Dead and Dead Again: Kansas City Quarantine

by Dalton Wolf

  The two armed men looked around to see where they could be of use next, but both noticed the sudden quiet that had fallen over the small valley. The people seemed to have won for now. Several dozen blood-soaked and harried parade-goers gathered in the empty street brandishing various weapons and watching zombies burn in pyres. Most of thousands of watchers had apparently run out of the little valley, the rest had been turned and either killed or wandered off.

  “Dave,” the man with the bat extended a working-man’s hand.

  “I’m Boomer. This is Brick,” he pointed to his friend, who with both hands on his head, stood shaking and whimpering in disbelief.

  “You’d better get him out of this and somewhere safe. He’s really out of it.”

  “He’s a little drunk. Having trouble sorting it out, I think. I would be too, but I just ain’t had time to freak out yet. And I smoked some really good weed earlier.”

  “I know what you mean. I’m baked. And I been drinking all morning.”

  That explains that, Boomer thought.

  “I’d say you should get to your car if you can,” Dave told him.

  “I agree with that.”

  “No…no, no, no, no,” Brick started muttering, wide eyes staring up the street behind the pair of new, temporary pals.

  Both men turned.

  “Holy Hell,” Dave said quietly.

  Dozens, maybe hundreds of trudging, shuffling bodies were topping the hill from the south, flowing down the street like a flood of death…a really slow, trickling flood, perhaps more like the steady approach of lava from a slowing volcanic eruption. It was still scary, but they had some time.

  “We can’t beat that many,” Dave noted slowly.

  “Not with Brick here drooling like he’s ready for the funny farm,” Boomer agreed.

  “Where’s your car?”

  “There’s all of them parking lots between Main and Broadway under the elevated roadway, by the tracks?”

  Dave nodded.

  “We’re on this side.”

  “That’s where mine is. I’m right in the middle. Me and my friend Billy over there came together,” he motioned to a giant Samoan man in a SKC jersey animatedly talking to a pair of short, skinny blonde dudes with bowl cuts who were clearly twins, although one wore a Royal’s jersey and the other a Chief’s sweater and hat.

  “Billy!” he called and all three men walked over.

  “This is Brick,” he pointed to Brick, who stared dumbly up the street.

  “And this is Boomer.” Boomer shook Billy’s huge hand.

  “This is Jake and Jerry,” Billy introduced the two identical men. “They’re twins,” he added needlessly.

  “I’d have never guessed,” Boomer joked and everyone laughed nervously.

  “We’re all down by the tracks,” Dave informed the group.

  “They are too,” Billy motioned to the twins.

  “Safety in numbers?” Boomer asked the group, receiving nods from all but Brick.

  “Take this, Brick,” Boomer thrust a rod into his friend’s shaking hands. Brick’s fingers clenched tightly around the rebar, but his eyes remained fixed on the approaching mass of ex-humanity.

  “Where’d you get that?” One of the brothers asked, holding up a broken piece of painted lumber he’d clearly ripped from the wreckage of a nearby crashed float. Boomer pointed them to the pallet of rebar and both brothers ran over to grab a rod.

  “Hurry, those things are walking pretty fast,” he called, but he needn’t have bothered. The twins were already returning armed with rebar rods in each hand.

  “We’re all parked down by the tracks!” Boomer called to the groups gathered on the street, many of them families who were rounding up their living children and sorting things out. Most pointed in different directions or simply ignored him.

  “Good luck!” he shouted, with a salute, and the men with him shouted similar sentiments while the other groups waved back. “Let’s go.”

  The six men set off up the street at a jog zigzagging between the burning heaps of former floats and former Humans, hoping the way would remain clear for all seven blocks to their freedom. Unfortunately, things fell apart before they’d made the second cross-street. A dozen dead stumbled out into the street before them, slavering and grunting. None of these were in very good shape; several were even missing arms or a leg.

