Dawn of the Dead (22 page)

The front wheels moved off the platform easily and bounced onto the floor of the concourse, but the frame scraped the top of the disc and it was stuck for a moment. The disc continued to spin, carrying the rear of the car with it. But Roger only gave it more gas, and the rear wheels spun, finally catching.

The car shot out onto the mall floor. Some of the zombies clung for a moment, but they all fell away quickly, scrambling to regain their footing; then they followed, the exhaust fumes billowing up in their faces.

The car skidded and swerved on the shiny mall floor. For a second it seemed that the pain was too much for Roger and that the car was out of control, heading directly for a marble column in the concourse. But Roger managed to pull the car out of the skid and maneuvered it toward the exit with tremendous energy.

One of the laggers of the zombies’ group tried to intercept the speeding auto by stretching out its arms, but the car crushed it unmercifully, splattering blood all over the floor.

Now Fran was able to see the car as it rounded the corner and headed directly for the main entrance, which she could see from her position.

The zombies at the entrance had already started back into the mall, attracted by the commotion. As the car zoomed down the concourse, it easily broke their ranks, scattering and splattering bodies everywhere.

Roger, his body drenched with sweat, his jaw set and teeth clenched, threw the car into a screeching tailspin, stopping with almost perfect precision at the doors.

The big trailer blocked the entrance effectively, but some creatures had managed to get inside the door. Under the big van, several zombies were struggling with the doors. One just pushed in, and it seemed that it would be able to enter.

Peter and Steve slammed against the door. Steve aimed his torch directly at the clawing creatures. The one in front withdrew its arm. But the grotesque things continued to writhe and kick under the truck. An image flashed in Steve’s mind—it was just like one of those medieval paintings of the gates of hell. And for one slight second, he began to question what he was doing. But then he put the thought out of his mind.

Peter returned to the car and searched around for the set of master keys. Slamming the door, he fell upon the lock mechanisms with the coded keys. Finding the proper one, he locked the swinging doors.

“That’s not one hundred per cent,” he told Roger, “but I don’t think they’ll get through.”

“Can’t they smash the glass?”

“Safety stuff . . . pretty indestructible . . . They got no leverage under the truck.” He turned to survey the situation. “Gimme the alarms.”

Steve rummaged in his backpack and produced two portable battery-operated burglar alarms. Peter activated the units and stood them against the base of the now locked doors. As he crouched near the glass, the creatures outside went into a frenzy, clawing at the glass doors. They were unable to get in.

“I’m hoping they’ll go away after they find they can’t get in,” he said to Steve as they watched the other creatures slowly moving down the concourse, approaching the action at the locked door.

The men jumped back into the car with not a moment to spare, and Roger put the vehicle into motion with a deafening blast.

Once again the sleek auto ripped through the ranks of advancing zombies. Like cardboard figures, they fell and were crushed under the powerful wheels.

Although Fran was practically paralyzed with fear, she felt helpless as she watched the car speed down the concourse. It was almost as if she were watching a terrifying, large-as-life movie. She stood by the department store gate as a muffled voice came over the walkie-talkie.

“We’re OK,” Steve’s voice crackled. “We got it made . . . it’s gonna work.”

She stared out through the roll gate. The surviving zombies in the concourse staggered weakly after the car. Almost a hundred bodies littered the concourse; some were beginning to move again, their blood mingling with the grease and debris kicked up by the speeding vehicle.

Once again, the shiny auto, with snazzy racing stripes, pulled up to the second door, sliding into a tailspin. The men scrambled out and again the zombies outside tried to crawl under the second trailer. But the men were able to shut them out easily, locking the door and planting the alarms. They worked as a team, silent this time, absorbed in their work.

When they had finished, they stood to look down the concourse. The creatures seemed to be more spread out now, but their numbers seemed to have multiplied.

“How many do you figure are already in?” Steve asked.

“Dunno,” Peter said, shaking his head, and stretching his arms outward. “Not too many. We’ll get ’em easy. We get it all locked off and we’re goin’ on a hunt!” he said with a malicious gleam in his eye.

