Dead and Dead Again: Kansas City Quarantine (24 page)

“Thanks. No pressure there,” Joel’s
eyes rolled in response to Calvin’s evil grin.

“Seriously, though,” Calvin turned
around to take in those he could see with a serious glance. “We won’t have time
to second guess ourselves. This is real. Maybe we all need a little reminder of
that. If we hesitate, we could die or get someone else killed. We have to count
on each other from now on until this thing is over. If you have to do or say
something stupid once in a while to keep your sanity, by all means go ahead and
do it. But let’s not allow it to jeopardize our alertness. We have to stay
alive…and when we get all of our friends and family sorted out, then we need to
find a way to end this sooner, rather than later, so there’s still something
left worth fixing.”

“I think there’s a lot of dead that
need killing before we can even think about any kind of fixing, Calvin,”
Tripper told him.

“Yes, I know. In fact, Sarah and
Joel, you both need to practice. Don’t waste our ammo, but you need to make
sure those things are going to work when and how we need them to. Pass on what
works to the rest of us if you can. I wish we had given them a test run before
we left.”

“You don’t trust Festus? I’m gonna
have to tell him,” Trip joked.

“I think he’ll allow it. He knows
I’m from Missouri. If you want me to believe it, you have to
show
me
.”

“You Missourians are always pulling
that out,” Joel complained. “It’s not really as clever as you think it is.”

“What have you Kansans got?”
Tripper snapped back. “Sunflowers? Now that’s clever. At least we’ve got a
story to go with ours, one that changes with every person who tells it.”

“Enough,” Calvin snapped. “Let’s
put the border war on hold for a while.”

“Ok, Calvin,” Joel agreed.

“Whatever,” Tripper grumbled.

The border war between Kansas and Missouri had started long before the American Civil War and even though lives
were rarely being lost, the history was too deeply ingrained within the blood
of citizens on both sides to ever truly fade away.

“Joel, Sarah, every one of these
random Shufflers you take down during your practice may be a life spared later.
And you need to be ready to hit moving targets.”

“But what if there’s a cure for
this some time? Shouldn’t we try to save lives overall?” Athena asked.

“We can’t look that far ahead. Maybe
you’re right. I’d hate to kill people who can be cured. But this isn’t a movie.
Maybe they’re really not…zombies. Maybe the virus is just taking on that
appearance. But we can’t let them eat us, either. Let’s make sure the guns work
and keep our paths and our bases clear. But let’s not kill them unless we have
to, just in case. Just…pick a side and let’s find you some targets.” These last
words were delivered in a raspy whisper as he contemplated their meaning—
let’s
kill some people.

“I’ve got the left side,” Sarah
said as if she were calling shotgun on movie night.

“I guess I’ll take the right,
then,” Joel said in a crazy, overdone clown voice.

Several of the others laughed and
Felicia squeezed his leg in affection. The vehicle Hephaestus had designed and
built was an extended and lifted, armored Humvee with left front (behind the
driver) and right rear gun turrets. Each turret had a 350 degree lateral firing
arc, allowing the pair of gunners to cover each other. It also had a
two-hundred-and-fifty degree vertical arc so it could be quickly flipped from
one side to the other to clear hills, balconies, streets, and possibly even
sewers on any side of the vehicle. In a ridiculous twist of fate, this type of
mission was exactly how Hephaestus had intended it to be used when he had first
showed Calvin the design. Of course, that was supposed to be for make-believe.
This was all too real.

“There,” Scooter pointed. “Straight
ahead and on both sides, take them down.”

Both guns set to and they could see
a line of shiny darts jetting out at the stalkers ahead. All of the targets
went down quickly as each gunner adjusted to the sights. Sarah brought hers on
target first, to Joel’s shame as the resident FPS champion of the group. Scooter
was very impressed, in every way. The guns let out only a barely noticeable
hiss of expended air and along with the quiet metallic clink-shook of the nails
being loaded and then fired down the barrel coupled with a uniquely doubled-up
exhaust muffler system, it was no wonder they weren’t drawing much attention.
The vehicle was silent. The guns were even more hushed. Dealing out death to
the already dead was as peaceful as simply driving down the roadway. The armor
would keep them safe from most surprises. Quinn’s vehicle was pretty quiet as
well due to the snorkels used for intake and exhaust and the extra muffling
system he’d made and installed himself.

