Derby City Dead

by Madigan, D. A.

  --and burst into flames.

  He went up like a pile of charcoal soaked in lighter fluid. The girl-zombie behind him was frantically flailing and screaming, trying to pull back away from him, but it was too late for her; her father's flames licked over her arms and then she, too, was a blazing, shrieking inhuman torch.

  Behind them, Dan could see other zombies from the street that had started to run screaming down the narrow passage between their two houses, but had now stopped and were backpedaling, arms over their faces, obviously terrified by the open flames.

  "RUN!" Dan screamed to Vicki, waving the mop-torch around in the air. Vicki didn't need further urging. She threw the box of cans aside and ran as fast as she could, little legs pumping hard as she sprinted across their back yard towards the van in the alley.

  The side panel on the van had been pushed back, and as Vicki ran, she could see a black woman she didn't know squatting in the opening among a lot of tools and piled up gear that Vicki did not recognize. Her dad had told her that her mom had stopped to help some people; this must be her mom's new friend... but what did she have in her hand? It was like a giant firecracker...

  Dan, running behind Vicki with the makeshift torch in his hand, yelled "Careful getting in, Vicki! Stay away from the end of that road flare!"

  Vicki jumped into the van and scrambled over the piles of tools, boxed up modems and routers and cable boxes, and other esoteric items, making room for her dad. Meanwhile, the black woman -- Vivian, Sheila had said her name was Vivian -- was leaning out of the van, waving the flare around vigorously.

  Dan tossed his own torch behind him as he reached the van. Pulling himself up inside, he looked back.

  There was still black smoke rising from the sullenly burning pile of char that had once been two of his neighbors. Beyond it, he could see a dozen other ghouls, milling about between the two houses, obviously unwilling to come within thirty feet of the open flames.

  Whatever they were... whatever was in them, animating them... it did not like fire at all.

  He pulled himself further into the van. Vivian yelled "Get your feet in!" and started hauling the sliding panel closed again. Dan yanked his feet in, feeling the solid metal panel brush against his heel as it clunked home.

  "Bunch of 'em back at the start of the alley," Vivian yelled. "I tossed the flare out, but..."

  The driver -- Sheila? -- tromped down hard on the gas pedal and the van screeched into motion, heading up the alley towards Bardstown Road.

  A man's voice came out of the dashboard radio: "A mob of raiders that were in Douglass are running up the street towards Bardstown. They're coming around the corner at a full run --"

  Dan remembered reading somewhere that humans running full out could outpace a galloping horse -- just not for very long, before collapsing from fatigue. But did these things get tired?

  Sheila -- Dan could see it was Sheila, now -- wrenched the van's steering wheel to the left as she went banging onto Bardstown Road.

  "We still heading to the Walgreen's?" Dan yelled from the back. Vicki had grabbed him and was hugging him tightly.

  "We are," Vivian said, from where she was crouched behind the passenger's seat, several more road flares on the floor next to her, "but we ain't gonna get in if we can't shake those bitches runnin' after us."

  Sheila yelled back "When we drove by on the way here, the metal security gate was down over the doors in front. Could mean there's someone inside and they locked it, or could mean the last person inside locked it down when they left." She paused for a second, weaving the van in and out of stalled or abandoned cars. "I'm going to go past it and turn right on Trevillian. Vivian, when I do, you throw a bunch of flares out and anything else you can set on fire. I want to break contact with this bunch and pull in to the parking lot off Trevillian and come up behind the Walgreen's and park."

  Dan was mildly surprised to see his wife pick up a CB microphone and say into it "Hey, flyboy, what's the sitch on the parking lot behind Walgreen's? Any zombies?"

  "That's a big ten four," came the same male voice back, "but I've got some flares up here, too. I can drop a few in the parking lot and that should make them head on out pretty fast."

  "Sounds like a plan," Sheila said back. "Get ready, then."

  "If the place is locked up, how are we going to get inside?" Dan asked.

