Outbreak (Book 1): Emerald City (3 page)

LUKE

Luke watched out his apartment window as the sun set over the city and he finished his cigarette. He was standing on the top floor of the Alaska building which, at fifteen stories, had been the tallest building in Seattle when it was built in 1904. Pulling a half empty pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, Luke looked at his dwindling supply.
Eleven,
he counted.
And only three more packs in my room. I should wait… aw, who am I kidding? Life’s too short to wait.
He lit the next cigarette with the butt of the first and flicked the spent butt out the window. He watched it fall.
One hell of a drop,
he thought when he heard voices in the hallway behind him. He knew it would be his roommates. Matt, Matt’s cousin Pete, and their friend Ted. It sounded like all three of them were sucking wind. Luke couldn’t blame them, it was a long way up, and it had been a long time since the elevator had worked. Taking another pull on his cigarette, he held his breath to get as much nicotine as possible and very carefully stubbed the cigarette out. Exhaling through his nose, he gently placed what remained of the cigarette back in the pack with the others.
Ten and a half,
he thought and
walked over to the apartment door to unlock the deadbolt.

Luke and his roommates had been living inside the building for just over three months now. Luke had thought the accommodations were bad at first, and then the power went out. Then it was really bad. No one liked climbing fifteen stories every time they wanted to come home, but it was the safest option. In Luke’s opinion, no matter how many times he had to stop and catch his breath while getting to the top floor, a good night’s sleep was worth the climb every single time. The downstairs was boarded up like a brick shithouse and they had made sure that to get off of the ground floor, that there was only one set of useable stairs. In addition, on every floor of the stairwell they had built security doors and anyone that did not know where the traps were would be blown to shit before they made it off of the ground floor.

Working together over the last few months, the four men had turned the top floor, originally a bunch of separate apartments, into a sort of penthouse. Ted, Matt’s redneck asshole of a friend, had been a surprisingly big help. He was good with his hands and had worked hard busting out most of the inner walls. The result was four enormous bedrooms and a common room. When they were done there was enough space and furniture for each of them to spread out and make themselves as comfortable as they wanted. Matt was the undeclared leader, so he had the best of the rooms, but Luke, Ted, and Pete were able to make due pretty well, especially given the circumstances of the apocalypse. During most days, the four of them would do nothing more than hang out in the common room, drink beer, and play cards. Today however, the other three had been on a supply run. Matt, Pete, and Ted had gone out scavenging nearby buildings while Luke stayed back to keep watch and stand guard.

Luke held the door as the three men came into the central space with a few half empty bags in their arms. They added the stuff to what was left of their dwindling supplies of canned foods, water, and a small armory of guns and weapons that were arranged in haphazard piles around the room.
Not much left
, Luke thought as he looked disappointedly over the meager amounts the other men had found.
And no cigarettes? Shit.

Once Matt caught his breath and cracked open a beer he had carried in with him, he sank onto a couch. “Gather around everyone,” he huffed. “We’ve got a problem. I’ve been doing an inventory and what we have here is about all we have left. There isn’t shit left downstairs and there isn’t anything in the buildings around us.”

Luke walked over to the card table they had set in the center of the room and sat down. He wasn’t surprised by Matt’s news. They had been going through each of the rooms on the lower floors, salvaging everything they could find to eat and drink, and they had cleared the last room almost a week ago. Waiting for Matt to go on, Luke pulled out his pack of smokes and took out his half cigarette. He lit up and sucked in a long slow drag.
Two puffs,
he thought.
Then back in the pack it goes
. He flipped back his long blond hair. It was greasy and from what he could see of it, his hair was not the golden brown that he remembered. It had been a long few months and bath and shower amenities were not the highest priority. Pulling in another drag, he looked down and saw he had finished the cigarette while lost in thought.
Damn it!
he thought.
Where is my brain! Now I only have ten left.

Matt sat down at the table across from Luke, chugged the rest of the beer in his hand and crushed the can with his fist. He looked around for another beer before throwing the spent container into a corner of the room where they had a large collection of trash growing. “Pete,” he said. “Beer me!”

“You got it, Boss,” Pete said and went to one of the windows, opened it, and brought in a six-pack that had been cooling outside. He handed the beers to Matt, who pulled one from the pack and popped the tab.

“I think it’s time to move,” Matt announced and pulled a weathered map out of his back pocket. He spread it out onto the table before letting out a loud belch. Pete could get the giggles over just about anything and let out a snort of laughter at his older cousin’s burp as he sat down and looked at the map. Ted hung back and watched from across the room. Luke turned his chair a little to be able to see the man out of the corner of his eye. In Luke’s opinion, Ted was sick in the head and he made Luke uneasy, so Luke made sure to position himself where Ted was always in his line of sight.

Matt smoothed down the map with his hands and used two more of the beer cans to hold down the top corners. “This is what we are going to do,” he said and pointed to their location on the map. “We are going to be out of food soon and everything within a mile of this place has been picked through.” Luke knew this was true. They went out in teams every week to scavenge, and every once in a while they would get lucky, but there were still a lot of people trying to survive in the city and there was not much food left to find.

“We also need a better place to work,” Matt continued.

This was news to Luke. “Work on what?” he asked.

“Let me explain,” Matt said. “You all know the Bowman boatyard?”

Pete raised his hand. “Sorry, I don’t,” he said just barely above a whisper.

Luke was not sure if there was anything medically wrong with Pete or if he was just a little slow, but the boy struggled with reading and Luke knew from their card playing the young man had zero ability in mathematics. Luke was also pretty sure Pete had been slapped around a lot in his life before the apocalypse. If anyone so much as raised their voice at him, Pete would retreat into himself and sometimes would sit alone and quiet for hours.

