I swore to myself. I took my time aiming the second rocket, accounting for error. I touched it off. The rocket hissed up, nearly out of site. A tendril of smoke puffed as it blew the shoot. The parachute misfired and didn’t deploy, perhaps burned in the jettison charge. The rocket pin-wheeled downward and landed behind a building outside the refinery, far from my mark.
I picked up the third rocket and drew in a steady breath.
This time, I placed the rocket on the parapet at the edge of the roof and stacked a few bricks around it, making a kind of launching shoot. I licked a finger and stuck it into the air. Wafts of a breeze arched over the top of the bank building. I adjusted the rocket’s aim by shimming it with shingles I peeled from the roof.
I re-wetted my finger and stuck it up for a final wind test. I struck the zippo and waited for the right moment.
After nearly a minute, I felt an ebb in the breeze. I touched off the fuse and watched it shrink, sizzling and spitting. The rocket hissed upward into the sky. I followed it until it disappeared into the wash of smoke that emitted from the refinery. I visored my eyes with one hand and panned across the sky. I spotted it, dangling from its parachute, weaving in the breeze and smoke. Uttering a prayer, I watched it descend.
The rocket landed in the parking lot at the east end of the refinery, inside the fence barrio, out of reach from the undead. I pumped my fist in triumph. The rocket had hit its mark.
I remained on the roof until dark, staring at the white patch of parachute, flicking in the breeze just inside the compound. Finally, with the sun down, I lost site of it. Nobody had come for my rocket.
I couldn’t worry. Those in the refinery would either find it or they wouldn’t. I would go through with my plan, whether it led me to salvation or death.
I left the roof and went to my office camping spot. I laid down on my bedroll, put my hands behind my neck and stared up at the ceiling. Sleep didn’t come for a very long time.
15 – July 10th, Year 1
I picked the eastern parking lot for a reason; a long, steep hill dumped into that lot. I wanted speed and I was hoping for cover fire from the refinery occupants as I neared the entrance. I knew I would get velocity on my bicycle. It was cover fire I worried about. If my note hadn’t been received, I would ride into a maelstrom of groping arms and chattering teeth.
The undead would turn me. Something in their blood infected the living and frosted the mind with an insatiable appetite I had seen in their numbers. Early reports on the radio confirmed this. Before the airwaves blinked out, newscasters had latched onto a reel of a man being turned. I had watched it over and over while holding my breath.
If they tore me apart, I could deal with it. I couldn’t deal with becoming one of them. I loaded two Glock magazines with 17 bullets each. I would have to count once I started touching off rounds. I planned to fire 17, change the magazine, then fire 16. I would use the last bullet on myself should I become hopelessly surrounded. A bullet to the head wouldn’t hurt, not really.
I tucked the Glock into my waistband, strapped the Gibson over my shoulder, and made my way downstairs to my mountain bike in the alley behind the bank building.
I took one last look up at the third-floor window where I had spent the past couple of nights before getting on my bike and kicking off.
I straddled my mountain bike at the top of a three-block hill that ran downward to the eastern gate of the refinery. Undead blocked the entrance. They kept two yards back from the electric fence that ran the perimeter of the compound. They gaped through the intermeshed fence, longing for meat that walked on two legs just beyond their reach. They paid no attention to me. I stood upwind from them. Their minds (and appetites) were distracted. But the second I rode within their sensory range, I knew they would turn their teeth on me.
Last chance to back out, I thought as I looked down at them. But I hadn’t come all this way to chicken out. This would either be my reinduction into humanity or my final moment on earth.
I kicked off and stood on the pedals. It felt like I was moving at a hundred miles per hour. I must have been going only thirty-five or so, but I am unaccustomed to riding at such speed. I had strapped the Gibson as tightly as I could to my back before setting off, but I felt the thing acting like a sail, bobbing and slamming against me in the wind, resisting the pressure of my streamlined trajectory.
When I kicked off, I saw nobody behind the tall Eastern gates to greet me. A smarter me would have called the whole thing off. But this final act of desperation had another purpose; If I couldn’t live with my own kind, I didn’t care to live at all. Making a headlong attempt at nearly impossible odds merely put an honorable slant to my suicide.
Suicide or no, I was riding into the fray. Already some of the rear ranks of undead turned toward me. Their queer eyes settled on me in what could only be perplexity. They had spotted me, something out of place in their world of the norm. Had they ever had a warm-blooded being come straight at them, much less at such high speed?
A few of them peeled out of the crowd and began their slow shambles toward me, temporarily forgetting the refinery. There may be scores of humans inside the electric fence. But here was one within easy grasp: me.
I leaned into the handle bars as I reached the bottom of the three block grade. As I bottomed out, I lost sight of the electric gate. I could only see masses of undead, more of them coming at me. They made that rattling, guttural noise I had heard so many times since leaving Marshall Jr. High School, a sound that terrified me. But even in the face of so many of them I felt no fear. This was it. I was going to live, or I was going to die.
I drew the Glock from my waistband and fired into the crowd. I’m not sure how many I hit. I saw a few of them curl back into their numbers. But there was no way to take an accurate aim from the seat of a moving mountain bike. I just fired. If they were human they would have ran for cover or at least hit the dirt in some attempt to get away from my shooting. But the things seemed oblivious to bullets. Their numbers fell and they didn’t even grant a casual glance. They merely stepped over their fallen and kept coming.
I fired off all seventeen of the first magazine. I let the bike coast and took my hands off the handlebars to slam the second magazine into the weapon. I aimed. I fired. I hit one of them in the head, a woman with a wicker basket hanging from one arm. Her head exploded into a mess of tissue.
I remembered Mrs. Pemberthy, my history teacher, back at Marshall Jr. High School. She had particularly loved the Revolutionary War and had spent most of a semester covering it in detail. She told us kids about the Battle of Bunker Hill and about how William Prescott had told his soldiers not to fire until they saw the whites of the enemy’s eyes. I hadn’t waited until I could see the whites of the undeads’ eyes. But I sure as hell could see those whites before I saw any sign of the refinery gate opening.
I touched off sixteen of the seventeen rounds in the second magazine. I allowed myself only a moment’s pause to consider my next move before beginning my exit plan.
I pressed the barrel of the Glock against my temple and raised my off hand up from the handlebars. I coasted that way, gun to head, off arm up, my eyes on the mob of undead straight ahead of me. I uttered a brief prayer. I even flicked my eyes up to the sky for a fleeting second.
I tightened my trigger finger to the point of fear.
An explosion went off.
In shock, I thought I had blown my head off. I became remotely aware first that there was