Shelter for Now

by Bob Howard

  The kitchen had typical swinging doors, and the gloom of the lobby was cut in half once he entered the kitchen. Sim knew that he wasn’t going to be able to collect supplies in the storage areas because they would only be darker. He didn’t waste time trying to decide what to do and immediately went back to the dining area for candles.

  Within a few minutes he had enough candles lit to be able to move about freely. He even found an employee area and retrieved a couple of backpacks from lockers. There was a coat that was several sizes too big for him, so it was perfect to wear over his own coat. Since the weather had been nice back when the infection started, he was surprised to find a coat, but he wasn’t going to complain.

  He loaded the backpacks with everything that could be useful. The sterno was in boxes stacked on storage shelves, and he used one entire backpack for them. There was a box of long candle lighters, and there were also matchbooks and boxes of matches. He found freezer bags and bagged a large supply of the matches to keep them dry.

  There was a treasure trove of canned foods, but most of them were cans too large to mess with. In the end, he settled for things he might usually ignore because they fit in the backpack.

  Sim studied one can for a few minutes, unsure of its value to him. On a whim he opened the can and got a sleeve of crackers out of a box. He spooned a bit of the dark contents onto a cracker and popped it in his mouth. It was curiously odd tasting, but its salty flavor was satisfying. Maybe it was because he had never eaten caviar, and it was a very expensive brand.

  “Well, it took an apocalypse and the end of the world for it to happen, but I finally ate something I couldn’t afford,” he said out loud. He felt like washing it down with some beer, but for some strange reason he had to have some more.

  “I always heard it was an acquired taste, and I acquired it in a hurry.”

  Sim didn’t want his load to be too heavy, but he couldn’t resist stuffing a few more of the cans of caviar into the backpacks. He was thinking about the reaction of his friends at the airport when they would see what he had returned with.

  There were too few items in the restaurant storeroom that were useful for backpacking through a zombie infested city, and Sim started trying to think where he could find something that didn’t need to be cooked. The sterno wasn’t going to go to waste on hot food. It would be used for heat and hot water.

  He didn’t expect to find anything like instant coffee or tea, but he was pleasantly surprised to find both. The supply closet where the hotel kept the little packs of sugar and the single-cup coffee packs had just what he needed. There was even a couple of random boxes he didn’t expect but were quite valuable. One was a box of beef sticks and one was a box of beef jerky. Both were obviously intended for vending machines but had found their way into the kitchen storage area.

  He fit everything into the backpack until it was hard to close and then scanned around for anything he may have forgotten.

  Weapons were easy to find in the kitchen. He settled on a meat cleaver, a long knife, and a knife sharpener on a handle. It was a traditional serrated style that was heavy and could be used like a short baton.

  Once he was satisfied with his scavenging, Sim cautiously approached the revolving front door. It was time to brave the cold, and he had enough daylight ahead of him to make it a good distance. All he needed was a little luck.

  Sim squeezed into the revolving door on the side opposite the one infected dead that was still trying to move. Sim didn’t want to turn the door far enough to free the infected from his prison. After all, there could be another survivor around, and Sim wanted to leave the kitchen for the next lucky person.

  As soon as he was free of the revolving door, the cold air slapped him in the face. The hotel entrance was in the middle of several high rise buildings and the street out front was like a sheet of ice, descending down a steep hill.

  He mentally pictured how easy it would be to slide from the front door all the way to the bottom of the hill, but there was one thing he had learned about random survival thoughts. As soon as he had one, he tended to follow up with what could possibly go wrong. He pictured himself sliding at high speed with the cold wind whistling by, and when he would glance back over his shoulders there were several dozen of the infected dead sliding on their rear ends right behind him. Worse, they were gaining on him.

  Sim decided he would stick to stealthy progress instead of rapid progress. He had pictured the cold wind accurately, and two steps out onto the icy sidewalk were enough for him to know that if he slipped, he would slide a long way. He pulled his collar tight around his neck and tugged a wool ski cap from a pocket. It was worse than he remembered.

  It was uncomfortable walking with his feet spread so far apart, but he eventually felt like he could do it without falling down. Crossing the street made him feel naked and exposed, but he would need to cross plenty more streets before he got back to the airport.

  Sim decided time was too important. When he was just trying to get away, time didn’t matter as much. He knew he was going to be on the road for years if he lived that long. Now that he was going back, time mattered more for several reasons. One of them was that the cold weather would be ending soon, and the warmer it got, the more infected he would have to face. Another reason seemed silly when he thought about it, but knowing he was so close to the airport was like being able to see the finish line. He would hate to die so close to being safe with his friends again.

  As he crossed the once beautiful brick streets, he could see an overpass in the distance. His navigator’s memory told him he had reached the interchanges on the interstate that went right by the airport. I-670 would take him to I-270, and if I-270 was clear, he could make it most of the way back by nightfall, and he could go the rest of the way in the morning. The problem was the interstates.

