"But it sounds like people are getting skinned alive in there," someone said.
"I don't care!" Ford barked into the radio. "Our job is to enforce the quarantine. No one goes in and no one goes out for any reason." His orders were clear.
Eight minutes later things changed.
People in the little cottages had been waiting out the quarantine in relative comfort, watching TV or playing board games. It wasn't until the sun went down behind the clouds that things became unnerving. First it was the muffled gunshots, and then it was the ring of police cars with their flashing lights, and then it was the screams as Andy O'Brian and his mother-in-law were killed, and now there were people lurking around the grounds. Strange, scary looking people.
Instinctively, the people in the cottages turned off their lights and barricaded their doors. They also began calling the police over and over again until they got through. Their frantic pleas moved Courtney Shaw, who, on her own volition, ordered them to be evacuated.
"We have commandeered a warehouse for exactly this reason," she told Ford. "It's just up route 24 about fourteen miles."
"We don't have suits for everyone," Ford replied. "In fact I have only six available. That's not enough."
"It is," Courtney insisted. "Look, you don't have to transport anyone. They all have cars. Just escort them to the warehouse. The only ones you really have to worry about are those at the big house. Yes, they are infected, but one is comatose and the other is..."
"If they got the disease, they stay," Ford interrupted.
"But one is only a little girl and the other is..."
"I don't care. They stay here with the rest. Unless I hear from the superintendent himself I'm not moving them." Courtney, who had used the line: You have new orders as if they had come from somewhere higher up, relented.
Ford wasn't happy about the move; regardless he followed “orders” yet he did so with the very certain knowledge that he wasn't about to lose any troopers on his watch. He contacted each of the cottages personally and coordinated the withdrawal so that his men wouldn't be on the grounds for more than a minute.
The family members in the cottages were eager to get as far away from the hospital as possible.
In the big house, Dr. McGrady was checking the hall closet for his coat. "Someone has to stay," he said. "And I'm not volunteering. Sorry Ed, but you aren’t paying me nearly enough to hang around here.”
His cowardice bothered Edmund Rothchild who gave him a hard look from beneath his bushy brow. “I’ll stay with Gabrielle and Jaimee myself, but you must show me what I need to do to take care of them.”
“Of course,” McGrady said. “It’s not hard.” Taking care of the little girl was nothing. So far, Jaimee’s sickness hadn’t progressed very far. She was moody and bored, but not cannibalistic. Gabrielle Rothchild was even easier. She hadn’t so much as twitched since McGrady had put her under. All Edmund had to do was keep an eye on her IV drip.
“I’m going to stay, too,” Maddy informed them, planting her balled fists on her hips. “Mommy needs me and Jaimee is my friend. I should be here for them.”
“No,” was all Edmund said on the subject. There wasn’t time to argue. The sirens of the police cars had suddenly kicked on. It meant they’d be coming through the gates in precisely one minute.
As McGrady explained the simple procedure to replace an IV bag, Ms. Robins grabbed Maddy and rushed around the house stuffing their things in a suitcase. The little girl was like a whining anchor, needing to be dragged around by the hand. Ms. Robins barely noticed the weight. She had seen the creatures masquerading as people walking around the grounds and she had heard O'Brian's ghastly death as it happened. The screams had lanced her heart and she had bled courage ever since.
"Hurry, hurry, hurry," she repeated, over and over, desperately afraid to be left behind.
When the minute had passed, eight cruisers swept through the open gates. In each were two troopers, one literally riding shotgun. They screeched up to the cottages, nervously looking all around. In the glare of their lights they could see the strange people...the zombies in the rain.
Trooper Ian Andrews, in the lead cruiser disobeyed orders when he saw Ms. Robins. He rolled down his window long enough to yell at her. “Get in your damned car!" he screamed. "Forget all that crap!”
She had a suitcase in one hand, another under her arm and Maddy held by the collar to keep her from going anywhere. Mincing around the puddles in four-inch heels, she was the slowest by far of anyone fleeing the cottages. Before she even got Maddy tucked inside her Mercedes, Dr. McGrady’s BMW was already pulling out, spewing mud in an arc. Right behind him was Mrs. Unger in her Cadillac.
