This was not the haven for which
they had been hoping.
Hundreds of cars lined both sides
of the tracks all the way to Union Station. From how few spaces were open,
Boomer presumed very few parade-goers had actually escaped. An indicator of
just how numb he’d become since the first attack was the fact that he didn’t
even pause to dwell on just how many people that meant had probably already
died. As far into the east as he could see, people stood on the hoods and roofs
of cars bashing all around at diseased attackers with anything they could get
their hands on. Screams of horror filled the air as people watched friends and
family members get torn apart, or begging for help as cold, dead, clutching
arms dragged them down into the hungry gnashing jaws of roving bands of the
dead.
“No!” Brick screamed and raced off
to the south.
“Brick? Brick! Where you goin’,
Man?” Boomer called after his fleeing friend.
Run!
That was the only
thought in Brick’s head.
Run until you can’t run anymore
.
Boomer followed him up the street.
At some point the two athletes lost all of their new friends, but Boomer was
running so hard and so fast, he never noticed when or how. He was happy Brick
had lost it; running seemed to make him feel better. He tried to pretend it was
just another morning jog. The elevated road extended a quarter mile up out of
the small downtown valley and eventually reconnected to the hill. When they met
another pack of dead milling around the intersection of the two types of
roadway, Boomer realized the small viaduct had been entirely bereft of zombies.
He wanted to file that away for future use, but was pretty sure there was no
point. On they ran. Brick ignored the dead, dodging past the slow-moving
attackers, while Boomer took random head-shots with his rebar, hoping to save a
future life with each one he killed again.
Boomers lungs burned, his leg
muscles began to pulse from the excess adrenaline and exertion. The pair had
not run far, but it seemed to be perpetually uphill. Suddenly the buildings were
gone and they stood in the middle of an intersection, grass and parklands lay
uphill to the south before them on both sides of Broadway. Desperately in need
of a break, Boomer grabbed Brick’s shoulder and pulled him to a stop. Both men surveyed
their surroundings to get their bearings. The buildings they’d run past stood
firm and resolute to the north behind them. The path ahead was no longer clear.
A horde of zombies lumbered down the hill towards them like a mudslide, an
unstoppable force of nature—no matter how unnatural it actually
seemed—spreading from one side of the road to the other and spilling over into
the grass on either side
“How’d they get ahead of us?”
Boomer asked the universe.
The Universe did not reply; it
hardly ever did.
“Zombies ahead. Zombies behind. We
ain’t got no place left to go, Brick! I ain’t going out like this!” But that
was false bravado. His arm had all the strength and firmness of Jell-O pudding
and as it hung impotently at his side, a gooey gray and red molasses mix dripped
infrequently from the long piece of iron rebar he’d ripped from the
construction site.
“No place to go…” Brick muttered
quietly. “No place to go,” he repeated in a whimpering whine. He darted back a
few feet to the nearest building, a two-story window-filled brownstone, stepping
into the shadow of a narrow, alcoved entrance inset within the facade.
“You need to use that damned rebar,
Brick! Stop whining like a little baby and do something. We’re dying here man!
Ain’t none but us two left.”
“I can’t!” Brick yelled. “Let’s
just keep going.”
“Where, man? There are a dozen of
those things in any direction you wanna go and my arm feels like spaghetti.”
But at least his friend was thinking again, and talking. It wasn’t much, but it
was something.
“Ok. Ok. C’mon Boom. Let’s head for
the memorial. It’s right up the hill and then up that other hill.”
“What? Man, you ain’t making any
sense at all.”
“It’s up the little dead-end there,
through that parking lot, and then up the grassy hill. Right there,” the
taller, muscular man pointed a shaking finger to the hill on their left.
Boomer tried to get his bearings,
checking the green street sign and looking about. They were hiding in a shadowy
doorway on 21
st
street between two signs that said West with a + and
– in on top and bottom. He didn’t have any idea what that meant, but felt he
should try and remember it anyway, in case someone ever answered a phone. Other
than that, he didn’t have any idea where he was. He never came down to this
side of town, so even though Brick wasn’t in his right mind, he followed his
friend towards the dead end. When they reached the end of the building they
were using as ‘shelter’, Boomer found himself again. The next building was set
fifty feet further back from the road with a half dozen drive ways set between
concrete medians next to a fortified booth. Each entryway was blocked by yellow
and black concrete and steel blocks that protruded from the pavement and would
only retract if one used a current id card. It was the same colored brick building
they’d run past for the last two blocks on Broadway.
