Rotting to the Core (Keep Your Crowbar Handy Book 2)

by Durnin, S. P.

  She smiled, adjusted the strap of her M-4, and pushed away from the fan's housing. After hefting the plastic-wrapped case of liquid, she moved towards the rear of the roof. Nearing the drop-off, Laurel sat the water down in the shade under the power plant's satellite dish and trotted to the edge. Jake, Kat and the others had to have circled the building by now. The moans of the dead rose in volume when she neared the lip, lending caution to her steps as she edged up to the five story plunge. Looking down, the red-haired woman saw the gap behind the office block was full of the creatures. They flowed towards the center from both directions, and were stumbling out of the cafeteria she'd passed on her way through the building too. That was a bit odd. Granted the battle in the turbine room had caused quite the ruckus, but the horrors wouldn't have any reason to concentrate...

  Then she saw them. The others were trapped inside the fenced transformer yard, not far behind the office block. While their minimal barrier held the zombies back, but there were more coming every minute. Eventually, there would be enough of them to either force open the gate, or simply topple the fence entirely. Once that happened, the dead would flow unstoppably into the enclosure. Laurel's tasted fear as she pictured her friends being dragged down by cold, lifeless hands, and consumed before her eyes. Just like Donna.

  “Jake!”

  The ringing voice she used to sing projected over the creature’s moans and reached his ears. O'Connor's head snapped skyward and his face lit up when he saw her safe on the roof. “Laurel! Are you alright?”

  “I'm fine!” She knew it was a lie. She could hear the moans of the infected on the floor below her.

  “Hey, roomie!” Kat called, as she jumped and waved at her.

  “Hey!”

  “This isn't working out so well,” Kat said, with a pout. “Going forward, I think someone else should be in charge of coming up with all the rescue plans.”

  The redhead laughed. “Oh, I don't know. This one seems to be very popular.”

  Kat looked out beyond the fence. “Yeah. But you know, popularity isn't everything. Take Miley, for example.”

  “I'm pretty sure she got chomped during the first week,” Laurel called back.

  “My point exactly,” Kat replied. “Sometimes? It's better to be that anonymous face in the balcony section, rather than the hoochie-mama in the spotlight.”

  Laurel scanned their nearby surroundings. “Let's use another analogy, shall we? You guys need to get out of there!”

  “We'll figure that out once we get you down,” Jake told her flatly.

  The access door thumped in its frame and Laurel jumped in surprise. “I think they just found the door up here.”

  “Fuck! Laurel, just stay where you are.” He looked around quickly then trotted over to the scissor-lift. Hopping up on the platform, Jake turned the ignition and the machine puttered to life. Laurel shook her head and wondered what he thought they could do for her with a three-storey elevator, from the bottom of a five-story building.

  Jake ran back to the gate. “Alright! Here's the plan. Kat and the others will get up on the conduit, and then start sniping the ones by the gate. I'll ram that thing through and pull it up to the building. Once I get it set, I'll extend it up. You can hang from the roof's edge and drop—”

  “All that's going to do is get you killed. There are so many of them back there, they'll tip the lift before you even make it to the wall,” she said, folding her arms under her breasts and cocking out one hip.

  Jake felt his chest tighten. “Well... then we'll get a line up to you and you can climb over! It won't be too hard. You can loop it to an air intake, wrap your legs around it, and slide down, just like Kat and I did when—”

  “Do we have any rope?” she asked calmly, and glanced back at the roof-top door. It was vibrating in its frame.

  “We've got to think of something! Now!” He was starting to get really worried.

  The writer passed a hand through that unruly hair of his, causing a flash of regret to move through her and Laurel began to tear up. There wasn't any way down. She wasn't getting off the roof.

  She thought about all the things they'd never get to do. She'd never kiss him again. Never feel his arms around her. They'd made love for the last time the previous night. She wouldn't be with him when they met back up with Allen and Maggie in Pecos. She wasn't going to get to swim in the Pacific with him, as they'd talked about when they'd briefly sheltered at Rae's safe-house. Or just relax in the sand beside him, once the Mimi made it past the Rockies. She'd never see him smile again.

