I moved to the far side of the insulation rolls, and still found no ladder. Had the guy climbed up here, died, and then someone came in and stole it? I couldn't fathom that – they would have climbed up and taken his supplies, I wagered. Unless he had turned already and they didn't want to confront him. But I would think if
that
were so he would have tried dive-bombing any hypothetical ladder thieves like he had me.
Unless
– and then I spotted it: a length of knotted rope looped around a support beam.
Ah-hah
.
He had nailed a two-by-four between the inverted V-shaped support beams turning it into an A, and had tied the end of the rope around it. That made it easier to climb up and over onto the loft. I unwound the rope and let it drop over the edge, then sat and waited in the dark for some time. I could hear no tell-tale sounds of the dead, just a persistent cricket in the alley. I slipped on the goggles, decided there was no time like the present (despite bad memories of failed attempts in gym class) to master the art of rope climbing, and lowered myself down to the floor fairly quickly. I guess that gym membership paid off. Still, we would see about getting back up.
I thought it best to move the storage rack back to where it had been. My backpack was still on it, and I thought about climbing the rack and tossing it up. Then I got the bright idea of tying the end of the rope to it and hauling it up after me. So back went the rack, tipped over near the side door, and up the rope I went – the things you can do when you
have
to do them, I suppose. And then I hauled up my pack. I lay in the dark, drinking from a bottle of water and feeling pleased with myself.
For the most part I felt safe about leaving the rope to the loft dangling free while I was out at night. I hadn't seen another living soul in my nocturnal exploring, and I found it highly unlikely any of the dead could climb the rope much less give a shit about it. As I crept back to the garage in the mornings I would listen carefully for any sounds inside, then tap on the metal sides to see if anything would come out. A few cats would shoot out here and there, but no dead. They seemed to like to stick to the streets. Alleyways were beginning to fill with weeds, although the one behind the garage was paved and not so heavily choked with plant life. When the dead
did
enter the garage, it was during the day.
I suppose a whole troop of them could have entered and formed a conga line and then left while I slept, as quiet as they usually were. There were only a couple that seemed too confused to leave the way they had entered. I was able to coax one out by shooting a screw with the wrist-rocket towards the twisted opening. The other was just too stupid to figure out how to leave apparently, like a bee in a wasp trap, so I slipped down and took care of it. I dragged it outside and into the backyard of another house down the street where I had deposited the former occupant of the loft.
He
hadn't seemed to decompose much yet – it was kind of weird what happened to their bodies. I had noticed some bodies would bloat and burst and do what came naturally to a corpse, some just seemed to kind of mummify. The longer you were a zombie, the more likely you were to become beef jerky, maybe? How the hell long had the guy been up in the loft then? Was his dropping in on me an act of desperation? Could the dead
get
desperate?
That
was something to ponder...
I had also begun to notice how the crows were attracted to the dead. Nothing else seemed to feed from them – cats and dogs might sniff at them, but would back away and leave them be. Crows didn't appear too selective in what they would eat, but it seemed to depend on how the corpse was decaying. The ones that seemed to decompose naturally they would go for the standard bits you always hear of them pecking at. The advanced, jerky-like corpses they would go for the eyes and nose, but not much else. I had heard that the flesh was poisonous to animals, but the crows didn't seem to have a problem.
I had become a bit paranoid about crashing in the space one of the dead had occupied for what seemed to be a substantial amount of time. I ventured into the house that the garage belonged to and found some sanitary wipes and used them to scrub at the surfaces of the loft. I couldn't find any real signs of gore or goo or whatever the hell one of the dead might leave behind – far as I knew they didn't excrete anything. I only found a small spot of a bloodstain soaked into the floor of the loft (that I henceforth decided was off limits to me even after scrubbing the hell out of it) and a short message scrawled on one of the support beams:
Overnight she turned and was dead,
no kissing - she bit me instead!
Ain't life a motherfucking bitch?
Not exactly Keats, I supposed. But it gave me a good idea what had happened. I tended not to rummage the corpses of the dead – to try and find out who they were before they had been infected. I wasn't incurious or pitiless as to who they once were, it's just that it was easier not knowing. Anyone who has lived this long must know what I mean – it doesn't help thinking about how this carnivorous monster had lived its life back in the day. If I allowed myself to try and memorialize all of the dead that I dispatched I would go insane. And I was
through
with digging graves. So I dragged away bodies to rot (or not) and got on with surviving. I think it's safe to say I didn't hate the dead, they were just something else to endure. I'm not sure I can say the same about the living, though.
It was early in September, cooler than it had been, and I was staring at the rafters over my head when I felt a low tremor and heard a distant boom. I was taken back to the time when I was eight years old and at day care when the B-52 crashed out at the Air Force Base. While that had been over ten miles away we had felt and heard the explosion.
I sat up and listened, and soon heard more booms – like hearing the Fourth of July fireworks down at the park as the explosions rolled up the hill to the north side. These booms weren't nearly as frequent as a fireworks celebration, but often enough to know that some sort of battle was going on.
The mayhem had lessened considerably the last few days, and it was rare to hear the sound of a motor or the incoherent yelling of a yokel. I can't imagine much gas was left in town after the mass exodus months before, and supplies had to be running low for the warriors and merrymakers. I fervently hoped that they were killing each other off.
I stood and wandered over to the edge of the loft and stared at the afternoon sunlight spilling through the mangled garage door. I would be taking a massive risk, I thought. The dead would be on the move in that direction for sure – well, maybe not. Who knew if they could tell what direction the explosions were coming from? The way the booms echoed and rumbled around it might confuse them. Still, it will agitate them enough to migrate, I thought.
