The refugees filed into the arena, silent and worried.The lights on the concourse flickered.
Chapter 32: Wanted
They were locked in the booth, Murph and the Chief. Thedead roamed the power plant, their numbers growing. Shambling corpses from thecity trickled in through the downed gate, stumbling over the twisted metal andold, cracked pavement. Murph had no idea of what was drawing them to the powerplant, but their numbers had grown considerably.
The town of Boardman was a small town, never more than3,500 people living there at any given moment. How many of those people weredead now? How many of those dead were making their way to the power plant,drawn by some impulse that Murph was too dim to understand?
Murph had watched the gauges dwindle over the last hour.The power plant was not putting out the amount of energy that it had been. Theyknew the reason why. One look at the conveyor belt was answer enough. The coalwasn't coming in consistently. Out in the yard, mountains of raw coal stoodunder covered sheds. The hoppers that fed the conveyor belt relied on thismountain for fuel, but the hoppers had to be manually filled to keep the boilerburning. Every other aspect of the power plant was automated. The coal wascrushed before it was fed into the boiler. The heat from the burning coalsuper-heated the water flowing in industrial pipes, transforming it into steamthat turned turbines. The turning of the turbines created electricity, all theelectricity that Portland would need. But the hoppers were running dry. Someonewould have to go outside and use the mini-dozer to push more coal into thehoppers.
They both knew it, but still they sat there, watching asthe power plant's output dwindled. When it had reached a critical level, theChief stood up and looked at the door. "Well, we can't wait anylonger."
This was the moment that Murph was dreading, the momentwhere the Chief sent him out among the dead to refill the hoppers. He would doit too... or at least try to. It wasn't as if he had anything else to do.
"You want to go out there?" the Chief askedhim.
Murph shook his head.
"Yeah, I didn't think so." The Chief stood upand looked around the office. He reached into the front shirt pocket of hispower plant overalls, and produced a pack of cigarettes, a soft pack, the foiltorn apart. He shook the pack, peering inside, and said, "Hell, I'm almostout of cigarettes anyway. I'll go."
Relief washed over Murph, followed by a withering dose ofshame. He wished he could be like the Chief, brave... calm. But he wasn't.Murph would never admit it to the Chief, but he was scared, more scared than hehad ever been in his life. Death was not something that he spent of lot of histime thinking about, but now it was here, and it was literally knocking on thedoor.
The Chief held the pack of cigarettes out to Murph."You want one of these before I go?"
"But what about the rules?"
The Chief smiled, a fatherly smile, and said, "Son,the moment the dead began getting up and walking around the world, I think allof the rules went right out the window. Go on. Do it."
Murph reached into the pack with a trembling hand, and asthey smoked underneath the florescent lights of the control room, amid all ofthe twitching dials and glowing lights of the console, the Chief told him hisplan. Murph nodded and shook his head, focusing on the task at hand. He wouldbe important; he would serve as the Chief's eyes, watching his back every stepalong the way.
When the time was right, and their cigarettes had beenground to ash on the floor of the control room, the Chief moved to the door. Heturned the lock with a trembling hand, and then yanked the door open. On theother side of the door, a familiar face greeted them. It was one of the menthat had left earlier, presumably to save his family. Apparently, all he hadsucceeded in doing was becoming a meal for the dead. His right arm hung at hisside, tendons and bone exposed where the flesh had been chewed off.
The Chief lowered his shoulder and bulldozed the man offof the metal stairs that led up to the door. Murph moved to the door, slammedit shut, and locked it. Before he closed the door all the way, he saw the Chiefin full flight, dodging through the handful of dead that had gathered in thecooling tower room. He shivered with fear.
The chair squeaked as Murph plopped down in it, wheelingit closer to the console and the controls for the monitors. He followed thechief's progress on the screen. He was in the cafeteria now, scrambling overthe cafeteria tables to avoid the outstretched hands of the dead. He spun outof the reach of a creature, only to spin right into the arms of a graspingwoman, her ankle bent at an impossible angle. The Chief shoved the dead womanbackwards, and she flew through the air and slid ten feet across the slickcafeteria floor.
Murph's heart beat in his chest, thundering underneathhis sternum. He could only imagine what the Chief was feeling as he scrambledfor his life. He had a sudden urge for a bowl of popcorn. The Chief made itthrough the cafeteria, and then bolted out the door that led to the loadingdocks.
Murph switched the camera with one hand, while clutchinghis radio in the other. On the loading docks, the dead were staggered farapart, but as the door burst open, all heads turned to the Chief as one, andthe circle of the dead started tightening immediately. The Chief ran to histruck, hopped in the cab and began rooting through it, his back turned to thecamera and the dead that were shuffling towards him. When a man in a flannelshirt was within three steps of The Chief, Murph hopped on the radio and said,"You got one behind you. Pretty close."
The Chief popped out of the cab and spun around,delivering a solid punch to the creature's face, and shoving
