“What are those for?” Phil asked
“You ever been to the Medieval Dinner Theater?” She asked
She got blank looks from everyone.
“You know, the knights do battle and all that while you eat with your hands?”
There were slow nods as they understood the question but not why she asked.
“Knights armor,” she said proudly, indicating the carpet strips and roll of duct tape. “Those nasty things won’t be able to bite through this!”
Suddenly they all got it and were excitedly trying it out, wrapping it around their forearms, creating makeshift gauntlets.
“Good idea, Mizz Lacy.” Phil grinned at her. “I’m starting to feel like one of those gladiators.” He had wrapped both arms and was helping Mr. Sato wrap his.
“There’s a place off Maple that sells costumes for the Renaissance Faire crowd,” Carla said. “Quality stuff, real thick leather.”
With the last of the coffee finished and everyone armored up, Phil stood and the room got quiet. “We all know the plan,” he said “It should be easy. Remember, we don’t come back here to the 28th floor no matter what. There’s no food. We’d die of starvation if we get trapped here. If the stairs are jammed, we find another floor to get on, hopefully one with more food hoarders than these guys were. They can’t get to us if we’re in any of the offices, the doors open out into the stairwell and they don’t seem to have enough sense in ‘em to pull them open.”
He looked around at the other men and women listening to him. At their makeshift armor and weapons. At the grim determination on most of their faces. He saw the ones who would fall. He knew the type. The weak ones. The ones still hoping to be saved by someone, not realizing that person would have to be themselves.
He’d never been in the military, but he’d been big all his life. He’d been a boxer for a while then a bouncer and finally worked his way into security. He knew a fighter when he saw one and Mr. Sato had grit. So did Mrs. Meadows. Some of that Army life had certainly rubbed off on her. The others, he wasn’t so sure about, but he’d do his best to keep them all safe. It was his job. And they had become his friends.
This is gonna get bloody,” he said. “You ladies stay back and try not to faint.”
There was a quiet titter of laughter from one of them and Lacy asked him “You ever had a baby, Phil?”
He gave her a quizzical look. “No. Why you asking that?”
“You don’t know blood like we know blood,” she said and led the way to the pile of office furniture to start dismantling their blockade.
They left one door completely jammed and stacked the overturned desks and bookcases against the other one leaving about a foot that could be opened once it was unlocked. By now with the noise they had made, the slavering lunatics outside had resumed their attack on the doors, trying to get to the warm bodies only a few feet away. Lacy was going to unlock the door but the sharpened claws she had taped to her hands were in the way and she was having a hard time turning the latch. “You do it.” she finally said to Phil. “I’ll take this first one.”
They switched places and she drew her fist back, tightening her already white-knuckle grip on her untested battle blades. The screams in the hallway were getting more intense as they sensed their prey nearby. She heard the click of the lock and the door burst open the full foot they had allowed it, easily shoving Phil aside.
A keening snarling thing had forced itself halfway through the opening and was reaching for her. She plunged the makeshift blades deep into his eye sockets and felt the shudder as they stopped at the back of his skull. He fell instantly and she was glad she had taped the blades to her hands. She would have lost them if she hadn’t. The next one was clawing her way over the man as he fell, and Phil rammed a sharpened golf putter straight through the side of her head with a mighty grunt.
It came right out the other side and stuck deep into the wooden bookcase. She hung limp like a lifeless doll, effectively blocking the doorway from any more of them being able to enter. “Don’t let your end go!” Lacy shouted at Phil over the howls of the undead as he held the bloodied woman there like an oversized shish kabob. She had freed her spikes and was looking for another target when Mr. Sato politely yelled, “Allow me!” as he shunted her aside.
He swung a big driver over the dangling woman’s corpse and smashed it down into another woman’s face, imploding her skull and sending blood and brains splattering for yards. She collapsed, taking the driver with her still stuck in her head. Mr. Sato stepped back to get another club and Lacy thrust her fist into another gnashing face, aiming for the eyes. The natural shape of the skull guided her right into where she wanted to be. She was quick to pull out this time and already had her left fist flying for the face of the screeching woman missing a large portion of her hair.
The days had been rough on her, Lacy noticed. She must have been fighting with the others to get in because she was horribly misshapen, one eye already gouged out in the frenzy to feast. She fell and that was the last of them but there was still screaming. Lacy looked back. The annoying woman had her hands on the side of her face and was getting ready to suck in another breath when Alex slapped her. Not hard, but hard enough to get her attention.
She was hyperventilating. “How the hell did she ever make it all the way up here?” Lacy wondered
“You’re going to get us all killed,” she said. “Maybe you should stay here. We’ll send help up. How’s that sound?”
The woman just nodded rapidly. Yes, yes. She would stay. She couldn’t go back out there. She had been on the third floor when she had heard the screaming. That’s when she had been caught up in the mad flight to this level, pushed into the elevator as she stood in the hallway trying to see what was happening. She didn’t belong with these savage people. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t. She had enough food hidden away from them, she could last a while by herself, until help came.
