Dead and Dead Again: Kansas City Quarantine (30 page)

“That’s for damned sure,” Tripper
laughed.

“Gus!” Scaggs screamed again as she
slipped in some of the gore and teetered over the side.

His heart sank as he watched her
horrified eyes disappear over the rim of the walkway, down into the pit with a
dozen active zombies.

“Help me—oof!” she screamed.

She felt arms grab pull on her arms
and legs, the spear ripped from her grasp as sinew stretched and several finger
joints on her mailed left hand snapped out of position between the teeth of one
zombie, the chain mail gloves leaving nothing but oozing gums in the mouth of
that particular zombie. Her legs were ripped in two different directions and
she knew it was just a matter of seconds before something broke. Pain erupted
from every joint as both legs were stretched to the limits of their natural design.
She screamed again, knowing there was no way Gus could save her now.

My God. This is how I’m going to
die.
She began to scream, but only then realized that she had never
stopped.

Gus’ body smashed onto two of the
Infected with a horrific clang as his armor struck the pavement. Cold, dead
fingers reached into her helm, clawing at her flesh. Tripper was suddenly there
just as one the corpse-like fingers of a zombie began pulling the loose helm
from her head. Gus grunted and rolled slowly to his feet and the two men began
bashing away in every direction. As quickly as the danger had arrived, she was
safe again. She cried out in rage, fear and relief and rolled away from the
zombie corpses to lean against a concrete wall, staring in horror at nothing.
An unrelenting stream of tears flowed from both eyes. Gus swept her up into his
arms and held her tight.

“Shh,” he whispered. “You’re ok.
You’re ok. Everything is going to be fine.”

“Oh my god, Guster. I thought that
was it.” She ripped up her face shield and visor and then his and planted
kisses on his surprised face. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she breathed
emotionally.

“Hey, I helped too,” Tripper
suggested hopefully.

She ignored him and kissed Gus
soundly, and with lots of tongue.

“Is she ok?” Calvin asked.

“I think so,” Tripper replied. “Gus
and I are ok, too, if anyone cares.”

“Ok, you can come out, guys,”
Calvin said brusquely. “We’ll have the rest cleared out by the time you get out.”

A little investigating had shown
that the pit was where Tripper’s mysterious zombies had been coming from. He had
made the connection and gone through the doorway when he’d seen Scaggs
disappear from the walkway overhead. Gus had simply panic-leaped the fifteen
feet down to save his new girlfriend. Calvin and Felicia ran across the lot to
clear away the remaining Shufflers as Gus and Scaggs stumbled through the small
opening. They were quickly joined by Tripper. Calvin pointed the exhausted
climbers to the vehicle. “Go ahead and get in,” he ordered. “Felicia and I will
open the gate and clear us a path.”

“I thought you were tired,” Tripper
said.

“And I’m the
driver
,”
Felicia seemed confused.

“See. I’m tired. Ok, me and Tripper
will clear the path. Either way, Gus and Scaggs need a break.”

The fatigued couple nodded.

“Also, Scaggs has a noticeable
odor,” Calvin added. “I don’t want to have to stand next to her out here.”

The others laughed weakly. The real
reason was as clear as the two broken fingers on her left hand, both pointing to
the sky where the others gripped the spear and her pale features were visibly
shaken under the open visor. Gus supported her to the passenger side of the
Hedgehog and following a brief conversation with Felicia, he hopped behind the
wheel and she climbed into the back. Calvin didn’t have time to wonder why. He
and Tripper jabbed skulls through the fence with long-handled screwdrivers until
enough bodies blocked the sidewalk enough to leave enough room for Calvin to
roll his side of the gate open. When the first gate was clear he came over and
kept zombies away while Tripper rolled the other gate open. The turrets peppered
the mass with tiny steel darts to keep a cushion and Gus carefully pulled the
Hedgehog through the gate, pausing in the middle of the street with less than
ten feet for a shaky perimeter, moaning dead on all sides pressing in.

“Ok, we’re clear. Get in!” Felicia
shouted from the back, holding the door open, her hammer ready to use as a spear
if any zombies should feel froggy.

“Hang on. We might need to come in
here again,” Calvin reasoned.

