City of the Dead

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Chapter Twenty-Four

Eddie Thorne pounded in a few more nails, securing the last board of wood across the door to the office. They decided to just abandon the office, since the zombies were bound to make their way in eventually. Instead of trying to block the door to the lobby, they nailed shut the door to the office itself. Jill felt certain that the zombies would not be able to break the door down, now that it was completely boarded up.

Eddie shrugged and tossed the hammer onto the floor. “Guess that’ll have to do,” he said, his voice low. He gestured behind Jill. “So what do we do with him?”

The infected man, who finally gave his name as Keith, was seated on the bottom step of a metal staircase beside the office, which led to a storage area directly above it. He breathed slowly, his face covered in sweat, and his eyes were closed.

“He’s not going anywhere,” Jill said coldly. “Let him stay there.”

“What about later, when he changes?”

“We’ll deal with that when we have to.”

Eddie nodded and looked around the warehouse. The two of them were basically alone, as everyone else went off to find hiding places and be by themselves. Kayla hadn’t been seen in over an hour, and Harold, the older man, was missing as well, which annoyed Jill because he possessed one of the group’s shotguns. Miranda, George, and Dario were all off somewhere, and Kyle was sitting up by one of the windows, keeping watch outside.

“So,” Eddie said. “You think we’re getting out of here?”

Jill stuck her pistol into her pants pocket. “Depends on who you mean by ‘we’.”

“I mean all of us,” Eddie said.

Jill shook her head, secretly hating herself for it. “I don’t think so,” she said. “There’s too many of them outside, and we don’t have enough bullets. If we had some kind of vehicle, like a bulldozer or something, then maybe. But if we have to get out of here on foot, there’s just no way.”

Eddie nodded, staring down at his shoes. “Yeah, that’s what I thought too. Looks like we’re stuck here for now, I guess.”

“We can’t stay here, though,” Jill said. “We’re still not safe. We don’t have any food or water. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m not spending the night here.”

“So you’re gonna leave?”

Jill walked up to Eddie until they were only a foot away. He glanced up at her with weary, knowing eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Jill said. “But I’m not waiting here to die. If there was a way to get all these people out of here, even if it was incredibly dangerous, then I would do it. I used to be a cop, Eddie. I don’t want to abandon anyone. I feel like shit about it. But I’m not going to sit here and wait for those zombies to come in and get me.”

“It’s more dangerous out there than it is in here,” Eddie said.

“The longer we wait, the worse it’s going to be,” Jill said.

“Yeah,” Eddie said, rubbing his chin. “I know. I’m just trying to think of a reason to stay myself. You think that just the two of us might have a chance?”

“Sure, even three or four of us. Kyle might be able to make it out, maybe even George or Harold. But I don’t see the others being much help. I think we should just tell everyone that we have to leave, and they can come with us if they want. If they want to stay, then that’s their choice.”

Harold appeared from around the other side of the office area, the shotgun dangling from his hand, the end of the barrel scraping against the concrete floor. He looked tired, wiped out, and looked at Jill wearily.

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

Jill crossed her arms. “I think we have to leave,” she said. “We’re not safe here.”

“Leave?” Harold said. “What are you talking about? Of course we’re safe here.” He looked at Jill strangely, wavering on his feet. “You can’t expect us to go back outside.”

“If you want to stay here, that’s your decision,” Jill said. “But I’m going to ask everyone, and let them decide for themselves. They can either stay here or come with me.”

Harold wiped his brow with his sleeve, which was already damp with sweat. “I think you’re crazy,” he said, shaking his head. He licked his lips and glanced across to Keith, who remained motionless except for the slow rising and falling of his chest. “Is he ... is he okay?”

Jill shook her head. “We told you, Harold. He was infected when he was bitten. We’ll leave him alone for now, but it won’t be long before he turns.”

