“Yeah,” Steve said, a frantic note in his voice. “And we can’t go down there!”
“Let’s check it out,” Roger said calmly but with authority.
He turned and noticed that Peter had already done so. He was the type who didn’t wait for a consensus of opinion but made an affirmative move. Roger trotted over to him.
“Most of the gates are down,” Peter said, staring through one of the giant grids of transparent Plexiglas bubbles that faced down into the building. Roger peered through another of the bubbles.
“I don’t think they can get into the stores,” Peter told him.
From their vantage point, the two troopers were only able to see a small segment of the interior. It was a square plaza with a garden beneath the sunroof of transparent bubbles. The space was open all the way down to the garden, which was only two stories below. Pathways to the entrances of the shops generated from the garden like spokes from the hub of a wheel. All but one of the heavy metal cage gates that protected the stores were down and locked into position.
Roger could see only three or four zombies tottering about. They bounced off the locked gates and would probably wander into the unlocked one eventually.
Peering around the bubble, Roger could see that halfway up the wall a balcony railing surrounded the entire place. There was a second level of stores with the same cagelike gates sealing off the entrances. As far as Roger could tell, none of the ghouls had made it up to the balcony—yet.
Fran and Stephen noticed the two troopers’ fascination with the bubbles and jogged over to see what all the interest was about.
“I haven’t seen any of them up on the second floor,” Roger told Peter.
“The big department stores usually use both floors. You probably have to take an escalator up to those floors from inside the store.”
“If we can get in up top—” Roger replied, but Peter was already off, looking across the rest of the expansive rooftop.
Suddenly, he ran toward a series of other housings that jutted up out of the otherwise flat surface. Curious, Roger followed.
Fran was still mesmerized by the scene below the plastic bubble. “What are they doing here?” she asked Steve. “Why do they come here?”
“Some kind of instinct,” Steve answered. The profundity of his next statement was almost a parody. “Memory . . . of what they used to do. This was an important place in their lives.”
With morbid fascination, they watched the zombies, who wandered aimlessly over the plaza. Some tried the gates but could not budge them. One, a woman, wandered out of the single opened shop, an appliance store. As the female creature left, she dragged a toaster idly behind her, pulling it by its power cable as it scraped loudly on the floor.
Peter and Roger reached an installation of large reflectors mounted in an intricate metal skeleton that stretched across a large area of the roof’s surface. Behind the structures, a large power generator could be seen.
“Solar screens,” Peter said quietly. A scheme seemed to be forming in his mind.
“Can’t be enough to power this place,” Roger stated.
“Emergency system, maybe.”
“It’s pretty lit up in there,” Roger recalled.
“Guess the power’s not off in this area,” Peter said to Roger’s back as the big white man trotted off to another protruding structure on the rooftop. “A lot of Philly’s still lit,” Peter continued to no one in particular. “Could be nuclear.”
But Roger wasn’t listening. He had found something very exciting. “Hey, look at this,” he called to his three companions. He was peering down through a wire-hatched skylight. There were several of these skylights laid out over this particular area of the roof. He moved to another one, almost as if he were a voyeur in a porno house looking through the peepholes. Peter moved to the first. Fran and Steve ran over to see what this excitement was about.
“These don’t go down into the mall,” Roger exclaimed. “What the hell is this?”
Fran and Steve peered down into the darkness, wondering what the attraction was that this roof had for the two men. All Fran and Steve wanted was to get back on the helicopter and fly off in the opposite direction to this place. It gave them the creeps. Any moment now they expected the zombies to charge up the roof and attack them. Each moment they lingered was precious. They wanted to exploit as many hours of daylight as they could and possibly make it to Canada, where they hoped the situation was different or at least improved.
Peter, in his steadfast, fastidious manner, pulled a flashlight from his utility belt. He had stayed in full uniform all the while. Roger, in the meantime, had stripped off all the police paraphernalia except for his ammunition belt and pistol holster.
Peter shone his light beam down into the space. The floor appeared to be only about seven feet below the window.
“Damn,” Peter emitted as he saw that there was absolutely nothing in sight: clear light gray floor, clear light gray walls.
“Hey, over here,” Roger called out as he moved to another window. “There’s something here.”
Peter ran over and shone his beam down again. They could see a vast array of cardboard cartons . . . hundreds of them.
“Storage?” Roger asked.
“Civil defense,” Peter surmised as he moved the light beam. It illuminated a collection of large drums, stacked floor-to-ceiling and running deep past the line of vision. On the face of each drum was the familiar symbol of a triangle within a circle, and the letters “C.D.”
“And boxes of canned food!” Roger cried out happily, like a kid finding a toy.
“How do we get down there?” said Stephen. He just wanted to get off the rooftop, either back into the copter or inside the building. He felt vulnerable and exposed on the open rooftop.
For the first time since they’d disembarked from the helicopter, Peter acknowledged Steve’s presence. With a sneer on his face, he destroyed Steve with one glance. Then he brought his rifle butt down against the glass and stared directly into Steve’s eyes as the shattered pane crashed to the floor below.
