The stairs led all the way to the roof. She emerged onto a small rectangular platform dotted with pipe vents and fans, the floor ribbed with snakelike tar strips. Eleanor closed the door behind her and then turned around to look for someplace to hide.
But it was useless.
There was nothing up here big enough to hide behind. She had gone as high as she could go, and now, the zombies had treed her just as surely as bloodhounds driving a raccoon up a pine. She had nowhere else to go.
The moaning was growing louder, and with mounting terror she realized she could hear their footsteps trudging heavily up the stairs. She closed her eyes and prayed for something to take her away from all this, some helicopter to swoosh down out of nowhere and take her away. But when she opened her eyes again, the sky was as empty as it had been before she closed them.
In the distance, she could see towering columns of orange flame rising up into the night sky, filling it with a ghastly glow. There was gunfire, too, distant and muffled. And, faintly, rising up from the wreckage, the sounds of someone screaming.
We’re dying
, she thought.
Not just me, all of us. This city . . . it’s dead.
There was a dull thud against the roof’s door and Eleanor flinched.
Already? Were they here already?
“All right then,” she said, raising her rifle toward the door, “whenever you’re ready.”
“Anthony, move!” Shaw shouted.
Anthony grunted, half turned, and fired a reckless shot toward a female zombie just ahead of him. The zombie was crack-whore skinny, her clothes hanging off her emaciated frame in bloody tatters. Every inch of her skin was crisscrossed with cuts and scratches, as though she’d stumbled through a dense thicket of thorns. Her nose was gone. It looked as if it had been bitten off. There was nothing but a black, gummy hole there now, oozing infected blood. Her head hung forward, revealing a huge gash from the base of her hairline, down her forehead and across the orbit of her eye. She seemed so frail, so skeletal, that it was a wonder she was able to walk at all; but she did, and with every step she grew closer to Anthony.
“Shoot her or get out of the way, Anthony!”
“I’m trying,” Anthony said, but Shaw was aware that his son’s voice had changed. He was whining now, frustrated. Anthony had never been frustrated by anything in his life. Everything had always come so easily for him—athletics, girls, police work; but now the gunshot wound in his shoulder and the shock into which it was sending him were starting to cloud his head. He was missing easy shots, and with every miss, his frustration and his fear grew stronger.
“Focus, Anthony! Front sight on the target.”
Shaw was yelling over his shoulder. He’d have shot the zombie for him if he’d been able, but they were surrounded, and he had plenty of his own problems to worry about.
They’d followed Eleanor back through the alley and come out on the wide stretch of water behind the apartment buildings just as she was running inside. In a flash, Shaw had realized what was happening. The infected were swarming the apartment building on his extreme left, but as soon as they noticed Eleanor blundering her way through the no-man’s-land between the back of the thrift shop and the apartments, they went after her. He’d watched them pour into the building, and for a second, he’d allowed himself a rising sense of elation. They were gonna rip her to shreds . . . and that meant the zombies would do his job for him. He and Anthony could get the hell out of here.
And then Anthony had started shooting.
Shaw had spun around, ready to slap the shit out of the boy for blowing their cover, and stopped cold.
On their way back here they’d passed a darkened, empty doorway. Or at least it had seemed empty. But no sooner had they disturbed the water in front of the door than a steady stream of zombies burst out of it and went straight for Anthony. They were practically right on top of him from the start. Shooting his Glock left-handed he managed to put down six of them with perfect head shots, but it was a losing battle, and he was forced to run to his father’s side for protection.
Shaw moved fast. He picked off the zombies nearest to Anthony and guided him into the open space between the buildings. It was the only place left to run.
Within seconds, they were surrounded.
Shaw and Anthony fell together back-to-back and started fighting for their lives.
“Keep your weapon up!” Shaw yelled at him. “Come on, Anthony! Stay with me, son.”
