by Wick Welker
What? Dave thought. He looked back at the group. An impatient Douglas motioned with his hand for Dave to return. The infected man was once again attempting to bite into the metal with little success. Cautiously, Dave swung the blade down through his neck and ran back to the group.
“What took so long?” Jacobs asked.
“That one was just doing something weird, chewing on a metal staircase,” Dave said.
“Hmph,” responded Jacobs, gazing forward as the squad moved once again.
As they made it down to the end of the street, they saw the edge of the horde that wasn’t touched by the EMP. The crowd of infected was largely distracted at the face of a building, ramming their heads into windows, and trying to break in.
Douglas put his arm up, motioning the squad to stop. “EMP weapons out,” he said quietly, and then flashed a hand signal at the squad, prompting to break their “W” formation, and snap into a single file line. He then motioned his hand forward and led them up along a sidewalk at the opposite side, where the small crowd tried to crawl into the building. As they crept up behind, a few of the infected noticed their movement, and turned toward them as they stumbled over themselves.
The squad snapped into a line as Douglas lifted his fist into the air, pausing for a moment while everyone raised their EMP-57s. As most of the attention of the infected was now being pulled away from the building, Douglas swiftly dropped his hand through the air as the squad clicked their silent rifles, releasing electromagnetic energy into the crowd. The men and woman instantaneously collapsed to the ground in a wide radius from the squad. All their movements ceased. Dave marveled at the transformation of the chaotic street to a quiet graveyard.
“This building is our target,” Douglas said. “I want Tripps and Michaels to take the front, and Wang and Yen at the rear. The forward team will use gunpowder bullets and the rear team with EMPs. We may encounter non-infected hostiles in the building. Move now.”
They assembled around the building, stepping over the bodies, and into a bloodied entrance through a narrow doorway. Dave entered first and saw a long corridor sinking away into darkness. It was a dank apartment building with doors lining the hallway, already ravaged by the infected. There was a small fire on the floor that Dave stepped over. He realized that the flames came from a dead dog curled up next to who he only assumed was the animal’s owner.
The team inched forward, kicking in various apartment doors only to find the infected that had fallen from the EMPs. Each apartment was a still-life snapshot of normal families going about their lives when a crowd of cannibals smashed into their windows. The pulse had captured each scene as it was happening in the cramped apartments.
As they went deeper still, Dave kicked in what he thought was another apartment door, but actually opened to a staircase. “Hey Captain.” Dave motioned to Douglas. “We’ve got another level here.”
The squad walked down, single file, and flipped on the lights mounted on the top of their rifles.
In the scant light, Dave only saw cobwebs and plastic storage bins lining the cement wall. He walked up to another door, which had several padlocks latching it closed. The sudden smell of ammonia and feces filled his nose, making him back away in a coughing fit.
“All right, all right,” Douglas said, crowding his way from the back of the line. “We’re getting into that room— holy shit, what is that smell?”
“The smell of someone who hasn’t had access to a bathroom… for a really long time,” Michaels said.
Douglas lifted up one of the padlocks. “Okay, we’re blowing the door. Jacobs, get up here with the gear. Everybody else get the hell back.”
Jacobs scurried up from behind the squad and dropped his pack on the floor in front of him, after flinching from the smell. He removed several wires and cutting tools, along with a small block of C4 explosive, which he began to mold around the various padlocks that studded the doorframe.
After several minutes of tampering with some wiring on a control board, Douglas grew impatient. “Are we about ready, Jacobs?”
“Uh, yes, yes. Everyone get back to that other wall over there,” he replied.
“You sure you got just enough on there to blow only the door? Not going to kill us, right?”
“Just let me work.” Jacobs got to his feet and turned to where the squad had assembled at the wall opposite the door. “All right, in three, two . . .and one.” An abrupt clap rang in the basement, releasing the door from the frame, and dropping it to the concrete floor.
“All right, good work Jacobs.” Douglas waved his hand in front of his face, clearing the smoke. “Guns up!” He approached the open door with an automatic rifle drawn and stepped into the room, leaving the squad trailing behind.
Dave crept in behind everyone as they filed into the room. He snuck around Wang and saw several shelves full of empty cleaning supply bottles, with a row of dried up mops leaning against the wall. He turned toward the corner of the small room where Douglas had knelt. He could see over Douglas’ bulky shoulders that a frail man with small glasses perched on his nose was looking up from a small cot. The man smiled at the squad and tried to hold Douglas’ hand but was stopped by tight chains that bound his wrists to large bolts in the floor.
“Thank you…” the man said with an American accent. “Thank you for saving me. I don’t know how I can properly thank you fine men.” He spoke from a dry throat. “And women!” he added as he saw Michaels release her hair from beneath her helmet.
“Why are you… who are you?” Douglas asked as he tested the strength of the chains that led to the floor.
Dave pushed Michaels out of the way to get a better look at the man. His cheekbones protruded out from a gaunt face. He had a long nose that pointed downward into a balled-tip above his thinly stretched lips. The man continued looking around the room and smiled at Dave.
“What’s your name?” Douglas asked.
