“Fuck,” Deckard whispered, before he turned and ran, bent almost in half. Far too quickly, he caught up with the others. It wasn’t just the mayor slowing them down. Chuck was laboring and struggling to draw air. When he pulled his mask off in order to catch his breath, Deckard saw that his normally tan face was stark white. Under the weight of the mayor, Stephanie was also struggling. They kept falling into one wall or the other.
“Courtney, switch with Stephanie,” Deckard ordered as he changed out his second to last magazine. “Chuck and Steph, I want you two to just sit here for a minute and rest. Let them get a little ways ahead. I’ll hold off the zombies.” This wasn’t easy. The zombies came in a wriggling grey wave, filling the tunnel, falling all over themselves, crawling over those in front, their bodies twisted and warped from the pressure of coming through the bars.
Shooting into such a mess was almost a waste of their limited ammo, but they had no other weapon. The axe had been left behind in their haste to flee. Chuck and Courtney barely got thirty seconds to catch their breath before Deckard was pushing them on again.
Three hundred yards ahead, Thuy was a bare speck of light, standing at the juncture of two more of the larger tunnels. From her studies, she knew that there was a maze of tunnels down below the earth. Most were small, no more than pipes that drained water out of street gutters, but there were larger ones the same diameter as the one she stood in. The idea was that if one became blocked, the water would flow around it to the next.
This redundancy made for a very dark and frightening puzzle. Thuy had memorized one section, just enough for them to escape and she knew there would be two more sets of the larger tunnels between her and her first turn. She wanted to get to them as quickly as possible but the others were far back.
Their flashlights looked like matches being waved about and the echo of Deckard’s gun rolled down the cement tunnels toward her in an eerie manner. It was as if she were hearing a gun being fired from another time and it made her feel even more alone.
She was suddenly struck by a bad case of goosebumps. It felt as if every inch of her skin was tented up by them. Beneath the sound of the gun, there were low moans and the patter of feet. It could only mean one thing: there were zombies in the tunnels and not just behind them.
For now, they were not in sight which was good since she was weaponless. Between the six of them, they had two M4s and an M16, and not enough ammo to last a ten minute fight. Thuy sank low in the cross-section of the tunnels and shot her light back and forth from tunnel to tunnel, afraid that one of the beasts was creeping up on her.
When Courtney and the mayor finally reached her, she wanted to give in to her relief and rush into their arms. Instead she took a steadying breath and looked them over. “Where’s Ms. Glowitz?”
“Back there,” snapped the mayor, jerking his head to the rear. Just then, he didn’t care about Stephanie or really any of them. He wanted out of the tunnels as fast as possible. The dark and the weird noises were creeping him out. “They’ll catch up. We should go on. Is that the way out?” He pointed down the tunnel they’d been following.
“Does it matter? There’s no getting out without the saw,” Thuy answered. “That means we wait.”
Three minutes never felt so long. The sound of the zombies drew steadily closer. They were coming on faster than Chuck and Stephanie. Thuy could just make them out at the range of her flashlight when the others joined them. She didn’t bother pointing out the obvious danger they were in, she only plowed ahead.
In the very rear, Deckard retreated slowly, letting the others get a good lead. Every few minutes he fired his gun, dropping the closest of the zombies. He would then run to catch up—though “run” wasn’t very accurate since he could only move in an odd squat-waddle that was terribly ungainly and far slower than his normal sprint.
Still the zombies were slower, at least the ones behind were. The ones coming up on them from the sides seemed way too fast. Every time he came near one of the larger openings, he could hear their moans…and sometimes he could hear high-pitched laughter that made even a veteran like him get a queer case of the shivers.
When they reached the intersection of tunnels that marked their turn, Thuy stopped again. Now, she hid her light and asked the others to hide theirs as well. It attracted the beasts and she didn’t have any way to fight them.
Stephanie reluctantly gave up the M4 she’d been carrying when Thuy asked for it. No one wanted to be defenseless, but she at least had Chuck, who, tired though he was, was a man who knew how to fight.
