Generation Dead - 07 (3 page)

“Any thoughts?
  We can’t just jump, because we’d have to clear both barricades.”  Julia looked around, and shrugged.

“I could toss you, but you’d probably break an ankle on landing, so that’s out, and Jake sure as hell wouldn’t trust me to throw
him,
”  I
said.

“Rope?”
  Julia suggested, pointing to the pipes and vents coming out of the roof.

“How do we get to the other side to tie it off?”  I asked, trying to figure out a way.

“How about you two grow a set and do it the easy way?”  Jake put a discarded five-gallon bucket about three feet from the roof ledge, and stepped back about fifteen feet.

Curious, I wondered how he was going to pull this off.  At the moment, I kind of hoped he was going to fall and break his stupid neck.

Jake ran forward, stepping once on the bucket, then on the edge of the roof.  He sailed over the opening, and landed heavily on the other side.  A second later, he popped up and grinned, looking very much like the Jake I used to know.

“Coming?” He asked.

Julia looked at me and shrugged.  She stepped back to where Jake had started his run,
and then
took off.  She flew to the other side, landing and rolling.  Jake helped her to her feet,
and then
they both looked at me.

“All right.
 
Why not?”
  I repeated the procedure, but when I landed, I skidded to a stop, staying on my feet the whole time.  I cocked an eyebrow at Jake, who nodded in appreciation.

“I’ll have to do a flip to top that
one,
” Jake
said, moving to the other side of the roof.  Fortunately, the buildings for the next five businesses were right up against each other, so we were able to cover an entire block without touching the street.

When we reached the street, we looked over and it wasn’t a good thing.  There were about fifty zombies wandering about, and probably twice that many hanging about indoors.  Wh
en the end of the world was a f
ew yea
rs old, some of the zombies sta
rted to learn a few things, especially when it came to their survival.  The big thing was they didn’t spend as much time outdoors, hanging about inside and mostly staring at the walls. 
They would
come out for a meal, though, no question about that, and if
something
got
their attention;
but otherwise,
there
were a lot of nasty surprises when you were out hunting for things.

“What now?”  Jake asked, looking over the edge.  He was on his stomach so the zombies couldn’t see him, but he had a good view of the street.

I was right next to him and I shrugged.  “I guess we could lob a timer out there, and hope like hell it stays intact enough to go off.”

Jake mulled it over.  “We could.  We’d have to be ready to go in a second, and be able to get up on the next roof.”

“Timing is everything.  What if we can’t get up in time?”  Julia asked.  “We had five on us in a hurry last time, and out there is quite a few more.”

“Anything we can use up here?” I asked, looking around.  The roof was fairly clear of debris,
except
for the occasional ball and bottle.  We sometimes found guns on roofs, remnants of a time when criminals would ditch their weapons by tossing them up on a roof.  No gun, no conviction.

Jake looked over the side again.  “There’s nothing to prop up against the side.  Wait!  Over there by that back fence!”  Jake pointed towards the back of the building across the street and in the alleyway that formed the access road for the homes behind the businesses was a pile of lumber and fence pieces.

“Nice.” I said.  “Anything look long enough for the roof?”

“Even if
it’s
five feet short, it’s still long
enough,
” Jake
replied.

“All right, but how do we all get up at the same time?”  I normally didn’t play devil’s advocate, but I really did want to be sure I was on that roof fairly quickly.

“Depends on what we find.  Come on, we’re losing daylight, and I really don’t want to spend another night in the city.”  Jake said,
back crawling
and taking off his backpack to find a noisemaker.

I couldn’t blame him for that sentiment.  We had spent enough nights in the city as it was, and each
time,
it got worse.  The ghouls came out in force, hunting and searching, and if they caught the scent of you or heard you, there was no place to go.  They also groaned all night long, which was extremely irritating.

Chapter 5

Jake pulled out a small timer, and wound it up to five minutes. He placed it in a rusty coffee
can,
and stepping as close as he dared to the edge of the roof, he tossed it as far as he could
.
  Julia and I were already climbing down the back of the building before Jake even threw. 

We heard the clang of the can and the zombies immediately set up a groan.  Jake slipped over the side of the building and hung for a second, dropping down and pulling off his mace.  I wasn’t ready to pull out my big melee weapon yet, but I had no problems with my tomahawk.  It was a nice, one solid piece of metal from blade to lanyard loop.  The beard was sharpened as well as the main blade, and the spike had been sharpened along the top edge.  Julia’s dad had given it to
me,
and with
it,
the
instructions
on how to use it. I could throw it
reasonably
accurately up to thirty yards, and could kill easily
using
it with either hand.

Julia pulled the sheath off the blade on her staff and gave a nod.  I nodded to Jake and we crept quietly to the corner of the building.  I checked several times to make sure there was no one in the alley with us.  That mistake had cost more than one person their lives.

A minute
later,
the timer went off, echoing loudly out of the can. It worked very well, drawing all of the zombies in the immediate vicinity away to the front of the building.

“Go! Go! Go!”  Jake whispered, sprinting across the street.  Julia and I were right behind him and we all flew across the small street into the back of the building.  Jake wasted no time, diving into the lumber and grabbing a long two by twelve.  It was about ten feet long, with a crack along one side and a full complement of bugs on the other.

