Rend, p.22
Rend, page 22
A man’s voice from behind startled her, but she was able to recover and use the knotted rope that he threw over the fortifications to haul herself up to safety. He’d quickly ushered her into the building where they now sat. As he was shoving her from behind, the man told her that once you were out of their line of sight, the zombies lost interest quickly and went in search of other things.
The scrape of a lighter’s thumbwheel against the flint preceded the spark of a tiny flame in the semi-darkness. The man who’d rescued her held a candle over the fire and it caught, casting a soft glow across the small area. She saw a quick flash of metal as the man quickly hid an object behind his back. He placed the candle on an upside-down clay pot that sat a few feet from her.
“Were you bitten?” he whispered hoarsely. In spite of herself, Allyson jumped at the sound of his voice drifting from across the room.
“No, I avoided them,” she replied. Feeling emboldened by her statement that she was okay, she asked, “Who are you?”
“My name’s Steve. Are you positive that you weren’t bitten?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. None of them got close enough to me to touch me.”
“Let me see your arms,” Steve ordered. “If you were going to get bitten, that would be the most likely place.”
She held up your hands and he set a knife down near the pot so he could pick up the candle. “Just a precaution, you know?” he muttered as he reached out and grasped her wrist. His hand jerked back like he’d been burned. “Are you wearing armor?”
“It’s a sharksuit. It stops a zombie’s bite. So, besides not being touched by one of them, I’m also positive that I wasn’t bitten because of this suit.”
He giggled to himself a little strangely and said, “That’s amazing. I should have thought of something like that to wear when I go out.”
She tried to see his features, but her eyes hadn’t adjusted to the gloom. “How long have you been here, Steve?”
“In the fort? Oh, let’s see… Wait, what month is it?”
She felt an odd mix of compassion and revulsion at his question. “It’s June, Steve. How long have you been here?”
He sat back heavily onto his rear end and crossed his legs. “That would mean that I’ve been trapped here for more than six months. I tried to keep track early on, but I wasn’t ever really sure what day this whole thing started on anyways.”
“You’ve been living inside The Wall for six months?” she asked incredulously. “How have you survived?”
He held his finger to his mouth and said, “By being quiet! Those things are attracted to sound. The less you make, the less interesting you are.”
“That must be why they made a beeline for the crash site.”
Steve nodded but then looked quickly to the side as if he’d heard something. “Probably. But that doesn’t explain why there were so many of them out there. Usually there’s only a handful at a time, there must have been hundreds already outside… Wait. Give me a second to think.”
Allyson flinched again as he stood up and began pacing and talking to himself. The poor man’s obviously suffering from some type of mental imbalance, she thought. I’m sure I would be too if I’d been trapped in here as long as he had.
She glanced up when he stopped suddenly. “That must be it,” he mumbled and then crouched down beside her. “Listen, I understand that I’ve developed some idiosyncrasies and I can tell that it’s weirding you out a little bit. I get it. But over the past few months, these things outside have been like, testing me in different types of situations to see what I’d do or how I’d react—”
“What are you talking about?” she interrupted him.
“I’m trying to get there, give me a minute. They’d set little traps along routes that I take to go get food and there have been several times where they could have killed me, but the zombies backed off and came back at me the next time that I was out.
“I know; crazy right?” he continued as he twirled a finger around his ear. “Anyways, the traps have gotten harder each time. Oh, and there’s definitely some kind of strange creature—what the hell am I talking about—more strange than the other zombies. I’ve seen it watching the testing a few times like it was directing them somehow.”
She held up her hands to calm him down and said, “Wait, what did this other creature that you think you saw look like?” A feeling of dread was beginning to settle into her stomach as she thought about the implications of what the creature that Steve had seen was.
“It’s hard to explain. Have you ever seen how crayons or a candle will get soft in a hot car and then the entire thing will sag without completely melting? That’s what this thing looks like… I think. It’s always hard to see in here, some days are better than others, but he’s also this strange tan color, like old leather that hasn’t been stained yet.”
“I think I know what you’re talking about. We got a briefing about those things, but we thought that they were all dead,” she stated.
“So I’m not crazy? Are those things smart?”
The security classification of the briefing with Hank and Grayson was Top Secret, but this guy had seen one of the Type Ones and had already experienced that it was trying to learn from him. Plus, he was her only hope of getting help right now. “Yeah, they’re smart. They can do things that the other zombies can’t, they’re like ringleaders and the regular zombies do what they say.”
“I knew it,” Steve whispered with a fist pump into the air.
“Steve… Steve! You were going to say something about why there were so many of them out there,” she said in an effort to reprioritize his fractured mind.
“Oh yeah! I think they may be getting ready to test how I react to a siege, or even a full-on assault of the fort. Their tests have become increasingly more difficult. Sometimes they trap me or confront me with overwhelming odds to see what I’ll do…”
He trailed off and seemed to become lost for a moment before remembering that he was taking part in a conversation. Steve shook his head slightly and then said, “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. It makes sense that they want to learn how to breach a barricade if they’re planning on escaping from the city.”
