Mad World (Book 2): Sanctuary (15 page)

Chapter Twenty

It was getting colder and colder, and this tunnel we were in was going down, down, down. We must have been hundreds of feet underground by now. At least that’s how it felt. The tunnel was quite narrow, maybe 2 to 3 feet across, and only 6 to 7 feet high. Still, we hastened down it like our lives depended on it. None of us were at all happy that Mark had gone so far ahead (hopefully up this tunnel) and that there was danger behind us. Zombies generally didn’t growl unless they smelled humans, and those humans had probably been us. Hopefully, the creature wasn’t following us, but even so, we hurried along at perhaps a too-fast speed. Several times, one or another of us stumbled, but we kept going. We weren’t in a panic yet, but we were close. There’s just something about tiny, dark tunnels deep under the ground, and getting lost in them, that makes you panic.

Suddenly, we heard scuffling up ahead. It was a weird sound, and I wasn’t sure what it was. I hadn’t heard any screams, so I assumed Mark was okay, wherever he was.

“Hold on,” said Jacob. His flashlight beam had hit a ridiculously narrow part of the tunnel, where it was only about eighteen inches wide. The tunnel we were in had at first seemed man-made, but at this point it was clear that it was natural, at least this part we were in now. Eighteen inches? We would have to turn sideways to get through.

“Do you think we should?” asked Caitlyn, eyeing the narrow funnel-like hole skeptically.

“I think it’s either go through here or go back to the cavern where we heard the zombie noise,” Jacob said. “Look, I don’t like the looks of this either, but I still think Mark probably came this way. He knows the way
out;
I think we should investigate further, until we can’t anymore. Then we can turn back.”

“I don’t know about this,” said Jonathan, looking a bit scared.

“Let’s take a vote,” I said.

Jacob, DeAndre, Risa and I voted to go on. Caitlyn and Jonathan voted to turn back. We pushed ahead.

We squeezed, one by one, sideways, through the crevice-like opening. Jacob went first, I pushed Luke on ahead of me (he dashed through like a little monkey, the skinny little scamp) and then I followed him. The rest came on behind me. Scraping my hand and knees, I slithered forward like a snake, pushing and pulling against the rock in turn, just to get myself through. I thanked my lucky stars that my belly was a small one, although I cursed my genes the two times my rear became stuck on the rocks.
Caitlyn should have no problem at the part,
I thought,
her hiney is slimmer than my big
caboose.
Wiggling forward inch by inch, cursing my big Latin bottom, and being so freaked out by the tons and tons of rocks over me, I finally snapped and let loose. That’s right, I began to giggle.

“Alyssa, come on!” said Jacob, smiling at me. He knew how I laughed to break the tension, and he loved me for it. But giggling did not help you slither through tiny rock crevices. After a few minutes, I finally was able to calm myself down to continue squeezing through.

I will tell you the truth, the tense twenty minutes of squeezing sideways through that rock was pretty awful, and I was sweating profusely by the time it opened up again, despite the low underground temperature. I practically fell out of the crack in the earth as it opened up, and it was actually wider than it had been before.

“Oh, thank heaven,” I mumbled under my breath, brushing myself off and checking on Luke.

“That was fun, let’s do it again!” he said, making me smile. It was all fun for him, and that was a good thing. No need for him to be traumatized by this. Looking around, waiting for everyone to emerge from the crevice, I saw a faint light coming down the tunnel up ahead.

“I wonder what that light is?” I said. “Maybe the outside?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t think we’ve been hiking long enough to get to the other side yet,” said Jacob. “It may be some naturally luminescent minerals in the tunnel walls.”

At last we were all out, and none the worse for wear.

“I hope there won’t be any more of those crevices. I felt like a butterfly wiggling out of a cocoon going through it,” said Caitlyn, laughing.

“I know, pffttt!!!” I said, agreeing.

“Okay, let’s push on, or we’ll never get out of here,” Jake said, and we all started hiking again.

The faint light ahead of us did turn out to be luminescent minerals in the rocks. It was weird, because it didn’t get any brighter as we got nearer. I did like having a little natural light, though.

We must have been walking for half an hour when we saw more luminescent rock up ahead. I wondered if this was how miners found valuable stones.

