Zombies! (Episode 10): State of Emergency

by Ivan Turner

  "Ha ha. You mean you don't want me to come down into the zombie vault? Aren't they closing you up anyway?"

  Now a shadow fell across her face. "That's why I need this done."

  "Sounds serious," he said to her, matching her demeanor. "Do I really want to be involved in this?"

  Luco looked around to make sure that no one was listening in. "You know about the Zoo?"

  "Sure," he said. "It's the worst kept secret in the hospital."

  "Did you know that it's empty?"

  He thought about that for a minute, decided he wasn't surprised. "They moved them all to Atlanta, right?"

  She shook her head. "They destroyed them all. There's only one left."

  "Wow." Now he was surprised. "Is it Todd?"

  Apparently, people knew a lot more about what went on underground than she had thought. "Todd escaped."

  That one got him. Even though there had been pictures posted around the city since Todd Mayfield's escape, no one outside the laboratory staff had ever seen him. Anyone other hospital workers who followed the news knew there was a murderer on the loose. But they certainly didn't know that it was a zombie murderer who had been living three stories beneath their place of work.

  "It's Zoe," she told him. "And she's talking."

  "Whoa," he said, putting his hands up. "What the hell is going on down there?"

  Shushing him, she moved in more closely. "Kevin, her brain is coming back into focus. I want to try and resuscitate her."

  Unexpectedly, he grabbed her by the arm and dragged her into the lounge. It was a small room with white paint, a tiny television, a table, a couple of chairs, and a futon. There was a ragged looking med student inside hovering over four open volumes.

  "Get out," Yuan said to her.

  Startled, she looked up at him. Normally, he was one of the nicer docs. He didn't pick on the students without cause. She stared at him like a deer in the headlights.

  "Seriously," he said. "Get out now."

  She looked once at Luco. No help there. Finally, she began stuffing pieces of paper into her books, and closed them up. She stacked the heavy volumes one on top of the other and took them from the room.

  When she was gone, Yuan turned on Luco. "Are you out of your mind?"

  "Kevin, the only reason we give up on reviving people is because of brain damage. Here, the infection has sort of rebooted the brain. Everything seems to be working fine but she's still dead. And she's still hungry."

  He started waving his arms and shaking his head. "No way. We have no idea what kind of shape her organs are in. If you actually succeed, you might just be creating a worse monster than you have now."

  "She's not a monster," Luco shouted. "She's a little girl." It was a complete turnaround for her, but one that had been long in coming.

  "Keep your voice down," he admonished. "Hasn't Hollywood taught you anything?"

  "I've worked it out. All we need is to fill her up with blood and jump start the heart."

  "Is that all? And I thought it would be complicated. Does Kraemer know about this?"

  She looked at him. "How do you know Kraemer?"

  "Everyone knows Kraemer. If he didn't authorize this, they'll put us in prison."

  "Then he authorized it," she said evenly.

  "You're a bad liar," he told her.

  "But are you gullible?"

  He thought about it for a moment. "Okay. But I'm going to need something in writing to check out the blood."

  "I'll get the blood."

  "What time?"

  "I'll bring her up around six. I want there to be enough snow accumulation to insure that no one's going to show up."

  He nodded grimly.

  "Thanks, Kevin," she said as she opened the door. "I owe you one."

  "Great," he mumbled. "You can smuggle me some cigarettes when we’re in prison."

  ***

  "Abby?" Martin said into the phone after he knew that the line was dead. "Abby!" he screamed into it even though he knew no one would hear. All eyes in the store turned to him. He didn't notice. He looked at his phone's display. He had a full signal so he disconnected and redialed. Nothing. No service. Just a recording. Only after giving up did he notice the change in the demeanor of his customers and coworkers. Some were still looking at him but most were watching the televisions.

  Wandering over to that department, Martin could see that someone had switched them to the networks. They were showing pictures of zombie mobs moving through the city and swallowing up communities. Some of the footage was pretty graphic. Parents were pulling small children away from the screens. One man threw up. Then Martin saw City Hall on a screen. The entire park was crawling with zombies. There was some feed from a crew that had been running a month to month expose of the zombies ever since the beginning. Then that went dark. The next picture came from an overhead shot. He could hear the helicopter blades through the speaker. He could see the zombies swarming into and out of the subway stations, banging on the gates and windows of the local storefronts. If they wanted into those stores then there were probably people in them. Abby might be inside one of them.

  Martin quickly grabbed hold of one of the kids working the store. "Where's Jazz?"

  The kid shrugged.

  Martin didn't have time for this. Over the buzzing of conversation, he shouted out for Jazz. Jazz was the manager on duty in the store. He was an okay guy, a little older than Martin was himself. Jazz was a nickname that he'd picked up as a kid and never shook off. Now he just went with it. Jazz had grown up in New York. As a kid he'd been stocky, but solid and tough. Now he was fat and there were no two ways about it. He wore a XXX size uniform shirt and he still had to stretch it and tuck it into his pants to hide his belly. As he trundled up to Martin, he was sweating bullets and looking more scared than Martin had ever seen a man look.

