by Paul Hetzer
They struck the bottom of the door again hard, nearly sending me tumbling off. Whoever was down there was very strong. Kera ran around the roof in a desperate attempt to find something to weigh down the door with. She wasn’t having any luck.
The trapdoor bucked again and it was all I could do to keep from being thrown off. I jumped off the lid and backed away a few steps, bringing the rifle to bear on the boxy structure.
The lid flew open, tearing from its metallic hinges and landing near the edge of the roof.
A large, dirty hand grabbed the rim, followed by another and a filthy, matted head of hair atop a thick head rose up into view. Its blood red eyes turned on me and a deep growl escaped from behind its yellowed teeth.
“Fuck you!” I snarled. “This is for Holly!” I aimed carefully at the center of the meaty face and fired. Its head kicked back when the round punched through the front teeth and up into the skull and its eyes immediately went dim. It slumped forward over the rim of the hatch. I waited patiently with my finger on the trigger and my cheek welded to the stock. Kera come splashing up behind me.
“Shit!” she said when she saw the ruined door to the hatch sitting a few feet away. “I couldn’t find anything, and those people are all around the building!” She spat out the word ‘people’ as if it was distasteful to her mouth.
I didn’t take my eye away from the holographic sight. “We control the only way up. They won’t get us.”
Something was tugging on the body of the big Loony from below trying to unblock the egress, fortunately without success. I lowered the rifle, looked over at Kera, and grinned crazily.
“As long as that monster is blocking the way, I don’t think any others will be getting up.”
I walked to the hatch and looked down it past the dead hulk. Loonies swarmed around the bottom like rats in a sewer and three had been able to climb the narrow steel ladder and were trying to squeeze past the dead man. I aimed the rifle down the hatch and easily picked off the three with one shot each.
I wanted to kill them all. I was so angry that all this had happened, that I was stuck here on this roof without my family. The anger felt like a balm to my soul, it coursed through my body, washing away the sorrow and despair.
I welcomed it.
These things that were once ordinary human beings were the cause of Holly’s death and for my boy not being here with me. Their deaths would soothe me. I fired a few more shots into the crowd milling at the bottom of the ladder, taking a sick satisfaction in watching a head come apart. I laughed out loud at the sight.
Kera came over and put her hand on my arm. “Are you okay, dude?” she asked nervously.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” I turned away from her and walked to the back edge of the building. Crowds of Loonies still pressed around the loading dock, none looked up at me. I started walking around the perimeter looking for some avenue of escape. Kera kept pace with me, staying toward the inside of the roof, the mild breeze blowing her long raven black hair in tangles about her face. The anger seemed to drain from my body with each step as I realized that I was changing, that I was no longer the man I was a week ago. With this new world were born new men.
“We won’t survive up here long in the heat without water, will we?” Kera asked rhetorically, swiping her hair away from her delicate face. She was a very attractive girl if you could get past her feigned innocence and not so feigned immaturity. Too bad Jeremy was so young.
“We can drink from the water puddles on the roof if we have to.”
“Won’t the sun dry them up?”
I shrugged nonchalantly, “After a while, I guess.”
We had walked the entire length of the back wall and continued down one of the sides. There were no outside ladders or stairs. After we completed the circuit we walked back toward the rear of the store and I looked over the edge again. Below me was the green top of the commercial trash compactor they used for crushing shipping boxes and other trash. The flat metal top was maybe ten or twelve feet below the lip of the roof and the entire machine sat about fifty yards from where the Loonies surged around the loading doors. Sticking out of the back end of the compactor was the bin that held the compacted trash and its top sat about four feet lower than the compactor and about six feet off the ground.
“I think I see a way we can get down.” Her eyebrows rose in question and I pointed over the side. “We can drop down onto that and then climb down onto the bin and from there to the ground.”
She inched reluctantly closer to the edge. Her eyes widened when she saw the distance to the roof of the compactor. “I can’t do that,” she blurted.
