Time Clock Hero (16 page)

“Now, if you ain’t hungry,” Ms. New Orleans said, leaning in close to Phoenix, “you ain’t a man.  It’s been a long time since I had a man for dinner, and I never knew a one that wasn’t always hungry for something sweet and southern.”

One of the women, younger, tattooed from her ankles up said, “Why don’t we let everyone use the bathroom, wash up, and then we’ll have dinner?  I’ll take you guys to the … oh, I’m sorry.  I’m Beth, by the way.”

Alaia introduced everyone.  “This is Phoenix, my husband, our son, Darkeem, and I’m Alaia.  My husband and I are NPD, which is why you see us dressed this way.”

“Glad to meet you,” Beth said.  “Follow me and I’ll take you to the shower.”

“Ooh,” Ms. New Orleans said, turning around with her nose to the air.  “They ain’t burned yet, but they do need to come out of the oven!”  She and the other two women hurried down the short hall and disappeared behind a door.

“You’ll be safe here for the night,” Beth said.  “The funeral home sits back off the road and just over the crest of the hill and isn’t really noticeable.  People are always passing it when they drive by because they miss the sign.”

Beth started to open a door, but then she stopped.  “The shower is in a room just past the embalming area – so, just be prepared.  I kinda just look to my right as I walk, and then I don’t have to see the corpses.”

“Corpses?” Alaia asked.  “Can’t we go another way?”

“This is it,” Beth said.  “Just be glad it’s cold in there and that these people seem to be fresh.  But something tells me we’re going to have to remove them at some point – but none of us has the guts to do it.”

Phoenix, Alaia, and Darkeem, with his mother’s hands over his eager eyes, followed Beth across the tiled floor with their eyes glued to the stainless steel tables and sinks running along the wall on the right.  Beth suggested they hold their breath, too – not because of any terribly foul odor, not because any of the bodies were in a state of decay, though that might come soon enough; but because of the antiseptic smell of the area – or was that embalming fluid?  Beth didn’t know.  But she hated the smell nonetheless.  The room felt icy – colder, probably, than a February night in Tennessee, and everybody shivered, psychologically and physically, as they passed by three corpses laying on what must have been icy-cold, stainless steel tables.

They came to a door at the end of the embalming area that lead to a small, nicely-furnished room.   Alaia took her shower first, followed by Darkeem.  Phoenix went last.  When they finished bathing and dressing – the hot water was magnificent – they followed Beth back the way they had come, careful to avoid seeing the dead.  She led them down a hall and through one of the sitting areas.  When they stepped into the kitchen and dining area, the aroma of beef stew and hot cornbread hit them in all the right places.  Ms. New Orleans produced a bottle of wine.

Phoenix, Alaia, and Darkeem sat down at the table; and together, with their hosts, they ate, drank, and laughed until every plate had been cleaned.

Phoenix stood near the front door.  He listened to scratching and scuffling sounds, all of them loud enough to be heard through the double pane windows and solid wood double doors.  His despair gave way to anger.  So much had changed so quickly in just a few days.  He had been a decent-enough cop only days ago, doing his job the best he knew how.  Now, he found himself worrying about the next bed he’d sleep in, what he would eat, and how he could keep Alaia and her son safe from a virus that had sprouted legs and arms.  He wanted more than anything to get to Carson Research Labs and put an end to the darkness for himself and his new family.

And Alaia’s advances.  She seemed as aggressive as any woman he could remember – maybe not a June Buckner, ready to do anything for a five-minute relationship, but a June Buckner nonetheless.  He hated to think what would happen if he straightened Alaia out on that issue.  Or maybe he’d just tell her he needed to go outside and check out the situation.  Then he’d give her the slip, the pink one, the one that reminded her that the only person she owned was herself.  But the thought passed quickly from his mind.  He could love her, couldn’t he?  But not maybe not like she had in mind.

He took out his inhaler.  The Oblivium went down easy.

But the thought of her and Darkeem being snatched away by the mindless sticks of protein wandering around on the front lawn of the funeral home made him sick.  He’d feel better knowing they were safe; and that thought, that feeling, surprised him. 

Yes, he’d played to the minds of women before, telling them everything they wanted hear, mostly lies about commitment, and how that he’d been hurt far too often in his short twenty-something years. They’d ask him to come over and he would oblige them.  Before first light, he’d be cleaned up and dressed and out the door, never to return.

Funny, he thought.  He hadn’t scored with Alaia.  But he suddenly realized a commitment he’d made to her and Darkeem.  A commitment that had nothing to do with what might happen out there, in the dark, beneath the folds of a sleeping bag, long after the lights had gone out.  But something having to do with their lives and safety.

Phoenix walked to the window, pulled the curtain back, and looked out towards the front lawn.  He ran his hand through his hair, then felt the stubble on his chin.  He’d seen all those infected outside a few minutes earlier.  How many he couldn’t tell, but he knew their numbers had increased since the night before.  The green lawn of the funeral home now looked like a soccer field with all of the spectators rushing onto the field, only in slow motion. 

