by D A Madigan
Beyond that, how could you do it without revealing to the other zombies outside that there were living people inside this building?
That last one also ruled out the other suggestions, namely, lasso a zombie from the roof, drag it up the side of the building, and dose it with oxygen, or, take an oxygen tank to the roof, attach a long hose to it, lower the other end of the hose down, and blow oxygen at a zombie that way. Nobody could come up with anything that eliminated, or even minimized, the chance that the hordes outside might discover the presence of living people inside the Walgreen's.
And if the horde outside discovered that, then the concrete walls of the Walgreen's... or, more likely, the segmented metal security shutters pulled down over the glass doors in the front... would not hold them out. They would come in pounding screaming waves until they battered their way inside.
So finally it came down to, whoever went out to scout the situation at Kroger's would carry an oxygen tank and a short length of tubing with them. If they got an opportunity, they could try to test the usefulness of oxygen as a weapon against the undead.
Of course, 'an opportunity' would probably add up to grisly death, as it was wildly unlikely that a chance to interact with a single zombie would present itself. The dead traveled in throngs. Ravenous throngs.
So the next argument was, who was going to go out and scout? Skip seemed to assume it would be him, since he was the one who had the most need for medical supplies from Kroger's. But Vivian surprised everyone by insisting on doing it herself.
She was so insistent, in fact, that Sheila eventually realized exactly why she was trying so hard to get the job -- she felt guilty about abandoning her grandmother -- her 'nana' -- to the zombies.
Vivian was no dummy and she'd come up with a pretty strong argument for why, at the very least, it shouldn't be Skip who went -- the helicopter might one day be a lifesaving resource for some or all of them, and he was the only one who could fly it.
Of course, that didn't mean it had to be Vivian who went. There were five adults in the store, and even if they did excerpt Skip from near-suicidal missions (which Skip was not at all happy with) that still left Dan, Sheila, and Franklin, in addition to Vivian.
But Franklin was also (ironically and sadly) nearly irreplaceable to the group. Even after a month inside the Walgreen's, none of them knew the store as well as he did, and none of them could run the generator as well as he could. His knowledge of the drug supplies and how to use the various equipment, where one could find odd items as one needed them, all of it was invaluable. And while his pissy ass attitude would have normally made him the very first person that any of the rest of them would have liked to see taking a stroll outside, the hard truth was, they needed him even more than they needed Skip.
Which left Sheila, Dan, and Vivian. And Vivian was adamant that neither Sheila nor Dan should risk themselves outside. It was bad enough, she said, that her niece and nephew had no parents; she was not going to risk either of Vicki's parents, as well.
It put Sheila at a disadvantage; she certainly didn't want to go out there herself, and the idea of Dan going out there just made her want to tear all her hair out. But they NEEDED Vivian. Her niece and nephew needed her, plus, she was smart and brave and resourceful and came up with wonderful ideas... she could, in that old 80s cliche, 'think outside the box' better than any of them.
But someone had to try to get up close to that Kroger's. It was a necessary first step. And then, assuming that this person got up there and got back again with worthwhile information, then they could decide what they needed to do next.
If the Kroger's, for whatever reason, was no use to them, the next closest place was a Rite Aid about half a mile up Bardstown Road. Beyond that, another mile up Bardstown was a shopping plaza with a Walmart and a Target. They had talked about all of them. The Rite Aid had more outside windows than this Walgreen's and was probably infested with zombies, or, at least, busted wide open and not defensible.
Walmart and/or Target might be more defensible, but the group consensus was, either they had already been accessed by zombies and were therefore unusable, or there were already survivor groups holed up inside defending the locations. In the first place, there was little point trying to make the hazardous journey up the road. In the second... well... they had all discussed it, and they were all aware of what their response would have been, if another group of survivors had come knocking on either of their doors.
