by J. L. Bourne
If I had been forced to shoot unsuppressed on this street, I’d have had the wrath of hell coming down on me in minutes. That’s why things like silencers are worth a king’s ransom on the mainland.
I kept my knees locked and moved with a stilt-like gait to the dumpster, attempting to lessen the noise of my suit. I quietly rolled the large metal box far enough to get me to the access ladder and then took off my pack so that I could fit inside the ladder cage. Ascending, I heard a muffled metallic sound coming from below and felt a rough tug on my pack line.
I pulled free and kept climbing; my pack swung a couple feet below, secured to my web belt. Reaching the top, I turned to tug my pack the rest of the way and looked down the ladder cage tunnel to the ground.
She, it . . . was almost beautiful.
It looked up at me as if gazing at a full moon. For a long moment, it did nothing. It stood about six feet tall, blond hair in a ponytail, jean shorts, and a T-shirt. It was barefoot, but, based on the V-shaped stains on its foot, I could tell it had been wearing flip-flops when it died, or maybe sandals. Its solid white eyes followed my movement from one side of the ladder to the other.
I took the Geiger from my pack and tied some line to it. Turning the volume up all the way, I lowered it down the ladder, closer to the creature below. As it cleared the metal shielding of the ladder cage, my suspicion was confirmed. The Geiger went crazy with static: The creature was putting off high levels of radiation. I lowered the Geiger even closer to it to get a better reading.
It reached for the device.
I yanked the string, pulling the Geiger away like a cat’s toy. Angered, the irradiated corpse actually climbed onto the dumpster and began to slowly ascend the ladder.
I watched, nearly frozen in terror.
The creature bared its jagged teeth and hissed as it neared. I shot it in the head and watched it pinball down the lower half of the ladder. The noise attracted two more to the area, but, based on their level of decomposition, they didn’t appear to be irradiated and didn’t seem to know I was on the roof.
Using binoculars to read street signs and referencing the electronic maps on the tablet I kept in my pack, it looked like I was in eastern Perdido Key, near Pensacola. I confirmed this when I matched the paper charts and saw the name of the marina on the map, the same one where my kayak was moored not far from the rooftop.
I powered down the tablet and plugged in the solar charger. The panels attached to the exterior of my pack served to maintain the batteries for my night optical device, tablet, comms, Geiger, and flashlights. After taking a radiation reading, I took off my hood and mask and placed an N95 mask snugly over my nose and mouth and some goggles over my eyes. I took this time to catch my breath and let the condensation on the inside of my gas mask evaporate. The radiation levels were relatively safe here on the top of the bistro.
After eating two cans of Vienna sausages, I did more reconnaissance from the rooftop in all directions. I could see the small radar dome and wind vane on the apex of Solitude’s mast to the south. Across the street to the north, a dilapidated bank—near collapse, actually. Chunks of its brick walls and every pane of glass had been blown outward long ago, along with a large circular vault door that lay halfway on the sidewalk. The bank’s blast damage was old but told a story. Mutilated undead bodies still writhed in the brick rubble below like the dying reflexes of smashed spider legs.
A bright blue duffel bag sat in stark contrast on the street near the massive rusting vault door. Some poor bastard actually thought money would get them through or help them in some way. Even in the early days, the time when John and I had first met, money was the last thing on my mind.
According to my transceiver and charts, the distress signal wasn’t far from my position. Still north by northwest. Stationary. I had approximately two miles of suburban traveling to do and it was getting dark fast. My night optical device, or NOD, would allow me to see in the dark, but not very far and not with a very wide field of view. Jan was our resident super-nurse, and according to her and the rest of her doctor cadre, those creatures had some sort of close-range thermal vision adaptation. Knowing this, moving at night among the enhanced irradiated undead was not at the top of my list of fun things to do.
I could risk heading back to Solitude for safety, but that was nearly three hundred meters away.
Making my decision, I descended the ladder far enough to kick the dumpster out from under it and went back up to make camp for the night.
