"Hello?" He called out. Even though he hushed his voice, it echoed greatly in the tight confines of the vent.
Immediately a bang of warping aluminium came from behind them, they turned and looked up to pinpoint where the sound had come from. A section of the vent above them sagged suspiciously compared to the rest.
Dennis took a step towards it and shouted up, "The zombies are gone. Why don't you come down?"
"I can't." Came the slightly muffled response.
Dennis stepped closer. "We just want to talk. Let's not let this misunderstanding stand in the way of a mutually beneficial partnership."
Helen winced when he said 'misunderstanding'. She knew he thought she was wrong to set the alarm off but refused to feel embarrassed about it.
"No, I can't. I mean I can't get back down. Every time I move, the whole thing feels like its gonna fall down."
Scott and Helen frowned at each other. Dennis betrayed a slight smirk.
"Okay, My friend Scott and I will see if we can find some ladders or something to get up to you." He turned back to Helen. "Make sure the air con stays off, we don't want him to freeze up there."
Helen rolled her eyes as Dennis and Scott walked out of the main control room.
"Is he joking? He's joking right?"
Helen walked over to the terminal and reached behind it. She felt around for the small Notebook she had left plugged into the system. She felt her fingers brush over it and carefully eased it out of its hiding place.
"Are you still there?"
"Yes." Helen thought about not answering but hoped responding with a minimal answer might keep him quiet for a bit.
"Erm, are you the voice from the speakers that tried to kill me?"
"Yes."
A few seconds of silence passed and Helen hoped that his enquiries had stopped. She turned her attention back to the Notebook and opened it, waking it up.
"Could you erm... You know.... Not try to kill me?"
Helen turned towards the vent with a frown. Before she could verbalise a response the shape in the vent moved slightly. It wasn't a significant movement, it could have just been a transfer of weight from one tired limb to another but it was enough to shift extra weight onto one of the wires that hung from the ceiling via a hook. A hook which had been supporting half of the weight inside the vent for the last twenty minutes and had slowly worked its way free with every slight movement, a hook that couldn't hold on anymore and fell from the ceiling.
Luke felt the vent give way around him. His stomach lurched as gravity took control of his body and he hit the ground hard, the flimsy metal offering no protection from the collision. He had been lying on his back and trying to turn onto his side when the vent fell, his outstretched body had spread the force of the impact. Unfortunately, it also knocked the wind out of him and he struggled to breathe.
With his breath taken out of him and the vent wrapped tightly around him, Luke began to panic. He tried desperately to breathe in but each attempt resulted in him opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water, his arms were extended above his head with no room between his body and the thin metal. He couldn't move and he couldn't breathe, only his legs protruded from the vent, which he kicked wildly in a vain hope that it would help. He heard voices and suddenly remembered that he wasn't alone. Still struggling to breathe, his body allowed him short, shallow breaths that burned with each gasp and made a raspy noise like each gasp was his last.
"Scott, help me lift him up."
Scott and Dennis each held a side of the vent and lifted it to a vertical position. As soon as the vent was stood up, Luke collapsed to his knees and the vent would have tipped over again if Scott hadn't stopped it from falling. They peered inside to see Luke with his hands still outstretched above him, looking up at them and taking quick, shallow breaths.
They each grabbed an arm and pulled him up, holding the vent in place with their other arms. Once he was stood they helped lift him out of the vent and allowed him to stumble forward a few steps, doubled over but breathing deeper and slower. Helen fidgeted with her weapon, fighting the urge to raise it and brandish it at this stranger but she knew that Dennis was trying to build bridges and start afresh, she didn't agree but she respected his decision.
Once Luke had regained control of his breathing he looked at the three people stood around him. One of the men looked considerably older than the other but looked relatively friendly. The other guy looked a similar age to Luke but was hard to read, his face gave no indication to what he was thinking. The woman looked a few years younger than Luke, he suddenly felt embarrassed because he found her really attractive but, more importantly, she looked really mean. Couple that with the fact that she tried to kill him and Luke was pretty sure she was the least friendly of the three.
The old guy stepped forward and held out a hand, "I'm Dennis."
Luke couldn't help but notice that the other two were giving each other hesitant looks in the background. He knew that he needed to make a confident introduction so he stepped forward and shook Dennis's hand.
"I'm Luke."
"Luke, I understand you're probably feeling uneasy about us at the minute but I can assure you, you're not in any danger. Setting the alarm off was a mistake, we shouldn't have done that, but I hope you can see that we came straight over here to help you out. Surely that suggests that we wanted to correct that mistake?"
As Dennis talked, Luke noticed the woman walking over to the workstation. He kept an eye on her in his peripheral vision and watched her typing on a small laptop. She stared intently at the screen, angrily tapping the keys and frowning before turning back to Luke and marching over.
"He's hacked into the Wifi." she said accusingly.
"Hey, you tried to kill me and I needed to contact my friends. It's not even your Wifi."
Dennis stood between them, arms flapping like he was treading water. "Let's calm down shall we? I'm sure that we can sort this out."
