“Screw you Byron Westland!” Did I just say that out loud? Whatever, who cares? “Would it kill you to maybe spread the wealth a little? Well, guess what, I’ve got you beat. I have Felecia Harmon!”
“Damn right you do.”
What the fuck? Felecia?
“Hang on Noah, I’m coming.”
“Oh my god,” I whimper, partially because it’s all I have the strength to choke out, but mostly because it’s Felecia. She’s always right there to save me. How does she do it? This girl is unbelievable, she must practice being awesome every morning in the mirror, that’s the only explanation. “They’ve got me pinned against the wall.”
“I know, I see you, I’m coming.”
She sees me? How? I can’t see the two guys I’m practically making out with, and they’re so close I can smell their last meal on their breath. Human, if you were wondering. Apparently Felecia ate her carrots and has developed superhuman vision.
I can tell she’s getting closer by the sounds of infects hitting the ground, but I still can’t see her. Someone’s close to licking my face, no, close isn’t close enough, I can feel his tongue flapping against my cheek as I do everything in my power to hold him off.
The warm trail of slime dribbles from my temple down to my chin as he squirms and thrashes his way closer. Those are his teeth. His teeth are scraping my jawline, strings of slobber bridging the gap between his mouth and my face.
His fingers clutch my shoulders even tighter, like he’s trying to crush my bones with his bare hands. And all of a sudden they let go, clawing at my vest one last time before being ripped away.
It’s Felecia! The unmistakable sound of her blade severing his head, mixed with her girly grunt, is music to my ears. The sexy girl grunt, that’s understandable, but the fact that the sound of flesh tearing and bone splintering is anything but horrific means I’ve been trapped in this hell on earth for far too long.
With my forearm freed, I push back the other face licker, causing him to drop the girl dripping brain fluid everywhere. I don’t need to be able to see it to know she landed on her head. The gruesome cracking is all the proof I need.
Another sexy Felecia grunt, coupled with a head bouncing off my knee, means she beheaded the one making unwelcome sexual advances on me. Foreplay is great, but not when it’s a precursor to getting your cheek chewed off.
I slam my foot down, repeatedly, splitting Crusty Dreadlock’s skull until I hear the insides squish against the floor.
“So you mighta been right,” Felecia sighs, trying to catch her breath. “These night vision goggles you grabbed from the base, they came in handy. I stand by my statement though, they are hideous. I feel like a dude ready to jerk off to some VR porn.”
“I got ten bucks that says you’re sexy as hell in them.”
“Oh, so says the boy who likes me in camo pants and a bulletproof vest for a shirt.”
“What can I say, you make it–” What’s that noise?
“Oh fuck, come on, I’ll model for you later, we gotta go!”
She grabs my hand and leads me through the darkened tunnel as I stumble over maimed bodies.
The dim light of the turbine room comes into view. We’re going the wrong way. We need to go through the tunnel. This is the way we came. Unless, that sound, is that a whole herd of them shuffling blindly through the pitch black tunnel?
“You got him? Hell yeah,” Norwood shouts, throwing a pair of night vision goggles in the duffel bag before taking Felecia’s. “I was just about to come in after you.”
“Wait, where are Maxwell and Neil?” I ask, looking around. Marty and Sami are guarding the entrance to the nonexistent catwalk, ramming poles into the incoming horde as they monkey bar their way towards us. Those must be the same poles Norwood used to jam up the doorknob last time around, trying to keep the bear on the other side of it.
“They went down that hallway, just in case we needed another way out. What’s the verdict?”
“There’s gotta be at least fifty,” Felecia shouts, eyeing the tunnel. “Too many, especially in the dark. We’ve got no choice but to take the hallway, hope it leads–”
“Go go go!” Neil turns the corner, almost tanking it, Maxwell no more than a couple steps behind. “This way won’t work! Run!”
“What the fuck do we do now?” Marty screams, ramming another incoming dangler off the high beams. “Those were our only two ways out!”
Felecia and I share a glance.
