Dead and Dead Again: Kansas City Quarantine (26 page)

“Ok, let’s try this again!” Calvin
yelled.

The pair jumped out again and ran
to the hood, flinging it up with one arm each and trying to hold both ears with
the same arm. Trip was the first to spot the three large black horns in the
dark engine compartment. It was on Calvin’s side, but hidden under a shield that
blocked his view. He pointed and Calvin leaned forward to get a look. In one
quick motion he grabbed and pulled on the wiring harness that went into the
back of the horns. A profound silence washed over them like an avalanche. Both
men would have sworn they had gone deaf if not for the tinkling from above that
drew their eyes first to the turrets, and then to the zombies they were
shooting. A group of eight zombies moved ahead of the others, all wearing
running gear.

“Might wanna step it up, boys.
We’ve got a pack of Joggers coming on fast,” Sarah cautioned them.

“That one almost made it,” Felicia
noted calmly. She was stuck in the back, and couldn’t shoot out because the
back window was sealed and concussion proof; it did not open. She could have
jumped out with the boys, but hadn’t even contemplated it until far too late.
Now she could only sit and watch everyone else act. But she did have a full
suit of chainmail armor on now, so she was feeling pretty badass.
It’s funny
that I’ve never felt as safe as when I’m stuck in a car in the middle of a
horde of zombies and can’t shoot my gun,”
her brain quipped to itself,
because it was weird like that.

“We’re turning in to the park right
now,” Quinn declared quietly. “I stopped honking a half a block ago. It looks
clear up the hill.”

“Right. We’re about to reach the
half-block on our end,” Calvin lied, switched off his mic and shouted to trip, “Step
on it!” Both men then jumped in and buckled up.

Tripper gunned the accelerator for
the full half-block until Calvin pointed at a little access road. He yanked the
wheel and skidded onto the little street and followed the curve up the hill
into the park.

“No, it’s over that way!” Sarah
pointed slightly to the right and he gave the wheel another yank, jerking the
Hummer onto the grassy hill.

“Watch that tree!” Calvin warned
him, pointing to a freshly planted tree on the sloping hill.

Tripper veered away from it.

“Bush, bush!” Calvin shouted out,
this time pointing to a pair of bushes to the left. Tripper steered back
straight again.

“Watch out, flower bed to the
left!”

“I don’t think we need to worry
about a flower bed hurting the car, Scoot!” Tripper snapped back.

“I’m not worried about the car,
either. I don’t want you tearing up the park.” When Tripper shot him a look of
disgust, he explained. “Hey, it’s a beautiful park, man, and the only tribute
to our fallen warriors from World War One. Show some respect.”

“Right, Calvin,” Tripper replied
evenly, mapping out a new path into the park that avoided all of the bushes and
flower arrangements. He had forgotten all about Calvin’s family history. The
Hobbes family had lost at least one man to every war of their existence, first
fighting for Great Britain, and then on both sides of the Revolutionary War,
and later in every war and ‘police action’ the US had fought. This had
continued until Calvin came of age. Both of his parents were in the Special
Forces and had been killed in the Middle East when he was barely a teen. Following
their death, in exchange for taking care of him, his uncle had made him promise
to never join the military. His friend had kept that promise and never joined
up, but he was all about supporting the troops.

“Sorry, I forgot, man,” Trip said
earnestly.

“Don’t worry about it. This is probably
the end of the world. Maybe I’m the asshole here.”

“Oh, you’re definitely the asshole,
just not about this,” his friend grinned mischievously. “Did they ever answer
your text?”

“Nope,” Calvin answered.

“Man, is Boomer gonna be
surprised,” Trip laughed heartily.

The custom vehicle topped the
little rise into the inner Liberty Memorial Park area and, after a moment of
orientation, accelerated straight for the flashing lights of the ambulance. The
bigger black vehicle was driving circles around the green shelter trying to
clear a path by running down the remaining zombies. Limp bodies flew in every
direction, skidding through the damp grass and bouncing off of the tables in
the shelter. Sarah and Joel began shooting their nail guns as soon as they were
within range of the group and they quickly cut a nice circle around the
structure.

“Slow it down a bit, Trip, will
you?” Sarah asked.

Trip slowed the Hummer from thirty
to ten.

