Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (Book 4): Resolution (41 page)

Abdul saw a body on the floor in front of
his door and a few feet from that was a shiny silver handgun. His
field of vision was limited and so he hesitated again. What if he
opened the door and another one of those things was waiting for him
out of sight?

Watching the woman fighting for her life
shamed him into opening his door. Holding his breath he stepped
into the hallway. The woman, a young girl with scared blue eyes and
smooth skin, saw him, her expression filling with terror and hope.
She screamed, “Get the gunnnnnn! Shoot it in the head!”

Abdul leapt from his doorway and snatched up
the gun in one fluid movement. His hands shaking desperately, Abdul
aimed the pistol’s short barrel at the back of the beast’s head and
pulled the trigger. The bullet grazed the side of the creature’s
head, creating a long bloody gouge and removing its ear.
Unfortunately, the bullet continued on, slamming into the wall
above the girl’s head and shocking her enough to set her off
balance.

Neither its new wound nor the sound of the
gunshot bothered the ghoul. It took advantage of the girl’s shock
to sink its teeth into her forearm. The woman’s scream threatened
to tear the roof off the building and crash its walls. It was a
scream filled with both pain and fear.

Abdul quickly pulled the trigger again. This
time, his bullet found its mark, punching a very hole in the back
of the creature’s stubbly shaved head. Abdul was afraid he had only
angered the ghoul because when the bullet entered its skulls, it
stood straight up and lifted its gaping mouth toward the ceiling.
It froze like that for a moment, while the small caliber bullet
bounced around inside its cranium scrambling brain matter. Without
another sound the monster crumpled to the floor with a thud.

The girl looked at the ruined flesh of her
arm. Abdul ran into his room and grabbed a towel from his bathroom.
He wrapped it around her arm as well as he could, but the hand
towel was soon soaked through with blood, which wasn’t stanched by
the cloth at all. No amount of pressure slowed the flow of the
pretty girl’s warm blood.

They both knew they needed to run, but they
both also realized she was in no shape to be moving at all. In a
few short moments, the girl lost consciousness, mumbling
unintelligibly. Abdul picked up a word here and there, but mostly
what she said was gibberish.

Though he was desperate to run, Abdul sat
with her and held her hand until he saw that she was no longer
breathing. In his head, he whispered a short prayer for her soul
and his. He knew he needed to get away quickly.

Abdul was on the third floor of the lodge.
He lifted his head, listening for any predators approaching from
the staircases at either end of the hall. He was nearer to the
stairs that led to the back of the house and emerged into a
den.

He crept down the hallway, flinching at
every creak the floorboards made under his feet, and he noticed
that the other bedrooms upstairs were all open. The first two were
both wrecks. There were clothes, luggage, and furniture scattered
in every direction. There was also a streaked bloody handprint on
the doorjamb of the room to his left.

Abdul’s heart raced in his chest, his fear
crowding in around him. He continued down the hallway and was in
the process of passing the next two bedrooms. He didn’t want to
look in but he couldn’t resist.

It looked like a balloon filled with red
paint had been burst in the middle of the room. There were
spattered patterns of blood on the walls, the floor, the ceiling
and the window, some of which were streaked and running. The
mattress, lying directly on the floor and draped in a white sheet,
looked like something used in a Nineteenth Century military field
hospital on which amputations would have been administered. Abdul
couldn’t believe it was possibly real. There was so much blood. He
couldn’t imagine any body holding such a volume of red fluid.

His eyes caught sight of movement on the
opposite side of the mattress, which stopped him cold in his
tracks. A person, a woman he thought, was stooped over another
lying on the opposite side of the mattress. If the motion didn’t
chill his heart, the sounds she was making did. She grunted,
chewed, grunted again, and swallowed. Abdul could only imagine what
she was eating, though he dared not.

Abdul must have stalled for too long,
because she stopped gnawing tissue from her victim and stood,
sensing prey near. Abdul stiffened, hoping perhaps if he stood
still he wouldn’t attract her attention. It was too late.

