by Bryan James
I shrugged off my pack quickly, pulling items aside until I found the coil of high tensile rope. Eli watched quietly, his head swiveling between my activities and the creatures approaching quickly.
We were in the middle of the dam, and they had already covered more than half the distance toward us. Many still wore bright orange vests and hard hats, the ravages of time having made their clothing ragged and filthy. But their moans were as vibrant as ever.
One end of the rope went around the most secure piece of railing I could find—one that had both support posts still firmly attached to the concrete edge of the dam. I then looped the rope through the carabiners and loops in my harness and body armor, finally reaching for Eli and beginning to tie the rope tightly around his waist.
“Leave the bag,” I said, pulling it from his back. His hands clutched for the dingy backpack as if it were made of gold, and he whimpered slightly. I made a face and took him by the shoulders, staring into his wide eyes.
“We’re coming right back here and we don’t need the weight, okay? I promise. We’ll be right back in about…” I looked up and over the car, to where the first of the creatures were only ten feet away. “… Five minutes. Okay?”
He glanced at the approaching zombies, then nodded quickly.
The first few could see us clearly now, and had increased the tempo of their moans, eliciting a response from those in the rear.
Again, if I didn’t know better, I’d say they were communicating in some rudimentary fashion. Before, we had thought it was simply call and response. A simple reflex, rather than a voluntary reaction.
But this seemed like more. Especially when the first moan was a dinner bell, and you were the main course.
“Hold on here,” I said, bringing his hands to my shoulder straps, and pulling on the combat gloves that were stashed in the side pocket of my pack. “Don’t let go. I’m going to be right here the whole time. They’re going to be falling around us, and some of them might hit us. But I’ve got you. Whatever you do, don’t let go. Got it?”
He nodded as the first one came around the front of the car, and I backed up to the edge, pulling one foot, then the next over the metal railing. Pulling the slack up on the line, I leaned back, drawing in a long breath as I quelled my nearly paralyzing fear of heights.
I was not cut out for this action hero crap. The irony of all ironies, I supposed.
Walking back slowly, my feet found the edge of the road, then the outer wall of the dam. Against my chest, Eli’s weight became an anchor and my grip tightened on the rope.
Then, the first one was upon us and the floor dropped away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Things that make you go ... boom ...
For the record, it is not fun to have zombies rain down on your head like meat confetti.
Useful under these circumstances? Yes.
Necessary? Probably, yes.
Slightly comedic? I guess so.
But fun?
Hardly.
They tumbled forward, most of them going over the railing at the hip, and hence falling past us in a cartwheel of moaning and frustrating convulsions as they splattered one after another against the rocks below.
But several by-passed the railing and simply walked over the edge, arms and faces pointed down at us, as if they would just continue on in the air like a cartoon character, or walk down the wall like a gecko-zombie.
Why was this painful?
Because unlike the ones that cartwheeled out and over, who had gained some manner of momentum from their forward tumble, the ones that walked out over us fell directly down, meaning that I had to swat them away while curled up over Eli in an upright fetal position.
Not. Fun.
I got several disgusting feet in my face, one rotten knee to the head, and one shoulder right in the nose before the undead rain had subsided.
And just so you know, if I ever form a band, it’s going to be called Undead Rain. Because why not?
I chanced a look up, from our perch only six feet below the edge, when I could hear no more hissing moans or hungry exhortations from the top of the dam.
Also, the meat parade had stopped. Another clue.
And another kick-ass band name, by the way.
Just saying.
“You okay?” I asked Eli, who nodded slightly and looked up at me.
“As good as I could be, I guess, suspended hundreds of feet above certain death while the living dead throw themselves on top of me. Peachy.”
Great, another smart ass, I thought.
Suddenly, I missed Kate and Ky something fierce. For some reason, I was sure they were fine. But with every passing second and passing mile, it was going to make reuniting with them more difficult. And them being safe wasn’t the same as them being by my side. We had been through too much together to let it end this way. It was time to get this show on the road.
I pulled us both up, something I never could have done pre-super hero serum, and I wondered vaguely at what point I would have died had I not been given that little gift, apart from the immunity, that is. Probably after the fight with Fred on the rooftop of that isolated laboratory.
Ah, memory lane. How would everything have gone down without me? Without us? Would they have pulled the good doctor out of the Seattle facility in time and alive? Would a special forces team been able to do what we did? Probably. Those guys were badasses wrapped in man-paper. But how quickly? How many would have been lost?
Eli grunted as we swung over the edge, making a face as he avoided a pool of gore at the base of the railing. One of the creatures had apparently burst open at the waist here, succumbing to the rot that had infested an open belly wound. His torso made it over the edge, but his legs hadn’t.
It didn’t trip us up, but I was definitely off chili for a while.
We booked it for the opposite side of the dam. The site was empty now, and large cracks in the soil had ruined the preliminary work the crew had done before the plague hit. Dirt and machinery lay in piles around the area, and two large trucks sat awkwardly at angles to one another against the far edge of the lot. A large trailer sat unevenly on cinderblocks near the dam, one edge having dropped from a broken support, the door hanging loosely out from the hinge.
