by P. J. Post
I love them.
I can’t protect them, care for them — raise them from a position of shame. I have to put the past behind me, behind all of us.
Jem salutes, and even with everything that’s going on, I can’t help but grin.
I hope Samantha’s right. Every day, I cry myself awake, and every day I think this is it, today is they day I stop fighting, I’m used up, done — but I keep going — there’s no one else to do what needs doing. I wonder what I would do if there was.
“Keep your heads down,” I shout and then pull my coat off and drop it inside before closing the hatch.
The crunch of the snow is unnaturally loud walking across the roof; the world is utterly silent around me. It feels like I’m the last living thing on earth. Even the Button Eyes have stopped moaning. The cold wind leaches goosebumps from my bare skin, but I don’t want to risk wearing a coat and having it snag on something at the last minute when I crawl down the ladder.
The tower looks solid as fuck. I seriously doubt that this is going to work, and part of me thinks this is going to blow us all to hell.
It’s a small piece of me though.
Samantha’s optimism is infectious.
I stop and focus, listening, and just under the sound of the wind, I can hear Freemont’s death rattle, the crackling of the fires a few blocks away, countless feet crunching through the snow and if I really concentrate, I can convince myself that I’m hearing cries for help.
I light a cigarette and trace the trajectory of the tower again.
As long as it keeps its shape, we’ll be high enough to crawl right across; if it collapses…we’re still fucked.
I smoke and watch the Button Eyes shuffling around the gas tanks. They’re packed into the courtyard so tightly, it’s a claustrophobic nightmare.
I take one last drag and flick the butt into the crowd.
And then I wipe my face and feel the whiskers, my Gandalf chin beard. I bet I’d look pretty fucking stupid without my .45, maybe I look stupid anyway.
Enough end of the world stalling.
I grab the spool and slowly play out the string as I back towards the hatch. I coil up several feet and then kick the hatch.
Keats pushes it open and steps down a few rungs. I crouch down above him, get a handful of string and lower the hatch onto my shoulder until just a thin line of sky is showing. The string feels snug, I hope it doesn’t catch on anything.
“Okay, hold on to the ladder, to each other. Any last words?”
Jem leans out around Casey. “I love you.”
What more can a hero ask for?
I jerk the string as hard as I can.
§§§§§
Nothing happens.
We wait a moment, and nothing happens again.
Shit.
I look down at Keats and he just shrugs.
And then I feel something, a vibration, like the one in my head, but this one is racing through the ladder, the walls, and a distant scraping sound whispers from above and below. The sound gets louder and louder, protesting and screaming at us from everywhere at once…it’s got to be the fucking cell tower.
What else can it be?
And then the vibration becomes a sudden jolt and the room tilts sickeningly, some of the kids cry out but no one falls.
The glass in the door below cracks and dust blows into the room.
Samantha coughs, and then it’s quiet again.
I try to push the hatch open but it won’t budge.
I don’t get it.
“It’s stuck,” I say to Keats.
He crawls up along side me and lays his shoulder against the metal even as he protects Pixie, and together we push again. It doesn’t move at first, but we keep at it, the hinges widens until there’s enough space for me to crawl through.
I roll out onto the snow and get to my knees.
“Well?” Keats asks as he lets Pixie out onto the roof.
The tower is gone, and so is the corner of the building. It didn’t fall straight, but it still took out the Tweed and Feed like I thought it would.
I hear screams from down the ladder as Keats tries to squeeze through, but he’s too big.
The screams get louder, higher pitched.
What the fuck is going on?
And then I realize what it must be down at the end of the ladder — the only thing it can be.
I kneel down and take hold of the hatch as the buzzing begins to take over once more, the vibrations growing, humming and soon they’re screaming down my neck, across my shoulders…my muscles feel like cords hooked up to a winch, stretched to snapping…pain shoots down my arms…my fingers feel like they’re on fire…the buzzing is all I can hear now, all I can feel…my skin is alive…I can feel them…in me…squirming under the skin…through me…I imagine my muscles turning to steel cables…it hits me hard and quick…my skull feels like a million tiny nails have been driven into it…I lift and my boots sink into the snow…
And then into the roofing.
My vision narrows, color draining from the scene.
The hatch gives way with an angry sheik…and then it’s free.
Keats crawls out as the kids follow him, chasing the fresh afternoon air.
I grab the ladder and help them find one rung after another even as I lower myself into the blinding dust that swirls up from the bottom of the well.
I can hear them moaning and groaning and thrashing around down there, fucking Button Eyes.
And then I hear gunshots, see the flashes through the dust.
Holly can’t climb without help and Samantha is too busy shooting blindly and kicking at the Button Eyes to help her.
How did they get in?
I take Holly by the waist and lift her up to Keats who, thankfully, followed me back down.
And then I crawl past Samantha and drop.
My feet hit the floor even as I reach through the soup-like dust and grab a Button Eye in each fist, slamming them into the walls and then into each other.
“Go!” I shout.
I leap up onto the ladder, taking two rungs at a time, trying to get to Samantha, to get her beyond the reach of the Button Eyes.
“Keats, help Holly, I got Samantha.”
