***
As the SUV barreled through the large doors, Ky screaming behind the wheel like a hormonal banshee, Kate flew to the top hatch and turned the wheel quickly, hoping that the noise of her work would be obscured by the cacophony outside. Her head popped out of the top as the SUV was grinding to a halt in the center of the warehouse. Inside, Ky was already kicking herself for not thinking this through.
More than a hundred of those things had made it inside, and while they had no clue where Kate and the girls were hiding, they were all now staring right at the driver of the SUV.
Cursing loudly, Kate took in the scene. Her idiot, beautiful friend in the driver’s seat, proving herself to be constitutionally incapable of staying out of trouble.
She watched as the creatures flocked toward the vehicle and Ky looked around frantically. Kate quickly waved her hands above her head, standing with difficulty on the sloped edge of the top of the vat, looking around her as she did, searching for a solution.
The SUV was still nearly twenty feet away, and even if the girls were on top of the vat right now, they wouldn’t be able to make that crossing. There were too many of them down there. Armed only with her pistol and her machete, she couldn’t take on that many—especially with all of them focused on the car.
Above her head, the walkway that mirrored the one she had used to enter the building was only feet away, empty of creatures. Her eyes followed a stream of light entering through a narrow window high on the wall behind the walkway, and she made a quick call.
Finding Ky’s eyes, she gestured with huge motions: reverse, meet us on the side of the building.
As the creatures below reached the hood and some began to pound on the sides of the car, Ky nodded and slammed the big vehicle into reverse, a stream of smoke pouring from the engine block as she backed into the courtyard again.
Ky would have to burn some time, Kate knew, before she could get to the side of the building safely. Hopefully she could make a loop of the facility before returning.
“Girls,” Kate tossed down, trying to remain quiet, despite being out in the open. Several of the creatures below had seen her as she emerged, but she didn’t care. They would cluster at the base of the vat, not knowing how to reach the catwalk. But if they couldn’t get to those windows fast enough, any creatures still on the upper floor could cut her off if they needed to come back to the safety of their metal tube.
“Climb up to me, quickly. We have to leave, and a friend is helping us, but we have to move quickly.”
Below, she heard the hushed tones of concerned whispers, before the sloshing sound of feet moving through the liquid at the bottom of the tank.
“Are you sure?” came the worried voice of Stacy, who had moved to the wall. “We’re safe in here. If we go out there again … there were so many,” her voice trailed off, and Kate continued to scan the room as the SUV backed all the way out of the warehouse and turned toward the courtyard. She was worried about Ky. Even the best drivers had trouble navigating through herds of these things, and she was just a teenager—years from her license.
“I’m sure of two things, honey. Number one, is that I trust my friend to come back for us. Number two is that I’m never sure of anything, but that I will die trying to get you to safety. You can believe that because I’m here right now, right?”
The herd below was milling about in confusion, many of them following the SUV out of the broken and mangled doors. Many more turning back to the room and ambling into one another again. But more than a few were looking up to the second floor as if seeking the source of the hushed tones. While they couldn’t see for shit, they could hone in on smell and sound quickly. They had to hurry.
“Girls?”
Annie’s head popped up from below Kate so quickly that she almost fell off the side of the dusty steel slope. Muttering in mild annoyance at the surprise, she held her hand out to the small girl and hoisted her up. Now that she could get a good look at her, she could see that she was skinny but healthy. Dirty blond hair framing a pretty face with a small button nose. Her feet were stained red with the wine from the vat, and her blue jeans and bright red shirt were filthy. Her voice was quiet and tenuous, eyes scanning the warehouse in fear.
“Can they see us?” she said. The sound of Stacy’s footfalls on the rungs inside the vat echoed slightly as she made her way up.
“No, but we have to stay quiet or they will. Do you see that walkway up there?” Kate asked, pointing at the narrow catwalk leading to the window. “I’m going to put you up there, higher and farther away from those things. Okay?”
Annie nodded slowly as Stacy’s head peeked out from the vat. Stacy’s brown hair was plastered to her plain, wide face, her dark eyes instantly scanning the scene as she pulled herself out, dark cargo pants dripping wine on the steel surface. Kate put her finger to her lips to signal quiet, as several moans from the base of the vat drifted up to the trio.
They had found them.
More moans answered the those below them, and a crowd quickly began to form.
Kate ignored the shambling monsters and grabbed Annie beneath the arms, lifting her easily above her head until the little girl was able to scramble up onto the metal surface. Next, she leaned forward for Stacy, whose eyes were glued on the herd below, many of whom had already joined their brethren at the bottom of the vat.
Kate paused for a moment, watching the behavior. As more joined, they seemed to share a low moan that was repeated back through the crowd, drawing more in. Almost as if they were calling to their friends that food was near.
Shit, she thought. If they were really learning some rudimentary communication technique, things were going to get interesting.
Stacy followed Annie quickly, both stopping and waiting for Kate as she spared a final glance for the creatures below and leapt up, catching her chest on the lip of the walkway and grunting as the sharp metal caught below one of her breasts as she flipped her body onto the corrugated surface.
She wondered vaguely what type of bra was recommended for the zombie apocalypse.
Smiling wryly as she stood up, she guessed it wasn’t the black lacy number she had on—her wardrobe an unwilling consequence of the availability of properly sized clothing in their last foraging run. She really wished they hadn’t had to chuck those bags at the river, but she hoped they would help point Mike in the right direction, eventually.
That is, if the bags hadn’t been stolen, eaten, washed away by a tsunami or buried in volcanic ash.
Taking one girl’s hand in each of her own, she gave up on trying to stay silent. Dozens of the vile beasts had already gather below them, with more catching their sight and sound as they ran.
