Orpheus

by DeWitt, Dan

  Ethan made a dismissive sound.

  "Tell me or I start screaming like a girl. And you know that I can."

  Ethan tried to make up a suitable lie on the fly, but he really couldn't come up with anything, so he told the truth.

  "That's weird," Jason said. "What do you think it means?"

  "That's what I'm trying to find out. But I don't want Rachel coming with me, in case it goes really bad."

  Jason said, "I don't like it. But I doubt you'll let anyone stop you." He surprised Ethan by sliding the table aside and unlocking the door. "Just be careful, okay? We've lost enough."

  "I will. Thanks."

  "Take this." Ethan accepted the radio. Jason thought of something else. "And this. Just in case." The gun went in Ethan's pocket.

  Jason opened the door for Ethan.

  Ethan was on the main road by the time Jason slid the table back in place.

  * * *

  The abandoned WJZZ building looked, as Ethan had expected, abandoned. The radio tower rose against the night sky like a monolith, though the blinking red light that warned approaching aircraft was dormant. He turned off his headlights and crawled to the edge of the parking lot farthest away from the entrance. His survival instincts told him to pull all the way to the front door, and that was logical if he was only concerned with the zombies, but he had at least a few human enemies now, and with them he would absolutely need the element of surprise if they were in the building. He parked, killed the engine, lowered his window, and listened for any signs of activity, undead or otherwise. He heard nothing, and hoofed it the front door, his gun at his side.

  The glass doors were locked. By itself, that wasn't out of the ordinary. The station was, after all, defunct, and the last person to leave had probably locked it out of habit. The faint humming sound coming from within, however, piqued Ethan's interest. It sounded like a motor, or maybe a generator. He looked around to make sure he was still alone. He popped out the magazine from the pistol and ejected the shell in the chamber. He pocketed these and grabbed the pistol by its barrel, ready to use it as a hammer. He flashed back to the time on the roof when Rachel suggested the shoe over the knob to lessen the noise. He took off his jacket, held it up tight against the glass, and proceeded. The first strike fractured the glass; the second punched all the way through. The jacket did a good job muffling the noise, but if anyone was inside and close, they probably would have heard it, so he moved aside, reloaded his gun, and waited a couple of minutes.

  No one came, so he reached through the glass and let himself in.

  He put a thumb over the flashlight lens and switched it on. He adjusted his grip to let only a sliver of light through. The humming, louder now, was just begging to be found. Ethan determined that it was coming from above, so he found the stairwell and moved up until he was pretty sure he was on the right floor, the third. He took several paces towards the interior, and was certain. It was a generator, and it had to be a big one.

  He followed the sound to the third room on the left. He opened the door and froze.

  His guess had been half-right. The noise came from a generator, but four smaller ones instead of a large one. Ethan inspected them closely. They were linked together by wiring; he suspected there was some kind of backup system, as two of them were currently off. Additionally, all four were wired into a sophisticated-looking panel with a bunch of flashing lights and words that made no sense to him.

  "What the hell is this?" he wondered. The technology was way beyond him, but he knew how to kill a generator well enough. Whatever this was meant to do, it couldn't be good.

  "Let's see what happens if I do...this?" He killed the power to one generator, then the second. Quiet descended on the room, and it took a few seconds for his ears to adjust. The lights on the panel flashed, and then the other two generators kicked in. All of the lights went solid again, save for the one marked "Alarm."

  He figure that he had a few minutes, at least, until whoever monitored this showed up to check. He started going room to room, looking for a good surveillance spot.

  Less than ten minutes later, he heard something in the hall and stopped where he was. He turned off his flashlight and poked his head into the hall without moving his feet. A silhouette wearing a headlamp walked towards the "generator room." He or she appeared to be carrying something large and rectangular in each hand. Ethan watched the figure disappear into the room and followed. He heard a voice yell out, "Aw, come on..."

