Chicago Fell First: A Zombie Novel (6 page)

She still had her purse hanging on her arm by its strap. She pulled out her phone, handing it to Danielle with pleading eyes.

“Take this! Please, you have to help me! Our other son … Brandon … he’s with my sister Phyllis. Her number’s in the phone. Please make sure he’s okay. I … I don’t think I’ll see him again. Tell him I love him … please!”

Danielle took the phone without thinking. Katherine stood and shoved Dr. Lake out of the way. She reentered the room and slammed the door. Danielle stood and tried to look in the small window but a burst of red hit the glass, obscuring the view.

As Danielle, the doctor, and the nurse stood there stunned, a crowd of running people rushed by, a mix of nurses, orderlies, and patients.

“Come on,” one of them shouted as they passed. “We have to get out!”

The nurse fell in with the runners and fled. Lake and Danielle looked at each other as the crowd reached the staircase door and vanished at the end of the hallway. The sirens still blared overhead.

“What the fuck is happening?” Danielle blurted out.

“I don’t know,” Lake said, “but I suggest we get out like everyone else.”

Danielle felt like a coward, but saw reason. If nothing else, she realized that the best course of action would be to find out the cause of the mayhem. She followed Lake as he walked toward the stairs.

When they reached the ground floor, neither of them could understand what they were seeing. The hallways, the emergency room and every direction were a mess of blood, body parts, the dead or dying. Screams and groans of pain and confusion hung in the air. They both almost slipped on the crimson floors as they made their way through what looked like the aftermath of a suicide bombing. They stopped dead in their tracks as they finally came to a place where they could see the cause of the chaos.

Shredded, torn, mutilated beings, still alive in some sick sense of the word, crawled about among the heaps of wounded and dead, tearing away chunks of flesh with their hands or teeth, stuffing their cheeks with human fragments. Too busy with the food that was already on the floor to turn their attention to the two new witnesses, they kept munching on those who had already fallen. The sound was as bad as the sight, the rending of skin and cracking of bone.

Dr. Lake threw up where he stood, a gush of vomit hitting his shoes. Danielle stared at the carnage until her self-preservation told her to move, to get out.

She squeezed Dr. Lake’s shoulder, trying to snap him out of his terrified trance.

“Let’s go, Doctor! We need to get outside!”

Lieutenant Klein, Chicago PD, having noted what the patrol officers who had responded to the wild woman attacking the pedestrians had reported, ordered his men to aim for the heads when confronting the things that had been reported wreaking havoc in the hospital. According to his men, the bullets to the chest and abdomen had failed to stop her. Klein didn’t understand how or why this was so, but he felt obligated to act on the information.

Klein led his men into the hospital. They wore body armor and carried automatic weapons, full riot gear. They passed through the mob of bloody, confused people outside and were shocked by the gore on every conceivable surface within the building. They went straight for the emergency room, where they had been told the majority of the chaos had been taking place. Two people passed them on the way out at a running pace. Klein quickly sized up the middle-aged man and young woman. They appeared to be moving normally and he could see no noticeable open wounds on their bodies. They seemed to be all right. He raised a hand to signal that his men should not fire on them and then used the same hand to wave them by. When it was clear, he gestured for his squad to keep moving.

Danielle took in a deep breath, her heart floating on a wave of relief as she saw the blue sky and sunlight. The smell of freshly spilled blood was gone, a scent that had been almost overwhelming in its coppery intensity. Dr. Lake, standing beside her, still vaguely smelled of his own vomit. Outside the building was chaos, insanity, panic; people ran about, some looking as dazed as if an explosion had just occurred. The air was full of moaning, whimpering and screaming. A police loudspeaker was blaring   between bursts of static.

“If you do not require medical attention, please clear the area! This is an emergency! Stand clear of all emergency personnel and police vehicles! If you do not require medical attention, please clear the area! If you are injured or are a hospital patient, please remain where you are and try to stay calm!”

“This way,” Dr. Lake said, tugging on Danielle’s sleeve. “My car’s in the staff lot!”

Danielle saw no reason to stay there among the chaos and followed Lake. They turned the corner toward the lot on the side of the large medical complex. As they ran, they saw several of the ravenous attackers that had made their way out of the building and now prowled the parking lot. One of them chewed a severed hand as it shuffled about between the cars.

“We have to go past them if we’re getting out of here,” Lake shouted. “It’s the white Lexus! Run!”

The remote control locks and ignition saved precious seconds, and they reached the car without interference. They got inside, slammed the doors, and Lake navigated out of his parking spot. As they sped out of the lot, the car struck a glancing blow against one of the shambling risen corpses that got in the way. The white hood of the Lexus was stained with gore but they did not stop. They dodged several panicked, fleeing citizens, and shot down a side street, managing to avoid the police and ambulance traffic that had made a chaotic tangle of the area.

