by Bobby Adair
Dalhover heard it too, and looked at me with eyebrows slightly raised.
We both shrugged and climbed onto the Humvee.
From the top of the Humvee, the wall was still tall. I revised my guess to twelve feet or so. The top edge of the cinder blocks was at the top of my head, but a smooth round limestone coping added another ten or twelve inches. I reached over the top and ran my hands across the dry, chalky surface, finding nothing at all to grip.
Dalhover looked at me with a question on his face.
I pulled my arms down. “The wall’s got to be a foot or so thick. There’s nothing to grab onto.”
Dalhover stood on tiptoe and reached over the wall, straightening his curved spine. His rough hands scraped across the limestone.
“What’s up?” Murphy asked in a low voice as he climbed up beside us.
Dalhover shook his head. “Goddamned wall.”
Murphy stepped up next to the wall and reached over with as little success as I’d had.
Looking at Murphy, Dalhover shook his head. He leaned back against the wall and interlaced his fingers to form a stirrup. He looked at me. “You first, Zane. Put a foot in. Step on my shoulder if you need to, but don’t kick me in the face.”
It was little uncomfortable standing face to face with Dalhover, my nose only a half-inch from his, smelling his tobacco breath and un-brushed teeth. Personal hygiene habits were taking quite a beating. Toothpaste was going to have to find a place on my future scavenge list.
Putting two hands on his shoulders and a foot in his hands, I gave Dalhover a nod, and jumped while pushing up with my hands. As I reached the top of the wall, I stepped up to one of his shoulders and threw an arm over, twisting sideways to throw a leg up. To my surprise, I topped the wall and stopped there, draped like a sloth on a branch with one foot and one arm on each side and my face lying on the dusty limestone coping.
“Shit,” Murphy muttered. “I can’t believe that worked.”
“Your turn,” Dalhover said, scooting over near the end of the Humvee’s roof. “You’re a big guy. Don’t know if I can hold you. You might get bruised.”
“It won’t be the first time,” Murphy said as the two got into position.
I turned to look into the compound.
Chapter 23
The wall surrounded a couple of terraced acres that curved in steps that followed the contour of the mountain. At the bottom edge of the lowest terrace there was no wall, just an unbroken row of smooth limestone blocks laid flush with the grass from the north wall to the south wall. The sharpness of the edge and the invisibility of anything beyond implied a sudden drop down the steep slopes and cliffs to the river.
In the growing darkness, I spotted the source of the electric motor sound. On each of the five terraces, a green, turtle-like robot mower hummed across the grass. On the second tier down, the mower was followed by four infected, keeping pace with the slow-moving machine. Two of the infected wore some kind of private security uniform. One looked like a lanky high-school kid. One was a shapely naked woman with one of those stylishly expensive haircuts that looked like it was on backwards. She struggled in the rear to keep up while limping on an injured ankle. One of her forearms had an obvious extra angle.
“What do you see?” Dalhover hissed in a loud whisper.
Looking down at him, I whispered back, “Four infected. They don’t see me yet.”
“Nobody else?” Murphy asked, as he stood with one foot in the stirrup of Dalhover’s hands.
“No.”
“Nobody with rifles?” he asked.
“Nobody is shooting yet,” I answered.
“And the house?”
“Everything looks fine,” I said. “Perfectly normal for rich people, except for the Whites in the grass.”
Dalhover rasped, “What do you think?”
I looked over the house. It was built down the slope a bit and didn’t appear to have any windows or doors on the bottom floor. The only entrance was across a breezeway from the second floor that ran over a little ravine between the house and a six-car garage built around one side of a circular plaza of a driveway.
“I don’t see any movement in the house.” I looked back down at Dalhover and Murphy. “There are Whites, so the virus is inside. If it’s inside then everybody inside is probably infected. Except for the Whites, the place seems safe.”
“You wanna go in, then?” Murphy asked.
“This place looks safe as hell to me,” I answered. “I think it’s worth the risk.”
And that was enough talk. Dalhover boosted, Murphy jumped, and then worked on pulling himself up into the same sloth-like position I’d adopted.
Dalhover turned to scan the darkness in the cedars.
Murphy quietly said, “Man, it looks a lot farther down to the ground from up here.”
“Yeah,” I whispered back.
“It’s gonna hurt.”
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“You wanna go first?”
“No.” Nevertheless, I shifted my weight so that my feet started to slide over the wall and down inside the compound. It was slow at first, but as my clothes dragged across the chalky surface of the limestone, I quickly passed the point of no return. There was nothing to grab and no way to slow my descent. Any chance of landing safely was predetermined by my initial shift and the physics of friction.
Then I was falling.
I hit the ground and rolled out onto the crushed granite driveway. My joints were jarred from the impact and probably would have hurt enough to take my breath away if not for the virus. Everything felt suddenly stiff but nothing felt broken. I was on my back and rolled quickly onto my stomach and pushed myself up to my knees, pulling my weapon up to a firing position as I did so. Necessity makes you tough.
From above, Murphy whispered, “Is that crushed granite any softer to land on than the grass?”
