by Jack Stewart
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
First things first: I took a backpack from a wall hook that some construction worker had left when they had closed up shop. I stuffed it full of bottled water and some of the canned food in the site manager’s office. That dude must have really liked to eat canned shit.
Then I popped open the fridge, noticed the power was off, and shoveled as much food into my face as I could. I’d eat, pee, digest, then figure a way out. In that order. As I polished off the last of the salami and cheese my eyes drifted along the wall of the trailer and spotted a fire extinguisher. Spray the bastards in the face as I ran? No. Use the extinguisher as a club? Fuck no. Maybe use the axe bolted to the wall…an axe! Primo killer zombie stick! I felt like I had just picked up my first weapon in a video game! A ten point Achievement for me! Well, second since I had already had the pipe. Whatever. I guess my next weapon would be a hand gun, followed by a shotgun, and then a rifle. Sometime later at a Level 25 Badass or some shit, I’d get a fully automatic rifle. I giggled quietly knowing I was losing my mind and had to pinch myself to stop and get back to planning. Although it would turn out later that I’d find the shotgun before the pistols.
I took the axe off of its hook and looked at the shiny, shiny instrument of death. It had a long, curved black handle with a rubber palm shaped grip. Nice. The blade was wide on one side and had a thick, blunt hammer on the other. Chop and smash. Bonus!
I set the pack and the axe by the door then carefully made my way down to the other end of the trailer into the small bathroom there. I walked inside and closed the door behind me. It was nearly pitch fucking black. I opened the door and reached for the light switch and click…nothing! The power was out.
I shrugged and opened the door wide to let in some light, dropped my drawers, and peed as quietly as I could. You ever try to pee quietly as a girl? It’s easy for a guy: just point your deal towards the side of the bowl. For a girl to do that, well, you had to hover and rotate and my leg was not in shape to either hover or rotate so I peed as quietly as I could. Which is to say that I peed quite loudly. The fucking things outside must have had bionic hearing, a water sports fetish, or both because I could hear them getting all worked up as I tinkled. I finished and sat stock still on the toilet listening to see if voiding my bladder had just cost me my life. After a few minutes of silence with nothing else cooking outside I pulled up my panties, reached for the toilet’s handle…and froze as my fingers started to push down. I could hear the water begin to trickle as I stood there fighting sixteen years of “flush the toilet after peeing” habit tried to kill me.
One flush I thought, frozen there leaning over the toilet and holding my breath, and the dead come to play. I slowly let out my breath and pulled my hand away from the toilet. Whew!
With that episode, I established Rule Number One…no, not “flushing a toilet can get you killed,” dipshit: Force of habit can get you killed. Although flushing a toilet can get you killed in certain cases (like this one) but not as a general rule.
I stood there for a good long while contemplating death and toilets letting my head loll back while looking up at the ceiling. There was a fan there. A big fan. The kind that are designed to pull out all the nasty gasses construction workers expel as they do their duty (hee, hee, duty. Get it? Doody? Doo? Poop? Never mind). The fan also makes a ton of noise to cover the sounds of evacuating bowels so that the cute secretary out in the main office of the trailer would not be offended. I glanced at the light switch on the wall behind me: there was only one. If the power had been on….well the lights would have come up, the fan would have come on making a huge racket like it did yesterday, and I’d have more company then I could shake a stick at. And I can shake a stick at a great many things.
Rule Number One, folks. Rule Number One.
I closed my eyes with my heart thundering in my chest. At the rate I was going, good old Darwin was going to take me right the fuck out of the gene pool pretty darn quick. I opened my eyes and looked up at that big old fan and saw light coming in through it. Maybe I could…nah. The fan was bolted into place. But maybe…
I walked back into the main office and looked up to see three very large skylights. Large enough, in fact, that a certain teenage girl could, with the help of a stepladder, get her ass up there, open the skylight, and get out onto the roof. But where to go from the roof?
I peeked out the east side windows and saw that the trailer was only eight feet from the partially completed framework of the building. From the top of the trailer, I could jump across to the second floor and find a way out of the construction site from there. Worst case scenario, I’d have to come back to the trailer and think up another plan.
Good plan? No.
Good enough? It would have to be.
I opened the door to the equipment storage portion of the trailer. There were enough ladders there to get me to the moon but I wasn’t going to need them.
I pulled out an eight foot extension ladder, set it up beneath the nearest skylight, and climbed up to the top. The window cranked open easily letting in the warm, humid stench of the dead. I could hear them farting away below the trailer and wondered what they hell they had been eating to create such a stink…oh yeah.
Well, then I wondered, who they had been eating to create such a stink? Russians? Portugese? Vietnamese? Spicy Thais? Pickled Germans? Fermented Americans? Ugh and good god man! Whoever (whomever?) their main course had been, they had been damn near toxic! The stink!
I could hear them grunt, burp, and fart their way around the construction site but nothing indicated they knew I was here. I cranked open the skylight until I had enough room to fit through then climbed back down and grabbed my pack and axe.