As I ruminated over what to do, I found myself preparing a smaller backpack than my usual one with supplies and lowered my spear down to the concrete floor with weed-whacker line. I often would begin to plan and prepare even while I knew I wouldn't go through with something. This time, I surprised myself and climbed down the rope to the floor. I threw the end of the rope up and onto the loft where it formed a loop I could snag with my spear. If any live folks came rummaging around, maybe it wouldn't get as much attention that way.
I ran streets through my head. I still intended to avoid Division, but I felt I could make it by alleyway down to...Glass, was it? That street ran along a bluff that overlooked the city. Sure, downtown was several miles away - but I might be able to see
something
. I had traveled as far as Garland Avenue one night, and I suspected the alleys began to run east-west after that. Still, it seemed possible to make it with minimal risk. And as I ducked through the garage door opening, it had become inevitable I was going to do it.
I felt naked and exposed in the daylight, wishing I had some sunglasses. I made a mental note to check my mom's house. The sun had moved south since the last time I'd been paying attention, and the light had a dimmer intensity to it. I had a co-worker who had grown up in Southern California and called it the October light of August. He'd been up here for close to twenty years, and for five of those years that I knew him, he had to announce that it
still
felt like it should be autumn in the late summer. On the given day each year that he had noticed this phenomena, he would march in to work and intone, “The October light of August is amongst us! To mess with my internal clock, making me pine for the days of my youth!” You really wanted to kick the pompous ass in his balls, all the way back to California. I never related to him on his feeling – August light was normal to me, but I now understood his disorientation. The light quality looked like a partial solar eclipse, and it just felt
wrong
. Or maybe I was just on edge more than usual.
I crossed several streets before I saw my first dead person, one block over. Surprise, surprise – he was heading south toward the sounds of mayhem. I darted across the street and into a brush-filled alley before he could see me. I moved slowly but steadily through the weeds, and about half way down I flushed a cat out. It bounded away and shot out of the alley and ducked under a parked car. A malnourished Golden Retriever rushed up to the car barking furiously, and the cat drew back further under the car, near the curb.
Aw, damn it
, I thought. That was sure to draw at least the one dead guy over. I wanted to cross the street and forge ahead into the next alley, but the dog seemed oblivious to anything else but the cat. I plucked my slingshot out of my pack and picked up a small rock and shot it at the dog just hard enough to sting it in the rump. The dog yelped and turned, its tail curling under. He spotted me and began to slink away with misery in his eyes. I didn't think my heart had much left to break off, but tears welled up in my eyes at the frightened, confused and betrayed look the dog had.
I hadn't thought much about man's best friend and how the pandemic had affected him. We had bred them for thousands and thousands of years to live with us and warn us, and now they were more than likely a liability in times where silence was truly golden. How long would it be before they learned to shun us and not bark? Or would they die out? I hadn't had a dog of my own since I was eighteen or so – a rusty colored Cocker Spaniel that I had to have put down when he got cancer. I hadn't been able to bear the idea of having another dog again, and yet I couldn't imagine a world without dogs.
The dog ended up trotting away to the east, and I quickly moved into another alley. I never heard the cat make a peep.
I got lucky and all other alleys I followed were paved. I didn't seem to be pursued by the dead guy I had spotted, and soon I finally made it down to Garland Avenue. One of my favorite little streets filled with book stores, art galleries, diners, bars and of course the theater. The street looked disheveled and lost, weeds choking the gutters, shop windows smashed and a truck tipped over on its side near a music store. Looking west on Monroe I could see several dead moving south. Were they still so used to the main arterials, I wondered? Perhaps because it was wider and less apt to have many obstacles. The dead were like water, I mused, looking for the path of least resistance.
As if being punished for being too contemplative in this no-nonsense world, a dead woman rounded the corner of a dry cleaners and began to make a beeline towards me. As soon as I was finished with her, another of the dead emerged from a parking lot across the street and limped towards me with a speed I hadn't seen before. Jesus
Christ
, had this guy been a sprinter before he got infected? His pace was little more than a brisk walk, and I began to wonder if he wasn't truly dead. His dark lips pulled back and a low moan welled up and pushed past his teeth, which began to gnash as he worked his jaw. As far as I was concerned, that was zombie credentials for sure and I let him get within two yards before I danced aside to move behind him. The plan was to slice a tendon above his running shoes, but the bastard could turn quickly as well. I could see at least five more dead moving in from the east, and for the first time I wasn't sure I could dispatch a dead guy before others closed in.
So I bolted. I had never ran full speed while out and about – I was ever careful of watching where I was going, but I shot down Post Street as fast as I could go. The way looked clear, and my head swiveled at each side street but I didn't really have a chance for a full inspection of my surroundings. When I realized I was running downhill I also realized I had ran past the side street that took you over to Glass, so I made the decision to go off-roading and darted into the brush that grew in the embankment along Post Street. I finally slowed, stopping in a small cluster of pine trees to catch my breath. I could see no dead behind me yet, so I crept with deliberate steps through the weeds and grass up to Glass Avenue. I came out near the bend in the road and stepped over the guardrail that bordered the street and looked around cautiously. It seemed clear, but I had discovered that could change in a hurry. I walked along the sidewalk on Glass, heading west, until a small
boom
from the south and some quick
pop-pop-pops
reminded me why I had come down here in the first place.
At first glance, it only looked like a normal, hazy summer day. But off to the west a smear of dust and smoke seemed to hang in the air where I judged the Monroe Street Bridge to be. A column of smoke rose somewhere downtown, and back farther to the east another one – bigger and darker and oily, about where I supposed Division crossed the river. It was a little disappointing, really. I guess I hadn't expected to see rocket's red glare stuff or anything – I knew I would be too far away to see anything clearly. Still, explosions with debris hurtling into the air would have been nice after the effort I had made to watch the show.