by David Rogers
“Then listen to me. I ain’t making this up, it’s what they’re saying on CNN and Fox and MSNBC and the rest. This ain’t Gonzo George talking, this is the fucking news, okay? We are in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, or the beginning of one anyway. They ain’t using that word yet, but that’s what it is.”
Peter opened his mouth to say something, what he wasn’t exactly sure, but his anger switched off so abruptly it left him momentarily speechless. “Bullshit.” He finally said.
“No, not bullshit. Real shit.” George insisted, and he didn’t sound like he thought it was even a little funny. “You said Amy’s in the hospital, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, what’s wrong with her then?”
“They said they don’t know.” Peter said slowly.
“And they ran her vitals, right? Scanned them, checked them on the machines, right?”
Peter’s irritation was starting to reignite towards anger again. “Alright, you’re about to head back into foot-in-ass territory George.”
“No Gunny, honest, I’m not disrespecting your wife.” George said quickly. “You said they said she’s ‘probably not’ okay. Well, that sounds like they think she should be dead, but isn’t for some reason.”
George was silent for several seconds, and Peter was too. He thought about what Lambert had told him. The cold numbness was starting to return, eager to grab hold of him again.
“Gunny?”
“Keep going.” Peter said quietly.
“Um . . . look, I’m real sorry about Amy, okay? I mean, she was a good woman. But if she should be dead, but isn’t, then she’s like a lot of other people the news is calling ‘sick’.” George said. “And I’ll tell you, the news is behind internet right now.”
“Internet?”
“Yeah man, the internet. People are putting posts up online, trading notes, pictures, videos. And before you go off on me again, some of it’s coming from med staff; it ain’t just random people speculating, okay? I’ve seen footage, medical charts, test results . . . it all adds up to the same thing.”
“And you say it’s zombies?”
“Shit, if the shoe fits, you know?”
“Zombies aren’t real.” Peter said looking over his shoulder at the ongoing crush of chaos in the waiting room. His eye fell on a pair of officers struggling to restrain a man who was silently fighting them. “That’s bullshit hysteria.”
The man was handcuffed, looked to be at least a hundred pounds out of shape, and of only average height. Despite all of that, he was on the verge of breaking loose from the two pairs of hands trying to keep a hold of him. His head kept swinging back and forth as he tried to get his mouth on the officers.
“No man, serious shit.” George said. “What else would you call someone who’s got no vitals and is still walking around?”
“They’ve got to have vitals.” Peter said, wincing as he heard the wistful, almost whining, tone in his voice. “They’re just not running the right tests.”
“Right tests?” the man on the other end of the phone laughed in Peter’s ear. It was not a laugh that denoted amusement. “Gunny, when there ain’t no heartbeat, when there ain’t no brainwaves, there ain’t no other tests they can run. You know the rule of threes same as me.
“First part, three minutes without air. Well, there are people in hospitals that haven’t drawn a breath in over an hour. That ain’t had no pulse at all. And the whole time, they’re trying to bite the doctors and nurses.” George took a deep breath. “You gotta wake up to the truth Pete. The word is zombies, and they’re here.”
“They’re missing something.” Peter said, unable to find a hole he could poke in the logic but still trying to avoid the conclusion being reached. It led to a place where Amy was beyond hope, and worse, and he wasn’t sure if he could go there. Not yet.
“When then?” a tiny corner of his mind whispered expectantly, accusingly. He shook his head, trying to still the voice.
“Damnit, there ain’t nothing to miss.” George said, sounding annoyed.
“Zombies aren’t real.” Peter said again.
“They are now. Pete, trust me. You need to watch your ass. It’s time to run for the hills and ride out the end of civilization as we know it.”
Peter hesitated, torn. What George was saying was, on its face, absurd at best and rubber-room paranoia at worst. But if it wasn’t just George saying it . .. he thought again about what Lambert had told him about Amy. How she didn’t have a heartbeat, how she wasn’t breathing. And he thought back to how she’d acted in the basement of the house, how she’d acted like . . .
