APOCALYCIOUS: Satire of the Dead (57 page)

“Just don’t be farting in my face, Neff.”

He chuckled because he was a ravenous eater of Bean and Bacon soup. It was his favorite and he had eaten some of it this morning.

“Something funny?” she asked suspiciously

“Yea…no…I just remembered something….uh…never mind…” he stammered.

She put a hand on his backside and pushed. “Go!”

He turned on his flashlight and she did the same as he swung open the metal door that led from the roof.

They took it slow as they descended into the darkness. It was silent within the stairwell but for Arlington’s boots echoing, keeping steady rhythmic time until they finally reached a landing with a door printed with a large number three.

“Here it is,” he whispered.

“I can read, you know?” she whispered back.

Arlington
didn’t respond as he pulled the handle toward him and swept the light through the doorway. Dust motes floated like snow through the beam of light. Another banner hung from the ceiling welcoming them to the exhibit. It was just as quiet in here as it had been in the stairwell and his boot heels made a distinct clack-clock sound as he moved forward. Juanita’s sneakers squeaked softly, but every sound seemed amplified in the cavernous auditorium.

Juanita emerged to his right side and the door swung slowly shut with a light hissing sound on its pneumatic shock. She shined her light on the large glass case in the center of the floor and walked toward it as
Arlington kept pace with her to her left.

The case was covered in dust and
Arlington wiped a section clear with his palm then wiped his hand on the leg of his jeans.

“It’s empty,” he said, sighing with disappointment.

Juanita examined other cases. “They’re all empty.”

“They must’ve moved them someplace safe when the infection was reaching critical mass,” he said.

“Great,” she groaned, “don’t tell me…the basement, right?”

“That’d be my guess.”

“And I suppose you want to have a look see?” she asked miserably.

“I can call Basil and have him pick you up if you want. I wouldn’t blame you,”
Arlington said. That was
exactly
what she wanted but she held her tongue.

“You’d probably end up getting lost if I wasn’t there to hold your hand.”

“Could be…basements are usually upstairs, right?” he said sarcastically, and she had to smile.

Juanita began to feel a coldness burrow into her bones and her heart began to hammer in her chest at the thought of going deeper into the building. Being trapped in a basement was not her idea of a good time, especially, when you were surrounded by a horde of dead cannibals and stuck in close quarters with a man that had been fiendishly devouring beans like the campfire scene of Blazing Saddles.

He looked at her, waiting for an answer.

She rolled her eyes. “You owe me big time,” she said with a sigh.

Arlington looked as if he wanted to say something witty then clamped his jaw shut.

They walked back to the stairwell and headed down the stairs.

             
                                         
Chapter 69 – Wails from the Crypt

The double push bars to the basement door was chained shut and Arlington cursed under his breath. A sign on the gray steel doors read in bold red letters ‘Authorized Personnel Only’.  He lifted the padlock that secured both ends of the chain and grunted.

Juanita squeezed close to his side, looked at the padlock and rummaged in her fanny pack. “I’d better not hear any comments about Mexican’s and stealing shit either,” she said as she withdrew a set of lock picks.

“Where’d you learn to do that?” he asked in surprise, but with a tone of admiration.

“I taught myself when I was with Annie.”

“Who’s Annie?”

“She’s dead,” she said quietly as she worked the picks.

“Sorry.”

“Would you shut up and let me work?” Juanita said in exasperation.
Arlington held the light for her and watched as her short fingers worked with surprising dexterity. She didn’t like people looking at her hands, she hated how they looked and assumed that everyone else did too. She thought they looked like those little Vienna sausages, but this wasn’t the time for such a trivial discussion. The faster she got through this door the faster they could be on their way and within a few seconds the lock clicked open.

“That was awesome! Can you teach me how to do that?”
Arlington asked, genuinely impressed. She placed the tools back in her pack and slid it behind her around her waist. She liked how he had said that, there was admiration there, almost a childlike quality in his voice.

She smiled up at him with perfectly lined, white teeth “Nope. A girl’s gotta have her secrets.” She unslung the shotgun from her shoulder and backed away from the door.

He smiled back in his crooked way.

“Well…are we going in?” she whispered. There was a loud booming noise from the stairwell above them that sounded like something heavy against metal, followed by a long, shrill scream and Juanita’s eyes widened. She looked at
Arlington with unspoken questions in her eyes. More screams cut the silence and the hairs on his neck and arms stood on end. He knew there was an exit on the floor above. The dead were close but how close he couldn’t tell.

“Stay here,” he said and ran up the stairs. She grabbed at the holster strapped around his waist, but missed and she watched him sprint away into the darkness above, his body seemed to dissolve into the shadows as if they had consumed him.

The roar of the twelve gauge was deafening in the enclosed space and its concussion surprised a scream from her. The shot was followed by two more before she saw Arlington scrambling back to her, his face pale and scared. He opened the door and ushered her in. “It’s our only choice. They’re comin’ through the exits upstairs and headin’ straight for us.” He slammed the door shut and turned the weak thumb lock.

“How did they…?”

“I don’t know,” he said as he wrapped the chain through the handles on the inside of the door. He clicked the padlock into place and the door boomed as the first of the dead arrived and threw its body into it.

“I hope that chain holds,” he said, then began turning over the metal shelves closest to the doors and barricading it with their weight.

Juanita watched, frozen, staring at the doors and her tiny body jerked each time the doors boomed with brutal impact.

