***
From the doorway of the tea shop, Karen watched Paul jog up the sidewalk to a woman in a brown coat. Karen pulled her cell phone from her jacket pocket and opened the Greenport Muni app. Administrative and managerial city employees could access the internal dashboards and remotely control their respective domains. Karen could query call records and monitor incidents in near real time. She could also command crews at will and move them like a general moved figures on a map.
Her app showed two crews en route: a ZMT team and a fire ladder. She requested one more fire truck to inspect all the vehicles on the devastated street and begin clearing the debris. Well past eleven, the store fronts, signs, and street lamps kept the street well lit enough she could see down the entire block of wreckage. People bunched together on the sidewalk and inspected one another for scrapes. Most appeared okay.
“How does it look out there?”
Karen turned to meet the black-haired woman who helped her up. “An absolute mess.”
“I haven’t seen anything like this in a while, not since outside of Greenport.”
“Me neither,” Karen said, quickly texting Thomas to check the app for any other incidents with an eighteen wheeler involved.
The woman stood behind her. “What’s that, in the back of the trailer?”
Karen looked up to the trailer—someone or something crouched like a dog on all fours. She stepped outside, calling back over her shoulder. “I don’t know.”
“Are you going to go near it?”
Karen ignored her and paced along the cars jumped on the curb, focused on the shifting figure inside the truck cargo hold. Down the street out of hearing range, Paul still sat by a woman and a body sprawled on the sidewalk, in an animated conversation. She loved Paul’s caretaker instincts, how he would take the time to help neighbors with their respective honey-do projects, or when he actually got to use his medic skills to treat people. ZMTs spent less than half their time on kill calls, and actively responded to emergencies to save lives. While all techs were supposed to be fully engaged to save lives as much as end them, Karen suspected a minority only cared for the calls in which they could shoot something, seeking an adrenaline rush they received during the Plague.
She climbed between two cars and continued approaching the back of the truck. The steel door had scratched streaks in the pavement, tracing a path to a metal cavern. Faint shuffling noises came from within the shadows, and the figure crawled on all fours diagonally toward the opening. It stumbled out onto the torn-off door, the face plate of its helmet clanging against the metal. It began to rise.
A tall masculine figure in a black tactical suit with matching gloves and boots stood before her. The chest puffed out and square, as if it were armored, and padding pushed through the forearms and upper thighs. Scuff marks marred the all-black motorcycle helmet, and its deep grey visor reflected the streetlamp back to Karen. A bright white LED light popped on and flashed.
She inched backwards. “Hello? Are you okay?”
It turned its head, the beam from the LED scanning the street behind her.
“Hello?” Karen waved. “Can you hear me?”
It turned its back to Karen and lifted the other door. The hinges snapped and the door tore from the side and heaved onto the hood of a car. Strapped to the side of the trailer, appeared to be three wooden boxes. A fourth lay in pieces further back. The male figure dropped its head and stepped inside, turning to rip the box strapped closest to the door. Wood splintered inside the trailer and plunked on the floor. Another beam of light appeared, rotating up and down the length of the trailer and out the door at Karen.
The second figure rolled its hips and swung its feet to the ground, ripping apart the strap that held the box to the trailer. Wood snapped and clattered in the dark, and two more white beams bounced on the trailer walls. The second figure turned and illuminated two more visors of identically dressed people.
Karen squinted into the reflected light, which illuminated the inside. Shards of wood scattered along the ground and the remains of red tie downs. The four people in their visors appeared as four shadows cutting through the darkness, their movement stiff and rigid, their boots landing hard against the metal.
“Hey, who are you?” she called. “Why were you in the back of the truck?”
Footsteps and beams of light answered back. The figure closest to her moved its head, panning the street behind her, and three matching figures came into view underneath the street light. Karen clicked her phone to life and began video recording the foursome to upload to the city’s servers for investigating later. She’d ask the police to look into if anyone match their descriptions from throughout the day.
A head turned, and its visor light crossed Karen’s eyes. Someone ripped the phone from her hand.
“Give me that,” she yelled. The figure cocked its arm and hurled the phone against the wall, shattering it on impact.
“What the hell?” She reached to grab its shoulder. The arm swung back and shoved her off her feet, sending her backwards and skidding across the pavement. Her right hip throbbed, bearing the brunt of the landing, and the back of her head stung. She reached behind her head to check for blood, scraped dry grains of sand through her hair.
“Hey you!” The black-haired woman from the tea room ran out and stopped along side a disheveled car on the curb. Her arm was raised, holding an orange gun. No bigger than a Glock, only four rounds rested in the magazine, and it would only fire for the gun’s owner. She pulled the trigger.
A bang erupted with a flash at the end of the chamber. She stood firm with her elbows locked and jaw clenched. The bullet cratered the visor of the black figure that pushed Karen, and glass and blood exploded outward on impact. The body collapsed to the ground. Its helmet LED shined on Karen.
The woman peered over the car to see Karen. She lowered her gun. One of the figures leapt forward, stomping the hood of the car and landing on the sidewalk. The woman stepped back, and a hand in a black glove wrapped around her throat and lifted her into the air. She gasped and kicked, dropping the gun to the ground. The figure carried her above its head while her limbs flailed. It stopped in front of the glass window of the tea shop, lowered the woman still in its grip and punched the glass with her head.