  "Why are you shouting like that?"

  "I've got to go, Jazz."

  Jazz was shaking his bald head. "Ain't no one going, Martin. You heard the TV."

  "Jazz, my wife is at City Hall in Manhattan."

  Whatever Jazz was going to say died in his throat. He'd seen the news. "I can't, Martin. Somebody spotted zombies just a few blocks away. I locked all the doors."

  "Then just let me out, now. I'm not staying, Jazz."

  "There's no way I'm gonna let you go out there and get yourself killed. How are you even going to find your wife?"

  For a minute, Jazz might have thought he'd won the argument, but Martin's face lit up and he looked at his phone. He and Abby had downloaded a friend finder application a month before but never used it. It tied into the GPS so that you could locate any phone that also had the application installed. Even though calls weren't going through, the 4G network was still up. Martin quickly thumbed in Abby's phone number for ID and watched as it pinpointed her location just off Broadway.

  "There!" he showed it to Jazz. "Now let me the hell out of here."

  "Listen, Martin…"

  "Jazz, if you don't open up those doors right now I will put a display through the glass and then you can all fight off zombies while I run to Manhattan." He was serious. There wasn't anything that was going to stop him from leaving.

  Finally, Jazz nodded, but ushered him away from the doors.

  "Jazz…"

  "Out the back, Martin, okay?"

  Martin didn't say anything but followed. They moved off of the sales floor and into a tiny series of corridors. There wasn't much back there. The store room was large and held tall shelves filled with electronics. There was a tiny break room where four people could sit and snack or watch TV or play cards. The bathrooms were also back there. Jazz took him past all of that and up a short set of stairs. At the top of the stairs was a door that led into Jazz's office.

  "What are we doing here, Jazz? I need to go."

  "I want to give you something."

  Martin sighed. What could Jazz possibly want to give him? The big man squeezed behind the desk and reached down underneat
h. After a moment of pushing and puffing, he pulled out a strongbox. Martin was about to thank him but not thank him for money that he didn't need. Then he heard the heavy metal contents sliding around the box.

  "What the hell is that?" he asked.

  "It's a gun," Jazz said, unlocking the box and pulling it out. He handed it over to Martin with a spare clip.

  "Where in the hell did you get this?"

  "Never mind. I shoulda never got it and I don't ever want to see it again."

  Martin checked to see that the safety was engaged and then stuffed it into the waistband of his pants. It had been a long time since he'd fired a handgun.

  Jazz left the office and moved past him spouting droplets of sweat. It wasn't just his size. Jazz was the ranking employee at the store which meant that people were likely to defer to him throughout the crisis. Either that or they'd string him up. Martin didn't envy him his position.

  Jazz went back down the stairs and led Martin into the loading bay. He pushed the button and the gate started to rise. After about two feet, he stopped it.

  "I almost forgot," he said. He walked away for a minute and came back rolling a bicycle. It was in pretty good shape and painted a bright green. "The trains won't be running and you won't get far on foot. Actually, I don't know how far you'll get on Ray's bike."

  "Won't Ray be angry?"

  Jazz shrugged and went back to opening the gate. "I like you, Martin, or I'd never have done this. You be careful, hear?"

  Martin nodded. "Thank you, Jazz."

  Snow blew in through the open gate. Martin buttoned up his coat and tied his scarf around his face. The back alley already had two inches on the ground. The street would be better but not for long. The wind in his face was going to be a cold and nasty bitch. But Martin was determined. He was more than determined. In a moment, he allowed himself to absorb the world around him and the world outside of his perspective. He saw zombies and looters and snow and ice and all of the things that could take a man and tear him apart inside and out.

  He was unafraid.

  Coming out of the alley, he started pedaling down Flatbush Avenue toward the Brooklyn Bridge. Without the weather, it wouldn't have been much of a trip, no more than a few minutes. He'd let himself go a bit since getting married, but he was still in pretty good shape. He was strong. The bridge would take him right to City Hall in Manhattan. It literally spilled out onto the park. The GPS placed Abby on one of the side streets. Of course, that was without the weather. Who knew how long it would take him now? An hour? Maybe longer. If he was lucky, Abby had found a safe place to hole up with Sam and he would be able to get to them with relative ease.

  The wind carried the sounds of the dead through the wintry streets. Two blocks away, there was an intersection where Flatbush met Third Avenue met Lafayette. It was where the Fulton Market began. It was close to the Atlantic Mall. The zombies had come out of the train stations there. At least, that's what they'd said on the news. Martin was riding away from that and sure that he could outpace the group. But he didn't know if there were any groups of zombies in his path. His urgency had prevented him from doing the research. Even now he could find the news on his phone, but chose not to do so. He didn't want to take the time. He'd put his trust in fate and if that failed him, he'd just trust himself.

