Outbreak: A Survival Thriller (14 page)

I cross my arms over my face, no
clue what to do next. I’m certain he’ll hit me again.

He doesn’t. Instead, he pulls my
arms apart and lowers his head over mine.

“I’m ex-Navy Seal, kid,” he says.
“You don’t have a
chan
—”

Before he can finish, I whip my
head toward the dark mass of his face. This time, the head butt lands like it
should, and I’m treated to the painless impact of solid bone smashing into
something soft—his nose, probably.

He swings at me and hits me in
the face. Four knuckles crash into my cheekbone. My eyes roll, and I smell
blood—his or mine, I can’t tell. Despite the pain, I react instantly.
Pausing would only give him time to plan his next move.

His ear. That’s what I go for
when I slap my flattened palm against the side of his head. It lands about how
I want it to, enough to stun him long enough for me to grab his body armor,
swing my legs, and roll him off.

As we scramble to get away from
each other, Wheels suddenly ducks low to the ground. He charges toward me so
fast, I barely have time to prepare for a tackle.

Barely. I drop all my weight on
my left heel and spin away from him, narrowly missing his charging shoulder.
Whirling around to face him, I drop into a defensive stance in case he tries another
one.

His dark shape hunkers in front
of me. He’s bent over now, fumbling with something on the floor.

A hollow scrape of metal against
concrete tells me he has picked up the shotgun. By the time he lifts it past
his waist, I’m no longer standing in that spot. I’m swinging myself around the
nearest stack to put something—anything—between us.

He hasn’t reloaded yet, so I
imagine he plans to use the shotgun as a club. With the stack between us, I’m
protected. Now, though, I’ve given him all the time in the world to reload.

“Where’d you go, kid,” he says in
a raspy voice, and I hear the snap of the shotgun being cracked open, followed
by the click of a shell being slipped inside.

An idea strikes me. How heavy are
these shelves, anyway?

Wheels speaks
again. I think he says, “Time to…” though time to what, exactly, I’ll never
know. Time to die, probably.

And maybe he’s right—but
not yet.

I heave with all of my strength
and manage to tip the shelf over on top of Wheels.

He dives out from under it but
doesn’t make it all the way.

The shelf lands with a bang so
loud I barely hear the shriek of agony from Wheels. Then there is silence,
which is even more startling. The infected have momentarily stopped their wall
bashing. I imagine them standing out there, gaping stupidly at the inch of space
in front of their faces, trying to figure out what the noise was.

They give up, apparently, because
the pounding resumes a moment later.

I walk around the toppled stack
to find Wheels lying on his stomach. The shotgun is on the floor by his hand,
and I kick it away before he can grab it. He lashes out to grab my boot and
misses. I step back in case he has any other surprises. Already, I’m wondering
how to finish this.

Could I really kill him?
A helpless man with no weapon?

“You fucking pussy,” Wheels says,
grunting and squirming beneath the weight crushing his legs below the knees. “They’re
gonna tear you and your little girlfriend apart, piece by fucking piece.”

“You were a Navy Seal?” I ask
him, not sure why I do.

“You bet I was. A little pussy
like you
has
no idea what that means and never will.
So go ahead, fucking kill me. I don’t care.”

“You were never a Seal,” I say.
“I’m going to forget you ever said that.”

Wheels makes
a violent
fff
sound that I imagine is the beginning of a curse directed at me.

My boot never gives him the
chance. I kick him in the face, hard enough to turn his head a full ninety
degrees in the other direction. I don’t stop there. Incapable now of controlling
the rage sizzling through my nervous system, I kick and stomp with the mindless
fury of an infected until, eventually, my boot lands in what feels like a soupy
mess.

The rage subsides, and I question
whether or not I’ll feel something later, some kind of shameful acknowledgment
of what I’ve just done.

Probably not.
Things are different now, and I vaguely understand what my father went through
in the warzones of the Middle East, where killing an enemy soldier never really
hit you on an emotional level. The way he explained it, your mind found ways to
justify it, to make the enemy seem less human, so you wouldn’t feel bad about
killing.