  Once you were on an interstate, it was hard to get back off again. They rose above the streets of neighborhoods, and when the infection spread, thousands of people died on the interstates. Sim was afraid to find out if the interstates were still that bad, but he had already experienced the nightmares of neighborhood streets. He didn’t want to repeat the experience of ducking from house to house, being driven away from where he wanted to go, and only being alive because he could climb fences, and they couldn’t. In the end, he decided he would try the interstates, and if he had to jump from an overpass it was better than spending two weeks climbing fences.

  It took longer to get from the Arena District onto the mess where I-71 merged with I-670, but once he was up on the raised concrete highway he felt a little better. At least he could see more than a block at a time, and he wasn’t tripped over the orange and white construction barrels every few feet.

  He could also see that the snow drifts in the neighborhoods below were so deep that he could have walked straight into parked cars without knowing they were there. He could also have walked straight into the waiting arms of the infected that had been frozen outside.

  The interstates weren’t spared the snowdrifts, and they were as choked with cars, trucks, and buses as the streets below, but at least the infected dead up on the interstate were still frozen solid. Maybe it was because of the cold air under the highway. Whatever the reason, Sim started moving as quickly as he could.

  He made good time, and even he was surprised by how determined he had become since the year before. Everything around him was covered with snow, and the light reflected into his eyes, making him squint as he ran.

  To take his mind off the cold and the difficulty of running in the snow drifts, he thought about what it would be like back at the airport, and he thought about what he had survived just trying to leave. This was not a world that welcomed lone survivors. The only way to make it was in a group. Of course he was feeling a little proud of himself for thinking of a way to see in that dark stairwell. For a fleeting moment he imagined an old friend telling him that one day he would set fire to a zombie and roll it down five flights of stairs. It hurt to laugh
and run at the same time, but he couldn’t help himself.

  That night Sim holed up in a musician’s tour bus. On the side of the bus was the name of some country group he had never heard of, but the bus was such a perfect place to stay that he swore he would start listening to country music if he survived long enough.

  The doors had all been locked, so Sim had gotten inside by prying open a small window. He was convinced it would be full of infected dead just waiting for someone to open a door, but it was empty. Whoever had abandoned the bus on the first day of the infection hadn’t realized how safe they would have been to just stay where they were until they could escape.

  After searching with cautious amazement, Sim sat down on a brushed leather sofa and let himself sink into the luxury around him. He didn’t know which surprised him more, an extremely safe tour bus or the fact that he was crying.

  When he was finally able to regain control, Sim made sure all of the windows were well covered with the heavy curtains and then opened the hatch that served as a sky light in the ceiling. He propped his elbows on the frame around the opening and aimed his binoculars at the airport.

  Smoke was still rising from the end of the concourse at the end of the terminal, but he couldn’t make out the details of what had been burned. The terminal didn’t appear to have burned and neither had the planes. He wasn’t sure, but it had to be an infected that was walking into the center of the area that was still burning, and it wasn’t long before the glowing cinders of the dying fire caused that infected to flare up like a match.

  “Well, if the infected are burning, there won’t be as many for me to outrun when I get down there.”

  Sim lowered the hatch most of the way closed as he climbed down into the comfort of the tour bus. He needed to vent the fumes from his sterno, and that meant losing heat, but he would have more than enough to keep him alive.

  He set up the little cans and lit a few of them, then he used one of his precious bottles of water to make some coffee. While it was getting hot, he warmed his hands, but he also checked the cabinets. There was a whole case of bottled water, and someone had really liked Johnny Walker Red.

  After the sun went down Sim had shaded the light from his sterno cans and climbed up to see if anything new was happening at the airport. The fire was getting smaller, and he thought he saw a flashlight on the roof of the terminal.

  He was sure he would make it home to his friends. That was his final thought as he drifted off to sleep in a warm bed, compliments of someone he wished he had listened to before the infection.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  WHEN THEY DECIDED to burn the frozen infected, they went from elation to worry. Then they went from worry to fear, and then all the way back to elation again. They couldn’t get over how well the infected had burned, and then with the arrival of the horde from the interstate they had worried about how many of them were catching fire and then wandering away in different directions.

  Flaming infected dead were drawn toward other flaming bodies, and some walking unnaturally long distances before their bodies gave into the inevitable damage that caused them to fall over.

  They saw more and more of them get together into smaller, burning, wandering groups, and it seemed like sooner of later one of those groups would find its way to the underbelly of a fuel truck or airplane. There was no way to tell how much heat it would take to light off a chain reaction of fires and explosions, but they were sure it would happen.

  When Jon made his last inspection rounds for the night, he took a chance and turned on his flashlight because he wanted to see if any of the infected had managed to douse their own flames in the snowdrifts along the buildings. He knew there was a chance of being seen, but he didn’t believe there could be anyone left alive who would be watching.

  It crossed his mind that Sim was out there, but he firmly believed Sim was at least making his way through West Virginia by now. If anyone else was out there, Jon had a little faith that they would appreciate a warm place to be.

