Dead and Dead Again: Kansas City Quarantine (6 page)

“I may have broken a few fingers
grabbing this handle,” the doctor replied, dropping the roof handle he’d ripped
away. “But I am otherwise undamaged.”

“C’bon. We’be still got a blog to
go,” Tripper told them.

“We don’t have time to write a
blog,” Sarah quipped, with a wicked grin.

Trip pushed his door open, unclicked
his seatbelt and fell to the floor of the bistro, noticing a few red speckles
splattering the checkered tiles. The other two were there in an instant,
helping him sit up against the car.

“Are you ok, Honey?’ Sarah asked,
concern edging her sweet voice.

“The air bag seems to have struck
him rather hard. He may have a broken nose and a mild concussion.”

 “I’b alright,” he said, shaking
off their help. “I bean, other than probably eberything the Doc just said,” he
smiled up at them.

“Here, let me,” Sarah was already
wiping his nose with a napkin she’d pulled out of a container that had landed
on the hood.

“My bat,” Trip said.

“No. Could have happened to anyone,”
assured the doctor. “It is no one’s bad.”

“Not by bad, my
bat
,” he
pointed to the car and mimicked swinging a baseball bat.

“Oh, I’ll get it,” the doctor reached
into the car and pulled out the dented and brown-stained Louisville Slugger.

Tripper’s nose had been broken at
least a dozen times before. Sarah squeezed and crunched it back into place,
almost painlessly thanks to his love of green leaf, while he sat distracted by
the carnage they’d created. Luckily the owners had taken the day off for the parade
or someone could have been hurt.

“Ok, let’s go,” Sarah put one hand
out on a shoulder of each man and pulled them gently. “Let’s get to the Station
before they’re too busy.”

“Right. C’mon, Doc.”

Turning, they realized there was no
way to leave the way they had entered the building, as the façade of the second
floor had collapsed onto the opening. The trio easily side-stepped the debris
to the door and Sarah found the lock, clicking it and carefully swinging the
glass door open. Trip paused to inspect a green and red sign stuck to the
glass. With a smile, he turned the sign to show ‘Open’ facing the outside and
closed the door behind them.

Both the doctor and Sarah squinted the
same questions at him.

“What? It’s not like they can keep
anyone out now.” He grinned.

“Possibly more than a mild
concussion,” the Doctor noted with some concern.

“No, he’s always been kind of an ass,
Doctor,” Sarah explained.

“Hmm, I always thought someone was
either a smartass or a dumbass. I’ve never before met anyone who exemplified
both.”

“He thinks it’s charming.”

Tripper laughed.

“Now, about this Police nonsense,”
the doctor said hesitantly, trying to pick his words carefully as they walked the
remaining block, looking around to make sure there were no virus victims shuffling
behind them. “I think that would be a mistake.”

“We can’t protect you, Doc,” Trip
argued.

 “I think the police are going to
be a little busy today.”

“There will be someone to help you,”
Tripper assured him. He was so wrong.

Three minutes later the trio burst
through the double doors of the police station and stood gazing around in
surprise. Not only was the watch desk vacant, but the entire building seemed to
be abandoned. Phones rang off the hook and papers and desk items were scattered
throughout the place as if everyone had just dropped whatever they were holding
and grabbed a gun, which seemed like the likeliest scenario. Two large wooden double
doors at the back stood wide open, leading to an eerily quiet interior. It was
like a haunted house at Christmas or half of the manufacturing plants in America, the equipment was still ready to go, but no one worked there anymore.

“Crap.” Trip stated flatly.

“We can’t leave him here,” Sarah
said, jumping at the whispery echo of her own voice.

“Just a second,” Tripper cried and
rushed off through the double doors.

“Jackpot!” they heard him exclaim
excitedly.

The other two ran to the doors to
see him standing inside a large chicken coup-like weapon cage. He held a long
bag with a shoulder strap into which he was stuffing three m-16 rifles and a
few shotguns along with every box of shells he could find on the shelves. He
handed each of them one of the remaining M-16s.

“You know how to use this, Doc?” he
asked.

