Officer Down

by E. E. Isherwood

  After several minutes, the two youngsters stopped.

  “We have to rest. Take a breather.”

  James looked back. He couldn't see any pursuit, but that didn't mean it wasn't there.

  “OK, take a minute.”

  “Do you have any water,” Ross asked.

  James looked at himself, wondering if he had big pockets or a pouch or something that would make the man ask the question.

  He shook his head, rather than say what he was thinking.

  “You could probably drink some of that.” He pointed to the rough-hewn wall nearby. A small trickle of water pushed through some cracks and pooled on the floor before disappearing in the porous floor.

  But Ross wasn't interested.

  James shook his head in silent disgust. Rather than chide the man, he went over and cupped his hands below the small drizzle, then took a drink. He was too thirsty to be picky. Lack of water would kill them as surely as the zombies.

  Mary followed his lead and found another crack with water leaking through.

  The stubborn man still refused.

  A low growl surprised James. It came from a few cars behind. He picked up his metal bar, feeling wholly inadequate. His gun was on his hip, but the bullets wouldn't last long. He had to make those count.

  Then he heard a bark and knew it wasn't a zombie.

  “What the?” He ran a short ways back up the tunnel. It felt unnatural. Like telling bystanders at the accident scene there was something to see.

  A soft whimper led him to the pooch. It was inside a large black Jeep Wrangler with oversized tires and a huge lift kit. It had no front license plate on the bumper—something he was trained to identify—but had a Tennessee plate leaning against the inside of the front windshield. The Jeep should have been crunching zombies on a high mountain pass somewhere, as the occupants cruised to freedom. It looked forlorn trapped inside the stone tunnel.

  He climbed up on the side step so he could look inside. A man and a woman were both strapped inside their seatbelts in the front seat. They weren't zombies. They were just...dead. Ashen gray. Gone. Behind them, lying on the rear seat, he saw the dog. It was light brown and looked like a cattle dog.

  “We've got to go, officer.”

  He planned to ignore them but thought better of it. “You guys keep going. I'm coming.”

  That put the responsibility on them to make good on their own escape. Or so he imagined.

  Getting to the back seat was complicated. The door opened with no problem, but the man was belted in, and it made it difficult to get the seat to move forward. The dog became more agitated each moment it could see someone coming to rescue it.

  The dog was tied to the roll cage. He'd have to get back there to free it. He looked behind and didn't see any zombies in pursuit.

  James reached in and undid the man's seatbelt. Though he'd seen death on his job several times, and countless dead in the current disaster, it was never pleasant handling a body. He held his breath as he pulled the man's arm to get him out of his seat—

  The man lurched.

  James slipped off the side step in shock. He landed hard on his lower back. He also felt his utility belt dig into his backside. It didn't help his already throbbing head, either.

  He had no time to process what to do next because the zombie spilled out of the seat and onto his legs. By some miracle of bad luck, the man's elbow caught him in the crotch.

  “Omph!” His body wanted to curl up in anguish. He felt tears of pain, but they also helped him recover his wits. Instead of being scared, he was angry.

  The zombie man wore tan tactical pants and a loose-fitting black T-shirt with a monster jeep imprinted on the front. James got a good look at the shirt as the man readjusted and tried to kneel on James' lower body. It was trying to get in position to assault his upper body, but the delay was enough for him to hit it…

  Except that he'd dropped his weapon.

  The zombie closed the gap to his head. He reached out with one hand to catch the man's throat, while he searched nearby for the metal bar. It had rolled off the main part of the road into the nearby rocky gutter of the tunnel. It was well out of his reach.

  He felt along his belt for his gun, but it was on his right side. The same arm as he was currently using to hold back the dead man gaining leverage above him. With his left arm, he brushed the only thing of substance he could grab on that side: his flashlight.

  It was about eight inches long and about one inch in diameter. Small enough he could carry it comfortably on his belt, but large enough to illuminate the entire cab of a drug dealer's car. He pulled it out not really knowing what he was going to do next.

  He first used it as a bludgeon on the side of the zombie's head, but that only annoyed him. It didn't have enough heft to do any damage the way the old aluminum Mag lights used to do. Rather than continue in a fruitless effort, he let the light slide in his hand until he gripped the wider end. He shoved it with as much force as he could, right into the eye socket of the Jeeper. The zombie became agitated and thrashy, but James held him with his stronger right arm. With the flashlight only partially in the socket, he pulled the man to his chest where the light made contact with his shirt. A final grab at the backside of the man's head and he pulled again—compressing the flashlight up into its skull.

  It was brutal and messy. But it worked.

  He wheezed for twenty seconds as the man twitched in death.

  Only the howls got him moving. This time, they weren't coming from a dog.

  Some kind of military operation

  The dog—a young male—came out of the Jeep willingly. James couldn't help but let the dog smell its fallen master—unsure if it was cruel or compassionate. He warily eyed the female in the front seat. He was hopeful she was well and properly dead, but, like the driver, he expected her to lunge at him if he did anything further to disturb her.

  The calls of the zombies in the tunnel behind had gotten to be a constant and frightening reminder of the big picture. He'd delayed for several minutes for a side project. He looked down at the dog as it trotted on its blue leash with perfect grace next to him. He wasn't a sideshow. He was fate.

