LZR-1143 (Book 4): Desolation

by Bryan James

  She could smell them almost as soon as she could hear them, their moans echoing in the tin and steel enclosure, and their rotten odor seeming to fill every space of the ducts. She wrinkled her nose and pressed ahead, her hands and legs shaking in fear as she crawled slowly, careful not to allow herself to make divots in the tin, knowing that as they popped back into place, they would announce her presence.

  Reaching the gap above the hallway, she noted the barricaded doors on either end of the hallway between a dentist’s office and a solar energy distributor.

  The people here must have tried to defend themselves. To keep the monsters out, she thought. Another shiver ran up her spine as she realized how dreadfully lucky she had been to be in the U.S. Consulate when this had happened. Thick walls, armed guards, and a top of the line security system.

  Without those, she knew she would be just one of the walking dead below.

  She poked her head out into the gap, feeling like she had never before been so scared. The smell was awful. Like when they put the manure in the flower beds at school, combined with the smell of her mom’s compost heap in Jersey. Rotten and foul—something never meant to be endured by human nostrils.

  The dead below were somewhat comatose, simply swaying in place, moaning in some horrid sequence of rhythmic intonations. One every five or six seconds, almost like they were speaking to one another, or assuring the rest of the group that those collected there were all still dead.

  No, definitely not that, she concluded. They were dead. Dead and stupid. They couldn’t communicate.

  But she didn’t intend to take that for granted. She was a survivor for a reason. She was careful, and she was cautious. She would tiptoe over that gap and not think for one instant it would be easy.

  Her legs were tired and felt numb as she pivoted in the small space, finding a way to push herself into position, pulling the straps on her pack tight as she gently and slowly began to stretch her left leg forward.

  But three feet was just a little too long for her leg to make the journey without her having to push off, just a little bit. So as her leg began to come down, she pushed off the other edge with a small nudge, feeling her left leg catch satisfyingly on the opposite edge.

  Now, she was straddling the opening, with one leg on either side, and her head facing directly down.

  Into the pit of undead beneath her.

  And that’s when she panicked.

  Her breath started to come in short bursts, her brain felt overloaded. She couldn’t focus on where she was and what she had to do. A feeling of intense dread and foreboding fear fell over her like a shroud of emotion, making her squeeze her eyes closed in abject fear. Her hands and legs began to shake again.

  But this time, the shaking couldn’t be as easily controlled. Each leg was now vibrating the metal of the duct, turning her sturdy passageway into a tin drum.

  The first creature to awaken from its stupor was a young woman. Maybe twenty years old before she had turned. Maybe younger. She looked just like one of the teacher’s aides in Liz’s school, but prettier.

  Her milky white eyes turned slowly, like one of those slow-motion movies, Liz thought, until they locked on the odd-looking little morsel in the ceiling. A small girl, doing the splits above a group of zombies, hanging from the precarious safety of an air conditioning vent.

  Of course, the zombie didn’t fully appreciate this.

  It only appreciated one thing.

  Food.

  A low pitched moan pushed itself from the creature’s chest, the witty and ironic Van Halen shirt falling as the chest pushed the dead air from the thing’s lungs. Almost as one, the entire hallway awakened.

  Thirty sets of eyes traveled slowly up the walls and fell on Liz, their eyes almost accusing. As if to say “Why would you put yourself up there, meal? We can’t reach you there.”

  Her breathing started to come slower as she realized her true predicament—that she needed to complete her passage. She was more at risk in this moment than she had been in the entire ordeal, and she needed to take action.

  But her mind and her body wouldn’t react. She was transfixed by the horrors beneath. The old man, still clutching a newspaper, whose nose was missing. The young woman with the ironic shirt, whose hands had formed into claws as the grasped at air beneath Liz’s legs. The middle-aged man in the janitor’s uniform, whose left arm was missing at the elbow, but who nevertheless stretched his misshapen stump into the stale air of the hallway, as if it could somehow bring down his prey.

  Jolts of urgent electricity were passing through her now, and she suppressed the urge to release her bladder in fear.

  No. This isn’t how she would end.

  Her father had died trying to save her. Tony had died.

  Her mom was out there somewhere, and she had to find her. She owed it to her father.

  Slowly, she wiggled the toes of her right foot and found that her leg still had energy in it. Enough to push away from the edge. Taking a deep breath, and ignoring the sea of upraised arms and faces beneath her, she thrust forward, toppling noisily and clumsily into the far reaches of the opposite side of the gap.

  Then, she got up, dusted herself off, and kept going.

  Nearly an hour later, she had truly reached an impasse.

  By her calculations, she was on the seventh floor. Also by her observations from above, the flooding had reached the third of fourth floors of the buildings across the street, so it reasoned that the water was up to the same rough levels here.

  But her way down was not now an easy one.

  Up until this point, she had found ventilation grates and other obstructions in the vertical shafts to help her descend each level. But now, the tubing was smooth for at least three floors down. Further than that, she couldn’t see.

