by David Wong
It was all happening in silence for John, the desperate screaming and cursing and everything falling apart.
John had time to think—
I am not the star of a zombie movie. I am the guy in the background who gets eaten in the first montage.
—when he was bear hugged from behind.
Eight thin, horrible arms wrapped him up from neck to ankles, squeezing the breath from his lungs, cracking ribs. The spider’s shriek filled the world.
105 Minutes Until the Massacre at Ffirth Asylum
Amy jolted awake, ripped out of an awful nightmare that involved something terrible happening to the people she loved. She didn’t remember the details of the dream, but didn’t need to. That was the only nightmare she ever had.
She was shocked that she had drifted off. If you ever needed proof that we are prisoners of biology, there it is. These could be her last minutes on earth and her body decided to sleep through a bunch of them. Josh was rubbing his finger on the screen of his phone and Amy was pretty sure he was playing a game.
They were absolutely alone on the highway, not meeting a single car coming the other direction, no taillights as far as they could see. Amy moved up and took the empty passenger seat next to the driver, Fredo. He looked more scared than she was. She kept him company. She found out his last name was Borelli and that he was getting a degree in Public Relations, but was thinking of changing his major because a lot of the classes depressed him. Fredo’s brother was in the marines, as his father had been, as his father had been. Fredo’s dad had fought in Desert Storm, Grandad in Vietnam. Brother saw action in Afghanistan. Fredo took classes in PowerPoint. Fredo was really into Japanese anime, but none of the porn stuff, he assured her. He didn’t have any friends or family in Undisclosed, but hoped David was okay. They talked about Battlestar Galactica for a while. That made the time go by, as Amy knew it would, and soon Josh was telling Fredo to turn and exit the highway onto a country road that Amy knew would eventually take them around the lake, past the woods and the turkey farm/stench factory.
“Where are we going?”
Josh said, “We have to get off the highway before the army’s roadblock, this road circles around the lake and comes in behind the industrial park. The friendly checkpoints are there. Once we get through, then we meet up with OGZA.”
“Where are they?”
“They set up inside the building REPER abandoned, I guess they left a ton of equipment and supplies behind. But that means they’re right there outside of quarantine and they’ll be the first to get overrun if the quarantine fails. So the first order of business is to meet up with them and get a status update. But it’s a fortified building, and we’re all going to be armed. Everything is going to be fine.”
Josh turned out to not be full of crap on the subject of getting inside town—the army guys manning the checkpoint on the country road south of the lake let the RV through after a short conversation with Fredo. But then, a few miles later, they met a second checkpoint, one that was approximately ten times scarier than the first. It was a terrifying wall of black vehicles and men in equally terrifying black suits. They had night-vision goggles or something behind their visors that lit up red in the night, making them look like freaking demons.
“Josh? What is this? Who are—”
Josh shushed her, but Amy thought he looked like he was trying with all his might to keep poop from escaping his body. An army of the black-clad men with their elaborate machine guns swarmed the bus, those red eyes floating in the night. Barrels were raised, like they were ready to paint the inside of the RV red. One of the guards went to the driver’s side door and Fredo held a one-way conversation with him. Fredo gave the guy the OGZA pass code or whatever, but there was no answer. The guy backed away and conferred with someone else. After a tightly knotted minute, he waved them through. Amy and the seven members of the Zombie Response Squad entered Outbreak Ground Zero.
The power seemed to be out in most of the town and all the stores were closed, but they would be anyway since it was the middle of the night. Still no signal on her phone. Fredo said, “We’re six blocks away. Still nothing from OGZA?”
Josh tapped on his laptop and said, “No. Everything has been cut off for the last hour.”
Amy said, “We probably just got close enough to the town where the wireless signals are all blocked or whatever. Like maybe they can still send but we can’t receive now.”
Josh said, “That’s probably it,” in a way that did not sound at all convincing. “I actually don’t know how they were getting around the blackout before.”
Fredo said, “Whoa, is that it? The lights down there?”
Josh answered, “That’s the quarantine. That’s the city’s hospital back there behind all that. They got the perimeter all lit up. Look at that fence.”
“Jesus,” Fredo breathed. “It’s … right … there. They’re right there behind that fence. Jesus.”
