Post by Sylar on Jul 15, 2015 17:00:48 GMT -6
...the beginning of the end...
Frank West's right foot dangled slightly from the side door of the charter helicopter as it flew over the northern Colorado woods. His best camera, a NIKON D3200, rested in his lap and a lit American Spirit was jutting from the corner of his mouth. It was just after 7 in the morning, and the crisp fall air chilled his face and hands as he peered out at the distant town.
"Willamette, Colorado," the pilot, Ed DeLuca, remarked as he brushed a wisp of his long grey hair out of his face. "Population 53,594. Distinguishing characteristics? Jaaaaack shit!" He followed this comment up with a quick burst of laughter, sending driplets of saliva into his salt and peppery beard. He glanced back at the photojournalist as if expecting a response, but recieved none.
Frank took a drag from the cigarette then took a glance through the lense of his camera. The helicopter was flying westward, following a stretch of highway west of Castle Rock. The little town of Willamette was situated between Castle Rock and Leadville, and indeed was nothing special. In fact, despite being a native of Denver and resident of Boulder, Frank had not even heard of Willamette until the day prior.
"Say buddy?" Ed spoke up again. "You're a journalist, right? What brings you to a place like this, anyway?"
"I got an anonymous tip that something big was going down," replied Frank, not looking away from the view through his telescopic lense. "A letter delivered to my office in Boulder."
"So if you're from Boulder, why did you charter a ride from Aurora?" the gruff pilot asked. "Seems a bit odd to drive out of your way for a ride when you could drive to Willamette in that time."
"I had a hunch that I would need to arrive by air," Frank answered with a cocky grin, then pointed down to the ground below. "I would say it was a wise choice."
Ed glanced down, and realized with a start that they were passing over a military blockade on the highway below them. A row of five large army trucks were parked side by side, with a group of at least a dozen soldiers clustered around them, M-16 assault rifles in hand. Many of them were glancing up at the helicopter as it entered Willamette's airspace, giving Ed a very uneasy feeling in the pit of his abdomen.
"We ain't supposed to be here....there'll be hell to pay for this," he grumbled nervously as he veered the helicopter over the small town's main street. Frank took in the scenery calmly, but with a sharp chill running down his spine. Dozens of the town's residents were wandering aimlessly in the war torn streets below, among the abandoned wreckage of multiple car accidents and burning embers of destroyed businesses.
"What is it? Some kind of riot?" Ed asked. Despite the chill in the air, he found himself wiping a trickle of sweat from his forehead.
"I can't tell," Frank replied as he began snapping pictures. He tried to mask how little interest he had in speaking to the pilot, as his thoughts began to run through a long list of explanations for the strange behavior of the people below. Something about the way they shambled around at a chillingly slow pace seemed inhuman. Much like the victims of the Sumerian rat-monkey from that Peter Jackson flick Braindead. "In my career I've covered two wars, a genocide, and an ebola outbreak in western Africa, and I have never seen anything like this."
As they came to the next block, Frank took notice of a man in hysterics climbing onto the roof of a white Mercury sable, a bloodied baseball bat tightly gripped in his right hand. Several of the shamblers took notice of him and began to swarm menacingly. As the helicopter flew overhead, the survivor began to scream for help, waving the bat erratically.
"HEY!!!" the young man shouted as he began to jump up and down. "Down here!!! I'm alive!! I'm ALIIIIIIIVE!!!"
The Sable, which sat diagonally across a four way intersection, quickly became surrounded by the rioters. As Ed lowered their altitude a bit, Frank noticed in an instant of terror that one of the attackers' arms was dangling loosely by a single tendon at the elbow. Upon coming to this realization, he began to take in the finer details of the rest of the crowd: most were covered in blood, and all were behaving in the same, brainless manner. The screaming man managed to keep the attackers at bay for a moment, braining them one at a time with his wooden slugger. Just when it seemed he may have a chance, a overweight woman in a flowery dress took hold of the man's left calf and took a massive bite out of his achilles tendon. Frank let out a loud "whoah" at the sight of such brutality, turning away as the man was pulled down into the crowd.
"Take me to the other end of town," Frank said dryly. "There's nothing we can do here." He glanced back one last time as the helicopter began to ascend again, catching a glimpse of another of the attackers, a thin hispanic man in a flannel shirt, sinking his teeth into the doomed survivor's left cheek. Frank had seen some horrible things in his life, but nothing had ever caught off guard the way this moment had. It would haunt his nightmares for the rest of his life.
As they flew over town, Frank took several more snapshots of the quiet chaos below. As disgusted as he was, he was far more curious at this point. He had no clue what to make of the state of Willamette, but he now knew for sure this would end up being the story of his career. He retrieved another American Spirit from the half empty pack in the breast pocket of his brown leather jacket and lit it with a match. He had never cared for the use of butane lighters. In the cockpit, Ed took a few puffs from a black electronic cigarette. He was very visably phased by the scene of violence they had just witnessed, but he remained silent as they flew toward the edge of town.
Frank was changing out memory cards in his NIKON for the next pass when he first noticed Willamette Parkview Mall. The sun had just begun peek out through the clouds, and reflect off the skylights of the entrance plaza.
"Hey check out that parking lot," Ed exclaimed, pointing a hairy finger down toward the main entrance of the mall, which had attacted a considerable crowd. Easily a hundred or more were clustered there, clearly unable to gain access.
"There's a helipad on the roof of that front plaza," Frank replied, tossing his cigarette out the side of the chopper. "Can you get me down there?"
"Are you crazy!?" Ed called back. "We have no idea what the hell's going on here, and you want to go down and mingle?"
"Whatever's going on here, I have to check this out," Frank replied as he stuck his camera into a pack and slung the strap over his shoulder. "Besides, I like to come prepared," he continued with a grin then produced .38 special from a shoulder holster and checked the chamber.
"Well, don't count on me to wait around here for long," the pilot grumbled. "This ain't what I signed up for by a long shot."
"I wouldn't think to even ask," Frank assured him, planting a firm pat to his shoulder. "But if you come back for me in three days, I'll double your fee."
Ed DeLuca mulled this over as he gradually descended toward the rooftop. "Three days? You think you'll last that long?"
"I wouldn't bet against it," snorted Frank. "This is my job, after all."
"Alright, slick, you got a deal," Ed said heartily. "Be on this rooftop by noon on Friday and you've got a ride. You best be on time, though. I ain't keen on risking my life waiting on you." Finding some strange humor in what he had just said, he chuckled, triggering a short burst of coughing. The coughs of a man who picked up smoking at age 10 and never got around to giving it up.
As Frank readied himself for departure, he glimpsed two military choppers in the distance, approaching from the west. A cold chill ran down his spine at the sight, fearing an interference in his work of the most irritating variety. He bid the pilot farewell, grimacing at a previously unnoticed stench of bourbon on his breath, confirming prior suspicions that the man he hired to be his lifeline was both a drunk and a washout. He had done a quick check on the man mere hours before their departure from Aurora (he had once been a commercial airline pilot for Oceanic, but had been laid off in 2009), and wasn't exactly surprised to have hired an alcoholic. Frank West was a man, like many others, who preferred certainty in his work. He was confident he would find another way out if Ed DeLuca did ultimately let him down, but the prospect certainly didn't excite him.
The helicopter never touched ground before Frank leapt from his seat and set foot on the rooftop of what would ultimately become his home for close to a year. He would rethink this moment, which took place on the morning of October 22nd, 2015, many times in the coming months. He very easily could have ignored the strange letter he found on his desk back home in Boulder, and he very likely would have died within the next few days there.
He gave Ed a final wave as the beat up charter helicopter veered off to the south, gaining a quick lead on the military choppers. Hoping to avoid being spotted altogether, Frank slipped inside through a nearby door, which led directly to the head of a steel staircase. The lights were dim and the air smelled musty, like the smell of his brother's garage, which was often filled with cardboard boxes of his excess junk. He felt around for a lightswitch, and found none.
Letting out a sigh, the photojournalist slowly made his way down the staircase, taking each step at a time. By the light cast from a window on the door directly ahead of him, he was able to get a decent lay of the land. He appeared to be inside a sort of storage area, as there were cardboard boxes stacked randomly throughout the room. There were four closed doors along the hallway to the windowed door, two on each side, but Frank opted not to check those immediately.
Peeking through the window, he was met with a small security office. Across from the doorway was the security desk, with three rows of surveilance monitors on the wall above. Stepping into the office, Frank found signs of recent activity: a half empty can of Mr. Pibb and two discarded Kit Kat wrappers crumpled next to the old desktop computer.
Many of the security monitors showed nothing but blue screen, some of which had blinking text of the words "No Signal". Frank leaned forward and began scrolling through the different feeds on one of the usable screens with the small black dial at the base of the lowest row of monitors. The first depicted a colorful plaza with a very blatant child theme, with the track of an indoor rollercoaster running across the foreground. From what Frank could see in the background, the plaza appeared to clustered with more of the strange rioters. The next feed showed one of the many parking lots that surround Willamette Parkview Mall. He switched quickly to the next feed with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. What microseconds he saw of the feed depicted a young woman in hysterics, being pulled out of the driver's side window of her PT Cruiser. One of the attackers leaned foward and sunk his teeth into the front of her throat, directly below the base of her chin. Just as a massive arterial spray gurgled out from the jagged hole left by the bite, the feed changed to an outdoor plaza with an ornate water fountain. This area, too, was infested, with many of the crazies clustered tightly around the fountain, seemingly hyponotized with dumb wonder by the intricate streams of water.
"They're everywhere," he muttered to himself with quiet exasperation. He wiped a bead of sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his jacket then continued to the next feed. What he saw sent a wave of relief throughout his entire body. The camera appeared to be postioned near the main entrance of the mall, which was surrounded by five of the first ordinary looking people Frank had seen since leaving Aurora. They were meticulously working on a makeshift barricade of trashcans and wooden benches. One of the refugees, a man who appeared to be in his mid thirties and dressed in a leather biker vest, was brandishing an axe and pacing nearby.
His heart filling with excitement, Frank jumped up from the rolling computer chair and made his way beyond the security office, eager to discuss the nature of the disaster going on around him with the newfound survivors. Beyond a steel door to the right of the security desk, Frank found a larger room with a large ventilation duct in the center, running from the floor to the wall across from the security room. To his right he found another door, which led into a long hallway. Taking a deep breath and releasing it slowly, he took the .38 revolver from its holster and stuck it into the back waistband of his brown slacks. He had already seen two residents of this small berg die violently in the last twenty minutes. In his experience, there was no such thing as "too careful."
Stepping out into the entrance plaza, he was blinded for an instant by the sunlight pouring in through the many skylights above him. He found himself on the second floor, in between a tuxedo rental outlet and a Gamestop. Before heading for the staircase directly to his left, he stepped forward to the railing that ran the length of the plaza's second floor, making the pathway a sort of full floor balcony. Down on the first floor, near the entrance, a group of people numbering at least twenty stood gathered around a heated arguement between professional looking dark skinned man in a yellow button down shirt and tie and a portly cop with broad shoulders and a shaved head. Though Frank could not make out any words from this distance, the officer was clearly enraged. Readying his camera, he bolted for the stairs, ready for some answers.
DAVID
"Say brah, you got a stoag?"
David Flynn looked up from his paperback of Stephen King's The Gunslinger. He was sitting on a wooden bench in front of the Colombian Roastmasters with his scoped .32 calibur rifle resting across his lap, and before him stood a dreadlocked young teen named...Julian? Julius? David could not remember off the top of his head. In the day and a half he and the other survivors had spent in the mall's entrance plaza, he hadn't exactly been the most social.
"Aye," he said flatly, producing a pack of Camel Crushes from the breast pocket of his flannel jacket and flipped the top open. The teen grabbed one with a smirk, and gave him a grateful nod. David grabbed one for himself before placing the pack back in his pocket. He glanced over at a No Smoking sign posted near the Outdoorsman, smiled, and lit the cigarette with his zippo. He ran a hand through his shoulder length black hair and glanced back at the youngster, who still stood nearby. "Can I help you?"
"My name's Julius," the kid replied shyly, extending a closed fist for knuckles. "Dig the accent, man. Where you from?"
"Liverpool," he replied, not trying hard to hide his disdain for small talk. "England...and my name is David."
"Sweet," Julius replied, crushing the filter to give his cigarette a menthol twist. When the young hipster didn't say anything else, David turned back to his book. The boy lingered, taking long drags from the cigarette, but saying nothing more. David suspected he had grown bored of his usual company, a "woe is me" 16 year old emo kid named Mark and a stranded out of towner named Dawson Land. Despite his lone wolf mentality, David had been keeping track of the people around him. Though he had never seen it first hand, he knew for a fact Dawson, Julius, and Mark had made a habit of sneaking away to the other end of the plaza to smoke skunk weed behind the escalators. He figured that Officer Joshua Greene, who was presently barking orders at a handful of other survivors at the entrance as they tediously worked on a barricade, knew as well, but had his hands full with more serious matters. Though use of the herb had been legalized in the state of Colorado, Greene had become a bit power mad in the onset of the outbreak.