  When he was done circling the roof of the terminal, he was satisfied that they hadn’t made a bad situation worse and headed for the access door to the roof.

  A scraping noise carried across the otherwise quiet night, and Jon instinctively lowered himself to the graveled roof. It was almost totally dark already, and Jon put his back to the area where some small fires still burned. He wanted to be facing away from the light to allow his eyes to adjust, and he knew that he would be silhouetted against the only light in the area. As quietly as he could, he lowered himself into a prone shooter’s position.

  As his eyes got used to the dark, he scanned from left to right and back again. As he watched he listened, and he heard something on the ladder. He held his breath. He knew that anyone who came over the edge of the roof on the ladder would immediately be facing the light behind where he was stretched out, and that was a big advantage for Jon unless the person saw his irregular form first.

  Jon was sure he could see a shadow grow in between the bars of the ladder, and it seemed to stop as if it was in a crouch. The quiet was complete, but Jon saw the shadow slowly rotate. He had the advantage, so he had to use it. If it was a person, they would still have their hands on the ladder.

  “Stay completely still until I say you can move.”

  Jon was surprised by how calm his own voice sounded.

  The shadow jerked just enough to mean the person was startled, but Jon had expected it, so he kept his finger off of the trigger. The dark shape moved from side to side which was also expected. Whoever it was, they would try to see where the voice had come from.

  Jon eased his finger onto the trigger and said, “That’s enough of trying to figure out where I am. I said to stay completely still until I say you can move.”

  From somewhere behind the shadow and probably a few rungs down the ladder, Jon heard someone else.

  “What’s the hold up?”

  The shadow made a shhh sound but stayed still.

  Jon said, “If you have a flashlight, shine it in your own face. If I see it point my way, I’ll pull the trigger of the gun I have aimed at your chest.”

  Jon knew if the shadow on the ladder had a flashlight in his eyes for even a split second, he would have an even bigger advantage, but if he had the same done to him, he would have to fight at least two people. He couldn’t take that chance, so he put a little more pressure on the trigger.

  By this time, his eyes had adjusted well enough for him to make out the details of the person between the bars of the ladder, but more importantly, he could see his hands. There was something shaped like a flashlight, and the stranger had to hook one arm around the bar of the ladder to be able to hold onto whatever it was in his hand, but something was wrong. Jon wasn’t sure what it was when he pulled the trigger, but his gut reaction probably saved his life.

  Two taser darts on wires harmlessly hit the wet roof to his left, but his shot didn’t miss. The dark shadow flew several feet away from the wall before descending to the ground. Jon stayed where he was and waited for the second shadow to appear, more quickly than the first.

  Whoever this guy was, he was under the impression that being mad counted for more than a bullet. He came over the edge ready to fight.

  Jon shouted, “One warning is all you get.”

  The man charged Jon, but he wasn’t fast enough. Jon shot him twice before he fell back over the edge.

  He waited several minutes to be sure there was no one else, then he crawled over to the edge by the ladder. All he could see below was the big dark shadows cast by the building.

  Jon was breathing heavy and was scared. It didn’t feel good to kill the men, but he was satisfied that he had given them a chance. He would never know if they were good or bad people, but he didn’t think good people would try to tase you first and talk later.

  When he got back inside and told the others what had happened, Garrett insisted that they should go up and search the area just to be sure it was safe. After an
hour they decided they could go back inside, but they posted a watch inside the roof access door. Until they knew for sure that the fires hadn’t drawn more survivors to the airport, they decided they would post the watch every night.

  ******

  Garrett told Susan she could stand watch from inside the access door to the roof, but she preferred to sit outside on watch for as long as she could. Every sound of expanding or contracting metal, every creak that was no more than an echo back to her own position from some movement she made, and every breeze that squeezed through a small gap somewhere made her feel like she wasn’t alone.

  At least when she was out on the roof she could put her back up against something and focus on what was in front of her. If something came up behind her, it wouldn’t see her until it stepped into her side view.

  The infected didn’t sneak up on you, but the uncertainty of the night before had left them all on edge. Jon was second guessing everything while Garrett was trying to reassure him that he had no choice. If the unknown men had been friendly, the first one wouldn’t have tried to use a taser, and the second one wouldn’t have tried to charge him. They would have tried to talk with him.

  Jon had rationalized the situation to the point that he was sure he could have told the man not to try what he was about to do. Time moved differently in memories, and Jon questioned whether or not he had pulled the trigger too quickly.

  No one blamed him, especially when he had shown them the taser. Garrett studied the spot where Jon had been, and it occurred to him just how lucky Jon was. In the darkness, Jon had put his body directly across a big puddle of ice water. His heart rate was probably going up like a sky rocket along with his adrenaline, but he told Garrett he was surprised how calm his voice had sounded. With his blood pounding in his ears, the taser might have been enough to kill him. There was always that risk.