by Perrin Briar
The undead slurped and supped on Oaks’ flesh. The iron tang of Oaks’ blood filled the survivors’ nostrils. Oaks’ screams were muffled by a zombie that covered his mouth, suffocating him.
Oaks’ body went lax. His eyes stared up at his comrades on the next floor.
“No!” Steve shouted. And then, weaker: “No…”
The table shifted under the zombies’ combined weight. There was a loud creak, and the floorboards snapped, giving way. The undead fell, along with Oaks’ body, into the hungry mass of snapping teeth below.
Z-MINUS: 1 hour 47 minutes
The zombies picked the flesh from Oaks’ body until there was nothing left but bones. And then they chewed on those, sucking out the marrow. No chance of him becoming one of them, at least. Small mercies.
The survivors were on the fourth floor, surrounded by a dozen bleeping life support machines. Comatose patients lay in permanent sleep, silent as the grave.
Taylor reaffixed her prosthetic leg. Her skin was raw where it had rubbed against her thigh. She got to her feet.
“We have to block the stairs again, otherwise those things are going to come up and knock next time,” she said.
Steve nodded, not much in the mood to issue orders. Taylor’s movements were slow and agonized. Steve didn’t move a muscle, didn’t even put his prosthetic back on.
Jericho put a hand on his shoulder.
“Some of us have to get unlucky sometimes,” he said. “It’s the way of the world.”
“Help Taylor,” Steve said.
He clearly wasn’t in the mood for chat or commiseration. Jericho pursed his lips, nodded, and then left.
Steve leaned his head back, resting on the wall behind him.
“He shouldn’t have had to die,” he said. “It should have been me.”
“It shouldn’t have been anyone,” Susan said. “None of this should have happened. But there’s more than just Oaks. There are millions of people out there going through exactly the same thing we are. He died for the cure, for a good cause. That’s what we’re all putting our lives on the line for. We have to make his sacrifice mean something. I’m sorry for him, really I am. But we have to keep defending ourselves. That cure, it’s all that matters right now.”
Steve just sat there, staring into space.
“He still didn’t have to die,” he said again.
He reattached his arm and flexed his metallic muscles, forming a fist. He used the hydraulics to push himself forcefully up onto his feet.
“Let’s get this floor buttoned down tight,” he said. “I’m not losing another one of us to those things.”
He left.
That left Susan, Phil and Richard. Richard lay on his side, pale as a ghost and panting for air. He was covered in a layer of sweat. It’d been a traumatic experience for them all. Apparently it had hit Richard harder than Susan had expected. Phil sensed the atmosphere.
“I’ll, uh, go check on Archie,” he said.
He left too.
“How are you holding up?” Susan said to Richard.
“Not bad,” Richard said. “A little sore.”
“Holding back all those undead,” Susan said. “That was pretty impressive.”
Richard shrugged.
“Not like I had much of a choice,” he said.
“Still,” Susan said. “You did well to last so long.”
They were silent a moment.
“Do you think Archie will manage to make the cure?” Richard said.
“He’d better,” Susan said.
They were silent again, letting the reality sink in.
“You know, I haven’t been with anyone else since we… split up,” Richard said.
“Split up?” Susan said. “No need to be shy, Richard. It’s hardly secret. We got divorced.”
But it had been painful. Friends suddenly felt they had to choose sides. Susan should probably have looked for a job elsewhere, but she had co-founded this project. She wasn’t about to leave it now.
“That doesn’t make it any less hard,” Richard said. “What I’m trying to say is I’ve been thinking, a lot, about us.”
There was a time when they would have been words to Susan’s ears, but that time had passed. Hadn’t it? A voice inside her, distant with time, screamed at her to say no, to listen, that it wasn’t too late. Susan stifled it immediately. He might hurt her again, might hurt Amy. Not again.
“Not now, Richard,” Susan said, her voice soft and whisper-thin.
“If not now, then when?” Richard said. “It’s the end of the world. Before long they’re going to get in here and we might never see one another again. I know I’d rather tell you how I truly feel than to die without letting you know.”
The world had changed. It was no longer the safe haven they knew. It was a world where they could become someone else and do whatever was necessary to survive. There was safety in numbers. Two adults could protect Amy better than one. That explained how she was feeling, didn’t it?
Susan nodded.
“Okay,” she said. “Tell me.”
Richard blinked in surprise. He hadn’t considered she would let him be open with his emotions. His eyes scrubbed left to right, thinking through what it was he wanted to say, putting his emotions into words. Human language was an incredible thing, but it was a poor medium for describing emotions. That was why people so rarely spoke about them, instead choosing to express them through actions.
Richard nodded, and then nodded more aggressively. He breathed through his teeth until his whole body vibrated. He wheezed, like an old man who’d been smoking forty a day. He collapsed to the side, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. He gasped through lips that were turning blue.
“Richard?” Susan said. “Richard?”
She laid him on his back. His breaths were gasping and raw.
“Your inhaler,” Susan said. “Where is it?”
She checked his pockets, but they were empty.
“He’s infected?” Steve said, appearing at the door.
