Dead and Dead Again: Kansas City Quarantine (9 page)

“Stay dead you flesh-eating freak!”
he let forth a tribalistic scream his uncle had taught him and jumped onto the
wriggling corpse, jamming his left hand down until the rod exited the back of
the ex-man’s skull. Just to make sure, he kicked the thing over and jammed the
other rod through its spine, then reached down next to the spilled pallet and
selected a larger piece of rod iron, commencing to beat the man for at least
another full minute. When there was so little left of the man-thing that he was
sure no actor, director or writer in the history of Hollywood could bring it
back to life, he doubled over and puked his lunch all over the bloody corpse.

“Fuck!” he shouted, when he finally
stopped heaving. Wiping the tears from his eyes, he then started to wipe his
mouth on the long sleeve of his crimson jersey but stopped at a distressing
sight. “Aw man! My new jersey is stained. Shit!”

Although crimson, the blood of the
dead man was much darker and droplets peppered the sleeves of both arms. As a
side-note he realized the BBQ sauce from his earlier meal was definitely going
to stain the white numbers. Another part of his mind told him he had more
important things to think about. Eyes aware and darting about once again, he searched
for witnesses to attest to the man being out of his mind. Hopefully some white
people had seen the whole thing. Everyone knew that a black man killing a white
dude with rebar was a death sentence unless there were some credible witnesses,
preferably white, who had seen the entire thing, or better yet, recorded it.
His former reputation would mean exactly shit in a hate crime, especially when
the victim had been brutally beaten until its head was splattered all over the
sidewalk like spilled Kung Pao.

He needn’t have worried. It wasn’t
just the one man who had lost it. This same scene was being replayed up and
down the street. Rising to his feet, arms limp at his side he witnessed a sight
even his most imaginative self-punishing nightmares couldn’t have created. All
around was chaos, hell on Earth. He would never know how long he stood
watching, but in his mind it seemed to last for a year.

“The dead risen and come to claim His
kingdom,” he muttered. “Just as grandma always tole me they’d do.”

In every direction groups of people
wrestled desperately with creatures like the one he’d just killed, or at least the
one he hoped was actually dead this time. Zombie science was still in the
theoretical stages, although it seemed they were going to be getting some hard data
from this day onward. Soon floats in both directions blazed and the vehicles
pulling most of them had unhooked and fled to…somewhere. The few ex-revelers remaining
were piling materials into large bonfires and tossing wriggling zombies onto
the flaming pyres. The living far outnumbered the dead for now, but Boomer
could see that if someone didn’t get control and start making plans soon,
things were going to go real bad, real quick. Brick hadn’t moved from the wall he’d
slammed him into, though he had sunk down and put his head in his hands, his
body shaking from uncontrolled sobs. The girl lay beside him rolling back and forth
slowly, hands covering her side and neck, trying to keep control of the blood
flow where the zombie-man had fed.

“Aw hell. Brick, you gotta get up
man!” he whisper-yelled without moving, unwilling to risk drawing the girl’s
attention. “You gotta get outta there. She’s…that girl could become one of em!”

Brick shook his head. A gurgling
sound rose from somewhere deep in her throat and she slowly rolled over and
started crawling towards him, a dark line of blood oozing behind her like a
slug’s slime trail.

“Brick!” Boomer shouted. “Get up,
man!”

But the former star quarterback
wouldn’t even look his way. Not until the claw-like hand of the girl who’d
rebuffed him reached out and grabbed his ankle in a fierce, iron-clawed grip. When
their eyes met, he screamed. She had the same wide, dead, milky eyes and skeleton
grin they’d seen on the fat guy. Even though he was half-mad from the surreal
scene before him, his remaining survival instincts forced his leg muscles into
action. Jumping up and pulling back, ripping his foot from her grasp, feeling
the vibration of snapping bones as the force snapped her slight wrist. Without
even a whimper, the hungry girl lunged along the ground after him. She would
not be denied, reaching with her one good hand, clasping and releasing like
that hook in that crane game he loved to play. But it was no purple teddy bear
as the prize; it was his flesh. Boomer was right. They were zombies. “Boomer!”
he screamed.

