Dead and Dead Again: Kansas City Quarantine (2 page)

“What party?”

“The top,” she ordered with
authority.

“What is your pass?”

The lieutenant read off the code on
the card in a shaky voice.

“Holy shit,” came the surprised
response. “Ok, we are recording. Give me the status for the Sit Rep.”

“We have had an
Incident
in
public. The Midwest is compromised…”

The sun shone brightly from an
ideal blue blanket that covered the busy metropolis in a dazzling perfection
only nature could create. A beautiful late fall day in the Heartland and the
biggest parade in history, The Greater Kansas City Sports Appreciation Parade,
was in full swing with thousands of floats, bands and convertibles carrying
notables, half of whom had no good reason to be there other than the need to be
seen and appreciated.

“Ooh, look at that float, Trip!”
Sarah practically squealed with delight, her shining jade eyes lighting up like
twin emerald suns, if there was such a thing. “It’s so Pretty!” she exclaimed
with another squeal as the long LGBT Rainbow float glided past, it’s diverse
occupants spraying the crowd with skittles and other assorted multi-colored
candies.

Tripper’s gray eyes gazed ahead
blankly. “It’s alright,” he admitted.

“Alright? It’s the best one we’ve
seen yet,” she argued, nudging him off-balance.

He subconsciously caught his medium
build on the sign post he’d been leaning his hangover against for most of the
morning. His long sandy brown bangs couldn’t hide the subtle, growing restlessness
he was feeling. It was entirely likely that he was the only person in the
entire city feeling frustrated this day, because everyone else in the damned Metro
was celebrating.

“What’s with you, Sweetie? You’ve
been out of sorts all day.”

“Nothin’, babe, just enjoying the
show,” he lied. He hadn’t even watched half of the floats and she probably knew
it.

“You haven’t even been watching,”
she accused him.

Oops,
he thought.

“You’ve been eyeing me sideways all
morning, acting all shifty and jumpy. You’re not on drugs are you?” she asked,
crossing her arms and glaring at him like a million concerned parents had done for
several decades, perhaps even centuries.

“Well, yes. Yes I am,” he laughed
and she joined him, happy he was finally able to show at least
some
emotion on one of the greatest days of the city’s history.

Trip Grissom was not a sociable
person. He had a small group of friends and was generally unconcerned with the
rest of the universe. He did smoke a little weed, and that would only be
technically not-entirely-legal for a few more months, when the new Show-Me
Cannabis Law or whatever they had named it officially took full effect. Usually
a little smoke made him pretty calm and incredibly funny, but not today. Sarah
studied him nervously, noticing a controlled tightness around nervous eyes,
which jumped about, refusing to meet her own.

Seeing him so uncharacteristically introspective
on the most momentous day of the city was making her uneasy. Her mind already
bothered by some unfathomable, ominous thing looming over them—and her
intuition was rarely wrong—the time had arrived to confront the issue.
Please
don’t let him be dumping me,
she begged the universe. She steeled her
nerves and asked anyway, knowing the universe persistently prepared its plans
without need or desire of her input, approval, or even basic understanding. “Trip,
is there something you want to talk about?” she asked, a frown of concern
quickly narrowing her eyes and stealing the dimples from her pouty red lips.

Is there something I want to
talk about? Yes!  
His mind screamed. There was something he wanted to talk
about, alright. But now that the day had come, he had no idea how he was going
to do it. He’d made a deal with himself that if the Royals won the World Series
again and the Chiefs won a playoff game last year, he’d ask her to marry him.
In normal sick and twisted fashion of the universe, seemingly every professional
and semi-pro sports team in Kansas City had won their prospective championships—except
for the Chiefs who had, however, won that first playoffs game before being
eliminated the following week—and most teams were well on their way to repeats.
But he had reneged on his private promises and now the Chiefs were undefeated
into October this year and the Royals had again won the World Series. The city
had decided to throw the biggest parade in history to celebrate all Kansas City sports and today was that day.

