Machines of the Dead (20 page)

Jack walked around the body and saw that it had no face, appearing to have been blown off, the nearby wall splattered with gore. He stepped over the corpse and entered the apartment. 

“Gross, man,” Zaun said.

The place was filthy and stunk of dead animal. Litter boxes with more shit than sand in them lay in the hallway and in the bathroom. Newspapers and magazines lay everywhere, as if the man had been a collector—no, a hoarder. As they went through the place, Jack heard gasps and other sounds of displeasure from the others. No one wanted to remain in the apartment any longer and the group quickly left to check on the apartment across the hall.

2F was void of life. The place was somewhat clean, the beds made, kitchen garbage empty. There was a television, a couch, a bookcase filled with hardcovers and paperbacks, mostly appearing to be romance in nature. Jack checked the bathroom, finding a small shower radio. Overall, the place was decent, a good spot to set up camp, but first they had to check out the rest of the building. They left the apartment and headed to the third floor.  

Upon reaching the top of the staircase, Jack heard the eerily familiar sound of fingernails on wood coming from behind 3R’s door. Images of his wife clawing at the bedroom door sprung into his mind.

Approaching the door, the scratching grew louder and Jack knew there was some
thing
on the other side. He tried the doorknob and found that it turned. He called Zaun over and together on the count of three
,
they rammed the door. The zombie fell back and landed on the floor. It was naked, bald on top with long dark, straw-like hair, and a large, bulbous nose. Zaun stepped up and put his sword into the thing’s head.

From inside, Jack heard the sound of chains rattling. He stepped passed Zaun. The sharp scent of pine filled his nose and he saw numerous green air-fresheners in the shape of Christmas trees hanging on the walls. 

As the group moved forward, they came upon another dead body laying chest down, head to the side. It was female with long blonde hair, appearing to have been no older than eighteen. She was naked except for a pair of handcuffs on her outstretched wrists. A black tribal tattoo of the sun took up the area of skin just above her ass crack. All along the body’s arms and legs were small cuts
,
and what appeared to be burn marks
,
possibly
made by cigarettes and a curling iron. 

The rattling of chains hadn’t let up. Jack and the others moved forward, nearing the source of the sound. Coming upon a room on his left, Jack looked in to discover a bathroom where an undead female sat handcuffed to a radiator. Upon seeing Jack, the undead thing reached out for him, but the chains kept her in check. She had cuts and burn marks along her arms, legs and face, some oozing yellow puss. Her eyes were milky white, and her mouth opened and closed, biting at the air. She had long, bleached-blonde hair and was wearing a red satin bra with matching garter and panties. She looked to have been around the same age as the other dead female.

“Dude,” Zaun said.

“Guy must’ve kidnapped her. The girl in the hallway too. Abused the hell out of them.”

“Sick bastard,” Maria spat.

The zombie kept reaching for them, its lips pulled back, jaw opening and closing. 

“I got it,” Zaun said.

“No,” Maria said, holding out her arm. “I want this one.”

Zaun looked at Maria as if she were crazy.

“Give her your sword,” Jack said.

Zaun removed the weapon and handed it to Maria. “Use the eye socket; blade goes in easiest that way.
”

“Don’t worry, it’ll be fine,” Maria assured him.

Jack and Zaun left the bathroom, leaving Maria to it. For some reason, she wanted to kill it and Jack wasn’t about to stop her or ask why. As they moved into the living room, he heard Maria grunt and could only imagine the blade sinking into the undead girl’s brain.

Maria exited the bathroom, and gave Zaun his weapon back.

“You cleaned the blade,” he said, surprised.

“I always return what I borrow in the condition it was given.”

They combed through the apartment, finding pornographic magazines, dildos
in
all
varieties, whips
and bondage equipment in the closet of the bedroom, and boxes upon boxes of DVDs and video cassette tapes, all with female names and dates on them. Jack found some as old as 1986. The sick fuck had been raping and torturing women for a very long time. No one wanted to see what was on the things; the guy was dead, the law could do nothing anymore. Once they got to a safe place, they could report the findings.

“I’m not staying here,” Maria said when they met up in the living room. 

Jack nodded. 

“This place is evil,” Zaun said. “Creep’s me the hell out.”

They left the apartment and went over to 3F. A thin metal ladder leading to the roof, stood in a small alcove to the left of the apartment. The apartment’s red door looked brand new, not a mark on it. Jack tried to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. Three Mul-T-Lock locks took up the space above the handle. Running his fingers over the door, Jack felt cold steel, unlike the other apartments’
doors that
were
wood. He knocked, feeling the solidness of the steel, like banging on the vault at a bank. 

“We aren’t getting in there,” he said. 

“Wonder what’s inside,” Zaun said. “Why the security?” He kicked the door a few times, then shook his head. “Forget it.”

“So,” Jack said, “2F it is.”

They set up camp in 2F, pulling the mattress from the bedroom into the living room. Maria decided to take the first watch, telling the others how serving in the military had conditioned her to function in good form with little to no sleep.

The sun was shining brightly, its rays illuminating the room, filling it with warmth. She left the shades up in order to have a view of the outside, doubting the bright light would keep Jack or Zaun from falling asleep. 

In the kitchen, she opened a can of beans and ate enough to satisfy her hunger, knowing that eating too much before going on watch, especially with no sleep, was a bad idea. A full belly often led to sluggish movements and the potential to nod off.

