Race the Dead (Book 1): The Last Flag

by Cavanagh, Wren

  In seconds, the screen on the phone lit up again. Her mother was trying to call her back; but she had said all she could, all she had wanted to. ‘I might not like you but I’ll always love you’…the damn drunk. How the hell did she think that would make her feel? She let the call go to voice-mail and sat back in the comfortable office chair.

  Shit. You had to look out for yourself —not like anyone else was gonna look out for you. If it was ‘mean’ to lookout for yourself, So be it. She was mean, snake mean and fuck you all very much, and fuck your love too, mom.

  That mean streak — along with a narcissistic, sociopathic personality and good looks — had paved her way out of a backwoods, fourth rate Ohio town: a Podunk hole even smaller and meaner than nearby Belmore. That’s how she’d lived and now it’ll be how she’ll die, on her own terms. Taking names, kicking ass and looking out for number one.

  She picked up the phone again and dialed the contact she got from her drug dealer. The phone rang once, twice. A defensive voice answered before it got to the third ring.

  “Yeah?”

  “Jeff Coyle gave me your number — said you can help with just about anything a person might want. I need bodies. Fifty Turned, aggressive and ready to eat, delivered tonight: I’ll give you the address… Yes, of course I can pay.”

  A link to the outside

  The mostly dead woman got up from the graveled ground where she had found herself kneeling and began to walk down the road, confused as to why she had been there, and confused as to where she was. It felt as if she kept waking from a dream within a dream with shorter interludes of darkness in between. She hated these fugue moments, these blackouts, and she wondered how many she had before she had become aware of them. What happened to me? She thought. What is this, where am I, who am I?

  She slowed to a standstill, closed her eyes and focused on remembering, she tried to exclude everything from her mind but memory. Slowly, with a tunnel like focus, it returned to her. A feeling consolidated to a memory; something in the sky…she has seen something — a plastic bird? No, crazy. A toy then? No! A drone. That’s it—a drone.

  Drone, DRONE, drooone, the word itself felt like a victory and she repeated in her mind, savored it, attached meaning and images to it, found joy as it’s meaning and connotations became clear.

  She thought it had seen her, whoever had piloted it had seen her and had turned around for a second swoop, but then it had moved on without finding her. Maybe there was something like that left in town, something that would allow her to communicate, to call for help. There had been a store. She had seen drones that looked a lot like the one that flew over her. And smartphones, laptops, and desktops, she closed her eyes again and tried to remember. She stood blind and deaf to the world until it came to her.

  Schlegel’s Electric Shack and Hobbies.

  “Oh God! Yes.” She shouted euphoric for having wrought back the memory from the endless dark void her brain seemed to have become. Yet something was wrong...The silence, she tried to shout again. “Yes!”

  No sound came out and after minutes of confusion she gasped like a fish and forced air in her lungs, and let it out as she spoke.

  “Oh God, yes.”

  There! There, she heard it this time. It had been barely audible, forced, but she heard it. Thank you God, she thought. Thank you God, don’t leave me now.

  The crowd that surrounded her noticed her too then, they all turned toward her as one and for a surreal moment they all looked at her like she mattered to them, but it was the briefest of attention before they returned to their aimless existence.

  The woman had no precise memory of when she had first regained awareness, no memory of her reaction to her blighted dead companions, but she was now blasé to their presence, unafraid of them. She had found them boring at first, as her consciousness had crept back she had tried to connect. Each one of them had a story they couldn’t tell her, an explanation maybe for the situations that they couldn’t or wouldn’t share. She tried touching them to get a response but there was none that had mattered.

  Now it was time for her to move on; without a backward glance she left for her new goal, it took her hours to walk the relatively short distance to the hobby store.

  It was on the floor level, in the middle of an old iron-framed building, whose bricks were a dark orange and whose windows arched gracefully. The store was colorful throwback to the enterprises that existed before just about everything had turned into a franchise. She grasped the door handle and tried to pull the door open, it was locked and chained. While scavenging for something to break in, she lost even more time, until with a large rock she found a block away, she managed to smash the bottom glass pane of the front door and crawled inside, then sat on the floor of the store and plucked glass shards from her knees and the palms of her hands. Something oozed out, but it wasn’t blood.

  Not good, she thought and stood up in the shop, a dark silhouette in the dim natural light that came through the battered windows and shattered door, she staggered behind the counter. A ratty office chair stained with coffee spills remained in front old desktop computer, around that set up it looked like a graveyard of electronics, desktops with and without their shells, stacks of laptops, drives and cables. They sat next to the everyday debris you’d find in a small and old business. But no power; there was no life in these abandoned bits of technology, but surely there’d be a battery here.

