Dead and Dead Again: Kansas City Quarantine (49 page)

Sarah, Athena and Brick moved up
onto the roof of the Wagon and waited for them to drop the harness again. Megan,
afraid of heights, needed constant ministrations from both Sarah and Athena to
convince her to close her eyes and go.

“She’s in,” Athena said.

By the time she reached the roof,
Megan was pale and shaking and had slipped into a near catatonic state.

“Can you take them inside and check
them out?” Calvin asked Hef.

“Of course.”

Sarah was brought up next, first glaring
at Brick and with a query for Athena, who nodded assent. “I’m ready,” she said
and the winch clicked into gear and lifted her smoothly but slowly up the wall.

 “Just you and me, sweetie,” Brick
cooed at Athena, turning off his mic, coming in close and reaching out for her
chest.

Batting his hand away at first, she
felt that wasn’t enough and shoved him physically, instead pushing herself back
towards the edge of the Wagon, but holding the panabas defensively between them.
Brick did not seem to care, leaning in again, forcing the blade against his own
throat, leaving her with the decision of either drawing the panabas back, or
pressing forward. But this time it was Athena who held firm. She leaned forward
and, knowing how little pressure it took her weapon to penetrate, the tall
athlete backed up until he was against the wall and there was no where else to
move. Now it was she who leaned in close, the blade digging into his throat as
a slow smile spread across his face, misconstruing her intentions even though
the livid gaze she returned promised that nothing but bad things were about to
happen. She was going to do it. One push was all it would take. But the others
were up there. How would she explain his death with only a half-dozen Lurkers
grasping at the sides of the Wagon? The alley was strangely silent until some
strange sounds began drifting over from the far end of the alley.

“What’s that sound?” she asked.

“Sounds like Hall & Oates,” he
said. “Because your kiss is on my list,” he cooed.

She clicked off her microphone. “Fuck
off, Brick. You need to get your head straight or it’s going to get taken off,”
she promised.

“Aw, you gonna make me beg?” he
reached out again even though he was only a half-inch from death as it was.

“What
is
that?” she asked
again, pressing her blade to his throat but looking down the alley as the sound
seemed to increase.

“What is what,” he snapped, pissed
that she wasn’t playing his game.

“That sound.”

“Oh that. That’s a clock radio.
Someone must have put it back there and left the doors open or something,” he
surmised. “I guess that’s how the zombies got in.”

A glint of satisfaction shining
from his fevered blue eyes turned her blood cold and she knew the ‘someone’ stood
before her. Quickly she wrapped the harness around herself and prepared to
ascend.

“Don’t go too far,” he warned. “This
is just the foreplay, babe. He’s gonna leave you alone again. Kid like Scooter
can’t help it. He’s always going to have to go off and save someone to prove
he’s worthy of you. And when he does, the Brick is gonna be there for you. I’m
gonna show you everything you’ve been missing in a real man.”

Athena brought her face close to
his, looking him straight in the eyes for a full dozen heartbeats with narrowed
lids. The lack of empathy there said she was done playing. Clanging twice on
the cable with her panabas, she was gone, scaling the side of the building like
a professional.

“I can take it from here, Calvin,”
Athena said evenly, fluidly slipping from the black harness. “You go help the
others.” She nodded to the closing hatchway through which most of the others
had left and the look she gave him said she was telling him, not asking.

Calvin glanced to Sarah, who
shrugged uncertainly and paused only a heartbeat longer, eying roof wall as if
he had unfinished business.
Ok, fine. Not now. But it’s coming, Brick,
he promised his old friend.

“Go,” she gave an insistent nod and
gentle nudge and he turned, pausing only an instant before she snapped, “I’ve
got this!”

“Here, this button up, this one
down,” he slapped a big yellow controller into her hand, jumped clumsily over
the cable and darted through the metal door.

“Make damn sure they don’t have any
bites!” he shouted to the backs of the others as he disappeared through the door.
“We don’t know if it’s always a quick transformation and—” the heavy steel door
shut behind him, drowning out the rest of what he said.

Brick clanked loudly on the cable
below just as Athena had to let them know he was in the harness.

