Machines of the Dead

Chapter 11

After placing Zaun in bed, Jack went over to the bedroom windows and raised the blinds, allowing sunlight to illuminate the dreary room, and to his delight, revealed a lost treasure. On the floor, opposite side of the bed where Zaun had been lying, were his guns and ammo boxes.

Like a kid on Christmas morning, Jack sat on the floor, took the keys from his pocket, and opened the first lockbox. Lifting the lid, he saw the Sig Sauer P226 inside. Not wanting to be unarmed a moment longer, he removed the trigger guard, then opened the ammo box, an army green, 30 caliber, M19A1 container he picked up at an army-navy store, grabbed a box of 9 mm bullets, and loaded the fifteen round clip. After popping the clip in, he gently racked the slide and was ready for business. Flipping the safety on, he placed the weapon down, eager to see the next gift.

He opened the box containing his. 45, a Smith and Wesson 1911 handgun. After removing the trigger guard, he loaded the eight round clip and drew the slide back before setting the safety switch to the on position. Jack couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so powerful, so invincible, so good. Then he did remember, and it had nothing to do with firearms. The last time he had felt this good was when he and Jess were sitting on the couch, watching television, his arms wrapped around her. Suddenly, the ecstatic feeling he had was gone.

He picked up both handguns like the hero in some action flick, and admired them. A spark of anger ignited within him, warming his soul with hate. He wished he could shoot each individual bot, slowly making each one suffer as he destroyed them all. But the best he could do was help the living, and send the animated dead back to the grave.

He grabbed the bag holding his Remington. 30–06, unlocked the trigger guard and had the weapon loaded and ready to go within moments. Most likely, he’d be running around, climbing, and banging into things, so he didn’t bother with the scope.

Finally, the big momma was left, his Mossberg 500, a 12-gauge shotgun. After removing the trigger guard, he loaded five shells of buckshot, then cocked the weapon, making room for another shell.

Now, Jack was ready for anything short of a nuke. The undead would fall easily at his feet; people too if they so chose to try and hurt him or anyone he was trying to save. As much as he would like to believe people wouldn’t be a problem, he knew it was a possibility. And with that thought in mind, Jack couldn’t remember if he’d locked the apartment’s front door.

Tucking the Sig Sauer into his pants, he hurried to the door and locked it. Standing there a moment, he realized he was hungry, and headed to the kitchen where he grabbed a can of baked beans and a can of corn. Using a can-opener that was resting on the counter, he sat at the table and opened the cans. After eating about half of each one’s contents, he replaced the lids, and went to check on his friend.

Zaun lay on his back, just as Jack had left him, the man’s stomach rising and falling with each breath. He smiled as his heart filled with warmth. He had no idea how long it would be before his friend would wake, but he was elated the guy was alive. Zaun would need time to regain his strength, to heal, and by the looks of him, Jack figured it would be at least a few days, maybe even a week. He wouldn’t leave until Zaun was able to defend himself, and strong enough to descend the side of the building via the rope. From what he saw of Zaun’s supplies, waiting a few days for his friend to recover would be doable, unless of course, the city was nuked; but he didn’t want to think about that, at least not for now.

Leaving Zaun to rest, Jack took the shotgun and the Sig Sauer and checked out each of the apartments on the floor. He found no survivors and no bodies, dead or undead. Any useful items were gone, taken either by Zaun, or by whoever survived.

Checking out the stairwell through the small glass window, he saw that a number of the undead had gathered just outside the door. Upon noticing him, they came toward him. Jack recognized the big guy from a few levels down. So, they could walk up stairs. He didn’t want to leave them there, and tried opening the door, but a number of undead were pressing against it, making it difficult to do so. He had an idea.

Walking to the stairwell at the other end of the floor, Jack peered through the window, scanning the area with his flashlight. All clear, he opened the door, and went down a flight. After making sure the hallway on the 22nd floor was void of undead, he went in.

Here, the apartment doors were all closed. Jack made his way quickly to the other end, peered through the window, then opened the door. He stepped into the stairwell, leaving the door ajar. He could hear the undead on the floor above him as they pawed and pushed at the metal door.

“Hey, assholes!” Jack yelled, his voice booming in the enclosed space. He waited as the undead began coming down the stairs. He heard a few thuds, guessing one of the undead had taken a fall, then saw a zombie dragging itself down the stairs as if its spinal cord had been severed.

