Anarchy

by Peter Meredith

  The look and the connection drew out.

  “Go on,” she eventually said.

  “Right.”

  Her vein was strong, making the stick a simple process. Once the tubing was strapped down, they watched as her bright red blood snaked along the tubing and slid into Griff’s arm. He jerked the moment it hit him; then he began panting, then trembled from head to toe.

  Agent Plinkett had been standing off to the side, holding himself, afraid to touch anything. “This isn’t right. He’s having a reaction or something.”

  Bryce leaned over Griffin. “Hey Griff! You okay? What’s going on?” But Griff’s eyes were unfocused, and a line of dark drool was now running from the corner of his mouth. “Crap!” Bryce growled. “We should stop it. Right? Maddy, what do you think?” By this, he meant, what does your new power to see the future suggest?

  It suggested darkness, danger, death, but also hope—the tiniest glimmer.

  “A little more.” Would it feed the glimmer or the darkness? It did neither and after less than a minute of watching Griff struggle, Maddy ripped the tape from his arm and pulled the needle. “Let’s hope it worked.” Gradually, he stopped shaking and began to once again moan and mewl. This was all too much for the others in the tent who began to clamor for the guards.

  “Enough!” Bryce barked at them. The sharp word, filled with sudden wrath, came out as a command and held such force that the others bit down on their cries. The air seemed to crackle with energy as he glared, only to dissipate in a blink when he turned back to his sandwich fixings. There was silence in the tent and that included Griff who was staring at Bryce with his muddled eyes.

  “Don’t let me turn,” Griff said.

  Bryce didn’t look up. “I won’t.”

  “You’ll kill me?” There was hope in his voice, making Maddy wonder if this was the hope she had seen within him. “Swear it.”

  “Yeah, I’ll, uh, take care of you.”

  Griff grabbed his arm. “Swear it. Swear it like you did for that woman.”

  The weight of Bryce’s promise settled onto his shoulders, bearing him down. He had sworn to help Victoria Dietch find her son who was lost somewhere in the city; an impossible task. Bryce was suddenly aware that Victoria was awake; he could feel her eyes boring into him from across the tent.

  He kept his head down as he answered Griff, “I swear it. I’ll kill you if you turn.”

  Griff’s tortured, sweating face broke into a grin. “Good. That’s good. And I’ll kill you, Bryce…if you turn, that is.”

  Chapter 9

  In the heavy silence that followed, Bryce made a third sandwich and ate until he felt like he was about to burst. Billy broke the tension when his stomach didn’t so much as growl as roar.

  “This isn’t all for Bryce,” Maddy said. And with this, the atmosphere in the tent returned to what it had been: a mixture of dread and anxious hope. Billy ate a sandwich that was nearly as large as Bryce’s had been, while Maddy made a more modest meal, thinking she would like to keep her new, somewhat magical figure.

  Although stuffed, Bryce thought about a fourth sandwich, though his thoughts didn’t make it from the planning stage as a great stupor abruptly swept him. He blinked twice and fell into a deep sleep, and dreamed about chasing a dancing ham through a dark city. Gunshots woke him.

  It was now daylight and the tent was half-filled. The greens and blues had been allowed into the building while a new group of five, the purples, had taken their place. Bryce looked right past them and saw Victoria staring at him. She quickly turned away. Bryce owed her a debt of honor, but to make him pay it would mean going back out into the hell the world had become. She was stuck between her fear of being eaten and the desire to find her husband and child. It would’ve been an easy decision if she knew they were alive, but what were the chances of that?

  Bryce wanted to ask Maddy what she thought; however, the gunfire began to increase in tempo and there were urgent shouts coming from within the grounds.

  The new people, the “purples”, were asking each other what they should do. They were a haunted, frightened group made up of four twenty-something females and an older man in his forties. He carried some sort of M16 variant and had magazines stuffed in his pockets. The women had two small pistols between them.

  “Someone should see what’s going on,” one of the women said, meaning someone other than her, clearly.

