Zombie-dem

by James J. Stubbs

  Chapter 15

  If you can't beat them. Eat them.

  Logan couldn't help but approach it all with an air of caution. It was just so far out of place that nothing about it made any sense. There was, and it was hard not to just let it all out, a child like part of him that just wanted to ignore that niggling voice and dive into the fun of it. Truth be told, Lizzie was having trouble turning the same voice in her own head away from the urge, but his training and his skepticism was winning out.

  The Ferris wheel, which was mounted just beside the old library building that he remembered so well, was spinning around at a fairly consistent rate, stopping every now and again to let some people off and others on. The electric motors of the bumper cars were whirring and buzzing away, and the laughter of the children was infectious as each car slammed hard into the others. Of course there was a fence. And the snapping electrical hiss it gave off as they approached meant they could bet one hell of a shock on it being electrified.

  Logan strode around with his arms folded. No one had seen them yet, but to be fair, at no point was the electrified fence guarded. It was tempting to try and find a way to shut it down, but it seemed on first glance that the cables were wired right to the Ferris wheel by the side of the library.

  Thick conduits ran across the paved area from the fence and to the wheel at the very rear of the carnival. That must have been how it was powered. That was smart. Using the almost wasted kinetic energy of the motion of the wheel to power the fence. It was still tempting. But if they did something to that fence, they would be putting a lot of people at risk, friend or foe.

  'What do you make of it?' Lizzie was keeping pace with Logan, and even tried to mirror his skepticism. But it was difficult. Her inner child was fighting hard. It must have been the drive to just get away from it all. To be part of something nice and forget all of the carnage going on around them. She was fighting back a smile too.

  Logan was listening to the voices carried on the wind. Someone kept saying something over and over again on one of the loudspeakers. His ears were pricked and he was trying to hone in on the sound. It was saying something like "come see where it all started". It struck him as sick at first. To turn such a horrific sight, as it was in his memory, into something like this.

  But people did some dark things to make sense of the darkness around them. Maybe this was just their way of robbing the situation of its any and all power. There was a torn and tattered white bed sheet over the main door of the library. Above it was a haunted house sign.

  'I don't know.' Scanning the crowd from the shadows, all he could see were happy people. Nothing at all untoward about them. He knew better than to trust that most basic sight. But he didn't sense anything either. Having been as far as he had, and having done some of the things that he had, he just had developed that sense. For danger or for harm. He'd been wrong, of course, at some points in his life. But he still trusted that basic instinct.

  Lizzie interjected to avoid the silence and its awkwardness. 'While I'm sure there probably is something wrong, I still want to race you on those dodge cars.' She laughed, and felt a note of excitement burn inside of her. He smiled back. Because deep down that was all he wanted too.

  Even though it seemed and felt well and truly out of his character, he strode out of the darkness and started shouting at the nearest people he could see. The street lighting was working around the carnival. They must have hacked into the power grid of the town and must have been feeding it juice somehow.

  'Hey!' He shouted and started waving. 'Over here!' Someone stopped. It was a mother and small child. No older than five. She, pale and undernourished but pretty with vibrant pink hair, started waving back. She lifted her child onto her shoulder. And the young boy, holding onto his hot dog in one hand, started waving with the other. Lizzie just wept. Totally over come with the display of humanity and happiness.

  The woman, no older than about twenty herself, started making a circling gesture with her hand. She was pointing round to the right. That must have been the way in. Logan just nodded to her, and smiled too. If this was a trap, it was the most ornate one he had ever seen. Lizzie's stomach was bouncing with enthusiasm and nerves. Both elated at the spectacle and horrified at the setting.

  'Come on.' Logan grabbed her by the hand and led her away to the right. He stopped to see a skid mark on the tarmac. It had been made by a push bike and he remembered the route very well. It must have been left there by his borrowed bike. He half smiled. Perhaps there was an element of happy nostalgia there.

  By the side of the library, an old industrial revolution building, caked for the most part in the discoloring soot you often found in heavily industrialized areas, there was an entrance to the fair ground. It hummed and buzzed with any number of electrical volts surging through it.

  There was a single man there wearing white overalls and a mask. No other kind of quarantine though, which was a little surprising.

