All That I See - 02 (19 page)

“The hell you could,” I said.

“I’m going to try.”

I used the controls to back the bucket well away from her.

“You couldn’t make it, and you’re not trying,” I said.

The truck reappeared two blocks over to our right by city hall. It stopped in the intersection. We waved. There were two people in the truck, but I couldn’t make out who they were. They didn’t wave back. The passenger might have been looking at us with binoculars.

“I think they must be coming up with a plan,” I said. “Maybe we should wait and see what they have in mind.”

We watched them watching us for several seconds. The truck’s engine revved again and it proceeded south and disappeared from view. Sara’s brow furrowed.

“It’s okay,” I said. “They’ll be back. Let’s just wait. There’s not a lot we can do anyway.”

“But it’ll be dark soon,” she said.

“I’m going to stay up here with you,” I said.

“How are you going to sleep in that box?” she said.

“How am I going to sleep at all?”

I moved the bucket back until I was as close to her as I could get so we could talk. She sat down on the edge of the roof and let her legs hang over the side. She looked between her knees to monsters reaching for her more than twenty feet below. She puckered her lips and a white, foamy glob of spit came out of her mouth. It hung there on her lips for a second then dropped down onto one of the upturned faces. She sniffed then looked around her, positioning the AR-15 across her lap.

“Every time I’m up high like this, I think about
Yertle the Turtle
,” she said. “It was my favorite Dr. Seuss book when I was a kid.”

“I don’t remember that one,” I said. “Mine was
Green Eggs and Ham
.”

“Everybody’s favorite is
Green Eggs and Ham
,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Yertle was king of the turtles. He climbed up really high on the backs of all the other turtles and he said, ‘I’m the ruler of all that I see.’”

I looked around at downtown Clayfield—the broken windows, the burned buildings, the dead bodies and bones, the wrecked cars.

“Ruler of all that you see, huh? Well, your subjects seem to like you a lot,” I said.

“In the land of the undead, the living woman is queen,” she said dryly.

“And food, your highness,” I said.

She snorted and let another glob of spit fall, “Let them eat cake.”

“It’ll probably get cool tonight,” I said. “Are you warm enough?”

“I’ll be okay,” she said. “I can wrap up in this apron.”

“Maybe they’ll be back soon, and we won’t have to spend the night out here.”

“Maybe,” she shrugged.

Night came. Between the moaning and howls of hundreds of zombies and the wailing of the siren, sleep was almost impossible. It’s funny, though, how your mind can block stuff out. Somehow I did sleep. It was fitful and brief, but I slept. Sara woke me after a while.

“They’re back, I think,” she said. “Somebody’s out there.”

I had been sitting in the bucket, and I stood. I was cold and damp. There was a light drizzle of rain misting around me. Out ahead of us, where the silver truck had been before, were two headlights shining our direction.

“Surely they’re not going to try something in the dark,” I said.

Judging by the shadows and silhouettes between us and the headlights, the numbers of infected had increased. We watched the lights for a while, and then they went out. We couldn’t see anything after that for a very long time—probably an hour. Then another set of lights approached from the north and stopped in the vicinity of where the first had been.

I was starting to feel uneasy. Granted, I hadn’t spent enough time with Nicholas Somerville to predict what he might do, but this just didn’t seem like his
modus operandi
. He had acted a little foolhardy when we’d first met, but that was only because he didn’t have all the facts about the seriousness of the virus. I was having trouble believing that he would attempt a rescue at night. And who was in that second vehicle?

“Sara,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“I want you to take the
forty-five
,” I said. “I’m going to throw it across to you. You might need it.”

“I have the rifle,” she said.

“With what, three rounds?”

“What are you going to use?”

“I have another handgun,” I said. I knew if I told her what caliber it was, she wouldn’t accept the .45. “I also have a big pipe wrench I can use as a club.”

“Okay. Toss it over.”

I emptied the contents of my pouch and wrapped the apron around the gun. “Here it comes.” I threw it underhanded and hoped I threw it hard enough. I heard it thump onto the roof. Sara turned on the little flashlight she’d take
n
from the convenient store, and picked it up.

A third vehicle came from the north and parked beside the second. Both sets of headlights went out.

“I don’t like this,” Sara said.

“Yeah, me neither.”

After several minutes, two sets of headlights came back on, and then the two vehicles backed up and drove away, one heading east, and the other heading west. At some point I fell asleep again.

When I woke up, it was dawn. I was shivering. The sky was gray and cloudy. I stood and looked toward the museum. There was a FedEx van parked in the middle of the street. A couple of zombies were checking it out, but not aggressively. The wipers were on, and I could see two people inside. Sara was standing at the front of the building, staring at them.

“Who is it?” I said.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “Two men. Not the Somervilles.”

She walked back to me, “Did you sleep well?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I slept a little.”

“Do you need any food?”

“I’m fine.”

The silver truck returned and parked next to the FedEx van. The occupants of the vehicles were talking.

“I really don’t like this,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what to do.”

“If I could make it into there with you—“

“You can’t,” I said. “It’s too risky.”

“If I could,” she continued, “How far out would it reach? Do you think you could swing us over to that tree?”

“Yeah, but then what? Then we’d be stuck in a tree.”

“What about the power lines?” she said. “We could climb across them to First Baptist over there. There’s no electricity in them anymore.”

I was skeptical and my face must have shown it.

