Dead and Dead Again: Kansas City Quarantine (8 page)

Trip stepped out and waved up to
her, so she could see they’d already crossed the street to the building and all
three humans started head-shooting the remaining Zombies. Twelve shots later
the street was once again quiet. Trip and the doctor stared in forlorn despair
past the approaching dozen zombies at the empty bridge. Tripper placed a hand
on the doctor’s shoulder and squeezed.

“Hey, it’s all guard rails and then
nothing but solid buildings down there, Doc. That guy ain’t gonna last long.
The case will still be there waiting for us later.”

“I hope so.”

“Is it absolutely necessary?”

“It would speed up the process. I
need samples of the original virus to mix other agents to determine what caused
the progression.”

“Can you clone something from
scratch?”

“I don’t know. I have all of the
data from the source on a disk here. We confiscated it from the lab where it
was developed. I won’t know until I get there and see what is on the disc.”

“Where’s there?”

“Excuse me?”

“You said ‘until I get there’,”
Tripper reminded him. “Where is there?”

“Oh. Protocol says I go to the
National Bio and Agro Defense Facility. It’s the closest facility to here.”

“You mean the Biosecurity Research
Institute in Manhattan Kansas?”

“It is the same place, yes.”

“I thought that facility wasn’t
finished yet…I mean how could it be, they just started construction a few months
ago?”

“That’s just the above ground
facility.”

“What?”

“That’s just the new parts.”

“What new parts?”

“The stuff for show. Construction
on the underground facilities began six years ago. The main structure has been
completed for two years and newer sections will be added over several decades,
I imagine.”

“Didn’t they need Congressional
approval or something for that place?”

“That was just for the funding. But
you might have noticed that when National Security is at stake, the government
moves first and worries about funding later.”

“So you appropriated the money from
elsewhere?”

“You’re most astute for a stoner,
Mr. Tripper,” the doctor commented.

Trip looked over in shock. “How’d
you—?”

“You are about to lose your
baggie,” the doctor nodded suggestively at Trip’s left pocket.

Trip reached down and tucked El
Supremo back in with a silent
whew.

“Don’t worry. I was just kidding
about the stoner crack. I judge each person as I meet them, by their deeds. You
have proven your worth to me a dozen times already.

“Thanks, Doc. Your shooting has
done that for me.” He paused and grinned.

“Let’s get inside.”

“Wait, Sarah should have a great
view of the surrounding area from the balcony. Is it clear?” he shouted around
the corner and across the street.

“Still clear!” She called back.
“Hurry, there are faster ones approaching from several blocks to the west. A
lot
of them.”

“They should mix well with the ones
coming from the south,” Trip replied, and the two men looked west to see what
she was talking about.

“Are we sure those aren’t people
people?” Tripper asked with some hesitation.

“Two of the ones in front are
missing arms. If they’re not Infected yet, they will be shortly…maybe”

It looked like a race. Some kind of
sick, surreal Marathon where the prize wasn’t some blue ribbon, or even the
knowledge of having finished the near impossible. No, the prize in this race
was food.
Flesh. Human flesh.
Those approaching Infected weren’t quiet
like the others, either. Moving at a slow jog, they moaned and hooted, braying
like a pack of hunting dogs—a pack of really lazy hunting dogs.

“What the…” Trip started, but
realized they could investigate better from safety. “Follow me,” he nudged the
doctor.

“The doors are right here,” the
doctor pointed.

“No, that’s just the side entrance.
She’s locked it already.”

The pair edged along the building,
a classical two-story white-stone structure with windows six feet up running at
eight foot intervals with a carved face over each one. Along the sidewalk at
street level the building was peppered with squat windows with glass too thick
to see clearly into and each protected with heavy iron bars bolted firmly into
the walls. Upon reaching the front doors, they slowed and the doctor
affectionately eyed a pair of iron sconces book-ending the opening of the
entryway, appreciating the class it took to inset little flower gardens into
the sidewalk on either side. A glance above revealed Mozart Insurance Company on
a black sign with brilliant gold letters. Just below that a more permanent
‘Library’ had been carved into the original surface of the gracefully aging
structure. The doctor noticed a movement further up and his eyes moved to see Sarah
waving down from the carved marble fence of the terrace. The terrace itself was
set within the confines of the structure, just above the entrance, not
protruding over the sidewalk or street, but still affording a clear view of
either side from the tables lining the rail.

“Yes, I do believe this will do,” the
doctor nodded appreciatively.