“Sure you can,” I said. “If you hang from the rim it won’t be that long of a drop.”
She looked over the edge again. “I don’t know,” she said nervously. “What if they see me, or I break my leg or something?” She glanced over at the large number of infected still enraged and fighting to get into the stockroom. “We’d never get away from all them.”
“We have to try,” I told her emphatically. “We’ll die if we stay up here. We may last a few days, but it’s a foregone conclusion what the end will be.”
“Maybe they will leave after a while,” she said hopefully.
“Maybe,” I admitted. “But most likely they sense we’re here and I believe that as long as they know we are here, they will be hunting us.”
I happened to glance back over my shoulder and immediately noticed that the body of the large dead man was no longer slumped over the hatchway in the roof.
“We’re going to have visitors!”
No sooner had the words left my mouth when a slim female wearing a dirty pink tee-shirt and torn, badly stained blue jean shorts crawled with feline-like movements from the opening and stood looking about with her back to us. Her blond hair looked like it could have been braided that morning. She had a sexy figure with one hell of a nice ass. The image was incongruent with her infected status.
Another Loony pulled himself out of the opening and spotted us instantly. It let out a snarling growl, saliva dripping from its gnashing teeth.
Kera and I raised our guns at the same moment. “Take out the man,” I said quietly to her.
“With pleasure.”
My finger depressed the trigger. My aim was off and when the woman turned to face us the bullet smacked into her forearm, shattering it and sending gleaming white shards of bone and a chunk of flesh flying across the roof behind her. She let out a terrible cry of pain, partially drowned out by the blast from Kera’s shotgun. The male Loony’s head completely disappeared in a cloud of red and gray and he crumbled to the ground.
The woman jumped over him and charged us. I put another round in her belly, causing a red blossom to appear on her pink shirt. She stumbled briefly, crying out again, but still didn’t slacken her pace. The third shot hit her in the sternum, dropping her face-first onto the hot roof where she skidded to a stop. More hands were reaching over the edge of the hatchway beyond her corpse.
A man’s head peeked up over the metal rim and Kera shot at him, missing. It continued climbing out, unfazed by the near miss.
“We can stand here all day shooting until we are out of ammo, or we can go over the side now,” I said urgently, “but you better decide soon!”
She shot at the man again when he cleared the hatch, punching a large hole through his chest beneath a torn work shirt. He tumbled onto the body of the first man.
Kera looked over at me with a pained expression on her pretty face. “I’m afraid,” she admitted.
“What!?” I asked confused. “Of what?”
“I’m afraid of heights,” she stated in obvious embarrassment.
Another Loony began pulling itself out of the hatchway, its black hair nearly as dark as Kera’s. I haphazardly shot at it and the bullet left a furrow in the top of its scalp. The man lost his grip on the edge and tumbled back into the hole. I could hear several other Loonies being dragged down with him.
Now was ou
r chance.
“You can do it, Kera, it’s either face your fear there,” I pointed toward the edge, “or stay up here where those monsters will ultimately get you.”
She inched her way until she stood a few feet from the ledge and looked over. “I’m afraid I’ll slip. I get all shaky when I’m near heights.”
“It’ll be all right, just don’t look down.” Her expression told me she still wasn’t convinced. “I’ll have hold of you and won’t let you fall.”
I glanced once more at the hatchway— it was still temporarily clear.
“Give me your shotgun.” I held my hand out for it and she turned it over to me. “I’ll help you down.” I laid the shotgun near the six-inch tall rim that ran the length of the edge.
I grabbed Kera’s hand and led her closer to the threshold. “Don’t look down,” I reminded her. “Look me in the eyes, don’t look down. I won’t let you fall.”
She looked up into my eyes and I positioned her with her back facing the drop above the compactor.
“I’ll help you over the ledge then you grab my arm and I’ll lower you over the edge. When I give you a nod, let go and you’ll drop the rest of the way.”
