I zipped up and moved toward the sinks. Brian handed me a nice clean white cotton towel. I looked at him questioning. “While I was grabbing the stopper I ran to that guy’s private bathroom and grabbed these towels that I saw yesterday.”
I turned on the faucet and was rewarded with some water. I quickly whipped my shirt off and splashed water on my chest, arms, face and neck. I pumped at the soap dispenser and worked up a lather on my exposed skin. I quickly rinsed off and cupped my hands to drink my fill of water. The water felt great going down my throat. I filled my belly and then put my shirt into the sink and using some soap, started washing it. I looked over and saw Brian had his shirt off and was doing the same things. His chest, stomach, and arm muscles bulged as he worked, along with thick scars on his stomach and back.
“Dude put your shirt back on, your making me feel very self-conscious.” I said while wringing my shirt out. I was thinking of doing my underwear next, sweaty unwashed undies are gross.
“Not my fault you are a girlie man. You are so pale I could use you as a way to reflect the sun next time we enter a dark room. Now shut up and clean your crap.” He laughed and finished wringing out his shirt.
He took the bottle of scotch opened it and took a small drink. He removed his bandaging and looked in the mirror at his wound. It looked encrusted but in certain places was still oozing blood. Brian took the bottle and while holding his arm over the sink poured some of the scotch onto his wound. He hissed and gritted his teeth. “Holy shit, that’ll wake you up in the morning also a great hangover cure.” I shook my head at him. He added more antibiotic cream to it and then dug the rest of the gauze and tape from his pocket and bandaged it.
“You are crazy; you know that right?” I walked away and popped into a stall where I removed my pants and underwear then popped my pants back on commando style. I exited and went to the sink to wash my boxers. Brian eyed me and started laughing. “You a little shy dropping trow in front of other men Boss? How did you shower in high school?” He laughed while taking off his pants.
“Oh man now you are gonna make me cry Brian. I don’t think we are this close man.” I averted my eyes to concentrate on washing my boxers.
Brian chuckled as he stood there, buck ass naked washing his boxers and pants in the sink. I just kept my eyes on my chore. “You are a giant idiot Boss. Do what I did, use the towel to cover yourself unless you like dirty bloody pants.” I looked over and that was exactly what he had done. My pants most definitely looked like they had seen better days. I took them off and covered myself with the towel and started washing my pants.
I was amazed the water was still on and said so to Brian. “Might be nobody else using the water since the pressure was built up; we might be good a little while longer. But drink as much as you can. Never know when we will find more.”
I finished washing my pants and wrung them out and then drank my fill again of water. Wish I had something to eat though. Brian gathered his clothes and started to walk away.
“Where are you going big man?”
“Going to hang my clothes by the nearest window and hope they dry a little before I put them back on.” He said over his shoulder.
I hurriedly grabbed my possessions and jogged to keep up. I could feel my towel trying to slip so I had to grab and hold onto it while also holding onto everything and jog. Finally, I found Brian in the lobby laying his stuff out on the couches. I followed his lead and watched amazed as he walked over and unlocked and rotated the two lobby windows open. “I didn’t know they did that!” I said amazed.
He gave me a strange look and shook his head.” How do you think they clean the windows? The slope outside is too sharp for them to use the sleds or swings.” He laughed at my expense again.
“Oh cool.” Was all I could manage to say as I lay my clothes out. The open window allowed the sun and breeze to dry our clothes. We went back to the office we were using as our temporary home. I sat behind the desk in my chair as Brian did the same in his chair.
“I think we need to plan out our next steps.” I said.
“I’ve been thinking about that. Since we have already moved up one floor why don’t we go through each floor one by one upward, till we hit the top. Then we can either go downward or stay up there depending what we find”, he concluded munching on a couple of crackers we had left.
