Ghost Run

by J. L. Bourne

  I kept going down.

  Dammit, my arms were getting tired.

  A shot rang out, hitting the building somewhere above my head, rattling the glass.

  The sixteenth floor was full of undead.

  I had maybe twenty more feet before the sheet ran out with a jagged and ripped end.

  The fifteenth floor was full of undead.

  The fourteenth floor was socked in.

  The thirteenth floor had curtains concealing what was inside. I had five feet of sheet remaining.

  I went halfway to the twelfth floor before seeing it was filled to the brim with angry corpses.

  Painstakingly, I wrapped my legs around the sheet and slowly made my way back up to thirteen.

  Wrapping my left arm through the sheet, I pulled my drill like a six-gun, jammed the carbide bit into the glass in front of me, and depressed the trigger. I punched the drill repeatedly into the glass until it formed a spiderweb. With every last bit of energy, I pressed the bit into the nexus of the window cracks and drove the bit in.

  The glass exploded like before into tiny pieces, sprinkling like salt onto the hungry undead below. I tossed the drill through the curtains into the opening I’d created.

  I unraveled my leg from the sheet and kicked back on the building as if rappelling.

  Time slowed for a moment.

  As I traveled forward into the opening feet first, my mind went over the worst-case scenarios. The dark stuff of nightmares concluded what could be behind curtain number one, but I had no real choice.

  I flew right into the waiting arms of a large padded leather office chair. It spun around and the momentum tossed me onto a huge wooden desk covered with shit that would never matter again. The curtain flapped in the wind and rounds hit again somewhere above me. The opening where I left the twenty-second floor faced away from the attackers. They might not have noticed I’d escaped.

  Kicking myself for not reaching for my carbine sooner, I unsecured it from my pack and raised it up to the ready position. The large corner office was adorned with plaques and pictures of a man standing next to three former presidents. Well, they’re all former presidents now, aren’t they.

  The office was clear. I risked a look out the other set of windows to the building from where the shots were coming. Halfway up the building, a fire raged; smoke hugged the sheer glass face before being dissipated by wind turbulence at the top.

  I waited for nightfall.

  0315

  The steel beams from the building across the street were straining under the extreme heat and weight of the floors above them. I could smell roasting flesh in the air, even from my holdout here halfway up the capitol building. Flaming corpses walked around on the street below, unaware they were on fire. I caught a glimpse of a flashlight beaming around below the fire-stricken floors. Whoever it was, they were looking for something or someone.

  In my building, I heard intermittent gunshots; they seemed to come from above. It was dark so I dug my NOD out of the top of my pack and flipped it on. Quietly, I moved the heavy chair away from the double doors that led into the office. I heard nothing, so I proceeded into the foyer, careful to turn the handle mechanism slowly, disengaging the lock and moving the heavy door inward. I could see a corpse standing next to an empty water cooler with its back to me, swaying, hibernating almost imperceptibly against the grainy and green honeycomb backdrop of intensifier illumination. I snuck up on the corpse and rammed the blade of my switchblade into the base of its neck.

  I was startled when the corpse didn’t crumple to the ground but swung in a wide arc. I hadn’t noticed that the body was attached by its neck to a length of dark wire suspending it a few inches off the floor. Its mouth still opened and closed; I must have missed the brain, so I pulled my carbon steel fixed blade and came down hard on the top of its skull with a crack.

  Lights out.

  I froze for a moment, listening.

  Footsteps.

  Ducking low into a reception area, I heard something approach. I low crawled away from the noise into a cubicle farm that smelled like mildew. With the sound in the foyer area getting louder, I went deeper into the maze of office desks and dividers, a potpourri of lives that once were, small picture frames holding photos of strangers alongside toddlers’ works of art penned in crayon. I saw a grenade sitting on a nearby desk and eagerly reached for it as if it were a lightsaber. I swiped it from the desk along with its attached plaque, which stated: Complaint Department: Take a number.

