Race the Dead (Book 1): The Last Flag

by Cavanagh, Wren

  The new backpack had nothing of significance: more snacks, a voucher that allowed them to challenge the other teams for one of their flags. She picked it up and hurled it across the room; wondered if the Fat Cobra and the She Devils were doing as badly as they were doing, or if they were already on their way to victory.

  “We gotta go.” Ross pointed to the crowd visible from the main window.

  “We’ll deal with them. Haven’t heard from Tom. What’s going on? What about the other groups?”

  “Don’t know. I got nothing. Last I heard him was when we left the store. Get out, he said.”

  Emma shrugged. “Roof.”

  “Hell, yes.”

  They made their way back up to the roof and lowered the ladder at the back of the bank, where there were fewer turned waiting for them below.

  “I'm going first. I’ll keep them off you. Get ready to run for it.”

  Emma grabbed the outer edges of the ladder and slid down them without using the steps. Ross joined her and they started running, with Emma taking the lead and cracking the heads of the closest corpses. Thank you God for slow dead people, thought Emma. At least the fast variant hadn’t come to pass. Yet.

  “Run for the tall building!”

  Ross didn’t need to be told twice and was already hauling ass, way ahead of her. Please oh please Lew be ok — never mind the kids just come back, Emma prayed, please come back. They ran on.

  Like a pied piper

  Dear Diary: I am blasting my small plastic and metal horn like a cheap archangel.

  Keep walking — keep walking and stay to the middle of the street. They're slowing down: I see some splintering off at the far edges. That won’t do. I blast my trumpet and let my congregation know their wandering is not appreciated. There. I see a few joining back in. Good job. A few more blasts — let’s keep moving along.

  But new arrivals, turned that were not at the bank are joining me from all sides. I see turned ahead, behind me and to the sides, they have come to join us. I've managed to maintain the lead but soon they’ll close me in circle, cut me off. And NO, no sir! I don’t want to be boxed in and left behind. What to do, what to do?

  And then I saw him — Toothy MacTootherson — in my procession! The man that came far, far too close to me before, and almost turned me into an Anjali snack, just as I was starting to feel better. I wonder if the watch in his gut is still ticking. However, what can I say but...How serendipitous! Just don’t get caught, Anjali. Don’t get caught.

  I walked over to him, turned on the horn, and kept it on with a piece of Duck tape I had brought from the store. (Dear Diary: I refuse to call it anything but Duck tape. It’s cuter, and as a bonus, it seems to make some guys come unglued. Fun to watch.) I slammed it down into the hollow cavity that is now his belly, then I turned around and walked away as quickly as possible, weaving my way through the growing swarm between me and the hospital ahead.

  In the crowd, a few noticed me and hesitated. One or two grasped my arms but didn’t hold on as I kept walking; they're confused as to what I am. But the loud horn and the growing commotion around Toothy is the more powerful attraction.

  Thank you Mahakali, great mother of us all! I looked back briefly and watched as they converged on him like ants, and quite literally took him apart. Toothy put up a feeble fight as he tried to get away, so it seems like the dead might retain a sense of the existential self. How interesting. I wonder if he felt betrayed by his own kind.

  The hospital is in sight and I'll be there soon. I feel cold.

  When you stumble and fall

  Kate kept falling. She ran and fell, ran and fell, stumbled and fell. Theo pulled her up every time until eventually the run turned to a walk, and then it was walk and fall. Tired and exasperated, he got on his knees, grabbed her by the shoulders, and shook her.

  “What is wrong with you? You gotta try to stay up, damn it!”

  She looked back at him, confused, her pupils dilated, her skin alabaster white. “Cold, hypothermia.”

  “Yeah, me too, all right? We can’t stop, we can’t.” He lifted her back up; it was getting harder every time. “Run for Chrissake, I can’t carry you. Run it’ll warm you up.”

  They got off to a clumsy trot in the hight snow, but in a couple of minutes Kate was behind again and her pace had slowed to a staggered shamble. Then she fall back in the snow.

  Exasperated, Theo stopped and turned to look at her.

  “C’mon...” He gasped. “We almost lost them. I’m not gonna fucking carry you, I can’t!” Then, out of the corner of his eye he saw movement. He realized the silence wasn’t so silent if he actually listened and he spun around on his feet. “Oh, shit.” He groaned. “Oh God, they are everywhere.”

  They had been hidden under a gelid camouflage of accumulated snow. And now, like insects from cocoons, they were breaking out of their frosted shells and converging on them, and as they rose they created a chain reaction. Each one of them alerted the Turned next to him or her. They were surrounded.

  “I can’t do this anymore...” Theo muttered and looked at Kate, on her haunches in the snow. I gotta leave her, he thought. I have to leave her. “We need to split up,” he said as he backed away from her. “They can’t chase us both. Just run for it, okay?”

