Shelter for Now

by Bob Howard

  “How bad is it, Garrett?”

  The answer came across in a low voice with some static, but there was no mistaking his excitement.

  “Thousands. There must be thousands of them. There might have been a horde moving on the interstate when we lit the fire.”

  “We couldn’t have known," she answered.

  “I’m not saying we shouldn’t have done it. We couldn’t see the interstate from here, anyway. As a matter of fact, it's going to improve the neighborhood. They aren’t close enough to the terminal for the fire to spread to us or any of the fuel trucks, and we’re thinning their population a bit.”

  “This should burn for a couple days?”

  “That’s my guess,” said Garrett. “Let’s post watches until we know for certain that the fire won’t get out of hand. It wouldn’t be my first choice, but if it spreads to the terminal we might be forced to evacuate. I’ll stay here for two hours. You guys decide who can stay on your spot. The rest of you can get inside and get warm.”

  Mike took the first watch as the others tore themselves away from the show. Even as they climbed back through the maintenance door, they had to take in the spectacle of the pillar of smoke that seemed like it was miles high.

  ******

  Even though he couldn’t see the airport from his hiding place, Sim could tell the tower of dark smoke was coming from that direction. Whatever was fueling that fire, he was sure it was a really large supply. Judging by the color of the smoke, Sim guessed jet fuel and anything that was dry enough to burn. He wished he had some way to know for sure, and hoped it wasn’t the main terminal itself.

  Sim’s current residence was a hotel balcony. It was cold, but with any luck the next balcony would have an unlocked sliding glass door and the room wouldn’t be occupied.

  He was tired of climbing, but the small gathering of interested parties hanging around on the ground below had given him no choice. He peered over the edge, and he could see that they were still there. The infected didn’t move on until they had something more interesting to pursue, and they hadn’t seen the column of smoke yet.

  Sim silently hoped there would be at least one explosion that would draw them away, but whatever was burning, it wasn’t making the right amount of noise to help him. He stood up, rubbed some feeling back into his legs, and got ready to throw his makeshift grappling hook up to the next balcony railing.

  As soon as he leaned outward, the infected below started making their usual racket, and even though he couldn’t hear the dead occupants of the room next to him, he imagined they were doing the same. They had their faces and hands pressed against the thick glass door as if they could bite him at any moment.

  He played out some line to start the heavy hook swinging, and then let the arc of the rope go upward when there was enough momentum. He saw the motorcycle handlebars disappear over the railing, and he felt a sense of satisfaction when he saw one end come back through the railing and neatly protrude out above his head.

  Now all he had to do was throw some rope over the handle and pull it down. The best part was that it was easy to pull it tight across the rails once he got the second rope onto it, and he could climb again.

  Sim had gotten the idea when he was trying to figure out how to get into the hotel. He found a motorcycle in the parking lot across the street, and he had been disappointed that the saddlebags on the bike only held a tool kit and a bag of weed.

  He had thought, “Great, I can get stoned and fix the motorcycle.”

  Then he remembered a guy he knew who got high before trying to fix his car. For some reason he thought he needed to completely remove the hood to work on the engine. Sim studied the handlebars.

  Removal of the handlebars on most bikes is complicated, but these had been customized by the previous owner, and Sim was a good mechanic. He had them off the bike in no time, and getting the rope was easy. It was strung all around the parking lot.

  There were infected nearby, but something had gotten their attention down the street, and he was taking advantage of it. He already had the hotel he wanted to scale picked out, and it was his first choice because he had found himself close to downtown Columbus. The tall buildings were keeping him from getting his bearings, and he couldn’t climb the office buildings.

  Sim had never been to Columbus before, and he found himself wishing he had seen it before all of the streets became littered with bodies and derelict vehicles. Garbage was everywhere, and even though the streets were beautifully made of brick in many places, the dark stains told a story about what it must have been like when the infection began to spread.

  The groaning below brought Sim back around to the present, and he saw that his crowd of admirers had gotten larger. He pulled in the slack on the rope and climbed, hoping this was the last time.

  Of course there was always the chance that a door from a balcony would be unlocked but also open. The prone bodies that were broken and piled along the street were a testament to the number of people who had jumped, were pushed, or had just plain fallen from above. For a moment he wondered if any of them had been people who were trying to climb upward instead of down.

  As soon as he cleared the railing he crab-walked to the wall by the door and got out of view from the inside of the room. No faces were pressed against the glass. As a matter of fact, there were no rust red smears on the glass like the other rooms.

  There was a big stain on the railing of the balcony that faced the street. He had noticed the stains on other railings and seen that they were probably caused by falling bodies bouncing on the railings as they went by.

  Sim cautiously reached across to the handle of the sliding glass door and pulled gently. He didn’t want to open it all the way for lots of reasons, but mostly because he was tired of surprises. More than once he thought it was literally possible to jump out of his own skin.

  The door moved silently about an inch, and he held his breath. A glance over one shoulder confirmed he had climbed to the fifth floor, and he was praying that he wouldn’t have to climb to the sixth. This was the first unlocked door, but the fact that it was closed made him feel like he hadn’t gotten lucky yet.

