by Ben Reeder
“Crap,” Porsche said. “What about the east side?”
“Good thinking. There are three entrances on that side. We just need to make sure they’re clear before we try to go out.” I went to one of the emergency evacuation maps on one of the pillars and broke the plastic cover so I could pull it out. It showed the building as a T shape with the vertical bar pointing to the west, and the cross bar running north-south. We were located at the bottom of the T, as far west as we could be. Most of the infected seemed to be piled up near the junction of the two bars on the west side. The east side only had a narrow parking lot that abutted on the rear of a residential area.
“There’s the two entrances on the east side,” she said, pointing to them, each one north and south of the vertical bar. “But you can see them from the main doors. What about the north and south entrances at the end of the wings?”
“Maybe, but they’re still too close to being visible from the main entrances. There’s another exit on the east side, though. Right here,” I pointed to a small notch set just north of the T juncture on the east side.
“There is?” she said with surprise in her voice.
“Yeah. Found it last year. Dave’s Rule Number Nine: Always know where the exits are and how to get to them in a hurry or in the dark.” As I quoted my personal survival rule, I folded the map and put it in the right hand cargo pocket of my pants. Porsche followed me as I headed for the door to the main lobby. She started to go for the stairs to our right when we got there, but checked herself when I kept going straight. The guard desk was abandoned, but the lobby wasn’t empty. Deputy Dickhead and one of the guards were standing in front of the south entrance, staring at the mass of people on the other side of the glass doors. The thick security glass would probably hold against the crowd that was there, but I wasn’t keen on seeing how much more it could take. I gestured to Porsche for silence, and we slowly crept along the walkway that ran along the north and west sides of the lobby. Deputy Dickhead was talking into his radio, demanding some backup, while the security guy just stood there with his arms hanging at his sides. I stopped when we came to the most exposed part of the balcony, where it crossed over the foyer for the north entrance and became a catwalk for about twenty feet. Below us, I could hear the shuffle of someone’s feet. I stopped to take a look at the mass of infected on the other side of the doors. Empty eyes stared at the people on the ground level, and I found myself fighting the urge to just run. When I moved again, some primal urge told me to move even more slowly. It took a full minute to cross the intervening twenty feet to the threshold of the east building, but none of the infected caught sight of us, nor did the men who were supposed to be protecting us. I kept on going until I crossed the open work area and reached the windows that looked out over the narrow east parking lot. There was a large group of infected lurking near the south end of the building, but they were mostly just wandering aimlessly. The north side was almost abandoned. All we needed to do was get to the exit.
“Okay, the exit’s clear,” I said softly. Relieved, I pulled out my phone. Now that I had a plan, I needed to coordinate with Maya. The blinking light of a waiting message winked at me as I slid the phone open. The preview menu showed Maya’s number, and I hit the view option expecting a message asking if I was okay. Instead, the words I read made my insides turn to water.
Chapter 3
Xanatos Speedchess
Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative.
~ H. G. Wells ~
Went in to cover a shift at work for June. Can you get a ride home? Maya’s text read. I stifled the urge to curse, but only half succeeded.
“What’s wrong?” Porsche asked quietly.
“My girlfriend went in to work,” I said.
“Doesn’t she work at an old folks’ home or something like that?” she asked. I nodded, for some reason glad she’d remembered.
“Yeah, but if you say that to her face she’ll hurt you. It’s a convalescent and rehab facility.”
“Either way, it’s crowds and sick people. You better tell her to get the hell out of there.” She hadn’t even finished the sentence before I was dialing Maya’s number. She didn’t answer after five rings, and it went to voicemail.
“Baby, it’s Dave. You have got to get out of there, now! I’m headed your way. Text me when you leave.” I closed my phone and took a slow, calming breath. There wasn’t much I could do from here, so I had to get my focus back on handling my own situation. I still had to get out of the building, and I still had to get to Maya. Only the destination had changed.
“So, what now?” Porsche asked.
