The Last: A Zombie Novel (10 page)

It leads to a bright modern office, with glass partition walls lining a gray-carpet corridor leading away parallel to the floor-to-ceiling windows on the left. Fresh light rinses over banks of desks, computers, and the occasional whiteboard to either side of the glass corridor. A fern wilts slackly in a ceramic pot by the door, a coffee machine and water cooler face me in a tucked-away culvert, and a wooden door chock skitters away when I accidentally kick it.

It looks like the office of a tech firm, or maybe a telesales depot. Do we have those in New York? I don't know. Probably they have their logo and a receptionist up at the far end; there must be a lift too that I've never seen, perhaps connected from one of the adjoining buildings.

I pad along the fuzzy gray carpet, peering left and right into both sides of the office through the glass walls. Cords run everywhere like tangled veins, for phones, computers, printers, all redundant now.

I stop in the middle. There's nobody here, but more building material than I could have hoped for. The desks look solid, and I'm pretty certain I can craft a zombie-proof wall out of them. I start planning the procedure.

Then I hear a shuffle. It's coming from the far end, where a fuzzy gray partition rises flanked by more ferns, beyond which I guess lies the reception and the door to the lifts. I set my feet and slide the pack off my back. Seconds later a fat dead guy emerges.

My heart does a belly flop. He pops out of cover at a lurching run, bouncing lightly off one of the glass walls, his glowing white eyes targeted on me. There's dark blood down his white shirt and staining his navy jacket. His black tie is askew like he's tried to hang himself with it and the rope broke, twisting at a painful angle. His neck is flushed red, his feet slap the floor, and there's a glinting silver shield at his waist.

He's private security, probably patrolling the floors last night. I spin but there's no time to run back for the stairwell, and I can't cede this building anyway. I need these desks, and besides this is not a mild-looking family standing in their pajamas, this is some asshole I've never met made-up like Halloween, packing heat and picking up speed like a damn bull charging. He wants to eat me, for god's sake. I'm not going to play patty-cake with him.

I start running. I redouble my grip on the dumbbell bar. When we're about ten feet apart I launch myself into the air, feet first and held out rigid. For a second I fly, then I impact the guy's chest full on and punch him off his feet. My heels catch on his chin and send me somersaulting through the air past him. Before I hit the ground, I have time for just one thought:

I dropkicked the shit out of this bastard. 

Then I hit the friction-burn carpet and crack my side hard, roll and smack my ankle bizarrely off the flat glass, and wind up lying on my side with my wrist throbbing. What the shit? That was probably the stupidest thing I've ever done. It was also utterly awesome.

I think this for about two seconds, until I get up and see another security guy coming at me from behind the divider, while his buddy shakes the fall off and starts to run too. Shit, what are they breeding back there?

I bolt up and turn to the glass to my right. One good stab with the bar and jagged clumps of it come down, another smack affords me some clearance, and I leap through seconds before they smack chest-first into each other.

I spring up on an office chair, which then reclines weirdly, like some asshole hasn't even taken the time to set it in a proper position, twisting my ankle. I fall onto the long bank of desks, smacking my knee on the edge and catching myself bodily on a monitor, which then folds back so I smack my face on a keyboard.

My teeth crunch, I bite my lip, my gut and chest spark with pain where the monitor top hit, and a hand grabs at my feet.

"Shit!" I yell, and scrabble away with the pain forgotten. I roll into a chair on the other side of the bank and then out of it again, so now I'm standing on a twingeing ankle with two fat mall cops wheezing evilly at me. Finally, to put the cherry on top of the cake, they split up and come for me round either side of the desks.

I look around desperately, remembering how little my computer did to the zombies outside my tenement. There are actually the same brand of computer here, which seems ironic.

There's one more long bank of desks and I climb up onto it. Monitors are the only thing I can use, and even if they don't kill them, they might buy me some time. I run to the end of the desks, toward the guy I dropkicked. I pick up a screen just as he comes near, and throw it with all my strength. It arcs beautifully towards him, a perfect shot, then catches on its cables with a crack and spins, swinging hard back toward my feet.

