Brian Keene - Entombed

With some difficulty, I stripped the Chinese guy’s shirt off and put it on so that I wasn’t running around half-naked anymore. Then, I slowly clambered to my feet. My legs were still a bit wobbly and when I stood up all the way, the room began to spin again. I closed my eyes and took several deep breaths. My head was still throbbing, and I wondered if I’d bumped it when I passed out. I felt my scalp, but there were no new cuts or lumps. The ringing in my ears had subsided. The restroom was quiet. After a few more deep breaths, I opened my eyes again, and was relieved to discover that the dizziness had passed. I stepped over Chinese guy’s corpse and stood in front of the sink. I avoided looking at my reflection in the broken mirror. Instead, I turned on the spigot and cupped my hands beneath it. The cold water felt luxuriant. I splashed my face and head several times. Then I scrubbed the blood and grime away, and dried off with paper towels from the dispenser. When I was finished, I felt alert and awake and reinvigorated.

I opened the restroom door, walked out into the hall and got hit in the face by something long and hard.

Then I passed out again.

This time, I came to with a start, fully remembering everything that had happened before. The pain in my head was worse now, and my mouth was pure agony. I moaned, sick to my stomach from the pain. Every time I breathed through my mouth, the air passing over my split lips made me wince. I tried breathing through my nose and found that doing so hurt even worse than breathing through my mouth. My nostrils felt like they’d been stuffed with wet cotton. I tried moving my jaw to alleviate the pressure in my nose and ears, but all that brought was tears to my eyes and more pain. I didn’t think my nose was broken, but it was definitely fucked up.

“I don’t think it’s broken,” a male voice said. “Looks sort of like a sliced plum, if you want to know the truth. I think the nail sticking out of that board caught you dead center.”

I opened my eyes and saw Charles St. John Smith III—he of the long name—staring at me. His expression was placid. Almost serene.

“Hi, Pete. You really lost your shit, didn’t you?”

I parted my mouth to speak and immediately regretted it. A fresh jolt of agony wracked my body. I choked back a scream and squeezed my eyes shut again. When I tried to move my arms, I found that I couldn’t. I prodded my teeth with my tongue and discovered that several of them had been broken. My nausea grew worse. I opened my eyes again and studied my surroundings. I was lying on the floor in the main corridor. Clyde lay across from me. My arms had been bound flat against my sides with black electrical wiring. The covering must have been worn off in some places, because I felt the copper digging into my skin.

Charles was crouched on his haunches in front of me. In one hand, he clutched a length of wood from a skid. A bent nail jutted from one end. My skin and blood decorated the tip of the nail. At five feet, eight inches tall, Charles was anything but an imposing figure. When we’d first sought refuge inside the bunker, the thirty-two year old had weighed about one hundred and forty-five pounds. Now he weighed considerably less. Still, that hadn’t prevented him from knocking me on my ass and tying me up. I flexed my arms, testing the bonds. They held firm. I opened my mouth slightly and spoke in halting, clipped tones.

“Where’s… Chuck…?”

“Downstairs.” Charles nodded his head toward the power plant. “All of them are downstairs. Me, Ritchie and that Chinese guy were the only ones who could climb up the incinerator chute. Damonte and Phillips are both too big, still. I think they’ve been hoarding food. How about you? Do you think they’ve got a secret stash somewhere?”

I tried to shrug, but the wires prevented me from doing more than twitching. They rubbed against my skin, chafing it.

“I think they might.” Charles looked at the wall as he spoke, as if afraid to meet my eyes. “I wasn’t completely sold on this whole eating each other idea. It seems to me that if we start doing that, then we’re no different than the zombies.”

“Then… why?”

“Why did I go along with it?” He shrugged. “Because if I hadn’t, I was afraid they’d turn on me instead. It wasn’t anything personal, Pete. I’ve got nothing against you. But you’ve basically been a loner. You hide out in the movie room all day. You don’t seem to understand the pull Chuck has over everyone else. Some of them are afraid of him, but a lot of the others have bought into his bullshit. I don’t get it. He’s not exactly charismatic or anything.”

“Al…” I spat blood. “Alpha male.”

“Yeah, you might be right. That’s probably it. Anyway, that’s why I’m going along with Chuck’s plan.”

“Because you’re a coward?”

Charles visibly stiffened. “You don’t know anything about me, Pete.”

“I know that you’re afraid of getting your fucking ass kicked.”

“Is that what you think?” He glowered at me. “When I first lived in Philadelphia, I moved there to go to film school, but I ended up playing in a hardcore punk band and running a club called House of Conflict. You ever hear of it?”

I shook my head.

“It was basically a big warehouse. I lived on the block with the other show warehouses and we had a good neighbor policy. We looked after each other, our block and the shows. We all had keys to each other’s places. My place was right next to the legendary Stalag 13. We had better bathrooms and a working washing machine, but Stalag had a skateboard ramp that went from the roof through the backyard. We used to skate on it. I helped bring bands like Unholy Grave, Vitamin X, and Cripple Bastards to play in Philly.”

“And that proves you’re not a pussy?”

“No. But I remember this one night, after a show at the Stalag. Some friends and I were riding our bicycles to the convenience store on 38th and Walnut, when this drunken asshole almost runs us over. He had to stop at the red light, and I jumped on the hood of his car while my friends tried to flip it over. When they couldn’t do it, the three of us dragged him out of the car and beat his ass right there in the street. I’d lost friends to drunken driving, you know? I’m not afraid of a fight. I got into it with a bunch of Nazi skinheads at a show, once. They were fucking with this black kid and his white girlfriend. It was me against them—five on one, but I never thought twice about it. And believe me, I got in a few good licks before I went down.”

“What’s your point?”

Charles sighed. “My point is that for a scrawny ex-punk with glasses, I can hold my own when I have to. I won’t back down from a fight. Although I prefer when people just do the right thing. It seems so simple.”

“So then do the right thing, Charles. Let me go.”

“No way. Out of the question.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re insane, Pete. Do you realize what you’ve done?” He gestured at Jim, George, Clyde, Ritchie and Mike. “You butchered them!”

“They would have done the same to me.”

Charles shook his head. “No. Not like this. We were going to drug you. You would have just gone to sleep, nice and peaceful. But this… what you did to Drew and Dave… you burned them alive.”

“They shouldn’t have gotten in my way.”

“Drew was your friend.”

“Was is the operative word there. A real friend doesn’t sell you out to a bunch of cannibalistic crazies.”

Charles paused for a moment, as if mulling over my words. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet.

“Maybe we are crazy, but you’re crazy, too. You’re a bad kind of crazy, Pete. There’s no way I’m letting you go.”