The Dark Knight (Apocalypse Weird 2) (5 page)

“I need to get that aid station up and running today,” said
Ash, standing up from the couch with a yawn.  “And if I do, we need to make a
run to the hospital or a nearby pharmacy.  We have to have supplies in place
before we actually need them.”

“Okay.  We’ll get you moved in.  I found a place up the
street, near the middle of the complex that’s empty.  We can set up a surgery
center downstairs in the living room, use the kitchen to clean up, and there’s
a downstairs bedroom for any patients I hope you never have.  You can live
upstairs, we’ll get a bed and some furniture out of one of the other places,
okay?”

“Okay,” said Ash.  “But what about the supply run?”

“The nearest hospital is down by the Five.   I don’t like
it.  It was bad down there when I tried to run for it.  There’s a pharmacy at
the Target and another one, a Rite Aid or something, nearby.  We can check
those out.”

“Those are all stopgaps.  If I ever need to do surgery
again, I’m going to need some pretty heavy duty tranqs and antibiotics.  A
hospital might be the only place.”

Frank moved to the door, shooting an, “Okay, we’ll make a
plan tomorrow,” over his shoulder as he left.

He met Candace halfway up the street.  Her place was near
Holiday’s.  She was standing by a parked car, her face tilted toward the rising
sun.

“Good night’s rest?” asked Frank.

“Some, not enough.”  She fell in beside Frank as he walked
up the street toward the front entrance.  When they arrived at the “Gate”,
Ritter stepped from his house, pulling on a black t-shirt.

“Where’s the coffee?  My place ain’t got none,” he whined.

“Then you’ll probably want to grab some next time we make a
run up to the Market Faire,” said Frank.

Ritter moaned. 

Beyond the Front Gate, Holiday stood next to a modified
flatbed truck carrying a medium sized cargo container.  STAX was written on the
side of the cargo container and below that, the motto, “Your secure total
relocation system”.  Behind the flatbed was a heavy duty and very odd-shaped
forklift with two overly long loading arms and a tall elevator which traversed
skyward making the forklift seem stoop-shouldered.

Frank, Ritter, and Candace stood in front of Holiday.

“We can build a wall out of these,” exclaimed Holiday.  “I
found a rental yard where there are hundreds of them.”

Silence.

Ritter and Candace walked forward toward the truck and
forklift.

“And just when did you find this... this stuff?” growled
Frank suddenly.

Everyone turned.

“Last night,” said Holiday.

“After we went to sleep you just let yourself out and went
traipsing around.”

“I locked the gate behind me... and I can do whatever I
want.  We’re not prisoners.”

“Well, I’m glad about that.  This time you locked the gate. 
Good job, kid.  But what if you’d gotten into trouble out there?”

No one said anything.

Frank continued.  “What if you’d gotten into trouble out
there and none of us knew about it?”

“Then, worst case scenario, I’d be dead.  End of problem,”
replied Holiday evenly.

“No, that isn’t the worst case scenario, kid.  The worst
case is, wounded, you might have dragged a bunch of them back here and
surprised us all.  Maybe even died trying to get through the gate and then we
wake up and they’re inside again because of your selfishness!  Or maybe you
could have even gotten bit and decided not to tell anyone about it ‘cause
you’re that kinda guy.”

“Selfishness,” Holiday said flatly.  “I did this for you. 
For all of you!”

Frank snorted.  “You don’t do anything for anyone but
yourself.”

Holiday thought of Ash.  Thought of holding her hand again
and their moment at the pool.  The angry look Frank shot at Holiday told him
Frank knew exactly what he was thinking.  Knew why Holiday really did it, even
if Holiday didn’t know himself.  Or didn’t want to admit it.

“C’mon, Frank,” said Candace.  “It’s actually a pretty good
idea.”

Frank glared at them all.  Then, “It is.  I wish I’d thought
of it.  Because if I had... I’d have waited and worked as a team to get it done
rather than trying to grandstand and play the hero, jeopardizing all of our
lives in the process.”

Holiday walked forward.

“Frank, I’m sorry.  I didn’t think of it like that, I...”

“You didn’t think, kid.  That’s your number one problem!”
said Frank, landing a thick finger right in the center of Holiday’s chest.

