Cherish Applebottoms's Arc

Chapter 8 of 11

The front door would not hold much longer; zombies pressed against it, groaning, feet splashing in the mud outside. They banged at the blocked windows and clawed at the walls. Cherish pressed her back to a loosened table and counted exits. Cherish knew the back was no better. She grabbed Liz by the arm. "This place had deliveries. Beer kegs, food. There has to be another way out!!" Liz wiped blood from her head and pointed at the storage room. Franko had locked himself in. "Cellar. Old delivery chute runs under the lot. Comes up somewhere out back. I never walked it." Cherish gripped her crowbar. One blind way out beat being overrun by the dead. The front door bowed inward. Hands tore at the boards. Cherish backed everyone toward the storage room. Marcus shut the storage room door and barred it with an empty shelf. Toward the back left corner Liz pointed at a trapdoor. "Padlocked. Nobody's opened it in years." Nobody knew where it let out. Cherish decided they would find out the hard way. She wedged the crowbar under the padlock and threw her weight down. The lock snapped. The trapdoor fell open on a dark square, and a cold stink of mold and rotten air rose up the stairs. "Liz, lights," Cherish said. She clicked on a flashlight and dropped into the dark first. Liz swept her flashlight across a gloomy cellar with a haunting atmosphere. "Everyone down," she said. Marcus took the rear with his knife. Lisa went first. Victoria froze at the top step, shaking. Cherish shoved her forward. "Move your feet, there’s no time left!" A zombie hidden in a cabinet lunged at Marcus as the group headed down the cellar. Marcus quickly stabbed it in the eye and dragged the trapdoor shut above them. The basement held stacked kegs and a withered corpse slumped against the far wall. The flashlight caught its collapsed face and the ribs showing through torn skin. Then it stood. It lurched toward Lisa. Liz came in fast from the side and stabbed it in the skull. It dropped and did not rise. "Welp, I guess gin is good for more than drinking, huh," Liz said with a smile at Lisa. Liz pulled a metal bat free from another corpse's hands. It twitched once, but Liz immediately kicked its skull in. She weighed the bat and grinned grimly. "Better than a bottle." The hatch stood at the far wall, chained. A slanted metal slit climbed toward gray daylight. She could hear mud and reeds above. "This is it." Cherish broke the chain and shoved it open. Gray light and wet weeds. The horde still clawed at the front. Cherish sighed. But the truck sat boxed in by the dead, far across the lot. Marcus crouched beside her. Cherish turned to Marcus. "I can draw them. Take the truck, lure them off." He told Cherish, "Meet me at Doom Medical." Victoria went pale. (The secretary from the clinic had come here the night the bar turned into a horror house, and felt remorse for not helping enough back at the bar.) "I'm not brave," Victoria said. She clutched the knife. "I won't let him go alone out there, I promise. I’ll do more this time." Victoria said with a serious yet dedicated expression on her face. Marcus and Victoria broke from the group and slipped up the cellar steps, crossed the dark lot, and ran low toward the truck. Marcus smashed a bottle on the hood. The horde turned toward the noise. Victoria had trouble starting the engine at first, but on the third crank, just as a zombie approached the driver-side window reaching for her, Marcus stabbed it and got in the truck. The truck roared down the road. Feet could be heard splashing through the mud, giving chase after the truck. Cherish led Lisa and Liz out the hatch into eerie daylight. They ran low along the swamp road while the dead chased the taillights the wrong way. They ran for it, crowbar and bat and blade. A soaked zombie rose from the muck, skeletal hand reaching. Cherish cracked its arm, then its head. Lisa split another. Then the diner rose out of the fog, with a faded sign reading DOOM CREEK DINER, moss hanging off the eaves. Shapes moved in the big front windows, and moss hung from every board. "Inside," Cherish said. "Now." But dead things already waited among the parked cars. The dead stood in the lot, swamp water dripping from their clothes. Clustered around the front, at least five of them could be seen through the foggy swamp. The group crossed to the diner's back door using stealth. Something crawled from the standing water near the step, a woman's body spitting a thin stream that hissed on the mud. Cherish broke its spine with the crowbar before it could spit again. They slid inside, where more dead waited. Inside stank of old grease and was a mess. They shut the doors, and Cherish could see between the booths. Then a plate shattered behind the counter. A small shape rose, apron stained, half its face burned. Where one eye should be, a second mouth gaped and clicked. The zombie waitress tilted her head toward them. She crouched low, ready to leap, and the diner was no shelter at all. An old waitress in a bloody apron, four fingers gone, lunged at Lisa with her jaw stretched wide. Lisa stabbed up under the chin and the thing dropped. Another waitress in a bloody torn outfit snapped around, with a wet mouth gaping open inside one eye socket. She shrieked and leapt. Her target was Liz. Cherish lunged and caught the waitress mid-air with the crowbar across the jaw. They crashed to the tile. The eye-mouth snapped at Cherish's wrist. Liz drove the bat down twice until the thing went limp, saving Cherish. An old waitress in a bloody uniform screeched like a boiling kettle and lunged at Lisa, three fingers grabbing. She shuffled fast and snapped her teeth at Lisa's throat; Cherish cracked the elderly thing's jaw. "Behind!" Liz shouted. A chef in a stained apron lunged, butcher knife raised, and drove it toward Cherish. His teeth snapped an inch from her nose. She jammed the crowbar across his mouth and held. Before Lisa and Liz could try to help Cherish, dead things rose from booths and behind the counter. Another hidden waitress leapt straight at Lisa, a second mouth wet inside her eye socket. Lisa went down under her. Liz swung the bat and knocked the thing off. A cook in a diner uniform, one-armed and feral, lurched at Liz and snapped at her arm. Liz jammed the bat crosswise into the gaping mouth and shoved her back. They fought shoulder to shoulder, booth to booth, blade and bat, until the floor went still. Liz broke the cook's jaw, then its skull. Lisa finished another leaping waitress with her machete. Blood slicked the tile. Cherish had been chased by the chef to the back kitchen, where she used a slicer to split the chef's head in two. Now they take a quick break before they head out to rendezvous with Marcus at Doom Medical.