"Well, thanks dude," Julius shrugged awkwardly, stuffing his hands into the pocket of his baggy blue hoodie and strolling off toward Dawson, who's large frame was leaning against one of the many stone pillars that ran along either side of the plaza. David chuckled quietly at the sight of the pair next to each other, thinking suddenly of Jay and Silent Bob from those comedies from the nineties. Granted, being a tall guy with horn-rimmed glasses and a fro of curly brown hair, Dawson didn't look much like Kevin Smith.
Suspecting Julius wanted something more from him than a mere cigarette, but choosing to ignore it for the time being, David turned the page in his paperback and reimmersed. If he was going to be stuck in this mall surrounded by death, he was going to make the best of it. He had lived in Willamette for four years, but had been a willing recluse the entire time. The owner of a local bar called Flynn's Tavern, his few connections to locals were the regular drunks, whose day to day woes he often found himself listening to nightly, but rarely sharing anything about himself.
"Come on, come on!!!" David heard Josh's voice bellowing out from the main entrance. "Move it or lose it, boys. We got a shitload of hostiles at our doorstep and I ain't keen on them getting through these doors." Glancing toward the shouting, he saw the portly officer lugging a wooden bench along with the barrista, a college age man named Chris Hines. A janitor named Freddie and a local contruction worker who spent a lot of time in David's pub, a thirty-something by the name of Brian Reynolds, were moving furniture as well. The biker stood nearby, saying nothing and brandishing a fire axe in one hand and a metal flask engraved with the Motorhead logo in the other. Despite the fact that the windows and doors of this extravagant shopping mall were made of inch thick shatterproof glass to discourage vandals, and the fact that head janitor Otis Washington had locked the doors up tight at all three entrances (other than the main entrance, the doors to Al Fresca Plaza at the northeast of the plaza and the entrance in neighboring Paradise Plaza were also locked), it seemed to make these men feel better to add an extra layer between them and the hordes outside. Otis had been up in the security room from time to time, and the state of the rest of the mall outside their sealed two plazas was looking pretty grim.
In total, there were around 25 survivors holed up together in the mall. David, like the rest of them, had been one of the fortunate few to reach the mall before the hordes. The local rock station KTXL had let out an emergency broadcast urging the citizens of Willamette to make for the mall a mere 38 hours ago, once the civic center had fallen. As far as any of them knew, they were last living people in Willamette. There had been a quiet anxiety among the refugees stemming from that fear, and it was only heightened by the arrival of two mysterious government agents.
The pair had managed to slip into the mall via the Leisure Park entrance to Paradise Plaza, and had an elderly man armed only with an ornate wooden cane and clad in a tweed jacket and loafers in tow. They offered no explanation to their purpose in this humble little town, but the older and far more experienced of the two, a dark skinned soft spoken man named Brad Garrison, promised to get everyone out as soon as he could get a line out. Unfortunately, for reasons unclear, all cell phone reception had been shut down in Willamette.
Everything about the situation stunk to high heaven, but David kept his cool throughout. As he was crushing the remains of his cigarette underfoot, he heard another commotion toward the front. Though what was being said wasn't exactly discernable, he clearly heard Josh's voice angrily bellowing out at someone. Slinging his rifle by the leather strap over his shoulder, the Scotsman raised himself from the wooden bench he had been warming for the last few hours and ran to intervene.
"God damn you, you know what the fuck is going on here!" Josh shouted angrily at the pair of government agents, who had just returned from Paradise Plaza with two duffel bags full of baseball bats and golf clubs, taken from the SporTrance on the second floor. Brad listened to the heated officer's shouting patiently, waiting for a break in the spiel to respond and trying not to smile at the clumps of spittle forming on the ends of the man's reddish blonde fu manchu mustache. "I demand an explanation! We all do!"
"Officer, as me and my partner here have explained time and time again, we know no more about what is causing this ordeal than any of you," Brad replied cooly, placing a hand on the shoulder of his much younger partner, a gorgeous blonde named Jessica McCarney. "We were sent here on other matters, which I am not at liberty to elaborate to you or anyone else here. Since this crisis began I have been trying constantly to get ahold of my field office, with no luck. Whatever is happening here, there is definitely somebody jamming transmissions from getting in or out of town."
Josh, who had remained in full uniform since the onset of the crisis, puffed up his chest and placed both hands on his gun belt. Brad and David both eyed his right hand immediately, which had begun to rest on the butt of his standard issue beretta 9mm. Josh Greene had a bit of reputation around town as a hothead, so David stuck his hand subtly into the inner pocket of his jacket and caressed the grip of his own sidearm, a colt revolver. Josh pierced the agents with a cold stare for a few moments before speaking again, "If anyone here is jamming anything, it must be your guys. We ain't heard shit from anyone, but Otis's radio keeps picking up military signals. Explain that."
As the back and forth continued, many other members of the group began to float toward them. Dawson and Julius stepped up directly behind David, who had planted himself near the foot of the stairs behind Josh. Jeff and Natalie Meyer, a middle aged married couple from Texas watched from a distance, near the plaza's trademark fountain. The oldest of the survivors, an elderly woman named Mabel Harris, shuffled nervously toward the group near the doors, Brian, Freddie, and Chris, who had stopped working on the barricade to watch the exchange. The biker, named Jack Townley, took a swig from his flask, rolled his eyes, and walked up the set of stairs opposite David, choosing to avoid the whole ordeal. David knew none of the other survivors by name, but what few others there were formed a crowd, making him increasingly nervous. If Josh flew off the handle and decided to get violent, things would get very bad very fast.
"We have every reason to believe the army has set up a quarantine zone around Willamette," Jessica spoke up, gently pushing Brad's hand off her shoulder and taking a step toward the enraged cop. "Whatever is going on here, it is completely unprecedented. There would be an immediate priority on keeping those things out there from spreading beyond the borders of this town."
"Exactly," Brad cut in. "As soon as we know more, we will share. We have no reason to hide anything, as not only do we have no orders to do so, but we're all in this together right now. As of yet the military has made no attempt to contact Jessie or myself. They would know we're here, so if they have any information we could work with, they would be obligated to share."
"Bullshit!" Josh shouted, his voice elevating and his face turning redder by the second. "I know you government types!! It's all bullshit and I refuse to die here because of you shits!!"
"Now I've had enough of this! If you do not step back and calm down, I'm going to break your fucking nose with the butt of my glock!" Brad exploded at once, making many of the bystanders jump in surprise. Josh himself became frazzled, not expecting the agent's demenor to change so suddenly.
"Woah woah woah," said Brian, who had spent most of the arguement standing by the barricade nervously picking at the black hairs of his Van Dyke styled beard. He had been a drinking buddy of Josh's since before either of them had even been old enough to care about girls, and the two shared a decent bond. If there was anybody in Willamette who knew how to calm Josh's temper, it was Brian, and he feared the mean tempered asshole might have bitten off more than he could chew. He gently gripped Josh's arm and pulled him aside a few paces to speak to him privately, glancing pleadingly at Brad for a few moments. David stepped forward to speak to the incensed agent, but Brad waved him off and made his way upstairs to cool off. Jessie gave him a look that said "I'll get back to you in a second," then followed her partner upstairs.
"Everything alright?" called a voice from the head of the stairs behind him, giving David a slight start. He twisted around to face the newcomer, taking note of the camera he clutched in both hands. A reporter...
"It is, now," David answered, sizing the journalist up, but removing his hand from the grip of his pistol, not wishing to appear hostile. "Who might you be, friend?"
"I'm Frank West," the stranger replied with a cocky grin as he held out his hand to shake David's. As he continued, he addressed the entire crowd as a whole. Brad and Jessie were nowhere to be found. "I'm a reporter from Boulder. I got a tip something was going down, so I just flew in. I know you people must have a lot of questions, but..."
"Damn straight, we do!" Jeff Meyer interrupted. At this point, Brian and a considerably calmer Josh Greene rejoined the group.
"Where the hell is the rescue team?" asked Josh, shooting Frank a thinly veiled glare.
"Presumably Middle Earth," Frank quipped back, not liking the cop's attitude right off the bat. "There is no rescue team, unfortunately. I'm all there is for the time being, as no one on the outside world knows what's going on here. The stretch of highway leading to and from this place is blocked off on either end by the military."
"I fucking knew it," grumbled Josh, rubbing the bridge of his nose with his index finger and thumb. "What exactly are you doing here anyway?"
"Well, like many journalists, I'm here to find out what's going on," replied Frank as he pulled a small notebook from the liner pocket of his leather jacket and pulled a half worn pencil from the wire spine. "So if I could take a few statements, I would really appreciate it. I saw the riots from above, but..."
Again, he was interrupted, this time by laughter. It started with Josh, whose grimace had melted into a bellow of laughter at once.
Brian followed suit quickly, then Julius and many others behind him. David gave the confused journalist a somber glance, then pointed toward the front doors.
"Ya might want to give that 'riot' a closer look, mate," he said sullenly.
Raising an eyebrow, Frank turned heel and strolled curiously over to the glass doors, pushing aside an upturned bench to look at the crowd gathered outside. He froze instantly at the sight he was met with. There were easily one hundred people gathered in a tight cluster at the outside doors, each one covered in blood. David walked up behind him and could see his bewildered expression reflected on the glass of the door.
"What are they?" he asked flatly.
"They were people once," replied David, who scratched at his beard somewhat nervously. "When they were alive."
"Excuse me?" is all Frank can think to say.
"You heard the limey," Josh interjected, having just caught his breath from the burst of laughter. At his weight, it was rather easy to lose one's breath. "They're fucking zombies."
"I thought we'd agreed not to use that word," said Dawson, who was still standing next to Julius a short distance away. He had his hands stuffed into the pockets of his long wool coat and was tapping one of his feet nervously.
"Whatever," Josh snorted, shooting Dawson one of his trademark glares. "The point is, you don't want to go out there at all, bud, unless you're lookin' to get eaten alive."
"How did this happen?" Frank asked, not turning away from the crowd of corpses once. He began to take snapshots of the crowd outside.
"Your guess is as good as mine," replied David after a moment, as a chilling silence had fallen over the others upon hearing the question. "All we know is what we've seen. It all happened very fast, about two days ago. Now from what we can tell, everyone else in town is dead and now trying to make us all the same way."
"This is insane," exclaimed the reporter. He turned back to face David, lighting an American Spirit to calm his nerves. "How does it spread?"
David merely smirked and shrugged.
"I bet you those feds know," Josh grunted, waving a hand in the direction Brad and Jessie had gone. "They have to know. Why else would they be here?"
"Dang it, Josh, don't get worked up again," said Brian, who was rubbing his own temples. "Whatever they're doing here, it's about that old coot over there, not those creepies." He pointed toward the lanky little old man, who was perched on the edge of a larger planter just beyond the fountain, leaning foward onto his cane and muttering to himself. A layer of white stubble had formed on his face, and his thinning white hair was disheveled.
"His name's Barnaby," Dawson said, stepping forward a bit to be more in the conversation. Julius followed shortly after. "That Mark kid tried to talk to him yesterday, and he pretty much called him a little 'dumfuck' and told him to go huff some paint."
"Little shit probably did," said Josh with a chuckle. "That's beside the point. I don't know about the old fart, but those two are involved in this some how. I just know it."
"We get it, officer," David said, speaking calmly like Brad had previously to hide his own irritation. "I don't see that we can do anything about that right now, so will you please save your energy. We'll need you if those things manage to get in here."
Josh seemed ready to snap at the Scot, but held his tongue. He knew David had a point, and honestly liked the feeling of importance his comment had given him. Relenting, Josh simply walked off toward the Colombian Roastmasters, presumably for another frappe mocha. Chris Hines followed him to oblige.
"Please forgive the local fuzz," David chuckled as he placed an arm around Frank's shoulder and led him back toward one of the benches that had yet to be added to the barricade. "Sit with me and have a drink of coffee, and maybe I can answer a few of your questions."
"No offense, Mr..."
"Flynn, but call me David."
"Well, David," Frank continued. "I'm not so sure you're the one who has the answers I'm looking for."
WILLAMETTE PARKVIEW MALL
As David Flynn and Frank West sat down to get aquainted, the rest of plaza resumed their daily business, which at this point consisted more than anything else of sitting around waiting to be rescued. Dawson, Julius, and a few others remained nearby, interested to know more about the photojournalist who seemingly flew in to save the day.
Upstairs, and on the opposite side of the plaza, Brad and Jessie continued fruitlessly to attempt to contact their headquarters. What they chose not to express to the mean tempered officer before was the fact that the situation frightened them just as badly as every civilian in the plaza. Brad remained stone faced and in command, but inside he feared the situation was beyond his control.
Continuing further northeast is the adjacent plaza, Paradise. The layout is a bit different than the Entrance Plaza, with only a small upperlevel above the stores against the south wall. Much of the plantlife is more tropical, and the north wall is a giant, multipane window that looks out into Leisure Park, the large nature walk that the mall completely surrounds. This plaza, like Entrance, is also secured, with both the Leisure Park and parking lot doors locked tight, but not yet barricaded.
