Dead and Dead Again: Kansas City Quarantine (17 page)

“Fair enough,” he returned her
unorthodox ‘kiss’.

The big man smiled. Maybe they
were
both crazy, but they were sweet. If this was some big joke, at least it
promised some fun. The big black ambulance bounced down the bumpy gravel road
out of the park with only a few cars ahead, but once they reached the main road
and headed towards the highway, they found traffic stopped dead. Scooter craned
his head out the window on the passenger side trying to get a look ahead. Smoky
black tendrils drifted into the blue sky about a half-mile up the road.

“Must be a crash,” he noted.

“What’s going on, officer?” Quinn
asked through the open slot in the thick window on the driver’s side. The
policeman had just stepped from his bike to place orange cones behind their
vehicle. He did a double-take at the odd vehicle and the fact that the
occupants were dressed in armor, but he’d seen stranger things coming out of
this area and was simply too distracted by his unsatisfying home life to care that
much.

“Metro Bus crash at the onramp
about a mile up there,” the man explained dully, as if for the hundredth time.
“Came up the ramp out of control and ran the stoplight. Smashed right into several
cars. A bunch of injuries. Access will be down for a while. We’ll start turning
all these cars around as soon as the emergency vehicles go through.”

“Great. Thank you.”

Several clear gunshots sounded in
the distance.

“What the hell…” the cop muttered,
dropping the stack of cones and grabbing the mic from his chest.

“Was that gunshots?” Quinn asked.

“One-oh-four to point, what’s with
the gunfire, over?”

There was no reply.

“One-oh-four to blockade, what’s
going on up there?”

More gunfire rang out.

“Hey, anyone up there at the
highway, what the hell is going on?”

“Get us out of here,” Scooter muttered
to Quinn.

“We can’t, the cops have the road
blocked,” the big man’s red beard shook back and forth as he looked for a
clearing to all sides.

“Take the shoulder.”

“That’s illegal.”

“You really think that matters
now?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t you see?” Athena leaned over
and pointed ahead.

His green eyes saw nothing. He
refocused, squinting a question at the couple.

“It’s here,” she breathed. “That bus
probably came from downtown. It’s infected and now it is spreading here.”

“You can’t be serious,” Quinn
replied dryly. Horns honked in the distance and now they could hear faint
screaming.

“Look!” Athena still pointed.

A crowd of people a half a mile ahead
ran up the roadway. Police dashed from car to car shouting at those stuck in
the jam and doors flew open to allow those inside to flee with the crowd to where
the trio waited in disbelief. What looked like a mobile riot weaved in and out
of cars and the report of gunshots came in regular intervals.

“Back! Back! Take the shoulder.
Don’t stop for anything!” Scooter shouted.

Quinn was about to pull out, but
just then two emergency vehicles screamed by on the shoulder, headed towards
the accident. A half a mile up, the leading ambulance veered to the side to
avoid something and clipped a tree, spinning out of control and flipping onto
its side as the fire engine, following too closely, slammed into it with a
horrifying crunch that echoed up the roadway.

“What the hell is going on up
there?” they heard the cop ask, before he started running forward to see for
himself.

“Turn around,” Athena shouted. “Get
us out of here, Quinn!”

“I don’t know any other way
downtown or we could turn around and go north,” Scooter breathed in
desperation.

“Where are we going?” the big
driver asked.

“I think Ninth and Locust.”

“Right. State, to 4
^th
to
Washington and cross the river back on i-70. That should get us there and
bypass the parade if we come up that street by the Heart of America bridge. I
think it’s the 6
^th
or Oak exit.”

“I…ok. Sure. Sounds great, Quinn,
State to Washington…um, do that. Let’s go!”

Quinn was unsure what really
was
happening, but he knew it was one hell of a coincidence that these two said
zombies had hit downtown and now there was chaos flowing up the interstate like
a tsunami heading right for their beach. Quickly checking the mirror for more
emergency vehicles, he yanked the big ambulance in a turn off into the grass
and then back onto the shoulder heading the other way. Horns blared and fingers
flew from drivers who were pissed at their cheating out of line, but if what
these two
said
was going down was what was
actually
happening, he
could live with the guilt.  Quinn finally began to wonder why they were going
into the heart of the problem instead of fleeing for the outskirts of the city
and safety. His honest mind could only produce one answer…a deal is a deal.

Just as they topped the hill to the
north speeding down an empty lane, they heard the first of several explosions in
their wake. Flames jumped up and smoke immediately began filling the valley
behind them before they crested the hill and all was blocked from view. Several
more explosions rocked the area just as Quinn turned onto State Avenue. The
ashen-faced trio clutched their respective weapons with a newfound fear. It had
all seemed like a fun little adventure. Nothing about the situation had felt
real until now. Unable to come to grips with how quickly things were happening,
Quinn reached a meaty paw up and flipped on the radio. Classic rock poured out
as if nothing were wrong.

