Dawn of the Dead (17 page)

She was awfully disappointed in Steve. He let the bigger man bully him. He had always been so confident and so reliable. That was what had attracted her to him at the station. Her ex-husband had been afraid of his own shadow, but in his home he tried to be the boss. Steve had always stood up to authority figures and spoken his mind. But Peter could silence him with one look—it was frightening.

The faint strains of the radio broadcast wafted through the room. The announcer sounded unprofessional; he didn’t have the clipped, midwestern accent of most newscasters. His voice was tired and he stumbled on some words, taking long pauses between paragraphs.

“. . . gasses or certain toxins that might affect the creatures. Experiments with hallucinogens have begun at Haverford, in the hopes of producing an agent that will cloud the brain and prevent the effective motor coordination of the body. However, scientists fear that the creatures function on a subconscious, instinctive level and that such drugs will have little or no effect. In Nevada, chemicals sprayed from crop-dusting airplanes have had more of an ill effect on the human population than on the walking corpses . . .”

Peter turned his attention from the broadcast.

“She all right?” he asked Steve, referring to Fran. “She looked blown.”

“What did ya expect?” Roger asked, annoyed that Peter was being so hard on his friend. Steve wasn’t a professional fighter like Peter and himself, but Roger still thought he had done damn good under pressure.

“No, I mean she really looked sick . . . physically.”

Steve looked at him long and hard. He was a difficult man to figure. He was one way one minute and a different person the next.

“She’s pregnant,” he said softly.

There was a long, heavy silence. The radio droned on. Finally, Peter heaved a sigh and closed his eyes again as though instantly falling asleep.

“How far along?” asked Roger, a concerned look on his face.

“Three and a half . . . four months . . .”

“Jesus, Steve,” he said, rubbing his head. “Maybe we
should
try to get movin’ . . .”

Without opening his eyes, Peter spoke:

“We can deal with it.”

“Yeah, but maybe she needs a doctor or—”

Peter cut Roger off. “We can deal with it! It doesn’t change a thing.”

Now he opened his eyes again and looked hard at Steve.

“You wanna get rid of it?”

“Huh?” Steve was shocked at the coldhearted attitude. It wasn’t even his decision to make.

Peter ignored his shocked look. He seemed to enjoy making people squirm.

“Do you want to abort it?” he repeated tensely. “It’s not too late. I know how.”

Tears streaked Fran’s face. She strained her ears for Steve’s retort. He should smash the bastard across the face, she thought. How dare he make that suggestion. And how dare Stephen not speak up and say it’s not his decision to make. Her heart pounded as she waited for the reply. The only sound was the droning radio.

After a time, Fran heard Steve’s footsteps rounding the corner to her sleeping area. He seemed surprised to see her sitting up. She was on one of the new blankets from the store. Another was rolled up as a pillow where her head had lain. She wiped away her tears, a lit cigarette still in her hand.

“Hey,” Steve said, kneeling next to her. “You OK?”

“All your decisions made?”

He looked at her for a moment, speechless.

“Do you want to . . . abort it?” she asked pointedly.

“Do you?”

She met his question with silence. Looking away, she took another drag on the cigarette, which was burning down so low it practically seared her fingers. Stephen sat next to her and put his hands on her shoulders.

She looked into his eyes.

“So I guess we forget about Canada, right?”

“Jesus, Frannie,” he said, taking her in his arms. “This setup is sensational. We got everything we need. We seal off that stairway . . . nobody’ll ever know we’re up here. We’d never find anything like this . . .”

He seemed as though his mind was made up. The decision had been made by the troika, the triumvirate, and the opinion of one Frannie Parker was of no regard.

“I guess nobody cares about my vote, huh?” She pouted.

“Come on, Frannie. I thought you were sleeping.”

She pulled away from him, the end of the cigarette growing smaller and smaller. “What happened to growing vegetables and fishing? What happened to the idea about the wilderness . . . hundreds of miles from anything and anybody? . . . Steve, I’m afraid. You’re hypnotized by this place. All of you. It’s all so bright and neatly wrapped that you don’t see . . . you don’t see . . .”

