The Plague Unto The End (29 page)

“No...no!” screamed Curtis as I pried his fingers from the edge.

He fell through the crowd to the ground and landed on his back, in the grass outside the front of the church.  I could see the handle of my sword wiggling as the massive crowd overwhelmed him.  I turned away and sat down on the roof.  I didn’t understand how I could have possibly won, but I was alive.  Just as I felt relief and wanted to break down—to rest—I thought of all the others still downstairs.  I still wasn’t sure if Curtis had even been telling the truth about everyone.

I needed to check on them.

I walked over to the ladder and slowly made my way to ground level.  I knew if there was anyone still alive, they would need my help quickly.  I still felt hesitant to move for the fear of seeing the others dead.  I had to make myself move.  I could see the door to the room where Sid had been sitting.  I was sure he was dead, but I had to know.

I ran to the room and turned on my flashlight.  I couldn’t see his face, but I could see Curtis’ rock-climbing pick handle extending from his head.  The pool of blood and his pale skin told me what I needed to know.  I also took a closer look at the medicine bottles on the floor of the room and noticed that they were all prescription pain medicines.  Curtis must have taken them before he started his rampage.  That would explain why nothing seemed to hurt him much.   I turned and ran across the hall to the room Jim had been sleeping in.  He was in the back of the room slumped against the wall with his .45 in his hand.  The wall to his left was peppered with shotgun pellets and his chest was soaked in blood.  I checked for a pulse and tried nudging him, but he was undoubtedly gone.

I ran to the sanctuary to find Rev, but I could see him lying in the middle aisle with a massive head wound.  I was never able to find Deandre after all the shooting started.

I couldn’t guess which room Matt had stayed in that night.  He had changed rooms every night, but I never knew if he moved because he didn’t trust anyone or if he moved just because there were so many unused rooms.  I wasn’t sure if the person shooting at Curtis upstairs was him or Beth, but I that would be a good place to start.

I went back to that hallway and shined my light on the other end of the hall.  I could see the ten scattered bullet holes from my Glock in the wall and the other holes from the shotgun blast including the one that had struck my leg.  Suddenly I could feel the pain in my leg again and the steps to get to the other end of the hall were more labored.  I peered into the room and could see Beth’s boots and some blood spray on the wall.

I started to back away from the door when I heard her make a gagging noise.  I ran into the room and took a closer look at her.  She was still alive, but she had taken a round to the left arm and to her right side.  She didn’t have long.

“Where’s Matt?  Is he dead?” I asked as I tried to apply pressure to the wound on her side.

“Ahh! Curtis...is trying to kill everyone!” Beth struggled to say.

“I know, I got him.  He’s dead.  Where’s Matt?” I asked again.

“We were in...another room...first floor,” Beth said as she began to fade.

“Is he dead?” I asked.

“Curtis...shot...” Beth said as her eyes became vacant.

“Beth...Beth!” I yelled.  I started to try CPR, but the more I pumped her chest I could see that I was just pushing more blood out of her wounds.  I stopped and closed Beth’s eyes.  I picked up the shotgun she had been carrying and checked it for shells.  It still had three shells in the tube and it was definitely Matt’s.

I stood up and limped down the hall to the stairs and made my way to the other hall.  I could see one other room in the hall with the door partially opened.  I didn’t want to see my friend dead, but I had to keep telling myself that he might be alive.  I stood outside of the room and took a deep breath.  I looked around the doorframe and could see Matt lying on the floor with a small blood spray on the wall behind him.  I couldn’t see any bodily injury so I assumed that he was shot in the head on the side I couldn’t see.

“Matt?” I said, but there was no answer.  I could see his machete on the floor next to him and his backpack that contained his shotgun shells.  I slowly walked into the room and kicked his foot.  He didn’t move.  I started to walk further into the room, but stopped myself.  I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing my friend’s face torn to pieces.  I leaned in and took the bag and the machete.

I stepped out into the hall and suddenly realized that for the first time since it had started, I was completely alone.  I didn’t know of a single person anywhere that was alive.  I wanted to lock myself in a room just let the nervous breakdown happen. I was in a building surrounded by corpses that desperately wanted to tear me apart and rooms full of my dead friends.  I couldn’t stay there.  I picked up my red backpack from the floor under the ladder and started to walk toward the kitchen.  One thought kept resonating:  whether Curtis was still outside on the ground.  He wasn’t dead when he hit the ground and I was sure that he had at least been bitten.  I turned and hobbled as quickly as I could toward the ladder and climbed to the roof.  As I walked to the edge I pulled out my Glock and pulled out another magazine from my bag.  I loaded the weapon and looked over the edge.

The sun was just starting to come up in the distance and the first morning rays allowed me to see just how large the crowd had become.  I could barely see the surrounding streets through the sea of swaying, stumbling corpses.  Curtis was still pinned to the grass by the blade of my sword.  The corpses had defiantly taken what they wanted from him.  He was missing both arms and a leg, but he had still been infected and changed.  His snarling corpse looked up at me from the grass and struggled to get free of the blade.  I pointed the Glock at his head and looked into his dead eyes.  I made the shot that I should have made in the hallway and Curtis finally stopped moving. The massive crowd erupted with moans and frantic movement after the shot rang out.