“I know who that is,” Dave interrupted, approaching the cot.
The man’s eyes focused on Dave’s face as he tightened his lips.
“How could you possibly know who this is?” Douglas scoffed, turning to Dave.
“I’ve met him before. That man there is Dr. Beckfield. He father of the nanovirus.”
Chapter Eleven: Mexico City
The first night on the roof, Sheffield managed to find several heavy boxes full of metal hardware from a of pipe system. He methodically placed them at all exits to the roof that he found..
As Elise watched him place the boxes, through that first night, she felt the utter futility of placing them in front of each door. They could easily be toppled over by enough time and pressure from whatever mass of bodies that’s pleased to come spilling out here, she thought.
It had taken several hours, but Sheffield felt confident that he had found all the doors that led to the chaos of infection below. It was only after he had dragged the cardboard boxes across the gravelly top that Sheffield had found a dolly inside of a chain-linked enclosure that housed electrical transformers and coiled wires, sprawling from a central tower to other stations across the roof. His consolation prize was also finding an uneaten lunch box that was setting neatly beside a dead utility worker, who had a gunshot wound in the side of his head. The man was lying face down, his yellow helmet tilted up from his head at a skewed angle, with a dribble of dried blood matted into his hair.
Sheffield brought the lunchbox back to Elise, who had curled up with the baby into a distant corner of the roof. They had managed to coax the baby into swallowing some crumbled bread that Elise had mixed with a little water they found pooled in a few corners along the roof. After crying a while longer, the baby finally slept on their first night on the roof.
Throughout the night, the streets below were brimming with the sounds of car horns, women screaming, children crying, gas canisters exploding, and bullets ricocheting. Distant explosions added to the sound of airplane jet engines in the sky and helicopter blades thumping in all directio
ns. Sheffield found himself constantly looking down and out over the street as if there would be some new development but it was only the same scene of water flooding the streets and cars engulfed in flames. The horde moved in the streets in all directions and had become restless from the lack of new prey. He got up during the night to look below, hoping the Mexican armed forces would show up, but only saw the same river of heads. The commanding voices in his ear speaker had long ceased to give updates.
“There’s a dead maintenance worker up here on the roof. Shot right in the head,” he said without emotion when the sunrise came.
“What?” Elise said, startled from sleep. “Did it look like he was infected?”
“No, it was just a regular old murder. It’s who I got the lunch from.” He looked down at the lunchbox and nudged it with his foot. “I didn’t want to tell you right away.”
She looked down at the crumble of bread that remained in the box. “Do you think he was shot by one of the terrorists? Maybe snooping around or something before the attack?”
“Maybe,” he said despondently, looking over the building as sunlight trickled in through the streets.
Elise fell silent as she brought the baby to her shoulder. She looked at the gravel and sighed heavily. “What’re we going to do now?”
“We’re going to wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“The Mexican Army to come in.”
“As if we have any other option.” She looked up. “Any luck flagging down a chopper?”
Sheffield snorted. “No, no. Well, it’s been dark for a while. We’re only now getting light. Maybe we can find something flammable, make some sort of torch to attract attention.”
“First, I think we need to accept that we’re most likely, and I mean statistically, going to die up here.”
Sheffield stayed quiet.
Elise continued. “The infected are going to find their way up onto this roof because they’re going to get bored soon. They’ve been out chasing all the good tail all night, but now everyone is all chewed up and they’re just going to start clawing their way into every nook and cranny until they find someone new. They’re going to find us.”
“Why are you saying this?”
“Because I want you to agree to shoot me.”
“What?”
“Shoot me and then shoot this little one right in the head before you go ahead and shoot yourself,” she said.
“Madame Ambassador…”
“There is no more ‘Madame Ambassador.’ I’m just Elise and you’re James. Okay?”
“Okay.” He was suddenly aware of the weight of his handgun in his shoulder holster.
“And I’m saying this because when the time comes, it’s going to be much better to go out on our own terms than on the terms of the cannibals.”
“I understand. I get what you’re saying.”
“I don’t want you to just understand. I want you to agree to kill me and this child with your gun. Don’t waste those bullets on the dead, they’re for us.”
“All right.”
“Do you agree?” She turned to him.
“Yes, I agree.”
“Shake on it.” She shifted the baby to her opposite shoulder and crossed her hand over her belly, reaching it out to Sheffield.
Quietly, Sheffield reached his hand out and felt her firm grasp, trying to ignore her stare.
She took her hand back and lifted the baby over her knees, handing him over to Sheffield. “Here, take the baby.” Getting to her feet, she looked out over the building edge and saw the street had settled down during the night. A new order had already been established. The sick had free range of the street to bump and fall wherever they pleased, while the remaining survivors scurried into their holes, hoping and waiting to be passed. “How are we going to get more food and water?” she asked.
Sheffield remained sitting with his back against the high ledge of the building. “We go down, back into the mall.”
Elise looked out over the buildings and the numerous stacks of black smoke that scattered across the horizon of the city. In the remote haze she made out the faint outline of the Popocatépetl volcano. “That would be extremely risky,” she said.
