by Brown, TW
They were even with the backside of the X-shaped Paris Hotel building when Joel signaled for them to halt again. The gunfire had not started back up, but there were occasional shouts coming from up ahead, and they sounded like they were growing nearer.
“Everybody, if you haven’t already…lock and load,” Joel said in a conversational tone and volume that sounded loud in the relative silence.
Joel was surprised when he heard a few sounds indicating that everybody had not, in fact, prepared for a firefight. It was one thing not to draw attention to themselves when it was just zombies. This was about to be a fight to the death with the living. Being quiet was off the table. The sideways look that Debra gave a few of the bikers, and even a couple of their own people who were chambering rounds told him he wasn’t alone in his assessment and shade of disappointment. If he was maybe twenty years younger and even remotely interested in investigating a romantic relationship, she would be the perfect choice. Of course, he also saw such a relationship ending in a shootout where one of them definitely died…maybe both.
“You think this is a good idea?” Reggie muttered, making sure to keep his voice neutral as well as quiet so as not to be overheard.
“I think it’s stupid. And if it were anybody else doing it, I’d wish ‘em luck and then write them off.” Joel brought his own assault rifle to his shoulder and scanned ahead, looking for something moving fast enough to possibly be living.
“Then tell me again why we are—” Reggie started, but Joel cut him off.
“While not by birth, that is basically my son in that tower. I asked my people for volunteers because I made the city off limits. As for you and your people, you can still go back.” Joel folded his arms across his chest, hugging the gun with the barrel pointed skyward.
“Nope. Your group is the one we want to be a part of, and if what I am seeing is any indication, we are on the same page.” Reggie leaned forward and whispered almost conspiratorially, “We had a few of our group we had to do away with after they wanted to try and turn into superheroes. Can’t save everybody…am I right?”
“Indeed.” Joel nodded, but he now placed Reggie on a personal watch list. While he had no trouble dishing out justice to those who stepped out of line, he took no real pleasure in sending anyone to the darkness. Reggie sounded a bit too enthusiastic in sharing the fact that he’d had to “do away with” members of his group.
He had no more time to consider his evaluation of Reggie. Up the street, there was a loud metal bang as a door was flung open and slammed into the concrete wall behind it. Three figures emerged and quickly appeared to be scanning the area. Once satisfied, they dashed across the parking lot that still had a few cars parked haphazardly throughout. They slid in behind a shuttle bus that was on its side and opened a large gym bag that one of them had been carrying.
Joel had them in his sights, but the trio were hunched over whatever it was they were doing and prevented him from seeing anything. After a few moments that dragged for an eternity, the trio got up to a crouch and hurried across the lot and then dove through some hedges, coming out on the back side and racing across what had been East Harmon Avenue towards the two remaining Signature Suites towers.
Figuring that these individuals were part of the enemy’s forces, Joel brought his rifle up to his shoulder. Sighting on the center of one of the men’s backs, Joel squeezed the trigger. His rifle made a muted report that still seemed much too loud despite the muffling apparatus rigged on the end of the barrel of his weapon. The man carrying the duffel staggered forwards as if trying to sprint ahead, but then stumbling over his own two feet.
The man hit the pavement hard and Joel waited for the other two to tend to their fallen companion. The pair never broke stride and threw themselves into some bushes near what looked like some sort of service or emergency entrance after snatching up the bag on the fly.
Joel was sighting on the second one when the duo reached the targeted door. One of them slid something into the edge and made short work of opening the metal emergency door. The second one already had what looked to be a drill or something. A moment later, the door had been removed from its hinges and set aside.
Joel was trying to figure out what they were up to when a loud noise erupted from the darkness of the gaping stairwell. Just as suddenly, the pair sprinted away. Joel didn’t need to look around to know exactly what had just been done. Still, he couldn’t help but appreciate the tactic as he scanned the area. Zombies were all turning around or adjusting their course and heading for that noise.
“The next stage of warfare,” Joel muttered to nobody in particular. “Use the zombies as shock troops and then probably draw them back out and clean up.”
“I was gonna suggest something along those lines at our next meeting,” Debra snorted. She sounded annoyed at watching what was obviously an idea she’d been contemplating being put to use…from the other end in a way.
Joel watched as the undead came to the loud siren sound that came from whatever device the duo had tossed into the now wide-open building. He noticed some movement in the shadows, but he couldn’t be sure that his eyes hadn’t been playing tricks. As he tried to focus in, he felt a hand grip his shoulder.
“Up there,” Debra whispered into his ear.
Pulling his eyes from the binoculars, Joel followed her hand to where she pointed. Up the tower his gaze roamed until he reached about halfway. A section of windows had been busted out, and groups of bedsheets tied together were being draped through the opening.
“That is a very bad idea,” he whispered, bringing his field glasses up again. “But I think they are running out of choices.”
Five floors up, smoke was starting to trickle from a few of the open balcony sliding glass doors. Desperation was obviously the prevalent mood inside the tower. Zombies were coming in from at least one point that Joel knew of, and from the looks of it, he was certain that the front had been breached already. Hadn’t he heard something on the radio about the undead coming up some of the stairwells?
