Cryonic (10 page)

“Go where?” Alex asked.

“Away from all this.” I motioned at the street below. “Outside the city.”

“We'll never make it.”

“You need to realize something, Alex. It won't be long before all of them make their way in here, and that will be the end of us. Just look down there. You see that horseshoe-shaped crowd in front of the building? Those freaks are trying to get through our front door.”

“Still, they can't open doorknobs, and we don't have a car. We can't just run for it,” Alex said.

“Carson has a car,” Celeste said with a smile. “They gave him one when they promoted him to supervisor.”

“There we go, Al.”

“We'll never make it out of the city. Americans are not allowed to leave the city without authorization. They have checkpoints.”

“We'll never know until we try, but if we stay here, they'll eventually break that door down. That's certain.”

“And there isn't much food here for three people,” Celeste added, sorting through the rations.

“We're going to have to come out eventually. Isn't it better to do it now, before the building is overrun?”

“I don't know, I don't know,” Alex fretted, pulling back his hair with both hands and pacing around the room. He stopped and looked out the window. I thought he was building nerve, but then he got that white-faced look—the same look he had when I needed him to free me from the hospital bed. “We should just wait it out. The army could come storming through here any minute, and then we'll be fine.”

“Oh, really? We'd be fine, huh? What do you suppose the army is going to do with us when they find us? Two fugitives and a person harboring them? We'd be better off with the freaks.”

I could tell Celeste was on board, but Alex sat down and put his head in his hands. He couldn't be convinced, but I wasn't going to leave without him.

The moans and wailing inside the building grew louder as the day wore on. They were so piercing in the evening hours that we only mustered a few hours of terrified, restless sleep. By lunch the following day, it was clear the building was being overrun. People were jumping from the floors above us, and screams emanated through the floor.

I looked through the peephole. At least a dozen zombies paced up and down the hallway and scratched on doors.

“You think they busted through the barricade?” Celeste asked.

“I don't know, I just don't know.” Our inactivity was making me nervous. I started pacing, racking my brain, and eyeballing Alex for any sign he'd changed his mind. “How many people live in this building?”

“A thousand. Maybe a couple thousand.”

“Are a lot of them home this time of day? I mean, when all of this started happening?”

“No more than twenty-five percent.”

Alex chimed in. “They keep us working in shifts so that people can't gather in large groups.”

“Maybe that's all that's out there, people from the building. I don't see any soldiers or doctors. Here, take a look,” I said to Celeste, giving her the peephole. “Are they your neighbors?”

“Most of them, yes.”

“Then we still have a chance.”

Celeste nodded. I could tell she was ready to make a move. Alex on the other hand was over by the window,
staring blankly at the street below. I heard snorting and growling at my feet. I got down on my hands and knees and looked through the crack at the bottom of the door. I couldn't see much, but I could hear one of them sniffing at the crack. The growls turned to screams.

“Oh shit! It can smell us in here.” I got up and looked through the peephole. The shrieking zombie was drawing the attention of the others down the hall. “I know how to stop this,” I said with a smile. “Plug your ears.”

I grabbed the assault rifle, released the safety, and got back on the floor. I pushed it against the crack and waited for the sniffing to come near. As soon as I heard sniffing near the barrel I pulled the trigger. The gun went off, and we heard a loud shriek followed by a light thump.

“I think I got him,” I said excitedly, jumping up to look out the peephole. I saw a pair of feet, heels up at the bottom of the frame, but I didn't get to revel in my kill. The noise from the gun attracted the other zombies, who attacked the door ferociously. They pounded on the door and rammed into it until the hinges started coming loose.

“Oh, man, I did it now,” I said sheepishly to my companions.

“They're going to break the door down. How many of them are out there?” Celeste asked calmly.

“About a dozen.”

“How can they even do that? Do they have some kind of superhuman strength?”

“I don't think so. They just don't feel any pain. They'll keep ramming it until they break in.”

“It's time to go,” Celeste declared. “Alex, get the keys from the drawer in Carson's nightstand.”

Alex didn't move. Celeste picked up the gun and walked over to him.

“We're out of time, dear. We have to go,” she said sweetly. Alex stared at his shoes. She held the gun up by the muzzle, and her voice grew stern. “Come on, Alex. We can do this. This is a powerful weapon.”

I grabbed the keys and ran around the apartment gathering food and clothing. I threw what I could in a duffle bag I found in Carson's closet. When I came back out into the living room, the front door was beginning to tilt into the apartment. Macabre fingers wriggled along the length of the gap. I went straight to Alex and handed him the bat.

“Alex, it's time,” I said. He wouldn't even look at me. “This is just like when I was strapped on that bed across the street. If you stand there frozen, we die. If you move, we live.” I put my hands on his shoulders. “You saved my life, buddy. I'm not going to let you die.”

Alex held up the bat sheepishly, and we moved him toward the door. Celeste took charge. “Royce, I'm going to have you open the door, and then you two just follow me, but
stay behind me
. You do not want to get in front of this thing.”

“You don't have to take the lead,” I said. “I can do it.”

“Actually, I do. Someone has to show you how to use this thing.”

Celeste pointed the gun at the ceiling and pushed a button on the side. The bayonet retreated, and a thick, red laser beam emerged. It nearly reached the ceiling but cast no light upon it.

“Ok, just be sure to aim for the head. Shots to the body don't seem to kill them.”

