“They were supposed to establish a line on the northeast quadrant, but right now I have my doubts,” Charlie said.
“Wonder what happened to Sarah and Rebecca,” I said.
“Jesus, did you have to bring that up now?”
“Just wondering. We’re almost three weeks late, but they’re pushing it.” It was a sore spot that we didn’t know what was going on. We thought we had a report about some activity out east, but nothing was definitive. That was the one thing that drove me nuts about the new world was the severe difficulty in reaching anyone at any serious distance. The communication system we discovered was great, but you had to have relays of messages.
We moved down the stairs and exited the building. We had been moving through the city trying to get a feel for what kind of resistance we were looking at, and I was hopeful that it would be minimal since it was early February, and there was still a good amount of cold weather hanging around. Add to the mixture that we were in a city that was a mile high, things might stay frozen a little while longer.
“Where did we leave the truck?” Charlie asked.
“I dunno, somewhere over to the west, I think,” I said.
“You lost it?”
“Wasn’t looking for it yet, so no, I didn’t lose it. Since when was I supposed to pay attention to where you parked the truck? As the passenger, my job is to make sure the area we park in is safe for us to get out of the truck, which obviously it was,” I said.
“Okay, smart ass, so which way back to the safe zone?” Charlie asked, checking the road for stragglers. There was one down the street, but we weren’t going to waste a shot on him and have his buddies come crawling out of whatever hole they were hiding in.
“It was by a lake; I remember that,” I said. “We walked east to get here, so let’s go west, and I’m sure I’ll remember something.”
“I can’t tell you how comforting that is,” Charlie said.
“Feel free to lead the way, pathfinder.”
“No, please, I insist.”
We bickered mostly because it eased the tension. We were alone in a hostile city with no real backup, and if things got dicey, we were very much in trouble.
“Come on, let’s go this way,” I said. We headed down Dartmouth Avenue, and I had to admit a lot of it looked familiar, but then a lot of it looked familiar in a lot of different places we weren’t in at the moment. We passed by a strip mall which looked like it had been bombed and a bank where someone had driven a car into the side of it. Neither looked familiar, but I wasn’t about to admit that to Charlie.
The Bradley gas station looked somewhat familiar, but the zombie coming out of the side street was all too common.
It was a young man, probably in his early twenties when he was taken, and he still wore his baseball cap over his dark features. His eyes were freakishly white under the visor, and they stared unblinking as he made his way across the intersection. He looked at me and then Charlie and then back to me again. I stepped forward with a two-handed grip on my pick and let fly when he was close enough. The flat end hit him on the side of the head and knocked him to the ground.
His head must have been particularly hard since he started to get back up after he got his hands underneath himself.
Charlie chuckled behind me. “Takes a second swing, does it?”
I stepped back. “Not usually, but I must have hit him at a bad angle. Give it a try,” I said.
Charlie shook out his arm and swung his left hand axe at the kid as he stood up. The blade struck the Z in roughly the same spot and knocked him to the ground again.
It was my turn to laugh when the zombie started to get up again.
“Son of a bitch.” Charlie took better aim this time and caught the zombie with the beard of his axe. The point cracked through the incredibly tough skull of this zombie and killed it, knocking its hat off in the process.
“Unreal. Let’s keep moving. There’s bound to be more of these,” I said.
We kept on Dartmouth and passed several more strip malls and homes. The homes had been broken into with several looking like there had been major battle inside. Down every street we looked, there were white flags hanging from mailboxes.
At the intersection of Sheridan and Dartmouth, there were two gas stations, each filled with cars. All the cars had been abandoned, most of them with their doors still open. Two cars still had occupants, but they weren’t zombies. Charlie looked them over and reported that each had died from a gunshot wound.
“Guess some things were worth dying over,” Charlie said.
“I guess.” I looked over at the other gas station. “Did you see something move?”
Charlie looked. “Not sure. There’s something over there, though. I think something just fell over.”
I flipped my rifle up and scanned the area with my scope, being too lazy to get my binoculars out of my pack. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary and reported as much to Charlie.
“Wonder what I saw, then? I know something fell over, or something ducked out of sight,” Charlie said.
“Probably the latter. Could have been a cat,” I said, still looking through my glass.
“Or a squirrel,” Charlie said. “God knows those things have wreaked enough havoc around.”
Was that ever the truth. Once when we were hiding from a horde zombies, a squirrel in a nearby tree took offense to our presence, and started making noise at us. After we fought the zombies off, Charlie made a point to shoot that squirrel dead.
“Well, whatever it was its content to stay on the ground and stay very quiet,” I said.
Charlie nodded. “Then again, I may be seeing… Holy Shit!”
I spun around and realized we were facing a mob of over a hundred zombies at least. They were all grey and nasty looking; several with deeply torn faces and necks. Most were wearing professional clothing, which was odd, but then we were in an area that would have supported that kind of employment. One woman looked like she was about to give a presentation on the merits of adult meat versus child meat. There wasn’t a scratch on her until she fell forward, and then I could see that huge chunks of her back had been eaten and ripped away.
