“We’re rescued?” Melissa exclaimed happily, just arriving.
Scratchard sighed and ignored the question.
They arrived slowly, in ones and twos, each of them coming from the corners and patches of the top three floors that they’d staked out for themselves. By the time the distant sounds automatic gunfire started up, causing all heads to snap to attention, forty-six of them stood by the window.
“That came from the north!” Eva shouted.
“Can’t see it from here,” said a student. “Let’s all check out the north side windows. Maybe it’s the army!”
“Everybody stay where you are!” Scratchard shouted, and the entire room froze. “The gunfire has to be a diversion. Bullets are completely useless against these things, but the sound of gunfire is the only thing likely to draw away a group of creatures this size. The show is in this room, people, and we’re better off not spreading out for the moment.”
“What are you talking about?” Samuels boomed. “This is clearly a military operation. Gunfire can mean only one thing. Can’t you see? The creatures are under attack.”
Scratchard ignored the comment, watching through the clearing dust below as thousands of undead frantically scampered off in the direction of the gunfire. Nodding to himself, he waited until the square was all but empty.
“Interesting,” he muttered, as he saw a moving pile of garbage park itself as close to the building as the uneven, shattered ground would allow. The back swung open and dark figures in body armor and riot helmets, carrying assault rifles, darted out and raced toward the base of the building. In the distance, the sounds of automatic gunfire continued unabated.
He whirled away from the window and took ten steps until he stood before the closed doors of the freight elevator.
“The drones,” he said. “They were scouting us with the drones. They know all about us. Hah! Or at least, as much about us as they could find out by drone. Why would the undead bother with drones? They’re too small to contain humans, after all. They’re the perfect little spy plane.”
He pointed at the lit plate above the elevator doors.
“Look!” he said.
The floor numbers were lighting up, indicating that the elevator was ascending.
“Oh god,” someone sobbed. “The zombies are in the elevator.”
Scratchard exhaled in disgust, shaking his head.
“Zombies don’t use elevators, stupid,” someone else said.
“How do you know?”
“Shouldn’t we take cover? Just in case?”
“Everyone Be Quiet!” Professor Samuels thundered.
“Thank you, Samuels,” Scratchard said. “It seems there are indeed advantages to being a blowhard.”
“The Hell with you, Scratchard!”
“Boys, boys, please,” Eva said loudly. “We’re about to have guests.”
There was a tense silence followed by a bell ring. The elevator doors slid open, and six people dressed in military gear jumped into the room.
“Everybody down!”
Everyone except Eva and Scratchard hit the floor.
The first of the intruders, the one who’d shouted, turned his gun on the two of them.
“Didn’t you hear me, losers? On the ground! Now!”
The other gun-toting paramilitaries spread out through the floor.
“For God’s sake, Scratchard,” bellowed Samuels desperately. “Get on the ground!”
“This is stupid,” Eva muttered.
“Yes, it is,” Scratchard agreed, stepping on a cigarette and calmly lighting up another. With the barrel of a gun menacing his face, he took two puffs and said with a look of irritation, “Look. Do we really have time for any of this?”
“Stand down, Private T-Bone,” came a woman’s voice.
The man in front of Scratchard trembled for a second, and then lowered his weapon in disgust.
“Yes, Ma’am!” he shouted back.
“Radio the Captain that we’ve found the refugees,” the woman said, tearing off her mask. Scratchard was astonished to see the face of a beautiful, young woman underneath.
“You’re right, sir,” she told Scratchard. “We don’t have much time. Their guns aren’t loaded. They were supposed to encourage quick cooperation. My gun, on the other hand, is fully loaded. My name is Kristine Richardson, and we’re here to get you and your people out of here if we can. Further explanation will have to wait if you want to stay alive. First order of business: how many of you are there?”
“Forty-six,” Scratchard replied promptly.
“Forty-six,” another masked man shouted, shifting angrily. “There’s no way we can handle that many. Forty-six? How the fuck-”
“Shut it, Private Brooks,” Krissy snapped. “We’re taking everyone. Just radio ahead and let Kumar and the Captain know, all right? Getting cover for the evacuees is their problem, not ours, understand? Sir. Are all of you in this room?”
“As far as we know,” Scratchard said, “everyone is accounted for.”
“Well,” Krissy muttered. “At least that helps. It also helps that you have a working elevator. We weren’t expecting that and almost missed it.”
“You’re welcome,” Scratchard said.
“Vito. Tyler. Ramirez,” the woman shouted. “Start getting them into groups of ten and we’ll take them down one group at a time. Brock. You go first and get them running to the safe point down the street. Joan. You’ll lead the second group.”
“What? In the open?”
“You said it yourself,” Krissy answered. “We can’t fit everyone into Crapmobile, so we’ll just have to trust that Albert, Brian, Kumar, and Steve can continue to divert any stragglers with drone support. One thing is for certain. If we don’t get these people out of here before the Swarm takes out our automated assault rifles, we’re sunk. Marshal always warned us against trying to use our tricks to fool a Swarm.”
The man she was talking to exhaled in a pissed-off hiss.
