by Jacy Morris
Allen just shook his head.
"Magic Mike?" Epps asked.
"Yeah, you would mention Magic Mike, Epps. That movie get you hot?" It was Brown, flipping Epps shit. Epps just gave him the finger.
"My favorite was This Is the End," the wormy little kid with the Southern accent chimed in.
Allen knew none of these things. "Yeah, well his head looks like a big toe."
"I'll give you that one," Epps said before going back to cleaning his gun.
The air in the office smelled like a cross between a honey bucket baking in the summer sun and rancid meat coated in garlic. He was surprised he could smell anything. When was the last time he had taken a shower? Back when the world still made sense he guessed. He closed his eyes and spared a moment to think about his parents. His old man would keep his mom safe, at least until the ammo ran out. After that, they would need all the help they could get.
He reached up and scratched his scalp. He looked at his fingernails when he was done. A crescent of black grit greeted him, and he began to wonder how long a human body could go without washing before disease set in.
"I got good news, and I got bad news," Sarge began. "Since you're all badass motherfuckers, I'm gonna give you the bad news first cuz you can handle it. In the morning, we're going out that goddamn window. We're going to do it quick and we're going to do it fast."
Ramirez, the loudmouth of the group, asked, "Why don't we just go now? The sooner we get out of this city the better."
"You looked out that window, Ramirez? It's like the goddamn Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade down there. By the time your slow ass got halfway down the rope, there'd be thirty Annies ready to tie your shoes for you."
"What's the good news, sir?" Whiteside asked.
The conversation was so cliché, so droll. Allen could barely stand it. Good news, bad news... how could conversations like this improve his writing?
"Don't call me sir anymore. I thought we went over that." Sarge straightened his shirt and then picked up a garbage can. "The good news is we have a toilet, so we don't have to shit on the floor like animals." He tossed the garbage can on the ground where it clanged off the floor. "No lights tonight. Clean your guns two at a time. I don't want everyone doin' it at once just in case those things find a way through."
The banging on the door had never ceased. Like a negligent mother with a screaming baby in the supermarket, they had all sort of drowned it out with their own thoughts. But sooner or later, they would have to deal with it. Epps picked the garbage can up off the floor and carried it behind one of the cubicle walls.
Izzy Allen closed his eyes and began to use similes to describe the sounds that he heard. Perhaps one day, when the world had righted itself, as he knew it would, there would be people to read the poems he wrote. But the only words that came to mind that night were of the four-letter variety, and they were most definitely not the stuff of literary legend.
****
The night passed, cool and slow. Sergeant Tejada enjoyed every breath. His men, all 11 of them, slumbered on the floor along with the three civvies. He tried to catch as much sleep as he could, but it was damn near impossible knowing that there were so many Annies clumped up all around them. At one point, he stood up and edged over to the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked down on the street. He stood for a while, trying to peer through the gloom that dominated the valley between Big Pink and the next building over. It was no use; it was too dark.
He closed his eyes and tried to feel them looking up at him, but that was no good either. He knew they were down there though. The Annies never gave up once they had prey in their sights. The only option was retreat. And when they ran out of places to retreat to, then it would be the long sleep for all of them. He wouldn't let any of his men turn into those things if he could help it.
Tejada ran his hand over the cold metal in his pocket. It weighed as much as a can of beans, but it was smaller. In daylight, it was that same olive green that had dominated every waking moment of his daily life for the last twenty years. The thing about seeing that green every day... it had a way of freezing time. The last twenty years seemed like nothing more than the blink of an eye. He had gone from a young pup full of fight to a grizzled old bastard in no time at all.
The fact was, it was all he really knew. Somewhere back there in his gray matter, there were memories of a life before the army, but they were like a dream, things half-imagined when lying on a rough cot. He looked around at the men on the floor and shook his head. They were the only real family he had.