“
Ewwww
!
Julia whispered as she grabbed one end of the board.  She hated bugs.

“Suck it up, they’re on their way!” Jake hissed, yanking the board over to the building. He was talking about the zombies
that
we ran in front of to get over here.  There weren’t many, but if they delayed us and got us noticed by the rest, we were in trouble.

Jake and Julia leaned the board against the wall and Julia scampered up it.  It bent slightly in the
middle,
but
it
didn’t crack.  Jake went next, but I didn’t have time to watch him go, since a rather ugly zombie came stumbling out of the street.  He was once an overweight man and had died wearing a really loud Hawaiian shirt.  The left side of his face and neck were completely gone,
as if
someone
had grabbed hold of his nose and pulled backwards really fast. 

I waited until he was close enough,
and
then I dispatched him with a quick spike to the head.  Three more were on their way, and I could see several others becoming interested in the street gymnastics.

“Aaron!
Up!”
Jake called from the roof.  He was holding Julia’s spear, and was waiting to lend a hand.  I guess he had gotten over the events in the house, and was ready to make nice.  Either
that,
or Julia had a knife in his ribs I couldn’t see.

I put my axe back in
its
sheath on my thigh and spun for the board.   Two steps up and the thing began to crack.  Another step and it cracked loudly, and I knew it wasn’t going to hold my weight.

“Jump!”
  Jake yelled and I launched myself up just as the board cracked and split.  I managed to grab the ball end of the staff and
held
on for dear life.

“Hang on!” Jake levered the staff over the edge of the roof and pulled
down,
bending the shaft quite a bit, but the ash handle held and I was able to swing a leg up and over the roof.

I stepped off the edge and caught my breath.  “Thanks,
Jake,
” I said.

“No problem, thank God you’re not fat.” Jake
grinned.
Despite
myself, I did actually like my brother from time to time.

“Let’s go, guys, we’ve got a mile to go and almost no daylight
left,
” Julia warned, heading for the other side of the buildings.

She was right, and it looked like we might not make it even then.  If that happened, we had some problems.

We reached the next street, and got lucky in that most of the zombies were far enough down the road that we were able to drop off the roof, get Julia on the next roof, then lower a rope for Jake and myself.  We got up and were on our way before they had a chance to get even halfway to us.

At the end of the next building, we had a bit of a dilemma.
  We needed to get off the roof
and head for the river, and we were about a half mile from where we needed to be. 

“Any thoughts?”
Julia asked.

“The only upside is the dusk.  They can’t see us too well, but that doesn’t matter if enough of them do.” Jake said, looking over the terrain.  We had to run through two blocks of high-rises, then get down to the river where our boat was.

“Do we have anything we can distract them with?” I asked, receiving shakes of heads in response.

“What if we set a fire?” Julia asked.  We had done that in the past, and it worked up to a point, but we usually did it in the day.  At
night,
the flames would call in every zombie for a mile or more.

“
Too
risky now.”
I said.  “I’m thinking with time being short, we need to just run for it, dodge and go.  No killing.” I looked pointedly at Jake and he had the grace to grin slightly.

“All right.
  I’ll take point and Julia, you take the center.  Aaron, you’re our backup if we need
help,
” Jake said.

Julia and I
nodded,
and we readied our weapons.  Julia hefted her spear and checked the haft to see if there was any damage from Jake using it as a lever.  I pulled out my ‘hawk and knife, adjusting my grip on both.  The knife was a big bladed bowie knife, with a coffin-handled ebony grip.  My
Uncle
Tom had given it to me as a kind of joke, but the blade was all business.  Twelve inches of sharpened carbon steel would cut
the
leg off a zombie with no trouble.  Ja
ke cho
ked up on his mace and pulled out his knife again.  His blade was
smaller,
but it was curved more, and designed more for penetration than cutting, although it did the latter extremely well.

“Let’s rock it.  Last one to the boat has to
paddle,
” Jake
said.

“You’re
on,
”
said
Julia.  She could never turn down a challenge.

“See you two later.”  I slid down the
drainpipe
from the roof and waited for the other two to get down.  When Jake hit the ground, we were off.

Chapter 6

Jake ran down the center of the street, with Julia and
me
right behind him.  We ran full tilt, not giving the zombies a chance to identify us
fully
before we were gone.  A chorus of groans followed in our wake, and in a short amount of time, we had a huge following of zombies, eager to rip us to shreds.

The first block wasn’t too
bad,
we only had a few to dodge around.  The next block was a little worse, because the zombies were alerted to something going on and were facing us as we ran towards them.  Jake started dodging from one side to the other, and it was difficult keeping up. 
However,
I knew what he was trying to do, and that was to keep the zombies from zeroing in on us and cutting us off.

Jake ran over a car, dodging a pocket of zombies, and by the time I got there, I had to jump over a couple of grasping arms. 

I nearly slipped on the windshield
while
stepping down, and my curse caused Julia to look back.  She slipped on a dead body on the ground and nearly fell. 
Fortunately,
I was right behind her and caught her before she hit the ground.  I actually carried her for a few steps before she got her feet under her.