Zed's World (Book 2): Roads Less Traveled

by Baker, Rich

  A few seconds pass, and the girl emerges from the gap in a stumble and regains her footing on the sidewalk. She turns her head and spots Kyle. She releases that hideous scream again and starts coming at him. Fast.

  Kyle turns and starts running. He’s able to run a mile at a sub-seven-minute pace, but that’s about as far as he can go that quickly. After about a minute and a half, the run tracking application on his iPod interrupts the music in his headphones with its stilted, mechanical female voice. Time: Twenty-three minutes. Distance: Two. Point. Seventy-five. Miles. Pace: Six minutes. Thirty seconds. Per mile. Workout average pace: Eight minutes. Nineteen seconds. Per mile.

  The pacing timer tells Kyle he just ran the last quarter mile at a 6:30 pace. He knows he can’t keep that up for long. He steals a glance over his shoulder and sees the girl still coming, only she’s closed the distance from fifty to about thirty yards. Kyle is baffled. Whatever she’s on, clearly it makes her oblivious to pain, but there’s no way she should be able to keep this pace up with a rib sticking out of her chest. He forces himself to go a little faster.

  Time: Twenty-four minutes. Twenty-six. Seconds. Distance: Three. Point Zero. Miles. Pace: Five minutes. Forty-five seconds. Per mile. Workout average pace: Eight minutes. Fifteen seconds. Per mile.

  Kyle can hear his heart beating in his ears. His last quarter mile was sub-six minutes. He’s never run at a sub-six pace before, let alone uphill, and his lungs are burning. His legs are hurting, and he knows he can’t keep this up much longer, but a glance over his shoulder tells him the girl has closed the gap to about fifteen yards.

  How can this be possible? he thinks, and he forces his legs to move a little faster. He’s nearing the top of the hill and can see the stoplight at Ninth Avenue. There’s a telephone/DSL control box at the corner; maybe, if he makes it there, he can keep it between the two of them so he can catch his breath.

  Time: Twenty-five minutes. Forty-five seconds. Distance: Three. Point. Twenty-five. Miles. Pace: Five minutes. Fifteen seconds. Per mile. Workout average pace: Seven minutes. Fifty-five seconds. Per mile.

  The corner is only a few hundred yards away now, but Kyle can feel the girl closing in. She must be within about twenty feet of him. He’s focused on the big silver box with the phone company’s logo on it when a police car roars into view, making a hard left turn off of Ninth Avenue and onto Price Street. The driver hits the gas and points the car directly at Kyle. A voice comes over the car’s loudspeaker, startling him.

  “Keep running,” the voice commands him. “Do not slow down and do not change directions!”

  Kyle listens to the man and keeps going as fast as he can. He is out of gas, though, and that big silver box is the limit of his increasingly rubbery legs’ ability to sprint like this.

  The car roars past him, missing him by two feet. He hears a thump as the car’s tires hop up onto the sidewalk just behind him, and then another thump that he can only assume is the car hitting the woman a nanosecond after that. Then the police car is braking hard, stopping, and backing up. It grinds to a halt a couple of seconds later.

  Kyle makes it to the four-and-a-half-foot-tall silver box and turns around to see what’s happening behind him. The girl has been hit by the police car, and her broken body is contorted in directions the human body is not meant to bend. Her right leg is completely severed, and her left has a ninety-degree sideways bend at the knee. Her spine has to be broken as well, based on the angle of the new joint in the middle of her back. Kyle can’t believe it, but her arms are still working, dragging her battered form toward him while her jaw snaps at the air.

  The passenger door opens, and the cop gets out. He walks over to the girl, draws his gun and fires a shot into the back of her head. The body convulses once and lies still. Kyle, partly from the exertion and partly from the scene he’s just witnessed, throws up. The cop walks over to him, gun still drawn, trigger finger resting on the slide.

  “Sir, are you okay?” he asks.

  “Yes. I think so. Have to. Catch breath,” he says, gasping for air.

  “Are you bit?” the cop asks.

