by Mark Clodi
On the ladder Bubba watched as Hon was flung off, but could do nothing to save the boy, in fact when the catwalk buckled he was torn free from his perch as well, only to be caught by Jed, who somehow managed to hold onto the ladder with one hand and grab Bubba with the other.
“Damn it boy, get a leg on!” Jed screamed at him.
Dazed Bubba groped for a ladder rung and Jed grunted in relief as the man's weight was shifted from his shoulder to the pillar. “Go Steve! There is a zombie on the roof, it got Greg, but can't go down, stay on the catwalk!”
Cautiously, Steve put his weight on the catwalk, it held, but swayed back and forth dangerously. It had almost leveled out with the second set of explosions. Taking a step, but not letting go of the ladder Steve moved forward towards the roof access.
“Where's Hon?” Bubba yelled.
“Gone Bubba.”
“No! Where'd he go?”
“The explosion got him.”
“Where is he?”
The two men were hanging onto the same ladder rungs and Jed's face was inches away from Bubba's. “Don't you pull a Jim! There ain't nothing you can do for the boy and we are armpit deep in a shit tank right now. Hon. Is. Gone. Now get your ass up the ladder before the zombies down below reorganize and come up after us!”
Bubba looked in his friend's face and then looked down below. The zombies had been knocked off their feet by the explosions as well and, as Jed said, they were starting to get up and moving again. Tears streaming out of his eyes Bubba clambered up the ladder. Steve was taking no chances with the roof access, he held onto the ladder with one hand and had his rifle aimed at the trap door with the other. He started raising the trapdoor with his rifle barrel only to have the portal snatched opened violently by a half-naked zombie. Steve fell back away from its grasping hand and fired three shots in rapid succession, one struck the zombie in the neck and it fell, spasming to the cat walk in front of Bubba, who fired two shots into its head and kicked it over the edge to the floor. A moment later another zombie dressed like the first one leaped down through the trapdoor onto Bubba, knocking him against the guardrail, which gave away beneath their combined weight. Bubba reached out a hand and snagged a metal support rod, which held him twenty feet over the floor and watched in awe as the zombie swung around underneath the catwalk using its fingers to gouge holes in the metal mesh to keep its grip. Jed reached the catwalk as Steve fired at the spider crawling zombie beneath them. The catwalk groaned with their combined weight and started to list dangerously to one side.
“Go Steve! Go! Up to the roof before this collapses!” Jed yelled pulling up his rifle. In disgust he saw that the barrel was sheared off about a hand span in front of the stock. Sighting down it anyway he fired at the zombie that was crawling back around towards Bubba. His bullets flew wild and the gun bucked in his hands, jamming, which almost caused him to fall over. “Shit.” he said as he watched the zombie climb over to Bubba.
Hon woke up. He was dazed and hurt and things weren't getting better. His face was wet and he thought he might have been crying. 'Where am I?' he thought. Looking around he realized he was on the pile of pallets where he had his secret cache. He hadn't visited it in weeks due to the cold weather, but the door was just below his feet. Hon tried to move to climb down and screamed when a pain shot through his arm. Looking at it he saw the sliver of wood sticking through his jacket just above his hand. He only had a moment to look at it before the half naked body of a zombie crashed into the pallets just above him, the heavy boot of the zombie hit the splinter and broke it off underneath Hon's arm, pulling it completely through and out of his body. Consciousness faded as his pain increased.
Hanging from the catwalk was not where Bubba wanted to be. The zombie was trying to shake him off and he had to focus all of his attention on just holding on. He did have time to notice Hon's broken form lying on the pile of pallets near the back wall. Bubba thought he saw the boy move, but he couldn't be sure. The light was too dim in the warehouse and visibility was only made worse by the dust and smoke in the air.
Then Xavier was close enough for Bubba to try and kick the zombie off. The zombie didn't react quickly enough to the move and took a heavy combat boot to the stomach, not enough to knock him free of the catwalk, but the blow did send him reeling the other way as he compensated for it. Bubba took a chance then and swung his body towards the zombie, wrapping both of his legs around it and letting go with his hands. Xavier was definitely not expecting this move and became overbalanced by the man hanging upside down by his legs, which were wrapped around his waist. Hanging on was not a problem, Xavier had all the strength he needed in his undead hands to hold them both, but what could he do?
