by Brown, TW
“This is the part I couldn’t practice much, sir.”
“You’re doing fine, Reynolds. We’re in no hurry as long as we have fuel. By the way...how are we situated on that resource?” Commander Bryant asked.
“Looks to be about three-quarters full, sir,” Reynolds reported.
“Very well then, you just do what you have to do to keep us above the trees and buildings.”
A tap on his shoulder caused the commander to jump. He didn’t realize until then just how tense he really was. He turned to find Madeline Bosley leaning between the seats. She was fitting a headset on.
“Look down.” Her voice was grim.
Both Rick and the commander glanced out their windows. Every orifice on the ground floor was clogged with zombies trying to force their way in. It seemed unlikely, just by the sheer volume pouring into the building that the makeshift barricades of equipment and furniture had done much, if anything, to slow them down.
The helicopter suddenly lurched and jerked violently. Its tail swung to the left. An experienced pilot would have easily corrected. Rick Reynolds was not an experienced pilot.
He yanked back and left on the stick violently. Alarms sounded over the screams as the helo jinked around. One over-correction led to the next, and soon the pitching and rolling helicopter was spiraling towards the ground. Hundreds of pairs of arms reached up as if they could pluck the doomed metal bird from the sky.
At some point, the rotor clipped the corner of the hospital. Pieces of blade tore into the oblivious crowd below as the machine dropped to the ground on its side in a horrendous crash.
The occupants were helpless and, in their state of dazed shock, they offered little resistance as arms reached in, tearing away at clothes and skin. Madeline Bosley felt something grasp her leg, pulling her. She looked down to see what, to her blurred vision, looked like a wall of groping hands and arms. The side hatch was simply gone. All around her, those who had not been knocked unconscious were screaming. To her left, she saw Commander Bryant fighting off the hands that reached through the broken glass while struggling with his safety harness. Rick was dangling from his seat, not moving. Blood dripped from his face, splattering on the commander.
As her senses returned, Madeline began to kick desperately to free herself. Zombies began forcing themselves into the helicopter through the open hatchway. She felt hands, cold and slimy feeling, grabbing her everywhere. Something hot, wet, and sticky splashed her.
Blood.
Somebody beside her began kicking even more violently. The scream changed from fear to indescribable agony. The commander’s kicking legs vanished through his broken window. His screams were no different or less horrifying than those of the person beside her. For some reason, Madeline expected an officer of the United States Navy to die with more dignity.
Teeth dug in, hands tore, and Madeline’s screams joined the others. She felt pain overwhelm her senses, and she wished for death as she watched two of her fingers disappear into the hungry mouth of the zombie that wore the tattered remnants of an enlisted man’s dress blues.
She wished for an explosion. In the movies, things blew up when they crashed. Her now broken mind focused on that idea as the world began to fade. Her last sights were that of her own insides being ripped from a growing hole in her body.
Moments later, had anybody in the helicopter still been alive, they would have heard the screams begin inside the hospital.
***
“Tracy?” Juan walked into the dark room that once served as the county jail’s control center. “Travis wants everybody to meet in The Square.”
The Square once acted as a recreational yard. That was a stretch. All it really was was a sixty-by-eighty-foot box with thirty-foot high walls and no roof.
He smelled, then heard, and then saw what was keeping Tracy Miller so long. Karen Duffy gripped the waist-high counter with both hands; her faded, blue, state-issued sweatpants were bunched around her ankles. She was leaning forward enough for Tracy to be slamming in and out from behind. There was just enough light for one to see the bored look on her face and the scrunched up concentration on Tracy’s.
“Jesus tits, Juan!” The sound of total frustration made Tracy’s already nasal voice sound even whinier if that were possible.
Juan smiled.
“Hey, he wants everybody. Now.”
Tracy made gurgling sounds and shuddered. He took a step back, yanking his pants up. He smacked the freakishly tall, skinny blonde on her ass, “You can go, babe. We’ll do this again real soon.”