  She briefly considered trying to jump or slide down, controlling her descent somehow—maybe with her shoes against the walls—but discarded it as too risky. If there were gaps in the walls she couldn’t see, she’d risk falling out into a hallway like the one she had just crossed. Not a wonderful idea.

  Having made her way in this direction since it was closer to the large street in the front of the building, and hence possibly more of a chance at finding anything that floated, she resolved to try for the other direction. The problem was, she didn’t want to have to go back through that tunnel of horrors behind her, and she was starting to get a little claustrophobic. Added to the fact that the building had continued to groan, shake, and make other noises inconsistent with a high level of comfort, she resolved to move forward, and turn right at the next cross roads.

  There had to be another downshaft further on, and it was bound to have some hand and foot holds for her to use in her descent.

  She had just reached forward to cross the down shaft when the quake hit and the walls and ceiling and floor began to all move at once, as if in the grip of a cranky toddler, intent on shaking loose its toys from a stubborn container.

  Reaching her hands out to the walls in a feeble attempt to brace herself, she felt her body being pulled toward the gaping hole in the ducts, toward a several story fall. One that could end in broken bones, a concussion, or death.

  Briefly confused as she struggled against the pull, she suddenly realized why she was sliding inexorably toward the vertical shaft.

  The building was tilting.

  Her brain whirling at light speed, she felt her horizon move, the building clearly losing the strength of its foundations on one side—likely the side from which the wave had emerged.

  Doing some basic geography in her head, she closed her eyes tightly and muttered a prayer to a god she didn’t believe in. Then, as the building continued to buckle, she let go of the walls and allowed herself to be drawn into the vertical shaft, which was now tilted nearly twenty degrees.

  It wasn’t enough to make the trip painless, but it was enough to keep her from breaking her leg or dying. She hoped she could still slow her descent enough with her sneakers, and she
kept the rubber soles touching the metal as she descended.

  Between her hands and feet, she managed to slow herself enough to notice the threat ahead as she quickly passed two more side tunnels—thus two more floors—and noticed the inky, reflective blackness below.

  Water.

  She had to stop. If she went into the water she might never get out again, and she would die alone and cold in the oppressive darkness.

  Grimacing, she allowed her palms to go flat against the metal, instantly burning the sensitive skin and taking small chunks out of her fingers as they passed over welded seams in the wall. Her feet bore down hard on the slippery ductwork, slowing her descent with enough time that she managed a precarious stop only five feet from the ominous pool of water that sat beneath her.

  A pool of water that was definitely rising.

  She turned, scrambling against the metal confines to move up another four feet, to where the closest side shaft was located. Her bloodied hands managed to grasp the edge and she pulled as hard as she could, even as the building continued to shake around her.

  Something hit her in the shoulder and she looked up, wishing she hadn’t. Debris was raining down from far above, pieces of insulation and metal—including bolts from the ducts themselves. Suppressing a whimper of fear, she pulled herself through and into the horizontal shaft, making for the first grate she could find.

  Peering through, she saw the petrified remains of a sandwich counter, moldy cheese, rotting meats, and a counter strewn with the debris of an attack. Including pools of blood.

  But no zombies.

  She didn’t have enough time to deliberate. She needed to get out of the shafts, and out of the building, before it went down.

  Her feet came down several times, loudly, on the metal grate before it popped through. Water, roughly a foot deep, sloshed through the store below, making its way through overturned chairs and tables, around an old soda machine, and out the open door into a darkened hallway. She dropped down as carefully as she could, but still felt a twinge of pain in her left ankle as she rose again, eyes everywhere in the small space.

  The water around her legs was cold and she could feel it rising. Reaching the door, she put her hands on the frame, struggling against the tilt of the building as she tried to assess the right direction, knowing that it could be a life or death decision.

  Deciding that it would be better to be on top of the falling building than on bottom, she turned left, making her way up the incline and toward the offices on that side of the tower. Open doors lined this level, and no movement was apparent, even after the building had stopped shaking. But the incline was increasing as she moved, and she could hear the tortured shrieking of steel and concrete as it began to reach its terminal tipping point.

  She didn’t have much time.

  Ahead, the office door for a tax consultant with a small gold plaque was her target. Using her hands to grab door frames and water fountains to push her way forward, she reached the door even as the building crashed hard against something and momentarily stopped its descent.

  Of course. The adjoining building.

  But if she remembered correctly, it was just a ten story office complex—it wouldn’t stand for long against the crush of this larger edifice.

  She grabbed the knob of the door and pulled.

  Nothing.

  It wasn’t locked, but the door only opened inward.

  “Of course. You can’t make this easy, can you, death-building?” she muttered.

  Standing back and balancing carefully on the slanted floor, she flung the door as hard as she could, sending it back into the office and managing to get it past its apex so its own weight would keep it falling on the other side. The office was dark, but the glint of sunlight reached her around a corner inside.

  Almost there.

  As her hand grabbed the doorframe to pull herself through, a face appeared from the gloom, a clumsy body following behind, hands out and teeth bared. It wore a cheap suit with a pocket swatch still evident in the top left pocket. A single bloody hole in its white shirt testified to its cause of death, but she didn’t have time to ponder the circumstances.

