by DeWitt, Dan
Holt had a thought. “Grab any batteries! And, sorry about the gun in your face thing!” The pair heard him. Fish held up a peace sign in acknowledgment as they split up, Lena to the supply room and Fish to the break area.
“Okay, do we even know what's above us?” Sam asked in between puffs of his cigarette. “It would make sense that the upper floors would be zombie...is that what we're calling them?...zombie-free. And that there are survivors, too. But the only way to know is to check each floor.”
“Yup.”
“Okay, then.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Just don't pair me up with the guy at the window. He gives me the creeps.”
“You and me both, Sam,” Holt reassured him.
“Sarge! SARGE!” Fish's panicked voice sounded from the break room. Holt and Mutt drew at the same time, expecting to see a pack of zombies on the kid's tail, but he was waving a two-way radio instead. Lena was a few paces behind him. “I just got a transmission from downstairs! They got a radio off of another guard!”
“Say that again?”
“Hold on!” He put the two-way to his mouth and transmitted. “Last caller repeat!” He released the button and they all waited. Even Anders moved close enough to hear.
There was a crackle of static, then: “Thank God you're there! Me and a bunch of other people made it into the bathroom, but those things are trying to get in! Please help us!”
Five people kept passing looks to one another. All of their gazes settled on the sixth.
Holt grabbed the radio from Fish and held it out to Mutt. “You're the law,” he said.
“What am I supposed to tell them? Congratulations on being alive, now smash a mirror and cut your own throats?”
Holt said nothing, but continued to offer the radio.
Mutt snatched it up with a grumbled curse. He cleared his throat. “This is Sergeant Mutters of the LWPD. What's your name, caller?”
“It's Burt! Burt Allen!”
“Okay, Burt, how is everybody else?”
“Scared shitless!”
“That's understandable, of course.” He released the mic and spoke to the group. “What am I supposed to do? I can't help them!”
“You know what to tell them, Mutters,” Anders said. “You just told us.”
Holt's watched the look of dawning horror come over his new friend's face. His heart broke for the Sergeant, and at that moment he decided he could be the bad guy. He took the radio from his shaking hands and walked away from the group. “Burt, my name is Cameron Holt.” Pause. “Yeah, that guy.”
Lena asked, “Wait, where's he going? What's he going to tell them?”
“He's going to tell them they should have moved faster, probably.”
“You heartless asshole!” She pleaded with the others. “Isn't there anything...?”
“There's no hope for them, Lena,” Fish said softly. “Zero.”
The last thing they heard before Holt closed the door to the supply room was, “Do you have the guard's gun, too?”
Holt was gone for more than five minutes, but no one spoke. Anders wandered back over to the window and lit up his second cigarette, but no one else even sat down.
They heard a muffled gunshot. It sounded like it came from downstairs.
Maybe from a downstairs bathroom.
Another shot quickly followed the first, then another right on top of that. Silence again. They could hear Holt yelling, then screaming, from the supply room. Sam was closest, and he thought he could make out the words “do it” over and over again, getting louder each time.
There was one final shot, and silence. Holt didn't open the door for another five minutes. When he finally did, he didn't speak. He handed the radio back to Fish, slammed through the stairwell door, and headed up to the fourth floor.
Mutt felt ashamed that he let another man do the dirty work that, by virtue of his authority, should have been his. He owed that man a gigantic debt of honor, and he vowed to himself that he would spend the rest of his life, however long it might be, repaying it. In the meantime, he'd take control of the group again. Holt would need their support. “Okay, grab the food and drinks. Fish, is there another armory?”
The question seemed to take the younger man by surprise, but it snapped him out of his fugue. “What? Oh, uhhhh, no. Only in the main office, on the second floor. And I think we've established that that's a lost cause right now.”
“Thought so. We'll figure it out on the way. Let's go.”
They grabbed what they could and entered the stairwell more cautiously than Holt had a few moments before.
