Day 354 - Untitled Zombie Story Chapter 9.1 - (2,055 words)

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UNTITLED ZOMBIE STORY

By Wayne Webb

Chapter 9.1

Derek and Sarah had both stopped moving and while Derek felt a cold panic set in, Sarah on the other hand seemed annoyed and irritated by the sudden invasion.

“Who let them in?” She shook her head and pulled a radio from her pocket, clicking the talk button and showing her irritation to the person at the other end. “Hey? Gates! Close the gates!” She put her box of things down and started advancing towards the zombie horde as if they were sheep wandering onto a country road, a harmless obstacle.

“Clear them away! For god’s sake, just shepherd them back to…” She was shouting her orders to the people who were standing around watching the undead make their way towards the main part of the crowd. One of the nearest to the edge of the zombie crowd suddenly jumped backwards and away and started moving the others nearby away.

“Move back, they’re deactivated!”

“Deactivated?” Derek said out loud to himself, there was so much more going on here than he could assimilate or even begin to understand.

Sarah turned to look at Derek and then mouthed the word “Deactivated?” silently with a shoulder shrug, then turned to look at them again. “Jesus! You’re right!” She pulled up the radio again and shouted into it. “Which bright spark turned off the signal? Come on guys! Turn the beacons on!” Sarah took a few steps backwards as the leading edge of the undead got close to a couple of crowd members who were moving too slowly.

Then the screaming started in earnest and the crowd started sprinting for cover and Sarah ran closer shouting for whoever was listening to turn the beacons back on.

Derek had to do something, he was here for his brother but he was hardly going to watch even a couple of innocent people be zombie midnight snacks. One of the people fleeing the zombies had fallen, and was using a walking stick to try and prop herself up again. Derek ran in past Sarah, pulled the stick from the woman, and apologizing while running to the fray he started swinging at the handful of slathering undead that were attacking the screaming woman, and the two men who were trying to pull the zombie off of her, but getting attacked themselves in the process.

Derek swung the stick in a wide arc and knocked two of the undead into each other, causing a small pile up and pushing the rear advancing ones on top of them, giving them a little respite to deal with the biters in the front.

Jabbing, punching and kicking them away Derek cleared a few feet on the ground and the two men, one of which was bleeding profusely from one arm scooped up the fallen woman who was shuddering and convulsing from her wounds on the ground. Sarah made her ground slower than Derek had sprinted the same distance but she got to the woman and the men carrying her as Derek started swinging the stick in a wide arc once more. He was not stopping their advance, but the movement forward was being slowed enough for the people to get away from the imminent attack.

An alarm klaxon sounded through the air and the vibrating noise confused the undead instantly, they lost focus on the screaming woman and started attacking erratically, without direction or focus.  Derek could take a few steps back and ease up on the swinging, just pushing the occasional stray back into the pack when they came on the wrong tangent.

“Turn the beacons back on! Turn them on now!” Sarah was still communicating with the radio and the guards on the watchtowers.

The zombie horde had thinned somewhat and they were leaving from the rear half backwards from what Derek could see, the beacons doing their job on what was in range only.

“They’re out of range! See?” Derek was shouting to Sarah who had left the injured to run into the hospital with the bleeding woman. She ran up to Derek and pulled him back from the random grasping and shuffling of the undead.

“Get the clean up crew, we have stragglers inside.” She said to him as if he knew exactly what to do.

Derek hesitated, he had no idea what that meant. If he admitted he didn’t know and it was something that they all knew, then that would expose him and he would have no chance of getting to James. If he did nothing then he put lives at risk. It was a conundrum.

He was spared the choice though as a number of men with batons and blinking beacon sticks like the ones that Ben had been using in their hometown ran into the group and the behavior of the zombies changed immediately. They pacified and stopped moving about, the klaxon was still sounding and the warping noise it made echoed about the town and created a Doppler effect and directional fade and repeat that wore on his nerves.

Then in the quieter gap left by the klaxon’s absence the undead were contained in the loop arranged by the five men with beacons and batons. No beating or bashing was actually required, and the long batons would probably have been for nothing more than keeping the zombies further away than arm’s length.

The gates were grinding to a close behind them, the noise previously masked by the siren sounds and the yelling of the fleeing citizens. Derek looked about for signs of where they had gone, but they had melted into the shadows and assumably into buildings out of sight from his standpoint.

Sarah was back at her box of papers and sorting them out, her radio left on the ground. Derek snatched it up and pressed ‘talk’ to alert the guards or whoever was on the other end of the radio. “Stop the gates! Open them up!” he said and waited for a response.

