Phoenix Protocol- the Middletown Omnibus

by Brent Abell

  Run, Jade; she heard Bryce in her head.

  Tears spilled down her cheeks, and she found herself running faster. Around her, the screams of the concert-goers falling to the zombies struck fear in her. She kept running. Hands pawed at her as she passed either trying to grab her for help or to eat her. She dared risk one last look over her shoulder to Bryce.

  She prayed he got away from the horde pushing out of the woods. Instead of seeing him behind her, she saw what little remained of him writhing on the ground under the floodlights the festival had set up around the camping area.

  Now, the lights only highlighted the slaughter. When Jade ran by, she saw the blood splashed across the canvas tents. People cried out in agony before being silenced. Her calves burned as she jumped on the bottom rung of the ladder on the back of the RV. She scrambled up the ladder and felt something grab her ankle and pull. Her fingers slipped, but she caught herself before the thing below her could pull her down.

  Jade kicked with her free foot, and her shoe slid off. The hand let her go, and she tried to get her footing again. A hand reached down to her, and Jade looked up to see Victoria looking over the edge. She took her hand and hurried up the ladder.

  The others clapped for her, and she sat down, exhausted on the RV roof. In the bright lights, she surveyed the carnage below them. People flooded from the woods and fell on the others still in tents or sitting in chairs around small campfires. A few managed to climb on top of the other RVs. Screams filled the night, and the wet sounds of the undead feasting on the bodies below brought Jade to the edge of madness.

  “Jade, get back from the edge,” Jason whispered behind her.

  “Wha…,” she began before she noticed the bodies getting back to their feet and approaching the RV. A man, with only one arm, pounded on the RV. He moaned and beat his fist harder. Each blow brought it to the attention of other zombies, and they joined him in slamming their fists into the camper.

  Jade pushed herself away from the side and felt her anxiety problem flare-up. Her breathing increased, and she closed her eyes. Finally, she put her head in her hands and sobbed. At first, the tears came slow but turned into a river rushing through her. Grief crushed her, and she stood up.

  Grant scooted up behind her and grabbed her leg. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  Jade turned and knelt before Grant. She got in his face and put her nose against his. A wide grin formed, and she laughed. “I’m going to do something about all this bullshit.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Grant replied.

  “You only play a tough guy on TV, you fucking fraud,” Jade spat.

  Grant looked at her like Jade had struck him across the face. “You don’t know one fucking thing about me that the damn entertainment news channels and supermarket rags don’t tell you! Did you know Jason served in the fucking Air Force, and I was in the police academy before we decided to try acting? Huh? Did you?”

  Jade stared at him, stunned.

  “Yeah, didn’t fucking know that did you,” Grant lashed out at her.

  “I’m sorry,” Jade whimpered.

  Grant backed off and sighed. “I’m sorry. I know it’s not your fault. Look, I…I didn’t mean to yell at you. I mean, you just lost Bryce and all.”

  Jade hugged him and sniffled. “I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have called you out like that.”

  The RV rocked once, and the group fell silent. Victoria walked to the edge and looked down at the mass of dead people beating their fists against the RV’s sides. Jason sat down in the middle and put his hands in his lap. Jade and Grant continued to stare at the zombies. Other concert-goers were pulled from their tents and viciously attacked. Like all the others, they soon got back up from the dirt in search of more people they could bite. The virus passed from person to person like wildfire.

  Jade’s heart felt heavy. Watching the newly dead crowd rise and stumble around the camping area left her pining for Bryce, but he was gone now too. She was glad they tore him apart enough; he couldn’t follow them. She gazed over to where they overtook him, and the zombies milling around blocked her view of his reanimated remains moving on the ground.

  “Hey, you going to be okay, Jade?” Jason asked her.

  She turned and shrugged. “Do I have a choice?”

  “You might,” Jason replied, smiling.

  “So, what did you do in the Air Force?” she asked.

  “I was a radio operator.”

  “You see much action as a radio operator?” she kidded him.

  Jason smiled at her and wiped the tear from the corner of her eye. “I only did when we went to town on a weekend leave.”

  “You are positively indecent,” she laughed and walked away from the edge. She didn’t want to look at the dead anymore. They were trapped on top of the RV, an island in the middle of a dead sea, and she knew nobody was coming to help them.

  ***

  General Harris buried his face in the man’s neck, and his teeth tore at the flesh. Warm blood gushed from the wound and covered his face while he ate and passed on his legacy in return. Once Harris knew he’d bestowed his gift, he released the man and let his dying body fall to the ground. He hesitated while the man he bit bucked and thrashed wildly on the ground. A faint sense of satisfaction settled over him when he saw the body go still for a moment and move around again. His new brother rose from the ground, and Harris looked into his hungry eyes. In his past life, he’d feel proud, but now he only felt the need to carry on and infect the entire human race.

