Zombies! (Episode 10): State of Emergency

by Ivan Turner

  "Oh, my God," she said into the phone and into the air.

  "Abby?" Martin said anxiously into the phone. "Abby, what's wrong?"

  "There are dozens of them, Martin. Maybe hundreds."

  "What, Abby? Dozens of what? Abby! Ab…"

  The call was dropped and the phone went silent in her hand. She barely noticed Sam tugging on her other arm. He was saying funny men over and over and pointing and laughing. But the men weren't all men and they were hardly funny. They were an army. An army of the undead, just marching down Broadway and absorbing anyone who was unfortunate enough to get in their path. Abby's first thought was to get to the train and away from the area. Sam would never be able to keep up with her so she scooped him up and ran. Only when she saw that everyone was running in the opposite direction did she have a second thought. The zombies were sweeping through the street like a pixel plague, covering every square inch with their foul color. When they reached the entrances to the train stations, they didn't stop. They didn't even get out of the way. Many grabbed hold of the railings and started down the stairs. Some just tumbled head over heels and disappeared from sight. Either way, the train station was hardly a safe haven.

  Gathering her wits about her, Abby looked around the street. She was almost as afraid of the crowd of panicking people as she was of the zombies. All at once, she was back in the Bronx, sweaty frightened men dragging her forward toward the fighting arena's exit. The whole episode had been completely out of her control. But then she was back in the center of the park, most of the people having scattered. The zombies, heading south down Broadway, had just reached the edge. Behind her was clear. She could run away from them, but worried over what she would find. Not too far down, Broadway ended and so did Manhattan Island. From there it was a left or a right and up West Street or South Street. Either way, if the army of zombies spread out, she'd get caught as she headed back uptown. Of course, dragging Sam along, she'd be exhausted before she even reached Wall Street. Her only recourse was to find shelter and fast.

  "Mommy, those are bad men," Sam said.

  She almost burst out laughing, holding him close as she ran and kissing him on the head over and over again. She had almost forgotten about him in her own panic. Some instinct had forced her to hold onto him and now she was relieved to find that he was with her. He gave her purpose. The zombies would not have her child.

  At the southern end of the park, east of Broadway, there was a line of stores. Some people had gone inside, but most had just run off. Traffic on the street had literally disappeared. Broadway was always crowded with cabs and buses during the weekdays. What had happened to them? Then she remembered coming out the train and seeing an empty Broadway. No cars. No buses. Somewhere further uptown, the zombie armada had stopped traffic and no one had even noticed.

  As Abby rushed down the row of stores, a sales lady came out of a boutique to see what was going on. When she saw the zombies swarming the park, her entire face morphed into a thing of terror. She was about to bolt, her whole body tense, when Abby grabbed her up and swept her into the store.

  "Do you have shutters?" Abby asked.

  "What?"

  "A gate? Does your store have a gate?"

  Dumbly, the lady nodded.

  Abby practically tossed Sam into the store and dragged the lady outside to help her. The lady was beginning to shut down from shock. Her instinct for flight had been interrupted but she still couldn't focus.

  "The gate!" Abby screamed into her face.

  The lady seemed to clear a bit and headed for the door. "I'll get the padlocks."

  But Abby grabbed her and hauled her back. "We don't need the locks."

  The zombies were reaching the southern edge of the park now. The first of the line was moving into the gutter directly across from where they stood. The smell had already reached them. The two women looked across. As always, the zombies came in a variety of styles. Tall and short. Old and young. Black and white. Chinese, Mexican, Italian. And even the ones that weren't chewed up or decayed were so frighteningly disgusting that it was all they could do not to look away.

  "Inside," the lady said. "We have to go inside."

  "We need to put down that gate."

  Sam was banging on the glass door, shouting out Mommy!

  "We have to do it from inside."

  A man came running out of the train station at their end of the park. He was wearing a business suit and no coat. His hair and his eyes were wild as he looked around. Those zombies that were near him changed direction and reached out for him. He screamed. He had this high pitched voice that went shrill with his fear. He fought against them and managed to break through the ranks. Like a trapped animal, his eyes searched for an exit. When he spied Abby and the sales lady, he charged toward them.

  "Help, help!" he shouted as he ran.