I cry out and leap away, dancing for my balance as it crunches onto the desk and the screen shatters. I get my balance back standing in the middle of the far bank on a keyboard and a mouse-mat, again with nowhere to go. Both of the fat zombies are right in front of me now, blocked only from grabbing my legs by a row of wheelie office chairs.

This is utterly stupid.  

I snatch up a Bluetooth wireless keyboard and Frisbee it at the nearest of them. It cracks off his mouth and his head recoils but it makes no difference. He stumbles through the chairs blindly, reaching for my feet.

I bring the bar down edge first. It buries in his eye socket with a horrible slurp and a geyser of gray goo. I gag and pull back, but the bar is lodged now and I just tug him closer, pulling myself off balance.

As I'm about to fall into his embrace, I push away, relinquishing the bar. He staggers back with blood and gray matter gushing down his face, but he doesn't go down. The other one is through the chairs now and almost on me.

I run two steps then jump for the aisle between the banks, where I back away tipping chairs over between us. They stumble over them. This is better. I get some clearance and space, and at last they're both following me the same way. I could do this all day.

At the bank's edge I grab another monitor, unplug it swiftly, and hurl it at the nearest one. It hits him edge-on in the face and breaks open his nose and his eye-socket. He falls back for a second and the one with my bar in his eye comes on harder. He looks a horrible mess.

I unplug another monitor and throw, but miss. Shit. I run halfway down the other bank, tipping more chairs, and toss the next monitor. It hits him in the neck with a gristly crunch and he goes down, this time staying down to gurgle and spit. OK. I unplug three more monitors in advance of the guy with the broken jaw reaching me, then hurl them at him in fast succession. One misses, one hits his head, and the third time's the charm with another crunch and gurgle in his neck.

He goes down. My arms throb. I stand there and pant. I wipe my hoodie over my face, coming away with blood and gray juice. The office is silent again but for my breath and their palsied, bubbly rasping.

I stand there and wait for it to stop, but it doesn't. I pick my way over cautiously. The bar guy is looking up at me with his one good eye. His fingertips reach toward me, but his arms lie slack.

It is too creepy.

I walk along the desk to the other one. He's just the same, a caved-in throat and a motionless body, but eyes that track me. It's horrible. I've killed them but they're not dead. Do I have to kill them again?

I back up and start to shake. I clamber over my own alley of tumbled chairs and round to the hole in the glass. In the corridor I stand and shudder. I can't believe this shit. How many times? I start back for the fire door, thinking maybe I'll go down to Sir Clowdesley and get some coffee and wait for Lara, but what am I going to tell her about this?

"Yeah I half-killed two of them upstairs, I just left them lying there like those creepy paintings in a haunted mansion. It was too creepy to deal with them, and I couldn't handle using the desks to make a wall with them watching me. What do you mean you'd rather go survive alone than do it with me? It'll be fine, I have moral compunctions."

She flies off on an albatross. She rides a unicorn out of town.

Shit. I rub my eyes and stamp my feet. They haven't moved. I haven't moved. It's between them and me, and it has to be me.

I start back. I go to the one on the edge first, with my bar in his head. 'You can keep it, pal,' I feel like saying, but this is no time for levity.

I nudge his head with my foot. It lolls to the side with no control. I nudge it back the other way. I can't think of a way to make this less disgusting, or less of a horrible memory. I've painted zombie head explosions a hundred times in comics, but it's never so visceral as when they actually look just like regular people, only paler. I can smell the tangy blood and the bitter salt of brain. I can see it oozing out in live-motion before you.

Monitor? I don't like the thought of feeling the weight crack through his skull and mulch his brain. The fewer senses involved the better.

So, gun.

I edge around him. I nudge his arm but he doesn't respond. He's like a seed planted in the office, waiting to sprout. I stand on his right hand. I pin his left beneath a chair. I put a chair on top of his face, in case he suddenly rears up. I reach to his waist belt, and unclasp the button on his holster.