He needed a couple of minutes with Alaia, who was back in the kitchen rustling up lunch.  Everyone had overslept, pleasantly, and they had skipped breakfast altogether.  As he turned around to go to Alaia, he heard a creaking noise, a noise that started slowly, became louder, and increased with a pop or two, like the vinyl siding on the side of his apartment creaked when the sun hit it.  He turned back and looked at the door.  It bowed inward just a bit, but it would never burst open.  In fact, it could never be forced.  The door, which was code compliant, opened outwards.  The jamb would hold.  Phoenix checked the panic bars, convincing himself they were firmly engaged, and he headed to the kitchen.

He walked through the hall to his right, turned left, and headed through the large, eerily-lit chapel.  The lighting struck him like a bolt of half-hearted, uninspired lightning.  And the pinkish glow of those flat-topped little lamps, two at either end of a closed casket, cast an aura of color reminiscent of Porky Pig’s complexion on old acetate film.  People brought death to this room and that was bad enough, he thought.  Then he chuckled, remembering rooms in better homes he once thought might have been rooms to die for.  But this chapel, lit the way it was with that subdued lighting, frosted with pink, was a room to die from. 

For no particular reason, Phoenix walked over to the casket sitting at the front of the chapel.  Maybe Ms. New Orleans and her friends, out of respect, had closed it – something they were capable of doing because they all seemed to be decent enough.  Or maybe it had occurred to them that the person lying there might wake up and climb out.

The casket, light brown with darker edges and corners, looked like middle-of-the-road quality.  It reminded him of the boxes they used for officers killed in the line of duty.  Never luxuriant, as a rule, but definitely not low end.  And why did it matter anyway? 

Phoenix touched the coffin lid, and he thought of a recently-waxed car.  He slid his fingers under the coffin lid and tried to raise it, but it didn’t budge.  Silently, in his heart, he thanked heaven the lid was locked into place.  But, as he turned away to head for the kitchen, he saw a hand crank sitting on the table next to the coffin.  He picked it up and inserted it into a hole in the coffin.  He turned it one way, and it refused to move.  He cranked it the other way, and it turned until it stopped.  He set the hand crank down and slowly lifted the lid, stopping just as he felt his finger slip in between the lid and the coffin.  He shook his head and allowed the lid to drop back into place, much like someone dropping the lid on a freezer.

Phoenix walked back through the chapel and left through a door at the rear, forgetting that he’d even attempted to open the casket.  He turned left and walked along the wide main hall, heading back towards the kitchen area where he could hear Ms. New Orleans and Alaia laughing. 

The sound of scratching and bumping, Psyke-Virused Nashvillians no doubt, came from the right, at the end of another long hall that terminated at another set of double doors.  Phoenix didn’t miss a beat when he turned into the hall and checked out the situation.  The two doors, both wooden – why anybody would use fine, mahogany doors at the rear of a funeral home he couldn’t guess – seemed to be flexing inward.  He checked the panic bars.  The doors felt secured, but---

And Phoenix, right then and there, knew the funeral home, far from being a place of refuge, had now become a tomb about to be vandalized by grave robbers – or was it the other way around?

He raced back down the hall and came to the next door on his right, opened it, and flipped on the light switch.  The coffin store – that’s what Ms. New Orleans called it – with its many coffins opened up for display, was also accessible from the outside by a door that, unlike the others, opened inward.  Phoenix hurried over to it.  This door was a residential-grade door, metal over a wooden frame filled with Styrofoam insulation.  This door belonged on a house, not on a business.  He’d seen officers batter these kinds of doors down with barely a half-swing from their rams.  He put his ear to the door.  Nothing.  Not a sound.

Phoenix left the coffin store and hurried back towards the kitchen.  When he got there, his eyes hit the large serving tray, a silver-plated thing, sitting on the table, stacked with sandwiches.  The bright white, overhead fluorescents seemed too bright after his little tour through the halls of death, and he looked down for a second.  Ms. New Orleans and her friends still had on the same clothes, but the odor he remembered from the day before didn’t carry the same punch – maybe they’d run them through the washing machine in the utility room, something he wish he would’ve done with his own.  Now he’d be the one bringing the fumes to the table. 

The level of conversation in the room, with Darkeem whining about something and Alaia trying to appease him, and the other women arguing unintelligibly, took on the flavor of a Greek Christmas with four generations crammed into a living room the size of a broom closet.

“In case anyone wants to know,” Phoenix said, “the entire circus showed up last night.”  He sat down on a metal chair next to Darkeem.  Beth handed him a disposable plate, the high-end paper kind, and he reached for a bologna and cheese.  Alaia poured him a flat coke, and he wondered how long it had been in the refrigerator.  He took a sip.  Without carbonization the soda tasted dead – that is, if death had a taste.  It was just as flat as that corpse in the coffin, so he set the disposable cup down and took a bite of the sandwich.  He shook a bag of Fritos out onto his plate and shoveled a handful into his mouth.