“There. That’s it,” she cooed.

“Yeah, that’s just about perfect,”
Joel agreed.

“It’s like nine and a half mph,” he
informed them.

“It’s the perfect speed for aiming
these things,” Sarah explained. “Right around ten to fifteen is smoother, no
matter what you’re hitting or what range.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Trip argued.

“No, she’s right; it really is,”
Joel countered. “I don’t know why, though,” he added lamely.

All around the shelter zombies fell
to the earth, several silvery darts poking out of the skin around their
exploded eyes.

“That’s some great shooting there,
guys,” Calvin praised them as they took down more and more of the shuffling,
limping Infected.

“It may take more shots to put a
nail in the right spot,” Joel said. “But it sure as hell is a lot less messy
than axes and baseball bats.”

“Too bad we can’t all have one of
those, but we’d run out of nails eventually, and have to resort right back to
our trusty melee weapons.”

“You’re probably right,” Joel
agreed. “But for now, I call dibs on the coolest of weapons—this one,” he
nodded down to his turret.

“We’ll see, Joel.”

This was basically agreement in Joel’s
eyes. He let out an enthusiastic ‘woohoo’ and took down three zombies with a
single extended burst.

Sarah was still unsure she wanted
to do so much killing, but she wasn’t about to give up the turret until she had
another plan.

“I call dibs on this one, then,”
she said.

“Of course,” Calvin agreed. “As
long as you both realize that everyone needs a little training on the guns, you
can be the main gunners.”

“Right.” “Sure.” They responded.

For a moment, the area around the
shelters was clear. Stragglers began shambling back into the park from the
outer edges, attracted by the lights of the ambulance.

“Ok, Quinn. Move in there on the
East side. Get as close as you can.”

“Right.”

A young black man’s head peeped
over the top of the shelters now, white eyes shining in wonder. Tripper pulled
up between the remaining little horde and the shelter, putting Calvin on the
inside. Calvin swung down the tiny chunk of removable bulletproofing on his
window and looked out.

“Boomer! Brick!” he called.

“Calvin? Is that you?” Boomer’s
brilliant teeth beamed like the sun on a solar panel. “Glad to see you, man! The
fuck you wearing, dude?”

“Hey Boomer!” Calvin smiled up at
his friend, before realizing he was wearing a plate helm and Boomer couldn’t
see his face. He waved through the window instead, not wanting to step out
because they needed to remain mobile for a bit longer.

Athena, however, had already leaped
out and stood looking up at the roof, guiding Quinn into position. “Climb onto
the roof!” she shouted.

“Athena?” Boomer eyed this
blue-armored warrior in surprise.

She pointed at the edge of the roof
behind them. Boomer looked back. The high profile ambulance box actually sat
higher than the shelter roof. He stood and hopped up onto the vehicle, then
dropped to his stomach at the rear, leaned over and pulled himself through the
back door of the modified Hummer upside down, dropping to his feet to stand in
the ‘bed’ of the ambulance.

“Brick!” Athena shouted.

The former Quarterback had
half-risen, but then froze, his fear-filled blue eyes fixated onto something in
the distance. She looked back to the north see what horrors awaited, but it was
just the army of undead Shufflers massing across the park by the memorial,
slowly beginning to advance towards the group again. Most likely they were
being drawn to the sounds of their shouting and the lights. He clearly had yet
to adapt his thinking to the reality of what they were facing, namely zombies.

“Turn off the lights, Quinn,” she
suggested, then, “Brick!” But he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, look away from the
approaching multitude.
Oh my god. He’s really out of it.
“Ok. You have
to come down now, Stephen,” she cooed, soft voice dripping with sweetness, like
she was trying to trade ice cream for good-behavior from a little child. “C’mon,
honey. You have to climb over and jump onto the truck, now”

He looked down at her for a second
and his eyes nearly locked into focus, but then he shook his head and returned
to his appraisal of the incoming zombies.

“Damn it!” Athena jumped onto Quinn’s
hood and stomped onto the roof.

“Hey!” Quinn complained.

“Get your ass up here, Brick!” she ordered
him, ignoring the smith.

Brick finally looked straight at
Athena, seeing her for the first time, but made no move towards the vehicle.

“Is he bit?” Calvin asked.

