by Oliver, Carl
Which is why Dr. Aresh had decided that tonight was a good night to start drinking heavily. Brooke and her classmates, upon hearing this news, sincerely hoped that it had more to do with Dr. Aresh’s recent divorce that might be causing him to overreact. In either case, there was nothing that any of them could do. Earth would be hit by the wave no matter what. So, they drank. Brooke ended up crashing with a couple of friends.
From there, it was a similar story to Jessica and Amy’s. Brooke woke to her friend Max screaming as his girlfriend, Jill, attacked him. Suddenly Brooke was locked in a tiny two bedroom efficiency with two murderous people, two zombies.
Brooke had locked herself in a bathroom for a half day, spending the first two hours trying to call 911 for help. Thankfully the guest bathroom had a small window that overlooked what was normally a busy street. The vacancy of any traffic, coupled with her inability to call anyone for help on her cellphone, led her to believe this was not an isolated situation.
She was able to kill Jill and Max with the large, heavy piece of porcelain that covered the back of the toilet. After that ordeal, she showered for the entire afternoon and stayed camped out in her dead friends apartment for a full day. It seemed like other zombies in the building must have been able to hear her, as they soon filled the hallway outside Max and Jill’s front door.
Once Brooke had decided there was no way out through the building, she went out the fire escape and quickly armed herself, and she had spent the last few days practicing with the rifle she carried on her back.
While Brooke had a good idea that this plague was likely directly connected to the meteor shower, she had not yet figured out the trick about safety and alcohol. For some reason this revelation was one of the funniest things in the world to her. Amy and Jessica told their story, Brooke lit up a little bit when they mentioned that they had four guys they were traveling with as well. Four young guys, while also offering the opportunity for amorous activities, offered the more appealing idea of having a group, which offered a better night’s sleep. Brooke really perked up when she learned why the group had come to Chicago in the first place.
“Wait. Let me get this straight. You traveled for four days to get here, just so one of the guys could piss off the Willis Tower?” The question hung, Jessica and Amy unsure if it was rhetorical or not.
“Ummm...yeah.” Jessica finally answered.
“That doesn’t seem weird to you? Taking all that time and effort, just for a piss?”
“Well, what else were we supposed to do?” Amy answered honestly. The question seemed to catch Brooke off guard, she stared into her half empty bottle of wine while she contemplated it.
“I guess, I don’t know. Whenever my friends and I talked about zombies, it was always arguing over what the best safe house or best weapon to defend yourself would be. Nobody ever really talked about what they would do with all the free time.”
“You really don’t consider it. I mean, so you sleep eight hours a day, and you might have to forage for food and fight off zombies for a couple hours a day, but then what do you do with the rest of your time?” Amy smiled into her bottle of wine as she took one last pull from it.
“Piss off the Willis Tower and rob fancy boutiques, I guess.” Jessica said, following Amy’s example, even though it made her eyes water. The wine was calming her nerves from the events of the last hour.
“Would you ladies mind if I joined your little party?” I don’t really want to hang around here, and as you can see there’s plenty of things worse than zombies for a lady to defend herself against.” Brooke smiled with the question, but Jessica could sense her loneliness. She played it cool, but something in her eyes told Jessica that Brooke was scared.
“I don’t know if it’s entirely up to us, we’ll have to run it by the guys first, but I don’t see any reason why not.” Jessica smiled. “After all, you did save our lives back there.”
By this point, a few zombies that had been milling aimlessly along the street began moving closer to the table where they were enjoying their bottles of wine. There was a tall, thin African American man, a white woman who looked to be in her late thirties, and a chubby boy of maybe twelve. Each had the paled skin and stumbling gait, however seeing the three together confirmed something for Amy that she had noticed before.
The child was moving with a similar gait, but it was not the same. His little legs moving surprisingly quickly, making his bare feet scrape against the pavement.
“The kid zombies move a lot faster than the adults. It’s weird.” Amy pulled the pistol out of her pocket as she spoke. Jessica noticed a wry smile cross Amy’s lips as she lined up her shot, taking out the two slower moving targets first. Two clean headshots. She waited only a moment more, observing the child zombie as it was now less than ten yards away.
Amy took a long drag off her bottle. She was about to aim and shoot, when something dark flew over her shoulder and crashed into the zombie boy’s head, knocking him off balance and to the ground. Amy and Jessica both turned to see Brooke, sans the bottle of wine she had just finished. She had hurled the empty bottle which had collided with the kids face.
A moment later the chubby boy sat back up, purple blood running down his cracked lips from what looked like a horribly broken nose. Out of the corner of her eye, Jessica noticed that Amy’s wry smile had developed into a full grin as she aimed and pulled the trigger, finishing off what was left of the chubby boy’s face.
“I think I’m going to like hanging out with you ladies. You’re fun.” Brooke said, standing. “How about we go find your friends now?”
There is an interesting rule of thumb, that it takes you about twice as long to go up something as it does to go down. This most appropriately applies to hillsides and mountains, however it is also applicable to stairs. Strangely enough it doesn’t apply to ladders though.