Eddie edged away from Jill and casually reached behind him, where his pistol was sitting in his back pocket. “Actually, you don’t look so good yourself,” Eddie said. “You feeling kinda sick at all?”

Harold looked at Eddie, his eyes wide. “I’m just kind of tired,” he said. “I’ve been through a lot today, like we all have.”

“Why don’t you go lie down or something?” Eddie suggested, reaching for the shotgun. “Let me have that gun, and you can go rest somewhere. Me and Jill can take care of things here.”

Harold lifted the gun with some effort and clutched it in his arms. “No, I think I’ll hold onto this, thank you very much.”

“I think you should give it back to George,” Eddie said. “You took it from him, after all. He’s probably better with the gun than you are.”

Harold backed away, shaking his head. “No, that’s alright. I don’t need to lie down, I’m fine. I’ll keep this.”

Jill found herself reaching for her own gun as well, the situation finally dawning on her. Harold clutched the shotgun in sweaty hands, his skin a bit paler than it was before, his eyes bloodshot, his face slick with sweat. He glanced between Jill and Eddie nervously, stepping away.

“You sure you’re okay?” Eddie asked.

“Yes, yes, I’m fine.”

“It’s okay, Harold,” Jill said quietly. “Give Eddie the gun and you can go lie down. I know you’re just worried, but everything will be fine.”

“No,” Harold said bitterly, shaking his head. “No, it won’t be fine.”

“Give me the gun,” Eddie said firmly, reaching for it again.

Harold clenched his teeth as his eyes darted between the two of them. He suddenly raised the gun to his shoulder, and Jill immediately drew her pistol and aimed right at him. “Put it down!” she screamed.

“Get away from me!” Harold cried, backing away, waving the gun unsteadily. “Just get away!”

“Drop it, Harold, just drop it,” Eddie said, keeping his hands in sight. “No one’s gonna hurt you. Just drop the gun and I promise we won’t do anything.”

“Back off!” Harold screamed, stabbing the gun forward, his finger on the trigger.

“You pull that trigger and you’re a dead man!” Jill shouted.

“Just get away from me! Leave me alone!”

Suddenly Kyle was there, aiming his gun forward, switching from Harold to Eddie and Jill uncertainly, completely bewildered. “Jesus, what in the hell is going on here?”

“They’re going to leave us here!” Harold cried. “I heard them talking about it! They’re going to take all the guns and leave us here to die!”

“He’s been bit!” Eddie snapped, pointing at Harold. “Just look at him! You can see he’s been bit!”

“That’s a lie! You’re lying!”

But thankfully, Kyle wasn’t an idiot. After one long look at Harold, he stepped over to Eddie and Jill, his gun aimed squarely on Harold. “Jesus,” he muttered. “I don’t believe this.”

“Just leave me alone!” Harold shouted again.

“We ain’t gonna hurt you!” Eddie promised. “Just drop the gun!”

“And then what?” Harold asked angrily, waving the gun. “You’ll just stick me in a corner with Keith and wait for me to turn into one of those things? And then you’ll shoot me like a dog? To hell with that!”

He kept backing up until he was almost up against one of the large garage doors. He stepped into the loading area and looked around, realizing that he had run out of room to retreat. He bared his teeth, eyes wild, and waved the gun around again.

“You have no choice,” Jill said, staring right down the barrel of her pistol. “Put down the gun, or I swear to God I will shoot you.”

At that, Harold’s mouth curved into a twisted, psychotic smile. “Oh no, you won’t,” he said grimly. He quickly lowered the shotgun and swung the barrel up under his chin, his hand on the trigger. “I’m not going to let you kill me!”

Eddie shouted once as Harold pulled the trigger. The gun went off and Harold’s head exploded like a melon, spraying blood and brain matter across the entire garage door. The blast tore a hole right through the door as well, the edges of the hole smeared with gore. His body slumped to the ground and the shotgun tumbled from his head fingers.

