The Great Wreck (26 page)

He
glared at me apparently wanting to make a lot of noise but relented and put his
shotgun away, pulling out his two silenced pistols instead while he mumbled,
“Spoilsport.”

We
approached the parking lot of Chase Field and froze. The smell coming from the
stadium was nearly overwhelming. I pulled on a half face respirator I had
picked up at a paint store while James tied a bandana around his nose and
mouth. The bandana couldn’t be an effective filter. Did James actually like the
smell of the dead?

The
smell wasn’t the only thing freezing us in place at the edge of the parking
lot. The Phoenix authorities has turned the stadium first into a vast field
hospital when the flow of infected overwhelmed the regional hospitals. Signs
were everywhere informing the potentially infected to wear face masks, wash
their hands, and for God’s sake,
do not
panic
! At some point the infected overran the place and turned the stadium
into a vast charnel house. And from the smell, it seemed that all of the dead
were still there.

“James?”
I asked as we stood there contemplating just exactly what might be seated inside
that stadium, “What’s the capacity of this placed?”

“Fifty
thousand give or take,” he said then glared at me, “It’s not like the dead will
all be
sitting
there you know,
waiting for the game to begin, so it will be a lot less. Now go take a look.”

“
Me?
Why me?” I asked.

James
pointed a pistol at my head, “Because you’re the one with a pistol pointed at
your head,” he calmly replied, “Now go take a look and wave at me if the place
is clear.”

James
pointing a gun at me had become such a common occurrence that it didn’t even
shock me. I still did not want to die just yet so I began to walk towards the
stadium feeling the sites of James’s pistol on the back of my skull the entire
way.

The
police and military had set of a maze of barricades designed to efficiently
funnel in and process the sick and dying. I could imagine tens of thousands of
people queuing up, hoping and praying that the doctors and nurses inside could
help them, then the terror as the first wave of reanimated dead got up and
started feeding.

I
walked through the maze of barriers and quickly made my way to the main
entrance of the stadium. I could see the playing field littered with trash,
hospital beds, surgical tents, and parts of bodies, but no walking dead. To my
left was a series of huge jumbo trons, to my right was the pitcher’s mound. I
looked up and could see that the roof had been left open. If it had been closed
the place would have been as dark as a grave and you could have held all the
guns in the world to my head and I would not have gone in there.

I
jogged back to the front of the stadium and could see James at the edge of the
parking lot with his hands in the air in a big, exaggerated shrug. I thought
about running right there, just boogying through that field and out the other side
leaving James and his particular brand of crazy far behind. But he’d catch me.
He was older, stranger, faster, and he would find me and put a bullet in my
head. So I waved to him that it was all clear. He let out a whoop and trotted
across the parking lot.

He
ran right past me an straight out onto the field. I followed him in and scouted
around looking for other exits as he stood transfixed on the mound in the
center of the field with his arms raised above his head in some type of weird
religious ecstasy, then began to undo his pants.

I
wasn’t going to watch this particular act of excretion and continued to walk
around the edge of the field. I stopped as James did his business. I listened.
I put my ear up to the wall of the and I could hear them, the dead, moving
around inside the stadium in the hallways and rooms behind the bleachers.
Hundreds of them, thousands of them. All it would take is…

“Yeeeee
haaaaawwww!” James yelled. I whipped around to see him doing up his jeans, a
large pile of shit placed neatly on the pitcher’s plate, “Take that you mother
fuckers! Dodger’s forever!”

Then
we heard the scream from somewhere deep inside the stadium. Then another from a
different section of the stadium. Then a dozen from somewhere outside. James
and I looked at each other and knew we were about to die.

*
     
*
     
*

From
all around us came scream after scream after scream followed by the sounds of
hundreds, then thousands of running feet. James stepped back and slipped in his
own pile of shit sending him tumbling down off of the pitcher’s mound.

He
actual laughed as he got back on his feet, “I slipped in my own shit! How’s
that for justice?” he said as he wiped his boot off on the grass and unslung
his rifle.

