Chapter Five: People are Strange

SARA

Ms Miller spoke up again, and I could tell it was hard for her to tell us what happened next. I didn't blame her—it's not the sort of thing you want to share with people, but we needed the information.

"I don't know. I came back, and things were kind of slow, but you know how things get in retail on hot afternoons. We're sort of isolated out here with the industrial parks all around us, so I wasn't really paying attention to stuff. We close around six, but management always has us stay half an hour after that for cleanup and paperwork. I got busy with mine. I came out to get signed off on my hours and didn't see anybody down on the main floor—that set off the alarm bells in my head."

I nodded to keep her talking; Grissom was doing some sort of calculation on the wall and from the look of the numbers, it was alarming. Greg was starting to pace now, and I couldn't blame him for a growing sense of claustrophobia. Dimly we could hear the moaning of the zombies down the hall at the security gate and I didn't want to admit it was louder than it had been before our lunch.

"So your gut was telling you things were messed up," Greg prompted her, and Ms. Miller nodded.

"Oh yeah. I went looking for Hackamore or somebody to sign my papers, and couldn't find a soul. I paged on the phone down there in the hallway, and while I was waiting, I started hearing that moaning. Totally creeped me out, but I sorta hoped it was some of the guys goofing around, so I didn't pay it no mind. I went back out to look and see if Hackamore was coming, and spotted a HUGE old puddle on the floor over by Gardening. That was enough to send me into the ladies room and block the door with the big garbage can. 'Cause the mess on the floor wasn't blood—it was exactly the same goo that came out of the skull, you dig?" Her voice shook.

"The infectious medium. By doing what you did, you saved yourself. If we could get a sample of that back to the lab—" Grissom muttered, and I felt a little panicked exasperation, so I spoke up, a little harshly.

"Grissom, get real—the stuff's clearly a biohazard and I for one don't think we ought to try going after it unless we've got hazmat suits."

He looked up from his calculations on the wall, startled at my tone I guess, but nodded. Greg was nearly twitching now, and I could tell he was barely holding it together, so I got up and went over to him. One hand on his shoulder and he relaxed, just a little bit.

"Thanks," he whispered and I gave his shoulder a squeeze.

Ms. Miller got up too, and went over to where Grissom was finishing up. She looked at the various equations as I came over; Grissom capped the Sharpie and sighed heavily.

"All we have is hearsay on the rate of infection—no slight intended, Ms. Miller—but working with that limited data gives us an outlook that's fairly . . . "

"Go ahead and say it," I grumbled, "bleak. If Diego bit two people on his way out, then each of them bit two people, by the time Ms. Miller got off work, theoretically, she might be the only employee of Manly Hammers who didn't end up a zombie."

Grissom turned away from us and looked towards the door of the stockroom.

"More than that," Greg muttered over my shoulder. "We've already seen that both the Cone, Cone on the Range employees and the Salon girl were zombies too. The whole strip mall's been infected. My question is, how many of them are wandering off looking for new victims?"

Grissom tensed, and he tossed the pen down. "Grab your weapons--We've got to go. NOW."

I wanted to argue, but the look on his face scared the shit out of me, so I patted my hip for my Glock and followed him. Greg took his shovel and Ms. Miller's hand and we all darted for the door and back out into that narrow hallway.

That's when I made the mistake of turning my flashlight over towards the security gate.

Oh God.

The number of zombies pressing on the security gate HAD increased— and the gate was starting to bend under the forward push. They weren't screaming or fast; no, it was the low groans and relentless drive of them that made the hair go up on the back of my neck again.

Did you ever see a wind up toy walking into a wall? How the damned thing keeps trying to go forward, even though it can't, and it won't change direction or stop until it winds down? Now make that a living corpse, complete with stench and rotting body parts, multiply it by about thirty to thirty five, and you get what we were looking at reaching for us through the safety gate across the alcove.

I froze.

Fortunately Greg and Ms. Miller bumped me along, sweeping me in their wake and down the hall towards a flight of stairs. I could see Grissom already going up, and given the shoving at my back I didn't have any choice about following him.

GRISSOM

The average security gate is designed to withhold the impact of a mid-sized car going up to twenty miles an hour; that's the industry standard as laid down by Underwriter's Laboratories. At the moment, the forward momentum of the crowd downstairs was going to snap either the lock or the hinges of the gate within ten minutes and I didn't want any of us trapped in the stockroom for the duration.

A vague idea had been forming in my mind ever since Ms Miller began telling us about her ordeal, and I tried to keep my thoughts focused as I led everyone up the stairs. At the landing I looked down the upper hallway with my Mag-lite and noted with a sense of despair that there was a puddle of something dark leaking from under one of the doors here. There was a frantic scrabbling too, but it was coming from another door further down. I looked over my shoulder at Sara and she passed me her gun without a word.

"That first office—that's Mr. Lawrence's office. He's the accountant," Ms. Miller whispered. I nodded and let my light drift to the door with the scrabbling. It didn't sound human.

"And that one?"