“What?” she said out loud and then put her hand to her mouth. “You think that they’re trying to get out?”
“Sure, why else would they be trying to learn so much about how a human reacts to situations,” he answered nonchalantly as he stood up and began walking again.
Obviously, Steve had gotten used to the idea of the zombies escaping from captivity, but it was something that she was just learning about. Not even a week ago, she’d listened to Reston present his white paper to the director and a few key individuals from both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees. His assessment was that it would be like shooting fish in a barrel and everyone agreed with him. Preparations were already being made to begin killing the creatures along the perimeter and an offensive inside The Wall was set to begin in the fall.
“What do you think is gonna happen? Can the walls hold them?” she asked.
“Hmmm? Oh sure, the walls will hold. The gates are what we need to be worried about. That’s how they’ll get out.”
Allyson was confused if he was talking about The Wall or the fort’s wall, but either way it was bad—the severity of the damage was the big unknown. If the gates of the fort collapsed, they’d die; if it were the gates in The Wall, millions of people might die.
“Hey, I had a mask with me when I came in here,” she said. “It has a radio in it. Where is it?”
He stopped pacing and replied, “No, I didn’t take it.”
She cocked her head in an effort to figure out what he was talking about, and then asked again, “Steve, did you take my mask? It’s important. We can get out of here if I can talk to someone on the radio.”
He shook his head and then said, “Okay, fine. It fell when you ran in here. I thought that you didn’t want it anymore.”
Well, fuck. This is going to be a challenge, her inner voice told her. Allyson didn’t know what he was like before being trapped in here, but he was definitely on his way to a padded room now. “Steve, I accidentally dropped the mask. We need it so we can call for help.”
The man stomped off into the darkness and returned carrying her mask. He dropped it into her lap like a petulant child and chunks of her vomit splattered out of the mouth cup onto her face. She gagged and Steve watched her idly for a moment before walking a few feet away to talk privately to himself.
Allyson wiped her cheek off with the sleeve of her radiation suit and turned the mask over to dump out the remaining contents onto the floor. She banged it lightly on the floor to remove any excess vomit, but stopped when Steve hissed, “Shhh!”
“Okay, geez,” she muttered and brought the mask up to her face. It smelled awful, but there was a noise, barely audible, coming from inside. Someone’s talking on the radio! She twisted the mask around in an effort to expose the ear bud and microphone, but they were imbedded into the mask so they didn’t interfere with the wearer’s normal movements. She held the mask up to the side of her head and could hear someone talking, but couldn’t make out what they were saying.
Allyson grimaced and settled the mask against her face before she fit the ear bud into place. She tried to imagine that she was getting a facial at the spa as her chin ground against the chunks of her oatmeal, but it didn’t help. She knew that she had her face pressed up against a layer of vomit.
The voice on the radio came on and then went away again. Allyson forced her mind to forget about the shit in her mask and listen to what the person said. A few seconds later the voice returned.
“Allyson Harper, we know that you’re alive, we won’t give up on you.”
She pushed the talk switch that activated the microphone and answered, “Yes! This is Allyson. I’m inside Fort McHenry!”
The radio emitted a short burst of static and the voice on the other end said, “Allyson, was that you? I can’t understand what you said. Can you say again where you’re at?”
“I’m inside Fort McHenry,” she whispered louder into the radio.
“I still can’t understand you. Are you alright? We’re trying to organize a rescue now. Stay where you are and we’ll find you.”
“Goddamn it, I’m inside Fort McHenry!” she said loudly into the mask.
“Shhh! They’ll hear you and come back!” Steve hissed at her.
“—Fort McHenry, is that correct?” the radio voice said.
She glared at Steve since he’d made her miss the first part of the transmission and replied, “Yes, we’re inside the fort.”
“Okay, sit tight. We’re scrambling a crew now to come and get you. We’ll broadcast every ten minutes to let you know the update.”
“Thank you!” she rejoiced. “We’ll be here wa—” The sound of bending metal cut her off.
“They’ve broken in the gates!” Steve screeched and ran from one side of the room to the other in a panic.
Allyson stood up and rushed over to block his path. “Steve, listen. They’re coming to rescue us. We need to get to the roof or to the walls or whatever.”
“We can’t! The only way to the stairway was through the courtyard and it’s teeming with zombies now. We’re doomed. Oh God, why’d I have to go and help you out? I could have stayed nice and safe here in my castle.”
She didn’t hesitate for a second as she reached out and slapped him as hard as she could across the face in an effort to bring him back from the edge. The sharksuit’s mesh gloves added a little weight to the hit and probably made the guy see stars. “Snap out of it, Steve. We have a future and we’re going to survive. Is there a secondary exit? Like a way to escape that they don’t know about?”
He held the side of his face and nodded his head. “Yeah, there’s a way out, but we have to go out into the courtyard to get to it.”
“How far away is it?” she asked as she grasped at any sliver of hope that he could offer her.