The
sound of approaching sprinters followed by their hordes of dead were coming
from every direction. For one split second I froze there and then I saw an
opening past James and took off running. I blurred past him heading for a set
of large, steel double doors that might have been the maintenance access and might
in fact lead me right into the maw of the oncoming sprinters, but it was better
than standing in one place waiting for the dead to block all the exits.

I
had already put twenty yards between me and James when I heard him calling out
behind me, “Hey, hey,
hey,
hey!” but
I wasn’t about to stop and I burst into a large open room stuffed full of
maintenance equipment.

Behind
me, the sprinters had arrived. I glanced back and saw James tearing after me
and sprinters pouring in from a dozen different entrances. They were followed
by hundreds of walkers that were now all worked up into a good run and filling
the stadium up. What a fuck up.

“Fucking
Diamondback fans! Run!” James yelled out laughing his fool head off.

I
actually did spot a few of the dead wearing Diamondback jerseys but didn’t have
time to ponder the irony of it as I took off into the semi dark of the stadium
frantically looking for a way out. I burst into a side hallway that lead down
to a large equipment garage. There I spotted multiple sets of roll up doors
that I knew would lead to the outside. I spotted a side door and burst out into
the biggest horde of dead I had seen since LA.

Not
thinking, I immediately turned right pumping my legs for all they were worth
running alongside the stadium and heading south back towards the freeway. If I
could make it there, I might lose the horde of dead.

James
was right behind me and the sprinters right behind him. Now I could hear what
sounded like a hundred sprinters screaming at the top of their lungs attracting
the attention of all the nearby walkers and shufflers. I looked back over my
shoulder and nearly stopped running at the sight. The wall of dead chasing
James seemed to go on forever with more dead pouring in from the side streets.
If they caught us it would be over in a seconds. With so many dead trying to
get a bite of us they’d tear us to shreds in an instant. But the animal that
had taken over my brain and body had other plans so I poured on the speed.

Up
on my left I could see a series of fuel storage tanks. A few hundred yards
beyond that was a walled off electrical transformer station, and past that, the
freeway. I ran to the gas tanks as I pulled off my pack and ripped open one of
the large outer pockets. I pulled a claymore out and hoped to God that I had
read the instruction carefully enough as I slapped it onto the giant fuel tank.
James could see what I was doing and whooped and hollered as I set the timer
for thirty seconds, hopefully enough time to make it over the wall of the
transformer station. I hit the “arm” button, grabbed my pack, and raced for the
transformer station with everything I had while counting to thirty in my head.

I
hit the wall at twenty five, threw my stuff over as I clambered after it, and
huddled against the cinderblocks wondering if I had set the explosives
correctly, wondering if the dead would get here before the explosion, wondering
if I was still too close when,
if
,
the tanks did explode. I looked up in time to see James jump over the wall and
then the claymore went off.

Boom.
Boom! BOOM!
BOOM!

Then
the whole world seemed to ignite as each tank detonated. For a second maybe two
everything was light and silence.
 
I saw
James as he frantically tried to get over the edge of the wall, then saw him fly
across the walled in area as the shockwave hit him. The wall I was leaning
against shifted and parts fell over. Then the sky turned so bright I had to
close my eyes as the great wall of sound and heat hit us. The roar of the
exploding tanks went on and on. The light seemed to get brighter as I squeezed
my eyes shut waiting for a tsunami of flame to engulf me and end my life.

When
the incineration didn’t arrive after a few seconds, I looked up and saw a giant
piece of one of the tanks sail far above my head trailing fire and smoke.
Trailing behind it were thousands of flaming pieces of debris looking like a
failed rocket launch. These pieces began to rain down on us. Some were the size
of my fist, others the size of cars. All of them potentially lethal.
 
James had scrambled against the far side of
the wall and was frantically trying to put out his pants that had caught on
fire when a smaller piece of flaming metal hand landed on him. The rain of
debris was saturating the area. I thought that at any second a chunk would land
on me.

