Dead and Dead Again: Kansas City Quarantine (3 page)

“It is when…there should be
thousands dead and…hey…why are all those idiots still standing around there?” he
asked, fingers clutching his sides as he grappled to pull oxygen from the
morning air.

“You’re one to talk; you only want them
gone so you can go down there.”

“I have…medical training.”

“You took one medical course.”

“Still…that’s something.”

“You dropped out at half-semester.”

“But I…learned a lot.”

“You’re as bad as all those drunken
idiots. There are more than enough emergency personnel around to do the job. If
everyone gets out of their way, that is.”

“Right, Babe, but…historically drunks
and stoners…are notoriously curious and…don’t make the best of decisions,” he
huffed back.

“That’s for damn sure,” she
whispered under her breath, following him despite an uneasy feeling building
deep within her gut.

Face beat red, breath coming in rasping,
labored gasps, he wobbled back and forth as his engine starved for oxygen and
threatened a forced shutdown. Slowing despite a driving curiosity, he craned
his neck and stood on the tips of his toes to see over the thickening crowd.
There seemed to be a team of about fifty police pushing through the masses
below—not using clubs or force, but just politely jostling people out of the
way. No cars were allowed within five bocks of the parade route other than local
residents and food trucks in designated parking lots. The city had learned from
previous celebrations that if they didn’t control the traffic there would be
such a massive traffic jam that it would take days to clear the streets. Most
of the police cars were blocking perimeter streets or designating ‘one-way’
streets for the post-parade migration.

The group of officers had almost reached
the jet. Tripper could never be sure about what he saw next, but Sarah would later
swear he remembered it exactly as it happened. The red-clad body under the black
blanket suddenly jumped up and lunged at one of the people wearing what looked from
this distance to be lab coats, driving the person against the white hull of the
jet again and again, which seemed to smear with a lot of crimson in a hurry, as
did the white coat.

“Hey…is that blood?” Trip called
through gasps as he fought for air. He was in decent shape but hadn’t run this
much in years. He was also very high with some very potent and oddly
temperamental weed, so it was entirely possible he was hallucinating.

“Tripper…” Sarah backed up, the
constant, buzzing dread of the past week and the knot in her gut building to a
crescendo in her heart with a hundred cymbals and bass drums sending a shudder
through her entire frame.

For a brief, frozen moment nothing
happened, and then all of the other ‘crash survivors’ sprang into action. The
two men wearing blue jumped in front of the remaining white-coats. Tripper
stopped dead as the clear report of gun shots echoed up the canyoned street.
The red-clad person turned to face the blue men with the weapons, letting the red-soaked
white-coated form drop to the ground. The red-clad person then staggered a few
steps towards the shooters, but dropped to its knees under an incessant
onslaught of bullets. Impossibly, as soon as the shooting stopped, the crimson dead
guy quickly rose again and darted at the group of survivors. The sound of
several more popping gun shots bounced up the street, but stopped as quickly. The
psychotic Chief’s fan now jumped onto one of the people from the plane wearing
blue uniforms—Air Force pilots, Trip thought—blocking the other’s line of sight
so he couldn’t shoot.

“Whoa! What the fuck is going on
down there?” Tripper once again started towards the gathering crowd below.

“Don’t go down there!” Sarah
insisted passionately, but he walked on.

Sarah grabbed his arm and squeezed
with the strength of a much stronger woman and pulled him back off balance.

“Trip, let’s go back now.”

“Hey, easy, Babe,” he tried and
failed to remove her talons from his flesh.

“No. I have a bad feeling about
this. Let’s get out of here.”

“Why don’t you stay here and I’ll
run on down?” he pleaded.

“NO!”

She would not let go, holding him
with an insistent glare as well as her surprisingly powerful grasp on his
forearm. More gunshots rang out as the red-clad ‘should-have-been-dead’ person chased
one of the other white coats into the crowd.

“We have to get out of here,
now!
”
she insisted forcefully, bright emerald eyes flashing with an impassioned zeal.