Amy could see Fredo’s imagination spinning with images of what creatures must be shambling beyond that fence. Or maybe she was projecting, because that’s what she was doing.
And David is in there with them.
Wait, why were there advertisements all over the fence? Under one of the floodlights she could see an ad for McDonald’s bratwurst.
A chubby guy hugging a long machine gun—a gun Amy recognized as “the gun all of the bad guys use in Vietnam movies”—said, “What do we do if they’ve been overrun?”
Josh answered, “We’ll have to play it by ear,” which Amy understood to mean, “We’ll turn around and run away and congratulate ourselves for having tried.” The RV continued past the quarantine and headed right for the creepiest buildings in town: the old TB asylum, a depressing old building that looked like a giant cinder block somebody had fished out of a swamp, next to a smaller building just like it, both of them looming over a bunch of dead trees.
Amy said, “Okay, that place does not look safe.”
The larger building was damaged, with smoke drifting from a huge hole in one end. A lot of equipment was scattered around the yard. She saw boxes of supplies on a pallet and at least two hoods from decontamination suits laying in the weeds. They’d all either been killed, or run away in a panic. And this RV full of college kids was declaring it their new safe house.
Josh said, “I bet it’s one of the safest locations in town. The feds already did the job of securing all the windows and doors and OGZA says they found a lot of food and stuff left behind.”
The RV was rolling to a stop. Amy stared at the massive, smoking hole in the wall and her imagination lit up with the image of some elephant-sized creature, breathing fire, smashing through it with its fists.
Oh, you have got to be kidding me, Sullivan.
Josh said, “That’s the gym down there, with the hole in it, but OGZA got that sealed off so you can’t get into the rest of the building that way. I guess some oxygen tanks exploded.”
“Were they trying to kill a shark?”
“What?”
Amy didn’t answer. To Fredo, Josh said, “You got the flares?”
Without a word, Fredo reached into the glove compartment and pulled out an orange pistol with a comically oversized barrel. He rolled down his window, pointed the gun toward the sky and fired. The lawn was bathed in light, a tiny white star rocketing up, then drifting lazily back to earth.
Josh said, “They’re supposed to signal with a light from one of the windows. They have a lantern or something and they’ll flash it off and on.”
Everyone stared at the darkened building. Minutes passed. No lights.
“Maybe they didn’t see it.”
Josh said, “Do another one. Do you have a red one? Maybe they missed the last one.”
Another flare fired. Another wait. No response from the building.
Vietnam Gun Guy said, “Man, that’s ominous as shit. Maybe we should go back.”
Josh said, “Hey, this is what we came for, Donnie. If they need he
lp, so be it. That’s why we brought all this hardware. This is the real thing here, we’re not just playing zombie video games and jerking off here. Everybody load up, we’re goin’ in.”
Amy finally spoke up and said what she had been wanting to say for more than two hours. It was futile, she knew, but she had to try.
“Josh … I want you to leave the guns behind.”
Vietnam Gun Guy, Donnie, said, “What are we supposed to use? Harsh language?”
Josh asked, “Why?”
Amy took a breath and said, “I don’t know how to say this without bruising your ego or whatever, but you’ve accidentally pointed that gun at my head four times in the course of loading it. Josh … I’m impressed that you did this, you’re amazing for just making this trip. But you don’t know what you’re doing with that thing. And I think there’s a one percent chance you’re going to actually need the guns and a ninety-nine percent chance that a stray cat is going to jump out of the shadows and you’re all going to shoot each other. And me.”
Josh laughed.
“I’m not joking. You’re not pixels on a screen. You’re flesh and blood. If you get spooked and shoot your friend, he’s dead, and dead forever, or in a wheelchair. You’ll live with that the rest of your life. Leave the guns behind. If there’s something in there, we are way, way, way more likely to survive if we just run as hard as we can back here, than if you try to stand and act out some video game fantasy. The guns will just weigh you down, Josh.”
“We’ll be careful, I promise.”
“No, you won’t, because you don’t have the training to understand what ‘careful’ is. Josh, I’m begging you.”
“I’m sorry, but—”
“If you leave the guns here, when we get back, I will have sex with you. I’ll put that in writing. I am not kidding at all. Your friends can watch. You can videotape it.”
