Descent by Jay Bonansinga
“Stay down, Nick,” Philip says flatly. “I don’t want any of them pus bags seeing us in here.”
Nick ducks down.
Philip sits down in the driver’s seat, the springs squeaking. He checks a map case on the dash and finds nothing useful. The keys are in the ignition. Philip turns it over and gets nothing but a clicking noise. “I’m not going to say it again. That place is over for us.”
“Why, though? Why can’t we take it back, Philly? We can take that fat bitch. The three of us?”
“Let it go, Nick,” Philip says, and even Brian, all the way in the back of the bus, hears the icy warning tone in Philip’s voice.
“I just don’t get it,” Nick complains under his breath. “How something like this could happen—”
“Bingo!” At last, Philip has found something useful. The four-foot-long steel rod—about the width and heft of a short length of iron rebar—is attached to clips under the driver’s side window. Hooked on one end, the tool is likely used to reach across the cab to the accordion door (in order to manually pull it shut). Now, as Philip wields the thing in the gloomy light, it looks like an excellent makeshift weapon. “This’ll do,” he murmurs.
“How did this happen, Philly?” Nick persists, crouching down in the flickering stutter of lightning.
“GODDAMNIT!”
Philip suddenly slams the iron rod against the dash, sending shards of plastic flying and making everybody jump. He smacks it again, cracking the two-way radio. He strikes it again and again with all his might, caving in the controls and shattering the fare box, sending coins flying. He keeps striking the console until the dashboard is totaled.
Finally, with the veins in his neck bulging, his face livid with rage, he turns and burns his gaze into Nick Parsons. “Would you please shut the fuck up!”
Nick stares.
In the rear of the bus, sitting next to Brian, Penny Blake turns away and gazes out the window, the dirty rain tracking down in rivulets. Her expression hardens as though she’s working out a complicated mathematical problem that’s far too complex for her grade level.
Meanwhile, up front, Nick is frozen with shock. “Take it easy, Philly … I’m just … babbling. You know? Didn’t mean anything. The place just kinda grew on me.”
Philip licks his lips. The fire in his eyes dwindles. He takes a deep breath and lets out a pained exhalation. He puts the rod down on the driver’s seat. “Look … I’m sorry … I understand how you feel. But it’s better this way. Without electricity, that place is going to be a walk-in freezer by mid-November.”
Nick keeps looking down. “Yeah … I guess I see your point.”
“It’s better this way, Nicky.”
“Sure.”
At this point, Brian tells Penny he’ll be right back, and he pushes himself off his seat.
He moves up the aisle, staying low, moving just beneath the level of the sliding windows, until he joins Nick and his brother. “What’s the plan, Philip?”
“We’ll find someplace we can build fires. Can’t build fires in an apartment building.”
“Nick, how many more of these ‘safe zones’ have you got mapped out?”
“Enough to get outta this part of town, if we catch a break or two.”
“Sooner or later, we’re gonna have to find a car, though,” Brian says.
Philip grunts. “No shit.”
“You think there’s gas in this bus?”
“Deisel, probably.”
“Guess it doesn’t matter what it is. We got no way to siphon it.”
“And no way to store it,” Philip reminds him.
“And no way to move it,” Nick adds.
“That metal thing over there?” Brian points at the metal reacher on the driver’s seat. “You think that thing’s sharp enough to puncture the gas tank?”
“On the bus?” Philip glances at the steel rod. “I suppose. What good’s that gonna do?”
Brian swallows hard. He has an idea.
* * *
One by one, they each quickly slip through the accordion door and into the rain, which has now settled into a low, cold drizzle. The daylight is muddy. Philip carries the steel rod, Nick the three brown Miller Light bottles that Brian found wedged under the rear seats. Brian keeps Penny close—there are dark figures visible in all directions, the closest ones maybe a block away—and the clock is ticking.
Every few moments, the lightning turns the city magnesium bright—illuminating the dead coming from either end of the street. Some of the Biters have noticed humans scurrying around the back of the bus, and those zombies approach now with a more defined purpose in their lumbering gait.
