White Flag Of The Dead (Book 8): The Zombie Wars (The Enemy Within)

by Joseph Talluto

  “You want everything filmed from one spot?”

  “Have you never seen my show? Of course you haven’t, you’re just an ingrate. My stuff is way beyond you.” Lucas waved Tobias off with a flip of his wrist and started looking around.

  Tobias was fairly certain that Lucas didn’t know what ‘ingrate’ meant, but that he was using it to insult him. He took another deep, steadying breath, and closed his eyes. “You realize, if we film here, we’ll a) be in the way, and b) be so close to the speakers, nothing you say will be heard over the music.”

  “What?” The speakers, sitting only a few paces away, suddenly came to Lucas’s attention.

  This was why Tobias hated filming at concerts. Especially the charity kind. The music caused problems for the sound, and the sight of the cameras caused the crowds to flip out more than usual. He would have loved to have been one of the other guys, the ones who just sat at the stationary cameras. They didn’t have to follow an idjit around, just point and shoot at what looked interesting. At least the money for this was good.

  “All right, we’ll free-roam it then,” Lucas said this like he was making some great sacrifice. “Get your camera out.”

  After unzipping his bag, Tobias lifted out the heavy piece of equipment. He placed it on the ground by his feet and began hooking everything up. He even had a waist and leg harness, like rock climbers used, to help him carry the large battery and various other bits and bobs. While he strapped this on, he watched Mr. Jonas out of the corner of his eye. The guy was ogling himself in a small mirror and picking at his no-doubt expensive teeth.

  “Here, can you put this on yourself?” Tobias held out a microphone attached to a battery pack that clipped onto the back of the user’s belt.

  Lucas once again rolled his eyes as he took it.

  Tobias finished setting up his own equipment, trying not to grind his teeth, and lifted the camera up onto his shoulder. He slung his now almost empty bag across his back. The last time he had let a camera bag out of his sight at one of these things, it disappeared forever.

  Once he was ready, they did a sound check. Tobias couldn’t hear anything Mr. Jonas said through the noise-cancelling headphones he wore. Apparently, Mr. Jonas had attached the microphone correctly, but had forgotten to turn it on. Somehow, Tobias got blamed for that.

  “All right, I want you to film everything from here on out, you got it? The editors can splice it together later.” Lucas looked down at himself and straightened his clothes once more. He tried to look like a reporter and a rocker at the same time. Tobias thought he just looked like a douchebag, but he might have been somewhat biased.

  Tobias was a jeans and T-shirt kind of guy. Currently, though, he wore beige cargoes. He had learned early on that the large pockets were very handy for work. He had never been one to care about his appearance too much and let his light, sandy hair grow out like a mop on his head. He had been told he sometimes reminded people of a surfer bum with his laid-back appearance, especially when he became tanned during the summer. He always thought he looked like a really tall teenager with softer features than the rest of the guys around him. It did seem to help him get girls though. They felt safe around him with his disarming looks.

  After counting down from five with his fingers, Tobias pressed the record button. Instantly, Lucas Jonas’s TV persona took over. Tobias never knew what to call it, but he had seen it hundreds of times. The people on the TV would shift from one personality to another as soon as a running camera was on them. The shift was so great with Mr. Jonas that it made him look like an entirely different person. Now Tobias could understand how this guy got to be so popular. He seemed a lot more approachable this way.

  Soon Tobias switched over into his own altered state; what he and his buddies called film mode. He trailed Mr. Jonas wherever he went and kept his mouth shut. If someone Mr. Jonas was interviewing asked Tobias a question, Lucas would answer for him, or Tobias would give a slight shake or nod of the camera if it were a yes or no question. His boss had told him that Mr. Jonas’s viewers liked that.

  Otherwise, Tobias was completely absent-minded. He went somewhere else in his head. Currently, it was to next Friday. He and the guys, which now probably included Bruce, were going to The Foxers. It was a favourite bar of theirs that they visited often. Tobias was looking forward to this visit more than normal, because Katie would probably be coming. One of Tobias’s friends had just started dating this chick who had a best friend, Katie, who came to almost all of the group gatherings. Katie was Tobias’s current dream girl. His dream girl changed often. This one was extremely smart and Tobias wasn’t used to girls who were smarter than he was. He was enjoying the difference, mostly because the last girl he dated was a complete airhead.

