In the Lone and Level Sands (61 page)

Max, Lou, and Ortiz drove out to the
building and took out the closest zombies. They made their way to
the roof with relative ease, and the roof was completely deserted.
The three set up a harness, and Lou and Ortiz used a drill-like
device to put some metal rings into the concrete. They ran a rope
through these, with one end of the rope leading through the harness
and the other into a large metal coil, which they also drilled into
the ground.

“Okay, this is your clamp,” Ortiz said.
“This’ll be at your side at all times. Just squeeze it to let
yourself down, and let go to stop moving. Try not to go too fast,
okay? Take your time.”

Working the harness seemed to be the easy
part; being 150 feet up was where it got tricky.

“Ortiz will use a bag to lower anything you
need down to you,” Lou said. “I’ll be on the ground, making sure
your sign is legible.”

“It might not be safe down there,” Max
said.

“I’ll be all right. I’ll try to stay in the
Humvee as much as possible. You just try not to fall, okay?”

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

They helped him into the harness.

****

He had stood there for a few moments, just
breathing heavily. His feet were planted firmly on the edge of the
building, and his hands were clamped tightly on the cable and his
harness. He leaned backward, making sure the cable was taut, and
stayed that way. Lou was already on his way down the building, and
Ortiz said nothing. It was like he could sense what Max was doing,
that Max needed him not to ask or rush him.

Max leaned back a little more, waited.

He looked down as often as possible. There
was no sense in pretending he wasn’t a deadly height off the
ground. If he could get used to it, it would only make the job that
much easier.

“You’re not going to fall,” Ortiz said.
There was that mind-reading, again. “Even if you zip down the whole
way, I can stop the coil long before you hit the ground. You’ll
slide down, the harness will lock, and you’ll have bruises on your
sides. That’s it.”

“Thanks,” Max said. He leaned back farther;
now he was standing completely straight, but at a 45-degree angle
from the roof, his feet barely holding him up, the cable taut as
possible. Like dipping toes and then feet and then legs into a lake
to get used to the cold, Max wanted to accommodate himself to
gravity pulling at him with full force.

Max thought about all of the war movies he’d
seen, the video games he’d played, thought back to scenes of
soldiers rappelling down the sides of buildings in no time
flat.

Max took a few steps backward. He pressed
into the concrete, held the rope and the clamp, and slowly went
backward until he was air-sitting with his legs on the face of the
building. Finally, Max felt ready.

He let go of the building, but didn’t
squeeze the clamp handle. Max swung forward, turning slightly, and
bumped his side against the building. Instead of sliding down
slowly with nothing but concrete to look at, he saw the city far
below and spinning.

“You okay?” Ortiz asked.

Max hung there, a few feet from the roof. He
wasn’t touching the rope or the clamp, he was just suspended by the
harness at his waist. Vertigo was setting in, but he let it. If
leaning back from the edge was the equivalent of dipping his toes
in the water, this mistake he had made was the equivalent of
tripping and falling in: Frightening, but effective.

“Yeah, I’m all right,” Max said. He leaned
back, stared at the tops of buildings as they faced down toward an
infinite sky. It made him uncomfortable.

“Want to get back up here? I can go down and
tag the building.”

“Let me try again.”

Max grabbed the rope and sat up, feet
against the wall. He held the rope tightly, let go of the wall,
then squeezed the clamp.

It was more terrifying than Max could’ve
anticipated. One second he felt safe and secure, then he was in
free-fall. The building’s face whizzed by in a gray blur. He closed
his eyes and prayed the rope wouldn’t snap.

His hand kicked in and let go of the clamp.
Max stopped moving, the harness yanked hard at his sides. He opened
his eyes and looked down, then up. Ortiz was several feet above
him, leaning over the edge, looking down, clapping his hands.

“God job, Max!”

“Thanks,” Max said, “but let’s wait until I
get this paint up before we celebrate.”

Or better yet, let’s wait until I’m back on
solid ground.

****

What felt like a half hour passed before Max
settled into a position where he could start spraying.

“How is this going to work?” Max shouted to
Ortiz.