It gave Steve a chill as he watched the big trooper raise his supergun and sight through the telescope.

Peering through the cross hair on the scope, Peter settled on the forehead of one of the creatures that was lumbering down the hall. The face appeared magnified and distorted, by the telescope. Peter applied pressure to the trigger, and the gun roared. After the impact, he still kept his eye on the scope and watched with pleasure as the sight filled with red. Without taking his eye away he knew that his bullet had hit the mark. He had the utmost confidence in the supremacy of his weapon.

10

The day had been overcast and chilly. Now nightfall descended on the lonely countryside. The zombies in the parking lot gathered around the semis that blocked the entrance to their sanctuary. In the moonlight, the creatures’ eerie moaning was like dogs baying at the moon.

Some creatures crawled under the trucks but could not enter the mall building. They pounded and scratched at the doors, but to no avail. In their nonthinking brains some instinct had triggered the impulse to smash against the glass doors, and they tried frantically to get inside.

The banging of the mob was muffled from the inside. Even though the revolving doors were locked, they seemed most vulnerable, but the crawling creatures could not quite get the leverage they needed to smash at the glass panels.

On the other side of the revolving door, the automobile offered added protection. And, as an early warning device, several of the alarm units sat atop the car, guarding against any penetration.

Like in a battlefield after a hand-to-hand-combat war, the zombies’ corpses were strewn all over the concourse. The only difference was that the bodies were from one side only. There was no mingling here of East against West, North against South, rich against poor, one culture or religion against another. Either the four humans were the victors or they were the victims. And once one of them was destroyed, it wouldn’t be long before they all fell prey to the living dead.

It was an eerie juxtaposition—the bleeding, putrid corpses superimposed against the now darkened and ransacked mall. The slumped and crushed shadows lay where happy, hard-working families had come to purchase the new and intriguing products that the great wheels of industry churned out for the unsuspecting, naive consumer. Now their haven had become a bizarre graveyard.

The band of humans appeared on the second-story balcony. Moving to the railing, they looked down into the expanse of the building. They looked like guerilla fighters, struggling in a foreign land, their weapons strapped to their backs, their faces creased with sweat and dirt, their eyes blank with fatigue and the abominable horror that they had witnessed.

They had taken the temple, and they surveyed their spoils. Even Roger seemed triumphant in his anguish as he limped to the railing, supporting himself by leaning against it.

Fran had mixed emotions as she viewed the spectacular expanse of dead bodies. She didn’t think of them in human terms, although many of them, only days before, had led their lives of quiet desperation. But it was a terrifying way to die, and she hoped that when the end came for her, she would go peacefully.

“We put the wall up here,” Peter told Steve after they had returned to the storage area. His pencil pointed to a map of the maintenance corridor. He drew a line just past the washrooms at the end of the hall near the fire stair. “There’s no door from the last office into the washroom, so nobody’ll get nosy . . . and this way we can still get to the plumbing . . .”

“Why can’t we just board up the stairway?” Steve asked. “Hell, they can’t even get through a stack of cartons.”

“I’m not worrying about them,” Peter told him somberly. He looked the younger man in the eyes. They had been through a lot in the past few days and all of them felt a bond of friendship. Both Steve and Fran felt they had proved that they were just as capable and necessary as Peter and Roger. They functioned as a team. No longer were they four separate individuals battling for survival.

Peter continued. “Sooner or later there might be a patrol through here . . . or even looters maybe. I don’t want anybody to ever know that stairway exists.”

They all looked back down at the map. On one side were the offices, with the washrooms to the right. The ducts and grille were above these. The maintenance corridor led along the rooms to the fire stair, directly across from the washrooms. It was at the point where the wall of the washrooms joined the maintenance hall that Peter wanted to build their fake wall. This way, from the outside it would look as if the hallway ended, but they would get the benefit of running water and flushing toilets as well as entrance, by way of the fire stair, to their hideout.