Celeste smiled at me wryly. I crouched down next to the doorknob and waited for her signal. When she was ready I yanked the door open so hard that I fell back on my ass.
Celeste stepped forward into the doorway like a gladiator and waved the laser back and forth at the zombies. The powerful beam seared through them like a hot knife through butter. They were in pieces on the carpet before I could get to my feet.

The hallway was littered with body parts and blood. Deep cuts and burn marks lined the walls where the laser had made contact. The jaws of severed heads chomped blindly like wind-up novelty teeth. A ghoul severed at the waist pulled itself slowly toward us.

“Holy shit, Celeste! That was incredible!” I squealed like a schoolgirl. She pushed the button on the side of the gun, and the metal bayonet returned from its sheath. “Did you know she was going to do that?”

Alex shook his head.

“Watch out for those heads, guys. They're still moving pretty good,” I said.

As we tiptoed through the carnage, Celeste forced the bayonet into the skull of the crawling zombie. I heard a shucking sound behind me, like someone had tossed a pumpkin out the back of a moving pickup truck, and turned. Alex was smashing the active skulls with the baseball bat.

“Atta boy, Al. That's the spirit.” I patted Alex on the back, and he smiled at us. It was the first time I'd seen him smile since the beginning of the outbreak.

We followed Celeste into the stairwell. Each time we reached a new floor, the zombies on the other side of the door shrieked and pounded against it as soon as they saw or smelled us.

When we reached the first floor, we paused before opening the door. The entrance to the parking garage was on the other side of the lobby, and the door in front of us was
windowless. Celeste turned on the laser, and I took a deep breath before pulling the door open. To our delight, the barricade had held, and the lobby was clear. We strolled out into the open feeling victorious, but as soon as the ghouls out front saw us, they began pressing against the glass doors and climbing on top of each other en masse to get inside. The glass caved in under the pressure, and a sea of ghouls chased us in to the garage.

The zombies were so close behind us that we didn't even try to close the door. Celeste sliced and diced them as they erupted through the doorway. Alex handed me the bat, grabbed the key, and went off searching for Carson's vehicle.

I was standing behind Celeste with the baseball bat, impotently watching her work her magic when I heard Alex scream. I ran over to help and found him backed against a wall between two cars with a zombie closing in. It must have already been in the garage because none of them were getting past Celeste. I cracked the zombie in the back of the head with the bat, and it dropped to the ground.

Alex went looking for the vehicle while I searched the garage for more stragglers. Most came after me as soon as they saw me, and the bat was a formidable weapon against a single attacker. Occasionally, I wouldn't get a clean enough shot to the head, and they'd get back up after falling to the ground. One even took the blow like the bat was made of foam and got in close enough to get a hand on me. The thing with the ghouls is they were clumsy, so I was able to push him to the ground and finish him off with the bat.

“Found it!” Alex yelled from across the garage.

I sprinted over to him and saw that Carson's “truck” was actually a white delivery van with no back windows. I hopped in, and we motored to Celeste.

“Swing around in front of her so that we can get between her and the freaks. Just watch out for that laser.”

Alex smashed into the zombies moving toward Celeste, and I opened my door. She hopped right on my lap, and we took off for the exit, ecstatic to be free from the menacing hands that thumped against the back of the van as we sped away.

I expected the streets to be clogged with vehicles trying to flee, but so few civilians were allowed to drive that our biggest obstacle was the swarm of zombies wandering the roadway. Alex took pleasure in smashing into them, and he hit so many with such force that he had to turn on the windshield wipers to clear away the blood.

We drove straight up Broadway and hit the first checkpoint as we crossed the George Washington Bridge into New Jersey. We approached slowly. The checkpoint had been overrun. Infected soldiers ambled about along with a mix of the city's denizens. At the far end of the checkpoint, a heavily armed troop transporter stuck on a concrete barrier was surrounded by zombies. The driver was trapped in the cabin.

“Hey, wait. Stop a minute. You see that?” I asked, pointing toward the back of the carrier. The door was open, and the remains of the troops who had been devoured as they exited were scattered.

“Ya, I see him, but we don't want to help that guy,” Alex said.

“No, not him,” I explained. “Look at the back . . . on the ground. See all those guns? We should get those.”

“It's not worth it,” Celeste said. “What if something happens to one of us?”

“Yes, we can find more elsewhere,” Alex chimed in.

“Just wait a minute, I have an idea. Celeste, give me the gun. How long can I make this thing?”

I rolled down my window and turned on the laser, pointing it laterally outside the vehicle.

“Um, it'll go about ten feet, I think. Just push this button to change the length.”

I followed her instructions and extended the laser as far as it would go. “OK, Al, now drive me up alongside them.”

Alex drove slowly toward the transporter. When the zombies saw us coming, some started moving in our direction.

“Step on it, Alex! We need to get them while they're all together.”

Alex accelerated, and I leaned outside the window. I pushed my tongue between my lips slightly. I was concentrating so hard on finding the right height to do the most damage. We whizzed by the crowd, and the burning laser cut them in two at the head, neck, or shoulders. Alex circled around to survey the damage.

“Hot dog,” I said, laughing. “Would you look at that? That worked like a charm. OK, buddy, loop me around again, and we'll get the rest of them near the back.”

One more pass with the van, and we took the crowd out at the back of the troop transporter. I had Alex stop the car, and I hopped out to pick up the weapons. There were six assault rifles just like the one we already had and a big round silver grenade. I opened the back of the van, laid the rifles inside, and picked up the grenade before the zombies further away started coming. I hopped in the back, closed the doors, and we were on our way down the Turnpike.