“You’ll have to do one letter at a time,
then come back up so we can move you over a little.”

“Got it!” Max said. He wondered how to word
the message. It couldn’t be too long, but if it was too short it
wouldn’t be of any help. Max might only have one shot.

It was a tedious process. Max began his
message, making sure to look across the building’s face with every
spray, eyeballing the size and hoping the message would fit. He
didn’t want to make things more complicated, but he figured he’d
need at least two lines of text.

When he finished all he could reach along
one area, he signaled up to Ortiz. Ortiz would reel Max in and help
him move to the side slightly, where he’d repeat the process.

When he ran out of paint, he signaled to
Ortiz, who would lower a bag to him. Max would take a new can, put
the old can in the bag, and continue.

After about a half hour, Max and Ortiz moved
the rope back across the building, and Max lowered himself to start
the next line of text.

The process repeated, and as the sky
threatened sunset, Max realized he was done.

He looked down, hoping to see Lou. He had
heard shots fired a few times, but couldn’t see anything. He didn’t
think he’d be able to hear Lou call up to him to tell him whether
the message looked good or not anyway, so he looked back up at
Ortiz and signaled to pull him up.

Ortiz pulled Max back over the edge of the
building and patted his back. “Good job, soldier.”

Max took the harness off, letting his sides
breathe. “We’ll have to wait and see, I think.”

“Let’s meet up with Lou,” Ortiz said. They
headed back down the building and found Lou just outside. He stared
up, holding his gun.

“You did a great job, Greenwald,” Lou said
without looking down. Max got out from under the building’s awning,
stepped out a few yards, then looked up. His message was large and
clearly legible:

COMMUNITY COLLEGE
SAFE

ZONE NORTH ROUTE
26

“It looks better than I thought it would,”
Max said.

“Well, hopefully it works as well. I hate to
leave the looking party so soon, but it’s getting late. We should
head back to base.”

“Good idea.” Max didn’t mind. To be
perfectly honest, he’d seen enough of the building for a while. The
soldiers climbed into the Humvee and headed toward the college.

“So, tonight should be ripe for celebrating,
right?” Lou looked at the radio, noticed it was off, and turned it
on.

“It’s just a building,” Max said. “We still
have more important work to do, like setting up the walls.”

“Not that,” Lou said. Max looked confused.
Lou laughed. “You really have no idea, do you?” He waited a moment,
and then laughed more.

“It’s the 4
^th
of July, kid,”
Ortiz said. Max suddenly felt very out-of-place. He hadn’t been
keeping track of the days at all.

“Everything is just a blur, these days,” he
said.

“Well, you’ll remember tonight,” Lou said.
“We’ve got some fireworks.”

“Fireworks?” Max wondered where (and when)
the soldiers had gone to get fireworks; all he ever saw them return
from their outings with was food, clothes, and ammunition. He
wondered if fireworks would be appropriate, given the
situation.

“Not really fireworks,” Ortiz said. “We have
some large-scale flares. We’re going to set a few off, get people’s
attention. Now that we’ve tagged up the place, we should start
bringing people in.”

“Won’t that also attract the zombies? Did
you consider that?”

“We were counting on it,” Lou said. “Those
freaks will be occupied trying to get to the source, which will
actually be a few miles from here. And, assuming the zombies can’t
read, any survivors in the area will get to the college with little
trouble.”

“Sounds like a good plan,” Max said. He was
beginning to feel excited, even if they were just flares. Every
year on Independence Day, his family would walk up to the nearby
park and watch the fireworks display. It was a big tradition. Max
knew it would never happen again, and it hurt him to think about
it. But the thought of seeing this new display, with this new
family, was comforting.

In the distance, Max’s building was fading
away. The message was still clear enough, and for the first time
that day, Max was able to see past his soreness and his tiredness
at the work he had done, at what he had accomplished, and he
finally felt proud.

Once again, he felt free.

57

In Fort Knox

Clark and Aimes took the liberty of showing
Evan and the others around the common areas, where they’d be
staying. There was the mess hall, the rec room, the quarters, and a
few other civilian areas. Evan, Cynthia, and Mal would share a
room, and the others bunked up in four other rooms down the
row.

