Bruce knew he was only inches away from the zombies below him, and he arched his back to increase the distance by whatever means were available to him.

The winds lifting the scaffolding diminished, slamming the suspended platform against the building and cracking the glass windows it struck. The cable tied to the scaffolding stretched tight again, roughly hauling Bruce skyward. The resulting vibrations sent through the cable nearly shook him off, but Bruce managed to keep his grip.

Moving fast, Bruce ascended the cable toward the scaffolding, trying to reach it before the winds returned. At the very least, he wanted to be higher on the cable if it should happen again.

When he had climbed far enough, Bruce was grabbed on the shoulder by Dillion, who proceeded to haul him up and over the railing to land on the scaffolding beside the tied down explosives they'd retrieved.

"Thanks," Bruce said between gasps of air.

Dillion was also breathing hard and merely nodded, wiping some perspiration from his forehead with a shaky hand.

Bruce wanted a moment to catch his breath, but he forced himself back to his feet. He couldn't relax while still on the scaffolding; the wind could start the platform swinging again at any moment, and Bruce didn't want to be around when it happened. Dillion and Bruce worked the ropes and pulleys on the old style lift system, raising the scaffolding slowly toward the top of the building.

A more modern version of the scaffold, using cables and an electric winch, was also present on the roof, but Bruce didn't know how long the electricity would remain active. If it had failed while they were down the side of the building, the two men would probably have to break some more windows to get back inside, and Bruce wasn't confident such a tactic would be advisable. The glass could cut them up badly, to say nothing of compromising the structure.

When they had put in the rain collection system the previous day, the two men had broken windows on the lower floors. Bruce had chosen the bottom levels because when they broke out the windows to suspend the gutters partially outside, the rain and other adverse weather could now come inside the building. On the second floor, it wasn't a problem, but higher up could cause leaks and water damage to one of the levels where they were storing food or trying to sleep. Keeping the building intact as much as possible was very important to their chances of survival because their ability to make repairs was extremely limited.

As Bruce worked the ropes on his end of the scaffold, he wondered what Dillion would think of the next phase of his plan.

***

"You are out of your mind!" Dillion shouted.

The stress of the past few days had worn Bruce's patience down to nothing, and he abandoned decorum and responded to Dillion in kind.

"When I found you, you and your family were about to be eaten!" Bruce roared, closing the distance between them and getting in Dillion's face. "It's my crazy ideas keeping both our families alive! If you have any better ideas, spit them out, but if you don't, shut up and give me a hand!"

The two men fell silent. Dillion had been taken back by the sudden outburst, and Bruce needed a moment to let his rage subside.

"What do you need?" Dillion asked quietly. He didn't have any better ideas and resigned himself to following Bruce and his crazy plan.

"Our best bet is the parking garage at the end of the block," Bruce explained. He kept his voice low to keep the anger smoldering inside him subdued. "It has a lot of open space for the zombies to fill. Once you're there, you'll need to create enough noise to draw them to you. They have to know where you are."

"In the open and vulnerable," Dillion muttered.

"The line we shoot with the harpoon gun to the building will allow you to get there and leave when the place starts to be overrun," Bruce corrected. "I'll be the most vulnerable during this excursion. If something goes wrong, you'll still be able to get back, but I'll be dead."

"Or undead," Dillion suggested.

"No," Bruce denied with a cold look of resolve in his eyes. "I'll be carrying a generous amount of explosives with me; I won't have my family seeing me walking around as a corpse. If things get out of hand, I'll make certain I don't turn. You ready?"

"No, but it hasn't stopped me yet," Dillion answered.

Both men fell silent for a moment as the weight of their undertaking settled down on them. Although it had to be done, the insane risk it involved was enough to make anyone uneasy.

Bruce went first, firing a harpoon to impact one floor down against the back wall of an executive balcony across the street. As he drew the trailing cable tight and tied it off, he suddenly wondered if the zombies had heard the noise of the harpoon impact. Although it was a fair distance above street level, it was possible some of the undead were inside the building and could have detected it. Seeing no choice but to go ahead as planned, Bruce picked up one of the bags of explosives and a few other items he'd left on the roof before he clipped onto the cable and slid across to the other building.

Using his boots to cushion his arrival against the wall, Bruce halted his slide. He waited silently, straining his ears to detect any sound of movement. If the undead were aware of his presence, they'd be coming after him. When he heard nothing, Bruce quietly unhooked from the cable and waved to Dillion.

Having reloaded the harpoon gun, Dillion fired his own line toward the parking garage on the corner. Once the cable was secure, he clipped onto it and glided across.

Bruce watched him go. They were using significant amounts of the cable he'd brought with him, and he knew they'd be forced to find more if they were going to connect additional buildings. He had a few ideas, but for the time being, he needed to concentrate on the task at hand.

