by A. P. Fuchs
The woman stopped moving.
Billie rolled off her, lay on the floor a moment to catch her breath, then got to her knees and tried pulling the stake out from the woman’s mouth.
“Come on,” she said when it wouldn’t budge. It was too lodged in the brain and between bone. She stood, yanked the other stake out from the woman’s gut, then hugged up against the corner where the hallway turned to the right. She glanced back at the zombie, and made sure it remained down.
Billie turned the corner. “He’s got to be here somewhere,” she said.
She kept her eyes peeled for any sign of light beneath each closed door.
Be ready. If there was one zombie lurking around, there’s bound to be more. Never mind Del, either. She grimaced. He’s just playing with me. He has to be. Sick, dead— “I’m going to kill him when I find him.”
Each door she passed was dark underneath. Those with windows showing the room within were dark as well, bearing no sign of activity in a long time. To make things easier on herself, she noticed that several of the doorknobs had a thin layer of dust on them, suggesting non-usage for at least a month or more. The knobs she did find that seemed clean from use, those she slowly turned, only to find herself staring into a dark room that was either empty, or filled with stacked desks, chairs, a few filing cabinets—nothing with a hurt old man inside of them.
“Come on, August,” she said. “Still be alive.”
* * * *
The undead below went off like bottle rockets each time Joe or Tracy popped a bullet into one of their heads. Most of them, anyway. Those with heads so rotted through merely blew open like soggy cardboard, whatever was left of the brain inside slopping out onto the pavement before the zombie’s body landed on top of it.
“I think that’s enough,” Joe said, putting his gun away.
Tracy fired off another shot, one that landed square between a teen brunette with a black dress. “Can’t help but wonder if we’re attracting everything in the city. Think of it: bring them all here and blow them away.”
“We don’t have enough bullets. I say we save them.”
The crowd of the dead moaned below.
“You’re right,” she said. “Got carried away.”
“Me, too.”
Joe put his hands against the railing of the catwalk they stood upon. Below, the alley was packed with zombies. The ones that fell before were quickly trampled as the undead tried reaching toward them, their fingertips falling well shy of where they needed to be to grab them. There was no way out, though. Not down the ladder. The most they could do was stand there and wait and see if the zombies would clear out. But that was the problem. They’d have to stand there and with them in sight, the undead wouldn’t leave. Not with the chance of food around.
“Holster your weapons,” Joe said. “We can’t stay here.”
“We’re not going down,” Tracy said.
“No” —Joe swung out onto the escape ladder— “we’re going up.”
She nodded.
Joe headed up the ladder, ensuring each time his fingers wrapped around the round iron rungs that he got a good grip. To slip and fall on top of Tracy and plummet to the sea of dead faces below was not the way he wanted to die. They’d rip them to pieces. He could only imagine the pain.
The dead moaned. Some growled. A few below slapped the brick wall beneath the ladder with their palms as they tried to get up.
Joe kept climbing, hoping that when these old ladders were bolted in decades back that the folks who did it did a good job and the thing would hold.
“You all right?” he said, nearing the top.
“Yeah. A couple rungs behind you. You nearly stepped on my fingers a second ago.”
“Sorry.”
“Not the time. Shouldn’t have brought it up.”
Joe made it to the top. He pulled himself over the ledge, took a quick look around, didn’t see anything, and helped Tracy up the rest of the way. The two stood there peering over the ledge.
“Wish we had something to make this ladder go away,” he said.
“Then we’d be stuck up here.”
“I just meant it’d be nice to know that we’re completely safe here and they won’t somehow figure out how to climb it.” He thought back to how the two of them got hold of the ladder. “They saw me boost you.”
“Aren’t those ones dead?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been fighting them so long they pretty much all look the same to me now. Besides, who keeps track of which kill looked like what?”
“Uh . . . yeah.” Tracy’s eyes darted to the side. “I know what you mean.”
Joe pulled out the X-09 and stepped away from the ledge. Tracy did the same.
“Let’s do a quick scan and regroup,” he said.
“Got it.”
They parted ways, Joe heading off to his left, she to her right. They’d meet back up near the middle of the ledge on the other side.
The rooftop was fairly spacious, the only clutter being a few heating ducts that were added in recent years, some kind of generator and a few loose wires. Joe crouched and inspected under, over and around the ducts and vents, ensuring nothing was up here hiding, not even an infected animal or rodent. He remembered back when he first met Des and Billie and they talked about encountering an undead rat. It was the first he heard of the animal population having been transformed besides humans.
He glanced up at Tracy. She scanned the rooftop as well, but also seemed to be keeping an eye on the street below.
The two finished their rounds and met up.
“How bad is it?” Joe asked, taking a peek of his own over the ledge.
“Main concentration seems to be in the alley where we came up. Overall, they’re everywhere, but more scattered.”
“I can see that.”
“They should thin out eventually when they realize we’re not coming down. Main thing now is to stay out of view.”