“They could be
the
nicest people in the world,” she said, pointing to the two vehicles. “But chances are, they’re not. If they’re like most of the people we’ve encountered, they don’t have good intentions for either of us, and there is only one reason why they’d go to any trouble to come in here. I would rather take my chances climbing on the power lines than with them.”

Then, from the north, came a big, yellow bulldozer. The man in the cab was safely enclosed in wire mesh. Behind it was another bucket truck. The doors opened on the silver truck and two men got out. They were both armed with rifles. When the bucket truck pulled up next to them, they climbed into the bucket.

“I’m coming over,” she said.

“You won’t make the jump!” I said. “And I don’t know if I’m strong enough to catch you!”

She looked over at the power lines then looked over the edge of the roof to see where the cables connected to the building in the back.

“Swing around to the line over there,” she said. “I’ll meet you.”

“Sara, there is nowhere to go!”

The engine on the bulldozer got louder and said
blap blap blap!
as black smoke belched out of
the
exhaust pipe on top. The blade lowered, and the machine pushed into the outer edge of the crowd with the bucket truck following close behind it. The creatures were herded forward at first, but then they began to fall and pile up and tangle together as the dozer cleared a path for the truck.

Sara put the rifle on her back with the strap over her shoulder and across her chest. She put the .45 in the front of her jeans then went to the front of the building. I realized she planned to jump to the power lines. She was giving herself a running start.

Chapter 22

The heap of writhing, rolling bodies advanced toward me ahead of the blade. When the bulldozer crossed into
the
intersection, Sara ran. I didn’t want to look, but I couldn’t stop myself. She came across the building at a full sprint and when she got to the edge, she leapt out like a circus performer reaching for a trapeze. She seemed to hang there forever. I was aware of every detail about her in that moment—the determination in her eyes, the way her reddish-blond hair lifted away from her head as she flew, the way her fingers stretched for the cable, the frayed hole in the leg of her jeans.

The power lines were stacked four high at two foot intervals. She caught the second to the bottom cable under her right armpit. The momentum swung her body under, slamming her leg into the bottom line just above the knee. She cried out and almost fell but was able to hang on.

The bulldozer was fully past the intersection by this time and the other bucket truck was now close enough to access the roof of the glass building. The bucket raised high enough, and one of the men climbed out onto the roof then ran to the spot where Sara had jumped. There was still no indication whether they were friends or foes. They were wearing masks just like we were--just like all healthy people—so there was no way to tell if they were people we’d met before. However, like Sara, I feared they weren’t there to rescue us. They were there for her.

“Please help her!” I yelled to the man on the roof, but he acted like I wasn’t even there.

Sara pulled both of her legs up over the bottom line and was now seated on it, holding the next line with both hands. There was blood on her hands, but I couldn’t tell where she was injured. She looked over her shoulder at the man, and then tried to get into a standing position. The man on the roof looked down to the reaching mass of zombies below him as if trying to determine if he could make the jump.

There was one man on the roof, one man in the bucket, one driving the bulldozer, and at least one in the cab of the bucket truck. Then there were others still waiting a block away in the FedEx truck. If they turned out to be enemies, there would be no way I’d stand a chance with my little .22.

The heap of zombies and zombie parts rolled toward me and my bucket jostled.

“Stop!” I yelled. “You’re going to push me over!”

The bulldozer operator didn’t slow. The bodies rose and tumbl
ed, and my truck began to tilt.
I looked at Sara. She was standing on the bottom cable, holding the third one up, and walking sideways down the line headed in the direction of the First Baptist Church. The crowd walked with her calling to their queen. Her mas
k and the front of her shirt were
red with blood. It looked like she’d hit her nose or mouth on the line in the jump. We made eye contact, and she saw how my truck was leaning. There was no doubt then that these men were not friends.

She hooked her left arm around the power line, wobbled there for a s
econd until she got her balance
then pulled the .45. It looked like she was pointing the weapon at me, but I knew she was taking aim on the bulldozer driver. She fired and her whole arm bounced up with the recoil. I turned to see if her aim had been true, but the man was unharmed. I decided to help her, pulling the .22. I fired all six rounds into the mesh encasing the cab of the bulldozer, and only one made its way inside. I hit the man in the chest, but it didn’t slow his progress. My truck went over.

I got as small as I could inside the bucket and tried to brace myself. There were plenty of bodies to soften the impact, but it was still jarring. Thankfully, I managed to stay inside the bucket. The bucket didn’t go all the way to
the
ground at first. The truck and armature were off-kilter on top of a pile of fallen zombies. Looking out of the top of the bucket, now the front and my only way out, I could see that I was about five feet off the ground. There were scores of heads and shoulders moving around and away from me. It reminded me of being in the back of a crowd at a concert or amusement park. The crowd was following Sara. She was still on the power lines, and making good progress toward the church. I was so glad she was out there ahead of me distracting them. If they noticed me, I wouldn’t have much of a chance.

The bulldozer continued to plow forward, pushing my truck ahead of it until my vehicle shifted and finally made contact with the ground, bucket first. When the bucket hit the pavement, it twisted around. I was almost thrown out. Then all I could see were shuffling feet. I heard Sara scream my name as I disappeared into the mass. We lost sight of each other. I heard creaking and scraping metal, then the lift arm snapped, and my bucket spun around like a carnival ride. The hood of the truck slammed into the open end of the bucket, there was complete darkness for a second, and I was pushed clear of the truck. Everything moved past me—feet, dozer pile of zombies, and what was left of my bucket truck. Then the other bucket truck rolled past followed by the outer edge of the mob.