“I saw a couple vehicles from the roof.” Clara conveyed her plan to the rest of the group. They were sitting on padded, cube-shaped stools in the first floor plaza area nearby where they had built their improvised table-defences. Andy lounged in a massage chair nearby drinking absinthe, smacking his lips after every sip. He must have found a coin to insert, because the chair buzzed and jiggled the bottle in his hand.

“They might be operable,” she continued. “We don’t know until we try. But if they’re not, we’ll have to steal a couple bikes.”

“I don’t know how to drive a motorbike,” Linton said.

“I’ve driven a moped once before,” Riddhi said. She looked at Robert for an answer. Since Clara had scouted out the roof, the mercenary had taken some clothes from a nearby store to replace his rags. He looked remarkably smart in black trousers and a white buttoned up shirt, the tusks of his Hogs tattoo poking above the collar. Only his grimy hands and blood splotched bandages gave away the smart disguise. He held up his injured arm. “Might be tough.”

“Our other option is to stand and fight,” Clara said. “Whatever that entails.” She wouldn’t mention the possibility of the vampire resurrecting and returning for vengeance, that would only lower morale.

Linton leaned forward on his stool, tying the laces on a pair of trainers he’d finally managed to scavenge. Between his shins nestled the payload, like a baby chick beneath its roosting mother. “If we could communicate with Blue Eyes somehow, we could ask him to send a rescue party.”

“That’s a big if,” Clara said. “Our radios are short range, line of sight. I didn’t see any radio dishes on the roof, just network relays.”

“What if you two escaped, drove to Quadra, then alerted Blue Eyes and came back with reinforcements.”

“We’ve discussed this already. I’m not leaving the payload,” Clara said.

“Send him then.” Linton nodded at Andy. A strip of sunlight caught Andy’s chair. He slumped and dozed, the bottle of booze dangled limp in his hand.

“We don’t split up like that.”

“Then take me and tell Blue Eyes and come back with reinforcements,” he stammered, his mind racing ahead of his words. “Or, no. We hide. We find somewhere and lock all the doors and stay quiet, wait for it all to pass. Or, maybe we could pay them off, the goths? Pay one of them to take us, betray their clan.”

“I don’t think that will work.”

“But-”

“Linton,” Clara said. “Take a breath.”

“They’re professionals,” Riddhi said.

Linton scoffed. “Some professional situation we’re in right now, with a demon chasing us and an army of cultists at the gates. It’s only gotten worse since they rescued us.”

“But we were rescued,” Riddhi said.

“I don’t care. I don’t care about any of this anymore.” He stood up and straightened his stained lab coat. “I’m a researcher, not a soldier. I shouldn’t be here. You can decide what we do without me, not like I have a say anyway.” Storming off, he swung his metal briefcase like a marching batton.

Clara pinched her temples and ground her teeth. She rose and took the booze from Andy’s grasp, swigging it, grimacing as the absinthe trickled into her stomach. She felt nauseatingly tired. “I can’t think.”

“You’re doing very well,” Riddhi said. “Please don’t take what Linton said to heart. He is exhausted. And scared. We all are.”

Clara smiled. “Thanks.” She pulled three of the cubic stools together and lied down. “I need a couple hours. Could you keep watch?”

“Any way I can help,” she said, retrieving the pistol from her belt and placing it in her lap.

Nearby, Robert rose and wandered away from their meeting. “I’ll take a look around.”

“Stay safe,” Clara said, setting an alarm on her terminal. “Wake me if there’s anything.” As soon as her head hit the padding, she fell asleep.

It was as if she’d blinked. Riddhi stood above her, shaking her shoulder. “Wake up.”

Clara sat upright, rubbing her eyes. “What is it?”

“There’s zombies outside.”

She stretched her neck. “How many?”

“Lots.”

“How long was I out?”

“Almost three hours.”

Clara checked her terminal. She’d set the alarm wrong. Stupid.

“I’ll go look,” she said.

They had transported all of their supplies from the jeep up to the first floor earlier that day. Among them was a duffel bag containing Clara’s scoped rifle. She unzipped the bag and slung the gun, pocketing the extra two magazines it possessed. Each held twenty high calibre rounds. A box of rounds inside the bag contained a further sixty. She hadn’t used the rifle much on their mission so far, so it was well stocked for ammo.

