Dead Opportunities: Book 3

Ride the Spiral to the End

Author's note: Upon posting this chapter I noticed tha chapter 1 of Book 3 was strangely missing. If you can't make any sense of the story that should be why. Please go back to 'sleep now in the fire' and everything should all make sense.

Sorry for the slip up.

Hoobajoo

Chapter 4: Exile

"Well Poledancer, this is a fine predicament is it not?"

"How can you joke with me like this? Why are you so relaxed about this? You're supposed to close me down, probably kill me too!"

"Yes. That I do."

"So, you're my friend. Why are you smiling?"

"You'll understand when you die. Men, take him out to the ditch. I'll shoot him and his blue sickos myself."

Polanda was dumbstruck even as the two martial police grabbed him roughly by the arms and hauled him out of the room without a word. Atkins sighed and followed.

Atkins expected more torrid screaming and frantic protests, but his friend only stared at him in disbelief still in the vice like hands of the guards. Even as they waited for the elevator and during the entire trip down to the ground floor, Polanda was silent, gradually working through the shock and resigning himself to death.

It pained Atkins to see him like this, but he also maintained silence and avoided eye contact as best he could. It needed to be done. Polanda and his newly returned pet projects One and Two had failed and he was mandated by the President himself to dispose of them.

The elevator doors opened and the stale air was quickly sucked out and fresher air replaced it. It smelled of grass, freedom and irony. All this time Poldanda had barely stepped outside as he worked determinedly on his White Beetle project. The serum had become his life and he was sure it would work above all other probabilities. And now it meant his death.

In that moment as the sun bore down and the fresh air sailed up his nose, Polanda didn't quite know whether he should continue to kick and scream or enjoy the splendour while it lasted. The soldier's boots continued to crunch on the crushed stone pathway towards his killing ground and the steady rhythm sealed it for him, strangely relaxing like a heartbeat as time slowed down.

It was a strange state of mind he enjoyed both within himself as well as from outside. He rolled his eyes as he watched the most important and memorable parts of his life flash before his eyes and smiled at the cliché of it all.

So he was going to die. I've earned it I suppose, he thought with somewhat happy resignation and fell into step with the guards, relieving them of the struggle. Atkins continued behind them and noted his friend's change in demeanour with sympathy.

Finally, they reached their destination away from other's eyes in a distant corner of the facility near a corner of the concrete wall. It marked the end of the safe zone and the beginning of what was referred to as the wilderness. Pristine Maine forest waited with its share of danger, be it natural or undead.

Atkins waved a hand and the guards turned and left, marching silently and eyes forward until they disappeared.

They were alone.

Atkins unholstered a pistol and pointed at his friend.

"So it has come to this, my friend." Polanda said sadly.

"Yes." Atkins replied.

And Polanda turned away from his friend and stared at the bare concrete wall, waiting for a bullet to pierce the back of his head and end his life.

He closed his eyes.

He licked his lips.

He sighed and closed his eyes tighter.

And he jumped as a hand slapped onto his shoulder.

Atkins walked around and stood in front of him and holstered the pistol away inside his jacket. He smiled wanly and took a deep breath as Polanda waited, confused and hopeful.

"You are supposed to die. For all intents and purposes you will in that you will never again set foot in this place. Your blue hounds One and Two will be the same."

He turned and walked to the wall. He looked for a moment until he found the brick he wanted. With a hard shove, the brick pushed inward and slid aside to reveal a lever which Atkins pulled to reveal the outlines of a doorway amongst the brickwork. It squeaked and groaned, rough brick and concrete scraping against each other as the door opened.

Polanda stood astonished and saw trees and open land beyond and quickly understood.

Atkins dusted his sleeves, quickly peeked through the door for any threats and regarded his friend with a heavy smile.

"I have arranged for a body to be presented to the morgue which will be pronounced as your own. The same with your blue hounds. The good doctor owes me." He licked his lips as Polanda waited patiently. Atkins was glad for it, able to stick to the words he had practised previously. "There's a lumberjack's house about two miles from here if you follow the path. I think you should be safe. It's a large forest. There's supplies in there waiting for you. I will arrange for the blue hounds to join you there after you leave first."

Polanda wanted to say something but was stuck for words. He wanted to cry. He scratched the back of his hand absently and fought back tears.

Atkins interrupted, "Take my pistol."

Polanda stepped forward and reached out to grab it, but was quickly enveloped in a bear hug which squeezed the breath and the tears out of him. Atkins was more stoic and simply patted him on the back roughly.

