Zombie City: Episode 1 COMPLETE!!!

Zombie City: Episode 1: Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Shane looked Terrance in the eye, surprise cutting through his dazed state.

“You’ve got a gun?” he asked.

“Fuck yeah I got a gun.” Terrance said.  “I’m from Oakland, remember?”

“You’ve got a gun on you.  Now.  At work?”

“Naw man.  You think I’m dumb?  I know better than to pack heat on my person when I’m at work.”

Shane shook his head.  “For a minute there you had me thinking—”

“It’s in my locker,” Terrance said, cutting him off.

Shane looked at him, dumbfounded.

“You gotta help me get there,” Terrance said.  “Fuckin’ noob tore up my leg.  I need you to help me walk.”

“You’re serious?  You’ve got a gun here at work, and you want me to help you get it?”

“Does it look like I’m playing with you,” Terrance said, voice getting louder.  “Fuckin’ crazy-ass cracker bites my arm this mornin’, another chews up my goddamn leg, and you trippin’ over me having a fuckin’ piece at work!  Fuckin’ yuppie crackers goin’ crazy, like they think brothas be made of chocolate or sumthin’, and you trippin’ over a mother fuckin’ piece!”

There was a loud crash from outside the elevator.

“The fuck was that?” Terrance said, his voice back to whisper volume.

Shane looked him in the eye, his face grim.  He stepped to the elevator door, leaned forward cautiously and looked out.

The flannel-clad corpse hadn’t moved.  Shane let his eyes skirt over it quickly, and he scanned the rest of the ground level.

Another loud crash sounded.  It had come from the third floor.

Shane took another cautious step out of the elevator, and looked up.  A handful of papers drifted through the air, sliding and flipping as they fell, making Shane think of confetti.  He looked past the papers, thought he saw movement behind the third floor railing.

He stepped back into the elevator.  Terrance watched him intently, a film of sweat on his brow.

“Something’s moving up on the third floor,” Shane said.  “I think there’s somebody up there, knocking furniture over.”

Before Terrance could respond, another crash sounded, louder and closer than the others.  Shane turned and looked back onto the main floor.  Something had landed amongst the chairs lined up in front of the low stage.

“What is it?” Terrance said.

“I don’t know,” Shane replied.  “Something fell.”

He took a few cautious steps out of the elevator, moving toward the stage.  He saw movement there, chairs being shoved around by something on the floor.  And then a man lurched to his feet, knocking a chair over as he stood.  He wore a white, long sleeve dress shirt.  The shirt was pulled askew so that his right shoulder was bare, and there was a dark stain across the front of his chest.

The man turned toward Shane, and started lurching in his direction.  He didn’t bother to push chairs aside with his hands, he just lurched forward, knocking them aside with his body.

“Fuck,” Shane said.

“What?” Terrance said from the elevator, his voice tight.

“It’s another one,” Shane said, turning back.

“Another?”

“Yeah.”

The man had cleared the chairs, and was now lurching slowly across the open floor.  Something was wrong with one of his legs—it was bent sideways at the knee, and twisted so that the toe of that shoe pointed out.  Something was wrong with his posture, too.  His back was tweaked, the left shoulder hanging lower than his right, that arm dangling straight down in front of him so that it bumped against his knee with each lurching step.

“Well,” Terrance said, voice rough, as though he were having trouble getting enough air for a breath, “shit.”

“He’s almost at the tunnel already,” Shane said.  “He isn’t very fast, but he’s coming this way.  What do you want to do?”

Terrance didn’t say anything.  Shane kept his eye on the man in the white shirt.  He could hear Terrance behind him; his breathing seemed more of a struggle with each breath.  White Shirt raised his head as he passed the tunnel, opened his mouth, and let out a long moan.

“What do you want to do?” Shane said.

He turned and looked back at Terrance. 

Terrance had his eyes squeezed shut, as though he were in agony.  His whole face was glazed with sweat, and the parts of his coveralls that weren’t covered in blood looked dark from perspiration.  His hands held the elevator rail with a white-knuckle grip but, as Shane watched, Terrance sagged sideways until his shoulder touched the elevator wall.

“Fuck,” Shane said.

White Shirt was only a dozen paces away from them, now.

“Fuck,” Shane said again.

Shane stepped the rest of the way into the elevator, and reached out to hit the button for the fifth floor.

“If these fuckers learn to use the elevator,” he said as the twin doors slid shut, “we’ll really be fucked.”

Author's note: Zombie City is an ongoing zombie horror serial.  I'm publishing the first episode here on wattpad.  If you'd like to follow the story beyond the first episode, subsequent episodes are available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Kobo, Smashwords, and pretty much everywhere else that ebooks are sold.