Kyle turned away, and then gripped his stomach and vomited violently, although there wasn’t much in his stomach to come up. Eddie covered his eyes with his hand for a moment and then lowered his hand, sighing deeply.

Jill lowered her pistol slowly. “That son of a bitch,” she whispered. “He was bitten too, and he didn’t even tell us.”

“That’s why he tried to defend Keith like that,” Eddie said. “He wasn’t worried about Keith at all, he was worried about himself.”

“He probably didn’t tell Keith either,” Jill said, flicking the safety on and sliding her pistol back into her pocket. “Or Keith would have told us.”

Eddie just shook his head. “Poor guy.”

George appeared from the rows of shelves on the other side of the warehouse, hurrying over to them. “Hey, what’s going on? I heard ...” He stopped in his tracks when he saw Harold’s dead body slumped against the garage door.

Eddie walked over to the corpse to retrieve the shotgun. He looked away as his hand closed on the handle, carefully pulling it from Harold’s dead grasp.

And suddenly, an arm jutted through the hole in the door and grabbed Eddie’s collar. It pulled him forward and he fell right onto Harold’s body as another hand pushed through the hole and grabbed his hat right off his head.

Jill and Kyle ran forward and helped pull Eddie back as the hands clawed at him. The entire garage door seemed to bend inward, and another arm squeezed through the hole, fumbling for anything it could touch.

Kyle ran over to his perch at the window and looked outside, his face lowering in despair. “Oh no, they’re right outside there,” he said. “They’re all pushing on the door.”

Eddie got to his feet and swallowed hard, touching his neck numbly, as if to make sure the hands hadn’t scratched him. Jill pulled him backwards, staring at the large garage door as it bent inward, unable to hold back the combined strength of hundreds of zombies.

The zombies could have pushed the door down at any time in the past few hours, but they left the doors alone since nothing directed their attention to them. But the shotgun blast attracted them, and once they detected their prey beyond the door, it would only be a matter of seconds before they managed to push the entire door down.

The side of the door buckled and two of the metal wheels snapped right off the track. Zombies tried to push through the opening, stick their arms through, grasping for anything within reach.

“We gotta do something!” George cried out. “We gotta block the door!”

“We don’t have time!” Eddie shouted back. “There’s nothing to block it with!”

Jill drew her pistol and forced herself to remain calm. There was no stopping the zombies now. She held her ground and took careful aim.

“Take the shotgun,” Eddie said, holding it out to George.

George hesitated and then backed away, shaking his head regretfully. “I ... I can’t, I can’t do this again. I’m sorry.”

“Go! Find the others and warn them!” Jill shouted.

George gave them one last pitiful, guilty look and ran off. Kyle ran over to them, shotgun at the ready, his eyes wide with terror. Eddie nodded sadly and raised his gun as well.

“I guess this is it,” he said. “There’s not much point in hiding, is there?”

“No,” Jill said. “We could climb up those shelves and the zombies could never reach us, but what good would that do? We’d probably die of thirst in two or three days.”

“You don’t think anyone will come and rescue us.”

“No, I don’t.”

Tears dripped down Kyle’s young face, but his voice was surprisingly firm. “Well, I’m gonna take out as many of those damn things as I can before they get me.”

The door buckled again, and one whole side broke free of the track, leaning heavily inward. With the ear-piercing sound of tearing metal, the garage door snapped loose and crumpled to the floor like a huge sheet of paper. It fell like a curtain, revealing the actors on a stage. But instead of actors, they were zombies.

Hundreds of them. They were packed in so tight through the dock doorway that it was impossible to miss them as Jill and the others opened fire. Kyle’s shotgun boomed first, and a young female zombie’s head exploded. The headless body fell to the floor and was immediately trampled. Eddie fired twice, taking out two more. Jill kept her gun at head level and squeezed the trigger, hitting four in a row right in the head. But the seven zombies they killed were like a handful of sand on a beach. Zombies flooded into the warehouse like a wave.