“Can’t wait.” Her tone said otherwise.
The two men left the woman pulling up her sweats as they headed up the central corridor. Karen Duffy was one of nine unfortunate women that had been in H-block lockup in the county jail. Or rather, she was one of nine remaining. Three died the first night Travis Reynolds’ gang stormed and took over the facility.
Juan still had nightmares about that first night. The few officers who stayed to man the facility died either in the initial hit, or moments later as they foolishly rushed to aid their comrades. Seeing their friends and co-workers die on the video monitors caused them to act recklessly. Storming out with no real idea of the threat, they had been stunned by a pair of flash grenades when they threw open the steel door that led to the heart of the jail and its several cellblocks.
Each block held several two-man cells of varying capacity. The first thing had been to find and release Gary Messer. It was then that things got nasty.
Juan and Tracy walked through the open door to The Square. Everybody was sitting on the concrete ground except for Travis and Gary who stood atop a big metal desk that had been brought out solely to act as a makeshift stage.
If Travis was a little off center, Gary was certifiably insane. Most of his body was scrawled on with prison tattoos that glorified “White Power,” “SS,” “100% Wood,” and then the usual skulls, demons, and naked ladies. His shaved head was etched with an enormous Iron Cross.
Sitting naked at the feet of those two were the four women they had chosen. Each bore a score of bruises from their time in service to the self-proclaimed rulers of this miniature kingdom. Their blank, vacant expression showed little more life than you found on the ever-growing number of undead gathered outside the brick walls of this jail empire.
“As promised,” Travis announced, “we have finished going through all the files. We gave you freaks a chance to admit your crime. Even though you don’t deserve it, we promised a quick death of a bullet to the head.”
Freaks is prison and jail slang for a sex offender. Considering how things had gone that first night, Juan knew that things were about to take a whole new turn towards ugly. It was no big surprise that there weren’t any takers when the generous offer was announced through a bullhorn shortly after Travis had found Gary.
A nervous murmur rippled through the crowd. Dennis, Boris, and Tony stood up and were joined by Geoff McIver and two other obscenely large skinheads who Gary had declared as the Convict Council. Apparently this had been choreographed in some way, because the men began to stroll around those still seated. Juan thought of it as a really twisted version of “duck, duck, goose!”
“Joshua Martel, please stand up!” Travis bellowed like a game show host from Hell.
Heads began to turn and twist as everybody wanted a look. Still, nobody stood.
“Too bad we happen to have your picture,” Gary snarled rubbing his hands together as the roaming goon-squad converged on one man. As soon as it was clear who the target was, everybody around the man scattered to give room.
“You are charged with nine—holy shit! Nine?—counts of child rape,” Gary read from a manila file he held up for the crowd as if everybody could see it and read it as well. “It seems our boy Joshua liked to hide in bathroom stalls, wait for his victim, hmm...seems his preference was little boys ages six to ten...he’d ass-fuck ‘em, then knock them out and run away.” All eyes were on Joshua Martel. Most were brimm
ing with hatred. Some were sharing in his fear. “How do you plead, you sick fuckin’ freak?”
The two large goons shook the trembling, sobbing, diminutive man. One grabbed a handful of curly brown hair and jerked his head up. Juan looked at the guy, trying to envision him as the person in those charges. The man was puny, malnourished, but his face looked like the guy you’d see behind the counter at some espresso stand.
“Please,” even laced with fear, Joshua Martel’s voice was way deeper than you would expect from such a small body. “I…”
“Guilty!” Gary bellowed. “We sentence you to death, you fuckin’ freak!”
With that, the goon-squad converged. They tore his black and white jumpsuit from his body and cuffed his hands behind his back. Juan watched in morbid curiosity as the man was bound at the ankles by clothesline.
A series of ladders still leaned against one wall from the events of that first night, but there were subtle differences in what was being done now as to what happened then.
