Waiting to Die ~ A Zombie Novel (12 page)

“So it’s a canal?” she asks.

“Yeah, pretty much,” he says.
“It takes all the storm water from the mountains and the sewer drains in the
low lying cities and filters it off so they don’t flood.”

“Is it fenced in like that all
the way?”

“I think so,” he replies. “They
kind of have to so people don’t go messing around and get washed away when it
rains. You wouldn’t believe how many people used to do that kind of shit… back
before.”

“Christ, Johnny, that’s our way
out,” she says as her face erupts into a smile.

“It’s almost a block away.” He
shakes his head. “We’d never make it. They’d catch us before we could climb the
fence.”

“Sure we would,” she counters.
“Look there.” She points at the buildings. “All of those apartments are so
close together I bet we could find something on the rooftops to bridge the
gap.”

“How are we going to get out of
this
apartment?”

“We’ll climb that tree, it
touches the other building.” She guides her finger in the air, outlining a lip
on the side of the building. “We could climb up there and we’re on the roof.”

“Do you realize how dangerous
that would be?”

“It’s better than waiting here
to starve to death, isn’t it?”

He stares at her. “You know
about the food problem?”

“How couldn’t I?” she asks.
“Unless you’re hiding it somewhere else, it looks like we have about a couple
of weeks left before we’re screwed.”

“Yeah, I didn’t want to worry
you with it,” he says, ashamed. “I was trying to figure out something else
before then.”

“Have you come up with something
else?” she asks, glancing down at the edge of the roof.

“No,” he answers and looks away
from her.

“Well then, my idea doesn’t
sound so bad, does it?”

Johnny traces a path with his
gaze, calculating each step. “I guess it’s possible,” he says, “but it won’t be
easy.”

“Anything’s better than what we
have here,” she says. “We’ll eat as much food as we can over the next few days
and get our strength up. Then we should be healthy enough to make it. If all
else fails, at least we tried.”

“We won’t be able to take much
with us anyway,” he adds. “That’s going to be a hell of a lot of climbing. I
hope you’re up for it.”

“I’m willing if you are.”

  Johnny draws in a notebook he
found in one of the other apartments, sketching out different plans as he tries
to figure out the best way to initiate their escape.

“We won’t know what we’re in for
until we’ve cleared the next building, but I figure we should be able to use a
ladder I spotted with the binoculars on the roof to get over to the final one,”
he explains. “I’m not sure how we’re going to get into the canal though. It
looks like there’s a block wall surrounding that last complex.”

“Won’t the ladder be awful shaky
if we extend it over to the last set of apartments?”

“Yeah, it will,” he agrees.
“We’re going to have to be extra careful. One slip up and we’re done, you
know?”

April nods as she takes a half
of a peach from the can she’s holding and slurps up the juice. “I’m pretty sure
we’re going to have to be careful whatever we do from here on out. It’s not
like those things are going to give us a break.”

  The sound of thunder rumbles
in the distance. Johnny can feel the vibrations and removes his earplugs to get
a better listen. Static electricity is in the air, making the hairs on his arm
stand on end. He can smell the ozone as the next lightning strike hits,
followed by a deep, ground shaking rumble.

He nudges April’s shoulder and
wakes her.

“What’s going on?” she asks,
groggy from sleep.

“There’s a storm coming,” he
says.

A crash of lightning flashes,
lighting up the bedroom.

“Oh, wow!” April exclaims as she
rises from the bed.

Like a train, the thunder rumbles
a few seconds later, shaking the apartment. Johnny gets up and follows April to
the window.

“Look at that,” he says,
watching the dead. “It’s got them all riled up.”

“They’re afraid of the storm?”
she asks.

“I don’t know, but this might be
our chance,” he says as he watches them scatter away from the fence in the
train yard.

“Right now?!” she asks.

“Right now,” he confirms.

With their packs over their
shoulders, they take to the stairs and out through the back door that leads
into the yard. The first few sprinkles of rain begin to fall as they make their
way through to the back of the property, crouching low as not to be spotted.

The dead howl along after the
thunder as it rumbles low in the clouds. In a wild frenzy, they scream as the
vibrations course through the ground and up their withering legs.

A snap of lightning strikes a
corpse on the street beside the apartments as Johnny pulls April up into the
tree.  “This probably isn’t the safest place to be during a lightning storm,”
he remarks as he watches the corpse shake. Trails of electricity course through
the creature and finally ground out as it shudders from the current. Sparks
filter through the cadaver’s head, popping its eyes from their  sockets.

“Holy shit…” April exclaims.
“That was
way
too close.”

“Too late for second guesses, we
have to go,” Johnny replies, hoisting her foot up between his interlaced
fingers. “Climb!” he shouts.

Once on the branch, April
extends her hand to help Johnny up. He kicks out at the bark of the tree while
he grasps at her wrist, gaining enough traction to pull himself up.

Again, the sky crackles with
light, sending another thunderous boom into the air. Johnny edges April
forward, guiding her higher into the dampening branches after she rubs the pain
from her wrist. Higher up, she slips and he catches her. She smiles back at him
as her heart races.

“A little more,” he instructs.

“I’m going as fast as I can,”
she replies, gripping the next branch.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “I won’t
let you fall.”

She is caught up in his words,
staring down at his outstretched arms. She smiles briefly. “I know,” she
replies.

Directly against the building,
April reaches out to a decorative lip jutting from the brickwork. Even wet, she
can feel that it has grip. She pulls herself up and braces herself against a
window as she stands on the flashing.

