“Oh. My. God. You don’t know me!” Sam exclaimed as she stormed out of the room.
“Sam, wait!” Rebecca called after her. She pushed herself up and said, “I’ll go talk to her.”
“Okay,” I nodded. “Stay away from any windows.”
I looked back at Jasper and continued, “That reminds me. How secure is the hotel from attack?”
“None of the windows in the rooms open up, so we’re okay there. We’ve also locked and blocked off all doors except the front ones there,” Jasper pointed to the glass doors. “We keep them open during the day, but it’s all locked up at night. And there’s our emergency exit in the back. That one’s locked and covered up with piled snow from the outside so it doesn’t really stand out as an obvious door.”
“Okay, that’s good,” I replied. “I’m not sure how smart the zombies are, but you might want to reexamine it to ensure that people like us who are moving south don’t discover it. The creatures are dangerous, but they’re manageable, it’s the people you really have to worry about.”
“But we want people to know that we’re here. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have found you or your group, and you’ve been such a wonderful addition,” Monica said.
“No, I think I understand what he’s saying, dear,” Jasper replied for me. “Besides the occasional creature, we haven’t witnessed anything like what Chuck and Jesse have mentioned. Sure, there’s been some stealing, but it seems almost impossible to us that these large-scale wars over food would happen. We’re still viewing this place as America. It’s not like that anymore.”
“Yeah, that’s really it,” I agreed. “Right now, there is no United States. There are a bunch of tiny independent islands in the sea of anarchy. Maybe in the future we can advance and grow to larger communities, then counties, states, regions and so on.”
“Given what we’ve seen, that’s a long way off though. We don’t mean to rain on your parade here guys, but things are probably going to get worse before they get better,” Jesse said to a frightened room. “It’s great what you’re doing here, but it’s also really risky and I worry about your safety. Especially if people discover that you have food.”
“You’re right, Jesse,” Jasper agreed. “I wish you weren’t, but the more of your story that I hear, the more I realize that we’ve been going about this the wrong way.”
“So you’re saying that we’re just gonna sit tight and not have any more communications with anyone from the outside world? That’s a little harsh and I don’t know if that’s what we signed up for when we agreed to stay here,” Rick said.
“I know, Rick. It’s something that we’ll have to vote on, but these folks have seen what’s out there. They know…” The sound of a muffled rifle’s report cut Jasper off.
“Looks like Mark got another one. He’s an expert marksman,” Jasper continued. “Anyways, Rick, these folks…”
“Wait a minute,” I cut in. “Mark is up on the roof shooting them? Haven’t you heard anything that we’ve said? Those things are attracted to noise. The more you make, the faster they come.”
“That’s what we’ve done every time after the first two came along. It’s easier to just shoot them before they get up close,” Rick said.
“Shit. I’ll go up and stop him,” Jesse said as he trotted towards the stairs.
“The sound of a rifle travels for miles. If there are any of those things around, they’ll be headed this way,” I said.
“Well, then we can just shoot ‘em and clean up the mess in the morning like we’ve done before,” Monica said as she continued to knit.
“I’m sorry, but you guys don’t get it,” I said. “You’ve been extremely lucky so far that this place hasn’t been overrun by the infected or attacked by scavengers. If onsies and twosies of these things have found their way here, you can bet there are more out there.”
Mark fired his rifle again. I stood up and rushed to the glass doors and shook them gently. “We need to block these off better than just a lock. I think we’ve got some more of these things coming this way.”
The hotel’s residents looked back and forth at each other for a moment and then they got up and started moving furniture and objects around. The easiest thing was the concierge desk since it was on wheels. It took a little more effort to flip the heavy bastard, but we eventually got it in place, blocking little over half of the doorway. The rifle fired three or four more times and I wondered what in the hell was taking Jesse so long to get him to stop.
After several minutes of heaving and grunting, we had a pile of objects in front of the doors. I wasn’t sure if it would be enough, but it would have to be for now. I stood back and surveyed our work, then grabbed a couple of throw pillows off one of the couches that we didn’t move and pushed them into place at the top of the pile to completely shut off the light that could be seen through the glass doors.
“Well, I don’t know if that’ll be enough,” I sighed.
“It’ll have to be,” Mark said as he came down the stairs. “There’s at least ten more of those things coming this way, but Jesse told me all I was doing was attracting more of them by shooting.”
“Ten more! What are we going to do?” wailed Monica.
“First off, we’re not going to panic,” I said. “The more noise you make, the more likely they are to stick around. If we just lay low, keep the lights out and be quiet, they may wander off.”
“How sure are you that the other exits and all the ground-floor windows are secured?” Jesse asked.
“Reasonably,” Jasper answered. “Mark, why don’t you and Rick take Jesse around and see about those exits first, then check the rooms.”
“Got it,” Mark replied. Then he waved at Jesse and said, “Come on, big man.”
“Make sure that no light is getting out,” I called softly after them. I was answered with a thumbs-up from Jesse over his bulging shoulder. He had the length of rebar that he’d kept with him since Chatham out and ready to swing.
