by Chris Lowry
The Z may not know to look in through windows, but the noise attracted them. They bounced off the window by the door, banged against the hollow core metal door itself, sending loud thuds through the room.
The sour smell of fear rolled across the floor again. I wanted to call out to Malik, but shadowy rotten heads filled the dusty windowpane.
Then they were gone.
It took a moment, a few seconds of terror as I wondered if they were coming through the thin door, longer still for the boy on the floor behind the desk.
But the thing about fear is it gets to be easy to live with.
Already on this day I'd survived a bite.
I didn't want to push my luck, but so long as the door held we were safe. Safe-ish.
We still had to get in the depot though.
I checked the front window and moved to the open one on the back wall. It was a tight eight inches from the wall of the shack to the fence and both ends were open, so any Z that made it this far back could in theory scoot down the narrow opening.
We were going to have to be fast going over the fence. I wasn't worried about the climb for me, since I was going first. The razor wire at the top was single strand but we would deal with that as we got to the top.
I looked through the fence. The Z were by the gate, only three or four meters away from where we would land. That meant once boots hit the ground, we'd have maybe five seconds before they were on us.
First one down would be in the most danger.
I looked at Malik.
If he was first, I'd lose him. He was too scared to fight. But if he hit the ground and pulled a rabbit, the Z would chase after him as he tore across the ground. Maybe he would lead them on a merry chase and I'd get the chance to move to the next stage of the plan.
“Malik, you feel like running?” I whispered.
His sob was answer enough.
I wasn't sure if I could even get him over the fence to follow me. I might have to leave him in the guard shack, paralyzed by fear.
I knelt in front of him. He had his knees pulled up to his chest, swollen tears dripping down his dirty face. He sniffed twice and wouldn't look at me.
“I'm going over the fence,” I explained. “You should come with me.”
He nodded.
So at least he was listening.
“You're going to have to be Johnny on the spot when we land. The Z are about five seconds away from us and we're going to have time to hit and run. You read me?”
He nodded again.
“Say it back to me.”
He looked up then and I could see I had been wrong.
Malik was scared, more scared than me, but he had a glint of iron will in his eyes. He would go over first if I asked him, he would run and lead the Z away if I needed him to do it. He didn't want to. He didn't want to go over, didn't want to do anything but curl up in a ball in this shack and hide out until all the Z were gone and the world was back to the way it was.
But we knew that wasn't going to happen.
“I'm ready,” he whispered back.
“Razor wire at the top,” I told him. “Watch your hands.”
I reached into the pocket of the canvas jacket and handed him a pair of thin jersey gloves. They weren't much protection, but would be better than raw skin.
“They're going to hear us on the fence,” I checked the window and moved back to the far wall. Still empty out there. Even the moaning had subsided, which was bad because they would hear our boots on the chain link.
“Up fast as you can,” I told him. “I'll go first, but you're on my ass, got it?”
He nodded and wiped his nose on the sleeve of his jacket and took four steps across the room to stand behind me.
I jumped then, through the window, jack knifing my upper body onto the fence and shoving my fingers into the narrow diamond shaped openings. I pulled hard and yanked my legs through the openings and scrambled up the fence.
The toes of my boots were too big to stick in the fence, so I just pushed and leveraged up. It wasn't easy.
Malik was out of the window after me, and moving up the fence like he was born to climb. The tips of his boots fit into the slots, giving him extra purchase, but I was fumbling, shaking the whole section. The metal fence clanged on the metal pipe, sounding like a Z dinner bell. We had three feet before they noticed and two feet more before the Z inside covered the fence under where we needed to land.
Malik made the top and hesitated.
The movement of the Z inside drew the rest of the outside Z to the fence and they shoved into the narrow opening between the guard shack and fence. The size forced them to go one at a time, but they filled both sides.
“Roof!” I shouted.
Malik stepped over onto the roof of the shack and I was right behind him. We both lay on the rooftop, one of us gasping and flexing his fingers because he had used them to hold all of his weight against the thin metal of the fence. The other younger kid didn't look as scared outside.
He looked like a kid hiding out on the roof of his school and waiting for the patrol car to leave after a prank gone sideways.
“They going to move,” he told me. “Just give 'em time.”
He was right.
As soon as we disappeared over the roof, the volume of the zombie moaning went down a couple of levels. We could hide out here for a couple of hours and they would all disperse from the fence.
Only I didn't have a couple of hours to spare.
I had a couple of hours to get the truck back and save my friends.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I rolled over to the edge of the guard shack and peeked, hoping that the movement wouldn't draw too much attention.
It didn't.
The Z inside were still at the fence, just standing there waiting. Could they smell us? I thought the Zombies focused on movement and noise, but what if I was wrong?
“They're not moving,” Malik said in a voice lower than a whisper as he shimmied up next to me.