“No. No no no, I don’t fucking think so. We are not doing that.” But she knows we have no other choice.
CHAPTER 10
Oh my dear god, that is a long way down. The gorge at the base of the dam pulses further away with every heartbeat. I can’t believe I suggested we do this. This is freakin’ insane, but what choice do we have? They’re coming from every angle.
I suck my head back in the window as quickly as it popped out. That’s gotta be at least a couple hundred feet. Pretty sure my butthole just swallowed itself.
Felecia glances skeptically at the pile of clothes and lab coats the scientists knotted together, shaking her head vehemently. They said they were short but I don’t remember by how much. What the hell are we gonna use to finish the makeshift rope? Strip down to our underwear and climb– wait, that’s it.
“Hurry, we gotta drag some of the bodies in here! We need their clothes.”
Marty peers out the window before scowling at me, looking like he’s going to hurl. “Are you shitting me? We ain’t climbing down that. Have you ever tied your sheets together to sneak out of your room when you were grounded? Because I have. And I didn’t feel safe at fifteen feet, let alone fifteen thousand.”
“I’m definitely open to suggestions,” I shout, dragging a couple of beheaded corpses into the room, leftover from the last time we were here. “Those scientists tied the knots themselves, and they’ve gotta be the most anal people I’ve ever met. If they were gonna climb down, it’s probably safe for us.”
“See, it’s words like probably that worry me.” He takes the bodies so I can run back to help Sami and Felecia with theirs.
“Stop being such a pussy, old man!” Norwood grunts on his way by, a corpse over each shoulder. “It’s like repelling down a rock cliff. If we’ve got no other choice then… holy shit,” he trails off, taking a peek over the edge. “Noah, are you fucking insane? The bottom’s like a mile away. We’re gonna need oxygen tanks at this altitude.”
“If even his crazy ass thinks this is a bad idea, I don’t want to look out that window,” Neil grumbles, stopping to pick up a body. “Is it any wonder I didn’t want you in charge of the bus?”
“Neil!” Felecia screams at a glass breaking pitch. “Shut up and strip these things! I’m not exactly looking forward to this either but if you haven’t noticed, we’re out of options.”
I slam the door the second Maxwell is through, one headless body over her shoulder, one under her arm. They’re piling out of the dark tunnel, colliding with the ones climbing through the rafters who are crashing into the ones being corralled down the hallway. They’re coming from everywhere.
“We gotta block the door,” I shout to anyone who will listen, deadbolting it, knowing this puny lock won’t be nearly enough.
“Noah, help me tip the filing cabinet over,” Norwood says, already giving it his all, but barely making it sway. “This thing’s heavy as shit.”
The mob of infects slam against the door, shaking the entire wall as they fiddle with the handle, trying to pound their way inside. If they break that lock, I doubt anything’s going to stop them, even this beast. There are way too many, they’ll force their way right through.
It crashes to the floor with a thunderous bang. Followed by another bang. And another. It sounds almost like thunder. Or explosions.
“The turbines are starting to blow,” Maxwell says in a panic, tying knots in the clothes Sami and Felecia are stripping off the zombies. “Too many infects are falling in, the rotors are
getting jammed up. We gotta get outta here before this whole place starts breaking down. Our rope’s never gonna reach the bottom but there’s a shelf to the left, looks like some sort of retaining wall. If we can swing over to it, we can mountain goat our way down the rest of the ledge.”
“Mountain goat our way down?” Neil wheezes in that breathy whine of his that’s made me want to punch him since the first time we met.
“Shut up Neil!”
The sound of everyone screaming it at once forces his head to drop in shame, but at least he stopped talking.
I help Norwood heft the giant desk onto the filing cabinet, flipping it onto its side but that’s it, we’re out of furniture. How much good are a handful of ergonomic chairs gonna do? Damn this minimalism craze. We need bulky couches and extravagant bookcases, any and everything heavy. They could really use some weight benches in here, or a treadmill, no, a washer and dryer. There’s a fridge but it’s one of those tiny ones college kids fill with a couple six packs. We’ve got nothing of any substance.