Philip knows the location of the gas tank from his days as a truck driver.
He crouches down near the massive front tire, and he quickly feels under the chassis for the bottom edge of the tank as the rain drips off his chin. This bus has two separate reservoirs, each one containing a hundred gallons of fuel.
“Hurry, man, they’re coming!” Nick kneels behind Philip with the bottles.
Philip slams the pointed end of the steel rod into the bottom of the forward tank, but it only dents the iron enclosure. He cries out a garbled howl of white-hot anger and drives the point again into the reservoir.
This time, the point punctures the skin of the tank and a thin stream of yellow, oily liquid suddenly shoots out all over Philip’s arms and hands. Nick leans in and quickly fills the first twelve-ounce bottle.
Thunder pounds the sky, followed by another salvo of lightning. Brian glances over his shoulder and sees an entire regiment of walking corpses—closer now in the flash of heavenly daylight, only twenty-five yards away—many of their faces clearly discernible in the photostrobe radiance.
One of them is missing a jaw, another one walking along with a streamer of intestines lolling out of a gaping hole in its stomach.
“Hurry, Nick! Hurry!” Brian has pieces of a torn shirt ready to go in one hand, the lighter in the other. He fidgets restlessly next to Penny, who is trying her best to be brave, clenching her little fists, chewing her lip as she keeps tabs on the advancing army of upright cadavers.
“There’s one—go, GO!” Nick hands the first bottle of fuel to Brian.
Brian stuffs the rag into it, then quickly turns the bottle upside down until the cloth is soaked. This procedure only encompasses a few seconds, but Brian can feel the time running out, the presence of hundreds of Biters closing in. A flick of the lighter produces a flame that is instantly extinguished by the wind.
“C’mon, sport … c’mon, c’mon!” Philip is turning to the oncoming horde, raising his steel implement. Behind him, Brian cups his hands around the wick and finally gets it lit. The rag flares, the flames curling down the side of the bottle, feeding off the fumes and spill.
Brian hurls the Molotov cocktail at the leading edge of the crowd.
The bottle shatters five feet away from the closest zombies and blooms in a yellow sunburst of fire, making a crackling sound in the mist. Several corpses stagger backward at the unexpected light and heat, some of them bumping into their counterparts, knocking them over like dominoes. The sight of these monsters tumbling would ordinarily be almost funny, but not now.
Now Philip grabs the second full bottle, and stuffs the rag in. “Gimme the lighter!” Brian hands over the Bic. “Now get moving!” Philip commands, lighting the rag and hurling the flaming bottle at the army of monsters coming from the opposite direction.
This time, the bottle lands in their midst, erupting in their ranks, setting ablaze at least a dozen Biters with the ferocity of napalm.
Brian doesn’t look back as he scoops Penny off the ground and follows Nick in a desperate run for the barbershop.
* * *
Brian, Penny, and Nick get halfway to the next safe zone when they realize that Philip is lagging behind them.
“What the hell’s he doing!” Nick’s voice is shrill and frantic as he ducks into the doorway of another boarded sto
“Hell if I know!” Brian says, ducking into the doorway with Penny, gazing back at his brother.
A hundred yards away, Philip is yelling something obscene and inarticulate at the monsters, swinging his iron weapon at an attacker. The flaming zombie comes at him in a wreath of smoke and sparks.
“Oh my God!” Brian shields Penny’s face. “Get down—GET DOWN!”
In the distance, Philip Blake is backing away from the mob with the lighter raised in one hand and the bloody iron raised in the other, some kind of Viking brazenness taking over now, all his pent-up rage coming out in a series of big, portentous gestures.
He pauses and lights a spreading pool of fuel seeping out from underneath the bus, and then turns and flees the scene with the full-tilt abandon of a ball carrier charging toward open field.
Behind him, the puddle of fuel catches and spreads, the blue flames billowing toward the massive steel girth of the bus. Philip traverses about fifty yards of wet pavement, cracking the skulls of half a dozen Biters along the way, while the fire crawls up the side of the bus.
