The Inevitable Zombie Uprising (4) - Chapter Two

Chapter Two: Out of Darkness, into Darkness

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1817


“So that's the nuke,” Joseph said with some finality. His voice was so authoritative, it should have prevented the typical exclamations. It did not. In fact, he was wrong about the explosion – it was not nuclear at all, just a big, conventional bomb. His dire conclusion only fed the natural panic felt by six strangers in a lightless cellar.
It is truly remarkable, to observe that when people are faced with an unexpected trouble, their reactions are as varied as fingerprints. A man of composure babbles. A talkative person falls silent. A forgettable face takes charge. But none of these could be seen in the dark. There, in the space of a few seconds between being hit and believing it really happened, all reason failed, all planning vanished, all authority disintegrated. What remained was terror and chaos and a hundred panicked voices in five worried throats. A sixth voice remained silent.
“OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD”
“So that's it. They bastard commie Muslim fucks finally nuked us. I wonder...”
“I can't see anything... Joseph? Joe, where...”
“Mom! Where's mom? She never goes to the basement.”?
“...never shoulda worked here.... never shoulda come....”
“if fallout will be bad. Or maybe its of them neutron bombs.”
“Joe? I can hear you but I can't see you...”
“OHMYGOD!”
“Is anybody hurt?”
“We gotta get outta here... where is everyone?...”
A light came on. A flame, really. That first among the inventions of mankind.
Have you ever caught yourself staring into a fire? The dancing, random patterns that blind you to the darkness around you. Calm you. It worked just like that, even now. The panic subsided a little, the voices each took a breath.
“Names. What are you names?” The voice was stern, but quiet and feminine. It held a cigarette lighter aloft like a pale-skinned Liberty. “You,” she reached up to lay her arm on a tall man's shoulder.
“I'm Lou. Lou Durer.” The man seems almost ashamed to say his name, to admit he's been panicking like the rest. The girl turns.
“And you?”
“Alvin. Quatermane.” he said, then added unnecessarily, “I'm with security.”
The simple and direct question had an effect like the flame, but magnified. When the flame's source became too hot to hold, the voice remained in the air, keeping the panic at bay. No one started – well, almost no one. A stifled shriek escaped the mouth of the next to speak. Shortly Alvin's flashlight had been recovered – it seems he dropped it because of the blast – and light was restored.
“I am Amy Wolfe. I work at the music store, over... uh... up, there.” She wasn't quite finished speaking before Joseph introduced himself, and Jan, whom he'd led to this cellar.
“And I'm Ursula. Now we all know each other. We'll be ok.”
Then the questions poured in. Like the panic, but with a bit more purpose. Joseph wanted to know if the Russians gave those bombs to the Turks. Jan wanted to know if they could open the door now. Alvin wants to know if his family was ok. Everyone wanted to know what they're supposed to do now. This time it was the painter who spoke up.
“We're getting out of here, first. And we're staying together. That sounded a lot like a bomb, but its been a couple minutes and nothing else has happened.” The terror was gone from him now. Perhaps the shame of being afraid when this woman who looked so much a child was not had awakened him. But his words were reasonable. He sounded reasonable, and that might have made more difference than the words. No one disagreed.
“We're going to figure out what happened, and we're going to help whoever is hurt out there. But first, Joe, you're going to open that door.”
The mumbled reply came down the stairs “I'm Joseph. Anyone can be a Joe and I'm not.”
“Okay; Joseph. You're going open that door.”
“Right cap.” The reply was laced with bitter sarcasm, and followed by a pause. “Its stuck.”

That announcement very nearly brought the panic back, but Alvin, who had mounted the stairs with the rest in tow, quickly solved it. “See, it locks. Like this. That's so if something really heavy hits it, the door won't break.” A massive deadbolt clanged back into its resting place, and the heavy steel door swung inwards.

The scene that it revealed looked nothing like a mall. To these viewers it could not be believed. There were supposed to be walls here. And a roof. Instead, it was a field of debris. What was once a narrow service hallway was now an equal part of a sea of destruction. The sky above them was a crystal blue. The sun, which could be half-seen behind a bit of wall that had fallen down less than the others, shown with heedless brilliance. At first, there were no people. The eye could not see them, at first, because they did not move. Then, as things cleared and eyes adjusted, the minds of these survivors sorted the twisted bodies of friends and acquaintances from the formless rubble.
Alvin, who first opened the door, was also the first to move. He ran to the crumpled form of a large, old woman he'd often seen but never knew. It seems she had been heading towards the shelter when the bomb went off, and now she did not even moan. Skull crushed. Already dead.
The story was the same over and over again. People had been torn apart as surely as the building that housed them. Here and there, the survivors found someone who was not dead, but they were dieing. Their concrete bunker was an island in a sea of destruction, and the shipwrecked souls drifted back to it one by one. Amy was crying. So was Alvin, though he denied it loudly when Amy noticed. Lou was not untouched, but he reacted with anger. He was still kneeling over the body of Mrs. Sprucesat. Not that he knew her very well, but she wasn't a bad person. Didn't deserve to die like this. Urusla didn't know these people; she lived and worked across town. They were one face to her. A face of sock, and pain, and dire prediction. Joseph was the last to return, and he came carrying a heavy bundle.
At first, one might have thought that he carried an injured soul, or the body of one victim. Instead, he carried a massive olive drab bag. He set down his sack with a crunch on some broken glass, and like some demented Saint Nicolas, he began to hand out weapons.
“Here's a pistol, for you. Its small, but its reliable.” Santa said to Ursula
“and a shotgun for you. 12Ga pump. Its got extra rounds on the stock” Joseph proclaimed as he tried to hand the firearm to a confused Alvin. It was Amy, a surprise to all, who first found her voice.
“Joe! What are you doing? We don't need those!”
Suddenly sheepish and irritated, he tried to explain “They're mine, its ok. They're from my store.”
Janus stepped in “Joseph, she means that no one's trying to kill us. It was just an accident. Just an accident. It'll be okay.”
“That was an accident? Oh really? They're here – or they're coming. We'll need these. Here, take this nine mil.”i
Jan attempted to explain, “He's just paranoid, dear. You can take it, just make him feel better. Its perfectly safe.” She took the proffered weapon and worked it with the precision of an asylum nurse. She gave Amy the pistol; loaded but with an empty chamber and a solid safety, and handed the extra cartridge to Joseph. Alvin and Jan did the same with their weapons, then slung or tucked them out of the way. Alvin made a mental note to be very careful about upsetting the cigar store owner.

All the while Lou knelt over the woman's body. Ursula, sensing that something more was wrong than even a friend's death might cause, came over and stood by him. She didn't say anything, but in that world of broken glass and concrete rubble, her motions did not go unnoticed.
“She doesn't have a pulse. I know, I just checked. And she's not breathing, I'd see it.”
His companion nodded.
“But see her hand? Its twitching. I don't think that's supposed to happen.”
Indeed, the fingers of her left hand moved on their own accord, imperceptibly small motions, but a twitch none the less. While they looked on, her fist suddenly clenched. It held for a moment, and then relaxed. The onlookers glanced at one another, their eyes saying 'did you see that? Did I really see that?'
The girl's whose hair was so dark it seemed more purple than black found her voice. She wanted to shout “Its a zombie! Get away!” and she felt the urge to break the thing apart before it could hurt them. Such was the power of a moment's vision she's had just a few hours before. But she maintained her calm. It wouldn't do, her thought, to say that now. He'd not believe me anyway. “Come on, back to the group.”