Grateful that I’m persistent and mouthy, he thought to himself.
“Good job, boys,” Miller barked as the last of the wave of zombies fell to the asphalt. “Orders are to sit tight here for a few until we can get that building down. Take a break, grab a bite. You boys on the barricade, keep watch for any activity.”
“Yes, sir,” one of the Corporals said with a firm nod.
“Lennox, you’re to head to the back to wait for your friends,” the Sergeant continued, pointing at him. “I appreciate the help, you’re a hell of a shot.”
Lennox nodded. He didn’t want to acknowledge the praise. In truth, he knew he was good at shooting and killing. It was something that he’d spent years warring with inside of himself. He didn’t want to be good at taking life.
At least with zombies, their lives were already claimed. It was a mercy, putting them down. That’s how he had to frame it in his head to keep the demons at bay.
“How much longer do they have?” he asked as he walked alongside the Sergeant.
“Just under a half hour,” Miller replied.
Lennox shook his head. He hoped to hell that they didn’t run into too much trouble. Jax hadn’t seemed thrilled about needing to get to the roof, and he wasn’t sure if it was because there were zombies in the way, or just the fact that he was in a wheelchair. Maybe both.
“Do you know what the state of that building is, up top?” the Sergeant asked.
Lennox shook his head. “No,” he replied. “I know Jax is on the twelfth floor, not sure about the other two, I think a few up from him? But I have no idea what the penthouse looks like. Hopefully nothing too bad. I know they had to barricade everything from Jax’s floor down.”
“Shouldn’t be too bad to get up there, then,” Miller replied.
“Yeah, stairs are real easy for a guy in a wheelchair,” Lennox muttered.
The Sergeant’s eyes widened a fraction, and then he shook his head. “Sorry,” he said in a low voice, “I didn’t realize.”
“I know,” came the reply. “He’ll be okay. He’s got two friends that can help him. If he was by himself he would have been boned, but I’m grateful to the others. I’m more hoping they’re not having to fight through significant opposition. An hour is a good window, but if each of the floors is packed with those things…” He shook his head. It wasn’t the time to be pessimistic. Jax had said he’d make it work.
You’d better, buddy, he prayed silently. I want to see your face after all this.
“Here we are,” Miller said, motioning to a cluster of vehicles well behind the line. “Have a rest, someone will grab you some food and water.” He clasped his hands in front of him. “Thank you, for the warning. For making it all the way out here. We would have been… well, you know.”
Lennox nodded as he sat down, taking a load off. “You can thank Jax when he gets here safely,” he said.
The Sergeant nodded and headed back to the barricade, leaving the tired man to close his eyes, leaning back against a large truck tire. And you’d better get here safely, buddy.
CHAPTER NINE
Jax watched with trepidation as Skylar reached for the doorknob, but froze at the sound of hands smacking the other side.
“Shit, of course,” she muttered. The noise they’d made in the stairwell had been bound to attract attention.
As if on cue, there was a series of clatters from downstairs, and resounding hungry moans echoed in victory. The zombies had busted the barricade at the bottom.
“No going back now,” Marcus said, and turned around to shove some of the furniture back in place to hopefully stem them from making it up to their landing. Jax held on tight, keeping himself from choking his friend, but still unused to the feeling of being suspended on his back. It was strange being wrapped up in the weird burrito seat.
Skylar turned to them. “Grab that coffee table,” she said, pointing at the table she’d used as a shield when she was first stabbing zombies.
Marcus passed it over and then bent to heave a recliner down into the hole they’d made when they were climbing up. Jax tried to keep his breathing steady as his ride moved this way and that. He’d heard that when you were a passenger on a motorcycle, you had to just go with the lean, or else you could throw off the equilibrium of the vehicle. He tried to do that here, not too stiff but not too limp. Just go with the movement to make it easier on Marcus.
They turned back to Skylar, who was positioning the coffee table on its end next to the door.