Gripping the gate with both hands,
he pulled the gate through a sticky puddle of ex-humanity. It rolled smoothly,
leaving an arcing trail of coagulating blood behind. Grunting with every
effort, Tripper killed four more zombies. The tinkling of the turrets was
non-stop until suddenly everything grew much quieter. Before Calvin could turn
to find the reason, Joel yelled out, “Whoa! Whoa! My turret is down!”

Calvin forced himself to move
faster, nearly running to get the gate pulled shut in time, slipping in some
blood, but grabbing the chain links and being dragged by the rolling gate until
he could pull himself back up again. Tripper kept his back clear, which was
amazing because there was a heavy circle of dead pushing to get into the area. His
friend twirled the aging bat around like he was a ninja. In a short-lived
moment of calm when they had a good ten foot radius free of zombies, Trip
nodded for him to finish. They moved as one to the other gate and he pulled it
shut, while the Louisville Slugger kept his back free of zombie teeth.

“Hurry, I can’t keep them back with
one gun!” Boomer insisted through gritted teeth. “And my fingers are cramping
on this trigger.”

Calvin slipped the solid steel chain
around the gate and through the locks, turning the handle and locking both
sides of the chain in place with a comforting, solid clink.

Only real people should be able
to get through here now,
he thought.

He nodded to Tripper and they ran
to the Hedgehog, both diving into the back next to Felicia, who slammed the
door closed behind them, the sound pressure wave popping everyone’s ears.

“We’re moving,” Gus announced,
sending bodies and their parts flying in every direction as he headed them
south, away from the tower and into unexplored territory. At least, it was
unexplored for the group; he and Scaggs had gotten a good look. It would be
simple to get them clear and headed back for either the shop or the Plaza. Confident
it would be the shop once again with one of the guns being inoperable, he took
the first left.

“What’s up with that gun, Joel?”
Calvin asked.

“I don’t know, Scoot. It’s an air
issue. It’s feeding ok, but there’s not enough pressure to shoot with.”

“The compressor gauge shows full,”
Felecia commented, now back in her chosen seat beneath his turret. She stuck
her head against the carpeted underside of the turret. “And I can hear it
running.”

“Must be a leaky line,” Tripper
said. “I think I hear a hissing sound.”

“Yeah, a line or a connection
somewhere,” Scooter spat in disgust. “Anyone have a screwdriver?” he asked as
an afterthought.

Tripper held out his backup weapon,
but at a foot-and-a-half with a one-inch bit face his beefy screwdriver was
much too large to fit into the tiny access hole.

“Here,” Felicia pulled out a
multi-purpose tool and held it up proudly, her colored locks sticking out of
her coif and plate helm and framing her blue-green eyes and milky face rather
nicely, Joel felt as he climbed down to help hunt for the issue.

“I have one too,” Scaggs held hers
out with her good hand. “We bought them together here in town, when the bolts
in our costumes for the Con kept coming loose—Felicia was a Pink Stormtrooper
and I was a Pink Master Chief,” she announced, also quite proudly. “We were
rockin’ the pink for The Cure.”

“Nice,” Calvin replied. “How are
you doing, Scaggs?” he asked, his bright green eyes never leaving the crooked
fingers of her left hand.

“Oh, don’t worry. I’m fine. I think
they’re just dislocated a little,” she said boldly with a broad smile. However,
the drained, colorless appearance of her usually olive skin told them all that she
was in pain, and also a liar.

“We’ll get you some pain meds when
we get back,” he assured her.

“I’ve got some pain meds,” Tripper
informed him with a broad, impish grin.

“Maybe later, Trip. We’ve still got
work to do. Now scoot over a bit so I can get in there,” he pushed his friend
aside gently. “Let’s get this panel off here and check the hoses. I think we
need to head back to the Dungeon, though.”

“Already on it,” Gus informed him.

“What about Lola and Lucy?” Tripper
asked quietly into Calvin’s ear, forgetting he was miked up.

“You’ve seen the video, Trip. It’s
as bad there as it is here. We need both guns to get through The Plaza.”

“You’re right. And both vehicles, I
guess.”

“Damn,” Calvin cursed. “This is
taking much more time than I expected and we’re all getting punchy. We need a
break. And Scaggs needs some medical attention. I think we should wait until
they have the ambulance done. And we might as well top off the ammo drums for
the turrets again. No telling how much ammunition we’ll use there.”