“Hmm. No Emergency Alert System
yet. See if you can find anything.” He motioned for Athena to take over the
radio and she leaned forward between the men, changing stations and listening
for a few seconds, then moving on. Each one either played uninterrupted music
or was off the air.

“Do you think anyone is even live on
air today?” Athena asked. “They probably all pre-recorded everything so they
could be downtown for the parade. Or their programs are broadcasting from
locations around the parade route. They wouldn’t have had time to get to their
stations and set off the EAS alarms yet.”

“No, the Emergency Alert System is
automatic,” Quinn said. “Once someone initiates it, it takes over all
registered transmissions and puts out the appropriate signals.”

“Wait!” Athena breathed excitedly.
“Here’s something…”

A deep, made-for-radio voice was
reporting in hushed tones.

“Again, I can’t tell you for sure
what’s going on. We lost contact with Skeve and the Slut down on Main Street over an hour ago. The last thing they said—and I can’t emphasize enough that
these are their words to me—was that
zombies
have taken over the parade
and that everyone needs to get to safety. I’m looking at video from a local news
chopper right now that we recorded before that network went off the air. The
scene I’m seeing down there is absolute bedlam. There is a downed plane, but
nothing around the area suggests it caused any damage to surrounding buildings.
However, there are ground level fires all over downtown. Floats and vehicles
are ablaze all along the parade route. It seems people are attacking other
people indiscriminately. It looks like the film footage from the L.A. riots for those of you who remember. The ground-level images on camera before the
cameramen were attacked were horrendous and graphic. I swear I saw a man trying
to eat a woman. I do not believe this is a hoax. There is rioting and mayhem in
downtown Kansas City…and my friends who were there first-hand said there are
zombies. That, along with what I saw with my own eyes on the video leads me to
believe that the end may very well be upon us. Everyone needs to stay away from
downtown and maybe get some appropriate protection from…oh my god…from zombies.
I’m uncertain how long we will remain on the air. We received word from federal
authorities demanding that we stop broadcasting, but I have sworn to continue
as long as possible.”

Athena clasped Scooter’s larger
hand, but some of the comfort was filtered by the steel coils of the mail
gloves both wore. He had never known her to be afraid of anything before, but
this was really happening. It wasn’t a prank. They weren’t being Punk’d. They
would not arrive downtown to find Tripper pointing and laughing at their
gullibility. They might not find Tripper at all. The radio transmission cut off
abruptly emphasizing the fact that they might not even make it downtown. Athena
changed the stations, but found no other live stations. The big ambulance
cruised in silence all the way to State Street until Quinn turned onto 4
^th
,
followed it around to Washington. Everything seemed unnaturally normal. If it
hadn’t been for the call from Tripper and the dead silence on the air waves
they could have believed this day was no different than any other fall day.

“Everything seems fine over here,”
Scooter commented quietly.

“Yeah,” the big smith agreed. “It’s
kind of creepy, given the circumstances.”

Traffic flowed in what seemed a light
rush hour pattern rolling away from downtown with only a few erratic drivers,
until they took the ramp onto I-70 and crossed the river, where the highway
became uncomfortably barren. Quinn slowed down as they approached the summit of
the hill. The low grumble of the Ambulance eased as they approached the
downtown end of the viaduct, the concrete retaining walls beginning to rise
around them. Heavy smoke billowed from several sources in the downtown
superstructures ahead to their right. Calvin and Athena clutched their weapons
as if they were teddy bears.

Topping the hill brought them a
better view, but no closer to an understanding of the situation. The smoke,
they saw, flowed from the lower and mid-levels of several buildings on either
side of the highway, but the bridges seemed mostly intact. Just ahead three cars
lay in varying stages of disintegration, two unrecognizable, flattened masses
flipped onto their roofs and one grey Mercedes that had smashed into a bridge
support and flipped onto its side. Calvin opened the thick port window on his
side and listened intently, but could distinguish nothing but the echo of the
Humvee’s engine rumbling off of the concrete retaining walls.

The ebony vehicle rolled through
without stopping. There were no dazed survivors wandering around. No calls for
help. Concrete and rod-iron dangled from the bridges they passed and it was
clear that at least two of the cars had burst through the rails of the bridges
at a very high rate of speed. The absence of emergency personnel in the area
considering the circumstances was extremely unsettling.

“Should we stop and see if they’re
alright?” Athena asked quietly.

