“Back! Get to the dumpster!” Jake shoved Julia ahead of him and followed closely behind, running to a dark green garbage bin in the corner of the alley. I was right behind him, and when we reached the dumpster, we both squatted down and heaved the thing onto its side. That little maneuver raised the height of the bin another two feet, and the side of the bin was much more stable than the lid or the wheels.
Jake helped Julia up and she in turn pulled him up. The two of them pulled me up, and I then shoved Julia up and over the lip of the roof. I cupped my hands for Jake and he placed his foot in, being launched skyward when I straightened.
I spun around and leapt for the roof, catching it with my hands and hanging precariously for a minute. The zombies had reached the dumpster and were now looking upward, reaching with hands, their mouths gaping. If I fell now, I’d be easily killed.
“Little help?” I called, and Julia was right there, grabbing my wrist and pulling as much as she could. Try as she might, though, she didn’t have the strength. Trouble was, the roof edge was very smooth, so I was having a hard time holding on.
“Jake! Get over here!” Julia called.
I couldn’t see him, but I hoped he was getting closer, as my arms were getting tired.
Jake’s face appeared above me and he looked down contemptuously. “My head still hurts, asshole.” His face disappeared and Julia yelled at him.
“Jake!”
Fuck him. I thought. I did a pull-up, even though my arms were starting to burn, and I managed to hook an arm over the side of the roof. I swung a leg up and was able to get a foot over the edge, easing the weight off my arms. Twisting over, I fell onto my side and back, my melee weapon jabbing me painfully in the back.
Chapter 4
I lay there for a minute, catching my breath. Julia knelt down by my head with what looked like real concern in her eyes. It was nice to see, actually. I smiled at her and held up a finger, slowing my breathing down and easing the tension in my arms.
Jake walked over and looked at me. “Hmm. Pity. I was hoping to get an apology before I helped you.”
Julia stood up and rounded on Jake. “He’s your brother, you shit! What if he had lost his grip? What if we both had gone over because I was trying to pull him up?”
Jake looked at her for a minute before replying. “That would have been a problem,” he admitted.
I stood up, not wanting to be on the ground anymore, and watched as Julia growled and punched Jake in the chest. The punch was hard enough to elicit a noise from Jake, and then Julia stalked off to the other side of the roof to see about getting across.
I walked over to Jake and he looked up at me. “I wouldn’t have let you fall, baby brother.”
I stared hard at Jake, trying to control myself. When I replied, it was barely above a whisper. “I wish I could believe you, brother.” I fairly spat the last word at him and walked away, too angry to trust myself to stay in his vicinity.
I went over to Julia and looked over the roof. The alley was about six feet wide, but the problem was the other roof had what amounted to a fence, just like this side.
“Any thoughts? We can’t just jump, because we’d have to clear both barricades.” Julia looked around, and shrugged.
“I could toss you, but you’d probably break an ankle on landing, so that’s out, and Jake sure as hell wouldn’t trust me to throw him,” I said.
“Rope?” Julia suggested, pointing to the pipes and vents coming out of the roof.
“How do we get to the other side to tie it off?” I asked, trying to figure out a way.
“How about you two grow a set and do it the easy way?” Jake put a discarded five-gallon bucket about three feet from the roof ledge, and stepped back about fifteen feet.
Curious, I wondered how he was going to pull this off. At the moment, I kind of hoped he was going to fall and break his stupid neck.
Jake ran forward, stepping once on the bucket, then on the edge of the roof. He sailed over the opening, and landed heavily on the other side. A second later, he popped up and grinned, looking very much like the Jake I used to know.
“Coming?” He asked.
Julia looked at me and shrugged. She stepped back to where Jake had started his run, and then took off. She flew to the other side, landing and rolling. Jake helped her to her feet, and then they both looked at me.
“All right. Why not?” I repeated the procedure, but when I landed, I skidded to a stop, staying on my feet the whole time. I cocked an eyebrow at Jake, who nodded in appreciation.
“I’ll have to do a flip to top that one,” Jake said, moving to the other side of the roof. Fortunately, the buildings for the next five businesses were right up against each other, so we were able to cover an entire block without touching the street.
When we reached the street, we looked over and it wasn’t a good thing. There were about fifty zombies wandering about, and probably twice that many hanging about indoors. When the end of the world was a few years old, some of the zombies started to learn a few things, especially when it came to their survival. The big thing was they didn’t spend as much time outdoors, hanging about inside and mostly staring at the walls. They would come out for a meal, though, no question about that, and if something got their attention; but otherwise, there were a lot of nasty surprises when you were out hunting for things.
“What now?” Jake asked, looking over the edge. He was on his stomach so the zombies couldn’t see him, but he had a good view of the street.
I was right next to him and I shrugged. “I guess we could lob a timer out there, and hope like hell it stays intact enough to go off.”
Jake mulled it over. “We could. We’d have to be ready to go in a second, and be able to get up on the next roof.”
“Timing is everything. What if we can’t get up in time?” Julia asked. “We had five on us in a hurry last time, and out there is quite a few more.”
