The door to the closet swings slightly in a draft, causing me to look up at the ceiling. There’s a vent.
“What about going over the top?” I say. “Rather than fighting our way past Zee, we might be able to skirt him entirely and sneak by in the vents.”
“I like it,” Steve says, turning a bucket upside down and standing on it so he can reach the vent. He uses the screwdriver to pop the cover off, lifting it and pushing it further into the duct.
“Give me a leg up,” he says, and I position myself in front of him, cupping my hands so he can stand on them, and from there step up on my shoulder. How I’m going to climb up there, I’m not too sure, but for now, it’s just an idea.
“It’s dark,” he says with his legs hanging out of the duct. “It’s going to be a tight squeeze, but it might work.”
Steve wriggles backwards. I position myself under him, guiding his shoes back onto my shoulders, and he steps back into my cupped hands, back onto the bucket and finally onto the floor. He’s breathing hard, but smiling. I flex my fingers a little, shaking out a spasm of pain. Even with bandages wrapped around my palms, taking his weight in my hands hurt, but I try not to show it.
“We can do this, Haze.”
When Steve speaks like that, I have no doubts.
“The vent leads back up the corridor. There’s air flow, so it must reach beyond here.”
We walk along the corridor, peering into the rooms and observing the placement of the vents, looking for anything out of the ordinary that might indicate where the main vent feeds into this section of the basement. They’re all identical, but the vent in the room directly across from ours has grubby hand marks around it. Someone’s climbed up in there several times before, probably to do maintenance.
Steve and I position a desk beneath the vent, and he says, “So, do you want to go first?”
“Well,” I say. “Aren’t you quite the gentleman?”
“First in. First eaten.”
And I laugh, saying, “In that case, be my guest.”
Steve climbs slowly onto the desk, still battered and bruised.
“One thing bothers me,” I say as Steve removes the cover of the vent.
“What’s that?”
“The soldiers were convinced this was a dead end. Wouldn’t they have thought of this? Wouldn’t they have realized we could sneak past them in the vents?”
“Huh,” Steve says. “Well, it’s a basement, not a prison. Here’s hoping there’s nothing barring our way.”
And with that he hauls himself up into the vent. Steve grunts, groaning as he rolls on one side, trying to protect his injured ribs and bruised hip. The sound of sheet metal flexing and banging echoes around me as Steve disappears into the duct.
“I guess that answers the question,” I call out from below, climbing up and pushing my desk-leg-substitute-baseball-bat into the vent ahead of me.
I clamber up behind Steve, making even more of a racket. I’m not as strong as Steve and have to flex my whole body as I wriggle into the duct. Between us, we sound like a herd of wild elephants stomping on Jamaican steel drums.
“Yeah, Mon!” I say, mimicking a line from one of my favorite movies—Cool Running. Steve can’t hear me over the racket, which is probably for the best, saving me from a silly explanation.
In the dim light, all I can see is a pair of shoes directly ahead of me.
“Hang on,” Steve says. “There’s a louver separating us from the main shaft.”
The duct is narrow, making it impossible to turn around. I have my arms stretched out before me as that’s the only place they can go.
The only way I can move is to wiggle forward as there’s not enough room to kneel. If I try to crawl, my butt catches on rivets on the top sheet of metal. I’d rather not tear my pants, or my ass, so I shimmy forward on my elbows. I don’t know how Steve fits in here. He’s bigger than me.
I hope the main vent is wider and higher, as I feel like I’m trapped in a coffin. It’s getting hard to breathe, and I have to consciously slow my thinking, telling myself not to panic, telling myself Steve’s doing his best. Everything is going to be okay.
“Got it,” Steve says, and a grate clatters to one side. “So which way?”
I hadn’t thought about that. We came from the left, but neither of us have any idea where we are within the sprawling maze of buildings.
Zombies growl from beneath us as Steve moves into the main duct. The sheet metal flexes and ripples under his weight. The original plan of sneaking quietly past Zee might have been a little bit of wishful thinking. Certainly, we wouldn’t have fooled any guards.
