Part 5 (1/2)
12.
KEITH STOPS THE VAN behind a row of overflowing garbage cans, almost directly beneath the high-rise apartments. We each grab our individual bags of weapons and supplies and head for the shelter of the building. The front doors are missing, and the entrance foyer is as trashed as everywhere else. Like an idiot I instinctively press the b.u.t.ton to call the elevator. Old habits die hard. behind a row of overflowing garbage cans, almost directly beneath the high-rise apartments. We each grab our individual bags of weapons and supplies and head for the shelter of the building. The front doors are missing, and the entrance foyer is as trashed as everywhere else. Like an idiot I instinctively press the b.u.t.ton to call the elevator. Old habits die hard.
”Don't think that's going to do anything, my friend,” Paul whispers sarcastically. I push past him and follow Carol, who's already heading up the stairs, the glowing orange tip of another cigarette illuminating her route through the darkness. There's a woman's badly decomposed body at the very bottom of the first flight of steps, her neck snapped and her decayed face wedged against the wall. She was like us, and that immediately puts me on edge. I step over the corpse and start to climb, wondering pointlessly if she fell or if she was pushed.
For a few minutes we do nothing but climb, our footsteps echoing up and down along the entire length of this dark and otherwise silent stairwell. We move quickly, most of us climbing two steps at a time. It's hard work, but the pain is easy to ignore. It's a perverse reality of my situation: I eat sc.r.a.ps, survive out in the open, and live from day to day, but I'm in better shape than I've ever been. The others are the same. Carol races ahead like a woman half her age. I feel strong and powerful, my body lean, toned, and efficient. Makes me wonder how, when everything was available to me on a plate and all I had to worry about was my family and my p.i.s.s-easy job, did I manage to f.u.c.k everything up so badly? The memory of who and what I used to be is embarra.s.sing. I wish this had happened to me years ago.
”How far?” Carol shouts down from several flights up.
”Just keep going,” I answer. We're more than halfway up now. The higher we go, I think, the safer we'll be.
”Wait,” Keith yells. I stop climbing and turn back. He's still a floor below me. ”Look at this.”
”Look at what?” Paul grunts breathlessly as he pushes past and starts heading back down again. I follow him back to floor eight (of eleven or twelve, I think). This floor is different from the others. I pa.s.sed it too quickly to notice, but the doors leading from the staircase to the rest of the building here have been boarded up. There's plenty of broken gla.s.s and other debris around here, but it doesn't look like the barrier has been breached.
”This has been done from the inside,” Keith says, stating the blindingly obvious.
”So there might still be someone in there,” Carol adds, equally pointlessly.
”Must be Unchanged,” Paul says under his breath as he runs his hands over the large sheets of plywood that have been nailed to the inside of the door frame, pus.h.i.+ng and prodding in different places, trying to find a weak spot. He finds one near the bottom right-hand corner where the door frame is rotten. He brushes away shards of broken gla.s.s with his feet, then sits down on his backside and pushes the board with his boot. When it moves slightly he beckons for me to help him. I position myself directly between him and the handrail of the staircase so he can't move backward, then brace myself as he starts to kick at the wood. The noise is ma.s.sively amplified by the confines of our surroundings, but in the moments of silence between kicks, everything else remains rea.s.suringly quiet. He's barely forced open a wide enough gap when he turns around, drops his backpack, and scrambles through. Once on the other side he pulls at the plywood and manages to yank away a piece about a yard square. I slide his bag through, then follow him.
We're standing on an empty, relatively uncluttered landing. There are three apartments on this floor, two doors on one side of the landing, one on the other. Two of them are open. I quickly check one over. Its three main rooms are empty and fairly undamaged. There's even the stale, mold-covered remains of a final untouched meal on a table in front of a lifeless TV. The owner of the apartment must have left (or been dragged out) in a hurry. Keith disappears into the other open apartment and reappears on the landing after a few seconds.
”Nothing,” he says quietly, ”just a corpse on a bed.”
”On a bed?” Carol says, surprised.
