Now she had to work herself up to doing this crazy stunt all over again.
At least Harley had the decency not to try and talk her out of it.
"Okay," he prompted softly in the dark, "let's go over it one more time. First of all, where are they?"
Marisa refocused on the question and the matter at hand.
"One near the breaker box. One between that one and the corn field. One was by the light post but Deke said it went chasing a glow stick. So that just leaves the one back there near the showers, and whatever might have been concealed by the dumpster enclosure."
"Good, now what's the plan?"
"The plan is," she repeated, "I will ease open the door, and you will go out first. I am to watch how you do it and then do it the same way. If something out there makes a move for you, you will dive back through this door, slam it shut, and not worry about apologizing for knocking me down until later."
"Um, I don't remember that last part."
"I added it," she growled. "Deal with it. Now, if we both make it out there alive, then we are to move slowly towards the shop, hoping the rain and darkness will disguise us from the zombies for long enough to give us a head start. Once anything does react, we run for the shop. You will lead, and focus on taking the zombie out near the showers if it gets in our way. I will run to the shop door, but not go in unless I have to until you get there. From that point on we make it up as we go along."
"Right."
Marisa nodded to herself, grateful to have the opportunity to settle herself by going over things again. Having a plan to recite helped. Now there just remained one more thing. She hadn't intended to bring it up, but her brief session with Stacey had made her reconsider.
"Uh, partner?"
"Yeah?"
"There's just one other piece of information," she sighed. "I didn't mention it earlier because I didn't think it mattered, but I guess this partner thing means I shouldn't hold anything out from you either. Sorry about that."
"Forgiven. What is it?"
"Umm...the second one...the one out between the breaker boxes and the cornfield...I'm pretty sure that one is Vicki."
Harley didn't reply right away.
Marisa could feel him studying her in the dark, knowing what he must be wondering. She kicked herself for not bringing it up earlier. After all, trust was a two way street.
"Is it going to be a problem?" he asked, his voice betraying nothing.
Was it? Would it cause her to hesitate at a crucial moment, possibly endangering both her and Harley?
No.
She wouldn't let it.
"Absolutely not," she stated with flat finality. "It's a zombie. All it wants to do is kill and eat. Vicki is dead."
Apparently that satisfied him.
"Good enough."
He moved around her in the dark and took the same position at the door he had held before Stacey had interrupted things. It was go time. Marisa fought to ignore the pool of acid forming in her stomach. This time it was going to happen. This time they were going to go through with it, and there would be no further reprieves.
"You ready?" Harley whispered.
"Hell no," She grouched back. "So let's do this before I come to my senses and change my mind." She briefly wondered if that ought to be her battle cry.
"Right."
With just the tiniest of clicks, Harley turned the knob and eased the back door open.
A dim yellow light spilled in, and the splatter of rain hitting the asphalt filled the hallway. A rumble of thunder rolled in from the night sky, but it sounded nothing like the cracking booms of before. The storm had abated somewhat. What had been wind driven sheets now fell as a steady downpour. Having been on the roof earlier, the cold didn't surprise her when it came rushing in. But it reminded her how miserable the others must be, now huddled under plastic tablecloths on the roof. She had loaned Doc her raincoat, and Stacey her umbrella, yet she knew they were scant protection from the elements tonight.
But it was a lot more than she had. Unfortunately for her, the dark red of her uniform was much more suited to this venture than the bright pink of her raincoat.
Marisa watched as Harley eased out the door. He took an agonizingly long time to do it, but she understood why. Due to the arrangement of the parking lot lights, the back of the building was in shadow. Only the distant lights toward the rear of the parking lot shed any illumination back here, and that was reduced further by the rain.
Which was a good thing.
Harley had explained the most likely thing to give them away at this stage was motion. So he crept slowly out the door, he eyes focused down the back wall where she knew the zombie near the breakers stood. After another moment, he slid out of sight and she knew his back must be against the wall beside the door.
Now it was her turn.
Following his example, Marisa moved in very slow motion. She eased at a glacial pace out into the storm. Water falling from the roof above splattered on her hair and down her collar, soaking her in seconds. The shock of the frigid water almost took her breath away. It was so cold...icy cold. But ignoring all of that was easy.
