It was a black ski hat. Andy put it on, knowing that he would then be asked to yank it all the way down so that it covered his face. He suddenly realized he was being kidnapped. “I think you have the wrong guy. I don’t have any money or anything. I-I’m just a regular guy.”
“You’ll do. Now pull down the hat until it covers your eyes. Good. Get on your knees with your hands behind your back.”
Andy had his wrists and arms bound and then he was frog-marched to a Humvee. He knew it was a Humvee by the smell and the sound of the engine. Did that make this man a soldier? When he tried to ask, he was punched in the face.
His head thumping from the punch, he was driven just long enough to get carsick. It was a fight to keep down the MRE he had been nibbling on for half the night. Even though the hat only extended just past his nose, he didn’t want to puke, afraid to upset his captor.
When they stopped he forgot his stomach as his fear reached a peak. He began to hyperventilate and make whiney sounds in the back of his throat—he was sure he was going to die and he never imagined he would die like this, tied up and blubbering. The more he thought about it, the more he couldn’t stop himself from freaking out.
The shadow man punched him the gut, knocking the air out of him. As Andy lay on the ground, desperately trying to breathe, the man leaned down and said in a whisper: “You need to be quiet. There are zombies nearby and if they hear you crying like a bitch, they’ll get hungrier than they already are.”
Zombies? Zombies, here on Long Island? How was that possible? These thoughts seemed to shock his lungs into compliance. Suddenly, he could breathe again, though he did so with all the strength of a mouse, taking little wisps of air though he craved more.
What if they heard him?
The hat was torn off his head and he found himself standing in front of a house. It was small, no bigger than a cottage. On the side was a driveway that led to a detached, single car garage that seemed like something out of a haunting. The dark hung on it heavily so that it was hard to make out.
“Don’t make a sound,” the man told Andy as he pulled him by the arm. They were thirty paces from the garage when something inside thumped heavily. Andy couldn’t help himself and stopped, his legs unwilling to go forward.
“Is that a…” He couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence. The man nodded, putting a finger to his lips and then dragged Andy on. He was pulled right to the side of the garage where the man shoved him up on his toes so that he could see through the cracks of a boarded over window.
At first he couldn’t see a thing and then a grey face smashed against the boards right in front of him. Its eyes were black as coal and from them what looked like oil dripped steadily. It snorted over and over again, its breathing growing more and more excited until at last it started scrabbling at the wood.
“It’s got your scent, now,” the man said with a smile. “We should leave.” Andy tried to run, but the man forced him to move at a walk. “That was a zombie,” the man said. “My friends and I created it.”
“Why? Why on earth would you do that? That’s crazy!”
The man shoved Andy, knocking him to the ground. “Right now your job is to listen. It’s not to talk. That will come later. I have a dozen zombies just like the one back there. They are all getting very hungry and pretty soon they’re going to break out and we both know what will happen then. The disease will spread and then everyone on this island will get eaten. Sad isn’t it?”
Afraid that it still wasn’t his turn to speak, Andy nodded. The man went on: “Luckily, you can change that. All you have to do is give your commanding officer a message for me. Do you know who’s in charge on the island?”
“No, but I can find out,” Andy answered, eager to please, eager to get the hell away from the zombie which was still scrabbling at the boards. “I can ask my captain. He knows.”
The man smiled. His face seemed dark and Andy incorrectly pegged him as hispanic. “Good. Get this up the chain of command as fast as possible.” He held up a slip of paper. “That’s the address to this house and a list of demands. If you aren’t quick the zombie will get out and then…” He shrugged, as if to say: What can you do?
With the hat thrust down again, Private Andy Wagner was sped back to where Eng had picked him up. Right away, Andy raced down Flatbush Avenue to where his C.O. had set up his command post and, without the least nod to military protocol, he burst in and began babbling his story.