They searched each floor in turn, and were left with one question: where were all the patients?
“This makes dozens of people,” Lena offered. “I know some of them were...downstairs. I have no clue where the rest could have gone.” She looked to Fish. “Did you guys run a fire drill?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Not that I know of. Even if we did, I'd think that most people would have taken their coffees, at least.” He cocked his head to his shoulder and stared. "That's weird."
"What?" Sam asked.
"Nothing. Just...thinking out loud."
“Maybe they went up?” Mutt said.
“That's an idea. What's on the upper floors, Lena?”
“The labs, executive offices, cafeteria. That's where I was headed; I was supposed to network a bunch of new machines in the labs when all of this kicked off.”
“Up we go.”
They climbed several more flights of stairs (peeking in to confirm the status of the next two floors) until they reached the 7th. Holt made to walk through it as he had all the others and nearly dislocated his shoulder. The door held firm. There were no locks, so it had to be barricaded from the inside. And to be barricaded from the inside, there would have to be people.
“Hey!” He pounded on the door. “Open up! We have survivors out here!” He got no answer. “Try the radio.”
Fish started to cycle through the channels. “This is Security 2, anyone there? Hello?”
On channel 4, they got a response. “Security 2, this is Dr. Lewis. How many are you? Any wounded?”
“Six, and miraculously, no.”
“Hang tight; we'll let you in.”
* * *
Orpheus returned as Mutt finished up. “And that's how we met Martin Trager, head of hospital and kind of a prick. I don't like him, I sure as Hell don't trust him, but we need him. And he needs what we can provide for him.”
“Specimens?” Tim asked.
“Right. And our experience. We survived the initial outbreak with few weapons and no organization. Now we have some tools. It's not ideal, but it's mostly doable. Trager's a bureaucrat, not a grunt, like us. He never would have been able to put this together.”
“He'd shit his pants if he ever had to fight one of those things,” Sam said.
“And what do you get?”
“His resources.”
“Resources to do what?”
Orpheus seemed surprised by the question. “Time to move out.” He rose and the rest of the team followed, save for Tim, who remained seated.
“Hold on a sec. I volunteered to help you guys because I wanted to do something. I wanted to stop feeling useless. If I die doing it, so what. But if there's some other agenda here, your agenda...”
Orpheus stopped in his tracks and turned slowly, but not completely, toward Tim.
“I'd drop it if I were you, bait,” Fish warned.
“...then I deserve to know what it is. I'm the only one who doesn't, and that's bullshit!”
Orpheus still hadn't faced Tim, but Mutt recognized his demeanor. It meant trouble. He kept quiet, but he got ready to peel Orpheus off of Tim.
“Sir, if you tell me what you're looking for, I can help you find it.”
Orpheus said, ”Stand up.”
Tim did, and waited for whatever was coming. Orpheus put his hand inside his jumpsuit and Tim remembered what he'd been told about catching a
bullet if Orpheus felt he couldn't trust him. He tried not to sweat.
Orpheus pulled out a small piece of paper.
A photo.
Tim took one look at it and knew.
“My son, Tim. I'm looking for my son.”
It all came together for him then. The two teams, the walkies, the wedding ring, and the name. Orpheus. Tim had been right on the money. He tried to not stammer. “Thank you, sir. We'll find him.”
Orpheus moved to the stairs, presumably to begin searching for valuables and collecting the walkies. Tim moved to follow him when another hand grabbed his wrist and stopped him.
Mutt said, “There's one other thing you need to know. There's almost no chance that his son's still alive. He's almost certainly one of them. And, in that case, no one puts him down but Orpheus...according to Orpheus, at least. But if that happens, there's no doubt in my mind that, no matter where we are or what we're doing, Orpheus will follow him about as quickly as it takes to pull the trigger once more. No one knows what happened to his wife, I have my theories, but the thought of finding his son alive or, worst case, putting him down for good, is the only thing keeping him going. So if you ever find the kid in the picture, the only person you don't tell is him. Got it?
