Entombed

TWO

I was still sitting in the movie room when Drew rushed in. Much like the day when we’d first entered the bunker, his eyes were wide and his expression was panicked. He was breathing hard, and when I asked him what was wrong, he held up a finger, indicating that I should wait. He bent over, put his hands on his knees, and gulped air. He sounded like he was dying. His face was red from exertion and sweat lathered his forehead and cheeks. I waited for him to catch his breath.

“What’s wrong?” I placed a hand on his shoulder. He was warm, and his shirt was damp with perspiration. “Are you having a heart attack or something?”

He shook his head and gasped. “They just voted… Chuck and the rest.”

“So it’s finished, then? Well, thank God that’s over with. Now we can get back to figuring out an alternative. Come up with a real plan.”

“No… they voted… to do it. They voted yes.”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. I was too stunned. I’d been scoffing at this insanity ever since Chuck had first proposed it. I hadn’t taken it seriously, and I’d figured most of the others wouldn’t either. Well, none of the sane people in our group, at least. A few might consider it—those who were cracking from the strain of our situation. But I’d always assumed that in the end, clearer heads would prevail. I’d been positive that the majority of us wouldn’t vote for something as totally fucked up as cannibalism via lottery. That’s why I hadn’t even attended the group meeting with everyone else. I’d figured the others would tell Chuck they were voting ‘No’ and that would put an end to the whole crazy idea. After all, who in their right mind would actually vote for allowing themselves a one in twenty-six chance of ending up as dinner for the rest of us?

Apparently, quite a few.

“They voted in favor of it?” My voice was barely a whisper. “In favor?”

Drew nodded. “Yeah. It was unanimous—except for me. I voted against it, of course.”

“Nobody else? Not even the Chinese guy?”

“He voted in favor, too.”

“But he doesn’t even speak English. How did he know what they were voting on?”

Drew shrugged.

“So, you and I are the only sane motherfuckers left down here?”

“It sure seems like it. What are we going to do, Pete?”

“I don’t know, brother. I don’t know.”

Eisenhower watched us, his bronze face expressionless. Aqua Teen Hunger Force still played on the big screen—Master Shake and Meatwad were singing a song about zombies. The irony made my stomach churn. I idly wished that I’d watched Reba instead. If I was going to die, it would have been better to go out jerking off to Joanna Garcia rather than watching a bunch of cartoon characters, no matter how funny they were.

Drew stood up. I was happy to see that both his complexion and his breathing were slowly returning to normal. It would have been a hell of a thing if he’d died of a heart attack before our fellow survivors had a chance to kill and eat him properly. He glanced out into the hallway and then quietly shut the door

“Jesus…” I shook my head in disbelief. “I can’t believe this shit.”

“There’s more, Pete. It gets worse.”

“How can it get any worse?”

“Since you didn’t attend the meeting, Chuck and the others decided… shit, I don’t know how to say this.”

“Decided what? Just tell me what the hell is going on.”

“They decided… they decided that you should be first. They… they said that was only fair, since everybody else was willing to vote even though it might be them that got picked. Chuck said that since you didn’t have the balls to show up, you were being disrespectful to the rest of them. They all agreed. Well, maybe agreed isn’t the right word, but they all went along with it. So, instead of a lottery to decide who feeds the rest of us, they’ve picked you to be the first.”

“Fuck you.”

“I’m not kidding. You’ve got to get the hell out of here, Pete. They’re coming.”

I stood there, stunned. My arms hung limp and numb at my sides. My hands and fingers tingled as if asleep. My asshole puckered and my balls shrank. There was a feeling in my stomach, a sensation I’d only felt once before in my life on the day my wife of eight years, Alyssa, told me she was leaving me and that she wanted a divorce. I sat on the couch that day, wanting desperately to flee, to run away from her, to get out of the range of the things she was saying, because if I couldn’t hear her say them, then they wouldn’t come true—but I was unable to move. On that day, my body felt like it temporarily belonged to someone else. Now I had that feeling once again, to paraphrase that old Pink Floyd song, except that in real life, my numbness was anything but comfortable. Instead, it was like drowning in a bathtub full of ice. Drew said something to me, but I couldn’t understand him. The ringing in my ears was too loud. I watched his lips, trying to read them. He grabbed my shoulders and shook me hard.