The moldy wooden pallets leaning against the bistro’s air circulator made good fuel for a small stealth fire. This was sunny Florida, but hypothermia never seemed to care. By the glowing pallet wood light, I checked and rechecked my kit for tomorrow’s trek.
Between the pops of burning wood, I could hear the undead in the streets below. I’d made a little too much noise with the suppressed shots I’d taken. The undead’s throaty moans and clumsy movement made unholy noises that cut through sanity if one let their mental guard down too long. Would I rather be in Tara’s arms, hearing the breath of my newborn nearby right now?
Yes.
But there are some out here like me who will never feel at “rest” until they’re hugging a ventilation pipe on a roof somewhere in the badlands. Like those shambling creatures on the ground below, part of me had died through all this. I’d left a piece of myself out here somewhere in the ether, between what was then and what surrounds everyone now.
Rooftop Diplomacy
Day 2
I awoke before daybreak to the sounds of distant tide and the wind. No aircraft, cars, or any other sounds made by man. Like Pripyat before, this was a dead place. I put on my mask and hood and made ready to descend into whatever mayhem awaited below.
I lowered my pack to the ground and then climbed down with my pistol in my right hand. Reaching the deck, I switched back to my M4 and checked it. Comforted by the yellow tint of brass inside the chamber, I started moving to the RF-geolocated area marked on my chart.
I had nearly two hundred rounds of subsonic ammunition on me, and a mag or so of supersonic. Black-tipped quiet stuff on the left side of my vest, red-tipped loud stuff on the right. Obviously, I wanted to stay below the sound barrier as long as possible, but if things went sideways, I’d switch to supers.
I moved along the buildings, careful to avoid the streets and alleyways infested with undead. Thankfully, I wasn’t near a major city, and was close to water. It was winter back when the first creatures walked, so this beach resort area didn’t seem too crowded.
But still, just enough action to keep things interesting.
After avoiding two different busy streets, I took a turn down an alley with only two creatures stumbling around a heap of trash. I hit them both from ten meters and took the time to recover the spent brass. As I did so, the corner where I just came from started to fill with undead.
They gave chase.
I ran down the alley, away from the approaching mob . . . and when I spilled out into the street, I was immediately surrounded.
My only option was to enter the large brick building right in front of me. Reaching the glass-paned door, I turned the knob.
Locked.
I bought a few seconds, taking three shots at the closest rotting creatures. Enough time to smash a pane of glass and unlock the bolt. Barreling inside the dark building, I slammed the door and reengaged the lock. Frantically, I piled up as much shit as I could in front of the door but knew it wouldn’t hold forever. There were at least two dozen of them out there now interested in me, the appetizer in the yellow suit that had just made a lot of noise right in front of them.
With no time to dig my NOD out of my pack, I flipped on my weapon-mounted light, spilling five hundred lumens of searing brightness into the dark room. Behind me, the undead broke glass and splintered wood, forcing me ahead into a gloomy passageway. To my right, through a series of boarded windows, I peered through the slits and saw something run past outside. Panicking, I sprinted f
or the boarded-over glass doors on the other side of the building. My heart sank when I saw the chain and padlock holding them securely together. It didn’t matter; one of those things was already tearing at the boards on the other side. I gave up on the chained doors, made for the stairs, and began to climb. Somewhere above me, a corpse that was already inside fell over, hitting the handrail behind me. It lay there, crippled from the drop, but still reached for my legs. I ignored it and kept climbing to the sounds of shattering glass and splintering wood on the ground level below.
At the top of the stairs was a red ladder situated against a wall behind an old desk. I climbed for my life, thinking of that airfield tower from what seemed like decades ago. I didn’t have a parachute this time.
I could hear the undead now coming up the stairs. Some steps were far more rapid than others.
Irradiated.