I didn’t waste time with my axe; my rifle was in my hand, and it was ready to go. The Z’s were too close for the scope, so I sighted in through the elevated scope rings and started taking shots that way. The zombies in the back spread out to avoid stepping on the ones I shot in the front, so my delaying tactic was a complete failure.
“Better move, they’re surrounding us,” I said, putting my rifle away and getting ready to run.
“Not to worry, I have a plan,” Charlie said. He took off at a run and I was right behind him. There was a zombie in the way, but Charlie swung hard from the hip and took the ghoul right in the face, upending it and tumbling it into its friends like an Olympic gymnast. Even that ploy didn’t work since the roller only took out another zombie.
Charlie ran down the street, and we were about free, when the damn horde got reinforcements from the north. A small shopping center to our north was literally puking zombies in our direction, and we had very little time to make a decision, and even less time to execute it.
“Follow me!” Charlie yelled. He ran straight for a small, five-storied professional building. I didn’t have time to read the different signs out front that advertised what services were offered; I was just hopeful for some sort of solid wall to put my back up against.
We reached the front door, and as usual we tried it before we broke through. Like a lot of business doors, it was open, and I couldn’t help but wonder how much higher the death toll would have been if the Upheaval had hit on a weekend. People ducking for cover couldn’t get into locked businesses and would have been eaten where they got trapped.
I pushed the door closed behind me and slipped a plastic zip tie through the handles and shut it tight. I used carabiners when I had them, but zip ties worked just as well, and I could carry a lot more of them without soundin
g like a horse-drawn sleigh during Christmas.
That only bought us a few minutes. The zombies had seen us go in here, and they would easily break through the glass in a few minutes. Charlie went over to the directory and quickly gave it a look.
“Lessee…attorneys on the first floor, useless. Real estate and a software company on the second floor, even more useless. Here we go. Pediatrician and Dentist on the third floor,” Charlie said. “Huh. No mention of fourth or fifth floor.”
“Government offices, then. Hard to find even after the end of the world. Stairs are over here,” I said. I went over to the large grey door and pulled it open. I jumped back as a body fell out onto the floor. I nearly hit it with my pick until I realized it was already dead.
“What happened to her?” Charlie asked.
I gave the body a look. “Dehydrated, most likely. Must have escaped to here and saw there wasn’t a way out.”
“Not a fun way to go,” Charlie said, stepping over the corpse.
I kicked the legs out of the way and made sure the door could close. “Can’t think of any way of dying that I would consider fun although I could name a few that would be preferable ways to go.”
“True that. If she was hiding from something, then we need to make sure we aren’t caught by the same thing,” Charlie said.
We went up the first flight of stairs and I took a quick look onto the second floor. I didn’t see anything that would have been worth running away from, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there somewhere. The air was cooler in the hallway of the second floor which led me to believe there was an open window around there somewhere.
I banged on the door with my fist and heard some definite movement down the hall. I motioned to Charlie and he slipped into the hallway behind me, his axes already out and open for business. I put my rifle on my back, and pulled out my pick, choking up on the long handle since I didn’t have much room to swing.
The hallway was dark, but around the corner there was some light, so I figured we’d head that way. Charlie tapped me on the shoulder, and I turned around to confront what could only be a nightmare.
There were two of them, one missing his legs, and the other most of his throat. His head flopped forward as he stumbled towards us, his eyes glowing unusually bright in the dark hallway. Between him and the shuffler on the floor, I can understand why that woman stayed in the stairwell.
But now these two had Charlie James to deal with, and he does not scare so easily. Charlie didn’t even waste time with the one crawling on the floor, he just used him as a step to get a better angle on the taller zombie. Charlie reached up and buried his axe in the man’s skull, and then got out of the way as the big Z crashed to the floor, pinning the other zombie underneath him. Charlie stepped back, and actually had to find the right angle to kill the other one, he was that well buried.
I waited for Charlie to finish, and then we looked around the corner. The hallway opened up into a large reception area that had two desks across from three couches that formed a small three-sided box. A huge chunk of local wood served as a coffee table, and I could only imagine how much that thing weighed.
Charlie looked out the window and waved me over.
“Damn.” The hundred zombies that had chased us here had grown considerably, and they were walking into the building beneath us. I went back to the stairs, and the two of us reached the third floor. The stairwell opened to a mural of the circus, and whoever painted that particular picture knew not to make the clowns too weird.
Charlie and I broke into the pediatrician’s office and managed to find several boxes of antibiotics and other medical supplies. In the dentist’s office, we found some more painkillers, and a small canister of nitrous oxide. Push came to shove, we could go out with big smiles on our faces.
We worked our way over to the other side of the building, and that’s when we both noticed that the roof of the second floor extended out away from the front of the building towards the rear parking lot.
“I’ll take yes for an answer,” Charlie said.
“Same here. We need to get out before that crowd discovers the other side of the building, and we’ll wind up like that women in the stairs,” I said.