In a flash, she bounded over the bed,
tripping when her feet became entangled in the loose sheets and
blankets. Her stumble was what Abdul needed to be able to flee. He
never would have made it otherwise.

He sprinted down the hallway and stopped for
a just a second to squeeze off a shot at her, but he was still
moving and his hands were quaking as if he were suffering a violent
fever. The bullet scorched wildly overhead, bringing down drywall
and paint from the ceiling but did little else.

Abdul descended the stairs, taking two and
three steps at a time. On a landing between two flights, there was
another body, over which he jumped and didn’t take even a second to
consider. He didn’t know if it was a man or a woman and didn’t
care. He could only think to get away.

In the hallway to the front door on the main
level, Abdul jumped over and through a scattered mess of luggage,
strewn clothes, and boxes. The hall was dark, which meant the front
door was closed. If it was locked, he was dead. He’d never had luck
with quickly opening bolted doors. He typically had to fiddle and
fuss with the knob, twisting it both directions before finally
turning it enough to open.

Abdul’s stomach turned and a bitter taste of
bile rose to the back of his throat. The nearer he came to the
door, the more his dread increased. His pursuer was stumbling her
way through the mess in the hallway, growling and hissing like an
animal.

Thankfully, the toe of a shoe kept the door
partially propped. Abdul ripped open the door and threw himself
out, surprised and relieved to see the well-armed people in the
front seemingly waiting for him.

“So how many are there still inside?” asked
Emma, never taking her eyes off the door.

“I don’t know for sure,” Abdul said. “I know
of at least three more bodies, but...”

Neil knew time was of the essence. “Okay,”
he instructed, “there are six of us now. Two teams of three each.
Emma, William, and Gordon, you three check the ground floor. Just
sweep it for zekes. We don’t have time enough to search for any
more supplies. It’ll be getting dark soon. We’ll come back later.
The rest of us will check the top two floors. No one goes anywhere
alone. Got it?”

They hadn’t even crossed the threshold of
the front door before another of the ghouls greeted them. It was a
young man whose right arm had been chewed down to his elbow. It
moved in a stilted, bobbing limp due to a grievous injury to its
right leg which robbed it of all the muscle tissue and sinew around
its ankle, leaving it to sag uselessly with each alternating step
like a ragged, superfluous tail. With its partial limb, it reached
and clawed the air. Its eyes never blinked but its mouth snapped
open and closed in quick, sharp chomps. Behind him, he left a
trickling trail of red, some of which was pressed into the pattern
of his lone boot.

Jess, her fear just as powerful as it had
been moments before, found enough courage to steady her hand, raise
her rifle, and fire. This time, the bullet struck the monster in
the upper chest, only inches below its throat, which also bore a
gruesome wound. The gunshot wasn’t enough to dispatch it, but the
force of the bullet thrust the ghoul backward.

“Now finish him,” Neil ordered.

Squeezing her trigger twice more, Jess hit
her target with one of the bullets, striking the thing immediately
to the left of its nose and just below its eye. The creature threw
its head back violently, blindly spatter painting the wall and
ceiling behind in red. Its hand and stump flailed for a second and
then the lifeless creature collapsed on the hard tiled floor of the
entryway.

Neil nodded and smiled at Jess as he
acknowledged, “I guess we’re ready.”

They pivoted into the house, pressing
themselves against the wall while their eyes adjusted to the dimmer
light inside. Neil flicked the light switch but nothing
happened.

“There are no lights out here,” Abdul
informed them, “only Coleman lanterns and candles.”

Neil scanned the room and saw one of the new
looking battery powered lanterns on a table next to a reclining
chair. Since their eyes were adjusting, Neil decided to leave the
lantern where it was for the time being. No distractions. Clear the
house and get out. They couldn’t afford to push their luck.

William asked Emma, “Which way?”

There were rooms both to the right and left
of them as well as a hallway that more or less bisected the house.
Emma repeated a mantra of her friend at Costco when she was
searching for a checkout lane. “Always go left.”