“We don’t stop for anything but
living people,” Scooter answered quickly.

“How do we know they’re not
infected?” Quinn asked. “I guess the only people we can trust are in this
vehicle now,” the man answered his own question.

“And our friends,” Scooter argued.

“But they were down here. How do
you know they’re not infected?”

“Doesn’t matter. They have the
guy.”

“What guy is that?”

“The guy who can stop this…maybe.”

“You’ve been watching too many
movies, kid. No one stops something like this.”

“Supposedly this guy has the data
of the virus that started it.”

“Whatever. I promised to help you,
and now we’re in this together, but I personally think we need to get out of
the city and find someplace to dig in.”

“My uncle has a place in central Missouri. It’s a walled compound ringing in a small valley between a steep, u-shaped crater
on a mesa, took half of his money to build.”

“Nice. That should do just fine, if
we can get there in one piece. Not sure how open the highways are going to be;
looks like everyone is already heading out of town.”

“We have a friend across the river
who has a shop we can hide out in until we’ve collected everyone and—”

“Noo!” Athena screamed in horror
and clutched his arm with the hand not holding the panabas the smith had given
her. Next to another overturned vehicle stood a person missing one arm with his
innards dangling from huge chunks of missing midsection. A tattered and bloodied
Chiefs jersey hung in ribbons over the gaping holes in his flesh and the eyes
that followed the vehicle were milky-white and seemed to glow with an insane
fire. “Oh my god. It’s real,” she whispered.

The zombie held a black man’s leg
in his only hand, sinewy jaws repeatedly ripping off chunks. Just an hour
before Calvin had eaten a turkey leg at the Ren Fest in exactly the same manner.
Occasionally the foot with the Air Jordan would wiggle when the zombie bit into
a muscle, which had caused Athena to scream. Believing the leg to be still
alive had made things somehow even worse in her dazed mind. Fear gripping three
guts, they continued past the dead guy and exited up the off-ramp.

“Almost there. We’re only a block
away,” Scooter breathed, troubled by the fact that he didn’t feel more relief
from the statement.

We made it,
one of Calvin’s
many internal voices sighed. But they weren’t there yet, and around the next
corner waited a reminder of why you don’t count your chickens before they
hatch…or your zombies until they’re dead. The first zombie they had passed seemed
mostly harmless. Distractedly gorging itself on a meaty treat, it had ignored
the vehicle. But merely a block from their destination, a stench struck the
vehicle like a wave and they looked to see the road ahead partially blocked by a
mass of infected people. Perhaps twenty prone, unmoving corpses littered the
street, while another thirty quite mobile corpse-like people milled around off
in the grass on the right. The grey-skinned zombies danced and jostled with dexterity
and speed nearly the equal of normal people and could have easily been mistaken
for such if not for the fact that each was missing some body part—an arm here,
chunks of flesh there, an ear or lower jaw.

The scene cleared as they
approached and the trio noted the moaning mass of diseased humanity was gathered
around a green, late model Chevy truck that held four desperate people in the
back, all of whom were swinging odd weapons in a barely effective attempt to
keep the dead at bay. The truck had crashed backwards into a decorative wall on
the back corner of the new district court building, across the street from their
destination. A tall rod iron fence protected the back of the pickup and three
of the members, two young women and a man were in the bed facing the street
swinging crowbars and a stop sign to keep the zombies from climbing into the
bed, the other man stood on the roof, keeping the dead from climbing up over
the hood, if that was possible. But the group was only keeping the mass of
attackers at bay, they hadn’t killed many. Only the one protecting the hood
seemed to have the time and space to plan how to split a skull with his stop
sign, but he kept slipping on the roof and nearly falling into the waiting arms
of the seemingly starving crowd.

“Stop. Stop!” Athena shrieked in
horror.

The big smith brought the former
ambulance to a screeching halt halfway up the street. Several of the diseased
attackers turned to look.

“Are you crazy?” Scooter yelled at
her, pointing at the gang of undead who had turned and were now lumbering their
direction.

“Look.” she pointed to the wrecked
vehicle. “Isn’t that Gus and Joel up there?”

“Can’t be. There are women with
them.” Scooter stated flatly.

“It looks like them.”

“It does. But it can’t be. They’re
the opposite of babe magnets, Rosebud. Even in the apocalypse, most women
wouldn’t be caught dead with those two.”

“Hey, they’re your friends.”

“I know. And I love them. They’re
two of my
best
friends, but they would have creeped those girls out more
than any pack of zombies could.”

“That’s not funny.”