All it took was looking down the length of the back wall and seeing the haggard silhouette near the breaker boxes. She froze as a distant flash of lightning dimly revealed the skull and grinning jaws. It seemed to stare towards the back and slightly away from them. Then the light faded and the thing's shadow stood down there, motionless. Its black outline framed against the yellow glow of the light around the corner, it was a silent death machine waiting for something to trigger it.
And beyond that, there waited something even worse.
Marisa forced herself not to look at the figure in the pale dress about thirty feet further away.
The young waitress swallowed and fought to keep her breathing slow and steady. Better to concentrate on the matter at hand. She carefully slid the last few inches to her place beside the back entranceway, pulling the door almost closed behind her. Once she felt the slick painted cinder bricks pressed against her back, she held her breath and squinted across the doorway at Harley.
He simply looked back at her, his face almost invisible under the shadow of his hat.
She knew what he was waiting for.
Her hand gripped the doorknob with knuckles almost white with tension. Now came the hardest part of all. Her job was to close the door. She and Harley had agreed that if they didn't make it, they needed to leave behind a place for the others to retreat to in case they needed to leave the roof. And the only way to do that was to close the door behind them...thus cutting off their only means of return.
Other than Doc, the rest had been too injured to leave downstairs alone. They wouldn't have been able to move and climb the ladder fast enough if the dead got in. And Rachel needed to be on the roof with the others in case something unexpected happened.
So this was the way it had to be.
Marisa felt like punching Harley for making this her job. Mainly because she suspected he did it so she would have one last chance to change her mind and bail out. And dear God how she wanted to...
Every instinct she had screamed for her to get her ass back inside and put the metal door between her and the monsters where it belonged. This was all or nothing. This was insane. She stared at that crack of blackness made by the last inch of space between the door and the jamb. Whatever she did next, it was what she would have to live or die with.
Marisa closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
Hey guys, watch this!
With silent care, she pulled the door shut.
The small jolt of the lock catching felt like the closing of a coffin lid under her hand. Now there was no going back.
Marisa looked back up from the knob to see Harley still looking at her. Unable to talk under the current circumstances, she settled for giving him a fatalistic half smile. It probably came off as more of a grimace than anything, but he must have gotten the meaning. He gave a conspiratorial wink back before indicating the direction of the mechanic's shop with the faintest nod of his head. They had business to take care of.
It was time to take a walk.
Resurgance Rachel.
Ignoring the lightning, Rachel clutched a pipe leading from the air conditioning unit for balance. The roof was every bit as bad as she feared it would be. Up here, they were fully exposed to the storm with absolutely no cover. Especially here at the back edge. And the rain still fell in buckets. She wiped her eyes to clear them of the wet hair plastering her forehead.
Marisa's raincoat hung a little long on her, and the hot pink was definitely not her style, but she knew she was probably the driest one up here. Stacey and Deke huddled under Marisa's umbrella nearby, and Grandpa Tom stood beside her with nothing but a plastic tablecloth slung over his shoulders while he acted as a tent pole to keep the injured janitor's head dry. They were a drenched and sorry looking lot, but that didn't concern her right now.
Right now, she held her breath as the two shadows moved away from the back door below.
They moved slowly, using the odd gait of the zombies as they went. It turned out that Harley had also been paying attention to the way the things moved while drinking coffee earlier in the night. He said he had done so in order to better recognize the things at a distance under bad visibility. Instead, he ended up putting the observation to use in mimicking their movement, and teaching Marisa to do the same.
But would it work?
Rachel had no idea how the dead identified each other as "not prey" or if that were even the way they functioned. Their behavior had a decidedly animalistic feel to it, but she had so little to go on.
What triggered these things to attack?
What senses were functioning, and at what capacity?
Why did they consider humans food yet ignore the food on the store shelves?
These questions now badgered her in a relentless stream. The answer to any one of them might give them an advantage they didn't have before. Now that she had an answer to what actually caused these monstrosities, it almost drove her crazy to think how little she understood them...mainly because she suspected that understanding them was going to be the difference between life and death in the long run.
These things had a logic of their own, and knowing that both relieved Rachel and drove her crazy. They made sense, in their own ghastly way. She just needed time and opportunity to figure out how they really worked. If she ever got the chance.
For now, all she could do was watch in helpless silence as two kids risked everything to buy her a few more days on the planet.
"Good," she murmured as she watched the pair advance unmolested another ten feet. "Goooood..."