  Harris also had one other thought in his head. It remained as a picture frozen in time from his past life; he needed to find the woman. He needed to locate her and pass his gift on to her. In his fragmented memory, Harris knew she did this to him, and he wanted her to share in the spoils of the undead world.

  6

  Before dawn, the rumbling in Victoria’s stomach woke her from her troubled sleep. She glanced around at the others and found them still asleep. The zombies stilled milled around the RV, but they stopped pounding on the sides. She stood up and saw more of them filling the camping area. Most of the tents were shredded and bloodstained. She figured most everyone on the festival grounds had either been devoured or turned.

  Torn limbs and chunks of bodies littered the muddy dirt. The field had a dark red tint from the blood seeping out from corpses. The humidity had set in, and the stench from the dead meat rankled Victoria’s nose. She pinched it closed for a moment and let her nose go out of frustration. When the temperature rose during the day, the smell would only get worse.

  “What are you thinking about?” Jason asked.

  Victoria jumped and turned around. “Shit, you startled me.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t want to wake anyone. I’ve been up for a few hours.”

  “So, you never really went to sleep, did you?”

  Jason shrugged. “I couldn’t sleep with all the moaning and screaming and shit going on down there.”

  “I think I slept a little. Not much, but enough to not feel like total shit,” Victoria sighed.

  “This is your fault; I heard,” Jason stated.

  “Are you judging me?”

  “No, I just want to understand.”

  Victoria sat back down and let her feet dangle over the RV’s roof. “I was wrong.”

  “About?”

  “About everything I thought I knew. I believed the company I worked for actually wanted to cure people. I thought I was a good person. I never thought it would go this way, but here we are stuck on an RV roof in the middle of a festival. The funny thing is how absurd it is to think we’re trapped up here with a bunch of hippie zombies circling us like a pack of sharks,” Victoria said with a snort.

  Jason sat down next to her and put his arm around her. Both sat in silence and watched the sun come up over the horizon. Victoria smiled and let the serenity take her mind away while the bright orb bathed the campground in its light. The zombies below slowed their attack on the RV and back
ed away. They didn’t stop combing the other tents looking for a meal, but they lost interest in their RV haven.

  “What are they doing?” Jason asked.

  Victoria observed them and wondered what they were doing. She stood up and walked to the other side of the RV without saying a word to Jason. He got up too and followed her to the front of their little island in the dead sea.

  “Something is very wrong here,” Victoria said.

  “I agree, something doesn’t feel right,” Jason agreed with her.

  Grant let out a loud yawn and sat up. “What are you two crazy kids up to?”

  “They’ve stopped trying to get to us,” Jason said.

  “Wait, they’re leaving?” Grant questioned and climbed to his feet.

  “It’s bizarre, they’ve lost interest in us, but they’re still searching through the rest of the campsite for food,” Victoria noted.

  Victoria didn’t hear any more screams from the campsite below. After the original horde poured out from the woods, it didn’t take them long to make their way through the tents systematically. The zombies swarmed like a plague of locusts and either ate or turned anyone crossing their paths. Some of the zombies exited the campground and made their way to the vendor and food truck area. She figured once they cleared that area, they’d continue to pass the Phoenix Virus off to anybody still alive in the concert area. Since it was a large grassy hillside with a makeshift stage erected next to the presidential effigy, she figured a bunch of people stayed on the hill to sleep. If the commotion from the campsite didn’t wake them, they’d have a rude awakening coming their way soon.

  Jade awoke and immediately sobbed. Victoria felt sorry for the girl, but she didn’t have a clue as to the pain of her suffering. Each death or new zombie weighed heavily on her. The others looked up to her for some reason. Yes, she did escape the lockdown at Xen when the virus escaped, and she killed the man responsible for the whole mess, but she didn’t think of herself as a tough girl or some leader in a post-apocalyptic landscape. She thought of herself only of lonely old Victoria trying to survive the cards the universe dealt her.

  “Victoria, something’s happening over there beyond the port-a-potties,” Jason said, pointing to the line of toilets next to the tree line.

  “We’re fucked,” Grant quipped and sat down next to Jade. He put his arm around her and tried to console her, but she only wailed louder.

  “Shut her up, they’re going to figure out we’re still here,” Jason warned.

  Victoria watched the new line of zombies march out from the trees, and she shuddered. Leading the pack was General Harris. Once he cleared the trees, he stopped and looked up at the RV. Victoria felt his gaze penetrate her soul, and her heart chilled when he smiled at her. The act of smiling was a reaction she didn’t know the dead were capable of, and it frightened her.

  “What is it?” Jason asked.

  “General Harris,” she quietly replied.

  “That douche bag in the army uniform?” Jason said, looking the general over.

  “Something’s different about him,” Victoria said.