“Hef says he’s got ten more barrels
back at the shop. They make the nails locally, so we can always break in and get
more. If we’re gonna waste ammunition, I’d say the nails would be our best
option. Save the bullets for emergencies.”

“Right,” Calvin agreed. “Make it
so.” He joked in
that
voice.

Moving through the streets at a
rapid pace this time, they reached the Dungeon safely, again not seeing a
single zombie on the return trip. Calvin made a note to use this road more in
the future. Unfortunately, the leak remained undiscovered as they approached
the alley, so Calvin called Hephaestus and Quinn to give them the bad news.

“Adventurers to Dungeon,” he
called.

“This is the Dungeon Master,” Quinn
replied instantly. “Go ahead, Party Leader.”

“We’re coming back in. Got a broken
sword, need a blacksmith.”

“Oh, well, we just happen to have a
few of those here. And you have great timing. The cage is in the back of the
ambulance. Just finished it up and was walking by the radio to get some things
for our next task. It’ll hold five in the cage and there are still eight jump
seats squeezed in. Got doors on both sides of the cage, too, so you can still
back it up to the Fortress and crawl through from the front if you need to.”

“Nice,” Calvin said happily.

“Lost a lot of storage space,
though.”

“That’ll happen,” Calvin responded.
“How difficult was the conversion?”

“It was easy. We converted an old
shark cage he had sitting around and just welded it to the frame,” the big
smith explained. “He’s putting one of the cots back in now. How far out are
you?”

“We’re coming down the alley now.”

“Son, you need to give us more
notice. Let me check the monitors,” he flicked the controller through all of
the cameras. Except for the same three lurkers on the north side of the
building that seemed to be permanently stuck in a very muddy ditch thanks to a
week of rain, the area appeared clear for as far as the cameras could show.

“Ok, opening up,” he announced
finally.

* * * *

To find the leak, Hephaestus took a
huge bong hit of El Supremo and, after a suitably long pause, blew through the
open end of the hose, which he had disconnected from the compressor.

“I could have done that,” Tripper
muttered.

“But you didn’t,” Hephaestus
replied after a brief fit of coughing. Tracking the smoke led them to a loose
fitting at the base of the turret itself that
someone
hadn’t tightened properly.

“Sorry.” Hef apologized with a
humble shrug. “Even the best miss things.”

“No one’s perfect,” Calvin replied.

“I did not get to test any of this
first,” he explained.

“It’s ok. We’re on the shakedown
cruise and are called upon to save the universe. Isn’t that the plot to every great
science fiction adventure movie ever made?”

Hef laughed. “Hardly, but quite a
few,” he admitted.

It took very little time to refill
the barrels and get the ambulance ready to roll. “Here are the keys to my baby,”
Quinn’s eyes misted over.

“Gus, you’re driving the
ambulance,” Calvin ordered.

“That makes me shotgun,” Scaggs stated
firmly, leaving no room for argument.

“We need to get you to the doctor,”
Calvin argued anyway, with a pointed glare at her pretzeled fingers.

“What, this? Shoosh, it hardly even
hurts anymore. I’ll be ok. We’ll get it taken care of after we save your
friends, ok?”

“Absolutely,” Calvin agreed. “Of
course, someone will need to snap those things back in place first.”

“What?” the girl’s pale features
managed to lose even more color.

“We need you to be able to grip
your weapon,” he explained, trying to bluff her into seeing the doctor.

“Fine, you do it,” she held out her
fingers. Two pair of eyes locked onto each other, each daring the other to blink
first. But Calvin was not a doctor and he would hate to cause more damage to
the brave girl.

Congratulations, Gus,
he
thought.
About time you got yourself a good one.
“Maybe we can wait a little
bit.”

“Oh, yeah, sure. I can wait.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Calvin
muttered irritably.

“Wait, first we need a proper name,”
Gus said excitedly, thin fingers lightly scratching his chin.

“Already got one,” Tripper informed
him knowingly. “Whoever is in the ambulance is Healer.”

“I know that. I mean the ambulance
needs a name. We’re calling the Humvee Hedgehog. This needs a name, too.”