  Fuck.

  For no logical reason, I tossed it in the top of my pack and continued into the labyrinth of the early-twenty-first-century office. The moon was in full view through the windows up ahead, its disk nearly bisected by some sort of wire that hung down over the outside of the building. The moonlight shone in, outlining the silhouette of a corpse that stood sentry over the windows.

  I checked my carbine and took aim as I closed in on the creature. This one wasn’t suspended by a wire necktie but, like billions of others, by some dark force that kept the terrifying things moving. The creature paid no attention to me. I pulled the drill from my belt and moved in closer, wondering why I hadn’t used it earlier. I rammed it into the creature’s face, simultaneously squeezing the black plastic trigger. The bit rapidly bored into the creature’s head, scrambling its brain and the chemical switches that let it walk and seek out what it thought was food. Anticipating, I switched directions on the drill and reversed the bit just before the corpse fell to the carpet floor with a thud.

  The sound of the electrical motor on the drill turned out to be a very bad idea.

  The cubicles stirred with movement and the bright moonlight at my back shone on a dozen creatures jolted from dormancy by the interesting mechanical noise I’d just offered them. Their simultaneous moans were calls to action for all nearby undead that were listening.

  The call to feed.

  The moonlight was at my back. They didn’t see me yet but were going off sound, like bats. Gray cubicle dividers shook and office chairs tipped to the floor as the creatures began to scramble and search. I backed away from the mob, which now numbered well over twenty. More of them stood, their heads peeking over the dividers, looking for a way out. As I edged backward, my elbow hit the cool window glass, signifying that I could retreat no farther.

  The moon’s light brightened the faces of the undead. More began to come into the office area from the hallway beyond, stimulated by the activity inside. I looked over my shoulder again, noticing the cable running outside the building from higher above. Taking another glance, I saw a second cable and followed it down to a platform glowing in the setting moonlight. Looking back, I was forced to take a shot at one of the creatures that came within arm’s length.

  All hell broke lose.

  The undead triangulated the shot and began to converge. I went full auto on the glass behind me and kicked. My leg launched through the glass and I almost fell through it before grabbing the thin frame of metal that separated the panes. I took more shots as the mob doubled down on my position. I slung my carbine and squeezed through the hole in the window, clutching the jagged, skinny metal wire. I began to descend much faster than expected because of the extra weight of the heavy pack on my back and the thinness of the wire.

  The skin on my hands was torn away in places before I impacted the aluminum platform rail, tumbling hard onto the window cleaning platform. I saw stars, and it took everything for me not to scream out in agony at the pain throbbing through my hands. I looked down at them through the NOD and saw too much blood.

  The first creature made it out of the opening above and hit the platform before spinning out of control, away into the void.

  Another corpse hit with a loud clang but remained bent over the platform at its waist. It looked up at me and grinned, or it looked that way to me. I gave it a front kick to the chin, helping it off the platform and down to the ground. It must have been a three-second fall before the audible thud. Another fell and m
issed the platform altogether, but I didn’t see it; the flapping of clothing fabric and whoosh of air were what gave away its passing in the night.

  I could hear the crunching of glass above, but nothing else fell.

  I dropped my pack and opened it with bloody hands. I pulled out my med kit and tore into the silver-laced clotting agent, spreading the powder onto my hands. The sting was nearly unbearable as I stood there on the suspended platform, holding my hands like claws to keep anything from touching the wounds. Small strips of skin hung from my palms, revealing dark tissue underneath. Eventually I drummed up enough courage to shove my hand back into the pack to get a bandage. I sloppily wrapped my left hand with my right and pressed the button on my Microtech knife for a one-handed opening. The tantō spike shot out, reflecting the last remnants of moonlight off the bloodstained razor-sharp blade. I sliced the bandage and repeated the process on my right hand. I reluctantly took my emergency oxycodone with a half bottle of water. Those motherfuckers are addictive; I only carried two in my kit for a reason. If it were not for Jan, I’d have been addicted to them a few months ago after a scavenging trip that went south on me.

