Zombies! (Episode 9): The Changing of the Guard

by Ivan Turner

  Heron lingered a moment, pleased with his new old demeanor. It felt good to feel good. And, though four to six months down the road, he would be dead of the cancer inside of him, today he was very much alive.

  ***

  At the scene of Rollins' ambush, there was police tape everywhere. The shutters had been brought down to keep anyone from entering the parking garage again. The building above it was sealed. The Starbucks on the corner, though, had reopened.

  When Heron and Rollins pulled up, Heron driving with his arm out the open window and a lit cigarette in his hand, there was no one to be seen on the streets. Rollins, too, was smoking, but he tossed his away as soon as they got out of the car. Heron lingered a bit and took two more satisfying drags. While he did so, Rollins pulled the padlocks off of the shutters and raised them up. They were police padlocks and the keys were available to investigating officers. Heron had established himself and Rollins as the investigating officers.

  It was dark inside and the two men paused. Rollins was in a plain uniform and thinking he should get his gear. Heron's hesitation lasted only a moment before he marched forward, switching on a high beam light as he walked. Rollins fell in behind him. There was no power so they would be descending into pitch darkness. Heron wasn't worried. The place had been cleaned and sealed by experts with the department. It was checked daily for signs of intrusion.

  "What exactly are we looking for?" Rollins asked as they cleared level one and headed down.

  Heron shrugged. He didn't really know. He knew that the end result was supposed to lead him to confirm or discount the alleged zombie army. But he didn't know what form that evidence might take.

  Even with only the two flashlights, he could see the blood that had been spilled on the second level. The police had fired thousands of rounds in fighting off the zombies. The bodies had been removed but the place still stank. Heron began a circuit of the area, his light trained on the walls and the floor. Rollins followed behind him, lending his light as support when asked but mostly shining it into the darkness. Once, Heron told him to calm down, but Heron hadn't been the one trapped down there a week before. Rollins had been seconds from suicide when Henry had cut through the rear attack and rescued him. The memory was too fresh and even a tough son of a bitch like Rollins was susceptible to its nightmare effects.

  There was nothing on the second level that provided any useful clues. Heron headed down to the third level but it was more of the same. There was only a little bit of gore, whatever had dripped off of the zombies as they'd made their way upward. But still no clues.

  "What happened to the ones that survived?" Heron asked. "Were they taken to Arthur Conroy?"

  Rollins shrugged. "I checked the paperwork the next day and there was no listing. Officially, we got them all."

  Heron shined his flashlight at the other man. "You got them all?"

  Rollins shrugged.

  "You were the last one out, Rollins. Did you get them all?"

  Rollins shrugged again. "I didn't think so. Henry was with me and he ordered the thing sealed up."

  Heron turned his light back to the floor. It seemed extremely unlikely that every last zombie had been destroyed by police gunfire. When they'd come in to clean out the structure, there should have been a few groups of stragglers wandering around. If the live ones were all removed, it lent further credence to Rollins' suggestion that someone was recruiting them for an army. After all, why throw away good front liners?

  Reluctant to go down to the fourth level, Heron led Rollins back up to the second. He searched around with his light until he found the access stairway. The door was locked. He turned to Rollins with the intention of asking him to pick it when he realized that Rollins wouldn't know how. Smith was the one who'd had the lock picking kit. Heron was beginning to see a depressing pattern of endings to his police companions. First there had been Stemmy, bitten by a zombie. Then had come Culph, a murderer. Then there had been Smith, trapped in a building and forced to sacrifice his own life for others. And now there was Rollins. What would happen to him?

  Frustrated with the lack of progress, they went back up to the first level. The difference in the lighting was stark after their time spent in blackness. The grey daylight that filtered in through the square opening wasn't enough to make their visibility good, but it was acceptable. The stairway was easy to find, its position relatively the same as the position of the door below them. This door was unlocked and the handle felt loose. In Heron's less than expert opinion, the lock had been tampered with. Moving in, Heron shined his light first up and then down. There were zombie drippings in there and the smell was nauseating. They listened for movement but heard none. Heron headed down first, careful on the steps. When he reached the door to the second level he tried it and found that it was unlocked from this end. The door swung open silently on well oiled hinges. As far as Heron was concerned, they had found the zombies' entry point. This was how they'd managed to cut Rollins and his team off from the exit.

  Rollins agreed. They shone their lights out into the second level blackness and saw the same nothing they'd seen when investigating. Then they let the door swing shut and headed up beyond the parking garage and into the building proper. The stairwell was enclosed and as dark as the tunnels below. The two policemen moved up slowly, playing their lights over the walls and stairs with the greatest of care. The marks of zombie passage remained constant as they reached the first floor. Through the small porthole window of the door, they could see a grey diffuse light illuminating the hallway. Heron knocked on the glass with the butt of his flashlight and waited to see if anyone or anything took notice. After a couple of minutes, they went through.

