secret_history | November 1st, 20:19

Part II: A Game of Chess

And we shall play a game of chess,
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the
door.”
—T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land

“Mickey! The keys!”

She looked up in time to see Marco drive a handful of zombies aside with his axe, swinging it in a wild arc to clear himself a path.

“Throw me the keys and jump over the turnstile!” he yelled.

With a visible effort he brought the axe down into a zombie’s shoulder, embedding it in bone and gristle. The axe stuck, but the creature appeared unaffected: though its arm hung limp and uselss by its side, the other arm continued to reach out hungrily. Marco wrenched the axe blade free and shoved through the milling throng. There was no way he’d be able to stay still long enough for her to throw the keys to him —he’d be overrun in no time. Hands were beginning to paw at the air in front of her, terrifyingly close, reaching for her clothes, her bag, anything they could grasp.

She scrambled backward, felt the sharp metallic corner of one of the turnstiles dig into her spine, and launched herself backward, falling rather than climbing over the one barrier between herself and safety. She landed in a tangle of arms and legs and purse, and felt a sharp pain jar up her arm and into her neck as her elbow connected hard with the marble floor of the metro station. She lay stunned for a split-second, then forced herself awkwardly to her feet and stumbled forward again. Marco might as well have been miles away, but she had to try, she told herself. He was still shouting at her, having cleared a small path for himself to the gate, and she was going to get there no matter the cost.

“Marco! Heads up!” she tossed the keys at him in a clumsy under-arm throw.

The keys glittered in the fluorescent lights of the station as they went through the air, sailing in a perfect parabola —and landing a good three feet away from Marco. With a curse he dove after them, holding the axe one-handed to keep the closest of the zombies at bay, with limited success. Mickey’s heart skipped several beats as she watched, hands clasped in front of her chest, fingers laced together so tightly that her knuckles turned white, then blue from lack of circulation.

Her attention fixed on Marco’s desperate struggle to retrieve the keys and get to safety, she didn’t hear the danger until it was almost too late. A soft moan came from behind her, a hot wafting of foetid breath on the back of her neck. She whirled in time to see a zombie that must once have been an employee of the mall’s food court reaching for her, his yellow apron proudly proclaiming “Mmmuffins” in red, yellow and orange puffy letters.

“Watch out!” a voice yelled, and she backed up just as another figure threw itself at the zombie.

The grotesque muffin man collapsed in a heap of limbs, knocked to the ground from the force of the attack. Mickey gasped in surprise as she saw that her rescuer was none other than Marlene, who stabbed repeatedly at the zombie with something she couldn’t quite see. When Marlene got up, backing hurriedly away, the creature had stopped moving entirely, one of its eyesockets a gory mess, its whole face marred by small circular stab wounds.

“Marlene!” Mickey gasped again. “What on earth did you stab it with?”

Marlene was panting from fright and exertion. She brandished a sharp metallic stick that glinted dully in the light, the end covered in blood and grey matter. “A knitting needle. I was making a scarf...”

In spite of herself Mickey found herself laughing at the ludicrousness of the situation: she’d been saved from a horrible, grotesque death at the hands of a flesh-eating undead thing by a middle-aged woman armed with a knitting needle. She didn’t quite realize that she was laughing until Marlene grabbed her by both shoulders and shook her, a lot harder than she expected from the frail-looking woman.

“Don’t you fall apart on us now!” she ordered sternly. “You’re the only one who has any idea what you’re doing in all this. “You keep your wits about you, damn it! I will slap you if I have to, but I’d rather not.”

MIckey swallowed hard and nodded. She turned bakck toward the turnstiles. “Marco?”

Somehow in the intervening seconds Marco had managed not only to elude the zombies on his side of the barrier, but had picked up the keys from where they’d fallen and had managed to pull the barrier closed. Unfortunately, there was no way to lock the barrier, as going close to it meant getting bitten.

“Hey! Zombies! Over here!”

Mickey’s turned to look in the other direction, and saw Randhir and several of the others standing on the far side of the station, doing precisely what she and Marco had done before: attracting the attention of the zombies in order to give Marco enough room to work without running the risk of getting bitten. Seeing his opening, Marco sprang back toward the barrier and turned the key in the lock, rattling the barrier to make sure it was secure before running back to where she was waiting for him.

“Nice work,” he told Marlene in an admiring tone, looking from the very-dead zombie to the gory knitting needle in her hand. “Sara always said that crafts were hardcore, but I never believed her until now.”

Mickey stared at him, wondering if he was serious, or if he was actually joking under these circumstances. Then she shook her head, dismissing the whole thing as too surreal to deal with right now.

“Is everyone all right?” she called out, her voice not nearly as steady as she would have liked it to be. When no one said anything to the contrary she nodded, then set out at a quick pace toward the entrance to Alexis Nihon Plaza a few metres away. “Everyone stick close, and follow me. Let’s go!”