It was a long way up.
Like looking up at the top of the tower from the ground outside, it had looked tall. But taking all those steps made it seem a whole hell of a lot taller.
Ellis gave a slight huff as he paused, hand on the rail, his right foot a step higher than the left, turning to see how Nick and Rochelle were doing behind him. He could have gone faster himself, but there wasn't really any need for that– he'd probably already shown off enough back at the fence.
Not that he could really explain his recent compulsion to show off. Nick already liked him. It wasn't like he was going to suddenly 'like him more' or something just cuz he could vault a fence or scale multiples stories in a few minutes. He chuckled to himself.
But then those green eyes as the man had so tenderly bandaged his arms… Shit, there'd been love in that touch, he could have sworn...
'Course, they were close to one another. That just made sense.
He waited long enough to see them both round the curve of the staircase before resuming his ascent, setting his mind to getting up the stairs the rest of the way.
This was definitely the hard way to do this, that much was sure. The elevator was an invaluable commodity, not available to them– unfortunately, as the burn in his thighs was telling him. At least they were getting their exercise, he supposed. Though that could have been just as easily attributed to the sprint across the airbase they had taken to get here just a short while ago, or the lifting he and Coach had done on the front end of that boat trailer, or the day-long treks they had been making on a daily basis for a week and a half. Shit, by the end of this apocalypse, he was easily going to be in the best shape of his life, he could guarantee that, and he'd never been lacking thanks to his job in the garage and the heavy lifting it sometimes required of him– yeah, they had a winch, but how satisfying was it to pick up a crankshaft over his shoulders and carry it out to the scrap heap? Keith could never do that– he was too gangly, and the time he had tried, he dropped it and broken five bones in his foot.
There were a few other levels to the control tower that had access to the stairwell, but for now, Ellis headed straight for the very top.
"We made it, y'all!" he called down.
"Oh thank God," Rochelle panted back, her relief echoing up the steps. "Now I think I know why Coach wanted to stay and watch the door," she laughed breathlessly. Ellis chuckled; he'd thought the same thing, both in terms of the older man's weight and his bum knee, but hadn't voiced it. "Whew…" she fanned herself as she joined him on the top step. "Going to be fun going back down too."
Nick trailed shortly behind her, taking the steps methodically and deliberately. Ellis' eyes skimmed over the cardshark– he'd removed that suit coat again, sometime mid-way in their climb, no doubt overly warm. Ellis knew he sure would be, hell, he would be just standing still in a get-up like that, but then again Nick was from Vegas, the middle of the desert, and he was used to wearing that much clothing.
But he couldn't say he minded seeing the gambler in less, odd as that was. His eyes unfocused and refocused, sizing up the width of his shoulders without the coat, and the trim of his waist, experiencing a shiver despite the precipitation threatening to well on his skin from the climb.
"I can't wait," Nick responded to Rochelle with a grin, his tone loaded with sarcasm.
Ellis stuck his tongue out at him and put his hand to the knob, swinging the door open.
The smell of death hit them again.
It wasn't as strong this time, just for the fact that were significantly less bodies. Ellis' blue eyes flashed over the scene, his lips parting with mild shock.
More uninfected people, shot. Some lie facedown strewn across the floor, others fallen out of chairs, blood had pooled and dried in dark patches across the worn linoleum. A few corpses were still clutching guns in their death, clear that they had put up a fight before going down. They weren't dressed like the sort of people you'd be expecting to work in a control tower… they were clothed like regular people, civilians. Ellis strode over to the nearest man slumped against the wall and pried the gun from the fingers curled with rigamortis. He frowned, pointing the M16 at the ceiling and clicking the trigger several times. Empty. Rochelle followed suit, checking another man's uzi, but it held just the same results. They slowly spread out, searching the aisles of dysfunctional computer equipment, stepping over bodies.
"It looks like they were… holdin' out up here," the mechanic summarized, unease eking through his tone.
Nick nodded solemnly beside him. "And not just against zombies," the older man bit the tip of his tongue pointedly between his incisors. Almost all the casualties had scratches from infected, but none themselves were showing signs of contracting the infection. But the common denominator across the littering of bodies was that each had met their end to gunfire, though sloppier than what they had seen in the hangar. Last time he checked, there weren't any gun-wielding zombies out there.