I climb up until I’m even with her.
The buzzing is so loud it hurts more than my muscles and my head, my entire body is vibrating now. I can feel it in my bones. Samantha looks at me, her face twisting with fear and horror as she puts a knee into my chest and shoves.
I slip, miss the lower rungs as they fly by and crash hard into the ground.
Fuck, why did she…what the fuck?
I feel bodies brushing against me and I push them away, spinning and twisting, shoving them, but the dust is so thick now that I can’t see the ladder, I don’t know which way is fucking which. I take off with one hand in front of me and the other holding my .45, searching for walls and shit that needs killing.
“Sam!” I shout up the ladder.
“Lane, oh God! Lane!” Samantha screams.
“Get to the roof, stay there, don’t fucking move!” I shout in return as more bodies surround me and then I bang straight into the outstretched arms of Button Eye. I find the thing’s throat, dig my fingers into the flesh, raise my gun, hopefully, to where a head is waiting — and pull the trigger.
“Lane!” Samantha screams again, her voice isn’t as loud — diffused, but I can still hear the emotion in her tone just the same.
The thing in my hands falls away.
I find a wall and follow it, hopefully dodging the zombie mob. My hands and shoulders keep bumping into framed pictures, most of them end up as shattered glass on the floor. I’m in a hallway, and after a few minutes, I see shadows bobbing in the glowing haze ahead.
I can feel dull aches rising up from under the cables that used to be the muscles in my arms and legs, they’re working their way up to full on cramps, but they feel distant, like someone else’s problem; my head is on fire — like it’s g
oing to explode.
I race through the grotesque and limbless shadows, pushing them aside — smoldering heads lolling from broken necks.
The floor is tilted, and once I’m clear of the worst of the haze, I notice an office door, it’s got more daylight showing through the wire-glass window than smoke. I try the handle, kick and shove and kick some more until I open it enough to squeeze through.
I slam the door and crawl over the desks and file cabinets that have slid to this end of the office. The floor slants up.
When I get to the far wall I see what’s happened.
This is the corner of the building, the one nearest the tower — the tower must have taken part of the building with it, and the burned and mutilated Button Eyes just walked right up the ramp of broken floors, but plenty of the fuckers were already packed into these halls even before.
Good thing we stayed up on the ladder.
I take a look at my body as color returns to the world. I have new scrapes along my arms. They’re black and oozing.
Fuck.
I don’t remember getting them, but at least they’re not bites. I’m not sure how many get of jail free cards Pixie Dust gives for bites, and I’m already at one and counting, Jem has a few.
The cold breeze feels refreshing as the dust begins to settle. I keep climbing up the floor to the hole in the side of the building, hoping to get back to the roof when I see a mirror hanging off-kilter from a nail.
My entire body is tingling like never before, my muscles feel ripped and torn, and the buzzing is driving me insane. I can barely concentrate enough to think, but now…
Samantha’s freak-out makes total sense.
My left eye is so blue it’s practically glowing, but my right one is black as fucking coal, black on black on black.
§§§§§
I find a place to rest in the rubble, near the collapsed exterior wall and let the cold wind wash over me. Snow is thick in this corner of the room. And slowly, as the buzzing recedes and the pain lessens, the shakes come, like I’m withdrawing from heroine or something.
I lean over and throw up.
I watch it drip down the brown on brown checkerboard floor as I dry heave, again and again, the spasms refusing to stop. The puke takes a long time to get to the desks and chairs piled up in the far corner. I finally catch my breath and fumble for a cigarette.
It only takes three tries to light it.
My everything hurts.
Is this the end?
Am I a fucking zombie?
Do zombies smoke?
I flex my fingers again and then squeeze them into fists.
What happened?
Why didn’t I just grab Samantha, why did I jump into the dust like that?
That’s way more crazy than usual, even for Suicide Lane. Why did I do that?
I’m right above the concrete foundation where the cell tower was anchored. I can see the front legs, where they melted, where they broke and where they bent. The Button Eyes between the tower and the gas tanks are burned to shit.
The stench reminds me of last night, Holly and the blade on her arm.
Brenda did that, volunteered to come with Samantha when she totally didn’t have to. She saved Holly from bleeding out.
I take another drag and lean back against the cracked wall board and splintered wooden framing.
She was a bitch, and I’m not sure I trusted her…I know I didn’t like her, but she still deserved better. Why did she wait so long to turn?
Is this how it started for her?
I’ll drive myself batshit thinking like this.
I lean back, concentrating on my cigarette.
The buzzing is gone. My head’s mine again. Now I’m just shaking and cold, it’s got to be the world’s worst hangover.
“Lane?”
It’s Samantha.
She’s close, somewhere above me.
“Yeah?” I shout back.
“I smelled cloves, you must be desperate. Are you okay?”
“I’m not sure. How are you, Holly, the girls?”
“They’re okay, scared. Lane, I…”
“I found a mirror, I know what you saw. I forgive you or whatever, I get it, but, babe, trust me, I would never hurt you.”
“I’m so sorry, I know you…wouldn’t, not…” she begins, but doesn’t finish as she drops down from the exposed framing above and lands on a silver radiator across the room.
