As the first light of dawn broke over the horizon, I struggled to shake off the restless sleep from the night before. Every muscle in my body ached, and the cold metal of the roof had done no favors to my already stiff limbs. I knew today had to be different; I couldn't afford another day of inaction. The weight of my situation pressed down on me as heavily as the backpack I had hastily packed in my escape. It was time to make a decision and take action, no matter how desperate it might be. The plan of spearing them might have worked if I had those fancy carbon fiber trekking poles, but these cheap-ass aluminum ones I had were not sturdy enough for the abuse. I considered it more of a weapon of last resort than for an all-out assault.
I had a weapon of sorts in my backpack called a pocket shot. It was basically a heavy-duty rubber condom that you could use as a slingshot. The heavy-duty rubber had a cap that stored approximately 40 or so ball bearings. I had, embarrassingly, a lot of practice shooting it and was pretty talented. There was even an attachment that would modify it to shoot arrows, which I desperately wished I had right now, along with an infinite supply of arrows. But then again, if I was wishing for wish's sake, a machine gun or a tank might be a better solution. I grabbed it out of my backpack and made my way to the edge of the building.
When I looked over the edge, I noticed that the zombie count was between 40 and 60 now, so even with 100% accuracy, and if the thing was effective, I still would not get a clean break. So, my idea of shooting my way out was probably doomed before it started, but thinking it'd be good information to know if the pocket shot had enough stopping power and blunt trauma to take one of the zombies down was information I needed to gather. While I was looking for a target, I noticed that the proportion of male to female was off. There seemed to be a lot more female zombies, maybe two-thirds, or even four-fifths being mostly females. Shooting a woman would make this difficult, so I found a guy wearing a baseball cap and then reconsidered as that might slow down the projectile and not give it the best chance. There was 2A, of course, but I didn't have it in me. I know that I disliked him smoking pot on the balcony, but he was very cool and had a laid-back vibe to him. As I was contemplating, a target became available—a zombie wearing hot pink shorts and a loud Hawaiian t-shirt. I don't know how I even fucking missed him wearing that outfit, but I lined up my shot, pulled back as hard as I could, and released. I missed horribly. Frankly, shooting at a person is not as easy as shooting at a beer can.
As he came closer, at a slow pace, I took my time aiming, visualizing that it was just a pop can, slowing my heart. I pulled back smoothly and released, and what a shot it was—straight between the fucking eyes. It knocked him over, and the zombie started to do the fish-out-of-water flop. All the commotion attracted other zombies, and I had to look away as a feeding frenzy started to erupt around him. I went back to my sleeping bag and let my nerves collect themselves.
As I was walking over to my bag, I realized how fucking annoying it is having only one shoe on. If I did actually want to make a break for it, running with one shoe would be nearly impossible. The shoe had been kicked into the space between the building's corner and the fence post that I had climbed madly up. I had somewhat of a plan to get it, so while much of the commotion was still going on behind me, I put together a fishing expedition.
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I had 15 and 30lb test fishing line and a few fishing hooks so that whenever we got close to a lake, I could have a quick try at a pike or a brook trout. Fresh fish always makes a camping trip that much tastier. So, I grabbed the spool of fishing line, tied a medium-sized fish hook onto it, and about 2 feet from that, I tied a small lead weight.
I walked to the corner of the building, directly underneath the shoe, and spooled the weight down. It got caught on the barbed wire chain link fence, but I was able to slowly pull it up and jiggle it until the hook got released. The second time, I came in from the side further away from the fence, landing the weight right inside the sole of the shoe. As I pulled on the fishing line, the hook managed to sink pretty deep into one of the shoelaces. I started to pull slowly up, making sure the hook was set. That's when I noticed Sneaky Motherfucker Number Two—a lady I'm going to name Karen, you know, the type with the manager haircut—coming in hot, trying to grab the shoe. I jinked it left out of her grasp and yanked up, causing the line to tangle like you would never believe, but I quickly got it out of her reach. Thankful that the hook had really attached well to the shoelace, I managed to get it up and onto the roof. My trophy back in my hands, I triumphantly woohooed, which turned out to be kind of a bad idea because almost 40 faces looked at me, creeping me the fuck out. I slowly and deliberately reeled in the fishing line and spooled it back on the plastic holder. I managed to get the tangles out while I sat on the top of my sleeping bag. I put my shoe back on, feeling complete for a moment, thinking how shitty this sun felt on my head. A different idea came in.
That man with the red hat who I didn't want to shoot with the pocket shot had a hat, did he not? And I have the ability to pick up and hook things. One plus one equals maybe a fucking hat. I reconfigured the end of the line to have three small hooks, all tied on with little pieces of line I had cut off, making it look like a mini grappling hook. I also tied a small lead weight about two inches down the line from the hooks to give it some weight so that I could throw it. With my line in hand, I went to the edge of the building, ready to get a hat. But of course, my fucking luck, the zombie with the red hat was not in front of the building. I walked to the other side, and he wasn't there either. Then I looked further into the crowd and down the road, and barely in the distance, maybe 200 feet away, I saw what I thought might be the red hat. What luck—when I want a zombie to stick around, he's the only one to take off.
With that idea stalled, I decided to see if I could reproduce my earlier success with the pocket shot. Maybe it was beginner's luck or whatever it was, but I had some pretty awesome strikes. After getting over my squeamishness about having to shoot women, as the majority around the building were female and easy targets, I decided to give it another try. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. One shot hit a zombie right in the ear, and nothing happened. Another shot hit one right in the mouth, which would have been a hefty dental bill if it wasn't the end of the world, but still not much of an effect. As I was down to 50% of my ammo, I decided it might be smart to quit. It was brunch time by now, so I decided it might be wise to eat some nuts and get some hydration.
Sitting and munching, I realized that fucking with the zombies might be educational, but I needed to think about the rules of three. Without shelter, the sun would kill me as fast as those zombies on the ground would. I had looked over the roof and grounds but really had not given a critical eye to how I might get into the building below me. There could be resources in it. At the worst case, it was shattered, and if I was out of sight of the zombies, potentially, they would leave.
