by Lora Powell
"That's as good as it's going to get."
We both stared at the ladder for a second. The lightweight metal seemed far to flimsy to hold either one of us.
"Maybe you should go first." Before I had a chance to get offended, he clarified, "I weigh more than you. If I go first and the ladder breaks, you will be trapped up here."
In a kind of twisted sense, his logic was sweet. Dying a slow death trapped on the roof wouldn't be a fun time. At least, if the ladder gave out, the fall would probably kill me.
"Ok." My voice squeaked. Heart pounding in my chest, I reached for the ladder.
"I'll hold on to this end."
Refusing to look down, I fumbled with trying to figure out how best to cross. The downward angle made it awkward. Finally settling for semi crawling, feet first, I started across.
FOURTEEN-DAY 7-8
A ray from the setting sun stabbed me in the eyes, effectively blinding me. But I wasn't complaining. If I couldn't see, I couldn't see the ground far below, or the growing crowd of zombies who tracked my progress with dead eyes.
The ladder shuddered and creaked as I inched past the halfway point. It buckled sickeningly under the strain, but somehow it held. Sweat covered the palms of my hands and I felt a trickle of it roll down my neck. I barely dared to breath until my too loose, stolen sneakers planted on the roof of the next building over.
"Made it," I called across the alley unnecessarily. Shawn had been holding onto the end of the ladder, watching me cross. I took a second to shake out the muscles in my shoulders and gripped my end of the ladder. "Your turn."
I squinted against the sun and watched as Shawn swung the bag of supplies over his shoulder. With a quick look down, he climbed onto the metal frame.
The end of the ladder jerked in my hands, harder than expected. I gripped harder, as if I could somehow prevent it from dropping my companion to his death. I suddenly understood why he had attempted to tie the other end of the ladder down. Each time he inched farther down, the rung in my hands jumped. I was sure that without the other end being tied, I wouldn't have been able to control my end.
I squinted into the light, hands clammy and cramping from their death grip, as I watched Shawn near the halfway point. The ladder developed a pronounced sway. My stomach dropped as I watched the metal bend further. How far could it go without giving out?
A hiss from below elicited several answering shrieks. We were drawing too much attention. The whole point of risking this rooftop crossing was to fly below the zombies radar. More and more of them were being drawn to the alley, and consequently could see that we were moving to the next building. If the crowd got too big, we would be in the same situation as before, just in a completely unfamiliar building.
"Watch out."
I whipped my gaze back to find that Shawn had somehow finished his crossing while I was watching the zombies watch us. He needed me to move my hands so he could step down.
Breathing slightly easier, I flexed my fingers to restore blood flow. I looked back at the gap between buildings that we had both miraculously survived crossing. The ladder was bent frighteningly. "Let's not ever do that again, ok?"
"You're telling me," he was already walking toward this building's rooftop door. I jogged a few steps to catch up. "It's locked."
Why couldn't this group of employees have been as careless as mine? The locked door was going to be a problem. I thunked the door in frustration and then jumped back as something banged into the other side. Growling and frantic scrabbling told me all I needed to know about who was making the noise. "Crap."
"Yeah. We'll have to find another way down."
On the far side of the roof, we found what we were looking for. There was a problem, though. Zombies roamed the streets. Far too many of them. We were effectively trapped on the roof.
* * *
It had gotten much colder than I had expected over night. In the pitch black, with clouds covering the moon and the sounds from the undead all around, neither of us had managed any real sleep. But by the time the horizon began to lighten in the east, there was a marked decrease in the noise from below.
Shivering from the dampness that the early morning dew had coated us with, I rubbed my hands together and watched the sun break into view. I'd never been happier to see the light. It had been a cold, scary night.
As the sun rose, we edged carefully to the side with the fire escape ladder and looked down. Only a few zombies were in view. They moved along with those bird like movements, seemingly not focused on anything in particular.
"If we can find a break in them, we might be able to get down and sneak out of here." Shawn was laying next to me, looking out over the edge.
"Then what?" We hadn't talked through the plan farther than escaping the building. I was starting to worry. I had spent some time driving around the city before, I knew first hand that nowhere was zombie free, but I was beginning to worry if my companion really grasped the scope of the problem. He had been locked up in the building since the start. "It's like this all over. We won't last long down there on foot."
"I've been thinking about that. I think we need to get out of the city. Go someplace where there was less population."
"Ok. But how will we get there?"
Looking to his right, he pointed. "Do you see the green jeep parked at the curb over there?"
If I concentrated, I could make out the back corner of what was probably a dark green jeep sticking out around the corner of the building. I nodded.
"That's mine," He pulled a set of keys from his pocket to show me.
I looked back to the jeep again. It had to be fifty yards from the bottom of the ladder to the vehicle. In a zombie apocalypse, fifty yards felt like a mile. We would have to both climb down the fire escape, run the distance, and get inside the jeep all before getting caught by any zombies. It seemed impossible.
There really wasn't a better option.
