Middletown Apocalypse

by Brett Abell

  He landed on the wing and sent the aircraft rocking. He tried to hold on, but the hull was so glassy smooth there was nothing but the edge of the cockpit to grab on to.

  “Hang on,” Charlotte said. “I think it’s gonna fall.”

  “It’s gonna—”

  Before he could get the words out, the cable holding up the glider snapped. Russ’s stomach rose into his throat as they dropped, but they didn’t fall far. The scaffolding hadn’t completely collapsed. Only the part nearest the window was down. They were perched only the top rails of the structure. To Russ, it looked like they were in a rollercoaster headed toward a missing section of track, because there was nothing beyond the end of the scaffolding but a three-hundred-foot drop.

  The zombies were still coming. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one in a bloody white coat crawling toward him.

  It was Sandy Harris.

  “Get in!” Charlotte shouted at him. “Hurry!”

  The scaffolding shifted again, and the glider slid a short way down the rails. Dr. Harris slid toward him, her face shredded and warped with hunger and rage. She reached for him, and that was all it took. Russ jumped headfirst into the cockpit, landing with his face between Charlotte’s legs. His crotch was in her face. She tried to push him away, but the ridiculousness of it made something in his head snap. Even with death staring him in the face, Russ Surewood couldn’t resist. Dear Penthouse Letters: It was the zombie apocalypse, and I was doing a 69 with a college cheerleader.

  The thought broke off clean though. His weight had tilted the glider just a little too far, and they started to slide.

  They didn’t stop either.

  “Get out of the way,” she said. “I can’t see.”

  He couldn’t move though, and they were starting to pick up speed.

  “We’re going over,” she said. “Move out of the way so I can see. I have to be able to work the stick.”

  Russ ducked his shoulder and slid to the floor by her feet. It was so cramped in the cockpit, he could barely move. But he wasn’t sure he wanted to see what was coming.

  “Oh God, we’re about to go over!”

  The next instant, they were falling, and falling fast. Charlotte wrestled with the stick, pulling back with everything she had. He could see her straining, the veins standing out in her neck, her head thrown back to scream.

  He braced himself for the crash, but it didn’t come. Somehow, Charlotte had found the strength to wrench the stick back. He felt the floor push against his cheek as the aircraft leveled out and started to fly.

  They were rising.

  “Oh my God,” Charlotte said. “Oh my God.”

  “You did it!”

  She laughed, her chest heaving like a bellows. “Yeah,” she said. “Oh my God.”

  Russ pushed himself up as best he could, trying not to bump up against the stick. There was only one seat, and the cockpit would have been tight even it had been just him. They wrestled with it for a few seconds until she managed to squirm into his lap.

  “Now this is one for Penthouse Letters,” he said.

  “Ugh,” she said. “Don’t be gross.”

  He chuckled to himself as he looked out the window, barely able to believe that they were alive. Charlotte banked the glider and took them over the campus. Below them, there were bodies everywhere. Many were still moving. Most of the zombies had moved onto the main roads that led off campus. Already, they looked like a dark river headed toward downtown Indianapolis.

  “Oh my God,” she said. “They’re everywhere.”

  “This is going to get really bad,” he said.

  “Where do we go? They’re everywhere.”

  “I don’t know.”

  He looked out the window again, thinking of what was going to happen when that river of the dead finally reached the big city. Hundreds of thousands of people were going to die. And that was just in the first few hours. Their numbers would grow exponentially, death and destruction spreading like a wildfire. What had Dr. Harris said? They’d spread faster than the flu.

  The worst part of it, though? He was still alive.

  Russ tried to tell himself that Charlotte was wrong. He hadn’t caused this. It wasn’t his fault.

  It wasn’t. It couldn’t be.

  But from up here, with a view to the end of the world, his conscience didn’t feel so clean. The world was about to end, not with a bang, and not with a whimper, but because he’d been in too much of a hurry to read a label.