“Anything we can use up here?” I asked, looking around. The roof was fairly clear of debris, except for the occasional ball and bottle. We sometimes found guns on roofs, remnants of a time when criminals would ditch their weapons by tossing them up on a roof. No gun, no conviction.
Jake looked over the side again. “There’s nothing to prop up against the side. Wait! Over there by that back fence!” Jake pointed towards the back of the building across the street and in the alleyway that formed the access road for the homes behind the businesses was a pile of lumber and fence pieces.
“Nice.” I said. “Anything look long enough for the roof?”
“Even if it’s five feet short, it’s still long enough,” Jake replied.
“All right, but how do we all get up at the same time?” I normally didn’t play devil’s advocate, but I really did want to be sure I was on that roof fairly quickly.
“Depends on what we find. Come on, we’re losing daylight, and I really don’t want to spend another night in the city.” Jake said, back crawling and taking off his backpack to find a noisemaker.
I couldn’t blame him for that sentiment. We had spent enough nights in the city as it was, and each time, it got worse. The ghouls came out in force, hunting and searching, and if they caught the scent of you or heard you, there was no place to go. They also groaned all night long, which was extremely irritating.
Chapter 5
Jake pulled out a small timer, and wound it up to five minutes. He placed it in a rusty coffee can, and stepping as close as he dared to the edge of the roof, he tossed it as far as he could. Julia and I were already climbing down the back of the building before Jake even threw.
We heard the clang of the can and the zombies immediately set up a groan. Jake slipped over the side of the building and hung for a second, dropping down and pulling off his mace. I wasn’t ready to pull out my big melee weapon yet, but I had no problems with my tomahawk. It was a nice, one solid piece of metal from blade to lanyard loop. The beard was sharpened as well as the main blade, and the spike had been sharpened
along the top edge. Julia’s dad had given it to me, and with it, the instructions on how to use it. I could throw it reasonably accurately up to thirty yards, and could kill easily using it with either hand.
Julia pulled the sheath off the blade on her staff and gave a nod. I nodded to Jake and we crept quietly to the corner of the building. I checked several times to make sure there was no one in the alley with us. That mistake had cost more than one person their lives.
A minute later, the timer went off, echoing loudly out of the can. It worked very well, drawing all of the zombies in the immediate vicinity away to the front of the building.
“Go! Go! Go!” Jake whispered, sprinting across the street. Julia and I were right behind him and we all flew across the small street into the back of the building. Jake wasted no time, diving into the lumber and grabbing a long two by twelve. It was about ten feet long, with a crack along one side and a full complement of bugs on the other.
“Ewwww! Julia whispered as she grabbed one end of the board. She hated bugs.
“Suck it up, they’re on their way!” Jake hissed, yanking the board over to the building. He was talking about the zombies that we ran in front of to get over here. There weren’t many, but if they delayed us and got us noticed by the rest, we were in trouble.
Jake and Julia leaned the board against the wall and Julia scampered up it. It bent slightly in the middle, but it didn’t crack. Jake went next, but I didn’t have time to watch him go, since a rather ugly zombie came stumbling out of the street. He was once an overweight man and had died wearing a really loud Hawaiian shirt. The left side of his face and neck were completely gone, as if someone had grabbed hold of his nose and pulled backwards really fast.
I waited until he was close enough, and then I dispatched him with a quick spike to the head. Three more were on their way, and I could see several others becoming interested in the street gymnastics.
“Aaron! Up!” Jake called from the roof. He was holding Julia’s spear, and was waiting to lend a hand. I guess he had gotten over the events in the house, and was ready to make nice. Either that, or Julia had a knife in his ribs I couldn’t see.
I put my axe back in its sheath on my thigh and spun for the board. Two steps up and the thing began to crack. Another step and it cracked loudly, and I knew it wasn’t going to hold my weight.
“Jump!” Jake yelled and I launched myself up just as the board cracked and split. I managed to grab the ball end of the staff and held on for dear life.
“Hang on!” Jake levered the staff over the edge of the roof and pulled down, bending the shaft quite a bit, but the ash handle held and I was able to swing a leg up and over the roof.
I stepped off the edge and caught my breath. “Thanks, Jake,” I said.
“No problem, thank God you’re not fat.” Jake grinned. Despite myself, I did actually like my brother from time to time.
“Let’s go, guys, we’ve got a mile to go and almost no daylight left,” Julia warned, heading for the other side of the buildings.
She was right, and it looked like we might not make it even then. If that happened, we had some problems.
We reached the next street, and got lucky in that most of the zombies were far enough down the road that we were able to drop off the roof, get Julia on the next roof, then lower a rope for Jake and myself. We got up and were on our way before they had a chance to get even halfway to us.
At the end of the next building, we had a bit of a dilemma. We needed to get off the roof and head for the river, and we were about a half mile from where we needed to be.
“Any thoughts?” Julia asked.
“The only upside is the dusk. They can’t see us too well, but that doesn’t matter if enough of them do.” Jake said, looking over the terrain. We had to run through two blocks of high-rises, then get down to the river where our boat was.
