Anarchy

by Peter Meredith

  He wasn’t about to go down that road. “If we were three feet off the ground, you could do this easily. So that’s what I want you to envision. We’re three feet off the ground.” He said this with a little mental boost.

  “Three feet,” she said. “I can do this.” And she did. She leapt and landed like a spazzy cat just as Maddy had. With Bryce’s encouragement she shimmied higher. Bryce held out the pole, and on the roof, Maddy had her axe out; something for Victoria to grab onto when she landed.

  “Now!” Bryce cried and, amazingly, she went, stepping onto the end of the pipe. It was only then Bryce realized that Maddy’s execution of the maneuver had been about as perfect as it could be. Victoria was almost doomed from the start. She didn’t thrust herself forward as Maddy had and the slightest hesitation caused her to have to fight for her balance, something that was impossible when standing on an inch-wide pipe. With a scream, she began to pitch to the side and her grasping hands snapped twigs and branches as they flailed.

  Bryce heaved under the pipe, doing what he could to keep her upright, but in a blink, he realized that she was going to fall. All he could do was thrust upward as hard as he could. She began to spin, her head and feet changing places, with the only saving grace being she spun towards the building. Above Bryce there was a heavy thud as Maddy buried the spike of her axe into the roof and stretched out with her free hand. She was half off the building herself when she snagged Victoria’s ankle. The woman dangle over a thirty-five foot tall. Her breath frozen in her throat, her heart seized between beats.

  Above her and half off the roof herself, Maddy held tightly to her ankle, but her grip would not last. “Do something,” she hissed to Bryce from between clenched teeth.

  “Look at me,” he said to Victoria. “There you go. Now put your hands together. “Together, like you’re doing CPR.” She was hanging upside down, just feet from Bryce and she thought he would grab her and pull her in, but once more, he used his trusty pipe. “Don’t grab it. I’m going to push you up. Keep your arms stiff.”

  The pipe bit into her palms, though not so bad as it could have since Maddy was straining to haul Victoria up at the same time. The effort was a fumbling, awkward ascent that not only involved the pipe and axe, Maddy even grabbed the woman with her legs when she could, wrapping them around Victoria’s hips so she could take the axe in both hands and pull. It felt like something of a miracle when Victoria was finally turned around and lying flat on the roof. For the moment, Maddy was spent and could do nothing to help Bryce.

  Not that he needed much help.

  He took the pipe and rammed it upward between the gutter and the edge of the roof. The other end he planted firmly on the sill. “I’m going to need a hand,” he called up.

  Maddy, who had been rubbing the life back into hers, said, “One second.” Again, she took a grip of her axe. “Alright.”

  Bryce squatted low, bunching the muscles in his thighs, his right hand as high up on the pole as he could reach. He sprang straight up, adding juice to his leap by yanking hard on the pipe and suddenly he appeared, as if standing on air, his feet inches from the gutter. Maddy shot her hand out and grabbed his hand just as gravity began to suck him straight back down. He collapsed on top of her, grinning.

  With his knee cocked on the pipe jutting from the gutter, he was in no danger of falling. “Not quite the cushioned landing it might have once been,” he said. “But still, I can’t complain.”

  She shoved him off of her and was about to hit him with a jab over his sexism when the calling of the demon burned through and her fear spiked. “We have…” Bryce was already up, fearlessly standing on the edge of the roof. He pulled up his pipe and then stuck out a hand to help Maddy. Still miffed at his remark, she snorted at the offered hand and stood on her own. “This way,” she said as she hiked up to the ridge of the roof. From there she half-crouched as she hurried along to where the building ran straight into a taller building.

  Victoria whimpered. Going up was the wrong direction in her mind. Bryce pointed down to their right where hundreds of zombies were running also, keeping pace with them. Up was their only choice, and the only way up was to climb a downspout.

  “You can do it,” Bryce said to her.