“Hey, that’s the IRS building,” Boomer
noted, glad to finally recognize something.
“Yeah,” Brick grunted, his blue
eyes wild and desperately searching for sanity.
“It looks locked up tight,” Boomer
noted glumly.
“Terrorists,” Brick breathed.
“Oh yeah. It’s a high risk day so
they’re closed,” he translated his friend’s simplistic responses.
“Memorial.”
“Oh yeah, the Liberty Memorial. I
haven’t been to the World War I Museum since the reconstruction. How is it?”
“Awesome.”
“C’mon, man. You gotta come back to
reality. We’re in deep shit here.”
“Run.” Brick panted, looking past
Boomer at a dozen slavering zombies stumbling towards them from Broadway.
They dashed past the building, the
gated driveways and the safety of concrete structures and climbed the grassy
hill past a large multi-trunked tree and into the park. As the fleeing men
rounded the top of the hill, now heading North towards the upright memorial
itself, both men stopped. Normally they would have paused to admire the
Egyptian stylings of the miniature Sphinx-like sculptures bracketing the east
and west sides of the tall memorial column or gazed into the reflecting pool
before the structure, but their eyes were instead captured by the hundreds of dead
stumbling about in every direction. The stink of death permeated the area—north,
east and south, the dead converged on the grassy park. And they already knew
what waited behind.
“Jesus F-ing Christ, Brick. We’re
surrounded.”
Brick dropped his iron rod and
started blubbering.
“No, no,” Boomer looked around for
something to hang his sanity on. “I ain’t going out like that. Over here,
Brick!” he pulled his catatonic friend across the park, bashing in the skulls
of half a dozen zombies that stood in their way, forcibly dragging his friend
over to little picnic shelter and sliding one of the heavy trash cans over.
“Get up there,” he pointed to the
top of the green can. When Brick climbed onto the green can without falling in,
Boomer pointed him higher. “Now climb on the roof.”
Brick pulled himself onto the green
concrete and corrugated steel roof of the shelter. Boomer kicked away the trash
can and jumped, catching the edge of the shelter with his powerful fingers and
in one deft move swung himself up onto the roof. Both men lay flat and
motionless, watching the army of undead things march onto the field around
them. Within ten minutes not one square inch of turf was visible as the zombies
flowed into the area, covering the park like a blanket.
A half hour they lay there,
immobile and shaking. Boomer kept trying to call Scooter, as he had been the
entire flight through the streets. Finally his friend answered.
“Where are you?” Scooter asked in
his friendly, open, everyman way that instantly put people at ease. And Boomer
really needed to feel at ease right now.
“We were at the parade. It’s all
fucked up, man. Something’s happened down here. We’re surrounded by
these…things,” he said quietly.
“Don’t laugh, but man, they—”
“—are zombies. Right. Yeah, I’ve
seen one or two.”
“One or two…man, they’re
everywhere. You gotta come and get us, Scoot. Brick has lost it, man. He’s
gone. I can’t get him to do anything but run and hide.”
“Look. I know what you’re talking
about. I just fought a bunch of them.” Scooter explained. “Trip and Sarah are
holding up in the building where she works. It’s supposed to be a fortress.”
“Yeah, I know the place. That’s way
too far for us to get to, though.”
“Well, we’re just outside there
now. We’ll try to come out and get you when we join parties.”
“Thanks man.”
“Where are you?”
“We’re in the park in front of the
Liberty Memorial.”
“I thought you guys were going to
stay on the plaza?” Scooter asked.
“We were,” Boomer whispered. “But
Brick wanted something phallic around to enhance his chances with the women.
Said he wanted to try to score some artistic types. We set up at the KC
Performing Arts Center. With the four Sky Pylons of Bartle Hall standing tall
nearby, he figured he couldn’t lose.”
“How’d you get so far from there?”