Darkeem started to say something, but Alaia put her hand over his mouth and her eyes lit up.

“Tell me you didn’t hear that?” Ms. New Orleans said.  She said she’d just heard something big.  Those were her words – partly English, partly bayouese.  Then she asked Phoenix what he thought it was, like he should know because he was the only man in the room.

Phoenix, half way through a handful of perfectly-fresh corn chips, hadn’t heard anything.  He finished chomping, took a sip of the Coke, which he finally decided was better used to de-acidify corroded battery terminals, and got up.  He stepped back into the hall with the sandwich in his hands and listened. 

The women started up with their socializing again, and Phoenix yelled for them to hold up for a second.  He headed towards the front of the funeral home, took a left into another small hallway, and stopped.  He heard a creaking noise, a steady, creaking, groaning sound, like somebody trying to sneak into or out of a bed.  The creaking turned to popping, just a few pops at first, then it became louder and more frequent.

He ran back through the chapel towards the front of the building.  What he saw shook him.  The wooden jamb and the double doors bowed inward, looking like bent popsicle sticks about to snap and splinter.  Phoenix hurried back the way he’d come, stuffing the sandwich into his mouth as he ran.

As he came down the hall he yelled, “They’re coming!”  And he could hear the doors popping louder, like a tree about to be felled, as they flexed inward beyond what they could bear.  And then a crash. The building shook and dust trickled down out of the ceiling tiles.  Phoenix reached the kitchen, shaking his head when he saw Darkeem and the others sitting at the table with half-eaten sandwiches in their hands.  “Time to go! 
They are coming!
  Like, any second now!”

Nobody said a word as they jumped up from the table, scattering chips and plates all over the small dining area.  Darkeem shoved his sandwich into his mouth.

The sound of automatic gunfire suddenly ripped through the air, coming through the thin walls around them like a stereo in a low-end apartment complex.  Alaia turned her head, trying to pinpoint the direction.  The shots rolled from one side of the building to the other, louder near the front – the place was surrounded.

“The Black Op guys – we gotta go,” Phoenix said.

Phoenix looked at Ms. New Orleans and company, their eyes wild with rational fear.  “We go to the casket show room and out through that door – it’s clear that way, and it’s just a short run to the woods from there!” 

Alaia led Darkeem out of the kitchen and into the hall.  Phoenix came out close on their heels.  As he ran, he suddenly became afraid that if the Psykotics didn’t get them, stray bullets, which he could hear ticking against the building, might.

A groaning, messy sound, growing louder by the second, filled the halls of the funeral home.  Phoenix turned his head around, slowing down enough to glance behind Ms. New Orleans and her friends.  The Psyke Virus zombies, fresh off the disassembly line, some with limbs shattered and stomachs chewed open by bullets, came around the corner behind them and started to pick up speed.

Ms. New Orleans stopped and turned around.  She pulled her semi-auto out and took aim, filling the hall with head-shattering and jaw-rattling explosions.  “You can’t have this place!” she yelled, and she kept firing.

Alaia led the way forward to the casket sales area, turning in when she reached it, holding the door ready as those behind her made a mad dash across the threshold.  Ms. New Orleans, who by now must have loaded a new clip, continued firing down the hall.  “Anybody seen Beth?”  Alaia leaned out and looked back down the hall just as another gun opened up.  Beth had joined Ms. New Orleans; and her weapon spewed flame, metal, and smoke.

Phoenix stepped back into the hall, looked towards the women, yelling with fury that the front door had been broken in and that they were wasting precious ammunition.  Maybe they couldn’t hear him, so he ran back up the hall and screamed at Beth.  “We have to get out of here – stop firing and come on, now!”

Beth agreed, but Ms. New Orleans, with a fresh clip in her weapon, held her ground and kept firing.  Eight or nine dead, piled grotesquely one on top of the other, filled the hall, slowing the infected on the other side who seemed to stumble onto the mess.  The smell of sweaty, bloody meat reminded Phoenix of a junior high boys’ locker room where wet, steaming dogs, fresh in from the summer heat, unbathed and unloved, lifted their legs near the dirty towel bin.

“I go this,” Ms. New Orleans yelled. 

Phoenix and Beth raced back down the hall, both of them breathless in the face of the red tide rolling towards them.  When they reached the door to the coffin display room, they looked back at Ms. New Orleans.  They saw her drop her gun, clutch her chest, and fall to her knees.  They closed the door and locked it.

Alaia, seeing Phoenix, hurried across the casket showroom floor from the far end near the exit.  “This way’s blocked,” she said.  “You can hear the gunfire – and I hear someone shouting out there.”

A burst of gun fire, high and staccato, ripped through the room, coming from the other side of the door.  The jamb of the door near the lock became a mass of flying splinters, and holes appeared in the door around the chrome door lever.

“Maybe they’re here to help us,” Beth said.