Unfortunately, Trip’s curiosity coupled
with the effect of El Supremo was stronger than common sense and any intrinsic
self-preservation instincts that were supposedly bred into his character. “I’ll
be alright. I’ll just get closer and—”

But she squeezed harder and started
pulling him back up the street.

“Babe,” he said firmly, but finally
the intensity of her fear burned through his foggy perception. Ceasing his
attempts to drag her along, he instead pulled her gently but firmly into a
loving embrace.

“It’ll be ok. We’ll just watch from
here. Follow me.” He drew her over to a nearby float—some boat on an ocean advertising
something or another. The costumed boat captain and several of his
scantily-clad female mates were too busy watching the scene down the road unfold
to pay any attention to them, so he pulled her up between the shaped-foam waves
for a better view. “I need to catch my breath anyway,” he grinned at her. By
the slight way her perfect petite breasts rose and fell against his chest he
could tell she was nearly unaffected by the run.

Smiling uneasily up at him, she twisted
in his embrace so they could watch the events unfold together. Her smaller
frame vibrated with fear or cold. Uncertain which, he wrapped both arms around
her torso and squeezed firmly. This didn’t seem enough until he started rubbing
his hands up and down her arms to try and calm her. Her body finally seemed to
be loosening up when more gunshots rang out far down the street and faint
screams echoed up to them from the gathered crowd. Now even Tripper tensed.

“Trip…”

He said nothing, but his hands
ceased their massaging and gripped her arms tightly. The police finally broke
through the crowd, the individuals of which were now trying to flee, getting in
each others way and pushing each other down in their haste. There was a brief
pause in the action as the police linked arms and pushed to create a perimeter
around the scene, which quickly broke down when the red-clad attacker lunged at
the blue line. There was a brief struggle with two of the officers and the
red-clad body was thrown several feet back. Hundreds of shots rang out from the
surrounding police and the figure jerked and spasmed as bullet after bullet
hammered into every inch of the nearly six-foot body.

“Oh my god. It’s just like on TV. They’re
killing someone right out in public,” Sarah sobbed.

“He attacked them first, Babe. And
he should have been dead already, like a few dozen bullets ago.”

“I know, but there are enough of
them to take down one person.”

What happened next proved her point
entirely wrong. The body lay immobile for only a few seconds before jumping up
and lunging at the officers again. The streets once again echoed with repeated thunder
of gunshots and the body fell, seeming to stay down this time. One tall black officer
walked up and shot the dead man in the head three times, just to be sure. The
attention of the shocked parade-goers was so focused on the red-clad body that
only Trip and Sarah noticed the person wearing the white coat that had been
slammed against the jet fuselage as she jumped up and lumbered into the crowd
like a drunken man on the deck of a rolling fishing trawler.

“Now what’s that one doing?”
Tripper asked. Everything around the couple had become so quiet following the
gunshots that they could clearly hear the first screams float up to them as the
blood-smeared white coat person they’d thought was dead now leaped onto an old
lady in a Chief’s jersey and appeared to sink her teeth into the woman’s
shoulder. “What the fuck.” Tripper said.

“Trip, let’s get out of here,” Sarah
whimpered, breaking free from his embrace and once again trying to pull him
away from his curiosity.

Chaos erupted and increased throughout
the streets below. More gunshots rang out as police fired at several different
people. Some of the officers dashed into the crowd and jumped on random
civilians and Tripper could swear some of the other cops were shooting at
them
.
One group of police made a line and stood their ground, still shooting at the bloody-coated
attacker.

“What the hell? Are you seeing
that? Are they shooting the other cops, or the people they’re jumping on?”

“Take me out of here, Tripper,
please,” she pleaded, now pulling with every ounce of strength in her body.

“Just wait a minute,” he pulled
back. “We don’t even know what to tell anyone.”

“I don’t care. Let the news people
figure it out later.”

“Babe, don’t you see what’s going
on?”

“No, Trip, and I don’t care. I want
to go
now
!”

The situation had degraded at an
amazing pace. They watched as gunshots and screams filled the air and bodies
were thrown against buildings and drug through the streets by groups of people
only to be dashed head first against floats, cars and buildings.