It hadn't happened... but the thought of dividing their supplies among a larger group of mouths was not one that any of them liked. (Franklin had taken the opportunity during that discussion to point out that the attitude they had now that they were inside the store, towards others who might want to access it from outside, was very similar to the attitude HE had had when their group had first rolled up on him. Sheila accepted the truth of that, but she also remembered Jerry's voice, advising her that she was going to have to tough up. Survival in the zombie apocalypse required hard choices. That wasn't much of a justification for leaving people outside to die, but it was going to have to do.)
Anyway, it seemed highly unlikely that a trip to another location would, at this point, help them out much.
But it was possible that, even if the Kroger's was infested with undead, they might still be able to find a way to get access to the drugs in its pharmacy. The pharmacy area was off in one corner and it was very possible -- even likely -- that when the crisis had started, the pharmacist on duty might have pulled down the steel security curtains and locked them, sealing off the pharmacy counter from the rest of the store. If so, they might be able to get access to that area by the drive thru window. Any attempt to force entry would almost certainly be noisy, which could bring the zombies down on them, and there was every chance that some other survivor or group of survivors might have had the same thought weeks before, and there might be nothing left to access... but that was why they needed someone to go up and take a look.
"All right," Dan said, finally, after the argument had gone in circles for fifteen minutes. "We're not going to decide this by talking about it."
He looked around. They were currently sitting in their 'living room', the mini lobby near the drug counter where the wooden chairs and the small flat screen TV were. They had long ago broken two card tables out of their boxes from the Housewares aisle (over Frank's muttered objections) and used the area as a combination living/dining room.
"Here," he said, picking up one of the small plastic trash cans that was currently half full of the empty cans and plastic and paper refuse from lunch -- canned pork and beans, served on paper plates after a quick heat in the microwave.
He got up, walked over to the other half full trash can near the other card table, and emptied the first trash can into the second one. Then he put the empty trash can on the card table, grabbed an unused paper plate, and tore it into thirds.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a ballpoint pen with CONN'S AUTO printed on it, clicked it so the point protruded, and wrote VIVIAN on one piece of paper plate, DAN on the second, and SHEILA on the third. Then dropped all three of them into the trash can. .
"My name should be in there," Skip said. "So should Frank's. No adult taking shelter here should..."
"Frank knows the store, you can fly the chopper," Sheila said. "Right now that makes you both unriskable. Us three are just sitting around eating canned soup. No, this is good. Skip, you pull the name. Let's see who's going."
"Goddamit, Sheila, I'm not going to sit here while you --" Skip said, his tone becoming heated.
Vivian put a hand on his arm. They each had exactly one full outfit; the one they'd been wearing when they got to the store. The only other clothing items in the store were gag t-shirts, some Louisville Cardinals sweatpants in children's sizes, and some pajamas and bathrobes that had come in early as Christmas items. The adults took turns doing laundry in the small utility closet sink about three times a week and then hanging the wet clothes on lines
strung between the sides of Aisle 1A/1B.
Skip looked down at Vivian's dark skinned hand on his wrinkled shirt sleeve and stopped, flushing.
"All right," he said hoarsely, after a second. "All right, then."
He reached into the bucket, felt around for a second, pulled out a scrap of plastic coated paper.
Turned it over.
It said SHEILA on it.
iii
Dan kept having to stifle the urge to break into song. Not that he was happy -- in fact, he was miserable and terrified -- it was just that his brain had this one song running through it, over and over again:
When this old world starts a getting me down And people are just too much for me to face
I'll climb way up to the top of the stairs
And all my cares just drift right into space
On the roof, it's peaceful as can be
And there the world below don't bother me,
no, no …
Dan's mother had had a huge fondness for the work of Carole King and James Taylor, and Dan had grown up listening to their music -- not just done by them, but as rendered by the dozens if not hundreds of other singers and groups who had done versions of their songs over the years. And although this roof certainly wasn't 'the only place he knew where you just had to wish to make it so', still, it was pretty damn peaceful compared to what was going on outside the building at street level.