They pulled apart and Polanda carefully placed the heavy pistol in his coat pocket, unused to such weapons.

They regarded each other once more.

"I'm not sure whether to thank you or not. I could be shot cleanly here or eaten to pieces out there. Why?"

"Because you have a chance out there. There's places that you could hole up in and go unnoticed. Maybe even you could find a settlement. But in any case, I doubt you will die. One and Two will join you remember? They'll protect you."

Polanda's spine straightened. "That's just it. I don't know if they'll stick with me. They want Craig. They'll want to kill him."

"Suppose they do then. It's still better you chance it out there. You're a smart one Poledancer. You're world class remember? You'll think of something. You would do better than me. I'm just big and dumb. You're resourceful."

Polanda looked at his friend, the open doorway and back to his friend again. His mind was made up.

"Thank you."

They shook hands, Polanda's hands nearly crushed in Atkin's as they always were.

"Goodbye."

"Good luck."

Heavy and stiff, he awkwardly stepped through the threshold and instantly felt naked and vulnerable. He turned to try and change Atkins mind, but the door closed with a low, hard thud that echoed through the ground and the still air.

He felt like crying, but he felt the lopsided weight of the pistol in his pocket and willed himself on into the forest.

XX

The journey was slow and tiring, not because it was physically demanding terrain, which it was not, but because he still couldn't shake the idea that he was out in the wilderness where at any moment a zombie could spring out of the bushes and eat him alive. Even if he had time to grab the pistol, he had never fired one before and he doubted he would be any good with it. He tried holding it ready in his hand as he walked, but his shoulder quickly tired and he replaced it back in his pocket.

He should have arrived already he reasoned, but he insisted on walking slowly, placing his footfalls carefully to minimise noise and detection. A man used to being thorough, he believed it was better to arrive late and alive, than risk an encounter.

Soon his neck was stiff as he whipped his eyes back and forth, left and right and over his shoulder, constantly looking for anything untoward. The slightest movements in the underbrush always made him jump, as did anytime his ankles brushed against a stick. Bare branches reached out at him from all sides like thin gnarled fingers, constantly reminding him of the perceived danger. He tried to listen for birds, thinking that if animals were around that zombies therefore could not be, but he heard nothing besides his own heartbeat and the scuffing of his shoes amongst the dry grass and leaves which he often mistook for foreign noises.

The tension gave rise to a sharp headache and he began to feel stiflingly hot and hungry. He felt like throwing up. He wished for the seclusion of his laboratory and the quiet hum of the equipment. All his life had preferred the ambience of a good library or his own bedroom compared the natural world. He hated school camp when he was a child and never took to it when was an adult either. His first girlfriend had been into bushwalking, but that relationship quickly soured.

He always liked to think he would one day die from a heart attack upon discovering some extremely important and prestigious scientific find. Dying in the place he loved so much and spent so much of his time. The notion that he might die in a forest with rotten teeth in his throat and his intestines being pulled out like some magic never ending handkerchief was the furthest juxtaposition he could think of.

He threw up at the thought.

Even during and after he had finished, he was deathly scared the noise would give him away. But he scanned the forest in every direction thrice over and found nothing that was not supposed to be there.

His eyes watered and his throat stung, but he resumed his slow trudge with the same determined care as before.

One foot after another followed and he made slow if steady progress. He veered from the path only to answer the call of nature and urinated against the side of a tree. He zipped himself up and froze to see a figure in the distance staring back at him.

Some instinct identified the threat immediately and screamed at him to run. He did so with all of the effort he could muster as he fixed his eyes where the figure had been. Through the broken view between passing branches and leaves he saw the distinct outline of a human form running in his direction.

"Shit! Shit!" he screamed breathlessly over and over again as he ran scared out of his mind.

Oh god! It's a zombie! I'm gonna fuckin' die! He's gonna eat me! He's gonna eat me! What the fuckamigonnado?!

The figure was closing he was certain. He could see it was indeed a man and his skin was dark with the discolouration of decay. Tears welled in his eyes, blurring his vision and his saliva bubbled thick amongst his panicked wailing. He didn't want to look back over his shoulder, rather to focus on the pathway before him and pretend everything was alright even as he sprinted.

It was fortunate that he did as he almost ran into the wall of a log cabin. A distant voice managed to wrestle through the scared cloud in his frantic mind that it must be the lumberjack's cabin Atkins had told him about and he quickly looked for the front door.