  'Any bites to declare?' He asked and held out a single hand. There was a wire gate over the entrance which must have been electrified too. He was stood behind it and must have felt very safe. They shook their heads in succession.

  'Okay, good.' He started pulling at the cables attached to the door but didn't take off the last crocodile clip just yet. 'Anything else to declare?' It took him a while to undo that last clip. His hands were shaking just a little. Maybe he was a little more worried at the sight of new faces than he was letting on...

  'Yeah.' Logan reached into his pocket with two fingers so not to startle the man.

  'Whatever, you have a gun, anything else?' Logan let go of the but of his handgun without taking it from the holster. It was at first a little surprising that the man didn't want to see it, but everyone in there must be carrying some kind of weapon anyway, so on second thought it probably didn't matter, and it wasn't that surprising after all.

  'Ah... I've got some whiskey and some smokes too, but no, that's it.' Logan spoke slowly but clearly, with that seductive gargle in the back of his throat. He was probably gauging the situation. Pulling every decibel in the man's voice apart, looking for a reason to be suspicious. The only problem was that he didn't find anything.

  'Well sir, we are in the business of fair trade.' He snapped off the last of the metal clips and pulled the door towards him. Logan didn't enter just yet. He at least wanted the man behind the fence to feel like he was in control. And the best way to do that was to just take things easy.

  'Fair trade?' He asked and stepped through once gestured to. The man shouted an assistant over. They both wore the same kind of white jumpsuit but this one was female.

  'No objections to a quick rub down?' The man spoke from behind a white protective mask so it sounded somewhat muffled but not to the point it was hard to hear him. Logan shook his head and assumed the star position. The man patted him down while the woman did the same to Lizzie. It was hard not to feel a little odd. In the state the world was in, it was hard to get close to anyone and trust them. He rubbed past the gun and didn't bat an eyelid. And then did the same to the other one on his other hip. He seemed to check the whisky bottle with a quick grasp but said nothing.

  'Okay.' The woman nodded and slunk back away behind the side of the library. Logan noted the metal railing where the bike he took had been tied down on. The bullet, from when he had shot the lock from the rail, had made a huge hole in the wall that was still there.

  'Fair trade. You can come in if you let us all share your whiskey. There's a bar inside the library, top floor, where you can get a drink. But we share everything here.' Logan reached inside his jacket and took the bottle. It might well have been his last one. But he passed it to the man either way. 'Any chance of a smoke?' He asked.

  'Sure.' Logan picked the packet from his side pocket and just handed them over. 'Take the pack. I guess I quit. No point starting again.' The man smiled. It was hard to tell with the mask on, but it certainly twitched with appreciation. 'Top floor?' Logan asked and p
ointed. Someone had scurried away with his whiskey. He wanted at least one more taste before turning the rest over.

  'Yes sir. Take the time to grab some food too. It's free.' He turned away to start clipping the defensive fence back together. Logan twisted his head and gestured for Lizzie to follow him.

  'This is so far beyond weird..' She took tight hold of his arm and followed him around the security grate and to the door of the library. It was almost a little hard for him to walk in. There was a little something of sacrilege to it, and to see it turned into some kind of exploitative fair ground attraction was very strange. The curtain started to twitch. But only lightly. So lightly that it might just have been the breeze. Except there was no breeze.

  It just swayed a little with each passing breath, then twitched, then thrashed violently. The scream came next, a hollow, dark and upsetting scream. But it wasn't from a zombie. A man, wearing a sheet over his face and body, fell out from behind the curtain flaying around his arms.

  Logan smiled, more through tragic humor than being impressed. Lizzie half jumped out of her skin and held a hand against her chest. She laughed with a happy scare while the man finally stopped to address them.

  'Haunted!' He shouted and pulled the sheet from his face. His face was painted in thick make up and face paint. He was supposed to look like a clown. Possibly a happy one, but distressed and agitated. He didn't break character for a moment. 'Run!' He shouted again. 'Can't you people hear the screaming?' He raised his arms into the air and ran around the library while howling at the top of his voice.

  'Even though I know that's just an act... that scared the hell out of me.' Lizzie laughed and steadied her breathing. Logan was still very reluctant to try and let go to have some fun.

