“My god, are you okay?” Huggins cried. “I mean, you hit that thing with your hands so many times. It could easily have broken the skin.”
“Relax,” said Burleson. “I’ve spent the last hour examining myself with a flashlight. I didn’t get cut anywhere. And I feel just fine.”
“That’s a relief,” Huggins said.
“Yes it is, Mister Mayor. Yes it is.”
“Why are you calling me that?” Huggins said. “There are I-don’t-know-how-many members of the city council who are next in line for that job.”
“And I don’t see that a damn one of them has shown up for work!” the governor responded, rising to his feet. “If it makes you feel more comfortable, we’ll just call you ‘acting mayor’ for the time being.”
“Really, I don’t know,” Huggins said. “You don’t even officially have the power to . . . to . . .”
“Stop with the hemming and hawing,” said the governor. With his free hand, he made the sign of the cross twice over Huggins’s face. Huggins swallowed hard.
“There,” said Burleson. “It’s done. Now what did you want to see me about?”
The city’s new acting mayor took a moment to collect himself. This was all happening so fast.
“Um . . . yes . . . the barricades outside, Mister Governor . . .”
Burleson had another puff.
“The barricades. Yes. What about them?”
“There are people outside of them,” Huggins said. “Lots and lots of people. They’re setting things on fire. They have guns. And they want to come inside.”
“We need the barricades,” Burleson said. “Just one bite, Huggins! Think of what happened to your predecessor!”
“Yes, but the people . . . they’ve come here from all over the state. I think they just want help.”
“They will figure it out for themselves,” the governor said. “Hoosiers are resourceful. Whatever it is, they always handle it.”
“Yes,” said Huggins. “There are also reports of zombies forming groups in the countryside. Out in the fields where there’s nobody to put them down? Big groups. If one of them headed toward the city . . . ? Maybe we’d need to bring everyone inside the Green Zone.”
“Are you crazy?” Burleson said. “There’s no room. You know that.”
“Well then . . .” Huggins said carefully. “Then maybe we need to . . . ask for a little bit of assistance?”
The governor took another puff and stared into Huggins’s face, just visible in the reflected light of the vehicles outside. How he hated Huggins and his nitpicking worries.
“Huggins, you’re about to make me regret appointing you mayor,” Burleson said.
“Acting mayor,” Huggins reminded him.
“This will blow over,” Burleson said. “Believe it or not, we will get through this. The sun will rise tomorrow, and a new day will come. These people outside the Green Zone will get tired of protesting and go back home. Protesters always do.”
“If they don’t break though the barricades in the middle of the night,” Huggins interjected.
Burleson was unmoved.
“This will be over soon,” the governor said. “If one or two people—insane people, criminals probably—get shot storming a police barricade, then what can you do? Will it be a tragedy? Certainly. But this is a crisis situation. You’ve got to expect a little shit to hit the fan, and a few bodies to hit the floor. And when everybody calms down and the power comes back on and people head back to their homes and start numbing themselves with television . . . probably just a few hours from now . . . well. Do you want me remembered as the chicken little who went screaming scared into his satellite phone?”
“We could still fix it—I’m just saying,” Huggins interrupted.
“Or . . .” Burleson continued. “Do you want me to be remembered as the governor who kept order? Who kept law and order?”
Huggins had, many times, advised Governor Burleson that running as a law-and-order candidate would be effective for him at the national level. Now the governor was throwing these words back into Huggins’s face.
“I just . . .” Huggins stammered, suddenly feeling like a teenager told he could not have something he desperately wanted. “If you’d only come out to the barricades and take a look . . .”
There was a sudden and loud knock at the door to the governor’s office.
“Mister Governor?” called a guard. “There are military and trucks approaching. I think we’re being invaded.”
In the darkness, Huggins smiled hopefully. Had the federal government taken the initiative and sent assistance unbidden?
“Naw,” said the governor. “It ain’t an invasion. It’s just BP.”
