The player didn’t start by itself, so Phil hit play and cranked it. Bass rumbled through the car. He smiled. He couldn’t remember the song – something from the late nineties – but it was perfect. True, angry, drive music. The kind that forced you to push the pedal down.
[TK: Nice non-descriptive reference music, hate to get sued for royalties from some washed up rock band still rocking their spandex playing in Asia somewhere.]
He rolled the shifter for a second, and then dropped the clutch and took off. He didn’t stop to open the gate this time, just blasted through it, the plow blade he had attached splitting it and sending both sides flying out in their respective directions. Creepers attracted to the music tossed to either side by the gates as they were thrown open.
He took a right and tore through the outskirts of town. Clipped a creeper and kept on going, checking the rearview mirror only long enough to note the thing wrapping itself around the same pole he had barely missed earlier.
Hit the highway and took the onramp up and around, dropping in the middle lane. Punched it. Music blaring. Engine humming. Cold beer in his hand. He looked off to his left and watched the town roll by. Peaceful in the pale winter light. He wondered how many more creepers were down there. Right now.
He shrugged. Enough to keep him busy for a bit, he figured. Up ahead a creeper was trying to cross the road. Had turned to follow the sound of his music. Buses parked along the side.
“Odd,” he said of the buses, and then swerved and smacked the creeper with the plow, sending it careening off the side of the highway.
[RL: Now, it is this scene that has caused some to call Phil “cold.” I find it makes him “cool.” Subtle difference, maybe, but a guy that takes protecting women as passionately as he does could never be considered cold in my opinion.]
Six
“Hey, Pete,” Phillip Craig said as he pulled the Porsche up next to Peter Eldridge. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, man.”
Peter sagged. “You scared the shit out of us,” he said.
“Speak for yourself,” Stuart told Peter. Then to Phil: “Where’d you get the Porsche?”
Phil smiled at him, revving the motor. “Some guy gave me a screaming deal on it,” he explained. “I practically stole it.”
[TK: Nice.]
“Where’d you get the plow?” Peter asked.
“That,” Phil said, “I can’t tell you. A magician’s secrets and all that. Anyway, are you boys gonna let me in?” He revved the engine again. “I wanna talk to Chris. Let him know he forgot something back in town.”
“What’s that?” Peter asked him.
“Me.”
Stuart nodded. “Right,” he said.
“I feel like Joe Dirt, man, and it hurts.” He tapped his chest. “It hurts my heart.”
Stuart nodded some more, stepped back into the guard booth and hit the switch. The gate started its slow roll to the side.
Phil said, “Thanks man,” and passed Stuart a half-drank beer. “You can kill that for me, it’s warm.” Then the clutch popped and the tires started squealing and the Porsche took off in a haze of white smoke.
Peter looked at Stuart, who shrugged and finished the beer, tossing the bottle into the parking lot.
“I fucking hate that guy,” Peter said, and went and sat back down in the guard booth.
[RL: I’m saying: Cool…]
[TK: Absolutely one of the best literary characters ever.]
[RL: If we did say so ourselves.]
[TK: Which we did.]
Seven
Chris passed through the lock and headed down the hall. The guard behind the Plexiglas screen waved, but Chris ignored him. There was so much to do. So, so much. And so, so little time. He didn’t see any way he could accomplish it all in one night. But the voice – his only true friend, the only one who cared – assured him he could do it. If anyone could, he could. He nodded his blocky head, cropped blonde hair moving from the motion.
Chris’ com unit lit up and Warden Bowers’ voice came out of it: “Chris, report.”
Chris sighed. Keyed his unit and replied, “Roger.”
“Where the hell are you?”
“In admin,” he explained. “I thought you were off.”
Warden Bowers should have been off. Doing whatever the hell he did when it wasn’t his shift. That would last six PM until six AM, when Bowers took over again. Chris was in charge over the night shift. For the first time. He needed every minute of it.
“I’m supposed to be,” Bowers snarled. “But we got one of our guards back. Seems Phil isn’t as blown up as you said.”
Chris shrugged. “Can’t win them all,” he said.
“What?”
“Copy, sir, Phil’s back. You need me to debrief him?”
“That would be nice.”
“Roger. I’ll meet him in ten. Take care, Warden, I’ve got it from here.”
“Copy,” Bowers said and was gone.
“Pope,” Chris called through the com unit.
“Pope here.”
“Have Phil escorted to the conference room. I’ll debrief him there.”
“Copy.”
Chris sighed and replayed the conversation he had just had. He hadn’t been that clear minded in days. Two days, to be exact. Maybe the voice was right. Maybe it was all going to be okay. His arm didn’t hurt anymore. His hands weren’t shaking. And everything was clear, perfectly clear.
He stopped at the door to the nurse’s office and went in. Didn’t bother to turn on the light. He didn’t need it, he realized. The world was so fucking clear, he could even see in the dark.
[RL: Again, it’s called foreshadowing…]
Eight
Erin Gibbs sighed and shifted in his bunk, thinking. His grey skin exposed from the waist up under the halogens.