On the opposite side of the Entrance plaza from Paradise is Al Fresca Plaza. This plaza is easily the most crowded with the undead than any other currently, possibly due to the outdoor temperatures. You see, Al Fresca Plaza is styled after an old time outdoor market, with cobblestone floors, and stores styled after dutch cottages. The selling point, though, is the complete lack of a ceiling. Though the plaza is in no way connected to the outside of the mall on either side, the roof is completely open.
Beyond Al Fresca is the Food Court, which contains a vast variety of small eateries, as well as two larger ones on either side of the Leisure Park doors: a Cheddar's Casual Cafe and a Johnny Carino's. The area across from these restaraunts is raised slightly, with stairs leading up a hardword dining area. This whole area has an old west theme, with each of the eateries and food stands being styled after frontier type buildings.
Wonderland Plaza is next, and is on the exact opposite side of the mall from Paradise Plaza. It is far more child themed plaza than the rest, with a large play area in the center of the ground floor. Though this area is infested with zombies, much like Al Fresca, many of them are distracted by the very active and very out of control rollercoaster, which runs the length of the plaza just above the railing of the second floor.
The final, and largest, plaza in the mall is simply called the North Plaza, as it consists of the entire northern side of the complex. This plaza only has one floor, but contains all of the mall's department stores and features the largest fountain in front of the hardware store. The western side of the plaza is still under construction, so the area in front of the grocery store is filled with scattered tools and a few scaffoldings, one of which has been knocked over thanks to the ranks of undead that wander the area.
Unbeknownst to the horde of zombies, there is a living person in the North Plaza this very moment. In the crawlspace above a small security office near the restrooms, a tall, muscular man in a pitch black tunic, black cammo pants, and military grade boots is busily working on a laptop computer hooked up to a mess of wires. He has long black, curly hair tied back in a ponytail, a trimmed black beard, and sports a recent tattoo of an Egyption heiroglyphic bird just below is own right eye. His skin is a light brown, eccentuating his Afghani heritage, and his black outfit coupled with the pitch dark due rag tied over the top of his head gave him the appearance of a ninja. After taking a deep breath and wiping a drip of sweat from his brow with a sleeve of his tunic, he put a final quick string of commands then snapped the laptop shut.
On the opposite side of the mall, where the survivors went about their daily rescue waiting, every locked door suddenly snapped to the unlock position. Almost instantly, the dead pushed their way in through both sets of doors in Paradise and the doors that led into Al Fresca.
The main with the bird tattoo smiled. All was going as he'd hoped.
BREACH
Frank sat next to David, drinking black coffee from a paper cup from Colombian Roastmasters. On occasion, he would jot bits and pieces of the Englishman's account of the last few days into his notebook, but mostly listened.
"I was in my pub when it all started," David recollected, leaning back against the hard wood of the bench and taking a drink of the Kraken rum in his metal flask. "It was just after one in the morning, and very few patrons remained. A rerun of a day old baseball game had just ended, so I was flipping over to TBS for the late showing of Conan when I hit a news alert. 'All citizens of Willamette should make for the civic center. Avoid anybody acting suspicious. Do not approach the afflicted,' and other bollocks like that."
"I take it the civic center was a bust?"
"I never saw it functional," replied David. "By the time me and my comrades made it, it was over run."
"Comrades?"
"At this point, that Hell Angels looking mother fucker is the last one left," the Scot answered with a frown, pointing toward Jack Townley, who was leaning against the railing upstairs, looking down at the entrance. "He and a couple others were drinking at a corner booth when I locked up. We all left together, but everyone else with us fell to the dead."
"These...dead people," Frank continued, struggling with the word dead. "They just attack anyone with a pulse?"
"Attack? Hell, they don't bugger around. They'll kill and eat ya, if they were to get ahold of you. The first guy I saw get attacked got grabbed by a group of three. One took a giant bite out of the side of his face."
Frank grimaced, thinking of the man on the Mercury Sable. He opened his pack of American Spirits, realized how many he'd already smoked in the last hour, and quickly placed the pack back in his jacket pocket. "So the next directive was to come here to the mall....yet, all of you here are the only ones in town who made it?"
"As far as we can tell," answered the elderly janitor, Otis. He was walking out of Colombian Roastmasters, playing with a strand of his nappy grey hair. Frank could see his age through his dark complexion, but it seemed only to be due to the stress of the last couple of days. "I go upstairs every few hours to check the monitors. I ain't seen a soul in any of the other parts of the mall. Only those damned ghouls."
"I think if we're still trying to think of something to call them, 'zeds' would make a good name," Julius interjected exitedly. He gave David a nudge with a closed fist. "Get it?"
"Do you think this is a bleeding game?" David snapped at the younger man. "People are dying like flies, and you're over here trying to name the abominations that did it!"
"I was just trying to lighten the mood," Julius replied quietly, nervously playing with one of his loose dreads. "Geez."
Frank jotted down a line or two in his notebook, then placed it in the same pocket with his cigarettes. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Otis trudging up the east staircase, probably headed back to the security room. As he stood to get more coffee, Mabel Harris approached him. He had to look down slightly to look the little, frail woman in the eye. Her face was gaunt, and her eyes big behind a pair of wire frame glasses. Her silver hair was unconventionally long for her age, and tied back loosely, and she wore a tan house dress and fur moccasins. "Excuse me, young man, I was wondering if you could help me with something," she uttered, her voice more frail than her body.
"I can try, ma'am," Frank replied respectfully, but with a cocky grin.
"You flew here, correct?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Did you see the statue? The one in town square?"
Frank had to think back for a second. Ed had not flown him directly over the town square, but he seemed to remember seeing prominant statue from a distance. It appeared to be a lone man in a cowboy hat standing on a boulder.
"I believe so. What about it?"
"Was it facing north?"
"Uh....yeah, I think so. Why?" Frank had a difficult time hiding his confusion.
Mabel looked him deeply in the eyes and a huge smile creeped onto her wrinkled face, revealing an excellent set of white dentures. "No reason, sweet boy. No reason at all."
She smiled at David, then shuffled away, slowly but confidently, toward the north side of the plaza. Across from her, Frank noticed the old man, Barnaby, was headed in the same direction, in sort of a hurry. Something about the way Mabel spoke to him sent a chill down Frank's spine, but he chose to set that on the back burner for now. One thing at a time.
"Hey boys!" called out Jeff Meyer's gruff voice from the entrance. Frank glanced his way, noticing him remove the tattered old ball cap from his head, revealing a massive bald spot from which he wiped some sweat. Freddie the janitor and the teen, Mark, were both standing on either side of him. "Would y'all mind giving us a hand with this barricade? That bench would make a handy finishing touch."
* * *
Professor Russell Barnaby, finally out of sight of the two pesky federal agents, shuffled north along the east side of the plaza, booking it as fast as possible on his frail old legs and wooden cane toward Paradise Plaza, muttering to himself. They didn't understand why he had come to Willamette, and thus could never understand how little they could do to keep him safe. He paused to lean against a column whilst shakily digging through his pocket for his bottle of downers. He quickly swallowed two, worried his heart was beginning to over work itself, then continued on his way.
Barnaby, a man of sixty-six, was never known for good humor or smiling amongst the faculty or student body of any of the three universities at which he has taught over the years, and needless to say nothing about the crisis in action has done anything to better his crankiness. Though he had thought to bring his pipe and tobacco, his fool proof method of relaxation, on this little pilgramage to eastern Colorado, Brad and Jessie had rushed him off on the onset of the outbreak without it. Cranky, missing his pipe, and altogther frustrated with the situation, the old scientist had had enough.
Up ahead, the plaza branched off to two different plazas, the left of which had locked doors between Barnaby and a thick cluster of the undead. In between the Al Fresca plaza and Paradise plaza was a massive set of escalators. Two young women were sitting crosslegged across from each other directly infront of the left escalator, the younger of the two sobbing and being comforted by the older. Mabel Harris stood right in front of the Al Fresca plaza doors, staring in wonder at the pale, dead faces through the safety glass.
Barnaby paused in front of Everybody Luvs Books, a large bookstore directly before the path to Paradise Plaza. The shutters at the entrance of this store were left open, with a set of keys dangling from the lock. That buffoonish janitor must have left these...
Barnaby was pulled from his thoughts with a start by the bonechilling screech of Mabel Harris. He glanced up in time to see the glass doors swing open, and the horde descending upon the poor old woman. Her screams quieted down as suddenly as they had begun as something like six corpses sank their teeth and fingernails into her soft flesh. The body of a young basketball player leaned forward and bit off her nose in one viscious chomp.
Feeling his heart begin to seize up, Barnaby stumbled back into the bookstore, his wooden cane with the silver wolf head topper raised in defense. Before the horde even had a chance to set upon the two women, the old man twisted the keys and brought the shutter down, his wrinkly hide safely inside. I can't believe I got myself into this...I thought this was over and done with years ago...
* * *
"One...two...three."
Frank exhaled as he and David lift the bench and began hauling it to the front of the plaza. There, Freddie stood directly in front of a locked, rotating door. The section of the door exposed to the outside was packed with zombies, all of which clawed their torn and bony fingers on the glass.
"Just wedge it in here," the portly janitor states, pushing his large round glasses up on his flat nose.
As Frank began backing toward the door, a loud click reached his ears, sending a cold chill up his spine. In an instant, the rotating door began to spin, bringing in four or five zombies with each rotation. An overweight woman in a yellow dress descended upon Freddie immediately, sinking her teeth into his pudgy throat. His dying screams almost drowned out Mabel's equally pained cries from across the plaza, but David's ears picked up on it immediately. He and Frank both dropped the bench and reached for their respective handguns, quickly backing away from the growing horde.
Jeff Meyer drew his holstered .44 magnum and immediately fired a shot into the closest zombie, liquifying its head in an explosion of blood, skull fragments, and brain matter.
"Make sure you hit the head," David shouted to Frank, pointing two fingers at his temple for emphasis. He takes aim with his colt revolver and shoots an undead businessman in the eye. Though David's carefully aimed shots are just as accurate and Jeff's, Frank's shots from his .38 special constantly veer off target, bouncing off walls or tearing through zombie chests and necks, showing his inexperience with using a gun against a moving target. Mark Quemada ran at the growing crowd of corpses with a metal baseball bat, and was quickly overrun as the horde pushed its way further into the mall, pushing back those who hope to fight it off. The barricade was practically destroyed at this point, corpse after corpse pushed its way through the newly unlocked doors. Josh and Brian, armed with a 9mm and a shotgun respectively, joined David, Frank, and Jeff.
Meanwhile, across the plaza, Brad and Jessie ran for the escaltors, finding it already cut off as the undead tore apart the two young women below. Adrenaline pumping, Brad tore out for the other side of the plaza, hoping to reach the stairs before it is too late. Jessie followed close behind. As he reached the other side, he spotted Jack Townley staring down at the carnage below, jaw dropped open. Brad ran up next to the biker and began to fire shots from his 9mm at the zombies below.
"What the hell are you people doing!?" he shouted at the survivors fighting off the horde. "There are too many! Get your asses to the stairs! We need to get to the security room!"
"Fuck this!" Jeff shouted, reloading his magnum as he started to run for the escalators. He grabbed his wife, Natalie, by the arm as he passed her.
"Y'all heard the man! Let's go!" shouted Josh as he, too, began to retreat.
"Bloody hell," David lamented before doing just the same. Zombies were getting in too fast for them to fend them all off, and they were gaining ground on the survivors rapidly. Julius Baxter was frozen in fright, staring blankly at the attackers as Dawson grabbed him and slung him over his shoulder. The survivors didn't get far before they were met with the opposising parade of undead from Al Fresca Plaza, which was now clustered around the foot of the escalators.
Brian Reynolds and another survivor, a small but bulky man with a fade in his brown hair and wearing a tan muscle shirt and cammo pants named James Ramsay, brought up the rear, standing next to a large directory directly below the catwalk Brad and Jack were standing on. They failed to notice how far ahead of them the others were getting as they fought at the undead, Brian firing from his 12 gauge and James hacking at corpses with a fire axe.
"Hey, wait up!" Brian shouted as he turned to the other survivors. This brief distraction was more than enough time for the corpse of a college girl to stumble down on her knees in front of him and sink her teeth into his left calf muscle. He let out a shrill cry as the girl ripped out a chunk of flesh the size of an apple before her head was caved in with the head of James' axe.
"Come on, bub," he shouted at Brian as he helped him up onto the directory. "This ain't over yet!" He swung at another zombie with his axe before climbing up with the wounded man. The horde quickly surrounded the directory, but was thankfully unable to reach them.
Across the plaza, the other survivors gathered into formation a short distance from the Al Fresca crowd. Frank and David holstered their guns and grabbed weapons from a pile of blunt objects, grabbing a baseball bat and croquet mallet respectively.
