Day 340 - Untitled Zombie Story Chapter 5.1 - (1,939 words)

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UNTITLED ZOMBIE STORY

By Wayne Webb

Chapter 5.1

The weather had taken a considerable turn for the worse in the last day and a half and showed no signs of abating. James had been working almost constantly since the middle of the night when one of the houses had come crashing down off of it’s poles and was leaning on a 45 degree angle one side of the floor supported and the other side on snapped poles and digging into the ground. The occupants of the house were mostly unharmed, the beds in the more fragile structures had been secured by bolts and nails to the floors, just in case the structures underneath ever did collapse, the bulk of the furniture would not fly loose and potentially crush anyone.

James had been a part of one crew that was nailing down and securing bigger items as the storm built, starting with the newest and outermost buildings, ones more exposed and in some cases only half as stable as some of the older buildings. They had been looking for ways to secure the structures with less and less material, making their supplies last longer, but that strategy seemed foolish now.

The injuries were from the jolt of the struts falling away and as it was the middle of the night they were all in bed asleep, all five occupants of the house. The things that were in less danger of crushing people became missiles though, and flew about the rooms as the sudden shift in gravity occurred and the world flew sideways with it, striking one of the kids in the shoulder and dislocating it.

The loud tearing and the bang woke up the people nearby and a rescue crew was mobilized in the middle of the night to make the building safer and to get medical attention for the child. The child’s mother leapt out of bed when she heard the screams and distress and not looking before she did sent her cascading down the angled floor, slamming into the remaining un secured contents of the bedroom and some from the kitchen that had fallen through the doorway to fall to the lower edge of the room where she stopped.

James was only a small distance away and the noise of the supports tearing and then snapping woke him up and got him out of bed to come and help, even though he had barely been asleep for three or four hours. The groaning and splintering sounds touched his dreams and his eyes slowly opened as that straining noise got louder like a dam waiting to burst, the tension in that sound was almost unbearable until the cannon like shot that cracked through the City when the struts exploded under the strain and disintegrated into heat and noise.

The rescue team was beginning to assemble as he jogged up to the house, the screams of the teenage girl keening like a bird cry, almost stifled by the wind so that he could hear them when he got close enough.

“Can I help?” He asked as he started moving things from the ground around where they were standing, away from the new angular shelter provided by the floor of the house, the remaining pylons the house was standing on were also bending under the strain of being twisted and moved from their original position. The ground was wet and muddy, they had been tracking equipment in and around the weaker houses for a day or more and it churned the grass and dirt there. The rainwater sluiced in and the muddy swirls weakened the lateral grip that the pylons had in the earth.

As he was clearing away the detritus from the crash and seeing he extent of the damage he saw how much movement there had been. The poles were leaning, bending and straining, but unlike the drier area where the other side had snapped, the remaining side was muddier and earth around the pylons was being pushed, leaving a gaping maw where the poled had been, a mound of mud and earth beneath where it had pushed it’s way to under strain.

“Get out from under there!” A voice shouted and arms grabbed him by the shoulders and yanked him backwards, violently and quickly though the danger was probably not as imminent as they thought it was.

James lifted his arms in surrender and accepted the task to carrying the injured girl behind her stunned and concussed mother to a safer location where they could get looked at, the husband leading the way with his son, who was barely ten years old, hanging on to his fathers arm and refusing to let go. They had a catastrophic few minutes and the ground beneath their feet seemed not as solid and less dependable than any ten year old would be likely to think.

The girl was shivering with the cold and tried to hold on to James’s shoulders as much as she could, but the ground was uneven and the father was rushing to get his family to safety. James was lost in the dark and unfamiliar route and had to stay within sight lest the lost each other and then things would be much worse. The increased pace had a jolting effect and each thud sent a shock wave through the poor girls body, exacerbating the injury and causing micro bursts of pain each time. The little cries she was trying to hold back only made James more aware of the pain she was in and how the pace was hurting her.

“Slow down!” he yelled, but the wind blew the words back into his face, the stumbling woman who was bringing up the rear, was getting further behind him and the father in front getting further away, and James could not be heard. Within a few more yards the father turned a corner and then before he knew where he had turned again James found himself lost with a girl in agony and a concussed and barely conscious woman stumbling blindly in the dark with him.

