Not seeing another face stuck in the window yet Drew walked backwards towards the door Gus had kicked in for them. He started pulling the trigger as soon as he saw another crawler make an appearance in the window. He setup right outside the room and kept his flashlight focused on the window. He was thinking this may be the best place to hold off the crawlerz. It wasn’t like a zillion of them could squeeze through that tiny window at the same time. They’d be forced to come up the stairs outside single file. This could be the chokepoint that allowed them to hold off the hordes of infected from the city with ease.
“They’re going from one balcony to another outside. We need to hold this space out here and give them some time to get across without falling.” Harley said walking back out into the hallway to stand next to Gus.
“I was just thinking we may be able to hold those things off right here anyway. The windows a solid choke point, right?” Drew said without taking his eyes off the prize. As if on cue there was a blur of motion and a crawler flew through the window. It tumbled past them down the hall.
Drew and Harley both turned to shoot it as another crawler came through the window behind them. It turned into a fast-moving crawler conga line as they started pouring through the window. Drew and Harley held their triggers down and retreated into the room. The crawlerz scrambling over the bodies of the dead and the dying to chase them. Harley slammed the thick door shut and braced it with his foot. He looked around until he saw the little metal lock at the top of the door. He got that fastened as the crawlerz started slamming into the door on the other side.
“Go out the balcony and over to the next one! I can hold this for a minute then I’ll follow you!” Harley yelled to Drew.
Drew ran into the oversized suite and saw there was an open door leading into a bedroom. He ran through the door and saw Gus over by the curtain covered slider. The slider opened on to a tiny balcony overlooking the street below. There was another tiny balcony about two feet away. A super easy jump if you were down on ground level. You’d just climb up the railing, lean forward with arms extended yelling out you were king of the world, and then hop across to the other balcony. It was a different experience when you were far enough in the air to make the big truck that they’d parked on the street below look like a Tonka toy.
Gus saw Drew and looked relieved. Drew assumed that was because Gus was worried that he may have been hurt out in the hallway.
“I’m glad to see you. Now it’s your turn to go. I hate heights man. Like I can parachute because that’s really high up but when I can see the ground like this, I don’t like it man. I’m going to go help Harley.” A freaked-out Gus took off before Drew could try and convince him to take the leap of faith. Not wanting to be the bottleneck in this operation Drew went ahead and hopped across to the next balcony. He could understand why Gus didn’t like it. Drew’s legs had turned to jelly when he looked down. He’d been afraid he might not make the short jump either.
“Look down.” LeBron was pointing at the ground below. The moon had come out enough for them both to make out what was going on down on the street. It wasn’t easy to see in the dark from this distance, so it took him a second to figure out what he was looking at. As his eyes gradually adjusted his first thought was it looked a lot like the roaches pouring out of the dumpster earlier. Basically, it looked like every person who’d been infected in the city of Asheville was headed to the hotel.
“We’re so screwed.” Drew whispered. He stood on the balcony staring down at the massive mob converging on them from every direction. The first floor of this hotel wasn’t going to stay pristine for much longer.
Chapter 25: It’s Not the Fall That Kills You
“Watch out!”
Drew looked up as Harley hurled himself through the air to land on the skinny balcony jutting out from the adjacent room. The shouted warning had given Drew just enough time to see that the next few seconds of his life were going to be painful. Harley was coming over and didn’t care who was in the way. The two of them collided and tumbled backwards into the room. Harley did a push up off Drew and spun around to go back out on the balcony.
On the neighboring balcony Gus slammed the glass slider shut and got up on the railing. Without looking down he immediately jumped towards the balcony of the room everyone else was now in. He landed straddling the balcony in a way that made everyone in the room flinch just seeing it. He would’ve fallen to the ground below if Harley hadn’t grabbed him and yanked him inside. Gus collapsed into the oversized couch in the room recovering from his rough landing on the rail. Harley went to shut the slider. He had to realign it where LeBron and Yue had pried it off its track to gain access to the room.
“You think they can figure out how to go out the slider and jump over to this balcony like we did?” A wide eyed Lisa asked the room.
“”I hope not cause you guys royally screwed up this door. I can’t get it back on the tracks.” An exasperated Harley said as he banged the heavy-duty oversized glass slider around like a normal person would wave a frying pan in the air.
The wall between the room they were in and the suite they’d just vacated started thumping. They backed away from it hoping it would turn out to be too solid for their pursuers to beat through. Flashlights aimed at the wall in the dark room they watched as the generic hotel paintings fell off the wall. The paintings bounced off the couch and landed on the floor. They leveled their rifles to blow away whatever came through the drywall. LeBron ran out through the still open doorway to the balcony and looked both ways.
