What used to be a young woman walked by, her arms dangling loosely by her sides. Her skin was pale and almost grey looking, as though all the blood in her body was either gone or solidified in her veins beyond its ability to alter the pigment of her skin. Her head hung loosely to one side, and her hair draped down in a sticky mess. A large dark clot of blood matted her once blonde locks as though she suffered some sort of head trauma just as she was infected. She wore a yellow sun dress that hung loosely on her frame, exposing knobby shoulders. As she stumbled along her hair swept aside revealing a tattoo of lips on her right arm. Around the outside edge were the words "I don't bite" written in fancy script. I sniggered when I saw it and inmediately she turned toward me. "Oh crap" I said under my breath, backing into the corner as tight as I could. Her yellow eyes searched the wall for the source of the sound, and she raised her arms in a sweeping motion, searching for movement. I held my breath, watching her arms as they moved from side to side. "Should I run?" I debated in my mind. "Or should I stay still and hope she goes away?" I stood like a stone while my eyes searched frantically for an escape. The door behind me was locked tight, and I didn't have time to get past her.
As she moved close I ducked her swinging arm and swung my plastic bag toward her head. I heard a splitting sound as the box of ammunition in the bag broke aross the side of her skull, rupturing the thin plastic of the bag and spilling bullets across the street. The sound of their brass casings rolling about attracted several more ghouls, all of which began to advance rapidly. As they did so their stumbling feet slipped on the round shots and they struggled to keep their balance. It was almost comical to watch this bizzare scene, like a macabre roller derby played by actors from a Michael Jaskcon music video. One fell to the ground with a sickening splat, another tripped over him and like dominos there was a heap in front of me, writhing and wriggling in an effort to grab hold of me. I deftly negotiated the minefield of grasping claws and scattered bullets, but by doing so I placed myself precariously in the street.
It was like a magnetic field surrounded me wherever I went. As I moved one direction the zombies near there would lose interest in the gas station and begin moving toward me. I moved away from them, putting me in range of others on the opposite side. Soon I had a chain of infected trailing behind, moaning and clambering for a chance to grab the only living thing for several blocks. Adrenaline pumped in my veins, urging me to move in almost acrobatic motions. I ducked under a set of arms and moved to my right, jumping over a small brick wall and into a set of bushes. Leaping up onto the too of the fence the rattling of the chain link attracted even more, and rather than hop over I opted to grab onto the steel gutters of a nearby building. Heaving myself upward I pulled myself onto the roof and looked down at the teeming horde below.
What an idiot I was. Did I really expect I could sneak my way past an army of corpses? I looked down at the sea of outstretched arms, growing larger by the second. The collective moaning and gargling emanating from their mouths attracted other infected nearby, fueling a frenzy of incomprehensible horror. As they struggled to get to me they clawed and scratched and pulled on their fellows, tearing entire chunks of hair out and even removing limbs. The victims, completely unaware of their new injuries continued to effort toward me, albeit in a now slightly disabled fashion.
I stood up and walked carefully to the rooftop, looking out over a sea of the undead. There had to be thousands of them. Shielding my eyes from the glaring sun above I realized just how thirsty I was, and tried to calculate how much liquid I'd had in the past week. I glanced up at the roof and saw my young friend looking down on me, watching solemnly at a scene I'm sure he's witnessed before. He didnt move, but sat quietly, helplessly with his arms folded on the edge of the rooftop.
I needed a plan. I certainly could not stay here forever and I wasn't sure how long it would take for something to distract these monsters in another direction. I looked up the street in the direction of the storage facility. I still had several blocks to go, a distance that now seemed almost insurmountable. Even if I could get there I certainly couldn't afford to tow this crowd behind me. Not knowing what shape I'd find my storage unit I might need hours, even days to pack it all up in a way it could be moved, and I still didn't have a vehicle.
I sat down on the roof and thought of Tracy. It seems like years since I had seen her face. So much had happened since I disappeared down that bunker shaft. Would she even be there? If she left me at the bunker she must have assumed I was dead, and after seeing the jeep stranded out on the freeway the odds of her finding reliable transportation was slim. Even if she had made it to the storage unit she'd be long gone by now. In my mind there were only two realistic scenarios: either she made it to A-1 storage, had cleaned it out, and was now gone, or she had never made it there in the first place.
It was full afternoon now, and the sun sat high in the sky. The horde below me still crowded all around me, but their movements had slowed from a frenzy to more of a rhythmic thrum. My pistol dug uncomfortably in my back, and I retrieved it, looking at its dark surface absorbing the sunlight. After my bag burst I only the ammo in the single magazine. If I'd had the whole box I might have been able to carve a path through this crowd or at least create enough of a distraction to give me time to hop off the other side. I laid the pistol against a metal pipe and began picking idly at the shingles. The hot sun made them pliable and soft, and I pulled a corner up, tearing it off. Turning it over and over again I finally got bored and skipped it like a rock across the rooftop. Instantly the crowd below me perked up at the sound and began pushing each other towards the south side of the building. My eyebrows raised as I realized I had an entire arsenal of possible distractions.
Starting at the top I pulled up shingle after shingle, making a large pile at the crest of the roof. The sounds of my labor worked the horde below back into a frenzy, and I could see their hands reaching and stretching, fruitlessly trying to obtain their goal. I worked feverishly and felt my throat grow dry in the summer heat. I looked down at my fingers, rubbed raw from the rough composite. I flexed them and blew on the irritated skin. What I wouldn't trade for a dip in a nice cold Swimmimg pool right now.
I looked over at my handiwork. The roof was now missing at least 50 shingles, and I had amassed a pile now balancing precariously on the crest of the roof. I began by skidding the first one across the roof like I had earlier. Being an entire shingle it made considerably more noise, and the zombies were instantly attracted to it. I skidded a second one and saw them hesitate backwards, then over to the side where my shingle had fallen off the edge. If this was going to be successful I would need to lead them in the opposite direction. I picked up a shingle and tried desperately to hold it level like a frisbee. It was floppy and wam in the afternoon sun and had difficulty holding its shape. I spun it like a large flat noodle and watched it flip downwards into the crowd. It landed on the head of what was once a large man wearing a hat with the words "I survived" and a picture of some roller coaster on it. As it knocked the hat off his bald head he seemed to look up into the sky in bewilderment. The other zombies around him clambered over him, so eager to get to the source of the movement that they forced him to the ground in ignorant frenzy. I smiled. "This might just work" I thought to myself. I looked back up at the roof of my building, almost a block away. He was still up there, silently observing.
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