  * * *

  Tobias Mackenzie was filming a crowd reacting to the on-stage performer when Lucas started snapping his fingers in front of the lens. Tobias turned to face him, frowning slightly at the intrusion. There was no one around for Lucas to be interviewing.

  “What?” Despite his own small microphone that went straight to an earpiece Lucas had on, Tobias still had to shout to be heard over the music. Even with his large headphones on, the music was insanely loud.

  “What do you think is going on over there?” Lucas spoke into his own microphone and pointed across the sea of fans.

  Tobias’s eyes followed Lucas’s arm to see what he had seen. On the other side of the crowd, a pocket of people was moving at odds to the rest. The general populace was surging toward the stage, trying to reach its idols, but over on the far side, people seemed to be moving out in all directions, away from a central point.

  “I don’t know.” Tobias zoomed in with his camera for a better look. The distance was still too far to make out perfect detail, but he made out enough. He made out terrified faces trying to run from something in the centre of the ring.

  “What is it?” Lucas shook his arm.

  “I can’t tell, but they’re fleeing from something.” He lowered his camera. “It’s probably just a stink bomb or something.”

  “Or something. Let me see. Open that little viewer.” Lucas’s manicured hands reached for the camera.

  Tobias pulled it away from him though. He didn’t want him touching any of the expensive equipment. He flipped open the LCD view finder and turned it so that Lucas could see. The small screen filled with the crowd as Tobias pointed the camera back at the people. Some of them were now literally trying to climb over others to get away from whatever it was.

  “That is definitely something!” Lucas grinned with enthusiasm. He showed all his teeth, like a crocodile.

  Tobias didn’t hide his disgust when he looked at him. Terrified people should please no one.

  “Come on, Toby, we’re getting over there.” Lucas slapped Tobias’s arm, ignoring his look.

  “Why do you want to do that?”

  “What are you, daft? To report on it obviously!” Lucas started to go around the back of the stage, swiftly stepping over and around the wires and scaffolding.

  As Tobias tagged after him, he tried to convince Lucas not to go. “There are probably other cameras already filming it. You can do a voiceover or something later.”

  “Lucas Jonas does not do voiceovers. It’s on-scene or nothing.” Lucas wove around a particularly dense clutter of cables and equipment.

  Carrying the camera made manoeuvring far more difficult for Tobias. It didn’t take long for him to fall behind.

  “Shit,” Tobias grumbled to himself as he got snared on cable. Damned overachievers were always getting into shit they should keep their noses out of. That in itself, wasn’t so bad, but did this one have to drag Tobias with him?

  He finally made it to the security point and found Bruce, who was always easy to spot. Not only was he one of the few people Tobias knew who was taller than he was, but he was also two to three times as thick. Today, he particularly stood out due to his crisp, white T-shirt contrasting starkly with his ultra dark skin.r />
  “Hey, did you see that annoying jerk I was following earlier?” Tobias pulled off his headphones. Thankfully, over here, the sound of the concert was somewhat dampened, and they could hear one another. Still, the sudden assault of sound pounded into Tobias’s head like a hammer. He really hated concerts.

  “Yeah, he went out that way.” Bruce pointed out into the crowd.

  “I think there’s something going on out there. Something bad.” Tobias didn’t want to go back out into the mob.

  “Out in the crowd?” The big security guard didn’t wait for an answer. He climbed up on a cement barrier holding onto the edge of the fence for balance. After a quick look, he turned to another security guard, “Hey, Jake, hand me the binocs.”

  The other guard, equally thick but not as tall, grabbed a pair of binoculars off a table and handed them up to Bruce.

  “What do you see?” Tobias stood on his tiptoes, but he couldn’t see very far over the heads of the crowd.

  “Give me a moment.” Bruce was fiddling with the binoculars, trying to focus them. “Shit, I see blood. It’s bad.” He pulled a walkie-talkie off his belt and spoke quickly into it.