“Careful just the same…I’m one of them…or about to be.”
She kneels down, one hand still holding the ruined wall, the other loosely holding her automatic pistol.
She may love me, but she’s not stupid.
She’s watching me closely, studying my eyes. “I don’t know what’s going on, and right this second…Lane, Jem freaked out too…don’t worry, she’s okay now, her eyes are still blue…but she was screaming, she was in pain…and the hatch…Lane, what’s going on?”
I have no idea how to explain the visions, the telepathy, the shit in my head, I’m not even sure it’s real — maybe I’m imagining all of it, maybe, after everything that’s happened, I’m just batshit crazy after all.
“I don’t know any more than you do,” I say.
“Don’t lie to me, not now.”
“You were in trouble, the girls were screaming, you were screaming…and I couldn’t get to you and then…and then I was on the floor at the bottom of the stairs fighting the fuckers.”
Sam glances down to the courtyard, like she’s thinking things through.
“And then my eyes turned fucking black.”
“Just one,” she says softly.
“Yeah, and?”
Sam sits down, sets the gun on the radiator and stuffs her hands into her coat as her boots dangle a few inches above the floor.
“I hope the cure is worth it…we don’t know what this is, what I’ve done to you — to the girls?” I ask as I flick ashes onto the floor.
“Stop. What’s done is done, and it beats the hell out of being dead or one of those things. If we’re going to remember and document all of this, fill out all those little postcards you got me, if we’re going to be together…love each other…we have to live first, right?”
I take another drag, staring at her.
She frowns. “Look, something weird is going on, and yeah, we already kind of knew that, but that hatch, it’s all messed up, that was you, you twisted it up like that, not Keats, not the explosives…you…to get to us, to save us. That’s incredible even if we can’t explain it, or what happened with your eyes. But you’re you again, or you’re still you, you know? And we don’t have to tell anyone about what happened.”
“You didn’t say anything?”
“Would you have? Shinji is looking for an excuse to kill you, and this time Keats would have helped. Some secrets have to be ours.”
“Is that fair?”
“Fuck fair,” she says, her tone suddenly bitter. “As far as we know, after this morning, the girls are immune, and the others, God forgive me, but I can’t be responsible for everyone, not before you…not before you.”
“What if this is how it begins…turning, I mean. What if I’ve killed all of you?”
“You haven’t. You just…” She leans forward. “Lane, look at me. For the last time, it’s okay, you and me and the girls, we’re going to be okay.”
She reaches into a pocket and pulls out a pair of sunglasses. “Wear these.” She tosses them to me.
They’re a dark lensed pair of Ray Bans, like the ones I used to have — like Samantha had that day on the boardwalk.
“I saw them a couple of days ago and thought about you,” she says.
I slide them on as I finish my cigarette.
“Cold?” she asks.
I look over at her, and then toss the smoke. “Pretty cold, yeah.”
“Come here.”
I find my way through the debris and snuggle up next to her.
She raises the sunglasses and studies my z
ombie eye. “It looks like a marble, like it’s made of metal. I can’t even see the pupil or iris anymore. Can you see okay?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
She lowers the glasses. “Puked, huh?” she asks, laughing softly.
I laugh with her. “Yeah, whatever it was…it was pretty bad. Not too much better now, to be honest.”
“Maybe Emily was right, maybe we are superheroes, well, maybe you are.”
“Sorry, babe, but that’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard all day, and today has been pretty full of stupid shit.”
“Fine, asshat, when we get back up on the roof, you tell me, you explain to me how that hatch…don’t leave me, Lane, not now.” Her voice breaks.
I pull her to me, wrapping her in my arms, holding her, kissing her stubbly head. “You said we were going to make it, you had a good feeling, that’s what you said. We’re all still alive, still safe. You’re not going to lose me, not like this. Okay?”
“Yeah.” She kisses my cheek, and then looks up into my eyes, and as she wipes her own dry, she grins. “You called me babe. I could really use a kiss, got any mints?”
§§§§§
Samantha was right, the hatch is a fucking mess, and I barely remember any of it. It’s all scraps and pieces, blurs of color and flashes of Sam and Holly, Keats and a sea of Button Eyes swimming through a haze. Samantha says I jumped down the ladder, into the building — and I remember it, sort of.
It’s like trying to remember the Del Ray Motor Inn.
But my body agrees with Samantha’s story, with my dream, it’s sore as fuck, like I’ve pulled every muscle I have. Samantha told everyone that the bomb or something to do with the building collapsing must have twisted the hatch and that’s why it wouldn’t open. Keats just dislodged it.
It’s bullshit, but I think the kids are buying it.
Well, except Holly, Samantha says she may have seen me on the way down, but she’s not freaking out, well, she’s still loyal at any rate. Keats is keeping his distance, but otherwise, he’s cool.
Though, to be fair, they both appear slightly suspicious of my new shades, given how fucking cloudy it is.
I think Jem felt something like I did, or maybe she got an echo of what I was going through, she knows something’s up at any rate. She’s been really touchy-feely, hugging me and staying close. She was waiting on me when I climbed up onto the roof, like she knew where I was the whole time.
