Dead and Dead Again: Kansas City Quarantine

by Dalton Wolf

  “We’ll stay at my uncle’s castle and wait for it all to blow over,” he promised.

  “You think that’s enough?” she asked.

  “We did the most important thing we could do already,” he pointed out. “We kept that doctor safe so he can get that sample out for testing. The rest is just surviving until they find a vaccine for us.”

  “At least your uncle has a lot of DVDs to choose from,” she admitted with a nod.

  “The Paddy Wagon is acting up,” Sarah reported when the vehicle began to surge and hesitate.

  “Ok, let’s go to Hef’s first,” Calvin suggested. “We can just turn on the Paseo. It’s actually closer from here.”

  Athena’s black eyes narrowed and then went cold as they focused on the three survivors, now locked within the cage. The kids and Megan seemed to be free of cuts and bites, but Calvin had set the quarantine parameters for a reason. None of them had turned grey or tried to eat the others, and she certainly hoped it stayed that way. She hadn’t wanted to shoot the man, but it would break her heart to kill either of the children…especially now that she knew their names. The woman was another issue. She was obviously stupid, sitting in the arms of a man she knew was about to change. It wouldn’t be so bad shooting her if it was something she had to do. She watched the woman closely for any signs of change. Underneath the sweat and grime of three days avoiding zombies Megan was a very pretty red-head with dazzling blue eyes, exactly the kind Calvin would love. She was tall, about five-nine, and seemed very pristine, almost princess-like—but naturally, not like she was trying. Athena found herself actually feeling jealous for a minute and her finger subconsciously tightened on the trigger, but she quickly shook her head to clear it.

  What the hell am I thinking? Keeping one eye on the road, when they were two blocks from the river she finally felt comfortable enough to lower the crossbow. Unfortunately, as she allowed her attention to wander away from the cage she noticed Brick watching her from across the vehicle, sheathing her in a slimy leer of barely controlled lust.

  I forgot all about you.

  A faint stream of illumination from a tiny LED inset into the headliner lit only his forehead, cheeks and a bare-toothed grin. Though steeped in shadow, she knew his fevered, deep blue eyes focused only on her. Sitting in the jump seat recess, blocked from those in the cage by a solid plate in the shark’s cage, he rubbed his swollen crotch. She mimicked retching and refocused the aim of her crossbow at his chest. His breath released in more excited gasps, though, so she lowered the aim to a more sensitive area, but immediately lifted it again as this once again doubled his arousal. He seemed content to just rub himself, but she left the safety off, just in case.

  “We’re losing power,” Sarah informed them all loudly.

  “Shit.” Trip muttered.

  Shit, Athena echoed Trip inwardly.

  “Here. Turn here,” Calvin pointed.

  “You sure?” Felicia asked.

  “It’s ok. This is actually the entrance to the back alley of The Dungeon.” He called on the radio for Hef to let them in.

  “Let me check the surveillance, Quinn, please go to the door controls,” Hef replied. After an extended pause, his excited voice jumped back onto the com system. “Calvin, do not leave your vehicles! There are dead all over the front and the sides of my building. They are coming your way. I do not know how this happened. Everything was clear the last time I checked.”

  “They’re inside!” Quinn suddenly shouted. “They’re inside your little garage! Twenty of them, oof, nineteen! Ok, I got the door shut again. It was open, though. Watch your back, Hephaestus!”

  The two vehicles had just reached the back side of the building and the Paddy Wagon had come to a hard stop. Calvin motioned to Felicia to back up next to them.

  “Parents, out!” he shouted. “Climb into the Paddy Wagon there and sit in back.”

  “Stay here, Athena. Keep them safe,” Calvin ordered.

  She nodded, knowing that he couldn’t see her and also that it wasn’t as if they had many choices under the circumstances.

  “The engine is dead. Sorry Quinn,” Sarah reported in a bleak voice.

  “We’ll worry about that later,” the big man replied with a great sigh from somewhere inside the massive structure.

  Then Hephaestus called out, “Get everyone on the roof of your vehicle—,”

  “—Gah! My baby—” they heard Quinn gasp at the thought of that many people on his roof.

