The Restless Dead

[SByrd89]

Just caught up...i cant wait to find out what donnovan saw upstairs.

Dont stop EVAR major.

[majorhavoc]

The darkness, if anything, seems even more foreboding up here on the third floor. The rapidly fading beam from my flashlight scarcely penetrates, casting a pale, watery light and flickering shadows across the walls of the third floor landing. It reveals that the layout up here mimics that which we noted on the floor below. Three closed doors: two on our left opening towards the front of the building, one on our far right, offering entry to the rear of the structure.

But no additional staircase ascends any higher. I try to remember how this building looked from the outside. Most of the structures that make up this row of storefronts are either three or four stories tall. Was this particular building just three? Flat topped or with a peaked roof? Surely there must be a way to gain egress to the roof, or at least to some sort of attic? When we were out on the street, it never occurred to me to look up.

I redirect the dying flashlight beam back to each of the three closed doors. As the feeble light falls on each, they in turn appear to grow in size and quiver with portent. I realize it's just the shaking of the flashlight beam. I steady my grip on it with my other hand and in so doing discover both my hands are shaking almost uncontrollably.

I’m again aware of an almost overpowering sense of unease; the uncanny feeling of something beyond death that we began experiencing on the first floor is much, much stronger up here.

I struggle to attach a basis for the sensation. The entire building reeks of rot and death, so is it some additional smell that’s assaulting my body? Or some unnerving sound? In the rare, brief intervals between the steady smashing and groaning noises coming from below, I almost do detect something else in the auditory environment. No so much a noise, but something within the absence of noise. Occupying a kind of interstitial space between all the other sounds. Lurking within the moments of silence like a sullen stillness; almost a humming on some unidentifiable frequency beyond the human register.

I shake my head as if to rid myself of this cloying intrusion. But it does nothing to relieve my sense of unease. It only serves to refocus my attention to the sounds that I can hear: the wild thrashing noises coming up through the ruined stairwell have changed; the crashing and bellowing continue, but suddenly with renewed purpose. That Tank is beginning to work its way back up from the basement.

If there's a way out of this tomb, it's beyond one of these doors.

And if there's an explanation for this preternatural sense of foreboding, I realize with grim certainty, it also lies beyond one of these doors.

“Com’on, Donovan," I urge quietly. "We don’t have much time.”

[majorhavoc]

I try the first door on our left by turning the knob gently, easing it open a crack and then pull it back closed. For the first time since entering this building, I withdraw the revolver, set the hammer and turn to Donovan.

“Ease it open again and then step away from the door,” I whisper, struggling to hold the flashlight and pistol steady.

Nodding, Donovan moves to my right, opens the door a crack, and then sidles away.

Focus on the whole area beyond the door, not just what you first see, I silently intone, recalling the countless room clearing drills we did back at Fort Drake. If your target is the first thing you see, he’s already got the drop on you anyway.

I push the door open with the side of my foot and hastily sweep the flashlight beam left to right. Biting reluctantly through eddies of gently swirling dust motes, the feeble light passes over a table and two chairs on the right side of room, two open doorways directly opposite me, and then illuminates a narrow bed butted up against the left wall. I make out a toilet and shower stall through one of the open doorways leading off of this room, and a refrigerator and kitchen sink are visible through the other.

On the bed I grimly note the remains of an adult figure slumped over near the head board, and lying lower on a bed, a much smaller corpse. There is a stillness to this room that makes it clear to me that this scene has remained undisturbed for some time.

Entering cautiously, I quickly clear the minuscule kitchen and bathroom and then return to the central room of this tiny apartment, where I meet Donovan, who has entered of his own accord. Neither of us sense any present danger in this room. Together, we examine the grim vignette on the bed. The adult is a female judging from her dress. Her left hand is still wrapped around the handle of a revolver, far larger than the one I have in my hand. The dark stain on the wall next to the bed, to say nothing of the obvious bullet wound to her head, makes clear she took her life.

And that of the young child lying at her feet. Another female, the child’s face is utterly gone, as is the back of her skull. Inexplicably, the child bears evidence of at least three other bullet wounds, including a massive exit wound on her lower back. For the first time I see a trail of blood coming from the doorway we just walked through, to the foot of the bed and then up and over the footboard to where the child now lies. Then I see the juvenile-sized bite mark on the adult’s left leg, right next to the remains of the child’s head.

