“Yeah, what did Krupp say to you?” Lisa asked as she locked on his eyes.
“He said you were cold-blooded and that I should watch myself around you.”
Lisa just nodded; she knew why she did what she had done. She wanted to believe that she would do it again no matter who it was, but she didn’t know for sure. She questioned if it would have been different if she had known Nobles better—or even liked her for that matter. The one certainty was that it was something that had to be done; she knew it and Nobles knew it too. Lisa saw it in her face at the very last second before the round entered her skull.
“He’s probably right. You might be able to catch up to them if you want,” she said.
A second later, they heard the infected break through to the upper floor. It was too soon; the lot below hadn’t cleared out enough for them to make it down the balconies to the ground. Now all that stood between them and the infected was a cheap fire-rated door in a tenement building.
“Too late,” Benson said. “If I do get bit, then put that gun right up to my head and pull the trigger; just like you did for Nobles. I’ll tell you exactly what I told Krupp; you did Nobles a favor.”
Lisa smiled in return and stopped herself from making some smartass comment. A vision of Nobles’s eyes when she pulled the trigger was burned into her mind and she could not look at it lightly, not now… not ever. Nobles was the first person she had ever drawn down on, let alone killed. Everybody always said it was easier the second time, but she had her doubts. She didn’t know if she could do it again—especially with Benson. He’d always been pretty okay to her. Then again, she drew down on Traynor when she went for the shotgun. Maybe the truth was that she never knew how she would react until the situation arose.
Her thoughts were interrupted with the arrival of zombies banging on the apartment doors. It was as if they knew which room they were in. A sizable hole in the blockade must have been made because it sounded as if the entire horde was right outside the door.
The door shuddered and the frame itself began to bow inwards. Before either could react, both their attentions were drawn by screeching tires out in the street that bordered the parking lot.
Chapter Two:
The Clinic
Sitting in Dr. Webber’s exam room should be like second nature to Ally now; he was not the doctor who delivered her, but he was the only doctor she remembered. Being there should be quite comfortable for her, but it wasn’t. Maybe it was all the strange people she and her mom saw on the way to the clinic. There were always a few drunks stumbling around town, but this morning there were more than she could have imagined—they even saw a group of them start to maul a person at a bus stop. They tried calling the police but got no answer and Ally’s mom didn’t seem to care; in truth, she didn’t care about much of anything as long as she could continue to listen to her audio books.
Another reason for being uncomfortable could be the fact that she was in a hospital gown with the backside exposed and her feet were in a pair of stirrups. For the first time ever she thought about the medieval torture chambers and all of their implements of pain. Ally put her ear buds in and closed her eyes, thinking that if she kept her mind blank for just a bit it could all be over soon. This was the first day of summer vacation before her senior year and she didn’t want to miss a second of it.
****
Screaming from the lobby caused furtive glances as the doctor continued with his examination.
“Nurse, could you go and see what exactly is going on?” he asked. He had seen a man and his wife when they first came into the lobby—bite marks evident—and the man already looked as if he was no longer in his right mind. Could this condition spread as it did on the zombie shows on TV? How delicious! the doctor thought.
The nurse looked around nervously when the doctor peeked at the door again, barely able to contain his glee.
It was happening!
The nurse knew that policy stated two needed to be in the room for this type of exam, but the girl’s mother was here and the lobby did seem to be the source of a lot of mayhem. The receptionist was in a panic trying to keep everything together and sounded as if she were being mauled by the crowd. The nurse smiled to the mom and removed her gloves on the way out, closing the door behind her. Though Montgomery clinic was a small clinic that adhered to state guidelines as much as possible, sometimes exceptions had to be made.
“There’s a lot going on out there, Mrs. Parks, and we really can’t afford to be disturbed if I’m going to get to those other patients today. Would you mind if I locked the door?”
“After all of these years you have to ask me something like that? Lock it, bolt it, pile chairs in front of it, slap it, and call me Suzy if you like,” Susan Parks said, trying to be funny and hopefully crack the all-business shell around the good doctor.
“Thank you, Suzy,” he said and smiled.
“Here are some gloves. I’m going to need your help, with the nurse being in the other room, and with one thing in particular,” he said as she stretched the rubber gloves over her hands. She looked up to see that he had an apparatus that appeared to be a box with hoses and wires.
“What is that, Doctor?”
“Well, it’s supposed to be a new device that monitors Ally’s stress levels throughout the exam,” he said and gave a nod toward the girl, whose eyes were closed. Ally had her ear buds in and didn’t even appear to be aware that her feet were locked in stirrups.
“I get lower rates on my insurance if I use it, but it doesn’t look like it’s working. Could you hold that box in the center there while I straighten these lines? Both hands please. There we go… then I pull this one down… and that one under… and voilà!”
“Ah, Doctor? You’ve tied my hands to the box,” Susan said before she felt the cold piece of steel up against her throat. Her eyes widened, not fully realizing what was happening. His left hand slapped a precut piece of duct tape over her mouth and slammed her against the wall before he pushed her arms high so the binding went up over a strategically placed coat hook. In one slice, he cut down the front of her shirt exposing her ample figure. Oh yeah… he had plans for this one. With the increased level of screaming outside, he was almost ready to jump up and down with joy. He couldn’t have paid for a better experience if he was at fantasy camp.
