In the predawn light, the street looked less formidable than I thought it might – hardly any cars blocked passage along it, and again I fantasized riding a bike down it. The wandering dead sobered me on the idea, though. While I still had my fair share up here with me, the events of early September had drawn a lot of them down there, and they didn't seem to have the inclination to hike back up here. Or maybe the hunting was better down there? I had no clue if any of the living were camped out beyond my sight. I saw no sign of fires, and I couldn't help but feel I would scout down there someday. But I was still rattled from my adventure the month before, and that day would not be soon.
I left Division to trudge north through alleys, my breath blooming cartoon vapor puffs in the air and frosting my mustache. I was wondering if the cold would actually kill off the dead for good. Surely, with a deep enough freeze, the brain cells would burst and that would be that? Could the pandemic be over as easily as that? Not worldwide, of course, but enough for the living to gain control and a little sanity in our region? The idea made my mood darken, and that in turn startled me. Had I written the living off as so irredeemable I'd rather see the dead take over? Why couldn't there have been a virus that just made asshole's heads explode? I would have been willing to deal with the mess.
As I emerged from the alley I was faced with the south end of the park, and mentally kicked myself for not heading a couple blocks west to bypass it. I looked both ways along Garland, and didn't see anything other than a listless dead boy leaning over the short wrought iron fence that bordered the park. He looked to be about ten years old, and the color of muddy ice. He wasn't a problem, and it was hard for me to take out the dead when they were not even teenagers. Not that I hadn't before. But today... I liked to think of him as playing in the park.
I was about to head west when the sun seemed to blink on, rising high enough to light up the vivid colors of the trees in the park. I stopped, taken aback by the beauty that had popped out of nowhere. My mother had loved the fall – most women I had known did. For some reason I associated it with going back to school when I was a kid and have never cared for it. But the sight of the trees lit up golden and bright, frost glittering in the grass, made me catch my breath and stare open-mouthed. Beauty seemed a rare presence these days. Over the tops of the trees to the north, I could see a sliver of white blazing against the sky, and it took me a moment to realize it was the office building that housed the bank my mother used. And the wheels, as they say, began to turn.
It somehow felt important to ignore alleyways and head up the sidewalk along Division. I can't tell you why, other than it felt wrong to sneak up on a potential home. Striding right up the street as bold as you please? Why, it made a man feel respectable! The fact that I hadn't seen any cars zipping around in weeks and the cooler weather made me bolder, I suppose. So I marched up Division feeling almost like a normal citizen without being harassed by the dead or the living. If the habit of maintaining silence wasn't so ingrained, I would have whistled.
As I reached the edge of the empty parking lot that stretched out before the ten stories of concrete and broken windows, my mood faltered. I almost turned down a side street to the alley that ran behind the building. I wanted to observe it for quite awhile, but the idea of having my back exposed to wide-open Division for so long, the sun lighting me up for easy target practice, made me nervous. So much open space, and I wasn't comfortable with it. Still, I had no idea if the building was occupied, and I needed to watch it from all angles before I would set foot in it, and the front was as good a place to start as any.
I maneuvered myself through some bushes under two shade trees and a street lamp in an island in the parking lot. I got a nice view of the front, east side of the structure and also the north side. The sun felt good on my back and I quietly ate some breakfast. I could see no movement at any of the window openings. The seventh floor looked like it had most of its windows intact for some odd reason, and it bothered me. After half an hour I moved quietly north – as far as the gas station, then double-backed down the alley and sat under the trees by the dumpsters and observed the west and south sides of the building. I could see no indications of occupation, but I was hesitant to go in. I felt I should come back at night and do the same thing, only utilizing the night vision goggles.
