“I don’t think you are going south just yet,” Jesse said, nerves tingling. “Follow me if you plan on living.”
Cory turned to look. Seeing the danger, he nodded once.
“Hold on to her,” Jesse said, indicating toward the girl. “Make sure she follows us.”
Eve nodded and grabbed the girl tightly by the arm. The girl gave her an odd look and shook off her grip.
The situation appeared grim, but Jesse knew there was one saving grace. His shelter was nearby. The only problem was, with his shoulder nearly useless, and this many people, he was sure they could not all make the difficult climb up the rope in the elevator shaft before being overrun. His secondary shelter located in the basement was useless, too. That left one final option. There was a back way into his shelter that he’d created for an emergency of a different sort, but it was untested and he wasn’t sure it would work at all. He had designed the route to escape from a group of marauders, people, not raptors.
“I’ve got a way out of this,” he said. “Safety. A shelter. But you’ll need to follow me.”
Cory hesitated, looked at the raptors, then turned back and dipped his head again.
Jesse led the way. The raptors gave chase and were rapidly catching up. He realized the head start they had might not be enough. New fears hammered a rusty spike into his spine, injecting his overtaxed system with what he needed to survive.
Pulling up short in front of a tall glass and steel building, he motioned the others to follow him through a tangled mass of twisted metal and concrete. His primary shelter was located across the street on the fourth floor, but in this building, he had constructed a few surprises. He hoped they would still be in working order as it had been months since he had set them all up.
He led them through the lower floor and across broken masonry and shattered glass, stopping at a pile of debris filled with chairs, desks, garbage cans, plywood, bricks, and other assorted office furniture.
“Stand back,” he said.
He began pulling on a single chair wedged in an empty space cut into the wall. The chair was attached to a rope, which was attached to a metal desk sitting on a ledge on the second-floor balcony. Leaning backward, he pulled harder. The rope drew taut, and the desk dropped from the ledge, setting off a chain reaction that quickly swept the debris pile away from in front of a pair of metal doors.
The way now clear, he ran to the double doors and opened one side. Inside, a stairwell corkscrewed its way up. Light filtered down from somewhere above, and the stairway smelled of bird droppings and the fetor of decay. Water trickled down the sides of the staircase and formed puddles on the ground floor.
Cory began to drag a chair inside the double doors.
Jesse shook his head. “Forget it, these doors open outward, you can’t block them like that.”
Cory nodded. Eve and the girl started running up the stairs.
“Wait!” Jesse yelled from behind. They both stopped. “Take the stairs two at a time.” He paused to rephrase. “I mean, take them every other stair. Look for the dark ones covered with grease. Go!”
Eve nodded and resumed her climb with the girl in tow.
“To the roof?” Cory asked.
“No, seventh floor,” Jesse replied. “Once there, go through the fire door and wait for me. Can you get them there?”
Cory grinned an acknowledgment and sped up the stairs, following the others, taking them two steps at a time while favoring his left foot but still moving with the agility of a cat. Jesse wished he had that sort of grace, if he had ever had it in the first place. Even with a bandaged ankle, Cory could move faster than he could on his best days. Maybe in his old high school football days he could give him a run, but he was a tired old man now. He looked up at the stairs, dreading the climb ahead. He sucked in a breath.
Setting his foot on the first tread, he began to climb. The pain and exhaustion made each step agonizing, and when he reached the third-level landing, he stumbled to a stop and held himself up by the railing, panting.
Sitting on the landing was a metal bucket filled with chunks of broken cement. Grunting, he shoved it off the edge and let it fall down the central shaft of the stairwell before he began moving to the next landing.
The rope attached to the bucket tightened and tugged a barricade fashioned from multiple layers of wire and chain-link fencing into place. It straightened under the tension from the dangling bucket and sealed off the stairs behind him. It was just in time too, for as soon as it went up, the raptors arrived at the entrance below and began throwing themselves against the doors, which boomed and rattled against their frames. The sound startled a flock of birds above, which took flight and added to the cacophony of noise.
Then, in one quick, loud crash, the doors burst open. He stopped his climb long enough to glance over the railing and down. The moving shadows below meant the raptors were piling up in the stairwell, pushing, shoving, and scrambling past each other in a mad dash to be the first to climb the stairs.
The chain-link fence would not stop them for long, just as it hadn’t the previous day. He had to get higher, move faster.
Something crashed below. Jesse looked down again. The rope holding up the fence had snapped, and his newly made barricade had fallen uselessly to the floor. They had failed.
Stumbling, gasping for breath, he redoubled his efforts to take two stairs at a time, only faster. He made it to the fifth-floor landing right as he started hearing a loud clinking sound coming from below. The raptors had made it to the fence, the useless fence.
Jesse’s head wanted to explode from the constant wailing and internal throbbing. He felt as though there was a little man inside pounding away with a sledgehammer.
“You okay?” Cory shouted from above.
“Yeah,” Jesse said. He drew a deep breath to shout over the noise. “Go! Find something to block the door so when I get there—” He could not shout any longer and doubled over, gasping for breath.
