Chapter Five
I sat with my back against the cold concrete, cradling the shotgun in my lap while I tried to ignore the sounds of the infected outside. I was sore all over, from the bruise on my shoulder where the kick of the shotgun had impacted, from the scrapes on my back and side.
As if reading my thoughts, Francis crouched next to me with a bottle of pain reliever, murmuring, "Nobody said the zombie apocalypse was going to be easy. Here." He shook two huge pills out into my hand and then offered me a bottle of water.
"Where'd you get this?" I asked, breaking the seal on the water bottle and unscrewing the lid.
"Some supplies in here," Francis said, pointing towards the corner. Bill was eating a can of pork and beans with the bent can top, and Louis was draining a bottle of cola. "You want anything? You shouldn't take that stuff on an empty stomach."
I looked up at him and brushed his chin with my fingertips, wiping away what looked like tomato sauce. "What did you have?"
"Spaghetti-Os," Francis admitted sheepishly, wiping his chin. "Did I get it all?"
"Yeah. Got any canned ravioli?"
I stood up and joined Bill and Louis at the crate, kneeling at the side of the makeshift table. "Let me see your John Wayne," Francis said to Bill. Bill handed him a keychain of some kind, which Francis used to open a can of ravioli.
"Thanks," I told Francis as he handed me the can. I used the lid as a sort of spoon to scrape ravioli from the can. I didn't realize how ravenous I was until I got to the bottom of the can and then held the can up to drink the tomato sauce.
When I lowered the can, the three men were looking at me, Louis with his eyes wide and his jaw slack. "What?" I asked quietly. "You've never seen a girl eat?"
"I thought I had," said Louis.
I wiped my mouth on my sleeve and stood up, slinging the shotgun over my shoulder. "Can we get going now?" I asked, then threw back the pills and washed them down with a bottle of water. I tucked the water into my belt and turned back to the guys.
"Do you know where we are?" Francis asked Bill, standing at the door, looking out into the night.
"No idea. We're not going to find out hanging around in here, though. Let's move."
Bill kicked the door open and we found ourselves prowling into an alley. The dawn was coming; the night was beginning to lighten into morning. "Do you think we can reach Mercy by morning?" I asked. For some reason, I wasn't wild about the idea of prowling through the city during the day. At night, it was just dark enough to pretend that the piles of darkness at every corner were rubble and not corpses.
"Burger Tank," said Louis, pointing off to the left. "Looks like we're near the waterworks."
"Does that mean we're near the New City sewers?" asked Francis as we pushed along the alleyway.
I could smell rancid frier grease and was reminded of my first summer job at a Burger Tank nearer to my apartment. It was definitely a Burger Tank we were approaching. Bill shrugged as he shouldered the door open and led the way into the storage room of the Burger Tank.
"I don't know this area. I'm not a big Burger Tank fan," said Bill. We walked through the kitchen and into the dining room. I knew what the sickly sound was before we came upon the trio of zombies feasting upon the flesh of a corpse. Bill quickly dispatched them with his handgun.
"There's the hospital," I said, pointing out the dirty plate glass window. Mercy Hospital towered just beyond the wall of warehouses in front of us. "We must be at the waterworks off Turtle Street. That's just a few blocks from Broad Avenue, where the hospital is."
"We're not going to get into the city that way," Louis said, pointing towards the street. It seemed that the entire area was surrounded by barricades.
"Lot of good these things did 'em," Bill said quietly, kicking the barricade. "The zombies can climb over 'em. They just slowed down the non-infected. Now look what happened."
"Look," said Francis, pointing his flashlight over towards a series of trucks lined up at the warehouse. "There must be doors if they're unloading freight." We followed Francis over and he hauled himself up onto the concrete loading dock. A corrugated metal door stood on his left. He tried the button on the side panel, but nothing happened.
After Francis shot the panel to small pieces, the door still wouldn't budge. "It's probably electric," said Louis. "And the power's out, except for emergency power. There's some windows above us. What if we took that scissor lift up to the roof and broke through the window there?"
"Sounds like as good a plan as any," Bill conceded. "Hustle. It's too quiet."
I was debating the merits of telling Bill that zombies weren't physically capable of planning an ambush, but I decided to leave it alone. Francis jumped the rail into the lift, helped me on, and pointed me towards the controls. "Hit it!" he told me once the others were on the lift.
Jerking the control stick back, the lift launched upwards, its disused metal squealing in protest. In response, a massive shriek sounded from the surrounding area. Every zombie in a five block radius was coming for us.
"Sorry," I called to the boys.
