by Cleek, Caleb
“When you included me in your group, I still felt helpless. I wasn’t alone anymore, but I knew I was in way over my head. It kept getting worse until I was hanging from the sheet with those things in the room above fixing to eat me. In that moment, I realized I was the only one who could save myself. I can’t explain it. I was suddenly overcome by the resolve to fight and to live. It was like God reached into my head in that instant and fixed whatever broke yesterday. The panic was gone.”
She paused again, looking back at the plume of smoke writhing its way into the sky like a black snake. “I’m sorry about the cardio comment. It was pretty callous in light of everything that just happened. I guess I was feeling grateful to escape with my life and needed to say something to break the stress of the moment.”
“Don’t apologize. I’m just glad you’re okay,” he added, still trying to figure out what had happened to her. Whatever it was, he wasn’t going to complain. He wouldn’t have survived another day with the Meagan of ten minutes ago. Her paralyzing panic attacks would have quickly gotten them both killed.
“We better keep moving,” he finally said when he had managed to catch his breath.
“Where are we going?” Meagan asked.
“I don’t know,” Zeke confessed. “We need to get away from the state line though. I don’t want to be mistaken for a sick person trying to cross the Alabama border. If we can make it back to Bowden, we might be able to find another car.”
When they resumed their trek, Zeke led at a much slower pace. Although she didn’t comment on it, he felt obliged to explain. “Now that we’ve put some distance between ourselves and whatever may be left of the Bowden Horde, I don’t want to run ourselves to death. If we cross paths with more of them, we may have to run for our lives. I think it would be wise to move slowly enough to have an energy reserve available if we need it.”
“That makes sense,” she said in an even voice. Zeke had been huffing and puffing when he spoke. She was right. He should have spent more time on the cardio equipment. His muscle bulk was proving to be a hindrance to him. The extra weight was doing little more than tiring him.
They cautiously moved through woods, open pastures and more woods. Finally, after an hour, they circled back to the highway just west of Bowden.
“We need to find somewhere indoors where we can hole up for a while. I have one full magazine left and a couple rounds in the other. If we run out of bullets, we’re in serious trouble,” Zeke said as he looked left and right out of habit. There wasn’t a car in sight. He slowly stepped onto the road with Meagan at his side.
Meagan carried a stick she had picked up in the woods. It was about three feet long and three inches thick. She had found it in the remains of a tree that had been cut for firewood. It was green wood and was very dense. It obviously wasn’t the best weapon to use against the infected, but at least it was something. It kept her destiny in her own hands. It gave her the ability to fend for herself. She had no doubts that Zeke would do everything he could to protect her, including sacrificing his life. He hadn’t hesitated to run back to the house which was full of infected and under fire from the helicopter. It wasn’t in her nature to depend on others and to expect them to take care of her, though. She had always been self-sufficient. The club gave her the ability to remain that way; it enabled her to defend herself.
Nobody was driving on Highway 166. Everybody knew the Alabama state line was closed. There was nothing on the highway between Bowden and the state line except for a few farms. That, and the fact that the horde had gone that way, kept everybody off the road.
As Zeke and Meagan walked into Bowden, the town appeared deserted. There were no vehicles driving on the streets. An occasional dog barked, but other than that, the silence was ominous: no lawn mowers, no cars, no airplanes. Just silence. As the houses grew closer together on smaller lots, they occasionally saw a face peering around drawn curtains. Many of the faces disappeared as soon as they realized they had been seen.
"There's another one," Meagan pointed out as they walked passed a single story brick house. This face didn't disappear like the rest when her pointing finger indicated its presence. It didn't respond when she waved either. At first it just eyed them with morbid interest. Then the face banged into the window. Its head reared back and its mouth opened. A faint howl made its way through the negligible space between the closed window and the frame it slid in. The face behind the glass twisted and contorted in rage. A scream from the house across the street answered in reply. Closed curtains in a large window swayed back and forth as a body rubbed against them.
Zeke turned and saw two faces in a small kitchen window of another house. The faces mirrored the neighbor across the street in grimaces of rage. Another scream came from somewhere behind the first house. This one, however, didn't come from within a house. It rang out in a hauntingly clear vocalization that brought terror from the hidden recesses of Zeke’s mind. It back brought images from horror movies he had watched late at night at slumber parties as a kid. It brought back images from Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom he watched with his grandpa, images of predators about to pounce on their prey. The howls forebode impending death. He understood that the death the howls were announcing were his and Meagan's.
They broke into a run. Another unseen voice clearly belted out a demonic scream that pierced through both of them and spurred them on to greater speed. Even though the specters were as yet unseen, there was no doubt they were there. As they continued to run, they passed a body lying on the sidewalk. It had been picked apart; there was virtually no skin left on the body and very little muscle remained on the bones. A severed arm lay a short distance away from its torso. Tattered and ripped clothing was strewn about the corpse, further evidence of what was lurking out of sight.
