hope.” Sarah seemed drained.
“Well then, someone, give us some options,” Max insisted, “What are we going to do? Just how do we rescue these people?”
Nobody answered immediately. Then Jack spoke up. “In an ideal world, we would just fly them out of there with a bunch of helicopters.”
“Hell, as long as we are dreaming,” Max replied, “why not wish for a platoon of marines with machine guns. We need to stick with what we have on hand.”
“Well, we got out of the bus depot by just driving though them,” Miguel offered, “Can't we do the same here. Just drive up, and let people climb down on to the roof of the bus?”
Sarah shook her head. “You didn't see the number of dead swarming around that building. There is no way we could get close enough. Worse, even if we got close, the bus would be surrounded; there is no way it would get back out.”
“What we really need is a hook and ladder truck,” Jack suggested, “Sling a ladder right across that mob and let people walk over it untouched. Load everyone into the bus and drive off before it gets swamped. What about that? Did the Blackwell fire department have one of those? Maybe with most of the town swarming the ShopWell we could zip downtown and grab it.”
“I don't know if Blackwell was large enough for one of the really large ladder trucks,” Max countered, “and I'm not sure we want to risk a run downtown to check it out.”
“We still need to hit a pharmacy,” Miguel reminded, “and with the ground floor of the ShopWell over-run, that leaves the downtown pharmacy.”
The debate went on like that until late in the night. We formed the rough outlines of a plan, but Max decided he needs to consult with the survivors on the ShopWell roof before we can nail down all the details. Nevertheless, the arguments were still ongoing when I headed off to write in this journal before grabbing some sleep.
May 15 - The Factory, Oklahoma
Max left early this morning to spend some time on the radio with the ShopWell survivors. I didn't go along, but I got the short, second hand version. Turns out Max was right about the fire department; there's no ladder truck that will fit the bill. There is, however, something up at the old zinc works that might serve even better. Jack is meeting with Max and Sarah and a few other people planning things out right now, and I'm going to join them in a bit. Max promised those poor souls in Blackwell that we would be back for them in two days. I get the feeling we are all going to be working flat out until then preparing for The Great Rooftop Rescue, as I've come to think of it.
May 17 - The Factory, Oklahoma
The factory has been buzzing with activity these past couple days. I've spent most of the time helping Jack, using the arc welder or the acetylene torch to weld scrap metal over the windows and door of the bus. Even the windshield is now covered by a sturdy metal grating. That vehicle is about as zombie proof as we can make it. We've made similar modifications to other vehicles that will play a role in the rescue, but the bus is the one that most of the survivors will ride out on, and it has to sit there getting pounded on by zombies while people climb in, so we put extra effort into sealing it up. The only way in or out of that tin can now is through the hatch we cut in the top. I can't believe how much we've gotten done in less than 48 hours. Just about everyone has pitched in, and an impressive number of people have volunteered for the actual rescue operation. I'm exhausted, and I don't have much time to write because I need to grab a few hours of sleep before we launch this crazy mission. Jack wants me along to help man the CB. It's been moved from the radio room into the truck that we will use as a mobile base of operations, observing with binoculars and coordinating the actions of the various teams. I'm not sure how I feel about being volunteered for this venture, but I can't really back out, not after seeing how committed everyone else is. I'm amazed and more than a little proud of this strange community we've formed. Maybe pulling an all nighter over an acetylene torch has my thinking addled, but I feel we've built something really special here, and I don't mean an armor plated bus.