“This really happened?” Captain Heverson of the Indiana National Guard asked, gazing down at the letter Anna had drawn up, his brow creasing and his lips disappearing into a line that went across his face. He didn’t want to believe this private whose name he could never remember.
The day before, Heverson had been standing on his bathroom scale, looking over his paunch and sighing when he first heard a couple of overly peppy radio DJs making jokes about zombies in New York. Now, he and his Brigade Support Company were apparently on the front lines, something he had never expected.
Andy Wagner hadn’t expected it either. He was on the verge of crying and his emotions overcame his common sense. “Yes, damn it, I fuckin’ saw…” He stopped himself before he could make things worse. “I mean yes, sir. I saw it with my own eyes and it saw me. It smelled me. It has my scent.” Andy’s fear was so palpable that it became contagious and nervous eyes began to dart around the tent.
According to the newly revised SOP on possible Infected Person sightings, Captain Heverson was supposed to inform the battalion executive officer without hesitation, only Heverson didn’t reach for the sat-phone. He was overcome with indecision. What if this was all in Wagner’s head? The young man certainly seemed on the verge of a breakdown.
Or what if this was a prank? Heverson looked quickly around at his staff, searching for the jokester among them. They were all deadly serious. No, Heverson thought, if this was a prank it was being played on Wagner.
“So help me,” Heverson growled, “if this is some sort of joke, people will be going to prison.”
“It’s no joke,” Andy pleaded, miserably desperate to get the captain to believe him. “I saw it, sir. We have to hurry before it gets out.”
The honesty in his eyes scared Captain Heverson, but he still didn’t initiate proper protocol. New York City was being held at “all costs,” which meant that over a hundred thousand civilians had been called to arms to guard the shores of Long Island. Many of them were on the verge of panic and there had already been a number of shootouts between perfectly healthy people. Heverson could imagine the carnage and the chaos that would ensue if word got out that there were zombies already on the island.
“I’ve got to see this for myself,” he said.
Fifteen minutes later, his Beretta hot in his hands and his ears still ringing from the six shots he had put into Bob the zombie, Heverson made his call and Anna’s plan was put into action.
Chapter 22
1—9:26 p.m.
The Hartford Quarantine Zone
The mayor of Hartford, Connecticut was desperate to get out of his own city. Danny Perez was mayor of a city of the dead. He didn’t think he would be missed.
Certainly, he wouldn’t be missed by Dr. Lee and her band of idiots. She had scampered down a tunnel straight to where the crazy laughter had been loudest. That had been lunacy.
Going back to where the other three, Deckard, Chuck and Stephanie were slowly coming up was also a bit nuts. They kept shooting over and over. Didn’t they realize that all they were doing was drawing the zombies right towards them? Didn’t they realize that they were probably being surrounded even then?
The idea of being surrounded in the dark tunnels made him want to piss himself and it made him want to run screaming, only he couldn’t. He’d been shot and even if he hadn’t been, the tunnels were too cramped to run. He could only limp slowly along, dragging one leg, bent so far over that the hump of his back kept scraping the low ceiling.
Going off on his own,
with only a flashlight for protection, was its own form of crazy, but he told himself that he could always go back if he ran into trouble. So far, however, he hadn’t heard a thing, and that was because he was smart.
Zombies were clearly stupid creatures attracted by sight and sound…and maybe smell, if the voice in the dark was to be believed. He couldn’t do anything about his scent, but he could do something about how much noise he made, which was why he crept along trying not to make a peep. He kept the flashlight turned off. So far it really hadn’t helped him except to give him peace of mind that something or someone wasn’t right in front of him in the dark.
He told himself that if there were zombies nearby, he would have heard them, and so far, the tunnels had been dead quiet except for the wicked laughter and the gun shots and Courtney Shaw whispering: “Mayor Perez? Mayor Perez?” All he could think was: Keep drawing them to you.
