All Our Tomorrows (13 page)

With a burst of strength, I slam the extinguisher against his head, crushing his skull against the metal door and he sinks lifeless to the floor.

Another two blows and the lock breaks.

The door still hasn’t opened, but I can pull the shattered handle away and get at the internal parts of the lock with my fingers. Slowly, with painstaking care, I manage to move the inside bolt and the door swings open.

The dead zombie falls out the door.

More zombies stumble through the store behind me, bumping into clothes racks and shelving. Outside, several zombies converge on the door. They’ve heard the noise and are herding on instinct, closing in on a conflict that can only mean a chance to feed.

I glance around, wanting to get a feel for the alley behind the strip mall. There’s a couple of fixed ladders leading to the roof to allow for maintenance access, but they’re deliberately set out of reach to stop vagrants from climbing up. I need a ladder to reach them.

Keeping my back to the cinderblock wall, I creep away, but Zee growls in the darkness. Zee can either smell, hear or see me. Time to test my theory.

Stepping forward as they converge, I spray a burst of CO2 from the fire extinguisher, giving Zee a good long blast for what feels like a minute. It was probably only ten to fifteen seconds, but I’m sure to spray each of them across the face before ducking away. They continue advancing toward the door, missing me entirely as I scoot further down the alley, taking pains to be quiet. Zee gropes at the door, searching for me.

Noise can’t be avoided. There’s a dumpster. I check for brakes on the roller wheels before giving it a shove and pushing it beneath one of the maintenance ladders. Zee responds immediately, turning and running after me.

I’m learning.

Zee conserves his energy if he thinks there’s an easy meal to be had, but escape his clutches and he takes the hunt to a new level.

Zombies sprint down the alley toward me.

I throw the fire extinguisher on top of the dumpster along with my backpack and climb up, grabbing the ladder and racing to the roof. I don’t want to risk giving Zee the chance to tear at the dumpster and pull it to one side.

Once on top, it’s clear to see I’m not the first one to think of this strategy. Empty tin cans litter one corner of the roof. There’s no one up here, but it looks like there were dozens of people living here for quite some time. Torn camping tents, empty gas canisters, even a rifle and live bullets lie scattered on the rooftop.

The strip mall is one continuous roof connected by small, waist-high brick walls. I feel quite proud of myself. I can’t wait to tell someone how I outsmarted Zee, although outsmarted is a bit of a stretch. Using the fire extinguisher was blind, desperate luck. But I understand the need to stay one step ahead of Zee.

Peering over the edge of the roof, I see dozen of zombies in the alley. I know what David would do. He’d look for supplies. He’d want to look for anything of any use, and then he’d hunker down at one end of the mall roof, planning to depart from the far end in the morning, so that’s exactly what I do.

There’s a few blankets, but what’s left of them is rotten. A torn sleeping bag is waterlogged.

The discarded rifle is useless. From what I can tell in the darkness, there’s been a misfire and the breech has been damaged. The barrel is rusted. It must have been sitting up here for years.

The ammo might as well be spent. It’s 9mm while I’m packing a Glock using 38 rounds. If only this was a movie, everything would fall into place instead of going to shit every time I think I’ve got a break.

Most of the stuff on the roof is junk, but my eye picks out a familiar shape lying beside a vent.

“Hellooooo, Nathan,” I whisper, picking up a dented aluminum baseball bat. The rubber handle has long since perished, crumbling in my fingers, but this will come in handy.

I head down to the roof of the first shop overlooking the intersection, wanting to keep Zee bottled up beneath me at this end of the strip mall.

What the hell did I see out there on the railway bridge? Am I going crazy? Spacemen in the woods?

We’re all crazy in the apocalypse. Crazy became fashionable a long time ago, but astronauts? Who are they? What were they doing? Where did they go? And Zee? Zee was mesmerized, but not just by the astronauts. The eyes. I saw them, staring at me. There was no innocence, no malice, just raw animal instinct, and yet for every zombie that approached me out there, there was at least one that just stood still watching with dark intent. And what the hell happened on the track when we were on horse back? Ferguson was shaken by that. Zee has gone from predictable to volatile.

As I fall asleep, looking up at the donut sign, I hope Steve is alive. I hope he is still out there somewhere. I have to find him. I have to.

