Zombie, Indiana

by Scott Kenemore

  Huggins scratched his head.

  “Well . . . is this what I was supposed to see?” Huggins asked the officer.

  The officer shrugged and said, “I guess so.”

  Huggins was not satisfied.

  “Who told you to come get me?” Huggins demanded.

  “Deputy Chief Jones did,” the officer answered. “Actually, he didn’t say to get you. He said to get Governor Burleson. But we couldn’t find him, so then he said to get you.”

  “And where is Deputy Chief Jones?” Huggins pressed.

  The officer did not respond, but gestured down the avenue toward the noise and firelight beyond the Green Zone.

  Huggins strode across the street to where a group of police officers with chevrons on their shoulders huddled confidentially at the entrance to a parking garage. Nobody was the deputy chief, and they too pointed him south. Huggins drifted down Capitol Avenue, walking in the very middle of the street. This, coupled with the nearby municipal vehicles, gave him the feeling of being in some sort of strange parade.

  Huggins reached an elevated walkway above the street connecting the Indiana Convention Center to a shopping mall. The National Guard had selected this as the southernmost border of the Green Zone. Several soldiers with sniper rifles huddled in the darkness atop the elevated walkway, and several more stood directly underneath it. A fire truck, a pair of military Humvees, and several personnel carriers had been parked just past that, blocking off the street. On the near side of this barricade were other assorted soldiers, government staffers, and city workers, each armed with precious flashlights. Several IMPD police cars were also parked nearby.

  Huggins approached the most important-looking group of people, and from them selected a heavyset black man in an IMPD uniform.

  “Deputy Chief Jones?” Huggins tried.

  The man looked at Huggins and nodded. Huggins had not turned on his flashlight and was harder to see. The man hit him in the face with a bright blue beam.

  “Ah, Chief of Staff Huggins,” the deputy police chief said. “Where is the governor?”

  “I have no idea where he is,” Huggins said.

  Another uniformed police officer stepped forward and shouted: “We need to speak to the governor, and we need to speak to him now!”

  Huggins put up his hands.

  “Whoa,” Huggins said. “What’s going on here?”

  “What’s going on here?” said the deputy chief. “We’ve got what looks like half the city massed on the other side of the Green Zone—here, and at about five other points all around downtown.”

  “Why?” Huggins said. “What do they want?”

  “I have no damn idea,” said the deputy chief. “Maybe they just came downtown to cause trouble. Maybe they want the lights back on and the hospitals up and running again. Maybe they want your boss to do his damn job.”

  “Are they being violent?” Huggins asked. “I see fires.”

  “Not so far,” the deputy chief said cautiously. “Those fires are for light and heat. But that could change at any moment. If these people lose their heads and charge, there’s not a damn thing we can do. Even if the governor ordered us to shoot them, I don’t think we have that many bullets between us.”

  It hit Huggins that they might be on the verge of something very terrible and very imminent. In an instant, he was no longer in the lone outpost of safety, waiting for the rest of the countryside to slough off its zombies and come back to civilization . . . instead, he was vulnerable. Some enormous, idiot animal was sleeping just outside his gates. And if he—someone, anyone—made the wrong move, the beast was liable to get angry.

  “I think I understand the situation . . .” Huggins said with mounting dread. “I’ll go get the governor.”

  “Just be sure you get somebody,” said the deputy chief, and turned his attention back toward the mass of people south of the Green Zone.

  Huggins took off running toward the capitol building as fast as he could.

  23

  The nondescript one-story bar that served as the headquarters of the Inlaws Motorcycle Club was located at the ass-end of Southeastern Avenue on the south side of Indianapolis. Under normal circumstances, to reach it most expeditiously from south of the city, a commuter would head north on State Road 37, then jog east for a spell on I-465, and then finally turn onto Southeastern Avenue.

  But no part of this was normal.