  Ethan stepped through the door and drew his weapon. He maneuvered himself so that a large storage cabinet provided him cover, because he recognized a telltale lump on the man's right hip. He said, "Hands up, jackass." The man wearing the headlamp froze, then slowly complied. "Your gun. Pull it out with your left hand...I said left hand...put in on the ground, and kick it away from you." The man complied again, and the gun skidded off under a desk.

  "Who are you?" Ethan asked as he moved out from his cover and into the man's line of sight so he could shine his flashlight in his eyes.

  "Let me explain..."

  "Who are you? What is this?"

  "Hold on, hold on, don't shoot..."

  "What does this thing do?"

  "I, wait a sec, let me explain..." The man seemed to be yelling louder than necessary, even with the generators running nearby.

  The little voice in Ethan's head, the one that had helped to keep him alive this long, started screaming, He's just stalling! And there's only one reason why he'd do that!

  Because he wasn't alone.

  Ethan practically vaulted backward and put the cabinet between him and the doorway, just as two quick bullets passed through the spot he'd just vacated. Ethan put his gun in his left hand and returned fire blindly. The man who'd been stalling dropped to the ground behind a desk, presumably scrambling to find his gun. Ethan knew that he was finished as soon as that guy found it. So he took the only shot that he had.

  The rectangular shapes that the man had been carrying were metal gas cans.

  Ethan fired into them and hoped that he wouldn't fry himself. One of the cans exploded in a fireball. He heard screams of agony from behind the desk as that man was covered in liquid flame. The explosion took the second man by surprise, and he recoiled. Ethan fired several more times in his direction. He heard a yelp and thought that he got lucky with one of them. The man dropped his weapon as the approaching flames set his pantleg on fire. He screamed again and ran out of the room as the flames spread across the doorway and up the walls.

  The first man was silent now, and Ethan tried not to think about it, because if he wasted any more time, he'd share the same fate. He took a deep breath and ran through the flames that now completely obscured the doorway, bracing for some burns.

  He burst through the other side and realized that he'd barely felt the flames at all. When he was reasonably sure that he was okay, he noticed the dancing orange lights reflecting off of some drops on the floor.

  Blood. I actually got him.

  He pursued the man down the stairs and to the parking lot. He assumed that the man would be gone in whatever vehicle he came in, but the pickup truck was still by the front door. The man himself was fifty yards past the truck and not moving well due to blood loss.

  The other guy must have the car keys.

  Ethan kept after him, but at more of a jog than a sprint. The guy was wounded badly; he wasn't getting away, and Ethan couldn't be sure that he didn't have another gun. Ethan's main concern was not rushing into a group of zombies. He kept his distance but didn't let him out of his sight.

  The wounded man began to stagger, then dropped to the ground, clutching his chest. Ethan caught up and knelt beside him.

  "You were at the school."

  Under the mask, the man nodded weakly.

  Ethan only had one question. "Why?"

  There was movement under the mask. Ethan pulled it off and stared into the eyes of a man who couldn't be more than a few years older than he was. He seemed like he was tryi
ng to speak, but couldn't muster the strength. He began to take shallow breaths, and the sucking sound from his chest sounded like a countdown. He reached a hand out and and grabbed Ethan's sleeve. Ethan, disgusted by what this man had done, wanted to knock his hand away and let him die frightened and alone, but he wouldn't let his rage make him a monster. The man was paying the price for his acts, as his partner had in the building.

  Ethan felt the hand clench his arm tightly, then relax and drop away weakly. He bowed his head, not out of grief, but frustration. He'd been forced to kill two men and had no answers to show for it.

  He thought he might know a way to get some, though. He pulled off the man's boots, then unzipped his black jumpsuit and wrestled him out of it. Ethan slipped it on over his clothes. It was snug, but it would do. He had one boot on and was struggling with the second when he heard a man yelling and, he thought, fighting for his life. He yanked hard on the boot. "Come on, come on, come on..." he said through gritted teeth. His foot finally slid in and he jumped to his feet. He pulled his weapon out and investigated the area where the noise came from.

