Tower of the Dead: A Zombie Novel

by J. V. Roberts

  “Look at this muthafucka, man.”

  I can’t see who said it, but they all seem to be thinking the same thing. Most of them are openly carrying handguns. A couple even have compact machine guns hanging by their sides. And why not? The eleventh floor is a no-man’s land, unless you’re a Golden Boy.

  “Good Times lookin’ muthafucka, what you want, you punk ass bitch?” He’s got a black handgun peaking just over the top of his waistband.

  “I’m here to see Wallace.”

  The laughter echoes from one end of the hall to the other.

  “Man, you done lost your muthafuckin’ mind, don’t no one see Wallace less they got business.”

  “I’ve got business.”

  “You don’t got business less Wallace says you got business, you feel me? Take your old ass back up them stairs before you get hurt.” His hand is creeping towards the gun at his waist.

  There is a considerable lump growing in my throat. “Listen, I’m not here to start nothing, alright. It’s a small personal matter that I just need to get sorted out, that’s all, no big thing.”

  “A small personal matter?” The gangster curls his top lip, exposing a shiny gold grill. “You got a problem with Wallace then you got a problem with me, muthafucka.”

  The gangster takes a step forward and I take three back, my back banging against the stairwell door as the rest of his crew falls in behind him.

  “It’s about my little girl, alright. I’m not here to start no shit. I’m here as a father.”

  “Man, don’t no one give a fuck about your little girl.”

  “He’s talking about that pony-tailed little bitch from the stairwell.” The man that called my daughter a bitch is standing about three rows back from me, some skinny ass punk covered in crooked tattoos.

  I come off the door. It’s just instinct; a father defending his daughter. The gangster that’s been in my face the whole time pulls his gun and jams it against my chest, shoving me back into place.

  “What you gonna do? Huh? You wanna die today?”

  Before the whole thing can spin any further out of control, before I can get my stupid ass shot, Wallace appears, shoving his way forward, ordering his men off me. “Ya’ll get back, put them guns away, ain’t no one shootin’ no one less it’s me pulling the trigger.” He steps up to me, getting close, uncomfortably close. “What you got to say, pops? Why you starting a ruckus in my home?” I don’t see a weapon. He doesn’t need one. Despite his comical features, Wallace is a very large man; size is its own weapon.

  “I ain’t trying to start nothing in your home. I meant no disrespect. It’s about my daughter. I heard that maybe you, or some of your guys, may have had a run in with her earlier today.”

  “What if we did?”

  “Listen, I don’t know if you got kids, but if you do, imagine hearing that a couple of grown men were messing with them, putting a scare into them. You’d want to come to their defense, right? I can’t have you guys messing with my daughter; it’s my duty, as a father, to protect her. You seem like a guy that can appreciate duty. Now I get that there’s more of you than me and that you’ve got guns. You’d kill my ass if I tried something, most likely; I get that.” I stop and breathe, trying to still the shaking in my voice. “But the next time I hear about you or your crew fucking with my little girl, I’m going to come down here and tear a hole through this place. You’ll get me, no doubt, but you’ll remember I was here.” I’m not sure what the hell just came over me; bullshit bravado. It’s gonna get me killed, no doubt. I’m telling myself that I did the right thing, but consolation is hard to come by in light of the impending pain.

  Calls of, “Man, kill this mothafucka!” echo through the crowd.

  Wallace raises his hand and rolls his fingers into a fist.

  I flinch and curl my arms up around my head, hoping to lessen some of the impact.

  I hear laughter.

  I peek between my elbows and see Wallace with his fist propped beneath his chin, smiling, his gold grill twinkling. I’m hesitant in lowering my guard, sure that I’m being fooled into exposing myself.

  “You know what, old man?” Wallace purses his lips and nods. “I respect that.”

  “Well…uh…thanks.”

  “Nah, I do, for real. You came down here like a real muthafuckin man and you let me know what’s up. You didn’t go talking shit, you didn’t call no police, you came to me. Ya’ll muthafuckas realize he coulda called the police out here, right?”