The window ahead of them was narrow, and it was high, but Kate could reach the lever release from where she stood. As she leaned forward and opened the portal slightly, she heard the coughing sputter of the SUV pulling up outside, then the instant report of an M4 carbine. Ky’s M4 carbine, she was sure.
Shit. They were late, and Ky needed to move.
Suddenly, the roar of the engine beneath the window sputtered and died. The volleys from the M4 increased, and a scream split the air.
Ky.
She was going to die there waiting for them.
Kate’s mind exploded, her hands grappling for the window and body pulling herself toward the opening in her fury and sorrow.
The M4 went silent and Kate’s tears began to fall on the dusty equipment below her. Her hands shook on the window sill as she pulled her face level with the opening.
A new sound met her ears and she leaned forward, craning her head to watch as the convoy of trucks, led by a humvee spitting fifty caliber greetings into the crowd of undead surrounding Ky’s SUV, plowed through the side gate closest to the warehouse. The chain link entry shattered and spun to the side of the road as the heavy armored vehicle crushed a phalanx of undead beneath its knobby wheels and pulled up next to Ky. The nimble girl, who had made it to the roof of her SUV, wasted no time leaping across the three foot gap between her dead vehicle and the humvee.
The gunner stopped firing, leaning forward as Ky spoke and gestured to the warehouse, then spoke into her microphone as the machine leapt forward again, now moving to the shattered door through which Ky had so recently retreated. The Rhino plowed forward behind the humvee, while the rest of the convoy pulled around outside the gate, preparing to leave after the extraction.
Kate had to hand it to Starr, she was organized and competent. She knew not to spend any more time on station than necessary.
Flying back from the wall, Kate met the two girls’ looks with a smile.
“We’re going to leave a different way,” she said, grabbing their hands and pulling them back the way they had come. “The convoy is back, and we’re …” She drifted off as she felt the vibrations on the metal walkway and turned, knowing what she’d see.
The creatures had found them.
Dozens of them were pouring out of the office and onto the walkway. They had seen the humans from the other side of the warehouse, and had simply continued through the office onto the opposite side. Like lemmings, there were still zombies crawling up the stairwell outside, following the first batch of creatures that had chased Kate inside initially—a nearly continuous line of undead that was now starting out onto the precarious safety of the hanging walkway.
From the front of the warehouse, the heavy report of the fifty cal began shattering bodies as they surged toward the new threat. The humvee drove slowly forward into the confined space, turret swiveling rapidly, keeping the creatures at a minimum safe distance. Behind the armored truck, the bus-like Rhino with several troops on the roof secured with ropes and tie-downs, kept the eager creatures at bay with concentrated fire. Ky was nowhere to be seen, but Kate correctly guessed that she had squirmed her way into the humvee through the gun turret.
The gunner waved once as the hummer pulled close to the vats, and Kate turned to meet the zombies behind them. They were only forty feet away and closing. She had to move fast to lower the girls to the vat below, so they could make it to the flat roof of the Rhino.
“Stacy, I need you to go first, so I can hand Annie down to you, okay? Can you be brave for me?”
This was easier said than done, Stacy realized. Below them, the creatures were clustered four deep around the vats, and the hummer was raining lead into the assembled bodies with ferocity, sending bloody body parts pinwheeling into the air while the vehicles advanced into position. As Stacy was grabbing Kate’s hand, the Rhino maneuvered into position.
“I’ll be down next, I promise,” said Kate, sparing another look for the zombies on the walkway. She had to hurry.
The dead were only twenty feet away now, and their footfalls were heavy on the thin metal. The wires and poles holding the walkway to the steel girders above them groaned with the added weight, and the thin perch began to sway precariously. Kate lowered Stacy quickly, watching until she saw the feet hit solid steel and the child gave her a thumbs up while looking around her nervously, as if expecting the creatures below to mount the slick sides of the vat.
Kate turned and cursed loudly, reaching for her sidearm.
Annie screamed as the first creature shambled to within five feet. Kate squeezed the trigger gently, sending a single round into the head of the closest ghoul. It cartwheeled to the ground as the walkway swayed violently again.
She drilled the second one in the forehead, then the third in the temple. The fourth took two rounds—one in the throat and one in the eye—before she took out the fifth and sixth with clean shots to the nose and forehead.
“Time to go, honey,” she said to Annie, offering the child one arm while she continued firing with her right hand. “You hold on with both hands, and I’ll lower you to your sister, okay? Don’t look down and don’t let go. You’ll be fine.”
The little girl looked up, her eyes full of fear and anxiety, lips pursed tightly and brow furrowed. But she nodded and stepped away from the ledge.
Kate lined up her next shot, took the creature in the face and bought herself several seconds as the pile of bodies blocked the walkway. Moving quickly, she began to lower the child down.
The groaning of the walkway suddenly intensified and the sharp sound of metal hitting metal echoed from somewhere above them all. The slender platform suddenly canted sharply to the side, unbalanced by the snapping support fifteen feet above. Several creatures plummeted to the ground below, falling amidst their brethren in a teeming mass of undead.
The gunfire below intensified as Stacy screamed, watching her sister dangle from Kate’s hand. The pistol flew into the air as Kate grasped for purchase on the flailing perch, finding a loose length of chain attached to a jammed pulley. The metal groaned again as the next creature pushed its way forward merely ten feet distant.
“Annie, you still with me?” Kate shouted down, the strain of holding both ends showing slightly in her voice. “You have to jump down to Stacy—it’s just a couple feet. Go now!”
The child released her hand as the walkway shook violently under the collapsing metal frame. Annie fell awkwardly to the top of the steel vat.
For a moment, it looked like she would make it.
But as Kate looked on, the red t-shirt slipped over the side of the vat, with only the scream of her sister grasping for air to mark her disappearance.