Zombie-dem

by James J. Stubbs

  Chapter 6

  Zombies in Central Park

  'Jace, I'm scared.' He led the two of them back to the elevator shaft and eventually down to the street below. They can't have been in the building for more than an hour. Give or take a few minutes with the time it took them to climb the stairs. But the snow had covered most of the city by the looks of the street they stepped out into. Jace darted to the police car they had left behind. But he had forgotten completely about the man they had left in the back seat.

  As soon as Jace got close enough for him to smell, the car started to rock violently from side to side. There was a deep but unsettling scratchy howl coming from inside the car.

  'Wait!' Lizzie screamed to him as he reached for the snow clouded door handle. He was on instinct and might have been governed by fear a fair bit more than he might have admitted. He snapped back before even touching the ice cold metal. It was odd how much the two of them trusted one another. He didn't stop because he had seen the car shaking. He stopped because she told him to.

  'I think something's very wrong.'

  She had perked up a little since she had shot what might have been an innocent woman in the building behind them. Jace had consoled her with the fact that at the very least she had defended him. The woman was going for him, no doubt about it. Dead or not dead, or whatever point in between. Of that much the two of them could be sure.

  But neither of them could get that video out of their heads. The rocking motion of the car was upsetting enough but the man inside started growling and snarling at the window as they approached. Lizzie held up her palm to her mouth in both shock and in some sort of hope that she might stop feeling sick if she did. His pale lips and milky white eyes were disgusting enough but the blood was thick, blackened and everywhere.

  'We can't get back in the car.' She got as close as she dared while Jace took out his phone. First he took a photo of the wild man in the car, he then pulled her away and held her close to his shoulders. Partly for warmth against the blistering cold wind, part for the love he no doubt felt for her even though it was truly an unspoken one, but mostly for her to see the screen of his phone.

  The flakes of snow landed gently upon the screen and melted on impact. It distorted the freeze frame image a little but it was clear enough. He was scanning through the video which had been sent to him from a mysterious old General. The people in the video and the man in the car looked the same. They had the same cold and vacant stare. The same scent of death. The same absence of mind and absence of thought in their eyes.

  'They have to be the same.' Jace looked at every motion in her eyes. He wasn't looking for the tears of a women he loved so he could comfort her, but for the police officer he knew and trusted to see past what had happened and to start thinking like the damn good detective he knew she could be.

  'Yeah.' Her eyes focused, just like he knew they would, and she started thinking again. She started to see again, not in her mind's eye which was no doubt constantly replaying the moment she fired that shot that killed the old woman in the building behind them, but she started to see what was unfolding around them. 'But there has to be a cure, right?' She was starting to grasp at straws.

  She could believe that the video was real and she could agree that the infected people were a threat and she could even agree that she was right to have shot one of them. But she couldn't quite bring herself to believe that they were dead like the old man on the video had claimed.

  'We need to get back to the station, or back to one our places.' Jace started thinking, arms crossed, staring almost longingly into the distance and at the rotating and bouncing car in front of him. 'Somewhere safe, you know, somewhere familiar.' He started rotating his jaw around on the joint while rolling his tongue around his teeth, but without opening his mount. He did that when he was thinking.

  'But... we're cops, shouldn't we do something?' Most of the time people just talk. They just say things almost on a half baked instinct. But she thought carefully about how she phrased that. Her duty, and maybe even her nature as a person, demanded of her that she stay in the firing line. Stay and do something useful and try to help people. But then there was a deep, dark place inside of her, like in everyone, that was just plain afraid.

  If Jace had come out with some kind of argument that suggested they crawl into a cave and ride this out, then she would latch onto it and never argue. So part of what she had said had just been for the sake of saving face.

  'Half the damn city is infected with the flu. If this...' he pressed his hand bravely against the window of his police cruiser, only to have the man inside slam his teeth into the spot so hard a small crack began to appear in the glass. 'If this is the final stage of that virus, then we have a very big problem.' Lizzie didn't know how to reply.

  'What's the population of the city?' He suddenly got stern, almost preachy and hard with her. A lot of people took it for arrogance when he did that. He would sometimes even say that was true, but she knew him better than that. His arrogance was two things. Earned. And a shield. No matter what he or anyone else thought about it.

  'I... I don't know. A lot.'

  'Even this island?' She just shook her head from side to side slowly and suddenly she realized how very cold it had become. They were stuck in the biggest storm front in living memory.

  'I can't shoot another one.' She said softly in his ear as she grew closer to him for some feint warmth. She was scared that was what was coming. They would have to shoot this poor old man and drive back to police precinct in a blood soaked car... Both of them began to wish that they hadn't thrown away their jackets in the building. But the effort of climbing the stairs had been to much at the time.

  'You don't have to...' He suddenly started pulling at her arm and broke slowly into a jog. Before he jerked her away she just about caught the feint outline of a series of stumbling shadows slowly shuffling through the snow down the block. They had started running for the park without even thinking about it and had even made up a good distance before the resonating growls started echoing through the streets and vacant space around them.