  The corridor was a bare grey color. The carpet was worn through in places. The walls were sticky with flesh marks. Again, the smell was pervasive. Rollins covered his nose but Heron didn't bother. At the far end of the hallway, a small window looked out onto an alley. Some winter sunlight came through. On the perpendicular wall was a door that stood slightly ajar. Just across from where they were at the opposite end was another door. This one was closed, as was a third door that sat in the middle just across from the elevators.

  "Do you want to check the whole building?" Rollins asked.

  Heron shook his head. He still wasn't sure what he was looking for, but two men weren't going to sweep an entire building. They went first to the end of the hallway where the door was open and the light was better. Inside was a large space that had been cleared of all furniture. Two full windows showed the street out front and the light was decent. Heron switched off his flashlight while Rollins kept his shining into the hallway.

  The interior of the office space was littered with debris. There were nails and tacks, some bits of wood and tons of paper shreds. A Wendy's bag sat in one corner, a swarm of flies buzzing around a partially eaten burger. Heron took a walk around the area, looking at all of the debris, touching nothing. At some point, there had definitely been zombies in there. The odor was present, as were the marks of their passing. After a while, he started poking around with his flashlight. There were a variety of business cards, none of which seemed to give him any useful information. More than likely, they were just from a collection of contacts left behind by the failed company that had occupied the space. Rollins had come into the room and was looking at the partially eaten lunch.

  "Hungry?" Heron quipped.

  "I don't see how I could be."

  Heron came over to Rollins and looked at the bag. "That's not that old."

  "A week maybe," Rollins agreed. "And there's only a couple of bites taken from the burger." He poked at the bag. "The fries weren't touched."

  Looking around, Heron spied the full soda and a wad of chewed up burger on the floor. "Maybe there was something wrong with it."

  Rollins gave him a look.

  "It's not exactly hard evidence," Heron said. "Let's keep looking."

  There was a small inner office and Heron went there now. The room was in far
worse shape than the outer office. The carpet was torn up and the floor beneath was scored as if heavy metal objects had been dragged in and out. One wall was scratched up and another was marked with what looked like crayon. It looked as if someone had tried to smudge it out but failed. There were four shapes on the wall, one big and three small. The big one was in the middle and divided into two sections. It was mostly oblong. The others were spread out, one on the right, one on the left, and one above the big one. The one above was bigger than the other two. In various places there were squares drawn. Heron counted nine squares dotting the five shapes. The nine squares had lines jutting out of them and connected to circles.

  The bouncing of a light source told him that Rollins had come in behind him. Though the lighting was even better in the inner office due to the two large windows at the back end of the room, Rollins seemed reluctant to give up the solace of his flashlight. Heron couldn't really blame him. When the light fell once again on the wall that had captivated Heron, Rollins asked, "What is that?"

  Heron didn't answer at first. He was still sorting it out in his head, though he doubted he'd get much further than he'd already gotten. "It's a map of New York."

  Rollins looked more closely at it, was able to pick out the five boroughs. Of course, the three separate ones were Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island. The big one was Brooklyn and Queens. It was a terrible drawing. The scale was off and the geography was inaccurate. But it served the purpose.

  Heron pointed to one of the squares in the upper middle section of Manhattan. "This is us," he said.

  Rollins nodded.

  "That means these other squares are probably infested areas as well. I think you were right, Rollins. I don't think this is a safe house." In fact, Heron was beginning to think there was no such thing as a zombie safe house. He was beginning to put the pieces together in his head and he did not like the almost completed puzzle. A few months back, Mikael Seaver had been given a tour of the Arthur Conroy facility. He had taken pictures of the zombies within and used those pictures to fuel the ardor of people who were ready for a crusade. So the Zombie Rights Association had been born. But the association grew too big too fast. There was an office and a spokesman. There was a proper web site, not the dinky address at which Seaver had posted his pictures. Someone had taken advantage of the bleeding hearts. Someone had used them as a front to build an army. Not only that, but according to Seaver's short memorial, this someone had used the people who really, stupidly, believed in zombie rights to gather and transfer zombies to what appeared to be nine locations across the city. Not on the map was the asylum in New Jersey which had housed many more zombies than expected. There were probably other locations in New Jersey as well. There might be some in Pennsylvania and Connecticut. It was the unthinkable, which was why Heron had never thought of it. If he was any judge, the ambush of Rollins and his unit had been a test run. Whoever was behind the zombie recruit wasn't completely comfortable with controlling them yet. But that wouldn't last. It would only get worse from here.