“Right,” echoes from the PA system. “Go to your right.”
“What?” I cry, surprised by the voice.
Zee reacts to a voice booming out of a metal speaker above a fire alarm point. Through the mesh of the next vent cover, I see zombies lashing out at the noise, acting on mass and attacking the disembodied voice.
“Keep going for a hundred yards and... up.”
All the noise we’re making in the ducts must have tipped off whoever’s survived, or perhaps they saw me jumping in front of the camera and realized we’ve gone into the vents.
“Going to … before you … warehouse.”
Zee rips the speaker from the wall, severing the electrical cables.
“Can you hear us?” Steve calls out, scrambling to the right. There’s no reply. “Hey, who’s out there?”
It sounded like Doyle. Even if he can still hear us, Zee has cut him off. This is good, though. We’re not alone. And we’re getting help.
I climb into the main duct behind Steve. It’s still quite narrow, but has a bit more height, allowing me to get to my knees.
“Don’t put any weight on the vents,” Steve says, shuffling forward. “You don’t want to join those guys down there.”
No shit.
Light seeps in through the grate ahead of me. The speaker hangs from torn electrical cables.
Hands reach for us. Zee jumps, clutching at the air, snarling and growling.
Being short, it’s a stretch for me to reach to the far side of the grate, but I dare not touch it at all. The last thing I need is to go crashing through the vent and into the corridor below. There are dozens of zombies down there. They stink. Their clothes are dirty, torn and soiled. They’re angry, frustrated they can smell and hear us, but they can’t see or reach us in the duct.
Steve makes good time, but I’m struggling to keep up. We are two heavy elephants plodding along with a herd of zombies baying for blood beneath us. My heart stops with each vent cover. I can’t race across them like Steve.
The duct swings gently with our motion. I’m not sure how it’s fixed to the concrete ceiling above, but the sheet metal rocks back and forth, which is unnerving.
We reach a junction with a vertical shaft. Thankfully, it ends here in the basement, so there’s only one way to go. Up. There’s no possibility of falling other than back to the junction we started in. Steve grabs at dusty joins in the sheet metal, pushing his back against the metal and shimmying up the shaft. The noise is staggering. I’m not sure what we think we’re accomplishing other than attracting more zombies, but once we reach the others we’ll be safe. Safe is a relative and rather transient term in the apocalypse.
“Come on,” Steve says from above, turning around and reaching out a hand to help. I flail around, slipping on the vertical sheets of metal as I grab at his fingers. The sheet metal flexes beneath my weight. The bolts securing the duct threaten to give way.
My fingers struggle to support my weight as I inch higher. Steve grabs my hand and pulls me the last few feet up to the next floor.
We shuffle along, hearing the zombie horde beneath us pounding on the walls. Fingernails scrape on the duct, desperate to get a handhold and drag us down.
Above the moaning and groaning, we hear Doyle on the loudspeaker system again, saying, “Left … warehouse.”
The zombies below us re
act immediately, slashing at the speaker on the wall and ripping it from its mounting.
Steve turns left into a new section of ducting. Behind me, one of the zombies gets hold of the duct. He yanks at the sheet metal, swinging wildly and shaking the vent. Bolts break away from the concrete above me. The duct shifts, coming away from the ceiling. I grab at the corner as the duct collapses about twenty feet behind me, breaking into a couple of sections and falling at a sharp angle. I start to slide backwards and have to scramble not to fall. I catch a glimpse of zombies grabbing at the broken section of the duct, tearing off one of the vents.
“Go. Go. Go,” I cry frantically after Steve, pulling myself up and into the junction between the ducts.
More zombies pile onto the broken duct, clambering over it and causing part of the sheet metal to crumple with their weight. There are hundreds of them in the corridor.
