Outbreak (Book 1): Emerald City

by Jay K. Anthony

“Cleveland,” Williams said. “You stay here and make sure Ortiz is covered.” He pointed at Tanner and then Tasha. “You two, come with me. Keep it quiet.” Without waiting for a reply, Williams turned and ran into the building. Tasha and Tanner followed after him. They entered an enormous, two story warehouse full of boats and boat parts. The center of the warehouse was open and Tasha looked up at the balconies. There were two, one on each end of the giant room.

  “He’s in the balcony,” Williams whispered. “We need to find stairs.”

  “Try the ends, along the walls,” Tasha offered.

  Williams nodded. “Okay, let's move.”

  Williams and Tanner moved quietly ahead of Tasha, crouched low with their rifles pointed out in front of them. With no idea how to proceed, Tasha mimicked what the two men did, taking care that the long heavy rifle was pointed down and to the side so she did not accidentally shoot either of them in the back. They moved through the enormous warehouse, sneaking between boats and around debris until they reached one end of the building. Sure enough, there were two sets of wooden stairs which lead up into the balcony, one along each wall.

  “Tasha,” Williams whispered, pointing to the stairs furthest away. “Go up that side with your rifle. We will try to flush out whoever is up there. If we do, snipe those bastards.” Again, he did not wait for a reply and started moving quietly up the closest stairs. Tasha gave Tanner a questioning look. She did not know what to say. I’ve never intentionally killed anyone before, she thought. Not like this. Creepers were one thing, they were dead inside. Her attacker back at the cannery, that was life or death. Then again, so is this. Ortiz was stuck out in the street, so it was her life which hung in the balance now. With that, she gave Tanner a quick nod which she hoped looked confident. He winked at her and moved to follow Williams. Tasha ran quietly across the floor to the stairs and started to work her way up.

  When Tasha reached the top of the stairs, all she saw were more boats. They were smaller than the ones down below, but there must have been hundreds of different watercraft plus all kinds of parts. We will never find them in this, she thought. Suddenly she heard gunfire, the same kind that had been shooting at them before. It sounded like it came from about the center of the warehouse. Tasha ran towards the sound, behind the boats, trying to align herself with where the shooting was coming from. She peeked between two crafts and saw Williams and Tanner moving together, weapons up, and running in a slight crouch. Suddenly Williams started firing and Tanner split off to his left, deeper into the balcony. Tasha looked for where they were shooting, but could not see anyone, so she kept going.

  “Put your gun down!” she heard Tanner yelling. “Do it! Do it now!”

  Someone else started shooting and then everyone was shooting … except Tasha. She hid behind a boat and looked over the top. She could still see Williams, but she had no idea where Tanner was at that moment. I have to do something! She raised her sniper rifle and rested it on the rail of the boat and looked through the scope. She was out of breath and was breathing so hard it was making the whole gun shake. Finally she saw someone, a crackhead looking guy. She hesitated. Is that the guy? Was she supposed to just shoot? Then the guy was gone from her view. Shit!

  She looked again, panning the rifle left and then right. She could not see anything through the scope because everything was so close. Remembering the scope could be moved out of the way, she thumbed the button Tanner had shown her and pushed the scope down to the side. She put the rifle barrel back onto the boat rail and looked again, sweeping left and then back to the right. Much better. Finally she found Tanner. He was on one knee, shooting down the length of the balcony. Tasha swept back to her right and saw his target. The crackhead guy was crouched behind a wooden crate. Suddenly Tanner stopped shooting and Tasha glanced back, realizing Tanner needed to reload. He’s out of position! Williams can’t cover him! Her heart thumping with panic, she sighted the crackhead, thumbed the firing selector on her rifle to automatic and pulled the trigger. In five seconds she was out of ammunition but she had annihilated their attacker. She had also destroyed the crate he was hiding behind, the boat next to him, and the windows behind him. Tasha let out a breath. That seemed to solve the problem.

