"Never can be easy, can it?" she muttered as she made her way to it.
Reaching the platform, she dropped the bags and leaned over. Below her, dozens of them had gathered, looking up at her, howling and groaning. She took a minute to take stock, looking around, finding she could see the street easily enough, and that it was clear of the dead.
"Well, hell," she muttered. "Looks like I'm gonna be here a bit."
By nightfall, she realized she may have made a bad choice in hiding places. The dead hadn’t wandered off in boredom, knowing a meal was waiting for them just out of reach.
Somewhere in the middle of the night, as she drifted off, Bunny wondered how she was going to get out of this one, somehow doubting any salvation was coming this time. Deciding it was a problem best left for tomorrow, she made a pillow out of the backpack, and went to sleep to a lullaby of hungry dead.
Chapter Twelve
DAWN CAME, and with it, Bunny saw there were more, not less, of the dead. She sat on the small wooden platform and looked down at them, pondering her situation. Somehow she had to get down from her perch, back to her car, and out of the construction site, all without getting bitten.
Looking up at the sky, she said, "Now would be a good time for one of your absurdly convenient interventions."
Getting no answer, and not sure if there was anyone listening, she picked up the radio and began scanning channels again, hoping that the military hadn't gone to an encrypted communication system since the soldiers she got the radio from had died.
Finding nothing but static, she leaned back against a girder and gave the backpack Rosa had given her another check, only to find she was low on water, and the food she'd eaten last night had been all that was packed. In other words, she wasn’t in good shape.
Leaning over, she found the dead looking back up at her, patient in their hunger it seemed. She waved at them, receiving greetings of snarls. Shrugging, she settled back again, watching the sun rise.
A helicopter swooped by, too far for her to get their attention, though she doubted they would stop if she did. They were on missions, which meant the government was still working, and gave her some small hope that maybe, somewhere, in a lab, some scientist was figuring this out.
She knew the world wouldn't go back to the way it had been as she and Rosa had discussed, but it was still comforting to see the Blackhawks making their runs in and out of Washington Park. Maybe, just maybe, this would all get fixed. After all, it’d only been four days since the start.
When faced with hungry dead, you couldn't expect miracles from anyone, especially if the politicians could figure out how to get this new majority vote. She snickered at that one, trying for a moment to escape the gravity of her situation.
Standing to stretch, she walked across the platform, paying no mind to the way the dead below her shuffled. Stopping at the far edge, she looked out over the city, feeling the nip of winter in the air, taking in the sunrise, and watching the people walking down the street.
Bunny started. People were walking down the street. Four of them.
Shaking herself, she watched them for a moment, and saw they were heading towards the intersection at the far end of the construction site. Looking that way, she jogged across the platform then eased her way along the girders to get a better view of the intersection down the way.
She spotted a good number of dead loitering, the ones that hadn't figured out how to get past the heavy wood fence that surrounded the site when she'd made her unfortunate run to escape them the day before. There weren't many, maybe a couple of dozen, but it was enough to give the quartet in the street serious trouble if they weren't careful.
Stuck as she was up there, Bunny wasn't about to watch those people die if she could do something about it. Skirting her way back along the beams, she picked up a couple of rivets left laying by the workers and got as close as she could to the street.
Looking down, she found the group had moved to the sidewalk near the fence, meaning she was going to have to aim carefully to get their attention without alerting the dead in the yard below her. She threw the heavens a dirty look for making her work for this and palmed a rivet.
Taking a deep breath, she gave it a softball throw, lobbing it out into the air, and missed by a mile. Rolling her eyes at her own stupidity, she pinched the next one and flicked it hard, tagging the lead man of the group, a tall, broad-shouldered black man, in the side of the head.
He stopped dead in his tracks, jerking around towards her, bringing up his rifle, a Winchester by the look of it. Behind him, the other three, a woman and two men, stopped, glancing around before looking where he was. After a moment, the leader raised his eyes high enough to spot her and Bunny waved.
He lowered the rifle, looking at her in surprise. She held up her hand and made a fist, receiving only a confused look in return for a moment. The man bringing up the rear moved closer, patting the first on the shoulder and whispering something to him.
Both looked back up at her and she pointed to her eyes then to the corner and held her hands up, palms open. The fellow from the back of