The balcony to their left was too far for the jumping trick to work. They’d have to make a bridge or something to be able to get over there. Unless they beat their way through the wall themselves. He looked over at the balcony they’d just vacated. The crawlerz didn’t seem to be paying any attention to the slider on that side. He knew that wouldn’t last forever. Once the room started filling up the psychotic monsters would be trying every possible path to get to them. They were a lot like army ants when they hit an obstacle.
“Can we get to the next balcony?” Drew asked. He’d guessed what his younger brother had gone out to check on. LeBron shook his head.
“No. It’s too far. We need to go through the wall.” LeBron said desperately trying to figure out a way for them to escape the mess they were in. Drew shrugged off his pack and pulled out the crowbar he used to get through doors and windows. He liked to call it his skeleton key.
Drew ran to the opposite side of the room and took a swing at the wall. The crowbar stuck in. He worked it around and started prying away. Seeing what he was up to the rest of them joined in on attacking the wall with whatever tools they had strapped to them. You didn’t survive long in the apocalypse without being able to carry around a lot of random crap in case you needed it. They were a bunch of walking Swiss army knives.
A plaster covered hand was sticking out of the wall behind them. It was groping around while it’s owner on the other side of the wall continued smashing itself against the sturdy two by four studs. Glancing over her shoulder Yue saw a scene from a horror movie unfolding. More hands began to break through the wall. The white powder coated hands waving in the air while their owners did their best to squeeze through.
Drew had cleared out a space between two studs almost wide enough for one of them to fit through. He was prying at the boards when Gus pushed him out of the way to put a few bullets through each of the studs. A big section of the roof cracked off and fell on his head. Ignoring the pain he pushed the studs hard enough for them to separate. He still hadn’t recovered from going crotch first into the hard metal railing outside. It felt a little unfair to Gus that the roof had also hit him. A considerate universe would spread the random pain around to the others in the group.
The wall behind them was starting to crack as they beat their way into the next room. It was another suite with the same layout as the first room they’d vacated. That meant they could duck into the bedroom section, shut that flimsy littl
e inside door and hop across another balcony. This time they knocked it out efficiently. Drew and Harley both supervised Gus jumping across. This time Gus did a lot better. Evidently the fear of smashing his crotch again overrode his fear of heights.
They were in the new room less than a minute when once again the wall started thumping. They attacked the wall on the other side of the room while LeBron checked the balcony just to make sure the jump wasn’t doable. It obviously wasn’t so he joined in on the assault on the wall. This time they used their weapons to weaken the wall in the same spot Drew had broken through before. That sped up the whole process and they were shortly standing in yet another hotel room. Gus even avoided having the roof hit him in the head this time.
They didn’t even pause in the next room. They just repeated the process again in an attempt to gain a little breathing room. They were getting tired which was making them sloppy. It was Yue who slipped and almost fell to her death off the railing this time. She found herself in the odd position of owing her life to Lisa. Lisa had snagged her by the waistline when she’d slipped. Scrabbling around for purchase she’d grabbed a handful of Yue’s underwear. Yue’s apocalypse appropriate briefs had been turned into a thong, but she’d ended up on the right side of the railing.
They pounded their way through yet another wall. There was no plaster dust covered arms sticking through the wall behind them yet. The crawlerz were already at the outside wall with the door to the hallway though. They were pounding on that trying to get in. The outer walls must be a little more solid by the door. It was only a matter of time before they’d be able to beat their way in though. The psychotic bastards were nothing if not persistent.
Covered in plaster dust, bleeding from too many scratches to count the inevitable happened after another series of walls and balconies. They were stuck. There were no more balconies to hop over to. A whack on the wall revealed solid concert on the other side. Drew was still rubbing his arm from the shock of that unexpected impact. Lisa was starting to panic. She wasn’t the only one. Rather than be annoyed by her Yue actually thought a bit of panic right now was a fairly sensible reaction. Plus, if it wasn’t for Lisa then Yue would be splattered all over the sidewalk so that earned her a pass.
“Now what?” Drew asked. He was holding his rifle like he was ready to charge out into the hallway and do some damage.
“Too many of them out there. They’ve been pouring in the whole time we’ve been renovating these rooms. We’d make it about negative two feet outside the door.” LeBron said. That sucked the wind right out of Drew’s sails.
“I think I have an idea.” Gus said just loudly enough to be heard over the pounding on the door to the room. Luckily, they’d ended up in a hotel that’d been pretty serious about the quality of the doors going into their suites. They were able to absorb a serious amount of punishment.
Everyone looked over at Gus. He looked like a very militant Casper with all the plaster dust covering him. Yue wondered if it was her imagination or had Gus gotten even whiter when he turned to tell them he had an idea. Gus stood there unable to speak while everyone stared at him. He finally just pointed at the balcony then looked up and down. LeBron got it immediately. Everyone else was wondering if Gus had slammed some drugs from his private stash. Not a bad idea when the odds all say you’re about five minutes from being ripped apart and devoured by an insane mob. Before anyone had a chance to ask if he had any extra LeBron ran excitedly over to the balcony.