I thought we
were dead. I hoped we were dead. But as the shock wave and fire passed us, as
the debris from the tanks and bodies of the dead that rained down around us
tapered off, I realized we had survived. My animal brain shifted into survival
mode again and I quickly grabbed my gear and started running for the freeway.

I
cleared the rubble of the transformer station and looked back at the carnage I
had wreaked. The sprinters and their waves of dead had been either vaporized, flattened,
or set on fire. I could see thousands of the dead on fire but still getting
back to their feet and wandering around. Far behind them I could see Chase
Field had partially collapsed in from the force of the explosion. Then I saw
James pop his head up out of the rubble, still laughing as he began running
towards me. I turned around and sprinted up the on ramp as a series of
secondary explosions went off.

I
ran until I found a semi-truck. I jumped in and slammed the door, checked the
sleeper compartment to ensure it was clear, then locked my door and tried to
catch my breath.

James
jumped in a second later laughing and huffing trying to catch his breath, “Tell
me, Mr. Gloomy Gus Mother Fucker, you tell me right now that wasn’t fun.”

I
wanted to put a bullet in his head right there but instead
 
said, “Fuck you, James. I don’t
 
care what you do, I am never, ever going into
an urban population center again, let alone a downtown area.”

“Well
fuck you too, Mr. Lilly Liver. Next time I’ll go in and have all the fun by
myself.”

“Do
what you want, I’m not going through that again! Got it?”

“Oh,
yeah, I got it, Mr. Big Balls. I got it real good.”

We
sat there in silence for an hour watching the flames spread north to the city
center waiting to see if the hordes of dead were going to spill up onto the
freeway and continue chasing after us. But they didn’t and we got out of the
cab and continued our way east until as the sun started going down, we found a
shitty little motel to seal ourselves up in for the night.

*
     
*
     
*

I
should have seen it coming, seen it in his eyes. James sulked around and kept
mumbling to himself as we sealed up the door to our room. Usually after an
adventure like that, he’d be happy as a pig in shit, but apparently I had
spoiled all his fun. The last thing I heard him whisper before he fell asleep
was, “You ain’t my mother.”

I
was still surprised the next morning when I woke up and James was gone. I
really didn’t think he’d just up and leave me.

I
woke up to the sound of a door banging somewhere down on the first floor.
Probably just the wind. I rolled over to get a few more minutes of sleep, a few
more minutes before I had to face this world again with James and all the dead.
A few more minutes of peace.

Then
the door banged again and continued to bang at regular intervals. I thought
maybe James was fucking around downstairs but even he wasn’t stupid enough to
go around making noise randomly. That brought me full awake. I looked over at
the bed James had slept in and saw that it was empty. The next thing I notice
was that our room door was wide open.

I
froze. I was terrified, exposed, and completely alone. It was just like James
to leave when I was sleeping but worse he’d left the door open for any dead
thing to wander by and see me as I lay there completely out. At least he’d left
my gear. I sat in the bed and listened to the door banging downstairs. I
couldn’t hear any wind. Maybe it
was
James down stairs banging away at that door. Then I heard them coming. The
sound of multiple feet stumbling up the stairs let me know that James hadn’t
been banging on the door, it had been the dead and many of them coming inside
the motel. I quickly gathered up my gear watching the door guessing I had maybe
thirty seconds or less to get my stuff and bolt out of the motel room. I was
wrong. I had much less.

The
first of the dead drifted by the door of my room without looking inside. A few
more followed the first. This first group was in bad shape. With most of their
cloths shredded and falling off, severely eaten, and now in an advanced state
of decay. That’s probably what saved me. As the dead get older, that thing in
their head that lets them track you down slowly gets worse. So these dead knew
I was here, but just couldn’t figure out where. But even though they had not
seen me, they had created another dilemma for me. They had blocked off my
escape route. Now if I bolted out the door, I’d run into the dead that had
passed me by or into the dead that were still coming up the stairs. I was
trapped.