by Mark Tufo
“I’m going to need way more bandaging than I’ve got here.” Winters looked up and over to me. I wouldn’t necessarily say there was panic in his eyes, but concern, yeah, there was a lot of that. “And burn ointment–going to need a vat of that.”
Gary was moaning; don’t even think he was aware of it, as his eyes were closed.
“Would love to give him a shot of antibiotics, and not for nothing LT, a hit of morphine.”
“Don’t think I need to go out on a limb to say this, but all that stuff is in the supply bag, right?”
He nodded.
“And if we can’t get it?”
“The morphine is for his comfort and to keep him quiet. The antibiotics, I think are pretty much life or death.”
I stepped away. “BT, we have a situation here.”
“Listening, Mike.”
“Do you by any chance have eyes on our supply bag?”
“You mean that very same bag that’s spread over a fair amount of Broadway?”
“Yeah, that one.”
“What do you need?”
“Gary is going to need the med supplies.”
“Entire street is enemy held, and I wouldn’t even know where to begin to find what you need. Got some more great news. Just heard from Eastman; he lost comm with Etna. Says his radio suffered some sort of damage in the attack.”
My heart, which had kicked into overdrive, began to slow back down. For a moment, I’d thought something had happened back in Washington. Trouble on our end I could deal with, as long as my family was safe.
“Mike?”
“Yeah, sorry; I’m here. Just thought…”
“No, near as I can tell everything is fine there. But we’re alone right now.”
“First priority is my brother, get him stable. If anything changes you know where to find me. Tommy, stay with Winters. I’m going to go a few floors up and see if I can find a medical office.”
“I don’t think going alone is a good idea, Mr. T.”
“I completely agree, but Winters can’t work on Gary and watch around him.”
Tommy looked torn but nodded to me. I pulled the door open and nearly had a friggen’ heart attack as three chairs tumbled down. Someone hadn’t thought this problem out when they attempted to construct a barricade. The stench was pervasive; the darkness impenetrable as I poked my head in. I waited until I was all the way in the stairwell and had closed the door behind me before I turned my flashlight on. Besides some miscellaneous furniture, I was all alone on the first landing. I found the absence of brass strange, but then remembered this was downtown New York, not Dallas. I panned the light all around; there was some blood, but not enough to convince me there had been a slaughter here. Made it to the second floor with absolutely no trouble, actually, all the way to the fifth, before it began to get interesting.
As I moved my light up to the sixth floor, I noticed the glut of office furniture–as if the previous tenants had refused to pay their rent and management had evicted them by throwing everything into the stairwell.
“What the hell?” The obvious play would be to exit there on the fifth floor and see what I could, or go in and find another stairwell up, but I had to take a moment to see what had happened. We all make mistakes, and this was one of mine. I picked my way up to the next floor; I tried to be as quiet as possible, but every little noise was echoed and amplified within those narrow confines. I played my light across what I now considered a makeshift wall. I figured it was to stop whatever was downstairs from coming up; didn’t realize it was the other way around until my flashlight glinted off the rheumy eye of a zombie peering back at me from the other side. After my initial surprise, I got back up to the small hole-through and got a better look. From what I could tell, the entire stairwell behind that one zombie was jam-packed with his brethren, and I’d just given them a reason to start their escape efforts again.
“Just another reason to dislike cats,” I said softly as I quickly retreated. I was referring to how curiosity killed them, apparently, and how if I’d just stuck to my mission, gone and did what I’d set off to do, I might not have stirred the nest. I could hear furniture shifting from the press of bodies, but as of yet they had not got through. I was on the fifth floor, mistakenly thinking I’d left my troubles behind, when I literally stumbled over my first clue that not all was as it should be here. A gnawed-on femur had nearly tripped me.
Heard the telltale, low growl of a zombie; she was a large one, but not a bulker. From her movements, I had her pegged as a first-generation zombie, that of the slow, stiff-legged variety. I’d have plenty of time to scope out the surrounding area and get gone before I ever had to do anything about her. That was, of course, provided she was alone. Apparently, that was too much to ask. Her office mates began to come forth from their cubes. I lost a few precious seconds trying to figure out why they were even in them. Residual memory? Muscle memory? Overtime? When faced with absolutely nothing to do or eat, maybe they had gone back to a place they were familiar with. Weird and terrifying, as I now found myself faced with more than a dozen of the ghouls. Unlike the newer versions, these were in various stages of decay, torn-through faces, hanging flesh, bodies glistening wetly. Their grayish color added greatly to a tragic, haunting feeling. With arms outstretched, they advanced.
I quickly went over to the windows and began scanning the horizon. I’d been so intent on keeping an eye on the things that wanted to murder me, I hadn’t been paying attention to what I was looking at.
“This is New York City. Shitload of people…has to be hospitals everywhere. Focus, man.” I took as much time as I dared, truly studying the nearby buildings. Betty, the Big Zombie, was close. I was just about to move to a more private spot when I suddenly found what I was looking for. A large, white plus sign in a field of red, a block and a half away at the most.