  She shook her head. Horrified and out of breath, she looked at the Turned, then looked up at him and she knew. Please don’t ask me to help you, thought Theo. Please don’t, please.

  “No!” Kate saw the fear in his eyes. “Don’t leave me, don’t!”

  Theo shook his head. “I’m sorry, not gonna let you get me killed.”

  He leaned close to her one last time and she latched onto his shoulders as he snatched the flag from her pocket, pushed her away, and ran. Kate scrambled to her feet and lunged at him with terrified guttural screams. Her cold, stiff fingers grabbed hold of the edge of his coat but weren’t able hold on, she fell face first into the snow for a cold, suffocating embrace. She pushed up on hands and knees and gasped for air, heard the muffled noises and footsteps behind her, so much closer. She looked up and all she could see were their hungry mouths and dead stares.

  Kate got to her feet and ran but it was too late, the dead closed in a circle around her. Desperate, she darted and stumbled, trying to push and shove for an opening in the crowd that tightened as it grew. Kate looked from face to face as the circle converged: most still looked like they could be a next door neighbor, the mailman or your ordinary soccer mom, but there was no life or humanity in them. No one she could appeal to. Kate lifted her weapon, wondering how often she had fired it, and how many bullets she had left. Then, defeated by acceptance and desperation, she placed the barrel at her temple, hoping there was one left, and pulled the trigger.

  ----------

  As Theo ran, the sharp crack of the shot rang out behind him and echoed in the ghost town. He stumbled, then stopped in his tracks and looked back. His shoulders fell, his face fell, and he felt like the sound of the gunshot itself punched him in the gut. When this is over, I will never remember any of this, Theo swore to himself. I will put it in the past and I’ll forget this ever happened.

  Just don’t stand still and make a target. Just run. He remembered that he had the camera and was tempted to ditch it, to pitch it right at the heads of one of those dead things. But then the production might not pay and he can’t have that. He had risked too much, too damn much for that to happen, and wanted to make sure everyone saw him on top of that building, with that one last flag as he got on his flight out of town.

  And Christ, there it was, not even a block away —the Community Hospital, with its large plastic H at the top corner of the wall, glowing red in the milky sky. Weary, panting, bobbing and zig-zagging through the wandering dead, he made it to the parking lot, but their numbers there were the largest he had seen yet, the clo
ser he came to safety…run, just...run.

  He screamed his mind, clenched his teeth and choked out the shout as he tripped over bodies hidden by rubbish and covered by the snow, and flew face-first into the soft cold ground. The axe flew from his grasp and hands like vises grabbed onto his legs. Stiff dead fingers, like claws, dug into his calves. In frenzied panic he twisted in the snow, fighting to break free as hoarse sounds escape him. No screaming! Screaming won’t do; it’ll only attract more attention.

  He freed one leg and delivered a straight-on kick to the face of the woman. It bent her head back with an audible snap, and she sank back into the snow, still moving but not longer able to control her limbs. But a man, heavy and large, was creeping his way up Theo’s belly teeth chewing on anticipation as he went. The dead man was dressed like an office worker from the waist up, but someone had made a good meal of him from the waist down.

  “Don’t! Quit it!” Theo locked eyes with him and gasped in a spent whisper as he prayed for a flicker of consciousness from the man — the recovery of a memory of who he had been. “Just leave me alone! Don’t.”

  The dead man was deaf to appeals and his full weight was on his chest, Theo tried but couldn’t push him off; the guy was too heavy and he didn’t have the strength for it anymore. In a last effort, he pushed the camera between them, and tried to wedge it into the man’s mouth. But the man swept it aside with ease.

  “No, no, NO!” Theo screamed.

  “Shut up, kid.

  Almost there

  The crowbar’s high-speed impact with the side of the man’s head let out a thick, crunching sound as the man’s eye socket and temple caved in, one of his eyes vanishing behind the rearranged flesh and bone. The other eye remained fixed on Theo like nothing had happened. A second blow did the final damage and a kick shoved him off of the boy.

  Emma grabbed him pulled him up, and held him in a standing position, as the boy was shaking and unsteady on his feet. Briefly she worried that she was going to have to carry him and prayed it wouldn’t be needed. Theo curled in on himself, his hands on his knees.

  “Hey, you're going to be fine,” she reassured him and placed her hand on his back.

  But Theo stood there, his eyes closed, his breathing rapid and shallow.

  “C’mon, we don’t have time for this, you're going to be fine.” She kept talking to him and could hear his breathing become deeper, more regular. “Alright, we gotta go, Theo, or we’ll all be lunch, move!” She said with urgency in her voice as she saw muted silhouettes honing in on them and gaining definition as they drew closer. He and stood up, took a deep breath and looked at the oncoming crowd.