Half of the duct has collapsed, falling at an angle away from me and connecting with the concrete floor. Behind me, the leading edge of the duct has come away from the junction, but the bottom sheet is still connected, forming a ramp sloping down to the floor.
“Should have gone first,” I mumble to myself. “Why didn’t I go first?”
I can hear zombies behind me inside the duct. The sheet metal flexes and shakes. I kick at the exposed edge of the torn duct, catching it under the bridge of my shoe and then again under my heel, trying to knock it free.
The duct groans with each blow. The weight of the zombies climbing within the duct causes it to sag. Spindly fingers grab at the edge of the metal as I lash out again, slamming my shoe into the rough edge. Finally, the broken duct gives way, crashing to the ground with an earsplitting crash.
“Haze!” Steve cries. “Hazel?”
Steve’s been yelling at me for a while, but I wasn’t able to make out what he was saying over the thunderous noise within the duct.
“I’m good. I’m good,” I repeat, catching my breath. There’s a hole where the ducts once joined. One of the zombies still has a handhold, hanging from the edge of the duct. His fingers grasp at the sheet metal, causing it to bend and warp. I kick at his fingers, crushing them against the metal and knocking him free.
The zombies below us howl with excitement, sounding more like bears or wolves than humans.
“This way,” Steve calls out, and I scramble after him, wanting to put as much distance as I can between me and the open junction.
The sheet metal flexes and shakes. The duct wobbles, swaying with our motion and feeling as though it could fall at any second.
“Shit. Shit. Shit,” Steve cries.
“What?” I ask, I can’t see anything beyond his legs.
“It’s a dead end!”
“What? No!”
“There’s nowhere to go,” he says. “The duct ends with a vent looking out over the warehouse floor.”
“But that’s good, right?” I cry. “Doyle told us to go to the warehouse. It must be safe there.”
“There’s zombies in there, Haze. Lots of them.”
“But they said we should go here,” I say, pleading with him even though it will do no good. Nothing I say can change reality.
“Go back.”
“I can’t,” I say. “The duct. The junction. It’s too flimsy.”
“You have to go back,” Steve says.
I start edging my way backwards, unable to see where I’m going. A bolt pops out of the ceiling and the duct shudders, twisting to one side.
“It’s going to collapse,” I cry, reaching out and pushing him forward again.
“We’re trapped,” Steve says from ahead of me.
“Is it the warehouse?” I ask, doubting him, not sure what he can see. “Are you sure it’s the warehouse? They told us to go to the warehouse. Did we make a wrong turn?”
“No,” Steve replies over the cries of hundreds of zombies swarming below us. “We’re in the right place.”
“I don’t understand,” I yell, feeling frustrated. It’s irrational, but I feel as though if I could just get up there past him, I could do something. I couldn’t, but perhaps I’d see something he hasn’t. Damn, I should have gone first, I tell myself.
“There’s a forklift. A loading dock. Warehouse shelving. This is it,” he says.
“But why?” I cry. “Why would they send us here?”
And my heart sinks.
I know.
“There are hundreds of zombies,” Steve says. “Perhaps thousands. I can see an open roller door. I think this is how they got in. Why would Doyle send us here?”
“Because we’re bait,” I say. “It’s the only thing we’re good for. A diversion.”
Steve falls silent.
“They used us,” I say. “They knew we would draw Zee away from them.”
“Fuck!”
“What are we going to do?” I ask. I’m in denial. Doing “something” will solve this. No. It won’t, but I can barely grasp that thought through the panic clouding my mind. Zombies growl and snarl. It’s too noisy. I can’t think straight.
A grate falls to the concrete with a thud ahead of me.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“I’m going to make a run for it. I’ll try to draw them away,” Steve says.
“No!” I scream. “Steve, don’t. Please, don’t go down there. You can’t leave me!”
“It’s the only way,” Steve says.
“You’ll die,” I cry. He knows this. He’s not dumb, but I have to point out that I know too.
“I—” he says, unable to complete his sentence as I cut him off.