  Brick simply stood at the back of the group and watched, but the rest all set to with vigor, grunting and yelling various battle-calls. Boomer plunged rebar into the forehead of a six-and-a-half foot SKC fan. The massive body twisted and fell away from him, yanking the rebar from his grip. He let it go and gripped the other rod with both hands, slamming the longer iron down into a fat white zombie with red hair and a jersey to match, smashing its skull down into its neck, brains and fluid squirting out of the eye sockets like soft serve out of an ice cream machine at Dairy Queen. Boomer glanced to his left just in time to see one of the twins cave the skull of a six foot black man in a Raider’s jersey who collapsed sideways into another zombie, forcing it to the ground. But zombies do not react as people do when they die, because they are already dead. This zombie immediately dug its claws into the concrete and lurched forward, sinking its teeth into the ankle of the defender before it, the other twin. The bitten twin let out a scream and his brother smashed his bat repeatedly into the skull of his twin’s attacker. As the last zombie fell, the others stood appraising the twins, sympathy apparent in the eyes of each man. Before anyone could speak, a dozen more zombies lumbered from the side-street.

  “Go!” shouted the injured brother. “I’ll hold them back!” He turned to the approaching group, but his healthy brother stood by his side with a nod.

  The other men saluted the pair and wished them luck. “Five more blocks.” Boomer said quietly, wishing he was already there.

  The remaining men now fled down the middle of Broadway, yelling to people they passed, telling them where they were going and offering rides. Occasionally they would come upon other groups fighting the zombies would give a hand, gaining some more followers for a block before the newcomers split off again or fell behind.

  Two-and-a-half blocks later, another group of dead charged from a side street. The big Samoan Billy was closest to this new group of dead. Slow as they were, the zombies were relentless and the big man went down in a screaming heap as animated dead bodies ripped and tore at his flesh. His angry screams washed out all other noise. Grasping and flailing, the powerful man rose and dashed two of the attackers’ heads into the pavement before another ripped out his Achilles and he fell flat on his back. He jammed the two-foot rusty rebar through the eye of another, but then he lay flat. Taking two heaving breaths, realizing his fate, he shot a look of finality up at the others. With a mighty howl, the Samoan turned the rebar and shoved it deep into his own eye socket.

  Brick screamed like any good horror vixen, turned, and fled down the street.

  “Aw, hell. He’s right. Just run, man!” Boomer screamed to the others.

  They ran. They ran like jackrabbits from a pack of coyotes, avoiding the groups of dead who slid out from side streets or waited behind the abandoned floats. They easily bypassed slower dead who shuffled across the street and out-flanked those who were waiting for them with gnashing teeth and hungry moans. The group ran on. They even ran past a few groups of people that needed help. Boomer tried to hold Brick up, but his friend kept running, so he followed and the others as well. They ran until they reached the supposed safety of the parking lots. The road here was slightly elevated above the tracks and adjacent parking lots so Boomer had a great view.

  This was not the haven for which they had been hoping.

  Hundreds of cars lined both sides of the tracks all the way to Union Station. From how few spaces were open, Boomer presumed very few parade-goers had actually escaped. An indicator of just how numb he’d become since the first attack was the fact that he didn’t even pause to dwell on just how many people that meant h
ad probably already died. As far into the east as he could see, people stood on the hoods and roofs of cars bashing all around at diseased attackers with anything they could get their hands on. Screams of horror filled the air as people watched friends and family members get torn apart, or begging for help as cold, dead, clutching arms dragged them down into the hungry gnashing jaws of roving bands of the dead.

  “No!” Brick screamed and raced off to the south.

  “Brick? Brick! Where you goin’, Man?” Boomer called after his fleeing friend.

  Run! That was the only thought in Brick’s head. Run until you can’t run anymore.

  Boomer followed him up the street. At some point the two athletes lost all of their new friends, but Boomer was running so hard and so fast, he never noticed when or how. He was happy Brick had lost it; running seemed to make him feel better. He tried to pretend it was just another morning jog. The elevated road extended a quarter mile up out of the small downtown valley and eventually reconnected to the hill. When they met another pack of dead milling around the intersection of the two types of roadway, Boomer realized the small viaduct had been entirely bereft of zombies. He wanted to file that away for future use, but was pretty sure there was no point. On they ran. Brick ignored the dead, dodging past the slow-moving attackers, while Boomer took random head-shots with his rebar, hoping to save a future life with each one he killed again.

