by Dalton Wolf
“Nice. My Hometown. I like what you did there.”
‘My Hometown’ happened to be the motto of Raytown, Missouri, and someone always made a joke of it just to say the motto. The apocalypse should be no different.
“I’m just saying. You could do better.”
“You know we have lived here for over forty years, Calvin. I have no intention of moving. I like having money to spend on food and water. If you would just marry our Athena you could buy us a better house, but we would still build it in Raytown.”
“I know, sir.” Calvin sighed and shook his head at his girlfriend.
“Not the time”, he mouthed, pointing to his ring finger and warning her to wait on telling them about the engagement.
“Now quit being a schlemiel and come rescue us,” the elder Rosenthal insisted.
“We’ll be there as soon as we can, sir.” He promised, green eyes rolling skyward.
“It’s Saul, not sir, Calvin. And we are not alone. We are here with both Sarah’s and Tripper’s parents as well.”
“What about Mr. and Mrs. McClintock?”
“I have not heard from them, but if you were smart, as I have always believed you to be, you might think about checking on your way, since you would be only a few blocks from their residence at some point on the way here if you are downtown as this Felicia person said.”
“Right,” Calvin muttered lamely.
“I’m just saying…” Saul trailed off.
“See you in about an hour, sir,” Calvin promised.
“We’ll be there soon. I love you, Daddy. Tell Mom I love her too.”
“No need. She heard you. Oy, the whole neighborhood heard you, but they are mostly dead now.”
“Bye Daddy.”
“Everyone get geared up! Gus, Scaggs!” Calvin called out, strolling back into the cafeteria and buckling up his armor. “I need someone to stay behind and mind the fort. You think you two can handle that this time?” He knew Athena would want to go help rescue her parents. So, too, would Sarah and Trip.
The hungry gaze Scaggs poured over Gus nearly caused Calvin to change his mind, but everyone needed some time alone, and especially new couples. Hopefully they would try to keep some sort of watch up during their romantic interlude and not let the Fortress get overrun by zombies. Maybe hoping wasn’t quite good enough, though.
“Make sure all the doors are shut and the balcony patio doors are locked if you decide to step away for food or anything,” he suggested with as much discretion as he could muster. Noting her impish grin and Gus’ furious blush, Calvin turned and headed for the lobby, shaking his head.
Tripper grabbed one of his mailed arms before he could step outside, pulling him aside into one of the spotless white offices standing off of the main lobby and leaning in close. “I just found the back door wide open, Calvin.”
“Your private life with Sarah is your own business, Trip,” Calvin joked.
However, the level gaze his friend returned nearly ruined his day. It had become standard procedure when leaving the doctor behind that they should make sure the place was locked up before leaving to ensure his safety as much as possible. All doors in the building were about ninety percent tamper proof from the outside. Although an employee with a key could have showed up to hide in the building, the chances were very low that such a person would have then left the doors wide open behind them, thus negating any protective properties of said doors. There was no conceivable reason the back doors should have been open under the current circumstances, excepting only tampering.
“I checked just a half-hour ago when I got up and it was closed,” Tripper added.
Calvin dredged his memories of the previous night and the morning. “The only person I’ve seen going that way is Brick.” Unless the Captain left a few soldiers behind.
“Yup,” Trip agreed. “And I found this in the parking lot.”
“What the hell is that?”
“It’s a clock radio. It’s set to our current time, and the alarm is set to go off in twenty-five minutes.”
“And the door is wide open?”
“Braced open with a brick.”
“That’s kind of poetic, I guess. You know, everyone pretty much thought I was planning to leave Athena and Sarah here for the next mission, so they could make us some good food again. Although I know how sexist that sounds.”
“They really do make good food.” Tripper explained. “If you’ve got a skill, you can’t get upset when people like you to use it. And I remember you asking them. I was kind of surprised when you changed your mind just now.”
“You think Athena and Sarah would let us rescue their parents without them?”
“Good point.”
“And to be honest, after seeing just how uncomfortable they seem to be with Brick, I wanted to keep all three nearby until I have time to deal with…whatever needs to be done.”
“Judging from what we know now, you might have to do the dealing sooner than you planned,” Trip’s thoughtful gray eyes examined the alarm clock. With a grimace, he removed the battery and tossed it casually into the small, black oval trash basket in the corner.
“So, what’s going on between Brick and the girls?” Calvin asked.
“I don’t know, Cal. And I know we can’t prove it, but I think our old buddy just tried to kill our girlfriends.”
“Your girlfriend, my fiancé,” Calvin corrected. “And we don’t know that for sure.” But he muttered it with little conviction. “He could have been hot and just forgot to close the door after getting some air…”
“And the alarm clock?”
“Maybe he took that in case he fell asleep while he was getting his air. We have a watch in the security booth when we’re all here so he’d be pretty safe out there…”
“Wow. You’re a good friend, Calvin. But do you really believe any of that bullshit?”
Calvin sighed in resignation. “I’ll have to check the surveillance videos. I believe he at least wanted to put Sarah and Athena in danger, at the very least. Why is another question for which I have no time to find an answer. Keep your eyes open and maybe warn Boomer, too. He’s already watching Brick for us.”
