by Dalton Wolf
“Holy shit. I’m tired,” Tripper noted with what little breath he could muster.
Eventually, though, both men reached the top and trudged carefully down a long hall to the roof access. Upon reaching the roof, they found Hef already half way through assembling a heavy duty wench to an exhaust vent. “What…can…we do?” Calvin breathed and coughed, flipping up his visor.
“There, get that stuff over the side,” he pointed to a blue nylon climbing harness and steel rope laying side-by-side.
“You want me…to hook them…up first?” Calvin smiled weakly, still clutching his chest.
Hef gave him a withering glare, but followed with a concerned, appraisal of his pale features and overly sweaty forehead. But his friend had just fought a few dozen dead people. “Hook them up, Calvin. Then toss them over to those waiting below. Tripper, fasten the other side of this wench like this.”
“Women and children first!” Calvin yelled down, but then fell forward taking deep, desperate breaths and clutching his chest in pain as a raging fire burned through his bruised torso. When the pain subsided, he snuck a look back to ensure his pals hadn’t seen, but they were clearly too involved in assembling the wench. With more care, he lowered the harness on the cable without further sarcasm, sparing himself and probably several others any further pain.
While the heavy cable was lowering, Hef and Tripper tightened the fasteners to the big vent and looped the cable through the pulleys. The roof walls were higher than Calvin was tall. “You’ll have to tell us when they’re in, Athena,” Calvin informed her. “We can’t see you down there.”
“The kids are in. Bring em up,” Sarah reported and Hef hit he switch, pulling them swiftly, but safely up the wall.
Calvin and Tripper helped Mr. Berg over the roof. He stood there looking down at Calvin, smiling as if he’d done nothing wrong before shaking the harness off of his very broad shoulders.
“You are not the kids.” Calvin stated with little noticeable humor.
“I didn’t panic. It was Athena’s idea,” the stout man shrugged.
“Let him help,” Athena told them firmly.
He quickly showed them why. When Miriam Rosenthal came over the wall next, he helped them pull her over without injury, practically lifting her up by himself.
“Wow. My back just said I’d better never do that again,” he joked, but he then carried her all the way over to the vent before setting her down.
The deep, throbbing pain in his chest told Calvin to shut up and be very glad for the help.
“The little girl insisted that I come up first,” Miriam explained. “She saw the ankle cast from my surgery and said the wounded always have to be helped first. Isn’t that the sweetest thing?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Calvin agreed.
The process was repeated for Alex and the Worm. Megan appeared over the wall next. It took all three men lifting the harness to get those being rescued up and over the lip of the high wall until Mrs. Rosenthal and Mrs. Berg skidded a wide, knee-high crate over that they could stand on. Everything went much faster from that point on. Mr. McClintock and Megan were the last two to be pulled up who were not in the original group of friends.
Sarah, Athena and Brick moved up onto the roof of the Wagon and waited for them to drop the harness again. Megan, afraid of heights, needed constant ministrations from both Sarah and Athena to convince her to close her eyes and go.
“She’s in,” Athena said.
By the time she reached the roof, Megan was pale and shaking and had slipped into a near catatonic state.
“Can you take them inside and check them out?” Calvin asked Hef.
“Of course.”
Sarah was brought up next, first glaring at Brick and with a query for Athena, who nodded assent. “I’m ready,” she said and the winch clicked into gear and lifted her smoothly but slowly up the wall.
“Just you and me, sweetie,” Brick cooed at Athena, turning off his mic, coming in close and reaching out for her chest.