Natural is better, he decided as he looked at her unaltered breasts. ‘Natural’ was the anticipation of screaming and the scent of blood as it sprayed out along the walls and floor as if of its own accord. Natural was the way her breasts jumped out at him when he cut through her bra, natural was the glaze of fear in her eyes and across her entire being when the good doctor looked at Ally who was still oblivious to anything other than Bruno Mars.
His pulse quickened as he felt a flash of heat rush to his face. This was the experience of a lifetime; it was meant to be savored, not rushed.
He roughly took Ally out of her stirrups with a length of hose around her ankles, startling her out of her haze. A fist across her face stropped her scream and her arms flew up in defense. She scratched him as she tried to pull away from the doctor.
He smiled; he liked a good fight and her terror was delicious. Her mother was trying to scream through her gag as she thrust back and forth trying to get free. Her efforts increased when she heard Ally’s screams begin as the doctor tied her hands before bringing her ankles to her wrists hog-style and tied her off.
Pounding on the door slowed him for a second, but then he smiled again as he heard the nurse who had gone out to the lobby screaming for help. She was clueless to what he was in the middle of and merely seeking her own refuge. He was half-tempted to let her join in but assumed she was already bitten and infected by now.
The day was looking up and it had just started. With renewed energy, he hoisted the hogtied girl up and noticed that at seventeen years old, she was heavier than expected. Must be all of that new muscle growth and exercise teenagers have the time for, not to mention free food. Ally
was a fine specimen. He would love to do to her as he was going to do to her mother but she just wasn’t old enough yet for his tastes. He threw Ally on the ground at her mother’s feet and looked at her for quite some time, allowing the effects of the moans and screams from the lobby to settle into her head.
Ally had nowhere else to look but at him as he slowly undressed himself. She tried to close her eyes but it made her feel too vulnerable. If something was going to happen she wanted to see it coming.
He took the scalpel out of his vacated smock pocket and held it up before her eyes. It was nothing but a blade to her, but to him it was a solid silver piece of murderous history that stretched back over two centuries. A small part of his collection and a family heirloom passed down.
He set to work on Susan slowly. He allowed the weight of the fabric to separate itself as he slid the blade down her skin, never cutting flesh. To cut such beautiful skin was something to be savored, not hurried. He started to lose control in anticipation of seeing the milky white flesh parted for those few seconds before the blood flowed, but managed to stifle himself. This was going to be a good day and he planned to relish every sickly sweet drop of it.
It was a naked and bloodied man who knelt down next to the hog-tied Ally. Blood and chunks of her mother’s flesh clung to the doctor’s face and hair as he brushed the hair back from her eyes. The screams in the lobby area had stopped and became a low-pitched drone.
“So pretty, I could almost break my own rules for one who looks like you,” he whispered.
But then what good would morals be if they are not adhered to?
“No… when you’re a couple years older, I’ll find you,” the good doctor said as he leaned in and left a bloody kiss on her cheek. He smiled, the terror upon her face replaced with rage. He washed himself, and then grabbed a clean, wrapped suit from the closet. He turned and looked at the bound girl on the floor as if he had had a second thought. He opened a small, black, alligator-skinned pouch crackled with age and pulled out a shiny scalpel from his collection.
He laid the scalpel down just inches away from her nose before he rose to leave. With only a momentary glance into the lobby, he left, closing the door to the exam room behind him.
He looked around at the magnificent carnage and marveled at the complexity of it. He didn’t know what this apocalyptic situation was or how it started, though he suspected it to be on a Biblical level. A couple infected noticed him and started following, but most were still too interested in the food that littered the lobby floor.
****
Ally choked back the tears from what she had witnessed happening to her mother and let rage take over. It was the combined movement of her shoulder, hips, and hog-tied knees that got her positioned so she could get her hands on the scalpel. She didn’t know why he left it for her, but she wasn’t about to question it and she damn sure wasn’t going to feel any sort of gratitude. The scalpel sliced through the cords and tubes as if they were butter. She quickly dug through her mother’s purse for anything useful but realized that the windshield breaker on her mom’s keychain was the only thing that was going to help her other than the car itself.
Ally heard sounds coming through the door that sounded like moans and many people stumbling about. She didn’t know what was out there, but she was going to be ready for it.
She cracked the door and looked out before quickly slamming it closed. Anxiety forced the breath from her body in large gasps as her chest heaved. Zombies? She couldn’t believe it… the lobby was filled with zombies.
Chapter Three:
Benson
The casino bus tires smoked as it tried to push a path through the mass of dead. Riders on the bus screamed as the horde swarmed toward them, waves of fecal odor, urine, and dead flesh ripened by the sun preceding the horde.
