Dead and Dead Again: Kansas City Quarantine (34 page)

Ok, not where I thought she was
going at all,
he corrected himself.

“Watch out! There’s a massive group
in your way,” The Doctor informed them.

Athena must have put him to work
monitoring the video for us,
Calvin realized.

“Can we get around it?” he asked, enlarging
the picture on his monitor to zone in on the mass the doctor was warning them
about. Each vehicle now had its own video feed, but the former library had much
bigger monitors in the meeting rooms.

“No. Not without backtracking,
anyway,” The doctor replied. “You may need to go lateral for several blocks and
come back after you pass.”

“We’d probably have to go all the
way back across the river to do that. Many of the side streets are being
barricaded now.”

“Then you’re going to have to just
shoot your way through this group. And when you get to about 27
^th
, I
won’t be able to guide you, because that’s on the other side of a hill from the
tower. I can see nothing.”

“Roger that,” Scooter replied,
seeing the same thing on his tiny monitor.

“Ok. You heard him. Lock it down.
Make sure all of the windows are closed. Let the turrets do what they do, Trip,
no need to waste our ammo.”

“Ok.” “Agreed.” “Right.” He
received in response.

“Try to keep to the center line of
the road, Felicia,” he cautioned.

“Whatever you say, boss.”

“I’m not your boss,” Scooter
replied.

“You hear anyone else in this group
giving orders?” she asked snarkily.

“I…no. I just…don’t call me boss,
please.”

“Sure thing, Chief.”

“I’m not comfortable with that
either.”

“Look. Someone has got to get me
out of this mess. I picked a guy, and you’re the leader of his group. That
makes you
our
leader. Get me out of this thing, and I’ll call you
Scooter or even Calvin if you wish. But until you either get me free, or get me
or yourself dead, you’re Chief or Boss, or Captain

“Do
not
call me Captain.”

“Right, Chief.”

“There!” he pointed. “Turrets, make
us a corridor. Stay to the center. Trip, keep an eye on those civilians,” he
ordered in a rush, trying and failing to enhance his calm.

“Right, Chief,” Boomer and Trip
said together.

“Crap.” Calvin grumbled.

The dead had been forced out or
blocked from entering the side-streets by the car-based barricades and had
funneled into a mob between two streets. The cautious civilians were not
killing them, however, instead content to just make sure they couldn’t enter
their neighborhoods. Perhaps they had already learned how precious their
ammunition was and had decided to let the dead be if they weren’t being
attacked. Perhaps they were being humane. Calvin and his friends did not have
that luxury. The turrets mowed a path before the Hedgehog, but when one shuffler
went down, others would instantly fill the void, sometimes falling down, other
times successfully stomping over their fellow Infected. Both vehicles were
forced to slow to a crawl to avoid excess body damage and while the repeated
bashing of bodies might not permanently damage the vehicles, it sure did make
one hell of a mess.

“There are too many of them!”
Boomer called out. “We need to get clear for a minute and pick a light spot.”

They were wasting a lot of ammo
with little positive return. And now some of the zombies were crawling onto the
hoods, only feet away from the semi-open turrets. This was quickly getting out
of hand. But then Scooter noticed something. Something he’d noticed earlier,
but then quickly forgotten. “Go. Just run into them,” he suggested. “Keep it between
five and ten. No, even slower.”

“Ooh, gross!” Felicia exclaimed.

“Not liking this,” Gus agreed as
his foot lightly pressed the pedal, sending the Wagon forward with a quiet
grumble into and over the bodies blocking their path, pushing down zombies that
stood before them.

The heavy impacts stopped. Zombies were
pushed backwards into more zombies, who fell on top of the already dead again
zombies until there was a writhing mass of dead things composing a demented,
rocky path through the streets over which the vehicles climbed with little
issue. The Hedgehog bobbed up and down and they could feel the crunching of
bones through their military issue seat cushions. Those in the wagon had to
traverse even larger mounds, having to climb both the zombies they pushed down and
the piles of dead the Hedgehog had already run over.

“No. No. No. I can hear the skulls
pop!” Felicia squealed, trying to cover her ears, steer and hold her rifle at
once.

“Reminds me of Jeeping in the Rockies,” Trip hooted.

