by Kirk Withrow
Lila jerked in her sleep, twisting and turning as though trying to escape some unseen demon that had invaded her slumber. After roughly ten seconds, her spastic movements faded, and Eric wondered if she’d managed to outrun the demons once again.
“There is more I need to tell you, Eric,” Frank said in a grave tone that immediately made the younger man nervous. He wasn’t sure he was ready for any more bleak news. “Mostly about this area…”
Eric’s unease grew considerably when Frank placed a gnarled finger on the section of tunnels located directly below Broadway. There was a red, squiggly line drawn near the main gate along with a red ‘X’ on the monorail track a short distance away from each side of the park’s entrance.
“Even though the major fighting inside the park has died down, there is still an active military presence outside the main gate. But it’s not what you think. You’ve probably heard sporadic gunfire since the battle on the first night; I believe this is where it’s coming from primarily,” Frank continued, tapping his finger on the wavy red line for emphasis. “I didn’t get a clear look at exactly what’s going on up there, but I saw and heard enough for my liking.”
Eric didn’t believe in ghosts, but the look on Frank’s face nearly made him reconsider. Still staring at the map, the older man’s hollow eyes seemed to focus on some unseen horror that lay far beyond the poster itself. After nearly a minute had elapsed, Eric asked, “Frank? You okay, buddy?”
Lost in thought and tormented by a painful memory, Frank shook his head as though trying to clear a great evil from his mind. He turned to look at Eric as if seeing him for the first time.
“I’ll be fine. Just stay away from the main gate,” he replied.
12
After some coaxing, Frank reluctantly told Eric what he’d seen shortly after hearing gunfire coming from the area near the main gate. He closed his eyes as he relived the horrific experience in his mind.
The shots were loud and fast—the type that could only come from military-grade hardware. His heart leapt, as an ongoing military engagement meant that there was still a chance of being rescued and getting out of there alive. The more shooting he heard, the faster he ran. His heart raced with excitement as he bounded up the east Broadway stairs, which opened into a covered area that faced away from the main drag in order to hide the tunnels’ existence from unsuspecting tourists. The primary reason the tunnels had been created in the first place was to allow things like trash and merchandise as well as off-duty employees to move through the park without detracting from the guests’ magical experience. As such, they were so well hidden that few people on the surface even knew they existed or how to access them.
Breathing heavily, Frank knelt on the east Broadway landing. The gunfire was so loud he could almost feel the concussive blast of each shot. Although he couldn’t see anyone from his position, whoever was shooting was close, possibly just on the other side of the building. Crouching low, he crept to the end of the wall. What he saw when he peered around the corner became permanently imprinted in his mind. Bodies upon bodies were heaped in jumbled layers that were nearly waist high in some places. It was as if the bricks that lined Broadway had been torn up and the road repaved with carnage. The sight and smell of so much death made him instantly woozy. He dropped to his knees, his face buried in his hands as though that might somehow block out the horror scattered all around him.
When he finally recovered enough to look at the wall of corpses again, he noticed several even more disturbing details. Despite most of them bearing injuries that didn’t seem compatible with life, many of the bodies still squirmed. In fact, the entire mound of bodies appeared to wriggle and twitch as though together they had morphed into a single organism. Given the severity of the damage he saw, he was surprised to hear no cries of pain. Instead, there were only hoarse, rasping moans that combined to make a low, droning sound like that of a swarm of insects overhead.
Mouth agape, Frank watched as a group of infected like the ones he’d seen in the break room started shambling toward the main gate. With a tumultuous roar that sounded like the heavens being ripped apart, the nearby machine guns sprang to life, tearing them to shreds and adding yet another layer of death to the ever-growing wall. The acrid smell of spent gunpowder mixed with the sickly sweet smell of blood and gore, creating an odor that made him double over gagging once again. Even so, he could hardly peel his eyes away from the thick, red mist that wafted weightlessly amidst swirls of dense, black smoke.
Having a front row seat to such a gruesome show made it impossible to ignore the utter brutality of the situation. By taking position near the park’s main gate located at the foot of Broadway, the soldiers had created a fatal funnel from which there appeared to be no chance of escape. In that regard, it almost seemed like the shooters might actually have a chance at winning the fight, as long they didn’t run out of ammunition. Frank thought about the number of tourists inside Fun World at the start of the outbreak and tried to estimate how many bodies already lay sprawled upon the once bustling thoroughfare. The latter task was akin to guessing the number of jellybeans in a giant glass jar at a fair, except that the jellybeans had been thrown into a blender and ground to a bloody pulp. Still, he imagined the considerable pile of death was actually little more than a drop in the bucket. The scene was hard to look at and even harder to watch in action, but he accepted that it was likely necessary in order for the good guys to prevail over whatever these things were.
What Frank saw next, however, took that understanding and tore it into a million tiny pieces. His ears still ringing from the recent fusillade, he saw several more people come into view. Unlike the walking corpses that had been strolling right down the center of Broadway like they owned the place, these people moved furtively along the edge of the road.
