World of Ashes (2 page)

             
"Yeah. They still have a heartbeat for a while. It's a strange thing, though. After they're done spazzing out they die. They flatline, no vitals, no breathing. The sick part is, their brain activity remains off the chart, like this thing feeds on something in the brain specifically.” Keith took a swig of water from a bottle someone had left behind. "The CDC was supposed to have recorded which parts of the brain are affected, but who knows where that data went. I think it takes a level of wanton incompetence to let a plague like this-” They heard gunshots echoing from across the eerie, fun-sized ghost town that had once been the DC Comics themed area. On the out of focus black and white security cameras Keller came sprinting from the first aid station, turning as he ran to shoot back into the building behind him. Grabbing his rifle and giving the pistol to Brewer they rushed to Keller's aid, Ethan in the lead. PFC Derrick Keller was reloading under a brick walkway beneath a narrow-gage railroad trestle, his gunner’s mesh uniform soaked with sweat from panic and made pasty from the ash.

Ethan looked up wi
th his rifle to clear the train before they walked under the arched of the bridge. The locomotive and its cars, as ghostly gray as the empty park around them, stood where it had plowed under a zombie wondering on the tracks. The engineer, a friend of Ethan’s from high school, had pulled the brakes and torn the ripe, fat zombie apart under the wheels more or less on purpose. People in the Midwest were having less trouble than city folk accepting that they could wantonly kill their neighbors who’d become infected (or sometimes not) and get away with it. Police tape still marked the scene, back when they bothered to mark the scenes of “Infection Related Attacks.” The “accident” had ended up being the unceremonious end of this park’s last season, the virus and the war to defeat it ended most civilian air travel in the nation less than a week later.

Ethan briefly wondered if the zombie’s remains were still under the engine. Probably not. In those nearly drea
mlike days of safety and plenty only a few short months ago, zombies were still relatively few and not well understood. EMS would transport infected people with minor wounds or who were unresponsive, the stage after raging and just before they get back up. Hospital outbreaks occurred when unconscious zombies were admitted, only to rise and infect the hospital staff and helpless patients.

             
"There's like three of those fuckers in there." Keller said through gritted teeth. "I shot one of them, but the other two are still in the office." Ethan might be horrendously racist, or just a realist, but he’d never seen a black man turn nearly the color of a sheet of paper before. (Michael Jackson notwithstanding.) 

             
Silently, Sergeant Brewer motioned for the two men with him to surround the First Aid station. “Time to play Soldier.” Ethan whispered as they went in with breeching maneuvers he’d trained extensively for as an MP during his first tour, or at least the one he actually signed up for. They found the zombie Keller had shot trying to get back on his feet, one arm completely chewed off and a fresh gunshot wound to the heart. The force the round knocking the zombie down where it hit its head had caused it to stay down, not the gunshot. Keith shot the rotting man in the face while Ethan put down the last two undead paramedics in the adjacent office.

Ethan
’s manic Joker laugh irrupted in a short bout as they walked outside next to the park’s log ride. The irony that he would be in this place doing these things was breaking him down as much as being away from home. He slung his rifle and took a cigarette from his grenade pouch, the grenade that had been issued for it probably at the bottom of a porta-john somewhere in southern Missouri.

All three of them were out of breath, but not from the physical exertion as much as from the adrenaline rush. Ethan looked like he was either about to break down in tears or break out in more laughter, but as Keith was beginning to see the youngest man amongst them was sweating profusely and acting like he was tweeking like a junkie.

             
"FUCK!" Keller shouted, gesturing wildly. “I hate this fucking state!”

             
Ethan patted Keller on the shoulder, "C'mon Derrick, let's go. You can carry the backpack."

             
"I outrank you." Keller said in an uncharacteristically bitter tone, narrowing his eyes and stepping back.

             
"No. You don’t. I have more time in the latrine than you have in the field you little fuck. Besides, I’ve already deserted. You couldn’t give me orders if you were General of the fucking Army Petreaus! Now, pick up the backpack or I'll stab you in the face." Ethan smiled and stepped past Keller with a wink of the eye.

             
"Fuck you!" Keller kicked the half rotted skeleton of a rather plump woman the police had left behind during the final moments of the panic. "Fuck you fuck you fuck you!" Out of nowhere Derrick raised the M9 in his hand to his temple and pulled the trigger. Brain and bone sprayed all over the wall of the first-aid station. Ethan and Keith both flinched when the gun went off, closing their eyes and mouths and not breathing. After Keller’s body collapsed to the blacktop Keith stepped away from the shadow he’d left in the blood spatter. It looked like the silhouettes burned into the stone by the blast of the first nuclear bombs seventy years before, only red.

             
"He had a bite mark on his wrist." Brewer picked up the wrapper from a hotdog stand and lifted Keller's right arm by the sleeve with it. He wasn’t taking any chances with the blood spatter. "But before the grace of God go we…” He said under his breath.

             
"It's that quick!?" Ethan knelt down to Keller’s body, trying desperately to block the images of the friend he’d lost in Iraq. The circumstances were different, sure, but the mechanism of death was a carbon copy. He took the kid’s patrol cap off and let the pile of mush that had been his head and face, now unrecognizable, settle to the pavement with a slop sound. Ethan barfed in his mouth, a flood of unwanted memories searing the back of his mind like starring into an LED projector.

             
"Yes, it is. Are you infected?" Keith leveled the pistol at Ethan's face. This was honestly the first time anyone had ever pointed a real gun at Ethan. It wasn’t as earth shattering as everyone said it was, not to him. In a way, Ethan hoped the sergeant would put him out of his misery.

             
"No. I was behind the, the..." Ethan snapped his fingers as his mouth went dry with panic. He knew Brewer was close to going into shock again, who knew how stable his thought process was.

