Chucklers (Book 1): Laughter is Contagious

by Jeff Brackett

  Without warning, a large black rectangle slammed into the woman’s head. It withdrew out of Charlie’s line of sight, then slammed down again. Bits of plastic and electronics rained down as muumuu lady’s eyes rolled back in her head, and she fell to the side as Charlie frantically pushed to keep her from collapsing on top of him. Tabby stood behind the woman, the remains of the smashed monitor Chris had replaced were still in her hand.

  Charlie saw movement. “Behind you!”

  She spun, swinging the monitor screen at an old man who wheezed his laughter at her through a toothless mouth. This time, the screen shattered completely and the old man went down. Charlie scrambled across the floor and pulled his knife from the body where he’d left it. Staggering back to his feet, he looked around. “Where’s Chris?”

  Tabby pointed back into the bridge and only then did Charlie realize the two of them had made it out. “He’s still in there.”

  Looking over her shoulder, Charlie could see at least half a dozen more crazies bunched near the navigation station Chris had recently repaired. There were shouts and curses that told Charlie that Chris was still fighting for his life in there. He shook his head. There was no way the young man was going to survive for much longer. “Poor bastard,” he muttered. He started to turn toward the elevators.

  His father’s voice stopped him. That poor bastard still has the keycards.

  Shit. With a grimace, Charlie took a deep breath and ran back into the bridge. Tabby followed and the two of them attacked the giggling horde from behind. Charlie yanked back on the hair of two of them and cut their throats before they even knew he was there. Tabby grabbed a desk chair from behind the console and slammed it into another one. That caught the attention of the last few, and they turned away from the meat-cleaver-wielding Chris and staggered toward her.

  Charlie cut another one, while Chris got one as it turned its back to him. Suddenly, there was only the one rushing Tabby left. Chris and Charlie both fell on the man, and he collapsed in a bloody mess. The three of them stood panting, looking at one another.

  “Guys?” Tabby pointed back out the door again. Charlie turned, and they saw another crowd of lunatics stumbling up the corridor toward the bridge.

  Charlie, Chris, and Tabby ran out of the room. Chris stopped at the door, trying to pull it closed, but there were several bodies lying across the threshold. Charlie grabbed his sleeve. “No time!”

  “But…”

  Charlie yanked, and Chris staggered after him. The new crowd of attackers stomped up the port side corridor, so Charlie and his companions rushed up the starboard side, trying to gain as much distance as they could.

  Tabby was in the lead, and she turned to look behind them at their pursuit. Fear showed in her eyes. “We’re not going to make it. There’s no time to open the elevator and close it again before they get to us.”

  Charlie pulled Chris up ahead of him. “Open up a cabin. Make it one on the ocean side.”

  “But they’ll see where we go.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Just do it!”

  Chris pulled the key card from his pocket and opened the first door on the left. The three of them piled in, and Charlie slammed the door behind him, throwing the privacy lock for good measure.

  “Now what? We’re trapped in here and they’re going to—”

  A slam on the door interrupted her and she squeaked.

  “They’re going to bust this door down in a matter of minutes.”

  Charlie ran across the room to the balcony and opened the sliding door. “This way.” He shoved the knife in the back of his belt and stepped to the rail. “Wish me luck.”

  “What?”

  Without any further explanation, Charlie swung his leg over the rail as he had when Purple Hair had trapped him on his second day into this nightmare. And just like that time, the incessant pounding on the cabin door told him that time was not on his side.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Chris asked him.

  Rather than answer, Charlie gripped the rail and slipped the rest of his body over the side. It was much harder this time than it had been the first time. He was exhausted after the fight at the bridge, and he didn’t have full use of his right arm. But he wasn’t going to wait in here for them to come rip him to pieces, either.

  He slid down carefully, arms shaking from fatigue, he clung to the rails as he let his feet swing out into open air. Finally, when he was hanging on the bottom rail, he swung his feet forward until he could feel the top of the balcony below. The slight swaying of the ship pushed him toward the rail, then pulled him away. Toward… away.