The gun comes out easily, and rests in my hand smoothly. It's affixed to his belt by a coiled bit of rubber tubing, but I can deal with that. I stand up over him. I study the gun. It looks simple enough, though I don't know shit about guns. It's heavy and gray with no branding anywhere. I look for a safety button, and see a little sliding lever with a red inner bit showing.

I'll guess that means the safety is on. I click it over. I kick the chair away, and point the gun at his staring face. It would be so much easier if he weren't looking at me.

"Look away," I tell him.

He doesn't. He stares at me like a dog. His mouth opens and closes. The bar in his face bobs obscenely.

I pull the trigger. The gun cracks slightly in my hand, the report sounds out with nothing like the bass rumble you see in movies, but more of a piercing tenor pop, amplified by the contained space.

My ears buzz. If any nearby zombies didn't know I was here before, they do now. Maybe Lara heard it too. As for the guy's face, his head, his brain, I don't want to talk about those things. It's a mess. His one good eye is still there, crumpled inward by the force of the shot and the ricochet off the floor, looking like a bloody gray toad, but at least it's not staring at me anymore.

Wait, it is. I feel his hand twitch under my foot. What the…?

I stand there in horrified silence for several minutes, waiting for whatever this is to end. Death throes? It doesn't end though. His brain has been mulched, but he's still trying to reach for me.

I aim the gun at his throat. I pull the trigger again.

Flash, bang, bloody mess. This time he is dead.

I puke a little. I get my shit together. I go over and execute the other through the throat. One shot and done.  

I unfasten his belt while I'm still in shock. I unfasten them both. I take both guns with their cables and blood-spattered belts trailing behind me like empty leashes, until in the gray corridor I put them down, drop to my knees, and have a mental breakdown.

9 – DESKS

Things speed up after that. It's business time, and I can defer the horror to later. It helps to move. I shoot out the glass to the street outside; it takes three bullets, god knows how many each gun holds, to put a nicely cracked hole in the big panes.

I smash the rest with hurled monitors. Glass rain falls outside and a blast of cool air rushes in. I walk through crunches of glass to the edge and look down. Already there are some twenty or so zombies lining up at the Sir Clowdesley entrance, baying for free coffee.

Ha, no, but they are thumping against the glass.

"Hey!" I shout. They look up at me. "What's up?"

They amble over and stand beneath me, five stories down. Perfect. This is much better. There'll be only the sound and hardly any of the proximity or the visuals.

It takes me a while to figure out how to unhook the first desk from its fellows. Little near-invisible catches on the underside inner rim are the secret. I unspool the cables running through it, then toss the desk contents out the window: monitors and computer towers. They each make a pleasing crunch and smash on the concrete outside.

I don't even look to see if I take out any of my groupies. Who cares? They'll get it in the end. This is just the resource-gathering stage of the game, grinding out my tower defense before I set to crafting.

It helps me to think of it in Deepcraft terms. There are zombies in Deepcraft too. I'm building my tower against zombie invasion. I'm just playing Deepcraft.

Dragging the desk up to the edge of the window is a good workout. It just fits through. I push it out halfway until it's on the balance point, like a truck on the edge of a cliff. Outside there are plenty more zombies hobbling closer, a fresh horde of dead New Yorkers.

I shove the desk. It grates over the edge and dives. There are about seven zombies beneath it when it hits, and they all get crushed. A smack, a crack, and the desk tips away, clearing the impact zone.

I don't look at the bodies too hard. They look just like crushed people, like crushed bugs with their bodies burst. They didn't have to be here. This is my damn tower. I can't have them here when Lara comes.

I start clearing the next desk. I do a quick count. There are thirty-one desks in the office in total. I imagine what kind of ring-fence that can make around the exterior of Sir Clowdesley. If I stack them atop each other and weigh them down with all the rest of the crap I've got in here, that will make a wall sixteen long. I envision a semicircle desk-fort-wall around the door and windows, then I expand that vision. I imagine sealing off a whole section of the street.

I'll need hundreds of desks. But this building has about a dozen floors. All of those will have heavy office furniture. I can tip them all out, my raw materials, then go down, clear, and build up my wall.