Roof Hopscotching To Rotten Leftovers

Sweeping her weight from side-to-side, young Jasmyn Sanchez scurried up the icy ladder in a swift motion spider crawl. Once on the bucking asphalt roof, she hunkered down behind a four-foot wall to catch her breath and think what her next move might be.
"That shooter on the roof across the street must be a rookie." she said, "and a very bad shot not to have hit me with so many rounds fired." She crab crawled with heavy duffel bag to the corner of the roof, then braced her back against the wet wall in the shadows. Quickly she lifted her boots from around her neck, pulling out the wool socks that were stuffed safely inside. Putting them on wasn’t easy with numb fingers. Her right hand fingers had been cramped so tight in a vice grip holding the Colt automatic, she had to pry them loose with her left hand. While lacing up one boot, and then the other, she began to feel the burning pin pricks of her feet and hands warming.

“Okay Francisco now what?” She wanted to check on the kitten, but already knew it was safe. Listening carefully, she noticed all the guns had ceased firing. SP squad units wouldn’t stop searching for her. The rain slowed to an icy drizzle, she stared into the dark night sky. Somewhere on the pitch black roof a generator kicked in, a window light flickered several times from the square block building that allowed access to the stairwell. The door was open.
In the distance came the faint throbbing of a flitter craft.

Running to the opposite side of the roof, she saw another fire escape. The lower roof of the adjacent building was a precarious jump. Scurrying down to the first turn about on the fire escape, she tossed the duffel bag to the other building then jumped. “Sorry about that sweetheart.” She said before slinging the bag over her shoulder once again. Running full out to the other side… there, just as before, was a fire escape and a lower roofed building. Four more times she repeated her hopscotch maneuver until she reached the tall building at the opposite end of the block. This time she jumped landing on narrow ledge that lead to a gridiron balcony with French doors. Pulling a balanced throwing knife from the human leather scabbard in her right boot, Jasmyn quickly lifted a pane of glass away from cracked and weathered woodwork.

The entrance was a piece of cake, as her brother would say. Cake! Jasmyn had never tasted cake in all her seventeen years. The old ones said their parents and grandparents had eaten cake. They said it made your teeth rot. Even if such a thing as cake really existed, who would want to eat cake if it made your teeth rot? “Thanks, but no cake for me.” She said, and slipped through the unlocked door just as the low flying flitter craft with yellow searchlight swept the building and passed overhead.

From her left boot she pulled a red filtered pin-light, replacing the knife to her right. Flexing her trigger finger several times, she pulled the 45 automatic from its shoulder holster. The room smelled rotten with decaying bodies and mildew. Stepping over the decomposing bodies she slipped several times in oozing viscous liquid. No one in their right mind would look for her in this room. The SP regiment boys wearing full combat gear were pussies when it came to facing death in the face. No, they would be combing the areas outside, thinking she would run for safety in the outskirts of the city. Laughing she opened a double door closet. Two bodies sat propped up against the back wall of the large ceder-lined closet. Setting the duffel bag down, she grabbed the pant leg of what looked to be a Catalina gang member, yeah, the tats were distinctive. The two-hundred-pound corpus was stiff and hard to move. The other dead weight was a woman dressed in black leather and fishnet stockings. When Jasmyn yanked on her foot, her head thumped like a ripe melon falling from a counter top, and arm and leg had been taken. Cannibals?