Hurricane Dan (A Zombie Novel) (10 page)

Chapter 19

             
As soon as the door was closed, the darkness of the hallway sank in. The only light came from an exit sign that tinged everything in fluorescent red. Both the wood on the floor and the walls had been stained black, up to around chest height. Above that the wall was painted blue and had folderol mirrors hanging all over it. Upon further inspection, Dan could see the mirrors were covered in beer labels.

He could see light at the far end of the hall; it appeared that it opened up into a larger room.

"You first," whispered Randy.

Dan gave him an annoyed look that was lost in the dark, before slowly creeping forward. As much as he hated it, the floor creaked with every step.

His katana was at the ready. He passed two bathrooms, a men’s room and a ladies’ room. They were still and undisturbed, as far as he could tell; no sign of zombies.

When he stepped out into the wider room, he found himself standing in the back of a pristine bar. The tables were clean and ready for the night’s customers. The bar was fully stocked with glittering bottles of liquor and fridges of beer. The bartender was even there, holding a double-barreled shotgun, and pointing it right at him.

"How the hell did you get in here?" the tall and skinny man asked.

Dan let his katana drop to the floor and raised his hands. "We were being chased so we went through the first unlocked door we could find."

The man looked pissed. "Damn it Kyle. You left the door unlocked, how many times am I going to have to tell you? Lock the door!"

Dan noticed a short, freckle faced, red headed boy of about ten years old, sitting at the far end of the bar.

"Sorry dad, I forgot," he said, looking sullen.

"When are you gonna learn?"

The kid just put his head down.

The man turned his attention back to Dan, though he lowered his gun so it was aimed at the floor. "How is it out there?"

"Pretty damn bad," said Dan. "Things just kept snowballing, it is beyond control at this point."

The man nodded to himself a few times before lowering his gun completely. "Well, I suppose you can stay here if there is nowhere else to go."

"Thank you."

"Call me Carl."

Dan waved everyone into the room and introduced them all to the man and his boy.

"You guys seem pretty worn out," said Carl. "How about a brew? On the house."

Barns looked like an excited puppy at the sound of a free beer. "Hallelujah!"

"Do you have any water?" asked Zoey. "We have been doing nothing but running for hours now. Or maybe some place to clean off the sweat?"

The man thought about it as he popped the cap to a beer and slid it to Barns. "There is a small sink on this side of the bar, but if you want to wash up you will have to make do with the bathroom sink." He filled a few glasses in the sink and began divvying them out to the group.

The water tasted like liquid gold when Dan splashed it into his mouth. He sank back into one of the chairs at the bar and succumbed to exhaustion, the glass draining too quickly for his thirst to subside.

"What a day," he said, catching the last drop of water on his tongue.

Zoey excused herself to go wash up in the bathroom. Carl popped the cap off of another beer and slid it to Barns. He watched them lounging in their chairs with strange curiosity. He looked happy to be serving them for free.

"Either that thing was empty when I handed it to you or you emptied it in one swallow," he said.

Barns eyed the new beer with wide eyes before pouring it down his throat. "Dat dere taste like heaven."

"Could we get another glass of water?" asked Randy.

"Sure thing, it's kind of funny how these things work out. I took my boy with me into the city this morning," said Carl as he filled up a few more glasses. "The manager is on vacation so I decided I would come in and get the place ready for tonight myself. I figured it wouldn't take any time at all with junior’s help. Yeah, I came in thinking I would serve the drinks and he would bus the tables." He shook his head as he handed them the water. "Instead it started getting dangerous outside so I locked the front doors."

"You guys have been here all day?" asked Dan.

Carl nodded. "Yeah, ran to the parking garage to get the old Remington out of my car first."

"What made you bring a double-barrel shotgun into Manhattan in the first place?" asked Randy.

Carl cracked a beer and took a sip. "Just got back from a hunting trip upstate. I kind of forgot it was in there to be honest. Pretty lucky, not that I want to use it."

He clicked on a flat screen television behind the bar and then turned it down so nobody outside would be able to hear. The footage showed a female news anchor talking to the camera, as army tanks whizzed by behind her in the middle of an intersection. She spoke about how the military was in full operation on the United States’ soil.

"The news has been going crazy. Nobody can get in or out of the city, the military has it on lockdown. The president is set to address the nation in an hour," she said.

Dan accepted as he was slid a beer. "I sure as hell hope he has a plan."

"Me too," said Carl. "The city was labeled a no fly zone earlier. Not sure what that is supposed to do."

"Who do they think did this?" asked Randy. "Does anybody have a clue yet?"

Carl shrugged. "They are assuming it is terrorists obviously, but they really have no clue."

"Or the result of some new drug gone horribly wrong," said Dan.

Randy cocked his head. "What do you mean?"

"You know, somebody was messing around trying to get high. I heard a similar thing once happened with bath salts."