Chapter 07: Mall
  

Sunshine has never been more welcome. After a cold, miserable night on the rooftop, punctuated with fleeting bouts of sleep, the sun offers the promise of a beautiful day.

Ferguson had some bread stashed in the side pouch of his bag. It’s not recognizable by any of the standards from before the outbreak, but it’s food. It’s hard, dense, and tasteless, but it sits in my stomach like a rock, giving me the illusion of a full meal. There were raisins in it, I think. Whatever they were, they were small, black and chewy and got stuck in my molars. I pick them out while watching Zee from the rooftop.

My legs dangle over the edge as I sit on the edge of the shopping mall roof. Most of the zombies are ignoring me, but there’s lots of them. The few that look up snarl and grab at the air as though I were no more than a few feet away.

The apocalypse is nothing if not undignified. There’s so little we do today that even remotely echoes life before. Everything’s a struggle, even such mundane daily routines as going to the bathroom.

Bathroom?

A room with a working bath?

Please.

Our toilets at the commune are long drops, pits in the ground that allow us to reuse sewage as fertilizer each spring. Out here in the city, there’s no privacy, no decorum, no dignity.

I find some scraps of newspaper stuffed into one of the vents, probably to keep the smell of corpses from wafting up to the roof, and use that as toilet paper. Actual toilet paper would be quite a find these days. At the commune, we use a shared rag, rinsed between wipes and washed daily. Newspaper is a treat. Oh, that sounds wrong on so many levels, and mentally I add toilet paper to my list of the things we left behind. As far as priorities go, toilet paper ranks above my Xbox, perhaps even above freshly baked muffins. One day, I tell myself as I clean up from the proverbial “number ones” and “number twos,” one day we’ll have toilet paper again.

Plastic bags are perhaps the only thing to survive the zombie apocalypse intact. They get dirty but they’re easy enough to clean and hang out to dry. They don’t break down so they’re really useful. And there’s so many of them. I can’t help but grin at “answering the call of nature” in something as distinctly unnatural as a plastic shopping bag, but there’s a method to my madness.

After pulling up my pants, I sling the plastic bag into the intersection and Zee goes wild. Scent, sound, sight. Scent is so dominant for them, they can’t help but fight over the scraps of soiled newspaper, tearing the plastic bag to shreds. David would be proud. It’s a smart decoy. Well, he’d probably roar with laughter, but he’d like the ingenuity.

I sling the backpack over my shoulders and grab the fire extinguisher along with Nathan, my new best friend and personal baseball bat. A light jog across the rooftops, and I’m moving in the opposite direction to Zee converging on the intersection.

The drop from the ladder at the far end of the strip mall is about eight to ten feet by my reckoning, but I have no choice. I’ve got to take the fall onto the concrete. I dare not backtrack to the dumpster. As soon as I’m down, I’m leaving a scent trail. The less the better. David has made a marauder out of me after all. All the tips he gave us are coming back to me, and they make sense.

Long grass grows out of cracks in the concrete. There’s a strip of grass on the far side of the alley forming a backyard for a workshop. I toss my pack, baseball bat and the fire extinguisher onto the grass to keep the noise to a minimum.

Just don’t sprain your ankle, I think as I drop to the concrete and roll forward, trying to minimize the impact.

“What’s the plan, Haze,” I mumble to myself, picking up my stuff. I’m role playing, trying to make sense of what has only ever been a vague notion—rescue Steve.

“Nimble. Stay on the move,” I say, gripping the baseball bat in my right hand and the fire extinguisher in the left. The tiny meter on the side indicates half-empty. The pie-graph like gauge is 90% red with only a tiny sliver of green close to the full mark, suggesting anything less than completely full is bad. I have no idea what that really means. Is it just a tactic to keep fire extinguishers topped up and ready to go? Or do they lose their effectiveness as the pressure drops? 50% could be useless, unable to produce the big white clouds I saw last night, but I resist the temptation to check. I have no idea when or where I’ll find my next fire extinguisher, but I intend to switch them as often as possible.

“You have to accept he could be dead,” slips from my lips almost involuntarily as I think through what I could face today. “You may never find out what happened to him.”

