by Chris Lowry
“Ready?” he asked Rat.
“No.”
Taylor drew back his hand and smashed the door with the pistol. Glass shattered over the zombie, who ignored it and went straight for Rat at the railing.
He ducked aside as she reached for him, and hit the rail.
The two men watched her tumble into the swarm of Z below with a loud thunk.
“Glad that’s over,” said Rat.
Another Z moaned behind them. They turned to see a man in a bathrobe stumble across the room toward them.
They parted one step to each side and let him follow his wife down to the pool deck below with a second loud crunch.
“Think they had any kids?” Rat asked as they peered into the dark apartment.
CHAPTER SIX
They stepped inside of the condo onto the plush carpet, glass crunching under their hiking boots.
Rat hissed as he spotted the couch and angled his direction so he was on it in three steps. He sprawled on the long white leather and used his hands to lift his ankle up to the glass and chrome coffee table.
“Don’t worry,” Taylor whispered. “I got this.”
“Thanks man,” Rat ignored or missed the sarcasm in his partner’s voice.
Taylor just shook his head, set the second bag of weapons next to him, and did a quick search of the two bedrooms, the bathroom and kitchen.
He came back into the living room and stared at Rat for a moment. The man was hurting, and a leg injury was the worst kind to get now.
A survivor had to be ready to run from the zombies and so far, there had been a lot of Z. Rat had been able to keep up, but now?
“You’re thinking of leaving me behind.”
He knew the man wasn’t a mind reader. It was more likely he was thinking the same thoughts, worried about the same outcome.
“What if we have to move quick?”
Rat patted the black bag.
“We have more firepower now. We could shoot a path clear. Besides, this? This will heal. I’m already feeling better.”
He pushed off the couch and set the toe of his foot on the ground. Taylor noted he didn’t put any weight on it.
“Let’s score,” he said instead.
He turned back to the dark bedrooms.
“Kitchen,” he pointed Rat toward the galley style narrow room off the hallway.
Rat hopped into the room and began rifling through the cabinets, pulling out cans and plastic packages of food.
Whoever the couple was that had gone over the rail, they were food full. He hadn’t seen cabinets this packed in a long time.
“Score!” he called out.
Taylor moved into the first bedroom and nodded. The master suite was just slightly larger than the other room, the king sized bed dutifully made, but ruffled in two spots. There were dark unidentifiable stains on the comforter he ignored.
He went to the nightstand on one side of the bed and knocked over four empty pill bottles next to a bottle of wine.
The owners must have checked out together, and turned Z. That explained the stains. Dead human bodies leaked. Dead zombies just kept rotting away.
He opened the nightstand drawer, pushed aside a couple of vibrators and wrapped his hand around a long black shaft.
He hoped it wasn’t another sex toy and felt a thrill of joy when he pulled it out of the drawer and clicked it on. It was a heavy metal Maglite that shot a powerful beam into the ceiling and cast a soft glow around the room.
“Score,” he called out to Rat.
It was a system they had developed in the time they were together, keeping tabs on each other in the hallway and sharing minor victories, like finding food and supplies.
He liked it.
He used the light to search the drawer, found a couple of tiny plastic bottles with a few pills in each. Vicodin. He pocketed them for Rat, then kept searching.
Besides their kinks, the drawers turned up nothing.
Taylor reached over and yanked a pillowcase off the pillow.
He moved to the other bedroom, but it was set up as a gym and home office. Not much use for paper supplies these days so he checked the closet, but both occupants of the condo had been on the larger size. None of their clothes would fit either of them.
He stepped into the bathroom and searched the medicine cabinet and under the sink. There were first aid supplies so he grabbed them as well and went back to Rat to check on his haul.
Rat leaned against the counter on one foot. He grinned as Taylor stepped in, and held up a can of chili.
“Texas style,” he crowed.
“We’re in Texas. We should just call it style,” Taylor tossed him the pillowcase.
“Homestyle? Flashlight?”
Taylor bounced the light off Rat’s face.
“It’s going to be dark in the stairwell.
We’ll need it.”
“Good score.”
Rat turned on one leg and began stuffing food into the pillowcase.
“We could just stay here tonight,” Taylor suggested.
He motioned to Rat’s ankle.
