Dead and Dead Again: Kansas City Quarantine
Dead and Dead Again:
Kansas City
Quarantine
By
Dalton
Wolf
Copyright Dalton Wolf © January 2016
Cover Illustration by
Matias Trabold Rehren~aka Zicuta
zicuta.deviantart.com
Cover Illustration Copyright held by Dalton Wolf
All rights reserved
FIRST KINDLE
EDITION
2016
Copyright
Note:
No part of
this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written
permission of the copyright holder, except in the case of brief quotations
embedded in critical articles or reviews.
Legal Disclaimer:
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the
author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Additional
Disclaimer
The information in this book is meant to
supplement, not replace, proper zombie survival training. Like any activity
involving speed, equipment, balance and environmental factors, Zombie Survival
poses some inherent risk. The authors and publisher advise all readers to take
full responsibility for their safety and know their physical and mental limits
and to be aware of their real-world skill-level with selected weapons before
placing themselves or their families in jeopardy. Before practicing the skills
described in this book, be sure that your equipment is well maintained and do
not take risks beyond your level of experience, aptitude, training and comfort
level.
El Supremo
and the Alley Shufflers
Of Knights,
Armor and Friendship
Don’t count
your Zombies until they’re Dead
Pitchforks,
Torches and other Bad Decisions
In
the occasion of Human events, when a person or group experiences a protracted era
of extreme good fortune, an equally potent cycle of bad fortune will be hovering
just over the horizon, like a bad storm waiting to release its unwelcome torrent
on unsuspecting victims. This cycle can affect cities, nations and entire civilizations.
~Translated Mayan Quote
Sometimes
shit just happens.
~Anonymous
American
Somewhere over the Midwestern
United States a plain white Gulfstream G750ER sailed through the crisp morning
skies with all the grace and beauty of a majestic eagle on the hunt. Within the
luxurious passenger cabin most of the roar created by the 17,000 force-pounds
of her twin Rolls Royce engines was drowned out by carefully-layered,
sound-defeating insulation. Other than some quiet easy listening music, the
cabin was as peaceful as a library. Including her two military pilots, seven individuals
occupied the roomy jet. Two doctors sat comfortably in their padded seats, one
animatedly chatting with a technician and a Nurse Practitioner while the other,
a gray bearded man in his sixties, stared blankly ahead, lost in thought. All
four wore flat white lab coats over colored scrubs, the classic décor of
doctors and scientists on the job. The two women were clad in pink and purple
scrubs, while both men had chosen a bland light blue. A military nurse in
camouflage scrubs sat in a side-facing seat up closer to the cockpit. He had
remained at eyes-forward for the entire flight.
“Doctor MacGreggor, the plane seems
to be turning,” the pretty blue-eyed blonde assistant the Institute had
provided informed the gray haired doctor stiffly, nervously sliding her hands
down her sides and flattening her lab coat for the third time before leaning
across him to stare out the window.
The not-quite-elderly doctor had
been mentally running through procedures and plans and found it difficult to
pull his thoughts back to the present until the woman invaded his personal
space. A faint aroma of fruits and flowers from her long golden hair floated up
to his nostrils, but it was the sight of two fleshy mounds trapped within a
peach, lacy bra jiggling before his eyes from some minor turbulence that jerked
his brain back to the present.
Good God, woman. I’m old, not dead,
he
mused silently.
Something she’d said had set off an
alarm in his memories, but it was vague and fleeting. Apparently even his
subconscious had been daydreaming this time. When his eyes finally moved up to
meet the lovely blues of the tech, they found a question waiting in an upturned
eyebrow, an unspoken desire for…something.
“I’m sorry, my dear, could you repeat
that?”
“The plane,” she pointed out the
window. “It’s turning. Look.”
“What? That’s impossible,” announced
the man confidently, his immaculately groomed gray beard darting back and forth
as he looked from the woman to the window. But a deliberate and decided tilt of
the plane argued emphatically against the impossible, as did the quickly
repositioning panorama out the window.
“Never-the-less, it is happening,
sir.”
“No, no. We are on a carefully
designed flight path that takes us away from any populated areas. There is no
need and certainly no room for adjustments.”
“There’s a city out there just off
the left side,” she informed him, still leaning over.
The doctor felt the heat rise to
his cheeks and knew it was from more than the scent of peaches and something unquestionably
sweet wafting up from her inviting cleavage.
If only I were twenty years
younger,
he lamented.
But even forty year old me could not ignore
protocols just to dally with a lovely. Damn!
“Pilot!” he shouted, jumping up and
running forward, white coat flowing behind him like a cape.
