Mason said “Sounds great, but you’re forgetting that none of that will even be open.”
“I was just reading it,” she smiled. “I know it won't be open, but there will be nice rooms and there will be food. Dan, can we go there?”
“How far is it to Denver, Mason?”
He flipped to the mileage chart on the back pages of the atlas. “Says it’s about 60 miles.”
“I say we give it a shot,” I said.
Mason was looking at Vera who was shaking her head no. He asked her “You don’t want to try Denver?”
“I want to go
home,” she said.
I said “This could be our best bet for survival, Vera. Who knows what has happened back in Worley lately. Maybe the mountain has moved further this way.”
“You don’t know that,” she said, suddenly snapping at me. “How could you know? And how do you even know if the building in Denver is standing? It might have collapsed or burned to the ground.” She pointed her finger at me. “Don’t pretend that you know what’s around the next bend, mister, because you
don’t.”
Mindy said “Don’t ta
lk to him that way! He’s only trying to help.”
“You stay out of this, missy,” Vera said. “Mason, take me home. If these two lovebirds want to go building climbing, then let them go. I want to go home.”
I said “We shouldn’t separate.”
“We were separated before we met them in Coeur d’Alene!” she said. “They were alone and we were alone.” She lit another cigarette. “We were doing fine without them.”
“Vera dammit,” Mason said loudly. “These are good people. We’ve been doing really well as a team with them. Dan is right. We shouldn’t split up.”
“You go with them, then,” she said. “I will go home by myself.”
“The hell you will” he stormed.
“Then take me home, dammit. I want to go home.”
“Good Lord…ok we’ll sleep on it tonight.” He took her hand. “Goodnight you two.”
I said “Goodnight.”
Mindy didn’t say anything. She plopped down on the couch next to me. I put my arm around her. She snuggled closer to me - then she sat forward. She grabbed the magazine again.
We looked through it together.
I expected Mason and Vera to be gone
the next morning. Surprisingly they were in the lobby. Vera was sitting on the couch smoking. Mason was looking through the road atlas again, and there was this weird but familiar smell that I couldn’t put my finger on.
“Good morning.”
“Dan, we’re going back,” Mason said. “Vera wants to go home. If I don’t go, she will go anyway and I can’t have that.”
I said “I understand. If Mindy wanted to go back to Spokane, I would take her.”
“But we have a plan,” Mason added. “We’re going to go back to Worley. If things are worse than what they were when we left, we will come back to you. But I want you to do me this favor: if you leave the skyscraper, leave me a note somewhere or something big enough so that I can see it. Make sure I know it’s from you. Use some spray paint – paint something somewhere that I can see. We will follow you wherever you go, but not quite yet.” He smiled. “So…where’s your lady?”
“She’s just getting dressed. She’ll be down in a minute.”
“Fine, in the meantime, I went across the street. There was a shop over there, and believe it or not, there were some eggs. They were powdered in a bag, but they are eggs. I fried some up on a pan with some
Sprite
on our grill
.
They don’t taste half bad. Do you want some?”
“Oh yea,” I said.
“Sounds great!”
Mason dished me up a good portion on a paper plate. I recognized the smell then; it was the eggs. The
Sprite
soda made them smell…different.
I finished the whole plate. They did taste pretty good.
…?
Where was Mindy?
Vera sat there staring at me. Cigarette smoke rose up her face.
I said “I’m gonna go check on Mindy.”
Mason said “Tell her to hurry up. These eggs are going to get
colder
.”
“Will do.”
I took the steps up two at a time. The room we stayed in was only three doors down from the staircase.
The door was open.
Oh God…
Mindy…
She wasn’t in the bed. The door to the bathroom was shut.
I knocked on it once.
Twice, a little harder. “Mindy?” I whispered.
No answer.
I kicked the door open. No one was there.
“Mindy!” I shouted.
Something bumped out in the hallway. I ran to the door. Mindy was coming out of the room across the hall. I grabbed her and hugged her hard. “Oh Jesus you scared the
fuck
out of me!” I said.
She smiled a crooked smile, a little embarrassed. “We were out of toilet paper.”
“Oh my God…”
“I’m ok honey,” she said, kissing me. “I’ll be down in a minute.”
“
Oh no
,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere without you. Never again.”
“Well let me go pee. Then we can go.”
“Ok, and hey! Mason made some eggs for breakfast.”
“Nice,” she said from inside the bathroom. “Are they coming with us to Denver?”
“No. Vera wants to go home.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, but I told Mason that if you wanted to go back to Spokane, I’d take you there.”
“I love you, Dan”
“I love you too, Mindy.”
She came out and kissed me again. “C’mon,” s
he said, “let’s get some eggs.”
THE TRANGO TOWER
Mason’s plan was to go back to Worley. He and Vera would check it out. If things looked ok, they would stay there. If not, they would return to Denver as soon as they could. Vera agreed to this plan. She said she wouldn’t want to stay there if things weren’t good.
