Entombed (2 page)

I’m so fucking hungry.

This bunker was built as a relocation center back in the early Sixties, when the Cold War was really heating up. President Eisenhower commissioned it, which is why a bronze bust of his head and all the photographs and pictures of him are down here with us. In the event of a nuclear attack on the United States, the bunker was supposed to house the members of the House and the Senate, along with their family members and a few staffers. It was big enough to hold just over a thousand people. To build it, they tunneled eight hundred feet into the side of the mountain, and dug eighty feet underground, as well. No, it wouldn’t survive a direct strike from a nuclear warhead, but it was deep enough and secure enough to protect its inhabitants from nuclear firestorms and radioactive fallout. The site was easily accessible from Washington D.C.—it was less than an hour away by railroad or plane, and the interstate ran nearby, as well. Back when the government kept it stocked with supplies, people could have stayed here for up to one-hundred and twenty days.

To prevent the local hillbillies from becoming suspicious during construction, a cover story was devised for the operation. The public was told that a new luxury hotel was being built on top of the mountain, and that it would bring jobs and economic development to the area. And that’s exactly what happened. A beautiful, ritzy resort hotel—the Pocahontas (named that because of its location in Pocahontas County)—was erected, and it attracted the wealthy, powerful and elite from around the world. The beautiful people came to visit in droves. Generations of actors, politicians, oil barons, banking magnates and others were among the frequent guests. The hotel employed locals, providing a nice alternative for those who didn’t want to slave away in a coal mine, cut timber, try their hand at farming, bend a wrench, or just sit back and collect welfare (these are the five biggest occupations in West Virginia). Over the years, the town grew and expanded. So did The Pocahontas, adding new wings, a golf course, tennis and racquetball courts, stables and an equestrian trail, and even its own private runway for small planes. And in all that time, no one above ground, other than the hotel’s administrators, ever suspected what lay beneath the mountain—until one Sunday morning a little over a decade ago, when an investigative reporter for the
New York Times
broke the story on the front page. When that happened, the facility was rendered useless. The government immediately decommissioned the bunker and turned ownership of it over to the hotel. At one point, a data storage company wanted to lease it from the Pocahontas, but the hotel’s management had other ideas. They turned it into a museum. For the last ten years, the bunker has been open to visitors and guests of the Pocahontas—an added tourist attraction to an already luxuriant establishment. I should know. I’ve been one of the bunker’s tour guides for the last three years. It was either that, or get a job at Wal Mart, and I fucking hate Wal Mart. And not just because my ex-wife worked there.

That was how I ended up down here with the others. By that point, the shit had already hit the fan in New York and Philly and elsewhere, but it hadn’t become widespread. At least, not here. We’d had reports of a few zombies, but West Virginia is such a rural state, with so much wilderness in between our towns, that it didn’t seem like an epidemic. It was like watching 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina or one of those other disasters—you knew it was happening and you felt connected to it, but at the same time, it seemed so far away. Bad things always happen to other people. Not to you. Not until the bad things show up at your front door unannounced and come inside and stay for a while.

Martial law hadn’t been declared in West Virginia yet, and the hotel was still making us show up for work, even though lodging reservations had dropped to zero. I was standing out back, sneaking a smoke with a few of the Mexican guys from the kitchen, when the dead arrived at the Pocahontas. We smelled them before we saw them, but we didn’t know what the stench was or where it was coming from. It was hot outside, and there was only a slight breeze—strong enough only to move the air around rather than cool us off. We all caught a whiff at the same time. I frowned. It was like smelling the world’s biggest pile of road kill. That’s what I thought it was, at first. I remember wondering if there was a dead groundhog or something somewhere nearby. One of the other guys said something in Spanish. I don’t know what it was, because I never learned the language. He probably said something like, “Goddamn, that stinks.” Within another minute, the stench grew overpowering. We all looked at each other, frowning and making faces. The Mexican guys talked to each other. I nodded as if I understood them. And then…there they were—shuffling out of the woods and across the parking lot towards us.

