Dawn of the Dead (27 page)

Chickie pulled the van to the side doors where the men shoveled in the booty. Another woman had joined her in the front seat, and they guarded the material with giant pistols. Zombies tried to pound their way into the vehicle, but the women remained steadfast, plugging a few here and there through cracks in the window.

In the mall, another biker was brought down by a pack of lunatic zombies to the amusement of his friends. They simply laughed and pointed as the creatures devoured the still screaming man.

Several creatures now wandered through the department store, having entered through the open second-story gate. They moved through the aisles, knocking against the displays and sending items scattering all over the floor. One zombie grabbed a mannequin dressed in swimming apparel and was shocked to find that when it took a bite, its teeth cracked on the hard surface. It threw the doll aside roughly, tagging after the others.

Nick, up on the balcony, was approached by several zombies. He ran down the maintenance corridor and into the office. Peter, miraculously, was nowhere to be seen. The raider scurried out and broke into the various offices. They were deserted. He charged up to the fake wall and assumed it was a dead end. Then he was distracted by the faint barking of a puppy. He checked the panel again, this time suspicious. He ran his hands along the edge, feeling it give way.

Just as he was about to kick the wall in, he heard a sound in the corridor. He turned, and to his shock saw three ghouls approaching him. He raised his gun to fire and knocked off the lumbering creatures one at a time. Then, he rushed out onto the balcony. The full spectacle of what he saw took his breath away. Creatures wandered everywhere, bikers roared this way and that. Even to a hardened Hell’s Angel like Nick, it looked like a ghastly war zone. He was just about to run downstairs when he was distracted by another noise, this time above him. He spun around and looked up. Just as he focused, a dark shadow passed over him. It was Peter, his big supergun aimed squarely at the raider’s head from the ceiling grid just above. The gun roared and Nick flew back over the railing.

Below, the surviving handful of raiders started to regroup. Their bikes began to peel out of the mall entrance one at a time. Just as he was about to leave the mall, another raider was snatched off his bike by a clawing zombie.

Chickie readied the van to pull out as the last bit of booty was shoveled into the vehicle. As a parting gesture, the woman lowered her window and fired point blank at the heads of the clutching creatures that had been trying to get in through the glass.

The last wave of raiders tried to get out through the first-floor entrance to the department store. The zombies mobbed their bikes outside and the men had to struggle to get to their cycles, shooting and beating their way past. One man was brought down, but three others managed to mount their machines. With a final roar, the men pulled out, accelerating to catch the little van, which sped away in a cloud of dust.

Peter had crawled through the ductwork, and he could see the last bike roll across the concourse just as he opened one of the grids. He leveled off with his scope, shooting one raider out of the saddle. Two more rode out of range and drove through the main doors into the parking lot.

The band regrouped out in the lot around the van. Where there had been twenty, there were now only seven or eight, including the two women.

Thor, who had ducked out of sight when Peter opened fire, now revved up his engine and roared through the concourse. It was as if he were the general of the victorious army accepting the honors. He dodged several of the creatures on his powerful bike and headed for the entrance. Just as he was about to exit through the doors, he threw his head back and yelled triumphantly.

Peter leaned practically all the way out of the grid in the ceiling. The cross hairs on his scope settled on the back of Thor’s head. As the biker pulled through the door and started to roar across the parking lot to his waiting band, Peter applied pressure to the trigger of the supergun, and the roar muffled that of the cycle. A second and a half later, Thor’s body was blown ten feet into the air. When he came down, a pack of hungry zombies awaited him.

Unfortunately, for him, he was not dead. As he rolled over on the cement, he saw to his horror that a swarm of creatures was moving to tear him apart, limb from limb. He let out a bloodcurdling scream. Without so much as a backward look for their lost leader, the other bikers moved their convoy off into the night, and gradually the roar of the engines faded away.

The silence was overwhelming for Fran. Even Adam had stopped barking. She looked down into the darkness. Tensely, her fingers clutched at the rifle. She stood on the landing as the silence enveloped her.