“Right?” Trip asked. “Good job,
Babe. I wouldn’t have ever thought of it. Great place to dig in and call for
help.”

She smiled down briefly and then
looked down the street, a dark, brooding shadow creeping across her brow. Tripper
noticed the tell-tale shudder as her spine told her bad things were coming.
Only this time they could all see it coming.

Crap,
his mind muttered. With
one long, lingering look down the street at the approaching horde of Infected,
the two men stepped between the high carved columns that guarded either side of
the large arching entryway. Trip paused and reached into the shadows, swinging a
large black iron gate shut like a portcullis. The deep, heavy clang, seeming
oddly musical and morbidly foreboding, rang like a bell tolling the doom of the
City throughout the echoing streets.

It ain’t even noon yet, and the world is over,
Tripper took out his phone and started making calls.

“There it is again,” repeated Boomer,
an uneasy feeling tightening his gut.

“Shut up, man. You’re blowing it,”
his buddy leaned back and whispered in his ear. “I’m about to score with this
babe.”

“Where you think you’re gonna take
her, Brick?”

“C’mon Boomer, I—what the fuck?”

This time they had both heard it. Sounds
of gunshots and screams coming from up north, very faint, but unmistakable.
They were in a valley, so they couldn’t see very far on either side, but both
were certain they’d heard it.

“Probably just some fireworks got
out of control,” Brick mumbled dismissively.

“Hey, man. You forget where I grew
up? I know what gunshots sound like.”

Boomer stood slightly over six foot
in height and his broad dark shoulders had kept many a tackler from destroying
his taller, leaner quarterback, Stephen “Brick Wall” Jacobs. But Brick was no
wimp, either. The physically imposing, well-tanned, handsome and blonde Jacobs
had obtained his nickname by making any tacklers who made it through the line
bounce off him as if from a building and then he would hit his running back
Boomer McClintock in stride out in the flat for big yards. The killer combo had
taken South to the title three years in a row since making varsity in their
sophomore year.

“Hey, Baby!” Brick was saying to
the pretty blonde who’d tried inching away from him while his attention was
distracted. “Where are you going? The parade is nice, but everything goes
better with me,” he schmoozed. “What say we slip into that alley and I slip
into something more comfortable...I’m thinking you,” he ran a finger across her
chin with a cheesy-charming smile that totally failed under such caddish
circumstances.

The girl pulled back making the
face of one who’d just eaten horseradish sauce when expecting mayo. “Sorry
honey. You’re hot, but maybe you need to sober up and learn a little respect.
That’s something your mommy should teach you before you play with the big
girls. Give me a call when you grow up,” she slammed the proverbial door in his
face, turned sharply and sauntered off to her friends, leaving him to stare at
her shapely ass as she sashayed away like a pro.

Brick’s fragile ego couldn’t handle
challenge of any kind, but being twenty-six and the girl barely twenty, he
would not stand for rejection from some kid.

“Bitch!” he spat, flipping her off.
“I’m the best man you’ll ever find, you fucking dike!” he shouted after her.

“Hey, easy man.” Boomer cautioned
him quietly, dark eyes darting around.

“Sorry, he’s had a rough couple of
years,” he explained to the girl and her friends, who were eying Brick as if he
had a disease.

“The fuck is wrong with you, man?”
he grabbed the taller but slighter man and slammed him against the wall of a
low brick building, completely missing the irony. “I told you not to talk to
women like that. You want me to kick your ass again?”

“Fuck you, man. She was a bitch.”

“You were being an asshole. Of course
she’s gonna be a bitch when you get crude like that. Women want romance, and
from a gentleman.”

 “Tell that to the thirty million
women who read that
Shades of Gray
crap.”

“Hey, I don’t know if it’s crap or
not ‘cause I never read it. But that still don’t mean they’re looking for some
dude to tie them up and beat them and shit like you’re always on about. It’s
all just fantasy. In reality, they want to be treated like a person, unless
you’re rich and then they might not give a damn how you treat them, as long as
you
treat
them. But last time I checked, you ain’t rich.”

“I could have been,” Brick muttered
bitterly. “I just graduated. I should already have been collecting my paycheck from
the draft.”

“Well that plan has been sidelined
for a while, man.”

“Pffft,” Brick spat. “You mean it’s
been suspended, forever.”

“You don’t know that. You still got
a chance now that the last surgery is done. It’s all rehab now, man. And six
teams told you they’d give you a look when you’re ready.”

