A clerk was being mauled next to one of the gas station
pumps. Karen covered her children’s eyes to protect them from the gore. Like
before, with her deaf neighbor, the group of infected worked at tearing the
young man in two.
“Where are the police? Where is the National Guard?”
Karen turned away from the window so she did not have to watch the man suffer
anymore.
“I don’t know. The National Guard station is located in
downtown Vancouver. It will take them a long time to get organized enough to
make it to this side of town,” Troy said as he cranked the wheel hard to make a
fast right.
“Can you slow down?” Karen steadied the two girls after
the turn.
“I want to get back to Mama’s, fast.”
They raced through an intersection. Troy did not see the
sports car moving quick on his right. The Mustang ran right into the rear
quarter panel of his truck. They spun out of control. The truck did a three
sixty in the center of the intersection. The Mustang kept moving forward. Its
left front tire folded under the wheel well and its hood bent in half. It was
heading right for a small store that sold vacuums. Sparks flew as it jumped the
curb and smashed into a storefront. Shattered glass sprayed out over the top of
the car and down onto the sidewalk. The driver was laid out dead on the horn.
After Troy’s truck stopped spinning it kept rolling
backwards and crashed into a telephone pole. Both girls screamed their lungs
out. They reached for comfort from the nearest adult. Pain exploded up Karen’s
right arm. It took a moment for her eyes to focus, but before she checked
herself she looked down at her girls. They were shaken up but neither of the
kids sustained any injuries.
The growing pain in her wrist had ratcheted past eleven
on the “does it hurt” meter. She looked down at her hand. Her wrist looked all
kinds of wrong. It was bulged and angled in a bad direction. It had been
dislocated or maybe broken. She could not tell. The sight of it made her vomit.
All of the pizza in her stomach poured out onto the floorboard between her
feet.
“What’s wrong?” Troy shook off the cobwebs in his brain.
Karen held up her wrist and showed him what was causing
her so much distress.
“Oh fuck!” he burped out the curse.
“Bad word.” Robin stopped crying long enough to point out
his error.
“Is it broken?” He reached out for her forearm and took a
better look.
Karen kept her head down. She did not want to look at it.
She spat the last bit of puke out of her mouth, “I don’t
know! Try and fix it!”
“I don’t know how to fix it! We got to get out of here!”
Troy checked three-sixty. Nothing and no one had spotted them yet. He tried the
key and the engine revved. He punched the gas and the truck lurched forward. It
made a god-awful sound like metal grinding and tearing itself apart.
The impacted side rear tire sat at a seventy-degree angle
and had gone flat. Troy put his truck into four-wheel drive and the front tires
activated. He was able to pull back out into the street, but it was like they
had the emergency brake on. No matter how much he stepped on the gas he could
not get it over forty. The faster they went the louder the noise became.
Horns blared as cars raced past them.
“You gotta fix my wrist! I can’t take it!” Karen yelled
at her brother.
“I don’t know how! I might make it worse!” he yelled
back. It was the only way to hear each other over the noise.
“What’s wrong Mama?” Valerie tried to touch the hurt
wrist.
Karen pulled her arm back before the child made contact,
“Mama got hurt!”
“Is it bad? Do you need a Band-Aid?”
“It’s bad! We need to go see a doctor!” Karen used her
other hand to cradle the hurt one so it would not move.
“We can’t go to the doctor! The hospitals are overrun!”
The next intersection was blocked by a dozen crashed vehicles
and surrounded by the infected. The dead ran as fast as they could toward the
truck. He couldn’t maneuver around them. He could only keep the pedal down and hope
that the radiator held. Body after body crashed hard into the front end of the
truck. Blood cascaded up onto the windshield blinding them until Troy turned on
his wipers.
Karen covered the girl’s eyes with her good arm.
Disfigured faces cracked into the glass and torsos were sucked under the front
wheels. They mowed down twenty of them before they got to the intersection.
The pile up at the intersection left only one narrow path
for them to escape. It forced Troy to take a turn onto a major street that ran
east and west through Vancouver. The section of road ahead had a median covered
with beautiful plants and well-trimmed trees. It was one of the busiest
stretches in the city of Vancouver.
Right now it was in absolute chaos.
Crashed cars, dead bodies, buildings on fire and growing
packs of infected swarmed the living. Karen’s eyes fluttered from the constant
assault on her senses. She coughed up a few dry heaves. Her empty stomach
begged to wretch up more puke.
They drove another block when the back wheel started to
vibrate and jump up and down. The noise hit a crescendo and the wheel fell off.