  “—and we will pull you up.”

  “We’re coming to the garage,” Calvin informed whoever was listening. “Just open it up, let us in and close it behind us. We’ll have to clean them out from the inside before we take the civilians in there.”

  “What the…someone left this side door wide open,” Quinn muttered.

  Brick seemed to have recovered himself some now that they weren’t surrounded by walking corpses and he stuck the big claymore into its sheath so it stuck out diagonally over one shoulder as he, Sarah and Athena all climbed out of the ambulance and helped the three scared victims onto the roof first, followed by the parents.

  “Fittest people stand closer to the edges,” Athena ordered. “The others get on the building side, leaning against it so you don’t fall off. Dad, you get over there,” she reached up and gently pushed her father to the building side of the Wagon roof.

  “What, now I’m fat?” he joked.

  Without enough room to stand safely Athena, Sarah and Brick had to stand on the hood to be the first wall of defense in case the zombies rounded the corner. It wasn’t likely as Calvin and the others had all been screaming and honking all the way down the long alley. Brick positioned himself at the front, but they were uncertain now which Brick would be standing there when the trouble actually started. Athena picked a spot away from the building on the outside of the hood. She held her panabas at the ready, the crossbow slung over her shoulder, but also at the ready. She didn’t like the bow. It was light, but too bulky for her taste. It was amazing in her mind that the petite Lucy had become so proficient with the unwieldy weapon in such a short time.

  When the turrets finished the half-dozen dead that had been lumbering down the alley toward the convoy, the Hedgehog rolled down the alley in the distance and disappeared around the corner, careening out of sight

  “There!” Calvin shouted, pointing perhaps thirty feet away to the side street they’d come down what seemed like a hundred times already without seeing a single zombie. But this time there were at least two-dozen Lurkers loping through the alleyway just off the garage.

  “What’s that music?” Boomer asked.

  “What music?” Calvin asked, propping his little window open.

  “I hear it too,” Joel affirmed. “Sounds like Stairway to Heaven.”

  Boomer and Joel were in the turrets so they could hear outside sounds better than the others. It took another few seconds before those inside caught the distinctive sounds of perhaps the greatest rock and roll song of all time.

  “There,” Tripper pointed. “It’s a clock radio playing Stairway.”

  Tripper and Calvin shared a look. “That mother fucker.” Calvin spat, turning off his mic first. “That’s it.”

  Trip also turned off his mic. “You gonna do it, Cal?”

  Calvin looked hard at his oldest friend and nodded coldly. “It’s that time, Trip.” As he said the words, Calvin felt an icy hand grip his nut-sack and throw both balls up into his heart and then hit them with his scrotum when they bounced back like one did with that toy found in souvenir shops across the world, the one with the paddle and rubber ball stapled to it by a rubber band.

  “Let me know when. We’ll do it together.”

  “No. I’ll do it.”

  “You’ll need a witness…and maybe help in case he kicks your ass.”

  “Thanks a lot, bro.”

  “I’m just sayin…”

  But for now they had other equally important tasks to accomplish. The big
doors opened and Felicia hammered the Hedgehog right into the middle of thirty or forty zombies that were walking around in a circle in the little garage crunching and munching at least nine under the wheels of the car and instantly sending a puddle of slow-moving, congealing blood across the clean white floor. With more Infected following them in, it was clear they wouldn’t be able to shut the doors again until they had cleared the tracks.

  “Ok, let’s kick some ass!” Calvin leaped out and slammed to the floor of the garage with a loud crash as his boots hit the slippery puddle from the smashed dead.

  “Oof!” the breath left his lungs and stars circled the ceiling above.

  Three zombies were on him instantly, one clutching and gouging at his visor and the plastic mask over it, trying to rip the helm from his head while the other two pulled on his arms and legs. He couldn’t believe how strong they were, being dead and all. Now he understood just how Scaggs had felt that day at the tower. But he was stronger than the actress and pulled back with all his might, patiently waiting for the help he knew was coming. It wasn’t far away as Boomer and Joel sent all three to hell with a crossfire that might have made the Japanese on the beaches of Iwo Jima jealous.

