by Morris, Jacy
He turned and jogged up the street, pausing once he was sure none of the dead were around him to see how the others were doing. The girls broke free from the pack, their arms and faces covered in the blood of the dead. He watched as Joan held a heavy length of rebar sideways and shoved one of the dead out of the way.
Behind them, Mort and Blake burst through the dead. Lou turned and jogged up to the next side street. It was clear, or as clear as it could be, so he turned left, breaking the line of sight between the trailing dead and themselves. His breathing was heavy in his ears, and the cool of the morning began to burn away, though the shadows of the buildings kept the sun off them.
Lou jumped out of the way of a grasping dead thing buried underneath the wheel of a car. It's arms flailed after him, the skin of the fingers long gone from trying to claw its way out from underneath the tire that was pinning its lower half. "Watch out for that one," he called.
The others skirted their way around the pinned monstrosity, and above them, the death rattle began again. How many of the dead were trapped in the buildings around them? He didn't know, but he was thankful for their incarceration, even if it as temporary. Many of the buildings in the downtown area were older. Had they been newer, more modern buildings, it might have been impossible for the dead to even break through the glass holding them back from their mindless free falls to the ground. But the buildings were old, and the glass in the windows was the good old shattering glass that broke apart in jagged shards with very little pressure. It didn't take much, and one of the dead, were it sufficiently motivated, was more than enough to break through the windows above.
How many of these poor bastards had shown up at work one morning, only to find that the world was going to hell in the streets? How many of them had sat in their office buildings pretending they were safe and waiting for the police or the military to come through and save the day? From the amount of the dead falling from the buildings, it was easily in the thousands. The pounding of the dead upon the windows along with the shattering glass would draw the dead from blocks around. Lou didn't know how he knew. He just knew. That's what survivors did, they figured things out on the run. If you guessed right about a few things, then you lived. If you guessed wrong... well, you weren't a survivor anymore, were you?
Another intersection was coming up. Lou saw a map of the city in his head. He had stared at maps like that for years while riding the city's busses from one dead end job to the next. He knew the city like the back of his hand. The twists, the turns... none of it mattered. Up was all that mattered on this side of the city, keep moving up. Turn to throw them off, turn again to move up, away from the river and toward the hills. The hills... that's where escape was; that's where they could be free.
Lou took a left at the intersection and skidded to a halt, instinctively raising his gun. In the street were three men, guns pointed in their direction. The men had heard them coming first, or maybe they had just heard the horde of the dead following Lou's group and made themselves ready. For a second, the two groups locked eyes, and Lou could see how it was going to go down. Someone was going to die. Lou felt the heat of something fly by his ear, and he knew it was going to be him. Hot fire ripped through his ear, and without thinking, he lifted his machine gun and sprayed the men down, thankful for the magazine of ammunition that the soldiers had given him.
The man on the left, his head just sort of disappeared. The man in the middle looked like he had fireworks exploding on the inside of his guts, and the man on the right put his hands over his throat, his gun clattering to the ground, and dropped to his knees as if he were going to pray. Blood began to squirt through his fingers.
The death rattle had already started here. Glass was already shattering. In his peripheral vision, Lou could see shapes heaving themselves to their feet, limbs twisted and broken, but functional enough to make a meal out of Lou and the others. Hot liquid poured down the side of his head. His thoughts were scrambled. He ran forward and picked up the guns from the dead men. Were they good guys or bad guys? None of that shit mattered now. Now they were just dead guys.
Ahead of them, there were more of the dead in the street. They must have been following the three men. Behind them, their own trail was catching up to them. To their sides, the falling dead were now the walking dead. Their window of survival was closing. "There!" Katie yelled, her finger pointing off to his left.
It was a stairwell. Where it led didn't matter. It was a way out of the mess they found themselves in. He ran forward, lightly pressing his hand to his ear, and pulling it away quickly as he felt the sear of exposed nerve endings. How bad was it? Did he look like that poor cop bastard that Michael Madsen cut up in Reservoir Dogs? Or was it just an Evander Holyfield chunk that was gone. He wiped his bloody hand on his shirt.