Hunkered down in the shadows of a storefront on the opposite side of the mountain of bodies were a woman and two kids. The woman, harried and disheveled, glanced around nervously like she expected Death to tap her on the shoulder at any moment. She had her arms around two children whose expressionless faces told the story of all the nightmarish things they’d witnessed. They walked sluggishly in whatever direction she guided them, as though they were no longer capable of moving on their own accord. The woman inched forward, pausing at the shadow’s edge just outside the line of fire. She stuck a foot out uncertainly as if testing whether the water was too cold.
“Julie!” A man’s voice—hushed but urgent—called out from somewhere nearby.
Frank glanced around but was unable to ascertain where the voice had come from. It was clear that the woman had heard it, because her movements became more frantic. Before the unseen man could utter another word, the woman Frank assumed to be Julie stepped out onto Broadway with the two kids in tow. She raised one hand to signal the soldiers and shouted, “Please help us.”
Before she could take another step, several gruff voices began barking commands at her from the direction of the gunfire.
“Stop!”
“Stay where you are!”
“Don’t come any closer!”
Like the angel of death clucking its terrible tongue, several ominous metallic clicks could be heard behind the men’s angry voices. Julie and the kids pressed forward undaunted. More desperate than before, the first man’s voice called out, but his words, like everything else in the vicinity, were soon engulfed by a massive barrage of gunfire.
For a brief instant, the woman and her two children appeared to dance unnaturally, twisting and jerking like hippies letting loose at a jam band concert. Almost as quickly, the boundaries between the three individuals blurred as red plumes exploded from each of their contorting bodies. Unidentifiable parts were blown away like roof shingles in a hurricane. When they finally collapsed to the ground, the damage inflicted by the .50 caliber projectiles punching through soft flesh at such close range was so great that it was impossible to tell that the crumpled heap had actually been three separate people only m
oments ago. Frank felt his gorge rise in his throat.
The man who’d called out to the woman unleashed a visceral cry of pain so loud that Frank heard it over the loud ringing in his ears. A flash of movement drew his attention away from the trio’s mangled remains. He looked up just in time to witness the second verse of the same song—the precautionary shouts, the heavy thud of bolts locking into battery, the chunk-chunk-chunk of the machine guns, and the red plumes. The man was running full tilt toward the pile of woman and kids when the first bullet struck him, the impact lifting him off the ground momentarily. When gravity brought him back to earth, he landed on his side and skidded forward several feet. An ever-expanding puddle of bright red began to form around the man. His breathing was shallow as he tried in vain to get back to his feet. Frank braced for the kill shot he was sure would come, but none did. After a moment, he realized that the man had come to rest just outside the heavy machine guns’ line of fire.
Still in shock and trying to process what he’d just witnessed, Frank stared helplessly at the struggling man. He was far more of a realist than an idealist, but this was simply too real. In fact, the man bleeding out before his eyes and the nearly disintegrated heap of family a few feet away were so far past what his mind accepted as possible that he struggled to formulate a new reality where such things could occur. After several moments during which nothing happened, he finally mustered the courage to try to help the dying man. Crouching low, he started to ease out from behind his cover. The dying man’s eyes shot up and locked onto him with startling speed and clarity.
“Don’t…” he said in a voice so clear and forceful that Frank considered looking around to see if it could’ve come from someone else.
Nevertheless, the dying man’s word had the intended effect as Frank stopped dead in his tracks. Sensing the implied danger, he crept back toward his cover as quietly as he’d left it. This seemed to appease the dying man, whose intense eyes began to fade almost immediately, as though the mere utterance of that one word had required the majority of his remaining life force.
“They’ll…shoot you. They…shoot…everyb….”
The dying man’s last word started strong but quickly morphed into something unintelligible that sounded like the last vestiges of air being forced out of a deflated air mattress. It was sickening, hollow, and final. A single, muted crack rang out in the distance as the dying man’s head exploded like a watermelon dropped from a tenth floor balcony. The impact made Frank jump, and he turned in time to see the shooter climbing down from his elevated position atop the main entrance gate. Shaking uncontrollably, Frank scrambled farther behind the wall, praying the sniper hadn’t seen him. He never took his eyes off of the man’s obliterated head. None of those people had appeared to be infected, yet they’d been gunned down just the same.
They shoot everybody.
The words had bounced around in Frank’s head like the bullet fragments that ended the dead man’s life, leaving no question about the situation. Now, in the relative safety of the tunnels, he stood unmoving just as he had on the day he witnessed the atrocities.
“Frank?” Eric asked, placing a comforting hand on the man’s shoulder in the hopes of gently guiding him back to the present.
