“It’s just up there around the
corner in that garage.”
“Excellent.”
They sprinted to the first floor of
the garage and Trip pointed the doctor to his charcoal grey Taurus. It was a
little old, but it got him from A to B. He hit the remote and unlocked it and
all three climbed in, the doctor sliding into the middle of the back seat.
Aging tires squealed as Trip started the motor and slammed the car into
reverse, barely avoiding backing into the wall. Pulling the shifter into drive,
the car shot for the exit, but he slammed on the breaks, which made little
sound as the Automatic Braking System kicked in.
“The gate is down.”
“Just break through it,” the doctor
suggested
A group of dead shuffled towards the
entrance. The trio could hear the moaning and occasional cackling of their
madness.
“We can’t break it down, Doctor, or
spikes will come up out of the ground and puncture the tires and we’ll be stuck
here.”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,”
the doctor countered angrily.
“Everyone knows about the spikes,”
Sarah backed her boyfriend.
“Shit.” Trip cursed.
“What?” the other two asked
simultaneously.
“I don’t have the ticket,” Tripper
mumbled.
“We need money!” Sarah shrieked,
ripping open the glove compartment.
“Oh my god,” Trip gasped.
“What?”
“I put your purse and my wallet in
the trunk. The ticket is in my wallet.”
“What the hell did you do that
for?”
“I didn’t want them to get stolen.”
“Trip!” She shrieked. The fastest
of the walking corpses had reached the car and jumped onto the hood, slavering
and gnawing at the windshield, its bony fingers clawing at the glass.
“We need a distraction so I can get
to the trunk.”
Without hesitation the doctor opened
his passenger door and jumped out. “Please hurry and don’t forget to pick me up!”
he shouted and dashed down the street away from the crazed virus victims
shouting and banging on the case to get their attention.
“What the hell?” Tripper said in stunned
astonishment. All seven of the beings now followed his retreating form down the
street.
“That was very brave,” Sarah noted
calmly.
“Yeah.” Tripper admitted, watching
the zombies stumble at a slow jog behind the man. “Hmm…they’re not moving as
fast as that first one did by the plane.”
“Trip…” Sarah said casually.
“What?”
“The trunk!” she hissed. “Go!”
“I have to let them get far enough
away. Don’t want them turning back when I’m half way out of the car. I don’t
have a trunk latch. Gotta use the key.”
“Okay. And you’re right. They do
seem to be slowing down. Maybe the more energy they exert, the faster they wear
down.”
“Don’t know. Something to keep in
mind, though. OK, I’m going.”
“Be careful, honey. I love you.”
“Hey, I’m just going to the trunk.”
He winked, opened the door and darted to the rear of the car, slipping the key
into the slot on the first try. Reaching in, he grabbed his wallet and shoved
it in his pocket and slung Sarah’s purse around his shoulder—no time for male
proprieties—and started to shut the trunk, but stopped at a sudden thought.
Leaning deep into the back, his fingers wrapped around the handle of his
favorite bat just as Sarah let out a shriek.
“Trip!”
He slammed the trunk and looked through
the back window to see which side the new attacker was on, but she was looking
behind him, eyes wide and one finger pointing over his shoulder. Knowing he didn’t
have time to think, only to act, he lunged down to his right into a tight roll,
feeling something sharp glance off his shoulder as he moved. In an instant, he
was up and facing his opponent—a quick glance around showed there was only one,
a very large white man with a huge belly and a red and gold Chiefs Jersey that
would have been a tent on Trip. The stench of roadkill flooded his nostrils and
he retched. The thing’s skin had turned the color of ash, eyes and mouth tightly
drawn into a freakish, cadaverous mask. The mask of the dead. Unfortunately, in
Kansas City the dead didn’t seem to want to stay dead anymore.
The man moaned and lurched towards
him, so Trip stepped to one side, bashed it in the head once with a level
swing, followed with an uppercut. With a grunt of finality he turned and brought
the bat straight down one more time on the top of the head with all the power
he could muster. The man’s skull burst like an over-ripened watermelon at a Gallagher
show and sprayed the area with a reddish-grey goo that dribbled down the former
man’s bulky, headless shoulders to splatter all over pavement and Trip’s shoes.