Mason insisted that I take his pistol. He told me that I needed to protect my lady. He said Vera’s shotgun would be good enough for both of them. He also gave me a box of bullets for the pistol as well as the roadmap with a
large circle drawn around the highway off ramp that led to the building in Denver.
“The exit’s right by the Sports Authority football stadium,” he told me. “You can’t miss it.”
I asked him if he knew where to go since he was giving me the atlas. He tapped the side of his head and said “It’s all in here.”
He added, “Today is September 25
th
. Give us one month. If you don’t hear from us by Halloween, you might as well figure we’re either dead or staying in Worley. I wish we had a better way to communicate, but please, spray paint a note on the exit sign if you leave. If you don’t leave, don’t leave a note.”
“Sure thing, Mason.
Thanks.”
“You take care of your lady.”
“You take care of yours.”
He nodded.
“Take care, Vera.”
She nodded.
“Oh, and you might need this,” Mason said. He rummaged through some of the stuff packed on the back of his bike. “Here it is.”
He handed me a large flashlight.
“Thanks again” I said.
They left.
We watched them until they were out of sight; then we turned and headed toward Denver.
The road was quiet.
We made it into Denver around noon. Inside the city, the roads were a lot harder to maneuver through. Cars were parked sideways on the highway or were flipped onto their
sides. Some buildings in the suburbs were burned; others had collapsed. There was a lot of smoke in the air as well. From time to time I could see the downtown skyscrapers in the distance.
We took the exit that Mason had marked on the map. Indeed, it was right by Mile High Stadium. The stadium was badly damaged but we could still make out its oval shape. The highways were severely cracked and had large pieces of cement lying all over the place. The road looked to have been jack-hammered. As we headed into the downtown area, backed up sewage filled our noses. The stench was overwhelming. Mindy and I both gagged as we drove through looking for the tower.
We finally found it. It was on the corner of 18
th
and Broadway. The main entrance was blocked by more burned out vehicles. We drove the motorcycle around the whole building. All of the entrance doors we found were either locked or barricaded.
We made our way up some ramps which led us to the building’s parking garage. There were a lot of bur
ned out cars in here as well. I noticed that most of the burned out cars were luxury sedans. I finally saw a set of doors that weren’t blocked by anything. They turned out to be doors to a closed elevator. To the side of the elevator I saw another entrance through some broken windows. There were stairs leading down and across a sky bridge to an outdoor lobby.
I really hated to ditch the motorcycle, but the revving of the engine was so loud and it echoed badly. I really didn’t want to draw
attention to Mindy or myself – I also didn’t want to leave the bike sitting out in the open because it was our only transportation. There were some bushes along the ledge of the raised parking lot. I pushed the bike behind one of the bushes, but it really wasn’t hidden from sight very well.
I took the key from the bike and pocketed it. I felt the butt of the pistol Mason gave me as it sat in its holster around my waist. Taking Mindy by the hand, we ran across the sky bridge into the lobby.
There were a few dead bodies lying around. One was a woman who had been ravaged by zombies. Her body was ripped apart. Dried blood had pooled around her.
I saw a sign pointing to a stairwell.
We went in - the door shut quickly behind us. It was pitch black in there. It stunk. “Shit. I forgot the flashlight,” I said. “Let’s go get it. It’s too dark in here.” We went back to the bike. The flashlight had been tucked into our sleeping bag.
On the way back, Mindy asked me if I had smelled the smell in the stairwell. I said yes. I didn’t want to scare her, but it did smell like zombies.
I told her it was probably just mildew.
Stupid me.
I should have known better.
Back in the stairwell, I clicked the light on. I shined the light at the door we just came
through. “Floor 3,” I said. We mounted the steps.
In complete darkness other than the flashlight, we made our way slowly up the stairwell. We found the fourth and fifth floor exit doors jammed shut. I didn’t know if the pole shift had caused it or not, but it seemed strange that such a new building would have broken doors.
“What’s
that?”
Mindy asked, her hand gripping mine.
“What?”
“At the top of the stairs…something’s hanging over the edge.”
I pointed the flashlight up the steps. There was something sitting on the top step. It looked like it was teetering there on the landing of the 6
th
floor.
We moved close
r. “It’s a head!” Mindy almost screamed. She moved closer to me as we moved up the steps, slowly.
“It
is
a head,” I said. “It looks like it got cut off.”
We stepped around it, tried the 6
th
floor exit door. It was jammed, too.
“Let’s keep going up,” I whispered.
As we came to the 7
th
floor landing Mindy said “Oh my God…” but
God
was garbled as she put her hand over her mouth. She pointed to the ground. There was a man lying on his side totally ripped apart. Everything else inside his chest was gone. His eyes were glazed open. Lying by his side there was a bloodied axe.
I tried opening the exit door, but it too was jammed shut.
“How many floors does this place have?” I asked as we stepped around the ripped man.
“I think
there’s 78 floors.”
“Damn.”
“I’m going to take this,” Mindy said as she reached for the axe.
“Not a bad idea,” I said. “C’mon let’s keep climbing.”