All told, it was another two days before I took my first tentative step through the back door of the office building and into my new home, and even then it took me another two days of painstaking reconnaissance until I was satisfied no one but me was there - and to convince myself no one would be returning. The idea of setting up my private space in the dropped ceiling on the sixth floor didn't occur to me right away – the natural choice would be the seventh with its better ratio of intact windows to all the other floors, but since it caught my eye I assumed it would anyone else too, attracting future looters. I briefly considered smashing more windows out for a more balanced effect, but didn't. Who the hell knows? Lucky number seven – I might want those windows someday, and wanton destruction was not something I enjoyed.
I spent almost a week on the seventh floor in an insurance company's office, but I felt restless and vulnerable. I did not like sleeping on the floor. I had set up some half-assed alarms consisting of aluminum cans, but they seemed like they would be pretty obvious to any looters. I was laying on my back one afternoon staring up at the acoustical tiles in the ceiling when I wondered if I could hide stuff up there. Standing on a desk, I discovered the tiles themselves were suspended in a thin framework and couldn't hold up much. But there appeared to be a lot of space. Exploring the sixth floor, the dental office had an even lower dropped ceiling at the front desk and office area. Lighting, computer cables and other crap snaked away up into the darkness. Well
those
would have to go...
And so it was that I decided to make my new hidey-hole a dental office. The weather was cooling rapidly, so I decided I would utilize the rolls of insulation stacked in the loft to help make the space cozy. I was pleasantly surprised to find two cans of gasoline tucked in the middle of two of the rolls. The garage had a typical garage-type smell to it so I hadn't noticed the cans – or at least realized that they were there next to me. The bulk of my stash was still at my mom's house, hidden in the attic space behind the dresser. I was afraid of moving the gas cans anywhere else where their odor might give their presence away, so for the time being I would leave them where they were.
I cut up swaths of the insulation and stuffed them in lawn and leaf bags to contain stray fibers. I didn't think fiberglass would be all that great to inhale or generally get all over the place. Once I was satisfied I had enough to stack in the space in the dropped ceiling, I set upon a way to suspend my sleeping bag from the floor joists. I took an office door to use as sort of a platform. The wall behind the filing cabinets met in a T-shape as it merged with another wall. Not perfectly stable, but if I was careful I could use it as kind of a base to help get into the bag and keep heavier objects within reach. I also hung a rope from the joists above to help pull myself up. I guess I wasn't done with ropes yet. The price you have to pay to hide above everyone, I guess.
To say I was kept busy redefined the word understatement – but I discovered that I
liked
to keep busy and to solve little survival problems. I felt safe enough on the roof of the building to heat canned food on the camp stove, and to boil water. Oatmeal and instant coffee had never tasted so good.
I became much more efficient collecting rainwater in large rubber containers, creating shallow but broader funnels that would direct much more water into old water cooler bottles, which I could seal up fairly well with plastic wrap and rubber bands. Life was beginning to mellow some, but I was still anxious and on edge – always expecting a mob of raiders to flood over the landscape and turn things to shit. When I had nightmares, it was only the living that plagued me. The dead chastised me – Jackie had not
totally
left me, you see.
But I had few encounters with the living – usually at a distance. I could see smoke rising from chimneys here and there when looking out from the roof's vantage point, and I know I had visits occasionally during the day. I would let them scrounge and look through the office building to their heart's content, but I don't believe anyone knew I was there. The dead – they didn't like stairs. When they did climb, it was easy enough to shove them out broken windows – if the fall didn't smash their heads in, they were easy to finish off later. Plus, the cold slowed them considerably.
The first big freeze in November came with a mild snowstorm. I was afraid of snow and rain blowing into my sanctuary, but the intact windows on the floor above kept drifts from accumulating up there to drip down below, and any that blew in on my floor didn't pile up very far inside (for now – I didn't know what to expect when a good storm rolled in). For now, I felt fairly snug.
I observed the dead with a clinical fascination as they froze in their tracks one evening. I had begun to take them out, knocking them down to smash their heads in until the thought occurred to me to wait and see what would happen when they thawed out. I felt certain that the reanimating virus, fungus, whatever would be killed, or couldn't utilize the brain anymore. So I waited. As the storm left and the weather warmed bringing a new storm with rain, the dead jerked and creaked back into motion.