Batting his hand away at first, she felt that wasn’t enough and shoved him physically, instead pushing herself back towards the edge of the Wagon, but holding the panabas defensively between them. Brick did not seem to care, leaning in again, forcing the blade against his own throat, leaving her with the decision of either drawing the panabas back, or pressing forward. But this time it was Athena who held firm. She leaned forward and, knowing how little pressure it took her weapon to penetrate, the tall athlete backed up until he was against the wall and there was no where else to move. Now it was she who leaned in close, the blade digging into his throat as a slow smile spread across his face, misconstruing her intentions even though the livid gaze she returned promised that nothing but bad things were about to happen. She was going to do it. One push was all it would take. But the others were up there. How would she explain his death with only a half-dozen Lurkers grasping at the sides of the Wagon? The alley was strangely silent until some strange sounds began drifting over from the far end of the alley.
“What’s that sound?” she asked.
“Sounds like Hall & Oates,” he said. “Because your kiss is on my list,” he cooed.
She clicked off her microphone. “Fuck off, Brick. You need to get your head straight or it’s going to get taken off,” she promised.
“Aw, you gonna make me beg?” he reached out again even though he was only a half-inch from death as it was.
“What is that?” she asked again, pressing her blade to his throat but looking down the alley as the sound seemed to increase.
“What is what,” he snapped, pissed that she wasn’t playing his game.
“That sound.”
“Oh that. That’s a clock radio. Someone must have put it back there and left the doors open or something,” he surmised. “I guess that’s how the zombies got in.”
A glint of satisfaction shining from his fevered blue eyes turned her blood cold and she knew the ‘someone’ stood before her. Quickly she wrapped the harness around herself and prepared to ascend.
“Don’t go too far,” he warned. “This is just the foreplay, babe. He’s gonna leave you alone again. Kid like Scooter can’t help it. He’s always going to have to go off and save someone to prove he’s worthy of you. And when he does, the Brick is gonna be there for you. I’m gonna show you everything you’ve been missing in a real man.”
Athena brought her face close to his, looking him straight in the eyes for a full dozen heartbeats with narrowed lids. The lack of empathy there said she was done playing. Clanging twice on the cable with her panabas, she was gone, scaling the side of the building like a professional.
“I can take it from here, Calvin,” Athena said evenly, fluidly slipping from the black harness. “You go help the others.” She nodded to the closing hatchway through which most of the others had left and the look she gave him said she was telling him, not asking.
Calvin glanced to Sarah, who shrugged uncertainly and paused only a heartbeat longer, eying roof wall as if he had unfinished business. Ok, fine. Not now. But it’s coming, Brick, he promised his old friend.
“Go,” she gave an insistent nod and gentle nudge and he turned, pausing only an instant before she snapped, “I’ve got this!”
“Here, this button up, this one down,” he slapped a big yellow controller into her hand, jumped clumsily over the cable and darted through the metal door.
“Make damn sure they don’t have any bites!” he shouted to the backs of the others as he disappeared through the door. “We don’t know if it’s always a quick transformation and—” the heavy steel door shut behind him, drowning out the rest of what he said.
Brick clanked loudly on the cable below just as Athena had to let them know he was in the harness.
“I’ve got this,” Athena repeated to Sarah, starting the wench.
“Oh…well…I guess I’d better see if there is anything I can do.” Sarah muttered hesitantly and started for the door.
A fire burn
ed through Athena’s veins as realization of what she was about to do ignited her adrenal glands, leaving her so preoccupied that she spared little more attention for Sarah. Sensing that her best chance was now, she switched her mic off. As soon as the clang from the closing door reached her ears, she flipped the ‘off’ button for the wench, fumbled to undo the safety clips and tried to release the cable. The weight on the end of the line would not let her flip the release, however, and the mechanism jammed in the gears, no allowing a reverse of direction. In desperation she began tugging on the knot with her fingertips, trying to untie the rope cable that held the wench to the vent. Brick’s grunting and cussing floated up to her as he pulled himself up the line without the wench.
“Calvin!” he yelled. When no one responded, he tried again. “Calvin? Trip?”
Still no response.
Athena worked the knot with a frenzied determination, knowing the fall should injure him just enough to make him susceptible to the Infected in the alley.
“You fucking bitch!” Brick shrieked, realizing what was happening. “You’d better hope I don’t get up there!”