“C’mon, man,” Boomer muttered,
turning and picking up two longer rods of rebar, about two feet long, and dashing
towards his friend who was holding the half-naked girl-zombie at arm’s length
trying to avoid her gnashing teeth and claws.

“Boomer!” he screamed again. “Get
this Zombie Bitch off me, man!”

Boomer arrived at the same time as
a white guy in a SKC jersey who held a blood-covered baseball bat. Trying not
to think about the irony, Boomer set up on the other side of the man and both
men went to work on the zombie, the baseball bat bashing one arm, while Boomer
smashed the other. They both crushed a kneecap, but although the bitch went
down she still caterpillared herself towards a slowly backtracking Brick.

“The head!” Boomer shouted. “We
gotta hit it in the head!”

“Right,” the new man nodded and
each took one bash at the girl’s skull, turning her pretty golden locks into
blood pudding, spilling brain stuff and gore all over her pretty pink outfit.

“What a waste,” the soccer jersey
wearing man muttered, clearly eying the pair of bulging breasts which were
still jiggling from the contact of her body on pavement. He seemed entranced
despite the sickening situation. The sour scent of whiskey and cigars assaulted
Boomer’s nostrils as the man continued. “I mean, I’ve never even seen a pair
that perfect and now she’s gone. If this was just a horror movie scene and her
tits were shaking like that, I’d be finding out who the actress was so I could add
her to my spank bank. Ain’t so hot in real life.” But he poked the girl with
the bat and made her breasts wiggle again. “Nope, nothin’,” he mumbled
drunkenly and sighed.

White people are crazy,
Boomer said to himself, shaking his head.

The two armed men looked around to
see where they could be of use next, but both noticed the sudden quiet that had
fallen over the small valley. The people seemed to have won for now. Several dozen
blood-soaked and harried parade-goers gathered in the empty street brandishing
various weapons and watching zombies burn in pyres. Most of thousands of
watchers had apparently run out of the little valley, the rest had been turned
and either killed or wandered off.

“Dave,” the man with the bat extended
a working-man’s hand.

“I’m Boomer. This is Brick,” he
pointed to his friend, who with both hands on his head, stood shaking and
whimpering in disbelief.

“You’d better get him out of this
and somewhere safe. He’s really out of it.”

“He’s a little drunk. Having
trouble sorting it out, I think. I would be too, but I just ain’t had time to
freak out yet. And I smoked some really good weed earlier.”

“I know what you mean. I’m baked.
And I been drinking all morning.”

That explains that,
Boomer
thought.

“I’d say you should get to your car
if you can,” Dave told him.

“I agree with that.”

“No…no, no, no, no,” Brick started
muttering, wide eyes staring up the street behind the pair of new, temporary
pals.

Both men turned.

“Holy Hell,” Dave said quietly.

Dozens, maybe hundreds of trudging,
shuffling bodies were topping the hill from the south, flowing down the street like
a flood of death…a really slow, trickling flood, perhaps more like the steady
approach of lava from a slowing volcanic eruption. It was still scary, but they
had some time.

“We can’t beat that many,” Dave
noted slowly.

“Not with Brick here drooling like
he’s ready for the funny farm,” Boomer agreed.

“Where’s your car?”

“There’s all of them parking lots
between Main and Broadway under the elevated roadway, by the tracks?”

Dave nodded.

“We’re on this side.”

“That’s where mine is. I’m right in
the middle. Me and my friend Billy over there came together,” he motioned to a
giant Samoan man in a SKC jersey animatedly talking to a pair of short, skinny blonde
dudes with bowl cuts who were clearly twins, although one wore a Royal’s jersey
and the other a Chief’s sweater and hat.

 “Billy!” he called and all three
men walked over.

“This is Brick,” he pointed to
Brick, who stared dumbly up the street.

“And this is Boomer.” Boomer shook
Billy’s huge hand.

“This is Jake and Jerry,” Billy
introduced the two identical men. “They’re twins,” he added needlessly.

“I’d have never guessed,” Boomer
joked and everyone laughed nervously.

“We’re all down by the tracks,”
Dave informed the group.

“They are too,” Billy motioned to
the twins.

“Safety in numbers?” Boomer asked
the group, receiving nods from all but Brick.

