Stage 3: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (15 page)

Mackenzie set to work stripping the empty bed, leaving the others to deal with the one still occupied. Mason rudely pulled the dead woman over the side of the bed, and Walker gathered up the sheets, mewling in disgust at the blood and urine stains, but working as quickly as he could. Working together, Mason and Walker tied the ends of all four sheets together, and Mason measured its length by feel, calculating that it would be long enough to reach the ground.

O
r close to it…..
Mason thought sourly.

As the men piled the bundle of sheets at the base of the window, Mackenzie gaped blindly at the door and whispered ominously, "Better hurry, Mace."

There was a heavy thud against the door, and the rebar quivered against the frame. Walker gave a yelp, but Mason calmly scanned the room. He needed something to break the window, but there were few options. He tried hammering at the glass with a  metal bedpan, but to no avail. In desperation, then, he moved to the closest bed and barked at Walker.

"Help me with this!"

The bed was on rollers, so moving it wasn't difficult. They pushed it into the middle of the room, and Mason instructed Mackenzie to move to a distant corner. The window was big, reaching nearly from floor to ceiling, and the lower ledge was only two or three feet high. If they could push the bed with enough force and tip it up at the right time, it should smash right through, but the timing would have to be exact. Mason counted down from three, then they both leaned into the bed and raced it across the tile floor toward the window. At the very last second, Mason lifted the back end and threw it forward, and it all worked better than he could have imagined. The front legs struck the window ledge just as he took weight off the back end, and the combined momentum of both caused the bed to pivot up and over. The window exploded outward, and the bed hung at the very apex of its somersault for a long moment before gravity took effect. At last, the bed canted forward and disappeared over the edge, and there was a muted crash from below. Walker spared a second to look out, and he grimaced with a disgusted, "Ugh….."

Mason cleared away bits of glass from the bottom of the frame, then he tied one end of the sheet-line to a radiator and gave it a test pull. Ready to move now, he had another look down, and once again cursed their luck. If they'd managed to get to a room two doors further down the hallway, they could have shinnied down the sheet-rope directly into the Secret Garden. As it was, they were twenty feet on the wrong side of the fence, directly above a swarm of untold hundreds of the dead and the undead.

Mackenzie slipped her hand into Mason's, and she turned her sightless eyes up to his.

"Trouble, Mace?"

Mason gave her little hand a gentle squeeze and said, "Only a bit, Mack."

Walker looked down, as his eyes went wide as he squealed, "We can't get down this way! It's suicide!"

Another body thudded against the door, and gnarled fingers reached through the narrow gap beneath. Mason flipped a nod at the door and told the doctor honestly, "You're welcome to stay," but there was no reply.

If only there was a ledge or some kind of foothold further down, they could scoot over and drop right into the Secret Garden. Sadly, they had no such luck. Aside from windows at each lower level, the building was a sheer wall of concrete from top to bottom.

Mackenzie gave his hand a tug. "There's more outside, Mace.
Lots
more."

He crouched down in front of the girl and took her slender shoulders in his hands. "Mack, how do feel about monkeys?"

"They're alright, I guess," she said, then she scowled, "Except when they throw poo. That's just gross."

Mason smiled in spite of the situation. "Okay, but how about the nice monkeys. The strong little monkeys who climb trees and swing from vines? How do feel about
those
monkeys?"

The scowl disappeared, but in its place was a raised eyebrow and an irascible folding of her arms.

"If you want me to climb down, Mace, just ask."

Once again, he found himself marveling at this incredible girl. She might be blind, but she could see better than most able-bodied men thrice her age.

"I want you to climb down, Mack," Mason admitted, "But there's a hitch. We're not exactly over the Secret Garden. But I have a plan."

Without hesitation, the girl nodded resolutely. "Okay, Mace. Whatever you say."

