ZWD: King of an Empty City (4 page)

“Sorry, I was startled.”

“Let’s get going before something shows up,” she said, tugging at my sleeve. I was feeling bad about the yelling thing and I guess she felt a little bad for yelling at me. As we walked she came up beside me and slipped an arm around mine and we walked down the street like we did when we were dating. Just before the corner she pulled my face down to hers and kissed my cheek, then slipped away from me as we got ready to cross the street.

ZWD: King of an Empty City Chapter 05

ZWD: Dec. 05.

Locked ourselves in the library with things that go thump. Pay no attention to the dumbass behind the door, just look at me, baby.

                The library doors were still working and open, so we just walked right in. The library was quiet.

              “Now what?” I asked.

“We clear it before we get started,” she replied.

I looked over the room we stood in. The first floor was a two-level room with a long ramp moving from the middle of the lower room to the help desk on the second level. Down here all the new arrivals were on display, along with the public computers. Up the ramp was a body of shelves that spanned ten across and I don’t know how many back. After that there were at least three more floors to go. Suddenly this didn’t seem like a good idea. She stepped over to the checkout desk and started going through drawers till she found a set of keys. Coming back to the doors, she started checking keys till she found what she was looking for and locked the door behind us. She pulled out the duct tape and ran a strip over the key in the lock.

“Now we will always know where this key is supposed to be.”

              “You locked us in?”

              “I locked them out.”

              “We’re trapped in here with whatever we find.”

              “No, they’re trapped in here with us. Good luck to them.” She ran another strip of tape down along the seam of the door. “If this is broken, we’ll know we’re not alone.”

She tugged my sleeve and we moved behind the checkout desk and cleared the little room just off to the side of it where people return books and they sort them out later to go back on the shelves. Coming back to the desk, I asked, “How you want to do this, pick a wall and work around?”

She was looking at the papers and sticky notes all over the desk when her finger pointed to a number that was written down on a sheet that had been taped to the desk. “Let’s make some noise,” she replied and picked up the phone, then punched in the number. “Attention library patrons, the library is now closed indefinitely. Would you be so kind as to take your selections and move to the checkout desk, where we may assist you.” She hung up the phone and sat down. “Now we wait.”

We sat there at the desk for twenty minutes before we heard the sound of something trying to open the fire escape door. It kept crashing into it, so we knew we had at least one in there with us. Somewhere up there on the second floor, it sounded like. My heart sank. I was hoping we wouldn’t have to do this, but I knew we did.

It had taken us five hours to get to the library. A trip that used to take us perhaps ten minutes was now five hours. It was still raining outside and foggy, and it was getting dark and I felt trapped in here, no matter what she said. I don’t like to hunt zombies in the dark.

It took us a few minutes to circle the first floor’s walls and check all the exits. She ran a strip of tape over each one when we were finished. Back at the desk we went down each row of books, one of us on either end, making sure nothing was there. On the second level of the first floor it was a little more difficult. More floor space to cover. We moved to a corner by the fire escape on the southeast side and split up. She stayed at the end of the aisle and I moved down them, shovel ready. At the other end we moved to the next aisle and I backed my way to her, then over to the next aisle. At each aisle she ran a strip of tape across it and taped a book from either side to the ends. Something to make some noise as the books fell to let us know something was there. It took us three hours to clear the floor. The whole time we heard that
chuck, chuck, chuck
from some fire door above us. Next we moved upstairs.

To get to the second floor you can either take the elevator, the fire escape stairs, or the grand marble and wooden staircase that ascends over the help desk. That was our path. We moved up it quickly, basically charging whatever we might meet. We didn’t meet anything. We took our time and cleared this floor the same way. It took longer because there were several rooms and offices in the back that we had to clear. After each one she ran a line of duct tape along the seam of the door. Despite the
chunk, chunk, chunk
coming from somewhere, I was starting to feel pretty good about this place. We had the second floor done in about three hours. We probably were a little too cautious, but I would rather err on the side of caution than not.

