Run: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller

by Rich Restucci

  “Unknown, over.” The phone rang and Rick asked the dispatcher to hang on for a second.

  “Negative 4044, too much traffic. Cannot comply with request, recommend you RTB or find secure location and wait for assistance, out.”

  What the hell was this? He just told the dispatcher that he had fatally shot someone, and she acted as if it were no big deal. Find a secure location? What was she talking about? Rick answered the phone, “Hello?”

  “Rick, it’s Mike.”

  “Mike, what the fuck is happening? I just got off the radio with dispatch. I told her I just killed a guy, and she went on like I was asking for directions!” Rick ran his fingers through his hair and they came back damp. He realized he had been sweating.

  “Dispatch has been told to inform all calling officers to either come in, or hunker down,” said Mike, “Rick, listen, you’re not coming in tomorrow. Get Sam and your dad, and get the fuck out of Dodge.”

  “Jesus, what are you talking about?”

  “You told me yesterday you were having trouble getting in touch with Brenda in Boston? The reason you couldn’t get through is because Boston is gone.”

  Rick tried to cut in, “Mike wha-”

  “Shut up and listen,” continued Mike, “This disease that’s hitting the east coast isn’t just on the east coast, it’s everywhere, here too. It’s been absolute chaos for the past few hours, everyone in the damn city has called 911, the board is lit up like a Christmas tree. A buddy of mine from USAMRIID called me an hour ago, he said that the infected people are incredibly violent, and extremely resistant to pain and trauma. There is no effective way to incapacitate them other than to destroy the brain. Boston is gone Rick, I’m sorry.”

  “What does that mean?” Rick demanded.

  “It means that the situation in Boston is completely out of control. The infected outnumber the uninfected by numbers that scare the shit out of me. The city is burning, and the Army, who’ve been there for a few days are pulling out it’s so bad. Now it’s here. There have been dozens of calls all night from scared folks claiming that their neighbors are attacking them. I sent eight units to check out a small riot, and of the sixteen cops I sent, one came back alive.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me? Boston gone? Fifteen cops in San Francisco dead?” Rick was flabbergasted, and he looked at where Mrs. McCreedy had bitten him again, looking for broken skin.

  “Rick, there’s twenty six cops we know of that are dead. Nine others are MIA, with six vehicles abandoned or destroyed. Garcia was the cop that came back from the riot. He told me that there was no way the rioters could have sustained the damage they did and lived. There was a crowd of 30 or so people banging on a mom n’ pop shop window, all units fired tear gas canisters into the crowd, and walked in with riot shields and gas masks. The rioters attacked and fucking ate them! Tear gas was useless. Garcia told me he shot one guy point blank with a 12 gauge, and blew the guy in half. The guy crawled toward him with half his chest cavity missing. Garcia tried to bolt when his buddies were getting slaughtered, but he was bitten a few times. He was taken to St. Mary’s. I called ten minutes ago to check on him, and St Mary’s is totally overrun. There are some doctors and patients on the upper floors, but we can’t get to them, there are too many infected. You’re in the safest part of town, but you still need to leave. This shit is next-level FUBAR, and you need to bug out. We’re way past helping anyone here, and it’s time to look to our own. There are sixty eight of us left, and I’ve called back all units to command. We’ll try to get everybody’s families, and make a run for the city limits picking up whoever we’re able to. If we can’t get out, we’ll fall back and make a stand here if we need to.”

  “Where’s the meeting point? What’s the plan if you make it outside the city?

  “Alcatraz,” answered Meara. “Gonna have to go right by you to get there, but don’t wait for us. Get any supplies and people you can and get to the island by any means necessary. Good luck buddy, and stay safe.”

  “You too man, I’ll see you soon,” Rick said, and with that they both hung up. He went to his bedroom and grabbed two large duffle bags, filling them with items that he considered useful. He pulled out his shoulder holster from the closet and strapped it on, then reloaded the Taurus to capacity, made sure the safety was on, and jammed it in the holster. He was bringing out more shells for the shotgun when he heard a knock at the front door. I can’t get two God damn minutes? he thought to himself. Rick picked up the shotgun and went to the front door. He waited for a few seconds, and was turning around to go continue packing when the knock sounded again. Rick raised the shotgun to the door and said quietly: “Who is it?”

