Escape From Metro City

by Mandel, Richard

  "Si," Raul had said with gratitude as he accepted the weapon. "Gracias."

  "Have you ever used long guns before?"

  "Only rifles and shotguns."

  "Ever use a clip-fed rifle?"

  "Si. My grandfather had old Army carbine from war. Good gun."

  "Good enough. Just remember that this thing will go full auto on you if you've got it set for that and hold the trigger down too long. See this selector switch right where your thumb goes? Thumb it here for single shot and here for full auto. I'd give you some quick lessons like I did with Mercy earlier, but we don't have time."

  "Si. I do my best."

  "I'm sure you will, Raul."

  It was the three Kevlar body armor vests which were still in the MCPD Armory that had proven to be their biggest prize. After a brief discussion and looking them over, Lisa and Cy gave the biggest to Raul while Lisa and Mercy got the two smaller ones. These didn't fit the two ladies very well, but the fact they were made from flexible Kevlar plus judicious use of their adjustment straps helped in this regard. The men guarded the door while the ladies donned and fitted their new body armor, then they swapped places so Cy could help Raul put on and adjust his own. Lisa had given Cy a wry smile as he had started helping Raul, but Cy had only grinned, patted his own old-style Army armor vest, and shrugged his shoulders in reply. Once they were done, they put back on the rest of their gear and left the MCPD Armory. All that remained now was to break out of the place and escape Metro City for good.

  Between ten and fifteen minutes or so later, the sounds of the moans and groans coming from a couple of hundred or so zombies gathering on both sides of the MCPD substation and the cawing of the crows perched on both its roof and on the nearby buildings and power lines was interrupted by the starting of a Dodge 440 motor. It revved up to full power, while at the same time red and blue lights began to flash behind the building. Suddenly an older model police car sailed out of the back parking lot into the front lot through the open gate that connected the two and headed straight for the street. There was a young woman with red skin and long black hair wearing a black two-piece firesuit with red-and-white trim and a black MCPD Kevlar armor vest at the wheel, and she handled that police car as if she were a pro (which she was). A black Army soldier in full combat gear shouldering a China Lake grenade launcher was hanging out of the front passenger window. He opened fire down the street as soon as the police car whipped around northward into it. There was an explosion in front of and slightly off to one side of the moving police car and zombie bodies went everywhere. The police car kept moving, slowly but surely picking up speed, following the path that the the explosion had cleared through the zombies on the north end of the street. Once it was clear of the zombies the police car's tires squealed as it took off, racing down the street, top lights still flashing. Soon enough it disappeared into the darkness beyond.

  The raven had never stirred from its perch. Instead, it had watched the proceedings with considerable interest, while the zombies scattered or were blown away and the crows flew off in all directions. It cocked its head sideways as only a bird can, looking northward up the street in the direction where the fast-moving police car had disappeared. It then returned its head to normal, flapped its wings twice, then settled back down and began to call. Awk! Awk! Awk! Awk! it cried as it sat on its perch. Had there been any humans left in the area to hear it, one might have sworn that the raven was laughing.

  It took Lisa about fifteen minutes using the side streets and back alleys to bypass the traffic and wreck choked beltway, and to find an exit to Highway 9 North that was still open. After that it took another fifteen to twenty minutes to work her way around the abandoned and wrecked vehicles that all but clogged it on the north end of town. Once Lisa worked the MCPD squad car past the last of these, however, the number of wrecks and abandoned vehicles thinned out considerably. Lisa was able to pick up speed and drive at something close to normal, only slowing whenever these were encountered and had to be driven around. She also handled that Dodge Royal Monaco police car as adroitly as she had handled her own HemiCuda, Cy noted. He had never been a racing fan, but he could now well imagine how she must have been on the track, and how she had managed to win the much-coveted Bellville Cup despite her youth. It gave him something else to admire about her as they rode on. Whatever Lisa was thinking about him she kept to herself.