"He's probably contacted his friends, they could be on their way to kill us right now! We need to get out of here."
Luke was surprised by Helen's willingness to retreat so quickly. She had seemed so confrontational until now that her eagerness to avoid conflict was startling. "I've called my friends, but they're not going to hurt you."
Helen ignored Luke and looked straight at Dennis, "We need to go. Now!"
"Your friends?" Asked Dennis. "Are they coming here?"
Luke nodded.
"I'd like to talk with them but maybe now isn't an ideal time. I think we're all a little too excited." He took the axe off Scott and gave it to Luke.
Helen instantly protested, "What are you doing? That's ours, what if he attacks us?"
Dennis spoke to Luke without acknowledging her, "Take this incase you have any guests before your friends turn up. We'll be here again tomorrow, say midday. Do you and your friends have a leader?"
"Not one person, we have a kind of collection of leaders. Well, there is one person who's more of a leader than the others but he doesn't really like being called the leader."
"That's fine, bring one or two people and we'll stick to the three of us. We don't want things feeling crowded in here."
"Are there more of you?" Asked Luke.
"We can discuss everything tomorrow including coming to some arrangement about sharing Internet access around here. For now we'll leave you to meet up with your friends."
Helen made an audible sigh as she returned to the Notebook, closing it and placing it behind the main workstation. She made no effort to hide the fact that she didn't agree with how things had just gone.
After a few seconds thought, Luke nodded. "Okay. I'll explain you guys want to talk and come back tomorrow. We're trying to build a community, maybe we can help each other out?"
The four of them headed out of the building. Dennis and Luke walked in front of Scott and Helen, an uneasy combination of tension and the relief of reaching an agreement accompanied them. As they strode out of t
he doorway they were instantly met by two cars, each with a person stood on either side.
Dennis, Helen and Scott froze at the sight of the people confronting them. The two men who were obviously the drivers stood behind their open doors. They were dressed in jeans and long sleeved tops, quite young, not much different than what you would expect from a pre-apocalypse era. However, the other two figures carried a presence that commanded intimidation. They wore what looked like a custom riot gear; Boots and thick overalls interspersed with thick plastic armour comprised of knee pads, shin pads, elbow pads, body armour, forearm reinforcement, reinforced gloves and helmets with visors. It was hard to tell if the figures were male or female, but the gear they wore made them look substantially bigger than the average person.
The drivers stood with guns pointed towards the building, one shotgun and one rifle, whilst one of the larger figures carried a spear with two equally sharp ends and the other had two machetes.
Without hesitation, Luke gave the axe he was carrying back to Dennis and strode up to one of the drivers. "Guys, it's fine. They're okay. Weapons down. It's all good, it's all retro."
At this, the drivers lowered their weapons and the two larger figures visibly relaxed. The figure with the spear stabbed it into the ground so it stood on its own and removed their helmet. The man who revealed himself was in his mid-thirties, his face was red and sweaty and his hair was stuck to his head. It looked like he had been wearing the suit for a while. He looked concerned. "Retro?"
"Retro." Responded Luke. He addressed Dennis and the others, "This is Mark, he's in charge of the scavenger teams. When the alarm went off I got in the vent and used my mobile to message him."
Mark looked suspiciously at Helen, "Is this the psycho bitch that tried to kill you?"
Helen's eyes widened and Luke instantly looked embarrassed. "Yeah but we're cool now. They felt bad and came to help me."
Dennis introduced himself to Mark, the other scavengers maintained their neutral posture, as did Scott, whilst Helen tensed herself ready for the situation to change.
Dennis repeated what he had said to Luke, explaining that setting off the alarm was a bad decision and Luke had been gracious to accept their apology. Mark listened carefully, occasionally glancing at Helen and Scott. Dennis relayed their plan to meet up again tomorrow when things had calmed down. Mark seemed reluctant.
"Luke, have you managed to get us Internet access for Ridgetown?"
Luke shook his head. "I managed to get my phone connected and might be able to do similar for the tech back at Ridgetown but I'm essentially grabbing access from this location. If Helen booted me out, there's not much I could do."
Everyone looked towards Helen for a response.
"I'm not just handing over control of this place. We've worked hard to set it up and maintain it."
Mark addressed her directly. "Look, we're not asking you to give up everything you've done. We're just asking that you share what you've got, we'll do the same, we're not asking for anything for free. We're working on a pretty good set-up, we'll help you any way we can. But part of our plan is to get our community online and keep it stable so we can stay connected to each other and keep up to date about where's safe."
Helen took a moment to think, unsure whether Mark was asking purely out of politeness. She had the distinct impression that if she didn't agree to sharing the network, they could quite easily take it from her. Not that she would just let them, she could make it nearly impossible if she really wanted to be awkward.
"I could open up access to the network. Anyone could connect to it but I would maintain overall control."
"No deal." Mark was quick to respond. "We want to share control. I don't want you kicking our access if we have a disagreement about something. It's vital that we're able to keep the connection up all the time, not just when you feel like it."