  What about me? Maddy thought. The old part of her that still saw herself as chubby needed to be reassured as well, but she couldn’t very well ask for it. Not that she would’ve outwardly accepted it, either way. The last thing she wanted was to be seen as weak. Sticking the handle of the axe into her yoga pants, she tugged at the spout and found it secure, at least at this point. But it ran upwards for twenty feet. What would it be like up there?

  Her instincts told her this was the way and so she went. It helped that Bryce handed his pipe to Victoria and came to stand beneath her. He would try to catch her if he could or at least break her fall some, and that was enough to keep her moving even though the grip was precarious at best, especially with her mismatched boots. The right one was slim and narrow and managed to catch the edge of the bolts jutting from the brackets with ease. The left was a tattered Ugg and was perhaps the worst boot for climbing ever invented.

  The boot was soft and fluffy with no tread whatsoever. It slipped constantly, forcing her to rely heavily on her hands and arms. Fortunately, she had grown strong as well and her grip was still tight when she reached the height of the next roof—it was wonderfully flat and she crawled onto it, rolled over and whispered down into the darkness, “I’m up. And the roof is flat!”

  Bryce had been down below whispering in Victoria’s ear, pumping her up. He even smacked her on the ass to get her moving. Her boots were a New Yorker’s version of hiking boots: stylish with exaggerated and never truly needed tread. They managed to catch every protruding piece of metal as she grunted her way upwards. With Bryce’s words ringing in her head, she didn’t look down, and she could almost believe she was on a playground, Just like when you were a kid.

  Her head wasn’t the only one that was ringing. Bryce’s head was thumping from the strain of using his strange, new power. “It’s probably not a stroke,” he told himself, though in truth, he had no way of knowing. He didn’t know if Serum-21 had grown some new organelle within his brain or if it had simply activated a dormant section, or if it had completely rewired the cells concerned with persuasion.

  The one thing science had taught him was that in nature, the overwhelming majority of genetic mutations were a major detriment. They almost always weakened or deformed the individual in some capacity, and even the mutations that could be considered good were never without side effects of some sort. And yet, this was Daniel Magnus’ work.

  “And a little headache is worth it,” he muttered.

  Up Victoria went, hesitating only when she made the transition from pipe to roof. A second later, Maddy looked over and stuck out a hand. Bryce flung up his pipe, which she caught deftly. Then Bryce was on the downspout, trusting his newly increased weight to decades old nuts and bolts. It groaned beneath his hands and in a few places the bolts scraped from the wall. This only had him going faster. He practically flew up the wall.

  Maddy wasn’t waiting for him at the top. She was using the pipe to smash at a door that led down into the building. Her eyes were wide with growing terror. Everything was taking too long, and the trap was closing so fast she didn’t think they would make it. The handle gave way just as Bryce raced up. It clattered to the roof and somehow the door was still locked!

  “Gimme that,” Bryce said, grabbing the pole. He slammed it into the hole, thrust his weight to the side and cracked something within the door. He then pried back until the metal front of the lock snapped and the door swung open. Moans and hideous howls assaulted their ears. There were zombies somewhere down in the darkness.

  Victoria backed from the door, but Bryce took her by the hand and pulled her inside. Maddy came pressing from behind, her anxiety radiating from her. “Faster! Faster or we won’t make it.”

  As they went down into
darkness so complete that Victoria was once more essentially blind, the moans of the dead grew louder; louder than they should, and it dawned on them that the dead were charging upwards just as they were charging down.

  “Take her,” Bryce said, meaning Victoria. He let go of her hand and started leaping down the flights. His improved eyesight allowed him to see the barest outlines of the stairwell. It was just enough to see by and he went down three stories in seconds only to come on dozens and dozens of the creatures fighting over themselves to get up the stairs. The trap had closed.

  “There’s no way down!” he cried. He smashed a face in with the pole, and a second, and a third. More surged upward, falling over the dead. He killed them as quickly as possible, giving ground slowly, but there were so many. It felt like he was fighting an army singlehandedly and it wasn’t long before his arms were like lead and his lungs burned with each breath. “Maddy! What are we going to do?”

