More of the Building

 

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We didn’t want to search the forty or so floors above us so Laura insisted that we take the elevator straight to the roof where we could observe what was around the building and get a tan.  The elevator only went to the floor beneath the roof, so we cautiously climbed the stairs, and slowly opened the door in case there were any zombies soaking up the rays.  There weren’t.  In fact there weren’t any rays either, the day had long since grown into evening.  Laura realized she’d forgotten to take a nap and insisted on lying down for twenty minutes, because she hadn’t waited for her eyes to get used to the city being so dark she almost feel off the roof.  It’s a good thing she threw her jacket down to lie on and saw it drift towards to ground.  

It took a few minutes but our eyes finally adjusted to the dark.  A small portion of the city was still lit, but was slowly losing electricity building by building.  Laura Lee and I, still in zombie apocalypse denial, debated whether or not people were turning off the lights to get a better picture on their large screen TVs, or they all bought light bulbs that all needed to be changed at the same time.  It was a fun debate.  We weren’t constricted by political party bickering over rules, or any time limits for our responses, other than the disqualification of a debater for passing out, not caused by a stroke, heart attack, or collapsing from low blood sugar.   In our effort to avoid the new reality, we left out “eaten by a zombie” because that would only bring up the point of whether the zombie could continue in the debater’s place until the debater themselves had turned zombie, which would open up a whole other can of worms.   The debate, although heated at times kept our minds off the savagery going on around us.  The debate ended on its own when we realized nobody could declare a winner because if that decision were left up to us it would only start another debate. 

Our spirits lifted enough to actually get our minds working on a plan.  The first stage of our plan was simple, see if our cell phones worked and if they did, answer any texts or emails, then call for help.  We knew we probably couldn’t get a cab to come for us, not for a while, so I suggested ordering a pizza where it’s guaranteed to be delivered within thirty minutes or you get your money back.  Laura wanted mushrooms and anchovies and I wanted mine plan with extra sauce even though it would surely mean a bout of heartburn.  Instead of ordering two, which might take longer and more for the pizza boy to carry up forty-four floors (if the zombies managed to take over the elevator), we decided we’d each order a half the way we liked it.   The first pizza place I called there wasn’t any answer.  The same happened for the next thirty-seven places. I finally got one, but they didn’t deliver to our building, or even our state.  I offered to pay for gas and not hold them to the half hour since they were in Puerto Rico, which was only a territory, and would require a boat, a plane flight or both, not to mention the possibility of driving for 1OOO miles.   So we hung up, discouraged, so much so we started to call Chinese restaurants, this time keeping within our own area code.  No dice or should I say, at the risk of being corny, no rice.  We figured they must be so busy no one was answering.  Ok, we knew we were fooling ourselves, trying to put a positive spin on things, but we were also letting our own hunger cloud our judgment.   We needed to find food and another plan or a plan we could eat.  That’s when all hell broke loose.  

Zombies from the Bank of Japan building next to us, which was 15 or 16 or maybe 17 floors above us, I kept losing count-- it was dark and all those foreign made windows look alike-- from the taller buildings next to ours started landing on the roof.  At first I thought they might be business men who had just gotten the news about the stock market crashing, but changed my mind when they splattered all around us and started to rise as if the stock market has just recovered and had hit a new high.  These were hungry zombies with dead man size appetites.