Still not enough.
The infected burst into the room I have just sealed and go straight for the next door in their path. The rattling sound it makes tells me the inner door won’t hold, either, and for a moment, I’m paralyzed, with no idea what to do next.
“The shelves,” Melanie says. “Can we use them?”
“Let’s try.”
She tosses her bow aside where she can reach it later. I holster the pistol and take the lantern from her, putting it on a shelf to maximize our light.
It’s incredibly taxing work, even with two of us to share the burden. Tipping the stack onto one side is easy, but the structure is incredibly heavy and tough to drag. When we finally get it propped against the door, I feel a surge of hope.
“Another one,” Melanie says.
We run to another that looks empty. We hear glass shatter as the infected realize there’s a window with only a layer of wooden boards covering it on the other side. They’ve begun to slam their fists against the boards, a better option than the door. Fortunately, whoever put up those boards did a damned good job of it. Still, they won’t hold forever.
We drag another shelf to the window, count to three, and heave it up high enough to prop it against the topmost board. The lowest one breaks. Diseased hands shoot through it like freakish weeds. They find the shelves and push, sliding the stack an inch across the floor.
Melanie and I look at each other. No need to say what we’re thinking.
We drag over another stack and drop it just right so it lies against the bottom edges of the first two. We lucked out in making the original stacks level with each other. Now the three of them form a blocky Y shape that covers the windows and the door, with reinforcement against the floor.
Now what?
Melanie and I throw another glance at each other.
“The walkway,” she says and jabs a finger up at the ceiling in case I can’t hear her. We’re both shouting over the commotion. “There’s a catch!”
“A what?” I shout back.
“A hatch,” she says, cupping her mouth with one hand. “To the roof! Outside!”
It makes sense. The previous residents constructed a hatch to get out onto the rooftop, which is how Wheels was able to shoot at me.
I’m puzzled as to why we might want to go up there. Obviously, it’ll get us away from the infected, who would have serious trouble climbing after us, but then what?
An idea takes hold of me. A ridiculously risky one, but it’s all I’ve got.
“We can use his body,” I tell her.
She squints at me.
“Wheels! His body!”
She nods, understanding. I swing the lantern toward the spot where I left Wheels. The infected want meat. That’s all they care about. And I’ve just killed the thing they wish to eat most.
“We’ll throw him off the roof,” I shout at her. “Distract them! Then climb over the other side!”
We make our way toward the corpse. I lead us through the space where I first woke up tied to that torture table. The metal instruments are still there, untouched. The phrase Pain is just a signal run through my mind. My only reason for revisiting this particular spot is to grab my utility belt, which lies on the floor at the base of a shelf.
It is still thick with supplies. The Colonel and his friends obviously went through it, removing the ammo and water bottle, but leaving the clamshell mirror and a few other helpful items.
Strapping it around my waist, we find our way to Wheels’s body. Removing the toppled stack pinning his legs is simple enough—we count to three, then lift and slide—but carrying him is awkward and slow. We settle on dragging him across the warehouse toward metal stairs that zigzag up to the suspended walkway.
Now we have a real problem. The narrowness of the stairs makes carrying the body more difficult than moving the stacks had been. Especially with one of my hands holding the lantern and my bulky pack constantly bumping the handrails.
Melanie slings her bow over one shoulder so the string crosses her chest. But even with both of her hands free and a smaller pack, her burden is no easier to bear. She hasn’t eaten since the last time she and I shared a meal, which was yesterday. The hooded look in her eyes makes me wish I had saved one of the amphetamine pills for her.
Despite her fatigue, she comes up with the idea of taking the lantern away from me, sprinting up the stairs, and resting it on the edge of the walkway. Yellow light washes over her as she makes her way back down.
We get to work carrying Wheels, but it is still extremely awkward and slow. Melanie takes the lead, facing forward with her arms carrying his legs. I’m behind her with Wheels’s demolished head resting against my sternum, my hands pushing up against his shoulder blades to keep him aloft.
We make it up the stairs and to the end of the walkway, heaving and panting, before finally dropping the corpse. This is the right spot. I know because a section of the handrail closest to the wall has been cut away, and a makeshift wooden platform leads from the walkway up to the sloped ceiling.
The hatch is visible as three edges are lit by sunlight, the fourth dark from the hinges connecting it to the rest of the roof. Even in the weak glow of the dying lantern, I can tell that a lot of care went into building all of this. So much thought went into it, in fact, that there are even ropes suspended from above on either side of the platform to grab for stability.
I set down the lantern since I won’t need it anymore. The platform is about ten feet long and slanted maybe twenty degrees upward. Stable, but we won’t know for sure until one of us tests it.
“I’ll go first,” I say.
Melanie nods. Her drowsy expression almost makes her look apathetic, like it doesn’t matter what we do anymore. But as I’m about to turn away, she grabs my hand, turns me around to face her, and plants a quick kiss on my lips.
“Be careful, Kip.”
“You too.”