"No other way," Louis said sympathetically.
A hundred zombies poured over the fence, through the windows of the building opposite, or from over the building we were trying to climb up. I drew my pistols and began to fire, hoping to make a dent in the horde.
"Fire in the hole!" Bill shouted, throwing a pipe bomb from the lift as I stopped it at roof level. We all climbed off the lift and began to cross the roof towards the huge, broken windows across the plaza, but when Bill said, "Shit" we all stopped to see what the problem was.
The red, flashing light was doing its job by distracting the zombies, but its location was problematic. It was lodged between a concrete pole and a gasoline pump in the Grab-n-Go. "Run," Francis said, shoving me. Louis and I started off headlong down the roof, followed by Francis and Bill.
The searing heat of the explosion threw me fat to the roof, Louis beside me. After scrambling to his feet, Louis helped me up and we climbed through the shattered window. I turned to help Bill up, then Francis. "Look out, they're coming," I said, pointing behind them to the flaming ruins of the gas station. The zombies were staggering around on fire, while some of them who had escaped ruin by not running fast enough were scrambling up the roof.
"We need to move," said Bill. "We can't take them on ourselves."
"Look," said Francis, pointing to a hole in the floor. I looked over and saw a semi-destroyed office below. Without waiting for agreement—probably because the zombie horde was almost pouring into the storage room in which we stood—Francis dropped down into the hole, standing on the desk. He reached up for me.
Now was no time to stand on women's lib. I shoved the pistols back into their holsters and reached for Francis. He helped me down and Bill and Louis came next. The gnashing, snarling zombies were swarming above us. "Go go go," said Bill. We burst into a hallway and nearly tumbled down a flight of stairs into a huge warehouse.
"A door, over there," I said, pointing maniacally.
"Go," said Francis. "But first." He grabbed my arm and pulled me close. I wondered what he was doing, my face contorting in a question that he answered by pulling the molotov cocktail from my belt. He touched it to Bill's cigarette and the rag went up, then threw it at the door we had just come through. It bounced off the door and fell on the concrete floor, shattering in a storm of flames.
"Good thinkin', Francis," Bill growled. "But never screw with my cigarette."
We fought our way down the alleyway outside the warehouse and into another building, engaging the occasional confused zombie. Ten minutes, eight short flights of stairs, and two dozen zombies later, we were standing around an open manhole.
"No," I said, folding my arms. "We need to find another way. "
"There is no other way," Louis argued, folding his arms, too. "It's a dead end. Except for the sewer."
"Two minutes in the sewer and we'll be out of this apocalypse," Bill reasoned. He shrugged. "Sounds like a fair trade to me."
"C'mon, Zoey." Francis draped an arm across my shoulder. "You're a tough broad. Let's just do this thing."
"Ugh," I said, trying to ignore the smell coming up from the sewer. "Fine. But when this is over, I'm never going into a sewer again. Do we have a deal?"
"Only if you move now." Bill nudged the manhole cover aside with his foot and slowly eased himself down. "Careful," he called up to us. "Bit of a drop."
Both Francis and Louis helped me down, each taking a hand and lowering me down into the sewer. My sneakers came down on the slick, slippery concrete sewer bottom. I put a hand out and seized Bill's shoulder as my already-aching ankle twisted painfully.
Louis was next, then Francis. "Ugh," he said, covering his mouth with his hand.
"I thought the subway smelled bad," I murmured, trying to ignore the smell. "Come on. Let's get the hell out of here."
"Walk on the canal edges," said Louis, hauling himself up onto the concrete berm. He gave me a hand up and Bill and Francis followed. We crept towards an emergency light that was up an incline. Under the light, a corpse lay with a hunting rifle and a pile of ammo.
"This might have a smaller kick," said Francis, his toe nudging the rifle's barrel. "Wanna trade it for your shotgun?"
I shrugged and glanced at Louis. He gestured for me to take it if I wanted it. I bent down to pick up the rifle, snagged as many magazines for it as I could, and left the shotgun. When I had slung it over my shoulder, we continued along.
Soon, we rounded a corner out of sight of the emergency light and had to flip our flashlights on. In the eerie, dripping silence of the sewer, it was difficult to imagine being rescued, to imagine surviving the mess.
A skittering sound made me throw my light to the right across the sewer canal. A moment later, I heard Louis give a shout. I spun my light back, but Louis was gone, his screams echoing across the sewer.
"Louis!" I shouted. We all played our light across the sewers, looking for a sign of him. Francis finally shouted out.
