Dead and Dead Again: Kansas City Quarantine (4 page)

“Oh my God. You’re going after him
aren’t you?”

“Yup. Whatever is going on started
with that crash and that dude’s the key.”

“Don’t do anything stupid, Trip.”

“Just gonna hold him and ask some
questions.”

“You’re not a cop.”

“I’ll hand him over to them, then.”

He felt her hand grip his shoulder
and dodged, pulling away, running.

“There were kids down there,” he
shot back angrily, his gray eyes blazing.

“Ok.”

Children,
Sarah’s mind wept
as they ran.
They were attacking children. Why were they doing that?
But
one part of her knew exactly what they had seen, even if she was afraid to
admit it. Those crazed people had not simply attacked the others.
That cop
was
eating
that child. Trip is wrong. It’s not
like
a horror
movie; we’re living one.
She sobbed as she ran, wishing that instead of
chasing some mysterious scientist-looking guy through the crowded, confetti-strewn
streets she was instead back at MU again, running for the Tigers and another
ribbon.

“There he is,” Sarah called back to
Trip a few minutes later, pointing out the lone white dot skittering amongst the
thousands of red, gold and blue jerseys down the hill.

“Let’s get him,” she darted off,
knowing that if they caught him fast enough, they could hand him over the cops
and get the hell out of here and go…just about anywhere else for a while. She
sure as hell didn’t want to hang around here anymore. Maybe they could spend
some time out in the ocean on Hef’s yacht.

“Wait…up…Babe!” Tripper shouted
between labored breaths.

But she was out of her mind. After
running back up Broadway they’d rounded the first corner and then sped through
the next intersection, surveying whatever north/south street they paused on
until they spotted the man continuing east, moving much slower than even
Tripper, so the couple ran on, paralleling his route all the way to Main before
turning north towards the river, against the flow of the parade. The man would
be slowed by the other half of the U-shaped parade which, surprisingly, was
still moving south along the street as if nothing had happened. Sarah felt if
she tried hard enough, maybe she could make herself believe none of that
nightmare had occurred. She believed that right up until they spotted the guy
in the lab coat again stumbling from the side-street a few blocks down,
desperately seeking a place to cross.

Trip was right. That guy was the
key. He was the reason cops were eating children to death and those children
were then getting up and eating others. It all seemed so ridiculous, like the
plots to those awful SkyFry Channel movies, which seemed to be the only crap
they played anymore, or it had been before her boycott of the station.

“Hurry up! We’re almost on him,”
she called to her faltering boyfriend.

Red-faced and puffing, Tripper
promised every power in the universe he would take one day off a week from
smoking weed if he could just not die right here on the food, confetti and
manure-covered street.

Unwilling to wait, Sarah shouted, “You!
White Coat! Stop! We saw you!”

The man was less than a block down
the street from them now and somehow her voice had carried over the sounds of
music and merriment any good parade emanates. The gray man paused and turned,
arms clutching the shiny case to his heaving chest.

“You!” she pointed. “Stop!”

The man started to run, but must
have realized the pair of younger runners could easily catch him if he fled. He
was right on one count; Sarah would easily catch him, but Tripper’s eyes rolled
halfway into the back of his skull and his beat-red face dripped sweat. He was already
picking out his future Smoke Free Day, but realized maybe he should be picking
out a plot in the cemetery instead. The older man turned back and awaited their
approach with a look of fear mixed with uncontrolled curiosity. Sweat also dripped
from every visible inch of skin and he reached into his coat to pull out a pink
kerchief and wiped his brow with a shaky hand, clutching the silver case
tightly in the crook of the other arm at his side.

Sarah slowed so that she and Trip
could stagger up to the old man together. She wasn’t sure exactly what to say
or what the man had planned and she wanted her boyfriend there just in case. The
boyfriend in question stumbled up beside her and grinned in exhausted
appreciation. Taking two great shaking breaths, he turned his anger on and
aimed it at the waiting man.

“What…” he paused and panted
several times. “What…oh geeze…oh my God…what…in…the hell…did you people do?”

“I …don’t…know…ungh…what you mean?”
The man panted back. Both men stood hunched and clutching their sides and
waving side-to-side like prairie grass blowing in a breeze. Sarah would have
laughed were the moment not so serious.