  Before anyone could answer, there was a crackle on the CB and then the pilot's voice: "Galaxy van, Galaxy van, be advised -- I have received a call from someone in the Walgreen's. Says they are the store manager, listening to my radio broadcasts, and heard me orbiting the store."

  "Can they let us in the back?" Sheila said, still slewing in and out of traffic, barely ahead of the baying pack behind them.

  "Negative, negative," the pilot responded. "At first they thought I was there to rescue them. When I advised I was skosh fuel and hoping to take refuge in the Walgreen's with another group, they became abusive. Called me a looter, said no one was coming in until quote proper civil order was restored unquote."

  "Great," Sheila said. "Okay, Skip, clear the back parking lot if you can. We're gonna pull in there and park and then try to come up with a plan."

  What happened next haunted all of them for the rest of their lives. At least, all of them who could see out of the van, and witnessed what was about to occur.

  At any kind of speed, the trip from the Noyce house to the Walgreen's shouldn't have taken more than three minutes, tops. But Sheila was having to weave around vehicles that had apparently been abandoned by their owners in the middle of the street -- or, judging from how many had the glass smashed out of their windows, and how much blood was splashed around, that had been attacked by zombies, and whose drivers and passengers had no doubt been absorbed into the various zombie hordes now roaming the neighborhood.

  Either way, she had to keep her speed up, and avoid the stationery vehicles that were everywhere. Often this meant running up onto the sidewalk, tearing through parking strips and bumping back onto the road again over curbs... Dan had always known Sheila was an excellent driver, but now he stood -- or, rather, sprawled -- in awe of her skills.

  They weren't even past Bonnycastle and Bardstown, where the Papa John's was situated across from the little strip mall with the tanning salon and the ATT store, when abruptly, the front door of the house on Bonnycastle right next to Conn's Automotive banged open, and seven or eight people came out, shooting.

  Dan had gotten up on his knees and was looking out the driver's side window when it happened. The group came running out to the left of the van. He could see them clearly -- an older man in the lead, with a rifle in his hands. He was wearing a military uniform of some sort -- brownish green, it could have been Army or Marines, Dan couldn't be sure. Behind him came a woman around his age, carrying a baby in her arms, another woman probably twenty years younger -- ten years younger than he and Sheila -- carrying another baby. The older woman had graying blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail behind her head and was wearing a casual house dress; the younger woman had short blonde hair and glasses and was wearing jeans, sneakers, and (Dan never forgot this detail) a bright blue t-shirt with a Kentucky Wildcats logo on it.

  On either side were two younger men -- husband of the younger woman and a friend or brother, maybe -- and they had guns, too. One had two pistols, one in either hand, while the one on the far side of the group had another rifle.

  Why had they come running out, at that exact moment? No one in the van ever knew. Maybe they'd heard the engine or the helicopter or both and hoped for rescue. Maybe they'd been listening to the traffic copter's broadcasts and hoped, if the pilot saw them, he'd land and pick them up. Maybe they'd had their own CB and been listening in on the chatter, and wanted to get in on the Walgreen's plan.

  But, no... if they'd been listening to that, then they would have known better.

  As luck would have it -- if you wanted to call it luck -- Sheila had just swerved away from Bonnycastle, up onto the sid
ewalk, to avoid a big U-Haul truck that had stopped across two lanes. So the van was on the sidewalk on the far side of Bardstown. As the heavily armed family came running out into the street, the gang of zombies -- thirty or forty strong by now -- that was chasing the Galaxy van had all screamed in unison and (as best Dan could figure with no view backward) turned as one and run towards the fresh meat that had just broken cover.

  Dan lost sight of the group for a second as Sheila ran the Galaxy van along the sidewalk, on the other side of the stationary U-Haul. But he could hear the crackling of gun shots.

  Sheila yanked the wheel to the left again, screeching back onto Bardstown beyond the stalled U-Haul, and Dan could see --

  -- the zombies had swarmed them. Every single one of the group was on the ground struggling and screaming under at least two ghouls each -- except for the one young guy on the far side of the group, who was frantically back pedaling, rifle to his shoulder, firing over and over again into the group of zombies that was still coming for him.

