Chapter 8

ZoeyHarris

I was cold and wet from the rain that had been blowing sideways through the exposed construction zone, but I felt better with a cold, hard steel door separating me from the metric buttload of zombies outside the saferoom. I slid down to sit with my back against the door and watched as my friends looked around the room and began to take inventory.

All except Francis.

He sat leaning against the drywall sheets that leaned against the wall to my left. His booted feet met mine at a ninety degree angle and he looked over at me. "How's it goin'?" he asked.

"I don't know, Francis. We're 30 stories up about to go up onto the roof for a rescue we don't even know is really coming," I said with a sigh, brushing my wet hair off my forehead. "I don't know, I'd say I've had better days."

"Stay positive, guys!" said Louis, hearing my pessimistic tone and apparently taking it upon himself to turn my frown upside down. "I got a good feeling about this."

"So much zombie bullshit," I muttered. "Is there anything good over there?"

"Ammo," Bill grunted. He tossed me a few magazines. They landed at my feet. "You kids gonna lay around all day, or are we gonna go get rescued?"

Francis looked at me, then stood up and pulled me to my feet by my hands. "C'mon, Zoey. It's not so bad." I sighed and picked up my magazines, stuffing them into my pockets. I kept the hunting rifle slung over my back, instead choosing my handgun, as it struck me as more manageable.

"How the hell did they all get up here?" Bill asked. I walked over to him and stood next to the other saferoom door, looking through the bars at the mass of zombies milling around outside in the stairwell. "So many..."

I shivered. "They were evacuating people off the roof," I said, remembering the photo I'd seen in the newspaper. "They were infected, and when they turned..." I shivered again, more violently, and was grateful when Francis put a warm hand on my shoulder.

"We'd better get going," he said, cocking his shotgun. Bill kicked the stairwell door open and we emerged, guns blazing. Zombie blood and brains splattered the walls, sending the poor bastards stumbling back or dropping like a bag of potatoes as their brains exploded.

Francis' shotgun blasted them away in wide swaths, clearing the stairs for us. Bill shot ahead of us, picking off zombies with quick stutters of gunfire, while Louis and I covered the rear, mopping up the leftovers with out sidearms. When we cleared the stairwell, we stepped into a long, dark hallway. A construction flood light shone on the far end. "Great," I muttered. "Creepy dark hallway. Excellent."

"Can it, kid," said Bill, flicking his cigarette butt down the hallway. "Let's move. We need to find a way up to the roof."

"Why didn't we just... take the elevator up?" Louis asked. I stared at him, eyebrow raised.

"It stopped at this floor," said Francis. "I guess the shaft is under construction. Let's just go."

I switched my flashlight on and we crept down the hall. Different rooms branched off the halls, and there were zombies milling around inside them. I shone my light into a room on my left and squeezed the trigger to put a bullet in the brain of a zombie in the doorway, then blasted away the other three. The others did the same until we reached what would have been an elevator lobby if construction ever finished.

"Bingo," said Louis. "Look, there's a ladder in the elevator shaft!"

My eyes followed his pointing finger to the yellow ladder. I saw the dark, storming sky through the hole in the ceiling. "Thank God, we're almost there," I said with a sigh of relief.

Bill was already kicking the vent cover through. He yanked the cover off and tossed it aside, then crouched and crawled through. "You're next," Francis said, yanking me by the bicep over to the vent. I didn't bother arguing, only climbed through and let Bill help me up.

"I'll go first," said Bill. "Louis, you're next. I have a feeling there's gonna be trouble."

"Right," said Louis. He followed Bill up the ladder while Louis came through the hole. "C'mon, Zoey," Louis called down to me.

I put my hand on the ladder and pulled myself up. I felt the ladder shake a little as Louis followed me up. We went up to the second platform, where another ladder led up to the roof. I walked over towards the ladder, peering up. Rain splashed down on my face. The rungs were slick with rain, so I moved a little slower behind Louis.

I heard gunfire when I reached the top, and drew my handgun in one hand as I peeked over the top. A hunter had pinned Bill to the roof near the door, but Louis easily dispatched it with a shotgun blast to the face.

"Zoey!"

Francis' shout made me look over my shoulder for him. I lost my footing on the ladder and fell, but saved myself by gripping the ladder tightly. My pistol clattered to the ground and I finally saw that Francis was hanging off the railing, his feet dangling in the abyss. The smoker's tongue was pulling him, and only his white-knuckled grip on the railing separated him from a 30-story fall to certain death.

