by Brown, TW
The low moans of a handful of approaching zombies interrupted the conversation. Both men glanced over at the zombies and then back to each other.
“I have a few things in that shuttle bus over there.” Joel gave a nod of his head to indicate the idling vehicle. “We can hop in it and edge around this little snarl. I think it has enough power to push through to the other side.”
“You out searching for survivors?” Brad asked as he fell in beside Joel and ambled toward the shuttle bus, not giving the zombies much more than a passing glance as they stumbled over each other in an attempt to adjust their course to pursue the men.
“Survivors?” Joel mused. “Not really. I think it would be more accurate to say I’ll be seeking out soldiers. This is an unprecedented event in our history. A person could literally rebuild a society in the image of what he believes is best.”
They walked in silence the last few yards to the shuttle bus. Brad broke off once to stick one zombie in the side of the head that would’ve been able to reach them before they climbed inside.
“So you plan on setting yourself up as some sort of dictator?” Brad asked as Joel shut the doors to the shuttle and climbed behind the wheel.
“That is an old word that has lost its meaning ever since lunatics like Hitler. I think I would actually consider myself a warlord if forced to pick a label.”
“Warlord.” Brad let the word roll off his tongue like he might be tasting it. “And I assume you will have some form of chain-of-command.” It wasn’t a question, but Joel heard the prompt.
“I’m going to need people who have the rare ability to separate themselves from emotion. Not everybody should survive. If they can’t offer something to the common good, then they have no purpose. The days of welfare or coddling those deemed to have some malady that gave them special treatment are gone.”
The shuttle pushed through a hedge that once acted as a barrier between the sidewalk and a vast parking lot. Scores of cars were crammed in and made an effective log jam at the exits if a person chose to adhere to the normal driving lanes. Joel rolled up onto a wide pedestrian walkway, instantly colliding with a zombie and sending it toppling over the railing and plummeting to some lower level out of his sight.
“Sounds almost heartless,” Brad finally spoke up.
“I prefer practical.”
Joel slammed on the brakes without warning, earning a yowl of annoyance from his cat and a string of expletives from Brad. He brushed both aside as his eyes widened just a bit at what he was seeing.
“How did I not consider that?” Joel muttered.
“You mind telling me what the hell you’re babbling about?” Brad snarled, pushing himself back into his seat and rubbing his palms to try and ease the bruised feeling in them.
“Who set up that emergency center?” Joel asked, pointing to the sprawling parking lot of the event center that once hosted championship fights, basketball tournaments, and a variety of other things.
“The Army?” Brad’s voice rose in confusion, making his response sound more like a question.
“And how much firepower you think is just sitting there inside that fenced-in death trap?”
“Yeah,” Brad barked, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “The key word there is death. That place is swarming with zombies. I mean…look at ‘em all.” He made a sweeping gesture with his hand.
A dull thud sounded outside the shuttle as some of the nearby zombies outside the fenced in lot had finally made their way over to the vehicle and were now starting to pound, paw, and gnaw on the sides in a futile attempt at gaining entry. Joel didn’t seem to notice, but Brad was looking around now with an expression on his face that gave away his thoughts that he was starting to regret meeting Joel Landon.
“So we lure them to one side.” Joel gave a slight shrug of his shoulders and began to stroke the soft fur of his cat which had jumped back into his lap at the sound of the undead on the sides of the shuttle bus.
“How do you suppose we do that?”
“They seem to be attracted to sound,” Joel explained, struggling to hide his annoyance that this man hadn’t already made such a simple observation. “One of us goes to one side of this place and creates a distraction, the other can slip in and either start grabbing gear, or else at least cataloging it so we know what’s here and what we might want.”
“And what is going to keep the zombies outside of that place from getting to the person making all the noise?” Brad challenged. He rose to his feet and ambled down the aisle of the shuttle, peering out both sides of the van at the gathering undead. “Look, I think we both have different ideas about how to ride this out.”
“Ride this out?” Joel laughed nastily. “You think this is going to just magically go away any time soon? I got news for you, sport, this is the new world. It will be survival of the fittest, and the weak will either perish or serve.”
“Maybe we aren’t exactly on the same page about this.” Brad glanced over his shoulder at the exit towards the middle of the shuttle.
“I don’t doubt it.” Joel shrugged his shoulders again and reached down for the lever with a small plastic square indicating it was for opening and closing the large double-doors. He gave the lever a pull and heard the hiss of the pneumatic system as the doors swung open wide.
A low moan sounded from just outside the bus. Peanut arched up on Joel’s lap and hissed angrily as a dead hand grabbed the top of the divide that cordoned off the stairs. Brad turned and his mouth dropped open in apparent surprise.
Joel carefully set his cat down in the well by the gas and brake pedals as he got to his feet. He was confident that Brad’s focus was solely on the small horde of walking dead gathered at the side entrance. Joel had seen them gathering the entire time that he and Brad had been talking. It had only taken that much time for Joel to be certain that this stranger was not compatible with the vision Joel held for the future. He talked a good game, but he seemed to lack the fortitude to make the tough choices and do what needed to be done.