It’s strange, but I feel as though I’m talking to David and Jane. This is what they’d say. They’d support me in my quest, but they’d want me to be realistic about the odds.

“We need to get more tablets. Without them, all this is pointless. If there’s a chance to find Steve, wonderful, but the tablets have to be the priority.”

Ah, pragmatic reason. Oh, how I hate thee. They’re right. Well, I’m right, mimicking what David and Jane would say if they were here.

“The mall,” I say. “If they’ve taken him anywhere, it’s there.”

The mall is where the mass of zombies were when we raided the veterinarian’s office. That must be where they have their hive.

David and Jane don’t respond. I don’t let them. I’ve made up my mind about what I’m going to do.

I pick up the pace. Rather than walking, I jog but slowly, running only slightly faster than a hurried walk. I’m determined to use a steady speed to my advantage. As I approach the burned out bus, I see the remains of the zombies we killed just a few days ago. There’s not much left, just a few bones and a dark stain on the concrete. Turning toward the mall, the wind blows softly on my face, drawing my scent behind me. Zee will follow, but if I can keep a good pace, I’ll be okay. I know I will. Nothing can stop me. But what is that confidence based on? Nothing other than my good fortune so far. Ferguson probably thought nothing could stop him either.

The hill seems longer and steeper than it did the other day, and I’m breathing hard by the time I reach the car dealership, but I’m in good spirits.

A zombie staggers out of the car dealership, and I put down the fire extinguisher, slipping the pack from my back and readying Nathan for battle, but Zee stands there staring at me. It’s as though he sees right through me.

“Come on,” I say, brandishing my baseball bat like a sword and holding it high. The muscles in my arm are tense, coiled like a spring. “What are you waiting for?”

There’s no answer. Not a growl. No groaning or snarling. Flesh has peeled away from the zombie’s face, revealing his bony jaw and teeth. There’s indifference in his eyes.

I stamp the ground, daring him to approach, but he stands motionless beside a Pontiac with flat tires. I don’t understand. Behind me, down the hill by the bus, zombies wander around but they’re aimless. They’re not following me.

I’m confused. Yesterday, Zee did everything possible to nab me. Today, I’m not sure he even sees me. Another zombie shuffles out of a driveway. His feet kick at the empty shell casings from a couple of days ago. I remember standing where he is now, firing on zombies charging up the hill. He too ignores me.

Am I dreaming?

I creep down the hill, stepping over dead zombies. Occasionally, I glance back and see the zombie by the car dealership. He stands motionless, watching me. Why? I don’t know, and I don’t care. I’ll take any advantage I can to get in, find Steve, and get the hell out of here.

A handful of zombies amble around in the intersection beside the vet’s office. Birds pick at the carnage still piled up in the street. Hundreds of dead bodies lie there rotting in the sun.

The houses lining the hill are old, having been built out of fiber cement weather boards. As decrepit as they appear, they probably looked like this before the apocalypse.

A zombie stands behind a rusting wire fence, watching as I walk past. Is this what happened in the forest? Are they waiting to attack?

Sweat breaks out on my forehead. My white knuckled hands grip the baseball bat and fire extinguisher. I quicken my pace.

As I pass the warehouse at the back of the veterinarian’s office, I see zombies in the office. They stand still, like shadows, ghosts. Their heads turn as I walk by, intently watching my every move, but they don’t come after me either.

“I don’t like this,” I whisper, wanting someone to provide some reassurance, but there’s no response, just the squawk of birds fleeing as I approach the mangled remains of the zombies trapped in the intersection.

The Cadillac we crept down in still sits in the middle of the road with all four doors open. From beneath the car, arms reach out for me. Fingers clutch feebly at the air.

The intersection is deathly quiet.

Zombies stand still in the distance. They’re watching me. There are hundreds of them. What are they waiting for?

My heart pounds in my throat.

I’ve walked into a trap.

There are zombies all around me, all at different distances, but were they to converge, there would be no escape. There’s nowhere to go but to go on.

My boots squish in the bloody mess staining the road as I make my way across the intersection toward the mall. I should grab more tablets. I should get in, get out, and get back to the commune, but something draws me on to the mall. I have to know what happened to Steve. I can’t explain why, but I feel as though he’s close.