Among the Roaring Dead (13 page)

The part of the city where Toni and the kids lived wasn’t as densely populated as some other sections in the city, but once Jess reached the general area there were dozens of apartment buildings and he started to notice more creatures coming out from the streets to find out what the noise of the van was. He decided to park a number of blocks from the apartment. He poured half the containers of H-gas into the van but the gas gauge hadn’t even gone up to half a tank and was starting to drop again.

He pulled the van over to the side of the road a few blocks from the apartment building and decided to walk the rest of the way. Being a more suburban part of town, there were more vehicles sitting in the middle of the road, and more worrisome, there were more creatures about. He scrambled the rest of the way, or at least as much as possible. His knees were hurting, which made running out of the question. He walked as fast as he could and lightly jogged when he heard a noise – often made by his own bumbling, that attracted other creatures curious enough to find out what he was. He heard lots of noise on the way; things getting knocked over; dogs barking and then painful screaming coming a minute or two later. He didn’t see anything else on the way back. He didn’t hang around long enough to find out what was out there.

Since getting deeper into the city, the roads became more and more clogged with wreckage and so many abandoned vehicles that the streets were largely congested. Some cars were still running, their engines chugging and spewing out black vapour from their tailpipes. One was flipped on its back with its front wheels still slowly turning. A bloodied arm hung out the driver’s window.

Even a bicycle would have been useful but there weren’t any lying around, and those he did see were chained to fences and bike racks. Thus he walked with his destination in mind, propelling him on. There were several large apartment buildings in the area, one at the top of the hill that was visible from a great many vantage points that had served as a good way to gauge his progress. The building where Toni and the kids lived was older and smaller but the roof was visible for several kilometres out.

The snow-like ashes had stopped falling about an hour ago. It was one thing to be thankful for. They covered almost everything, from the ground to local houses and shops and even Jess too. He was constantly wiping it from his hair and his forehead. When it mixed with his sweat it seeped into his eyes and stung like lemon juice in an open cut. His feet and fingers were chilled. He knew that if he didn’t get there soon, he would probably freeze to death.

His feet were starting to hurt as well, and there was no doubt in his mind that they were likely badly blistered. The roadblock of disabled vehicles was starting to lessen a little. Toni and the boys had lived on the outer fringe of the downtown area since the divorce. It was far enough away from most of the non-stop energy of the big business downtown core, but close enough that there wasn’t a long commute for Toni.

As he got closer to the apartment, he realized just how quiet it was. Usually you heard noise all the time, cars and planes, or the humming of electric machines or even just bugs in the grass. Now all of that was silent. It was so dark that moving quickly was difficult. The lack of light was disconcerting on several levels but there were signs of electricity. Possibly leftover surges still moving along the wires but some transformers and wires above were buzzing and popping in places.

At one point an electrical wire let loose a loud zap! and came tumbling down like a wild thing a few dozen feet in front of him. The going was not as quick as he would have hoped. But he needed to know that his family was okay.

The apartment building didn’t look a whole lot different than usual. Tall and beige with an orange overhang that sheltered the front door, it was so close to the lip of the valley that at times it seemed that all it would take was a heavy rainstorm to send it sliding down the hill.

They once had a little house out in the suburbs when the kids were younger. At the time, Jess would have to remind them all not to leave lights on when they left a room or to not turn the taps on full blast when brushing their teeth. The kids were very young in fact, and to leave them alone for even a few minutes invited all kinds of disaster. In the blink of an eye one of them would try to flush a toy down the toilet or throw something at the television.

There was always something breaking and Jess told people that he should have just bought a deep dark well that he could throw his money down.

But the truth was that those were the good years. He blew more money on beer and booze feeling sorry for himself than he did on that house and he had everything he had ever wanted - the wife he had always coveted since high school and two beautiful, intelligent boys. But there was always some pain inside that he had to patch with alcohol. Just like an open wound that was so damn painful, you sear it shut with something even worse and numb it into submission. That was a fact that Jess had learned long ago, was that you can overwhelm your senses when they don’t want to behave. Have an itch on your skin that just won’t go away? Pinch the skin so hard that it hurts and the itch won’t come back again. Have memories and fears that keep you up all night? Drink yourself through it.

For whatever reason Jess just couldn’t do what he needed to do to keep their family together.

“You had your choice,” Toni used to say.

They lived in that house for about seven years before Toni decided that she had had enough.

In one of their last conversations as husband and wife she said that the loss of their nice home was a sensible trade for her personal dignity.

“All you do is pace and complain about this and that. Do you know what it’s like to live with someone like that - what it does to your soul?”

She said this at the end a phone line before one of her friends grabbed the device and said goodbye for her.

“You’re not going to stalk her are you?”

It wasn’t the last time they talked - but future discussions either took place at the designated times that they transferred the boys back and forth or they spoke where lawyers were present.

She moved with the boys into this 15 storey apartment building beside the valley about dead center in the city.

It wasn’t very nice. Michael said that there were frequently cockroaches in the kitchen. Lift a pot from the counter and five of the disgusting insects would scatter for refuge.

Jess had stood there for so long on the front lawn of the building that the darkness became perceptible. Jess could see that there was a body near the front entrance, its form twisted and misshapen, presumably having fallen from a balcony. The dead man was shirtless, and his face was turned away from Jess but one of his legs was clearly missing; there was only a bloody torn pant leg where the limb should have been.

A wave of worry hit him at that moment. He had lost Daniel and the rest of the world seemed to be worse than just dead. He was suddenly afraid to go upstairs, but knew he had to.

