Infected (Book 2): The Flight (13 page)

With Zeke's body pinning her to the roof, she was able to hold the ladder’s full weight.  She struggled to pull it upward as the small band of infected rapidly shortened the distance between themselves and the bottom of the ladder, which was now suspended three feet above the ground.

"Don't let it go, I've got you now," Zeke said as he repositioned himself to pull her away from the edge. As soon as he lifted his weight from her, she began to slide toward the edge. 

"Don't let me go!" she screamed as her body slipped on the slick metal sheeting that covered the top of the building. He dropped to his belly and grabbed onto the waist band of her pants as she slid over the edge.

"Let go of the ladder. I can't hold you!” he yelled.  The combined weight of Meagan and the ladder pulled him across the smooth surface.  Meagan refused to let the ladder fall.  The realization that he couldn't support her weight without being pulled off the roof himself stung like a hornet.  He refused to let go of her as he slid closer to the edge of the roof.  As he reached the point where hope was lost, something snagged on his belt, stopping the forward progression that was going to end with the two of them plummeting to the ground.  "Let it go!" he yelled again, struggling to hang onto her.  Her body hung vertically, head first over the edge of the roof.  Zeke was holding onto her thighs, but they were sliding through his grasp.  She still refused to let it go. 

“Bend your lower leg toward the ground,” he grunted.  She obeyed, bending them so far that her feet touched her butt. The sharp angle in her legs provide a solid hand hold and her legs quit sliding through his hands. 

Afraid to break loose from whatever had snagged his belt and had created the tenuous state of equilibrium holding them on the roof, Zeke hesitated to haul her up. After a second had passed and the snag showed no signs of letting go, he started pulling.  He pulled her up as far as he could and then released his right hand and grabbed onto the waist of her jeans and pulled her further toward the roof.

Her feet squirmed, kicking him in the face for the second time in a matter of seconds as they sought something solid.  His biceps burned as he pulled her dangling body back over the lip of the building, the ladder still in her hands.  Finally he brought her to the point where only her arms hung toward the ground, still clutching the ladder.  He let go of her waist band and edged himself to the lip of the roof, pulling the ladder out of reach as the first infected arrived with up stretched arms, grasping for the bottom rung which was just beyond its fingertips. 

Zeke doubted they would have been able to climb it, but if one of them latched onto it, he and Meagan would have lost it forever. With both of their feet firmly planted on the roof, pulling the ladder the rest of the way up was a simple task.  Once it lay securely on the roof, Zeke and Meagan took a minute to simply sit down and regain their breath.

When he was finally able to speak, Zeke looked at the hex headed roofing screw that had snagged his belt.  With a forced smile, he said, "And that’s why I spent the extra time doing reps of curls instead of working on my cardio."

The clamor at the bottom of the building increased in volume and intensity.  In mere minutes, more and more individuals heeded the feeding call of the first three infected that had chased Zeke and Meagan up the roof. They ran to the building from all directions, fighting for position around the area where Meagan kept peering down at the growing mob.

After an hour, the clouds began to break. With the disappearance of the clouds, the dark metal roof began to heat up.  Sitting on the sun scorched metal quickly became unthinkable.  The temperature cut through the cushioned soles of Zeke’s running shoes as he stood.  Meagan’s tennis shoes were thicker soled, but only offered a slight reprieve from the blistering heat that was cooking her feet.

The thick Georgia air was saturated with moisture.  The ninety percent humidity prevented the drenching sweat from evaporating and offering any cooling effect.  “If we don’t get off this roof soon, we’re going to die.  Without water, we won’t make it through a day.”

“What’s the point?” Meagan questioned dejectedly.  “If we leave the roof, the mob is going to eat us.  I’d rather die up here from the heat than be torn apart and eaten alive down there.”

Zeke shook his head as his foot ran back and forth over another of the hex headed screws that held the metal roofing panels in place.  “It doesn’t have to be die up here or die down there. There has to be another option,” he said. “There’s always another option!”

“Our problem is we climbed onto the wrong roof.  If we got on that building, we could have broken out the skylight and gotten inside,” she lamented as she pointed at the building thirty feet away where the dark tint of the plastic skylight was plainly visible.

“Maybe we can still get on that roof,” Zeke said hopefully, an idea formulating in his head.   “If you could get all the infected to gather on the far side of the building, I could lower the ladder to the ground and you could run over to this side.  We could climb down, move the ladder to that building, and climb up before they realize what’s happening.”

Meagan’s face lit up in a smile. “I love it when a plan comes together.”