Just as Joel reached the man, who for some foolish reason, had yet to draw any of his firearms, Brad turned with a look of fear on his face. He looked down at Joel’s hands which were open wide with the fingers splayed.
“Wha—” Brad Lehrer did not finish his question.
Joel gave the man a hard shove, sending him tumbling awkwardly into at least a dozen of the walkers scrambling for position at the opening like a litter of puppies around a newly offered food dish. He watched impassively as the man vanished into the crowd like he’d just plunged into a tank of water.
There was just a moment where the moans of the gathered throng were the loudest noise, then the scream came. Joel turned and walked back to the front of the shuttle and shut the side door before driving away. He glanced in the right sideview mirror and saw the knot of bodies humped over what had once been Brad Lehrer.
“On the plus side, I doubt there will be enough of you to come back and wander about,” Joel mused aloud.
He turned left on what the sign at the intersection announced as Gym Road and then left again almost immediately onto Wilbur Street. He passed the front of a large building identified as the Dayton Complex and hung a right. This would take him along the edge of the parking lot and parking garage on his side of the vehicle with an assortment of buildings and communal areas on his right. He noticed the one large grassy common was now a series of massive trenches that Joel guessed had been set up as huge burial sites. Unfortunately for those who’d sought shelter here, it looked like more of the dead remained inside the fence of what the signs now told him were FEMA Site #6. There were hundreds, if not even a few thousand, undead walking around inside that fenced-in sanctuary. Scattered like grains of pepper in a salt shaker he spied undead soldiers still dressed in their combat camo gear.
He was considering how he might possibly be able to break in to the compound and loot the place when the distinct sound of an approaching helicopter drew his attention back towards the
direction of the airport. Joel considered just blowing it off, but then the chatter of a machine gun piqued his interest even further.
Joel only had to back up a little to see the helo as it swung around, coming in low over the airport that had deposited so many tourists over the decades. It was military, Joel realized. He watched as it dipped its nose and made a slow approach his direction. That was also when he noticed a curl of black smoke coming from just under the rotor.
Joel thought that the helo would put down in the massive airfield. He was more than a little surprised when it continued his direction. More specifically, it was angling for the four-story parking garage. He watched it as the smoke began to pour forth in greater volumes with every passing second.
At last it was close enough that he could see a face peering out at him. That individual gave him a curt wave as the AH-64E Apache Guardian tilted slightly and came in for a landing atop the parking structure.
“Things just got a little interesting,” Joel said to his cat as he watched every single zombie in his field of vision turn and start for the parking garage. Whether they were inside or out of the compound made no difference. Perhaps this was the break he needed.
Joel put the shuttle in park and then shut off the engine. He wandered to the back part of the vehicle and climbed up on the empty luggage racks. Making short work of the overhead air vent, he was out onto the roof in a matter of minutes. He could hear the Apache winding down, but it was still easily the loudest noise source in the area. Watching the zombies trudge tirelessly toward the sound, he felt confident that he now had a method to distract the undead. There were other possibilities, but he wasn’t ready to plan that far ahead yet. He was a firm believer that if you looked too far ahead, you were likely to trip over something right in front of you and in plain sight.
As he surveyed things in a more up-close manner, he noticed that the fence was beginning to undulate. His gaze travelled down to the first of several clusters of the undead struggling against the relatively flimsy barrier. He could hear the screech of metal, and then heard what almost sounded like a giant Slinky as at least one part gave way. The perimeter was breached.
Something crackled to his right and Joel spotted an undead soldier dragging itself along on the ground at the rear of a pack that was now pouring through the breach in the fence line. The left leg was entirely gone and the right leg was missing from just above the knee. There was a headset wrapped around its neck, and the noise was coming from there.
“Anybody on this frequency, this is call-sign Sky Angel One. We are currently on the roof of the parking structure of FEMA Six. Our bird is dead, repeat FUBAR. We request extraction from this location,” a man’s voice chirped from the headset.
Joel thought it over for a moment and then hustled over to the downed soldier. The man was lacking any sort of weapon, but the radio seemed like a good item to confiscate. Besides, none of the zombies seemed to even be aware of his presence. Their focus was the noise source on top of the parking garage.
Reaching his target, Joel had to fight back the urge to be sick. The stench from these things was simply beyond anything he’d ever experienced. And in such large numbers, that smell was amplified to the point of unbearable.
He moved in fast and flipped the disabled zombie onto its back. Making short work of it with a stab to the eye socket, he relieved it of its belt and then untangled the headset from around its neck.
Inspecting the radio, he really wished he could just dunk the entire thing in a vat of antibacterial solution. He had to flick a chunk of something nasty that clung to one earphone pad and decided that he would not be donning this piece of equipment.
