They Call Me Daring

Chapter 28

"Wow, ditches are looking nice." I nodded my approval when I jogged up. Seemingly overnight, the perimeter of trenches had grown to a ten-by-ten foot tunnel.
Ted looked up from down inside, wiping the sheen of sweat from his forehead. "Yeah, well, we've been working our butts off. And it's all thanks to your old man." He nodded, jerking his head over to the far end, where I could just make out my father's tall figure gesturing to people, giving out orders.
"Did you come for him?" Ted asked, squinting up at me.
"What? No, no, God no."
Ted raised an eyebrow. "Family problems, eh? Happens to all of us. I'm sure you guys'll get over it eventually." He wiped down the back of his neck. "That is, if we live long enough."
I left soon after, before my father could see me, and checked up on the church. They had dug a good sized trench on three sides, and I told them to move on to the forth. Better to have mediocre protection all around than three very well protected sides and one vulnerable section.
By the time I got back to the mansion, Clark had every able bodied young man and woman lined up inside the gate, and unrolling a large bundle of wire.
"Liam!" He greeted me when I entered with my usual fashion- hurtling over the wall.
"Hey." I dropped down lightly, and strolled over to him in the center of the lawn, every eye on me. "What's up?"
"We're trying to electrify the gate. Run wires down the side walk." Clark explained, running his fingers through the cables. He paused, frowning. "Except I don't know how to do that."
I sighed. "Anybody here have any experience with... you know, electrocuting people?" I looked up and down the line.
"Sure." One man stepped forwards. "I was an electrician before... well, I can handle cables, no problem."
"Great." I clapped my hands together. "Alright then. You, Clark, a couple others, you guys start planting those things everywhere- just make sure you map it out or something so we don't all die, right?"
"What about the rest of us?" Somebody stepped forwards, a cap cocked down over their face so I couldn't see them. A cap that looked oddly familiar.
"Some of you can go scavenge out supplies and stock up. Some others, you can start digging out back- we need as much storage space as possible. We also need to figure out a watch tower or something, too." I reasoned.
"And what about the bomb?" Everyone in the line suddenly fell silent, gaping at me and the hatted person.
I blinked, trying to regain my stature. "Excuse me?"
"Liam," Meg whipped my cap off her head and shook out her hair, gazing at me in exasperation. "You need to tell them."
I stared at her in disbelief, then sighed. "Okay, you guys deserve to know.
"Me and Meg-" She glared at me, and I glared back. "Yeah, you're part of this too, now. We- and the Doc- agreed it's time to end this. For once, a real end. To win our world back."
"How will a bomb do this?"
"The Doc and us... we're trying to make some kind of gas that will kill only the zombies, kill off infected brain cells or something."
"And if this doesn't work?"
"If it doesn't work..." I repeated slowly. "If it doesn't work, we die fighting. If we sit by holed up in our little forts, eventually we're going to die. Whether it's from the... the zombies, or maybe food-poisoning, or dehydration- it can't last forever. We're dangling by a thread as it is- now that they're evolving, that thread is gonna snap- unless we do something about it.
"We can die unceremoniously, the last resistance of the human race. We can hide and cower in the corner and fizzle out without a flame or a stain. Or we can fight back, and maybe win our world back. Of course, there's always the chance it could go horribly wrong- but at least we'd go down kicking and screaming. Which is the way I plan to go." I looked up and down the silent line, meeting every pair of eyes, wide and scared and honest.
"So what do you say? Are you going to run and hide and die without leaving your mark on the world? Or are you with me? Are you going to fight back even when there's nothing to fight for? ARE YOU?!"
Silence.
Then the roar rose all at once, a rumbling, roiling broth of voices which grew as one, rising until it was a deafening thunder.
"YEAH!" I screamed along with them, and I saw Meg roll her eyes in the corner of my vision. She was impressed, I could tell.
Five minutes later everyone was hard at work. Clark and the electrician, Mick, and a couple of other guys had set out winding raw wires into the steel bars of the gate, webbing them down the sidewalk out front, our most exposed side. I had another hundred people divided up into small groups, one weapon per group, to scout the outer blocks and scavenge for anything useful they could find.
There was a crew that was digging the holes in the lawn, tearing up the sod to build small storage cellars. And then there was my group for the watchtower.
