Redemption of the Dead (24 page)

She took the flashlight from her
mouth. “Can’t leave doors open if you’re on the escape.”

Tracy turned
the knob and opened the door. A handful of people were on the roof.
Quickly, a man with gray hair came over to her.

“Joe, this is Dean,” Tracy
said.

Joe shook the man’s hand.

Dean led her
by the arm to the ledge; Joe followed, surprised at his jealousy of
seeing another man touch what he supposed he should start calling
his girlfriend.

Joe came to the ledge and looked out.
Most of downtown was in shambles, with several of the buildings
crumbled into heaps, others standing partially erect, partially
demolished. The damage in this world was much worse than that of
his own.

Felix had
been right, however. At least a half dozen streets over, the giant
undead had gathered together and stood side-by-side. The
regular-sized zombies roamed the streets below, coming in from all
directions and heading toward their giant counterparts. Joe eyed
them intently, trying to discern between the ones already lined up
in the distance and the ones approaching and the direction they
were travelling.

“The scout
that reported this—you know Dale—also reported he had been no more
than five feet from one of the rotters and the creature just looked
at him then continued on its way.”

“Either something was wrong with that
zombie or it knew exactly what it was doing,” Tracy
said.

“They don’t think,” Joe said, “but they do seem to have an
understanding of their role, of what they do. Maybe even
why
they do it, for all we know. I’ve never known a zombie to
pass up a meal unless it was physically incapable of attaining it,
and even then . . . I don’t know what’s scarier.”

The two eyed
the walking deceased in the distance. Thanks to some of the
buildings having been leveled, it made line-of-sight much easier to
watch the creatures. From what Joe could see, the things streamed
forward to the giants’ feet then, as if hitting an invisible wall,
spread out lengthwise. Others came in behind those zombies and did
the same, but Felix was right in saying they weren’t forming
perfect lines.

“The only
unusual behavior I’ve witnessed was,” Joe said, putting Tracy’s and
Dean’s attention on him, “where I come from, they move en masse
from one area to another, actually emptying the place they just
left.” He couldn’t help but wonder if his world was still living on
somehow and if the undead had now completely overrun the Haven and
downtown had become the safe zone. He supposed he’d never
know.

“Where was this?” Dean
asked.

Tracy
covered for him and said, “How long has this been going on, this
formation of the dead?”

Dean thought
for a moment. “Dale came in not long ago, like twenty minutes, but
he said he’d been observing it for over an hour.”

“Have the
creatures ever exhibited any behavior like this before?” Joe
asked.

“No,” Tracy
said, “nothing that would be considered ‘out of the ordinary’ for
them. There’s a strategy here.”

“That’s impossible,” Dean said, “those
creatures can’t think.”

“Apparently
they can,” Joe said, “but not the way you and I do. Their behavior
both where I come from, and here, shows very clearly they are aware
of what they are doing. They might not understand it or even care,
but they all have one goal, right? Kill us, convert us, or eat us.
Each of those three things require three specific sets of actions.
Unless those three events have been happening by fluke and that’s
all these creatures are or ever would be capable of, then what
you’re looking at clearly shows something else at play, an aspect
about them that we never understood before.” He looked to Tracy.
She gave him an approving grin.

“Well, you
certainly seem to know a lot about this,” Dean said. “Any
advice?”

Joe simply deferred to
Tracy.

She said,
“Right now, stay put, stay hidden. The undead haven’t given any
indication to us in the past or even now they know where we are. No
sense drawing attention to ourselves if we don’t have
to.”

“Agreed,” Joe said.

More of the
dead filled the street, their vast numbers suggesting many had
remained hidden until now or were trapped and had just gotten
out.

The undead took rank amongst their kin, the giants looking
off into the distance as if waiting for something, as if
planning
for something.

* * * *

23

Elevators

W
ith Sven
holding
her steady while
Billie partly leaned into the elevator shaft, she looked up and
counted the visible exterior doors from within and determined the
elevator on the left was lodged on the seventeenth floor. Upon
confirming the find on the eleventh floor, they were able to
ascertain the second car was stuck up on the
twenty-fifth.

Now on the
seventeenth, it was the moment of truth. Sven was in charge of
prying open the doors; Bastian had his machine gun at the ready,
aimed squarely at the opening; Billie stood against the wall on the
side, gun ready to shoot down anything that came out groaning or
growling.

Billie nodded at Sven.

“Guten tag,” Sven said loud and clear, giving the door a
hard
whap
with the palm of his hand.

The three waited for a response, then
muffled from within, “Hello?

Sven smacked
the door again. “Guten tag.”

From inside: “Hello? Who’s
there?”

Billie’s
heart sank with relief, but this was only the first part of the
plan. For all they knew, this was yet another trap and those
“stuck” within the elevator were shape shifters.

Sven pried
the door open only a couple of inches, just enough to clear the
path of communication.

“How many are you?” Sven
asked.

“Fourteen,” came the male voice from
within.

That’s got to be cramped,
Billie thought.

“Show me face,” Sven said.

There was
shuffling and bumping in behind the door, then Sven took a step
back.

He looked at
Billie. “He look okay.”

“Only one,” Billie said.

“Step back
from door. Only one person come out. Anymore get shot, okay?” Sven
said.

He pried the
door open enough so a single person could squeeze through sideways.
The moment the male in the white lab coat was pulled through,
shouts arose from within along with demands to let them
out.