He would never tell them that of course. It was unfitting for a leader to do so, and even though he was technically not their leader anymore, they were all still looking to him. The last thing he needed was a communication breakdown in a tense moment. He didn't need anyone's trigger finger tensing up because they were questioning the order of things. That's why he had tried to shed himself of his status in the first place.
If you put a leash on a dog that was scared, they would dig in their heels. If you let them know that they had nothing to worry about, well, you had a friend for life and they would go wherever you wanted them to... until you got them hurt or killed. He was trying not to do that.
No, his men knew who he was. None of them had to say it.
He felt them now. He felt the withered eyes of the Annies trained upon him from the dark streets below. They couldn't see him, not in the dark, not with the mirrored glass of the skyscraper between him and them, but they knew he was up there just the same.
He ran his hand over the smooth steel of the grenade in his pocket. Would I die for them? He didn't have to anymore. They were freed of debt to him, and he of debt to them, as it should be. But would he die?
He looked over their sleeping bodies on the floor, shadows upon shadows, their position only given away by their soft snores. They were all he had. Yeah. I'd die for them. He placed his palm over the hand grenade in his pocket, gave it a reassuring squeeze, and then moved to his own spot on the ground. He stepped gingerly over a body, lest he step on the poor sleeping bastard.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the glimmer of an open eye, and he knew that the boy was watching him. The boy thought he was a man, but he had never had the opportunity to learn such things. That much was obvious, like teenagers falling in love for the first time... so obvious, yet so tragic at the same time. Andy he said his name was.
Tejada felt something for the boy. He was not unlike any raw recruit he had ever come across. He was green. He was stupid. He had a lust for the world's treasures that would get his ass killed. Given enough time, he could break the boy of his youth, but they didn't have enough time. He was a problem, and yet, he found he couldn't just give up on the kid.
Tomorrow, he would give the kid his gun back, along with a stern warning to not get anyone killed. If he learned, he learned. If he didn't, well, that would be it for guns. He would give him a nice knife or something.
He laid back down, trying to put the slit-eyed regard of Andy out of his mind, but he found himself wondering why he cared. Why did he give two shits about some civilian asshole who didn't know the barrel of a handgun from its grip?
I just do. God help me, I just do.
****
Andy watched Sergeant Tejada lay back down. He sensed something in him, something that he didn't care for. There was a weakness there. Perhaps the old soldier wasn't as perfect as he had thought. He hoped he didn't get killed because of his weakness.
That he had ordered the men to take away his gun was the most embarrassing moment of his life, and he had experienced plenty of them. All evening long, he had sensed the disapproving looks of the other soldiers. They didn't look at him as one of them. They looked at him like he was Rudy or Amanda, helpless, useless. In their eyes, he might as well be a baby in a shit-stained diaper, and Tejada had only solidified that image.
But it wasn't his fault! That dumb motherfucker moved right in front of me. He should have known better! The argument rang holl
ow in his brain, but he couldn't escape the feelings that came with it.
Embarrassment, rage, anger... these emotions warred within him, but anger was always the most dominant. He tried to stuff the emotions down inside as Sergeant Tejada began snoring. I'll show them. I'll show them all. I'm just as good as they are, if not better. Tomorrow he would show them all.
He lay down to sleep, his dreams filled with the faces of the dead, parents thousands of miles away, and his own voice screaming in his ears. In his dreams he cried, tears running down his face as he was left behind, alone and trapped by the dead. When he awoke, he felt the wetness on his cheeks as the other men around him avoided looking in his direction.
Chapter 3: Exfil
The sun came up orange, filtered through the smoke of a hundred smoldering fires in the city. The sunlight filtered in through the windows of Big Pink, stained, rotten. It shone on the faces of the survivors, playing across their faces like the light of hell. The sky, had it not been obscured by smoke, would have shined a clear blue. But instead, it was obscured by haze.
Sergeant Tejada rose, his body complaining for the hundredth time about sleeping on a cushion-less floor. Today was the day they left the city behind. This he vowed. He rose and stretched, his back sounding like a burst of automatic gunfire. Others were awake, but silent, allowing the others in the company to get as much sleep as they could. Who knew when they would have another such opportunity?
