by Fuchs, A. P.
Her blue eyes went wide. When she spoke, her voice was soft, timid and afraid. “You’re serious.”
You bet I am. If they bit you, you’re gonna die right here. “Now, Billie.” He cocked the hammer. It could have been the adrenaline, could have been losing April and his failing to keep Des safe, but right now he’d love to see her die.
His head suddenly spun and the world seemed to pull itself a million miles away. He couldn’t believe he just thought that. Couldn’t believe he wanted that. He debated lowering the gun, but if he did, then he’d let the old Joseph rise again and that was something he’d never let happen.
Joseph had died with April.
Tears glazing over her eyes, Billie reached the hem of her T-shirt with shaky hands and slowly pulled it up.
Long, red lines ran up the sides of her waist and ribs, stopping on either side of her chest.
Billie looked away as he leaned in close to examine her. No teeth marks. Nothing that hinted of gummy white saliva.
He kept the gun pointed at her. “Lower your shirt then raise your arms.”
She obeyed, frowning. He checked the shirt and it was torn on either side in a clean line, not chewed up or ripped in places the way nails or teeth would tear it.
After taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly, he lowered the gun.
Billie slapped him hard across the cheek, stormed off past him and gave him the finger.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. He just didn’t know to whom he was apologizing: to her or to April, for what he had become.
15
Empty Building
The world had disappeared last night. August had mustered up enough courage to head back downstairs and sleep in the vault, both hands on the rifle, the rifle on his chest. The droning bangs of the dead slamming their palms on the thick glass upstairs kept him awake at first, but soon its monotonous noise became a background beat to his thoughts and, eventually, he drifted off to sleep. Just before he closed his eyes that final time, August expected to wake every half hour or so, his racing heart forbidding him any sleep. Instead, darkness prevailed and a black sleep took him, shutting out the noise from above, the apprehension of something lurking in the shadows beyond the safe’s door, the discomfort of the rifle weighing on his chest. He didn’t dream; he closed his eyes one moment and opened them a few minutes later only to discover, as per his watch, a little over nine hours had gone by. The room was as dark when he awoke as it was before he fell asleep.
He stood slowly, a sharp ache filling his muscles. It’d been a long time since he’d slept on the floor, never mind without a pillow. It took several minutes for the blood to flow into the muscles to make them usable again. Still, his elbow and knee joints felt as if they were made of wood and that something would break if he tried bending them.
Head far more clear, he still couldn’t get over how long he had slept. You’d think you’d be very awake with a throng of the dead beating at your door all night long, the thought of never seeing morning prevailing in your mind.
The drive into town then the long walk all the way from the TransCanada must have gotten to him more than he realized.
His stomach growled; the inside of his mouth was sticky.
August stood inside the vault door, listening.
The banging had stopped.
Checking the rifle, he decided his first order of business was to hit the water fountain near the escalator. After that, he’d head upstairs and see if the windows were still intact. He’d worry about breakfast—lunch—later.
His old bones creaked and ached as he opened the heavy vault door and, after poking his head out, he ventured into the bank beyond.
The flashlight was dead so he tucked it into his back pocket. Hopefully he’d find some batteries later.
The hallway beyond the bank was quiet. No dragging footsteps, no groans. No anything. The only sound was his breathing and his own footfalls.
After getting a cool drink at the water fountain—and thanking God a hundred times it was still working—he cautiously approached the escalator, ready for a walking corpse to appear at its top and charge toward him.
One step. Two. Two more. Slowly, now.
No banging.
No groaning.
No breathing save his.
At the top of the escalator, August surveyed the lobby. The blood-splattered windows were still intact.
Carefully, he turned on his heels and moved toward the back doors, something he didn’t look into the night before, his brain too tired to even have thought of it. These windowed-doors were boarded up.
“Wonder why they didn’t do up the glass at the front?” he said. But he already knew the answer. Either those who were here before him were overtaken by the dead that had come in through the Square, or they had fled because some form of rescue came.
August went back toward the escalator down a hallway with a row of elevators on either side.
This joint’s got over thirty floors. To check every one would take all day never mind checking the Square. “Are you planning to stay here?” Maybe. Could have everything I need till I figure out why I was supposed to come here. If I was supposed to come here. He still wasn’t one hundred percent sure that whole “exodus” thing at his cabin was Divine or not. The further that special event receded into the past, the more doubt was able to creep in. What would You have me do?
No reply, just a sense that he should stay put for now. Whether that was from him or Upstairs, he didn’t know.
“Got a big day ahead of me,” he said, and pressed the up arrow on the elevator.
* * * *
All the floors were clear, just empty offices, some with papers strewn everywhere and phones off the hooks (which didn’t work when he checked).
By the time August finished scouting the top level, he was exhausted. But there was still one more place to check: the stairwell next to the elevators.