He found it only two steps away and thankfully it was not locked. It swung open freely in his cold shaking hands and it closed behind him as he fell to the floor through tangled feet. A heavy thump against the door's pine slats caused him to squeal and jump back up again as the zombie pounded and scratched against the wood. Polanda grabbed the pistol and held it ready in front of him with enough state of mind to notice that the only thing that had prevented the monster spilling through after him was that the door latch had luckily clicked into place when the door had closed behind him. The small piece of luck both amused him and terrified him.

The zombie outside gave up on the door, having found the window next to the front door and quickly smashed the glass. Through the hail, Polanda got his first good look at the fiend and promptly soiled his pants although he didn't notice. He screamed in terror, seeing both the monster and flashes of how he expected it would devour him. The gun in his hand erupted into the ceiling uselessly.

The sudden noise jolted the terrified professor and he fell to the floor again, tripping over his own feet and letting the pistol fly free across the room out of his fingers. He had enough presence of mind again to mostly catch his fall, however, and looked for the gun as the zombie heaved itself through the window opening, ignoring the broken glass in the window frame tearing into its soft rotten belly. Whilst its hand flailed for purchase and its body caught on the glass, it had eyes only for its target. It half screamed and half whispered a gurgling deep burp as it scrabbled and tumbled head over heels into the room.

Polanda recoiled away as it nearly fell on his feet and pinned him down, but he was quickly up on his own feet and saw the gun on the floor near the corner of a tired grey couch. He lunged for it and got his fingers around it before the zombie crashed into him, sending them tumbling onto the floor again through a hallway.

The beast rolled on top of him, but Polanda managed to brace a hand between them both and buy some room to squirm. He felt his fingertips push through the scungy skin of his attacker like soft sponge cake and he felt the urge to retch again. He made an oddly timed mental note that next time this happened he should wear protective latex gloves. Who knew what strange bugs and diseases this thing had, he thought.

The weight of the pistol brought him to the present and he tried to bend his wrist to angle the barrel into the creature's face, but it twisted and writhed and pushed and he missed, sending another bullet into the ceiling.

His braced left hand was coming loose and the weight of his attacker threatened to snap his wrist back as well. The pain was immense and growing and he screamed fearing it would give out. As it was, the zombie's face was only inches from his own even as he kept his eyes on the pistol in his almost free hand.

But to get a good shot, he had to see where the target was. He turned his eyes amidst the slick hands that battered against his jaw and cheeks and looked again at the monster.

He screamed in terror, seeing all of the worst fears in his life coming together in one single enemy. It was a rotund face, bloated by decay almost beyond any recognition that it was or once was a human face at all. Dirty rotting teeth were exposed through missing lips and the protruding bone of the nasal cavity was visible, even the cartilage of the nose tip.

But it was the eyes that terrified him. Dark and soulless and wide open and caught in a blood drunk rage. He knew of the phrase 'the windows are the eyes to the soul', but there was no soul to look upon, and no emotion other than an insatiable hunger.

Coagulated clumps of blood burped out from the monster's snapping mouth and almost landed in his eyes and open mouth. He knew that if he let any of it into either, he would be dead anyway and renewed his efforts to wedge the pistol in and fire.

Amidst the fear and panic, he found something inside open up and a new strength in his tiring left hand lifted the creature up just enough for the gun to poke into the open maw. The creature bit down on the metal, thinking it had something to eat, but Polanda gave himself just enough time to enjoy the coming victory with a smirk and pulled the trigger.

He winced at the sharp crack of the discharge and closed up his eyes and mouth in anticipation of the coming blood splatter. Cold slimy clumps peppered his face and the zombie's forehead butted into his chin. The monster lay still on top of him and slowly started to slide off onto the floor, slipping on it's own putrescence.

Polanda lay still for what seemed a long time, waiting for the aftermath to settle. Finally he opened his eyes, and saw the splattered gore that painted the floor and the cabin's walls. Dark flecks of gore amidst faded brown wallpaper. He pushed away from the dead zombie, stumbling to his feet only to fall down again on his backside.

He wanted to cry, but a surge of excitement made him laugh. The joy of having survived was intoxicating. He had quite literally stared death in the face and had enough spine to blow it away. His laughter filled the small cabin, drifted out the broken window and was taken away by the pristine forest wind.

A bird fluttered down onto a nearby branch amongst the pine needles outside, heard the laughter and chirped.

Some further distance away, One and Two also heard it and gave it no further mind.