  About Joe McKinney

  Joe McKinney is a sergeant in the San Antonio Police Department and the author of more than twenty books. His work has twice been honored with the Bram Stoker Award, and his 2006 novel Dead City has been cited by academics and zombie fans alike as one of the seminal novels in the genre zombie. As a police officer, he’s done a little bit of everything, working as a regular street officer, a disaster mitigation specialist, homicide detective, he ran the City’s 911 Center for a while, and is currently a patrol supervisor. He lives in the Texas Hill Country north of San Antonio. Visit him at http://joemckinney.wordpress.com for news and updates.

  Class is Canceled

  John O’Brien

  Chapter One

  Charlie looks up as the door to the biology department administration office opens. One of the senior interns pokes his head in and says, “Hey, Charlie. I just had a call from receiving. They say there’s a delivery. Head down and sign for it, will ya?”

  “I have class in twenty minutes, man. Can you get someone else?”

  “Nah. Just go down, pick it up, and take it over to whatever lab it’s for. You’ll have plenty of time.”

  Charlie Noble sighs dramatically. As the junior member on the team of grad students in the biology department, he’s often the gofer. The others who are actually working on their theses always seek him out to run whatever errands they’ve been assigned. Charlie is a long way from being at their level. As a matter of fact, he’s not really a grad student at all, but merely working off part of his tuition grant through the work-study program. The biology staff, not really knowing what else to do with him, assigned him to work alongside the graduate students. He doesn’t get to work on the research stuff, but is on the periphery and hopes that the knowledge he gains will give him a boost in his classes. That is, if he wasn’t always being sent on errands for this or that.

  As the other intern is about to leave, he turns and adds: “Oh, and it’s at our receiving door, not the school’s main one.”

  “Fine. Where do I take it?” Charlie says, exasperated.

  “Like I said, wherever it’s addressed to,” the intern states, and leaves, closing the door behind him.

  Charlie glances at his watch, seeing the minutes swim past. He’ll be lucky to make it to his class in time. It’s one of his lesser classes and one he’ll pass with ease, but shit, he hates to be late. In his mind, it’s better not to show at all than to be late.

  After making his way down to the small receiving door, he opens it and is surprised to see a host of black suits waiting just outside. Several dark SUVs are parked in the small receiving lot. Seeing a dozen well-built men scanning the lot makes Charlie feel as if he’s stepped into some espionage movie.

  “Um …” is all Charlie is able to mumble as two of the suited figures approach.

  “You’ll have to sign for this,” one states, holding a clipboard. “But I’m going to have to see some identification first.”

  Charlie fumbles for his wallet, eventually plucking it from his pocket and handing his driver’s license to the taller, tanned man hidden behind dark sunglasses. Snatching the ID from his fingers, the man begins copying information onto his clipboard. Without another word, he returns the license and signals a man waiting near one of the SUVs.

  As Charlie puts his wallet away, a small package is retrieved from the Suburban and brought to the door. Charlie grabs hold of the plainly wrapped package, momentarily taken aback by its weight.

  “What’s in
here?” Charlie asks, more rhetorically than as an actual question.

  The three men stare at him silently for several seconds before turning away without a word. With a hand signal from the man holding the clipboard, the others smoothly climb into the SUVs. Gears are engaged and the vehicles exit, pulling into a convoy formation as smoothly as Charlie’s ever witnessed.

  “Well, that was … interesting,” Charlie mutters, looking down at the package in his hands.

  To Charlie, everything seemed so official, so secretive. Yet, they handed him a package without knowing anything beyond what was printed on his ID. The two ideas seem diametrically opposed. Shrugging his shoulders as best as he can while holding the heavy package, he commandeers a wheeled cart to help him with his load.

  With time seeming to race by, and with his upcoming class time looming, Charlie looks at the address label in order to determine where he needs to deliver the package.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Charlie states.