“This child was a zombie, wasn’t she Bill?” Donovan asks softly. “And she attacked this other person, probably her mother.”

“Yup. That’s sure what it looks like.”

“At first I thought the mother was just trying to put the child down before taking her own life, but had botched the job, making her little girl suffer.”

“This child didn’t feel any of those bullets, Donovan. Whatever suffering she endured, it happened before her mother started firing. They all suffered.”

“So much suffering, Bill.”

“You still think this child somehow deserved this fate, Donovan?”

“Shut up, Bill. You know I can’t account for this. No one can.”

“Do you think she accumulated so much sin in her short life that God saw fit to punish her like this?"

“I said shut up.”

“That she should die a monster, riddled with bullets from her mother’s own hand?”

“Go to hell, Bill!”

“I’m sure if there is such a place Donovan, that’s exactly where I’m going.”

[Sheriff McClelland]

I'd given up on you several months ago . Loved the story detail , hated the wait

I'm on board again . Great stuff !

[The Mrs.]

I like the subtle transition that seems to be unfolding.

[majorhavoc]

I'd given up on you several months ago . Loved the story detail , hated the wait

I'm on board again . Great stuff !

Thanks Sheriff. So sorry to leave you and my other readers high and dry. It wasn't intentional. Believe me, I missed this story too.

ETA: And thank you to the new readers too, like you, The Mrs.

[The Mrs.]

ETA: And thank you to the new readers too, like you, The Mrs.

Eh. Good stories are meant to be read.

[DAVE KI]

“You still think this child somehow deserved this fate, Donovan?”

“Shut up, Bill. You know I can’t account for this. No one can.”

“Do you think she accumulated so much sin in her short life that God saw fit to punish her like this?"

“I said shut up.”

“That she should die a monster, riddled with bullets from her mother’s own hand?”

“Go to hell, Bill!”

These exchanges are getting interesting.Do I sense a larger part for Donovan? Kinda had him figured for zombie poop awhile back.

[nathat]

loving it. So glad you're back.

[m249saw]

moar?

[majorhavoc]

I suspect Donovan was about to offer some choice remarks on the existence of Hell and securing my place in it. But our exchange is interrupted by a tremendous splintering crash beneath our feet, alarmingly close. The Tank has ascended to the second story.

“Good Lord, that thing’s right below us, Bill!”

“That puts at least one wall between it and the stairwell. That means we’ve another minute or two,” I say, prying the magnum revolver from the corpse’s hand.

“Is it still loaded?” Donovan asks hopefully.

“Nope,” I reply, snapping the cylinder back closed. “She used the last bullet on herself. But maybe we’ll find some .357 or .38 caliber cartridges along the way. And knowing Frank, he just might have a box or two in that armory of his he calls a kitchen cupboard. “ Twirling my finger, I gesture Donovan to turn around.

“How come I have to carry it?” Donovan whines as I unzip his backpack and deposit the weapon inside. “It’s heavy!”

“Because," I reply matter-of-factly. "If it’s in your pack, then I won't be tempted to use it to beat you across the face.” His lack of response suggests he’s wrestling with the notion that I might not be joking. I realize I am too.

Emerging from the apartment, another shattering rumble emanates from the floor below, this time followed by a deep groaning protest throughout the building.

“That didn’t sound good,” Donovan observes grimly.

Moving quickly, we try the second doorway facing the front of the building. It’s locked. I’m about to try to kick it down when from the other side I hear the sounds of splintering floor boards and a guttural roar.

“Shit,” I announce, backing away from the door. “That didn’t take long. It’s made it up to this floor.”

It occurs to me that maybe, just maybe, we could drop back down to the second floor and try to escape while the Tank is searching for us up here. I peer over the edge of the ruined stairwell and begin calculating the odds of swinging safely onto what remains of the landing below us. Suddenly, the wall just to the left of the locked doorway explodes.

What comes next happens because there is no time to think. No time to consider or rationally choose between fates. No time to have any awareness at all of the kind of unholy terror that in a more innocent time remained safely sequestered in only our darkest and most terrifying dreams.