My heart drums against my ribs as I make my way along the platform, gripping the side ropes to steady myself. I imagine each shaky step being my last before the entire thing collapses. At the other end, I lift the hatch a few inches, glad it isn’t locked, and briefly take note of features like hinges, a locking mechanism, and even a rope you can use to pull it shut from inside.
I throw it open. A sudden wash of steely light leaves me blind for a moment. When I can see again, I look at Melanie. She has tilted her head back and is smiling sadly up at the light. In her mind, it must symbolize freedom. She has, after all, been trapped in here with a murdering cannibal all night.
I make my way back down the platform to grab hold of Wheels’s boots, having to endure the foul stench of them. Can’t be much worse than the crushed head Melanie has to stare at. By the time we move him to the other end of the suspended platform, the stacks we set up below finally slide away and land flat with a bang.
The infected burst through the windows and the door with newfound ease, as if their rage at having been trapped this long has doubled their strength. The warehouse fills with their ravenous clamoring.
“They’re inside,” I say, more to speed us along than anything else. It’s clear by a sudden widening of her eyes that Melanie is well aware of the situation.
“You need to climb outside first,” she says.
We drop the corpse. I pull myself through the hatch, with a helpful push from Melanie. The platform shakes wildly now from all the extra movement. How many people was this thing designed to hold? Definitely not more than two, which means I need to get Wheels off immediately.
I’m outside now. The space around me is suddenly vast and quiet and full of light. It’s as if I’ve entered a completely different world. The quiet tells me the infected have all entered the warehouse.
I reach through the hatch, stretching my left arm as far as it will go, my other hand clutching the edge for support. From this angle, the task ahead of us seems impossible.
There is no way this is going to work.
Melani
e can’t lift the body alone. Even if she could do it, my arm muscles are spent, and there is no way I’ll be able to raise it and help her out afterward. And to attempt it all with one arm, the other occupied with keeping me in place…
It gets worse.
The whole point in bringing Wheels with us was to throw his corpse to the infected outside, giving them something to focus on while we made our escape over the opposite edge. But the infected are no longer out here. They’re inside the warehouse now, meaning our idea is worthless.
It also means I don’t need to lift the corpse.
“Melanie, let go of him!” I scream at her. “Grab my hand!”
“What?” she shouts back at me.
She is bent beneath the corpse’s weight, struggling to drape the legs over her shoulders and hold the ankles.
“It won’t work,” I tell her. “Leave him there! Take my hand! You have to get out!”
“I don’t understand, Kip!”
A grinding pop goes off next to me. The extra weight on the platform has yanked out one of the metal loops screwed into the ceiling—a fixture installed for the sake of attaching a support rope. Melanie ducks as the platform drops a few inches. She blinks up at me, more confused than afraid. It hasn’t hit her yet that she is going to die.
“Take my hand! Melanie, just do it!”
Directly below her, the infected have gathered into a ravenous mob. The knowledge of what is about to happen sinks in, and Melanie lets out a sob.
“Oh, no. Kip!”
“Grab my hand,” I shout at her. “Now! You have to jump!”
She shakes her head at me, eyes glistening with tears. Her face is so close I could reach down and touch her. But only if I release my other hand.
There is another pop as a second metal loop detaches from the ceiling. The support rope attached to it falls. I reach my arms through the opening toward her, and Melanie jumps at exactly the right moment. My hands find one of her arms, and I grab her as the platform detaches completely and sails down, along with Wheels’s corpse, into the mob.
I press my forehead to the roof’s metal surface, pulling with my neck and arm muscles and every other muscle to get one of her arms out of the hole. Then I roll away, bringing her arm with me, never letting go even as it bends and scrapes along the edge.
There is no moment, like in the movies, where the hero gracefully pulls the damsel through to safety. Instead, she and I are locked in a brutal, messy struggle in which victory is measured one inch at a time, one painful scream after another. Her arm might as well be a stubborn weed I’m trying to yank out of a garden, with the merciless way I’m pulling on it.
When she’s finally through, I slam the lid over the opening. The arm that saved her life dangles limply at her side. She almost faints, and I grab her before she can roll down the sloping surface.
The arm is out of its socket. Though I’ve never actually done it, I manage to pop it back in after instructing Melanie to cover her mouth with her other hand to stifle a scream.
She doesn’t scream—not even a squeak—as I slam it back into place.
Instead, she rolls away, clutching the shoulder and squirming from the pain. When she finally sits back up, the first thing she does is slap me across the face. I reel, covering the sore spot with one hand.
“Do it again,” I tell her.
I leave my cheek exposed.
She surprises me by grabbing my neck and pulling me in for a hungry kiss. I hold her in a fierce embrace that makes her whimper a bit from the pain still in her shoulder.
I could die right here, content. But Melanie kills that peaceful moment.
“The virals,” she says.
They are still gathered in the storage space below us, lifting a noise that makes the roof vibrate. A whole horde of them. I glance over the rooftop and into the back parking lot where I had entered earlier.
The lot is mostly empty. I see only a few stragglers, the blind ones trying to feel their way around. One missing both legs drags itself forward. None of them poses much of a threat.
“They’re all inside the warehouse,” I say.
