She said, “Everyone, I need your help. Start looking around the room, find anything that we could use to take out the screws. A ruler. A knife. Anything long and flat. Okay? Let’s go.”
Elise and Vera got up and started to look. Carly did the same. Lara picked up the mattress frame and pushed it back against the barricade, over the mattress that usually went on top of the frame. They were beating against the door again, and with each strike, more and more of the vibrations came through.
They’re getting stronger by the second…
“Lara,” Carly said behind her, walking over with a metal spoon. “Will this work?”
“I think it might.”
She took the spoon and climbed back on the chair. She didn’t really know if it would work, but it was worth a try. She had seen movies where people used spoons to turn screws. But those were movies…
She positioned the spoon underneath the nearest screw and was elated to see that it slipped into the groove. She began to turn it. The screw was in there tight, and it took a lot of effort just to turn it counterclockwise even a little bit. But it moved — that was the important thing. It moved.
She closed out the sounds of heavy banging behind her — at one point the bed frame fell again, and Carly rushed over to reposition it — and concentrated on turning the screw until she had it half free. She tried using her fingers to twist it out the rest of the way, but it wouldn’t budge. Not even a little bit. So she went back to the spoon.
Finally, the first screw fell to the floor. It landed and clattered away into a corner. She thought she heard Carly and the girls breathe a sigh of relief.
One down, seven to go…
She started working on the second screw, even as another vicious bang! sent the mattress and the bed frame tumbling to the floor behind her. Lara didn’t look back. She heard Carly hurry to take care of it and the girls rushing over to help.
She concentrated on the second screw. It was only halfway out, but her arms were already starting to ache from being extended upward toward the ceiling. The constant heat blasting against her face didn’t help, but it didn’t have nearly as much impact as the strain building in her arms.
The second screw fell to the floor, and the third one came out much easier than the first two. She had a harder time with the fourth and fifth screws because her arms were getting tired. They felt like jelly, like pieces of spaghetti trying to hold up something heavy. The remaining center screws held the grate in place as she worked around the edges instead of taking them all out in order. This way, she wouldn’t have to worry about holding up the grate until she was almost at the end.
She was out of breath by the time she got the sixth screw out. Now with only two screws left, the grate started to creak and shift against her grip. She tried gripping one of the edges and ripping the whole thing out of the ceiling with brute force, but she couldn’t shift the grate even a little bit, despite pulling on it with all her strength.
So much for that idea.
She went to work on the seventh screw, and by now her feet had become nearly as fatigued as her arms. She gritted through the pain and tried to think of something else. She thought of Elise, and Vera, and Carly. Of Will and Danny, making their way over to them. Of the ghouls outside their door this very moment, salivating at the thought of coming in. It was that last thought that drove her on, made her continue twisting the long-dented spoon in the same counterclockwise motion long after she lost feeling in both her arms.
Behind her, another loud crash sent the dresser tumbling to the floor. Carly expelled a loud gasp.
“Lara,” Carly said behind her. “Hurry.”
Lara heard everything she needed to hear in the younger woman’s voice. “I know,” she grimaced, concentrating on the screw.
It was almost out…
“Girls,” Carly said behind her, “I need your help with this. Whenever one of these things fall, we need to get it back up right away. Understand?”
Lara couldn’t make out the girls’ mumbled replies, but all three worked diligently behind her, constantly moving, pushing the heavier objects back against the door, even as the relentless pounding continued and seemed to get louder. It was as if they knew they were getting closer, that the door wasn’t going to last much longer. Lara didn’t have to ask how the door looked. She knew how it looked. She could hear it, feel the wood starting to buckle against the constant, unrelenting pressure.
Not too long now…
She forced herself through the screaming pain and hurried with the eighth and final screw, her left hand holding up the grate in the middle, fingers splayed out to get as much coverage as possible. When the eighth screw finally came free and clattered to the floor, the grate suddenly felt as if it had gained 100 pounds and it was all she could do to drop the spoon and quickly grab at the grate with both hands before it plummeted down and bashed into her face.
Lara climbed down from the chair and practically dropped the grate on the floor. It fell heavily, chipping the concrete.
Carly looked across the room at her and smiled. It was the first real smile Carly had managed since they ran inside the room. “Nice work.”
“Thanks,” Lara said. “I don’t think I can move my arms, though.”
Carly laughed, but stopped when another massive bang! nearly tore the door from its frame. The mattress, nightstand, and bed all toppled against the assault, and the ugly red felt armchair moved at least half a foot. Carly quickly pushed the chair back against the door as the girls picked up what they could. Lara rushed to help.
Come on, Will, where the hell are you?
She heard a scraping sound above her and looked back as a black, dark figure fell through the air conditioner duct and landed inside the room in a crouch. She nearly had a heart attack when the figure stood up, a shotgun slung over his back and pouches of ammo jiggling around his waist and chest.
Danny grinned at her. “Hey, I was just in the neighborhood and heard there was a bunch of girls who needed a manly hand?”
Carly rushed over and leaped into his arms. He grabbed her and laughed, then kissed her passionately on the mouth. Vera and Elise giggled. Danny was wearing one of those glowing sticks dangling from a string around his neck…the same string with Ben’s pendant attached at the end.
Lara said, “Get a room.”
A voice from above her chipped in, “Preferably not this one.”
She looked up. Will was draped through the duct opening in the ceiling. He had another glow stick dangling from a makeshift necklace — just a cheap piece of string, really. They had been using the illumination of the sticks to maneuver through the dark air ducts, she realized.
“Hey, you,” she said.
“Hey yourself.” Then, putting on his serious face: “We should probably get moving. That door doesn’t sound like it’s going to hold for much longer.”
Another crash tossed most of the barricade to the floor, spilling the nightstand and the mattresses and bed frames in all directions. The felt armchair, amazingly, rocked backward slightly, then bounced right back in place.
“Time to go!” Danny said. He unslung his shotgun and pulled four extra glow stick necklaces out of a pouch. He cracked them one by one, then handed them out. “Will’s going to pull everyone up one by one. We’ll regroup in the Control Room if we can make it that far. If not, there’s always Plan Z.”