Every major network and news outlet
was covering the events. Half of the country could care less what happened in
KC, but the rest of the nation loved a good party. Everyone wanted to get into
the act. In preparation for the event, the population of the Kansas City
Metropolis had seemed to triple over night, and may have actually done so.  This
fine morning people lined the streets from the river downtown on the east side
of Main Street all the way south through downtown to the fountain-filled
Country Club Plaza before the path cut west through the Plaza for about a mile
on Emanuel Cleaver Blvd. The lively and lengthy parade followed that path to
Madison Avenue, then turned north up to Westport road, and juked east to Broadway,
only four blocks over from Main. From there the route stretched all the way back
to the river again. Anyone missing something on the Main Street route could
just jog over to Broadway and see it again…if they could find an open spot to
squeeze into on the crowded sidewalks.

The sheer number of parade entries
and goers and the unending revelry that had continued since the game seven
victory had made this week seem like Mardi Gras, Thanksgiving, Christmas and
the Fourth all rolled into one celebration. Every high school, non-profit
organization and booster club that had connections with city sports in any
capacity was there in force, along with many that had no business there at all.
Most of the Holiday floats from the bigger city parades were present as well.
Unfortunately for many, the power infrastructure in KC was mostly above-ground
so none of the famous balloons of the other major cities were flying, but there
were more than enough of everything else to satiate the pallets of most
paradophiles.

The entire country was watching and
talking about what they were drinking in the water out here and once again
people were proud to live in the area, whether on the Kansas side or in Missouri,
because the most important thing everyone was learning about Kansas City was
that it was splayed out over half a hundred miles just inside the borders of
both states. The Chiefs, Royals and Mavericks played in Missouri, and Kansas housed the T-Bones, SKC Wizards as well as FC Kansas City, the National Women’s
Soccer League team that had just repeated another championship. Most of the art
and science buildings were located on the Missouri side, while much of the
upscale shopping and housing sat along the Kansas border. Only the nerdliest of
students knew how many cities were now included in the KC Metro Area, but it
seemed like a hell of a lot to Trip.

“Babe!” Sarah snapped his head back
to the moment with a hand on his shoulder.

“What?”

“What is
wrong
with you?”

“Nuttin, honey. Let’s watch the
parade.”

“I
have
been, but
you’re
drifting.” She poked a red and gold nail into his chest.

“Just…” he sighed in exasperation.
“Maybe I smoked too much this morning.”

That
was true. El Supremo, a
potent blend that his friend Hephaestus had grown in his lab, was kicking his
ass today. Most of the time El Supremo was a kind and forgiving friend who let
them function like normal people with killer senses of humor, but occasionally
the magical bud would hit them over the head with the +8 Hammer of Stupid and lobotomize
them into social zombies.

“I told you not to start so early
this morning, Sweetie. You’ll be asleep by noon.”

“I’m fine, Dollface. I
just—hey…that’s not right.”

“What?”

She followed the direction of his storm-gray
eyes as they drifted up and behind her at something high above the buildings
along the street to the West. “It’s just a plane going in for a landing at the
airport,” she shrugged after a quick glance.

“I’m pretty sure this is a no fly
zone with the Vice-President here today. And that thing is off course and way
too low if it’s going for Wheeler.”

“I don’t know if…yeah, maybe you’re
right. I don’t think that engine is running.”

“No maybe about it. I thought it
seemed weird. There’s no sound. Neither engine is running. It’s not
landing
;
it’s
crashing
! C’mon!” he shouted, running north, away from the incoming
plane, but in the same direction.

“What are you doing? If we just
wait here, it’ll pass over us and we’ll be safe.”

“I know. I’m not worried about
being safe. I want to see where it goes.”

“Why?” she called after him,
throwing her hands up in disgust.

The plane veered west over the
buildings and out of their sight towards Broadway, so he turned at the nearest
corner. He didn’t read the sign, but he thought it was 15
^th
or
something. With a resigned sigh and the certainty of pending regret, Sarah ran to
catch him, golden pony tail bobbing behind her.

