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Lou climbed up through the hole that had been choppedinto the ceiling of the building that they were in. The dead woman on the floormust have been responsible for that one. A red fire axe still sat in the cornerof the security room, along with bits of plaster, gravel and scraps of wood.
The woman's rifle lay on the keyboard of the securityconsole, tossed there as an afterthought. Lou had looked everywhere forammunition for the damned thing, but there was nothing. It was doomed to bejust another rusting, rotting piece of metal in an abandoned room that mightnever be seen by human eyes again. He stepped backwards as a pair of sneakersdropped down, blotting out the rays of sunshine.
It was Clara, her face like a January storm. "How isit up there?" he asked.
"Rotten," she said. "Help me down. Myankle is still sore."
Lou reached up and grabbed Clara by the waist, and thenlowered her to the ground. Lou knew to leave well enough alone. If there wasone thing that he was good at, it was reading people. A life around junkies anddishonest dealers had given him that much at least. He could read people theway others could read books. Clara was alright. She might have her downmoments, but she spent more time up than down. Katie was the one he worriedabout. She could put them all in jeopardy at some point, one crossed wire, onewrong word, and then she could snap or do something that couldn't be changed.Lou smiled at the word "jeopardy." Who ever thought he would be usingthat word about his own life. Until this summer, the word had meant nothing tohim. It had just been the name of a game show. But now it was a condition, acondition that he and the others were struggling to escape from.
He let Clara slink away without saying another word, andthen he climbed up on the roof of the building. What a way to see the zoo,he thought. It had been here his whole life, just sitting up in the hills thathe had never seemed to notice. His whole life had been down in the valley. Ithad been made of concrete, steel bridges, and rivers that seemed to keep youconfined to your own particular part of town. He could have walked to the zooin a day... and yet he had never had the desire or the chance. Hell, he hadnever even had the thought.
That life, that zoo-going life, that was for them. Rememberthe them? What a laughable concept that was now. Here he was, a dead end,someone that in the eyes of "them" would never amount to nothing. Buthe was alive, and most of "them" weren't. On top of that, he wasleading his group. No one had ever even bothered to listen to what he had tosay before the world ended. He supposed that's why it was so important for himto do this right. For the first time in his life, he was respected. Hemattered. He should never have let other people decide that for him, but that'sjust the way the world worked.
Now he was in control, of his fate and the fate of theothers. He didn't want to let any of them down. Underneath the bright, yellowsun, he walked to the edge of the building, laying down and surveying all ofthe options. In the distance, he could see the squat, square structure that satover the train station. Beyond that, the ground sloped downwards to thehighway. That was a kill zone. That was a place that none of them would come backfrom. The line of the dead stumbling up that hill wasn't as bad as some of thethings they had seen in the city, but it was steady enough to let him know thatthe highway here was the same as in Portland, a graveyard filled with the dead.
The noise of the dead banging on the walls was drawingthem there, slowly but surely. If they waited too much longer, they would mostdefinitely be trapped. It might already be too late, but he didn't want tothink about that. Giving up was the last thing on his mind. He had never doneit before, though the world kept trying to get him to lay down. He saw noreason to give up.
He scanned to the right, looking at the lush forest thatled down to the parking lot. A hill rose almost straight up. It was the type ofhill that could be climbed, but you would have to basically crawl face first ata 70-degree angle to scale it. The hill was covered with a deep blanket of ivy,underneath sparse pine trees, their trunks bent upwards as if they had sprungstraight from the hill itself. He looked up at the top of the hill, trying tosee through the tree-tops. He had no idea what was at the top, but it presenteda better option than crawling around in the MAX tunnels or heading down to thehighway to end up as a roadside snack.
The hill it was. They would have to leave most of theirequipment behind. Oh well, if it had to be done, it had to be done.
He was just about to go tell the others what he haddecided when he thought, Dammit! What about Blake? He laid hishead on his arms, switching cheeks when he felt the pain from the stitches inhis face. Blake... there's no way he could climb up that hill with his hand theway it was. Even if he could, it would wind up so infected that he might stilllose the hand.
The tunnel or the highway? That was all that was left tothem... well, that and the third option. But he didn't like the third option.That was for
