Dead and Dead Again: Kansas City Quarantine (48 page)

But for now they had other equally
important tasks to accomplish. The big doors opened and Felicia hammered the
Hedgehog right into the middle of thirty or forty zombies that were walking
around in a circle in the little garage crunching and munching at least nine
under the wheels of the car and instantly sending a puddle of slow-moving,
congealing blood across the clean white floor. With more Infected following
them in, it was clear they wouldn’t be able to shut the doors again until they
had cleared the tracks.

“Ok, let’s kick some ass!” Calvin leaped
out and slammed to the floor of the garage with a loud crash as his boots hit
the slippery puddle from the smashed dead.

“Oof!” the breath left his lungs
and stars circled the ceiling above.

Three zombies were on him
instantly, one clutching and gouging at his visor and the plastic mask over it,
trying to rip the helm from his head while the other two pulled on his arms and
legs. He couldn’t believe how strong they were, being dead and all. Now he
understood just how Scaggs had felt that day at the tower. But he was stronger
than the actress and pulled back with all his might, patiently waiting for the
help he knew was coming. It wasn’t far away as Boomer and Joel sent all three
to hell with a crossfire that might have made the Japanese on the beaches of Iwo Jima jealous.

“Thanks guys,” he grunted
gratefully, slipping a few more times as he rose before he could get a solid
footing. Watching his step more carefully, he went to work with an angry energy
and with his first swing buried an axe into the skull of an ex-blonde man or
blonde ex-man who wore a train engineer uniform and a small rectangular yellow
name tag that said Melvin. “Sorry, Melvin,” Calvin said as he ripped Headsplitter
violently from the split skull and swung his left arm burying Brainslicer into
the neck of a security guard by way of the top of its skull.

Both sides of the skull split and
fell away to the sides, spilling gooey brain matter, not to mention other materials
that were normally supposed to remain inside the body. Neither half of the face
and skull fully separated from the body, however, and Calvin was stricken
momentarily motionless with disgust from watching two halves of a dead man’s
head staring at him upside down like he was in some comical clown nightmare
watching both halves bouncing up and down as the body shuffled for several
steps before falling.

“Remind me not to eat before we go
out on missions,” he complained, spitting a nasty taste onto the tile before
raising Brainslicer for another kill.

Brainslicer…Headsplitter…I don’t
really like those names. I think I’ll call them something else…maybe just
Slicer and Splitter.
Sending Slicer swinging wide with Splitter ready to swing
back the other direction at two zombies waiting to die again, a loud grunt
pulled his eyes to the left to see to see Trip falling under three zombies.

“Calvin!” he screamed.

“He slipped in the blood, too!”
Boomer called out, firing at the zombies climbing all over his friend. “Tiles
must be real slick with this freakish goo.”

The Swifties in this group held their
heads down, their eyes hidden.

“Shit,” Joel cursed. “Can’t get a
clean shot on them.”

“I got one through the ear. Try
that.” But it seemed to take several dozen more nails to end them that way.

“Guys!” Trip groaned in
desperation. The zombies gnawed on Tripper like dogs on a bone, but their teeth
chipped and shattered on the armor. Still, they could smell food underneath and
went into a near-frenzy trying to get to it.

“Oh shit! I’m out!” Lucy had
emptied all four canisters of twelve bolts through the back of window and dove
back in to pull reloads from the ammunition box.

“Aaaagh!” Tripper yelled as more
zombies grabbed both of his arms and pulled in different directions, and then others
did the same with his legs. His bat rolled uselessly across the floor to rest
against the tire of the Hedgehog.

“They’re ripping me apart!” he
screamed, feeling tendons stretch nearly beyond their limits, his muscles and
bones nearing the snapping point. If these had been some other type of stronger
Infected or if Trip had been one of the girls, or Joel, he might already be
dead. But he pulled as hard as he was being pulled and managed to break even
for a moment. “Guys!” Tripper let out a horrific shriek. In that instant a
detached part of his mind thanked God he had never turned his mic back on. He
didn’t want the last thing Sarah heard from him to be his death scream.

