Brian Keene - Entombed

“Dude? Hold on a second. You can’t be here. You’re dead.”

The rat squeaked in response.

“Don’t give me that. Even if you’re not Dude, you could pass for his twin.”

The rat squeaked again. It sounded agitated.

“Better get out of here,” I said. “These people are crazy. They’ll eat you if they find you.”

As if heeding my warning, the rat dropped back down on all fours and scurried under the skids. I watched its tail vanish from sight, and then it was gone, like it had never been there. Maybe it wasn’t. I considered that maybe it had been a hallucination brought on by starvation and the beatings I’d taken. If it had been real, and it had come from outside, then I needed to find out how. If a live rat could get into the bunker, then a zombie rat could do the same.

My stomach growled again.

“Wait,” I called. “Come back, Dude!”

The rat didn’t return. The corridor was quiet again. I closed my eyes and wept silently.

Once my dizziness had subsided, I stumbled over to the forklift. Ritchie was dangling there, impaled from the upraised forks. I stared into his dead, glazed eyes. Then I crouched down and placed my head and shoulders against his chest. Grunting, I pushed him backward. It was a difficult task. His insides stuck to the forks and left a gory trail in his body’s wake. The stench was terrible. The squelching sounds were even worse. I turned away, took a deep breath, and then renewed my efforts, pushing him to the edge of the forks. After a final, determined nudge, Ritchie’s corpse dropped to the floor. I maneuvered between the forks and the blast door, and then positioned myself so that the tip of the forks caught the wires behind my back. I wriggled back and forth, driving it deeper. The cold steel slipped under my shirt, and the tension on the wires increased. Then I took a deep breath and began sliding back and forth. The wires rubbed against my chest and arms, digging deep. If I hadn’t been wearing a shirt, I’m sure they would have cut me. The pain was incredible. Just when I thought I wouldn’t be able to take it anymore, I felt the wires go slack. Gasping, I managed to slip free of the bonds. My skin was chafed and my shirt was torn in places, but I was free.

I paused long enough to catch my breath and work some of the kinks out of my aching muscles. My mouth still hurt, but the pain in my head had subsided. Then I walked over to the skids, got down on my hands and knees, and peered beneath them. It was dark under the slats, and I couldn’t see or hear anything. There wasn’t even any rat droppings. Dude had always had a habit of pooping on my shoulder when I carried him around. I edged closer, lying my cheek on the cold concrete floor.

“Dude? Was that really you? Are you under there? Come here, ratty. Come here, Dude…”

I lay there for another minute, relishing the coolness against my cheek. Then I stood up again and groaned at the pain. I scooped up the wires Charles had tied me with, and then took off in pursuit of him. I glanced up at the closed circuit security monitor as I ran. The dead were still out there, milling about. They were much more restless than the dead inside with me. I preferred the latter.

I saw no more rats as I ran.

I caught up with Charles just as he was finishing moving the toolbox blocking the door inside the power plant. He didn’t know I was there until it was too late. As he grabbed the door handle, I hurried up behind him and looped the coils of wire around his throat. Then I jerked them hard. He made a choking sound, but I could barely hear him over the generators. He tried to throw himself forward but only succeeded in strangling himself even more. Before he could break free, I turned around, hunched over, and pulled the wires over my shoulder. The lengths bit into my hands, but I ignored the pain and discomfort and yanked harder. Charles kicked and thrashed, but I remained upright and my grip didn’t slacken. Eventually, his movements weakened, and then stopped altogether. He twitched sporadically a few more times, almost like aftershocks. I waited another full minute before finally letting go of the wires. Charles fell to the floor, dead.

“Six more to go.”

I flexed my hands. The wires had cut into both of them, drawing thin lines of blood. I wiped them on my pants, adding to the gore already there.

“Hurry, Pete… Find me… Kill them all and find me …”

“Oh, I plan on it, baby. Don’t you worry about that.” Following Alyssa’s insistent urging, I opened the door and entered the stairwell. “Ready or not, here I come.”

The stairwell still smelled like roasted meat. The aroma hung heavy in the air, and my stomach growled even louder. The hunger pains were just that—pain. It physically hurt me to be so famished. I’d felt them early on, in the long days when we’d first run out of food. But after a while, they had stopped, replaced with the constant fatigue we’d all suffered. Now the hunger pains were back. It felt like somebody was stabbing my stomach with knives. Maybe it was all psychological. Maybe they were just induced by the aroma, but my stomach muscles contracted and I groaned, shivering with both desire and pain.

Flecks of burned flesh stuck to some of the stairs, charred almost to ash, like the blackened remnants you’d find at the bottom of your backyard grill at the end of summer. Some of the skin crunched beneath my feet, crumbling to dust. There was a smeared red, pink and black handprint on one wall, and some scraps of burned clothing on the landing. Strips of charred skin also dangled from the handrails. Powdery ash floated in the air, and the ceiling and walls had sooty patches on them from the smoke. I found one of Drew’s shoes lying on the landing. It was burned black. The leather had cracked and the soles had melted onto the floor. I prodded it with my foot, but the shoe was stuck fast.

“Serves you right, Drew. You backstabbing motherfucker.”

Even though I’d whispered, my voice echoed in the stairwell. The effect was strange and distorted. It sounded like multiple voices all hissing at the same time. Then they all coalesced into Alyssa’s voice.

“You have to be careful from this point on, Peter. They’ll be waiting for you.”

“You think I don’t know that? I’m not crazy, Alyssa.”

“I didn’t say you were. But you’re doing what you’ve always done—charging ahead without thinking about the consequences. You always think with your heart and your gut. Never your head. You can’t just rush in there. You’re still outnumbered.”

“Only six to one, though. The odds keep getting better. Reckon I can even them some more before I’m done.”

“You always were cocky.”

“You used to like that about me.”

“It got old, after a while.”

“Is that what happened to us?”

“You know what happened to us, Peter.”

“Yeah. Sometimes I think I do. Sometimes I see it clear as day. Other times, it all seems so silly. All of those things that were important. All of those things I couldn’t live with. They don’t seem as clear anymore. Sometimes I can feel the guilt and other times I can’t. I don’t know which is worse.”

“Your mind does whatever it has to do to cope. But that’s always been your way.”

“How is it I can hear you, Alyssa?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because I want to turn you off. I don’t need this shit right now. I’m a little preoccupied with trying to stay alive and I don’t feel like being lectured by my ex-wife.”

“The truth hurts, doesn’t it, Peter? If you want me back, then you’re going to have to face up to some of these things. As for how you can hear me, I think you know the answer to that.”