Eat Your Heart Out, page 18
I shake my head. “Try? Try what?”
“We have to go for the van,” she says.
She says it resolutely. With force. As in, oh yes, of course we should go for the van.
Oh. Hell. No.
Miller says it for me. “Go? For the van? You can’t be serious.”
She stands up. “Trade places with me.”
“No. No way,” Miller says.
But the things hit the door again, leaving him with no choice but to sit in the spot left open by Vivian.
She takes one of the flashlights and walks around the edge of the roof. “There’s a fire escape ladder over here,” she calls from a corner on the opposite side of the building. “We just need to release it.”
“No,” Miller says.
She comes back, swinging the flashlight as she walks, taking a stand in front of us where Miller was a minute before. “What choice do we have?”
“We called the police. They could be on their way.”
Vivian puts her hands on her hips. “We called the Flagstaff police. Even in good driving conditions, town is more than an hour away. How long do you think Rachel can stay out here? How long can any of us?”
“I’ll go,” Miller tells her.
“You have to stay here. Rachel needs you. I’ll go.”
No.
This isn’t right.
No.
“I’ll go,” I tell them.
“You’ll never make it on your own,” Vivian says.
I don’t have time to be insulted. “Neither will you. And if Allie’s theory is correct, I’m going to bite it anyway.”
Vivian snorts. “If her theory is correct, then you’d never make it back with the van. You don’t send a Red Shirt out for help. I’m Action Girl. I should go.”
“This whole thing is a really dumb idea,” Miller inserts.
“It’s not that bad,” Smentkowski says. “The creatures have obviously breached the electric fences, so it’s a straight shot through the woods, back to where we left the van. If we can keep those things interested in us, someone might be able to make a break for it.”
“Whoever goes out there isn’t coming back,” Miller says.
Ever the optimist.
“It’s probably two miles or so,” Smentkowski says.
“It’s at least three,” Miller snaps. “In the snow.”
“They . . . might . . . make it,” Smentkowski stammers.
“Her theory . . . it’s not . . . not correct . . . not a movie . . . real life . . . we’re real,” Rachel says. Her breathing is getting more labored. “We still have our free will.”
This settles it. Rachel is having the baby. We have to give it a try.
“I need to find something to use as a weapon,” Vivian says.
She leaves us there again, moving around the snowy roof, examining the groups of patio furniture. I can’t make out exactly what she’s doing. There are a few grunts. Some twisting metal. Vivian returns with what looks like the circular base of an iron patio chair.
“I’m going.” As I say these words, I realize that they’re true.
That they have to be true.
I don’t know if I’m The Jerk. But the only way I won’t be him, the only way that I can ever face myself in the mirror again, is if I try to do something. Try to help.
I have to say, the way Vivian looked at me when I charged that creature in the lab. The way people are treating me with more respect. That’s what I want. I want to be that guy. But if Allie’s theory is really correct, do I want to be recast as The Courageous Captain?
Can I go down with the ship?
“I’m going,” I say again. With full force.
Vivian waits a second. “If we both go, can you hold the door?”
We’re forming a team.
“It doesn’t matter,” Miller says. “No one is going anywhere.”
Rachel moans.
The couch shakes from the force of another pounding.
After it’s still for a moment, Vivian says, “We’re going.”
We.
Miller isn’t happy, but what can he do? We push another sofa in front of the door and seat Rachel on it. Smentkowski remains on the first couch. “Whatever you’re going to do, you better do it fast. Those things on the other side of the door won’t stay quiet forever.”
Vivian tosses Smentkowski her backpack. “Keep this safe. It’s got all the shipping manifests from downstairs. If we make it out of this alive, we’ll be able to tell the police where those bars were sent.”
He takes the bag and nods.
Miller, Vivian, and I run over to the corner of the roof. I see the ladder. It’s attached to a small metal platform. We’ll need to climb off the roof, drop the ladder, climb down, and run like hell. Run like hell past the electric fence and into the tall trees.
“You need a distraction,” Smentkowski calls.
“Got it,” Miller says.
He doesn’t say what he plans to do, and I don’t ask. I can’t think about too many things or I’ll lose my nerve. I climb out onto the platform. The metal creaks and sways and shakes. A feeling of icy cold washes over me, and I don’t know if it’s the weather or my internal terror.
My father would never do this.
This idea gives me a little bit of warmth.
Miller pumps the last two shells into the shotgun and tries to hand it to me.
I feel incredibly stupid, but I have to tell him. “I don’t know how to use it.”
“I do.” Vivian takes the gun and passes me the chair piece.
It’s heavier than it looks.
I end up with my flashlight in one hand and the piece of iron in the other.
Miller stands next to Vivian, who is about to join me on the platform.
“Some people call you the space cowboy,” she says.
“Some call me the gangster of love,” he answers.