The body slumped to the pavement
with a heavy, sickening plop. Unable to control himself, bile rising in his
throat, Trip collapsed to his knees, vomiting every bit of an excellent steak
and egg breakfast. Tears came unbidden as the reality of what he had just done
hit him.
Oh my God. I just killed a guy.
Holy fucking shit. I killed
someone. I beat his fucking head in.
“Trip! Let’s go! We have to go help
the doctor. You can throw up again later.”
“Easy for you to say,” he gagged
and wiped the tears at the same time. “You didn’t just spill some guy’s brains
all over the place.”
“I saw it. But he was dead already,
Trip.”
“You don’t know that,” he shouted
back, fighting back more tears.
“I know. I’m sorry. But it was him
or you, and we have to get out of here.”
A scraping somewhere in the shadows
of the garage was all the motivation he needed. He didn’t want to be lunch, but
even more than that he didn’t want to kill another guy or—
what if the next
one is a kid
? He worried.
Despite his sour stomach, he wiped
the bloody length of the bat on the dead man’s jersey, turned, and teleported
to his door, unable to remember how he got there—fear was an excellent
motivator. Tossing her the purse, in half a heartbeat, he had already slid the
bat between the two bucket seats as Sarah dug for the proper change. The gate
was beside them and the ticket already inserted and he sat holding out his other
hand to Sarah.
“Two-seventy-five,” he said.
“Just a second.”
“Hurry up, babe,” he demanded, snapping
his fingers and checking all around for more undead. “The dead don’t wait for exact
change,” he quipped.
“That’s not funny, Tripper,” she
snapped. “I’m getting it. Don’t rush me.”
How come I don’t see any real
people running around?
He wondered while he waited, knowing it was because
most stayed to fight the dead. Most people were natural protectors.
What
does that say about us?
He wondered, but only felt slightly guilty.
“I need another quarter,” she held
out her hand.
After a minute of both arms digging
into his pockets in a frenzied search, he stared back with eyes wide in dismay.
“I don’t have a quarter!” he
shouted.
“Well, it’s two-seventy-five. I’ve
only got two-fifty and a bunch of twenties.” She held up a twenty in
consternation.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” He
snatched a twenty and slipped it into the money slot and the gate began to lift.
He heard the change drop into the
coin holder, but slammed on the gas, squealing out of the garage sideways and sending
smoke pouring up the street and his ride drifting back and forth in the other
direction after the doctor.
“I’ll owe you,” he promised the pouty
frown eying the retreating ticket machine.
They caught sight of the Doctor three
blocks down. “There he is,” Tripper noted with a smile. “They’re almost on him.
Man, he looks tired. That serves him right.”
“He said he didn’t start it,
Tripper. I believe him.”
“OK, but I’ll bet he personally knows
the guys who did.”
Sarah shrugged. “Probably.”
The doctor scurried along the right
sidewalk with the dead now hobbling close on his heels in the hop-skipping jog
of football players with sprained ankles trying to exit the football field
before the play commences. At last seeing the grey car approaching, and nearly
on his last legs, the doctor darted across the street, his pursuers shambling
at various speeds spread out in a long line across the street in pursuit.
“Perfect.” Trip crowed.
He didn’t even have to think about
it; he knew what the Doc had in mind. Gunning the motor as he approached the
line of undead and yanking the wheel at the last moment, the aging sedan
slammed full-broadside into the group of walking cadavers, coming to a dead
stop. He then slammed into reverse and backed into the two he’d missed. With a
primordial scream, Trip jammed the shifter into first and ran them all over again,
sickening both himself and Sarah with the stomach-churning crunches of shattering
bones while the spinning tires sprayed blood and skin onto the side of the
building behind them like stucco. A yank of the wheel spun the car to follow
the Doc, who had continued running twenty or thirty more feet up the street
before he had to finally stop, holding out a pasty thumb as he stood
doubled-over trying to catch his breath.
