In the Dead: Volume 1 (13 page)

And then the “zoo keepers” showed up. Only they were CDC guys, dressed in full hazmat gear and with cattle prods. James had read it cost them over a million dollars to get the zombies into exhibit. He guessed they weren’t about to shoot them and destroy that investment.

“
Step out of the way,” the CDC guys said through their respirators.

“
Hurry,” James whispered as he edged past the biggest CDC guy. He had a feeling that bad things were going to happen in a minute.

They made their way past the crowd and started toward the front gate. James wanted to run, but he feared that would only make their escape attempt that much more obvious and inspire the rest of the cattle people in the zoo to freak out, too.

The screams began behind them. Loud wails from the group. James knew what was happening. Timmy and his Mommy Dearest had reanimated.

“
Ok,” he said, “Run! Run!”

His brother let go of his shirt and they both started running, but within minutes, the terrified crowd behind them had caught up. James tried not to look, but there were people with blood on their shirts. He wasn’t sure if it was residual spray or if they’d been bitten.

“
Why aren’t they shooting?” Ryan asked as they made for the front gate.

It was almost like someone read his mind because at that moment, the sounds of gun fire echoed through the air. One shot, then silence.

“
That isn’t enough to kill them both,” Ryan said and began to run faster.

By the time they reached the turnstyles to let them back out into the parking lot, people were crowding them, stuck in twos and threes. Ryan started to elbow his way through the crowd, but James caught his arm.

“
We’ll get held up, come on, this way!”

Ryan followed him without argument (possibly for the first time ever) and they hurried toward the entrance gates. The woman behind the toll booth jumped up as they burst through.

“
Hey! You can’t go this way!” she said, her voice muffled by the glass.

James ignored her and they kept running toward the parking lot.

“
James!” his brother cried and James stopped and turned.

Ryan was standing in front of where the exit turnstiles would normally dump people out into the parking lot. James stared at what he saw. The people who had gotten stuck were now screaming. And behind them, the zombies were swarming the crowd.

“
How many are there?” James asked, his tone low and blank.

“
Looks like ten.” Ryan shuddered. “But there are about to be fifty.”

“
Yeah, so let’s go.”

James caught his brother’s hand and they ran toward the parking lot. Cars swerved, nearly hitting them as they darted down the aisles toward the last row where James’s beater of a Honda was parked.

He moved to unlock Ryan’s side, when his brother pointed.

“
Look at all the people trying to get out.”

James swiveled toward the single exit of the East Parking Lot and scowled. Cars were run up on the sidewalk and the grass, they were slammed against each other in a twisted mess of metal that would take hours to escape. And judging from the fact that the screaming in the distance had faded, they didn’t have hours. Not anymore.

“
Forget the car,” James said and motioned to the park that was just beyond the wall around the zoo. “We’ve got to go on foot.”

“
The house is ten miles away!” Ryan protested. “It will take us hours to walk home.”

“
If there are zombies, I doubt we’ll be walking. And as soon as we’re at a safe distance, I’ll call Mom to come get us.” James stared at his brother. “Please. Please don’t argue and just do this.”

Ryan stared at the traffic jam at the exit and nodded. “Fine.”

James stifled a sigh of relief and started for the wall around the lot that kept people from sneaking in without paying. There were security guards in the parking lot who would normally keep them from scaling it, but they were busy with other things. Like the crazy drivers. And the zombies who were now climbing over the turnstiles and heading into the lot.

“
Shit, hurry,” James said as they reached the wall. He motioned to a car that was parked close and helped his brother scrambled up on the hood. “And don’t look back.”

Of course Ryan immediately did just that and his face paled beneath his freckles. “Oh shit.”

He hit the roof and vaulted over the wall and James followed. It was a bit longer drop than he’d expected and as he hit, he felt his ankle turn. A fiery burst of pain shot up the back of his leg and he grunted as he crouched down and grabbed for his ankle.

“
What?” Ryan asked. He pivoted to stare at James. “Are you okay?”

He nodded, but he doubted his expression said anything but pain. “I’m fine. Let’s just go.”

His brother opened his mouth to argue, but when James started limping across the park, he didn’t say whatever he was going to say, he just followed. Behind them, James heard more screaming, tires squealing and occasionally, gunfire.

“
Why didn’t they shoot them right away if they had guns?” Ryan asked between panting breaths.

James shook his head. “Protecting the asset, I guess. But they waited too long, obviously. Hey, there’s Cortez Tower. We can climb up there and call for Mom, okay?”

Cortez Tower stood in the center of the old downtown section. It had been some kind of Civil War Monument or something and had fallen into disrepair, but now that the city council was trying to revitalize downtown, they’d cleaned it up. It was about a mile from the zoo, which seemed like forever the way James’s ankle was screaming in pain with every step.

“
Can you make it?” his brother asked.

James didn’t answer, but kept up his limp/run at the same pace. It really hurt, but he wasn’t about to tell Ryan that and open the door for arguments and time wasting discussion about splints and stuff. They just had to get to the Tower. That was it.

The rest of town hadn’t quite figured out that all hell was breaking loose at the zoo. By the time they were just a quarter mile away from the carnage, people were strolling along the sidewalks, out in their yards doing some work in the sunny morning or drinking their iced latte’s as they went about their weekend activities. Again, James wondered if he should start screaming out warnings, but he didn’t really want to be in the midst of panic. He’d seen what had happened in some of the cities during the zombie apocalypse. People were trampled and shot for what they had. Chaos had reigned more often than not. Until he and Ryan were in a safer place with a vantage point and a blocked door, he wasn’t about to start calling for the cavalry.