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Mrs. Meadows.” Mr. Sato said but stopped from saying more when she turned to face him. Her arms were covered in gore and blood, brain matter dropping off of her spikes. Her face was hard and speckled with red drops.
“If she screams like that out there,” she said and pointed with a dripping hand towards the stairwell “We’ll all die. She’ll bring them running if they already aren’t.”
“No, it’s okay.” The woman hurriedly said before they tried to make her go back out there. “I want to stay. I’ll be fine here.”
“Block the door after we’re gone.” was all Lacy said as Phil pulled the spike out of the woman’s head and she fell to the floor. Part of him didn’t really want to leave Mrs. Dawson from third up here, he knew she would die if they didn’t make it down, clear a path and send help back up but she would wind up bringing those things running with her shrieks.
She hadn’t even been in danger; she had been behind a wall of furniture and behind everyone else who had stood ready to jump in. Part of him had already written her off as one of the weak. Lacy climbed over the pile of bodies and squeezed herself through the opening. Phil needed to clear a few more feet out of the way before his big bulk made it through.
There were sets of stairs on either end of the building and as they gathered in the hallway in front of the banks of elevators, it was a toss-up which way to go. There had been more of the creatures three days ago, so they had managed to push against the doors and wander out onto the stairs. Once in the stairwell they wouldn’t be getting back in, though.
They all wondered how many had been trapped there, endlessly wandering up and down. What a nightmare. “If we had to have a zombie outbreak, why couldn’t we have the slow moving shamblers?” Lacy asked, and noticed with some satisfaction that no one drug the bodies out of the doorway for the silly woman. She would have to get her hands dirty if she wanted to lock the doors leading into the tomb she was building for herself.
“Well,” Phil said, “We know there are a bunch in that one.” He
pointed to the left. “So I guess we take a chance on the other.”
As they headed to the right in the dim light filtering through the tinted windows, Lacy reached out and pushed the call button for the elevator. Nothing happened. No light ring lit up. No ding of an elevator arriving. No doors sliding open. She sighed and readjusted her spikes, making sure they were comfortable in her grip.
The stairs were empty. They slid in one by one, being as quiet as possible. Lacy had told them about what Johnny called Battle Rattle and they had all made sure they didn’t have anything clinking and clanging around on them. They didn’t have weapons and gear they had to use black tape on but they had each eliminated anything that could make unwanted noise.
They padded down the stairs quickly, the lights from the emergency signs weak after two days of being constantly on. By the time they hit the twelfth floor, they could smell the undead and by the time they got to the eighth, they could hear them. They hadn’t run into any on the stairs and it seemed the dead only went down, they didn’t like to climb up unless they had a reason. Like six savory bodies to gnash on. They could hear them below, quietly milling around and making small noises.
Lacy held up a fist to indicate for the rest of them to stay put, and she slipped down a few more flights until she could see over the railing to the mob below. They were packed tight, shoulder to shoulder in the faint green glow of the lights from about the fifth floor down. Hundreds. How did so many wind up in the stairwells? Had a bunch of people tried to hide in here and all of them turned? Had the stairwell doors been jammed closed by survivors? She had no idea why they wouldn’t push open to the garage. She knew from fire codes they were supposed to open outwards to the ground levels. This side was blocked, maybe the other was open.
She crept back up and motioned for them to climb. They went back up four more floors before they thought it was safe to whisper and she told them what she’d seen. They agreed, they had to try the other side. They were all nervous now, sweating in the uncirculated heat of the building. The fire doors had no windows so they didn’t know what they would find when they were opened.
They couldn’t risk tapping and bringing whatever was there screaming out at them and getting the horde from down below flying up the stairs. Their only choice was to chance it here on the twelfth floor or climb so far up they could deal with any problem before the dead below could reach them. They decided to go up to the twentieth, that way there should be plenty of time to deal with any threats and get inside the hallway. They got to the sixteenth and said screw it.
This is good enough. They were all winded. Phil said this was the insurance agency’s floor and none of them ever came in early. Better than even chance it would be deserted. They sat down to rest, all of them breathing heavy in the Georgia heat and the long climb up they had just done. It wasn’t just the climb, it was the tension, the humidity, the stale air that seemed thick and hard to breathe.
After a few minutes they were ready, and as quietly as they could, opened the door just enough to see in. Clear. Phil pulled it a little wider. Still clear. They all slipped in and made sure it was latched behind them. Lacy hustled down the hallway to the big glass doors of the agency and tried them. Still locked. They were good, this floor was empty. They continued to the other stairwell and followed the same procedures, slipping down quietly until they ran into masses of them packed in tight around the fourth floor. Why didn’t they push open the door and go out! It was frustrating. In a hurried conference with barely audible whispers, they decided to return to the sixteenth floor. They would have to regroup and figure out something else.
Not all of the undead had wandered their way down. As the crew was silently making their way back up the stairs, they heard a snuffling keen above them. Then the sound of hurrying footsteps coming down. They all froze. Eric had been at the tail end of the procession going down, so he was at the front of the line going up. “GO!” Lacy stage whispered. “Get to the next floor!”