“It's too far to jump over,” I could envision in my head leaping over the fence, falling the ten feet to the ground and landing to run. It wouldn't end well. A twisted ankle and we would join the mindless puttering around the depot yard.
“I can make it,” he bragged.
I almost let him. It would be like the run rabbit scenario. They would feast on
Malik al fresco while I dropped down out of their reach.
“Too dangerous,” I said.
His eyes flashed.
“Watch.”
He shoved up on his toes and tips of his fingers, took three steps across the roof, landed with his foot on the pole at the top of the fence and leaped over the heads of the zombies. If I tried it, I'd hit razor wire. My foot would slip on the pole. I could see a dozen ways it could go wrong for me.
But Malik did it with confidence, as if leaping Z in a single bound was just something he did every day.
He landed with the grace of a gazelle and tucked into a roll that popped him up on both feet a few meters from the inside Z.
They didn't notice him flying, but they heard him land and turned to wobble toward him, moaning louder.
That cleared the fence line for me and I did one narrow step across, leaned down and lowered myself on the inside, dropping the last few feet and kicking my toes against the Z still reaching through the outside of the fence.
I hit the ground with a thud, not as graceful as Malik but stayed on my feet. The noise made two of the zombies turn back toward me.
“Run,” Malik called and he took off jogging.
I took his advice and ran down the fence line to the road, and began jogging after him.
There was no need to run any faster. The Z were perpetual and relentless, but steady. Not slow. Not fast. Just forever.
Malik waited for me to catch up and we jogged up the road through the depot yard together.
“Good work,” I told him.
He flashed a white toothed grin.
&
nbsp; “Long jump, high jump, track and field,” he bragged.
I could see him almost wanting to blow on his fingernails and buff them on his coat.
“It paid off,” I gave him a last compliment. We needed to focus on what was next.
We were over the Z, but still in here with them. Trapped behind a fence, and we didn't know what was in the warehouse yet.
“Let's move closer to the building and check out those doors,” I pointed. “If we can get one up, we need to do that.”
Malik nodded then did that thing that the young do that pisses off older people so much. He took off with a burst of energy, moving with the effortless ease of a well-trained athlete.
I could put on a burst of speed to keep up, fueled mostly by pride, but I'd burn through that like a rocket during launch.
I let him be young, and be fast as he raced up the road and careened over to run parallel to the overheads. He passed one, two and stopped at the third and hopped up on the narrow concrete ledge to yank on the metal roll up. It didn't budge.
He shrugged to me as I caught up, jumped down and kept moving to check.
Malik stopped at number eight, this time waiting for me and we both pushed up on the roll up metal. It screeched and shuddered as the mechanism caught and counterweights pulled it out of our hands and it crashed back with a bang.
The interior of the warehouse was bathed in pools of sunlight where it washed through skylights in the roof.
Shadows shuffled through the patches of lights and loud moans washed over us before the stink.
“Keep moving.”
I jumped down and Malik took off again. We left the door open as an invitation for the Z inside to come out and enjoy fresh air.
Doors nine and ten were locked and that was the last one before the corner of the warehouse. I took a breath to call out to Malik, tell him to go wide around the blind spot as he reached it.
A Z pitched out and crashed into him, the two going down in a tumble of limbs and moans, and the boy's screams. He fought against the Z, shoving its head up and away from his him.
I unslung the rifle as I ran, and took a hard swing with the barrel in hand. It cracked against the raised head and broke its neck with a loud snap. The head lolled backwards held on only by skin, but the mouth still bit, still opened and snapped.
I kicked the body off Malik and helped him up as the Zombies chasing us drew closer.
“Thanks,” he sobbed and brushed Z gunk off his sleeves and coat.
It stained the brown gloves and he dropped them on the ground as we started jogging again.
There were more doors along this side of the building, ten more set in the walls. Three were blocked by trailers, the metal cargo containers pressed flush with the building.
Malik started trying doors again. The first one opened and we were greeted with Z moans.
He hopped down, hit the third and it opened too. The next two were blocked by trailers.
We heard a splat behind us and turned. Z were dropping over the side of the open door and plopping into the concrete bay. They didn't jump or hop down, normal behavior for a human, but took a step forward out into the empty space and face planted into the ground.
No wind milling arms to break the fall, no awkward twists or turns to try and balance or even stay inside the building. The Z just reached the end of the floor inside and kept walking until they plowed into the ground.
The first two just twitched and moved, but the second and third wave of singles landed on the others to soften the blow. They crawled and lurched toward us.
“How many you think in there?” Malik licked his lips.
“No way to know,” I said.
He nodded as if that's what he expected.
We needed to get inside, get a look at some of the trailers backed up to the doors. Chances were some were half full or if luck was with us, all the way full. Then we could get one of the trucks running and just attach it.
I tried not to think about the facts.
I didn't know how to drive a tractor trailer.
I didn't know how to attach a trailer to the engine.