But Anthony was fading fast. Between backward glances over his shoulder, Shaw could see that plain enough. Anthony’s gun kept dipping to the water, as if it was way too heavy for him. His face was white as cheese. His breathing had become ragged, and underneath the raspy pull of his lungs, Shaw could hear the whimpers of frustration and fear.
Shaw still carried the duffel bags and the gas can, and he was about to toss them aside when a zombie erupted from the water and grabbed hold of Anthony’s injured right arm.
Anthony let out a shrieking yell that Shaw felt down to his bones. He thrashed and kicked and tried to shake the zombie loose, but he was weak and all he managed to do was pitch over to one side and go under.
“Anthony, no!” Shaw cried.
Shaw spun around and shot Anthony’s attacker in the face.
“Shit, where are you, Anthony?”
He jammed his free hand down into the water and groped around for Anthony.
The next instant his fingers closed on his son’s shirt and Shaw yanked him up.
He stood Anthony up and saw that his eyes were drooping, but he was still breathing.
“Are you okay?” Shaw asked. “Did he bite you?”
But he already knew the answer. Even as he spoke, he could see the blood pouring down his son’s shoulder, the shirt fabric ripped away to reveal a deep bite.
“Oh, Anthony,” he said. He lost all control then. He tried to speak, but his throat was too tight to let the words out. Tears were streaming down his face. “Anthony, no.”
“Daddy, I don’t want to die. Please, don’t leave me.”
The words polarized something inside Shaw. He was still raging inside, still trembling with anger and denial and fear and love, and somehow, in all that mixed-up pain, he found the strength to talk.
“I’ve got you, Anthony. I won’t leave you.”
And with that he threw Anthony over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and ran toward the apartment building, firing his M-16 one-handed into the zombies closing in around them. Hands and faces danced in and out of view, but Shaw just ducked his head and ran. He felt the zombies clutching at him, pulling at him, but all of that was somehow secondary, a world away. All that mattered was getting his son somewhere safe and warm, providing for him, caring for him.
They entered the apartment’s central hallway and were immediately thrown into darkness. He saw dim shapes midway down the hall, bumbling into each other as they attempted to mount the stairs, and he could hear the ones from outside splashing around behind him. He looked left, looked right, and saw a closed door a few feet down the hall.
Shaw set Anthony down next to the door and rammed it with his shoulder. It gave way on his second attempt, and he found himself inside the open doorway, looking at a decomposing corpse faceup on a mattress. He stared at it for a second, breathing hard. The skin on the corpse’s face had turned black with rot, the chest and stomach bloated with the gases that accompany decomposition. Its hands were gnarled claws, and the tightening action of rigor had pulled them up in front of the chest in a posture that suggested the corpse was frozen while trying to push away some great weight.
Shaw let out a long, hissing breath of disgust.
So this is it
, he thought.
Last stand down here with the dead.
And the dying.
Okay then. So be it.
He threw the duffel bags on top of the TV set at the foot of the bed, and then stepped back into the hallway, grabbed Anthony, and pulled him inside the room, leaning him up against the wall.
He closed the door and braced it with a dresser.
Then he crossed to the bed and with one quick motion dumped the mattress and the decaying corpse into the water, propping the mattress up so that it sandwiched the corpse against the wall.
No point in Anthony having to see that
, he thought.
“Can you help me with this?” Shaw asked, getting into position to push the bed against the door.
He looked at his son. Anthony’s face had turned so pale the blood vessels showed through the skin. His eyes were rimmed in red, his mouth hanging open. Anthony stared back at him, his expression a ghastly mixture of terror and blank incomprehension.
“It’s okay, son. Just stand there.”
He reached into the pouch he kept at his left hip and counted six more full magazines.
Damn it,
he thought,
not nearly enough.
But when he looked up at Anthony, his smile was steady.
“Don’t you worry, son. Daddy’s gonna take care of you.”
CHAPTER 21
Eleanor backed away from the door. The zombies were banging on the other side, causing it to shake in the frame. Panicking, she looked around once again for something she could use as cover.
But there was nothing.