“So we’ve got time for irrelevant hipster song lyrics now?” Smentkowski calls.
I can hear Vivian’s shoes crunch on the rooftop snow.
“Since we’re probably going to die. And also for luck,” she says. She pushes herself up onto her tiptoes and kisses Miller. Right on the mouth. We’re on the roof. Flakes of snow fall onto his blond hair and sparkle in the beam of Vivian’s flashlight. It might be romantic. In another place. Another time.
She lets go of him and steps back.
“Don’t die,” he tells her.
“I won’t.”
Vivian puts one foot onto the platform and then the other.
“Wait until I give you the signal,” Miller says.
She squeezes by me, moving toward the ladder and shining her flashlight all around until it lands on the release hook. For some reason, Vivian whispers. “We both get on the ladder. As soon as Miller gives the signal, I’ll flip the hook. We’ll go down fast. And then we run.”
She climbs onto the ladder as far down as she can go.
I move on as well, taking a position directly above her.
We wait there for a minute.
A few dark, snarling figures swirl around like tornados down below.
I’ve got my fingers wrapped around the cold, slippery metal. Wrapped so tightly. For an instant I picture what it would be like to let go. To fall into the night. To vanish and disappear into the snow.
I wonder if Vivian is having these thoughts.
Up on the roof, Miller is making one hell of a racket.
Vivian takes sharp breaths.
“We’re gonna make it,” I tell her.
“We have to make it,” she says.
I can’t see the monsters down below us anymore.
“Okay. Now!” Miller yells.
It takes a couple of tries, but Vivian is able to pull the ladder hook all the way up.
The instant she does, my stomach does a series of flips like I’m on a roller coaster doing loop-de-loops. We’re plummeting down the side of the brick building.
In a blur. A rush. A whoosh.
Down. Down. Down.
The ladder bows and creaks and bends, and when we’re down halfway, we’re also almost swinging to the side.
I drop my flashlight, but thanks to the side-to-side motion, it doesn’t hit Vivian. It lands without a sound on the blanket of snow. I barely manage to keep hold of the metal wheel.
Down. Down. Down.
Vivian lets go right before the ladder crashes to the ground and is thrown a few feet forward. I hang on till the end. Which is stupid, because the force of the crash tosses me up against the brick wall. The iron chair part hits my ribs hard.
I bounce off the wall a couple more times like a pinball.
I know I have to let go.
Let go of the ladder.
I fall back. Flat on my back. Onto the cold sheet of ice.
I’m lying down. Faceup in the snow. The wind knocked out of me.
Here. Existing. Staring up at the dark hole of the sky.
Trying to focus on the snowflakes as they drift down.
Breathe.
I can’t.
I need to breathe.
Something’s moving around me.
Footsteps in the snow.
Vivian.
“Four!” she screams. “We have to run.”
Then.
Bang.
The shotgun.
We have to run.
SHELDON SMENTKOWSKI
The shotgun fires, sending a thunder echoing into the night. Vivian and Paul have barely been gone two minutes and they’ve already had to use the gun.
Team #SurviveTheZombieApocalypse is down to only one shotgun shell.
Up on the roof, Miller’s plan is working.
A little too well.
I mean, if his plan is to make those things way more interested in us than in Paul and Vivian, then you betcha it’s a massive success.
At first, I didn’t really get it. Miller grabbed a few of the extra towels off Rachel’s lap and took them over to the edge of the roof. In the narrow beam of his flashlight, he started ripping them into strips.
Watching him do it made me think that maybe Brittani is right. That I do need to work out more with the trainer. Miller is tearing through the cotton cloth with ease, like he’s shredding paper.
He’s still got the lighters from earlier, and he breaks them apart. I can smell the rotten cabbage scent of the lighter fluid even where I am. He sprinkles the liquid over the strips of cloth and lights them, dropping the flaming strips one by one. Miller’s not doing much damage, but the monsters down on the ground seem plenty distracted. They hoot and howl and snarl.
Midway through that process, as it’s basically taking everything I’ve got to keep the zombies from crashing through the door, he gets an even better idea.
Rachel kind of pants, “God. Oh. God.”
Miller stalks around, making a terrible racket as he tosses chairs and patio tables off the roof, probably hoping that he might actually hit one of the things and take it out. At one point, he has a whole damn sofa lifted over his head, like he’s Donkey Kong getting ready to toss the next barrel at Mario.
There are no more shots, and from what I can tell, Vivian and Paul have been able to make a run for it.
Everything appears to be going okay.
Except that we’re supposed to be keeping the zombies off the roof until Vivian and Paul get back with the van. But now, instead of coming back to the sofa to help me block the door, Miller goes rogue. He scavenges around, finding what looks like a garden hose. He crosses the rectangular space, which is mostly empty now that he’s tossed all the furniture over the side. There are only a few patio chairs scattered here and there, a lonely table, and the sofas we are using to block the door. Miller takes long awkward steps, looking kind of like a spaceman as he sinks in the snow between his movements. He ends up on the opposite side of the roof.