Donovan and I do the only thing we have left to do: we choose the third door. And in so doing, we run away from a known terror and straight into the arms of a waking nightmare.

[DTyra]

[majorhavoc]

Instinctively, I slam the door behind us after a panic stricken Donovan follows me into the darkness of the third room.

Even before it latches closed I feel a flood of foreboding overwhelm every bodily sense. An inky, impenetrable blackness closes in around us like an enveloping husk, choking off any connection with the living world beyond. The stagnant, fetid air assaults our nostrils and even our tongues; immediately raising the taste of bile in our throats and a cold film of sweat all over our bodies. In the stillness waiting in the darkness of this room, I again can almost hear something occupying the silence, an incessant, unnerving buzzing that is almost, but not quite there. In its appalling nothingness it announces itself, terrifyingly urgent, profoundly unwelcome.

And most abhorrent of all, beyond any sense of sight, smell, taste or temperature, we feel deep in our bones a cold, dire feeling of overwhelming dread. A yawning sense of oblivion waiting for us in this room. What we’ve perceived from the moment we entered this building has been emanating from the room we now find ourselves in.

Fumbling, I discover the flashlight hanging by its lanyard around my wrist. It’s still activated, but so overpowering is the darkness of this place, I wasn’t even aware it was still on.

Common sense demands we immediately step deeper into the room, away from the closed door and wall we’re backed up against. For surely the Tank will burst through it any second. Yet Donovan and I remained glued to the spot, comically pressing up against it with our backs, as though we could even slow the certain death hurdling towards us on the other side.

Yet inexplicably, the Tank does not come bursting through. Weighing heavily on the groaning third story floorboards just a few feet behind us, it pauses, snorting heavily, but does not attempt to pursue us any further. For the first time in my post apocalyptic life, I witness a zombie, clearly aware of my presence, decline to act on its ravenous hatred. The Tank simply remains rooted on the other side of the thin wooden door, a mere paw swipe away from grasping us. There it remains, standing sentry. Lest we try to retreat from whence we came.

“You were w-wrong, Bill,” Donovan whispers in the near darkness, beginning to sob. “So very wrong. That s-storeroom on the ground floor wasn’t Hell. Not even close. B-but we’ve found it, haven‘t we? Dear God in heaven, Lord and Savior, we’re in it now!”

No cynical retort about Heaven and Hell springs to my mind. No glib response about God and his plans for his children, whether pious or drenched in sin. Not even a venomous reminder to Donovan to keep the hell quiet. I say nothing because nothing needs to be said that isn’t already perfectly obvious. Whatever is in this room with us knows damn well we’re here.

And with far more certainty than when my team and I cowered in that godforsaken swamp, surrounded by Vietcong and waiting to die, or when those Khmer Rouge tossed that satchel charge and entombed us in that cave, even more than when I sat, ashen faced in the doctor’s office last year, only half hearing the words spilling like poison from his mouth, I know that today we are well and truly fucked.

In the darkness, I decide, there is not total silence. With no visual reference, I struggle to identify the sounds I’m hearing. A wet, sliding sound, something hard and damp moving minutely across raw floorboards. Coming from multiple directions, a collection of soft, chittering noises, like insects, hard shelled and full of purpose, moving about in dank places not meant to visited.

I fight against the almost overwhelming desire keep the feeble light from my flashlight where it is, cupped greedily between my two hands, casting its meager illumination upwards. I want to take it, sidle up closer to Donovan and huddle together where we stand, clinging to this last tiny island of life and warmth and human companionship. If I could, I would trade a lifetime of happiness to remain exactly here where I am now, terrified, but still alive, instead of venturing any further.

In the end, it is the thought of Zoey and Francis that settles the matter. Reluctantly, I redirect the flashlight beam ahead of us and take my first halting step forward.

[DAVE KI]

Drs. office? Cancer? Just thinking out loud so to speak(or typing).I hate cliff hangers. BUT THIS IS GREAT THOUGH!!