“Brock! Speed is our only hope now.”
“Right,” he answered, seeming to come to a decision. Springing into action, he moved through the crowd, tapping shoulders with his gun. “You! You, you, and you! And you… you… and-”
“Me!” Eva interrupted, stepping in front of Brock. “Take me on this first run, and I’ll help you keep this first group focused. The rest will be prepped but you’ll need my help.”
“Do it, Brock,” Krissy said.
“It’s your funeral, lady. Come on, then. You two also. Everybody I’ve tapped, follow me. You will obey my orders. You will not deviate, or you will be eaten. Am I making myself clear?”
“Oh dear God,” Samuels exclaimed, scrambling to his feet.
“Just stick close, fatboy,” Brock said, “and we’ll be fine. I promise.”
The group crowded into the elevator, and the door closed.
“Captain says they can be ready for all forty-six, Kris,” T-Bone reported. “He’s down off the tower and back in the garbage tent already. Moves pretty fast for a half lame bastard, doesn’t he?”
“Do I have time to bring our research?” Scratchard asked suddenly through a cloud of cigarette smoke.
“Research?” Krissy asked.
“Oh yes,” Scratchard answered. “After all, we are researchers. Well. Most of us are. And there really hasn’t been all that much else for us to do for the last seven weeks. Not that we were able to accomplish a great deal, of course, but what we have learned is all stored on my hard drive. Do I have time to go and get it?”
Krissy examined the crowd. “I suppose so. Just the information, mind you. We’ll be moving fast and we already have everything you’d need to hook it up. Out of curiosity, what have you found out?”
“Very little, I’m afraid,” Scratchard admitted. “But what we have learned is quite extraordinary. It was the dust, you see. Little particulates of the creatures’ tissue – too small to represent any kind of sentient threat – could be found clinging to the o
dd mote of dust. Almost microbial in size, but definitely not any bigger. In fact, anything larger than the head of a pin represents a potential danger.”
“A pin? That small?”
Scratchard smiled. “You bet your life. It is quite possibly the most dangerous thing in the universe, Christine, ‘universe’ being the operative word. It is sentient, and it is evolved. Most of all, however, it is extra-terrestrial in origin, and it is colonizing our world.”
Kristine stared at him, but could think of nothing else to say.
Chapter Twenty-Six: Day 52: Hostile Takeover
Angie’s heart thumped in her chest when she saw the remains of Shitbox.
The great beast lay on its side, with the support ribs exposed and the canvas camouflage cover torn apart. It looked as if it had been attacked from several different directions at once, leaving the scattered parts and wiring exposed to the open air.
Tears came to her eyes as she approached the wreck.
It would have to be reported, if that even mattered now. Marshal and Uncle Luca were dead, and the world was full of strangers again. Okay. Jackie was a friend. And Albert and Kumar. But back when she had thought she was all alone, after her mom and dad were killed, it was Marshal who had saved her, taken her into his home, and made her feel important again. And Uncle Luca too, the way he could make her laugh, and the solid warmth of his torso when she hugged him made her feel safe. Both of them were special, and had come to take the place of the family she had lost.
A lump in her throat forced her to try to think of something else, even as the tears streamed down her face. The wreck now lay before her at her feet.
There were no bodies and no blood. Of course, there never were.
Through her grief, a thought occurred to her. Could anyone have escaped?
It was long odds, but the chance of being caught during an attack inside a Crapmobile was one of the things that had haunted Marshal. Back in the beginning, when it had just been her and Marshal, he’d worried about that possibility, so that later, when he and Uncle Luca had designed the more advanced version, he’d built in all sorts of contingencies. There always had to be camouflage blankets on hand, for example, close at hand and easy to access. And at Angie’s insistence, they’d added a container of stinky liquid, the ammonia mixture that Marshal cooked up. Given enough time, it was believed, the occupants could cover up, lie very still, and hope to stay invisible amid all the wreckage.
At the time, Angie could only approve. She didn’t need such precautions, of course. Her own ‘garbage dress’ was a masterpiece of obfuscation, well scented and very deformed. She’d decorated it with all sorts of non-clinking, aberrant attachments that disguised her human shape, and she had worked on improving it constantly. When she moved, it was hard for the undead to even perceive her as a human shape, but when she crouched down, she was indistinguishable from a tiny pile of windswept trash. Even regular humans had trouble picking her out.
Her heart skipped a beat with excitement as she searched the wreckage.
The bottle containing the noxious liquid was half-empty, and judging from the horrible smell all over the debris, it had gotten plenty of use. Also, the camouflage blankets were all missing. Somebody had definitely had the opportunity to escape before the end came.
She wiped her cheeks and contained her hope. It was something, but it wasn’t proof yet. They could have survived only to be dragged down several meters from the wreckage.
She searched the ground for tracks, looking for clues but found none on the hard, asphalt surface. No sign of an escape, nor of an attack. She continued searching.