Ellis set his hands on his hips, all at once puzzled and disgusted. "Were they resistin' the military or somethin'?" he conjectured, "Not followin' procedure?" There had to be some reason these people had been mowed down like this.
Nick clicked his tongue. "Seems a little extreme," his eyebrows leveled.
"Hey, boys…" Rochelle's voice stirred them from their dialogue, sounding slightly excited. Ellis blinked and hurried over to her, past the computer equipment she had skirted around to the north end of the tower room, Nick following him.
She had found a map. Not just a map, but a desk of maps.
Ellis' eyes widened and he hastily leaned over the desk and flattened his palms against the top one. It was a bird's eye of the entirety of the Jacksonville NAS.
"Well damn," Nick commented, "looks like we hit the jackpot."
Yeah, no fooling. Ellis studied the diagram carefully. The map had been written on with red sharpie, denoting their current location, a couple of buildings circled, lines drawn between them, numbers over the circles. It looked like a plan. An escape plan, he reckoned from the looks of how the final line jerked off the edge of the paper on the west exit and big capitalized letters spelled out: FREEDOM.
Freedom. Why did that seem familiar? Ellis worried his bottom lip, mind churning.
"These people were trying to get out," Rochelle spoke, filling the silence. She began to reason out the scenario to them, pointing on the map. "They were low on ammunition, and they were going to get more…" her fingers skimmed over the first circled building– an armory specifically– tapping it with a forefinger. "They were going to take it to another control tower," she pointed to the second circled target, a hexagon much like the one they stood in, "probably had more refugees– and then they were going to leave the NAS fully armed."
"Back out wit' the zombies?" Ellis asked incredulously, disbelieving that anyone would chose the outside over internments. "Or was the station already over-run an' they was jus' like us, lookin' fer supplies? Holdin' out in the towers fer safety until they could?" But that conjecture didn't make sense and he knew it; they hadn't been killed by zombies, this was the work of people, people with guns and the intent to kill. Maybe Ro was wrong. Perhaps the other folks in the second tower had been enemies instead of friends? Maybe each group had been planning to kill the other to steal their armaments and supplies, and this was the group that had lost. He shuddered at the thought, at the desperation that would cause good people– people who should be rallying together– to turn on one another.
Nick rifled the edge of the map, pulling it up to get a look at the ones underneath it. His mouth quirked downward in a frown, the lines on his forehead deepening with concern. "I think there was something a lot bigger going down here, sport," he delivered, yanking one of the maps swiftly out to lay it on top with a flutter.
"What the…?" was all Rochelle got out.
It was an exact replica of the map of the country they had seen in both Savannah and Brunswick, blown up to detail the southeast. Except it had one extreme and notable difference.
Not only did it have the red X's, it also had green circles. And those little circles pock-marked the landscape of the nation in the oddest of places– far-away, obscure little towns and bergs that couldn't possibly be supplying evac to thousands upon thousands of people. In fact, some were marked for tiny islands off the coast.
They weren't the interments were they? The places people had been shipped to to get them away from the infection? Ellis felt his heart start to hammer in his chest at the possibility– the thought that his family might be there, in one of those many dotted places, safe and contained from the spread of the infection. Safe and waiting. Waiting for him to join them.
"Lord, we gotta check one'a these places out!" Ellis blurted to the other two survivors standing beside him, over-exuberance literally flowing out of his system. His eyes narrowed down on the green circle nearest to Jacksonville– Starke– just a hop, skip and a jump away, practically, out on I-10 just a little ways, then south off 200. Okay, so maybe it was more like twenty-miles off the beaten path, but what was that if they could actually find an internment themselves, rather than going through the evac in New Orleans? Shoot, they could evacuate themselves!
Nick looked decidedly uneasy and he had gone very silent. "We should be careful how we proceed," he murmured. "Nothing says what these circles point to– the modifications to this map aren't government approved, they've been added. Likely by the people in this room."
Ellis didn't like the words, nor the man's tone of voice, but he quieted himself and nodded, trying to stay rational. Nick was right, they could be anything, or they could be absolutely nothing at all.