  Slow nods.

  “Well, I mean, I’m not really the type that calls the police.” No one in this building is.

  “Smart man,” Wallace confirms.

  “Well, I mean—”

  “Here’s the deal, smart man. I’m gonna give you a fifteen second head start.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “You got fifteen seconds to get your bitch ass back up them stairs and then me and my boys are coming after you.”

  “But I don’t understand, I thought you just said—”

  “Make it ten seconds. You better get moving, less you want a bullet in that ass.”

  The men behind him are licking their lips. Guns are coming out. Bullets are being chambered.

  I stumble back into the stairwell, not sure which direction to run at first.

  Should I get Alisa?

  No! Hell no!

  My little girl is safe where she is.

  Do these assholes know where I live?

  I’m running up the stairs and am almost to the twelfth-floor landing when the first gunshot rings out.

  I hit the deck.

  Instinct? Cowardice?

  I don’t know.

  I wrap my hands across the back of my head and begin praying.

  More gunshots.

  A lot more.

  One after the other.

  I’m no expert, but it sounds like machine gun fire. The gunshots sound muffled. They’re definitely not coming from inside the stairwell. I slide towards the railing and peer down at the eleventh-floor landing.

  Empty.

  The battle is raging on the other side of the door.

  Some dispute turned deadly, maybe? I feel relief, curiosity, and fear; I mean, it’s still my building, where I live with my family, my little girl is only a few floors away, and it sounds like a small war is taking place.

  The building shakes and then there’s the sound of an explosion. The sound of glass breaking and people screaming. Doors are flying open, there are feet racing down the stairs.

  The explosion definitely came from outside.

  First thought: I’ve got to get my family out of here.

  Second thought: Which one do I get first?

  It’s not a hard question. Bottom line is that I don’t know what’s going on up there. If I grab Alisa then I’ve got to drag her through potential danger. Better to pick up Tasia and get Alisa on the way back down.

  I don’t waste no time. Folks are shoving past me; I’m the only one trying to make it back up. Some of them are covered in blood. All of them look scared…terrified.

  “What’s going on? Where’d the blood come from? Was that a gas line exploding? Ya’ll hang on, what the fuck happened?”

  They aren’t having it. They act like they can’t even see me. So I continue moving upward, questions unanswered.

  I’m on the sixteenth-floor landing and I can still hear folks making a hell of a racket below me. As I step out into the hall, I’m not sure what the hell I’m gonna find, yet, despite those open-ended expectations, the sight still surprises me.

  There’s blood everywhere: pooled and smeared across the cement floors, red handprints and streaks on the walls. Light fixtures dangle from the ceiling, pulsing and sparking, casting eerie shadows that blink in and out of existence every couple of seconds like phantoms. There are bodies too, but I can’t make out the faces, not from where I’m standing.

  I count three.

  Two are curled up, knees to chest, as if they died
trying feebly to defend themselves.

  The third is sat up against the wall and he’s mangled something awful. His feet are pointing in two different directions, as if his legs were snapped at the knees. His belly is torn open and his intestines are piled in his lap; it’s an awful sight.

  There are two other folks in the hallway as well. One of them is standing among the bodies and the other one is pounding rhythmically at my door, straining the hinges with every angry blow. I recognize both of them. The woman, standing among the bodies, is my next door neighbor, Ruth. The man pounding at my door is her father, Amos.

  “What’s going on?” I’m rushing towards them; the bodies and the blood are now the furthest thing from my mind.

  The way Amos is pounding on my door must mean that Tasia is hurt or trapped. I get about a foot or so from Ruth when I realize something else is wrong entirely. Her skin looks like it’s melting, like it’s trying to slide off her bones. Her head comes up; I can see the underside of her blood red eyelids. She twitches a little as she takes me in, her chin moving from shoulder to shoulder like some curious dog.

