by T. Gault
“I’m sorry I didn’t realize…I’m just trying to make things less awkward. You are in a truck with three guys you’ve just met.”
“Yeah, but I’m pretty sure I could take all three of you,” Tracy said confidently.
I wasn’t sure if she was making a joke or if she was being serious.
Matt tapped on the window and started to point at the parking lot as we pulled up to it.
“Let me out on the side where...his mom was,” said Matt quietly.
I sped through the parking lot to the van and quickly stopped next to the driver’s door. Matt climbed out of the back of the truck and ran to the remains of Curtis’ mother. Matt checked her pockets again and again, but couldn’t find the keys.
“What’s the problem? Hurry up,” I said.
“She doesn’t have them,” responded Matt.
“Look in the ignition,” I said.
Matt jumped up and stuck his head inside of the vehicle.
“Here they come,” Tracey said as she pointed to a handful of carriers stumbling toward us.
Matt was still looking inside the vehicle for the keys, but didn’t appear to be having any luck.
“C’mon, Matt, we don’t have time for this. We’ll find another vehicle. There are plenty out here,” I said, but Matt still continued searching inside.
Suddenly there was a thumping noise from the back of the truck. Curtis got out of the back and ran over to Matt. Because of what happened with Curtis last time we were here, I didn’t know what he was about to do.
“Move your leg,” said Curtis to Matt and Matt pulled his legs inside the vehicle.
Curtis reached under the driver’s side of the vehicle and pulled out a small black box. He opened the box and pulled a key out. Matt moved over to the passenger’s seat and Curtis got into the driver’s seat. He started the engine and gave me the thumbs up.
“Well, alright then,” I said to Tracey.
The van started to move just as a carrier slammed into the front of the van. Curtis powered right on through and the corpse was pulled down under the wheels.
PFFFF, “Let’s go get Beth, Fran, Sid and Jim,” said Matt over the radio.
CLICK, “Yes, let’s,” I responded.
Curtis followed me to the parking lot of thee sporting goods store and we couldn’t believe what we saw. The barricade had been completely trampled and the inside of the store was full of the infected. I knew there was no way we were going to be able to get in and out without an impossible fight.
CLICK, “Sid...Jim...Beth? You guys still in there?” I called on the radio.
All of us outside held our breath waiting for an answer, but I never got one.
PFFFF, “Maybe we won’t need the van after all,” said Matt.
PFFFF, “Frannie are you in there!” said Curtis over the radio in a panic.
Then I caught something out of the corner of my eye. Some movement on the roof of the building. I saw a hand waving. It was Jim, but all I could see was his arm.
CLICK, “Hey, why didn’t you guys answer on the radio,” I said into the radio, but still got no response.
PFFFF, “I don’t know why they aren’t answering, but we need to get a move on, they’ve noticed us,” said Matt.
The hoard inside was starting to squeeze its way back out of the store. With the size of the crowd, there was no way that I was going to be able to go in on foot or drive right through, and the others couldn’t jump from the roof.
“We could try what I did at my house,” I said, looking at Tracey.
“What did you do there?” she asked.
CLICK, “Matt, do you have any shells left? I need you to shoot off a couple rounds in front of the store.”
PFFFF, “What? That will bring every one of them in the area on top of us,” Matt replied.
CLICK, “Yeah, but it will get them out of the store for us to go in and get the others,” I said.
PFFFF, “Okay, but this is going to be a matter of perfect timing and a whole lot of luck,” Matt responded.
Matt pulled the van up in front of the store and I saw the barrel stick out through the window.
BOOM, click click, BOOM. The steady flow of corpses coming through the cracks in the barricade turned into a frantic rush. They began trampling each other to get out of the building. Tracey and I slumped down into the seats of the truck and watched the crowd surge toward us. The van started to move out of the parking lot slowly and Matt continued to fire off shots. I could see Tracey becoming increasingly uncomfortable as the bodies overtook the truck. Several of them bounced off of the truck as the force of the mass of rotting flesh shoved passed us. Tracey tried to slide as far away from the broken-out passenger’s side window as possible without being noticed. I kept my gun ready, just in case one of them noticed us in the truck.
I inched up gradually in the seat to look over the dashboard at the store. There were only a couple of them hobbling out of the opening now, but the ground was littered with the carriers that had been crushed under the weight of the crowd. Most of them were still trying to move, with broken legs and missing limbs. The truck was still running and all I would have to do is let the clutch out and gun the gas to get inside the store.
“You ready to try this?” I asked Tracey.
“I think I should have stayed at the church, but I guess I’m in this now,” said Tracey.
