Chapter 3: Pretty Big Balls
The problem was present. It had to be dealt with. Thirtyor forty bodies moving through the dilapidated tenement, adding more to theirranks with each step they took. The undead were tireless. Groggy junkies wakingfrom a night of abusing their own bodies were no match for a mass ofindefatigable automatons searching for one thing and one thing only... liveflesh.
Zeke planted himself against the door, his ear to thecheap wood. Behind him was a scene that would be considered a nightmare inordinary times. A large black man lay on the bed, a bullet wound through hishead, his brains splattered on the dirty mattress. Blood ran down the wall. Anaked woman in chains rotted on the mattress next to him, her fingers frozen ina claw that was mid-dig in the man's dead body. The twice dead girl's eyeslooked at him, accusing. He had put the bullet hole in her forehead, and hewould have done it again.
He didn't know how the girl had wound up there. Had shedied of an overdose? Had she always been a prisoner? Zeke didn't want to know.It wasn't his problem. He looked over at the man that occupied the room withhim, Lou, the son of the man lying on the mattress. Lou had put the bulletthrough his father's head himself. Zeke respected that. Lou could have left thetask to Zeke, and he would have done it gladly, but he had cleaned up his ownmess. Sure, Gary Lee's depravity wasn't caused by Lou, but it was still hismess. We're all responsible for our families in one way or another.
As he was thinking, he heard their approach. Muffledscreams could be heard from other parts of the building. When the wrought-ironfence out front had failed and the dead had flooded the courtyard of thetenement, Zeke knew they only had one chance. They had to stay put at thefarthest end of the building and let the mass of the undead spread out. Alone,they could be dealt with. As a mass, even the best-trained soldier would findhimself outnumbered and overwhelmed by the throng of unyielding dead.
The moans and screams came closer. The sounds ofscattered gun shots echoed through the tenement's flimsy walls, but they didn'tlast for long. Zeke pressed his hand to the shattered doorjamb, holding thedoor as closed as he could. He looked over at Lou. He was harder than helooked; harder than a lot of soldiers he had encountered in his own time. Therewas nothing quite like a youth spent on a street full of danger with a twisted,drug dealer for a father to temper a man's steel. Zeke had seen the man'smettle for himself in the police station that they had escaped from, a stationthat now was likely little more than an animated morgue.
The moans and screams were closer. He heard feet poundingdown the warped wooden floor in the hallway.
"Help!" a man screamed.
Zeke looked over at Lou and shook his head. The mancouldn't be helped, he was a liability, an unknown. Survival was number oneright now. If Zeke gave the go-ahead, Lou would save the man withouthesitation, but there was no way of knowing if the man was bit or sick. Onebite. That's all it seemed to take. It wasn't worth the risk. If they let theman in and he was bitten, there would only be one thing to do, put something tothe head... either a bullet or a boot. Either way, that would bring attentionthat they didn't need. They heard banging on a door down the hallway from wherethey hid. They heard the splintering of wood, and then they heard morefootsteps, different from the ones that came before. They were shuffling movements,sliding through the refuse of the tenement's hallways. Then the screaming came.
They stood in silence as an entire building of peoplebecame an entire building of the dead, except for the two of them. Zeke didn'tknow how long they stood in the quiet, but the room had heated up as the sunrose, baking the corner apartment on the third floor. The smell of decayingcorpses had grown, and his body was covered in sweat. They had to get out. Itwas time.
"You ready?"
Lou, who had been silent for most of their watch, noddedhis head, sweat pouring off the smooth brown skin of his bald head. Zeke pushedthe door open slowly and stepped out into the dimly lit hall of the tenement.Though it was the middle of the day, most of the windows had been broken and boardedup. Sunlight and heat filtered into the hallways in scattered rays, and thedead lingered. Zeke breathed deeply, trying to rid himself of the odor of thenightmare they had left behind. The smell in the tenement hallway wasn't muchbetter; it still smelled of urine and the deceased, but it wasn't nearly asstrong.
Through the narrow corridor, they moved like catsstalking prey, Zeke taking the lead. He inched forward, heel to toe, avoidingthe scattered refuse that littered the floor of the hallway, discardedsyringes, empty baggies, and fast food wrappers. The door to the first roomthey came to was boarded up. That was good. They slid past it, watching wheretheir feet went.
As they approached the next door, they heard the sound ofit first. A subtle creak in the floorboards, a disturbance in the air pressure,something was in there, and the door was hanging off of its hinges. This mustbe the room where the unlucky screamer had tried to hide. Zeke brought thesight of the gun up to eye level, and turned quickly, taking in all theinformation he could, as fast as he could. Three bodies, two squatting over theform of another, their backs to the door. Good, he thought. Let's keepit that way.
Zeke glided past the door, his gun at the ready, and thenhe motioned Lou forward with a wave of his hand. His breath caught in histhroat, as Lou moved past the door, but he made it without incident, and heexhaled silently through his nose, a long