  Boomers lungs burned, his leg muscles began to pulse from the excess adrenaline and exertion. The pair had not run far, but it seemed to be perpetually uphill. Suddenly the buildings were gone and they stood in the middle of an intersection, grass and parklands lay uphill to the south before them on both sides of Broadway. Desperately in need of a break, Boomer grabbed Brick’s shoulder and pulled him to a stop. Both men surveyed their surroundings to get their bearings. The buildings they’d run past stood firm and resolute to the north behind them. The path ahead was no longer clear. A horde of zombies lumbered down the hill towards them like a mudslide, an unstoppable force of nature—no matter how unnatural it actually seemed—spreading from one side of the road to the other and spilling over into the grass on either side

  “How’d they get ahead of us?” Boomer asked the universe.

  The Universe did not reply; it hardly ever did.

  “Zombies ahead. Zombies behind. We ain’t got no place left to go, Brick! I ain’t going out like this!” But that was false bravado. His arm had all the strength and firmness of Jell-O pudding and as it hung impotently at his side, a gooey gray and red molasses mix dripped infrequently from the long piece of iron rebar he’d ripped from the construction site.

  “No place to go…” Brick muttered quietly. “No place to go,” he repeated in a whimpering whine. He darted back a few feet to the nearest building, a two-story window-filled brownstone, stepping into the shadow of a narrow, alcoved entrance inset within the facade.

  “You need to use that damned rebar, Brick! Stop whining like a little baby and do something. We’re dying here man! Ain’t none but us two left.”

  “I can’t!” Brick yelled. “Let’s just keep going.”

  “Where, man? There are a dozen of those things in any direction you wanna go and my arm feels like spaghetti.” But at least his friend was thinking again, and talking. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

  “Ok. Ok. C’mon Boom. Let’s head for the memorial. It’s right up the hill and then up that other hill.”

  “What? Man, you ain’t making any sense at all.”

  “It’s up the little dead-end there, through that parking lot, and then up the grassy hill. Right there,” the taller, muscular man pointed a shaking finger to the hill on their left.

  Boomer tried to get his bearings, checking the green street sign and looking about. They were hiding in a shadowy doorway on 21st street between two signs that said West with a + and – in on top and bottom. He didn’t have any idea what that meant, but felt he should try and remember it anyway, in case someone ever answered a phone. Other than that, he didn’t have any idea where he was. He never came down to this side of town, so even though Brick wasn’t in his right mind, he followed his friend towards the dead end. When they reached the end of the building they were using as ‘shelter’, Boomer found himself again. The next building was set fifty feet further back from the road with a half dozen drive ways set between concrete medians next to a fortified booth. Each entryway was blocked by yellow and black concrete and steel blocks that protruded from the pavement and would only retract if one used a current id card. It was the same colored brick building they’d run past for the last two blocks on Broadway.

  “Hey, that’s the IRS building,” Boomer noted, glad to finally recognize something.

  “Yeah,” Brick grunted, his blue eyes wild and desperately searching for sanity.

  “It looks locked up tight,” Boomer noted glumly.

  “Terrorists,” Brick breathed.

  “Oh yeah. It’s a high risk day so they’re closed,” he translated his friend’s simplistic responses.

  “Memorial.”

  “Oh yeah, the Liberty Memorial. I haven’t been to the World War I Museum since the reconstruction. How is it?”

  “Awesome.”

  “C’mon, man. You gotta come back to reality. We’re in deep shit here.”

  “Run.” Brick panted, looking past Boomer at a dozen slavering zombies stumbling towards them from Broadway.