  “Am I bit?” Kyle doesn’t know why the cop would want to know that. Well, she was kind of like a mad dog; maybe she had rabies, he thinks and then says, “No, I’m not bit.”

  “Good, because if you get bit, it’s game over,” the cop says, holstering his pistol. “What the hell are you doing out? Haven’t you seen the news?”

  “No,” Kyle says. “It was date night.”

  The cop ignores the last comment and is interrupted by his radio.

  “Paul 207 what is your twenty?” the voice on the radio says. Longview police designate their unit number with “Paul” for patrolman, unlike the Fort Collins police department who just go by their unit number.

  The cop presses the button on his mic. “Paul 207 and Paul 220, Ninth and Price, Code 2. Subject code black.” Code 2 indicates that they’ve made contact with the person they sought, and like the Fort Collins police, code black means the subject is dead.

  “Copy Paul 207. Next contact; subject seen at Seventeenth and Alpen View. Green shirt and red hat.”

  He clicks the button again. “Paul 207 en route,” he says. The police cruiser backs up next to the cop, who turns his attention back to Kyle.

  “How far to your house?”

  Kyle points east on Ninth Avenue. “About a mile and a half that way.”

  “We’d give you a ride, but we have another one of”—here he gestures with his thumb at the body on the ground behind him—“these fuckers to deal with. Listen to me; get home as quick as you can. Turn on the fucking news and get caught up on what’s happening. Lock the doors, pull the shades, and don’t do anything to draw attention to your house. Turn off your sprinklers. Turn off your light timers. If you have a gun, load it and be ready to use it. DO NOT go near these fuckers, do not offer to help them, do not try to talk to them. Whatever they’ve got has shut off their brains and all they do is attack and bite. And if you get bit, you’re done; you become one of them. You read me?”

  Kyle reads him but is having a hard time reconciling what he’s just been told with what, until a few minutes ago, was a reality where people with massive injuries don’t outrun uninjured people, police don’t run those people down, and they definitely don’t tell the town’s residents to barricade in their homes and load up their guns. Out loud he says, “So you’re saying these are zombies?”

  “I didn’t say that. I don’t know what the fuck they are. Call ’em what you want, just don’t get near them. We have to go—oh, and one more thing; to stop them you have to hit them in the head! You saw the damage she took,” again he jerks his thumb at the twisted body behind him, “and was still coming for you. You gotta hit the head.”

  With that, the cop slides into the cruiser and the car speeds away to its next encounter.

  With adrenaline pumping through his system like nitrous oxide in a street racer’s car, Kyle has no problem running a sub-seven-minute pace all the way home.

  Two

  Fort Collins. Friday, May 17th, 2013, 8 PM - Zpoc plus 90 minutes

  Danielle sits on the couch crying while Toni consoles her. Keith leans on the kitchen counter and watches the video he took of the zombies attacking and eating the policeman. Andy looks over Keith’s shoulder.

  “That’s disgusting. I never want to see that again,” Natalie says as she takes a glass of water to the sobbing girl on the couch.

  Keith rolls his eyes and pockets his phone.

  “Dude,” he says to Ben, “we need to find out what the hell is happening. Let’s check the TV.” He looks at the girls on the couch and adds, “In my room.”

  The three guys make their way upstairs. Ben signals to Toni what they’re doing, and she nods. In Keith’s room, he has the TV on and turns it to one of the Denver news channels. The anchor has a graphic that reads “RIOTS” over his shoulder. The word “riots” has a cartoonish brown beer bottle breaking on it. He’s in
mid-sentence when the speakers on the TV come to life.

  “… again are asking people to stay in their homes, lock their doors and draw as little attention to themselves as possible. If you’re not seriously injured you should not try to get to any of the area hospitals, as they are running over capacity, and they’re asking people to avoid calling 911 unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

  Keith clicks a button on the remote and switches to another channel.

  “… similar activity has been reported across the country. Governor Hickenlooper has mobilized the Colorado National Guard to augment the police forces trying to deal with this unprecedented level of civil unrest.”

