Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (Book 4): Resolution (48 page)

William was shaking so much he couldn’t hold
the light steady in his hands. The light skittered on the walls as
if it too were afraid. He tried to control his breathing and calm
his fears, but his efforts produced little in the way of effects.
The terror in his veins was as wild and untamable as a wild
mustang.

If whatever was out there would just show
itself, William could get past the nearly crippling fear.
Waiting...anticipating...dreading… all were more poisonous than
facing the monsters in the dark. He exhaled a stilted breath and
came to an abrupt stop.

From multiple doorways on both sides of the
hall, first arms and then heads and legs, and full bodies spilled
into the corridor, oozing like the rancid wave of foulness that it
was. Emma leaned back, dropped the poker at her feet, and quickly
had her assault rifle in her hands.

She growled, “Fuck this!” and began
firing.

The creatures were coming at them three
abreast and filling the flashlights’ beams several ranks deep.
Emma’s first rounds brought down two zekes from the front rank and
one from the second. Stifling her fear, Emma brought the rifle to
her shoulder and aimed the M4, firing well-placed rounds into
several gray foreheads. Her bullets plowed into them like a strong
wind through tall grass. The beasts fell left and right, their legs
tangling themselves with those still stalking forward.

Emma could feel her heart rate rising
considerably and her jaw tightened. Her breathing too was starting
to change. Emma thought she was starting to enjoy this. She
devoured the rush like candy and yearned for more. She was
surprised at herself, but there was no denying her burgeoning
passion for the fight. She made no effort whatsoever to mask her
pleasure from others.

Through the lazy wisps of smoke and barking
thunderclaps her rifle was making, Emma shouted, “I need to reload!
Your turn!”

Neil raised his own M4. He was more
practical and businesslike in his approach. His face didn’t change
much as he squeezed off round after round. Emma watched him in awe.
He wasn’t doing this because he enjoyed it. Neil did it because it
was needed of him.

It may have been an odd moment, but Emma
felt a sudden rush of respect for Neil. She saw what Meghan had
seen; what had attracted Meghan to Neil in the first place. He was
a good man and a good friend.

Smiling warmly over at him, she said, “Okay,
I got this.”

Neil once again stepped back and allowed
Emma to go to work. Firing surgically and conservatively, Emma and
Neil killed more than three dozen of the monstrosities until the
floor was carpeted with still bodies.

Picking their way carefully through the
carnage, Neil swept all around their feet with his own flashlight,
ensuring they wouldn’t be fatally surprised. Emma had her poker
again and was jamming its sharpened point into any suspicious
looking skulls. Anything that looked like it still harbored the
torturous life of the undead was dealt a firm and vicious jab. She
wasn’t sure if she was killing any of them or not but she was
certain that none of the demons would be killing her or any of her
friends.

William and Jess watched all of this from
behind Neil and Emma, stunned at the efficiency and ease with which
the two of them essentially killed close to forty people. Under any
other normal circumstance, their actions would have been nothing
short of psychopathic and evil. As it was, both William and Jess
were thankful for their companions’ abilities.

“They know we’re here now,” Neil cautioned.
“We have to move quickly. Keep up.”

They moved down the hallway further into the
darkness, closing doors as they went. There was no time for looking
around. Neil wished he could see more, but was thankful for the
light they had. He couldn’t imagine wandering through this maze in
absolute darkness.

Standing near an open door, Neil reached
forward to grab the door handle and retreated with a gasp when a
shriveled, skeleton of a hand touched his own. A wave of terror
gripped him from his groin to the back of his neck, locking his jaw
and drying his mouth in an instant.

“Jeeeeeeesusssssss!”

He fell backward into the opposite wall and
slid down until he was seated on the floor. He looked over at the
still open doorway and gasped as well when the little child zombie
slithered out of the dark room. Its legs had been gnawed all the
way up to its thighs but the feast had ended when the little ghoul
reanimated. It appeared as if it had been a boy about the same age
as Danny. Looking at the wriggling inhuman body with its pulpy
rotten stumps, it was easy to spot other wounds he had suffered in
his agonizing death. He was missing a few fingers and his face bore
gaping wounds still detectable despite the setting in of mortal
decay.

