by Paul Bishop
Elon put a hand on my shoulder. “Can you make it to the pole?”
“You’re gonna have to help me up, but I’ll do what I can.”
“Okay.”
Chris opened the door to the DJ booth. The full-throated sounds of the cannibals feasting met us at the door.
“Don’t climb until I’m over there,” the wounded man said.
Elon wanted to hug him but stopped himself. He knew how badly it would hurt.
Chris looked at him. “Yeah, me too,” he said.
As all the primal screams of pain he’d held in erupted, he broke into a run across the room. Elon and I slipped quietly out of the booth and headed to the second stage in a crouch. I carried my crutches in one hand and limped along on my mismatched legs.
While we scuttled as fast as we could, the other man reached the bar. The cannibal king sidestepped out of his way. The others stopped feeding and looked at him. He ran behind the counter and flicked the Zippo as he did so. His sprint continued, with his arms out and chest forward, into the back wall of the bar. He impacted into three rows of bottles full of clear liquid that might as well have been lighter fluid.
Damn, I wonder what Sammy put in that drink?
Elon reached the pole as the light show began. Flames immediately reached the ceiling of the bar and Chris came around, a human torch, and barreled toward the cannibals. They scattered, suddenly very human again.
While the mob was distracted, Elon shimmied up the pole like a pro. He punched the ceiling tiles and I ducked from a shower of fiberglass. One came loose and he stuck his hand into the crawlspace and hauled himself inside.
Chris chased the invaders like characters in a silent movie, if not for all the screaming. He made it a few laps around the bar before he fell. The beasts slapped at the spreading flames and tripped over the mess they’d made of Sammy’s innards. I couldn’t even see Gigi’s body.
11
“Come on!” Elon stretched his arm through the hole in the ceiling, his hand still a good distance from the floor. I’d have to do some climbing.
I hopped my way on stage, less than sexy but who gave a damn? I slipped my arm through my crutches and let them dangle off the crook of my only remaining elbow before I grasped the pole between my thighs the way Gigi had shown me on my first night. I used that to hold my weight while I pulled like hell with my arm. My stumpy limb was no help at all, but I faked it anyway.
My rescuer reached lower, but I was still a good foot away.
“Get those two,” the cannibal king shouted. A quartet of blood-soaked and slightly singed followers turned and stumbled toward us. The fifth man lay on the ground and writhed in the last death throes of someone burned alive. It brought me a small measure of satisfaction.
“Come on, Janet,” Elon said.
“I’m trying,” I said and I really was. It had taken me two days to walk there but it felt like it might take longer to reach the top of that pole.
I pulled with my good arm, squeezed with my thighs, and released at the right moments to slide an inch and sometimes two toward the ceiling.
The flesh-eaters had arrived. Damn, I wished I had another propane tank at that moment. All I could do was swing around the pole and hurl my fake leg at them. I caught one across the jaw with my heel, but the guy behind him caught hold of my leg and pulled.
In a way, I wished I could have seen his face more clearly when he got my leg free, took a bite, and broke his teeth on the hard plastic. It seemed like a perverse kind of justice to let the shitheads have the ill-fitting piece of junk—and better than my good leg, which I still needed.
As the straps peeled away from my thigh, Elon yanked me into the crawlspace.
“Grab here,” he said and guided my hand to a support beam overhead. “Don’t put all your weight on the ceiling or you’ll fall through.”
Solid advice, I decided, and made sure to take his caution to heart.
The crawlspace was perhaps three feet high and as dusty as all hell. I saw a bird’s nest and a decade’s worth of rat droppings and shivered. Then, I saw the rats. I couldn’t get away from the damn things but there was no time to renew my feud with them, though. Elon scrambled to the far corner of the space and a short ladder leading to a hatch and, hopefully, roof access. I followed him but moved slowly and deliberately and didn’t put any more pressure than needed on the ceiling.
