Dawn of the Dead (24 page)

Then Fran brushed the hairs off Steve's shoulders, and he got out of the barber chair. She put the scissors away and wandered over to the pet store to play with the kittens and puppies. She changed the soiled newspaper and kitty litter, filled the water bowls and gave them all fresh food. She watched with a wan smile on her face as the little animals lapped up their food joyfully, oblivious to the desecration around them. Then she ambled over to the tall cage in the concourse and threw bird seed to the tropical birds that fluttered and flapped about, screeching loudly.

A half an hour later, the team regrouped on the upper balcony. They still had their weapons and survival kits, but Peter was wearing a wide-brimmed hat and Fran sported a new mink coat. They looked wearily down the main concourse to the deserted and ransacked stores. It was empty of corpses, but they could still hear the moaning and pounding at the main entrances. It was extremely dark outside, and so the group could not see the creatures there. But their persistent sound was evidence enough of their presence.

“They're still here,” Fran said wearily, scanning their realm.

“They're after us,” Steve replied. “They know we're in here.”

Peter fiddled with the brim of his hat. It looked outlandish with his trooper's uniform.

“They're after the place.” He turned to Steve and Fran. “They don't know why . . . they just remember . . . remember that they wanna be in here!”

“What the hell are they?” Fran's eyes darted nervously. The noises at the entrance seemed to rise to an eerie crescendo pitch.

“They're us, that's all,” Peter droned on, his voice barely above a whisper. “There's no more room in hell.” His face was set in a grim expression, his eyes downcast.

“What?” Steve spun around, not believing what he had just heard uttered.

Peter took the wide-brimmed hat off his head and wiped his forearm across his sweating brow. He leaned against the railing and gazed long and hard at the couple.

“Somethin' my grandaddy used to tell us. You know Macumba? Voodoo? Grandaddy was a priest in Trinidad. Used to tell us, ‘When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth!' ”

The room spun around Roger. He reached his arms out for some stability, but they only thrashed about in the air—there was nothing to hold onto. He felt as if he were in a madly tilting Ferris wheel. His mouth opened and he emitted an urgent scream, which came from deep within him and seemed to echo long after his mouth clamped shut. He felt clammy and wet, as if he had been immersed into a pot of cold water and left to dry in a draft. His face, which was ashen, contorted in pain as the needlelike stings traveled up his black and swollen leg. His arm, which was wrapped but oozing, was all but numb.

A distant voice reverberated through his pounding head.

“Get more morphine in him,” Steve determined as Fran fumbled with one of the hypodermics. In her haste, she dropped the vial of serum, and it shattered on the floor. The sound was like thunder to Roger's ears.

“Get another one . . .” Steve urged, struggling to hold the wildly thrashing Roger in place. “Come on . . .”

Fran rushed into the other room to the medical supply area, which had been organized with little cabinets and a small refrigerator. She took a new vial of serum from the refrigerator.

After the crew had built the fake wall in the maintenance corridor, they had decided to give each other more privacy and built separate rooms.

The huge storage area was now arranged so that there was a central living room in the middle, with three bedrooms and a general room, which contained the medical supplies and a workbench with tools, surrounding it like the spokes of a wheel. They had managed to drag up fairly large pieces of furniture, including mattresses, tables and chairs, lamps, and a few sectional pieces that formed a couch in the living room area. This was in addition to the television, the microwave oven, and other large electronic pieces that they had brought up earlier. Although there were still many cartons scattered about, it was beginning to look more like a home—or at least a college dormitory—than a storage area.

Downstairs, Peter was intent on checking the covering at the floor base of the fake wall when he heard the violent screaming emanating from above.

He ran into the far office and climbed up a rope ladder that dangled from the ceiling. Scrambling through the grille-work in the ceiling, he entered the duct. Then he pulled up the ladder and closed the grille. Wriggling through the tight space for a few feet, he came to another opening and dropped through that grille into the washroom. Then he moved around the back of the finished partition, and through the wooden framework, into the fire stair. It was a circuitous path, but one that would not be detected by unwanted intruders.

