One of the soldiers was the first one down. He hopped onthe rope, and slid from view, Martinez' black combat boots braced against thewall, the tendons in his neck tight and bulging from supporting the soldier'sweight.
"You two are next," the man with the glasses said.
Joan let Clara go first. She grabbed the rope in herhands and backed out into the air. Her arms were already tired from shovingaway the infected, and climbing down the rope put even more strain on them. Shewas halfway down when her strength gave out. She slid uncontrolled for the lastten feet of the descent, the rope shredding the skin of her hands with heat andfriction. She screamed in pain as she thumped onto the ground, her ankle takingthe brunt of the fall. "Clear!" a soldier yelled while he helped herup off the ground. She limped to the side, her hands balled into fists andstinging.
She looked around her to see that they were not alone.Though the mass of infected were not nearly as concentrated as in the hospital,their presence was still felt. Even now, they homed in on their position. Joanwas the next one down. She had no problem lowering herself down the rope, andClara envied her with her unsprained ankle and her hands that still had all oftheir flesh. Two more soldiers slid down the rope, their gloves preventing themfrom sustaining the same injuries as Clara.
Clara looked up to see Martinez standing at the window,shadows converging on him from the darkness inside the building. He fell to hischest and swiveled his legs into the air, before shoving his whole body out thewindow. He hung by his hands, and then he dropped to the ground, smashing intothe concrete, the rope still tied about his waist. He screamed in pain as hehit, and the other soldiers snatched him up off the ground and headed straightto a green military vehicle. It was tall, and Clara needed a boost to get intothe back of the massive vehicle. She felt the soldiers shoving at herhindquarters as they lifted her up. She was too tired to feel anything butrelief for the hands on her backside. She collapsed on one of the metalbenches. The soldiers worked together to lift Martinez into the back of thetruck, and the soldier in the sunglasses was the last one in.
He sat at the edge of the truck, and pulled a pack ofcigarettes from his breast pocket. He offered one to the groaning Martinez, whohad blood pooling on the leg of his trousers. Martinez took one from thepackage with a shaky hand, and the man with the sunglasses lit it for him witha plain, stainless steel Zippo. He pulled one out of the pack for himself.
"Can I have one of those?" Clara asked.
"Me too," added Joan.
As they drove away smoking, Clara caught sight of thewindow they had escaped from. The dead poured out of it onto the concretebelow, rising to follow after the truck. Clara took a deep breath from thecigarette. Menthols... it figures, she thought.
Chapter 5: A Numbers Game
"Wake up, motherfucker! Time to go to school!"It was his father's voice, yelling at him, the slurred voice sounding almost playful.
"Get the fuck up!" The voice changed, the wayonly an alcoholic's voice can. He just wanted to sleep. He just wanted to closehis ears, his eyes, and his mind and let him go away. But that's not howalcoholics work. Even if he gave him what he wanted, he would probably beoffended by that.
He sat up, his head filled with cotton, and he opened hiseyes to find that his father was not there. Instead, sitting across from himwas the man he had met the previous night, the man that had gunned down threeof the monsters and prevented Mort from overdosing on Ambien. The nightmare ofthe previous day caught up to him, through his foggy mind, and he closed hiseyes.
"Don't do that, man," his savior said."Don't go back to sleep. Plenty of time to sleep when you're dead, andthat'll be soon enough if we don't move our asses out of here."
Shushing the call of oblivion, Mort opened his eyes backup. He was lying on a respectable couch, newish, but not so new that Mort feltbad for sleeping on it with his homeless dirt and dust. He ran his brown handsover the velvety brown couch, sharp angles, cushions without holes; it wasprobably the best bed that Mort had slept on in a year or two. He sat up, andtried to rise from the couch, but he fell back, gasping in pain. His knee wasswollen, and as the fog of the pills wore off, he held his leg out straight infront of himself and pulled up the leg of his jeans. His left knee wasmonstrous-looking, twice the size of what it usually was. The cop had reallydone a number on it. The cuts and scrapes on his body were nothing compared tothe heat and pain radiating from the swollen hunk of flesh that was supposed tobe his knee. It looked like the knee of an elephant.
The man across from him saw the shape his knee was in,and he got up out of his chair. He returned with an ice pack in a towel, andhanded it to Mort. "This ought to help," he said in a twangy voice.It reminded Mort of Texas. He had spent some time down there decades ago. Itwas a brutal experience, living free, alternating between blistering heat anddownpours of rain that soaked everything to the bone.
"Thank you," he said.
"You might wanna save that thanks for later, when weactually get out of here."
"What do you mean?"
The man looked at him. He had hollows around his eyes.They were deep-set, but a vivid twinkling blue that Mort could only describeas sniper's eyes. They seemed to see right through him. His square, narrow jawwas covered in stubble, and he moved easily, his cowboy boots seeming to be anextension of his feet rather than clunky things that were