“It’s nothing,” she continued,
shouting now to be heard over the repeated gunshots and refusing to look back. “It’s
a riot, just like it started in Ferguson and Baltimore. Let’s go find someplace
safe until it’s over.”

“There are cops shooting cops down
there. That ain’t no riot.”

“Well do you know what it is? Huh?”

“No, but it’s spreading fast. It looks
like something out of a bad horror movie.”

“You know I don’t like horror
movies. That’s just one more reason to get the hell out of here. I—oh my god!”
she screamed. “What’s that cop doing to that little girl?”

Both watched in horror as a one of
the police officers held a screaming and kicking child of about eight years up
and pressed her body to his face like he was at a pie-eating contest, teeth
gnashing through her red dress as he took bite after bite while the nearby
bystanders screamed and beat on him with whatever they could find. Blood
sprayed from the small body and drenched the crowd and the frenzied people
doubled their efforts to beat the blue knight down and free the girl. Despite
the number of people and the damage done to his body, the officer ignored their
presence for almost a full minute until the child stopped struggling and its
head went limp. Disappointed, the psycho cop threw the child as soon as it
stopped struggling and the tiny body bounced limply off the pavement and lay
still, clearly dead. Hunger still unsatiated, the officer then immediately
grabbed the nearest attacker’s arm and sunk his teeth deep into the forearm, swallowing
a large chunk of flesh and digging in for more while the petite woman struggled
and screamed as sticks, posts and bricks bashed his arms, back and head.

“Trip?”

Trip watched in horror. It had to
be the weed. And the heat. And the distance. Yeah, that was it. Things could
get confusing from a distance.

“Did he just take a bite out of
that woman?” someone said next to them, thereby verifying his suspicions.

“Did you see what he did to that
girl?” another asked in disgust.

Now he had full confirmation. He
wasn’t imagining it. He wasn’t hallucinating. Sarah gasped and clutched him
tightly. “Oh my God, Trip,” she whispered.

“This ain’t happening…” Tripper
whispered back, a sickly feeling grasping at his gut and twisting it into a
pretzel.

The officer fought for a few
minutes until the crowd finally overpowered him and pushed him to the pavement
and someone with a heavy boot stomped on his head repeatedly until his brains
splattered over the sidewalk like a gallon of spilled yogurt, the terror stemmed
for a moment, but only a moment. The dead child the cop had bitten suddenly jumped
up and leapt onto a heavy woman’s back and sunk hungry teeth into her neck as
if it were an ice cream cone.

“This can’t be happening…” Trip repeated
in disgust. Screams and shots once again rang out from further down the street
and the crowd broke into separate groups of battle as other injured individuals
turned on their friends and family. “You’re right; we have to get out of here.”

Sarah nodded weakly, but stood
frozen in place. “Look there!” Sarah pointed.

“What? Where?”

“There. From the plane. That doctor
looking guy.”

“Yeah, I see him.” Tripper hissed. At
least he thought it was a guy.

Even though the figure was clearly
trying not to stand out, the lone remaining white-coated person from the small
jet stood out to the couple like the sun in a clear sky as he moved amongst the
blue, red and gold clad sports fans. Edging slowly up the center of the street,
fleeing chaos as it expanded towards them like a colony of ants on a piece of
ham dropped in the park. The figure regularly paused and nervously glanced
about, seeking openings before darting to its next hiding spot. Eventually they
got a clear view as the person took a chance and ran full speed up the street
towards them, only a few blocks away. It was a man, a man appearing well past
middle age with a head of wavy hair as white as his coat with a full beard to
match. The man carried a silver metal case clutched to his chest and once again
darted between the floats as he pressed through the throngs of people trying to
push up the street. Spying an escape route, he crossed the street and headed
east down a side street as the craziness continued to spread slowly up the
street towards them.

“You’re right, babe. I think it
is
time to go,” Trip said distractedly and finally let her drag him back up the
street towards the cross-street they’d originally used. The shooting and
screaming seemed to increase as they ran, moving closer despite their speed,
but neither partner was willing to look back and find out if that was an
illusion. Trip wanted to see if he could spot the white-coated man on the next
street and Sarah just wanted to leave.