In the Lone and Level Sands (12 page)

“The suite has a refrigerator in it,” Daisy
said. “It isn’t very big, though.”

“So we should make sure to grab as few
perishables as possible,” Evan said. “Maybe some milk and eggs, if
we can find any.”

“Planning on making a cake?” Jason said.
“And don’t forget, we still need weapons.”

The group followed Evan into the kitchen.
They split up and searched for food, making more noise than Evan
cared for. Jason filled a large pot with cans of beans, soup, and
corn. Evan found two loaves of bread. Jennifer picked up a large
cleaver.

“We can use these as weapons,” she said. She
pointed behind her. “There are plenty more where this came
from.”

They were almost finished when a low roar
filled the room.

“What is that?” Jennifer asked.

“It sounds like a p-plane flying a t-too
low,” Eugene said. The sound grew louder as the seconds passed. The
group ran out to the windows in the eating area to see what was
happening.

A 747 was falling from the sky, not more
than a thousand feet above the tops of the buildings. Within
seconds, its left wing crashed into an office building and
decimated it; the wing was nothing but a twisted, mangled stump
after it cleared out a few levels of cubicles. The plane spun down
into 42
^nd
street, tearing up the pavement like a shovel
would with dirt. As it sped down the street, it crushed cars,
pushing them forward like toys. Bodies and crumpled metal and stone
littered the street in the plane’s wake, thousands of pieces of
paper rained from the sky like confetti.

“Oh my God!” Stephanie said. She covered her
mouth.

“Those poor people,” Daisy said. Evan turned
away and looked down at the ground.

“You know what this means, right?” he
said.

“That plane was taken over by the crazies?”
Jason asked.

“Most likely.”

“That m-means that Chicago isn’t the only
city in th-this,” Eugene said.

“Yeah. I wonder how widespread this is,”
Jason said.

“I just can’t believe this is happening,”
Cynthia said.

“Mommy, I’m scared!”

“It’s okay, Mallorie. Everything’s gonna be
okay.” Cynthia hugged Mal, then looked out the window again. People
were scrambling around on the street. Survivors were trying to
escape the plane, and people on the ground were trying to get
around the wreckage and debris left from the buildings.

“We should probably get going,” Evan said.
“We’re not too safe here in the open.”

“Yeah,” Jason said. “Let’s go.”

They went back into the kitchen and began
dividing the rations between the eight of them. They gave Mal a bag
that she could easily carry, and Daisy took one of the microwaves.
Then they formed a single-file line.

“Okay, so here’s the deal,” Evan said. “I’ll
lead us with my cleaver, and Jason, you bring up the rear with
yours. We’ll head up to the suite on the… What floor is the suite
on, Daisy?”

“The 22
^nd
.”

“We’ll head to the 22
^nd
floor and
camp out there until we can figure out what’s going on. Everyone
ready?”

Before they could leave, the group was
startled by the sound of a door opening. Evan cracked the kitchen
door and took a look to see what had entered the cafeteria. A man
stood near the door.

“Is he one of them?” Cynthia whispered.

“I don’t know,” Evan said.

“He opened the door,” Eugene said. “They
c-can’t open doors.”

“This one just pushes open, doesn’t it?”
Jennifer asked.

“I can’t remember,” Cynthia replied.

“He’s blocking our exit,” Daisy said. “What
should we do?”

“Let’s just stay quiet, and maybe he’ll
leave,” Stephanie said.

The man in the doorway grunted, then walked
farther into the room. He placed a hand on one of the dead bodies,
brought its hand to his mouth, and licked its fingers.

Armed with his cleaver, Evan moved slowly
out of the kitchen and ducked behind the counter. He looked around
the corner and saw the zombie stop and sniff the air, then return
to the body and begin dining. Evan put a hand on the counter to
pull himself to his feet, and accidentally knocked a salad to the
floor. The plate shattered when it hit the ground, lettuce
scattered, and the zombie stood up and started toward the
noise.

“Shit!” Jason said.

“It’s okay, it’s just one,” Evan said. He
stood up and prepared the cleaver.