I was on the ladder, twelve feet in the air, the light from my carbine illuminating the brass padlock securing roof access. I swung the light around as the first creature appeared at the top of the stairs and began to charge. Its lips and eyelids were gone, unblinking eyes locking onto me like an alcoholic to a bottle of whiskey. In an act of desperation, I put my carbine up to the lock, touching the standoff end cap on my suppressor to the lock clasp. I was risking death from ricochet or, worse, falling into the arms of the radioactive demon now climbing the ladder after me. I squeezed the trigger, missing the lock but punching a hole through the hatch. A single beam of .30-caliber light shone through the steel. Feeling the iron grasp of a dead hand on my steel-toed boot, I squeezed the trigger again. The lock flew off; a tiny piece of steel struck me in the forehead, right between my mask and hood, splattering a few droplets of blood onto my mask and down into the fray below.
The undead went berserk.
I jammed my boot down blindly, striking bone and teeth, loosening the creature’s bear-trap grip on my foot. Without looking, I threw myself upward, hitting the hatch with the back of my head and spilling light into the darkness below. Resembling strange deep-sea plant life, an ocean of hands reached up in unison to somehow will me back down the ladder and into their arms. One of them emerged from the array of limbs, flailing the lesser creatures out of its way. It looked up at me with its jaw hanging slack and growled before it began to climb.
I took the shot down the hole, sending the thing back into the waving sea of hands.
I slammed the hatch, hoping nothing else would come for me out of the darkness of the building. I was several stories up and surrounded by buildings of various height. The Geiger was still chattering away; the mask had to stay on. Condensation covered the inside; blood speckled the outside, degrading my view. The wind must be blowing from what was left of New Orleans.
I checked my chart and took another radio reading. The signal intensity was so high now that I could no longer estimate distance to signal. Hearing the hatch rattle behind me, I put my kit away and slung my rifle across my back. The building next to this one was only a few feet away and one story shorter, so I took a running leap, rolling and ending up on my back in a puddle of rainwater. I checked the perimeter atop this new building, noting that all roof accesses had been secured via locked ladder cages.
Fifty yards away, on the building from where I’d just jumped, was a silhouette outlined by the bright morning sun. It stood there like a gargoyle, arms slack, staring in my direction over the gap between us.
Chillingly, it didn’t walk off the edge.
Goddamn radiation. Scientists had no way of knowing its effect on the undead before the cities were nuked off the map.
Ignoring the creature, I took the chart from my pack and began to get my bearings relative to the signal source.
Looked like another two blocks or so.
After folding the map, I grabbed my weapon from my back, and turned to take out the corpse. It was gone.
Using a two-by-eight board leaning against a vent, I was able to traverse to the next building. As I carefully walked the plank, I saw them below, standing in undead hibernation. I was safely on the other side before I allowed myself to imagine the board snapping underneath, dropping me onto the sleeping dead. Best not to think that way.
My roof hopping was finished, though. The adjacent buildings were too far away, across the road. After verifying the coast was clear, I climbed down a metal conduit pipe on the north side of the building, listening to the crinkle of the potato chip bag I was wearing.
Staying low, I moved to the next spot of cover, an abandoned ambulance. My Geiger began to chatter. The metal ambulance was soaked with radiation. Crouched next to the metal monster, I felt it rock slightly.
Something dead was trapped inside. Keep moving. Can’t stop here.
I made for the Perdido Spirits store across the street and was halfway there when I noticed something strange. Something very unexpected.
Checkers
Day 2
A balloon, tethered by a small cable, floated in the middle of the street. An unidentified body lay sprawled out beneath it, between me and the liquor store. The corpse wore military clothing with a camo pattern I’d never seen. Some sort of spiderweb and hexagonal design. An M9 was jabbed into its mouth and a good portion of the back of its head was missing. Although a gas mask was still in the clutches of its left hand, the corpse wasn’t wearing a radiation suit.
The bloodstained leg on its fatigue pants told the rest of the story. The soldier(?), or paramilitary operator, had been bitten. I think it was a man; tough to tell after sitting in the Florida sun for who knows how long. He must have swallowed a bullet after knowing all was lost. I’m surprised his body was still relatively in one piece, considering the varmints running unchecked out here in the badlands.