“You!” the doctor pointed to the
armed military nurse sitting across the aisle. “Get that noise-maker out and
follow me!” The officer pulled out his side arm and both men darted up the short
aisle in single file.
“Pilot!” the doctor shouted again,
approaching the cabin. “What the devil are you doing?”
He exploded through the golden curtain
as a cluster of twenty or thirty skyscrapers tilted into view outside the
windshield, a pair of rivers running through and meeting at the heart of its
industrial area.
Kansas City
; must be,
MacGreggor
thought, correctly
.
“I’m sorry, Doctor. I was just
getting ready to call you. We’ve been showing an overheat in engine two and engine
one is nearing maximum tolerance. I had to back down both engines to lessen the
strain, but the numbers are staying significantly higher than specs allow for.”
“Those for which the specs allow,”
the doctor corrected.
The pilot ignored him and pushed
on. “That usually means a cooling problem. I’m going to stop at the downtown
airport in KC and get it looked at.”
“No, no, no. We can’t stop. This
has to be a non-stop flight. Don’t you know what we’re carrying? No stops.
Return to the plotted course.”
“We can’t fly if our engines burn
out.”
“How did you even get this job?
Didn’t they go over this before we left? We can’t afford to let this plane anywhere
near the civilian population. There are people out there who would love to get
their hands on what is in these containers, and any accident could be
catastrophic. A public airport is the worst case scenario.”
“This isn’t KC International Airport, Doctor. This one is just a small airport.”
“I can see with my own eyes that it
is right in the middle of a major metropolitan area!” the doctor shouted back,
pointing out the windshield straight ahead.
“Calm down, Doctor. Charles B.
Wheeler is practically a government airport. They have full government
facilities. Military, government and diplomatic planes along with their support
equipment go through here all the time. They’ve got what we need and they’re
used to special protocols.”
“There must be another option.”
“No, sir. Lt. Gibbons is giving
them instructions to clear us a hanger.”
“I do not think you understand the
level of insulation we need between ourselves and the general populace when we
transport these samples.”
“Look, Doc. I’m sure you’re good at
what you do. That’s why you’ve got that high clearance that lets you tell me
where to go and what to do without filing flight plans. But I want you to understand
that I’m really good at flying planes. I know how to keep them in the air and I
know when they’re about to fall out of that air. I’ve been doing this since I
was fourteen and I can tell you with ninety-five percent certainty that if we
don’t get this problem fixed right now, we won’t reach our destination.”
“What
I’m
saying is that
perhaps it would be better that we crash in the middle of barren wilderness
than come anywhere near a populated city. Get us out of here. Now!”
“There
is
no barren
wilderness in this part of the Midwest, Doctor. Anyplace we go down, civilians
will find us before any of our people can. At least here we get to dictate the
circumstances.”
The doctor thought for a few
minutes, but the captain appeared most adamant about their danger. “I don’t
like this.”
“Doc, I’m paid to get you there in
one piece or go down in flames to keep the civs safe. This isn’t a panic
decision. We’ve thought it all out. I’m making a controlled landing at a
working airport that has facilities to help us out. I am making this decision
to avoid an inevitable crash in the suburbs. But if you want us to crash
instead…” he sighed. “There’s nothing but this metropolis, small cities and moderately
populated countryside almost all the way to our destination. Just think how bad
a crash in any of those areas could be. We’ll get her fixed up and be out of
here in no time. Trust me.”
The doctor eyed the dark-haired
pilot speculatively for a few heartbeats. “Fine. Well enough. It sounds as if
this is the only safe choice unless you have a self-destruct button located
somewhere on that panel.”
“Sorry, Doctor,” the man
apologized.
“You know the parameters we need?”
“Yes, sir. Gibbons there has
already transmitted them.”
“Very Well. I’d better go make sure
our cargo is locked down.”
“Thanks, Doctor. Makes my skin
crawl knowing it’s on the same plane as me.”
“You’re lucky. Most drivers don’t
even know what they’ve got in their hold when we move this stuff.”
“I regret more and more each day
that they decided we need to know the contents to ensure we perform the proper
protocols.”
“Ignorance is bliss, isn’t it?”
“It is, Doctor MacGreggor. It
really is.”
Beep. Beep.Beep.
“What’s that?” the doctor pointed,
a hint of concern soiling his impeccable English as he eyed the blinking lights
popping up all over the control panel.
“Engine failure on one,” the
co-pilot announced, hitting the fire suppressor switch. “Flame out. Probably
got it fast enough. Fire suppressors have put the fire out.”
The two pilots shared a significant
look before both went into a frenzied state to hunt down the problem, each now clearly
more worried about just keeping the plane in the air than mere safety protocols.