The wheel was left in the center of the street. The axle grinded along the road
and the truck slowed to five miles an hour.
“We have to get out!” Troy’s voice was filled with dread.
“What? We can’t!” Karen snapped back. How could he even
suggest it? The thought of trying to make it with a child in her arms was
unthinkable. Pile on top of that an injured wrist and it made it an impossible
journey.
“We can run faster than this Karen!”
“Keep going! I can’t carry Robin with my hand like this!”
A bus straddled the street ahead. Windows were smashed
out and the engine block was on fire. It blocked the whole eastbound lane. Troy
angled the truck toward the median. He tried to punch it but the truck was dying
a quick death. The front tires climbed up onto the ledge and dug into the bark dust,
but no matter how hard he pressed down onto the gas the axle could not make the
jump. They slowly crawled down the center of the boulevard until they crashed
into the back end of a bus. The front tires fought and dug into the dirt, but
it could not gain enough traction to pull itself up and around the dead bus.
“FUCK!” Troy shook the steering wheel.
“Bad word.” Robin updated.
“We can’t get out here!” Karen was losing it.
“We have to!” Troy picked up his shotgun.
Through the black tinted goo and new blood on the windows
Karen surveyed the street. She spotted a beacon of hope. East Vancouver Police
Station was written in large black letters across the front of the building. In
Karen’s eyes it looked like a beautiful palace of pure white. In reality it
looked like every other building in Vancouver. There was nothing really special
about it. The main doors were two hundred feet back from the street and tucked
around a corner. The whole building sat at a forty-five degree angle in
relation to the boulevard.
Glass windows stood floor to ceiling around the entry. Given
the level of chaos that was only a block away from this building, Karen assumed
the doors would have been littered with dead bodies. The grounds were clear. No
infected in sight. It was their best and only bet.
“Run for the station,” Karen said as she got Botchy back
into her bag.
Troy opened his door and slid out, his weapon at the
ready as he double-checked his surroundings. “Valerie, come on.” His broad
shoulders waited at the open door. She popped her seatbelt, crawled across the
driver’s seat and climbed up onto his back.
Karen managed to unlock her belt and pop open her door.
Every move she made was agony. She got to her feet and reached out for Robin
with her good arm. The little monkey climbed up into her Mama’s only working
appendage. Karen screamed out in pain as she stood upright.
“You okay?” Robin felt responsible for her Mama’s pain.
She kept the bad wrist tucked up tight against her body,
“It wasn’t you baby.” Karen jogged around the back of the truck and joined her
brother. Troy had Valerie set and was ready to roll. They got on the move as
soon as Karen rounded the end of the truck. She did her best to stay with him
as they crossed the street and made for the station’s front door.
Karen gave birth naturally to the girls, no drugs and no
pain relief of any kind. Their births were beautiful, yet hardcore and painful.
The human body does an amazing thing after it gives birth. It gives you a
wonderful euphoric high that helps you forget the fact that nearly seven pounds
of baby just squeezed itself out of your crotch. There was no high coming from
her wrist. No feeling of accomplishing something amazing or primal.
Only pain.
A mountain of pain stacked on top of another mountain of
pain. Sweat had started to accumulate all over her body.
When was the shock going to set in and dull some of
the pissed off nerves in this wrist?
They stepped off the street and onto the sidewalk. A
thigh high chain-link fence separated the sidewalk from an area covered in
shrubs that led to the front door.
Troy crossed over it easily, paused and braced his sister
as she stepped over the obstacle. They ignored the paved path and ran across
the decorative, bark dust covered, garden of shrubs and short trees. The plant’s
branches and leaves dragged across their calves. Their heavy feet kicked the
sun bleached little chunks of wood.
Over Karen’s heavy breath she could hear the sound of the
three flags flapping in the wind. The United States flag clung to an aluminum
pole twenty feet in the air above them. The primary red and blue colors popped
brightly against the white in the spring sun. On two shorter poles were two more
flags that waved proudly. A dark green one with old George’s head sitting in
the dead center of it for the State of Washington. The last bit of colored
canvas was for the Vancouver Police department.
She focused on the sounds they made and tried to ignore the
pounding headache that accompanied the outrageous pain in her wrist.
On the same property next to the main building was a
playground Karen had brought the girls to many times over the last few years.
Valerie spied the play equipment, “Mama! Look! Can we
play?!”
Kids. She had already forgotten that their lives were in
danger. Karen was completely unable to form a sentence and respond. All of the
power in her brain had been diverted to fight through the pain and keep basic
life support functioning. She had less than a hundred yards to go and it felt
like she was about to pass out.
