Dead and Dead Again: Kansas City Quarantine (51 page)

The families hugged and said their
goodbyes, just in case, and Calvin went over instructions again and again for
the parents on how to keep a proper watch and asked for assurances that they
would keep a constant presence in the radio room. Eventually it was the parents
who shooed them out of the building for some peace and quiet.

Upon their arrival at the Dungeon,
everyone but Trip and Joel kept their partying to a minimum, knowing how big a
day they were going to have in the morning. Calvin took some pain meds and the
blood thinners the doctor had given him and went immediately to sleep. He had
never felt so tired in his entire life. If anyone had asked how he was feeling
at that point, he would have sworn with absolute certainty that a demon was slowly
sucking out his soul.

One hour after official dawn the
two custom vehicles sat in the intersection of Burlington and 210 Highway
staring down the street at an ocean of undead milling around
something
in the distance. Calvin had woken feeling refreshed, though still annoyingly
drained and weak. Athena had let him sleep later than he’d asked while she and
the others prepared everything they needed for the journey. Hef had finally
given Scaggs her very own portable nail gun the previous evening and the
excited actress had spent several hours practicing.

Their hope to preview the area
using the tower cam had been dashed. Even though the tower was tall enough to
see over the downtown buildings, this area was downhill, far away, and had a
few hundred little trees lining the four-lane road. A patchy fog floating
through the valley had settled over the area they needed to see most. Magnifying
the view to its highest resolution, all they spied were glimpses through the
trees of one or two zombies, hints and glimmers of dead shuffling between some of
the buildings. Everyone had taken a turn examining the video and had agreed
that it didn’t look that bad, mainly because they didn’t have a choice and
truly wished it to be so. The doctor needed help. Needless to say, once again
they were wholly unprepared for the reality that had now bitch-slapped them,
hard.

“What’s your plan, Chief?” Felicia
asked from the Hedgehog’s driver’s seat.

“Let me think a minute…” he
muttered, absent-mindedly rubbing his chest.

They were staring at a
lot
of zombies.

Starting just a few blocks away, the
road ahead seethed with circling, shuffling freaks of nature from building to
building, moving through the lessening, ground-hugging fog from one side of the
street to the other and all the way down to where they could barely see machine
gun turrets of the two military vehicles and, not too far past that, possibly another
vehicle sitting high-centered in the fountain. And all around this, zombies marched
wall-to-wall as far into the distance as they could see. Like the thousands of
drunks spiraling down the ramps of Arrowhead after a home game, this horde
would be going nowhere until someone made them. This was far too many to just
go barging in with guns blazing, and they weren’t even counting the hundreds
the soldiers must have already killed again.

“How come every time we see them,
there are so many more than the last time?” Athena complained.

“I’d like to say you’re imagining
things,” Sarah said quietly. “But we do seem to be staring at quite a bit of evidence
to support your conclusion.”

“I hope it’s not because we’re
losing more people than dead,” Tripper noted ominously.

“Me too,” Scaggs agreed.

Since the parents were watching the
Fortress, there would be no more staying back for anyone unless they went out
on a simple run for supplies. The newest couple sat close together in the back
of the Hedgehog, side-by-side, holding hands and whispering. Everyone had
noticed a subtle change in their relationship. Both now appeared flushed and
jittery. Neither could stay far from the other for long and both would sneak
off at the drop of a hat only to be found a few minutes later in some unused
office or hallway whispering, holding hands or kissing. The previous night
Scaggs had moved her things into the same room as Gus, leaving Felicia in the
awkward position of having to make up reasons to not stay with Joel. The actress
had explained quite logically that it wasn’t that she wasn’t into him; it was
just that she wasn’t ready to move that fast. It had taken only one hour of
trying to sleep alone for her to knock on Joel’s door and although she still
insisted to everyone who did not ask and definitely didn’t care that absolutely
nothing had happened, the crimson glow that flooded her features whenever she
looked at Joel failed to support her vigorous denials. The mindless, beaming
grin that stretched her cheeks whenever anyone looked her way was a decent
indicator to her inner glee...until they’d rounded the corner onto Burlington, that is.