  Mercy had asked that the regular radio be turned on, so she could hear the news. It was near the top of the hour, and Cy turned it on just in time to catch the tail end of an infomercial advertising investment opportunities in mobile telephone transmission towers. There was a pause, and then the top-of-the-hour network chimes sounded on the station to which they were listening.

  BONG! Be-dah, ba-dah-ding!

  "This is the Mutual News Network," sounded a deep resonant voice, followed almost immediately by a sharper and somewhat higher pitched one. "Mutual News. I'm Christopher DeWitt. The crisis in the American heartland at Metro City continues through the evening of its third day, with the entire population transformed into mindless zombies and the U.S. Army struggling to maintain its quarantine of the entire affected area. Earlier today the Reagan Administration confirmed reports that a military relief convoy which had been sent in on a mission to locate and rescue any survivors had been wiped out by the zombies. More on that in a moment.

  "In a related story, Pandora Corporation spokesman Piter de Voormand assured the public that it was cooperating in every possible way with both the government and the Army in resolving this deadly situation. This includes a pending investigation into how the virus that caused the Outbreak leaked from its facilities north of Metro City in the first place. And now back to our top story.

  "This just in. The Army has confirmed contact with four human survivors inside Metro City who are currently trying to escape the city to safety. According to their official press release, the survivors are identified as U.S. Army Corporal Cyrus Rappalo, Metro City Medical Center Senior Nurse Mercy Parks, Mexican immigrant laborer Raul Esteban, and the famed semi-pro stock car driver Lisa Stanridge, winner of last year's Bellville Cup race. Corporal Rappalo is currently the only known survivor of the Army relief convoy, and he encountered and joined forces with the other three during his own efforts to escape the doomed city. The Army has assured us that it will do everything it can to save these four from the tens of thousands of zombies that are currently stalking the Metro City quarantine zone, killing and eating everyone in their path.

  "In other news, the new government in Iran condemned the United States ..."

  Lisa suddenly turned the radio off. "That's enough of that," she said somewhat acidly.

  From the back of the police car, Mercy spoke. "At least the Army revealed we're alive. Publicity. That's the best thing they could have done for us right now, outside of rescuing us."

  "Si," came the muffled agreement from Raul, whose mouth was full of food as he sat beside Mercy in the back. They had found some more packaged snack food shortly before they had evacuated the MCPD substation, and the hungry Raul had wolfed all of it down. She now helped him reload the ammo clips for the M-16 that Cy had loaned him, while he finished chewing the last of his food.

  "I agree," Cy said from beside Lisa. "Now that the public knows we're alive, Pandora can't just go and bump us off or something."

  "I wouldn't put it past them," Mercy said. "They've got the people and resources to pull that kind of thing off, and I've heard rumors of them doing stuff like that during my time with them. Nothing you could ever prove, mind you, but still ...."

  "Well I for one hope it all works out," Lisa said. She still had her eyes on the road, as she was the one driving. "Think positive, folks." She found an opportunity to give Cy a quick glance and a grin, and then she refocused on her driving. "I hope the Army picks up on us soon. Right now, we need all of the help we can get."

  As if on cue there was a loud squawk from the police radio inside their car. "MCPD squad car on Hi
ghway 9, this is U.S. Army Air Cavalry unit Zulu Tango Four. MCPD squad car on Highway 9, this is U.S. Army Air Cavalry unit Zulu Tango Four. Respond please."

  Cy grabbed the mike and keyed the switch. "Zulu Tango Four, this is Corporal Rappalo. Boy, are we glad to hear from you! Where are you, over?"

  "Pop a window and look up, Corporal, over."

  Cy immediately did so and stuck his head out of the window of the fast moving police car. When he brought it back in a few seconds later, he grinned at the others. "There's a Huey Hog heading our way. That's a gunship, and from what I can see it's packing quite a weapons load." He then keyed the mike again. "Roger that, Zulu Tango Four. Welcome to our little going-away party, over."