  “Mr. Barnes? Mr. Barnes, it’s Chris Rawding from 3A, can I talk to you please?”

  Rick knew there was a young guy living upstairs, but he didn’t know his name. Quiet and shy, he was a computer kid or something. Rick looked through the peephole in the apartment door to make sure it was the neighbor he knew. The cop saw a tall, thin kid about 22 or 23. He removed the safety bar, and unlocked the door to let him in. Chris came through the door and stopped quickly when he saw the shotgun. He looked warily at Rick. “Come in, please,” Rick said, pointing the shotgun at the floor, “I’m a cop.” Those three words always either calmed, incensed, or scared people, and a good cop could always tell what emotion would be elicited prior to uttering them. Rick was hoping for calm and he was right on the money.

  “I know you’re a cop, that’s why I’m here.” The kid drew his forearm across his forehead, and Rick noticed it came away sweaty.

  “What’s the problem, is everything ok?”

  “Yeah, um, the problem is that I’ve seen some weird stuff lately, and I’m a little freaked. I’ve been online for the past few hours, and some of my online buddies have told me that this infection is all over. I need somebody to tell me what’s happening, and you’re the first person I thought of. I heard gunshots earlier, and saw you and some EMTs out the window. You shot that guy, was he infected?

  “I hope so.” Rick sighed. “He wouldn’t respond to any verbal commands, and he attacked one of the paramedics. Bit him.”

  “Bit him?” Chris looked really scared. “Two of my friends said it’s the bites that infect you, and if you get infected, in a very short time, you lose your mind and attack anybody near you.”

  “Shit.” Rick said, and looked at his hand. Thank God for false teeth. “Alright, it’s Chris, right?” Chris looked almost sad when Rick wasn’t sure of his name. Chris nodded. “What is it I can do for you exactly?”

  “Uhh…well, you have a gun…”

  Rick raised his eyebrows.

  “It’s just that… I don’t have a gun, and I’m getting a little nervous, so I was wondering if I could hang with you for a little while.”

  The kid looked like a scared school girl, complete with wide eyes and nervous lip biting.

  “Well then there’s good news and bad news, kid,” Rick said. “Good news is that I’m somewhat of a gun enthusiast, bad news is that I’m leaving in two hours.” He handed Chris a small hand gun. It was a .32 caliber pistol that he had purchased for his wife when he had lived in Boston. His wife had outright refused to carry it, even after she had gotten certified to carry a firearm. Rick had brought the weapon with him when he had moved back to San Francisco, and the gun had sat in his weapons locker, unused, since his return.

  “Normally, I wouldn’t give you a firearm,” he said to Chris, “but these circumstances are anything but normal.” He looked at the young man as Chris accepted the weapon. “Have you used a firearm before?”

  Chris looked at the nickle-plated weapon and nodded in the affirmative.

  “Good. I hope you won’t need to use it.”

  4

  Living on the outskirts of San Francisco, Paul was used to nightly sirens. But last night they were going apeshit. Paul had gone to bed at about 9:30, he was getting along in years, and he liked getting up early, so he went to bed early
. Sometime during the night he woke up needing to pee. He got out of bed, and realized that his digital clock wasn’t on. He pressed a button on his watch, was momentarily blinded by the bright blue backlight. Paul blinked a few times and then focused on the numbers. 3:26 AM. He stumbled sleepily to the bathroom and took care of business. On his way back to bed, he looked out his window, noticing that the power seemed to be out in his section of town. The sodium arc streetlight at the end of his driveway was functional though. He looked down the road, and they all seemed to be. The light near his neighbor’s house illuminated an odd scene. Three people were kneeling over a fourth, taking something from the unfortunate victim.

  Paul was incensed. As a former police officer, he knew he had to report this. He had recently been involved in a shooting, where he fired his pistol at a drugged-out thief who was robbing a gas station. The perp was killed, and Paul was toted as a hero by some, and as a vigilante by others. The police had confiscated his firearm until the investigation was over, so he was unable to assist the guy getting mugged in the street now.

