I did, however, almost fucking air punch when I saw Nate, Mark, and Alicia, all perched on top of some double stacked pallets of wrapped bricks. Their little tower was two wide, two deep, and two high, so the platform was just big enough across the four upper pallets for the three of them to safely sit on, a good fifteen feet from the ground and completely out of reach of the undead. I took out my handset and clicked the mic. I knew everyone else was clustered around a radio back at the lodge, listening.
“Where’s your radio, you bell end?” I said quietly from my perch.
I heard my own voice crackle from below them, smiling as Nate’s granite face cracked into a grin, his eyes like weird discs of light in the NVG’s. That explained it then; the radio was on the yard floor, surrounded by zombies, and they couldn’t get to it. They could hear me though. Scarily, so could the undead, and when I’d spoken, they’d sparked to life and clustered towards the spot where the radio lay. That sight left me cold, but I had a job to do and put that aside to process later.
“Look to your right, Pooh Bear,” I said. “I’m on top of the main office.”
All three faces turned towards me and I stood up, clicking a little flashlight on and off so they could see my position. All three waved, Mark and Alicia hugged – which, let me tell you, was a big thing for Alicia, letting a man’s arms around her – and their relief was palpable. I smiled. Nate’s smile, however, was a little different. It was… smug? Funny. It was like he’d been expecting me all along, and my appearance elicited a little self-satisfied grin that said, “I fucking knew it.”
Made me smile again.
“Hey fellow lodgers,” I whispered for everyone’s benefit into the handset. “You’re live on Big Brother, so please do not swear, and most certainly do not respond at volume because the undead are everywhere right now and I’m in hiding. Give me one very quiet response so I know you can hear me.” I’d turned my handset’s volume right down to minimise the chance of the monsters hearing me up on my perch.
“We’re here, flower,” came Norah’s crackling whisper. I heard her response on the radio lying among the undead, so that cheered me, knowing Nate and company had been able to hear me while I was losing my shit at his selfish ignorance of my demands regarding his whereabouts. They knew I’d been on my way, so I guess that was the reason for Nate’s smug mode.
“Everyone, I’ve got eyes on Nate, Mark, and Alicia. All three are in good health, appear to be injury free due to their happy hugging, jumping, and general victory twerks. No further responses please as I need the airwaves to try and sort out with Nate what we’re going to do. But Charlie, your dad is absolutely fine, and I’m going to bring him home, okay?”
They followed my instructions and didn’t respond to avoid risking giving my position away, but I couldn’t help a little grin of my own, as I imagined the collective cheer back at the lodge, and Charlie’s grinning face as my news was delivered, no doubt getting the world’s biggest hug from Norah. All I had to do now was keep that promise.
Scanning the yard, I could see our pickup pointed front first towards the gate, just a few feet from the opening. There was an ocean of monsters between them and the vehicle. There was also the big truck they had planned on using, fully loaded, and secured with bricks, bags of sand and cement, a small cement mixer, bags of plaster, plasterboard, varying bits of lumber, and all that good stuff. They must have been literally finishing as the horde arrived, which is some shitty luck.
The truck, however, was pointed in the wrong direction. It was at ninety degrees to the gateway, and the cab was pointing away from the gate, so it would either have to be reversed out, or turned round fully further in the yard where there was space to swing it in a three-point turn. An idea started to form. A reckless and stupid idea, but that’s all we really had, and I was the only one with the appropriate skills to pull it off.
“Nate,” I said over the radio. “Are the keys to that crane truck in the ignition?”
He turned to Mark and asked the question, which made me swear as Charlie’s dad shook his head, dug into his pocket, and lifted them up so I could see. Bollocks.
“Have you got the pickup keys?” Nate pointed to the vehicle. Okay, so that was a bonus. The keys were still in the ignition. “Where’s your rifle?”
Nate pointed down into the mass. I later found out that he’d had to unclip the rifle strap as a zombie had somehow grabbed it and started dragging him back, otherwise he’d have been a dead man. Shit, things must have been close and tense for Nate to nearly get himself killed; he’s usually five steps ahead of the game. When that strap whipped back, it had caught the radio hooked on to the top pocket of his tactical vest. In one swoop, he’d lost his primary weapon and his means of communication with home.
I quickly rolled my eyes along the outdoor containers – you know the ones, like you see in the movies that are stacked up in shipyards? - and stacked pallets of materials that created long outdoor aisles for all the big stuff that couldn’t be stored inside the warehouse. Their brick tower was at the very end of one of those aisles.
There was a gap of around fifteen feet between the edge of the office building and two of those big containers stacked on top of each other, and they’re about eight feet high each. The lowest part