“I missed my college tryout, Boom.
No one’s gonna take a quarterback who never started in college.”

“Hey, you were the top prospect in
the nation and heir apparent at your school before that wreck. And you been
throwing every day with a dead leg and bum off-arm and looking good. They’re gonna
be watching for you now that you’re good to go.”

“I don’t know…” Brick hung his
head. “Maybe I’m just drunk.”

“You’re definitely that, man. Why
you gotta get so blasted for every occasion?”

“Because they always want to talk
to me about the leg, and—what the fuck?” he repeated his earlier expletive-based
phrase.

Gunshots from less than a block
away pulled their attention, followed by spine-chilling screaming from multiple
sources that matched the pipes of any horror movie vixen. In the next heartbeat
reality, normality, perhaps even sanity all hopped in a cab and took a vacation.
The girl who had shut Brick down so hard dashed at the pair of athletes without
her top, screaming, crimson blood pouring down her side as a large, fat,
slobbering white man wearing an #87 Chiefs jersey close on her heals clutching
her shredded half-top and bra in his grasping hands.

Brick pointed and laughed. “Serves
you right, bitch.”

“Hey, back off, man,” Boomer
shouted, kicking the man in the teeth as he closed on them. The man dropped in
a heap, but jumped back up with surprising quickness and lunged at the girl
again. In a surreal moment of horror, Boomer realized the man wasn’t trying to
feel her up as his bloody teeth sunk into her side, rending another chunk.

“What the fuck!” the two
footballers yelled as one.

Boomer raised one leg and extended
with every ounce of energy into the man’s midsection, straightened and with a
maniacal scream sent three punches to his head, but the man seemed unaware of
his presence and took another healthy bite. The young woman begged for help,
fighting to break free from the psycho’s firm grasp. Tears welled up in
Boomer’s eyes as the girl pleaded for his help. In desperation, he reached
around behind the man and pulled with all his might, ripping his grip from the
screaming girl. She fell to the ground, and with a heavy grunt of effort, he lifted
the attacker bodily and slammed him onto the sidewalk beside her. Bones audibly
snapped, but he made no sound, and lay there for a few seconds before he wiggled
and rolled over trying to rise again. The man’s left arm was clearly broken, forcing
him to roll to the other side and push up with his right and that’s when Boomer
noticed the pale face with its eyes seemingly two sizes too big and thin lips pulled
tight into a perpetual snarl. A huge chunk of flesh had been torn from the
psycho’s neck and the wound oozed a dark substance, soaking his crimson and
gold jersey.

Boomer had worked on his uncle’s
farm one summer. When they’d done a count on the cow herd they’d come up one
short and had to search the nearby hills for the missing heifer. Boomer had
been unlucky enough to happen upon the animal’s remains in a little valley
trapped between three boulders. The poor creature had clearly been there several
days and the scavengers had been at it. And the smell…the putrid, rancid stink
of decaying flesh and festering innards had burned his nostrils and emblazoned
itself into his memory forever. Unable to eat for three days, he would never
forget that wholly unpleasant stink…and though to a lesser degree, now that
same stench rose from the man before him as it cackled and drooled a thick,
reddish saliva onto the sidewalk.  

Ice gripped Boomer’s heart as he
put it all together in one chilling instant. “Brick, get something hard. Find a
pole or anything. We gotta bash its head in.”

“The fuck are you talking about?”
Brick shouted back, still standing in exactly the same spot. “Did you see that
shit?” he stared at nothing before him.

“It’s a zombie! It’s a fucking Zombie,
dude!” Boomer shouted.

“Are you fucking crazy? There ain’t
no such thing as zombies, Dumbass.”

“You gotta help me, man.”

“No way. I ain’t going near that
thing.”

Boomer kicked the slobbering,
growling man down to the pavement again, looking around desperately and spying
some orange cones nearly twenty feet away, blocking off a section of the
alleyway. With a silent prayer, he turned his back on the creature and darted
for the cones.

“He’s coming after you!” Brick
shouted, making no move to help either the fallen girl or his friend, instead continuing
to lean the full weight of a good drunk up against the wall Boomer had pushed
him up against, dazedly gazing around in horror at the carnage their world had
suddenly become.

