by Lukens, Mark
“I used supplies I found in the building, but the pickings were pretty slim.”
“How long have you been up here on the roof?” Kate asked.
He shrugged as he unslung his rifle and leaned it against the wood and metal building. He dropped the tan duffel bag he’d been carrying down on the floor next to his rifle. “Since it started. Since everything collapsed.”
Kate finally had a chance to catch her breath and look around at the rooftop. The skyscrapers in the city were less than a mile away, and the sky was hazy even though the air was cool. She wondered if there were people in those office buildings, people hiding out on some of those floors like this man was hiding up on the roof, like she had hid in her house. She imagined those people blocking the doors to the stairwells and conserving what little food they’d found in vending machines and break rooms, watching the carnage in the streets below out of the plate-glass windows.
“You can take your dust mask off,” the man told her.
She turned her attention back to him.
“If the plague was going to get you, it would’ve gotten you by now.” There was sadness in his eyes—he was speaking from experience.
Kate pulled the dust mask down and took in a full breath of air. She could smell the smoke in the air now—something was on fire nearby. Maybe a lot of things were on fire. She stripped off her latex gloves and balled them up, shoving them into her jacket pocket.
“What’s your name?” he asked. “My name’s Ted.”
“I’m Kate.”
“Pleased to meet you, Kate.” He smiled, and he suddenly looked harmless even with the pistol on his hip. “You’re welcome to stay up here as long as you want to. I know it’s not the Ritz, but . . .”
“Thank you.” She glanced over at the edge of the roof in the distance. “My car.”
Ted frowned. “Did you have food in it?”
She nodded.
“Yeah, the rippers’ll probably get to it.”
“I put the boxes in the trunk.”
Ted seemed to be rethinking his assessment. “Well, maybe we could get to it eventually, but not anytime soon. We’ll have to wait until the parade is over.”
“Parade?”
“That’s what I call it. Every so often those rippers collect into a big group. Like a school of fish or a herd of cattle. Here, I’ll show you.”
Kate could already hear the commotion from the street six stories below as she and Ted got closer to the edge of the roof, the edge a brick wall about waist-high. The noises were louder now as she crouched down next to the wall, following Ted’s motions. He pulled out a pair of small binoculars from a pouch on his belt and unfolded them, handing them to her as he situated himself against the wall, peeking up over it.
“Won’t they see us up here?” she whispered.
“They don’t look up a lot, I noticed. They seem to focus more on what’s going on right around them.”
Kate looked through the binoculars at the street below, watching the rippers flooding the street from the direction she had run. And there were more coming from another direction, both groups forming into one gigantic mass of people. There were hundreds and hundreds of them, maybe thousands.
“Some will scrounge around in the houses,” Ted said. “But sometimes they’ll just move along in one big group. Like I said before, they’re like a cattle train or something.”
Kate kept staring at the rippers below, watching through the binoculars. There were a few skirmishes among the large group, but most seemed to be moving forward alongside the others. She saw four rippers taking down another one of their own near the edge of the group, killing him with knives and then clawing at the fallen ripper with their hands, pulling out pieces from his insides as he screamed.
“They eat their own?” she asked.
“Yeah. All the time. It’s like if they don’t find enough food, then they just single out one of their own. But it seems to me like they pick an older one, or a weaker one. Maybe a sick one. Weeding out the weak.”
Kate panned a little to the left with the binoculars, focusing on the older homes across the street. Some of the rippers were smashing the doors and windows in, pouring into the homes. The yards she had just run past moments ago were now filled with rippers. A chill gripped her as she thought about being down there only moments ago. She had thought about hiding in one of those houses. If Ted hadn’t shot those rippers, even if she would have gotten away from those two, she would have run into one of these groups eventually.
She’d seen enough. She handed the binoculars back to Ted; she didn’t really need them to see down to the street below.
They walked back to Ted’s living quarters.
Kate looked at the rifle leaning against the wall next to the tan duffel bag. “You’re a good shot.”
He smiled and shrugged, looking a little bashful. “I haven’t used a rifle in over twenty years. I shot expert in the Marines, but that was back in the late 70s. I had enlisted, but I’d been too young for Vietnam. Missed it by about five years.”
“Well, thank you for saving my life,” she said. “Did you see me from up here?”
“No. I’d been out scrounging around. But I heard them coming so I got back here. But then I heard a car. It’s been a few days since I’ve heard a car running around here. I was in the doorway with the door cracked. I saw you crash your car. Saw you get out and start running. I saw those three ripper things chasing you.”
Ted got down on one knee next to the tan duffel bag and unzipped the pack. “Here’s what I found today.” He pulled out cans and a few boxes of food, a few single bottles of water, two cans of soda, three cans of beer, a box of matches, a bar of soap, a half-squeezed tube of toothpaste.
“How did you stay away from the rippers out there?” Kate asked him.
“I’ve been pretty lucky so far. I usually go out early in the morning. That seems to be when they’re the least active. I watch from up here for a bit, then go downstairs. The pickings are pretty slim, but the rippers don’t know how to open the canned goods. And a lot of this other stuff doesn’t mean anything to them.”