  The lady pulled open the door and ran into the boutique, nearly tripping over Sam as she did so. Abby went in after her, waving for the man to hurry. When all of them were inside, the woman opened the door a crack and reached up. She yanked on a chain and the gate came free whacking the door along the top. Slowly, too slowly, she let it close inch by inch until there was barely enough room for her to reach her arm through. With one hand pulling, the gate came down slowly. The zombies reached the front of the store. Abby, Sam, and the man could see them through the front window. Some ran up to the shutter and started banging on the metal plates. Others crawled underneath, trying to reach up to the lady's exposed arm. With about eighteen inches to go, she couldn't pull it down anymore. While most of the zombies had scrambled out from underneath, the one closest to the door had stayed. It continued to try and get in. Pulling her roughly away, the man yanked the gate up and then yanked it down again. It slammed on the zombie's head. The thing shuddered. The man pulled hard on the chain and the gate came up a couple of inches. A second zombie tried to claw its way in over its struggling peer but the man brought the gate down once more. The first zombie caught the brunt of it and seemed to go slack. Sticking his foot through the narrow opening, the man managed to nudge it far enough away that the gate was able to close fully. Exhausted, the man backed away from the door. It swung slowly closed with the slight tinkle of bells.

  "Is everyone okay?" Abby asked.

  Everyone nodded. Sam was standing silently next to her, looking from the sales lady to the man. He was trying to figure out if they were part of the group of bad people or if they were friends.

  "Do you have a television?" asked the man.

  The lady shook her head.

  Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his phone, a sparkling iPhone. He began thumbing and tapping the screen, his expression growing ever more frustrated with every passing second. "There's nothing. The whole network is down."

  "What about the regular phone?" Abby asked.

  The lady went to the phone and dialed 911. She got a recorded message and shook her head.

  "So that's it, then," the man said. "We're stuck in here blind and dead."

  They stood there, the three of them, staring at each other. Abby could feel the tension rising in the room. Now that the action was over, desperate brains were beginning to try and work through a way out. When there seemed to be no obvious solution, destructive emotions were taking over. The only sound was the muted pounding of zombie fists against the gate.

  The boutique was a little hole in the wall that seemed more suited for the Village than for an off Broadway store by City Hall. There was a selection of wispy clothing as well as different scents and knick knacks. It was everything your young and trendy college graduate wanted in her studio apartment. But it was not for Abby. The lighting was dim and the place was all peach and violet. Sam found a black chair by the cash register and climbed up into it. The man sank to the floor, his back against a wall. His hands were shaking so badly that he had stopped trying to calm them. In fact, he hardly seemed to notice. And the poor sales lady just stood in the center of the store looking from Abby to the man
and back. She looked as if she was trying to decide which of them to help first.

  Abby, too, felt like panicking. Two things were keeping her together. The first was a too large resume of past experiences with zombies. The other was Sam. She didn't know what to say to her strange companions. She didn't know anything about them. So she introduced herself and her son.

  The man looked up at her, then at the befuddled sales lady. Then he started to laugh. Then he started to apologize for laughing. Abby's introduction seemed so ridiculous under the circumstances. But she was right. Since they were entombed together, it made sense that they get to know one another. His name was Vincent Vacarro. He was a middle aged, middle income, middle management guy. He wore a gold band on his left ring finger. Abby looked him up and down. He was tall, but not as tall as Martin. He also looked big but she was sure the suit lent to the illusion. This was not the kind of guy that hit the gym. This was the kind of guy that was proud of not hitting the gym. He'd probably been in decent shape in his youth but age and a more sedentary schedule had robbed him of what nature had teasingly provided earlier on.

  The sales lady's name was Chantelle Roberts. She was young and pretty with creamy brown skin, now streaked with black mascara lines. She had the look of a girl who had started working at the boutique to pay some bills while in school. But the bills had won and school had lost. Maybe she was twenty three or twenty four years old, locked into a life of retail.

  "Let's try and keep a level head," she said to them. In a few hours, the police will clean it all up and we'll be able to go."

  "Just like that?" Vincent asked incredulously.

  Abby nodded. This was not her first time being trapped by zombies. What was preying on her mind was Martin. What must he be thinking?

  Chantelle went behind the counter and started fiddling with the computer. The internet was still working. When he realized what she was doing, Vincent went and took over. In a moment, he had logged onto one of the news sites and was running a live feed. There was a worried looking anchor lady reading a frantic story.

  "…from all five boroughs and three townships in New Jersey. The police commissioner has declined comment and the representative from Homeland Security has been unavailable. Joining us now from the upper west side…"

  Vincent looked up at Abby. "Do you still think the police are going to clean it up?"

  "What is it?" Chantelle asked them. "It…it sounds like a war."

  "A war?" Vincent cried. "It's the end of the world."

  "It's not the end of the world," Abby said.

  Vincent huffed.

  "But they're all over the city." Chantelle looked at the computer screen where they were flashing a ticker with the locations of all of the attacks. City Hall, the court district in the Bronx, the Staten Island Ferry Terminal, La Guardia Airport. The list went on. "It's like an invasion."

  "It's the end of the world."

  Chantelle looked sternly at him. "No, really! Look at those locations. It's almost as if someone's been planning this."

  Vincent waved his hand and puffed his lips. He walked away from the computer.

  Sam pointed at him and said, "Mommy, he's bad."