In the parking lot and over the main concourse of the mall, the creatures wandered freely, as they had before the humans had arrived in what seemed like a lifetime ago. They fought over the remains of the bikers, eating ravenously, their slurping sounds the only noise in the cavernous mall now.

Peter continued to crawl through the ductwork. He peered down through the grids at the feasting below. Some of the bikers were now coming to as zombies themselves.

Suddenly, he heard the beeper on his talk unit. He hit the button.

“Peter!” came the frantic cry.

“Where the hell are you?” Peter grumbled.

“In the elevator!”

“Listen,” Peter told him carefully. “Those things are all over the place. Climb up top . . . I’ll get you out the grid in the shaft. I’m comin’.”

The big trooper squirmed his bulk through the ductwork once again.

In the elevator, Steve hit the button for the second floor and the car started to climb. He clambered up with his feet on the handrail of the car. His hands reached up and grabbed the mouth of the escape hatch, and he managed to get his head and shoulders out through the opening. Just as he kicked his legs to force himself up, the car stopped.

The doors opened to the second story of the department store as Steve gazed once more at the attractive displays. He yearned to gather up more things for his huge stockpile upstairs. That moment’s hesitation was all the zombies needed. With startling abruptness, several of them darted into the elevator. They clawed at Steve’s legs and pulled him down out of the hatch. Screaming, he thrashed violently, but the creatures held on with super strength.

In the ducts, Peter heard the bloodcurdling screams. He stopped short, listening intently. All was quiet. He had a sinking feeling in his stomach. Then he snapped to and backed away, heading for the maintenance corridor.

In the elevator car, Steve thrashed and kicked ferociously. The creatures had a hard time, but they finally managed to pull him out of the car. The elevator doors closed and opened, their safety bumpers slamming against the creatures that blocked it.

A zombie took a bite out of Steve’s arm. Another took a large chunk out of his neck. He scrambled, trying to free his handgun from its holster. Punching and kicking, even though he was bleeding profusely, he managed to pull his weapon. He fired the big pistol once . . . twice . . .

Peter was just dropping out of the duct in the washroom when he heard the pistol shots. The thought struck him that he may have made a terrible mistake in thinking that Steve was dead. Unless it was a raider’s gun, which he truly doubted, he had left his comrade to die!

He started to climb back into the grid, but he stopped himself. What good would he do now, those were the desperate shots of a dying man. Confused, angry with himself, utterly exhausted, he punched at the wall violently, shattering a bone in his hand.

Once more the big pistol sounded and its shell ripped through the head of one of the zombies. The zombie flew back out of the car, but the doors still slammed against one last creature. Others poured out from the store as Steve fired one last time. The zombie that had been wedged between the doors flew back, and the doors finally closed shut.

Outside, Steve could hear the remaining zombies pound against the door. They scratched and pawed, none of them with the intelligence to push the button, but narrowly missing it with their random banging.

Once the doors closed, Steve fell to the floor. The wound in his neck ran red, his eyes widened with terror, and he stared at the pistol in his hand. He was finding it increasingly harder to breathe.

Peter appeared alone at the bottom of the fire stair. First the yapping puppy, then Fran, ran to him.

Fran could tell by the way Peter hung his head.

“No . . .
no
!” she shrieked, feeling faint.

She threw herself down the remaining steps. Peter caught her before she managed to charge out into the hall.

He held her tightly in his arms.

“I heard his gun . . . maybe he’s all right. We’ll wait. We’ll just wait a while . . .”

A slight blue haze appeared in the eastern sky. The mall stood silently in the impending dawn, mute to the disaster that had taken place within its walls that night.

Armies of zombies, reinforcements for the wounded and killed, moved in and out of the building unimpeded. They walked through the halls and lumbered through the aisles.

Several creatures pounded and scratched at the closed panels of the elevator doors in Porter’s. As they pushed against one another, one of them inadvertently pressed on the elevator call button with its shoulder. The door glided open and in the open car, Stephen stood. The blood on his body was caked and dry, his eyes were vacant, drool filtered down from his mouth. He stepped forward. The other creatures drifted away, some bowing a welcome to a new member of the tribe. He was among them now, no longer prey—one of the living dead.