I dropped to the ground, rolled and snatched up my pistol. "Hold on," I shouted to Francis, squeezing round after round into the smoker. It finally collapsed in a puff of smoke and Francis reached for my hand. I holstered my gun and helped him haul himself over the railing, rolling him onto the ground with my legs under his back.

"You okay?" I asked, breathing heavily as I patted his chest.

Francis looked up at me and chuckled. "I hate smokers," he finally said. "C'mon, Bill's gonna get cranky if we-"

"Quit your goddamn dallying," shouted Bill down the ladder. "Come on, we've got to move!"

Francis pulled himself off me with the railing and helped me up. "Up you go," he murmured, putting his hands on my hips and pushing me lightly up the ladder. I blushed a little and glanced down at him. He had been watching me ascend when he caught my eye, then looked down quickly.

I emerged into the pouring rain; it soaked me within ten seconds. Louis was perched near the edge of the roof. "Where's Bill?" I called over to him. Louis pointed down, then swung off the roof himself. Francis and I walked over to the edge and saw Bill and Louis crossing a crumbling helipad.

"We're saved," I breathed to Francis. "Come on."

"Careful now," said Francis, easily dropping to the platform under the ledge. He reached up for me and I gladly eased off the roof and let him help me to the ledge. We crossed the ramp together and followed Louis and Bill into the air control hut. It had clearly been the last stand of Mercy Hospital, as evidenced by the mess of corpses littered around the place.

"Zoey, get on that radio. Louis, Francis, supplies. I thought I saw some fuel up there," said Bill, pointing at a raised platform outside the window near the radio station. "I'm gonna go see if that big gun works." He pointed at the ceiling of the hut, and I nodded.

The previous operator's corpse was still in the chair in front of the radio, so I didn't bother sitting. I just leaned over the table and pushed the decomposing arm off the table, replacing it with my own as I fiddled with the receiver. Static poured out, punctuated by some other noise I couldn't identify.

Finally I steadied the frequency on the noise and almost shouted with joy when I heard it was a voice. "This is News Chopper 5, come in Mercy Hospital. I thought I saw lights at Mercy. Come in Mercy Hospital!"

I depressed the transmission button. "This is... we're at Mercy Hospital!" I shouted.

"Oh my God," the pilot exclaimed. "Survivors? How many of you are there?"

"There are four of us. Can you help us? Are you still evacuating from Mercy Hospital?" I asked.

There was a static-filled pause, then the pilot answered back. "Yeah. I'm delivering a load of survivors to the safe zone now. I should be able to make it in ten minutes."

"Okay, we'll be here," I said. "Keep us posted."

"News Chopper 5 out."

I emerged from the elevator hut and saw a pile of gasoline containers in the center of the wide lane leading back to the helipad. "Look out," shouted Louis as he tossed another gas can towards the pile. I walked over to the air conditioning unit and climbed up onto the roof where Francis and Louis were working.

"Good news, guys," I called. "A helicopter is going to be here in ten minutes."

"Score," said Louis. "We're almost out of here!"

"Told ya it'd work," said Bill, lighting a cigarette as he walked across a pair of wide pipes connecting the roof we were on to the roof of the radio hut. "Now all we've got to do is-"

At that moment, there was a horrible, bloodcurdling scream. My eyes widened and I said, "What the hell was that?"

"Trouble," Francis said.

"They're comin'!" shouted Louis, pointing to the edge of the larger roof below us. I shuddered violently when I saw a massive crowd of zombies pulling themselves up and onto the roof. "Bill, where?"

Bill was already on the machine gun. The spinning mechanism began and then bullets began to spit out at the zombies. The large-caliber bullets blasted the crowds apart. "We've gotta cover him," said Francis, and we raced across the pipes to the radio hut roof.

"I don't like it," I tossed over my shoulder at Francis over the roar of my handguns as I shot the three zombies rushing out of the stairwell. "We're too exposed!"

"We'll make it work," Francis answered, crouching at the side of the roof and firing at a crowd of zombies that had been trying to crawl up. Louis stood near Bill, using his rifle as both a firearm and a club to keep zombies off Bill.

"Die, you zombie bastards!" Bill roared as his minigun spat hot lead at the zombies, tearing their groups apart. "Die!"

They kept coming and coming and I had to wonder what had attracted them and where they'd been during our fight across the city. Eventually they slowed to a trickle, allowing me to snipe at them in the distance before they got close. The concrete ran red with blood and gore, and I slumped against the air-conditioning unit nearby.

