I struck him with my other fist. We went on like that for a long time. I don’t know how long, exactly. I know that his struggles weakened, and then ceased, and even after he’d stopped moving altogether, I kept on stabbing and slashing at him. It was exactly like what had happened with George, except that this time I had a knife. My hands, legs and face were splattered with blood, and my clothes were sticky and wet again.

When I stood up, blood dripped from my fingertips and the edge of the knife. I put the bloody weapon back in my pocket. Then I rolled Jeff over and searched him for anything useful. He had nothing on him except for his car keys and a black leather wallet. I ignored the keys and gave the wallet a cursory examination. It contained a few one, five and ten dollar bills, totally useless in the current environment, unless you were using them to start a fire or as toilet paper. In one of the wallet’s pockets, there was also a round wooden token with the slogan IT IS WHAT IT IS emblazoned on it. That made me grin.

“It is what it is,” I muttered. “Do whatever you have to do to survive, and if the situation changes, adapt or die.”

The other side of the wooden coin had the name of what I presumed was a strip club—The Odessa, Lewisberry, PA. After a moment, I stuck the token in my front pocket. Then I rifled through the rest of the wallet. All that was left were some pictures of a woman and two kids. The children looked exactly like Jeff. I didn’t linger on the pictures too long, because looking at them made me feel bad. I closed the wallet, but not before noticing that I’d left bloody thumbprint smudges all over Jeff’s family’s faces. I dropped the wallet on his corpse and stood up. When I walked away, the soles of my shoes stuck to the floor, and I left red footprints in my wake.

The fire alarm ceased wailing as abruptly as it had begun. The roar of the generators seemed almost subdued in its absence. There was no way of telling how long I had before Mike came looking for Jeff, or how soon Chuck and the others would recover from my attack and launch a new strike. I hurried over to the stairwell door and jammed my spear through the door handle. Not satisfied with that, I wheeled one of the heavy toolboxes over to the door, as well, and shoved the toolbox against it. Satisfied it would hold, I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand and sighed.

Moving the toolbox was hard work. It was heavy, and would have been difficult even if I wasn’t weak with hunger. When I was finished, I had to resist the urge to sit down and rest. Instead, I rummaged through the toolbox until I found a pencil and a small, pocket-sized tablet. Then I returned to my hiding place behind the machinery and began making a list of everyone that had been inside the bunker when the siege had begun. I crossed off Annie, Ryan, Milo, Rachel and everyone else who had died before the decision to resort to democratic cannibalism had been decided upon. That left a population of seventeen, not counting myself. Seventeen people who had voted to eat me, except for Drew—and possibly the Chinese guy, who might not have understood what they were voting on. But while he might not have understood everything that was happening, he’d stood by Chuck and the others earlier. That made him an enemy. The same went for good old Drew, who had sold me out in the end like some cheap prison snitch.

I stuck the pencil in my mouth and chewed on the eraser, working up some saliva to ease my thirst as I pondered the situation.

Seventeen enemy combatants. I crossed off the ones I’d already killed—Krantz, George, Jim, Jeff, Dave and that back-stabbing son of a bitch Drew. True, Dave and Drew could have survived my attack, but if so, they were badly burned at the very least, and shouldn’t be much trouble. With those six out of the way, that left Chuck, Mike, Clyde, Chinese Guy, Emma, Phillips, Nicole, Damonte, Susan, Ritchie, and Charles. I’ve already told you about half of them. Nicole Baez was twenty-five who did body-piercing at a tattoo studio in Lewisburg and had worked at the hotel on weekends. Ritchie Giffen and Damonte Williams had also been Pocahontas staff. Susan Fremont was a local who had been at the Pocahontas to arrange her daughter’s wedding reception. Finally, there was Charles St. John Smith III, or Charles the Third as he’d insisted we call him several times. Charles was from Philadelphia, and worked in the music industry. He’d supposedly been, at various times, a disc jockey at WKDU 91.7, a promoter at punk clubs like House of Conflict and Stalag 13 (which I’d heard of even down here in West Virginia) and had played in a hardcore band. Charles had been passing through when the zombies attacked. He hadn’t even been staying at the hotel. He’d been gassing up his car across the street and fled here when the shit kicked off. None of them were people I’d have expected to go along with Chuck’s insane plan, but evidently, all of them had.