  Plinkett was leaning against one of the tent poles. Grunting, and feeling more than his age, he got up and went to the tent flap and poked his old-baby head out. More gunfire and now the guards were edging towards the barrier that ringed the building. One was talking into his radio but Plinkett couldn’t hear what they were saying.

  Maddy and Bryce could, however. A few dozen “zekes” led by some sort of grey, sniffing dog-man of a creature had been nosing around the front gates. Per protocol, the guards manning the wall had kept out of sight, which had, so far, kept any of the zombies from coming closer. These zombies were different and had tried to scale the barrier, which was little more than a circular wall made of office furniture, cubicle walls and any handy bit of junk.

  The man in charge of the radio was still calm and the order was to remain in place.

  On the face of it, this was good news. Reality had a second, much darker face. Maddy and Bryce shared a look, both feeling the darkness that was coming. “What do you think?” she asked.

  Bryce sat up and began working his shoulder in circles. The muscle was healing quickly, ten times faster than that of a normal person. What would’ve set a man back three weeks was now little more than a twinge. “I was going to ask you.”

  “I don’t know. It’s not like I have some sort of mental meter capable of discerning and comparing different possibilities. I just know something bad is coming.” Then again, she hadn’t really tried to gauge different possibilities. So far, she had just let the future sort of wash over her and read it as either bad or worse. There wasn’t a good.

  She closed her eyes. Something bad is coming, she thought. Will it be worse than braving the streets while dragging along a crippled FBI agent who might turn at any second? She drew a blank. “I feel like a Magic 8 Ball.”

  “We’ll stay,” Bryce said.

  Plinkett had been watching them. “Damn right, we’ll stay. The helicopters remember?” At some point in his mind, they had become a squad or air fleet instead of a less and less likely single bird. “And it’s not like we have a choice. We wouldn’t last five minutes out there with Griff and that kid.”

  “Hold on!” one of the new purples cried. “Anywhere is safer than a stupid tent. I’d rather be out in the open where we can run.”

  Mostly out of guilt at having abandoned Maddy and Bryce to fight the demons alone, Nichola Lines had been busy keeping well out of sight for most of the night. She had hoped to get in good with the FBI and get out of the city on the next helicopter, but now that danger was threatening again, she piped up. “No. We listen to those two.” She pointed at Bryce and Maddy. “They got weird-ass powers. Like they can see the future and shit. If they say stay, then we stay.”

  “Bullshit,” the one male in the purple group said.

  “It might be true,” Plinkett admitted. “They were given some sort of shot or something and they changed. They weren’t like this three days ago. He was this little weak kind of guy, and she…she was fat and smaller, by half a foot, maybe. I don’t know about that other stuff, seeing the future, but the change…it’s crazy.”

  There was silence in the tent while outside of it the gunfire picked up.

  Bryce didn’t like this talk of seeing the future or powers. It felt as though these things shouldn’t be blurted out, especially as he could sense their skepticism and worse, their hope. “Yes, we know things but it’s not exact and it doesn’t guarantee anyone’s safety, not even our own. Stay or go, it’s up to you.”

  The group of purples were struck by indecision and could only stare back and forth
at each other waiting for someone to say something. Like everyone else who had braved the streets, their night had been a living terror, running from one desperate life and death situation and into another.

  The one man in the group, Denny Riems, glanced down at his M16A4. It hadn’t been his originally. He had taken it from a corpse in heavy SWAT gear. The corpse had not been a single. It and a dozen others had been crumpled all together at the bottom of a stairwell. Denny would’ve passed right on by if he hadn’t seen the butt of the gun sticking out the top of the pile.

  “I think we should recon the situation first,” he said, forcing his voice deep, thinking that would make him more commanding, and thus more likely to be listened to. “Wanda, you’re the freshest. Zip over to where the fighting is and see what’s what.” She went stark white. “It’ll be okay. We won’t leave without you.”

  When she hesitated, Billy piped up, “I can go. I’m fast.”