“That’s all of them,” Maxwell says, tying off the last pair of pants and throwing the questionable rope out the window. “The pipe seems sturdy enough, but, guys, I don’t know about this. You’re sure there’s no other way outta here? That is a long way down.”
“I’ll go,” Sami says as the rest of us look around the room, grasping at straws for some other escape plan, maybe something that doesn’t involve dangling a few hundred feet over a rocky gorge. “I’m the lightest, maybe with my weight on it, it’ll help set the knots in place or something.”
“This is crazy,” Neil mutters. “I promised your mom I’d protect you, and letting you climb down that–”
“If you were so worried about protecting me, then you wouldn’t have tried to kill yourself.”
The rest of us stop and stare in shock.
“I’m eleven, I’m not stupid. I know what you were doing. And besides, I already did the airduct. I can do this too.”
Before anyone can stop her, she’s crawling through the window, as terrified as she is determined. The gentle breeze blows the flyaway hairs onto her sweaty brow, clinging to her saturated skin.
Where was Sami when this all started? We could have used someone like her on our team. I would have traded Darius for her in a heartbeat, or hell, any of the kids we left at the hospital. I wonder if they’ve figured out what’s going on yet.
The whole room stops breathing in unison as Sami lets go of the windowsill and begins shimmying her way down the long line of tightly tied clothing. How much weight is fabric meant to hold? I’ve never actually climbed down a sheet before, I wasn’t a bad kid, I didn’t do things to get myself grounded.
“I’m sorry for what I tried to do back there,” Neil says, quietly, staring at his feet. “I didn’t really think about it, I just, I don’t see the light anymore. I know how stupid that sounds, but I just don’t see the point in this. We’re not getting out of here alive.”
“Look here you little shit stain,” Marty says, trying to ignore the banging on the door, steadily growing louder, “we’ve been through our ups and downs. You are not the same kid who stepped on my bus Tuesday morning. You’re not. The point in all this is, you get to live. Look at all the little pissants who you came on my bus with, how many of them are still here?”
“Living meant something then, back when we thought we were going to an evacuation center. That there was still hope. That this could be fixed and everything could go back to normal.”
“It can,” Maxwell says with assurance in her hopeful tone. “There are refugee camps all over the world, America’s still fighting. The world’s still fighting. They’re going to rebuild. Things can go back to normal.”
“But not for us.” Neil’s tapping his foot so hard he’s going to drill a hole through the floor if he doesn’t slow down. “We can’t go back to normal because we’re stuck in this hellhole. If by some miracle we make it out of this dam, and all the way to the ocean, we’ll be trapped on a fucking island forever. You know damn well no one’s coming to rescue us.”
Maxwell drops her head because Neil’s right. Even if they rebuild this world, how long would it be before they sent a rescue mission out this far into the wasteland? And what are the odds they’d even find us? We don’t get to go back to normal, if we survive, the apocalypse is home now.
“She’s down,” Maxwell says, not bothering to dignify Neil’s statement with a response. “She’s on the retaining wall. Felecia, Noah, go. Look, that door’s not gonna hold, and if anyone’s gonna make it out of this alive, I’m seeing to it that it’s you two. You have something to live for. Go!”
“You’re lighter,” I say with a small nudge to Felecia’s back. “If it breaks on me, at least there’s a chance you’ve already made it down.”
“It’s not breaking.” She caresses my face before slinging her legs over the window frame. “You’re coming down with me, one, because this is your stupid plan to begin with, and two, if it breaks, we fall together. Which it won’t, because we’re making it to an island, I don’t care what it takes. Give me a second to get situated, then you come right behind me.”
She looks at me one last time, takes a deep breath, and disappears over the edge without waiting for a response. It’s not a question, she’s not giving me an option here, I’m going down right behind her. I can tell she wants to kiss me or say something, just in case, but there’s no time. The door isn’t going to hold. I can hear it splintering from across the room.
“You’re not coming, are you?” I ask, draping my trembling legs out the window.