The opposite hallway illuminated ever-so-slightly as Rebecca and Sam emerged carrying a candle for light. “They’re here, aren’t they?” my wife asked.
“Yeah, there’s a group of them outside,” I said.
“Will we ever be safe? Will our baby ever be safe?” she wailed holding her stomach.
I always forgot how little interaction Rebecca had with the creatures. Besides the one we hit with the truck outside of Joplin, I’m not sure if she’d actually seen another one up close. “We’ll be fine. We’ve just got to keep quiet and they’ll go away.”
“What if they don’t?” Sam asked me.
“Then I’ll take care of them,” I’d already begun to formulate a plan for dispatching them from the roof. They were relentless, but they weren’t very smart. Hell, I could probably make a really long spear and just stab them repeatedly until they bled to death, but that would take forever.
Several of the creatures moaned outside and Becca squeaked in fear. Sam was on her in an instant with her hand over Rebecca’s mouth. She was a veteran gatherer from Virden and had seen plenty of the infected to know what to do around them. In response to the sound that they heard from inside, several creatures banged against the walls and windows of the hotel. I glanced back and forth between the heavily curtained windows and where Sam continued to attempt to keep Rebecca quiet.
Several pairs of eyes glittered in the candlelight while the creatures continued to pound away. After a few moments, the noise slacked off and then finally stopped all together. “Are they leaving?” Monica asked.
“No way of knowing, but after they heard Rebecca’s squeal, I doubt it,” I muttered. “They may not know for sure that we’re in here, but until something else draws them off, I think we’ll be stuck with them.”
Sam eased the pressure on Rebecca’s face and she nodded indicating that she’d gotten her emotions under control. “I’m sorry, they just frightened me. I’ll keep quiet,” she whispered. Then she placed a hand on Sam’s arm and sai
d, “Thank you. I lost it for a second.”
“No problem,” she said. “These things are assholes. I ran into a bunch of them early on when I first moved to Virden. If you’re quiet, and they don’t see you, then you’re usually okay.”
The three men returned from checking the interior. “Looks pretty secure as far as I can see,” Jesse said. “We didn’t open any of the rooms though. That’s just another layer of protection since these things can’t really use door handles.”
“Alright everyone,” I said. “I recommend staying here in the main lobby tonight and keeping quiet. I just need some rope and we’ll take care of the problem outside tomorrow morning.”
“Rope? What the hell have you got planned now buddy?” Jesse asked.
“I‘ve got an idea that I’d like to try,” I replied. “It might take a while, but it should be pretty quiet. Do you like to fish?”
“Huh?”
* * *
The next morning I took a few members of the group up to the top of the roof and pulled out a length of rope from my backpack. It was standard rock-climbing rope that we’d picked up at the same outdoors store that I got my tomahawk from, so it shouldn’t stretch that much under pressure. I sat on the old air conditioning unit and began tying my knot.
After only a few seconds Jesse realized what I was doing. “Aww yeah… Fishing!”
Once I had the knot tied, I secured the running end around the base of the air conditioner. “In case one of them tries to run away once it’s hooked,” I answered Mark’s unasked question as he peered over my shoulder.
“Well, let’s see what you’ve got. I don’t wanna stand out here in the cold for no reason,” he replied.
“Okay, here goes.” I banged together a couple of empty cans that I brought up with me and then casually tossed them over the side where they clattered against the swept-off sidewalk below.
“We’ve got a few minutes… Why do you guys keep the snow cleaned off the driveway?” I asked.
“Well, it gives us some exercise and it makes the place look more inviting to travelers. Guess we’ll stop that now, huh?”
“Maybe. That will be up to you,” I replied. “Wait. Hear that?” I peeked over the edge and saw several zombies stalking towards where the cans fell. “Here we go, boys!”
I lay on my stomach and fed the rope through my hands. After I estimated that about twenty feet had passed, I looked over the edge and began gently nudging the rope in different directions.
Down below several of the infected scanned the area searching for what had made the noise. The black and neon pink rope bounced off of one creature’s shoulder, then passed in front of the thing’s face. It recognized something was different and gave a soft moan which several of the others answered back. The rope continued to bounce off different parts of the creature’s head, and then finally it slipped over the crown and settled around its neck.
I gave a little whoop of joy and yanked hard to tighten the noose. Jesse pulled as well and we lifted the first of our victims off of its feet. The thing struggled and thrashed against the side of the building and kicked the others that were beside it. That only got them more agitated as they too began to hit and bite at the one that was kicking them. It was actually pretty damn funny to watch from up above where we were safe.
Our first catch slowly began to kick less and the thrashing eased to a few erratic jerks, and then finally ceased altogether as it suffocated and died. Besides some knocking on the side of the hotel, it was almost soundless. “Holy shit! That worked better than I thought it would!” I exclaimed.
“Alright, now that looked like fun! Let me try!” Rick said as he edged closer to the side of the roof.
“Wait, we still have one attached,” Jesse said as he let some of the rope slide through his gloves. The creature’s body hit the ground and we let the rope hang slack.