I could get used to this,
he
thought. Then chastised himself for getting comfortable.
No one is safe. Not
until this thing is cured…or at least countered.

Most of these corpses were moving
faster than the dead they had encountered so far. A group of five slavering
feeders charged the vehicles in a pack, but the two ‘gunners’ took them down as
Tripper swerved to give them both a line-of-fire.

“Must be fresher kills,” Calvin
mused to the others.

“Or the virus is mutating,” Athena
suggested.

“You noticed it too?” he asked.

“Of course,” she sounded insulted.

“I didn’t notice,” Tripper said.
“What are we noticing?”

“These are moving faster than the
others.”

“Oh, that. I noticed that. Just
thought it was obvious,” he lied.

“We’ll inform the doc when we get
back,” Calvin told them, ignoring Tripper. “Keep track of everything so we can
use it in the future. We’ll debrief after each foray.”

“Listen to you, Captain Leader
Guy,” Athena joked.

“Well doesn’t it sound like something
we should do?” he snapped, annoyed.

“Absolutely, Captain Leader Guy,”
Trip quipped and the others laughed.

“Ok. Some walk faster than others,”
Athena listed off the first thing they’d learned on this mission—zombie
related, anyway.

“And they seem to get a burst of
energy right after feeding,” Scaggs added.

“Really?”

“Oh yeah. Me and FeFe saw it in a
gang of biters.”

“You didn’t mention that before,”
Gus admonished her.

“There…hasn’t really been time. I
didn’t even remember ‘til just now. They had us surrounded and were moving
really slowly, but as soon as they bit into live flesh—not ours, thankfully—they
got stronger and faster, overpowering the guys in the group where before they
were just staggering mannequins likes most of the rest we’ve seen.

“But it only seemed to last for ten
or fifteen minutes,” Felicia added.

“Yeah,” Scaggs agreed. “If that
much. Then they were shufflers again.”

“That’s
very
good to know,”
Calvin noted. “Thanks, girls.”

Continuing on, they tried to recall
anything anyone had noticed or been told by one of the others while each person
kept at least one eye on the street. The ride continued without incident until
Scooter called out.

“There’s the tower over to the
right, Scaggs,” he pointed out his window and Joanne turned and looked into the
distance at the big, triangular, rust-red thousand-foot tower rising from the
suburban countryside like a redneck Eiffel Tower.

“You sure you’re ready to climb
that?” Gus asked her.

“You bet. Looks fun.”

The others simply shook their heads
again in wonder. The convoy reached 31
^st
street safely, but Sarah
began to get an uneasy feeling.

“Stop here, Trip,” she ordered when
they entered the center of the intersection.

“You see something, baby?”

Sarah remained silent.

“Babe?” he asked again.

“Just a minute,” she shushed him.

They waited for several minutes,
all eyes and ears straining in every direction for whatever had spooked her. But
there were only a few slowly stumbling zombies bouncing around in the shadowy doorways
of the buildings or stuck inside the structures, rebounding from thick display
windows, trying to get out.

“Sorry,” Sarah announced at last.
“There was something…never mind.” She shook her head clear.

“That’s ok, Sarah,” Calvin assured
her. “Better safe than sorry. And after five years of you saving our asses
in-game and keeping us from getting caught smoking with your freaky female intuition,
I’ve learned to trust your instincts about danger.”

“Well it’s ok now. Not sure what
that was about,” she said with a shrug.

“Ok, Trip. Take us to the tower,”
Scooter pointed to the tower.

“To the Tower!” Trip shouted
dramatically.

“To the Tower!” Gus and Scaggs echoed.

Scooter hung his head. “Gimme a
break,” he complained bitterly.

The tower base appeared before them,
but it was not clear. Trip brought the Hedgehog to a slow crawl when they saw
the small roiling mass of dead covering the street in front of the building. He
looked at Scooter. “Think we should go around the block?”