  He pulled a little harder, and the door opened a few inches. It was quiet inside the room, and more importantly, there was no smell. Sim stepped hopefully across the door and peered through the opening. The beds were made. There could have been any number of reasons why the beds were made, but the most likely explanation was that the room had been unoccupied.

  He sampled the air first. It was stale. The doors had been closed for months, and the air conditioning had died with the power, but he didn’t smell any decay from human remains.

  The room was gloomy, and there were plenty of shadows in the corners for his imagination to play with. His imagination was working overtime on one particular shadow in a corner that he was sure had moved.

  He stared at it for several moments and held his breath, waiting for the movement to come again. It couldn’t be an infected because they weren’t shy about announcing that they had spotted you. If it was a live person, there was a good reason why they had survived so long, meaning they were almost as dangerous to him.

  Sim’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, and as they did, the shadow took shape. He wasn’t completely sure what it was, but someone had taken the time to lean something into the corner. It needed to be investigated, but for now he judged it to be safe.

  He took his eyes away from the shadow and surveyed the rest of the room. It was a suite, and he couldn’t see all of it from the balcony. Staying low he crawled into the room onto the deep pile of carpet. The balcony was attached to the bedroom, so he was safely out of view behind the first neatly made bed. He reached back behind him and gently closed the sliding glass door.

  There was a room without a door that Sim guessed would be the bathroom, and he could see from his hiding place that the other door went into a sitting area. The door was open, and the room beyond felt empty.

  The last thi
ng he wanted to do was use a gun inside the room and give away his position. He might as well hang a sign on the doorknob that said there was free meat inside the room.

  Sim slipped his long blade from the sheath that was attached to his belt and stood to his full height. He gave the shadow in the corner one final glance and walked quietly toward the open door.

  As soon as he stepped through the door, his shoulders dropped a couple of inches, and he felt the tension fall away for the first time since the night he decided to leave on his own. In hindsight it had been a bad decision because he hadn’t been able to go south. Everywhere he went, it seemed like the infected dead decided which direction he should go. Instead of south, they had made him go west into the city, the last place he wanted to be.

  The sitting area was in front of a big, plate glass window with the curtains drawn. Off to the right was a full kitchen and a hallway that led to the door of the suite. Even in the gloom he could make out the signs on the back of the door. One of them would tell him the hotel rules and check out time. The other would tell him which way to the emergency exits. He got a quick mental image of the guests who had stopped in front of that sign for just a moment.

  Sim decided he needed some light, and five floors up seemed safe enough for open curtains. Before sliding them open he peeked around the corner to study the parking garage across the street. The movement of the curtains could draw the attention of the infected, but that wouldn’t be as bad as drawing the attention of someone who had a rifle and tended to take things from other survivors rather than to share.

  It was quiet across the street, so he slid the curtains open slowly and brightened up the room. The kitchen was spotless and unused. Sim wasn’t sure what he would find in the refrigerator, but he walked straight to it.

  The air that drifted out of the tightly closed appliance wasn’t as bad as he expected. There were no perishables he could see, but the doors and shelves were stocked with bottled water, a variety of sodas, and beer.

  His hand shot out and wrapped around the neck of the first bottle of beer before he had a chance to even think about it, and he laughed quietly as his conscience reminded him it wasn’t free.

  “I know,” he said in a low voice. “Put it on my bill.”

  The minibar was built into a wall to the right of the kitchen, and he hardly thought about it as he opened it and retrieved a small bottle of bourbon. He started checking the cabinets as he unscrewed the cap from the bottle and drank it in one shot. By the time he had chased it with warm beer he had found the snacks. It wasn’t the most nutritional meal, but it was mentally satisfying.

  He stopped in the middle of opening a bag of chips and listened as something went by his door in the hall. He stood still and held his breath. Both of his elbows were extended out to the left and right while both hands gripped the top of the bag of chips. The sound outside the door gradually faded away, and Sim knew that it was more likely to stop at another door than his. Some of his new neighbors were having no respect for the other guests. They were moaning and groaning, bumping into things, and knocking them over. They would keep the infected in the hallway busy for years.

  Before opening the chips he stepped back into the kitchen so the sound wouldn’t carry into the hall. He retrieved a second bottle of beer and a shot of bourbon and went back into the bedroom. A quick check of the bathroom revealed that he had been safe when he made the decision to bypass it before. It was obvious that no one had been using the room and the little bars of soap still sat neatly next to the bottles of shampoo and conditioner.

  Back in the bedroom again, Sim found himself facing the corner that held the shadow that had fueled his imagination. It seemed like something out of place that was just left leaning there.

  Whatever it was, it was made of cloth and was wrapped around two poles of equal length. He lifted it easily from the corner and laid it across the first bed. Just as he rolled it out, his foot caught against something under the bed, and he instinctively jumped backward.