He stumbled as pain rocketed up his leg.

Ryan skidded to a stop in front of him and turned back. “How bad?”

James blinked. He was tearing up from the pain, though he hated to share that with his brother. Still, he couldn’t exactly hold back.

“
Bad,” he said through gritted teeth. “But we’re not far enough away from the zoo to stop. We are about half a mile from the tower.”

“
Why are you obsessed with the tower?” Ryan asked while he came back and put James’s arm around his shoulder to support him. They started running again, this time in tandem like they were in a weird three-legged race.

“
We’ll be able to see if the zombies come toward us,” he explained. “The door is heavy, too. If we close it and lock it, we’ll be able to block it off. The zombies won’t figure it out.”

Ryan shot him a look. “Wow, you’re pretty smart.”

James laughed. “Thanks, I guess. I could do without the utter shock, of course, but I’ll take the backhanded compliment.”

“
I see it,” Ryan panted as they burst through a back alley into the town center. “Come on.”

They hobbled into the center of the roundabout and up the marble stairs to the base of the monument. Even though it was a nice day, when they moved into the tower, no one else was inside. The desk, which was unmanned most of the time, was empty.

“
Close the door,” James grunted as he sank down on the staircase next to the old, creaky elevator. “And I’ll help you block it with the desk.”

His brother did as he was told and James pushed himself back up and the two boys shoved the desk in front of the door. Ryan tugged on the door and it held.

“
Good enough. Now let’s go up.”

They got on the elevator, which was hardly big enough for two and they pressed the button. Up and up the old elevator creaked, groaning and protesting every foot it climbed. Finally it stopped with a jolt and the old door slid open.

The top of the tower was a tiny little observation deck that could hold no more than four or five people. It looked down over the whole city and James and Ryan moved to the side where they could see the zoo.

From thirty feet up, they couldn’t see much detail, but smoke was coming from the mass of cars still situated at the exit to the parking lot where they had fled. People ran around and some of them didn’t look like they were really thinking.

“
Are those zombies?” Ryan asked.

James nodded. “They move like them, that’s for sure.”

Ryan flipped his phone open and pressed a button. “Hey Mom?” he said after a pause.

James could hear her squealing and yelling. Apparently word had gotten out about the zoo thing.

“
No, we’re okay. No we got out. No we’re not bitten. We had to abandon the car and James twisted his ankle…. Cortez Tower. We’ll wait. Just be careful. I love you too.”

He closed the phone and looked at James.

“
She’s on her way.”

“
I figured.” James stared down over the city again.

“
So do you remember when we were little and Mom and Dad took us to the zoo every month?” Ryan asked.

James nodded. “Yeah.”

“
I always went for the bugs and the monkeys,” his brother continued. “But you wanted the lions and the poisonous snakes. I asked you why once.”

James stared at him. “Jeez, I don’t even remember that. What did I say?”

Ryan shook his head. “You said that unless something could kill you, unless you could see it plotting against you… it wasn’t that interesting to you.”

James laughed. “Yeah. I guess that’s true.” They both stared out at the zoo parking lot. There were bodies laying there. Not moving.

“
They’re the lions now,” Ryan said softly.

James shivered. “Yeah. And now I wish I’d just been happy looking at the bugs.”

Mr. MacGyver

The camp smelled like a toilet and looked like the county fairgrounds after all the festivities were packed up. Dirty, beaten up and overly used. Only here there were more people.

Meghan sighed as she grabbed for her sister’s hand and dragged her toward the big board in the middle of the camp.

“
You look on one side, I’ll look on the other.”

Ashley didn’t answer, but just took her place at the message board like she had a dozen times before at a dozen different camps. Meghan squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed them before she started scanning the bulletins from the top to the bottom. She was so tired of this.

“
Anything?” Ashley’s voice came softly from the other side. Her sad tone told Meghan that she didn’t see any messages from their parents.

“
Nope.” Meghan rubbed her eyes. She tried to smile as Ashley came back around the message board but her sister was fifteen, not stupid. She didn’t return the expression.

“
How many times have we done this?” Ashley asked.

Meghan shook her head. “I’ve lost count.”

They linked arms and started toward the center of the camp where they could apply for a tent for the night and see if there was any food to share. Meghan tried to think about anything else but their predicament, but it was impossible.

In September she
should
have been going to college, so in August, she and her sister had flown to California in order to spend a last week as kids with their grandmother. And two days into the trip the worst thing had happened. The Outbreak. Z-Day. Grandma had died of a heart attack when the first zombies tried to break into the house. And the two of them… well, they’d been running ever since. Trying to get home. Trying to find their Mom and Dad.

And knowing that in Colorado, just like everywhere else, the grey menace had come and maybe…
probably
…. taken everything they’d ever known.

But they still looked.

“
The motorcycle isn’t going to work much longer for us,” Ashley said as Meghan wrote their names to claim a tent for the night.

“
I know. It’s just getting too cold for it.” Meghan shook her head. “And the further north and west we get, the colder it’s going to get. So we need to figure out a car situation and then I think we should really consider the cabin.”

Ashley stiffened. “But it’s not near anything.”

Meghan squeezed her hand. “
That’s
why it would be the perfect place to go, Ashley. Mom and Dad loved that place, they dragged us up there every summer. If they were going to run somewhere, that’s where they would go. And if we can get enough supplies together, even if they aren’t there, it would be a good winter hole up spot.”