Frank paused for a matter of seconds before the crowd, taking in the sight with a certain level of shock underneath his adrenaline fueled rage. People of all shapes, sizes, races, and ages made up the horde. All were people once, and now all had the same hungry look on their pale faces. The nearest of the dead, an overweight man in a business suit with the left side of his face chewed away, began lumbering specifically for Frank as the other survivors began to fight their way across the dense, shambling army. Frank took a deep breath and swung the bat as hard as he could at the side of the dead man's skull. With a wet thwack, the wooden bat sunk into the fat man's temple, leaving a deep rounded dent and knocking the corpse to the floor. Blood and teeth were flung onto Frank's shirt and jacket. After the first kill, the rest came much easier for the reporter. Before long, he could only see red as he brought down the bloody bat again and again.
"We can't do this!" Dori Crandall, a flannel wearing vegan with long black hair, shrieked as she latched onto Frank's arm.
"The hell we can't!" Frank shouted back. ''We're almost there, damn it!"
He was the first to reach the escalators, swatting an old man zombie out of the way with his bat. He shoved Dori up the steps, and she was quickly followed by Jeff and Natalie, then Dawson and Julius. Josh nodded at the reporter as he ran up shortly after.
"Come on!" Frank shouted at David, who was busy fighting off the dead with his mallet. The Englishman nodded and pushed his way through the crowd, following the reporter unscathed. Chris Hines, the barista, tried to run from behind one of the nearby pillars to catch up with the others, but was over taken within seconds, his screams drowned out by his choking on his own blood. The zombies began to follow the other survivors upstairs, but were slowed down by the steps.
Josh led the group as they charged down the plaza, toward the very same door Frank had used less than half an hour prior. Jessie stood at the door, beckoning them to hurry. Frank noticed Brad and Jack rescuing the two stranded below one at a time with a nylon rope from the camping store a few yards the left of them. Frank ran over to help James carry Brian into the security room, as the bite had already rendered his leg useless. At this point, all the other survivors had retreated down the long hallway to apparent safety. As the trio stumbled their way after them, Frank noticed the undead out of the corner of his eye, gradually shambling up the stairs, each and every one them hellbent on catching up with the much faster meat sacks on legs.
What the hell have I gotten myself into...
SANCTUARY
"I need everyone to calm down and please hold all questions for just a moment," Jessie McCarney shouted at the panicky group of refugees as they all stood clustered around the giant ventilation duct inside the entrance to the security room. Otis stood just behind the agent, nervously spinning his oversized keyring on his index finger.
"Calm down?" Jeff Meyer bellowed in exasperation, in between instances on compulsively wiping his lips and mustache with his right hand. "Those damned monsters have us pinned up here now! That plaza was ours, and they took it from us! Just like that!"
"How did they even get in?" Dori cried shrilly, tears streaming down her face. Natalie Meyer was attempting, unsuccessfully, to calm the hysterical woman down.
"That's what what makes no damn sense about all of this," grunted Josh, who was leaning against the monitor room door, taking slow deep breaths to relax his tired heart. "What the hell happened, Otis?"
"Will you just hold on a damn minute," Otis stammered back, holding back his panic as best he could. "There are still people out there."
Just then, the door flew open and Brad Garrison stepped in, handgun still tightly gripped with both hands. Right behind him, James and Frank stumbled in, each with one of Brian Reynolds' arms drapped over their shoulders.
"Hoooly shit," Jeff grumbled sickly at the sight of Brian's torn calf muscle.
"Those fuckers got me good," Brian whimpered weakly. "I never knew how much a persons mouth could fuck a guy up."
"People are capable of terrible things when all restraint goes out the door," Frank mused somberly. He then turned to Otis.
"Where can we set him?"
"There's cot in the office," Otis replied, pointing toward the monitor room. "Just lay him down on it. I don't mind the blood."
"Is there a first aid kit?" asked David as Frank and James took the wounded survivor into the next room. "I have a little field medic experience, but no tools."
"There is one, but it's only got bandaids, aspirin, and hydrogen peroxide in it."
"We're going to need antibiotics," David said grimly as he strolled toward the office door. "I'll go take a look at it, but I can tell you that right off the bat, mate."
As David walked into the next room, Frank passed him coming back out to the crowd. Brad turned his gaze to the reporter.
"Are there any others?" he asked cooly as he rubbed the back of his shaved head.
"Others?" Frank replied. "If there are, they aren't gonna make it up here. In case you hadn't noticed, those freaks were kind of on our asses a second ago."
Brad shot the reporter a sharp glare, then turned to Otis. He gave a the janitor a quick nod then turned to inspect the vent behind him. Otis nodded back, then strolled over to the door leading out into the mall. He locked it tight then began to nail a 2X4 across it.
"Wait, you're sealing us in here?" Julius stammered, his voice shakey with terror. He was sitting with his legs folded against his chest in the nearest corner. Dawson stood nearby, keeping an eye on his broken friend.
"Only for the duration of the crisis," Brad replied, not turning his attention away from the vent. He pulled a mulitool from the pocket of his slacks and began removing the screws from each corner of the access hatch. "Those things are strong in groups, but even if they pack that hallway out there, they shouldn't be able to build enough momentum to break through that door. You all should be safe in here."
"Wait, where are you going?" Frank asked sternly, stepping up behind the agent and clutching his camera. Josh and James stepped up behind the reporter.
"You heard the man," Brad replied as he removed the second screw. "That injured man needs medicine, and we need food if we're going to staying here indefinitely. Which, to be quite frank, seems likely if we continue to have trouble getting a line out."
"There's a pharmacy in the mall," Otis piped in, still working on boarding up the door, now with Jeff's assistance. "It's part of Seon's Food Mart, in the North Plaza. There's just a lot of those dead folks between here and there."
"Could these ducts be used to travel directly to the grocer?" Jessie asked, twirling a strand of her golden hair with one finger.
"Now I know you can get back into the mall through that duct, but the vents become too narrow for anyone to fit through once they get over the plazas," answered Otis. "I believe that shaft leads to a similar opening on a rooftop above Paradise Plaza. There should be a door to a stairwell that runs into a storage warehouse."
"That'll have to do," Brad sighed as he removed the final screw. The duct cover fell to the ground with a loud clank. Dori, who had zoned out of the chaos going on around her, yelped with a start.
"You ought not go alone, buddy," said James Ramsay, walking into the room with a freshly filled styrophoam cup full of coffee. "We all nearly died just trying to get to the damn stairs. You're talking about going across the mall."
"He's right, Brad," Jessie concurred, resting a hand gently on the stressed out agent's shoulder. "They may be civilians, but the situation has gotten out of hand here. We could use any help we can get."
"You won't have to bend my arm," Brad said, turning to take a look at the people around him. "One thing that I need to know right off the bat: did any of you see where the elderly man my partner and I were protecting was when the dead broke in?"
Frank suddenly remembered noticing Barnaby's troubled walk toward Paradise Plaza just before the doors burst open. He didn't know for certain where the old man would be, but had a general enough of an idea to bluff his way into the fed's inner circle. If anyone in the mall would make a story for him, it would be Brad and Jessie.
"I saw him," Frank remarked with a slightly raised hand and a cocky smirk on his face. "I'd be glad to take you to him, but only if you let me tag along."
Brad snickered. "I know your type, Mr..."
"West. Frank West."
"Well, Frank, you can come with me, but don't be disappointed when you get nothing out of me," Brad continued. "I know a reporter when I see one, and I am not authorized to tell you jack shit."
"Fair enough," Frank replied, the grin more smug than ever. He was keenly aware that he had yet to mention Ed DeLuca and his helicopter to anybody.
"I'm coming, too," James piped in, handing his coffee to an unsuspecting Dawson, and failing to notice his slight glare. "Let me grab my axe, and it's yours."
"Ah, what the hell," Jack Townley said with a gravelly voice after a bourbon stenched belch. He stepped out from behind the vent, stuck his flask back into his leather vest pocket, then grabbed a crowbar up off the floor. His blonde hair was messily tangled back behind his ears, and he wore a dirty old Harley Davidson skull cap over it. His grin was yellow from years of drinking, smoking, and probable meth use. "I don't really like the idea of sitting around, waiting to die."
"Alright, that makes four," Brad said, checking the clip on his pistol before turning to Otis. "Do you have a map on hand?"
"Let me grab one from my desk," the janitor replied, shuffling past them to the office.
"Now hold on a damn minute," Josh grunted, stepping between Otis and the door and raising a hand in a "halt" gesture. The vein on his forehead had begun to protrude. "I seem to recall asking a question before. Those doors, on both sides, were locked by you and Freddie. I saw this happen with my own two eyes yesterday. So I ask you again, Otis...what in the flying fuck happened out there!?"
Otis visibly tensed up at the sudden hostility, but did not break composure. "If I was to guess, the only way something like that would happen would be if somebody overrode the locks electronically. You see, the whole mall is run by a state of the art computer system. A lot of it is over my head, but I've been around long enough to know some of the basics. The only places somebody could have done it would have been from here....or the North Plaza. That's where all the mainframes are at."
"There's no way it could have been an accident?" Jessie asked. "A malfunction in the system?"
"Not one I'm familiar with, ma'am," Otis replied politely before pushing his way past Josh. "Now if you would excuse me, officer, I have to get something for the agent."
"That's another thing I'd like to address," Josh said heatedly, turning his attention toward Brad. "As far as I can tell, I'm the last surviving member of the WPD. As such, I would appreciate it if I were treated with such respect. You two agents have been keeping me, the sole representation of law enforcement, out of the loop. There might be some issues with that from a constitutional standpoint, if ya get my drift. I'm coming with you, dammit. That's my friend laid out in there, so if you think I'm gonna sit here with my thumb up my ass, you're dead fucking wrong."
"Fine," Brad sighed, rubbing his temples with his forefingers. "Consider yourself a part of the group. Just make sure you keep up. We're going to be moving as quickly as possible once we're out there."
"Don't worry about me, cochise," Josh replied with a venomous grin. "I can handle myself."
At that moment, Otis returned, in his hands a folded map and a yellow and black transceiver. "Take this to keep in touch while y'all are out there. Some of the cameras are malfunctioning, but I can help from here when I can by watching those monitors."
"I appreciate it," Brad said, pocketing both, before turning to his ragtag group of explorers. A reporter, a biker, a cop, and a redneck. "I commend all of you. When we make it out of this hell, I'll see to it you are rewarded."
"I'll stay here and watch the fort," Jessie said, half jokingly, as she wiped the lenses of her glasses with a hankerchief.
"We'll be back in short order," Brad replied. "Hopefully with dinner."
"If you pass through the food court, y'all should check in on Cheddar's," said Otis. "The food there is damn good and I have a grill stashed out on the rooftop. Everytime the cameras in the food court turn that way, the doors are still fastened shut."
Brad gave the janitor another short nod, then climbed into the vent. Townley followed right after, then James. Before Frank could climb in, David stepped out from the office, his hands bloodied, and beckoned the reporter over.
"I have a short list of things I'll need for this wound," David said, handing Frank a scrap of paper. "As well as a few other odds and ends we may need before this is all over."
Frank let out a chuckle as he stuffed the list in his jacket pocket. "When you woke up this morning, did you see yourself being promoted to town doctor?"
"No more than you expected to jump down from the sky into a B horror movie, I suspect," David replied, giving the reporter a somber grin. "Be careful out there, brotha."
"And you in here," Frank replied, gesturing to the boarded up door. Outside in the hall, raspy moans of the approaching horde of zombies could be heard echoing through the corridors. They had gotten through the door in the plaza.
Frank turned back to the vent, where Josh Greene was struggling to squeeze his large frame through the hatch. Once he had finally maneuvered himself in, Frank climbed in behind him, bloody baseball bat in hand. The reporter turned, gave Jessie a wink and a grin, then disappeared into the darkness.
* * *
As David stepped back into the office to work on Brian's mangled leg, the other survivors dispersed into the security room. One of the back rooms, the larger one directly to the left when facing the stairs, had been converted into a sort of employee rec room, with two couches, a TV with DVD player, a shelf full of DVDs and paperback novels, and an air hockey table off to the side. Dawson and Julius were the first to settle in this room, opting to light another joint to call their nerves and mourn the loss of their fallen friend Mark. Disgusted by the pair, Jeff Meyer lead his wife to the next room over, where they both sat the corner and kept to themselves.
David used his swiss army knife to cut away the leg of Brian's pants and began to pour some of the peroxide over the wound. Brian grunted and jerked in pain, until David offered him his flask. Dori Crandall, sheepish and exhausted in demeanor, nudged David on the shoulder and offered him a small sowing kit she kept in her handbag.
"Thank you, Dori," said David as he began to tape a patch of gauze over Brian's calf. "But that corpse took a nasty bit of flesh, leaving nothing for me to sew together."
"Ugh, I think I'm going to be sick," Dori said with a gag as she ran back into the security room, attempting to tie back her long brown hair.
"Bathrooms just under the stairs, miss," Otis called from his rolling desk chair in front of the monitors, not really wanting to clean up the girl's mess. Just then, a thick metal door to in between the desk and the door to the back rooms cracked open and Jessie stepped out.
"This is quite a large holding cell for a mall security office," Jessie remarked as she poured herself a cup of coffee from a pot Otis had just made.
"The owner spared no expense," Otis chuckled. "Except maybe for my retirement fund."
"It could come in handy," Jessie said, ignoring Otis's joke. "Let's just hope we don't need it."
