Location: Undead Central, San Diego CA — Roz’s Roof
I woke up with a pounding headache. My ankle was swollen from last night’s activities. My back hurt from sleeping on the roof. My shoulder barely worked thanks to falling asleep on my own arm.
I rubbed my eyes but it didn’t help. They still felt like sand paper.
“You might have gotten uglier,” Joel observed.
I didn’t have the energy to flip him off.
“I feel like shit.”
“Dehydrated. You need water. We all do,” he said.
Joel crept to the edge of the roof and looked over the side of the building. He came back up and shook his head. Roz stayed low and stared after him. The kids were a few feet away, conferring in whispered voices.
It was overcast, and from the chill in the air I’d guess it was no later than about 0600 hours.
“Not good. We can’t get down. We can’t go back in the garage, and we can’t get in the house.”
“Still full of dead fucks?”
“Yep,” he said. “Craig reconnoitered earlier.”
“Brave kid.”
“And he’s light. Don’t want a fresh hole in the roof.”
Another helicopter thundered against the morning sky. I’d put it at a mile or two out. We could see it, but it couldn’t see us, because we were a speck in a big old pile of fuck you. Too bad we couldn’t set a home on fire to signal the chopper.
“Anyone got a flare gun?” I asked.
Joel Kelly rolled his eyes.
The chopper cut to the east and then zipped into the distance until we couldn’t hear it anymore.
The morning brought some fog and a creepy view of the world below. Where we’d seen the undead on the ground, now they seemed to be creeping out of the mist with heads and arms floating. A shuffler appeared out of the fog with a leap and then was gone, five or six feet away like some kind of fucked up zombie frog.
The nearest house was twenty or thirty feet away and no matter how fast we could run, there was no way in hell we’d make that sprint. The dead were too thick. I’d have a better chance of pogo-sticking off heads than outrunning the tightly packed horde.
“What if one of us put on a lot of clothes? Then the bites wouldn’t get through,” Christy said.
“You’d be dragged down and torn apart,” I said.
Not a good way to go. Sure they might not be able to bite, yet, but enough of those things on top of the kid and they’d have his arms and legs separated from his torso in no time.
“Uh. Yeah. Bad idea,” Christy said.
“Can we make a rope out of our clothes and hook it to the house over there?” Craig pointed at the nearest rooftop.
Poor kid. He looked worse than me. His hair was a mess but his eyes were the really sad part. He must have been rubbing at them because one was dark red and he looked as tired as anyone I’d ever seen. Craig lifted one hand to point at the house but it hung limp, almost like a Z’s hand. Even his words were slurred.
“One, I don’t want to be dangling buck ass naked over those bastards. A shuffler would surely get us. Two, none of us can possibly James Bond the rope over there.”
“It was just a suggestion,” he said and frowned. Craig lay back down and stared in the direction of the slow rising sun.
“Yeah. It was a good one,” I said, but he didn’t acknowledge my words.
Joel looked at me but I could only shrug.
The sound of a helicopter again. I sat up and tried to get a glimpse but couldn’t tell which direction it was coming from.
“There!” Joel said. He was up on his knees pointing west of San Diego, out toward the water.
The chopper cut across my vision like a fucking messiah. If Jesus himself had risen from the ground and taken to the air, I don’t think I’d have been this excited.
The thundering grew louder. The big green military transport did a zig-zag over buildings and roads. As it moved I found myself getting up. First, one foot under a knee. Then I was up in a crouch and trying to ignore the pain in my ankle. I licked my dry lips, but it didn’t help, even though I was, for some reason, salivating.
“Is it coming this way?” Roz moved beside me and put her hand on my waist.
I looked her way and tried not to grin like a crazy man.
“Yeah. It’s coming our way.”
It was. I thought for sure it would go anywhere else but it kept doing a serpentine strut across the sky. Its general direction was still toward us.
I jumped to my feet and waved my hands in the air and started to shout.
“Hey! Hey! We’re right fucking here!”
Roz did the same and so did the kids. Craig didn’t get to his feet but he waved. His hand was nearly as listless as his body. I hoped the poor kid wasn’t sick.
Thank the fuck Christ someone was coming. I was worried about the kid. I’d just met him a day or two ago but he and his sister didn’t deserve this crazy new world. I couldn’t help but wonder if this part of the country was infected but the rest of the world was fine and dandy. Maybe families were rising even now to have breakfast together. To watch the morning news or sit through children’s cartoons. Mom and Dad rushing off to work while the kids try to stay awake in school.
I shook my head and made my brain focus on the task at hand—getting that chopper’s attention.
The helicopter must have seen us because they made a beeline straight toward Roz’s house.
There was one side effect of our antics and shouts of joy. The horde below had gone into a frenzy. They pressed in on the sides of the garage and howled for our blood. A pair of shufflers flung themselves at the building like we were a side of bacon left out for their morning meal.
The chopper slowed as it neared us. It was green and had large side doors. One was open and had a machine gun pointed out just like they were in a war zone — and that wasn’t far from the truth.
The pilot and co-pilot were hard to make out, but I was sure one of them nodded in our direction. A face appeared behind them and studied us intently.
The wash of the blades as the helicopter came to hover in front of us blew Joel Kelly’s FDNY cap off his head. He waved but the pilots didn’t wave back.
The chopper swung to the side and my gut twisted.
“No!” I screamed. “Don’t leave us!”
Roz jumped up and down but I couldn’t hear her over the rush of wind.
The side door came into view and with it, the big machine gun. I thought for a crazy moment that they were about to open up on us.
The man that I’d seen a few seconds ago leaned out and waved. He was tall and had dark hair laced with grey. He looked like Gunny, but this man was older. He waved again and we waved back. I felt dumb for it, but it was the best I had in place of a hug and a wet kiss. I’d save that for after we were rescued.
The helicopter hovered just out of reach, then the guy hanging onto the doorway motioned for us to get down. I didn’t need a second invitation and dropped to a crouch on my sore ankle. It screamed in pain but I pushed it to the back of my mind.
The man produced a bullhorn and fiddled with the buttons. A woman dressed in combat gear moved beside him and said something. He nodded at her and then lifted a bullhorn.
“Stay down just like that. When we get close make your way onto the craft. When you are onboard sit down and don’t move. Got it?”
I gave the thumbs up. He nodded at us and then yelled something at the pilots.
Roz knelt while she talked to the kids. Christy looked at Craig and gave his hand a quick squeeze.
The dead around us went into a frenzy. The shuffler that had haunted us all night tried to leap onto the helicopter but it was a good twelve feet off the ground. The down draft from the blades flattened a couple that were on shaky limbs, or worse, were missing them entirely.