Dead and Dead Again: Kansas City Quarantine (12 page)

“It’s ok, Lucy. Calvin and Tripper
and the others will come. You’ll see,” Lola hugged her friend back. They rocked
back and forth together as the disheartening sounds of screams, explosions and
gunshots filled the air outside and tendrils of acrid smoke occasionally wafted
in through the open window.

“You’ll see,” she whispered. But neither
girl knew who she was trying to assure.

“They have to come.”

In a warehouse just northeast of
downtown, a tall olive-skinned man was using some very powerful tools to build
something. It was something the world had never seen before and he was building
it for one simple and logical reason—someone had told him it could not be done.
The man was using a sonic welder to fuse two pieces of metal together. The
sound waves could be very hazardous to anyone not wearing special head gear and
ear plugs, but this large, bare-chested individual was always prepared and
wearing both plugs as well as sound defeating headphones under a protective
helmet that looked like something someone from the Empire out of
Star
Wars
would have worn. The machine emanated a barely audible whine as it melted
together two metals on what appeared to be a tread belt made mostly of titanium
and some new hardened rubber material. This tread was for a very special
vehicle he had designed, and it was nearly complete.

“
Yes!
There you are.” He
powered off the welder and removed the black helmet, hanging it on a hook on
the side of the waist-high machine, rolling the cables onto a rack.

Smiling in satisfaction, he grabbed
a chain dangling from the ceiling. The chain was snaked around a power cord to
a controller above and was added so the cord couldn’t be ripped from the
machinery when someone pulled on it to move the overhead crane in its tracks,
as the man did now. Wrapping the load-bearing chain around the gigantic belt, with
little effort, he moved everything over to a table under brighter lights so he
could inspect his work.  His smile grew into as near to satisfaction as ever
graced his dour visage as he realized it was free of any imperfections. He
removed his earplugs and put them in a tiny case in his chest pocket and took a
deep breath, full of contentment.

Hephaestus Antonopoulos loved to
build things, and this was nearly the culmination of one of the coolest things
that he had ever imagined and put on paper.

“And with that, El Supremo says its
time for a smoke,” he announced to the walls.

His shop was located in a warehouse
district, so it naturally wasn’t very safe outside at night. Gripping the haft
of his favorite weapon—a two-and-a-half foot steel-reinforced oak rod with a
spiked disk welded to the end of the center rod—he pulled it from the shelf and
pressed the handle into an open slot on his multi-pocketed, neon purple work
belt. At a satisfying click, he knew the weapon was firmly in position Then he
threw on a t-shirt and took down a few of his throwing darts and slid them into
the sleeves he’d sewn onto the side pockets of the work belt.

Hef was a pacifist by nature, but
sometimes even pacifists had to defend themselves. It was stupid to believe
violence never solved anything. Violence had its place the same as pacifism and
it was a wise person who could evaluate the situation and decide which to use. His
father had always told him that anyone wishing for peace had better be prepared
for war. Not one for guns, he felt the look of wicked efficiency of his various
handmade tools generally scared off any potential troublemakers. Next he
reached under his workbench and with a subtle twist slid out the hidden
container that held a properly screened portion of five of his best weeds, and
El Supremo. The distinctive, pungent aroma of skunk filled his nostrils.

Hef didn’t smoke cigars, and this
called for a celebration. It was time to begin the final reassembly, only a
week or ten days away from the shakedown cruise. With a smile and a random song
whistling between his full lips, he sauntered for the door. Two bowls later and
he’d been sitting outside his shop and dazedly staring at the cloud patterns
for what seemed like a year, at the very least. Only fifteen minutes had
actually passed, judging from position of the sun, however.

Suddenly he heard something around
the corner.

 “
Gruingh, snort.”

“What is that, a pig?” he wondered
aloud.

Then he heard a long scuffling
sound like something being drug across a sidewalk, followed quickly by a
stumping sound. The sound repeated itself. And then again.

Schlick…Thump...Schlick…Thump…Schlick…Thump…Now
getting louder.

He didn’t need the hairs to stand
up on the back of his neck to freak him out, but they did anyway.

