DEAD RAIN: A Tale of the Zombie Apocalypse (20 page)

51

Dammit,
Leeds thought.
They’ve split up the group.
He was faced with a dilemma now and had to act fast. Luckily he had a perfect solution at hand.

He crept to the back of the funhouse and pried the lock off a small plywood panel. The hatch dropped open, revealing an emergency generator inside. Leeds remembered the gennie from a story his son had told back when he worked on the pier. A freak summer storm had knocked out the power and some loud-mouthed punk vacationing from the city who’d mocked the funhouse on his way in, had pissed his droopy-assed jeans when the lights went out while he was inside. The smart-mouthed thug tried to slip discreetly out the door in the darkness—just as the gennie kicked in. The outside lights flared on, exposing the puddle in his pants, and the crowd on the pier showered him with the laughter he earlier craved.

Leeds closed the choke on the unit and twisted the key. It sputtered, spat blue-tinted fumes, coughed uncertainly a few times, then finally kicked into gear. As its rhythmic humming started Leeds threw a master switch on a console beside it and the impact was instantaneous.

A string of blinking red lights
that lined the funhouse overhang flared on and the devilish ringmaster sprang to life. “Ho ho, hee hee!” his recorded voice blared through the night from a pair of loudspeakers over the door. “Welcome to the Devils Den, my friends! Enter… if you dare!” The stentorian greeting repeated again and again as the mechanical ringmaster rocked back and forth on his heels and his impish canned laughter brayed across the pier.

Inside the building, the women felt their hearts drop as the funhouse came to life. Demonic growls and witchy laughter echoed through the crooked black corridors. Dim bulbs flickered on, revealing dummy monsters hiding in nearby nooks, ready to spring forward when triggered by motion senso
rs.

“Oh my God, what’s happening?” Kerri gasped. She was stumped as to how the power could have come on, and knew the situation couldn’t be worse. The noise was certain to draw the ravenous walkers right to their door.

Cat sat up, alarmed. She was still conscious, but had swallowed some strong medication that Kerri had assured her would kick in soon. Now, instead of getting some much needed pain free rest, she faced a very different prospect.

“What’s happening?” cried
Emma, hugging the Colt to her chest.

“Just calm down. The power came back on, that’s all,” said Kerri, eyeing the girl’s handgun warily.
Jesus, how could that kid have been so clueless, giving her that gun? We’ll be lucky if she doesn’t blow her brains out.
“It’s okay,” she continued. “Just let me go see what’s happening outside. Stay here. And stay calm.” She made a beeline for the entrance to peek outside. If they were lucky, she’d find the entire pier lit up, maybe the entire boardwalk.
Maybe it’s the National Guard,
she thought hopefully.
Maybe they’re finally getting things under control.

A mechanical werewolf lunged with a roar as she passed, causing her heart to skip a beat. And it skipped again when a coffin lid flew open and a hissing vampire popped up.

Any optimism she had died a hasty death as soon as she peeked out the door. The funhouse was the only place with power, a noisy beacon that would surely bring unwanted company.

What the hell is going on? Did the guys do something stupid when they left?

Paranoia crept into her mind.
Did they do it on purpose? Did they sacrifice us so they could get away?

No… don’t be crazy. Jesus, girl, hold it together.

Sickly fear washed over her as she spotted the first of the walking corpses shambling into view, unmistakable with its bloodstained shirt and heavy-footed gait. It came stumbling around the side of the carousel… and was followed by another. And another. There was no doubt about it—they were coming straight for the funhouse.

Kerri ducked inside and quickly pulled the door closed. Her mind raced wildly, trying to figure out what she could possibly do.

If she could somehow disable the power…
but how?
She didn’t have a clue as to how or why it could even be turned on. And by now it was too late anyway.
They’re already coming. We’re trapped in here.

Her paranoia escalated, making her question her very sanity. The whole thing seemed a living nightmare. Evil and surreal. Like she’d died and gone to hell. How else could she possibly explain the power going on in the one place she happened to be?

She hurried back through the black-walled corridor, half-expecting to find her companions gone and herself alone in some private corner of hell. To her relief they were right where she’d left them. But it was meager relief at best.

She wasn’t in hell after all.

Just hell on earth.

***

Outside on the pier, Leeds crept along the side of the funhouse, half-hidden behind the wooden railing. He could see the stream of cadavers approaching, their attention focused on the mechanical ringmaster, whose rollicking movements and obnoxious bellowing were designed to attract attention.

Creeping to the funhouse door
, Leeds pushed it open and stuffed a rag from his gear bag under the bottom edge to hold it open. Then he turned and slipped back along the railing before the walking dead could see him, ducking behind the building just as they arrived.