Zombies.

I think their silence was the scariest part. The dead were quiet. No moans or gurgles or cries or shouts. That’s not the norm, or at least it didn’t remain the norm. Zombies make noise, as a rule. But this group was quiet. It was obvious that they meant business. They bore down on the hotel with an emotionless, single-minded determination, hobbling and pulling themselves forward despite the fact that some of them were missing limbs and major organs, or trailing intestines behind them like leashes. Most of the zombies were human, but there were dead animals, too. Rats, mostly, along with a few foxes and skunks and a black bear cub that was missing an eye and most of its lower jaw. That didn’t stop it from coming, though. The dead are determined sons of bitches. Their silence made that determination all the more unnerving.

Two of our groundskeepers drove toward them in a golf cart. To this day, I don’t know what those guys were thinking. It’s not like they were armed or anything. They were landscapers, not soldiers. I have no idea what they intended to do. Maybe run over the zombies? Whatever their plan was, they never got a chance to see it through. The dead might have been slow, but they could swarm you until there was nowhere left to run. That’s what happened with the groundskeepers. They ran over a zombie fox with the golf cart, but the corpse got caught beneath their back wheel and slowed them down. The golf cart shook. Bits of matted fur and decayed flesh were smeared across the pavement. Then, the driver made a sharp turn. I guess he was trying to dislodge the dead critter. Problem was, golf carts aren’t made for hairpin turns. He tipped the fucking thing over on its side, and before either man could scramble free of the wreckage, the zombies were on them from all sides—penning them in. One man started screaming as the dead shuffled closer. The other one sank to his knees and began praying in Spanish and frantically crossing himself. It was a slow death for them both. The zombies crowded in, closer and closer, until both the golf cart and the victims were lost from sight. Their screams became whimpers, and then turned into screams again. One zombie thrust its arm in the air, as if in triumph, clutching a hunk of raw, red, dripping meat.

That was all the rest of us needed to see. We turned and fled, shoving and tripping each other in our hurry to get away. Behind us came the most awful sounds—tearing and ripping and biting. By then, the screams had ceased. We ran back into the hotel, only to learn that the shit had hit the fan inside the Pocahontas, as well. Zombies surged in through both the main entrance and the doors to the meditation garden. They swarmed through the lobby and around the elevators and were beginning to make their way down the long concourse of ritzy stores and shops that occupy most of the hotel’s first floor—jewelers, a humidor, candy stores, coffee shops, a bookstore, clothing stores and other businesses catering to the guests because none of the locals in town could ever afford to shop in them.

I ran into my buddy Mike, who worked in the hotel’s banqueting department. Looking back on it now, it’s all Mike’s fault that I’m in this goddamned situation. He reached out and grabbed my shoulders, stopping me in mid-run. At first, I was so scared that I didn’t even recognize him. I tried pushing him away, but he squeezed harder. My hands curled into fists.

“Let go of me, asshole! Don’t you see what’s happening?”

“The bunker,” he yelled. “We’ve got to get everyone into the bunker, Pete.”

And just like that, everything changed. It was like Mike had uttered some magic words. I was still scared, but my head was clearer. I started thinking about survival, rather than just running around in blind panic. My fear wasn’t ruling me. I was ruling it. It felt very Zen. People ran by us, tripping and stumbling and crying. The hallway was filled with screams and shouts. All of these things seemed distant. Remote. Disconnected from us. I suddenly felt like an island.

“The bunker…hell, why didn’t I think of that?”

“You’ve got a key, right?”

I nodded. As one of the tour guides, I had one of seven plastic key cards that would let us into the bunker. I was about to speak, when I noticed Mike’s eyes grow wide. He bit his lip but I don’t think he was aware that he was doing it. He stared at something over my shoulder. I turned around, wincing at the sudden stench. A group of zombies were shambling toward us.