Opposite from the door we are supposed to be guarding.
I squint at Miller, who is fifty or sixty feet away from me.
As best as I can see, he’s fidgeting with the hose.
“What are you doing?” I call.
He doesn’t answer for a second, but then he yells back, “There’s a metal safety bar surrounding the edge of the roof, and I think we can tie the hose—”
What we should do is use the hose to better secure the door, because those things are punching the hell out of it. But whatever Miller’s idea is, he doesn’t get to finish explaining it.
Rachel cries out and falls over, forming a ball on the sofa.
I don’t know. I don’t know what’s happening.
From down below, Vivian screams, “We have to run.”
I’m beginning to regret not volunteering to be on the expedition that is going into the woods. At the time, it seemed like staying up here was a better idea than going down there with twenty of those things. But now I know.
They can run and we can’t.
We have to run.
That’s what Vivian screamed. And they can.
They can run.
We are stuck up here.
Miller stays where he is and is still messing with the damn hose.
It’s like I can’t quite get a grip on things.
Or figure out what to pay attention to.
And then.
I find something to focus on.
A dark blob. Coming closer and closer and closer.
Moving fast.
I barely have time to duck, and the only reason Rachel’s head isn’t totally knocked off is that she’s lying down, writhing on the couch.
It’s a sofa.
It flies through the air, coming so close that it actually ruffles my fucking hair. It skids across the roof on its side, at first sliding across the snow. As it sinks and makes contact with the roof, the iron drags against the concrete and creates a horrible, bloodcurdling screech. The couch crashes against the brick ledge on the far side of the roof.
Those things.
They threw the iron couch that Miller had just tossed off the side of the building a couple of minutes earlier. From the ground. Up two tall floors of an industrial building. They tossed a fucking couch.
We. Are. Doomed.
I’m cold.
My heart barely feels like it’s beating at all.
Miller is running back toward me and shouting something, and Rachel is crying, and everything and everything.
And too late, too late.
It registers. I get what Miller is saying.
“Smentkowski! They’re coming through!”
They are.
At least one of them is.
I’ve gotten distracted and backed away from the door, and one of the monsters is pushing it open. Hard. With enough force that it hits me in the chest.
My flashlight flies away, another thing that very narrowly misses hitting Rachel in the face, and my lungs deflate like an air mattress with a hole in it.
I can’t breathe, and I can’t see those hands. Those silver-blue iridescent hands.
But I feel them.
They shove me.
I fly back a few feet, crashing into a patio chair, which flips over and catapults me facedown into the snow on the roof.
Rachel screams. Once. And then again.
I turn my head to the side. My flashlight has landed against the sidewall of the roof, extending a beam of light in my direction, like a beacon. And I think about getting up and going for it. I consider jumping off the roof.
I could jump.
I can’t face the possibility of having one of those things on top of me again. Or being ten seconds from having it rip into my jugular. I could jump and the fall would kill me before the zombies could.
Rachel screams again, and I’m reminded why I can’t jump.
Her flashlight shakes as she hobbles away from the door. She shines her light over one of those things. One of the zombies is only a few paces away from her. Snow falls and slides down its smooth skin. It paces toward her with slow deliberation.
I have to help.
If I can.
I force myself up off the ground.
Miller whirs by me, picking up the patio chair near my feet as he goes.
“Get Rachel,” he says.
Get her and do what? I don’t know what the hell he wants me to do, but I guess getting her away from the creature is a good start.
Miller’s running toward the stairs, and he hurls the chair through the open doorway with an astonishing amount of force, and again I wish I were the kind of guy who could bench-press patio furniture.
The monsters let out a series of feral screams. Miller’s chair sends them far enough back into the stairwell that he’s able to get the roof door closed again. So there’s only one of those things up here now.
And Miller’s leaving me to deal with it.
I don’t know what he’s doing.
What the fuck is he doing? What the fuck?
I mean, my logical mind does know. He’s trying to secure the door so that we don’t have twenty zombies up here instead of one.
But still.
He’s leaving me to deal with this one.
I have to deal with it.
“Sheldon. Sheldon,” Rachel calls out.
I take the last of the patio tables left on the roof. It’s small, circular, low to the ground, and almost completely embedded in the snow. Working fast and frantically, I dig it out.
The thing is so close, so close to Rachel.
She’s kind of waving her flashlight around. Like a kid with a lightsaber.
I pick up the table, and it’s heavy. It’s straining every muscle I have to get the solid iron off the ground. My arms burn immediately, but I’m able to lift it.
I take a few steps closer to the creature, close enough that I won’t hit Rachel.
And I throw it. I throw a table.
