Orpheus (16 page)

Jen Stone was dead, unnoticed.

Fifteen seconds after her death, her brother figured out that something was wrong with her.

At twenty-three seconds, she opened her eyes to what used to be her brother shaking her shoulders and yelling, "Jen! Jen! Say something!" and lunged for him.

And at forty-two seconds, Bart was dead as his sister continued to tear at, and eat, the flesh of his exposed throat.

Chapter 13: Hitting the Fan

Even though the theater was pitch dark and at about a fifth of its capacity, the murder of Bart Stone went unnoticed for only a few seconds. Two women who were in the same row saw what was happening and screamed for help. Rachel heard the screams and flew to the window. "Oh my God!"

Ethan and JD joined her immediately.

"Holy shit..."

JD screamed into his radio. "SECURITY TO THEATER FOUR NOW GODDAMMIT!"

The security guards responded within a very respectable time frame. The bigger one pushed Jen off of her brother. She crashed against the wall and came for him, but he pinned her back up against it with his large Maglite flashlight at her throat. She gnashed at him, but he kept her at arm's length. Reanimated or not, she was only a slightly built woman, and her insane thrashing was not enough to shake loose.

The other guard knelt down and examined Bart. A person with no medical training whatsoever, he still felt comfortable in his assessment that the poor guy was dead. The guard didn't think that there was much of a crime scene to protect, as there were about thirty witnesses to what had happened, so he reached to close the man's eyelids. Before he could react, his right index finger was missing, and he screamed as it slid down the recently-deceased man's throat.

The big guard instinctively spun around to face whatever was causing the screams behind him, and he loosened his grip on the woman just enough for her to wriggle sideways a few inches. It wasn't much, but it was just enough for her to take a chunk out of the back of his hand. Now his screams joined his partner's. Jen broke free completely and buried her face in the crook of his elbow.

The theater was in a full panic now, and people were falling all over each other to escape. Some retreated back to the main areas of the theater, whereas others opted to head through the emergency door and back to the rear parking. The guard with the missing finger crabwalked away as fast as he could. The blood spouting from the missing finger made the going very slick, but he made it far enough that Bart chose another, closer target.

The guard saw it all but registered none of it. He just kept screaming. In between screams, he noticed a strange tickling in his throat.

* * *

The three Gen Y-ers watched the horror unfold beneath them with frightening speed. JD kept screaming for security, even though the only two security guards on staff had already been savaged. They would soon be back on their feet, of course, but they wouldn't be any help at that point. Rachel mumbled something about having to help them and moved to the door, but Ethan shot a hand out and locked it around her upper arm. The contact seemed to help anchor Rachel and realize the futility of attempting to render any aid right now. "Absolutely not," he said. And to JD: "Dude, call someone else and have them bar those doors or something. We can't let those fuckers make it to the street!"

JD switched the channel on the radio to the manager's but got no answer. He was just as successful on the channels for concessions, the ticket booth, and maintenance respectively. He held up the radio and looked at Ethan with a lost look in his eyes. "There's no answer," he said in a small voice that was a far cry from the star quarterback barking out his cadence. "Nobody's answering..."

"JD, are there security cameras?"

"Huh?"

"Security cameras. Does this place have them?"

"No."

"Shit. We need to know what's going on."

Rachel stepped to the projector and killed the power. The theater itself was cast into darkness, mercifully obscuring the now relatively dormant scene below them. Everyone was either dead or reanimated at this point, so there was really no benefit to watching.

But as soon as Rachel turned off the movie, the scope of this crisis began to sink in. They could hear screams coming from the other theaters and the general direction of the lobby. None of the individual screams lasted long, but this was a Saturday night at the movies: there were a lot more people to go.

"Oh, God, I'm not hearing this."

"It's okay, babe, it's okay..."

"How the fuck is it okay, 12? We're sitting in the house of 1000 corpses!"

"Not helping, JD." Ethan spoke calmly but was scared shitless. Panic wasn't an option; JD was already on the edge. Rachel was amazingly together, but if Ethan lost it, she wouldn't be far behind. If that happened, they'd all be as dead as everyone in Theater 4. He tried to imagine what his father would do. Their relationship was never perfect, not that any father/son relationship ever was, but his dad was great in a crisis. Granted, none of those crises had ever involved murderous...flesh-eating...zombies?...but Ethan thought that something this big would turn his dad into Captain Fucking America.

"Can we make it up to the roof, JD?"

JD nodded and pointed. "Take a left in the hall. Door on the end."

All three jumped when Ethan's cell phone rang. "Dad!"

"Thank God! Are you okay?"

"We're okay, we're okay. But people are going nuts here, Dad!"

"It's happening there, too?"

"Yeah, yeah! Where are you?"

“Weaving through traffic on Main. The neighborhood became a madhouse in the span of about three seconds. There are accidents everywhere. Where's your mother? She didn't pick up!"

Mom.

"Getting her hair done."

"I'll keep trying. Stay where you are."

"Dad...how far are you?"

"Ten miles or so." He paused. "No. Don't even think about it."

"My car's only a few blocks away. I can get her."

"No, you can't. Stay there like I told you."

"You're too far, Dad!"

"I said stay there! I'm not screwing around, Ethan!"

He pulled the phone away from his ear. His father was shouting loud enough for Rachel to make out every word. "Hold on a sec," he said as he slowly opened the door to check for anything in the hall. He didn't see or hear anything, so he made his way to the roof access door. "I have to see something."

"What are you doing?"