  She started to stand up from behind the boat, just in time to see a second person on the balcony, this time a kid. He was aiming a gun right at her. He fired and she ducked back down just as bullets ripped into the boat in front of her. “Shit!” she yelled. Wood splintered everywhere around her. Tasha dropped to her stomach and crawled backward, trying to get as far from the edge of the balcony as she could. “Tanner!” she screamed and heard a single rifle shot.

  “Clear!” Tanner called out.

  “Clear!” she heard Williams yell from the other end of the warehouse.

  “Tasha!” Tanner yelled. “You okay?”

  Tasha shook all over as she stood up. “I’m okay,” she yelled back, but she did not feel okay. She felt like crap. She did not think she had been hit, but she did feel like throwing up. She had never been shot at before and she did not like it. “I need a second is all,” she said and walked on shaky legs toward the stairs.

  Williams yelled out the second floor window. “Hey! Ortiz! Cleveland! All clear! Come on up and don’t forget to grab my radio!”

  CLARK

  It was nearly dark as Clark followed Rocha through the streets of the city. They moved quickly but quietly, carefully checking around each corner before rushing forward again. Suddenly Rocha stopped and held up his fist. Clark paused and waited, trying to catch his breath. It had been a hell of a day.

  “Check this out,” Rocha said waving Clark forward.

  “What you got?” Clark panted as he moved alongside the soldier. The break in pace was welcome. After the spectacular cruise ship explosion, Rocha had run them into the city. He had said an explosion of that size would bring lurkers for a hundred miles and that he and Clark needed to find someplace to hide for the night. Pronto. Clark had not argued. He had no problem wanting to find somewhere they could relax. Unfortunately, it had not been that easy. They had run for miles, but now Rocha had stopped at a corner and was pointing out some kind of big box store distribution center.

  “I think this will work,” Rocha said. “Back when I was in school, I used to work at one of these. They have everything. I’ll bet we can even find some food.”

  Food sounded good to Clark. “Think it’s been looted?” he asked.

  “Only one way to find out,” Rocha replied. “Ready?”

  Clark was sweating like a pig and hardly felt ready for anything, but he wanted to be off the streets. Luckily they had been able to avoid conflict with any infected. The few mobs they had encountered appeared to be fixated on the cruise ship explosion and they had been easily avoided. In concept, the streets would be relatively clear of infected if they had all migrated to the explosion, but still, the last thing Clark wanted was to get stuck outside at night. “Following you.”

  Rocha looked up and down the street. “Moving,” he said and started off in a crouched jog across the parking lot. Clark followed as close behind him as he could and they ran between a pair of abandoned cars before reaching the building. Rocha wiped grime off of one of the windows and looked inside. “Doesn’t look too bad,” he said. “Some stuffs been messed with but this whole part of the city is industrial, nothing but warehouses and manufacturing basically. People must have assumed there wasn’t anything worth looting in here.”

  “Too bad for them,” Clark said. He looked at the windows which lined the front of the building. All of them looked intact. He tapped on one. “I think it’s just glass. Should we break our way in?”

  “Nah,” Rocha replied. “If we break the glass it’ll make noise. Might draw any remaining lurkers around here plus if anyone comes by, the broken window will advertise we went inside.”

  The logic made sense to Clark so he looked around the side of the building and saw the front doors. “How about those doors?” he ask
ed.

  “Check them,” Rocha said. “I’ll cover you.” Clark hurried over to the front doors and tried to open them. “Shit,” he said. “Locked. How about around back?”

  Rocha nodded. “Let’s go. Follow me,” he said. The building was an enormous rectangle of white painted cinder blocks. It took up a whole city block and there was no cover for the two of them as they ran around one corner and sprinted toward the back. Rocha stopped at the rear and peeked around. “Bunch of cargo bays,” he said. “No trucks though. Let's go.”

  Clark followed Rocha up a short flight of concrete steps onto the loading dock. A dozen metal bay doors, all closed, were at intervals along the back of the building. Clark went over to inspect one and look for a lock, but they appeared to all have been secured from the inside. There was a single door at one end which looked to have been hit with some kind of hammer, but it still held shut. Clark remembered his last experience opening a random door and was not interested in opening another that could have a mob of infected on the other side. Clark looked over at Rocha. “How about you try this one?” he asked. Rocha came over and tried the handle, but it was locked.

