Dead and Dead Again: Kansas City Quarantine (54 page)

“Ok, then,” he replied. “There’s a
gas station down the street by the interchange. You think we can still get gas
there?”

“If the tanks are still turned on,
we can use my company card,” she held up her plastic along with a three day old
smile. My bank is local, so it should go through. I don’t think they can turn
us off from ourselves yet, can they?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Calvin said with a
thoughtful grimace.

“I wouldn’t put it past them to
try,” Tripper grumbled, glaring at some microcosmic unit of ‘government’ existing
only within his own paranoid mind.

“Well, if it’s on, lunch is on me,”
she flipped her hair and stood in what would have been a super-model pose. No
one ever told her that she looked like a psychotic clown, or maybe P!nk in that
‘
Don’t Leave Me’
video after she’s already lost it and is running around
with the axe.

Starting the cars was the hard
part. The zombies out in the street heard the roars of the v8s and approached
the fence clearly hoping for food, several dozen falling over into the lot and begging
to be finished off by Calvin while his friends tried to sneak to their
prospective cars. Boomer escorted Morena on his arm as if to the prom and
dropped her off safely in the shotgun seat of the Paddy Wagon, shooting a wink
to Felicia at her thumbs up. He then danced happily all the way to his GMC.

Calvin guarded the fence until Athena
and Trip were safely in their vehicles and driving through the gate into the
watchful perimeter of Joel and Lucy and their deadly turrets.

“Ok, Calvin,” Athena called from
her Lexus, aiming her rifle out the passenger window and somehow still watching
the street ahead simultaneously.

Calvin shook the putrid, congealing
corpse goop from his axes and wiped them briefly on two rags hanging in the
custom pouch Quinn attached to every piece of armor he had ever made. This special
touch of dedication and imagination was something that only those who had lived
a medieval lifestyle for a few days could fully appreciate, and that was no
one…until this very week. When both axes were clean he sheathed them and began
to pick the larger chunks of flesh from his armor, wiping at the coagulated
blood until anything that was still moist was removed.

“Are you coming or not?” Athena
complained.

“No law against neatness,” he
replied tossing a mischievous grin at her.

Calvin spun on his heels and
swaggered over to the Tesla, sinking down into the driver’s seat as if into the
comfortable captain’s chair found in any man-cave in America. Only he wasn’t
about to watch the game, he was preparing to save first a man and perhaps, through
that man, the entire world. The seat took some adjustment to accommodate the
axes on his back, but he soon sat comfortably enough. Lightly brushing the dash
and steering wheel with a loving hand, he flipped the key to start. Nothing
happened. Nothing, that is, except for the central console lighting up like a
Christmas tree as some messages flashed across the screen. But no roaring
engine that practically every driver in the world had come to expect from their
ride.

“That was anti-climactic,” he
complained. Then, “what the…crap, I have to read?” he cursed, trying to make
sense of things pinging and flashing for his attention.

“It’s a
smart
car, Calvin,”
Athena informed him haughtily. “You want to switch so you can have a higher IQ
than your ride?” she jabbed.

Tripper and several others laughed.

Calvin ignored her. He was too busy
reading data that basically informed him the car was ready to proceed as soon
as he put it in gear. After the first few seconds of confusion, he quickly
adjusted to the very user-friendly console, put the car in reverse and backed
out of his spot. Then with an evil grin, he stomped on the gas for an immediate
response that sent acrid white smoke billowing into the morning air and left
four matching black lines from his parking spot to the open gate. As he reached
the gate, Athena sat within her Lexus shaking her head at him. “Shh,” she cautioned
him belatedly. “We’re trying to be quiet, remember?”

“Sorry,” he apologized, not
sounding even remotely sorry. He would have revved his engine to emphasize just
how sorry he was not, but that would have left another quadruple set of marks
right up to the ass end of the Paddy Wagon.

“Let’s go,” he breathed.

The convoy of borrowed cars drove
westward to the tracks and left a confusing assortment of trails through the
grass and gravel behind the buildings all the way to the street containing the
gas station. There were still no dead down this far.

“Here we are,” Morena informed
them. “Up there on the right.”