"Are you there?" came the static-filled shout from the radio below.

"The pilot," I said and made my way down the stairwell, Francis in tow. I seized the microphone and jammed down the button. "We're here!"

"I'm on my way," said the pilot. "I was in an ... incident. But it shouldn't be too much longer. I should warn you, the frequency the radio used has a tendency to attract hordes of infected. You should be prepared."

I glanced at Francis and smirked, reloading my rifle. "Thanks for the tip. What's your ETA?"

"Give me five more minutes."

"Done."

I had barely replaced the microphone on the table when the scream of the horde ripped through the air, sending a shiver down my back. "Come on," Francis said, gripping my bicep and hauling me back up the stairs. We arrived in time to see the horde pouring over the edge of the rooftop. The crowed rushed at hut, screaming.

"I really hate these things," I muttered to Francis, raising my rifle. I moved to the pipe connecting the roofs to get a better angle.

"Be careful," Francis called to me, moving to cover the ground below the pipe while I picked off the forerunners. They tumbled and were trampled under the zombies behind them, causing them to stumble. "Good thinking!" Francis shouted.

Bill let out a string of curses and I hesitated long enough to look over at him. The big gun was glowing red-hot at the end and smoking. "Damn thing overheated," Bill said to Louis, slamming the side with his palm. "Looks like we'll have to do this the old fashioned way." He raised his rifle and fired into the crowd.

Without the machine gun's suppressive assistance, the horde advanced faster and harder than before. We were forced to retreat to the high ground on top of the stairwell, Francis helping me scramble up the side of the wall by the hand just as a zombie lunged for my legs. I pulled myself to my feet and dropped by hunting rifle, choosing instead to use my dual handguns to fire into the mob of undead that were crawling up all sides of the building.

"Guys!" Francis shouted over the roar of his shotgun. "I don't think we're gonna make it!"

Louis gave a vicious kick to a zombie that had pulled itself over the edge. His foot tore the brittle bone and flesh apart, and the head went sailing while the body tumbled back into the fray below. "Damn it, Francis, get your shit together," he shouted, aiming his uzi into the crowd and firing in short bursts. "We are gonna make it!"

Bill paused his firing and flicked his cigarette away before resuming. "I'll see peace on earth if I gotta kill every one of these bastards with my bare goddamn hands!" he growled.

A flash of light in my peripheral vision tore my attention to the right. "Guys!" I shouted, the relief evident in my voice. "The chopper's coming!" We were saved! Just as the zombies were beginning to overwhelm our limited ammo supply, the helicopter was here!

"Wait for it to land," Bill shouted. "Then we run, on three."

I kept firing, pausing only to reload, but the supply of zombies seemed endless. While I jammed the last clip home in my pistol, I glanced over to the helipad. The helicopter's lights flashed deliberately. "It's there! On three?"

"One..." Bill said, using his rifle like a golf club to bat a zombie off the roof. "Two... three! Jump and run!"

"What?" I demanded, but Bill was on the move already. He jumped, dropping into a roll on the roof, and came up running. Hell, if that old man could do it, so could I. I jumped off the roof, over the zombies, and landed in a roll. Perhaps I wasn't as slick as the old man, but I managed.

Francis and Louis were right behind me, Francis turning to fire into the pursuing crowd until his ammo went dry. I dropped off the hut's roof, swinging off the pipe to land in a crouch. "Zoey, you got bullets?" shouted Bill as he dropped down next to me. Francis and Louis followed, pursued by a horde that spilled off the roof with no conception for their own safety

"A few," I shouted back. He held out his hand and I tossed him the pistol. He raised it, aimed at the stack of gas cans in the middle of the alley that led up to the radio hut. A moment later, a spark from the bullet had lit the gas, so that the zombies spilling off the roof were spilling directly into the fire. "You are beautiful, talented, and charming," I shouted with a laugh back to Bill, who handed my pistol back.

We were halfway down the canyon formed by outcroppings on the roof when a massive, hulking shape dropped from the taller building to the left, landing with enough force to crack the concrete beneath its feet. "TAAAAAANK!" Louis screamed. But of course we needed no warning...

"We are so screwed," Francis said, smacking his forehead with his hand.

I raised my pistol and fired the remaining five bullets at the tank as it raced at us and screamed a curse when I heard the telltale click of an empty magazine.

Bill said simply: "Run."