Ten enemies remained. Ten people that I had to kill in order to survive. Eleven if I counted Clyde. I had tried to reason with them, to negotiate mutually agreeable terms that we could abide by, but Chuck and his people wanted none of that. And they were Chuck’s people. None of them had spoken up in protest when he called them that during our argument. The only conclusion I could draw from their behavior was that the others felt the same way Chuck did—and therefore, fuck them. I considered writing their names on my forearm, the same way Bruce Willis had done in the first Die Hard movie, but I couldn’t because I didn’t have a magic marker and the pencil wouldn’t write on my skin. Pity, that. I would have enjoyed crossing their names out one by one in their own blood. I wished I had an iPod loaded with nothing but Motorhead songs. I’d have stalked the corridors of the bunker, slashing throats and smashing heads to the left and to the right, grinning a rictus grin and bathing in blood with “Orgasmatron” and “Killed By Death” on repeat providing the perfect soundtrack for slaughter. If I closed my eyes, I could picture it all. Even better, I could hear the music in all of its ear-splitting glory. I could smell the blood, feel its warmth as it sprayed across my skin. I could taste…

At that moment, I realized I’d been laughing, and the razor knife was back in my hands. I’d been fondling it. Worse, the crotch of my pants was stiff, and not just from the quickly-drying blood encrusting it. I had an erection, the first one I’d had in several weeks. Before, I’d thought that perhaps starvation was effecting that part of my body. Yes, I still got horny. I got horny all the time, especially when sitting in the movie room. But I’d been unable to muster much of a response in the past few weeks. Now I realized that it hadn’t been that I lacked food or nutrition. The reason had been that I lacked the proper motivation and visual stimulation. Now I had them again, and my body responded in kind. I remembered that something similar had happened to Dave right before I’d had to kill him. Maybe Dave hadn’t been such a bad guy, after all.

I became aware of a feint sound, nearly inaudible beneath the noise of the generators. It had a deliberate cadence, but no matter how hard I listened, I couldn’t figure out what the sound was. A voice, possibly? If so, I’d find out who they were and where they were soon enough. It was time to go to work. My first step was to find Mike. After I’d taken care of him, I’d finish Clyde off. Then I’d take care of the others.

As I walked toward the exit, bloody box-cutter in hand, I heard that strange sound again. This time, I was definitely sure it was a voice, but it was still too faint and disjointed to figure out who was speaking. I tried humming to make it go away, but it remained, ethereal and persistent.

“Ready or not,” I said, “here I come.”

I opened the door and stepped boldly out into the hall, not caring if someone saw me or not. In truth, I wanted them to see me. I wanted them to be afraid. I wanted them to know that death was coming for them, not at the hands of some shambling, rotting corpse, but a living, breathing human being—a man who still possessed that spark we call a soul. A man whose soul they had collaborated to snuff out.

It turned out that I was indeed spotted almost immediately. Down at the far end of the corridor, Mike knelt over Clyde. When he saw me coming, he jumped up and ran toward me. I kept the same unhurried pace, as if I were just out for a leisurely Sunday afternoon stroll. The door swung shut behind me, once again muting the noise of the power plant.

When Mike had crossed about half the distance between us, he stopped short and stood there gaping at me. I must have made quite a horrific sight, covered in gore and grinning like a madman. Except that it wasn’t gore. It was my new skin. And I definitely wasn’t crazy. I’ve always believed that if you start out sane, you know when you cross over into insanity. That’s the way it always works, right? When these people on the news finally snap and shoot up their office or their school or butcher their families and loved ones, they usually kill themselves afterward. That’s because they know the enormity of what they’ve done. They know it was an act of insanity, and they can’t bare to live with the consequences. That was how I knew I wasn’t crazy. Not only could I live with the consequences of what I was doing—I was relishing them. It was the consequences of what I was doing that were keeping me alive. My only regret was that I hadn’t figured that out earlier. Maybe then I wouldn’t have wasted so much time feeling guilty over what I’d done to Krantz or the others.

Mike continued to stare at me. His expression was one of shocked disbelief. Then he turned around and fled down the hall.

I laughed. “That’s no good, Mike. Where are you going to run to? The blast door is your only exit.”

If he heard me, he gave no indication. He raced past Clyde without pause and clambered up onto the closest forklift. Still laughing, I continued walking toward him, purposely taking my time in order to draw things out. The laughter felt like ashes in my throat a moment later when Mike turned on one of the propane bottles and then started the forklift. Earlier, I hadn’t thought to check if the keys were still in the ignitions. Obviously, Mike had. The engine choked and sputtered, and then roared to life.

“Hey,” I shouted, stopping in my tracks. This wasn’t what I had expected. “What the hell are you doing, Mike?”

Ignoring me, he fumbled with the shift. The gears grumbled and the hydraulics whined, and then Mike gave it gas, backing the forklift out of the cul-de-sac and whipping it around to face me. His expression—a strange, desperate mix of fear and determination—probably should have unnerved me, but it didn’t. Instead, it just made me start laughing again.

“Okay, Mike. Is this the way you want it? Come on, then!”