  The outlook on his chances brightened considerably with the dog at his side. Like they could take on anything.

  Without a collar, he had to assign a name. “I'm gonna call you Jeep.” The pup looked up at the name but continued to run. James wondered if the dog knew what was behind them. Would Gracie have been as friendly to a stranger? He doubted it. Once she hit the ground, she would have run—either direction, it wouldn't have mattered—for about sixty seconds at full speed. Then she'd have spent all her energy, and would follow it all up by laying down. He felt a tinge of the betrayal in his heart, knowing he was alive and pulling this dog while she was alone back at his home.

  “I wasn't given a lot of choices.”

  He caught up with Ross and Mary, and to his surprise he also found Kevin standing with them. He was anxious to tell him what he'd learned.

  “Hey, officer. The army is in there,” he pointed down a tunnel blocked by two large trucks, “but they said we had to keep going down this way.” He motioned down the opposite tunnel, which had a prominent blue stripe painted lengthwise on the wall. The cars continued, always pointing deeper into the mine.

  James recognized this as the end of the green line. The “T” junction on the map. But he wasn't sure how he felt about being told which way to go, even if it was the way he wanted.

  “Why can't we go the other way? Did they say?”

  “Nope. They just said we'd find the rest of the civilians if we went down this tunnel.”

  James studied the situation. The Army guys had gone into what appeared to be a much larger room. A large door on the back wall hid behind the many large columns of stone supporting the ceiling. It seemed safer than where they were going.

  Howls from the hallway urged him to make up his mind.

  “They gave you no clue why they
didn't want you to follow?”

  “Only that they weren't kidding around. Some kind of military operation; they said they'd be forced to shoot us if we didn't comply.”

  What were the trucks all about? He constructed a scenario where mine employees made for a safe room once they saw what was coming and then blocked it so no one else could follow.

  Of course, he could walk between the trucks into the room beyond—he judged his generous girth would just barely fit between them—and see what he could see, or negotiate, but with zombies in his tunnel already, he couldn't afford to get cut off from his objective. There were obviously people in the direction he was going. He'd already planned to go to the furthest corner room.

  In the back of his head, he still held out hope something would come of that phrase on the map: vertical shaft. That might be how they get up to the surface. He liked that much better than getting back in a dump truck or dealing with hostile Army guys on a one-way operation.

  “All right. We'll keep walking. We should be getting close to the vertical shaft. That might lead us out.”

  It wasn't a good chance, but it was a chance.

  The lights flickered as he started down the blue tunnel. That made him stop.

  When he looked back toward the obstructionist trucks, he was sure he saw someone's head poking out from behind one. Someone who didn't want to invite them to their little party. It gave him some comfort to know he'd avoided a confrontation with the Army, but he couldn't help think about how much easier it would have been to have a bunch of guys with guns to hold off the zombies. With a narrow slot between the two trucks, it would only take a couple guns to hold off a great horde, possibly indefinitely.

  That's when he realized what they were doing. What he, Mary, Ross, and Kevin represented.

  Jeep pulled at his leash. He seemed anxious to continue deeper into the mine. James thought the dog might understand his intuition in a kind of puppy sixth-sense, but a minute later the dog found a pool of water and began to lap it up. He was only looking for a drink, not trying to understand a military exercise.

  He looked at Ross, wondering if he was going to use this as an excuse to drink something, but he ignored the water altogether.

  “Man, that's a great idea,” Kevin exclaimed. Like James, he cupped his hands and began to drink water pouring from the wall. It somewhat surprised James that this man, who by all appearances was a wealthy snob, would drink from the ground, but the other would not. Always searching for motives of his perps, uh, friends, he couldn't think of anything that would explain it. Maybe Ross didn't like being told what to do. Or, he didn't like a police officer telling him what to do. Or, he didn't like a black man telling him what to do. Or, he didn't like…

  The theories continued as they walked along the thin blue line. But they were all distractions from the mission they were now on. Unwittingly they'd joined the operation of the military.

  Jeep pulled his leash harder the longer they walked, as if he, too, knew.

  They were the bait.

  We have some people going crazy back here

  The tunnel was nearly as long as the walk in on the green line. One car after another. He estimated it to be close to a mile in length, based on the clip they'd been moving. Ahead, the destination.

  It was the first place he'd seen live civilians since they'd left the front entrance. They'd come through many junctions, thus many places for people to peel off and hide, but that's why James chose the farthest room he could find. He figured it would be the last place the zombies would go, and the place with the least amount of humans.

  “Come on! Get inside,” yelled a couple of women at the door-less entrance to the large room at the end of the line. Both were dressed in flip flops and looked like they'd come from the pool. They wore bathing suits but had towels wrapped around them like blankets.

  “What's going on in here,” Kevin asked the women with a little too much cheer.

  “Survival, jackass, what's it look like?” one of them said.

  “We came in behind the Army. Are they here?” James asked. He knew they didn't go this way, but it was a good opening line. Maybe the Army guys split up...