  “Yeah, we totally gotta go.”

  “Wow, you recover fast.”

  “I had practice.” He saw Ross filming them and nodded. “You gotta a camera, great. I was sick of carrying that thing around.” He dug in the snow and found the ax. “Let’s go — we’re almost there.”

  They rushed for the entrance, along the way, they took out the returned in their path, kicking, swinging their weapons, as they cut across the parking lot and made it to the hospital’s door.

  ----------

  Dear Diary: I’ll tell you what I know. The cells involved in making memories zap my brain as they come back to life. I finally made it back to the hospital. And best of all, I remember this place. I walked in the door and memories started flooding in. Not perfect, mind you. And at times it makes for unsettling experiences, like when I turned to the lobby desk, and for a split second saw admitting nurses, assorted personnel, visitors, and patients in a busy hospital. I blinked, reality responded, and I was staring at empty desk in an empty, barely-lit lobby.

  I think it was in August, or nearly the end of August, so hot out and I was already sick and short on options.

  What did I do?

  I think... Yes, I did.

  I tried to create a vaccine: serum derived from the blood of survivors, for the antibodies. Too bad I had no survivors handy. No one did.

  My best bet was Steve Morrow, infected by Melanie Lucie Potts. Why him? He was still alive. He had been ill for months and had actually not been diagnosed as infected until two weeks ago; even then we debated as to whether it was the same disease or a variant. Why, you ask? Lighter symptoms, miraculous longevity — normally no one lasted longer than a week. For all I know, he could be still alive.

  What did I have left to lose? Do you think I’d want to be quarantined in the middle of devastating and complicated global health crisis, where anyone worth anything would be overworked and overburdened? Get out of town — you bet I didn’t.

  I went into Morrow’s room, he was awake. Good natured even. I drew his blood, and raced to the lab, trying to think of the best way to buy myself this new pox. Egg-based: forget it, eight to nine months. Cell culture: shaves a month to a month and half off the egg-based method, but I didn’t have that much time. Recombinant DNA method: best bet, normally as little as six weeks, but I would have to cut it down to one. Evacuation from the hospital was being planned, but as soon as I looked sick I’d be quarantined. One week.

  And I am here now, something worked, so far anyway. Something here in this hospital can potentially help others. Hell, I could be a walking source of a new vaccine, and the more data, the better. I closed my eyes and tried to focus, breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth.

  In, out.

  In, out.

  Where was my lab? Focus woman, focus! And zap — the ripple of memories, like small electrical waves, run over the surface of my brain. Not unpleasant, but unsettling. Just try it if you don’t believe me.

  Fifth floor. Don’t know where exactly yet, but I think I need to be on the fifth floor. But am I sure? Am I sure when I know that memories are recreated whenever we remember them? Am I sure, or is it wishful thinking on my part? And even if I was sure, and I could make it up there, would I be able to get back together with the others and get airlifted out of here in time?

  Doubt it, seriously doubt it.

  Dear Diary: for vaccine data, I’ll have to do, unless they send back a platoon to get it. And something else, something at the fringes of my recollection about the sixth floor. What? What is it about the sixth floor? Good Lord —that cold, chilling breeze on my neck; what a glacial caress.

  They're here.

  ----------

  “Theo, help me over here. Grab that end. Block the doors,” Emma shouted, as she got a hold of one end of a large couch.

  Together they dragged it and shoved to front entrance door.

  “About time.”

  “Sorry to have kept you waiting, but great to see you too,” Emma replied and eyed the furniture in the lobby. “People, block the door. Ross, you too. Put down the damn camera.”

  In a rush, they piled on as much of the tables and furniture in sight, but the motion sensors on the doors keep opening and closing them.

  “We have enough furniture for a bonfire here but the damn door won’t stay closed.”

  “Wait.” Anjali stepped unsteadily on top of the couch, reached the switch at the top of the door frame, and locked the door. “There.”

  “Well, that works. Had never paid attention at that. Good job.” Emma then pointed at the large glass panes that made up most the lobby’s front wall. “Draw the blinds.”

  The blinds ran across the large windows and the long, flat, white slats were flipped shut, but they could only hear the impacts from the bodies trying to get in.

  Theo peeked through the slats. “They just don’t quit,” he said, from between chattering teeth. “They're still coming after us.”

  Emma nodded, “I don’t think they have great attention spans without a visual. Come on, people —let’s move in where they can’t see us.”

  With stiff, slow, and cautious steps, they
moved past the large entrance hall into a waiting area mostly invisible from the entrance, where they collapsed into the chairs.

  “Hey, this place still has electricity.” Theo pointed at lit aquarium and leaned in to take a closer look. “Yeah...Would be pretty, if it wasn’t for all the dead fishies. At least they don’t turn into zombie fishies.”