So now, he had to keep repressing the impulse to start singing, or, at least, whistling. Dan was an excellent whistler. But he had a feeling that if the hordes below heard so much as two sequential notes, they'd be pounding at the walls to get in.
He and Skip had tied the waists of two pairs of pantyhose together, then tied the legs of each pair to two different pipes about fifteen feet apart. Pulling back on the tied together waistbands, you had a pretty decent slingshot.
They'd fired two small bags of charcoal off the roof so far to get the feel for it. There were easily a dozen more they could use. The pantyhose slingshot threw the bags out and up a good forty feet, landing thirty feet from the store in the back parking lot. This they'd confirmed using handmade periscopes Vicki, Jameel, and Shymala had constructed out of cardboard tubes and compact mirrors, under Vivian's guidance.
Each time they'd used the slingshot, though, they'd felt as if a fraction of the tension potential had been lost. So this one was for keeps.
The sun had gone down ten minutes ago. The last lingering pinks and purples of twilight were slowly draining out of the sky.
Below, the ghouls were restlessly shuffling back and forth, moaning and gabbling the way they did when they weren't directly stimulated by the presence of either prey or fire.
Over at the corner of the roof, Sheila was crouched down. She had a loop of clothesline in her hands. One end was wrapped around her waist, the other secured to the roof AC vent ten feet away from her. If their plan succeeded in stampeding the zombie horde out of the back parking lot, she was going to rappel down the side of the building and head towards Kroger's.
She had a pocket full of lighters, a kid's nylon backpack that was stuffed full of home made torches made out of short lengths of broken off broom handles densely wrapped with paper towels on their ends, two plastic pint jugs of lighter fluid, two spark-lighters, a crowbar, three cans of hairspray, a flashlight with fresh batteries, and a tank of oxygen with a four foot length of rubber hose fitted to the output nozzle. She was wearing three pairs of pants -- her own work slacks under Dan and Skip's jeans, which both men had volunteered to let her use. On top she had Skip's leather jacket, zipped up, rubber gloves, a rubber Hallowe'en mask meant to look like a green skinned ghoul of some sort that went over her entire head, and a bicyclist's helmet on over that.
It was the closest they could get to any kind of armor in a Walgreen's that had been overloaded with Hallowe'en product on Z Day.
Now Dan, who like Skip was wearing Louisville Cardinal sweatpants in the largest child's sizes available, meaning they were uncomfortably small on both of them, pulled the pantyhose back again. Skip used his multi-tool to stab a hole in the plastic-coated paper bag and thrust it into the slingshot. Dan grasped the bag of briquettes with his fingertips. He looked over at Sheila, who was watching him intently. He wanted to give her a thumbs up or an O for Okay with thumb and forefinger, but couldn't, and none of them dared to speak above a bare murmur.
Skip took out a balled up piece of wrapping paper and a lighter, lit the paper, shoved the burning ball into the opening in the bag of quick lighting charcoal briquettes, and ducked down. Dan pulled back on the bag against the tension of the hose just the slightest little bit more... and let go.
The flaming bag arced upwards, tumbling through the air, and disappeared beyond the edge of the roof.
There was a soft whump, quite unlike the crunching scrabble of scattering briquettes that had heralded the landing of the previous two unlit bags.
A soft whump, a blossom of orangish red light -- and a high, ululating scream.
Which immediately became a chorus of screams, and the sound of frantically running feet.
Sheila was leaning forward, looking down. Then she got on her belly, swung her legs over, holding the rope looped around her waist... and vanished over the edge.
Her heart was pounding so hard in her chest she was afraid she was going to have a cardiac event. Her hands wanted to tremble and she refused to allow it, controlling her breathing the same way, through sheer raw willpower. But she was so terrified it amazed her she wasn't peeing her pants. And her husband's pants. And Skip's pants.
