by Rich Baker
He sprints to the kitchen, with number three back to its feet and limping after him. He grabs the skillet off of his stove and brings it down on the things head. Bone crunches, but the creature doesn’t go down. He swings the other direction, bringing the pan up, connecting with and breaking the jaw. Its head snaps back, and D-Day kicks it in the chest, buying himself some space. He skitters past it, back to the entryway, and retrieves his pistol. He drops the empty magazine, racks the slide on a fresh one and puts a bullet in the head of number three just as it was gaining momentum back toward him.
Now that he has a moment to breathe, he recognizes one the zombies as the blonde man who wanted one of D-Day’s guns, his yellow hair streaked with blood, long deep scratches on his face. Part of his nose and upper lip are missing.
He looks around his apartment and sees blood everywhere in the entryway, on the wall, and onto the ceiling. Blondie must have come here for D-Day’s guns when Melissa released the dead into the building, and they got him right here in the doorway. He spies one of the master keys that he gave to the supply gathering crew laying near the couch, also covered with blood. It was all for nothing. D-Day’s guns are all locked in a safe in his closet.
Pounding on the door brings D-Day back to the present, and he knows he needs to get moving. The door won’t hold forever, but he can buy some time. He grabs his security bar from the closet and puts the Y-shaped end around the doorknob, then jams the inch-long spikes on the other end through the carpet and into the floorboard. When he releases it, the end around the doorknob is loose, but if the door pushes open, it will wedge the other end of the bar even tighter into the floor. It’s a simple yet effective device and well worth the $29.99 he spent on it, especially now.
Satisfied that the door is as secure as it can be, he heads to his bedroom. He double checks the bathroom and under the bed to ensure he’s not surprised by any other members of the undead. He’s truly alone in the apartment, so he goes to the closet, opens the door and keys the code into his gun safe.
The motor whirrs as the bolts withdraw, and he pulls the safe door open. He grabs a big duffel bag and puts two of his green metal cans of .223 ammunition in it. He pauses and puts several boxes of 12-gauge shotgun shells inside, as well as extra cargo pants, shirts, socks, and boxer shorts. He grabs his travel kit from the bathroom and tosses it on top. He picks it up to feel its weight; it must be seventy-five pounds. He doesn’t want to risk putting more in the bag, even though it’s made to hold more. He zips it closed and sets it aside.
He picks up his backpack, which is already packed with essentials for a hasty exit and straps his 12-gauge shotgun to the side of it. The old pump action Winchester Ranger has been modified with a folding stock and a thirteen-inch barrel, so with the stock folded it’s just over twenty-two inches long and easily secured to his bag. He grabs the duffel, takes them to the living room, and sets them down by the middle window. He takes a minute and does a loop through the kitchen, grabbing some canned food and a few bottles of water. He tops off the backpack with these sundries and returns to the bedroom to grab the bag that Carmen brought. It’s a lightweight bag, with thin nylon sides and weak stitching. He grabs another bag from his closet and transfers her stuff – a couple of pairs of shorts, shirts, socks and several more pairs of underwear - into it. There are another pistol and holster in the gun safe, and he puts them in the bag, along with several boxes of ammunition and extra magazines for the .40 pistol. While he’s thinking of it, he reloads the magazines for the pistol he’s carrying.
Lastly, he takes a rifle from the safe. It’s another AR-15, configured in a similar fashion as the one he left with Carmen. He reaches into the safe and grabs two suppressors – one for the rifle and one for the second pistol. He grabs a second tactical vest from the closet, this one black instead of the tan color he’s wearing, and puts the last AR magazines in its pouches before stuffing it into the bag. He closes and locks the safe out of habit, zips the bag shut and deposits it next to the others in the living room.
Next, he grabs a hammer and a center punch from his tool box. He places the punch in the center of the window and with one whack the window shatters, held in place by the laminate that glues the two panes of glass together. He flips the hammer around and uses the claws to clear a hole large enough to get the punch in contact with the second pane. Another whack and the second pane shatters. He uses a screwdriver to work the edges loose, and with a few helpful smacks from the hammer, the window breaks free and somersaults its way to the pavement below. The undead on the street are drawn to the commotion and gather around the spot where the eight-foot by five-foot section of glass landed.