“No,” Melanie says, still dazed. “Leaving. They’re—they’re coming out again…”
“How do you know?”
“I saw them. They know we’re not inside. They’re coming.”
I scramble over to the hatch and hold it open. My eyes take a few seconds to adjust to the darkness, but eventually I see that Melanie is right. The horde of infected—finished with devouring Wheels’s corpse—is now pushing outward, trying to funnel through the door they used to get inside.
The scent of gasoline wafts up to me.
“Can we jump down from here?” Melanie says.
I shake my head. “No way.”
We’re two stories up. If we were to jump from here to the pavement, our chances of breaking an ankle or a leg would be astronomically high.
“The grappling rope,” I say. “It’s our only chance.”
I swing off my pack, locate the grappler, and yank out all twelve feet of rope.
“Here.” I hand it to Melanie. “Fix it to the edge. Climb down.”
“But what are you—”
I ignore her for the time being and focus on digging through my pack, seized by a burning idea.
When I find what I need inside my pack, I hold it up in a firm grip and shoot a warning look at Melanie. Her eyes widen at the sight of it.
“Go,” I tell her.
She turns and makes for the edge. Within seconds, she finds a rust-eaten patch in the corrugated surface and sets the grappler into place.
We lock eyes—a solemn, hopeful gaze—as Melanie slips over the edge and disappears.
I give her thirty seconds, time I spend studying the shifting mass of infected through the hatch. They’re like a bunch of partygoers in a crowded nightclub that has suddenly caught fire, so desperate to get out that they can’t help but climb over each other, effectively clogging the only escape route.
At the center of the storage area is the Colonel’s enormous stash of gasoline cans. The infected jostle the shelves, knocking the cans over, and I can only hope some of the gas has leaked out to pool around their feet. The intensified smell tells me it might have already happened.
The grenade feels heavy as I hold it over the opening. I’m at twenty-six seconds in the countdown, on my way to thirty—and destruction.
Twenty-seven…
Twenty-eight…
Twenty-nine…
Thirty.
“Good-bye,” I whisper.
I pull the pin and fling the grenade—a fragger like the one I used to kill the Colonel and Bandanna—into the warehouse. It lands nowhere near the gas cans, but that shouldn’t matter in such a closed space.
Five seconds. That’s all I have until the boom.
I sprint toward the grappler, gather a few feet of rope, and hold on for dear life as I throw myself over the edge, hoping the grappler will hold.
It does, but only for a second as a violent tremor jostles the building, accompanied by a skull-cracking boom. The blast rips apart the boarded window in front of me and sends a shower of splinters into my body, and my ears fill with a steady, high-pitched whistle that drowns out every other noise.
That whistle is all I hear as I fall two stories toward concrete.
CHAPTER 14
I’m only half-conscious when I feel something soft break my fall.
Not soft, exactly, but it certainly isn’t concrete. It isn’t my pack, either, since I no longer feel it around my back. My eyes sting too much to open them, but I know—I’m certain, actually—that I’ve landed on top of Melanie. She must have tried to break my fall.
Reality becomes a dark, throbbing mess of sensations I can’t decipher. My eyes won’t open. The whistle in my ears mixes with a scream I know is mine, though I can’t feel my mouth.
Something grabs my coverall and drags me away from the building.
Hands. I know from t
he way the nails dig into me.
All I can think is the infected are taking me away from the smoke; away from Melanie, who might still be alive; away from this unfinished life so they can devour what’s left of it.
“Kip!”
She’s alive.
I open my eyes—the left one, anyway—and blink away dust. My right eye remains sealed and stings inside its socket.
Steeped in shock and disbelief, I reach up to touch it.
“Don’t,” Melanie says, pushing down my hand. “Can you feel your legs?”
I move them, surprised there is no pain. But that’s because all of the pain is concentrated in my lower back.
With Melanie’s help, I get up, as shaky as an old man recovering from a bad spill. The pain in my lower back is awesome—and I mean that in the literal sense, as in “something that inspires awe.” Never have I felt pain like this in my life, nor did I even know it existed.
With a sharp cry, my legs give out and I tumble back to the ground.
“Oh God,” Melanie says, bending over me. “What is it? How does it feel?”
“Hurting,” is all I can say between gasps.
“More of them are going to come. Let’s try and make it to the trees. You can do it.”
No way in hell, I want to tell her. But I’m gasping too hard to speak. The pain is like having spears driven into me, bypassing my skin but shredding the muscle and bone beneath.
“Go,” I tell her through clenched teeth. “Run…”
“I won’t leave you.”
“Go!”
“But I love you, Kip.”
Finally the pain is too much, and I pass out.
When I open my left eye again, I see high grass and trees. My nose rakes in a smell of weeds, dry and untamed, and the more powerful, acrid stench of smoke. I’m lying on my left side, my face against fabric Melanie must have laid out for me.
She appears in my field of vision and crouches next to me.
“How do you feel?”
The pain in my back is still there, though now it’s more of a dull throb than the vicious, stabbing, ripping, grinding agony from before.
Outbreak: A Survival Thriller Page 11