“I agree, but we may not have another option.”
“This is how people die. They think they can get away with taking small risks, that because they’re desperate and dying they somehow deserve to have everything go their way. People start thinking that all the terrible stuff that has happened justifies them into doing whatever they want, that it will work out in their favor because they are who they are. None of this…” She pointed out toward the city. “None of this is a movie. It may look like a movie but it’s not. We’re not protagonists with a scriptwriter secretly behind the scenes making sure everything is going to work out for us.”
“I get it,” Sheffield said, irritated.
“If we open one of those doors and there is even just a handful of the infected behind it, it could start a chain reaction of movement of every single one of them in that mall. All of them on the street would follow each other until they’re all up here on this roof, and then you’ll have to put a bullet in our heads. It will very likely happen if we go down there looking for food. All of those infected people down there are just waiting for something to stimulate them.”
“Ma’am, I understand. You asked where we are going to get food, and that’s the first idea that came to mind.” He let the annoyance he felt draw into his tone. “It’s the only idea.”
“You’re right, sorry I’m lecturing too much.” She turned around, away from the city, and looked out over the vast roof of the building. “We should—”
“What?” He looked up at her.
“Oh,” she said in surprise, staring past him.
“What is it?” He looked out to find what her gaze was locked on but couldn’t see past a series of venting ducts.
“I think I know who killed that maintenance worker,” she said.
“What the hell are you…” Sheffield got to his feet and saw a single man in a bulletproof vest with a black helmet and Army fatigues pointing an automatic rifle at them, from an electrical shed fifty yards away. The man maintained a fixed position, standing next to a chain-linked fence with his rifle raised in the air, and his elbows sticking out. Without speaking, Sheffield slowly put his hand behind the baby, who was positioned in front of his chest. He crept his fingers inside of the windbreaker that he had taken from the sporting goods store and quickly yanked the gun out, pointing it at the man.
“No!” Elise yelled as the main ducked. “Don’t threaten him.”
Sheffield maintained the gun on the man as he slowly crouched and handed the baby to Elise with his other arm. “There is no way I’m putting down my gun.”
The man stayed crouching but backed up so that his shoulders were squarely resting on the shed behind him.
Sheffield only had an oblique angle at him.
A radio garbled from beneath the man’s vest, which he slowly took out while keeping the rifle on Sheffield with one arm. He spoke with a low tone, making it difficult to hear not only what he was saying, but in what language.
Elise spoke quietly, “Right now, he’s telling whoever it is that there are two Americans on this roof. If we kill him now, they’re still going to come here and find us, and be just that more pissed off that we killed one of them.”
“Ma’am, we have no idea who he’s talking to.” Sheffield kept his gun pointed at the man, who had now put his radio into a side pocket.
“Of course we don’t, but I’m pretty sure if that guy wanted to kill us, he would’ve already done it since he’s been watching us since before we even spotted him. He’s waiting for his cavalry.”
“Shit,” Sheffield said, realizing she was right.
The man backed away from the shed and walked backward, easing himself away from their corner of the roof until he found another shed farther across, and disappeared from their view.
>
Sheffield lowered his gun. “He’s definitely waiting for something. Probably got marooned up here just like us and is waiting for extraction. They’ll probably come and get him now that they know we’re here.”
“So, our choices are pretty simple. We go down into the mall, where we’ll die. We can go and try to kill him, where we’ll also probably die. Or, we wait around to be kidnapped, which is the only scenario where we don’t die.”
Sheffield turned and spoke in an annoyed tone, “We can at least go hide in another spot.”
“You don’t need to get all mad for being realistic.”
“Do you have to be so cut throat about it?”
“Whatever.” She got to her feet, cradling the baby over her shoulder. “But you’re right. We should probably find another place to camp out.” She walked over to the other side of the roof in the opposite direction to the armed man. “I guess we go this way.” As Sheffield shuffled up to her she stuck the baby out to him. “Would you mind taking it?”
“Yes… I’ll take it,” he replied, emphasizing her word choice of the baby.
“I’m sorry, it’s just a little too much for me right now to just start being a mom again,” she replied.
They walked along the leading edge of the roof, disappearing from the sight of the armed man. The daylight had crept up from the horizon and was now glowing from a batch of low-lying rain clouds. The vacuum of hunger churned inside Elise as she kept her head low, looking out over the streets. Her hips ached with each step, a painful reminder of the uncomfortable night she had just spent on the roof with a crying baby.
After they had made their way along the roof for several hundred feet, Sheffield looked back at their original spot, and saw the faint movement of the gunman’s helmet. The man moved from one crouching position to the next, following them from a safe distance. “He’s definitely keeping his eye on us,” Sheffield said.
“Let him, he’s only a drop in our bloody bucket of problems,” Elise said, stopping at the edge again. She looked down at the streets and saw they were now above a back alley of the mall, where a large mass of infected people had accumulated between the loading bay and the back wall of an opposing building. They had gathered in multiple layers of bodies in one spot directly below. They were continually stirred up in agitation by the constant humming of a mechanical sound within the building.