  “No, just a few people running in from time to time. Is the Army here to save us?” As she said it, she looked behind him as if to confirm. Then she saw Jeep.

  “Oh she's so cute,” she squealed as she squatted down to pet his fur.

  “His name's Jeep.”

  “Oh Jeepy Jeepy Jeepy,” she said as she scratched behind his ears. He was clearly in his element as his tongue hung out, and he leaned into it. When she stopped, he raised his paw to her—signifying very clearly he wasn't done with her yet.

  “Oh, I want to eat you up,” she continued.

  The other woman was more reserved. “I'm Tracy.” James put her at about five-foot-five, one hundred thirty-five pounds. “We need help. We have some people going crazy back here.”

  “Crazy? You mean sick?”

  “No, sir. I mean totally batshit crazy. We think it's the tunnels. Claustrophobia, or something.”

  That wasn't a stretch. He nervously studied the tunnel behind. They'd brought something everyone needed to fear. He hid his feelings as he walked in a few steps, pulling Jeep with him.

  The room was spacious. The dimensions were difficult to establish because of the large columns, but it looked to be about big enough to fit an average high school track around the outer edge.

  A sad-looking group of about ten people sat near one of the first columns. The ceiling was maybe twenty feet high. But there was no vertical shaft.

  “There's supposed to be a shaft to the surface back here. Have you found it?”

  Tracy gave him a funny look. “You mean the pit? It's back that way?” She pointed deeper into the room, past the people.

  “Uh-oh,” he thought.

  The room had been cut from solid rock. Some large equipment had come in and removed the core limestone, leaving the walls, floor, and ceiling with a general look of uniformity, even though they were all a little rough.

  But it was suitable for storage.

  The traffic from the tunnel had made it to this room and about two dozen cars parked where they could fit inside. However, it was already mostly full of big utility trucks—the kind with the bucket that takes linemen up to the wires. They were parked ten abreast to point he couldn't see. On the right side, there was a menagerie of construction equipment, attachments for tractors and excavators, ladders, concrete barriers, cement drainage pipe sections, and dozens of phone poles and emergency tornado sirens.

  All in all, he wasn't inspired by what he'd found at the end of the map.

  He turned back to Tracy, while her friend continued to pet Jeep. “What are you guys doing back here?” He couldn't help look her over. “And you aren't really dressed for this.”

  “No shit. Me and my sister were swimming in our pool just up the road when some sickos come right over our fence. We thought they were neighborhood kids pulling a prank or something, but our kiddos started to scream bloody murder when they saw them. They—”

  She looked at her sister. James knew.

  “We lost a friend to the first one. Her daughter ran with us. She's over there.” She pointed to the small group. James could now see they were mostly children.

  “Figures,” he thought.

  “We went out our back fence, into the woods, and didn't stop until we came down the mine road. But that was days ago.”

  Mary jumped at that. “You've been down here for days? How are you staying alive?”

  “Plenty of water. People that came in brought us a little food, for the kids. Mostly we've been waiting for the all clear so we can go back home and get cleaned up.”

  Studying them closer, they were bedraggled. Their hair was tangled in knots, they had a sheen of dust over their exposed skin, and their faces were smeared with any number of things.

  And here he was bringing bad news. As if on cue, the sounds of howling ca
me from out in the tunnel.

  “What's that?” Tracy asked. Again, she looked behind James.

  “I'm afraid this emergency isn't quite over,” was all he could say.

  Someone needs to get out

  “But you're the police, right? You're here to help us, yeah?”

  Tracy's sister ran off to the kids.

  James studied the area, looking for anything that would help him defend them. He swept the room and came to a realization.

  “Uh, where are all the others? All these cars are here. Where'd those people go?”

  “I told you. Lots of them went crazy. These folks have been here since the start.” She swept her hands over all the cars in the room. “They stuck around for a long time. Mostly sat in their cars and listened to music. Sometimes they had to start 'em up to keep the batteries working—which smelled terrible. Oh, those were some tough times.”

  She spoke as if that happened a decade ago.

  “And then?” he asked.

  “I guess they went back to the front entrance. A couple of times someone would come in and say things are better outside, a big bunch would run off...and we'd never see them again. Others came in looking to us for answers. Of course, we know the least of anyone.”

  She laughed a cold laugh while tugging her colorful towel tighter around her.

  “And there are some people who...how shall I say this...visit the pit, and never come back.” She thumbed back toward the back of the room.

  The implications were frightening. He'd seen plenty of suicides, but he couldn't imagine jumping into a dark pit inside a mine for any reason.

  “Can you show me? I want to understand our defenses before they get here.”

  “Who? Who's coming? Help?”

  Could it be true? The Army was just up that tunnel. Help was near. And yet…

  “I'm afraid there is no help. You have to save yourselves.” He looked into her eyes as he said it. In a different life he might have found them inviting, but here, he only wanted to see resolve.

  For the ten-millionth time, he was disappointed. He saw her face drain; the spirit left her. She gave up in that moment, but he couldn't exactly blame her. She'd been waiting for days for someone to come along and give her the OK. She's undoubtedly wondered if the other groups leaving had gone out and survived. Now? As far as he knew, no one had successfully escaped the mine.