A low, subsonic thump rises above the rain and moaning noises. Philip can’t see Brian and the others in the mist ahead of him.
“PHILIP! IN HERE!”
Brian’s howl is a beacon, and Philip dives toward the sound of it as the explosion rocks the ground and turns a dark, gray afternoon into the surface of the sun.
* * *
None of them gets a good look at it. They are all slammed against a door inside the boarded alcove, shielding their faces from the flaming shrapnel—pieces of the bus, jagged shards of metal bulwark, and fountains of glass—flying past the doorway. Brian manages to glimpse a reflection off the glass of a store window across the street: The explosion, half a block away, has launched twenty tons of bus straight up, a mushroom cloud of dazzling, horrifying fire, the force of the blast bursting open the cabin, the molten hot shock wave punching through multitudes of dead with the violent brilliance of a supernova—countless bodies swept away on the wave, incinerated in the furnace, some of them torn to pieces by the flying debris, the mortified body parts flying up into the storm-lashed sky like a flock of birds attempting to escape.
A flaming piece of fender lands fifteen feet from the doorway.
Everybody jumps at the clanging noise, their eyes wide with shock. “Fuck! FUCK!” Nick exclaims, hands shielding his face. Brian holds Penny in a locked embrace, speechless, momentarily paralyzed.
Philip wipes his face with the back of his hand and gazes around the doorway with the stupor of a sleepwalker just coming awake. “Awright then.” He glances over his shoulder, and then back at Nick. “Where’s this barber shop?”
SIXTEEN
Half a block south—in the darkness of a festering, airless tile room, among scattered remnants of True Detective magazines, plastic combs, dust bunnies of human hair, and tubes of Brylcreem—they dry their faces with towels and barber smocks, and then find more ingredients for homemade Molotov cocktails.
Bottles of hair tonic get emptied, and then filled with alcohol and plugged with wads of cotton. They also find an old, scarred Louisville Slugger hidden under the cash register. The baseball bat probably once warded off unruly customers or neighborhood punks looking to boost the day’s receipts. Now Philip gives the nascent weapon to Nick and tells him to use it wisely.
They scavenge for any other supplies they might be able to use. An old vending machine in back yields a handful of candy bars, a couple of Twinkies, and an ancient sausage stick. As they stuff their knapsacks, Philip tells them not to get too comfortable. He can hear noises outside—more dead encroaching on the area, drawn to the explosion. The rain is slowing down. Noises are carrying. They have to keep moving if they’re going to get out of the city before dark. “C’mon, c’mon,” Philip says. “Let’s get our asses in gear and get to that next zone—Nicky, you take the lead.”
Reluctantly, Nick leads them out of the barbershop, into the drizzle, and down another row of storefronts. Philip brings up the rear with the iron bar ready to rock, keeping a watchful eye on Penny, who clings with simian instinct to Brian’s back.
* * *
Halfway to the next safe zone, a stray corpse lurches out from behind a wreck, shuffling menacingly toward Brian and Penny. Philip lashes out at the back of its head with the hooked end of the iron prod—hitting it just above the six cervical vertebrae—so hard that the cranium detaches and hangs down across its chest as it collapses to the wet paving stones. Penny averts her gaze.
More cadavers are materializing in the mouths of alleys and the shadows of doorways.
Nick finds the next painted symbol, near the corner of two cross streets.
The star is scrawled above the glass door of a small shop of some sort. The store’s façade is draped in iron burglar screens, and other than a few frayed wires, broken neon tubes, and wads of gaffer’s tape, the display windows are empty. The door is shut but unlocked ( just as Nick had left it three days earlier).
Yanking the door open, Nick waves everybody inside, and they enter in a hurry.
In fact, they slip inside so quickly that nobody notices the shop’s sign over the door’s lintel, the letters formed by dark, cold neon script: TOM THUMB’S TINY TOY SHOPPE.