 “You know damn…you know damn…damn
well what I mean.”

“We saw the crash and what happened
after and followed you,” Sarah added, hoping to move the conversation along so
they could all leave sooner. Whatever was going on a few streets over wasn’t going
to spontaneously stop. The anarchy would eventually make its way their
direction. How much time they had before that happened was the only unknown
quantity.

“That’s…that’s…all…classified
information,” the man answered.

“You think I give a rat’s ass about
your stupid security clearances?” Trip found enough air to respond. “You think…that
shit matters now? There was…a cop eating the face off…a little girl back there.
I watched the girl
die.
She was…dead and then she got up…and attacked
somebody!”

This announcement caused several of
the surrounding parade watchers to turn and observe the confrontation.

“I’m sure it looked that way, young
man, but—”

“—no buts about it, dude. I
saw
it. What is that you got there? A virus? A Cure?”

The man backed away from the anger
expressed in Trip’s voice, both arms clutching the silver case to his chest
protectively. Sarah stepped between them.

“My name is Sarah. Sarah Devorah
Berg. This is my boyfriend Tripper Grissom.”

“Doctor Devon MacGreggor. We should
be finding our way out of here,” he added, clearly agitated at having been held
up.

“We have a car nearby. It will cost
you information.”

“We should get to it,” he replied
without pause, but gave a nod of assent. “Before the others realize they need
to leave.”

Sarah pointed across the street at
a barricade blocking off the street their parking garage was on and the trio
waited for an opening between a marching band and a float built on a flatbed
being pulled by a ten wheeler. When the diesel paused, they darted across Main, ignoring the blowing whistles of the police behind them. The trio then pushed through
the celebrating crowd lining the street and around the barricades and down the
cross-street, the sounds of revelry lessening as they moved down the mostly
barren side-street.

“What can you tell us about what
happened, Doctor MacGreggor?” Sarah asked, haunted eyes looking back as if
expecting more of the psycho killers to pop out at any moment.

“It wasn’t me. I was sent to neutralize
it. I was taking it back to a lab.”

“OK. Why don’t we start at the beginning?”

But there was no more time for
chat. Just then a scream broke out from somewhere behind them. The three
stopped in horror and turned to see a group of crazed parade-goers break from
the alley behind the far police line and leap onto the nearest revelers. They
were much closer this time so Sarah and Trip both got a good look at the
‘changed’ people. Each had some form of damage done to them; bitten off hunks
of flesh, blood running freely from open wounds. But it was their faces that
caused the most concern. The eyes of the affected individuals were milky-white
and the skin around the eyes and mouths were pulled back, stretched as if
they’d had ten thousand plastic surgery appointments in one minute. The eyelids
and lips were drawn so tight they appeared to have been cut away entirely,
giving them a hungry, maddened gaze, much like—

“—Zombies,” Trip spat. “You made
fucking zombies, man!”

“Don’t be ridiculous. There’s no
such thing as…” the doctor’s denial trailed off.

The evidence for the existence of
the very thing for which he had intended to disavow was clearly facing them from
across a sea of drunken revelers, parade floats and one red and black clad marching
band that currently seemed intent on doing battle with their various instruments.
There before him were crazed formerly dead humans whose objective seemed to be
to feed on their former brethren.

Zombies, or something pretty damn
similar.

“Their eyes! My God! What’s wrong with
their eyes?” Sarah cried.

“I don’t know,” the Doctor replied.
“It’s not supposed to do this. I don’t know what this is. Nothing has ever done
this.” The trio stood rooted to the pavement, fascination overriding any
natural survival mechanisms that were supposed to be signaling flight.

It was the band that brought
meaning from the confusion first, possibly because band geeks were more likely
to know not only what a zombie was, but how one was dispatched from the planet.
Although equally possible was the likelihood that they were pissed off about
getting interrupted in the flawless performance of the march they had been
practicing so hard for nearly six months. The group of marching musicians
pulled together and charged right for the incoming group of zombies.