Tejada could feel the dread in the air. He could taste it like ashes in his mouth. Tejada moved slowly to the windows and looked down. They were still there, spread out, but that wouldn't last for long once they busted open those windows. Timing would be key.
Tie the ropes off. Bust the windows. Get everyone out and down. How long would that take? The civilians were the x-factor. If one of those civvies clammed up at the edge of the window, things could get hairy real fast. They didn't have the ammo to shoot their way out of a real horde. 5 minutes... that's all the time he estimated they had from the first broken window to the last man hitting the ground. After that, they would be surrounded, and they would be overrun by the sheer numbers of the dead.
He looked over the men, calculating, deciding the order. Rudy was the riskiest proposition. Lying in a coma for a week, already grossly overweight, how well could he manage this part of their journey?
Rudy sat in discussion with Amanda. He had no qualms about Amanda. She would do what she needed to do. He had seen that on the bridge when the Chloe situation had been thrust upon them. She was a survivor. Rudy? He was a wild card.
Tejada stalked over to the pair and squatted down next to them. He felt the boy's eyes on him the entire way.
"Good morning," he said, smiling a grin that he knew was toothy and filled with bright square teeth. He had been described as bullfroggish as a youth, but people still responded to his smile despite that fact.
"Good morning," Amanda said.
"Good morning," Rudy began, his awkwardness like nails on a chalkboard to Tejada. "I'd like to thank you for coming back for me," he stammered.
Tejada waved him off as if it weren't a big deal, even though the delay in retrieving the unconscious man on the bridge had most likely fouled up their plans to begin with. The dead wouldn't have been quite as dense, quite as bunched up if they hadn't had to double back and grab the man. But he had ordered it. The way Tejada saw it, there just weren't enough lives left in the world to be throwing them away in the name of expediency.
"It was nothing," he said. "Hopefully, you would do the same for me or any of my men."
The kid nodded, his chin disappearing as the fat of his neck billowed around it.
"Good, good." Tejada hesitated as he tried to word his next statement in a way that would not hurt or embarrass the kid. "Listen, I uhh... I wanted to talk about today." Amanda and Rudy were all ears. "You know that we're going to be going out those windows, and I just wanted to make sure that when the time comes, you're not going to hesitate."
"What do you mean?" Amanda asked, her hand going protectively to Rudy's arm.
Tejada sighed. This would be so much easier if they were military people. He had never been known for his tact. "I mean, in a few minutes, we're going out those windows. Below us, are a hundred of those damned things. Any sort of hesitation, and we're going to find ourselves surrounded. We are going to die. So I'm just wondering if you're up to it, kid? Can you do this?"
Rudy laughed. "You don't have to worry about me, sir. I have experience jumping out windows. This time I have a rope. That's going to be good enough for me."
Tejada smiled, still not sure if he could trust Rudy. But he liked the confidence he saw in the man's face. "Well, that's all there is. So, if you guys are ready, we ought to get this show on the road."
Rudy nodded at Tejada, his eyes free from fear. He has the confidence at least. That's something. "Masterson!" Tejada yelled. "Get over here and show these people how to rappel down a wall."
"Yes, sir!" Masterson quipped. Tejada winced again. That damn word. Would they ever stopped calling him "sir?" He let it go for the time being, as there simply wasn't enough time to bother arguing about it. Plus, it showed that his men were still in a military mindset. And that was just fine with Tejada for the moment.
****
Rudy watched closely as Masterson showed him how to wind the rope around himself in order to control his descent and not end up as a puddle on the street. It seemed simple enough. He certainly felt better about this than he had about jumping out of an office building onto the back of a semi-truck.
"You got it?" Masterson asked.
"Yeah, I think so," he said.
"Don't think. Know. Do you got it?"
"Yes, sir," he said. He felt the rebuke in the man's words, and the word "sir" just came out of him unbidden.