             
Even in a moment that didn't call for laughter the man with the gun managed a smirk, "I wasn't gonna shoot you unless you started getting hostile. That’s how it starts, man. That’s how you know.”

             
Letting his breath go Ethan rocked back on his heels as he knelt next to Keller. "I put this kid through hell. Made him think I could help him get through this. Maybe he should have chased our unit down." Ethan looked down at his previous companion. "And he killed himself so he wouldn't hurt us…"

             
"If you think he was really being that noble.” Keith shrugged, looking like a shaggy haired madman in children’s clothing. “I’m sorry about your friend, but he’s dead, just like all of mine.” Keith started walking away. He picked up the medical bag and despite the pain in his sprained ankle he started back toward the office. "Where are you from?" He asked without looking back.

             
"Right here actually... Well, about thirty miles and a couple towns South. I used to work here when I was in high school, and even for a bit after the Army; Security wasn’t any more fun than pushing buttons or picking up trash. Just paid better.”

             
"Really? That's amazing man. Most of us are from all over..." Ethan had caught up to Keith. Neither looked back. "I can't imagine how bad Pensacola is now." They climbed the stairs back into the secutiry office. "So if you're from around here, is your family still around?" Keith changed the subject.

             
"I don't know. I've been through Sullivan four times going to and from Fort 'Wood since the Army kidnapped me like a British press gang, but they never let me stop. Stop-Loss, or conscripted veterans, get red dogtags. Lets our command know we’re a desertion risk. I haven't had access to a phone in two months."

             
Keith pointed his finger like a gun to a desk behind Ethan. "There's a phone right there."

             
Without hesitation Ethan picked up the phone and dialed his home. Cell towers had gone dark months ago, but rumors that some land lines still worked persisted. There was a ringtone and within three rings Ethan heard the voice of an angel on the other end. "Baby!? Omagod! It's me. I'm in Eureka. I'm coming home as soon as I can, stay where you are!" His face suddenly grew concerned by what he was hearing on the other end of the line.

Keith’s brow furrowed. He could hear the receiver
picking up the sound of shouts and gunfire that echoed like they were from inside a building. "Baby, don't go with them! Tell Dad to block the door, stay in the house and lock everything. Go upstairs and don't let anyone in the house. I'll be there as soon as I can!" Ethan's eyes widened in horror, "Nicole? Nicole! Hello? FUCK!" He threw the phone against the wall, shattering it. "We have to go. There has to be a car around here we can use."

             
“Ooh, can we take a Moon Car?” Keith was referring to one of the oldest rides at Six Flags. Small buggies with single stroke lawn mower motors that resembled an early Ford Model-A. It was basically a super slow lawn mower with no blades and a padded steering wheel.

An
explosion in the distance rattled the rickety buildings. They both looked through the window to see a squadron of Apache gunships blowing up anything that moved near the highway. Their guns chattered and wire guided missiles destroyed things the ash had previously hidden.

             
"I don't think we should be on the roads right now."

             
"FUCK!" Ethan shouted again and threw a dark computer monitor across the room. "If I don't get there now they'll send ‘em to some camp with Private Pyle as a guard and then they're all gonna die!"

             
"Well, my schedule is conspicuously clear right now. Let’s do this." Keith said, flipping on a radio in the security office. It crackled with static as he scanned through the channels, looking for one he and Ethan could use exclusively if they got separated along the way. They landed on two police bands, each was a veritable cornucopia of screams and gunshots and some asshole redneck reading verses from the bible that seemed irrelevant to the situation, making an entire channel useless with his open mike. Other channels had calls for help from people who couldn’t be saved, and perhaps even something more sinister, something undead.

             
Quietly, Ethan tried the phones again, but there was no dial tone this time. The lines were completely dead. More explosions shook the ground from much closer targets. They became anxious to gather what few supplies there were and leave. Contemplating the loss he'd just experienced, Ethan’s heart was weighed heavier than he expected. If Nicole had never answered to begin with he might have taken it better, but not now. Now he had practically no time to get to his family before they were evacuated to the care of incompetents. Another scan of the radios revealed no signals at all, not even the zealot. The Apache gunships had taken care of him too, triangulating his position.

             
“Zombies don’t use radios. Why are they attacking signal origins?” Keith watched out the window as a rocket flew over the park and took down the repeater at the top of the hills that surrounded Six Flags.

             
“Conspiracy theories are going to have to wait.” Ethan took the radios and turned them off. “We take no chances we don’t have to.”

             
The zealot was just one of a growing number of people Ethan began to realize he wasn't going to miss, thinking about the world he’d lost while they searched for a car. He knew he could be callous to the world, but it didn’t even bother him than the zealot, or his radio, had been destroyed by their army. Ethan figured he’d miss close friends, his family and beloved for sure, but most everyone else was just as empty and hollow to him before as the random people on the games in the
Grand Theft Auto
saga. The fact that most people were zombies now didn't endear them to him anymore than when they were the fat, disconnected, pill popping, lazy fucking morons he’d taken for granted as a child. Around the front of the building he pulled out the pack of cigarettes. Half the pouches on his gear had been for candy and tobacco and whatever other contraband he could find even before he’d become “That Guy.” The way Ethan figured it, by the time he’d have to use a 9mm rather than his rifle he’d already be fucked. Lighting the cancer stick he inhaled the smoke, something that pained him, but nothing else was available. He could see through the ashen clouds just enough to make out the highway and a few still-smoldering cars. This was going to be a long walk if they couldn’t find a car.

             
In silence they walked back to the first aid station. The bodies were exactly as they’d left them, much to their relief. They didn’t have time to bury the bodies, the sun was setting and both were already a measure beyond exhausted. Ethan whispered the words to The Lord’s Prayer over Keller before they left.