by R. J. Spears
The mall was overrun with the infected two days later and that’s when Jenkins, me, and handful of other folks ended up at the Alamo. Ready for our heroic last stand. No, scratch that. Just last stand. There was nothing heroic about what we were doing. It was just plain surviving.
The Alamo sat almost an equal distance between the Rivercenter Mall and the Hyatt. Jenkins frequently reminded me that we would have probably been better off staying at the hotel and he was probably right, but that didn’t keep me from telling him to shut his mouth.
We were holed up in the chapel, a former Spanish mission, on the grounds of the Alamo. It’s four foot thick limestone block walls and barred windows were the only thing keeping us safe from a thousand ravenous mouths. Like those militiamen, we were surrounded by an enemy where surrender wasn’t an option. But unlike them, we didn’t have a vast array of weapons. Between me, the two cops stationed at the Alamo as guards, and the one cop that had taken sanctuary with us, we had my Glock, three other side arms, and one shotgun. Almost equal to our dearth of guns was our ammunition supply. We gun carrying types expended a great deal of our rounds early in the siege on the chapel and in our supply run to the gift shop. I had two magazines left and half a load in my gun. Between the cops, there were just over three dozen rounds and eleven shotgun shells.
In other words, there would be no shooting our way out of this mess
Our best weapon was communication but that had limitations. The cellular network had collapsed under the weight of all the emergency calls. Randell pulled an old fashioned radio out of a closet, but the few stations on the air had switched to emergency broadcasts. Most were off the air entirely now and those few still broadcasting ran a looping transmission telling listeners stay tuned for news that never came.
The cops had their two-way radios, but after the first couple days of chaos, the radio traffic was light. Despite our desperate pleas for help, no one had said they were coming to our rescue. The best advice from anyone we spoke to was to hold tight and wait for the National Guard. The last direct transmission to us was two days ago, but we had caught stray and distant signals from people unknown. Most messages were desperate maydays asking for help, but some seemed to be from a coordinated groups that sounded like the military. These messages were barely intelligible through the static and faded away quickly.
Before being stranded in San Antonio, I knew little about the place. Yeah, the Alamo was there. Yeah, they had the Spurs, but I was shocked to learn that the city had the nation’s seventh largest population with over 1.3 million people. That staggering number worked against our favor. Had the Alamo been out in the sticks, we would have most likely been able to either escape or hold out. Being caught in a large metro-area meant that there was a potential of over a million dead things roaming around outside. That meant that the people who would even consider coming to our rescue had their hands full. If they were still even alive.
I surveyed our group taking an inventory of our strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately, our weaknesses outweighed our strengths by a daunting ratio. We had several tourists with us, including an elderly couple, Oscar and Minnie. They were from Wisconsin. She was the grandmother I wished I’d had; kind, but strong with a light touch on the kids in our group. Despite pushing 75, Oscar wanted in on all our planning and seemed able to keep his shit together.
“We need a plan. You guys are local cops,” Mack said pointing to the guards. “There’s got to be a way out of here.”
Gentry, the older of the two cops, went to the main door and knocked on it. He waddled a bit as he had a 20 pound sack of potatoes worth of padding around his midsection. “This is the way out.”
“That’s not helpful,” Mack said, nearly whining. “Those things are out there.”
“Yeah, how can we get past those zombies?” This question came from Sammy, the street vendor who had sold tacos in front of the Alamo prior to the zombie invasion. He was a young Hispanic guy probably in his mid-twenties who rarely spoke out at all.
Just in front of the doors was an open area covered by stone with a grassy area in the middle. Beside and behind the chapel was the Alamo gardens complete with a couple historic cannons, the aforementioned gift shop, and a tree said to be nearly 150 years old. Or so said Randell, the tour guide.
The undead shambled around outside doing their moaning thing 24/7 -- soon to be 365. That was until they got riled up by something. Then they came at the doors and the barred windows, shaking and clawing at them. There was more than a couple times that we all feared they’d make it through those doors, but miraculously they held.