Holiday swallowed.  Lowered his head and tried again. 

“You’re right about that.”  He took a breath.  “But can you
let go of that, Frank, and see that this might actually work for us?”

When he looked up, Frank was staring into his eyes.  The
warmth, the teamwork, the friendship that had been there during those first few
days when it had just been the two of them, fighting off that fire, all that
was gone now.

And Holiday missed it.  He’d really liked Frank. 

“Alright, kid,” growled Frank.  “Tell us how you figured
this one out.”

Holiday had gone to the construction
equipment rental yard in the night.  He’d crossed quiet streets where another
car might never again drive.  He’d steered clear of the two neighborhoods he
passed.  The one where he’d first seen Ash running for her life and the other
they’d fled into and barely escaped from the dead end cul-de-sac.  At the
entrances to each neighborhood, he watched the quiet streets within and the
tall, dark houses that lay along them.  There was no one, no living thing or
zombie there.

There might never be again.

And yet it did not feel empty in its seeming lack of life. 
Holiday knew unthinking eyes could be watching him from inside those houses. 
Forever trapped, forever watching.  He knew that kind of horror was possible
now.

He continued down the little side street to the bottom of
the road that ran smack into the three story multi-building apartment complex. 
“Vista Del Sol” its floodlit entrance proclaimed in the stillness of the
night.  Through an arch with a high bell tower rising above, he could see a
courtyard beyond and the remains of bodies lying on the cobblestones there.

It reminded him of some lost desert city in the ancient
Middle East after a battle.  An empty city that refused to yield to siege and
now, as the invaders plundered its further reaches, here along its quiet
initial porticos and first streets, one found only the dead.

Why? He asked himself.  Why would I think of such an image? 
I’ve never been to war, much less the Middle East.

But the knowledge of such images remained in him and he
could not let them go.

Then a realization came on the heels of those images. A
stark truth.  He knew the shapeless, once-living humans now corpses, would in
time, turn to bones and bleach in the thousand suns that followed.  He heard
himself whisper, “Why?”

And there was no answer in the silence of the night.

He turned due west and followed the street under an
overpass.  The wide and spreading toll road above.  Approaching the overpass
made him feel that any moment they, the zombies, would come after him out of
the shadows.  Up from the weeds and unkempt nature preserve along the sides of
the road, out of the shadows under the bridge where the abutment met the toll
road above.  As though they had been waiting for him all along.  Keeping some
promise only they understood from the last time he’d escaped them.

I need to bring weapons every time I leave, he thought.  But
he’d been so angry when he left Frank’s garage that he’d been blinded by his
determination to prove himself.  He’d left the Guy Fieri flame-handled knife in
the kitchen at home.

He crossed the shadowy darkness underneath the overpass and
emerged into moonlight on the other side.  He turned right at a small street
and found the equipment rental yard along its length.  The place consisted of a
medium-sized concrete warehouse painted Navajo white, now resembling a large
tombstone in the faint moonlight, fronted by dark tinted windows and a small
entryway.

Most likely the rental office, thought Holiday as he
surveyed the place from the road.  Up the driveway, beyond the warehouse, lay a
gate and a darkened guard shack.

He tried the entryway door.  It was locked.  Waiting, he
listened for any sounds coming from within the warehouse.  He listened for the
sandy scrape of dragging footsteps.  Or a low, husky groan.  A thump, even.  He
heard nothing and moved on to the gate. 

Beyond its diamond-shaped mesh he could see yellow tractors
and backhoes, bulbous cement mixers and gawky cranes.  Cargo vans and bucket
lifts were parked over in another section.  There were other pieces of
equipment but he was unsure what purpose they might serve.  He heard a loud
thump
and then a brief groan.  Turning back to the guard shack, he saw a man wearing
a uniform slapping weakly at the glass from inside.

It was one of them.

The guard bumped himself into the glass again as he
mindlessly beckoned to Holiday.  And again.  Blood and grease and drool left
ghostly ink blot images on the smudgy plastic window.

Holiday climbed the gate-fence as it shifted under his
weight.  At the top, he hauled himself over and dropped to the other side. 
Crouching, he waited.