  “Stand back,” Rocha said and raised his machine gun. He thumbed a selector on one side, aimed, and opened fire at the space between the handle and the door frame.

  Thwip! Thwip! Thwip! Thwip! Thwip! Thwip! Thwip!

  The door was metal, but by the time Rocha was done, it drifted open. Rocha took out a flashlight, kicked the door the rest of the way in and stepped inside. “Clear,” he said and Clark followed him into the darkness.

  The space was just as big inside as it looked from the outside, and it was filled with everything Clark could imagine. He walked down an aisle of beef jerky. That was it, just different brands of beef jerky in containers which ranged from the size of a sandwich bag to a five gallon pail. “Rocha,” he said, his mouth watering. “You seeing this?”

  “Shhh ...” Rocha said and pointed down the aisle. “I heard something down there.”

  Clark stuffed two large packets of jerky into his shirt and went to hide behind Rocha. He looked over the man’s shoulder. He wanted to ask what, where, and how many, but he knew the best thing he could do was keep his mouth shut and let Rocha do his thing. They crept down the aisle together and Clark looked through the store shelves to see if he could find what Rocha had spotted. He found it. It was an infected and it was shuffling toward the front of the store. Clark watched as it joined a group of infected who had collected at the same window Clark and Rocha had been looking through just minutes before. He could tell because of where Rocha had wiped away the grime on the glass. Rocha handed Clark his rifle.

  “Oh,” Clark said. “I don’t know.”

  “Relax. Just hold it, don’t shoot it,” Rocha said.

  “Ah, okay.”

  Rocha reached behind his back and drew two curved machetes from a pocket in his backpack.

  “What are those?”

  “Gurkha Knives,” Rocha said with a hint of pride. “Got these when I was on assignment overseas. Time to get up close and personal.”

  “Why don’t you just shoot them?”

  “Need to conserve ammo,” Rocha said with grin. “Watch this.”

  Rocha crept across the store and up behind the group of infected. Just as he approached, the ones nearest him turned around, but before they could react, Rocha was upon them. He was a bladed demon, ruthless and aggressive. He hacked, slashed, kicked, and stabbed his way through the mob before any of them could fight back. After he was done, Clark walked over and could only stare at Rocha as he wiped down the knives and hid them back under his rucksack. He held out one hand, so Clark gave him back his rifle. Clark knew he should say something, but what was he supposed to say to someone standing in the center of a massacre. “Nice work?” he finally asked.

  “Damn straight,” Rocha replied and walked toward the store’s Home and Garden Center. Clark followed him and soon they were in some kind of large, outdoor goods area filled with shelves of overgrowing plants and shrubs. Thick clear Plexiglas windows were on three sides. Clark looked up and saw the roof was the same. We are in a giant greenhouse, he thought. He figured this was where the distribution center kept all the plant inventory alive before shipping. There was a display set up in the middle of it with padded lawn chairs and sun umbrellas. There was even a hose running to an expensive looking fountain

  “Hey, what do you say we take a breather?” Clark asked.

  Rocha looked around. “Maybe,” he said. Clark watched as Rocha traced the hose from the fountain to the wall and tested the tap. After a minute, brown water ran from the fountain before it slowly turned white and then clear. “Bingo,” Rocha said. “Okay, let’s break here.”

  “Thank God,” Clark said. He sat down in one of the lawn chairs and adjusted the umbrella to shade him from the setting sun. He pulled out a packet of beef jerky and began to open it.

  “Hold up,” Rocha said. “I thought you were a doctor?”

  “I am,” Clark replied and watched Rocha as he unshouldered his pack and dug in a pocket, bringing out disinfectant soap.

  “You’ll want to wash your hands before you eat that,” Rocha said as he began to wash off in the fountain.

  Clark looked at his hands, they were disgusting. “Oh, shit,” he said and quickly jumped up and joined Rocha. Rocha handed him the soap and they both started to scrub.

  “I’ll try to radio Command here in a minute,” Rocha said. “But, I’m betting they’ll want us to hang here for the night.”