“Yes,” I lied.
A sliding sound announced Murphy’s decision to join me, and a second later he grunted when the ground knocked the wind out of him.
“Damn,” he groaned after a deep breath, not making any effort to move from his prone position. “That sucked.”
I could no longer see the infected that were on the second terrace down. They either didn’t see us when we were on the wall or weren’t interested. They didn’t come after us.
“What first?” I asked. “Do we try to get the gates open or check the house?”
Murphy rolled over onto his stomach and pushed himself to his hands and knees. “Did I say that sucked?”
“Yep.”
“There are lights on in the house,” Murphy said.
“Solar power,” I suggested.
“Convenient.”
“Yep.”
Murphy got to his feet, looked around, and then pointed to a security camera mounted on the corner of the house. “If somebody is still inside, they know we’re here.”
That made me uncomfortable. I looked around again, and now that I was looking for them, I spotted several cameras. “What do you think?”
Murphy said, “I’m with you. I don’t think there’s anybody home but we need to check it out before we try to figure out the gate.”
“Let’s go.” I jumped up and started a jog up the driveway with no cover except the fading light of evening. Murphy huffed loudly behind me.
At the end of the driveway, I angled across to the corner of the garage and stopped beside the wall, partially hiding myself from the house. Murphy came to a stop, breathing heavily beside me.
An old, two-door Mercedes convertible with oversized spinner rims and low-profile tires sat in the courtyard. I shook my head. “What a way to fuck up a car.”
“Yeah,” Murphy agreed.
Following the line of the curved garage, I spotted a set of double doors at the other end. That was a people entrance. The doors were decorative, after a modern fashion, but still managed to look formidable.
“You wanna try the doors?” Murphy a
sked.
“Might as well,” I answered. “If there’s someone in there, they know we’re here. They haven’t done anything yet, but if we sneak around, they might think we’re more of a danger than we are.” I walked out onto the courtyard and followed the curve of the garage.
“I’ll cover you,” Murphy said from behind.
At the first garage door, I checked to see if it would open, but was immediately befuddled. There was no exterior handle. The door was made of long metal slats that could, I presumed, roll up to the ceiling inside. I pushed it with my hand. If felt weighty and solid. This was no ordinary sheet metal garage door. Without even the smallest gap into which to push my fingers, I pressed my hands flat against the metal and pushed upwards. It didn’t budge, nor did it flex. It may as well have been a solid wall. I shot a look back at Murphy.
He wore a questioning expression, but refocused his attention on the house.
I bypassed the other five garage doors without stopping to test them. Once I reached the double door entrance, I was again stumped. The doors stood nine solid, patinated feet tall. I pushed one, then the other. Neither rattled in the slightest, nor were there handles to pull.
I looked back at Murphy and shrugged.
He returned the gesture.
A railing ran from the corner of the garage, from just beside the double doors, around a third of the plaza’s circumference. It kept people from falling off of the plaza and into the ravine that separated it from the house. Halfway along the garage wall, a breezeway extended out toward the house’s front door. There was no way to reach it from the outside.
I stepped back and looked up at the roof of the garage.
Crap.
The eaves of the roof stretched out at least three feet from the wall and were at least ten feet up. I’d need a ladder to get up there.
I went over and peeked around the corner again.
Double crap.
Even if I did get on the roof of the garage as a means to get onto the roof of the breezeway, I wouldn’t be able to get to the house. The roof of the breezeway was a tall V-shape, with a wide curved peak. Like the coppice on the walls, only made of smooth metal, it would be impossible to grip. Worse still, there was no way to get from the roof down to the house’s entrance without pulling some kind of crazy Spiderman move.
I looked back at Murphy, threw up my hands and shook my head.
He waved me back over.
I jogged back.
“Let’s go out behind the garage and see what we can see,” he suggested.
“Yeah.”
I followed Murphy along the featureless garage wall, around the corner, and down the slope of the mountain. We descended along the back wall of the garage, which grew taller and taller as we went down. At the opposite corner, we came out onto one of the terraces that formed the ravine between the garage and the house. The breezeway was fifteen or twenty feet above us by then.
“That sucks.” Murphy was not thrilled.
I didn’t say that I’d expected that, though I did. “We probably need some ladders to get up there. We may have to go back out and ransack the neighborhood.”
“It’s almost dark,” Murphy countered. “Let’s check around the other side of the house. If there’s no way in, I think it might be best if we all hop the wall and just camp here in the grass tonight. It won’t be comfortable but it’ll be safe.”
He was probably right, but the idea of trying to sleep on the ground with the fire ants and the scorpions didn’t sound like any kind of rest to me. On the other hand, when was the last time I’d had a full night’s sleep?
We made our way around to the side of the house and then to the back. The last colors of the sunset were fading from the western horizon. Below us, the terraces were separated by vertical walls of stacked limestone five or six feet tall. Above us, the back porch of the house was too high up for any kind of ladder that we’d likely be able to scrounge from neighbors’ garages. Whoever had designed the house had designed it to have only one way in, over the catwalk.