“Stop it. We’re not going in there without protection, and that’s that. And this isn’t a video game fantasy, you’re insulting all of us when you say that.”
As he spoke, Josh was affixing some small electronic device to his shotgun. Amy thought it was some kind of fancy scope, but Josh tapped away at his laptop, and a video window appeared. He swung the shotgun around and the video image swung around with it. Josh had a wireless gun camera.
He handed the laptop to Amy and said, “If we don’t make it back, make sure the video gets uploaded to the YouTube channel. The world needs to know what’s happened here.”
Amy said, “Oh, so I’m not going now?”
“We’ve got the guns—no, listen—we’re going to go make sure it’s all clear first. Then we’ll come back for you. Don’t look at me like that. We’re not being sexist here, Fredo’s going to wait behind, too, and he’s male as shit. He’s going to stay behind the wheel, engine running, in case we have to make a quick getaway. You’re going to be watching it live, on my gun cam. If things go bad in there and it looks like we’re not going to make it out, don’t hesitate to just g—”
“I won’t. Fredo, you hear that? If I say go, we go, right?”
“Yeah, I’m hitting the gas at the sound of gunshots and screams.”
To Amy, Josh said, “Okay, your new job is now to make sure Fredo doesn’t leave unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
To the men in the RV, Josh said, “Regulators, mount up.”
Everyone stood. One guy had a little flashlight attached to his gun, and he clicked it on. The kid in back strapped on his bulky night-vision goggles.
Josh said, “Remember, save your ammo. This isn’t a video game, we’re not going to pick up more along the way. Short, controlled bursts.” He turned to Amy and said, “I’ll be back. I promise.”
Josh took a deep breath and opened the side door. A blast of cold air shouldered its way in. Outside was the sound of wind whistling through the wounded building and suddenly Amy badly wanted that door closed and locked again, to have the warm, metal cocoon sealed off from whatever was out there.
Stop it.
The boys started filing out into the darkness and Amy heard Josh say, “Get your ears on.” Everybody pulled out earmuffs or plugs. Protecting against that debilitating monster shriek John had talked about.
The door clapped shut behind them. Amy looked down at the laptop and saw the asylum grounds on the shaky, grainy image from Josh’s gun feed, the barrel protruding into the bottom of the camera’s view. It lent a feeling of unreality to the whole thing. She wasn’t sitting in the middle of a clearly haunted abandoned TB asylum crawling with monsters. It was all just some stupid video she was watching on a computer.
The view bounced along the grounds, approaching the front doors of the old building. The guy to the left of Josh had the flashlight on his gun, the beam whipping wildly around the front lawn like the guy holding it was riding a mechanical bull. The view steadied as Josh arrived at the big, wooden front doors. Flashlight guy grabbed one of the old, tarnished brass handles and pulled. Locked. Josh knocked and said, “Hello? My name is Josh Cox, I’ve got a team of six armed uninfected out here. We’re offering our assistance to OGZA. Is anyone in there?” Nothing. They all stared at the locked door like a bunch of chimpanzees looking at a car engine. “We’ve, uh, been following your updates until the feed cut out a little while ago. Are any of you still at this location? Princespawn? Direwolf?”
Amy’s view whipped downward, as Josh apparently pointed the gun at the ground. The kid with the flashlight shouted, “I can pick the lock.” Another voice yelled, “No, you can’t.” Everyone screaming to be heard over their ear protection.
Josh yelled, “They probably got it barricaded. There’s probably some other door they come and go out of. Let’s go around. Everybody stay sharp.”
The view swung back up to shoulder level again, and the Hipster Zombie Squad edged along the wall of the building, the flashlight beam flashing back and forth, illuminating boarded-up windows and drifts of dead leaves blown against the foundation. Looking for another entrance.
Watching through the video feed was frustrating. Whenever the flashlight beam would swing out of view, the video window would go completely black—the little wireless camera had no night-vision capability. She peered up over the laptop and out of the windshield of the RV in time to see the gang disappear around the corner of the building. The trailing guy, the one who had the night-vision goggles and looked about thirteen years old, was sweeping his gun behind them. Watching their six, just like he saw somebody do in a movie. Or cartoon. He rounded the corner and Amy and Fredo were now truly alone.
