As he towed along in Rudy’s wake, he wondered again about the Chinese man. The contents of his stomach threatened an escape attempt.
No. He wouldn’t have it. Not in the mask. Not when he couldn’t take it off, not without dying. Forget it.
He willed his belly to settle down, and it did.
Rudy ambled forward, his back hunched and his shoulder cringing. He led the way with his cane, which—as Zeke now knew—held only two shots. And what were two shots against a slavering pack of rotters?
He’d no sooner thought of them than he heard, somewhere close, a softly grunted moan.
Rudy froze. Zeke froze behind him.
Rudy’s head swung left to right, up and down, seeking some obvious escape or path.
Rotters? Zeke mouthed, but inside his mask Rudy couldn’t see the lips forming the question, so he didn’t answer.
Another moan joined the first, like a question added to a conversation. It came with a different timbre and a more jagged edge, as if the mouth that made it was no longer complete. After the groans came the footsteps, tentative and slow and so perilously nearby that the fear felt like a boot on Zeke’s chest.
Rudy spun around and grabbed Zeke’s mask, pulling it close to his own and whispering as softly as he could manage. “This road. ” He waved a hand at the nearest intersection and pointed down to the right. “Several blocks. Big tower—white building. Climb up to the second floor. Break what you have to. ”
Rudy closed his eyes for a full second and then opened them again. He added, “Run for it. ”
Zeke didn’t know if he could run for anything. His chest was as tight as if it were wrapped in ropes, and his throat felt like it was wearing a noose tied from a scarf. He looked down the road Rudy indicated and saw almost nothing but a slow, sloping grade that he was nearly certain must dip farther away from the hill he wanted.
Through his head a parade of memorized maps flipped a page at a time, reassuring him that this was the wrong way—but could he run uphill? Where would he go to escape, if not to this tower that Rudy had told him about?
Panic was filling his mask and blinding him, but it didn’t matter. The groans, moans, and shuffling steps were coming closer, and he was confident that soon, very soon, they’d be upon him.
Rudy took off first. Bum hip or no, he could run, but he couldn’t run quietly.
At the slapping of his feet the moans took on a higher, keening pitch, and somewhere in the depths of the fog a press of bodies began to organize. They began to assemble. They began to hunt.
Zeke panted, trying to draw in enough breath to catch himself up or calm himself down. He pointed himself down the hill and took a last look over his shoulder. Seeing nothing but the swirling, grasping fog, he took heart. And he ran.
The streets under his feet were uneven and split, from the earthquake or simply from time and terrible wear. He tripped and recovered, stumbled and caught himself on his hands—which bruised and bumped, but worked like reflexive spiders and threw him back up to his feet. Then he ran some more.
Behind him in the fog he could hear them coming in a rushing tide.
He did not look. He focused hard on the shrugging, pushing figure of Rudy—who was moving ahead, gaining speed, though Zeke didn’t know how. Perhaps the older man was more accustomed to wearing the suffocating masks, or perhaps he was not as crippled as he seemed. Regardless, he was closing in on the white building that rose up suddenly out of the
murky air.
Fog crashed against it like waves, as if it were a boulder in the ocean and the tide had come in to stay.
As soon as Zeke could see it, he was nearly on top of it—and this was a problem. He had no idea how to reach the second floor. He didn’t see a fire escape or a set of stairs. He only saw the front entrance—huge tarnished bronze doors that had been barricaded with split logs and chains.
His forward momentum was uncontrollable and unstoppable until he slapped his hands against the structure and forced himself to a halt. The force of his collision ached and stung against his already battered hands, but he used them to feel his way around the boarded windows and their intricate frames, where the stonework wasn’t covered with boards or sheets of metal.
Looking around, he saw no sign of his guide. “Rudy!” he squeaked, too frightened to yell and too frightened to keep silent.
“Here!” Rudy called from someplace out of sight.
“Where?”
“Here,” he said again, much louder because he was right beside Zeke. “Around the side, come on. Hurry up, they’re coming. ”
“I hear them. They’re coming from—”
“Everywhere,” Rudy said. “That’s right. Feel that?” He took Zeke’s hand and pushed it up to a ledge somewhere around chest-height.