“I’ve got this,” Athena repeated to
Sarah, starting the wench.

“Oh…well…I guess I’d better see if
there is anything I can do.” Sarah muttered hesitantly and started for the
door.

A fire burned through Athena’s
veins as realization of what she was about to do ignited her adrenal glands,
leaving her so preoccupied that she spared little more attention for Sarah. Sensing
that her best chance was now, she switched her mic off. As soon as the clang
from the closing door reached her ears, she flipped the ‘off’ button for the wench,
fumbled to undo the safety clips and tried to release the cable. The weight on
the end of the line would not let her flip the release, however, and the mechanism
jammed in the gears, no allowing a reverse of direction. In desperation she began
tugging on the knot with her fingertips, trying to untie the rope cable that held
the wench to the vent. Brick’s grunting and cussing floated up to her as he
pulled himself up the line without the wench.

“Calvin!” he yelled. When no one
responded, he tried again. “Calvin? Trip?”

Still no response.

Athena worked the knot with a
frenzied determination, knowing the fall should injure him just enough to make
him susceptible to the Infected in the alley.

“You fucking bitch!” Brick
shrieked, realizing what was happening. “You’d better hope I don’t get up
there!”

“What are you doing?” Sarah’s voice
demanded from just behind her ear. Athena snapped upright, blood draining from
her face and a coldness creeping up her spine.

Oh my god. How do I explain
this?
She pulled her shaking hands to her sides searching for words to
explain to her best friend why she was about to kill another friend.

“Calvin might have tied that knot,”
Sarah pointed to the apparatus. Her words were not coming over Athena’s earbud.
She had turned her mic off. “You want him to have it slipping off on his
conscience, along with everything else?”

“What?” Athena nearly collapsed in
surprise.

“Here.” Sarah moved to the opposite
side of the vent to which the entire homemade contraption was tied. “On three,
we both kick. If it comes off, it’s no one’s fault, right? Just metal fatigue.”

Sarah’s face took on a feverish
mask of what was clearly hate. Athena would have been very afraid if that anger
had been focused upon her but she could feel the window of opportunity quickly closing,
the ticks of a countdown clock that must be heeded. The rat-like scratching of
his mailed fingers scratched near the top of the roof wall and ragged, raspy
grunts emanated from just beneath the rounded edge of the raised white stone.

Athena no longer cared how or why
Sarah was helping her. It must be done
now
. With a nod, she stood opposite
her friend, facing the large vent. “One. Two. Three.” Each girl viciously kicked
the vent, but not together. It cracked and bent, but did not pull free.

“You bitches!” Brick screamed,
blonde armored head now peeking over the rise of the roof as a searching hand
felt around for something to grab hold of, but it was too smooth. His visor was
up revealing a furious face, red and sweaty from pulling himself up the cable
in the heavy leather armor. Grimacing with exertion as he held himself in
position, feeling desperately for anything to gain some leverage and failing, he
reached back over his shoulder and pulled his claymore free and jabbed it
straight down, trying to burry the blade into the concrete rooftop. The massive
blade bounced harmlessly off the stone roof and the shock ripped the blade free
of his grasp, sending it to the side and with a heavy clank as it came to rest
harmlessly flat on the roof, out of reach.

“I’m gonna rape your fucking guts
out!” his puffy red face screamed the promise with a maniacal furor, bloodshot
blue eyes bulging with hate.

With a perfectly-placed massive
double-kick from both ladies, the vent ripped free of its moorings and flew
over the edge of the roof. The look of wide-eyed surprise on Brick’s face as he
watched the vent sail over his shoulder was one both women would remember
fondly for some time, even through the guilt of their actions. Weakened fingers
holding for only a second as the weight of the vent tugged from below, Brick’s
shriek echoed throughout the valley followed by a heavy thud and another,
heavier clanging thud right behind that as his body hit first the edge of the
ambulance roof and then slammed into the pavement of the alley below. He
screamed following both loud thumps, letting the girls know he’d likely broken
at least two of something in the fall.

