Outbreak, p.7
Outbreak, page 7
part #3 of Reign of the Dead Series
“How can that be?” Burns asked. But thinking back on the scene he had witnessed in the cellblock he knew it was the truth. As if his protests might have the power to stop the inevitable, he stammered on, “I’ve been on duty through the night. Whatever this is…it just started.”
“It’s even worse than that Captain Burns, at least here in New York. Yesterday evening, at approximately twenty-two hundred hours, reports started coming in from western Pennsylvania. Acts of violence committed by unknown assailants. The reports were widespread and grew in frequency as the night progressed. By midnight reports were also coming in from Cleveland, Cincinnati, Washington, D.C, and Atlanta. Shortly thereafter New York City was affected as well. As we speak, the problem has become worldwide. Today at twelve hundred hours, the President will declare Martial Law in most major U.S cities. It is my job to prepare this city for that decision and protect civilians from further infection. I am in command here, Captain, but I will need the help of local law enforcement. I need to count on your cooperation.”
Burns nodded, but was unsure if he understood completely. Was it the end of the world? Is that what the Colonel was implying? “What’s causing it, do they know?” he asked, as he refocused his thoughts.
“No one knows. There are lots of theories. The television news channels are full of kooks with all kinds of far-fetched stories. Right now we need facts. We have to combat this situation in the best and most efficient way possible. It’s spreading and it’s spreading fast. Because of the population density, New York has been affected worse than anywhere else. We’re in some bad shit here, Captain.”
“Colonel, reports have been coming in that the dead are coming back to life and that they’re responsible.” Burns said. “Of course I know how fantastic that sounds, but my men are starting to come a little unglued when they hear crap like that and I’d like to believe those reports are wrong.”
The Colonel said, “Captain, my advice to you is to go on the assumption that those rumors are true. Forget about what you’ve come to think of as your comfortable little world. The rules have changed. We are in a whole new situation now.”
The Colonel locked eyes with Roy Burns to emphasize how serious the situation had become. He glared at him; steely eyed and uttered six words…
“This is a whole new world.”
Stepping forward and putting his right hand on Roy’s shoulder, he spoke to him in a subdued and gravely serious tone. “It would be a good idea to have all your men outfitted in riot gear. Make sure they understand that the infected mobs are transferring the illness through the saliva of bites. And stay clear of contaminated blood. If you get any on you, wash it off as soon as you can. As of twelve hundred hours, their orders will be to shoot suspected diseased persons in the head on sight. No exceptions”
When Captain Burns only stared at him he said, “Did you hear me, Captain? In the head. Body shots are no good. You can shoot the bastards in the stomach and chest all day and they will keep coming, but one shot in the head…well, that puts them down. They’re saying it’s something to do with the brain. That’s what allows them to get back up again. Oh yeah, they’re dead all right. There’s no way they are anything but dead. You just make sure your men don’t hesitate. If they do, it’ll cost them their lives.”
“I’ll brief my men. They’ll be ready.” Burns told him, “They’re good men.”
“Good men hesitate, Captain.” Westinghouse said softly, “Good men die. If we’re to set up our defenses for the inner part of the city it is imperative that you hold Broadway right here.” The General said, and pointed to the intersection at the next block. “Keep them from crossing that barricade.”
“We’ll do our part,” Burns said.
The Colonel pulled a half-smoked cigar from his pocket. Chomping down on the partially chewed end with his murmur barely audible, he said, “As we all will Captain and God help us.”
9
The city had come to life only to find itself in the spasms of a death throe. The streets were impossible to navigate by automobile. There were abandoned vehicles and scattered accident scenes. The number of roving corpses was increasing exponentially. They wandered the streets and alleys like gangs of mindless murderers. Anyone with a beating heart was attacked. Car alarms droned over the already panicking and noisy street as people ran this way and that. Some ran unwittingly into the arms of walking corpses where they were wrestled to the ground in a frenzy of blood and gore. A huge explosion echoed against the buildings and the street shook with the blast. Chuck dove to the ground as Duane and Jamal fell in his wake. Black smoke billowed up from behind a building just east of them. Chuck raised his head for a glimpse and realized that he was lying face to face with a dead man on the sidewalk. The corpse wore a shredded white shirt and his blue tie was pulled up around his head. An iron pipe was lying loosely in his open hand and Chuck grabbed it as he scrambled to his feet.
The man stared blankly up at him as if still in shock over what had happened. A pointed and bloody shard of glass protruded from the man’s stomach. It had been used to rip open a gapping cavity and spill the intestinal contents. In that same instance, Chuck detected a hunched and furtive figure close by; a bald man, with his full face buried in a handful of trailing, purple intestines, which he greedily ate. He gobbled them down in huge mouthfuls never once choking on his hideous bounty. Duane recoiled at the site and crawled backward, crashing into the brick wall behind him. He flattened himself there as if trying to blend into the brown and sand colored brick. Jamal simply stared in stunned silence, unable to move or say a word.
Chuck felt a tug as his ankle turned and his balance was knocked askew. The man at his feet had awakened and reached out for him. His mouth was opened wide and presented jagged, broken teeth.