Clara glanced at Andy, he was still snoozing in the massage chair. Best to leave him like that, let him get some sleep.

“Where did you see them?”

“Outside,” Riddhi said.

“Which direction, I mean?”

“Every direction.”

Clara scowled. “Stay here, watch over him.”

Clara walked to the balcony’s edge which overlooked the glass entrance on the ground floor. From here, she could see all the way out into the parking lot. Skeletal shapes draped in oversized rags roamed towards the shopping complex under a gloomy sky. She spotted no more than a dozen, but they might attract more. “How do they know we’re here?”

“I don’t know,” Riddhi said, panic filtering into her voice.

“When you were at the research centre, was this normal? Were they drawn to you?”

Riddhi shook her head. “Only in the final two weeks. Before then, we were safe.”

Clara bit her lip, unsure of what to make of it. She ducked inside the restaurant which they had barricaded and headed to a large window at the rear which overlooked the car park from a different angle. Zombies approached the mall from all directions. An explosion sounded nearby–much closer than she had heard them earlier that day. Clara spotted a plume of smoke and debris rising from a road out of sight. A motorbike appeared near it, then dipped out of sight, driving slowly towards their position. Clara fished her binoculars from her bag and spied the vehicle. It appeared again, closer than before. There were two goths riding it, and something was strapped to the side. A black rectangular box. Clara focussed her lenses, it was a speaker. A handful of zombies stumbled into view down the road, following after the bike, then a horde. The goths were shepherding them.

“It’s not random,” Clara said. “They’re being shepherded.”

The undead amassed, forming clusters, bunching together in piles whenever they were left alone for long enough. But the goffs kept them moving, kept drawing their attention and directing them towards the shopping complex. It would be too dangerous to go outside and work on a vehicle now, not to mention a colossal waste of ammo.

“Look familiar?” Clara said.

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“I bet this is what happened to you guys, why the research centre got overrun. You don’t remember seeing any cultists in the area?”

“I was focussed on my research. The militia were supposed to keep us safe.”

Clara sighed, rubbing her silver watch. Well, that settled it then. She returned to the plaza area and rifled through her backwack, swapping the gear over from the batwing backpack before throwing it away. Taking her normal clothes behind a nearby pillar, she changed back into her combat outfit and returned to the group feeling refreshed and prepared. Andy still snoozed in the massage chair. Robert sat on the stools beside a pile of clothing and the trolley of absinthe bottles they’d pillaged. He was tearing old shirts into strips, soaking them in the absinthe and jamming the cloth into the tops of bottles. As Clara approached, he handed her a bottle.

“Bouquet for the lady.”

“Oh, my favourite.” She sniffed the cloth poking out of the top, the ethanol fumes made her eyes water.

“I don’t know much about this strain of zombies, but in my experience, everything hates fire.”

“Good call. So you’ve seen the horde?”

“I have,” he said. “Figured you do with a little more rest.”

“Thanks.” Clara looked away, biting her lip. It was true, but she felt like an idiot for needing to sleep. “Well, this limits our options, doesn’t it. I don’t think we’ll be moving out of here any time soon.”

“Yeah.” Robert finished the last of the molotov cocktails, placing it in the trolley with the rest. “I’ve had an idea about the escalators. If we place a board on top of them, just a slab of varnished wood, they’re going to be fairly difficult to climb up. Might stump a horde, or even the cultists, if any try and run up it.”

“Just a slab of wood?”

“A tabletop would do.”

“Okay, good idea.” Clara placed her cocktail amongst the rest. “Or, we move everything to the roof?”

Robert stared out of the window while he thought about her proposition.

“No,” Clara said. “No, that won’t work. Too exposed. They could climb up anywhere on the wall, put snipers on overwatch and fill these floors with undead. We’re better off fighting them here where they’re bottlenecked.”

“Save it for plan C,” Robert said, limping over to where Lintong was slumped on the floor outside their barricaded base. “Hey, Linton was it? Come give me a hand.”

The scientist picked himself up off the floor, carrying the payload with him inside. Clara followed them, and found Riddhi sorting through supplies which she’d scavenged from nearby shops–a few canned tins and bottles of liquid. Some of it was consumable. As Calra sat beside her inspecting the haul, Riddhi cracked open a can of pop and took out a tray of pills. She swallowed each with procedural movement, unfocussed on her task. Then her eyes flickered, and she looked at Clara. “Is there a pharmacy nearby?”

