25.

Mike had chunks of flesh missing in several places. Both his thighs had hunks missing, but his right triceps was the worst. It looked like more than half of it was gone. I pulled more fabric from Mike’s clothing and tied a tourniquet around his right armpit to cut off the flow of blood to his arm. Having successfully sealed the doorway, Alex and Celeste joined us. Mike’s leg wounds looked less threatening, so we stuffed them with golf-ball-sized wads of fabric and tied fabric around the wounds to keep the wads in place.

Mike started coming to, and as always, he wanted to talk. “Thanks, guys, thanks. I don’t know what happened. I was digging through that shelf near the doorway, and those fuckers got the door open somehow. Oh man, oh man, I’m in bad—”

The automated voice spoke and the door slid open.

“Close it for me, Al.”

In one fell swoop, I grabbed Celeste’s weapon and kicked the leading intruder back into the others and out the door. I unloaded rounds into them as Alex shut the door.

“It’s that God-forsaken retina scanner. Those creeps are beating on the door looking for us, and every time a soldier is in front it opens the door for them.”

“Guys, guys, just leave me here,” Mike begged. “You gotta go. You know what’s going to happen to me.”

“No, we don’t,” I barked. “We’re gonna load that van up with food, and then we’re gonna . . .” I looked around the room as I searched desperately for an answer, “we’re gonna take you to one of those research centers to see if they’ve found a cure.”

The personnel door opened again. Celeste and Alex took care of it.

“Royce, we’re not going anywhere if we can’t do something about that door,” Celeste said.

“I know, I know. Gimme a second. I gotta get another gun from the van. The laser on that other one crapped out on me.”

“The gun is fine,” she said. “You just used up the battery. Too much fishing.”

“How do we charge those things?”

“With a charger, of course.”

“Can we get one?”

“Not likely, unless we can get inside their barracks.”

“I know what to do about the door. We can take that forklift and block it with pallets,” Alex suggested.

“That might hold for a while, but there’s too many of them,” I said. “Remember, they don’t feel anything so they’ll just mash themselves into it until it falls over. We need more time than that to load the van. We won’t be able to finish.”

We stood there for a moment.

“I have an idea,” I said. “Celeste, Alex, watch the door. Just, um, don’t stand too close to it, okay? Unless they open it, of course.”

They looked at me like I was crazy, which I guess I was. A ladder on the wall behind us led to the roof. I climbed the ladder and walked over to the edge of the roof directly above the personnel entrance. The zombies below massed around the entrance, pushing and pawing at it because they knew what was inside.

I pulled the neutron grenade from my pocket.

The zombies moved back and forth across the spot where I wanted the grenade to land. I needed a bit of a clearing to throw it into, otherwise it might bounce off somebody and land too close to the door. I couldn’t help but notice that my predicament was a bit like playing a game at the county fair, except my friends would die if I messed up.

I waited and waited until the moment was right. Then I pulled the pin and tossed the grenade underhand toward the clearing like I was throwing a bocce ball. I was so concerned about the grenade landing too close to the door that I threw it too hard in the other direction. I watched the grenade’s high arcing trajectory with bated breath. It cleared the area I wanted it to land in and plucked a zombie in the forehead who stepped into its path. The grenade careened off the ghoul’s forehead and then hopped across the concrete before rolling to a stop in the middle of the clearing I was shooting for. I couldn’t have put it in a better spot if I had walked it out there myself.

I was so busy reveling in my good fortune that I didn’t think to hit the deck. When the grenade went off, the force of the blast took care of that for me. I flew backwards and landed flat on my back. I lay there for a moment watching the glory of a mini mushroom cloud. When the smoke cleared, I leapt to my feet and ran to the edge of the roof to check out the grenade’s handiwork. Just as Celeste had promised, the crater from the blast was roughly fifteen feet in diameter. It was much deeper than I had expected, which was all the better. The zombies outside the blast radius fell into the crater one after another on their way to the door. Once in the crater they were too far away from the retina scanner for it to pick them up. The crater was just close enough to the door that zombies walking in from the sides couldn’t get in front of the scanner without falling into the hole.

“What did you do?” Alex yelled to me as I made my way back down the ladder. “My ears won’t stop ringing.”

“It was the neutron grenade.”

“Why bother?” Celeste asked. “There’s no way you got all of them.”

“Nope. Didn’t get them all, but I did make a big ole hole in front of the door. They’re all falling in, and now they can’t get in front of the scanner.”

“That’s very clever, Royce,” Celeste said with a warm smile.

“Happy to be of service. I’m probably going to get cancer from it, but . . . ”

“Don’t worry about cancer,” Alex said. “It’s not even a serious illness anymore.”

“We better get some more of those grenades then,” I said, grinning. “Seriously though, let’s load the van before too many of those freaks fall in that hole, and they start piling on top of each other.”