War of the Undead (Day One): The Apocalypse Crusade (A Zombie Tale) (28 page)

After Heines had cracked his sternum and he had been trampled by the admin workers rushing up the stairs, Von Braun had wandered into the lobby breathing like a broken accordion. His one thought was of revenge. He decided he would gather an army of his own and take the cure from that fuck-wad of a cop. The one problem was that the lobby was practically empty with only two morons wandering around.

He tried to gather them to his cause, but they kept wandering off and soon he became confused as well. His brain was a mush of hate—there were simply too many people he wanted to hurt: the cop, the gook, the nigger. And there were others. He remembered, barely, that his lawyer had been an asshole who had to die. And then there was Johnny Carew from the fifth grade...

“I gotta kill that fucker, too.” There were more and Von Braun found himself staring at the distant flashing lights of two dozen emergency vehicles as he dwelled on all those he wanted to kill with his bare hands. The lights captivated him and, like a deer in headlights, he stood at the tall windows that made up the walls of the lower floor and simply stared.

Von Braun gazed blankly through the glass doors until he heard the explosion on the top floor that rattled the building. He then stared upwards for a full minute before a thought blinked into his brain, “My cure!” With the black goo draining from the ducts in his eyes, running was difficult. He stumbled like a drunk over to Mr. Mumford and Anita and began to shepherd them to the stairs.

They were annoyingly slow and easily distracted. They didn’t understand that the cure was in danger, in fact, it seemed to Von Braun, they didn’t understand anything. “Get up there you fat fuck!” he screamed at Mr. Mumford, pointing at the stairs where the smell of burnt flesh was overpowering. Had it been clean flesh Von Braun would have left the two and run to gorge himself, but the flesh had the underlying stink of shit which made his stomach turn.

Mumford hesitated in the doorway, growled and then scratched at his eyes, tearing off a piece of his eyebrow. Anita turned away. Von Braun was thinking of killing her when he caught movement through the glass doors—the police were coming.

There were many of them, too many for him to count, but not so many that they couldn’t be overcome. “Go get them,” he said, turning Mumford around. Mumford didn’t need to be told twice. His brain was a black hole of misery, however he knew fresh meat when he saw it. He and Anita went after Foster’s little force and Von Braun went for reinforcements.

In the little wedge of grey matter that was still operating he knew it would take lots of his kind to bring down so many cops. His stomach rumbled hungrily, thinking about it. As he climbed the stairs he encountered others and these he turned them around to point down stairs yelling into their ears, “The police are down there. Go get them!”

He sent a constant stream down. When he reached the fourth floor he came on a dozen beings that no longer looked human. Their skin was black and ragged, their skulls burned down to the bone, but still they pressed onto the door and beat at it with hands that were little more than fused bone. Von Braun tried to get them to go after the police as well, but they could smell the fresh meat of the scientists and nothing was going to dissuaded them from getting through the door.

Von Braun went back down to the third floor, rounded up another twenty or so and sent them downwards. They had been feeding on the newly killed. The six people trapped in the CAT Scan room, not understanding the breadth of the problem, had tried to make a break for it. They hadn't got far. Von Braun paused only long enough to take a bite from Dr. Hester's lukewarm corpse--the meat wasn't hot which meant it wasn't good.

Spitting it out, he went to the south stair and began pushing more of the zombies toward the first floor. It was then that the first gunshots began to rattle the air.

“Hurry, fuckers!" he screamed at the slow moving zombies. "There won’t be anything left!” All told, eighty infected people were heading for the seven officers.

The troopers were surveying the bloodbath in the first floor break room when the first of the infected people broke out into the lobby and began wondering around. They could smell fresh meat but they couldn’t pinpoint where the sweet odor was coming from. With their hoods stifling sound and cutting off their peripheral vision, the troopers were oblivious to them.

Foster was very glad for the concealing plastic. Yes, it kept the germs out but it also hid the fact from the others that he had gone a shade of green. He had never been to any crime scene that was comparable to what lay in front him. It was more than just the blood.

All over the floor were ugly hunks of flesh, long strands of hair still anchored to flaps of scalp, and a number of fingers. He counted eight, but no thumbs. There were also seven bodies, only one of which was actually dead. The rest were like the CDC man in the van, mostly dead. Most had been torn apart by something with vicious teeth and an eternal hunger, but a few sported gaping holes caused by a nine-millimeter handgun.

"Where's the rest of them?" One of the Middleton boys asked.

"Maybe Heines is trapped upstairs," Foster answered.

The deputy shook his head. "No, I meant, where are the rest of the dead?" He pointed at the ground. Amid the blood and the pieces of stray body parts were thirty-nine brass casings.

Foster stared all around, realizing that the deputy was right, the numbers weren't adding up. With so many shots taken, there should have been a couple of dozen bodies. Something caught his eye. There had been so much blood that he hadn't noticed it before. "Drag marks," he said indicating the floor where black streaks ran through the red. The color didn't make sense, but he had seen the telltale marks of a body having been dragged away enough times to know what they were.

They followed them out into the admin area to the nearest cubicle, fully expecting to see a pile of corpses, instead, there were just two, again grasping, half-dead creatures that made their stomachs churn.

"It looks like they just walked off," someone said. "How? How do you get shot up and then walk away like it was nothing?"

"And where did they walk off to?" another asked, quietly. The men were more like frightened boys. They clumped together, facing outward ready to shoot the nearest shadow if it looked menacing enough.

"We should've waited for the CDC," a deputy said. "We should've sat tight like the rule say. We..."

"Shut your fucking lip!" Foster snapped. "We still have a man in this building, not to mention there are civilians trapped upstairs. Now, let's do our fucking jobs."