This is probably useless, he had thought more than once. I go inside one elevator, but there are nine others that could very well be holding the dead. Or those monsters could be riding them up and down and I’d never know. Wait, that’s not true. I never heard the elevators going when I wasn’t in them. Maybe I am in the clear, here? “But that stairwell . . .”
He opened the big door a crack, the barrel of the rifle poking through. After waiting a moment, he quickly shoved it open all the way in case a zombie was on the other side. If someone was there, the door would plow into them and buy him a moment to aim his shot. The door slammed open hard, banging into the wall. A bit of drywall crumbled to the floor.
August approached the railing, looked down, couldn’t see anything except for the sides of some stairs, then glanced up at the steps going two flights to the roof.
“Could use a little fresh air,” he said and, using the railing, helped himself up the steps, already dreading the trip all the way back down.
“Wait.” He stopped two steps up.
He quickly went to the elevators, called them up to his floor and when the doors opened he pressed the emergency stop buttons in each. Smiling, he thought, There. The only problem is I may need them later. Well, maybe I’ll send one down and lock it on the second floor or something.
Back inside the stairwell, he carefully made his way up even though he could already see these two flights leading up to the roof were clear. At the top, he thought he heard a tap coming from the other side of the roof door. Waiting, listening, wondering if it was his imagination or not, August brought up the rifle and got ready to fire.
No other sound came.
Was probably me.
He put his hand on the steel horizontal door handle and pushed. The handle went down and in, but the door didn’t open. He tried again then a third time. Same thing.
“Oh,” he said at the silver and black key-coded lock box beside the door.
He examined the tiny silver buttons on its face. They were numbered 0-9.
“It could be anything.” Four- or five-
digit combos. Maybe more. He punched in a couple just for the hey of it. You never knew. He glanced up. “Wanna gimme a hand?” He closed his eyes and the numbers 2, 5, 3, 7 and 9 appeared one at a time in his mind’s eye. He tried them. No go. Those numbers were just him.
“Thanks anyway,” he breathed. Staring at the lock box, he added, “You send me out here then hightail it when I need a hand.” With a grin, “Hmph. Sounds familiar. Moses had a time of it, too. Not that I’m him or anything.” After a chuckle, “Don’t got a beard down to my feet.”
He thought for a moment. “I could blow the lock.” Yeah, but if something’s on the other side, how’re you gonna lock it again? “Okay, fine. I’ll leave it for now. Bring something up to reseal it later.”
August went down the stairs.
* * * *
By the time August reached the bottom of the stairwell and stood before the door that opened up into the Square, he could barely stand.
Going down is worse than going up. And he had to leave the elevators on the higher floors. If an undead or two were in the other elevators, they were now trapped between the floors. Thank goodness for elevator control on the security level.
August leaned forward slightly and caught his breath. His rifle suddenly doubled in weight. He set it down and did a few stretches before picking it up again. It was a little lighter.
His stomach growled and the inside of his skull felt hollow. He’d have to get some food soon.
“Now You’re making me fast, too, huh?” he said. A sharp ache pierced his heart. Before, he wouldn’t dare take a shot at God; he knew far better than to aim an arrow at the Throne. This was the one thing that, throughout his entire Christian life, he still had a hard time dealing with: trusting Someone he didn’t see. He wasn’t stupid. A Christian’s life was one where your faith would be constantly tested. He knew the prize. But he also knew the cost: “Take up your cross and follow Me,” Jesus had said nearly two thousand years ago. He just wished Jesus would have emphasized how heavy that cross would be sometimes.
Checking his rifle over, ensuring a bullet was in the chamber, he opened the door.
The wide hallway beyond was empty; stepping out into it was like planting yourself into the middle of a field with nothing for miles. The walls and doors lining the hallway held no meaning.
“Let’s go,” he said, “one at a time.”
And August began his hunt for anything or anyone alive.
Or dead.
16
Along the River
More than once Billie stopped and put a hand to her eyes, trying to conceal the tears.
Des was gone.
“Yo, Billie!” Joe shouted from several paces ahead.
“In a minute,” she said quietly.
Brown and dry leaves crunched beneath his feet as he neared her. He pulled her hand away from her face. “Look, I know it’s hard, but we can’t sit and mope right now. You don’t want to be caught out here with the dead walking around.”
“Think I don’t know that?” she snapped, sniffled, and stormed past him. A moment later: “Why are we taking this route, again?”
“The river’s our best bet. So far as we know, they don’t like water. The nearest zombie is probably two hundred meters that way.” He nodded to their left, beyond the trees and bush, to what was left of Henderson Highway and the houses and neighborhood alongside it.
“Yeah, but we got no boat. If one of those things comes for us, there’s nowhere to go. Can’t just jump in the river, man. The undertow’ll suck us down to the bottom.”