“When the second group of them
things came at us Brick just bolted and we followed. We lost everyone else. Now
we’re stuck here surrounded by an army of these…things. If you come, you better
either bring an army or something that you can take one out with.”
“Right. I’ll see what we can do.
You might be there a while, my friend.”
“We ain’t got no place else to go,
Calvin. Hope to see you soon.”
“Hold tight, buddy,” his friend
replied hopefully.
“We are looking hott, with two
tees!” Lola Jones squealed to her friend, Lucy. The small, petite blonde took
her brown-skinned friend’s hand and began dancing around her like a fairy
princess.
The Plaza was rocking. Colored confetti
floated about, exploding randomly from the barrels of pneumatic cannons. A
kaleidoscope of helium balloons floated over the street at regular intervals,
tied to the buildings, sign posts, vehicles and people wandering about. The local
sounds of revelry drowned out the distant announcements of the announcer at the
other end of the Plaza. Lola wore a very low cut sexy blue lace lingerie teddy
over pink yoga pants, flaunting every asset the good lord had given her. The
only concession she’d made to decency was a tiny powder blue half-sweater tied
around her waist partially covering the upper portion of her shapely buttocks.
The petite Asian-blooded girl she danced
in circles around sat demurely on a low stone post. She wore a light blue sun
dress with a wide, round yellow hat and looked remarkably beautiful without any
makeup other than a light dusting of shadow around her angular, almond eyes and
soft pink lipstick accenting her perfect, thin lips. Neither girl wore
sunglasses as they both felt their eyes were their best features, and both were
entirely correct in that belief. Lola flashed her emerald orbs at her friend as
she danced. Sometimes she just hated Lucy. Her best friend could roll out of
bed and comb her fingers through her straight, jet-black hair and be ready to
go, while Lola had to primp her golden curls for an hour to get them to sit in
the right place. But today seemed special; for once she felt like the most
beautiful girl around, even with Lucy by her side.
“That’s the fourth guy to ask for
my number in the last half-hour.”
Lucy rolled her exotic,
almond-shaped brown eyes and tilted her head as her friend danced another
circle around her.
“
You
may be getting
proposals, but they won’t even come near me. Do I smell or something?” she
pouted.
“You smell like the Garden of Eden,
Lucy. Any guy would be lucky to sniff your pedals. It’s because you’re too
intimidating. You have to smile. Guys love your smile.”
“I can’t smile unless it’s
natural.”
“Well, no guy is going to approach
you when you’re frowning. You’re too beautiful for them to get the courage when
you’ve got the shields up.”
“I try to give them signs that it’s
ok.”
“No you don’t. You just stare at
them.”
“But I’m trying to stare in a ‘come-hither’
way.”
“It’s not working. Your
‘come-hither’ looks more like ‘I need medication’. We’ll have to work on that
again.”
“I guess I’m just not very
sociable.”
“It’s because you spent so much
time alone in foster homes and stuck in the Juvie system. You never learned how
to open up.”
“You open up in the system and
people take advantage of you,” Lucy mumbled, turning away.
“Hey,” Lola cooed quietly. “I’m
sorry. I know what happened to you and your brother. I’m so sorry. But you’re
out now. You made it. You’re safe and you have a bunch of friends who are never
going to let anything bad happen to you again.”
But that wasn’t true. No one could
guarantee protection for someone against things they hadn’t yet even fathomed
could exist.
Lola noticed a man lumbering
towards them, a drunken six-footer dressed in light khakis and a Royals jersey,
but wrinkled and slovenly. The man had spilled an entire chili dog on his lap
and hadn’t cleaned it up. She was all set to shut him down when she saw his
face…and let out a startled scream.
Lucy casually glanced up, but could
only see the man’s approaching legs from her current seat.
Probably another
old guy hitting on her,
she thought. “Back off, you skeevy stoner,” she
bellowed, stepping up to help her friend.
But Lola wasn’t trying to deflect a
pass. She was trying to process the reality of what her eyes had seen. Pasty
white dry skin, eyes wide and staring, but so cloudy with blindness they surely
couldn’t see anything and for a mouth, nothing but bared teeth, gnashing and
dripping Bar-B-Q sauce all over his jersey.
Wait…
Is
that Bar-B-Q
sauce?
Part of the chili dog still hung
out of his mouth.