Ethan ran up the short flight of stairs that led to the roof. He burst through the door and ran to the edge that faced the street. He inched forward enough to see exactly what he didn't want to see, and what he saw was the horrors of Theater Four, only on a much larger scale. Hundreds of figures, fewer and fewer of them alive by the second. The ranks of the undead grew just as quickly. The scene replayed itself in either direction.

He told his father what he saw as coherently as he possibly could, then added, "You'll never make it to her in time."

"Yes, I will. Now stay there!"

"This time I can't, Dad. I'm sorry."

"Goddammit, Ethan, where-"

The line went dead. "Dad? Dad?" Ethan had a pretty good idea of what his father was going to say, anyway. He was just trying to protect his wife and his boy, but he refused to admit that he couldn't possibly do both. Or either, for that matter.

"So what do we do?" Ethan whirled and saw Rachel. He'd been so focused that he'd never noticed her following him to the roof.

"We? You barricade yourself in with JD while I go hop some rooftops, and get my car and my mother."

"Not happening. We stay together. I can probably make those jumps easier than you can."

"Listen to me, Rach. Please."

"Like you listened to your father?"

Ethan's mouth wanted to retort, but there was none forthcoming.
Six words. She beat me with six simple words.

"Time's wasting, baby."

Ethan clenched his jaw until it hurt. "Fine. But we can't just leave JD by himself."

When they returned to the room, they discovered that JD believed that they could. He kept shaking his head. "No, no, I can't do that."

"What the fuck, JD? You can make those jumps on one leg."

"We're safe here, guys. Let's just wait for help to arrive."

"I don't have that option. I have to get to my Mom."

"Please don't leave. We're okay here. We have," he swept his arm in front of him to highlight their surroundings, "...food, drinks, we can even watch movies 'til help arrives!"

Rachel had had enough. "Oh, quit being such a pussy, JD! We don't have time for it. Are you coming or not?"

JD looked from her to Ethan to a spot on the floor between his knees.

Ethan's spirits dropped considerably when he said, "Then goodbye, JD. Good luck."

Rachel moved to kiss JD on the cheek, but he winced as if afraid that she was going to slug him. She insisted, and planted a gentle kiss on his suddenly flushed cheeks. Satisfied, she grabbed Ethan's hand and followed him to the door.

"Guys?"

The young couple turned, each silently hoping that their friend, once faced with the possibility of being the only living person in a building overrun by hungry zombies, had come to his sense and reconsidered. "Take these." He reached into a toolbox and pulled out a spare flashlight and a nasty-looking combination hammer and crowbar. Ethan took them and nodded. "Good luck, 12."

Those were the last words passed between them, and the young couple heard a click behind them as JD locked the door.

A few moments later, Ethan and Rachel stood on the precipice of the roof, gauging the jump. It was only about eight feet, but it was the first of many they'd have to traverse to get to the car, and it looked like a chasm under the circumstances.

"Ready?" she asked.

"Yeah. You?"

"I think so."

Ethan stared into the alley below them. Zombies were starting to hunt in there for new victims. They were everywhere. He didn't take his eyes from the alley as he said, "Rachel?"

"Hmm?"

"I love you."

The girl laughed a short, genuine laugh. "And all it took was the apocalypse." She leapt lithely to the next rooftop, an "I love you, too" trailing behind her.

* * *

"Goddammit, Ethan, where are you?" was what Cameron Holt said before he realized he was speaking to dead air. He redialed and got...nothing. No recording informing him of an error, no busy signal, nothing. He tried his wife again and got the same result. "Fuck! Fuckfuckfuck!" He pounded his fist against the truck's roof, hoping to feel a little better. He didn't.

His wife and son were somewhere downtown, surrounded by murderous monsters. The phones had just died, so he couldn't contact them. And his son had directly defied him. Why would he do that, now of all times? Because they'd raised him right. How was that for a kick in the ass?

He made himself trust that his family could fend for themselves until he got to them. He wasn't joking when he'd told Ethan that he was weaving in and out of traffic, although calling it "traffic" didn't really paint the whole picture. It seemed that every inch of roadway and sidewalk was clogged with stalled or abandoned vehicles, panicked people running around, lumps of what Holt assumed used to be humans, and those...things. He couldn't believe how fast it was spreading. Just ten or fifteen minutes ago it seemed that the humans outnumbered the zombies 50-1. But whatever was causing it was unbelievably contagious, and that ratio was almost completely turned upside down. The only positive was that he had to be less and less careful with his driving; the brush guard was getting a great workout, at least.

At one point he was nearly run over by a large military-style truck with a flat black paint job. The huge flatbed was mostly hidden under a flapping tarp, but the mass of arms and legs suggested that it was crammed with people who were wisely getting out of Dodge.

He was so preoccupied with moving forward that he was unaware that the zombies he'd already passed were closing in around him, and that slowed him down even more. They climbed all over the truck, obscuring his vision. Their insistent pounding threatened to shatter and eventually break through even the tempered safety glass. His son had been right when he told him that he was too far and couldn't make it in time. Holt couldn't even attempt to deny it.

All at once, his own survival was very much in doubt.

He needed to get inside someplace safe to regroup and reassess his rescue attempt. He knew that he was only a few hundred feet away from the hospital. They'd have food, medical supplies, and hopefully an idea of what was going on. The thought that many more people might have the same idea and could potentially turn the hospital into a powder keg passed through his mind, but he thought that the virulence of the contagion was actually a small blessing in that regard. He didn't think that there was really enough of a gestation period between the infection and the reanimation for someone who was stricken outside to get inside before they became a Romero extra. There was a chance that someone might become infected within the hospital itself, of course. If that happened, he was walking into a slaughterhouse. But that was an if scenario compared to the definite when of his current situation.