Dead and Dead Again: Kansas City Quarantine (25 page)

“Ok,” Trip said with even more
uncertainty.

“But, do it slowly,” Scooter added.

“I
am
doing it slowly,”
Tripper grumbled in exasperation.

“Stay at this speed here,” Scooter
said and they hit the first few Shufflers, as everyone was starting to call the
slow, mostly unwounded upright walkers, the wounded ones being called Gimps.
Most of the Shufflers became instant road fill, but a few of the more active
ones, Joggers and Grabbers as Trip named them in his mind, tried to climb the
hood. Sarah immediately turned their heads into pin-cushions.

“Nice shooting, Honey,” Tripper praised
her. “Way to keep the Grabbers away.”

“Almost there,” Scooter warned.

“That street sign is right in front
of us, man,” Trip huffed.

The vehicle hit the sign and nearly
stopped, but Tripper hit the accelerator and pushed it over. As he advanced
slowly a heavy metal scraping screeched from the undercarriage and Trip stopped
as zombies further away were now looking at them and edging closer.

“Forget it, just go,” Scooter
ordered. He hadn’t expected the sign to be so unyielding. Tripper hit the gas,
and there was a terrible lurching shriek of metal-on-metal followed by a clunk
that no wanted to think about.
Grass,
part of Calvin’s mind reminded
him.
Those signs I hit were all imbedded in the grass. These are in
concrete. Why didn’t I remember that before I told him to do this?
There
was no answer. He wasn’t sure whether to be happy about that or not. “Damn,
that was stupid,” he mumbled, forgetting about the little mic resting on his
cheek.

“Not really,” Athena argued.
“You’re parallel with the building only a few inches away and you’re clearing a
nice little path for us. It looks good from back here…except for the sign sticking
up your ass thing.”

“We may have ripped the entire
undercarriage from Hef’s toy.”

“That would definitely be bad,”
Athena agreed. “But I’m sure Hef built it better than that. He would have
designed it for mountain climbing. We should be able to skid across boulders
and even roll over a few times and keep going. A few dead guys and a rusty old
pole shouldn’t kill it.”

“You’re right,” Calvin agreed.
“Unless he wasn’t finished with it, yet.”

“If it wasn’t done, he would have
told us,” Tripper guaranteed the others with confidence. But talking with his
hands caused him to accidentally pull too far away from the building and one of
the dead slid in between the vehicle and the wall of the building. When he
steered back, the Shuffler was crushed between car and wall and smeared like
peanut butter under a knife, leaving a dark, gory stain on the wall, and worse,
on the windows and body of the vehicle.

“Sorry about that,” he apologized
to whomever was retching in the back.

“You saying that to the zombie you
just turned into a hamburger patty or to us for having to watch?” Athena asked
while making disgusted retching sounds.

“Ew, gross! There’s an eye looking
at me,” Felicia laughed uneasily. “I think we’re going to have to keep track of
nearby car washes.” Though laughing, her pale features suggested she was close
to losing her breakfast. The unfortunate girl had pressed her face to the
window to examine the building, putting the former man’s right before her eyes
as the head popped and she was now unable to rip her fascinated gaze from the
solitary eye that slid slowly down the window within a thick stream of
yellowish mucus.

“Ok, we’re here, hold up,” Gus
announced. The ambulance pulled in right behind the Hedgehog and paused for a
minute as the two climbers reached out and scurried up the big pipe and out of
sight. “It’s going to take me about forty minutes to get up there.”

“We’ll drive around the block a few
times to make sure you get going and that everything is going ok,” Calvin
suggested.

“You mean to be sure I’m not
freaking out,” Scaggs disputed.

“That too. And then we’ll head
towards Boomer and Brick.”

Tripper drove around the corner
while Scooter watched the pair progressing across what looked like a corrugated
tin roof that was erected over pipes and wiring harnesses, all of which ran under
the tower into a shack in the central area.

The lumpy metal roof made a nice
little walkway and they were quickly in position. Gus used a key to open the
protective gate to the ladder, swinging it noisily away. Pulling himself up first,
he then nodded for her to climb up behind. He handed her the keys and after a
deep breath for courage, she pulled the gate closed and locked it. Looking up,
she realized that it seemed a
lot
higher up close.
No turning back
now, girl.

“Ok, they’re in position,” Scooter
informed Tripper.

“You can go one block south and run
a bigger block, Scoot,” Gus said. “I can’t see any biters on the next block
over there, just around the tower here.”