“What are you doing?” she asked and tried to take the radio away from him, dropping her papers again.

“Open the gates! Now!” Derek commanded but nothing happened and the gates kept closing.

“Who is this?” came a crackling voice from the box in his hands and Derek sighed, handing the radio to Sarah and pointing to the group of thirty or more undead that were being corralled by the mean with the sonic devices, the beacons that controlled the zombies to some effect.

“If you close the gates?” he said and pointed to the front entrance that was slowly getting smaller and smaller.

“We’re locking them inside. Oh.” Sarah blushed and clicked the radio. “You heard Tom, open the gates you morons.” She was embarrassed she had not thought of it.

“Hey!” Came back the indignant voice. “We are just doing what we’re told to do remember!” Sarah blushed even more, but this time in anger.

“Just open the goddamn gates until the zombies are OUTSIDE the walls again!” She clicked off the talk button and threw the radio to the side, the resulting “Roger that.” which sounded sullen and unhappy thrown in as a politeness, was partly obscured by the speaker rolling onto it’s face on the pavement.

Derek said thanks and then helped her get the papers back in order and started towards the Clinic doors. Sarah looked back at the undead who were being slowly moved towards the now opening main gate and then back at her new helper, whom she did not know but had somehow accepted.

“You know we have a breach right?” Derek said as they walked through the main doors of the clinic, following Sarah to wherever it was she was headed, it was at least in the same building where he had seen his brother being taken.

“You think? I guess it must be right? I mean these guys are not exactly the brain trust but they survived the cull without being picked, that’s got to count for some basic intelligence and survival skills? So…”

Derek nodded though he did not know what he was agreeing to. “So if they didn’t make a huge mistake, twice over then someone opened the gates and someone activated the …” Derek stopped talking and let the silence finish his thoughts in Sarah’s mind. He was trapped by his own words as he realized he had no idea what the people here called Zombies, the undead, the living dead or whatever they referred to them as. That would be a dead giveaway that he was not part of the townsfolk.

“Yes, you’re right, it has to be an inside job. I mean you can’t turn off the beacons form outside the walls, you can only do that from the offices, or one of the gate houses.”

One of the gatehouses? Derek guessed this meant there was at least one more entry and exit to this walled town. That made sense, towns did not exist out here in a cul de sac, it was a line generally around the main road, it ran north to south or east to west most times. So there was another way in and out.

“Should we check the other…” he said and Sarah blushed again at being told the obvious by this random citizen.

“Check all entry exit points! We may have an intruder or a saboteur!” She barked into the radio,

“Roger.”

“Roger that.”

Two distinctly different responses came in to the radio speaker and Derek counted two voices different from the pissed off one they had already conversed with around what he thought was the main gate. In reality he had no idea if it was or was not, it was just the gate he saw first, and the one with enough room around it to land a helicopter.

“The guard towers!” Sarah exclaimed, “They have the switches too.” She barked more orders down the radio but for once was happy she thought of it before someone else did.

“Where you want these?” Derek hefted the box of papers he was carrying and Sarah nodded, and walked off down a corridor, implying she should follow him.

“I’ll just follow you then shall I?” Derek said to himself and did just that.

Ben had been listening to the radio commands that Sarah had been giving and reached similar conclusions about the other entrances that Derek had. He had balked for a second when he heard Derek giving commands over the radio and thought for an insane second that perhaps he was in cahoots with the townsfolk, of whatever crazy experiment this place was. Once the guards admitted to not knowing who this ‘Tom” was he calmed down a little more, Derek was infiltrating and had not given his real name.

He could use that, if he could catch up with him. He had made the right choice in picking him to come with him in search of this place. There were not enough answers and too many questions, even in his own team. They had been handpicked to accompany him, but he was an outsider nonetheless. They were always watching him, he felt that they were on the edge of letting him into the secret club, whatever it was, but never quite crossing that line.

Ben had sent the beacons to off, and had started opening the gate before fleeing and no one had seen him do it, this town was safe, secure and complacent up until this very moment at least. Then from a safe distance he had the purloined radio from Angela in his pocket, the volume turned way down low where only he could hear it.

The casualty of the woman at the front, the one bitten and savaged by the undead disturbed him, but it was an unfortunate accident. He had no intention of hurting anyone, he just wanted to cause a disturbance and unbalance the leaders of the town. Undoubtedly after an incursion or an accident like this they would be meeting to find out what went on and what to do next.

When they did, Ben would be there and then he would figure out what they were up to.

None of this made any sense, the zombies, the devices and what they were doing with the City where he had been living?

Zero sense.