  As Nolan and Drextel clung to the back-fat of different bikers seated in front of them, both men noticed that the convoy of Harleys was taking an approach to the city that seemed more than a bit indirect. As they neared County Line Road, the bikers turned onto side streets where modest homes on modest lots alternated with farms and cornfields. It was so eerily, blisteringly dark that Nolan was only able to assure himself of their location via the odd street sign glimpsed in a headlight’s glare.

  Though technically residential, these streets were hilly and wild, and the convoy of bikers moved across them like an iridescent metal caterpillar. Again and again, Nolan’s gut told him they couldn’t be this close to the city. He could still see stars. This felt like cornfields downstate. But again and again, familiar buildings and landmarks loomed into view and proved his gut wrong. This was the place.

  Except it wasn’t.

  Lit only by the moon, the city looked dead. Like the grave marker you might erect on the ruins of a previous civilization. This was a monument. A remembrance. The ghost of a Midwestern metropolis that once had been. Not the town that Nolan knew.

  As the bikes penetrated deeper and deeper into Indianapolis, Nolan noted that the darkened windows and doorways around them were alive with movement. Furtive movement, but movement. Then, before long, the furtiveness seemed to fade. Nolan started seeing pedestrians out on the open streets. Lots of pedestrians. Had they come here from other parts of the state, seeking sanctuary and safety (or at least electrical outlets with power in them)? And what had they found? This dead dark city where the residents skulked in shadows.

  The bikers drove on. One of the winding back roads finally went underneath I-465 and intersected with Southeastern Avenue. The bikers turned and headed into the city, toward downtown. They passed modest blue-collar homes with well-kept lawns where residents—most of them armed—milled about and chatted in the starlight. When the bikers came into view (or, Nolan considered, earshot; for people heard them long before they saw them), these residents waved, gave a thumbs-up, or even lifted their guns into the air. One woman in a ratty housecoat actually burst into applause.

  Were these bikers pillars of their community, Nolan wondered? Did they help residents along Southeastern Avenue locate lost dogs and sell Girl Scout cookies? Probably not, Nolan thought. Probably they were just bikers who mostly drank and fought and fucked, and sometimes moved a little meth around. No, the locals were cheering just because the bikers still existed. All the other entities and institutions had fallen away under the stress of this situation. Yet the bikers had survived. They were maybe the one familiar thing that had endured. Their organization, such as it was, had continued to function. They were what was left.

  The bikers pulled to a halt in front of the wretched, unmarked tavern that served as their headquarters. Candles flickered in the grimy windows, and people milled about inside. A long row of Harleys was parked in front. Nolan’s group pulled up and made it longer.

  Nolan was exhausted, hungry, and had bugs in his teeth, but other than this was basically fine. Drextel said nothing, but appeared to be likewise no worse for wear.

  Somewhat disconcertingly, Nolan realized that he was the center of attention. (Many of the bikers were as round as they were tall. Spherical, or at least ovoid, men who lived their lives close to the ground. Nolan stuck out above them like a sore thumb. A very tall sore thumb. And then there was the recognition. He could see it on their faces. There was something else too. Something more than just seeing a celebrity. Something like hope.)

  Nolan and Drextel were ushered into
the squalid bar. Someone had nailed a rotting zombie’s head to the door, with a long coffin nail right through the forehead. Despite himself, Nolan smiled at this.

  Inside, the headquarters of the Inlaws revealed itself to be smoky and serious. There was a long wooden bar, a pool table, and a number of chairs and tables that did not match. The walls were decorated with posters of hot rods and girls that nobody had bothered to frame. The bikers were obviously using whatever candles they could find to light the place. Many of the flames that flickered on every flat surface (except the floor) arose from scented candles. For Nolan, it was like walking into a perfume store.

  The head bikers huddled in the back of the bar, talking in low tones. Nolan was offered a lukewarm beer, which he declined. After a few minutes, Nolan began to see gestures in his direction from out of the huddle. It was clear that he was the lone topic of conversation.

  “What do you wanna do?” Drextel said out of the corner of his mouth, sidling up beside Nolan.