“Ms. Mendoza.”

She snapped her head up.

“D’ya wanna scout around while I secure these doors?” he asked above the din of bodies colliding with the metal doors.

“Yeah,” she said regaining her composure and held her shotgun before her as she scanned the light left and right, up and down as she disappeared into the gloom. She was clearly shaken, but she hadn’t let that stop her. Arlington liked that.

He stacked boxes of dusty artifacts on top of the overturned shelves. The contents of the musty smelling boxes were probably priceless, but to him their only worth was in their weight. He wasn’t particularly fond of blocking his only exit and was aware that eventually they would have to fight their way out and face the almost certain probability of becoming lunch meat or starving to death inside. He was soaked in sweat when he fished out the radio from his pack and called the ship.

“Basil, where are you?”

The radio crackled and broke, “The rooftop. I figured it wouldn’t matter. The dead didn’t come after the ship this time. They went directly…..” the radio signal broke again.

“Basil!” he yelled into the radio

“…here. I think the link between myself and the one that has the other skull knew we were going…..” again the radio signal broke and
Arlington smacked the device against his thigh.

“Are you there?”

“…skulls are interfering with the signal…”

“How many of the dead are there?”

Arlington thought he could make out the word
thousand
but he wasn’t sure.

“Laptu is having a fit….wants to protect the baby…”

“Make sure the big galloot stays in the ship. Is there any way out of here?” He cursed himself for bringing the Bigfoot. Juanita had been right; they should have left the big guy behind and let him play with the babies.

…completely surrounded…”

“What about the roof?”

“It’s covered.”

“Dang it,” Arlington spat. “Keep me posted if anything happens.”

“You….well…” the signal was lost again and
Arlington put it back in his pack.

“Neff, back here!” Juanita shouted from the shadows.
Arlington worked his way through the rows of shelves and found her peeking over the edge of a large wooden crate. She saw him and said, “I don’t know why I’m surprised, but the skulls are vibrating. It’s really weird.”

He placed a hand knuckle side down on one of the skulls. “Dang, they must be vibrating at like a million beats a minute. I can feel it rattling my eyes.”

“Now what?” she asked.

“Now we throw them in the pack,” he said, as he slid his arms from the straps and laid it on the floor.

“OK…
then
what?” she asked in agitation as he shoved the skulls into the pack. It was a tight fit, but as he jostled them he was able to secure the flap and close it around them.

He nodded toward the shelves. “I s’pose we’ll take an inventory to see what else we’ve got down here. Maybe we’ll find something that’ll help us get outa here.”

“Right, broken pieces of pottery and a dinosaur shin bone should be more than a match for a million hungry corpses,” she said, waving the light toward the door. She saw that there were small bulges forming on its surface from the fists on the other side.

“Stranger things have happened.”

She glanced at his hook and tapped it with a knuckle. “You need a break?”

“Actually this hook is great, better than the original,” he said then realized that she probably needed one. He couldn’t mask his cringe as he mentally kicked his callousness. “How ‘bout you, you need a break?”

“I could use one, yeah.”

“You should have said something.”

“I don’t like to bitch,” she said and saw how Arlington raised an eyebrow. She gave him a playful shove in the stomach and noticed that there was virtually no fat on him at all. “I mean I don’t like to bitch about my
hips hurting
.”

He motioned for her to sit. “I s’pose I could use a little break myself,” he said.

“You don’t have to do that,” she said, not buying his bull, “I’m just not very good at stairs and five flights of them were way too many.” She eased herself down, leaning on the twenty gauge for support. He saw her face become pained as she lowered herself to the floor. For a moment they just listened to the booming of the doors and the chain rattling with each concussion.

He sat down, legs splayed straight out. He flicked the safety on with his hook and she got a better look at it. There were actually three hooks lined side by side that could curl all together or one at a time.

“I’ve seen artificial hands before but that one is…I don’t know…different.”

“Noah gave it to me.” He patted the back of his head. “Put a chip in my brain too.”

She frowned. “So you were abducted and they did that to you without your permission?”

“I had my concerns about it at first, but the longer time goes by, the more I appreciate it,” he said.

She continued to frown. “Still, they should have asked first.”

Arlington
shrugged, a frown etched on his brow.

“It saved me… see, I used to be into all these conspiracy theories. It
was a waste of time, just a selfish fantasy to escape into.” He looked at his hook appreciatively and rooted in a cardboard box, extracting a cylindrical can of non-dairy creamer. She watched as he stuffed the can in his pack and he continued without commenting on the condiment. “I’ve been a screw up my whole life,” he said as he rubbed his hand over the opposite tattoo covered arm. Juanita thought he had nice arms, regardless of the poorly rendered art that adorned them. He looked up at her and just enjoyed looking at her for a moment. “Do you believe in God?” he asked.

She was taken aback for a moment, wondering where that question had come from, and then she reached into the collar of her shirt and withdrew a tiny gold cross. She let it fall between her breasts. “Catholic,” she said as she watched, amused as he tried valiantly not to stare at her breasts. “They aren’t real, you know?”

Arlington was thankful that it was poorly lit in the depths of the basement, because he could feel his cheeks getting hot. “I wasn’t….”

She held up a small hand stopping him. “It’s alright. I didn’t ask for these either,” she nodded her chin toward her chest and told him about the Doctor and Annie.