[majorhavoc]

The visible world consists of a quivering cone of pale light advancing tentatively just a few feet in front of me. Skirting a stained and torn couch and a toppled chair, I cautiously approach a dusty table, littered with plates, utensils and the desiccated remains of some unidentifiable last meal.

My heart stops when I spot movement on floor just beyond the table. What I first take to be a thick tree root is some sort of long, glistening appendage, somehow anchored to the floor, yet slowly undulating. At its terminus, an orifice of some type is beginning to open up just ahead of a large bulge, easily twice as wide as the rest of it. Further behind it and all along its length I see additional bulges of varying sizes advancing slowly towards the orifice at the end.

I watch, transfixed, as the orifice opens wider and wider, viscous black lips spreading open to reveal the slick, curved surface of something dark and vaguely spherical inside. Reaching the apex of its diameter, the rest of the object disgorges suddenly with a wet sloshing sound and the orifice reluctantly sags closed, gurgling and spewing vile liquid like a broken sewer pipe. A human skull, blackened and stripped clean, rolls a few inches until it comes to a halt at the edge of a pile of other stained bones, shoes and wadded clothing. The pile is sprinkled with metallic objects, some recognizable as wrist watches or jewelry, others tiny, unidentifiable nuggets of gold and silvery metal.

Casting the flashlight slowly about me, I identify several other piles of stripped human remains scattered throughout this space, once some sort of large living room. And near each collection of bones and human attire, a similar tentacle is rooted to the floor, slowly disgorging one macabre addition after another. Returning my attention to the one at my feet, I follow its length all the way back to the wall, where it ascends upwards and merges with other tentacles from the floor. Circling a full 360 degrees with the flashlight, I realize we are now standing in approximately the middle of a vast network of these tentacles crisscrossing the floor, all tracing back to the walls and few even running across the ceiling above us.

Conjoined, the larger trunks converge in the far left corner of the room where I see a massive web of tightly packed material, pod-like and glistening with fluid, somehow attached to the junction of the ceiling and where the two walls meet. Pulsating with slow, deliberate movement from within, a thick column of material descends below it, back down to the floor. There, this thickest of appendages spreads out into an undulating bed of tissue. Vaguely gynecological in appearance, it’s several feet in length and consists of two large, opposing sheaves of material, appearing as lobes or lips, wet and gurgling. And protruding from within the folds of those lips are the splayed legs of a human-like figure, identifiable as a zombie only because rather than resisting, the legs are still slowly kicking with purpose, driving the figure deeper and deeper into the enveloping folds of this abomination.

The sounds around me are suddenly joined by the wet splash of semi-solid material to my right. I turn to see Donovan bent over, vomiting directly onto his feet.

“What in God’s name is this place?” Donovan sobs, panting and still spitting the last of his stomach contents onto the floor. “What’s happening here? It’s like this thing is eating the zombies!”

“Not eating, Donovan. I think maybe processing. Absorbing raw material.”

“Processing? Raw material? What in God’s name for?”

“I’m not sure. But I think it has something to do with that,” I say, training the light on the web of material anchored to the corner of the ceiling and walls at the far end of the room. “Everything seems to be feeding into, or emanating from whatever the hell it is.”

“It looks… looks almost like some kind of a nest.”

“Yeah,” I concur, studying the mysterious object. “Yeah, I believe that’s what it looks like to me too. A nest or maybe a cocoon. You might just have figured it out.”

“Figured it out? What the hell are you talking about? I haven’t figured anything out.”

“It’s as good a theory as any, Donovan.“

“Screw theories, Bill! If that’s a cocoon and it’s being fed zombies, then what the fuck is growing inside of it?”

[majorhavoc]

An unwelcome new sound introduces itself in the darkness. Spinning around, the dim beam of my flashlight falls upon a zombie standing to our right, just ten feet behind us. It’s been in this room all along, and we walked right past it, not thirty seconds ago.

“Shit.” I mutter, struggling to understand why it didn’t spring as soon as we entered. “Get behind me, Donovan.“ With glacial slowness, the creature advances towards us in a halting gait. Almost as if it wants to act on its instinctive desire to attack, yet is somehow being admonished to adhere to some competing purpose. It lets out a low, rasping moan which is immediately echoed by a chorus of other moans, emanating from within the darkness all around us.