  She set about scavenging the place. Everything moved so slowly. No, no it didn’t...She was slow. Like a geriatric. Was she one? No, she didn’t think so, but that thought stopped her. What did she look like? She stepped in front of a sunglasses display and looked in its mirrors.

  Jesus! Christ! She’d never get a date looking like that. She yelped out a wheeze. Breathe, remember to breathe, damn it.

  She looked down at what she was wearing, had she done that before? She couldn’t remember. Her clothing looked medical. A nurse? Better yet, a doctor? That would be good. People liked and respected nurses and doctors, especially doctors. She searched her pockets and found a small feminine wallet, and an official ID with a photo. She looked in mirrored display and compared the photo on the ID card to her reflection.

  Wow, I need a shower and a vacation, she thought. Better yet, I need a miracle. The woman that stared back at her was a grungy, pale, sick looking version of the stylish professional woman in the ID. The distinguished doctor: Anjali Aluri. CDC. Awesome! I'm a doctor — my parents must be proud, but first things first, where are the damn batteries?

  Dr. Aluri rummaged through the store and found the section with the backup batteries, and grabbed the biggest she could find. It was the size of wastebasket, with considerable effort she dragged and pushed it to the counter, then plugged in the computer and turned it on. After tense seconds the fan in the desktop came to life, the monitor brightened and the login screen appeared. She tapped the keyboard and ran into a wall.

  Password? Password.

  Damn it.

  After a minute or two of confused panic she lifted the keyboard and there it was. Password123. Seriously? Hoping it wasn’t a joke, she typed it in the appropriate field, and like that, she got in. It took her almost half an hour but she found the right icon in the end, clicked it for Internet access, and checked in on the rest of the world.

  Now, to get out of here. She looked around found the phone, and dialed 911.

  First flag for the She Devils

  Kate stopped at a crossroads, she turned to Cho and Xhiu who trailed a few feet behind. “How close to that the first flag?”

  “Less than a mile ladies,” Xhiu, their navigator, replied and pointed them to the left.

  Cho asked, “Do you really think the final flag is at center of town?”

  “I’d think so,” Xhiu shrugged. “Where else would it be?”

  They res
umed a steady jog down the block, not even halfway to their target they began to hear the beacon’s call.

  “Everyone, slow down,” said Kate holding out her arms, “If we can hear it, they can hear it.”

  As they walked tense and weary toward their goal the beacon got progressively louder.

  “Those things are attracted to sound,” Cho gaped in disbelief “Did they have to make it so damn loud?”

  Kate nodded “You even have to ask? They want to make sure they get conflict and drama for the viewers.”

  The women exchanged looks and turned to their cameraman, who shrugged and said nothing. He looked none too happy.

  “We get eaten — you get eaten. Just sayin’,” Cho pointed out.

  “I'm planning on running for it while you keep them busy snacking, because being on the menu is not part of my contract,” he replied with a hint of a smile.

  They moved on, taking care to be well out of sight, watching for the returned to show up. They rounded the corner and there they were.

  Like ants on a sugar cube, the dead crowded the flag with the show’s logo in the colors of the She Devils. The weighted base held the flagpole upright, and the forlorn dead circled it like slow but agitated insects. On the street opposite from their target, a small strip of cheap single-story commercial buildings populated the block.

  “Legally, where do we even stand?” Kate wondered out loud, as she watched one of the Turned bite into the metal flagpole. “I mean...They’re dead, but they're not. Or they wouldn’t be walking around. Can we legally kill them, again?”

  “You can kill anyone in self defense,” replied Cho. She looked very much unconcerned by the idea. “And anyway, they’re dead and we don’t know them. It’s not like they're friends or family.”

  Xhiu shrugged and Kate made sound that somewhere between a sigh and a frustrated growl.

  “It’s like they gave a party and invited everyone in town,” Cho said and flipped off the crowd with both hands.

  “Just about,” Kate agreed with a grimace. “At least one hundred people there, maybe two hundred.” Intimidated and unsure on how to proceed, they retreated behind the corner of the building. Then Cho grinned from ear to ear and pointed across the street.

  “I know what to do!” Cho’s smile was devious and happy as she pointed to a hardware and paint store across the street from the dead crowd. “I bet they have alcohol in there.”

  Kate shrugged. “You need a drink?”

  “No! Think about it: a nice fire and fire alarm would work out great for us! Stay clear of the road, ladies. Get ready to get that flag when the turned clear the lot. Logan, follow me! You're my Boswell.” Clapping her hands in delight, Cho jumped a couple of times on the balls of her feet then sprinted off with cameraman in tow.

  “Not a bad idea,” Xhiu agreed.

  Kate looked concerned. “Did it say anything at all in our contract about destroying public or private property?”