'Drop' was his first thought, 'the fall won't kill me, but will fuck this asshole up pretty badly.' but he didn't drop, something else unexpected happened. The other man on the catwalk leaned forward and pressed the barrel of his rifle on Xavier head.
“Put my friend back on the catwalk or I will blow your fucking head off.”
Xavier tilted his head back and laughed.
“Do it!” shouted Jed. “Or I will kill you!”
Steve made it to the roof, but as soon as he was there he was tackled by Greg. Greg's face was beat to the point that he could not see out of one of his eyes.
“No! Greg! Stop! No!” screamed Steve trying to bring his rifle up and go for the pistol on his belt while pushing his former friend off of him.
Greg grunted and dropped back to lay in the snow of the roof, not moving.
Steve pulled his pistol out and pointed it at the man, hands shaking, “Greg?”
“Uh.” was the only reply he got.
“Greg you alright?”
“Feel like I won the prize for 'World's Best Ass-kicking Recipient.' What happened?”
“You're alive!”
“Don't feel like it.”
“Did they bite you?”
“Don't know my face feels funny.”
Steve pulled out a flash light and rolled over in the snow of the roof to shine it on his friend's face, causing him to flinch away from it. Greg heard Steve pull in a sharp breath.
“That bad?”
“Oh yeah. You're busted up good, your eye is still in, just swollen up, but I think your nose is busted and, uh, I think one of your ears is missing.”
“Seriously? Which one?”
“Your left.”
Greg put his right hand up to his left ear and felt around, his ear felt normal to him, thinking he had the wrong ear he felt his right one, but it too seemed intact. “You're just fucking with me aren't you?”
“Well your nose is still broken.”
“Fuck, it hurts Steve.”
“We'll get you out of here. C'mon, can you get up?”
“No.”
“Well...you gotta. Ain't anyone else to carry you, broken nose or not. Besides you jumped me so your legs have to be okay.”
“Where's everyone else?”
Down below they heard Jed yell out for the zombie to put Bubba back on the catwalk, followed by the zombie’s insane laughter.
Chapter 14
“You gonna help em or just sit here all evening?” Maggie asked to Jaye who was standing beside her. The warehouse that the men were in was directly in front of them, the building Maggie and Jaye were in was also abandoned, none of the zombies outside had noticed them. Maggie had followed Jaye into the building after Xavier’s troops had started their attack. Shaking his head Jaye reached into his pocket and took out a notebook, he flipped to the last page and pointed at some text scrawled there.
Maggie took the book and looked at where he was pointing. She had grown accustomed to reading Jaye's script, it was blocky and child-like, and whoever had written this used cursive. The writing had an elegant, almost feminine quality about it.
Looking up sharply Maggie said, “Someone else wrote this! You're not out here by yourself!”
Jaye shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the text ag
ain, which Maggie read out loud, “'Return with the ghost who walks through walls', what is this shit?”
Jaye reached to take the notebook back from her, but Maggie held it up, trying to read more, “Wait! What is this? 'When the snow flies, your ally flees. Know her by her emerald eyes, dark tresses and unbroken spirit. She will die before she betrays you.' That's me! Isn't it!?”
Grabbing the notebook Jaye flipped it to the front and pulled out a pencil to write with, NO SHIT, he wrote, underlining the words twice.
“Okay, I take it back, who wrote this?”
-Gypsy
“Serious?” Maggie waited and Jaye nodded his head once. “Well I guess I've seen weirder things in the past year. She is right, you know, I won't betray you. If that was me she wrote about.”
-Not everything is what you think.
“Well that is.”
Rather than argue Jaye shrugged and turned back to watching the men's building through the dirty window.
“So you're not going to help them? You already helped the boy.”
-She didn't write everything down, just what she said I might forget. If I shoot, I die.
“Shoot...your gun?”
-Yeah, I didn't bring any bullets.