Rats swarmed around us, confused as to why humans had invaded their secret world after all these years living in a silent truce. Not only that, it turned out that the damn cannibals below us weren’t the only ones who were hungry.
I heard Elon cry out first. “Ow. Little bastard!”
Then, I felt a nibble and another, and they soon became ten. They were small bites, but not what I needed as I tried to concentrate on hauling my ass across the crawlspace to possible freedom. I swatted two rats away with my stump, an effective tool for rat swatting. I hadn’t realized it before.
As we neared the far end of the building, we could feel the heat from the bar fire below us.
Elon let his knee drop and it pushed through a ceiling tile. I saw the orange of the flames. We pressed on with only a few more feet ahead of us. What awaited us on the roof, I had no idea.
Another rat attempted to nibble on my half arm and I batted him away but slipped a little and put my stump through a ceiling tile, which caved in the world for the rat that followed on the heels of his friend. It slipped down into the fire beneath us.
Bloody hands stretched upward and the creatures jumped from chairs and barstools to try to reach us.
“Come on, Janet,” Elon said. “We’re here.”
His words were followed by weapons. Spears of rusted metal jutted through the breakaway ceiling tiles. A thick machete came within inches of my face and I screamed. I prided myself that I’d kept a level head during all of this, but that was too close a call.
The ceiling tiles were torn down like an earthquake rent the ground from under us. The bloodstained and slightly singed hands of the cannibals grasped tiles and pulled and their knuckled fists darted into the crawlspace like curious birds. More were revealed with each new tile that vanished. Driven by hunger I would never comprehend, they stood on the bar stools and systematically shredded the ceiling with us only inches away from safety.
They balanced on the stools in the middle of the fire. The cannibal king urged them on and yelled at them to continue the hunt. One cannibal fell from her precarious stool and tumbled into the fire. She tried to stand but slipped on the blood-soaked floor and succumbed to the flames.
Elon reached the ladder. He pushed up with his shoulders and banged into the hatch, but it held. With a muttered curse, he lowered his body before he launched himself up again and rammed both hunched shoulders and the back of his head against the metal square. It popped open and a rush of cold air sucked in.
The new oxygen stoked the fire below and flames licked my good leg.
“Get them,” the cannibal king shouted. He grinned mockingly as he held my fake leg over his head like a trophy—a last-place trophy, I thought acerbically.
Elon held his hand out to me again and I stretched toward it.
A thick blade swung up into the crawlspace and sliced him across the middle. The cannibal who held the machete stood on tiptoes on top of his barstool. He leaned forward and his body followed the momentum of the swing. His arm had overextended to land the blow, and he continued forward and off his barstool. The blade stuck in Elon’s gut but his arm still clutched the ladder.
My hand hovered an inch away from his. I wasn’t sure if I should grab it or if he would pull me down when he fell.
He looked at his belly in shock. The blade tilted, then slipped out slowly, slick with his blood. It clattered below but my gaze remained fixed on Elon.
The heat around me broke sweat on my forehead. He kept his hand extended as the blood seeped into his shirt. I snatched his hand. The grip wasn’t as strong as it had been on the pole, but he pul
led me to him and began to climb.
Drops of hot blood splashed on my forehead as I followed him up the short ladder. He kept his left hand pressed tightly into his gut. Behind me, glass shattered and chunks of the ceiling fell as the fire spread.
Finally, he reached the edge of the hatch opening and stopped with me still below him on the ladder. His moan was low and quiet. I could see a little of his face and he had his eyes closed and his skin had turned pale. I wedged my stump arm between a rung of the ladder and the wall and pushed up on the bottom of his boot with my good hand. I felt him take some of the weight and he went over the edge.
I caught the ladder again a millisecond before I fell.
With my face tilted toward the cool breeze above, I tried to drag myself up but I couldn’t move. Pressure clamped around my ankle and a wheezing laugh turned my blood cold.