  Dan could clearly see that several of the zombies swarming on the downed family had head wounds -- one, a black woman in a startling orange and black floral patterned dress, seemed to be missing most of her head from the eyebrows up.

  Then the first of the ghouls still up and running hit the young guy with the rifle in a flying tackle, and he disappeared underneath a churning, screaming pile of ravenous undead.

  Dan could reconstruct it. The group had had good discipline. The older fellow -- husband, father, grandfather to the others -- had had some guns in the house, but probably not a lot of food -- or maybe they were short on baby formula. He'd distributed the guns to the younger two men, who might have had some military experience themselves. When they'd heard the engines -- van and/or copter -- they'd come running out. They had all probably had some shooting experience, and obviously they'd seen all the zombie movies.

  And in the movies, head shots always 'killed' zombies --

  "GOD DAMN IT!!!!" Sheila screamed in anguish and frustration. But Bardstown was clear for about fifty yards in front of her; she put her foot down and the van roared away from the dead and the dying behind it.

  ix.

  A glance in the rear-view mirror showed that, for the moment, there were no zombies in pursuit of the van. Sheila made a snap decision and swerved into the Kroger's parking lot. She was having a hard time keeping her vision clear; all she wanted to do was pull the van over and cry. Cry for that houseful of strangers that had run out into the street with their guns ready, hoping for rescue. Cry for those babies, carried to horrible deaths by desperate parents and grandparents.

  Cry because there hadn't been anything she could do to help them.

  No time for that shit, of course. She had a van full of people she could do something for... maybe.

  She drove into the back parking lot running behind the supermarket, turned left, drove down through the connecting parking lots that ran behind the Immediate Care Center next door and the appliance showroom next to that, and came out just to the left of the empty building that had once housed a Hollywood Video, before video rental places had all gone broke. It would have been incredibly convenient if the common parking lots had extended all the way down to Trevillian, but they didn't. Bardstown Road ran steeply downhill between Kroger's and Taylorsville/Trevillian, and the Walgreen's was actually quite a lot lower than the Kroger's, which meant so was its parking lot. There was a ten foot high concrete wall between the lots with a line of shrubs on top of the wall. So to get to the Walgreen's, she'd have to go back onto Bardstown, turn right, and head down about forty feet and then turn into the Walgreen's parking lot.

  But this way, at least the zombie pack behind them hadn't had a chance to re-establish visual contact with the van.

  Her CB crackled, and Skip's voice came on: "I've dropped flares around the perimeter of the lot behind Walgreen's. I started at your side to drive the zombies that were there out onto Trevillian. I show you clear to the store. Over."

  Vivian picked up the mike so Sheila could use both hands to shift and steer. "We copy that, flyboy. We are en route to the back of the store. Over."

  Even on short acquaintance, Dan found Sheila's new friend impressive. She was obviously brave and resourceful, and no matter what else she did, she somehow found the time to keep at least some of her attention focused on the two young kids huddled together on the floorboards in front of the passenger seat. Right now she was stroking their hair with the hand she didn't have on the microphone.

  Now she said "You got any idea how we gonna get that man inside to let us in?"

  Sheila gunned the van back out onto Bardstown, screeching into a right turn. "Yeah," she said. "I think maybe God is looking out for us after all, Vivvy. I do have an idea."

  Dan hugged Vicki, in the back, and thought to himself (without any irony whatsoever) how lucky he and his child were.

  Turning right off Bardstown forty feet later, Sheila could see a half dozen zombies -- or whatever they were -- rounding the corner off Trevillian and heading towards them at a sprint. She ignored them; behind the Walgreen's, she could see the first of several flares burning where Skip had dropped them. She drove the length of the Walgreen's building, noticing that the parking lot she was driving through, to the right of the closed up store, was almost completely empty... giving credence to the notion that, as with the store Vivian had found herself trapped in, nearly everyone that had been inside earlier this morning had left when the crisis started.