She glanced at the river rushing by at a good clip beside them.
“At least we haven’t seen any of them. That’s a good thing, ain’t it?”
“I suppose.”
They walked in silence, stepping over and around trees that had fallen over or been bent at obscure angles thanks to the river’s seasonal rise and fall from melting snow. The funk of stale water hung on the air and more than once Billie longed to go up to street level and get a lungful of fresh air. Not that that was any better, though. Having the dead walking around for a year had polluted the air so badly that it was a wonder she and the other survivors hadn’t come down with any diseases. It still had yet to be discovered why they hadn’t been affected the day the rain came and why, a year later, the disease—if it was a disease—still hadn’t harmed them.
The duo walked on. It was slow going, the uneven debris-covered ground making the trek toward downtown difficult. When she asked Joe multiple times why they had to go into the city, his best answer out of all he offered was, “You saw them before we hit the river. They’re coming down toward the Haven. Can only presume they’re emptying downtown. The safe zone’s being switched. Besides, we can get off the ground when we get there, clear a floor or two in either the Richardson or CanWest Global. Maybe even one of the hotels.”
Joe seemed to be lost in thought because he didn’t say anything for a long time. Not that he really said much at all, but despite living alone and being so secluded for so long, Billie still wasn’t used to silence. At least when Des was alive, she had him to talk to once in awhile.
Oh, how she missed him. Despite how annoying he could be, he was the most down-to-earth person she’d ever met, a guy who didn’t care what people thought of him. He wasn’t a looker, by any means, but on the inside? Yeah, she could really go for that.
She could really go for that right now.
“You never told me where you got your gun?” she asked Joe just as they ducked under a low-hanging tree branch.
“The X-09. Didn’t ‘get it’ anywhere. I built it.”
“X-09? Mean anything?”
He pursed his lips. “‘X’ for ‘extreme.’ Wrong spelling, I know. The nine . . .”
It appeared he was going to say more, but he didn’t.
She didn’t want to pry any further so asked, “Where’d you learn to do that?”
Joe paused before answering. “The Net, before I got rid of my connection.”
“You still never said why you did that.”
“And I’m not going to.”
“Oookay. So, what, you looked up a gun-building site and got lucky?”
He glanced back at her and offered a cool stare. “No.” Then, “Well, kinda. You’d be surprised what you’d find on the Web. Just about anything.”
“Oh, believe me, I know. Trust me. I spent most of my life on there. It’s how I survived, actually. You know, getting plugged into other people and all that. You hungry?”
“Not really. Used to going without food.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Something caught her foot and the ground rushed up to meet her. Palms out, she stopped her fall, but something small and pointy jammed into her palm.
“Billie?” Joe said, coming over. He knelt down beside her.
“Aaarrrghhh,” she growled and shoved away from the ground, accidentally pushing whatever was in her hand in further. She sat back on her knees.
“You okay?” he asked.
Her palm was smeared with blood. At its center was a shard of broken beer bottle.
“Of course,” she said and not in answer to his question. Why would she expect this little jaunt downtown to go smoothly? Carefully, she pulled out the shard. Blood bubbled to the surface of the wound, leaked out, and dripped onto the ground.
“Oh man, that stings.” She looked around for something to wipe her hand on. There wasn’t anything out here and the river was too filthy to rinse it in. And as far as she knew, it could be loaded with dead bodies, their germs circulating through the water like salt.
“Here.” Joe tore off a strip of fabric from the bottom of his shirt. He offered it to her.
“Thanks,” she said and, taking a deep breath and holding it, wrapped the fabric around her hand.
She was able to wrap it around her hand three times before Joe reached over and helped her tie it.
“The second we find clean water, we’ll
wash it up, okay?” he said.
“Yeah . . .” she breathed and stood, cradling her hand.
They walked even slower, the vibration from each thump of her footfalls aggravating the wound.
She nearly bumped into Joe when he stopped suddenly in front of her, his hand up. “Wait,” he said.
“What?”
“Something’s out there.”
17
Empty Square
The bulk of Winnipeg Square had been covered and by the time August sat down on the steps leading up to the catwalk, which were near the food court, he was ready to pass out from fatigue.
The shops were empty, the only dead a few dismembered limbs. Where the rest of the people had gone, he could only guess into the creatures’ stomachs.
With each pass into the shops, the side rooms, the bathrooms and beneath stairwells, he kept a sharp ear out for whatever it was that had been making noise last night.
But Winnipeg Square had proved empty.
He had made sure the doors leading outside were secure every time he encountered some and all were boarded up save for a pair that opened up onto Fort Street via the Royal Bank building. Those he secured by simply locking the door and stacking desks and paper-filled boxes from the bank offices in front of them.