“Hannibal Smith, The A Team,” Zeke said, laughing.  “I haven’t heard that one for a while.  I didn’t know girls liked The A Team.”

Meagan laughed as they walked to the side of the roof that was opposite from the other building.  “When I was little, my dad and I watched it together all the time.  I had a huge crush on Face when I was ten years old.”

“That figures,” Zeke said, smiling.  As they walked the edge of the roof, fifty or sixty bodies screamed and wailed angrily on the ground.  The group followed them step for step, nineteen feet below.  Every five or six steps, Zeke banged noisily on the side of the building yelling, “Come and get it!”  The agitated group continued to grow as more individuals ran to the discordant commotion.  The large group of infected below them followed in a raucous commotion of moans and howls as Zeke and Meagan led them away from where Zeke was going to lower the ladder.   

“I think we have a problem, Zeke. You’re banging is drawing them from all over the city.”  Zeke had been looking at the growing number below him.  When he looked up, he realized that infected were streaming in from all over town, drawn by the noise he was making as well as the wails from the hungry mouths below. 

“We can’t catch a break for anything,” he muttered despondently, as he stopped and stared at the small groups and individual infected running toward the mob below him.

“It may not be as bad as it seems,” Meagan disagreed.  “They’re all coming to this side of the building where we’re making noise.  Get ready with the ladder and I’m going to keep their attention over here.  When you’re ready, I’ll move away from the edge and meet you on the other side and we’ll make a break for it.”

Zeke slowly backed out of sight and Meagan began banging on the side of the building.  She realized that the banging probably wasn’t even necessary as long as they could see her.  The sight of a meal was all that was really needed to hold the attention of all the eyes focused on her with rapt attention. She turned to see how Zeke was coming.

He picked up the ladder with a soft clang as the end bumped into an air conditioning unit sitting upright on the flat of the roof. The noise wasn’t that loud, but several of the infected suddenly seemed to have lost their fascination with Meagan and their gaze shifted away from her toward the roof in the middle of the building.  Although Zeke had backed away from the edge and was out of sight, the noise was enough to pique their curiosity.  A group of eight moved to the middle of the building, staring up at the roof where the noise had originated.

“Try to keep the noise down,” Meagan yelled.  “That bang attracted a small group to directly below where you hit the air conditioner.”

Zeke silently nodded to her, signifying he would keep quiet.  He traversed the rest of the roof without making any noise.  By the time he had cautiously made his way to the far end, the small group that had been drawn by the sound had lost interest and returned to the main body. 

Zeke began to lower the ladder over the side as carefully and quietly as he could, but as the extended ladder slid across the edge of the roof and down toward the ground, it rattled and clanked softly.  At the first rattle, the same group of eight infected once again lost interest in Meagan.  The soft metallic screech of the ladder sliding across the edge of the roof started the group in his direction. 

“Quiet, Zeke,” Meagan chided.  “They’re coming your way.” She jumped, yelled, waved her arms, and banged on the side of the building.

The small group that had splintered off stopped their advance toward Zeke who was holding the ladder motionless at the far side of the building, but they didn’t return to the main group.  They continued to look back and forth from Zeke’s end of the building to Meagan’s, as if unable to make up their mind whether to investigate the unknown noise or return to a sure quarry that Meagan represented.

For five minutes, they stood in indecision before they once again started moving toward Zeke, despite his silence.  As soon as they rounded the corner, Zeke and the ladder came into view. They moaned in delight at finding another potential meal.  The moans quickly turned into irritated wails at the realization that he was out of reach.  The sound drew twenty more bodies from the main group. 

“It’s no good,” Meagan yelled to him.  “There’s a bunch more coming to your side.”

Zeke pulled the ladder back up and dropped it onto the roof in anger.  Meagan drew back from the far edge and walked to Zeke. 

“I thought it was going to work,” she said dispiritedly as she looked across the narrow expanse to the sky lights on the far building that had offered a promised entrance inside and a reprieve from the blistering heat.

Zeke set the ladder on its edge and they sat on it in silence for several minutes. The realization slowly set in that unless the infected below them suddenly lost interest and left, they were going to die of exposure on the roof.

As Meagan stared at a row of screw heads sticking up a quarter inch above the metal, she dolefully said it was too bad they didn’t have some tools to take out the roofing screws and remove a piece of metal sheeting because they could use the sheets to make a lean-to shade against the air conditioning unit. 

