by Jack Wallen
Just as the childhood memory seeped away, my feet touched down on the roof of the other building. Sam had his arms around me and jettisoned the slider back to the U.N. Building. The very second the handle set sail across the span of air, Sam had a strange, short, sniper-looking rifle in hand and was drawing a bead on the next undead contestant in our little nightmarish game show.
Miraculously, Sam’s first shot was dead on. The zombie nearest a living brain dropped, lifeless on the roof.
Sellers was the next to sail across. She flew with all the grace experience had to offer. When she landed with an agility that belied her near six-foot frame, I anticipated a grand jeté followed by a dozen or so pirouettes.
Before Sam could send the slider back, another assault was launched – this time two Screamers. Both Sellers and Leamy dropped to their knees and drew beads on the beasts.
This time Sam was off and the target continued on towards Dom. Somehow the hulk-built man dodged the monster and turned to face his foe. This time, when the zombie attacked, Dom was ready. When the beast made contact, Dom dropped down, scooped it up in a fireman’s carry, ran to the edge, and heaved the thing over to plummet to its final death.
With Dom’s show taking center stage, no one noticed that Sellers had dropped her target with a single shot.
“Oh God.” Jean cried as he dropped to his knees.
Bethany was instantly at his side. “What is it?”
Jean was sweating as he rocked on his knees. “I don’t feel so well.”
I saw it first. A knot formed in my gut and my heart. “He’s been bit.” Everyone looked at me. “The back of his left arm. He’s infected.”
“No. No! No!!!” Bethany cried. “
“Jean, when did this happen?” Sam was at the man’s side.
“I don’t know – oh God, my head! The noise!” Jean screamed.
Bethany stood to face me. “How could this happen? He was immunized. There’s no way –“
“I don’t know Bethany.” It was true. I had no idea how Jean could possibly amplify with both Bethany’s and my vaccine coursing through his system. “It’s possible one of the experiments in my lab escaped. Maybe the infection from a bite – ”
Sam turned to us. “Why this is happening is of no consequence now. Is there anything we can do to save this man?”
“No, there is not and you know it.” Jean was standing, a look of hopelessness and loss etched on his face. “My time is up and I will not risk harming you.”
Jean let out another scream and grabbed his head.
“Bethany, you are mankind’s only hope. It has been such an honor to know you and work by your side.” Tears flowed down Jean’s cheeks as he spoke.
And then he took off, running full-speed toward the edge of the roof.
“Jean, no!” Bethany cried out and gave chase. She was too late. The gentle man hurled himself from the roof.
Heroic. Tragic. Selfless.
Bethany dropped to her knees and screamed. Sam went to her side and helped her up. As much as I wanted to join her, I knew mourning our losses would have to come later. And this loss was great.
As soon as the zip slider made its way back to the remaining crew, Dirt Bag was heard ordering Burgess across on the line. It was obvious Burgess was refusing to budge. But when Dirt Bag shot a few rounds at the fat man’s feet, Burgess wrapped his sausage fingers around the handle and took off towards us.
When Burgess landed, Sellers immediately had a gun on him.
“Please do something stupid so I can blow your fucking brains out.” Sellers did her best Clint Eastwood.
Burgess did the first intelligent thing he’d done since I’d known him – raised his hands in surrender. Smart man.
Shortly before a flood of Undead Americans poured out onto the roof, the last of the group took off on the zip slider to relative safety. Sam released the zip line in case one of The ZDC actually survived and decided to take off after the escapees.
My lungs held on to a precious breath. I was afraid to let out the air for fear everything would come crashing down and the hope building in my heart would be crushed. I was close. I had the cure and, if these heroes manage to get me far enough away from The Collective, I could follow through with the promise I had made to Lindsay. But we had so far to go.
“Everyone hurry! Inside!” Sam commanded sharply.
The chilling sound of the screamers collecting on the other roof was battering my ears. Against all discretion I glanced back to see an undead war taking place. The zombies were attacking one another, ripping flesh and cracking bones. Bodies were being tossed off the building as if they were nothing more than bags of garbage. The sight was a train wreck I couldn’t stop viewing. As much as it sickened me, I wanted to see more, see just how far it would go. But then one of the fiercer undead warriors spotted me spying and let loose a hideous roar that seemed to be aimed directly at my soul. It was like the thing knew that what was done to him was done because of me.
My fault. It was all my fault.
I dropped to my knees. Something inside pulled me downward, as if to beg of me to pray; pray for time, for strength. I wanted to pray that my cure could save what remained of the human race.
Tears dropped to the roof below me. One by one the wet dots splashed the surface faster and faster. The sorrow bore down on my heart and insisted my body convulse.
Before I could fall deeper into the throes of sorrow, hands were on me and a soft whisper of a voice caressed my ears.
“Danielle… we have to hurry.”
It was Bethany. After all I had done, how could she possibly have a single ounce of compassion for me? I stood, turned, and wrapped my arms about the woman. Not a word was spoken – not a word was necessary. In that embrace was both the giving and receiving of forgiveness, the need and expression for compassion, the breath and beat of life.