  There was a suitcase under the bed and several small cardboard boxes. A quick check under both beds showed him he was still safe, but he was apparently wrong about the room not being occupied. The guests just hadn’t been in the room at the time the world went to hell.

  Sim went back to the thing on the bed and found that it was a long and high banner between the two poles. It was a map of Columbus, but something about the streets was different. They didn’t seem to have nearly as many intersections as he had already seen. There was a big caption along the top of the banner that said, “Visit the Lost Tunnels Under Columbus.”

  Sim studied the streets on the map and knew what the map was really for, but when he thought about going down into those tunnels, he couldn’t imagine why it would be a good idea.

  ******

  Two days later the refrigerator was empty, and Sim had enjoyed the solid sleep. Fatigue, bourbon, and beer were the combination that made him worry less about whether or not the hotel room door was enough security. His half alert mind told him it had been enough before the infection, and people knew how to break down doors back then.

  The neighbors were still being inconsiderate, and the hallway wandering dead bounced against his door from time to time, but Sim just needed to shut down for a couple of days. He decided he would figure out what to do after that.

  When it became obvious that his break was coming to an end, he started listing his options. Down from the balcony was possible because his fan club in the street had moved on to bigger and better things. There never was an explosion where the smoke climbed into the sky in the direction of the airport, but bigger and better than nothing could have been something as small as a piece of paper blowing by.

  Sim didn’t see the point to climbing back down, though. Eventually, he would have to climb back up again unless he had somewhere to go once he was on the ground.

  His second option was up. He could climb more balconies to check the rooms above him, but he couldn’t come up with a good reason to do so. The only thing he could think of was more refrigerators and stocked mini bars. That choice would be no more than a mental escape from reality.

  The only thing he could think of that had a possible positive outcome was to take control of the hallway outside of his room. Then he would have access to the stairs at either end, and he would be able to go up or down. He would at least have a choice between the two, but Sim couldn’t think of a reason for going in either direction at the moment.

  If his third option was to stay, Sim knew he would need more than what the room had to offer. It was that thought that made him remember the suitcase under the bed. He rolled over and dropped his feet to the floor. When he pulled out the suitcase, he doubted it would be a survivalist’s bug-out-bag, but it had to at least satisfy his curiosity.

  There was a second suitcase next to the first, and he tossed them both onto the bed before opening one. They were both locked, but a screwdriver was all he needed to pop the first one open. Sim rifled through clothing that was suitable for someone younger than him and much smaller.

  The second suitcase was more interesting, but any hope of a magic survival kit being inside quickly faded. Flyers and magazines that went with the banner were the only contents. Maybe it was boredom, or maybe it was because Sim was feeling no sense of urgency, but he picked up one of the magazines and leaned back against a pillow.

  According to the magazine, people were always finding reasons to dig more tunnels under Columbus. Drainage projects were begun and then abandoned. Underground pedestrian crossings were dug, opened, closed, and then buried. Someone started construction on a subway system but didn’t finish. The builders went bankrupt, and it became nothing more than a dangerous temptation to thrill seekers and kids with skateboards.

  Legends were repeated often enough to become fact, and over the years, an unknown number of people had disappeared while exploring the tunnels. That was likely to be partially fact, because some of the tunnels had vertical shaft
s that were uncharted. One had been discovered that dropped straight down for almost two hundred feet.

  The magazine conveniently omitted whether or not bodies were found at the bottom of that shaft, but it wasn’t the only one, and it had to be at least partially true. Danger signs and no trespassing signs weren’t enough to keep people out, so the city eventually had the defunct subway project permanently sealed.

  Then came the big headline. The not so secret tunnel system under the Ohio State University campus was a way to gain access to several tunnel projects that had been closed over the years.

  Despite an initial feeling of being underwhelmed, Sim found himself to be engrossed by the articles in the magazine. Some of it was true, some of it wasn’t, but most of it was intriguing. One of the articles talked about a group of OSU students who had become lost in the tunnels and were never rescued.

  The real truth was that the tunnels held all of the steam pipes for heating, wiring for electricity and internet, and various pipes for plumbing. There was no mystery to the fact that buildings had to get power and water from point A to point B, and under the buildings was a convenient way to do it.

  Despite the obvious hype that was added to the articles, Sim enjoyed the speculation, and there was something about hidden tunnels that seemed to nag at him.

  He flipped to the next page and read an article that had some old photographs of Columbus that were dated as having been made around 1876. There was a picture of a train station and another of a wagon going into the mouth of a large tunnel. The caption said it was for pedestrian and wagon traffic under the railroad tracks.

  The article didn’t say too much about tourists being able to visit the tunnel. It just described that it was built quickly by the federal government, and it was eventually closed due to lack of use. It seems that the drainage, ventilation, and lighting were so poor that wagons and pedestrians preferred to take their chances crossing the tracks in front of the trains up above. The tunnel was closed and forgotten, but an unknown source for the article claimed there was more to the tunnel than the city had been aware. The source claimed there was some sort of Presidential survival shelter hidden in the tunnel by the Ulysses S. Grant administration.