They moved up. Even over the smell of the rotting dead, Lou could still catch a faint whiff of stale urine. Such was the late night fate for any stairwell in a big city. At night stairwell's became the bathroom for staggering drunks needing to relieve themselves. At the turn for the first flight of stairs, Lou saw the gleam of headlights reflected in sunlight.
They were in a parking garage. That was good news. It was guaranteed to be an unpopulated space, no windows, no little rooms for the dead to hide in and pop out of just when you felt safe. If they could get to the roof, they could catch their breath, maybe hunker down inside some cars, and wait for the dead to settle. Ten blocks... they had gone ten blocks.
Behind them, he could hear the panting of the others. "Is everyone here?"
"I think so," Mort yelled from the flight below.
"Is everyone alright?" he asked, his own blood dripping down the side of his neck.
"I think so, I don't know," Mort said.
"I'm ok," Joan yelled.
Clara yelled as well, "I'm scared shitless, but what else is new?"
"I think I'm missing some fingers," Katie shouted.
What the fuck? How does one "think" they're missing some fingers? "Well, are you or aren't you?" He yelled.
"I'm definitely missing some fingers."
Below them, they could hear the groans of the dead as they began to clomp up the stairwell. Their moans echoed off the cold, pockmarked concrete, filtering up the stairs to their ears. He could still hear out of his left ear. He wouldn't wind up like Blake. "What about Blake?" he yelled down to Mort as he rounded another flight of stairs.
"He's here. Doesn't even look tired, believe it or not."
Lou believed it. Blake was a machine. If he still had his hearing, Blake would be calling the shots. But he didn't. He was deaf as a doorknob. Was that even a saying? He supposed it didn't matter anymore. There was no Google to correct him. If he said it was one, and the people around him didn't agree... well, too bad. It was now a saying. His head began to spin, and the sweat from his head was now dripping into his ear wound, stinging like mad.
They reached the top floor of the garage. It was six-stories tall, but it was still dwarfed by the buildings around them. There were a handful of cars on the top floor, but little else, just cold concrete and blue sky.
For the first time, Lou had the chance to look at the others. Katie held her hand up to her chest. Red blood dripped from her missing fingers and onto the concrete. Her pinky finger looked like it was hanging on by a shred of skin. "We gotta get that fixed."
"I'll be alright," Katie said, though her face was pale, and she looked like she was going to fall on her ass at any second.
"Is that a bite?" Lou asked, knowing that he had to ask.
She looked at him with hate in her eyes, and it made him take a step back. "No, it isn't a bite," she spat. "One of those bastards shot me."
Joan dropped her backpack to the ground and began rummaging through its contents. Finally, she came up with what she needed. She sat on the ground cross-legged, and poured water over her hands to wash them off. Her hands moved faster than butterfly wings as she swooped a suture through a needle, and then told Katie, "Squa
t down. I'm going to try and reattach that finger. Can't do much about the missing one."
Katie did as she was told. She held her damaged hand out to Joan, holding it with her perfectly healthy hand. Lou didn't want to watch, but he knew that one day, he might have to sew somebody up. Needles had always made him feel nauseous. He watched as Joan stuck the suture needle through the shredded skin at the almost severed end of Katie's pinkie, and then he turned away. Fighting through the dead. That was no big deal. They were dead. They didn't feel anything. Watching a needle go through living flesh, that was enough to make his stomach turn.
He looked up at the sky and watched the death rattle begin in the buildings across the way. He wondered if this was how hockey players saw the world, on the ice watching mindless humans bang on the glass. Those buildings were high... and there were many forms now at the windows, looking down at them, but Lou wasn't concerned. If they fell from this height, they would most definitely not be getting back up again.