Only two ways to get to the third floor, fire escape stairs or the elevators. Our plan was to open the elevators on the top floor and then lock them open. I didn’t want to do the stairs yet. Clearing the fire wells, and I counted six of them, was going to take a lot of planning or a foolish act, and I was getting tired. I didn’t want to do either. We hit the button for the elevator.

In a moment the light stopped on our floor and the door slid open. Inside with his back to us stood a huge man swaying back and forth. Before he could start turning around she pressed him to the back wall of the elevator, pinning him there with the Ice Pike. He started to push away and I could see his black puffy hands were a stark contrast to his pasty white skin. The blood had started to pool in his hands. I wasted no time, the shovel was swinging and his head rolled to the floor.
Chuck, chuck, chuck
came again a little more furious now till it settled into a steady rhythm.

As we pulled the body out of the elevator I could see his legs and feet were bloated as well, and black. He must have been standing there in that elevator for a long time. My guess was from when this all started. This was when I noticed something; flies never hung around zombies. You would expect them to be having a feeding frenzy, but I can’t recall ever seeing one buzzing around a zombie. We found garbage bags and stuffed him inside. It took about thirty of them because all we could find were little waste bin bags. This made me think there was a basement we would have to clear too, with all the cleaning supplies and a boiler in it, and I remembered only too well in
Dawn of the Dead
that’s where the nasty zombie was hiding. I didn’t want there to be a basement. We threw his body and head onto a book cart and rolled him into the elevator with us. Better to keep him in sight, right? We pushed the button for three and were ready to push him into whatever we met when that door opened.

By this time it was two o’clock at night, if the clocks were still correct. We’d moved through most of the third floor fairly quickly till we got to the door where the
chunk, chunk, chunk
sound was coming from. This floor was filled with little cubicles and reading rooms for group study. There were a few offices here and not much else. Near the front of the library we came to the noisy door that had been driving me mad all this time. These doors opened out. They had one of those bars that stretch across most of it, waist high, so you can pop it open with your hip. Something on the other side was trying to open the door from the stairwell. We needed to know what we were facing on the other side, so we moved to one of the other exits on this floor and opened it to see what the landscape looked like. Here there was a landing and stairs going up or down. On the back of the door was a hip bar that was more consolidated, built into the door’s mechanics. I’m not a door expert; I have no idea what those door things are called. I can tell you they didn’t stick out like the single bars did on our side of the door. So whatever it was hitting, it was doing so with no force.

We went back to the noisy door and talked about what we were going to do. I wanted to push our book cart friend out there as a battering ram and attack behind it. That turned out to be a bad idea because it was really close quarters out there on that landing, and there was the chance that someone could fall down the stairs. It was better to let it in and kill it here where there was a better battlefield. Then the question came as to how we could open the door and let it in. The doors swung out. Someone would have to hold it open and let it in. That wasn’t going to happen. We went back to the other door and tried different ideas about how to get the door open. We tried holding it open with the Ice Pike, but that didn’t work, it slid off the door. We tried popping it open and shoving a book into the space behind the hinges. The door closed, popping the book out.

Finally we decided on what we thought was a good plan of action and we went back to the noisy door. Since I had on the thick canvas coveralls I was more insulated from bites, with only my hands and head exposed. She stripped off her coat and gave it to me, freeing her up for more mobility. I took the coat and on the count of three pushed the door open as hard and fast as I could. As it swung out I tried to put myself behind it with the coat covering my head. Not much of a shield, but I stood there behind the door pretending to be invisible and hoping that she could entice this thing into the main room. She stood in the door with the Ice Pike in hand and I could hear her say, “That’s it, honey, get back up. Pay no attention to the dumbass behind the door, just look at me, baby. Come on. A few more steps and you're in. Now!”