The pitiful creature pulled itself along on
its legless frame with its frail, emaciated arms. It was hard to
believe that the thing had once been a human child. William
couldn’t take his eyes off of Neil while Jess couldn’t pull hers
away from the sickening fiend.

When Emma’s poker swung out of the darkness,
smashing the zombie’s skull and scrambling its infected brain,
everyone but Emma jumped. She leaned forward and finished shutting
the door, having to kick the lifeless carcass deeper into the room
in the process. “We need to keep moving if we want to make it outta
here alive,” she said.

“Maybe we should just call it a day and get
back,” Neil said from the floor.

“What?” Emma demanded. “We’re almost there
for Christ’s sake. Why the hell would we turn back now?”

“I don’t know, Emma. Who knows how many more
of those things are down there waiting for us? Hell, that’s
probably where all of them are anyway. People brought onto the ship
from Whittier when all of this started were probably taken down
there. Right? I mean, there could be hundreds.”

Emma looked at Neil sharply. “So we came
here...for nothing?”

Neil was about to answer when he thought he
saw something from further down the hall. He picked up his
flashlight and pointed its beam in that direction. None of them
could tell for sure what they were seeing. There was just so much
surging movement, it was hard to get a fix on any one thing. When
they did finally see that it was a herd of undead perhaps a hundred
deep or more coming at them, Neil leapt to his feet and they turned
about in the hallway to retreat.

William stopped in his tracks, confronted by
another group coming at them from behind. “Shit!”

Emma stepped around him. “No time.” She
pulled the trigger on her assault rifle and cut down four ghouls.
She stepped forward and fired again. With each pull of the trigger,
Emma forced herself to move forward.

Jess had joined her, using the old Mini-14
carbine Emma had given her. Her gun’s voice was much more metallic
than Emma’s M4, which sounded like a deep-throated growl.

The women’s combined firepower quickly made
a difference in the pack behind them, dropping more of them than
either could count. Jess’ rifle popped and clicked, indicating she
had fired through all twenty of its rounds. She pulled the empty
magazine from the rifle, dropped it, and then tried to reload but
her hands were shaking too badly to accomplish the task.

“Get behind me to reload,” Emma said.
“Concentrate and relax. I’m gonna need you back right away. I’ll
need to reload pretty quick. Grab your empty clip too.”

Jess did as she was told, stuffing the
retrieved clip into her sweatshirt pocket. In a matter of seconds,
she was standing next to Emma and firing again. If Jess had any
time to do so, she would have felt a sense of pride in herself.

There was neither time nor room in her mind
for anything other than trying to count the number of times she had
pulled the trigger and finding her next target. Her ears were
ringing as if she had the Liberty Bell inside her head. Still, she
continued to fire her rifle and step alongside Emma, pressing
further and further into the hall.

Neither woman had given a thought to what
was happening behind her. The unfortunate reality was that
developments in that direction were not going as well. While both
Neil and William were armed with assault rifles, there were many,
many more zekes coming at the two of them.

Holding his flashlight against the side of
his rifle, Neil felt a sick feeling rising in his stomach at the
realization that no matter how many they were able to shoot, there
were still be more to kill. They didn’t have enough ammunition.

His worries were punctuated when he slammed
one of his last full magazines into his rifle. The other thing they
were running short on was time. They couldn’t afford to wait any
longer. He chanced a look over his shoulder and was disheartened to
see that, despite their best efforts, Emma and Jess had not been
able to destroy the mob behind them.

The air was growing thick with smoke and the
rising din of the chorus of moans. Seeing that William was still
pounding away at the press of reanimated ghouls, Neil opened a door
to their left and scanned the other side.

It was a big room, perhaps a banquet room or
some other similar space. He was excited to see with a sweep of his
flashlight that there were doors on the opposite side. They had a
way out.