When he pulled his glasses down again, he saw that everybody was staring at him. A few of the bikers appeared uncertain and that same look was on the faces of more than one of his own people. He’d been very clear on the mission, and this possible change of heart was troublesome in Joel’s mind.
“If you can’t handle this, then go. This is the last chance to turn around,” he said as calmly as possible.
“This just ain’t our fight, Hoss,” one of the bikers said as he clapped Reggie on the shoulder while he edged past and started back the way they’d come.
Four more bikers, gazes aimed at the tracks and obviously avoiding eye-contact, quickly followed. Joel watched them passively, once glancing over at Reggie to see the man’s reaction. To his credit, the man was just as stone-faced as Joel hoped he appeared at the moment. When he brought his attention back to the group, he noticed two of his own people making raised eyebrow gestures to each other. Then he noticed that Debra had left his side.
She’d moved past the group, and at first, Joel thought she might be dismissing things and simply taking it on herself to get the group back to heading for their objective. Then she stopped walking and turned very slowly.
The large blade in her hand caught the sun just right and flashed a beam of light into the eyes of one of the individuals with the waggling eyebrows. Joel knew what she was about to do and felt a smile curve the corners of his lips.
“You knew the rules,” she whispered before she gripped the first of the pair by a handful of hair and slid her blade across the man’s throat. “Desertion is not acceptable.”
“We weren’t deserting,” the other person yelped, unable to move quick enough to avoid a spray of blood across the face from his would-be companion.
“And where did you think you would go if you left us?” Debra took a step towards the man, allowing the other to drop unceremoniously to the tracks. With one booted foot, she pushed the body over the side where it landed wi
th a meaty smack on the road below. “Did you think you might just head back to the vehicles and wait it out? Or perhaps you thought to take one?”
The man opened his mouth and snapped it shut with an audible click. “I’ll stay,” the man whispered after a moment where the tension grew as the sounds of the man below being ripped apart and feasted upon carried on the desert wind.
“Too late for that,” another voice said from behind the man causing him to start and then attempt to spin around.
In one swift motion, Will Barnes drove his KABAR up under the man’s ribs, yanked it free, and shoved him from the tracks. There was a cringe-inducing crack of bone as the man’s legs shattered.
Joel glanced down, curious why there’d been no scream. A pool of darkness was spreading from the body and the man looked up, his mouth open wide, but no sound came forth.
As a few of the undead shambled over and knelt to begin clawing and biting into the newest offering to fall from above, the man finally found his voice. It started as a weak sound and eventually grew to a shriek.
“Musta knocked the wind from him,” Will sniffed as he wiped his blade and shoved it back into the sheath on his hip.
“You want me to go run my guys down?” Reggie asked.
Joel glanced over his shoulder at the fleeing figures that had left at a walk but now obviously ran for all they were worth. He shook his head and returned his gaze to the tower and the sheet that had dropped far enough so that somebody might be able to get themselves about ten or fifteen feet from the ground before they would have to let go and drop.
“They weren’t one of us and hadn’t ever stepped a foot inside our community,” Debra explained when Reggie seemed to be confused by the response.
Joel didn’t listen to any more of the talk. He edged past and resumed his trek towards the towers. He’d seen a few people looking out in their direction, but obviously self-preservation had taken over as the first person flung a leg over the rail of the balcony and planted his or her feet against the edge before pushing out and lowering themselves with a hand-over-hand method.
Picking up the pace, Joel continued to scan the area in the direction that the pair who’d popped off the door and left the noisemaker vanished. By the time he and his group had reached the intersection of Harmon Avenue and Audrie Street, he’d managed to catch one more glimpse of something moving too fast to be one of the living dead.
They’d been moving in a crouch and using the abandoned vehicles that were becoming a bit more prevalent in this area for some reason as cover. They’d crossed Audrie and made their way towards the parking structure across from the towers. All they needed to do now was cross Harmon and they would be on the same block. That was the easy part.
Below them, on the streets, the undead were plentiful. In some places, there were so many that the entire section of road would be impossible to cross as the zombies were packed in shoulder-to-shoulder. These groups were starting to mass up and collect others as they moved in the general direction of the planted noisemaker.
Joel signaled a halt as they watched the first person reach the bottom of the improvised bedsheet emergency exit rope. The individual looked around and then dropped. As soon as he or she landed, they rushed the nearest zombie and took it down.
Joel expected the person to make a run for it in some predetermined direction that would hopefully provide safety. He was momentarily surprised when the person ran for the busted open door, stabbing and chopping through the numerous zombies that had reached this particular opening. When the person disappeared into the dark opening where the door had been, Joel understood. His guess was confirmed a few seconds later when the person emerged with the device and took off through the palm trees and headed away from his position and along Harmon.