  "Sam!" she admonished, dragging him close to her. But Vincent didn't seem to notice or care. He went to the window and leaned his face against it through the displays. In the electric light, Abby could see the vibrations caused by the pounding on the gate reflected in the glass.

  "I have a daughter," he said, turning back and looking at Sam. "She's in high school now."

  "What's her name?" Abby asked.

  "Maria. God, she's beautiful."

  "I'm sure."

  "I'm never going to see her again." He leaned against the window and sank to the floor, burying his face in his hands.

  "Do you have a picture?" Abby asked.

  Without even looking up, he tossed her his phone. It bounced on the floor, the screen flickering momentarily. Abby looked down at it, then picked it up. There was an icon on the screen for photos so she just tapped it. There were a lot of pictures of a lot of people so it was difficult to determine who was who. There was a picture of Vincent and a middle aged woman who Abby guessed was his wife. It was a casual picture at a park or something. Vincent was dressed in a polo shirt and a pair of slacks. The woman was dressed in a tight shirt and stretch pants. She shouldn't have been wearing either. In fact, Abby thought even she might look better in the outfit. Sometimes, it was just better to accept the aging process and adjust to it.

  "Very nice," Abby said even though she could only guess at which of the numerous girls in the pictures was his daughter. She placed the phone on the counter.

  All throughout the exchange, Chantelle was pouring through site after site on the internet. "They haven't put up the Emergency Broadcasting Signal yet," she said. "And they're not listing shelter locations."

  "That's good, right?" Abby asked.

  Chantelle shook her head. "I don't think so. The news people are telling everyone to stay indoors. No one's allowed on the streets. The snow is causing a real problem."

  In the last few minutes, Abby had forgotten about the snow. She thought about what Chantelle had said about someone planning an attack. She wondered if it had been coordinated on a snow day. While the snow might slow the zombies down, they didn't feel the cold. They would gradually spread all about the city while the police and the army vehicles would be stymied by the weather.

  They lapsed into silence again. There was nothing for them to do but sit and wait.

  ***

  Anthony Heron was officially retired. It felt strange to him, having been a police officer for so long, but strange wasn't bad. There was a time, not too long before, when he would have sworn that he wouldn't know how to fill all of those hours. But that time was gone. He wanted to make the most of the life of which he'd been making the least. So when they'd officially pulled him from the Undead Unit, he had told them about his cancer, filed his paperwork, and said goodbye. It was surprisingly easy. Early in his career he had built relationships but so many of them had faded and failed to be replaced. In his last months as leader of the zombie task force, he had befriended no one. His friends from homicide had faded away like ghosts. Keep in touch, Naughton had said, but they both knew they might not ever see one another again. Naughton was a good man and a good work friend. But he wasn't coming over to the house. He didn't have a family and his interests outside of work differed greatly from Heron's own. No, their time together was over. It would be nice if he showed up at Heron's funeral, though.

  Alicia had gone off to work early that morning and taken Mellie to school. With the snow coming, Heron would likely go get his daughter early and spend a couple of hours with her until his wife got home. He'd warned Alicia that she'd better come home early. If he was going to be snowed in, he wanted it to be with his wife. She had promised him with a kiss.

  After eating a slow breakfast while surfing the internet, he went out for a run. Running seemed out of place under his current circumstances. Often he thought that now was the time to give in to all of those temptations he'd always fought. Why not have ice cream three times a day? Why not sit around and watch TV instead of exercising? There was no good reason and then again there was no reason for him to die fat and stupid either. Aside from the smoking, which had ultimately been his undoing, Heron had lived his life under the guidelines of eating right and exercising. He felt as if letting go of that would be like letting go of himself. That would be giving in. A person can accept his fate without necessarily giving in to it.

  And so the morning passed fairly quickly. He ate lunch and then went to get Mellie. He had never picked her up before. Alicia's was the well known face. They had a picture of him on the off chance that he might show up. When he finally did, the teachers looked at him questionably, as if they intended to give him a hard time over taking the child. When he entered the room, though, Mellie looked up at him and squealed Daddy. She ran up and grabbed him by the leg. For
her this was a unique treat. As he gathered her things and took her from the room, he flashed her teachers a wry smile.

  "It's going to snow tonight," he told Mellie as he bundled her up. "We can make snow angels."

  "What's a snow angel?"

  He smiled. He and his sister had made them when they were kids. They'd come in wet and filthy from sweeping their arms and legs across the streets of the Bronx. They didn't speak now, Heron and his sister. She had gotten pregnant when he as fifteen and run off with her boyfriend. As a teenager, Heron had been old enough to understand but not old enough to really care. He remembered his parents calling the police and hiring a private detective. After a while they had found her, but she had never come back. She'd given birth and built a new life somewhere else. Somewhere across the country, he had a sister and a twenty five year old nephew that he never saw. It was sad but he'd grown used to it. It was just a natural part of life, he supposed.