Rend, p.25
Rend, page 25
“Just up ahead is where we should be able to find an apartment building. We need to get off the street as soon as possible before we get noticed,” Steve said as his voice echoed across the lonely, open stretch of pavement.
“I see them,” she muttered. Steve was a nice enough guy, but he tended to repeat himself a lot and it was beginning to grate on her nerves. Allyson wasn’t sure if that was because of the traumatic events that he’d lived through for the past six months or if he’d always been that way. As a rule, she tended not to get along with lawyers, so they probably wouldn’t have gotten along too well anyways.
“Hey, Steve, did you ever come to Baltimore before the war?” she whispered, changing the subject.
“Yeah, I made the trip a few times to see the Yankees beat up on the Orioles. Why do you ask?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I was just reminiscing about the old days and trying to remember the name of a bar that we used to go to just outside the stadium. It had a vegetable as a logo, but that’s all I can remember.”
“Oh, you mean Pickles,” Steve stated as he held up his middle finger toward the stadium.
“Yes, that’s it!” she answered.
“I hated that place. Everyone always talked smack to the visiting team’s fans who were just looking for a beer.”
“You guys didn’t do that in New York?”
“Oh yeah we did,” Steve chuckled. “In fact, this one time I was with a couple of the Spanglinis… Man, they beat the crap out of a Rangers fan. Boy, they didn’t take kindly to anyone wearing shirts that weren’t Yankees or Mets.”
Allyson considered her reply and then said, “I always had an amazing time at Pickles. Maybe it was the visitors causing the problems and that’s why you didn’t like the place.”
“Eh, maybe. I didn’t think we were too rowdy though. I mean, the visiting team always has to stoke the fire, right?”
“That’s not how we did it…” she trailed off, no longer interested in the conversation.
They walked in silence to the intersection. Almost directly in front of them was a massive high rise, designed to look like five separate towers, but in reality it was only one.
“What about that one?” Allyson said as she pointed to the first building. Her hips were killing her and blood had soaked completely through the socks that she’d placed over the sores to prevent further chaffing.
He craned his neck skywards in an attempt to see beyond the clinging mist. “Nah, it’s just an office building,” he stated. “There’s not going to be any food or bedrooms in there if we get stuck long-term.”
She nodded and scratched idly at the side of her face where the gentle breeze teased her hair against her skin. She stopped rubbing and stared intently into the mist toward the Inner Harbor. Zombies shuffled toward them from the direction of the tourist area.
“Steve!” she hissed and grabbed his shoulder. He followed her outstretched arm and squinted to make out what she was pointing at.
“Shit, we need to get off the street,” he said… again.
Allyson wanted to shake him for the thousandth time, but ran across the intersection to the office building and pulled on the doors in futility. “It’s locked!” she shouted.
“Keep your voice down!” Steve said softly as he ran over to the same door she stood beside. “They’ll hear you and then we’re screwed.”
A chorus of low moans answered the lawyer from the direction of the Inner Harbor. He peered around the corner and sprinted to a door that was midway down the building and closer to the advancing mass of creatures. He shook the handles, but they were locked as well and the zombies began to cry out in earnest.
Allyson jumped when more moans emanated from the direction that they’d just come from. The ones that followed them from the fort were already here and the first of them had reached the far end of the warehouse. A huge gray figure blocked her line of sight as Steve grabbed her hand, jerking her back around the corner in the direction they’d been traveling.
She ran with him for a few steps and then pulled her hand from his. “You scared the shit out of me! Don’t do that again,” she yelled.
“Sorry, I saw you staring off down the street and thought it would be easier to get you going if I pulled you along.”
They jogged northward for a couple of blocks and Allyson’s right ass cheek was beginning to get sore as well as her bleeding hips. Each step she took made the duffle bag full of pilfered goods swing out and then slam back into her. She slowed in front of an alley and switched the bag from one shoulder to the other.
Her world exploded with a blinding pain to her ribs as a zombie launched itself from the alley and wrapped its arms around her waist. Somehow they both stayed upright as it crushed her ribs in a bear hug and bit into her shoulder. She screamed in pain as the teeth ground the mesh sharksuit into her skin and she slapped uselessly at the creature with her free hand.
Steve appeared in front of her and thrust his curtain rod spear into the side of the zombie’s head. The creature’s falling form pulled Allyson’s shoulder violently when its teeth stayed clenched as Steve’s spear struck home, killing it.
He jerked the blade free of the creature’s skull and wedged it in the zombie’s mouth. With a twist, the blade opened its jaws enough for Allyson to slide her shoulder out and then she unwrapped the cold, dead arms from around her waist. She didn’t even have time to thank the lawyer before he was running and she had to sprint to catch up.
She mimicked Steve’s path and centered herself in the middle of the road to avoid another ambush from the alleyways they passed. After several blocks she began to get winded. She trained constantly and had even ran several full-length marathons, but the added weight of her protective clothing, the injuries to her hips and the duffle bag combined with the sheer terror of nearly being ripped apart had formed a dangerous combination. She knew that the adrenaline that had constantly pumped through her system for the last few minutes would dissipate and then she’d crash. They needed to find some sort of shelter before that happened or else she was done for.
