"Yeah I half-killed two of them upstairs, I just left them lying there like those creepy paintings in a haunted mansion. It was too creepy to deal with them, and I couldn't handle using the desks to make a wall with them watching me. What do you mean you'd rather go survive alone than do it with me? It'll be fine, I have moral compunctions."
She flies off on an albatross. She rides a unicorn out of town.
Shit. I rub my eyes and stamp my feet. They haven't moved. I haven't moved. It's between them and me, and it has to be me.
I start back. I go to the one on the edge first, with my bar in his head. 'You can keep it, pal,' I feel like saying, but this is no time for levity.
I nudge his head with my foot. It lolls to the side with no control. I nudge it back the other way. I can't think of a way to make this less disgusting, or less of a horrible memory. I've painted zombie head explosions a hundred times in comics, but it's never so visceral as when they actually look just like regular people, only paler. I can smell the tangy blood and the bitter salt of brain. I can see it oozing out in live-motion before you.
Monitor? I don't like the thought of feeling the weight crack through his skull and mulch his brain. The fewer senses involved the better.
So, gun.
I edge around him. I nudge his arm but he doesn't respond. He's like a seed planted in the office, waiting to sprout. I stand on his right hand. I pin his left beneath a chair. I put a chair on top of his face, in case he suddenly rears up. I reach to his waist belt, and unclasp the button on his holster.
The gun comes out easily, and rests in my hand smoothly. It's affixed to his belt by a coiled bit of rubber tubing, but I can deal with that. I stand up over him. I study the gun. It looks simple enough, though I don't know shit about guns. It's heavy and gray with no branding anywhere. I look for a safety button, and see a little sliding lever with a red inner bit showing.
I'll guess that means the safety is on. I click it over. I kick the chair away, and point the gun at his staring face. It would be so much easier if he weren't looking at me.
"Look away," I tell him.
He doesn't. He stares at me like a dog. His mouth opens and closes. The bar in his face bobs obscenely.
I pull the trigger. The gun cracks slightly in my hand, the report sounds out with nothing like the bass rumble you see in movies, but more of a piercing tenor pop, amplified by the contained space.
My ears buzz. If any nearby zombies didn't know I was here before, they do now. Maybe Lara heard it too. As for the guy's face, his head, his brain, I don't want to talk about those things. It's a mess. His one good eye is still there, crumpled inward by the force of the shot and the ricochet off the floor, looking like a bloody gray toad, but at least it's not staring at me anymore.
Wait, it is. I feel his hand twitch under my foot. What the…?
I stand there in horrified silence for several minutes, waiting for whatever this is to end. Death throes? It doesn't end though. His brain has been mulched, but he's still trying to reach for me.
I aim the gun at his throat. I pull the trigger again.
Flash, bang, bloody mess. This time he is dead.
I puke a little. I get my shit together. I go over and execute the other through the throat. One shot and done.
I unfasten his belt while I'm still in shock. I unfasten them both. I take both guns with their cables and blood-spattered belts trailing behind me like empty leashes, until in the gray corridor I put them down, drop to my knees, and have a mental breakdown.
9. DESKS
Things speed up after that. It's business time, and I can defer the horror to later. It helps to move. I shoot out the glass to the street outside; it takes three bullets, god knows how many each gun holds, to put a nicely cracked hole in the big panes.
I smash the rest with hurled monitors. Glass rain falls outside and a blast of cool air rushes in. I walk through crunches of glass to the edge and look down. Already there are some twenty or so zombies lining up at the Sir Clowdesley entrance, baying for free coffee.
Ha, no, but they are thumping against the glass.
"Hey!" I shout. They look up at me. "What's up?"
They amble over and stand beneath me, five stories down. Perfect. This is much better. There'll be only the sound and hardly any of the proximity or the visuals.
It takes me a while to figure out how to unhook the first desk from its fellows. Little near-invisible catches on the underside inner rim are the secret. I unspool the cables running through it, then toss the desk contents out the window: monitors and computer towers. They each make a pleasing crunch and smash on the concrete outside.