"There!" he called, splashing across the sewer and onto the opposite concrete bank. For the first time I noticed a door, and followed Francis over to it, trying to ignore the moisture threatening to overwhelm my high-top shoes.
Louis was being attacked by a smoker in what looked like a maintenance hatchway. Francis brought the butt of his shotgun up under the chin of the smoker, snapping its neck. It slumped, a cloud of smoke emanating from its mouth, and pulled Louis down with it.
I dropped to a knee by Louis and began to pull the tongue off him as Bill came into the room and closed the door. "You okay, Louis?" he demanded as I finally unraveled the tongue. Bill and Francis helped Louis to his feet.
"I'm fine," said Louis. "Those tongues... they sure are strong."
"Vent over here," said Francis, pointing to a hole in the wall where a vent had been thrown off. "Should we check it out?"
"Better than sticking around here all day," Bill said. "After you, Francis."
Francis moved in first, and I followed with my handguns drawn. Half a dozen zombies were crawling around in the muck inside the sewer. His shotgun made short work of them, and we emerged in a larger sewer. A spray-painted notice pointed towards the right.
"Is that a ladder?" I asked Francis, peering down into the darkness. A shaft of dim light shone down through a manhole.
"We're almost there!" Francis shouted, clapping me on the shoulder jovially. "C'mon, Zoey, let's get some fresh air. You two coming?"
"Right behind ya," said Bill, emerging from the vent behind Louis. We all walked to the ladder and Francis began to climb. Bill pointed me to the ladder next, and I began to climb up after him.
A moment later, my head bumped into Francis' behind, and I heard him groan. "Well shit," he said.
"What?" I asked. "What is it?"
"There's a bunch of vampires up here," he whispered down.
"They're zombies, Francis," I said exasperatedly, in unison with Bill and Louis.
"Whatever. Got a pipe bomb?"
I felt my belt; I only had a water bottle. "Anyone got a pipe bomb?" I murmured down to Bill and Louis.
Everyone came up empty. "Shit," Francis said. This was the general consensus of everyone involved, I imagine. I sure felt like that. "We're going to have to do it the old fashioned way."
"Bullets?" asked Louis.
"Whatever, can you go? I'm getting a cramp hanging here," I said waspishly.
I wasn't prepared for the devastation that awaited me when I finally emerged from the sewer. This area had been hit pretty hard. A dozen vehicles were present, in various stages of distress and disrepair. A humvee had run into a bus, tipping the bus over. A sickeningly large puddle of blood had dried around the bus. I covered my mouth and tried not to vomit.
But the destruction of the vehicles, the death of so many, paled in comparison to the presence of so many zombies. They milled about, apparently oblivious to our presence—for now—and staggering every so often. Twenty seconds later, Bill and Louis had joined us and we were picking our way across the flood-lit plaza towards the emergency room of Mercy Hospital.
All it took was one zombie. It sniffed the air hungrily, turned, and gave a moan. Three nearby zombies turned and moaned. Ten more around them turned and moaned. And they all began advancing towards us.
"Go," muttered Bill. His assault rifle roared and zombies fell. That only attracted more zombies, until we were practically wading through a sea of infected. I found it more effective to holster my pistols and pull out my rifle to use as a club.
We were able to keep them at bay that way. Francis would fire his shotgun into a crowd of zombies, buying us time as we performed the deadly tango across the plaza.
"Saferoom," said Louis with palpable relief. I glanced up and saw where he was pointing: a red steel door was standing open just inside the emergency clinic. All we had to do was get through the hospital doors and over the desk.
Bill kicked the hospital doors open and then turned to mow down the remaining zombies. A few stragglers were lagging behind the main crowd, but there was something wrong. There was a kind of hostile groaning and growling that I didn't want to accept.
The witch was sitting in the doorway to the saferoom, sobbing her eerie sobs. "Holy shit," I panted, coming up short. "We've got a problem here."
"Cover me," Francis said, shoving me back towards the door. I fired my pistols into the zombies approaching from the outside, keeping one ear open as the witch's moans got more and more hostile.
"Francis, be careful," I called.
Francis' shotgun roared, and I turned in time to see the witch's brain explode all over the opposite wall. "She's down," Francis shouted over the sound of our gunfire. "Can we get in here now?"
We backed into the saferoom, blowing away every zombie that tried to follow us. Francis and Louis barred the door and then we all looked around at our surroundings.
"The good news is, we're almost there," said Louis uncertainly.
I sank onto the floor with my back to the wall. "I'm so tired. Can we stay the night here and find the evac in the morning?"
"One hour," said Bill, sliding easily into his leadership role. "Rest up, because we leave in one hour."