“I said what the hell was that?”
“Just one more thing we need to be extra careful about. We’ll have to skirt far around that Runner. Shit, I thought they’d all be dead.”
“Runner? What’s that?” He looked in a few directions.
“The Runner, the infected that just…” I looked at him, he was oblivious, “Tom, you’ve seen Runners before right?”
“What Runner? What’s a Runner?”
Boom. If there ever was a God, and believe me I’ve thought about that a lot in the past year, even more than when I was in prison, then he had just targeted a nuclear missile on my nuts. My head actually hurt for a split second as I yet again processed something that shouldn’t ever be processed.
I looked hard at him and asked in a very quiet voice, “Tom, you’ve never seen an infected that runs?”
He harrumphed. “Hilarious.”
Triple fuck.
“Tom, this is no joke…”
He raised his eyebrows in that, Look pal, I know you’re bullshitting me expression.
“So the dead can run too?”
“They aren’t dead. Infected with whatever shit this is,” I waved my hand across the parking lot, “but for whatever reason, they didn’t die. Extremely resilient to pain, and don’t give a shit about personal safety…or hygiene, but alive.”
He still looked skeptical.
“Alright, have you ever seen a living person stand in a swarm like that, not only not getting eaten, but taking bites out of a zombie?”
He looked at the Runner, “He’s dead. Just like the rest.”
“Tom, why the hell would I… You know what? Forget it. If you see someone that just doesn’t look right, or if somebody looks feverish and twitchy, or for fuck’s sake if they scream all weird and loud, just run. Trust me when I say something will be chasing you.”
He nodded smiling, “Sure, pal.”
Idiot. Didn’t have an issue with dead people walking, but running was out of the question. Suddenly, I didn’t want Tom as my partner and guide, but I was committed now.
The front parking lot was as full of zombies as Tom was full of shit. The southern side barely had any though. The plan was to take the fire escape down from the roof of the barbershop/sewing supply business to the south, and traverse behind the little hill with the statue on it, bringing us right up to the ambulance parking area. Tom assured me there was a door there, and it would be open. He also assured me that the stairs to the morgue and his trapped cowboy buddies were twenty feet inside that ambulance bay.
He would not assure me that inside that door was a considerable lack of the living dead. It had been my experience that whenever you don’t see zombies, zombies are everywhere. Oh, that and there’s always a zombie in the bathroom.
Before any of that, we had to get to the Richie’s Records across the wide street. There were no zombies that I could see in the road, but as I just mentioned, that’s when I get really nervous. The music store had what we needed for a diversion.
We climbed down a fire ladder from the building we were on, and made our way across the street. The front window and door to our component shop were intact. I checked the top of the door for those annoying little bells that would announce our arrival, and finding none I opened said door. No stench of death of decay assaulted my olfactory senses, so I snapped my fingers once and waited.
Nothing came shuffling out of the darkness.
I held the door for Tom and he slipped inside, me following.
“You get some music, I’ll get the batteries,” he whispered and tried to mosey off.
I grabbed him. “I saw this movie. Everybody dies when they split up. We stick together. Don’t move outside of a five foot range or we could end up eating each other later.”
He blinked and nodded, wide-eyed, but most importantly he didn’t move. I grabbed some D batteries, and Tom picked up a silver boom box that came straight out of a nineteen eighties break-dancing movie. I found a rack of CDs, and thought for a moment that the radio might only play cassette tapes if it were truly from the eighties. Bingo. It had a big old CD player right in the top.
“Put these in.” I handed the batteries to Tom, and he ripped open the packages.
I started flipping through used CDs, shaking my head at the choices in the A section. Paula Abdul, Ace of Base, Air Supply. Air Supply? What kind of music shop was I in? Where in God’s name was the AC/DC? Seriously.
“What are you doing?” Tom eyed the front window. “Just grab one and let’s go!”
He grabbed the first disc in the first rack. Yup, you guessed it. ABBA.