But she had absolutely no time for it right now, so as she slid down the clothesline, she did her best to simply ignore the near-paralytic fear she felt in every fiber of her being. Somebody had to do this. If not her, then who?
Dan ran in a low squat over to the side of the building and stuck his periscope tube out. They were only maybe twenty five feet up; in the small sight field he had from the mirrors in the tube, he got a confused impression of flaming figures running around the sides of the building screaming, Sheila touching down apparently unnoticed, little balls limned in blue flame rolling across the back parking lot's tarmac.
The back parking lot itself was utterly clear of zombies, other than three or four prostrate, roughly humanoid bonfires smoking and burning around the spot where the lit bag must have hit.
The parking lot adjoining the Walgreen's parking lot was a common one that ran behind and serviced all the stores between the Walgreen's and the Kroger's, and that connected to the Kroger's parking lot, as well.
Unfortunately, Bardstown Road sloped downward between Kroger's and Walgreen's, and Walgreen's itself, just across from the McDonald's at the corner of Taylorsville and Bardstown Road, was significantly below the ground level of the Kroger's and stores adjoining it. Which meant that Walgreen's parking lot was considerably lower than those common parking lots. A concrete wall ten feet high with a four foot shrubbery on top of it divided the Walgreen's lot from the common lot Sheila wanted to get into.
Not being able to simply walk around on the sidewalk due to zombie overload in that area, Sheila's plan was to go over to a car that had been parked next to the concrete wall (a Toyota SUV someone had backed into the space), climb up on the hood and then the roof, step from the roof onto the top of the concrete wall, and then force her way through the shrubs into the parking lot beyond.
She had to hope that the flaming bag of charcoal would cause enough of a distraction to give her time to do all that. How she'd get back again she had no idea.
She had no magical or brilliant conceptual tricks she hoped to use to accomplish this. Bundled up as she was, she had vague hopes that perhaps she might not smell like a live human to the zombies, or, if they relied somehow on visual data, certainly she wouldn't look much like one.
If the infected hosts of the zombie bacterium could simply sense uninfected living tissue, though, she was almost certainly doomed. Or, at least, she'd have to br
eak out the oxygen and/or torches, or, maybe, if she had a chance, take shelter in a vehicle... although she'd seen these things smash enough auto glass during that long nightmarish ride in the van on Z Day not to place any real hope in that.
Despite how chilly it was -- they were, by the calendar they kept marked off in the store, nearing Thanksgiving -- she was sweating profusely under the rubber Hallowe'en mask. If living body odor was a tip off, then that might get her killed, too. On the other hand, it might absorb a few bites. At least, she could hope.
On the ground, feeling horribly vulnerable, Sheila looked around. Several flaming zombies had fled from the rear parking lot to the side parking lot, apparently igniting a few others; those had fled into the street running in front of the store, further spreading the flames through the relatively dense, terribly flammable zombie horde there. Off to Sheila's right she could see the street. It was a mass of screaming, flaming, fleeing zombies, all attempting to run off either up or down Bardstown Road. Some were screaming and running into the McDonald's parking lot. But flames were spreading faster than they could run; Sheila wondered if that one bag of blazing briquettes wasn't going to eliminate the entire horde that had been aimlessly milling around the Walgreen's for the last month or so.
The smell of burning zombies was oddly sweet, though... rather like burning leaves. It carried a strong association of autumn with it that Sheila found pleasant.
Sheila reached the Toyota SUV, moving in a scuttle, scrabbled up onto the hood, feeling stiff and over padded in all her layers, trying to keep a clear field of vision through the eyeholes of the rubber mask, despite the sweat running down her nose from her forehead. She crawled quickly onto the roof, stood up, stepped up onto the concrete wall, and shoved her way through the hedge there.
Now she was in a narrow area beside the next building up, which had once been a Hollywood Video, but was now empty. . A two foot wide length of wood and wire fence, about three feet high, closed off what would otherwise have been an access point into the back parking lot.