She leaned toward him, making a final plea. “Stephen, let’s just take what we need and keep going.”

“We can’t hardly carry anything in that little bird,” he rationalized.

“What do you want?” she said, her voice rising in anger. “A new set of furniture, a freezer, a console TV and stereo? We can take what we need. What we
need
to survive!”

Peter’s eyes popped open, and he leaped up. “Shut that thing off!” He had the hearing of a trained dog. And it seemed as if he never slept, just closed his eyes.

Roger clicked off the radio, and they listened. Slight sounds were coming from the fire stair. The TV had been turned on again with the sound low, and the blue glow made the barricade of cartons look surreal.

Roger crawled over and clicked the TV set off again. The electronic C.D. whistle died, and there was silence.

Steve had heard Peter’s outburst, and he stepped tentatively from behind the wall of cartons. Crawling on her hands and knees, Fran peered around the corner to look.

There was another noise, sounding too familiar, just like the faint squeaking of the door at the bottom of the steps. Then footsteps on the metal stairs. Slow, deliberate, heavy footsteps . . .

The faces of all the refugees tightened. Peter and Roger pulled out their rifles, and Roger readied his.

They all tried to hold their breath, to make as little noise as possible, so that the intruder wouldn’t know they were there.

More thumping in the hall and Fran grabbed Steve’s hand. He squatted down and held her. The sounds seemed to be getting closer and closer. The door behind the cartons clicked, but didn’t move. Then there came an insistent pounding, slowly at first, then stronger. It kept up for a few minutes; yet it seemed an eternity for the occupants. And then there was silence.

Peter gave everyone a look that meant, Don’t relax, the worst is not over.

After a time, the footsteps receded down the stairs.

“Somebody better sit watch all the time,” Peter pronounced, and the others shook their heads in agreement.

“They’ll never get through there,” Roger said, hoping that he was right.

“Enough of ’em will,” Peter replied seriously. “And it ain’t just them things we got to worry about. That chopper up there could give us away if somebody come messin’ around.”

“What are they gonna do?” Roger insisted. “Land another pilot to fly it out. They’re not gonna mess with a little bird like that. They got enough on their hands. You know, back in Philly we found a boat in the middle of Independence Square. Somebody tryin’ to carry it to the river, I guess. Didn’t make it. Damn thing sat there for eight days.”

“Somebody finally got it, though. It come down to how much it’s worth.” Peter laid his rifle against the side of the carton and lit a cigarette.

Fran ducked around and lay back down on her blanket. She lit another cigarette from the first and then ground the first one out on the cement. She was becoming a chain smoker from this experience. And to think that she was planning to give it up because of the baby. What did it matter now? Who knew if she would even get out alive!

“Frannie . . .” Steve came around and sat next to her again.

She took a deep drag on the cigarette.

“Dammit, Fran,” he looked at her earnestly. His brown hair was all matted, and there were smudges of grease in his hair from the trek through the ceiling ducts. He looked almost comical. “You know how many times we’d have to land for fuel tryin’ to make it up north? Those things are out there everywhere. And the authorities would give us just as hard a time . . . maybe worse. We’re in good shape here, Frannie. We got everything we need right here!”

Steve curled up with his head on the rolled blanket. He held out his arms to her.

“Come on . . . get some sleep.”

She still didn’t respond or move toward him.

“Frannie. Come on.”

Grinding her second cigarette out on the floor, she stretched out next to Steve. Tentatively, he put his arm around her. When she didn’t push it off, he tightened his hold, and then began rubbing his hand up and down her body as he curled next to her. Staring into her eyes, that seemed to be focused elsewhere, he opened her blouse and reached inside. He closed his eyes and seemed to relax in the comfort of her softness. His hand moved under her clothing. Fran still hadn’t spoken, and her face was set in a grim, thoughtful expression. At first she didn’t respond physically at all, but then at Steve’s insistence, she relaxed her body, and she brought one of her arms up around his head.