"Dat be why you just stick with da flip flop," said Barns.

"You guys play any cards?" asked Carl.

Dan shook his head. "Not really."

"What about you?"

Randy shrugged. "Does Magic the Gathering count?"

"I played me some poker a ways back," said Barns.

Carl walked over to one of the tables in the room and threw down a deck of cards. He set a beer down in front of every seat where he expected them to sit. "No better way to pass the time while we wait for a rescue. The game is called euchre."

When Zoey reemerged from the bathroom some ten minutes later, any gore had been wiped away and she was squeaky clean. She watched them play cards for a minute before accepting a mixed drink and turning to watch the television.

Dan was struggling to think of what card he should place. There was a rule about the jacks changing suit that kept screwing him up. One hand, a spade was a spade, the next, a spade was a club, it kind of pissed him off. He had just played his hand when Zoey spoke up. She was sitting next to the ten-year-old boy who was busy scribbling a picture onto a napkin.

"Guys, check it out."

The television displayed a podium. Dan perked up as he watched the president approaching to make a statement.

"Hold on," said Carl, stopping Barns before he could play his hand.

He dared to grab the remote and turn the television up a couple notches.

Nobody moved as the president began to address the crowd.

"My fellow Americans, by now you are all aware that something has happened. I am here to confirm that the attacks on New York and New Jersey are the result of biological weaponry. And I am here to confirm that this is the single greatest attack to ever fall upon American soil. Countless lives have been lost and countless more are still in peril. Now, I want to assure you that our military is doing everything they can and will soon eliminate this outbreak. I urge everybody to stay inside as much as possible over the next few days, only go out when it is absolutely necessary. So far we have begun to eradicate this disease on the mainland and are working to quarantine it to the island of Manhattan, where it is still very much out of control. We will then begin work on cleansing the island."

Dan could see that the president was still talking but his microphone had gone out. A couple seconds later the picture went fuzzy and when it came back into focus, it was displaying the symbol of a red letter "A" with a circle around it, over a black background. It was the symbol for anarchy; Dan remembered it from the goth kids that used to draw it back at his old high school. The children's song “Ring Around the Rosy” played ominously in the background, little girls singing it in low key. When the symbol faded away it was replaced by a man wearing a bird mask and a short top hat.

The man looked sinister. His eyes were sunken in under the mask, like a face inside of a skull. The bird beak jetted out long, white, and pointed. He wore a cloak that looked as though it were from the Middle Ages. When he spoke, only the bottom of his chin moving from behind the mask was visible.

"People of the world, your governments deceive you."

"Who the hell is this guy?" asked Dan. Instead of a response he was simultaneously shushed by almost everyone in the room.

"I don't know, Dan," said Barns.

On screen, the bird man went on. "And they have been deceiving you for hundreds of years. You see, we have been led to believe that the Bubonic Plague traveled on the backs of rats, causing a third of Europe to become ill and die. Did all those people really die? Yes. Did the plague really travel on the backs of rats? No. The Bubonic plague traveled from person to person through human bite. For hundreds of years they have worked to cover this up. In the following years after the plague, the citizens of the world armed themselves. They knew that if the disease should ever appear again, they would have to protect themselves from the walking corpses. The governments of the time, and future governments, saw this as a threat and set out to change history. They wanted to bend the truth enough so that all the future generations would be okay living with less protection. Why? Because all governments fear their people."

"I don't like where this is going," said Dan.

The man eyed them through the television with those skeletal eyes. "Little by little they have changed history, made us believe that the Bubonic Plague was nothing more than a sickness like the flu. Yesterday there was nothing left of the proof that was once the Bubonic plague. They had successfully disarmed the earth’s population and perverted history. Oh, but that was yesterday and today is a different day. Today we erase six hundred years of deception. For you see, we have been working with a strand of the Bubonic plague. We altered it in order to make the human immune system once again vulnerable, like it was in the original outbreak. It recently became ready and so we let it loose."

"What the hell," said Zoey.

Dan was beginning to feel a little sick to his stomach. "This guy is insane."

"What you see today is our proof. Zombies have been around for hundreds of years and our governments covered it up so they could more easily disarm the people. Not any more; the truth is out. If you find you have any doubt of what I am saying, you need only look at your great city. There can be no denying it any longer; the Black Death has consumed Manhattan!

Chapter 20

             
When Dan woke up he hurt all over. It was a result of the previous day’s exercise and sleeping on the wood floor. They had used their coats, and dish rags, to help make the ground slightly more comfortable, Dan had used the backpack as a pillow. It was the most expensive pillow he had ever used in his life. Unfortunately expensive didn’t substitute for comfortable, it was also the worst pillow he had ever used in his life.