“Shut up, Trip,” Scooter snapped.
“Just keep going. Save the ammo. Stop shooting them,” he added to Boomer and
Joel. “Most of them get pushed out of the way if they’re not already lying on
the ground dead...dead again, I mean.”

The second Joel stopped shooting
the ones in front of the Hedgehog the rest could see that he was right. As they
continued, most of the zombies were actually pushed from in front of the
vehicle, as long as their speed stayed under 5 mph. Once they had slowed, Felicia
only rolled over a few dozen more before they cleared the seething mass of
death and once again traveled down mostly empty streets. The wagon once again
pulled back a half block to give the others a cushion, everyone cautiously
eying the barricades on either side until they finally reached a seemingly
abandoned 28
^th
street. But it only seemed that way.

As the Hedgehog crossed the intersection,
the gray pavement next to the Humvee exploded and the wide car lurched onto its
side and skidded several feet. Being the only one onboard who hadn’t latched
his safety buckles, and sitting as he was in the rear troop chairs, Calvin was
thrown to the other side of the vehicle with great force. It took every bit of
athletic prowess he possessed to keep from being dashed into oblivion against
the barely cushioned seats opposite his own, though the padded armor certainly
helped

“What the fuck!” Trip cursed,
unbuckling his seat belt and standing upright on the side window and bringing
his M-16 up to bear. .

Calvin wanted to take a minute to
orient himself and check for broken bones, realizing instantly, or so he
thought, that he was a bit dazed and bruised from the impact and would have a
sizeable bump on his head for the next few days. He would have loved nothing
better than to take a few moments to re-orient himself, but circumstances
dictated other actions.

 “It’s guys with guns!” Boomer
shouted followed by several unintelligible grunts. He was still in his turret,
lying on his side and trying to spin the barrel up to face the incoming
attackers. “Real people, I mean,” he grunted in explanation. “They got a fucking
rocket launcher, man!”

“Holy Shit! What do you want me to
do?” Gus asked from a block behind, where he had quickly retreated to as soon
as he’d seen the street explode.

“Mgfplph,” Calvin replied as he
tried to unwind from the tangle of safety belts into which he had become
snared. Sparing a moment for a glance back through the thick, dust encrusted
back window to where Gus waited. “Just stay back out of sight, Gus,” Calvin finally
mumbled, fairly certain he sounded coherent.

“The Hedgehog looks intact. I could
come up and ram you to get you back on your wheels and we can get the hell out
of here before it’s too late.”

“No! Just…hold up. Nobody do
anything stupid yet.”

“You mean like trying to defend
ourselves?” Tripper demanded angrily.

“What? Trip…no, I mean, if they
wanted to finish us, they would be firing right now. They’re clearly waiting
for a response.”

“Or they think we’re dead and don’t
want to waste ammo,” Scaggs suggested.

“Oh…right. I guess I’m not thinking
too clearly. Is everyone ok?”

“Other than being blown up, I’m
fine,” Tripper retorted in mild annoyance. “How are you?” he added.

“I’m fine,” Felicia replied.

“I’m good,” Boomer said.

“Yup.” Said Joel succinctly.

“You should have been buckled in,
Scooter,” Brick enlightened him haughtily from the comfort of the passenger
seat.

“Shut up, Brick. Everyone, get
ready to defend yourselves,” Calvin ordered.

While Felicia, Brick and Trip were
un-clicking their belts and flipping the safeties of their guns and loosening
weapons in their scabbards, Calvin jumped over a seat to kneel behind Brick,
using his overturned seat as gun rest—
damn, this thing is seriously tall on
the inside,
his dazed mind noted casually.

Wiping his eyes with one of his unused
goo rags, he took careful aim on an approaching Latino woman, knowing full well
that if he were to actually fire, the bullet would never penetrate the
reinforced windshield and would likely ricochet back and hit one of his friends.
He simply wanted those outside to see someone inside aiming back.

“What the hell!” The approaching
girl shouted uncertainly. “They ain’t military.”

“What? That’s a military issue
Humvee if I’ve ever seen one,” an afro-topped, light-skinned teenager in Chiefs
red and blue jeans replied confidently, brandishing an Uzi in the direction of
the flipped vehicle.

“Well, then, you ain’t ever seen
one, jackass,” the rough female voice snapped.