“I wonder if there are people in
there,” Scooter asked. “Let’s make a pass by the windows again. Far side of the
street,” he ordered Trip.

Trip spun the wheel the big Hummer
exhibited a much tighter turn radius than anyone had believed possible Their
first trip through had pulled all of the zombies to the south side of the
street, next to the building, allowing them to now pass unhindered in the north
lane. Nothing, living or dead, watched them through the clear glass of the
station.

“I think we should go get the
Hedgehog checked by Hef,” Athena suggested.

“You know, you’re probably right,
Athena,” Calvin agreed. “Wait. Why do you say that? Do you see something?” he
asked in concern.

“It’s…ugh.” She gagged.

“It’s hard to tell with the zombie
guts dripping off,” Quinn answered for her.

“I didn’t think about that. Might
need mud flaps for this thing, too,” Trip suggested. “Goo flaps? Dead flaps?
Blood flaps?” he tried to find the right name. “Yeah, that’s it. Blood flaps.”

“Ew!” Felicia gagged.

“I’ll have Hef figure something out
later,” he said. “Drives over them real easy, though, just like little piles of
mud in a field,” he added.

“Just stop, Trip,” Sarah insisted
quietly.

“Ok, you can go,” Gus said before
they’d gone halfway around the block.

“You sure?” Calvin asked.

“Yes. I’m fine. It’s not much
harder than a regular climb. I don’t think we need to worry about any zombies
climbing up here.”

“How’s Scaggs doing?” Felicia
asked.

“She’s fine. She’s a monkey. I think
you need to go back and check out the Hedgehog. I can see a stream behind you
from here and it doesn’t look like blood.”

“He’s right. You are leaking
something.” Athena announced ominously

“You sure?” Scooter asked.

“No. That’s why I said ‘I think’
instead of just ‘you’re leaking something’. Oh, wait, no I didn’t say ‘I think’
at all, did I? That must mean I’m pretty damn sure.”

Calvin bit off the reply that first
came to mind. “Right.” He said flatly, turning to Trip and mimicking choking
her. His friend laughed.

“You know I can see you up there,
don’t you?” Athena asked from directly behind them, waving at them as they
looked back through the big rear window.

“Of course we did,” Calvin lied.
“Let’s go, Trip. Better go a bit faster this time.”

Tripper sped up almost to the speed
limit, but then upped it to 45mph when he noticed how fast the fuel gauge was
dropping.

“Punctured the fuel tank,” he
hissed.

“Damn!” Scooter spat, the smell of
gasoline had just reached his sensitive nose. Yes, there was definitely a leak.

Tripper slowed to 35mph as the
familiar rough housing of the occupied editions approached, mostly to ensure
they didn’t run any of the looters over and incur the wrath of the armed
escorts. Again the armed men with dark brows and anger in their eyes showed
them a lot of attention, but let them pass unhindered. Crossing the river without
any further mishaps, Calvin grabbed the radio and called Hephaestus.

“Adventurers to Dungeon Master,” he
called, using the call signs his friend had forced upon them.

It
was
his equipment, after
all. Gus and Scaggs had been dubbed Frodo and Sam since they were the ones
taking the ring to the big red volcano. Calvin was Party Leader, and whoever drove
the ambulance would be called Cleric or Healer ‘because it is an ambulance’,
Joel had pointed out dramatically when Tripper had asked.

Scooter repeated the call several
times before they received a response.

“Dungeon Master to Adventurers,”
Hephaestus replied eventually, his breath coming in rapid gasps. “Apologies, I
was using the Dungeon Privies and did not take a mic with me,” he explained.

“Ew, luckily,” Sarah gagged.

Hephaestus laughed. “How is your
quest going?” he inquired

“One of our steeds has a stone in
its heel. We need someone to remove it.”

“What did you do to my Hedgehog,
Calvin Hobbes?” Hef demanded in mock anger, though Calvin was unsure how much
was really mock.

“How do you know it was yours?” he
asked.

“Because if you were talking about
that ambulance of Quinn’s you would have called it an ox or bull…and now you
did not deny it.”

“I think we ruptured the fuel
tank.”

“How did you manage that? The tank
has three-quarter Titanium Plating over it.”

“Not important right now,” Calvin
snapped.

“It will take a few hours to empty,
repair and replace,” Festus sighed.

“I know. But the alternative is
trying to drive without fuel.”

“That would be difficult,” Hef
laughed. “Where are you?”

“We’re about two minutes out.”