“We can go up or down!” LeBron yelled back to everyone else. No one got it for a second then the very obvious statement resonated. Of course, there were balconies above and below them as well as to the sides.
“How the hell do we get down there?” Drew asked. He’d walked over to stare off the side of the balcony. The balcony below them didn’t seem too far away. Once he was hanging off the side with nothing but air beneath him it’d probably seem pretty damned far though.
“Tie sheets together?” Yue said casting around the room looking for something they could use.
“Or we could use this rope I brought.” Harley said dryly. He’d already dropped his pack and was digging through it. Ammunition and Slim Jim’s were spilling all over the floor as he dug for a tangled ball of nylon climbing rope. Yue walked over to shine her light down so he could pull the rope out without losing all of his stuff. Not that it mattered really. They didn’t have enough ammunition on them to make a dent in that mob outside. Bullets were for blasting through walls at this point.
They tied the rope to the balcony and let it drop. It hung way past the balcony below. It was just a piece of rope hanging off a balcony. It wasn’t like a knotted climbing rope or the big thick rope from gym class.
“Well, that’s horrifying.” Yue said staring down at it.
Despite the fact that the room they were in was bound to be overrun by the infected at any second no one made a move to try and climb down the rope. They were all thinking the rope would just slow them down on the way to their deaths below. To add insult to injury they’d smash into the concrete below with rope burns on both hands. Harley stared at the rope for a second then yanked it back up. He looked around at all of them sizing them up.
“Who weighs the least?” Harley said looking back and forth between Lisa and Yue. Neither of them said anything. An oblivious Drew piped up that he thought Yue was probably the lightest. Lisa shot him a look that said if they managed to survive the next few minutes, he had some explaining to do. Harley very quickly tied the rope around Yue. His familiarity with ropes and knots was obvious in the professional way he did it.
“You’re scary good at tying up girls.” Yue joked nervously. She was trying to get her mind off the next step. The next step was going to suck. Not giving her time to think about it Harley picked her up and with Drew’s help lowered her gently down the side of the building. She worked her way onto the balcony below then quickly untied herself so they could pull the rope back up.
Harley quickly tied Lisa up and tossed her after Yue as casually as most people would fling out a fishing lure. They were able to get LeBron lowered down as well before the first of the infected burst into the room. One of them had beaten its way through the wall from the hallway. The hole was between two of the studs in the wall so only allowed the crawlerz to enter the room one at a time. Gus stood tall blasting away at them as they tried to push through the corpses of their cohorts to gain access to the room. Drew was wondering if Gus was considering staying up in the room. It’d make a warped kind of sense considering his fear of heights. Harley started tying the rope around Drew before he could try to talk to Gus. There was no time for it anyway.
“This is going to hurt. Just so you know. Try and climb on that wall as much as you can. We don’t really have a lot of time to mess around.” Harley said. Then he wrapped the rope around the railing to lower Drew.
Drew climbed up on the rail and hesitated to go over the side. Harley gave him the courage to do so with an inspiring shove. Dangling in the air like a gigantic YoYo he felt himself being lowered. The rope was cutting into him painfully in multiple places. He occasionally bounced off the wall. How Harley expected him to do any sort of climbing was beyond him. His best guess was that Harley said that to distract him so that he could push him over the edge.
In a complete panic he kicked out when he felt someone grabbing at him from below. It took a second for him to register it was Yue and Lisa trying to pull him onto the balcony. Harley was even shouting for him to let them pull him in. The girls pulled him over far enough for him to get down on the balcony. They immediately started untying him. Drew sat down and tried to rub some feeling back into his back and underarms. He’d done rope courses before with his dad where they made them a swiss seat out of the rope to sit in. Lots of D-Rings and stuff for zip lines. He liked that way a lot better than the Harley way.
In the darkness they couldn’t see what was going on above. The steady roar of gunfire assuring them that at least one of the men up
there was still alive. The rope snaked it’s way quickly back up about halfway then descended with both ends dangling in the breeze. Harley’s voice roared out from above telling them to wrap the rope around the bars and tie the two ends together. Yue quickly moved to do as she was asked. Once it was tied, she felt it get tugged on a few times then Harley yelled for them to watch out.
The four of them stared up into the darkness in the direction of the gunfire. They could see the bottom of the balcony and the occasional flash as a weapon went off. Yue was leaning way out staring straight up when her vision was completely blocked by Harley hanging by his hands off the railing above them. His feet were kicking all over the place then he was coming towards them at a million miles per hour. Yue jumped out of the way even as Drew and LeBron leaned forward to catch the big man.
Crawlerz: Book 3: The Mountains Are Calling Page 22