  'Let's try to find out what this place is.' The loudspeaker started up again. It overpowered all of the distorted fair ground music and read out the same message. "Come and see where it all started." Logan was going to check out the bar. The man in the sheet with face paint running all down his face, stained and running with sweat and tears, hadn't bothered him at all.

  He still found himself taking a very deep breath before pulling the sheet back. The library was very much the same as he remembered it last. It even smelled the same. That same evil smell. If anything it was worse.

  The library come haunted house wasn't a ride or anything. It was like the set of a movie. Curiosity kept him wondering, and stopped him from taking the long walk up the marble steps to the top floor. He had to see it. It was like the scene in a play just kept playing over and over again.

  'Damn it!' Someone screamed from the corner of the first room. Logan took Lizzie, breathing hard and her heart beating, into the adjacent room. It was darkened, and stank to high heaven. The curse had come from someone with an overly exaggerated American accent. As fake as you can get. He was dressed in combat clothing, with more fake guns than he could carry easily. Tall, like Logan, but far too young to play the part convincingly enough.

  That was most surreal. Seeing someone try to play him, try to mirror him, as a twisted part of a fairground attraction. There were some other people there. Convincing enough. Playing the parts of the others that were present. They were acting out the video clip he had taken when he was last there. The one that recorded the first of the zombies turning.

  'Don't worry!' The man playing the part of James Logan screamed to the girl nearest him. 'I'll get you out of here. I promise!' Logan's heart sank at the over exaggerated play. The woman screamed as more stumbling actors came out from behind the bookcases all around them. They ignored Logan and Lizzie while stumbling towards the defenseless individuals in the center of the room. The actor playing Logan starred firing his fake guns and those playing the zombies dropped to the floor.

  The sound was encapsulating. The gunfire sounded so real. Bounced around all of the empty bookcases and cavernous walls. There must have been a hidden speaker somewhere. The zombies groaned and slammed into the marble ground with bone crunching impact.

  'Come on!' The actor shouted, took the youngest girl around the waist and ran out of the library, again, ignoring both the real James Logan and Lizzie too. It sent shivers running down his spine. Guilt and shame mixed with anger and a burning desire to just get back on his bike and make for the coast. Try to just keep running .

  'That isn't what happened.' He said softly while the last of the zombies stumbled past him. 'Not even close.' He sighed. Lizzie thought better of it than to ask. She didn't want to go digging up his troubles. He was already troubled enough with things that had happened since.

  But he told her anyway. 'I just didn't believe it.' He started and turned away. They started climbing the steps to the top floor but did so very slowly so he could talk. 'I shot someone, after they were dead, but not before she had bitten her own daughter. She died in hours and I sent the rest of them away. So I could study them like cold, dead, lab rats.' He said it as matter of fact. Because it was. That is what he did, and truth be told, he would do it again.

  'You were trying to solve something.' Lizzie protested for him. 'You were trying to put an end to it before it even began.' She just confirmed what he was thinking anyway. It just didn't make it right. It didn't make him feel any better. He smiled and nodded. These people must have been trying to recreate the video. The one Logan had taken in that very spot, when the zombie outbreak first started. There was something nice about it. In a twisted and horrific way. Preserving the memory of what happened was in theory a good idea. But it was a very odd way of doing it.

  The laughing grew louder as they climbed the steps. They followed it to a makeshift bar. It was, in reality, just a grand old oak table. It must have been a rather nice reading spot in another life. The roof over them was opened up to the light by large windows, and old books lined the sides of the walls. There were two seats free at the table so they took them. Everyone around them just said "hello" or tried to shake their hands. A friendly bunch if nothing else.

  'What is for you?' There was a man stood at the other side of the table. The large oak piece had been pushed right to the side of the room, up against a grand old bookcase. There were all kinds of drinks in the place of the books. But, despite appearances, it made for a very nice and friendly bar. It didn't take him long to eye up the whiskey. He pointed it out and just said:

  'Neat, please. Make it two.' Lizzie smiled back at the excessively tall and thin bar man. He wore a nice black shirt, which was as ironed as it could be, and as clean as anything she had seen in a long time. The music leaked in through the open windows. The same fairground tune, upbeat but crackling on the old speakers.

