Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (Book 4): Resolution (17 page)

Emma responded the fastest. She raised her
assault rifle and unleashed a furious volley at the intruders. Not
all of her bullets were on target but enough were to stop the two
focused on all of them. The other was still content to eat Gus and
not bother with the rest of them.

Through the reverberating echo and ringing
from the gunshots, Neil could hear the undeniable click and clank
of footsteps on the stairs outside. Standing much closer to Emma
and her rifle, Danielle couldn’t hear the footsteps, though she
could feel a building knot in her chest.

Danielle asked Emma, “I thought you said not
to shoot?”

Gritting her teeth, Emma shot back, “When
they know you’re there and they’re comin’ at you, it’s time to take
the gloves off and go to work.”

Neil pulled the trigger on his shotgun and
hit the next one as it emerged in the doorway. The blast at such
close range from his powerful weapon did amazing damage and with
tremendous force. The mostly decapitated corpse was thrown backward
violently, hitting and sending over the low metal railing the ghoul
immediately behind it.

Neil shouted, “Go! Now!”

Neil and Emma backed away slowly, allowing
the others to get away first. Jerry and William were leading them
and were the first to hear and see the fists pounding on the
already compromised glass doors at the other entrance.

The two men stopped for a second and Jerry
asked hopefully, “Is there another way out?”

“I...I...I don’t know for sure,” William
stammered. “There’s a laundry room down that way and I don’t know
what else.”

“Go then! Go! I’ll follow!”

William ran down the stairs and then into a
short hallway which led to a very tight laundry room with three
coin operated washers and dryers. They packed themselves into the
little room and slammed the door shut. William, Neil and Jerry
maneuvered a washer and then a dryer in front of the door. They
stacked the two appliances atop one another, sliding a third one up
against the other two to add some weight.

Neil whispered, “That should hold them but
how are we getting out of here?”

He looked up to the lone window in the room.
It sat high up on the far wall and wasn’t really much of a window.
When the pounding started against the door, shaking the appliances
pushed against it, Neil knew they had to try.

Again, he, Jerry, and William moved a pair
of appliances against the wall below the window. This time, the
washer felt heavier and the dryer put up more of a fight. After a
few desperate seconds, the three men stood back. The door was
holding, allowing them all a moment to catch their breaths.

It wasn’t going to last and Neil knew it. He
looked up at the window and Jerry, sensing Neil’s intentions,
climbed up the glossy white Maytag slope. Though high on the inside
wall, the window was at a very moderate height on the outside. They
could and did climb out the window quickly, gathering out of sight
and out of mind of any of those things.

They were out and free of any pursuers. The
shop where Sandra and Allen were waiting was in front of them and
at the foot of the hill. It was a short run down a gentle, grassy
slope and then they would be there.

They rushed down the hill, trying to
capitalize on their momentum. If they stalled, fear might cause
them to second-guess their decisions and plans. They ran hard down
the slope, all of them aiming for the front entrance.

Opening the door, they ran into the waiting
area in the front of the shop but stopped. Allen wasn’t there and
Sandra was no longer lying on the little couch. The magazines, once
stacked neatly on the little table in the middle of the room, were
scattered all over the floor. Something was very wrong.

Danielle thought that maybe Allen had taken
Sandra back to the truck, fearing that the others had suffered
similar fates. Then they heard a horrible, wet, ripping noise
followed by the undeniable sound of chewing. On the floor leading
away from the couch where they had left Sandra they saw some
smeared, bloody footprints leading to the back.

With bats, an axe, and firearms at the
ready, the group inched their way toward the sound. Rounding the
wall, they came upon the scene. Allen was on his stomach with
several engine parts across his legs. Sandra was sitting across his
back chewing on bits of blood dripping flesh, which hung from her
mouth. As one piece dropped from her teeth, she leaned down and
tore another juicy morsel from the seeping, mortal wound on Allen’s
neck and shoulder. A rapidly expanding pool of red covered the
floor around Allen. The man wasn’t moving and didn’t appear to be
breathing. He was an island of flesh in a sea of blood.

