Day 351 - Untitled Zombie Story Chapter 8.2 - (1,139 words)

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UNTITLED ZOMBIE STORY

By Wayne Webb

Chapter 8.2

Just inside the gates was a security enclosure, though it had no barrier or impediment to entry, Derek guessed it was the place where the gates were controlled. Just after the final thump and latching of the main entrance, a man had come out of the small booth and met up with the flat bed truck that was taking James to the hospital.  It made sense that he had been controlling the gates and knew what was going on.

There was too much open space between the building he was on and the Hereford building, which looked more like a hospital than a clinic, to cover it without being seen unless he waited until the night had fallen for longer.

A glimmer of a plan began to form and he needed to find shelter from prying eyes and out of the cold night air before he could enact the idea. The building he was in was connected to the one with the guard tower and before he could decide what to do movement in that box caught his attention.

However it was manned the guard within it was ending his shift and leaving it empty, climbing down the metal ladder that lead down from the lookout position to the roof of the building next to the one Derek was on, and oblivious to the man on the rooftop next door he continued to the stairwell that opened up to the top floor below him. Derek watched in silence, ducked down under whatever low cover he could find, hugging the shadows just in case the man decided to look this way.

He never did and the door to the stairs closed loud enough so that Derek could hear the lock slamming shut afterwards as well. Not that he had any intention of heading into a building sight unseen, but that option was now closed off to him. Instead he chose to hop the small gap between the buildings, once he could easily navigate by leaping from fire escape to fire escape, and make for the guard tower and see whatever it was that inside it.

The box was empty apart from a few small items built in to the walls. A panel of switches that were all clearly labeled and he could read comfortably in the light of the brightening moon.  There was one for various things called beacons, and they had alphanumeric references on them, unsure what they did it was safer to not touch them. There were also switches for the spotlight, focused beam and wide modes so that the guard could direct the spotlight to target and highlight something or just light it all up.

There was nothing else of interest or of use to Derek from what he could see. No maps and no tools he could use, just the switches and a chair, a comfortable armchair set on a high platform so the watcher could see over the edge and still be seated while on look out.

He briefly considered sitting down in it and taking a nap, but there was no guarantee when the next person would be turning up for their shift. Derek was keeping an ear out for the door to the stairwell, it was not a quiet one and he should be able to hop over the wall and shimmy along to safety if he was put under any pressure.

He got in the chair and settled into it, thinking that maybe a small nap might be ok, but that was dangerous thinking and he struggled with the sense of urgency. He was still trying to get up any motivation to move away when he noticed that there was still someone manning the next tower along from him, and that if he could see him or her, then they would see him.

He scrunched down as far as he could in the chair, trying to not present a silhouette against the night sky or any other form of contrast that would expose him. As he burrowed into the chair, the relative comfort of the soft cushions were more of a prison than a relaxing position and he tried to get as deep and flat as he could.

Something was sticking into him, something hard and odd shaped, yet he did not want to rise up off of the item, no matter how uncomfortable it was. He felt underneath his back to see if he could move the thing without having to move his profile to any more prominence and he grabbed the thing by some kind of leash or strap to pull it out from underneath him.

The relief at it being gone was significant but then he saw what it was that he had been sitting on and found himself holding a pair of binoculars. He put them to his eyes and he could see in the dark. They had an infrared mode, one that lit everything in green but clearer than looking about without the spotlights. They would have not had these on while the spotlights were on, so he now realized he had to be a lot cannier than he had been up until this point.

He clambered down out of the chair and crouched below the higher wall of the box, peering over with his binoculars to see who was at the nest tower. The view he was afforded was a pair the same looking right back at him. The infrared detector on his pair was picking up the little white lamp of the opposing guard tower’s pair of binoculars.

Shit! He thought to himself, he was being stared at head on, there was no way that they had not seen him and they were meeting his gaze head on. There was no point in running, hiding or doing anything from this distance, he was caught or at least exposed and would be caught soon enough.

Then a small wave to him made him realize that he could not see the guard’s face because of the binoculars, and by the same token he was also unrecognizable.  He waved back a little more cheerfully than anyone on nighttime guard duty should be and saw the person on the other tower turning away to look at other things in the night.

A huge sigh of relief was shattered by the sound of a door opening and then he knew he had to move. He took a straddling position on the rear wall of the box and walked along the edge hanging by his fingertips, out of sight of the tower, and unseen from the rooftop.

A torch was flicking around and the guard was muttering to himself about the previous guard taking things and not replacing them. Derek had slung the binoculars around his neck and there they stayed.