  “Thanks guys,” he grunted gratefully, slipping a few more times as he rose before he could get a solid footing. Watching his step more carefully, he went to work with an angry energy and with his first swing buried an axe into the skull of an ex-blonde man or blonde ex-man who wore a train engineer uniform and a small rectangular yellow name tag that said Melvin. “Sorry, Melvin,” Calvin said as he ripped Headsplitter violently from the split skull and swung his left arm burying Brainslicer into the neck of a security guard by way of the top of its skull.

  Both sides of the skull split and fell away to the sides, spilling gooey brain matter, not to mention other materials that were normally supposed to remain inside the body. Neither half of the face and skull fully separated from the body, however, and Calvin was stricken momentarily motionless with disgust from watching two halves of a dead man’s head staring at him upside down like he was in some comical clown nightmare watching both halves bouncing up and down as the body shuffled for several steps before falling.

  “Remind me not to eat before we go out on missions,” he complained, spitting a nasty taste onto the tile before raising Brainslicer for another kill.

  Brainslicer…Headsplitter…I don’t really like those names. I think I’ll call them something else…maybe just Slicer and Splitter. Sending Slicer swinging wide with Splitter ready to swing back the other direction at two zombies waiting to die again, a loud grunt pulled his eyes to the left to see to see Trip falling under three zombies.

  “Calvin!” he screamed.

  “He slipped in the blood, too!” Boomer called out, firing at the zombies climbing all over his friend. “Tiles must be real slick with this freakish goo.”

  The Swifties in this group held their heads down, their eyes hidden.

  “Shit,” Joel cursed. “Can’t get a clean shot on them.”

  “I got one through the ear. Try that.” But it seemed to take several dozen more nails to end them that way.

  “Guys!” Trip groaned in desperation. The zombies gnawed on Tripper like dogs on a bone, but their teeth chipped and shattered on the armor. Still, they could smell food underneath and went into a near-frenzy trying to get to it.

  “Oh shit! I’m out!” Lucy had emptied all four canisters of twelve bolts through the back of window and dove back in to pull reloads from the ammunition box.

  “Aaaagh!” Tripper yelled as more zombies grabbed both of his arms and pulled in different directions, and then others did the same with his legs. His bat rolled uselessly across the floor to rest against the tire of the Hedgehog.

  “They’re ripping me apart!” he screamed, feeling tendons stretch nearly beyond their limits, his muscles and bones nearing the snapping point. If these had been some other type of stronger Infected or if Trip had been one of the girls, or Joel, he might already be dead. But he pulled as hard as he was being pulled and managed to break even for a moment. “Guys!” Tripper let out a horrific shriek. In that instant a detached part of his mind thanked God he had never turned his mic back on. He didn’t want the last thing Sarah heard from him to be his death scream.

  “I can’t get there!” Calvin called out, standing before an onslaught of dead that were trying to push past him to feast on his screaming friend. Luckily for Tripper, he remembered the knives Hef had given him. In one fluid motion, while still swinging Splitter at the zombies with his left hand, he sheathed Slicer and pulled a knife from behind his neck and threaded the needle between two of his own attackers at one of the zombies pulling on Trip’s legs. The well-balanced, well-thrown blade entered through the base of the skull and stuck firm, dropping the zombie instantly. Just as quickly, he threw another at one that had Trip’s right arm with the same results, but then he needed both Splitter and Slicer to as several Swifties now turned his way, drawn by his arm motion.

  Not worrying about how much ammunition they were using, Boomer and Joel punched through two more skulls with concentrated fire that ate through the back of their heads like warm urine on a frozen pond. This was finally enough for Tripper to kick free of the gang of biters and drag the remaining two several feet to within reach of his bat again. Lying on his back and swinging with both arms, his revenge was both sweet and immediate. On the down side, the zombie whose skull he popped with his first blast dropped a gallon of brain goop onto his face shield, leaving him blind. He swung the bat back and forth to keep a small perimeter around himself until he could pull a rag out and clean the face shield. But then Lucy reached some new plateau in her fight against fear and jumped out of the back of the custom vehicle, chunking bolts into his remaining opponents. This was the extra damage they needed to get a cushion again between him and the Dead.