The road curved slightly. As they rounded the bend, Bowden High School came into view. "We need to get off this road and get inside," Zeke wheezed as he struggled to satisfy his body’s screaming demands for oxygen. His legs were wobbly, and his vision was spotty; exhaustion was threatening to send him to his knees. His forward progress was fueled solely by adrenaline and a stubborn refusal to give up and die. Meagan was huffing beside him. She may have been in better shape than him, but she was struggling now as well. Both were near the point of complete exhaustion.
The school seemed like the best immediate option for a secure indoor location to rest. Screaming voices grew around them. There were at least a dozen keeping pace with them, possibly on parallel streets. "I can't go much further," Meagan gasped as they approached the school’s entrance. Zeke pulled on the handle. The door was locked. He looked through the narrow, wire-impregnated glass, trying to see inside. The hallway was dark and empty.
He turned from the door and saw two bodies emerge from around the bend two or three hundred yards behind. The two men stopped, eyeing them without moving. Even from that distance, the absence of other noise permitted sound to carry clearly when one of the men took a snorting breath, sampling the air with its nose.
"We're out of time," Zeke said, voicing the obvious. He resumed his flight in search of another door that might permit them entrance to the building. When he looked over his shoulder, the infected men broke into a pursuing sprint.
Zeke and Meagan rounded the corner of the building. They passed a worksite where somebody had been painting a huge red B on the side of the building. The job had been abandoned without any effort at clean up. A ladder still leaned against the wall.
As Zeke passed the neglected equipment, Meagan, who was several paces behind, yelled, "Wait!" Zeke spun on his heels. Meagan had already started extending the aluminum ladder. He understood what she was doing without being told. If one door was locked, they were probably all locked. If they couldn't get safely inside, they could at least get on the roof and out of reach, assuming the ladder was tall enough. The ladder clinked rapidly as the locking mechanism slid over each rung and was pulled back into place by spring tension. At maximum extension, the l
adder was a good five feet short of the roof. Before Zeke had a chance to make sure the legs were securely positioned on the ground, Meagan was already ascending two rungs at a time; any trepidation or signs of caution were afterthoughts she didn't have time to consider.
Zeke bounded up the rungs behind her, catching the back of her shoe in the mouth as he climbed. The ladder bowed under the weight of the two scalers roughly climbing at the same time. Meagan blatantly ignored the sticker which warned to refrain from using the top rung. Placing her hands against the wall for balance, she stepped onto the top rung, stretched upward, and wrapped her fingers over the ledge of the roof. She pushed off the ladder as she pulled with her arms to give the slight acceleration needed to overcome her dead weight and pull herself up. The push off caused the ladder to teeter slightly and it began a slow motion succumbence to gravity. Two rungs from the top, Zeke tried to steady the ladder by pushing his hands against the wall. His best efforts couldn't stop the ladder's slow leaning tilt.
Unable to stop the lean, he realized the ladder's fate was sealed. It was going to fall and unless he got off, he would fall with it. He stepped onto the second to last rung, raising the center of gravity, which increased the rate it slid across the side of the building. His only chance was to push off the rung with his legs and hopefully achieve enough height to reach the edge. His rubbery legs thrust upwards with every bit of strength they held in reserve. His arms stretched up, and both hands firmly grasped the ledge above him. In a fleeting thought, he realized that without the ladder, they wouldn't have a way to get off the roof. His foot reached out to the left and he wrapped the toe of his shoe around the top rung of the ladder, stopping its arcing path along the side of the building.
He looked to his right as Meagan pulled herself up onto the roof, two feet away. Looking to the left, he saw three infected tear around the corner. He pointed his feet up as far as he could with the ladder hooked at his ankles and pulled with his arms. He dragged his torso over the edge of the roof, but with the ladder dangling from his feet, he couldn't get his legs over the ledge. Meagan lay down on the ledge beside him, her head and arms hanging down, grasping for the top of the ladder. Zeke pulled his legs up as high as he could. Meagan touched it with her fingers, but couldn't get them around it. She scooted further over the edge until she reached the point she felt like there wasn't enough friction between her body and the roof to hold her in place. Zeke strained to pull his legs up higher. With a final grunt from Zeke, the ladder rose into her straining fingers.
She tried to pull it up, but only succeeded in pulling herself further over the edge. "Don't let go of it!" she screamed. "I can't hold on to both the roof and the ladder!"
With Meagan supporting part of the weight, Zeke pulled himself up far enough to swing his left leg over the top of the roof with the ladder still supported by his right foot. His body was now parallel to the edge of the roof. He maneuvered his body so that his weight was resting on Meagan's butt, pushing her down onto the roof. "I'm letting go with my foot. If you can't hold it, let go."
With Zeke's body pinning her to the roof, she was able to hold the ladder’s full weight. She struggled to pull it upward as the small band of infected rapidly shortened the distance between themselves and the bottom of the ladder, which was now suspended three feet above the ground.
"Don't let it go, I've got you now," Zeke said as he repositioned himself to pull her away from the edge. As soon as he lifted his weight from her, she began to slide toward the edge.
"Don't let me go!" she screamed as her body slipped on the slick metal sheeting that covered the top of the building. He dropped to his belly and grabbed onto the waist band of her pants as she slid over the edge.