Troy kept a fast pace and his shotgun was pulled tight
into his shoulder, ready to strike down anything that moved and was not human. Every
ten seconds he would look back to check on his baby sister. Karen looked like
she was drifting into another dimension her face was so wracked with pain.
Troy rounded the corner and faced the first set of double
doors that led into the building. It was clear. He pulled open the door and let
Karen in first. The blast of AC felt like a miracle sent down from heaven. It
was so cold against Karen’s sweat covered skin. She had to wait for Troy in a
little three-foot by ten-foot room made almost completely of glass. Troy pulled
the slow moving exterior door shut until it clicked.
Karen’s eyes had stayed focused on the ground ever since
she left the truck. It was a survival mechanism that she was not even aware of.
Her primal mind had taken over and it knew that if she tripped over a shrub or
rock that there was no stopping her fall and she, or her child, would be
seriously injured. Her eyes had remained down even as she entered the first set
of doors into the station. Troy opened the last set of doors that let them
enter the police station. Karen felt a huge sense of relief as she crossed the
threshold.
She did it.
She made it through all that pain and now she was safe.
The police would protect her and her girls.
“We need help! Please, someone help us!” Her voice echoed
back to her. Karen looked around the front lobby for the first time. It was
completely empty.
What the shit?
No officers. No help. Just a large, empty, sterile room
that looked more like the waiting area of a dentist office than the police station
she was expecting. A bloody skull cracked hard against the outside window
across the lobby. The double pane glass would hopefully keep them safe. For
now.
Come on universe! Stop fucking with us!
The color scheme of the Police Department was a soft sky
blue. The walls had old photos of officers spanning the decades. A bronzed
statue of a beautiful German Shepherd sat on the far wall. A plaque hung below
the dog’s chest and spoke of its brave K-9 work from the years 1997 to 2006. The
dog’s name was Johnnie.
Across from the statue was a bullet proof glass window
that might have led to a call center, but a steel roll-down door was pulled
shut just on the other side of the glass. Karen could not see any farther than
the steel door.
Pamphlets littered the counter in front of the glass
window. They told of the dangers that might befall the citizens of Vancouver if
they were not diligent against crime. An old picture of
McGruff the Crime
Dog
was telling kids to help take a bite out of crime. It hung on the wall
next to the front door. It looked out of place and out of date. Not too far
from the poster of McGruff was a computer terminal that was designed to be used
by people that needed to report law breaking. A laminated piece of paper was
taped to it. The words “Out of Order” were printed in black.
Karen and Troy’s dead buddy on the other side of the
glass had a few friends join in on the fun. They crept around the building,
stumbling over the short plants, but making their way slowly to the front door.
The two thousand square foot room’s only furniture was
made up of four sky blue low-backed recliners that faced each other in a circle.
Plus there were four standard sized, darker blue, waiting room chairs that sat
by the wall next to the glassed off front desk.
Karen spotted the legs on the waiting room chairs. Each
leg was a black metal rod, independent of each other. She looked back at the
doors behind her.
The doors had waist high metal handles that ran
horizontally across them.
“Troy, use the chair to lock the doors,” she said as she
headed over to the seats and set Robin down in one of the extras.
Troy figured out what she was talking about and dropped
Valerie off next to her sister. He muscled up the chair and raced it back to
the doors. The back legs slid perfectly down into the handles. He pushed on the
doors and they only opened an inch before the chairs rigid frame stopped it.
“It’s solid.” Troy stepped away from the door and began
to case the room for anything that could help them better block the doors.
Karen had taken a seat next to her girls. She kept her
eyes closed. Her mind begged to drift anywhere but here. In Troy’s walk around
the room he found a hallway that led to a set of public restrooms. A door to an
office that had the words “Vancouver Permit Office” stenciled into the glass.
He pulled on it, but it was locked. Didn’t need to pull a permit anyway.
Past the bathrooms there was only one other metal door. It
was solid black and eight feet tall with no window. Another laminated sign was sloppily
taped to it. This door was for “Authorized Personnel Only”, according to the
taped up paper.
“Mama, do you need to cry?” Valerie stared at her Mama
with a deep concern.
“Yes baby. Mama wants to cry, but it won’t help.” Karen
lowered the timber of her voice to power through the sentence.
“Doctor needs to give you medicine?” Her little
eyes darted around the room looking at the dog statue, then to the infected
sliding along the window and back to her Mama.
“Mama, dog.” Robin pointed.
“Yep baby, a dog. I do need medicine, but what Mama
really needs is for you two to be quiet.”
