Officer Down

by E. E. Isherwood

  “Hey, excuse me.”

  The couple never looked at him, or if they did, he didn't see it.

  “What the?”

  Kevin chuckled. “Scared locals accosted by huge black man, story at eleven.”

  “Really, Kev? You think everything is racism out here?” He'd been on the force in a tough precinct north of downtown; he knew a few things about racism. This wasn't it.

  Kevin shrugged.

  The next people to come down were a pair of teens—a girl and a boy. His injured brain thought they reminded him of someone he knew, but he couldn't place them. They were dressed as if they were coming home from a rock concert. Both had on tattered jeans, though he couldn't say whether that was from the disaster or if they'd been that way before.

  “Excuse me; I'm a police officer.”

  That got their attention immediately. They came to a stop just a few feet from him, leaving room for other people to continue walking down the road.

  Kevin gave him a look, but he couldn't read it.

  “I need to know where you're coming from. Why are you going down there?” He pointed down into the pit.

  The young man seemed frazzled beyond words. His partner looked at him once, then spoke. “We left with Ross's parents and some of their neighbors. We live near the cemetery—not far. Everyone is walking now. This traffic jam goes on forever. It was so confusing...”

  She sniffed. The dried tears became apparent the more she spoke.

  “Half the people walked up the highway. The other half walked down the highway. We wanted to cross the bridge over the river, but it was closed. Everybody switched to this road, so we followed.” Her face turned hopeful. “Is there help down there?”

  She looked at her partner. “Maybe your folks are down there?” She didn't sound confident.

  James tried to guess whether there would be help in the mine. He didn't see a single police car in the grand parade. No flashing lights. Nothing official. Whoever started this doomed plan is down there, probably in the first car. He suspected that person was a civilian. A civilian who gave no thought to what he or she started here.

  Elsewhere along the edge of the mine, he saw endless zombies. Most were to the east and south of the great hole in the ground, but they were slowly making their way around. A few brave souls were fighting, slowing them. But the battle was already lost. Other zombies lurked in the nearby trees or accosted people walking along the line of cars. Those zombies found out the hard way that people still carried firearms, which kept them thinner on that side of the compound.

  All the pieces were in place for people to safely get into the mine, but there was no way to escape.

  “Unless you run now, Jimbo,” he thought.

  The opportunity was there. He could run up the line of cars to the highway, and follow that for twenty miles until he was back home. All he'd have to do is run through the core of the city—swimming with dead—and fight his way to Gracie. She'd be so happy to see him…

  “Officer? Is there help? Is it safe down there? What should we do?”

  Even without his hat and shirt, he was still an officer of the law. Someone had to protect the rest of these sheep. Someone had to wear the big boy pants. It was his fate.

  The young couple had no weapons, no water, no food. They'd arrived with only the clothes on their backs.

  James sighed, then stood up straight with his decision. He looked the young woman in the eye. “Let's go find out.”

  A last glance at the rising sun.

  He choked on the words as they came out. “Goodbye, Gracie.”

  Far back in his brain, he harbored a small hope she could survive until he reemerged on the surface, but it seemed impossible. A smart dog might figure out how to get into the toilet bowls and live a few more days, but not her. Her charming lack of intelligence would be her final undoing in the new reality. She would not adapt.

  Would he?

  Don't toss those cookies

  The walk down felt like he carried heavy chains over his shoulders. He'd had hope early on as he protected the city with his fellow officers, and he was willing to risk his life for them while there was a chance of saving everything, but he saw no hope now. The black hole down below was a desperate, terminal, destination for those caught on the road.

  He knew he needed another weapon. The Glock would be an excellent last resort, but if he was going in the mine—and he saw no way out of that—he didn't want to be shooting friendlies in the dark. Better to have something to swing, or poke, the bastards.

  “Holy shit!” Kevin cried as he looked between two parked vehicles.

  James moved to the inside of the roadway to see what Kevin saw. There, just off the road among the fallen rock and debris next to the tall cliff of the rim, was a man—

  “Oh my god, he's inside...” Kevin's voice faded.

  James had seen plenty of zombies attack their victims since the sirens went off. This one was something new. They were bloodthirsty, yes, but they almost always went for the neck or other exposed arteries. They weren't popping open skulls and eating brains, like they did in the movies.

  The voice in his head telling him to ignore this problem was easy to ignore.

  He gripped his black baton and extended it with a crisp flick.

  Blood nearly coated the feeding zombie. His head and shoulders were solid red; mottled red dotted everywhere else. He wore no shirt. The blue pants were light and airy, where they weren't dripping wet. No shoes.

  A hospital escapee.

  The victim's head was tilted backward. It was hard to say what sex it was. The neck was chewed through. The ribs had been broken open. The insides had been gnawed on. The jeans and white tennis shoes gave no further clue to the identity.

  James' stomach lurched.

  “Don't toss those cookies, J. Not in front of the kids.”

  “What's he doing? Why?” Kevin asked the right questions.

