Dead and Dead Again: Kansas City Quarantine (46 page)

Calvin shushed everyone. After a
few seconds of hard listening, the group turned and faced the Paddy Wagon only
to see three sets of parents peeking out of the thick rear windows cheering the
couple and pounding on the glass. Boomer’s dad was noticeably absent, but that
was understandable.

“About putting the parents in
different place, I think we all will need to keep an eye on Mr. McClintock.
He’s going to need help.”

“Your parents can take care of
him,” Boomer suggested. “And we’ll make regular stops to check in on him,” he
promised. “He’s gonna be ok. He’s a tough old bastard.”

“And how are
you
doing?”
Calvin asked his friend.

“I’ll survive. Everyone knows I
never did get along with her. She kicked me out of the house before I’d
graduated high school just because I didn’t get straight A’s. That’s a little fucking
crazy…but I
did
love her. She was my mom and I’m going to miss her.”
Despite a strong, convincing facade the shadow of his broad shoulders shook for
a moment and he ducked low in the cupola to recover. With a shiver of his
chainmail coif rattling over the radio channel, when his head rose into view
once more and he took up position he was once again the undaunted, iron-jawed
Boomer everyone had come to know and love. “Just don’t get on me for how I may
treat these Deadheads for a while,” he muttered with a grim determination.

“Fair enough,” Calvin consented
with a nod.

Assessing the neighborhood, everything
seemed empty for the moment. Zombies lay scattered throughout the distance,
oozing brain matter and vitreous humour from destroyed eyes onto streets and
sidewalks. The sweet scents of freshly mowed lawns still hung heavily over the
neighborhood, disturbed occasionally by wafting tendrils of smoke from a
barbeque somewhere in the area.
Someone is still living a normal life
somewhere out there, at least.
Calvin was pleased to note. Off in the
distance a dog barked and birds chirped in the trees. The only things missing
from making this a perfect suburban day, other than a serious lack of twice
dead neighbors, was the gentle hum of a lawnmower or weed-whacker somewhere
down the street and a neighbor washing their car in the driveway. As the first
large droplets of rain began to fall and a brilliant flash and clap of thunder
shook them all, he reconsidered.
And the sun. The sun would be good.

A distant scream ripped through this
placid suburban daydream.

“Jesus,” Tripper breathed in a
hush.

“Get her in gear, Felicia,” Calvin
ordered, darting for the back of the Hedgehog with everyone but Athena, Brick
and Sarah.

“Where?”

“There!” Calvin pointed.

The street stretched into the
distance for four blocks east and ended at a T-section. At the farthest end of
the block, on the southern leg of the T, and almost out of sight around the
corner, a family of four fought off a mob of Infected from the bed of a
silvery-blue late model pickup truck. Just as Joel, Gus and the actresses had
been trapped a few days before, the family of two adults and two children were
slowly losing ground to the relentless rush of hungry neighbors. Around the
truck no less than fifty of the more active dead jumped and milled about. The
man and woman defended either side of the truck bed, each smashing baseball
bats into skulls, sending blood, bone and diseased flesh flying with every desperate
swing.

“I want to go
there
!” Calvin
shouted.

As the vehicles approached, the
young ebony-headed boy in the back holding what looked like a tire iron pulled
on the girl’s blonde, ratty hair and pointed. “Help us!” screamed the young
girl with hair the color of the tallest grasses on the prairie.

“Don’t stop! Save yourselves!” the
man yelled, but Felicia had already aimed the Hedgehog at the mob of active
dead and both turrets were looking for needy eye sockets.

“Oh my god.” Sarah slowed The Wagon.
“Not sure we should take the truck in, maybe get out and run in there?” she
asked Athena.

“Sounds like the best bet.”

“Let’s go.” Athena said to Brick
and jumped out of the Paddy Wagon.

“What are you doing?” Brick
screamed.

“We’ve got to help them!” Sarah
shouted back.

“Don’t stop!” Brick demanded,
reaching his foot over and trying to press the gas pedal to the floor through
her foot. But Sarah’s other foot was firmly on the brake and she elbowed him in
the face and slammed the vehicle into park.