As Deckard came up to the group, sweat pouring from his brow, Thuy told them: “We have only about a half mile to go. Just a couple more turns and then…”
A warbly cry suddenly drifted down the tunnel: “Doctor Leeeeee? Doctor Leeeeee?” Thuy gasped, realizing who it was calling her name. It was Jaimee Lynn Burke.
She was completely mystified at how the girl could have possibly found her and when the child answered the unspoken question, it nearly caused the scientist to come unglued. “I can smell y’all Doctor Lee. I can smell y’all’s clean blood. It makes me hungry, Doctor Lee.”
Thuy felt a new fear that was unlike anything she had felt in the last three days. She was being hunted. She was being stalked. She was being hounded and if she had known the cunning little monster that Jaimee Lynn had become, Thuy would have guessed she was being driven into a trap. This new terror of being hunted was so all-encompassing that Thuy froze, her back to the curved wall of the tunnel.
Deckard shoved the mayor aside and crawled to Thuy. In a whisper, he said: “Lead us out of here. You have a gun, she doesn’t. She’s just a child.”
“Sure, okay,” Thuy answered, with just a ghost of her earlier confidence. “We go right from here. We go to the third intersection and then left again.”
Thuy wasn’t the only one freaked out by the sound of the child’s voice and the laughter that kept coming to them from out of the darkness. They moved in a clump, slower than before, Thuy held the M4 held out in front of her, the trigger almost halfway pulled.
It seemed to fire on its own when they ran into the first of the child zombies. Unlike normal zombies that would have come on relentlessly, the children scattered at the bright light and the flying metal, leaving three of their number behind.
The group carefully moved around the bodies, doing their best not to touch the black blood that coated the walls. Once passed they hurried on until they came to the first intersection. Thuy roved her flashlight down each of the four tunnels. There was nothing in sight, but what they could hear was unnerving to all of them. The laughter was back and so close.
“Ignore it,” Thuy said. “We can leave them behind if we hurry.”
That was wishful thinking on her part. The kid zombies were faster in the cramped tunnels and they were tireless in their pursuit—and yet they didn’t close in as Thuy expected.
She pushed on, faster now, toward the next intersection. Seventy more yards taken at a run, her body bent oddly. Her legs burned from the cramped conditions, but because of her height it was nothing compared to the pain the others were feeling. Stephanie and Chuck were limping from the cramps in their legs and Deckard thought it would have been easier to crawl.
At the intersection, high laughter coursed down each tube, save for the one to the right—they needed to go to the left. The group was no longer clumped, as it had been. They were spread out, in danger of being cut off from each other. Thuy was desperate to push on, but feared an ambush from the sides.
“I’m going on,” she said to Courtney and the mayor when they caught up to her. “I’ll go slowly, I promise. You two guard these tunnels until the others catch up.”
The mayor looked down into the black nothing on the right and wanted to piss himself. “Guard them with what? We don’t have guns.”
“Just alert us if anything comes your way. I’m sorry, but we can’t wait for the others and we can’t go on without them. Stay here and do yo
ur duty.” Thuy glared into the mayor’s eyes until he nodded, she then left the two and moved forward into the left tunnel.
If she could remember the map correctly, there was barely two hundred yards to the tunnel that emptied into an overflow point out in the real world where there would be stars and fresh air and maybe no zombies. They’d be beyond the city limits and beyond the lines of the 82nd.
She pressed on despite the fear eating her insides up. She walked slowly towards where the laughter was loudest.
Behind her, Courtney kept watch on her tunnel. The light in her hand shook, making the shadows jitter. There were whispers now in the dark. There were plots and plans, and death was on the air. She thought her chest would explode in fear, but at least she had someone watching her back.
Desperately needing a touch of humanity, she glanced behind her, expecting to see the mayor sitting in his tunnel. What she saw was simply a black hole. He was gone.