“Oh fuck!” Pete said tightly, trying to keep from wailing like a child. He sucked down a long shuddering breath, trying to hold the sob back from coming out. She was really dead. “Damn, damn, damnit!”
“I’m sorry Gunny.” George said. “Amy was a good woman. Hell, she kept up with you for, what, thirty years?”
“Thirty-three.” Peter said, feeling a rim of moisture on his eyes and blinking as he took another breath. Keep it together.
“Thirty-three years and she kept up with you all that time.” George said admiringly. “I feel for you man. Take a moment, but don’t hang up.”
“Hang on.” Peter said as gruffly as he could, trying for manly rather than desperate. Taking the phone off his ear, he held it down against his thigh and faced the wall. After a moment he slammed his forehead into it, hard enough to raise a flicker of dizziness. He put his right hand out and steadied himself against the wall for a moment, then his hand formed into a fist and he pounded on the wall several times. Damnit.
After maybe a minute or so he took a long cleansing breath, held it for a three count, then exhaled slowly. When he put the phone back to his ear, his voice was even, almost polite. But with an edge of detachment and disconnect. “Okay, I’m here.”
“Sorry Pete.” George said, sounding like he meant it. “Now, you said you’re at the hospital?”
“Yeah, Gwinnett Medical.”
“Listen, that really ain’t a good place to be.”
Peter glanced over his should reflexively. The chaos had not abated. “It’s pretty hectic, but sooner or later the PD here ought to try to get things put onto some sort of an even keel. I mean, they ain’t MPs, but they don’t have to deal with a bunch of pissed off Marines either, so how hard can it be?”
“No, listen. Hospitals are ground zero right now.”
“What?”
George sighed. “Where do you go when you get hurt or sick? Where do you take your family and friends when they need help? Think about it Gunny. Everyone’s going there, and an awful lot of them are sick or about to be. You need to get out. There ain’t nothing you or anyone can do for Amy if she’s sick, and if you don’t want to be next, or worse, then bail out while you can.”
Peter eyed the crowds again. “And go where?”
“I’d say get the hell out of town, get away. Get far away. People are dangerous right now. Bunch of walking bite bombs just waiting to explode and turn everyone they can get their hands on into more of the same. Me, I’ve got some more calls to make, then I’m loading up and headed for my cabin. You’re welcome to meet me there. I’m telling all the guys the same thing.”
Peter opened his mouth, but before he could say anything he ducked involuntarily as a gunshot rang out. He was on the floor almost before the echo started reverberating from the waiting room walls. The phone was gone, he’d dropped it, but he didn’t need it at the moment anyway. Instead, his right hand was snaking down to his ankle. His fingers thrust up under the hem of his pants, and they came out gripping a pistol.
The Kahr PM45 he kept as his standard carry weapon was a small gun, small enough that it almost seemed to vanish in his hand. But it had five dependable .45 ACP rounds in its magazine. Even without the barrel length of a ‘normal’ pistol to work with, they still delivered enough energy to cause significant damage.
His left hand came around to th
e slide, racking it back automatically to strip the first round off the magazine and into the chamber. In the moments while he ducked and drew, and readied weapon and himself, his eyes were tracing across his surroundings. He gripped the gun and tried to find the threat.
There was a lot of shoving happening near the door. The jumble of bodies was confusing, shifting and moving energetically. Some civilians were stumbling clear, though none of them had the look of sick people – zombies, as George was calling them. They just looked like ordinary people who were wounded. Other people were trying to shove closer, police officers who were also drawing guns.
Another pair of shots sounded. This time he barely flinched, his ears now primed to expect and deal with the familiar aural assault of gunfire. Instead, he was able to pinpoint the shooter. It was a fairly tall officer standing in the wide doorway that connected parking lot to waiting room.
His service piece was in his hand, jammed into the side of a person who had their face buried against the officer’s shoulder. The cop was screaming, face twisted in pain, as he fired another pair of shots into his assailant.
