Stephen Knight - Left With The Dead

“Falcon, this is Terminator. Tell Six I’ll even fetch his coffee and give him foot rubs if he can get us out of here-though do pass on that I’m hardly an expert at either. Over.”

Falcon laughed over the radio. “Good one, Terminator. I’ll pass that on. If you-”

Jolie shrieked suddenly from somewhere in the apartment, and Gartrell tuned out Falcon as he bolted out of the bedroom, his pistol ready in his right hand. He found Jolie kneeling on the floor, clutching Jaden to her as Jaden reached past her shoulder for the curtains. Gartrell saw he’d already been able to pull them half-open.

“Is everything all right? What happened?” he asked, hurrying toward them.

“Dah. Dee,” Jaden said gently, still reaching for the window.

“He’s out there,” Jolie said. Her voice quaked in fear, and her shoulders shook. “Jaden opened the curtains before I could stop him…and when I looked out, I saw him outside .”

“You saw who outside?”

She looked up at him, and tears spilled from her big blue eyes. “Jack. My husband. Jaden’s father.”

“Dah. Dee.”

“Terminator, this is Falcon…you still there? Over.”

“Falcon, Terminator. Stand by, something’s up on my end, over.” Gartrell stepped past them and peeked past the open curtain at the street below. The stenches were still walking north, but there was a congregation of about ten or fifteen standing right below. One of them-a man in a blood-spattered French blue shirt blazer and tan slacks-looked up at the apartment building with flat, dead eyes, his face pale and bloodless. A huge rent had been torn through his bearded cheek, and one of his hands was wrapped up in a bloodstained handkerchief. Flies flitted about the corpses below. Gartrell watched as they crawled in and out of the man-thing’s mouth and nostrils. The stench didn’t appear to care; it just stared up at the building.

At the windows of the apartment next door. Jolie and Jaden’s apartment.

“Dah. Dee,” Jaden said again, and this time there was an edge to his voice.

“Take him out of here,” Gartrell said. He moved the pistol’s fire selector to SAFE and slid it into its holster, his eyes still on the group of zeds below. As he watched, the stench he figured to be Jolie’s husband-who in the pictures on the wall was hale and hearty, unlike this scraggly figure below-reached into one of its trouser pockets. It pulled something out and, for the first time, slowly looked down. It opened its hand and stared at what lay inside.

It was a key ring.

Oh, fuck me. Gartrell thought he had seen it all when zeds drove vehicles and fired guns, but if they could start unlocking doors with keys…that was even worse, somehow.

“Dah-dee!” Jaden said, this time with much more force.

“Take him back to your apartment!” Gartrell shook Jolie’s shoulder. “Jolie! Get him out of here! Now! ”

“All right!” she snapped back, her voice marred by a sudden sob. “We’re going!” She picked up Jaden and hurried back to the bedroom, sniffling. Jaden struggled against her, but she held him tight. Gartrell turned back to the window and slowly edged closer. Sure enough, Jolie’s dead husband was going through the keys on the ring, and he finally settled on one. Moving with a stupid slowness, the ghoul advanced toward the apartment building, holding the key out before it like it was some sort of weapon. Gartrell leaned forward a bit more to keep eyeballs on target, but he saw other zeds look up in his direction. He stepped back from the window and headed for the apartment door. He unlocked it and double-checked to ensure that he could open the door from the hall and that he wouldn’t get locked out. He ran toward the stairway across from Jolie’s apartment, and as he reached for the door, he realized he wasn’t wearing his helmet-and his NVGs were still mounted on the helmet’s bracket. He dithered about for an instant, wondering if he should go back for it, then decided he didn’t have the time. He pushed open the stairwell door and kept it open with one foot as he looked down over the banister.

Below, the darkness was total, complete, unbroken. Gartrell heard the sound of his own breathing, loud in his ears, magnified by the tight confines of the stairwell. He put a hand on the butt of his pistol, and waited.

From below, he heard something, a distant banging noise. He recalled the glass in the apartment building’s front door was reinforced with wire, and thought that one or two zombies would be unable to break through it. But what about five? Or ten?

The banging stopped, but other sounds slowly rose up the stairwell. The crash of a door flung against a wall. A distant moaning. A far-off shuffling of feet…

Fuck, they’re inside!

As if to bring the point home, light flooded into the bottom of the stairwell as the door on the first floor was pushed open. Shadows filled the light, shadows in the shape of human beings.

Gartrell had seen enough. He pulled back and closed the door to the stairs behind him and hurried for the apartment at the end of the hall.

“Falcon, this is Terminator, over.”

“Terminator, this is Falcon. What’s happening down there? Over.”

“Falcon, Terminator.” Gartrell stepped inside the Skinners’ apartment and locked the door behind him. “I’m suffering from some major deja vu, this is the second time in less than twenty-four hours the building I’m in is overrun by stenches, and it’s not getting any easier with practice. I’ve got maybe a dozen stenches on their way up, over.” As he spoke, Gartrell sprinted for the hole he had cut in the closet wall and pushed through it. He went straight to the bureau and donned his helmet and body armor, then collected the remains of his gear. He put water bottles in his pockets and ensured the grenades were close at hand. He would need them soon.

“Jolie! Load up one of those backpacks with as much food and water as you can carry, and get your revolver and that shotgun. We’re leaving!”

She appeared at the door, still holding Jaden. “Where will we go?”

Gartrell pointed at the hole in the wall. She started to say something else, but he waved her to silence.

“Ma’am, listen to me. The stenches are on their way up. You want to save that little boy of yours? Do as I tell, and do it damned quick.” Falcon was speaking into his ears, and he put a hand to one of the ear phones. “Falcon, Terminator. Say again, over.”

“Terminator, this is Falcon. They’re hot-refueling one of the Chinooks. They’ll come for you as soon as they can. Twenty minutes, tops. Over.”

“Not sure we can hold out for ten minutes, Falcon. I’ve got a little over a hundred rounds of ammunition total, not really enough to hold down the fort.” He slipped on his knapsack and pulled out the remaining drum of 12-gauge ammunition for the AA-12. He swapped out the almost-depleted one-down to three shells! — and slapped on the new one. “Falcon, how many soldiers are in the Second Avenue subway line? Over.”

“Terminator, Falcon…uh, not really sure at the moment, why do you ask? Over.”

“Because there’s a station right in front of the apartment building, and it might be our only chance. If we can stay ahead of the zeds and link up with the lightfighters, we might have a good chance of getting out of here. I’d love to catch a ride on that Chinook, but twenty minutes is a long wait under our circumstances, and if something goes wrong and the chopper has to abort, we’ll be trapped on the roof and royally fucked. So I really need to know if there are any troops in the area, how many, and if they’re headed our way. And I need to know that real, real quick. Over.”

“Roger that, Terminator. Stand by.”