He waited and watched as they approached the loud-mouthed ringmaster and groped his faux flesh with their gnarled fingers. They soon realized he was merely an artificial dupe and turned, about to wander away.

Leeds cursed silently.

Then o
ne of the ghouls hesitated, attracted by the sound of growling and cackles from inside the funhouse. He stood frozen for a moment, his rotting brain processing the new stimuli… then he stumbled up the wooden ramp and disappeared through the open doorway.

Soon a train of hungry cadavers were shuffling up the ramp.

That’s right,
Leeds chuckled silently.
Follow the goddamned leader.

52

Back on the beach staircase,
Ryan and Bronski remained still as statues until the lifeless walker shuffled away. As soon as the coast was clear the trooper tugged the boy’s sleeve, and they descended the steps to the sand.

Bronski paused there, considering their next move. The nearest ramp to the city streets was fifty feet away across the boardwalk. To get there would be a death race. The herd had already lost interest in the shattered picture window and was scattered across the boardwalk. Without another major distraction they’d draw the zombies to them like pins to a magnet. It would be nearly impossible to get past them and even if they somehow managed to reach the other side, the stiff-legged walkers might not be so slow when they were chasing them down the ramp, with gravity helping them along.

He turned and gazed down the beach. A flash of lightning revealed another set of stairs a hundred yards away. He motioned to Ryan and they jogged the distance—but found zombies on the boardwalk there as well—and as far as they could see.

Ryan saw the look of consternation on the trooper’s face and half expected him to give up. Instead Bronski motioned him to follow and stepped into the darkness under the boardwalk. They swept the black void with their flashlights, aimed low so their beams wouldn’t slip through the boards above. Dawn was still hours away, and between flashes of lightning the unlit
boardwalk was dark.

It was a relief to be out of the rain, but not much—icy blobs of water dripped through the boardwalk crevices. The sand beneath their feet was wet but solidly packed.
They crossed through the darkness and reached the other side without incident, but found it sealed off with chain-link fencing that rose from the concrete abutments marking the end of the beach to the edge of the boardwalk above.

Bronski looked up and saw that the fence was firmly attached to the
edge of the boardwalk. He swore under his breath. He’d left the multi-tool with its wire cutter in his tac bag back at the funhouse. He turned and stepped back and saw Ryan moving along the chain-link barrier, shining his light at the top. Bronski was about to chastise him but the boy turned and gestured him over. At the top of the fence was a gap where the chain-link had separated from the edge of the boardwalk.

Bronski squee
zed Ryan’s shoulder and smiled.

“I’ll go first,” Ryan whispered.

“No. I’m heavier. If I can’t make it, there’s no point in you going over.” He handed his rifle to Ryan and removed his plastic poncho. Balling it up he jammed it into the back of his beltline, so it wouldn’t get chewed up on the fence.

It wasn’t an easy climb. The
chain-link was old and saggy and it wobbled and swayed under his weight. The higher he climbed the unsteadier it became. It nearly threw him off when a supporting bolt snapped overhead and the fence swayed precariously, seemingly about to collapse. The metal squeaked noisily as a thousand rusty links rubbed against each other.

Bronski froze, clinging to the top of the fence. The swaying slowly stopped and the squealing links quieted. Finally the fence settled and for a moment all was silent.

A squishy footstep sounded in the darkness. Ryan turned towards the sound and switched on his flashlight. He almost fainted at the sight of several zombies wandering towards him under the boardwalk, coming at him from all sides. As the light flared on they seemed to react, quickening their wobbly steps.

“Jesus Christ kid, climb!” Bronski shouted. “Move!”

Ryan switched off the light and ran to the fence. Slinging the trooper’s assault rifle over his shoulder he paused to slip the shotgun under his belt, then finally started climbing.

Bronski watched
from above as the zombies closed in. In a flicker of lightning he saw them reaching for the boy, who was moving as fast as he could but was weighed down by the heavy guns. Bronski released his grip on the fence, dropping to the alleyway below.

Ryan cried out as a cold dead hand closed around his ankle. He tried to kick it off but it was surprisingly strong and tenacious. Its dead muscles worked mechanically, utilizing their full potential, not constrain
ed by normal human limitations.

Bronski shoved the barrel of his pistol through the fence and shot it in the head. The thing went limp and dropped away. Ryan scrambled higher. Bronski shot another one that was close enough to grab at the boy, then he stepped back, scanning the alleyway
around him for zombies drawn to the gunfire. Thankfully there were none—yet.

“Hurry up, Ryan!”

“I’m coming, hold on!” Ryan reached the top. As he rolled across the top he lost the shotgun, which slipped from his belt and dropped back under the boardwalk.

Bronski saw him pause. “Leave it! Come on!”

Ryan scrambled down, dropping the last eight feet. Bronski fired his pistol and Ryan looked around to see what he was shooting at. A handful of zombies were coming down the alleyway.