"That's Mr. Hackamore's office . . . Lord, if he's a zombie one of you is gonna have to do him in, because I can-NOT behead my boss. I may not have liked his attitude sometimes, but he never did anything bad enough to get the bowling ball treatment from me!" Ms Miller shook her head emphatically.

I took a cautious step forward, and a low whine came from under the door. I relaxed a tiny bit. "Did your boss have a . . . dog?"

"Oh geez, he brought Pepito today?" Ms Miller relaxed a bit. "Yeah, he's got this ancient teeny Chihuahua mongrel, good little dog. Hey Pepito baby—" She called out, and the volley of chirpy barks came in return, muffled by the door. I reached for the knob and opened it as Sara and Greg tensed behind me. Out shot a beige shoebox on skinny legs that darted over to us and did a frantic dance. I've never been a fan of toy breeds, but this poor animal was utterly delighted to see us and seemed determined to lick everyone in our group.

Ms. Miller scooped him up and calmed him down. At the back of our group, Greg signaled for everyone to be quiet. We could all hear the creak of the security gate in the silence.

I spoke up. "Okay, here's our situation—we need to get back to the Denali, but barring that, we need a place that the Undead can't reach. Somewhere on this floor there has to be a roof access, and if we can get to that, we can block it off once we're through."

"We can't get down from a twenty four foot roof without a ladder!" Ms. Miller protested. Sara, my bright, quick-thinking Sara spoke up before I could.

"Maybe not, but we should be able to get to the lower roofs of the adjoining stores. Grissom, how did all those zombies get into Manly Hammers? We locked the front door behind us, and there were only a couple we ran into inside—all employees in fact."

"Garden Department," Ms Miller broke in firmly. "It's got a separate door, and I bet that's how they're getting in."

"Which means they have some sort of tracking sense if they started to congregate at the gate," Greg pointed out tersely.

I nodded. "Some form of sensory feedback, although I doubt they communicate with each other. In any case, we're going to have to keep moving and hope that the roof will give us another breathing space. It's . . " I checked my watch, "About two hours to sunrise, and that ought to help a bit if anyone's looking for us."

I looked at them: beautiful pale-faced Sara, frightened Ms. Miller, resolute Greg and bug-eyed, nose-licking Pepito.

My people; all of them.

Except the dog.

"Let's find that roof access."

Greg spoke up quietly. "Uh, Grissom—it's right behind you."

I turned, and the beam of my flashlight swept over a closet door marked roof access. I nodded sagely, as if I'd known this all along, and while Greg and Ms. Miller bought it, I could tell by Sara's smirk that my ruse hadn't fooled her at all. We moved to it and I tried the knob, which didn't turn.

"There's key box in Hackamore's office," Ms Miller volunteered. "Might have the one we're looking for."

"On it—" Greg muttered and loped back to the middle office and while he did so, I spoke to Ms. Miller again.

"When did the power go out, do you remember?"

"Lord, let me think . . . had to be after six when I locked myself in—my watch doesn't glow in the dark, but maybe an hour after that? Around seven maybe?"

I nodded. "So the power's been out for about eight hours—someone monitoring the power grid out there HAS to have noticed it by now. If we get high enough, we might be able to see how far the blackout spreads."

Sara headed down the hall and I shot her a worried look, but she waved me off and disappeared into the same office that Greg had gone into.

GREG

The guy's office was a mess. I mean I've SEEN messes, especially on the job. Crime scenes are nothing but messes, with the added condiments of blood, semen, and other bodily fluids better not named. But this place—stacks of paper and files a foot high, old fast food wrappers, soda cans, packing materials, and tons of tools scattered about.

It took me a minute to locate the key box that Ms. Miller mentioned, and when I took a step towards it I barely missed the little surprise that Pepito had left on the rug. Given the state of the carpet, I'd say it wasn't doggy boy's first accident either.

The key box was mounted on the wall, and hanging open, thank God. I peered into it, and just then heard something behind me. I turned, swinging my spade, but Sara sidestepped it and grinned at me. "Good reflexes there, Ninja-san."

"Sara—I could have killed you!" I grumbled. "And watch your step."

"Watch my---ew! Grrrreat. As if I don't have enough issues right now. Is there a Kleenex somewhere?" she grumbled. I shrugged and waved my head.

"Somewhere—looks like this office has a lot of everything. Might be some cleaning wipes near the desk."

She had her shoe off and was holding it out gingerly; I turned back to the key safe and looked into it. "Terrific—about half the labels are peeling off of the hooks. I always thought you had to be efficient to run a hardware store, you know?"

Sara made a distracted noise. "If the people under you are efficient, management doesn't have to be, necessarily. Ooh, shop wipes, yeah. The building access row is probably the top one."

"Bingo." God Sara's smart. She hadn't even looked in the box and had it figured out. I took the keys over the peeling label 'RoOf' and turned to her. "How'd you know that?"

She finished wiping off her shoe and tossed the wipe into the empty garbage can next to the desk. "Case two years ago at a Manly Hammers in south Vegas. Shooting in one of the offices—I dusted the key safe in that one. See any rope?"

"Rope?" I looked around with her help and we found some coiled up in the corner, near a boxed power saw and some sprinkler heads. Sara hefted it on one of her shoulders and I grinned.