He moved his collection into the lean-to, stacking them up with the other items against the wall. He came back to the doorway. “You can sleep in here if you want to.”
Kate just stared at him.
Ted’s face turned red and he smiled sheepishly. “I didn’t mean with me. I meant you could sleep in here while I’m on watch.”
“Thank you.”
“I know it probably doesn’t smell so great in there right now.” He picked up the can of air freshener he’d just scored that morning and sprayed a little of it around. “That should help a little.”
Kate couldn’t help smiling. She would accept his offer to sleep in his structure. It might not smell the best, but it had been over three days since she’d taken a shower (all she had done was wash up in the sink with the water she’d filled up in the bathtub), so she probably wasn’t smelling her best either.
“We’ll take turns keeping watch,” Ted said.
“I thought you said they couldn’t get up here.”
“They shouldn’t be able to. I’ve locked the doors to the stairwells and the door to the roof up here. But if they find a way to get to a second-floor window, or find a way to break one of the doors down . . .” He shrugged his shoulders and let his words die away.
“But they wouldn’t,” she said quickly. “They wouldn’t try a window. Why would they bother? They’ve got too many other houses to pick over. Easier targets.”
“Yeah,” he agreed.
But she could see that Ted was thinking more long-term, like maybe days or weeks from now when the rippers got hungrier and more desperate. She wondered how long Ted was planning on staying up here.
CHAPTER 14
Kate and Ted shared a meal of canned ravioli, Vienna sausages, and some green beans. Ted found a collection of Sterno cans in a looted restaurant on one of his scavenger missions, something t
he rippers hadn’t been concerned with. He’d lit the Sterno cans so their food could be somewhat warm. He told Kate that he had hopes of finding a Hibachi grill and some charcoal, but for now the Sterno cans would have to do. Kate sipped from a bottle of warm water and Ted drank a can of Pepsi. They shared a bowl of dry Frosted Flakes for dessert.
“There isn’t too much boxed or fresh food left,” Ted said when they were done eating. “At least not around here. The rippers have torn everything apart that they can find. It’s only the metal cans they have trouble with. They don’t bother with them too much. I try to snatch up anything I can in a bag, box, or a plastic bottle, sometimes even letting the cans go for now. I know I can go back and get them later.”
Kate didn’t say anything. She was miserable, but she felt good for the first time in a few days. She actually felt safe, even though she was stuck up on a roof near the edge of the city.
“I used to work here,” Ted said as if Kate had asked him why he had chosen this particular building. “This used to be a manufacturing plant on the bottom two floors, and some offices above it. But it all closed down two years ago when the economy started going bad.”
Kate nodded. She’d been lucky to be tenured by then at the university, and with the economy getting worse every day, the government was handing out grants to students left and right, like having more kids with college degrees in the workforce would help the job market somehow.
“I lived about two miles that way,” Ted said, pointing off in the distance.
Kate looked but she couldn’t really tell where he was pointing to.
“You can’t see it from here,” he told her. “It was just a cracker-box apartment house. Four apartments in it. My wife and I lived there.”
Kate didn’t want to ask what had happened to his wife—she could already guess. “Did you have any kids?” she asked instead.
“Yes. Two sons.” He smiled wistfully, looking down at his lap for a moment, at the empty plastic bowl where the Frosted Flakes had been moments ago. “They were some wild boys, though. No matter what me and Nellie did, those boys wouldn’t follow the rules. One died in a motorcycle crash when he was nineteen. The other one went to prison a few years after. He’s still there.”
A chill ran through Kate as she thought of being stuck in prison when the Collapse began.
Ted was quiet for a moment, staring at the horizon where the haze in the air was creating a spectacular sunset, a splash of muted yellows, oranges, reds, and purples. Then he spoke without looking at her: “It’s probably my fault. I wasn’t hard enough on them.” He finally looked at Kate and his light blue eyes were moist with tears. “My daddy was hard on me, awful hard, and I didn’t want to be like him, you see.”
Kate just nodded.
“We just had a string of bad luck after my boy died,” Ted continued. “Brent went to jail. My wife got sick, and her back kept getting worse and worse. Then two years ago I lost this job. We had to leave our house. Just gave it up to the bank, and then we moved into that crummy little apartment.” Ted chuckled humorlessly. “And then this happened.”
They were silent for a long moment. “What about you?” Ted finally asked. “You married? Have any kids?”
Kate felt that his real question was: What did you lose when the Collapse came?
“No,” she said. “No husband. No kids. I’m a professor at a university.”
His face brightened up, his dazzlingly blue eyes lighting up. “Oh yeah? What did you teach?”
“Anthropology.”
“Oh,” he said, his face dropping into a frown. He didn’t ask further about it. Most people didn’t. Even at the end of the world, her career was boring.
“I wanted my boys to go to college,” Ted said, changing the subject. “I didn’t want them slaving away in some factory or on some construction site like I did all my life. I wanted better things for them. I hope they knew that.”
Kate just nodded again. She didn’t know what to say. It seemed like Ted had some things he needed to get out of his system. You could only talk to yourself for so long—God, Kate knew that was true.