Moments later, the person vanished around the corner on the far side of the driving range that sat across the street from the towers: Topgolf or something, Joel believed was the place’s name. He looked up and was surprised to see the bedsheet rope being hauled back up.
“Wonder how they chose the person for that job?” Debra said with the slightest hint of amusement in her voice. “The person either lost a lottery draw, pissed somebody off, or was brave to the point of stupid.”
“Well, it worked.” Joel pointed as the stream of undead changed course, moving away from the doorway.
“Yeah, so what’s our next move?” Reggie asked with a dismissive shrug of the shoulders. “Thought we were here to recue your people and increase the numbers of our army.”
Joel made sure to clear his face of any emotion before he turned to face the man. “Yes, but this is the part where we assess the scene and then choose the path least likely to have us joining the numbers of the dead heads.”
“I say we hop down onto the roof of that credit union drive-thru,” Will suggested, indicating the nearby single-story building.
Joel nodded and the team started making the jump one by one. When it was Joel’s turn, he thanked whatever powers-that-be for his relatively good health. His desire to stay fit made it less likely that he would blow a knee or break his hip. Still, when his feet left the relative safety and sturdiness of the monorail track, his mouth went dry and his bowels clenched. The landing was much worse than he expected and for a moment he thought that perhaps he’d shattered both his knees despite his tuck-and-roll landing.
A hand appeared in front of his face and he looked up to see Debra offering him some help to his feet. He accepted, and when she pulled him up, she kept the momentum going enough to bring Joel in close so that she could whisper in his ear.
“Your landing was shit…if you’re hurt you need to shake it off in front of these pricks…and I want to be the one to kill that prick, Reggie, when this is over.”
Joel pulled back and regarded the woman with a raised eyebrow. Was she that good at reading his expressions, or was he that bad at hiding them?
“Last straw was when he wanted to know if he should kill off his people. That was where you drew the line,” Debra said softly, barely moving her lips so that Joel wasn’t sure if he’d just been fortunate enough to read them, or she had indeed spoken loud enough so that he could barely hear her.
Joel cleared his head once again as he regarded Debra. He felt a twinge of concern at her obvious ability to read him. He would have to make certain that he maintained somewhat of a poker face in her presence.
When the last person finally made it across, the entire group climbed to street level on the backside of the building. The few zombies in the parking lot were easily taken down by the time everybody was on the ground and Joel started off towards Harmon on the direction opposite of what the person carrying away the noisemaker had gone.
There was a small alcove on the corner with what looked like a power meter setup against the back wall. That would allow them to climb up and over easier. Joel decided that he should go first in order to assess the scene.
He was just pulling himself up to the top of the wall when a blast of feedback like you would hear from a bullhorn echoed up and down the streets. He froze, initially fearing that they’d been spotted and things were about to get nastier if that were somehow possible.
“You have refused all my demands that you surrender yourselves,” a familiar female voice crooned. “I promised your salvation and you spurned my gift. How could you refuse to be able to sit at the feet of God? Is living a life steeped in sin and evil so precious to you? And now…you will perish. Your death will come to you at the hands…and teeth of those who, like you, refused his mercy when it was offered freely.”
“I’ve got ‘em,” Debra hissed. She pointed to the pink-hued building across the street. “It’s coming from the Carriage House.”
Joel had almost narrowed it down himself and was glad for the confirmation that he’d been looking in the correct general direction. The only problem facing them was that the building was surrounded at least twenty deep from what he could see. The brick wall that ran along the side of th
e building had been breached in at least three places. Two locations looked as if cars had crashed through and one had obviously been blown open by some form of explosives.
“You can try to send your people down one at a time, but eventually you will run out of bodies,” the female voice continued. “We will just keep planting those noisemakers. Your undead brothers and sisters will keep coming in waves. Perhaps you can save us all the time and just come down and accept their embrace. Your fate is sealed…the sooner you accept it the better.”
“Okay, we’ve tip-toed as much as possible. It is time to get our hands dirty,” Joel said after the last member of the team had climbed over the wall to now stand inside the decimated grounds of the Signature Towers.
He hadn’t been able to tear his eyes from the one tower that had been practically demolished. The debris strewn about reminded him of what he’d seen on television a few years back when a bunch of warped radicals had crashed airplanes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. In his mind, it didn’t matter what religion you followed, the moment you started calling for the death of people who did not see things your way…you were perverting the ideology, and thus, a danger to the world around you.
His secondary mission here was to extract Conrad and his people in order to bulk the numbers of his community. His first task was to rid the world of the plague of this particular band of zealots. He shook his head to clear the doubts. Shouldn’t rescuing Conrad come first? That had been the mission he recruited his people for. The idea of adding to their numbers needed to be a priority…didn’t it?
“We can hit both,” Debra said, startling Joel. He hadn’t realized he’d been thinking out loud.
“I think we would be best served to keep our group together.” Joel’s eyes flicked towards Reggie. The man had the look of a person seeing a buffet after being deprived food for weeks as he eyed the zombies in the distance that were clustered around the main entrance to the first of the two remaining towers.