May 18 - The Factory, Oklahoma
Jack woke me just before the rescue mission kicked off, and I need to be up a while before my brain starts firing on all eight neurons, so it all seemed a bit surreal as we pulled away from the factory. Max, Jack, and I were out front in the panel tuck (our command vehicle), followed by the two chase vehicles, the pharmacy scavenge team, the dump truck, the bus, and finally the construction crane. We drove the nearly eight miles to Blackwell, past I35, stopping on highway 11 no more than a half mile from the ShopWell. Max got on the CB and talked to the ShopWell survivors, confirming that they understood the plan and were ready to go. Then for some reason he decided to switch places with Sarah and drive one of the chase vehicles. Sarah joined us in the command truck, along with two gunners, and we drove to our position a bit south of highway 11 almost directly west of the store. At the same time, a scavenge team made up of four people riding in two cars, continued down highway 11, right into downtown Blackwell and toward the pharmacy on Main Street. As they passed the ShopWell, no doubt some of the undead pealed off from the horde around the building and started following them downtown. That was part of the plan actually. Any dead heading that way was that much fewer for us to deal with during the rescue. Hopefully the scavengers would be long done at the pharmacy and heading south out of town to take a round-about way home long before the walking dead reached them.
The remaining vehicles followed us into the fields west of the store, then turned west and lined up one after another. The heavy dump truck was first, followed by the bus, and finally that massive construction crane. From that position, they began backing slowly toward the store with a chase vehicle pacing them on either side.
The dump truck and the crane had been suggested by a woman named Gina from among the ShopWell survivors. Before the collapse, she was working on demolition and environmental remediation at the old zinc works north of town. When our idea of using a fire department ladder truck came up short one truck, she suggested the construction crane as the next best thing. Honestly, that crane was even better. It's massive, and so heavy I don't think an army of zombie elephants could budge it. The crane arm wasn't exactly well suited for climbing on, but we fixed that with a bit of creative carpentry. After the crane was in position at the outer edge of the undead horde, it extended the crane arm out over the horde and up to the roof. While traveling, the three sections of the arm are contracted, one inside another, so the wooden climbing surfaces couldn't be attached until after the crane was in place. I can't imagine what that was like, lugging those sections up, one at a time, and sliding them into place while a hellish ocean of corpses thrashed about below.
Sarah stood on the running board of the panel truck, clutching the CB handset. Jack and I stood on the roof using high powered binoculars, watching events unfold. The crane rolled up to the building. The undead noticed. The compressed mass of animated corpses became a bit ragged around the edges as some turned and began stumbling toward the approaching vehicles. Before they drew too close, the two chase vehicles turned, one heading north and the other south. They began to angle away from the building, driving just fast enough to stay barely ahead of their undead pursuers. The idea was to draw as many zombies as possible away from the building, reducing the crush of undead already beginning to surround the rescue caravan.
The rescue vehicles were all in position. The crane sat more than a hundred feet away from the building, already extending its arm toward the roof. I could see the main rescue team emerging from the hatch in the top of the bus. They quickly began to unstrap the wooden components of the ramp and began to assemble it. First was a narrow bridge that extended from the bus to the bottom of the crane arm. Once that was hooked into place, they carried additional components across one at a time and slid them onto the metal arm of the crane, working their way up from the bottom. This created a flat surface, about two feet across with a three foot high rail
ing on each side extending all the way up to the roof. The dead swarmed about them, clawing at the vehicles and trying to climb up on the crane. Mostly they failed, but occasionally one would be shoved up a bit higher by the pressing crowd and actually get an arm up near the edge of the ramp. Gunners stationed on the roof of the bus picked them off. I could see the spray of tissue, the body pitching over, then hear the delayed crack of a weapon a second later. It was a disjointed drumbeat that was picking up its tempo even as the first survivors began their decent from the roof.
It was all going smoothly, if agonizingly slowly, until disaster happened. A rather large zombie got a hand up onto the bridge connecting the bus to the crane. It shifted. A survivor lost his balance. Tumbling over the side, he grabbed at the bridge, adding his weight to that of the zombie. The entire section heaved sideways and tumbled into the seething mass of dead.
“They've lost it!” I reported to Sarah, “They've lost the bridge, and there's still people on the roof.”
“Peter,” Sarah shouted into the CB, “What happened? How many are left?”
The radio crackled.