ZWD: King of an Empty City (11 page)

 
I woke up a moment later choking and spitting water. It took me a moment to figure out where I was. I pulled myself up on my elbows and let my forehead touch the pavement. The cold puddle of water I was lying in felt good to my face. I had to blink water out of my eyes several times. As my vision cleared I looked at the water below me and saw blood mixed in with it. Suddenly I remembered where I was and fear shot through my body. I could feel my entire body get warm like someone put a flame on high from the inside. The adrenaline rushed through me and gave me the strength to move. I didn’t take time to look around, just started crawling out of there. A hand clamped down on my boot. I looked back then and saw the zombie that had been knocked off his feet pulling himself to me with determination. I tried to jerk my foot free, but it was still numb from moments ago. “To hell with it,” I thought and with my good leg I started crawling away from there as hard as I could, dragging him with me. A few feet away lay my folding Marine shovel. If I could get to that, I’d be rid of him. I took a brief moment to look around and see just how close the rest of the zombies were. The hoses were keeping them at bay. Some lay on the ground and were crawling to me, but they were some distance away.

             
Because I was moving away from him, this zombie in the gray suit wasn’t getting a better grip, but he was hanging on with one hand very well and slowing me down. I tried to roll over on my back and kick him off, but realized he was only able to move closer. The kicking wasn’t doing much good. I kept crawling on my elbows till I reached the shovel.

The moment my hand touched that shovel, it was a game-changer. I knew how Thor felt when he got his hammer in his hand. I gripped the handle and spun over on my back, sitting up, and brought the shovel down on his wrist with everything I had. I heard and felt a definite crunch. That was the first time I think I ever heard a zombie scream. It sounded like dried leaves mixed with something unnatural, I don’t know what. Fortunately for me, the nozzle of one hose slammed down onto his back and he let go of me to thrash about on the ground.

             
Meanwhile, other dead had gotten closer than I liked. Then one of the hoses flying around slammed into one’s back and threw him on the ground at my feet. All I could do was crab-walk on my three limbs out of there.

Once clear of the hoses and their wild flailing I took a moment to look at the chaos I’d caused. The hoses had hit several zombies in the head and they lay on the ground deader than dead. That still left dozens and dozens all focused on me, the little wet morsel of food that was down to three legs. I rolled back over to my stomach and stood up as quickly as I could. I looked around, but I didn’t see her anywhere. I just started moving for the barricades of the federal buildings. I was moving in a hop, drag, run kind of motion since my right leg was still feeling like a gazillion needles were sticking in me. Even so, I was outdistancing them. Unfortunately, I didn’t know where she’d gone or how long I could keep this up. My leg hurt like hell, my back wasn’t much better, and I knew once I stopped my headache was going to split my skull in two.

She stepped out from one of the National Guard trucks with a plus-shaped tire iron in her hand, and like a Frisbee she threw it at the zombies closest behind me. It took out one’s legs, giving me a few extra yards. She started pulling anything she could from behind this truck and throwing it to slow them down, wrenches, monkey wrenches, sections of pipe. I idly wondered why the National Guard would need a monkey wrench. When I got to her, a quick glance in the toolbox she was so quickly throwing things from told me everything. Someone here had been a plumber. There was an acetylene canister that felt mostly full, and that sparkie thing you use to light gas. I’m no plumber, I don’t know what it’s called, but I could see the possibilities. I grabbed them both and lit the gas, adjusting it till I got a short blue flame, and shoved it under the truck beneath the gas tank. We ran as hard as I could go. Some of the zombies got past the truck, following us, but when that gas tank blew many of them went down with its destruction.

             
We were thrown to the ground by the force of the blast on the other side of Fourth Street and Broadway. There was a big parking lot behind the federal building. It was full of cars, the owners probably in the building’s shelters. She went from car to car trying to find one that was open while I lay on the ground under a Hummer. Her quick recon found everything locked. We got me to my feet and decided we had to keep moving. That explosion was going to draw every zombie for blocks, if not miles. And if it didn’t draw them, it was certainly calling any marauders and scavengers nearby. Our only other choice was to hole up for a while in the parking garage that led into TCBY. From the lion’s den into the lion’s mouth, but that was where we went. We made for the stairwell and hoped there was nothing nasty waiting for us inside. As she pulled the door closed and jammed the handle of my shovel into the door handle so no zombie could show its intelligence and open the door on us, I collapsed to the floor.

             
It’s not easy trying to catch your breath and not make any noise so you can listen for sounds of other things, but somehow we managed to do that. Once she was satisfied we were safe for now she sat down on the stairs. “What the hell were you thinking?” she demanded.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” I replied weakly. I was getting feeling in my right leg again and the needles were fading, but the headache was building. My shoulder and back felt ten times larger than the rest of my body.

“OH my GOD! Blood!” she exclaimed. My eyes popped open and I just stared up through the shaft of the stairwell.

“Where?” I asked in alarm.

              “From your head. Were you bitten?”

              “I don’t think so.”

              “Are you sure?” she asked as she squatted down beside me and started looking at my head. Once she was certain it was only a cut from the hose she started roughly checking my body over for bites. Pleased or frustrated that there were none, honestly at that moment I wasn’t sure, she looked closer at my head.

              “You have to sit up.”

              “Do I have to?” I mumbled.

              “Yes, I think you have a concussion. You have to stay awake.”

              “For how long?”

              “I don’t know. We have to get to the library now so I can find out.”

I tried to sit up, but couldn’t move. I felt tired and weak. Something thumped at the door and in the little window, and from my vantage point on the floor I could see the door was blocked with zombies. “I think coming in here was a bad idea now.”