That is most certainly the
freakiest sound I have ever heard.

He rubbed his chin and put his pipe
away. Pulling out Gronk, his special spiked mace-axe, he took a step towards
the corner. “Hello. I am not playing here. I have weapons. You should go hang
out someplace else.”

For a brief moment, he thought he
might have scared away whoever it was, but only for a moment. The shuffling
sounds sped up. At first he thought they were running away, but the volume
increased; it was getting…closer.

Schlick. Thump. Schlick. Thump.
Schlick. Thump.

“If you want money, you should know
that I am loaded. But you will never see a dime of it. Just move on before we
have a problem,” he called in his most menacing voice. To cover all bases, he loosened
one of his darts it its holster and had it ready and put another in his left
hand—in case the one coming around the corner was packing—all the while hoping
he’d never have to use it. He was very good with the darts and would easily be
able to kneecap the guy, but he was also rich and the ensuing law suit would be
an enormous pain in the ass.

A shadow began to form on the pavement
and expand from the corner of the building, growing larger and more ominous
along with the strange sounds. The shadow seemed to sway from side-to-side.

Drunk, or worse,
he thought
in disgust.

“Hey, why do you not go and—” The
universe would never know what Hef was going to say next, because the drunk
rounded the corner and stopped his heart.

“Good God. What kind of shit have
you
been doing?” he demanded in disgust, looking down at the mess on the white male
coming around the corner.

The man’s light pants were stained
with some black muddy-looking goo. One arm hung limply and he walked on the
side of a broken ankle. Hephaestus looked up to demand an answer and jumped
back in deeper disgust. The man before him seemed more creature than man. He’d
clearly smoked so much crack his eyes had gone to hell. The creepy doper stared
at him with wide, unblinking milky-white orbs that seemed to still see him well
enough, but his un-brushed mouth was rotten as hell and sent out a rank, musty
odor even from twenty feet away. Festus could see that whatever infection the
man had gotten from whatever drugs he had fallen to had slowly killed off the
muscles around his mouth, and pulled the skin back to reveal the full set of
teeth and gums. The man lurched towards him and the jaw began clenching and
gnashing and the injured man reached out a hand so atrophied by arthritis it
was melded into a perpetual claw.

“Begone, Huffer!” Hephaestus warned,
raising his club with the promise of pain. That was when he noticed the color
and design of the uniform shirt and the name on the patch on the collar.

Harold
. With a bone-jarring
shock, he recognized what used to be his friend Harold Pembrooke. Harold was
one of the security guards on duty in what was left of the yards. He was
supposed to be on-duty watching the tracks to keep people off the private
grounds. Harold’s uniform was always meticulous and he didn’t do drugs. Only
two months from retirement, the dependable man would never leave his post
unless something very significant had occurred. But now Harold stumbled before
him looking every inch the walking corpse.

“What in the hell? Hey, get…get
back,” Hef ordered, nervously brandishing his club. “Harold, I do not know what
has happened to you, but you clearly need help. Why not wait here, and let me
go call someone, ok?”

But that wasn’t ok with Harold, who
lunged at Hephaestus with his good arm clutching and teeth snapping. Hephaestus
grabbed the man’s hand and twisted, turning his friend backwards and putting
him into a hold. But Harold was a lot stronger than he looked, and apparently
feeling no pain, as he twisted around with amazing speed and force, snapping
his own arm in the process without even a grunt of pain, springing at
Hephaestus with gnashing teeth going for his neck.

Despite the absurdity of the
situation, Hef’s first thought was to protect himself. One push with every
ounce of muscle in his mighty body and the man went flying ten feet into a stack
of scrap iron with a great crash of steel on steel as flat bar, rebar and angle
iron scattered. One of the poles that made up the corner of the rack pierced
the man’s chest, but he made only a few moans as he twisted and kicked himself
free of the spears, leaving chunks of his own flesh clinging to the rebar, and
came on again, limping on a broken ankle, both arms now dangling limply at his
side.

“What in the hell?” Hephaestus
wondered in awe. “Why will you not stay down?” he asked of his friend. “You are
clearly sick. I can get help for you if you just give me a minute. Did you fall
on the tracks? Is that what is wrong? Some kind of chemical spill?”