  He crested a small rise and saw a man willing himself to his feet. He looked exhausted; the three corpses that ringed him...Ethan wasn't sure if they were zombies or not, but they weren't moving anymore...told him why. Then Ethan noticed that the man, who looked familiar, wore the same jumpsuit that he himself had just taken off of a mass murderer. He was taken aback when the man said his name, then his surprise was replaced by more anger. He punched the defenseless man as hard as he could, and he crumpled back to the ground.

  Ethan maneuvered the man over his shoulder in a fireman's carry and brought him back to the van. The radio station was ablaze from the third floor to the roof, and with no one around to fight it he didn't want to be around when it came down. He dumped the man unceremoniously in the cargo area and trussed him up with bungee cords. He took the driver's seat once more. He turned the key, and, after his mind was able to process what it meant, all of the questions that he had were either answered or backburnered.

  He drove back to the Drive-In in a state of near-shock.

  * * *

  Rachel stared out the same window that Ethan had stared out a few hours before. Jason was mumbling his millionth apology, but she didn't want to hear it. "How could you let him go out there by himself?" She was mostly succeeding at staying under control, but a tinge of panic was creeping into her voice. "Did you forget what's out there? How could you do something that dumb?"

  "Hey," Harold chimed in. "It's not his fault."

  "It's not? He was the only person awake. He was our 'guard.' So whose fault is it?"

  "Your boyfriend's and nobody else's. Yell at him when he gets back." Now Harold's hackles were up in defense of his mate, and he said something that he would immediately regret, but at that moment he didn't care. "If he gets back."

  "You son of a bitch!" Rachel closed the distance between them in a flash and threw a punch intended for Harold's face. Sister Ann, who had, for her own reasons, been willing to let them work it out themselves up to this point, came to the conclusion that it wasn't really working and moved to intercept Rachel. She threw her arm up and deflected the blow's aim, if not its momentum. Rachel's fist crashed into the wall behind him, and the impact sent a shockwave from her knuckles to her teeth. She didn't cry out, but the pain brought her back to her senses and she didn't fight as Sister Ann led her backward.

  "Five of us," she said, looking back and forth between the two combatants. "Five. Out of over thirty. This is not how we survive...children."

  Jason yelled, "Headlights!" and three heads swiveled towards him, everything else forgotten for the time being.

  "Who's driving?" Ann asked.

  Jason squinted through the glass. "Ethan. It's definitely Ethan. He's okay, Rachel."

  "Good. Because I'm going to kill him." She threw the bolts on the door and stormed outside, all survival instincts submerged under her anger and fear. He hadn't gotten more than one foot on the ground before she was on him. "What the fuck were you thinking? Were you even thinking?" She saw movement behind him in the van. "And what the fuck is that? Oh, my God, is that a person? Who the fuck is that? What the fuck, Ethan?" She expected him to respond with anger, or humor, or that cute little boy smile he saved for when she was annoyed with him...something. And when he did, she'd get really angry.

  He did none of those things. He merely put his hand on her forearm and said, "Rachel. Please listen."

  She yanked her arm away. The sudden rush of blood made her injured hand throb. "I so don't want to hear anything you have to say right now."

  "Not to me." He reached in and turned a knob on the dashboard. The last chords of "All Right Now" by Free filled the van.

  "Wow. You scared the shit out of me for a CD. You win Boyfriend of the Year. Yaaaay..."

  "Wait."

  The deejay's voice stopped her in her tracks as surely as if she'd been flash frozen. The words bounced around her head without making any sense, but their meaning was clear.

  "Oh. My. God."

  Chapter 22: Disconnected

  Orpheus felt Mutt's weight on his shoulder gradually increasing with each couple of steps. The head resting on his shoulder worried him, and not just because his own neck would be defenseless if Mutt turned. "Hey, hey, stay with me. We're almost there."

  "Almost...where?" a groggy voice returned.

  "We'll know when we get there, right?"

  "I thought you two were in shape? Me and Sammy here are cramping up from moving so slow."

  Mutt said, "Just shut it and kill whatever's almost as ugly as you."