2—Long Island, New York
“There’s no way off this island, agreed?” Anna Holloway asked her partner in crime.
Eng glanced over to where the others sat in the Humvee, looking like abandoned kittens waiting to be bundled in a sack and tossed in a river. They were parked just up from the hundredth yacht club they had visited that night. Just like all the rest, there wasn’t a boat in sight.
They were all exhausted, but Anna had a plan brewing behind her blue eyes. “As far as I can tell,” Eng agreed, “but I’m guessing you have something in mind?”
“If we can’t get off on our own, then we’ll need help and the only way we can get help is by twisting some arms. We need to be able to cow the authorities into submitting to our demands, completely. They have to fear us. They have to be so afraid that they’ll let us break quarantine, and this time, five hostages won’t cut it, but maybe five million will.”
After a sly look back at the others, Eng whispered: “I’d say we have enough of the Com-cells to create five human bombs. Do you think that’ll be enough? It doesn’t seem like a lot.”
“First off, all it takes is one zombie to turn Long Island into fifty miles of death. Secondly, if we do this right, the authorities won’t know how many we have. If we place the five we do have here and there around the island, with the suggestion we have more, they would be a real threat and a real bargaining chip.”
Eng’s eyes almost disappeared as he thought over the idea. Involving the US military would make things extremely dicey. It was well known in China that their technological capabilities were fantastic. Even then planes were cruising overhead and there was no way to know if the pilots were somehow listening in on their conversation. At the same time, the military was clearly stretched perilously thin. Eng had noted the rash of different units they had run into that night. When combat engineers and signalmen were standing guard over empty stretches of seawall, it suggested things weren’t going well. Perhaps the military was so overwhelmed that they would suspend their rule about not negotiating with terrorists. It was worth a shot.
“So how do we proceed?” he asked. “They have been docile so far, but they won’t remain that way if we start jabbing them with needles.”
Anna wondered if he was right. The little group had been pathetic to the point of being apathetic to their fate. Even then they could have wandered away into the night and there would’ve been little Anna or Eng could have done about it.
Still, it didn’t hurt to err on the side of caution. “A little subterfuge will do the trick,” she whispered. “Follow my lead.”
She sauntered up to the group. “I think we should take a break. We’ve been running around like crazy. But first, Bob can you help us down at the docks? There was some equipment that looked interesting, but I’m not strong enough to help Eng.”
Anna had to hold back a cruel laugh when Bob puffed up his chest as he stood—ego stroking was the first step in getting a man to do what you wanted. She had figured that out in the first grade.
The docks, so close to the pounding of the surf and filled with so much rope, were the best place to subdue their hostages. Bob went down to a little boathouse, cracking his knuckles and warming up his back. He looked stupidly surprised to find it empty and his mouth came open when he saw the guns pointed at him.
“Just turn around nice and easy or Eng will shoot you in the gut,” Anna said. “This is just a precaution.”
“A precaution against what?” Bob asked, obediently turning.
For some reason a lie wouldn’t come to her just then and she started fumbling out words. Eng saved her. “There’s a traitor among us. One of you is thinking about running off.”
“That’s right,” Anna was quick to agree. “We don’t think it’s you but you are the smartest so we figured we should hold you here until we figure it all out.”
Bob allowed himself to be trussed up by Eng. He even gave them helpful hints as to who he thought it was who was going to run off. “If I had to guess, I’d say it was Renee. She’s always going on about how…hey, what’s with the gag?”
“Just a precaution,” Anna said. “Open up.” It was a little sickening to Anna that he didn’t argue. He opened his mouth and accepted his fate.
With Bob incapacitated, it was Alan’s turn, then Renee’s and then Meg and Jenny. Soon the five of them were lined up on the floor, all in a row. Since proper bio-hazard equipment wasn’t available, Anna and Eng improvised, using fisherman gear. Rubber boots and hip-waders covered them from the waist down, while windbreakers, hoods, and scarves covered the rest. Even rubber gloves were found. Squinting over the top of her scarf, Anna loosened the cap off the top of the vial and moved toward Bob.