  James closed the distance with his hand raised and baton at the ready. The zombie man seemed to sense the threat. He snapped his head up, cried out a feral yelp, and sprang. He stepped on his victim, which caused a disgusting squish of fluids to splash out.

  The shift and speed of the infected man caught James by surprise. He tried to bring the baton down on its head, but he ran underneath the swing. The baton missed, though his arm carried enough force to land on the shoulder. The contact was brief and ineffective; his arm slid off the slick blood.

  Although the two men met advancing toward each other, James had a hundred plus pounds over the other. The smaller, thinner man bounced against his chest, and as James wrapped the man in his massive arms, they tumbled toward the downed victim. James' eyes grew wide as he saw what was going to happen.

  He pinned the bare-skinned man beneath him, and together they impacted the bloody mess. They hit hard. Hundreds of pounds of force on the mangled body caused an explosion of blood.

  “How can there be this much blood?” he wondered in the flash after it happened.

  The fall dazed him for a moment. The zombie below him cried out and squirmed violently. He pulled his baton around so he could lift it again. But it wasn't made for this situation. Instead of using it as intended, he gripped the hilt and punched it into the zombie's face about ten times. It was followed by the ripe squirt of a breaking melon as the skull collapsed and the murmers signaled the passing of the zombie's—lifeforce?—soul?—viral overlord?

  He finally gave up his stomach, alarmed no food came out. He'd not eaten in—he had no idea. A full day or two, at the very least.

  Kevin and the couple came to his side. He sat over the body of a malicious, bloody man with a face that had been erased. Below him, another body. From so close, he could see it was a woman. A fancy necklace was wrapped around the bloody neck. Somehow it had not been bitten off in all the violence.

  James recoiled, finally seeing the macabre scene and his part in creating it. Quick to stand, he tried to wipe the blood from his white undershirt
. It was hopeless. There were smatterings of it all over him.

  He stepped back, looking at the crime scene, then at the people hovering near him. They had fear in their eyes. He imagined he did, as well, at that moment. Death had almost claimed him.

  As before, more people continued to run down the road, but they were on the other side of the cars. By some agreement, everyone wanted to run in the open near the inside edge of the spiral access road, rather than the narrower inside path against the rocky outer wall. He thought they'd made the right call. Somehow the sheep had figured it out.

  “And here I am doing something stupid,” he thought with deep breaths.

  He walked back to the open side of the road, then headed to his right—down. If Kevin and the kids followed, so be it. If not, they'd be safe for a few minutes. He cleared one zombie out of millions.

  They chatted behind him as he walked, letting him know they'd followed.

  When he reached the wreck of the dump truck, he paused. Part of him wanted to climb back into the cab, close and lock the doors, and feel safe for just a little while longer. Any of the cars might provide that feeling, except that an unhealthy percentage still had people thrashing inside them.

  He wiped his brow and finally steadied his breath from the violent exertion. The analogy of the sheep and sheepdogs was exactly correct. But the wolves. They were much worse now.

  Always cheerful and willing to help his fellow man—that's part of what made him happy to serve on a police force in the dangerous urban interior—he came to a conclusion that crushed him. A weight as heavy as the dump truck crushing the minivan in front of him.

  “We're all sheep, now.”

  A nasty deja vu

  He was ready to move on with the trickle of survivors, but he noticed the shirt he discarded earlier. It called to him.

  “You wanted to be an officer. Serve and protect, and all that.” His private thoughts mirrored a lifetime of living the lifestyle. Now that he was going down into the mine, there was no advantage to taking off the badge, so-to-speak.

  He picked up the shirt.

  “Better to reign in Hell, huh?” It was Kevin, again.

  “Do I want to know?”

  “Oh, it's just a quote. You're putting on your uniform again. That pretty much makes you the leader, right. And we're going down. Down there.” He pointed. James didn't need to look.

  As he buttoned his shirt, the blood from his undershirt soaked into it forming big stains in the fabric.

  He sighed deeply. “You think we're going into Hell?”

  Kevin said he was in finance, but he'd suddenly become kind of creepy. Like a mortician who enjoyed his job a little too much. His response did nothing to change James' mind.

  “I think God left us behind, actually. The whole planet is Hell now. We've been forsaken.”

  He'd heard it all the past few days. The reasons for the zombie outbreak. They ranged from aliens to government conspiracies. A few went wild, such as the crazy one everyone seemed to mention which was that the Canadian government released the plague so they could conquer the United States when all its citizens were dead. More than a few fell in the middle, by his estimation, of plausible causes. His personal belief was that an industrial accident had gone unreported. He'd been involved in corporate busts that would shock most people.

  A few religious people speculated that all the destruction could be God coming to collect His flock. Though James chuckled at the usual follow-on statement from such clergy, in that they couldn't understand why they weren't collected. That was always their biggest argument against the idea.

  And here was one of them, on his stretch of road.

  James walked downward. “So you think these zombies are, what, people who have been called to God? What's that called?”

  “The Rapture. And, sure, it seems crazy. But why not. You think God couldn't surprise us?”

  He laughed, absolutely certain God could surprise him.