“Okay, you brace the door, and don’t let it open wider than the table,” she instructed. “If there’s only a few, I’ll get them over the edge, and if there’s a ton, we’ll shut the door and re-evaluate. Deal?”
Jax shook his head, but Marcus just said, “Yep, let’s do it,” and stood behind the door, bracing himself as he wrapped his hand around the handle.
Jax held his breath. He wanted to ask, what’s the difference between a few and a ton? He always had questions. But now wasn’t the time. These two were saving his ass, when they could have left him behind to die. He wasn’t about to start questioning their methods. Seeing Skylar grabbed by that zombie had turned his chest to ice—he’d thought for sure they were going to lose her.
He had the fleeting thought that he needed to learn to trust these two, because they went with their guts, and it seemed to work out. Plus, there were even more flesh-eating monsters coming up from the bottom, and he wasn’t sure if that barricade was going to hold. The only way out was up, so taking stock over a coffee table would have to do.
“Go!” Skylar declared, and Marcus turned the knob.
The weight on the door was immediate, and he threw himself back against it, struggling to keep it closed enough that his girlfriend could keep the coffee table in place. She stabbed two ghouls in the face in quick succession, splattering gooey half-coagulated blood all over the place.
More arms reached through the gap, clawing for her face.
“How’s it look?” Marcus grunted as he pressed against the door, feet planted firmly on the cement of the stairwell landing.
“Just two more,” Skylar growled as she hacked and slashed, trying to knock the arms aside to get to the heads behind them.
Jax gripped his meat tenderizer and brought it down on one of the arms, snapping the elbow at an unnatural angle. The rotted hand hung limp and useless, unable to block her way, and she nodded at him in thanks.
He took out another arm. And then she managed to stab the one with functional limbs, dropping it with its brethren. He considered giving her the gun, but the noise would just draw more of them to the door, and they needed to at least try to get in without thirty ghouls right on top of them.
Speaking of ghouls on top of them, the stairwell zombies had reached the barricade, and furniture was shifting under their excitement. Jax swallowed hard. It wouldn’t hold for long.
“Okay, open a little more,” Skylar said as the last one fell, and she pushed inside, using the coffee table like a shield. “Stay quiet,” she whispered.
Marcus leaned down, making Jax’s stomach lurch, and shoved two of the bodies out of the way so they could secure the door behind them. He locked it, just in case, and Jax let out a deep breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. One dangerous section down, two to go.
Well, three, if they counted the terrace, which he figured for the sake of realism, he should. Better to expect the worst, really.
Speaking of the worst, this penthouse had been a party. There were easily twenty-five to thirty ghouls just on this floor, let alone on the second. They would need to get through them to the staircase on the far end. At least the entire one wall was glass from floor-to-ceiling, so they could see by the light of the bright moon.
He gripped the gun and mallet like a lifeline. He had five bullets left, and he had to make them count. He’d lucked out being able to shoot that zombie at close enough range it was impossible to miss, but making noise was a last resort and wouldn’t be worth
it if it wasn't a sure shot.
Sweat dripped down the back of his neck, from pure nervousness but also from being duct-taped inside of a thick comforter.
Skylar stepped forward slowly, holding the table out in front of her, keeping her footsteps flat and soundless. It wasn’t going to matter in a few moments, as they were going to have to go right through the center of the pack to make it.
Something brushed against Jax, and his brow furrowed. Was Marcus… he turned his head, and his eyes widened when he realized a zombie was gnawing at his lower back. Thankfully the comforter was thick enough, working in his favor, because the teeth didn’t pierce it, but it was disconcerting, to say the least.
A low moan began deep in his throat, and he patted Marcus’ shoulder frantically. He could try to smack it with the meat tenderizer, but he didn’t think his arm would bend that way.
Marcus turned to look at him, but he seemed reluctant to look away from Skylar, who crept forward continually with her shield.
“There’s a… it’s trying to eat my back,” Jax whispered as quietly as he could into Marcus’ ear.
