by Mark Clodi
Turning his back on the camera Ned raised his pistol at the shuffling mob and began firing into it. He gave commentary while reloading and warned common citizens not to approach any of the diseased and that the disease was, as far as they knew spread through biting and blood, so avoid getting bit at all costs. Just when it appeared that the mob was going to get him Ned said into his mic, "Jim, I am going to send it back to you now as we have to get out of here, stay safe!"
Newswoman Diane, noticeably paler, said, "Thanks Ned, don't take any chances!" Dora smiled a bit, there had been rumors for years that Diane and Ned had been having a torrid love affair. "Jim, you have a new statement by the governor?"
"Indeed I do, the situation is very fluid right now. The governor has declared martial law and is ordering all able bodied citizens to arm themselves and patrol their neighborhoods, but warns that violence against uninfected will be treated as assault, manslaughter or murder as determined after this emergency is over." Jim looked into the camera pleadingly, "Please people do not take advantage of these horrible circumstances to break the law in any way. We need to pull together if we all want to live. The governor has called upon all citizens with military training to report to Kauffman Stadium to parking lots M, H and J for redeployment."
Jim looked down at the monitor built into his news desk, "This just in, Denver has fallen and I…this can't be…" Jim stared at the page in his hand for a moment, before looking back into the camera, "This…there…have been. This is confirmed…portions of Denver, Colorado have been bombed with nuclear weapons in an effort to stem the tide of diseased. This, of course, is a follow up to this morning's news about a nuclear bomb being used in Denver. It has now been officially confirmed. No word yet on how effective that strike was or on our forces losses."
The studio went silent, after a moment Jim continued, "The Federal Government has issued a statement saying they will cooperate with local authorities to help eradicate any and all threats brought on by the current outbreak. This aid will include the use of any and all force necessary as deemed by the people on the ground. Yesterday a strike force tried to make it into the heart of the city of Denver and was eradicated, almost to the last soldier, these brave men were able to pinpoint the greatest concentration of diseased and relay the coordinates to other members of their team waiting with the weapons. The president authorized the use of a weapon strike at the coordinates upon a request by the governor of Colorado. The soldiers may have been caught in the blast or killed by the infected. They did not make it out of Denver. The Federal government is now evaluating the success of the strike and will use this infor-"
The small television cut out, a blaze of static washed across the screen and Dora was left staring at the other two. Her new best friends named Paige and Mike.
Chapter 5
"Now what do we do?" Dora asked expecting Paige to come up with an answer.
"Stay here and hide?" Paige suggested, seconded by Mike's eager nodding.
"Hide? Don't you have friends or family to check on?" asked Dora.
Mike held up his cell phone, "I can call them, tell them to stay inside."
Paige seconded that notion, "Yeah, if we hold up here for a while, maybe the guard will get things under control and it will be safe to go out again. You heard the governor, unless you have military training just stay put."
Out in front of the restaurant there was the sound of more breaking glass. Looking around worriedly, Dora asked, "Are there any weapons in here?"
Paige favored her with a pained look, "Why would we want our employees to bring weapons to work? No, we have nothing, maybe we could make clubs?"
"Not even knives?"
"We have some box cutters, nothing else, everything comes pre-packaged, it's not like we do more than warm the food up here."
Dora nodded to that, "Yeah welcome to modern eating, I guess." Looking around the office and trying not to jump as even more shattered glass noise came from the front of the restaurant, Dora said, "No windows in here either, where does that vent go?" She pointed to a large vent set up high in the corner of the office wall.
"How should we know? To the furnace? I'm not a plumber."
Mike shook his head too; he was looking at the shelves along the wall. He was looking at the corner of the shelves that had been propped up with a post. It was a makeshift job with the shelves awkwardly drilled into the post at the edges. Following his gaze Dora said, "Yeah getting hit with that would suck, it's really long though. Can we get it down?"
"Tear it down you mean? No way, the manager will have a fit." protested Paige.
"I thought you were the manager?"