Regardless of how I might deal
with it, Wheels deserved to die.

I don’t stick around. I scream
out Melanie’s name, but there’s no way she can hear me above the bashing of
infected fists against the warehouse walls. I grab the lantern and make my way
to the office.

She’s in there, but her back is
turned to me as she busies herself with aiming the 9mm at the door. The warped lines
of light around the curved edges tell me the infected are close to breaking it
off the hinges. Another minute, and they’ll be inside.

“Melanie,” I shout.

She still can’t hear me. All of
her concentration is on the pistol and the act of keeping it leveled at the
door.

I tap her shoulder. She whips
around, and I duck at the sudden threat of a gun barrel leveled at my face.
When no shot is fired, I rise slowly with my hands up.

“Kip,” she says, and I can hear
the relief in her voice above the commotion. “Take it.”

She passes me the 9mm,
then
goes after her bow and quiver. I’m not sure how much
good either weapon will do against the horde.

“Follow me,” I tell her, grabbing
a lantern.

We leave the office. I pass her
the lantern so I can lock the door we have just shut behind us. Luckily for me,
the Colonel (or his predecessor) was paranoid about fortifying every door on
the inside as well as the outside. This one uses a steel beam that can slide
horizontally through metal fixtures. Better than a simple deadbolt.

Still not
enough.

The infected burst into the room
I have just sealed and go straight for the next door in their path. The
rattling sound it makes tells me the inner door won’t hold, either, and for a
moment, I’m paralyzed, with no idea what to do next.

“The shelves,” Melanie says. “Can
we use them?”

“Let’s try.”

She tosses her bow aside where
she can reach it later. I holster the pistol and take the lantern from her,
putting it on a shelf to maximize our light.

It’s incredibly taxing work, even
with two of us to share the burden. Tipping the stack onto one side is easy,
but the structure is incredibly heavy and tough to drag. When we finally get it
propped against the door, I feel a surge of hope.

“Another one,” Melanie says.

We run to another that looks
empty. We hear glass shatter as the infected realize there’s a window with only
a layer of wooden boards covering it on the other side. They’ve begun to slam
their fists against the boards, a better option than the door. Fortunately, whoever
put up those boards did a damned good job of it. Still, they won’t hold
forever.

We drag another shelf to the
window, count to three, and heave it up high enough to prop it against the
topmost board. The lowest one breaks. Diseased hands shoot through it like
freakish weeds. They find the shelves and push, sliding the stack an inch
across the floor.

Melanie and I look at each other.
No need to say what we’re thinking.

We drag over another stack and
drop it just right so it lies against the bottom edges of the first two. We
lucked out in making the original stacks level with each other. Now the three
of them form a blocky Y shape that covers the windows and the door, with
reinforcement against the floor.

Now what?

Melanie and I throw another
glance at each other.

“The walkway,” she says and jabs
a finger up at the ceiling in case I can’t hear her. We’re both shouting over
the commotion. “There’s a catch!”

“A what?” I shout back.

“A
hatch
,” she says, cupping her mouth with one hand. “To the roof!
Outside!”

It makes sense. The previous
residents constructed a hatch to get out onto the rooftop, which is how Wheels
was able to shoot at me.

I’m puzzled as to why we might
want to go up there. Obviously, it’ll get us away from the infected, who would
have serious trouble climbing after us, but then what?

An idea takes hold of me. A
ridiculously risky one, but it’s all I’ve got.

“We can use his body,” I tell
her.

She squints at me.

“Wheels! His body!”

She nods, understanding. I swing
the lantern toward the spot where I left Wheels. The infected want meat. That’s
all they care about. And I’ve just killed the thing they wish to eat most.

“We’ll throw him off the roof,” I
shout at her. “Distract them! Then climb over the other side!”