  I lay back on the far end of the scaffolding and turned off my NOD. The meds hadn’t kicked in yet, but the water and the gift of temporary asylum from the undead had. I looked over at my only companion, the man in the moon, and began to speak.

  “You’ve seen worse, haven’t you?” I asked.

  Yes, my subconscious responded.

  “Your own catastrophic birth, the death of the dinosaurs.”

  It only gets worse, kiddo.

  “Not very encouraging, man in the moon. Woo!” I howled.

  Yes, now the meds were definitely starting to kick in.

  The platform was chilly from the wind coming out of the west. I was on the back side of the building, opposite the action. Looking down with the NOD, I could see only a couple dark spots moving around below.

  “Good-bye, Moon,” I said as its face dipped behind a distant building.

  See you soon, I hope, the voice in my head responded.

  On my back, looking up to the stars, I could see evidence that the sun was on its way . . . not soon, but not too long from now it would show itself and ruin any chance I had at getting out alive.

  Beams of light danced above my line of sight to the stars. I thought that I was hallucinating until shots burst through the window four feet above my head. One of the creatures slammed into the damaged window as rounds were pumped into it. Chunks of glass and corpse showered down onto the metal platform. My heart raced, and adrenaline pumped into my system, temporarily pushing me out of narcotic brain fog.

  I adjusted the reticle on my NOD and began to examine the lift control panel. The flashlights waved around above my head and eventually disappeared, leaving me to the howling wind and the inevitable sun. The box had three settings: Stop, Up, and Down. Grabbing on to the rail, I selected the down setting and began to laugh out loud as the machine slowly lowered itself, floor by floor. It must lower hydraulically, I thought, as I doubted the machine had seen electrons in a long time. I suspected that the Down worked but the Up never would again.

  As the floors slowly went by, I saw increasingly gruesome snapshots of death and carnage. The floors that had been cleared by the human raiders were slaughterhouses of dismembered corpses and twitching limbs. The floors that the raiders took a pass on were packed tight with undead. As I passed the seventh floor, I saw that the creatures were crammed so tightly inside that when they saw me, there was no room for them to even beat on the glass.

  The window cleaner lift shook for a moment at about the fourth floor before it began to lower one side unevenly.

  Ten seconds later, my pack flew off the now vertical lift onto the ground below, and I was hanging off the railing twenty feet off the ground like a trapeze artist. I shook my legs in a desperate attempt to get the cable to pay out more slack, but this only caused excruciating pain to shoot from my injured hands to my entire body. Looking up at the sky, my hands gave way and I fell.

  But the pain disappeared as soon as my hands lost their grip. The meds.

  I marveled for a moment at weightlessness and at the brief few seconds I felt nothing. And then I hit the ground like a lawn dart. Despite the meds, my ankle hurt like hell, momentarily filling my vision with rhythmic starbursts of pain. I lay on my back, trying not to pass out while simultaneously reaching for my rifle. I crawled over to my pack and used it to wedge myself up into a sitting position. I immediately tightened my bootlaces on my injured foot. My vision started to close in as if I were traveling through a dark tunnel. Every heartbeat expanded the darkness, but the time between beats became darker and darker.

  “Checkers, follow, help,” I said into the Simon just before blacking out.

  • • •

  I momentarily returned to consciousness to a dark figure approaching. The sun had not yet come up, so I knew that I hadn’t been out very long. With my vision again closing in, I raised the rifle and shot the dark shape as high up as I could see. Whatever it was, it fell and didn’t get back up.

  The next sound I remembered was the whirring of the GARMR’s motors as it neared. Half conscious, I saw it lowering its body down next to me. I grabbed its titanium frame with my less injured hand (thankfully, I can still shoot and write) and felt the warmth of its nuclear battery on my knuckles as it somehow dragged me and my pack across the grass in a straight line away from the building. It was low to the ground, its legs folded up at the top joint, giving it extra torque while it pulled. Once I felt the security of tall grass, the command was given for the machine to stop.