“I can’t get there!” Calvin called
out, standing before an onslaught of dead that were trying to push past him to
feast on his screaming friend. Luckily for Tripper, he remembered the knives
Hef had given him. In one fluid motion, while still swinging Splitter at the
zombies with his left hand, he sheathed Slicer and pulled a knife from behind
his neck and threaded the needle between two of his own attackers at one of the
zombies pulling on Trip’s legs. The well-balanced, well-thrown blade entered through
the base of the skull and stuck firm, dropping the zombie instantly. Just as
quickly, he threw another at one that had Trip’s right arm with the same
results, but then he needed both Splitter and Slicer to as several Swifties now
turned his way, drawn by his arm motion.

Not worrying about how much
ammunition they were using, Boomer and Joel punched through two more skulls with
concentrated fire that ate through the back of their heads like warm urine on a
frozen pond. This was finally enough for Tripper to kick free of the gang of
biters and drag the remaining two several feet to within reach of his bat
again. Lying on his back and swinging with both arms, his revenge was both
sweet and immediate. On the down side, the zombie whose skull he popped with
his first blast dropped a gallon of brain goop onto his face shield, leaving
him blind. He swung the bat back and forth to keep a small perimeter around
himself until he could pull a rag out and clean the face shield. But then Lucy reached
some new plateau in her fight against fear and jumped out of the back of the custom
vehicle, chunking bolts into his remaining opponents. This was the extra damage
they needed to get a cushion again between him and the Dead.

“We’ve got crazy DPS, but we’re in
need of some serious area effect weapons for mobs!” Joel yelled.

The turrets cut down zombie after
zombie with well-aimed nails from Boomer and Joel and soon the melee combatants
were able to move to the door. Calvin and Trip took turns dragging bodies from
the track by their legs so it could be shut again. Tripper had to do most of
the work because Calvin began to stumble and fell to his knees twice.

“You ok, buddy?” Tripper asked in
concern.

“Just…need a rest,” Calvin lied. He
needed more than a little rest. Silently cursing the pain in his chest, he was
forced to pause for a few breaths. Not wanting to scare anyone, especially
Athena, he’d told no one that after a day of the pain easing, it now had
actually increased at least three-fold, and there was no time to mention it now.
Two zombies approached Tripper as he pulled the last body from the tracks.
Calvin threw Splitter into the skull of one of the attackers and Lucy pinned
the other’s skull to the wall. With a sigh, Calvin leaned back against the
bench next to the door and took a deep and very painful breath, allowing the
tunnel vision to fade away a little.

Most of the zombies waiting outside
had entered because the door was blocked from shutting fully. Now free, the
heavy doors rolled slowly shut. Once shut, there remained only a finite number
of targets to deal with. Calvin actually let one claw and gnaw on him for a few
breaths while he recovered.

“Calvin!” Lucy shouted at him.

But he was afraid if he moved away
from the bench he would fall over. “Just…taking…a breather,” he huffed.

She shot his attacker right through
the ear with a mental promise to tell Athena. “You can take a break when we’ve
cleared the room,” she ordered.

Taking one more agonizing breath,
he nodded and with the turrets giving support, the trio of armored warriors marched
a circle of death around the garage.

“Just cleaning out the dungeon,”
Tripper joked. “Hope we get good XP.”

“I was just going to say this is
the most fucked-up dungeon crawl we’ve ever been on,” Boomer agreed as the last
one went down. “Gruesome, too.”

“And not really worth it,” Joel
added. “There won’t be any woot from this at all.”

“See anything else moving?” Calvin muttered
as he wiped post-animate matter from his face shield with a rag and tossed it.

“Clear,” Joel said.

“Clear,” Boomer reported.

The others also repeated the
message.

“That was fun,” Tripper breathed
between desperate gasps for breath, turning his mic on so the others could hear.

“About time. Give me a hand,” Hef breathed
heavily. “I’m on the roof.”

“You running a marathon up there,
buddy?” Tripper asked, but didn’t wait for a reply. “Be right there.”

“I’m walking the back storage
rooms,” Quinn told them. “Ok so far. Found nine wandering between the garage
and workshop.”

“Right,” Calvin answered. “The rest
of you, take your time and clear the lower level and then start moving all of
the bodies to the door so we can dispose of them. Find something to keep
any…live ones locked up. Trip, you’re with me.”