The doors were all jammed. Eighth floor. Ninth. Tenth. All jammed shut. It was slow going. We had to concentrate as we climbed the steps. It was so dark. As we reached the 11
th
floor, the flashlight blinked off, then right back on again.
“Oh shit. Don’t do that” I told the flashlight.
Mindy looked at me with deep concern in her eyes.
The flashlight went off.
I hit the flashlight on my open palm but it didn’t come back on. We were in complete darkness. I hit it more but it didn’t matter. The flashlight was done.
“Ok don’t move,” I told Mindy. “We need to let our eyes adjust to the darkness. There has to be light somewhere.”
“K.”
We stood there on the 11
th
floor landing, waiting.
“There
is
no light,” she said.
“Yea.”
“If Vera were here, we could use her lighter,” Mindy said
I knew we had to be near a door. I needed to find a wall first just to verify my surroundings. Mindy was right behind me.
She had her hand on my waist. I reached out blindly to find a wall. There is was, to the right! It was cool to the touch, smooth paint covered brick.
“Let’s sit down with our backs against the wall, right here,” I told Mindy.
“Ok.”
We both blindly sat down. It felt so awkward.
Mindy was next to me.
I knew the door was to my right. In front of us, the stairs would be going down. To our left, stairs would be going up.
“Let’s wait a few minutes,” I said.
“Ok.”
We waited again. Mindy’s hand was grabbing mine very tightly. She was very scared. I was trying my best to stay composed. This was utterly dark, utterly black. I couldn’t see anything at all.
She put her head on my shoulder. “I’m
scared, Dan.”
“We’ll be fine, just give it a minute.”
In the complete darkness, my mind started trying to make shapes even though they weren’t there. I thought I saw a dark shadow move in front of us. I thought I saw Mindy stand up, but she didn’t. I closed my eyes. I leaned my head back as I looked straight up.
Mindy was starting to breathe faster. I heard her grasp the axe with her other hand. There was a slight clink as she slid the axe across the concrete.
“Be careful with that,” I said.
“I am. I’m just going to keep it closer to me.”
I tried to click the flashlight back on, but it didn’t do anything.
“This is really scary, Dan. I’m afraid.”
“I am too,” I admitted. “I don’t know what to do.”
“We’ll fall if we try to go back down the stairs,” Mindy said. “And if we
try to go up, we’ll trip over…something maybe.”
I was trying to think of something, any
thing to do. It was so black.
So dark.
Finally I had an idea. “Mindy, slide away from me but hand me the axe. I’m going to try to chop a hole in the door.”
“I’m afraid to move,” she said.
“Just keep your back to the wall. Slide to your left as far as you can go.”
“Come with me.”
“I’m going to stand right here. I’m going to swing at the door with the axe. I don’t want to hit you by accident. You’ll be ok, just slide over there.”
“Ok.”
“Keep talking to me, though. I want to be sure you’re ok.”
“Alright.”
She started to slide away from me on the floor. “I’m sliding now,” she said. “Still sliding on the floor…still going…going…Ok, I’m against the other wall.”
Leaning down, I felt for the axe in the darkness. I found the handle. As I stood back u
p, my balance was thrown off. I stepped forward trying to steady myself. I reached for the wall, thinking that it was right there, but it wasn’t. I stepped forward again and as my foot came down, there was nothing there. I went head first down the stairs with the axe.
I was swimming in darkness. Then light
erupted in my brain as my left arm found the first step as I fell. My wrist broke when I hit the step. The pain was so huge.
My fall continued.
I rolled onto my left side, hoping to avoid further pain or injury. That was a bad move on my part. The axe came to a clanging halt, sharp edge up. As I rolled down the next steps, the axe slashed my shoulder. It wasn’t a deep cut, but bad enough for the aroma of fresh blood to fill the stairwell.
Mindy heard the axe clang on the steps. She asked “Dan? Are you ok?”
I finally came to a stop on the landing between the 10
th
and 11
th
floor. The pistol fell out of the holster on my fall, too. I had no idea where it was.
I said “I fell, Mindy.”
“Oh shit! Are you ok?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh Jesus…where did you go…Dan? Dan!”
“I’m down the steps. Mindy don’t move or you’re going to fall, too.”
I heard her sliding, feeling around in the dark. In a few moments, she was sliding down the steps. I heard her coming down the steps like a toddler would – one step at a time on her butt - afraid to fall, but determined to get down no matter what.
The axe was still on one of
the steps, blade pointing up.
“Be careful of the axe. I dropped it.”
The next thing I knew, I felt her hands on me. “Where are you hurt?” she asked.
“I think I broke my wrist.”
“Can you move it?”
I tried. Bolts of pain shattered my arm when I tried to move it. “No, it hurts way too much.”
“Let’s get back to the bike. We need to find something for the pain.”
“How?”
I asked. “How are we going to do get anywhere? It’s too dark to see anything.”
“I got to you, didn’t I?” she asked me sternly. “If I can do it, you can. Don’t give up on me, Dan.”
“I’m not, believe me, I’m not.”
“Ok just slide to the steps on your ass. Go down one at a time on your butt.”