He outlined his plan in as few clipped words, and as expected, Mackenzie readily agreed. When Walker couldn't come up with anything better, he shrugged, harrumphed, and nodded reluctantly. At that unanimous decision, Mason coiled the end of the sheet-rope around Mackenzie's tiny waist, tying it into a slip knot, then he showed the girl how to release the knot with a single tug and made her swear up and down that she wouldn't put her hands anywhere near the knot until Mason called down to tell her to pull it.

"I promise, Mace," she said sweetly, "I trust you."

Suddenly, she threw herself into Mason's arms and hugged him. He wrapped his arms around her thin body and held her tight. At last, he heard another thud from without, heard the rebar scrape along the door jamb ever so slightly, and he kissed Mackenzie on the forehead.

"I won't let you down, Mack," he said, corralling an errant lock of hair from her face, "Well, yeah I'll be letting you down, but you know what I mean!"

"I do," she said, then she found his face with her hands and kissed him on the cheek as gently as the touch of a butterfly.

There was another thud against the door. All of those bodies pushing at it would have it open soon. There was no time to lose. He lifted Mackenzie to the window ledge, laid a blanket down in case some shards of glass remained, and had Mackenzie sit with her legs dangling over the side.

He paused long enough to ask, "Ready, Mack?"

The girl declared, "Ready, Mace," then she allowed him to lift her out through the open window and leave her dangling thirty feet in the air.

Once suspended, her natural momentum brought her back toward the building, but she deftly held out her hands to cushion the blow, then she simply felt her way down the wall as Mason lowered her toward the growling swarm. When she was a dozen feet from the ground and barely out of the reach of hundreds of claws reaching up at her, Mason and Walker worked together and shifted the upper end of the sheet-rope one way, then the other, then back again.

The idea was to create a sort of pendulum effect, swinging Mackenzie back and forth until she had gathered enough momentum to drop her on the right side of the fence. If they miscalculated, the girl could slam against the building and be injured, or the sheets could end up hooked on the top of the fence, or, worst-case scenario, they could drop Mackenzie into the swarm like a bait-ball into a school of sharks.

"Easy….." Mason hushed, "Easy now. This way….okay, now back….Easy, Doc….."

Walker was as determined as Mason was to get this right. Aside from the fact that they were playing with an innocent girl's life, the entire procedure represented their salvation. As such, whenever Mason directed him one way or the other, the doctor obeyed every instruction to the letter, replying with a strained, "Okay….got it…..nice and easy….."

Working the end of the line together, they soon had Mackenzie swinging like the proverbial monkey at the end of the vine. At one end of the arc, she would sail far out over the swarm and they would instinctively claw at the movement of air, then she would swing the other way, hover briefly over the Secret Garden, then arc back toward the swarm. At last, working as one, Mason and Walker built enough momentum in the girl's swing that she was clearing the fence on every swing with room to spare.

Mason called down a cautionary, "Ready, Mack!"

It was the signal. All three knew what they were to do. Mackenzie took one last swing out over the swarm, then when she passed back over the fence and reached the very apex of the arc, Mason called out," Now!", and she pulled at the slip knot and fell eight feet to the ground. Thankfully, she knew exactly what to expect, so she hit the ground with legs bent, rolled onto her side like a seasoned paratrooper, and popped back up to her feet, gaping up at Mason with a broad grin.

She called something up to Mason, but the growling of the swarm was like the background roar of a jet engine, and it washed away her words. Still, she was down and she was safe, and that was all that mattered.

Behind Mason, the door creaked and groaned under the weight of the swarm. The rebar was holding, but only just. Mason hauled in the line as quickly as he could, quickly tied the same knot around the doctor's waist, and slapped him on the shoulder.

"Your turn."

Walker climbed over the window ledge and took a series of deep breaths as if he were a deep-sea swimmer readying for a plunge. Sweat glistened on his forehead, and his skin was ashen. For all the world, he looked about ready to faint.

Mason barked at him, "Now, Doc! Move!" 