Her eyes grew big when I said ‘drop’.
“It won’t be that far down,” I reassured her. “When you get down, I’ll toss down the rifles and shotgun and then I’ll come down.”
CHAPTER 15
Getting Kera down to the compactor’s roof went fairly smoothly. She dropped the last three feet and fell onto her butt with a loud bang. Fortunately, the Loonies crowding the loading dock didn’t appear to have heard the thump of her behind on the thin metal over the din of their own ruckus.
I glanced nervously at the hatchway again. One of the infected was clawing its way out of the opening. It was a boy probably not much older than Jeremy. I raised the rifle – then hesitated, although only for a moment. I sent a single shot into him, striking the boy in the chest. He staggered backwards then dropped to his knees. He looked at me with a nearly human expression of surprise on his face before falling forward, dead. I tossed the two rifles and the shotgun down to Kera. She deftly caught each one and set them aside.
I threw my legs over the wall and lowered myself down as far as my arms would reach then let go. I landed on the metal roof with a louder bang than Kera’s.
Several of the infected did take notice this time.
I motioned Kera to lay flat and I did the same, however, it was too late. Three nearly naked, filthy looking men were sprinting toward us, screaming incoherently. I grabbed a rifle and brought it to bear on the lead Loony as they quickly closed the distance. It took five shots to stop the three, which also alerted the others to our presence.
“Move! Move!” I shouted at Kera when the crowd at the dock shifted our way. Without hesitating she picked up her shotgun and jumped down into the dumpster. I followed her with a rifle under each arm. We bounded out of the dumpster on the opposite side from the approaching crowd of infected and immediately beat feet up the pavement as fast as our legs could carry us.
The horde picked up their pace when they spotted us. We hopped the curb and rushed up an embankment to a back road that was thankfully clear. I kept glancing over my shoulder at the gaining mob. There must have been two hundred of them now.
Kera suddenly veered away from me when we approached a cross street, dropped to the ground, rolled into the curbside opening of a sewer and disappeared into its dark interior. Her pack briefly caught on the lip as she slid out of sight.
The Loonies were approaching fast, just seconds away from reaching me. I jigged to the right after Kera, sliding the pack off as I dove for the opening. I threw both rifles into the squat rectangular hole and shoved my pack in behind them letting its weight help pull me through head first. The concrete scraped both of my elbows raw as I squirmed through the tight opening. I fell nearly five feet to the hard, wet bottom, knocking the breath out of me.
Kera was sitting in the water beside me, her breath coming in gasps. I sat up, picking up the rifles and the pack from a gurgling stream of dirty water and slinging them over my shoulders. I attached my rifle back to its chest rig and cinched it tight.
The bright daylight flooded down from the rectangular opening a couple of feet over my head and into the small box we found ourselves in. Concrete tubes maybe thirty-six inches in diameter led off in two different directions.
Kera put her hand over her mouth to muffle a scream. An arm reached through the bright opening clawing for us, followed by the rage-distorted face of a male Loony, its bearded face grime covered. It snapped its teeth at us and snarled, squeezing further into the entrance. I could see the shadowy shapes of many more around it.
With a whimper, Kera started crawling down one of the dark pipes, her soaked sweatpants barely hampering her flight into the unknown.
Shit! I thought to myself and followed her into the blackness of the tunnel. I fucking hate confined places! I had the presence of mind to switch on my headlamp as I scrambled on elbows and knees, splashing through the water after her. My stomach tightened when I heard the thump of a body falling into the space behind me. I had to belly crawl because of the pack and the rifle on my back, which was made all the more difficult with the Colt rifle strapped tightly to my chest, but fear was an amazing motivator and I scrambled down the dank, dark tunnel with amazing speed.
I kept urging Kera to move faster. They were in here with us. I could hear a scraping noise behind me in the dark as they clawed their way after me. I wished that I could be up on the street in the bright, hot summer sunshine, anywhere but down here in this tight coffin of cement.
