Black Tide Rising - eARC (15 page)

He stood with his back to the wall. He’d wrapped his arms in blankets, haphazardly because he hadn’t exactly had a lot of time when the patient on the bed next to him had started screaming there was stuff crawling on him and throwing the bed clothes around. ZZ wasn’t an idiot. Not him. He knew damn well what that shit meant, and he was out of his bed, wrapping his arms in sheet and blanket with a lot of it trailing, and grabbing the nearest defensive weapon. Which wasn’t a very good weapon, being the tray on wheels that they’d put next to the bed.

Given he’d come in for throwing up all his food and catastrophic weight loss and the stomach cancer and all, he probably wouldn’t have been able to lift a tray like that normally, but fear, like love, makes a man stronger. He was swinging the tray table around, and caught the guy getting up from the other bed, teeth gnashing and hands groping, on the side of the head and sent him flying.

Of course he came back. ZZ had seen zombie videos on YouTube. There was a reason people were calling this the zombie apocalypse. The damn things just. Wouldn’t. Stay. Down.

He tried to forget the guy had been named Bill and that he had cancer of the bladder, and that he had a two-year-old grandson and a granddaughter in Arizona. There was no Bill now, only a zombie, chomping and clawing as it dragged itself upright, and lurched towards ZZ.

Who, this time, managed to catch him harder on the other side of the head, and, when Bill dropped, rush him and smash his head flat with the tray table.

Apparently Bill was not the only one to have turned, because there was the sound of chomping teeth in the hallway and someone rushed in, running like a gorilla, on feet and knuckles, and dragging a mess of tubes and an IV stand behind her. ZZ had smashed her against the wall, hitting out with the tray and catching her head between it and the wall. Her head went crunch and then splat, with a sound not unakin to a cabbage getting dropped from a great height, and he turned his head just in time to avoid being splatted with blood and brain matter.

But there was another zombie. Right about the third, he realized that they had to be coming from somewhere, which left him with the question
where in hell are all these zombies coming from?
It was impossible they’d all zombed out at the same time as Bill. Okay, not impossible, but not likely.

Before he could think to investigate, he was surrounded by zombies, and then it was crunch, smack, hit. And he realized after a while they were going to get him in the end. There was only one of him. Which meant that they’d kill him and—

And he heard two young people talking, a man and a woman.

He called out to them. Then he thought that even as they waded into the fray they might have trouble telling the zombies from the not-zombie, to wit, himself.

As the young lady—and she was a looker too, with that braid of red hair—deployed a floor lamp—it occurred to him she might select his head for crunching. And like that, unbidden, came to his lips the song his mother had sang when they went walking when he was a tot, and he found himself singing aloud. “Rocky Mountain High, Colorado!”

The young lady redirected the club, the young man stuck his lance in someone else, and ZZ made to help them with the table.

In a moment—seemed like—they were panting and covered in sweat and blood, the zombies were down, and ZZ said, “Thank you.”

The man, a dark-haired guy, lean with a sort of sharp face, which made ZZ think of Caesar’s line about lean men, said, “No prob. But stop singing hippie songs, okay? I can still change my mind and stab you.”

“Hey, it was my momma’s favorite song, youngster, and besides get off my lawn.”

And then there was the sound of groaning and of teeth from the hallway, and zombies poured into the room.

“Where in Hell are they coming from?” ZZ asked.

“I don’t know. We have the emergency stairs blocked and we—” the guy said, as he turned to stab zombies. Fortunately this set was easier, as they stopped to eat their fallen comrades. But not too easy as there were at least twenty of them.

“The other emergency stairs,” the girl said.

“Shit. There’s more than one of them?” the guy yelled, putting his lance into a zombie’s eye and twisting.

“Fire regulations or something,” the girl yelled, swinging her club and spraying out brains. “I can’t believe we forgot.”

“Why not? I always used the elevator.”

To show he was willing, ZZ stepped up to stand with them and slam his table into zombies.

“But that means…” the girl said. It was weird that she looked even better like that, splattered in blood and fighting. She reminded him of Rosie is what it was, and he shouldn’t be eyeing a girl half his age. Particularly not when he was dying. But ZZ had never felt less like dying. He had trouble concentrating on the rest of her words, as they all killed zombies. When they had taken care of that wave she said, “That means the people we left blocking the stairway from the zombies below—”

“Might be overtaken?” the lean man said.