  'This is the one you brought?' He smiled and asked while he poured out a very generous serving into two separate glasses. Logan nodded and started drinking big gulps as soon as the glass was in his hand. 'What's its story?' The barman asked a little brashly. 'Everything has a story now.' Logan sighed, thought about lying, but just told him anyway.

  'I took it from a hotel in the Lakes Country last night, just before it was burned down by some murderous cannibals. Who eventually got what was coming to them.' He added hastily at the end while sucking air in through his teeth. The liquor was strong, maybe even overpowering. The man twisted his face, examined the whiskey while nodding in approval and placing it back on the shelf behind him.

  'So, how did you get here?' Again Logan thought of messing with him, telling him a lie that sounded less ridiculous than the truth, but finally thought better of it and just told him everything. 'What's your accent?' The barman added before Logan had the chance to start speaking.

  'Well... when D.C. fell, we managed to find our way to the nearest airport and flew a Hercules transport plane across the ocean in the dead of night. Clipped into another pane mid air and crashed onto some damn mountain, Scar fell I think, over in the Lakes Country. Stayed there a while in case our buddy, the pilot, came back. Since he didn't, and we were targeted by those cannibals, we made our way here on a bike we borrowed from som
eone staying at a nearby hotel.' Lizzie sniggered when he said that last part without even the smallest hint of irony or humor in his expression.

  'Wow...' The waiter grimaced while pouring more drinks for the other people around the table. They were all involved in their own conversations so hadn't noticed. 'So what brings you here?' He finished off by pouring more whiskey into their now empty glasses. Logan was usually a lot more cautious than this, but it was easy to let go when everything seemed, and really felt, just normal. He didn't think before he spoke.

  'Last time I was here... I saw signs for a port. Hoped I could use it to get on a ship. We're trying to make it to Russia for...' he trailed off as the barman's face lowered and his smile disappeared too. He had no idea how to finish that sentence anyway. What would he say? That he was trying to get to Russia, see if they were still working on the Zolpidem cure, and try to find a way to save the world? He'd never believe it.

  'Oh my... It's you isn't it.' His smile had completely failed him, and some of the others around the table had perked up. 'James Logan. General James Logan!' He threw the drink down his neck, while Lizzie looked on both bemused and confused at the spectacle. All of a sudden she was partying with the A-lists. Or so it felt.

  'Let's just relax...' Logan protested but all of a sudden everyone wanted to shake his hand and they were cheering. It all just felt wrong. What were they even cheering for? Some guy who happened to stumble through the area and find the first walking zombies was all he was, and he was no closer to finding an end to the story. Maybe it was because they had all had a few drinks. They were just happy, giddy in cases, and enjoyed meeting him in the flesh.

  'So what is this place?' He asked the barman a telling question so the conversation might settle the rest of them down. Lizzie was having a little too much of the liquor on display than she probably should have. It was so easy to fall into its spell. It helped you forget, helped you to forgive, even if it was only to forgive yourself, and it nursed you into a place of total relaxation at the same time.

  She was starting to realize why Jack used to drink so much. At least she was finally starting to think of him as past tense too. It was hard to let go. But she had to try.

  'Shouldn't you know?' The barman laughed a little, while taking a white dust cloth to polish some glasses. He really knew how to play the part. Logan smiled and shrugged his shoulders as if to say "tell me anyway". 'Well... this is where it all started. That part I guess you do know. We were on the road when we got your message, the video, the one you took here.' That must mean this man in particular was part of the carnival. Come to think of it, his accent didn't quite fit in with many of the others. 'Then, when everything happened, you know, the government and everything else just fell. We were lucky and we never got sick... so we just came here and set up our carnival once we cleared away all of the shufflers. Just trying to keep the world a little more happy if you get me.' It was all far too noble.

  It made Logan even more suspicious. Lizzie had gotten chatting to some of the locals, all of them were very happy to see her. Her looks no doubt had an awful lot to do with it. But none of them made a move on her. Since she was sat there with probably the scariest father figure a girl could have the embarrassment of having.

  'So what?' Logan took a final gulp of his whiskey. 'Just out of the kindness of your hearts?' Logan was pressing him. Trying him and digging as hard as he could. Slamming against the man's kindness just to see where it was going to break. But it didn't. The man offered him more to drink but he declined. It was best to keep at least most of a clear head. He just kept smiling, despite Logan's advances on him.