“Nothing changes. We get out of here. You head to your dad’s place. I go get my girlfriend. Now, we focus on getting you to your car. Where did you park?”
“My truck’s on the north side,” she said. I nodded and headed for the hallway.
“Yeah, they’re just standing outside the doors,” we heard from the stairwell ahead of us. “They just keep staring at me. It’s creepy.” A staticy voice replied, something about not abandoning his post. It didn’t surprise me that they’d posted a guard at the side entrances. I pulled up short right before we got to the open stairwell and turned to Porsche.
“We’re going to take the stairs up to the third floor,” I whispered. “Stay low and don’t make a sound.” She nodded and followed me as I crept to the walkway that led to the north building. The stairs were right next to the entry, and I slowly crept up the steps to the landing between floors. The part of the building we had just left only had two stories above ground, and the one we were going to had three. A glassed in stairwell connected them. Through a narrow gap between the landing and the top of the glass door, I could see the small group of infected waiting at the outer set of doors to the side entrance. Something about what I was seeing struck me as wrong, and I stopped to take a closer look.
It took me almost a minute to see it. None of the infected were pulling at the handles to the door. For all I knew, the outer doors were still unlocked, and the only thing stopping them was the way the hinges worked. Even dogs could be trained to pull on door handles, and they didn’t have opposable thumbs. I slowly shook my head and crept up the next flight of stairs to the walkway that led into the third floor of the north building. I looked around, but no one seemed to be in here either. I’d never heard any part of the center so quiet, and the silence pressed against my ears like something sinister as we crossed the empty floor. The sound of the metal cap of my water bottle seemed too loud in my ears as I unscrewed it and downed a few gulps of water. I heard Porsche curse from the northern windows as I put the cap back on.
“What’s wrong?” I asked as I walked over to her. She pointed to a handful of infected wandering among the parked cars.
“There’s my truck,” she said, indicating a blue light utility truck on the other side of the infected.
“That does change things a little,” I said as I looked down at the latest obstacle.
“What are they doing?” she asked. The question took me aback for a moment, since I thought the answer was more than a little obvious. But Porsche was better with people than I was, and it made a kind of sense that I tended to miss. No one did things for no reason, not even brain damaged cannibals. Keeping that in mind, I started to see a pattern in the way they were moving.
“I think they’re looking for something,” I said slowly. “The question is, what?” A moment or two later, the answer darted out from under a car, on the opposite side from one of the infected. It was a black and white cat, and it moved with the speed of the desperate. It dodged between two of the infected but didn’t manage to escape the reach of a third. For a moment, it squirmed as its captor tried to take a bite out of it. Then it got its back legs against his forehead and went sailing away, leaving the confused cannibal with nothing for his efforts but a handful of loose fur. In a blur of black and white, it was under the cars again. The infected lurched around looking for it, but th
e little ninja feline had learned its lesson well. As the hunters went looking for where they’d last seen it, it rocketed out from under another car several rows down and made for the houses behind the center.
“Thank God!” Porsche gasped as it made the safety of a manicured yard.
“Smart kitty,” I said. “Very smart. Okay, I know how we’re going to get you to your truck. Grab the cords from a few headsets, and those beanbags over by the toss game. And if you find any of the footballs people throw around, grab a couple of those, too. Anything that you think we could throw.”
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Gonna go open a door,” I said as I headed for the stairs. The roof access doors were always locked and only the maintenance team and security had badge access. All I had was a steel bar. Sure, I could bash my way through if I had a few hours, but I didn’t. Well, strictly speaking, I had more than a steel bar. I also had Dave’s Rule Number Eighteen: Know how shit works. Doors have a few weak points, if you can get to them. One is the hinges. The other is the doorknob. Once I reached the door to the roof, I put myself next to the hinges and raised the bar over my head in a two handed grip, then brought it down as hard as I could on the door handle. The shock of the blow stung my hands, but the handle bent. It broke on the second try and clattered to the ground. My hands slid along the smooth surface of the bar as I changed my grip on it, then I slammed the end of it against the opening where the handle had once been. The other side of the handle popped out on the other side on the first hit, then the rest of the inner workings gave way on the next. With nothing to hold the latch in place, the door swung open with only a little fiddling.
