by David Spell
“The police were also kind enough to give us some guns. A few of the pigs made the mistake of not watching their backs. We took care of them and relieved them of their stuff.”
“What’s your name, amigo?”
“Derrick, but you can call me ‘DC.’”
Corona extended his hand. “DC, bienvenido for the Tijuana cartel. Welcome!”
Antonio was impressed. This weapons haul might not prove the loyalty of the new guys but it was a good start. He let the African-Americans each keep a long gun and a sidearm and the rest he had secured in the armory his men had set up in their headquarters.
Week by week, the cartel soldiers worked together, clearing the ever-widening area around their headquarters of zombies, seeking out human survivors, and looking for food, clothes, and supplies for the gang members. The fifty story apartment building housed the entire army for the moment, with a secure area around the intersection of Peachtree Road and Piedmont Road. Antonio found himself in control of one of the richest areas of the city.
He knew that eventually someone would come for him and his men. The question was, ‘Who?’ The Atlanta Police Department didn’t appear to be a threat. A couple of police cars had approached their barricade the first week the cartel was in town. His guards had opened fire, killing the two officers in the first police car. The second cruiser turned and fled. There had been no more police sightings after that.
The National Guard had shown that they were not up to the job. In so many cases the citizen-soldiers just had not had the training they needed to keep them alive in a city full of zombies and roving bands of heavily armed criminals. Patrol after patrol had been overrun by zombies. The soldiers had either been devoured or infected. In reality, they had had little or no effect on eliminating Zs from the city. In other cases, like DC had described for Tony the Tiger, gang members had ambushed the National Guard troops, killing them and stealing their equipment.
Corona suspected that eventually the government would send federal police officers after he and his men. He didn’t fear the FBI or the DEA or any of their tactical teams. They just did not have enough men to arrest the Atlanta chapter of the Tijuana Cartel.
No, the only force capable of taking down Antonio and his soldiers was the American Special Forces, and he was gambling that that wasn’t going to happen. The Americans didn’t like to use their military on their own soil. That was good for him and his cartel but bad for the women and men who were already servicing his soldiers.
Corona’s next goal was to begin expanding his empire further out into the state. Even as he established his foothold in the city, he wanted to begin moving out into the suburbs with his patrols. As word of his conquest got around, the cartel boss expected Mexicans from all over America to join him. Why wouldn’t they? The selfish Americans hoarded all of their wealth, refusing to share it with their southern neighbors. As his army grew, Tony the Tiger was going to expand his empire as far as he could.
Antonio was not only a conqueror, though. He was also a businessman. The drug trade was still lucrative, even in the midst of a bonafide zombie apocalypse. People still wanted their cocaine, meth, weed, and the occasional prostitute. The Tijuana Cartel had it all and Antonio “Tony el Tigre” Fernando Corona was not going to stop until he controlled the entire east coast of the United States of America.
A knock on his door caused the two women to stir and brought Antonio back inside from the balcony. He opened the door, admitting Jorge Quintero who was holding two paper cups of steaming coffee.
“Gracias, amigo,” the cartel leader said, taking one of the cups.
“De nada, señor.”
Corona and Quintero met almost daily, discussing their progress and their operations. Jorge was one of the few men that Antonio trusted completely, having grown up together on the streets of Tijuana. They walked through the master bedroom out onto the balcony, Jorge glancing appreciatively at the two beauties in his boss’ bed. The men seated themselves in patio chairs, sipping their coffee, gazing out over the city.
“So, how are we progressing?” Antonio asked in Spanish.
“We’ve cleared four of the surrounding blocks and our barricades are keeping the zombies out. We’ve killed hundreds, maybe more than a thousand of them. I know they’re still out there, but we haven’t seen any big groups in a couple of weeks.
“The challenge now is keeping our people fed. We’re sending out teams every couple of days to find supplies. We’ve got a lot of mouths to feed.”