"Let go of the ladder. I can't hold you!” he yelled. The combined weight of Meagan and the ladder pulled him across the smooth surface. Meagan refused to let the ladder fall. The realization that he couldn't support her weight without being pulled off the roof himself stung like a hornet. He refused to let go of her as he slid closer to the edge of the roof. As he reached the point where hope was lost, something snagged on his belt, stopping the forward progression that was going to end with the two of them plummeting to the ground. "Let it go!" he yelled again, struggling to hang onto her. Her body hung vertically, head first over the edge of the roof. Zeke was holding onto her thighs, but they were sliding through his grasp. She still refused to let it go.
“Bend your lower leg toward the ground,” he grunted. She obeyed, bending them so far that her feet touched her butt. The sharp angle in her legs provide a solid hand hold and her legs quit sliding through his hands.
Afraid to break loose from whatever had snagged his belt and had created the tenuous state of equilibrium holding them on the roof, Zeke hesitated to haul her up. After a second had passed and the snag showed no signs of letting go, he started pulling. He pulled her up as far as he could and then released his right hand and grabbed onto the waist of her jeans and pulled her further toward the roof.
Her feet squirmed, kicking him in the face for the second time in a matter of seconds as they sought something solid. His biceps burned as he pulled her dangling body back over the lip of the building, the ladder still in her hands. Finally he brought her to the point where only her arms hung toward the ground, still clutching the ladder. He let go of her waist band and edged himself to the lip of the roof, pulling the ladder out of reach as the first infected arrived with up stretched arms, grasping for the bottom rung which was just beyond its fingertips.
Zeke doubted they would have been able to climb it, but if one of them latched onto it, he and Meagan would have lost it forever. With both of their feet firmly planted on the roof, pulling the ladder the rest of the way up was a simple task. Once it lay securely on the roof, Zeke and Meagan took a minute to simply sit down and regain their breath.
When he was finally able to speak, Zeke looked at the hex headed roofing screw that had snagged his belt. With a forced smile, he said, "And that’s why I spent the extra time doing reps of curls instead of working on my cardio."
Chapter 24
The clamor at the bottom of the building increased in volume and intensity. In mere minutes, more and more individuals heeded the feeding call of the first three infected that had chased Zeke and Meagan up the roof. They ran to the building from all directions, fighting for position around the area where Meagan kept peering down at the growing mob.
After an hour, the clouds began to break. With the disappearance of the clouds, the dark metal roof began to heat up. Sitting on the sun scorched metal quickly became unthinkable. The temperature cut through the cushioned soles of Zeke’s running shoes as he stood. Meagan’s tennis shoes were thicker soled, but only offered a slight reprieve from the blistering heat that was cooking her feet.
The thick Georgia air was saturated with moisture. The ninety percent humidity prevented the drenching sweat from evaporating and offering any cooling effect. “If we don’t get off this roof soon, we’re going to die. Without water, we won’t make it through a day.”
“What’s the point?” Meagan questioned dejectedly. “If we leave the roof, the mob is going to eat us. I’d rather die up here from the heat than be torn apart and eaten alive down there.”
Zeke shook his head as his foot ran back and forth over another of the hex headed screws that held the metal roofing panels in place. “It doesn’t have to be die up here or die down there. There has to be another option,” he said. “There’s always another option!”
“Our problem is we climbed onto the wrong roof. If we got on that building, we could have broken out the skylight and gotten inside,” she lamented as she pointed at the building thirty feet away where the dark tint of the plastic skylight was plainly visible.
“Maybe we can still get on that roof,” Zeke said hopefully, an idea formulating in his head. “If you could get all the infected to gather on the far side of the building, I could lower the ladder to the ground and you could run over to this
side. We could climb down, move the ladder to that building, and climb up before they realize what’s happening.”
Meagan’s face lit up in a smile. “I love it when a plan comes together.”
“Hannibal Smith, The A Team,” Zeke said, laughing. “I haven’t heard that one for a while. I didn’t know girls liked The A Team.”
Meagan laughed as they walked to the side of the roof that was opposite from the other building. “When I was little, my dad and I watched it together all the time. I had a huge crush on Face when I was ten years old.”
“That figures,” Zeke said, smiling. As they walked the edge of the roof, fifty or sixty bodies screamed and wailed angrily on the ground. The group followed them step for step, nineteen feet below. Every five or six steps, Zeke banged noisily on the side of the building yelling, “Come and get it!” The agitated group continued to grow as more individuals ran to the discordant commotion. The large group of infected below them followed in a raucous commotion of moans and howls as Zeke and Meagan led them away from where Zeke was going to lower the ladder.
“I think we have a problem, Zeke. You’re banging is drawing them from all over the city.” Zeke had been looking at the growing number below him. When he looked up, he realized that infected were streaming in from all over town, drawn by the noise he was making as well as the wails from the hungry mouths below.
“We can’t catch a break for anything,” he muttered despondently, as he stopped and stared at the small groups and individual infected running toward the mob below him.