“Do you think Boomer and Brick are
seeing this? I think they’re just a few blocks over by the new Performing Arts
Center.”

“Who cares,” Sarah muttered
bitterly, but Trip ran on without noticing.

“I think it’s going to try and land
on Broadway!” he panted, already out of breath.

Being a former track star at her
private school and then later in college, she easily caught him and kept pace. But
that wasn’t enough so she memorized the path ahead and turned to run backwards,
giving him a ‘come hither’ wink as a special kind of torture.

Catch me and you can have me.
Her look said.

Sure, if you can stop and wait
until I get there, that’d be great,
his body replied.
I gotta quit
smoking so much,
he thought for the thousandth time.

A distant screeching echoed through
the streets. Both assumed, correctly, that this was the plane making a
semi-controlled landing and most likely bouncing off of a few buildings. Rounding
the corner a few minutes later put the couple about five full blocks up the
hill from the crash site. Ahead lay a slow, steady decline in the terrain running
northward from their current spot and with the parade now stopped around the
crash, the couple could step out into the street for a faster run. Both could see
the downed plane up ahead in the distance. It appeared to be one of those
expensive Gulfstreams with what Tripper recognized as government markings, even
from this distance.

The jet sat on the west side of the
street pressed up against a building. Mostly intact, it seemed more likely the
plane had been in a car wreck, rather than having just fallen out of the sky.
The Gulfstream seemed to be missing only half of the left wing, which sat
perfectly parallel with the sidewalk in the middle of the street, and the left
wheel, which was not within their view. There was no smoke or fire, but that
didn’t mean there wouldn’t be. The door of the jet already sat open inward and with
the wheel gone, the tilt left only about a six inch drop to the pavement. The
couple could see three people wearing white coats and two wearing blue standing
over what seemed like two immobile bodies, one wearing a white coat, the other clad
in red and gold, likely a parade-goer.

“Looks…like…somebody died,” panted Tripper,
walking nearly doubled over and trying to vacuum-in more oxygen to avoid a
total flameout.

Although many sports-clad bystanders
milled around the scene, none seemed to be stressing over the downed reveler or
the other body, the attention of the hundreds of gawkers aimed entirely at the
plane and survivors. Any efforts of those moving about seemed to be directed
towards moving the colorful floats to the east side of the road so emergency
vehicles could approach the scene.

“That’s sad. I hope they didn’t hit
any kids when they crashed.”

One of the white coats threw a
black blanket over the pair of bodies.

“Me…too, babe. I…I only see…the two
bodies, though.”

“Same here.”

“Both are…too big…to be a kid,” he grunted
between rapid breaths and a hacking cough or two, spitting phlegm onto the
street. “Unless it’s…a…really big one.”

She shot him a withering glare and
slowed to let him catch up. The crowd was gathering and growing. At least a
thousand people packed into the double-wide lanes, scurrying through the floats
and bands and trying to make room on the east side of the roadway. Thousands more
were exhibiting better judgment and slowly retreating up the street and away in
case the craft exploded—the exodus was slow because there were simply too many
people to move en masse quickly and the midway point between the couple and the
crash quickly became a choke-point of humanity.

“I don’t get it,” Tripper muttered
almost too quietly for Sarah to hear, almost.

“Don’t get what?” she snipped, her
green eyes flashing with annoyance.

“How does a plane fall…out of the
sky onto a parade…and only hit two people?”

“It looks like it actually landed
on that side street and slid through the intersection and across the street
there,” she pointed to the right. “See those scrape marks on the corner of that
building there? I think it crashed on eleventh and slid west, bouncing off of
that building and through the parade. Those barricades there probably saved
everyone by keeping them out of that intersection. It’s, like, the only fully
blocked street downtown.”

“Yeah….that makes sense I guess…but…there
are still thousands of people there. Surely…more than two…should have been
hit.”

“I guess the Kansas City luck is
really kicking into high gear.”

“Yeah…that could be it. This
should…look great on the news. Another story…of Kansas City winning.”

“Well, two people might be dead,
Trip. It’s hardly worth celebrating.”