The only weapon she was able to take from the church was the one she had brought with her from the ambulance. It wasn’t the most easily used hand weapon, but I would hate to be in the way if she swung it. She said it was called a “halligan.” I had never seen anything like it. It was a metal bar that had a pair of prying forks on one end and a pointed hook on the other end. She said they used them for getting into houses in emergency situations.
I heard one last BOOM from Matt’s shotgun and he came over the radio, PFFFF, “I’m out. I’ve got to reload. Go now or we’re going to have to forget about them.”
CLICK, “We’re moving now. Get ready to help with pickup,” I replied.
I sat up in the driver’s seat and gunned the gas. One unlucky carrier lumbered out of the opening just as I hit the barrier. He was smashed between the front of the truck and the shelving. As I started to push my way into the store, heard a loud POP.
“What was that?” I said.
Tracey opened the door and stepped out into the store. She looked around for carriers and glanced back at the truck. “You blew the front tire.”
“Crap!” I said, jumping out on my side of the truck.
“Where are they? How do we get up on the roof?” asked Tracey.
I stumbled over to the right side of the truck to see the tire. “There is a spare under the bed.”
“Hey, watch your back!” yelled Tracey as one of them lunged at me from the rubble around the truck. I fell backward and saw Tracey’s halligan crush the skull of the corpse reaching for me.
“We don’t have time for this. This place is still full of them,” said Tracey.
“But my truck, I...it still works...there is a spare,” I stammered.
“You’ll be changing it by yourself then. I’m not going to die to save a dumb truck. Now how do we get up on the roof?” said Tracey very forcefully.
I looked back at the track and pounded my hand on the hood.
“The ladder is over there,” I said as I nodded toward the ladder.
I pulled out my sword and began to run for the ladder. Tracey and I smashed and slashed our way there and climbed up to the roof. I was first onto the roof and saw the others all seated against the small wall surrounding the roof. Something didn’t seem right though. The four of them were all on the roof, but Sid looked like he was sick. His left arm was tied off above his elbow and his hand was almost gray. Frannie looked like she was getting sicker too. All of them looked like they had been through a disaster.
“What happened? I thought you guys were held up in the office,” I asked.
Jim just stare
d at me and looked over at Sid. Sid seemed to be having trouble staying awake. Beth was sitting with Frannie’s head in her lap.
“Did you get what you wanted?” asked Beth very smugly.
“Yeah, and we found another place, but what happened to you?” I repeated.
“When you left, we did go to the manager’s office and locked the door, but the weight pressed up against the door from all of them was too much,” said Jim.
“Ahhh, we fought our way through...the best we could. One of them things got ahold of my hand. I can’t even feel my fingers anymore,” said Sid.
“I tied it off with a piece of his shirt as tight as I could, hoping that it wouldn’t spread if there was no blood flow, but he’s still getting sick,” said Beth.
“We’ve been sitting up here ever since, and I’m guessing that you guys realized that the walkies couldn’t get through. That’s my fault, I was going to grab them, but with all the confusion I ran out without them,” said Jim.
“I went...back for ‘em, and that’s when they...got me,” said Sid.
Tracey took a close look at Sid’s arm and shook her head. “I don’t think I can save the arm,” she said, holding his hand.
“What do you mean save the arm? Where...is my arm going?” asked Sid.
“It’ll have to be amputated, but the good news is, I don’t think whatever it is made it through. I think he’s suffering from shock and that’s why he looks so awful,” said Tracey.
“But I don’t want you to chop off my arm,” whimpered Sid, looking at everyone else.
“I can’t do it here. I’ll need some more supplies. What about her,” said Tracey as she walked over to Frannie.
“She was scratched yesterday,” said Beth.
“Interesting. Every case I’ve seen with bites haven’t taken that long to create the end result. Usually it takes about six hours, or so depending on the location of the bite,” said Tracey.
“So what does that mean?” I asked.
“I don’t think she has it. She would have changed already,” Tracey said.
“Well, I cleaned and bandaged it yesterday after it happened,” said Beth.
“That was good, but I’ve seen people treated in the hospital when all of this started. It doesn’t help. Once it gets into the bloodstream there isn’t much you can do. They never treated it with a tourniquet though. I’m curious to see if it does work for him,” said Tracey.
“I’m happy to be your guinea pig...ahh,” said Sid, trying to look smooth.
“I think the girl might just need some antibiotics,” said Tracey. “She may not have the virus or chemical or whatever it is, but she probably has something. There are all kinds of infectious diseases that thrive on dead tissue.”
“Where’s Matt and Curtis? Did they get, um...?” asked Jim.
“No, they’re actually out waiting for us to tell them what to do next,” I said.
“Okay, so how are we getting off of this roof?” asked Jim.
