by Bible, Jake
“Booking ass is always part of the plan, bro,” Luke replies.
“Don’t push it,” Amy says. “You get to the first pyre and light it up.”
“Bright day,” Joe says, glancing up at the sky. “If Crumb ain’t looking this way then he could totally miss it. But others may see it and realize things are bad. They’ll take advantage.”
“They always do,” Amy says. “It’s a risk we’ll have to take. With how thick the dead are getting, the others will have to make a decision soon. Join up or die down here.”
“Others?” Stella asks. “Are there people still living down here in Denver?”
“Quite a few,” Amy says. “We tried getting everyone together at one point, but some personalities don’t take to being behind fences.”
“You should get an HOA,” I smirk. “They take care of the riff raff right quick.”
“Not helping,” Stella says.
The metal doors begin to warp and groan.
“We should get back up on the helipad,” Joe says. “Bottleneck them on the ramp.”
Stella turns my wheelchair around and we move as fast as possible to get up the ramp and centered on the helipad. I glance around and notice all the support struts holding the helipad together. Support struts that will make great handholds. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.
“Hey, guys,” I start to say, but I’m quickly interrupted by the roof access doors being ripped off their hinges and dozens of Zs streaming out onto the roof.
They whip about, looking like a bunch of rabid terriers hunting for their missing squeaker toys. Then they spot the toys. We are the toys.
A quick undead head count tells me we are up against at least forty of the bastards. It doesn’t take them long to hit the ramp and get wedged between the railings. It also doesn’t take long for the ones jammed at the back to get bored and start looking for new ways to get up at us.
“Go!” Amy yells back at Bo and Luke.
The twins nod and are lost from sight as they climb over the edge of the roof. I get a little queasy just thinking of them climbing down the side of the hospital. Fuck that.
Joe, Mickey, and Trent fall to a knee and aim at the Zs. They each take slow, deliberate shots, not wasting ammunition or time. Each squeeze of the trigger is a headshot, but each squeeze of the trigger happens a lot slower than I’d like. These guys know how to shoot, but they aren’t like Lourdes’s people or like John, Reaper, or Stuart. They are civilians that have gotten good with guns, that’s all.
Not that I can talk much shit. I’m as civilian as they get. Hell, I was better with a spiked baseball bat than I was with a pistol or rifle. At least I was before I lost my arm. Man, I could totally go for some new prosthetic attachments for Stumpageddon. Sucks they got lost along our travels.
The ramp is quickly clogged with dead Zs. But that just gives the ones behind something to crawl over. It almost becomes easier for them. A couple get to the top of the Z pile and actually leap at us, but Amy takes them down fast. She doesn’t have anywhere near the pauses the others have between shots. I’m guessing she has training that the others don’t. Makes sense the way she was talking earlier.
She knows something. She probably knows more than something.
“On our right!” Amy shouts and pivots to blast the heads off three Zs climbing up the helipad’s support struts. She ends them before they can get up over the railing, but they are quickly being replaced by new ones. “Joe!”
“I see them!” Joe shouts.
He gives up on the careful head shots and flicks his M-16 to full auto, spraying the Zs as they scramble up onto the helipad, cutting them off at the legs, turning them into the not so walking dead.
But there are still too many.
Mickey and Trent start scooting back as the Zs coming up the ramp make some serious progress. They’re dropping them, but the Z horde is just too big and they can’t drop them fast enough. I look past the up close and personal danger and see more Zs coming out of the roof access doors.
“We’re going to be trapped in a couple minutes!” Joe yells.
“We were already trapped!” Amy yells back. “So shut up and fire!”
Joe shakes his head, but doesn’t stop pulling the trigger except to eject a spent magazine and slap in a fresh one. He pulls back the slide and puts his rifle back to his shoulder. Then hesitates as two Z heads evaporate in front of him. He jerks back and looks over his shoulder.
“We have a shooter!” Joe yells. “Someone get eyes on him!”