* * *
The front of the store, barely five hundred square feet, is littered with brightly colored debris. Overturned shelves have spilled their inventory of dolls and race cars and trains across the soiled tiles. A tornado of destruction has swirled through the shop. Wires dangle where mobiles once hung, the shattered plastic remains of LEGO sets and planes piled here and there. The feathery stuffing of ripped plush toys stirs like dead leaves in the slipstream of the visitors slamming the door behind them.
For a moment, they stand in the vestibule, dripping, catching their collective breaths, gaping at the startling ruins strewn before them. Nobody moves for the longest time. Something about the wreckage mesmerizes them, and keeps them glued to the threshold.
“Everybody stay put,” Philip finally says, pulling a handkerchief and wiping moisture from his neck. He sidesteps a mangled stuffed bear, and then he cautiously moves deeper into the shop. He sees an unmarked rear exit, maybe a stockroom, maybe a way out. Brian gently puts Penny down, and checks her for any signs of injury.
Penny stares at the sad rubble of decapitated Barbies and disemboweled stuffed animals.
“When I ran across this place,” Nick is saying from across the room, looking for something, “I was thinking they might have stuff we could use, gadgets, walkie-talkies, flashlights … something.” He moves around the end of the cashier’s counter, up a few steps, and over to a perch behind the register. “Place like this, in this part of town … hell, they might even have a gun.”
“What’s back there, Nicky?” Philip shoots a thumb at a curtained doorway in the rear of the store. The black privacy drape hangs down to the floor. “You get a chance to check it out?”
“Stockroom is my guess. Be careful, Philly. It’s dark back there.”
Philip pauses by the curtain, shrugs off his backpack and fishes in it for the small penlight he keeps in the side pocket. He flips it on, and he pushes his way through the drape … vanishing into the gloom.
Across the store, Penny is transfixed by the broken dolls and eviscerated teddy bears. Brian watches her closely. He aches to help her, aches to get everybody back on track, but all he can do right now is kneel next to the child and try to keep her distracted. “You want one of those candy bars?”
“Nope.” It comes out of her like the crackle of a pull-string doll, her eyes fixed on all the busted toys.
“You sure?”
“Yep.”
“We got Twinkies,” Brian tells her, trying to fill the silence, trying to keep her talking, trying to keep her occupied. But right now, all Brian can think about is the look on Philip’s face, and the violence in his eyes, and the whole world—their world—falling apart.
??
“What things, kiddo?” Brian looks at her. “You mean the toys?”
She nods.
A stab of sorrow and shame cleaves Brian’s midsection. “Go for it,” he says.
She starts gathering up pieces of trampled dolls and tattered stuffed animals. It looks almost like a ritual to Brian, like a rite of passage for the little girl, as she selects Barbies with missing limbs and teddy bears with torn seams. She slips the injured toys into the knapsack with the care of someone performing triage at a clinic. Brian lets out a sigh.
Right then, Philip’s voice calls out from somewhere deep in the guts of the back hallway, cutting off Brian’s thoughts—he was about to fecklessly offer Penny the sausage stick—and now Brian springs to his feet. “What did he say?”
Across the shop, behind the cash register, Nick perks up. “I don’t know—I didn’t hear.”
“Philip!” Brian starts toward the back curtain, his flesh crawling with nervous tension. “You okay?”
Hasty footsteps shuffle inside the draped doorway, and all at once, the curtain flaps open and Philip is peering out at them with a wild expression contorting his face, somewhere between excitement and mania. “Grab your shit, we just won the Irish fucking sweepstakes!”
* * *
Philip takes them down a narrow, dark corridor, past shelves of unopened toys and games, around a corner, and through a security door apparently left unlocked amid the previous occupants’ hurried exodus. Down another narrow hallway, guided by the thin beam of Philip’s penlight, and they come to a fire escape. The metal door is slightly ajar, the shadows of a passageway visible on the other side.
“Get a load of what’s on the other side of our little toy store.” Philip pushes the fire door open with his boot. “Our ticket out of this hellhole.”