“The stairs might be tough.”
Rat listened to the sound of the zombies filtering through the shattered glass door.
“I don’t think I could stay here man. I can make it.”
Taylor shrugged. If the man said he could make it, he would try.
“I’m not going to carry you.”
“Hell, I know that. I’ll carry myself.”
“But we can leave one of these down here,” Taylor indicated a black bag of guns and ammo on the couch.
“That makes it easier.”
They shrugged into their packs, food, new weapons and checked the hallway. It was empty.
“Fifteen flights?” Taylor asked.
“I got this.”
Rat followed him into the stairwell.
CHAPTER SEVEN
They made it to the thirteenth floor before Rat called it quits.
“We could just pick one here, man,” he said. “This floor is fine.”
“We should have done that twelve floors down,” Taylor gasped.
The weight on his back was beginning to wear him down. He grabbed the door to the hallway and eased it open.
A couple of quick flashes with the Maglite to draw attention was met with silence. No zombies in the hallway.
He led Rat to the closet door and knocked, again searching for Z noise. There was nothing.
He tried the door, but as expected, it was locked.
“Can you kick it in?”
“Can you?” Taylor snorted.
Then he kicked it in. They waited again for any errant Z to run toward them, but the condo beyond was quiet.
“Welcome home,” Taylor stepped inside.
He did a quick search of the apartment to make sure they were alone, and brought back an unopened bottle of whiskey from the kitchen.
They set up camp in the living room. Rat lit four candles and dripped wax onto the table top to affix them standing up.
Taylor divvied up the food, and they began to eat.
“I know they’re still out there?”
“Zombies?” asked Taylor. “Yeah man, we just saw like a million of them.”
“I mean people. Like us.” Rat licked his chapped lips. “We need to find them man.”
“You think?”
“I don’t think. I know.”
“What are we going to do when we find them? You remember what happened last time.”
“Last time was a fluke.”
“Bikers.”
“At least they weren’t zombies.”
Taylor shook his head and laughed.
“Yeah, shit. Zombie bikers would have been hell. The Riverside Warlords were bad enough.”
“There ain’t even a river around here is there?”
“The Lake’s a river.”
“No shit?”
“I shit you not. Part of the Tejas river or something.”
; “The Texas river.”
“Te-hass,” Taylor corrected his pronunciation.
“What’s the difference?”
“J versus X, I think. I was never very good at the old Espanol.”
“Maybe that’s why the Warlords were Riverside? Too much confusion between Texas and Tejas.”
Taylor grinned and unscrewed a pint whiskey bottle. He slopped a dollop into a cup and passed it to Rat.
“Texas. Tejas. Taco warlords. I pretty much don’t care what they call themselves as long as they stick to their side of the water.”
“We can’t hide out here forever,” Rat poured himself a drink and indicated the condo they were hiding in.
“We won’t,” Taylor agreed.
He took a sip of whiskey and grimaced.
“We supply up, store up on dry foods, pastas and shit like that. Then we get going.”
“Going where?”
“I think more of the gangs are going to pop up. Look at it like this. It’s human nature man. Some guy is going to want to get all this power over everybody else, and he’s going to get violent to do it. We found a bunch of firepower today. Know what that makes us?”
“Number one on somebody’s shit list.”
“Exactly.”
Taylor took another drink.
“I don’t know about you but I do not like being on a shit list. I don’t like being on the nice list, the naughty list, the grocery list. Hell, keep me off all lists period.”
“I’m with you.”
“Then it’s settled. We find food here. There should be plenty in a couple of apartments. We hole up for a couple days while your ankle mends. Then we hightail it to somewhere else.”
Rat leaned back and sipped from the bottle. The whiskey burned his throat going down and settled in his stomach to radiate warmth. He liked the way it felt. He liked that it eased the dull throb in his ankle even more.
He was pretty sure it wasn’t broken, but he could feel it swelling in his boot. He wouldn’t let Taylor help him take off the hikers for fear the ankle would keep blowing up until he couldn’t fit it back in.
“Duct tape too,” he said, thinking out loud.
“For your ankle?”
Rat nodded. He had to hand it to Taylor. That guy caught on quick. Knew stuff.
Just like he knew the biker gang was bad news.