Another three Z heads turn to mist and I realize that Stella and I are the eyes that Joe needs since everyone else is busy shooting Zs and keeping us from getting eaten.
“It had to come from that way!” I shout at Stella, pointing at a far off construction crane that sits idle amongst a never completed building about four blocks away. “Only place that has the height!”
“Hold on!” Stella says and leaves me to stare at the far off crane. She comes back with one of the guys’ packs and rummages through it. “Got it!”
She pulls out a pair of binoculars and puts them to her eyes. I’d ask for a look too, but considering my less than stellar mental capacity, I’d probably just see flying unicorns and space pandas.
Space pandas are a thing, so fuck off.
“I see someone up there,” Stella says. “Big rifle.”
“From that distance? It’d have to be,” I reply.
There are shouts behind us and I try to look back, but my head and shoulder protests instantly and I have to close my eyes tight to keep from screaming and passing out. It feels like my world is made of Jell-O. I take a few deep breaths and things begin to stabilize, but I have a serious feeling that they will never get back to normal.
“Another shooter!” Joe shouts as Stella wheels me around. “Back that way!”
Z heads are popping like balloons at a rigged carnie game. Joe, Amy, and the others slow their firing down, conserving ammo as our mystery helpers drop Z after Z. Half the horde is headless in a matter of seconds. Then the shooting stops and the Zs surge.
“Must be reloading,” I say then we hear shouts from the children’s hospital.
Stella looks through the binoculars again and smiles.
“The shooters are helping everyone else,” she says. “Clearing out the thick groups so Elsbeth can do her thing.”
“Ooh, let me see,” I say, reaching for the binoculars. Stella bats my hand away even though the binoculars are well out of my reach. “No fair.”
“Tough shit,” Stella says.
“Mickey! Trent! Go right!” Amy orders as she and Joe move left.
Leaving us alone as bait.
“Hey!” I shout. “What the hell?”
“Keep your heads down!” Amy yells at us. “Don’t move and you’ll be fine!”
Just a heads up, if you hear someone say “don’t move and you’ll be fine” in the apocalypse that usually means you are fucked. I’d totally tuck my head between my knees and kiss my ass goodbye, but that would hurt too much and I’d probably pass out anyway.
The Zs come right for Stella and me then get cut in half in the crossfire from Mickey and Trent on one side and Joe and Amy on the other. It’s obvious they’ve used this tactic before because they angle their shots so that stray bullets don’t become not so friendly fire. In a couple of minutes, we’re looking at piles of dead Zs and only a few stragglers trying to get around the mess and at our delicious live flesh.
“Clean up the leftovers while I go see if I can secure the door,” Joe says to Mickey.
“I’ll help,” Amy says then glances at us. “You two alright?”
“Just fine,” I say and give a thumb-up. “Nice teamwork there.”
“Teamwork is the only way we’ve survived.”
“Good to hear,” I say. “It’s reassuring.”
Amy is about to continue following Joe, but turns and walks up to us instead.
“We’ve saved your asses, but that doesn�
�t mean you are home free,” she says. “If you’re bringing the Consortium down on our heads, and you have that asshole Kramer with you, then you and your group are way more trouble than we can handle. We’re surviving, not thriving. One hard push and it will tip us into the not surviving category.”
“One good push in the other direction will put you in the thriving category,” Stella replies. “We’re good at the thriving part.”
Amy grins and shakes her head. “Right. Which is why you’re on the run and had to leave your nuked home behind. That’s some good thriving there.”
“You don’t know us,” Stella snaps. “Don’t judge until you do.”
“And you don’t know us,” Amy says, hooking a thumb over her shoulder towards the others. Joe is quickly getting the warped roof access doors put back up. He pulls out a handheld welder from his pack and gets to work while Mickey and Trent put down the last of the Zs one by one with pistols. “See them? We used to never go out without teams of at least a dozen. Don’t have that luxury anymore because we don’t have those numbers anymore.”