Even the power of love could not
burn through the overwhelming dread a few thousand zombies could throw at them.
Or perhaps, like Dementors, they fed on happiness as well as flesh. Up to that
moment the young actress had believed that they were making progress—they all
had believed it. Their own successes and various observations of the area had
placed a firm belief into their minds that maybe the barricades in all of those
neighborhoods were holding, that maybe the living were finally winning. “I
thought we were winning?” she observed in a confused whisper over the mic.

“And I thought we had all watched
the same movies?” Calvin noted bitterly, perhaps letting out too much of his
own disappointment. “The dead are like a Tsunami. They flow into the living
areas in wave after wave until everything is washed away.”

“I was hoping the good guys were at
least starting to catch up,” Scaggs muttered.

“The only way to start gaining
ground, I think, is for us to end this,” Calvin insisted. “If we can stop it,
then
maybe we can get ahead again.”

“But, I mean with all those
barricades and everyone now knowing more about what’s going on and having better
ideas on how to kill them…I mean, kill them again. And the government is supposed
to be dropping in supplies. I don’t know how that whole thing is going, but
this is Kansas City, you guys always seem to work it out together, right?” she
asked.

“Thanks for those kind thoughts of
the people around here,” Athena said graciously. “But I don’t think you ever
know how something like this is going to affect a city or how the nation is
going to respond until the event actually happens. I mean, look at New Orleans after Katrina. It took weeks just to get them water, but they had a
hundred-mile-perimeter wall up around this city within a day. I guess it really
depends on who is in position to do things when the bad things happen.”

“Yeah,” Trip agreed. “Good people do
bad things when they’re scared, and bad people can do really good things for
good people when things go bad. And of course, bad people can still do very bad
things. You just never know until it happens. Both people and towns can surprise
you. Maybe even countries and governments.”

“I haven’t been surprised by a lot
of people,” Scaggs said. “But I really believed in my heart that this city could
hold it together. I mean, it may just be your sports that kick ass, but that energy
stays with people and it seeps into their bones. We
felt
it as total strangers
and it was awesome! You have a proud city that is mostly ignored by the rest of
the country and that has given you an attitude that just might still help pull
you through this. I mean, if anyone can pull through this.”

“Or it’ll cause everyone to stay
and die because they’re too damned stubborn to admit defeat,” Tripper grimaced.

“Way to be the pessimist, honey,”
Sarah mouthed sarcastically. “We’ve already got Calvin, we don’t need another.”

“I’m more of a realist,” Calvin
argued, but he didn’t press it.

“Geeze, I thought Gus was supposed
to be the gloomy one,” Scaggs commented out of the side of her mouth.

It took several minutes staring
into the distance for the others to laugh, but when they did, it took several
more minutes to stop.

“You’re so fracking awesome,” Gus
kissed her soundly on the lips.

“It wasn’t
that
great
,
”
Scaggs seemed surprised.

“Timing is everything,” Tripper
saluted her. “You caught us all off-guard.”

“Is that car dealership still up there
on the left?” Calvin asked with a big smile now to match Felicia’s, grasping
desperately at some positive energy and holding on with everything he had before
it could skitter away again.

“Not really,” Trip said. “But I
think there might be a Kia lot up there somewhere.”

“Nice,” Calvin muttered.

“Ok, let’s cross here to the west and
head through the field to the tracks.”

“You want to drive on the tracks?”
Felicia asked, an uncertain set to her jaw.

“You can handle it. It’s pretty
flat in there.”

“Why can’t we take a street?”

“Because there aren’t any other
streets between us and that gathering of dead,” Calvin responded evenly. “We’ll
take the tracks to Tennis Court.”

“Ok…doesn’t seem the time to play a
match, but whatever.”

“We’re not going to play,” Calvin
sighed.

“Then what good is a tennis court?”
she asked, her voice shaking as she drove over the bumpy open field to a large
opening in the old wooden fence by the tracks.

“Not a tennis court. Just Tennis Court. It’s a street.” Trip informed her.

“That’s funny. Is there a big
tennis building there?”

“You know, oddly enough I believe
there is. Go figure.”