“What are you doing?” Sarah’s voice demanded from just behind her ear. Athena snapped upright, blood draining from her face and a coldness creeping up her spine.
Oh my god. How do I explain this? She pulled her shaking hands to her sides searching for words to explain to her best friend why she was about to kill another friend.
“Calvin might have tied that knot,” Sarah pointed to the apparatus. Her words were not coming over Athena’s earbud. She had turned her mic off. “You want him to have it slipping off on his conscience, along with everything else?”
“What?” Athena nearly collapsed in surprise.
“Here.” Sarah moved to the opposite side of the vent to which the entire homemade contraption was tied. “On three, we both kick. If it comes off, it’s no one’s fault, right? Just metal fatigue.”
Sarah’s face took on a feverish mask of what was clearly hate. Athena would have been very afraid if that anger had been focused upon her but she could feel the window of opportunity quickly closing, the ticks of a countdown clock that must be heeded. The rat-like scratching of his mailed fingers scratched near the top of the roof wall and ragged, raspy grunts emanated from just beneath the rounded edge of the raised white stone.
Athena no longer cared how or why Sarah was helping her. It must be done now. With a nod, she stood opposite her friend, facing the large vent. “One. Two. Three.” Each girl viciously kicked the vent, but not together. It cracked and bent, but did not pull free.
“You bitches!” Brick screamed, blonde armored head now peeking over the rise of the roof as a searching hand felt around for something to grab hold of, but it was too smooth. His visor was up revealing a furious face, red and sweaty from pulling himself up the cable in the heavy leather armor. Grimacing with exertion as he held himself in position, feeling desperately for anything to gain some leverage and failing, he reached back over his shoulder and pulled his claymore free and jabbed it straight down, trying to burry the blade into the concrete rooftop. The massive blade bounced harmlessly off the stone roof and the shock ripped the blade free of his grasp, sending it to the side and with a heavy clank as it came to rest harmlessly flat on the roof, out of reach.
“I’m gonna rape your fucking guts out!” his puffy red face screamed the promise with a maniacal furor, bloodshot blue eyes bulging with hate.
With a perfectly-placed massive double-kick from both ladies, the vent ripped free of its moorings and flew over the edge of the roof. The look of wide-eyed surprise on Brick’s face as he watched the vent sail over his shoulder was one both women would remember fondly for some time, even through the guilt of their actions. Weakened fingers holding for only a second as the weight of the vent tugged from below, Brick’s shriek echoed throughout the valley followed by a heavy thud and another, heavier clanging thud right behind that as his body hit first the edge of the ambulance roof and then slammed into the pavement of the alley below. He screamed following both loud thumps, letting the girls know he’d likely broken at least two of something in the fall.
Smiling in relief, the two women casually walked over to the edge of the roof, enjoying Brick’s screams rising from the alley below. They watched as the crowd of Infected chased his limping form down the alley into the shadows, one on his back ripping hunks of flesh from his shoulders as he beat it impotently with his good right arm, the other dangling limply like bait jiggling on a hook.
Sarah reached down and picked up the big claymore with a grunt and heaved it over the side of the roof. “Evidence,” she mouthed.
Athena looked back at her friend with a clear question broiling in her dark eyes as Sarah’s now emotionless eyes had already told her too much. You too? she wondered, asking the question with her eyes that her voice couldn’t bring up.
Sarah nodded almost imperceptibly. “I was there that first day, Athena. I’m so sorry I didn’t help sooner…or say anything…but what he almost did to you…he did do to me. About three months ago. And he did it to others before. I don’t know how many or who or why. He’s a sick, sick man.”
Athena nodded her understanding, reaching out to hug her friend as Brick’s screams rose from somewhere further down the street.
“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” they heard his faint voice screaming from somewhere in the fog. As his voice faded, so did some of their hate for the man.
“What was that? What happened?” Calvin yelled as he and Hef burst onto the roof.