“Yeah, survival is a bitch,” I say. “But we just crossed over half the country to get here. We’ve lost a lot of people too, but we’ve also gotten half our people here while dealing with psycho Lizard Jesuses and zombie herds the size of a Bonnaroo crowd.”
“Lizard Jesus?” Amy asks. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Some cult leader guy named Kelvin and his shotgun acolytes,” I say. “We ran into them back in Illinois. No bueno.”
“You ran into Kelvin? Kelvin Holston? And you got away?” Amy asks, looking impressed. “How? No one gets away from the Tomb.”
“Am I the only one that isn’t part of this apocalyptic conspiracy club?” I ask. “How the hell do you know Lizard Jesus?”
Amy frowns and Stella says, “That’s what he’s named Kelvin. My husband is big on the nicknames.”
“Joe? You okay?” Amy calls out.
“Yeah, I got this,” he replies as he continues working on the doors.
Amy crouches next to me.
“Do you think these survivor pockets are random?” Amy asks. “Do you think the cities that have been destroyed just fell on bad luck?”
“No?” I respond. “Yes? You tell me.”
“Nothing is random,” she says. “The reason certain areas have survived is because they have had folks like me, like Kelvin Holston, like Camille Thornberg, keeping things together.”
“And Asheville?” I ask. “We did a good job keeping it together there in Whispering Pines.”
“Bang up job,” Amy says.
“Vance,” Stella says. “Edward Vance.”
Amy laughs then holds out a hand to apologize. “Sorry. Vance was a placeholder. He was prepping the area for Anthony Mondello.”
“That didn’t work out so well,” I say. “I killed them both.”
“Right,” Amy smirks then sees the look on Stella’s face. “You killed Vance and Mondello? You’re that guy?”
“I’m that guy,” I smile then pause. “Wait, what guy? The hero guy? Because if you mean the hero guy then that’s me.”
“Technically the Zs got Mondello,” Stella says. “But that happened because of Jace.”
“I kill by proxy too,” I say.
“Shit,” Amy says, her entire demeanor changing. “You’re that guy. You’re those people. Hmmm.” She’s lost in thought for a few seconds then clears her throat. “What about Kelvin? What happened to him? How’d you get away?”
“Teamwork,” I say. “Kelvin sacrificed himself with some big speech and then let the Zs eat him.”
“Did he quote the Bible?” Amy asks.
“Yep,” I reply.
“Figures,” Amy says. “How many of his people did you get to come with you?”
“None,” I say. “He’d already killed all his followers and turned them into Zs. They were waiting for us in the pit when we came in through the backdoor.”
“All of them? He killed everyone?” Amy gasps.
“Except for some of his shotgun acolytes, but we won the showdown and then it was all over,” I say.
“It was hardly all over,” Stella says. “It was a lot more complicated than that and we lost a lot of our allies, especially the cannies.”
“Cannies,” Amy sighs. “Not too keen on them.”
“No one is,” I say. “But numbers are numbers and they haven’t taken a bite out of anyone yet.”
“Give them time,” Amy says.
Several bursts of gunfire come from the children’s hospital then it goes quiet. Stella wheels me around so I can see and it looks like they have the Zs under control.
“Shooters?” I ask.
Amy holds her hand out and Stella reluctantly gives her the binoculars. She scans the area then shakes her head. “No sign of the shooters.” She pulls the binoculars away and shouts over her shoulder, “Our helpful guests are MIA. Eyes sharp in case they turn their sights on us.”
“Not much we can do up here,” I say. “We’re kind of sitting ducks. If they wanted to kill us they would have already.”
“Doesn’t mean we don’t stay cautious,” Amy replies. She sighs and gives the binoculars back to Stella.
“Is that the pyre you were talking about?” Stella asks, pointing northwest.
“That is,” Amy says, shielding her eyes from the bright daylight. “Good for those boys. Now we just have to hope Crumb is paying attention. That old bastard spends half his time sleeping on the job instead of watching for the pyres. But he’s the only one that will volunteer to stay down here in the city and keep the pyres maintained and ready.”