“No,” Susan said. “He’s asthmatic. He needs his inhaler. It must have fallen out of his pocket.”
“Then he’s screwed,” Taylor said. “There’s no way you’ll get to the third floor and back in one piece.”
“He has a spare,” Susan said. “In his jacket.”
“Where?” Steve said.
Susan turned to meet his eyes.
“On the first floor,” she said.
“Fat lot of good it’ll do him down there,” Taylor said.
Susan looked at the man on the floor before her, gasping like a fish out of water. She still loved him, despite him leaving her. She couldn’t face losing him. Not now. Not when she needed him most.
“I’ll go get it,” Susan said.
Steve stepped forward.
“I can’t let you go down there,” he said. “We need someone to work the machine.”
“Phil can work Archie,” Susan said. “Richard will die if he doesn’t get his shot,” Susan said.
“You’ll die if you go down there,” Steve said.
“I have to,” Susan said. “There’s no other way.”
Z-MINUS: 1 hour 33 minutes
Steve jammed the chair leg into the gap and pried the elevator doors open. He slipped his hands inside and pulled. The elevator doors groaned open, just wide enough for Susan to fit through.
Infected howls burbled from the building’s bowels. Short sharp shrieks and guttural growls. They sounded loud, close, but the sounds were just reflecting off the glass walls. Steve looked at Susan, genuine concern on his face.
“You don’t have to do this,” he said.
Susan looked back at Richard, curled up on the floor. Phil was doing everything he could to keep him comfortable.
“The elevator is on the first floor,” Steve said. “Climb down, get the inhaler, and then get back on the elevator. We’ll turn it back on after thirty minutes and haul you up. If you’re not back in the elevator by t
hen we won’t be able to help you. We can’t risk them getting in the elevator and hitting a button by accident and getting up to us here.”
“Okay,” Susan said.
She took a deep breath and stepped through the gap. There was a narrow ledge she could rest her feet on. The walls were lost to shadow after five feet. Susan sensed it was a long way down.
“Wait,” Steve said. “Take this.”
He handed Susan his knife – a vicious curved combat blade.
“We’ll make a distraction over on the other side of the building,” Steve said. “Maybe we can draw them away from you.”
“But it’ll draw more of them from the city,” Susan said.
“At this point I’m not sure it makes much difference,” Steve said.
He checked over his shoulder. The others were out of earshot. He still lowered his voice.
“I don’t think we’ll be able to hold back the undead already in the building,” he said.
The soldiers began to fire at the opposite end of the hospital corridor at the undead outside. Their gunshots were deafening, even from here, the retort bouncing off the bare walls.
Steve nodded to Susan.
“Show time,” he said.
Dangling from the middle of the elevator shaft was a thick bundle of wires and cables, highlighted by the waxing moon. Susan measured the distance, bent her knees, moved her arms back and forth, let out a puff of air, said a prayer, and jumped…
Time slowed as she sailed across the empty open space. Her eyes widened to take in the wires and cords. She opened her arms wide to avoid missing the cables entirely. The cords struck her in the face before she thought she had even reached them.
Her arms reacted, snapping into a bear hug, wrapping around the cables tight. She felt a sharp tug as her bodyweight pulled on her arms. She swung across the open space. The cables were not flexible, and she did not reach the other side.
She held on tight, not daring to open her eyes. She came to a stop, her arms and legs wrapped around the cables.
“…all right?” a voice said. “Susan? Are you all right?”
Susan turned to see Steve’s silhouette in the elevator doors. It took her a moment to find her voice.
“Y…Yes,” she said. “I’m fine.”
Gunfire in the middle distance. The soldiers were still firing. Jericho whooped and roared.
“You need to start climbing down,” Steve said.
Susan nodded, but couldn’t relax her hands and feet. She was immobilized by fear. If she didn’t move soon she would remain there, and the soldiers would have to risk their lives to save her. Some hero she turned out to be. But finally, she began to move.
She maintained her tight grip with her arms, and ever-so-slowly let go with her feet. She hung there a moment, her strength keeping her in place. She lowered her legs to the cables. This time she released her hands, and shuffled down a few inches. She tightened her arms again and relaxed her legs. Inch by inch, like a snake’s powerful muscle movements, she made her way down the cables.
The square of light Steve stood in grew smaller as she descended into darkness. But it wasn’t totally dark. Her eyes adjusted to the soft moonlight that cast silhouettes of skeletal office spaces on each floor she passed. There were bloody smears like graffiti on the glass elevator walls.
On the second floor she came across a single figure drenched in blood, seemingly lost and having been separated from the rest of its herd. A young girl, around Amy’s age, dressed in a frilly ensemble. She peered through the glass at Susan, her features lost to the darkness. She put her hand to the glass, leaving a smear.
The only sounds were Susan’s clothes against the cables as she edged lower and lower, but even that might have been enough for the little undead girl to pick her out. Susan kept going.
Her arms ached, burning like they were on fire. She could actually feel them tearing, her shoulders coming loose and dislodging from their sockets. She felt like she’d been climbing for hours. Sweat dimpled her skin. She knew she couldn’t hold on much longer.