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“There should be one. Probably looted already.”

Riddhi’s head drifted back to the table.

“What for?”

Riddhi placed the tray back inside her lab coat’s inner pocket. “My medication.”

“What do you take? I can keep an eye out.”

“Lamotrigine, for seizures.”

“Oh.” Clara wasn’t sure what else to say. Riddhi looked her in the eye and smiled sheepishly, then turned her attention to a pot of honey she’d scavenged.

“It’s okay. I have suffered with them ever since I was a young girl. You won’t believe it, when I first went to the doctors, they told me I was overreacting.” She leaned in closer. “They said it was just my period playing up.”

“Wow.” Clara took out a small spoon she kept handy within her pouches and dipped into the honey pot. “But, the medication works?”

“Only thing that stops me from blacking out and banging my head.” Riddhi licked her fork. “Not the easiest to find nowadays. Expensive.”

“Is it rare?”

“Lamotrigine is, yes. I need iron tablets as well, and I should be on a few others, but I manage without them.” Riddhi fidgeted with the bangles around her wrist, and Clara felt her own hand being drawn towards her small silver watch. “It’s why I do all of this, honestly. Our research… I have a mind for it. And the salary, it keeps me alive. I need these pills, and they are rare.”

“How many do you have there?” Clara asked.

“Four days left,” she said. “I will make them last eight.”

“We’ll be back in Quadra before then.” A waft of perfume drifted from the Riddhi’s freshly scavenged clothes. Clara hadn’t even considered smelling nice. Suddenly, she felt embarrassed, unwomanly, whatever that meant. “Your perfume smells nice.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.” Riddhi rose immediately and retrieved the bottle from nearby. “Here, there is plenty to share.”

“Thank you.” Clara sprayed herself, then got up. “Anyway, back to work.” Riddhi started to rise, but Clara stook her hand out. “No, no. Get some rest. I’ve had a couple hours, now you get yours.”

Riddhi sunk back into the table. “Thank you.”

Clara returned to the balcony plaza, where Andy slumped in his massage chair. She had mistook him for being asleep, but actually, he stared into the shadows with a sunken expression.

“You alright?” she asked.

“Eh, I don’t know.”

“What’s up?” She rarely saw him concerned. It troubled her. If Andy was afraid, then they were in deep.

“Last night,” he said. “I could have done better. I need to.”

“It’s okay Andy.” Clara knelt beside him, her heart fluttering. It took a lot for him to admit his weakness; she had to choose her words very carefully so that he wouldn’t close off again. “We did well considering we were improvising. We’ve got the payload. We’re alive, relatively uninjured. You developed a new ability, right?”

“Yeah,” he grumbled.

“Well, that’s good. Like you always say, we’ll improvise, we’ll manage.”

“I wasn’t improvising.” Andy leaned forward in the massage chair and sighed, shaking his head.

“What’s up?”

“I had plenty of time to think of something better to say, but all I could come up with was vamp-why-are you such a pussy. What does that even mean?” Andy put his head in his hands. “Oh, it’s making me cringe.”

“Are you joking?”

“Huh, you don’t think so?”

Clara scowled at him.

“Do you think maybe… it was cool in like a careless way?”

“Andy, why the fuck are you thinking about one-liners at a time like this?”

“It’s important. You have to leave a strong impression.”

Clara scoffed, frustration catching the words on her tongue.

“Can you think of anything better?” Andy asked, his tone as genuine as ever she’d heard it.

Clara clenched her eyes shut and took three long breaths to settle her emotions. “I figured out what the explosions from earlier were. Do you care?”

Andy sighed. “I care.”

“The cultists aren’t fighting anything, they’re luring zombies to our location.”

“Huh.”

“There’s already too many for us to move around outside, and at night, it’s gonna get worse.”

“Okay, so it’s a siege.”

“Yep.”

“How we looking for ammo?”

“We’ve still got two belts left for your heavy machine gun, so two hundred rounds. My DMR is well stocked, we haven’t used it much, but my submachine gun is low. I’ve got two magazines, but one’s only half full. As for pistols, I have a .45 with four full mags. Forty rounds. I gave everyone else a .45 too from those we took from the cultists’ van yesterday. They each have a spare magazine.”

