Artifact by Shane Lindemoen Page B

banister held fast.
    Sid collapsed onto the floor and spent the next few moments sucking air.
    Alice pointed her gun at Sid and said, “Were you bitten?”
    Sid shook his head and held out his arms for us to see. He met my eyes and blinked. “You…”
    I shrugged agreement. “Me.”
    “Where did you go?” He asked between breaths, “Where are your clothes?” He pointed at my chest. “What happened to your burn?”
    “It’s complicated.”
    “Complicated.” He echoed, looking back and forth between Alice and me.
    Alice stepped away as he got to his feet. “You know each other?”
    “Yes,” I said. “He picked me up this morning – brought me here.”
    Alice frowned. “I thought you didn’t know how you got here this morning.”
    “I didn’t,” I said. “This was after.”
    “Lance,” she wiped at her face several times, as if she could somehow clean the moment away. “What on Earth is going on?”
    “I’ll explain later – right now we have to get to the maintenance locker and grab the extendable ladder.”
    “Why?”
    Sid said, “There are a couple people out there on top of a storage container, about a block west of here.”
    2.
    The ladder wouldn’t reach. I had to work fast because the end of this dream was probably getting ready to cycle again. I had no idea how much time I had left.
    The plan was to extend the ladder all the way to the top of the truck, forming a rudimentary bridge to the office. It extended several meters shy of where we needed it.
    When Sid and I slid the ladder out of the window, we clubbed a few zombies as the bottom half fell to the ground.
    “They’ll have to jump to the ladder,” Sid said. “We’re going to have to try and hold it steady. They’ll only have a few seconds before being pulled to the street.”
    The zombies ignored the ladder for the most part, except to move around it, and continued piling themselves around the shipment container.
    “It’s about six meters from the top of the container to the ladder,” Alice said. “The woman might make the jump, but not the little girl.”
    “An Olympic athlete couldn’t make that jump,” I countered.
    Sid shrugged, barely keeping the rising panic out of his voice. “I could climb down, and she could throw the girl to me–”
    “That’s not going to work,” I said.
    Suddenly, the man that was hanging over the sunroof began to stir.
    “Oh no…” Alice said.
    He sluggishly pushed himself upright, and I could see a deep wound on his right side. The blood seeped in rhythm with his pulse – it was bright red and full of oxygen.
    “He’s still alive,” Sid said.
    “How do you know?”
    “He’s wincing.” Sid’s relief was palpable, if only momentary.
    I saw it too. The man carefully inspected his side and clenched his jaw against the pain.
    Twisting his head, his gaze settled on the woman and the child hopelessly looking up at our window. He looked around the trailer and saw that the zombies were nearly high enough to climb up.
    He said something to the woman in the leather jacket, and she turned her head. There was no way of knowing what was being said over the rising din. She just stared at him. After a few moments, she pointed to where we were holding the ladder.
    He nodded and looked down into the cabin for a few moments, probably trying to clear his head and catch his breath.
    He disappeared into the cab for what felt like an eternity. When he reappeared, he had two bundles of what looked like bungee cord. He painstakingly crawled onto the trailer and moved to where the woman and the little girl were kneeling.
    They spoke briefly, and the woman started to cry. The little girl’s face was blank and stoic, seemingly detached from the world that was falling apart around her.
    He stood and waved at us.
    “Catch!” He yelled.
    He waited for me to extend my arms, and then pitched a bundle of bungee high over my head, where it slapped against the building and then slid down into my open