Some of them tried that. It didn’t work. The Zs latched onto them and bit into their necks and arms and faces and thighs and feet. The screaming of the bitten was horrific.
Keane aimed his smartphone at the mayhem and slaughter taking place below his apartment for a few seconds longer, enough for us to realize that every single person in that hapless crowd—men, women, and children—were being ripped to pieces, eaten alive.
Everyone in the lobby was quiet after the video stopped.
The TV reporter was back. The “authorities,” she told us, estimated that fifteen people were killed in the videoed Z attack and that a National Guard unit had been dispatched to eliminate the pack of Zs responsible.
I threw what was left of my turkey sandwich into the box on my lap and turned to Cindi.
“I lost my appetite,” I told her. “I need a drink.”
“Me, too,” she said.
***
The Take-Off Lounge was still hopping. I led Cindi to that same corner where we’d met and saw that our self-proclaimed CIA acquaintance was back in his seat, sipping another drink. He spotted us and waved us over with a scowl and, with my arm over Cindi’s shoulder, we approached him.
“You’re back,” he said. He held up something and waved it at me. Squinting in the dim light, I saw that it appeared to be an official CIA badge in a leather case. It had a name on it.
“That’s me,” he said, pointing to the name. “George Reed.” He burped and slumped to his left, clearly feeling too many drinks after however many hours he’d been occupying that corner seat. “You can call me George.”
“Nice to meet you, George,” I said. “I’m Paul. This is Cindi.”
“Sorry for being such a crab before,” he said. “Let me buy.”
He raised an arm and yelled over to one of the bartenders serving the still-overflow crowd in the bar. The Z epidemic was definitely good for business. We gave him our orders, and the bartender was off and back with them in no more than a minute. George Reed turned to us, lifted his drink and made a toast: “To survival.”
Cindi and I raised our glasses. We took long sips. George was drinking straight whiskey. He winced.
“I wasn’t bullshitting you,” he said. “What I said before. They have no choice.”
“Nuking us,” I said with a hint of incredulity in my voice. “The whole city.”
“To save the world, why not?”
“Why are you telling us this? If you’re CIA?” I asked him as Cindi leaned into me and whispered, “Let’s go.”
“I can’t be part of it,” he said as he held his drink at a precarious angle. “All the killing, the excusing. A lifetime of compromise.” He looked at me, then at Cindi standing with a frown against my left shoulder, still wary of him. “Like, look at you two. Why should you go up in flames? And you know, I can help you.”
“Help us?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “See, there’s a way out. A secret passage.” He swiveled around and plucked a small, square drink napkin from a holder on the bar, then looked at me. “You got a pen?”
Cindi fished in her purse and handed one to him. He started to draw something on the napkin. After a time, he handed it to me and said, “This is the way out.” He’d drawn a series of lines in thick, blue ink with neatly printed names of streets identifying the lines. In the upper right-hand corner, in a clear space, he had drawn an arrow and next to it, “Zone D.”
“Zone D?” I asked.
“That’s where you have to get out,” he said. “Couple days ago, we identified several soft spots in the quarantine. Dark areas. You go through Zone D, you escape. You run fast enough after that, you escape the nukes.”
“So why don’t you leave?” I asked. “Save yourself?”
“I got no reason to leave,” he said with a shrug. “My life has been this, the Company. No family. No wife. No kids. I gave them everything. And anyway, I’d never make it there.”
“Why not?”
He pointed to his wrist and said, “The implant.” He took a long sip of his drink and swayed a moment. “We all get them now. Let’s them keep track of us. They know I’m here. That I quit and settled here, in some hotel bar, drinking myself to oblivion. So, I’m no threat. They’ll come and get me when they’re ready. Or not at all. Won’t matter when the nukes fall.”
Cindi leaned into me again. “Let’s go,” she whispered.
I looked down at the napkin with the scribbled map and stuck it into my jeans pocket.
“I wouldn’t wait,” he said and nodded up at the TV. “Zs spreading. Pretty soon, it’ll reach the tipping point, and they start dropping the nukes.”
***
“What a nut,” Cindi said after we left the bar with our drinks and strolled the long hallway back toward the lobby. She laughed. “Nukes.”
I looked at her as we walked.
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “But somehow, it makes crazy sense. And he had that badge.”
“Any nut can fake a badge,” she said with a laugh. “You really think the CIA gives out badges?”
I shrugged. I truly didn’t know. I put my hand inside my jeans pocket and felt for the napkin with a crude map he’d drawn that, crazy as it seemed, promised to save our lives.
As we approached the lobby, I suddenly pressed Cindi to the wall and kissed her, and she kissed me back. Maybe it was the drink, the excitement of becoming lovers in a crisis. Whatever. We let our passions race as the kiss lasted, and I soon found my hands all over her. We were oblivious to other guests walking by until some guy let out the comment, “Get a room.”
I backed off at that point and said to her, “You know, that’s not a bad idea.”
But that wasn’t happening. Our assigned rooms had roommates, certainly moved in by now, and every other room in the hotel was taken. Instead, we ended up in the stairwell at the other end of the first-floor hallway. We started necking again, and at some point, I snuck a hand under her blouse. Finally, breathless, she backed away.
