by Lauren Beltz
thought aloud. “If we have a look out on the roof, our retrieval group could signal to the look out that they are on the approach back, and the look out could gather the rest of the group and get down to the ground floor.”
“And what if the ground group removes the barricade on the doors before the retrieval group returns?” Lenore asked. “The last thing we need is for the support team to get overrun by infected. Or, what if the support group doesn’t get the ground floor open in time for the retrieval group? They’ll be sitting ducks out there.”
“We could leave the view of the revolving doors unobstructed so that our ground team can see the retrieval group once they get through the cars. It will let them know when to free the doors.” Anna suggested.
“We don’t even know if the doors on the first floor still have all their glass panes,” Sebastian argued. “In fact, we don’t even know what the situation on the first floor is like; we blocked it off at the stairwell. The whole first floor could be overrun for all we know. We could get the barricade in the stairwell off just to get overrun before the retrieval group can even get out of the building.”
“I might be able to lend a hand there,” Davidson said. They all turned their attention to him once more. Daniel could almost see the cogs in his head turning as Davidson thought. “I can probably rig a device to go out of a second story window and peak down through a window on the first floor. Or at least get a decent look at the front of the building to gauge what state it’s in.”
“What on Earth makes you think you can do that?” Anna asked.
Davidson’s first response was a crooked grin. “I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve. I can start on that tomorrow morning, it you want.”
Anna nodded. “I’ll cover your shift if it rains,” Sebastian offered.
Davidson shook his head. “You haven’t worked water duty before. If it rains, I’ll work on rigging up my device when I’m done. Besides, don’t you have sweeps to finish?”
Sebastian and Anna shared a look. “We’ve been resweeping the building,” Anna finally spoke up. “We finished clearing out the lower levels about a week and a half ago. We haven’t found anything all week.” She paused for the briefest of moments before adding, “We don’t expect to find anything else.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to keep looking,” Daniel suggested. “Just in case. I know Davidson was usually the extra hand on scavenging, but I can help if you need. I can put off laundry for another day.”
“An extra hand is always welcome,” Sebastian said in thanks. “And we’ve cleared all the nasties out, so it’s just rummaging through empty cabinets now.”
“I’m sorry,” Lenore spoke up, “but have we forgotten that we still don’t have a plan on how to get past all the infected down there roaming the streets?”
“If we could find a way to blend in with them, we might find a way to walk through them unnoticed,” Daniel suggested. A lump formed in his throat just at the thought.
“Blend in with them?” Lenore asked, turning her full attention to him for perhaps the first time in over a week.
“They are attracted to the unique smell of humans,” Daniel told them. “If we can find a way to mask our smell, then if we send only two people - three at the absolute most - they might be able to walk through the infected unnoticed.”
“How are we supposed to mask our scent? We already go with showering only once a week.”
“We cover ourselves in infected blood.”
“What?” a chorus of the word echoed through the hallway. Daniel swore he could hear Nathan laughing on the other side of his apartment door.
“It could work,” Sebastian offered. “It worked in The Walking Dead.”
“That was a TV show, Seb!” Lenore snapped.
“Comic,” he corrected her.
“What?”
“It was a graphic novel before it was a TV show. But that’s not important. When we were clearing, they did seem attracted to us, like they could pick us out of a crowded room.”
“Where would we even find infected blood?” Davidson asked. At least someone was trying to keep the conversation on track.
“The elevator shaft,” Anna said, as if it were the most obvious answer in the world. “There are God only knows how many infected bodies in the elevator shaft.”
“So we just open up the elevator on the second floor, wait for all the bodies to spill out, and then roll around in the blood?” Lenore asked, incredulous.
Sebastian shook his head. He bit the end of his thumb as he thought. “Impossible. It took over a week for us to get the shaft doors pried open on our floor. There’s no way we’d be able to do it again on a lower level.”
“So what then? We try to lure an infected into the building so we can kill it and use its blood to try to get past the others?” Anna asked. “Assuming the blood, of course, doesn’t infect us on contact.”