  The rising sun was concealed by the large capitol building, but I could see its rays pass entirely through the building’s windows on the second floor. I must have been two hundred meters away from where I’d fallen from the platform. I looked down at my ankle and tried to flex it. It moved but didn’t feel so great. I didn’t dare loosen my bootlaces or my ankle would expand to the size of a fire hydrant in the span of a few minutes. I looked over at the GARMR and caught myself patting it on the back, treating it as if this man-made beast was somehow alive.

  “Thanks,” I told it aloud.

  The GARMR didn’t respond but simply locked onto my face with its spinning sensors, not willing to miss any gesture commands it might be given. Unyielding obedience, but not unconditional love—this was the way of machines, of tools, but not of living companions.

  Smoke climbed up over the buildings and I hobbled my way back to the country club, using the GARMR to support the weight my injured leg couldn’t handle. The warmth of the GARMR was unsettling, but I had no choice. I could injure myself beyond the point of mobility if I got too careless.

  With the majority of the undead concentrated between the two buildings in the distance behind me, I was able to get to the golf course while shooting only twice, bringing my magazine down to five rounds remaining. I stopped near a water hazard and watched as two oblivious turtles jumped into the drink and swam off. Wincing from the pain, I reluctantly reached into my pack and popped my last two painkillers. I didn’t bring more because I knew myself (from past experience) and knew that addiction was more of a vicious monster (master?) than those things walking around. I couldn’t really decide which was worse, my torn-up hands or my ankle. The pain from both was hard to compartmentalize, even with the strong meds that coursed through my body. I’d lost a lot of water fighting to high ground in order to intercept the Phoenix transmission, and looked thirstily at the pond after downing my last half bottle of water.

  I fought off the urge to dunk my head in and drink; getting diarrhea or some other god-awful disease while being injured would definitely seal my fate. I wasn’t far from Goliath, so I changed magazines and pressed on.

  0800

  Gunfire erupted from the direction of the capitol building, along with an explosion that shook the trees within visible distance. I watched the capitol building shed clouds of dust a
nd glass as if about to collapse in on itself. Those dark visions of 9/11 flashed back to my mind for a brief second, but the capitol didn’t give in on itself; the building lurched over like a refrigerator on an appliance dolly. Great steel beams snapped and more dust shot out of its broken windows as the building slowly toppled over instead. It fell at a tragically slow speed before shaking the earth, coming to rest at a forty-five-degree angle on top of the shorter building nearby. The shorter building was barely visible over the tops of the trees surrounding the country club golf course, but the state capitol resembled a crashed monolithic spaceship. Dust hovered all around, and sunlight glimmered off the shards of glass that somehow remained attached to it.

  Pulling my binos, I watched masses of confused undead shuffle out of windows and fall away into the dust clouds below. Tracer fire beamed like a laser from somewhere on the ground up into the building, wreaking havoc on what was left of its internal symmetric lines. I watched in awe as enough firepower to sustain our stronghold in the Florida Keys for years was wasted in the span of a few short minutes. These idiots were likely trying to kill me. There was no other fathomable reason to go scorched earth like that.

  I turned away from the train wreck that was downtown and slipped away into the field that led to the area where Goliath was hopefully still parked. I knew I was on the right track, as I’d already seen a chemlight I’d dropped on my way to the interior of the city. The GARMR’s heat was now freaking me out, so I found a walking stick along my path in the form of a small tree poking up out of some old mulch like a weed. I took out my blade and chopped the green wood at the base and cut the branches off, forming the crude implement.

  With one hand on my gun and the other on the oak stick, I hobbled ahead to the building, careful to not attract too much attention. As I approached, the hellish faces of undead stared back at me through the glass of the office building. They opened and closed their mouths and beat on the glass in protest. Beat all to hell and high on meds, I didn’t give a fuck.