I don't even look to see if I take out any of my groupies. Who cares? They'll get it in the end. This is just the resource-gathering stage of the game, grinding out my tower defense before I set to crafting.
It helps me to think of it in Deepcraft terms. There are zombies in Deepcraft too. I'm building my tower against zombie invasion. I'm just playing Deepcraft.
Dragging the desk up to the edge of the window is a good workout. It just fits through. I push it out halfway until it's on the balance point, like a truck on the edge of a cliff. Outside there are plenty more zombies hobbling closer, a fresh horde of dead New Yorkers.
I shove the desk. It grates over the edge and dives. There are about seven zombies beneath it when it hits, and they all get crushed. A smack, a crack, and the desk tips away, clearing the impact zone.
I don't look at the bodies too hard. They look just like crushed people, like crushed bugs with their bodies burst. They didn't have to be here. This is my damn tower. I can't have them here when Lara comes.
I start clearing the next desk. I do a quick count. There are thirty-one desks in the office in total. I imagine what kind of ring-fence that can make around the exterior of Sir Clowdesley. If I stack them atop each other and weigh them down with all the rest of the crap I've got in here, that will make a wall sixteen long. I envision a semicircle desk-fort-wall around the door and windows, then I expand that vision. I imagine sealing off a whole section of the street.
I'll need hundreds of desks. But this building has about a dozen floors. All of those will have heavy office furniture. I can tip them all out, my raw materials, then go down, clear, and build up my wall.
It's just Deepcraft.
I get to work. I shift desk after desk. At some point I hear frantic barking from below, and watch as a pack of running zombies chase a dog down the street. The dog is lathered with scummy brown sweat, and the zombies run like Neanderthal man, like they were born to this, their feet slapping the asphalt.
Poor dog. There's nothing I can do for it. Its barks echo away down 23rd headed for a messy death somewhere.
I don't stop shifting desks until it's well into the afternoon. They pile up like messy dominos outside, with bodies crushed amongst them. They almost reach all the way across the street already. Some of them crack on impact and the metal frame pulls away from the wood. Each one crushes one or two zombies into the mix.
I look back on the office, empty now but for the two dead security guards and plenty of bits of trailing cable. A company just got downsized. The smell of decay and baking road-tar blows through the window.
I go over to the guards. I don't look at their pulped heads and necks, I just grab the first one and drag him away by the feet. He's harder to move even than the desks.
Out the window he goes. I don't stop to watch his body smack and roll. I tell myself it's just another desk. The next one goes. I stand at the window and look west along 23rd. The stink of dead bodies is rising up now, a kind of butcher-shop blend of blood and guts. The sun has already descended below the canyons of the city, and the sky over the buildings is leering toward a blast furnace orange.
I have to do this whether there's enough light or not.
I pick up the two guns and belts and strap both around my waist. I have to buckle them to the tightest notch, never
before used by the two fat guys who wore them before. I realize I'm thirsty.
The stairwell to Sir Clowdesley is cool and dark. It doesn't know any of the bad things I've just done. I come down and back through the coffee shop, where I pick up a bottle of water from the unrefrigerated fridge section of the bar. It's cool and I drain it.
At the window I'm happy to note my blackboards are still there. I peel away the sofa covering the broken window, my muscles throbbing warmly, and see the redheaded lady still there. Somehow she survived the rain of desks. I point the gun at her head and pull the trigger.
Bang.
Her head blows open and she is flung off her feet. I peer through the window to see her getting up. I aim one more time and shoot her in the throat. She goes down permanently, gurgling.
More zombies come over at a steady lope, drawn by the sound. I climb through the window to meet them. A guy in a black nightclub shirt with bloody stains all down his thighs, a homeless-looking kid without any shoes and filthy blackened feet. They've gotten grayer already. There's dried blood on their teeth and round their lips, where they've been eating; cats, dogs, at one point I thought I heard a horse whinnying before it fell silent. It must have run across the bridge from Queens. Probably people too. I haven't seen any other people.