“I watched my wife turn into one of those . . . those ripper things. At first it was like she was sick with the flu or something. Only she didn’t have a fever. But she was confused. She started saying things that didn’t make a lick of sense. She called the stove a car.” He chuckled for a moment. “Told me to put a pot of tea on the car for her. I knew what she meant. And a few hours later it got worse. She started getting mean. And hungry. She ate the raw ground beef right out of the fridge. I called 911, but all I got was a message saying they couldn’t take any calls right now and to call back later.”
Kate remembered hearing the same message a few days ago when she had called 911.
“I tried to get her downstairs to the truck. I wanted to take her to the hospital. But she was fighting me every step of the way. She had this look in her eyes like she didn’t even know me anymore. I let her stay in the apartment and went next door to Billy’s apartment. I banged on his door, but he and his wife were turning too. They bolted out past me and down the stairs.”
Ted was quiet again for a moment. “I was going to drive to the hospital for help for Nellie. I left her in the apartment. Locked the door. On the way, I stopped a cop. Asked him to help me. He told me to go home or I was gonna be arrested.”
Again, his story brought back the memories of a few days ago when she had driven home from the supermarket. She had asked a cop for help and he’d told her to go home, resting a hand on his service pistol as a final warning.
“And even the cop was starting to mess his words up a little,” Ted said. “I could tell he was beginning to turn. It seemed like everybody around me was turning. I figured the hospital wouldn’t be any help. I didn’t know what else to do, so I went back home. Nellie was gone by then. The apartment door was open and she was gone. I locked myself in the apartment for the night. I had my rifle and my handgun with me for protection. I gathered up all the ammo I had. And then I just sat there in the dark. I could hear the commotion out on the street. I heard the helicopters and the airplanes. I heard the military vehicles patrolling. I heard gunshots and explosions. By then the electric was out.”
Again, Ted was quiet for a moment. “I packed a small duffel bag in the morning and left. One of the rippers had been at my door in the middle of the night, jiggling the handle. I thought they were gonna rip it off. I sat there in the dark with my rifle aimed at the door.” He mimed having the rifle in his hands. “I was waiting for the door to crash open. And I had this strange feeling that it was Nellie out there. I thought she’d somehow found her way home. But I knew she wouldn’t be the same. And I wasn’t sure I’d be able to shoot her. I prayed she wouldn’t get that door open.”
“I’m sorry,” Kate said. Her words were a whisper in the cool, hazy evening air. It was all she could think of to say. She was the worst when it came to sympathy for others, so awkward when someone told her about a tragedy in their lives. Other women Kate knew seemed to know what to say, how to act, empathy oozing from them, their faces crumbling in sadness. It seemed to come so naturally for them, but not for her.
“Well, like I said, I grabbed my two duffel bags of food and supplies and got into the truck. It was bad the next day, rippers everywhere, military patrolling, martial law. Chaos, that’s what it was. But it was still better than it is now. I didn’t know where else to go. I remembered this place, and it seemed like the safest place I could think of. So I came here.”
Ted was quiet again as the sky darkened slowly with the coming night.
“I haven’t been able to get a hold of my parents,” Kate said. “I haven’t been able to get a hold of my sister or my brother. I called and called, but the cell phones weren’t working. I don’t know why I waited so long to try to call them. But everything happened so fast. Before I knew it, the school had canceled classes and the banks had closed. The supermarkets were a madhouse. And by then it was too
late to get a hold of them.”
“They live around here?”
“No. They live in a small town called Astorville. It’s on the other side of the state. Up in the mountains. I was on my way there this morning when the rippers showed up. When my car died.”
Ted was quiet, just watching her with his watery blue eyes.
“I waited these last three days in my house,” Kate said. “The president was on TV right before the cable and electric went out. He said local authorities would be in touch with everyone. Help was on the way. Well, I waited for the cavalry to come. But I can see now that the cavalry isn’t ever coming.”
Ted nodded in agreement. He seemed suddenly stoic, a placid man who had always accepted what fate dished out for him.
And what a bad hand fate had dealt to Ted over the years, and now. Fate had dealt everyone the worst of hands now. Kate’s parents had always said things were God’s will. No matter what happened, it was God’s will. Even if the circumstances were horrible, it was still God’s will, and God worked in mysterious ways. Kate remembered many arguments she’d had with her family, trying to show them that things weren’t God’s will, but just dumb luck. Sometimes it was good luck, and sometimes it was shitty luck, but it always came down to the roll of the cosmic dice.
She wished now that she wouldn’t have had so many arguments with her family. She wondered why it had been so important for her to change their beliefs. She had always felt that they’d been trying to indoctrinate her, but in her way, she’d been trying to indoctrinate them. Why couldn’t she just let them live with their fantasy, or even play along with it? She wondered how many people just played along to keep the peace in their families.
Well, not her. Not Kate Crawford. No, sir. She had to prove to everyone that she was right. She had to prove to everyone that she was smart—smarter than they were. She had to prove to everyone that she was independent, and that she was strong. But she didn’t feel strong right now, not strong at all.