  'Look around you Logan.' He even addressed him by name. That made him feel a spot guilty considering Logan hadn't asked for his. He smiled even wider than before. 'There's no way anyone is going to make it on their own. Not even you.' He laughed, nodded to another customer, pulled open a bottle of beer and slid it down the table to him. 'If you ask me, sir, this is the best damn thing that ever happened to us.'

  'Us?' Logan pushed one last time. But it was hard to soften the sharp smile that was forming in the side of his own lips.

  'All of us.' He said rather simply. 'The whole damn world.' Logan chuckled out loud. Maybe there was part of him that disagreed, maybe not. Logan could never bring himself to be thankful for the death of so many countless people, but that didn't mean there was no truth in what the man was saying.

  'Share a drink with us?' Logan offered and pointed to the crate of beers he just spotted on the floor behind the table. He nodded and took three. Lizzie probably didn't need it, but took one anyway.

  'I was lucky, you know?' Logan had an ability. In the civilian world, the only one worth a damn anymore, it was the best thing to have. He could get anyone talking. But it made him one of the best and most dangerous intel gathering agents in the Air Force. Not that it mattered anymore. But he could just get people talking. 'I never lost anyone.' The barman took a sip of beer and made sure to keep an eye on his patrons at the same time.

  'I don't mean the end of the world was a good thing. Not all good anyway. But there were some damn rotten parts of it that needed to be brought down. We're all the same in the jaws of the devil, you know?' Logan smiled, gesturing him to continue. 'No one left to shaft us.' He sniggered. 'No one to control us... turn up on time, listen to the guy in charge, because he knows best. All that's gone now. And now the guy in charge is just one of us. Or one of them.' Logan, by this time, could not control the smile that he always kept so well hidden most of the time.

  'Never a more true word.' He raised his beer and drank to it. Lizzie didn't join them in the toast. How could she? How could he, for any of that matter? They were saluting the end of a world. The end of a civilization she had stood to protect for so long.

  'What's wrong with you?' Her drink made her that much more confrontational. 'You're drinkingto the end of everything humans have ever built, over so long.' She slowly raised her voice. 'How is this better?' She was almost shouting. Loud enough to start drawing some attention. Logan seemed to just want her to say her piece, not that it would even matter in the end, he probably had some half baked philosophy that made her view obscure enough to ignore. Knowing that didn't stop her.

  'I was a cop to keep everyone safe... not watch them die. I wanted to be a cop to keep things as they were, to protect that system!' She barked the last little bit. Logan didn't judge her, and even took her point, after all, he had been doing the same for the longest time.

  'So why did you join?' He asked her point blank. 'To save people? To help everyone? Like you said we should, no matter where we ended up on the face of the earth? What made the police any more than an extension of white power? Something to put between the desperate poor and the dazed rich, who were just afraid of losing all of that money and all of that power. What is it if nothing more than a way to keep the poor desperate and the rich happy? And me?' He almost laughed with self loathe.

  'What makes the Air Force, or the Army, anything more than an extension of manifest destiny? A way for America to stay powerful and extend its interests into other parts of the world. So one power can continue to grow at the expense of another... so we can be sent to be killed and to kill, because people all think a little different depending on where it is they come from? At least here, at the end of the world, all of that is gone. Now we're just people. We love each other and love our kids, and if we don't stick together then we die alone. So yeah... this is better. Reggie just took down a system that we were all too afraid to stand in the way of.'

  She hated him so much. But he was right. She drank a little more and half sunk into the table. Half annoyed and half castrated. But he was right. All she had ever done in the police force was enforce someone else's rules. Despite what those rules did to people. Now she got to help people. Not just because someone told her to, or said she was helping when really she wasn't, she could help on her own terms.

  'Reggie?' The barman finished his beer and placed the
bottle neatly in an empty crate. They may even have had a mini brewery to fill it back up. Who knew?

  'It's what a friend of mine called the zombies... before anyone had the nerve to call them that. Devil's rejects. That's what it was short for.' He finished the last drop of his beer and stood from the wooden chair he had been sat on for some time. It was nice for a while, but slowly started to ache his legs after a while.