Jack waited as it rounded the banister, then aiming his Sig, fired at the thing’s head, stopping it cold. The others were coming down the steps slowly, and one by one, he took them out until there were four dead bodies, including the big guy, in a pile at the foot of the stairs.

Letting the door close, Jack went to the nearest apartment and checked it for undead. Finding none, he went back to the stairwell and one by one, dragged the corpses into the apartment. Knowing he and Zaun would be using the stairs, he wanted the foul-smelling things out of the way.

With that done, Jack went through the rest of the dwellings on the floor before checking out the ones on the two floors below. He found that almost all the residences he visited had pots of water in them, just sitting on the stove as if everyone had decided to boil something, but never got around to doing so.

After spending a few hours searching the places, finding a few supplies but nothing special, he returned to Zaun’s.

Two days went by before Zaun was fully conscious and able to sit up and use the facilities on his own. Before that, Jack had fed and washed him. Zaun explained about filling pots of water and leaving them in the other apartments, the water used for washing and toilet flushing in case the electricity went out. His actions had proved beneficial, the only drawback — having to go to the other apartments to do his business, and carrying heavy pots of water back to his when he felt like it.

Throughout Zaun’s recovery, Jack talked about his own adventures, from waking up tied to a wheelchair to entering Zaun’s apartment.

“So, that’s how you saved my ass?” Zaun asked. “With a T aser?”

“Yeah,” Jack said, smiling, not telling his friend how close to death he had really come.

“You’ve been a busy man.”

Jack laughed. “Compared to you, it seems I had it easy.”

Zaun sat up in bed and took a sip of Gatorade.

“Yeah,” he said, “cleaned out the whole building, give or take a few places. Couldn’t get them all, those undead fuckers. It was tiring, having to swing a sword so many times and run around gathering supplies. Wish I had the keys to your guns, would’ve made life a lot easier.”

“You did a great job. I only came across a few undead, and what a stockpile of food you have.”

“I gathered as much as I could, buying a shit-load of food before things got really bad. After the… screaming… and other sounds died down, I went around to the apartments, gathering what I could. I kept myself well fed and hydrated. I was holding up, hanging in there… until one of them bit me. From there I started going downhill, until you came and saved me.”

“Well, we’re going to get you healthy, go out and look for any other survivors, then get the hell out of here.”

“There are no others, Jack,” Zaun said, quietly.

“There’s got to be, you can’t be the only one.”

“I checked. There’s no one else.”

“How can that be?” Jack asked, horrified.

“It just is. I the checked the basement, the roof, looked in and behind things. I checked every apartment up and down.”

Zaun’s faced started to redden. He slowly shook his head.

“You did your best, man. Don’t be hard on yourself.”

“I was a coward.” Zaun said, looking away.

“Don’t say that; you were amazing, killing all those undead and trying to save people.”

“That’s just it, Jack,” Zaun said, turning back to meet his gaze. “I didn’t try to save or help anyone… not at first.”

“When the shit really started to hit the fan, after all those people were mowed down on the Brooklyn Bridge, I flipped out. I hid in my apartment. I heard screams in the halls. People pounded on my door, but I was too afraid to answer it. I had already stocked up on food. I was an island, self-sustaining. From what I saw, it was every man for himself. Even the police scattered. Can’t blame them, they’re only human. It was a lawless period, brief as it was. People were acting crazy, and the dead were growing in number, coming back to fucking life. The news had said it wasn’t an airborne virus, but who really knew, right?”

Jack felt bad for the guy; for anyone caught in the city. It seemed like the world was ending. Maybe it had, at least for the citizens in Manhattan. No one could predict how a person would react to such an extreme occurrence; the dead rising up, looking for human flesh. Zaun shouldn’t blame himself for how he reacted to the events that unfolded, that were still unfolding. Sure, there would be scumbags who would take the opportunity to do evil, to rape and murder, but short of that, a person couldn’t get down on themselves for trying to survive.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Jack told him. “The whole city was, and is, in chaos; and from the looks of it, you were one of the smarter ones. People should’ve stayed inside, listened to the warnings; stayed off the streets.”

“Yeah,” Zaun agreed, “but in order to be able to stay in your home, you’d need supplies. Make sure you had enough of the essentials. No one knew how long this epidemic, the imprisonment, would last. The elderly were especially vulnerable. Mr. Zarnof came to my door, asking for help. I pretended I wasn’t home. Found him outside my door, dead. He wasn’t bit or anything. I think he just died of a heart attack or something.”