“No, might be lapped,” the girl said. “I mean, when we get to the other floors, there will be zombies there ahead of us.”

“Shit,” the lean man said. He turned to ZZ. “You—what’s your name?”

“Zeezee.”

“Right. I’m Lucas Fiacre, and that’s Beth Arden. Is there anyone else alive on this floor? Not zombies?”

ZZ eyed the door. “If there were, they’re probably eaten. Going to sue the fucking hospital for not issuing fucking guns to fucking patients when this fucking Pacific flu started.”

“Tell me about it, man,” the lean guy said. “I fucking hate that we have nothing designed to kill these sons of bitches on hand. I’m going to run down the hallway and check. Just to make sure.”

“Don’t,” Beth said. “Just call out.”

“It will attract zombies.”

“We are anyway.”

Fiacre stepped forward, while Beth and ZZ lent support, and as soon as they were through the door, Fiacre shouted, “So, anyone not a zombie in here? Scream or knock or something.”

There was no answer but the gnash of teeth and the groaning. “Hey, you hoo!” Fiacre said and did his best attempt at the hundred meter dash towards the door to the stairwell while slaying zombies—now that would have been a game for the Olympics—stab zombie, run, stab zombie, run, trip over zombie that Beth killed, almost fall and get eaten except ZZ caught him and pulled him forward.

Then both of them tripped on a still-live zombie—stab, scream, smash head with table. Beth saved them from falling and pulled them along.

By the end of the hallway, they were all fighting with one hand and holding the other up with the other, while jumping, dodging, tripping over fallen zombies.

I’ve Seen It Raining Fire In the Sky

When they got back to the landing there was pandemonium. Dr. Hayden was alternately opening and slamming the door, managing to catch some zombies in it each time, while Dr. Barfuss wanted to know precisely what this meant and why they were not going up as promised.

People recoiled from Beth and Lucas and ZZ as they came in. Dr. Barfy said something about contagion. Yeah, well, he should try killing zombies without getting it all over himself.

Lucas told them about the other staircase.

“Does that mean there will be zombies up ahead of us?” one of the nurses asked, dismayed.

“Yep. We’ll have to fight all the way up.”

“And where are we going once we get to the top?” Dr. Barfuss asked. “Bet you haven’t thought of that young man. Even if we can fly the helicopters—”

Do no harm
, Beth told herself. It was weird, because with adrenaline pumping through her, she could have smashed Dr. Barfy in the face, like a zombie. She realized she’d have to control it.
That’s the slippery slope,
she thought.
Kill zombies because they can’t come back and are just vectors, and then start thinking of people who annoy you as better off dead too.
And she was almost sure it wasn’t true. Dr. Barfy might be an annoying paper-pusher, but what Dr. Pillarisetti had said about the collapse of civilization
? If there aren’t enough people who can learn, who will be doctors?
They might need even Dr. Barfy.

Lucas was saying something, answering Doctor Barfuss “…can. We’ll go to Plynth. You know, the new hospital, which was supposed to open on Monday. They’re fully stocked. They have generators. They’re empty.”

“They won’t be empty once the generators start and they have light and sound,” someone said.

The group was going forward, up the stairs. Beth looked back at where Dr. Jonna Hayden was still holding the door. “Doctor, do you see any way to secure that door? To delay them? This stairway seems to be free of zombies.”

“Only because they’re eating people in the wards,” ZZ, the man they’d rescued said. He was tall, middle-aged, a bit gaunt, but tanned. Black and possibly native American and white and who knew what else, Beth thought, looking at him, so that tan might be built in. It wasn’t displeasing. Whatever he was, he was a scrappy fighter, and he still had that table clutched in his hand.

Beth chose not to argue and Lucas inclined his head. “Probably. But all the same. If we can get to the top with a minimum of fuss.”

“Okay,” Dr. Hayden said. She’d taken something off her white coat and seemed to be jamming it under the door.

“What was that?” Lucas asked, as she started up.

“My cell phone,” the doctor said. “Figured end of the world, didn’t need it.”

They started running up the stairs, but Lucas stopped at the door to the third floor.