Steve was slowly pulling away and her side ached from the burning pace that he set for their escape. From a quarter of a block behind him, she saw a zombie angling across the street toward her partner. He avoided the badly limping creature easily and continued running. As she got closer she realized that the zombie was dressed just like her and one of its arms dangled uselessly. A few steps closer and she could see that it wore the remnants of a shattered gas mask and the front of the radiation suit it wore was covered in a rust-colored stain.
Allyson was able to sidestep its half-hearted lunge in her direction as well but she recoiled in horror when she recognized Simpson’s face. The man had been in her flight and was one of the ones who’d gone back with her to help the downed helicopter crewmen. When she stepped away from it, she stumbled and fell. Simpson’s zombie was only a second too slow in reaching her as she scrambled back to her feet and ran deeper into the heart of downtown Baltimore.
She jogged for another two blocks and realized that she was all alone so she slowed to a walk to catch her breath and stretch out her aching oblique muscles. Somewhere along the way she’d either become disoriented and took a wrong turn or Steve had ducked into a building without getting her attention. Figures, she screamed in her mind. That crazy jerk is trying to use me as bait to lure the horde away from him so he can be rescued. The apartment building was his idea; I bet he used me so he could escape. That asshole!
Her mind continued to develop harsher scenarios about Steve leaving her for dead and she began to realize how the idea of being alone in the city terrified her. She risked a quick glance back toward the harbor and couldn’t see anything through the fog, but the moans of the zombies were as clear as a bell. They were still coming after her. She looked around at the buildings surrounding her in despair. None of the doors looked particularly better than the next so she rushed over to one of them and tried tugging on it to open it up, but it was locked.
She jogged down to the building’s next door, which was sealed as well. Allyson shook the door in frustration and kicked it with her boot. “Fuck!” she yelled. The goddamned zombies knew that she was here; being quiet wasn’t going to change that.
“Hey!” Steve whispered loudly from around the opposite corner. “There you are. I’ve been looking all over the place for you.”
Relief flooded through her and Steve the Asshole had suddenly become Steve the Savior in her mind. “Oh, thank God!” she cried as she ran across the street and hugged him. “I was so worried that you left me.”
“I wouldn’t do that, I came back for you after I realized you weren’t with me. I found an unlocked apartment building just around the corner. Looks like it has a flat roof, so a helicopter would be able to land up there and take us out of this hellhole.”
Allyson released her grip on him and nodded in agreement. “I just want to get off the street.”
“Okay, come on, it’s right over here,” Steve said right before a cacophony of wails from the undead bounced off the closed-in walls of the buildings around them.
“Shit!” the lawyer whispered as he looked around frantically for a place to go. His gaze rested on a large moving van that sat down the block opposite the direction that they wanted to go, but it was much closer to them than the apartment building. “Hey, it’s unlocked. We can hide inside until they pass us by.”
“Do you think it will work?” she asked.
“Yeah, if we’re quiet and they can’t see us, we’ll be fine.”
They rushed over to the van and climbed into the cab. Allyson knew it wouldn’t help anything if the creatures noticed them, but she reached out and pushed the door lock lever down before she wiggled into the cargo area and lay down next to Steve.
The undead passed by the abandoned vehicle in waves searching for the two humans who had eluded their trap. Allyson cringed and covered her ears to suppress the sound of their moaning.
TEN
19 June, 1423 hrs local
Federal Hill Neighborhood
Baltimore, Maryland
Asher leaned out of the Blackhawk and stared intently at the streets below as the helicopter flew overhead. There were only a few clouds today and the sky was a brilliant shade of blue above the helicopter, helping to dissipate the ever-present mist below. The tops of most houses were clearly visible and the fog was thin enough that he could discern the skeletal remains of bushes around the previously landscaped homes.
The team had crisscrossed the neighborhoods all morning long, starting at the last known location of Allyson and her companion near the edge of Locust Point. The helicopters had recently moved over Federal Hill after Reston decided that they’d traversed Riverside as many times as possible. While they flew overhead, the technicians back at the Emergency Operations Center watched the satellite imagery for any blossoms of heat signatures that would indicate Allyson’s whereabouts.
For the hundredth time, Asher wondered if Allyson was already dead or if they’d moved fast enough to outpace the field of view of the satellite camera thousands of miles above the ruined city. The technicians assured him that they periodically zoomed out far enough to see the entire city, but so far there hadn’t been any hits, which could also simply mean that they’d holed up in a hide location and were waiting for the zombies to thin out around them.
Asher focused on the creatures in the streets below and observed the same thing that he’d seen all day. They appeared to be moving generally toward the west until the helicopter flew overhead. As it buzzed over them, the zombies got agitated and reached uselessly skywards. Then they’d temporarily follow in the direction that the bird headed before turning and heading westward once more.