As he rushed up the stairs, several steps at a time, Roger's screams became more and more agonized. As Peter charged into Roger's makeshift bedroom, he could see Fran withdrawing a hypodermic from Roger's good arm. The man kicked his legs and whipped his arms around with abandon, striking anything or anybody within reach. Steve tried to wrestle the man still, but even in his sickness, Roger was exceptionally strong. Peter ran over and clamped his big hands onto the other trooper's shoulders. Whether it was his powerful arms pressing down, or simply his presence, Roger miraculously relaxed. Fran watched for a moment with tears in her eyes and then drifted out of the room.

“Go on,” Peter said to Steve after Roger had settled down enough to allow the drug to take effect. “I'll stay with him.”

Steve gave him a long, hard look, as if to say, “I know what you're going through,” and left the room.

In the living area, Fran was sitting in an inflatable chair, which was molded to her body. She felt safe in that chair, as if she were in a womb, and often found refuge in it when things got rough. Steve came up to her and put his arms around her neck from behind. She cupped his hands with hers and held them tightly. He rocked her gently back and forth as she sat staring off across the room.

In Roger's room, a heaviness fell over the air. He caught his breath and looked up at Peter.

“You . . . you'll take care of me, right, Peter?” he asked, feeble and childlike. He licked his lips and tried to speak coherently. “You'll take care of me . . . when I go?”

Peter stared directly ahead, his eyes focused on a nail in the temporary wall. “I will.”

“I don't wanna be walkin' around like that, Peter . . . not after I go . . .” Roger tried to sit up to better make his point, but Peter merely applied slight pressure and the blond trooper lay down again. “I don't wanna be walkin' around like that . . .”

Roger's eyes were terrified. Like a frightened deer, he looked this way and that at the walls, the ceiling, at Peter—but he couldn't focus. The spinning started again and he felt nauseated.

“Peter?
Peter?
”

“I'm here, trooper,” Peter said, almost mechanically.

The man's face was impassive. He was prepared.

“You'll take care of me . . . I know you will . . .” Roger pleaded.

“I will.”

“Peter?”

“Yeah, brother?” his voice softened. His eyes glistened and the lines around his mouth tightened.

“Peter, don't do it . . . till you're sure . . . sure I'm comin' back. Don't do it till you're sure . . . I might not come back, Peter.” Roger's voice weakened, and a shudder passed through his body. “I'm gonna try not to . . . I'm gonna try . . . not to come back . . .”

His body gave a final heave, and his eyelids fluttered but remained opened. Peter reached across the still chest and closed the lids. Then he sat very still, the tears streaking his dust-covered face.

•  •  •

Moonlight filtered down through the skylight in the living area, a pathway to heaven. The path to freedom through the skylight was now a sturdy wooden ladder, that had replaced the pyramid of cartons. Someone had superstitiously left a derringer pistol on the top step.

Stephen was huddled over the huge twenty-one-inch color console television that they had lugged up to replace the first one. He had wired the set to a makeshift antenna that stretched up through the skylight. Now he fiddled with it, but only a faint signal came in. Nearby, a table lamp sat on a small end-table, shedding some light on the darkened room. Its cable was patched into a network of wiring that stretched about the room.

Fran unpacked in the dining alcove. She had chosen a pale wood butcher-block with four rush-seated chairs. Nearby was a matching breakfront, which she had filled with dishes and silverware. It was something she had always wanted, and she felt foolishly like a newlywed. She was trying very hard not to think about what was going on in the other room. For quite some time now, Roger had been silent, but neither she nor Steve had the nerve to investigate. At every sound, she turned to see if Peter was coming out of the room.

Steve was intent on the television. At first he had turned it on to get his mind off Roger, but now he was seriously listening to the two men who were talking. One was a commentator, the other a government official. It amazed him to see others who were still alive. He felt so isolated here. It had only been about three or four days, but since their total existence had been disrupted, all time had lost its meaning.