“What are you doing?” a woman asked.

“Going to see if anyone can be saved.”

“That’s insane. The zombies will just get ahead of us,” Dr. Barfuss said.

“Fine. You go ahead, then, run on up. You and whoever wants to go with you. I’ll go see if anyone needs saving,” Fiacre said.

“I’ll come with you, son,” ZZ said.

“Me, too,” Beth said, surprised to hear her own voice as she said it. But after all, she was here to save people, right?

Third floor yielded three people, all women, one coughing violently with the early stages of H7D3. For a moment Beth thought it would be faster to kill her now and easier on everyone, but after all you couldn’t. Maybe there was a chance she wouldn’t turn. At least the woman was wearing a mask. And all three survivors had been blooded in combat with the zombies. The coughing woman was holding an IV stand as a mace. People who really did fight as cornered cats were probably as valuable as normal doctors and twice as valuable as Dr. Barfuss.

Fourth floor, Maternity, yielded a desperate woman clutching a baby in one arm, and a jagged, broken flower vase in the other. The vase had blood on it, and there was blood sprayed up her arm and on her hospital gown. The problem hadn’t so much been rescuing her, as stopping her from stabbing them as they approached. But in the end, she’d staggered and sobbed, lowering the arm that held the vase, and sobbed, “My husband. He was visiting. He—”

“Turned?” Beth said.

“I had to kill him, I had to.”

“Of course,” Beth said. “You had to.” She said it because she needed to comfort the woman, but her brain told it was right too. “Can you run?”

And they ran.

By the seventh and top floor, as they emerged onto the terrace that held three helicopters, they’d gathered fifteen people in addition to their starting-out two dozen.

Beth almost expected to hear Dr. Barfuss greet them with “That’s too many people, you idiot. You’ll never take off.”

But he didn’t because Dr. Barfuss was dead. And Ron, the helicopter pilot, was happily tearing pieces of flesh off Dr. Barfuss and eating them.

“Oh, hell,” Beth said, and brought her lamp down hard on the head of the helicopter pilot, again and again and again, beating head and face, and neck to pulp long after he’d stopped twitching.

“Stop!” Dr. Pillarisetti yelled, and grabbed her arm. He was covered in blood and unidentifiable fragments and had just come from the stairway. “Stop, Beth. Stop. He’s dead.”

And then Beth had started crying. ZZ, the patient, had kind of gathered her in and said, “It’s all right. It’s better than freezing up, kid.”

He only let go of her as they were apportioning people between helicopters. He patted her shoulder as he called out, “Oh, hell, yeah, I can fly one of these. Better than the crap I flew in Desert Storm. At least no one will be shooting at us. Probably.”

When they were trying to cram more people than should be possible into each of the rescue helicopters, Beth found herself next to Dr. Pillarisetti and asked, “How did you get so bloody? You weren’t on the stairs.”

“No,” Nikhil Pillarisetti said. “I doubled back, to go…to euthanize those people we left behind strapped in carts. Some of them were our friends. And at any rate, leaving even a zombie strapped down and helpless to be eaten by other zombies felt wrong. So I cut their throats. Well, those I could reach. Definitely Dr. Tomboulian. I couldn’t leave her. Don’t look at me like that.”

“No. Thank you,” Dr. Hayden said quietly.

“Yeah, it was hell managing to get back here, though. Someone had jammed a cell phone under the bottom floor door,” he said, and grinned as he handed it to Dr. Hayden. The doctor just looked sad as she took it back.

* * *

When Dr. Hayden zombed out, as they rose high over the city—which was burning, flames licking up to the sky—it was Beth who strangled her, quickly, efficiently, and before Dr. Hayden could bite anyone in the press of terrified people.
She would have preferred it
, Beth thought, as she held her friend and felt her spasm and fight and finally go limp. There was no Dr. Hayden left, not really. This was stopping a vector. And doing no harm.

“I’m sorry, Beth,” ZZ told her as he got to her, just too late to help.

“It was a promise,” was all she said. To Dr. Hayden, and to herself.

