Dead and Dead Again: Kansas City Quarantine (55 page)

One-hundred mph.

Shortly they would be merging onto
635 highway and Calvin had to slow to eighty to take the clover leaf, the
vehicle tilting slightly on its chassis as it reached the apex of the curve, but
whatever tires were part of this specially designed masterpiece held tight
through the turn and he immediately jumped it back to a hundred in just a
little over one second, swerving to avoid the only other wreck he’d seen on the
video earlier. Now he truly floored the vehicle. He had earlier checked all the
city traffic cams and tried to memorize anything he might have to avoid. Leading
the team missions on game night had given him invaluable training for recalling
such details because he had to know the layout of any terrain like the
blemishes on his own face in order to follow his team in his head and get
everyone where he needed them when they needed to be there.

“How fast are you going to go?” she
asked nervously, shouting over the music.

Pure Rock and Roll replied and her
supple fingers clenched in her lap.

One-twenty. One-thirty.

“Calvin.” She breathed
apprehensively.

One-forty. One-forty-five.

“Calvin.” She said louder. “Calvin!
The I-seventy interchange is there!” she pointed ahead at the green sign
closing at a phenomenal rate.

But he was already on it. He had moved
the red roadster into the lane farthest from the exit. As the turn approached,
he pressed the brake firmly and pulled the car across the highway, partially
losing control as he entered the opening of the cloverleaf and sending the car drifting
across the exit in a semi-controlled skid across the flat grassy area, sliding sideways
and standing on the gas again, spraying mud and grass a hundred yards in every
direction. Their momentum, his steering and a steady pressure on the
accelerator quickly pulled the vehicle across the grass in a continual deluge
of shredded earth until they were facing the other direction, heading back onto
the exit of the clover-leaf onto I-70 for downtown. The car hydroplaned for a
minute when the transmission shifted and the remaining mud was thrown off, but
he recovered without issue.

“Are you alright, Calvin?” Sarah
asked in concern. “You’re breathing really hard for someone in a vehicle that
drives itself. Or is there something else going on there?”

“Gawd, you guys,” Scaggs yelled.
“Turn off your mics if you’re going to do that.”

“We’re not doing anything,” Athena
told them.

“Though now that I think about it,
why not?” Calvin asked.

“Ew!” Scaggs retched.

“We’re about three minutes out,”
Athena changed the subject.

“Holy shit!” Trip replied.

“I know. Fast isn’t it?” Calvin
said.

“No. Not that. I’m back already.
Hey, Buddy, you’ve got to get here. Those soldiers are still alive. They’re
coming out to meet us. I can see six of them trying to fight their way to the
vehicles.”

“Who else is there now?” Calvin
asked.

“Everyone but you and your
girlfriend.”

“Fiancé,” Athena corrected.

“Whatever,” Tripper dismissed her
casually.

“How many Infected are left?”

“A few hundred. Shit,” Tripper
spat. “I’m going in!”

The screeching of tires screamed
over the headpieces followed by the distinctive heavy thuds of bodies slamming
into quarter panels before the radio went dead.

* * * * *

Trip couldn’t believe his eyes.
Without ammunition, the group of soldiers marched out in a tight pack, steadily
trudging into the street from a low brick building in the distance. Several
ragged Leapers and Joggers instantly charged the buffet of soldiers even though
they made no discernable noise. The two lead soldiers raised their rifles and
bashed the first two Joggers, but rifle butts didn’t work as well as
sledgehammers, spears and pointed objects and only one of the Infected went
down, while the other reached its target and took a healthy chunk from his
shoulder. The man screamed and went down immediately under the grasping arms and
hungry jaws of two other Infected that had begun to feast. One of the soldiers
in the back put a bayonet through the man’s skull and the Infected increased
their feasting, howling with glee.

Four of the remaining five actually
had bayonets fastened on their rifles, but with two dozen dead now hopping
towards them, attracted by the screaming dying man, the captain ordered a
retreat back towards the single-story brick structure they’d charged from. The
group of soldiers was pleasantly surprised when Tripper slammed his Beemer into
the fray at a high rate of speed, and just as equally annoyed by the unhealthy
shower of blood and guts from a dozen brittle dead bodies being blown apart and
sent splattering over the poor defenders by the horrific impact. Covered in
putrid, rotting flesh, bits of unrecognizable bones and the black, grimy mud
that flowed in the Infected veins instead of blood, the soldiers continued
their tactical retreat.

