LZR-1143 (Book 4): Desolation (12 page)

Besides, they had a problem with homeless in the city, and this was assumed to be another poor vagrant.

Two more followed, and the guards, already feeling slightly feverish, grew suspicious.
 

The guns came out when the fourth and fifth followed closely behind.

When the external doors were sealed, they thought that they had bought some time. They called the police and paramedics, feeling assured that someone would arrive to tell them it was all okay. To care for their wounds and disperse the lunatics outside.
 

Those now locked inside protested against the entrapment, but only until they saw the faces and bodies pressed against the doors. The ruined visages, the mangled bodies.

Then, they were content to remain inside, behind the shatterproof glass.

Right up until the guards turned.
 

It didn’t take long after that for shit to get real.

But Liz—she was truly lucky today.

She was lucky because she and her father were upstairs, fifteen floors above the lobby, and behind hardened steel doors and walls, guarded by a private security company that was monitoring the chaos below. A company that quickly sealed the thick doors against exit or entrance.
 

Inside this refuge, fifteen stories above the death of the city, thirteen visa applicants, one Liz, and seventeen consulate employees—including five security guards—had found a temporary shelter from the storm of undead.

They listened to the radio and watched the television. Until the broadcasts slowed, then died.
 

They peered out of the windows at the carnage in the streets below. Until the dead so vastly outnumbered the living that chaos gave way to the monotonous rule of the wandering creatures, swaying in the once-bustling and now quiet streets of the great city.

And then, as in all such cases, food and water became the order of the day.
 

After several weeks, there were clashes as food ran short. Arguments arose constantly about whether to open the doors and make a foray into the building, or onto the streets, in search of food and supplies. Five days into what they simply referred to as ‘the siege,’ the power went out. The consulate’s generator ran for two more days until that too died and did not come back to life.

Many arguments later, it was decided that a single floor would be explored—the floor five stories above that had housed a small gourmet eatery. They would go to the staircase, skip the intervening floors, and open the doorway above. If there was any sound, any movement, they would return.
 

Two employees, two guards, and two outsiders carefully disengaged the magnetic lock, peered into the pitch black hallway outside, and slipped into the building.
 

Five hours later, those left inside had abandoned hope that their saviors would return.

Liz’s father tried to convince her that everything would be okay. That someone would find them, rescue them, bring them out. But Liz was savvy. She understood.
 

Amongst the discussions and the arguments, as the adults debated their next course of action—even debating whether any courses of action existed—she had picked up on the undercurrent of fear and desperation. People outside were sick, and they were violent, and they were crazy, and no one here knew what to do about it.
 

The guards had described the video cameras from the ground floor. Everyone could go to the large picture windows on three sides of the consulate and peer down into the streets. They couldn’t ignore the pillars of smoke and flames and explosions.
 

Two days after the failed foray to the upper floors, one of the explorers miraculously returned. Somehow, one of the guards had made his way back into the stairwell, instinct driving the ability to locate its origin.
 

One of his comrades almost let him in.

At the last second, the torn sleeve and the bloody patches on the stained uniform gave him away, even in the darkness of the unlit hallway. He began to use his undamaged arm to pound slowly on the glass.
 

The constant tempo of the man’s incessant pleading for entry—his low, guttural moaning—invaded her every thought as Liz cried that night. Not out of fear, but out of sadness. That man, that creature, standing in the hallway outside represented the obstacles that existed in this new world. He represented her worst fear, and the thing that made her most sad—that she would never see her mom again.
 

The last time they had spoken was the morning of the visa interview. Because of the time difference and her mom’s hours, it was tough to link up, and they had missed the call the night before because her mom had had to work. Liz remembered hating her just a little bit for that, but only in such a small, childish way.
 

How small that seemed to her now.
 

She thought of how far it was to the other side of the continent. That planes and trains and cars wouldn’t be making that trip now. She felt trapped, and alone.
 

After the return of the guard, things got more precarious and the sense of desperation was amplified. The food from the consulate’s small cafeteria was running dangerously low. The snack machine and soda machines had already been raided and rationed, and the signals from the city below weren’t positive. Crowds of those things were now crisscrossing the streets, flowing between parked and wrecked cars like a dirty river, sticking together in large groups as they moved. At times, it seemed like the streets could be empty, as the large groups moved past, and not a single straggler remained. But they were never far. And there were always too many.

No, any illusion of peace was fictional; any appearance of safety was a mirage.

They continued to survive. To make do with what they had. Strangers thrown together by fate and circumstance, patience wearing thin and tempers flaring with increasing frequency.

Then, finally, many indeterminate months after the outbreak, the food ran out.
 

Liz’s dad had slowly saved portions of his rations for her, and as he prepared to organize a last-ditch effort to find food, he told her where they were hidden.
 

He had to do something. He couldn’t let her die inside.
 

He wanted to go out.
 

One guard would remain with her, and the group would make the dangerous attempt. All for one, one for all. They would go upstairs, and return with food, or die trying.
 

Because they would all die if they didn’t try something.
 

The remaining guard—Tony—had always been nice to Liz. Some of the other adults looked at her as useless. A small, food-consuming addition to the crew that had no possible upside. But Tony had been nice, even before the outbreak, letting her come in with her dad, even though it was technically against the rules. He was from New York, and was here with his wife. She worked at a bank. It made him sad when he talked about her. He said he knew she was probably one of … those things.
 

