LZR-1143: Redemption

by Bryan James

  “Yeah, that’s a wrecked helo. Our landing site is fucked.”

  FORTY-SIX

  “Manual says that all the elevators return to the first floor when the lockdown goes through. That means if we can access the shaft through the elevator on this floor, it shouldn’t be jammed up.”

  I shrugged my pack into place and grimaced as the increased weight shifted awkwardly. Behind me, almost in my ear, Romeo’s face looked concerned.

  “You think you have it bad?” I asked.

  He licked me once and kept the worried look.

  Ingrate.

  Rhodes had sacrificed his pack to fashion a harness out of my pack and his. Luckily, we had been outfitted with top of the line 5.11 Tactical gear, which allowed modular construction of the packs. Additional nylon straps and a few carabiners later, we had a functional dog-pack.

  “He doesn’t like being tied up,” said Ky, worried.

  “Look, have some faith,” I said, exasperated. “Odds are that if I go down, all y’all punks are gonna go down too, so Romeo can just roll the dice with the rest of us.” I turned to Kate.

  “We good on the door?”

  “I don’t hear anything, and we saw how many of them left through the front. We lucked out there. Should have a straight shot to the elevator shaft.”

  “Okay, everyone good to go? Rhodes? Good to go?”

  “Other than this busted wing, I’m fully operational.”

  “Okay folks, time to save the world.”

  Kate opened the door and I slipped into the hallway, machete at hand. The pistol stayed home unless necessary.

  Less noise, fewer zombies.

  I needed to write a survival guide after all of this.

  The hallway leading back to the lobby followed a slight curve, and was totally clear for the moment. I turned to the right, moving slowly, noting the multiple open doors along the hallway. Hopefully the open doors meant that the occupants had all moved away recently.

  Kopland and Kate followed, then Ky and Diana, followed by Rhodes, who had his pistol up and ready.

  We didn’t have time to clear each room, so I just risked the obvious. As I passed each one, I slowly pulled the doors shut and moved forward.

  Ahead, there was a nurse’s station on the right, and the elevator shaft straight on. A bank of vending machines flanked the hallway on the left.

  No movement yet.

  I moved forward, shutting my last door and peering over the edge of the nurse’s station. Clipboards and tablet computers were strewn about as if discarded in a panic. A thick stream of dried blood decorated the white counter top and a larger pool clustered near the overturned chairs inside the enclosure. A single finger, complete with a simple wedding band, lay on the counter next to the telephone, a bloody handprint on the receiver.

  Another hallway extended out to the right of the station, perpendicular to our hallway, and more than twenty open doors lined the passage.

  This place was a nightmare of possible problems.

  I gestured back at the group to follow close, and took one last look around, then sheathed the machete. I picked the elevator on the left, and grabbed the doors and pulled to the sides. They moved easily and the thin line widened inches from my face. I closed my eyes with the effort, feeling the doors move and the opening widen.

  The air smelled off, suddenly.

  Rancid.

  Rotten.

  Shit.

  I opened my eyes in time to dodge the hand that shot out from the darkness inside. Shouting despite myself, I fell back, a foot of space now open between the two doors.

  Inside the elevator, more than a dozen people were crammed, body-to-body, a pungent, foul odor of refuse and decay blasting into the hallway. Behind me, I heard running as the group clustered around me and Romeo whined.

  “Quiet,” I said absently, activating the blade in my right arm.

  “We got company on our six, man,” said Rhodes calmly, jerking his head to the rear. Inevitably, more than twenty of the shamblers from the lobby had been slow on the uptake, and hadn’t left the building. Now they were trying to join our party.

  “Okay, let’s take care of these folks, shall we?” I approached the first one, a man in a lab coat and thick glasses with a missing forehead, the bone of the skull showing behind. The blade took him in the eye and he crumpled back. Ky’s crossbow spoke, and Kate and I leaned in to the space, liberally dispensing peace with our blades until it was clear. I pulled the doors apart fully, and reached up, using the corpses below as a stepping stool.