“Come on,” he urged again. “You’ve got to go, Pete. Snap out of it. You’ve got to run, right fucking now.”

“Where are they?” It was hard to form the words. My tongue felt thick.

“Last I saw, they were all still in the dining room.”

“Well, that’s appropriate.”

“They were debating how to proceed. Some of them said we should tell it to you straight—we owed you that, as decent human beings.”

I choked down laughter and bile. Drew didn’t notice.

“A couple people said we should just wait until you went to sleep, and capture you then, but Chuck and the others said that we should act before that. Then they started debating how. By that point, I was already slipping out the door to come warn you. As far as I know, they’re still debating, but it won’t be much longer. They’ll come for you. That’s why you’ve got to go now, man.”

“But where? The reason they’re having this vote is because we’re trapped in here. Where the hell am I supposed to go, Drew?”

“I don’t know.”

I shook my head in despair. “I can’t go outside or into the hotel. The zombies are still there, hanging around both sets of blast doors. I mean, what kind of choice is that? Leave the bunker and get eaten by the dead, or stay here and get eaten by the living? Either way, I’m screwed.”

“Just hide, then.”

“Hide? Hide where, exactly? We’re in a bunker, Drew. And what the hell am I supposed to do when they find me? And they will find me. What then? Talk my way out of it? We don’t have any weapons down here. Sure, we’ve got kitchen utensils and tools and shit, but I can’t fight my way out of here with a fucking butter knife.”

Drew paused for a moment. Then, with an excited grin, he snapped his fingers and grabbed my arm.

“What about the power plant? It’s dark and crowded and there’s all kinds of places to hide in between the transformers and the generators and stuff. Best of all, it’s so loud in there. They’ll never hear you over those generators. Hide there. I can bring you water, whenever I get a chance.”

“Until they catch you,” I said. “Then we’ll both be dinner.”

“Well, I don’t know what other options you—”

He stopped suddenly as the sound of footsteps echoed down the hall, coming toward us. The fear returned to Drew’s eyes. He glanced around the room frantically.

“Quick—hide!”

I had two choices—stand behind the door or duck down behind Eisenhower’s display. If I hid behind the door, there was a chance that whoever opened it would see me. It was dark in the room, except for the glow from the television, but if they pushed the door too far and it struck me, I’d be discovered. I glanced at the small stand that Eisenhower’s bust sat on. If whoever was coming stood at certain spots in the room, they’d surely see me crouched down behind it. My only hope was that the room’s dim lighting might work to my advantage.

Muffled voices echoed in the corridor, unintelligible beneath the DVD soundtrack. The footsteps stopped in front of the door. Drew and I stared at each other. One set of footsteps walked away. I took a deep breath and held it. Then the doorknob started to turn. Exhaling, I leaped over the chairs and dove behind the Eisenhower bust display just as the door started to open.

“Where is he, Drew?”

I recognized the speaker from his voice. It was Krantz, one of Chuck’s cronies. I’m not sure what he’d done before the zombies took over. I don’t think he ever mentioned it. Whatever his previous vocation, down here in the bunker, he’d been a toadie and a boot-licker—one of those guys who attach themselves to the alpha male of the pack and do whatever they ask in an effort to be accepted, liked and protected. He was in his mid-forties, balding, and cursed with the worst case of Rosacea I’d ever seen. He had chronically bloodshot, runny eyes and his face was a network of spider-web veins. His nose looked like a rotten fruit. When we’d first entered the bunker, he’d also had a prodigious gut. Now, like the rest of us, he’d undergone drastic weight loss. The lack of food had just made his skin condition that much worse.

“Hey, Krantz. I was just coming to find you guys.”

Drew sounded nervous. I held my breath, wondering if Krantz would notice. He did.

“Don’t bullshit me, Drew. I’m not in the mood. Where’s your buddy?”

“Pete?”

“No, the fucking Tooth Fairy.”

“I don’t know where he is.”

“Don’t fuck with me, Drew. I mean it. This can go one of two ways for you, and I don’t think you’ll like the second option.”

“I’m telling you, I don’t know where he is. Seriously. I came to look for him. Figure he’d be in here, since he spends a lot of time watching movies. But he wasn’t. I was just about to head back and tell you guys. Is the meeting over?”