  “Is he grinning? I didn’t think a zombie would do something like that,” Jason added.

  They both stood watching as Harris signaled to his undead army to advance on the RV.

  “No weapons?” Jason joked.

  “No, we’re pretty fucked,” Victoria replied and wondered if they’d survive the day.

  ***

  It’d been hours since the first wave of Harris’s zombies crashed against the RV and rocked it back-and-forth. The scorching sun held high in the sky, letting the survivors perched on top of the RV; it was about noon. Victoria’s lips were dry and cracked from the heat mixed with a lack of water. She inspected her arms and saw they were slowly turning a bright red from the sun pounding down on them. Jade collapsed, and the guys covered her with their shirts to help shield her from the elements. She noticed they didn’t look in great shape either. Both were panting and sweating profusely in the afternoon humidity.

  “Watch this,” Grant said and unzipped his pants. Stepping up to the edge, he pissed on the zombies below.

  Jason shook his head. “I don’t think they give a shit.”

  “No, but the army dude sure looked mad as hell when I did it,” Grant said.

  What Grant said piqued Victoria’s curiosity. “Wait, you said he looked mad?”

  “Yeah, he glared at me all mad as fuck.”

  “Is that a normal zombie-thing to do?” Jason questioned.

  “I highly doubt it. All the ones I saw escaping Xen were the typical Romero-like zombies. Since I first saw Harris as one, he seemed different,” Victoria answered.

  “He’s creeping me the fuck out,” Jason said, shivering in the heat. He licked his lips, trying to moisten them, but his mouth was dry. He’d never been so parched in his life.

  Grant stood up and walked over to the vent at the top of the RV. “Why didn’t we notice this? We could pop it open and send someone in to see if there are any water bottles or something to eat.”

  “I’ll go,” a small voice answered the call.

  Victoria, Jason, and Grant turned to Jade. She looked up at them, and Victoria saw the sadness in her eyes. Something in her wanted to reach out and comfort the girl, but Victoria couldn’t bring herself to do it. If they were all going to die, why did she need to have any feelings for Jade?

  Jason nodded at her and quietly went about feeling around the vent for the air unit and the small clear square next to it.

  “This clear panel has a crank on it inside, but I think I can work it open from up here,” Jason said.

  “Shit, that hole is small. Are we sure Jade will fit?” Grant wondered.

  “Bryce always said I was a stick,” Jade said. She allowed herself a small smile and closed her eyes. “Let’s do this,” she added, moving next to Jason.

  Jason ran his fingers along the rubber gasket around the vent and pried upward on it. Slowly, the adhesive holding the gasket in place peeled up from the roof. He tugged harder, and it ripped free from the vent. He fell backward and grinned.

  “Vent is still there hotshot,” Grant teased.

  Jason stood up and stomped his foot onto the plastic covering. His first blow didn’t do anything, but on his second one, everyone heard the crack the filthy plastic made. He raised his foot a third time, and the camper rocked. Jason lost his balance and hit the roof hard. The others rushed to the side to see what happened.

  Harris stood next to the camper glaring at them. The zombies formed a line, and each one threw their weight into the RV. Each blow felt harder than the last, and the RV swayed more and more. The bloodied general pointed up and opened his mouth. No sound escaped his lips, but the intention was clear; he’d ordered his troops to war.

  Jason scrambled to his feet and hurried to the vent. Giving the vent one last stomp, he felt the plastic give way. The center splintered and cracked enough Jason could see down into the camper. Getting back to his knees, he yanked on the vent until it broke free.

  “Jade, hurry! See if they have anything in there we can use as a weapon!” Jason called out.

  Jade rushed over and got on her belly so she could back herself down the vent. Her feet went through, but she felt the opening close around her when she got to her thighs. “FUCK!” she shouted.

  Victoria locked eyes with Harris, and her blood ran cold. His eyes were blank pools, but an eternal rage roiling beneath their glassy surface. She spat, and the glob landed on his cheek. He didn’t react but motioned for the zombie horde to press on their attack.

  Jade wiggled harder and faster until her jean shorts finally slipped down past the edge of the vent. “I’m almost in!”

  “Hurry!” Grant shouted.

  “Shit,” Jade muttered.

  “What?” Jason asked.

  Jade wiggled her hips, trying to get through the small opening. She heard something rip, and metal brushed against her thigh. “Double shit.”


  “Double shit doesn’t sound any better, Jade. What happened?” Jason said and got down on the roof next to her.

  “I’m stuck.”

  “No, shit?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, fuck,” Jason sighed.

  Victoria continued to hold Harris’s gaze for what seemed like an eternity. He stood perfectly still and let his minions push past him in their assault on the RV.

  What’s he doing? She wondered to herself.

  A thin grin spread across Harris’s pale dead face, and when he opened the RV door, all Victoria could do was scream.