Sven said something
,
but Billie couldn’t make it out above the din.

“Tell them
to be quiet,” she said though it was clear Sven couldn’t hear her
either.

A series of
rapid gunshots made her jump and the voices ceased. The man in the
lab coat raised his hands in surrender. Bastian lowered his weapon
as dust and debris from the ceiling settled at his feet.

“Better quiet,” he said. He said
something in German to his brother.

“Yah,” was all Sven said.

He’s going to have to teach me some of that one of these
days,
she thought. Billie kept
her gun trained squarely at the man in the lab coat’s head. “You
have the barrel of a gun aimed at your temple, you have a man in
front of you with a machine gun, and the man who just let you out
holds a giant crowbar not to mention he could break your neck
faster than you could scream,” she said. “Just letting you know
who’s in charge.”

The
scientist—a young man with messy brown hair, at least three or four
days’ worth of stubble, and a set of out-of-place-amazingly-blue
eyes—simply nodded.

It was
decided before they opened the door that Billie would do most of
the talking because of Sven and Bastian’s thick accents. “I want
your name, who those people are, and how you got in there to start.
Got it?”

The man
nodded, his hands still raised. She wasn’t about to tell him to put
them down. “My name is Greg Undersall, engineer. Those people in
there are my team. We were put in there by these men, strange men.
They looked like people, but there was something about them that
made everyone uncomfortable. Once one of them . . .” He bowed his
head.

“Once one of
them . . . ?”

“He was able
to control one of my assistants. Not like a robot, but he had this
influence on her that was unlike anything I’d ever seen before.”
Greg nervously glanced at the elevator, then back at
Billie.

“What?” she asked.

He didn’t speak.

Billie nodded to Sven, who quickly
wrapped his big fingers around the back of Greg’s neck and
squeezed.

“Okay,
okay,” Greg said, “tell him to stop. I’ll tell you.”

Billie let Sven hang on a moment
longer then told the gentle giant to let him go.

After gasping for air and catching his
breath, Greg said, “There’s . . .”

From inside the elevator. “Don’t say
it!”

Billie scowled.

Greg shifted uncomfortably on his feet. “There’s a body.
One of my group, his name was Steven, started to lose it after
being trapped. He wouldn’t . . . wouldn’t stop screaming and
pushing against everyone else. Eventually he got violent and” —she
gave him a moment to take a breath before finishing— “things got
out of hand and we—and I mean
we
as we all decided
to take responsibility—ended up smothering him, our own safety our
only concern. It was wrong. I’m haunted by it. He came back and
immediately went on the attack, but we wrestled him down and broke
his neck. Don’t know why I just told you that straight up. I’m
sorry.”

“Don’t say
sorry to me,” Billie said. “Back to the matter at hand: those men
who trapped you, what did they look like?” She simply needed
confirmation that those they encountered in the lab below were the
same despite the connection being obvious. If being a computer
enthusiast had taught her anything in her old life, it was that
information was valuable and there was no such thing as too much of
it, even redundancies.

Greg went on
to describe Dr. Moore along with several others that matched the
hairs and outfits some of the other zombies had.

“Those men weren’t what they seemed,”
Billie said.

“You’re telling me. So, what
now?”

“I ask the questions.”

He sighed and rolled his eyes.
Apparently his newfound freedom was making him cocky.

“Put him back in,” Billie told
Sven.

Sven grabbed
Greg on either side of his coat collar and shoved him toward the
door.

“No, wait! I’m sorry. Don’t put me
back!”

People called from inside the
elevator, begging to be released.

“Stop,” she
told Sven. “Listen, Greg, the three of us here don’t have time for
games or some sort of stupid power struggle. We’re the ones in
charge. Either you and your people get with that or we throw you
back.”

“Okay,” he said softly, “okay. You
win. I’m sorry.”

“Good. What
about the people in the other elevator, or were you fourteen
it?”

“You’re
right. There was more than fourteen of us, nineteen, actually—and
I’m talking about those of us involved with the underground
research here since the creatures took over—but we had some
military people here, too, overseeing what we were doing and
coordinating.”

“Coordinating what?”

“That’s classified.”

“You’re about to become classified if
you don’t speak up.”

Sven shoved
Greg against the door, slamming him into it hard. Too hard, Billie
thought, but was glad for Sven’s support. Greg rubbed his shoulder.
She could tell he wanted to take a swing at Sven, but it was also
apparent it didn’t take much for the engineer to hold himself back
from going up against such a big guy. “You guys don’t let up, do
you?”

“Nope,” Billie said with a grin.
Really getting used to this gun thing.

“There are plans for an attack
underway. Those are the things we were working on.”

From inside
the elevator, a female said to those within, “He told
them.”

Greg didn’t
seem to pay her any mind. “I don’t have all the details as our job
was simply to keep our heads down, work, and come up with ideas for
items that would be more effective against the creatures given the
resources we have, which aren’t many.”

Not many
?
she thought, recalling the amazing
facility downstairs.
Perhaps
compared to what you were used to before all this.

Billie took it all in, then told Sven
to close the elevator door. He did despite the shouts of protest
from within.

“Okay,”
Billie said, “you come with us and we corroborate your story. We’ve
encountered our quota of liars for the day and we’re not about to
exceed it.”