by Sam Sisavath
She looked down at Carly. “I don’t suppose you have any screwdrivers lying around?”
Carly gave her a wry look. “It never occurred to me to stock up on screwdrivers, sorry.”
Lara climbed back down. “Well, we’re going to need a screwdriver. Or something that can work like one.”
There was a loud bang! behind her, and turning, she saw that one of the mattress frames had tipped over, pushed back by a particular massive hit on the door. Immediately, the girls gasped, and Carly gave her a pale look that didn’t try to hide the horror rushing through her.
“It’s all right,” Lara said, “the door’s still holding.”
Carly nodded, though there was no relief on her face. The door was holding now, but for how long? That last hit was hard enough for the concussive force to travel through the barricade and knock back the mattress frame. How badly had it damaged the door?
She said, “Everyone, I need your help. Start looking around the room, find anything that we could use to take out the screws. A ruler. A knife. Anything long and flat. Okay? Let’s go.”
Elise and Vera got up and started to look. Carly did the same. Lara picked up the mattress frame and pushed it back against the barricade, over the mattress that usually went on top of the frame. They were beating against the door again, and with each strike, more and more of the vibrations came through.
They’re getting stronger by the second…
“Lara,” Carly said behind her, walking over with a metal spoon. “Will this work?”
“I think it might.”
She took the spoon and climbed back on the chair. She didn’t really know if it would work, but it was worth a try. She had seen movies where people used spoons to turn screws. But those were movies…
She positioned the spoon underneath the nearest screw and was elated to see that it slipped into the groove. She began to turn it. The screw was in there tight, and it took a lot of effort just to turn it counterclockwise even a little bit. But it moved—that was the important thing. It moved.
She closed out the sounds of heavy banging behind her—at one point the bed frame fell again, and Carly rushed over to reposition it—and concentrated on turning the screw until she had it half free. She tried using her fingers to twist it out the rest of the way, but it wouldn’t budge. Not even a little bit. So she went back to the spoon.
Finally, the first screw fell to the floor. It landed and clattered away into a corner. She thought she heard Carly and the girls breathe a sigh of relief.
One down, seven to go…
She started working on the second screw, even as another vicious bang! sent the mattress and the bed frame tumbling to the floor behind her. Lara didn’t look back. She heard Carly hurry to take care of it and the girls rushing over to help.
She concentrated on the second screw. It was only halfway out, but her arms were already starting to ache from being extended upward toward the ceiling. The constant heat blasting against her face didn’t help, but it didn’t have nearly as much impact as the strain building in her arms.
The second screw fell to the floor, and the third one came out much easier than the first two. She had a harder time with the fourth and fifth screws because her arms were getting tired. They felt like jelly, like pieces of spaghetti trying to hold up something heavy. The remaining center screws held the grate in place as she worked around the edges instead of taking them all out in order. This way, she wouldn’t have to worry about holding up the grate until she was almost at the end.
She was out of breath by the time she got the sixth screw out. Now with only two screws left, the grate started to creak and shift against her grip. She tried gripping one of the edges and ripping the whole thing out of the ceiling with brute force, but she couldn’t shift the grate even a little bit, despite pulling on it with all her strength.
So much for that idea.
She went to work on the seventh screw, and by now her feet had become nearly as fatigued as her arms. She gritted through the pain and tried to think of something else. She thought of Elise, and Vera, and Carly. Of Will and Danny, making their way over to them. Of the ghouls outside their door this very moment, salivating at the thought of coming in. It was that last thought that drove her on, made her continue twisting the long-dented spoon in the same counterclockwise motion long after she lost feeling in both her arms.
Behind her, another loud crash sent the dresser tumbling to the floor. Carly expelled a loud gasp.
“Lara,” Carly said behind her. “Hurry.”
Lara heard everything she needed to hear in the younger woman’s voice. “I know,” she grimaced, concentrating on the screw.