I took a couple also and just stared at them as I spoke. “I can agree with that plan. Hopefully we get lucky and find some food for Matt and his merry band of office dwellers.” I crunched away on my breakfast. We sat in silence for the next 20 minutes or so lost in thought of happier times.
“As soon as our clothes are dry we will go ahead and move up to the next floor. We have the gun and our baseball bats. I wish we had a new way to gouge out eyes and mush the brains though. I don’t want to use the gun unless it is absolutely necessary since we have a limited number of bullets.” Brian concluded chewing on more crackers.
“I’ve got a great idea, follow me.” I jumped out of my chair and grabbed my towel before it could fall to the floor. I rushed to the door and down the hallway back toward the elevator lobby. To the right of the elevators, before you reached the stairway, was a narrow door the same color as the wall. I used my keys and opened it. Inside was the janitor’s closet full of chemicals, brooms, and mops. I grabbed a broom and handed it to Brian. “If you can break this in half we have two new spikes and we can break the mop and have another two as reserves.”
Brian looked at me for a second then flexed and broke the broom in half leaving jagged edges. “Sometimes Boss, you surprise me with your imagination.”
I reached in and pulled out a roll of silver duct tape and smiled. Brian reached behind me and pulled the mop out. Easily he snapped this in half, put the mop side against the wall and using his bare foot kicked the mop head off. I handed him the broom side and he did the same for it. We made our way over to the clothes, I sat in one of the lobby chairs and started using the tape to wind the smooth ends of the spikes, so we would have a better grip.
Brian checked the dryness of the clothes. “Hey your underwear is dry.” He threw my boxers and they landed on my head. I laughed and tugged my boxers on under my towel. Brian laughed, dropped his towel and slid his boxers on. “You are such a prude boss. The rest of the clothes are just damp but I think we need to put them on and get moving before we lose our light.”
I put my new weapons and tape down and followed suit pulling on my clothes and shoes. The pants were a little damp but the shirt was fine. Brian got all his clothes back on and his shoes tied. “I’ll be right back I’m going to go grab our supplies and stuff, why don’t you finish taping these up?”
“No problem and grab more alcohol from the bar and while you’re at it look for more cigars.”
I sat and folded the towel thinking of how I could bring it with me on our trip upstairs. I looked down the hallway and here came Brian pushing his executive chair with all our supplies on it. He got to me and smiled. “I found back packs in that guy’s office that we missed. Guess what is in them?” He threw a black one at my stomach knocking the air out of me. Quickly I unzipped the bag and looked inside, it was packed with protein bars and dried fruit and beef jerky. Pumping my fist in the air, I asked. “Where was he hiding these?”
“I decided to check under the bar for more liquor and found these two shoved behind some empty bottles of liquor. I think we need to make some room in the bags for some of our other supplies. Mainly the alcohol and these.” He picked up a small box off his chair and opened it, displaying a full box of the Cohibas we had smoked last night.
“Ok so I think we need to divide all this up to fit all our stuff in the bags.” I up ended the bag spilling its contents onto the couch. At the bottom of the bag was a small first aid kit. I picked it up and threw it at Brian. “Might want to keep this close just in case you get bit or shot again.” I laughed.
He gave me a blank look and dumped his bag out on the couch. He looked through the contents and started sorting it out putting them together into small piles. I sighed, mostly because he had not reacted to my little bit of sarcasm.
We worked quickly and had all the food in small sorted piles. I did the inventory and came up with 25 small bags of Jerky with a couple of pieces inside each, 45 Protein bars and 60 small bags of assorted dried fruit. We also had 2 small first aid kits. For alcohol we had a quarter bottle of scotch, 2 full bottles of some tequila I had never heard of, another bottle of port from the night before, and lastly a bottle of vodka. Our weapon inventory was four spikes, two baseball bats and one gun with 21 bullets. We both shared a package of jerky, snapped a protein bar in half, and devoured a package of dried fruit each.
“This is the best I have felt in a while. You ready to get moving?” Brian informed.