“Why didn’t you take out the guard?” he asked himself.  He
had no answer and that was when the voice, the grizzled hectoring bark he’d
heard inside his head back in the alleyway when he’d rescued Ritter, Candace,
Dante and Skully, spoke up. 

“Never leave an enemy behind you, maggot.”

He waited. 

If they come, if they’ve been watching me, if those things
can somehow communicate with each other, they’ll come now and I’ll get back
over this fence before I’m surrounded.

If you blow this...

“Be quiet,” he told himself. 

He thought instead of how Frank might treat him if he could
figure out a way to keep everyone safe.  On the other hand, his relationship
with everyone... Ash included... would be beyond repair if he somehow failed
tonight. 

Better to do this or die trying, he thought.

But Holiday still didn’t have any idea, any firm idea, what
he was doing out here in the dark and the quiet of night.  He knew a piece of
construction equipment would help matters, but he couldn’t think of anything
other than Dante’s idea to “dig a trench”.  He had no idea how any of the
machines or vehicles here could make the walls more secure. Or even create
walls.

He walked toward the backhoes, selected the biggest one and
climbed in.  There weren’t that many controls and most were labeled.  Trial and
error wouldn’t take too long to figure it out.  There was an ignition keyhole
but no key.  He climbed down onto the bone white concrete apron.  The moon was
high in the night sky now, turning everything around it a powder shade of blue.

Just after midnight, guessed Holiday. 

He wandered the enclosed yard.  There weren’t any of them
here, he noted regarding the zombies.  Every so often he could hear the
security guard bumping into the see-through plastic of his booth back on the
other side of the gate-fence.  But the bumps were sporadic and becoming less
vigorous.  Occasionally, when Holiday happened to come into view of the booth as
he searched back and forth across the rental yard, then, the plastic window in
the guard booth would again begin to shudder violently.

He searched through the heavy equipment for another hour,
making a mental inventory of all the machines they might use.  None of them had
keys and many were locked by massive chains and padlocks anchored to the
concrete.  Holiday knew he’d need to go into the dark rental offices of the
warehouse to find the keys.

Probably near the front door, near a rental desk of some sort,
he reasoned.

He would need the guard’s keys to open the rental office.

Leaning against the back of the building, he found a thin
pole about half his height.  It had a triangular handle on one end and a “u”
shape on the other.  It was a tool of some sort, but it seemed far too flimsy
for any kind of actual repair work.

It’ll have to do, thought Holiday, taking it and climbing
back over the fence.  The dead security guard within became even more agitated
as Holiday approached the small rectangular shack.  The door was on the far
side, away from the entry drive.  The guard was a shadow leaving smudgy blood
and gore along the plastic windows like some very disturbed child’s finger
painting.  On the other side of the shack, Holiday noticed a piece of paper stuck
to the door.  It fluttered as a small night breeze came up out of the nearby
woods and passed along the surface of the door to the shack.

Holiday cautiously approached and then snatched the paper
from the door just as the guard flung himself weakly into it again with a heavy
thump
that caused him to fall to the floor of the shack.  Holiday read
the note.

“
I didn’t have nothing to kill myself with. Gomes and
Ramirez are inside the building.  I locked ‘em in there.  Gomes bit me hard.  I
want to see Rose again.  If you got a gun please kill me.  –Paul”

The moon was falling through billowing bluish clouds into
the western night.  Along distant hills Holiday could see long lines of waving
grass illuminated in the pale moonlight.  Buildings and trees, closer at hand,
were now mere dark silhouettes.

The guard thumped at the window, leaning heavily into it
this time.

I want to see Rose, again.

Holiday put one hand on the door latch, leaning away, ready
to back up the instant it opened.  The other hand held the tool above his
head.  He’d bring it down on the guard’s head the moment he... it, stumbled
out.

Paul.

Paul.

Maybe that’s all it’ll take, thought Holiday and looked off
toward the moonlit sky and nightscape one last time.

He saw shipping containers stacked up, almost three stories
high, beyond the fence at the far end of the property.  They were like building
blocks, thought Holiday.  Like a giant child’s building blocks left out after
dark.  And that’s when Holiday knew what they’d do for a wall.  He dropped the
u-shaped pole right there, climbed the fence and went to the back of the
property.  He climbed that fence and lowered himself to the other side after a
brief scan of the massive yard below.