It was almost out…
“Girls,” Carly said behind her, “I need your help with this. Whenever one of these things fall, we need to get it back up right away. Understand?”
Lara couldn’t make out the girls’ mumbled replies, but all three worked diligently behind her, constantly moving, pushing the heavier objects back against the door, even as the relentless pounding continued and seemed to get louder. It was as if they knew they were getting closer, that the door wasn’t going to last much longer. Lara didn’t have to ask how the door looked. She knew how it looked. She could hear it, feel the wood starting to buckle against the constant, unrelenting pressure.
Not too long now…
She forced herself through the screaming pain and hurried with the eighth and final screw, her left hand holding up the grate in the middle, fingers splayed out to get as much coverage as possible. When the eighth screw finally came free and clattered to the floor, the grate suddenly felt as if it had gained 100 pounds and it was all she could do to drop the spoon and quickly grab at the grate with both hands before it plummeted down and bashed into her face.
Lara climbed down from the chair and practically dropped the grate on the floor. It fell heavily, chipping the concrete.
Carly looked across the room at her and smiled. It was the first real smile Carly had managed since they ran inside the room. “Nice work.”
“Thanks,” Lara said. “I don’t think I can move my arms, though.”
Carly laughed, but stopped when another massive bang! nearly tore the door from its frame. The mattress, nightstand, and bed all toppled against the assault, and the ugly red felt armchair moved at least half a foot. Carly quickly pushed the chair back against the door as the girls picked up what they could. Lara rushed to help.
Come on, Will, where the hell are you?
She heard a scraping sound above her and looked back as a black, dark figure fell through the air conditioner duct and landed inside the room in a crouch. She nearly had a heart attack when the figure stood up, a shotgun slung over his back and pouches of ammo jiggling around his waist and chest.
Danny grinned at her. “Hey, I was just in the neighborhood and heard there was a bunch of girls who needed a manly hand?”
Carly rushed over and leaped into his arms. He grabbed her and laughed, then kissed her passionately on the mouth. Vera and Elise giggled. Danny was wearing one of those glowing sticks dangling from a string around his neck…the same string with Ben’s pendant attached at the end.
Lara said, “Get a room.”
A voice from above her chipped in, “Preferably not this one.”
She looked up. Will was draped through the duct opening in the ceiling. He had another glow stick dangling from a makeshift necklace—just a cheap piece of string, really. They had been using the illumination of the sticks to maneuver through the dark air ducts, she realized.
“Hey, you,” she said.
“Hey yourself.” Then, putting on his serious face: “We should probably get moving. That door doesn’t sound like it’s going to hold for much longer.”
Another crash tossed most of the barricade to the floor, spilling the nightstand and the mattresses and bed frames in all directions. The felt armchair, amazingly, rocked backward slightly, then bounced right back in place.
�
�Time to go!” Danny said. He unslung his shotgun and pulled four extra glow stick necklaces out of a pouch. He cracked them one by one, then handed them out. “Will’s going to pull everyone up one by one. We’ll regroup in the Control Room if we can make it that far. If not, there’s always Plan Z.”
“Oh great, another Plan Z,” Carly frowned.
“Carly,” Will said, “you first, then the girls.”
Carly climbed up on the chair and held out her hands. Will grabbed them, and taking a breath, pulled her up slowly. Carly said, “If you say I’ve gained weight, I’m going to kill you, Will.”
He grinned and pulled her halfway up. Carly reached into the corners of the duct for leverage, while Danny grabbed her legs to help push her the rest of the way.
They continued that way with Vera, then Elise. The girls were easier, lighter, and Danny simply passed them up to Will, who pulled them both into the air duct without much effort.
When it was her turn, Lara loosened up her legs and arms and climbed back up on the chair. Will, dangling from the square box in the ceiling, said, “Ready?”
“Thanks for coming,” she smiled up at him.