  Unlike at Kroger's, where, as she'd driven past its front entrance a few minutes before, she could clearly see people -- or, more likely, not people -- milling around aimlessly inside.

  Vivian had probably had a brilliant idea, going to Walgreen's instead.... and Sheila had remembered something else. Something that might get them inside.

  She pulled in behind the Walgreen's, passing between two of Skip's dropped flares, backing the van right up to the heavy metal double doors there.

  She took the mike from Vivian. "Skip, you coming in with us?"

  Skip's laconic drawl came back "If you can wave your magic wand and get past those doors, I'll be right behind you. If not, though, I'll stay in the air... I may need to bingo for Bowman Field in another couple of minutes, anyway."

  "All right," Sheila sent back. "Do you have that number that the store manager called you on?"

  "Hold on," Skip replied. "Let me check the caller ID... yep." He read it off quickly

  "Keep your fingers crossed, chill'un," Sheila said. "Here goes nothin'."

  She picked up her cell phone and punched the number into it, starting it off with *67, to mask the incoming number from the Caller ID on the other end.

  She heard the phone on the other end ring -- once, twice, three times -- then someone answered.

  Someone with a very familiar voice said, "What? What is it? I mean, hello, Bardstown Walgreen's, how can I help you?"

  Sheila composed herself, and then, in as calm and professional a voice as she could muster, said "This is Galaxy tech 2526. We're at your back door on that all services out call you placed."

  There was silence on the other end of the phone for several seconds, leaving Sheila to wonder just how much this person knew about what was going on outside. If his TV, internet, and phones were down... and he'd pulled down the corrugated metal security doors, so he couldn't see out...

  "You're here to fix the cable?" the person said, finally.

  "TV, internet, and phones," Sheila responded. "I've got all new equipment for you right in the truck."

  "You're at the back?" he said.

  "I'm at the back, yessir," Sheila said.

  "What's that copter doing up there?" he asked. "Because I talked to that chopper pilot before and he gave me the impression that a bunch of looters were going to be trying to break in here."

  Sheila rolled her eyes. "I don't know anything about that, sir," she said. "There have been some kind of disturbances downtown and there are several pol
ice helicopters in the air, but everything seems normal in the Highlands. But if your services are working or you don't need the truck roll, I'll call my dispatch and cancel..."

  "No, no, no!" the fellow shrieked. "No, don't you dare! I need this cable working! Hold on!"

  Sheila hit the MUTE button and said "Get the back doors open. We're going to need to bolt."

  Dan was already moving towards the back of the van and pulling on the latches. As they swung open, he could hear Sheila advising Skip, in the helicopter, to get ready to land.

  Then, to his horror, he heard one of the front doors opening -- he would have sworn it was the driver's side door. And as the right side of the metal double doors at the back of the Walgreen's started to be pulled open from the inside, his wife came around the side of the van -- holding a pistol in her hand.

  Inside the door that had just opened, a short, rotund Caucasian guy with a graying goatee and a thinning comb-over was pulling the door open. "I hope you brought a new --" he was saying.

  Then he caught sight of Sheila, pointing a gun at him. He stopped, eyes widening -- and then squawked "LOOTERS!!!" and stepped forward, obviously intending to slam the door shut again.

  The van was no more than five feet from the back door. Dan yelled "DON'T SHOOT!" and lunged at the door. He hit the ground on his feet and then his shoulder was slamming the door back open again, sending the short guy inside sprawling backwards into a gloomy room full of cardboard boxes.

  Behind him, Dan could hear Sheila yelling "Get everyone inside! Vicki, quick, get in there!" while, simultaneously, Vivian was saying "Come on, babies, we're goin' in the store, quick now, let's move quick".

  And over it all, the sound of the helicopter engine getting louder and louder, as Chip landed it no more than thirty feet away, inside the lines of still burning flares he'd dropped previously.

  And, just beyond those lines, obviously attracted by the sound of the engines, and the sight of the people coming out of the van, a crowd of milling, shrieking zombies was gathering.