“Oh, no,” said Jacob, and he began running forward. Apparently he’d seen something I hadn’t. I grabbed ahold of Luke’s hand, and we began jogging forward too. We all ran up and saw it. And our hearts dropped to the ground.

It was Mark. He had fallen sideways, and his flashlight, pointing away from us, was what we’d seen and mistaken for more rock luminescence. At first it looked as though Mark had simply somehow fallen, maybe from a heart attack or something. But as Jacob kneeled beside him and turned Mark’s shoulders toward us, we could see what had happened.

Zombie attack.

Mark’s eyes were open and stared up at us, unseeing. His throat had been ripped out, and he had bled out. His stomach was ripped out as well, and there was gore everywhere. It looked like Mark had been jumped and the thing had probably grabbed him by the neck and bitten down immediately, preventing him from crying out, because we hadn’t heard a thing. I looked up and saw a slight ledge running along one side of the tunnel. The zombie had probably jumped from there. Mark had fallen heavily, this was clear. The dirt and rocks were pushed to one side, and he was lying on top of his own gore. There was a huge puddle of blood underneath him, and it trickled down the tunnel away from us in small rivulets.

“Oh, Mark,” Jake said.

“What are we going to do now?” asked Jonathan.

“We push on,” I said. “It’s the only thing we can do.”

While we were looking at Mark and deciding whether or not to take his equipment, we heard a low growling, faint, but clear. Coming from behind us, from the way we had come.

“Oh, man…” said DeAndre. “Jake, my man, grab the man’s flashlight and backpack, and let’s go.” He looked behind him and had one hand on his shotgun.

“I agree, let’s go,” said Risa.

“Wait a minute,” Jacob said. He crouched beside Mark’s body and pulled a thick piece of paper that had been peeking out an inch out of the dead man’s pocket. It turned out to be a map. “Bingo,” said Jacob, then stood and looked down the tunnel ahead of us.

“Guys, be ready,” I said. “Whatever killed Mark is probably up ahead of us.” I unholstered my shotgun and held it pointed at the tunnel ceiling. The others did the same.

“Lukey,” I said. He looked up. “Grab hold of Mama’s jeans loop and stay right beside me, okay?” Luke nodded solemnly and grabbed my pants, and we headed down the tunnel, past Mark and forward.

We hadn’t gone 30 feet when we came upon a sight of horror. The zombie that had killed Mark was crouched in the dirt, lapping up a puddle of blood and gore it had dropped there. And that wasn’t the worst of it. This zombie appeared to have been a little girl. About the age of 3 from the looks of it.

It was completely naked and dark grey. The creature’s body was covered in filth, and the nails on its fingers were worn down to the bone: dull white shone through the skin. It looked like it had a large wound on the side of its ribcage, and there was a large chunk missing, with black sticky tar-like zombie goo covering it. The lips around its teeth had been partially ripped off in a fight, and a flap of skin drooped from the side of its mouth past its chin. Most of its hair had been ripped out - it lay in a few straggly strands that fell in its eyes. Eyes that glowed a dull yellow in the dim light of the underground tunnel.

It stared at us malevolently in the glow of our flashlights and began to growl, low at first, then louder and higher.

It was a shocking sight. The thing looked like it had turned quite a while ago and had been surviving on its wits for some time. It bore the scars of many battles and since it was still moving, I assumed it had won them all. It wasn’t big, but it was obviously resourceful. It had survived through stealth and cunning, hunting from the shadows and the pitch dark of the tunnels, ambushing its victims before they even knew it was there. That’s what had happened to Mark.

Now, there were six guns trained on it. Luke hid behind me, holding on with fists to either side of my hips, and peeked out with huge eyes to look at the thing. It crouched there, frozen but growling and wrinkling its nose and baring its teeth at us. The thing was a horror to look at. To have such a little kid turned like that was awful, and then now it was a monster. An abomination.

We stood about 10 feet from it. We couldn’t move. We were in shock. It growled at us. Suddenly, a blur came f
rom between Jacob and Caitlyn,
rushing forward, and in a split second we heard the blast of a gun echoing down the tunnel: POP! It was Risa. She was charging directly
toward the thing, emptying her .33 into it. The first shot hit its shoulder and it tumbled over. The second and subsequent bullets found the thing’s head. Risa marched up to it, firing again and again, POP!! POP!!! POP!!!! She ended up standing over it, emptying the last few rounds into the black, gooey pulp that used to be a little girl.