“Shit, I guess that’s the problem with a noose, huh?” I said as I peered over the edge at the seven other zombies angrily scratching at the building. It seemed like they realized that we were up here and were trying to figure out a way to climb up. I swear one of them made eye contact with me and it cocked its head like it was thinking. I decided that guy was the one we needed to get next.
“Okay, this is gonna suck, but we need to haul it up so we can loosen the noose,” I said.
“Well, that’s not any fun. Don’t you have any more rope?” Rick asked.
I looked at him. I was mildly irritated and said, “No, Rick. I don’t have any more rope. We’re lucky that we thought to grab any at all.”
Rick didn’t respond to that, but instead grabbed the rope. “Okay,” he sighed. “Let’s pull this fucker up so we can catch another one.”
For the next three or four minutes, we grunted in unison as we hauled the thing up above its peers and finally over the small ledge onto the roof. “Geez, these things are falling apart,” Mark said.
I assessed what we’d hauled up. It used to be a heavyset man and his clothes were partially torn or rotted away from nonstop exposure to the elements. He had dozens of small puncture wounds and scrapes that were scabbed over or oozed plasma, depending upon the severity of the wound. There were little chunks of skin missing from his recent dangling experience among his buddies. Looks like they’d taken a bite of him as he kicked and squirmed, but didn’t find his skin to their liking and spit him back out. There were a lot of dried feces all over it because it probably just shit as it walked. I wondered momentarily what it was eating to stay alive but decided that I really didn’t want to know.
I could tell by the expressions on Rick and Mark’s face that the thing probably stank horribly and I was thankful, again, for my gas mask. I started to pull the running end of the rope through the knot I’d made, but Jesse stopped me by placing a hand on my shoulder. “Hey, give me a second, just to be safe,” he said.
I nodded and moved back a few steps while Jesse bashed the thing’s head inward several inches with his metal rod. After he was satisfied that it would have been dead even if we hadn’t strangled it, we took the noose from around its neck and pushed it over the side. I heard a thump and a few moans before I was able to get back to the edge to see it fall.
It had landed on several of the creatures below; one of them clearly had a broken neck and would hopefully die soon. The others picked themselves up and a few of them started to wander off so I slapped the side of the building to bring them back over to me. I watched in fascination as a couple of them were able to stumble up on top of their two friends in order to get higher. I was pretty confident that they couldn’t climb, but now I knew that they could basically fall their way up a staircase. That seemed like a pretty important fact so I filed it away.
I searched for the creature that had made eye contact with me a few minutes before, but I couldn’t find him. It must have taken off after the fat one fell. We’d need to figure out where it went before we went outside again. For now I decided we should just have fun with our little fishing expedition.
Rick and Mark really took to the task of roping the creatures. I don’t know why, they were both much better at slipping the loop over their quarry’s heads than me. By the end, we’d even attracted two more of the infected from around the front and had quite a pile of dead creatures at the base of the hotel. It was very cathartic for me and I felt totally relaxed as we opened the door to return downstairs.
We walked into the lobby laughing and slapping each other on the back. “Oh my God, that was so much fun!” Mark exclaimed. “I really needed that.”
“What the hell have you fools been up to?” Jasper asked.
“Clearing the area around the hotel,” Jesse replied. “You’ll need to do a little bit of cleanup around back, but it should be safe to go outside and do it.”
Suddenly, I remembered about that other creature. “Wait,” I said. “We missed one.”
“What do you mean? We checked all around the building,” Mark said. “There weren’t any more of them.”
“Yeah, but one of them looked right at me earlier like it was thinking and then I never saw it again.”
“You must have imagined it. We got them all,” Rick said.
Jesse backed me up and said, “I thought we got ‘em all too, but my life’s been saved several times by this guy. We should go back up and check it out again.”
“I don’t know…” Rick said as he glanced at Mark. “We got ‘em all. But alright, I survived thirty years on the force by being thorough and listening to people when they had something to say. Let’s go.”
“You guys can go back up. I had a blast, but I can barely feel my fingers anymore. It’s time for some soup and I want to stretch out by the fire to warm up.” Mark sealed it by pulling off his gloves and unzipping his coat. Rick looked at Mark, then back to us. I could tell that he was trying to decide what to do. He announced his decision by unzipping his coat also.
I shook my head. The euphoric feeling I’d had a few moments ago fell away and the heavy burden of leadership settled back onto my shoulders. Rick and Mark might be confident that we got all of them, but I wasn’t. All we needed to do was let our guard down for a moment and one of those things could tear through the entire hotel, killing everyone inside. I waved to the members of our party to let them know that we were alright and then turned around and trudged back up the stairs.
We started by searching over the side where we’d collected all of our kills. I thought I caught a glimpse of movement far down by the corner, but I couldn’t be sure because my periphery vision was obscured due to the mask’s goggles. Jesse and I crisscrossed the roof a few times and we both kept seeing shadows that moved or the bushes shook when no wind was blowing.
“There’s one down there,” I finally sighed after seeing the heel of a foot pull behind a bush once more.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “We’ve been up here for a few hours and the light isn’t really the best. It could just be our eyes playing tricks on us.”
Enduring Armageddon Page 18