A flutist shoved her flute into the
eye socket of a lumbering zombie as it reached out for her. Its eye popped like
a crushed grape and the thing instantly dropped to the sidewalk. But then two
hungry former soccer fans with gnashing teeth and hungry eyes leaped onto her
back, rending her tender flesh with their hungry jaws. Letting out a pitiful
shriek, she fell just as a skinny drummer dashed in and took down the two
zombies simultaneously with a drumstick in each hand, stabbing one stick into
the eye socket of each attacker, fluid dripping onto his hands and running down
his arms.  The boy didn’t have time to mourn the girl he’d had a crush on since
Kindergarten, because three more of the gray-skinned people-things lurched
towards him with clenching jaws and grasping talons. With a heartfelt cry of
loss, he turned and dashed back to join his friends and reform their defensive
line.

One tuba player stuffed a zombie’s
head into the opening of his instrument and then pulled down hard on the end, snapping
the zombie’s neck noisily. Soon nearly everyone with an instrument was helping
take down one of the intruding monsters. Those without a potential weapon
turned to the parade floats, desperately ripping anything that could be used to
smash or penetrate a skull. The civilians seemed to be winning for now, but Sarah
and Trip knew if this was anything like the movies that was likely to change.

“Let’s get out of here,” the doctor
implored them earnestly.

The trio ran full-out for three
blocks before both Trip and the doctor had to stop, each holding their sides,
chests heaving as they teetered and eventually leaned up against a wall. Trip
took the time to demand answers from the doctor between wheezing breaths. “What…did
you do, Doctor?”

Sarah reached out and grabbed both
men, one on each arm, pulling them both down the sidewalk, slowly, but at least
they were moving away from the chaos.

“I personally…checked the pulse…of
Dr. Wilson…and that other victim,” the doctor occasionally looked to either
Trip or Sarah as he explained, but mostly he seemed to be talking to himself.
Both found his story slightly difficult to follow at first.

“Wilson…contracted the virus…yes…but
he was dead. The case broke…during the crash. But…none of us came…came near him…until
he died. We carried him…out with the proper procedures. No one should have…contracted
anything. That other man was out there…already. He was killed when we…crashed.
We put him next to Wilson, but he wasn’t infected…with anything. You can’t
contract a disease…after you’re dead, you know? But then he rose. He just got
right up…and attacked that technician. Wilson stayed down. He’s still down for
all I know. But that other…that other man…he was dead. The dead don’t attack.
Not in real life. It’s not possible. He was dead. I’m certain of it.”

“That’s fine, Doc,” Trip stumbled
down the sidewalk. “But what is it?”

“I don’t know. If anything, they
should have gotten sick, but nothing like this.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t say.”

“You’ve already
been
saying.” Tripper informed him.

“What?”

“Look around, Doc. You think your
security levels mean anything now? We’re almost to our car. I’m guessing we’re
probably your only way out of this shit. So, spill.”

The doctor looked around at the
surprisingly empty streets. He recalled having read something regarding a
detailed parking policy for the parade, about parking in distant parking lots
and taking mass transit downtown and most streets being one-way downtown before
the parade and one-way out of town following the festivities. There was little
chance he was going to find someone else with a car. The lessening sounds of
screaming coming from the distance behind them only served as motivation for
the doctor. He wasn’t getting out of this area on foot; it was moving too fast
now.

“It was a virus,” he admitted.

“I knew it!” spat Trip. “Fucking
government creating viruses to kill other people and they’ve killed all of us
instead.”

“There are many uses for viruses—”

“—like what?” Trip demanded
angrily, grabbing the doctor by his lapels and pulling his face close. “Huh?
Like what?”

The doctor managed to reply calmly,
despite the sweat beading along his brow.

“Well, like simply to research the
development and weaknesses of viruses themselves, or as a defense, for fighting
other viruses and curing diseases and genetic mutations. Just to name a few.”

“Bullshit. We don’t use viruses to
cure viruses.”

“Actually, we have adapted serums
from several viruses as potential cures for other viruses and diseases. It is
part of what we do. In fact, that’s what this was supposed to be, but something
went terribly wrong and now it has somehow become even worse after coming in
contact with the general population.”

“Yeah, that’s just great. You
idiots have killed us all,” Trip let go of the doctor and shoved him forward
and they all began running again as he looked back and saw several corpse-like
former humans several blocks back, shuffling up the street after them.

Where are the fleeing
people
?
He wondered.

“Perhaps not,” the doctor insisted.
“We can still get ahead of it.”

“How, exactly?” Sarah asked.

“Well, first we need to get to your
car.”