“So you want me to disobey a direct order and deny a guy closure about his family?”
“He looks out for us; we look out for him. I don't care if you don't understand it.”
“I understand just fine. I just want to make sure that the four of us right here are on the same page. For all I know, this is another one of your dumbass hazing things.”
Sam, who had remained on the sidelines since they entered the building, said, “We don't pull that stuff down here. Ever.”
“So what do I do if I find him?”
“Tell one of us. We'll figure it out. Chances are Orpheus will spot him long before we do, but we can try.”
“This whole thing sucks.”
“You know what sucks, bait?” Fish said. “I didn't hear that story for two damn weeks, teacher's pet.”
"By the way, what did you see?" Tim asked.
"Huh?"
"When you first saw the evacuated floors."
"Oh, shit, I forgot about that. Well, check this: the whole...zombie...thing kicked off at what, six pm-ish on a Saturday, right?'
"Yeah. So?"
"So, we normally have a lot of people working Saturdays, that's not strange. What's odd is that I remember that the breakfast delivery came in at about 9:00 am. Coffee, donuts, bagels."
"I'm not following, Fish," Sam said.
"We've all worked in offices, and we know what happens when free food's involved. There's no way that breakfast stuff would last an hour, let alone all day. What I wondered then was, if that floor was evacuated, why was it evacuated like nine hours before there was anything to be evacuated from?"
* * *
They retrieved the walkies and whatever else useful they could find, then gathered around Orpheus and his city map. “Okay, this,” He drew a large X over the building they were in. “...is clear. Retrieval is complete. Batteries in the walkies been swapped out?” He saw several nods. “Good. And I hope everyone's gone to the bathroom, because now we get in the shit again.”
They secured the building as they left and backtracked to the intended reap zone. Orpheus didn't expect much in the way of a zombie presence. The “warehouse district” as it was called was a relative term. Mostly, it consisted of modest companies who had their operations and storage in the same place, such as the local window manufacturer and newspaper publisher. Those buildings would have been mostly if not completely evacuated right in the beginning, as they had a small number of employees with transportation easily accessible in their dedicated parking areas. Easy in, easy out.
Still, they were just as cautious as they would be anywhere else. Complacency killed. The sweeps didn't take long, and, as expected, they found no one, or thing, inside any of them. The large ventilation pipes and wide open spaces would make the burn even easier. The only thing that really stuck out in Orpheus' mind was in the printing room of the newspaper. The line of newspapers left abandoned on the press didn't proclaim “THE DEAD WALK THE EARTH” or other such nonsense like you saw in the movies. The headline had to do with island politics. Somehow, that was even more unsettling. The speed at which this thing had happened was frightening.
They dropped a smaller number of walkies than normal in and around those buildings and hoofed it to the theater. They were acutely aware of the throng of zombies that still occupied the alley between the theater and the library, drawn by their arrival, so they quietly slipped up the fire escape to the roof. The existence of the fire escape wasn't coincidence or a stroke of luck; it was another reason why they chose this insertion point.
Once on the roof, they took a breather, grabbed a quick snack, and checked their gear. Sam grabbed several pairs of handcuffs and a pole with a loop on the end of it, similar to what a dog catcher would use to corral a rabid dog.
Tim had an uneasy feeling what those meant.
They made the leap back to the library roof and gathered around the door. Mutt asked him what the plan was. Orpheus said, “I'm almost positive that there's a Jekyll somewhere on the other side of that door. Unfortunately, I have no idea what else might be. So, my big plan is to open this door and wing it.”
Tim surprised himself when he said, “I'll do it.”
His comment was met with four furrowed brows.
“Not likely," Mutt snapped. "You can be the first one to cover me, though. How's that?”
“Come on, Orpheus! You had no problem setting me loose in the theater. I could have just as easily been killed there. Let me take the lead. I'm ready.”