The sun rose, slowly burning away the moisture from my clothes as we lay on the roof, watching for our moment. It seemed like as soon as the few zombies within view wandered far enough away, another one or two would round a corner and we would be right back at square one. I was starting to think that we would never get a chance to run for it when the final pair of zombies disappeared out of sight.
"Now."
FIFTEEN-DAY 8
The morning dew had left the fire escape slippery. Concentrating on moving one foot after the other down, as fast as I humanly could without falling, gave me no time to worry about the zombies that were surely just around the corner.
Eerily still, the usually busy section of the city was a ghost town. The sound of our sneakers squeaking on the metal rungs, and the not so distant noises from the zombies, the only things breaking the silence.
The light thud from Shawn's landing on the pavement sounded too loud to my hyper sensitive hearing. Sure that it would have been heard, I finished my descent frantically. Muscles locked up from nerves, I neglected to bend at the knees, and nearly toppled over on landing. Strong hands pulled me upright by a shoulder and propelled me in the direction of the jeep.
Down on the street level, the smell was intense. A faint odor of garbage and decay had plagued us all night up on the roof, but down between the buildings, where air flow was restricted, the smell became overwhelming. I tried not to gag as I ran. There was no time to be sick.
The street was stained with dried pools of blood here and there. Trash had been strewn everywhere. A swarm of flies buzzed heavily around an overflowing dumpster.
I missed stepping on a severed hand by inches, the skin mottled and grotesque.
We had made it most of the way to the jeep when the hair raising scream that I had been dreading sounded behind us.
"Don't look back!" Still gripping my shirt, he pushed me forward when I started to look over my shoulder.
The sound of a third set of feet pounding their way up the street struck me with terror. Never the most athletic person, my near miss
escapes from before had taught me that the zombies were really fast. Running from them was not easy.
Beside me, Shawn held his hand out in front of him and pressed the button on his keys. The taillight that was in view flashed. Just a few more steps and I pulled the passenger side door opened desperately, flinging myself inside. A long second later, the driver's door flung open and the heavy bag he had been carrying sailed across the center console and crashed into my lap, the end of the bat poking me in the side.
Zombies that had been drawn by the commotion banged into the side of the jeep moments after Shawn pulled his door closed. Decay had truly set in for most of them, and their bloated faces left greasy smears on the glass as they tried to get inside. The zombie that had chased us up the street snarled at me without her lips as the engine started and the jeep bumped through the growing press of bodies.
Transfixed, I watched the one missing part of her face until she became just one of the crowd that was chasing us as we retreated from the city.
I stayed quiet, gripping the bag of our supplies with white knuckles, as I recognized that we were working our way toward the highway. At some point, I became aware that I was sitting on a mangled pile of some sort of paperwork, and the floor around my feet was littered with half empty water bottles. I didn't even care. I was just glad to be in a vehicle and leaving the city.
The streets were empty of other traffic, but they were not deserted. Quiet cursing from my left sounded every time we made a turn onto a street with too many zombies. It was fortunate that we were not in a car, as we climbed over curbs and plowed through junk to escape being trapped. Winding a circuitous route through the madness, it took twice as long as usual before I spotted the sign for the highway.
We dodged a short zombie and picked up speed on the on ramp. The highway was just as deserted as the city streets, except with less of the undead wandering around. Occasional cars had been abandoned on the shoulder, but we encountered nothing to significantly slow us down as the miles flew by.
Twenty minutes after getting onto the highway, I finally spoke up. "Where are we going?"
Concentrating on the road, he spared me a glance. "There was this summer camp that my parents used to make me go to each year. It's in the mountains, the nearest town is really small. There shouldn't have been many people in that area when this all started." He glanced at me again. "Do you have a better idea?"
"No. The summer camp is fine." I had spent most of my life in one city or another. I had no idea which way to go to find a less populated area.
I fiddled with the radio for a while, but found only silence. Even the recorded emergency broadcast from a few days ago was gone. I shifted the bag on my lap to give my side relief from the end of the bat, and absentmindedly rolled an empty water bottle from side to side with the toe of my shoe. Sliding in my seat, I tried to get more comfortable atop the pile of papers.
The drive was starting to wear on my already frayed nerves when I felt the jeep begin to slow down. Lifting my eyes from where I had been watching that water bottle roll under my sneaker, I looked up hopeful that we were near our destination.
The mountains that had been in the distance were closer now, but that was not the reason we were slowing down. Up ahead, a solid wall of stopped vehicles blocked both lanes of the highway for as far as the eye could see. "What is that?"
"I think it must be a road block. I heard on the TV that they were setting them up at all of the state lines to try to contain the sickness."
We rolled to a stop yards from the last vehicle and sat in the jeep, staring at what was undoubtedly hundreds of abandoned cars. Nothing moved ahead of us except for a single zombie who wobbled on a badly broken leg.
After several minutes, it became apparent that any people who were there before, were long gone now. Looking around, I noticed that the other side of the highway, a short distance away across an overgrown grassy center, was completely empty. I gestured to it, "Is there any reason we can't drive on that side?"