“We need you, Danielle.” Bethany’s gentle voice soothed my nerves and gave me the strength to continue on – despite what my work had done to mankind.
“Thank you,” was all I could manage before we made our way into the building and caught up with the others.
Sam guided us to the elevators where we would ride down to the ground floor and make our escape. Sellers was still guiding Burgess with the hot end of her weapon. Every time he barked out a complaint she again begged him to push her to murder.
The fat man did not comply.
The elevator door shut with all nine of us crammed inside. The momentary silence was pure bliss.
“Fuck!”
The bliss was quickly ruined by Sam’s outburst.
“The car. The fucking car has room for maybe seven of us, and that would be tight,” Sam huffed.
“What about the phone?” Sellers interrupted.
Sam looked at Courtney, unsure of what she was talking about. He placed his hands on the back of his neck, only to jerk them away dangerously, angrily.
“The phone the suits called you on. Call them and tell them the drop off point has changed and that you need an extra car for your trouble,” Sellers grinned.
Like a hero from some cheesy action movie, Sam wrapped his fingers around Seller’s head, drew her near, and kissed her.
“I could kiss you, Sellers,” Sam smiled, after pulling away from the kiss.
“Yeah, you kinda just did.” Courtney’s voice was vixen’d, her body swaying just slightly.
We arrived at the first floor without another word. Not even John Burgess made a sound. The elevator doors hissed open and Sam led us to the front door.
“Good luck, Mr. Leamy.” A strange man in a security outfit tipped his hat as Sam walked by.
“Thank you, Jamal. You sure you don’t want to join us?” Sam looked to the stranger.
“My family knows to find me here. I gotta wait for ‘em,” the guard nodded.
The two men offered up wishes of luck before the stranger turned and casually disappeared down the hall.
We exited the buildin
g, into what should have been the relatively fresh air of New York. Unfortunately the stink of death was all that greeted us.
Sam hobbled to the driver’s side of what I assumed to be our getaway car and fished under the seat until he stood up, phone in hand.
Before Sam could fire up the device, Bethany crossed to him and grabbed the handset away.
“You won’t find a call back number. What we have isn’t a run-of-the-mill phone. This is what a certain cross section of hackers call a Phreak Pager. To the unwashed masses there is no way to even place a call – it’s receive only. I would imagine if someone left you this, they were planning on giving you a call sometime soon. But, since we can’t wait, and since I happen to be here, there’s no need to wait around and watch the horde make it down from that roof and snack on our sweet meats.” Bethany went silent and worked on the phone.
Bethany tapped out what seemed to be random sequences of keys and eventually handed the phone to Sam.
“Yeah! Hello? That’s right, it’s me. Never mind how I got the number. I got your lard ass for you. No. Change of plans.” Sam was working some serious business. “I have a few extra people to not leave behind so I need another car, and I need it now. Yeah, I know you could push a fucking button and kill me now … but if that happens my soldiers will not hesitate to waste your precious Burgess and you’ll never get whatever it is you want from him. So, find a second car and get here pronto. You know where we are. We’ll be waiting. Make it fast!”
Ever playing the hero, Sam hung up the phone without so much as a ‘good bye.’
“They’re on their way.” His mouth slanted a cocky grin.
To punctuate the victory, what sounded like a battle cry rained down from above. The battle cry was followed by the body of yet another Screamer that happened to lose the war with gravity.
As hard as it was, we decided to wait out by the car. There was no way we were going to take the chance the suits would swing by, not see us, and pull away. I would have liked to think they would use their brains (for something more than zombie chow) and dial the phone upon arrival.
We all knew better than to trust either the criminal mind or chance. They both wanted to do nothing more than rape and pillage our worlds.
“Anyone care to tell me what the fuck is going on? Who in the Hell is coming to get me?” Burgess spat.
The skinny man with the serious-looking crossbow at his side, crossed to Burgess. “Listen Tubba, pulling you out of that undead infested hole was the second to last thing I’ve ever wanted to deal with in my life. Care to take a guess at what the very last thing I want to deal with is?”
The bean pole was met with silence.
“Your fucking mouth! So shut it before I shut it permanently!” the skinny man screamed, spattering the fat man with saliva.
“Ronald! Step away from the target.”
Thanks to Sam, I now had everyone’s name.
Another Screamer attempted to reach terminal velocity before nearly exploding on the ground.
“Oh shit!” Sellers’s voice rose above the maniac din from above.
“What? Oh hell no,” Dirt Bag added.
I turned to see what was causing such concern and wanted to wet myself on the spot. The remaining zombie masses must have emptied the U.N. of living tissue and spilled back out of the bottom floor.
They were heading our way.
“Run! Into the building!” Sam shouted.
We all took off, save for Sam who hobbled over to the car and got in. At first it looked as if he was going to leave our group in the lurch, but that tide quickly changed when Sam was roughly one hundred yards from the building. The car squealed a one-eighty and sped, dangerously fast, directly towards the on-coming, undead crowd.
The scientist in me would have sworn the mass of zombies could have stopped the car or damaged it beyond repair, but when the machine hit home, the monsters blew to pieces. Like balloons filled with lumpy brown pudding, the meat sacks exploded, tossing viscera, organs, and bone in every direction.