"Don't leave us!" Ms. Robins wailed. A zombie almost caught her as she pushed Maddy into the car. It came splashing up out of the dark, its face half shorn away, one eye hanging by some grisly string of nastiness. Ms. Robins didn’t have to be told to run. With a scream, she raced around the Mercedes, putting it between them.
As the zombie scurried around the car it walked right next to the police cruiser. “What the hell is that?” the trooper in the driver seat asked. His voice was girlishly high.
Ian didn’t notice and when he answered, his own voice was two octaves higher than normal. “What do I do? Do I shoot it?”
“No!” the driver practically screeched. “Don’t you fuckin' roll down the window again. Uh...Uh, use the spotlight.”
“Right,” Ian said. He had a death grip on his shotgun. It was as though the weapon had fused to his skin, and he had to will his right hand from the stock in order to work the spotlight.
The illumination, equivalent to 240,000 candles, blasted into the disfigured face of the zombie, transfixing it long enough for Ms. Robins to climb into her car. Just like McGrady, she didn’t wait for the troopers. She pointed the Mercedes across the lawn and stomped the gas, tearing twin ruts in the new sod before bouncing over the curb and onto the street. She was so out of her head with fear that at the gate she swung left instead of right.
Lieutenant Ford, watching from the new command post swore into the mike: “Someone get that black car, damn it! And who’s on the beamer?”
“Kilo-four is in pursuit of the BMW. That fucker is really moving.”
“Watch your language, Kilo-four,” Ford admonished. He relaxed a touch when he saw a second cruiser go off after the Mercedes. Ms. Robins wasn’t going to get very far. “Let me have a vehicle count.”
“This is Kilo-one,” Ian answered, his voice slightly more under control. “Including the two that got away I have a vehicle count of seventeen. I say again, one, seven.”
Ford had been thinking of just sending four cruisers to convoy the vehicles to the warehouse, however f seventeen vehicles was quite a number to handle. If the civilians decided to scramble and go in different directions the quarantine would be officially broken and he would be to blame.
“Kilos, one through eight, this is base. Once your stragglers are rounded up, reform and continue on to the warehouse. Do not let any stray. I repeat, no strays.”
This was a terrible mistake. With the Poughkeepsie officers gone and eighteen of his finest going berserk in the quarantine tent, Ford only had forty-one troopers to work with and now sixteen of them were off trying to round up civilians, few of whom considered themselves part of the quarantine. Two drivers needed gas and broke off as soon as they saw a gas station. One car had kids who wanted pancakes; the driver thought nothing of searching for a late night diner. And one family just wanted to go home—the driver of that car tried to sneak out of line at three different opportunities.
The troopers were gone for nearly two hours.
Back at the Walton facility, Edmund Rothchild watched the police leave. When the lights and commotion was over, he could see seven or eight of the beasts he had helped to create, standing in the rain. They made him sick to his stomach. He wanted to go out and apologize to them and a part of him felt it would be fitting if they tore him in
to pieces—he deserved it.
If he’d been alone he might have done just that, but there was Gabrielle and Jaimee to take care.
“Hello?” Jaimee asked, when the house grew quiet. “Can I come out now? I been real good.”
“Not yet, child,” Edmund replied over the intercom. “But I’m working on it.” He clicked off his mike and then dialed his partner Stephen Kipling. “Kip, it’s me. I need a favor. I need an ambulance and a driver who isn’t afraid of getting arrested. Money is no object.”
3
In the hospital, Thuy was out of ideas. Offensively, they had few weapons: a single gun with a handful of bullets and a couple of broom sticks that had been converted into spears. Defensively they rested their hopes on a few bits of twisted metal.
Thuy suggested they keep away from the central door and not make any noise in the hope the infected people would just give up and go away. It was a vain hope. The zombies could smell the mass of humanity and it drew them on. They went at the door endlessly, pounding with bloody fists, completely unfazed by the broken bones and the pain.