He contemplated the masses that stretched away as far as he could see before the mist enveloped them. What is their motivation? Do they think like humans with needs and desires? Why do they attack the living if they aren’t eating them? How do they survive if they don’t eat? Or do they eat and we just don’t know what it is? How do they function without any working organs or blood flow? There were so many unanswered questions that the research he’d gotten access to couldn’t answer.
The radio beeped in his ear, pulling him away from his unanswerable questions. He tapped the talk switch and replied, “This is Kes—I mean, this is Hawke.”
“Hawke, its Reston. The satellite just picked up two heat signatures that appeared out of nowhere just north of the inner harbor and then they disappeared again. It looks like they came out of one building and then entered a multi-story apartment complex on the corner of Calvert and Lexington.”
“That’s them. They’re making for a defensible location that may have food. I’ll bet that the roof is flat and a helicopter can land on it, right?”
Reston paused for a moment and Asher imagined him pulling up and zooming in on the satellite imagery. “Yes, your helo will be able to land on the top of the roof.”
“Alright, send the pilots the grid and we’ll head over there,” Asher stated.
“We’re sending it to them now,” Reston replied. “Asher, we keep getting intermittent breaks in that fog and it seems like every zombie in the city is converging on their location. I mean, even ones from the suburbs are moving toward the downtown area. It’s like they’re communicating somehow.”
He thought about it for a moment while he felt the helicopter bank toward the north. “Maybe they have some type of hive mentality like ants or bees. You know, they have a purpose in mind and they do whatever they can to complete their mission.”
“That’s what we’re thinking as well… But if it’s a hive, where’s the queen? Who’s directing these things to go after Harper and her companion?”
The pit of Asher’s stomach turned to ice. What was it that Hank Dawson had said about the original zombies? They were leaders and directed their followers during attacks against the military during the war. He cursed himself silently for not paying more attention to that part, but Hank had been adamant that they’d killed all of the original ones and the secondary infections were all that remained.
His mind raced faster than the Blackhawk that he rode in. Was there an original Pentagon zombie still alive in the city? Did the Bureau know about it if there was? Why would it risk discovery by massing all of the zombies in one location?
He felt like the “why” was just beyond his grasp. If there was an original—a Type One as Hank had called them—then it had successfully stayed hidden for almost six years. Why now?
Suddenly, a hypothesis came to mind: Maybe Allyson had seen it and that’s why it was expending all this effort to go after two people.
His radio crackled on the pilots’ internal frequency. “Okay, Hawke. We’re coming in now. I’m gonna circle the building to ensure that we can land safely for extraction.”
“Understood.” The helicopter began a slow counterclockwise circle around a ten-story white brick building. There was a medium-sized flat section higher up than the rest of the roof and then it dropped down to another level that the helicopter would not have been able to fit on. To Asher, it looked like the bird could make it, but he was prepared to fast rope in if he needed to.
“What do you think?” he asked the pilots.
“We’re gonna try it. Did you see all those zombies down there?”
He looked downward at the mass of zombies below as the pilots continued to circle the target building. They were as thick as a swarm of fire ants down in Georgia and the creatures crawled over one another like ants would in their efforts to reach the building that Allyson had entered. He had no worries that they’d be able to climb as high as the roof, but the damn things had managed to pile themselves up so high that they reached about twelve feet off the ground already.
“We’re going in. We’ll set your team down and then lift off. We’ll continue circling the building and land when we see your smoke.”
“Got it. Thanks, guys.”
The pilots adjusted their flight path and slowly glided downward until the wheels touched. They had to keep enough power to the engines that if the roof proved unstable or insufficient to land on, they could quickly power up and lift the bird to safety so the landing wasn’t nearly as smooth as it usually was with trained pilots.
Asher watched the crew chief intently. When he got the thumbs up he twisted the release on the buckle of his five-point restraining harness and leapt to the roof below. He’d already identified the roof access door when they were circling overhead and he ran toward it. A quick glance over his shoulder revealed that the four men who made up his small rescue team were still with him.
“We’re going down the stairwell,” Asher shouted over the roar of the helicopter engines as the bird lifted skyward. “They’ll be coming up, so we’ll meet in the middle. Make sure you positively identify your targets before you shoot.”
The men nodded that they were ready and he jerked the door outward to reveal a stairwell that stretched downward into darkness and out of sight. The moans of the dead echoed from the gloom and Asher prayed that they weren’t too late.
*****
19 June, 1449 hrs local
114 East Lexington Street
Baltimore, Maryland
Allyson was worried that the creatures in the hallway would find them regardless of where they hid. It was only a matter of time before they began breaking down every door and searching the apartments for their prey. This was the end.
They’d hauled ass over to the apartment building from the van as soon as the mass of zombies searching for them had passed, but the creatures spotted them somehow and the entire group shifted back toward the building that they’d decided to take refuge in. She and Steve had gotten the doors secured, but the sheer weight of numbers soon smashed through the double doors that opened inward to the lobby.