A few moments later, Governor Burleson and Acting Mayor Huggins were standing on the steps of the capitol building and watching as three eighteen-wheelers—flanked by as many armored cars—pulled up to the curb. Each vehicle was emblazoned with the Burundi Petroleum logo. John Dawkins—the BP Indiana Jones—waved perfunctorily at Burleson from the window of one of the armored cars.
“What is this?” Huggins asked.
“Trucks of phytochemicals, brought down from Whiting,” Burleson answered.
They watched as the truckers disconnected their cabs from their trailers. Then, with no further ceremony, the cabs and armored cars made their way back through the checkpoint heading north on Meridian Street. Outside the armed barricade, the confused crowds parted to let the convoy through. (This might have been because the armored cars had cowcatchers.)
“This is the stuff we add to the water supply,” the governor explained. “Every city in the state will get at least one truck.”
“But . . . you don’t have access to the water system from the state capitol building,” Huggins pointed out.
“That’s right,” Burleson said. “We’ll have to wait for these . . . chuckleheads that have us surrounded to head back to their homes. Then we can have the chemicals taken to the various aquifer input points. Badda bing, badda boom—the next time somebody tests our drinking water? No zombie juice. Damn things must have been an act of God, amirite?”
The governor was pleased. He elbowed Huggins jocularly in the ribs.
“But how do we get the people to disperse?” Huggins pressed. “What if they don’t want to leave? What if they stay?”
The governor gave Huggins a look to indicate the mayor was killing what remained of his buzz.
“If they don’t want to move, then we’ll get some damn armored cars with cowcatchers like BP has,” Burleson said in an isn’t-it-obvious tone. “This is no problem at all.”
They stood there a moment longer, looking at the giant green trucks full of chemicals. The police, National Guard, and others within the Green Zone regarded the trucks curiously.
The governor smiled. He seemed content.
Huggins reminded himself that he was now an officeholder. Perhaps, in this connection, he should keep up appearances. Somewhat reluctantly, he too allowed himself to smile. Burleson noticed this.
“There you go,” the governor observed. “See? It’s not so hard.”
Huggins had to agree. It was not hard at all.
26
The round leader of the bikers had introduced himself as Big Red. To Nolan, this was a bit of a puzzle, as nothing about the man was very red. (Big, however, was amply covered.)
Big Red took a small detachment of bikers—along with Nolan and Drextel—and drove up Southeastern Avenue to the heart of the city. It was difficult to hear much above the roar of the engines, but Nolan could smell improvised campfires on the wind. Big Red did not say exactly where they were going.
After just a few minutes, they began to pass other travelers heading down toward the circle. People who had strapped their belongings to the tops of their cars. People on foot with backpacks. It had the feeling of a pilgrimage. One lit entirely by candles and flashlights.
The bikers neared downtown and the traffic became quite thick. Nolan th
ought of the handful of times he’d worked major events downtown. The place had the feeling of a rock concert, or maybe that time they’d hosted the Super Bowl.
Near the heart of the city, bikers veered off into a string of back alleyways. Nolan was not familiar with this part of downtown, and was soon disoriented. Big Red pulled his entourage to a stop next to a string of dumpsters at the service entrance to a hotel. He got off his hog and fished a large ring of jangly keys from his leather jacket. He flipped through until he found the right one, then used it to open the service door.
“How did you get a key to this place?” Nolan asked. The bikers merely chuckled. They turned on their flashlights and followed Big Red inside.
They were in a dingy service area. It was full of carts holding unwashed room service dishes, plastic tubs full of water that had once been ice, and racks full of silverware. There were also cases of wine in cardboard containers, and stacks of glassware in plastic crates. The bikers touched none of it. Instead, they conducted Nolan and Drextel through a grungy metal door. Beyond it was a stairwell that started going up and never seemed to stop. They began to climb.
The bikers—there were four in total, counting Big Red—performed impressively, Nolan thought. They were panting to beat the band, sure, but their giant guts seemed no substantial impediment. The bikers climbed just as quickly as Nolan. Drextel managed, too.