The cop in Lisa wanted to rush out of the apartment where she and Benson waited and try to help those on board, but the realist inside of her wouldn’t allow it. She would kill four or five—maybe even a couple magazines’ worth—but in the end it would still be just that… the end. Her career as a cop was over; unable to perform her duties, she reasoned there was no sense in losing her life too. It was nothing but survival. Krupp was right; it was time to cut bait and run. But could she? Could she forget about all the citizens of Hot Springs?
“We gotta go,” she said as the zombies in the parking lot rushed toward the bus.
“Agreed,” Benson said. A waver in his voice undermined his determination, but his kids needed him and he would be there.
They crawled over the railing and hung until their feet felt the top of the railing below. They snaked their bodies inside the lower rail and dropped down. They repeated that with the next two balconies before hiding behind the stub wall that bordered the lowest balcony. The stub wall was three feet high and the bottom balcony was three feet off the ground, making it around a six feet drop, which they managed with ease. They slipped out and crossed behind their own truck as the mass of undead focused on the gamblers. They took advantage of the distraction, stopped at the truck bed, and opened the hatch. The truck was out of commission but there were bandoliers of double aught and full mags of .40s. Their presence drew some attention from the Zs, but they didn’t stick around long enough for them to be an issue.
A look more than three stories up showed Krupp and Traynor navigating the plank they had seen earlier that joined the two buildings. Lisa wondered why it was there and reasoned that it could have been left from someone escaping the building or a trick the maintenance man set up to go between the two. There were many reasons why, but all of them told her that it was not safe. She saw Traynor nearly lose her balance before catching herself and waiting for the plank to stop shaking before she moved on.
Benson pulled his expandable baton and hit the button, then tucked the strap of an M4 over Lisa’s shoulder as he adjusted the Mossberg on his own.
“Where we headed?” Lisa asked, not really having a plan of her own.
“We have to find a boat to get us across the pond if you want to get back to the station. I have to get to my family on Grand Island, so I guess we’ll be sharing a boat for a bit.”
They draped bandoliers across his front before he took point and they moved away from the approaching crowd. He looked for the quickest way to get out of sight as they headed back to the shoreline in hopes of snagging a boat.
Lisa slipped her Mossberg and M4 over her shoulder, drawing her side-handle baton and her .40. She and Benson started off across the parking lot, ignoring the few Zs making their way toward them. They crossed the street and quickly ducked through the hedge and down to the townhouses along the shoreline. These were normally occupied by older retired people who golfed and fished all day and played bridge until seven, if they weren’t heading out to the casino. The lot was filled with cars but no people, causing Lisa to assume they were the ones on the casino bus.
They ducked down behind a handicapped van and waited for the few who had followed them to catch up. Benson held Lisa’s eyes with a sense of urgency. At first she thought that he lacked confidence in her ability to kill these things, but then she realized his lack of confidence was in himself, not her. She gave him a reassuring smile as they let the first ones come past the van before they struck.
In one swoop, Lisa struck one right across the bridge of his nose, sending him onto his back and then swept the feet out from under another on her back swing. She jumped around the feet of the second one so that she could come down on the head of the first with her baton several times until it stopped trying to get up. Benson handled the other much the same. They stood to face the last two, who were just starting to moan. They didn’t know if the zombies called to each other or not, but neither wanted any more noise than there already was. Feeling more like gangbangers than cops, they rushed up to the remaining two and caved their heads in with a couple swift strikes of their batons.
“Let’s try the units closer to the shoreline. Maybe we will find som
e boat keys there,” Benson said.
“These are people’s homes, Benson; we’re cops not criminals.”
“I don’t even know what we are right now, Reynolds, I really don’t. But… what if we don’t steal from the houses that are occupied? I mean, look at all of them on the road,” he said, sweeping his baton in an arc to indicate the staggering masses of Zs all around them. “And the bridge is packed with cars and people—alive and not. We’ll never get across it, so unless you’re going to turn west and head for the mountains, we need a boat.”
Lisa took in what Benson was saying and reluctantly agreed. This was a pivotal point in her life and she knew that she had to make smart decisions in order to survive. Getting a boat was paramount to their survival. What did she expect when she suggested they come down here for a boat? Somebody wasn’t going to be here handing out boats, so of course she was going to have to acquire one.
Steal one.
She’d entered the apartment complex without any qualms, but these were locked doors of private residences. Was it a social status thing? Was it because these people had more, it made the crime that much worse? She shook off that line of thought and simply acknowledged that breaking into them just seemed all kinds of wrong.
They walked between the houses in the community, surprised that their earlier confrontation hadn’t drawn more in. Lisa’s eyes strained trying to see through the lace curtains that showed behind partially open vertical blinds. They saw a sedan in one garage that looked like it might be a Caddy or a high-end Chevy. The roads right now were not an option and they assumed the alleys and sidewalks were also havoc, so the car or one of the scooters in there were out. A boat—they needed one of the boats; they didn’t care which one, just something that floated and hopefully had a motor. In front of the Caddy, Lisa spied a box for a tarp or canopy that had a big Sweetwater trademark, so she knew they had to have a boat.
Zombie Rush Page 3