They all peered with awe into the vast space. In places, the darkness was interrupted by shafts of sunlight that drifted in from the various skylights. The barren space was very quiet.
Peter shouldered his rifle, replaced his flashlight and dropped, feet first, into the room. He stood for a moment, silhouetted in a sun ray, waiting, watching, as if he were a hunting dog scenting the prey. Then he readied his rifle, looking this way and that across the large room.
“OK,” he called quietly, and Roger dropped catlike to the floor.
The two men instantly slung their rifles and moved to the food cartons. They had prearranged that they would carry the big boxes to the spot directly under the open skylight to facilitate Steve and Fran’s entrance into the semi-darkened room.
In a few moments, moving quickly and without speaking, they had constructed a pyramid out of the cartons. It seemed as if they had designed a kind of stairway to heaven—except that this stairway could only lead to a greater hell with the monotonously circling zombies waiting below. The creatures had nothing but time on their side.
Fran was shaking as she watched the two troopers piling box upon box. Unsure of herself, she clutched Stephen’s arm as he helped her get her footing on the cartons. Then she reached for Roger’s outstretched hand and he guided her down the rest of the way. An anxious Steve followed, but whether his anxiety was for Fran or himself, it was hard to tell.
Peter had not waited for the two “civilians” to enter. He was already off, as if on some dangerous mission in an exotic faraway land. He had no patience for the two neophytes. He had already written Steve off as a weakling who, although he could pilot the helicopter, was of no use on the ground. And Fran, while she was certainly spunky, was a woman, and according to Peter, subject to overemotionalism.
In the enormous room, Peter noted only two doors, one at either end. The big trooper moved up to one of them as Roger came up behind him.
Roger’s gun was readied.
Peter turned the doorknob. A click told him that it was unlocked, and he gave Roger a familiar nod. Roger stood several feet back, his rifle aimed directly at the door and ready to fire. Then, with a sudden, commando-like motion, Peter threw the door open and ducked away flat against the wall. Roger stiffened, his finger all but pulling his rifle trigger, but there was no apparent danger.
Roger shivered slightly and took in a sharp breath. He hadn’t realized that he had been holding his breath the whole time Peter was turning the doorknob. The blond trooper was determined not to let the other man see his fear. Roger realized that in order to gain Peter’s respect, he had to be as coldhearted and precise as the big trooper. And, even at a time like this, respect was very important to Roger.
It was quite obvious to Roger that Peter had become impatient with Fran and Steve. And, since they were Roger’s friends, he felt that he had to become even fiercer and more courageous to make up for his friends’ lack. It was so ingrained in him that he had to please the authority figure, that even while his very life was in danger, he could only think about gaining Peter’s approval and acceptance.
The door opened into another vast room, which seemed to be about the same dimensions as the first room and also contained stacks of C.D. supplies.
The troopers moved cautiously through the door into the area. The room was also empty, and the sun’s rays pierced through the darkness from the skylights in this room as well. The room was dead quiet, and there was a door at the other end of it.
“Double damn,” Roger cried out. “Looks like a free lunch, buddy.”
In the first room, Stephen had started to open one of the cartons.
“Spam!” Fran said with disgust.
“You bring a can opener?” Roger asked as he walked back into the room.
“Oh.” Fran looked disheartened.
“Then don’t knock Spam,” Roger explained lightly. “It’s got its own key.”
Fran flipped the can over in her hand and found the little key.
Meanwhile, Peter had walked right past the group, as if they didn’t exist. He had a fierce, concentrated look on his face, as though he were alone on a terrible mission. He walked with such a single-minded purpose that Fran mused that he had lapsed into a trance.
Peter strode toward the still-unknown door at the other end of the room. Roger, giving Fran a quick shrug of the shoulders as if he could read her mind, followed obediently.
At the door, the two troopers went through the same stylized S.W.A.T. tactics they’d used at the first door. The door swung open into a very small space. Again, to Roger’s relief, there was no immediate danger.
As they entered, the men realized that they were on the top landing of a concrete and metal fire stair. Roger recalled his meeting with Peter, which had taken place in a similar location. Although it was now only twenty-four hours later, it seemed a lifetime.
The space was stifling: no windows; musty, stale air. A lone bare light bulb dangled from the ceiling, but down the stair at the next landing it was quite dark, and further down the stairs the blackness was so thick that Roger felt as if he had been swallowed by a great monster.
“Whatda ya think?” he asked Peter, trepidatiously.
Peter just stared into the darkness and then back into the storage area.
“This is the only way up here,” Roger continued, his voice bouncing off the concrete walls, echoing in his ears. “Whatda ya think?”
Peter merely continued staring at the empty space. Then, as if he were alone, he turned and entered the main room, where Steve and Fran waited on pins and needles.
Roger stood for a moment on the landing, and then followed Peter into the main room. He couldn’t figure him out, but at least he could rely on him for making the right decision.
Roger walked into the center of the room. As soon as he cleared the door, Peter appeared and slammed the stairway door closed, turning the flimsy lock. Then, without speaking to the other three, who stood by mutely waiting for orders, Peter started stacking the cartons against the door; a barricade against the unknown.