“Shit.”

“Tell everyone you can,” Mike said. “I’ll meet you down there.”

“Where are you going?”

“The kitchen. There’s no telling how long we’ll be down there. We’ll need food and water.”

“Good idea. I’ll come with you.”

“No, Pete. You need to let everyone else know. I’ll take care of getting the supplies.”

“You can’t carry all that stuff by yourself.”

“I’ll load it up on a cart and use the service elevator. That opens up right into the conference center. Long as you’ve got the bunker door open, it’ll be fine.”

I frowned. “Are you sure?”

He nodded. “Positive. Now go.”

“Be careful.”

“You, too. Just make sure you keep that door open for me.”

I promised him that I would, and then he ran down the hall, easily dodging the dead. His movements reminded me of a football player charging toward the end zone, intent on a touchdown. By the time the zombies reached for him, he was already past them. I turned the other way and headed for the bunker.

The next time I saw Mike, his throat had been torn out, his nose was hanging by a flap of skin, and one of his eyes was missing. That didn’t stop him, though. He showed up at the bunker door, just like he’d said he would.

And then he tried to eat me.

***

There were two entrances to the bunker. The first one was via an outdoor tunnel on the other side of the mountain, some distance from the hotel. Normally, when we gave visitors a tour, we started from that entrance after taking them there via a short bus ride. The entrance had a ten foot high steel blast door with a big sign affixed to it that said DANGER: HIGH VOLTAGE. The sign had originally been put there to scare people away—random hikers or hunters who might have stumbled across it—but it was obsolete now. The Pocahontas kept the sign there as part of the ambience. Since the bunker was now nothing more than a museum, it added a touch of authenticity.

The other entrance was located inside the hotel itself, adjacent to our basement-level conference center. The conference center was a huge, open room where various organizations and groups held conventions, employee meetings, dinners, and things like that. It was a very plain room. The carpet was thin and worn. The overhead lights were too bright. The walls were a drab off-white color. I once overheard a hotel guest refer to the décor as “wholly uninspiring.” But one of those uninspiring walls concealed the bunker’s second entrance. When the partition was slid back, it revealed a second steel blast door, bigger than the door guarding the outside tunnel entrance. It was twelve feet high and twelve feet wide and weighed over twenty-five tons. Despite its size, the blast door was easy to open from the inside. Any healthy person could have done it. There was a wheel you turned to open or close the door, and all you had to do was apply fifty pounds of pressure. On tours, we always exited the bunker through this door, and it always took our guests by surprise when they emerged back into the hotel.

A shriek brought me back to my surroundings. A woman’s voice. I couldn’t tell whose, shouting about something biting her face.

The zombies flooded into the lobby and there was no time to wait for an elevator. I took the stairs two at a time and paused at the bottom of the stairwell. I put my ear to the door and listened, trying to determine if the conference center was safe or not, but I couldn’t tell. The screams from upstairs were too loud. Taking a deep breath, I slowly nudged the door open and peeked into the room. Either Mike’s warning had been heard, or others had the same idea as him, because there were a group of about twenty-five people cowering by the wall. About half of the group were folks I knew—employees of the hotel. The other half of the group looked like hotel guests or visitors. One big guy had a cable repairman’s uniform on. My friend Drew was among them, and I felt better when I saw him. I stepped through the door and hurried over to them.

“Pete!” Drew rushed toward me. “Tell me you’ve got a key to get inside?”

Nodding, I pulled the keycard from my back pocket. Drew sighed with obvious relief.

“Thank Christ. I thought we were gonna be trapped down here.”

The group milled around me, blocking my access to the partition. Behind us, something thudded in the stairwell. They scrambled out of the way, and I hurried over to the wall and pushed the partition into its recess, revealing the blast door. The sounds in the stairwell grew louder. I flashed my keycard. The lock disengaged, and I turned the wheel. The door rumbled open with a deep, ominous boom.