"Right. Well, it would make sense to start at the roof, I suppose." I said thoughtfully, squinting up into the cold white sun.
"Yeah. Easy for you to say." Meg said next to me. She was wearing blue jeans and a black cut off tank-top, a black bandana holding back her mane of red hair. Her eyes sparkled in the sunlight, her skin glowing like-right, never mind. That's not important. Just ignore all of that. Yeah, no. What?
"Rope." I demanded, and in an instant a thirty foot coil was pressed into my hand. Jeez, it was like having a personal arsenal of servants.
"Be back in a jiffy." I murmured, then took off running. The sluggishness of day was very faint now, and I doubted there was only one reason for that. I felt my shoes gripping the drying grass, the cold wind whipping my face like a... whip... and then I was off the ground and forcing my legs to keep pumping vertically up the wall. Up and up, I felt my momentum running out, felt my own weight dragging me back down, and I kicked off with all my strength, throwing myself upwards, into the sky.
I flung out my arm and caught the overhang by the finger tips. I swung my other hand up and regained my grip, slowly pulling myself upwards with the raw power of my arms.
Biceps and forearms bulging, I felt the sweat rolling down the back of my neck despite the cold from the strain. Every muscle in my body was clenched, trying to keep me from plummeting down three stories to my death. I slowly found purchase on the slate shingling, and dragged myself upwards.
The minute my body was on solid surface once more, I flopped over and gasped like a fish in the stark, white sun and billowing wind.
"Liam, you still alive up there?" I heard Meg call out from below.
"Wouldn't you like to know?" I gasped back, but I don't know that she heard me anyways.
After another minute I rolled over and flung the rope down off the side. "Ready!" I called into the wind, bracing myself on the rough shingles and pulling back. A moment later there was a tug on the rope as somebody hoisted themselves up.
Straining, I leaned completely backwards, taking slow backwards steps, slowly pulling them upwards. After a minute or two of sweat and pain, hot tiles and sliding sneakers, a hand emerged over the top of the roof, and a young man hoisted himself up and over.
He helped me pull up the next person, which made it a little easier. It took almost half an hour to get all fifteen of us up on the roof. Then we all sat panting, shivering in the whipping wind.
"Okay, Liam." Meg shivered next to me. "Now what?"
"Now we build a tower." I said, confused. I thought it was obvious.
"With what?"
Crap. I frowned down at the ground, then raised my gaze to inspect the nearby streets and alleys. Something, anything, that we could use. A pile of wood or metal, chicken wire, a ladder, anything. And then I saw it.
"That." I pointed, and Meg raised an eyebrow.
"Okay, but you're going to get it up here."
I leapt off the roof without another thought- I heard people cry out behind me, before they saw the white hair and realized it was me. Then it was fine.
I hit the ground running and hurtled up and over the fence, right over Clark's head.
"Dude!" He shouted, ducking just as my feet cleared his head.
"Sorry!" I called back. "A little help would be nice, though!"
Ten minutes later we had the tiny ice fishing shack tied with rope, and a nice pulley system up to the roof.
"Ready when you are!" I called back to the line of Clark's annoyed helpers, jumping up on top of the shack to help pull it up. A tug on the rope, and the old wooden planks groaned.
"Again!" I grabbed the slack rope to help pull. Another collective heave- and the shack rose up a couple of feet off the ground. I pulled down with all my strength again, and the shack inched up along the wall. Soon I was two stories up.
Now, there's a slight problem with makeshift pulley lines. We didn't exactly have a safety lock. If the rope slipped out of the ground crew's hands, down we would go. I would, of course, be fine. But I couldn't say the same for the shack, which was groaning as the ropes constricted around it.
"Faster!" I called down, yanking on the rope. Slowly, it rose, and then there was the thud of wood on wood. It had hit the overhang.
A cheer rose up from below as my crew on the roof hastened to fasten the old rope to the shack and the guys on the ground finally released  the rope.
The shack dropped suddenly, and I heard the guys on the roof sliding forwards, dragged toward the edge with the strain.
"Come on, guys!" I shouted, leaping up onto the roof with them (at that point my weight was only dragging it down. "Now, with me! Pull!"
I grabbed the rope near the front, kicking my feet forward, as my toes slowly grated towards the edge of the roof, and I was looking down thirty feet below at the worried faces of the ground crew.