My part done, I headed back to the floor to find Porsche dumping a pair of small footballs into a cardboard box.
“What’s all this stuff for?” she asked.
“Distraction,” I answered as we headed for the stairs again. The stairway to the roof was musty and hot. Off to our right we could see the access to the elevator machinery, and right in front of us was the doorway to the roof. The door opened easily enough, but I dropped my backpack against the doorjamb to keep it from closing all the way as we stepped out into the fading light of Monday afternoon. The sun was sinking in the west, making the horizon a forbidding red. I walked slowly to the edge of the roof and took a long look at the view.
“This is one of those moments you’re going to remember for the rest of your life,” I said.
“What?”
“The sun’s setting on the world we know. When it comes up tomorrow, it’ll be on a new world. For the rest of your life, you’re going to look back on this day, and remember where you were when the world ended.” She looked at me with a disbelieving frown.
“You’re getting philosophical now?” she said. I shrugged.
“No, just…aware of the moment. Funny how the game changers are hardly ever pleasant. Okay, moment’s done. You ready to hear the rest of my master plan?”
“You have a plan?” she laughed.
“Dave’s Rule Number Four: Plan ahead and always have a backup plan. We need to get the infected interested in something else. Plan A is to set off a car alarm and hope they go check it out. Plan B is to get their attention on us up here on the roof, draw them over to this side of the building and then make a break for the other side.”
“Do you have a plan C?”
“Nah. Plan B almost always works,” I said as I dug through the box of stuff. She’d grabbed a handful of half sized footballs, a good dozen tossable beanbags and about a dozen of the headsets. I pulled one of the headsets out of the box and pulled the detachable end free, leaving me with just the spiral cord and the heavy plug in base. Dangling the heavier end about two feet from my hand, I spun it around a few times then let it go near the top of its arc. The cord streamed along behind it as it flew in a gentle curve away from the building…and tangled up in one of the decorative trees at the end of the row.
“Why don’t you start with Plan B then?” Porsche asked.
“Because then it would be Plan A, and thus destined to fail,” I said as I hefted one of the beanbags. I hurled it as hard as I could, and it cleared the tree, but when it landed, it barely made a sound and no car alarm went off.
“Don’t aim at the crappy cars. Aim for that yellow Mustang over there.” The car in question was in the middle of the row I’d landed the beanbag on. “The better looking the car, the more likely it has a car alarm.” With her advice fresh on my mind, I grabbed one of the footballs and gave it my best throw. It fell short, and bounced off the hood of a car two spaces before my target. We could hear it hit from the roof, and we saw some of the infected turn that way. Porsche grabbed a football and lobbed it in the same direction. Hers flew in a smooth spiral and hit the roof of the same car mine did, but instead of bouncing off to the side, it did a slow, high arc, hit the roof of the next car, then landed on the hood of the car we were aiming for. The horn started blaring and the headlights went on, and infected started moving toward the noise.
“Whaddya know? Plan A worked! Plan A almost never works. Let’s go,” I said as I broke into a sprint for the door.
Speed was more important than stealth as we pounded down the stairs. The sound of our footsteps clattered off the walls as the second floor went by, then we were at the ground level, facing the door to the call floor. I popped the door open and took a quick peek. A guard was standing with his face pressed up close to the glass doors about fifty yards from us, with his radio up next to his mouth. Directly across from us was the narrow hallway that led to the emergency exit. I looked over my shoulder at Porsche and she gave me a nod. She pulled the door the rest of the way open, and shrugged her purse and duffel bag over her shoulder.