I came from behind the door and threw the coat over its head. “No, don’t ruin my coat!” she yelled at me. I jerked it back off and this thing spun to face me. She hit it in the ribs with the pike, shoving it into me. I still had the coat, so I put it over this thing’s head. From her I heard, “Fuck, get it off its feet!” I grabbed its shoulders and shoved it to the side, where it hit a table. “Get my fucking coat!” I grabbed the coat and pulled it off. She drove the Ice Pike into its chest and pinned it to the floor. “Hit it in the head!” she commanded. I had to run over to our pile of stuff and grab a machete. I ran back and tried to bring the blade down, but I found I was on the wrong side to manipulate the blade well for a killing blow. I sank the blade into its jaw. I had to put my foot against its face and pull the blade out. I ran to the other side where I could swing and not hit my girl. It took two or three blows before I could take its head off. I like the weight of the shovel better.

We bagged this thing up and sat there on the floor catching our breath. She didn’t say a word to me the entire time unless she had to. “Hand me that” and “Can you
please
take this over there” kind of stuff. So after an hour of cleaning up I said, “Sorry I gave your coat Zombie cooties.” She chuckled; that was a good sign. Looking at the clock, it was three in the morning and we still had another floor to go. We decided to get some rest. We ran tape around the edges of the doors so nothing from above would come down on us. I loaded the new body onto the book cart and took the elevator downstairs. In the back of the library there’s a glass exit door that leads to a garden area with a low fence around it where people can go out and read during the summer. It had a fountain that was turned off and some chairs scattered around tables and a bench or two. I wheeled the book cart there and pushed it into the garden. I never went outside the door, but held it open with my foot. We didn’t see him when we cleared this floor because he was outside, but as I brought the cart to a stop a zombie that had been lying down on the bench sat up. It startled me and I almost let the door close behind me, locking me out. I was able to catch myself and go back inside before it could rise.

The lights were off downstairs. I don’t know if they were on a timer or we turned them off, but they were off. I sank back into the shadows of the library and watched this zombie walk up to the window and look in. From the streetlights and moon I could see the light reflected in his dead eyes. Other than that, at first glance he looked normal. You know when you see zombies in the movies, they’re always in several different stages of decay? I think for the first time I actually took time to look at these things, and he looked normal. I sat down on one of the tables nearby and crossed my legs. I just sat there and watched him look into the building. I don’t think he could see me, but to be safe I didn’t move a lot. I was sure he couldn’t get in. Occasionally he would raise his arm and let it fall against the glass as if he were trying to bang on it, but there was no force to the action; it was more mindless than anything.

I sat there and watched him till it started getting light outside. I guess it was about five in the morning. I didn’t feel good about all that light about to come pouring in here and me just sitting there like a salad on display at a cafeteria. I moved further back into the room. He turned and glanced over his shoulder, then turned his body in that same direction. I moved around to see what it was that caught his attention. From the side of the building this guy in a yellow tee shirt came running down the street. He paused for a moment in my line of sight and bent over to take a breath. I could tell he was tired and had been running a long time. He stood up and raised his arms over his head and took a few quick breaths, then looked behind him again. He looked over at where my zombie was and he shook his head, and then started to run again. He disappeared down Second Street. My zombie turned and started to walk to where he was standing and I watched as he moved through the little gate that separated the library garden from the sidewalk. I didn’t notice it last night, or that it was open. But my zombie walked straight to it and then turned down the street, slowly following the runner.

I didn’t know what to think about the runner. I wanted to help him. I wanted to invite him into the library. I was a little shocked that he was there. He was the first person we’d seen moving around in a long time. We knew there were more people, but they were keeping themselves hidden. These days you say hi to your neighbor with one hand raised and a knife in the other behind your back. That’s a sad statement, but true. The clock said five-thirty and I hadn’t slept yet, so I went back up to the third floor and found the reading room she’d made into our temporary home. She was curled up under the table, using her coat as a pillow. I stretched out on the couch that was against the back wall. I was out in no time.