The creature above them heard the sudden sound of hurrying feet and let out a howling scream as it started racing towards them. It was running so fast its feet got tangled up and it started tumbling face first down the stairs. All they had to do was stay to one side as it bounced down in a series of arm flailing, bone-breaking falls.
The damage was done, though. From three stories below they heard the roar of a hundred voices scream up at them and the trembling of the stairs as they pounded towards the warm blood they now sensed nearby. Eric made it to the landing on the ninth floor and ripped the door open only to have a snarling she-demon attack him with out-stretched arms and gnashing teeth.
He fell backward as she landed on top of him, deaf to his screams of pain and horror, slashing deep gouges across his nose with her pretty white teeth. She bounded up again as soon as she had drawn blood, instantly searching for the next host to carry the seething viral nanobots. She took a sharpened golf club straight through her blackened eye and into her seething brain. More of the undead were starting to come out of the ninth-floor corridor stumbling over the falling body of the woman and the screaming, kicking bloody mess of Eric. Phil slammed into the door with his 260 pounds and forced it closed on them, snapping bones of the dead and the screaming Eric. He held it against the writhing creatures and bellowed at them to get to the next level.
He couldn’t get the door to latch, too much flesh and broken bone poking out against the frame. Below, only two flights down and closing fast, the tumbling, racing mass of screaming undead were trampling each other in their haste to repopulate, to infect, to taste blood. As Lacy raced past him, the last of them, Phil let the door fly open from the undead pressing against it. He shoved the first three that came out as hard as he could down the stairs and into the path of the horde before he turned and ran for his life. He could see them now, only one landing below.
He ran up the stairs three at a time, breathing like a great bellows, knowing he couldn’t outpace them for more than one more flight, maybe not even that. He rounded the turn in the stairs, using the banister in his hand to propel him onto the landing and through the door Lacy was holding open.
She pulled it shut fast but not fast enough that the lead zom didn’t see her face as the door clicked closed. He slammed into it raging and howling his fury and was joined by the rest of the hundreds forcing their way up the stairs. “Other side,” Phil gasped. “We need to get a few more floors up. Got to get above them.”
As they neared the other door though, they heard the screams of the undead coming from this stairwell also. The infected knew where they were. By the time they reached it, the mindless pounding had started. They all stared around at each other, panting hard, and eyes wide. They had lost Eric to the dead hunger, but everyone else seemed unscathed.
“The doors will hold.” Phil panted. “Fire doors… Steel frames... They’re too dumb to open them… and too many bodies crammed against them anyway.”
Lacy leaned against the wall, hands on knees. She laughed humorlessly and shook her head. “We’re in the same situation we were in before. Phil, who’s on this floor? Couldn’t get lucky and it’s a freeze dried food company could we?”
“Tenth floor. This is the Williams & Williams floor. The law firm.”
Robert started towards the doors that opened into the suites and offices of the attorneys. “Shall we see if they have better food than you guys did?” he asked pragmatically, a determined look on his face.
It turned out that the lawyers did have better food than the electronics firm. Their refrigerator was well stocked but two days without electricity and some of it had gone bad. The few things in the freezer were thawed but hadn’t spoiled. They shared a half dozen frozen dinners cooked over a fire built in the hallway in front of the elevator doors.
They had pried one set of them open and the smoke flowed upward in the pitch black cavern and out of the roof vents, thirty-eight stories above them. The pounding on the stairwell doors was muted but still present. They didn’
t have much hope of them giving up and going away for a long time. Days maybe. And that’s if they kept quiet and didn’t get them riled up again.
Lacy stared out of the windows of the corner office that looked out over Centennial Park, the Ferris wheel and water fountains built for the 1996 Olympics. Like most places in the South, Atlanta was a gun friendly city. At the giant SkyView Ferris wheel that was now a permanent downtown fixture, there is a sign that prohibits guns in the gondolas. However, they provide a storage locker for your weapon so you can ride legally. They discovered this when they took a ride one day when Gunny picked her up for lunch. With this in the back of her mind, Lacy started methodically going through every desk drawer, starting in the executive's offices. The others joined her and they tore the place apart, finding nothing. Maybe there were pistols in some of the safes, but no one had any idea how to open them.
Later, as they watched the moon rise over Atlanta in the conference room of Williams & Williams, Esquires, and sipping on some of their fine Louis XIII Cognac, the remaining survivors tried to come up with a plan that didn’t entail them either being killed by the walking dead or slowly starving to death.
“What about the roof?” Carla asked, “I’ve been zip lining before, maybe we can rig up something so we can slide over to the next building on the electric line or something.”
“No lines up there,” Phil said. “All the power and phone lines are underground, come up through the basement.”
“Make a parachute?” Alex asked, but that was instantly shot down. Who would try it first?
“Perhaps we can strip enough cables out of the ceilings, make a strong rope and climb down if we can get back to the lower floors.” Mr. Sato suggested. They pondered that for a while but with all the undead milling around on the streets, they would be hard pressed to get down, get off the rope and get into the garage to find a suitable vehicle before they were overwhelmed. Those things were fast and no one present had a car even remotely rugged enough to go smashing through the city.
Zombie Road: Convoy of Carnage Page 26