“You lying sack of...” then she tilted her head sideways and laughed. When they first met she was going to sneak up and devour him, make him into a zombie of her own, the first of many so she could make a gang large enough to take on Xavier. It had been a crazy, foolish thought, which would not have worked anyway, because everyone she created would still have a spark of Xavier in them and be under his control to some degree.
Remembering back to meeting Jaye, she had just been about to pounce when he had turned around and pointed his shotgun at her, both barrels had ended up pointed at her nose from less than six inches away. Of course he hadn't said anything, and she eventually figured out he was mute. He had carefully written his name on the same notebook he was using now and a choppy dialogue has ensued. There was something different about the guy, Maggie gave him that, he seemed to be able to disappear in the blink of an eye. Since meeting him she had kept careful watch on how he pulled his trick and she still hadn't quite managed to figure it out yet..
“So what do you do if one of them catches you?”
-If I do what I was told, they won't.
Maggie thought for a moment and said, “You messed up, didn't you?”
Jaye tilted his head in a way that Maggie had learned meant 'what?'
“The little kid. You weren't supposed to save him were you?”
Jaye shrugged his shoulders and wrote -Instructions said what NOT to do, not what to do. You saw the boy?
“It was a boy? I saw the sled, I saw the footprints.”
-It was a boy.
“Is he the one who 'walks through walls'?
-Don't know
More gunfire erupted from the building across the alley from them.
“Well, I see someone survived the explosions.”
Chapter 15
“We seem to be at an impasse here.” Xavier said, staring down the barrel of the gun.
“No impasse. Put my friend back on the catwalk or I blow your fucking head off.” Jed said.
Xavier shook his head slowly back and forth, “If I put him back then you can blow my head off, that ain't gonna happen.”
Below them other zombies started coming into the warehouse, a bead of sweat trickled down Jed's forehead, despite the cold. Counting them up he realized they were all moving with the smooth movements of those undead he classified as 'smart', he had never seen so many in one place at the same time. His eyes also caught sight of Hon, moving feebly on the pile of pallets, the zombies down below were all staring upwards and had not caught sight of the boy yet. 'I can't save him. I can't save Bubba, I don't even think I can save myself.' Jed thought.
“You seeing the big picture now cowboy?” asked Xavier, “There ain't no way out from this one.”
“Shoot him.” Bubba said.
The zombie shook his legs, thrashing Bubba about, while he yelled, “Shut the fuck up! This is between me and the cowboy here.”
Up above on the roof Steve whispered to Greg, “They're fucked. Hell I think we're fucked. Look at them all!” His pessimistic assessment didn't stop him from poking his rifle through the trapdoor while he lay belly down on the roof.
Xavier noticed the rifle point down at him and said, “I am becoming inclined to drop this heavy son of a bitch, with so many people pointing guns at me.”
“Try it and my friend and I both will fire, you can't dodge me, I don't care how fast you think you are.”
“Well then, we'll just have to do it your way, won't we? I put him on the catwalk, and you don't shoot me.”
“It'd be best if you just moved on too, left us alone.”
“We walk out of here, no one gets hurt, well, no more than they already are.” said Xavier in a reasonable tone.
Jed didn't trust him, but nodded anyway. If he had a gun that worked he probably would have killed the thing and tried to make a deal with the next zombie. Instead he watched as Xavier slowly climbed up the catwalk, which rocked dangerously side to side. The zombie lifted his body sideways and brought Bubba up and over the rail with his legs in a move that displayed his supernatural strength.
“Fuck.” Jed said softly.
Xavier maintained his position with one arm, balancing an upside down Bubba on the rail of the catwalk. Then he tilted sideways for balance and grasped Bubba's arm with his, pulling the man upright and depositing him on to the marginal safety of the walkway.
This put Bubba in a safer position, but interfered with Jed's shot. It also put Xavier almost directly under the trapdoor. The zombie crouched down, hiding well behind Bubba. Then with hardly an effort he jumped up through the trapdoor onto the roof. Steve shot as the zombie moved, the bullet went through Xavier's shoulder, exited his belly and punched a hole into Bubba's collar before ricocheting off of one of the metal supports.