Liz liked Tony, so she was glad that the group decided to leave one guard behind—someone had to stay that knew how to operate the doors. Even though there was no food, this was still the safest place in Vancouver, and they knew it. If they made it back alive, it was the best place to try to last out the apocalypse.
 

She didn’t want her dad to leave. She knew what was out there. They had to destroy the guard outside—he had beaten his arms to the bone on the plexiglass, leaving huge smears of dark fluid on the bulletproof glass.
 

They shot him once in the head, and she had screamed when the brains splattered against the wall behind.
 

She thought that her dad would become like that. Dead but alive. Moving, but mindless.

But he knew that they needed food, and he couldn’t stay behind while everyone else went. He couldn’t take her with him, because he knew that it was dangerous. In his mind, better she die from hunger than from being eaten alive.

She cried as he pulled her away, his own tears streaming down his face.
 

“It will be okay,” he said, voice sincere, eyes clouded behind his thin, wire-framed glasses.
 

“I will be back for you. You must stay here and stay safe. I will be back. I promise you.”
 

She hadn’t believed him.
 

And as the large group disappeared into the hallway, the heavy door shutting behind them with a loud, permanent crash of finality like a tomb closing on its dead occupants, she knew that he didn’t believe it himself. A single, final glance as he melted into the darkness was the last she had seen of him.
 

Less than an hour after they left, gunshots echoed from above. Multiple shots, fired quickly, then stopped suddenly.
 

Then, quiet.
 

She looked at Tony and he forced a smile. But when he turned away, she saw his face.

They both knew it wasn’t good. But they couldn’t leave.
 

Tony liked to play cards, and for a while, that’s how they killed the time. He would pace along the hallways, staring outside, into the streets below, waiting to hear something from the radio on his belt. Waiting for some contact from the group.
 

Two days after the group left, the radio squawked loudly in the night, and he scrambled to find the volume. An indistinct sentence, a garbled scream, and a single, clear word: help.

They stared at each other for more than an hour. Finally, Tony made his decision.
 

He had to try to help. If they were transmitting, someone was alive. If someone was alive, it wasn’t impossible—they could find food, they might be able to survive.
 

They spent several hours in quiet cooperation as he showed her the fairly simple, but important, mechanisms that controlled the doors. He explained that they were magnetic, but didn’t derive power from the main grid. They were independently powered by a hardened battery casing that would last for years. He made her go through the motions multiple times, until he knew that she could open the doors and lock them again quickly.

He took one last walk to the windows, putting one hand on his pistol and the other on his taser, staring out over the city and taking in the rising sun on the eastern side. Tendrils of smoke still hung in the air, obscuring the mountains in streaks of black.

“You just point and shoot,” he said, turning and handing her the taser. “I don’t know if it will work on those things, but I’ll need the gun if I’m going to bring any food back.”

She nodded mutely, but knew the weapon was likely useless. He knew it too. He was walking out to die, and she would follow soon from hunger.

The door opened slowly as the loud locking mechanism disengaged, and she watched as Tony walked into the hallway, slipping into the darkness beyond with a silent nod of his head.

Working her hands over the simple controls, she resealed the door and sat down and cried.

There were no gunshots, and there was no warning.

It was five days later—at least she thought it was five days, it was so hard to tell time inside—when they came.
 

She was on her last package of raisins that her father had squirreled away for her, and had been exploring one of the abandoned offices in the back of the consulate, when the faint pounding reached her ears. She sprinted to the front door, thinking that perhaps, against all odds, her father had returned. What she found shouldn’t have surprised her.
 

But it did.

There were more than twenty of them—they filled the hallway, and they were pressed against the thick, bulletproof, bomb-resistant glass like bugs on a windshield.
 

Where had they come from?

She was feeling panicked. Could they press through the glass? Surely not. No, Tony had said that a grenade couldn’t even get through that glass. No, they couldn’t get in.

But they were so … hungry. They were bloody and mangled, and they all stared at her. Not past her. Not towards her. Directly at her—at her eyes, even.

She couldn’t take it. She left the entrance area, passed the metal detectors, and closed the ceremonial wooden door that separated the working area from the security screening area.
 

There.

At least she couldn’t see them anymore.

Now what?

She couldn’t even think about leaving, even if she were stupid enough to try. And push the concept though she might, she couldn’t imagine a scenario under which she decided to go outside with them out there.
 

No, she needed another way.

If she was going to survive, she needed food. No one was coming for her. She had to take care of herself.

Liz walked to the large windows, putting both hands on the glass and staring at the streets below. A mist covered portions of the buildings, and she couldn’t make out the details—it looked almost normal. She wanted to let the despair take her. She wanted to quit—to lay in the corner and remember her dad as he was. Smart and funny. Not walking off to his death. She wanted to remember her mom’s last visit to Vancouver, when they had visited the estate gardens outside the city, sitting by the lake under the corny swan gazebo, watching the stars come out and talking about middle school and boys and stupid things.
 

“You’re a smart girl” her mom had said, when she complained about her classes and her friends and it all being so hard sometimes. “There’s nothing you can’t do, remember that. Don’t let anyone tell you different.”
 

A tear escaped her eye and she angrily pushed it away.
 

Her mom was probably dead, like her dad and all the others. For all she knew she was the last human left alive.
 

Well she was damn sure going to keep it that way as long as she could.