D-Day grabs one of the ropes and pulls it up until he has the end of it, which he threads through the handles of the two duffel bags. Combined they weigh more than one hundred pounds, but he doesn’t want to waste time sending them down individually. Once he’s satisfied he’s tied a knot that is not going to come undone, he grabs the second rope and clips it into his harness like he’s going to begin his rappel, and ties it off, so it’s locked. This way if something happens and the heavy duffels pull him out of the building he won’t fall to his death.
He loops the rope once around his gloved hand and begins lowering the bags, loosening his grip to let more rope go, peeking over the edge to gauge how far he’s lowered them. He sees Carmen’s dark arms reach out of the window thirty feet below him, and as he feels her pull on them, he lets more rope feed through. When the rope goes slack, he waits, watching. From this angle, he can’t see the into the window, though his head is far enough out of the building that he can see where the glass is missing. A few seconds later Carmen sticks her head out of the opening, looking up. She smiles when she sees D-Day and gives him a thumbs-up.
He releases the rope, and as she casts it out of the apartment below it drifts back to the window to his right. He takes one last look around the apartment, and, satisfied that he has everything they’re going to need, he shoulders the backpack, grunting a little under its weight, slings the rifle and readies for the descent to the seventh floor.
It only takes him a minute to get down to their new apartment. He takes a couple of sideways steps and pushes back from the building, giving him enough momentum to swing into the apartment where Carmen waits for him. He releases enough rope to get his feet onto the carpet, takes a couple of steps and releases the rope altogether. He slips the backpack off, then steps out of the harness. Carmen grabs him and starts to come in for a kiss when she notices the black blood on his clothes.
“What happened?” she asks. “Did they get into the stairwell?”
“No, they were in my apartment. I think Blondie let them in. He was one of them.”
“Holy shit! Are you okay?” She starts looking him over, checking for scratches or bites.
“I’m good, Carmen. I’d be turning by now if I wasn’t.”
He goes to the bedroom, strips, and gets in the shower. While he does that, Carmen throws his clothes in the washer. She pauses for a moment, and strips out of hers and throws them in too.
She joins D-Day in the shower but is too drained to make love. After toweling off, they put on fresh underwear, and Carmen puts on a t-shirt. The supply gathering team hadn’t searched this apartment yet, so they find cold cuts and bread in the kitchen. They fix sandwiches and eat in the living room, watching the world through the broken window.
The sun is dipping low over the mountains. Smoke from the many fires burning through the Denver Metro area is thick in the air, so the sunlight is already being filtered to a deep bloody red hue, making for an early sunset.
After eating, D-Day gets dressed and makes another trip to the roof. He retrieves the two ropes and takes them back to the apartment.
“You never know when we might need them,” he explains. Carmen nods, but he can tell her mind is somewhere else. They push the loveseat and chair in front of the apartment door and turn the couch, so it looks out the window onto Park Avenue. Carmen
stretches out, her head in his lap, and falls asleep. He uses a monocular from his backpack to scan the road outside. Carmen was right; it does look impassible. Cars have piled into each other, and everywhere there was a small gap someone has tried to force their way through, only to get wedged. In the dim light he can see several silhouettes of people in the cars, thrashing, no doubt turned to zombies and held in place by their seatbelts. People have even tried taking their cars onto the sidewalks, jamming up against the buildings and the potted trees.
He carefully gets up, trying not to disturb Carmen, and walks to the edge of the open window. He looks through his scope, peering as far down Park Avenue as he can. A couple of blocks away, past Tremont Street, things appear to thin out. Park is going to be the nearest entry onto I-25. D-Day’s plan, if they need it, is to get to I-25 and go north in the southbound lanes. The high-occupancy vehicle or HOV, lanes separate the north and southbound lanes of the interstate with cement K-rails on either side, so no one in the northbound lanes would be able to get to the southbound lanes once the northbound traffic got snarled. Traffic in the southbound lanes should be less jammed up, because who in their right mind would be trying to get INTO the metro area during the apocalypse? He makes a mental map of how he thinks they can get there.