“Kill him Steve!” Jed yelled. He stepped forward to pull Bubba out from under the trapdoor as Greg yelled in pain above them. Steve's worried face was framed in the trapdoor for an instant, and then he started to stand up and pull away from the edge. He was too late for that, the trap door swung over and caved in part of his skull. Jed watched as Steve fell back to the roof without a sound, his arm dangled inside and a trickle of blood began dripping down the outside of his jacket to splatter on the catwalk below him.
“Bubba grab his rifle quick!”
Bubba, still a little dazed, turn and leaped up to snag the barrel of Steve's rifle, then his friend was pulled backwards out of sight and the trapdoor slammed shut. Jed pushed past Bubba to climb up the roof access ladder far enough to bolt it closed. The fighting on the roof all but stopped a moment later.
“Why didn't you shoot him when you had the chance?” asked Bubba, reloading Steve's rifle.
“My gun is fucked, it was a bluff Bubba. It won't fire.” Jed held up his gun so his friend could see.
“Oh damn Jed. We got one rifle between us...No I got my pistol.” he said, reaching into his waist band as if to get it for Jed.
“Don't bother, I still have mine too. Why ain't they attacking?” Jed said, pulling out his pistol and pointing it to the zombies below them.
The zombies were just standing there, staring up at the men.
“I don't know, but maybe we better start taking shots while can.” whispered Bubba.
“Let's move over to the next section of catwalk first, this one is about to give.”
Then Hon moaned.
Bubba froze, looking downward into the dim light, trying to find the boy, “Is he....did they....” spotting the boy's form he shouted, “Hon!”
“Shut the fuck up Bubba, you think that will do him any good? C'mon and move!” He pulled Bubba to the next section of walkway and then said, “On three fire at will.”
Bubba nodded and soft counted to three and fired at
a homely looking zombie wearing a blue button up shirt. The man Bubba fired on was put down forever, but Jed, with a standard pistol, missed the mark and only put his down to the floor for a moment. The zombies below scattered when the shots rang out making difficult targets. Bubba continued to fire at any that got close to Hon, but none of the zombies paid the boy any mind; they were too busy dodging gunfire from the two men.
“Out!” shouted a voice from the hole where the door used to be.
Jed saw the bare chested zombie standing there in the soft moonlight and took a shot at it with his pistol. The bullet made a hole in the sheet metal next to Xavier's head and the zombie flinched away, disappearing into the night. The rest of the zombies ran for the door or the hole that the car had made in the wall, leaving the warehouse empty in moments.
Chapter 16
“Bubba we gotta move, the first rule in fighting is not to be where your enemy expects you to be.”
Bubba was still peering down into the darkness towards where Hon lay. “Jed.” he began.
“Bubba! Focus here!”
“No Jed. Listen to me. Why didn't they get Hon?”
The older man stopped for a moment, “Why....I don't know Bubba. Things happened fast, maybe they didn't have time.”
Turning sharply Bubba looked Jed in the eye, “You ever known a zombie to leave a helpless person behind? Especially a kid? They could have got him.” Bubba swallowed nervously, “But they left him. Why?”
“Shit Bubba, can we do this after we get out of this mess? I got a real bad feeling about this one...”
A loud thump sounded from the roof and they heard footsteps approaching the trapdoor.
“Shhh.” shushed Jed, then he whispered, “We gotta move. I will stay here, you go over to the catwalk above Hon, you can take a look at him there, see if he...see if he is one of them.”
Bubba nodded and moved quickly across the damaged catwalk directly underneath the roof access, once he was secured in his position above Hon he looked down at him, trying to see better. It was no use, it was too dark to see if the boy was alive or had turned. Rifling through his pockets Bubba's hand came upon his flashlight; it was a cheap low voltage model. It was also his only light source. Shining it down didn't improve his vision any, the beam was too weak to reach the twenty feet to the floor. 'I knew I should have grabbed the police light from the trailer.' he cajoled himself, 'Well shit if this light isn't good enough to even reach the floor, it ain't gonna help me much up here.' Flicking the switch to on Bubba dropped the light over Hon's form, it landed with hardly a noise on the boy's back.