“Hey! Hey! Help! Come back!” James shouted and his body wracked as he put all his energy into projecting his voice, causing the girl in his arms to yelp a little louder.

“Fuck me.” He said and realized they were alone and lost, no idea which way he was supposed to go in the maze between the buildings.

“Where is Henry?” said the woman slurring her words a little less than before and holding on to James’ arm to steady herself.

“I don’t know, he was too far ahead and he … just disappeared.”

“Henry! Henry?” The woman shouted but her voice was less effective than James had been before and they stood in the cold wind and shivered as more rain sloughed over them in new downpours.

“Let’s get some shelter!” James pushed the woman with his shoulder to the under house cavity of the nearest building and they crouched to get underneath it and out of the rain temporarily.

The wind was howling louder underneath the house, the cavity making a wind tunnel that sucked air through and increased the speed and throughput. At least it was semi dry and the ground was only muddy at the edges. James looked around nervously, thinking that after escaping a falling house that standing under another one was just tempting fate a little too much tonight.

“You ok?” A voice shouted and a bright light shone in their faces at head height blinding them.

“Help us!” James called out and tried to squint through the beam of light and see where it was coming from.

“Jesus, Mary? Get the doctor!” Came a man’s voice, the one that had called out to see if they were ok and then a rope ladder appeared in the beam of light, intersecting it and giving James a better look at the situation.

There was a trapdoor in the floor of this building and a head was poking through it and looking his way with the torch, shining in his direction. A man climbed down the ladder and made his way to them, the torch light no longer directly on them but bobbing and weaving with his steps in the space under what was probably his home.

He came to James and shone the torch on the girl and saw her shivering tearful state and reacted quickly. “Let’s get her inside, can she climb?”

“No!” shouted James, still compensating for the wind and hoarse from shouting into it, and deciding that a full explanation can wait until they got inside.

“Follow me!” The man took the woman by the arm and saw from her hesitant movements and far away look that she would need to be lead away.

They came out the south side and there was a stairway there, not visible from the way they came, they had come under a gateway house. Not many dwellings had ways into the upper level, most were connected by bridges and walkways and he number of entry points were limited and guarded, or protected just in case the undead ever started to resist the effect of the sound machines.

They were up the stairs and inside the house soon, and the first step inside the room was bliss, the volume of the storm dropped immediately and the wind was no longer there, and James could feel the rain he just walked though on the stairway drying on his skin and reminding him how much this shelter was to him.

“Put her here, James.” The man said, surprising because James had no idea who he was yet, he knew his identity by sight.

“Angela? Angela? You ok?” The man said and snapped his fingers at the mother barely getting a response, and so he pushed her gently to an armchair and sat her down. James could see that the chair was bolted to the floor.

“Is this house safe?” James asked and he laid the girl onto the daybed where  the man had indicated and she cringed as her weight settled on her body and her shoulder pained her again.

“Safe?” the man asked confused by the query.

“Their house… the pylons collapsed on one side… it fell, they fell. This girl… she dislocated her …” James was panting through his words, more out of breath than he knew.

“I can see, her shoulder is all messed up. Mary’s gone for the doctor, she’s a few houses from here, is that where you were headed?”

“I don’t know, the father he … he was leading… got too far ahead… and she is concussed…” James felt his knees give out and he slipped down and sat on the floor and took a few deep breaths.

“It’s all right, we’ll find them, Mary is on it, she’ll be back soon with the doctor James, you just lie down and catch your breath ok?” The man was smiling, trying to reassure but the calm confidence only made James more suspicious.

“You know me? I don’t know you.” He said and lay back as the tiredness and shock overtook him and he put his head on the floor, looking sideways at the woman in the chair, she had curled up into a little ball and was staring at him intently.

“Everybody knows who you are James. You just haven’t met all of us yet.” The man said and the woman cut her gaze from James to look across at the man and mouth a silent “thank you” at him.

“You’re welcome.” James said in return and closed his eyes for a second.