It was almost two hours, and several harrowing encounters with restless undead, before she found what could possibly have been a trail. Angie had no delusions. Other than observations made from her treasured fantasy television and literary genres, she wasn’t any more of a tracker than Uncle Luca was a ballerina. But after a long and patient search, she discovered what looked like footprints in the mud just off to the eastern side of the street. They looked fairly new, and lacked the sloppy, toe-dragging shuffle of the undead in search mode, and they led off in the direction of the Don Valley.
Angie frowned, considering. The Don Valley was a sort of non-industrialized, semi-wilderness that ran down the center of Toronto, following the Don River. She didn’t know much about it except that the Don Valley Parkway ran down through it, and that there were a number of very big bridges from major streets that crossed it. There were large portions of it that remained undeveloped, and other parts, like golf courses, public parks and boulevards, that were.
Could they have escaped into hiding down there?
She set her jaw and started forward. If they were down there, instead of making their way home, then it was because they were in trouble. If that was true, then they would need her help.
I’m coming, guys.
Valerie Hunter felt like she was carrying the world on her shoulders as she pushed the button to return the skid-lift to its closed position.
Originally, it had been Marshal’s charm, alongside the fact that he was a well-intentioned man in way over his head, which had inspired her to offer assistance. In the aftermath of the outbreak, with everyone she had ever known dead (or worse), working alongside a man like Marshal to help make the world a better place had seemed like a good way to direct her energy. After all, it didn’t take a genius to see that humanity was in trouble, and that if there was going to be a future, then Marshal and Luca were probably the horses to bet on. Her organizational skills would be a benefit, while her brassy nature, spectacular good looks, and monumental humility were just icing on the cake.
Besides, it had gained her unquestioned dominion over a room in the nicest habitat in the entire, post-apocalyptic wasteland. Not a bad perk, all things considered.
So how had she wound up running the whole damn thing?
It wasn’t that she felt unequal to the task. Valerie always operated on the not entirely untrue notion that she controlled virtually every situation she’d ever been in anyway. She’d worked for some of the most powerful people in the country, and it was her ability to rule their empires on a day-to-day basis that enabled them to rule the world. They might make the decisions, but it had been her job to warn them if they were about to make a mistake. She was the one who wrote up the marching orders, arranged all the meetings, prepped all the clients, and more-or-less shifted the gears in the engines of power.
Now she worked for Marshal, and things were unchanged. Marshal was still choosing the direction, but lately, it had been Valerie sailing the ship.
And now Marshal was gone, probably forever, along with his first officer and two valuable citizens. In their absence, real questions as to her right to be in charge – especially from some of the newcomers – had started to arise. In her corner were all her friends, which included the people that Marshal had elevated into positions of authority. These were the people who had heard the same message of the future that she had, the same people who had come to believe in Marshal just as deeply as she. These were the people who saw her as the proper steward of that vision, anointed by Marshal himself, and were prepared to follow her on that basis.
The newcomers, on the other hand, had arrived into a world of shortages and temporary misery. With over a hundred people now, there simply weren’t enough resources to go around anymore. Even with Crapmobile in constant use, freighting in supplies to feed, clothe, and house the flood of people, shortages were becoming a daily problem. Unlike the early days, when newcomers were treated to a hot shower, a hot meal, and a comfortable mattress, many were now forced to huddle like refugees on patches of the upper floors in First Canadian Place, exposed to the increasingly cold winds of autumn, waiting for promises that would be long in coming. Mattresses, blankets, propane barbecues, and other helpful items were being shipped in as fast as possible, but the shortages continued.
For his part, Captain Vandermeer had organized his army to produce ‘man-powered�
� versions of Crapmobile similar to Marshal’s earliest model. While slower, less maneuverable, and less capable of handling heavy weight, it had served to alleviate some of the demand on Crapmobile. Extra food and medicine was pouring in again. Valerie had immediately set Brad and Steve on building more models from the parts in Luca’s shop.
The New Toronto Army, comprised of former overseers from the slaughterhouse as well as, surprisingly, a few of their victims along with a sprinkling of students from the university, was proving to be a major asset to the community. They numbered fifteen now and called themselves the Winter Bastards, after Marshal’s alleged reputation as the son of a hitman called Dr. Winter. Marshal’s plan to force the former criminals to convert their bad image was paying off in spades. The Bastards had yet to be forgiven by their former victims but, with each new life-risking deployment on behalf of the community, there was a grudging acceptance that they were at least paying their debt. Many of the university students viewed them as heroes for their daring rescue at the McLennan building, and while that illusion was quickly banished by stories told by the slaughterhouse survivors, it still proved a difficult image to shake.
Another piece of good news was the disappearance of the zombie Frank. The especially large and troublesome zombie had, according to Marshal, haunted the streets outside his apartment since the first day of the outbreak. Recently, however, Frank had disappeared, leaving the ISU-monitored streets surrounding the apartment all but empty. Indeed, Kumar, Albert, and a healthy slaughterhouse survivor called Annie had been making a practice of luring undead out of the neighborhood using Marshal’s network of tablet-supported speakers. With the disappearance of Frank, it was now possible to walk from the apartment all the way to Luca’s auto yard without fear of discovery by zombies. The area surrounding the apartment had been, for all intents and purposes, purged of undead presence.
From Oblivion's Ashes Page 56