“No time like the present.” I walked over to the window and put the point of my pick against it. Taking a book off a nearby desk, I put it against the window and using the flat end of the pick, smacked it, and the window cracked. Hitting it again, the pick went through. I pulled on the glass and pulled a large chunk of glass inside.
“Think that was too loud?” I asked.
“Can’t be helped. I don’t have much ammo left, and we don’t know where the truck is,” Charlie said.
“Yeah, and there’s that,” I said, pulling in another chunk of glass. I looked at Charlie and then grabbed another chunk of glass. I ignored the look he gave me and grinned to myself.
We moved out to the roof and away from the building. At the corner, I got down and looked over the edge. The way was clear, but it was about thirty feet to the ground. We could jump off, but after we broke both our legs we’d only be food after our ammo ran out.
“I like that tree,” Charlie said. There was a pine tree that was growing right next to the building. It was about twenty feet closer to the zombies than I would have liked, but it was better than falling and breaking my neck.
“If we’re going to go, it had better be now,” I said.
Charlie didn’t waste any time. He walked over to the side and dropped into the tree. Branches snapped, and the tree swung away from the building, but it held, and in a minute Charlie waved from the ground, hidden in a corner of the building from the zombies still streaming into the building.
I jumped, landing hard in the tree, and slamming a branch into my crotch. I coughed in pain and slid the rest of the way down, trying not to hit myself again. I lost my grip on a branch and fell forward, losing the canister of gas out of my pack. It slid out and fell to the ground. The top hit the ground and broke off, and the canister blew down the street, skittering away and sounding like a fire bell. It banged into a building, then it spun in a circle, spitting gas and vapor.
I dropped to the ground and joined Charlie at the corner, breathing and trying to forget the pain in my gut.
“Tree rack you, too?” Charlie asked.
“Yup.”
“Ready to leave?”
“In a minute.”
“Take your time. That canister has distracted a bunch of those Z’s, so whenever you’re ready, we can move,” Charlie said.
“All right let’s go,” I said. I couldn’t justify staying still when I had the ability to move.
We ran down street and passed a building painted in red, orange, and yellow digital camouflage. It was so striking that I remembered seeing it for the second time.
“Truck’s this way,” I said.
Charlie nodded. “I remember that building. Don’t remember those zombies this way before.”
Several Z’s watched us run by before giving chase. They were joined by several more who came out of the homes we passed on our run. I was hoping we could leave a few behind, but they kept coming. After ten minutes, the two of us were leading a pack of about fifty zombies on a walk down by Bear Creek in lovely downtown Denver.
“This just gets better,” I said.
“Call Casey. We’ve got two thousand fighters out there. Got to be a few doing nothing right now.”
I pulled my radio and got on the channel. “Casey? Talon here.” I waited a moment, then called again.
“Casey?”
“John?”
That wasn’t a female. “Tommy?”
“Hey, John!”
Charlie grinned. “I’ll be damned.”
“Tommy! Where the hell are you?”
“We’re on the outside of Denver, coming up I-25. Where are you?”
“Running from zombies somewhere in the southern end of Denver,” I said. I gave Charlie a thumbs up then quickened my pace as a cou
ple of zombies seemed to be faster than the other ones.
“Okay. Hold on.” There was a pause. “All right, we can intercept or at least give you a reference to meet us at. We’ll come over on 470,” Tommy said.
“Sounds great. I’m glad the rest of the army is here,” I said.
“Umm,” Tommy said.
“Repeat that, I didn’t hear you,” I said, suddenly getting a ball of ice in my stomach that had nothing to do with the tree branch that hit me.
“We don’t have the army, John. Duncan and I sent them north to clear the middle states, and we just have five hundred with us.”
It was my turn to pause. I looked over at Charlie who just shook his head.
“So close,” he said.
“Tommy?” I asked.
“Yes?”
“Does the rest of the army at least know to come here?” I asked.
“They do. They will,” Tommy said.
“Well, that’s better news than before. Let us know when you get in town. We’ll lead a crowd your way,” I said.
“Fair enough. And John?”
“Yes?”
“Duncan says hi. You too, Charlie.”
Charlie laughed out loud. “Hi back, Duncan.”
I signed off. We moved along the road and passed a baseball field choked with weeds and leaves. I couldn’t explain why, but that baseball field made me sad in a way that I hadn’t felt in a long time. It just told me in no uncertain terms that our innocence was long gone and was never coming back.
“Well, hell,” Charlie said.
I tore my eyes off the field and looked in the same direction.
“Crap, that sucks,” I said unnecessarily.
Our truck, which was about fifty yards in front of us, parked nicely under a tree, was the object of the attention of about a hundred more zombies. Added to the ones we had trailing us, and we were pushing our five hundred a day limit.
The zombies behind us, seeing that we had stopped, started groaning as they gained on us. The noise attracted the attention of the ones by the truck who started to drift in our direction.
“And, of course, there’s a few in the subdivision coming our way as well,” Charlie said, pointing a tomahawk across the street.
White Flag of the Dead (Book 9): The Zombie Wars (We All Fall Down) Page 13