Behind me, I heard someone clear their throat loudly. I turned to see Randell using a chair to step up onto the large wooden desk situated along the north wall.
“Excuse me,” he said, his voice cracking. “Excuse me,” he said again but this time louder and with more confidence. “One hundred and seventy six years ago, over two hundred brave souls stood on this very ground, ready to defend the freedom of their people against an invading force. How did they do that?” He let that rhetorical question float among the crowd as he took each of us in with a glance before continuing. “Courage. Courage to fight and defend what they thought was right.”
“Not to be a wet blanket, but in the end, they all died,” I said.
“Yes, Mr. Grant, they did die,” he said holding me in a hard stare, “but their courage, their example of what made this country great still lives on in us. They still inspire people everywhere to make a stand. And that’s what we need to do. We can live on our knees or we can die on our feet. What is it going to be, people?” Once again, he stopped to take in the audience and more than a few of them were looking up now, nodding their heads. Some sort of light popped on behind their eyes. I’ll be damned if this prissy little guy wasn’t rousing this audience even after my downbeat and deflating speeches tore them down. I felt a wave of self-loathing pass over me.
“But what can we do?” It was the older Hispanic lady again, teetering between hope and dread.
“We need a plan,” Mack said, shaking a fist in the air. “Do you have one?”
“No,” Randell said and you would have thought that would have been the end of it. “But we,” he stopped and started pointing at each person in a very theatrical manner,”we will come up with one. With all the ingenuity of our founding fathers, we will find a way. Won’t we?” He nodded his head, smiling while taking in the crowd. “Yes, we will. Yes, we will. Those men 167 years ago made the Alamo unforgettable. People, from this day on, will have another great reason to remember the Alamo. Us.”
If we made it out of this mess, I’m guessing Randell’s next career would be in politics. No one clapped, but some teetered in that direction.
We brainstormed and batted around ideas spurred on by the mantra that there is “no dumb idea.” (Not to rain on anyone’s parade, but there are dumb ideas and more than a few were tossed out.) Finally, with the air just about out of our sails, I reached deep down and found some inspiration.
“I have an idea,” I said. All eyes fell on me. While Randell may have enjoyed the attention I didn’t welcome it all that much. “It’s a wild one and has a snowball’s chance in hell of working.”
“That’s better than what we have now,” Mack said.
“Everybody, come up front, and I’ll lay it out.”
The group moved in unison to the front windows that looked out on the open area in front of the entrance.
“Here’s what I’m thinking,” I said. “Sammy, you pushed your food cart up near the front entrance before you came in. Do you remember if you turned off the propane before you left your cart?”
Sammy’s face strained in concentration for several seconds. “I’m pretty sure I did. It’s just habit. Propane isn’t cheap.” He shrugged apologetically.
“No need to apologize,” I said. “That’s part one of my diabolical plan. Joey,” I said to a solidly built cop in his late thirties. “Did you take your keys from yo
ur cruiser or are they still in it?” He had run down a half dozen zombies just before he bailed and sprinted for the chapel, leaving the car about fifty yards away.
“They’re still in it,” he said but still patted at his pockets to make sure he didn’t have them.
“Ready for part three?” I asked. “Here goes. You see that city bus down at the end of the block?” They took turns looking out the windows for the next few seconds and a few people nodded their heads. “Can anyone drive it?”
Joni raised her hand as if she were in school. “I used to drive a school bus,” she said. “I can’t see it being too different.”
Randell got ahead of the plan, “You’re going to shoot the propane tank and the explosion will drive the zombies back. You’ll make a run for the car, take it, and drive it to the bus, then bring the bus back to us and away we go. Brilliant.”