  Whatever the thieves were stealing, it was dripping. The three seemed to be lifting whatever they were taking to their faces, almost like they were eating something. It was too far away to make out, so Paul got his cheap little binoculars from his nightstand. He used the binoculars to watch the kids play baseball at the park near the end of his street. He loved watching the kids play ball, he always had, especially since his son had moved out when he had grown. Paul focused the binoculars on the event unfolding a house away.

  The scene was one out of a nightmare. The three kneeling were eating a man. There was blood all over them, dripping down their faces. Pieces of the victim were being unceremoniously stuffed into the greedy mouths of the attackers. One stumbled off with what looked like the lower portion of a leg, but more were coming, stumbling toward the attack scene. Paul initially thought that maybe some of these new folks would help, but they knelt down and started helping themselves to portions of the hapless victim! Paul knew that this must be the same thing that was happening in Boston. Suddenly, the man on the ground, the one being eaten, convulsed. The attackers seemed to pause for a second, looking at their dinner. With the one stump of an arm the victim had left, he pushed one of his attackers away! He tried to get up, but there wasn’t enough of him to do so. Both legs were torn away, and his one arm, which was handless, wasn’t strong enough to push himself off the pavement. The people stood up and shuffled off, bumping into things and tripping as they went.

  Paul knew he could be next on the menu. There were screams coming from a few houses away now, and the street seemed to fill with the shuffling people, stumbling toward the source of the sound.

  Where did they all come from!? There were at least thirty of them out there now, all heading for the house three away from Paul’s on the other side of the street. He picked up the phone to call his son, but it was dead. He didn’t own a cell phone, thinking they were a nuisance. There was no way he would make it past all of the people outside if he attempted to run for it. Where would he go anyway? Rick’s house was too far away… Rick! Rick would come for him. Paul figured he would hide in his basement, and be quiet until his son arrived. He wasn’t one to hide while others were in danger, but he had no weapons, and there were too many of the infected outside. That’s what they must be, infected. As the implications of that caught up with him, he felt the icy grip of terror. A thump on his farmer’s porch furthered the emotion. If he hadn’t had taken a whizz five minutes before he would have pissed himself. Some shuffling steps on the porch, and a thud on his door sealed the deal. He hurried to the basement door, stopping on the top step. He shut the door behind him, and put two shovel handles crosswise across the door, pinning them against the surface with the junk on the basement side of the door. The barricade would hold for a few minutes at most. Paul quietly walked down the stairs and peeked out his basement window. He couldn’t see much because the window was small, not even two feet wide and half that in height. There was also a hedge dividing his side yard from his neighbor’s. He could see the shuffling feet of the infected in the glow of the streetlight through the boughs of the hedge. There were many.

  Paul could hear a consistent pounding on the front door of his house. He looked up the fifteen feet of stairs at the poorly-barricaded door. It was weak at best, but it was all he had. The pounding stopped, and he breathed a sigh of relief. He sat on the bottom step and surveyed his surroundings. There were a few tools he could use as bludgeoning weapons, but that meant he would need to get close, possibly infecting himself if he got infected fluids on him. He really didn’t want that, as he wasn’t sure how this disease was transmitted, and it seemed incredibly contagious. Paul put his head in his hands to think. He looked up at the basement window, and almost screamed. A pair of feet had appeared right outside the window. The feet trudged off to his back yard, and he was once again alone in the dark.

  Some hours later, he heard screaming from out front. He went to the window and saw that another unfortunate victim had been taken down under a street light. Why the hell was everyone standing under the damn street lights, when the shadows were so much safer? Idiots. Paul saw some movement in his hedge, but couldn’t make out what it was. He backed away from the window, but not before something interesting came into view…

  5

  “Chris, on your six!”

  “What?”

  “BEHIND YOU!”

  Chris turned in time to see a girl who looked to be in her late teens, with horrible lacerations on her throat lurch at him with bloody arms reaching. He brought up his .32 pistol and fired, but she was on him before he could get it above her waist. Chris ineffectively shot her in the stomach. She ploughed into him and they both went down, with her on top. He dropped the gun and reached for her throat with both hands. She had a vise-like grip on his shirt, and was growling and hissing, trying to bite him the whole time. He pushed her head up with a mighty shove, and the left side of her head exploded outward like a squeezed grape. A microsecond later he heard a loud report.