  With his toes barely touching the balcony below them, Charlie shifted his grip, hanging precariously onto the rail with only his left hand, and slipped his weaker right hand under the bottom of the balcony to help his balance as he shifted more of his weight onto his feet. Finally, he was balanced enough. The next time the rocking shifted his weight toward the ship, he let go of the rail above, balanced for a second with his feet on the rail and his hands pressed on the ceiling above him, and jumped into the balcony of the cabin below. “Come on!” he called.

  A few seconds later, he saw Tabby’s legs come into sight. He stepped up to the railing, and helped guide her feet toward him. They stopped when she was still a foot away from the railing. “I can’t reach!”

  Charlie climbed back up, braced himself with his left hand on the ceiling again, and wrapped his right arm around her waist. “You’re gonna have to let go,” he shouted. “I’m gonna count to three, then you let go.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  The ship rocked toward the cabin. “One!”

  “No way!”

  It rocked away. “Two.”

  Toward… “Three! Let go!” He pulled her toward him as she let go, and the two of them fell backward off the rail and onto the hard balcony flooring.

  Charlie scrambled to his feet. Chris’s feet were already coming into sight. He grabbed the man’s feet and pulled them toward the railing. Seconds later, the three of them were laying on the balcony of a cabin on Deck Eleven. After a few seconds, Charlie heard the door to the cabin above crash open. He got to his feet. “Come on. They’ll figure it out in a couple of minutes.”

  Chris and Tabby nodded and got back to their feet as well. Tabby tried to open the balcony door. “It’s locked.”

  Charlie picked up one of the metal-framed patio chairs and swung it as hard as he could. The door shook in its frame, but the glass held.

  “It’s hurricane proof,” Chris told him. “It’s going to take more than that.”

  “I've already done this once, and the fun crowd in the cabin above us is gonna figure out where we went in a few minutes. And then they're gonna start trying to figure out how to join us down here. So instead of telling me how this can't work, I suggest you give me a hand and make it work.”

  It took the two of them about thirty seconds to kick the door out of its frame. It took them another minute to get out of the cabin, and into the elevator. Chris slid his keycard into the slot in the elevator and the doors closed.

  * * *

  “What’s that?” Tabby grabbed Charlie’s collar and pulled it down. “Oh, shit.”

  She let go and Charlie turned to face her. When he saw the look on her face, his blood went cold. “How bad is it?”

  Chris looked at Charlie, then at Tabby. “What? How bad is what?”

  Tabby licked her lips and Charlie took a deep breath. He unbuttoned the top three buttons on his shirt and turned back around. Pulling the top of the shirt down, he answered without looking back. “One of them bit me when we were fighting.” He pulled his shirt back up, turned back to face them, and repeated his question. “Now, how bad is it?”

  Tabby and Chris looked at one another. Finally Tabby answered. “It doesn’t look too bad. Barely broke the skin.”

  Charlie nodded. “But it did break the skin, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  He took a deep breath,
calming his nerves. “How long you figure I have before I turn into one of those things?”

  Again, his companions looked at each other. Chris swallowed, then shrugged helplessly. “Who knows, man? We don’t know what’s causing it. I told you about that slick on the water. It could be air born, it could be something that got into some of the ship’s food, it could be—”

  “It could be something in the blood or saliva of someone who’s already infected,” Charlie finished. “Couldn’t it?” He looked from one to the other. “Couldn’t it?”

  Tabby nodded. “It could.”

  Like I said boy, seven ways to Sunday.

  Charlie handed his knife to Tabby. “I saw you lost yours on the bridge. Maybe you should hold on to this.”

  She nodded and reached for the blade. As she took it, he looked her in the eyes. “Don’t you let me turn into one of those fucking hyenas. If I start laughing, you… you…”

  He swallowed and Tabby solemnly met his gaze. “I will.”