  “Ruth?” I take a subconscious step back, holding an arm straight out in front of me; a barrier rather than an offer of assistance. Something about the way she’s looking at me chills my blood.

  She takes a step to match mine, her foot hovers in the air for a moment before touching down, as if she’s practicing balancing on one leg.

  Then she takes another.

  I retreat further. “Hang on now, Ruth. You just hang on. What happened?”

  Her lips quiver. She’s about to say something. Her mouth opens and a river of blood flows forth. It hits the ground between us, splashing both of our feet. A gurgle in her throat turns into a growl. Her hands come up, her fingers are bent, her nails pointing at me like ten tiny daggers. Her pace quickens and the growl in her throat intensifies.

  I am running backwards now. I’m not sure what Ruth plans to do when she gets hold of me, but I don’t plan to find out. “You just stop! Stop, goddamn you!”

  Amos is still at the other end of the hall. He’s going at my door like a man possessed, kicking and punching. It’s obvious to me, now, that his aim ain’t to help. I’ve got to get down there before he can get to Tasia. I played some football in high school and one year in college. I still know how to duck and weave. I stop suddenly on my back right foot, get low, and propel myself to the left, going under Ruth’s right arm. I don’t stop moving, breaking into a full on run. I jump the bodies and the blood. The world around me blurs. All I can see is Amos; he’s got that same sagging skin, and is emitting that same hungry growl. There’s a window at the end of the hall, right beside where Amos is standing. An idea occurs to me. It’s probably stupid, but it’s all I’ve got. My daddy always told me that desperate men are stupid men and, right now, I don’t think there’s any man in America more desperate than me.

  I hit Amos in the side with everything I’ve got. I’m pretty sure the impact breaks his damn spine. He folds up on my shoulder and I carry him towards the square of thin glass and brittle wood. It shatters as soon as he makes contact. I stop completely and use my arms to push him and keep him sailing forward.

  Once he clears the window and has begun his journey towards the sidewalk I turn around to see Ruth coming at me. She’s not running, but she’s not exactly walking either. It’s a shaky and deliberate pace. I look around at my feet, find the longest piece of broken glass I can, and hold it out, pointy side down.

  “Ruth, I don’t know what the hell is going on, but I don’t wanna kill ya! Talk to me, girl! Let’s work this out! Did you hurt those people, you and Amos? Is that what this is? Whatever happened, it’s not worth dying over!”

  She don’t stop. She just keeps on coming. I don’t try to stab her, it just sort of happens. She doesn’t stop and I don’t move the glass. It goes right into her, a few inches above her belly button.

  I immediately start apologizing. “Oh, lord! Oh, god! I’m so sorry, Ms. Ruth!”

  But she’s still coming. The glass in her belly don’t even faze her. She’s going for my shoulders, my throat, her mouth open and drooling blood. The glass goes in further and before I know it I’m wrist deep inside her, my fingers fishing around her organs. Her teeth are coming for my throat. I retract my hand and push her away. I’ve lost my weapon in her guts. I pick up a piece of wood with glass still attached to the end, wielding it with both hands like an axe.

  “Oh, forgive me, Jesus!”

  As she recovers and starts back towards me, I swing down and send the piece of glass right through the top of her skull; that shuts her down instantly.

  I just killed Ms. Ruth!

  Fuck…Ms. Ruth was just trying to kill me!

  Didn’t even look like her. Looked like some monster wearing a Ms. Ruth Halloween costume.

  I turn and take notice of the apartment building across the way. I’d missed it in all of the excitement.

  The entire front half is on fire.

  Actually…no, that’s the wrong way to describe it.

  The front half of the building is missing. It’s the middle of the building, the stuff that’s left, that is actually on fire.

  There are folks on the roof trying to escape the flames, screaming for help, and there are other folks up there with them that remind me a lot of Ms. Ruth: same sagging skin and jittery walk. One of the messed-up-looking folks gets hold of a young girl, probably somewhere around my daughter’s age, and just starts ripping into her. She tears right through the front of her throat. I feel my stomach drop out as I watch a red spray of blood from the newly severed artery cut through the air.