  “You think that's true, officer?” It was the girl. “Is this a religious thing?”

  “I think—hey what's your name?”

  “Mary. And this is Ross.”

  “Well, Mary,” he said as he continued walking, “I'm absolutely, 100 percent sure I have no clue what this is. Believe me; I've heard it all. Not a one has been proven correct, and not a one has been proven incorrect. Could this really be a ploy by Canadians to take over our country? Sure, why not.”

  He walked faster, wanting to end the discussion. The kids walked to keep up.

  “I think he was right. This is God taking people.”

  James smacked his forehead inwardly. “I thought the Bible Belt was in the South,” he thought. “If everyone's going to be nuts with religion, I'm going to lock myself in a car and just be done with it.”

  His religious convictions were tame by comparison. He'd grown up Baptist but drifted the longer he spent on the force. Seeing things as they were—harsh, and cruel—stole some of his zest for praising God. In spite of all that, he wanted to believe God was good. That had to be the foundation for all the rest.

  Could God be behind all the suffering around him? The thing pulling out innards? He viewed that as impossible. It had man's signature alone on it. But there was no reason to argue with his associates over it.

  Around and around and down the spiral gravel road they went. They moved fast, but it still took nearly thirty minutes, with only minor delays on the way.

  At one point he halted at a white van that had a girl's team of some kind inside. They all thrashed wildly when they noticed him. It spooked him, though he played it off as mere surprise. Who had left them all locked up like that?

  Near the bottom, they they encountered some old drilling equipment that had solid steel bracing he managed to break off. They made clumsy baseball bats, but he guessed they'd be effective at cracking skulls. While looking at the three people he'd gathered so far, he wondered if they'd all end up hitting each other with those bars.

  “Either by accident or voluntarily, huh Mr. J?” That was a nasty deja vu. If they all succumbed to the bite of those things, they would be swinging at each other.

  At the bottom, the vast maw of the mine loomed in front him. People came off the ramp and ran the last hundred yards to the opening, confident they'd made it to safety. The line of cars continued inside. He was relieved to see bright lights deep into the tunnel. The place almost looked pleasant, though the gunshots throughout the complex above him never let him forget what was happening all around.

  Kevin had sprinted ahead of them so he could turn around, while in front of the entrance. He held his arms out in a welcoming gesture. “My friends. Welcome. To Hell.”

  James, usually stoic and practical, felt his eye twitch in mad rage. He ran the numbers on whether he should punch the man out cold and leave him behind, but it didn't seem like the type of thing a leader would do.

  Already a few people ran from out of the tunnel, straight for his blue shirt.

  “Here come the stupid questions,” he said softly.

  Situationally sick

  But instead of questions, they shouted and pointed up.

  “The Army is here!”

  James looked up. His heart leaped. The military would have enough guns to defend the entrance for a long time. As long as there were enough of them.

  Near the top, where the road started down into the mine, he saw tiny figures on the move. A long line of dull gray uniforms. Running his way. He guessed there were forty or fifty of them.

  But behind them—

  “We're screwed.” James deadpanned.

  “What do you see?” Mary asked. “I can't see that far.”

  “Well.” He considered how to answer. “There are soldiers running. And behind them...there are...”

  Kevin jumped in. “A shit-ton of the possessed.”

  His annoying statement didn't affect James. Not this time. What was following those soldiers had any number of names. The police chief called them
“situationally sick” in his effort to maintain political correctness right up until the end. Suddenly “possessed” seemed the height of plainspoken truth. Whatever else they were, they acted as if they were possessed demons.

  And, he was ashamed to admit, if such a phrase put the fear of God in the people around him, so much the better. If those zombies made it down into the mine, there would be a lot of running, shooting, and praying to be done before the end. They needed to be suitably scared.

  “What about you? You scared?” He asked himself.

  He knew the answer.

  “Listen up, people,” he shouted. He looked around for the men who had created the roadblock up the ramp. They were supposed to have come down here and done the same. “We don't have much time. We need to build a barricade over there.” He pointed to the entrance. The place where it should have been obvious a barrier needed to be constructed. If they had the time, they could carefully park cars and trucks in neat rows in front of the entrance—it would have been very easy to defend the gap if the attackers had to contend with a formidable defense. Though he'd seen them in action enough to know they could climb over most anything, given enough time.

  As it was, they could walk right in.

  He entered the mine; though he'd been in the shadow of the steep-walled mine most of the walk down, it seemed much darker than it should inside. Rather than dwell on that, he threw himself into the task. It took him about six cars before he found one with the keys in the ignition. It was a large four-door Mercury.

  “This car belong to anyone?” He shouted it, but there weren't many people around. His three friends—he was sure it wasn't theirs—and a couple of stragglers. On the far side of the car he was in, people silently walked by with their heads down. In a hurry.

  He jumped up from the car.

  “Hey!” His voice was deep and commanding. He knew that from the many times he'd gotten petty criminals—mostly teens with rattle cans—to stop what they were doing and walk to him. But this time, almost no one turned or stopped.