Zaun stopped talking. Tears were rolling down his face. “I still can’t close my eyes without seeing dead bodies, hearing the cries of people as they suffered.”

Jack hadn’t thought about what it was like from a topsider’s point of view. He had been one of the lucky ones, removed from the immediate chaos, the front lines. He couldn’t remember ever seeing Zaun so down, let alone cry.

“You did what you had to do in order to survive,” he said. “You did the best you could, and what was right for you.” Jack didn’t necessarily believe everything of what he was saying, but wanted Zaun in a positive frame of mind. He, himself, had no idea how he would have acted if he had been left in his apartment, his wife one of the undead. He would like to believe he would have tried to help people, but not having had to endure it directly, he truly didn’t know. Zaun was more of a loner, having no family and not many friends. The guy only did what his mind was capable of doing: dig in and survive.

“Only when I stopped hearing things,” Zaun continued, “did I finally get up the nerve to leave my apartment. I hated myself for being such a coward. I was relieved by the quiet; that there was no one left to save. I thought about killing myself, seppuku style, the way a samurai would have offed himself, but that was only deserving of a true warrior.

“I forced myself to eat, pushed my self-loathing down deep, realizing I could do nothing to change the past. I decided to see if there was anyone still alive. But the whole damn building was filled with the dead or undead. I was angry, pissed off. I hacked those undead fucks to pieces, but I quickly found that the only way to stop them was to separate the head from the body. I put all my years of training to use, except it wasn’t like fighting people. The undead were slow and stupid. Only in numbers were they formidable, intimidating.

“I started with our floor, clearing out the undead, dumping the bodies down the elevator shaft. I went through each apartment, looking for survivors, gathering up supplies, food as well as soap and whatnot. There were so many of the undead; I had to take breaks regularly. Sometimes, I’d have to run away, and then half the floor would be after me, chasing me into the stairwell.

“Then, one day when I was walking down the stairs, I heard a woman cry out. I ran down, saw her enter on the third floor. A zombie was on her tail, a kid of all things. I lopped his head off, then followed her to her apartment. She wouldn’t let me in, so I bashed the door down. She was crazy, all scratched up and bleeding. She didn’t want to come with me. When I went to grab her, she bit me.” Zaun paused, staring at the bite mark on his arm. “I was so angry. So pissed… I… backhanded her. Raised my sword…”

Jack closed his eyes. “You had no choice. She was already dead.”

“But that’s just it,” Zaun cried. “I didn’t kill her. I left her alone.”

Jack opened his eyes. He didn’t know what to say.

“I probably should have killed her, but I was so full of rage. She’d killed me, and I wasn’t about to allow her the easy way out. So I left her to die a slow, painful death.

“I came back to my place, scrubbed the wound, poured hydrogen peroxide over it, then bleach. Burned like a motherfucker. Later that night, I was already feeling tired, drained, but not like I was when I was hacking up those ungodly bastards. I was drained as if I had no strength, as if I hadn’t eaten in days. I was so hungry and all I kept thinking about was meat. Human meat. If I had the strength, I think I would’ve gone back down there, found the woman and started tearing into her. As it was, I was too wiped out. I was so hungry, Jack. Hungry enough that I had to fight against eating my own flesh.

“Eventually I started hallucinating. I saw my mother. She came to me. Told me everything would be all right. That I’d be with her soon.” Zaun was crying again. “It was the only good thing that happened to me.”

“Well, I’m here now, buddy,” Jack said, patting Zaun on the leg. “The past is the past. It’s time to move forward. You’re looking better, but you need to rest. No more talking, too much stress is no good. I’m going to let you sleep, then get you up in a few hours for some chow.”

Jack was pleased to see his friend coming along quickly. It was probably his age, good eating habits, genetics, and the fact that he was in shape. He didn’t want to spend anymore time topside than was necessary, but he also didn’t want to scare the guy. He hadn’t told him about the possible plans to nuke the city. Jack wasn’t leaving without his friend, and if the city was leveled, he and Zaun probably wouldn’t suffer for more than a few seconds at best.

Caught in a tough situation, Jack left the room, hoping the good doctor had come up with a way to solve the bot problem and alert the military before they decided to blow up Manhattan.