“Sorry!” Trip shouted, reversing
into another group, the BMW bouncing over stacks of writhing bodies, one fender
already hanging by its lone surviving bolt. “My beautiful car!” he lamented.

“You should have come with us,”
Athena boasted, sounding short of breath. “We just hit one-forty-five coming
into downtown!”

“Hey, Sarah!” Calvin called, also
breathing hard.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t let the military guys get
the case. You get in there now and get Doc, and then get to the muscle car. If
he’s healthy enough, get him in that other set of armor and both of you look
for the case while the Hedgehog covers you.”

“Ok, Calvin.” Sarah agreed.

“I can help too,” Morena
volunteered.

“Thanks, Mo,” Calvin said. “But
don’t take any chances. I don’t like you being out there without protection.”

“They gave me some metal armor
stuff,” she replied. “And I’ve got a gun now.” She flicked off the safety on
the gun and stepped out of the Paddy Wagon. Her gun had a two liter bottle and
some cloth and other things she’d found in the floor board stuffed around it.
“And I know how to use it,” she added, taking aim.

“No!” Sarah shouted, trying to stop
the woman.

But she was too late. Mo fired
twice, exploding the skulls of two SKC fans.

“Oh,” Sarah corrected herself. “I…thought
that would be louder.”

“It’s a little silencer my daddy
taught me how to make. He was Special Forces.”

“Right. I should have guessed,”
Sarah muttered, already wanting to hate the pretty-even-though-she-looked-like-a-clown
newb. “Bet you like doing the dishes too.”

“I
love
doing the dishes,”
Mo admitted. “But I can’t cook for shit.”

“I’m a great cook,” Sarah informed
her with only a slight hint of superiority.

“Really? You’re so lucky. I’m
soo
jealous. You
have
to teach me. I mean, if we live,” she added, exploding
the skulls of two more zombies that were approaching their steadily increasing
perimeter, the rifle only making a dull ‘dropped-mic’ sound.

“We’ll see,” Sarah acquiesced, promising
to give the woman a fair chance now. “If, as you say, we all live.” She slammed
the Paddy Wagon into park and jumped out, bringing up her Lucerne Hammer and
checking all sides for clearance before dashing over to the military Humvee to
look for the doctor.

“Piece of shit!” Scaggs shouted,
stepping out dazed and bloody from the wall that held her smoking Jeep wreck. Her
helm was dented and the chainmail sat on her body slightly askew. She tripped
over some bricks and fell down, but quickly rolled over and pushed herself up
again. One foot jabbed out at the Jeep and missed, sending her to the pavement
again. This time she stayed down, laughing and trying to catch her breath.

“What, a few dozen zombies and one
wall and you fall apart on me?” she screamed at the silent Jeep, shooting any
zombies looking her way from the ground with her air gun.

“Is she alright?” Gus asked from
the other side of the ‘battlefield’. He was currently using his Denali as a plow, pushing twenty wriggling dead guys away from the soldiers and through the
wall of a building. Ceiling falling around him and bashing the vehicle roof a
few inches lower to the top of his skull, he slammed the big SUV into reverse
and hammered the gas. The Yukon forced its way out of the storefront sending
brick, mortar and other building materials flying in all directions as well as
a cloud of choking dust into the morning air and ripping off whatever parts of
the grille were still intact on the way out. This time he didn’t hit the brakes
as he plowed into a second pack of dead. The vehicle still came to a rest from
the shear mass of bodies and he once again shifted into drive, heading for
another group of twenty shufflers closing on the soldiers’ position. “Can
anyone see if she’s ok?” he called to his friends, knowing it was likely his
vehicle wouldn’t be running much longer.

“She’s probably got a bump on her
head,” Boomer told him. “But she’s holding her own.”