I stuck the box-cutter in my back pocket and pulled off my bloody shirt. While I was pulling the shirt over my head, Mike floored it and the forklift shot toward me, racing past Clyde’s still form. The hydraulics shrieked at a fevered pitch. The heavy steel forks banged and clanked. I ripped the shirt free and dangled it in front of me with both hands, waving it back and forth like a bullfighter in the ring.

“Come on, motherfucker. Toro! TORO!”

He gave it more gas and the forklift barreled down the corridor. I stood in the middle of the hallway, my feet spread shoulder-width apart and my knees locked, frantically urging him on with my makeshift matador cape. Mike shouted—a long, unintelligible cry of frustration and anger and fear. He hunched over the steering wheel, gripping it tight, and zeroed the forks in on me. I waited until the very last moment and then jumped aside. The forklift zipped past me. I grabbed one of the roll cage bars and pulled myself up onto the machine. I coughed, tasting exhaust fumes in the back of my throat.

Mike tried to push me off with one hand while he steered with the other, but I was ready for him. I slashed at the back of his hand with the box-cutter. The razor sliced deep, opening a long gash that ran from between the knuckles of his middle and ring fingers all the way down to his wrist. Shrieking, Mike yanked his hand away, but I slashed again, cutting his wrist and forearm. I expected him to punch me or try pushing me off again, or maybe crash us into the wall, but instead of doing that, Mike dove off the other side of the forklift and rolled across the floor. Immediately, the forklift began to lose speed and waver out of control, heading for the wall. The engine stuttered. I quickly slid into the driver’s seat and took control of the wheel. Then I turned around. My arc was too wide and the forks scraped against the wall, gouging into the concrete.

I’d expected to see Mike fleeing down the corridor again, but instead, he lay on the floor, half-curled into the fetal position, and cradling his right ankle. His lips were drawn back in an anguished sneer, exposing nicotine-stained teeth, and his eyes were squeezed shut. Tears ran down his face.

“Did you break your ankle, Mike?” I shouted over the engine. “Gee, that’s a tough break.”

I maneuvered toward him.

“Get it, Mike? I said that’s a tough break.”

Moaning, he tried to stand up. His injured ankle buckled beneath him and he fell down again. His whimpers turned to screams as he began to crawl away, dragging his leg behind him.

I shook my head. “Some people just don’t have a sense of humor.”

Mike screamed in response.

I took my foot off the brake and eased the forklift forward. Then I stomped the accelerator. The forks and chassis blocked my view of Mike, but my aim was true. The fat tires crunched up and over his body, silencing his cries. The entire forklift bounced and jostled, as if I’d hit a particularly large pothole. Then it smoothed out again. I glanced behind me and smiled with approval. His head and pelvis had both been crushed, leaving behind a flattened, twisted thing and crimson tire tracks.

I heard the voice again. This time it was louder. Clearer. It sounded just like Alyssa, but that couldn’t be.

“Pete, they’re coming…”

“Alyssa?”

There was no response. I turned around and faced forward in my seat, intent on parking the forklift back in the cul-de-sac. Instead, I jerked in surprise when I saw Ritchie coming out of the shower room. He and the others hadn’t been able to break my blockade in the power plant, so while I’d been busy taking care of Mike, Ritchie had shimmied up the incinerator chute, just as I’d done earlier.

Ritchie’s eyes widened when he saw me. He glanced at Clyde, still sitting slumped over with his back against the wall, and then he turned back to me and Mike. For a moment, I thought he might charge me, and perhaps try to jump up into the cab the same way I’d done with Mike. He must have panicked, however, because instead of doing that or retreating to the restrooms, he darted the rest of the way out into the hall and ran towards the blast door. I stomped the accelerator and sped after him. As I passed by the shower room, I saw a second figure fleeing into the restroom. The door swung shut before I could determine who it was.

Ritchie reached the blast door, looked over his shoulder at me, and then shouted something. I couldn’t hear him over the forklift’s engine, but I could still hear Alyssa. She was urging me on. Then Ritchie did something completely unexpected—he grabbed the wheel that opened the blast door.

“Oh, shit.”

Weakened by hunger, Ritchie strained to turn the wheel.

“Ritchie,” I shouted, “what the hell are you doing? You’ll let them in!”

Nodding, he strained harder. His limbs shook from the exertion, but despite his efforts, the door didn’t budge. Ritchie shot a hurried, panicked glance back at me, and then wiped his hands on his pants and tried again.

I hurriedly worked the controls. The forks could be tilted up and down and side to side, so that they’d fit under different sized skids. They were also tapered so that they were narrower near the front. I raised them, drawing the forks close together so that there was no gap between them, forming a giant spear of sorts. Gunning the engine, I aimed them at Ritchie. Instead of running, he redoubled his efforts. He was still trying to turn the wheel when I rammed into him. The forks punched through his chest and hit the steel blast door behind him. The noise was incredible. It was like standing inside a bell tower. My ears rang. The force of the impact threw me from the seat, slamming me against the wire mesh of the roll cage. My mouth filled with blood. I relished the taste.