“Not quite,” I said. “You may see people shooting propane tanks in movies, making them explode, but that’s just the movies. It doesn’t work unless someone has an incendiary bullet.” I took in the crowd with a glance, but no one offered one up. “Even if we had one, it would be a long shot. That’s where my plan hits a big snag unless someone has a good idea of how to get to that propane tank without being eaten alive?”
“Why don’t we bring the tank to us?” Sammy asked.
“But that would mean someone would have to go out there,” Oscar said. “And that’s just plain suicide, aside from the fact that you’d let all those things in.”
“We don’t have to go out,” Sammy said. All attention went to him and he ran with it. “When I was a kid I wanted to be in the rodeo. I practiced a lot with a lasso. If we had a rope or something I might be able to snag my cart. Maybe we could pull the whole thing up to the roof?”
“Genius,” Mack said, smacking his forehead dramatically. “Where are you coming up with a rope?”
“Could you use an extension cord?” Randell asked, impaling Mack with a stare.
“Yeah. Maybe,” Sammy responded.
Oh, the power of an idea.
Twenty minutes later, using a scaffolding in place for a renovation project, we climbed up to the roof of the chapel. Looking down on a sea of undead, Jenkins looked a little green around the gills.
“Come on, Jenkins,” I said. “It’s time to get over the fear of heights.”
“It’s not the heights giving me the willies. It’s them,” Jenkins said pointing into the mass of zombies. It was a daunting sight. There had to be a close to three hundred of them out in front of the chapel.
It only took a few seconds for them to notice us, a set of living people -- or as they probably thought -- food, standing up there in plain view. That’s when the moaning really started as they packed against the side of the chapel. I think I actually felt the impact of their collective mass colliding with the building.
“This isn’t going to work,” Sammy said. “They’re crowding around my cart. I don’t think I’ll have a clear shot.”
“We need a distraction,” Randell said.
“Mack, go downstairs, get the people to make a racket at the back of the chapel to draw these sons of bitches away,” I said. “Wait ten minutes so that we can get out of view and they can’t see us anymore.”
He started to protest, but went downstairs. Maybe he didn’t like heights, either.
The remaining people stepped away from the edge. Being an excitable lot, the zombies didn’t settle down right away. Their guttural grunts and groans carried up the side of the building along with their stench. And what a smell that was. It could make a buzzard on a shit wagon gag.
After about ten minutes the people downstairs started yelling and banging on things at the back of the chapel. The zombies took a good full minute before they forgot we still might be on the roof. It took five minutes for the shambling mass of the undead to fully divert their attention to the back of the chapel. Just to be safe, we waited another five minutes.
“Do you think you can get it now?” I asked Sammy.
“I’m not sure what I can do with this extension cord. I usually used rope,” he said fingering the hundred foot long, 20 gauge orange extension cord.
“We could ask the women to shave their heads and then we could braid the hair into a nice rope for you,” I said.
“That’s not very constructive, Grant,” Joni said, acting like the adult that I wasn’t.
“Sorry,” I said. And I meant it. “It’s all we got, Sammy.”
“Okay. I’ll do my best,” he said, but his face was saying something completely different.
The food cart was one of three wheel metal types with an umbrella. It looked worse for the wear after being trampled on by a thousand zombies, but still had its basic shape.
He was better than he thought, or we got lucky. He snagged the assemblage of the front wheel after less than ten attempts. Five sets of eyes peered down nervously as he delicately pulled the extension cord taut. After two hard yanks on the cord, he was confident his noose would hold.
“Sammy. How much does one of those things weigh?” Jenkins asked.
“That metal’s pretty light, but we hook it up to my cousin’s truck every night, so I really don’t know,” Sammy said. “I’d guess two hundred. Two fifty, tops.”
“Anyone know how much an extension cord can hold?” Jenkins asked.
I muscled my way up beside Sammy and grabbed the cord in both hands, and said, “We’re about to find out.” Jenkins, Randell, Sammy, and I got ourselves ready to pull when I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye. At the back of the chapel, a lone zombie had broken from the crowd. It seemed like it was on a Sunday stroll, heading up towards the front of the chapel.