  She paused before answering, her mind spinning with possibilities, none of which seemed to make any sense. Every path seemed to lead to darkness and demons, and it didn’t help that Victoria wouldn’t stop begging for her to come up with a plan, and she couldn’t concentrate with the zombies sending up a howling moan that rattled the door knockers along the apartment hall—then the demon was there in the darkness and its presence shook her to the core.

  “It’s here,” she whispered.

  “No shit,” Bryce muttered from two stories down. The cold wave of its hatred washed over Bryce, taking something from him vital. It was draining, causing his head to begin thumping even harder, and his arms to weaken even more.

  Kill! Kill! Kill!

  The zombies came on faster and faster, as if they were being whipped from behind, and Bryce was giving ground step by step. “Coward!” he cried to the demon. “Face me alone.” It only laughed, a creaking mocking sound. It had already given Bryce that chance and it wasn’t going to him another.

  Bryce fought for another half minute before he realized he was going to die if he kept going like this. There were just too many. He turned and ran up the stairs to the fourth floor where he found Maddy staring at a wall.

  “We’re trapped,” she told him before he could ask.

  “We’re not. You just haven’t seen the way out yet.” He started checking doors and it was only when he found one open that he realized they were in an apartment building. “Get in.” He pulled her inside, slamming the door behind the two women. He sat Maddy on a couch before running to the kitchen. Under the sink he found a bottle of bleach. “Victoria, pour this all over the door.” He then sat opposite Maddy and tried to smile. “You can do this. You can find a way out.”

  Maddy shook her head. “You don’t understand. There’s more than one demon out there. I can feel her.”

  “Her?”

  “Yes,” Maddy whispered. “She’s like me. She knows things. She knows everything I know. The Spider Demon is driving us right at her and no matter what, we won’t be able to get past her.”

  Chapter 22

  Bryce tried to clear his mind to feel the second demon, but his head was hurting too much. He needed time to rest, just for a few minutes, only minutes weren’t something they had to spare. The zombies were in the hall. For the moment they were confused that Bryce wasn’t standing right there waiting to be killed.

  In a whisper, Bryce said, “We have to try. Maybe if we split up. I can lead them back in the direction of the church and you two…”

  Maddy dropped her eyes. “You might get away. Maybe you should try it.” She knew she didn’t stand a chance against the Spider Demon. Against the other one, maybe, but only if the she-demon was alone, and what were the chances of that?

  The door thudded as a zombie knocked into it. There was a snuffling coming from around the cracks. Bryce let out a long weary breath and went to the window. “This isn’t bad. We have a fire escape and there’s some scaffolding on the building across the street. If we can get there, we might be able to get away.” Maddy didn’t look up. She didn’t need to look out the window to know that the street Bryce wanted to cross was flooded with the dead.

  “We go across the roofs of cars,” Bryce told her. The door shuddered under a blow. Neither of the women moved. “Or we die right here.”

  Victoria stood and went to the window. The dark, deeply shadowed street looked like it was rippling and alive, but here and there were open spots: the roof of a delivery truck, a van cocked up on a sidewalk, a big Ford Suburban, twisted sideways. They looked like stepping-stones across a terrible river; her stomach began to ache just thinking about trying to cross it. Regardless, she summoned her courage, saying, “We might be able to make it.”

  “You must really love your son and husband,” Maddy remarked, getting to her feet. The door shook on its hinges. She didn’t look back.

  “They’re the only reason I have for living,” Victoria said. “If I knew they were dead…” She shrugged. “But if I can find them, I think things will be okay. It’ll mean something, like something important. Like all this was for a reason.”

  Maddy couldn’t imagine what that reason would be, other than Magnus had wanted to play God. The door thundered. There was something large on the other side. “I’ll go first,” Maddy said. She heaved up on the window and found her ears assaulted by the roar of zombies four stories down on the street. They hadn’t yet seen her but with the demon’s pulse, they were worked up into a frenzy. For a moment Maddy’s courage failed her, but then the front door of the apartment was bashed practically off its hinges. Bryce darted forward and jabbed his pipe at something huge in the dark hallway. It was a great beast of a zombie over six and a half feet tall with a girth of at least that size. It filled the doorway.

