Down the Road: The Fall of Austin (6 page)

Help needed all around him.

Two arms grabbed him by the shirt, shaking
him from his global focus. He yelped in fear as he looked at the
face of a young woman.

“Please, help me,” she cried. “My boyfriend
wants to kill me.”

Mike quickly noticed the large bite on her
arm and a missing ear dripping blood on her neck and shoulder as
she pointed in the opposite direction. Mike turned and saw her
boyfriend in hot pursuit. Mike recognized the face—not by name—but
by the symptoms.

“Get in the vehicle,” Mike said, opening the
back door of his cruiser and tossing the girl inside.

He turned to his fellow officers. He knew he
needed to try to take control of this bizarre situation.

“Roland, protect the suspects and get them to
the car!”

Roland soccer-kicked the cuffed madman in
front of him, and he momentarily lay prone.

“What about us?” Derek asked, still firing
his tazer.

“Wait until we clear the suspects.”

Roland assisted Charlie in standing up and he
came to his feet without too much effort. But Charlie’s friend was
like a sand bag. “Shit,” Roland said, dropping the perp. “Mike! I
think we lost one!”

Mike knew only very basic CPR. Knowing the
girl was secured in his vehicle, he ran to help. He leaned in and
placed his ear by the mouth of the motionless man. No breathing.
Mike used his fingers to estimate where to position his hands on
the ribcage and began pumping on the chest. After a few times, he
stopped, then leaned in and placed his ear by the man’s mouth
again. He repeated the process.

Derek picked up on a pattern. All the people
who were acting strange and crazed, from the family at the
apartment to the people who started the night’s issue, had one
thing in common: They had been bitten.

Mike was about to administer mouth to mouth
when Derek screamed, “Mike! Wait! Don’t!”

Mike froze.

“Mike, I think it’s the bites,” Derek said.
“The bites are infecting people with something.”

“
I knew it
,” Mike whispered, pulling
away from the dead man.

Roland and Clark looked at each other
uneasily. They both then looked at Roland’s bitten arm.

Derek’s theory was confirmed when the body on
the ground—the same body Mike was about to provide mouth to
mouth—
twitched
. All four officers turned and watched as the
man’s eyes slowly opened. He gagged twice before coughing up blood.
He attempted to rise.

“We’ve got to get ya’ll to the hospital,”
Mike said. “I’ll take Charlie and the girl.” He then turned to
Officer Clark, who was still tazing the creature on the ground.
“Clark, you should drive. Roland, no offense meant, but you should
ride in the back.”

He scowled, offended anyway. But Mike’s idea
was the safest, considering the situation.

“We should go now,” Roland conceded.

They went to their vehicles.

The girl’s boyfriend was attacking Mike’s
cruiser, trying to get to her. The boyfriend wasn’t attempting to
lift the handle, he was just clawing away at the window as if
trying to scrape and peel little bits of glass away to get at his
lover. Mike placed a front kick into his chest, knocking the crazed
man out of the way.

Mike threw open the door.

“Please uncuff me,” Charlie said.

Mike paused. But as the boyfriend rose from
the ground, Mike whipped out his keys and uncuffed Charlie. Charlie
clambered into the back seat with the girl. Mike front-kicked the
boyfriend again.

“Derek, get in!”

“But I’ve got my—” Derek started to say.

“Leave it, man!” Mike shouted. “This is a
fubar situation! I need you with me to keep an eye on these
two!”

Derek didn’t protest further. He opened the
passenger door and sat down.

Mike started the engine. In front of him, the
crazed vagrants—though they had already been thoroughly roasted by
tazers—had risen to their feet. The cruiser’s headlights blinded
them temporarily, illuminating them in the darkness. They covered
their eyes with their arms and advanced on the cruiser. Mike backed
the cruiser out of the mouth of the alley and onto the road. The
tires squealed as he shifted out of reverse and into drive and
punched the accelerator.

“864 to Dispatch. Returning to base.
Over.”

Anticipating a response, but not getting one,
Mike repeated himself.

“864 to Dispatch. Returning to base.
Over.”

Still no response.

