As we were cutting in front of the last house on the block, Dean cried out, "Jackpot! Follow me!"
He ran right past the stairs leading up to the porch and continued toward the road. There were more walking dead out on the road, meandering about in search of food. As our footfalls went from the deadened silence of the grass-covered lawn to the slapping sound of rubber on pavement, the nearest of the dead took interest and joined in our pursuit.
It looked like our destination was a church of some sort. It was not large and somewhat modern looking. It wasn't like the old, gothic-style buildings I always pictured from my youth. A lone sedan sat in the parking lot.
As we sprinted across the asphalt lot, I chanced a look over my shoulder. There were at least twenty-five of the creatures shambling behind us. Some hunched or twisted in some form or another, while a few others dragged a foot behind. We were quickly running out of time. The undead walkers following us would never tire. While, on the other hand, we would. I was already nearing my breaking point. I couldn't continue much farther without rest.
Dean didn't break stride as he rammed into the double entry doors. They both swung open, clearing our entrance. I had just passed the threshold as my friend pushed the first door closed, latching both top and bottom in what seemed like a single motion. Just as I tried to slam the other in place, hands on the outside pushed back
"Let me in!" came a desperate high-pitched voice. "Hurry!"
I pulled back on the handle, opening the door part way, and a thin form in a hooded sweatshirt shot by. Not ten feet away was the ghastly menagerie of zombies.
"Close it! Close it!" screamed the high voice.
I shoved the door closed once again, driving both bolts in place as hungry hands pawed at the other side. Their repeated attempts at entry were vibrating through the steel doors. I could almost feel their frustration as the meal that was so close just slipped through their cold dead fingers.
My chest was heaving. I bent at the waist leaning on my knees to allow for easier breathing. Dean and the young man who had joined us were both lying on their backs. I laid my duffel bag containing weapons and food with Dean's. All of us were gasping for breath.
"We need to secure the windows!" I said, taking charge for the first time.
Both the kid and my neighbor began to laugh. "That's the beauty of this place," the young man said between bursts of laughter. "There aren't any windows."
"All churches have windows," I asked, standing back up and walking around, looking for evidence.
"This is a Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall," the youth answered, looking at me questioningly. "Not many of them have windows. Something about the devil looking in."
"Wrong. they don't want their worshippers being distracted by looking out windows during sermons," Dean corrected.
"Oh, don't believe the kid," the newcomer said sarcastically. "Just ‘cause you’re past your prime doesn't mean you got any smarter along the way."
"I ought to throw you right back outside!" stormed my neighbor, arms flailing in a mock show of getting up. "Who the heck are you anyway!"
"Tim, but my friends call me Scud," he said with a satisfied grin while pulling his hood off of his head, letting a long mane of curly blond hair flow free.
"What's a Scud? A big skid mark?" Dean said regaining his feet.
"No. It's a missile, Mr. Wizard," Tim said, facing his antagonist.
"Can we put him outside now, Hank?"
There was a crash in the basement. It sounded like pots and pans falling to the floor. We all froze. Dean whipped out his pistol and replaced the spent rounds. He took the lead, immediately motioning us quiet and to follow. We found the door with stairs leading down just off the entry room we were presently in. The lights were on, but clearly, someone or something was down there.
"Please be a raccoon. Please be a raccoon." Dean kept mumbling under his breath as he descended. I was right behind him, tire iron in hand. The steps were that backless kind. I kept picturing something reaching through that open space and grabbing my exposed ankles. I could see myself, both ankles grasped and pitching forward, arms windmilling rapidly, clawing for something to stop my fall.
None of that happened. We made it to the landing, Tim following not far behind. What sounded like a small symphony of plastic cups hitting the floor stopped us dead in our tracks. Eyes wide, we exchanged glances before Dean forged ahead, gun held ready.
We could hear something shuffling around, betrayed by sounds of unknown things crunching under foot. Dean pushed the door open and swiveled hastily to the left. There was a low moan and the gun discharged, followed by the thud of a body dropping to the ground. The smell of gunpowder drifted out of the room.
"Dude!" Tim asked, "one shot?"
Dean got a smug look on his face. "I know. Pretty good, huh?"
"You totally didn't double-tap it!"
We both gave the youth a questioning look.
"How did you guys ever survive this long?" Tim continued. "All the contemporary knowledge about the zombie apocalypse says that you should never assume that the zombie is dead with the first shot. You need to shoot it a second time to be sure it won't rise again."
I had to chime in. "Contemporary knowledge about a zombie apocalypse?"
"There are tons of databases on the subject all over the net," Tim replied.
"How can there be knowledge about something as way out as that?"
Tim grinned, "You're in the middle of it right now, so it can't be that way out."
"I meant that hadn't happened yet!"
"So, what are you, a Doctor or something?"
I offered my hand. "Dr. Henry Cooper. My friends call me Hank."
My neighbor offered his hand. "Dean Walker."
Tim shook both of our hands in turn. After finishing with Dean, he turned towards me and asked, "What do you think is causing this?" When I didn't respond immediately, he added, "You know, the zombies to rise?"
As I mulled over the possible causes, I saw a smile spread across Dean's face. Tim's eyes looked expectant, waiting for the answer to this plague.
"He's not a medical doctor. He's a bug doctor," Dean informed the newcomer.