  At the sight of it, Victoria screamed and shoved Maddy from behind, pushing her bodily out the window and onto the fire escape. Behind them the door exploded inward. The door, along with a four-hundred pound zombie, smashed into Bryce and sent him flying back onto and over the side of a couch.

  Maddy didn’t have time to watch. Victoria was shoving her down a narrow and treacherously steep set of metal stairs. They hit a landing and zigzagged to the next set of stairs and were midway down when a body blasted from a window above them. Glass rained down together with a long metal pole, but the body—Bryce’s body—didn’t follow. He was hanging off the fire escape by one hand, blood dripping down from a deep laceration along the side of his neck.

  With a deft move, and with the help of her foresight, Maddy snagged the pole as it hurtled by.

  “Nice catch,” Bryce said, trying to grin as he pulled himself up. The grin was a lie and came out crooked. “I don’t know what I would’ve…” The window he had just smashed through as well as part of the wall blew outward, covering him in dust and glass. The huge great zombie came crashing onto the fire escape; its weight pulled the entire structure from the wall by a foot or so. “My pipe!” Bryce cried and stuck out his hand.

  Maddy tossed it up but couldn’t see if it was caught because Victoria was pushing her on again. The older woman was single-minded in her desire to get the hell off the fire escape. More zombies were leaping from windows and crashing down, shaking the metal beneath them. One grey body cartwheeled past the two women, spinning and spinning until it splatted down onto the zombies below.

  The women raced down another level and now they were not far above the street level. Maddy looked back and saw Bryce in an impossible situation. There were dead zombies at his feet, while above him were more, tearing at him as they came down the stairs. To one side was the giant of a zombie, which had somehow crawled down the outside of the fire escape and was swiping at him with its long claws.

  In the narrow confines, Bryce still couldn’t swing the pipe properly. He jabbed at the giant as hard as he could, but the pipe only skipped off its huge head, leaving a gash but not doing the least bit of real harm. He then reversed the pipe and sent it through the eye of the closest zombie on the stairs. It fell and near
ly bowled him over. Four more live ones came rushing down right after it. Before he could deal with them, Bryce ducked beneath the giant hand of the big zombie and was about to make a dash for the next set of stairs when another window crashed outward and there was the Spider Demon, its eyes black and wet as jet. It stuck out a long arm and Bryce barely evaded it by falling back into the creatures piled around the stairs. Diseased hands tore at him, ripping his shirt and tearing strips of flesh from his back. He was being swarmed.

  Maddy pushed past Victoria and started up the stairs. She knew that Bryce had no chance. None. Not even with what little help she could render, especially since the Spider Demon was stepping out of the window. Now it would be between her and Bryce, straddling the stairs. She would have to kill the demon. She knew it would literally be an uphill fight where her axe, with its short reach, would be next to useless.

  Bryce felt her coming. She was the one bright spot anywhere around him. He wasn’t about to let his death go to waste and with the last of his energy he ordered her to leave. It was entirely mental. He had barely enough air in his lungs to remain upright. Maddy could have fought the order, but she knew in her heart nothing would come of her spurt of bravery, and she turned and raced back down the stairs. Don’t look back, she told herself. Just keep going.

  She concentrated on the stairs until she reached Victoria, who was looking back with dread in her eyes. Still, Maddy didn’t look until Bryce’s pipe fell past them and transfixed a zombie that had been standing in the street staring up. The pipe went through its gaping mouth and out its back, pinning it in place.

  For a moment Maddy stared at the suddenly immobilized zombie, then her eyes were drawn upward. Bryce couldn’t be seen. There were too many of the creatures swarming the fire escape and climbing along the outside of it like black bugs on a cage. A useless scream built in her throat but before Bryce’s name could pour out of her, she saw the giant of a zombie suddenly fly back from the fire escape. Time slowed and the creature appeared to hang in the air just long enough for her to see that Bryce was falling as well.