FRANK
Frank West's right foot dangled slightly from the side door of the charter helicopter as it flew over the northern Colorado woods. His best camera, a NIKON D3200, rested in his lap and a lit American Spirit was jutting from the corner of his mouth. It was just after 7 in the morning, and the crisp fall air chilled his face and hands as he peered out at the distant town.
"Willamette, Colorado," the pilot, Ed DeLuca, remarked as he brushed a wisp of his long grey hair out of his face. "Population 53,594. Distinguishing characteristics? Jaaaaack shit!" He followed this comment up with a quick burst of laughter, sending driplets of saliva into his salt and peppery beard. He glanced back at the photojournalist as if expecting a response, but recieved none.
Frank took a drag from the cigarette then took a glance through the lense of his camera. The helicopter was flying westward, following a stretch of highway west of Castle Rock. The little town of Willamette was situated between Castle Rock and Leadville, and indeed was nothing special. In fact, despite being a native of Denver and resident of Boulder, Frank had not even heard of Willamette until the day prior.
"Say buddy?" Ed spoke up again. "You're a journalist, right? What brings you to a place like this, anyway?"
"I got an anonymous tip that something big was going down," replied Frank, not looking away from the view through his telescopic lense. "A letter delivered to my office in Boulder."
"So if you're from Boulder, why did you charter a ride from Aurora?" the gruff pilot asked. "Seems a bit odd to drive out of your way for a ride when you could drive to Willamette in that time."
"I had a hunch that I would need to arrive by air," Frank answered with a cocky grin, then pointed down to the ground below. "I would say it was a wise choice."
Ed glanced down, and realized with a start that they were passing over a military blockade on the highway below them. A row of five large army trucks were parked side by side, with a group of at least a dozen soldiers clustered around them, M-16 assault rifles in hand. Many of them were glancing up at the helicopter as it entered Willamette's airspace, giving Ed a very uneasy feeling in the pit of his abdomen.
"We ain't supposed to be here....there'll be hell to pay for this," he grumbled nervously as he veered the helicopter over the small town's main street. Frank took in the scenery calmly, but with a sharp chill running down his spine. Dozens of the town's residents were wandering aimlessly in the war torn streets below, among the abandoned wreckage of multiple car accidents and burning embers of destroyed businesses.
"What is it? Some kind of riot?" Ed asked. Despite the chill in the air, he found himself wiping a trickle of sweat from his forehead.
"I can't tell," Frank replied as he began snapping pictures. He tried to mask how little interest he had in speaking to the pilot, as his thoughts began to run through a long list of explanations for the strange behavior of the people below. Something about the way they shambled around at a chillingly slow pace seemed inhuman. Much like the victims of the Sumerian rat-monkey from that Peter Jackson flick Braindead. "In my career I've covered two wars, a genocide, and an ebola outbreak in western Africa, and I have never seen anything like this."
As they came to the next block, Frank took notice of a man in hysterics climbing onto the roof of a white Mercury sable, a bloodied baseball bat tightly gripped in his right hand. Several of the shamblers took notice of him and began to swarm menacingly. As the helicopter flew overhead, the survivor began to scream for help, waving the bat erratically.
"HEY!!!" the young man shouted as he began to jump up and down. "Down here!!! I'm alive!! I'm ALIIIIIIIVE!!!"
The Sable, which sat diagonally across a four way intersection, quickly became surrounded by the rioters. As Ed lowered their altitude a bit, Frank noticed in an instant of terror that one of the attackers' arms was dangling loosely by a single tendon at the elbow. Upon coming to this realization, he began to take in the finer details of the rest of the crowd: most were covered in blood, and all were behaving in the same, brainless manner. The screaming man managed to keep the attackers at bay for a moment, braining them one at a time with his wooden slugger. Just when it seemed he may have a chance, a overweight woman in a flowery dress took hold of the man's left calf and took a massive bite out of his achilles tendon. Frank let out a loud "whoah" at the sight of such brutality, turning away as the man was pulled down into the crowd.
"Take me to the other end of town," Frank said dryly. "There's nothing we can do here." He glanced back one last time as the helicopter began to ascend again, catching a glimpse of another of the attackers, a thin hispanic man in a flannel shirt, sinking his teeth into the doomed survivor's left cheek. Frank had seen some horrible things in his life, but nothing had ever caught off guard the way this moment had. It would haunt his nightmares for the rest of his life.
As they flew over town, Frank took several more snapshots of the quiet chaos below. As disgusted as he was, he was far more curious at this point. He had no clue what to make of the state of Willamette, but he now knew for sure this would end up being the story of his career. He retrieved another American Spirit from the half empty pack in the breast pocket of his brown leather jacket and lit it with a match. He had never cared for the use of butane lighters. In the cockpit, Ed took a few puffs from a black electronic cigarette. He was very visably phased by the scene of violence they had just witnessed, but he remained silent as they flew toward the edge of town.
Frank was changing out memory cards in his NIKON for the next pass when he first noticed Willamette Parkview Mall. The sun had just begun peek out through the clouds, and reflect off the skylights of the entrance plaza.
"Hey check out that parking lot," Ed exclaimed, pointing a hairy finger down toward the main entrance of the mall, which had attacted a considerable crowd. Easily a hundred or more were clustered there, clearly unable to gain access.
"There's a helipad on the roof of that front plaza," Frank replied, tossing his cigarette out the side of the chopper. "Can you get me down there?"
"Are you crazy!?" Ed called back. "We have no idea what the hell's going on here, and you want to go down and mingle?"
"Whatever's going on here, I have to check this out," Frank replied as he stuck his camera into a pack and slung the strap over his shoulder. "Besides, I like to come prepared," he continued with a grin then produced .38 special from a shoulder holster and checked the chamber.
"Well, don't count on me to wait around here for long," the pilot grumbled. "This ain't what I signed up for by a long shot."
"I wouldn't think to even ask," Frank assured him, planting a firm pat to his shoulder. "But if you come back for me in three days, I'll double your fee."
Ed DeLuca mulled this over as he gradually descended toward the rooftop. "Three days? You think you'll last that long?"
"I wouldn't bet against it," snorted Frank. "This is my job, after all."
"Alright, slick, you got a deal," Ed said heartily. "Be on this rooftop by noon on Friday and you've got a ride. You best be on time, though. I ain't keen on risking my life waiting on you." Finding some strange humor in what he had just said, he chuckled, triggering a short burst of coughing. The coughs of a man who picked up smoking at age 10 and never got around to giving it up.
As Frank readied himself for departure, he glimpsed two military choppers in the distance, approaching from the west. A cold chill ran down his spine at the sight, fearing an interference in his work of the most irritating variety. He bid the pilot farewell, grimacing at a previously unnoticed stench of bourbon on his breath, confirming prior suspicions that the man he hired to be his lifeline was both a drunk and a washout. He had done a quick check on the man mere hours before their departure from Aurora (he had once been a commercial airline pilot for Oceanic, but had been laid off in 2009), and wasn't exactly surprised to have hired an alcoholic. Frank West was a man, like many others, who preferred certainty in his work. He was confident he would find another way out if Ed DeLuca did ultimately let him down, but the prospect certainly didn't excite him.
The helicopter never touched ground before Frank leapt from his seat and set foot on the rooftop of what would ultimately become his home for close to a year. He would rethink this moment, which took place on the morning of October 22nd, 2015, many times in the coming months. He very easily could have ignored the strange letter he found on his desk back home in Boulder, and he very likely would have died within the next few days there.
He gave Ed a final wave as the beat up charter helicopter veered off to the south, gaining a quick lead on the military choppers. Hoping to avoid being spotted altogether, Frank slipped inside through a nearby door, which led directly to the head of a steel staircase. The lights were dim and the air smelled musty, like the smell of his brother's garage, which was often filled with cardboard boxes of his excess junk. He felt around for a lightswitch, and found none.
Letting out a sigh, the photojournalist slowly made his way down the staircase, taking each step at a time. By the light cast from a window on the door directly ahead of him, he was able to get a decent lay of the land. He appeared to be inside a sort of storage area, as there were cardboard boxes stacked randomly throughout the room. There were four closed doors along the hallway to the windowed door, two on each side, but Frank opted not to check those immediately.
Peeking through the window, he was met with a small security office. Across from the doorway was the security desk, with three rows of surveilance monitors on the wall above. Stepping into the office, Frank found signs of recent activity: a half empty can of Mr. Pibb and two discarded Kit Kat wrappers crumpled next to the old desktop computer.
Many of the security monitors showed nothing but blue screen, some of which had blinking text of the words "No Signal". Frank leaned forward and began scrolling through the different feeds on one of the usable screens with the small black dial at the base of the lowest row of monitors. The first depicted a colorful plaza with a very blatant child theme, with the track of an indoor rollercoaster running across the foreground. From what Frank could see in the background, the plaza appeared to clustered with more of the strange rioters. The next feed showed one of the many parking lots that surround Willamette Parkview Mall. He switched quickly to the next feed with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. What microseconds he saw of the feed depicted a young woman in hysterics, being pulled out of the driver's side window of her PT Cruiser. One of the attackers leaned foward and sunk his teeth into the front of her throat, directly below the base of her chin. Just as a massive arterial spray gurgled out from the jagged hole left by the bite, the feed changed to an outdoor plaza with an ornate water fountain. This area, too, was infested, with many of the crazies clustered tightly around the fountain, seemingly hyponotized with dumb wonder by the intricate streams of water.
"They're everywhere," he muttered to himself with quiet exasperation. He wiped a bead of sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his jacket then continued to the next feed. What he saw sent a wave of relief throughout his entire body. The camera appeared to be postioned near the main entrance of the mall, which was surrounded by five of the first ordinary looking people Frank had seen since leaving Aurora. They were meticulously working on a makeshift barricade of trashcans and wooden benches. One of the refugees, a man who appeared to be in his mid thirties and dressed in a leather biker vest, was brandishing an axe and pacing nearby.
His heart filling with excitement, Frank jumped up from the rolling computer chair and made his way beyond the security office, eager to discuss the nature of the disaster going on around him with the newfound survivors. Beyond a steel door to the right of the security desk, Frank found a larger room with a large ventilation duct in the center, running from the floor to the wall across from the security room. To his right he found another door, which led into a long hallway. Taking a deep breath and releasing it slowly, he took the .38 revolver from its holster and stuck it into the back waistband of his brown slacks. He had already seen two residents of this small berg die violently in the last twenty minutes. In his experience, there was no such thing as "too careful."
Stepping out into the entrance plaza, he was blinded for an instant by the sunlight pouring in through the many skylights above him. He found himself on the second floor, in between a tuxedo rental outlet and a Gamestop. Before heading for the staircase directly to his left, he stepped forward to the railing that ran the length of the plaza's second floor, making the pathway a sort of full floor balcony. Down on the first floor, near the entrance, a group of people numbering at least twenty stood gathered around a heated arguement between professional looking dark skinned man in a yellow button down shirt and tie and a portly cop with broad shoulders and a shaved head. Though Frank could not make out any words from this distance, the officer was clearly enraged. Readying his camera, he bolted for the stairs, ready for some answers.
DAVID
"Say brah, you got a stoag?"
David Flynn looked up from his paperback of Stephen King's The Gunslinger. He was sitting on a wooden bench in front of the Colombian Roastmasters with his scoped .32 calibur rifle resting across his lap, and before him stood a dreadlocked young teen named...Julian? Julius? David could not remember off the top of his head. In the day and a half he and the other survivors had spent in the mall's entrance plaza, he hadn't exactly been the most social.
"Aye," he said flatly, producing a pack of Camel Crushes from the breast pocket of his flannel jacket and flipped the top open. The teen grabbed one with a smirk, and gave him a grateful nod. David grabbed one for himself before placing the pack back in his pocket. He glanced over at a No Smoking sign posted near the Outdoorsman, smiled, and lit the cigarette with his zippo. He ran a hand through his shoulder length black hair and glanced back at the youngster, who still stood nearby. "Can I help you?"
"My name's Julius," the kid replied shyly, extending a closed fist for knuckles. "Dig the accent, man. Where you from?"
"Liverpool," he replied, not trying hard to hide his disdain for small talk. "England...and my name is David."
"Sweet," Julius replied, crushing the filter to give his cigarette a menthol twist. When the young hipster didn't say anything else, David turned back to his book. The boy lingered, taking long drags from the cigarette, but saying nothing more. David suspected he had grown bored of his usual company, a "woe is me" 16 year old emo kid named Mark and a stranded out of towner named Dawson Land. Despite his lone wolf mentality, David had been keeping track of the people around him. Though he had never seen it first hand, he knew for a fact Dawson, Julius, and Mark had made a habit of sneaking away to the other end of the plaza to smoke skunk weed behind the escalators. He figured that Officer Joshua Greene, who was presently barking orders at a handful of other survivors at the entrance as they tediously worked on a barricade, knew as well, but had his hands full with more serious matters. Though use of the herb had been legalized in the state of Colorado, Greene had become a bit power mad in the onset of the outbreak.