While Mike tried to reach an ominously silent
base, Charlie retrieved a crumpled joint and lighter from the
nether-reaches of his crotch and sparked up. The unidentified girl
next to him eyed the doobie with a sort of sad relief. Charlie took
a long hit, savoring every bit of THC the hit offered. In a defiant
show, Charlie exhaled, filling the interior of the cruiser with
second hand pot smoke. Charlie offered the girl a chance to take a
hit, and the girl was more than happy to accept.

Mike said nothing. This was no longer a
typical day. Hell, it wasn’t even a typical city anymore—or world.
Charlie sparking up was a fitting end to their painful night, and a
marker for Officer Mike Runyard of the beginning of the zombie
apocalypse in Austin, Texas.

Wednesday, April 14th

12:05 AM

In an armored military personnel carrier

on IH-35, just ahead of APD Cruiser 864

“What the hell is going on?” asked a short
and slouching soldier of Asian descent in the back of the APC.

“Knight, I already told you,” said his team
leader Sgt. Arnold, “We’ve been sent to secure the Texas state
capitol.” The stout, round-faced leader leaned back. Dark rimmed,
military-issued glasses stood firm on his round nose. The M203
grenade launcher strapped to the top of his gear clicked against
the metal wall of the vehicle.

“You mean
we
have been sent to secure
the Texas state capitol,” said Sgt. Arnold’s colleague, Sgt.
Nickson, sitting directly across from him. He was indicating the
three men that made up
his
fireteam.

“You four couldn’t secure a pair of
Depends
for your mothers,” said Spc. Noble, defending her
fireteam leader, Sgt. Arnold. Her childlike face cracked a smile,
but her dark eyes were piercing and somehow instantly gave her
credibility.

“Fuck you, Noble, you little bitch,” said
Spc. Rodriguez, a hulking black man as thick as a redwood tree, the
“fire” man of the team. “I’ll fuck your mother in the ass, then
make her suck the shit off my dick.”

“He’ll do it, too,” said Rodriguez’s partner,
Spc. Garrison, the “assist” for Nickson’s team. He was a much
smaller man than Rodriguez in more ways than one. Gray-haired with
a goatee just as gray, Garrison was Rodriguez’s hanger-on, more for
the fact that Rodriguez would stand up for him not necessarily as a
friend, but as an excuse to lash out and bully anyone he could.

“How can you fuck Noble’s mom when Garrison
always has your dick in his mouth?” asked Spc. Goodson, smirking.
Blonde-haired and blue-eyed, he looked more like a model than a
soldier. The cowardly Garrison unconsciously shifted in his seat in
defense.

“At least I have a dick, you faggot,”
Rodriguez said before Sgt. Arnold broke up the festivities.

“All you dumb fucks need to shut the fuck
up!” Sgt. Arnold barked.

“Neither I or Sgt. Nickson have been told by
command what’s going on, specifically. All we know is we are to
secure the Texas state capitol by 0600 hours. What that means, I
don’t know. But we’re not going to do it if we don’t work together.
The fact that they’ve equipped us with some
really
good
shit—” Sgt. Arnold indicated the Heckler & Koch HK416s instead
of the standard outdated M4 Carbines, “—says a lot to me. So quit
this dumb shit and shut the fuck up!”

Sgt. Nickson smirked, and so did his men. The
tension between the two rival fireteams was as palatable as
drinking a bowl of Tabasco sauce.

There was, however, one exception. On
Nickson’s side, sitting stoically, was Specialist Daniel Talltree.
His long black hair was tied in two braids behind his head. Being
Native American, he was allowed to keep his hair long. His dark
hands held fast to his HK416, though a sniper rifle was held in its
case, disassembled, on his gear. His dark brown facial features
were strong and severe, clearly indicating his ancestors did not
come over on the Mayflower. Gazing into an upper corner of the
vehicle, he concentrated on ignoring his partners and focusing his
energy on the approaching mission.

12:14 AM

APD Cruiser 864 en route to downtown
hospital

The plague, having exposed itself to Officers
Mike Runyard and Derek Tucker, was stabbing the officers in the
heart like a jagged knife of fear. It was clear to them this
problem was spreading and no one was telling them what they needed
to do.

“Clark, how’s Roland?” Mike asked over the
CB.

“He’s not looking so good,” came the
reply.

“Just keep talking to him. Keep him
concentrating on something.”