The doors slid closed and banged against Steve, but the bumpers reacted electronically and opened again. He lumbered into the store and started down the familiar aisle. Other creatures drifted by him in total acceptance.

Upstairs, a red-faced, tearful Fran packed supplies into a sack. She moved ponderously, as if each action was an effort.

Peter stood at the top of the stairs, his eyes focused on the landing.

With more and more determination, Fran planted the filled bags next to the base of the escape ladder that led to the roof. Her movements were deliberate. She had filled her head with the hope that Steve was alive, and that this packing was for them—and the baby. But now she realized it was not to be so.

A lumbering zombie walked almost purposefully up to the maintenance corridor entrance as if it knew the way. It did—it was Steve. Other zombies passed him, wandering aimlessly. He looked past them, seeing the fake partition wall. Something deep inside his dead brain triggered a reaction, and he lumbered forward.

“It’s almost light,” Fran said softly to Peter. He had not left the stairway since he had returned from the battle. “Let’s go.”

He looked at her silently, his face drawn and tired. She had never seen him looking so vulnerable.

“He doesn’t answer the radio. It’s been hours.” She had prepared herself for the worst and some inner resource of strength that she didn’t even know she had welled up inside, filling the void.

“For God’s sake,” she began to cry. “You better come on because if I get to thinkin’ about this, I’ll just go down there and let them . . . let them . . .”

The puppy began to growl and charged down the steps through Peter’s feet.

In the hallway, Steve had reached the fake wall and was pounding on it. The other creatures moved up behind him and joined in.

Upstairs, Peter heard the pounding, but stood stoically, gazing down into the darkness. Adam continued to bark, as if in recognition, below.

“What is it?” Fran asked, fear rising in her throat.

“They’re comin’ up!” Peter cried out. “Maybe Stephen’s with them!”

With a great crunching noise, the fake partition gave way. The army of creatures, led by Steve, staggered over the splintered lumber and the crushed plywood and moved up the stairs.

Peter slammed the door just as the puppy scurried by and leaped into Fran’s arms.

“Go on,” he spoke to her quietly. “You get out of here.”

“Peter . . .”

“I said you get out of here.” His face was set with grim determination, and Fran didn’t dare question him any further.

Fran was in a panic. She didn’t want to leave without Peter, but she could see his stubbornness setting in.

“Oh, Jesus, Peter . . . please . . .”

“I don’t want to go,” he said sadly. “I really don’t . . . you know that? I really don’t.”

Suddenly, the door flew open and the advancing creatures lumbered in.

Fran started to scream. The puppy cowered in her arms. She practically crushed it.

“Stephen, Stephen . . .” she started for her lover, but Peter raised the supergun, a slight, enigmatic smile curling on his lips, and he shot the zombie clean through the head.

As Stephen fell, Fran startled to reality.

“Move, woman,” Peter commanded, rushing her to the ladder. She grabbed the sacks, and with the puppy under her arm, she climbed the ladder to the roof. Peter picked up the derringer that he had hidden by the ladder and covered her as she made her escape.

The creatures advanced on Peter, and he managed to lead them away from the skylight, toward his room. They crashed through the carefully set up living room, upsetting the furniture, overturning lamps, crushing the knick-knacks.

On the roof, Fran ran toward the helicopter and threw the sacks in, securing the puppy in his cage, which she had installed in the back of the passenger section. She jumped in the pilot’s seat and sat staring at the controls. Then she moved into action and started the copter up.

Peter backed into his room, the creatures gaining. He slammed the door in their faces. Just as he was about to raise the small handgun to his head, his mind flashed on Fran, sitting alone in the copter. He stared at the gun in his hand and then violently kicked the door open. Suicide would never be his cup of tea. The sudden movement scattered the zombies and allowed Peter a clear path to the ladder. He made his escape as if he were a quarterback running for the winning touchdown.