The cars pulled in and Mo tried her
card. Somehow the machine took it and she ran to the other pumps putting her
card in for everyone. Calvin pulled to the exit and waited. No Infected
wandered into the lot to harass the distracted fuelers. He was a little
disappointed by this, but he didn’t know why.

“I’m in the lead,” he stated boldly
when his friends finally started getting back into their vehicles.

“Which way are we going?” Sarah
asked.

Calvin turned off his key.

Shit.

“Um, I hadn’t actually thought through
that part,” he admitted with a blush that he was thankful none of the others
could see. “Ok, we go back the way we came, follow the tracks. Only, instead of
taking the tracks behind the racquet club, we’ll drive beyond and through the
brand new landscaping past the park. Athena, Gus, Scaggs, Boomer, Sarah, you’re
with me. Tripper, you take Felicia and the Hedgehog with any dead who want to
tag along up Two-Eighty-Three. There’s only one split there or I’d give you
more people. But you have the Hedgehog, so you’re one up on everyone else. Take
the…zombies
slowly
all the way up near Seventy-One highway and make your
way back. I believe there’s a street...Forty-sixth, I think, gets you to
Holmes. It’s the last right before you reach Seventy-One. North Holmes comes
almost all the way back here, but it’s through the burbs so watch your back…and
your sides.”

“Yeah, and watch for random rocket
fire,” Boomer joked.

“You sure you won’t need the
Hedgehog with you?” Tripper asked.

“I’d hate to keep you out there
alone,” Calvin said.

“Just give me Boomer and we’ll get
it done,” Tripper stated confidently.

“You ok with that, Boomer?” Calvin
asked.

“Hell yeah. We’re just gonna be running
anyway. If we get into trouble I’ll lock the doors and give you a call.”

“Ok. The rest of us will be
splitting up at several different junctions. Let’s try to get this done within
the hour. I’ll see you back here.”

It took three hours to coral the
zombies into any semblance of a cattle drive and get them moving in the same
direction and out of the area. Though it was a cluster-fuck from the beginning,
Calvin managed to eventually get things under control. Zombies being zombies, they
shuffled aimlessly and stumbled away at every noise and movement that caught
whatever passed for attention in their dead heads. The group quickly discovered
that the vehicles in the middle of the convoy couldn’t make even the slightest
noise without drawing the attention of the zombies ahead, causing the entire
‘parade’ of dead to stall and mill about aimlessly until the horns, yelling and
eventually gunfire from the lead vehicles pulled them all forward again. The
‘cowboys’ in the middle could only physically bump the Infected back in line.

Tripper and Boomer had initially
led two or three hundred off to the right on 283 and were quickly out of sight.
The others did eventually move most of the remaining ‘herd’ northwest into the
Northlands. At random points a dozen of the gray-skinned Infected would branch
off from the trail and root around in the grass. No one understood the reason
for this, but they were too busy to worry about it. At the first split, two of
the cars pulled off, honking and firing rifles in an attempt to take as many as
would follow. Gus and Scaggs took this second group with them, staying on 9 Highway,
making so much noise they took a full third of the horde along.

“See you back at the rendezvous,”
Gus called.

“Don’t take them up on
Six-thirty-five with you, and
be
careful
,” Calvin stressed.

“Right, Chief,” Scaggs replied.

“Hey Calvin?” Tripper asked.
“Aren’t we just taking thousands of dead out and dropping them off in the
middle of the Northland?”

“Basically,” Calvin answered
honestly.

“What did North Kansas City ever do
to you?”

“Nothing.”

“So how do we justify dropping a
few thousand walking corpses on their doorstep?”

“Perspective.”

“How’s that?”

“We have to get the doctor. He’s
the most important plan anyone has right now. We have to hope everyone knows by
now what is happening, so there shouldn’t be anyone out for a walk or anything.”

“Good point.”

“Ok. Athena, you can come with me
for a while. We’re taking I-Twenty-nine to Six-thirty-five. The rest of you
guys take your half of this mob up North on One-sixty-nine. Get off on Englewood, but do
not
come back on North Oak,” he ordered.

“Why not?” Tripper asked.

“That’s where Gus and Scaggs were
taking their friends,” Sarah reminded him.

“Oh, right.”