As they moved along with the other vehicles, Danielle turned the radio on.

The news broadcasts seemed to be a mixture of confusion and assumption. “It was like a (bleep!) Zombie movie! Holy (bleep!) they just got up and started biting people and killing and I got up and ran out. I wish I took some (bleep!) video with my phone!”

Danielle turned to Dr. Lake, who seemed to have calmed down.

“What just happened back there?”

“ An outbreak of some sort, spreading very quickly … But I wonder if it might have begun with the little boy, Joseph Saunders. He attacked the nurse overnight and that seems to have been the first indication of violence. How it got to the ground floor, I don’t know. What did Mrs. Saunders say to you before she ran back into her son’s room?”

“She gave me her phone,” Danielle told him. “She asked me to check on her other son. She sounded like she knew she wasn’t coming out of that room alive. Where are we going?”

“I’m going home,” Dr. Lake told her. “I have a wife and three kids. I think I need to be there while this mess is sorted out. I don’t want to be away from them. I can drop you off—where do you live?”

Danielle recited her address and Lake nodded. It was right on his way home.

Danielle entered the building and made her way up to her floor. As she walked down the hallway to her apartment, there was no one else in sight, but she could hear the televisions behind the doors and recognized the droning of newscasters’ voices trying to describe what was happening in Chicago that afternoon. 

The TV was on and Claire was sitting on the couch watching the news, eyes wide with disbelief. Claire turned to look at Danielle.

“You’re home! I was getting worried. Were you there when it happened?”

“Yeah,” Danielle confirmed. “And don’t ask me to explain it, because I don’t get it either, but it was horrible and I don’t want to talk about what I saw. Listen, I have to borrow your car.”

“But you have to stay here,” Claire protested. “They’re telling everybody to stay inside until they figure out what’s happening. Where could you possibly have to go?”

“I made a promise. You know how I feel about keeping my word. There’s somebody out there who might need my help. Where are the keys?”

“Shit!” Claire blurted out. She knew Danielle well enough to keep herself from arguing. Once her roommate’s mind was made up, she was nearly impossible to dissuade. “They’re on the table. Be careful!”

Danielle scooped up the keys and put them in her pocket. She went into her bedroom, changed clothes as quickly as she could, exchanging her school and work attire for jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers in case she had to run—as fast as she could with her prosthetic—not knowing exactly how dangerous the situation outside would become. On her way out, she grabbed the crutch that rested against the couch, and flew back out the door.

“Claire, stay safe,” Danielle said as she departed.

Chapter 5

Douglas Clancy had never been to Bellamy before. He had heard of it, not that there had been much to hear. He found it easily enough, but spent half a day driving there, so far from Chicago. But a job was a job and he needed the money, so he went and found the sleepy little town with its one main street lined with the sort of establishments he expected to find on the one prominent avenue.

The residents called his destination a mall, but it was really just a small shopping center with a bank, an ice cream place that he assumed was probably closed in the winter, a little used book shop, a Laundromat and a diner that had not, Doug guessed, been updated or remodeled since the late seventies. The diner was the place that had called him. Their old Pac-Man machine, a relic from a bygone era, had finally broken down. The diner’s owner said he had a terrible time finding anyone who would even attempt to repair such an old machine. Doug smiled at the opportunity to work on such a project. They just don’t make them like that anymore, he thought as he parked and got out his tools. He had even told the proprietor that he could probably make more selling the machine to a collector than having it repaired to sit there and collect its few quarters a week, but the owner was the sentimental type and wanted Pac-Man back in working order. He had agreed to Doug’s fee and so the trip had been made.

The streets of Chicago became an odd blend of chaos and emptiness. As Danielle drove, she noted that her car, the little hybrid she had borrowed from Claire, was among the few civilian vehicles moving about the city. There was activity, but mostly police cars and ambulances, some with sirens and lights on while others cruised silently, watching, investigating, patrolling.

Danielle easily dug up the home address of Katherine’s sister Phyllis. Normally it would have been about a fifteen-minute drive, but the day’s unfolding events had mutated the city’s normal flow of traffic. Thanks to a few detours and adjustments, Danielle made it in thirty minutes, which she thought wasn’t too bad, considering the circumstances.

Chicago is a big, bustling city to those who have only seen it in movies, and much of it is that way; but it has quieter sections too, residential areas of well-kept houses with nice front yards and plenty of tall, full trees lining the streets. Those neighborhoods look much as they did in the fifties or sixties, except for the newer models of cars that sit in the driveways or along the curbs. It was to one of those areas of square blocks filled with handsome houses that Danielle Hayes drove. She found the streets eerily empty and assumed that most residents here, like in her own building, were inside, glued to the TV, fascinated by the unfolding horror in the center of the city. She found the right house and parked along the street in front of the freshly landscaped lawn. Before she opened the car door, she began to feel nervous.

