He led us to a corner and looked down.
This was clearly the tallest building in the area, and as such the view was commanding. On a regular day in the old world, the view might have been mundane: the tops of other buildings, and streets populated by people going about their business, doing their thing. Briefcases, high heels, food trucks, faces bent over phone screens. Nothing exciting.
Now, though…
I could just make out a huge, shifting mass moving along through a swath of smoke some two streets over.
“That’s Chapman Street,” Durkee said. “It runs straight through the city.”
Smaller, faster figures ran out ahead of it; the living, perhaps, or more likely the handful of runners in a sea of shambles. Here and there I could make out other figures holding still, the report of gunfire stretching back to us.
“Those are probably some of my men,” Poltava said, her voice strained. “They aren’t going to be able to hold that for long.”
“They aren’t going to be able to hold that at all,” Durkee said. “Damn. And more and more are going to join them.”
“I take it we can’t get the wall back up,” I said.
“No. That spot they’re at is where the wall used to be, I think.” He peered over the side of the building, considering our options. “We could detonate some of the buildings along there…no, that won’t work, but…wait…”
He walked to the other end of the roof. The three of us followed him, Tony nearly dragging his leg behind him. I was going to have to look at it, provided we survived all this.
He pointed at a group of houses seemingly clustered around Chapman. “Those are the Garnet Cloisters,” he said. “No, I don’t know who named it. It’s pretty much the outskirts of living territory. But that neighborhood…I guess it straddles Chapman. There’s a pedestrian overpass linking the two sides. Guess a toddler got run over or something years ago.”
“You want us to take down the overpass,” Poltava said immediately.
Durkee smiled grimly. “It’d create a hell of a lot of rubble and we could wire it up pretty quick. Might stop up the dead long enough for us to put up new fencing, or blast them, or whatever Hammond thinks he’s going to do. Did you bring C-4?” He glanced at me. “That’s an explosive.”
“I know what C-4 is,” I said. “I knew that before the apocalypse.”
Poltava let out a harsh bark of laughter that startled even me. “Did we bring C-4? We’re swimming in it. Yeah, we can knock down the overpass. But what about the neighborhood?”
Durkee roamed back over to the other corner. “Not too many breaking off from the main pack,” he said as we trailed after him.
“You only need one to cause a problem,” I said.
“I know. But we’re up against the clock. Poltava…tell the general to get us the C-4. We’ll handle the rest.”
We will? He wasn’t volunteering me for this, was he?
Poltava already had her walkie-talkie out.
Durkee turned to Tony and me, and his smile took on a grim cast.
“What do you need us to do?” I asked, praying he would tell us to just go home, that the Army would handle it from here.
“Well, you’re going to help me evacuate that neighborhood. And maybe hold off the early wave of the dead, if they get there before we can blow the overpass. Which is likely.”
I must not have looked very amused.
“Just until reinforcements arrive,” Durkee amended.
Which might be never.
Well, nothing else about this day had gone right. Might as well keep improvising.
Chapter Thirty
We’ll handle the rest, Durkee had told Poltava.
We meant me, and I didn’t know how, exactly, I was supposed to go about doing that. I rehearsed the speech in my head over and over again, and it never got any better: Hey guys, you’ve survived the apocalypse in your own home. Congratulations! Now split so we can blow it up.
It seemed cold.
Tony and I took the south side of the Garnet Cloisters, and Poltava handled the north side. Hammond dispatched two squads were dispatched to the areas between the fallen barrier and Garnet to clear out anyone still lingering there, along with several bags full of explosives.
We had a load of houses to move through before Hammond and Durkee could detonate the overpass (or before the dead arrived and made a fruit salad out of us), so time was of the essence. Poltava had met up with several other soldiers and they had begun the process of placing the explosives—and let me tell you, knowing there’s someone rigging the overpass above you to explode is really, really uncomfortable.
I rapped on the front door of a tidy, yellow-walled house.
A pleasant-looking older man opened it, a cane in his left hand. “Hello,” he said. His eyebrows lifted somewhat—I guess mine would, too, if I opened my door and found a bloodsplattered woman toting two rifles and an axe on my doorstep. I must have looked thoroughly disreputable. “How can I help you?”
Hello sir. We’re going to blow up your house.
Well, there went my speech.
“We’re evacuating this street,” I said.