"How long until this is done?" Lou asked without looking.
"Man, that is sick," Blake said.
By the way she sounded, Lou could tell that Joan was only giving him a fraction of her attention as she said, "You can't rush perfection."
Lou walked across the concrete and stuck his head into the stairwell. The noise and clatter of ascending dead folks was still there, but it sounded scattered, less intense. He hoped that they had lost the scent and spread out through the garage. It was really their only hope. He had never been so glad to duck into a piss-smelling stairwell in his life. For a moment there, he had been having visions of being buried underneath the unstoppable weight of the dead. They would grasp him by the shirt and drag him down, taking bites out of his flesh. The same would happen to the others, but he wouldn't hear their screams because he himself would be screaming too loud.
But they had escaped once again, dodging death and its shuffling embrace. It was still after them; it might never stop, but they had dispersed the threat, sending it shuffling throughout the parking garage, a few shuffles at a time.
"How's it going over there?" Lou asked.
Joan hissed between her teeth. "I don't think this is going to work."
"You tried," Katie said. "That's something."
Lou could hear the shuffling of one of the dead below him. It was about to reach the top of the last landing, and there were more on their way. The first one stepped into sight, a ragged creature, its jeans ripped and covered in stripes of blood. Long, bloodstained hair fell from the creatures torn scalp. "We're running out of time," Lou hissed over his shoulder. In response, the creature in the stairwell made a plaintive gurgling sound. From the stairwell, more groans joined in as if in response.
Behind him, Lou heard Joan say the following: "How do you feel about only having three fingers on this hand?"
Lou stepped back from the stairwell in time to hear Katie's response. "Better three living fingers than three living fingers and one dead finger. Do what you gotta do."
Then, Lou wished he hadn't turned around as Joan grabbed Katie's damaged pinky finger and began popping out the stitches that she had already put in. Katie clenched her jaw in pain, trying not to cry out and draw even more of the dead to their position. When Joan had popped the last stitch, the nearly severed end of Katie's pinky finger fell at a ninety-degree angle, held only by a half-inch piece of skin.
Joan wrapped her hand around the dangling digit and said, "This is going to hurt."
"Oh shit," Katie said just before Joan ripped the finger free. She groaned in pain.
She held the finger out to Katie and said, "You want this?" Katie just looked at her like she was crazy. Joan shrugged and dropped it to the ground. Then she reached into her backpack and pulled out a roll of bandages.
By then, the creature in the ripped jeans had made its way to the top of the parking garage. It shuffled out onto the gray, pockmarked concrete, and Lou lashed out at it with the stock of his machine gun. It stumbled backwards, and the evil part of Lou, the part that he had inherited from his father, decided to finish the creature permanently. He stood over the downed creature as it struggled to do a sit-up, its arms reaching forward and its legs rising into the air. He drove the gun into the bridge of the creature's nose. There was a crunch, and it rocked backward, its head bouncing off of the concrete. It still wasn't good enough for Lou. The creatures face still looked like a face. All he wanted to see was a puddle. He drove the gun downward, again and again.
Sweat dripped from his eyebrow and rolled down the bridge of his nose to hang off the tip, as he looked downward at the mess below him. The creature's face was now a splattered red mess mixed with white bone shards. The butt of his gun was slick with gore, and he stood up feeling an ache in his shoulders and his back. His surroundings slowly came back to him like fog burning off in the morning sun to expose the true nature of the world.
More of the dead were pouring in from the stairwell, slowly, but this was the tortoise's race and not the rabbit's. The others were backing towards a stairwell on the other side of the parking garage. He saw Katie's heavily bandaged hand, spots of red blossoming on the thick gauze that Joan had wrapped around her maimed appendage. Katie held the hand close to her chest, her free hand clutching her handgun.
Lou's thoughts went back to the men in the street. The one's they had gunned down. Were they good? Were they bad? They were dead.
