The First 30 Days (PUBLISHED)

Fourteen - Days 7-8

A ray from the setting sun stabbed me in the eyes, effectively blinding me. But I wasn't complaining. If I couldn't see, I couldn't see the ground far below, or the growing crowd of zombies who tracked my progress with dead eyes.

The ladder shuddered and creaked as I inched past the halfway point. It buckled sickeningly under the strain, but somehow it held. Sweat covered the palms of my hands and I felt a trickle of it roll down my neck. I barely dared to breath until my too loose, stolen sneakers planted on the roof of the next building over.

"Made it," I called across the alley unnecessarily. Shawn had been holding onto the end of the ladder, watching me cross. I took a second to shake out the muscles in my shoulders and gripped my end of the ladder. "Your turn."

I squinted against the sun and watched as Shawn swung the bag of supplies over his shoulder. With a quick look down, he climbed onto the metal frame.

The end of the ladder jerked in my hands, harder than expected. I gripped harder, as if I could somehow prevent it from dropping my companion to his death. I suddenly understood why he had attempted to tie the other end of the ladder down. Each time he inched farther down, the rung in my hands jumped. I was sure that without the other end being tied, I wouldn't have been able to control my end.

I squinted into the light, hands clammy and cramping from their death grip, as I watched Shawn near the halfway point. The ladder developed a pronounced sway. My stomach dropped as I watched the metal bend further. How far could it go without giving out?

A hiss from below elicited several answering shrieks. We were drawing too much attention. The whole point of risking this rooftop crossing was to fly below the zombies radar. More and more of them were being drawn to the alley, and consequently could see that we were moving to the next building. If the crowd got too big, we would be in the same situation as before, just in a completely unfamiliar building.

"Watch out."

I whipped my gaze back to find that Shawn had somehow finished his crossing while I was watching the zombies watch us. He needed me to move my hands so he could step down.

Breathing slightly easier, I flexed my fingers to restore blood flow. I looked back at the gap between buildings that we had both miraculously survived crossing. The ladder was bent frighteningly. "Let's not ever do that again, ok?"

"You're telling me," he was already walking toward this building's rooftop door. I jogged a few steps to catch up. "It's locked."

Why couldn't this group of employees have been as careless as mine? The locked door was going to be a problem. I thunked the door in frustration and then jumped back as something banged into the other side. Growling and frantic scrabbling told me all I needed to know about who was making the noise. "Crap."

"Yeah. We'll have to find another way down."

On the far side of the roof, we found what we were looking for. There was a problem, though. Zombies roamed the streets. Far too many of them. We were effectively trapped on the roof.

It had gotten much colder than I had expected over night. In the pitch black, with clouds covering the moon and the sounds from the undead all around, neither of us had managed any real sleep. But by the time the horizon began to lighten in the east, there was a marked decrease in the noise from below.

Shivering from the dampness that the early morning dew had coated us with, I rubbed my hands together and watched the sun break into view. I'd never been happier to see the light. It had been a cold, scary night.

As the sun rose, we edged carefully to the side with the fire escape ladder and looked down. Only a few zombies were in view. They moved along with those bird like movements, seemingly not focused on anything in particular.

"If we can find a break in them, we might be able to get down and sneak out of here." Shawn was laying next to me, looking out over the edge.

"Then what?" We hadn't talked through the plan farther than escaping the building. I was starting to worry. I had spent some time driving around the city before, I knew first hand that nowhere was zombie free, but I was beginning to worry if my companion really grasped the scope of the problem. He had been locked up in the building since the start. "It's like this all over. We won't last long down there on foot."

"I've been thinking about that. I think we need to get out of the city. Go someplace where there was less population."

"Ok. But how will we get there?"

Looking to his right, he pointed. "Do you see the green jeep parked at the curb over there?"

If I concentrated, I could make out the back corner of what was probably a dark green jeep sticking out around the corner of the building. I nodded.

"That's mine," He pulled a set of keys from his pocket to show me.

I looked back to the jeep again. It had to be fifty yards from the bottom of the ladder to the vehicle. In a zombie apocalypse, fifty yards felt like a mile. We would have to both climb down the fire escape, run the distance, and get inside the jeep all before getting caught by any zombies. It seemed impossible.

There really wasn't a better option.

The sun rose, slowly burning away the moisture from my clothes as we lay on the roof, watching for our moment. It seemed like as soon as the few zombies within view wandered far enough away, another one or two would round a corner and we would be right back at square one. I was starting to think that we would never get a chance to run for it when the final pair of zombies disappeared out of sight.

"Now."