Dead and Dead Again: Kansas City Quarantine (44 page)

“Damn it, Trip!” Calvin snapped,
but realized he was out of line. “Ah, never mind. It hasn’t affected your work
any, so who the hell am I to judge? If we’re all taking the train to hell, we might
as well enjoy the ride down.”

“I get to drive.”

“I’m driving,” Felicia snapped quickly,
clearly already in love with the rugged vehicle. “Oh, you were talking about
something else…sorry.”

“And what about the case?” Calvin
asked no one in particular.

“What case?” Athena replied.

“The doctor’s case.”

“What about it?”

“We could have been looking for it
instead of partying all night.” In his defense, he had been shot and did not
want to go back out the previous day, but forgetting about something so
important was indefensible.

“I actually considered it that
second day,” Athena admitted. “We really needed some time to cool down,
Calvin,” she reasoned. “And there’s no certainty we would have even found it.”

“Plus that place was swimming with
Infected,” Tripper nearly whispered into his ear. “Remember? We looked.”

“It was the right decision and now
we’re all feeling more refreshed because of it,” Athena assured them all
confidently.

The vehicles traveled safely down what
might or might not still be 71 Highway—it was now also apparently designated Interstate
49—and made the inter change onto Swope Parkway. A large group of Shufflers
blocked their path somewhere near the halfway point, in the middle of the Kansas City, Missouri suburbs about where Swope Parkway morphed into Blue Parkway and just about
a mile before it turned into 350 Highway, or joined with it or did whatever it
did with the other road. There were several roads around the metro that existed
in one long line, but had as many as a dozen names throughout the city, 350
highway was one of these and nearly everyone drove the route at some point in
their lives, if not daily, because it was central to the inner city and
suburbs. Apparently even the Infected understood this on some base level
because there was an army of them marching down the middle of the road away
from the approaching vehicles. There was no alternative route to take and no
exits before they reached the stumbling mass and sharp hills rose above either
side of the road. The Shufflers lurched up the road almost with a purpose.

 “Whoa.” Felicia slowed the vehicle
to about 15 mph.

“Um…hey, Chief?”

“I see them.”

“They’re really going somewhere in
a…well, what’s the opposite of hurry?” Tripper asked.

No one answered. It just wasn’t
that important.

“Well with something resembling an
intent, at any rate,” he finished after he realized no one else would.

“I have an idea,” Felicia said,
slowing the Hedgehog and beginning a zigzag pattern. “Get ready Joel and
Sarah,” she warned. When she was back in the middle of the street, she hit the
horn. As the zombies turned, the two gunners were able to hit them with the
nail guns from thirty feet off. Swerving back and forth put them at a
forty-five degree angle and gave both turrets a clear field of fire most of the
time.

“It’s working!” Felicia crowed.

“Great idea, Felicia,” Sarah
congratulated her.

“Yeah, thanks girlfriend,” Joel
added.

“I did this earlier,” Tripper
muttered into Calvin’s ear.

“Aw, let her have it,” his friend
replied quietly under the sound of the compressors and honking horn.

With both turrets having a clear
field of fire, Zombies fell like wheat before a scythe, the tinkling darts clearing
a navigable path through the churning mass of entirely too active dead people.

“I hope they never find a cure for
this,” Boomer breathed into his mic.

“Why?” Athena was the first to ask.
“Don’t you want things to be normal again?”

“Yeah, of course. I meant that I
hope they don’t find a cure for
these
people.”

“That’s pretty cold, dude,” Tripper
told him coolly.

“Oh yeah? If they find a cure, I
mean something that’ll fix all the ones who have already died, or whatever, then
that means every one we killed could have been cured.”

“Not really,” Athena argued. “Most
of them would have died from the injuries they have already sustained and the
continued rotting of their flesh. Can’t move around without flesh.”

“But we did a lot of that damage to
a bunch of them.”

“Not the wounds that turned them
into zombies or the damage from falling down or running into things; none of
that heals.”

“Come winter time they’ll probably
all lock up and break anyway,” Tripper added.

“What? Why would you think that?”
Sarah asked.