Not in Vain

Kacey Ezell

Once upon a time a very good friend had described a cheerleading competition as the seventh circle of hell. It was probably sacrilege for a cheerleading coach to feel that way, but Mia Swanson had to admit that her her old flying buddy had a point. After eight hours of squealing, chanting, hyper high-schoolers throwing each other up in the air, tumbling down open hallways and quite literally bouncing off the walls…Mia had a headache. And there was still most of an hour left on their seven hour drive back to Albuquerque from Colorado Springs.

Two hours, Mia promised herself. Two hours and I’ll be home, in a bathtub, waiting for Max and the girls to get home. We’ll have dinner. It will be great.

One of the most irritating things about this particular competition was that it had fallen on a Shooting Weekend. Once every other month or so, Mia and some friends and their families got together and went shooting out on White Mesa, just outside of Albuquerque. It was all BLM land out there, and as long as they took precautions not to hit anyone or any animals, there were no restrictions. It had started before she retired from the Air Force a year ago, and it had rapidly become one of her favorite traditions.

Alas, retirement meant a new career, and a new career meant new commitments. Mia glanced over her shoulder at the teenagers sprawled in various seats in the fifteen-pax van and smiled. Seventh circle of hell aside, this really was her dream job. These were good kids, and Mia was proud to coach them.

“What’s that?” Jessa asked, sitting up and pulling her iPhone earbuds out of her ears, as if that would help her see better. Mia looked up and cursed lightly under her breath. Blue and red flashing lights stained the sky up over the next slight hill, and she’d been doing closer to eighty than seventy mph. She eased off the gas and began to break, just as they crested the hill.

“A roadblock?” Mia could hear the incredulity in her own voice as she continued to slow the van. “Jessa, have you got signal? See if you can pull up the news.” The senior immediately set to work as Mia pulled to a stop, rolling down her window as a uniformed officer approached her window.

“Officer. Good Evening,” Mia started. “What’s going on? I…” She’d been about to disclose that she was armed, even though she hadn’t exactly told the team that, and she was certain that she’d hear from some irate parents. It might even cost her the job, new as she was, but there had been no way Mia was going to be taking a three day competition trip, with a fourteen hour total drive time with twelve teenagers and no weapon. No fucking thank you.

“I-25 is closed,” the officer said, cutting her off abruptly. He appeared to be sweating, and his expression looked agitated.

“Just the road? Is there an accident?” Mia asked. Maybe they could cut over to Bernalillo and take one of the state highways down through Rio Rancho.

“City’s under quarantine. Governor declared a state of emergency—” The officer abruptly stopped talking and started scratching vigorously at his throat, where his collar met his neck.

“Coach?” Jessa called. She and another of the seniors were huddled over her iphone, the glow from the screen throwing a white, eerie light on their faces in the growing dusk.

“Not now, Jessa,” Mia replied, trying to keep the patience in her voice. “Sir? Officer, are you all right?”

“No, what is on me? Oh God, they’re all over me!” the man screamed, and then, to Mia’s complete astonishment, he began to strip off all of his clothing.

“Officer, stop! There are children in this car!” Mia said, aghast. She glanced out the front window of the car, only to see two more half-naked officers coming toward them, shedding clothing and gear as they went. “What the fuck is this?”

“Coach!” Jessa screamed. Mia turned in time to see a fourth naked man reaching in through the half-open window at them. She and two other girls flinched away from the window and his grasping, reaching hand. For no reason whatsoever, Mia noticed that his arm was covered in coarse, dark hair.

In her past life as a combat helicopter pilot, Mia Swanson had often faced situations where she had to make a decision quickly, and it had to be right or she and her crew could die. She’d thought that being a high school cheerleading coach would have been different. Apparently she was wrong.

The officer at her window had stopped cursing and began screaming. Keening, more like. When she was a kid, Mia had devoured Anne McCaffrey’s dragonriders series. In that series, when a dragon died, its fellows were said to raise a keen that damn near shattered eardrums with its sound. Mia could only imagine that sound was much like this one. That was the thought that flitted past her consciousness as she made her decision and acted. She thought of dragons crying out in mourning.

In one smooth, mechanical move, Mia removed her Ruger .45 from her concealed carry purse and put the gun against the head of the officer now reaching for her through her open window. The back of his head exploded outward, and Jessa and some of the other girls screamed, Mia supposed. She couldn’t really hear, thanks to the fact that she’d just fired a gun in a mostly enclosed car. Then she turned and shot the man on the passenger side, still reaching for the girls through the window.