Get a grip, girl
, she told herself.
Slow down. Focus. Think this through.
“No,” she said aloud. “No, I can’t.”
You can. You will. You have to, Eleanor. Get a grip.
The gun was a known quantity, something she could control. In the academy, her tactics instructors had taught her to slow down, analyze the situation. When things get out of hand, you get control of one thing, really focus, and everything else will start to fall in line.
Eleanor did that now.
She ejected the M-16’s magazine and counted eleven rounds. She had those and one in the chamber and another full magazine in the back pocket of her jeans. But that was it. After that, she’d be reduced to using the rifle as a club.
How could she have made it through so much, she wondered, only to be reduced to this? It wasn’t fair. She had fought a better fight than this. Hadn’t she done everything a woman could possibly be expected to do?
The door shook with another hard hit, and this time, something cracked.
The wood was giving way. As she watched, a crack raced from just below the doorknob over to the bottom hinge. How many hands were pounding on that door, she wondered. Twelve, fourteen, more than that? It sounded as if the stairs beyond were full of the infected.
And then the door gave way.
It snapped off its hinges and fell from the door frame in two large pieces, and in the darkness beyond, Eleanor could see the faces of the damned. For a moment, they stared at her and her at them, and then they surged forward, a wave of teeth and fingernails.
She raised her rifle, the ghost ring sight centered on the lead zombie’s chest . . . and then she lowered it. Inspiration struck. She stepped over the low wall of the air-conditioning platform and onto the steeply sloping roof. There was an uncertain moment, a deliriously acrophobic moment as her stomach rolled over, and she felt as if she might faint, and then she closed her eyes and forced herself to regain control. Then she opened her eyes and started crab-walking across the roof, the shingles rough as sandpaper beneath her fingers.
She moved toward the north corner of the building, passing beneath the air-conditioning platform, and chanced a look up. One of the zombies was lunging toward her. It went over the knee-high wall and tumbled forward, down the side of the roof and over the edge.
She watched it fall, arms and legs pin wheeling wildly in the air, and she let out a cry that was part terrified whimper, part triumphant yell.
Breathing hard, she looked back up at the air-conditioning platform.
More zombies were coming over the knee-high wall around the platform. Several of them lost their balance and went over the side of the roof. But others stayed on their feet and started toward her.
Moving in a crouch, Eleanor backed away. She had maybe thirty feet left of roof behind her, but she could already tell she was going to have to stand and fight. More and more of the zombies were making their way down the length of the roof.
She raised her rifle and fired at a female up near the roof peak.
The zombie collapsed and rolled down the side, taking six others with it.
“Yeah!” she screamed, shaking her rifle at the remaining zombies.
This is going to work
, she thought.
It is really going to work.
But there were still others she couldn’t just bowl off the side. A fat, blond man in a blue T-shirt was closing on her. His jeans were soaked in blood, and with every shuffling step across the shingled roof, his tattered sneakers left dark smears of ichor. She stepped over the ridge and grabbed her gun by the barrel, holding it like a baseball bat.
She waited for him to step into range, and when he was close enough, she swung for his head. The blow knocked him down, but he grabbed for her at the same time, and the M-16’s shoulder strap got caught up in his fingers.
The next instant, Eleanor was struggling to maintain her balance. The zombie was sliding down the roof sheeting, but it was pulling her with it, and try as she might, she just couldn’t keep her feet. Eleanor pitched over forward, landed on her chin, and slid down the side of the roof. She saw the edge racing toward her, the yawning emptiness beyond it coming rapidly into view, and she clawed at the shingles for something to hold on to.
The next instant the zombie was tumbling over the side and falling free to the writhing carpet of clutching hands and upturned faces below. Eleanor followed after it, swinging her legs over the edge and catching herself on the eaves at the last possible instant.
She had only seen the ground below for a second, but that had been more than enough for her.
There were hundreds of zombies crowded in together down there, an infected bolus of hands and teeth and gore reaching up for her, their collective motion almost tidal.