Slowly, he drew away from all the sounds, and after maybe a hundred yards, and passing six or seven of the smaller tubes, he came to his first intersection. As mayor of Hartford, he knew his city intimately, both the good and the bad. He knew exactly where each construction project was taking place—one such project was in progress, digging up a road, coincidentally to repair the very drainage system he was creeping through.
It would be a long trek underground of at least a mile, but he hoped that with each step eastwards he would leave danger further and further behind.
He crossed through the intersecting pipes and hadn’t gone ten feet before he heard a whisper ahead of him. It hadn’t been a whisper of voices, it had been the secretive sound of a tennis shoe scraping on cement—there was someone, or something ahead of him.
Just like that, his heart became a mad thing in his chest, running so fast that he was afraid that it would seize up from the strain. Moving slowly and deliberately, he turned in the tunnel and started heading back, placing each foot carefully, making sure he stepped as lightly as he could, holding his breath pent up in his lungs.
Sweat ran into his eyes and he blinked as if he were sending out some sort of signal. It made more sense simply to close his eyes, but he couldn’t force them shut. They were wide open searching endlessly in the black nothing for the slightest shape, the slightest motion. He held the flashlight against his chest, ready to blast light at the first new sound. He made it back to the intersection. Ahead of him was the pipe that led to the others.
From it he heard shouts and gunshots and…and another sound that turned him cold. It was a slapping thud, similar to the noise a small child might make when tripping and falling on a sidewalk, only there wasn’t an ensuing scream. The mayor could picture little zombies slithering down out of the feeder pipes, and dropping uncaringly onto their faces.
The sound repeated twice more. He couldn’t go back. Without thought, he turned to his left and hobbled down this unexplored pipe for a few steps when he heard the snuffle of a creatures picking up a scent. Now, they were ahead of him.
His fear had him by the throat and before he knew it, the flashlight in his sweaty hands was on and pointing at a squiggly mass of zombies. They were children. Disgusting, horrible, dead children.
A scream ripped from his throat as he turned and ran in a squat back to the intersection, the light going in all directions. To his right were grey faces and sharp teeth. In front was a girl, pale and blonde, wearing a blood-stained hospital gown. Behind her was a regiment of monsters straight from hell.
The mayor flicked his light to the left up the tunnel where he had abandoned Courtney. Here, there were only three of the kid monsters, each one just tall enough not to scrape their heads on the top of the pipes.
It would have been smart to go in that direction. He could have used his bulk to rush right over them, only he couldn’t do it; they were grinning such wicked malice that he could easily picture them latching on to him with their pointy little teeth and suckling on his flesh like giant diseased remoras.
Four seconds of pointless hesitation went by as he turned from one direction to another. It was enough to doom him to a very bad death. Had he charged the three, he would have been infected, but he might have gotten away with only a few bites. Instead the mass of children converged from all sides and in the cramped space there was nowhere to go and no way to fight.
2—The Hartford Quarantine Zone
The mayor’s screams ran down the pipes, causing the fine hairs on Courtney’s neck to stand up. The others had caught up and had paused to catch their breaths. Now, they were almost paralyzed in fear. Deckard pushed them on. Thuy was far ahead and all alone. There was no telling what terrors she was facing by herself.
He pushed them on as fast as they could go. Behind them came a gibbering mass that nipped at their heels and ahead—far ahead was Thuy’s light bobbing, always moving, seeming to float on its own. He couldn’t understand the courage it took to forge ahead like that, especially given the fact that she was completely alone.
They pushed on until Mayor Perez screamed his last. Though the scream was high and piercing, he was actually still long minutes from death. His fingers were raw bleeding stumps, his belly was wide open and there were mouths slurping in his guts. There was such a mass of bodies on him, pinning him down that he couldn’t move. All he could do was cry. It was a blubbering noise that was worse than any scream. It was the sound of utter despair.
Not long after the blubbering started, there came a new scream, this one filled with fury. It was taken up by dozens of high voices that shook the pipes. A mother might have understood what was happening: a terrific tantrum was taking place. The tunnels had been too small for everyone to feed. Only nine of the little kid zombies had gotten in to the yummy soft spots and they had gorged themselves until their bellies sloshed and then they wallowed in hot blood, spinning and spinning in the hot, liquid copper.