“It’s okay,” Matt said to Pete. “Bowman was this guy that, like a hundred years ago, started up a boat company here in Seattle. Made a big deal out of all of it and made a shit ton of money. He was into something about quality over quantity. Anyhow, he has this big-ass boatyard over in the Duwamish.”

“I don’t know what that is either,” Pete said.

“Don’t worry about it,” Matt replied. “It’s a waterway. Like this really big river to the south of here. Anyhow, this Bowman guy, he used to make boats --”

“You want to steal a boat?” Pete interrupted.

“No, Pete, pay attention,” Matt said. Luke could see the frustration building in the man. Over their last few months holed up together, Luke had learned there were two sides to Matt. One was calm and stable, a man who would do anything for his friends and especially his cousin. And then there was the other side. That Matt would fall into a blind rage on a moment's notice and one that Luke was pretty sure could kill a man with his bare hands.
Worst part,
Luke thought.
You never know which Matt is going to show up.

Matt took a deep breath, held it, scratched his head, and let the breath out slowly like he was counting down from ten. “The boats are not what are important,” he continued. “I can’t sail and I sure as hell don’t want to get stuck out in the water in a speed boat out of gas. What is important is this Bowman fellow was a freak about security.”

“How do you know this?” Pete asked.

“I used to steal shit from there. Now shut up and let me tell you my plan.”

“Ok,” Pete said and hugged himself.
Here we go,
Luke thought.

“Ok,” Matt said. “Shit, I lost my train of thought. Yeah, ok. So, Bowman was big on security, right? So, his boatyard is big, like acres big. And he has all this research and development stuff going on and all of these warehouses of these expensive ass boats. You follow?”

“Yes,” Pete whispered. Luke and Ted nodded.

“Good. Right. So before all these zombies started popping up, I worked with this security guard guy and we would steal shit from there. But whatever. The best part about the place is that Bowman had put up this kind of federal super prison fencing shit around his whole operation.”

“I’m sorry,” Pete whispered. “But I just don’t get it.”

“Damn, Pete,” Matt said. Luke knew that Matt loved Pete and would probably never hurt him intentionally, but the kid could wear anyone down with his endless questions. “Shut up for a minute and let me explain.”

“Ok,” Pete said, and looked at the floor.

“Ok,” Matt continued. “Damn. Anyhow. What I’m thinking, is that if this fence could keep out everything from your everyday looter to corporate spies, I’m betting it can keep out the zombies.”

“How come we just don’t use the basement?” Pete asked.

“Because!” Matt said. “We are going to starve to death and there ain’t nowhere to work! Is there a lift down there? Is there a work bench and shit?”

“No,” Pete sighed, and got up from the table. Luke watched him go and stand by one of the windows. He was not sure if the boy was crying, but he looked like he was close. It was a pretty normal routine. Pete would push Matt to the limit, Matt would snap at Pete, and Pete would slink off and cry.
A fabulous life
, Luke thought. He decided it was time for another smoke.

Matt ignored his cousin and kept going. “So we get over there, and that shit is like, just a few miles across town,” he said, tracing his finger down a line on the map. “We get there and we make sure the fence is still secure. Then we clear out all the zombies from inside the fence and it's home sweet home.”

“That’s not bad,” Luke said as he carefully took a cigarette out of his pack. At first he had no interest in Matt’s plan of moving out of the building. He had his own secret stash of food, plus the hotel was as secure of a place as it was going to get. All he would have to do would be to ration his food and he could hole up for quite a while.
At least until this shit blows over,
he reasoned. Still, he knew there was safety in numbers, which was the only reason he put up with the three of them in the first place.

When the shit hit the fan and the infection spread across the country, Luke had been in the hotel on a business trip. Before the apocalypse, Luke had been a software engineer and the one time the stupid company he worked for had ponied up to send him to a client site, it had turned out to be the same week the world was going to go to hell. Luke had found himself two thousand miles from home and in a city he knew absolutely nothing about. As soon as people started turning into zombies, the city locked everything down and they were all quarantined to the hotel. Nobody was sick at first and folks got along okay sharing food from the hotel’s restaurant. Then the virus got in and the hotel became a madhouse. People started getting sick left and right, so Luke had barricaded himself in his room. He lived off of cigarettes, energy drinks, and the protein bars he had brought from home and passed the time listening to people scream up and down the hallway outside his door.

After a few days, it got quiet and he decided to look around. Corpses were everywhere but he was hungry and made a try for the lobby. He was scavenging for food in the kitchen when he encountered his first zombie. The monster had Luke cornered and he was sure he was going to die when a gunshot had rung out and Luke turned to see Matt standing there. Turned out, Matt, Pete, and Ted were looking for a new place to hole up. “Mind if we stay awhile?” Matt had asked. Luke could tell by the look on his face it was not really a question, so Luke decided to go along to get along.

“So we clear out the zombies,” Luke said, coming back to the present. “Then what?”

“We have a new base of operations,” Matt continued. “Somewhere with floor space so we can do whatever we want. I’m thinking we build some kind of convoy super truck. Something like a tank that we can drive straight over the zombies with.”

“Crush those nasty bastards,” Ted said, speaking up for the first time. Luke looked over at him.
Of course our resident psycho would say something like that,
he thought.

“Yeah,” Matt said.

“Where will we go?” Luke asked.

“I’m thinking eastern Oregon or something,” Matt said. “I don’t know for sure. Somewhere it doesn’t rain every Goddamn day. Plus, there ain’t too many people out in that part of the country so there shouldn’t be too many zombies. I figure we find some small town, clean it out, then make ourselves comfortable until the military gets the world figured out again.”