  There was a laugh over the speaker. "Glad to oblige, Corporal. We'll be your escort to the quarantine line, just in case the zombies get frisky. Say, what'd you do with all of those crows everybody else was reporting, over?"

  "Nothing," Cy responded. "Why, over?"

  "We ain't seen one since we crossed the quarantine line, over."

  "I haven't heard or seen one since we left town," Lisa observed, still keeping her eyes on the road and remaining focused on her driving.

  "Yeah," Mercy said. "That's weird."

  "Let's not knock our luck," Cy said, then keyed his mike. "I guess they decided to skip our farewell, Zulu Tango Four. Anyway, I see you're packing. What have you got, over?"

  "We've got dual miniguns, side rocket pods, and a gunner in each door, over."

  Cy grinned. "Man, you guys have got some Hotel Sierra there, over!"

  There was another laugh. "That's right, Corporal. Our orders from General Ryan are to make sure that all of you get out of there alive, especially the two ladies riding in there with you, over."

  "Thanks for riding shotgun for us, Zulu Tango Four, over."

  "Not a problem. Glad to oblige, over."

  By now the Huey Hog gunship had closed the range, swung around and was positioned above and just behind the rapidly moving police car on the highway, matching both its speed and direction. As it had done so, everyone inside had gotten a good look at it, and saw for themselves how heavily it was armed. Like most UH-1C/M Iroquois gunships ("Huey" was that particular chopper model's popular nickname) it sported dual side-mounted, six-barrel 7.62mm M134 miniguns keyed to the pilot's controls along with two standard 7.62mm M60 machine guns on waist-high pintle mounts in each side door, with both positions manned by live gunners. It also had two side-mounted cylindrical pods carrying a full battery each of 2.5-inch anti-personnel rockets. No one said it aloud, but everyone inside the patrol car felt a sense of relief wash over them once their gunship escort was in position and began its escort mission. They were still not yet out of Metro City, but now they had some of the best protection possible for getting out given the circumstances. It seemed as if nothing could go wrong, and that their eventual escape was all but assured. So it seemed at the time.

  What was not known to the Metro City survivors were the events that had taken place earlier that evening some miles north of their current location, events that under normal circumstances might have seemed perfectly ordinary. This was the Outbreak, however, which made them extraordinary, and the dramatic conclusion which they came to would not have been ordinary even under normal circumstances.

  Somewhere deep within the bowels of the now-abandoned Pandora Corporation Industrial Complex north of Metro City, whose main entrance was only a quarter-mile and to the east of Highway 9 North and connected to it via a surfaced two-lane road, somewhere in the heart of its lowest levels underground, a certain old style multi-line touch tone desk phone had begun to ring. It rang three times, one of its white line lights flashing in sync with each ring, and then that light went solid as the call was automatically answered. Over the speaker connected to that phone was heard the alternating high-pitched squeal and mid-tone warbling of two computer modems syncing up with each other, and then the tones merged into a single stream of steady but rapid pulses. One by one, several banks of period-proper mini-computers and data storage devices had activated in succession and then began to process the data being fed through that call. Readout lights flashed and old-style magnetic tape reels whirred as their contents were read and fed into an old fashioned and rather large hard drive storage system. The data thus collected on that hard drive was then fed into another bank of mini-computers in another location deep beneath the industrial complex. More lights began to flash and this time were joined by text and graphic readouts flickering away on CRT-equipped consoles that had none but the dead left to man them. Somewhere unseen, a 132-column printer came to life and began to chatter away, spewing out printout after printout on old-style sprocket fed wide carriage paper where nobody was left alive to read it. But that was not all.