Seeing a fire extinguisher compartment near
to him, he shot forward, pulled the red canister from its perch,
and set it on the floor. Neil bellowed, “We gotta run! Now!
Everyone, c’mon!”

Emma turned away from her still approaching
targets and quickly moved to where Neil was pointing. Jess followed
and soon so did William. Neil rolled the extinguisher into the hall
and shot a hole in it.

The pressurized vapor rushed into the
hallway in a thick white mass. The sudden appearance of the cloud
befuddled the senses with its forceful presence, creating the
optimum screen for Neil’s departure. The four of them disappeared
into thin air...well, thick air.

The room into which Neil, Emma, William and
Jess retreated was cavernous compared to the claustrophobic
tightness of the hallway from where they had come. Unfortunately,
there was no time to catch their breaths; they had to keep
moving.

They crept across the room toward the doors.
At the first one, Neil grabbed the door handle and counted silently
with his mouth and on three, he opened the door while Emma stood
with her rifle pointed straight ahead.

Chairs. Tables. Serving carts. More chairs.
Coat racks. And no exit to be found. Their hearts sank with the
disappointment. There was only one door left and their hopes were
dimming.

To make matters worse, the throng in the
hallway had discovered their escape into the banquet hall and were
banging fists and feet into the door and wall surrounding it. The
thumps were erratic and uncoordinated, doing little more than
shaking long dormant dust loose. It was only a matter of time and
all of them knew it.

They hurried to the next door but this time
Neil looked at each of them and nodded. He pulled open the door,
closing his eyes to shut out any potential disappointment. Emma
pulled on his sleeve and shook him until he opened his eyes.

Peeking around the edge of the door, Neil
looked into a full kitchen with a stocked pantry. More importantly,
in his flashlight’s beam Neil could see a door that was aptly
labeled
Emergency
Exit
.

Neil plunged into the kitchen and led them
to the exit. Emma was pulling the door closed behind her when they
heard the crash in the banquet hall behind them. The other door had
finally collapsed, after sagging, creaking, and popping with the
combined weight more than a hundred of the undead pressed against
it.

Through the compromised doorframe, a deluge
of knotted arms, legs, bodies, and heads spilled into the room and
threatened to spread to every corner like quicksilver. A never
ending stream of walking corpses quickly flooded the banquet hall
with their staggered, spasmodic gait and sickening siren moan.

Emma had closed the emergency exit door long
before any of that had happened. When she did, she was excited to
see windows were lighting the narrow hallway. There were stairs at
the end of the corridor and William was even then disappearing up
the next flight. Emma was quick to follow the others up and
away.

The hallway at the top of the stairs was as
diminutive as the one below but led to a substantial looking door,
which quite obviously led to the outside.

Pulling the massive door’s handle, Neil
swallowed hard and pushed it open. They were indeed standing
outside again. Neil couldn’t remember a time in his life in which
he was so elated with the briny smell of the sea. It was snowing
again and the air felt quite a bit cooler since they had entered
the floating charnel house. The sun, once again wrapped in its gray
quilt of a sky, was preparing to bid farewell for the night.

Neil didn’t know how comfortable William was
with navigating the rough waters of the Prince William Sound at
night, but he was fairly certain they would all be better off if
they didn’t have to do it. They needed to keep moving.

The four of them were standing on a steel
deck, all business and no frills. Below them was the main deck.
They would be required to descend a slippery-looking ladder and,
unfortunately, Neil couldn’t get a clear view of the space directly
below them. He could, however, see that there were a half dozen or
more zekes several strides to their left, but it appeared that the
creatures were unaware of the quartet’s presence.

Neil knelt behind the solid railing and
signaled for everyone else to do the same. “Okay,” he said. “There
are a handful of them over that way but there may be more.” He
caught Emma’s irritated look and apologized, “I’m sorry. That’s all
I can see.” He nodded toward her, “You and I will go down first.
William and Jess come down after. William, which direction should
we go to get back to
Serenity
the
fastest?”