When Sandra realized she was being watched,
she leapt to her feet with the agility of a cat. She looked at the
others like she was sizing up her next meal and then sprinted
toward them. William brought her down like a tree with Gus’ axe.
The blade struck Sandra on the side of her head near her ear,
sinking into her skull and scrambling her brain.

Sorrow filling his eyes, William said,
“Allen was my friend, you bitch.”

When he removed the axe, the thing that was
once Sandra fell to the floor without any further protest. William
wasn’t done. He swung his axe again, hitting Sandra in her forehead
between her still open eyes, the sockets of which quickly filled
with blood as her skull, now with several fissures in it, came
apart.

Standing over the corpse, they heard another
sound coming from the back of the shop. With alarm in his eyes,
Neil looked at Jerry and then at William.

Jerry said, “Danielle, can you take William
and the others out to the front lobby so that we can get ready to
move again?”

“I don’t understand,” Danielle asked,
confused. “Shouldn’t we all—”

“Just get William outta here. Now!”

The big black man protested but he must have
suspected Neil’s reasoning. He said, “No. I wanna say goodbye to my
friend. I can’t just—”

William’s words were cut short by the sudden
appearance of a confused, rage-filled Allen in the doorway. William
smiled for a moment but then realized something was amiss. He was
about to ask Allen what he could do to help when the other man
lurched forward. William fell backward, trying to avoid the attack,
tripping over a magazine table.

Allen was still standing and ready to set
upon his friend when Neil swung his bat in the tight quarters of
the shop waiting area. His first swing was off target, hitting
Allen in the shoulder. It was enough to send the recently turned
zombie backward into the working area of the business though.

Off balance now, Allen was vulnerable to
another attack by Jerry, who used his garden hatchet to split
Allen’s head almost down to its neck. Unable to remove the tool
from the wound’s stubborn grip, Jerry let go of the handle and let
both the hatchet and Allen, his head pumping out very red rivers of
blood, fall to the floor just inches from Sandra. With his boot
pressed firmly to side of Allen’s face, Jerry forcibly extricated
his weapon.

Allen’s shotgun was lying across the table
over which William had tripped. Neil picked it up and looked back
down at William as if to apologize for taking his friend’s gun.
Offering both his hand and Allen’s shotgun, he said, “We should
keep moving while it’s still light out.”

William, confused about what had just
happened and the speed with which it did, sat motionless. He was
still processing and trying to wrap his mind around the events. He
looked beyond Neil at the two corpses they had known as friends
just minutes ago. Allen and Sandra were both dead and, in his mind,
he
had killed Sandra.

He accepted Neil’s hand finally and got back
to his feet. He wasn’t standing for more than a second when he
leaned forward and vomited. The foulness spilled out of him until
his stomach was empty and then he dry heaved uncontrollably. He
finally stopped, a single long line of spittle dangling from his
bottom lip.

He whispered through his surprised sadness,
“I’m sorry.”

Neil was unfamiliar with Whittier and the
way in front of them, so he let William lead. They were running
again, but this felt different. They weren’t just running for the
sake of immediate survival. The sense of hope he was starting to
feel influenced his trust in William’s guidance. He barely noticed
when the air around them was filled with a very fine snow, like
sifted flour.

The weather turned quickly in Whittier and
always had. Clear skies could find themselves muscled from the city
by gangs of cool, moist air coming from the ocean and surrounding
glaciers. Rain clouds in the blink of an eye could displace the
sun.

The snow coming down was light, but
consistent. It was the kind of snow that would accumulate without
anyone noticing until several inches were underfoot. Without snows
like the one falling around them even then, the arctic cold in all
its brutality would freeze the ground, killing all the dormant life
waiting to emerge in the far off spring. It was the kind of snow
that most Alaskans appreciate because it covers the dull grays and
browns of the retreating autumn. The snow was beautiful and clean;
it sparkled because it could and did.

