I turned and headed to the darkness of the truck bay. It mirrored my feelings exactly. Travis got out the car. Tracy motioned to him, but thought better of making any more comments. I heard the car door shut softly behind me; my back up was on the way. I hopped up onto the loading dock and turned to lend Travis a hand up. I turned on my small flashlight attached to my rifle (back to the whole ‘survivalist’ aspect). It couldn’t penetrate more than twenty or so feet into the murkiness, but except for the occasional upturned box, it seemed we were alone. That was a vast relief because I knew if that shotgun went off Tracy would be up here in a flash, and our only means of a hasty escape would be unmanned. Shit, the dock was huge. I should have found out in what general direction I should be heading towards. I wanted to go outside and ask Justin, but the thought of yelling back and forth, and thus ringing the dinner bell for some unwelcome guests kept me inside. There was that, and I also had the sinking feeling that time was running out. Time felt oppressive, each second that ticked off added weight to the unseen burden I was carrying.
“Dad, sweep the light back to the right, I thought I saw a glint,” Travis said.
I slowly panned the flashlight to the right. I did catch a flash of light. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the glint of an aluminum ladder. It was a watch, and even from this distance I could tell it was expensive. ‘Oh why couldn’t this be a natural disaster,’ I moaned to myself. I was surrounded by flat screen TVs and Xbox 360s and some dead dude’s Rolex. That brought me back quick; attached to the watch was a three-quarter eaten employee of the store, probably a manager by the looks of the watch. As we stepped closer we could clearly see the small girl child that was chewing through his head.
‘Well at least he won’t be coming back,’ I thought irrelevantly. The light struck her in the face and she looked up immediately. Malevolence creased her young features, almost as if to say ‘I’ll deal with you two after I’m finished here,’ and then she turned back to the task at hand.
Travis and I stopped, and he raised the Mossberg. I pushed my hand down on the barrel and shook my head no. First off, she wasn’t attacking us and I didn’t want the noise to bring any others, and second the thought of killing a child - even a child that had nothing of humanity left in her - just didn’t sit right. But that look, it was predatory. She knew what she was doing and she was enjoying it! God help us! God help us all!
We moved further down the bay, always aware of what was happening to our right, but the steady slurping of blood and the crunch of bone and cartilage stayed constant. We reached the far end of the bay before we came up on the ladder. It was a big ladder but I didn’t think it was going to telescope out to the top of the roof, which I figured to be about thirty-five feet.
“All right Trav, I’m going to grab the ladder. You’re going to have to cover us,” I said as I slung my M-16 over my shoulder.
The ladder made a loud clanging noise as I pulled it off its hooks. The sound nearly made me drop it. My nerves were on edge and my senses were firing on all cylinders. Travis was tense and his senses appeared heightened, but he didn’t seem any worse for the wear. We slowly made our way back towards the open bay we had come in through. When we were near where I thought the little girl was, I strained my ears to hear the telltale signs of a zombie eating. It was not a delicate affair. Nothing, I heard nothing. A cold chill, no scratch that, an arctic blast crept down my spine. I knew she was closing in, and somehow she was avoiding Travis’ sweeps with the flashlight. And then I felt her cold touch against the back part of my leg. I tried to scream, I’m not proud of that, but what came out was more like a strangled gurgle. There was no way I was going to be able to drop the ladder and turn around quick enough to defend myself. I waited for the pain of gnashing teeth clamping down on my calf. I looked up to Travis hoping that he had heard my gurgle for help; maybe he already had a bead on her and I could be saved the fate of being dessert for some undead tweenie. But the gods were not aligned with me. Travis wasn’t even looking my way. He had the light and the shotgun pointed off to our left where the little monster was now chewing her way through what was left of the manager’s spinal column. I chanced a look behind me. What I saw would have blanched my face bone white, if not for the fact that blood was now flowing into my face. Relief and embarrassment commingled as I pulled the ladder’s guide wire back up and wrapped it around one of the rungs.