"You look like a mountain climber—anything else in here that would help?"

"Yeah, you see any of those plastic cuff things anywhere? I have an idea---"

So ten minutes later Sara, Grissom and I made a barricade.

If the doors from the offices on opposite sides of the hall were opened at the same time, it very nearly blocked the hallway. And with a pair of plastic cuffs cinched tight across both doorknobs, it's pretty much impassable. I wouldn't count on it holding forever, but it was a start—good enough for me. Ms. Miller was unlocking the roof access door while we did that.

Up we went; Grissom first, then Ms. Miller, then me holding Pepito because Ms. Miller needed both hands to climb, and Sara behind me. I wondered if she was checking out my butt, because had our positions been reversed, I definitely would have been checking hers out. The general lab consensus is that Sara's got the best booty. Catherine's is nice, but she flaunts it a little too much sometimes—a guy likes to notice things without them being waggled all the time.

And Sofia has no booty, sad but true.

Anyway, we went up the ladder for about three rungs and came to a stop. Grissom called down that there was a hatch, so we all waited, hanging onto the metal rungs. Pepito kept trying to lick my nose. In the quiet, we could hear the zombies, and I kept straining to hear something else beyond them.

Like, say, cars.

Or sirens.

Anything to indicate some normality through this unreal night; any sign that life as usual was going on SOME where, and that we might get through this in one piece. I've never been a big fan of end of the world stories, and the thought of being in one—living and dying in one didn't appeal to me at all. I still had so much I wanted to do with my life: surf the great beaches of the world; have more sex; get promoted; beat Warrick at pool; get married maybe—

"It's open," Grissom called down, and I got ready to climb, hoping Sara didn't bump her head on my ass on the way up, or that I'd bump mine into Ms. Miller's.

By the time I made it up through the hatch I was taking deep breaths. The air up here was great; fresh and open. I handed off the dog to Ms. M. and clambered out, looking over the expanse of gravelly flat roof and out around the horizon.

When I looked towards Vegas, the lights there made me tear up a little bit.

I admit it, okay? The reassuring glow off in the distance; that beautiful sin-filled city with 24 hour massage parlors and tinkling slot machines was home, and I'd never wanted to get back to a place more than I did right then.

SARA

So we were up in James Taylor territory, kinda. The gravel didn't make it easy to walk around, but it was big and wide and warm up there. Grissom and Greg broke off a section of satellite dish leg and shoved the bar through the hand loops of the roof access door, so nobody from down below was going to get up through it behind us.

Ms Miller was looking lost and clutching the dog, whispering to it, so I went over to her, just standing close by. She seemed to appreciate that, and spoke to me in a low whisper. "It just doesn't seem real, you know? I'm a big coward; I never did like scary movies anyway. I'm more into a good comedy, like The Wedding Singer."

I nodded. "Yeah. Or Office Space."

She grinned at that and set Pepito down; he sniffed my shoe and wagged his tail, so I tried to ignore him. Grissom came over to us, Greg with him. "So let's try calling again, and do a quick inventory—what do we have with us?"

A quick check of all our pockets, and five minutes later we were looking at two cell phones; my Glock and three extra rounds; two packs of gum; change; a lighter; a Swiss Army knife; car keys; a can of Binaca; two wallets; and some lip gloss.

"Not a lot," Greg observed thoughtfully. Grissom nodded, and I had to agree—unless we got rescued soon, spending a day up here in the blinding sunlight would be brutal. Made me wish zombies were more like vampires, and just went 'poof' in the daytime.

No such luck. We hadn't even brought any water, not that we'd been planning this little adventure out anyway.

Thank God we'd all used the bathroom and had lunch--

"Phone?"

Grissom pulled his out of the pile and hit a button; we all watched him, and I noticed I could see him a little better now—

Dawn had to be coming.

He blinked, and nearly shouted. "Jim!"

We all crowded closer; kind of an instinctive thing I guess. A sort of hot relief was filling my chest now, spreading through my whole body and making me a little dizzy. God, we got through; it was going to be okay—

"We're . . . South of Nellis, probably Indian Springs. Got the wrong address—Look, just stop bitching for a moment and listen!" Grissom was yelling now, and I shot a glance at Greg. "We're . . . in trouble. Yes, trouble. What kind?"

Helplessly Grissom looked at all of us, and for a moment I could SO feel his pain. What the hell was he going to say? Brass was a lot of things, but receptive to the concept of the walking Undead terrorizing the three of us into climbing on the roof of a Manly Hammers probably wasn't something I could see him believing.

I know I wouldn't have, if I hadn't been there. And, you know—

De-animated a few of them myself.

"It's . . . a hostile situation. We've got some sort of outbreak of . . . disease here. Hang on—" he pressed the phone to his shoulder and looked at Ms. Miller. "Address?"

"Thirteen oh one Pine Plaza, Indian Springs," she recited quickly. Right then we all heard a squeaking, creaking groan filtering up through the quiet night, followed by a meaty sort of crash.

Damn it!

The security gate waaaaay down on the main floor had just broken.