I tucked my spikes into my belt and shouldered my bat. I slung my bag onto my back and cinched it tight. I stared down at the left over straps hanging and walked over to the receptionist’s desk and dug around in her drawer to find a pair of scissors. I came back and I cut the excess strap because I didn’t want to leave anything that some dead fuck could grab onto. I handed the scissors to Brian and he did the same. Brian tucked the extra magazines into his pocket and the gun into the right side of his waistband.
Brian untied the fire hose from the stairway door. I reached out towards the door handle and waited for Brian to give me the go signal. He looked at me gave me, a nod and I opened the door, held out my bat but it was all clear. Brian took lead and flipped out the little LED flashlight we had found. He narrowed the light to a tight narrow beam. I put my hand on his right shoulder so he knew where I was at all times. We slowly took the first three steps and stopped for a second. Brian shook his head and kept moving upward. Every time Brian’s foot left a stair I replaced it with one of mine. We made it to the first landing and I found I was stretching my senses to their limits trying to hear, feel, or see something coming our way. Brian stopped again and I looked forward where the light lit up a dead unmoving body, so much of it had been consumed that not much was left. We gave the body as much room as we could as we skirted by. The next set of stairs went quicker and easier. The next landing was empty but I squeezed Brian’s shoulder as I heard something below us.
“I think something is below us following us slowly. I hear a thump and a scrape every once in a while.” I whispered to in Brian’s ear. “Shine the light slowly this way.”
Brian did as I asked and after a life time of waiting, the light lit up a zombie missing its legs and slowly pulling itself up each step. It had no lower jaw and that could be why it never moaned or made any noise. I looked closer at the zombie and recognized him as a member of my team who had run out the door earlier. It was Sam, someone who had been with us for three years, I remembered he had just gotten married and was waiting for his first child. I removed one of my spikes and held it tightly in my right hand keeping the bat in my left. I used the bat to roll the body over and hold it down as I shoved my new spike through its eye pulping its brain to mush. I wiped the spike on the body’s left over remnants of clothes and shook my head in shame.
Brian turned the flashlight back up to the door in front of us. He reached out and slowly opened the door. He looked both ways and signaled for me to move inside. I did and moved to the left. This floor was much smaller, as the building was built like a pyramid. This floor and the rest above us did not belong to my company so I had never visited them before. I did know by working in the building for a while that these floors were occupied by the building’s management team. Brian closed the door behind us and used the firehose trick to secure it.
Brian came up beside me and surveyed our immediate area. He proceeded down the short hall to our left and we cleared the bathrooms using the flashlight. We had not come upon anything so far. We turned at the end of the hall and came back toward the elevator lobby and moved around the receptionist desk. The big glass doors in front of us were wide open. So far everything seemed to be in place, with no damage or signs of a rushing evacuation.
We made our way down the hallway checking off empty offices. Only five offices were located on this floor, they were slightly larger than the ones on our floor. Each office had its doors wide open. We entered every office and found them empty. We looked at each other hoping the other knew what had happened to the people and why this floor was untouched.
“Not much here Boss why don’t we go ahead and move up to the next floor. We’ve found no supplies to add to our bounty or weapons. The phones are dead here too.”
“Let’s go.” I followed Brian back to the stairway door and untied it. Brian gave me the flashlight so this time I could take the lead. The stairway stayed the way we left it with the one twice dead zombie. We moved quickly up to the next level running into nothing; no zombies, no bodies and no signs of anything.
At the next door I unlatched it and pulled the door open. Brian stepped in quickly keeping his bat in front of him he stopped; and then slowly took a half step back. He waved at me to come forward. We both stood there at the doorway and saw that the entire floor had been upended and the floor was littered with bodies. I swept the light over the bodies and made a quick count. “Eight dead bodies Brian. I don’t see any head damage and I really don’t want to stay on this floor. I have no idea what has happened and don’t want to know.”