Cory nodded, and Jesse gave him a lame wave with the shotgun to go on without him. The door above opened, and then slammed shut, but he barely heard it. The raptors below were crashing against the chain-link fence and had somehow pulled it down the stairs and had trapped themselves underneath it. They tried to scale it, tear it down, and rip through it, all at the same time. Their actions only made it worse.
Jesse withdrew his hunting knife from its sheath and set his shotgun against the wall. On the fifth-floor landing, he had arranged a series of five-gallon plastic buckets full of cooking oil and two red gasoline containers. Using the knife, he stabbed the plastic gasoline containers and ripped the lids off the buckets, dumping it all onto the stairs and landing.
Dirty gasoline and fry oil raced down, pouring over the ledge, and raining down on top of the chaotic mass of raptors below.
He took the gun and a glass bottle filled with gasoline. He pulled out the cork sealing the bottle, stuffed a rag into it, and started climbing again.
Passing the sixth floor, he stopped to look down. A few raptors had broken through the chain-link barrier and were continuing the climb. Many had been coated in gasoline and grease and were slipping, sliding, and falling. Their focus seemed to shift from getting to him to attacking each other in frustration. It became a sea of snarling, tearing flesh below. However, many more were pushing up from behind and knocking the others out of the way.
Making it to the final step and onto the seventh-floor landing almost killed him. He couldn’t continue like this much longer. His heart was threatening to burst in his chest, and his body shook with tiny convulsions. The pain was immense and unrelenting.
He set his shotgun down against the wall. With a shaky hand, he reached for the lighter in his pocket. He turned the glass bottle upside down, trembling so much he almost dropped it. Brown gasoline soaked into the rag.
He flicked his lighter.
Sparks.
Flicked it again.
More sparks.
He shook it and t
ried again, but it failed to light.
“Damn it! Light!” he said.
Cory must have been watching, because he stepped next to Jesse, producing an old Zippo lighter, already lit.
“Thanks,” Jesse said as he set fire to the rag.
The rag caught and burned, casting a glowing orange reflection on the green-tinted walls.
Cory ran back and held the steel-clad fire door open. Jesse grabbed the shotgun and moved to the edge of the landing, watching the chaos and shifting shadows below. He could smell the gasoline fumes rising up and filling the stairwell with vapor.
He spat over the railing and then tossed the flaming bottle.
“Bye-bye, bitches,” he said as the bottle tumbled away.
-34-
WHOOSH
“GET DOWN!” JESSE yelled.
Not stopping to see where the flaming bottle landed, he dove for the door and slid through it. Cory kicked it shut behind him then ran toward Eve and the girl. Jesse landed flat on his stomach. Cory, arms spread wide, wrapped Eve with one arm and the girl with the other, covering them both with his jacket and driving them to the floor. Jesse tried to scramble to his feet to get to the others, but his shoulder screamed in protest when he put weight on it. He got one hand up to cover his head and—
The doors blew open with a whoomp!
Then it seemed as if everything went eerily silent. Time seemed to slow. Jesse turned his head and saw the tail end of a fireball go rushing past overhead, rippling like an ocean wave as it sped along the ceiling and raced to the windows for escape. Office files, papers, ceiling tiles, and other small items were swept along in its wake. The few remaining windows left in the building burst outward, throwing shards of splintered glass raining down to the streets below.
The intense heat of the blast scorched the exposed flesh of Jesse’s back and arms. The air was slowly being sucked out of his lungs. He felt every agonizing millisecond. Around him, the light that had been coming in through the windows seemed to flicker and dim before growing bright again as the boiling black mass of smoke trailed after the explosion.
Then all sounds returned like a massive thunderclap.
From the stairwell came the horrible screeches of raptors dying in agony. Items not blown out the windows crashed to the floor. Burnt paper floated down lazily.
Gnashing his teeth together and clamping his eyes shut, he balled his hands into fists and covered his ears, waiting for it to stop.
In gulps and gasps, he sucked in fresh air and uncovered his ears. He felt as if he’d been run over by a freight train. His ears were ringing, his head pounded, and his heart was hammering irregularly, but he was still alive. Groaning, he rolled onto his side.
The back of Cory’s jacket was smoking. He had managed to cover Eve and the girl, saving them from the worst of the blast. Eve untangled herself and rose first. Her shirt smoked along with her partially melted hair. The girl appeared miraculously unharmed. Jesse ached down to the marrow of his bones. He moaned and rolled over onto his back, looking up at the smoldering ceiling. Bits of charred insulation drifted down like snowflakes, and the blackened, exposed wires above oscillated up and down.
He stuffed a finger into his right ear and jiggled it, hoping to clear the high-pitched whining noises now filling his head. The smell of roasted flesh, gasoline, and burnt hair all mixed to form an acrid, nauseating stench.
Cory stood and brushed himself off. Blackened ash shed off him and drifted down lazily. He offered a hand up, but Jesse waved him off. Eve helped the young girl to rise. They both seemed shaken but otherwise unharmed.
“Block those doors,” Jesse said. His voice sounded to him like he was speaking underwater.