Shawn looked where I pointed. "I doubt whoever was guarding the road block is still there. That should work."
Easing his foot off of the brake, he turned the wheel to the left. I noticed, as we bumped off of the pavement, that grass had been crushed by a few other vehicles who had pulled the same maneuver before us.
SIXTEEN-DAY 8
Driving on the wrong side of the highway threw me off balance. A lifetime of sticking to the right side of the road ingrained in my mind that doing otherwise was dangerous. As we rolled along the deserted stretch of pavement, I kept expecting to suddenly find myself in a head on collision, despite common sense telling me that wasn't likely to happen anymore.
Over on the other side of the road, the line of stopped cars stretched on. A few zombies emerged from the traffic jam as we drove by. Some car doors stood open as if the occupants had fled in a hurry. But I didn't see anyone who appeared to still be alive.
We drove for more than a mile before finally coming to the reason for the stopped traffic. Military trucks had been parked sideways, blocking the road just past the next exit. Orange cones had attempted to direct traffic down the off ramp, but stubborn drivers had apparently refused to exit, instead backing up traffic in the long lines of cars we had just passed.
Our side of the highway was blessedly open, and we breezed right on by the road block. Further up the road, we were forced back to the correct side of the highway when we found the matching road block for traffic that had been traveling in the opposite direction. The jam of cars on that side seemed significantly smaller, leaving me guessing that more people had been attempting to run away from the city than towards it.
The landscape around us had been changing. More and more of the view through the windows was filling with trees. The tires hummed along the deserted road, the silence eventually wearing on my nerves. I couldn't remember the last time I'd been in a car without playing music. That was one of the things I'd noticed about the end of the world, it was much quieter now.
A car sat abandoned in the middle of the right lane ahead. The driver door stood open. We hadn't passed any parked cars since the roadblock, and this one stood out for that fact. Shawn slowed down as we drove by and I pressed my face to the glass, attempting to pick up any clues about whoever had been inside.
The hot pink steering wheel cover and a small stuffed butterfly hanging from the rearview mirror caught my eye as we drove by. There wasn't a person in sight and I felt a flash of pity for whoever had owned the car. Seemingly, she had been female. And young. I hoped that she wasn't out there alone.
I looked back to the guy on my left. I was grateful to not be on my own. I doubted I would make it very long without someone to watch my back. We all had to sleep sometime. Now that we were out of the relative safety of the office building, we would have to be on guard every second. And it didn't hurt that fate had dropped me in front of someone who had proven capable, with enough decency to team up with a strange woman.
The guys could have chosen to ignore the pitiful looking wreck that tumbled out of the bathroom. Or worse.
Shaking my head to clear those thoughts, I asked, "Are we close?"
"Yeah. If I'm remembering right, we take the next exit. There will be a really small town, and then nothing but mountains."
True to his word, a few minutes later Shawn drove down the off ramp. We slowed down as we entered what appeared to be the main street of the smallest town I'd encountered in my life. I wasn't sure it even qualified as a town. Maybe a village?
On the right, a long, single story brick building squatted in a lot of overgrown weeds. A crumbling area of blacktop led to rusted playground equipment. The sign out front declared it to be an elementary school, but by the looks of the place, it had been out of use for much longer than a week.
To the left, a tiny square building was labeled as the post office. Rusty red smears marred the white paint on the door. Next to the post office was a gas station with only two pumps and an attached
diner that looked like the type of place truckers would have frequented. The large pane of glass on the front had been broken.
A few small roads, practically one lane and with no lines, shot off left and right from the main road. We passed a fire station, it's one bay door open and the truck not inside. A few older houses stood next to a trailer court. That was where we spotted the first group of zombies. There were a half a dozen of them, and my stomach clenched as I got my first good look at a small child who had become one of the undead.
She cocked her head and watched our vehicle with the others, then sprinted along behind them as they gave chase, her too short legs not able to keep up.
Turning away from the window, I stared resolutely ahead as Shawn stepped on the gas, leaving the group behind. We were abruptly through the town and the trees closed in around the road. It couldn't have taken more than twenty seconds to drive from end to end, even at a slower speed. He hadn't been kidding when he said it was a really small town.
The road gradually began to incline. Steep, rocky ground rose sharply to our left. The trees were thick and only occasionally broken by cabin like homes perched on the side of the mountain. The ground on the other side of the road fell away into more trees.
We had been driving for a while, and I was sure that it had to be nearly noon, but the trees blocked a lot of the light. It made it seem much later in the day than it actually was. We had traveled miles from that little town when the car finally began to slow again.
"I'm not sure where the turn is," Shawn answered my unasked question when I looked his way.
The first indication that we had finally arrived was the large, wooden sign partially covered by growing trees to the right of the road. Right below the sign, a gravel road wound through the brush and disappeared into the trees. The gravel crunched under the tires when we made the turn.