As the silence descended upon the tunnel and smoke rose from the muzzle of her gun, Risa turned to us. There were unshed tears in her eyes. Jacob walked over to her and hugged her. Then Luke and I joined them. Risa sobbed into my T-shirt as I smoothed her hair. Looking over at the dead zombie, I hugged Risa harder.

We had all been shocked by the sight of such a little kid zombie, but Risa had been the most horrified of all, and she had acted bravely.

She cried a minute longer and then was quiet. Jonathan came up and rubbed her back. She looked up at him, and he smiled at her. Then she looked back at the thing lying in the dirt and said, “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

Hoisting her backpack higher on her shoulders she faced forward. Jacob looked at her and then at me and nodded, and then we hiked on.

Chapter
Twenty-One

It took us two more hours of uneventful hiking, and then we were out. The last mile had been an uphill slope. When we finally emerged from the tunnel, and it was into a vacant lot of all things, we were in Canada. Blinking from the bright light, we looked around. The vacant lot in Emerson, Manitoba was on a deserted side street. We all looked around for a minute, then started walking.

“I think there’s a little café up here called ‘Nettie’s Café’ where we can wash up and rest while I call the Sanctuary number again,” Jacob said.

We walked three blocks and then spotted the restaurant in question. It was a tiny hole-in-the-wall place, but after what we’d just been through, it looked like heaven. Filing in, we sat at a table in the back and took turns going to the restroom to wash up.

I took Luke into the ladies’ room and was washing his face, marveling that we had all come out of the ordeal alive and uninjured.

“Mama?” asked Luke.

“Yes, baby?”

“Was that a little girl zombie in that tunnel?”

I stopped washing him up and looked at him in the mirror. His eyes looked sad and curious at the same time.

I finished washing him and then washed myself
.
Then, before we left the ladies’ room, I picked him up and sat him on the counter so we could be somewhat eye-to-eye. My aching body wouldn’t allow me to crouch this time.

“Yes, Luke,” I said, looking into his eyes. “It sure was a little girl zombie.”

“It was sad,” he said.

“Yes, it was.”

“I hope there’s no more of those, ever.”

I looked at him. “I hope so, too, Sweetheart.” And I hugged him and then picked him up and carried him out and to the table.

“I’m going to call Sanctuary now, okay?” Jacob said. “Let me know if anyone comes near.”

I nodded.

He dialed the number, and I could hear him talking quietly on the phone for a few minutes. It wasn’t too long before he ended the call.

“Okay, they’re sending some
one
to pick us up,” Jake said. “They should be here in twenty minutes.”

“Oh, that is fantastic news,” I said, smiling.

“Alyssa, can we order sodas?” Risa asked.

“Yes, absolutely.”

We all ordered soft drinks and French fries; we knew we could finish those quickly. It seemed like our contact was there in record time. A man walked up to our table and introduced himself.

“Hi, are you Jake and Alyssa?” he asked, extending his hand.

Jake stood up, and took the man’s hand. “Yes, I’m Jake, and this is my family.”

The man asked for the password. This time, Jake turned sideways and said, “Kermit loves jellybeans.” And we all laughed, including the man.

The tension broken, he smiled at us all. “My name is Michael,” he said, shaking everybody’s hand. “Great. Well, I was very sorry to hear of what happened today, but I will be happy to give you all a lift to Winnipeg. Eh? Everybody ready?” He rubbed his hands together.

“Yes, absolutely!” said Jacob. “We are more than ready.” Smiling, Jake turned to us and gestured and we all got up and followed Michael out to a large white GMC Suburban. It was new. Plush and super-comfortable; it even still had that new-car smell.

“You can put your weapons and backpacks in the back if you’d like. They’ll be safe there,” Michael said.

We unloaded everything into the large storage area in the back. It felt wonderful to take all that weight off. I sighed, feeling better. Up front, the seats were new overstuffed leather. We slid into them with smiles on our faces. I leaned back, and my back creaked and then relaxed. It felt so good to be here in Manitoba, and soon we’d be on our way to Winnipeg and Sanctuary.

Michael turned the key, and the vehicle hummed to life. Pulling onto the road, he made his way to the freeway and headed north.