“I doubt it would do any good—”

“—other than to attract the
attention of all the biters on the other three sides of the tower,” Scaggs
interjected semi-sarcastically.

“Right,” Scooter agreed. “Where do
you need to be?” he asked Gus.

“Just back it up a few blocks,” Gus
replied with a grunt, pulling his harness on.

“I’m already moving,” Quinn
informed Trip over the mic so he could back safely.

“Cool,” Trip put the Hog in reverse
and the vehicles backed up a block-and-a-half.

“You ready?” Gus asked Scaggs,
checking her harness and the cords to the equipment bag that would be dangling
beneath him as he climbed.

“Ready sir!” she saluted.

Her only job was to watch the bag.
She had to keep it free from entanglement, keep it from swaying back and forth
too much in certain areas, and maybe occasionally she would need to lift it up
so he could strap it to the tower and give himself a rest. This was a fifty
pound bag compared to the thirty pound load he regularly carried. He had once
carried an ancient replacement filament that had put the total weight to
seventy and had regretted it the next day. But that was only a 600 ft. tower,
not a thousand. For this trip most of the weight was in the charging system and
batteries for the camera with the solar panels and miniature wind turbine
actually weighing very little. But the wind had picked up. He didn’t bother
telling anyone just how worried he was about the climb. It needed to be done
and he was the only one who could do it.

“Ok, we need to get onto the top of
the ambulance,” he told the actress. The pair exited the Hedgehog and ran back
to the Ambulance. Scaggs instantly climbed the hood, narrowly avoiding getting
her harness caught on the snorkel. Gus walked over to the driver side and
leaned close to the window. Athena jumped out and dropped into a crouch, aiming
at two zombies that had appeared half-a-block behind them, but Trip turned the
Hedgehog slightly again so Sarah and Joel could shoot them quietly with the air
guns.

“No sense drawing any attention,”
he quipped over the com, with a smile for Athena, who nodded her thanks.

Gus leaned in through the tiny
block window to talk to Quinn, his thin face an emotionless mask.

“Ok. You see that flat part of the
brick building right at the far side of the tower?” he pointed to a low overhanging
roof next to a stretch of high picture windows.

“The part right before you get to
the area that has another few stories?”

“Yes.”

“Ok. I see it.”

“Well, there’s a big iron drainage pipe
there, just next to all the windows. All you have to do is get us up against
the building there, and we’ll climb the pipe.”

“But the tower ladder is on the
other side, Sweetie,” Scaggs noted, frowning down at him from the roof, her
shiny auburn hair hanging down and perfectly framing her beautiful,
heart-shaped face. His breath caught in his chest, but eventually he continued.

“There’s…there’s a sort of walkway
we can use to get to it. This saves us having to clear out the parking in the back.
We’d have to find a way to keep it clear long enough to finish the job. I used
to come this way before it was legal, when I was sneaking in. Trust me, this is
where we need to be,” he beamed confidence.

“Hmm, and this way we only have to
clear enough space for this vehicle so you can shimmy up the drain pipe instead
of us having to clear a massive perimeter so you can waltz in the front door…”
Quinn ran the plan through his already over-taxed brain.

“Right,” Gus answered, climbing
onto the roof of the ambulance.

“Great. Hey! No stomping around up
there,” Quinn ‘yelled’ as quietly as he could.

Gus laughed and Scaggs stifled a
giggle, though it may have all been nerves as they were now the only ones
outside without protection…other than light chain mail armor. Gus had worried
about that earlier, but this chain mail weighed so little he hardly noticed.
Scaggs seemed to have little difficulty with hers as well, but things might be
different several hundred feet in the air with a decent wind. Still, he’d asked
the man for the lightest coats and these seemed to fit the bill. He sure as
hell wasn’t going out there without armor. The pair had discussed it with Hef
and Calvin; if they could only climb half the tower before fatigue set in, then
that’s all they would climb.

“Ok, here we go,” Tripper announced
with some trepidation.

“Just get up on the sidewalk and
try to force them away,” Scooter told him.

Trip steered onto the left side and
up onto the sidewalk.

“You know there’s a sign there,
right?” he warned Calvin.

“Run it down. I’ve done that in
seven cars in the winter time; nothing to it.”