"I'm not your sir," the man said before he headed over to Andy, the boy from the theater, and began repeating his explanation for how to rappel down the wall.
Rudy watched the men gather their belongings, tying their equipment down so that nothing shifted or hung loose. The smell in the office was awful, their makeshift bathroom was full, and Rudy was looking forward to escaping the claustrophobic confines of the office building. Rudy and Amanda watched as Masterson explained to Andy what to do. It wouldn't hurt to pay attention to the instructions one more time.
Sergeant Tejada, sensing that preparations were just about over, yelled out orders. "Alright, Masterson, Brown, Allen. I want you three going first. Get down there as fast as you can. Establish a perimeter. Whiteside, Quigley, and Day, you three are next. Then I want Kazinsky, Beacham and Gregg out. The three civvies will come next, while myself, Epps, and Ramirez cover them from up here. Once they're on the ground, Ramirez and Gregg are out the door. I'll cut these ropes, then I'll join you all at the bottom in time for a cup of tea."
Everyone nodded. And with that, there was nothing left to say. Rudy, who had never been religious, began to chant a mantra in his mind. "Lord let us live. Lord let us live." He repeated the phrase over and over. For good measure, he took a puff off of his inhaler, and he readied himself for the part that was to come next.
He flinched when the soldiers blew out the glass windows with a handful of shots from their rifles. The soldiers tossed the ropes out the window, and Masterson, Brown and Allen quickly snaked the ropes around their bodies. Without hesitation, they stepped out into the smoky day and disappeared from sight.
"Cover 'em!" Tejada snapped. The next soldiers up stepped to the edge of the windows and began picking off the dead.
Rudy felt his body infused with adrenaline. Amanda laced the fingers on her left hand through his fingers, and he turned to her and smiled. She smiled back. It was beautiful. It melted away the soreness in his body from the previous day's exertion. He knew he was ready.
"They're down!" one of the soldiers yelled.
"Go!" Tejada yelled, and three more soldiers coiled the ropes around themselves and disappeared from sight.
/>
It seemed like only a matter of moments, and then three more soldiers disappeared.
"You three are up next," Tejada said. Rudy, Amanda, and Andy inched their way to the edge of the building. Rudy leaned out over the edge and looked down. His head began to swim immediately, and he had to lean backwards and take a deep breath to make the rocking in his head stop.
"You can do this," Amanda said, and he knew he could, because she believed in him, and that meant he couldn't let her down.
"They're down," Andy said, and then the three survivors sprang into work, coiling the ropes around their legs, around their waists, and over their arms. Andy, as if he had done this a thousand times, stepped out into the air first, then Amanda.
Rudy inched to the edge, and his head began to rock again. He hesitated.
Tejada had no time for his bullshit. "Get out there, Rudy! Now, motherfucker!"
Rudy stepped out over the edge, dropping immediately and banging against the side of the building. He hit hard, and it knocked the breath out of him. The wind swirled around him, and he had to will himself to loosen his grip on the rope. The rope snaked across his body as he began to descend. He squeezed his eyes shut.
"You gotta go faster than that!" Tejada yelled from above.
Rudy opened his eyes and looked upward, his teeth locked in a death grin. Tejada was looking down at him; his square head seemed bloated and angry, the skin on his face had turned an angry red, and Rudy released his grip on the rope to get away from it.
The windows slid by, and he coughed on the smoke in the air. As he passed one set of windows, he screamed as a shirtless dead woman banged against the window, what remained of her once ample breasts flattening against the glass. He slid further down, the rope zipping across his pants and his shirt and his forearm, stripping some of the skin off the latter.
He chanced a look down and saw hell below him. In a circle, the nine soldiers stood, their rifles at the ready as they fired into a ring of the dead that seemed to inch closer and closer with every second that went by. How long could the soldiers' circle stand and not break? From his vantage point, he saw the dead spread out along the streets, moving so slow that at first it seemed like they were standing still, but they weren't. They were coming.