Corona nodded. “How many women do we have?”
“I think maybe around forty, jefe. And ten men. Our soldados found a few survivors yesterday, but none that we wanted to keep.”
“Are any of our people using the men?” asked Tony the Tiger.
“No, señor. We probably have some homosexuals in the ranks but they’re too embarrassed to be seen using one of the male prisoners.”
“Si, yo entiendo. Why don’t we get rid of the men? That’ll be ten fewer mouths to feed. We can even get rid of some of the women if they aren’t doing a good job.”
Jorge nodded. “Señor, I have an idea. Do you know Israel Ramirez? He’s our maintenance man and a mechanic. He’s the one who fixed the generators and got them running.”
“He’s that little guy, right? Not a soldier, but good to have around. He can fix anything.”
“Si, señor, that’s him. When he joined us a couple of months ago, I found out that he’d worked for the CDC, the American Centers for Disease Control. He was in the maintenance department there. He had a car when he showed up, and of course, we confiscated it. Ramirez got his stuff out of the car and had two black bags.
“I told him that we searched everybody and every bag. He was real nervous when I looked in the bags. One just had a fancy Apple computer, but the other one had some test tubes and chemicals and was maybe a scientist’s bag. It had a tag with a woman’s name on it saying she worked at the CDC. I asked Israel what this was. He said he wasn’t really sure but he thinks it had something to do with the zombie virus.”
“Why am I just now hearing about this?” Antonio asked, anger in his voice.
“I’m sorry, Jefe. I locked the bags in the armory and forgot about them. We had so much going on, fighting zombies, searching buildings. I apologize, but like I said, I have an idea if you want to hear it.”
Corona waved his hand, indicating for his subordinate to continue.
“Gracias, señor. I wondered if we should do an experiment and see what happens if we stick one of the prisoners with some of the chemicals? If they turn into a zombie, we’ll know that we have a powerful weapon in our hands.”
Antonio’s eyes bore into Quintero. Finally, after a full minute, the cartel leader smiled and spoke. “Un gran idea, hacer que suceda.”
Buckhead, Atlanta, Wednesday, 1300 hours
Israel Ramirez was scared. No, he was beyond scared, he was truly terrified. The last eight weeks had seared images into his brain from which he would never recover. He had seen and done things of which he was terribly ashamed. Israel knew that his mother was praying for him back in Mexico. The young man wondered, however, if those prayers would ever be answered. Have I doomed myself to Hell?
The large generators hummed in the basement of the Peachtree Summit building as the small man checked to make sure they were functioning properly. Ramirez had earned the trust, as much as they trusted anyone, of Antonio Corona and his deputy Jorge Quintero by making sure the generators kept running. When Israel and Carlos and the four other gangsters had shown up in Buckhead two months ago, Jorge immediately offered Carlos and the others jobs as soldiers after hearing of their involvement with the Mexican street gang, the Brownside Locos. Quintero even let Carlos keep his street name, ‘Boxer,’ from his days as an amateur pugilist in Los Angeles.
The deputy cartel leader then looked over at the slight frame of Israel and asked, “What can you do?”
Ramirez was already questioning the wisdom of followin
g his neighbor Carlos down here. Israel lowered his eyes, showing respect, and stammered, “Jefe, I’m a maintenance man. I repair things. Forgive me, but that is my skill. I’m not a fighter or a soldier. I know nothing about guns, but I’m willing to learn.”
Quintero’s hard stare finally softened. “Can you repair generators, the big ones? The two at our headquarters are broken and Señor Corona is angry. He lives on the top floor and he’s very pissed that the elevator isn’t working.”
Ramirez glanced up at the big man with the shaved and tattooed head. “Si, señor. If it doesn’t require new parts or some kind of major repair, I can fix.”
Jorge had one of his men take Israel into the basement of the high-rise apartment building. The two large, commercial generators were new and should be running, the young man thought. He borrowed a flashlight from his escort and after ten minutes of removing panels and examining the machines, Ramirez stood in front of Quintero again.