But those were inconsequential facts that couldn't stand in the way of getting the job done. People were relying on me, and my choices had been made.
Besides, I wanted to get back to the camp and a trailer full of food bought me time. Time for me to consider how to unleash Hell and wreak havoc.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Malik opened the next door behind the trailer and I hopped up beside him. We could see the shafts of sunlight coming in through the skylights, creating yellow squares of sunshine on the floor of the warehouse where we could see them, and outlining rack after rack of boxes in a soft glow where we couldn't.
The doors he had opened along two walls let in a lot of light too, creating a twilight world where zombies shuffled toward the openings and new found freedom. The plopping of their bodies was like the steady drip from a faucet, not quite an endless procession of Z, but just a repetition.
I didn't stop to count, but there must have been over a hundred former workers inside. Which made me wonder about how the virus started in here. Was this a company that made their employees come to work even as the world collapsed around them?
Or was there something more sinister at work?
Was this a trap?
Or bait?
A Z shambled out of the darkness, arms extended and moaned.
This time Malik didn't cry out, which I was grateful for since it would have alerted more to our incursion. He just flinched out of the way and the Z vectored in on me. I took a swing with the rifle and hated the close quarters of the work.
The Z's head splatted and the rest of its body splotched into the concrete bay.
I pointed toward the two trailer doors.
Malik scooted over to the first one, bent down and rolled it up. The clacking of the metal rollers on the overhead tracks boomed inside the dark warehouse. He fumbled with the latch on the trailer doors, folding the metal arm up and out, then twisted it out so the door could open.
It was empty.
“Leave it,” I said and moved to the next one.
The noise of both doors let everything inside know where we were and a few of the Z outside bumping up against the concrete wall under the open doors.
I opened the two levels of doors while Malik jittered behind me.
“They coming,” he breathed.
I knew they were coming. They were always coming. I fumbled the trailer door opened and sighed.
It was half full.
Call me an optimist, but a half full trailer with cans of red beans was a beautiful sight to behold.
We just needed to fill it the rest of the way up.
I jumped up and did a running round of swings with the rifle, cracking skulls and dropping Z just to give us some space to think.
I could try to get the couple of hundred boxes back to the hillbilly camp but they could just send me back for more. That would waste my time, and I wanted to get this done so I could move on.
We still had to get the rest of the group free of the camp, and then go set up a new fort somewhere else, unless they were following me all the way to Arkansas. Brian was pretty insistent on hunkering down and starting the rebuild. Byron wanted the rebuild too, and enact the plans he kept in tattered notebooks in his backpack, designs drawn for his impenetrable school that ran out of food after a month.
So to help them, I had to return with a full load or as close to it as we could manage.
Besides, a truckload of food would be a great distraction and while the hillbillies were focused on it, I could either do damage or get free.
“We need more,” I told Malik and took a swing at the nearest Z.
“That's enough,” he argued back. “They's too many in here.”
I ignored his pleas and started running for the racks, swinging at any zombie that came too close, dodging the others with a sidestep or shuffle.
Malik f
ollowed on my heels.
I guess he didn't want to wait by himself.
Have you ever run through a mostly dark warehouse full of zombies trying to find a dolly or pallet cart and read the faded black lettering on dust covered boxes in an attempt to get food as a ransom for your group?
I do not recommend it.
I found a row of boxed canned beans first.
“Pull down the boxes and stack them here,” I told Malik.
Then I played guard dog and kept the aisle and opening clear of Z.
He got as many boxes as he could reach down the first quarter of the row, and we were faced with a quandary. Carry the boxes back by hand, or find something to haul them with.
Malik had gathered thirty-eight and I ran the math in my head and came up with too many trips by hand, one of us carrying two boxes, the other only one to keep a hand free to swat at Z.
Too many chances to get bit, get hit or otherwise mess up.
“We need a cart,” he huffed.
Reading my mind. Or maybe I said it out loud. My arms were getting tired of swinging and I wanted to shed this coat and it's stink of zombie gore.
I swung again.
On a brighter note, we seemed to be running low on Z. There were fewer coming at us now and the sound of their moans had shifted from inside the warehouse to the open cargo bay doors where they gathered in the narrow depressions and bounced off the concrete.
Inside, most were dead or walking toward us so we could put them in that state.
“Cart,” I agreed and we jogged along the wall looking for where a warehouse might store a cart or hand truck.
Malik found one and gave a triumphant cry.
It turned into a low shriek of terror when a zombie stumbled out of the pitch-black shadow and latched onto his coat. He backpedaled, tripped and I had time to skip in and tee off on the Z's temple.
We grabbed the handle of the pallet cart and pulled it back to the boxes. It was designed to hold plastic wrapped pallets of boxes like the ones inside the trailer, but Malik was a master at stacking.
I was able to help with four or five boxes between Z patrol.
We hauled it back to the trailer and dumped them inside, then went back one aisle over and cleared out forty more boxes.