“Maybe we can find a janitor’s closet or something,” she gasped and laughed.
“Or,” I said, “a room in a motel outside the city.”
“Escape through Zone D?” she said with a sarcastic frown.
“Why not?” I shrugged.
“You serious? You believe that guy?”
“What’s to lose?”
“There are Zs out there,” she said.
I shrugged. Or nukes dropped on the city, I didn’t add.
***
The stairwell began to be a source of considerable traffic after that. Some guy stepping over us told us apologetically that the hotel elevator was out of order.
With a sigh, Cindi and I decided to head back to the Take-Off Lounge. As we approached, we heard what sounded like a scuffle or fight coming from inside with people avoiding whatever was happening by spilling out in the hallway. We edged through them to get a look at what was going on.
At the entrance, we saw that it was George Reed in the middle of the altercation. Three or four guys in dark suits and thin, black ties had latched onto him, trying to escort him out of the place.
“Bastards,” George shouted as he struggled to free himself. “They’re going to kill you all!”
After that, I saw one of the guys place something across George’s mouth. A moment later, George went limp. No more struggling. They simply dragged him out of the bar and down the hall toward the lobby and, presumably, out of the hotel.
I turned to Cindi and said, “See that?”
She swallowed, nodded.
I pulled her out of the bar into the hall, no longer wanting a drink.
“Maybe he isn’t crazy,” I said to her.
Cindi turned and stared at me, her eyes wide, wondering.
A couple walked out of the bar just then, with the guy telling the girl, “Now there are carriers.”
“Hey, what?” I called after them.
The guy stopped, turned. He frowned as if to say, me?
>
“What’d you say? Carriers?”
“That’s the latest,” he said. “Just on the news. Zs mutated again or something. Some people just carry the disease, spread it to other people. Like that lady, Typhoid Mary. Could be you, could be me, could be her. Fucking carriers—people who are immune infecting other people.”
He made a face, turned to his date, locked arms with her and off they went down the hall toward the lobby.
After that, I led Cindi to the same stairwell, and we sat trying to determine what was what.
Finally, she asked, “So how much time do you think we have? If it’s true.”
I looked up at her and shrugged. “Not much, I don’t think,” I said. I stuck my hand in my pocket and felt for the napkin. I took it out and examined it for a time.
“This looks pretty straightforward,” I told her. “I mean, he marked the streets. We just follow them to this open area. Zone D.”
“How far is it?”
“I have no idea.”
Echoes of steps came toward us, and another couple was stepping over us.
“Bad place to sit,” the guy, a burly, scowling fellow said.
When he had opened the door to the first-floor hallway, Cindi said, “Everyone’s so tense.”
“Maybe they can sense the worst,” I said.
“So, should we try it, go?” she asked. “Listen to that nut. It still sounds…”
“Crazy,” I said. “I know. But, geez…”
We both settled into our thoughts. A few hours ago, I didn’t even know her, and she didn’t know me. Now we were plotting to evade a federal quarantine, no doubt a serious felony. Then, I came to a decision. “I think it’s real,” I said. “Those guys who took out George Reed didn’t look like hotel security to me.”
Cindi nodded. “Me neither.”
I waved the map at her and said, “This is our ticket. Let’s use it.”
***
She had a small carry-on bag where we would store some bottles of water for the walk. I decided to leave my belongings behind, not wanting to carry anything we didn’t have to. It was Cindi who thought of a weapon—steak knives from the restaurant or something.
She’d get the carry-on while I got the knives. Twenty minutes later, she was standing by the stairwell door waiting for me. Her face filled with relief as I approached from the other end of the first-floor hallway. “I thought you’d left without me,” she whispered, as she grabbed hold of me.
“It was tougher getting the knives than I thought,” I told her, keeping my voice down. I held up a white cloth napkin holding the two. “But I got them.”
As I placed them in her carry-on, Cindi said, “Well, let’s hope we won’t need them.”
“Ready?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said and held onto my hand. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”
We burst through the exit door by the stairwell into the chilly night.
***
The CDC had only theories as to why and how Z had started in the city. It had been established that the first Z patient was fifteen-year-old Sarah Ambrose who, about a month ago, inexplicably lapsed into a coma. Her parents took her to the emergency room at St. Barnard’s Hospital in the Gross Pointe District, and she was given antibiotics and intravenous meds. A couple days later, she was declared dead but then, within the span of minutes, she woke up, or seemed to.
She was described by the attending nurse as having a wild, ravenous look after her gaunt, dark eyes opened. When the overjoyed girl’s mother went to hug her, the girl bit her, tearing a deep gash out of her shoulder and neck. Blood splattered everywhere. Somehow, the nurse and the woman’s husband pulled the mother away and restrained the savage girl.
The mother was hospitalized, and within hours, she lapsed into a coma. Like her daughter, she was given a regimen of meds but soon appeared to have died. And, like her daughter, minutes later, she woke up in a savage state and bit her husband, a nurse and an orderly. Her daughter, in another room, had bitten a doctor. Within hours, anyone bitten by the mother and daughter had contracted what one CDC doctor had termed a “zombie-like” disease. The spread of Z was textbook after that.