Because of this rule, Scott, Justin, Chris, and Tyler had made it down to the fifth floor in what felt like record time. When they had reached the fifth floor, they paused. It was on the fifth floor that it became blatantly obvious that they were not alone in the building.
On the way down the stairwell, the noises had been covered up by their own feet pounding on the stairs, as well as their conversation, which echoed off the concrete walls. Once they reached the fifth floor though, the sound below them became louder and clearer.
It wasn’t talking, or groaning or moaning like one might expect, if one had watched too much TV. It was the sound of a large group moving. Bodies bumping into things, feet shuffling, and clothes rustling.
“You guys hear that too, right?” Justin asked. He was the furthest down the stairs, as he had been leading the way.
“Sounds like someone’s waiting for us in the lobby.” Tyler said, his voice falling to a whisper.
“Sounds like a lot of someones are waiting for us in the lobby.” Scott confirmed.
“Let’s get out here, see what we can see.” Chris pushed through the stairwell door with a big 5 painted on it, leading the group into a plain office hallway. The group moved quietly, and Justin shut the door slowly behind them, making sure to keep it from banging shut and giving away their position.
“So, what now?” Tyler asked when they were safely in the fifth floor hallway with the door closed behind them.
“Well, it looks like a few of the zombies followed us in the front door.” Scott said. “Anyone know where the back door is?”
“First, lets see what the situation is.” Chris suggested. While he spoke, his eyes were moving fast, and his mind even faster. He was scanning the hallway, and his mind was putting together what he remembered of the layout on the ground floor. “Tyler and Justin, take a right up there and start breaking into offices. Watch out for any night janitors who might be trapped in one of the rooms. You’re trying to get an outside window to get a peek at what’s going on outside on the North side of the building. Then check the West. Scott and I will take the East and South. Meet back here in five minutes.”<
br />
The group split up and quickly checked the perimeter of the building from their fifth floor vantage point. They met back up in only three minutes.
“It looks like that apartment building we passed a few blocks back followed us in. There’s a trail of zombies leading up to the front door.” Justin reported, with Tyler nodding in response.
“There’s a group of them to the South, too.” Scott suggested.
“So we are going out of the North or East, I guess.” Chris responded. “Anyone have bright ideas on how we get out of the building in the first place?”
“Based on how noisy they were, I don’t think we can fight our way through.” Justin said in frustration. “Not enough bullets.”
“Could we just push through?” Tyler asked. “Like when we pushed the little girl around at the apartment building?”
“Too risky.” Chris responded. “With only a few zombies, that could work, but we could be overwhelmed. With the brandy in our systems, we won’t turn. All the same, a few bad bites and you bleed out, all the same.”
“What if we jump?” Scott offered, and Justin rolled his eyes in response. “No, like. We could go down to the second story and jump.” Justin stopped rolling his eyes and shrugged in response, acknowledging that it was better than any idea he could think of.
“Well, if it’s not too far of a drop. And if those things aren’t on the second floor too, then it could work.” Chris conceded.
With that, the group made their way back to the stairwell, and crept down as silently as they could to the door with a large number “2” painted on it. Chris went in front, and cracked the door open so he could peer through.
“Coast looks clear.” Chris whispered, pulling the door open further. The four friends walked into the second floor hallway and made their way through what looked like a gift shop area for tourists and toward the North end of the building. They reached a wall of glass and looked out.
The coast wasn’t completely clear, but there were only a dozen or so zombies visible in the two closest blocks.
“So...now what?” Scott asked. It was at least a fifteen foot drop to the ground from where they stood, not to mention, there was probably a pane of bullet proof glass holding them in. He wasn’t sure on the proofing of the glass, but he had to assume that it was thick. Tyler stood between Scott and Justin, all three looking out the thick window at the street below.
“Now we break out, climb down the rope, and meet back up with the girls.” Chris said from behind them. Justin started to ask the question that they all were thinking.
“What ro…” But before he could finish, he turned to see Chris waving a thick bundle of nylon rope. Tyler had seen the rope before at camping stores. He was pretty sure it was the type that rock climbers used. Chris zipped up the backpack he had been carrying, Tyler was surprised that one of them thought ahead enough for this kind of escape. Although if anyone was going to think of it, Chris would have actually been his last guess.
“This rope.” Chris said as he began looping the rope around a large support pillar that was fifteen feet from the window. Once he had tied a knot in the rope, he pulled on it to test the strength.
“That answers half of the puzzle. But how are we going to get through this window? It’s huge, and I think this might be the thickest pane of glass I’ve ever seen.” Justin said, gesturing at the window that towered at least ten feet tall.
“Well, I was thinking if we put a bullet through each corner and then hit it with something big and heavy, that might do the trick.” Chris offered. “But if anyone has better ideas, I’m all ears.”
“I don’t think that will work. But I honestly have no idea what would.” Scott conceded. “You don’t happen to have a baseball bat hidden in that magic bag of yours as well, would you?”
“Nah, I was just thinking we could push one of those display tables through it.” Chris gestured behind him, back toward the gift shop area. Tyler saw what he was gesturing at. There were a number of large, heavy tables which were completely covered with memorabilia tee shirts and sweatshirts. The tables certainly looked like they would weigh a ton, and they had wheels on the table legs, to make them easier for staff to move around.