The snow was also an omen worth respecting.
Winter was here.

William thought that the emerging weather
might be used to their advantage. He used to play football in
Washington and snowy days always worked to his advantage. He tried
to guess where that crowd of those things chasing them earlier
might have gone, but guess was all he could do. He didn’t know if
they’d eventually lose interest and then just hang around or if
they would keep moving indefinitely. He didn’t know these things.
He couldn’t predict their behavior like he could with fish.

William was a fisherman and had been for as
long as he could remember. He’d worked big factory trawlers on
topside and on the processing deck. He’d worked as a mate for a
commercial fishing enterprise out of Seward and then got his own
boat and had his own business. He liked the stares he got
sometimes. He was a rare breed for sure. One didn’t encounter many
black men in the trade. He always did favor being different and his
choice of vocation provided him a lifetime of being different.

He worked hard, but he always had a natural
knack for it, able to predict where and when the fish would be most
plentiful. His success led to many repeat customers over the years
so that he was solidly booked from the beginnings to the ends of
most summers. He liked the phrase to the effect that if you loved
what you did then what you did would never be work. He was
certainly living that way.

When he bought his property in Shotgun Cove,
he knew that he had finally arrived. His business didn’t center on
a single fishing boat. He had the full package to offer his
customers. He owned several boats parked in the harbor. He had
reliable hands working for him, trained to be wise about their fish
sense. Every day, he would take out one of his own boats so that he
could still taste the salt air of the sea and chase fish.

William knew that he should have been there
with his crews on that day when all of this started. He was Skyping
with his daughter, who lived with her mother in Washington. She was
eleven and growing faster than he could accept. Her name was Chloe
and she was his little flower. Her birthday was fast approaching on
that day and plans were being made about a visit.

His crew, led by his best and most loyal
friend Paul Peters, was waiting for him at the dock to take a late
season group out. William already had a good idea about where the
fish would be lurking and had them stall casting off until he
arrived. He wanted to close out the season with a bang.

William never made it out of the Cove that
day. He never saw Paul or any of his men again. He hoped that maybe
they had cast off and gotten away before things got too out of hand
in the city. Those hopes were dashed earlier when he and the others
were running along the edge of the harbor. When he got to a certain
memorable bend, he stood upon an equally memorable large, flat rock
and looked over at the harbor. His boats were still there as were a
waiting crowd of ghouls packing the pier full.

He felt like he betrayed those men all over
again when he saw his boats still there. They had waited for him
and now were likely no different than Sandra or Allen. He’d
condemned them so that he could talk with his daughter for a few
minutes more.

William couldn’t know if things might have
worked differently for them if he had been there. The likelihood
was that he would be one of those things too. Maybe, though, had he
been there, he would have sensed the rising danger and the
approaching calamity the way he could sense where the best schools
of fish were waiting. Maybe they all would have lived.

Leading his friends and this new group of
people, William took them closer and closer to the Whittier Manor
Condos. They had passed a few of the creatures along the way but
were moving fast enough to stay well ahead of any single pursuers.
When they happened upon three of them standing in the middle of the
road, Neil and Jerry stepped forward with their bats.

The two men circled the ghouls like the
outer wheel of an intricate gear made of concentric circles. Giving
themselves enough room, the two men swung their weapons, cracking
bones, crushing limbs, and ultimately pummeling skulls and brains
until the creatures no longer posed a threat. It took only a few
seconds but it was enough for them to lose the rhythm of their
flight.

Standing there for those couple of seconds,
Danielle noticed that same nauseating buzzing hanging in the air.
Jerry saw the recognition on her face and said to her and everyone
else, “Yeah. They’re close. We should get inside now. There could
be a big group of them coming at us.”