"Helen. We need to show that we're willing to cooperate." Dennis appealed to her.
"Why should we? We've kept that place running recently. Without us, it would have stopped running a long time ago."
"We could really use that Internet access." Said Luke.
"Helen, we don't need to be the only ones using an entire provider." Dennis was practically pleading with her.
"Okay." Reluctantly, she agreed. She wasn't comfortable with the idea but felt she didn't really have a choice. "I'll show you how to set up your systems to have the same level of control I do, then you can do the same with any extra terminals you set up."
"Great. We'll take you to Ridgetown now and drop you off when you're done." He turned to Dennis to continue speaking but was interrupted by Helen.
"Whoa! I'm not going anywhere!"
Mark looked at her with a confused expression. "But we need it up and running now, we can't hang around twiddling our thumbs while you pick a day you're free."
"Well, you're not kidnapping me and I don't want to go with you."
"Who said anything about kidnapping you?" He turned to Dennis and Scott. "You guys are more than welcome to come as well. We have safe structures and food."
Dennis was the first to respond, "Can we have a minute?"
Mark nodded and the three of them huddled together.
Luke slapped his hand down on Mark's armoured shoulder and grinned. "I'm definitely glad you guys showed up but you didn't have to throw me under the bus like that."
Mark looked confused, "Like what?"
"The way I described Helen was a bit of a in-the-heat-of-the-moment thing. She seems cool though."
Mark laughed. "That's a pretty quick turn around for someone who tried to kill you. Sounds like you've got a bit of a crush? Is that even possible in that amount of time?"
Luke grinned and punched his chest. Even though it was a playful punch, the thickness of the armour hurt his fingers. Luke knew better that to let Mark know it had hurt, teasing could be classed as one of Mark's hobbies.
The three survivors addressed Mark and his group after what seemed like a heated, whispering debate. Helen's body language made it obvious that whatever had been decided, she wasn't happy with the decision. Dennis was the spokesperson for the group.
"In light of what's happened in the past few hours, it's understandable that we're a little hesitant of trusting each other. We understand that what we did could be construed as hostile but want to make amends for that, so Helen's going to go with you and help get you online. To reassure us that nothing is going to happen to her, we ask that one of you stay with me and Scott back at our safe house. Helen and Luke both have Internet access and we have access at our safe house so we can all stay in permanent contact with each other via messaging. Do you people have a two-way radio we could stay in contact on?"
Mark nodded.
"Good. I've never used the thing myself but I'm sure Scott could get ours working."
The second armoured figure, who had yet to speak, removed his helmet to reveal a late twenties Asian man with shoulder length black hair. "You want someone to be your hostage?"
Dennis was quick to defend what he was saying, "No, absolutely not. Whoever comes with us will be in constant contact with the others and will be coming with us as an act of good faith. We do have some food and drink that they are welcome to while they wait, simply rest if they want to?"
The armoured figure walked towards Dennis without hesitating.
"Sure, I'll be your hostage"
Scott's head tilted to the side like a dog hearing a noise outside its master's house. "You wouldn't be a hostage."
The armoured man turned to Mark, smiling and shrugging his shoulders. "I've barely sat down in three days, being a hostage sounds like a holiday to me."
Scott looked startled, eyes widened and glancing between Dennis and Mark. "He wouldn't be a hostage."
The armoured man turned towards Scott's group. "I'm Ishaq. Is that your vehicle down there?"
Scott nodded, eyes still wide open.
"Let's get going then, I don't like being in the open for too
long." Without waiting for any response from his group or Scott's, he began to march towards the pickup.
Scott clumsily jogged after him, sidestepping along side him so he could face Ishaq. "You're not a hostage."
Ishaq shook his head and smiled as he walked. Without looking back, he shouted to Mark, "We'll use the away team frequency for the radio."
Luke approached Helen. "I promise, you don't have anything to worry about. Once we've got the community online we'll leave you guys alone, but I hope once you see what we're trying to create, we might be able to be friends."
Helen was clearly still unhappy with the situation. "Let's just get going shall we?" She turned to Dennis. "You owe me big time for this."
Luke and Helen walked towards the car that Ishaq had come out of. Dennis sighed and turned away from them and towards the pickup. He wondered whether he had made the right decision. He knew he was taking a risk but felt like it was an important risk. He had known for a while that they needed to increase the size of their group if they were going to survive, three wasn't enough. He instantly had a good feeling about the people he had just met and he was normally a good judge of character.
Since he had met Helen, Dennis had decided he was going to show her that she could trust people, she was going to need to if she was going to fit into this new world. He didn't blame her for her skepticism towards people, she would need to keep a healthy dose of it, but he was worried that if she never trusted anyone, life was going to be very lonely for her.
As he approached the truck he could hear Scott still trying to explain to Ishaq that he wasn't a prisoner. Dennis smiled, he could tell Ishaq was teasing Scott and thought he would be an ideal person to talk with to get a feel of what their community was like.
Ridgetown: A Zombie Apocalypse Novel Page 3