“All shall assemble on the roof for the carrying out of the sentence,” Travis announced, and he and Gary jumped off their stage to lead the way.
Boris walked over to Juan with one of the goons and Tony, “We are supposed to guard the door and make sure that everybody goes up. Travis don’t want none of them freaks tryin’ to make a run for it.”
“Where would they go?” Juan asked with a laugh.
Boris and the goon looked at one another as if each expected the other to have an answer. Tony looked away to hide a smile. Juan liked Tony. He appeared to be the only one of Travis’ gang that didn’t seem to be getting off on this whole ordeal.
There were a few stragglers, but the goon, Boris had called him Lee—at over six-and-a-half feet tall and easily over three hundred pounds—had discouraged anybody from trying to make any sort of break for it.
At last, everybody was up on the roof. Juan stepped over the bundle of ropes that had been individually tied to the steel railing of a catwalk that would presumably have allowed the police to move around if they needed to come into a cell block from above. The ropes all quivered and thrummed. Juan felt his stomach lurch just a little.
No, sir, this wasn’t tight at all.
Over the murmur of voices, he could hear the now condemned man begging and pleading for his life. The crowd, a large portion anyways, was starting to work themselves into a frenzy. There were taunts and jeers.
“Freak!”
“Better get right with God, you cho-mo!”
“You other freaks take a good look, you’re next!”
“Rape-ohs and cho-mos must die!”
Travis raised his hands to quiet the crowd. “Any last words, freak-boy?”
Standing naked before a human wall of hate, the tiny man only stared at the ground, shaking. Gary and the other goon forced him to his knees and hogtied his ankles to his wrists behind his back. The nearly two hundred men spread out on the roof to see. A few hung back. Juan had a good idea why. They were next.
Somehow, Juan had migrated forward. He told himself that he didn’t want to see what was about to happen. Worse, he didn’t want to see what had already been done. It was too late.
His eyes drifted to where all the ropes led: over the side. At the end of the ropes were all the black men, and the three black women. Each had been bound, hands behind their backs. Ropes were wrapped around each body several times, keeping their arms pinned to their sides. The ropes were long enough so that each one of them had been fed on by the mob of zombies gathered below. Now, at the end of most of those ropes a zombie wriggled like a worm on a hook. Some of the tying had apparently been shoddy, because a few of the strands were empty. The body had obviously been pulled free. Some were nothing more than torsos with twitching spinal columns sticking out of the bottom. Others were missing their legs from knee or mid-thigh down.
Juan had wanted to vomit then. Now he only felt numb. Maybe that was better. He didn’t know. He watched as Lee and the other goon began to lower the child-rapist, Joshua Martel, over the side of the roof, belly down. Juan listened to the man’s screams as he neared the upturned faces of the dead and the nest of grasping hands.
They lowered him slowly and both Gary and Travis leaned forward. Occasionally, one of them would grab the rope and tug it one way or nudge it the other as they guided the condemned man to whatever particular death they had in mind. When he was only a foot above the churning mob below, Gary signaled for the goons to stop.
For a moment, Juan remembered a piñata at his niece’s sixth birthday. His uncle Hector had teased the children by tugging the line just enough to keep that piñata out of reach. There had been squeals and laughter.
Now, there were only screams of terror.
And the groans of the undead.
One of the zombies below reached and strained. Taller than the rest, he could almost touch the squirming body above. Gary motioned for the goons to lower their load just another few inches.
If that guy was guilty, and such a thing as karma existed, Juan figured it was being served right then. The tall zombie reached, straining above the other outstretched hands to claim its prize. The man at the end of the rope, Joshua Martel, screamed in an entirely different register. Juan could not force himself to turn away as he watched a tiny, dangling piece of flesh grasped by a filthy hand and torn off, vanishing into the mouth of that zombie. Blood now splattered down on the crowd only increasing their frenzy.