He handed it to me and I almost puked. “Tom. There’s a good chance we’re going to get dead in a few minutes. I will not die to ABBA. Jesus, don’t you hicks listen to anything good? This is the damn country! Where’s all the country?” I came across something that had no right being with the rest of this shit: Aerosmith.
I held it up. “Now this? This is the shit.” I used my knife to open the disc, because everyone on earth knows you can fight with your thumbnail trying to open a CD case and it will just smile and tell you to screw. I placed the disc case back on the rack. “Now we can go.”
We got back to the ladder without seeing a single creature. I handed Tom the disc, but didn’t let go right away. “Track number four, and crank that shit to eleven, buddy.”
“It only goes to ten.” He pointed at the knob.
Jesus, who are these people? “Ten then,” I told him shaking my head. “Alright, get up the ladder, I’ll turn it on.” He climbed, and I tried to crank up the volume a little louder, but it wouldn’t go. Of course I hadn’t turned the damn thing on yet, I just wanted to see.
I put the boom box on the sidewalk and set the selector to CD. The blue light read number one, so I pressed skip three times and climbed up the ladder like a monkey with its ass on fire. I didn’t get three rungs before the awesome sticks of Joey Kramer started beating the shit out of his drums. The song Walk This Way had begun, and it was LOUD. When I was halfway up the ladder, I turned to look down the street. At least thirty dead had decided to fight for the front row of this gig. Funny considering the musical choices in the record store.
I scuttled over the ledge, Tom helping me, and we stared down. The street was filling with undead. We moved two buildings over, and that might not sound like a lot, but it was probably almost an eighth of a mile when you considered the corner and the way the road was situated. Pus bags were stumbling past us down below, all headed for the concert.
“That, my friend, is a fucking diversion.”
He nodded, smiling, and we made our way to the fire escape a few more buildings east. We belly crawled up to the edge and looked at the hospital parking lot. Sure enough, dozens of them were moving off toward the music. The Runner was gone too, but I didn’t see him sprinting anywhere. When the coast was clear, we climbed down the iron ladder. We had to pass several inky black windows, which concealed God only knows, but nothing attempted to eat us.
Keeping low, and skulking between abandoned or crashed vehicles, it took us just under an hour to make that last quarter mile. The trip had been scary. I checked my watch and it was almost three AM. The sun would be up in two hours, compromising our stealth, but I didn’t want to hurry for fear of making too much noise or being seen.
The caterwauling howl of a Runner froze my blood appropriately. That little shiver that most people say runs down your spine, but actually scrunches your balls (sorry ladies) hit me, and Tom looked absolutely terrified. I had no idea how he could have lived this long and not heard that scream. The scream had been close.
Tom looked like he was about to break radio silence, and I ran my finger over my own throat and then held it up to my lips in one of those desperate Don’t utter a sound! gestures. He got it and kept his teeth together. No. Dear Reader, there was no radio, but that sounded great didn’t it?
We were hunkered down next to an ambulance with open back doors. I peeked under
it to make sure no feet were on the other side, or crawlers were down there. What I did see was the giant sexy rear tires of my MRAP. It was backed up to the ambulance bay, and it too had the back door open.
That royally pissed me off.
Morons brought my truck into a dangerous situation, and then left it completely vulnerable. It was no great wonder that these assholes were trapped.
I didn’t have tons of time to remain angry because those feet I was looking for a moment ago shuffled into view. They were wearing cowboy boots, but that was no surprise, we were in shit-kicker country. The boots moved toward the back of the ambulance, and I pulled my SOG from the shoulder sheath once again. The thing moved past the end of the bus (that’s what paramedics and EMTs call an ambulance, and I think it is just as cool as radio silence), and stopped, sort of looking about.
It didn’t look in our direction though, and I crept up behind it and tapped it on the shoulder. It turned slowly to see what had touched it, and before it could moan, I drove the point of my blade into its eye.