"Well I am the manager on duty, but I'm just an assistant manager, I told you Tom is in Vegas."
"So if we have to defend ourselves against one these zombie-guys what do we use? Your good looks and Mike's endless wisdom?"
"Ouch." said Paige completely not offended, she had realized she was no beauty long ago, "That hurts. I'll grab the pole myself if something tried to break in here. Until then let's try not to take the place apart okay?"
A loud thump sounded against the office door. Paige sighed wistfully then shrugged her shoulders and tried to wrench the pole away from the shelves. The shelving was attached firmly to the pole and to the wall, after three sharp tugs it pulled away from the wall and all of the training manuals and books came crashing down in such an avalanche of debris that Paige stumbled and fell over on top of them.
"Shit!" Paige yelped as she fell, a couple more books piled on top of her, followed by a couple of men's magazines from top shelf. Dora was up and knocking aside some of the books as they fell and managed to catch one of the wooden shelves, stopping it just as it touched Paige's back. Mike leaned over and brushed other books and binders away from Paige, his eyes on the men's magazines, which had spilled open revealing a titillating scene of two lonely farm girls in a hayloft. After tossing the shelf aside Dora looked at Mike looking at the magazines, then Mike looked at Dora and blushed, they both stopped working. Paige continued struggling and her muffled voice said, "A little help here?"
They pulled her out of the rest of the books, which settled into an unstable pile. Another loud bang hit the door causing all three to jump in unison. Dora let out a frightened laugh and all three of them reached for the pole, which still had two shelves screwed to it.
"Dibs!" cried Paige, as Mike knocked the shelves off the end of it.
"Dibs? Dibs? Who says that? You're calling dibs on our only weapon?" asked Dora.
"I'm the manager, I made the mess, I get the club."
Disgustedly Dora surrendered her hold on it with bad grace, "Fine! I hope you use it and don't choke when it comes time to hit things."
Another thump sounded on the metal door, the frosted glass rattled a little in its frame.
"Uh, this thing will hold right?"
"Dora, this whole experience would go better if you only asked us questions we can answer. Do we look like we built the place? No. We only prepare and serve food here. The door looks solid to me, it should hold, what do you think?"
Dora started thinking, her first instinct was to lash out at the overweight, sarcastic woman, hurt her how she knew she could, she had to stifle that urge. Too many things had changed in too short a time and there was this small inkling of an idea that maybe, just maybe Paige was right. Nodding, she answered more truthfully than she intended. "Sorry, I'm nervous." she let out a short laugh, "Who wouldn't be. I'll try to stop asking dumb questions."
Paige just nodded once, a short, curt nod that indicated she understood.
"So what do we do?" asked Mike, still eying the porn magazines, which had fallen behind Paige.
"Well I don't know about you two, but I'm going to explore that vent before the door banger gets in here." Dora crawled up onto the desk, which was an ancient metal beast that the office was seemingly built around. Paige didn't protest, but did eye the vent warily, comparing her ample circumference with the size of the
grate.
"I don't think I will fit." she said finally.
Dora, now on the desk, looked down at her and said, "You'll fit, you have to, you have the stick of power. Not to mention, I should have asked, but one of you has a car right?"
They both nodded. "Good." Dora responded, "You two need to decide if we are taking both of your vehicles or just one. I am going to get this grate off and see where it goes." Another loud thump shook the door, this time a crack appeared in the lower corner of the glass. "I guess I better hurry!"
Looking at the grate she saw it was screwed on, Dora hopped down from the desk and motioned for Mike to get up there instead. "It's screwed on, you can unscrew it right?"
Mike looked at her with disbelief, "Well, uh, with what?"
"Well don't you have a screw driver or something? Men always have those, those things in their pants to unscrew stuff."
From his position on the desk Mike actually checked his pockets, and finally shook his head. Paige pulled up the drawers of the desk and came up with a small plastic case, which she opened and took out a screwdriver. Handing it to Mike she tried not to jump when the door was hit again.