              “We didn’t have much choice.”

              “So, what do you think, Sundance?” I asked her as I looked at a zombie licking the window in the door. She turned and looked at the stairwell, then bit her lip in thought.

             
“First, we have to get you out of sight.” She knelt down beside me, helping me sit up, and went over my head like a mom looking for ticks on a child. She didn’t have to, but I think she pressed way too hard on the cut on my head. Then she pulled my bandana from my back pocket and tied it around my head. I didn’t think that my head could hurt worse than it already did, but when she tightened the bandana . . . I can’t really explain that shaft of pain except to say that it was so tight, my heartbeat throbbed in my ears.

              “We’ve got to get you stitches. Now get up. We have to get you out of sight.”

“Not without my shovel.” My folding Marine shovel had become my zombie killing comfort food, if you will. I felt comfortable with it in my hands like you feel comfortable in a favorite pair of jeans. It wasn’t natural having my hands empty, and I wasn’t leaving without it.

              “What?” she exclaimed in confusion.

              “You have your Ice Pike, I have Harold.”

              “Who’s Harold?”

              “My shovel.”

              “You named your shovel Harold?”

              “You know mythology. All the great weapons have names, like Excalibur.”

              “You named your mighty zombie-killing shovel of death Harold?”

              “I’m working on it, nothing’s set in stone.”

              “Maybe your head. We really need to get you stitched up. I think you’re delusional. Get up the stairs and I’ll get the mighty ‘Harold’ for you in a minute.” She did that quotation fingers thing when she called it Harold. I still believe that all great weapons need a name, and Harold is a great weapon.              

             
We went up the stairs and stopped on the landing at the next garage level. After looking out the door to that floor, she eased it open and looked around while I sat there on the first set of steps. My ears still throbbed. I leaned my face next to the concrete wall and it felt so good against my skin. I heard her mutter “Son of a bitch” in an amused tone.

              “What?”

              “Get up and take a look.”

I struggled to my feet feeling dizzy like I could throw up at any moment. When I joined her just outside the door she pointed and there, not fifty yards away, was another door with a big red glowing exit sign above it. Through the window you could see the sun shining and the street beyond that. It was that simple, all we had to do to escape the zombie horde below us was to walk fifty yards and go out a door, and we were clear. It couldn’t be that easy.

“Start walking, I’ll go get the ‘Mighty Harold.’ When I get back you either better be at that door or ready to run because they’ll probably be on our tails.”

             
I pulled the machete from the sheath in my belt loop and started moving to the door. When I was a little over halfway she went back into the stairwell to grab my shovel and whirled. In a burst of speed she was running to catch up to me. We got to the exit unmolested. We had to kick the door open because it was stuck, but other than that it was easy. We went down a flight of steps to street level and were making our way down Fourth Street like it was any fine Sunday afternoon in winter. We traveled another block past more parking decks and lots. That’s what Fourth Street is downtown, mostly, parking for the high-rises. At Center Street, we turned north again to go to the library. We both thought there was a gift shop or drug store somewhere nearby, but we couldn’t remember where it was. We had to stop several times so I could rest my head and fight back the urge to vomit. The last thing I wanted was more pain from vomit strain added to my already miserable head.

             
We turned on Second Street to go east; it would be a straight shot to the library. We stopped and she checked the gash on the back of my head. She took the bandana off and snapped off icicles that had formed on the hood of a car and wrapped them in the bloody bandana, then tied it again too tightly to my head. I have to admit it made the pain ease up a lot, and every time a droplet of icy blood trickled down the back of my neck past my collar I woke up more and more. We had to stop again at Second and Main so I could vomit. She broke chunks of ice from the bumper of a car and held them to my cheeks. The cold felt good, it felt really good.

               A few blocks later we found ourselves at the back of the library facing that little fenced-in garden where I watched the family of three saunter out of the fog. Because of the winter quiet and not having all the normal sounds of a lazy city moving around, sounds traveled pretty clearly around the downtown area, and we could hear something near the library. I rested under a tree on the corner while she scouted ahead. I watched her as she went along the side of the library to the front. She wasn’t next to the building but on the far side of the street near the off-ramp of the interstate. When she got close enough to the building where she could see the front entrance she backed away slowly and then trotted back to me.

             
“There’s something like fifty zombies at the front door.”

“Joy,” I said. “Alright, we know they’re attracted to bright shiny things like fire.” I stood up and we made our way down Cumberland to President Clinton Avenue, where all the restaurants and bars are one block over. We moved up the street till we were even with the road that turns into the library’s main entrance. Along the way we passed some trash dumpsters and I dug around inside till I found an old spray can of paint. At the road to the library I smashed a window out of the nearest car and pulled one of the many lighters I carry out of my pocket and set the seats of the sedan on fire. I placed the spray can in the seat so it would be in the heart of the fire.

             
We didn’t wait around for the zombies to notice or try to make noise to get their attention, because if we were attracting the ones from the library’s front door we were attracting them from anywhere nearby, and I didn’t want that again today, so we just let it burn. When the spray can blew up it would take care of that. We moved off around the block to a point near the front door of the old Sticky Fingers Bar and Grill and watched. It didn’t take long for the can to blow and like one being, they all turned and walked over to the burning car. We crossed the distance and at the front door she pulled out the key we’d taken earlier from the library and unlocked it. Once in we relocked it and went to the second set of doors, doing the same thing. A quick tour of the ground floor told us that all our security measures were still in place. The tape was still on all the exit doors, with the exception of the one we went out of on our last visit, and we were certain no zombies came in that way.