David Bernstein - Machines of the Dead

Maria rolled the man onto his back and let out a cry as he reached up and grabbed her by the hair. Jack saw her fighting to get away, but the man pulled her to him as he raised himself up and sank his teeth into her shoulder. Maria screamed.

“It’s undead,” Jack yelled to Zaun, who was already on his way to her. Jack aimed his pistol at the thing, but couldn’t risk a shot for fear he’d hit Maria.

Zaun sprang forward, dashing to her, sword out.

Maria tried shoving the thing off of her, but like a pit bull clenching its jaws around prey, it wouldn’t budge.

Zaun was there in moments, and sank the blade of his sword into the zombie’s skull.

Maria scrambled from the corpse and tore her jacket off to see the wound. “Shit, it went through.” The flesh was shredded and bleeding. “I’ll be all right; just have to Taser me.”

“Infected, here?” Zaun asked.

“I don’t think we’re out of Manhattan,” Jack said.

“Guess we should’ve taken the left.” Zaun cleaned his blade on the dead body’s shirt and sheathed it.

Something stirred behind Jack. Turning around, he saw another undead coming toward him. Walking up to it, he took aim, and blew the zombie’s brains from its head.

“Fucking things are like rats,” Zaun spat.

“We’ll need to keep an eye out. I think it’s a good idea to make sure all the dead bodies in here are really dead.”

“I’m on it,” Zaun said, and went around the room poking his sword into each one’s head.

Jack told Maria there was no point in waiting to Taser her. The quicker the bots were dead, the better. She agreed and lay on the floor. Pulling out his Taser, he asked if she was ready. She nodded and he shot her, sending the electricity into her body, frying the bots. He hated seeing her spasm in pain, but it was only for a few seconds. When it was over, she felt fine, the Taser ha d little to no residual affects.

She stood, walked over to a chair, and let Jack clean and wrap her wounds. The bots were dead, but infection was always a possibility.

When Zaun was done with his task, he came over to Jack. “The only way out of here, besides the way we came in, is the door at the far end.” He pointed across the room. “And it requires a keycard and a code.”

“We need to find out where we are in the city,” Jack said. “We can’t stay here for long. I would imagine it’s only a matter of time before we have company again.”

“I’ll keep an eye on the stairs we came up,” Maria said.

“Zaun and I will check out the door across the room.”

Maria headed off while Jack and Zaun walked over to the door. Using the keycard and entering the code, Jack had the door open in seconds. He was surprised all the doors had the same combination, but guessed it made sense since only the high-ranking individuals had them.

The operations room led to a small office. The place had a dark brown shag carpet, yellowing walls, a cracked leather sofa and two folding chairs. Along the right wall was a receptionist’s counter, the wood paneling filthy with stains. There was a blank sign-in sheet on the counter. Potted imitation plants hung on hooks from the ceiling and there was a beat-up coffee table with magazines on it. The whole place was a decoy, an area where interference could be run in the event an undesirable walked in. There were no signs or posters indicating a product, not even a clock. The windows were blacked out and had thick, metal mesh covers on them.

Jack walked over to a door. He guessed it led to the outside. Placing his palm against it, the door felt chilly.

“Door’s cold,” he told Zaun. “So, either there’s a freezer on the other side or it leads directly outdoors.”

“Only one way to find out.”

Jack grabbed the handle, ready to turn it and pull, when an explosion sounded from the other room. He and Zaun rushed back inside the operations area.

“Stay here,” he told Zaun. “We might need cover.”

Jack sprinted around desks and chairs, kicking a plastic garbage can out of the way. Reaching the stairwell, he saw Maria hanging over the railing, firing her machine gun.

“What’s happening?” Jack shouted.

“We’ve got company. I don’t know how many, but I managed to wound a couple.”

Jack wasn’t sure what to do. Stay and fight, or run? Heading into the city was dangerous, the undead were everywhere, but staying and fighting could prove a faster death. They’d probably run out of ammo before the soldiers did, or simply be overwhelmed by their numbers, depending on how many men Reynolds had sent after them. As crazy as it was, heading into the city seemed to be their best bet.

“I think we should leave,” he said.

“Agreed.” Maria leaned over the railing, fired a few more shots, then followed Jack.

“Company?” Zaun asked as they approached.

“Yup,” Maria said.

Jack ushered them into the waiting room.

“What’s the plan?” Zaun asked.

“We head into the city. Find a building and hold up for a while. I don’t know about you two, but I’m tired as hell.”

“You know what it’s like out there, Jack,” Zaun said.

Jack’s mind flooded with the images he had seen when he went to rescue Zaun, the alley, the super, the stairwell with Big Zombie Man. He wondered how many undead were outside the door right now. They might be walking into a real shit storm, but if that was the case, they would have no choice but to stay and fight.

“It’s our best option,” Jack said. “We can’t take a chance and hope to outlast Reynolds’ men. They might outnumber and outgun us. If it is a small group, sure we could fight, but then what? More might be coming. The point is, we just don’t know, but I can tell you this, Reynolds wants us, and I bet he’s pissed off to no end.”

“He’s right, Zaun,” Maria said.

Zaun nodded.

“We ready to do this?” Jack asked.

The others nodded.

Grabbing the doorknob, he opened the door.

The first glimmerings of early morning sunshine illuminated the sky. A parking lot stretched out before the group. A few cars took up spaces. The air was cold, a wintry wind chilling Jack’s sweaty neck and face. Looking around, he saw no one. Not a single human being. He immediately knew they weren’t in Manhattan; the three story apartment buildings across the street were too short and there was no skyline above. So they had to be in Brooklyn or Queens.

“Where are we?” Maria asked.

“Not sure, but it isn’t Manhattan,” Zaun answered.

“Where the hell is everyone?”

Jack heard nothing. Not a car, truck, plane or the simple buzz of city life. Maybe all the boroughs were evacuated, for precaution, but why? It was impossible to leave Manhattan, wasn’t it? No, that wasn’t true, as they themselves had escaped. He imagined others might have too. Was it even possible to evacuate a city the size of New York?

To the right was another warehouse building. “We need to put as much distance between us and Reynolds’ men as possible.” Jack wanted to head to the apartment buildings across the street, find people, but they would be out in the open, having to cross the parking lot and the street, making it easy for Reynolds’ men to see where they went.

Instead, they headed to the adjacent building on the right, ran passed the locked entrance, and ducked around the corner. They sprinted to the rear of the place to where a back alley stood and took a right, going behind another warehouse building.

Up ahead, a man wearing a mail carrier’s uniform was standing with his back to the group.

The man turned around as they approached. Jack stopped and the others bumped into him. Half the carrier’s face was missing, looking as if it had been shoved under a lawn mower, the skull completely showing on one side. The zombie started forward, arms out, hungry for flesh.