Chapter 9 - Dark Side of the Moon (Pink Floyd)

                                    

                                          
NATE
There's a ginormous elephant in the room and sooner or later? We'll need to acknowledge its existence.
But for the moment we simply sit in shaky silence, not daring to look at each other. Knowing we'll lose it if we do.
Occasionally one of us took a sip of water. While our heads turned towards each new scream, crash and gunshot bursting up from the streets below.
Half an hour went by. Then the sounds are obliterated by the thunk....thunk....thunk  of helicopter blades.
Three of them pass low overhead. Weaving through the buildings like pterodactyls swooping through pre-historic canyons. They're huge and fly so close we glimpse the soldiers inside. Swivelling mounted guns yet not firing.
Leo and I jump to our feet and rush over to the parapet. Gawking at them, then down to the streets.
It's absolute carnage.
Abandoned cars, some burning for whatever reason are scattered along the roadway and on the sidewalk. One has hit a fire hydrant turning it into a huge fountain. Bags and scattered belongings litter the street.
Now and then a living person scoots across an open space, before ducking into a doorway or slithering under a vehicle.
There's also the dead or dying. Some are lying on the ground. The blood from their horrific wounds is being washed down the stormwater drains by the water gushing from the hydrant.
Most are motionless, while a few are screaming in fear and pain. Some begin twitching and rising....just as the young German had in the lobby.
Was it really only a couple of hours ago?
And amongst them are....the truly un-dead.
Lumps of nothing more than flesh, bone and blood. Walking as if they're being controlled on invisible strings by a giant puppet master. Their movements are drunken and shambling, seemingly without purpose.
Until a sound or a movement draws them.
Then they all turn as if part of a choreographed dance. Heads raising as if they're....sniffing the air? Following a scent like bloodhounds?
"They're dead"  Whispered Leo, his eyes never leaving them.
"They have to be dead. No one could survive injuries like some of them have. How can they be walking around? Why? How can any of this be real?"
Suddenly there's a blur of movement. A young woman is racing between some cars, dragging a suitcase behind her. Her flight stops abruptly when one of its wheels catches on a manhole rim.
She's trying frantically to tug it loose. And I'm just about to scream at her to leave it....when the mob of un-dead surround her. They're so deceptively quick, neither she nor I even notice them until they fall on her.
Her screams....Oh fuck....her screams.... 😨
I twist around and crumple. My butt hit the deck, back slumping against the parapet. Struggling to breathe as tears pour down my face. Hands dangling between my bent knees.
Just crying....crying yet not making a sound.
Leo kept a solo vigil over her.
When the screaming eventually stopped he slid down next to me....our bodies touching. I peer up to see tears of horror streaming down his face.
I reach for him, he reaches for me and we sit there. Sobbing in each other's arms.
The dam of absolute fear has burst. It'll burst again and again for us both over the coming days. As everyone around us in Atlanta and most likely the whole world, who are still lucky enough to be alive? Fights for their very lives....
....their existence.
Fighting to survive. Only to die horribly at the hands of an ever-growing army of the un-dead.
Then some will rise again to take their places in the ranks. Lazarus-like corpses with no aim and no intent. Just a voracious need to kill and eat.
Leo and I are now shipwrecked. Marooned on top of a building in a land that isn't our own. Totally surrounded by death on two legs.
If this is hell? Then I guess we're slap-bang in the middle of it.
Our only thoughts now are....how it got to this?
And how long until it's us down there with them?