“Take this, Brick,” Boomer thrust a
rod into his friend’s shaking hands. Brick’s fingers clenched tightly around
the rebar, but his eyes remained fixed on the approaching mass of ex-humanity.

“Where’d you get that?” One of the
brothers asked, holding up a broken piece of painted lumber he’d clearly ripped
from the wreckage of a nearby crashed float. Boomer pointed them to the pallet
of rebar and both brothers ran over to grab a rod.

“Hurry, those things are walking
pretty fast,” he called, but he needn’t have bothered. The twins were already
returning armed with rebar rods in each hand.

“We’re all parked down by the
tracks!” Boomer called to the groups gathered on the street, many of them
families who were rounding up their living children and sorting things out. Most
pointed in different directions or simply ignored him.

“Good luck!” he shouted, with a
salute, and the men with him shouted similar sentiments while the other groups
waved back. “Let’s go.”

The six men set off up the street at
a jog zigzagging between the burning heaps of former floats and former Humans, hoping
the way would remain clear for all seven blocks to their freedom. Unfortunately,
things fell apart before they’d made the second cross-street. A dozen dead
stumbled out into the street before them, slavering and grunting. None of these
were in very good shape; several were even missing arms or a leg.

Brick simply stood at the back of
the group and watched, but the rest all set to with vigor, grunting and yelling
various battle-calls. Boomer plunged rebar into the forehead of a
six-and-a-half foot SKC fan. The massive body twisted and fell away from him,
yanking the rebar from his grip. He let it go and gripped the other rod with
both hands, slamming the longer iron down into a fat white zombie with red hair
and a jersey to match, smashing its skull down into its neck, brains and fluid
squirting out of the eye sockets like soft serve out of an ice cream machine at
Dairy Queen. Boomer glanced to his left just in time to see one of the twins
cave the skull of a six foot black man in a Raider’s jersey who collapsed
sideways into another zombie, forcing it to the ground. But zombies do not
react as people do when they die, because they are already dead. This zombie immediately
dug its claws into the concrete and lurched forward, sinking its teeth into the
ankle of the defender before it, the other twin. The bitten twin let out a
scream and his brother smashed his bat repeatedly into the skull of his twin’s
attacker. As the last zombie fell, the others stood appraising the twins, sympathy
apparent in the eyes of each man. Before anyone could speak, a dozen more
zombies lumbered from the side-street.

 “Go!” shouted the injured brother.
“I’ll hold them back!” He turned to the approaching group, but his healthy brother
stood by his side with a nod.

The other men saluted the pair and
wished them luck. “Five more blocks.” Boomer said quietly, wishing he was
already there.

The remaining men now fled down the
middle of Broadway, yelling to people they passed, telling them where they were
going and offering rides. Occasionally they would come upon other groups
fighting the zombies would give a hand, gaining some more followers for a block
before the newcomers split off again or fell behind.

Two-and-a-half blocks later,
another group of dead charged from a side street. The big Samoan Billy was
closest to this new group of dead. Slow as they were, the zombies were
relentless and the big man went down in a screaming heap as animated dead
bodies ripped and tore at his flesh. His angry screams washed out all other
noise. Grasping and flailing, the powerful man rose and dashed two of the
attackers’ heads into the pavement before another ripped out his Achilles and
he fell flat on his back. He jammed the two-foot rusty rebar through the eye of
another, but then he lay flat. Taking two heaving breaths, realizing his fate,
he shot a look of finality up at the others. With a mighty howl, the Samoan turned
the rebar and shoved it deep into his own eye socket.

Brick screamed like any good horror
vixen, turned, and fled down the street.

“Aw, hell. He’s right. Just run,
man!” Boomer screamed to the others.

They ran. They ran like jackrabbits
from a pack of coyotes, avoiding the groups of dead who slid out from side
streets or waited behind the abandoned floats. They easily bypassed slower dead
who shuffled across the street and out-flanked those who were waiting for them
with gnashing teeth and hungry moans. The group ran on. They even ran past a
few groups of people that needed help. Boomer tried to hold Brick up, but his
friend kept running, so he followed and the others as well. They ran until they
reached the supposed safety of the parking lots. The road here was slightly elevated
above the tracks and adjacent parking lots so Boomer had a great view.