  “Kate, who’s gonna sue? They are all dead.”

  ----------

  Back in the executive office, Cheryl grinned at the monitor. “Well, that’s better! Arson! Arson is good, I like arson. Things are livening up, can we make the pings louder?”

  “Fats would have to okay that, or the lawyers,” one of the technicians said.

  “Actually, I get to okay that. Fats left me in charge,” she snapped back. “Ask the lawyers if you wanna cover our asses. Actually…” she paused for a few seconds, “…fuck the lawyers, it’s my call. Raise the volume.”

  In a few minutes, under the gray toneless sky the beacon began to scream its call. New stragglers joined in from the farther periphery and the few that hadn’t made their way into the paint store turned back to increase the numbers of the crowd. Cheryl smiled happily. The show’s growing number of followers on social media shared in her delight with a torrent of new memes celebrating arson and sirens as a solution for just about everything under the sun.

  ----------

  Anyone login in, turning on, or tuning in saw the stream from the aerial drone monitoring the She Devils. They saw Kate and Xhiu hiding behind an abandoned, dented van catawampus to the sidewalk before the scene cut to the feed from Logan’s camera from inside the paint store. There, Cho got right down to business. In an adrenaline flavored rush, she grabbed a roll of duct tape and dragged a ladder from one ceiling sprinkler to the next. One at the time, she created tight wedges from the tape, inserted them in the sprinkler heads, and taped the entire thing tightly. Once done, she leapt off the ladder, searching for flammable materials and accelerants.

  Without a word and as fast as she could, Cho built a makeshift bonfire of rags, towels, wood, and plastic. If it burned, it went in; and at last she opened several cans of denatured alcohol and stuffed painter’s towels in the spouts, and set them by the back door. Others she used to anoint her pyre, once done she grabbed one of the cans with the rag tail and turned to the camera, stared into it with a grin.

  “Impromptu Molotovs, bitches!” She pulled out her Zippo lighter, lit the rag and tossed it to the pyre, with a speed and energy unique to fire the pile became a roaring blaze . As the smoke rose to the ceiling, she finally stepped outside, the back exit alarm sounded, adding to the cacophony from the fire alarm.

  “Run!” She yelled and gave Logan a shove.

  An explosive ‘whump’ sound echoed after them, soon the flames and smoke reached the nearby businesses and set off their fire alarms and strobing lights. The lifeless crowd slowly oriented itself toward the new distraction and swarmed toward it attracted by the louder noise. There you go, you sorry dead things, thought Kate. Move along, go! She looked on as several of the turned entered the paint store without a second thought. If anything, some had moved faster than others, competing to get to the new sound first.

  “Sorry, dead things…” Kate mumbled to no one as she watched them pushing each other to get into the burning building.

  “Zombies.” Xhiu corrected.

  “Zombies —that’s so unrealistic, and ghouls too dramatic. Turned; I'll stick with that. The returned that turned. They came back, but nobody wanted them.”

  It baffled her: they saw and heard, they processed information and walked upright. There was a base humanity left in these husks. And here we are, making a pyre out of them. Kate looked back at the parking lot. She had a clear path to the flag, even the laggards were focused on the paint store.

  “Xhiu, stay here.”

  “Okay,” came her soft, subdued reply.

  Kate sprinted to the lot. She charged and toppled the six foot flagpole that had been stuck in a cement filled tire. The goodies backpack, secured to it half way up was easily retrieved, and she went about untying the flag when suddenly the volume of the beacon amped up to deafening decibels and she screamed in pain and surprise. Its feedback made the noise crack. The fringes of the crowd closer to her turned back toward the beacon. They saw her and forgot all about what was going on across the street. She was their new siren and they rushed to meet her.

  Damn, they move faster in groups, Kate thought as she struggled and pulled at the flag to free it. A figure appeared next to her and she gave shrill scream of fear. But it was Xhiu, she had arrived and now knelt beside her and cut through the base of the flag with scissors from the medkit. The noise from the beacon stopped then.

  “Oh, God...Run!”

  Both women grabbed their prizes and sprinted to catch up to Cho. “Shit! They're coming after us now!” Kate yelled. And they were.

  Anyone who hadn’t gotten into the burning building and was close enough to the outer fringe was now carried along by the crowd. Without the distraction of the alarms — even the one from the paint store was now a silent burned plastic artifact — the shuffling mob honed in on the only live movement in sight: two women running for their live
s.

  The crowd stopped at nothing, they fell and got up, hit walls and cars along the way. They staggered, bounced back and kept going. They’d trample upon each other, only for the fallen to rise back up or crawl on to rejoin the ones who had trod upon them with no hard feelings. The dead definitely got along a lot better than the living.