The Zombie Virus (Book 1) (24 page)

I looked back up at the trapdoor after
reholstering the pistol, my headlamp illuminating it brightly.

“There are two snap latches!” I laughed out
loud in relief. “They’re not locked!” I carefully reached up and
undid one, then the other latch with an audible snap.

“I’m sorry,” Kera apologized with a grimace,
“I didn’t see them.”

I pushed with all I was worth at the square
fiberglass door. It flew open on a hinge and banged against the
flat roof of the building.

Sunlight flooded down and around us and we
blinked our eyes at its brilliance. The Loonies let out a new
chorus of growls and wails when they realized we were escaping. One
dark haired man with an ear torn off and dried blood down to his
shoulder was slowly pulling himself up the ladder, one rung at a
time. I reached around and grabbed Kera by the back of her sweats
and helped push her up and onto the roof then silently followed her
out into the fresh morning air.

We knelt around the rim of the boxed entryway
and peered down into the darkness. The torn-eared man was over
halfway up the wall, carefully pulling himself up the ladder,
another man following at his feet. I loosened the rifle and aimed
it point-blank at the lead man and fired. His head erupted in a
spray of gray and red and seemed to collapse in on itself as the
bullet over-pressurized the skull and blew it apart. His spasming
body hung tenaciously by one hand for a moment before his lifeless
grip slid free and he fell backward, falling into the Loony several
rungs down and sending them both crashing into the crowd beneath
them.

I backed away from the hatch and Kera slammed
shut the trapdoor with a thump.

“That won’t hold them for long,” I lamented,
looking around the large expanse of the flat roof. Metal structures
and vents populated its surface along with water from last night’s
rainstorms which lay scattered about like small, shallow lakes. The
rising sun in the clear crisp blue sky was already baking the
asphalt roofing, sending heat-waves radiating upward. I strode to
the rim of the back wall and cautiously looked over the edge.

“Damn!” I muttered when I saw what looked
like a hundred or more Loonies gathered around the loading dock
doors, many still futilely pounding on it in their desperation to
get in.

I heard a loud bang behind me and Kera let
out a frightened yelp.

“They’re trying to get up!” she screamed at
me, backing away from the trapdoor with her shotgun pointed at
it.

I rushed back over just as the door bounced
up and then loudly settled back down onto its frame. Not knowing
what else to do, I sat on it and felt one of the infected below
strike it another blow.

“Shit!” Kera cried, her face tight with
building panic. “What are we going to do? You can’t sit there
forever!”

“Look around,” I instructed her, trying to
keep the desperation out of my voice. “See if you can find
something loose and heavy that we can pile on top of it.”

They struck the bottom of the door again
hard, nearly sending me tumbling off. Whoever was down there was
very strong. Kera ran around the roof in a desperate attempt to
find something to weigh down the door with. She wasn’t having any
luck.

The trapdoor bucked again and it was all I
could do to keep from being thrown off. I jumped off the lid and
backed away a few steps, bringing the rifle to bear on the boxy
structure.

The lid flew open, tearing from its metallic
hinges and landing near the edge of the roof.

A large, dirty hand grabbed the rim, followed
by another and a filthy, matted head of hair atop a thick head rose
up into view. Its blood red eyes turned on me and a deep growl
escaped from behind its yellowed teeth.

“Fuck you!” I snarled. “This is for Holly!” I
aimed carefully at the center of the meaty face and fired. Its head
kicked back when the round punched through the front teeth and up
into the skull and its eyes immediately went dim. It slumped
forward over the rim of the hatch. I waited patiently with my
finger on the trigger and my cheek welded to the stock. Kera come
splashing up behind me.

“Shit!” she said when she saw the ruined door
to the hatch sitting a few feet away. “I couldn’t find anything,
and those people are all around the building!” She spat out the
word ‘people’ as if it was distasteful to her mouth.

I didn’t take my eye away from the
holographic sight. “We control the only way up. They won’t get
us.”

Something was tugging on the body of the big
Loony from below trying to unblock the egress, fortunately without
success. I lowered the rifle, looked over at Kera, and grinned
crazily.

