Excerpt:

Inside the maintenance room, they did find stairs to the roof. They ran up the stairs and opened the door at the top, exiting the building. Once on top, they used some of the supplies they found in the maintenance room to secure the door so that they wouldn't be surprised by an unwelcome guest.

From atop the building, in the early morning light, they could see the toll the ensuing chaos below was taking. A half dozen cars were abandoned in the street, a couple were embedded into the sides of buildings and were burning. The only sign of life in the streets was the unlife, the zombies roaming the streets looking for more victims to join their growing horde. The smoke rising in the distance indicated that this was at least a city-wide event. Sirens in the distance wailed endlessly, warbling tiredly; the emergency vehicles attached to the sounds were long ago abandoned: likely abandoned by a zombie crew.

Jets screamed by overhead, scouting the area but helpless to assist any survivors. In the distance, army helicopters were hovering between the buildings, firing at the crowds below.

Seeing the helicopters, the group on the roof erupted in a chorus of shouts: jumping about, waving their hands over their heads hoping to get the attention of one of the pilots. It didn't look like they were going to be seen. Finally, one of the choppers turned and began to approach.

Justin laughed and turned to Jessica and gave her a bear hug around her waist, holding her close and lifting her off her feet. She hugged him back and shared his happiness that they were about to be saved. Even Sonya and Fred had made amends and were excitedly jumping up and down together with glee.

The helicopter flew between the buildings, occasionally hovering and opening fire on the hordes and any straggling zombies. Eventually, it was in front of their building, firing at the zombies still on the street. Then, from the eighth floor, they four saw a window explode outwardly with glass and debris, followed by a zombie leaping toward the helicopter below. No, not just one zombie, it looked like the whole horde that had been chasing them was now pouring out of the window, like a hose dousing a fire. Just like a fire, the helicopter was not prepared to withstand the stream.

The first zombie fell downward toward the whirling blades below. The blade ripped off its arms, decapitating and severing the body in an uncountable number of places, splashing the blades and roof with blood and flinging the mangled limbs and body parts against the walls and downward into the street. The helicopter shook with the impact and started to drift as the pilot desperately tried to regain control and stabilize the bird. Then the next zombie hit, nearly repeating the performance of the previous one, but shortened by another body colliding with the blades, then another, and another. The blades ground to a halt, the continued impacts and the bodies getting caught on the gears responsible for keeping the blade moving and the copter held aloft.

The joy of rescue immediately turned to horror as the suddenness and immediate resolution of the attack shook them to their core. The copter's blades stopped moving and seemed to defy gravity for a moment. The stream of zombies continued, landing on the vehicle that was just now being torn back to earth by the greedy force of gravity. As it fell to the ground, the zombies relentlessly pounded on the glass of the windshield, entering through the open door where the gun was mounted, not content with the certain death that the strike force faced from the fall, greedily claiming the kills as their own, feasting on the fresh meat even as the once proud vehicle collided with the zombies underneath, and then the ground.

The helicopter fell straight down, the blades so thoroughly stationary that there was not even a slight rotation of the vehicle as it fell. The explosion was intense. The impact shattered the windows of the buildings along the block, causing the four spectators that were helpless to assist and unable to alter anything about the unfortunate demise, to cover their ears with both hands. The flames generated an extreme amount of heat from the burning fuel that they felt even as they stared downwards at the scene.

The four of them stood and watched as the the remains burned, the flames leaping to the sky, looking as though some part of it still wanted to fly. The only sound was the burning and crackling of the wreck below; they stood in silence, too in shock to speak. They stood together, yet each was distinctly alone.

It seemed an eternity that they stood there. Jessica decided it had been long enough. She turned and began to speak, but was cut off. A zombie and pushed through their baricade on the roof and had charged them. It grabbed Sonya and started biting her on her face. Its momentum knocked both the zombie and Sonya off the roof. The three watched in shock as Sonya's screams and pleas became more distant until they stopped completely upon hitting the fire below.

Justin recovered first, "We have to get out of here. Get away from the edge! We have to get that door closed."

As they approached the door, they noticed that there was no additional sign of activity. I wonder if this was a lone attack? It occurred to her that there seemed to be only one way down, as unlikely and as unappealing as it was.

"Don't close the door; we need to go back down that way."