  “You know, that’s not very respectful,” said Kate, half smiling.

  I leaned over, staring at the pile of rotting flesh that, minutes ago, was trying to eat me.

  “My apologies, sirs and madams. I fear that I may have been rude in my behavior. Can you ever forgive me?”

  They didn’t answer.

  “Okay smart ass. Just pop the top.”

  I pushed up on the panel and it moved aside.

  “I’ll pop your top,” I muttered under my breath, scanning the space briefly.

  “You’re not popping anything of mine for a while, if that’s your attitude.” She left the elevator, the hint of a smile lingering in the air.

  The creatures were closing, but thankfully none from the other hallway yet. We pushed Rhodes up first, then Kopland, who was already wheezing from the efforts of moving through the tubes. Ky went up next, then Diana. Kate and I pushed the doors shut behind us for good measure, making the smell in the small space more pronounced.

  She reached for the edge of the ceiling, but looked at me meaningfully.

  “You really think we can get that helicopter off the roof? Just me and you?”

  I smiled.

  “We’re like… superheroes. We can manage.”

  “If you say so,” she said. “But what if we can’t?”

  “Then we have them throw down a rope, and we send Ky up with the stuff. If there’s time, we all go.”

  She looked at me for a moment, then nodded.

  Outside, the first hands started to beat on the metal doors, and she started to pull herself up. I reached up, pushing her through the small hatch.

  “Hey,” she said, and I pulled my hand back from where they had been firmly planted on her ass.

  “Sorry,” I said instinctively.

  “Don’t be sorry,” she threw back down, smiling. “Just commit to the moment.” Her head disappeared and I stared, confused.

  The hands beat against the door, more bodies and more noise outside.

  “Shut up, I’m trying to think,” I said absently.

  Romeo whined and licked my face.

  “Okay, okay.” I jumped up and easily pulled myself through the hatch, careful not to knock the dog against the ceiling.

  The shaft was dark, but empty.

  A welcome change.

  A ladder extended up, slightly recessed in the concrete wall, passing through all seven floors and ending far above, against a utility panel at the top, near a ventilation fan. It passed each floor’s elevator doors a foot to the right, so we had only the seven story climb, then to open the doors on the top floor.

  “Rhodes, I’ll take point,” I said to the big man, who was still scanning the tight space, his NVGs pulled down to help his vision. He flipped them up quickly, then back down, grunting slightly in surprise as he flipped them up and docked them.

  “What’s that? Oh, yeah, copy. I’ll take the rear. You know, in case I plummet to my death.”

  “Good call,” I said dryly.

  The climb wasn’t hard, but we had to take it slowly. Kopland was in horrible shape and Diana, although young and fit, was dragging—likely from exhaustion. Kate took the slot in front of Rhodes to make sure she could help him out if needed. Ky was behind me, insisting on watching Romeo.

  Romeo, on the other hand, was enjoying himself immensely. He had adapted quickly to his king-like status, and now panted happily in my ear, slobber occasionally finding its
way between my neck and my suit.

  In the middle of the shaft, we paused. Behind the third floor door to my left I could hear movement in the hallway. I knew why. Those that had been trapped on the upper floors wouldn’t have had an immediate way out like those below. They would need to slowly find their way to the exits, down the stairs, through several doors. It could take weeks, or they could slowly rot to… what, death? I wasn’t sure. It hadn’t been long enough for us to see what the effects on these things were after a prolonged period of time. One assumed they ate for self-preservation—that something inside of them drew them to humans as a source of energy or life. If that were the case, when there was no more food, would they collapse and rot?

  Or would they always be here, always hungry, always a threat?

  “We’re good,” rasped Kopland, gaunt face appearing near my foot. Below, Rhodes nodded over Kate’s shoulder.