"Well, thanks dude," Julius shrugged awkwardly, stuffing his hands into the pocket of his baggy blue hoodie and strolling off toward Dawson, who's large frame was leaning against one of the many stone pillars that ran along either side of the plaza. David chuckled quietly at the sight of the pair next to each other, thinking suddenly of Jay and Silent Bob from those comedies from the nineties. Granted, being a tall guy with horn-rimmed glasses and a fro of curly brown hair, Dawson didn't look much like Kevin Smith.
Suspecting Julius wanted something more from him than a mere cigarette, but choosing to ignore it for the time being, David turned the page in his paperback and reimmersed. If he was going to be stuck in this mall surrounded by death, he was going to make the best of it. He had lived in Willamette for four years, but had been a willing recluse the entire time. The owner of a local bar called Flynn's Tavern, his few connections to locals were the regular drunks, whose day to day woes he often found himself listening to nightly, but rarely sharing anything about himself.
"Come on, come on!!!" David heard Josh's voice bellowing out from the main entrance. "Move it or lose it, boys. We got a shitload of hostiles at our doorstep and I ain't keen on them getting through these doors." Glancing toward the shouting, he saw the portly officer lugging a wooden bench along with the barrista, a college age man named Chris Hines. A janitor named Freddie and a local contruction worker who spent a lot of time in David's pub, a thirty-something by the name of Brian Reynolds, were moving furniture as well. The biker stood nearby, saying nothing and brandishing a fire axe in one hand and a metal flask engraved with the Motorhead logo in the other. Despite the fact that the windows and doors of this extravagant shopping mall were made of inch thick shatterproof glass to discourage vandals, and the fact that head janitor Otis Washington had locked the doors up tight at all three entrances (other than the main entrance, the doors to Al Fresca Plaza at the northeast of the plaza and the entrance in neighboring Paradise Plaza were also locked), it seemed to make these men feel better to add an extra layer between them and the hordes outside. Otis had been up in the security room from time to time, and the state of the rest of the mall outside their sealed two plazas was looking pretty grim.
In total, there were around 25 survivors holed up together in the mall. David, like the rest of them, had been one of the fortunate few to reach the mall before the hordes. The local rock station KTXL had let out an emergency broadcast urging the citizens of Willamette to make for the mall a mere 38 hours ago, once the civic center had fallen. As far as any of them knew, they were last living people in Willamette. There had been a quiet anxiety among the refugees stemming from that fear, and it was only heightened by the arrival of two mysterious government agents.
The pair had managed to slip into the mall via the Leisure Park entrance to Paradise Plaza, and had an elderly man armed only with an ornate wooden cane and clad in a tweed jacket and loafers in tow. They offered no explanation to their purpose in this humble little town, but the older and far more experienced of the two, a dark skinned soft spoken man named Brad Garrison, promised to get everyone out as soon as he could get a line out. Unfortunately, for reasons unclear, all cell phone reception had been shut down in Willamette.
Everything about the situation stunk to high heaven, but David kept his cool throughout. As he was crushing the remains of his cigarette underfoot, he heard another commotion toward the front. Though what was being said wasn't exactly discernable, he clearly heard Josh's voice angrily bellowing out at someone. Slinging his rifle by the leather strap over his shoulder, the Scotsman raised himself from the wooden bench he had been warming for the last few hours and ran to intervene.
"God damn you, you know what the fuck is going on here!" Josh shouted angrily at the pair of government agents, who had just returned from Paradise Plaza with two duffel bags full of baseball bats and golf clubs, taken from the SporTrance on the second floor. Brad listened to the heated officer's shouting patiently, waiting for a break in the spiel to respond and trying not to smile at the clumps of spittle forming on the ends of the man's reddish blonde fu manchu mustache. "I demand an explanation! We all do!"
"Officer, as me and my partner here have explained time and time again, we know no more about what is causing this ordeal than any of you," Brad replied cooly, placing a hand on the shoulder of his much younger partner, a gorgeous blonde named Jessica McCarney. "We were sent here on other matters, which I am not at liberty to elaborate to you or anyone else here. Since this crisis began I have been trying constantly to get ahold of my field office, with no luck. Whatever is happening here, there is definitely somebody jamming transmissions from getting in or out of town."
Josh, who had remained in full uniform since the onset of the crisis, puffed up his chest and placed both hands on his gun belt. Brad and David both eyed his right hand immediately, which had begun to rest on the butt of his standard issue beretta 9mm. Josh Greene had a bit of reputation around town as a hothead, so David stuck his hand subtly into the inner pocket of his jacket and caressed the grip of his own sidearm, a colt revolver. Josh pierced the agents with a cold stare for a few moments before speaking again, "If anyone here is jamming anything, it must be your guys. We ain't heard shit from anyone, but Otis's radio keeps picking up military signals. Explain that."
As the back and forth continued, many other members of the group began to float toward them. Dawson and Julius stepped up directly behind David, who had planted himself near the foot of the stairs behind Josh. Jeff and Natalie Meyer, a middle aged married couple from Texas watched from a distance, near the plaza's trademark fountain. The oldest of the survivors, an elderly woman named Mabel Harris, shuffled nervously toward the group near the doors, Brian, Freddie, and Chris, who had stopped working on the barricade to watch the exchange. The biker, named Jack Townley, took a swig from his flask, rolled his eyes, and walked up the set of stairs opposite David, choosing to avoid the whole ordeal. David knew none of the other survivors by name, but what few others there were formed a crowd, making him increasingly nervous. If Josh flew off the handle and decided to get violent, things would get very bad very fast.
"We have every reason to believe the army has set up a quarantine zone around Willamette," Jessica spoke up, gently pushing Brad's hand off her shoulder and taking a step toward the enraged cop. "Whatever is going on here, it is completely unprecedented. There would be an immediate priority on keeping those things out there from spreading beyond the borders of this town."
"Exactly," Brad cut in. "As soon as we know more, we will share. We have no reason to hide anything, as not only do we have no orders to do so, but we're all in this together right now. As of yet the military has made no attempt to contact Jessie or myself. They would know we're here, so if they have any information we could work with, they would be obligated to share."
"Bullshit!" Josh shouted, his voice elevating and his face turning redder by the second. "I know you government types!! It's all bullshit and I refuse to die here because of you shits!!"
"Now I've had enough of this! If you do not step back and calm down, I'm going to break your fucking nose with the butt of my glock!" Brad exploded at once, making many of the bystanders jump in surprise. Josh himself became frazzled, not expecting the agent's demenor to change so suddenly.
"Woah woah woah," said Brian, who had spent most of the arguement standing by the barricade nervously picking at the black hairs of his Van Dyke styled beard. He had been a drinking buddy of Josh's since before either of them had even been old enough to care about girls, and the two shared a decent bond. If there was anybody in Willamette who knew how to calm Josh's temper, it was Brian, and he feared the mean tempered asshole might have bitten off more than he could chew. He gently gripped Josh's arm and pulled him aside a few paces to speak to him privately, glancing pleadingly at Brad for a few moments. David stepped forward to speak to the incensed agent, but Brad waved him off and made his way upstairs to cool off. Jessie gave him a look that said "I'll get back to you in a second," then followed her partner upstairs.
"Everything alright?" called a voice from the head of the stairs behind him, giving David a slight start. He twisted around to face the newcomer, taking note of the camera he clutched in both hands. A reporter...
"It is, now," David answered, sizing the journalist up, but removing his hand from the grip of his pistol, not wishing to appear hostile. "Who might you be, friend?"
"I'm Frank West," the stranger replied with a cocky grin as he held out his hand to shake David's. As he continued, he addressed the entire crowd as a whole. Brad and Jessie were nowhere to be found. "I'm a reporter from Boulder. I got a tip something was going down, so I just flew in. I know you people must have a lot of questions, but..."
"Damn straight, we do!" Jeff Meyer interrupted. At this point, Brian and a considerably calmer Josh Greene rejoined the group.
"Where the hell is the rescue team?" asked Josh, shooting Frank a thinly veiled glare.
"Presumably Middle Earth," Frank quipped back, not liking the cop's attitude right off the bat. "There is no rescue team, unfortunately. I'm all there is for the time being, as no one on the outside world knows what's going on here. The stretch of highway leading to and from this place is blocked off on either end by the military."
"I fucking knew it," grumbled Josh, rubbing the bridge of his nose with his index finger and thumb. "What exactly are you doing here anyway?"
"Well, like many journalists, I'm here to find out what's going on," replied Frank as he pulled a small notebook from the liner pocket of his leather jacket and pulled a half worn pencil from the wire spine. "So if I could take a few statements, I would really appreciate it. I saw the riots from above, but..."
Again, he was interrupted, this time by laughter. It started with Josh, whose grimace had melted into a bellow of laughter at once.
Brian followed suit quickly, then Julius and many others behind him. David gave the confused journalist a somber glance, then pointed toward the front doors.
"Ya might want to give that 'riot' a closer look, mate," he said sullenly.
Raising an eyebrow, Frank turned heel and strolled curiously over to the glass doors, pushing aside an upturned bench to look at the crowd gathered outside. He froze instantly at the sight he was met with. There were easily one hundred people gathered in a tight cluster at the outside doors, each one covered in blood. David walked up behind him and could see his bewildered expression reflected on the glass of the door.
"What are they?" he asked flatly.
"They were people once," replied David, who scratched at his beard somewhat nervously. "When they were alive."
"Excuse me?" is all Frank can think to say.
"You heard the limey," Josh interjected, having just caught his breath from the burst of laughter. At his weight, it was rather easy to lose one's breath. "They're fucking zombies."
"I thought we'd agreed not to use that word," said Dawson, who was still standing next to Julius a short distance away. He had his hands stuffed into the pockets of his long wool coat and was tapping one of his feet nervously.
"Whatever," Josh snorted, shooting Dawson one of his trademark glares. "The point is, you don't want to go out there at all, bud, unless you're lookin' to get eaten alive."
"How did this happen?" Frank asked, not turning away from the crowd of corpses once. He began to take snapshots of the crowd outside.
"Your guess is as good as mine," replied David after a moment, as a chilling silence had fallen over the others upon hearing the question. "All we know is what we've seen. It all happened very fast, about two days ago. Now from what we can tell, everyone else in town is dead and now trying to make us all the same way."
"This is insane," exclaimed the reporter. He turned back to face David, lighting an American Spirit to calm his nerves. "How does it spread?"
David merely smirked and shrugged.
"I bet you those feds know," Josh grunted, waving a hand in the direction Brad and Jessie had gone. "They have to know. Why else would they be here?"
"Dang it, Josh, don't get worked up again," said Brian, who was rubbing his own temples. "Whatever they're doing here, it's about that old coot over there, not those creepies." He pointed toward the lanky little old man, who was perched on the edge of a larger planter just beyond the fountain, leaning foward onto his cane and muttering to himself. A layer of white stubble had formed on his face, and his thinning white hair was disheveled.
"His name's Barnaby," Dawson said, stepping forward a bit to be more in the conversation. Julius followed shortly after. "That Mark kid tried to talk to him yesterday, and he pretty much called him a little 'dumfuck' and told him to go huff some paint."
"Little shit probably did," said Josh with a chuckle. "That's beside the point. I don't know about the old fart, but those two are involved in this some how. I just know it."
"We get it, officer," David said, speaking calmly like Brad had previously to hide his own irritation. "I don't see that we can do anything about that right now, so will you please save your energy. We'll need you if those things manage to get in here."
Josh seemed ready to snap at the Scot, but held his tongue. He knew David had a point, and honestly liked the feeling of importance his comment had given him. Relenting, Josh simply walked off toward the Colombian Roastmasters, presumably for another frappe mocha. Chris Hines followed him to oblige.
"Please forgive the local fuzz," David chuckled as he placed an arm around Frank's shoulder and led him back toward one of the benches that had yet to be added to the barricade. "Sit with me and have a drink of coffee, and maybe I can answer a few of your questions."
"No offense, Mr..."
"Flynn, but call me David."
"Well, David," Frank continued. "I'm not so sure you're the one who has the answers I'm looking for."
WILLAMETTE PARKVIEW MALL
As David Flynn and Frank West sat down to get aquainted, the rest of plaza resumed their daily business, which at this point consisted more than anything else of sitting around waiting to be rescued. Dawson, Julius, and a few others remained nearby, interested to know more about the photojournalist who seemingly flew in to save the day.
Upstairs, and on the opposite side of the plaza, Brad and Jessie continued fruitlessly to attempt to contact their headquarters. What they chose not to express to the mean tempered officer before was the fact that the situation frightened them just as badly as every civilian in the plaza. Brad remained stone faced and in command, but inside he feared the situation was beyond his control.
Continuing further northeast is the adjacent plaza, Paradise. The layout is a bit different than the Entrance Plaza, with only a small upperlevel above the stores against the south wall. Much of the plantlife is more tropical, and the north wall is a giant, multipane window that looks out into Leisure Park, the large nature walk that the mall completely surrounds. This plaza, like Entrance, is also secured, with both the Leisure Park and parking lot doors locked tight, but not yet barricaded.
