by Brett, Cal
He squeezed his eyes closed while he let the pain in his hand ebb and took a moment to wipe away the sweat from his face. For a moment he feared the shaft was a dead end which, with no way to go back, would be literal. He braced himself and reaching out with his good hand, felt the space above the last rung of the ladder. It was set back slightly but then he touched a flat surface that felt like painted metal. He traced around its edges until he found a hinge and his hopes rose. Sliding his hand to the other side, he felt a latch and almost started to cry with relief.
In front of him was a hatch, similar to the one he had come through at the bottom. He gently pulled at the interior pin to see if it would give and was further relieved when it did. As much as he wanted to pull the door open and get out of the sauna, he paused. He realized he had no idea what was on the other side and didn’t want to jump out into some zombie infested area. He tried to think of where he was and how far up he might have gone. He imagined the layout of the building. The ladder was on the west wall of the parking garage which meant he was facing the river front and the hatch could possibly lead outside the building.
If it did, he reasoned, he should be somewhere on the same level as the loading dock. ‘Has to be some sort of upper electrical room,’ he thought. That seemed logical since he doubted they would build an access to the building’s utilities that opened directly outside. But, he also told himself, he knew nothing about condominium architecture and it could be a slide into the river for that matter.
Unable to find Robbie in the garage or anywhere else with the security monitors Kelly began thinking about what to do next. “Need a plan,” she said out loud as she looked at the feed from the front garage entrance. “What is the first problem that needs to be solved?” She asked herself and immediately answered, “I need to get those garage doors closed to stop any more undead from getting in.”
She clicked around with the mouse until one of the monitors showed the front garage entrance from the outside. She clicked on another until she found the view looking out towards the street downtown. She did the same thing with the cameras looking in and out at the lower level entrance. She studied the layout, trying to think of a way to get the gates closed without getting herself killed.
“Wait!” Kelly scrambled up and out to a small bookshelf behind the main desk. The shelf was lined with manuals and operations instructions for various equipment in the building. She scanned over the bindings until she found a two inch thick binder labeled Secur-A-Gate. Pulling it out she saw an engineering drawing of a garage door on a glossy cover. “I guess nobody had time to read the manual,” she said as she sat back down at the monitors and started flipping through the stiff pristine pages.
A few minutes later, she found a section on operating the gates. The chapter explained five ways to open and close the doors. One was using a smart phone application that she could conveniently download from the app store. “Not!” She said turning the page.
The second was by using a programmable key card in the access terminal outside in the driveway. She looked around and found the corresponding key card machine and a box with blank plastic Secur-A-Gate cards. But, she would need to find and figure out how to log into the program, create an account, set up the codes, program a card and then hope it would work while she stood exposed in the driveway. “Risky,” she said not dismissing it but moving on to check on the other options.
The third method was from a remote terminal. “Promising…” she thought and found a picture of the item. It was just a small rectangular box with several levers like light switches. Up for open and down for closed. Still sitting, she pushed the wheeled office chair back out to the entry area and scanned for a similar box somewhere near the main security desk. “Too easy!” She exclaimed as she spotted the box near the hard wired phone. When she flipped open the cover of the box she exhaled disappointedly. “Yep, too easy,” she grumbled and rolled back to the manual. The box was empty as the switches had not yet been installed.
The last method was a key. A mechanical lock control mounted near the gate could be used to raise and lower it. The downside was, it was not automatic. The gate only moved with the key in the lock and held into the up or down position. Which, she realized, meant she had to stand there until the gate was full closed.
She easily found the grey colored key box near the door to the room with the monitors. It was fortunately unlocked, and while there were many glistening multi colored keys hanging on the rings, there was only one with the odd square shape needed to fit the garage door control.
Kelly sat back down and stared at the monitors while nervously rolling the key in her hands. She watched as a few dozen undead still crowded around the lobby door while others seemed to ramble aimlessly around the concrete parking deck. From the street view she could see that there were only a few near the front garage entrance. It looked as if most that were nearby had followed the crowd into the parking deck.
In her head, she worked out a plan. She could probably drop down to ground level from one of the second floor balconies, slip along behind the building’s overgrown landscaping, to get to the gate and kill the ones outside. From there she could slip inside, find the control, without being noticed, but the second she turned the key, all bets were off. The noise of the gate closing would get the attention of those inside and anything in earshot on the street. The unknown factor was how long it would take the gate to close. How long would she have to stand there?
Kelly suddenly realized what she needed to do. She stood up and bolted from the security office. The creatures, with their faces pressed to the small window at the end of the hall, noted her return and renewed their slapping and clawing at the garage door. Kelly ignored them and sped away in the other direction, disappearing around the corner into the main lobby.
Robbie heard nothing on the other side of the hatch, a combination of the heat and the strain of holding himself up motivated him to take a chance. He pulled back the latch and pushed the door open a crack. Natural light filtered in from above revealing a small room lined with grey fuse boxes. The walls were unpainted concrete block with two long narrow windows near the ceiling. Robbie pushed the door open wider to see that the room was maybe 20 x 20 and divided in half by electrical cabinets. The side he was on was empty other than the spiders that had taken up residence in the corners.