There was an embarrassed silence broken when one of the deputies said, "Sir? There's more of them."

Attracted by Sergeant Foster's yelling, three zombies had come snooping around. One was Lacy Freeman, the pistol she had taken from Rory Vickers was long forgotten. Her meds had run out and now all she knew was hate and hunger.

The three saw the strange plastic covered figures and grew confused, not being able to juxtapose the sound of human voices with what their blurred vision showed. They advanced slowly until Foster said, "Take them, two per individual. Concentrate on pinning them first and cuffing them second. I don't want anyone bitten."

The officers knew what to expect this time and the take down went smoothly. The three were trussed up with only a little bit of fuss and then the seven officers stood around looking down at them. One of his troopers said, "My visor keeps getting fogged up. Is that normal?"

"Mine too," someone agreed.

"I think you should be worried if it wasn't," Foster told them. "It just means our suits are air tight. That's a good thing." He wanted to reassure them and himself. He had begun to sweat and, like the others, every breath sent a fog across his vision. "Maybe we should just take a moment to relax before we head up. Smoke 'em if you got 'em."

There was only one trooper with a nicotine addiction. "I would if I could," Trooper Bower said. "You think I can take a drag through these filters?"

"I think you could..." Foster stopped in midsentence. From the lobby, another dozen or so zombies walked into the cubicled admin area. Sudden fear gripped him and instinctively he dropped into a crouch. The others took one look and hunkered down as well.

"What do we do?" one of the Middleton men asked, his quivering voice at odds with his size.

"We, we...hold on, let me think," Foster said. His greatest fear was of the germs, of turning into one of
them
, however he was also extremely afraid of making a mistake. It was the age of blame and lawsuits, where every action was scrutinized later so that a sacrificial lamb could be produced whenever something really big happened. This is what had him nervous, not for a second did Foster consider the possibility of being eaten alive.

He peeked over the metaled edge of the cubicle and studied the people for a few seconds. "They're like the others. Whatever happened to them has messed up their minds, which means they'll come in stupid. I saw a printing room while we were coming in. I say we use it to funnel them in at us one at a time. We zip tie them and clear the floor that way."

Awkwardly in their plastic hoods, they all agreed to the plan. Foster led the way. It was all of forty yards to the printing room but they stopped after only making half that distance. There were a lot more zombies than they had realized. The first floor was teeming with them.

"Go back!" Foster said, urgently.

It was already too late. There were black-eyed creatures in front
and
behind. And worse, they'd been spotted. One of the zombies in a hospital gown let out a hiss and charged. This brought on a full stampede of the infected.

"Run!" someone yelled. Two of the officers took off in different directions. Another officer, with a zombie bearing down on him, fired his weapon twice in quick succession, dropping it at his feet.

"Stop," cried Foster to the fleeing troopers. One kept going, racing at top speed to who knew where. The other's mask fogged over at the wrong moment. He tripped over a chair that had been sticking out of a cubicle and went down hard. Three zombies attacked him, throwing themselves on him with their jaws gaping.

Coming to a split second decision, Foster yelled, "Quick! Follow me." He ran to the downed man and at first tried to do the humane thing: he kicked a horrible black-eyed woman full in the face with his boot. Teeth and blood flew; still she clawed and bit at the prone trooper. Next he used his gun and shot her in the spine. Her legs went jelly, but her hands continued to tear at the plastic and her mouth reached his abdomen where she began to rend threw the plastic and into his flesh.

Foster grabbed her by the collar of her shirt and hauled her back. One of the troopers fired into her chest twice at point blank range and she slumped.

Meanwhile gunshots were going off all over the place. The downed trooper was firing up at his other two attackers without regard to anything but saving his own ass. Bullets passed through them and around them, and a couple came within an inch of hitting Foster. He didn't notice. He had his own zombies to worry about. Six were charging in a line in front of him and he completely forgot his fear of getting in trouble. He began firing as quickly as his finger could pull the trigger.

The other officers were emptying their weapons into the advancing horde with very little effect. If one fell after absorbing the impact of five or six rounds, another took its place. For the span of a half a minute, the two groups fought to a draw and then the Middleton deputies were forced to reload as their guns ran dry. Reloading with gloved hands and fogged over masks, was impossible in the second or two they had to work with.

First, one was bowled over then the other two were gang rushed a moment later. They were swarmed under a pile of zombies. Foster and the other trooper tried to help. They shot into the mass until their guns emptied as well. Foster fumbled for a full magazine, dropping it. He didn't try to grab it from the ground. It was too late for the deputies and maybe even too late for him and the remaining troopers. There were just too many zombies, too close, coming from every angle.

"Run!" he yelled, grabbing the one standing trooper and pulling him along. Foster dodged between two zombies and ran along a corridor of cubicles until his path was caught off by three more of the walking horrors. He dodged to the right, jumped up onto a desk and then leapt a cubicle wall. He didn't quite make it and the wall came crashing down. He landed on the desk in the next cubicle and was up and running before he could draw a breath.

He ran low, keeping below the walls of the cubicles. At one of the little corridors, he paused to check behind him for the trooper whom he'd grabbed. The man was nowhere to be seen. There were gunshots from three directions and zombies everywhere--Foster's courage failed him and for once in his career he ran from the sounds of the guns. He ran for the lobby where he stopped in dread. There were dozens of the creatures between him and the exit.

His breath began to race clouding his mask completely. "Oh fuck," he whined, digging for a new magazine from the holder at his belt. One slid from his grip and clinked on the linoleum, the next felt turned around and wrong. It wouldn't seem to fit into his gun. With the fog obscuring his vision he was blind and afraid and all around him the growls of the creatures grew louder as they closed in.