  Despite hurtling at some speed over the already thick snow, they just about managed to stay on their feet and mount the surrounding wall ahead of the park. Jace kept on running even though Lizzie kept turning to look over her shoulder. At least the monsters weren't too fast. She had lost sight of them through the undulating layers of thick snow that rolled around on the wind before he finally stopped at the first tree line in the shelter of the park.

  She hadn't noticed the fact the two of them had been hand in hand the whole time until she had to let go to reach out for the cold trunk of the tree in front. It was almost frosty to the touch. It was odd how much the light had changed in just a short space of time and a short space of distance. But the park was dark. Very dark.

  New York was never dark. Nothing ever stops in New York. Business stays open all night, takeaways, bars, name it, its open. But this was as dead and as dark as any graveyard.

  'Maybe we can find somewhere in the park to hide out for a while.' He said while stroking the side of his gun.

  'We won't last long in this cold though...' Lizzie protested on instinct. She never meant to throw spanners into his plans. But that was often how they worked. They just poked holes into one another's theories until finally a workable solution emerged.

  Jace paused to catch both his breath and his bearings. They had dashed into the park on instinct and that alone. Like the apes inside of them needed to make for the trees at the first sign of trouble.

  The apartment complex had been just off 5th Avenue, just ahead of Museum Mile. That meant they had entered the park right by the Italian conservation gardens. A plan was starting to form in his head but it was ambitious at best and stupid at worst.

  They could stick with the park. It would be less well populated, no one had really ventured in since the virus hit, even the police had some areas in lockdown for that matter. His apartment in the
Kitchen. They could make it to Hell's Kitchen on the south side of the park if they were careful and if they watched every step.

  He rubbed his thick hair as fast and as hard as he could. There was an element of frustration in the gesture but Lizzie was right. The weather was their enemy now. He started to laugh. He could be a little unhinged like that. He could poke the humor out of an angry lion at times.

  'What's so funny.' Lizzie asked. She had finally snapped out of it. She knew, even through the pulsating and nauseating guilt, that nothing was right about all of this. She could put aside the fact she might have killed someone and switch the police mind inside of her back on.

  'Nothing.' He chuckled and put his hands on his hips. They were already turning blue in the bitter cold. At least the thin line of trees sheltered them a little bit from the harsh winds. Now it was just a dull penetrating cold rather than a sharp piercing one. 'I was just about to run this plan past you.' He smiled as the laughter in his chest turned to almost despair in his eyes. 'You know, how you run it through your head first just to see if it makes sense, before you get it out there?'

  'Yeah,' she smiled sweetly at him, squared up to him and placed her forehead on his shoulder. 'What did you stumble on this time?' She could sense there was something eating at him. It was a joke but one in his head only. It wouldn't be funny, but she would laugh anyway. At least it would be funny that he thought it was funny.

  'I was just about to say how we could make it through the park, navigate the reservoir, the lake and boathouse and then the lawn, and make it to Hell's Kitchen where we could bunker down in my place and wait this out.' He smiled again and rolled his shoulder to get her to look him in the eyes. She reluctantly moved her head and met his gaze.

  'What's wrong with that? It sounds like we actually could do it. We might be safer in the park than we would be out in the streets. If this is really what's happening, then like you said, the city has too many people in it to evade them all...'

  'First of all... I love that you like my plan. Bonus points for me. But no, that's not the funny part...'

  'Okay, let's have it.' She couldn't help but laugh at the build up. She knew it wasn't going to be funny but she still admired his ways.

  'I was about to say that we could avoid them in the park... But then I thought, what do we call them?' He stopped laughing and joking about it when the guilt hit him. They were people he was talking about after all. Dead people, if that General on the video was right, but people after all. The two of them fell silent.

  The reality was the hard part to deal with. In their line of work, they had to go to some strange places in their minds just to deal with some of the things that they saw. It was almost like they had to de-humanize things just to be able to deal with them. If the reality ever hit them, like it tried to some times, they just had to run away from it.

  Jace always figured one day he would buy a motorbike, the BMW Touring bike he always wanted, and ride till there was no more road. He would be able to think through everything he had seen and everything he had done in his time as a cop and just work through it all. But that wasn't going to happen just yet. So it was just time to keep running.

  De-humanizing was all he knew. And in times of crisis such as this, it's probably always best to stick what to you know. 'Robots.' He started to laugh again, but only at his own ironic carelessness. 'Let's just call them Robots.' She smiled both nervously and sweetly at him and rubbed a tear away. She leaned in and hugged him tight.

  She knew him. Better than anyone. A lot of people would have hated him for a comment like that. That's why some people just didn't get him, thought he was arrogant or lofty. But it was just his shield. This way, it could all be a game. And then they were just players and no one was in danger. It was the engine that made him tick. No one could take it away from him and it had gotten so far that Lizzie hated anyone who tried.