“Julie’s got plenty,” Andy said, stroking the wood polished handle of his revolver. “I’ll take a look at the rest.”

They moved over to their stockpile in the restaurant. Robert and Linton carried one of the heavy tables outside as they passed.

“Six full magazines for the AR,” Andy counted. “A couple for this 9mm.” He patted the second holster at his ribs. “I’m out of grenades.”

“We’ve got a few spare,” Clara said, fishing the padded box out from amongst the pile. “Top up.”

Andy put on his ammunition vest underneath his leather jacket and clipped five grenades to his bandolier. With his ammunition vest fully stocked with magazines, he didn’t look so skinny anymore.

“Give us a hand,” he said, pointing to the HMG.

“I thought you were a big strong man now,” Clara said. “Can’t you carry this on your own?”

“Only when I’m pissed off,” he said. “And it’s knackering.”

“So there’s a limitation to the ability?” Clara asked as they carried their gear outside.

“I think so, until I… you know, do the thing.”

“Recalibrate?”

Andy nodded.

“Look at you, getting with the programme.”

Andy looked over the massive gun fondly. “I feel like a sell-out.”

“Yeah, you are.”

Nearby, Linton and Robert were attaching a heavy table to the top of the escalator, using rope they had scavenged from a DIY store to tie it to nearby railings and prevent it slipping all of the way down the steps. Linton grunted as he took the weight of the table, shifting it to where Robert instructed. Dropping it, the scientist arched his back and panted. “It’s too heavy. Can’t we just blow the steps up?”

“What with?” Robert said.

“Grenades,” Linton snapped, as though he was speaking to a child.

The mercenary raised an eyebrow and shared a look with Clara. “You carrying many?”

She shook her head.

“Fragmentation grenades aren’t for demolitions,” Robert said, knocking on the elevator’s solid steel casing. “We’d need a load of plastic or dynamite to blow this thing.”

“Yeah,” Calra said. “Also, we don’t want to fully block off any attackers, just make it harder for them to get to us. Bottleneck them. Surprise them. It’s not about shutting them out completely, because then we’re just trapping ourselves in here. It’s all about forcing them to make hard decisions in the spare of the moment.”

“I get it,” Linton said.

“If we had enough explosives for this,” Robert continued. “There’d be a better use for them. But if you have any other suggestions, don’t wait so long to ask.”

Linton grumbled and went back to shifting the table. Clara helped him slide it in place. Within minutes,the smooth, varnished wood of the tables turned the escalators into slides. The zombies struggled with steps alone, they’d have a lot of difficulty climbing up now, and while they struggled, they’d make for easy targets.

“Right,” Clara said. “Get set up.”

Andy chose a spot behind a row of marble plant pots at the edge of the balcony to place his machine gun. He had an eye for picking good spots. The position overlooked the building’s large glass archway entrance, and had visibility on each of two escalators, one of which was to his immediate left, the other was opposite him at the other end of the circular balcony. There was a large marble pillar behind him. If he needed to abandon the position, there was immediate cover from any angle.

He set the tripod up on top of the platpots. It was rickety where the crash had damaged it, but could still swerve about forty-five degrees around. If he needed to adjust it further, he’d just have to pick it up. He loaded the machine gun with one of the belts, placing the second belt beneath the plant pot.

“Let’s build this area up some more,” Clara said. Thankfully, there were still plenty of tables inside the restaurant to take. Together, they began creating a waist-high barricade around the position.

“Silver,” Andy said. “Vampires hate the stuff, right?”

“Supposedly, yeah.” Clara looked around to make sure the others weren’t nearby. She wanted to keep them focussed on the zombies and cultists, not worried about the added threat of vampire.

“I saw a jewellery store on the ground floor,” Andy said. “We should take some. Might be useful.”

“What else?” Clara said.

“Sunlight, obviously. But we can’t exactly bag that up.”

“Wooden stakes?”

“Yeah, we could carry one each.”

They set a final table upright against the plant pot, pulling a second heavy table behind it. This created an L shaped barrier on either side of the gunner’s position.

“Do you think it’s going to come to that?” Clara asked nervously. “Close quarters with a vampire?”

Andy shrugged. “We got lucky, didn’t we. Started shooting when the sun came up. Doubt it’ll be that easy again.”