But what else would people trying to escape have a map like this for? People who were looking for 'freedom'? He furrowed his brow.
Rochelle looked torn. "I wish they had left more information…" she murmured, no doubt craving more pieces to the puzzle. She folded her arms. "But first thing's first, we need to get out of here. Right now we're in a building surrounded by zombies. And we, like these people, don't have a whole lot left to defend ourselves."
Nick turned from the table and walked towards the windowpanes, the heels of his dress shoes click-clacking on the linoleum floor. He stuck his chin in a hand, rubbing at the stubble decorating his neck as he pondered the scenery below. "Yeah." Ellis slowly came to his side and peered out at the air station as well. There were still plenty of zombies hammering away at the door underneath them, showing no signs of boredom or fatigue. His nose wrinkled, wondering how they could be so god-awful persistent.
"Kill the fucking carriers…" Nick breathed, seemingly out of the blue.
"What?" Ellis tweaked an eyebrow at the man, but his gaze followed the conman's out to the north where they'd come in... out to the runways.
Big red letters had been drawn onto one of the long strips of asphalt and it read just that.
KILL THE FUCKING CARRIERS.
Rochelle joined them in staring at the curious runway message. "The carriers?" she spoke with confusion. "I never heard that term used for the infected. Isn't that kind of obvious?"
Yeah, seemed pretty obvious to him too that zombies ought to be killed, hardly something that needed to be spelled out. "Maybe it was some kind'a code word tuh bomb out the bridges surroundin' Jacksonville," Ellis reasoned, his stomach doing full-on flip-flops– shit, all the carnage around them had him about ready to heave his small breakfast.
The reporter shook her head, clearly not in agreement with the explanation but not having another to supplant it either. She moved off to their rights, gazing east, squinting her eyes. The girl pointed suddenly, sweeping out her arm. "I think that must be the armory they were going for. Maybe it's still stocked. It's probably our best bet right now."
"Then as soon as we get out of here, that's the first place we're headed," Nick concluded.
Rochelle nodded. "I agree. I'm sure Coach will too."
Ellis scratched his arm, still frowning down at the zombies beneath them. They were almost like ants with how small they were from all the way up here, and the way they seemed to loosely follow the trail he had cut for them across the NAS to the control tower. It was as if they were following dropped pheromones or some shit though he was certain that couldn't be the case– they were attracted to the scent of living flesh and loud noises, not one another. His blue eyes followed the trail backward, brow furrowing.
A number of the creatures were coagulated at the west exit where they had fled from still, milling about agitatedly, beating on one another as if they were arguing over something... which was weird seeing as there was nothing there for them to snack on. It was incredible just how fast they had swarmed after Rochelle had been vomited on.
At last he put two and two together. "Ro', it's yer clothin'."
"Huh?" she vocalized, lifting a thin black eyebrow, his words out of context.
"Tha' explodin' guy done threw up on you an' covered ya with its scent or some shit," Ellis explained, "an' it's attractin' the zombies right to us." There was a pause and he glanced back and forth between man and woman as his words sunk in.
"Shit, I think the kid is onto something," Nick said, looking the reporter up and down.
She pinched her now-more-green-than-pink top between a couple of fingers, lifting it off her skin. "So wait… you think if I ditch these all those zombies will go away?" She seemed a little incredulous, and hell, Ellis was slightly so himself considering how simple an answer it seemed to be. But they certainly hadn't had this problem ever before now and the only difference was the puke.
"I'd burn them personally," Nick advised, throwing in his own two cents. "But yes."
"I guess that's what I get for wearing my favorite top on my big day," she laughed, a bit of sadness in her voice. "Some fat-ass hurls all over you and attracts the entire populace of mutated zombies to your doorstep so they can eat you and your friends' brains out."
"Yeah, sounds about standard," Nick joked back. "Trust me, this is only my second-favorite button-up for that exact reason, I left my silk one in my garment bag."
Ellis gave a little amused snort at the rather lame attempt at a joke.
But it still seemed to make Rochelle crack a smile. "Thanks, Nick," she said with a roll her eyes.