“Now climb, if you fall we’ve got you!” Paul shouted. “Mad Jack, tie the other end off.”
‘Wait, didn’t he tell me they would have me? Should I really trust a man named Mad Jack to tie the other end of my life line off?’
“Henry’s up!” Justin shouted.
‘Damn, that was fast.’ I looked up to verify and immediately wished I hadn’t. Vertigo, like a physical force, pushed my face into the ladder. From my vantage point, with cool aluminum on my cheek, I could see the gamut of encouraging and disparaging (Marta’s and Deneaux’) faces. When the worst of the episode passed, I looked behind me. Mindless pursuit would not be the adjective I would have used to describe what approached. Relentless, yes, mindless, no. The zombie closest to me extended his hand. This was like my worst nightmare in church. If I let him get any closer I would have to take the proffered viral encrusted hand in celebration of a new bond between man and zombie. Yeah, that’s it. I could be the ambassador, the one that broached peace between man and monster! I would be a national hero, heralded as the savior of all mankind! Or he’d gnaw through my fingers on his way to devouring my forearm. Yeah, that seemed much more probable. Still stalling.
I quickly unsnapped the tie down that was holding the ladder in place; the buffeting wind made it jump. I jumped on it before it could completely bounce off.
“Mike, what are you doing?” Paul asked in alarm, not sure if the nylon rope they had secured the ladder with would hold the entire weight should the ladder and I both go over.
I was four rungs up when I felt the ladder shift. Company had joined me on this final leg of the journey.
I was halfway craning my neck to look back when BT’s words struck me. “Don’t ,” was all he said, and the tone was enough, I actually paid him heed.
The ladder was bowing something fierce. I looked up to watch as the top skids were a good fifteen or sixteen millimeters from losing contact with the roof. See how I did that, I changed from U.S. measurements to the Metric system. Maybe if we had just switched back in the seventies like they said we were going to, I would be able to feel much better about my predicament. Because fifteen or sixteen millimeters sounds WAY better than half a n inch!
Another zombie joined us, or a particularly heady wind hit, or a damn butterfly landed on a palm frond somewhere on an island in the Pacific, didn’t matter, the rear of the ladder came off the ladder truck. What had previously seemed like a good idea now truly sucked as I death gripped the rung I was on as we swung with velocity towards the wall. Memories flooded through my senses, I guess the mind feels the necessity to show events that are not life threatening when one is faced with a most certain demise. For the briefest of moments I was once again a fifteen-year-old enjoying a burgeoning beer buzz with my two best friends on the planet, Paul and Dennis, as we discovered a place called Indian Hills. My parents had left me alone for the weekend and I did what any respectable teenager would do if they wanted to hold on to their cool card, I had a raging party. The next morning as my two buddies and I cleaned up, we decided to hightail it from the premises before my mother came home. During the best of times she could give Deneaux a run for her money. With the hangover I was suffering from, I did not want to add her to the mix.
Paul, Dennis and I had grabbed a few beers and were reinvigorating the buzz we had so much enjoyed the previous evening. Our goal was an area that we had seen from a perch atop our local grocery store. We would come to find out that the area was known as Indian Hills. It was an Indian burial ground (no, really!). The place had become a sort of oasis for us as we had grown over the next three years. That it was mystical was beyond reproach. We had more than our fair share of adventures on that land, but that’s a story for another journal.
The fingers of my right hand smashed against the wall as I had readjusted my grip from rung to rail. I’m not ashamed to admit I screamed. I’m pretty sure it was a good throaty man scream but I can’t be sure, it might have been as intimidating as an eleven-year-old girl’s. My immediate thought was better the right, I shoot lefty. And then all thought was washed away by the mind-blistering pain that ripped through my neurons. The pain peeled back quicker than I expected. I would learn later that the left side of the ladder had struck first, absorbing the majority of the strike. I would most likely lose all four fingernails on my right hand but that was a small price to pay for my life. I might have had some small micro-fractures in the tips of my fingers as well, but I’d left my Blue Cross Blue Shield card back in Colorado , and I figured that I was out of network anyway.
The haze in my mind burned off the moment I felt that hand wrap around my foot. So there we were, me and my new buddy, suspended thirty feet above the ground by a small rope attached to a ladder I wouldn’t tie anything bigger than a Chihuahua to. The ladder swayed back and forth against the wall, I’m sure doing its best to cut through the nylon holding us in place just like in every movie I’d ever seen. Sure, I had a safety rope on, but it looked like it had seen better days.
My new buddy was really trying to climb up the ladder. His hand was wrapped like a vise and I could feel his full weight as he either was trying to pull me down or pull himself up to greet me properly. But he would bite me long before we could exchange banalities.
“Cut the rope!” I shouted. ‘Did I just say that?’ “For the ladder!!” I clarified quickly.
“We figured that much,” BT said, looking over the rim of the wall.
“Just making sure, hurry, my buddy here is pretty hungry and he thinks I’m on the menu.”
“What do you mean nobody has a knife?” I could hear Tracy ask irately.
I tried to shake my new buddy’s hands free, but he was having none of it. His right hand gripped my calf. As soon as he pulled up and got his mouth into position, I was about to become his lunch. My arms strained as I supported the both of us.
“Not that one!” BT shouted.
‘Are you kidding me?’ I thought as I hung on, still grimly trying to shake my ‘friend’ loose.
“Let go of the ladder!” BT said, “Don’t worry, bud, the rope will hold.”
“The both of us?” I asked him.
“Probably,” the one called Mad Jack said.
I pulled my hands back just as the ladder zipped by. The rope tied around my waist bit deep into my flesh as it absorbed all of our weight. I felt like I was being severed, and the added pressure as the group on top of the roof began to hoist me up only contributed to the strain. My biting buddy was still firmly entrenched like a fat deer tick, but without his feet planted on the ladder he was merely hanging on for his dearly departed life. I wasn’t in any immediate danger of being bitten but rather torn in two like a convicted felon, drawn and quartered or, in this case, halved. To-MAY-toe, to-MAH-to, what’s the difference?
“The rope is breaking!” April shouted.
“Shut up, fool!” Mrs. Deneaux snapped. I would like to think that perhaps it was to save me from the bad news of my upcoming demise, but more than likely it was to hide the surprise so she could relish the look of shock on my face as I plummeted earthward, the old bitch. There was a lurch in my stomach as I free fell a few feet. I quickly looked up.
BT was leaning as far over the wall as he could, fat droplets of sweat cascading down upon my face. Normally this would have grossed me out to no end, but since he was single-handedly pulling the rope up hand over fist, I would forgive him this transgression. The veins in his neck stood out thicker than the rope I was tied to. His teeth clenched together in a pressure I think could snap through a steel cable, his eyes squeezed shut in concentration and pain.