  Charlie swallowed again around the lump that had formed in his throat and nodded. “All right, then.” He turned back around as the elevator doors slid open, and the three of them stepped out to join the rest of the group below decks.

  Chapter 70

  Erica Chapman

  Lane Ends – 750 ft.

  HOV LANE ENDS - 750 FT.

  From that sign on, the ramp began to slope decidedly downward. Matt drove slowly as they dropped into the smoke that covered the lower streets. He and Erica both scanned the street ahead nervously as they reached the bottom of the ramp. The GPS indicated that they should turn left onto Franklin Street. Matt eased them forward and took a left, passing beneath a huge overpass.

  “How far to our turn?” Matt kept his eyes on the road. His knuckles were white where they gripped the wheel.

  Erica looked at the GPS. “About half a mile. Then you turn left on San Jacinto.”

  Matt simply nodded. On their left, they passed an older building. Smoke poured steadily from within, and Erica could see lazy flames licking through heat waves in the air out front. A three-foot-high concrete barrier bore the words UNITED ST TES POST OFFICE. She noted the missing A and wondered if it had been there before the chucklers outbreak.

  There were plenty of wrecks on the road, but the street was wide enough that it would have taken a six or seven car pileup to block their way. Erica watched the street signs as they passed, confirming the route that the GPS had plotted for them. As they passed Congress Avenue, Erica let her gaze be drawn to the skyscrapers in that direction. It looked like they were less than half a dozen city blocks from the edge of downtown proper, and smoke roiled through the streets like a living thing, pouring down the embankment of Buffalo Bayou. Congress passed over the bayou, and she could see movement in the smoke. “More of them on the right.”

  Matt glanced over, and grunted. “Too far away to be much of a problem.”

  There was a huge pileup at the next intersection, but he simply hopped the curb and drove through the lawn of a bordering building. They passed another major intersection at Louisiana Boulevard, and within a few blocks, they were moving into an obviously older section of town. The buildings were an old-style brick and stonework, much different from the more modern glass and steel exteriors of current architecture. More disconcerting though, the streets were also considerably narrower.

  Matt drove onto the sidewalk to get around a pileup and deeper into the old business district. Erica looked at the GPS again and pointed ahead. “Our turn should be two blocks ahead.”

  Two men rushed at the Xterra from behind some parked cars on the left, and Matt swerved to the right and accelerated. They passed the chucklers, and Matt was just slowing back down when a body dropped to the sidewalk to their right. Matt slammed on the brakes and if it hadn’t been for her seatbelt, Erica would have hit the dash. “What the hell?” Matt blinked at the unexpected sight of the woman on the sidewalk trying to get back to her feet. The fact that her right leg refused to bear her weight without bending at an unnatural angle slowed her down, but her maniacal laughter lent an otherworldly eeriness to the scene. Apparently unperturbed, the woman leaned forward and began to drag herself across the concrete in their direction.

  As they watched, a man in a torn and bedraggled business jacket, but oddly enough not wearing any pants, dropped into sight from somewhere above and landed on the woman, crushing her torso, and causing her mouth to spurt blood. Erica yelped in fear.

  “What the hell?” Matt repeated, leaning forward and trying to see where the man had come from. Erica leaned toward the side window and saw another man leaning out of a third story window of the old building to their right. Meanwhile, No Pants tumbled to the sidewalk and lay stunned for a moment, but staggered to his feet after only a few seconds. He looked at Matt and Erica, grinned hugely, did a little dance step and splayed his hands at them in a comedic jazz hands movement. Then he sprinted toward Erica’s door, even as the next man jumped from the window. Three other windows began spewing people, and suddenly, a crowd was forming on the sidewalk.

  “Matt, let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” Erica screamed.

  Matt shook himself out of his stunned stupor and hit the gas, pulling away just as No Pants grabbed at Erica’s door handle. To her utter horror, the handle clicked and the man started to pull it open, but lost his grip as the Xterra accelerated. Panting in fear, Erica yanked the door closed and slapped her hand down on the lock. She looked over at Matt who shook his head as he drove. “They jumped out of the damned windows? Who does that?”