And if he knew that, Rat figured he should heed any warnings the man might have.
A lot of people died in the zombie plague. A lot more died after.
You had to be pretty smart to survive and Rat knew he wasn’t exactly the brightest bulb in any carton of crayons.
But he was pretty smart to hang out with Taylor.
If the guy said no more people, Rat was going to give up on hoping they found some.
He passed the last quarter of a bottle back to Taylor.
“You want to finish it?” Taylor held it out, but Rat shook his head.
“I’m going to grab shut eye. Wake me up in six and I’ll take second watch.”
Taylor nodded, and poured the rest of the whiskey in his cup. He watched Rat settle down on the floor, favoring his ankle so that it stretched out in front of him.
He should get up and go check the window. This high up, they would be safe from Z, and he could go out on the balcony, get a better look.
But the chili in his belly felt pretty damn good and the bourbon on top of it felt a hell of a lot better.
He was just going to sit here and mellow out a bit.
He didn’t mean to close his eyes, but the door was locked, they were eighteen stories up and he couldn’t help it.
He listened to the steady rhythm of Rat snoring, and as his breathing dropped down to match it, he drifted off too.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The scream woke them both up.
“Did you hear that?” Rat wiped a string of drool from the corner of his mouth.
Taylor scrubbed sleep from his eyes.
“I’m not deaf.”
They heard it again.
“Sounds like it’s right outside the balcony,” said Rat. “Go look.”
Taylor was a step ahead of him, or at least ahead of the suggestion since his partner in crime wasn’t moving off the floor.
“Don’t get up,” he said and held a rifle to his shoulder.
“Bad ankle,” Rat reminded him.
But he lifted his rifle too, aimed it at the ceiling ready to offer back up.
Taylor scuffled through the empty apartment and moved to the blinds that covered the slider to the balcony.
He could hear something outside, a scrabbling squealing noise that he couldn’t quite place, but at least the screaming stopped.
He reached up with a finger and pulled the cord that swished the blinds open.
A woman dangled on the end of a rope swinging in a pendulum motion off the edge of the railing.
Her feet scrambled for purchase against the slick rail, even as the rope slipped and dropped her a foot further down.
She screamed again.
Taylor fought to open the door, but it wouldn’t move.
“Lock?” screamed Rat as he offered assistance.
Taylor felt for a lock on the door, twisted the latch and heard it click.
But the door still wouldn’t move.
The woman slipped down again, her panicked eyes locked on his just before her head dipped below the railing.
She didn’t fall though.
He could still see the rope moving, though the motion of the swing was slowing down, not quite as wide as it had been just moments before.
“Stick!” Rat shouted. “Look for a stick!”
Stick? Taylor crinkled his eyes. He cast around the living room for a stick to bust the glass.
“No, stick in the door. Some people block the slider with a stick.”
It didn’t make sense to Taylor. They were eighteen stories above the asphalt. Who would lock the door and use a stick to block any would be burglar from getting in.
But he checked and there was a stick preventing the door from sliding open.
He jerked it out of the way, slid the door back and ran to the edge of the rail.
“Help me!” the woman shrieked.
Her hands gripped the rope as it swayed away from him.
Taylor reached out, missed.
“Hold on!”
“I’ve got a choice!” she screamed back.
He thought that seemed ungrateful for someone whose life he was about to save, but he kept reaching for the rope anyway.
“What is it?”
Rat crawled behind him, favoring the ankle.
“A woman,” Taylor grunted and grabbed the rope.
“Alive?”
“So far!” she screamed.
“You heard her,” Taylor snatched the rope and hauled her in toward the balcony.
Her hands grabbed for the rail, missed and she flipped upside down, still hanging, still swinging and now screaming even louder.
“Tell her to shut up!” Rat yelled.
“Shut up!” Taylor told her.
“Get me up!”
Still with the demanding tone. He almost let her go. But she was alive, and that counted for something in his book, at least so far.
Her screaming was going to attract the undead.
Even as he thought it, he saw a body pitch off the balcony one floor up and moan all the way down to splat on the concrete below.
The Z trapped in the building were making their way outside, drawn by the screams and in their undead zombie brains, maybe they thought they could fly over for a little snack.
A second body almost hit her from directly above.