  But I don’t look away.

  Instead, I start screaming at the monster to get off her, to leave her alone, as if it’s gonna do a goddamn bit of good. I mean, shit, Ms. Ruth kept coming at me with an eight-inch piece of glass lodged in her stomach, screaming ain’t gonna do nothing; doesn’t stop me though. None of the other folks around the girl try to help her, as if they know the attempt would be futile; they’ve got other things to worry about, like the flames and the other five monsters that are coming at them.

  One fella sees me and starts yelling back at me and waving his hands. I can’t hear him over the flames, but it’s easy to see that he’s signaling for help.

  As I’m trying to formulate a way to communicate back, I can hear a helicopter approaching. Finally, the cavalry is arriving. I can see it in the distance, through the smoke. I start pointing and yelling for the panicked man to turn around, trying to let him know that his help has arrived. He cocks his head at me, but before he can turn he’s cut in half.

  I mean it, literally.

  The top half of his body goes spinning across the roof and his legs just hang there for a minute before buckling at the knees and going to the ground.

  There’s a soldier hanging off the side of the copter behind a minigun and on either side of him are two other soldiers carrying long rifles; all of them are decked out in fatigues and black sunglasses. They’re strafing everyone on the roof, killing them all, man and monster alike.

  “Stop, we got innocents up there! You’re killing innocents!” In my desperation, I chunk a handful of glass at the distant helicopter to try to get their attention.

  Desperate men are stupid men!

  The discarded glass travels in a small arc and catches the sunlight before plummeting to the ground somewhere near Amos’ corpse. The bodies on the roof across from me are now still, reduced to broken up chunks of bloody flesh. The helicopter cuts through the smoke and buzzes my building, sending a downdraft through the window that pulls my clothes tight around my body.

  3

  My wife is standing just inside the door of our apartment, holding the hatchet I’d brought home, and shaking like one of Alisa’s windup toys.

  “He just…kept…pounding…I looked out the peephole…I saw,” the words keep getting caught in her throat.

  “Hush now, it’s alright.” I take
the hatchet, set it on the counter, and wrap her up in my arms.

  Behind her the television blares.

  “They’ve sealed off all the streets around the neighborhood.” She’s crying against my shoulder, I can feel her hot tears soaking through my clothes. “News said they’re not letting anyone in or out; they closed off the airspace over the entire city.”

  “Did they say what’s going on?” I have a hand cupped around the back of her head and am massaging her scalp with my fingers, just trying to get her to calm down so we can formulate some kind of escape plan. I’m watching the television behind her. I recognize the images.

  It’s our neighborhood.

  Our streets.

  Except now they’re lined with military fellas and armored vehicles. The soldiers are dressed up in camouflage, wearing bulky body armor, with their faces all painted; ready for war. Judging by the constant gunfire I hear taking place outside, the war has already started.

  “Said it was some kind of disease, makes people dangerous.”

  “That it does. It makes them wanna kill. You heard Amos going at the door. It wasn’t a social call. Ms. Ruth attacked me too, tried to kill me, never seen anything like it in all my days.”

  “Lord Jesus, help us.” She gives a heavy sigh. “They’re evacuating everyone around us within a five mile radius.”

  “But not us?”

  She shakes her head. “They’re just shooting folks down in the streets, anyone that steps outside.”

  Another explosion rattles our building. This one is further away than the first one. “Okay, listen, if we stay here we’re gonna die.”

  She steps back from me, her cheeks still wet, wringing her hands together. “You’re right, I know you’re right. But what’re we supposed to do, huh? Those men out there will shoot us the moment they see us.” As if to drive home her point, another round of automatic gunfire kicks up outside. “But that’s if we even make it. How many others are there like Ms. Ruth?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know, Tasia. We won’t know till we know. But we sure as hell can’t stay here. We need to get to Alisa and my mom and get out.”