VERTICAL CITY: A ZOMBIE THRILLER (BOOK 1 OF 4) by George Mahaffey

Author:George Mahaffey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: apocalypse, zombie, plague, dead, end of the world, undead, dystopian, the remaining, apocalypse zombies, apocalypse apocalyptic

Chapter 5

Shouldering the door open, I enter another hallway and pad up yet another staircase that opens to a space centered by an intricately-detailed diorama of the city.

Shooter’s there, panthering around the diorama, searching for something only he can see. He turns which allows me, for an instant, to study his face in profile. The first thing that comes to mind is racing dog. Seriously, that’s what Shooter looks like: a greyhound, long and lean with closely mown hair. He appears thirty years older than me even though he’s only eleven. Of course running from an army of the undead on a nearly daily basis has a way of prematurely aging you.

Shooter’s a legendary figure amongst the Jumpers, one of the first and the only one of the original group to still be alive. He helped string many of the first sections of The Dream Catcher and would often volunteer to go out on long-range patrols, usually by himself. There are stories about how he was nearly killed dozens of times, yet able to miraculously find some point of exfiltration while single-handedly smoking hundreds of the undead. After breaking his back, pulverizing several vertebrae, and nearly losing an arm, he “retired” and became Odin’s watchman, overseeing the day-to-day operations of the Jumpers and the Hogs and several of the other trades related to The Dream Catcher.

With some effort, Shooter turns and acknowledges me with a bob of his head. I’ve always tried to be as succinct as possible in my jump debriefs since Shooter’s a mercurial sonofabitch; nasty as a bag of broken glass on one day and cool, yet enigmatic on another. The kind of dude who prefers to say “someone put a period on their sentence early,” rather than use a word like “suicide.”

Shooter hunts in a pocket and tosses me a laser-pointer.

“Show me where you trekked, troop,” he says.

The pointer clicks on and I maneuver its red beam over the diorama until the building Del Frisco and me escaped from is located.

“What floors did you recon?”

“Eighteen through twenty-two.”

“Anything?”

“A generator.”

“Gas or solar?”

“Solar.”

Shooter nods approvingly at this, taking back the pointer before crouching on his heels and drawing a mark on the diorama building with a black grease pencil.

“How many of the bad guys did you encounter?”

“Unknown, sir.”

“More than fifty?”

I nod.

“More than three-hundred?”

I shake my head and he looks up at me.

“Both of you make it back?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Del Frisco’s a wild card isn’t he?”

I stare at Shooter who smirks.

“I’m not asking you to rat on the guy, Wyatt. You can tell true.”

My head sinks.

“His methods are… unorthodox, sir.”

Shooter laughs at this and I’m glad he’s in a good mood as he sidles up next to me.

“Did you see anything else? Anything out of the ordinary?”

I feel like screaming at Shooter that everything nowadays is out of the ordinary, but thinking better of it, I simply ask, “Like what, sir?”

“You tell me.”

I know exactly what Shooter’s asking about. He’s fishing for info on the numbers we saw scrawled on the inside of the building.

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