The Gathering Dead by Stephen Knight Page A

didn’t blame him for being cautious. After all, it seemed the world had just ground to a halt, and a responsible father had to be mindful of his children. Always.
    “I see. Well, at least you have your kids with you, Earl. Might not be the best place in the world for them, but at least you know they’re safe for the moment, right?”
    Earl didn’t look up, only shrugged. “If’n you can call this safe.”
    “It’s definitely better than being on the streets,” Finelly said, walking out from behind the sandwich station. “Take it from us, we drove from the west side to Central Park, and look where we wound up.”
    Earl looked up at Finelly and favored him with a thin smile. “Yeah, I guess so. You boys hungry? I can start the grill or somethin’, I guess.”
    McDaniels’ radio crackled. “Six, this is Gartrell, over.”
    “Excuse me for just a second,” he said to Earl, then half-turned away from him and pressed his microphone button. “Five, sorry about that. We’re on twenty-seven, and have made contact with an individual who is up here in the cafeteria. He says he’s with two dependents, though I have not seen them yet. What’s the SITREP from your end? Over.”
    “Zeds are still massing outside, but they don’t seem very directed at the moment. Can’t really keep eyes on them all the time, but it appears they’re just milling around in the street. Maybe attracted by the lights, Lord knows the lobby is bright enough with all that white marble. Any news from USASOC? Over.”
    “Roger, news from USASOC. Break, Leary, you listening in?”
    Sergeant Leary transmitted after a brief delay. “Yessir, listening in. Over.”
    “Good. Here’s the deal: Rapier is looking for an aviation asset that can haul us out of here. The assembly area at Central Park was completely overrun by the zeds, and all the aircraft are a write-off. Lots of aviation units are repositioning, but no one’s in reach right now. I’m supposed to get back with them in an hour. Leary, how are the Safires doing? Over.”
    “About as well as can be expected, major. Scared stiff, like the rest of us, but coping for the moment, over.”
    “Five, the twenty-seventh floor seems pretty defensible. The maintenance man up here says he has the elevators turned off, and the cafeteria seems to have its own controlled exits separate from the fire escape door. We might be better off up here, over.”
    “Roger that, Six. We should still keep someone on overwatch in the stairwell, though. Wouldn’t advise we keep them on the ground floor, since support would have to cover twenty-seven stories in case something goes bad, over.”
    “Understood. Let us check out the rest of this floor up here, and we’ll figure out how to play it. McDaniels, out.” McDaniels turned back to Earl. “Mind showing us around the rest of the floor, Earl?”
    “Sure, no problem. Follow me.”
    The small maintenance worker led them through the serving area and into the kitchen in back, where everything seemed to be made from stainless steel. Cooking ranges sat dormant. There was a walk-in freezer built into one wall, and a walk-in refrigerator in the other, both well-stocked. Cookware had been put away neatly; whatever had befallen the city had done so when the building was shut down for the day. McDaniels realized it was Sunday, and the order to evacuate Safire hadn’t come to him until Saturday morning. So the building was very likely unoccupied.
    As Earl led them out of the kitchen, McDaniels asked, “Earl, what were you doing here over the weekend?”
    “My shift is Wednesday through Sunday nights,” Earl said. “When things started to go bad, I was already here. Had no place else to go, and it was just me and Artie Johnson and the two security guys in the lobby. Everyone else left. I stayed back.”
    “Why was that?”
    “Because my family was nearby, and they came here when I called ‘em. We was gonna go north, but we got caught here.”
    Beyond the