“Drop him,” Travis ordered.
The goons allowed the rope to slide through their hands. Like a giant fish striking, it suddenly hissed and the two let go. The screams below were terrific but brief.
Juan looked east towards the still rising sun. The day was only starting and it would be a long one. Already another name had been called. There was a commotion and a man took a running leap. He must’ve gone under a crowd, because Juan barely heard that one’s screams.
He had to get out of here. There was no way he could stay for anymore of this.
Another name was called.
***
“Strike-One to Base, we have movement in Area Ten. Multiple vehicles with hostiles in pursuit. Over.”
“This is Base, we copy. We have a ground team three-oh miles from your location.”
“Roger that. We are reaching Bingo on fuel and returning to the nest.”
“Copy. Charlie-Team, this is Mountain-Home, did you catch all that?”
“That is a big affirmative, we are westbound now on eight-four and the road is clear. We expect visual in fifteen to twenty. We’ll keep channel open.”
***
“...just one more step, you son-of-a-bitch,” Thad Bushnell hissed through clenched teeth. The zombie, a middle-aged businessman with the tattered remains of a suit, worth more than Thad made in a month at the mill, stepped out from behind the jackknifed car-transport rig that blocked three of four lanes of I-8 heading east towards El Cajon from San Diego.
Even with the suppressor, the rifle made a noise that echoed. From his perch on the overpass, Thad scanned for the nearby vehicle that he could hear approaching. He focused his attention on the football stadium. There was plenty of movement, but none of it living. The crowd was drifting and heading in the same general direction. He drew the flare gun from the open duffel bag at his feet, pointed it skyward, and fired. The radio slung around his neck crackled to life.
“We see you, Thad,” a female voice said. That would be Chelsea. “JoJo is on the way. He just scooped Keith and is en route.”
“What are they doing over at the stadium?” Thad asked incredulously. “I thought we agreed it was too dangerous.”
“The water,” Chelsea replied. “And I guess Keith was right. They found cases and cases of it.”
“We still should stay out of there. Can you see those crowds? There must be six or seven thousand in the parking lot alone.”
“Yeah,” Chelsea sounded way too happy. “I guess.”
“Well, I’m on the overp
ass and I managed to cut the lock on that Frito truck. Couldn’t stay down on the interstate, though. It was getting a little busy.”
“Sorry, I didn’t see that one,” some of the exuberance drained from her voice.
Thad shook his head. Her only job was to stand up there on the balcony of her suite at the Four Seasons and warn him if she saw anything coming his way. He shuddered. That girl had grabbed his shoulder. She’d been dead for a while, and the California sun had dried the corpse out enough so that the smell hadn’t carried far. Being so close to the large masses around the stadium left a hint of that stench on the air. The zombie walked right up to him from behind. Her body was now on the ground, a few yards from the one he’d just dropped.
The sound of the laboring engine grew louder all of a sudden. Thad looked as the garbage truck came into view. The truck’s prongs were out front with all of the steel grating welded on. Zombies practically exploded into pulp if they ventured across the path of that big machine. Using his binoculars, Thad zoomed in on the vehicle. JoJo was driving and Keith was on top of the cab in the makeshift turrets with Dinah Morello.
Dinah was their leader for all intents and purposes. As far as they’d been able to tell, she was the only living member of the San Diego Police Department. In the two and a half weeks that had passed, Thad had never seen her lose her cool.
He’d been with her the night this whole thing started. In fact, he was sitting in the back of Dinah and her partner’s squad car in cuffs. On the way to be booked, an emergency call of multiple officers down at Balboa Mall diverted their trip. Thad still remembered the total chaos that night.
The blood.
The death.
The screams.
“Stop wasting flares, Bushnell!” Dinah’s voice came through, crisp and curt as always. Two weeks into this nightmare, and she still treated him like he was in the back of her squad car.
“Well,” Thad yelled, “then hurry the hell up and come get me.”