Sweeping the torch all around us while backing away from this newest threat, the flashlight beam illuminates four more creatures slowly emerging from the shadowy corners of this room. Make that five. No, six.

Sidling together, Donovan and I adjust our retreat towards the only remaining part of the room that isn’t occupied by an advancing zombie.

“H-how many bullets do you have left?” Donovan asks, clinging desperately to any shred of hope.

“Not enough.”

“We came all this way then, only to die here. “

“Something’s not right,” I whisper, puzzled.

“D-damn straight something’s not right! We’re surrounded by zombies and we’re going to die!“ Donovan cries out in despair.

“No, Donovan, don’t you get it? Why aren’t they charging?”

“Does it matter? They’re going to eat us just the same!”

As Donovan is saying this, I note that three of zombies are lurching laterally as much as they are advancing forward. Almost unconsciously, Donovan and I again adjust our retreat towards the only gap in the slowly tightening cordon.

“Wait a minute. We’re not being attacked. We’re being herded.” For the first time, it dawns on me that we’re edging steadily towards the mouth of the hellish monstrosity occupying this room.

“Why, Bill? If that abomination wants to consume us, it’ll get the chance as soon as these zombies finish us off!”

“Maybe it needs a living host.“

“F-for what?

“Maybe to complete whatever’s growing in that cocoon. It might explain how we managed to get this far without that Tank killing us. “

“You think that overgrown ape’s been holding back? I thought it was doing a pretty damn good job of trying to turn the two of us into a bloody pulp!”

I’m not listening to Donovan anymore, who seems incapable of contemplating any fate except defeat and a horrific death. My mind working feverishly, I notice for the first time another doorway in the right-hand wall, just barely visible fifteen feet behind a large, upholstered chair. Two of the advancing zombies have split apart to work around the chair as they advance closer to us.

Donovan and I take yet another reluctant step closer to the undulating mouth of the tentacled thing growing throughout this room. Finished with its prior meal of the undead corpse, the twin lobes unfurl again, stretching a feathery web of mucous and pus across a glistening, expectant interior.

“Donovan!” I whisper urgently, directing his attention with the dying flashlight beam. “Can you see that door? Just behind that big chair?”

“I-I can see the chair, but if there’s a door back there, I can’t make it out!“

“It’s there. Trust me. When I say so, I want you to take two big steps with me to the right. I think we might be able to draw that zombie on this side a little further away from that chair. The one on the left of the chair will have no where to go, so I think we can open a bit of a gap. “

“What for?”

I marvel at this man’s capacity for stupidity in the face of adversity. “To get past them! To get to that goddamned door! If that zombie moves with us to the right, even a single step, I want you to run like hell. Go over the top of the chair if you have to!“

“What if it’s locked?”

“Donovan!“ I cry in exasperation. “What if it’s not?”

[majorhavoc]

In the end, I decide to leave no part of this last, desperate plan to the vagaries of Donovan’s fickle resolve. I grasp him firmly by the collar and yank him roughly towards me as I sidestep to the right. The infected creatures immediately react, stepping laterally to counter our sudden shift in direction. They move in unison to discourage any path except towards the yearning maw of that thing gurgling softly on the floor just a few more steps behind us.

I’m focusing solely on the two zombies on either side of that large chair. The left-most creature stumbles into it and almost falls over. It staggers back a few steps in the opposite direction to recover its balance.

“Time to make our move, Donovan,“ I whisper urgently, unclasping his collar and slapping him on the back. “Run, you idiot! Run!”

Urged forward, Donovan lets out an anxious yelp and plunges straight towards the chair and the door beyond. The zombie to the right reacts a second too late, and Donovan just squeaks by its grasping arms.

The gap closes as I follow on Donovan’s heels, so I elect a more vertical approach. Pushing off with my trailing foot, I lunge upwards and plant my other into the seat cushion of the chair, just as the zombies on either side of it begin turning towards the fleeing Donovan.

I misjudge the amount of give in the seat cushion and my foot sinks deeper than I expect. My trailing leg doesn’t clear the seat back and instead I drive my knee into it, toppling it over. Falling forward, I just have time to tuck my head as I roll off the back of the falling chair. I somersault back to a standing position just in time to crash into Donovan. Pushing the door open together, we half stumble, half fall into the darkness beyond.