“The beds aren’t the most comfortable,”
Aimes said, patting the top bunk of the room Evan and his family
were going to sleep in. “But you guys will be safe here.”

“They’ll be fine, I’m sure,” Cynthia said.
“Thank you again. I don’t think we would have made it out of there
without you.”

“There were so many of them outside the
building,” Clark said. “Without guns, it would have been hard for
sure.”

“I want the top bunk!” Mal said.

“I think that’ll be fine,” Evan said. Mal
climbed the ladder to her new bed.

“I’m queen of the tower!”

“Seems like your girl likes it okay,” Aimes
said after a chuckle.

After confirming that Evan and his family
had everything they needed, Clark and Aimes left to check on the
other survivors.

In the next room, Daisy and Stephanie were
chatting. Vanessa had chosen to stay in the same room as them, but
she still wasn’t saying much.

“It’s cozier here than I’d imagined,”
Stephanie said.

“It’s okay,” Daisy replied. “Just glad to be
out of the Cardigan. These beds sure are comfier than the couches.
Being up in that building made me want to deep throat an
anti-aircraft cannon.”

“At least it was fairly safe,” Stephanie
said. “It’s definitely safer here, though.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Daisy said.

Stephanie looked at Vanessa. “You know, I
bet they can get you something else to wear besides that dress.
That can’t be very good for you, emotionally.”

“I don’t want to get rid of it,” Vanessa
said. “It has too many memories.”

“Memories that I’d want to forget, if I were
you.”

“Forget?” Vanessa laughed a little. “I
remember the name I gave my first stuffed animal, and that was
almost thirty years ago. I won’t forget these past few days. I
won’t forget my wedding. I won’t forget all the screaming, the
bloodshed. Or how Butch and I were the only ones who made it out
alive… Out of the entire wedding party and all the guests, just us
two.”

“You don’t need to get rid of it, hon,”
Daisy said, “but you should at least change out of it and into
something else. Something clean, and more comfortable.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Just for being here. I’m sure I’ve been a
pain.”

“It’s understandable, Vanessa,” Stephanie
said. “Don’t worry about it, okay?”

“Yeah, no prob,” Daisy said. “I was
unnecessarily hard on you.”

“Okay, thanks,” Vanessa said. She
smiled.

Clark and Aimes knocked on the door to their
room. Stephanie opened it.

“Hey, you three,” Aimes said, “whenever you
get hungry, you can head over to the mess hall.”

“Hey,” Stephanie said, “do you guys keep any
spare clothes?”

“There’s a set-up by the mess hall where
we’ve got clothes of all shapes and sizes,” Clark said. “Whenever
you want, you can go pick some stuff out.”

“Thanks, guys,” Daisy said. The soldiers
smiled and disappeared into the hall.

****

“This place is massive,” Jason said. He lay
on the top bunk in his and Eugene’s sleeping quarters, staring up
at the white ceiling.

Eugene paced back and forth in the middle of
the room. “It…”

“What?” Jason turned his head to the side,
looking over at Eugene.

“Sorry, what d-did you say?”

“I was just talking about how big this place
is, Fort Knox.”

“It is quite large. Almost…”

“Huh?” Jason said. “Almost what?”

“Oh, n-nothing,” Eugene replied. “It’s nice
they came around.”

“Are you okay, man?” Jason sat up, and
Eugene came to a stop.

“Wh-why do you ask?” Eugene adjusted his
glasses, but then took them off.

“You’re pacing, you seem even more nervous
than you usually do. You’re dripping sweat. Do you want me to make
a list?”

“I’m fine, really.”

“Look, is it what happened on the
helicopter? Since we’ve been here, it’s been real calm. It just
makes me uptight when others are acting uptight, and you should
know that I’m not uptight.” Jason jumped down from the top bunk and
looked into Eugene’s jittery eyes. Eugene sighed. While fiddling
with his glasses, he dropped them. Before he got the chance to make
a grab for them, Jason raised a hand. “Don’t worry, I got ‘em.”
Jason retrieved them and held them up for Eugene.