But his friend stumbled onward,
unblinking, moaning something unintelligible. His old friend wasn’t his old
friend anymore. He was some kind of crazed creature out for a bite to eat.

And I am the main course,
he
realized. With a prayer of forgiveness to the universe followed by several successive
kicks, he smashed the man’s left knee, then his right and the man formerly
known as Harold went down hard, but still without any kind of indication of
pain that would be expected from any but the most heavily sedated. The sick
man’s jaw clenched and released and the eyes followed Hephaestus, but the thing
was now immobile, impotent. Hef walked around the man and grabbed his legs,
leading him back towards the corner to give himself a little breathing room and
keep the entrance clear while he planned out his immediate future. But as he
rounded the corner, he saw three more men stumbling towards him.

The first was on him almost before the
overwhelming stench hit his nostrils and he had little chance to react. Luckily,
Hephaestus was in such exceptional physical shape that he needed very little
time to react, even stoned as he was. He jumped to the side and into a recovery
roll Scooter had taught him. His nostrils could pick out only the stench of
death and decay from the body that flew past and he wretched in disgust.

Death. The Dead. The dead have
risen
. All of this flashed through his mind as he rolled. He knew now what
he was facing. Acting only on instinct, he turned and threw an eight-inch steel
dart into the head of the man who’d attacked him. The dart entered the eye
socket and vitreous fluid squirted out as the eye popped. As the dart entered
the brain, the former man fell into an impotent heap. Hephaestus turned quickly
and sent out a mighty swing at the man-thing that was trying to jump on his
back. The big homemade mace shattered the man-thing’s skull and continued out
the other side. He threw another dart into the eye-socket of the last undead
man lurching towards him.

Its. They are its, not men,
he modified his thinking after examining the bodies and sizing up the situation.
With little delay, he pulled out his phone and called 911. There was no answer
and no recording.

“Of course,” he muttered. “Want to
turn myself in and there is no one to take me.”

He took a deep breath full of
regret and pulled out his pipe, loading it with his best weed for one last
smoke of freedom. When he finished filling the bowl, and held it up to his
lighter, but paused. With a sigh, he walked over and pulled the darts from his
victims skulls and wiped them on their clothes. He then shuffled over to the
corner, bent over and, rigid as a man of thrice his own age, looked back at
what he’d just done. Harold’s jaw and broken appendages were now the only things
still moving in the side alley where four men had been not one minute before. He
took one giant pull from his pipe and held it, then another, and again, all the
while staring down at four corpses, one of which still twitched and moaned as
it ached for a taste of his flesh. Hef repeated this process until the bowl was
empty. How long he had stared down at the stinking piles of flesh he did not
know, but he nearly had a heart attack when his phone rang.

What in the hell?
He jumped
at something so normal after his brief, but dangerous life and death struggle.
Ah.
Nine-one-one calling me back.
He didn’t even bother to look at the number.
Good.
Glad I smoked. I need to be high for this.

“Hello?” he said slowly, feeling a
bit more of a buzz than he’d expected.

“Hephaestus, you still there, man?”

So, not Nine-one-one…

“Is that a trick question?”

“I mean, are you still at your
shop?”

“Wha?”

“Hef. I don’t have time to repeat
myself.”

“Tripper?”

“Of course.”

“I do not know how long I have been
here, but I was certain I was the last man alive.”

“How baked are you right now?”

“Deep fried.”

“Thought so.”

“Tripper. I just killed four men.”

“Oh man, I’m sorry, Dude.

“Whatever you do, do not come over.
There is a crazed gang on some serious drugs, or they are huffers or something.
They were outside trying to break in. I had to kill a few of them. They were so
jacked-up on something that I had to literally bash their heads in. And now I am
high as your proverbial kite, my friend. That is going to mean some serious prison
time for me. Or deportation at the very least. I do not want you mixed up in
this. Being a foreigner, they will probably scream terrorism and send me to
Gitmo. I tried to call the police and report myself, but no one is answering
the phones.”