Instead of responding, Krantz began to search the room. I heard his footsteps, slow and deliberate. Drew coughed. On the screen, the credits rolled.

“He’s not in here. Maybe he’s asleep.”

“So who was watching this cartoon, then? I doubt that it turned itself on.”

“I guess he must have been in here before.”

“And where is he now?”

“I told you, I don’t know.”

“You’re lying, Drew.”

I peeked out from behind my hiding place. Krantz was standing directly in front of me, but he had his back turned. His hands were on his hips. Drew was facing him. Drew’s expression had gone slack.

“Come on,” Krantz said. “Let’s go.”

“Go where?”

“You can explain this to Chuck.”

“Explain what?”

“Why you’re lying. Why you’re hiding Pete. Maybe we’ll just go with you instead. Might make things easier all around.”

Drew shook his head. “I’m telling you, I don’t know where Pete is. I’m not lying. I just—”

He moved fast, surprising both Krantz and myself. One moment he was talking, and the next, he’d thrown a punch at Krantz’s throat, connecting with the man’s Adam’s apple. Krantz stumbled backward, grasping at his neck, and toppled to the floor. He made choking sounds, and when he saw me, his eyes went wide, bulging in their sockets. He thrashed on the floor, writhing, trying to breathe and failing miserably. He reached for me with one hand.

Without thinking about it, I pushed Eisenhower’s bronze bust off of its pedestal, dropping it directly onto Krantz’s head. The sound was like an overripe watermelon bursting. Blood splattered all over me, and then I couldn’t see Krantz’s eyes anymore. His arms and legs jittered, and a dark, wet stain appeared on the crotch of his pants. Then he lay still.

“Holy shit…” Drew gaped.

I stood up. The room smelled like piss. My vision was blurry. I wiped my eyes with my hands, smearing Krantz’s blood. I took a step toward Drew and my foot slipped in the gore.

“Holy shit,” Drew said again. “I guess he doesn’t have to worry about his Rosacea anymore.”

He giggled, but it was a strange, bleak sound. There was no humor in Drew’s voice, and his expression was grim. I knew how he felt. I tried to swallow, and found that I couldn’t. My stomach fluttered.

“Tell them I did this,” I said.

“But then they’ll—”

“Tell them” I interrupted. “Otherwise, they’ll be after you, too. Tell them you and he came in here, and I surprised you both.”

“But—”

“We don’t have time to argue, Drew. I’ve got to go.”

I stuck my head into the hall. The coast was clear. There was no sign of whoever else Krantz had been talking to. Maybe they were searching another room. Whatever the case, I made a break for it, praying they wouldn’t step back into the hall at that moment. I glanced back only once, and saw Drew staring after me, clearly still in shock. He lifted one hand and waved at me.

Then I ran.

I guess it would help if I described the bunker’s layout. It feels like a labyrinth until you learn your way around, but once you get used to it, the layout is pretty straightforward. The bunker covers just over one-hundred and thirteen thousand square feet. If you entered it from the hotel (which was currently occupied by hordes of zombies), after the blast door, you’d walk down a short corridor which opened into the dining room. This is a large area. It had to be, when you consider how many people would have eaten there in the event of a nuclear war. Beyond the dining room was the infirmary, pharmacy, dorm rooms and several lounges, as well as the library and the media room. Most of these had been converted into exhibits for the tours. They still had some of the original equipment and supplies that the government had kept here when the bunker was still active. Sadly, none of these supplies included food.

As I ran, I thought about hiding in one of the dorm rooms or the infirmary, but quickly decided against it. Given their close proximity to the dining room, that was where most of the others would be. My only choice was to go in the other direction, deeper into the mountain. The corridor I fled down was the same as all of the other hallways in the facility—garish white linoleum floors and drab, featureless concrete walls. The monotony was broken only by the occasional exhibit or ‘Exit’ sign. Those exit signs were the biggest joke of all. The irony hadn’t been lost on any of us. There was no exit from the bunker, except in death.