  Tobias couldn’t hear what he said over the music.

  “I take it your friend is heading over there hoping for a story?” The walkie-talkie was put away and Bruce hopped down next to Tobias.

  Tobias nodded, although he would never use the term ‘friend’ to describe Mr. Jonas. Not even sarcastically.

  “Come on, you’re going to help me get that idiot.” Bruce moved out through the gap in the fences.

  “But...” Tobias really didn’t want to go. This feeling was even worse than it usually was. Something in his gut just told him it was a bad idea.

  “Stay close behind me.” Bruce reached back and pulled Tobias after him.

  As they reached the crowd, Bruce let go of Tobias, but Tobias reluctantly continued to follow after him. The big security guard was a lot easier to follow through the crowd than Lucas had been. Bruce’s huge size and commanding voice got people to move out of the way quickly. His broad shoulders made a large enough path for Tobias to follow with his camera easily. Still, that unsettling feeling sank deeper and deeper into Tobias’s gut, the further into the crowd they got. When he used his free hand to grab hold of the back of Bruce’s shirt, he saw that his own skin appeared to be getting quite pale, losing its nice summer tan.

  When Tobias was very young, he had been separated from his parents at a theme park. He spent hours wandering around, lost in the crowd. All he could see was a strange forest of legs everywhere he went. Eventually, someone noticed and brought him to the lost and found where his parents, all weepy eyed, picked him up. He figured that was where his dislike of crowds had come from. He always felt some anxiety in them, but he learned to deal with it. It was part of his life.

  Right now though, in this crowd, his heart was hammering harder than the bass line the band on stage was pounding out. He kept looking up at the clear, blue sky, something usually guaranteed to calm him. Not in this mob, though. Something just wasn’t right; something he couldn’t name.

  He noticed that Bruce’s yelling had increased in volume, and that they had slowed their progress considerably. The people around them were all trying to head in the other way. When they first began to wade through the crowd, people were generally calm, albeit somewhat annoyed, but their expressions changed as Bruce and Tobias pushed deeper.

  Bruce completely stopped moving forward and created a break in the flood of people with his body. They moved around him like a river around a boulder. The faces of the people slowly changed from a bit scared, to frightened, and finally to straight-out terrified. It wasn’t until Tobias saw the first people bleeding that he realized he was talking.

  “Please, Bruce, we have to go, we have to leave. Come on, Bruce, let’s get out of here. Let’s go back to the stage.” His grip on Bruce’s shirt tightened. He even tugged it slightly like a small child would tug on a parent’s hand or pants leg.

  The music suddenly cut off, allowing the sounds of screams to be heard. It looked like someone in charge finally realized something was going on.

  The press of people lightened dramatically.

  “Jesus Christ,” Bruce mumbled just loud enough for Tobias to hear.

  He carefully moved out from behind Bruce now that there was an opening. In front of them, a clearing had formed. Lying in the middle of it, amongst the dropped trash, were people writhing in pain from bloody wounds. A few looked either unconscious or possibly even dead. At least one was dead. A man had an umbrella speared into his ribs. Tobias couldn’t help but think that that was such an odd thing to die from: death by umbrella.

  Across the clearing, several security guards and a handful of police officers were fighting with a man who was completely unresponsive to their shouts and the occasional punch they threw. As Tobias and Bruce watched, the combative man bit into one guard’s bare arm and tore a sizeable chunk out of it. The two of them could only watch in shock and horror.

  Tobias slowly brought his camera to his eye. Looking through the viewfinder detached him from the scene, as if it was already on TV. A police officer pulled out a Taser and zapped the violent man. The man twitched slightly but didn’t stop. The Taser did virtually nothing. He grabbed the officer who had the Taser and instead of biting his arm, he went for his face. Aw hell, he tore his throat out!

  There was movement in the bottom of Tobias’s view. He panned down to the dead man. Only he couldn’t be dead, because he was moving. Tobias didn’t know how; the umbrella was right through where his lung should be, but he was beginning to sit up.

