Rotting to the Core (Keep Your Crowbar Handy Book 2) (15 page)

Besides, the cafeteria had lots and lots of
stuff to eat and, since Daniel knew how to use a can opener, he
didn’t go hungry. There were cans of beef stew and fruit cocktail
and baked beans and tons of SpaghettiOs. Daniel really liked
SpaghettiOs. He knew how to make mac-‘n-cheese too. There was a lot
of that. There was apple juice and grape juice in little plastic
containers and, best of all, he found a big ten-pound bag of Peanut
M&Ms in the back of the pantry.

Daniel ate some of them as he drew pictures
in the common room. He liked M&M’s.

He liked drawing, too.

O'Connor was attempting to
brainstorm an escape plan as Ben, Jerry, and William ushered them
to the top of the grain elevator. Unfortunately, neither he nor
Penny had yet to come up with fuck-all.

As they climbed the stairways up through the
gallery, where most of the grain, oats, and rolled corn was kept
within the grainery's twelve, hundred-feet high, thirty-feet wide
holding towers, Jake realized he'd never actually considered how
very tall such silos were. The writer felt a distinct urge to turn
around and ask for something lower in the facility for he and
Penny's impromptu bridal suite. Like say, a broom closet. He'd be
fine with that.

Just so long as it was closer to ground
level.

Jake had never been good with heights. Even
during his time spent with Britain's SAS Regiment, he'd been
forced—many times, quite literally by other members of his brick—to
leap from aircraft in flight or be washed out of the civilian
combat journalist training. The minimum requirement was eight jumps
and during easily half of them, Jake had to ask some of the
Paratroopers to throw him bodily out the rear hatch if he choked,
prior to takeoff. True to their word, every time he balked due to
his sense of self-preservation screaming 'What The Fuck Do You
Think You're Doing?!?' loudly in his ear, a trio of the tough Paras
took firm grips on O'Connor's jump harness, and flung themselves
from the plane with him in tow. They'd laughed about it later—each
night over Guinness and Jameson's at nearby pubs of course, but
Jake accepted their good-natured ribbing with a smile. The Paras
kept him from washing out of the program.

Even so, Jake had no qualms admitting he'd
had to change his underwear a couple of times after safely
reaching—and then kissing—England's loamy soil. Jumping out of a
perfectly good airplane was
not
a natural act.

Upon reaching the top of the gallery, Jake,
Penny, and their escorts moved along a slim walkway lining its top
edge on the side facing the grainery's outside leg. This was where,
prior to zombies rising to eat the majority of the living, human
population, large terminal elevators capable of loading 120-car
unit trains within a day once transferred product for
transportation. Taking into account that the facility stored large
quantities of various grains, Jake had expected to see the odd rat
or two while they'd tromped the length of the building to the
stairwell. What he hadn't expected was the size of the bloody
things. Living in the tunnels which ran the length of the grainery
beneath the bins, the happily gluttonous rodents were nearly two
feet long and weighed as much as large house-cats. Mullet Ben had
chuckled at him when Jake shied away from one waddling along a pipe
next to his shoulder and insisted the 'critters' were harmless.
Jake had still moved away from the wall and kept to the outer edge
of the walkway after that. Fear of falling over the railing aside,
he wasn't willing to take on a rat the size of a healthy
beaver.

Besides, he was fairly sure getting rabies
vaccinations would be nigh impossible if one bit him.

Upon reaching the head house, which was
really an 80x60 sixteen story tower, the five of them began
climbing a second stairwell up the remaining seven stories to the
top. Jake was fairly tired. After getting little rest and being on
the move for almost twelve hours
prior
to being captured by
Rebecca's people, he was ready for a good night's sleep. That had
been in short supply for both himself and Kat for the last couple
of days, seeing how they'd been trapped in Old Hall by about a
thousand zombies.

That thought caused him to once again wonder
where Cho was. It had only been perhaps ten hours since they'd
separated at the high school, where Jake had been caught
flat-footed by Deputy Penny Carson after he'd followed her towards
the cafeteria, but he was still worried about her. He looked out
over the dark, abandoned landscape and sighed.