The curtains were drawn so that nobody would be able to see in, but a beam of light slipped over the top, striking Dan in the face. The beam fell perfectly, burning right through his eyelids and lighting his pupils. Once it had woken him, he found it impossible to fall back asleep. He tried rolling around and moving from the light but his consciousness remained aware of the wood floor beneath him. He eventually gave up and stumbled his way to the bathroom.

An image bounced around in his mind as he splashed water on himself and rinsed out his mouth. It was of the television and the bird man; he had announced that the Black Plague was in Manhattan and then the picture had simply cut out. They were left watching fuzz for the rest of the night. It was creepy; that silence had made them feel abandoned.

Dan went back to the front of the bar and sat at one of the bar stools. He busied himself by eating a breakfast of ninety-nine cent potato chips.

Zoey was the first to stir; she came and grabbed some chips of her own.

"Good morning," she said, stretching.

He couldn't help to notice that as she stretched, her shirt lifted high enough to see her belly button. Her hoodie was unzipped, the hood slung over her head.

"How did you sleep?" he asked.

"Not good, the floor was killing me."

"It's not very forgiving, is it?"

She shook her head. "No, it is not. So what do you think we should do next, fearless leader?"

"Fearless leader? That sounds like a nice name to give somebody else."

"Why?" she asked. "You are the one that has kept us alive so far."

"I don't think I have done any more or less than anyone else."

"You are being too modest."

"Hey, I could say the same about you. But honestly, I really don’t give a fuck."

She smiled. “Thanks.”

“I had a nightmare,” he said.

“Oh yeah?”

“That guy with the bird mask, he was chasing me. He kept saying that he was going to eat me. He wasn’t wearing a mask in the dream, it was an actual bird’s head. A man’s body with a bird’s head, chasing me through the city and yelling that he was going to eat me.”

“Sounds pretty messed up.”

“Tell me about it.”

They both looked over as Carl got up and stumbled into the bathroom, his hair sticking up on end.

“I didn’t have a dream,” said Zoey. “But I swear I kept waking up every ten minutes.”

“It was not fun—” He stopped, hearing somebody yell outside.

Dan went over to the window and pried a window shade. There were zombies out in the street, about seven or eight directly in front of the bar. They stumbled with purpose. Dan followed their direction; his heart began to race when he looked at the other end of the street. The riot police were there, making a wall of riot shields from one building, across the street to the next. They threw canisters of tear gas out at the zombies. The zombies paid no attention to the gas and kept moving towards them.

"Zoey," Dan said, calling her attention. "You asked what my plan was for us next. I say we make a run for those guys."

She peeked through the curtains, taking a sharp breath when she spotted the Riot Patrol.

"They can save us!"

Dan watched the zombies for a moment. They were thin enough that they might be able to run through with a little luck, but they were bunching up against the line of riot shields. The bar group was going to have to move fast before the zombies mobbing at the shields grew too thick to get through.

Dan wasted no time going through the bar and shaking all of his sleeping friends. "Come on, guys, wake up. We have to go."

Barns didn't look too happy with the idea of going anywhere. "But we got ta say here with the flip flop and safety."

"There is no safety here, Barns," said Dan. "That entire wall is glass."

"But the flip flop."

"It's not worth our lives."

Carl came over holding a bottle of vodka. "Here, take this with you. I'm probably going to get some insurance money for the damage done to the front of the store. I can afford to give this away."

Barns looked thankful but torn. He held the vodka tightly, yet his eyes still darted across the other bottles sitting behind the bar.

"Tank you very much," he said after a long pause. He twisted the cap off immediately and proceeded to drain half the bottle. When he was done, he stuck the bottle into his back pocket.

"Now dat be a good breakfast!"

"Okay," Dan said, addressing the room. "We are going to have to make a fifty yard sprint in order to reach the riot police. You know the drill, don't trip, don't slow down, don't stop for anything."

"Sam," said Carl to his little boy. "I need you to ride on my back son."

"But dad, I am old enough to run on my own."

"I said you are going to ride on my back, that is the end of the discussion."

The boy hung his head in embarrassment but didn't complain any further.

“Wait a second,” said Randy. “This is insane, we just woke up two seconds ago.”

Dan looked at him. “Those guys are only attracting more zombies, every second we waste there are more of them that we need to get through. I don’t know how long we can wait before the trip will become impossible.”

Dan went to the sink and scooped up a couple mouthfuls of fresh water. When he was done, he put on his backpack and sword.

"Is everybody ready?" he asked, walking up to the front doors.

"Wait," said Randy. "I want to lead us this time. I am a zombie movie buff and know the most about them. I think that means I should lead."

"Randy," said Zoey.

Dan took a step away from the door. "Alright, just make sure you call out to the riot police when we get close. We don't need them mistaking us for zombies."

Randy took a deep breath and placed his hand on the lock. "Ready?"

"Ready as we will ever be," said Zoey.