The two made their way toward the middle of the roof. Joe took in the city. Winnipeg was never known for its tall buildings or postcard skylines. There were a handful of buildings pushing thirty-plus floors. The rest were somewhere in the ten- to fifteen-floor mark. If anything, Winnipeg’s lack of being a giant metropolis was to their benefit these days. Fewer tall buildings meant it made it so much easier to see the giant zombies stomping about.
There were four, from what he could see, the nearest one being some ten blocks away. The other three were beyond that, yet even up here at this distance the low booming of their footfalls thundered on the air like tom-toms.
“You’ve been around those big guys more than I,” Joe said. “Have you ever seen them turn on their own kind if food couldn’t be found? Whether big zombie or small, doesn’t matter.”
“No. The most I’ve ever seen was a couple of them fight, but that seemed to be over food, not using each other as food.”
Joe watched them. “It bothers me that they kind of lurk like that. They skulk around the buildings, constantly searching. Really makes me uncomfortable.”
“Why?”
“Well, we’re on a rooftop for one thing. If we end up crashing up here, we’re going to have to wiggle our way beneath those ducts and get out of eyeshot. But besides that . . . I think it’s the fact they’re not doing anything. I keep getting pictures of Godzilla in my head, destroying stuff. They’ve more or less kept things intact, from what I’ve seen.”
“When they first came on the day the world changed” —Joe’s ears picked up; these large zombies have always been here since her world died, it seemed— “we sent jets after them. There used to be a lot more. Many fell, most outside the city; a lot of them fought back, hitting some planes out of the sky, into buildings.” She pointed across the way where the tail of a fighter jet stuck out on an angle from an older building. “Eventually we ran out of planes.”
“Amazing,” Joe said. The word just trailed off his lips. He hadn’t really meant to say it.
“I do
n’t get you,” she said, turning toward him. “These things were everywhere. Every major city. Even small towns—many were squashed when the dead first attacked.”
“Attacked?”
“Rose from the dead. Returned. Came back. Whatever. Did you hit your head or something? Somebody shoot you? Shoot yourself? Memory issues?”
“Take it easy,” he said, raising his hands.
“I just don’t know what this is.”
“What, me asking you questions?”
“Asking me questions about stuff you should know about. You’re good with your gun. You know how to fight. We’re alike that way, fine. But I make it one of my jobs to know what’s going on, to learn, to try and find new ways to beat them. You don’t seem to do that.”
“Why does that bother you? Oh, and you’re wrong, by the way. I’ve spent many nights lurking in the shadows, studying them before killing them.”
“Yet you act like you haven’t seen a giant zombie before.”
“I’ve seen them before,” he said, “just not until . . . recently.”
“You just come out of hiding?”
“Kind of.”
“What does that mean, ‘kind of’?”
I don’t think she’s ready for it, he thought.
She stood across from him, one hand on her hip, the other clutching her weapon. Her face read that he’d better start talking or it was going to be a very long day.
He eyed her carefully. He’d only say what she needed to know.
“Well?” she asked.
He sighed. “I’m not from around here, Tracy.”
“Then where are you from?”
“A different world.”
13
Search Party
“You guys are a bunch of idiots, you know that?” Mark shouted as he chased after the rest of the group. He hopped over a slab of fallen concrete from one of the surrounding buildings, climbed up another, then slid down its opposite side.
“Can you be any louder?” Michelle said. “Why not just put up a giant sign and let the dead know we’re here?”
“Sorry,” he said, “but you guys always get ahead of me. My legs aren’t as long.” Mark stood a good foot shorter than Michelle. At eight years old, he might be considered taller than most kids his age at four and a half feet—those that were left—but compared to the others, he still had to keep up.
“I know you’re concerned about Dillon,” she said. “We all are, but the only way we’re going to find him, and live to tell about it, is to keep quiet and stick together.”
“Michelle’s right,” Rhonda, his mother, said. “Sorry, Michelle.”
Though it was an unspoken matter, Michelle was the leader of their little band. She was considered a Black Lady, one of a handful of special agents from the Hub. The Black Ladies weren’t a specially-appointed group, but had emerged out of happenstance and need, their identities marked by their skin-tight black leather outfits, and extraordinary skills in weaponry and combat.
Michelle kept her black hair back in a ponytail, though Mark thought she looked prettier with it down. He’d never tell his mother, though. It was only recently he had taken interest in girls and females his age were few and far between. He had no choice but to appreciate the beauty of the older crowd. When beautiful girls around Michelle’s age showed up at the Hub now and then, that was. Most of them appeared otherwise disheveled, worn out and just plain boy-ish.
Rhonda put a hand on his shoulder. “Find anything?”
“Naw,” Mark said. “I checked up and down that line of cars off Donald. Looked in every window. Couldn’t see him.”
Michelle pulled out the walkie-talkie from a pouch on her belt. “Dillon, you there? Come in.” She put the talkie to her ear. No reply.