  Laurel also realized that she couldn't wait any longer, or she'd lose her nerve. The dead banging on the access door knew she was up here, and they were hungry. The metal frame was pushing out of the wall as she watched.

  “I'll get you down!” he promised. “Once George finally gets here, we'll—”

  “Jake.”

  He looked up at her and saw something in Laurel's face that stuck a shard of ice though his heart.

  “There no more time,” she said sadly.

  Jake's eyes got big. “That's it, I'm coming up!”

  “You can't,” she exclaimed. “There's just too many of them down there. You wouldn't even make it to the door.”

  “No!” Kat yelled. “You can't ask us to watch you die! We'll fight through them and make our way up the stairwell! Just keep moving around the roof's edge! You should have enough ammo to hold them off 'til we get there!”

  “You know you can't. Not even the both of you together could make it through without being bitten.” Laurel shook her head and wiped her eyes.

  “Rae, Penny, and Gwen can cover us from the pipes!” Kat turned to the trio of women, her eyes desperate. “Right guys?”

  Rae looked at her, eyes full. “Kat, there's just... You wouldn't get ten yards. Look out there.”

  She pointed outside the fence at the hellish crowd. They were packing in against each other so tightly, most of them couldn't even move. If it had been living people in that mess, they would've been crushed, suffocated by the press, and unable to draw a breath.

  There wasn't any way through.

  Jake began to tremble violently. He cast his eyes desperately around the yard, searching for something, anything he could use to reach Laurel. Nothing. Nothing but useless hulks of steel that used to power people's homes.

  “No goddammit!” Pulling his crowbar free, he stumbled towards the gate. The others were so shocked, they didn't move to stop him for a few seconds. He began stabbing his weapon through the fence and into the creature's heads. He burst eyes; crushed noses, shattered temples, but none of it did any good. More and more of them filtered through the cafeteria and from around both corners. Despite his efforts, the horde was getting bigger.

  “Jake! It's not working!” Rae exclaimed, and put a gentle hand on his back.

  He ignored her.

  “Jake—”

  “No! This isn't happening!” He thrust the weapon through the links again, impaling a creature wearing hospital scrubs through its forehead.

  Kat was weeping openly as she came and took his arm. “Jake. We can't. You have to stop.”

  “No!” He shrugged them off callously and killed another zombie. This one was a blue-haired grandmother, who was missing half her throat and one ear. Her jaw hung lopsidedly, half-torn from her skull, which would make it impossible for her to feed. That didn't stop her from trying though, right up until his crowbar passed through her pallet and into her brain.

  “Jake, stop!” Laurel called, crying now herself. She could see the gap between the door-frame and the roof's entryway widen.

  Kat wrapped his good arm around her body tightly. “Rae!”

  George's shapely counterpart slung her huge rifle across her back and jumped forward to get a solid grip of his other appendage. “Gwen, Penny, help us!”

  Carson and the surviving member of the Barbie Duo let their weapons hang from their straps, took hold of him around the waist, and started pulling. The wri
ter moved back half a step, and then muscled ahead to the fence-line once again. His eyes were wild and unseeing. He twisted and fought them, almost taking the women off their feet as he swung his arms in an attempt to free himself.

  They shoved and heaved against each for another a minute, until Kat and the others managed to push him back half a dozen yards. She rode his swinging arm around and, as she thumped into his chest, strained to push him towards the center of the enclosure. Jake was very pale and half-mad with panic. She saw his shoulder had begun bleeding heavily again, and she ignored the warm wetness as it soaked her shirt. Shoving with everything she had in her legs, the blue-haired woman managed to move him back another yard.

  He was just so strong. Adrenaline was running rampant through his system, and it gave his limbs frightening power. The four of them struggled to keep O'Connor away from the fence, and he cursed them for it, swearing he'd fight his way through to the redhead above if it meant killing every damn one of the things waiting outside. From the roof's edge, Laurel begged him to stop, terrified at the thought of Jake actually making it outside the slim barrier. He'd be torn apart. The dead would kill him as she watched from above or worse, make him a member of their awful fraternity.