At the top of the staircase was a metal door with a “Fire Escape Alarm Will Sound” sign. Big Red paid it no mind and pushed through. Nolan, Drextel, and the bikers stepped out onto the hotel roof, many stories above the city.
The scene before him took Nolan’s breath away. The architecture of downtown Indianapolis spread out beneath them, dark and broken-looking. The spaces between the buildings were teeming with people. Rivers of flame and flashlight-beam seemed to spill out from the city’s center. Yet beyond these human rivers—at the very core of Indianapolis—were blocks that had been cordoned off.
“You prob’ly don’t need me to explain this . . .” Big Red began. “But I’m gonna do it anyway.”
“There must be a million people down there,” Nolan said.
Big Red nodded.
“Like every street festival you ever saw, times ten,” Drextel added. He was looking too, but kept his distance from the side of the building. Nolan guessed the bookish man was afraid of heights.
“Why is the city center barricaded like that?” Nolan asked, stepping to the very edge of the building—so close the tips of his shoes extended over the edge. “What’s happening?”
Big Red explained that the dark area at the city’s core—the area that encompassed the state capitol, the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, and the City-County Building—had been cordoned off hours ago. It was full of police and soldiers. According to Big Red’s sources, they’d initially erected the checkpoints just to keep zombies out. Before long they’d stopped letting anybody inside, alive or dead. At the same time, people across the state started heading for the capitol. Some people did this because they figured Indianapolis would be the first to regain power and basic services, but most people were fleeing from the zombies that were gathering in the countryside.
“We’ve ridden across half the state in the last twelve hours,” interjected one of the other bikers. “The things we’ve seen there, you wouldn’t damn believe. Whole towns—whole towns!—eaten alive. Zombies get together out in the cornfields where you can’t see it happening. The corn is like camouflage for them. They collect in there. Then all of a sudden they come out of the corn next to some little flyspeck town—and there are a thousand of them, and they come from all directions—and they eat everybody. The whole town.”
Nolan nodded seriously.
“Listen,” Big Red said. “This here’s the important part. And move back from the damn ledge, wouldja? Yer makin’ me nervous.”
Nolan smiled and complied.
“The Inlaws have what you might call ‘relationships’ with other bikers across the Midwest,” Big Red said.
“Yes, you transport drugs with them,” Nolan said. “But go on.”
“Well now, I suppose maybe we do . . . come to think of it,” the biker said with a grin. “But what we did today—while you were dicking around in the woods—was connect with our brothers in other states. First we went over to Cincinnati. Then we went down to Louisville. And do you know what we saw? We saw tanks and planes and Army soldiers—real Army. We saw Air Force, Marines, Navy. Like that.”
“You saw the Navy in Cincinnati?” Nolan asked skeptically.
“They were out on the river,” one of the bikers insisted.
“But you don’t see that down here, do you?” said Big Red.
Nolan agreed that he did not.
“So what does that tell you?” the biker asked.
Nolan thought. If the bikers were being honest, he had to admit he had no good answer.
“Maybe those other cities are more important than Indy?” Nolan tried. “Or maybe there’s a waiting list, and the Army will get to us tomorrow.”
“I don’t think so,” said Big Red.
“Then what?” Nolan asked.
Big Red looked around at the other bikers, and they laughed as though the answer could not have been more obvious.
“What?” said Nolan.
“Well . . . Hank Burleson, o’course,” Big Red said after the laughter had died. A late summer wind whipped across the roof of the hotel as the words left the biker’s lips.
“James,” Drextel said. “Maybe you ought to tell these men what you were doing down south today.”
Big Red looked back and forth between them.
“I thought y’all said you were looking for your daughter,” Big Red said to Drextel.
“We were,” said Drextel. “But first . . . James, you tell ’em.”