• • •
The group of refugees sat on the floor near the pyramid under the open skylight. They had attacked their cans of Spam with relish, and the empty tins littered the area. Stephen slept fitfully, his head in Fran’s lap. Her hand was in his hair, and occasionally she patted him as one would a feverish child. This was the first real sleep he was able to have since they’d left Philadelphia.
Roger leaned against the pyramid watching Peter, who sat in the lotus position, his gun across his legs. For the past hour, Peter had not taken his eyes off the doorway to the suspicious stairwell. Infrequently, he and Roger still picked at the cans. Roger swilled water from an empty can that he had filled from one of the C.D. drums.
“You better get some sleep, too, buddy,” Roger cautioned, nodding toward Stephen.
“There’s an awful lot of stuff down there that we could use, brother,” Peter said softly, allowing Roger into his thoughts for the first time that day.
“I know it.”
Fran’s deceptive tranquillity at having her stomach filled and being out of immediate danger was shattered by the men’s talk. Instantly, she realized that this wasn’t a rest and recovery stop, but a mercenary raid.
“They’re pretty spread out down there,” Peter continued. “It’s a big place. I think we could outrun ’em.”
“Hit and run,” Roger agreed, unaware that Fran was now listening and getting increasingly angered.
“Hit and run . . . maybe grab us off a radio.”
Fran could stand it no longer. What was happening to them? Didn’t they realize they would be no better than common criminals?
“You’re crazy!” she blurted out. She extricated herself from the sleeping Steve and walked over to the two troopers.
“This place could be a gold mine,” Roger said, checking his weaponry and moving quickly toward the door, where he began to remove the carton barricade. “We gotta at least check it out.”
“This is exactly what we’re trying to get away from,” Fran said to the still-seated Peter, who was checking his own guns. “Look what happened at the airport . . .”
“The only problem at the airport was stray bullets!” Peter told her belligerently. “We could outfight those dummies blindfolded.”
Fran ran over to Stephen and shook him, but the exhausted pilot was dead to the world.
“Leave him be,” Peter said, standing to his full height. “We’re going ourselves.”
He bent over and snatched up Steve’s rifle. He snapped off the safety and slammed a shell into the chamber and handed it to the woman.
“That’s ready to shoot,” he said in a surprisingly gentle tone of voice. “Be careful.”
Fran held the gun as if it were about to explode.
“The trigger squeezes real easy, but the weapon’ll kick you good when it fires,” Peter explained. “Be ready for that.”
“Wait a minute, I—”
“Anyone but us comes up them stairs, you guys take off in the machine. We’ll try to make it out to the parkin’ lot. You can pick us up there.”
Fran was speechless. She just stared at the man in total fright, with desperation in her eyes. She knew that the troopers had made up their minds and that her arguments would be useless.
“If we don’t show up after a few minutes . . . we’ll catch up to you some other time. You understand?”
His voice was toneless, and Fran sensed a greater meaning behind the words. She felt frozen to the spot and could only shake her head up and down like a little girl.
Roger and Peter, their faces set in stone, proceeded toward the fire stair. They pulled open the door on the top landing and were greeted by the same dimly lit corridor as before. They moved slowly out onto the landing and looked into the darkness below. Then, without looking back at the trembling figure of Fran poised at the doorway clutching her rifle, they mov
ed slowly and silently down the steps. Suddenly, Peter stopped and turned back to Fran as if he’d forgotten to tell her something.
“You’ll prob’ly hear some shooting,” he said to the frightened woman. “Just don’t panic, OK?”
Fran could barely manage a sigh in return.
“You’ll be all right. It’s our asses that’s in the fire.”
Fran stood on the landing until she could no longer see the men. She could still hear their footsteps padding down the narrow metal stairs.
Slowly, she turned around, the gun clutched in her arms as if it were her child. She shut the door behind her and locked it. Then, she struggled with a few of the heavier boxes and barricaded the door once again. She glanced at Stephen. How he was able to sleep throughout all this was beyond her. She just hoped that the two troopers would be back soon and that they all could get out of here for good.
By now, the two big men were two landings below the barricaded door. There was almost no light now from the single bulb two landings above. Roger clicked on his flashlight and shone the beam around. He saw that he was in a very small concrete space. The stairs went down no further and there was only one door. Peter eased down the steps behind him.
“This is the only way up there,” Roger told him when they were at the same level.
They opened the door slowly and discovered that they were in another cement-walled space that also seemed small, but was fully lit.
They stepped cautiously into the room and found themselves at the end of a very long, narrow hallway. Directly across from them were two open supply rooms. The rooms had the scent of cleaning solutions and ammonia. Buckets with huge wringers and stringy mops were lined up against a stationary sink and toilet.
Their eyes followed the one wall of the hallway, and they could see a dozen or so doorways, some open, some closed. Along the opposite wall, however, there was nothing.
The far end of the hall, about a hundred yards away, opened out onto the second story of the mall proper.
The two men looked at each other, feeling like intruders in so mundane a situation—the mazelike hallway of an office. They walked down the corridor, trying the first two doors, which were locked, and finally getting lucky with the third, which was wide open.
Dawn of the Dead Page 8