She pulled a chair over to the window and sat, looking out over the street and buildings across the way. The place was like a ghost town, unease settling into her. Off in the distance she saw gray smoke rising into the sky. She imagined there had to be a number of fires throughout the city and was glad that none seemed to be nearby. Candy bar wrappers and old newspapers tumbled by as gusts of wind pushed them around. She couldn’t get over the number of vehicles left in the street and parked along side it. It was hard to imagine anyone leaving their car, but such things
,
material things
,
proved meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Panic
must have
spread rapidly as people fled to safety, to loved ones.

And where were all the dead? Maria and the others were in Brooklyn, a borough consisting of over two million people.

Then, as if the cosmos had heard her, a lone zombie entered the scene. It was male, dressed in a dark gray business suit, walking very slowly down the street. Right behind it was another zombie, this one female, with long brown hair. It was wearing black spandex pants with an electric blue stripe running down the side and a matching top. The skin was flayed from its arms and legs, the face miraculously intact.

Looking at the male again, she saw something dangling from its waist to the ground and trailing behind it. Maria grimaced, realizing the object was the thing’s intestines. Other than that, it appeared fine, save the limp.

The female zombie was gaining on the male, walking almost twice as fast, still slow however. Maria watched as it drew closer, then stepped on the male’s intestines. The male zombie jerked to a stop, then fell forward to the pavement as the sausage-like organ snapped.

Maria turned away, disgusted.  By the time she looked back, the male was up again, walking, the female slightly ahead of him.

During the first hour of her watch, Maria saw a total of fifteen undead walk by the building, the most gruesome being a female pulling herself along, having no lower half, and leaving pieces of its body behind.

During her second hour of guard duty, she grew tired, her head falling forward or back, jolting her awake. She pulled out a picture of her five-year-old daughter, Alexis, and stared at it, drawing the strength she needed. She imagined the day when she arrived back in North Carolina and could see her little girl again. Maria closed her eyes and felt her daughter’s soft skin on her own as she hugged her child. She heard Alexis’ cute laugh and tender, high-pitched voice. Opening her eyes, she stared at the picture. Her daughter had the most beautiful brown eyes and gorgeous smile.

Tears welled up in Maria’s eyes and she blinked rapidly, fighting to keep them at bay. She stuffed the picture back into her pocket. Ten minutes later, weariness fell over her again. She needed to stand, to move around.

Getting to her feet, she walked around the room, the floor groaning slightly here and there but not nearly enough to wake the others. It would probably take the rumbling of a passing train to do that, Maria thought.

She went over to a bookcase and saw that it was filled with romance and science fiction novels, along with a few horror titles. She thought about reading, but that never worked for her when she was tired; it would only cause her to nod off.

She went into the bedroom and found a small handheld radio. Finding the power button, she turned it on. Static blasted from the speaker and she quickly lowered the volume. Set to FM, she went through the stations finding nothing but static. Switching to AM, she discovered that all the major stations were playing a pre-recorded message. Listeners were told to stay away from any infected. Hospitals were being evacuated. People were to remain in their homes until the situation was resolved. An updated message would soon follow.

She wondered how long the message had been playing. Based on what she and the others had seen, she doubted there would be an update. A new message would have told people to flee the area, at least she hoped it would’ve said that. No, the CDC would want people to remain where they were, preventing the spread of the contagion. She wondered if the public or the CDC knew the reason the dead were coming back to life.

Maria shut the radio off and left the bedroom.

Taking her M4 with her, sidearm at her hip, she decided to check out the building; make sure things were quiet. Yes, they did a thorough check of the place, but it was still reasonable to patrol the interior.

She went to the first floor, not liking how accessible the building was. With no lock
,
Jack having blown it out
,
anyone or thing could waltz right inside. The outer door was somewhat secure, at least as far as the undead were concerned
,
the mindless things unable to turn a doorknob, but a living person would have no trouble.

Maria and the others weren’t the only survivors. She was sure of it; and when it came to people, some were good and some were bad. There was no telling how an individual would act in the face of what was going on in the city. The law was gone, and people were looking out for themselves. 

The ground floor windows were barred, which made the entranceway the only weak point. She headed to 1R, the rear apartment on the first floor, and grabbed a kitchen chair. Bringing it back to the foyer, she wedged it under the outer door’s knob. It wouldn’t stop a determined individual, but would slow him down or cause him to change his mind and go to another building. Bottom line
,
it was better than nothing.

She went back into 1R, looked around, and came away with a mop bucket, a few containers of bleach, and a bottle of drain cleaner. She poured the bleach into the bucket, then found a vase, dumped the dead flowers out, and emptied the drain cleaner into it. She placed the vase into the bucket, making sure the bleach didn’t overflow into it.

Grabbing another chair, she set it by the building’s inner door and hoisted the chemical-filled bucket onto the top of the partially open door. The idea was the same as the bucket-of-water-on-the-head gag, the unsuspecting person getting soaked with cold water, except in her version the individual would get doused with a bucket of toxic chemicals that when mixed, caused severe burns and possible blindness.

Satisfied with the new security measures, Maria headed up the stairs to the third floor. There was no way she was going into apartment 3R, not with what went on in there. And looking at 3F, the apartment with the vault-like door, she decided to check out the roof.

Shouldering her weapon, she climbed the ladder, pulled the lever on the roof hatch and opened it. Cold morning air brushed her face, sending a welcomed chill all the way down to her toes. Looking around, there was only roof extending in both directions. The wind blew hard against the hatch and Maria decided
she had
seen enough of nothing. Coming back down, she closed the lid and thought she heard a noise. A clicking sound. Pausing on the ladder, she listened, but heard nothing.