Nolan hesitated for a moment. He was not completely sure why. He had never hesitated to say he did jobs for the governor. Heck, it was a source of pride. It opened doors and impressed women. And yet now a strange knot came to his stomach. It took him a few moments to fight it off.
“I’m a police officer,” Nolan began. “My title is Special Sergeant. During the day I work narcotics. East side.”
“You know Nathan Dazey?” asked one of the bikers.
“Who doesn’t?” Nolan replied with a smile. “But the reason the word ‘special’ is in my title is that I also do stuff for the governor when he calls. Odd jobs. Stuff he wants to keep quiet. Things like that.”
“Hell, you work for the damn governor?” one of the bikers said. He lunged forward and raised his fists like he wanted to punch somebody. Nolan tried to gauge how high the stout biker would have to jump to connect with his jaw.
“Hold on!” Big Red said to his compatriot. The other biker lowered his fists, but still stared bullets into Nolan.
“Yeah, I work for him,” Nolan said. “So what?”
Big Red stroked his beard, thinking.
“We have a plan,” Big Red said. “See the barricades down there? People have been pushing up against them and getting pushed back all night. As more people flow into the city, it’s just going to get worse. People are gonna get hurt. Or killed. A cop or a National Guard is gonna get nervous and start shooting.”
“But what can you do?” Nolan asked.
“It’s not what we can do,” Big Red said. “It’s what you can do.”
Nolan did not understand, and said as much.
“Why do you think we picked you up?” Big Red asked. “Why do you think we brought you to Indianapolis?”
“I don’t know,” Nolan said honestly. “You’re basketball fans?”
Big Red chuckled.
“What I am is a grizzled ol’ biker man,” Big Red said. “At least that’s how people see me. And that’s sure as hell how the guards and police on those barricades would see me. But you’re a different matter.”
Nolan was silent.
“Somebody needs to diffuse this situation,” Big Re
d said. “Someone needs to tell those National Guard troops to set down their guns and let the people through. Then get to the governor and tell him he needs to do whatever they’re doing down in Ohio and Kentucky . . . and not this!”
Big Red gestured down at the center of Indianapolis with a single violent poke. Nolan could imagine him gouging an eye out in a bar fight with that kind of move.
“If we go to those barricades looking like we do, we’ll be the first ones that get shot,” Big Red continued, looking around at his brethren. “But if James Nolan did it? Well, I’d sure as hell listen to him.”
Nolan was not convinced.
“Whatever your politics are, I think the governor’s a reasonable man. He’s helped me a lot over the years. If things got truly hairy, I’m sure he’d do something.”
Big Red shook his head.
“I don’t know if you can see it from here,” Big Red said, “but let’s give it a shot . . .”
Nolan was not following.
The bikers walked Nolan to the far side of the skyscraper roof. They faced away from the downtown scene, toward the fields and farms south of the city.
“I’ll be goddamned,” said Big Red.
“What?” Nolan said.
“I thought for sure it’d be impossible to see in the moonlight . . . but there you go,” Big Red answered cryptically.
“Huh?” Nolan said. “I still don’t see—”
But then he did.
Big Red was looking at two blobs of grey/black on the very cusp of the horizon. On a night with electric light or cloud cover, they would have been impossible to discern. But the only artificial illumination came from tiny campfires, and the full moon blazed away above. Nolan couldn’t believe his eyes.
“Just in case you can’t put two and two together, those are enormous groups of zombies,” Big Red said wryly. “They’re the ones I’ve been telling you about. The ones that form up out in the countryside. They meet other groups and join up. Then they do it again, and again.”
“Jesus,” Nolan said. “There must be thousands. Tens of thousands.”
“Yup,” Big Red allowed. “And they’re headed this way.”
Nolan tried to figure out how close to Indy the zombie groups might be. He recalled his high school physics and tried to gauge the height of the building and divide it by . . . but no. He was coming up empty. All he knew was that if they could be seen at night with the naked eye from a building downtown—even a very tall one—they could not be that far from Indianapolis.
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