  A sudden strike against the door to my left elicited a single bark from Romeo in my ear and I jerked suddenly, nearly losing my grip.

  Cursing, I shushed him quickly. He gave me a wounded look as the pounding on the door became urgent and frenzied, now dozens of hands and arms instead of one.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I threw down. “They can’t get through.”

  But the sounds echoed in the narrow shaft, an eerie accompaniment in a dark and confined space as we continued our crawl up.

  By the time we reached the last door, Kopland was visibly winded, the climb having taken the last of his energy and strength after an arduous last few hours. Diana was closing her eyes as she hung from the ladder, taking deep breaths.

  “Remember, these doors will open to possibly more than a hundred of these things,” I said softly. “Everyone needs to get to the far side of the ladder. I’m the only one that will be engaging here. I’m going to open the doors and jump back out of the way. I’ll help them move off the ledge and hopefully we can dispose of most of them down the garbage chute here.”

  I didn’t wait for an answer. Carefully moving from the ladder, I reached the narrow ledge outside the twin doors. Crouching carefully, I listened first for movement.

  Nothing close.

  Taking a breath, I grabbed the metal in both hands and pulled.

  Begrudgingly, it gave way slowly.

  One inch.

  Three inches.

  Five inches.

  I saw movement beyond but pressed forward.

  Seven inches.

  They saw me and started forward. I cursed loudly. There were at least five of them very close, and they were moving quickly toward the doors.

  Nine inches.

  One foot.

  The first hand grabbed the doors, and I gave them one more shove, widening them enough so that a single body at a time could press through.

  And press through they did.

  One at a time, they pulled themselves through the gap, hands reaching for me as I grasped the ladder with one hand and one foot, other hand using the slim blade attached to my arm to jab and pull, sending the blade into the head and jerking the bodies to the edge of the lip. One by one, they tumbled into the waiting darkness below.

  A nurse.

  A doctor.

  A guard.

  A child.

  A man with one arm.

  A woman in a smock.

  A naked man with neatly sliced incision along his chest.

  All tumbled off the ledge, and down the shaft.

  After more than twenty minutes, the press of bodies slowed, and I was able to breath between visitors.

  “All good up there?” asked Kate, making no effort to contain her voice.

  “Getting there,” I said, pulling an absurdly overweight woman who had struggled to squeeze her girth through the gap, eventually widening the space by several inches before I tossed her down with the rest.

  No more hands were grabbing for the gap, and I waited.

  Five minutes went by and no bodies appeared.

  Slowly, I disengaged from the ladder and peered into the darkness beyond the doors.

  “Clear,” I said quickly, and pulled the doors open all the way. Looking down the hallways to either side, there was no movement. Shadows covered the ends of the narrow passages, and papers and linens were spread throughout.

  There was more blood here. More debris.

  I checked the signage near the elevator.

  ‘Intensive Care’ and ‘Wound Care’ were the first two offices listed.

  That would be why, I suppose.

  Ky hopped off the ladder behind me, and Kopland struggled to the edge and stumbled in, followed by Diana and Kate, who reached back to help Rhodes in.

  As we moved past the nurse’s station on the right, I averted my eyes from the carnage. I had seen it all before, but it didn’t make it better. Blood spatters and pieces of bodies. A half-eaten thigh bone on the floor next to a pile of spilled magazines. A mug filled to the brim with coffee, untouched and unspoiled in the dry air, next to a neatly dismembered arm, teeth marks marring the torn flesh of the elbow.

  The stairwell was only fifteen feet away, and we covered the distance quickly.

  Carefully, I rapped once on the steel door and listened for movement before opening it inward slowly and peering into the darkness.

  A scream behind me brought me back into the hallway, where I saw Diana stumble back from the suddenly opened door of one of the rooms lining the hallway. A small form in a hospital gown was attached to her leg, blood lining the wound it had quickly made near her knee.

  It was a kid.

  No more than four or five when they died.