  The stench hit her before the sound, as it clawed forward quickly, stumbling on the incline. She screamed once, stepping to the side as it barreled forward. A hand found her backpack as it tumbled into the hallway, its feet now clumsily scrambling for a foothold in the angled space.

  She screamed again as the other hand flailed for her and she realized that her grip on the doorframe was the only thing keeping her alive. If she let go, it would take them both to the other end of the hallway and, since it was undoubtedly stronger than her, it would eventually kill her.

  Thrashing, she made a quick decision. Shrugging out of the pack quickly, she let the creature have it, sending him tumbling back into the hallway and buying her time to force her body forward, toward the light.

  Pulling herself up and into the office, she made her way quickly to the edge of the building. Inside the office, the windows had all been destroyed by the quake and she stood now on the precipice of a new, dangerous world. Since the outbreak, she had lived in a sheltered world of safety and confusion, alone but secure inside her fortress.

  Now, as she stood on the edge of the window sill and stared into the city below, she sighed deeply and took it in.

  The water swirled slowly in the street below, merely ten feet away on the angled surface of the destroyed building. There were no streets or cars or shop entrances. Only water. Rivers of ocean where before there had been torrents of people and life. In the dark sky above, the glowing embers of the active volcanoes lit the murky atmosphere with an angry light.

  And here she stood. One girl, against the world.

  Committed to surviving, to finding her mom.

  Steeling herself, she started to walk down the steel exterior of the building, even as it began to shake and settle once more beneath her feet.

  She scanned the turbulent water below, letting her eyes pan through the ruined streets. In the distance, maybe three blocks away, she recognized the familiar maple leaf of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on a flag extended over the surging water, along with a hand-written, ravaged and torn banner, likely months old, that said simply “Alive. Help here.”

  But it was a police station, perhaps with supplies, maybe even a raft or emergency inner tube of some sort.

  She took in a deep breath and locked her eyes on the next building.

  She would survive.

  She had to.

  ***

  Only two miles to the east, far beyond Liz’s ability to observe, other refugees were milling about in confusion. Thousands upon thousands of zombies—all of whom had been part of a large herd that was caught between the edge of the city and the suburbs—were standing, confused and listless, at the edge of the new coast line.

  Between a mall on their right, and a suburban residential neighborhood on their left, they milled in a mixture of parking lots and streets. Half of their number having been consumed suddenly and violently by rushing waters that burst from the city’s center and pulled the meandering corpses under the angry waves, the remaining group—nothing as large as the two million that had swarmed the fortress in Seattle, but still topping nearly fifty thousand—were stymied.

  Drawn toward the city by some unknowable, untraceable urge to move to these areas together, they no longer felt the same urge to push forward into the cold, dangerous water. As it lapped at their very feet, they stared, milky eyes wandering, heads turning. Moans escaped lips in even intervals, their primitive communication evolving slowly as they searched for something.

  For some destination.

  Some target.

  Some victim.

  And as the earth exploded beneath them, and the volcanoes roared back to vivid life in the east and south, they turned almost as one. Their eyes, even amidst the tumult of the shrieking earth beneath them, turning to the glowing embers far in the distance.


  As they picked themselves up off the ground after the shaking had stopped, they moved mindlessly forward, almost as one.

  Toward the glowing flames in the distance. To the east. To the closest flaming mountain.

  What they did not know—could not know—was that those bright lights and noises were not related to humans. They were simply the marks of nature trying to reclaim her kingdom.

  And what they did not know—could not know—was that between them and those lights were several small bands of humans, trying desperately to survive.

  ***

  “Wait, are you saying he can’t ever cut his hair or his fingernails?”

  She shrugged, adjusting the cap over her long hair, and tightening the rubber band around her jaunty pony tail before squinting in the direction of the early sunrise.

  “I’m just saying that it’s intellectually inconsistent to say that his hair and his nails grow, but that he can somehow groom them. I’m not against him grooming himself, clearly—although I must say that a lumberjack-esque man of steel is appealing—I’m just pointing out the inconsistencies. That’s all.”

  The light from the rising sun was diffuse and dull, reflecting through layers of deep, recently dispersed ash from multiple roaring volcanoes.

  “I don’t get it, then. Why do you care?”

  Ky rose from where she was squatting, resting for a moment as Kate pulled her head back out of a small imported car and leaned against it, hand running through her hair as she looked around.

  Clearly she wasn’t into the debate. Ky sighed, shrugging her shoulders under the moderate weight of her tactical harness and shaking her head.

  She missed Mike. He was like the idiot school kid, the older brother, and the hapless dad, all mixed into one superhuman bag of meat. Plus, he was entertaining.

  Kate. Well, she was just a mom.

  Pretty, smart, and competent. But not at all goofy.

  All she knew was important stuff. Mom stuff.

  “Haven’t you ever just realized something from a movie or a book? Like, a major plot hole that ruins the plausibility of everything you had forced yourself to believe? Something that is so implausible and logically inconsistent, that it makes the entire fictional endeavor seem like an obvious ruse?”