Iain McKinnon - Remains of the Dead

He stretched up and found the balcony overhead, giving a sigh of relief at finding the extra purchase. He pulled his gaze away from the ochre brickwork to look up. With his height the next storey up was only inches away from his face and he was easily able to get his elbows between the rails and onto the decking. He gripped the bars like a dejected prisoner and tested his weight and grip.

“You’ve just got to go for it.”

He swung his good leg level to the decking and jammed his foot in between two railings. He threw his left hand up, using the momentum from the swing and found the top of the railing. Grunting from the exertion, he pulled himself over the railing and landed with a thump safely onto the deck.

He lay there like a landed fish gasping for air staring at the underside of the balcony above. Even though his leg throbbed he let slip a childish giggle of delight.

“Made it,” he wheezed.

After a few moments gaining his composure, Ali got back to his feet. He walked over to the window and gazed in. The sunlight and the dark interior combined to turn the glass into a dull mirror. He placed his hand to his forehead and lent into the window, hoping to shade the worst of the glare.

The room looked abandoned. Items of a normal life left behind by their dead or fleeing occupant. Ali rapped on the windowpane with his knuckles. He wasn’t adhering to some long lost etiquette, he wanted the noise to draw out any zombies that might still be inside.

After waiting long enough for any shambling half skeleton to investigate, he tried the window. It was locked shut.

Still grasping the handle he looked up to the next balcony.

“Onwards and upwards,” he sighed.

He repeated the climb and made his way to the next balcony. But again the window was firmly closed.

He waited for a moment to regain his strength. Above him was the final floor.

He didn’t know what he’d do if that window was shut. He looked over at the adjacent terrace of balconies. The gap was too wide to jump but he’d seen a movie once where the hero had jumped diagonally, landing on the balcony one level down and across.

But Ali’s leg throbbed, his joints ached, and he didn’t feel much like an action hero.

“One last climb,” he said.

He saddled the guard rail and started his third ascent.

In a few seconds he’d repeated his climb and was standing at the top floor balcony. He was delighted to see the window was open a crack. But the initial thrill evaporated as he tried the handle. This window too was locked shut.

Undeterred, Ali wedged his fingers in and pulled. The window didn’t budge.

Ali berated himself for losing his steel pipe in the throng below; with a little leverage he might be able to pop the window open.

As he stared at the adjacent apartments, contemplating his chances of successfully leaping the gap, the metal baluster in his grasp twisted slightly. Ali’s mind sparked. Bending down he methodically checked each of the thin metal struts that joined the decking to the handrail. The four on each corner were sturdy structural columns with the ones between forming a safety screen to prevent someone from accidentally falling. Some of these were loose. They turned in their seating.

Ali examined the construction of the balcony. If he could buckle the handrail up he should be able to pop out some of the metal bars.

He lay down on the deck, his head wedged against the wall, his fingers stretched down to find purchase through the gaps in the deck, and then he kicked out hard. He smacked the underside of the handrail with his heels. The metal rattled but nothing gave. Ali stuck his left foot through the bars and twisted to lock himself tight against the recoil of the kick.

This time Ali lashed out with one foot. With his more secure position, more of the energy went into its target. Ali kicked again and this time he felt something yield. Furiously he kicked and kicked again and with each strike he felt the metal buckle.

With a dozen more angry boots the handrail started to budge. Ali squatted in front of the misshapen baluster. The light metal welds had snapped and some of the bars were detached. Ali grasped hold of the most likely candidate and twisted. With a few good yanks the three-foot metal rod was dislodged.

He wasted no time in slotting the bar between the window and the frame. He took a square stance and purposefully pulled back with both hands. The plastic frame started to creak and deform. Ali kept the pressure up, leaning back and pulling with all his might. Something started to give-he could feel movement through the metal shaft.

Invigorated by the prospect of success, he found more strength and pulled harder. There was a sudden crunch and the makeshift crowbar was catapulted out of the Ali’s grasp. The bent metal bar flung off into space, slicing through the air like the blades of a helicopter to land in the zombie-carpeted street below.

The tension suddenly released, Ali stumbled backward where he collided with the damaged handrail. He threw his hands out, grasping for anything before his momentum carried him over the railing.

Unable to stop, he flipped over the balcony. As the sky flashed overhead his grip found purchase. Then came a jolting wrenching through his shoulders as the momentum yanked at the joints. He hung there for a spilt second before his fingertips slipped free.

Ali started plummeting again. He was watching the balcony above fly away. As he fell a couple of the loosened bars burst free and were sent tumbling to the ground with him.

Ali flailed his arms out, trying to grab hold of anything to arrest his fall. His arm connected with something impossibly solid. The force of the impact was numbingly violent. His whole body twisted from the impact and he collided hard with the metal deck of the balcony below. The two metal bars that had fallen with him clattered off the decking and continued their journey to the crowd of zombies below.

Ali started laughing. Like an action hero, he’d survived by a piece of miraculous luck. Granted, it hadn’t seen him favoured enough to get him to the adjacent apartments, but he was still thankful. He laughed until he realised just how much pain he was in. The laughter turned to coughing, and when that subsided, Ali groaned.

After an age and a couple of aborted attempts, Ali hauled himself up to sit against the wall. His injured leg throbbed and now his shoulder did too. There was a lump on the back of his head and a massive headache to testify to the force of the impact. He looked down at his hands. They were bloody and scratched and now he noticed the nail on his index finger had been ripped off about halfway. He felt sick looking at the raw pulp of his nail bed. He dropped his hand out of sight, grateful that the pain from elsewhere was masking his missing fingernail.

He looked out over the thoroughfare packed with undead. They filled the road from here to the offices across the street. The front windows were smashed in and the zombies were packed inside just as thick as outside. To his right he could see the plaza they’d been trying to get to. The helicopter and its promise of rescue were long gone. And still there was no sign of the people who’d been shooting earlier.

Up to the left, back towards the warehouse, Ali could just see the odd patch of tarmac. The zombies were thinner on the ground up there but there were still thousands of them. The odd waft of grey black smoke drifted across the street, some of the petrol bombs were still burning and hopefully still incinerating zombies.

“What now?”

He could climb back up and try the window again, but even if he forced his way inside there would be nothing of use to him. All the food and weapons had been scavenged from here years ago. Could he survive until the helicopter came back? And what if the helicopter never came back?