James stared at him as they inched forward. “Um, because of the new exhibit, asshat.”
A lady behind them glared and shot a meaningful look down to the kid she had strapped into a stroller. James turned his back on her and ignored the daggers shooting from her eyes.
“Are you really telling me you think it’s going to be worth ten bucks to see this?” Ryan sighed.
James shook his head. Ryan was fourteen and nothing impressed him anymore. Even the Outbreak halfway across the country had been yawn-worthy and though their Mom said it was just his way of coping with the carnage, James wasn’t sure it wasn’t just his younger brother’s annoying way of rebelling against everyone else’s horror.
“I’m paying, so what do you care?” James asked, a bit more sharply than he had intended. “Look, we’ll check out the new exhibit, maybe take a pass around the lions and the snake house and then we’ll be outie.”
Ryan laughed. “You are such a geek.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” James said with a shrug. “Geeks end up ruling the world, so I say… bring on the geek.”
“Go!” Ryan pointed ahead of them. The lady in the booth was motioning them forward.
James paid, grabbed a map and hauled his brother into the big open area that was beyond the gate. There was a souvenir shop, a set of bathrooms and a bigger, wooden version of the map he held in his hand. No one was looking at that stuff, though. Everyone was moving toward the same area.
“Come on before they all block everything and we can’t see,” James snapped.
Ryan let out a put-upon sigh and followed his brother, sneakers dragging on the ground. James suppressed the urge to smack his brother and abandoned him, hurrying through the crowds of people, dodging the strollers with crying, whining kids.
He hesitated at the archway that said, “Scenes of the Outbreak” in big, red letters. His heart leapt. This was it. What he’d been waiting for over the last six months… ever since the zoo had been renamed as a memorial to the Outbreak of the Summer of 2010 and they’d announced they would be caging and displaying…
“Zombie!” one of the little kids squealed.
The crowd gathered around a cage gasped and stirred and James sprinted forward. He elbowed his way through the crowd, ignoring the grunts and protests of the people he was running over in his zeal to see…
“Whoa,” he whispered.
The cage had iron bars and there was an expanse of grass between those bars and the barrier that everyone was currently leaning on. Behind the bars, though, that was the best part.
There were two zombies in the exhibit. A male and a female. Both were dressed in tattered rags, the remnants of what they had once been before the Outbreak.
“Oh look, this tells us more about them, Timmy,” said a lady a few people down to James’s right. She looked at the metal sign while her kid swung around without a care. “The zombie was created due to an accident in a lab in Washington State. Though it isn’t known when these particular zombies were infected, the state of their clothing suggests some time in the last 8-12 weeks. The male was once a bus driver for the Topeka Kansas transit system. The female appears to have been a traffic cop for the City of Austin, Texas. Zombies are extremely dangerous, so please stay behind the barrier.”
James stared. He had only seen zombies on television. Once the government had realized the Outbreak was out of control, they’d built that Wall in the middle of the country and cut off the infection before it got as far East as Kentucky. For a while, people had been scared. Every night they analyzed the possibility of infection on the news.
But soon, things got back to normal. The news still covered the Outbreak, of course, and there were a few weird reality shows about it. But it was no longer the lead story.
“Whoa, they are way uglier than I thought they would be.”
James jolted and found that his brother had forced his way to the barrier, too. For once Ryan didn’t look bored or jaded. He actually looked impressed.
“Look at how her cheek is rotting,” James said, pointing at the female zombie. “You can see her teeth through her face!”
“Gross!”
“Timmy, get down now.”
James leaned over and looked down. The same woman who had read the description of the zombies out loud to her kid was now checking her cell phone while “Little Timmy”, who looked to be about eight, climbed up on the barriers that blocked them from the cage with the zombies.
“Jeez!” James grumbled. “Look at that?”
Ryan leaned around him. “Yeah? So what?”
James pursed his lips. “Why don’t people watch their kids? Seriously, the barriers are there for a reason!”
“God, you are such an old fogy for a guy just out of high school,” his brother laughed.
“Apocalypses will do that,” James said with a glare for his brother. “Just because you don’t care, doesn’t mean no one else does.”
His brother shrugged. “I care. I just don’t think we’re in an ‘end of days’ type scenario. Not much has changed except no more planning for that vacation at the theme parks in California.”
“Sick,” James said with a look at his brother. “Just sick, man.”
“Hey, lady, your kid!” a guy in the crowd cried out and there was a fair amount of panic in his voice.
James and Ryan looked down the way again and to James’s horror, the little boy had managed to sling himself over the barrier and was now on the grass between the wall and the cage of zombies. Worse, it seemed like the zombies saw it, too. They had been pacing aimlessly, but now they rushed the cage, reaching through the bars, drooling black sludge and making a horrible, rasping hiss.
“Timmy!” the mother cried. She tossed the cell phone she’d been so interested in and vaulted over the barrier.
But Timmy clearly had some experience in escaping his Mom. He was already running toward the cage and he was a quick little bastard. Everyone else just stared, mesmerized and terrified as the mother rushed after him.