  “GET UP! There’s more coming!” Rick shouted. Rick and Sam were beside Rick’s unmarked police Crown Victoria, Sam covering her ears with both hands. Rick was still sighting targets through the ACOG of his semi-automatic AR15A3. He plugged an elderly man, naked except for black socks. The man toppled backwards with a hole in his forehead.

  The plan had been simple: Load up what they could in duffle bags, and get to the car. They weren’t ten steps out the door when Chris’s duffle strap snagged on a wrought iron tree-fence, and he fell backwards. He succeeded in freeing the strap, but not before a few infected had seen him. Rick didn’t notice this until he was fifty feet away at the car and found Chris missing. By this time, the infected were almost on Chris, and Rick had to fire.

  Chris struggled loose of the dead weight on top of him, picked up his gun and duffle, and ran to the Crown Vic.

  Rick put Sam in the front, and the gear in the back, while Chris jumped in the passenger side and quickly slammed the door shut.

  “Mr. Barnes,” he said, “We’re drawing a crowd, hurry!”

  Rick shut the back door, and hopped in the driver’s seat. He fumbled with the keys for a precious two seconds, and that was enough for the dead crowd. Rick started the car and put it in reverse. As he was turning his head to look behind him, a bloody palm smacked the driver’s side window, leaving a red smear.

  “Buckle up, honey,” Rick told Sam. Rick threw the car into reverse and accelerated quickly, catching an unfortunate undead behind the car and grinding it under the wheels. They left the apartment building behind, and travelled south toward the freeway.

  “No plan survives contact with the enemy…” Rick said while shaking his head.

  “Moltke the Elder,” Chris volunteered.

  “What?” asked Rick.

  “Moltke the Elder, he was the one who coined that phrase, he was a German Field Marshal.”

  “Wow, bet yo
u kicked butt on Jeopardy, huh?”

  “I was a poli-sci major.”

  Rick was confused. “Thought you were a computer guy?”

  “I am. Do you know how hard it is to find a job with a political science degree? Computers were a hobby for me, and I turned my hobby into a career.”

  Chris changed the subject, “There’s goo on you,” pointing to a nasty stain on Rick’s shirt. Chris rummaged through a duffle while they drove and came up with a multi-colored Hawaiian shirt. He gave the shirt to Rick, and when they had a second with no dead near, Rick stopped the car, carefully took off the ruined T-shirt, so as not to get any of the blood near his face, rolled the window down, and pitched it out. He grabbed some McDonalds’ napkins from the door pocket and wiped the offending material off of him. He pitched the soiled napkins out the window after the T-shirt, closed the window and donned the Hawaiian shirt. The whole event took less than a minute, and that was enough to see five infected coming at them from different directions. Rick shook his head and drove away.

  Thick black smoke was billowing up from the street to the right, and as Rick crested the one of San Francisco’s many hilled streets, he could see the city was in shambles. At least four enormous fires raged in the heart of the city, with smaller ones dotting the outskirts. There were dozens of car crashes, and people seemed to be fleeing in all directions, some with luggage and small children in tow. Hundreds of shambling figures were lurching after any living human seen. How could it fall apart so fast? Rick thought. “My God…” Chris said, surveying the scene. At the bottom of the hill, there was a man with a shotgun shooting everything in sight. It was a pump-shotgun, and he had a box of shells at his feet. There were 8 bodies around him, and more were approaching. He was screaming something unintelligible as he fired. A bleeding woman ran up to him screaming for help, and he jacked a shell into the chamber and shot her in the left shoulder. She fell on her back, and then sat up, without her left arm. She looked at where her shoulder used to be and started screaming. The man shot her in the chest, and she flew back, now unmoving. The man stood over her firing into a group of about half a dozen infected. He got two before the weapon clicked empty. He tried to reload, but the rest of the creatures got to him and took him down. Rick didn’t want to get delay any longer, so he took a left and gunned it down the street. Chris looked back and was horrified to see the shot-gunned woman taking bites out of her own severed arm.