"He's just a kid really, why would he have a screwdriver on him?" Paige asked Dora.
Shrugging her shoulders Dora said, "Well he's a guy, they have screwdrivers and know how to do those guy things."
"Like unscrew a screw?"
"Sure."
Paige shook her head, "You don't unscrew things then?"
Smiling Dora said, "Nope."
"What about the reverse?" Paige muttered under her breath.
"What's that? You have to speak louder if you want me to hear you." looking at Mike she said, "Is it off yet?"
Mike had been standing on the desk watching the exchange and he immediately turned and started unscrewing the two small fasteners holding the grate on. He handed it down to Dora who, finding it unworthy of use as a weapon, propped it up against the door. It promptly slid to the floor as the bottom of the door was kicked fiercely from the outside.
"You going in or are you going to stand there?" asked Dora.
"I don't see where it goes, it's dark."
"Oh for christsake! Let me up there. As she joined him on the top of the desk Paige handed her a flashlight, also taken from the drawer, it cast a thin, weak beam, but it was good enough to light up the interior of the venting. The office was at the back of the building and the venting appeared to run straight for fifteen feet then turn upwards at a ninety degree angle. It widened right away, because it split, with half going into the office and the other half continuing on to the kitchen. Turning back to look at Paige, Dora said "Hey you're in luck, the thing gets wide right away, even you will fit. Mike could probably do sit ups in there. I mean, it's big!"
Paige gave an exasperated look to Mike as Dora turned back around and tried to get up into the vent. "Hey Mike a push here? Lift my foot up."
Mike pushed her foot up and Dora scrambled into the vent, it was a wide fit and she was easily able to crawl along to the point where it turned upwards, standing up on the thin metal made a great gonging sound and for a second Dora thought she was going to fall through the vent into whatever room was below her, but it only bent a few inches then held her weight. She poked her head at the end of the vent, which was about a foot above her head, it looked, she thought, like one of those furnace filters, only it was all brown, she touched it and released a cloud of dirt and dust on top of herself. She let out a scream and pulled back away from it coughing and mad as she retreated into the vent.
"What is it?" Mike yelled seeing her crawling back.
"It's…It's…DIRT! All dirty and doesn't go anywhere anyway, now I am just dirty and trapped."
Mike helped her out of the vent and Dora plopped down on the desktop with an exasperated look. "I thought vents always led to a way out?"
"You sure it's a dead end?" asked Paige, Mike was already trying to get into the vent.
"Yeah, go look for yourself if you don't believe me, you'll just get dirty." Dora said. Once Mike was in Dora handed him the flashlight and he took off down the ducting. Dora, watching his scrawny backside was mortified that the duct work didn't give under his weight nearly as much as it had when she was in there. 'I don't weigh more than a punk assed kid, do I?'
Mike got to the filter and poked it tentatively with the screwdriver, which he had also brought along. He managed to get a hole through the filter and could not see anything beyond with the weak light from the small flashlight. He couldn't see any way to get the filter out of the way, aside from tearing it apart. Still not sure if he should he was just getting ready to head back down into the office, when he was struck by the idea that the filter probably was slid in from the side. He stuck the screwdriver back into the hole he made and tried pushing the filter sideways, the first direction he tried worked. He heard a clatter as the cap on the filter fell off on the outside and was rewarded with a thin sliver of light, through which he could see the flat top of the roof.
"I can see the rooftop!" he yelled back down the vent.
"Yeah, but can we get out that way?" Dora called back.
"I think I can force the metal apart, it's not that strong."
Dora looked at Paige and raised a questioning eyebrow. Paige nodded and yelled, "You better do it!"
The pounding on the door was growing in intensity; part of the safety glass was shattered near the bottom. However there were thin wires running through it that held the glass in place. While Mike was pounding on the metal above them Paige bent over and peered out through the small cracks in the glass.
"It's them." she whispered to Dora, who was still on the desk.
"Them who?" Dora asked loudly.
"Shh! It's the infected, the zombies."