“Rockefeller Medical Center.” I moved to the north-facing windows; bought me an additional twenty seconds. Betty heavy-sighed as her midday snack left her in the lurch. “Holy shit.” I was looking down at another medical center; must have passed it on the way in. I resigned not to be too hard on myself for the oversight.
“Sorry, Betty!” I waved to her as I headed out the exit. Had to sidestep a chair that fell free from up above. I could see the obstruction begin to swell; was only a matter of time and they were going to bust through.
“Mr. T, we have zombies,” Tommy radioed.
“On my way.” I was taking stairs three at a time. Our best bet now was to all head to the medical center. Rockefeller Center had been compromised. Seemed like I was never going to get that chair for Matt. Tommy was standing guard over Winters and Gary, his rifle up, switching from target to target, yet never firing. We had six shufflers, one of which I cracked in the back of the head with my butt stock, sending him flying. I won’t swear it on a stack of bibles, but from the back, it sure did look like Matt Damon might add me to his Christmas mailing list for who I’d just hit.
“Moving isn’t a good idea,” Winters said. Gary was stripped down to his briefs.
“Gotta go. Good news–there’s a medical center about a hundred yards from here,” I said.
“I’ll carry him,” Tommy offered.
“Don’t touch any of his wounds,” Winters warned.
That was akin to not getting sand on yourself at the beach. How he was going to manage that was a mystery. Winters grabbed up his meager supplies and Gary’s boots; everything else was going to need to be replaced as it was cut to shreds by the ground and finished off by the medic.
“BT, we’re on the move. Leaving Rockefeller Center and heading not far, to a medical services area.”
“Copy that,” BT replied.
“All good where you’re at?”
“Tough to say. Zombies aren’t leaving–in fact, they look like they’re having a giant meeting about what they plan on doing next.”
“Getting better and better. Hey, are there clothes in that place?”
“Why? You planning on doing a little souvenir shopping?”
“Yeah. I’m sure the missus will be thrilled when I bring her back an M&M’s t-shirt. Gary is without gear; he’s going to need something.”
“Sorry. How’s he doing?”
“Road rash like a mother. As long as this place has some supplies, we should be all right, and then we’ll just have to deal with his modesty. I’ll never get him out of here if he doesn’t have clothes. He’s the only person I know that wears a bathing suit in the shower.” BT laughed at that.
“We all have our issues,” I said.
“Some more than others.”
“And he only does that when other people are home,” I clarified.
“Just so happens he’s in luck! He’s going to be as bright as a Mardi Gras drunk, but he’ll have a t-shirt and some sweats. Don’t see anything besides flip-flops for shoes though.”
“Got that covered. Boots made it.”
“Hurry up and find a way for us to regroup. Something is going to go down soon and I’d rather we were all facing it together.”
“Get back to you soon,” I told him.
We made it to the medical center without any mishaps, which, considering my track record, is pretty good. Although, even I should be able to travel a hundred feet without expecting a piano to land on my head. It wasn’t much more than a medical tent like you’d see at a concert, a place for the overly fucked-up and super-dehydrated to get back on track. It did, however, have gauze plus burn and scrape medication in spades. The problem with the ointment, though, was it came in little foil travel packets. We were going to need to rip open a couple hundred of the things and squish them all over my brother. We’d do it because we needed to, but just because we hadn’t encountered any problems getting here didn’t mean we weren’t bringing some with us and time would be of the essence. The Rockefeller zombies had seen us leave, and I would think had seen us enter this small facility. We wouldn’t be able to hole up here indefinitely.
Winters tossed an armload of the A&D packets toward me along with a pair of sterile gloves. “Keep spreading this on him. I’m going to look for drugs.” I could hear him in the back, pushing things all over the place. Tommy was keeping an eye on the door. “Got a couple of Z-packs…that’s going to have to do. No painkillers, though. I don’t think aspirin is going to cut it.”
I was surprised he even found antibiotics in the little aid station; the thought he’d hoped to find opioids seemed crazy, especially in the heart of New York and without an armed guard.
“Talbot–need an update,” BT called in.
“Have Gary at an aid station, got medicine and wrappings, no hard drugs for the pain. Have a few minutes…maybe…before we need to move again.”
BT was quiet for a second. “Any medical personnel there? And before I get a smart-ass answer, I mean any bodies.”
“Why? And, yeah, at least one. Younger guy in a white coat in the corner, what’s left of him anyway.”
“Check his pockets.”
“I’d rather use your spoon! Bud, he’s mostly a pile of goo. It’s…disturbing.”
“When I was on the force, about half the people we busted for popping pills were medical professionals. ‘Physician heal thyself’ and all that shit.”
“More like, ‘What’s up, doc?’”
“That was horrible. Just check the body. Odds are pretty good he’s got a little something on him.”
“Tommy, I don’t have another pair of gloves. Can you check that guy for pills?”
“Nice delegation,” BT murmured.
“Being an officer has its perks.”