“We got a live one, no check that, a dead one coming our way,” I said. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
We pulled and the food cart nearly capsized with our overzealous effort. The thing bounced in the air and came down with the loud clattering sound of a hundred symbols. So much for being covert.
‘Mr. Solo,’ as I was calling this solitary zombie, took notice immediately and started on a beeline for the cart. We pulled the cord and the cart clattered along the ground then slammed into the side of the building. On the collision, the metal made a wanging noise that made me think of a Bugs Bunny cartoon. The zombies did not find it funny. A few more took notice, breaking away from the scrum of undead at the back of the church and start towards the cart in a fast shuffle.
The cart resisted being pulled up as it rubbed against the side of the building, but it finally yielded and came upward, the metal shrieking against the wall. Those few seconds of resistance were all the time Mr. Solo needed to cut the gap between him and the cart.
These things never showed much in the brains department but Mr. Solo somehow decided that grabbing the cart was a good idea. Maybe it was sheer zombie desperation? Maybe it put it all together and this was its own personal elevator, figuring that the food court on level two was serving up a smorgasbord of human delicacies he just couldn’t resist? Whatever it was thinking, if these things did think, we had an extra two hundred pounds added to our burden. The orange extension cord didn’t like it at all as the plastic stretched and bulged in several places.
Hand-over-hand, we pulled. Mr. Solo dangled in the air, feet kicking, but held on as if his undead existence depended on it.
I looked around for some sort of weapon since we had left our guns with the people downstairs in case they needed them.
“Joni, get something to whack this son of a bitch when we get this cart up here,” I said between grunts of exertion.
We had it about halfway up when Jenkins’ hands slipped and he fell backwards. While toppling, he reached up and grabbed at whatever would stop his fall which just happened to Randell. Randell’s grip gave way, too, and he fell in a heap onto Jenkins, leaving Sammy and I holding the cord. Of course, that meant bringing up Mr. Solo who was now snarling at us. Why that undead bastard wouldn’t let go was beyon
d me.
Jenkins and Randell seemed fused together into a human ball as they tried to untangle themselves. The muscles in my shoulders and arms screamed at me to let go. I had little doubt that if I did, Sammy would be pulled over the side into the waiting arms of Mr. Solo and his hungry friends.
Sammy and I grunted as we got the cart to the edge of the roof where it got stuck. It was the table that hung off the front of the cart. Well, that and Mr. Solo.
“Jenkins, get up here and help!” I shouted.
He finally extricated himself from Randell and ran up to grab one of the side wheels of the cart. After a couple tugs, he jumped back.
“There’s one of those things hanging on!”
“We know that,” I said. “We’ll have to deal with the zombie up here.”
He didn’t looked convinced, but Randell moved past him and got a hold on the cart’s tire. In a tacit coordination, we all yanked at once and the cart broke free, spun up into the air and came to rest on the edge of the roof. Mr. Solo’s weight started to pull it back into the void, but Jenkins jumped in and we gave it another tug. It flipped over bringing Mr. Solo, ass-over-elbows, onto the roof with a resounding crash of metal and a thud of decaying flesh.
A normal living breathing person would have had the wind knocked out of them, but not Mr. Solo. He was barely worse for the wear. When he went to stand, we saw what made him decide to take the little trip up the wall with the cart. He really didn’t have a choice. The sleeve of his jacket got tangled in the wheel assemblage and he was along for the ride whether he wanted to or not.
Now, he must have been glad because he now had all of us to himself. Mr. Solo made a lunge for Jenkins who was the closest, but his sleeve held him lashed him to the cart. Mr. Solo snarled and snapped, and I thought we were in good shape until we heard a loud ripping sound as the sleeve of Mr. Solo’s jacket broke free at the shoulder.