Medora: A Zombie Novel

by Welker, Wick

  On the fifty-third floor, he cried. He cried inaudibly in a silent office room. Tears sat on the brim of his eyelids and cusped the bottom of his eyes. He was crying because of his life, which he would miss. Then he wiped his eyes and ate a Snickers bar, which he took from a vending machine that he smashed with a chair. His pockets were lined with Fritos bags and candy bars. He couldn't believe all the floors were empty, not a single person was left behind. He thought with scorn of his fat boss that he hated who had made him wait behind while the entire city escaped this plague without him. His mind became intoxicated with his hate for Janice, eating his thoughts and stalling his motivation to escape the building. It gave him a sickening pleasure to curse her in life and in death. It was then he realized that he was going through all the steps of grief. He was currently undergoing the anger step, and what he was grieving for was the immediate loss of his own life.

  On the fifty-fifth floor, he started to build a barrier of a heavy office desk that he dragged and leaned on the doors of all the stairwells. He piled filing cabinets and office chairs around the doors creating a semi circular dam surrounding them. Once he realized that the barrier was failing to stop them from slowly pushing through and was actually preventing him from going up to the next levels once they breached the floor, he stopped trying the blockades.

  He heard them clamoring at the stairwell and got to his feet again, ready for the next couple flight of stairs. When he got to the sixtieth floor, he realized that the building had eighty floors and he was close to judgment day. He would have never guessed that he could gauge the timing of his death by the number of floors of a building. Each floor was passing with the equivalent of a year of his life and he would die at the ripe age of eighty. He began to think of his life's regrets and much to his surprise regretted never getting married or having kids. He also regretted never having written a book. When he wrote a short story in college about a woman and her ten-year-old daughter who simultaneously were diagnosed with terminal cancer, he thought he could become a writer, never for a career but as a hobby. With sadness, he thought on the wasted potential of his abilities. Then he became depressed with the wasted potential of his life. He was now in the guilt phase. He hated that all he had done was work at an advertising firm and never found a career that he enjoyed.

  On the seventy-third floor, he was consumed with exhaustion and fell asleep under a table, no longer caring if they burst in and killed him in his sleep. Was indifference a step? When he awoke, he heard nothing and then realized that he was probably only asleep for a few minutes. His hips ached from hiking the stairs and his heart ached from contemplating his life. He had reached a mental and physical barrier where he thought in only the sheer mechanics of moving his body with the lowest amount of energy to provide just enough mobility to climb the stairs. He thought that the monsters would kill him by exhaustion long before they ever reached him alive.

  By the time, he was at the eightieth floor he didn't think anymore. His being had degenerated into nothing but the primal and automated instinct to survive. They opened the doors and began to flood the office floor and cubicles. Dave knew that the last stairwell would lead to the roof and he liked the idea more of dying by his own accord and not being torn apart by the sick. He slowly limped up the last stairwell, down death row to the open air.

  Sunlight burst into his eyes and his skin flashed beneath the bright light. The sky was still and the air was warm. He stepped up a small metal staircase that led to the main roof of the building and looked around feeling as if he was on the site of the lunar landing. Satellites dishes, antennas, large metal boxes and ventilation cones sprouted from the gravel-rubber top of the building. He shuffled in between the various obstacles of equipment scattered about in front of him, and looked around for any moveable object to block the door. Clutching to the side of a square shaped vent, he fell over and stared at the gravel. That’s all there was now: grey and white pebbles lying lifeless without concern. He thought how he would be like them soon: still, complacent and aloof. He groped to think of nothing as he looked down at the rocks, detaching himself.

  Only finding cigarette butts and soda cans, he knew there wouldn't be anything to block the door and so he stared at the end of the roof with his eyes fixed on the stern black line of the edge cutting into his mind and silencing all other thoughts. He stared and waited. Waited to hear just a single click of the roof door from below; a click of the latch turning and unleashing hell at his feet. He never knew his mind could be so vacant and so still as it was then. The only sounds were a slight wind humming in his ears and the shallow clicking of his throat swallowing. It wasn't until that moment that he knew it was the random clutter of thoughts of his daily life that had choked out the pristine serenity that he had now reached from the utter absence of thought. He felt his soul open up and clap at the sky in preparation for his leap from the edge of the building. He felt steady and ready to go. Just one click of the door, he thought.

  The door clicked and he instantly cowered from the edge. He receded backwards, gaining a revitalizing boost of self-preservation after hearing the click. The click, like a shotgun firing within him had aroused every muscle and nerve in his body, ready to stand and fight rather than fall and die. He could see them bubbling up from below the metal staircase on the other side of the building. They emerged as one mass building upward, carrying bodies in a wake of arms and legs. They diffused slowly around the top, stumbling over wires and falling into antennas. One toppled over into the bowl of a satellite dish, exploding the flesh and bones of her face outwards. When she stood back up there was nothing but a gaping crater sinking into her head. By random motion, they made their way to Dave.