Nobody had any better ideas, so they decided to give Chris’s a try. They weren’t sure how long the zombies would continue to mingle in the lobby before getting curious and exploring the second story. That, and they also didn’t know how long until the entire base of the building was surrounded, instead of just one side. Once that happened, escape would become much more difficult.
Justin and Scott stood at the two ends of the huge pane of glass, ready to shoot out the corners, per Chris’s instruction. Chris and Tyler cleared off one of the large rolling tables and lined it up with the window. They planned to both push to help the table gain momentum, and then hopefully it would crash through, opening up their exit. They would quickly climb down the rope that Chris had prepared, and then would be on their way.
They knew they would have to move quickly, as the sound of breaking glass would likely draw attention from both the zombies in the street as well as those who were near the exits in the lobby. Just in case, they each took a pull from the bottle of vintage bourbon that Chris still had in his backpack, finishing the bottle off. If they did get into any kind of a scrap, they wanted to make sure that they had their protection.
“Okay, now on my count.” Chris and Tyler lined up behind the table, ready to heave their weight into it. “One. Two. Three.” On the count of three, Tyler’s ears were assaulted by the crack of gunfire in the small space. Out of his peripheral vision, he saw Justin and Scott firing low first, and then high, each putting a couple bullets into the corners of the glass. The bullet holes were so tiny that Tyler couldn’t even make them out.
How could such small holes do any good? Does this even have a chance of working?
Tyler felt himself doubting the chances of Chris’s plan working out, when he heard a grunting battle cry coming from right beside him.
“FREEEEDOM!” Tyler thought that the Braveheart quote was a little unrelated to the moment, but it still signalled him to start pushing, even if he was still almost positive that this plan wouldn’t work.
The table continued to build up speed, as Tyler estimated the distance until the table would bounce off the window like a bird.
Ten feet.
Five feet.
He felt himself slowing down, letting the momentum of the table take it into the glass. From the periphery of his vision, Chris flew forward, pushing until the moment that the table made contact with the glass.
Tyler heard a noise, it was somewhere between the sound of a wave crashing against surf, and a jet engine. Chris tried to spin around, but his momentum and the slick tile floor made it difficult to change directions quickly. Tyler saw Justin and Scott back up quickly as the window came crashing down. Half of it fell outside, but half of the large pane of glass fell on the edge of the floor, shattering into golf ball sized shards. Chris scrambled on his knees, crawling away from the wave of broken glass that fell around him.
Just as the sound exploded through the room, it was over. Following the shattered window, a gust of wind forced it’s way through the new opening. Tyler looked down and saw Chris, pushing himself back to his feet. His hands were red with blood. Looking up, he saw the concern in his friends’ faces.
“I’ll be okay, it’s just a few scrapes. Grab the rope!” Chris pointed in the direction of the rope, and Justin and Scott began running toward it. Tyler found himself momentarily hypnotized by the pointing motion, and the blood slowly dripping from Chris’s pointer finger.
“Ty...wake up...we’ve gotta go. Now!” Chris was shouting, and Tyler realized that he had been standing still, staring at his friend for what must have been at least ten seconds.
They really knew how to make their booze back in the day.
Tyler turned and saw Scott standing at the edge of the broken out window, looking down. Justin
was already on the rope.
Thirty seconds, or more?
Chris grabbed Tyler by the shoulders and pushed him toward the edge. Tyler felt his nerves fraying, he had never been a big fan of heights.
“We’ve gotta go now, buddy. No time to spare.” Tyler saw Scott pick up the rope and lean out with his feet against the edge of the building, rappelling down. Scott made his way down, and Chris slapped Tyler on the shoulder again. “Your turn now buddy. Just like Scott did it. All you have to do is ease your way down, one hand over the other.”
At first Tyler was unsure why Chris was coaching him so much, why he seemed so rushed. Then he looked down and saw a mob of zombies moving up the street toward the base of the building where Justin and Scott waited below.
Why are they coming so fast? Are they really that attracted to sound?
Although he felt like they were shaking with fear, Tyler forced his hands to grab the rope and begin moving down, just as his friends before him had done. It was a little harder than it looked, and he had to keep his hips up in order to keep his feet against the building. When he felt Scott and Justin’s hands touching his legs, he let himself look down and then dropped the remaining five feet.
Tyler looked up just in time to see a zombie sink it’s teeth into Justin’s forearm.
“Fuck.”
Justin shouted, before quickly pulling out his gun and putting a bullet through a zombie’s forehead. Scott already had his weapon out and was putting rounds into several other zombies that were within ten feet. One by one, parts of their skulls evaporated into purple and gray sprays, a fine mist of blood and bone and skin. But when they fell they were soon replaced by the next wave.
Once on his feet, Tyler joined his two friends, firing his gun into the wall of death that moved toward them. He was firing North, into the street that they were hoping to escape through. Justin and Scott had each taken up a flank, preventing them from being surrounded. Later, Tyler would reflect that they looked so harmless from above, only a couple dozen zombies. How bad could that be? Down here, on the same level, his confidence was shaking.