“Yes, unfortunately. I did three
tours in the middle East.”

“Thank you for your service,” Trip
said.

‘Yes, thank you.” Sarah added.

The doctor leaned back in surprise.

“We always make it a habit to thank
our veterans,” Trip explained. “Our whole group does it. Anyway, no pistols
here and no more vests, but these guns should get us by. Six M-16s and three
shotguns with a few thousand shells should keep us until someone can come in
and rescue us. Don’t know about food, though,” he amended.

“There are three food machines and
a stocked kitchen at work,” Sarah informed him happily.

“Won’t help if the power goes out,”
he responded.

“It will run on solar, wind, and
diesel generator power if we lose the main line.”

“Nice. You never told me that
before.”

“I can’t even think of why it would
have come up.”

“Alright, c’mon Doctor Death, let’s
get you safe so you can fix this mess.”

“I take offense at that name, Mr.
Tripper.”

“I don’t care.”

“Trip,” Sarah started, but he
raised a hand and cut her off.

“No! I’ve never had a reason to
kill another living creature in my life and now in less than a half-hour, I’m a
mass murderer. It’s because of him and those like him.” He turned back to the
doctor. “Now, we’re going to do everything we can to get you someplace safe and
find whatever help you might need to fix this, Doc. But if I wanna call you
Doctor Death, or Toe-sucking Ass-muncher, you’d better just take it quietly
until I get used to this shit and decide if I like you or not. And what’s with
the lab coat?” At this the glint in Trip’s steely grey eyes glared so brightly that
the elder man actually took a step back.

“I am a doctor and scientist.”

“Still, isn’t it a little cliché to
wear a lab coat out in public?”

“I wasn’t in public. I was in a
plane that fell out of the sky.”

“But who wears lab coats anymore?”

“Everyone. And it’s government
policy,” the man explained in mild indignation.

“Whatever. Let’s move,” Trip tried
to chamber a round in his rifle and realized there was no ammo in the weapon.
Blushing he slipped a new magazine backwards into the weapon and tried to load the
chamber…and then he did it the proper way.

“And make sure you’ve got ammo in
your guns!” he huffed, tossing each of them a clip and turning away angrily as
Sarah started giggling.

“Nice angry rant, Baby. It was
going really well until the Keystone Kop thing.”

“Instant Karma is a bitch,” Tripper
mumbled with a grimace.

Sarah and the doctor both smiled and
for a brief moment the tension flowed away. It lasted until they each realized they
would have to hit the streets again and all three squared their shoulders,
checked the safeties on their weapons, and strode purposefully for the door
side-by-side.

The trio skulked from the station,
hoping not to be spotted by anyone official now that they had stolen city
property. Stealing guns from the police station might even be a federal crime
for all they knew. If this thing went away, Tripper would return the stuff and
take his punishment. As barren as the street was, Sarah couldn’t imagine things
ever coming right again. The streets were as eerily empty as the police station
had been. A few lonely leaves rattled up the street in a mild breeze and the
raspy sound echoed back from the stone and steel buildings as if they strode
through the Grand Canyon. She breathed in and caught the faint odor of acrid
smoke drifting through the air.

“Is it just me, or does it
seem…creepier now?” Sarah whispered.

“It is the adrenaline,” the Doctor
explained.

“I ain’t got any left,” Trip
countered.

“Yes, that’s what I mean. Our
adrenal glands were excreting a large amount of…” he paused to appraise the couple.
Realizing they would most likely not understand what he was about to say, with
a sigh he made a few slight amendments. “We were very excited when we came
through the first time. Now we have had a moment to calm down, not to mention
the desolate wasteland we found inside. It’s only natural we would feel this
way coming back out into the streets again.”

“No, it’s something else,” Sarah
whispered. “We’re in danger. I can feel it.”

“Of course we’re in danger,” Trip
started to say in a normal voice, but Sarah cupped her hand over his mouth and
shushed him. “Of course we’re in danger,” he whispered, removing her hand from
his mouth with a concerned glare. “There are flesh-eating Zombies crawling all
over the city.”
There I said it again. Zombies. They’re Zombies. Zombies are
real. Oh my God, Zombies are real.