Wait, that’s not a chili dog.
That’s…that’s a baby’s arm!
Even were she not a stunningly
attractive woman, Lola’s blood-curdling scream would have pulled the full
attention of several nearby gentlemen. Three men were between her and the
approaching creep in an instant. “Back off, pal,” ordered one older man with an
old Royals shirt two sizes too small over his pot belly. He held out his arm to
stop the stumbling freak.
Lucy leaned around her friend,
curiosity demanding she get a better look. The freak no longer seemed
interested in Lola and instead grabbed her protector’s arm and bit deeply into
it. Two other men started pounding on the lecher, but he ignored them and took
another bite out of the first man’s arm, who yelled and tried unsuccessfully to
pull away. Soon there were a dozen men gathered around yelling directions to
each other and beating on the crazed psycho. The first man finally pulled away
and ran screaming into a building to seek medical attention for his arm. But
the drunk did not pursue. He simply grabbed another sports-clad man, pulled him
close and voraciously bit him in the throat. The bitten man stumbled away,
pressing both hands to his neck and failing to stop the spray of blood. He only
managed to stumble a few steps before collapsing onto the pavement, a red pool
quickly forming around his body and trickling across the sidewalk to flow into the
gutter like rain runoff.
Lucy stared, brow furrowed in dazed
incomprehension.
Is this a joke? It’s not very funny.
The feral man
turned and twisted, trying to bite anyone who came close while the defenders
knocked each other down as they jumped out of his path to avoid the gnashing
teeth. One of the young men who had been knocked down jumped up and screamed, “Zombie!
Oh my god! It’s here! It’s the apocalypse!” His wild eyes took in the anarchy
that had enveloped the streets. With another scream, he bolted into the crowd.
Lucy heard his screams abruptly
cut-off a few feet down the road, but couldn’t see through the crowd to the
cause of his silence. Her attention was pulled back to the men struggling with
Lola’s attacker. The man was clearly on some drug, because he fought everyone
off successfully for some time. Then Lucy noticed the man who had been bitten
in the throat, who surely must be dead by now, start convulsing, his dark skin
turning a pasty grey. Her eyes locked in fascination as he rolled over, face
muscles becoming spastic, pulling the skin tighter and tighter until his face
was a rigid, maddened snarl. And then the man she’d thought was dead pushed
himself from the sidewalk and leaped onto a tiny Latino man who had been
standing to the side shielding his children, a boy and girl of roughly five or
six. The dead guy repeatedly ripped hunks of flesh from the man with his teeth
while digging into his torso with his fingers, using them like talons to rip
flesh and pull out innards, shoving intestines into his mouth like he was
eating sausage links at a picnic. The Latino man’s children screamed and kicked
at the pale attacker, who ignored them until their father fell in a lifeless
lump. The attacker then picked up the feisty little boy and bit deeply into his
chest until blood sprayed in all directions and he screamed a scream Lucy knew
she would never forget if she somehow lived past this day. The little girl ran
away screaming.
Lola shrieked. Several parade-goers
shouted in outrage and attacked the grey man, driving it away from the dead boy
and his father. As Lola continued to scream, Lucy raised her hands to either
side of her head, gripping her dark hair as if it were her sanity and all of
the forces in the universe were trying to rip it from her grasp, because that
was exactly how she felt. She would have screamed, but her brain was not
working right. She could not send the proper pulses to the desired receptors. In
some small way Lola’s screaming actually helped to calm her, to center her, to
distract her horrified mind just enough to allow some instinct to take over.
“C’mon!” she yelled, grabbing Lola’s
limp hands and pulling.
“What are you doing?” Lola asked,
pulling back.
“We have to hide!”
“We need to help those guys!” Lola
shouted, pulling away.
“No. Let the men fight. We need to
go.”
“We can help them!” Lola insisted.
“We’re girly-girls, Lola. Let girls
like Athena and Sarah help the boys. You and I hide and wait for rescue. It’s
what we do.”