His eyes widened, and he reached out to tap Skylar on the shoulder. She paused and glanced back at him, and he gently maneuvered so that she had a full view of the ghoul latched onto Jax’s back.
He lashed out with her knife, stabbing it in the temple, and gently lowered the corpse to the floor so that it wouldn’t make too much noise.
“Uh,” Jax murmured. It was too late. The zombies inside were taking notice of them. Skylar swallowed hard, and then grabbed the coffee table, turning it sideways.
“I’m just going to push through,” she said. “Stay close behind me, we’ll just shove our way through to the stairs.”
Marcus nodded jerkily. “Okay, okay,” he replied breathily, as if psyching himself up.
“Go!” Skylar hissed, and then darted forward.
Marcus took off, hot on her heels, and Jax gripped his weapons with white knuckles, eyes darting around everywhere to try to keep tabs on the ghouls. It was difficult, bouncing as he was, but as corpses flew left and right from the coffee table battering ram, others swarmed behind them.
He finally accepted his fate of not being able to fight, and just curled his head down, holding on to Marcus and trying to be as light of a backpack as possible. He could feel them on his back. He didn’t know if it was hands or mouths, but he knew they were there, dragging at him. He wished fleetingly that he’d had one of the knives, so that if things got dicey, he could cut himself free and let the others save themselves, but realized that Marcus had probably engineered that on purpose.
He knew that Jax wouldn’t pull the trigger on himself back there and risk being dead weight on Marcus’ back, so he’d been given the gun and the meat tenderizer. There was no escape, all he could do was hold on and trust his friends, and hope that they didn’t die because of him.
Eventually Skylar stopped, having to use her coffee table to bat zombies away from her. She shifted it over to one hand and slashed wildly with her knife with the other. Marcus stabbed a zombie in the face, kicking it in the chest to dislodge it from his blade, but his movements were slower, sluggish. He was either getting tired, having a hard time moving with his Jax-pack, or there were too many zombies weighing them down clutching to his back.
Or all three things.
Jax wanted to start swinging, but he was afraid that if Marcus moved too fast or in a direction he wasn’t expecting, that he’d accidentally smack him in the face.
He reached back and swung behind him, trying to hit something, anything, but the ghouls were all lower than his area of reach.
Skylar let out a yell of frustration, and Marcus swung to see her swing the coffee table in a mighty arc, taking the head of a ghoul clean off. “Let’s go!” she screamed, and tore for the staircase.
Marcus ran, his quick sprint shaking all but one of the ghouls, the corpse flailing around behind them as he took off. They reached the stairs, and thankfully there were none right at the top, so they barrelled up.
Or at least, Skylar did. Marcus struggled, grabbing the railing and trying to drag his way up the stairs.
“There’s a zombie on my back!” Jax called to her, and she thundered back down the steps, kicking viciously at the barnacle corpse behind him.
It took two kicks, but the ghoul finally dislodged, falling down the stairs like a rag doll.
“Come on!” she urged, grabbing Marcus’ free arm and helping him up the rest of the staircase. “We have to block them!” she huffed as the ghouls below began to crawl up the stairs.
Jax pointed to a sofa nearby that looked just about the right width to block it off. “There!” he cried.
Skylar ran around the back of it and shoved. Marcus grabbed the closest side and pulled, and between the two of them they heaved it to the staircase. The zombies were about halfway up now, and Marcus got out of the way, joining his girlfriend on the other side. They pushed until the couch got stuck at the mouth of the staircase.
“Harder!” she shrieked, and they gave it another good heave at the same time, stuffing the overly fluffy sofa into the gap, blocking the top half of the staircase. It worked like a plug, and perhaps wouldn’t hold forever, but hopefully long enough for them to get to the terrace.
The home bar and rec room sprawled across half of the floor, the rest a glass wall looking out over the terrace proper. There was a pool and a decent amount of zombies milling about, or at least, they had been milling about. Now that they’d heard the commotion, they were turning and heading towards the open patio door.