“You’ve been doing that all afternoon,” Tall Bill Mahone told him. Lying in the bottom bunk, rather than in his usual perch with his back pressed up against the bars.
“I’ve been doing that all my life.”
“What? Flopping around on your bunk?”
“No,” Erin said, “thinking.”
“You know I meant flopping around on your bunk like a God damned fish. What’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing, just thinking.”
“Okay. Whatcha thinking about? Or, should I ask, who are you thinking about?” Bill asked, and chuckled.
Erin shook his head. He had been thinking about Mercedes. The young woman he had arrested years before after she murdered and mutilated a pimp she claimed had raped her. It wasn’t that Erin doubted the man had, but there was no way of proving it – or any reason to try – after she cut his throat.
Now, across the ocean of time that spanned those past few years, they had met once again, under completely different circumstances. And now they would be working together to keep Brennick from imploding and dooming every prisoner, guard and administrative employee to death by zombie.
Hell, even civilians, if Bowers was being honest about the buses filled with survivors.
But Erin wasn’t thinking about that, really, because he didn’t plan on staying at Brennick beyond the immediate future.
“Just get it out,” Bill told him, “you’ll feel better.”
Erin shifted again.
“Check this out,” Bill said, standing up so he was face to face with Gibbs. “It’s a poem, for Jessie:
“Sunlight shining through your hair,
Your skin so soft as it’s laid bare,
My rough touch you soon embrace,
As I stroke your perfect face…”
“Stop,” Erin told him, and held up a hand. “I’m already feeling homicidal.”
“Fuck you,” Bill said, and disappeared into his bunk. “I thought it was pretty good.”
Erin didn’t say anything. He just lay in his bunk, thinking.
“She’s gonna fucking love it,” Bill assured him from beneath.
[TK: I think that’s
a very nice poem. And if she doesn’t like it, she really only has herself to blame. I’ve fallen for every woman that’s given me a painting of me standing over my slain captors. And before you ask: twice.]
Nine
“He offered to write you poetry?” Mercedes asked Jessie, and laughed. “What a fucking loser.”
[RL: Great transition.]
“I’ve been thinking about it,” Jessie said from her bunk, “and I think you should stop swearing, too.”
“Why?”
“Because,” Jessie explained, pulled a lock of red hair out of her eyes, “you don’t want to teach your child all those words. I heard somewhere that the baby can already hear what’s going on. You know, from inside your belly.”
Mercedes sighed. “You’re starting to get on my nerves with this shit,” she said.
“Yeah, yeah,” Jessie told her. “Anyway, I thought it was kind of cute. He kept spouting off and just floundering, you know, and couldn’t figure out what I wanted him to do.”
“So he threw out poetry?”
“He was really on edge about it.”
“Sounds like it. So, what are you going to do?”
“Play with him some more.”
Mercedes sat up, her dark face a mask of righteous indignation. “You didn’t,” she said.
Jessie laughed. “Not like that. I meant ‘toy’ with him. It’s fun.”
Mercedes lay back down and shook her head. “I’m sure,” she told her cell mate.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to figure out who to put in charge, and then I’m going to figure a way out of this shi… hell hole. I’m getting a security pass tomorrow, guards said I could go anywhere I want. I figure that means I can get close enough to get out.”
“You want out?”
Mercedes didn’t know the answer to that. She stayed silent.
“Still,” Jessie said, “that’s not what I meant.”
“Oh?”
“I meant: you’re going to be spending a lot of time with Mr. Gibbs, the big bad cop man.”
“Ex…”
“Right. Ex-cop man. Funny, you adding that part.”
Mercedes fumed. Why had she added that part? she wondered. Was it because she was starting to think of him as an equal? Or just as a man, and not the man who had arrested her?
Never.
She was justifying working with him. That was it. She had to stop hating him long enough to get everyone out of lock down and back to something like normal. Then this new Brennick could be her new world. She would be in charge. Then they wouldn’t take her baby.
They couldn’t. Who would they give it to?
And Gibbs would never let them, she told herself.
He would never let them hurt her again.
[RL: A great example of how she’s simultaneously hating and beginning to look to Erin for protection.]
[TK: Sounds like my first marriage. Except you’d need to switch “protection” to “an excuse for everything that ever went wrong in her life, to include before we even met.” Yeah, that’s about right.]
Ten
Alexander Pope watched the Porsche pull up behind the buses, the V-shaped plow just inches above the pavement. Blood smeared and splatted across it in blotches and droplets. A bit of hair was caked in the blood on a corner.
The engine was turned off and then the door opened. Phillip Craig stepped out, holding a beer.
“Well,” he said, “if it isn’t the fucking Pope.”
“I heard you were dead,” Pope told him.
“Shit, man, it’ll take more than a few thousand creepers and a little explosion to take me out.” He took a pull off his beer and smiled at Pope. “I just advanced to the next level, is all.”
[TK: Love how he’s still treating this as a video game.]
Pope nodded. “Chris wants to see you in the conference room in ten,” he said.