The Hedgehog bounced and shook as
only a vehicle that is riding on railroad tracks but not using rail worthy
wheels can do. It is a feeling impossible to describe to anyone who has never
tried it, but it is highly recommended to never try it on an active railroad…or
at any time. In fact, one should never drive on railroad tracks without
official permission and officially approved vehicles. However, much of the
excitement of this dangerous and unlawful act was filtered by the knowledge
that it was highly unlikely there would be any trains to dodge because they had
already killed most of the engineers and there was this little end-of-the-world
emergency that was keeping the rest at home this day. Calvin didn’t mind not
having to dodge trains, however, having come to the conclusion just this
morning that danger was highly over-rated.

Felicia and Sarah navigated their
respective vehicles over the tracks for nearly a quarter mile, well past the
beginnings of the mob of dead gathered around the fountain where the road split
into North Oak Trafficway and Nine Highway. The tracks sat two blocks away from
the main road, though, and the occupants of the two custom vehicles saw very
little activity behind the offset warehouses and factories. The few Lurkers
that leapt from the alleys and buildings were quickly dispatched by the turrets
or bumpers. Calvin did not want to get out until he had to. Unfortunately that
time had arrived.

“I think it’s this last one here,” he
pointed ahead to a long, low, whitish building, probably a small warehouse.
“That street between there is where we need to go, but drive to the end of this
building first. I want to get a closer look at what we’re heading into.”

Felicia nodded, inching along the
building until she was just a few feet from the corner and Calvin gave her a
sign to stop. He jumped out, edging along the wall and listening with one axe
out and both ears straining to hear around the corner. He jumped at a shadow
sneaking up behind him, only to find Athena sliding up quietly with a wink.

“There used to be a bunch of trees
here…” he said hesitantly, eying the perfectly manicured lawn ahead with low
shrubs and a tiny fountain.

“They were infected with some bug
and had to be chopped down,” Sarah’s voice informed him knowledgeably in his
earpiece. “The entire lawn has been professionally landscaped to match the park
across the way.”

He looked at Athena, barely
recognizable in her armor except for the fact that her face shield and helm
were both up. Her dark, almond-shaped eyes always seemed to be hiding a joke
but this day only a mask of concern looked back. She had cried for hours during
the night after seeing how the bruising had spread, now covering his entire chest
in a puke-fest collage of the ugliest colors ever invented by man or god. He
had worked overtime, and worked her overtime, to assure her that he was ok,
that it was a normal healing process. A fact he insisted she should have known as
a licensed medical whatzit. And when the pain had woken him in the middle of
the night and he waited for the meds to take, they had shared a passionate, but
very tender hour as both felt a little more keenly just how precious life could
be.

Any other time he would have loved
to be here beside the love of his life enjoying another gorgeous Kansas City park, but he had a feeling this was not going to be a picnic.

“Well?” he asked her.

“I’m not going out there alone,”
she stated firmly.

“On three, we both look out.”

She nodded.

“One, two, three,” they said
together and both peeked out.

“Oh my,” Athena said, hauling her
head back in just as fast as she’d cast it out.

“There’s another big park behind
the fountain,” Calvin noted.

Trip and Sarah were suddenly by
their side, Gus and Scaggs behind them.

“What, you want to go on a picnic
when we’re done?” Tripper quipped.

“I
was
thinking of a picnic,
but that’s clearly not happening,” Calvin mused.

“I think he means they seem to be
drawn to grassy and tree-covered areas as opposed to buildings and such,” Sarah
noted.

“Yes, but not our park over by the
Fortress for some reason…” Calvin countered.

“True. But there are larger parks
around there to draw them,” Sarah pointed out.

“But what about the television
tower? No parks,” Tripper argued.

“Not so,” Gus argued from the back.
“There are two places. One big field next to it and one behind it. How could
you not have seen that?”

“I did see open areas, but I
couldn’t see grass or trees. I was driving. I had to watch the sea of dead
threatening to capsize us.”

“Didn’t you only drive the first
time?” Scaggs dredged her memory.

“Don’t you have some hand-holding
to do back in middle-school?” Trip snapped back in good humor.

“Hey. This is fracking romantic,” Gus
held their joined hands out as if flipping Trip off. “So shut it. And as for
the tower, who do you think got a better look at it than me and Scaggs, huh?
Trust me, Dude. All the grassy areas were covered with zombies. Some were even crawling
on the ground. I can’t believe I didn’t think about mentioning that before. Others
were just walking around in circles like they were sniffing the air.”