Tommy didn’t look thrilled about the prospect, but I only got two, maybe three, dirty looks as he fished around. He had to flip the man over to get to the side pockets. If I thought any of this was gross before, I was mistaken. There was a wet tearing sound as Tommy lifted the edge of the medic up, well, as he tried to lift the edge of the medic up. Ended up half his body stayed where it had been on the floor. Tommy was more or less just shuffling a moist skeleton into another twisted position. Instead of wrestling with the compost, he just pulled the white lab coat free. Winters was watching the whole thing; I think his jaw was less than three inches from hitting the floor.
“I’ve seen a lot of things, but I’m not sure anything is going to get any worse than that,” he said as he came up beside me. “What’s he doing exactly?”
Tommy came over with a brown bottle; it did not have a label on it, but it most certainly did have pills. He shook them at us.
“What are we supposed to do with that? Could be Viagra for all we know and I for one am not carrying a man around sporting a perpetual hard-on.” Winters was busy dressing the wounds I had slathered. Tommy opened the container up and spilled a couple of pills onto the counter, getting ready to hand them to me. “We can’t give unknown pills to him; they could be heart medication or something even more dangerous.”
“What do they look like?” BT asked. I forgot I’d kept the channel open. I took a glove off and took one of the pills from atop the shelf.
“Got OP on one side and the number ten on the other.”
“Give him one,” BT said.
“Since when did you become a pill identifier?”
“I’ve seen enough OxyContin to know what you’ve got.”
“This is Oxy?” I looked at the pill. “Tommy, how many do you have?”
“Twelve.” He was looking inside the brown bottle.
“Don’t even think about it Talbot. We’re on a mission.”
“Too late…the thinking part, anyway.”
“Tommy, under no circumstances are you to hand that bottle over to the lieutenant.”
“Buzzkill.”
“There’s water behind the counter; let’s get that in him.” Winters was wrapping Gary like a mummy. I got up and found the water. The pull was strong as I held that water and that pill; who wouldn’t want to check out from our current situation? “Should have checked the damn body myself,” I mumbled as I went back over, managed to get my brother to swallow that and the first couple of pills from the z-pack.
“That should keep him safe until we get him back.”
“Got a group of shufflers coming,” Tommy warned as he went back to his post.
“You clear over there? We’re going to need to move again.”
“That’s a negative, we’re hemmed in. The zombies look like they’re making a grid search pattern. They’ve got a large main group in the roadway and they’re sending out patrols to go into each building on the street. We might have to move soon, too.”
“Winters, get Gary’s boots on him. We gotta move out. BT, two blocks southeast of you is Nintendo World; we’re heading there now. I want you to make a run for it; we’ll cover your move. Tommy?”
“Got him.” Tommy gently picked up Gary, who groaned in protest. I stepped out of the store. Upon seeing me, the shufflers quickened their pace.
“Times like this I wish I’d brought a sword.”
“Or a crossbow.” Winters was beside me.
“Can you imagine trying to load that thing fast enough to stop a horde?” I asked.
“Not really.”
We started moving away. If we could keep a big enough lead on the shufflers, we could lose them, although, what was the use? As soon as we started shooting to cover BT’s breakout, they’d find us. Rifles began to fire; there was an extended concentration of percussion as they fought to get free. Sitting idly by, waiting for my unit to show themselves, was exceedingly difficult. I was getting it in stereo through the radio as BT ordered the group forward.
We were by the Nintendo store; it was two floors, all windows. Oh, you have no idea how much I wanted to go in there, fill a rucksack with all manner of games, grab a few Mario knick-knacks…but if we set up shop on the second floor we’d be quickly trapped. So, there we were, just standing on the street, and I honestly didn’t have a clue where to go. We had to wait for BT and the rest; g
etting split up in a city overrun by the undead was not an option. We were cut off from our home base and as of yet, we hadn’t even begun the mission we’d been dropped down here for. If I went back to Bennington and told him we couldn’t finish because of zombies, I had a feeling that wouldn’t fly. We were on this operation, despite the zombies or because of them; either way, we had to finish.
“I see them.” Tommy was pointing ahead; my gaze was still fixed on the second floor of the Nintendo store and the giant stuffed Donkey Kong. When I looked back, they were running full tilt; could see a brigade worth of zombies following them. Standing and fighting was not an option and from this angle, we didn’t even have clear lines of sight to cover their retreat. I turned to look around, spotting for alternate escape routes when I saw the boy. He looked like a street urchin from a Dickens play; he stood at the end of the block, watching us.
“What fuckery is this?” I said, Winters turned. “You see that too?” I asked.
“Yeah…not sure I want to, though.”
The boy started waving. Don’t know why; he already had our attention. Then he made a motion as if to follow him.
Winters looked at me.
“No idea,” I told him honestly.
“We’re coming in hot,” BT chugged out.
“Keep running past the Nintendo building. We’re following a lead to the end of the block,” I replied.
“Really?” Winters wasn’t thrilled.
“Every building around here is nothing but glass panels and I don’t want to end up bunkered in one. Tommy, come on.”
The boy was gone when Tommy looked. “Where to?”
I started jogging. I didn’t have an answer for him. We rounded the block; either we had taken longer than expected or the kid was phenomenally fast. He was nearly a block and a half away, still waving with his arms for us to follow.