Before I climbed up again, I peeked out the window on the east side of the trailer and looked out. Ten stiffs had wandered in. On the west side…well…oh fuck seems to sum up the situation nicely. Apparently the dead were gearing up for another full blown demonstration because the whole construction site on this side was filling up faster than a Pink! concert. Or is it P!nk? Whatever.
Worse, one of the more put together bastards was looking directly at the trailer, not moving about randomly, just standing completely still and looking.
Bad news.
Maybe he was the one getting excited about my pee. Must have been a lawyer when he was alive. Or a pervert.
I backed away from the window, grabbed my gear, and climbed up the ladder. I slipped my pack and axe through the window, then followed. The metal of the top of the trailer was cool and dusty as I lay there flat on my stomach. My leg throbbed a bit but hurt less than yesterday. That was good. The trailer had a two foot high wall of metal surrounding the edge I guess to hide the air conditioning unit or some such or maybe make it harder for thieves to get up on the roof. That was really good. Either way it concealed me from the folks below. I slowly and carefully raised my head up and peeked over the edge until I could see just the tops of the dead’s heads (Dead Heads, get it? Grateful Dead fans? Nothing? Whatever.). Most were still moving about blissfully (blissfully?) unaware that breakfast was just a few feet above their heads. Except the Lawyer. He was still zeroed in on the door of the trailer. That was bad. He might be a problem when I stood up to make my jump. In fact, standing up was going to be a problem. As soon as I stood up and made a run for it, I was going to attract the attention of the Lawyer, at the very least, and most likely any other dead who happen to be looking my direction.
Fuck.
The ladder. Maybe I could use the ladder as a bridge to cross the gap. I would have to slide it over nice and slow then crawl over it myself. Not the fastest way, but maybe better than popping up like a Jack in the Box and leaping over the gap all flashy and such.
I twisted around and looked back down the skylight. Pulling that sucker up quietly was going to be a bitch and I’d have to hope that any of the dead below who might see the edge of the ladder being lifted might not care since it was not edible, then slide the ladder a
mere five feet above the heads of the walkers below, then crawl over the gap hoping not a one looked up or caught me moving out of the corner of its eye. I lay back down on the roof with a sigh. It was definitely something some twisted programmer would make you do is some dumb zombie apocalypse video game (like Dead Island, maybe. God what a crapper that was) but I was not going to take that chance. So jumping over it would be.
I peeked over the side again. The Lawyer was still staring at the door. What to do? Throw a can over its head and hope to distract it? Wait until he drifted away? Turns out, a sprinter would be my salvation.
As I lay there trying to think up a plan, I heard that terrible scream of rage that froze my blood. Je! Sus! That sound terrified me. Somewhere very close by, someone was about to die. I peeked my head up just in time to see every walker in the lot turn towards that scream and begin to trot on their way. Soon they had gotten up to a full jog and cleared out of the lot like teenagers leaving party after the cops arrived. Or the parents. Or the geeks.
Yeah, it was that fast.
Except the Lawyer. He just stood there looking at the trailer. I think he liked me.
No matter. It was time to go. Once the bulk of the dead had cleared the construction site fence, I jumped to my feet, tossed my pack and axe over, then launched myself landing on the concrete of the second floor with nary a stumble giving any straggling dead below the chance for a nice up-skirt shot. I’d have to get some pants sometime soon.
Mind the gap!
I heard the Lawyer grunt as if startled to think that he had been right all along. He let out a long groan and began to trot towards the stairs that led to the second floor. Normally his hoot’n and holler’n would have attracted all kinds of dead but the masses were too busy following the much louder sound of the sprinter. I put on my pack, picked up my axe, and moved to the head of the stairs. I waited there listening for the Lawyer as he closed in on me. I stood just to the left of the stairs and waited until his still nicely combed head of hair popped up over the edge of the floor then buried my axe in his skull all the way down to his neck.
He let out a grunt in the form of a question, kind of like ‘Huh?’ as if surprised that there was an axe in his head, then tumbled down the stairs. I waited to see if this bit of excitement had attracted the attention of any other dead and when none showed up, I wiped the axe head off on some discarded rags and plotted my next move while establishing Rule Number Two: Always clean off your gear.
Up or down? Down lead to the street where somewhere nearby a sprinter was chasing down its next meal. Up lead to…well I didn’t know what up lead to, so up I went. Turns out up was the right decision. The tenth floor had a partially completed connection on the north side of the building that crossed over the street to another partially completed building and much larger construction site. I jogged over far above the masses of dead streaming south below me. I focused on the path ahead through the maze of partially completed walls until I reached the north end where another bridge connected to yet another building.
People had been protesting the construction of this place for nearly a year before the Event kicked off. The buildings were a line of upscale richity rich apartments that stretched for miles connected to shopping centers, theaters, parks, and such with bridges high off the ground so that you could just walk to wherever you needed without having to sully yourself by using the streets and maybe bumping into commoners or bums and such.
These bridges would allow me to get within a mile or two of the police station without ever having to set foot on the street. Great! Now all I would have to do is watch for any stragglers that might have drifted up into the buildings. Unlikely, but since this thought sounded like a good rule, I christened it Rule Number Three: Never assume. Because it makes an ass out of you and me. Get it? Ass out of u and me? Assume? Well, ok, it makes a meal out of me and a cannibal out of you at least. Still don’t get it? Whatever.