  “We’ve got crazy DPS, but we’re in need of some serious area effect weapons for mobs!” Joel yelled.

  The turrets cut down zombie after zombie with well-aimed nails from Boomer and Joel and soon the melee combatants were able to move to the door. Calvin and Trip took turns dragging bodies from the track by their legs so it could be shut again. Tripper had to do most of the work because Calvin began to stumble and fell to his knees twice.

  “You ok, buddy?” Tripper asked in concern.

  “Just…need a rest,” Calvin lied. He needed more than a little rest. Silently cursing the pain in his chest, he was forced to pause for a few breaths. Not wanting to scare anyone, especially Athena, he’d told no one that after a day of the pain easing, it now had actually increased at least three-fold, and there was no time to mention it now. Two zombies approached Tripper as he pulled the last body from the tracks. Calvin threw Splitter into the skull of one of the attackers and Lucy pinned the other’s skull to the wall. With a sigh, Calvin leaned back against the bench next to the door and took a deep and very painful breath, allowing the tunnel vision to fade away a little.

  Most of the zombies waiting outside had entered because the door was blocked from shutting fully. Now free, the heavy doors rolled slowly shut. Once shut, there remained only a finite number of targets to deal with. Calvin actually let one claw and gnaw on him for a few breaths while he recovered.

  “Calvin!” Lucy shouted at him.

  But he was afraid if he moved away from the bench he would fall over. “Just…taking…a breather,” he huffed.

  She shot his attacker right through the ear with a mental promise to tell Athena. “You can take a break when we’ve cleared the room,” she ordered.

  Taking one more agonizing breath, he nodded and with the turrets giving support, the trio of armored warriors marched a circle of death around the garage.

  “Just cleaning out the dungeon,” Tripper joked. “Hope we get good XP.”

  “I was just going to say this is the most fucked-up dungeon crawl we’ve ever been on,” Boomer agreed as the last one went down. “Gruesome, too.
”

  “And not really worth it,” Joel added. “There won’t be any woot from this at all.”

  “See anything else moving?” Calvin muttered as he wiped post-animate matter from his face shield with a rag and tossed it.

  “Clear,” Joel said.

  “Clear,” Boomer reported.

  The others also repeated the message.

  “That was fun,” Tripper breathed between desperate gasps for breath, turning his mic on so the others could hear.

  “About time. Give me a hand,” Hef breathed heavily. “I’m on the roof.”

  “You running a marathon up there, buddy?” Tripper asked, but didn’t wait for a reply. “Be right there.”

  “I’m walking the back storage rooms,” Quinn told them. “Ok so far. Found nine wandering between the garage and workshop.”

  “Right,” Calvin answered. “The rest of you, take your time and clear the lower level and then start moving all of the bodies to the door so we can dispose of them. Find something to keep any…live ones locked up. Trip, you’re with me.”

  Lucy saluted smartly. “We’re on it, Chief.”

  Boomer started muttering something that sounded like “Black guys always carrying the dead bodies. Jus’ like Morgan Freeman in Gettysburg. Can’t join the army. Gotta dig the graves for the white mens….”

  “Are you saying something?” Calvin demanded sharply.

  “No. I got it, boss man,” Boomer responded in a southerly accent. “Totally kidding, dude” he added as Calvin raised his axe. “Go help those kids, Calvin,” he pointed to a secret panel behind some shelves that was opening to reveal a wide, black-painted rod-iron spiral staircase hugged the wall and climbed directly to the top floor, bypassing the apartments.

  “Someone get the medical equipment ready out there off the main room,” Calvin pointed to the doors opening on that wall as well. “We don’t know what kind of condition our rescuees are in.”

  “Is that a word?” Athena asked.

  Once again Calvin cursed himself for forgetting he was wearing a mic. Sheathing their wiped clean weapons, he and Trip ran through a now wide-open doorway and bounded two stairs at a time side-by-side up the waiting stairway, slowing considerably after only the second ‘bound’ and then taking the stairs one at a time…and then resting every ten steps or so. Calvin began to teeter back and forth as they neared the top.