“Stop it, Brick. Be a man for
once!” She commanded.

“There’s too many and they’re too
fast!” he shouted.

“We’re out,” Athena said from
outside the vehicle, already standing next to Calvin and Tripper making a push
to the aid of the couple on the pickup bed.

“C’mon, Brick! Make yourself useful
you asshole!” Athena shouted, but he wrapped both arms around Sarah’s neck.

“Forget it, we’re good,” Calvin
waved Athena off. “Flank them on the right so we can take them fewer at a time.
Let the turrets cover our left as they turn to come after us.”

The armored fighters waded boldly into
the mass, Calvin lopping heads from shoulders, Athena splitting them open.
Tripper swung away, still using his trusty bat, though they had now wrapped it
in some tough, reinforcing tape from Hef’s garage. Lucy aimed the
double-crossbow from just outside the open back door of the Hedgehog. She’d
been so quiet everyone had nearly forgotten her presence. But she intended to
contribute in any manner possible, a girlie-girl trying to be an only slightly
less girly-girl. The crossbow did all the work, all she had to do was aim it. Thankfully,
her aim was becoming pretty good and she spiked a large suit-wearing zombie
through the back of the head just as it reached a long, rotting arm towards the
little girl.

“Mfgh! Brick! Help!” Sarah’s cry
came over their headphones.

Each of the new combatants took a
quick glance back to see an arm around her throat trying to pull her into the
back of the vehicle. Believing it was a zombie, Boomer spun and raised his turret,
trying to get a quick shot off through the open door, but upon seeing Brick’s
face he realized their drugged-out friend was holding Sarah too close—there was
no shot. There were, however, plenty of zombies out front attacking some little
kids. Someone else would have to help Sarah fight off Brick. Boomer walked the
turn plate beneath his feet, spinning the turret back to the front and looking
for targets, burying steel darts in the brain of a short Latino in a beige
three piece. “Man, he’s lost it.”

“Sarah, try to open the cage so one
of the parents can help you,” Calvin grunted tightly, trying to ignore his
burning chest as he took down his fifth Infected. These creatures were moving
more like real people than any they’d seen yet. If he and his friends weren’t
wearing the armor they might all very well have been dead already. But that was
the difference between being prepared and being a victim. He concentrated on
killing zombies and fighting his way to the truck to save the desperate family.
Someone else would have to save Sarah.

I’m gonna kill that
son-of-a-bitch someday,
Lucy promised, sparing another glance for Sarah’s
predicament.
But these little kids need me now.

Athena stood right beside Calvin,
splitting a skull for every two heads he severed. Sarah was her best friend,
but Brick was just a man, and not long for this world if she had anything to do
about it. Her friend could handle him, or the parents would help out if she
could unlock the cage. But Calvin might get himself killed if she wasn’t there
to watch his back. He was very weak from the shooting, already beginning to
falter.
Sorry, Sarah,
she thought guiltily. Each of the other combatants
spared a glance when they could, but were each unable to step away from the
battle.

With a sinking heart, Sarah realized
her friends couldn’t help and the parents were on the other side of a locked
cage door; she would have to work it out herself. Suddenly a wicked grin lit up
the cab at a sudden realization.
I’m wearing armor!
Swinging her arm
back, she bashed her armored elbow even harder into Brick’s nose with a
satisfying crunch of cartilage, drawing blood and causing him to loosen his
grip around her throat. Taking advantage of the opening, she pushed both arms
up and twisted around, bringing the locked and loaded m-16 up into his chest.
He raised his hands, and she shoved him back into the corner of the ambulance,
up against the cage the smiths had installed. Her dad’s muscular arms reached
through the cage and gripped Brick around the throat in an unbreakable hold.

“I’ve got him, baby,” he called
out. “Do what you’ve got to do.” Brick calmed almost immediately, but Mr. Berg’s
grip didn’t lessen.

