Brian Keene: Entombed

“Pete!” Drew rushed toward me. “Tell me you’ve got a key to get inside?”

Nodding, I pulled the keycard from my back pocket. Drew sighed with obvious relief.

“Thank Christ. I thought we were gonna be trapped down here.”

The group milled around me, blocking my access to the partition. Behind us, something thudded in the stairwell. They scrambled out of the way, and I hurried over to the wall and pushed the partition into its recess, revealing the blast door. The sounds in the stairwell grew louder. I flashed my keycard. The lock disengaged, and I turned the wheel. The door rumbled open with a deep, ominous boom.

“Everybody inside!”

I didn’t need to tell them twice. The group hurried into the bunker, jostling one another in the process. Drew was at the rear of the procession. He paused when he realized that I wasn’t following.

“Aren’t you coming?”

I shook my head. “I’ve got to wait for Mike. He went back to the kitchen to get us some supplies.”

Drew glanced at the stairwell and elevator doors and then back at me. His eyes were wide and his expression grim. “Do you think he can make it?”

“He’s got to. Otherwise, we’ll starve. There’s no food in there. Just a vending machine with sodas and chips and shit.”

From behind us, someone asked, “What’s the hold up?”

Drew and I turned. It was the cable repairman. He stared at us in confusion. Fear had made his face taught and pale. He had a receding hairline and his forehead was slick with sweat. He smelled sour. This close, I could read the name sewn above the pocket of his uniform: CHUCK.

“We’re waiting on somebody,” I said.

Chuck blinked. “But those things…”

“Aren’t down here yet. My friend Mike went to get food and supplies. Soon as he gets here, we’ll close the door.”

“Screw that,” someone else called. I couldn’t tell who it was. The group was standing all bunched together like sardines in a can. “If you want to hang around and wait for your friend, go ahead. But close the damned door first.”

“I’ll be honest, Pete,” Drew said. “I tend to agree with them.”

“We’re okay down here,” I insisted. “The zombies are on the lobby level.”

Then the stairwell door banged open and a corpse tumbled into the conference room, making a liar out of me. I glanced over at the service elevator. The doors remained shut and the light above them indicated that the elevator was still on the lobby level. I gritted my teeth, fighting the urge to run inside the bunker and seal the door.

“Damn it, Mike…”

The first zombie tottered to its feet and stared at us. Then it lurched forward, grasping with one hand. Its other arm hung limp at its side, obviously broken in several places. Shards of splintered bone stuck out of the torn flesh like porcupine quills. Its mouth hung open, and its grayish-white tongue dangled like a slug. It took another step. Two more corpses emerged from the stairwell and followed along behind it. Then another.

“Come on, Pete.” Drew tugged at my shoulder. “We’ve got to go.”

“We have to wait for Mike.”

“He’s obviously not coming,” another man said. I found out later that his name was Jim Mars. “We wait any longer, and we’re dead.”

“He’s right, Pete,” Drew said. “Come on!”

I shrugged free of Drew’s grip and glanced at the elevator again. The light had gone on, indicating that it was moving.

“We go in there without food,” I said, “and we’re dead anyway.”

“We’ll make due. We only have to wait a few days. Sooner or later, when we don’t come out, they’ll get bored and wander away.”

The zombies crept closer. Behind us, the group in the bunker echoed Drew’s sentiments, urging me to close the door. Then Chuck stepped forward.

“Look,” he said, “fuck this. If you don’t want to come, then that’s your own business. Stay here and get eaten. But we’re closing the door.”

I started to get in his face, but then the elevator dinged and the doors opened. We all turned to look. Mike stepped out of the elevator. Even if he hadn’t been so obviously mangled, I’d have known something was wrong with him right away because his movements were jerky and halting. I cringed, unable to turn away from the damage he’d suffered in the short time since I’d last seen him. In addition to his missing eye and throat, and his nearly-severed nose (which dangled by one flap of skin and banged against his cheek each time he took a step), the crotch of Mike’s pants were a bloody mess. I wasn’t sure, but it looked like his dick had been ripped off.

He wasn’t alone in the elevator. There was a wheeled cart inside, just beyond the open doors, loaded down with canned goods and boxes of dry food and cases of bottled spring water. A first aid kit sat atop the supplies. There were also five more zombies milling about the cart. They trailed after Mike, staring at us with blank expressions. Their mouths were crimson and shiny. The lights in the conference center flickered and dimmed, then grew bright again. It made the blood on their faces seem that much more garish.

With the dead converging on us now from two different directions, there was no way to get to the cart. Even as I considered it, the elevator doors slid shut. The zombies didn’t notice. They were focused solely on us. I glanced around for a weapon, but there was nothing. Sighing, I turned to Chuck.

“Come on then. Get inside.”

He did. Drew followed along behind him, leaving me standing alone. Mike’s shoes squeaked on the tiled floor as he closed the distance between us. I stared into his eyes, wondering if there was any shred of consciousness left.

“Mike?” My voice cracked. My throat felt dry and swollen. “You still in there, dude?”

He reached for my hand, and his teeth snapped together. Flinching, I turned and ran inside the bunker. Behind me, Mike moaned. It was a hungry, mournful sound.

“Hurry up,” Chuck shouted. “They’re going to get in!”

I slid the blast door shut behind us. It rumbled, slipping into place and then clicked as it locked. A hissing sound faded as the door sealed.

“Will it hold?” A woman pushed forward through the crowd. “Can they get inside here?”

I shook my head, and explained the blast door to them, realizing as I did it that I had slipped into my tour guide speech. When I was finished, I asked them if they had any questions. Turned out that they did. Lots of questions. I spent the next twenty minutes answering them. I gave them the whole spiel, including an abbreviated version of the bunker’s history and how it benefited us in our current situation. When I was done, we stood there for a while. Nobody spoke. The sound of our breathing echoed softly in the hall. Beneath it was an even quieter sound, barely noticeable unless you concentrated on it—a steady, monotonous drumbeat.

“What is that?” Drew whispered.

“The dead,” I said, “pounding on the door.”

Chuck frowned. “And you’re sure they can’t get in?”

“I’m positive. They can’t get in, but as long as they stay on the other side of the door, we can’t get out this way, either. We’ll have to use the other entrance.”

“What if there are zombies around it, too?” Drew ran a hand through his hair. His eyes were wide and wet.

I shrugged. “Then we might be here for a while.”

Turned out I was right. There were more zombies around the other entrance, and that was how we ended up trapped inside the bunker. It takes forty to fifty days for the average human being to die of starvation, provided they have water to drink. We’ve been here for a little over a month now. What little food we had—stuff from the vending machine and breath mints a few survivors had in their purses—ran out in the first week. Even if we’d done a better job of rationing it, those supplies wouldn’t have lasted. We’ve got plenty of water. I’m not thirsty, but I’m fucking starving. I’m as hungry as the persistent dead still lingering around outside the doors.