I shoot the guy in the brown suit in the neck. After three shots, only two of which hit, he goes down. I get the kid in two.
I start dragging desks. I get a good rhythm going, starting at the left side of Sir Clowdesley and laying them out. The first time that I get blood or some other cold slick liquid on my hands I freak out and rub it away on the desk, leaving bloody finger trails. The second and third times I ignore it.
I press on, running backward at a fast clip pulling each desk behind me, scraping loudly along the road. I tip them over on their sides, so the smooth surface of the desk faces outward. I get four lined up, the first quarter of a semi-circle, and more zombies come.
Another dirty kid, a guy in a bathrobe, a cop packing heat, a girl with a fast food apron on. I drop them and rescue the gun from the cop's holster. Now I have three.
I get twelve desks down, and it's properly getting dark. It gets harder to pick out the zombies as they come near, with no streetlights. Still I can hear them clacking and slapping their drunken feet nearer.
Bang bang bang, my guns report. I get sixteen desks out from the pile's periphery, then I have to start salvaging ones buried in the midst of half-dead zombies. Here there's an arm half-cloven through, emerging through a crack between two desks, the fingers still twitching toward me. I reach in and shoot the owner in the throat. I do that four or five times.
I start to wonder how many bullets I've got left. One of the mall cops' guns clicks emptily as a blood-smeared Goth guy in ripped leather jeans and a drooping Mohawk comes charging for me. I panic, drop the gun and snatch up one of my others. It takes four shots to put him down.
I pile up more desks atop the sixteen. They've heavy but I slide them on top one end at a time. The wall stands high enough that I can't see over it now, only through cracks. It's dark, but I hear them slapping against the impromptu barricade. They can't get at me except through the narrow slot I use to drag in the desks.
The last few drag wetly, tearing over crushed bodies. Many of these are still alive, but unable to get up due to broken bones and bodies. They lurch and grope for me like a nest of octopus tentacles.
I get the last desk out and up. I turn and see one more zombie creep through the corral. It's a lady in a low-cut white dress that has slipped to reveal one ample gray breast. She jogs unevenly toward me, one of the heels on her shoes broken away, making an uneven clopping sound. I shoot her in the throat from point blank range, and she lies down like she just got tired, flat on her back, and gurgles wetly to a second death.
I pull her dress back up to cover her chest. I haven't got the energy to pick her up and push her over the wall.
In the darkness I amble the wall's half-circle courtyard with my phone flashlight on, stumbling on bits of broken computers and monitors. I toss them under the desks to weight them down. Zombie palms slap the desk wall like hail. I'm done though.
I go for Sir Clowdesley, past my moped, and crawl in through the window. I shut it up with the sofa.
In the library I hunker down on one of the sofas with lots of pilfered cushions spread around me, in the dark. It's even cozy like this. I eat a packaged BLT sandwich, drink one of the lukewarm banana milkshakes before it can go off, and drain another bottle of water.
Outside their thumping is a low cacophony. Exhaustion creeps up over me and I put my head down and sleep.
* * *
I wake cold and unrested to silty gray morning light. It takes a moment to realize I'm in Sir Clowdesley, and why. I look around the library; there's no sign of Lara. At least the twinges are at bay, though my arms and shoulders ache. I lie still for a moment, straining to hear the chop of helicopter blades or the friendly loudspeaker hail of a soldier calling for survivors outside, but there's nothing.
I'm alone in this.
I get up and go groggily down the stairs, with one of the guns and belt wadded in my hand. I pull back the sofa and peer out of the drive-thru window.
The redhead is still lying there in a mess, the weak light making her wounds look ghastly. The others I killed are there as well, spotted like strange gray mold risen through the paving slabs. Blood has set in dark puddles like blackcurrant jelly. Looking at them makes me ill.