"Let's get down, people. Take that stairwell!" They didn't need further prodding. They were ready to run, rabbits fighting the tortoise. Rabbits going as fast as they could. The finish line was somewhere out there, but would they know it when they saw it?
Lou was the last one in the stairwell. His nose was once again assaulted by the familiar stench of stale urine. Ahead of him, the others pelted down the stairs, their shoes and boots clomping on the rough concrete. From below him, around the turn of the landing, he could hear the clear smack of a metal hammerhead upon the skull of the dead. They were in the stairwell ahead of them. That was not good news. Lou hoped that the dead were scattered throughout the garage and that there were only a few standing between them and the streets.
Down they went, circling to their left, the smack of hammer on skull ringing through the stairwell. Katie shuffled along in front of him, not quite rushing as fast as he wished. Now was the crucial time, the critical time. They would escape, or they would be surrounded... and then they would be lost, for a time at least, before they would rise again.
He stepped over the flailing bodies of the dead with misshapen heads, their arms reaching out for him. Then they were out on the street. Lou took a deep breath, realizing that he had been holding his breath as they ran down the stairs. The air felt good; it still reeked of the rotting corpses of the dead, but it felt like a lungful of air that served a purpose. It served to move him through the streets, one step-closer to that finish line.
They moved through the scattered remains of the dead that had followed them into the garage, the rest of them shuffling aimlessly in the six floors of concrete that piled above them, trapped there until something living came along and drew them out. For now, the parking garage was a mausoleum.
The street lay ahead of them, empty but for a few straggling dead folk, their limbs too busted up to allow them to keep up with the other dead, the more functional ones. Lou thought of them as "bustas," an old slang word that had fallen out of fashion through no fault of the word. The "bustas" were easy to move through.
Without having to tell anyone, they burst into a jog. Even Clara with her sore ankle and Mort with his slowly healing knee said nothing as they loped up the street, away from the dead in the parking garage. Above them, the death rattle continued as they scurried through the blocks, up the hill, and away into the outskirts of Portland.
It would be better there. Lou knew it would be. How could it be any worse?
Chapter 13: Into the Darkness
They stood at a fork in the road. A decision was waiting to be made. Mort was be
nt over, his hands on his knees, gasping for air. His knee throbbed, but it had been worth it to get out of the city proper. They had run for maybe a mile, dodging and weaving between the dead and the battered, disowned cars that lined the street.
The dead were behind them, some of them in plain sight, but the survivors had a moment to breathe, and sometimes breath was the most precious commodity in the new world. They stood looking at three possibilities, each one with its own shortcomings. To their left, a road curved gently upward and out of sight around the side of a hill. It was the on-ramp to the freeway. A line of cars stood abandoned in the road. They could only assume that the highway itself was much the same, a parking lot full of deadly occupants locked into vehicles that were worthless.
In front of them the MAX tracks wound westward, disappearing into the hills. A tunnel waited at the end of the tracks, or so Joan said. She had the best knowledge of the West Side, having lived there for several years while commuting to the hospital. The tunnel would be dark, which wouldn't be a problem if it were empty. If those things were in there, then it would be a death trap. Mort didn't fancy dying in a concrete tunnel, the weight of the world pressing down upon him. The dead ones were bad enough in the daylight, let alone in a pitch-black tunnel where there was no escape.
To the right, a road led through a residential area. Joan said the road wound through some neighborhoods and up over the hill into the suburbs of the West Hills. There would be plenty of houses to hole up in should they need to. Who knew? Maybe there were other survivors as well. Of course, how friendly those survivors were was anybody's guess.
Mort coughed and spat a wad of phlegm on the ground. Behind him, he could hear the scrape of shoes on pavement. A white hand slapped him on the shoulder. Mort turned to Blake who held his notepad in his hand. He looked down at the notepad and read the single word there, "Thoughts?" Mort found it odd that sometimes Blake preferred to write his thoughts down on a notepad. It's not like he couldn't speak.