On the opposite side of the Entrance plaza from Paradise is Al Fresca Plaza. This plaza is easily the most crowded with the undead than any other currently, possibly due to the outdoor temperatures. You see, Al Fresca Plaza is styled after an old time outdoor market, with cobblestone floors, and stores styled after dutch cottages. The selling point, though, is the complete lack of a ceiling. Though the plaza is in no way connected to the outside of the mall on either side, the roof is completely open.
Beyond Al Fresca is the Food Court, which contains a vast variety of small eateries, as well as two larger ones on either side of the Leisure Park doors: a Cheddar's Casual Cafe and a Johnny Carino's. The area across from these restaraunts is raised slightly, with stairs leading up a hardword dining area. This whole area has an old west theme, with each of the eateries and food stands being styled after frontier type buildings.
Wonderland Plaza is next, and is on the exact opposite side of the mall from Paradise Plaza. It is far more child themed plaza than the rest, with a large play area in the center of the ground floor. Though this area is infested with zombies, much like Al Fresca, many of them are distracted by the very active and very out of control rollercoaster, which runs the length of the plaza just above the railing of the second floor.
The final, and largest, plaza in the mall is simply called the North Plaza, as it consists of the entire northern side of the complex. This plaza only has one floor, but contains all of the mall's department stores and features the largest fountain in front of the hardware store. The western side of the plaza is still under construction, so the area in front of the grocery store is filled with scattered tools and a few scaffoldings, one of which has been knocked over thanks to the ranks of undead that wander the area.
Unbeknownst to the horde of zombies, there is a living person in the North Plaza this very moment. In the crawlspace above a small security office near the restrooms, a tall, muscular man in a pitch black tunic, black cammo pants, and military grade boots is busily working on a laptop computer hooked up to a mess of wires. He has long black, curly hair tied back in a ponytail, a trimmed black beard, and sports a recent tattoo of an Egyption heiroglyphic bird just below is own right eye. His skin is a light brown, eccentuating his Afghani heritage, and his black outfit coupled with the pitch dark due rag tied over the top of his head gave him the appearance of a ninja. After taking a deep breath and wiping a drip of sweat from his brow with a sleeve of his tunic, he put a final quick string of commands then snapped the laptop shut.
On the opposite side of the mall, where the survivors went about their daily rescue waiting, every locked door suddenly snapped to the unlock position. Almost instantly, the dead pushed their way in through both sets of doors in Paradise and the doors that led into Al Fresca.
The main with the bird tattoo smiled. All was going as he'd hoped.
BREACH
Frank sat next to David, drinking black coffee from a paper cup from Colombian Roastmasters. On occasion, he would jot bits and pieces of the Englishman's account of the last few days into his notebook, but mostly listened.
"I was in my pub when it all started," David recollected, leaning back against the hard wood of the bench and taking a drink of the Kraken rum in his metal flask. "It was just after one in the morning, and very few patrons remained. A rerun of a day old baseball game had just ended, so I was flipping over to TBS for the late showing of Conan when I hit a news alert. 'All citizens of Willamette should make for the civic center. Avoid anybody acting suspicious. Do not approach the afflicted,' and other bollocks like that."
"I take it the civic center was a bust?"
"I never saw it functional," replied David. "By the time me and my comrades made it, it was over run."
"Comrades?"
"At this point, that Hell Angels looking mother fucker is the last one left," the Scot answered with a frown, pointing toward Jack Townley, who was leaning against the railing upstairs, looking down at the entrance. "He and a couple others were drinking at a corner booth when I locked up. We all left together, but everyone else with us fell to the dead."
"These...dead people," Frank continued, struggling with the word dead. "They just attack anyone with a pulse?"
"Attack? Hell, they don't bugger around. They'll kill and eat ya, if they were to get ahold of you. The first guy I saw get attacked got grabbed by a group of three. One took a giant bite out of the side of his face."
Frank grimaced, thinking of the man on the Mercury Sable. He opened his pack of American Spirits, realized how many he'd already smoked in the last hour, and quickly placed the pack back in his jacket pocket. "So the next directive was to come here to the mall....yet, all of you here are the only ones in town who made it?"
"As far as we can tell," answered the elderly janitor, Otis. He was walking out of Colombian Roastmasters, playing with a strand of his nappy grey hair. Frank could see his age through his dark complexion, but it seemed only to be due to the stress of the last couple of days. "I go upstairs every few hours to check the monitors. I ain't seen a soul in any of the other parts of the mall. Only those damned ghouls."
"I think if we're still trying to think of something to call them, 'zeds' would make a good name," Julius interjected exitedly. He gave David a nudge with a closed fist. "Get it?"
"Do you think this is a bleeding game?" David snapped at the younger man. "People are dying like flies, and you're over here trying to name the abominations that did it!"
"I was just trying to lighten the mood," Julius replied quietly, nervously playing with one of his loose dreads. "Geez."
Frank jotted down a line or two in his notebook, then placed it in the same pocket with his cigarettes. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Otis trudging up the east staircase, probably headed back to the security room. As he stood to get more coffee, Mabel Harris approached him. He had to look down slightly to look the little, frail woman in the eye. Her face was gaunt, and her eyes big behind a pair of wire frame glasses. Her silver hair was unconventionally long for her age, and tied back loosely, and she wore a tan house dress and fur moccasins. "Excuse me, young man, I was wondering if you could help me with something," she uttered, her voice more frail than her body.
"I can try, ma'am," Frank replied respectfully, but with a cocky grin.
"You flew here, correct?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Did you see the statue? The one in town square?"
Frank had to think back for a second. Ed had not flown him directly over the town square, but he seemed to remember seeing prominant statue from a distance. It appeared to be a lone man in a cowboy hat standing on a boulder.
"I believe so. What about it?"
"Was it facing north?"
"Uh....yeah, I think so. Why?" Frank had a difficult time hiding his confusion.
Mabel looked him deeply in the eyes and a huge smile creeped onto her wrinkled face, revealing an excellent set of white dentures. "No reason, sweet boy. No reason at all."
She smiled at David, then shuffled away, slowly but confidently, toward the north side of the plaza. Across from her, Frank noticed the old man, Barnaby, was headed in the same direction, in sort of a hurry. Something about the way Mabel spoke to him sent a chill down Frank's spine, but he chose to set that on the back burner for now. One thing at a time.
"Hey boys!" called out Jeff Meyer's gruff voice from the entrance. Frank glanced his way, noticing him remove the tattered old ball cap from his head, revealing a massive bald spot from which he wiped some sweat. Freddie the janitor and the teen, Mark, were both standing on either side of him. "Would y'all mind giving us a hand with this barricade? That bench would make a handy finishing touch."
* * *
Professor Russell Barnaby, finally out of sight of the two pesky federal agents, shuffled north along the east side of the plaza, booking it as fast as possible on his frail old legs and wooden cane toward Paradise Plaza, muttering to himself. They didn't understand why he had come to Willamette, and thus could never understand how little they could do to keep him safe. He paused to lean against a column whilst shakily digging through his pocket for his bottle of downers. He quickly swallowed two, worried his heart was beginning to over work itself, then continued on his way.
Barnaby, a man of sixty-six, was never known for good humor or smiling amongst the faculty or student body of any of the three universities at which he has taught over the years, and needless to say nothing about the crisis in action has done anything to better his crankiness. Though he had thought to bring his pipe and tobacco, his fool proof method of relaxation, on this little pilgramage to eastern Colorado, Brad and Jessie had rushed him off on the onset of the outbreak without it. Cranky, missing his pipe, and altogther frustrated with the situation, the old scientist had had enough.
Up ahead, the plaza branched off to two different plazas, the left of which had locked doors between Barnaby and a thick cluster of the undead. In between the Al Fresca plaza and Paradise plaza was a massive set of escalators. Two young women were sitting crosslegged across from each other directly infront of the left escalator, the younger of the two sobbing and being comforted by the older. Mabel Harris stood right in front of the Al Fresca plaza doors, staring in wonder at the pale, dead faces through the safety glass.
Barnaby paused in front of Everybody Luvs Books, a large bookstore directly before the path to Paradise Plaza. The shutters at the entrance of this store were left open, with a set of keys dangling from the lock. That buffoonish janitor must have left these...
Barnaby was pulled from his thoughts with a start by the bonechilling screech of Mabel Harris. He glanced up in time to see the glass doors swing open, and the horde descending upon the poor old woman. Her screams quieted down as suddenly as they had begun as something like six corpses sank their teeth and fingernails into her soft flesh. The body of a young basketball player leaned forward and bit off her nose in one viscious chomp.
Feeling his heart begin to seize up, Barnaby stumbled back into the bookstore, his wooden cane with the silver wolf head topper raised in defense. Before the horde even had a chance to set upon the two women, the old man twisted the keys and brought the shutter down, his wrinkly hide safely inside. I can't believe I got myself into this...I thought this was over and done with years ago...
* * *
"One...two...three."
Frank exhaled as he and David lift the bench and began hauling it to the front of the plaza. There, Freddie stood directly in front of a locked, rotating door. The section of the door exposed to the outside was packed with zombies, all of which clawed their torn and bony fingers on the glass.
"Just wedge it in here," the portly janitor states, pushing his large round glasses up on his flat nose.
As Frank began backing toward the door, a loud click reached his ears, sending a cold chill up his spine. In an instant, the rotating door began to spin, bringing in four or five zombies with each rotation. An overweight woman in a yellow dress descended upon Freddie immediately, sinking her teeth into his pudgy throat. His dying screams almost drowned out Mabel's equally pained cries from across the plaza, but David's ears picked up on it immediately. He and Frank both dropped the bench and reached for their respective handguns, quickly backing away from the growing horde.
Jeff Meyer drew his holstered .44 magnum and immediately fired a shot into the closest zombie, liquifying its head in an explosion of blood, skull fragments, and brain matter.
"Make sure you hit the head," David shouted to Frank, pointing two fingers at his temple for emphasis. He takes aim with his colt revolver and shoots an undead businessman in the eye. Though David's carefully aimed shots are just as accurate and Jeff's, Frank's shots from his .38 special constantly veer off target, bouncing off walls or tearing through zombie chests and necks, showing his inexperience with using a gun against a moving target. Mark Quemada ran at the growing crowd of corpses with a metal baseball bat, and was quickly overrun as the horde pushed its way further into the mall, pushing back those who hope to fight it off. The barricade was practically destroyed at this point, corpse after corpse pushed its way through the newly unlocked doors. Josh and Brian, armed with a 9mm and a shotgun respectively, joined David, Frank, and Jeff.
Meanwhile, across the plaza, Brad and Jessie ran for the escaltors, finding it already cut off as the undead tore apart the two young women below. Adrenaline pumping, Brad tore out for the other side of the plaza, hoping to reach the stairs before it is too late. Jessie followed close behind. As he reached the other side, he spotted Jack Townley staring down at the carnage below, jaw dropped open. Brad ran up next to the biker and began to fire shots from his 9mm at the zombies below.
"What the hell are you people doing!?" he shouted at the survivors fighting off the horde. "There are too many! Get your asses to the stairs! We need to get to the security room!"
"Fuck this!" Jeff shouted, reloading his magnum as he started to run for the escalators. He grabbed his wife, Natalie, by the arm as he passed her.
"Y'all heard the man! Let's go!" shouted Josh as he, too, began to retreat.
"Bloody hell," David lamented before doing just the same. Zombies were getting in too fast for them to fend them all off, and they were gaining ground on the survivors rapidly. Julius Baxter was frozen in fright, staring blankly at the attackers as Dawson grabbed him and slung him over his shoulder. The survivors didn't get far before they were met with the opposising parade of undead from Al Fresca Plaza, which was now clustered around the foot of the escalators.
Brian Reynolds and another survivor, a small but bulky man with a fade in his brown hair and wearing a tan muscle shirt and cammo pants named James Ramsay, brought up the rear, standing next to a large directory directly below the catwalk Brad and Jack were standing on. They failed to notice how far ahead of them the others were getting as they fought at the undead, Brian firing from his 12 gauge and James hacking at corpses with a fire axe.
"Hey, wait up!" Brian shouted as he turned to the other survivors. This brief distraction was more than enough time for the corpse of a college girl to stumble down on her knees in front of him and sink her teeth into his left calf muscle. He let out a shrill cry as the girl ripped out a chunk of flesh the size of an apple before her head was caved in with the head of James' axe.
"Come on, bub," he shouted at Brian as he helped him up onto the directory. "This ain't over yet!" He swung at another zombie with his axe before climbing up with the wounded man. The horde quickly surrounded the directory, but was thankfully unable to reach them.
Across the plaza, the other survivors gathered into formation a short distance from the Al Fresca crowd. Frank and David holstered their guns and grabbed weapons from a pile of blunt objects, grabbing a baseball bat and croquet mallet respectively.