I raced by the restrooms and then through a set of double doors, which led into another corridor. On my left was the incinerator room. It was diesel-powered and burned hot enough to incinerate human bones. The government had intended it to be that way, in case survivors in the bunker had to dispose of their dead, or rid the facility of radioactive or contaminated clothing. Before the arrival of the zombies, the hotel had used the incinerator to burn up trash, so it was well-stocked with diesel fuel. Since first coming down here, we’d run it a few times to keep warm, but it had mostly sat empty.

I paused in front of the incinerator room and listened. The hallway was quiet. I turned around and peeked through the double doors. The corridor was still empty. If the others had discovered Krantz’s death, then they hadn’t organized yet. Even still, the hunt was on now. They’d be coming for me soon. My heart pounded, pulsing in my throat. Common sense dictated that I should keep running, but I was scared and tired and panicked, and I decided instead to hide inside the incinerator room. I went inside and closed the door behind me, debating whether or not to turn on the lights. With the door shut, it was so dark inside that I couldn’t see anything, and after stumbling around for a few seconds, I fumbled for the light switch. It felt sticky and cold beneath my fingers. I clicked it on and the fluorescents buzzed to life overhead, flooding the room with their harsh brilliance.

I glanced around, looking for a weapon or a place to hide. The incinerator room was a large, gray-cinderblock area. Despite its size, there wasn’t much room inside because the incinerator itself dominated the space. It was a big, metal beast with a large, hinged iron door. A ventilation shaft ran from the top of the unit up into the ceiling. A second shaft ran from the ceiling down into the incinerator. This second shaft was a burn chute that went to the bunker’s decontamination center, one floor above. In the event of a nuclear war, survivors could have shed their irradiated clothing, which could then be sent down the chute and burned. The other ventilation shaft acted as a chimney. It exited somewhere atop the mountain, far away from the hotel. I knew there was no way I could escape through it, though. We’d tried that early on in the siege, only to learn that the ductwork narrowed steadily the further it went. A human being wouldn’t have been able to fit through it. I glanced down at my skinny frame, wondering if maybe I could chance it now. Then I shuddered at the thought of getting stuck. Facing down the mob in the bunker was better than slowly starving to death while trapped in a tube.

Of course, I was starving to death down here, too.

Still, either option was preferable to facing down the dead, and even if I did make it out of the tube, I’d still have the zombies to contend with. I knew they were still sequestered around the blast doors, even without opening the doors to check. We’d been able to hear them milling around out there. The dead aren’t quiet. They’re anything but. They moan and growl and bump into things. They’d remained at the blast doors. Could they be gathered around the chimney pipe, as well? I didn’t know—and decided the possibility of getting stuck in the tube wasn’t worth the risk of finding out.

You might be asking yourself why the dead hung around for so long? If they couldn’t get inside the bunker to eat us, why didn’t they just move on in search of easier prey? Well, it’s because they’re stupid. Their bodies may be reanimated, but their brains certainly aren’t—at least, the part of their brain that solves problems and figures things out via logic and thought. Sure, they have their basic motor skills. They can walk and grasp and bite like a motherfucker, but they have no deductive reasoning. They saw us go inside the bunker, so they milled around the blast doors, waiting for us to come out. More zombies arrived and joined the others. Sooner or later, the first group of zombies probably forgot that we were in here, but by then, there are so many of them crowded around the doors, they mimic each other. If one zombie sees another banging on the door, it does the same. And they stay there until they rot away, or something else distracts them.

In the first few days of the siege, we tried to do that very thing—distract the zombies that were waiting on the other side of the blast door inside the hotel. We sent two volunteers, Rachel and Milo, to the bunker’s other exit. Rachel ran for her high school’s cross country team and Milo was a personal trainer who worked in the hotel’s gym. Both of them could run, and were in good shape. The plan seemed so simple. They’d sneak out of the bunker via the other blast door, make their way down the mountainside and through the woods, and then let the zombies inside the hotel see them. When those zombies began to follow them away from the blast doors, Rachel and Milo would run back to the other exit and get inside before the zombies could catch them. Then the zombies would lose interest and leave. Except things didn’t quite turn out that way. There were more zombies in the woods than we had originally planned on. Rachel and Milo hadn’t made it twenty-five yards past the exit when a corpse shambled out from behind a tree and made a grab for Milo. The personal trainer—this athletic, Adonis-like man—dodged the zombie, tripped over a root, and fell down, banging up his knee and twisting his ankle in the process. The creature had its rotten teeth in Milo’s throat before Rachel could even react. She panicked, and instead of helping Milo (although at that point, the only way to have aided him would have been to bash his brains out) she started running back toward the blast door. We hollered, cheering her on and urging her not to look back. For a brief moment, we thought for sure she’d make it back inside without being noticed, as Milo’s killer was busy gorging itself on his flesh. But two more zombies emerged from the woods and saw her. Rachel made it back inside, but by then it was too late. They knew we were in here. Then we had zombies at both exits.