We don’t get far. As I’m slamming the door closed behind us, Donovan runs into something hard and hollow at his knees and topples forward, clutching madly at some sort of wall of slick fabric. The reverberating thud he makes as he lands confirms our location just as my hand finds a small latch just below the bathroom doorknob. I lock the door and fumble with the flashlight dangling by its lanyard around my wrist. It illuminates a thrashing Donovan as he struggles to extricate himself from the shower curtain that has fallen over with him into the bathtub.

We’re locked in this dark, tiny room like a pair of cornered rats.

The weight of at least two bodies crashes into the outside of the bathroom door and the wooden frame groans in protest. I press my back into it even as I’m directing the meager beam of light all around us. Its intensity is waning steadily now, only a few minutes of illumination left.

Barely six by eight feet, the interior of this room consists of a fiberglass tub/shower enclosure, a toilet and a sink. The slatted doors to the right of the bathtub indicate a shallow closet of some sort. And the rows of hastily cut wooden boards screwed tightly against the wall to my left mark where the window used to open out onto the back side of this building.

I can already hear the wood beginning to splinter around the door latch next to my right hip.

“Donovan! We need something to brace this door so we can work on that window!” He’s just standing up with a vacant look in his eyes, still grasping the shower curtain rod in his left hand. The rod, I notice, is the expandable kind designed to fit a variety of bathtub dimensions.

“Perfect!” I say, snatching it from an uncomprehending Donovan. Stripping off the shower curtain, I fit one end of the rod up against the far wall of the shower enclosure and orient the other towards the door. Twisting the two rod sections, I extend its length until it butts up firmly against the trembling bathroom door. I tighten it as much as I can, redirecting much of pressure the zombies are exerting against the door onto the back wall of this room.

With the doorway secure for at least a few minutes, we attack the boards barricading the bathroom window. There’s the tiniest of gaps at the very top, allowing a sliver of indirect daylight into the darkened bathroom. Enough to get our fingers around the top board. But so well secured is the barricading that all we can manage to accomplish pulling with our hands is to loosen a few narrow slivers of wood.

“We need tools Bill,” Donovan declares, again showing signs of independent thought. “Something to pry these boards with!”

Working together in the dim light, Donovan and I frantically scour the meager contents of this bathroom. Behind the vanity doors underneath the bathroom sink I find cleaning supplies. Typical of a Vietnamese household, brand name cleaning products are conspicuously absent, in their place are jugs of ammonia, vinegar and bleach, and large boxes of baking soda and powdered soap. The small closet to the right of the bath tub likewise reveals little of use: towels and washcloths, shampoo and soap, plus overnight supplies for unexpected visits from relatives and family guests: sheets, extra bedding and an inflatable air mattress.

But no tools. In desperation, we rip the metal towel racks off the wall, but these turn out to be cheap, hollow metal tubes. After bending all three of the towel racks into useless scrap metal and snapping in two the wooden handle of a toilet plunger, all we’ve managed to accomplish is to pry off the top-most board of the window barricade. Peering through this enlarged gap, we’re greeted with a tantalizing vision of freedom. Inches from the wooden boards we see hurricane fencing that had been hastily stapled to the window casement. If we could get at it, it could be easily ripped out by hand. Beyond that and the window glass, a black iron fire escape is visible with a metal ladder ascending upwards out of view.

There’s our way to the roof, I think grimly. If only we could get past these wooden boards, we could open the window and climb towards a chance for freedom. But we’re out of tools, and judging by the creaking sounds coming from the door, we’re just about out of time as well.

[Nature_Lover]

This is a great story!
Thank You!

[Sheriff McClelland]

Great twists/turns !

Rip the drain pipe out of the sink for a pry bar

[majorhavoc]

Thank you both. That last installment was a little rough; I was on my way out the door. I've cleaned it up a bit now that I'm back.

Re: the sink drain pipe. That's a really good idea and is exactly what I came up with. I literally locked myself in my bathroom trying to figure this one out. Unfortunately, the drain pipe is PVC. I came up with nothing else.