Then she turned and gunned the engine. The fifteen-pax van leapt forward and slammed into the naked bodies of the two remaining officers. They went down and she felt the sickening crunch as her wheels went over one of them. Then she threw the van in reverse and backed up far enough to shoot the one whose skull she hadn’t crushed.

Sound suddenly came back all in a rush. Behind her, cheerleaders where whimpering in shocked tones, while Jessa continued to call for her. Incongruously, the opening chords of Elllie Goulding’s “Anything Could Happen” came out through the speakers, thanks to her iPhone plugged in to the van’s radio. Mia couldn’t help it. She started laughing.

“Coach?” Jessa asked again, her voice scared.

“It’s all right, Jessa,” Mia said. “Just give me a minute. I won’t let them hurt you guys.”

“N-no, we know that,” Jessa said, though her voice trembled. “But I think you need to see this.” She held out her phone. On it, on one of the mobile news websites, were the words Mia had been refusing to think.

“ZOMBIE OUTBREAK hits LA, NY! Major cities under quarantine. States of emergency declared all over the nation…”

There was more, but Mia had seen what she needed to see. Anything could happen, indeed, Ellie, she thought as she handed the phone back to Jessa. “All right. Jessa, read the rest of the article and get anything useful out of it and any other news pages. Anything about cures, vaccines, instructions, whatever.”

Mia put the van back into drive and rolled forward until she could pull off next to the roadblock. They’d just passed the exit to NM 550. They’d go back and take that exit, she supposed. “You guys stay here and keep a look out for any other cars. If someone comes over the hill, lay on the horn. I’ve got to get some stuff.”

The team was too shocked to argue as Mia took her gun and hopped out. First up were the downed officers’ weapons: standard issue .9mm pistols. Mia grabbed the officers’ gear belts as well. Might as well have somewhere to holster the .9s, she supposed. One of the officers’ car keys had half spilled out of his pants pocket during his striptease, and Mia took the opportunity to look in the trunk of the APD car.

“Jackpot,” she said lowly. The article had mentioned quarantine, so Mia hadn’t wanted to take the officers’ body armor, in case it had gotten blood on it when she’d killed them. Here, however, were spare tactical vests and two twelve gauge pump shotguns. She quickly took the items and headed back to the van. While her cheerleading team watched with wide, disbelieving eyes, she threw this loot, plus all the ammo she could find in the cars into the empty passenger seat of the van. Then she went back and took the mini-igloo cooler that she’d found on the floorboard of the car. Inside were several bottles of water and glory of glories: a twelve-ounce can of Sugar Free Red Bull. She brought this back and started the van back up.

“Looks like we’re taking a different route,” she said as she wheeled her way back around. Luckily, there was no one else approaching as they took the exit off of I-25 onto NM 550.

* * *

It took a full ten minutes of driving in silence before one of the cheerleaders spoke up. As Mia might have suspected, it was Jessa.

“Coach?” Jessa asked, her tone steadier, but still uncertain. “Um…?”

“What happened?” Mia asked, humor in her tone, despite everything. “Was that what you were trying to ask?”

Jessa tittered nervously, and a few of the others laughed in the growing darkness. The sun was sinking behind the desert mesas directly in front of them, and Mia had dug her dark Oakeys out of her purse.

“Well, yeah. I mean, that was pretty…um…”

“Weird?”

“Yeah, weird.”

“Yeah,” Mia agreed. “It was. I’ll explain it here in a second, okay? I need to do a few things first. Actually, I need you all to do something for me. You all have your phones, right?”

A chorus of “yes”s filled the back seat.

“Okay,” Mia said. “Of course you all do. I need you all to text your parents. Tell them that we didn’t make it in to Albuquerque before the quarantine. Tell them that I’m taking you to a safe place to wait out the plague. Tell them that they can meet us at the following coordinates. Are you all ready?”

Another chorus of “yes”s.

Mia checked the note on her phone and read off: “North 38 degrees, 18 minutes, 6 seconds. West 111 degrees, 25 minutes, 12 seconds. Sam,” she said, calling out her one senior male cheerleader. Sam, she knew, was an Eagle Scout. “Check everyone’s phone and make sure they got it right before they hit send.”