“Why?” Valerie asked. Karen couldn’t answer any more
questions. She looked around for her brother.
Troy hammered his fist into the black door, “Open up! We
need help!” he hit it a few more times.
Nothing.
“There’s a door, but its solid metal!” He called to his
sister.
“Sheetrock. Shoot it.” She called back to him. Something
about her wrist being so messed up had calmed her. Instead of being scrambled
and unfocused she was channeling her thoughts. It somehow helped her think
clearly.
Troy sized up the wall that surrounded the door. Three
feet of blank wall on either side. He chose the left.
“Fuck it,” Troy said as he licked his lips and opened
fire.
BOOM, knee high.
BOOM, waist high.
BOOM, chest high.
The girls flinched with every shot. All three of them. The
noise got the monsters outside excited as they rounded the corner and found the
front door. They crashed into the glass door, but couldn’t figure out how to
pull it open.
White dust exploded out of the new hole Troy had created.
An exposed two-by-four sat at the edge of his new passage way. Chunks of
sheetrock fell to the industrial grade carpet. He used his boot to kick out the
few bits that still clung to the wall.
“I’m heading through!” Troy ducked down and pushed his
big body through the small hole. The dust caused him to cough like crazy as he
crawled through. He kept his gun ready in case someone or something jumped out at
him.
Once he breached the other side he quickly reloaded the
spent three shells. Troy’s eyes panned around the room. This room had half a
dozen desks scattered throughout. Paperwork everywhere. Someone left in a
hurry. Framed photos of young families sat on most of the desks. He listened
for the faintest sound.
It was empty.
No one was there. A doorway sat at the far wall. “HOLDING
CELL” painted in gold letters across the top of the door. Troy jogged over to
the door and pulled at the handle. Locked, but from this distance he could hear
the faint sounds of someone yelling on the other side. The walls around the
door were painted white concrete blocks. It would take too many rounds to get
through it. The voice continued to yell. It sounded like the person was calling
for help.
A keycard panel sat to the right of the steel-door. An
LED light blinked red. What was the chance that one of the officers left their
card on their desk? Slim. None. Most likely they were long gone.
Suddenly the red led light went black and a green light
flashed. The locking mechanism clicked and the door was opened from the inside.
Troy aimed at the new moving target. A man in his sixties stopped dead in his
tracks when he saw the burly, shotgun lugging, man in his office.
Both men froze with fear.
Unsure what the next move should be. Troy noticed his
dark blue uniform had shinny spots speckled all over. Wet blood. It was the
badge on the man’s left that caused Troy to drop the barrel of his gun down. The
nametag claimed he was Sergeant Poole.
“Sir, my sister needs medical help!”
“Get the fuck out of here,” the old officer said as he propped
the door open and stepped past Troy. He made a beeline for a vending machine on
the far wall.
“Sir, she has a seriously injured wrist and we have two
young children with us. We need help!”
Poole pulled his Glock and fired a round into the corner
of the glass that separated him from his snacks. It made a ton of noise as the
glass fell. Poole picked up a garbage can from under a desk belonging to an
officer named Peterson. He yanked out the plastic bag and tossed it to the
ground.
“Sir.” Troy took a step closer to Poole.
“I told you to get out!” Poole worked left to right and
pulled out the food from their spiraled racks.
“We need your help!”
Poole continued to efficiently empty the food into the wastebasket.
“Troy!” Karen called from the makeshift doorway.
“I’m okay. There’s a cop here,” Troy said as he stepped
closer to Poole.
“It’s Sergeant and I’m not here.”
A male voice from the holding cell called out, “Someone,
let me out of here!”
Troy whipped around, “Who’s that?”
Poole had the top two rows cleared out.
“I’m coming through.” Karen helped guide Valerie through
the hole in the wall.
“I told you people to leave!” Poole slammed a pack of
beef jerky into the garbage can.
Valerie stepped through the dusty hole and let out a
horrible cough. She waited on the other side for her baby sister to come
through next.
“Robin, it’s dusty.” Valerie reached out to steady the
toddler.
“Dusty?” Robin coughed a little to copy her sister. Karen
was right behind the little ones. She screamed out in pain as she ducked
through the hole.
“Can someone please let me out?! I don’t want to die
here!” The mystery man’s voice begged.
Valerie raced to Troy’s side and went to hold his free
hand right away. Robin wanted up into her Mama’s arms, but Karen would not pick
her up, “Not now baby.” Robin accepted it and was easily distracted by their
new environment.
Poole ignored everyone in the room. He finished filling
his can, grabbed another one from under the next desk, tore out the bag and
started filling it with the last three rows of food.