I know I write this in the first person voice, but I am NOT Bill Overbeck. But whenever this happens I just write the scene and he comes up with things on the spot that I never would have thought of. Sometimes I have to Google the technical points just to confirm that Bill knows what he's talking about, but he's always been right. The solution he comes up with for this one blew me away. I never would have thought of it in a million years.

Sometimes I feel like I'm not so much writing this story as I'm just recording what happens to these characters.

[majorhavoc]

I feel the situation sliding towards hopelessness, like that day Francis and I were trapped in the fire station with an unconscious Zoey slowly bleeding to death in the back of that derelict ambulance.

Francis. I think wistfully. Where are you now? Keeping the others safe, I hope. I sure could use some of your single-minded focus about now.

“Damn it all, Bill!” Donovan blurts out in exasperation. “You got us in here! Think of something! Didn’t you used to be some sort of special forces soldier? Didn’t they train you people to make explosives and stuff?

“Donovan,” I say with resignation. “Improvised munitions would have had zero tactical value in the kinds of operations we were running. And it’s not like the average Vietnamese household had things like potassium nitrate just lying around. That I could use. With that and a couple of pounds of sugar, I could make a bomb. But Donovan, it‘s not like in the movies. You can't just mix Draino and tile cleaner and make an explosive. Even if we could, setting off something like that in a room this size would be suicide. The window would be blown open, but we wouldn’t be alive to take advantage of it. We don’t want a violent explosion right now. We need something to exert slow, steady pressure against those boards. Like a pry bar.”

“Or a car jack,” Donovan responds, absently.

“Or a bag lift,” I add, my mind still on Francis and the fire station.

“A what?“

“A bag lift. Fire departments and rescue personnel use them to jack up building debris or wrecked vehicles to free victims. It’s funny, because just now I was thinking about the last time I was in a fire station and Francis wouldn’t give up and how he …..

“... how he?”

“.... how he was just too bull-headed to give up,” I begin slowly, my mind racing to make a connection that’s just beyond my grasp. “And how what we needed more than anything just then was a jump starter, so Francis made one out of something that had no business being a jump starter.”

“Yeah, but we can’t use a jump starter right now, Bill.”

“No Donovan,” I agree, it suddenly coming to me. All the pieces, right before my eyes. “You’re absolutely right. But we could use a bag lift, couldn’t we? Right between the hurricane fencing and the boards behind that window!” Ducking back under the quivering shower curtain rod, I throw open the small towel closet and withdraw the air mattress, unused, still in it‘s packaging.

“Bill,” Donovan says, looking at the packaged air mattress doubtfully. “Those things are meant to be inflated with an electric pump. It’ll take us a half an hour to blow that up ourselves.”

“You’re wrong about that, Donovan. We can blow it up ourselves, a lot more quickly and with a hell of a lot more pressure than any electric pump.” I’m kneeling at the bathroom vanity again, opening the doors to the cleaning supplies underneath. “And you were the one that had the idea for it!”

“A bomb? I thought you said we couldn’t - ”

“ - Not a bomb exactly,” I correct, locating and withdrawing the box of baking soda and the jug of vinegar. “But a very energetic chemical reaction. Something that produces a lot of gas, very quickly.”

Working together, we unpackage the air mattress and unscrew the large nozzle designed to accept an air pump. I pour the entire box of baking soda through the open air nozzle, where it settles into the interior of the air mattress. “Get as much of that air mattress between the barricade and the hurricane fencing next to the window glass! And hurry!”

Hastily, Donovan feeds the limp folds of the uninflated air mattress through the gap at the top of the window frame. “Leave a few inches around the air nozzle hanging out,” I direct, uncapping the jug of vinegar.

“You hold the nozzle up and I’m going to pour as much of this vinegar into it as I can. It’s going to start bubbling like crazy. But Donovan, when I say to, you have to screw that air nozzle closed and you have to stuff the rest of the mattress completely behind those boards. If you don’t, we won't contain the pressure and the mattress will rupture before it can bust through these boards. Got that?

Daylight streams in through the gap created by the missing board, a tantalizing hint of the possibilities lying just inches beyond. It illuminates Donovan’s face as he grimly nods to me in understanding.