Peter’s eyes narrowed as he saw the attacker just rock and jostle a little under the bullets’ impacts. That was it, just a bit of swaying as the bullets hit, and no other reaction. There was no spray of blood, no fresh shout of pain, no nothing. The man’s arms stayed locked around the officer, his face pressed up against him. As Peter continued watching, as much fascinated as he was concerned, he saw the attacker’s head rear back with something red and dripping clenched in the teeth.
He felt his stomach turn over as he realized what George had to be right. The right word was zombie. There was no other term that fit. He watched the formerly human mouth gulp and swallow, and a chunk of the officer’s flesh vanished down the throat. A bloody piece of the officer’s uniform shirt remained visible at the corner of the zombie’s mouth, a fragment or a larger piece that just hadn’t been swallowed yet Peter couldn’t say. But it didn’t seem to bother the zombie as it leaned in for another bite.
The victim, still screaming in pain, thrust the pistol at the zombie before it could get its teeth back in him. Peter winced, knowing what was coming and what it was likely to do in the press of bodies around the door, but knowing there was nothing he could do to prevent it short of shooting the officer himself. There was simply no way he’d be able to be heard in time to stop it.
The officer, his pistol pressed in between the zombie’s closing jaws, panic fired off four rounds. The first was enough to cause the back of the zombie’s skull to explode outward in a wet spray of chunky bits. The other rounds simply unnecessarily added to the carnage and gore. Mostly by hitting people in and around the doorway as they exited the zombie’s disintegrating skull.
Peter saw people tumbling to the ground and winced again. There was a real chance of being trampled if you lost your feet in that press of bodies. He realized the screaming seemed even louder, and not only from the doorway. He swept his gaze across the room again, automatically rechecking after his focus on the door and what was happening there.
There were two other zombies that he could see from his vantage point on the floor that were now in the middle of successful assaults. Both were restrained, with handcuffs and zip-ties respectively, but the police who’d presumably been escorting them had either lost control or been inattentive enough for the same result to have occurred. Now each zombie had a mouth full of person and was contentedly chewing.
Peter decided he’d been wrong. The room had not been in chaos before. It had just been loud and unruly. Now it was in chaos, or at least making a much better case for an award of that description. Most of the police were drawing weapons, which was dangerous unless the shooters were well trained.
In his experience police were rarely more than casual shooters, at best, and that was stretching the definition of ‘shooter’ rather generously. If they began firing, whether it was one or all of them, the result was likely to be a blood bath. Bullets tended to keep going once fired, until something stopped them. Bodies were not always enough; sometimes you could shoot through one person and hit another behind them.
Zombies seemed to be almost materializing from within the crowd, though Peter surmised it was probably just more inattention on the part of those who had been minding them. But it didn’t matter. No one wanted to be near them or the police, and the screaming was deafening.
The people the ER staff had stationed on the doors that led deeper into the hospital were utterly insufficient against the tide of people that now suddenly pressed them, all eager to get away from the teeth and guns in the waiting room. Some weren’t even willing to go wait their turn, or to try and fight through the press at the doors. They were taking other steps.
A man on the far side of the room hefted a potted plant in both arms and flung it at the nearest window. With a barely heard crash the floor to ceiling pane of glass shattered. Two more windows were broken as well. People began spilling out into the parking lot through the newly formed openings, avoiding the fighting and bodies that were clogging the exit doors. Peter took one more look around the room and made his decision.
Rising cautiously from the floor, he stayed in a low crouch and shot out the nearest window. It shattered as easily as the others one had, and he ran out, bending low from the waist and knees. His GTO was unmolested in its spot. Sliding in behind the wheel he first locked the doors, then dug his keys out. The big engine rumbled to life without hesitation.
As he backed out of the space he heard more gunfire sounding from the direction of the waiting room. He ignored it as he shifted gears and drove forward, honking his horn and weaving around people who were lingering in the lot. The gate at the little booth where you were supposed to pay for your parking was up, the booth unoccupied. Peter cleared it without slowing, leaving the lot behind as he accelerated for the street.