Some news reporter picked up on that and started calling the strange new disease “Z.” And shortly after that, anyone who contracted it became known as a Z.
There were unconfirmed reports of Z epidemics having occurred at various times in the dark corners of Africa, or in under-developed areas of South America. It was noted that Sarah Ambrose and her parents had recently returned from a safari in central Africa. How those Z outbreaks had been contained, or if they had been, was not explained. Perhaps the disease simply ran its course and fizzled out. But Z had never gained a foothold anywhere else.
Until now.
What was especially disturbing, of course, was that, as recently confirmed, Z could now be spread by airborne transmission. And even worse, though unconfirmed, it had been reported that some humans were carriers—that is, they could spread the disease but not develop its horrible symptoms. Though scientists were working furiously on a vaccine, to date there was no known cure or antidote. The only way to stop a Z was to kill its brain—shoot or stab it in the head. All the zombie movies ever made had gotten that part right.
Thankfully, by all accounts to date, Z had been confined to the city. And the quarantine was meant to ensure that.
***
Once outside, it felt as if we had left our space capsule untethered and had entered a dark, remote void. Fortunately, Cindi was wearing a leather jacket, and I had on my sport coat to fend off the damp, chilly night.
“This way,” I told her, pointing right. And off we went.
We followed the napkin map as best we could, stopping every few blocks under a street lamp to figure out where we were. The streets were deserted, dark and silent, adding to our dread. Then, we headed onward in the same direction. After another few blocks, we feared that we were hopelessly lost.
“This map is worthless,” Cindi said waiting for me to figure something out. “That guy was crazy, and we’re crazy for listening to him. Let’s go back.”
“No,” I said. “That’s not an option.”
In the next moment, I heard the skittering of steps or something along the asphalt from out of the darkness beyond the glare of the streetlamp.
“What’s that?”
“Shhh!”
I took Cindi’s arm and moved us out of the light into the shadows of a storefront. After a few moments, there was no more skittering, and I pulled her back onto the sidewalk.
“This way,” I said.
We hustled up the street hugging the storefronts in a direction I hoped was the right way according to the napkin map. Then, after a few blocks, we ran into a National Guard platoon. As we approached them out the darkness, the skittish soldiers turned and pointed their M-16s at us.
“Don’t shoot!” I shouted and raised my arms. My voice bounced off the dark, silent buildings around us along the entire street. “Don’t shoot!”
The platoon trotted up to us, and its captain stepped forward. He was a nervous looking guy around thirty-five who’d gotten way more than he had bargained for on this assignment after signing up for duty some years ago.
“What the hell you doing out here?” he whispered. “Almost got yourself killed. This sector’s infested with Zs.”
“We got lost,” I told him. “We’re at one of the hotels. We were going stir crazy. Went out to get some fresh air.”
“Fresh air?” he laughed. “The airport hotels are five clicks that way. That’s three miles that way.” He gestured behind us. “You really got lost.”
I shrugged.
“Look, man,” the captain went on. “It’s not safe out here. There’s Zs everywhere just north of here. Where you’re heading, where we’re going. You really need to turn around and head back the way you came. Now.”
“Yes, sir,” I told him. I turned and nodded toward the airport hotels, three miles east of u
s.
He gave me one last nod then waved to his platoon to head out. Off they went, double-timing it, their boots echoing over the asphalt road, leaving us alone on the dark street corner.
“We going back?” Cindi asked.
“No,” I told her. “Let them get ahead of us. That’s the way we need to go.”
“But he said there’s Zs that way,” Cindi said. “We’ll be heading right into them.”
I sighed. There was no answering that. It was either death by Zs or death by A-bomb. “We’ve got no choice,” I said and waved the napkin map at her. “C’mon.”
We started walking in the same direction as the National Guard platoon had just marched. A couple blocks up, the map indicated a right turn, and just as we turned that way, there was a flash followed by an explosion. We stopped a moment, getting down on our haunches.
“What’s that?” Cindi asked.
At first, I thought it was too late. They were already dropping the nukes. But then another flash and explosion came from where the National Guard unit had gone.
“Artillery,” I guessed. “Rocket launchers, maybe. Let’s go.”
We got up and quickened our pace down the dark, narrow road for about half a mile until it intersected with another. After squinting at the map, I pointed right, and we followed yet another narrow, deserted road for a while longer until turning right onto Jergen Street. There was a yellow “Dead-end” sign posted just after the street sign. Jergen Street ended after about a quarter-mile, becoming, as the map indicated, a nameless gravel road leading through a short grassy strip into thick woods.
“There it is,” I told Cindi and pointed to the map. “Zone D.”
We ran down the gravel path to the trees and, after stopping a moment, went for it. We kept walking, scattering the brush with our arms, ducking to avoid branches. After an indeterminable time, we came out of the woods into a wide field. To the east and west of us, we saw helicopters lighting the ground below them. For some reason, none of them patrolled the open field that we just had stepped into.
Silence of the Apoc_Tales From The Zombie Apocalypse Page 2