  Not far from where all of the computer activity was taking place was a very special lab. Inside that lab was a very special storage canister sealed within a heavy armored shell. None but the dead were left to see when the lights in that lab came back on as if by themselves. None but the dead were there to hear and see that armored shell crack apart and then get lifted away in two cleanly cut halves on huge hydraulic arms to reveal a very large vertical tank standing on end and completely full of a sickly colored liquid which hid its contents from view. None but the dead were there to witness when that interior tank was drained from the inside and from its base of the fluid which had previously filled it, thus allowing the contents of that canister to stand on its own two feet. None but the dead were there when the front half of that tank popped open as if by itself, and then swung back and out of the way as if moved by an invisible hand. None but the dead were there when the creature that had been stored inside that special storage canister reached up and yanked out the data feeds and life support lines that had been connected to various parts of its head and upper body, and then ripped away the oxygen mask that had covered the lower half of its face. That face was one of a demigod straight out of Nazi Aryan dreams, with blond hair and eyes that were an unreal brilliant shade of cobalt blue, but its skin was the color of a corpse and it was on the body of a completely naked muscled hulk that stood between nine and ten feet tall. The owner of that body was more careful with those lines connected to its lower midsection, ones designed to effectively remove body wastes, but those too were quickly and efficiently removed. With that its body was completely free of every connection that had kept it alive and sustained it while it was being stored inside that tank. The eyes opened, closed, and then reopened, the lungs breathed in deeply, and then the owner of both stepped out.

  All of that had taken place about the same time as the Metro City survivors had been making ready for their dramatic escape from the MCPD substation. Even now, as the survivors raced northward under the supposed protection of the Huey Hog, another force had emerged on the scene and was preparing to stop them before they could escape. It was a threat more unlike and considerably more deadly than any they had faced so far ... and not even the raven that now flew northward in their wake knew what was going to happen once their new foe forced them into confrontation with itself.

  Chapter 9

  Confrontation

  The first sign of what was in store for the Metro City survivors came as they began to pass the outer edges of the sprawling Pandora industrial complex north of town. Just about the time they saw its double layered, barbed wire topped outer fence begin some distance off to their right through the trees, the police radio in their car came to life. "Corporal Rappalo, this is Zulu Tango Four. Corporal Rappalo, this is Zulu Tango Four, over."

  Cy had the mike in hand and was ready to key it before the gunship pilot finished speaking. "This is Corporal Rappalo, over."

  "Better tell your driver to slow down, Corporal. The highway is completely blocked ahead of you, over."

  Cy felt the MCPD patrol car begin to slow. He looked over at Lisa. She nodded in acknowledgment but kept her eyes to the road. She looked worried. "Ask him how bad," she said.


  Cy nodded back, then keyed his mike again. "Advice taken. Lisa wants to know just how bad, over?"

  The response was immediate. "There's no way around anywhere that we can see. Not on the highway, or on the shoulders, or on the median. And none of this was there when we flew over here earlier, Corporal, over."

  Lisa's eyebrows went up. Cy looked incredulous. "Come again, over?"

  "Like we said, Corporal. The road was clear when we flew over earlier, over."

  Even as the Hog pilot finished speaking, the still-slowing MCPD patrol car rounded the turn in the highway. Lisa's eyes opened wide at the sight now before them, and she quickly brought the car to a full stop. Beside her, Cy looked amazed. In the back, both Mercy and Raul looked shocked. The section of the highway before them, one which should have been straight and level for the next two miles, was completely blocked just as had been described. No, not just completely blocked. It was thoroughly blocked with an obvious deliberate effectiveness. One could see the long marks on the pavement, on the shoulder and median, and the road for the nearby side exit leading to the Pandora complex where something had dragged vehicles ranging in size from small economy cars to 35-ton tractor-trailer rigs, and then arranged them and stacked them fairly neatly across the full width of the highway and its shoulders from one side to the other. Both whole and once-whole automobiles had been stacked two high in order to maintain an even height with the tractor-trailer rigs across the full length of the barricade. There was also a fair amount of metal and glass debris around it, all of it from the vehicles and scattered up and down its full length. The whole thing was a sight both amazing and ominous.