“It’s about two hundred feet away,” Steve said as he cocked his head to the side to listen. “They’re coming.”
“We need to go. Now!” Allyson whispered.
“Oh, they’ll just go away again like they always do. I failed their little test this time,” he replied.
Allyson noticed the personality shift once again and stated, “Steve, this isn’t a test. They murdered seven good people outside of these walls. They’re out for blood. Even if they do have some super-zombie controlling them, he won’t be able to stop what I saw happening all around me.”
Despite the gloom she could see the blood drain out of Steve’s face as he internalized what she said. “Maybe you’re right. We need to go!”
Geezus! her mind screamed. “Yes, Steve, we need to go!”
He nodded and went to the corner to retrieve an old backpack. Then he crammed a few bottles of water and a couple cans of food into it and zipped it closed while he walked across the floor and peeked through a small hole that he’d obviously drilled with a knife during his captivity. Steve whimpered like a struck child and turned back toward Allyson. “He’s here. The boss zombie.”
She got up and gently pushed him out of the way so she could see what he was talking about. She had to stand on her toes to get a good view out of the higher-than-normal peephole, but through the mist she saw the creature in the center of the courtyard. It looked just like Steve had described it and even at this distance she could feel the evil emanating from it. The damn thing was gesturing toward various places in the fort and groups of zombies shuffled off in the direction that it had indicated.
She’d seen enough. “It’s searching the entire fort. We need to get out of here.”
“Let’s go. I have a back way that is hidden from the view of the courtyard,” he said with confidence.
She followed his retreating form to a pile of trash in the corner. Steve squatted and pushed the pile to the side. His body blocked his movements, but his shoulders hunched up and down like he was jerking off. What the fuck is this crazy asshole doing now? she asked herself. Out loud she said, “Steve, we’re going to get trapped in here. We need to go outside.”
“We are,” he said and turned sideways. A square black hole in the floor indicated some type of passageway and he was pulling a rope that stretched away into the darkness below.
She crept closer and could hear a slight squeaking sound from far below. “It’s a pulley,” she muttered in amazement.
“Yeah, it’s some type of dumbwaiter that goes down to a room in the basement. No idea what it was originally used for though because now the room is just full of boxes and shipping crates full of pamphlets and shit like that for some big celebration that didn’t take place because of the war.”
The door leading to the courtyard shuddered as something hard impacted against it and the strange moans that the creatures made filled the small room. “Will that thing hold both of us?” she asked.
“I don’t know, it holds my weight okay. Alright, let’s go,” Steve said as he slipped off the ledge into the hole. His fall stopped about three feet down as he landed on the dumbwaiter’s platform and he waved her into the hole with him.
The door shook again and the crack of wood splintering motivated her to jump into the darkness. Steve hauled the rope in the opposite direction and the platform began to lower. “Pull some of the garbage back around the hole and slide the grate into place,” he ordered while he held the rope in an effort to keep the entire thing from crashing downward.
She did as directed and piled up the boxes and clothing that had been concealing the hole previously, and then she fit the metal grate into place. Steve breathed a sigh of relief and began feeding the rope hand over hand as the platform lowered deeper underground.
The shaft ran vertically for a good twenty feet and finally the platform landed on the storage room floor with a loud clang of metal on concrete. “Whoops,” Steve breathed heavily. He flicked his lighter and held it over his head to get his bearings. “Come on, it’s this way to the tunnel.”
“Tunnel?” Allyson asked skeptically.
“Yeah, there’s an old sewage drain tunnel that will get us out of the fort and near the southern edge of the park grounds,” Steve answered. “We can escape into the city that way.”
A large shipping container caught Allyson’s eye and she asked Steve if she could borrow his lighter. She worked the thumbwheel until it sparked and then she held it close to the container to read what it said. In large block letters, the words “STAR-SPANGLED BANNER” were stenciled into the wood with black paint.
“Son of a bitch, it’s here,” she muttered.
“What’s here?” her new companion asked.
“This shipping crate is the reason that we came here. We were sent in to recover the flag. It’s the original flag that flew over the fort when the National Anthem was written.”
Steve seemed to consider it for a moment and then placed a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry, um… I never even got your name.”
“I’m sorry, it’s Allyson. Allyson Harper,” she said as she stuck out her hand.
He took her extended hand and gently shook it. Moans of the dead echoed down from the dumbwaiter shaft. “Let’s get going. It won’t take them long to find the main entrance down here,” the practical version of Steve’s personality said. “Like I was going to say, you know it’s here now and that it’s not going anywhere. Now we just need to get rescued and you can come back here in the future to get the damn thing if you still think it’s worth all the loss of life.”
She nodded her head and followed Steve toward the outer wall. Allyson stopped short and whispered, “Fuck!”
“What’s wrong?” Steve asked in concern.
“When I went to the door to look out the peephole I set my mask down. I left it upstairs.”
“Nothing we can do about it now. We need to get going.”
“That was our only means of communication to the outside.”
“We’ll have to hit up a Radio Shack or something and see what we can do.”