Lucy saluted smartly. “We’re on it,
Chief.”

Boomer started muttering something
that sounded like “Black guys always carrying the dead bodies. Jus’ like Morgan
Freeman in Gettysburg. Can’t join the army. Gotta dig the graves for the white
mens….”

“Are you saying something?” Calvin demanded
sharply.

“No. I got it, boss man,” Boomer
responded in a southerly accent. “Totally kidding, dude” he added as Calvin
raised his axe. “Go help those kids, Calvin,” he pointed to a secret panel
behind some shelves that was opening to reveal a wide, black-painted rod-iron
spiral staircase hugged the wall and climbed directly to the top floor,
bypassing the apartments.

“Someone get the medical equipment
ready out there off the main room,” Calvin pointed to the doors opening on that
wall as well. “We don’t know what kind of condition our rescuees are in.”

“Is that a word?” Athena asked.

Once again Calvin cursed himself
for forgetting he was wearing a mic. Sheathing their wiped clean weapons, he
and Trip ran through a now wide-open doorway and  bounded two stairs at a time side-by-side
up the waiting stairway, slowing considerably after only the second ‘bound’ and
then taking the stairs one at a time…and then resting every ten steps or so. Calvin
began to teeter back and forth as they neared the top.

“Holy shit. I’m tired,” Tripper
noted with what little breath he could muster.

Eventually, though, both men
reached the top and trudged carefully down a long hall to the roof access. Upon
reaching the roof, they found Hef already half way through assembling a heavy
duty wench to an exhaust vent. “What…can…we do?” Calvin breathed and coughed,
flipping up his visor.

“There, get that stuff over the
side,” he pointed to a blue nylon climbing harness and steel rope laying
side-by-side.

“You want me…to hook them…up
first?” Calvin smiled weakly, still clutching his chest.

Hef gave him a withering glare, but
followed with a concerned, appraisal of his pale features and overly sweaty
forehead. But his friend
had
just fought a few dozen dead people. “Hook
them up, Calvin. Then toss them over to those waiting below. Tripper, fasten
the other side of this wench like this.”

“Women and children first!” Calvin
yelled down, but then fell forward taking deep, desperate breaths and clutching
his chest in pain as a raging fire burned through his bruised torso. When the
pain subsided, he snuck a look back to ensure his pals hadn’t seen, but they
were clearly too involved in assembling the wench. With more care, he lowered
the harness on the cable without further sarcasm, sparing himself and probably
several others any further pain.

While the heavy cable was lowering,
Hef and Tripper tightened the fasteners to the big vent and looped the cable
through the pulleys. The roof walls were higher than Calvin was tall. “You’ll
have to tell us when they’re in, Athena,” Calvin informed her. “We can’t see you
down there.”

“The kids are in. Bring em up,”
Sarah reported and Hef hit he switch, pulling them swiftly, but safely up the
wall.

Calvin and Tripper helped Mr. Berg
over the roof. He stood there looking down at Calvin, smiling as if he’d done
nothing wrong before shaking the harness off of his very broad shoulders.

“You are
not
the kids.”
Calvin stated with little noticeable humor.

“I didn’t panic. It was Athena’s
idea,” the stout man shrugged.

“Let him help,” Athena told them
firmly.

He quickly showed them why. When
Miriam Rosenthal came over the wall next, he helped them pull her over without
injury, practically lifting her up by himself.

“Wow. My back just said I’d better
never do that again,” he joked, but he then carried her all the way over to the
vent before setting her down.

The deep, throbbing pain in his
chest told Calvin to shut up and be very glad for the help.

“The little girl insisted that I
come up first,” Miriam explained. “She saw the ankle cast from my surgery and
said the wounded always have to be helped first. Isn’t that the sweetest
thing?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Calvin agreed.

The process was repeated for Alex
and the Worm. Megan appeared over the wall next. It took all three men lifting
the harness to get those being rescued up and over the lip of the high wall
until Mrs. Rosenthal and Mrs. Berg skidded a wide, knee-high crate over that
they could stand on. Everything went much faster from that point on. Mr.
McClintock and Megan were the last two to be pulled up who were not in the original
group of friends.