Karen screamed. The black figure again bashed the woman’s skull against the window, and again, shattering it. Blood ran down the woman’s forehead; the back of her head was caved. The figure dropped her body half in the sidewalk and half inside the tea shop. The remaining patrons fled to the back of the store, knocking over tables and chairs.
The killer rotated its head to scan the inside of the store. It backed away, glass crunching under its feet, and turned to Karen.
***
Paul turned back to the zombie in the jumpsuit, instinctively reaching for where his sidearm would be holstered if he were working a shift. City regulations prevented off-duty personnel from carrying their issued weapons, but they could carry their orange gun when off duty. A small contingent of Greenport residents carried their issued orange guns with pride, but the majority preferred to keep it for home defense. Most off-duty ZMTs carried their orange guns, wishing for their on duty weapons. And tonight, Paul’s issued orange gun lay in his bedside table.
A pop burst from down the street. The zombie and Paul turned for its origin, but the trailer sprawled across the street blocked their view. It made a distinctive, muzzled pop of a flare. Paul knew someone fired an orange safety gun.
Then a scream.
The zombie turned its whole body toward the source of the cry, shuffling half its body on the bone jutting from its arm and kicking its legs in succession. It began to flop like a walrus with only one fin across the pavement, forgetting about Paul.
Paul eyed the severely disabled zombie and looked back to where he came and remembered Karen, still in the tea shop. He couldn’t tell if Karen or another woman screamed. He stopped himself from yelling or running at the zombie. He stood un
armed. Delivering a swift kick to its head would only antagonize it further, and despite its lack of movement, it would still be able to grab him and knock him down.
He ran back to the cab and knelt at the running board resting along the front and and rear bumper of two cars. It appeared loose enough to pry the scrap of metal off the cab. He fit his fingers underneath the flat edge and pushed upward with his arms. The front bolt of the running board popped through the distressed rivet hole. His right palm grabbed the metal and his shoulders forced it backwards.
The screaming ceased, and the zombie continued to flop away from him.
He yelled, “Hey!”
The zombie spun back to Paul.
“Come back this way.” The muscles in his legs burned as he sought leverage to snap the metal loose.
The zombie began shuffling back to Paul. The bone in its dangling forearm snapped and dropped to the ground. Its face contorted and jawed yelling at a ragged pitch.
The metal bent upward, hinging on the back bolt. Paul pumped the metal up and down to fracture the weak point.
Continuing toward Paul, the zombie’s rhythm plopped and skittered across the pavement. It would propel itself forward with its left arm while simultaneously kicking its feet, and landing on its chest. The bloody stump of a right forearm pushed up and begin the cycle forward anew. It crawled less than ten feet from Paul, and he labored to pry the metal free.
A bright wash of light swept across the zombie, and a low rumble approached behind him. He winced at the glare of an oncoming SUV and stopped prying the metal loose, unsure of where the vehicle would stop. Tires screeched and trails of smoke drifted, and the vehicle stopped wide to Paul’s left.
The driver’s side door flung open, and a figure in jeans, brown flannel shirt, and skull faced bandana across half his face, raising a 9mm handgun in Paul’s direction. The husky figure looked familiar. Paul let go of the metal, dropped to the ground and covered his head. A burst of two shots erupted, and the screams of the zombie ceased.
Paul rolled over to see a jumble of flesh and limbs piled less than five feet from him, close enough to inhale a stench of copper and bile. He looked at the masked figure, and it casually approached Paul, with the gun lowered. The broad shoulders and Adam’s apple let him know the shooter was male. He stood up, squared his feet and raised his fists on instinct, wincing at the throb in his shoulder.
“Paul,” the shooter said, his southern accent thick, waving the gun at his hip. “I brought a gun to your fist fight, and this is the second time today I’ve saved your damn life.”
***
Karen ran across the street and hid behind a faded blue minivan. People dashed by her, away from the scene unfolding. She inhaled deeply. The adrenaline and frantic urge to seek shelter away from the black clad commandos fueled a fire underneath her jacket. Popping the top two buttons, she closed her eyes and sought to organize the thoughts haphazardly piling inside her head.
Who or what were the black figures? Men? Women? Soldiers? Mercenaries? They lacked Greenport’s standard uniform and moved too quick and without remorse to be citizens playing dress up. They had to have been trained to react with such precise brutality. And nowhere in any of the city’s rules of engagement called for bludgeoning someone against a glass window. Were they under attack? Did an outside force get past Alan’s network of security provisions? And for what? The city thrived in comparison to other cities, and hostile attacks ceased years ago once the persistent threat of zombies became manageable. Was Alan watching the chaos now on one of his feeds? Without her phone, she couldn’t communicate to him or her call center. The lack of information swelled pangs of anxiety in her stomach. The only information Karen possessed at this moment: Three out of four commandos roamed Belleville, one of whom killed a woman. A truck lay jack knifed down the main street as people fled past her. And Paul was somewhere on the other side of the trailer.