“So,” she said. “How fast can this thing go?”
Fredo said, “Depends on how much stuff you want me to run over when I do it. Thing handles like a blimp.”
Amy returned to her laptop and in the video feed window saw the group had stopped moving. The mic on the gun camera was weak and she could barely pick up words over the background noise. Every time the wind blew, everything was drowned out by a sound like crashing ocean waves. The noise cleared up enough for her to hear Josh say “Where?”
She faintly heard Flashlight Guy yell, “Right there, man. Behind the wheelbarrow.”
She couldn’t see what they were looking at, Josh had a frustrating habit of pointing the gun camera at the most irrelevant spot possible, lazily aiming the gun at his feet, or the cloudy sky, or right at the head of one of his friends. By the time the camera angle settled on the spot, Flashlight was on his hands and knees, studying the ground in front of him. Did he lose a contact lens? Josh edged in closer, around a rusty wheelbarrow somebody had pulled out of the way, and Amy saw that they had found a basement window. The glass had been bashed out, probably decades ago. But if it had been boarded up, it wasn’t now.
Wind howled into the mic, obliterating bits of their conversation.
“—no way they just left it like this—”
“—don’t see anybody—”
“—hello? Can anyone hear me? My name is Josh Cox—”
&
nbsp; “—No, let’s go in—”
Flashlight aimed his beam through the window while the guy with the Vietnam gun—Donnie—got down on his hands and knees, and writhed into the building, the jagged bits of broken glass making it look like a brick mouth was swallowing him whole.
For a moment, nothing happened. Amy could feel her bladder seizing up as she watched the dark basement window bobbing in the gun-cam feed. Finally, Donnie’s hands emerged and gestured that the coast was clear. Josh was next, but the camera stayed behind as he handed his gun to somebody so he’d have his hands free to crawl in. The view swirled around as the gun was handed back and forth, and then a moment later Amy was looking at a dim room that looked like an old cafeteria with a faded black-and-red checkerboard tile floor. The view swung back around to the window, then to the floor nearby where a sheet of ancient plywood bristling with curled nails had been tossed aside.
Josh yelled, “They did have it barricaded. Somebody took it off from inside.”
As another guy crawled through the window, someone off camera said, “Told you, man. They evacuated, prob’ly for the same reason the feds did. We prob’ly passed ’em on the road comin’ here.”
Josh said, “You sound relieved, Mills.”
“Man, when we didn’t get an answer I thought we were gonna find this place full of dead bodies.”
“Me, too.”
“Hey, if you’re suggesting we abort, you convinced me.”
Loudly and clearly, Josh said, “Not until we do a sweep of the building.” Amy decided Josh just now remembered that everything was being recorded for possible posthumous YouTubing.
The whole gang of six was inside the cafeteria now. Somebody shouted, “Well, we know they was here. Left a lantern behind.”
The camera found a green propane camper’s lantern in the corner. Someone yelled, “Anybody know how to light it?” They didn’t. After about ten minutes of them farting around and Amy yelling into the laptop monitor to just leave it, Jesus Christ people, they got it lit.
Lantern in hand, they ventured out of the cafeteria and into a hallway. Flashlight Guy went first, Josh right behind him with the camera gun. The lantern carrier followed, casting a soft glow and distorted shadows around the group. The team investigated two other rooms, each time going through this ridiculous SWAT team procedure that Amy had seen in movies, where guys with guns would lean on opposite sides of the door frame while Josh kicked in the door. Both times the rooms revealed themselves to be empty. Amy knew exactly nothing about SWAT procedure, but knew from where Josh’s gun camera was pointing that he never checked the corners to his right and left when he entered the new rooms. It seemed even to her untrained eye that this would make these guys really easy to ambush, and this further solidified her opinion that these guys knew even less about how to walk through a building with guns than she did. They reached a door marked STAIRS, did their room-entering dance again, and took a flight of stairs down to a subbasement. They reached a short hallway with some office type rooms—empty—and one serious-looking metal door. Big lock, a steel grate instead of a window. The kind of door you saw in a prison.