Smiling in relief, the two women
casually walked over to the edge of the roof, enjoying Brick’s screams rising
from the alley below. They watched as the crowd of Infected chased his limping
form down the alley into the shadows, one on his back ripping hunks of flesh
from his shoulders as he beat it impotently with his good right arm, the other
dangling limply like bait jiggling on a hook.

Sarah reached down and picked up
the big claymore with a grunt and heaved it over the side of the roof.
“Evidence,” she mouthed.

Athena looked back at her friend with
a clear question broiling in her dark eyes as Sarah’s now emotionless eyes had
already told her too much.
You too?
she wondered, asking the question
with her eyes that her voice couldn’t bring up.

Sarah nodded almost imperceptibly.
“I was there that first day, Athena. I’m so sorry I didn’t help sooner…or say
anything…but what he almost did to you…he
did
do to me. About three
months ago. And he did it to others before. I don’t know how many or who or why.
He’s a sick, sick man.”

Athena nodded her understanding,
reaching out to hug her friend as Brick’s screams rose from somewhere further
down the street.

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” they
heard his faint voice screaming from somewhere in the fog. As his voice faded,
so did some of their hate for the man.

“What was that? What happened?” Calvin
yelled as he and Hef burst onto the roof.

“The vent broke,” Sarah and Athena
said together, each pointing impotently at the gaping hole in the roof.

Calvin dashed to the edge and
stepped on to the crate beside them to see if he could help, but they stopped
him with outstretched arms. “He’s already dead, Calvin.”

“I had this thing welded with some
really good corner welds,” Hephaestus muttered, fingering the open shaft and
then eying both girls speculatively. Athena saw mild suspicion as if the words
of accusation were written across his forehead in bright pink neon letters. His
sharp eyes quickly took note of the cement chunks Brick’s sword had torn from
the rooftop, but he said nothing.

Quinn stepped out next. “What
happened?”

“Your problem has been handled,”
Hephaestus explained to the big man. “By Athena and Sarah, not Calvin,” he
added.

“What? Oh. Oh!” Not understanding
at first, when Brick’s distant screams floated up to them, comprehension dawned
in his deep blue-green eyes and he assessed the two women with a newfound
respect.

Calvin also eyed both women,
appraising. But with a shrug, he turned to his friend. “It was probably just
bad metal, Hephaestus. Metal fatigue’s a bitch.” Then he leaned forward and added
quietly into his friend’s ear, “Too late to worry about it now. We’ll talk
later. Then he added louder, “why don’t you go get something to cover this?”

“But…I…Ok. That is a good idea. I
feel more rain is coming,” the man spared one more curious glance at the pair
of girls. “Not that I ever liked the man, you understand—he was
not
welcome here,” he shot a serious look at both girls. “But…that was one of my
best rigs…” he sighed, stumping through the door with sunken shoulders.

Quinn sauntered behind him with one
meaty palm resting on his shoulder in sympathy, the other balancing one of his
great maces on a massive shoulder.

“I designed and built that thing
for a Bond movie, you know. It was used for a stunt where—” he was still explaining
when the door shut behind him.

Scooter’s gaze lingered for a very
long time down into the alley, his ears seeming to twitch at faint screams and
begging sounds he thought might be Brick being torn to pieces somewhere off in
the foggy distance. It was a long, lingering look, full of memories, sadness,
and regret. Both girls remained quietly beside him, waiting, watching. But when
he’d strained his hearing for minutes and heard no more cries he turned and
rubbed his hands together and casually shook his shoulders as if shrugging off
a backpack or a morning chill. “Right. Let’s go, ladies. We’ve got stuff to do.
Midnight train to Paradise leaves…eventually. We need to get the Paddy Wagon
in so Hef can fix it.”

“That’s it?” Athena asked.

“That’s what?”

“One of your oldest friends dies
under mysterious circumstances and you’re just moving on?”

“Mysterious circumstances? You said
the vent broke. Sounds open and shut.”

“You know it didn’t just break.”

“Doesn’t that mean you just ruined an
entirely believable alibi?”

“Hephaestus clearly knows something
happened,” Athena reminded him coolly. “So does Quinn. They’re going to talk to
you about it later, anyway, so it might as well come out now.”