“See you back at the split at Burlington. If you make it back first, concentrate on cleaning up around the fountain as quietly
as you can. We’ll start making noise if we have to, but let’s try to sneak
everything out.”

“Right, Chief,” Tripper said. “See
you when we see you.”

Calvin and Athena drove another ten
to fifteen miles until Tripper’s voice informed them that they were pulling off
and heading back to the fountain.

“Good luck,” Tripper said. “You’ve
got twice as far as the rest of us, so we’ll probably have it all cleaned up by
the time you get there. Unless that thing is really fast.”

“Don’t worry, it is.” Calvin
replied confidently. “C’mon, Athena. I’ve got the passenger seat all warmed up
for you.

“What? I don’t get to keep mine?”
Athena sounded disappointed.

“Sorry. But you
can
ride
with me while we break the downtown speed record.”

“Whatever,” she mumbled. “This was
more of a mommy car anyway.”

The two cars pulled a few hundred
feet ahead of the stumbling multitude and she climbed into the passenger seat
of his Tesla after removing the keys and putting them in her combination sheath/backpack.

“Ooh, I love the color,” she cooed,
rubbing the soft seats. “And it’s comfy.”

“I’d prefer charcoal grey, but
yeah, it’s cozy,” he agreed with an energetic smile.

 “You ready, Roy?” he asked in his
best Burt voice.

“I was born ready,” she mimicked
Sally from the same movie.

“Give me a second,” he mumbled,
plugging in his Ipod and fiddling with the virtual stereo buttons. The entire
time he listened to an engine revving in his head as he went through the layout
of the roads he planned on taking.

Follow Twenty-nine to
Six-thirty-five, then hit I-Seventy.

“Beautiful day,” Athena commented,
sounding bored.

Both windows were still down and
the sounds of nature forced themselves into the confines of the silent vehicle.
A cool breeze wandered across the landscape, snaking its way between the
loosely scattered buildings and rattling the colorfully changing leaves of Fall
that lined the roadway and danced in the breeze like the participants a gay
pride parade. Birds chirped in the trees with a qualified cheeriness and air of
apathy that said not only were they completely ignorant of the apocalypse
happening around them, but that even if they did know, they still would not
care. Several tall puffy clouds dotted the horizon to the west, warning of yet
another storm system moving in. Athena sat silently, waiting, clicking her
fingernails on the door while he synchronized his phone to the radio and hit a
virtual button, looking over to her and giving her a shit-eating grin.

Carpenters’
Superstar
blared
over the stereo. “What? No!” he shouted in shock, one hand slapping at virtual buttons
to stop the music.

“That’s not what I hit. It’s not!”

Athena laughed hysterically as the
beautiful song continued to blare forth. Calvin threw the misbehaving device at
the dash and it bounced onto Athena’s floorboard. The song switched to a heavy
guitar riff backed by thunderous drums and deep base. Letting fly with a
maniacal laugh, as the first Shuffler of the last zombie horde on highway 9
reached his ‘new’ car, the pedal hit the metal and the engine roared to life,
figuratively at least. Power shot through the vehicle the likes of which neither
Calvin nor Athena had ever felt. Instantaneous energy to four wheels without the
rumble, roar or scream of exploding fuel is something that must be experienced
to be appreciated. Zero-to-sixty miles per hour in two-point-seven seconds is
another.

Damn that was fast,
he
thought, not slowing down at all.

“That’s fast!” Athena echoed his
thought, suddenly distracted by the pain of her own hair whipping across her
face.

Calvin pulled the car to the center
of the road so he could roll his own window up to stop the suddenly thunderous
roar of a hurricane storming through and both bodies were pushed back into the
seat with adrenaline pumping force.

Seventy.

Eighty.

Ninety.

“Car!” Athena pointed.

With a subtle shift of the wheel, he
swerved left to avoid a hulk in the right lane. The magnificently tight
suspension and steering combined with form-fitting bucket seats made the rapid
lane shift hardly noticeable to the couple. Athena’s long, jet-black hair once
again began to whip back and forth, only now the steady rhythmic pulses came in
time with the music. She hated hard rock almost as much as she despised white
guys with dreads, but somehow it was impossible to not head bang even a little
to this song.