Vicky awoke slowly, with no memory at first of recent events. Her mind was still in the dream where her husband was standing with her at the park, holding her as the sun set.
The beeping of the alarm wouldn't let her remain there, however.
"Alex," she said, "turn that stupid thing off, it's too early" She wanted nothing more than to just go back to sleep - to return to that dream. Her job could wait; breakfast and laundry, and all the rest of it could go to hell. Just five more minutes…
There was no answer, and terror shot through her, turning her skin ice cold and sending shivers up and down her spine. No, please God, she begged in her mind, though as her senses came back to her she knew it to be a futile plea; because that was not the alarm clock. And Alex had been dead for a month. There was no job either. Not anymore. There was nothing. For a moment she imagined that she could actually feel him lying there beside her and she gave in to blind hope, reaching out only to find cold sheets and blanket beside her as she had known it would be.
She sat up so fast that the room spun for a second. She looked to the left, where the alarm clock had sat, dead and useless since the power had gone out a couple of weeks ago now. Her mind had dared it to be a dream, desperately hoped - as she did some mornings - that it had all been a nightmare.
The loud, high pitched buzzing went on, seeming to slice into her brain.
She slid out of bed, grabbing the pipe off the night stand and made her way out of the bedroom. She could never forget now to carry a weapon of some kind. It’s amazing how a person changed after prolonged traumatic experience. Carrying something to defend your own life with became as second nature as taking a shit when the need came.
There were alarms all over the apartment. The simple little dirt cheap ones that ran on watch batteries and made a really high pitched sound when they were disconnected from their base. There was one in every window and one at the door. She told herself that was it as she made her way out into the living room and the sound grew louder, but as she passed through that room and into the kitchen, she realized that it was just her poor sleep-addled judgment telling her so. She had heard those go off while testing them and this was not that either.
Then it hit her, what it must be. She had never heard the fire alarm for the apartment building. It must be that.
Like Alice, down the Rabbit-hole, Vicky felt as though she had been submersed in a whole new world beyond her reckoning. But as deadly as Alice's world may have been as imagined by Lewis Carol, it had nothing on her present reality. There was no cool cat here, or colorful playing cards that talked. There were no magical drugs that could make her gigantic or small. In fact, there was nothing magical about it at all. One tiny mistake could get her killed and no amount of imagination could get her out of the trouble she was in.
The world outside of her fifth story window was burning. Fires had started in many nearby buildings. She'd wondered at first if someone was trying to smoke her out, but she knew that was just the paranoia talking. There was a lot of that lately. She often thought she heard voices in the dark. Once last week, she'd been dead certain that her old school teacher had been in the local mini mart. Twice over the last few days, she thought she saw her dead husband out there among the infected. But, then again, maybe he was.
The infected: That was the name that news officials had given them. Before the stations went down one by one that is. But infected with what? The truth was that no one really knew. The centers for disease control had been very cryptic, but their words were easily translated despite the long comments to mean, simply, "We don't have a fucking clue." And neither did anyone else.
Vicky had no weapons - well, no good ones anyway, just a kitchen knife and a pipe from beneath the sink. Her husband was the one who watched all of the zombie flicks. But he was gone, and she was here.
She stood there overlooking the streets below, which were still crawling with the damned things and knew that she was a dead woman – no better than those moaning and bumping into each other in the streets below. Death just hadn’t caught up with her yet. As she watched one in the crowd cried out and leapt at one of the others. The group was at each other again then. She’d seen it happen on more than a few occasions. They got hungry enough, and they would even eat their own. The alarm would attract them, though. Hell, it would whip them into a frenzy. There was no way that she could get out of here alive if the place was on fire. It would spread until it got to her and she would burn. If she tried to get out through any of the main entrances and exits, she would no doubt be bombarded with the infected and with only a pipe and a butcher's knife; there really wasn't much that she would be able to do to defend herself.
She had filled her apartment with things she had found in other apartments in her own building. There was no shortage of food. The room that had once been her office was now full of canned goods, Raman noodles and other similar products, dried foods, packaged drinks and bottled water. Thus far, she had only needed to leave the building a few times, and she'd done it through back alleys. Only once since her husband’s death had she been confronted by an infected that wasn't from her own building. The pipe to the head worked just fine and the leather pants, coats and gloves kept scratches and attempted bites from getting through and breaking skin. Or, it had so far, but she often found herself wondering just how long her luck would last. Her husband had long ago bought one of those black masks you so often see in plague movies, complete with a bunch of replacement filters and she had worn that. No sense in taking any chances. On the last trip, she'd gotten to the mini mart and packed as many drinks and medical supplies, pencils, pens, maxi pads, and whatever else she could think of at the time into a back pack and a sea bag that her husband had left over from his military service. Too bad he hadn't kept any guns in the house, she'd thought at one point, none but the one handgun that had gone with him when he died.
Now it looked as though she would have to leave all that she had collected behind. She knew that the other nearby buildings were bound to have plenty of supplies in them, but that meant a whole new bunch of apartments with unknown surprises waiting to try and eat her alive. If she really screwed up, she could end up in a building that was crawling with those things.
No point in thinking about it, she guessed. She had a backpack filled with small edibles and water bottles - about a two week supply, if she rationed properly. The chances were so slim of even making it out of the building alive, let alone actually finding a place to stay afterwards, that she felt it pointless to even contemplate anything beyond the next half hour.
If there had just been any guns in the building, she might have had a better chance. And they had liked the place because it was mostly full of old people that wouldn’t likely cause any problems. Looking back now, she kind of wished they’d moved to a bad section of town, or even in the country-side; somewhere that a revolver in the bedside table drawer, or a shotgun above the mantle place was as likely as zombies in the streets were now.
She thought of the gun shop just down the block. There had been many a night when she'd thought of it, actually. But the streets were crawling with the infected and the only way to get to it, as far as she knew, was the front door, which was surrounded. There was no way in without being seen, and being seen meant dying for her.
She grabbed her jacket and slipped on the leather pants. She grabbed the butcher's knife and slid it in behind her belt. She grabbed the backpack and put it on, making sure it was nice and snug, but wouldn't cause too much discomfort and chafe her arms and shoulders after some time. Her husband Alex had taught her how to do that, and remembering that little fact caused her to have to fight back tears. She checked momentarily to be sure that her sunglasses were in the inside pocket along with a small wallet-sized picture of Alex. Having all that she thought she couldn't do without, she peered through the peephole. There was smoke in the hallway. Not a good sign.
She quickly slipped on the mask, unlocked the door and peered out one more time. No sign of life
out there.
Out in the hallway, the smoke was heavy. She could barely see the other end, but nothing appeared to be burning out here as far as she could see.
She quickly shut and locked her door behind her. If it turned out to be some easily fixable problem, she fully intended to return there and hole up as she had been doing so far.
Toward the end of the hallway, however, she noticed a flickering reddish-orange light, and upon turning the corner, was confronted by intense heat. The stairwell was burning.
This and the elevator were the only ways down.
Panic set in briefly. She would burn to death. She pondered trying to overdose on something back in the apartment. The thought of leaping out a window and falling to her death occurred to her, but she figured if she didn't die right away after the fall, she may have to suffer being eaten alive.
What else was there, though?
Then she remembered the stairwell six floors up. There was a roof access up there. The only problem was that the stairwell here was on fire. She could see through the little window that the way up was blocked, and the door was generating a lot of heat. All of the furniture she and Alex had worked to throw down and block the