  Further horror dawned on Tobias as he realized he knew the man. It was Lucas Jonas.

  Lucas somehow managed to sit upright, and then stand, the umbrella sticking out of him like some absurdly large and garish corsage. He shuffled in a slow circle, a wheeze escaping him. He seemed rather disoriented, and understandably so. He then spotted Bruce and Tobias and began shambling over.

  “Bruce...” Tobias whispered, not able to get his voice out. “Bruce...” he couldn’t think of what else to say.

  Lucas continued shambling towards them, his microphone dragging along the ground behind him, still attached to his waist. Tobias could hear the rumbling sound of its drag coming out of the headphones around his neck. As Lucas reached his hands out toward Bruce, Bruce stepped forward to help him.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Bruce assured Lucas, “we’ll get you a doctor; you’re going to be all right. Everything is going to be all right.”

  Bruce grabbed Lucas’s arms, steadying him. Lucas sagged, allowing the large man to take his weight.

  Then he bit into Bruce’s arm.

  Bruce screamed and shoved Lucas back on instinct. He fell, the umbrella getting pushed into him slightly further, but he immediately started getting back up.

  “Did you see that? Fucker just bit me!” Bruce turned to Tobias. “Put the goddamn camera down, man.” He grabbed the lens with one large hand and shoved down.

  Tobias was suddenly jolted back into reality. Lucas really did have an umbrella sticking out of his chest, and he really did just bite Bruce. Thinking of bites...

  He looked across the clearing to where the guards and police were still fighting with the first attacker. The officer with his throat ripped out lay on the ground, his eyes glazed over, and blood no longer pumping out of his wound. But then his body jerked, and like Lucas, he began to move, to get up.

  “Bruce, let’s get out of here.” Tobias started backing away, his eyes so wide they might fall out of his head. “Let’s leave now!”

  Lucas Jonas scanned the people around him. Many of them had stopped fleeing once they had gotten to a safe distance and were now watching. Most were taking pictures or videos, while others texted frantically on their sophisticated cell phones; some even used their cells as phones and actually talked to people. Like witnessing a car crash, it was hard to look away. Then Lucas
started running at them, full speed. When the people turned to flee, they didn’t get far before slamming into the backs of the rest of the crowd. Lucas grabbed the first person he came to and started attacking him viciously, violently. He was tearing him to pieces.

  Tobias backed up until he bumped into the wall of people at his own back. Bruce didn’t take long to join him.

  “You’re right, let’s get the hell out of here.” The big man shoved his way into the wall of people more forcefully than before. He practically threw one man right off his feet.

  Tobias looked back at the carnage one last time and then followed after Bruce. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only one who decided to do this. Several people tried to get in behind Bruce’s large frame, using him as a human plow. Tobias was jostled around as he tried to keep pace. He reached for Bruce’s shirt but fell short, his fingers lightly brushing the cotton fabric. More and more people got between him and his friend. Panic began to rise as Bruce pulled away, getting farther and farther from Tobias.

  “Bruce!” He pushed harder but the crowd was too dense. He wasn’t as strong as his friend was. “Bruce!” But Bruce had already gotten too far away.

  Tobias took deep, steadying breaths. The crowd was flowing out of the park gates. He’d get out by just going with the flow. There was no rush. Just go with the flow.

  He got shoved shoulder to shoulder with some punk rocker chick. He glanced over at her and saw that she looked ill. That was another reason to hate crowds, especially ones this big. There was always a bunch of sick people dispersed throughout them, infecting everyone else. And, of course, Tobias would end up right next to one.

  After a moment, he took a longer look at the girl. She was really pale, and sweating. Tobias was pretty sweaty himself from the stress, the compressed body heat, and the blazing sun, but this girl was dripping buckets. Her eyes were sunken and she leaned heavily on the people in front of her.

  He finally decided to say something. “Hey, are you all right?”

  The girl turned her head to face him. “I'm fine,” her voice came out weak. If Tobias hadn’t been jammed right up next to her, he probably wouldn’t have heard her. “Some psycho bit me a few days ago. I guess the hospital didn’t disinfect it properly. Those quacks.”