“Sweets is right. They ain’t
wearing no damn uniforms,” a young dark-skinned man wearing both red and blue informed
the rest. “Looks like they wearin’ armor.”

“Soldiers wear armor,” someone out
of sight replied.

“Not military vests. I mean real
armor, I mean like…like King Arthur shit.”

“What the…Hey! You inside the
truck,” yelled a bald, crotchety old black man in a voice ravaged by age,
Hennessy and smoking.

“Jesus, it’s Scatman Crothers,”
Tripper breathed in wonder over Calvin’s shoulder, the two having practically
shoved Brick into the back of the vehicle and out of their way.

‘Scatman’ approached cautiously
with his hands up. Wearing washed out camouflaged pants and a black shirt with
some faded Asian words on it, he also had an M-16 casually slung over his
shoulder as if it were a towel and he were on a beach in the Caribbean.

Trip and Scooter glanced at each
other with expressions ranging between curiosity and confusion.

Trip shrugged.

Calvin grabbed the PA mic.

“Yes?” he asked calmly, as if they
weren’t in a vehicle lying on its side surrounded by two dozen machine
gun-toting gang-bangers.

There was a pause, presumably due
to the man not knowing exactly what to say.

“Well…just who in the hell are
you?”

“I’m Calvin.”

“What branch you with, Mr. Calvin?”

“Branch?”

“Yeah. Military or government, Mr.
Calvin?”

“No. I’m not
Mr
. Calvin. I’m
just Calvin, sir. Calvin Hobbes. I’m…we’re not with the military—or any other
government institution, for that matter,” he explained, to hopefully save
himself the time of answering no to a dozen agencies.

“You ain’t with the National Guard,
Secret Service, DOD, maybe Homeland?”

Oh well, it was worth a try,
Calvin thought. “No, sir. We’re just people, like you.”

“People like us don’t own vehicles
like
that
or the other one hiding up the street.
”

“Oh, they’re not ours. They were
loaned to us by a friend who likes to be prepared. We’re just trying to help our
friends and family.”

The man examined them a bit longer,
then lowered his head and shook it slowly.

“Aw, shit. We done blew up regular folks.”

‘Scatman’ slung his rifle on the
opposite shoulder and gestured for the others to do the same. “Wasted a good
rocket, too,” he complained bitterly.

“If it helps…I think we’re
alright,” Scooter told them. “Our friend built this. It’s pretty rugged. If we
could get back on our wheels, maybe we can still drive.”

“Hold tight. We’ll see if we can
flip you back.”

He and Trip shared another shrug.

“Um, ok. Thanks.”

A dozen men rushed out, several
talking as if they were already deep in the middle of a conversation about
whether to help the group or not. “Like I said, why don’t we take what they
have? We might need it later,” one man suggested.

“I’m for that,” another agreed.

“Shut up, fools,” the older man
shouted them down.

“We need to be ready to shoot
back!” Brick breathed into his mic.

“We are,” Calvin hissed. “Calm
down. Don’t do anything unless I tell you to.”

“Whatever.”

“Just shut up and grab a spot to
lift,” Sweets, the pretty Latina with broad shoulders and hard dark eyes
muttered to several of the men outside. “Stop talking as if you’re smart enough
to make decisions. These are our neighbors. We’ll need to help each other out
to beat this shit.”

“Sweets is right. And they’re armed
too,” the ‘Scatman’ cautioned the younger men quietly. “They’d kill half of us
and we wouldn’t have gained a damned thing compared to the lives we’d lose.
These folks are just doing what we’re doing, looking out for their own. Tryin
to get a handle on what the fuck is going down with this city. Might come a
time for your kind of survivin’, but it ain’t on day one, fool. Not in Kansas City. No sir. And when it does come, I better be long gone or I’m probably gonna
tan some hides. Now grab that bumper and let’s get these nice people out of
here if we can. Least we can do after damn near blowing them all to hell.”

Three men climbed up onto the side
of the vehicle and leaned, using their weight as leverage to pull the Hedgehog
over. The heavy vehicle flipped rather easily considering its bulk and as
everyone jumped back and away as it bounced three or four times before coming
to rest on all four intact wheels. Felicia climbed back into the driver’s seat
and shifted into gear, rolling forwards and then back to make sure it would do
that, at least.