Fortunately for Bruce, the people who had occupied the executive office had been more concerned with evacuating than locking up, and the balcony door was unsecured. He eased the door open and cautiously looked around.

The large office had a glass topped wooden desk near the balcony doors where Bruce looked in. An overly stuffed chair of black leather was pushed in under the desk, and it matched the sofa against the far wall. Sitting on the desk was a laptop computer, its screen dark and nonfunctioning. Positioned beside the laptop was a fax machine, a jar of pens, and a vertical file organizer stacked with papers.

Since the office was still in order without any bloodstains or other signs of violence, Bruce hoped the building was free of undead. Closing the balcony door most of the way, but not latching it in case he needed to depart quickly, Bruce headed across the office toward the exit onto the main floor.

He pulled out a hand shovel he'd brought with him. Although not as large as the spade he'd used to kill zombies before, it was lighter, easier to carry, and wouldn't encumber him if running became necessary.

Keeping one foot against the door in case he needed to shove it closed against a horde of silent undead, Bruce slowly opened it. The exterior office floor was empty of anyone, living or otherwise, and Bruce breathed a sigh of relief.

A potted plant waited outside the office, and Bruce slid it over to prop the door open. He didn't know if the door would lock if it shut, and he couldn't afford to have his only exit blocked by an impeding door. Once certain he'd be able to leave, Bruce began an inspection of the level.

Unlike the executive office through which he'd entered the building, the workspaces crammed between cubical walls of gray plastic were cluttered. Papers were stacked in uneven piles, sometimes obscuring staplers, desk phones, and the edges of computer keyboards. Adhesive notes were attached everywhere to the cubicle walls with reminders of deadlines, names and phone numbers, as well as motivational sayings to make the work seem less oppressive and redundant.

As he passed the cubicles and headed for the stairs, Bruce wondered how much of what had seemed important had been rendered meaningless by the crisis they now faced. Life was fluid, and circumstances changed the priority of things and events more often than people realized. He thought about his family, waiting for him in their improvised sanctuary, wondering if his efforts would mean anything in the grand scheme of things or if they were all doomed, no matter what they did. Had he saved them, or merely prolonged their suffering for a few more years? Bruce concluded it didn't matter how hopeless it looked; he would fight for his family and their chance at a better world. Until his last breath departed from him, he would never give up.

The stairwell door squeaked as he pushed it slowly open. Emergency floodlights, powered by rechargeable batteries lit the stairway enough to see, but darkness seemed to cower in the corners, waiting the opportunity to spring out and reassert its claim on the space. The provided light allowed Bruce to look over the railing and find it clear of zombies both above and below his position. He took a fire extinguisher off the wall and used it to hold the door open as he had done with the office plant earlier.

His shoes created echoes off the concrete walls around him as he descended to the second floor. As he went down, the occasional moan or a raspy inhalation of breath reached his ears over the pounding of his own heartbeat. The undead were nearby, but he didn't know if it came from the masses crowding the streets outside or if they were in the building with him.

Lacking the time to do a proper search, Bruce went about his work as quietly as he was able. He removed plastic explosives from the bag he carried and smashed shaped charges into key locations between the ground floor and the second floor landing, sufficient to break away the steps and any supporting structure underneath. When everything was in place, he wired the charges together and added a receiver so the explosives could be set off by remote.

Stepping carefully to avoid becoming entangled in any of the wires, Bruce headed back up to the floor he'd previously cleared. It was a long way up and back down again on the next stairway he needed to rig, but he couldn't afford to fight it out with any undead who might be shambling around the premises. The noise would certainly attract more. Going the long way was safer, so that's what he did.

***

After completing the wiring on the second set of stairs, Bruce once more climbed the steps to the empty office level. Three separate stairways allowed access when the elevators were out of commission, and for some reason the power to this side of the street had been severed. Bruce assumed it was a downed power line or something similar, but he didn't have the time or energy to care one way or the other.

He was about to head downstairs for the third time when he looked out the window toward the parking garage. Dillion had been running around and setting off car alarms in order to attract the undead, leading them away from Bruce and his activities. The plan was working, but Bruce noticed Dillion had done something stupid; he'd left the level where the cable was attached in order to activate the car alarms on the upper floors.

"What are you doing?" Bruce hissed, staring out the window. "Get back to the cable!"

He knew Dillion couldn't hear him, but Bruce's response was instinctual and not thought out. He watched Dillion move between the cars, clearly unaware of the approaching danger. "Get out of there. Move. Move!"

As Dillion finally started down to the proper level, he discovered the zombies making their way up. Changing directions, he sprinted to the stairwell only to find it choked solid with walking corpses. Dillion did the only thing he could, racing up to the top of the parking structure. Bruce could do nothing but watch as Dillion ran to the edge of the building and leapt over the side.