“The ductwork runs all the way into the washrooms,” Peter further explained. “We’ll have to get in and out that way. We’ll bring up any big stuff we want before we put up the wall.”

The two men huddled around the map. Surrounding them in the large storage area were mounds of supplies brought up from the small stores, but they were all in disarray.

Fran had been sitting and watching Roger and was quite concerned at his feverish condition. The trooper’s clothes were soaked through with sweat. His hair was plastered to his forehead, and underneath the closed eyelids, his eyes seemed to roll around. She figured he must be delirious, since his skin practically burned to the touch. She had been trying to soothe him with a wet cloth on his forehead, and tried to make him comfortable behind his barricade of cartons. Gently she wiped his face and his neck and then realized that he was shivering. Wrapping the blanket around him tightly, she gave him a reassuring pat. Then she moved toward Stephen and Peter.

“He seems to be sleeping,” she said with a nod in Roger’s direction.

“Good,” Peter said softly. He was torn between running over to Roger and remaining aloof. It was a tendency of his that had developed during his youth. When things got too heavy, too emotional for him, he tried to stay as far away as possible. That way things couldn’t hurt him. He had done that when his grandmother was dying. He couldn’t stand to see her frail body becoming a parcel of bones. He couldn’t stand to see her watery eyes watching him mournfully. So he chose to ignore it. Three days before she died, he enlisted in the Marine Corps.

Fran moved to where she had stored her medical supplies atop one of the cartons. She had assembled bottles of various medicines, vials of pills, and diabetic hypodermic syringes, as well as bandages and dressings from the pharmacy in the mall.

“I don’t know what else to do . . .” she mumbled to herself glancing furtively at Roger.

Steve stood up, brushed the dust off his pants leg and walked over to her. “You’re doin’ fine,” he reassured her, placing his arm around her shoulder.

Fran looked up at him with her tearstained face. She looked devastated by the recent events. Her hair hung in limp strings across her face, her complexion was sallow, and there were dark circles under her eyes. Steve knew he didn’t look any better. They weren’t living any more—they were barely existing. He longed for the familiar tedium of his past life. Anything but this nightmare!

“His leg is awful,” Fran said somberly. “The infection is spreading fast. Can’t we fly him out of here? . . . try to find a med unit?”

Steve looked at her sympathetically for a second and then turned to Peter.

“I’ve seen half a dozen guys get bitten by those things,” Peter told them quietly. “None of ’em lasted more than thirty-six hours.”

The finality and seemingly coldhearted manner with which Peter spoke stunned Fran. She had thought the two of them were friends—true friends. But then she realized that it was only Peter’s way of preparing himself for the inevitable.

“Peter . . . Peter . . . where are you?” Roger screamed from behind the cartons.

Peter gave the couple a quick, knowing glance and answered kindly, “Right here, buddy.”

Some inner resource had allowed Roger to sit up. He was now sweating even more profusely than before, and his eyes looked very dark and sunken.

“Yeah, yeah,” he called softly. He licked his cracked and swollen lips and looked around the vast, barren room, trying to get his bearings and clear his eyesight.

Fran could no longer take it. She moved to the far corner of the room and sat down on some cartons, her head in her hands. Occasionally, Roger would call out, his voice sounding pathetic as it echoed through the big storage area.

“We did it, huh, buddy? We whipped ’em.”

“That’s right, Rog,” Peter’s soothing voice answered him.

“Didn’t we?” he asked, his voice empty and strained.

Peter’s methodical, patient voice answered him again.

“We sure did, buddy.”

“We whipped ’em and got it all!” Roger screamed out frantically. “We got it
all
!”

•  •  •

Fran, Steve and Peter had been working on the fake wall for over two hours. They had created a great network of two-by-fours, which they had braced up at the rear of the corridor. More lumber was wedged against the walls, making a frame. Stephen slammed large nails into the framework for reinforcement. They had already nailed a Masonite panel into place on one side. In the corridor, Peter carefully nailed in a molding, which made the new partition look like a finished wall.