“Maybe we’re out of range?” Andrew said, a stroke to his dirty blond beard. At six-foot-four, he was the tallest of them, and the skinniest. He didn’t talk much. He once said he was more of an observer than a contributor, though Mark thought he looked like he could be a jabber box if he let himself. Andrew didn’t live at the Hub like the rest of them. They only met him last week and, depending, not everyone was invited back to the Hub for a rest and a meal. All to do with who found him; it wasn’t Michelle, Mark or Rhonda. A guy named Ron had ran into Andrew while on a supply run. Ron said he found Andrew escaping from a horde of the undead. Many at the Hub had been discovered that way, but Andrew was found walking instead of running, as if he wanted to be surrounded by zombies, and it hadn’t sat well with Ron. The man seemed detached. Mark thought perhaps living in this world was finally getting to the tall man with the dirty blond hair, and Ron thought Andrew was a closet lunatic and didn’t want to risk the lives of those at the Hub with another crazy. He’d personally fallen into that pit before and once brought back a guy who turned out to be a serial killer from times past. Old habits die hard. Things got messy and four people died before a Black Lady named Tracy took him down. Permanently.
Today, Andrew had come across them while they were making their way up Smith Street. They hadn’t really wanted him to tag along, but the guy kept trailing them so what else could they do? At first, Rhonda had whispered to Michelle to “just end him,” but Mark had known Michelle long enough to know she wouldn’t cap just anybody. So far as he knew, she hadn’t killed anything that wasn’t undead before. She merely replied: “Following us isn’t a reason to do him in. If he’s dangerous, fine. So long as he plays nice, we’re okay.”
“What do you think?” Andrew said. It appeared he wasn’t sure Michelle had heard him.
Michelle shook her head. “Don’t think so. We had contact with him not thirty feet from here. He said it’s dark, and he has metal pressed up against him. Said he saw a pine tree air freshener on the floor. Sounded like he could be squished in one of the cars lying around.”
“Know how many there are?” Mark said. “Thousands.”
“I know,” she said, “but since we had him on the talkie, that limits our range to within a radius of five hundred meters or so. Wish these things were more high tech, but these are the el cheapo ones from Wal-Mart, so the story behind those who brought them in goes. I think you were part of that group, weren’t you?”
He nodded. Michelle had a way with bouncing the blame back on him when she wanted to. He didn’t know why. Maybe it was because—so he’d heard—her own kid had been killed by a zombie four months back and every kid she saw somehow reminded her of him. But Mark especially, it seemed.
“Five hundred meters is still a decent amount of space,” Rhonda said.
“Split up?” Andrew said.
“No!” Michelle said. “Like before, we stick together.” She gave Andrew a cold look. He hadn’t been invited to this party.
“Try him again,” Mark said.
Michelle brought the walkie talkie up to her mouth. “Dillon, you hear me? We had you a few minutes ago. We’re going to need more information. Come back.”
She waited.
Dillon’s voice broke through the silent talkie. “Hard to speak. Space so small. Really stinks in here.”
“Dillon, where are you?”
“Like I said, I don’t know. Small space. Squished. Metal. Air freshener on the floor. Too dark to see anything. Just know that pine smell.”
“Pine smell, great.” Michelle pressed the button on the talkie so she could talk to him again. “Can you hear anything besides me?”
She waited.
Dillon came back on. “Just every so often one of those big buggers shakes the ground. When they do . . . I hear . . . falling. No, wait. I mean, I hear—debris?—sounds like pebbles rolling down concrete.”
Mark tugged on Michelle’s arm. “Ask him how much metal is around him.”
“Dillon, how much metal is actually around you? We thought you might be in a compressed car, you know, trapped.”
“No. I was in a car when things came down. I told you that.”
“Things came down?”
“I we
nt through one car’s door to go through the other side. Was the only way to get into—” The line went staticy.
“Dillon!”
The talkie fell quiet in her hands.
“He’s out there,” Andrew said, hands on hips.
“Let’s hope so,” Rhonda said.
Michelle pressed her lips together, and then said, “We go further.”
“But the range?” Mark said.
“Relax, kid,” Andrew said. “I’m sure he’ll turn up.”
* * * *
This was dangerous, Michelle knew. Standing out here in the open with the others was not a good idea. It was only the possibility of the walkie-talkie’s range being interfered with by the surrounding buildings that they tried to stay out in the open. And there seemed to be a lot more “open” since the Richardson Building collapsed. She figured it must have been recently, though, within the last day, maybe a few hours more. Thick dust still hung on the air. She could only guess a giant undead had taken it down. What triggered the creature to do it was another story, one she didn’t care to find out.
Dillon was a friend of hers and she was thankful he had his own walkie-talkie when he left the Hub yesterday. What he was thinking going out alone, she didn’t know, but Dillon liked to drink and the Hub had a stash of booze meant for special occasions. Whoever deemed Dillon worthy of being in charge of it, she could shoot right now.