  Maddy’s lips went tight. She didn’t like the idea of him leaving her side, something that made no sense. She had never liked kids, especially those of the boy variety, and although she hadn’t known any since she had been a girl, she had always thought that ten-year-old boys were the worst of the subspecies.

  Wanda was perfectly happy to let the boy go in her place. “I’m not gonna break quarantine. They won’t let me back in with a purple armband and then I’ll be alone. I say let the kid go. I’m sure they’ll let him back in to be with his family.”

  “Someone should do something quick,” Bryce said. Not only had the gunfire picked up, his sense of coming darkness was increasing rapidly. It was as if his internal barometer was falling drastically in the face of a looming hurricane. His eyes slipped to the tent flap and he felt a cowardly desire to run. He choked it down.

  “Someone else should do something,” Maddy declared. “Billy’s staying with us. If you guys want to check things out then do so on your own, but like Bryce said, make it quick, your window of opportunity is closing rapidly.” If it was ever open. She had the same sense of the situation as Bryce and she envisioned a vast horde sweeping south towards them, growing larger as it came on.

  This should’ve had the purple group in heat to come to a decision, but it had the opposite effect. They went back and forth debating, spitting out their words like bullets, and all the time, the darkness grew. Then Maddy heard a soft, distant murmur-like sound. She cocked her head as the sound took hold. She went to the flap and looked out. The first thing she saw was that the guards had disappeared; the second was that the clouds were lower and angrier than ever. A storm was coming.

  “It’s too late,” she announced, shutting the flap. “We need to get within the walls.”

  Wanda stood quickly, sat back down just as quick, and then popped back up doing a fine impersonation of a piston. “We should run for it.” This was in direct contradiction to all of her earlier statements, which only threw things further into disarray.

  “She said, it’s too late,” Bryce said, climbing to his feet and feeling the stretch and pull of his clothing, everything was tighter on him—he hadn’t stopped growing. “Maddy stand in the door. No one leaves until I say so. I need two of you to help carry our friend, Griff. Nichola and Victoria. Agent Plinkett, you’ll help, too. Billy, grab the food, and if you don’t mind too much, I’m going to need this.” He slid the heavy chain that hung around the boy’s neck. Billy did mind, and so too did Nichola and Victoria, and yet Bryce spoke with such calm assurance that they felt oddly compelled to follow his orders.

  Bryce sure as hell didn’t feel calm. His nerves were jangling and his stomach was no longer considering another sandwich—a bad sign. He went to the tent flap and peered out. There were stray zombies in sight, not more than a dozen. There were many more nearby that he couldn’t see, but could smell. Unless they had been very recently turned, zombies tended to smell more or less like shit. That stench was heavy, and like the sense of doom, was only growing.

  Attracted by the gunfire, the creatures were creeping from basements or working their way from whatever building they found themselves in. How many would they have to face? Hundreds? Thousands?

  “We should’ve run,” he muttered under his breath. He had no faith in a rescue and as much as he liked Griff and appreciated everything the agent had done for him, he now had eleven other people depending on him. If they knew who he really was, they’d realize they were foolishly depending on him. It felt like he was an imposter in a stolen body. A glance down at his hands…his now large hands. They weren’t his. His had always been soft and free of calluses or scars.

  But who would step up if he admitted this? Maddy was struggling with the same thing. He could sense her inner weakness, the turmoil that made her doubt herself. Strange, he wanted to reassure her and yet couldn’t reassure himself.

  With a deep breath, he shut the flap on both the tent and his useless regret. “We’ll go out the back. Weapons ready.” He tore open one of the seams and glanced out at the back of the Federal Building. It loomed over the barrier across the street. In his mind, whoever had built the barrier along this section should be awarded a medal. Given the materials at hand, mostly office equipment, they had done a superb job. He faced an unbroken wall of cubicle dividers, many still sporting calendars or memos, and frequently pictures of people who were likely all dead. Butting up behind the initial wall were desks stacked like the steps of a ziggurat, their legs, bound by electrical cords pulled from lamps and computers, supportted the entire structure.