Carmen starts to stir, so he puts the monocular back into his bag, scoops her from the couch and carries her to the bedroom. She wakes up, but just long enough to see where they’re going. He lays her on the bed and covers her with the sheet and comforter, and crawls in next to her. She rolls over and throws an arm across his chest, her deep breathing lulling him to sleep. He drifts off, mental maps of the city streets rolling through his head.
He wakes up the next morning to the smell of bacon. Carmen walks in, and before he can get up, she hands him the clothes she washed the night before.
“I thought you’d want these. They’re clean and free of Jamba Juice.”
He looks at her like a dog hearing a strange noise. “Jamba juice?”
“Yeah. It popped into my head when I was putting this stuff in the laundry last night. Your clothes were covered in zombie juice, which reminded me of Jamba Juice, which rolls off the tongue better.” She blushes a little. “Sorry, it’s just how my mind works.”
“I assume you weren’t in advertising before the world ended,” he says while he pulls his cargo pants on.
“Senior loan officer at the Denver Fire Department Federal Credit Union.”
He looks at her, unsure how to process that piece of information, so he says “Ah, the DFDFCU.”
“Yeah,” she says, either missing or ignoring his sarcasm. “That’s the one. It was a good job. I don’t know how that helps us in this world, but that’s what I did until Friday. Most of my customers are probably dead now…”
She trails off, leaving an awkward silence as D-Day finishes getting dressed.
“Is that bacon?” he asks to break the silence.
“Yes!” she exclaims. “They had some in the fridge! I figured we should cook it up before it goes bad. I hope that’s okay.”
He smiles. “There’s never a bad reason to eat bacon!”
“Good,” she says. “Because there’s eggs too. Fried in the grease.”
“Yes!” D-Day exclaims. “That’s exactly how I like them!”
Over bacon and eggs, he tells Carmen they need to do some training with the AR-15, so she’s at least familiar with its operation and knows how to shoot it. She agrees, so after breakfast, he takes her through its use, how to load it, unload it, reload it. How to clear a jam. How to sling the rifle for ease of movement and how to bring it to bear quickly. She’s a quick study, and he’s impressed by her attention to detail.
After two days, the power goes out. Each apartment has one ‘hot’ outlet per room fed by the building’s solar power system. Most people plug a light into that outlet, so they’re not caught in the dark in the event of an outage. Carmen and D-Day power their refrigerator and a hot plate from theirs. At night, as they stare out the broken window into the darkness, they marvel at how many stars there are in the sky.
“I’ve never seen the sky like this,” Carmen says. “It’s beautiful. It’s a shame the world had to end for me to see it.”
They scavenge the other apartments on the seventh floor and below. With no power in the other apartments, most of the perishable foods that remain are starting to turn, so they eat what they think is still safe. For a couple of days, they live on turkey or ham sandwiches, bacon, and eggs. The eggs that are past their ‘sell by’ date, D-Day hard boils and eats if he gets hungry for a snack.
Each day, they practice with the weapons. Carmen is lethal at forty yards with the AR-15, hitting nine out of ten shots, and from forty to a hundred yards she hits over fifty percent. He has her shoot first from a table, using the bipod to stabilize it, then having her kneel to shoot, then stand, then walk by the window and shoot. He has her carry the rifle everywhere, going up and down the hallway outside the apartment, so she gets used to the gun, how it feels, how to move with it, making it her constant companion. At first, she complains about the weight of it, but after a couple of days, she’s grown used to the ten pounds of black steel and composite plastic. Soon she looks like she’s always had it. He makes another trip to the roof, rappelling to his apartment to retrieve the rest of his ammunition so they can continue practicing and still have enough ammo for the road if needed.