“Run the checks.”
“Bill, two is lit up. We’re gonna
lose her.”
“Shit. We’re not even half way
around the city, we’re gonna have to cut across downtown to finish this turn
and get down fast.”
“We might be gliding it in,” the
co-pilot informed him in a strained, trembling voice. “Oh, man., Colonel, we’re
losing shit all over the board. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
“Easy, Gibbons. I’ve seen
everything before, that’s why I’m here. I’ve got this.”
“Sorry, Colonel.”
“It’s ok. That’s why they put you
with me, Noob. Doc, you better go back there and get everyone locked in. This might
get rough real quick,” the captain said in a rush. “And if you have any pull
with the man upstairs, now is the time to make the calls.”
“Send the Failsafe codes,” the
doctor ordered.
“Message?” asked the co-pilot.
“Give the fail code. Spilled milk.
Status unknown until further contact. MacGreggor has the carton,” the doctor
ordered.
“Roger that, Doctor.” Despite the
troubles he faced keeping the flight in the air, the co-pilot transmitted a
pre-arranged emergency voice code…
“Charlie Delta Charlie Zero Zero
One. Priority Flash. NBAFCOM. Protocol Eleven. Kansas City: Possible Code Q.” The
co-pilot then stated the doctor’s fail codes and repeated the message until a
shaky female voice broke over the other radio traffic.
“NBAFCOM, Charlie Delta Charlie
Zero Zero One. Roger that. Protocol Eleven. Possible Q. What’s your status,
Over?”
“We are making an uncontrolled
descent into downtown Kansas City. Oh shit. No time for coordinates, lighting
up a ping now. Touching down less than a quarter mile south of Wheeler—”
* * * * * *
Eleven hundred miles away in a tiny
room two-hundred feet under the sands somewhere in the middle of a desert, a
tiny short-haired blonde Air Force Lieutenant just over twenty years old sat by
the radio wiping tears away with a uniformed sleeve and desperately trying to
restore contact with the missing bird.
“Charlie Delta Charlie Zero Zero
One, do you copy? Over. Charlie Delta Charlie Zero Zero One. Are you receiving?
Over.”
Please God, let them answer.
The anxious lieutenant had been
trying for three minutes longer than protocol allowed, however. Hope fading
like fog after a clear sunrise, she knew it was time to make some calls.
“Oh my God,” the girl whispered,
stifling a whimper. “Oh my fucking God!”
The phone clicked and a deep,
throaty woman grunted something unintelligible into her ear.
“Colonel Batmouche’?” she spoke
haltingly into the phone.
“Yes?” a woman’s deep, crisp voice
snapped.
“This is Lieutenant Jenson in the NBAFCOM Tower.”
The tower was actually twenty miles
to the south and not at all buried beneath the rolling plains like her bunker
was; Jenson hated that no one ever got the irony in that.
“And?”
“Ma’am…we have an Interrupted
Protocol Eleven with a possible Q code.”
“Verified?”
“They sent all the right codes
before going dark.”
“Jesus. Where?”
“Downtown Kansas City, ma’am.”
“What the fuck are they doing
there?”
“They had called in an emergency
reroute for repairs.”
“God Damnit! There
are
no
reroutes on Bio Courier Flights.”
“It was an emergency, Ma’am, I
called them off, but their primary used an override code.”
“But…they’re having a parade today…”
“Yes, ma’am. A big one. I was
watching it on my way in. Oh my God, ma’am. What if…?” the Lt. stifled a sob.
“You’ve tried to reinitiate
contact?”
“Longer than I should have, ma’am,”
the young officer sniffled. “I’m sorry. Maybe I should have called you first.”
“No, you’re good. I would have done
the same thing. My God, a parade…this could be a worst case.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Are you ok, Lieutenant?”
“I’m scared, ma’am.”
“You and me both, Jenson. You know
the procedure?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Can you handle it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Make the calls on my authority.
The code to the box is Seven, Five, Three, Two, Nine, Nine, Six. I’ll be there
in ten minutes to verify and take command.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” the lieutenant breathed
in relief.
Her frightened eyes stared in at
the simple, classic, heavily clichéd red hard-line phone on the end of her desk,
the one everyone who had ever sat in this chair prayed daily that no one ever
had to pick up, unless they were cleaning it or running a com check. The Lt.
took another, deeper breath as reinforcement for the first and entered the code
into the black metal box on the edge of the desk and pulled out a red card with
codes on it. One shaking hand brought the receiver to her ear and held it there
until she got a response.
“This is Lieutenant Jenson at
NBAFCOM. We need to post an alert immediately.”