He could see one closed door on the other side of the room through a gap in the cabinets. There were two blind spots beyond the cabinets but the areas were small. He reasoned if there were any undead there they would have heard the door open and already have shown themselves. He whistled into the space anyway just to be sure and braced himself to shut the panel if anything appeared. When nothing did, he took a deep breath and squirmed out the hatch onto grey concrete floor.
Rolling onto his back, he lay on the cool concrete surface with his eyes squeezed shut until the pain in his hand was tolerable. He then slowly shrugged out of his jacket while he stared up at the ceiling. A moan from below echoed up the open shaft causing him to jerk, sending jolts of pain through his arm and hand. He lay back down and used his leg to shut the hatch which locked in place with a click.
“Damn it!” he winced at the pain in his hand and the dawning realization that he had let a legion of zombies into their previously safe garage. He quickly ran over the access points he remembered, and determined that they probably couldn’t get into the main building. The walls were concrete and the doors all opened outward. That is, unless Kelly opened one of the doors and couldn’t get it closed again before they got through. “Can’t think about that right now,” he told himself as he rolled over onto his good arm to assess the room.
Using his knees, he pushed himself forward a few feet to confirm that nothing was lurking behind the cabinets. Seeing only more dust and spider webs, it was apparent that nobody and nothing had been in the room for a long time. The door was steel set into concrete with a big bolt lock making it look very secure. The windows were too high to lo
ok through from ground level and he groaned as he realized he was going to have to climb up onto one of the cabinets to see what was outside.
“This is going to suck,” he muttered as he struggled up to his knees. He cringed as just shifting his position caused sharp pain to shoot up his arm. After several deep breaths he stood quickly and nearly fell down again as the blood rushed from his head and his internal gyroscope shifted. He grabbed one of the electrical cabinets to steady himself until his head stopped spinning. “Ah, shit,” he wheezed, “yep, that sucked.”
Kelly crawled to the sliding glass door leading to the balcony overlooking the street. Although she knew she was high enough to be safe she didn’t want to attract the attention from anything in the street below. She slowly pulled back the curtain and looked out on downtown. From this angle and through the fogged window, it could almost be a normal apocalyptic day outside. She reached up, clicked the lock and pulled the door open. She slipped outside to a gentle breeze which filtered in to push back the curtains as she eased herself onto the balcony.
Below in the street, the cars were backed up as she remembered. They looked as if they had been parked bumper to bumper and abandoned. Some had open doors, while others were missing windows, from which their occupants had either escaped or been ripped out by a ravenous mob that swarmed though the metallic buffet. Luckily, the blood and gore from that day had been washed away by rain and storms over the last few years.
She looked closely at the cars and the narrow gaps between them. Weeds, bushes and even a few small trees had sprouted from cracks in the road and some even grew from the cars themselves. She knew that some of the cars still retained what was left of their prior owners. Trapped now, until either they or the car deteriorated into dust.
A few animated corpses lumbered along the street but she couldn’t see any within the block in front of the condo building. After making sure that those nearest were not looking her way, Kelly dropped her bow staff down and crawled over the balcony railing until she hung on from the bottom bar. This put her toes about seven feet above the ground below. She couldn’t tell exactly since the space between the hedge and the wall had grown over with tall grass and weeds. She didn’t take much time to think about it. She let go before any of the zombies on the street noticed that lunch was dangling within grabbing distance nearby.
The fall was fast, and although she had bent her knees in preparation for landing, she slapped hard into the ground. She had planned on rolling when she hit, to deflect some of the impact but found herself simply lumped hard into the overgrowth. The wind was knocked from her and she did her best not to gasp and cry out from the impact. She tried to catch her breath while she looked up the side of the building and realized she must have scratched her face on the wall as she fell. Her cheek was stinging and when she touched it, her fingers came away wet with fresh blood.
“Ooow! Dammit.” Kelly whispered to herself as she sat up in the tall grass. Stretching her legs, she made sure she was intact and finding only scratches and an aching butt, she slowly stood up. Through a few gaps in the bushes she could see that the situation out on the street had not changed. None of the local undead seemed to have noticed her arrival in their midst. With that confirmed, she picked up her staff and began slowly edging down the wall towards the garage.
About 20 feet before the garage opening, the bushes thinned down to tangles of brown and dead twigs with no leaf cover. The trunk of a dead tree and clumps of expired flowers, looking as if they had once been part of a neatly laid out landscaping plan, marked the end of the hedge row. Kelly peered out from behind the last green bush knowing that once she went any further her cover would be gone. Seeing no immediate danger she lifted her staff into a fighting stance and began easing out of her cover.