Hitting the button, Joel spoke slowly and clearly, “Attention occupants of the military helo that just landed at the Thomas & Mack parking garage, the location has been overrun. Your arrival has attracted the attention of substantial amounts of whiskey-deltas. Suggest you try to escape the structure ASAFP. There is a grassy field below and I have a shuttle van from one of the local casinos. I intend to exit the city limits right now. If you want out of here, then I would make for my location.” Joel looked up to see the dark silhouettes of two individuals peering over the edge in his general direction. Joel waved his arms.
He decided not to tell them that he had plans to come back and abscond with as much military hardware as possible. They might not be too keen on that idea. Still, they were soldiers. He would do what he could to get them out of harm’s way. What they did after that was up to them. If they wanted to come back and perhaps try to rescue a bunch of idiots who would likely be dead with two weeks anyway, then that was their call. But, no matter what his own personal agenda, Joel would not forsake fellow soldiers.
“Hello down there,” a man’s voice replied. Joel watched the figures up above and saw one of them waving. “What the actual fuck happened here, over?”
“No idea, over.” Joel looked around to ensure he was still safe. He’d be damned if he was going to stand here and get eaten. His charity and desire to help fellow soldiers only went so far. “I just escaped the MGM a short time ago. Been up there riding this out the past few weeks until…” His voice caught in his throat as he flashed back to his dear Wanda.
She’d gone out to check on some damn friend of hers that had escaped from the casino level and come up in an elevator. Joel knew better than to try and stop her when her mind was made up, but he’d made her carry a gun. While he’d managed to stay away from the madness he’d seen unfolding on his television the past several days, he knew it was bad.
She’d promised to be careful, and Joel had no reason to believe that she couldn’t take care of herself. The two of them went to the range at least once a week, and she had become a damn fine shot with both handgun and rifle. To further bolster his confidence, she’d been the one pointing out things that were being done improperly as the news continued to roll in about how the entire world was collapsing.
She’d had no problem believing that most of the Asian nations went dark so fast. She’d brought up footage of places like downtown Tokyo, pointing out the massive amount of foot traffic. Enormous crowds were only part of the problem. She went on to explain how places like Tokyo would be next to impossible to survive in for more than the shortest periods of time due to the fact that the population was in such close proximity with each other.
“I doubt those rice paper walls did very much to keep zombies out,” she’d said, only being partially sarcastic.
When his Wanda had left that day, she’d assured him that her friend was okay. She wouldn’t do anything to endanger anybody.
One of the first things Joel had done when martial law had been declared in Las Vegas was to alter the elevator so that it only went up and down with the turn of a key. It had been a simple modification of the emergency circuit, and since nobody’d heard from staff or management for the past several days, there was nobody to tell him that he couldn’t.
He’d been sitting on the couch watching the latest EBS announcement when he heard the scream. Jumping to his feet, Joel had burst into the corridor to see Wanda struggling with somebody at the elevator. His heart had almost burst from his throat when the two had fallen into the elevator and vanished when the door slid shut.
He’d run to it, pounding impotently on the button as the numbers ticked down. When the elevator stopped and the LED indicated that it had done so on the fifth floor, Joel punched the wall in frustration. Then, after only a brief pause, the elevator began to return up to his floor.
Joel had been so hasty, that only as the doors were about to open did he realize that he didn’t have a weapon on hand. Wanda was standing in the open elevator, a splatter of almost black blood across her face. On the floor in a heap was a body of a woman with the back of her head blown out and a neat bullet hole in her forehead.
“People suck,” Wanda had said with a weak smile. A trickle of blood came from a small rip on one arm. Neither of them needed to say a word. Both of them knew the
eventual outcome.
She’d stepped out of the elevator and almost collapsed as the adrenaline left her body in a knee-weakening rush. Joel had sent one of his staff to the doctor’s room. He’d had the doctor and his family brought to his floor the first days of martial law, insisting that they were safer with him than at some government emergency shelter. And from what the news showed, staying in a residential home was asking to die. The doctor had been grateful, as had most of Joel’s staff when the initial offer had been made.
It’d been after the fire that claimed the entirety of the Cosmopolitan just up the street that the first deserters had vanished in the night. They’d obviously used the emergency exits. It was the pounding of zombies on the other side that had informed Joel that there had been some late-night departures. That had also been the day that Joel had sealed the emergency fire exits.
“Anybody else wants to leave, all they need to do is say so,” Joel had announced to the remaining residents on his floor. “But I’ll be damned if somebody is going to endanger the rest of us by leaving a door open for those things to come stumbling up.”
“Hey, buddy, you still with me, over?” the radio crackled, snapping Joel out of his memories.
“Yeah, still here, over.” Joel looked around again, amazed that no zombies were coming for him.
“Look, the whirly-bird is done. Took a freaking rocket during our fly over a residential area if you can believe that happy crappy. Nearest outpost still online is about thirty miles from here, over.”
“You looking to regroup with your outfit, over?”
Joel shaded his eyes and looked up at the two figures after several seconds passed without him being answered. He could tell that they were in an earnest conversation. Well if they were going to stand up there and argue all day, then they would be doing it without him as an audience. He was about to tell them that they were on their own when his radio crackled with static and then a reply.