“I've got to . . . be careful with words here . . .” the scientist was saying. He was dressed in a suit, but his tie was rumpled and his shirt open at the collar. His face was unshaven and his eyes drawn, with dark circles under them. “We haven't been able to study their habits. We've repeatedly asked for a live capture so we can have controlled studies . . .” he seemed to stutter on the last word and his cheek twitched nervously. “We need s-s-supply-and-demand ratios.”

The commentator was also dressed in a rumpled suit, but he wore no tie. He, too, looked as though he hadn't slept in days.

“You mean,” he questioned, “their need versus—”

The scientist cut him off. “Versus the amount of food available. Let's be blunt.” He pulled his folding chair closer to the camera. There was a commotion in the TV studio. The noises and shouting reminded Steve of the confusion at WGON before they had escaped.

“Jesus Christ,” he mumbled, thinking how far away they were now from that scene, and how much they had gone through to be here now.

He squatted near the set, his eyes transfixed. Fran came up to the screen from behind him.

The scientist continued, his eyes growing wider and darting nervously.

“Project their rate of growth. There's a critical balance. And it's the waste that kills us, literally. They use . . . they use maybe five per cent of the food available on the human body. And then the body is usually intact enough to be mobile when it revives. There's an ecological imbalance, and they're incapable of understanding.” He finished his sentence, and wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket. The stains on his sleeve were noticeable over the air.

“What are you proposing?” The commentator had gray hair and an unshaven face as well. He wore rimless glasses, which kept slipping off his nose. The hot lights from the studio caused him to perspire.

“We have to be unemotional,” the scientist replied. “We have to provide countermeasures or we're all . . . they can't control the rate of growth and consumption. We have to control it for them.”

“You're suggesting that we help them?” the commentator asked, horror-stricken.

“By helping them in this case we save ourselves.” The scientist looked around at the studio audience, hoping to get some support for his radical idea.

A great outcry greeted his words. The image on the set bobbled around as if the camera were being jostled by an irate crowd. The speaker fumbled for the right words to describe the situation.

Steve watched with fright in his eyes. “Good God,” he uttered.

The scientist's whining words reached Peter in the other room. His face was impassive and expressionless. His eyes, however, were pinpointed on something straight ahead of him.

“I'm proposing that certain . . . necessary measures be put into effect at once,” the scientist continued. “Measures applying to all official search-and-destroy units, while they're still operative . . . Hospitals . . . rescue stations . . . and any . . . private citizens . . .”

Peter's eyes fluttered and he looked down at the rifle stretched across his lap. The TV droned on from the living room:

“In cooperation with the mobile units of the O.E.P., the corpses of the recently dead should be delivered over to the authorities for collection in refrigerated vans . . . they should be decapitated to prevent revival . . .” The words rushed out of the scientist's mouth, as if they were distasteful.

When he had finished, he took a deep breath, as if anticipating the outburst that followed.

Peter's eyes went from the rifle on his lap to the floor, where twenty feet away lay Roger's corpse. His face was covered with a blanket. A slight breeze from the fan in the living room wafted over the inert form, lifting the corners of the blanket.

“This collection . . . this collection,” the scientist shouted over the voices clamoring in the studio. The staff was now on stage, protesting vigorously. Emotional and foul language was being thrown around with no concern for the FCC regulations.

“This collection could be . . . stored . . . rationed . . . for distribution among the infected society . . .” He could barely be heard over the angry shouts. “In an attempt, in an attempt to curb the senseless slaughter . . . the senseless slaughter of our
own
society . . .”

Peter blinked his eyes. He wanted to make sure of what he saw. He wanted to be certain that it wasn't his imagination playing tricks on him. But now he knew it to be true—Roger's foot had definitely moved under the blanket. He tightened his hands on his weapon.