Time and again, growing ever more desperate, Thuy wandered around in the dark, kicking at the debris in her labs, hoping to come across something that would save them. There was nothing but trash left.
"We could pick a door and make a break for it," Deckard suggested. "I have twelve rounds. Who knows how far that will get us?"
"Bullets don't seem to make much of a difference against them," Thuy said. "From a scientific view, it's fascinating. From a human point of view it's terrifying."
Deckard pictured Lacy Freeman, impossibly standing up with two fat holes in her chest. "It's disgusting is what it is."
"Yeah, disgusting," she said, absently. The image her mind conjured up was that of Heines burnt and blackened, but still moving, still trying to kill. He was out there in the stairwell, no longer sentient or aware beyond his endless hunger.
She let out a long sigh. Deckard dropped down beside her, their knees touching gently. She didn't pull away as she once would have. There was no reason to, not anymore, not with their time so close.
They sat in an easy silence until a little after nine when she asked Deckard for some privacy. "I need to do something," she said at his look. By the light of her fading cell phone, Thuy wrote out a quick last will and testament. In it she apologized for her role in what had happened. The last line read: It seems fitting that I, who looked to end the death and suffering of others, but through my incompetence caused so much of both, will suffer at the hands of my victims. My death will not be long in coming.
The others on the fourth floor waited bored but terrified. That Von Braun would attack before they were rescued was a foregone conclusion. It made every minute a dull torture.
Most of them prayed. Eng was among the few who did not. He ground his teeth, thinking about what might have been. His right hand rarely left the front pocket of his slacks where the .38 snub nose sat. It was damp with the sweat of his palms. Despite all evidence suggesting that it would be of little value against the zombies, he was glad for it and he wouldn't stop touching it as if it held a spiritual significance.
The others would curl their lips at the way he kept rubbing himself. He didn't care. They would be dead soon and they would deserve what they'd get.
Alone in the BSL-4 lab, Milner paced. He'd been there long enough to know he wasn't infected; Heines had not yet been contagious when he had taken a bite out of him. Since no one was bothering to watch Milner anymore, he could've walked right out if he wished, however he chose to be by himself. The others were cretins. Miserable little bugs compared to him. Thuy was an abject failure, Riggs was falling apart under the stress, and Deckard, in spite of the bravery he'd shown was nothing more than a security guard. The rest were just morons. He figured if there was any justice in the world, they would all die a horrible death and he'd be allowed to walk out the front door.
John Burke fretted over his daughter. It ate him up inside knowing she was sick. "But she's a fighter, like her mama was," he whispered to himself. He'd been doing that a lot and the scientists had ceased cocking an eyebrow over it. John found it surprising that he liked the scientists and he had a real affinity for Chuck, whom he'd dubbed a good ole boy, despite that he hailed from that crap state Oklahoma. Then there was Stephanie, a fine woman in his eyes.
Good people. He was planning on leaving them when the fighting started. He would hold back, look for his chance and just split on out of there. Jaimee had to come first. He had to get to her.
Stephanie and Chuck sat with their long legs poking straight out in front of them. They were midway between the north stair and the central. They held hands like grade-schoolers and for the most part sat in silence. Chuck was built for silence; Stephanie liked to talk, but just then she didn't need to vent her frustrations, she needed to be reassured on one very important point.
"You won't let me get eaten alive, will you?"
He was quick to reply, "You know I won't let that happen to you."
His answer had come to fast for her, as though it had been an ingrained reflex as opposed to a thought out response. She shook her head. "No. I mean it. I can't be eaten alive, it's too horrible. I want you to do whatever you need to do to, you know, to keep that from happening to me."
At first Chuck was confused. She had to know he would fight his hardest for her, but that didn't mean he'd be able to guarantee her safety. Then the word alive kicked into his mind. Ohhh, now he understood. He wanted to bluster and "stand upon his honor" but that would've been just a load of bull. There was no honor in having the ropes of your intestines pulled out and fought over by undead beasts while you lay, half-alive, watching.