The car crashed through the crowd and sped off for another run. To our shock and awe, the beasts changed course to target Sam and the car.
Not being one for cowering in the corner, Dirt Bag stepped out of the building and took off running. In his hand he held what looked like a grenade. The running man lobbed it into a circle of the damned and a ball of flame erupted, engulfing the threat in a wash of fire.
Sam crashed through the crowd sending chunks of smoking char flying and oily slush splashing. Dirt Bag ran back to the building, chased by Sam and the vehicle. For the moment, the streets seemed to be clear.
For the moment.
I had to remind myself that chaos was ever-present.
When Sam finally made it back into the building, Sellers wrapped her arms around him and planted a deep, passionate kiss on the man.
“I owe ya one, Sam.”
“Actually Sellers, you owe me one for each of us. I’ll be collecting on that debt tonight,” Sam winked.
As endearing as the exchange was, it didn’t hide the fact that, should another crowd of brain eaters arrive, we would find ourselves trapped in a building awaiting a group of punks to show so we could hand over their prize in exchange for a second vehicle. I didn’t like the way this scenario was playing out.
The flames on the street subsided. All that was left was smoke and scattered remains. What struck me as odd was the brown ooze that erupted from the bodies. That emulsion-like liquid could only indicate one thing – the zombies were decaying from the inside out. In a way it made perfect sense. Once the infection amplified, the organs were of no use and received no supply of oxygenated blood. The organs would die, one by one. Since the muscle and skin were the largest of the organs, it was logical they would go.
“Danielle?”
“Yes? Oh, I’m sorry, Bethany. I was lost in thought.”
“About?”
I wanted to stop the moment of time and just grow lost in the pool of the woman’s gentle, brilliant eyes. Instead, I merely answered her. “Time is on our side,” was all I felt needed saying.
Bethany cocked her head and furrowed her brow, unsure of my response.
“The undead are slowly rotting from the inside out. Given enough time, each of them should disintegrate into a pool of that brown, sticky slush you saw raining down out there.” My voice, hopefully, carried a tone of minor triumph.
“You mean they’re all just going to melt away?” Sam overheard our conversation and chimed in.
I decided it was time to educate the entire group on the fundamentals of necrotic flesh. It wasn’t necessarily the best topic to be discussing at the time, but since we were doing nothing more than waiting – why not offer up a little lesson. Besides a bit of relatively positive news would do everyone some good.
“Essentially, what you’re saying,” Dirt Bag seized the moment to attempt a Cliff’s Notes version of my explanation. “We wait long enough and the streets will be filthy with the liquid gore of the bastards and all we have to do is mop ‘em up?”
I nodded in agreement.
“Fuck! Then I say we just wait out this storm of death any way we can. Let’s pack a lunch and hide away!” Dirt Bag was practically dancing around the group.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, DB.” Sam brought it all back to reality for us.
“Sam is right.” I hated to toss sand on the warm, comfy fire I had only just lit, but there was no point in misleading anyone. “The undead are being created faster than they are being either killed or relenting to their unnatural expiration dates.”
“Which means?” Sellers questioned.
“It means we aren’t going to be running out of zombies any time soon.” Sam dropped the reality bomb on us without hesitation.
Before I could continue on with the lesson, a car screeched to a halt beside Sam’s getaway machine. Without a word, Sam slammed open the door and gestured to Dirt Bag who immediately shoved a gun into the back o
f Burgess.
“What the fuck are you doing? What is this about?” John protested.
“It’s about you getting the fuck out of this building and marching to that car outside,” Dirt Bag insisted.
Before anyone could think about their next move, Burgess took off running like an obese cat hurtling itself across a room towards a dish of kibble. The huffing, sweaty man managed to churn only a few yards out of his stumpy legs before the strange car sped directly into his path. It looked as if the two were about to collide, when the car spun ninety degrees and a massive gun barrel popped out a window.
Burgess brought his heft to a halt. It was a wonder his knees didn’t shatter.
As we made our way out of the building, the occupants of the car made themselves known.
“Well, well, well, if it isn’t the architect of Armageddon.” One of the strangers grinned enough to reveal more gold teeth than I cared to see.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Burgess said.
With Gary Oldman-like speed, the stranger went from cordial to crazy in mere seconds.
“Don’t play games with me, you fat fuck son of a bitch. This,” the stranger’s arms went wide and his head nodded. “This is all you. You sent mankind to Hell on a power play to turn a market on its head and become the king of shit. Now look at it. Look at it!” The stranger waved a rather odd looking gun into the face of Burgess. “On your knees and behold your kingdom. Bask in the glow of your subjects dying at your feet. Where you had hoped to be looked upon as a God, you are nothing more than a creator of chaos, a wretch whose whole life will play out with such bittersweet irony.”
The lunatic pointed the odd weapon at Burgess and pulled the trigger. A soft hiss was heard and John smacked at his neck as if a mosquito had pierced his skin. The shooter held aloft his other hand, which contained a small remote.