  He runs to the receiving door and forcefully pulls it open. None of the vehicles are still in sight. Letting the door swing closed, he tromps back to the cart. He stares again at the label, hoping that he read it wrong the first time. Nope. The label still says “Middletown Labs”—not the Middletown University Lab.

  An easy enough mistake, I guess, he thinks, pondering what he should do.

  It’s the other part of the address that sends shivers up his spine: USAMRIID. Charlie involuntarily pulls his hand back and retreats a couple of steps. A package delivered to the wrong lab from the military’s foremost biological research facility. That’s not something he wants to touch with a pole from a state away. He finds himself holding his breath, not even wanting to breathe the air in the same room as the package. Thoughts cycle of weaponized smallpox and other nasty shit. Anthrax? Marburg? Ebola? A list of the nasty agents associated with biological warfare race through his mind, none of which he wants to be remotely close to.

  After several seconds of panic, he begins to calm, realizing that whatever is within the package would have some kind of secure containment.

  And, surely they wouldn’t transport and deliver such a thing in a plain cardboard package, and to an unknown someone just standing at a door—and with only a driver’s license for proof.

  Relief comes quickly, rationality taking control of his thoughts again. But, now he’s in a quandary as to what to do with the package. There isn’t a lab on campus to deliver it to, and he can’t very well call the people who delivered it. He could call the USAMRIID number, but he really doesn’t want to go that route. And, he can’t very well just leave it in someone else’s hands. He had signed for it, and he doesn’t want that delivery crew visiting him again.

  Charlie tracks down the original intern and tells him the story, asking him what to do.

  “Just take it over to campus shipping and let them deal with it,” the intern says, trying to dismiss Charlie as quickly as possible.

  “Are you sure that’s the best idea? I mean, who knows what’s really in there. The USAMRIID handles some pretty serious shit,” Charlie replies.

  “You asked my opinion, and I gave it to you. Do what you want.”

  Seeing that he’s not going to get any help here, Charlie heads back down to the small receiving bay. It’s already too late for him to get to class, but missing one isn’t much of a worry. He doesn’t like it, but much worse is the fact that he’s now stuck with this package. Perhaps he should take it to the central shipping department—tell them it was delivered to the incorrect location, and have them take it off his hands. He’ll ask for a receipt in case the suits show up at his house at midnight, but he’s ready to hand this problem off.

  Satisfied that he has a solution to bring the issue to an end, he wheels the cart through the building and outside. The sun beams down on trimmed and landscaped lawns with wide walkways angling through them. The bricked buildings, some with ivy growing up the sides, add to the pristine nature of the day. Middletown carries the last vestiges of summer, with only the slightest hint that rain, snow, and cold weather are just around the corner. The leaves on the majestic oaks as well as the smaller decorative trees adorning the campus have turned, adding golds and reds to the greenness of the lawns. The smell of freshly cut grass lingers in the air, carried on the lightest of breezes. In all, it’s one of those perfect days that promote epidemic “illness” among the student body—students suddenly finding reasons to be anywhere other than in stuffy classrooms.

  On the lawns, several students sit on blankets or on the grass itself, immersing themselves in a book or their own thoughts. Off to one side, it looks like a teacher has decided to conduct class outside, with the students all sitting in a semi-circle around the instructor. In places, Frisbees sail through the calm air, and one group is gathered in a circle playing hacky sack. In addition, Charlie sees shirtless guys tossing a football, their skin glistening with sweat. His attention, however, is drawn to the women. Clad in tight shorts with blouses to match, they walk along the pathways on their way to and from their classes.

  He wheels the cart onto one of the side paths, catching up with and following closely behind one such pair of shorts that has caught his attention. Everything else fades as he watches her walk, angling for the slightest hint of a butt cheek showing below the tight hem. His thoughts fall away from his task as he immerses himself in fantasies, mostly just watching her ass swing back and forth.