”Someone's laid out their missus or their mother or something. Dressed her up nice and brushed her hair. Still looks f.u.c.king horrible.”
”Very touching,” Paul mumbles as he presses his ear against the closed door of the remaining apartment. He pushes it gently, but it doesn't move.
”Smash it?” I suggest, my axe ready in my hand. He thumps it pointlessly, then nods his head and moves to one side. I lift the axe and thump it down, the clang of metal on metal filling the air as I mis-hit and catch the Yale lock. I lift my arm again. Keith grabs my wrist before I can bring it down.
”Listen.”
I do as he says, but I can't hear anything. I try to pull my hand free, but he tightens his grip and glares at me.
”I hear it,” Carol whispers. Then I do, too. A quiet, m.u.f.fled voice shouting at us from deep inside the apartment.
”Not my...” it shouts, the third word unclear.
”Not my floor?” Keith suggests.
”Not my fault?” Paul offers, shrugging his shoulders. ”Get the door open, man, and let's get him killed. It's just some nutter.”
I do as he asks, smas.h.i.+ng the blade down again and again until the weak wood splinters and the lock gives. I kick it open and peer into the gloom. A well-timed explosion outside bathes everything in ice white light like a camera flash for a fraction of a second, just long enough for me to see that there's someone standing at the far end of a short hall on the other side of the door. I catch a glimpse of his motionless outline, or hers, directly ahead. The door slowly swings shut again.
”How many?” Carol asks.
”Just one that I can see,” I answer. ”Pa.s.s me the flashlight, Keith.”
Keith switches on the flashlight, but before he can pa.s.s it to me, the door flies open and the figure throws itself at me. The force of the sudden, unexpected attack takes me by surprise. I trip over my own feet as I stagger back, and before I know what's happening, I'm lying flat on my back with a foul-smelling f.u.c.ker right on top of me. He grabs the collar of my coat and lowers his face until it's just inches from mine. His breath is so bad it's making me want to puke.
”Not my fight,” he shouts, peppering me with spittle. ”Not my fight-”
Keith smashes the side of his head with the flashlight, sending him reeling.
”Not my problem,” he sneers, trying not to laugh at his own joke. The man who attacked me rolls over and gets up and stupidly starts walking back toward Keith again.
”Not my fight,” he says, blood running down his face. ”Leave me alone. It's not my fight. Get out of here...”
Keith lunges forward again, flashlight held ready to strike, sensing the kill.
”He's one of us, Keith,” Carol warns, but it's too late. He swings the flashlight around and smashes it into the man's face again. He drops to the ground, and this time he doesn't get up. Keith s.h.i.+nes the light down. Christ, Carol's right. He was one of ours. Keith looks at him with disdain, then steps over the corpse and goes into the apartment.
The small, squalid place is like a coc.o.o.n. The door I broke down hadn't been opened for weeks. The air is musty and stale, and the rooms are filled with boxes of supplies. On closer inspection, we find that almost all of the supplies have been used up. The dead man on the landing hardly had any food left.
”He'd done well to last this long,” Paul says, watching me as I check through more empty cartons.
”If you ask me,” Keith says, wiping the flashlight clean on a floral curtain, then opening a door into another room and glancing around it, ”people like that are as bad as the Unchanged. Not fighting with us is almost as bad as fighting against us. You don't have a choice whether or not you want to be a part of this war. There's no opt-out clause for anyone.”
”That was his wife, you know,” Paul says, following me out onto a small veranda that overlooks what's left of my hometown. I've been out here for a while, just getting some air.
”What?”
”The guy Keith did in, that was his missus lying on the bed next door.”
”How d'you know?”
”Found a photo of the pair of them together. Lovely couple,” he murmurs sarcastically.
”Was she like us?”
”Nah, one of them.”
”But he couldn't let go?”
”Looks that way. Probably killed her, then regretted it. True love, eh?” he jokes. ”Never runs smooth.”
”You're not wrong. My other half was...”
”I know. Bad luck, man.”
”What about you?”
”Good question.”