“As long as that monster is blocking the way,
I don’t think any others will be getting up.”

I walked to the hatch and looked down it past
the dead hulk. Loonies swarmed around the bottom like rats in a
sewer and three had been able to climb the narrow steel ladder and
were trying to squeeze past the dead man. I aimed the rifle down
the hatch and easily picked off the three with one shot each.

I wanted to kill them all. I was so angry
that all this had happened, that I was stuck here on this roof
without my family. The anger felt like a balm to my soul, it
coursed through my body, washing away the sorrow and despair.

I welcomed it.

These things that were once ordinary human
beings were the cause of Holly’s death and for my boy not being
here with me. Their deaths would soothe me. I fired a few more
shots into the crowd milling at the bottom of the ladder, taking a
sick satisfaction in watching a head come apart. I laughed out loud
at the sight.

Kera came over and put her hand on my arm.
“Are you okay, dude?” she asked nervously.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” I turned away from her and
walked to the back edge of the building. Crowds of Loonies still
pressed around the loading dock, none looked up at me. I started
walking around the perimeter looking for some avenue of escape.
Kera kept pace with me, staying toward the inside of the roof, the
mild breeze blowing her long raven black hair in tangles about her
face. The anger seemed to drain from my body with each step as I
realized that I was changing, that I was no longer the man I was a
week ago. With this new world were born new men.

“We won’t survive up here long in the heat
without water, will we?” Kera asked rhetorically, swiping her hair
away from her delicate face. She was a very attractive girl if you
could get past her feigned innocence and not so feigned immaturity.
Too bad Jeremy was so young.

“We can drink from the water puddles on the
roof if we have to.”

“Won’t the sun dry them up?”

I shrugged nonchalantly, “After a while, I
guess.”

We had walked the entire length of the back
wall and continued down one of the sides. There were no outside
ladders or stairs. After we completed the circuit we walked back
toward the rear of the store and I looked over the edge again.
Below me was the green top of the commercial trash compactor they
used for crushing shipping boxes and other trash. The flat metal
top was maybe ten or twelve feet below the lip of the roof and the
entire machine sat about fifty yards from where the Loonies surged
around the loading doors. Sticking out of the back end of the
compactor was the bin that held the compacted trash and its top sat
about four feet lower than the compactor and about six feet off the
ground.

“I think I see a way we can get down.” Her
eyebrows rose in question and I pointed over the side. “We can drop
down onto that and then climb down onto the bin and from there to
the ground.”

She inched reluctantly closer to the edge.
Her eyes widened when she saw the distance to the roof of the
compactor. “I can’t do that,” she blurted.

“Sure you can,” I said. “If you hang from the
rim it won’t be that long of a drop.”

She looked over the edge again. “I don’t
know,” she said nervously. “What if they see me, or I break my leg
or something?” She glanced over at the large number of infected
still enraged and fighting to get into the stockroom. “We’d never
get away from all them.”

“We have to try,” I told her emphatically.
“We’ll die if we stay up here. We may last a few days, but it’s a
foregone conclusion what the end will be.”

“Maybe they will leave after a while,” she
said hopefully.

“Maybe,” I admitted. “But most likely they
sense we’re here and I believe that as long as they know we are
here, they will be hunting us.”

I happened to glance back over my shoulder
and immediately noticed that the body of the large dead man was no
longer slumped over the hatchway in the roof.

“We’re going to have visitors!”

No sooner had the words left my mouth when a
slim female wearing a dirty pink tee-shirt and torn, badly stained
blue jean shorts crawled with feline-like movements from the
opening and stood looking about with her back to us. Her blond hair
looked like it could have been braided that morning. She had a sexy
figure with one hell of a nice ass. The image was incongruent with
her infected status.

Another Loony pulled himself out of the
opening and spotted us instantly. It let out a snarling growl,
saliva dripping from its gnashing teeth.

Kera and I raised our guns at the same
moment. “Take out the man,” I said quietly to her.

“With pleasure.”