  "That's the spirit," Sam said, keeping his eyes on the forest. "Now keep it down."

  Tim's plan had worked. The remaining four escaped the press box and only had to contend with a handful of zombies that hadn't taken off in pursuit, and they had just barely beaten the arrival of the "rescue" chopper which still pursued them. They were momentarily lost under the canopy of trees, but the spotlight would eventually find them if they didn't think of something fast.

  It was slow going. Dr. Vincent's serum was keeping Mutt's zombie infection at bay, but the toll it was taking on him physically was drastic. Orpheus was probably only a few more minutes away from having to carry him outright. "Just put me down, Holt. This is stupid. I'm gone."

  Orpheus made to say something inspirational but was preempted by a radio transmission. "Holt! Where the hell are you!"

  Trager.

  Against his better judgment, Orpheus responded. "What?"

  "'What?' That's what you have to say after I send the rescue you begged me for?"

  "I changed my mind."

  "Don't be an idiot."

  "Out, Marty."

  "Holt! Holt, answer me!"

  Holt clipped the radio to his belt and he and Mutt continued to shuffle forward until their three-legged race was interrupted by Fish's rifle. "Shit! They're coming!"

  And coming they were.

  The zombies veered around trees and through bushes, coming from three compass points. The fourth direction, back the way they came, would have served as a suitable egress if they'd all been at their peak. Exhausted and with Mutt in tow...no chance.

  Sam and Fish had already mowed down several zombies, with more coming. Holt released Mutt so he could unsling his own rifle; in those short seconds, Mutt collapsed to the ground, unable to support himself. Holt didn't have time to check on him, as he was needed in the fight. Mutt, to his neverending credit, refused to sit there and let his friends fight without him. He crawled to Holt's side and grabbed his pistol and magazines. He fired from his ass, but he held his own.

  The moonlight only broke through the trees in spots. The battle area was dark, but the zombies' eyes provided suitable targets. Their eyes didn't glow a supernatural red or anything that theatrical, but the infection did something to them that made their eyes highly reflective, and the remaining members of the Scalpel team were grateful for it.
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  The symphony of crashing brush, impromptu battle cries, and gunfire was soon accompanied by the sounds of the approaching helicopter.

  * * *

  The pilot, Jameson, was annoyed. He'd argued with the tattooed chick for ten minutes about how there was no way in Hell that he was going up to rescue someone dumb enough to get surrounded by zombies, and that should have been the end of it. Somehow, their plight had become priority #1 for Trager, and here he was anyway. But when Anders comes personally knocking at your door, the smart thing to do is go.

  Anders scared him, he couldn't kid himself about that. It wasn't a physical fear, no; Jameson would bet any amount that he could take Anders in a fair fight, but he doubted that Anders and a fair fight had ever made each other's acquaintance. If they had, the fair fight probably end up with sore nuts and a shattered beer bottle stuck in its back. The other thing was that if Jameson thought that he was annoyed because he had to rescue Holt (and now, Holt didn't want to be rescued!), he'd underestimated Anders. Jameson had seen him literally shaking with anger on more than one occasion tonight.

  Like he was doing now. If Holt wasn't careful, he was going to have an "accident" during the rescue.

  Jameson cleared his throat and said, "Anyone see those dipshits?"

  The other two men shook their heads, while Anders said nothing.

  "All right, I'm going to expand the circle."

  "Hold up," Anders said at a volume that indicated he didn't remember that they were in a helicopter. When Jameson failed to heed him, he slapped him on the helmet and yelled, "I said to hold up, asshole!"

  "Okay! Okay!"

  "Point the light down there...near those tallest pines." The high-powered light cast daylight on a large diameter of the forest, and several shapes in motion vindicated the decision.

  "That them?"

  "No!" Anders took over the searchlight controls and swept it sideways. More shapes, moving in the same direction. He took a guess at where they'd all intersect, and lit that next. Before the light illuminated that area, he knew: he'd seen the muzzle flashes. "That is! Get over there and let's take 'em out!"