“Do we have anything we can distract them with?” I asked, receiving shakes of heads in response.
“What if we set a fire?” Julia asked. We had done that in the past, and it worked up to a point, but we usually did it in the day. At night, the flames would call in every zombie for a mile or more.
“Too risky now.” I said. “I’m thinking with time being short, we need to just run for it, dodge and go. No killing.” I looked pointedly at Jake and he had the grace to grin slightly.
“All right. I’ll take point and Julia, you take the center. Aaron, you’re our backup if we need help,” Jake said.
Julia and I nodded, and we readied our weapons. Julia hefted her spear and checked the haft to see if there was any damage from Jake using it as a lever. I pulled out my ‘hawk and knife, adjusting my grip on both. The knife was a big bladed bowie knife, with a coffin-handled ebony grip. My Uncle Tom had given it to me as a kind of joke, but the blade was all business. Twelve inches of sharpened carbon steel would cut the leg off a zombie with no trouble. Jake choked up on his mace and pulled out his knife again. His blade was smaller, but it was curved more, and designed more for penetration than cutting, although it did the latter extremely well.
“Let’s rock it. Last one to the boat has to paddle,” Jake said.
“You’re on,” said Julia. She could never turn down a challenge.
“See you two later.” I slid down the drainpipe from the roof and waited for the other two to get down. When Jake hit the ground, we were off.
Chapter 6
Jake ran down the center of the street, with Julia and me right behind him. We ran full tilt, not giving the zombies a chance to identify us fully before we were gone. A chorus of groans followed in our wake, and in a short amount of time, we had a huge following of zombies, eager to rip us to shreds.
The first block wasn’t too bad, we only had a few to dodge around. The next block was a little worse, because the zombies were alerted to something going on and were facing us as we ran towards them. Jake started dodging from one side to the other, and it was difficult keeping up. However, I knew what he was trying to do, and that was to keep the zombies from zeroing in on us and cutting us off.
Jake ran over a car, dodging a pocket of zombies, and by the time I got there, I had to jump over a couple of grasping arms.
I nearly slipped on the windshield while stepping down, and my curse caused Julia to look back. She slipped on a dead body on the ground and nearly fell. Fortunately, I was right behind her and caught her before she hit the ground. I actually carried her for a few steps before she got her feet under her.
“Thanks!” she panted, taking off again. She looked at me kind of funny when I ran with her, as if she was surprised, I carried her so easily. Truth was she didn’t weigh that much, and I was fairly strong, so I didn’t think anything of it.
“Come on, it’s just a bit farther!” Jake said, ducking under an outstretched arm. Julia and I ran around the same zombie on the other side, causing that former woman to spin in place and fall on her butt.
We reached the edge of the river, but we weren’t out of the woods yet. We still had to get down to the riverside and launch our boat. Behind us, about two thousand zombies were lurching along the street, with more pouring out of buildings and shops. We had to get moving in the boat and get moving fast. Add to that, the darkness had seriously fallen, and the shadows of the skyscrapers made things darker than they normally would have been out in the open.
We raced down a flight of stairs, passing the restaurant that was normally our landing point for excursions into this part of the city. Back in the day, it would have been a neat place to eat, but now it was just a memory with faded tables and broken windows.
At the landing, Julia climbed into the boat and secured the duffle bag while Jake worked at the rope. I stood at the top of the stairs leading down to the landing, and I had the great job of watching the hordes tumble down the stairs and groan with rare enthusiasm. I wouldn’t doubt some of these zombies were original leftovers from the very beginning of the apocalypse.
As I stood there, I waited for J
ake to get the rope untied. I could see him struggling, and I called down to see what the matter was. In a minute, I was going to have my hands very full.
“Come on, Jake! They’re almost here!” I shifted, but I couldn’t move just yet.
“I’m trying, but the damn thing got pulled tight somehow and it’s not letting go!” Jake sounded genuinely panicked, so I knew he wasn’t horsing around. I could hear Julia adding her two cents to hurry as well.
Seven zombies, the advance guard of the Chicago Horde, came stumbling through the riverside patio portion of the restaurant. I had just a few seconds before it was over.
“Jake!”
“Trying! One minute!”
“I haven’t got a minute. Aw, hell.”
Chapter 7
“Aaron!” Julia could see what was coming and could do nothing to help.
Jake looked up and he was about to let go of the rope when I called down.
“Stay there!” Suddenly I was calm. While I had been panicky before, I was deadly calm now. I put my tomahawk away and sheathed my knife. I reached a hand back and pulled out my heavy fighting weapon. It was a single-edged sword with a wide blade and a half-inch thick spine. The edge swept up to a point that could punch through a piece of sheet metal with ease. The hilt was designed for using with a single hand, but a second could be employed easily for increased cutting power. My Uncle Duncan had given it to me a couple of years ago, calling it a ‘falchion’, but it was a butcher’s blade and little else. He spent hours training me with it, telling me that the odds of me fighting someone else with a sword was really rare, so we focused on cutting, proper stance, and effective follow-through.
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