The Romero Strain by TS Alan Page B

Joe.
    “Oh, shit. You don’t think––?” It hit me. In my haste and in carelessness, I had forgotten to close the access door behind us. “We forgot the door!”
    I ran, heading the way we came. I had been so focused on getting to the doorway that I didn’t realize David had followed right behind me, until the beam of his flashlight darted across my face.
    The noise came again, and this time David heard it. I drew my pistol and cautiously approached the open archway. I guardedly peeked my head into the dim lit tunnel. There was at least a dozen undead wandering the tracks from the west.
    The ones closest to the doorway stopped, sniffed the air, and looked right at me.
    “Shit, shit, shit! Close the door, close the door!” I shouted.
    We struggled to push the heavy-roller door closed. Only a foot remained but we couldn’t get it to move any further. Several pairs of hands jutted through the opening, grabbing the lip of the steel door. They tried to pull it back.
    David and I kept pushing, but the door refused to budge. An undead person peered menacingly through the gap with a flesh-hungry look. It had nearly the same intensity Jack Nicholson had in the film The Shining , when his character peered through the hole in the door delivering his unforgettable line of dialog. This undead, however, had no speech, but the groan it gave delivered the same chilling effect.
    I didn’t hear the others come down the stairway, and I don’t think David did either. There was no hesitation from any of them. They pushed and the door slammed shut, snapping off a few undead hands.
    Max had been barking madly when he arrived with the others, but stopped when the door closed. He stood near the doorway, teeth bared, and growled with a vicious intensity ready to defend me if the door suddenly reopened. I didn’t correct him or reprimanded him for his furious behavior, but I did praise him and rough his fur with affection for his loyalty and willingness to protect me.
    There was urgency in our need to get through the wall that blocked our path.
    Joe was waiting on the top landing, acting as if we had abandoned him. I wanted to punch him in the face, but I no longer had the strength.
    David, seeing my diminished capacity, knew it was up to him to break down the barrier.
    We only had one ten-pound short handled sledgehammer, and a thirty-six inch carbon steel wrecking bar. Without hesitation, David picked up the hammer and began pounding away at the brick, while Marisol and I guarded the staircase. Joe reluctantly joined in the razing, without protest or comments, using the slotted claw end of the wrecking bar. It was easier than I thought it would have been. The old red brick crumbled easy, and David and Joe punched a sizable hole into it within a matter of moments.
    David shined his flashlight through the break, looking to see what was behind the darkness. “It looks like a large room. But there’s a lot of… of large garbage bags lying around, and it really smells disgusting.”
    “Disgusting, how?” I asked.
    “Like a Kill Van Kull garbage scow.”
    I peered inside the room. It smelled like rotting garbage. “I gotta feeling I know where we are,” I said.
    Marisol asked, “Where?”
    “The refuse holding room,” I announced.
    David cleared more of the wall. A pungent odor wafted out.
    “Goddamn,” Joe said. “We gotta go through that!?”
    I quoted Jim Carey from How The Grinch Stole Christmas . It was the line about how one man’s compost could be another man’s potpourri.
    David shook his head. He knew that one, too. I couldn’t stand that he was one up on me.
     
    * * *
     
    We had come to the garbage holding room. Large black bags of festering, rotting debris collected from the waste cans on the platform were stored in the room until the maintenance train came to haul it off, usually once a week.
    We cleared the garbage, and stood silently at the door. I placed my ear against the metal to hear if there were any