  The video cuts to stock footage of Guardsmen loading gear into a Humvee. The anchor’s voice runs over the stock video.

  “The United States has about 400,000 members in the Air and Army National Guard units, and it is expected that all of them will be called up by the state governors before this is over.”

  The video switches to Governor Hickenlooper in what looks like a hallway at the state capitol.

  “Our primary concern is the safety and health of the people of Colorado. Therefore, I’m issuing orders to all members of the Colorado National Guard to report for duty. Our local police departments have called up all their officers, and they’re doing all they can, but this has gotten so big there just aren’t enough of them to go around.”

  Keith changes channels, this time to FoxNews. It’s the top of the hour, and Greta Van Susteren is taking over from Sean Hannity. They’ve caught her in mid-sentence.

  “… around the globe,” she says.

  The screen starts splitting into different views as she goes through a list.

  “London.”

  The upper-left part of the screen shows a mélange of people on a darkened street, running and fighting. It’s not immediately obvious in the small image, but individual people are being tackled by groups of attackers. The three boys watching know too well what happens next.

  “Paris.”

  Greta goes on, and another section of the screen shows a similar scene.

  “Berlin. Buenos Aires. San Jose. New York, Washington DC, Beijing, Moscow, Delhi, Melbourne, Manila—the list goes on and on. Masses of people have been rioting for more than an hour and a half, and no one knows why, no one knows how this was so coordinated, and no one knows how many have been hurt or killed. Hospitals everywhere are overrun with victims, riots have destroyed some medical facilities, and police and other first responders are just not able to keep up. The President, we’re told, will be speaking about this situation at 10:30 PM Eastern Time. Now, let’s go to …”

  The boys are startled by a screech from the TV as the Emergency Alert System begins a broadcast. The screen goes black and “EAS” flashes across the top of the screen. The overbearing voice blasts at them.

  “This is a broadcast of the Emergency Alert System. Authorities in your area have issued the following emergency warning. All residents of Fort Collins, Colorado, and surrounding communities are urged to stay indoors due to pockets of civil unrest occurring throughout the city. Residents should remain indoors with their doors locked. Do not open your doors to anyone you do not know or anyone who appears to be violent. Police are working in conjunction with the Larimer County Sheriff’s Department to gain control of the affected areas. Local National Guard units, at the request of the governor, are mobilizing to assist in containing the situation.”

  The voice stops, and then the screeching noise repeats and the message begins to play again. Keith hits mute on the remote.

  “What did it say?” Toni asks from the doorway.

  The three boys jump at her interruption.

  “Goddammit, Toni!” Keith exclaims. “You scared the shit out of me! We need to put a fucking bell on you or something so we know you’re coming.”

  “Dick,” she says, giving him a look. She turns to Ben. “We heard that God-awful emergency alert noise downstairs but couldn’t understand what the warning said.”

  “Stay indoors, the police, sheriffs and National Guard are controlling the situation,” Ben says.

  “Like they controlled the situation over at Moby?” she exclaims. “They’re not controlling shit! They’re getting slaughtered!”

  “Babe …” Ben starts to say.

  “Don’t ‘babe’ me, Ben! We just watched a cop get EATEN! Watts was torn to pieces, somehow still able to walk, and screaming that horrible sounding scream! Danielle is just now getting herself under control, and I think all of us are in a state of shock. We can’t get any calls out, either. We’re scared, Ben! What are we going to do?”

  The EAS alert is over, and Keith changes the channel to another local station and unmutes the sound. The anchor is talking while a map of Colorado displays on the screen. It has red dots pulsing over Fort Collins, several over the Denver metropolitan area, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, and Grand Junction on the western slope of the state.

  “As you can see on this graphic, the affected areas are all the larger cities along the front range, and cities with interstate access running through them. The I-25 and I-70 corridors are, for the most part, affected, and on the Western Slope, Grand Junction is experiencing this violence as well. Whatever is driving this series of attacks has so far stayed out of the mountain communities, with no reports of violence in towns like Aspen and Vail, and so far smaller cities to the north like Loveland, Longview, and Greeley seem to be fairly calm.”