They’ve been there ever since.

Rachel killed herself a few days later. She swallowed an entire bottle of Advil that she’d had in her purse. It wasn’t a quick death, nor was it painless. When we put her in the incinerator, her abdomen was swollen and hard. I can’t imagine what that many painkillers did to her liver. She popped when she burned.

My thoughts turned back to the business at hand. Musing over Milo and Rachel would only insure that I ended up dead like them, and I was determined not to let that happen. I needed something—anything—to defend myself with. There weren’t a lot of items or tools inside the incinerator room, and as a result, my choice of weapons was less than inspiring. A red fire extinguisher, covered in a thick layer of ash and dust, hung on the wall. It would be heavy and unwieldy. A long iron bar with a blunt hook on one end was leaning against the wall next to it. We used the bar to shove things into the incinerator and stir the ashes around, but it wouldn’t be of much use in defending myself with. It was heavy, and its length and the limited amount of space in the room meant I would have trouble swinging it around or thrusting. I decided instead to use the rod to bar the door. I slid it through the door handle. Both ends of the iron bar lined up flat against the wall. Satisfied that this would prevent anyone from pulling the door open, I slumped down to the floor with my back against the cold incinerator, and took an opportunity to catch my breath.

I hadn’t realized until that moment that I was trembling. My skin was covered with goose bumps and the hair on my arms stood up as if I’d been shocked with static electricity. I suddenly felt very cold. At first, I thought it must be the chilly metal surface of the incinerator, but when I slid forward and moved away from it, the feeling didn’t subside. Instead, it grew worse. My teeth started to chatter and the shaking intensified. I belched, wincing at the smell. My mouth tasted sour. I burped again, shivering all over now. My stomach cramped and then I felt pressure building in my throat. I leaned over, involuntarily brought my hand up to my mouth, and then vomited through my fingers. Even my puke felt cold. It ran down my wrist and arm and splattered all over my lap, soaking my clothes. The stench was terrible. There were no solids in it, seeing as how I hadn’t eaten anything in… well, since we’d run out of food. It was all liquid, and I cringed when I noticed a brownish-red tint to it. That couldn’t be good.

My stomach cramped again, forcing me to bend over far enough that the tip of my nose touched the cold concrete floor. The dry heaves came next, followed by more burps. I guess my body wasn’t satisfied with that, because then the gas started coming out the other end. At that point, I was beyond caring. I lay there shaking and moaning in my own filth and stink, and waited for the tempest to subside. I thought about what I’d just done—killing Krantz. The magnitude of my actions was unshakeable. I thought about the sound his head had made when I squashed it with Eisenhower’s bronze bust. I wondered if I’d ever be able to forget that sound.

I wrapped my arms around myself and lay down on the floor, curling into the fetal position. I was soaked with my own puke and cold and hungry and miserable, and I felt like crying, but that would have been a waste of valuable fluids. The remorse weighed heavily on me. I told myself that Krantz had left me no choice. No choice at all. If I hadn’t killed him, then Drew and I would be dead by now. Certainly I would be, at least, and that was reason enough to do what I’d done. It was pure survival. Nothing else. You do what you have to do to stay alive.

I repeated this to myself over and over again, but it didn’t really help. I’d done a lot of bad things in my life, but they all paled in comparison to committing murder. I’d just killed someone. Not someone who was already dead, but a living, breathing human being. That topped the bill of the list of things I’d done wrong in my life.

Thinking about those wrongs made me think about Alyssa, my ex-wife, which brought new pangs to my stomach—not of hunger and revulsion, but of guilt and regret. I lay there, wishing I could die and hating myself for fighting it when I’d had the opportunity to do so just moments before.