As I moved north from building to building, the construction of the apartments became more and more complete until I hit the first newly completed structure. I looked down to the street below and could see that the fence was still up so no one had moved in just yet and the corridor connecting this building to the next was closed with an industrial looking gate locked shut. So I made my way up to the roof where they had built a series of parks connected by an elegant sky bridge from one building to the next. Neat! I walked through the peaceful park and over to the north edge of the building to look at the last two sections of the apartment complex. Both were finished and both had cars in the parking lots around them signaling to me that they had been occupied. I peered down to the tenth floor where the sky bridge connected the empty building I was in to the inhabited one next door and was relieved to see a very solid, locked gate closing off the bridge. I could also see things moving in the windows of the apartments that had had people living in them. Looks like this was my last stop. As a matter of fact, I would go back a section to the last building that didn’t have walls put up yet so I could see the entire floor I was on. That way no sneaky dead could jump me. Moving through a dark apartment complex, inhabited or no, just didn’t sit well with me.
But before I could get cracking, some of those things in the completed apartment building across the street apparently had spotted me and wanted to tell their friends about it. They unleashed a series of unholy screams that froze my feet to the ground. At that point two things should have happened: first, I should have pissed my panties and all down my legs. Uncool and certainly unladylike. But I had already completely peed out earlier. Second, those things should have been on me in a flash but some were locked inside their apartments and could only pound fruitlessly (because they had no fruit. Get it?) on the locked doors or tear about the apartment building looking for a way to reach me. This last thing bought me enough time to get moving a come up with Rule Number Four: Keep moving! Freezing in place when sprinters are around will only get you a ménage à trios, (à quatour, à cinq, à plus?) and not in the good way. You know what I mean, you pervert.
So I bolted back the way I came. If I was lucky, the sprinters would be stuck in the inhabited apartment building. If I was sort of lucky, they’d get out but get stuck in the locked down, new apartment building.
I was not lucky. I was not even sort of lucky. In fact, I was really, really unlucky: They got out of the building faster than people leaving a surprise showing of an M. Night Shyamalan movie and were hot on my ass.
Not only was I really, really unlucky, but apparently Lady Luck herself was a zombie. A large collection of sprinters broke through the gate of the first apartment building just about the time I reached the sky bridge of the empty one. I heard the gate come crashing down as I flew down the stairwell. By the time I had gotten halfway down to the ground floor, the sprinters had broken through into the new apartments and were rushing towards the sky bridge. I reached the street and took off as fast as I could towards the fence that surrounded the construction site just as the sprinters had reached the bridge and spotted me. At that point I got my first break as the dumb ass sprinters who saw me launched directly off of the bridge and down to the street from ten stories up.
Splat.
Splat, splat, splat!
Pop!
That’s the sound of the last one’s head popping like a water balloon as it hit the street. I would have found this amusing had all the sprinter ruckus not attracted the attention of the walkers scattered about the street around me. Apparently, they had found the spectacle of sprinters base jumping down to the street amusing as well for they stood there a whole five seconds before realizing the something alive was running through their midst. Seeing me shoot by them, they got moving.
But I had my wind up and was putting more and more distance between me and the shufflers. After a few minutes with no one screaming behind me, it seemed that I had thrown off the sprinters. I slowed down to a respectable jog and then stopped when I was within a mile or so of the police station. I stopped, not
because I was exhausted and not because the dead had stopped following me. In fact I could see them a few blocks behind me waving their hands in the air like they just didn’t care (which, in fact, they did not care) still trailing after me and hoping for a bit or two. Or three. No more than that because there were several hundred trotting along now and that’s all they would get before there was nothing of me left to be eaten.
No, the reason I stopped was because, a good mile away from the police station, the police had thoughtfully erected a ten foot high concrete barricade across the entire street to keep out the dead. Unfortunately, it looked like it was going to keep me out as well.
I looked to the left and to the right and saw that they had done the same at each street as far as I could see. They had also sealed up the ground floor windows and doors. That might be good news if there were people alive on the other side. The bad news is that I couldn’t see a way in.
Behind me the dead were closing in and I had to make a decision. Somewhere along the wall there had to be an entrance and it wasn’t here. I mentally flipped a coin and decided to head west away from the city center and hopefully towards fewer dead. I took off trying to keep a pace that was faster than the dead but not so fast that I would tire out. I might be in for a long run.
A few minutes after I left, the ever growing crowd of dead arrived at the wall, carefully observed that it was not edible, saw me shagging ass to the west, and recommenced their pursuit. I figured the wall would go a mile to the west if the Police had erected a giant square. Turns out I was right for the first and last time that day. I saw the edge of the wall coming up on my right. I hoped that I would turned the corner and see and entrance. Otherwise it might be another mile or more until I could get around to the north side of the square. Maybe when I rounded the corner, I could ditch the dead behind me. So I trotted onward as the edge of the barricade approached wondering what would get me first: the dead behind me, a sprinter that I happened to pass close enough to, or, oh, my god, the great wall of dead that I nearly ran into as I rounded the corner.