  As the crisis was relatively new, people hadn't yet cleared the streets. The snow had prevented most people from venturing out with their cars in the first place. The foot traffic was down to almost nothing, just a few bundled people thinking that they could make the place where they wanted to be before the situation got out of hand. Some cars went by, driving way too fast for the weather. Martin kept to the sidewalk. The last thing he needed was to be lying helpless in the street, the victim of a traffic accident. At some points along Flatbush avenue, he was forced into the gutter by construction. He was careful. Ray's bike had mirrors on both handlebars. They came in handy. Ray rode his bike a lot. In fact, it was his primary mode of transportation. Taking it like this had been like stealing his car.

  If Martin survived, he promised himself he'd make up to him.

  His first zombie encounter came at the intersection between Flatbush Avenue and Tillary Street. It was another wide intersection. A concrete island separated the two sides of Flatbush. There were three lanes on either side plus turning lanes as it approached the cross street. Tillary was also this behemoth road with multiple lanes. A few cars were still moving up and down at a slow pace. The snow had really started to whip up and was accumulating quickly. Someone had abandoned his car in the left turn lane. It sat like a silent guardian, waiting to roar to life when needed. To Martin, it looked like a harbinger of the end of the world. But he wasn't buying into any of that.

  Back to the zombies.

  There were three of them and he'd be damned if they didn't look just like a trio of drunks hobbling down the empty streets late at night. He wouldn't have known them for zombies right away if they'd been wearing coats. That was the giveaway. No coats or hats or scarves. They weren't even wearing gloves. Slowly moving down the street, stumbling as the wind pushed at their backs, they were headed right toward Martin. He'd either have to ride right through them or head into the street. It was no choice, really. He needed to turn left on Tillary anyway. Tillary would take him down to the bridge. He didn't give it a second thought as he veered off of the sidewalk.

  They didn't even notice him.

  The riding was getting harder and harder. He'd been out for several minutes and his face burned with the cold, while the rest of his body was overheated with exertion. He crossed on the diagonal, not caring for the sparse traffic now. Even in the few minutes since leaving the store, he'd noticed the number of moving cars diminish. The sky was grey and dark, allowing only just a dim, washed out light from the sun to filter through. Martin guessed it to be just after three o'clock. He had less than two hours of daylight left. He hoped it was enough.

  As he continued on, he began to wonder where those three zombies had come from. From the snippets of news that he'd caught, it seemed that only large groups of zombies had been encountered. Dozens or hundreds, just as Abby had said. To see three just wandering down the street worried him. They were either an aberration, just three zombies that had found their way out of some abandoned cellar, or they'd broken off from a much larger group. If he encountered that group, he was in trouble. The going with the bike was slow and awkward. He could still travel faster than the zombies, but not without sacrificing safety. As it was, he was slipping and sliding across the road. But he was loath to give up the bike. When he reached the bridge, he might make up some time. The overhead cage might disperse some of the snow making the going easier. Of course, if he caught sight of a large group of zombies in his path, he might have to turn and run. Literally, run.

  Two more blocks down Tillary and visibility became nonexistent. He no longer had to worry what he would do if he caught sight of the zombies. With all of the snow, he would smell them long before he would see them. He'd crash right into them before he'd see them. The wind had picked up and was twisting in all directions. Snow swirled around him and the streets were coated with the fine dry powder. The tires were slipping out from underneath him. It took him four revolutions of the chain to get the bike to move forward. Finally, he decided it was no good and he had to stop and get off. With his hands on the handlebars, he began to walk it, turning right onto Brooklyn Bridge Boulevard.

  The boulevard was a long stretch. It was the beginning of the bridge but didn't start to raise right away. You could also pass onto the pedestrian promenade but Martin declined to do so. The promenade was a narrow path than ran through the center of the bridge for its entire length. A person could cross on foot or on a bicycle. But it was narrow and, under the circumstances, Martin preferred the elbow room afforded by the car lanes.

  After a few minutes of very slow going, he heard gunshots. It was impossible to determine the direction and distance. They seemed close and up ahead
but their sound was scattered across the wind. He guessed rifles. He hoped rifles. Rifles would indicate police whereas handguns could mean looters. The last thing he wanted was to run into looters. Thinking of the gun in his waistband, he felt sure he could take the life, such as it was, of a zombie. But he wasn't sure he would be able to shoot a man. Maybe not even in self defense.

  Martin was beginning to tire. He'd come a long way and his cell phone told him that it had taken almost an hour to do so. He wondered about Jazz and the store full of workers and customers. If the zombies in Fulton Market had reached the store, they would cause a panic if nothing else. It would take thousands of them to get through the glass on the windows and doors so the people inside were relatively safe, but the terror would pass through with no problem. Despite the snow and the uncertainty of what lay ahead, Martin was glad he had left. He didn't think he'd have been able to tolerate being trapped in that store, even if Abby and Sam had been at home and all right.