Karen walked as fast as her rubbery legs could carry her.
“Officer, my wrist! I need…help. Please!” Karen raised
her arm up to the man. Like a child wanting a parent to kiss it better.
Poole never turned to look. His only mission was clearing
the vending machine.
“Hey! I’m a human! Please let me out!” The man’s voice
called to them.
The mystery finally got to Troy and he marched out of the
office and into the holding area with Valerie in tow. At the end of the hall
was a left turn that led to the cells.
A man in his forties dressed in a messy gray suit stood
on the other side of the bars. He was tall, slender and sported jet-black hair.
His arms were fed through the metal barrier. He reached out for Troy the second
he rounded the corner. Not like he was trying to attack Troy. More like a hug.
Troy kept his distance from the man’s reach and tucked
Valerie behind his legs. He was the only prisoner in the small jail. The
holding room consisted of four cells total. The bars and the walls all painted
in beige.
The man’s voice sweetened, “Hey. Hello. Can you get me
out of here?”
Troy noticed a set of extension cords that ran along the
wall next to him. They powered up a medium sized lunchroom refrigerator, small
microwave and a thirty-two inch TV. All of the electronics were crammed into the
cell across from the man in the gray suit. An antenna was Duct tapped up high
on the wall and hooked to the back of the TV. Its volume turned down but it had
the local news playing.
It looked like a news crew was being chased by a group of
infected. The camera was all over the place and would flip from pointing at the
infected to back at the news anchor that led the escape. The infected were
closing in on the fleeing humans.
Poole stepped around Troy with a garbage can in each arm.
He entered the furnished cell and set the pilfered food down next to the
fridge. Karen was right behind Poole and she joined Troy as they stepped deeper
into the holding area.
They could see now how much Poole had collected for his
new room. He had extra guns and ammo stacked up on the bed. A computer tucked
in a corner. The local news was pulled up on the screen. Photos scrolled at a
rapid pace, they were of the nightmare taking place across the northwest. A
folding table leaned up against the toilet. A pile of new toilet paper rolls
sat in the tiny sink. A water cooler was placed at the foot of the bed. A small
walkway was all that was left of the floor. Every other inch of floor space was
taken up by something to help Poole stick it out.
“What are you doing?” Karen pressed.
Poole took a moment and looked over everything he had in
his room.
“Sir?” Troy raised his voice.
Poole stepped to the door, grabbed the bar and pulled it
closed with a hard metal slam.
Karen and Troy shared a look of confusion.
“Sergeant Poole, what are you doing? People need your help!”
Troy’s face turned flush with anger. Poole began to set up the folding table
next to the bed.
“He’s a coward.” The prisoner leaned his body up against
the bars. The siblings looked back at the man in the gray suit. His eyes
softened with a look of sadness. It was clear that he wanted his new audience
to pity him. The five o’clock shadow on his face told them he had been there
the night.
Karen turned back to Poole, “Can you please help us?”
Poole snapped the last leg of the table tight and set it
into place. Every inch of the cell was now taken up.
“Sir!” Troy spit the words at the man. Poole dropped a
deck of cards on the table. His hand hit the flimsy furniture so hard it almost
collapsed.
The man in the gray suit spoke in a descending musical
scale, “Here he goes.”
“Mama’s hand needs medicine.” Valerie tried to save the
day by explaining the situation better.
Poole closed his eyes and turned his back to them, “I
asked you to leave.” He said it so coldly that it made the hair on the back of
everyone’s neck stand up.
“Coward.” Gray suit sounded like a brat.
Karen burned Gray suit with her eyes. She gave him a “You
are not helping!” look.
Poole sat down on the state approved mattress and began
to shuffle the deck.
“Is there anyone you could call to help us?” Karen tried
her best to calm the rage building in her.
Poole shuffled the deck again, “Who would I call? You
think I have a helicopter waiting for me on speed dial? If I did you think I
would still be here?”
“But you’re supposed to-” Troy was cut off.
“I’m supposed to uphold the law! I’m not a babysitter.”
“You swore to protect and serve?” Karen needed to sit
down again but there were no chairs in the room.
“I swore to protect mankind from mankind. Not
from…whatever this is.” Poole laid out the cards for a game of solitaire.
“What is going on out there? Officer Poole has been tight
lipped with the details since my wrongful imprisonment. I’m Leon by the way,”
he said as he reached his hand through the bars and waited for anyone to shake
it. No one did. “I’ll catch you later on that,” Leon said as he pulled his hand
back through the bars.