Pot smoke wafted into the front of the car
again as Charlie exhaled. Charlie and the girl were relaxing,
shoulder to shoulder, in the back seat. The weed diluted their pain
with waves of Caribbean ease and a reggae beat.

“I guess ya’ll are doing just fine,” Derek
commented. The second hand smoke was taking an effect on him as
well, tempering his fear with a dash of paranoia. There was a time
when they would have never tolerated smoke from the back seat.
Tonight saw that stern guideline tossed to the wayside. Besides,
the passengers were placated by the cosmic bud, despite their
intense pain.

“Things are very good, sire,” came the reply
from the girl.

“Sire?” Charlie chuckled. “Sir.” They both
laughed. “What are we, serfs on the fife?” The laughter continued,
a gentle melody in the growing chaos outside the car.

“A fife’s a flute.”

“No, it’s not.”

Laughter.

As the potheads laughed it up, Mike and Derek
observed the outside world on William Cannon. It was a bizarre
combination of regular life and intense chaos.

On one city block, people waited for the
arrival of a late night Capitol Metro bus. On another corner, the
fire department was handling a situation at a gas station. Further
up the road at another bus stop, a fight was underway between
homeless people. At the Whataburger by the highway, a large crowd
had gathered around the restaurant, looking inside.

It was becoming perfectly clear to the two
officers that the world had been flipped head over heels into the
l9th ring of hell, and it was only going to get crazier.

The girl, who no one cared to ask her proper
name, took a long final hit off the jay. She exhaled slowly, the
smoke gently drifting out of her mouth and nose.

Charlie reached for the joint, still stuck
between her fingers. As he picked it up, he paid no mind to how
cold her hand was. His own body was becoming pretty cold as well,
despite the peaceful warmth the
happy tobbaccy
was bringing
to his dying soul.

Hypnotized by the world around them, Mike and
Derek’s minds did not register the snarling growl and crunch of
tissue and tendon until Charlie screeched.

“Oh, shit!” Mike yelled, turning around and
catching sight of the carnage behind the cage’s wire mesh. He
swerved, sideswiping an adjacent vehicle before regaining control.
Also turning to look, Derek watched the girl with no name biting
into Charlie’s neck. She had grabbed Charlie by the head in a way
that one of her thumbs gouged an eye while the other hand
fish-hooked his mouth, held wide open in a cry of death. Swerving
and distracted by the murder-in-progress in the back seat of his
vehicle, speeding down the highway in excess of sixty miles per
hour, Mike tried to keep control.

Charlie’s screams died down as the girl moved
to his belly and took a bite. A thick chunk of flesh was removed by
her mouth. And as she gnawed on the flesh and blood, her hands tore
open at the exposed wound, digging into his stomach cavity and
exposing his fluid-soaked innards.

“Jesus H. Christ! Mike, pull over!”

“I’m trying!” Mike yelled. He was in the
center lane and traffic was slowing to a crawl.

“Put the lights on,” Derek said.

Mike flipped the switch, and the blue and red
lights began to dance on the passing cars like ghosts tripping on
Ecstasy under the dark night.

“Oh, Jesus,” Derek said, who probably
shouldn’t have looked into the back seat again, but did anyway. The
girl was yanking out cords of intestine and various organs and
their subsequent wastes and fluids. Blood splashed on all the
windows, and even dripped from the cage. Had Mike and Derek paid
attention, they might have noticed little bits of red on them,
making small spots on their midnight blue shirts. A steady haze of
pot smoke still gave Mike hope it was all just a dream, and that he
would wake up in his bed for another day at work.

As the lights touched the cars around the
cruiser, the vehicles began to make room for it to pass. Some even
pulled over in submission, thinking they were being ticketed. The
cruiser edged to the side of the road. Once the vehicle reached a
complete stop and Mike put the car in park, the cops jumped out
like frightened kids running from a carnival funhouse.

“What do we do?!” Mike exclaimed. “We can’t
open the back door!”

“We have to shoot them.”

Mike flinched. The thought hadn’t crossed his
mind. He had only ever drawn his weapon but a few times, and had
never had cause to neutralize a perp. Even the tazer was a weapon
he had only used twice before until the incident at Riverside
Apartments yesterday.