We make our way toward the
corpse. I lead us through the space where I first woke up tied to that torture
table. The metal instruments are still there, untouched. The phrase
Pain is just a signal
run through my
mind. My only reason for revisiting this particular spot is to grab my utility
belt, which lies on the floor at the base of a shelf.

It is still thick with supplies.
The Colonel and his friends obviously went through it, removing the ammo and
water bottle, but leaving the clamshell mirror and a few other helpful items.

Strapping it around my waist, we
find our way to Wheels’s body. Removing the toppled stack pinning his legs is
simple enough—we count to three, then lift and slide—but carrying
him is awkward and slow. We settle on dragging him across the warehouse toward
metal stairs that zigzag up to the suspended walkway.

Now we have a real problem. The
narrowness of the stairs makes carrying the body more difficult than moving the
stacks had been. Especially with one of my hands holding the lantern and my
bulky pack constantly bumping the handrails.

Melanie slings her bow over one
shoulder so the string crosses her chest. But even with both of her hands free
and a smaller pack, her burden is no easier to bear. She hasn’t eaten since the
last time she and I shared a meal, which was yesterday. The hooded look in her
eyes makes me wish I had saved one of the amphetamine pills for her.

Despite her fatigue, she comes up
with the idea of taking the lantern away from me, sprinting up the stairs, and
resting it on the edge of the walkway. Yellow light washes over her as she
makes her way back down.

We get to work carrying Wheels,
but it is still extremely awkward and slow. Melanie takes the lead, facing
forward with her arms carrying his legs. I’m behind her with
Wheels’s
demolished head resting against my sternum, my
hands pushing up against his shoulder blades to keep him aloft.

We make it up the stairs and to the
end of the walkway, heaving and panting, before finally dropping the corpse.
This is the right spot. I know because a section of the handrail closest to the
wall has been cut away, and a makeshift wooden platform leads from the walkway
up to the sloped ceiling.

The hatch is visible as three edges
are lit by sunlight, the fourth dark from the hinges connecting it to the rest
of the roof. Even in the weak glow of the dying lantern, I can tell that a lot
of care went into building all of this. So much thought went into it, in fact,
that there are even ropes suspended from above on either side of the platform
to grab for stability.

I set down the lantern since I
won’t need it anymore. The platform is about ten feet long and slanted maybe twenty
degrees upward. Stable, but we won’t know for sure until one of us tests it.

“I’ll go first,” I say.

Melanie nods. Her drowsy
expression almost makes her look apathetic, like it doesn’t matter what we do
anymore. But as I’m about to turn away, she grabs my hand, turns me around to
face her, and plants a quick kiss on my lips.

“Be careful, Kip.”

“You too.”

My heart drums against my ribs as
I make my way along the platform, gripping the side ropes to steady myself. I imagine
each shaky step being my last before the entire thing collapses. At the other
end, I lift the hatch a few inches, glad it isn’t locked, and briefly take note
of features like hinges, a locking mechanism, and even a rope you can use to
pull it shut from inside.

I throw it open. A sudden wash of
steely light leaves me blind for a moment. When I can see again, I look at Melanie.
She has tilted her head back and is smiling sadly up at the light. In her mind,
it must symbolize freedom. She has, after all, been trapped in here with a
murdering cannibal all night.

I make my way back down the
platform to grab hold of Wheels’s boots, having to endure the foul stench of
them. Can’t be much worse than the crushed head Melanie has to stare at. By the
time we move him to the other end of the suspended platform, the stacks we set
up below finally slide away and land flat with a bang.

The infected burst through the
windows and the door with newfound ease, as if their rage at having been
trapped this long has doubled their strength. The warehouse fills with their
ravenous clamoring.

“They’re inside,” I say, more to speed
us along than anything else. It’s clear by a sudden widening of her eyes that Melanie
is well aware of the situation.

“You need to climb outside first,”
she says.

We drop the corpse. I pull myself
through the hatch, with a helpful push from Melanie. The platform shakes wildly
now from all the extra movement. How many people was this thing designed to
hold? Definitely not more than two, which means I need to get Wheels off
immediately.