"I'll kill you if I have to."
"Just make it quick."
4
In Poughkeepsie, the darkened, windowless bar held the mindless zombies in; their olfactory senses weren’t superhuman. They smelled the tacky, nearly dried blood of the dead waitress and they smelled the alcohol that had been spilt and they smelled each other, but they didn’t smell the humans in the town just outside the bar’s doors.
They drank the alcohol until it was gone, then they simply hung around, as aware as the sticky, beer-stinking furniture. Who knows how long they would’ve stayed there sealed up in the bar simply from lack of wit?
Just after nine a young couple walked in and paused in the doorway. They took one look at the black eyed, crazy people and took off running for their lives. The two got away, however the floodgates were open and the twenty-four infected patrons went out into the night. They scattered, each directed by the phantoms in their heads. Pedestrians were attacked, as were cars filled with people. Homes were broken into and gunshots began popping off all over town.
Three of the zombies attacked a movie theater. The girl selling tickets behind the heavy glass actually laughed at them, thinking it was some sort of performance art or a skit of some sort. Even when one of the zombies figured out how to work the doors and screams began in the theater, she only chuckled.
In all this, the police were of little help. The recalled officers from the Walton facility, not understanding the severity of the issue, took their sweet time, griping over their radios at being sent here, there, and everywhere. They tooled back to Poughkeepsie at a gentle fifty miles per hour, causing a backup on the highway, as no sane person thought it safe to buzz by one cop car, let alone nine.
Officer Shadrick, in the last car, was chortling in his seat as he kept a watch on the civilians growing aggravated over the slow pace. “Here comes one,” he said into his radio. The car, a Ford Bronco that was mottled orange with rust, crept up, running at the posted speed limit exactly.
“Tell me when,” Officer Megs said.
Shadrick’s grin was so wide it pinned his lips back halfway to his ears. “Not yet…not yet…Now!” Just as the Bronco came up on Megs’ bumper he flicked on his lights. They flashed red and blue in the wet night and the Bronco swerved and slammed
on its breaks. Shadrick threw his head back and laughed.
“You guys are being juvenile,” Sergeant Reynolds said from the lead car.
“What?” Megs asked, his faux innocence coming through clearly. “My hand slipped. Besides, you’re the one doing ten miles an hour below the limit!”
“Are you saying you want to hurry?” Reynolds asked. It was a completely rhetorical question. A brawl in a college bar was nothing new. It meant a long tedious night of taking statements and going through the pain of booking a gazillion people on minor charges that would be plea-bargained down to practically nothing anyway.
There was no sense hurrying for that.
Twenty minutes later, the Poughkeepsie dispatcher, Erin Poole demanded, “Adam-six, where are you?”
“Be advised, Adam-six is engaged in a natural way,” Shadrick answered. Reynolds had pulled over at a McDonalds and was currently stinking up their bathroom while the others were munching their way through piles of french-fries.
“Who is this?” Erin demanded, breaking protocol. “Is this Shadrick? Tell Reynolds to get his ass back here. Things are, I don’t know, they’re getting weird and scary. We have all these college kids here, and they're starting to get...I don't know, really aggressive.”
Shadrick immediately ran to the bathroom and beat on the door until Reynolds came out, buckling his gun belt around him. “Something bad is happening at the station,” Shadrick said. Within seconds the nine cars were racing out of the parking lot with their lights blazing.
At first, the dispatcher was relatively calm as she urged them along faster, however out of the blue their connection went to shit. “Say again, dispatch,” Reynolds yelled into his radio. “You have to speak up. Who’s right there? What do you mean?”
In answer, a scream lanced over the airways and then the radio went dead. All nine cruisers heard it. There was no need for Reynolds to say anything. He pushed the gas pedal to the floor and kept it pinned there until the lights of Poughkeepsie came up. At the city limits they went loud, their sirens beating the air and drowning out the sounds of the gunfire coming from every direction.
War of the Undead (Day One): The Apocalypse Crusade (A Zombie Tale) Page 31