This corpse was fresh, still dripping. It had been savaged, and most of its important morsels had been removed, although it still had its arms and legs. With my knife in its eye, the thing grabbed me and made a noise like raaaaahhhh… before its remaining eye rolled back in its skull and it collapsed. The sound it had made was more or less quiet, and we hadn’t attracted any other critters. I was hoping most of them were listening to Aerosmith a few streets over.
I heard Tom sigh. “Jesus, Jimmy…” he said under his breath.
“Was this one of the guys that came in with Sabotino?”
Tom nodded. It had gone bad for this guy, but I also understood the need for the supplies they came for. We wouldn’t disappoint.
Tom and I moved around the front of the bus, and I looked at my truck in all her beautiful glory. I stepped up on the passenger’s runner and looked in the window. Nothing was amiss. Moving to the back I could see that the MRAP was empty, devoid of living or dead. I climbed in and made sure both the passenger and driver’s side doors were unlocked, then hopped out the back and looked into the forebodingly dark maw of the ambulance bay doors. Both doors were propped open, one with a big trash receptacle, and the other with a corpse. I couldn’t see five feet in with the darkness though.
Decision time: Turn on my tac light for a moment and shine it in there, illuminating the zillion or so shuffling corpses, and also telling them that dinner had arrived, or don’t turn it on and go in blind.
Fuck that.
I turned it on for a moment and swept back and forth. Several corpses littered the area, but two steel interior doors twenty feet in were closed, and there was nothing else moving. I shut the light off and Tom pointed to a side door about ten feet past the exterior doors. This was the way down into the basement and the morgue. It was across the hall from an elevator which was undoubtedly used to bring deceased down to the basement. There were bullet marks in the concrete and brown arterial spray on the walls. Old brass littered the floor as well and a fluorescent light dangled broken from the ceiling. All of these things indicating a stand had been made here, but it hadn’t been recent.
Scared shitless, I made my way inside the hospital and turned my light back on. My mouth was totally dry and my nuts were clenched. I was on edge, and Tom wasn’t any better, looking every which way, pointing his shotgun at every possible location. I pushed the door open, and looked into the stairwell. More corpses. Three of them, and put down for good. Two landings down was another door, this one with a window. Tom and I crept down the steps, me turning my light off. I looked through the window, and I could see several shapes moving in the gloomy hallway, and there were lighted windows at the end of the hall.
I couldn’t tell how many, but there were more than a couple, and they lurched and staggered. We were in the basement, a floor below the street, with a couple of doors between us and anything that could hear us. I was hoping if this went bad that nothing above would hear the shots down here. I pulled the suppressed Sig but it didn’t have a light on it. I passed Tom the HK. “When I open the door, turn the light on and shine it at their faces. Don’t shoot. If they start getting too close, or if I run out of ammo quickly, give me the rifle back and get ready to use your shotty.” He swallowed hard and accepted the rifle. “You turn the light on here with this thumb switch.” I indicated the pressure switch on the magwell grip. “You ready?” He nodded, looking terrified.
I pushed the door open, and the smell was pretty awful. The door hadn’t made a sound, but the moment Tom hit the light, thirteen dead faces looked right at us. The moaning started, and so did the shooting. I dropped two before they moved. They came at us quickly then in the confined hallway and I took my time shooting. The suppressed rounds were loud in that hall, and my ears were ringing in just a second or two.
There were about fifteen left at thirty feet, and that math didn’t work for me. Had I created zombies? I fired the Sig until it was empty and slid in another magazine. I fired that one empty too, but there were still plenty left. I’m not gonna lie and tell you every shot was a head shot, but I did pretty well. When the Sig’s slide racked into the open position, I knew it was about to get louder.
Dutiful Tom passed me the HK and aimed his shotgun, but didn’t fire. I chose the closest target, putting my red-dot on her forehead, and let the dead broad have it. Now that was loud. Way, way louder than the suppressed weapon. It sounded like a friggin grenade, and the sound bounced all around the corridor, instantly making my ears ring twice as loud.