  It was Kat who broke him out of it. Knowing her friend was doomed, and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it, hurt her badly. She couldn't imagine life without her red-haired roomie. Laurel had always kept her grounded, kept her honest. She was the lovely Asian's touchstone.

  She let go of Jake's arm, threw her own around him, and began to sob. His struggles ceased and his arms went limp. She wasn't able to take her face away from his chest, because she knew. She knew her friend was saying goodbye.

  Jake's eyes were locked on Laurel. “Please. Please! There's has to be a way!”

  The redhead watched as Kat clung to him, and something in her mind finally clicked into place. It seemed to her that the power plant, the smell of cordite, the blood-smeared patio below, even the dead pounding their way through the security door behind her, all just fell suddenly into the distance. She looked calmly at her friends, seemingly from only a few feet away, seeing into their hearts and their futures. They had so much suffering still ahead. It stretched out behind them as they stood together, like malevolent shadows that lurked just past their shoulders; difficult to see in the fading, evening light.

  Jake's was especially dark. The black misshapen form loomed over him like an angry, thorny-skinned wraith, waiting to tear through his flesh when he finally lost hope and gave into his fear. It worried her, until she looked at Kat's. Cho's was so very dark as well, but stood close against the writer's, its night-toned hand pressed to the chest of his own terrible shadow. While his was a jagged, wild-eyed behemoth, hers looked slim, controlled, and composed entirely of razor blades forged from the darkness between the stars. It caressed the ragged hulk stretching over Jake and his shadow settled back again, seemingly calmed by the others touch.

  At that moment, Laurel could've either laughed or kicked herself for being so bloody dense.

  Kat had even told her—the night before the outbreak—that she wanted to end up with someone like Jake. She'd said it jokingly, almost in passing, and her roommate had written the comment off as the lovely Asian just building him up to her before they met. But that wasn't it at all.

  Allen's unruly-haired friend actually was The One the lonely ninja-girl had been waiting so long for.

  And she'd turned away from him, and had given him over to Laurel.

  Because she loved her, too.

  Laurel could only imagine how hard it had been for Kat during the previous months. Being with the both of them every day, training them, fighting beside them. Always there, but never able to say anything, even to her best friend. She'd encouraged Laurel to stop dragging her feet with him repeatedly, and was ecstatic when they'd finally been together for the first time back in Foster's hideaway. She'd been bouncing in her seat with joy as Laurel told her about the way she and Jake had made love, absorbing every detail, because she knew she would never be able to experience it for herself.

  “Kat,” she called.

  Her friend's eyes came up, tear-streaked and grief-stricken as she wept uncontrollably. “Oh god. Laurel. I... Please. You can't—”

  “There's nothing any of you can do. They've almost broken through.” She looked back towards the roof entrance again, just in time to witness a few gray skin and filth covered hands coming around the door-jam. It wouldn't be long now. “I have to ask you for a favor, roomie. I won't be there with you anymore, so I need someone I can trust to watch out for Jake. Keep him from doing all his dangerously stupid stuff, you know? If no one's around, he tends to get into trouble more often than not... Can you do that for me? “

  Kat's face crumpled in pain. “Laurel—”

  “Please?”

  “I promise! I'll... Oh, Laurel!” Kat couldn't hold it in anymore and sobbed brokenheartedly.

  “Thank you, Kat,” she said, and turned her gaze to Jake.

  He was shaking so badly. The skin on his face and chest was pale and covered in sweat, but he remained upright, even though it was clearly a struggle. His left arm was almost completely covered in crimson from the wound in his shoulder, too. It hung listlessly; his hand barely able to retain its grasp on the forgotten crowbar.

  Jake watched her as she turned away to compose herself. Laurel had never been much for public displays of affection, per say. Her performances, singing whatever Celtic music happened to take her fancy at the moment—and the occasional kiss—were about as far as she went outside the bedroom. Even though he was usually more affectionate in a relationship, he hadn’t considered that to be a problem. Not when she was capable of such sizzling heights when they were alone. But this was different. Foster was nowhere to be seen, he was stuck inside the transformer yard, and the infected were literally banging down her door.