They’ve both lost track of the days, and if it weren't for his watch, they’d have no clue that they’ve been sequestered together for three weeks. The perishable food is gone, so they’re making soup and other canned foods now, and they’re both getting restless. They talk more about their plans for leaving, but with the hordes outside not getting any smaller, the thought of leaving is a daunting one.
They make love that night, which they’ve been doing more often as boredom has been setting in. They can only do so much weapons training, and D-Day wants to conserve the rest of the ammunition. With nothing else to occupy their time, they explore each other’s bodies. Falling asleep fully satisfied, with Carmen’s arms and legs twined around him, is his favorite part of the day, and this one is no different. He’s exhausted, sated, and falls into a hard, deep sleep.
Ten
Something’s wrong. The light isn’t quite right. There should be more light at this time of the morning and this time of year in Iraq. Also, there’s too much noise.
D-Day looks over at Robertson, who’s fucking around as usual.
“Robs, god dammit, what the hell are you doing?”
Robertson looks at him, a confused expression on his face.
“D-Day, you know how I do. Whenever the fire alarm goes off, I have to ride the bull.”
Robertson turns the throttle on the miniature motorcycle he calls ‘the bull.’ It got its name after he used half a roll of duct tape to mount horns on the front of it. The motor sounds like a blender on frappe as Robertson speeds off shouting “FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!”
“D-Day!”
He turns to see Conrad jumping up and down, shaking the room. I thought Conrad was dead, D-Day thinks.
“D-Day!” Conrad shouts again, this time his voice sounding just like Carmen’s.
Carmen. Denver. Zombies. SHIT!
D-Day bolts upright, grabbing his rifle from its spot next to the bed. Carmen jumps back from her position next to him, trying to shake him awake.
“Jesus!” she shouts. “First I can’t wake you up, then you’re going to shoot me!”
The strobe over the door is flashing, and the fire alarm is bleating in time to Robertson’s “Fire! Fire!” from D-Day’s now fading dream. His watch says it’s 4:51 AM. Sunrise is in fifty minutes. First light is in twenty.
“What the fuck is going on?” he asks. He’s groggy and hasn’t been this tired in a long time.
“The fire alarm started going off a couple of minutes ago,” Carmen tells him. “I couldn’t sleep, so I was sitting and looking out of the wi
ndow, and the lights started flashing, and the alarm was blaring. It scared me so bad I almost fell out the window.”
“Okay,” D-Day says, and shakes his head, trying to bring some coherence to his mind. It’s unlike him to sleep so soundly. “Okay. Let me get dressed, and we’ll figure out what’s going on.”
The temperature overnight has dipped into the high forties, and the crisp air helps to sharpen D-Day’s mind. He looks out the broken window, and in the darkness far below he can see the shadowy shapes of zombies starting to crowd around the front of the building as the strobe light in the lobby, intended to alert firefighters to the location of an alarm, now acts as a beacon for the undead.
He looks at the taller building across the way, and even though the angle isn’t quite right, he thinks he sees flames reflecting back from the glass on its windows.
He asks Carmen if she sees it too, and like him, she’s not sure. They both smell smoke, but that’s been constant since the drones firebombed the downtown area and smoldering zombies started several of the buildings on fire.
“Here’s what I think we should do,” D-Day says. “I think we should take the bags down to the ground floor. If it’s clear, we can see if the security cameras are still working, and we can see if there really is a fire, or if one of these clumsy fuckers just pulled an alarm.”
“Alright, so what if they did?”
“The controls in the security room can turn the alarms off. If there’s a fire though, then our decision to leave has just been made for us.”
“Oh, shit, D-Day, this is bad, isn’t it?”
“Maybe not. With the strobes going and the alarm blaring, the dead are surrounding the front of the building. Which, in theory, means they’re going to move away from the parking garage. It may end up buying us more time.”
They get dressed in the dark and move the loveseat away from the door.
“You good?” D-Day asks.
“I’m ready, let’s go.”