“The stairs to the roof are out there, huh?” Marcus huffed, and Jax nodded.
“They sure are,” he replied.
Skylar leaned against the wall for a moment. “Catch your breath, boys,” she said. “We need another plan.”
CHAPTER TEN
“We’re going to need to take them all out,” Skylar said, “otherwise if we get up there before the helicopter shows up, they’ll follow us up.”
Jax shook his head. “Unless we can lock a few in here,” he pointed out.
“Maybe,” Marcus added, chewing his bottom lip. “But the more come in here, the harder it’s going to be for us to get out.” He pushed the image of Skylar struggling in the death grip of a zombie from his mind. He had to focus. They were almost there.
He tightened his grip on his knives. He was tired. Sure, they’d run marathons together, but never wearing humans on their backs. It was definitely a workout. He had a feeling his back would be feeling this for a while once they made it out of here.
If we make it out of here… he thought, but then pushed that away too. They were going to make it. They had to.
“You okay back there?” he asked, and felt his friend shift on his shoulders as he nodded.
“Yeah, don’t worry about me,” Jax replied.
Skylar raised the coffee table shield and turned towards the patio. “We’ve got to do this, and now,” she said, motioning to the door with her knife. Some of the zombies had reached the door.
One went splash into the pool, and Marcus cocked a brow. “If we can get them in the pool they’ll be stuck,” he suggested as he walked in step with her, readying his knives.
“Good call,” she agreed. “Let’s take them one at a time, at least as best we can.”
He could hear the little tremble in her voice. He knew his girl. She was tough as nails, but was just as worried about him as he was about her.
“We got this,” he said firmly, and she threw a smile over her shoulder at him.
“Yeah, we do,” she agreed, and then rushed the door with renewed vigor.
Marcus hadn’t expected that, and broke into a sprint to catch up to her. She stabbed one of the zombies and shoved the rest back through the door with the coffee table. It was just long enough to block the opening, but she had to keep her head back to avoid the gnashing teeth. She held it at neck height, giving him easy access to corpse eyeballs for ske
wering.
Skylar suddenly shrieked, and he looked down to see one of them crawling under the makeshift barrier, its legs gnawed to complete nothingness. It must have been one of the last to die, eaten by too many mouths. It held fast to her ankle, and she tried to kick at it, but was focused on holding the table up.
Marcus knelt, slamming his knife through the top of its skull. He tried to wrench it free, but it didn’t come easily. He put his foot against its head to brace it, and gagged at the feeling of squish beneath his shoe. It didn’t matter how long he spent fighting the dead, he couldn’t imagine ever getting used to the putridity of rotted corpses.
There were two left on the other side of the table, and he popped back up, nearly losing his balance as Jax inadvertently sat backwards on the upswing. He corrected himself, but Marcus stumbled and bumped into Skylar.
It was enough to slide the coffee table from the doorframe, and she staggered forward as the table slipped. Marcus made a mad grab for her, but his hands caught nothing but air as she tumbled out of the patio door.
The coffee table bowled over the two zombies, and she reacted fast, rolling away to avoid getting bit in the face. Marcus darted forward, pressing down on the table with his foot to keep the two zombies pinned.
“Get them!” he cried as they thrashed and snarled. He didn’t know how long he could hold them down for.
Skylar scrambled to her knees and lunged forward, stabbing each of them in turn, letting out a sigh of relief as they fell limp.
The relief was short-lived, however, as a ghoul staggered dangerously close to his kneeling girlfriend. Marcus threw himself over her, launching into the air, straight into the zombie’s chest. Jax yelled in alarm as they flew through the air, straight into the pool.
The deep end, of course, they’d ended up in the deep end, with a thrashing corpse.
Dead America The Northwest Invasion | Book 10 | Dead America: Seattle [Part 8] Page 5