Trip nodded. “What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know yet. Let’s keep a very close watch for now. I’ll try to sort it out later. Watch your back and keep an eye on the girls.”
“Like I wasn’t already going to do that,” Tripper said through the side of his mouth, patting his Louisville Slugger.
“Let’s get the parents as soon as we can so we can sit him down for a talk. Get everyone together. We go in ten minutes. I need to check some things before we leave.”
Calvin found his way to the security booth. He quickly searched the database for the best camera views of the past half hour, fast-forwarding the back hallway he saw Brick opening the door and taking the alarm clock outside and dropping the alarm clock. He sighed. Noticing another file showing an ‘open and read’ notation, he clicked on the icon and opened the file.
The video feed in the saved file showed Brick coming up behind Athena in the ‘kitchen’ and grabbing her breasts. He watched the scene play out for several long heartbeats until Brick leaned in to kiss her and pushed her back out of the camera view. Several long, drawn out breaths later he stood watching the screen, eyes squinting, emotionless and staring long after the selected clip had finished, metal encased fingers tapping the table in a steady, clanking rhythm.
“I see,” he eventually grunted, standing and squaring his shoulders under the light blue chainmail and readjusting his axes in their sheaths. Taking three deep breaths, he turned and stomped from the room, his heavy brow furrowed in reflection, the dark shadow of a storm forming over his bright sea-green eyes.
* * * * *
Athena once again rode shotgun for Sarah in the Wagon. Brick slumped with resolute disinterest in one of the jump seats in the bed of the custom vehicle. Felicia drove the Hedgehog with Joel and Boomer working t
he turrets. Calvin sat brooding in the passenger seat while Tripper leaned over his shoulder like one of those monkeys with the tiny accordions or tambourines on the street corners in the old movies. Lucy sat deep in thought opposite the monkey, watching something that wasn’t there.
The cloud cover appeared a uniform grey at first glance, but upon further study one could pick out angry splotches dotting the entire city that promised a good shower for those in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“Looks like rain,” Athena grumbled.
Trip craned his head upward to look for himself. “Good, these vehicles could use a good washing.”
“Yeah, we didn’t manage to keep track of the car washes, did we?” she grimaced.
“We didn’t really have time to wash the vehicles,” Calvin assured them
“Actually, I can think of several instances where we had time but we chose to put our considerable energy into other efforts,” Tripper mimed taking a hit off of a joint.
“I’m beginning to regret that. What does it tell posterity that at the end of the world, we chose to sit around smoking weed rather than keeping our equipment clean?” Calvin asked.
“Perspective,” Sarah answered.
“How’s that?”
“Anyone in the future who hears about this is going to know we had a great understanding of perspective. What matters and what doesn’t.”
“Really? By imbibing what are still illegal drugs instead of bettering our chances of surviving this scenario?”
“First, that law passed,” Trip disputed lightly. “It’s not illegal anymore; they just got it a little slow on the date, that’s all. And as for bettering our survival chances, hell, if you ask me, we were bettering our chances. I know I can accept all of this better with a little mellow on.”
Several of the others nodded agreement, but Calvin couldn’t see them. “I’d rather we weren’t all high when we go out to rescue people,” he suggested.
“I’ve been blazed since we hit Hef’s house that first day,” Tripper admitted.
“Damn it, Trip!” Calvin snapped, but realized he was out of line. “Ah, never mind. It hasn’t affected your work any, so who the hell am I to judge? If we’re all taking the train to hell, we might as well enjoy the ride down.”
“I get to drive.”
“I’m driving,” Felicia snapped quickly, clearly already in love with the rugged vehicle. “Oh, you were talking about something else…sorry.”
“And what about the case?” Calvin asked no one in particular.
“What case?” Athena replied.
“The doctor’s case.”
“What about it?”
“We could have been looking for it instead of partying all night.” In his defense, he had been shot and did not want to go back out the previous day, but forgetting about something so important was indefensible.
“I actually considered it that second day,” Athena admitted. “We really needed some time to cool down, Calvin,” she reasoned. “And there’s no certainty we would have even found it.”
“Plus that place was swimming with Infected,” Tripper nearly whispered into his ear. “Remember? We looked.”
“It was the right decision and now we’re all feeling more refreshed because of it,” Athena assured them all confidently.
The vehicles traveled safely down what might or might not still be 71 Highway—it was now also apparently designated Interstate 49—and made the inter change onto Swope Parkway. A large group of Shufflers blocked their path somewhere near the halfway point, in the middle of the Kansas City, Missouri suburbs about where Swope Parkway morphed into Blue Parkway and just about a mile before it turned into 350 Highway, or joined with it or did whatever it did with the other road. There were several roads around the metro that existed in one long line, but had as many as a dozen names throughout the city, 350 highway was one of these and nearly everyone drove the route at some point in their lives, if not daily, because it was central to the inner city and suburbs. Apparently even the Infected understood this on some base level because there was an army of them marching down the middle of the road away from the approaching vehicles. There was no alternative route to take and no exits before they reached the stumbling mass and sharp hills rose above either side of the road. The Shufflers lurched up the road almost with a purpose.