I pushed on, near panic, not only from what was behind me, but also from being trapped in this cramped, dark place so far underground. Claustrophobia wrapped its confining walls of dread tighter about me, threatening to overwhelm me with its fear induced panic.
The hair on the back of my neck rose. A slithering sound and heavy breathing reached my ears from close behind me. I could hear many bodies pulling themselves after me. The sugary sweetness of their odor wafted past me in the cool, damp air.
Kera hadn’t turned on her light. She plunged ahead into the darkness in full-blown panic, emitting gasping sobs as she wormed her way down the sloping tunnel, my light illuminating her pumping legs. The repetitive clank of her shotgun against the hard cement echoed eerily past me sounding like some peg-legged pirate running through the dark .
Something clawed at my boot and I screamed. I bumped my head hard against the roof, knocking out my light. Blackness engulfed me.
My brain was immobilized with utter panic and adrenaline gave me a burst of speed. I was in pitch-blackness now with bloodthirsty creatures filling the tunnel behind me. My breath was pumping from my lungs in loud, hoarse gasps and terror shot through my veins. I didn’t want to die down here in this stinking sewer!
I could see them in my mind’s eye, clogging the tunnel like starving rats, fighting to get to us. Something again grabbed my boot, firmly this time, and I rolled onto my back in a panic. Another clawed hand grasped my leg and a low feral growl rumbled from the darkness. I kicked hard with my free leg into the utter blackness, trying to yank my other leg free of its grasp. My boot connected solidly and the grip released.
I scrambled away on my back, crab-crawling in a mindless attempt to escape. The small pack on my back and the two rifles worked together in a tangle to halt my advance. I could hear more growls and movement of many infected shimmying through the hole in pursuit. I tried desperately to turn back over to free myself from the jam, then a strong hand closed around my ankle and yanked me savagely back up the tunnel. My breath stopped in a gasp. Fear, like a cold, tight ball, formed in my stomach.
My hand searched frantically for the handgun holstered at my hip and after what seemed like a lifetime my hand closed around its welcomed grip.
The thing that had me was pulling itself slowly up the length of my body and I could smell its rank breath
in the darkness.
I freed the gun, pushed it forward until it contacted flesh, and pulled the trigger. The sound was deafening in the enclosed space and a painful ringing filled my head. The weight of the creature pinned my legs as it fell dead. It was yanked roughly backwards off of me and another tried to take its place. I shot the gun twice more up the length of the tunnel, then turned onto my stomach and crawled as fast as I could away from the things that pursued me in the thick darkness.
I could no longer hear Kera ahead of me. She had never paused in her headlong rush to escape as panic pushed her further into the confining drainpipe. I couldn’t blame her.
I crawled onward down the steep drain, listening for any close sounds of pursuit. When I was able to get my panic under control I stopped and carefully listened. Over the ringing in my ears I could hear them far back behind me. I reached up and fiddled with my headlamp and was awarded with the tunnel being filled with its bright white light. I let out a whispered ‘thank you’ of relief.
I shined the light back the way I had come and could see movement at the edge of the light’s illumination. Fear tightened my chest again and I rolled over and continued my sloshing, headlong crawl through the cold concrete tube.
The tunnel dumped out into another rectangular concrete catch basin. Kera sat in the inch-deep water in a ball, rocking with her arms tightly wrapped around her drawn up knees. The shotgun lay next to her. She looked up at me with a questioning look in her frightened eyes when I emerged from the pipe.
Sunlight streamed down from the opening over our heads with a powerful, warm brilliance. I wanted to escape into its bright salvation.
“They’re close behind me,” I said breathlessly in answer to her questioning stare. The concrete box we found ourselves in was a twin of the one we started in except for an extra drain piping into it.
“I’ve never been so scared,” Kera whispered, shaking in fear.
“I know. Me neither.” I stood and looked out the opening to the drain to a wide thoroughfare.