  "Shine your light on it," Heron told Rollins. He pulled out his cell phone and began to take pictures. He took a picture of the full map, and then several shots zooming in on different areas. There was no way they'd be able to pinpoint any location based on the crude drawing. But they might be able to identify the locations about which they already knew. Then they might be able to triangulate and extrapolate in order to get a pretty good idea of the others.

  Rollins drew his gun and turned his light on the door. "Did you hear something?"

  Heron shut down his thoughts and listened. Also drawing his sidearm, he brought back out his flashlight and turned it on.

  Together, they headed back to the outer office. The sun had shifted position in the last few minutes and the light was a little dimmer. Crouched by the door, sniffing at the left over fast food, was the figure of a man. He was wearing a tattered coat and had long, scraggly hair. He didn't immediately look up at them but the stench was unmistakable.

  Rollins took aim but Heron put out a restraining hand. He was worried that there were more and that the noise would bring them. Motioning that they should head toward the door, he began quietly tip-toeing through the debris. Rollins followed. About halfway to the office door, the man stopped and looked up. He wasn't facing them, but sniffed the air and turned quickly to see them. Heron was going to shoot this time, but then noticed the startled look in the man's eyes. He stood, took a step back, and raised his hands into the air.

  "Holy shit," Rollins muttered. "He's alive?"

  "I'm Lieutenant…"

  The man bolted. For a moment, the two cops just stood there dumbfounded. Then Heron took off after him with Rollins on his heels. They came into the corridor just as the stairwell door was closing behind their quarry. They rushed into the dark stairwell shining their lights up and down. The man had gone up, his footsteps echoing down toward them. They both started up when Heron stopped and turned to Rollins.

  "Go back to the car and call for help. I don't want him getting away."

  Despite the fact that Rollins thought the guy was just some squatter who'd been unfortunate enough to cross their paths, he was conditioned to taking orders without question. He headed down the stairs while Heron headed up.

  As the lieutenant moved, he listened for the footfalls above him. The man he was chasing was making no effort at being quiet. He was probably panicked and Heron was thinking just what Rollins had been thinking. But if he'd been squatting in this gore covered building, then he had to have information about who else had been using it. It was also possible that the man was infected and dying.

  Another floor and Heron continued. He was at least two flights behind the other. He wondered just how physically fit a homeless man who had to sniff at week old Wendy's could be. Well not as physically fit as Anthony Heron. In the weeks since he'd stopped his chemotherapy, he'd gone back to running instead of walking. He had started eating right and all of that time without smoking had done him some good. Too bad it wouldn't last.

  Up above, he heard the click of a door opening and closing. His quarry had left the stairwell. He ran past the next floor and went to the one after that. He was almost certain that this was the right floor. The scuffed up number on the wall read 4. Pushing open the door, he rushed into the hallway and straight into two more men. These two were definitely zombies. They reacted quickly, grabbing at his coat as he spilled through. Heron was taken completely by surprise. One of the zombies was very close. The other was a bit further away. If it had been any closer, Heron would have surely been pinned. As it was, though, he kicked out at the second even as the first grabbed him from behind. He knew the bite was coming and wasted no time. Zombies are, by nature, off balance. He threw his weight back and the back of his head collided with its forehead as it dipped its teeth in. Its feet came out from under it and it started to fall backwards.

  It didn't let go, but its grip loosened and Heron was able to free his gun arm. He fired first at the far zombie. It had recovered from his kick and was closing in. His shot hit it in the neck and it staggered. His second shot hit the mark though, passing into the open mouth and through its upper jaw. It teetered once and then fell. The gunshot would bring more zombies so he needed to clear this up quickly and get the hell out of there. Reaching behind him, he poked the barrel of his pistol into his captor's face and fired once. The head exploded and the zombie let go. Heron went momentarily deaf and might very well have caused himself a chronic case of tinnitus but his freedom was worth the price.

  He was of two minds as he recovered his footing. He desperately wanted to pursue the stranger, sure now that he was related to the ambush. But he was concerned that two zombies would be the least of his problems if he went further into the building. As it was, he needed to clear four floors and then exit through the parking garage. He wondered if Rollins had met with any trouble. He hadn't heard any shots but that wasn't necessarily a good sign.

  Ultimately, Heron de
cided that he'd better live to fight another day. All thoughts of his illness had gone for the moment, leaving his survival instinct in charge. He headed back into the stairwell and saw a zombie approaching from above. He didn't bother to shoot it. It was slow and would probably trip itself up coming down the stairs. Instead he turned and headed down. On the next landing, three zombies were waiting for him, making their best attempts to mount the stairs. He halted just long enough to take aim and fire at them, dropping all three. As he rushed past, he didn't notice that his shots had not all been kill shots. One of the zombies swiped at his ankle and he went tumbling. He'd have gone down the next flight and probably broken his neck if the zombie hadn't kept its grip on his leg. As it was, he ended up off balance and had to twist to get a good view of it.