Growling, a low, animal sound starting in the back of my throat and growing until it tore at the air, I snarled in defiance and threw myself backwards. No way was this mere object going to drag me and all these people down with it. I was strong. I wasn't going to let them down.
"With me! Now! PULL!" I roared, feeling my heart pumping faster. Slowly, too slowly, we began to regain ground, putting distance between my toes and the edge of the roof, and the shack ground up the side of the house, the roof slowly emerging. "Almost there! Keep pulling!"
I felt the adrenaline rush coming on, just like I had earlier in the alley. I knew I needed to let go, before I lost control and murdered everyone. I had almost bitten my own brother earlier- what was going to stop me from tearing all these people apart?
I loosened my grip, panting, trying to keep it down. I couldn't lose my head, not now. I grabbed the rope again, and pulled with renewed vigor, focusing on the burning in my hands and the sweat on my back, the things that made me human.
"Liam." I hear Meg's voice over the pounding in my ears, a soft, whispered warning, one that most people wouldn't have heard. But I heard it. And it dragged me back.
Grinding my teeth, I yanked upwards on the line, feeling it fall slack behind me as everyone else lost their grip. I groaned, heaving on the line, my heart running a hundred meter dash, and then- thump.
The shack grated to a halt on the roof, and the rope fell slack. I immediately let go, treading quickly backwards, putting as much distance as possible between me and everyone else while I tried to find myself.
My vision pulsed red, and I felt myself going, even as I fought against it. My head was throbbing, and everything was sharp as knives, from the sun on my back to the throbbing in my sore palms. I panted, my chest rising and falling a million miles a minute, and I tried to calm down. But I couldn't.
I was about to lose it. Not here, not now. But yes- red again, and I smelled the irresistible scent of human flesh and blood. Bleeding hands from the rope, the scent stained the air, and I turned to face them, fury pounding it's tattoo on the inside of my skull, trying to escape, and I tensed up, preparing to launch myself forwards to rip apart all the pitiful humans and release their blood on the world-
And faced a girl. Her eyes were big and I saw the fear spark in them, and laughed heartily at her insolence, pitiful thing, the red hair swirling round her face in the breeze like a halo of blood... blood... I dove for her neck, going for the kill...
And her hands gripped my neck, to my great surprise- pulling me towards her! And then... she kissed me.
I felt my heart rate drop to none in an instant, as if the world were suddenly standing still to watch, holding its breath. The world faded from the red and the pounding and the anger... it all dripped away, replaced by an absolute, concrete sense of realness.
This was real, it was me. This was love.
This was human.
I had closed my eyes, and there was nothing but Meg and me and the cold breeze trying to pull me away from her... but I wouldn't let go, not ever. The moment lasted forever.
And ended much too soon. When she finally pulled away, I blinked in the sudden brightness of everything. She squinted into my eyes, and sighed in relief.
"Green again, Liam." She winked at me and turned away like that. I blinked, infinitely confused. What was she talking about? What was green?
It was when I went back over and caught my reflection in the tin tool box I had brought up in the shack that I realized what she meant. My eyes had gone back to their original green.
For the next hour I was wild with happiness. I laughed at the jokes the workers told, I pulled my shoulders like the rest of them. I pounded my thumb with a hammer more times than I can count, and I actually felt chilled by the wind and the cold sweat on my back.
I felt human.
It was raw, hard work, of course. We dragged the ice shack up further until it was on the flat part of the roof, and then drove stakes into it's floor, nailing it fast to the roof. Then we brought out the saw, and the stick-thin, quirky little man named Gabe cut a hole through the roof and the floor of the shack.
We came out in the attic, which I hadn't even known existed until right then. I dropped through first, landing amidst a decades worth of dusty old board games and moth eaten animal heads. It was eerily silent inside, and once my eyes had adjusted to the pitch black, I found the light switch and flipped it on for the rest of them.
In one corner we found a cardboard box of my Dad's cluttered with sniper rifles- I doubted he remembered owning it. So we passed it up into the rickety little shack with windows cut into every side for 360 degree visibility.
Meg stumbled upon a fold-up painting ladder tucked neatly in the corner, which we propped up to the hole in the roof. We gathered our supplies and stored it in the attic, and vowed to bring to electrician up later to hook up an emergency warning system.
Gabe found the exit into the hallway, and one by one, our work completed, we dropped down into the mansion and went our separate ways.