  At twenty feet away, he backed up to the edge of the building and peered over. It looked like a long race road track fading to a vanishing point at the street. He never could have possibly imagined such a height. He looked back at them, rested his arm on the base of a massive antenna next to him, and then realized that it was the very last place he could escape. Climbing up the crude metal pegs of the antenna that formed a ladder, he reached the last peg at the top.

  They swarmed around the base, fifteen feet below. Now, here he was, perched high in the sky, the Buddhist monk, the Enlightened One. He watched them and observed them.

  The sick soon covered the entire roof of the building, a sea of heads bobbing up and down, crawling and stepping on one another. Some would get on top of others and wriggle across their heads and shoulders, crowd surfing amongst the wave of bodies. The roof was flooded, but Dave could still see others slowly emerging from the staircase and with each inlet of the sick from below, a few on the edges of the building were forced off, falling limply to the streets like a tree falling after being cut at its base. There began to be a rhythmic pulse in the crowd as more came from below creating a cascade of movement towards the edges of the building, forcing more to slip off the edge. One ripple after another would cause bodies to fall from all edges. The top of the building was like a gigantic popcorn maker, but filling up with bodies that overflowed over the rim. Dave watched as they dropped, falling without resistance, completely oblivious to the danger of the height. They were forced off at predictable intervals as more came from below. Every few minutes, there would be a surge of people toppling over the edge.

  Some of the sick took notice of Dave above them and started to climb the rungs of the metal ladder, clutching at the bars. When they came close to his feet, he kicked down at them, breaking their grasp of the antenna ladder and making them fall to the crowd below. One fell directly on top of a man's head, snapping his neck backwards, making his head swing limply down his back, jaw gaping open.

  Dave looked out and saw the puffed, cauliflower head of Janice milling around amidst the crowd. She was finally with her own, he thought. She looked like a farm animal, moving casually between people, going from one grazing spot to another. He could see that her other arm was now missing leaving two black gaping holes at her shoulders,
illuminating the sickly white color of the rest of her body. The bulbous boils of skin had grown over most of her scalp, leaving her with little hair. They were all being led outward to the edges of the building like cows being dumbly taken to a slaughterhouse.

  More moved up the ladder and Dave kicked. Every time he kicked, he seemed to attract the attention of the entire crowd around him, agitating them into more movement towards him. They knocked against the antenna, making it rock back and forth. After a while, he felt like it would rock back and forth more with each blow. They leaned into the antenna trying to climb up some bodies piling up around the base, giving others an extra boost to get higher and higher up the ladder. He started to clutch the rungs of the ladder with his hands and kicked down with both feet at once, knocking more of them down to the crowd. He could see a human pyramid building up towards him, their weight pushing at the antenna.

  The antenna started to sway outward towards the edge of the building. With each hit, it swung towards the edge and rebounded back to original position. He was soon precariously swinging back and forth on the antenna and could see his legs dangle in open space as the antenna swung over the edge of the building. Dave closed his eyes as he swung, waiting for the antenna base to snap. He shut his eyes tightly and could faintly hear the whir of helicopters close by. He imagined a swift rescue from one of them above, dropping a rope ladder and carrying him up, away from the sick. However, it didn't come; no helicopter came for him although they probably saw him, holding on only a few feet above to a radio antenna while hundreds of people clutched at him from the edge of a skyscraper in the middle of Manhattan. He knew they could see him from above, probably broadcasting the image all over the country.

  The base of the antenna began to squeak with the sound of tortured metal; screw bolts bending with metal slats. The antenna slowly began to bend outwards with Dave's weight, becoming weakened with pressure. It stopped, leaning at an angle over the ledge of the building. Dave moved and repositioned himself so that he was now on the side of the antenna facing inward towards the roof, looking down at the streets. He hugged the rod close to his body, closing his eyes and whispering to himself. He started to pray, which he hadn't done since he was a child. He prayed out loud to whoever it was that listened to prayers. He asked for deliverance from the monsters, but all he got was the base of the antenna breaking loose of bolts, slamming the length of the antenna down onto the edge of the building. The force of the impact knocked his body sideways from the rod, his feet losing grip and his legs dangling in the free space, eighty stories above nothing. He scrambled back on top of the antenna which was now lying completely horizontal on the building top with it's end jutting out over the edge, holding on to a few bolts that kept it suspended. His heart was exploding from his chest and his hands were wet with sweat, making it difficult to maintain a good grip on the smooth surface of the metal ladder of the antenna.

  The movement of the antenna created a stir in the crowd and cross winds started to shake him. Dave waited for the last bolts to loosen and send him to his death below. He bowed his head toward the metal and rested his forehead, clutching the antenna with every muscle in his body as if he was trying to stay atop a raging bull.

  The antenna stubbornly stayed in place and an unusual phenomenon happened that immediately reminded him of a donkey following a carrot on a stick tied to its back. The mass of infected people near the edge began to be drawn by Dave and started to step off the edge of the building to get at him. One after another was stepping forward trying to attack Dave who was suspended in air, far outside of their reach from the edge. The motion created more motion in the crowd and the entire population of the roof began a mass exodus off the side of the building; an avalanche of bodies, like a sheet of snow, spilling off and falling hundreds of feet to the streets. They dumbly followed one another off with Dave acting as the bait, luring a human waterfall off the top of the building.