“What's your problem?” Penny demanded huffily
behind him, looking daggers at the guard named Will. Will ignored
her venomous glares, for the most part. It had become evident that
he hadn't taken their brief 'companionship' as seriously as Penny
had. When Rebecca had asked Will to accompany Benjamin and Jerry as
they settled the two in the new 'bridal suite', he'd merely nodded,
then motioned O'Connor towards the stairs with his Savage Model 110
bolt action.

Jake turned the corner and began moving up
yet another floor. “Just thinking. Did you ever used to go
camping?”

“What, are we playing 'Let's get to know each
other’? Now?” Penny looked at him quizzically. “Well, that's new.
Most guys just stare at my tits and mumble incoherently.”

“Nice tits aside, I'm being serious.” Jake
topped another set of stairs behind Jerry. “Did you ever go out—I
mean
way
out into the middle of nowhere—where there were no
houses, no streetlights, no nothing?”

Penny shrugged. “A few times. Why?”

Jake looked out over the corrugated steel
handrail. “You never notice how dark the night really
is
unless you've done that.”

“What, you scared of the dark?” Ben laughed.
“Afraid the Boogieman is gonna get ya?”

“That's not what I'm talking about.” Jake
stopped at the next landing and pointed out into the gloom. “Human
beings in general fear the dark. It's a survival instinct left over
from long before our ancestors, a hundred-thousand times removed,
came down out of the trees. The night has always been where
predators thrive. Those big, fast, sneaky things—with lots and lots
of long, sharp teeth—who feel at home in the shadows. Living in
sprawling cities, surrounded by bright, gleaming plasma-screens,
neon fast food signs, and our brightly-lit billboards of the
digital age, mankind tried to forget that fact. We pushed back the
night with streetlights, hi-beams, and 10,000 watt LED flashlights,
telling ourselves there was nothing to be afraid of.”

Benjamin frowned and looked into the night in
the direction Jake pointed.

“But now? That's all over, and everyone knows
we were just lying to make ourselves feel better so we didn't have
to deal with our fears. Look out there. No lights, no people, no
civilization.
Everything we built, all of humanity’s proud
tributes to its own greatness are just so many vacant monoliths
now. The Empire State Building, The Superdome, Bourbon Street,
Disneyland... They're all empty. Our cities are either abandoned,
burned to the ground, or overrun by an enemy we never saw coming.
Oh, yeah. I also think any questions about the existence of real
monsters are moot at this point. We've all seen them and yes, they
want to eat us. So you asked if I'm afraid of the dark? No, not of
the dark. Of the creatures that
live
in it? Hell yes. Anyone
who isn't is either stupid, dead, or one
of
them.”

Penny stared at him. “How do you know that
for sure?”

Jake wasn't about to let the fact he, and his
friends in the Screamin' Mimi, still had a working satellite
connection to what was left of the Internet slip out. Well...half
the time they had connection. Okay, some of the time.

“They said as much in some of the final
broadcasts that aired while I was still in Columbus,” he told them,
turning away from the night to continue up the dim stairs. “The
only confirmed safe place left is west of the Rockies, but there
might be other communities around that have been able to hold out.
I was searching for them when you people Shanghaied me.”

“Have you found anyone else?” Penny asked
quickly, jogging up beside him. Jake was thankful it was pretty
dark in there just then. It kept him from being observed as he
involuntarily committed an awkward social faux pas. Namely,
glancing down as her breasteses bounced firmly while she trotted up
the stairs.

Hey, don't judge. She was attractive. He was
human. He looked.

“There was a group a little to the north-west
of here, but they weren't anyone I'd recommend hanging out with.
They seemed a little over-fond of questionable activities: Looting,
rape... kidnapping.” Jake looked pointedly at Penny.

“Jesus, I wish we'd never found you.
Believe
me on that one,” she snorted.

Mullet Ben laughed as they topped the final
set of stairs and came to a security door. Penny's silent sometimes
roll-in-the-hay Will pulled a large ring of keys from his belt and
used one to open the lock, while Benjamin and Jerry herded Jake
through the dark opening. Inside, it was obvious someone had been
living in the grainery's top-most room. Most of the furniture was
pushed to one side, several of the more obvious control consoles
had been dismantled and removed altogether, and all the large,
industrial grade windows had been propped open to catch the
slightest breeze. Jake moved towards the far wall and saw a few
photographs had been taped there: Martin and Wanda at Niagara
Falls, both of them again in Vegas, two teenage boys and one girl
maybe three years apart in age, then a few of each maybe five years
older, one of the girl in a hospital gown, looking tired and sweaty
but happy, and holding a newborn infant. There were others, but
Jake didn't look at them. He didn't want to know what the couple
had lost.