Scaggs was now up and giggling with
glee dancing around the area filling eyes with nails from her portable air gun.
She had practiced for a few hours back at the Dungeon and was now near to
mastering the weapon. The compressor sat low on her back and was very light
weight. The silver gun was also lightweight and had a sighted barrel that was
very simple to use. The weapon components themselves did not quite weigh twenty
pounds. The heaviest item was the ammo bag sitting on top of the tank. Hef had
been forced to make this unit much smaller for Scaggs, but she was paying him
back for it now. With careful aim and a practiced touch, each pull of the
trigger sent only one or two shots into her targets compared to the multiple
nails needed from the heavy turrets because she was in close and didn’t have
the bouncing of the vehicle to contend with. She would be using a lot less
ammunition over time and was able to go places the vehicles could not. Making a
mental note to tell both Hephaestus and Calvin just how effective the gun was,
she also decided to call it a Needler, directly ripping off the name from the
Halo
games because it fit. And since gaming was probably a thing of the past
now, it wasn’t likely they could sue her.

“Doc is with me,” Sarah called out
over the radio. “We’re going up to the fountain now to look for the case.”

“I see you. We’re almost there.”
Calvin and Athena surveyed the damage from a half a mile away.

Athena motioned for him to slow
down as she looked through a pair of binoculars. Faint, wispy patches of fog
still rolled over the area. Tripper’s Beemer lay burning on one side of the
street, but he stood assaulting the remaining zombies gathered around the
soldiers with his Louisville Slugger, sending crimson, black and grey lumps of
zombie brains flying with every other swing.

Boomer’s GMC was a smoking ruin
wedged halfway into the last white-painted brick building before the road split.
The wheels were still spinning, but it was high-centered on the wall and he had
left it there running. The solid African-American man was currently fighting
his way to the soldiers with both hammers slamming into dead skulls and chests
with equal power, shattering bone into fragments and smashing muscle and sinew
into paste.

“I’m like Black Thor!” he crowed.

“I was going to say John Henry,”
Calvin suggested.

“What?” Boomer breathed, swinging
both arms as he dodged others.

“Wasn’t that the guy who dug the
hole in the mountain competing against the machine for the railroads?” Calvin
asked. “Hammer in both hands?”

“Yeah, but he died,” Boomer said.

“Good point. Be Thor, Boomer. Be
the best damn Black Thor you can be.”

“Screw you, Calvin,” he spat back
as he mashed another two skulls and turned just in time to see one of the
soldiers get bitten by a knee-biter, in the knee as it happened. He screamed
and went down instantly, clutching at the wound and begging for help.

“Do it! Do it!” he screamed.

GI Jane stuck her bayonet into his
skull and twisted. The downed soldier went still and Jane jumped back to avoid
another knee-biter, onto which Boomer sent a downward swing—really just letting
gravity do what gravity did— arcing the hammer into the skull of the knee-biter
with a meaty crunch and now-familiar pop of a coconut cracking.

“We’re gonna have to stop meeting
like this,” he popped up his visor and smiled at the girl they were calling GI
Jane. He liked them tough and she had just enough of something special to get
his blood up. And he did have a thing for Latinas. With a scowl, she promptly
jabbed her bayonet into the eye of a zombie that was creeping up on him and he
slammed the visor quickly down again.

“Hey, I had him. I’m covered, baby.
Head to toe, armor. All we have to worry about is getting pulled apart or some
gore in our mouths or something.” He threw one hammer over her shoulder into
the skull of a Leaper that was reaching for her neck.

She looked back in surprise, but
quickly covered with her soldier’s face. “Thank you, sir!” she shouted firmly,
but when he raised his visor again, her scowl melted instantly into a thankful
smile at the flash of his sparkling ivories.

“Any time,” he said, slamming down
the visor again and stepping casually off to help another soldier.

“How about tonight at eight?” she breathed
quickly out of the side of her mouth.

His surprise was so total that he
paused, going down under two Leapers. But one athletic twist of his
well-conditioned body and two swings bashed both skulls as he lay on his side,
greatly impressing Jane, who lent him an arm to pull him back to his feet.

“It’s here! It’s here!” Sarah
called over the mic. “I’ve Doc with me and his package is in my lap.” After the
dead silence had lasted long enough, she added, “Wow, I wish I had sounded that
out in my head first.”