We didn’t waste any time. Jogging quickly to the office building, we peered in cautiously at first, ensuring that we were alone. Eli located the boxes jammed into a corner in a large crate, and I began the laborious process of hauling them to the door.
When the heavy pallets were accessible from outside, I took a deep breath, following the child without pause to the two large trucks. They were definitely not typical Fords, but these I probably could have managed without the kid’s encyclopedic knowledge. Still, his ability to hot-wire a large piece of construction machinery was, I will admit, rather impressive.
Plus, it kept me from having to ransack the office for keys, wasting precious time.
The huge engine, blessed by an industrial grade, long life battery, roared to life with a bare hiccup of confusion as we pulled in front of the office and I manipulated the small loading arm to the straps on the pallet. The explosives were pre-packaged, and easy to load—even for someone with no prior heavy equipment experience.
I did, however, manage to slam one of the wooden pallets against the metal bed. It creaked and groaned, but didn’t explode in a fiery maelstrom of certain, painful death. Under my breath—and away from Eli’s judging eyes—I called that a win.
The two pallets of Blastex were crooked and loose on the bed, but I didn’t care. It wasn’t a long trip. The engine continued to idle as we got back inside and started back toward where we had last … hung out.
God, I kill me sometimes.
In the distance behind us, to the south and to the east, two roaring, flaming volcanoes exploded in a renewed bid to spit anger into the sky, giving the appearance of an early dawn. I could clearly see spouts of magma shooting into the air, and the constant rumble and explosive fo
rce of the eruption was loud in our ears. Like constant thunder from a storm just off the horizon.
As I watched their renewed fury light up the sky, a nagging sensation flickered at the corner of my mind. I felt like I was missing something important. Something keyed to the volcanoes and the noise and light. But nothing came, and I didn’t have time to chase down the mental rabbit hole.
The truck came to a stop at the center of the large structure, and I noticed the widening cracks beneath us. It wasn’t going to take much to bring this down. I hoped.
But my mind continued to wander. Something was missing, but what? Everything had gone mostly to plan. Exit the building, check. Clear the zombies, check. Get the explosives, check. Make sure the exit was clear …
Slowly, my head rotated to the east again.
Where the massive light and sound show was making a GnR reunion tour look like a baby’s lullaby.
Then I looked down, to the town below. To where thousands of creatures were slowly starting to mill in one direction.
Up.
Toward the sound and light.
Toward the dam.
“Out of the truck, kid. We have to light these candles and we have to do it now,” I said hurriedly. We were on a tighter clock than we had believed. We had to open this dam before the bulk of those things could get out of the way of the water. The roadway up was steep, and it was long.
But once they climbed more than two hundred feet up, by my rough estimate, they’d be out of the range of our waterfall of zombie destruction.
So we had about ten minutes to light this candle.
I checked my watch. Assuming they had followed our plans to the second, the group should be reaching the outer door now. Which means they would make their way to the road in five minutes, and would be out of harm’s way.
Shit, this was going to be close.
Eli didn’t question the order, he just hopped out, pulling his pack around and yanking his book free. I jumped to the top of the truck bed and pulled the lid from the top of the pallet. Inside were several different boxes, with names I didn’t recognize.
“Forget it,” he said. “Just open the other box and find something marked primer cord. Then stretch a long length between the two boxes.”
His nose was in the book now, confirming what he already knew. Then the book slammed shut and he was peering over the edge of the pallets, pulling hard plastic pieces and cords out with two hands.
The Blastex was in a large box inside each crate and he didn’t bother trying to remove it. The primer and the cord were placed, and he pulled the detonator box along with him as he moved to the other side and linked the two boxes together with one string.
I watched in nervous anticipation. Nervous that he’d plug wire A into slot F, and we’d be annihilated in a millisecond; nervous that a herd of zombies would soon crest the ridge ahead of us before we could destroy a dam and flood the valley below; and oddly, slightly nervous about the male pattern baldness that ran in my family.
I have somewhat exotic fears, okay?
“Okay,” Eli said, a tinge of doubt in his voice, checking the set up the third time. “I think that does it.”
“Think? You’re inspiring huge dollops of confidence here, kid. Can’t you be sure?”
He looked at me with a large frown.
“I’m doing this from memory, for the first time, in the dark, while a herd of zombies is trying to come eat me. Oh, and I’m just a kid. ‘Think’ is the best you’re getting.” He nodded to the large, heavy detonator and said “Grab that, it’s too heavy for me.”
We ran to the other side, dodging large cracks and uneven pavement. Ahead, we couldn’t make out any forms—human or zombie—in the resolving distance between us and the curve in the road.
We took a position about fifty yards back from the edge of the dam, behind a low cement barrier with the cliff wall to our left and the road to our right. A fallen tree blocked us from behind, so we were safe from view if we lay prone.
I checked my watch. They were due up now.
Shit. They were late.
But I was sure the zeds wouldn’t be.