Jill grabbed Eddie’s arm and ran for it. Kyle stood his ground, firing shot after shot, blasting a half dozen zombies. He was able to kill two with one shot, they were so packed together. But his shotgun soon clicked empty. He grabbed the stock and swung the gun like a baseball bat, cracking it against the skull of the nearest zombie. They converged around him, circling like sharks around a wounded swimmer, smelling blood in the water.

“Kyle!” Jill screamed. “Run!”

But he ignored her, and swung the gun again, striking another zombie. They pushed in around him and he struggled in vain, swinging the gun desperately.

“Kyle!”

The zombies went in for the kill and attacked him from all sides. They bit into his arms and his neck and pulled him down into the center of the mass of bodies. He didn’t even cry out, and kept fighting right until the very end.

Jill ran backward, shooting the zombies as fast as she could. Finally, the gun clicked when she pulled the trigger. She had more bullets in her pocket, but she didn’t think the zombies would wait for her to reload.

“Come on!” Eddie shouted, running for the office. Jill ejected the clip in her gun as she ran and fumbled in her pocket for her extra bullets. The huge crowd of zombies lurched after them relentlessly, more and more of them pouring into the warehouse every second. Pretty soon the entire building seemed full of the walking dead.

They ran to the metal staircase next to the office, where Keith was still sitting. He was slumped against the steps and looked up weakly at them, his eyes glazed over.

“I’m sorry, man,” Eddie said, “I’m real sorry.” He grabbed Keith’s shirt and pulled him away from the steps, and he slumped to the floor, motionless.

Jill managed to snap two bullets into her clip. She glanced up to say something when suddenly, the nailed-up office door broke right off the hinges without warning. The boards of wood pulled free of the wall and the door fell right over, and more zombies came reaching for them.

One of the zombies snagged Eddie’s collar and pulled him right to the ground. Jill frantically snapped the clip back into her gun and yanked back the chamber. Eddie shoved the zombie away as Jill put a bullet into its skull. Lying on his back, Eddie lifted his shotgun and blasted the next zombie that came through the door, blowing a hole right through its stomach. It flopped to the ground, its spine severed by the blast.

Jill grabbed Eddie’s arm and pulled him to his feet and together they ran up the metal staircase. Below them, some of the zombies surged on Keith, who didn’t have the strength to fight them off.

The storage area above the office was dark and dusty, full of thin metal shelves stocked with boxes full of receipts, shipping orders, and other paperwork. There were some metal cabinets full of cleaning supplies and bathroom supplies.

“So what do we do now?” Jill asked, breathing heavily. She ejected the clip again and began to load bullets into it once more.

Eddie grabbed the metal frame of the staircase where it was bolted to the wall. He shook his head. “No, this is too solid. I thought maybe I could use the shotgun to blow it apart, but it would only be a waste of ammo. I only got two shots left.”

“These cabinets,” Jill said. “Knock them down the stairs.”

Eddie and Jill pulled the tall cabinets away from the wall and tipped them over the edge one at a time. They crashed down onto the staircase and the zombies already starting to climb up, but they didn’t effectively block the way. When they fell to the side, the zombies just continued to ascend the stairs.

One zombie almost made it to the top, but Jill found a broom and used it to knock the zombie right over the railing. But more and more were coming, and soon they were out of objects to stop them with.

Jill ran to the back of the storage area, looking for anything they could use as a possible weapon. She glanced up at the wall above her and noticed a sliver of light.

“Eddie!” she cried. “It’s a window!” She stood on some boxes to push a large piece of plywood out of the way, revealing a small window, about two feet by a foot and a half. She grabbed a piece of wood off the floor and broke the window with it, swinging it around to break away all the little shards of glass around the edges.

Eddie pushed over one of the metal shelves and it toppled over at the top of the staircase, boxes full of paperwork breaking open and spilling paper everywhere. It would block the way for a few seconds at least.