When I looked down, the cannibal king held a hand around my good leg and swung my fake one in his left hand. His body hung by his one-handed grip and drifted lazily over the orange fire. He smiled at me with his filed-down teeth in full view.
I kicked to try to shake him loose, but he held firm and his vice-like grip almost cut off the circulation to my foot. In desperation, I tried to drag myself up again, but the weight of us both was too much for one arm.
“Elon!” I called but received no response. I assumed he was too busy losing his guts on the roof.
“It’s such a shame the other leg is gone,” the cannibal king said. “I wonder, did they enjoy it? Whoever got to sample your fine flesh, that is.” He spoke loud and clear over the roaring fire.
“Get off me, you sick bastard.”
“And your arm? Did they like that too? Which was the appetizer and which was the main course?” He laughed again.
“No one ate me then and no one is gonna eat me now,” I said.
“We’ll see.”
He dropped my leg, slapped his other hand around my ankle, and hauled himself up, leading with his open mouth. His sharpened teeth dug into the soft side of my foot.
My vision went white with pain and I almost lost my grip. I kicked frantically with my leg, but it only tore my foot from his mouth and made a nasty gash where his teeth had been. My blood trickled from the corners of his mouth as he chewed through a smile, his gaze fixed on me. Sweat ran in streaks down his face and cut lines of white through the grime collected on his skin.
I looped my stump arm around the side of the ladder and pushed painfully into a gap between the metal and wall. The rusty edges of the ladder cut lines in my flesh, but I needed my good arm.
When I summoned the courage to release the ladder with my right hand, I half-expected to plunge to the floor. Luckily, I had wedged myself in damn well. I dropped my arm and let the crutches slide until I could grab them in my fist.
My devourer had finished chewing and pulled himself up again. He was a wiry bastard but strong. His shark teeth dug into my heel. This time, I didn’t try to jerk away and hoped for a cleaner cut.
I poked at his head with my crutches. There wasn’t much force behind my swings, but I had his attention at least. He removed his mouth from my foot and another hunk of flesh tore away. I could see from the intense sweat on his face, though, and that he was losing his grip. The friggin’ heat licked at me too.
He began to climb my leg, hand over hand until he reached my knee, which brought him high enough into the crawlspace to hook his own legs over the frame of the drop ceiling. Once there, he released me and rolled toward the wall where he caught hold of a thick black plumbing pipe as the fragile ceiling frame gave way beneath him.
I lifted my leg and a flap of flesh opened and closed on my heel, not fully ripped away from my body. I didn’t care right then because I had the second half of my weapon.
He was too far away to reach with my leg or my arm but within range of my little helper. I aimed my crutch at him, lifted my leg parallel to the crutch, put my foot on the top of the knife grip, and pushed. The knife broke free from the top layer of duct tape that held it in place and extended below the tip of the crutch.
He began to ready himself to leap over to me or perhaps to the ladder where he could knock me off and go after Elon, even though that might have been entirely unnecessary by that point.
With the blade exposed, I thrust my crutch at his face. The heavy knife slid along his cheek and sliced his ear in half. Both halves were still attached to his head but now gaped an inch apart.
The cannibal king shrieked and slapped the side of his face with a hand in an effort to close the wound.
I stabbed again with my makeshift weapon and caught him a little lower across his wrist. He still clutched his cheek wound but blood now poured from the back of his wrist and hand. His other hand held him in place on the pipe so he couldn’t let go. I drew back for another swing.
He released his wound as I pulled away and grabbed my crutch. We played tug of war for a few seconds and he even brought back his evil grin. I decided to use the old playground trick you used when you knew you would lose. I yanked, he pulled, I hauled again and, when he reciprocated, I pushed.
With two of us behind the crutch, it moved quickly and sliced deeply across his exposed throat. With the same razor-edged efficiency with which the blade had cut strips of Jacqui’s flesh from her body, it opened the man’s neck neatly all the way to the top of his spine.