Bronski grabbed Ryan’s collar and jerked him to his feet. “
Come on!”

***

A hundred yards away, Sheriff Leeds finished a hasty climb down the side of the pier and dropped quietly to the beach. He’d watched from the pier as the trooper and the boy slipped under the boardwalk and he knew exactly where they were headed. Satisfied that he’d sealed the women’s fate with his devious maneuver, he anticipated finishing the job with two well-timed gunshots. He’d get them while they slogged through the flooded streets on their way to the state police station. The trooper would go first. Then the boy, as he floundered in a panic.

Leeds smiled as he started his trek down the beach, following the footsteps in the sand. Two quick shots and his nigh
t would be over. Then he could get himself to civilization and the cleanup would begin. And he’d go down in history as the hero who rang the alarm.

53

Tumultuous thumps and guttural moans echoed through the corridors of the funhouse, announcing the arrival of the dead.

“Come on, we have to move,” Kerri said, keeping her voice calm and steady even though she felt like screaming. Her tensions had waned in the presence of the troopers, but now Bronski was gone
, the psychotic rabble was coming, and Silverman was a basket case, zonked on a pain killer cocktail. And then there was Emma. A wavering basket case.

“Come on!” Kerri barked, slapping Cat gently on the cheek to rouse her. “We have to go, Cat. Now.”

The trooper opened her eyes, a confused look on her face.

“They’re here,” Kerri said quietly.

A surge of adrenalin stirred Cat from her doldrums as she listened to the growing sounds of the invading zombies. She would have liked nothing better than to sink back on the hard wooden chair and veg out, but she instinctively knew it would mean certain death. No stranger to danger, she had survived countless firefights in Afghanistan and what she was feeling now was familiar. She pulled herself together and slid off the chair.

To Kerri’s surprise,
Emma remained fairly calm as she helped Kerri steady the wounded trooper on her feet. “This way,” Kerri whispered, nodding towards the mirror maze. “Slow and steady. And very, very quiet.”

Moving at a snail’s pace they entered the maze. It was
impossible to move any faster. Even with the lights on the maze was artfully deceptive, a masterful assembly of softly lit mirrors and glass panels designed to confuse and disorient. The clear glass panels were virtually invisible, and cleverly positioned to work with the mirrors to make every possible doorway a gamble.

With one arm supporting Cat around the waist, Kerri used her free hand to steer their way, cautiously probing
ahead to find the elusive openings through the maze. As they passed from one cubicle to the next, Kerri studied the recessed lighting fixtures set in the framework, wishing there was a way she could knock out the system. But the lights were set behind Plexiglas panels and there was no way to disable them without making plenty of noise.

Kerri’s hand hit a clear glass panel in front of them, and another to her right.
Emma found the open doorway on her left. “This way.”

A sudden loud commotion erupted in the funhouse behind them, echoing through the corridors amid the recorded sounds of the animatronic denizens. To Kerri and
Emma it was a perplexing hodgepodge of canned growls and groans and cackles and violent thumps. But even in her drugged delirium Cat quickly deduced that the walkers had tried to swarm the mechanical monsters, resulting in a pile-up in the narrow, dimly lit passageway.

“Don’t stop,” she whispered, as
Emma froze, momentarily paralyzed by the strange violent sounds. “We need to find a way out of here.”

***

Back in the black-walled corridor, a dozen writhing cadavers lay tangled in a twisted heap, clogging the narrow hallway like some giant many-limbed reptile caught in a trap. They dragged themselves clumsily forward, slowly plucking their limbs from the pile, crawling like crippled crocodiles.

A once handsome boy in surfer shorts kicked free of the tangle and dragged himself forward down the hall. As the ghoulish din behind him faded he heard enticing whispers ahead, reflected off the smooth glass walls of the maze. A vague, fear-filled odor hit his nose and he scrambled eagerly forward on arms and legs, his back arched like a Halloween cat.

The hallway behind him came alive with frantic thumps and clomping footsteps as his own chemical trail wafted back to his fellow dead. They pushed and clawed and kicked aggressively, determined to be first to the feast, responding to the strange new pheromones emitted by his reborn glands.

As the surfer boy neared the entrance to the maze, the sound of soft footsteps ahead and the smell of human blood from Cat’s wound spurred him into a frenzy. Like a hungry amoeba he was one with his need, a machine with a one track mind. Loping forward on fingers and toes he galloped like a chimp into the mirror maze—and crashed headfirst i
nto an invisible pane of glass.

His head filled with light as he collapsed in the cubicle. The light quickly faded to black.

Another scrambling body stumbled over him and fell. Then another. And another. Soon the monstrous lizard was whole again, writhing on the cold wooden floor. Blocking the way into the maze.