Well, maybe we just need a really long deep-freeze
, I thought, and didn't worry about it.
The fall ended up being fairly mild and uneventful. Light snow and rain, for the most part. I didn't know if I would ever be able to predict – or anticipate might be a better word - the weather. I suppose I could try to find reading materials on it.
Really have to go to the library
, I told myself. If it could be done in the olden days, then I could do it too, right? But I didn't even know if I could find a barometer anywhere – or if it would be any use to me. I guess it takes an apocalypse to show you how stupid you truly were.
Thanksgiving and Christmas were celebrated with chili. I had gathered up the nerve to go into Mrs. Clarke's house late in the year. It had been ransacked, with no sign of Mr. Clarke at all. I did discover a khaki utility vest that looked like it had been used for fly fishing. I liked the idea of multi pockets, and I suppose the twelve year-old in me thought I was Doc Savage. Merry Christmas to me! I found little glass jars that I discovered belonged to an airbrush (apparently Mrs. Clarke had been quite the artist). I collected all sorts of shit like that at the time. You never knew what could be used when.
The new year brought some new weather. A decent storm blew in to drop several inches of snow, and the wind rattled and shook the ceiling tiles. I stayed pretty warm in my sleeping bag, my cave of insulation helping to keep my body heat in. During the storm, I knocked the dead over to let the snow cover them – one I went so far as to immerse its head in a puddle that had formed in a planter, then used a snow shovel to pile snow atop its body to ensure the damned thing would get nice and frozen. Gotta give those brain cells a good chance to burst...
The skies cleared, and dropped the temperature down to single digits at night, never climbing out of the twenties during the day. Water turned into ice that grew as bitter and mean as concrete. The dead, for the moment, were motionless.
I became less nocturnal, and so saw others like me more often. But we were like ghosts to each other, I think. Shadows in the corner of your eye that are gone when you turn your head. I imagine many might have had families to keep fed, but may not have had the calories to spare in a fight to take supplies away from me. Or, they were just decent human beings.
I was careful not to be seen entering or leaving any of my haunts. Tracks in the snow couldn't be helped, so I avoided my mom's house and the garage. There were tons of tracks around the office building, but I believe the area's population had scouted it enough to decide it was empty of value. Decent human beings or not, desperation to feed a child could drive anyone to depths that had been unimaginable before the pandemic and I trusted no one.
Becoming more active in the daylight made me feel groggy and disoriented – that October light of August feeling. The sun on the bright snow lit the world with a dreamlike quality. Shadows were filled in, and I felt like I was living on top of clouds. I slept fitfully. One morning as I crossed through the fence bordering the back parking lot I stopped under the trees in the neighborhood to fumble with my sunglasses. I didn't like the feel of them under the fabric of my ski mask – they pressed in on the sides of my head too tightly and I just wanted to crush them up in a fist and then drop-kick them down the street, but I knew I could not do without them. My exasperated breath fogged and then froze on the right lens, when I saw the boy.
He was maybe seven years old, in a striped t-shirt and shorts, just marching down the middle of the street. Brown hair in a buzz cut, freckles liberally sprinkled across his face. And he was eating an ice cream cone. I blinked rapidly in the bright light and squinted, but the kid continued his walk down the street. He was completely silent. I could see his blue sneakers sinking into the snow, but I could hear no frosty crunch with each footstep. Just as he was about to round the corner and disappear from view, the woman caught my attention. She had come in the same direction, as silent as the boy. She seemed to be anxious that he was out of sight and picked up her pace in her vintage flats, white capri pants and red blouse, a matching red scarf tied around her head. Of course the horn-rimmed sunglasses completed the retro look.
Well, this is it,
I thought.
I have officially gone off my rocker.