I darted across the open space and didn’t slow down once I was in the hallway. We were ten steps from freedom, but I had to admit to myself that it might get even more dangerous for us the moment we stepped outside the door.
Five steps away, and my doubts grew. Was I really helping Porsche by getting her out of the building, or was I just making sure she died sooner rather than later?
Two steps away, and my hand was almost on the door. Sudden certainty hit me. I knew that there was no question of if she would end up infected staying here. It was only a matter of when. On the other side of that door, she would have a chance.
My hand hit the bar, and I left doubt at the door. I was giving Porsche control over her own fate; it was the best anyone could do right now. The emergency alarm was shrill behind us as we sprinted for the first row of cars. We ducked down behind a gray minivan as the blaring sound was suddenly muted by the door closing, and made our way between the front grills of two more cars before we were forced to slip out to the second row. My shoulders tensed as we crouch-walked behind the parked cars, feeling extremely exposed. I kept my head moving, looking for infected as we went. Every step felt like I was in a horror movie, and that the audience was screaming at me not to go into the dark room. My nerves were wound as tight as a drum by the time we reached the end of the row. Twenty feet of asphalt separated us from the next row of cars. In my head, I flashed back to being a kid, when the road in front of my house became boiling lava or a piranha infested river. Open space seemed almost as dangerous right now.
“Okay,” I breathed. “Last stretch. You ready to make a break for it?” I looked back over my shoulder, but Porsche’s brow creased in uncertainty.
“What are you going to do from here?” she asked.
“I’m going to go get my girlfriend,” I explained.
“On foot? And then what?”
“Yeah. I know some back ways. And then we’re getting the hell out of Dodge. Now, are you ready?” She nodded, and I took off. We stayed low as we crossed the open roadway, then ducked behind the cars. The first fifty yards were fine. The sound of gunshots sounded off to the north as we went, first the crack of single rounds going off, then the harsh hammering of an automatic weapon. More shots came, sounding like a hamme
r, then a group of short bursts alongside the staccato rip of the other gun. I risked a look over the top of a blue sedan to check on the infected, but their attention was still on the car alarm. Another car alarm went off as one of them stumbled against it, probably drowning out the gunshots. We ran out of cars with six spaces left to Porsche’s truck. Another car was parked beside it, and I was guessing it would give us a little cover from the infected that were milling around in front of the building. I turned to Porsche.
“No,” she said before I could open my mouth. I gave her a blank look.
“Huh?” I said feeling particularly nonplussed.
“We’re not splitting up yet,” she said firmly. “There’s no way I’m letting you walk all the way to wherever your girlfriend is, and I’m sure as hell not going to try to get out of town by myself. So, you’re stuck with me. Deal with it.” Porsche’s stock went up a few points in my book as she gave me a determined look. I gave it half a moment’s thought, and realized I didn’t even need to do that. Aside from having a cool head on her shoulders, Porsche was another human being. I couldn’t just leave her on her own. Right now, I was bound by one of my own rules; one Porsche was following without even knowing it. Besides, this was really not the place to argue the finer points of anything.
“Rule Thirteen: Don’t be one of the people who suck when shit hits the fan. Thanks, Porsche. It means a lot to me.” The gunshots stopped, and I turned to her with a frown as we heard a single scream in the distance.
“Oh, God,” she whispered.
“God’s too busy with the dead,” I said softly. “We make our own miracles now.” She nodded and took off for her little Nissan in a crouch.
Chapter 4
Learning Curve
A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind.
~Albert Szent-Gyorgyi ~
I followed Porsche to her truck with a growing sense of dread. In the distance, I could hear occasional gunshots and the wail of a single siren. Horns sounded off to the west of us for a few seconds, but stopped as we got to the door of her little blue Nissan truck. I risked another look over the hood, but the infected were still gathered around the blaring car alarms. Porsche tossed her duffle bag into the truck bed before she unlocked her door and slid in, then reached across and unlocked my door. I crawled in, then pulled it closed behind me as quietly as I could manage.
