Brian Keene - Entombed

The Guardsmen were given the order to fire on anyone trying to escape the city, and some of them actually did. They gunned down civilians in cold blood. Then some of the other soldiers refused the order to shoot civilians and turned on their comrades instead. Soon enough, the troops were fighting each other—and fighting the civilians who shot back, as well. While dissent broke out in the military ranks, Hamelin’s Revenge broke out of the city. It showed up in Newark, then Trenton, and then Philadelphia. By the end of the second day, it had spread to Buffalo, Baltimore, Washington D.C. and over the border into parts of Canada. The President declared martial law nationwide, even in those areas where the disease hadn’t shown up yet. The army was mobilized. But by then, it was too late. You could shoot a zombie but you couldn’t shoot the disease that caused it to get up and walk around in the first place. All it took was one bite, one drop of blood, pus from an open sore or cut—any exposure to infected bodily fluid—and you became one of them. People that died normal deaths, from illness or accidents or murder, stayed dead, but those who came into direct contact with the disease and managed to get infected—they became zombies. At first, the disease only infected humans, rats and mice. By the second week, however, it had jumped species and started showing up in dogs, cats, cattle, bears, coyotes, goats, sheep, monkeys and other animals. Some creatures, like pigs and birds, seemed to be immune, but most weren’t so lucky. Even weirder, some species that had seemed immune at first, like squirrels and deer, became infected later on. In truth, I’d never understood why the disease didn’t impact squirrels right away. After all, squirrels are just rats with bushy tails. All I know is that if the disease ever does begin to infect birds, humanity is fucked.

But we’re probably fucked anyway.

Once the disease began jumping from species to species, it became unstoppable. America, South America and Canada fell first, followed by Europe, Asia, Africa and then Australia. After that, we lost what little satellite television coverage remained. The last thing any of us saw, as far as I know, was footage of zombies shuffling through the streets of Mumbai.

Of course, the zombies weren’t the only threat. There were roving gangs of looters, criminals, extremists and military and law enforcement personnel who’d decided to watch out for themselves, rather than the rest of us. The new law was the law of the gun. Bad enough you had to worry about getting eaten by a dead friend or family member—you also had to worry about getting robbed or raped or murdered by some crazy, antisocial fuckwit taking advantage of the chaos and thriving in the new world disorder.

Not that the powers-that-be had to worry about any of that. Washington D.C. was evacuated early on. They sent President Tyler, the Vice-President, the Cabinet, the Pentagon big-wigs, and all of the House and Senate members and their staff and family to secure underground bunkers in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland and Colorado. Bunkers just like this one, except more modern. I have to wonder if they’re in any better shape than we are. Probably. I doubt our leaders are sitting around watching Aqua Teen Hunger Force and voting on whether or not to resort to cannibalism. At least, not yet.

I’m so fucking hungry.

This bunker was built as a relocation center back in the early Sixties, when the Cold War was really heating up. President Eisenhower commissioned it, which is why a bronze bust of his head and all the photographs and pictures of him are down here with us. In the event of a nuclear attack on the United States, the bunker was supposed to house the members of the House and the Senate, along with their family members and a few staffers. It was big enough to hold just over a thousand people. To build it, they tunneled eight hundred feet into the side of the mountain, and dug eighty feet underground, as well. No, it wouldn’t survive a direct strike from a nuclear warhead, but it was deep enough and secure enough to protect its inhabitants from nuclear firestorms and radioactive fallout. The site was easily accessible from Washington D.C.—it was less than an hour away by railroad or plane, and the interstate ran nearby, as well. Back when the government kept it stocked with supplies, people could have stayed here for up to one-hundred and twenty days.

To prevent the local hillbillies from becoming suspicious during construction, a cover story was devised for the operation. The public was told that a new luxury hotel was being built on top of the mountain, and that it would bring jobs and economic development to the area. And that’s exactly what happened. A beautiful, ritzy resort hotel—the Pocahontas (named that because of its location in Pocahontas County)—was erected, and it attracted the wealthy, powerful and elite from around the world. The beautiful people came to visit in droves. Generations of actors, politicians, oil barons, banking magnates and others were among the frequent guests. The hotel employed locals, providing a nice alternative for those who didn’t want to slave away in a coal mine, cut timber, try their hand at farming, bend a wrench, or just sit back and collect welfare (these are the five biggest occupations in West Virginia). Over the years, the town grew and expanded. So did The Pocahontas, adding new wings, a golf course, tennis and racquetball courts, stables and an equestrian trail, and even its own private runway for small planes. And in all that time, no one above ground, other than the hotel’s administrators, ever suspected what lay beneath the mountain—until one Sunday morning a little over a decade ago, when an investigative reporter for the New York Times broke the story on the front page. When that happened, the facility was rendered useless. The government immediately decommissioned the bunker and turned ownership of it over to the hotel. At one point, a data storage company wanted to lease it from the Pocahontas, but the hotel’s management had other ideas. They turned it into a museum. For the last ten years, the bunker has been open to visitors and guests of the Pocahontas—an added tourist attraction to an already luxuriant establishment. I should know. I’ve been one of the bunker’s tour guides for the last three years. It was either that, or get a job at Wal Mart, and I fucking hate Wal Mart. And not just because my ex-wife worked there.

That was how I ended up down here with the others. By that point, the shit had already hit the fan in New York and Philly and elsewhere, but it hadn’t become widespread. At least, not here. We’d had reports of a few zombies, but West Virginia is such a rural state, with so much wilderness in between our towns, that it didn’t seem like an epidemic. It was like watching 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina or one of those other disasters—you knew it was happening and you felt connected to it, but at the same time, it seemed so far away. Bad things always happen to other people. Not to you. Not until the bad things show up at your front door unannounced and come inside and stay for a while.

Martial law hadn’t been declared in West Virginia yet, and the hotel was still making us show up for work, even though lodging reservations had dropped to zero. I was standing out back, sneaking a smoke with a few of the Mexican guys from the kitchen, when the dead arrived at the Pocahontas. We smelled them before we saw them, but we didn’t know what the stench was or where it was coming from. It was hot outside, and there was only a slight breeze—strong enough only to move the air around rather than cool us off. We all caught a whiff at the same time. I frowned. It was like smelling the world’s biggest pile of road kill. That’s what I thought it was, at first. I remember wondering if there was a dead groundhog or something somewhere nearby. One of the other guys said something in Spanish. I don’t know what it was, because I never learned the language. He probably said something like, “Goddamn, that stinks.” Within another minute, the stench grew overpowering. We all looked at each other, frowning and making faces. The Mexican guys talked to each other. I nodded as if I understood them. And then… there they were—shuffling out of the woods and across the parking lot towards us.

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