“I can repair, señor. Someone has put the wrong fuel in both of them. These are diesel but somebody put regular gasoline in. I’ll need to drain the tanks and the fuel line, and clean the filters. Then we can put in some diesel and they should be ready to go.”
“Bueno, bueno. That will be your job,” Quintero said, the relief evident in his voice. “How long will it take?”
“Maybe a day, a day and a half at the most. I’ll need a lot of containers to hold the gasoline inside. We don’t want to waste it. Do we have some diesel fuel stored here, Jefe?”
“I’ll work on getting you the diesel and we’ll find plenty of containers to put the gas in. I need you to start now.”
“Si, señor.”
Twenty-four hours later, the generators were humming, providing power to the apartment building. Jorge actually smiled and shook Israel’s hand. “Amigo, you’re now in charge of all our maintenance in this building and the others that we’ve taken over.”
Now, Israel knew that he had to somehow get out of this nightmare. His fear came from knowing that, in all likelihood, there was no escape. If the cartel caught him trying to leave, they would kill him. If he somehow managed to get away, where would he go? The zombies were everywhere and the chance of evading the hordes of flesh-eating creatures roaming the city seemed slim.
Even though Ramirez had entered the United States illegally four years earlier at the age of twenty-one, he didn’t consider himself a criminal. He had obtained a forged Social Security Card for five hundred dollars. This had allowed him to get a driver’s license and a good job in the maintenance department at the Centers for Disease Control. Israel’s illegal status should have prevented him from working for the government, but his purchased documents had never been questioned. He hoped to marry one day and raise a family in America. He loved the United States and desperately wanted to experience the American Dream.
Israel had learned English and had worked hard to be a model employee at the CDC. His salary, while low by American standards, was a fortune compared to what he could have made in his home of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. He was able to afford a small, one-bedroom apartment in the suburb of Chamblee, just north of Atlanta, and was the owner of a six-year old Toyota Corolla.
Ramirez had been working the second shift at the CDC on the evening when the last attacks took place in Atlanta. He was shocked when he and his workmates gathered around the TV to see the video footage of the aftermath of a car bomb and a suicide bomber, both of which had blown up near Atlantic Station, an upscale outdoor mall, just off of the interstate near downtown.
Israel normally finished his shift at 11:00pm. He had gotten caught up, however, watching the news coverage of the attacks in one of the break rooms, not sure if he should leave or not with hundreds or thousands of infected reported to be spreading out through the city. At 1:00am, though, the decision was made for him. The director of the CDC had given the order for the facility to be evacuated, telling the third shift workers to leave immediately. Ramirez did not need to be told twice.
He hurried out to his gold Toyota and was just about to turn the key when he saw his first zombies moving across the well-lit parking deck. Israel quickly laid over in the seat, praying that they wouldn’t see him, terror settling into the pit of his stomach as he watched infected people for the first time, up close and personal. His back and legs cramped from lying in the uncomfortable position for over ten minutes. How long should he wait? he wondered. Could they get to him inside of his car?
After what seemed like an eternity, Israel heard the building door open and close, then excited voices close by. Immediately, the sound of growling and snarling filled the air as the creatures rushed past his car in the direction of the people. Ramirez chanced to raise his head to peek out his window, watching the drama unfold around him.
A black man, one of the CDC security guards, and a beautiful white woman with long, wavy brown hair, wearing a lab coat, were standing near the exit door. Israel recognized both people, remembering that each had always been kind to him, smiling and thanking him whenever he had performed some maintenance task for them.
Suddenly, the security guard began shooting, the loud explosions echoing all around the parking deck. Israel watched several of the zombies collapse to the pavement. The couple eventually managed to get the door open again, rushing back inside.