No one says a thing. Marty’s just standing there, helping Norwood and Neil hold the barricade in place, like their added weight is making a bit of difference against a hallway full of rabid infects.
Maxwell’s eyes bounce back and forth between the guys and the window, trying to weigh a lifetime’s worth of options in a matter of seconds. “You’re sure an island will work?”
“Enough to risk my life for it. Guys, you’ve been through too much to let this be it. Look, I know life won’t be what it was, but we can make it something great. All we gotta do is get to the coast. Together, we can do this.”
Neil nods, there’s no assurance behind it, but he’s nodding at me. “I’ll make sure they don’t break through that door before you guys are safe, all of you.”
“That door is going to hold,” I command, like it’ll actually listen to me, watching as Felecia stares up at me with wide eyes, waiting. “I’ll see you guys at the bottom. We’ll try to find a way across the gorge.”
They all give me a salute as I lower myself over the edge of the world and hang onto the line of clothes for dear life. Why does this feel like the last time I’ll ever see them?
The wind whips around me as I begin my descent. It’s nothing more than a light breeze but up here, a few hundred feet over nothingness, it envelops me in its cold dampness. Beads of nervous sweat feel like they could turn to icicles now that the sun’s beginning to sink behind the mountains. How has an entire day passed since we left the hospital? I don’t know if it feels like hours or weeks, my body says months.
Every muscle aches and twitches as I wrap my hands around lab coats and curtains, needing more support than they’re offering. The daggers digging at the back of my eyes mean I’m beyond dehydrated, and hungry, sleep deprived. The adrenaline that’s kept me going full speed ahead for days now is running dry.
We barely eat, or rest. We mean to, but something always gets in the way. I don’t know how I’m still moving at this point. I doubt my own saliva is enough to keep me hydrated, not a scientist here but pretty sure it doesn’t work that way.
This somehow feels safer than what we’ve already done. When we were tight-roping across the top of the dam, a rope of clothing really would have put my mind at ease. I realize I’m dangling over a straight drop into a rocky gorge but something in me is broken, or fixed, or missing completely, I don’t know anymore.
Safety and danger have lost all meaning. That fight or flight instinct that exists in all of us has been reduced to nothing but a gray haze.
My sweaty palms glide over the knotted clothes so fast I feel like I’m freefalling, the cement wall offering just enough traction for my feet to find their place as we repel in unison. Our tandem movements have us bouncing off the wall at the same time, her just a few feet below me. I swear the whole rope is vibrating with our every synchronized heartbeat, fabric tearing ever so slightly, nearly giving me a panic attack every time, but it’s holding.
I’m going too fast to be scared. Ripping off the band-aid before you even count to three. We have to make it down because they have to make it down. All of th–
A loud blast rocks the dam, sending a barrage of dust and pebbles raining down on us. I have no choice but to close my eyes. What the hell is happening? What’s that rumble? What’s going on?
“Shit, Felecia, Noah, hurry! The dam broke!”
CHAPTER 11
The what? Oh you’ve gotta be shitting me. What does she mean the dam broke? How the hell does a dam just break?
I try to open my eyes but the dust is forcing them to well up. I can’t see a thing, everything’s blurry. Someone please explain why the whole dam is trembling. If I could just wipe my eyes, but I need both hands on the rope. I need to stop calling it a rope, that’s like calling two pieces of bread a sandwich. That is not a sandwich, and this is not a rope! And for some reason my fake sandwich rope won’t stop shaking.
Through sporadic blinks, I can make out Felecia below me, and I think Sami below that. It’s gotta be her. We’re not far, all we have to do is swing to the side and hit the retaining wall but I can’t look long enough to do it. I can’t keep them open. It feels like someone’s scrubbing my pupils with a dry toothbrush.
My eyelids slam shut involuntarily in painful bursts, trying to eradicate the foreign substance, but it’s not working. I swear individual grains of debris are sticking to the gooey film coating my eyeballs.
Blood Type Infected (Book 5): The Departed Page 6