  The strange ringing in his ears was back. O'Connor shook his head quickly to clear it and attempted to wrack his brain again for an out. One that didn't involve some or all of them being turned into tartar.

  Zip. Zero. The synapses had turned to Jell-O.

  Laurel turned back and her eyes never left his. What he saw there caused Jake more fear than he had ever been capable of before. He didn't notice Kat watching him, her own eyes full of worry. He didn't feel Rae or Penny's arms still wrapped around his waist from behind. He didn't hear Gwen crying quietly as she turned her head away, not wanting to watch what came next. All he could see were Laurel's eyes.

  “I want you to know something,” she told him, calmly removing her tac-vest to lay it on the roof. “You need to know that you saved me.”

  Jake opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off.

  “There's not much time, so I need you to just listen.” Checking the door again, Laurel saw a gore-covered hand slither out between it and the stairwell proper. “I don't have any regrets about our time together. In the safe-house, at Rae's, none of it. If I had to morn something, it would be how long it took for me to trust you. And that was my fault, never yours. You've always been gentle and patient and—”

  She was trying really hard not to cry. It would hurt him so much more if she did.

  “I want you to understand that I'd given up. On caring for someone, I mean. You changed that. I never thought... Well, I thought you were too good to be true. I was afraid. And because of that it kept us apart for much too long.” The arm was through up to the elbow now. “I don't want to die. I want to get off this roof and be able to kiss you again. I w-want you to hold me and feel you against me, but—”

  His face was a rictus of pain. “Laurel—”

  It was hard, but she managed to stay in control.

  “—but I want you to live, Jake. I want you to be safe. To grow old with someone who loves you in return.” The things at the door were almost through. Laurel saw another trio of hands come around to grip the edge. “I wish... I wish I could be there with you t
o see it.”

  She took a grenade from the bandolier that rode between her breasts and Jake realized what she was about to do.

  “No! Don't!!” He yelled and tried to run for the gate, but was unable to shake free from Kat and the others. “Laurel, please!”

  The door collapsed outward to reveal the stairwell. It was packed with zombies and Laurel watched as they began moving slowly out onto the roof. She hefted her M-4 and pulled the pin on the grenade clutched in her fist.

  “I have to go now,” she said. “I expect you take care of one another. Tell George and Gertie and the others that I'll see them on the other side, someday.”

  “Oh no,” Kat whispered.

  “Don't let me be your last, love,” she told Jake, her affection for him evident in her wavering voice. Then Laurel smiled brilliantly for him one last time, and her lopsided expression allowed what she felt in her heart to shine through clearly on her face. “Goodbye.”

  Then she was off and running, back towards the center of the roof and the oncoming dead.

  Firing steadily, the redhead dropped the nearest creatures before letting her grenade's spoon go clattering away across the roof's surface. She dodged quickly around the outer edge of the crowd, as the weapon's fuse burned down, and shouted nearly into the zombies’ rotting faces.

  “Come and get me, you fuckers!”

  Jake and Kat were beside themselves. They could hear her battle with the creatures as it went on, but they didn't have a clue what was happening. Being five stories below, there was no way the others could see her. They called out, begging for Laurel to keep running, hoping she could find a hatch or skylight or something that would allow her to escape the things. If she could just find a place to hide, they could still go in after her, armed to the teeth once Foster showed up.

  The survivors all realized that would probably be a suicide mission. Even if they managed to reach her, there was very little chance they'd have enough ammunition left to make it back down through the building again. They didn't care though. Laurel was one of them. Perhaps more dear to some than to others, but Jake had educated them on the meaning of loyalty. He'd turned himself over to Poole, fully expecting to die if it meant the bastard would release Karen Parker. Also, Donna had shown them what courage truly was when she'd kept the dead off Laurel and Penny, before being dragged down. Her last stand had galvanized within each of them the belief that anyone, even the most fearful, even the most overlooked and unproven, could accomplish something heroic. Maybe even glorious. None of them would ever forget the way Donna had made the creatures suffer before she'd died. If it was their time, could they do any less when it came to saving Laurel?