“Whoa.” Felicia slowed the vehicle to about 15 mph.
“Um…hey, Chief?”
“I see them.”
“They’re really going somewhere in a…well, what’s the opposite of hurry?” Tripper asked.
No one answered. It just wasn’t that important.
“Well with something resembling an intent, at any rate,” he finished after he realized no one else would.
“I have an idea,” Felicia said, slowing the Hedgehog and beginning a zigzag pattern. “Get ready Joel and Sarah,” she warned. When she was back in the middle of the street, she hit the horn. As the zombies turned, the two gunners were able to hit them with the nail guns from thirty feet off. Swerving back and forth put them at a forty-five degree angle and gave both turrets a clear field of fire most of the time.
“It’s working!” Felicia crowed.
“Great idea, Felicia,” Sarah congratulated her.
“Yeah, thanks girlfriend,” Joel added.
“I did this earlier,” Tripper muttered into Calvin’s ear.
“Aw, let her have it,” his friend replied quietly under the sound of the compressors and honking horn.
With both turrets having a clear field of fire, Zombies fell like wheat before a scythe, the tinkling darts clearing a navigable path through the churning mass of entirely too active dead people.
“I hope they never find a cure for this,” Boomer breathed into his mic.
“Why?” Athena was the first to ask. “Don’t you want things to be normal again?”
“Yeah, of course. I meant that I hope they don’t find a cure for these people.”
“That’s pretty cold, dude,” Tripper told him coolly.
“Oh yeah? If they find a cure, I mean something that’ll fix all the ones who have already died, or whatever, then that means every one we killed could have been cured.”
“Not really,” Athena argued. “Most of them would have died from the injuries they have already sustained and the continued rotting of their flesh. Can’t move around without flesh.”
“But we did a lot of that damage to a bunch of them.”
“Not the wounds that turned them into zombies or the damage from falling down or running into things; none of that heals.”
“Come winter time they’ll probably all lock up and break anyway,” Tripper added.
“What? Why would you think that?” Sarah asked.
“Because their blood doesn’t work anymore. If they don’t bleed, they’re not keeping warm. They’re no longer exothermic, which makes them ‘cold-blooded’. And the kind of cold weather we have around here would lock them up like a Medusa’s gaze.”
“They’re not cold-blooded, Tripper,” Athena countered. “The doctor seems to think there’s some kind of energy exchange still going on and it increases when they eat living flesh. That black sludge in their veins still moves and transfers energy. But not like it would for us. They might or might not freeze in the cold, but he already gave it some thought based on the few he’s studied and said he doubted it.”
“I think they would freeze up. I mean, they already move pretty slowly even without the cold,” he responded adroitly.
“Well, by all accounts they’re already dead, so they shouldn’t be moving at all,” Sarah fired back.
“True. Maybe we need to take some prisoners and study them?”
“Let’s wait on that until we get everyone safe and find out if we can set up a place to research them,” Calvin suggested waspishly, wishing he’d thought of that when the doctor was still around.
“You see?” Boomer muttered. “We don’t know if they’re living or dead. We
might just be killing people who can be cured. I mean, if they don’t die of all the injuries they already have, like Athena said.”
“We can’t think about it like that, Boomer,” Calvin insisted. Having a minor epiphany, he continued, trying to assuage his friend’s guilt. “Look you guys, we’re going from every book and movie ever made of this crazy scenario and they all say the Infected can’t be fixed. No one on Earth knows anything more about this than we do right now, those of us living under the shadow of this thing. From what we understand, at this point in time, as the current experts, those former people are now the walking dead. Zombies, if you will. Let’s just use that as a rule from now on.”
“But look at what we do every time we go out,” Boomer added. “We could sit at the Fortress and never go out. Think of all the potentially healed people we could save.”
“We wouldn’t have ever saved you or Brick if we did that,” Athena pointed out.
“I know. And you wouldn’t have killed a hundred people trying to get us, either. I’m grateful for the rescue, but at what cost? I mean, how do we judge that later?”
“So we don’t judge ourselves later,” Tripper answered. “We can only judge what we do now, as we do it.”
“Right,” Calvin agreed. “We’re doing what we have to in order to survive. Even if the impossible happens and this thing stops here in KC and everything is fine afterwards, for now we have to react in whatever way is in our best interest for the safety of our group, and as close as the law allows. The rest of the country may not have to deal with this thing, but we do. Let’s just treat the healthy Humans as best we can, and put the dead in the ground where they belong…for now. Put the dead where they belong until we get a cure…if we get a cure…” He sighed angrily. “Jesus Christ, can we all please stop worrying about things we can’t do anything about right now? Just worry about staying alive and finding our family. These things are trying to kill us, our friends, families and our neighbors and we’re going to kill them first. Is that understood?”
“If y’all says so, boss. I beeze good for Massa. I forgets all bout my book lernin and worryin and let’s massa do my thinkin’ fo’ me.” Boomer replied in his best southern slave voice he liked to use against his friends any damn time he felt like it.