“Maybe it is dead. Maybe the sunlight killed it.”

“Plan for the worst,” Andy said, sitting against the barricade and taking a sip of absinthe. “Damn, that’s good stuff.”

Robert approached the two of them. “That should slow them down.” The older merc sweated, and the blood splotches staining his clothes had expanded, but his eyes were alert. A pale patch had appeared in the centre of the welt on his face–the first signs of recovery. “I’ve had an idea for a trap.”

“What’s that?” Clara asked.

“Rig some explosives to the glass ceiling.” Robert pointed at the archway overhanging the main entrance. “If you rig it properly, you can bring the whole thing down. Cover the lobby in shards of glass.”

“What do you need to make it work?”

“Gunpowder. Not loads. I can take it from any of the ammunition casings we won’t be using.”

“I think we’ll be using all of it,” Clara said. “But I do have plenty of 7.62. How much will you need?”

“Ten rounds should do. I’ll make the explosives, if you think you could climb up there to attach them?”

Clara inspected the steel beams holding up the archway. She could attach a safety rope somewhere and probably get quite high up the wall, if only she could source a ladder to take her past the first ten metres of vertical beam.

“We’ve got about four hours before it’s properly dark,” Robert said. We could be done for then.”

Clara imagined his plan in action, mapping it out in her mind. Outside, a handful of zombies approached the entryway, pressing their faces up against the glass. Earlier, they had blocked the shattered doorway with a pile of coffee tables and chairs taken from the cafe below. It would stop zombies from wandering in, but wouldn’t hold once the night arrived and they became enraged. “Linton, grab every piece of furniture you can find on the ground floor and shove it up against the glass.”

“I need a minute,” the scientist said, slouching against the marble pillar with the payload between his legs, massaging his forearms. Clara stared at the metal briefcase. All of this trouble for that.

“What’s inside the briefcase?” she asked.

Linton shook his head in his lap, wrapping his legs around the payload.

“Could it be useful?” Clara asked.

“It’s nothing like that,” Linton said. “It’s just research.”

“Worth risking your life over?” Robert said.

“Worth basing my entire life upon,” he replied.

Clara took the absinthe from Andy and offered it to the scientist. “Here.” The scrawny man took two big sips and spluttered. Clara bent and grabbed the briefcase from beneath him. He looked up at her, shocked.

“I’m gonna stick it with the rest of our stuff,” she said. “It’ll be safer there than you carrying it around everywhere.”

“No, I can’t take my eyes off it.”

“Yes you can,” Clara said. “Our primary objective right now is to get this back to Blue Eyes. Our secondary objective is to save your life.” She smiled. “Consider it a courtesy and do what I say. Start barricading the entrance, please.”

“You won’t be able to get inside without the code,” Linton said, taking a step towards her.

“I don’t intend to. But I bet Blue Eyes has the code.”

Linton nodded slowly. His eyes lingered on the payload, then his shoulder slouched and he headed over to the nearest escalator. A length of thick rope had been lowered over the length of two tables covering the steps, making it possible for them to climb between the ground and first floor.

“Remind me,” Robert said. “How much are we getting paid to keep him alive?”

“Quite a lot,” Clara said, handing him a pouch of 7.76.

“It’s always the annoying ones.” He disappeared into the barricaded restaurant to work on the explosives.

Clara took out a notepad and pencil, jotting down a list. “I need you to grab some things,” she addressed Andy.

Andy had since retrieved the bottle of absinthe and was sitting on a stool with his feet up sipping it with the purview of the lobby below like an old man drinking on his porch.

“I’m on guard,” he slurred. “Get one of the others to do it.”

“Which others?”

Andy waved his bottle towards their fortified position behind him.

“I will if you can say their names.”

Andy winced. “Specs, Ball-pit and… Limpy.”

“Limpy?”

“Yeah, he limped.”

“Once, while we were escaping. Have you seen him limp since?”

Andy shrugged. “A little bit.”

“His name’s Robert,” Clara said. “Get up.”

“Give me a minute.”

Clara booted the padded stool out from under him, sending him sprawling on the floor. She snorted, holding back her laughter. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to do that.”

“Blood hell, chill out.” Andy rose and leaned on the balcony.

“Right, now that you’re awake.” Clara handed him the notepad with a shopping list. “You can make yourself useful.”