"Oh!" intoned the youth, eyes lowering, mirroring his disappointment.
"I work in the biology department of the university. My main area of expertise is entomology. Entomology refers to insects. I have also done some specific work in forensic entomology, which investigates the cause of death. Through my knowledge of the life cycles of various insects, I can determine the time and perhaps the location of someone's death."
"So, that's useful how?" Tim lashed back at me. "Are you going to tell me when or where a big, fat, ole’ zombie died, just before he eats my face off? I thought you were a real doctor."
That really hurt. I had always been really proud of my profession and position at the university. I had authored and coauthored many papers, but in the midst of this outbreak, my accomplishments were meaningless. I couldn't cure this disease. This plague needed to be solved by highly trained minds like the ones employed by the CDC. Not a bug doctor.
"Hank here had an important job!" Dean said, seeing the situation and coming to my aid. "I wish mine was as important."
My heart rose and fell again, all in the span of one sentence. My next-door neighbor, the man who had saved my life, and I didn't have a clue as to what he did for a living. I was a terrible person.
Tim took up the question, saving me from my embarrassment, "So, what did you do Dean?"
"I am, err, was the manager at Radio Shack."
"I'm trapped in a Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall with two nerds. Great!" Tim mocked sarcastically.
"And what did you do for a living?" Dean mocked back playfully. "That's right, just a burden on ole’ mom and dad."
The youth just sunk in on himself. Dean immediately knew
he had hit some terrible note in this world gone mad.
"I'm sorry, kid." he apologized, moving near enough to put a hand on his shoulder in comfort. "I didn't mean anything. It's just that this world, I'm just not used to it."
Tim looked up at Dean. He was not crying but his eyes were red and glassy. We needed something to distract him, distract us all.
"I wonder if there is a way to look outside." I offered, changing the subject. "See what's going on."
The gloomy mood lessened as we went back to the main floor. We could hear the recent dead pawing against the metal-sheathed door. Carefully, we explored the parts we hadn't yet ventured into, the main assembly room darkened but empty, with no windows on either wall. Behind the area where we supposed the leader would preach from, we found two rooms. The first was just a small chamber where the minister could get ready for his sermon. The other was the jackpot, an office. It had a computer with what looked like camera feeds attached.
Tim flopped into the comfortable-looking, black leather desk chair and moved the mouse, waking the computer from its sleep.
"Dang! They have a login," he exclaimed, exasperated.
There were actually two login accounts. One user, called Admin, was password protected. The other was named guest and was not password protected but had very little access. There were no camera feeds available on this account.
Tim tried a few feeble attempts at hacking the administrative password, but his random attempts all fell short of the mark. "This is useless!" he growled, shoving the mouse away in defeat.
"Ya wanna let a nerd give it a try?" Dean challenged from his perch, leaning on the back of the chair’s high back.
Tim reluctantly gave up the cushy seat and Dean took control. He logged onto the guest account.
"You can't do anything from there!" Tim warned. "Everything is locked out!"
"And they say you kids know so much more about computers than us old guys. Take away your GUI and you ain't got nothing," Dean mocked, a grin on his lean face. "They weren't smart enough to lock out the DOS command prompt." His fingers flew across the keys as he typed various words, half of which looked like gibberish. The screen went blue, then a DOS prompt appeared and Dean entered something inside a pair of parenthesis. He then logged out and logged back in using the same word he had typed inside the parenthesis and the administrative account opened.
"How did ya do that, Dean?" marveled Tim in awe.
"I'm a Hack Jedi," Walker said, leaning back while folding his arms behind his head. "Actually, it was easy. In DOS, I told the Windows XP machine, system 32 if you were reading my code, to backup the command program and the screen saver files. Then, I edited the settings so that as the screen saver loads I get a DOS prompt that was totally unprotected. That's where I changed the password. We do things like this all the time. If people actually knew how useless their computer security really was, they'd never shop online again. It would wipe out the entire cyber economy."
"And that, my friend Timmy, is why no job is more important and no man is more intelligent than any other," I added, bringing the lesson to a moral conclusion.
"Then what about the guy who sucks the crap outta my septic tank?" Timmy asked with an impish grin.
"Probably the most important job!" I admonished him, wagging an accusing finger at him.
"Crap!" said Dean.
"Exactly!" I replied.
"No, not crap, poopie crap. I mean crap as in one of the camera feeds is down crap! We can't see a whole side of the building," he explained with overly dramatic arm and hand gestures. "Probably an amateur job. See?" he said while pointing under the desk. "No cable ties. They probably had some DIY parishioner who did the job on the cheap, and now we have to pay for his sloppy work."
"DIY?" I implored, leaning closer to see what he was talking about. The screen showed ten small thumbnails of the various camera’s displays. I could tell the camera covering the front by the small army of undead outside.
My neighbor leaned back in his chair once again, this time holding his head in both hands. "DIY! Do it yourself. It's really big with young homeowners or people trying to flip houses. The only problem is sometimes they don't have the technical know-how to do the job right. They fudge the parts they don't understand."
"I don't think it's a big deal. We can still see three sides. That's pretty good," I said enthusiastically, trying to keep our spirits high.
"If the person wasn't such an idiot, we could see entire building! Amateurs! Should've left the heavy lifting for us big boys."
Tim rose to his feet. "I'm hungry."
Chapter 10
Melissa