Chuck pulled away and brought the pipe down hard on the animated cadaver’s back. There was a loud crack as club met bone and it fell back to the concrete walkway. It squirmed in search of solid footing. Three times Chuck swung, and three times the ghoul went down only to rise again. Finally Chuck laid a crushing blow to its left temple. It went down then, dead at last.
Without warning the squatted man rose and lunged. It fell into Chuck and clasped its bloody hands around his throat. Chuck bulled forward and swung, this time with a deliberate shot to the head. The creature’s skull exploded in a shower of grey matter and skull fragments. Chuck and Duane were spared the gruesome spray, but Jamal was not so fortunate. His face was covered in the foul spillage and he dropped to his knees where he knelt, vomiting.
“We’ve gotta go man.” Chuck warned, speaking deliberately to Jamal who was choking and gagging out a steady stream. Chuck suddenly seemed unfazed by the confrontation and resulting carnage. It was an illusion, another act to hide his true feelings and fears. It was something he was experienced at doing. Chuck’s calm veneer and wise-cracking jokes were often just cover for his own insecurities, weaknesses he would rather not show. Not to anyone, not even Duane, and certainly not to Jamal.
Jamal gagged again and another torrent of vomit splashed onto the concrete between his outstretched arms.
“It’s too dangerous here, Jamal. There are too many and they’ve seen us,” Chuck said. “We’ve got to move—right fucking now!”
Jamal looked up from his position on all fours. People were running. Some ran fast, others slowed by various injuries. It was difficult to tell at first glance which ones were alive and which ones were not. Across the street, an old man held tightly to his leashed dog. The dog was alive enough as he pulled the old man along, but the old man himself was one of the dead things. Blood caked the right side of his face, and even from across the street his glazed eyes were noticeable. He was dead, and the dead man was taking his dog for a morning stroll, or was it the other way around?
“If you don’t come now we are going to leave you here. Do you hear me?”
“Why don’t they try to eat the dog?” Jamal asked.
“What?”
Jamal pointed to the old man with the dog. “See? He ain’t trying to eat the dog. Neither are any of the others.”
Chuck couldn’t wait any longer and pulled Jamal to his feet, and said. “I know a place over on Thirty-third to hole up. We’ll be safe there until we can figure out what to do.”
“What to do?” Duane laughed, “We get the hell out of this city, that’s what we do. We get out of New York and back to our families in Virginia.”
“Talk as we walk.” Chuck said, and pulled them along. “We can’t just run for the hills. We have to have a plan. Imagine if we try to get out of town by way of the Lincoln Tunnel. What if it’s blocked with traffic and those things are down there too? We’d have a real problem getting through.”
Duane said. “Do you have a better idea, Chuck? That’s the only doable way for us to get home. Any other will be too far and too difficult. It’s the fastest way out of the City.”
“That may very well be, or maybe it isn’t. Too much is happening right now and if we don’t get off these streets we won’t have to worry about it. I need time to think.”
***
Chuck knew Duane was right. The Tunnel was their best way out of the city and getting out must be their first priority. New York was falling apart and it wouldn’t be long before they were cut off completely. Less populated areas would be much safer than where they were. In a city the size of New York, rationality was breaking down quickly. In the few short blocks they had come, it had become noticeably more dangerous. Maybe it wasn’t happening anywhere else, Chuck thought. Maybe the phenomenon was confined to New York; all the more reason to escape.
***
Chuck ducked into an alley and pulled the other two in with him, out of sight of the carnage happening in the streets. They would soon reach the docks and what could only be described as a street gang’s crack hole. “You might want to think twice about going where we’re going, but you’re welcome to come with us if you like,” he said to Jamal.
He secretly hoped Jamal would decline the offer and find his own way out of the city. Where they were going, Jamal would not be welcome. “We’re entering Skipjack territory. You know what that means.”
Jamal’s jaw tightened. “I know what it means. It don’t matter much. I’ll be okay.”
Chuck nodded, and without further thought to it, he and Duane darted back into the street.
Jamal waited there for a moment as if weighing his options. That indecision was short-lived. There was a resounding crash, and two trashcans tumbled from the corner where they had been stacked.
From the darkness, a figure lurched forward. Its movement was jerky and unwieldy as it entered the semi-light at the front of the alley.
Jamal recognized the ghoulish man. It was Scar.
Scar was a street bum named for the large scar that creased the entire left side of his face. He was a life-long panhandler and well-known in this part of the city. Word on the street was that he had received the injury to his face in hand-to-hand combat with a Vietnamese soldier. It was 1968 and in the Quảng Trị province of Vietnam. His valor had saved his entire outfit. He was a decorated war hero who had fallen on hard times. But Jamal always figured it to be nothing more than, ‘urban legend’.
Scar fell hard into him.
“Help me,” Scar cried. “Help me, please.” He held out an injured hand as he begged. There was a bite wound between his thumb and forefinger.
Jamal shoved him back and sprinted out of the alley to where Chuck and Duane waited. The three men then continued on their way without further mind to the old man’s plight.
Scar slid down the damp, smooth limestone wall and crouched there on the cold concrete, where he cried.