“Because their blood doesn’t work
anymore. If they don’t bleed, they’re not keeping warm. They’re no longer
exothermic, which makes them ‘cold-blooded’. And the kind of cold weather we
have around here would lock them up like a Medusa’s gaze.”

“They’re not cold-blooded,
Tripper,” Athena countered. “The doctor seems to think there’s some kind of
energy exchange still going on and it increases when they eat living flesh.
That black sludge in their veins still moves and transfers energy. But not like
it would for us. They might or might not freeze in the cold, but he already
gave it some thought based on the few he’s studied and said he doubted it.”

“I think they would freeze up. I
mean, they already move pretty slowly even without the cold,” he responded
adroitly.

“Well, by all accounts they’re
already dead, so they shouldn’t be moving at all,” Sarah fired back.

“True. Maybe we need to take some
prisoners and study them?”

“Let’s wait on that until we get
everyone safe and find out if we can set up a place to research them,” Calvin
suggested waspishly, wishing he’d thought of that when the doctor was still
around.

“You see?” Boomer muttered. “We
don’t know if they’re living or dead. We might just be killing people who can
be cured. I mean, if they don’t die of all the injuries they already have, like
Athena said.”

“We can’t think about it like that,
Boomer,” Calvin insisted. Having a minor epiphany, he continued, trying to
assuage his friend’s guilt. “Look you guys, we’re going from every book and
movie ever made of this crazy scenario and they all say the Infected can’t be
fixed. No one on Earth knows anything more about this than we do right now,
those of us living under the shadow of this thing. From what we understand, at
this point in time, as the current experts, those former people are now the
walking dead. Zombies, if you will. Let’s just use that as a rule from now on.”

“But look at what we do every time
we go out,” Boomer added. “We could sit at the Fortress and never go out. Think
of all the potentially healed people we could save.”

“We wouldn’t have ever saved you or
Brick if we did that,” Athena pointed out.

“I know. And you wouldn’t have
killed a hundred people trying to get us, either. I’m grateful for the rescue,
but at what cost? I mean, how do we judge that later?”

“So we don’t judge ourselves
later,” Tripper answered. “We can only judge what we do now, as we do it.”

“Right,” Calvin agreed. “We’re
doing what we have to in order to survive. Even if the impossible happens and
this thing stops here in KC and everything is fine afterwards, for now we have
to react in whatever way is in our best interest for the safety of our group,
and as close as the law allows. The rest of the country may not have to deal
with this thing, but we do. Let’s just treat the healthy Humans as best we can,
and put the dead in the ground where they belong…for now. Put the dead where
they belong until we get a cure…if we get a cure…” He sighed angrily. “Jesus
Christ, can we all please stop worrying about things we can’t do anything about
right now? Just worry about staying alive and finding our family. These things
are trying to kill us, our friends, families and our neighbors and we’re going
to kill them first. Is that understood?”

“If y’all says so, boss. I beeze
good for Massa. I forgets all bout my book lernin and worryin and let’s massa do my thinkin’ fo’ me.” Boomer replied in his best southern slave voice he liked to
use against his friends any damn time he felt like it.

“Screw you, Boomer,” Calvin replied
to the laughter of his friends. “Just don’t worry about it. We may not even get
out alive, so why worry until we do? That’s all I’m saying.”

“I’m just fucking with you,
Calvin,” Boomer admitted. “You think I believe they can fix those things?
They’re
zombies
. They’re dead.”

“Ass,” Calvin muttered. “Turn
here,” he pointed for Felicia.

“Raytown seems pretty tame,”
Tripper said.

“Shut up, Calvin,” Athena snapped a
warning, sensing a joke from her fiancé.

“That was harsh,” Felicia said.

“No it wasn’t. You don’t know him
yet, FeFe. He was going to say something like ‘when isn’t it tame?’ or ‘you
were expecting something more from a retirement community?’ or ‘said everyone
who had ever visited Raytown’.”

“I was just going to agree that it
seems pretty quiet,” Calvin lied in as innocent sounding voice as he could
muster.

“You’re a damned liar, Calvin
Hobbes,” she shot back angrily.