  “I don’t like being anyone’s hostage,” Nolan said quietly. “We’ll see what happens. At the very least, I’ll make sure they let you go.”

  “You kidding?” the bookish editor replied. “Whatever happens, I’m stickin’ with you . . . at least until we get back to my neighborhood.”

  Nolan nodded to indicate he understood.

  The huddle of bikers at the back seemed to have concluded their immediate business. They adjourned in all directions, and a number headed straight to Nolan. The police sergeant let an unflinching scowl come to his face, one he usually reserved for the arrest of a particularly unsavory character.

  The round leader of the biker gang stepped up to Nolan, staring hard into his eyes. Nolan returned the stare.

  “Mister Nolan,” the biker said. “We need some words with you.”

  “That’s good, because I need to have some words with you. Where do you people get off kidnapping me? Or kidnapping my friend Drextel, for that matter? Do you know what we were doing down in those woods? In the middle of all of this shit, Drextel’s daughter is missing. I know her. She’s a good girl. She’s scared right now, and the only thing she wants is to get back to her father. And now you’ve brought him up here to Indy, a hundred miles from her.”

  The biker, confident and untouchable, stared up into Nolan’s eyes without flinching.

  “I don’t know what you expect me to do for you,” Nolan continued. “I don’t know if you think I can make your little gang important because I used to play basketball, but that doesn’t matter. There are bigger problems in this state right now.”

  “I know that, son,” the biker said. (Despite himself, Nolan smiled at this; he had not been addressed as “son” for many years.) “That’s why we need you.”

  Nolan wrinkled his brow and tilted his head to the side.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “How long you been downstate, son?” the biker said.

  “Since it started,” Nolan told the biker. “Since yesterday afternoon. I think I was one of the first people to see the zombies when they started coming up. I was in a cave.”

  “Well, let me fill you the fuck in on what’s happening up here,” said the biker. “This city is halfway to hell. These things—walkers, zombies, whatever you call ’em—they’ve been massing into big groups that you can’t stop. You wouldn’t believe how deadly they can be in a herd. You see one or two? You can run away, sure. But you wander into the middle of a group of three hundred? There’s no getting out. Everywhere you run, you run into a zombie. Before you know it you’re exhausted, and then they move in and rip you apart. I’ve seen it.”

  “So?” said Nolan, “What does that have to do with . . .”

  “Listen,” said the biker, raising his hands to silence the tall policeman. “You’re not hearing me. These groups—these battalions of zombies—they’re massing in the countryside and heading into the cities. They’re attracted to people. I don’t know how or why, but they are. Maybe they can smell us on the wind. They know where Indy is, and they’re headed here.”

  Nolan opened his mouth a little, but did not speak. He wondered—if the things were headed toward Indiana’s capital city—why on earth the bikers had taken him there.

  “The government has made a safe zone down on the circle,” the biker continued. “They have guns and tanks and hummers and everything. Totally secure.”

  “That’s great,” Nolan said. “So swallow your pride, leave your guns at home, and get down there.”

  The biker shook his head.

  “You don’t understand,” the biker said. “They’re not letting anybody in.”

  “What?” Nolan said. “That can’t be right. Maybe they just turned away some of your men because you look a little rough around the edges. You’ve gotta be used to that . . .”

  The biker’s stare was unwavering. In his ten years on the force, Nolan had learned to recognize cues that could indicate when someone was probably lying. The biker did not show any of them.

  “I didn’t believe it till I saw it myself,” the biker said. “They’ve got people camped out all around downtown. Women and children. People have come into the city to get away from the zombies. But now the zombies are coming, too.”

  “And the Army’s doing nothing?” Nolan said. “I can’t believe that.”

  “It’s not the Army, exactly,” the biker said. “Maybe a few National Guard reservists. But they’ve got downtown sealed off. I watched them turn away doctors. Honest-to-God doctors in scrubs with stethoscopes around their fuckin’ necks.”