Her feet came to something solid. She felt at the object below her, unwilling to release her grip in case it wasn’t the roof of the elevator. The soles of her feet padded the flat material. It didn’t give. She gradually relaxed her grip, the floor taking her weight.
She was in pitch darkness. No moonlight down here. Susan knelt and felt at the smooth surface of the floor with her fingertips until they caught on something: the edges of a square depression. She slipped her fingers into it and pulled.
The latch opened, and a square of glass came up with it. Susan leaned the hatch back and peered through the hole.
A bloodied face peered up at her.
Susan started, skirting back on her hands and feet, smacking into a glass wall. It took a moment for realization to dawn on her, her conscious catching up with what her unconscious already knew. She edged back to the hatch and looked through it.
The figure’s blue eyes were open, staring straight at her, unblinking. The figure was dead – really dead – squashed between a pair of other bodies. None were people she recognized. A trail of blood ran out of the elevator, bloodied footprints like hell’s breadcrumbs.
The elevator doors on the first floor were open. She could see through them into the main entrance foyer. Things had been pushed over, destroyed and smeared with blood since she had last been there. But there were no zombies. At least, as far as she could see.
Susan took a deep breath and sat on the edge of the hatch, her legs hanging down. The face stared up at her. What if he wasn’t really dead? Susan thought. What if this was an elaborate trap? The creatures seemed stupid and devoid of such cunning but there was so little they knew about them. Wasn’t it at least possible? Yes, but unlikely. She was just coming up with excuses, reasons not to put herself at risk. But she had to go.
She took a deep breath and dropped down. She landed on the balls of her feet, her shoes finding dried blood. She waited for something to come racing out at her, but nothing did.
She stepped over the mutilated bodies and peered out of the elevator. The foyer was empty. She creeped out and headed toward the corridor that led to Richard’s office.
She froze.
A figure in her peripheral vision had his back to her. The figure was hunched, shoulders uneven, one jutting up, the other lower, at a forty-five degree angle. It stood there, unmoving.
Susan inched back out of the corridor and hid around the corner. Sweat ran down her face in thick rivulets. She crouched under a desk. Her hands shook. She clenched them into fists, a symbol of confidence she did not feel.
Susan picked up a handful of pencils from the floor. She tossed them toward the entrance hall. The undead was slow, his feet torn by the shards of glass on the floor, but he eventually turned to face the sound. He staggered forward in the loping stride of the undead, his feet tripping on discarded items.
Another undead stepped from another corridor and grunted at the first. A bark. A challenge, perhaps. Susan shrank back under the desk. She waited as the two undead stood before the tossed pencil, neither moving to pick it up. My God, these things are dumb.
Susan shook her head at her earlier concern they might be intelligent. Susan tossed the eraser out the front doors. It bounced and bounded down the stairs. The undead figures followed it out.
Susan crawled from under the desk. She peered down the corridor again. No more undead. The undead she’d distracted were scrapping, fighting for the unruly eraser. Susan got to her feet and jogged down the corridor, hurrying past the open and closed doors, not wishing to see what was inside.
She hustled into Richard’s office, pulling the door open to get at the coatrack. She searched through Richard’s jacket pockets until she found what she was looking for. She took out the inhaler and tucked it in her pocket. Now she just had to get back in the elevator. She checked her watch.
She had two minutes.
Z-MINUS: 1 hour 12 minutes
Uh-hhhhhhhhhhhh.
The sound was a starting pistol. Susan reacted without thought. She dropped and crouched under a desk. A zombie stood in the corridor, visible through the doorway. Had it seen her?
The creature wandered around, in a circle, scratched it’s head with one hand, and its ass with the other, both actions stimulating the same number of brain cells. Evidently, it hadn’t spotted her and was of no danger yet, but how was she going to get to the elevator in time? She had one minute forty seconds left.
The zombie began to turn. It seemed to look right at her, but its eyes swept over her. He turned again to look out the door, and once again scratched his head and ass.
Was he repeating his actions over and over? Susan thought.
That was how superstitions were thought to have started; someone did something, and it resulted in a positive result, and so they repeated the same action again, and if the result was the same, they learned that the action produced a positive result, and so it became a habit. When someone came along and saw the action and the positive outcome, they copied it, thus giving birth to a new superstition.
What had caused the zombie to have begun his cycle, she didn’t know, but here he was, completing his performance. He turned on the spot, his eyes once again passing over her, glazed and watery, and then he was facing the opposite direction. He raised his hands to scratch again…
Now or never.
Susan leaped from her hiding place, ran around the desk, and behind the creature. As he turned and moved, she mimicked him. Susan clamped a hand over her mouth and nose to quell the monster’s stench. The zombie completed its pirouette. Susan ran down the corridor and around the corner. She stopped, leaning her back against the wall.
One minute left. There were no footsteps behind her, no suggestion the zombie had heard, seen or followed her. She should have just moved on, down to the elevator, but she couldn’t help but check in case the zombie cornered her in the elevator. She leaned around the wall…
Her face was almost ripped off as the zombie stumbled into her. Susan backed away, turned, and ran for the elevator. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Her over-wariness had almost cost her – and Richard’s – life. Idiot!