She heard a few sniffles, some more whimpers, but eventually, everyone did it. “Now, I need to make a phone call. I need you guys to be quiet.”

Normally, Mia wouldn’t dream of driving and talking on the phone in front of her team. It was setting a horrible example. However, she was not about to stop again before she had to in order to get gas. Luckily, they’d filled up in Santa Fe, so her tank was mostly full. She pulled out her iPhone and dialed her husband.

“Baby?” Max Swanson asked, picking up on the first ring. His voice was filled with anxiety and worry, and it damn near brought tears to Mia’s eyes. She blinked furiously.

“I’m all right,” she said quickly. “We didn’t make it in to Albuquerque before the closed the Interstate.”

“Oh, thank God,” he said. “Neither did we. We just got the news on the radio and got packed up. We’re bugging out to your mom’s. We can wait here for you…wait…Hashim wants to talk to you,” Max said, his voice strained.

Mia blinked. Hashim Noori was a very good friend. She’d met him in Iraq almost seven years ago. He’d been her interpreter then, but he’d since gotten a visa and moved to the US. He was a microbiology professor at UNM. Mia couldn’t imagine what on Earth could have made Hashim interrupt her husband on the phone, but then, this morning she couldn’t have imagined that she’d be bugging out in a zombie apocalypse scenario with her cheerleading team, either.

“Hashumi,” Mia said into the phone. “Salaam wa alaykum,”

“Walaykum salaam,” Hashim said, his lightly accented English impatient. “Mia. I must ask you. You were in a city?”

“Yes, we were in Colorado Springs, at a cheerleading competition.”

“There were many people there?”

“Yes, Hashim, why?”

Her former terp was silent for a long moment. “Mia. You have all been exposed. I have been reading messages on the internet. This virus is unlike anything else. It is airborne like a cold, but it is also passed through the blood, or a bite or cut. Body fluids from an infected person.”

Mia pursed her lips. “Infected person. Hashumi, do they strip down? Go crazy, like?”

“Yes, Mia. You have seen one?”

“Four. The cops at the roadblock. They attacked us.”

“Mia!”

“They are dead,” Mia said, her voice blank. She still wasn’t thinking about the fact that she’d just killed four cops. “No one got bit or scratched.”

“That is good, but Mia, this is very bad news. You must not join up with us.”

“No, I think you’re right. We’ll follow along behind until we know if any of us have got it. How long?”

“The incubation period is approximately a week, but if the police are turning now…we should know in a day or two.”

“Got it. May I speak to my husband again, please?”

“Of course. Fe aman Allah.”

“And you, my friend.”

“Baby? How long till you can be here?” Max asked.

“I’ll be there in about thirty minutes, but you have to go on ahead without me.”

“What? No!”

“Baby, listen,” Mia said, blinking quickly to keep the tears at bay and remain focused on the road in front of her. “I have twelve cheerleaders with me. We were just at a fucking cheer competition! You know what those things are like! Hashim said this thing is like a cold. We could all be infected, and I’m not bringing that around you or the girls. You go to mom’s. Hole up. Stay alive. I’ll join you as soon as I know it’s safe. I love you.”

Max was silent. Mia could hear him breathing deeply, quickly. She heard the distant giggle of her youngest daughter through the phone. Finally, Max sighed.

“All right,” he said, softly. “But you stay alive too, you hear me?”

“I will,” she promised, knowing it wasn’t in her control at all. Knowing it could already be a lie, she promised. “I’ll see you soon.”

* * *

They’d gone on ahead to White Mesa anyway. It was slightly out of the way, but Mia didn’t want to take the chance of catching up to Max’s group. After she’d finished talking to Max, her friend Allison had gotten on the phone and told her that they’d leave a cache of supplies at their normal shooting site. Mia had very nearly cried again, but she’d managed to hold it together. Mostly because the sun was fully down now, and she needed to concentrate in order to see the road and the unmarked turn off to their shooting spot.

Though the sun had just gone down, the half moon was already riding high in the sky. The dust from their slow rumble up the dirt road filled the air, as Mia stepped out of the fifteen-pax van. The moon turned the dust a silvery color and she was abruptly reminded of another night, in another desert, under the same moon, but a world away.