I quickly climbed back down the ladder feeling as though I had avenged my lost friends, but still knew that nothing would bring them back.  I gathered all of the supplies that I could fit into my backpack, stuffed the video camera inside and came up with a plan.  It was the best idea I could come up with.  I could hear the heavy wood doors at the front of the church, creaking and bowing under the immense pressure from the surging crowd. There were enough of them now that it had created a kind of perpetual noise.  There was no way that the church would ever be quiet enough to make them leave.  The van was still parked around the back of the building and the old beat-up car was still around the front.  I checked Curtis’ room and couldn’t find the keys to the van.  He must have had them in his pocket when he fell off of the roof.  I still had the keys to the junker.

If the plan I came up with failed there was no coming back.  I would be trapped and overcome in an instant.

First, I found the medical supplies and took a quick look at my leg.  The pellet had not stuck in my leg.  It had passed through the outer portion of my leg, leaving a gash.  I probably needed stitches, but I quickly packed the wound and wrapped my leg tightly.  I also took some of the pain medicine left in Curtis’ room.  I made my way to the second floor and walked into the room through which I had first entered the church and lit the bag containing Jim’s .45 ammunition on fire.  I threw the bag as far as I could through the open window, away from the building.  The bag disappeared into the crowd and I waited for what felt like twenty minutes, but it was really more like twenty seconds.

The ammunition started to fire and the crowd began to react.  I ran for the front doors and stood waiting for the tons of dead weight to back off of the doors.  I could hear the mass moving outside.  The doors seemed to relax.  I checked my pocket for the keys one last time and did a few practice swings with Matt’s machete.  I was going to try to avoid using my gun, if possible, but if I was sure at some point I wouldn’t have a choice.  I turned and looked down the hall one last time and faced the door again.  I figured the faster I went, the better off I would be.  Once the doors were open they would be coming at me anyway and any forward momentum might give me that little bit extra I would need to get to the car.  I was as ready as I was going to get.

I took one more deep breath and kicked the handle on the door.

The morning light was blinding as the doors flew open.  I locked my eyes onto the old car and sprinted.  The crowd had thinned out, but there was still a very large number of them.  I started to run, shoving the first couple of carriers to the ground, but the others quickly noticed my movement.  One of them jumped at me from the right and I swung the machete with all of my body weight and cleaved off the upper half of his head.  Two more came at me from the front.  I slashed the weapon into the left side of one of their skulls and shoved it into the second one.  I jerked the blade free as they fell to the asphalt of the parking lot.  I could hear the crowd’s agitation around me, building as I moved.  My leg was throbbing from the exertion, but the adrenaline pumping through me kept me going.

A group of them near the car and started to charge at me.  I ran around to the front of the car and buried the blade into the head of the carrier closest to me.  The blade was stuck; the dead weight of the collapsing body pulled the weapon from my hand.  I pulled out the Glock and ran to the driver’s door. The door wasn’t locked.  I ripped the door open as the first of them slammed into the outer panel of the door and started to force it shut.  I shot into the rotting face of the carrier pushing against the door and shoved back on the door.  I slipped into the small opening and pulled the door shut, but the door would not latch.  I looked back to see a decaying arm stuck in the door.  I tried to open and close the door on the arm, but they were closing in fast.  The rear passenger’s-side window exploded and I could see them trying to come inside.  I let go of the door handle and slid the key into the ignition.  The old beat-up car rumbled and clattered to life.  I shoved the gear selector into drive and jammed the pedal into the floor.  The car barely started to move as the horde started to pile around the car.

I kept the pedal jammed to the floor and the car inched painfully slow forward.  The carrier outside my door started to pull the door back open.  While keeping my foot on the gas, I turned sideways in the seat and started to kick the door until the rotten hands outside lost their grip.  I ripped the door shut as I heard one of them thumping through the rear passenger’s window onto the back seat.  I pulled out the Glock and fired several rounds at its head.  The corpse tumbled back out the window and I felt the car lurch forward as the crowd in front of the car began to thin.  I saw a few of them fall in front of the car and the vehicle jumped and jarred as it rolled over them.  The beat up old car finally broke through the dense mass and I tried to keep it under control as the tires began to grip the road.

I got onto the first side street that I saw.  I looked down at the gas light on the dashboard and wondered how far the fumes in the gas tank would get me.  I was only able to drive for a couple of miles before the engine started to sputter, but it was far enough away from the crowd to get out of sight.  The engine finally died as I rolled up to a strip of small businesses.  The location was strangely familiar, but I was positive that I had never been there before.  I got out of the car and started to walk past them on the road.  My leg began to hurt worse from the walking and I decided I would be better off if I found an open building to rest inside of.  I cautiously walked into the complex and checked half of the buildings before I found one with an open door.  Someone had broken the lock to the business to the point that the door could not be secured.  I noticed the sign to the business had fallen to the ground.  I lifted up the sign to see “Joe’s Electronics Repair.”

I thought again of the video camera.  I pulled out my flashlight and my Glock and slowly opened the door.  I didn’t hear anything.  I stepped inside.

Inside the building smelled like a rotting corpse.  I had come to associate that smell with the carriers, but if there was any way I could watch that video tape, I needed to find it.  I entered a long hallway with a door to my left and a workbench with a lamp at the other end of the hall.  I looked into the window on the door to my left and could see all kinds of electronics equipment inside.  I checked the door handle and the it was locked.  It was a fairly flimsy door and I wasn’t about to let a flimsy door stop me.  I reared back and kicked the door open.  I stepped back to see if anything was going to come out of the door, but nothing did.  I stepped inside and could see the source of the smell.  A heavy set man was hanging from the rafters by a long piece of cable.  A ladder was lying on the floor beneath him.  I shined my flashlight up to the rafters and could see they had bent from the weight.  I couldn’t say how long ago he had hung himself, but he had been dead for a while.