Jason stood up. “I can take this one!” He
moved in front of Evan, held his cleaver in the air, and began
walking toward the oncoming zombie. Once it got close enough, Jason
swung the blade and stuck it in the zombie’s head. It made a
sickening
thunk!

Blood splattered onto the front of Jason’s
shirt. He removed the cleaver from the cracked skull of the dying
zombie. It collapsed to the floor with a small moan escaping its
mouth. Jason turned around, smiling at the group, who had all
emerged from the kitchen.

“That wasn’t too bad.” The smile
disappeared, and Jason looked down. “Ahhh! What the hell?” The
zombie was pulling his leg toward its mouth. It yanked and Jason
fell down, twisting his ankle and cutting one of his elbows on the
counter. Evan jumped over to help, along with Stephanie and
Jennifer. They each grabbed one of Jason’s hands and attempted to
pull him away from the zombie. Evan took the cleaver and debated
whether to chop off the zombie’s hands or head. If he cut the head
off, it could take a couple whacks, which would eat away precious
time.

“Do something!” Jason screamed.

Evan took a swing at the zombie’s neck. The
cleaver made a decent-sized slice. He took another. Still not
enough. One more severed the spine. A final blow, and the zombie’s
head was completely severed. Blood sprayed from its neck.

The group watched, and after a few seconds,
they were convinced the zombie was dead.

“All right,” Stephanie said. “Come here,
Jason. We need to treat that cut before we go. We don’t want it to
get infected with whatever that creep had.” She pointed to the
headless zombie. “Evan, you should probably make sure no more come
in here. This will take a few minutes.”

Evan nodded and went to the door. It was
just a push door, so Evan put a chair in front of it. It wouldn’t
help much, but if anything entered, they’d hear right away. Evan
looked over at Jason. He looked shaken, but glad to be okay. He
smiled up at Stephanie, who smiled back as she soaked a cotton ball
with peroxide.

“Why didn’t it die when I hit it?” Jason
asked. “I’m pretty sure I hit its brain.”

“Well,” Stephanie said, “they can’t talk,
they can’t open doors, they can hardly
move
. How much of
their brains do you think they’re using?”

“The bottom part,” Evan said. “The part that
tells it to eat.” He looked around. Jennifer was talking to Cynthia
and Mal. Eugene was over by Daisy, who was crying. She must have
thought about her fiancé again. Eugene was comforting her.

It’s so sad
, Evan thought,
to have
the person you love ripped away from you like that. And to have to
be the one to kill him…

Cynthia looked at him, their eyes met, and
they exchanged smiles. Mal asked Cynthia a question, and Cynthia
returned her attention to their daughter. Evan’s smile faded, and
then Stephanie stood up, helping Jason to his feet.

“We’re done here,” she said. “Are you okay
to walk?”

“Yeah. I should be fine. Thanks.”

“No problem.”

“Okay,” Evan said. “Everybody grab your
stuff, and let’s go.” Everyone gathered their things and followed
Evan to the door.

“What if we run into more than one?”
Jennifer asked.

“Don’t worry about the ‘what if’,” Evan
said. “We just need to be positive, and move quickly. We’re still
quicker than them, you know.”

Evan unblocked the door and left the safety
of the food court. He held the door for the others, and then led
them up the stairs.

17

The Carnival in a Panic

“Max, don’t fall behind!” Andrew said. He
was ushering the family along, looking for the most open areas to
move between people. Max, however, was looking around as much as
possible, trying to soak in the situation. People were attacking
each other at random. Nobody seemed to be able to see it coming;
someone they were with could, in the next second, tear their throat
out.

A few people were trying to climb the fences
and get out of the carnival grounds, but this was dangerous,
especially for anyone in a group. Max could see some people lying
down near the fence, likely trampled in the panic of those around
them.

The Greenwalds passed a carousel. The
calliope droned through the shouts and cries filling the night.
Some children were still on the carousel, most of them were
screaming. One of the crazy men had climbed onto the still platform
surrounding the carousel and was lunging at the children as they
passed. Max took a step toward the ride, and then heard Julie
scream. He turned to see someone grabbing her by the sleeve, teeth
bared. Max ran as the man put her arm to his mouth. Max didn’t
think he would get there in time.