My finger depressed the trigger. My aim was
off and when the woman turned to face us the bullet smacked into
her forearm, shattering it and sending gleaming white shards of
bone and a chunk of flesh flying across the roof behind her. She
let out a terrible cry of pain, partially drowned out by the blast
from Kera’s shotgun. The male Loony’s head completely disappeared
in a cloud of red and gray and he crumbled to the ground.

The woman jumped over him and charged us. I
put another round in her belly, causing a red blossom to appear on
her pink shirt. She stumbled briefly, crying out again, but still
didn’t slacken her pace. The third shot hit her in the sternum,
dropping her face-first onto the hot roof where she skidded to a
stop. More hands were reaching over the edge of the hatchway beyond
her corpse.

A man’s head peeked up over the metal rim and
Kera shot at him, missing. It continued climbing out, unfazed by
the near miss.

“We can stand here all day shooting until we
are out of ammo, or we can go over the side now,” I said urgently,
“but you better decide soon!”

She shot at the man again when he cleared the
hatch, punching a large hole through his chest beneath a torn work
shirt. He tumbled onto the body of the first man.

Kera looked over at me with a pained
expression on her pretty face. “I’m afraid,” she admitted.

“What!?” I asked confused. “Of what?”

“I’m afraid of heights,” she stated in
obvious embarrassment.

Another Loony began pulling itself out of the
hatchway, its black hair nearly as dark as Kera’s. I haphazardly
shot at it and the bullet left a furrow in the top of its scalp.
The man lost his grip on the edge and tumbled back into the hole. I
could hear several other Loonies being dragged down with him.

Now was our chance.

“You can do it, Kera, it’s either face your
fear there,” I pointed toward the edge, “or stay up here where
those monsters will ultimately get you.”

She inched her way until she stood a few feet
from the ledge and looked over. “I’m afraid I’ll slip. I get all
shaky when I’m near heights.”

“It’ll be all right, just don’t look down.”
Her expression told me she still wasn’t convinced. “I’ll have hold
of you and won’t let you fall.”

I glanced once more at the hatchway— it was
still temporarily clear.

“Give me your shotgun.” I held my hand out
for it and she turned it over to me. “I’ll help you down.” I laid
the shotgun near the six-inch tall rim that ran the length of the
edge.

I grabbed Kera’s hand and led her closer to
the threshold. “Don’t look down,” I reminded her. “Look me in the
eyes, don’t look down. I won’t let you fall.”

She looked up into my eyes and I positioned
her with her back facing the drop above the compactor.

“I’ll help you over the ledge then you grab
my arm and I’ll lower you over the edge. When I give you a nod, let
go and you’ll drop the rest of the way.”

Her eyes grew big when I said ‘drop’.

“It won’t be that far down,” I reassured her.
“When you get down, I’ll toss down the rifles and shotgun and then
I’ll come down.”

CHAPTER 15

Getting Kera down to the compactor’s roof went
fairly smoothly. She dropped the last three feet and fell onto her
butt with a loud bang. Fortunately, the Loonies crowding the
loading dock didn’t appear to have heard the thump of her behind on
the thin metal over the din of their own ruckus.

I glanced nervously at the hatchway again.
One of the infected was clawing its way out of the opening. It was
a boy probably not much older than Jeremy. I raised the rifle –
then hesitated, although only for a moment. I sent a single shot
into him, striking the boy in the chest. He staggered backwards
then dropped to his knees. He looked at me with a nearly human
expression of surprise on his face before falling forward, dead. I
tossed the two rifles and the shotgun down to Kera. She deftly
caught each one and set them aside.

I threw my legs over the wall and lowered
myself down as far as my arms would reach then let go. I landed on
the metal roof with a louder bang than Kera’s.

Several of the infected did take notice this
time.

I motioned Kera to lay flat and I did the
same, however, it was too late. Three nearly naked, filthy looking
men were sprinting toward us, screaming incoherently. I grabbed a
rifle and brought it to bear on the lead Loony as they quickly
closed the distance. It took five shots to stop the three, which
also alerted the others to our presence.