“I had no choice. It was either this or find a new girlfriend. As you’ve probably noticed, my history with girlfriends in the post-apocalypse has been pretty hit and miss.”
“I bet you say that to all the g—”
She never got the chance to finish. There was a loud crack! behind her and she knew without looking that the door had just given way, that the only thing holding the ghouls back now was the barricade, and it wouldn’t last for more than a few seconds.
Danny, behind her, shouted, “Go go go!”
Will had already gotten a grip on her wrists, and he pulled her up in one fluid motion, grunting loudly in the effort. Unprepared for the pull, she thought her arms might pop out of their sockets.
Will deposited her into the air duct with another big grunt.
The air duct was intensely hot, and Carly and the girls were already sweating profusely as they sat inside, their wet faces lit up by the glow sticks hanging from their necks. The unnatural green glow glinted off the shiny metal interior of the air ducts, reminding Lara of some weird sci-fi movie.
She climbed past Will, who made himself as small as possible to allow her to hurry by. Fortunately it wasn’t as tight a squeeze as she had feared. Although the grate was only two-by-two feet wide, the duct itself was wider at four-by-four feet. It had to be to accommodate the massive industrial-sized air conditioner that Harold Campbell had installed in the facility. The generous size allowed Carly to mostly sit and the girls to stand slightly hunched over.
Even as she moved past Will, a loud crashing sound thundered behind her, back in the room. She knew the door had just come completely free from its hinges, and on cue, a split second after the loud crashing noise, she heard the roar of a shotgun blast.
She stopped and looked back at Will. He was leaning over the hole, shouting, “Danny, now, Goddammit!”
The shotgun bellowed from below.
One, two, three times.
Will reached down and grabbed onto something and jerked back up in a harder and rougher movement than he had used on her. Danny climbed through the hole, his face grimacing with pain. She knew instantly that Danny hadn’t been as lucky as her, that one, possibly both of his arms, had come free from its sockets during the pull. He was heavier than her, and the weapons and ammo he carried only added to his weight.
He crawled up the rest of the way by himself, but she could see he was in tremendous pain. His teeth were tightly clenched and he cradled his left arm as he crawled forward while behind him Will unslung his shotgun and fired into the room. The loud shotgun blasts were ear-shattering in the close confines of the ducts, and Lara thought she might have just lost all hearing, but that proved false when she heard Will fire again, and again, and again.
Danny struggled into a sitting position in front of her and reached into one of his pouches, pulling out two round green globes.
Grenades!
Danny shouted, “Fire in the hole!”
Will quickly scooted back as Danny pulled the pins and tossed the grenades through the opening, just as a ghoul stuck its head up, black eyes searching. A second later the ghoul evaporated in the dual blasts that sent shrapnel screaming through the opening, slicing into the area around the grate like thousands of tiny daggers. Much to Lara’s relief, Will had moved far enough away to be spared from the double explosions.
Lara feared the entire ceiling—and they with it—might collapse. A cloud of smoke shot through the opening, and for a moment she lost sight of Will, who was somewhere behind the wall of white mist.
She looked back at Elise and Vera to make sure they were all right. Both girls were pressing their hands against their ears, eyes squeezed shut, neither one making a sound. Elise looked on the verge of tears, but when Vera took her hand away from her ears and reached for Elise’s, the other girl fought back the tears.
While things were calming down in front of her, they continued to be chaotic and desperate behind her. Lara still couldn’t see Will through the curtain of drifting smoke. She could only see Danny, sitting nearby, cradling his left arm in his lap and trying desperately to get it to work for him.
She crab-walked over. Danny gave her a look indicating he was fine. She knew better and grasped his left arm. He flinched, but didn’t say anything.
“Hold still,” she said, “this is going to hurt.”
He grinned back at her through the swirling white smoke. “No shit, Doc. Tell me something I don’t know.”
“I once dated a lesbian in college.”
“Oh ye—”
She pulled. Hard. And heard the pop! as the bone slid back into the socket.