“Oh. The screens are clear. Your
Detect Animals spell is up and working, you do not notice anything out of the
ordinary. Do you enter the Dungeon?”

Calvin laughed. The shadowy alley was
already lighting up as the doors lifted.

Five minutes later Hephaestus stood
before him with a thin metal tube about two feet in length that was mashed and
split in the middle.

“It is not the tank, Calvin. It is
a fuel line. That was a one-in-a-million accident. This one spot I left open on
the entire undercarriage so that I can get a tool in there to remove the
plating. There is a bolt right next to the line there.”

Calvin stood next to the vehicle
with a grave look on his face.

“How long to fix?”

“Well, I have the parts here,
luckily, so…fifteen minutes, maybe. And I will tack a plate over that hole so
it does not happen again.”

“Thanks, Festus,” Calvin patted him
on the shoulder.

“Just be more careful with my toys,
Calvin,” he smiled down and patted Calvin back affectionately. “I must gather
the parts. Grab a snack or something,” he suggested.

Thirty-eight minutes later both
vehicles were back on the streets gunning south for The Liberty Memorial. Without
a video feed, the group had taken a chance and driven south past the Memorial
first, but burning floats and wrecked vehicles blocked parts of the eastern
side streets. The area could be traversed, but not easily. So they had bypassed
the area and flanked the park to the west and were attempting to come in from
that side, where the traffic cams they’d accessed had showed very little
activity and all traffic had been forbidden during the parade. Roving bands of
scattered Infected wandered the streets, but nothing blocked their path.

“The next street should be it,
Calvin,” Athena said hesitantly. GPS wasn’t working and all of the usual map
apps were blocked. She had been guiding them in the ‘back way’ from memory.
Quinn kept the big ambulance within two car lengths. Calvin had explained to
Hef that they still needed the big Armorer until Boomer and Brick were rescued.
Hephaestus had looked only slightly disappointed, admitting he was used to
working alone most of the time, anyway.

“There! About time!” Felicia
crowed.

The video feed finally loaded and everyone
in the Hedgehog craned to see the monitor. Panning the camera around from east
to west, Gus then centered in on a stone column book-ended by a pair of squat
buildings and a pair of griffen-looking statues on either side. Having found
the memorial, he focused in on the area. Spotting something specific through
his telescopic lens, he panned slightly to the southwest of the monument, centering
in on the grassy west side of the large park.

“How are we going to get through
that
?”
Trip grumbled.

“I’m working on it,” Scooter
mumbled, rubbing a chainmail finger along his jaw as he planned. “I’ll have something
by the time we get there,” he added.

“We’re there.”  Quinn informed him
happily. “It’s on the other side of this hill,” he pointed up a tree-filled
hillside.

“Shit.”

“Do we go on up the hill?” Quinn
asked.

“No. Absolutely not. Pull in here. We
need to find a way around
that
.”

But Quinn and Athena didn’t have a
monitor and therefore had no reference from which to draw a proper conclusion. The
‘that’ they were referring to was a roiling mass of walking corpses several
hundred strong covering a great portion of the playing fields and the surrounding
grasslands of the sports park around the memorial. There were open spaces, but
mostly the zombies trudged only a few feet apart from each other. Many of the
fences had been torn down as had the netting on the tennis courts and the
soccer goals. Anything not welded or bolted in place had long since been torn
free and stomped into the muddy grass.

The main mass of Infected seemed to
be circling around a shelter in the center of the park that covered two picnic
tables adjacent to the western of two parallel driveways that led to the
Liberty Memorial. Two figures could clearly be seen lying flat and unmoving on
the green tin roof of this shelter, about eight feet off the grass. The
broader, shorter of the two figures appeared to be a black man wearing a red
jersey and blue hat with blue jeans, while the other wore a red hat and blue
shirt with white khakis.

 “Oh my God! Is that them?” Athena
asked in horror, looking in through Scooter’s little window. The scene was
eerily reminiscent of a maritime disaster, two weary survivors adrift in a
roiling sea of death on some broken piece of their downed ship.

“What are you doing out of your
vehicle?” Calvin demanded.

“There’s no one around,” she waved
her arms around at the vacant dead end street.

“Still, don’t get out unless you
have to.”

But she ignored him and studied the
monitor, dismissively waving one hand at his unnecessary caution. “It’s like a
feeding frenzy down there,” she muttered.

“Feeding Frenzy? Really?” Scooter
asked. “Is that the analogy you want to use?”