  The collision takes him by surprise. One moment he’s enjoying the scenery, and the next he feels a tremendous jolt and is flying through the air. With a grunt, Charlie lands on the edge of the concrete path, feeling a sting on his arm as it scrapes along the rough surface before sliding into the grass. The metallic sound of the cart being upended accompanies the sight of a football a few feet away, wobble-rolling away on the lawn.

  “You all right, dude?” a voice asks from behind. Rolling onto his back, Charlie sees a well-toned shirtless guy standing over him.

  “Sorry about that,” the man says, extending his hand to help Charlie to his feet.

  Charlie brushes himself off, trying to remove the grass stains from his clothes and looks at his arm. A large scrape has removed the upper layers of skin on his forearm, bordered by several less severe scratches. Red-tinged plasma oozes from the wound and Charlie feels a burning sensation associated with the injury—one with which he’s well acquainted, having played soccer for most of his life.

  “Oh, shit, man. I’m really sorry,” the man says upon seeing the injury.

  “It’s all right. Shit happens,” Charlie returns.

  “Well, dude, I’m Craig. If you ever need anything, you can find me at the Kappa Sigma house. Again, sorry,” Craig says.

  Charlie nods his reply, barely noticing Craig as he turns to gather up the football. Instead, Charlie focuses on the upended cart and the package lying on the walkway next to it.

  Fucking seriously?! he thinks, wondering if his day could get any worse.

  The woman he had been following stands on the pathway, having stopped to see what the commotion was behind her. As he appears to be okay, she gives him a smile and turns to resume her walk. Charlie wonders if her smile was flirtatious, an indication of her interest, or maybe she was only being nice and making sure he was all right. He had never been good at reading women. His heart beats rapidly from nervousness, and he wonders whether he should approach her and introduce himself. The sway of her hips and her long brunette hair grow smaller. With a deep, longing sigh, Charlie returns his attention to the cart.

  He rights the cart and picks up the wrapped package, noting that one corner is dented inward.

  Crap, crap, crap! I hate my fucking life.

  With his arm still burning, he contemplates what to do next. The shipping department may not take a damaged package. They may tell him to just bugger off, that they aren’t taking any liability for it. Charlie looks at the label again, searching for the address of the lab where it was supposed to be deliv
ered.

  Of course there wouldn’t be one. Well, this day is wasted already. I’ll fucking take it there myself and tell them it was delivered this way.

  Turning around, he wheels the cart toward the lot where his ten-year-old Honda Civic is parked. The wheels squeak as he pushes the package back across the park-like expanse of the large quad, like the cart is injured as well. What Charlie can’t see, or anyone else for that matter, are the invisible fumes trailing behind him, wafting gently out of the dent in his burden.

  Chapter Two

  “In half a mile, turn left,” says Siri, giving Charlie directions to Middletown Labs. Following the female tone, he finds himself proceeding through the middle of the city. With his windows open and enjoying what he can of the nice day, he turns down the music in order to hear Siri’s next warning of the upcoming turn. The warmth of the day, though not overly hot, is making him a little light-headed. He barely heard, or for that matter understood, the last instructions. Once he gets the package sitting on the passenger seat delivered, he’s heading to his one-bedroom apartment and cranking on his Xbox.

  This has already been a wasted day, might as well make it complete, he thinks as Siri issues an instruction.

  That’s the last conscious thought he is able to understand. His head suddenly swims and an overwhelming dizziness takes hold as he unknowingly presses down on the accelerator and his head slumps forward. The car lunges into the busy intersection where Charlie had been waiting at a stoplight. He doesn’t feel the collision from the bus cruising through its green light.

  The Honda Civic crunches under the impact and is sent spinning across the intersection where it collides nearly head on with a lamppost. The squealing metal and shattering glass cause the pedestrians waiting to cross the street to turn toward the noise. Many look, some only to see their death rapidly approaching. Six people are caught by the careening vehicle before it slams into a post with a solid crunch. Four of them die instantly, while the other two lie bleeding on the ground, their deaths delayed by a few minutes.