Six men in various KC team jerseys futilely
pounded an incredibly obese man wearing a #68 jersey into the ground and
stomped on his back and head while he gnawed on the leg of a petite middle-aged
blonde the spitting image of that lead character in
Clueless—
pink dress,
cute purse, puppy and all. Brick couldn’t remember her name, but her older
doppelganger ignored the fat man behind her and beat a white-eyed, sunken-jawed
man on the head with her purse while he, in turn, munched on her forearm as if
it was a juicy
Popeye’s
drumstick and the dog yapped angrily at
everything that moved. Ten feet away a pale, wide-eyed little black girl hung
on the bare leg of a girl in a cheerleader outfit taking chunk after chunk out
of the screaming teenage girl’s leg, gulping each hunk of warm flesh as a fish
out of water gulps the air.  Apologizing to those around, the little girl’s
mother tugged on her arm while the teenager’s friends screamed and beat on the
brat with their pom-pommed fists.

“I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s
gotten into her, today!” the girl’s mother screamed. “Letititia, c’mon girl,
quit it now! Mal! Malcom Littlehorse! Get yo ass over here and get your
daughter under control!”

“Get your little demon off my
daughter you stupid bitch!” the pristine mother of the teen screamed slapping
at the little black demon.

“Malcom! Get over here and stop
this trashy ho from hitting your little princess!”

Brick’s numb brain directed his
vision to where the woman had yelled. A large Native American man he assumed
was the aforementioned Littlehorse fought alongside two black men of average
height and one short white guy, all four wearing Chiefs red with the names Alt,
Grunhard, Szott and Shields. Dazed as he was, he would have laughed at the
irony, except this impenetrable line was completely unable to keep one petite,
pony-tailed blonde teen girl in a blue and red cheerleader outfit from gnawing half
of an old lady’s face off as if puling he cheese from a slice of pizza, swallowing
the flap of skin whole before digging into a shoulder.

Tears sprang unbidden to Brick’s eyes,
his vision fogged over as thoroughly as his sanity, his conscious mind receding
deeper into his skull the longer this strange scene played out. On the other
side of the street someone had set a float on fire and several parade-goers
worked together to throw a red-haired, ashen-faced psycho cheerleader onto the
fire. The girl quickly caught fire, which should not have happened. Brick knew
it took a whole lot more fuel and heat than that to burn a body. Ignoring the
caustic black smoke billowing up from the colorful sea-horses, crabs and other
sea creatures, the young girl twisted and rolled over the edge of the platform
and onto the street, all the while burning like a walking matchstick. She
lumbered slowly after the group that had thrown her onto the burning float, noticeably
slowing, her flaming limbs stiffening. The stench wafted over to where Brick
stood lifelessly watching. Like Frankenstein’s monster the girl extended her
arms, lumbering at the unarmed men, several of whom crossed themselves and retreated
until their backs pressed against the red bricks of buildings along the street.

Twenty feet from the men, flames
covering every inch of the girl didn’t bring out the slightest whimper of pain.
At ten feet, the men realized they were trapped, blocked by clusters of fights to
either side of the inset section of the building. Flames racing up the girl,
flesh boiling away like rolled newspaper peeling in a fireplace, yet onward she
stumbled. Injured far beyond the capacity for any Human to withstand, she
should have long since passed out from the pain. Only five feet from her awaiting
feast the young woman’s head finally exploded from the heat, the flaming body
dropping to the pavement to lay motionless before the group of terrified men.

The trousers of two of the men
showed dark stains extending down from their groin area and the distinctive,
fragrant scent of urine joined the putrid stench of burning flesh, spilled
alcohol and vomit. The potency of the vomit aroma drew Brick’s vision to the
ground where fresh globs of reddish vomit coated his dirty white tennis shoes. A
desperate wail forced its way between his chapped lips as he realized he had
thrown up all over himself in public again. Sinking to the ground and burying his
head between his beige khaki-clad knees, the well-build athlete began blubbering
like a three year old.

Twenty feet away Boomer leaped a
barricade blocking the construction area, the dead guy chasing him had fallen back,
now shuffling half-way between he and his friend. Kicking over a pallet, the young
African-American revealed several slightly rusty scraps of black rebar stacked
neatly in rows on the wooden platform. He reached down and grabbed one bar
firmly in each sinewy hand. A shadow on the pavement warned him to move.
Leaping aside and rolling along the dusty concrete he jumped up and turned on
the fat-guy-thing as it stumbled over the pallet to lay prone, laughably trying
to upright itself again, yellowed teeth gnashing from his gaunt, gray face,
milky dead eyes tracking Boomer without emotion. Something told him in no
uncertain terms that the thing wanted to taste his flesh. Boomer never gave it
a chance.