Calvin sighed, closely scrutinizing
the group of defenders. The two men did, indeed, resemble their friends. Even if
it was not them, it was unlikely Athena was going to let them continue without
helping the people. It was the right thing to do.

“We’re going to need to do
something…” said Quinn, the dead inching closer.

“We have to help whoever that is,”
Athena insisted.

“Don’t you think it’s every man for
himself now?” Calvin asked.

“No. And neither do you or we’d be
on our way to California right now.”

“California sounds fine with me,”
Quinn interjected.

Athena gave him a withering glare
to match the one she had been aiming at Calvin for the entire conversation.

“Just sayin…”

“We’re going to help them!” she
insisted. “If we’re going to survive whatever this is, we need to know now if
we can make it the right way. Otherwise, what’s the point?”

“Fair enough,” the big man said,
ripping open his door and pulling out his big maces and slamming down the
face-plate on his blue helm.

“Damnit!” Scooter spat angrily. “Ok,
we have to help them.”

“Welcome to the team, Scooter,”
Athena chided him with affection, her voice sounding tinny and echoing within the
now closed faceplate of her helm.

Calvin slammed down the visor on
his own helm and stepped out, pulling both war axes out in one fluid motion.
Athena had more trouble when a loose piece of leather caught on the seat belt
and pulled her back in, wrapping the two together even more.

“Damn it!” she cursed.

Scooter leaned back into the big
vehicle to give the straps one hack of an axe, but Quinn harrumphed and he
realized he was about to cut the man’s property. “Sorry,” he shot back and he
and Athena unwound the leather and nylon with shaking fingers.

The dead who had become interested
in them were not fast movers, thankfully, which explained why they were at the
back of the pack attacking the truck. But they weren’t patient either. Sensing
food, or whatever it was that was made them attack the uninfected, and even
though these things moved with the enthusiasm and coordination of the lunch
crowd in the rehabilitation wing of nearly any recovery hospital, they were coming
closer. Calvin felt time eroding under the relentless tenacity of their hunger,
but that was probably thanks to all of the movies they’d all seen.

“Get her clear. I’ve got your
back!”  The big man bellowed and charged forward.

He heard Quinn grunt as he took on
the first zombie out of four who were slightly faster than the others. But he
refused to look away from his task.

Leather under the nylon, twist,
twist again, pull—it’s free!

“Ok, go!” Athena snapped and both extracted
themselves from the vehicle and dashed forward to stand on either side of the already
entrenched Blacksmith.

That was a great start,
part
of Athena’s mind muttered sarcastically, but it was only trying to keep her
bladder from releasing by distracting her. Unfortunately, her eyes found the
mangled masses of brain and skull the big smith had already left in his wake
and she wretched.

Oh my god. I can’t do this.
But
it was kill or be killed. She had made them jump out. Now she had to live with
that.

“Ok,” Scooter panted, splitting the
skull of a man in a Timberwolves shirt and sending brain matter spraying
everywhere. “Ugh, that’s disgusting,” he muttered.

“Remember. As far as we know,
they’re zombies. Head shots take them down. Keep your mouth closed until we
find something to protect us from the spray. We fight down the right side,
keeping them on our left until we get to the truck, then get that group behind
us, edge down the truck to the street and force our way back here.”

Athena swung a sideways arc into
the side of the head belonging to a wild-eyed young grey-black girl missing a
big hunk of flesh from her thigh just under a plaid skirt. The panabas cut
completely through the skull, the top half of which popped off and into the air
like the top of a dandelion under a weed-eater, sticky brain matter flying one
direction, the skull another. The body sank down with a heavy thump and the
empty skull cap landed a few feet away and bounced with the sound of two
coconuts banging together. She wretched again, but held the bile down. Some
sick, twisted part of her mind brought up the flight speed of an unladen
swallow and she giggled for just a moment.

Quinn had taken out another two
with single swings to the side of the head, bursting the skulls and turning
both zombies into Human rugs. With ten feet between themselves and the group of
twenty or thirty zombies attacking the truck, he flipped up his visor to remove
a hunk of flesh that had landed on the cheek. His features were visibly pale,
green eyes filled with a crazed gleam bordering on horror. Athena felt better
knowing even the big man was scared, but still stood to the task.

“Ready?” Calvin asked, sounding
much calmer in his own ears than he felt.

 “Ready!” his partners shouted
resolutely, even if it was false bravado.

“Go!”

The armored trio dashed forward
until they met the next line of shuffling zombies and three were down in one simultaneous,
fluid motion, Athena’s panabas proved to be at least as effective as William
had promised as she split the skull of her second target just as Scooter’s
off-hand axe found its second skull. Quinn crushed the skull of one short,
immensely fat man wearing a red #25 jersey, spilling goo all over the sidewalk
before them. He slipped, but caught himself and stepped over the growing puddle
to kick a drooling moaner back into the group, gaining them all a little
breathing room to realign as it knocked several others to the pavement.