“What? Why? It seems appropriate. They’re
circling around like sharks.”

“Maybe like the frenzy later in the
day where the older, beat up sharks get to lazily float around and wait for
something already half-dead to eventually float by.”

“What?”

“I’m saying they could hardly be
said to have worked themselves into a
frenzy
, being as how they barely
can work themselves into a well-paced shuffle.”

“You’re seriously arguing the
semantics of my chosen metaphor when the world is ending all around us?”

“Don’t change the subject,” Scooter
needled her.

“Feeding Frenzy might not have been
the most…ideal phrase, but it’s all I could think of at that moment. Did you
have anything better?”

“Off the top of my head…It’s like
someone dropped a contact in a crowded church.”

“How about: It’s buffet time at a
retirement home and Boomer’s manning the food cart,” Sarah suggested.

“Ooh, ooh. Something about how many
strippers you can get dancing around one pole,” Tripper added.

The others rolled their eyes and
Sarah reached over and slapped him on the arm.

“It’s the line around the lone
port-a-potty at a Grateful Dead concert,” Joel added. Felicia slapped his leg
laughing.

“Nice!” the others agreed. “And you
even got
dead
in there.”

“Hey Spenser, can you zoom in on
that roof?” Calvin called over the radio.

“Roger that,” Gus called back.

“Is it too late to go back to stay
with the doctor?” Athena joked lightly.

“I’m thinking of joining you,”
Tripper agreed with a dry grimace.

“We’re going to have to split up,”
Scooter decided.

“That doesn’t sound like a good
idea at all,” Quinn mumbled, being alone in the ambulance at the moment.

“Don’t worry,” Calvin assured him.
“Athena is coming back there
right
now
,” he shooed her away with
repeated, dismissive little swats.

“We’re going to try and attract
most of them to the far side of the park.”

“How are you going to do that, Oh
Mighty Calvin?” Athena asked petulantly, stomping back to the ambulance.

“We’re going to stick our heads out
the window and make a whole lot of noise.”

“That sounds brilliant, genius,”
Athena growled. “You gonna go right to the middle and blow your horn?”

“Pretty much,” Calvin admitted.
“This thing is so quiet I figure we can drive right through them to the far
side, almost out of the pack. Then blow the horn, sing a song, whatever we need
to do to get their attention. When most of them follow us, we’ll head out the
other side of the park, go around the block and haul ass back here and escort
you up the hill to rescue them. We should only have to kill a few around the
shelter. Then we should be able to get the jocks down and be gone long before
even the fastest in that horde can get back to us.”

“Oh.” Athena said simply.
That’s
actually a decent plan,
she conceded, but only in her mind. She was so
annoyed that when the growling zombie leaped out of the alley at her, she shot
it in the head without a second thought. The report of the M-16 seemed more
like concussions from a bomb, however, as it echoed through the little valley.

“Oh shit,” she said, looking back
at Calvin and grimacing an apology.

The report of the shot continued to
echo for a long, drawn-out, almost comical moment. “What, are we in the Grand Flipping Canyon or something?” Trip asked no one in particular.

No one replied.

“Here they come” Joel announced
needlessly.

Bobbing heads appeared over the rim
of the hill above their dead end and Infected slowly stomped down the hill,
some rolling.

“More to the rear,” Felicia added.

Calvin craned his head around to
look. They were, indeed, in a little valley inside a larger area of the park just
down a hill to the west from the nation’s only World War I Memorial. There were
mobs of dead scattered all throughout the park and it was clear now that sound
did attract their attention. “Ok…that’s not good,” he stated the obvious.

“I’m sorry, you guys,” Athena
apologized earnestly. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“That’s ok, Rosebud. Those Leapers
and Lurkers hiding in the alleys come out pretty quick. They’re like animals,
hiding in wait to spring the trap. You’re lucky it didn’t get you. I told you
to keep that visor down any time you’re outside.” He studied the still-twitching
remnants of what had once been a homeless man.

“I usually have the panabas, but I
was in a hurry to get up here.”

“Face it, your reflexes are quicker
than your brain,” Tripper pointed out. “Not that
that
is hard.”

“Hey!” she shouted defensively,
clicking her seatbelt and shutting the door of the ambulance. “It was an
accident,” she explained. “Next time I take only Chuck,” she promised.

“Chuck?” Sarah asked.

“My panabas. It’s badass. It was
either Rhonda Rousey or Chuck Norris. I went old school instead of girl power.
And Rhonda sounds like a guy’s weapon anyway.”