We followed the wall back around to the other side of the house. The bulk of the two acres spread out below us on the terraces. The four infected we’d spotted earlier were at the far end of the terrace above us, near the car entrance, still following the mower.
“We need to take those Whites out before we get the others,” Murphy suggested.
“Okay.”
We climbed up a short terrace wall to get up to their level. From there, Murphy led the way down. I drew my machete as we went. He pulled his hatchet and held a knife in his other hand. I reached for my Glock as a backup weapon and recalled that I’d given it to Steph.
As we closed on the infected, the mower made a turn and followed the wall at the back edge of the terrace, leading the four infected toward us.
“The security dudes first,” Murphy whispered. “As we pass, I’ll take number two, you take number one.”
“Okay.”
The Whites were following each other in a tight formation, so instead of following directly behind Murphy, a position that would have left me no room to wield my machete, I stepped to my left, so that I was jogging directly at the oncoming lawnmower.
The infected saw us, but didn’t alter their behavior. We were just like them, two more Whites following one another across the grass. At least that’s what they thought, until Murphy came up beside guard number two and smashed him across the head with his hatchet.
As soon as I saw Murphy move, I slashed guard number one across his throat. He gushed blood and fell.
Guard number two was down, but wasn’t dead. Murphy’s hatchet was stuck in the guy’s skull at an odd angle and he was trying to get up. The kid was lunging at Murphy, but I was too far back to help. At the last second, Murphy jabbed and drove his knife up through the kid’s larynx.
In that moment, I pulled my machete up for another swing and punished guard number two for not dying right away. I caught him across his left shoulder and he rolled over, unable to support himself any longer with that arm. He rolled onto his back, his teeth still gnashing at Murphy’s ankle, until my machete cleaved his face and he died.
Looking up from that, I saw Murphy pulling his knife from the kid’s blood-spewing throat.
The naked, limping woman was howling and doing her best to close the gap between herself and Murphy. It only hastened her death as Murphy kicked her hard in her good leg and she went down. My machete ended her struggles, too.
With darkness in my eyes, but victory in my heart, splattered with another layer of fresh blood, I looked at Murphy. He shone his twisted grin back at me. It was gruesome, disgusting work. But winning a life or death struggle left you on an emotional high with a contradictory weight of guilt that was hard to reconcile.
“You all right?” Murphy asked.
I nodded. “You?”
“Yeah.”
The teenager made a gurgling sound and refocused our attention as his soon-to-be lifeless body struggled to breathe. Aside from the blood flowing from his mouth, nose, and throat, he looked normal. Just a regular kid, whose only concern a week before had been looking cool for his friends and getting his hands into the jeans of the cute girls at school. Now, he was dying on his lawn.
His gurgling went on, accompanied by raspy breaths as his empty eyes stared at the stars and blinked. Murphy stepped back beside me and looked down at the kid. I didn’t see Murphy’s face, but the change in his breathing told me he was as troubled as I was. Neither of us moved. Neither of us spoke as first five, then ten minutes ticked by, while the kid so very painfully, very slowly finished dying.
When the last noise gurgled out of the kid’s slashed throat, the last light of the sun had gone from the sky, and the crickets chirped loudly into the hollow night.
In a hoarse voice, Murphy said, “We should go.”
Some were easy. Some were hard. Some were really hard. I asked myself how many infected I needed to kill before I would stop paying an emotiona
l toll.
I climbed the short wall to the next tier and froze. “You know what?”
“What?” Murphy was immediately alert and looking around as he brought his rifle up.
“That’s the kid’s car up there.”
“That fucked up Mercedes?” Murphy asked.
I nodded and jumped down to the grass beside the kid and started going through his pockets. I found his billfold, of no use to me. Then I found his keys. I pulled them from his pocket. They glimmered in the light of the half moon as I looked up at Murphy and tried to smile. “Bingo.”
“House keys?” He asked.
I nodded. “And the car. I’ll bet he has a garage door opener in the car.”
“Fuck, yeah,” Murphy said with as much enthusiasm as could be mustered.
Chapter 24
“Zed, why don’t you run up there and check out the dude’s car? I’ll go let Dalhover know what’s up.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I’m sure they’re wondering by now.”
Together we clambered up the terrace walls and took off in our separate directions.
The run back across the property took an unexpected toll. When I reached the flagstones of the courtyard, I was breathing heavy, sweating rivers, and dragging my feet. I realized that I’d been pushing myself way too hard for too many days. I needed sleep, a full night of it, maybe a few. I bent over, putting my hands on my knees to catch my breath, and looked down along the line of the wall. Murphy was agitated and walking up and down in front of the section of the wall that we’d entered over. Uh oh. Something wasn’t right.
What do to? Run back down the hill and shout futilely at a wall, or proceed with the plan? We had no way to get back over the wall. I put my hopes on the Mercedes and ran as fast as my tired legs would carry me. When I got close to the car, I fumbled with the keys and then pressed the single worn button on what looked like a car’s keyless entry fob.