“Well, about that...Sid can’t really climb down that ladder now. Frannie doesn’t look like she’s up for a ladder climb either,” I said.
Suddenly I heard more glass breaking down on the ground level. I walked over to the edge and looked down to the front of the store. It looked like the noise from smashing my truck into the front of the store had caused some of them to turn around and come back to the store. The sales floor looked like it was slowly beginning to fill with corpses again. The truck was not going to be an option. I had to come to grips with that. Then suddenly it came to me. We could use the rope from the body we had pulled up onto the roof. We could lower Frannie and Sid down to the ground. I walked to one side of the building and looked down to see if the carriers were as thick on that side. It didn’t look like sending them that way would work. There were too many of the carriers to concentrate on fighting them off and getting Sid and Frannie out.
I walked back over to the edge of the roof facing the front parking lot. Again, once they figured out where we were coming down from the roof, we would be surrounded and whoever was last would either be stuck or have to make a break for it through the store.
“What are you thinking?” Jim asked.
I sighed, “I’m not sure yet, but I’m working on it,” I said.
“If we all can’t leave, then that’s just how it is,” said Jim.
“No, we’re all going to get off of this roof. We found a great place to go, with good people. It’s pretty safe and we could wait this thing out there,” I replied.
“Until what? The military comes to the exact building that we are hiding in and rescues us? What if they just decide to bomb the whole area to get rid of all of it?” said Jim, his normal playful demeanor was nowhere to be seen.
“Look, we have made it this long and we can keep going. We just have to figure this out,” I said, looking around the roof again.
PFFFF, “So what’s the word? I can’t keep driving in circles all day. They are starting to clump up pretty bad,” said Matt.
CLICK, “This is going to sound really weird but I’ve got an idea how to get everyone out,” I said.
PFFFF, “Well, what is it?” said Matt.
CLICK, “I need you and Curtis to stand by, close to the area. You are going to drive the van up to the back of the store and I am going to have to lower everyone down to you one at a time,” I said.
PFFFF, “Okay, well, I hope the rotters feel like cooperating,” said Matt.
CLICK, “I’ll hit you on the radio when we’re ready for the first one. It’s going to be Frannie,” I said.
I found the rope on the roof where we had left it. Sid had been a boy scout and learned how to tie knots and how to make a harness using rope, but he was in no condition to tie a knot. He explained how, to Jim and me, and we set it up like Sid explained. We sat Frannie in the harness and Jim and I lifted her off of the ground. It seemed to be holding.
CLICK, “Okay, bring it on in,” I said to Matt on the radio.
PFFFF, “Here we come,” replied Matt.
I saw the van quickly pull into the parking lot and drive toward the back of the building. The vehicle immediately caught the attention of the carriers in the parking lot. They started to hobble after it as fast as they could. We loaded Frannie into the harness and sat her up on the ledge on the roof. Frannie looked over the edge and looked back at Beth.
“I’m scared. I don’t want to fall,” said Frannie.
“Don’t worry. These big strong guys are going to hold onto the rope. They won’t let you fall,” said Beth, trying to calm Frannie.
Jim leaned close to me, “So, she thinks I’m a big strong guy, huh?”
“What, let’s just do this and get out of here,” I replied.
I laid down with my feet up against the small wall surrounding the roof. Jim sat behind me and put his feet on my shoulders. We both firmly gripped the rope and I gave to nod to Tracey and Beth. They slowly lowered Frannie over the side of the roof and I felt the rope tighten.
“Beth, you and Tracey are going to have to tell us how fast to lower her,” I said.
“The van is next to the wall. I can see Matt poking his head out of the sliding door,” said Beth.
We started to lower Frannie slowly, but I could hear that Matt and Curtis weren’t alone down below.
PFFFF, “Can you guys go any faster? In a minute here I’m going to be fighting over her with some of them,” said Matt.
Jim and I quickened our pace and suddenly the rope went slack. I felt the rope starting to tug and jerk. The rope went slack again and I heard the van starting to pull off from below.
“They’ve got her!” said Beth.
“The carriers got her?” I asked.
PFFFF, “We’ve got her,” said Matt.
I started to pull the rope up as fast as my hands would go until the rope became tight again. Jim and I looked at each other and slowly began to pull the rope back up.
“You’ve got one on the line. You’ve snagged a c
orpse,” said Tracey.
Jim let go of the rope and I felt the full dead weight of the corpse on the rope. The rope began to slide through my hands and started to burn. I loosened my grip and let the carrier plummet to the asphalt below. I grabbed back onto the rope just before it slipped through my fingers to stop it from falling over the edge.
“Okay, it looks like they let go. Hurry and get it back up here,” said Tracey.