The last agents to leave the room must have closed the door without locking it behind them.
Tom leapt across the conference table and trampled across the backs of fallen zombies to make his way to the exit door on the opposite side of the room. The floor was like a muddy bog of body parts, and his ears were met with the squishing sound of blood drenched flesh, and crunching bones beneath his feet.
By the time he reached the door, Tom observed that the lock had been broken by Baycheck’s team as they forced the door open to rescue the group inside.
Both the main doors and the emergency exit could no longer be locked; there would be no way to keep the zombies from escaping the room. There were too many for Tom to keep contained.
As Tom yanked the clamoring creatures away from the exit door, he caught a glimpse of the nearby service area across the hall. He knew what he had to do if he was to stop this room full of zombies from getting loose again.
Tom quickly retrieved the vest full of explosives that lay in the corner of the service area and darted back into the meeting room, shoving back two middle aged creepers that were advancing out of the doorway.
The living dead had become more of a nuisance than a personal threat now that he was no longer vulnerable to attacks, and he pushed his way back into the room like he were pushing shopping carts back into a supermarket’s cart corral.
On the floor, sprawled out in a pool of his own blood, Ron appreciated that Tom knelt to check on him once more, despite both of them knowing Ron didn’t have much time left.
Tom saw Ron looking at the vest and answered his unspoken question.
“I need to stop these things from leaving this room. There’s too many of them,” Tom said, before searching Ron’s pockets and retrieving the one thing he needed - the detonator to the vest.
“There’s only one way I can stop them.”
Tom put on the vest and stood up and began connecting the detonator to the loose wires protruding from the lining of the vest. He felt a tug at his leg. It was Ron.
“Give it to me,” Ron said feebly, coughing up blood. “I’m dead already.”
Tom paused. He respected Ron’s heroic gesture, and reluctantly slid the vest off of his body and onto the floor by Ron, and gave him one last look.
“Well, go on… get out of here,” Ron said with strained force.
#
The explosion tore through the convention center with the ferocity of a dragon’s breath.
The massive windows erupted outward onto the street; shards of glass and debris rained down on the crowd behind police barriers nearly fifty yards away.
McCormick Place was flooded with fire, incinerating everything in its path. Thick plumes of gray smoke barreled out of corridors leading into the METRA train tunnel beneath McCormick Place.
NATO members were being hurried onto the lead car of the South Shore commuter train quickly after the passengers occupying that car were ushered by the secret service into the succeeding cars.
Weakened by the blast, the tunnel’s walls and ceiling began to crumble.
As the last NATO passenger was aboard the train, and the command was given to leave the station, a concrete slab sheared off from the tunnel and toppled outward across the platform toward the commuter train. A massive chunk collided with the third car, knocking it on its side.
Sparks lit up the dim tunnel and the cacophony of screeching, twisting steel was almost deafening enough to drown out the screams of those still trapped inside.
The torque of car number two, beginning its tilt onto its right side wheels as the lead car was still trying to pull away, caused the coupling between them to snap just as the lead car was about to fall victim to the chain reaction.
With all wheels solidly on the track, and gaining momentum, the lone commuter rail car sped into the night, as its VIP passengers observed the full view of the catastrophic scene from the rear windows.
The lakeside landmark, McCormick Place, engulfed in flames as smoke billowed into the night sky like a dark pall being drawn out over Lake Michigan.
The lead secret service agent radioed in to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center the new designation for the South Shore rail car, which now contained the President of the United States.
“Renegade is secure. South Shore rail car No. 15 is now classified call sign U.S. Rail Car No. 1. Repeat, Renegade is secure aboard U.S. Rail Car No. 1. Destination, South Bend Airport. Requesting transport for the President and NATO members. Over.”
“Roger that. Both Air Force One and Marine One are in route.”
#
In the days and weeks to come, the resulting media coverage will be controlled so that extremist zombie sympathizers are to blame for the explosion.
Not a hard sell at all in the aftermath of such a devastating blow to the city of big shoulders.
The morning sun rose on a quiet suburban street - so quiet and normal looking that it hearkened back to the days before the epidemic and chaos gripped the city.
Holly Dexter rose from the breakfast table of her mother’s house to answer the doorbell.
“Good morning. You don’t know me,” Jemma Straight told Holly, “but I’m a friend of your father’s.”
Holly’s eyes filled with a mixture of delight and sadness over meeting someone who knew her deceased father, but she uttered not a word.
“I just thought you should know that your father is a hero and you should be very proud of him.”
Holly was a bit confused. She was still grieving her father’s death at the hands of some major who accidentally shot him at a military base, whose name she couldn’t quite remember.
What she did remember was that her father died trying to save her and that was enough to make him a hero to her.
“He wanted me to give you this.” Jemma stated, then handed Holly a bag with her store’s logo on it.
Holly stood in the open doorway as Jemma walked away without another word.
She looked inside the bag to find a copy of a Zombie Tales comic depicting a hand rising from a grave with the title Zombie Resurrection.
When Holly looked up to ask the significance, Jemma was completely out of sight, but she could feel the distinct presence of someone watching her.
# # #
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the “I want to be a Zombie” contest winner, Jemma Line from Dagenham Essex, United Kingdom (whose character appears in this installment), for her invaluable feedback during the editing stages.
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To see more works by this author visit www.hdtimmons.com
Zombie Lies Page 5