The crash stalled the forklift. I fumbled with the controls again, trying to restart the engine so that I could raise the forks higher, but the forklift wouldn’t start. Ritchie was still alive, but just barely. As I watched, he reached behind him, clawing at the forks with his bloody hands. He couldn’t quite reach them. I climbed down from the cab as his head drooped onto his chest. I felt for a pulse and found none.

“Are you dead?”

I slapped his head and then flicked his ear with my thumb and middle finger. Ritchie didn’t respond.

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess you are. What the hell were you thinking? We can’t open the door. If we could, none of this would be happening.”

I hurried over to Clyde and knelt beside his still form. Then I put my fingers to his throat and checked his pulse, as well. I couldn’t find one, and his skin was cool to the touch. He’d bled out, dying while I was occupied with the others. Humming the bass line from Queen’s ‘Another One Bites the Dust’, I stood up and strolled toward the restroom. I began to sing aloud. My voice echoed off the walls. Giggling, I spun around and did a quick moonwalk. Then I knocked on the bathroom door.

“Housekeeping. I’m here to scrub the toilet. Anybody home?”

I pushed the door open and stepped inside. The bathroom was empty. I got down on my hands and knees and peered under the stall. I saw no feet but there was a shadow on the floor around the toilet. As I watched, the shadow moved. Grinning, I stood up again.

“Hello?”

I waited for a few seconds more and then I made a big show of walking towards the door. I stepped hard so that my footfalls would be heard. I opened the door and let it slam close. Then I stood still and waited.

Inside the stall, someone whimpered. I held my breath, resisting the urge to charge. I heard sounds of movement. Slowly, the stall door opened. The Chinese guy walked out, saw me, and screamed.

“Howdy.” I winked at him.

“Duì bù qǐ,” he cried. “Duì bù qǐ. Duì bù qǐ…”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

He flung his hands up in front of his face and cringed. “Bù, bùyào shā wǒ. Du ìb ùqǐ!”

I took a tentative step toward him. The Chinese guy began to weep. A dark stain appeared on the front of his pants and the restroom filled with the sharp stench of piss.

“Dude, you could have at least used the urinal!”

“Bù, bùyào shā wǒ,” he wept. “Duì bù qǐ. Bù, bùyào shā wǒ…”

My head began to hurt. His sobs were like knives stabbing into my brain. My temples throbbed. The pain made it hard to hear Alyssa. I strode across the floor. The Chinese guy tried to run past me, but I grabbed his arm and swung him around. He crashed into the mirror over the sink, shattering the glass. Jagged shards clattered off the porcelain and onto the floor. Before he could recover, I twisted his arm behind him and shoved him against the wall. With my other hand, I reached up and grabbed a fistful of his hair. Twisting it in my fist, I slammed his face into the broken mirror. The Chinese guy shrieked.

“Nǐ húndàn!”

“Shut up.”

His screams turned guttural and frantic.

“Shut up.” I slammed his face into the glass again and again, punctuating each blow with another command. “Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.”

I spun him away from the mirror and threw him to the floor. Silver fragments jutted from his forehead and cheeks, and his lips were swollen and bleeding. Groaning, he tried to roll away, but I kicked him in the side of the head. He started to cry out again, but I stepped on his throat. His eyes bulged and his mouth hung open. I stared down at him, impassive.

“You brought this on yourself. You may not speak the language, but you knew what the hell was going on.”

I put all my weight—what little of it was left after weeks with no food—on his throat, and stood there until he was dead. Slowly, I became aware of a loud breathing in the restroom with me. I listened to the panting sound, and then realized that it was me. I stared at the broken mirror. A few cracked shards dangled in the upper left corner and I could see my reflection in them. I felt a momentary surge of shock. It was quite a sight. I was a mess.

“Pete…”

“Alyssa?” I glanced around the restroom, but it was empty. “Where are you?”

“I’m here. I’m right here.”

“Where?”

“Come find me, Pete. Catch me if you can…”

“Alyssa!”

The restroom began to spin. It was hard to breathe. My chest, limbs and head felt heavy. There was a rushing sound in my ears, as if a wall of water was bearing down on me. Dark spots floated in front of my eyes, and suddenly, it was unbearably hot. Sweat poured down my face. My hands and feet tingled. Then the rushing sound changed into a constant, steady ringing. I felt extremely weak and sleepy. The ringing grew louder.

“Aly—”

And then the hunger and weakness and exertion and shock caught up with me, and I collapsed on top of the Chinese guy. The last thing I was aware of was the smell of his blood.