“Nice.”

“What do we do now, Calvin?” Quinn
asked, still chuckling.

“Ok. We split up again…or still. We
keep the plan to split up, but change our routes You guys head back the way we just
came. We’ll go North towards the tracks and Union Station. We’ll cut back up
into the park when we get half way there.”

“Halfway where?” Athena asked.

“Oh…sorry. That didn’t make any
sense at all, did it? I was picturing the park as a box and…nevermind. Just go
slow. Make lots of noise and let them follow you. Try to get as many on your
tail as you can. If they start catching up with you or the street ahead starts
to fill up, just haul it out of there and angle straight up the hill into the memorial
plaza area. Don’t forget to let us know you’re breaking off so we can come
cover you.”

“Ok,” Athena agreed.

“Let’s try to get back to the
center as close to the same time as we can.”

“I don’t know where it is you’re
saying we should meet,” Quinn interjected.

“I saw it,” Athena told him. “I’ll
show you when we come back around. I sort of know my way around here.”

“Ok. This is one place in Kansas City of which I have little knowledge,” he explained. “I don’t get downtown much.”

“A lot of people from the outer cities
don’t realize how much there is to do down here now.”

“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” Calvin
snipped. “Maybe we can push the tourism when the living outnumber the dead
again. Anyone have any questions about the plan?”

No one said anything, but he could
sense Athena in a huff, which he ignored for now. There were enough
distractions out there that he was confident it would blow away on its own. Or
it wouldn’t and she’d make him pay. Either way, it would have to wait.

“Ok, then. Trip?”

“On it, Scoot.” He laid on the
horn, which surprised them all as it blared out the deep, ear-splitting blast
of a massive, triple air horn. Tripper laughed. “What kind of jackass puts a
train air-whistle in their car?” he asked.

“I like it,” Joel bellowed merrily.

“I don’t!” Sarah yelled, holding
her ears. “Make it stop!” As the front turret operator, and not having the
protection of the triple-thick windshield, she’d nearly had a heart attack. “Please
don’t do that again unless you have to,” she begged Tripper.

“Sorry, babe,” Tripper shouted almost-ruefully.
“But it’s gotta be done.” He shot her an impish grin and pressed the button
again, then frowned almost immediately. Only intending to jerk her chain with a
short burst, the horn kept blasting away when he pulled his finger away from
the button.

“Stop it!” Sarah shouted, ducking
back into the vehicle to be heard. “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it, Tripper!”

“I can’t!” he yelled back. “It’s
stuck!” He pounded the silver button several times in a futile attempt to make
the sound go away.

“See what you get, Jackass?” She
snapped angrily. “Now the horn is stuck! You had to be mister funny man!”

“Quinn, we’re pulling south. See
you in a bit!” Calvin shouted. “We’ll try to find a place to stop and fix the
horn!”

“Please do!” Quinn laughed back.

The two vehicles pulled out, Quinn driving
north and blaring the trumpet on his own vehicle, although the Hedgehog riders
couldn’t hear it over the thunder of their own horn, pulling every nearby
Infected towards the south.

“When we get to this intersection
up here, I’m going to jump out and fix that!” Calvin shouted.

“Ok!”

When they reached the corner, a tiny
horde of Joggers poured in from both sides. “Next street. Next street!” Calvin
shouted.

“We’re still clear up here,
Calvin,” Quinn said over the headphones. “Just pulling them along with us. More
are coming out of the park to join them. There’s a grassy hill next to us and
they keep rolling down the hill and breaking themselves on the street.”

“This would be great comedy in a
movie,” Athena said quietly. Calvin barely heard the second half of her
statement as she whispered, “But here it’s just tragic.”

“Here! Here! Now!” Calvin shouted.

 Trip slammed on the brakes.

“Flip the hood release!” Calvin
called.

“There isn’t one. I mean, they’re
on the fenders!”

Both men jumped out, dashing to the
front to unhook the black metal releases on either side, but the hood did not
budge. They quickly looked back to see if they had enough time to find out why.
They didn’t. Both men jumped back in and Trip drove them a half block further up
the street for a little bit more of a cushion.

“Here. Here it is!” he shouted,
pointing to a florescent green knob clearly marked ‘Hood Release’ on the left
side of the dash. “Of course! He disconnected the real latches and put a special
hood switch in here so anyone in the movie universe wouldn’t have to be stuck
outside trying to open the hood during the apocalypse like we were! He always
thinks of everything!”