What was she doing there? What would she say? Was she supposed to ring the doorbell and tell
whoever answered that Katherine and her young son and the boy’s father were dead, presumably, and that the child had killed them? How, Danielle wondered, do you even make words like that come out of your mouth?

But she had made a promise and intended to keep it. She finally stepped out of the car and began a slow, nervous walk to the front door.

She almost pressed a finger to the doorbell, but stopped. The door was open, just a crack, but enough to cause hesitation. She stood for a moment and listened, straining for any hint of sound that might come from behind the door, but there was nothing.

She turned and walked back to the car, and retrieved the crutch she had brought with her. Now armed, she retraced her route to the front door and opened it, slowly and cautiously.

The doorway led directly into the living room. Danielle stepped inside. One lamp was lit and she saw nobody. She stepped farther in, went through the living room, proceeded into the kitchen, and stopped.

The floor was covered in blood. A woman was on the floor, a man crouched over her, feasting, chewing fervently, grunting and wheezing as he ate. Danielle wanted to turn and flee, but the part of her soul that was a scientist made her do the opposite. She stepped closer, craning her neck for a better view.

The woman’s face had been bashed in, made into a crushed mask of broken bone and shattered flesh. Her shirt had been torn apart and pieces had been ripped from the left breast. Danielle stared in horror, trying to make herself turn and run. She hesitated too long.

The thing that had been a man turned its head in her direction, stared for an instant, and sprung to its feet, faster than those at the hospital had seemed to move. It charged.

Danielle’s thoughts were overridden by instinct, the animal urge for survival. She moved aside, just managing to avoid the clumsy groping claw. As it moved past her, she swung her crutch downward and slammed it into the backs of the thing’s knees. It fell. It immediately tried to scramble back up, but Danielle was acting on impulse rather than emotion. Something deep within her enforced the idea that what she was encountering, although it moved like a living man, was no more alive than the cadavers she had grown used to handling at school. Dead tissue, it’s only dead tissue!

She slammed the end of the crutch down into the face, cracking the bridge of the nose and destroying both eyes in one ruthless hit. She pulled her weapon free of the hole it had made, and backed out of the kitchen. Once clear, she took a few running steps to the door, but stopped.

The child, Katherine’s other son, where is he? What was his name again?

“Brian?” she called out, realized her mistake, tried again, “Brandon? Brandon, are you here? Brandon, I’m here to help you, I’m a friend of your mom! Hello?”

She listened, trying to divide her attention between listening for any sign of the little boy and any hint that the creature she had just blinded would find its way to her and attack again.

Despite the fear she felt and the adrenaline that rushed through her like fire, Danielle actually smiled when the little boy peeked cautiously out from behind the couch. He was small, about seven or eight, she guessed, and looked very afraid.

“Come on, Brandon,” Danielle said, trying to sound reassuring, taking a step toward the boy. “We have to get out of here.”

Brandon emerged from his hiding spot, walked toward Danielle.

“Why did Uncle Martin hurt Aunt Phyllis? Is she dead?”

Danielle wouldn’t lie, and saw no reason to after what the child had seen.

“Yes, Brandon, she is. Come with me. We can’t stay here.”

She grabbed hold of his hand and quickly dragged him out the front door, got him into her car, tossed the crutch into the back seat after brushing its tip against the grass to try to leave behind some of the blood and eyeball glop.

“Where are we going?” Brandon asked as Danielle began to drive away from the little house of death. “You’re a stranger … I shouldn’t go with you … but it was worse in there. But where are we going?”

“I haven’t quite figured that out yet,” Danielle admitted. She wondered how she was going to explain about his parents and brother.

The resurrection of Pac-Man took just under three hours. Some sweat, some swearing, a few adjustments and the familiar beeping sound of a little round yellow being navigating his way through a maze of dots and avoiding those colorful ghosts resumed.

Doug rubbed his hands together in satisfaction and smiled. He put his tools back in their case, went to secure them in his trunk, and headed back into the diner to collect his payment. As he approached the door again, he noted the name of the establishment and laughed. “Mirage.” Did that mean the food looked good but tasted like sand?

Doug realized he was hungry. It was nearing dusk and he hadn’t eaten all day. Food sounded like a good idea before the long drive home. He got his check from the owner and selected a booth along the wall.

“How’s the patient?” the waitress said as she came over and stood beside Doug’s table. It took Doug a second to realize what she meant.