Davidson was the one who spoke up this time. “It’s simpler than that. We lower someone down the elevator shaft to retrieve a body. Or part of a body. Then they can bring it back up - we can rig a sort of belay system to help pull them up - to cover the retrieval group.”
“How do we decide who gets that honor? Rock, paper, scissors?”
“I’ll do it.”
All eyes snapped to Lenore. If the voice had not been so feminine and so clearly hers, Daniel never would have believed he had heard those words come from her mouth.
“What?” she asked. “Someone was going to suggest it anyway, whether they wanted to or not. I’m the lightest of the group by far, which will make me the easiest to pull back up the shaft with the added weight of…” she couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence.
Daniel could not stop staring at her. “Lenore-” Sebastian started to protest.
“I’ll do it,” she repeated, her voice insistent this time, as if no amount of negotiating would change her mind now that she had offered.
“You couldn’t even stand the sight of Hayley,” Anna said as she shook her head to herself. “How do you expect to be able to handle a horde of dead ones?”
“It wasn’t the sight of her I couldn’t stomach,” Lenore snapped, her voice seeping with venom. “It was your inhumanity that I couldn’t stand.”
“Right,” Anna laughed. “So you’re saying the smell of perhaps a hundred rotting bodies isn’t going to bother you at all?”
“Anna-” Sebastian warned. Daniel could see the group splitting into two camps. He wondered vaguely which side he would end up on if they continued.
“Of course it will bother me,” Lenore replied. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t handle it. I can. And I will.”
“I’ll fashion a harness and make sure we have enough rope to lower you safely to the base,” Daniel offered. They met eyes for the briefest of moments.
“We’ll pay extra attention for anything we can use to fix into rope,” Sebastian said. “We haven’t been collecting any more sheets or towels since we already have more than we need, but we can grab some tomorrow to fashion into a substitute rope. But I can go down into the shaft. I don’t weigh that much more than Lenore-”
“Seb, I’m going to do this,” Lenore insisted again. “End of discussion.” The way the siblings glared at each other then, Daniel could tell it was clearly far from the end of the debate. The remainder would be held in their apartment later.
“How about we wrap up this meeting?” Davidson suggested, and Daniel figured he must have sensed the mounting tension as well. They all had a lot to mull over and digest, and it was getting late. “We’ve got enough to keep us busy for the next day or so, and I’m sure everyone could use a good night of sleep.”
Daniel knew he wouldn’t be sleeping well, if at all, that night, but he mirrored the sentiment. “We could reconvene in two nights’ time,” Daniel suggested, “to formulate the details of our plan once we know our situation and our options a little better.”
They all nodded in agreement. They didn’t hear a word from the other side
of Nathan’s door. “Needless to say,” Anna started right before they all went their separate ways, “we need not bring up this discussion with William.” They all nodded again. “I’ll handle him tomorrow,” Anna added, almost as an afterthought.
It was going to be a long week, Daniel thought as he made his way back to his apartment.
Lenore
Sebastian was already wide awake by the time she pulled her tired eyes away from the ceiling and got up for the morning. He was waiting for her at the table, a half-eaten can of tomato condensed soup and some stale saltine crackers set out. Wincing, she lowered herself into the first chair she reached. A new bruise had found its way onto her side overnight, and her aching muscles did nothing to mask the pain.
“Morning,” she grumbled as she sat down. Folding her arms, she dropped her head to the table and yawned. Even her jaw seemed to ache.
“You know you don’t have to-” Sebastian started, but she was already lifting her head back up to stare at him.
“I’m going to do it,” she told him, cutting him off before he could go into detail about the fact that she had offered to lower herself into a pit of decaying, rotting corpses with God only knew what kind of disease. “I would appreciate it, however, if you would volunteer to stand by to help pull me back up. If it isn’t too much trouble.”
“Of course it isn’t. I just don’t understand why you feel like you need to be the one to go.”
“I know you don’t understand,” she answered