“Steve. No!” I reach out and grab at one of his legs, pulling him back, yelling, “You can’t. Please! I won’t let you.”
Tears well up in my eyes, but I feel his body relax. Steve rolls around on his back, arching his head so he can see me in the dim light. He pounds the sheet metal beneath him in frustration and Zee roars at the sound.
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
There’s silence for the best part of a minute as we both lie there stunned. Silence, though, only applies to us. Zee continues to howl.
“We have to do something,” he says, frustrated.
“But not this,” I say. “I can’t lose you again. I can’t. Not you.”
Steve lies on his back staring at the underside of the duct above us. He sighs, mumbling something. I can’t hear what he’s saying, but I can see his chest rise and fall in a huff. Over the snarling, I hear an unusual sound. It’s faint. It’s not natural. I’m still holding onto Steve’s leg. I’m not letting go. If Steve climbs out of this duct, he’s dragging me along with him.
“Can you hear that?” I ask.
We’re both silent. Again and again, there’s a sound like the wheezing of a door swinging on its hinges.
“What is that?” he asks.
“I’ve heard that before,” I say, trying to place the sound.
Steve twists around. I can see him peering out through the open duct into the warehouse.
“The door,” he says.
“What door?”
I can’t see anything, which is incredibly frustrating. My fingers grip his ankle as though I’m holding on for dear life.
“What’s happening?” I ask.
The thumping below me fades, dropping in its intensity. Bodies fall to the concrete. I can hear them collapsing in a heap.
“They’ve sealed the door,” he says. “I can see sparks, flashes. They’re welding it shut.”
“Who is?” I ask, confused. “What door?”
“The door below us. The one leading into the warehouse.”
The duct shakes, but this is different from the chaotic, violent shaking when the zombies attacked. I turn my head, peering behind me, and see Elizabeth’s head poking in through the broken junction. She’s wearing a white space suit, but she has her helmet off. The thick, stainless steel neck ring rests on her shoulders.
“Are you two okay?” she asks.
“Yes. Yes,” I r
eply, overcome with relief. “We’re fine.”
“Let’s get you out of there,” she says, and I realize she must be standing on a stepladder of some kind. I shimmy backwards, feeling the duct flex beneath me.
“Slowly,” she says. Her gloved hands reach out for my legs, guiding me backwards and onto the top rung of a ladder.
“Easy,” she says, and I slow my pace even more. I’m frantic to get clear of the duct. I need to calm down. “That’s it. Just a little further.”
Elizabeth helps me down the ladder as Steve wriggles backwards through the duct. The bolts along one side have been torn from their mounts and are hanging loose. It’s surprising the entire duct hasn’t collapsed.
I look around.
Bodies lie strewn everywhere. Blood soaks the concrete floor, running into an open narrow drain along the side of the hall. It’s all I can do not to vomit at the sight and stench around me. I don’t know that I’ll ever get use to the sheer brutal violence of life and death in the apocalypse. Such sights as a crushed skull or pools of blood make my stomach churn.
An astronaut welds the door to the warehouse shut. He has his visor down. The light from his welder reflects around him. Sparks fly, spraying through the air and bouncing off the walls.
Elizabeth’s helmet lies against the concrete cinderblock wall, lying upside down next to one of the fancy guns I first saw in use on the railroad bridge.
“We could have never cleared them out by ourselves,” she says. “There were just too many of them. When we saw you in the ducts, we knew you were our only hope. If you could lead the bulk of them back into the warehouse, we knew we could seal the breach.”
Steve climbs down the ladder.
“You did well,” Elizabeth says, smiling.
I’m not smiling. I don’t think she realizes we had no idea about their plan. It’s not their fault. They couldn’t have known the zombies would react the way they did and rip the speakers from the wall, but still, I feel as though we were sacrificial lambs. I’m sick of being someone’s pawn.
Steve holds me close, wrapping his arms around my shoulders and pulling me in tight. I’m still shaking from what happened.
All Our Tomorrows Page 17