As he approached the building, several shuffling figures hustled as best they could to descend upon him. Jess made it to the front doors and slammed them shut behind him. There was a mop beside the door and he jammed this between the handles, ensuring that none of them could enter without first breaking the glass but all they seemed capable of doing was slapping it with their open palms or trying to bite it, but both types of efforts were largely in vain.

Though they seemed largely unintelligent when alone they moved like other animals did when together - there was always one who first noticed prey or predators and the others followed suit.

These creatures were no different.

There was an almost unfathomable mish-mash of limbs, desperate hands and roaring faces pressed against the glass. Jess feared that the glass would give way against their weight or shatter from one of their banging fists but it seemed to be holding. He was reminded of being at the zoo, a big thick plate of glass separating him from a tiger three times his size - but all the same he was unnerved then and now at his proximity to something so ferocious and capable of extreme violence.

Jess backed up away from the doors into the shadows of the foyer. After a few minutes the things started losing interest. One by one, they slowly turned away, walking around the front grounds of the building aimlessly as if they had forgotten the entire incident where he squeaked through the doors.

It was a strange scene - each of them walked with an odd sense of balance. Their heads were pronounced much more forward in comparison with the rest of their frames and their arms were perpetually out in front of them, in anticipation of something, or perhaps to balance themselves. There were dozens of these things walking in random directions.

Some were kids, though most were considerably older. Some wore uniforms from their place of work. Some wore pyjamas. One middle-aged man was completely without any clothes at all.

They crossed the front lawn as if lost deep in thought. The last of the ones at the glass finally turned his ugly head away and seemed to wander off, unsure what to do.

When this last man moved away there was someone a few feet behind him in the darkness, just standing there. The position of her body made it seem like she was staring at the front door. Jess moved a little closer, a sickening feeling filling his stomach as he might have recognized the woman’s shape. Though her arms were lifeless at her sides and her head lolled to the side there was no mistaking it.

Dressed in her blue nurse outfit, her hair matted against her long and thin head, she looked upwards, as if smelling the wind.

Jess sprang for the doors, trying to unblock them. Toni’s face bolted to his position and she slammed her body hard against the glass, her hands and white glossy eyes searching frantically for a way in.

“Hold on!” he yelled. “I’m trying to open it!”

But in mere seconds, the rest of them came back, each with eyes as vacant, hands and faces thrust against the glass as though it were keeping them prisoner.

“Toni,” he said, putting a hand up on the glass near her position.

This just seemed to agitate her – she seemed to be trying to bite the glass.

There were a few dim lights here and there inside the main foyer, just enough to keep the inside of the building out of complete blackness, casting it instead into a deep orange glow that was probably enough to make him just visible enough to keep their attention on him. The backup generator was presumably running.
Installed for emergencies.
He walked backwards, keeping his eye on Toni, trying to fight back the grief that was threatening to explode out of him.

“Oh God!” he said and fell backwards, rolling over onto his stomach. He covered his face with his hands.

“Jess,”
Orson said. It wasn’t so much of a question as the paused beginning of a sentence.

“What?”

“You came this far. The boys might still be alive.”

He got up to his feet.

“I’m glad I never upgraded you Orson.”

“Me too – but then how can you improve on perfection?”

The elevator button didn’t work, although he waited a minute to make sure. The stairwell was equally gloomy and a strange malodorous stench floated about the stale air for the duration of his climb.

His footsteps echoed around him as he climbed. On the seventh floor was a large puddle of dried blood. Jess shone his light on the area and the light died out. He gave it a shake but the batteries appeared to be dead.  It was so dark now that the liquid almost appeared to be black but the heel of Don’s shoe stuck in it for a moment as he tried to step over and past it. Although it was soft enough to still be sticky, it was clearly a liquid that had sat there long enough to begin to congeal.

The front of Jess’s jacket had two pockets with zippered openings for his hands or knickknacks or whatever else one might put in such things. The only thing he had in there was the smartcard. When he reached the 15
th
floor, he stood in front of the door and waited for the click of the iris scanner. In time, Toni had added him to the security for emergencies.

The door clicked open.

There seemed to be a rush of cool air as he pushed open the door. There wasn’t the familiar sounds playing inside as there would have been in afternoons past. He almost expected to see video game explosions being broadcast on the TV. One playing; the other listening to rap music. He pulled the key from the socket to the tune of a horrible sound, like teeth grating.

He called out. Not loud enough, he thought, to alert anyone else on the floor, but loud enough that anyone inside the apartment would hear it. No one answered. Dirty dishes were piled up in the sink. Submersing a finger, he found the water enclosing them to be freezing cold. The window showed a panoramic view of the east end of the city, with grey streets criss-crossing northeast and southwest. Dark grey clouds sped away to oblivion.

Jess inspected the apartment and found little out of place apart from what appeared to be ran-sacked clothing dressers – hopefully a sign that Toni had quickly packed and got the kids out. Her mini-cabinet of jewellery was untouched.

He flipped a light switch; as expected there was no power. Turned a tap; a small stream of water. He cupped his hands underneath and took a big drink from it. Warm and slightly metallic tasting. A thin layer of dust seemed to lie on the cross-checked wooden floor. The main window was open and the drapes were flapping in the wind. Many clocks had stopped working the instant when the sky flashed but Jess thought he was tracking the time fairly well. He could have sworn that it was the middle of the day on a Sunday but the sky outside the window was black. There were no lights from the street below.