“The vent broke,” Sarah and Athena said together, each pointing impotently at the gaping hole in the roof.
Calvin dashed to the edge and stepped on to the crate beside them to see if he could help, but they stopped him with outstretched arms. “He’s already dead, Calvin.”
“I had this thing welded with some really good corner welds,” Hephaestus muttered, fingering the open shaft and then eying both girls speculatively. Athena saw mild suspicion as if the words of accusation were written across his forehead in bright pink neon letters. His sharp eyes quickly took note of the cement chunks Brick’s sword had torn from the rooftop, but he said nothing.
Quinn stepped out next. “What happened?”
“Your problem has been handled,” Hephaestus explained to the big man. “By Athena and Sarah, not Calvin,” he added.
“What? Oh. Oh!” Not understanding at first, when Brick’s distant screams floated up to them, comprehension dawned in his deep blue-green eyes and he assessed the two women with a newfound respect.
Calvin also eyed both women, appraising. But with a shrug, he turned to his friend. “It was probably just bad metal, Hephaestus. Metal fatigue’s a bitch.” Then he leaned forward and added quietly into his friend’s ear, “Too late to worry about it now. We’ll talk later. Then he added louder, “why don’t you go get something to cover this?”
“But…I…Ok. That is a good idea. I feel more rain is coming,” the man spared one more curious glance at the pair of girls. “Not that I ever liked the man, you understand—he was not welcome here,” he shot a serious look at both girls. “But…that was one of my best rigs…” he sighed, stumping through the door with sunken shoulders.
Quinn sauntered behind him with one meaty palm resting on his shoulder in sympathy, the other balancing one of his great maces on a massive shoulder.
“I designed and built that thing for a Bond movie, you know. It was used for a stunt where—” he was still explaining when the door shut behind him.
Scooter’s gaze lingered for a very long time down into the alley, his ears seeming to twitch at faint screams and begging sounds he thought might be Brick being torn to pieces somewhere off in the foggy distance. It was a long, lingering look, full of memories, sadness, and regret. Both girls remained quietly beside him, waiting, watching. But when he’d strained his hearing for minutes and heard no more cries he turned and rubbed his hands together and casually shook his sho
ulders as if shrugging off a backpack or a morning chill. “Right. Let’s go, ladies. We’ve got stuff to do. Midnight train to Paradise leaves…eventually. We need to get the Paddy Wagon in so Hef can fix it.”
“That’s it?” Athena asked.
“That’s what?”
“One of your oldest friends dies under mysterious circumstances and you’re just moving on?”
“Mysterious circumstances? You said the vent broke. Sounds open and shut.”
“You know it didn’t just break.”
“Doesn’t that mean you just ruined an entirely believable alibi?”
“Hephaestus clearly knows something happened,” Athena reminded him coolly. “So does Quinn. They’re going to talk to you about it later, anyway, so it might as well come out now.”
“Babe, Festus never liked Brick. He always said that it seemed to him like he was dead inside—called him a zombie long before we actually knew zombies were real, believe it or not. He said Zombies are without soul and all they do is feed. Brick always had to feed his needs, usually his ego, no matter who it hurt. He said he didn’t want the man he might have to one day kill to be a regular guest at his favorite place. I’m actually surprised he wasn’t happier about this, but you know how he loves his toys.”
Scooter looked straight in Athena’s dark eyes and put his hands on her shoulders and she just knew he knew everything. Her blood froze as she realized he knew she had murdered one of his oldest friends in the world. How could he ever look at her the same now? Why would he want to? They’d been killing zombies, but she had just killed a man. A living Human, flesh and blood. A man they all knew. No matter what he had done, didn’t that man deserve justice? What if he was just insane? What if it was merely the drugs causing his actions? Shouldn’t she have given him a chance to clean up? Scooter believed whole-heartedly in justice. How could he possibly forgive her for this? As he forced her to return his gaze, she wanted to scream and run. It was over between them.