10
Michael didn’t realize the vehicle had come to a stop.
Awareness came gradually. He noticed the silence first, as if waking from a dream world, likely still affected by the concussion. He came back to reality as the screams and sirens rose to deafening levels around him and a man on the car’s radio telling people to stay in their homes.
To his right stood the familiar façade of The United Nations building. Tall and slender, it stood on some of the most expensive real estate in the city. Armed guards were stationed at its entrance. There were several dead bodies splayed on the sidewalk, blood pooled around their heads.
Again the car began to move forward.
Michael watched as wailing police cars screamed, plowing past them on the sidewalk as the traffic thickened. The red flash of break lights caught Michael’s attention as the squeal of tires on asphalt heralded the abrupt halt of their vehicle. “Good God, man.” He loudly proclaimed to the universe. “This is crazy. The traffic is too thick, and those things could be anywhere.” He expelled a sigh of relief and gazed through his window at a car parked on his right. A homeless man washed its windshield. He marveled at the ignorance of the street bum still pandering for quarters even as the world fell apart. Was he so pre-occupied with his eventless life that he had failed to recognize the destruction around him?
But Michael had judged too quickly. On closer inspection, he realized the man was not a panhandler at all. The man was pounding the vehicle with a staccato jerk of his body, trying to break through the windshield. The driver looked over at Michael, his eyes wide in disbelief, his mouth wrapped around a silent scream. He recognized the look on the driver’s face. For Michael, it was like looking into a mirror. The eyes said it all. The fear shone starkly in the dark irises surrounded by the whites of shock, a rational mind not comprehending the madness of the moment.
He wanted to calmly explain to the driver. “It is what it is.” That is what he would say to him. “Sir, we have entered a new reality. My good man, we are living not like yesterday, but for all of our new tomorrows. For all of our days now we will need to fight to survive.” This is what he would tell the man if he could. But it would make no difference. He could see reflected in the man’s eyes, that same message, that same fear, that indeed the worst had happened.
The driver looked up into the windshield of his car and screamed something that was lost behind the windows of the closed up automobile. Then the car lurched forward as the man drove up onto the wide Manhattan sidewalk running over people, dead and undead. The car jerked to a stop for a few seconds, only to lurch forward as one reanimate stepped in front of him. Once he was on the street, he stepped down hard on the gas and weaved through the clogged traffic until he got to the next intersection where he turned the wrong way on a one-way street.
Michael wanted to flee. He had an incredible urge to jump from his ride and run as fast and far as his legs would carry him. It seemed to be what most others were doing. But logic dictated a better course of action. Where would he run? The city was too big and too dense with traffic. To panic would mean certain death, or as certain as death might now be.
The Doctor veered left at a Y in the road and crept along with the rest of the traffic. There was a bronze and glass tower on their left. Above the green awning of its main entrance in large letters, Trump World Tower shone in the morning sun. It was a work of art, architecturally speaking, in the way a building could be a work of art. Ostentatiously built to be impressive and beautiful, this residential skyscraper was one of the most elite and expensive places to live in all of New York. The Doctor inched the vehicle forward and turned left beside the World Tower. A man ran in front of them and came to a stop to their right. He balanced himself on a waist-high wall overlooking a road that ran below normal street level and disappeared into a tunnel. He steadied himself there for rest until another grotesquely injured man crashed into him. Both men went sailing over the edge and out of sight to the pavement below. The presence of evil was stirring in the air. Michael could sense it. It was building to a fever pitch and threatened to consume everyone and everything around them.
Adam pulled into the entrance of the World Tower and came to a stop in front of the parking garage. The gate was open, the attendant’s post, abandoned. Adam hesitated for a moment, then slowly inched forward and down into the darkened confines of the underground space.
The garage was exclusive to World Tower residents, and each resident had their own private parking space and marked as such—Apt 101, 102 and so on. But on this day, Adam made no attempt to find his own. Today, he made a beeline for an open area beside the elevator clearly marked, ‘Authorized personnel only.’
They sat there for a while, silently. Each unable to move or utter a word. The morning’s events raced through Adam’s mind in menacing fashion, threatening his now tenuous grip on sanity. He had made it safely home, but he wondered how long it would be before the horror outside followed him there as well? His hands shook as they gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned red. First, he would call Meena. He had to know if she was safe. Only then could he fully concentrate on his own well-being.
“Why are we here?” Michael blurted out. “This is parking for the World Tower. Why are we here?”
“It’s where I live—on the eighth floor. The radio said we should stay in our homes so that’s what we’ll do. We can find out more from the television.”
“They should have instructed everyone to just stay where they were. The streets are clogged with people trying to get home. They’re running right into the danger they are being told to avoid.”
Adam pulled his keys from the ignition.
“Security is tight here so just follow me and you’ll have no problem getting inside.”
Michael followed closely behind Adam as they walked toward the elevator doors. The garage was eerily quiet with only the echoes of the chaos outside drifting in to them as muted background noise. There in the confined, hardened darkness, their steps echoed in repeated pings off the concrete walls as they walked to the elevator, splitting the welcomed calm.