  'Thanks for the drink.' He slid the empty bottle across the fairly wide but clean and heavily polished table. Lizzie stood too, did the same, but didn't speak. They left the room and the fresh air was almost overpowering by the time they made it back to the marble stairs.

  'What do you make of them?' Logan asked her gently. He was just trying to see if she was okay. There was an urge inside of her to ignore him. But what would it matter in the end?

  'This isn't better!' She said firmly and stood in the doorway so he couldn't leave without hearing her out. 'Nothing about this is good... except that you're right, and we do get to help people now.' He smiled. She was always plucky. And he never meant to upset her.

  Truth be told, he was really just projecting. All of what he had said about her being a cop, was really just how he felt about having been in the armed forces for so long. He almost hated his time there. Yes, he felt like he had done some good. He had tried to keep the most horrific diseases under the sun under some kind of control. But all he had really done at the WDC, was put them under America's control. He hadn't stopped them. If anything, he had weaponised them himself, and handed America a loaded gun. He nodded at her, and she took that to mean he was sorry. After all, it was the best she would get.

  'It is nice to be... you know? Free.' He said and spread out his arms to stretch. 'But you're right. It couldn't be worth the price people have paid for it in blood.' While his arms were spread she hugged him tight. He gasped but just let her do it. She was obviously in a silly mood, or just about getting there at least. While still buried in his chest she asked:

  'Can we go on the Ferris wheel now?' It was far too cute for him not to laugh.

  'Sure.' He pulled her away but held on tightly to her hand. The haunted house play was just about starting again in the library on the bottom floor. He really didn't want to see it again, so he half pulled her out of the door, nearly ripping the curtain out of the way as he did.

  The carnival was still in full swing. Who knows if it ever even stopped? There was no telling where these people were even from. Did they just disappear into the town on a night time, try to make it back to some kind of sheltered flat or did they just bunker down in the library, and start it all again the following night?

  It was like a scene from the Wild West. Everyone was certainly enjoying themselves and there really did seem to be no end to it at all. The laughter was infectious. Lizzie, admittedly, was a little bit drunk. As they walked out of the old library, hand in had, it hit her even more so. The fresh air just made her chuckle.

  Logan was still on guard. Reserved. Just like always. But he played along the best he could and led Lizzie past some games and towards the wheel. It must have been turning all night long. In fact, Logan could just about see dawn break on the horizon.

  The humming of the electric fence was comforting to hear but it was hard to differentiate it from all of the other sounds.

  A clown came running around the corner, screaming and flailing his arms around. He stopped dead in front of the pair. His makeup had ran and his face was streaky and pale. The large red lips that had been painted across his cheeks had sunk into his neck. Lizzie jumped with a start as the clown stopped dead, arms down by its side and motionless.

  Then he smiled. The broadest, most comical and full toothed smile they had even seen between them. And then it was gone. He raised a single finger to his lip, shuffled around them awkwardly and started running again, arms flailing like a whacky inflatable tube clown from back in the states. Lizzie breathed hard at the shock. But some children, laughing and playful, ran as fast as they could around the corner after him, armed with funny little water pistols made of brightly colored plastic.

  Logan laughed out loud. That was enough to make her start. She fell to her knees and chuckled while wiping a tear of joy away from her eyes.

  'Come on, let's see if we can get on this thing.' Logan arched his neck all the way to the top of the wheel. It grazed the very top of the buildings that ran along either side of the library. They were flame scarred, but it didn't seem to bother anyone. It must have been well maintained as there was no noise coming from it at all. It was painted in dazzling white, as if new, and was gliding around effortlessly.

  'Two please?' Lizzie asked, still giggling. The wheel house was manned by a young girl, no more than fifteen at first glance. She didn't seem best amused at her job, or at Lizzie having so much fun when she was stood guarding the big wheel all night.

  'Anything to trade?' She asked, barely even glancing them in the eyes. Her clothes were in tatters, but were clean enough. They really did have some kind of society running here. It might just be interesting enough to hang around for a while, see what made them tick. That was a nice passing thought. But, to Logan, that was all it was ever going to be. He needed to get to Russia. There was something driving him there. If this was nothing more than a fun interlude then so be it.