I begin pouring and almost instantly I can hear hissing coming through the air nozzle, and from within the mattress behind the window barricade. “Get ready, Donovan!” I empty a little less than half of the jug into the air mattress before a frothy mixture begins spewing vigorously back out of the nozzle. Not nearly as much vinegar got into the mattress as I had hoped. It’ll have to do. “Now Donovan! Close it off!“

His fingers a blur, Donovan begins twisting the nozzle cap closed. At first, he misaligns the threads, but without a trace of panic, he deftly backs the cap off, ignores the steadily increasing volume of bubbling liquid spewing around the cap, and then begins tightening again, closing it off tight. I drop the vinegar jug and working together, we half roll, half stuff the remaining several inches of the air mattress within the confines of the window frame behind the boards.

We back away as the barricaded window emits a squealing sound, escalating in pitch, as the rubberized mattress material expands to fill the last voids behind the boards. Then we hear the brittle crackling of the window pane behind the hurricane fencing starting to give way, followed by the groaning of wood screws straining to hold the wooden boards in place against the window frame.

“Bill, what happens if the glass cuts open the air mattress?”

“Then it vents off the pressure, the boards stay in place and we both die.”

“I hope it doesn’t cut it open then.”

The sounds of the straining woodscrews, splintering glass and squealing of the air mattress are approaching a crescendo when I think to warn my companion.

“Uh, Donovan? You know how I said it wasn’t possible to make a real bomb with what we have in here?”

“Yeah, so?” Donovan relies, looking intently at the window barricade.

“Well, I think I might have sort of outdone myself.”

“What to you mean?”

“I mean, DUCK!” I scream and bodily throw Donovan into the bath tub and jump on top of him, smashing my nose against the bath faucet in the process.

[majorhavoc]

Two things happen in rapid succession. First, either the door gives way or I somehow clip the shower curtain rod when I dive into the tub after Donovan. Because all of the sudden zombies are in the bathroom with us and I can feel fingers clawing at my back, attempting to lift me up.

Then abruptly I can hear little except a persistent ringing in my ears and the bathroom is suddenly a lot lighter, but filled with wood splinters, shards of glass and the burning taste of vinegar swirling all around me in complete silence.

From what seems like a long distance off I hear, faintly: “Bill? Bill! Are you listening? I said get the hell off of me!”

Stumbling, I clamor out of the tub. Blinking painfully in the swirling, acidic clouds of vinegar vapor, I see that all but one of the zombies have been blown out of the bath and back into the darkness of the living room beyond the shattered remains of the bathroom door. The one remaining zed is staked to wall next to the bathroom door, a jagged piece of former window barricading protruding from its neck. Stunned, its face is completely covered in a thick white film of the baking powder and vinegar mixture. With its windpipe stapled to what little is left of its cervical vertebrae and its face painted completely white, it paws at the air in front of it in utter silence.

Donovan and I stumble out through the open window and find ourselves blinking in the almost blinding daylight, gasping greedily in the fresh, open air of fire escape outside. With it, for the first time in what seems like an eternity, comes the intoxicating taste of freedom and the possibility of living to see another day.

I chance one last look back into the hellish interior of this building. We were inside for less than half an hour but it felt for all the world like we had been trapped there for six long months. The impaled white cake zombie peers back at me, vigorously gesturing in startled silence; looking for all the world like an macabre theater mime. An undead mime performing in elaborate pantomime as the final two members of its unimpressed audience hurriedly exit, seeking the promise of something better in the living world beyond.

<end of chapter>

[m249saw]

moar?

[DannusMaximus]

“Bill, what happens if the glass cuts open the air mattress?”

“Then it vents off the pressure, the boards stay in place and we both die.”

“I hope it doesn’t cut it open then.”

Donovan has a knack for pointing out the obvious, doesn't he?

MH, your description of the zombie digester thing in the room is just gruesome. Loathesome. I can even smell it, a rotten, wet godawful nauseating thing. I think this an original creature, or if it was in the game I don't remember it (been awhile since I played, though). You definitely ramped up the queasiness factor in the last few installments. It's been borderline uncomfortable to read.

So...

Moar?!