Jaimee Lynn Burke had been too slow to get at the mayor and no matter how much she had ordered the others away, they wouldn’t budge. They were in a blood frenzy and nothing short of a knife stuck in the base of the skull would have budged them.
Thankfully there were others with clean blood. “Dr Leeeeee!” she screamed.
A hundred yards away, Thuy paused, her back slightly bent, one hand on the curved wall of the tunnel and the other shining her light. Not for a second did she consider answering and the pause lasted for only as long as it took for her to take a single breath, and then she pushed on.
She could hear the others behind her and, although she hadn’t glanced back once, she knew exactly what was happening. It didn’t take a genius to piece together the events that had transpired. Nor did it take a genius to know that it was going to be a race to the end of the pipes. More than one emptied into the North Park and whoever got there first would have the advantage.
Thuy rushed on, knowing that Deckard would hate the idea of her going off alone. He would push the others on at their best speed…even if it killed them, and with Stephanie and Chuck that was a real possibility. They had fought a good fight, but it couldn’t last.
They would be two more deaths on her conscience to add to the millions. Her feet slowed as she pictured the faces of the people she knew who had died. How many of them were walking around grey and awful? How many would still be alive if it wasn’t for her? That answer was easy: all of them.
She trudged on, her back bent not simply from the tunnel. The weight of guilt pressed down on her and it was some minutes before she saw the bars that blocked the end of the pipe. With relief she saw that there was nothing between her and them.
“Thank God,” she whispered. Thinking she was safe, she turned and waved her light up and down in exaggerated motions, hoping that Deckard would understand that all was well.
But all wasn’t well.
“Dr. Lee?” A child’s voice from behind.
Thuy spun and saw a girl, pale and scrawny, standing on the other side of the bars. It was Jaimee Lynn Burke and behind her were leering hungry faces.
“Yes,
Jaimee Lynn?” Thuy asked, fighting to keep her voice even. She had slung her M4 across her back and now it felt a million miles away.
“Weren’t y’all gonna to help me find my daidy?” The idea of finding her father held some appeal to Jaimee Lynn, but it was nothing compared to her hunger. Running around in the black tunnels had spiked her appetite something fierce and the scent being given off by Dr. Lee was almost sexual in its power over Jaimee Lynn.
“Of course, I will help you find your father,” Thuy answered, with a smile on her face. Thuy had not been fooled in the least by the question. She heard the lie in Jaimee Lynn’s words and saw the hunger in her twisted face. “I know you want to find your father, but wouldn’t you want to make a stop first? I have friends you could meet. Older people, soft people. Would you like to go see them?”
An image of plump, middle-aged, white meat, brimming with blood took over Jaimee Lynn’s mind. Dr. Lee would make a fine meal, but only if she wasn’t shared. She was small and skinny. How much blood could she possibly have? Not enough for two and Jaimee Lynn had a lot of mouths to feed.
The idea of soft, easy to catch old people had Jaimee Lynn salivating, “Where are they? Are they close?”
She hoped Dr. Lee wasn’t referring to the others hurrying up behind her. Two of them, Stephanie and Chuck, were rags of flesh hanging on bone, while Deckard was a tough, mean thing that would put up way too much of a fight. He would be dangerous and not worth it. Out of the lot of them only Courtney was truly succulent—but she was just one person.
“They’re very close,” Thuy told her, “but all of your friends are in the way. If you can move them out of the way, I could show you.”
Jaimee Lynn knew it wouldn’t be that easy. The mutilated kids around her couldn’t understand the concept of delayed gratification, especially after they had heard the wonderful sounds the mayor made as he’d been eaten. Their blood was up and pumping. They were primed and ready to feast.
The Apocalypse Crusade 3: War of the Undead Day 3 Page 34