  Rhodes pulled his pistol but couldn’t line up the shot. Kate was faster.

  She activated the blade in her arm and calmly grabbed the child’s hair.

  It was a girl, face not overly gone with desiccation or decay, lines of ruin appearing but not overly marring a pretty face. But her eyes were gone. They were the eyes of someone who would never again know humanity.

  Kate pushed the child to the ground slowly, and put her hand over the eyes before placing the blade against the temple. A tear dropped from her cheek as the metal slid home, and back out. The child stopped thrashing and she stood.

  Nothing to say, I opened the doorway into the stairwell and we moved up.

  We moved on.

  There was nothing to do but to just keep moving on.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  The helicopter crew huddled around the doorway was easily dispatched, as I was no longer hesitant to use the pistol. They fell to the floor quickly and I kicked the bodies away from the door, scanning the space for more movement before jogging to the wreckage of the bright orange helicopter.

  It had taken the landing wrong, likely from an attack inside. Blood spattered the cockpit windows, and the doors all hung awkwardly toward the ground, as the vehicle tilted slightly to one side. The rotor blades were snapped off and long gone, having decimated a large antennae and communications array, which hung off the lip of the roof precariously, wires dangling at odd angles.

  The chopper itself was in mostly one piece, missing only the end of the tail, where it had slammed into the brick enclosure housing a second elevator and ventilation shaft. It sat nearly twenty feet from the edge of the roof, but took up the entire helipad.

  Helo evacuation would be impossible with it sitting here.

  “Kate, let’s see what we can do.”

  Even as we walked to the side of the crashed vehicle, I picked up the sound I knew we would hear within minutes.

  Rotor blades.

  Our ride was coming, and it needed a parking space.

  We decided that the landing struts were the best handholds, and each took a position.

  “On three?” she asked, looking at the wreckage doubtfully.

  “Okay,” I said, getting a solid hold.

  “No way this works,” I heard Diana say, tightening the piece of fabric around her leg over the bite wound.

  Kate counted down, and
on three, we pulled as hard as we could.

  The metal shifted and groaned, and my muscles strained. The skids came off the ground slowly and we pulled back, leaning against the weight.

  The helicopter slid nearly a foot before we stopped and set it down.

  We repeated the effort and gained another foot.

  In the distance the helicopter was getting larger, and my ear bud spoke.

  “Seeker, this is School Bus, do you copy?”

  I strained against the weight of the vehicle, as I thankfully heard Rhodes respond on our behalf.

  “School Bus, this is Seeker, we have you five by five. We are finding you a parking space. Stand by.”

  Several more feet went by as I began to breath heavily. Kate was kneeling next to the skid in front of her. The edge was approaching, but too slowly. It was beginning to look impossible.

  “Hey Mike,” Ky was at my shoulder, voice tentative.

  Between breaths, I looked up.

  “Not now, kid.”

  We pulled again. One more foot.

  “Mike, I think I…”

  “Ky, seriously. I don’t have the energy. Hold off until we get this done.”

  One more foot.

  The thick chop of the incoming helicopter’s rotor blades was loud in the sky, now. I could imagine the herds below looking up, looking for food.

  Ky disappeared from my shoulder in a huff, and we pulled again.

  One more foot down.

  Too many to go.

  “Seeker, this is School Bus. You have an ETA on that parking space? We have enough gas to stay on station for a few mikes, but you are sorely needed at home.”

  We pulled again, and this time the vehicle shot forward several feet. Kate and I looked at each other in confusion and glanced through the cabin of the helo, where Ky’s happy face was peering through the cracked window on the other side.

  “I tried to tell you—I feel different. Let’s get this done, jackwads.”

  I smiled broadly, and, re-energized, we pulled and pushed until the helo reached a precarious position at the edge. We pushed together and the wreckage tumbled, end over end, crashing against the glass walls of the building, shattering windows and raining debris on the creatures that had gathered below, watching the movement and listening to the noise above them.