The officer hadn’t killed all of the zombies. The two remaining ones were banging on the metal door that had just been slammed shut in their growling faces. Ramirez saw two black briefcase type bags sitting in the parking lot. The couple must’ve dropped them, he realized. Now that the majority of the creatures had been eliminated, Israel knew that this was his chance to flee.
Those two bags looked very inviting, though. Maybe they held something important or valuable? His conscience smote him with guilt. No, those aren’t my property. But at least I could hold them for those nice people, Israel thought to himself. We’ll be back at work in a few days and I can bring them to that pretty woman. That idea made the maintenance man smile.
Ramirez started his car, the new noise causing the zombies to turn and begin shuffling his way. He drove toward the exit, stopping several yards away with room to turn around. The creatures kept advancing towards him, now a safe distance from the bags. He quickly turned the steering wheel and accelerated back toward the building.
The Corolla skidded to a stop next to the items. Israel threw open his door, tossed a leather briefcase and a canvas bag into the passenger seat and took off as the zombies lurched back toward him, just twenty feet away. He jerked the steering wheel to the right and blasted towards the exit, speeding past the two snarling Zs.
After three harrowing hours, Ramirez had finally managed to get back to his apartment. Several times he’d had to reverse his course to avoid packs of the creatures. Of course everyone else in Atlanta, it seemed, was trying to either get home or flee the city, so the gridlock had been maddening. Traffic was heavier than Israel had ever seen it before, even in the middle of the night.
The young man locked himself in his apartment, watching the news coverage of the incident on his small television. He heard the evacuation order given for the city of Atlanta, but where would he go? He had briefly considered driving back to Mexico, but that was a long way to go on interstates packed with other fleeing vehicles and large groups of zombies surging west looking for fresh victims to eat.
It wasn’t long, though, before Israel realized that he had made a mistake in not leaving the city right away. His apartment was less than two miles from Interstate 85 and by the second day, Ramirez was seeing zombies regularly as he peered out his window. These used to be people, he thought, watching an older Hispanic man, covered in blood, his throat ripped open and a chunk of his face missing, stumble around in the parking lot below Israel’s second floor room. An Asian woman followed behind the first zombie, large open wounds visible on both of her arms. One of her eye sockets was a bloody mess where the eyeball had been ripped out.
A wave of nausea swept ov
er Israel forcing him to turn away from the window. Surprisingly, he felt safe in the upstairs apartment. So far, no infected had come up the steps. His other pressing problem, though, was the lack of food in his kitchen; his stomach already growling. Ramirez knew that he was going to have to find some groceries soon or he would starve to death.
Later in the evening of that second day, there was a soft knock at his door. His neighbor from across the hall, Carlos, slipped in, the butt of a pistol sticking out of his waistband, Ramirez noted. The two men weren’t close friends but they had stopped to chat in the hallway from time-to-time and had even drank a few beers together the previous Cinco de Mayo.
The two Mexicanos had talked late into the night, glad to have each other’s company. Israel learned that Carlos ‘Boxer’ Romero was a construction worker, but was heavily involved in the Brownside Locos street gang. Boxer didn’t have any ideas about what they should do, either, but he did invite Ramirez to share his own meager food supply across the hall.
“And amigo, we can take what we need if we have to,” the gang member said, tapping the pistol sticking out of his pants.
Israel had stayed closed to Carlos, hoping that his new friend could keep him safe. They survived over the next couple of months, but just barely. The men went out on two foraging missions to the Hispanic grocery store and to the convenience store, both adjacent to their apartment complex. Each trip had terrified Israel and both times they had had to run from growling zombies, carrying as many supplies as they could stuff inside their duffel bags.
On their last expedition, they had rushed back inside their building, Carlos slamming the door shut just before the hungry Zs got there. Ironically, because their apartment complex wasn’t in the best part of town, the doors were metal with reinforced frames, providing extra security against the ravenous creatures just outside. The men carried their looted supplies upstairs, as the sound of the Zs banging on the entrance echoed throughout the building.