Yet something was wrong.
She could tell it just by watching them. They were doing the gait right, but somehow it wasn't quite right. Something was different. Something she couldn't quite put her finger on, but whatever it was made them just ever so subtly different than the creatures they imitated. Rachel got an ugly premonition as she continued to watch, and a quick glance down at the two nearest corpses confirmed her fears.
The dead were watching them too.
Neither had moved, or assumed an attack stance, but both had now turned their heads to face them. Grinning jaws and hollow sockets pivoted ever so slightly as they tracked the pair.
Rachel didn't dare make a sound to warn them. A scream on her part might rouse the zombies to a higher state of alertness, causing them to attack just on instinct. Even worse, it might bring more from around the side of the building to investigate the noise.
A desperate look back at the two showed their advance to be agonizingly slow. She couldn't imagine how hard it must be for them not to break out into a run. Death smiled at them from all directions. Yet somehow they kept the same steady pace as they moved together towards the back.
Moved together...
Oh shit! That's what they're doing wrong. They're working together. Moving as a team. The zombies don't really do that. Not in that fashion.
It was a subtle difference, but now that she knew what it was it stood out in a way that seemed to scream "different." And she wasn't the only one noticing.
Rachel looked back down and detected a definite new alertness on the part of the two nearest zombies. They had now shifted their stances so their bodies faced the pair as well. Worse yet, the distant one at the showers ahead also tracked them with its gaze. Even the one drawn a ways off by Deke's glow sticks now followed their progress.
She could sense the countdown starting, and knew it was only a matter of time. With this much attention on them they couldn't hope to get there without doing something "unzombie-like" enough to provoke an attack. That one single mistake announcing them as prey.
As it turned out, they never got a chance to even make the mistake.
"Marisa! RUN!"
Stacey's scream almost caused Rachel to jump out of her raincoat.
She whirled to see the girl pointing off to the right, towards the store side of the parking lot. A sick feeling of certainty gathered in her gut as she followed the waitress's gesture to the asphalt below. There was one other zombie that had to be accounted for...one that functioned on a higher level than the others...and it was him.
Buddha Boy.
The mangled giant lumbered into Rachel's view from the right, still taking bites from something she didn't want to identify as it went. Even from its greater distance it had spotted the two, and recognized them as not zombies. The detached, clinical side of her mind immediately drew the conclusion that, if nothing else, this monster had superior eyesight compared to the others.
At least it didn't seem in a terrible hurry.
But that didn't matter now, either...because she turned her head back in time to see all the other corpses had gone into their attack postures and were starting to charge as well. The race was now on.
Harley and Marisa must have either heard Stacey's scream or figured it out for themselves for they had started to run as well.
"Go!" Rachel whispered as she watched the pair flee.
In the distance, she could see Harley sprint out ahead of Marisa. Only the knowledge this was part of the plan helped her fight down the urge to yell at him to wait for her. Even knowing that, she still felt relief when she saw him veer off to intercept the predator running at them from the direction of the showers. Now she clutched the AC pipe and prayed he could pull off what he planned.
The distance between the man and the monster disappeared by the second.
Then, at what seemed the very last instant, Harley brought himself to a controlled stop. The distance and lighting made seeing his face impossible, but Rachel noted he pulled off the next maneuver with the same degree of near nonchalance she found so irritating earlier in the store. It looked like something out of a movie. The man calmly raised the pistol, aimed, and blew the monster's head to pieces as it closed the last of the space between them. They couldn't have been more than three feet apart.
At least that left them an unobstructed path to the shop door. But they weren't out of trouble yet. The creatures were still racing up from behind...
...and Marisa was struggling.
Although the young woman still ran at a good clip, she had also developed a noticeable limp. And the horrors chasing her looked even faster than they were earlier tonight. Rachel realized to her dismay they were actually gaining.
Dammit, Marisa! I warned you about that toe! I told you to be smart!
Rachel raged in despair at the stubbornness of the girl. Whether broke or not, Marisa's toe hadn't been up to this kind of punishment. The veterinarian had to admire the determination that allowed the other woman to push herself through what must now be real agony, but the sheer foolhardiness of it pissed her off. Now the dead closed in behind her and she lost ground by the second.
Still, she had nearly reached the door. It was going to be close, but it looked like Marisa had enough of a head start to make it.
Then things got worse.