“Huh? Oh, sorry. I just…”
Although Eric was sure Frank had spared him some of the more grisly details, he understood the message loud and clear: the military were not their saviors. They were there to enforce the quarantine, and he and Lila were on the wrong side. It felt like a punch to the gut given Eric’s plan of escape up to that point had been to head for the main gate. The shocking story took him by surprise, though when he considered it, he realized he should’ve expected nothing less. It all but confirmed his suspicion that they were dealing with an infectious disease of some kind, and thus it made sense that a complete lockdown of the park offered the best chance of containing the spread of whatever was destroying Fun World, even if it came at the cost of hundreds of uninfected lives.
When he shared this theory with Frank, the older man replied, “Well, if you put it that way, I suppose it makes sense. It just sucks being part of the necessary cost of containment. I guess the wire will make their job a hell of a lot easier.”
“The wire?” Eric asked in confusion.
Frank let out a sad, half-chuckle as though he were recalling something from another life. “After 9/11, some high-paid military consultants told the higher-ups that Fun World was a ‘target-rich environment’ with woefully inadequate security. While the current security doesn’t seem much better, one thing they did—at great expense, mind you—was enclose the entire hundred-plus acres of Fun World with a big security fence. Most of it looks like a standard issue prison fence, though they went to extreme measures to make it blend in wherever it’s in view of tourists from the inside. After seeing the finished product, most of us employees started joking about feeling like we were ‘behind the wire’ as they say.”
Eric was surprised that he hadn’t noticed the wall, but given the premium Fun World placed on maintaining the illusion at any cost, he knew he shouldn’t have been. Even so, he felt even more trapped after learning of the security fence. The thought that he might never get Lila to safety flashed through his mind, but he immediately forced it down.
“One last thing. I’m not really sure what to make of it, but I’ve heard mention of something called Operation Fat Lady several times on the military channels I’ve been monitoring. There’s never been enough context in the chatter for me to figure out exactly what it’s referring to. Does that name mean anything to you?”
Eric racked his brain but couldn’t recall ever hearing anything by that name during or since his brief stint in the military. The logical assumption was that it was a reference to the proverbial fat lady of operatic fame, and it wasn’t much of a stretch to imagine that the shit they were facing was literally the beginning of the end. If that was true, Operation Fat Lady seemed like as good a name as any for the military’s quarantine effort.
As though weighed down by the fat lady herself, Eric’s eyelids grew increasingly heavy. He was relieved to learn that Frank had nothing else to pile on top of the shit sandwich that he’d been trying like hell to digest.
“Some kind of vacation, huh Frank?” Eric said hoping to lighten the grim mood.
Frank let out a warmhearted, half-chuckle and replied, “Well, Fun World’s always been about the whole experience and strives to ensure that everyone leaves with just a little more magic and joy in their lives than they came in with.”
Eric paused reflectively before looking up at the older man, despondency brimming over in his red-rimmed eyes. “I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done, but I do have one more question for you,” he said tentatively. “How did you do it? After Betty died, how did you keep going?” Eric’s concern for Melanie coupled with the horrors of the last few days was starting to take a toll on his mental state.
Frank thought about the question for a moment before responding with a question of his own. “How could I not?”
Eric turned this answer over in his mind. He’d seen Frank’s gaze shift toward Lila momentarily before he replied, and he couldn’t help but think there was significance in the subtle gesture. A moment later, he looked over to his sleeping daughter and it hit him like a bolt of lightning. He realized what the older man had really been saying to him: How could you not?
Frank smiled when he saw the understanding wash over Eric’s face. He also noticed the increasingly vacant look and the subtle dipping of the head indicative of someone struggling to fight sleep’s unyielding call. “You look exhausted. Why don’t you get some sleep? I’ll keep an eye on things.”
Eric nodded appreciatively, not feeling as though he had much of a choice in the matter. A brief flicker of excitement flashed through his eyes as he thought of something extremely important. “You wouldn’t happen to have a phone charger, would you?” Eric asked hopefully.
Frank grabbed a cha
rger from the shelf behind him and presented it at the same time Eric presented his phone. It looked like they were playing a high tech game of rock-paper-scissors. Unfortunately, Eric lost as he realized that the charger was for a different phone model.
“That figures,” Eric said glumly.
Clapping the younger man on the shoulder, Frank said, “Don’t get too down about it. The phones haven’t been working anyway.”
Deflated and having said all there was to say about the undead monsters desperately trying to make a meal out of them, Eric settled in next to Lila and was asleep in a matter of seconds.
13
Thud.
Eric felt no pain as his boot rocked from side to side. Annoyed by the intrusion, he tried to burrow deeper into sleep’s dark recesses. He had no idea who was trying to wake him and he didn’t care. His fatigue was so great that sleeping for an entire day seemed like a dream come true. When the kick came a second time, however, he found it harder to ignore. Doing so was made all the more difficult by the odd but familiar sound that followed. Like a strong breeze snaking through an abandoned building, the harsh sound was cold and ominous. When he heard the rasping moan again, his eyes snapped open.