  'Yeah... hold on.' Logan shuffled around in his pockets to try to find something. He was just about to give up a combat knife, or maybe even offer her some ammo when Lizzie piped up.

  'I got this one.' She opened up her shirt and pushed back her belt. Rested against her bare skin was an open bottle of beer, still full, and it even managed to rise a smile on the young girls face. She passed it over and the girl took a long sip. Her hands were shaking a little. The bottle even clicked against her teeth a few times. She looked at the old man working the controls of the wheel. She must have been scared of getting caught.

  'Don't worry.' She smiled at Lizzie. 'My dad works the machine, I just take the trade.' Logan couldn't help but to be a little relieved. He thought it was one thing leaving a young teenager in charge, but leaving a drunk one in change was just a bad idea. Even though the beer was probably better for her than drinking water at the moment.

  It was easy to forget that every form of industry had long ago ground to a halt. There was no water in the taps, just in the rivers and in the streams. That stuff killed people in thousands once upon a time and there was no doubt that it would again if the world could never be returned to something near normal soon.

  They stepped forward. As luck had it, they didn't have to wait long at all for a ride. As one young couple, who couldn't get enough of each others lips, stepped off, they just jumped right on. The seats were like buckets. Hard and sturdy but you had to sit right back in them. The guy, probably the young drinker's father, pulled a polished metal rail over them and just said "enjoy" before stamping his foot on a button and the wheel was once again in motion.

  Lizzie let out a long sigh as the wheel rose up on its first cycle. It was liberating to let go. Liberating to just forget. The breeze was sharp but pleasant as the wheel left the safety of the small buildings that used to be the town's center. The dark sky was slowly turning from an inky black into a milky white blue at the horizon's furthest stretches. Logan slouched back and tried to let go. It was just too hard for him.

  'Shit!' It was Lizzie who rose the alarm. She had spotted movement in the streets beyond the carnival. Logan bolted upright and his eyes instinctively darted to the access gate to the carnival. So this isn't where they stopped all night after all. A very young family were just outside of the gate and the security guy was bolting the clips back to the metal mesh to complete the circuit again.

  'Hey!' Logan started shouting and waving his arms at the old man manning the wheel. But he didn't notice. The music was too loud. That freaky carnival music, broken and crackling with the quality and age of the speakers. 'Damn it!' he shouted and started rocking back and forth in his seat. T
he wheel was just about at the top of its cycle and his view of the old town center was near perfect in the newly breaking light.

  There were a lot of them. Not enough that he couldn't handle, but enough of them to rip that family apart. The parents were young. No older than late teens at best. The kids were around four, maybe six at a push. They were still snacking on their meaty treats and pink candy, completely unknowingly heading in to a disaster.

  The zombies were stumbling around. Half awake and half motivated. The music mustn't be bothering them too much because they didn't seem to be affected by it. But one or two of them started to stir as the laughs of the little girl started echoing around the corners of the streets.

  'I need to get off this thing!' He yelled as the wheel began its painfully slow descent. He sat back in the seat and started pushing as hard as he could at the locked metal bar, until it finally gave way with a grinding crash. The old man didn't even notice that. He might even have been asleep.

  'Stay here but raise the alarm... tell anyone you see!' Was just about all he had time to say to Lizzie. He waited impatiently for the wheel to drop as low as he dared and jumped the rest of the way over the side. He cleared all of the control boxes and whatever else was down there, and rolled along the slightly wet grass to a full stop.

  There had been a game he had noticed when walking towards the wheel. It was a boxing game where contestants had to hit a target as hard as they could. He needed something to fight the creatures with. Guns would make too much noise, waste too much ammo and were far too clumsy with kids involved.

  He darted to that game and knocked one guy clean off his feet. He grabbed the boxing gloves from the counter and darted with them. They fit just nicely around his firm hands. The material wasn't too thick either so he could hit hard with them.

  The people he took them from complained bitterly, swore at him, but didn't try to follow. He could clear the fence. Not in a single leap, but just about. The gloves would protect him from a shock more than likely. He took the chance that the voltage wouldn't be hard enough to cause a spark to jump to his skin.