“Help us!” someone from the group
in the truck screamed at them.”

“What the hell do you think we’re
doing, genius?” Scooter called back.

“Scooter?” the man on the roof
called in surprise.

“I’ll be damned; you were right,
Rosebud. It
is
Gus and Joel,” Scooter muttered as he hacked through the
necks of two zombies who were so close they were practically humping each other
as they approached their feast. The bodies dropped motionless as the heads
rolled off, still snapping, smoky eyes continuing to follow them as they moved
past. As with most of the movies, it did seem to take destruction of something
within the brain to finish them completely; merely severing the spine deadened
the body, but not the skull.

“I wish William had decided to join
us,” Quinn shouted over the grunting of the trio, the zombies’ moaning and
sickening chunking of hacked flesh and popping of battered skulls. “He would
have enjoyed this, I think.”

The rotting stench of corpses
overwhelmed them all, forcing Athena to become a mouth-breather. “How could
anyone enjoy this?” she wretched.

On every other step she vomited in
the back of her throat and swallowed her own bile, gulping and retching in time
with her swings, but never wavering, knowing if she gave in, she would likely
die, or worse, Calvin might. And it was her fault they were out here in the
first place. She could have let them drive on, but would Calvin really have
done that? She was sure he wouldn’t.

“Not what I mean,” the big man
panted. “I doubt he’d like the killing…”

They were in a small shrub garden
area now, only a few feet from the truck. A dozen dead remained dead again
behind them. That left less than twenty moving dead between them and their
friends, only half of the Shufflers had noticed their presence. But it was
gory, disgusting work. And it didn’t help to know that they were killing things
that used to be people.

“…but knowing his weapons work as
he designed them would be a treasure. Harungh!” He aimed a huge downward blow at
a behemoth of a black man in a faded #68 jersey who loomed over them all. The
man’s head disappeared into his torso and the whole body fell forward to the
left, onto Athena, who screamed as she went to the ground, buried under a mass
of dead flesh oozing a stinky vitriolic fluid onto her armor and into the wood
chips around her.

“Calvin!”

“Athena!” Scooter called
desperately and leaped across Quinn to her side, beating back the eager dead who
were trying to have her for lunch.

Scooter had practiced for so many
years in his basement with wooden axes, and eventually some cheaper iron ones.
Four, six, sometimes eight hours a day with only his imagination to use for
targets as he danced about in intricate patterns killing invisible, armed
attackers. He set-to, swinging both arms in twin arcs of death. The big armor
smith stopped to watch in astonishment. Being a veteran of the Renaissance
Festival and a friend to those who lived that life, he had seen many people
over the years battling with real weapons in tournaments and at play. Never had
he seen anyone wield dual weapons with the speed and precision this young man
did. It was like one read about in the novels, like the weapons were extensions
of his arms, like his palms had been extended two feet beyond his arms and he
turned them and sliced as if he were merely doing a martial arts dance, only
with this dance, at each flick of an arm, a skull spilled gray matter or a neck
went severed, another head sent rolling impotently down the sidewalk.

“Get it off her!” Scooter screamed
as he drove through the dead as effortlessly as a mower rolls over the
neighbor’s rose bushes.

“I’m alright,” she called from the
ground. “Little out of breath, though.”

Scooter swung and turned and
chopped and kicked, spun again, swinging both arms in every arc he’d ever
practiced. He even had names for some of them, though it was such second nature
now that they were only an afterthought of his subconscious as he moved easily
through each motion. And in what seemed only a heartbeat, no more dead moved
around him. He paused, panting heavily, eyes darting around for more targets to
attack, only then realizing he had been screaming the entire time. Instead of
dead, he saw only six Human faces staring back, mouths agape. Quinn had helped Athena
to her feet and now both stared, visors open, in dumfounded disbelief. Joel,
Gus and both women gaped down at him with equal awe.

“Hi Joel. How you doing, Gus?” Calvin
asked casually between breaths.

The other two men continued to
stare.

“What? Is…is my fly undone?” he
asked, pretending to check.

“Dude!” Joel yelled from his perch
on the roof, shaking his long, dark hair from his eyes.

“That was the most awesomest
fracking rescue ever!” the unremarkably featured Gus crowed, bracing his street
pole on the concrete and vaulting his medium build frame out of the truck bed. Setting
the pole down on the ground, he caught both women as they climbed over the bed
rails before pulling his long, sandy hair into a pony tail.