* * * * *
Darryl
Darryl pulled into the parking lot of the Del Rey and skirted around the edge of the lot until he swung into the front row, where there was a line of about twenty other bikes parked against the front of the building. He braked as he put his feet down, then walked the bike backwards at the end of the line and lowered the kickstand. Shutting the Softail down, he got off and took off his helmet, locking it into the bike’s hard bag before headed into the bar.
The interior was dimly lit, mostly by neon signs advertising various brands of beer, though there were a few actual lights on the ceiling overhead, grudging adding their standard illumination to the multiple colors of light coming from the advertisements. He saw a few of his friends at the pool table, and a few more at a table in the corner, but he waved at everyone in response to a few raised voices of welcome as he headed instead for the bar.
Pinky saw him coming, and a smile creased his discolored features as he grabbed a glass out of the cooler. “Yo DJ.”
“Word Pinky.” Darryl said, dropping onto one of the stools. “You reading my mind.” he said, gesturing at the tap the bartender already had the glass under, filling it with beer.
“I try, I try.” Pinky said, grinning again. His face bore a birthmark on the left cheek, an unevenly shaped section of skin where his normal coloration was not present, leaving a pinkish swirl on his dark features. A lot of guys would be pretty pissed, at life in general, over something like that, but Pinky never seemed to mind; he even encouraged the nickname he’d had since high school. “Heard you rode one of the new girls home with ya last night.” he said as he set the full glass on the bar.
“Man.” Darryl said, grabbing the beer and taking a large drink.
“Come on now, tell it like it is.” Pinky laughed, folding his arms and leaning against the back counter.
“Girlie not right in the head.” Darryl said as he lowered the beer.
“Yeah, but was she right in the sack?”
Darryl grimaced. “Girlie was fine last night, ya know?”
“Oh I know, but I wanna hear about it b
efore I make a run at her.” Pinky said, still grinning.
“That ain’t a good idea cuz.”
Pinky eyed him. “What, she got a dick?”
Darryl snorted, glancing over his shoulder. One of the brothers in his club was still dealing with that from two years ago, when he’d hooked up with, what he’d thought was, a woman at a rave downtown. When they’d gotten back to his place though, the woman had turned out to be a transvestite. “Naw man, but she crazy.”
“Crazy good?” Pinky asked.
“Naw, crazy whack. Girlie woke up ‘bout an hour ago, came at me. Didn’t say nothing, no screaming or anything, just tried to get her hands on me.”
“Shit, for real?”
“Word. And broke two doors in my pad, and put a big dent in the front too.” Darryl confirmed, taking another drink.
“Shiiiit. So where she is?” Pinky asked, his grin fading slightly.
“Po-lice got her. And get this, she bit one of them cops, bit him right in the arm.”
“Damn.”
“They carried her out butt naked in handcuffs, and she still trying to bite ‘em the whole time.”
“Man, that one on the house then.” Pinky said with a shake of his head as he flicked his eyes at the glass in Darryl’s hands. “You gotta go to court?”
“Dunno.” Darryl shrugged. “But if I do, just to witness. Got CP to call it in for me, got some friendly cops over to take care of it.”
“Guess she ain’t hot enough for that shit then.” Pinky said with a sigh. “And she was so fine too.”
“Girlie ain’t fine enough to put up with getting bit.” Darryl said with another shrug. “Yo, I’m gonna go talk with the brothers. Hook me up with a plate of nachos, big plate, all of it.”
“Yeah, sure.” Pinky said with a nod.
“Good looking out.” Darryl said, reaching out to bump fists with him. He picked up his glass and turned for the pool tables as he heard Pinky hollering back into the kitchen. Darryl wandered across the bar, stepped up onto the pool section, and claimed a stool on the wall. After taking another drink, he set his beer down on the counter and dug his cigarettes out of his pocket.