Cory nodded.
Jesse sat up, but it only made the pain worse. He lay down on his back and rested there for a moment, then rose and stumbled to the entrance leading to the stairwell. With Cory doing most of the work, they leaned what was left of the door up against the jamb and secured it into place with a heavy desk.
“We safe now?” Cory asked.
“Uh, yeah,” Jesse said.
“Thanks for the warning,” Cory said angrily.
“Wait,” Jesse said. “Not safe. Not yet.” He was still rattled from the blast, but his hearing was getting better and his energy was returning. He patted his pockets and found a single shotgun shell there.
“What do you mean?” Cory asked.
“We’re almost there,” Jesse said, thinking how many shells he had left. Two? Three? He shook his head and said, “We need to get across to the other side of the street.”
“Other side of the street?”
“I’ll show you. Don’t worry.”
Jesse led him to the side of the building, near one of the broken windows. The wind whistled past outside, and a steady rain continued to fall. Water had blown in where they stood, making the area slick.
“Watch your step,” he said.
A twisted steel cable hung between the building they were in and the one across the street. The drooping wire entered the opposite building through a missing window three stories down and disappeared into the blackness of the interior. Jesse had rigged the wire two months ago to give him another way into his shelter. It had taken days to rig, numerous failures, and plenty of cursing. He had not expected he would ever need to use it. Now, it was their only hope.
From under an overturned desk, he retrieved two zip-line harnesses that he had stashed there when he’d set up the escape route. He handed one to Cory.
“Do you think you can figure out how to use this?”
The man in black examined the harness for a moment. A puzzled look creased his face. “Who are you? MacGyver?” he asked, shaking his head. “Yeah, I think I can figure it out.”
“Good. Step through those loops and hook this to the wire.” He indicated toward the trolley, which looked like two wheels sandwiched between a pair of stainless steel brackets. “You need to go first as the stop on the other side is difficult, so you’ll need to go in feet first and stop yourself before you slam into the pole on the other end.”
“Pole?”
“Yes, pole. Then, you’ll need to catch the others when I send them.”
“Uh, huh,” Cory said. He didn’t look convinced. “What about you? Are there are only two of these things?” He indicated the harness.
“I’ll think of something. Now go, before they regroup.”
Cory stepped into the harness and hooked onto the zip line. His movements were almost mechanical, precise. Silently, he stepped off the ledge, flew down the cable, and disappeared into the building across the street.
“You’re next,” Jesse said.
“Adam, he—” Eve peered over the edge and down at the street.
“What?”
“Never mind,” she said. She was trembling, and she looked terrified.
Jesse was exhausted and worried that he might not be thinking clearly. He forced calm into his voice before speaking. “I’m going to need to have you both go on one harness. You,” he motioned to Eve, “need to step through these loops and hook up.”
Eve shook her head and shrank back in fear.
“You have to. You want to live, right?”
The girl looked at Eve. She seemed calm.
Eve again looked at the cable, then Jesse. “This will work? You promise?”
Promise. The word hit Jesse like a baseball bat slammed against his stomach.
“Everything okay?” Eve asked.
“It’s… It’s… No, nothing. Go, get across.”
Jesse reacted to a noise behind him. Raptors not killed by the fireball had reached the door and were trying to get through.
“You have to go. It’s now or never.”
The girl took a step toward Eve and grabbed her hand.
“Put this on,” he said. “Hurry.”
Eve stepped through the harness and he secured it. She wrapped her arms around the girl and held her tight. The door behind them started to
lean inward under the blows from the raptors.
“No time left, you have to go.”
The doorway to the stairwell banged again. He turned to look, hoping it would hold. With each successive impact, the desk moved slightly. The broken doors were folding inward.
When he turned back to the zip line, he noticed the nylon strap on the harness had frayed where it connected to the roller wheels at the top. There was no way it could hold the combined weight of Eve and the girl. If he pushed them out now, the harness would break, and they would both fall to their deaths.
“Wait,” he said.
“What? We have to go. We’re ready.”
“Something’s wrong. Hold on.”
He needed something to reinforce the strap. Think! His shirt wouldn’t work. He needed something small enough to fit through the eyelets on the trolley. Something that would not bind it or cause it to drag on the line. Otherwise, they might get stuck where the line dipped. Maybe a shoelace? Was there time to get one? Time to untie his boots? No, there wasn’t. But, he could cut them off with his knife.
Eve eyed him nervously. The girl was watching with interest.
“Hold on. One sec.” He drew out his hunting knife and bent over to cut the laces on his boots.
As he leaned over, the pouch around his neck fell out of his shirt and hung down. In it was the last bullet meant to end his life. The same bullet he had been carrying around his neck for the past five years.
No! Time froze, and he was taken to another place. The world around him faded, and memories came flooding back, horrible memories. Fleeing the raptors, always fleeing, houses burning, friends dying, his once-peaceful neighborhood, green, new, brown, death, trying to raise and protect his family. He saw it all in an instant. Then it shattered into nothingness when the door behind him rattled again, forcing him back to the present.
Raptor Apocalypse Page 23