Oh my God, I can’t believe I just did that. Professor Stevens would be so proud…if he wasn’t probably already dead.
Danny sighed and unslung his M4A1 from behind his back. “So, about that lesbian encounter…”
“Later,” she said.
Two more shotgun blasts roared behind them, then Will appeared through the smoke like some apparition. “Less chatter, more moving.”
Ahead of them, Carly began crawling through the air duct, moving as fast as she could. The girls followed, walking hunched over. Lara crawled behind them, her head bumping into the ceiling every few feet until she got used to it and started moved at a lower angle.
She risked a glance back over her shoulder, just in time to see a ghoul appear out of the evaporating mist. Its black eyes looked even more freakish against the green neon of the glow sticks that flooded the ducts. That is, for the split second before Will detached its head from its shoulders with a shotgun blast. The buckshot must have kept going, because Lara heard another ghoul behind the headless one let out a surprised shriek.
The shotgun blasts were like someone hammering away at her ears with explosives. Each shot made her wince and hesitate, and it was only with great focus that she managed to force herself to keep moving, despite what sounded like the never-ending bellow of gunfire behind her.
Carly was well ahead of the pack, with the girls moving steadily behind her. They were so far up front that the two-foot halo of their glow sticks began to fade into the darkness. She was afraid they would get lost. Lara didn’t know if there were turns in the air ducts, though she could feel it curving in places to accommodate the half-circle construction of the facility. She hadn’t passed any overt turns yet, which was good. That meant there weren’t too many spots where they could get lost or lose track of one another.
She knew the ghouls were now in the air ducts with them, because Will and Danny were firing and moving and firing. Through the sound of shotgun and M4A1 fire behind her, a scream pierced the darkness of the air duct in front of her.
Carly.
She recognized Carly’s scream even though she couldn’t see a damn thing up ahead. She looked back at Danny and Will, taking turns firing into the darkness b
ehind them, oblivious to what was happening up front. They probably couldn’t hear anything over the roar of their own weapons. And they were kept busy, too. Ghouls lunged into Danny and Will’s neon halo, only to be shredded by gunfire. Like they had done before, Will and Danny fired and reloaded, screaming out “Changing!” each time.
Lara raised herself higher and began crab-running up the air duct. Her head scraped against the metal ceiling once, twice, almost five times. She ignored the sudden jolts of pain and kept moving, willing herself to go faster, until she finally (finally!) saw the neon lights of glow sticks appear in front of her again.
There was Carly, on her back, with a ghoul on top of her. Carly had managed to grab the creature’s neck with both hands and was holding it back, but even so, the ghoul’s mouth was open, and it bared its brown and yellow and crooked teeth at her, trying to get at her neck. Saliva dripped rabidly from its mouth.
She pulled the Glock out of her waistband and hurried forward. She passed Elise and Vera, holding onto each other, speechless as they watched Carly battle the ghoul. Passing the girls, Lara stuck out the Glock and fired twice.
Her first shot missed the ghoul entirely, but her second creased the back of its head.
It turned and looked at her, its eyes registered annoyance.
She shot it again, this time hitting it in the right eye. The soft tissue of the eye popped like a grapefruit and sprayed the ducts. It was enough to make the creature stumble away from Carly, and for a moment Lara wondered if she had hurt it, wounded it enough to force it back. She realized what a stupid notion that was when the ghoul turned its attention completely away from Carly and dove at her.
The creature was small, its shrunken form making it almost a perfect fit inside the four-by-four confines of the ducts. It was already hunched over, so when it ran at Lara, it didn’t have to stop. It came at her full speed, and all she could do was empty her gun into it, her last two shots hitting the ghoul point-blank in the chest.
That slowed it down, but it didn’t stop. Black blood dripping in its wake, turning the floor slippery, the creature started running toward her again when Danny appeared, lunging past her and driving his cross-knife into its head.