“Dad, you all right back there?” Travis asked as his gun never wavered off the scene he was looking at.
“Ugh...” I started off brightly. “Yep.” I wanted to add more, but a large chunk of self-loathing was stuck in my throat.
We were close to exiting when Tracy hit the horn. It wasn’t a long blast, but it scared the crap out of me. This time I dropped the ladder, which rattled Travis. His gun fired, taking out a piece of meat still left on Mr. Department Manager who would never get the chance to realize his dream of mediocrity and middle management. Some of the shots peppered the little girl in the face. The pellets sank into the soft flesh of her face. Her left cheek sloughed off from the assault exposing tiny baby teeth stained red and encrusted with the gore of her meal. She rose to meet this new threat, and the sight left a lasting mark on me that still haunts most of my nights. In her right hand she dragged what appeared to be her dolly, a remnant from her past life. Did she just not have the mental capacity to let go of the dregs from her previous existence? Was there somewhere deep down in the nether-lands of her pillaged soul, some last hold out? I wanted to know.
Travis didn’t. He blew her head off. Her small body, adorned in possibly her favorite blue dress, stood for perhaps a heartbeat longer before she crumpled to the floor atop her last meal, still clutching the doll. For all intents and purposes, if you took the blood away it looked like a happy embrace between a father and his daughter. I launched something from my stomach. What it was I’ll never know because I was empty. It wouldn’t have surprised me in the least if I had hacked up a kidney.
Travis looked a little green around the gills but he wasn’t suffering the effects nearly as bad as I was. I stood back up, grabbed the ladder and headed out into the night. There was nothing more in there I EVER wanted to see again. I stepped down from the loading bay. The night seemed blindingly bright after the darkness we had just left, both literally and figuratively. Travis motioned with his gun to indicate what Tracy had beeped her horn about. Coming around the corner was a lone zombie. He was still a hundred yards away and didn’t seem like a huge threat at the moment, but I was getting the sneaky suspicion this was not going to end well. Tracy was gesturing wildly in the car.
“I know, we see it too,” I stage whispered to her. It amazed me that I was already starting to call them ‘ITS’ instead of ‘THEMS.’ “It” seemed such an impersonal word to describe what was once a human, but it was much easier this way.
I was extending the ladder out and preparing to stand it up when I heard a voice from above. No, unfortunately it wasn’t THAT voice from above.
“Dad!” Justin said, a little more loudly than I would have hoped. I looked up to acknowledge him. “We’re about to have some company,” he finished.
“Yeah, we saw it,” I replied as I struggled to get the ladder in position.
“Yeah, no,” came his cryptic reply. “I mean there’s about a dozen of them heading this way.”
A sweat broke out on my forehead and it was only partially because of the exertion. “How much time?” I grunted. The ladder was in place and it was a good ten feet short from the top.
“A couple of minutes at the most,” he riposted.
“Oh great! This just gets better and better!” was my response. Things just were not going as planned. And then I full out laughed. Maybe I was close to the edge, I don’t know, but it was a laugh I could have lost myself in. Who the hell PLANS for this! I finished with my semi-hysterical outbreak, thankful for the relief it spawned.
“Dad? You all right?” Justin asked.
“I’m as good as I’m going to get,” I retorted. “Get somebody, preferably two people to come and help you.”
He looked at me quizzically.
“They are going to have to lower you over the edge and you’re going to have to drop to the ladder.”
“No fu…” he started. “I mean NO way, that’s gotta be a twenty foot drop to the ladder, I’ll never make it.”
“It’s twelve feet max,” I told him. “You’ll be fine.”
“I don’t know about this,” He hedged.
“Justin, we don’t have time to argue, you either get on the ladder within the next minute or so or we have to leave.” I forced the issue.
I could see Justin mentally began to weigh his choices. I wasn’t prepared to let him prioritize.
“Justin,” I started. “So I know you have beer and a pellet gun plus you have a safe haven.” I could see him