Dan’s nerves were beginning to shoot up and down his body, making him tingle all over. He felt as if he were about to jump off of a cliff with nothing more than a parachute. "Do it."

Randy twisted the lock and threw open the door. His sword reflected in the morning sunlight as he made his move. He acted like he was going to run, but on his second step he ran right into a zombie. Both man and monster fell to the ground; Randy's sword went bouncing across the pavement.

Zoey let out a surprised shriek.

The entire group froze for a heartbeat. Dan took a split-second analysis before deciding what to do. On the positive side, Randy was on the ground with only one zombie and had yet to be bitten. On the negative side, their group would have to dispatch four approaching zombies before they could focus on the one attacking Randy. It would take too much time; countless zombies would be on top of them and they would be doomed.

"Run!" Dan yelled, pushing the back of their group to start moving.

Two more zombies fell on Randy as he struggled to free himself. One of them fell to its knees and bit down on his thigh, right above the knee. The other grabbed Randy’s wrist and bit off one of his fingers.

Barns grabbed Zoey’s arm as he started to go. She was off balance at first but fell right into the sprint. Dan was on their heels, next to Carl and his boy.

The sound of moaning rose and sank with every zombie they came to and passed. There was enough space for them to find comfortable running room. The zombies lunged for them but they were able to go wide and outside of their reach. Dan could feel fingertips graze him every now and again.

Randy's screams rose up behind them. Dan couldn't find a chance to look back, he had to grit his teeth and keep moving forward. He regretted the decision to leave the poor bastard, yet understood that it was the only way for the rest of them to survive. It did not take long for the screams to die off. He hoped Randy's pain had ended quickly.

As they approached the riot police, the zombies grew denser. Their only saving grace was the fact that the zombies’ attention was completely on the police.

The last five feet looked to be the most dangerous of all. The zombies compacted against the shields where batons came out to crack them in the heads.

Are they going to let us in, Dan wondered as he closed the last of the distance.

"We are human!" he shouted as they reached the line.

Barns grabbed the first two zombies by the neck, that were blocking their path. He threw them backwards where Dan dispatched them with the sword. Zoey grabbed the next one by the shoulders and threw it to the side, Barns threw aside two more.

The wall of shields seemed to tower over them, casting them into their shadow.

Carl joined the pack, pushing a zombie out of the way to get to the shields. Dan had to face backwards, swinging his sword, frantically trying to kill every zombie that approached them from behind.

There was so many that he barely had time to think. Slash, stab, kick, shove, his brain was working on overdrive. He felt like he was trying to hold back the tide of the ocean.

A hand grabbed the back of his collar and yanked, sending Dan's heart into his throat. He thought that he was done. He braced for the pain of being bitten. It wasn't until the shields closed in front of him and he was staring at the backs of the riot police that he realized he was not about to die.

“Randy!” Zoey screamed. Dan looked at her and could see her eyes were wet. “We have to go back, we have to go save him!”

She made a move for the front line but Dan held her back.

“He’s gone, Zoey.”

“No!” She tried to get away but he held her tighter. “We just left him.”

“We had no choice.”

“He was alive and we ran away. We killed him.”

Dan shook his head. “There were too many zombies, if we had stopped we would all be dead right now.”

She turned and buried her face in his chest. He could feel her tears soaking his shirt, but he could not hear her cry. She held it in, pulling away and wiping her eyes.

"We got four healthy in Hell’s Kitchen," said a man decked out in SWAT gear, into a walkie-talkie.

Dan could see three other SWAT guys standing inside the safety of the riot police's wall. They each carried a military grade assault rifle. He could also see another line of riot police, boxing them in between the buildings. They seemed to be inching their way down the road. The SWAT guys picked off any zombie that dared come at them from the buildings to their sides.

"We are going to get you out of here alright."

Dan turned at the sound of the SWAT guy’s voice. "What are you guys trying to do?"

"We are spread across the city, attempting to kill enough of these things to thin them out."

"Is it working?" asked Zoey, her voice hoarse.

"I'm afraid not. We don't have the right weapons and there are way too many of them. We have yet to make a dent and our guys are already tiring out."

"How do you plan to get us out of here?" asked Dan.

"Look alive," said the SWAT guy. He fired three rounds, dropping three zombies that were coming out of a building to their right. Dan’s ears rang from the percussion.

"We are using the city's snow plow trucks to get around, one is coming to pick you up as we speak."

"Den we be on our way out of da city!" cheered Barns.

"I'm afraid not. The roads are so backed up that we can't get any vehicles through. The only way would be to walk and, with all the zombies, that has proved to be an impossible task. I'll tell you what we do have though, a two block safe zone around the New York public library."

Dan ran a hand through his hair in exasperation. "When is this going to be over?"

The SWAT guy looked amused. "Not until the military gets things under control on the outside. Unfortunately, by the sounds of any contact we have made, things are far from under control."