“Pac-Man’s alive and well,” he reported, looking up at her and smiling without realizing it. She was attractive in a petite, cute sort of way. Her hair was brownish-blonde with a hint of red to it, her glasses looked appropriate for her face, balanced on the bridge of a slightly upturned nose, and she had an aura of polite intelligence about her that Doug immediately noticed.

“Good, glad he’s okay,” she said. Her name was sewn onto the breast pocket of her white uniform blouse. “KACEY,” it said in bright blue lettering. “What can I get for you?” she asked.

He hadn’t even read the menu, so he improvised. Certain things were common to all diners.

“I’ll have a turkey sandwich, side of fries and a Coke.”

Kacey scribbled the order down on the pad she took from her apron pocket. Doug watched and his shadow-self began to see through his eyes. He watched her fingers as they manipulated the pen across the paper, applying just the right pressure in just the right pattern to form the words on the sheet. Those fingers were being guided, he knew, by the muscles in her hands which were in turn guided by those in her arm and all those actions began with electrical impulses sent from her brain, which was cooperating with her eyes that sat behind the spectacles held up by that cute little nose. The fingers at the end of that brain-guided arm were composed of various segments, joints working in tandem with fingertip nerves made sensitive by their partnership with the circulatory system. Kacey was a glorious machine and Douglas was fascinated.

“I’ll have this out in a few,” she said, breaking the spell. Doug coughed and looked down at the placemat on the table, forcing his shadow-self back to its hiding place.

Kacey returned a minute later with the Coke. She set it down on the table, dropped the paper-wrapped straw beside it. She did not walk away, but stood there for a second, staring at Doug before speaking.

“You don’t live in Bellamy.” It wasn’t a question, but a flat, matter-of-fact statement. Doug guessed the Mirage Diner rarely saw outsiders.

“No,” he responded, “I don’t.”

“Where are you from?”

“Chicago.”

“And you came all the way out here to fix a video game?”

“Yeah … well, not many people know how to fix those old machines anymore.”

“Yeah,” Kacey laughed a little, “that thing’s older than I am. It might be older than you, too.”

Doug shook his head as he did the math. “Not quite. That’s an eighty-three model. I’m thirty.”

“Oh, okay,” Kacey said. “I’m twenty-one.”

Alarms went off in Doug’s head. Why was she telling him her age? Why was this conversation happening? Something about her tone alerted him. Was she really so unused to seeing anyone from out of town that she had let her fascination send her into a state of flirtation? The thing that scared Doug was that he found her attractive as well, and that, he knew, could be a dangerous thing.

“Miss!” cried out a customer at another table, one of just a half dozen people eating at that time, coaxing a sigh of relief out of Doug.

“I’ll be back with your food,” Kacey promised, darting away to see what was needed at the other spot.

Doug’s mind was split. He had been caught off guard by the unexpected attention from the waitress, and he certainly was attracted to her, as she seemed to be to him. But he knew that he could, if he didn’t proceed very, very carefully, be hazardous to the health of anyone he came into contact with. Still, he thought, he had been aware of his other side, his inner demons, for so long and there had been no disasters yet. The question in his mind was one of how far he could trust himself. In the background, he could hear that other customer making a request.

“Turn the TV on, will you? I want to see what happened with that shit that was going on in Chicago.”

The wall-mounted television clicked on. Doug had driven to Bellamy with CDs playing in the car and had no idea what news story the woman at that other table was talking about. In minutes though, Doug was shocked by what he heard.  

An outbreak of violence in the downtown area with multiple deaths. Civilians killing civilians. Police also killing civilians. Reports, officially unconfirmed, of cannibalism and what seemed to be corpses getting up to attack again; and claims that the mayhem and horror had begun to spread outward into the suburbs and away from the center of Chicago. Authorities were advising those in Chicago to remain inside behind locked doors and those outside the city to avoid it. Even the voices of the commentators sounded confused, on edge.

Doug took a long sip of his soda and stared at the TV, his eyes glued to the pale, scared reporter and footage of helicopters circling over very familiar city streets. He finally looked away. He had to, just to verify for himself that he was not experiencing a nightmare. He had to see something other than the strange spectacle on the screen. He turned his head and saw the interior of the Mirage; the other diners stared as intently at the TV as Doug had, their faces like those of rubberneckers passing a horrific car crash.

Even Kacey was mesmerized by the reports of Chicago’s chaos, staring up at the television with a glazed expression until the loud chime of the bell from the kitchen told her that an order was up. She scurried over to the window in the wall that separated the dining area from the kitchen and picked up the plate from the ledge. She carried Doug's order to him without spilling anything, despite her attention on the TV.