“Tell Chris I’ll see him when I see him.”
“Marshall said he saw this car a few hours ago. It killed his sister.”
“Marshall?” Phil asked, and downed the last of his beer. “Oh, was he driving one of the buses?”
Pope nodded.
“Whoops.”
[RL: *Laughing*]
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Phil shrugged. “I saw them on the side of the road. Thought it was a coincidence.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“Did you kill his fucking sister?”
Phil shrugged again, looked around a second, then cupped his beer and lobbed it into a nearby trash can. “If it was a creeper, man, I killed it. It’s what I do. What I don’t do is hurt women. So, no, I didn’t kill his sister.”
Pope nodded. “Chris wants to see you in the conference room in ten,” he said again.
“I already told you: I’ll see him when I see him. I’m not real impressed with our new fearless leader right now. And I need an hour and a penthouse before I’ll be ready to think straight.”
“Excuse me?”
“Look,” Phil explained, “I spent two days straight shooting, burning, beating, and blowing up zombies. Set off like a hundred pounds of dynamite. Then drove this fucking thing all over town.” He showcased the Porsche with a wave. “At this point, my erection isn’t going down on its own. I’m starting to get lightheaded, man, seriously.”
[TK: I don’t remember the context in which this idea started, but I do remember it took us about 20 mins to stop laughing when we came up with it. And Pope’s reaction is how I imagine most “normal” people would feel about the stuff running around our heads. That’s why our friends are a unique, select group.]
Pope shook his head. “You’re fucking disgusting,” he said.
“I’m a man,” Phil told him, walked up and patted him on the shoulder. Pope recoiled and pulled away from his hand. Phil looked at it, and then laughed. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I’ll wash up after.”
Eleven
Chris tore open the refrigerator and rifled through it, tossing vials over his shoulder as he searched for the right ones. They had to be there. They just had to be. The voice had been very specific. It was just a mineral. But it had an interesting side-effect.
“There,” he said and snatched up two bottles of the stuff. Studied the labels to make sure. Then set them gently in a nursing bag he had found in a cabinet.
Next, he needed to find the syringe. Where was it? He pulled out the drawers in the fridge and tossed them. Vials and safety needles skidded across the tile floor.
“Damn it,” he seethed. He was running out of time. And he had another stop he wanted to make, without the voice’s permission.
“What you’re told,” Chris’ voice reminded him in his mind, “without question, and only what you’re told.”
“It’ll be quick,” Chris assured it. “You won’t even notice.”
The voice reminded him that it had already noticed. It told him that this wasn’t about the voice. It was about the two of them. Together. A team. Partners. If Chris wanted to survive, he would listen and do as he was told.
“Found it,” Chris said, and held it up. “It’s no problem.”
The voice told him he was doing very well.
Chris spun a chair out and sat. Took a string of surgical tube and wrapped it around his arm. Rubbed his eyes.
“Everything’s going perfect,” he said, and pressed a needle into his vein.
Twelve
Maurice Avelanda stepped out of the shower and sighed. He didn’t know how he felt. Being in the prison was surreal.
He had risked everything to get to the prison, to be safe behind its thick walls. But now that he was, he felt this instinctual need to get out. He felt like the walls were closing in. Everywhere there were people with guns. On the outside, that seemed like it would be comforting.
It wasn’t.
And none of the guards seemed very pleased with having the civilians around. They ha
d been led straight from the buses to the showers. Maurice being forced to wait in the loading bay until the rest of the survivors arrived. Armed guards watching his every move. Then, as a group, they were forced to strip. Then they were searched by nurses and guards. Any possessions they had succeeded in keeping through the outbreak taken.
A guard named Pope, supervising, explaining that it was standard procedure. Everything would be organized, categorized and stored. If they were ever released, their possessions would be returned.
It was the “if” that made the entire group nervous. Not to mention the inhumanity of being naked around total strangers. Pope explained that they had no other choice. There wasn’t enough space or time to check them all individually. If someone was infected, they could turn at any moment. Maurice thought the tall, lanky Pope was just getting off on the power and the sight of the women and girls naked.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the men and women were separated – wives clinging to husbands and children crying – and the women were led off to God only knew where. The men were allowed to shower.
Now, standing in the steamy room, Maurice thought he had made a mistake. Something was terribly wrong. He could feel it. It was in the air. Something about the loss of Sam, the man Maurice thought was their leader. Something about the loss of the other guards. Something about having civilians on the guard’s turf, where they were used to being in complete control.
Pope came back into the shower room with another guard. The latter pulled a laundry cart filled with uniforms. The guard brought it beside Pope and stood back.
“Clothes,” Pope told them. Then he took a bag from the laundry cart and pulled a handful of long, thick orange strips from it. “We don’t want you dressed like prisoners,” he explained, “it would confuse the guards. But we can’t have you dressed like guards just yet. We’re all trying to get used to each other, and these are extreme circumstances. So, we’ll be giving you guard uniforms, and you will each need to wear these strips on your right upper arms.”
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