“No!” she squealed and jumped for him with her arms outstretched.
The female zombie caught her wrist and the crowd gasped in unison and leaned forward.
“Why isn’t anyone stopping this?” James whispered, though he was perfectly aware that he wasn’t any better.
“Desensitized by seeing zombies on TV,” his brother explained.
The woman screamed again as the female zombie yanked her against the cage. Hard. The little boy flew forward, pinned by his mother’s body as she flailed and pulled against the female zombie. Zombie Lady bit down on the woman’s hand and there was a horrible spurt of blood as she tore a hunk of flesh away.
Meanwhile, the male zombie rushed the cage and bit the little boy through the bars.
“Get help!” someone in the crowd yelled and that seemed to wake everyone up. A few people started running, yelling for the zookeepers to come.
James stood frozen in his place, staring as the zombies tore and bit their victims. This was just like he’d seen on the news during the first few days of the Outbreak. Only it was just a few feet away.
“Um, James?”
He ignored his brother, still mesmerized by the carnage playing out before him.
“James?” When he still didn’t move, Ryan grabbed him and shook him. “Jamie!”
James shook his head and looked down at his brother. “What?”
Ryan blinked and he actually looked scared. Really scared, not ‘annoyed teenager who knew everything’.
“When they get bitten, they turn into zombies,” his brother said, voice shaking.
James nodded. “Yeah.”
“So that means those two will be zombies sometime in the next few minutes.”
“Yeah.”
James actually felt badly for them as he looked. The woman had stopped screaming and gone limp. The little boy was also down and the male zombie had disconnected his arm and was now shaking it like an angry dog.
/> “There’s no gate separating us from them, James,” Ryan said. He grabbed James and shook him again. “Jamie, when they wake up, they’re coming for more people. We have to run.”
The words sunk in. “Shit, you’re right!” James said and he looked around them.
Everyone else in the crowd was too shocked to have made his brother’s very intelligent leap of logic. Part of James said that he should remind them of Ryan’s observation and get them moving for the gates.
The other part knew that would cause a stampede and that he and Ryan could get separated, trampled or zombie-fied in the process.
“Stay cool,” he whispered. “And stay close. Let’s go.”
His brother nodded slightly and James felt Ryan’s fist close on the back of his shirt as they started moving through the crowd. He breathed a sigh of relief. At least if Ryan held his shirt, they wouldn’t get separated.
If he lost Ryan, his Mom would kill him. Not to mention that he’d probably miss the little creep.
They moved through the crowd, which had more than doubled since James had gotten there earlier. They were stirring and screaming and moving to fill in any space and get a better look at an unscheduled live feeding of the new zombies in exhibit.
And then the “zoo keepers” showed up. Only they were CDC guys, dressed in full hazmat gear and with cattle prods. James had read it cost them over a million dollars to get the zombies into exhibit. He guessed they weren’t about to shoot them and destroy that investment.
“Step out of the way,” the CDC guys said through their respirators.
“Hurry,” James whispered as he edged past the biggest CDC guy. He had a feeling that bad things were going to happen in a minute.
They made their way past the crowd and started toward the front gate. James wanted to run, but he feared that would only make their escape attempt that much more obvious and inspire the rest of the cattle people in the zoo to freak out, too.
The screams began behind them. Loud wails from the group. James knew what was happening. Timmy and his Mommy Dearest had reanimated.
“Ok,” he said, “Run! Run!”
His brother let go of his shirt and they both started running, but within minutes, the terrified crowd behind them had caught up. James tried not to look, but there were people with blood on their shirts. He wasn’t sure if it was residual spray or if they’d been bitten.
“Why aren’t they shooting?” Ryan asked as they made for the front gate.
It was almost like someone read his mind because at that moment, the sounds of gun fire echoed through the air. One shot, then silence.
“That isn’t enough to kill them both,” Ryan said and began to run faster.
By the time they reached the turnstyles to let them back out into the parking lot, people were crowding them, stuck in twos and threes. Ryan started to elbow his way through the crowd, but James caught his arm.
“We’ll get held up, come on, this way!”
Ryan followed him without argument (possibly for the first time ever) and they hurried toward the entrance gates. The woman behind the toll booth jumped up as they burst through.
“Hey! You can’t go this way!” she said, her voice muffled by the glass.
James ignored her and they kept running toward the parking lot.
“James!” his brother cried and James stopped and turned.
Ryan was standing in front of where the exit turnstiles would normally dump people out into the parking lot. James stared at what he saw. The people who had gotten stuck were now screaming. And behind them, the zombies were swarming the crowd.
“How many are there?” James asked, his tone low and blank.
“Looks like ten.” Ryan shuddered. “But there are about to be fifty.”
“Yeah, so let’s go.”
James caught his brother’s hand and they ran toward the parking lot. Cars swerved, nearly hitting them as they darted down the aisles toward the last row where James’s beater of a Honda was parked.
He moved to unlock Ryan’s side, when his brother pointed.
“Look at all the people trying to get out.”