She opened her eyes and rolled to the ground to peer beneath the minivan to the other side of the street. Two pairs of boots stood still while a third approached them. Karen envisioned them scanning the buildings and surrounding area with the white beam of light feeding them data.
Two gunshots sounded up the street, and two of the commandos pivoted. Karen looked down the street, seeing only the cab of the eighteen wheeler atop a pair of cars. She looked beneath the van again and the three sets of boots marched up the sidewalk to the source of the gunshots.
Karen crawled to the back bumper of the minivan and watched the commandos stride up the street. She dashed across the street and continued to follow them, discovering the strewn body of the black-haired woman, whose eyes now pooled with blood, mouth hanging open. At the sight of the strewn orange gun, Karen wished she could pick it up and use it, just in case. She skirted past the broken glass, with no one remaining in the tea room. The dead commando laid still with its beam pointing to the sky. Curious, she approached.
Up close, the clothes looked like those issued to the military—heavy, rugged and covered with pockets. The boots lacked any scuff marks, and where the top of the boot met the pants, a stretchable piece of fabric connected the two. The same material connected the gloves and shirt. A slick, synthetic material was worn underneath the outer shirt and covered its neck, upward underneath the helmet. The helmet had a flat black sheen, and the hard plastic visor reflected a smoky grey, with a black hole off center, where the bullet punctured. Karen couldn’t make anything out through the hole. She attempted to lift the visor, but it remained sealed shut. She tugged at the helmet to remove it from its head, and it tilted from the front, but remained in place as if caught on a hook. Her fingers traced the jawline of the helmet and discovered a metallic screw head the size of a dime. She placed her fingers between its jaw and helmet to where the screw appeared to be. A threaded, slick piece of metal connected at its cheek into the back of the jaw.
Her hand recoiled at a cold wetness. The slickness stuck to her fingers, a deep red and black liquid covering the tips. She rubbed the murky fluid on her jeans wishing she hadn’t touched the dead commando. Her fingers, despite the fluid removed, felt unclean, and a dull sensation spread across them.
Past the three commandos, a man sat atop the woman in the brown leather coat that Paul was talking to, its head buried in between the woman’s neck and shoulder. Blood covered the front of the jacket as she lay, her head jostling back and forth while the man gnawed away. Her fingers twitched as if to key a piano and her mouth opened and shut. The pinned woman let out a scream, a scream that told Karen she had turned.
The woman grabbed the man’s shoulders and shoved him backwards onto the street out of Karen’s view. The now female zombie sat up right and screamed again while looking back and forth. People still huddled on the sidewalk now ran. It jumped up to follow the fleeing crowd.
It took its first step, and the lead commando seized the zombie by its neck with its left arm and threw her against the brick wall. Her body bounced and fell to its side on the ground. She began to push up as a second commando dropped the heel of its boot into her neck. The zombie screamed and reached her right arm around to grab the commando’s leg. The commando grabbed her wrist and twisted her arm, delivering a kick with its other foot. Repeatedly.
Karen’s eyes grew wide and her hand covered her mouth, watching the commando kick the skull of the zombie until blood splattered on the concrete and its screams gave way to silence. During the Plague, she’d witnessed a few bandits or marauders act that vicious to make a sadistic point: They held power, and they could use it as they deemed necessary. She didn’t think she’d ever see them again.
The other two commandos turned to their left and walked toward the street while the lead commando stood over its kill. Karen spotted a shop with mannequins dressed in winter clothes in the windows and its door slightly ajar. She crouched low and scurried to the door. Across the street, Paul climbed into the passenger side door of the crashed truck while a person with a bandana mask pushed him up. She sli
d in the door, and closed it behind her.
“Are you bit?” a high-pitched male voice yelled.
Karen whipped around and held her palms out in front of her. “No, no. I’m not.”
“So God help me I’ll shoot you if you are,” said the man. His emerald bow tie clashed with the orange gun shaking in his hand.
“I haven’t been bitten!”
“Raise your arms. Turn around.”
Karen spun on command. Through the front glass, one of the commandos picked up a male zombie and smashed its head against the pavement. Now face-to-face, the bow-tied man lowered his gun, placing it on the counter, and smoothed the hair of his grey comb-over. His green gingham shirt tightly hugged his short frame. He moved toward Karen from behind the counter.
“I apologize for my hostility.”
“It’s understandable.”
“It appears this situation is out of character for the neighborhood.”
Karen laughed under her breath. “That’s an understatement. Look, do you have a phone, or a computer that’s connected to the network?”
“I do, a tablet,” he said, before placing his hands on his hips.
“I need to use it.” Karen tried to stress the urgency in her voice.
“This doesn’t seem to be the time for such activities. We need to be prepared in case an undead crashes the store.”
“Sir—”
“Nicholas, please.”
“Nicholas, my name is Karen. I manage the city’s response teams, and right now, I am your emergency response. If I can get to the network, I can command ZMTs here to protect your store.”
Nicholas paused as if to consider the request permissible. He walked behind the counter and pulled out a tablet the size of a piece of computer paper. “Very well, Karen. If the ZMTs damage my store, I expect full restitution.”
Survivor Response Page 9