Those dead bastards never made it within five feet. I dropped them all. Two more came from side rooms down the hall, and I ejected my magazine and shoved in a fresh one, yanking the charging handle and taking aim. Two shots later and the moans stopped. I could barely hear them anyway over the ringing, but I could tell they were done.
We moved down the hall, and I looked into the first open door: janitor’s closet, and empty. Second door was closed, and the third door was an office in a complete shambles, but devoid of bad guys. I closed the door anyway, and Tom got the janitor’s door.
The morgue was at the end of the hall, and it was all glass windows with that chicken wire embedded in it. There was also a light on in there and that didn’t make sense. Heavy curtains covered all the windows from the inside, and I knew this is where Sabotino and his two guys were holed up if they were still alive. I could hear something moving around through the double doors at the end of the hall, but there’s no way whatever it was hadn’t heard the shots and the moaning, so it was either incapacitated or blocked from getting into the hallway.
I shined the light back and forth down the corridor, but nothing more was coming for us. That didn’t mean that there weren’t eight thousand ambulatory corpses bearing down on us from upstairs though.
I looked at the curtains again. If the boys were in here, those curtains had saved their lives. The twenty-five or so undead that I had re-killed might have overwhelmed the living men had they tried an escape. Granted there were three cowboys and only one of me, so if I could do it alone then the shit-kickers should be able to do it too.
I asked Tom if he would be kind enough to click the radio twice, wait, then twice more, signaling Sabotino that we were outside the door. He did, and we received four clicks in response. I knocked on the morgue door, and I heard something heavy being moved out of the way behind it. The door opened a crack and someone I didn’t know looked out at me. He let loose with an audible sigh, and opened the door to allow us in, shutting it immediately after. “Heard you shooting.”
The light was a camping lantern, and I almost laughed at that. These dumbasses were lucky the dead hadn’t wanted to investigate the light, but if it had been on when the zombies got down here, I get why they didn’t smash the windows in. The mortuary looked like any one you would picture, with the steel fridge doors to store horizontal chilled corpses against the wall, a couple of examination or autopsy tables, file cabinets, a desk, stainl
ess steel sinks, and coroners tools.
Sabotino and his two remaining stooges did indeed have seven bags full of pilfered medical shit, but on their best day, they wouldn’t be able to carry it all out in one trip. I wondered how they got it all down here, but I didn’t want to spend the time to ask. Stooge Number Three was on one of the tables, very dead. “He got bit,” said Stooge Number One. “Zero tolerance policy. I had to shoot him.”
The sheriff put down his beautiful lever action rifle and stuck his hand out. “Thanks for coming,” he said to me.
I shook his meaty paw. “It was my pleasure, but I’m driving us out of here. That, of course, assumes the entire ambulance bay isn’t full of them by now.”
He nodded, and I wanted to get this show on the road, so I shouldered a duffle and made to leave. The other guys did the same, and we all moved back out and up the stairs as quietly as possible. We didn’t encounter anything scary all the way to the MRAP, and we loaded the stuff. Tom was getting in the passenger’s side door when he somehow shut the door on his fingers. I heard them crack, it was gross, but to Tom’s credit, he didn’t make a damn sound. I would have screamed my head off at the pain.
I looked at his hand, but I couldn’t do anything right then. We would have to button up first. “Alright, let’s get the hell out of here; we’ll fix your hand up in a minute.”
The sheriff looked at me. “We need those last two duffels.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind? We need to get as far from this place as we can, and now’s the time, the dead are all a few streets over listening to a concert.” I thumbed in the general direction of the tunes.
“Those bags have some critical supplies like drugs and bandages. We lost two men getting them, I won’t have them die for nothing.”
“Fine, go get them.”
The stooge that opened the door folded his arms. “I ain’t goin’ back in there.”
“Yeah, that’s not happening,” the other guy said.
“Then I’ll have to make two trips.”
The Zombie Theories (Book 2): Conspiracy Theory Page 9