  Nolan studied the man’s face. How did this mad tale have such a ring of truth? Did the biker’s unkempt beard and broken blood vessels conceal the tells that might otherwise betray a liar? Yet Nolan did not doubt him. Even if he were lying, he at least believed he was telling the truth.

  “If that’s the case,” Nolan said, speaking slowly, “I’d like to go and see it for myself.”

  The biker smiled, revealing a set of glistening white dentures.

  “I was hoping you’d say that.”

  24

  The Chevrolet Bel Air slowly crept north along State Road 37. Steven kept it near the shoulder, just in case someone came barreling up behind them doing the limit. He needn’t have worried.

  The highway was dark and still. Most of the cars and trucks they encountered were empty, abandoned by the side of the road. Steven carefully circumvented these, staring hard into the windows and windshields. The people inside were never alive.

  The operational cars were usually off at a distance. It seemed they took pains to keep it that way. At this point in the game—whatever the game was—running into strangers was a roll of the dice. When one car sighted another, they usually moved away to avoid a meeting. Steven did this, too.

  Green signs by the side of the road soon announced the approach of Indianapolis. Thirty miles to go. Then fifteen. Unbelievably, it appeared they actually might make it. (The ancient Chevy’s gas gauge showed the tank half full, but it had not moved since they had started their journey.) It was closing on ten in the evening by the time they reached the city limits.

  “It’s not there!” Madison cried.

  Madison had been silent for most of the ride, knocked out by the pills she’d swallowed. Kesha thought she needed the rest. Fleeing the zombies in the farmhouse where Sara and Tara had died had not done her ankle any favors. It was now swelled to near-grapefruit proportions.

  “The city’s not there,” Madison reiterated.

  “It’s just dark,” Kesha told her. “All the lights are out, so we can’t see it. It’s an optical illusion.”

  Madison sat up and stared through the dusty windshield as if she could not quite believe her eyes.

  “It’s like the whole city just fell into a giant pit,” Madison said.

  “Yeah, but Kesha’s right; it didn’t,” Steven said. “You’re just not used to seeing it dark. Nobody is.”

  The Chevy crept into the strange, light
less netherworld that used to be Indianapolis. Now and then they passed a landmark that was familiar to Kesha, but the effect was hardly comforting. She’d wanted to return to the city and find her father, yet this wasn’t the place she had imagined in her mind. This was another Indianapolis. An alternate Indianapolis. Where the streets were dark, you smelled fire on the wind, and the atmosphere was ghostly.

  They headed north toward the capitol, and began to see other people on the sides of the road. Some kept to the shadows. Others wandered slowly and silently across lawns and sidewalks, apparently unconcerned by the prospect of being detected. Were they humans or zombies—Kesha wondered—or maybe a little of both? In the glow from the Chevy’s single, dim headlight it was difficult to tell.

  “It’s my dad’s doing,” Madison said icily. “He’s fucked the whole place up.”

  “Maybe it will be better closer to downtown,” Kesha said.

  “Or worse,” Madison returned.

  Kesha had trouble picturing how that could be possible. This was a half-empty wasteland with strange men and zombies creeping in the shadows.

  Guided by Madison and Kesha, Steven steered the ancient car under 465 and east to Meridian Street. Then they turned north and headed straight for the capitol.

  “Just stay on this road,” Kesha told him. “Stay on this the whole way.”

  “Got it,” said Steven.

  Soon the houses and businesses on the passenger side of the car gave way to a sprawling green field. A small white sign announced the presence of Concordia Cemetery. After several hundred feet, the field became covered with headstones.

  “Oh shit,” cried Steven. “This can’t be good.”

  Kesha scanned the dark folds of the burying ground, but did not detect any movement.

  Madison, who was also looking, said, “I don’t see any zombies out there. Is this a new cemetery?”

  “Maybe the zombies can’t get through their coffins,” Kesha said. “Or they did but they’ve wandered away by now.”