“Why didn’t I think of that?” Zeke asked rhetorically.  “We might be able to do better than make a shade.  If we can take a sheet of the metal off, we might be able to whittle through the wood sheeting beneath and get into the building.  He quickly pulled a multi-tool from his pocket and unfolded it, gaining access to the pliers.  He set to work twisting the small hex heads of the screws.  It was laborious and tedious work, but one by one, they slowly backed out. 

He and Meagan switched off every few minutes.  Sweat dripped from their skin, landing on the sheet of metal they were removing, forming miniature streams that ran down the metal valleys before evaporating and adding to the humidity.  After nearly twenty minutes, they had removed all the screws in a twelve foot long panel.  Pulling it aside revealed the plywood underneath.  Zeke quickly opened the knife blade and began poking and scraping at the wood surface. 

In short order, he managed to whittle an inch-wide hole through the wood.  With a hole started, he closed the knife blade and opened the three inch saw blade.  As he rapidly worked it up and down, he looked up at Meagan and said, “Up until now, I have always considered the saw the most worthless attachment on this thing.  Now, if I could find the designer who included it in the tool, I would give him a thousand bucks for his genius.”  His pace slowed as fatigue set in. 

“Let me take a turn,” Meagan said excitedly.  The prospect of getting out of the sun had lightened her dreary mood considerably.  They switched places and she began the up and down motion, extending the six-inch line Zeke had cut in the roof. 

When her steady pace began to waver, they traded places again.  The smell of freshly cut wood spurred them on as the cut steadily grew until it was two feet long.  “Do you figure that’s long enough?” Meagan inquired as they switched again and she took the tool from Zeke.

“I think so,” he stated as she took the knife blade out and whittled another round hole so she could begin a new cut ninety degrees away from the first. 

In a little over thirty minutes they had nearly completed a two foot by two foot square hole.  With six inches left to cut, Zeke stood and stomped on the middle of the cutout.  The remainder of the uncut wood broke in a ragged edge, opening a hole to the interior of the building.  The square of wood fell four feet where it landed on a layer of insulation covering the top of a drop ceiling.  Supporting himself with an arm resting on either side of the hole, Zeke cautiously lowered himself into it. His feet touched the surface below and he allowed more weight to come to bear on it.  It suddenly gave way as the ceiling tile cracked under his weight and fell to the floor below. “What do you think?” he asked.  “If we drop the ladder down, we should be able to get inside.”

“Better make sure there aren’t any infected in there before we blindly climb down.”

He lowered himself back into the hole and stomped his feet up and down, knocking several more tiles out of the frame and pulled himself back up to the roof.   

After yelling for a minute straight, nothing came into view of the expanded hole beneath them.  “I guess it’s probably okay,” Meagan said.  Together they picked up the ladder and lowered it into the hole.  When it was as low as they could reach, Zeke laid on the roof and reaching down, lowered it the final three feet to the tile floor and rested the top against the side of the hole he had knocked out of the drop ceiling.

Zeke pulled his pistol out of his holster and lowered himself into the hole again, his feet roving back and forth, wildly searching for the ladder.  When they were firmly planted on the top rung, he exclaimed, “Here goes nothing,” and lowered himself down.  

The air between the roof and the drop ceiling was full of stirred up insulation.  As he climbed through the void, his skin began itching as the tiny particles settled into the pores of his exposed skin. Meagan watched breathlessly as he descended into the interior of the school. 

With both feet firmly planted on the floor, he looked around, put the gun back in the holster, and placed his hands firmly on the sides of the ladder to steady it. “I have the ladder, come on down,” he yelled up. 

Meagan’s leg trembled as her foot searched blindly for the first rung.  Finding it, her second foot instantly made contact and her first foot stepped down to the second rung, her hands cautiously maintaining a steadying grip on the outer roof.  With her second foot securely planted on the second rung, one hand timidly let go of the roof and then shot down to the support of the ladder.  Once both hands were on the ladder, her confidence increased and she rapidly descended to the floor, coming down between Zeke’s arms which were still holding the ladder in support.  With both feet on the floor, Zeke let go of the ladder.  Meagan turned around and wrapped her arms around him.  Their sweat drenched shirts clung together as she hugged him and pulled their bodies into tight contact. 

“I thought we were going to die up there,” she said as she released him from her embrace and reveled in the relative coolness of the building. 

“So did I,” he said.  “But as good as being off the roof is, if you turn around, there’s something even better behind you.”

Meagan turned cautiously, not wanting to get her hopes up as she tried to imagine what could be better than escaping the convection broiler where they had spent the last three hours.  On the wall directly behind her was a water fountain. “Ladies first,” Zeke said as she bent over and the cool water ran across her cracked lips and down her parched throat.