“Nice,” Trip said. It
was
nice to have something to smile about given he’d just mangled seven beings who
not a half-hour before had been innocent Humans just out for a good time. Pulling
up to the curb, he pointed to the back seat and the Doc jumped in.
The next issue started as he pulled
away from the curb. “Uh-oh,” grumbled Trip quietly, eying down at the steering wheel
in horror.
“What is it?” the Doctor asked and
both he and Sarah leaned over to look.
“No, it’s…” he spluttered, and
nodded towards the front of the car. “The steering is pretty tight. I’m
fighting to get away from the curb. I think I bent something.”
“Shit,” the doctor understated.
“Oh my God!” Sarah cried.
“It’s OK. I don’t see anything else
around,” Trip assured her calmly.
He pulled on one side of the wheel
and turned the car out into the street, but then overcompensated and headed almost
immediately for the other curb.
“Damnit!” he slammed the dash and
jerked the wheel back the other direction with both hands. “Bent tie rod and
who knows what else. We need another plan. I can get us a few blocks away, but
after that…” The car continued down the street, zig-zagging as if they were
heading home at 3am on a Saturday morning.
“My work,” Sarah said excitedly.
“What?”
“My building. I have a key and the
alarm codes. No one will be there today. It’s got a concrete exterior. It’s bomb
proof with barred windows and bomb-proof doors in front. No one we don’t want
in there is going to come in. Also, it’s just down from the police station.”
“Sounds like a fortress,” the
doctor seemed impressed.
“It’s an insurance company,”
Tripper informed him logically. He was beginning to sweat profusely as he
muscled the car between the sidewalks.
“Why does an insurance company need
bomb proof windows?”
“It used to be a library.”
“Thank you for clearing up the
issue.”
“And a museum.”
“Still not seeing it.”
“Tripper,” Sarah admonished him. “It
is the home office of a very big Life Insurance Company with very sensitive
files inside. We want to make sure no one can steal our clients’ privileged
information.”
“What a very nice corporation. That
must be the first one ever.”
“Plus we lease out offices to some
government types who paid a lot of money to protect the building.”
“Now you’re telling me something I
can believe,” the elder man said with a knowing nod.
“Ninth and locust, right?” Tripper
asked.
“Right.”
“Ok, we’ll drop the doc off at the
police station and run around the block to your building and hide out until
someone can come get us.”
“Who are you going to call?” Sarah
asked
“Scooter and Hephaestus, maybe Hef
first.”
“Excuse me. What do you mean you’re
dropping me off at the police?”
“We can’t protect you, Doc. And
they need to know what’s going on.”
“I don’t know what is happening
either,” the doctor responded.
“Never-the-less, you need to be
someplace where they can keep you safe and contact some people to come and get
you so you can stop this.”
“Again, I think you have imbued me
with qualities I do not posess. I don’t know how this happened.”
“But you work with viruses and
such, right?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“—and you originally said you were
trying to neutralize it?”
“The Ebola variant, not this.”
“But it is what you do, right? And
you have a sample with you?”
The man sighed. “I see what you
mean. Yes, I suppose I have more knowledge than anyone else about the
situation,” MacGreggor conceded reluctantly.
Before Tripper could reply a
metallic clunk clanked at them from under the front end and he yelled, “Hold
on!”
The speeding car jerked left and
they jumped the curb and slammed through the front window of a restaurant
before he could bring it to a stop. Trip’s life failed to flash before his eyes
as his favorite charcoal grey sedan smashed several red and green tables and
chairs into a dirty white wall before being stopped by what looked like a very
large buffet table. Stunned briefly as the air bags exploded into their faces
and sides, they all grunted in pain and surprise.
I think my nose is broken,
Trip
thought hazily. “Eberry won’t still Adive?” he asked groggily.
“Did you say, ‘Ivy won’t stay
alive?” Sarah asked groggily.
“I thought he said ‘if we run steel
eyes” the doctor grunted
“Is everyone still alive?” Trip
repeated, enunciating each word, but already knowing the answer now.
“That’s not even close to what I heard
the first time,” she giggled. “But I’m ok.”