When she stepped beyond the dead tree, she froze. Not 10 feet away on the sidewalk, an undead stood completely still as if staring out into traffic. She realized it had been hidden behind the dead tree and was thankful that it was facing away from her. She did a quick scan of the area to ensure nothing else had been lurking out of sight then looked down at the ground between herself and the creature. The distance was mostly dirt and dead grass with no twigs or dead leaves to give away her approach.
After factoring all this in, she bounded quickly into the opening and swung her staff like a baseball bat at the back of the thing’s head. The staff crushed into its skull. The zombie crumpled immediately to the ground without ever knowing what hit it. Aside from the echo of her staff striking its head and the body hitting the concrete, the afternoon remained still.
Kelly crouched down to avoid the attention of anything beyond the rusting traffic and made her way towards the open garage door. Peeking in, she saw the crowd of undead still pawing at the door to the lobby and the two SUVs parked near the elevators. The door seemed to have their full attention and the ramp going down into the lower decks was empty so she slipped inside to look for the key box for the gate opener. It only took a few seconds to spot the large silver plate on the wall with the square hole.
She pulled the key from her pocket and pushed it in, ensuring it would fit. Then, she stood up and made herself visible to the hungry creatures at the doorway. “Hey you sons of bitches!” She shouted while jumping up and down waving her arms.
It got their attention.
Robbie stood uneasily and winced as the pain from his throbbing finger ran through his hand and up his arm. The severity of the pain seemed to surge with each heartbeat and explode each time he moved. He could hear the excruciating pulse in his ears as if it were a beat played by some sort of demon DJ at an evil nightclub. He breathed deeply to gather his strength and stepped over to the steel door in the center of the wall.
Pressing his ear to the door, he heard nothing. He looked down at the latch style handle and contemplated opening it but even tired, hot and in pain, he knew he was safe where he was. He couldn’t justify taking the risk of opening a door that could lead to an alley full of hungry undead. Still leaning on the door, he looked over the small room and up at the windows near the ceiling. He saw a spot near the wall where he could step up on the lip of one of the electrical cabinets and climb on top of the metal box. From there he could see outside and maybe down into the area behind the door.
He paused. On any other day, he knew he would be nimble and strong enough to climb up the box almost without thinking. In fact he had done similar climbs many times in the last few years. But with his hand in such pain, he worked each step through in his head while he still leaned on the cool metal door. He carefully worked out how to get a grip with his good hand while stepping up onto the lip of the box, then lift up and balance there until he could pull himself up onto the top. With it all worked out in his head, he put the plan in motion.
Several seconds later, he lay back on the ground again cradling his hand. Unwilling to give up, he rose reached again for the heavy pipe and swung his foot back into the lower lip of the box. Taking care this time to get as much of his boot on the narrow shelf as possible, he pushed off and strained to raise himself with one arm.
As he lifted up, he thought he heard a pop, pop, pop sound. He wondered perhaps if the cabinet was coming loose and paused as he balanced himself on the ledge to ensure the whole unit wasn’t about to fall on him. He tested the cabinet which felt stable and when he heard nothing else after a few moments, he continued up. As he hefted himself onto the top, he heard the pop, pop again. But, it sounded more like it was outside and further away.
Balancing himself on top of the metal boxes he lay still and looked out the windows. Down below was a narrow alley lined by high concrete walls that he recognized as the loading dock where they had initially entered the building. From this angle he could only see along the dock where delivery trucks used to back in and the far wall which was lined with large metal dumpsters. He lay still and listened for any other indication of where the strange pops had come from.
The pain in his hand pulsed from the climb and
it was difficult to discern any sounds with his heart thumping loudly in his ears but he strained to block it out. After waiting a few minutes and hearing nothing, he concluded that it was just another sound in a dead city. Maybe a piece of one of the nearby buildings had broken loose. That type of thing happened all the time, producing all sorts of strange sounds. He began to breathe regularly again and focused on the good news that the loading area only had a few undead stumbling around. He wondered if they had been there since that day he and Kelly had escaped into the condo garage.
They looked like slow ones and he surmised, hoped, that even with his injury, he could take them out and find a way back into the building. He knew the back door they had come in before was locked, but there were several other access points he and Kelly had set up for just such a situation, where they might get locked out. As he was about to climb down he heard another pop, pop, pop from outside. It was still muffled but slightly louder than before. He stopped and stared out into the loading dock wondering what it could be.
Then he heard something else that sounded like shouting. It was too far away and the room was too well insulated to make out individual words but it definitely sounded like several people talking loudly. He stared out the windows and saw the undead in the loading dock had noticed it as well. They were turning and beginning to stumble towards the street.
‘Well,’ he thought, ‘maybe it’s our friends in the trucks come to save the day again by leading the zombies away.’ He had decided to take advantage of the distraction to get out of the utility room when he heard the pop, pop again. Immediately following the sound, two of the decaying creature’s heads exploded.
‘Dammit,’ he said to himself, realizing whoever it was, they were in the alley and well-armed.