“You're not ready for a Jekyll; no one ever is. Maybe someday.” Believing he had made his point, he took Mutt's weapon and replaced it with one of the poles. “Slip this over its head and don't let go. Don't hesitate. And for Christ's sake, don't trust it. Just loop it and move back to the stairs as quickly as you can.”
“Got it.”
Orpheus put his hand on the knob. “Sam, Fish, when we get to a safe place you two are on cuffs."
“Hey, thanks,” Fish said.
Orpheus looked to Tim. “Don't engage unless I do.”
Tim nodded.
“Wait for my signal. Do nothing until I say.” Orpheus cracked the door open and Mutt pushed his light in a few inches. He swept it left to right and back again. He stopped on a hunched shape near the base of the stairs. Its back was to them, and it appeared to be alone. It was moving, swaying, back and forth in one spot. Orpheus appreciated the small favor. He said, “That's your target. Grab and go.” He swung the door open wide enough to accommodate all of them.
Tim moved fast. He yanked the pole out of Mutt's unsuspecting hand and pushed past Orpheus into the stairwell.
Orpheus growled, "Get your fuckin' ass back here!"
Tim shook his head vehemently and put several stairs in between them. He was committed now.
"Goddammit, cover him," Orpheus said to his team. "Bloody Hell."
Tim gulped. He moved very slowly, making absolutely sure of each step before he made the next. All he could see in his mind was him falling down the steps and getting savaged while everyone else was already thinking about his replacement. He was pretty sure he was being unfair to them, but he couldn't help but think that three guys previously in his position had probably been less paranoid, and now they were dead.
Tim got to the last step and he thought he heard something coming from the thing's direction. He strained to hear it and thought that it might be mumbling something. Don't trust it, Orpheus had insisted. So Tim didn't. He moved close enough to loop the apparatus around its neck. He looked to either side of him instinctively; nothing else appeared in the dull red glow. He held his breath and extended.
Just like playing “Operation” when I was a kid.
He had about a foot left to go when he heard it
say, “Not fair.” It said it over and over. He reflexively said, “Sir?” and kicked himself for it. The thing whirled around.
It looked human. And then it screamed, a monster unleashed.
Tim knew that he'd made a huge mistake. He slammed the loop downward and was lucky enough to get it around the neck. The thing lunged at him. The pole was strong, and Tim had a firm grip, but the forward momentum knocked him onto his back. It kept screaming.
Each floor of the library was a great circle around a central atrium. There were two wide staircases at each end. Tim felt more than heard a change in his situation. The Jekyll hadn't been alone, after all. He was just separated from the rest of the zombies in the library, and they were all coming now. Most slowly, but too many swiftly.
The Jekyll was still screaming and trying to get at Tim. Because of the pole, it couldn't reach him; its flailing arms passed a foot from Tim's face. Due to its weight, however, Tim couldn't get to his feet, either. The end of the pole was braced against the floor and steadied under Tim's armpit; it probably wouldn't seem like it to an observer, but Tim had control. He just couldn't risk moving. He'd screwed up the approach for sure, but he was going to follow Orpheus' other order to hold on if it killed him and trust that they would save his ass again.
There was no pretense of stealth anymore, so the rest of the team turned on their high-powered lights and waded into combat. Some Sprinters were on top of them in the blink of an eye. Several well-placed rounds knocked them backwards and sideways, but they were moving too fast to get an easy headshot. The team couldn't concentrate solely on them either, because though the slower ones moved at a walking pace, they hadn't had much ground to cover. Everywhere Tim looked he saw pairs of legs closing in on him. He started to slide towards the roof stairs by doing a sort of wriggle on his butt and shoulders, still scraping the pole along the ground. It was slow going, but each inch further away from the zombies was worth it.
He was almost to the stairs when a zombie fell down, its kneecaps blown off, right next to him. Its jaws were only a few feet away from Tim's face, and he had no time to think. He hoped he could hold the pole with one hand for a second or two, pulled his sidearm, and blew a hole in its face.