Frank paused for a matter of seconds before the crowd, taking in the sight with a certain level of shock underneath his adrenaline fueled rage. People of all shapes, sizes, races, and ages made up the horde. All were people once, and now all had the same hungry look on their pale faces. The nearest of the dead, an overweight man in a business suit with the left side of his face chewed away, began lumbering specifically for Frank as the other survivors began to fight their way across the dense, shambling army. Frank took a deep breath and swung the bat as hard as he could at the side of the dead man's skull. With a wet thwack, the wooden bat sunk into the fat man's temple, leaving a deep rounded dent and knocking the corpse to the floor. Blood and teeth were flung onto Frank's shirt and jacket. After the first kill, the rest came much easier for the reporter. Before long, he could only see red as he brought down the bloody bat again and again.
"We can't do this!" Dori Crandall, a flannel wearing vegan with long black hair, shrieked as she latched onto Frank's arm.
"The hell we can't!" Frank shouted back. ''We're almost there, damn it!"
He was the first to reach the escalators, swatting an old man zombie out of the way with his bat. He shoved Dori up the steps, and she was quickly followed by Jeff and Natalie, then Dawson and Julius. Josh nodded at the reporter as he ran up shortly after.
"Come on!" Frank shouted at David, who was busy fighting off the dead with his mallet. The Englishman nodded and pushed his way through the crowd, following the reporter unscathed. Chris Hines, the barista, tried to run from behind one of the nearby pillars to catch up with the others, but was over taken within seconds, his screams drowned out by his choking on his own blood. The zombies began to follow the other survivors upstairs, but were slowed down by the steps.
Josh led the group as they charged down the plaza, toward the very same door Frank had used less than half an hour prior. Jessie stood at the door, beckoning them to hurry. Frank noticed Brad and Jack rescuing the two stranded below one at a time with a nylon rope from the camping store a few yards the left of them. Frank ran over to help James carry Brian into the security room, as the bite had already rendered his leg useless. At this point, all the other survivors had retreated down the long hallway to apparent safety. As the trio stumbled their way after them, Frank noticed the undead out of the corner of his eye, gradually shambling up the stairs, each and every one them hellbent on catching up with the much faster meat sacks on legs.
What the hell have I gotten myself into...
SANCTUARY
"I need everyone to calm down and please hold all questions for just a moment," Jessie McCarney shouted at the panicky group of refugees as they all stood clustered around the giant ventilation duct inside the entrance to the security room. Otis stood just behind the agent, nervously spinning his oversized keyring on his index finger.
"Calm down?" Jeff Meyer bellowed in exasperation, in between instances on compulsively wiping his lips and mustache with his right hand. "Those damned monsters have us pinned up here now! That plaza was ours, and they took it from us! Just like that!"
"How did they even get in?" Dori cried shrilly, tears streaming down her face. Natalie Meyer was attempting, unsuccessfully, to calm the hysterical woman down.
"That's what what makes no damn sense about all of this," grunted Josh, who was leaning against the monitor room door, taking slow deep breaths to relax his tired heart. "What the hell happened, Otis?"
"Will you just hold on a damn minute," Otis stammered back, holding back his panic as best he could. "There are still people out there."
Just then, the door flew open and Brad Garrison stepped in, handgun still tightly gripped with both hands. Right behind him, James and Frank stumbled in, each with one of Brian Reynolds' arms drapped over their shoulders.
"Hoooly shit," Jeff grumbled sickly at the sight of Brian's torn calf muscle.
"Those fuckers got me good," Brian whimpered weakly. "I never knew how much a persons mouth could fuck a guy up."
"People are capable of terrible things when all restraint goes out the door," Frank mused somberly. He then turned to Otis.
"Where can we set him?"
"There's cot in the office," Otis replied, pointing toward the monitor room. "Just lay him down on it. I don't mind the blood."
"Is there a first aid kit?" asked David as Frank and James took the wounded survivor into the next room. "I have a little field medic experience, but no tools."
"There is one, but it's only got bandaids, aspirin, and hydrogen peroxide in it."
"We're going to need antibiotics," David said grimly as he strolled toward the office door. "I'll go take a look at it, but I can tell you that right off the bat, mate."
As David walked into the next room, Frank passed him coming back out to the crowd. Brad turned his gaze to the reporter.
"Are there any others?" he asked cooly as he rubbed the back of his shaved head.
"Others?" Frank replied. "If there are, they aren't gonna make it up here. In case you hadn't noticed, those freaks were kind of on our asses a second ago."
Brad shot the reporter a sharp glare, then turned to Otis. He gave a the janitor a quick nod then turned to inspect the vent behind him. Otis nodded back, then strolled over to the door leading out into the mall. He locked it tight then began to nail a 2X4 across it.
"Wait, you're sealing us in here?" Julius stammered, his voice shakey with terror. He was sitting with his legs folded against his chest in the nearest corner. Dawson stood nearby, keeping an eye on his broken friend.
"Only for the duration of the crisis," Brad replied, not turning his attention away from the vent. He pulled a mulitool from the pocket of his slacks and began removing the screws from each corner of the access hatch. "Those things are strong in groups, but even if they pack that hallway out there, they shouldn't be able to build enough momentum to break through that door. You all should be safe in here."
"Wait, where are you going?" Frank asked sternly, stepping up behind the agent and clutching his camera. Josh and James stepped up behind the reporter.
"You heard the man," Brad replied as he removed the second screw. "That injured man needs medicine, and we need food if we're going to staying here indefinitely. Which, to be quite frank, seems likely if we continue to have trouble getting a line out."
"There's a pharmacy in the mall," Otis piped in, still working on boarding up the door, now with Jeff's assistance. "It's part of Seon's Food Mart, in the North Plaza. There's just a lot of those dead folks between here and there."
"Could these ducts be used to travel directly to the grocer?" Jessie asked, twirling a strand of her golden hair with one finger.
"Now I know you can get back into the mall through that duct, but the vents become too narrow for anyone to fit through once they get over the plazas," answered Otis. "I believe that shaft leads to a similar opening on a rooftop above Paradise Plaza. There should be a door to a stairwell that runs into a storage warehouse."
"That'll have to do," Brad sighed as he removed the final screw. The duct cover fell to the ground with a loud clank. Dori, who had zoned out of the chaos going on around her, yelped with a start.
"You ought not go alone, buddy," said James Ramsay, walking into the room with a freshly filled styrophoam cup full of coffee. "We all nearly died just trying to get to the damn stairs. You're talking about going across the mall."
"He's right, Brad," Jessie concurred, resting a hand gently on the stressed out agent's shoulder. "They may be civilians, but the situation has gotten out of hand here. We could use any help we can get."
"You won't have to bend my arm," Brad said, turning to take a look at the people around him. "One thing that I need to know right off the bat: did any of you see where the elderly man my partner and I were protecting was when the dead broke in?"
Frank suddenly remembered noticing Barnaby's troubled walk toward Paradise Plaza just before the doors burst open. He didn't know for certain where the old man would be, but had a general enough of an idea to bluff his way into the fed's inner circle. If anyone in the mall would make a story for him, it would be Brad and Jessie.
"I saw him," Frank remarked with a slightly raised hand and a cocky smirk on his face. "I'd be glad to take you to him, but only if you let me tag along."
Brad snickered. "I know your type, Mr..."
"West. Frank West."
"Well, Frank, you can come with me, but don't be disappointed when you get nothing out of me," Brad continued. "I know a reporter when I see one, and I am not authorized to tell you jack shit."
"Fair enough," Frank replied, the grin more smug than ever. He was keenly aware that he had yet to mention Ed DeLuca and his helicopter to anybody.
"I'm coming, too," James piped in, handing his coffee to an unsuspecting Dawson, and failing to notice his slight glare. "Let me grab my axe, and it's yours."
"Ah, what the hell," Jack Townley said with a gravelly voice after a bourbon stenched belch. He stepped out from behind the vent, stuck his flask back into his leather vest pocket, then grabbed a crowbar up off the floor. His blonde hair was messily tangled back behind his ears, and he wore a dirty old Harley Davidson skull cap over it. His grin was yellow from years of drinking, smoking, and probable meth use. "I don't really like the idea of sitting around, waiting to die."
"Alright, that makes four," Brad said, checking the clip on his pistol before turning to Otis. "Do you have a map on hand?"
"Let me grab one from my desk," the janitor replied, shuffling past them to the office.
"Now hold on a damn minute," Josh grunted, stepping between Otis and the door and raising a hand in a "halt" gesture. The vein on his forehead had begun to protrude. "I seem to recall asking a question before. Those doors, on both sides, were locked by you and Freddie. I saw this happen with my own two eyes yesterday. So I ask you again, Otis...what in the flying fuck happened out there!?"
Otis visibly tensed up at the sudden hostility, but did not break composure. "If I was to guess, the only way something like that would happen would be if somebody overrode the locks electronically. You see, the whole mall is run by a state of the art computer system. A lot of it is over my head, but I've been around long enough to know some of the basics. The only places somebody could have done it would have been from here....or the North Plaza. That's where all the mainframes are at."
"There's no way it could have been an accident?" Jessie asked. "A malfunction in the system?"
"Not one I'm familiar with, ma'am," Otis replied politely before pushing his way past Josh. "Now if you would excuse me, officer, I have to get something for the agent."
"That's another thing I'd like to address," Josh said heatedly, turning his attention toward Brad. "As far as I can tell, I'm the last surviving member of the WPD. As such, I would appreciate it if I were treated with such respect. You two agents have been keeping me, the sole representation of law enforcement, out of the loop. There might be some issues with that from a constitutional standpoint, if ya get my drift. I'm coming with you, dammit. That's my friend laid out in there, so if you think I'm gonna sit here with my thumb up my ass, you're dead fucking wrong."
"Fine," Brad sighed, rubbing his temples with his forefingers. "Consider yourself a part of the group. Just make sure you keep up. We're going to be moving as quickly as possible once we're out there."
"Don't worry about me, cochise," Josh replied with a venomous grin. "I can handle myself."
At that moment, Otis returned, in his hands a folded map and a yellow and black transceiver. "Take this to keep in touch while y'all are out there. Some of the cameras are malfunctioning, but I can help from here when I can by watching those monitors."
"I appreciate it," Brad said, pocketing both, before turning to his ragtag group of explorers. A reporter, a biker, a cop, and a redneck. "I commend all of you. When we make it out of this hell, I'll see to it you are rewarded."
"I'll stay here and watch the fort," Jessie said, half jokingly, as she wiped the lenses of her glasses with a hankerchief.
"We'll be back in short order," Brad replied. "Hopefully with dinner."
"If you pass through the food court, y'all should check in on Cheddar's," said Otis. "The food there is damn good and I have a grill stashed out on the rooftop. Everytime the cameras in the food court turn that way, the doors are still fastened shut."
Brad gave the janitor another short nod, then climbed into the vent. Townley followed right after, then James. Before Frank could climb in, David stepped out from the office, his hands bloodied, and beckoned the reporter over.
"I have a short list of things I'll need for this wound," David said, handing Frank a scrap of paper. "As well as a few other odds and ends we may need before this is all over."
Frank let out a chuckle as he stuffed the list in his jacket pocket. "When you woke up this morning, did you see yourself being promoted to town doctor?"
"No more than you expected to jump down from the sky into a B horror movie, I suspect," David replied, giving the reporter a somber grin. "Be careful out there, brotha."
"And you in here," Frank replied, gesturing to the boarded up door. Outside in the hall, raspy moans of the approaching horde of zombies could be heard echoing through the corridors. They had gotten through the door in the plaza.
Frank turned back to the vent, where Josh Greene was struggling to squeeze his large frame through the hatch. Once he had finally maneuvered himself in, Frank climbed in behind him, bloody baseball bat in hand. The reporter turned, gave Jessie a wink and a grin, then disappeared into the darkness.
* * *
As David stepped back into the office to work on Brian's mangled leg, the other survivors dispersed into the security room. One of the back rooms, the larger one directly to the left when facing the stairs, had been converted into a sort of employee rec room, with two couches, a TV with DVD player, a shelf full of DVDs and paperback novels, and an air hockey table off to the side. Dawson and Julius were the first to settle in this room, opting to light another joint to call their nerves and mourn the loss of their fallen friend Mark. Disgusted by the pair, Jeff Meyer lead his wife to the next room over, where they both sat the corner and kept to themselves.
David used his swiss army knife to cut away the leg of Brian's pants and began to pour some of the peroxide over the wound. Brian grunted and jerked in pain, until David offered him his flask. Dori Crandall, sheepish and exhausted in demeanor, nudged David on the shoulder and offered him a small sowing kit she kept in her handbag.
"Thank you, Dori," said David as he began to tape a patch of gauze over Brian's calf. "But that corpse took a nasty bit of flesh, leaving nothing for me to sew together."
"Ugh, I think I'm going to be sick," Dori said with a gag as she ran back into the security room, attempting to tie back her long brown hair.
"Bathrooms just under the stairs, miss," Otis called from his rolling desk chair in front of the monitors, not really wanting to clean up the girl's mess. Just then, a thick metal door to in between the desk and the door to the back rooms cracked open and Jessie stepped out.
"This is quite a large holding cell for a mall security office," Jessie remarked as she poured herself a cup of coffee from a pot Otis had just made.
"The owner spared no expense," Otis chuckled. "Except maybe for my retirement fund."
"It could come in handy," Jessie said, ignoring Otis's joke. "Let's just hope we don't need it."