The place was full of shipping containers.  They were smaller
than the kind one might see on the back of a semi or a train.  But they were
made of metal.  He heard a low
gong
when he tapped one.  Lightly. 
Quietly.  He walked between dark alleys of containers and out into the open. 
All around the yard he could see hundreds of containers stacked one atop
another.  Some stacks reached almost three stories, or at least well above the
two story office that guarded the yard.  There were three trucks, flatbeds that
seemed made for hauling the cargo containers.  Then he spotted two of the
special forklifts.

After that, it was a matter of finding the employees’
handbook in one of the cabs of the trucks that explained how the whole
operation worked.

The forklifts moved the containers.  Diagrams showed how
they could be positioned and stacked, interlocking with one another, and what
to be concerned about when doing so.  There was a list of clearly unsafe
practices to be avoided. 

The moon had disappeared behind the western horizon when he
started reading how to load the containers onto the flatbeds.  The flatbeds
were much like tow trucks in that they had a winch and track system to drag the
containers up and onto the bed of the truck for transport.

Later, as it turned dark without the moon’s ambient light,
in the predawn cold, Holiday unlocked the cab of a truck and switched on a
powerful Mag-Lite he’d found behind the seat.  He tucked the handbook into his
back pocket and selected a container that was stacked on top of another
container.  He started the electric forklift and moved it into position.  The
forks whined as he raised and toggled them into the ports beneath the
container.  When he was sure he had them aligned, he moved forward and was
rewarded with an awful metal
clang
.  One of the forks hadn’t been
centered.  He reversed, made a few adjustments to the forks and tried again. 
This time he got it.  He locked the forks, almost forgetting to, and reversed
away from the stack.  The container followed, to Holiday’s amazement.

Once he had the container positioned, he tried to lower it
onto the pavement with as little sound as possible, but it still made a dull,
empty
gong
that seemed to echo throughout the yard as it settled onto
the concrete pavement.

While I’m doing this, thought Holiday to himself, I’ll need
someone to watch my back.  I’ll be too busy with this operation to keep an eye
out in case any of those things show up.

He got out and shined his Mag-Lite into the stacks of cargo
containers.  When he found nothing there, nothing moving toward him with a
stumbling, wobbling, side to side gait, he went on to the second part of the
operation.  Pulling out the handbook once more, he read by the light of the
flatbed’s interior cab how to load the container onto the flatbed. An hour
later, he had the whole system roughly worked out and one container loaded and
ready as the truck idled in the early morning dark.

Dawn was not far off.

Morning dew was beginning to condense on the windshield as
Holiday turned up the heat in the cab to fight off the chill of the long
night.  He sat there for a few moments, facing the front gate, which wasn’t
locked.  A pole slotted into a hole in the cement held it in place.  He
expected to see them come out of the darkness and into the high beams, then
throw themselves against the gate, reaching gray arms through the thin wooden
slates at him.

What will you do then, he asked himself.  Drag them back to
Frank and the others?

I can run them over with this truck.

Really?  Think about that, he told himself.  Think about
what that’s really like and if it’s as easy as it sounds when you don’t
actually have to do it.  However easy it sounds, I guarantee you, it won’t be
that easy to do.  Or to live with, for that matter.

We should keep one of the forklifts back at the Vineyards,
he thought, preferring planning to the darkness of his imagination.

The “castle”, he joked to himself as the cab inside the
flatbed began to grow warm.  If Frank goes for this, it really will be a
castle.

I don’t see how he couldn’t, Holiday told himself.  It’s the
answer to our biggest problem.

But it’s just an answer to one problem, he replied.  Not the
answer to all our problems.

Later, after the forklift was attached to the tow hook at
the back of the flatbed, Holiday jogged to the gate, opened it and felt naked
as he ran back to the safety of the cab inside the flatbed.  He drove through
the gate, heard Frank’s voice hectoring him that night in the garden and
applied the brakes.  There was a loud rumble as the forklift banged into the
back of the flatbed.