  Clark shrugged. It didn’t matter to him. They were in a nice place, quiet, nothing chasing them. Some downtime would be perfect. Plus, he was exhausted. Rinsing off one last time, he went back to his lawn chair and sat down. It was warm in the greenhouse, so he took his boots off, leaned back and opened the packet of jerky.

  SLAM!

  “What in the hell!” Clark cried and fumbled for his pistol. Rocha was next to him, dripping water from the fountain, already with his rifle. They looked at one of the greenhouse windows where they saw an infected standing pressed up against the Plexiglas, pawing and scratching at the window.

  “Son of a bitch,” Rocha said. “Did he run into that?”

  Just then they watched as a second infected in the parking lot outside the greenhouse turn and ran hell bent straight at them. “Oh,” Clark said. “That's going to hurt.”

  SLAM!

  The infected ran into the greenhouse siding like a bird into a window. It knocked itself dizzy but was recovering enough to paw at the glass next to the first infected. “Damn,” Rocha said as he carried his rifle over to a high window just above the infected. Climbing onto a box, he opened the window, leaned out, Thwip! Thwip!, closed the window and came back to the fountain. “I’m getting really tired of these lurkers. Ruined the whole damn world.”

  "Why do you call them lurkers?" Clark asked as he went back to digging out a piece of jerky. "They’re just infected."

  Rocha dropped into a second lawn chair and set the safety on his weapon. "Not sure. Just what a few guys started calling them and it stuck. I guess we could just call them zombies.”

  Clark shook his head. “No, they aren’t zombies either.”

  “Really? That’s not what I think.”

  “What do you think?”

  Rocha paused and looked at Clark. “You ever seen any zombie movies?” he asked.

  "Some."

  "So, didn’t those things act like these things? Think about it. If you run, do they chase you?”

  “Yeah …”

  “If they catch you, do they eat you?"

  Clark let out a long sigh. He knew where this was going. "Yes," he reluctantly agreed.

  Rocha set down his weapon. "Sounds like zombies to me."

  “Whatever,” Clark said and stood up before walking over to the glass to relieve his bladder.

  “I’m going to give Command a call,” Rocha said and picked up his radio. Clark listened as Rocha chec
ked to see if they could get transport back to the base. The story was just as Rocha said it would be. The chopper which had taken them to the cruise ship was the last active chopper in the city and they were not a high priority asset.

  “Guess we may as well get comfortable,” Clark said walking back over and sitting down.

  “Damn straight,” Rocha replied and sulked unhappily in his lawn chair. “You want to know what I think?”

  Clark was tired and just wanted to go to sleep, so he did not really want to know what Rocha thought, but he didn’t see any reason to be rude. “What's that?” he asked.

  “This sucks.”

  “That’s very enlightening,” Clark joked.

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing. What sucks?”

  “I joined the service to make a difference. I just wanted a chance to do some damn good. But I can’t. The lurkers keep screwing things up.”

  SLAM!

  Clark jumped as another infected ran head first into the side of the greenhouse. Rocha kept talking like nothing happened. “The whole world sucks, man. And you know what? I have a blister on my foot … and it sucks.”

  Clark watched the infected. It had broken its nose and was bleeding all over the glass. He needs a doctor, Clark thought. He should go to the … “We can still fix it,” he said quietly. Suddenly he felt a little less tired.

  “Fix what?”

  “The apocalypse.” Clark said sitting up in his chair. “How far is it to the hospital?”

  “Seriously?” Rocha asked.

  “Just tell me,” Clark said. “How far?”

  Rocha pulled his backpack over and held it between his feet. He dug into another pocket and took out a map. Clark scooted his chair over with a screech on the floor to sit across from Rocha and they looked at the map together.

  SLAM!

  Clark jumped at the noise. “Stupid zombies,” he said.

  “Ha!” Rocha said. “Now I got you saying it!”

  “Jesus,” Clark said and shook his head. “Ok. So, where are we?”

  Rocha pointed at his map. “Here,” he said. “Right here on Hudson street.”