Legal Note: I do not own any of the characters associated with Dawn of the Dead. I do not have any legal right to use them. This story was done just for the fun of it not for profit. If you like it please tell me. If you don't like it please tell me why with particulars but not excessive detail. Any one who wants to rip on my style or me just to make them self feel better is really only polishing their wand and their statements will receive the due amount of interest (i.e. NONE). And finally before any one brings it up: I do know my punctuation stinks. I just don't care.
Summary: What really happened at the Cross Roads Mall and hoe Andy was actually rescued.
Humanitarian Note: No zombies were injured during the writing of this story.
Setting it Straight
I just wanted to set the record straight. My name's Howard Barks. I am a survivor of the Crossroads Shopping Mall. I know they didn't put me in the dramatization they came out with a few years ago but there are a few other details they left out. I was a maintenance worker there. In the drama "based on actual events" apparently I was killed off early in the siege. I figure they did that because I told them to go to hell when they wanted me to participate in their farce. I'm not trying to throw a bad light on any of my friends that did help them. Those folks will always be dear to me. I don't mean that in some weird limp wrist way. It's just that you don't meet guys like Kenneth or Michael or women like Ana every day.
Michael actually saved my life that very first day. The scene in the show where he opens the door to the maintenance room in the sporting goods store happened pretty much like it did in real life. Rob had come in that night not feeling too good. He was the other maintenance man. He'd had some run in with a guy at this pizza place when he stopped for lunch and well the guy had sunk his teeth into Rob's shoulder. The doctors gave him a couple of shots and some pain pills and sent him on his way. So long about seven o'clock he can barely stand up. I drag him into the closet and turn to get some water for him and dig out his pills but by the time I turn around he's on his feet. I didn't know what to think. Then he grabs me! Well we're in there tussling around knocking stuff off of shelves and all when Michael opens the door. Rob turns around and jumps on Michael! Before I can get to my feet the two of them are making a mess of the shoe display and Rob is roaring like an animal. About the time I grab a fire extinguisher to smack him up side the head Michael puts the handle of that mallet through his brain and the fight's over. Well we didn't waste any time getting the hell out of there when we heard the gun shots from down by the fountain. What you see in the movie as far as the elevator and all that is pretty much right.
After C.J. and the guys cleared out Metropolis things calmed down. We barricaded the doors and made sure that the place was closed up properly. After Norma and the rest of the church group showed up we had some bad times for a few hours like they showed in the movie but when that was done we felt pretty safe. Then Kenneth comes down from the roof and tells us about Andy. I followed him back up and we all waved and what not. I was wondering how he would hold out. I mean after all we were in the mall with plenty of food and water even with the church group we had more than enough to go around for a couple of months. Andy I wasn't so sure about. I sort of knew him too which made it a little more personal. I'd bought ammunition at his store pretty regularly you see. Andy was good people. He'd had a bad run of luck for a few years but he was good people. I figured somebody had to do something and since every one else was working on staying alive I figured I could put some thought to helping Andy.
Now we had a really good book store there so I started going through the shelves. Pretty soon I found a book about fire fighters and rescue workers. I remembered that old show Emergency from when I was a kid and something clicked in my head. I read that book cover to cover and got a whole bunch of ideas. The only problem was that I didn't have all the stuff we would need to get the job done and besides Andy was something like a hundred yards away. There was one story in there about a Coast Guard rescue that got me thinking though. They had fired a rocket propelled grapnel from one ship to another to run life lines and then evacuated the crew onto the Coast Guard cutter. This was back right after WW2 you see and they weren't using helicopters yet. Anyway I didn't have a rocket and couldn't make one so I started figuring other ways to launch a grapnel. I dug through the stacks and came up with a book on medieval siege weapons. Sure enough there were plans for making a ballista. A big crossbow that could shoot spears and rocks a lot further than anyone could throw. Now I didn't have the parts to make the thing like it was laid out in the book but we did have a sporting goods shop and a hardware store. I got out a couple of those weight machines that use the rubber bands and hauled them up to the roof with a load of tools and other things. Kenneth thought I was nuts until I explained what I was up to. Then he pitched in. Pretty soon we had the thing put together and a monstrous mother it was too. Of course I didn't have the rope we would need so back to the books I went. Ana, Michael and Nicole were browsing when I got there and they asked what I was up to. I told them. The next thing you know they're helping. Turned out that Nicole had done some macrame in school so she knew a lot about knots and things. What I couldn't figure was where we were going to get the material to make the rope with. We were at Hallowed Grounds talking it over when Glen says "What about all those clothes? They're made out of thread aren't they?" After that when we weren't unraveling shirts and dresses we were making rope. A couple of days later and we had three ropes spun out. We made one real light rope out of fishing line that was attached to the piece of pipe I was going to fire over to Andy. The other two would be for him to use to cross with. We also had a reel of fishing line that he'd have to use to pull over his rescue gear. That sporting goods store was about the most important store in the mall as far as the rescue went. Kenneth sent messages to Andy using the white board and let him know that we had a plan and that we were just about to get under way. That's when Andy sent his message "Hungry" back to us. But Andy was thinking too. When Kenneth told him what we had planned Andy started putting bags of weapons and ammo together along with a few other things.