Too late, he tried to fight back, but there was little he could do. Eng knelt on his chest while Anna dabbed a small amount of the Com-cells just under his nose. The only thing his struggling did was to cause him to hyperventilate, sucking in more of the Com-cells than if he had remained calm.
The same was true for all of them. Renee tried to roll around to avoid her fate, while Alan blew air out of his nose as hard as he could until Anna held his nostrils clamped shut until he couldn’t take it and when she finally released his nose, he sucked in a lungful of the disease.
Then he cried. They all did. Anna only rolled her eyes, restoppered the vial and then cleaned the outside of it with pure ethyl alcohol.
“Now we wait,” Eng said after he had stripped off his outer layers.
“Wrong,” Anna said. “Now, I wait. You need to scout some locations where we can hide these guys. They should be close to major concentrations of humans, but not so close that they’ll be easily found. While you’re doing that, I need to figure out how to contact someone in charge in a way that won’t get us caught.”
This was the harder chore by far. Finding and killing bad guys was what the army did better than anyone. It was nothing for them to track cell phones and radios, basically the only two ways Anna had to communicate.
For an hour, right up until Renee started thrashing on the floor, Anna wracked her brain, trying to come up with some way for them to make their demands known. Minutes later, they were all squirming on the floor like caterpillars on a hot frying pan. The pain was the first sign that the Com-cells had taken root.
Anna went outside just as Eng came driving up in the Humvee. He made a face at the noise coming from the boat house. “You should tell them to shut up,” he snarled. “If someone walks by our goose is cooked.”
The idea of telling five people afflicted with the zombie disease to “shut up” was so asinine that Anna spat out. “Why don’t you go tell them? It would do you some…” Her words faltered mid-sentence. Suddenly, she realized how she could communicate with the people in charge.
“We need more rope and we’re going to need something to make blindfolds out of. And I need a person, preferably military.” The idea wasn’t foolproof and communication would lag, but they didn’t need to discuss much and they weren’t about to try to negotiate.
Over th
e next hour as the five hostages became five zombies, Eng gathered the needed supplies, including a soldier he snatched at gunpoint as he squatted in a bush not far from his post.
3—Long Island, New York
His name was Private Second Class Andy Wagner of the 67th Brigade Support Company, Indiana National Guard and if he wasn’t already in the process of taking a dump, he would have shit himself when he heard the sly steps coming his way.
Andy was no warrior. He hadn’t joined the guard out of a sense of patriotism, he had joined so the army could pay for his college. Now, he was filled up to his chin with regret.
He had been sitting alone for hours, frightened half out of his wits, with only terrifying rumors and wild guesses leaking down the line as his source of information. The monsters of his imagination were truly horrible creatures: huge, undead fiends that were more demon than human. The one thing he hadn’t imagined them to be was sinister and quiet.
“Hey…who is that?” he asked in a whisper. When the person didn’t answer, but only kept moving forward slow and careful, Andy looked around for his gun. It stood, leaning against a tree, eight feet away. He leaned forward, his ass sticking out behind and was just about to waddle over to it when a shadow broke away from the surrounding darkness.
“Just stay where you are and finish up there,” the shadow said. “You don’t want to meet your commanding officer stinking like shit do you?”
The shadowed man was so frightening to Andy that he mistook the words “commanding officer” to mean God. He honestly thought he was about to be killed right there with his pants down around his ankles. He started babbling: “I-I d-didn’t do anything. I-I’m just a records specialist. I-I didn’t do anything.”
“Wipe your ass,” the shadow said. “You stink.” Andy did what he was told, going through the motions hastily before pulling up his trousers. The man stopped him from buttoning them. “Not yet. Step away from that pile of crap. Good, good. Now put this on your head.”
The Apocalypse Crusade 3: War of the Undead Day 3 Page 33