  Just to be sure he quickly and messily tucked his sleeves in behind the edges of the gloves . With a growl and to much protesting from the crowds, who just didn't know what was going on around them, he jumped onto the fence. It bowed under his weight but stayed erect, which was impressive considering it was just a mesh of steel and cable ties. The kind of dirt basic pop up fence you would find at any festival or music gig.

  He swung his legs over the side and just dropped. The gloves were hot even to the touch, but he ignored it and sprinted after the family. He had, by this point, gathered a bit of an audience. He took off to the right. The town hall, a big Gothic and messy black building, was on the right with some newish hotel and bar on the left. That was the way the family had been heading and that was where the zombies were stumbling to meet them.

  A scream from the young girl and a panicked shout and cry for help from the young father confirmed they had finally met somewhere in the middle.

  'Get behind me!' Logan screamed. He was fast runner, even for his age and size, and had sprinted down the distance in next to no time. The zombies were fresh. Fresher than most he had seen in the last few days to weeks. They hadn't been turned too long. He counted quickly that there were twenty of them. They were all water logged and bloated, fat around the middle and half stripped of their clothes. Guessing was all he could do to try and think of where they had come from.

  With another growl and arched back shoulder, he slammed his fist into the first that stumbled into him. An almighty crack confirmed that he had broken its neck, but more of them were right on him before he could think. A swift kick saw one of them to its knees, while a solid push knocked over three more. He stamped on one head, booted another and swung another punch over his right shoulder to break another of them almost in half. The clashing of bones and sinew was sickening, but Logan just didn't give up. He was just blindly brawling.

  In his head he was just hoping that he was buying some time. That eventually someone would come along to help him, armed with a little more than thin gloves. He booted at another head and slipped backwards with some impressive footwork. He didn't dare glance over his shoulder in case he was rushed from one of them, so just kept focusing on his targets.

  He had done some boxing in his time and was slick as they came on his feet. One of them launched forward, a women this time, but his punch was only just miss timed. It came at him jaw first and he got his fist stuck as he broke through a thin line of molded teeth. With a scream from the creature and a growl of effort from him, he managed to snap the lower jaw clean off and slammed his fist back into the top of its head to finish the job.

  'Hold on, buddy, I'm coming!' The voice, even though it was one he didn't recognize, was comforting enough. The old man from the Ferris wheel limped into his peripheral vision. He couldn't have been a day of two under seventy. He swung a crowbar around his fingers and planted it into a zombie's skull.

  A single shot fired from a distance and the bullet sparked through the left eyeball of the third last one. It didn't come from a 9mm, it was far too loud, but it had to have been Lizzie. Drunk or not, she was still the best shot Logan knew. She must have borrowed a gun. A quick glance back saw her atop the duck card-shooting game with an air gun over her shoulder. That was one hell of a shot from one hell of a distance for a drunk girl. He couldn't help but smile, impressed.

  He lurched forward and slammed his fist into the messy gut of the second from last. It squelched through a thin layer of mutated and molded skin and became caked in black blood and brown guts. He pushed the creature away with his foot and stamped on the head once it tumbled to the floor. More men came running but the old man had since plunged the sharper end of the crowbar into the skull of the very last one.

  'These damn kids.' He grumbled in a pathetic old voice. He winked at Logan, who was frantically pulling the gloves away from his flesh. He threw them aside and just dropped to his knees to try and catch his breath. Saliva dripped from his teeth. He spat a few times just to dry out his mouth. Not to show weakness, he arched his back up to stand upright. He shook the old man's hand and started to walk back to a bemused crowd of around ten men and ten women.

  His desert combats. Golden handguns just a say poking from beneath his shirt and jacket. His long silver grey hair and chiseled jaw. It was hard to hide. They started to mumble, not that anyone dared approach him.

  The awkwardness was brought crashing to a halt as the young woman, the mother of the children he had saved, rushed him and held him as tight as she could. Her tears ran down his face as she pressed against him, sobbing the word "tank you" over and over again. It broke the silence, and halted the need for the "is it really you?" conversation that no one wanted. The ones who had gathered slowly dispersed, many of them patting Logan on the back as they left, filtering either back into the carnival or into the town itself.

  'I think we earned a drink.' The old man offered. Logan was so happy to hear it, that he didn't even notice the three men, dressed in blue overalls, start to pull the zombie corpses back towards the carnival.