A large black box was tucked into his body’s load-bearing vest, with an antenna jutting out across its cheek and up the tether to the balloon hovering above.
The distress signal radio source.
A pair of wires led from the radio in the corpse’s vest to a rectangular-shaped object about ten feet away. The soldier’s bag was draped over this unusual equipment. It looked like a large motorcycle saddlebag, heavy and adorned with small flexible solar panels covered in mildew and dust. I unplugged the electrical lead attached from the radio to the saddlebag and moved it to the deserted alley adjacent to the liquor store.
After making sure I had two ways out of the alley, I began to rummage through the bag. The gray digital camo fabric was stiff and sun-faded from exposure. Expectedly, food and water stores were near the top. I’d need to Geiger those later before even thinking of consuming them.
Under the food stores was a tablet, likely what the electrical wires were feeding. Under that were a few odds and ends you’d expect to find at the bottom of a survivor’s bag: cordage, folding knife, car slim jim, picks made from hacksaw blades, and a box of 5.56 ammo that was useless to me and my Blackout carbine.
I straddled the bag over a nearby concrete barrier and went back to the street to search the soldier’s corpse. Thankful that I was wearing a suit and mask, I grasped the decomposing body under its arms and peeled it from the concrete. Realizing it was still attached via cable to the floating antenna, I disconnected the corpse from the carabiner. The antenna balloon floated slowly at first until it broke the tops of the buildings. I could hear the balloon drag the attached metal cable across a nearby roof and then it was gone.
I was pulling the corpse into the alley when something astonishing occurred.
Through the acoustics of my hood and mask, I heard the muffled sound of quiet servo motors spinning online. Looking over my shoulder, I could see that the rectangular power source was now covered in debris, had four legs, and was standing.
Months of dust and built-up grime dropped from its frame and joints as it began to run what I assumed was some kind of diagnostics program. Fearing the machine’s low noise might bring the dead, I continued to quickly drag the body into the alley.
Once the mechanical quadruped�
�s head retracted from its body, I saw what looked like a small but fast-rotating mirror where its eyes might be. The thing was the size of a rottweiler. Its recumbent legs flexed and it began walking in my direction. The eerie sound of the machine’s metallic and carbon-fiber legs clicking on the concrete made me want to reach for my carbine and waste it.
With the soldier’s corpse positioned, I stepped back and allowed the machine to do whatever it had been programmed for. The machine walked to within ten feet of the corpse and stood there for a moment before the motors quietly spun down and the head folded back inside the body. After this, the legs bent and the machine slowly dropped like a mechanic’s hydraulic lift, back to its compact rectangle state of dormancy. Hearing movement in the street, I quickly grabbed the saddlebag and dragged the soldier’s corpse into the alley behind the liquor store. Once again the machine spun to life and walked over to within ten feet, stopped, and sat back down.
I checked the corpse for valuables. A fixed-blade knife, a large-face wristwatch with multicolored buttons, and body armor. The armor would stay here, as it was infused with months of putrid decomposing corpse by-product. I placed the knife in the saddlebag and put the watch in my suit’s cargo pocket. Satisfied with the salvage, I yearned for the safety of my boat while pondering my current predicament.
The dead soldier was broadcasting on a Remote Six frequency. His organization had been wiped off the map, probably at around the same time this guy put a bullet in his head, but of course there was no way to know for sure. What was his mission? What was the purpose of this doglike machine? And what was making the machine follow him?
I marked the location of the corpse and odd mechanical quadruped for possible future investigation. The sounds coming from the street on the other side of the liquor store had decreased my curiosity about the present salvage.
There was undead nearby.
I slung the saddlebag over my shoulder and began to leave. The sound of electrical and hydraulic motors spinning up behind me got my attention. I turned and saw that the machine began to follow . . .