Emma scooted into the biggest room in the
house and nearly tripped when she came to the edge of the recessed
floor. She would have fallen had it not been for Gordon’s quick
reflexes. He grabbed the collar of her coat just as she started to
teeter forward. Gordon had been in the house once before and knew
of the floor hazards, but he was not thinking fast enough to stop
her from taking the step. Gordon’s grabbing her was sheer luck.
Regardless, he got a thankful look and a smile from the younger
woman, which made him feel young and vital for the moment.

Feeling lucky she hadn’t just suffered a
broken ankle or worse, Emma breathed, “Thanks. Any other
architectural traps I should know about?”

“I only got the nickel tour which ended on
that couch with a beer in my hand,” Gordon said. “Betsy got the
full tour. We should have brought her I guess.”

“D’you know where that door leads?”

Gordon thought for a moment and then said
through the side of his mouth, “Dining room I think. The kitchen is
beyond that. It’s a big kitchen. I heard Betsy say something about
that.”

The first room with the recessed floor
looked well used but not like a battlefield. It looked like people
had been eating when the chaos broke. There were plates,
silverware, and glasses of water on the furniture and the floor but
not the destruction associated with a struggle against the
undead.

The dining room was the next room over and
it appeared free of any signs of battles as well. There was an
abundance of food displayed on the table, waiting for diners to
have their fill. Emma looked at the food, stalling long enough to
pull a long pickle wedge from a jar and stuff it into her
mouth.

Detecting the eyes on her, Emma said,
“Sorry. I just can’t resist a good pickle.”

The next room was separated from the dining
room by a closed door. There was an open doorway on another wall,
which led into the bisecting hallway. It was in the hall that Emma
saw the first evidence of any strife. There was a pile of clothes,
some of which had spilled into the dining room, and a partially
crushed cardboard box. There was also a streaked and still
glistening dark stain on the light colored corridor wall.

Quieting the alarm bells ringing loudly in
her head, Emma asked, “Gordon, is there a door on the other side of
the kitchen into the hallway or is it open?”

Gordon shrugged. “Like I said, I only made
it to the first room. The place wasn’t even done yet. I don’t think
the owners were here. It was just an onsite manager-type guy who
invited the neighbors over when he received his furniture.” Looking
up at the ceiling as if it might have the answer, Gordon asked, “I
wonder if that fella is around here somewhere?”

“I think maybe we should go through the
hall,” William suggested. “I don’t really want to go through a door
that can hide something on the other side. I think we should
just—”

They hadn’t heard any footsteps and so were
completely surprised by the young woman standing in the doorway.
She was gaunt, and as pale as alabaster. Her forearm had a single
bite which had bled her dry.

Gordon, still naive and hopeful, asked her,
“Child, are you alright?”

Her response was aggressive and sudden,
charging headlong into the room toward Gordon. He couldn’t move or
even speak. He was the deer caught in the headlights, frozen. The
woman jumped and flew nearly horizontally at Gordon, hitting him
like a human torpedo.

Gordon, a surprised scream escaping his
mouth, was tipped backward with the female ghoul latched onto his
chest. He felt her bite through his down vest, his sweater, and the
t-shirt underneath. The impact forced the wind out of Gordon’s
lungs with a painful grunt as the two landed and slid beneath the
large cherry dining room table, breaking wooden legs from the table
as they slid to a stop.

Emma and William, stunned, quickly jumped
into action. Emma tried to make her way to the opposite side of the
table where Gordon had come to rest. There were chairs and empty
boxes piled on that side of the table, so her going was slow. She
was working herself into a frenzy; the chairs seemed to be working
against her by snagging their legs together in protest.

William decided to grab the pair of legs on
top and pull with all his might. In so doing, he was able to pull
both of the struggling bodies out from under the long table.

Gordon was doing everything in his power to
hold the gnashing jaws at bay, but was losing the battle. The old
man’s face was as white and frazzled as his hair. He was a picture
of absolute terror.

Emma pulled the black automatic pistol from
her hip holster and fired. The demon’s head pitched violently
toward its right shoulder, neck bones crunching. Despite the hole
on her head, there was very little blood from the wound. There was
no final scream or growl from the dying predator. She went limp
atop Gordon.