Free Rise by Gareth Wood Page A

fire door by the back of the building. I knocked.
    After a minute I knocked again, this time a little harder. I was beginning to think that I had the wrong building when I heard something inside. A sound of furniture being moved, and a voice that said “Hello?” I said, “Open the door” to him, and a few seconds later the door opened, and a man was standing there staring at me in amazement. He was heavy-set, maybe in his late forties, and looked very tired. His eyes were red and puffy, and he was wearing a filthy track suit. I said hello and stepped inside. I asked him if he was Dave, and he nodded, and then he was hugging me and crying and saying how happy he was that I was there. He thought he was dreaming when he heard me knocking, and then was convinced that it was a zombie that had somehow climbed the ladder. I broke away from him and shut the door behind me, sure that Jess had seen me go in. She was watching for us to leave now, and would be our insurance.
    I introduced myself to Dave and asked if he was alright, if he could travel. Still crying in relief he told me he was fine, but that all his colleagues were dead. He told me the power was still on in parts of the city, and that the water had run until five days ago. He showed me where he slept and lived in the studio. He had no weapons, but had boarded up the stairs, using desks and conference tables. He asked where I came from, so I told him how we had heard his broadcast, and had decided to rescue him. He was eager to get going, so we spent a few minutes gathering what he’d need, like some food (he had raided a cafeteria on the first floor), extra clothes, and a knife he’d found. I had him change into his darkest clothing, and put all his things into my pack. I asked him if he knew how to use a gun, and when he nodded I handed him the Glock. We then went into the studio where he stopped the record that was playing and announced he was being rescued and that 94X FM was going off the air now. He wished good luck to any listeners, and shut it down.
    Thus it was that 24 minutes after entering the building, we went out the way I came in. I checked and the undead were all still pre-occupied with the fire, so we climbed down the fire escape and dropped to the ground. I took out my flashlight and flashed it towards where Jess was waiting, our signal to her that I was coming back. She flashed it back once, and we set off directly towards her. We ran. Stealth was not an option now, just getting to the river was our only goal. We made it halfway when I saw a muzzle flash as Jess fired a shot. Behind me a walking dead had just joined the truly dead, but that also alerted the others to our presence, and they gave chase. We were far faster than they were, so made it to the fence and started climbing just as Jess was taking a fourth shot. Dave climbed over first. He was out of shape from sitting in his booth for so long, but adrenalin got him over the top. I followed, and we got over to the train car just as Jess was dropping down. She said she had shot five of them as they started to pursue, and I quickly introduced her to Dave. He started to hug her too, but she said we had no time, and we got moving. We made it about a hundred yards when we ran into the three we had seen staring at the sky earlier. It was so dark I nearly didn’t see them in time, but I guess they were attracted to the gunshots. They suddenly loomed out at us, and I raised the carbine and shot at them. One fell right away, and the other two kept coming. I shot again, and then Dave shot too, and the other two fell. We ran past them a good hundred yards before we slowed and went into stealth mode again. We carried on like this for a long time, slowly creeping towards the garage, and hiding and resting as often as we could. Dawn came, and we found ourselves a good kilometer from Sarah and the others. Enough undead were about on the streets that we decided to hole up in a house until night again, then