Flip This Zombie - Jesse Petersen [5]
“Still fastidious after all these months,” David muttered.
“I. Don’t. Like. Goo.”
I shot him a glare when he dared to laugh at my suffering, but quickly refocused on matters at hand.
There was a small foyer area directly behind the doors and it flooded with light from outside for a brief moment before those same doors swung shut behind us. In that brightness I saw a bulletin board that had once touted church socials and announcements but was now tacked full with multiple layers of handwritten prayers and desperate pleas for news of lost loved ones.
There was also a blank space where a collection box once sat. Half the note requesting funds from visitors and parishioners alike was rotting away on the wall behind the space. That box had been ripped free early in the outbreak, when people still thought money had value.
Times had certainly changed. We used Benjamins as fire starters now.
Once our eyes adjusted to the darkness, we moved into the main church area with extra caution because the area was so exposed and open.
The pews that had once been so carefully arranged to face the front of the church for weddings or sermons were now overturned, broken, and in some cases, even burned. The high domed ceiling rose up above us and the stained glass that capped it sent sprays of color down across the marble floors.
Red was the main color in the dim hall, red from the glass, the red of the torn carpet that had once lined the main aisle… red from the blood.
Over the past few months I’d developed an abiding hatred for red. Too bad, really. It had always been my color.
“Anybody home?” Dave called out.
We waited for a moment to see what the call brought us. Often any loud sound brings zombies coming to check out the new food source. That was why it was better not to use guns in close quarters or to shout too loudly during a fight, because that was like setting off a “zombie goodies” beacon.
But today Dave’s question brought nothing but silence in return.
“I don’t see or hear any pilgrims, either. Maybe the morons finally figured out this wasn’t an oasis,” I said softly. “Stopped making themselves zombie bait.”
“I doubt it,” he said with a sigh. “Some people never stop making themselves zombie bait. That’s why we have a job, remember?”
I was about to come up with some kind of witty reply when there was a crash across the large hall. Both of us lifted our weapons higher as we peered through the hazy light. At some point, someone had the sense to build a sort of bunker on the elevated platform that held the altar and the sound had come from there.
“Here we come, bionic zombies,” I muttered.
Now when all this started, I was a normal person. Okay, a reasonably normal person. The first zombies I killed scared the shit out of me. I dreamed of them, my sleep troubled by nightmares where I was overrun, overcome, bitten and changed just like so many people I knew and loved had been. I saw them in every dark corner when I was awake, too. For at least the first month, everything made me jump.
But over time, fear had given way to anger and my kills had gotten easier and bloodier. And then anger gave way to pure and simple job satisfaction. I mean, when I looked at a dead zombie head on a spike, I thought, “Hey, I did that. Picasso would be proud. Especially how I rearranged that eye.”
In short, I was a proficient zombie warrior and took pride in my work, but that first thrill of emotion was now gone.
Except for today. Now, with the idea of a newer, scarier kind of zombie out there for me to kill, my heart raced and my bat shook just a little.
If Dave noticed my new attitude, he didn’t say anything. As we reached the altar, he merely motioned his head to the left and then to the right, indicating we should each take a side and come around the back to see what had caused the crash. I chose to go to the right and we reached the sides of the bunker at about the same time. Peering over the low wall, I suppressed a sigh.
There was a zombie down in the bunker