She glared lasers at the shotgun
seat in the Hedgehog and although they were in two different vehicles and it
was impossible for him to see her or she him, she still tried to use her power
to make him uncomfortable.

“Are you glowering at me?” Calvin
asked.

“Yes.”

“How could you possibly know that?”
Sarah demanded.

“My back was burning right between
my shoulder blades,” Calvin replied. “Turn left up here, Felicia,” he added. “Right
here,” he pointed.

“Plus, I know my girlfriend—”

“— Fiancé—”

“—and if I’m making fun of her
parents or her home town,” he pointed again. “Left here.” He whispered. “She
tends to get pouty.”

“Screw you, Calvin Hobbes.” Athena drew
the bow of her anger and launched several more glares into the vehicle ahead,
but they rebounded impotently from the reinforced windows.

“So which one was it?” Felicia
asked quietly leaning over to whisper to Calvin.

“Which what was what?” he asked.

“Which thing were you going to
say?”

“Oh,” he leaned even closer. “The
last one,” he whispered.

She giggled and turned the vehicle where
he pointed.

“Now turn right and go until you
see the ugliest orange house you’ve ever seen,” Calvin said loud enough for
Boomer to hear even without the earpiece.

“Hey, it’s better than you damned
white folks and your socially approved browns and grays. Boring and done. Wait ‘til
you see the house I’m gonna build. It’s gonna be purple with orange trim.”

“That’s disgusting,” Calvin
mimicked retching. “I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.”

“Fuck you, man!”

“Now
I’m
fucking with
you
,
Boomer,” Calvin laughed. “You can paint whatever little hovel you eventually
beg, borrow, or dig out of the mud whatever color you wish, and you can live
right next to me, my friend.”

“But we’ll have to have all of the
gatherings at our house,” Athena added. “No way am I going into a purple and
orange house. Only bad things could happen in there…bad things.”

“Not
ugly
purple. It’ll be beautiful
colors. You’ll see…Assholes.”

The others laughed just as the
first dead guy bounced off the hood of the Hedgehog with a meaty thud that
echoed for several protracted seconds.

“The fuck?” Tripper cursed.

“Sorry,” Felicia apologized quickly.
“He came from nowhere, and fast.”

“Whoa,” Tripper cried as another
one leaped over the hood and smashed into a parked car alongside the curb.

“Welcome to Zomburbia,” Calvin said
quietly, humming the
Twilight
Zone
music.

“This is interesting,” Felicia slowed
and carefully watched the yards as if looking for little kids playing with a
ball that might get loose.

“They’re much faster and slightly more
erratic than the zombies from the city,” Athena agreed.

“Slightly?” Calvin countered.

“Shut up, Calvin.”

“Shutting up.”

Rounding another corner afforded a
clear view of a long street lined out before them. The dead here in the inner suburbs
ran from one side of the street to the other, rebounding from fences, cars and
buildings in completely unfocussed chaos instead of following the path of the street
like normal dead people did. The suburban dead did seem to be attracted to
sounds and several of the nearest ex-neighbors now grouped-up to lope towards
the incoming vehicles. But even though they charged like a pack of wild dogs, the
twenty dead that moved towards them in a nearly cohesive group were easily dispatched
by the turrets. The last two leaped energetically onto the hood of the Hedgehog
just as Boomer and Joel sent the killing nails through eye sockets to blend
their dead brains into sludge.

“Well…that was different,” Tripper
noted needlessly.

“Everyone be a bit more careful out
here,” Calvin cautioned, also needlessly. “Let’s get a bigger cushion this time
before we bring out the parents. Athena, radio them and tell them not to come
out until we get in there and bring them out.”

“You’ve already told them three
times,” she replied.

“Just do it!” he snapped.

Sarah leaned over and whispered to
Athena. “They’d already texted Lola too.”

“Oh. I already forgot.” Athena
whispered sadly.

“Sorry, Calvin. I’m calling them
now.”

“Thank you,” he said. “Sorry I
snapped.”

“I love you,” she responded.

“Oh god!” Tripper interrupted in
disgust. “Does every situation have to turn into some kind of love fest with
you two?”

“Shut up, Trip,” Calvin, Athena and
Sarah said as one.