“New plan. You stay here and you blow that dam in exactly …” I checked my watch. “Three minutes, if I don’t come back. Got it?”
He nodded, resting against the rock wall and looking in both directions.
“If they’re still in there …” he trailed off.
“They aren’t,” I said, projecting a certainty I didn’t feel. The quake could have knocked out a tunnel. They could have been swarmed by the zombies we left behind. The door could be blocked by rubble.
Anything could have happened.
“We have to blow that dam before those things get up here. If we don’t, no one has a chance. You read me? There’s no way away from these things if we can’t take them out with one blow. They’re going to make it, I promise.” I put my hand on his shoulder briefly, then turned away, running toward the edge of the woods, where the walkway to the pump room emerged from the hillside.
But even as I turned the first corner, angling downhill, I heard the rapid fire of an automatic weapon and skidded to a halt. Bullets tore into the trees and dirt around me as I dove into the underbrush.
“Friendly, friendly!” I yelled, wincing as I removed a pine cone from my neck.
“Mike?”
It was Ethan’s voice, and I rose slowly, peering down the path, allowing a smile to split my face.
“You’re late!” I yelled, watching as the rest of the group made their way up the steep incline. “We’ve got some fireworks all set that the kids should really enjoy!”
I allowed myself a short laugh of joy as a fifty pound blur of wet, red fur barreled into my leg and I crouched quickly to scratch the top of Romeo’s head before he shook loudly and ranged ahead of the group, nose to the ground.
“I doubt that,” said Rhi, following closely behind her husband’s slow, limping form, rifle up and ready. “They were freaked out enough by our slog through the shaking tunnels and our fight with those freaks in the hall. That your doing?” Her tone was accusing and I held my hands up before moving past her to help carry Margaret, nodding once as Reggie thanked me for the help.
“Nope, you can thank Eli and Rosy for that,” I said.
“Are they …” This was from Susan, who clutched her son Tommy tightly to her chest.
Ahead of me, Ethan and Rhi had reached the road, and I checked my watch. Two minutes left.
“Rosy didn’t make it, I’m sorry. But I have Eli with me. He’s waiting up the road …” I trailed off, as my eyes caught movement to our left, down the road coming from town.
Time’s up.
“Ethan, Rhi, can you hold back a minute? Reggie, can you see that cement barrier up there on the left? That’s where Eli is. Get the kids behind that barrier and you guys button up, okay?”
Reggie nodded, and ushered the children away as I handed Margaret back to him.
No one else could see as well in the dark, so they hadn’t made out the approaching forms. But Rhi could hear it in my voice as we stepped away.
“Where?” she asked simply.
I pointed, raising my gun.
“They’re already too high for the water to get to them,” I said, checking my watch. Less than a minute until Eli blew the dam. There were at least thirty of them in the front ranks, above what I estimated to be the danger line for the rushing water.
“Okay, we take a knee here, let them come slowly. They don’t see us yet, and if we start shooting now, it’ll draw more of them faster. The water might distract them and we take them down when they’re cut off. Agreed?”
I nodded and watched Ethan spit in the ground before doing the same. Rhi found a large fallen tree to hide behind and I jogged across the road, finding a piece of rotting fence post and a snarl of wire fencing against the rock wall. Ethan took a position behind me and to the left.
The night was quiet, now that we had settled. I even heard
the chirp of a single bird, underneath the distant rumble of the volcanoes. The light still split the sky in uneven waves of diffuse oranges, reds and yellows. As I put my hand on Romeo’s flank for comfort—he had just returned from pointing diligently at the approaching herd before a quick low whistle brought him back to me—I wondered again about Kate and Ky, hoping against hope that they were safe and we could find each other. I hadn’t yet resolved the question of how, but knew that there was only one place to start: back at the bridge.
If I could follow their trail, I could know they were still moving north. I vaguely remember a conversation that Kate and I had before we left the cabin. She mentioned a rest stop that she had used once, right outside the city, maybe twenty miles to the east. A large moose outside.
That was it.
She would go there, I knew it. And I could find her there.
With a small smile of satisfaction on my face, I bent my head to look at my watch, and the world exploded.
***
Before the apocalypse, the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, was home to roughly 2.4 million people. The city, combined with its suburbs and surrounding areas, was a thriving metropolis. A vibrant, glowing jewel in the Canadian crown, full of outdoorsy, laid back people with a real zest for life. Thriving trade and commercial ventures. It was even a popular spot for television filming, due to lenient overtime laws and the ability to avoid U.S. labor unions in a variety of different occupations.
Now, it was the home of the dead.
Well, the undead, at least. And that was who Liz was trying so very hard to avoid.
She had made good progress in her trek through the building, managing to come across her entire floor until she found a vertical shaft that she could safely crawl down. She had made it several floors down before hearing her first moan.
They had congregated in a hallway, and it was one she needed to cross over. Unfortunately, the ceiling had caved in during the quake, and while her passage was clear, she needed to step across three feet of gaping air, underneath of which were several dozen undead mouths.