James swiveled toward the single exit of the East Parking Lot and scowled. Cars were run up on the sidewalk and the grass, they were slammed against each other in a twisted mess of metal that would take hours to escape. And judging from the fact that the screaming in the distance had faded, they didn’t have hours. Not anymore.
“Forget the car,” James said and motioned to the park that was just beyond the wall around the zoo. “We’ve got to go on foot.”
“The house is ten miles away!” Ryan protested. “It will take us hours to walk home.”
“If there are zombies, I doubt we’ll be walking. And as soon as we’re at a safe distance, I’ll call Mom to come get us.” James stared at his brother. “Please. Please don’t argue and just do this.”
Ryan stared at the traffic jam at the exit and nodded. “Fine.”
James stifled a sigh of relief and started for the wall around the lot that kept people from sneaking in without paying. There were security guards in the parking lot who would normally keep them from scaling it, but they were busy with other things. Like the crazy drivers. And the zombies who were now climbing over the turnstiles and heading into the lot.
“Shit, hurry,” James said as they reached the wall. He motioned to a car that was parked close and helped his brother scrambled up on the hood. “And don’t look back.”
Of course Ryan immediately did just that and his face paled beneath his freckles. “Oh shit.”
He hit the roof and vaulted over the wall and James followed. It was a bit longer drop than he’d expected and as he hit, he felt his ankle turn. A fiery burst of pain shot up the back of his leg and he grunted as he crouched down and grabbed for his ankle.
“What?” Ryan asked. He pivoted to stare at James. “Are you okay?”
He nodded, but he doubted his expression said anything but pain. “I’m fine. Let’s just go.”
His brother opened his mouth to argue, but when James started limping across the park, he didn’t say whatever he was going to say, he just followed. Behind them, James heard more screaming, tires squealing and occasionally, gunfire.
“Why didn’t they shoot them right away if they had guns?” Ryan asked between panting breaths.
James shook his head. “Protecting the asset, I guess. But they waited too long, obviously. Hey, there’s Cortez Tower. We can climb up there and call for Mom, okay?”
Cortez Tower stood in the center of the old downtown section. It had been some kind of Civil War Monument or something and had fallen into disrepair, but now that the city council was trying to revitalize downtown, they’d cleaned it up. It was about a mile from the zoo, which seemed like forever the way James’s ankle was screaming in pain with every step.
“Can you make it?” his brother asked.
James didn’t answer, but kept up his limp/run at the same pace. It really hurt, but he wasn’t about to tell Ryan that and open the door for arguments and time wasting discussion about splints and stuff. They just had to get to the Tower. That was it.
The rest of town hadn’t quite figured out that all hell was breaking loose at the zoo. By the time they were just a quarter mile away from the carnage, people were strolling along the sidewalks, out in their yards doing some work in the sunny morning or drinking their iced latte’s as they went about their weekend activities. Again, James wondered if he should start screaming out warnings, but he didn’t really want to be in the midst of panic. He’d seen what had happened in some of the cities during the zombie apocalypse. People were trampled and shot for what they had. Chaos had reigned more often than not. Until he and Ryan were in a safer place with a vantage point and a blocked door, he wasn’t about to start calling for the cavalry.
He stumbled as pain rocketed up his leg.
Ryan skidded to a stop in front of him and turned back. “How bad?”
James blinked.
He was tearing up from the pain, though he hated to share that with his brother. Still, he couldn’t exactly hold back.
“Bad,” he said through gritted teeth. “But we’re not far enough away from the zoo to stop. We are about half a mile from the tower.”
“Why are you obsessed with the tower?” Ryan asked while he came back and put James’s arm around his shoulder to support him. They started running again, this time in tandem like they were in a weird three-legged race.
“We’ll be able to see if the zombies come toward us,” he explained. “The door is heavy, too. If we close it and lock it, we’ll be able to block it off. The zombies won’t figure it out.”
Ryan shot him a look. “Wow, you’re pretty smart.”
James laughed. “Thanks, I guess. I could do without the utter shock, of course, but I’ll take the backhanded compliment.”
“I see it,” Ryan panted as they burst through a back alley into the town center. “Come on.”
They hobbled into the center of the roundabout and up the marble stairs to the base of the monument. Even though it was a nice day, when they moved into the tower, no one else was inside. The desk, which was unmanned most of the time, was empty.
“Close the door,” James grunted as he sank down on the staircase next to the old, creaky elevator. “And I’ll help you block it with the desk.”
His brother did as he was told and James pushed himself back up and the two boys shoved the desk in front of the door. Ryan tugged on the door and it held.
“Good enough. Now let’s go up.”
They got on the elevator, which was hardly big enough for two and they pressed the button. Up and up the old elevator creaked, groaning and protesting every foot it climbed. Finally it stopped with a jolt and the old door slid open.
The top of the tower was a tiny little observation deck that could hold no more than four or five people. It looked down over the whole city and James and Ryan moved to the side where they could see the zoo.
From thirty feet up, they couldn’t see much detail, but smoke was coming from the mass of cars still situated at the exit to the parking lot where they had fled. People ran around and some of them didn’t look like they were really thinking.
In the Dead: Volume 1 Page 9