  They dashed past the building, the gated driveways and the safety of concrete structures and climbed the grassy hill past a large multi-trunked tree and into the park. As the fleeing men rounded the top of the hill, now heading North towards the upright memorial itself, both men stopped. Normally they would have paused to admire the Egyptian stylings of the miniature Sphinx-like sculptures bracketing the east and west sides of the tall memorial column or gazed into the reflecting pool before the structure, but their eyes were instead captured by the hundreds of dead stumbling about in every direction. The stink of death permeated the area—north, east and south, the dead converged on the grassy park. And they already knew what waited behind.

  “Jesus F-ing Christ, Brick. We’re surrounded.”

  Brick dropped his iron rod and started blubbering.

  “No, no,” Boomer looked around for something to hang his sanity on. “I ain’t going out like that. Over here, Brick!” he pulled his catatonic friend across the park, bashing in the skulls of half a dozen zombies that stood in their way, forcibly dragging his friend over to little picnic shelter and sliding one of the heavy trash cans over.

  “Get up there,” he pointed to the top of the green can. When Brick climbed onto the green can without falling in, Boomer pointed him higher. “Now climb on the roof.”

  Brick pulled himself onto the green concrete and corrugated steel roof of the shelter. Boomer kicked away the trash can and jumped, catching the edge of the shelter with his powerful fingers and in one deft move swung himself up onto the roof. Both men lay flat and motionless, watching the army of undead things march onto the field around them. Within ten minutes not one square inch of turf was visible as the zombies flowed into the area, covering the park like a blanket.

  A half hour they lay there, immobile and shaking. Boomer kept trying to call Scooter, as he had been the entire flight through the streets. Finally his friend answered.

  “Where are you?” Scooter asked in his friendly, open, everyman way that instantly put people at ease. And Boomer really needed to feel at ease right now.

  “We were at the parade. It’s all fucked up, man. Something’s happened down here. We’re surrounded by these…things,” he said quietly.

  “Don’t laugh, but man, they—”

  “—are zombies. Right. Yeah, I’ve seen one or two.”

  “One or two…man, they’re everywhere. You gotta come and get us, Scoot. Brick has lost it, man. He’s gone. I can’t get him to do anything but run and hide.”

  “Look. I know what you’re talking about. I jus
t fought a bunch of them.” Scooter explained. “Trip and Sarah are holding up in the building where she works. It’s supposed to be a fortress.”

  “Yeah, I know the place. That’s way too far for us to get to, though.”

  “Well, we’re just outside there now. We’ll try to come out and get you when we join parties.”

  “Thanks man.”

  “Where are you?”

  “We’re in the park in front of the Liberty Memorial.”

  “I thought you guys were going to stay on the plaza?” Scooter asked.

  “We were,” Boomer whispered. “But Brick wanted something phallic around to enhance his chances with the women. Said he wanted to try to score some artistic types. We set up at the KC Performing Arts Center. With the four Sky Pylons of Bartle Hall standing tall nearby, he figured he couldn’t lose.”

  “How’d you get so far from there?”

  “When the second group of them things came at us Brick just bolted and we followed. We lost everyone else. Now we’re stuck here surrounded by an army of these…things. If you come, you better either bring an army or something that you can take one out with.”

  “Right. I’ll see what we can do. You might be there a while, my friend.”

  “We ain’t got no place else to go, Calvin. Hope to see you soon.”

  “Hold tight, buddy,” his friend replied hopefully.

  Lucy and Lola

  “We are looking hott, with two tees!” Lola Jones squealed to her friend, Lucy. The small, petite blonde took her brown-skinned friend’s hand and began dancing around her like a fairy princess.

  The Plaza was rocking. Colored confetti floated about, exploding randomly from the barrels of pneumatic cannons. A kaleidoscope of helium balloons floated over the street at regular intervals, tied to the buildings, sign posts, vehicles and people wandering about. The local sounds of revelry drowned out the distant announcements of the announcer at the other end of the Plaza. Lola wore a very low cut sexy blue lace lingerie teddy over pink yoga pants, flaunting every asset the good lord had given her. The only concession she’d made to decency was a tiny powder blue half-sweater tied around her waist partially covering the upper portion of her shapely buttocks.