“Move along to the edge of the
building, we’re going to have to climb up the gutter,” Johnny shouts over the
rain as it begins to strengthen.

He climbs up next to her and
places his back firmly against the bricks. He looks down and takes a deep
breath as he closes his eyes, trying to purge the height from his mind.

“Okay, now what?” April asks
once she’s next to the rain gutter.

“Use the fasteners around the
gutter and pull yourself up,” he instructs. “You can use them for footholds
too, but don’t try to use the gutter, itself, it’s too wet.”

April begins to ascend the
gutter as the rain pelts her back. She pushes through the pain in her muscles
and hoists herself up onto the roof, falling onto the hard, wet tile once she’s
over. She breathes erratically through fear and exhaustion as she lies, waiting
for Johnny.

His head finally pokes up and he
throws his arms over and pulls himself onto the roof in time to hear another
crack of thunder exploding from behind. Lying still, waiting for his heart to
slow, he looks over to her and says between pants, “Tell me how good of an idea
this was again.”

April laughs and looks into his
eyes in remembrance. She misses how he used to be before life became so
serious. And in a time of peril, it was good to know that, deep down he still
had a sense of humor.

Drenched, Johnny gets to his
feet and scours the roof for the ladder he saw yesterday through the
binoculars. Leaned sideways against the lip of the roof, it glistens from the
rain that soaks its surface. The wood is aged and bleached from the sun, but
looks sturdy enough.

“All right, let’s do this,” he
says as he picks the ladder up and extends it as far as it will go.

Standing it on end, he gently
lowers the ladder to the next building, careful not to let it drop. Once it is
extended out far enough, he drops to the lip of the next roof with a wet slap.
He peers over the side of the building at a half dozen corpses reaching upward
toward him. They wear the same hungry, lustful looks as every other body he’s
seen, but soaked under the backdrop of lightning, they somehow manage to
frighten him that much more.

“That’s great,” he says as the
dead are lit up from behind by another flash. “Whatever you do, don’t fall.”

“Just lovely,” April replies as
she also stares at the hungry faces.

“If it’s any consolation, I
don’t think we’d survive the fall anyway,” he says, forcing a grin.

On her knees, April feigns a
smile and crawls across the ladder, positioning her hands along the outer edge
and using the steps to support her weight. The rain washes her hair into her
face and she’s tries to squint through her poking bangs. At the other side of
the gap, she continues to crawl, afraid of standing until she knows she’s
safely on the roof. When she finally opens her eyes, she realizes that she’s
safe and breathes a sigh of relief.

“Hey, it’s not
that
bad,”
she smiles through her drenched face. “Whatever you do, don’t look down.”

Johnny is already making his way
across when he hears her comment, prompting him to do the exact opposite of
what she suggested and look down. He can see more of the dead converge on the
yard below. His face tightens as he closes his eyes again. “Yeah, thanks for
that,” he says, clenching his teeth.

The ladder begins to creak as he
suddenly stops in the middle. He waits out the noise and continues on once he’s
satisfied that it isn’t breaking in the same way that it is in his imagination.
He says a silent prayer to whatever gods will listen and bridges the remaining
few feet.

Safely on the other side, he
pulls the ladder over and lets it slap against the side of the building before
he pulls it up.

They cross the roof together and
simultaneously peer over the edge.

“Oh, that’s not good,” Johnny
comments.

“No, no it isn’t,” April agrees,
staring down into the canal, filled with rushing water.

At the edge of the canal there
is a small maintenance road that has become nothing more than a muddy trail. A
fence divides the canal from the outer block wall of the building they’re standing
on, leaving a distance of a few feet between the two.

“Maybe leaving in the rain
wasn’t the brightest idea,” Johnny says, pondering their next move.

Debris races by in the canal as
the water surges, creating white caps that plunge the litter down beneath the
cresting rapids. Farther down the maintenance road, April can see movement.
Bodies speckle the roadway, shambling back and forth through the blinding rain.

Squinting, April’s mouth
suddenly goes wide. “If we’re going to go, we’re going to have to go now,” she
says, pointing at the mob.

Lowering the ladder over the
wall and the fence, Johnny says, “You first.”

“Such a gentleman,” April
replies and starts down the ladder.

Quick on her heels, Johnny
scurries down behind her. Through the rainy film, he sees an undistinguishable
mass a few hundred yards away along the maintenance road. He squints and tries
to make out the shape when he realizes it is the same formation he saw on the
first night he was in Mike’s apartment. He is certain of it when the blob of
darkness moans and howls, barking out from different positions along its
surface.

“Let’s get the hell out of
here,” he says, almost pushing her as he trudges up behind her on the road.

They start off in a jog as they
hear the mass behind them, slopping through the mud. They round a corner,
following the canal as the downpour intensifies, obscuring their view. What
little they can see through the rain washes away as they flee, making one
direction blend with the next.

“Exactly how far does this go?”
April asks, raising her voice over the storm.

“About twenty miles to the
coast,” he replies.

“They’re going to follow us all
the way, aren’t they?” she asks.

“Yeah, probably,” Johnny
replies, lowering his head to keep the sting out of his eyes.

April stares at a mass of black
shadows ahead. She looks back and forth at the gathering shapes and tilts her
head slightly as she tries to make out the forms “Hey, what’s that?”

Johnny follows her gaze and
squints through the rain, “I’m not sure. Whatever it is, it’s blocking the
road.”

“Oh shit,” she stammers,
“there’re more of them!”