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A brisk breeze flutters through the smashed door behind me and carries down the hall. Almost instantly the hunchback female with a serious skin condition is aware of me. She begins the slow shamble down the long hall toward me and I think about waiting for her, making her come to me and maybe even drawing her out into the street before engaging her. But the day is waning, light will be scarce soon and I’m not about to be caught out in the wild after hours.
I move down the hall slowly, checking doors as I go and keeping my eyes on her progress. When my beauty queen with the gray skin sloughing off her bones moans into range, I kneel down and swing out, aiming for her shin. It cracks, breaking the bone and dropping her to the ground. Once she’s down, I quickly kick her over on her side, making her temple more accessible. I could have hit her in the head when she was up, but it wouldn’t have ended her and it would only have either made a mess of her face or been a waste of energy. The top of the human skull, the only section I have clean access to in this tight hallway, is incredibly strong. The temple and the face, not as much.
She grabs at my leg, clawing at the denim and moaning. Her big dead eyes are looking right at me and it’s that more than anything else that gives me chills. How is she looking at me with those things? What does she even see?
“Nothing.” I growl, growing angry at her constant moaning and greedy hands. “You don’t see anything.”
I swing the ASP down hard, making contact with her cheek bone. It explodes in a rush of black and gray. A tooth pops out of her mouth and skitters across the floor behind me. I bring the baton down again, this time closer to her ear and I must catch the temple a little because she stops moving. But I don’t. I keep swinging the baton because I can. Because I want her gone. I want all semblance of a human face to be beaten into the floor and stripped from this body because it’s not real anymore. It’s not human and it shouldn’t look like one. No one should come through here, see her finally, perfectly, wholly dead and think how sad it is.
When my arm grows tired and I’m sufficiently grossed out by the softness of what I’m now beating, I stop. I’m breathing heavy and I’m tired. I’m tired of a lot of things. I need to get upstairs, get my water and get home. I’ll clean myself up and watch a movie, something I haven’t done in a week. Not since Ryan rode the bike. I don’t know why I haven’t, but tonight for some reason I really desperately want to.
I take off at a sprint, ignoring the rest of the doors in the hallway. I don’t have enough time, patience or daylight to mind them all. It’s risky but not as risky as being out at night. This building is only six stories. I’m rounding the corner on the stairs heading up to the fifth floor, breathing deep and even, searching for my calm again, when I trip. I fly forward, my momentum thrusting me up the stairs and onto the fifth floor landing. I watch with horrified interest as my ASP, my greatest, most loyal friend, flies down the hall without me.
“Ah, hell.” I groan.
There’s another groan behind me and I scurry quickly up the last two stairs I’m still sprawled out over. When I spin around to look behind me I want to scream. It’s a crawler. A no leg having, teeth at your toes, scare the bejeezus out of me crawler. I hate these things. I hate them for the very situation that I’m in right now – they come out of nowhere. Taking a zombie down on purpose in order to end them the way I just did, that’s one thing. But Risen like this guy who slither across the earth at your feet like a snake, that’s messed up.
He’s coming for me now, reaching up and pulling himself with that incredible, undeterred by pain zombie strength that he has. He’s on the landing with me before I can think to move and then his hand is on my ankle. I kick at his face with my free foot, making contact with his nose and breaking it violently. It makes a sick, satisfying crunch sound, but it doesn’t stop him. I pull myself backwards, reaching for the ASP with desperate fingers. He’s climbing my leg now. His hand is on my knee, bringing his face level with my foot and I have the terrifying thought that he’ll bite it through the worn material of my te
I finally grip the base of the baton and bring it around, crashing it into his forearm. I repeat the process and he finally lets me go because he has to. The bone is broken. I crabwalk away from him without thinking and end up in a room. It looks like it used to be an office of some kind and I back into a heavy metal desk that refuses to move, to give me room to escape. I’m trapped. And he’s coming, pulling himself into the room after me using his one functioning arm and groaning incessantly.
I quickly lash out with my foot, swinging the heavy wood door closed on his face. He’s too far into the room, though, and I only succeed in slamming it against his skull. It bounces back at me as he continues to groan. Feeling frustrated, angry and scared, I kick again. The door smacks him in the skull, pi
Kick, crunch! Kick, crunch! Kick, crunch!
There’s a heavy crack and I know I’ve gotten my wish. I kick one last time and let the door swing back at me after it makes mushy contact with what’s left of his head. I don’t look at the mess I’ve made. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before but I do want to be able to eat later and actually enjoy it so I stand up slowly on shaking legs and step quickly over what’s left of the guy.
Today, I have emphatically decided, is for suck.
And it’s not over. This day is never ending. I still haven’t scored my water and I just worked up quite a thirst with my leg workout back there. I take a moment to calm down, to breathe easy and remind myself to be careful when what I really want to do is run through this building as fast as I can, get my water from the roof and run back out again. Time efficient, but deadly. So I don’t do it.
Turns out I needn’t have worried. I make it to the roof without further incident but when I arrive, my heart sinks. The door, which I normally keep latched firmly, is thrown wide open. Someone has been here. I pass through the opening slowly, sca
I luck out. There’s only a Risen. She’s wandering around aimlessly on the far side of the roof opposite my rain system. I’m tired and grumpy so I ignore her and her pencil skirt office attire for now. Maybe I won’t have to engage her at all.
I move quickly to my rain barrels which are actually Rubbermaid rectangular storage containers, the kind people used to put holiday decorations in and shove in a dark corner of their garage 90% of the year. Now they sit attached to a series gutters I ripped off the sides of buildings and secured to each other so they run side by side, creating several long lines of water collection that feed down into a pasta strainers I fit in the lid of each tub. They keep leaves and other debris out, including frogs, but I’ll still have to boil it when I get home just to be sure there’s no bacteria. Or I would have to do that, if there were any water in the tubs.
They’ve cleaned me out. Whoever the bastards were, they took my entire water supply from this roof. I throw the lid off each tub even though I can tell from just nudging them with my foot that they’re empty. Every last one of them.
“Dammit!” I shout.
All of that for nothing. The zombie in the hall, the crawler in the door, this one coming at me now here on the roof. All of it. All for nothing. I risked everything and now I’m going home empty handed.