“I’m not just being stubborn,” he told her softly as his hands explored her hardening nipples under her clothing. “I really think this is better. Hell, you’re the one’s been wantin’ to set up house.”

She continued to stare off across the barren room impassively.

In the administration corridor, all was quiet. A few stray zombies wandered among the corpses on the floor. One large and severely wounded creature came out of the fire stair, probably the one that had been pounding on the door upstairs.

A female zombie, dressed in jeans and a sweater, in her early twenties, squatted near one of the corpses in the hall. She lifted its arm and moved it to her mouth, but she dropped it quickly, repelled by its coldness. Then she leaned over and picked at another corpse, just like someone at a smorgasbord. This one was cold, too. Discouraged, the zombie stood and drifted toward the mall.

Slowly the creatures left the corridor and moved out onto the second-floor balcony. The central mall was strewn with the bodies of their not-so-lucky comrades. Here and there a few zombies squatted and finished off their dinner.

Meanwhile, the radio in the upper room droned on and lulled the inhabitants to a fitful sleep:

“. . . not actually cannibalism . . . Cannibalism in the true sense of the word, implies an intraspecific activity . . . These creatures cannot be considered human. They prey on humans . . . They do not prey on each other . . .”

On the mall balcony, zombies wandered past the stores, as if out for a Sunday stroll. Some moved down the stationary stairs onto the main concourse below. More and more zombies had been filing in from the surrounding communities, as if their normal lives continued; schools, offices and shopping malls continued to attract the walking dead.

The huddled bodies of Steve and Fran were intertwined behind the cartons. Roger was stretched out in a sleeping bag that he had found in the camping department. Only Peter slept sitting up, at his post near the fire door, his rifle slung across his lap.

The radio continued:

“They attack and . . . and feed . . . only on warm human flesh . . . Intelligence? Seemingly little or no reasoning power. What basic skills remain are more remembered behaviors from . . . from normal life.

“There are reports of the creatures holding tools, but even these actions are the most primitive . . . the use of external articles as bludgeons, et cetera. Even animals will adopt the basic use of the tools in this manner.”

At the mall entrance, some of the creatures drifted out into the night, while others entered the enormous building. Although there were not as many as there had been in the afternoon, the number was enough to be reckoned with. Several creatures continued to claw at the roll gate to Porter’s. In a strange and eerie montage, the staring, painted eyes of the mannequins inside seemed to watch the zombies on the outside. The rattle of the gate mingled with the droning, fading sound of the Muzak.

8

“These creatures are nothing but pure, motorized instinct . . .” a gravelly voice was saying to her. She shook her head, looking about for the person who belonged to the disembodied voice, and realized that she had been sleeping and the voice that had wakened her was only the television.

Her body was stiff from lying on the thin blanket on the cold cement floor. Couldn’t those wise guys have thought to steal a mattress, she thought, as she tried to rub the stiffness out of her back. The morning sunlight spilled through the skylights above. Sitting up, Fran peered into the next area of the room. The television was playing to no one. The men were gone. On the tube a disheveled man sitting in an emergency newsroom read the report:

“Their only drive is for the food that sustains them. We must not be lulled by the concept that these are our family members or our friends. They will not respond to such emotions. They must be destroyed on sight . . .”

Fran quickly glanced to make sure that the barricade was in place at the fire stair door. At least they weren’t stupid enough to go on another search-and-destroy mission this morning, she thought.

Looking up, she realized that the men must have gone up on the roof through the open skylight.

At the edge of the roof, Peter looked through binoculars. To the untrained eye, it would have looked like a lovely countryside, the mist rising as the sun climbed higher in the sky. But Peter knew better. About a quarter of a mile away, he saw the large warehouse of a food-processing chain. Probably owned by old man Porter, he thought to himself. And considering the state he’s in now, he certainly wouldn’t mind lending the survivors a hand.

In the yard and in the large open garages of the building, Peter noticed a fleet of enormous trailer trucks that were parked in rows. A plan was forming in his mind. He had explained the germ of it to Steve and Roger over their breakfast of lukewarm instant coffee and Spam.

“You sure we can start ’em,” Steve had asked.