Finally we were ready to go. We set up the ballista and while Andy stayed under cover we shot a few lengths of pipe at him. That was our first set back. They just cart wheeled off into the Zombies. All of a sudden Andy stands up with his white board. "Put feathers on it, dumb ass." He wrote. Boy did I feel dumb. Down we all went and figured out how to make some kind of feathers for the poles. We ended up using the brims off of baseball caps. That was Tucker's idea. They were curved and made from plastic so we could cut them in two and fit them into slots I made in the ends of the pipes. Then we used duct tape wrapped around the base to keep them from coming out when we shot them. First try we hit the wall right below Andy's sign. Then we angled up and pow! We dropped the next one right on his roof. Andy picked it up and shook the thing in the air. You should have seen his face. We were laughing and screaming for joy so much that we got the Zombies all riled up. That brought us back pretty quick. The next shot carried the thin rope made of fishing line and the single line with notes taped to them so that Andy would know which was which. He got the first heavy line across and made it fast and we took all the slack out of it with a come along from the hardware store. We sent over the bag full of his harness and some extra rope to anchor the line better and a radio so we could finally talk to him. Then he sent back eight bags of ammo and guns. He wasn't fooling around. After he and Kenneth talked for a minute and he thanked us for what we were trying to do he got harnessed up. Well finally it was time for him to come over and we were all sweating. If anything went wrong he'd be dead or worse. I even heard Glen say a prayer. The rope sagged more than we thought it would and the zombies were howling and reaching up for him but Andy kept his head. He pulled himself on over hand over hand. I tell you what when Andy set foot on the roof of the mall we all shouted and cheered. Even Steve who was pretty much a useless dork.
We settled in to a feast that evening with Andy at the head of the table and his little fish in a bowl right next to him. They showed him eating it in the fake video that came out with the DVD but he didn't. (He did eat the fish food though.) About then was when the power finally gave out and the business with the parking garage happened. That was pretty close to right too but there was no dog. They put the dog in so they could have it run over and bring food to Andy. Nicole probably could have used a pet by then. Of course she and Terry were getting pretty close. Anyway after we dealt with the zombies in the garage and lost Bart we came back to find Andre, Luda and Norma all dead. They got it close enough in the film so I wont go into that. I do want to say here though that Bart was not the dumb bastard they made him out to be. He was going to school to be a cop. He told me once that he wanted to make something of himself. And I want to say that he didn't go down without a fight like they showed in the movie either. That boy fought hard even when he knew he'd been bitten. He deserved better.
Those deaths were what spurred us on to make the "Arks" as we called them. Here is where the movie got it absolutely right too. What they showed was built exactly like what we built. Kenneth was their consultant on those things. The escape was close too but we were not running away from a zombie hoard storming through the mall. And Tucker didn't die in the sewer the way they showed. Tucker broke his neck when Kenneth's ark ran over something in the street and turned over. All that crap with the zombie hanging on the side of his ark was made up. We were free and clear of the bastards and all of a sudden boom! Over Ken's ark went. Out C.J. goes. Out Ana goes. And out I go. Andy stayed by the back door to cover us. I saw Ana shoot Steve but to this day I'm not sure if he was a zombie or not. Personally I don't care. The only one that came out of that crash alive was Kenneth. We got him into the van and all of us were piling in when Ana stops and goes back to Steve. That's when Michael got bit. He was helping her in the street. Not at the back door. See Andy and me had taken up firing positions and we kept the zombies back but they swarmed around Ana and Michael. The rest of the chase went down pretty close to the way it did in the movie. The Ark didn't smash into the dock though. Kenneth drove out onto it a little way to block it so that the Zombies couldn't get to us to easy. Then we got swarmed and C.J. did get trapped. When the van blew up we figured he'd done it. C. J. Was a brave guy and I don't think it was any accident that the propane tank went off.
The rest went the way they showed in the movie except that we were out of the harbor before Michael shot himself. I think he wanted to know that Ana was okay. All the crap that they showed during the credits was made up. When we got to the island we cleared out about a dozen zombies. Then we set up camp and started improving things. I still hear from Kenneth every few months. Andy lives about a mile from me and he's got a new wife. He is still hopping to find his little girl though. Ana went back to work as a nurse but she hasn't married again. I don't think she's over losing two men inside of a month. Nicole and Terry got married and have three kids; Michelle is the oldest named after Michael, Kenneth named after Kenneth and Norma named after Norma. I signed on with the Engineers and found myself a wife. Strange thing about that is we knew each other in high school and back then we couldn't stand each other. We were so glad to find some one that we knew when we met up again that we started spending all our free time together. We're expecting our first baby in three months. There's a lot of hope left in this world. And it's guys like Kenneth, Andy and me that are going to make it safe for the little ones.