Overhead the sky is miserable. I bring up my phone and look at the screen blearily. 11:16. I slept right through the alarm. It's fine. I feel sick. I push the sofa to the side, grab a sandwich and a bottle of water, and sit to a desultory breakfast. The bread is mushy. The sell-by-date is two days past. I keep eating though I don't even feel hungry.
What now?
I hawk and spit out of the window. I think I'm getting sick. I can hear them mumbling away at the desk wall, but it's holding.
I bring up the gun. I try to un-attach it from the cable, but it seems to be part of the haft's molding, rubbery black plastic encasing the metal. I turn it over, careful to point the muzzle away from my face. I click the safety back and forth, trying to remember if it's on when it shows red or off.
I look for the button to eject the clip. Ten minutes later the magazine slides out smoothly. I never owned a handgun, but I've fired my friend's, when I was back in Iowa. I pull the slide forward, revealing one coppery dark-nosed bullet in the breach. I tip it out awkwardly, then let the slide roll back.
Now the gun should be empty. I click safety over, aim out the window, and fire.
Click.
I eject bullets from the magazine and count them; seven shells remain. I feed them in and slot the magazine back, work the slide to feed one into the breach, then put on the safety.
I fasten the holster-belt round my waist. I put the sofa back.
There's more work to do.
The fifth, sixth, and seventh floors are all offices, and their doors to the stairwell open; a cubicle farm for a travel agency, a call center, and the admin hub for an upscale bridal service. In the travel agency I find tourist maps of New York and pocket one. On desks I see personal thingamajigs; here a Jessie doll from Toy Story, there a Totoro, pictures of family in fun stylized frames, faces that are all gone now.
I smash out the windows and send their desks raining down. Today I'll aim to expand the space I have. Across the street there's a 7-11 which will have all kinds of canned food and drink. They'll have a lighter so I can warm the night with a fire. I don't know what I'll use for a brazier, but whatever. Maybe I can shell one of the milk steamers and use that. I'll make a chimney out of rolled plastic picnic tarps. I have lots of ideas.
Desks rain down all through the gray day. I throw them out in the midst of the crowd around my existing wall, clustered three-deep now. The offices empty out and the furniture piles up outside.
Out on
the street, standing in the semi-circle courtyard, I think about how to do this. It's tricky. There are too many zombies now to kill them all; I don't have enough bullets. If I try to push the desks back, they'll breach the gaps.
I delay that problem for later. For now I stack more desks to reinforce what I've got.
Back in the library I take out my USBs and bring up the prepper Bible on my laptop. While it gets dark outside I surf through screen after screen, advising me on guns, traps, pulleys and power. How to hot-wire a car intrigues me. How to filter and boil water. How to siphon gas, how to leech energy off a building's emergency power, how to jump current and voltage up and down to match appliances, where to find weapons and ammo in the city. I mark a few potential targets on my tourist map: the Police Academy a few blocks over, all major banks, certain police cars and vans, police officers themselves, obviously, even most bars and convenience stores.
My head blurs with it. There's a lot to take in. In woozy moments I remember the family I left behind; the guy with his broken collarbones, the daughter in the box, the mom and daughter tangled up in chairs and tables. I wonder what they're doing right now. Do zombies sleep?
I'm alone. I get cold. I bring up my phone and look at the battery, more than halfway down. I'll deal with that soon. I double-click it.
"Hello Amo," Io says.
"Do you think I'm the last human alive?" I ask her.
She thinks for a moment. She's noticing there's no Internet connection, no databank to scour answers from, and then scanning her own limited memory.
"I don't think I can answer that question, Amo."
I chuckle, but hearing the sound makes me aware of how foolish I sound. Talking to a phone.
I turn it off. It's not amusing, not really. Probably it's an early sign of madness. It's weakness and I can't afford to be weak.
I try to snuggle into the sofa deeper against the cold, pile more cushions on, but they don't do much. It's gone fully black outside, and now I hear the shushing breath of the zombies out there, like an ocean lapping away at my desk breakers. I feel ill and strange. There were a lot of things I meant to do today, but they stopped me. I couldn't even get a lighter, so now I can't have a fire.