With Mason's help, Walker lowered himself over the ledge. Like Mackenzie, his natural momentum spun him around, but unlike Mackenzie, he flailed about clumsily and slammed into the building before he could brace himself. He struck his head hard, and there was a frightening moment when Mason thought he might lose consciousness, but the doctor shook his head ponderously, wiped blood away from his eye, and offered a weak, "I'm okay."

Mason fed out the line as quickly as he dared, and soon had Walker lowered most of the way. When he stopped, the man was supposed to start himself swinging, but he proved to be woefully bad at the exercise. Whether it was the man's fear at hanging so perilously close to the swarm, his general lack of muscular strength, or the smack on the head, he simply hung there like an exhausted fish at the end of a line. He tried to bring his feet up to push himself off and start a swinging action, but every time he tried, his legs gave out and he slammed back into the wall.

The door groaned behind Mason. The rebar was slowly but surely being pushed back along the door jamb. In another minute, it would give way. He looked down to Mackenzie standing alone in the Secret Garden separated from hundreds of crazed monsters by a chain link fence already beginning to buckle under the weight of the swarm, and his mind brought up all manner of ugly images of what would happen should she be suddenly left alone in this hellscape. He harbored no illusion that he was the only man in the world who could take care of her, but for the moment, he was all she had. He just simply had to get down to her, but he could only do so once Walker was down, and the good doctor was proving to be all but useless.

Mason hurled a string of epithets down to the doctor to spur him to action, but it was pointless. Mason swore again, but this time, all of his curses were directed at himself. He'd been a fool. He should have gone down first. If he'd gone ahead of Walker, he'd be with Mackenzie right now. But when he'd made the decision to let Walker go first, it was after due consideration of a number of factors. Firstly, would Walker have ever had the strength to climb down by himself? Hardly. In truth, he didn't much care if the man lived or died, but there was the very real concern that Walker, left alone with a creaking door ready to give way, would have panicked. If so, he would have tried to escape down the sheet-rope whether Mason was clear of it or not. That much weight would have torn the line and doomed them both, or, more likely, the doctor's strength would ebb, he'd lose his grip, and he'd sweep Mason off the line as he fell. Either way, he'd be dead, and Mackenzie would be alone. Now, even considering those probabilities, he truly regretted his decision.

If Walker couldn't start himself swinging, Mason would have to do it. There was no other way to get him down and get the line clear. He began to pull frantically at the sheets, yanking them one way and then the other, but two men moving a little girl was far easier than one man moving twice the mass. At last, though, he detected a shift at the end of the line and knew that Walker was finally moving. It was only inches, but it was a start. He pulled in concert with the man's momentum, increasing it by tiny degrees with every swing, but the man himself was giving little in the way of assistance. Mason cursed down at the doctor and swore to himself that if there'd been enough bed linen in this room to hobble together a second line, he'd leave Walker hanging there like a piñata and make his own way down. But without that option, if he wanted to live, he had to get down, and to get down, he had to get Walker down first.

Every muscle straining, now, he pulled on the sheet line for all he was worth. Back and forth, back and forth he pulled, and at last he saw the arc slowly building. If Walker could bring his feet up, flex his knees and push off, he could increase the swing by yards, but he wasn't doing that. Instead, he seemed focused solely on keeping himself from hitting the wall a second time, so he had his arms out and was scrabbling along the side of the building like some kind of Spiderman wannabe. Mason hurled curses down at the doctor, curses the man would never hear, and kept pulling.

The door creaked again, and Mason flipped a glance over his shoulder, making himself a promise, then and there. If the rebar came loose, he would launch himself through the window and suffer the consequences. The sheets might tear or the knots might give, but he wasn't about to face off against countless creatures bare-handed just to keep Walker safe. Hell, maybe he'd even have the satisfaction of landing squarely on top of the pitiful excuse for a man and crush the life out of him before the swarm could have their due.