“No,” Boomer shouted from inside
the ambulance. “He’s checked out, man.”

“He’s just dazed,” Athena answered.

The air guns opened up on the
approaching masses at about twenty feet. Athena felt a bead of sweat building
on her forehead as she glanced back to check the distance.

“C’mon, Stephen, honey. It’s ok.
We’ll help you,” her dulcet tones attempted to attract the dazed athlete, arms
gently waving him onto the vehicle. He reached out a hand and she grabbed it
with both of hers and heaved.

In that moment Boomer was back up
on the truck beside her, his dark hands grasping at the other arm, pulling in
unison. Together the pair heaved their nearly-catatonic friend onto the roof. Boomer
pulled more of the nearly two hundred pounds than Athena, but she exerted all
of her strength to steer his useless body just perfectly so that when he
ultimately collapsed onto the vehicle he plopped down right over the back door,
head hanging off the roof, drool dripping harmlessly into the grass below.

“Get down there, Boomer,” Athena
ordered.

“You go,” he shook his head. “Get
inside; I’ll drop him in there.”

“Boomer Louisa McClintock. You get
off this roof now and catch him or I’m going to tell everyone your middle
name.”

“Louisa!” Trip called. “Oh my god.
Boomer is Louisa!”

“Again, I mean,” Athena shrugged a
completely unapologetic apology.

“Woooohoooo, Louisa!” Joel cat
whistled. His friends sent catcalls and whistles.

Boomer threw a mock injured look at
her and jumped down as she pushed Brick off into his waiting arms.

“Nice work. That’s what they mean
by
throwing
a
brick
,” Joel quipped, air-throwing a basket.

“Maybe Thick as a brick.” Sarah
snorted roughly, glaring up at the man angrily.

“No, no,” Tripper shut them all
down, mistaking Sarah’s anger for sarcasm. “She done dropped da brick on him,”
he joked. “Huh? Huh? Right?”

“Can we all speed it up a little,”
Calvin ignored pretty much everyone.

“Athena, be ready to jump down and
get in as soon as they’re clear. Hurry it up and get him in, Boomer!”

Calvin wasn’t panicking, though it
may have sounded that way to anyone not familiar with his methods. His friends
tended to become easily distracted with their own wit and thereby often let
trouble find them while they stood around patting themselves on the back. The horde
of dead rolling towards the two vehicles like a tsunami and they were just
sitting on the beach gossiping and sipping drinks from hollowed out coconuts
with little umbrellas in them. While they dawdled, the pack of Shufflers had
slowly closed to within twenty feet and there were now too many targets for
Sarah and Joel to keep the perimeter cushion clear.

“Get us moving, Trip” Calvin
ordered. “Slowly. Spiral away from the center.”

“We’re partway in,” Boomer said.

“Got him, Boom? Go, Quinn. Go!”
Athena yelled from the top of the roof.

The big smith gunned-it and the powerful
ambulance sent mud and grass flying up behind it as the tires dug in. Several
zombies bounced off the brush guard on the front and Boomer had to repeatedly stomp
one hand from the oversized rear bumper. The stubborn dead guy in a blue jersey
wouldn’t let go until all of his fingers had been broken off. With that, Boomer
finally managed to manhandle the rest of Brick firmly into the back of the
truck. Athena waited until they were clear and then swung down into the back with
even more grace than Boomer had originally shown.

“Nice moves, Rosebud,” Calvin
tossed her a compliment over the mic.

“Thanks, baby,” she fired back.

“You know, I did that first,”
Boomer argued into the mic Quinn had just given him.

“She made it look better,” Calvin
dismissed him smoothly.

“Well, it’s not a fair comparison.”

“How’s that?” Calvin asked.

“I don’t have her finely chiseled
ass to work with,” he pointed out.

“Seriously? I’m rescuing you and
you’re talking about my girlfriend’s ass?”

“I’m just saying…”

“We need to get Brick back to have
the doctor look at him,” Athena suggested. “If you’re all done talking about my
ass, I mean,” she sniffed her disapproval.

“Ok. Why are we going so slow?” Calvin
asked, feeling his temperature rise.

“Slowly,” Tripper corrected.

“Adjust our speed, not our
English!” Calvin spat back.