“Come on!” Jill cried. “All the zombies came into the office! There aren’t any outside on this side of the building!”

Eddie ran over and handed Jill the shotgun. “All right then, I guess you better be going.”

Jill stared at him in confusion. “What are you talking about?”

Eddie smiled weakly and said, “I’m afraid I ain’t coming with you, Jill.”

“No,” Jill said, shaking her head. “No, you have to ...”

Eddie pulled the collar of his shirt down along his shoulder and Jill could see the ragged bite mark there, already oozing blood down the side of his chest.

“The one that knocked me down got a bite of me,” Eddie explained. “I was too slow, I guess. Wasn’t careful enough.”

Jill exhaled heavily, the wind knocked out of her. “Oh Jesus,” she whispered, her legs feeling weak. She almost tipped over, but Eddie grabbed her and held her up.

“Listen,” he said. “It’s alright. Don’t even worry about it.”

“Eddie,” Jill said helplessly, her voice trembling. “I’m so sorry.”

A strange, peaceful look came over Eddie, and he brushed his hand along Jill’s cheek, smiling at her warmly. “You know, I never put much faith in religion. My wife though, she was a big believer in God and Heaven and all that stuff. I’m thinking maybe it’s time for me to see if she was right after all. Maybe I’ll get to see her again.”

Jill could not think of anything to say. She put her arms around Eddie and embraced him, closing her eyes. She wanted to escape the warehouse, but not alone. She didn’t think that she would be the only one getting out. That’s not what she wanted. But it felt like nothing ever happened the way she wanted.

“You go on, now,” Eddie said softly.

Jill backed away and went to the window. She looked outside to make sure no zombies were waiting for her, and then tossed the shotgun out, where it fell to the grass below. Jill turned back to look at Eddie. There were already zombies climbing over the shelves, making their way into the storage area. Eddie just stood there peacefully, smiling at Jill.

“Good luck, Eddie,” she said.

“Good luck to you too, Jill,” he replied. “I hope you make it out.”

Jill hopped up and climbed through the window. She grabbed a hold of the window as she slid her legs through, and then dangled for a moment before letting go. She fell to the ground almost fifteen feet below, the soft grass cushioning her landing. She rolled to her feet and grabbed the shotgun.

There were a few zombies in the street, but none of them close to her. She clenched her teeth and ran off down the sidewalk, away from the warehouse.

She tried not to think about the others she left behind, Miranda and George and the rest of them, still hiding in the warehouse. She hoped they were still alive, but she knew that they were all doomed. There would be no help coming for them, and they would stay in the warehouse until the zombies found them. In a way, Kyle and Eddie were the lucky ones, the ones who went down fighting.

But it all felt so pointless, like it had all been a huge waste of time. In the end, they were all going to die anyway. And Jill escaped, leaving them to their fate.

She tried to clear her head and get her bearings. Pistol in one hand and shotgun in the other, she ran down the street, trying to focus on the matter at hand. She didn’t have time to blame herself for their deaths. She did the best she could, no one could have done any more for them.

She paused at a corner and realized that she was only a mile or two away from Brad’s apartment. Of course, there was no reason to think he was there, no reason to think that Brad was alive at all. The only reason Jill was alive was because she had slept in. Brad was almost certainly dead. It would be stupid and reckless to go to his place and look for him. She didn’t even like Brad.

Behind her, the warehouse was still barely visible behind a line of trees. She stopped and looked back at it, guilt churning in her gut. She couldn’t save Eddie, or Kyle, or Miranda, or the rest of them. Those people were little more than strangers, but she would have saved them if she could have. Brad might not be a close friend, but he wasn’t a stranger. He might be the only person left in all of Raccoon City that Jill knew personally.

She turned and ran down the street in the direction of Brad’s apartment. If he wasn’t there, then she could accept that, but she was going to check. And if Brad was there, then Jill was going to make sure that he got out alive. She wasn’t going to leave anyone else behind.

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