  He raced through the next intersection and Erica glanced down at the GPS. “Turn at the next street.”

  Matt nodded and cut the wheel at San Jacinto. “Now go four tenths of a mile…” Her voice trailed off as she saw what was ahead of them. A jumble of burning vehicles completely blocked the street two blocks ahead of them. It wasn’t a massive accident. They had simply been driven or abandoned there, and then torched. Inky black smoke flowed off of them and hundreds of revelers danced through the cloud.

  Matt came to a stop just as the closest partiers noticed the SUV. There were a few cocked heads, almost as if they were trying to determine whether or not to believe there really was a bright yellow SUV idling in the street before them. Then they began shrieking with laughter and raced toward the Xterra.

  “This would be a good time to go, Matt. A really good time to go!”

  Matt must have thought so too. He put the shifter in reverse and started to back up. Something slammed into the back windshield, and he stomped the brake again. Erica spun in her seat to find No Pants drawing his hand back to slap his open palm against the vehicle again. Past him, through the cracked and bloody window, there was another crowd of laughing faces rushing at them.

  Matt didn’t need Erica to tell him to hurry. No Pants was shoved to the side as they powered past him and into the mass of his companions behind him. Erica and Matt found themselves four wheeling through the crowd from behind while a larger one rushed at them from the street before them. The SUV struggled against the mass of bodies behind them. Once again, Erica felt the sickening bounce of multiple speed bumps in the road.

  She looked past the crowd behind them and saw more and more chucklers emerging from various buildings all around them. “Oh god, Matt. There’s more of them.”

  * * *

  The SUV cleared No Pants and his traveling companions, and Matt cut the wheel sharply to the right. He shifted back into drive and punched the gas, spinning the tires as they tore down the nearest clear street. Erica glanced down at the GPS, but it was busy recalculating their route. In the meantime, even more people began streaming from the entrances of buildings. “Why are they coming out now?” Erica asked.

  “Must be all the noise,” Matt shouted. “Between spinning the tires, and the mob chasing after us, we’re getting a little loud.”

  Erica looked up to see a DO NOT ENTER sign in front of them. “You’re going the wrong way!”
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  Matt blew through the intersection. “If a cop stops us, I’ll apologize.”

  Erica swallowed, mentally kicking herself. “Sorry.”

  Another crowd milled about in an empty parking lot ahead and Matt turned left, again going against the light, as the laughing mob began running toward the yellow SUV. “Where are we?” he asked.

  She looked at the GPS again. “You’re going too fast for the thing to keep up. Every time you turn, it starts to recalculate again.”

  “Give me a minute to put enough distance between us and those… just give me a minute and I’ll try to slow down.” Matt was trying to keep calm, but Erica could see how rattled he was. Ironically, that helped her to keep calm.

  He swerved left, then right to avoid more small wrecks as the road began to curve more to the left. Ahead, the wrecks became too dense and he cursed. Erica looked behind them and saw the crowd coming toward them from two blocks behind. She licked her lips. “Matt? They’re—”

  “Yeah, I see ‘em.” He drove over the concrete esplanade and into the inbound lane, cursing quietly as he was once more forced to drive back toward downtown. But there were fewer accidents on that side of the road, and he was able to make better time. They left the mob behind, driving back into the smoke.

  “Any luck with that thing yet?” Matt jutted his chin at the GPS screen, reminding Erica of what she needed to be doing.

  “Give me a minute.” The progress bar showed that the GPS was seventy-three percent completed with recalculating their new route.

  “Faster would be better. We’ve got more of ‘em up ahead.”

  She looked up and saw another crowd running toward them from several of the buildings around them. “Turn here,” Erica pointed to the left.

  He turned without asking why, and she lost sight of their pursuers. “Now turn right in two blocks and slow down.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “We need to get where those people can’t see us anymore, or they’re going to keep coming.”