  Keith mutes the TV again. “Let’s get the fuck out of Dodge,” he says.

  Ben considers this for a moment. “We were headed home tomorrow anyway,” he says, and then pauses for a second, thinking. “I’m sure the folks wouldn’t mind if we brought a few more people. Not with all this shit going on.” He looks at Toni. “What do you think?”

  “Let’s ask the others,” she says. “But if it gets us out of here, away from those whacked-out people, I’m all for it.”

  Keith turns the TV off, and they all go downstairs to the living room. Danielle has stopped crying and looks over as they file down the stairs.

  “So what is it?” she asks.

  Ben takes a deep breath. “Well, there’s good and bad news. They’re saying that this,” he gestures east, toward the campus, toward where they just came from, “these riots or whatever they are, are going on all over the place.”

  “Worldwide,” Keith interjects.

  “Right,” Ben says. “It’s global. But they’re saying that it’s focused on the bigger cities. They just said on Channel Nine that Longview hasn’t been affected yet.”

  “Yet. But it will be,” Danielle says.

  “We don’t know that,” Keith says. “They’re calling in the National Guard. I’m sure they’ll get this under control. There’s a Guard armory in Longview. I bet they’re geared up and get this back to normal in no time.”

  “Keith, we just watched people kill and eat a cop,” Danielle replies. “Rioters don’t do that. Watts was torn to pieces but was still moving. That’s not normal. Christ, Ben ran over one of them, and it just started pulling itself along with its arms, like nothing happened. I’m no expert, but that’s NOT normal rioter behavior. That’s not even normal HUMAN behavior.” Danielle is getting upset again and once more on the verge of tears.

  Ben speaks up again. “Look, we don’t have a lot of information, but based on the news, Longview hasn’t been affected, neither has Loveland or Greeley. We think Longview is our best bet. It’s a few miles away from I-25 and close to the mountains, and according to the news, those are both good things.” He gestures at Keith. “Our folks are there. They’ll have an idea of what to do.” He turns to the others. “My dad’s neighbor is a big survivalist nut. He’ll for sure have some ideas on what to do and where to go.”

  “Oh, yeah—Danny!” Keith says. “Danny can arm the whole lot of us! He’s been hooking dad up with all kinds of shit as payment from when he fixed that financial fraud deal! Shit, I forgot about him. Done deal,
let’s go!”

  “I’m graduating tomorrow!” Danielle protests. “I’m supposed to be on a plane to San Diego Sunday! I’m not going to head off to Longview on some stupid hunch you have.”

  She reaches for the remote to turn on the TV.

  “What are they saying about California?” she asks. “Is this happening there too?”

  “We didn’t see anything about California,” Ben says.

  “So how do we know there are any problems there?”

  “Try calling your folks,” Keith says to her.

  “I’ve been trying. All circuits are busy.”

  “That’s a pretty big sign that things are fucked, Danielle,” Keith says. “The phone lines are overloaded because everyone’s trying to call their families to check on them. They didn’t say ‘it’s affecting every major city in the world except the one you’re running away to.’”

  “No,” she says. “I’m too close. I just fucking finished school! I’m supposed to be starting my LIFE after graduation tomorrow! This isn’t fucking fair!”

  “Well, you can do whatever you want. I’m not going to end up like Watts. I’m going to Longview,” Keith declares.

  “Let’s vote on it,” Ben says. “I don’t want to force anyone to do anything, not when it could be life or death. Everyone for going to Longview?” He holds up his hand. So do Keith, Andy, and Toni. After a minute, Natalie raises her hand.

  “I’m not staying here alone,” she says.

  “Well, if you’re all going to abandon me, I guess I have no choice,” Danielle says.

  “You have a choice. If you come with us, though, don’t bitch the whole time,” Keith says.

  “Fuck you, Keith! I should have broken up with—” Danielle starts.

  “Okay, it’s settled. We’re going,” Ben says, cutting her off before she starts an argument with Keith. “Let’s grab the stuff we want to take and get moving. I don’t think we should waste any time.”