by Luke Duffy
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.
“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, stea
dying 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.”
She turned her head and tried to cough into her arm. Tobias was glad she turned her head away from him, even if it meant she was coughing on others. And had he heard her say she was bitten?
His mind flashed back to the man who had his throat ripped out. It probably wasn’t as bad as it seemed. He did get back up. Same with Lucas. But then, why did he attack someone else? Shock. He must have been in shock and thought he had to defend himself or something. That was probably it. Yeah, that was it.
While Tobias tried to convince himself that nothing was as bad as it seemed, the girl next to him dropped to the ground. Thankfully, the people behind her noticed and managed to stop before they trampled her.
“Hey!” Tobias didn’t dare bend down. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to stand back up even without the camera on his shoulder. “Hey, come on, you have to get up!”
The people behind the girl nudged her with their feet, trying to coax a response from her. Her body suddenly jerked just like the guard’s, and just like Lucas’s.
Somehow, Tobias’s body still had adrenaline to pour into his system, which it unloaded by the dump truck. His eyes widened again and he struggled desperately to get through the crowd, but he couldn’t get anywhere. There was literally a wall of flesh and clothing.
He looked back down over his shoulder and watched as the girl lifted her head. She lashed out and grabbed hold of the nearest leg. Her teeth sank deep into the bare calf. Screams of pain ripped out of the victim while more screams of terror and shock escaped those who witnessed it. One of the loudest was Tobias’s own, but he was completely deaf to it all.
Before he knew it, he had grabbed his bag off his back and shoved his camera into it along with any slack from the wires. A brief thought about just dropping it crossed his mind, but because of the wires attaching to the battery system, harnessed around his waist to the camera, he wouldn’t be able to unhook himself quickly. He slung the bag over his shoulder once more, its earlier weight now unfelt. Tobias then grabbed the shoulders of the nearest person and pulled. The combined weight of his body and his camera nearly crushed the man as he climbed on top of him. He then proceeded to crawl across the heads and shoulders of everyone, not caring about, or even hearing, the cries of protest and pain from those beneath him.
Although he never stopped moving forward over the mass of people, he did take a look around. Behind him, a ring was slowly pushing outward from where the sick girl had fallen. Even farther back, a much larger ring had formed where he had left Lucas. They reminded him of pebbles being dropped in a pond, the ripples all headed outward. It looked like even more people were attacking others, some in the strange biting manner of the first attackers. Others fought with each other as they tried to get away. There were other places in the crowd where these pockets, the ripples, were forming. Screams were now the predominant sound. They were near constant. What had started out as screams of joy was now ending as screams of terror.
Tobias watched as one man dropped beneath the flood of people. He had been pushed over. No one stopped for him as they had for that girl. His head never popped back up. Tobias wasn’t the only one crawling across flesh and hair. Several other people had the same idea, responding to the same drive: the need to flee.
The crowd had become bottlenecked at the gates, but many had stopped bothering with them. Several concertgoers were climbing up and over the stone walls to get out. Tobias figured they had the right idea, especially because he was closer to the wall than he was to the gates. Also, with the height he had already gained from his position on top of others, he was halfway up the bricks before he even reached them.
When he finally did reach the wall, he hauled himself up onto its large, flat, stone top. Once balanced up there, he sat for a moment, trying to catch his breath. How much time had passed since Lucas Jonas first noticed the disturbance, anyway? Lucas...
Tobias pulled his camera back out of its bag. He was amazed that there wasn’t a single scratch on it. It was also still running, still filming. Tobias hadn’t bothered to stop it at any point. He began using it to scan the crowds, trying to find Mr. Jonas or Bruce.
Lucas Jonas was actually easier to find. He was still at the edge of the largest growing space, still tearing into people with his hands and teeth. What made it especially eerie was that he could still hear the attacks coming through the headphones. He
quickly unplugged them. The umbrella appeared to be gone. It had been replaced by a gaping hole straight through his torso. It was so absurd, it seemed unreal. Tobias suddenly felt very sick. He leaned over and puked on the sidewalk that ran along the outside of the wall. His revulsion, making him want to turn away, was the only thing that saved the crowd on the other side from his bile.
What was going on? Tobias couldn’t understand what was happening. His head spun and he had to grab hold of the wall to keep from falling off. He took several deep breaths, trying to clear his head. Maybe he’d think about things later, when he wasn’t sitting on the park wall.
He looked up and finally noticed what was happening outside the park. The flood of people was dispersing in all directions. Several people had gotten to their cars and had tried to drive away, but in their haste, had caused accidents and traffic jams. People ran in all directions, panicked. Police, firefighters, and paramedics were all over the place, trying to help and to create order. So far, they weren’t succeeding. Some people even seemed to be looting, as if they were at a riot.
The attacks were happening outside the park as well.
* * *
Tobias decided he needed to get out of there, find somewhere safe, maybe get home if he could. Although he didn’t know how safe his tiny and empty apartment would be, it seemed like a better option than staying where he was.
He looked around from his high position on the wall and spotted all the media vans, including the van he had come in. Too bad they were parked several blocks away and across the park. Tobias used his camera to see if anyone he knew was there. Several reporters and other cameramen stood on top of the vans, filming the surrounding chaos. Tobias thought he might have recognized one of the cameramen, but it was hard to tell. Cameras had a habit of blocking the faces of those who held them.
As Tobias watched, an arm reached up and grabbed one of the reporters. He was pulled off the van and Tobias could no longer see him from his vantage point. His imagination did a good enough job to fill in that part, though. The cameramen over there all turned and filmed the reporter being attacked. No one tried to help.