“No,” Sarah insisted. “It’s more
immediate. There’s something up ahead.”

The other two glanced up the street.

There was nothing.

No people.

No cars.

Nothing.

Even the rattling of the leaves had
ceased. There was literally nothing physical on which to build any suspicion or
fear, but the conviction in her manner forced both men to pause. After only a
few seconds they felt it, too. She was right. There was an intense feeling of
foreboding flowing into them from somewhere up the street that sent a shiver
through the pair, who now looked to Sarah for some kind of explanation.

Sarah, however, seemed out of
sorts, unfocussed. She leaned against the stone corner of the nearest building
and stared down the empty street. “Up around the corner of this building. Go
quietly, Trip,” she cautioned, pointing to an indention on the building that
lay between them and their destination.

He un-slung the bag of guns and handed
it to the professor, who hefted the heavy bag across his back with a grunt. Trip
reached into the bag and pulled out two clips for the rifle, stuffing one in
each back pocket. Taking a steadying breath, he slowly edged down the street along
the building to the corner. Another fortifying breath allowed him to peer
slowly around the corner, hoping all the while that if there was something
there, it wouldn’t notice slower movement. What he saw caused him to jump back
so fast he tripped over a small pipe protruding from the sidewalk and fell back
onto his back. Sheer fear pulled him instantly back to his feet and he dashed
back to where the other two waited, his well-tanned face as white as a hairy
man’s ass.

“Zombies!” he hissed. “A few dozen between
us and your building. They’re wearing sports gear so they all came from the
parade. How’d they get here already? ”

“Heading this way?”

“No, they’re about halfway up the
block, kind of milling around, looking for something to eat.”

“What are they doing there?” Sarah
asked.

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask. They
seemed preoccupied. Maybe they chased something to this area and either ate it
or lost it.”

“You’re talking about a person,
Trip,” Sarah gagged in disgust.

“Let’s hope it was chased and not
ate,” added the doctor, patting her on the arm. “And are we certain Zombie is
the word we want to use for them?”

“You got a better name?”

“I’ve been calling them Infected in
my head.”

“Maybe because
you’re
infected in your head,” Tripper shot back.

“Nice,” Sarah congratulated him.

“Like it or not, they
are
zombies, Doc,” he stated firmly.

“I would feel more comfortable
saying Infected. It seems more official and likely to cause fewer bouts of
incredulity when we tell people. But mainly because it is accurate. They’re
infected with some disease that seems to imitate the properties of death and
then reanimates the person with an intense hunger for…well for Human flesh, or
so it would appear. But we don’t really know for sure if they’re dead, or if
it’s only human flesh they desire, or if they can be cured, or, well, or many
other things that we don’t know at this point. Perhaps there might come a point
at which I will feel comfortable calling them…Zombies. If they are truly dead,
then I see no way in which they could be cured. They would, in fact, be the walking
dead. For now, I must call them Infected.”

“Infected. OK, I guess that would
work too, but let me ask you this, Professor—”

“—Doctor.”

“Right, Doctor,” Trip amended
amiably. “When you’re passing this information on to someone else in the near
future, which do you think is going to convey the symptoms and situation faster…all
of that stuff you just said and the many other things you will undoubtedly have
to say to get the point across to those like you, or just saying the one word…Zombie?”

“I don’t know.”

“Really?” Tripper asked in
disbelief.

“I have to admit that perhaps I’ve
been avoiding the name simply because it seems so ridiculous, having never
believed in the possibility of such a thing.”

“Well, look around, Doc. We’re up
to our proverbial and literal asses in the ridiculous right now.” He whispered.
The absence of any other sounds or people in the heart of a bustling metropolis
seemed to emphasize his words that much more. All three now subconsciously held
their weapons facing the corner ahead, while their eyes darted back behind them
with regularity. “The past of reality and sanity is gone; we now live in the
time of Zombies.” He stated simply. “Zombies. Zombies. Zombies. Just because
you don’t believe in them, don’t make them not real.”