Lola let herself be pulled across
the street, where they witnessed three little girls beating on a little boy who
had the gray-tinged skin and skeleton-face thing going. Their parents were too
busy dealing with adult attackers to notice one of their kids ripping flesh
from its sister and chewing with relish before taking another chunk, all the
while disregarding the blows it received from the other children. Lola and Lucy
sobbed and both could feel their sanity slipping away. Angry shouts and
horrified screams filled the streets and gunshots rang out from several
directions, one ricochet taking out a chunk of brick from the building the
girls ran towards.
“In there!” Lucy pointed to the doors
of their favorite coffee shop.
“I don’t think coffee is what we
need right now.”
“No, we’re going up there,” she
pointed to the tower that sat at the east end of the Plaza.
“There are steps up to there
through the coffee house.”
They yelped and jumped back as a
pair of muscular men dragged one of the ‘changed’ individuals past them and
dashed its head against a wall.
“Oh my god!” Lola screamed.
“Let’s go!” Lucy shouted and they
laced fingers and ran into the shop.
“Give me the key to the back,” she
yelled at her friend Jason.
Jason always gave her free drinks
when she wanted to do her homework or just hang out in the shop. He smoothed
back his wavy brown hair and shot her a huge white-toothed smile, effortlessly
tossing her the key. It was Jason who had shown her the tower and hadn’t even
tried to kiss her, even though she’d wanted him to. Instead, they’d just sat
talking for hours and now he let her up there whenever she wanted. She liked
sitting at a table by the window doing her homework and watching the traffic
and tourists pass by below. Jason was always nice to her, even when she looked
like absolute hell. Sometimes he’d join her for lunch and they would talk about
the future. She liked Jason.
He was still fondly returning her
grateful smile when the big black woman in a red and white jersey jumped on
him, forced him up against the counter and ripped out his throat with her
pearly teeth. Lucy’s dazed mind could clearly see the surprise in his eyes
replaced by a desperate fear as the horror of his situation sank in with the
next incision of the woman’s teeth. Unable to scream for help, one hand
reaching out to her, trying to say so many things he’d clearly wanted to say
for so long, feeling his life force draining from his body, by force of will he
held her stare until his eyes began to glaze over. And then both orbs rolled
back into his skull and his body went limp. Jason was gone.
“Jason!” She screamed. “Oh my God.
What’s happening?” she demanded. “Not Jason! Oh God no!” He was gone, but Lucy
had a feeling he would be back. Because that’s what was happening around her; people
were being killed, and then they were coming back to life. With a sob, she yanked
her friend to the door at the back of the shop that was cunningly disguised as
a floor to ceiling mirror. Her shaking hands fumbled to get the key in the tiny
lock, but finally it clicked.
“C’mon,” she said and pulled her
friend inside and shut it again.
The pair of frightened girls dashed
down the painted cinder block hallway to a locked gate on a set of caged-in stairs
halfway between two doors. This time Lucy deftly worked the lock, knowing every
second might matter. She pulled the tall gate firmly closed behind them,
because sometimes it would stick and not shut. A dozen steps later and they
were in the viewing rooms looking down on the chaos unfolding below.
“Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my
fucking God!” Lucy cried. “What the fuck is going on?”
“What do we do now?” Lola asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what’s
going on. Oh my God, those guys hit that thing with everything they could pick
up and it kept coming.”
“What do we do?” Lola repeated.
“Call Scooter!” Lucy cried. “He’ll
know what to do.”
They both hit Scooter’s number, but
he didn’t answer, and it didn’t go to voice.
“Try Athena.” Lucy suggested.
Again, both dialed without an
answer.
“We are experiencing high cell
tower traffic,” Lucy grimaced and cussed. “Damnit!”
“Oh my God. It doesn’t matter
anyway.”
“Why not?”
“They’re on their special
Valentines date. It’s Valentine’s Day Again, remember? They have the ‘no phones
on rule’. Oh my god. How are they going to know to get away if their phones are
off?”
“But they’ll check them every once
in while, won’t they?”
“Ok, I’ll text Athena while you
call Scooter. One of them will eventually answer.”
“What about your dad, Lola?”
“Right, I need to call him.”
Her dad answered right away.
“Hello, honey. What’s up?”
“Daddy?” she started to cry.
“What is it, baby?”
“Is mom there?”
“Sure, but if you wanted to talk to
her, she has her own phone, Sweetie.”
“No. I just wanted to make sure
she’s there.”