“Why pyres?” I ask.
“Easy way to communicate without making a lot of noise,” Amy says. “Noise brings the dead.”
“No shit,” I say. “But why not use radios?”
“They can be overheard,” Amy says. “We’ve made that mistake before.”
“We’ve got a guy that can program them to private channels,” I say. “Maybe he could—”
“Tried that,” Amy says. “There’s no such thing as private anymore.”
“Well, I wouldn’t exactly call a pyre private either,” I say.
“Is he always like this?” Amy snaps, exasperated.
“He’s always like this,” Stella says. “Jace likes poking holes in plans and theories.”
“But I’m guessing he hates it when people poke holes in his plans and theories,” Amy says, smirking.
“Detests it,” Stella agrees.
“I’m sitting right here, people,” I say. “No need to be jerks.”
IT’S ANOTHER HOUR BEFORE the chopper returns. Amy and Nick have a quiet heart to heart away from us, both continually looking from us to over at the children’s hospital and back to us. Joe, Mickey, and Trent stay off to the side, their rifles slung casually against their sides. A little too casually. Like that’s how they want it to look. Don’t blame them. They should stay cautious. I would.
“You think they’re going to leave us?” Stella asks. “I’m getting a ‘ditch the new people’ vibe.”
“I don’t think they’ll ditch us,” I say. “Not all of us, at least. They’re trying to figure out what to do with us, though. We may not like their decision.”
There’s the distinct sound of helicopter rotors and I painfully look northwest and see a second chopper heading our way. It’s obviously the backup chopper since the thing looks like it’s being held together with spit and chewing gum as it gets close.
“That looks promising,” Stella says. Then it passes by us and is lost from sight. “Or not.”
Amy walks over and her face is not a happy face.
“We’ve talked it over and right now we aren’t comfortable taking you up to Boulder,” Amy says. “Not until we know more about you and about the numbers coming after you. Once we have more information, we’ll make our decision then.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Stella snaps. “You’re no
t going to leave us up here, are you?”
“What? No,” Amy says. “You have children over there and these buildings are no longer secure. No, we are going to ferry your people back and forth to Buckley until we have you all dropped off. We’ll be able to refuel our helicopters and return to Boulder. Once everyone has had a vote then we’ll come back and let you know what has been decided.”
“Damn, so I guess you do have an HOA,” I say.
“No, we just have a democratic process that helps keep people pacified by thinking that their voices are being heard,” Amy says.
“And how’s that working for you?” I ask.
“As well as anything else these days,” she replies then focuses on Stella. “We are not leaving you and your people to die, alright? If the vote comes out against bringing you in then we will make sure you get safely over the Rockies and on your way to one of the other large enclaves. The Temple or Circuit City.”
“Are they still there?” Stella asks. “Kramer isn’t so sure they are still there.”
“Kramer isn’t as smart as he thinks he is,” Amy says. “And he won’t be a concern anymore. No matter what is decided, Kramer stays with us. We’ll need him.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Because Camille Thornberg needs him,” Amy says. “And that is good enough.”
“Who are you?” I ask. “What the hell did you do before Z-day?”
“I’m Amy Lowden,” Amy replies. “And I worked in a deep hole. I still do.”
“Oh, well, now that that’s cleared up,” I growl. “Please, exile us to an old army base.”
“Air Force,” Amy corrects.
“Fuck you,” I reply.
“Jace,” Stella warns. “Let’s be nice to the woman that has our lives in her hands.”
“At least she has two hands,” I say and try to wiggle Stumpageddon, but am quickly reminded about the gunshot wound in my shoulder. There might be some tears. Might be. “Ow.”
“He lost his arm when he fought off Mondello and kept the man from killing our son,” Stella says. “The Zs didn’t just take that piece of shit, they took my husband’s arm, as well.”
“I am sorry,” Amy says. “I truly am. Everything you’ve said about yourselves is exactly what we need up in Boulder, but we have to assess the entire situation. This is beyond helping some traveling survivors.”