“We'll be back in the morning,” Will finally
spoke. His voice was deep and he didn't look at either Jake or
Penny before locking the door behind them.

“Screw you too, asshole,” she called, kicking
the base-plate that ran along the bottom of the door.

“That'll do a lot of good.” Jake told
her.

Shooting an angry look his way, Deputy Carson
kicked the door again. “He didn't even say anything. No 'Have a
good time', or 'It was fun while it lasted', or even just a 'Piss
off. You're a lousy lay'. I can't believe I had sex with that
jerk.”

Jake ignored her and began peering through
the windows, looking for some way to escape the 'bridal suite'.
There was no way he was going to attempt scaling the outside of the
building. The sheer concrete walls didn't have any protrusions to
provide handholds, and there wasn't a convenient ledge he could
crawl away on to freedom either. Rebecca's guards had put them at
the very top, seven full stories above anything even resembling
another rooftop. Maybe he could tear some conduit from one of the
walls, use it to get down to the next level? They wouldn't keep the
fifteenth floor doors locked, would they?

“What are you doing?” Penny leaned against
the wall to one side of the door-frame.

“Trying to figure a way down from here.” Jake
bent and began yanking at the two and a half inch flexible conduit
along the wall. “If I can work this free...”

Ten minutes later, the conduit was still
firmly attached to the grainery's interior wall. Jake had even
attempted using his Ka-Bar Tanto knife to cut and pry the damnable
thing free, but nothing he tried worked. With his escape plan
stymied, he kicked the conduit in a moment of anger with the sole
of his Bates combat boot. Then he spent the next few minutes
hopping around and walking off the pain that shot up from the
bottom of his foot upon doing so. That stupid conduit was on there
to stay.

Penny laughed. “That'll do a lot of
good.”

“Who asked you?” Jake grumbled, finally
shaking feeling back into his bruised heel. “You're part of the
reason we're in this mess.”

“Yeah. I held a gun to your head and made you
follow Ben, Jerry, and me into the school.” She snorted.
“Dumbass.”

“No, you just held one to my head
after
I came inside.” O'Connor snapped. “Speaking of which,
I'll have my gun back now.”

“Can you blame me?” Penny pushed away from
the wall, pulled his Hammer repeater from where it was still
stuffed into the waistband of her rather tight shorts, and tossed
it carelessly to him. “What the hell did you expect me to do with
some clown skulking after me through a dark building? Cook him
dinner? Offer him a cold one?”

Her bluster didn't impress Jake one bit. He
inspected the pistol as he spoke, ejected the magazine, inserted a
fresh one from his tac-vest, dropped the slide, and secured the
weapon in his thigh holster once more. “Don't give me that. You
people had Benjamin out in that van
just waiting
for anyone
to come by. How many survivors have you found that way?”

Carson grumbled and passed one hand through
her long curls.

“Sorry? I didn't catch that, Deputy,” Jake
asked again.

“Eleven, okay?” she yelled.

Penny didn't seem particularly eager to
discuss the subject, which told Jake there was more to it than
that. “How many did Rebecca have killed?”

The ex-officer of law and order seemed to
deflate at that question. “Four.”

“So, let me get this straight,” Disgust was
evident in Jake's voice, “you stood by and let them kill four
people, and you've got the brass-fucking-balls to give
me
shit over being cautious of you at the school. Is that about right?
Have I left anything out there?”

“You forgot the part where I've been planning
to ditch this pack of idiots!” Penny growled, fists clenched
against her sides in anger. “I've been squirreling away supplies at
the high school every chance I got for the last month, just waiting
for an opportunity to bolt. The problem is, Rebecca got a rule
passed early on that no one goes outside the fence alone, so at
least one of her little droogies is always along for the ride! That
made it kind of tough for me to stockpile things I'd need to bolt,
without attracting attention. ”