  Dave immediately saw a chance to leave the building without jumping off of it. “Come and get me! I'm right here, you sons of bitches!” he waved his arms and yelled, drawing more movement towards him, while more and more walked right off the edge, not expecting an eight hundred foot drop below them. “Ah ha! You bunch of stupid idiots! Come right on over!” He slapped his hands on the hollow metal of the antenna; beginning to see his deliverance as more and more fell. The roof was beginning to clear, but he could see more coming from the stairwell from below, slowly crawling out. There must be hundreds, maybe thousands, he thought. Just as long as this hunk of metal stays put, I might actually pull out of this.

  For twenty minutes, he screamed till his voice was hoarse while clapping his hands and slapping on the antenna, drawing all of the sick towards the edge of the building. He looked down at them as they fell. Sprawled limbs, flowing clothing, shoes slipping off, and all of it shrinking quickly down to the streets. He could only imagine the pile of human body debris that was building up in the streets below. Limbs, torsos and heads exploding into hot dog carts, crashing into car windshields and raining down decaying entrails onto whatever poor bastards that were down there.

  On they poured off the side of the building, one following the movements of another straight off. One woman, as she started to fall off the ledge, got her leg caught between the weight of another person leaning in and the ledge of building, which made it completely tear off as she fell off the building, leaving behind a single leg with a stocking and a slip-on shoe. The entire scene looked like a mass suicide of a cult all jumping to their deaths at the same time. Some looked straight at Dave as they slipped off the edge, reaching their arms out to grab at him. They had no idea that they are walking right off the top of a skyscraper nor had the capacity to understand that the person right in front of them was falling down hundreds of feet just as they would too.

  The crowd on the roof was starting to thin, most of the sick having taken the plunge, and Dave decided he had pushed his luck long enough with the antenna staying in one place. He sat around it as if he was riding a horse, shimmied himself to the ledge and crawled onto the roof. Looking down at the gravel on the roof, he laughed out loud at the unbelievable development that he was still alive. There were some stragglers grazing about who started to walk towards him. He felt nothing but a violent surge pump through his veins at the unrelenting monsters that still pursued him. He waited until one got close, grabbed her shoulders by her flower-patterned blouse and swung her off the ledge. He felt nothing even close to the guilt of physically sending someone to their death but an overwhelming sense of satisfaction at disposing of a malignancy, which had pestered his body into a near collapse of exhaustion and his mind into crumbling insanity. Walking straight up to a mailman, he kicked the heel of his shoe into his chest, and knocked him to the ground. Dave then ripped a small cylindrical vent from the top of a thin-sheeted metal pipe and crashed it on top of the mailman's head. Black, clotted blood oozed from his opened scalp.

  The infected no longer had the strength of the masses and Dave started to run towards the stairway. He was done being chased into hell. Now, it was time to exit the building. The stairwell had a few lying on the stairs that began to move with his approach. He jumped down on top of a chest and leaped off, landing at the bottom of the stairs. The stairs below were relatively empty. Most had come all the way to the top of the building only to fall off of it. He had eighty floors and wasn't going to stop until he was on ground level. The exhaustion in his bones had become infused with energy and he steadily began walking down. Not too fast but a comfortable pace where he could fend off the sick as he descended. He came up to man in his twenties with a baseball cap, grabbed his thighs, flipped him over the rail to the stairwell below, and then stomped on his face as he passed him. Liquid hot anger coarsening inside of him was fueling his body. Dave had lost all concepts of humanity with regards to the infected and treated them as disposable.

  The flights of stairs turned to blurring moments of explicit violence and heavy panting. He stoppe
d momentarily to eat another Snickers bar and continued downward. As he descended, he kept looking among the bodies for Keith, hoping he wouldn't find him here, dead in the stairwell. So far, he could only see the bloated, disfigured faces of the terminally sick. He had no time to reflect, no time to wonder over the events behind him. The floor numbers flew past his head as he continued downward, quickly approaching the ground level. There were less and less of the sick as he headed down, making it easier for him to move swiftly.

  The stairwell smelled like road kill rotting in the sun, staining his clothes with the stench. His face was slick with sweat and his hips were now aching with every step down, a constant turning of his legs in their sockets, creating a sharp and tense pain radiating down his bones. Suddenly, like a flash in his mind, he was at the last step and set his foot on the lobby level. He pushed an infected man in a business suit against the wall and then tripped in exhaustion, falling down onto his chest. The man in the suit started to beat his fists on the top of Dave's head and then started to gnaw at his scalp, only getting mouthfuls of his hair. Dave screamed in fury, pushing himself off the man and started to beat his fists into the sick man's face. He grabbed the man's neck with one hand and brought the side of his other fist into his bloated cheeks again and again, swearing and screaming until the man sank down the cinder block wall. With his knee, Dave delivered one last blow to the face and then burst out from the emergency doors.