August tackled the crazed man. He dropped
Julie as he fell, and he lay there for a second, dazed. August had
plenty of time to get up, and then she kicked him in the head. Max
arrived shortly afterward.

“Julie, are you o—”

Andrew slapped Max across the head. It hurt
and, complimented by the lights of the carnival, made Max feel
disoriented.

“I told you to keep up!” Andrew said. “Look
what almost happened!”

“Let’s keep moving,” Margaret said. The
family pressed on, but then Max remembered the carousel, and turned
to look. It was fading from his view, which was constantly
interrupted by people running around.

Escape would have been easier if it had been
brighter outside. The lights that Max had always loved didn’t offer
much to see by.

Soon the family was running, led by Andrew.
Margaret was carrying Tim, and Julie hadn’t stopped crying since
her earlier brush with disaster.

“No!” someone screamed. Max saw a woman
covering her face. A ride meant to swing two opposing cabins full
of people back and forth (and eventually upside-down and in a full
loop) was moving at full speed, and a man was walking right into
the path of the swinging cars.

Max didn’t know if the people on the ride
knew what was going on outside, or if it was going on within their
cabins. He didn’t know if the screaming woman knew the man, who
took another step, and the huge metal cabin swooped by, splattering
him against the front of it. Max saw a shower of blood, and the
pulp of the man rode the front of the car to the top of its swing
before being flung off, flapping into the darkness. What disturbed
Max most of all was that he didn’t know whether the man was crazy
or normal.

The carnival grounds seemed to go on
forever. The family passed a ride that spun little rocket carts
around by metal wires. A woman was standing near the side of the
ride, screaming.

“My daughter’s on that ride! Help!”

The Greenwalds passed, Max watching her the
entire time. All around he saw people running and screaming and
pointing. None of them seemed to pay the woman any heed.

“For the love of God! Won’t someone
help
me
?”

Max rushed over to her. She looked at him in
disbelief, and when she was sure he was there to help her, she
said, “My daughter, she’s on the rockets!”

Max looked at the ride, tried to figure out
where the controls were. He saw a small booth near the center of
the ride.

“That booth probably has the controls in
it,” Max said. He and the woman waited for the ride to spin the
rockets higher above them, then rushed over to the booth. It was
empty; the carny had either fled or gone crazy. There was an array
of buttons and switches, and Max didn’t know which one did
what.

“How do we stop it?” the woman asked.

“I don’t know,” Max said. “None of them are
marked. Maybe there’s a manual around here somewhere.”

A new sound entered Max’s ears. It was loud,
and had a very distinct grind to it: The rip-roar of a
chainsaw.

“What’s that noise?” the woman said.

“Ignore it. We need to find the manual.”

Max looked around the control array and saw
a small basket in the leg space below the counter. A stack of white
papers clipped together rested within. He tore it from the basket
and flipped through the pages.

“Did you find it?” The chainsaw groaned
somewhere close by.

“I think so,” Max said. He found a control
map on one of the pages.

“That’s it! Can you turn it off?”

“It says which button does it, but it
doesn’t say if there’s a certain procedure. We may not want to just
shut it off in one go,” Max said.

“But my baby! They have to have some kind of
emergency brake, right?”

Max looked at the map again and found a
switch labeled “Emergency”. He found the corresponding switch on
the array (which wasn’t identical to the map in the guide, but was
close enough) and flipped it. He heard the gears in the machine
begin to slow down.

Max and the woman stepped out of the booth
to see that the rockets were beginning to lower. They also saw a
large group of people fleeing from a man crazily flailing a
chainsaw as he stumbled through the carnival.

“Oh God, no!” the woman said.

The man stepped right beneath the lowering
rockets and cables, chainsaw raised high. One of the passing cables
struck it. The cable was nearly severed, the chainsaw was ripped
from the man’s hands and tossed into the night, and the man was
thrown to the ground.

The spin did the rest of the cable in, and
it snapped. One of the rockets flew upward. It seemed to hang in
the air a moment, and then Max’s heart sank, along with the rocket.
It landed on a group of people with a loud
crunch
.