His grin faded. It was wonderful to watch.
It was my turn to grin when his arm released the pipe and he fell into the fire to be cooked—the way meat should be served.
12
I managed to scramble through the hatch and flopped over the edge onto the roof like a wounded seal. Elon hadn’t gone far since he’d made it over the top and I almost landed on top of him.
My teeth gritted against the pain, I made it onto one knee, worked my crutches under me, and pushed to my foot. The knife dangled from the bottom of my crutch on one bloody piece of duct tape.
My companion was literally swimming in a pool of his own blood. He looked at me with wide, white eyes and seemed nervously excited. I could tell the look was him trying to hold onto the life draining out of him.
“My bike,” he said.
“Your bike. Where?”
“My bike,” he said again and panted like an overexcited puppy.
Wisps of smoke and ash floated out of the hatch like a chimney. I lifted my crutch and pushed the metal square closed. The solid thud jerked his body and seemed to bring him into the present.
“Over there,” he said. He pointed to the east side of the building and the alley between the club and our living quarters. When he pulled his hand away from his gut, the deep gash in his stomach yawned wide and gave me a quick view normally reserved for medical students. Blood dripped off his arm and the tip of his finger as he pointed in the direction of his motorcycle.
I had no clue how I could get him down the side of the damn building. By the time I thought of something—if I did—we’d probably both plummet through the roof when the fire consumed Sammy’s club.
“My pocket,” he said and returned his arm to cover the wound like he was ashamed of it or something.
“What about your pocket?” I asked as I scanned the rooftop in search of something to form a makeshift stretcher for him. Maybe, I thought despairingly, I should crutch over to the edge and see if there was a bush or something we could both jump into and have half a chance in hell of not breaking every bone left in our bodies. I felt bad for him since he had a few more bones to break.
“My keys,” he said.
I looked at him in confusion.
“I want you to go,” he said. He dug his free hand in his front left pocket. “Without me.”
All this damn chivalry was sweet and all, but it would leave me a very lonely woman.
You’re a survivor, echoed constantly in my head. Who said it was no longer important. I’d told myself the same thing for months after Ryan died. At first, it was a plea of guilt. I survived and he did
n’t. Why me? Then, it shifted and became a point of pride. To be a survivor these days carried a whole hell of meaning. I only wished I had a few more with me in the survivor club.
A tiny keyring with a single silver key dangled from his index finger.
“I can’t ride a Harley, Elon.” I gestured to my half leg. I didn’t even have the shitty spare anymore. A lightbulb went off. “But I don’t need to.” I pulled my own key out of my pocket. Sammy’s car. The key had been kept nice and warm under the pile of money still resting next to my crotch.
“Suit yourself,” Elon said and forced a half-smile. “It’s not as cool though.”
“You’re right, but I’d rather keep the one leg I still have.”
The blood pooling around him had slowed, not from anything he did to staunch the flow but from a lack of blood left in him to pump out.
He was dying and we both knew it.
“Don’t spend my last damn seconds on this earth arguing with me that I ain’t gonna die,” he said.
“I won’t.”
“Good. Then get on out of here. Don’t pretend I’ll make it off this roof to go with you. Keep going as long as the gas’ll take you.”
Me, the iron girl, started to cry. Yes, for Elon, but for all of them, even Charlie. And for this place. The roof beneath my foot heated from the fire below and the tar grew softer. Sammy’s would be ash by sunup and so would all the people I’d started to love and consider family.
Two families gone in two years. Screw this world and screw the Collapse.
Screw giving up. I’m a survivor.
I crutched over to the edge of the roof and looked down. His and Chris’s motorcycles were parked side by side and looked showroom new compared to Sammy’s old beater parked under a tree that dripped sap onto the car in abstract patterns.
It was amazing how tall a one-story building looked from the roof. There were no bushes, no trampolines, and no swimming pool to aim for. And, of course, me with only one leg to land on.