Shaking her head sadly Dora said, "Oh? I thought maybe it was one of your missing employees wanting to talk to us. Of course it's them, you stupid girl! Don't 'shush' me either and don't whisper, I think they know we are here. Now get up here and let's see if we can stuff you into this vent."
Paige flashed Dora a brief angry look and climbed up onto the desk. Despite Dora's comments and Paige's own image of herself as being fat, she was not so large that she couldn't squeeze through the vent into the shaft beyond. Her hips, which were ample, fit with nary a squeeze and she was soon at Mike's feet while he pressed the sides of the vent outwards in a bid to escape. She had managed to keep hold of her stick through the process too and it lay at her side on the floor of the vent.
Chapter 6
Mike was having a tough time with the sheet metal. At first he thought he could force it open easily at the seam along one corner, but that was proving hard to do. The venting pierced the roof at this point and that was having a considerable effect on his ability to force the sides apart. In fact he was not so sure he could get out now. He tried pushing the screw driver through the metal and it went through easily, he then made a line of punctures to find out where the roof was and where the venting was above the roof. Then he had the bright idea to use the screwdriver to pry the slot the filter had slid out of to make it wider, so at least he would have more light. While doing so he started sweating and on one particularly hard jerk downwards the screwdriver slipped from his grasp, flicked upwards just so and toppled through the enlarged opening out onto the rooftop.
Dora hopped off the desk back in the office, she was certain she could get up through the vent, now that Paige was gone and wouldn't see her stepping on top of a filing cabinet to do so. Creeping towards the door she looked through the cracked glass and couldn't see much of anything, it looked like a man's shirt. As he backed away for another swing she saw that it was indeed a man. Someone dressed in a business suit who looked like father time had kicked the living shit out of him. He was an African American male wrinkled down to a small prune sized shadow of his former glory. Probably he weighed less than Dora did. She wondered if being infected made him look like that, then shook her head, even viewing them on the s
mall television the ones Ned had been fighting didn't look all old and wrinkly.
The old man hit the door again and Dora noticed more movement in the hallway, another zombie was there, a woman who made Paige look anorexic. This one was apparently a naturalist as she didn't have a stitch of clothing on. Her skin was an even pale white color, except for her slightly tanned face and arms. Dora couldn't see her feet, but seeing the woman's massive buttocks turned towards her elicited a groan of disgust from her mouth before she could stop herself. The woman had a huge mole on her ass; it was so large that it was probably cancerous.
'Why didn't people take care of shit like that?' she asked herself. Upon hearing her moan both zombies, who had slacked off a bit, turned back towards the door and started pounding it again, giving Dora an extreme close up of the fat woman's sagging belly, which was low enough down to hide her brown pubic hair.
"Ugh! Fat swirls! Damn that's ugly." she said out loud.
The door suffered a few more heavy hits, ratting in its frame. Looking at the door, Dora didn't think she had anything to worry about; it was metal and strong enough to keep anything they could throw at it out.
"The idiots, this door is way stronger than the wall, if they started smashing that we would be in trouble." she clapped her hands over her mouth as the pounding on the door stopped. Then, unmistakably, something hit the wall to the right side of the door.
Dora backed up until her butt hit the desk. "Oh shit. They did not just hear that. No, no, no, no!"
The wall took another couple of hits and Dora heard a tearing crumbling sound, then another hit sounded louder and the wall on her side bulged inwards. "Fuck!" she spat out. Bending over she picked up the vent grate from where it was on the floor, determined to wedge it into the duct to hide her retreat. Climbing on the desk she looked down for something to wedge the grate into place. Tape, a stapler, anything to try and attach the grating to the wall after her. Her eyes came to rest on the faded, plastic tool box. It was like a book, with molded plastic holding the various tools in place and one 'page' between the covers, she flipped the middle section over to see what was on the other side, a small cheap looking hammer and various pieces of general use hardware in plastic bins. There was a round slot that Dora recognized had probably held duct tape at one time, however it was empty.