  Eyes peeked out from the cracks in the wall and a few heads jutted up. These were focused on the coming threat and it was there to be seen. The great grey filthy horde had reached the front of the building and was now spilling down along the sides of the barrier.

  Bryce marched to the wall, pausing only when the first of the beasts came rushing up. He let the lock end of the chain fall so that it swung gently. From the first moment he had laid eyes on it, he knew the chain was going to be an awkward bugger of a weapon. To get a feel for it, he swung it in a slow circle over his head, then as the zombie, an older woman, sagging and fat, approached, he stepped back and swung.

  He misjudged the strike by inches and the lock tore down the dead woman’s face, taking its nose clean off. The lock and chain undulated like a suspended snake as it carried downward. To strike again swiftly, Bryce twisted his entire body around in a tight circle, a circle that resembled a pirouette, and then heaved the chain around in a blur, and sent the lock crashing down on top of the zombie’s head.

  The zombie dropped and he moved on, still swinging the chain. More were coming, for now, in dribs and drabs. With each swing, Bryce felt his proficiency increasing. Of course, these were just run of the mill zombies and they came on without ducking or even noticing the lock until it crashed into their heads.

  He killed three before he made it to the wall and caught the eye of one of the guards. The man’s eyes were wide and unblinking. “Our quarantine is up,” Bryce told him. “You’ll let us in.”

  “I can’t,” the man said. “Really, I’m not allowed…”

  Bryce locked in on the man’s eyes. “You can or you’ll die. There are too few of you to hold the wall. It’ll crumble and you’ll be trapped. You need us. Do you want to live?” Bryce began nodding and the man nodded along. “We have an understanding, good. Now fetch us two chairs.”

  The man seemed dazed as he turned from the wall. Not too far away a woman hissed, “Don’t do it, Raymond. You don’t know them. They could be infected.”

  Bryce snapped his fingers, angrily. “Quiet!” She went silent looking like she’d been slapped. She ducked down.

  More zombies came straight for Bryce and with each swing of the chain he hated the weapon that much more. It kept wanting to leap back at him and although the zombies didn’t care if their teeth were smashed in, Bryce did.

  Thankfully, the man, still looking somewhat confused was back. “Will these work?” The chairs were lifted over.

&nb
sp; Neither were of the rolling variety, which meant they would do. Bryce waved to the tent where Maddy had her head peeking out. She led the little group out and for some reason they all ducked down as they hurried forward, as if they were expecting sniper fire. It didn’t keep them from being spotted.

  The zombies flocked in and as the others tried to manhandle Griff over the wall, Bryce and Maddy went to fight. Maddy had cleaned her ice axe after her last battle and now it gleamed in the gloom of the day. Whenever she swung it, it flashed brilliant silver. Bryce found himself watching her out of the corner of his eye as he struck down the zombies one after another.

  Her form had improved, though that was mostly from a greatly increased confidence. It was clear that she was no longer afraid of an average zombie. Her speed had improved as well, but it was her foresight, her ability to know that impressed Bryce the most. It made her look far more fluid, almost as if she were dancing.

  In comparison, Bryce looked herky-jerky with the chain bouncing and wiggling with every hit. Once more he likened it to a snake, a live, and quite uncooperative, metal snake. Bryce was heartily glad when Plinkett began hissing that the group had made it over the wall. The pair turned at the same time and began running for the wall. Ahead of them Plinkett was going over exactly as one would imagine a paunchy forty-four-year old would: slow, rickety, ungainly.

  “You first,” Bryce said to Maddy as they ran.

  Seeing what an ugly mess of it Plinkett had made, had her nervous as she stepped up on the chair and grabbed the rather flimsy wall. It rattled beneath her hands and she saw herself tearing the entire thing down. These wild images didn’t take Bryce into account. He grabbed her from behind and lifted her to the top of the wall where she was helped across by Plinkett.

  Bryce didn’t need help and easily vaulted the wall, landing softly on the desks. He leaped down and for a quick second stared at his hands. He had picked Maddy up…easily. She had to be at least a hundred and thirty pounds…And I picked her up.