Splitting another skull and ripping
the panabas free, Athena kicked the limp corpse away, watching the Wagon from
the sidewalk, wondering if she’d have pulled the trigger into Brick’s chest or
not. Probably too many witnesses, but he
was
being a danger to them all.
Someone needed to do something about him, and soon.
Calvin will handle it.
Thirty
zombies still surrounded the family and she was already exhausted. Calvin and
the others were clearly wearing down. The turrets were having trouble getting
clear shots because half of the zombies were on the other side of the vehicle,
blocked by a tall, long concrete ornament that ran along the yard the truck had
broken through and high-centered on. Standing too high for the armored
‘warriors’ to jump over and clearly too strong to drive through, Felicia rolled
the Hedgehog back and forth from one side of the vehicle to the other so the
gunners could look for different angles.

“I’m…wearing down…fast,” Calvin
called out between ragged gasps for air, a powerful burn in his bruised chest
nearly as painful as just after he’d been shot, perhaps a little worse.

“I’m spent,” Athena agreed.

Fatigue was setting in for the
whole group and just as Athena and Calvin were about to drop back for a
breather, the parents were beside them with Sarah, each swinging weapons she
had given them from the stash in the truck. “What the hell?” Calvin yelled in
rage. “They don’t have armor on! Get them back!”

He pushed Mr. Rosenthal back, but
the elder man quickly stepped to the side and jabbed his spear into the eye
socket of an old guy in a tan suit who was about to jump on Calvin’s back. Calvin
glared at him through his visor and turned back to sever more heads from
bodies. Finally taking a minute to reassess, he noticed the additional Infected
were pouring in from the building behind the wrecked truck, it appeared to be a
temple.

“Of course,” he muttered. “Everyone
went in there to pray. Forget the fact…that… there’s a virus going around…and…anyone
can catch it. Let’s gather in one place…with one door…and sing songs until it
goes away…real fucking smart!”

“Easy there, Calvin,” Tripper
warned him.

“You complain like a Jew,” Saul
laughed as he swung a three foot long mace into the skull of what was certainly
a kindly old woman three days before, but had become a mindless, ravening kill
machine in a cute floral dress.

“Get to the Hedgehog, sir!” Calvin
snapped at him.

“I am fine right here, thank you
very much.”

“You’re too old…to be out here
fighting active…dead people without proper…protection.
I’m
too old for
that.”

“Samson stood in a field and destroyed
an entire army with the jawbone of an ass and he was eighty-seven years old and
wearing nothing but a loincloth,” he stated firmly.

“Not even
remotely
true,
Dad,” Athena muttered over the mic.

“You think I cannot help out
against a few listless senior citizens who are already dead? I am only
sixty-three. You think I am that old?”

No one had time to escort them
back, so they fought on, grunting and killing things that should have already
been dead. “Maybe…old wasn’t what…I meant…to say…I meant…I meant…never mind.”

“You mean too uncoordinated, yes?
Too stupid, huh? Too what, young Calvin?”

“Well…I was going to say too
Jewish, but that thing about Samson made that whole point moot.”

Saul laughed and lunged, jabbing the
end of a mace into the face of what used to be a pregnant young mother, laughter
turning maniacal when he realized what he’d just done. Slowly the tiring group
hacked, shot, smashed and split their way to the truck. Calvin and Athena now split
their attention between the dead before them and ensuring that no Infected
could come close to the unarmed parents as those elders used their longer
weapons to jab over their shoulders into the—thankfully distracted—zombies.
Finally the staggering group cleared a corridor to the bed of the truck.

“Run to that vehicle. Get in the
back! We’ve got the kids.” Calvin shouted to the man and woman, while he and
Tripper helped the children down. “Follow your parents,” Calvin pointed.

“They’re not our parents,” the girl
snapped, brandishing a long, bloody knitting needle and holding her younger
brother close in a protective hug.

“Ok…well…follow them…anyway. They
protected you so far…so stick with them,” he called roughly out of the side of
his mouth as he, Tripper, Sarah and Athena made a defensive line between the
unarmored people and the rapidly shrinking group of starving dead. The three
mothers used very light, long pole axes and pole arms to jab from eight feet
away, so they were actually able to deftly pick off the crafty Infected that
tried to bound outside the perimeter to charge the vehicles. The shaken children
stood watching behind the group. Calvin could sense they hadn’t left.

“Go!” he turned and shouted,
raising both axes out to either side.

Both children broke and ran for The
Wagon.