Part Three

Gordon sat up in his chair as his phone began ringing, opening his eyes to reach out for the receiver. “Homicide, this is Detective Reed speaking.”

“It’s me,” Tina said. “I know you don’t like me calling you at work, but something strange is going on over here, and I  don’t know if I feel safe with what I’ve been hearing on the news.”

“What have you noticed?”

“Well I haven’t seen anything, but a few times, I would swear to you that I heard glass breaking.”

“I’ll call to have a couple of officers-”

John clamped a hand over his shoulder. “We’ve got activity on the cameras. Come on, you’ve got to see this.”

“I’ll have to let you go. Call the dispatcher and have them send by a couple cars to check things out. It’s better to be safe than sorry on something like this.”

“Right. I love you.”

“Love you too. I’ll call you later tonight.” Gordon got up and followed after his partner, who was almost jogging  to cross the building.

Janice turned as he opened the door, shaking her head. “You’ve missed it. A line of six people went into the building, and they were carrying someone who looked similar to the suspect in your vigilante’s video.”

“Maybe it’s a ruse so he could get into the building. He may know that-” Gordon’s eyes widened, and he pointed at the monitors as a wide column of nude bodies walked toward the building. Among them, they were carrying a number of people who still struggled weakly to get free. “They’ve been taking more hostages.”

“Reggie, get on the phone and get SWAT moving.” Janice turned to look back over her shoulder at John. “Go let our friends in the FBI know that things are about to get ugly. We may need the national guard within the next few hours.”

***

Gordon sat at his desk with his eyes closed. He had never been much of a believer in the power of prayer, but he was silently working though a quiet request that everything would be okay. He wanted the SWAT team to show up and sweep the building without problems, but his gut instincts were telling him that his boss was right. Frank had been suggesting the same thing, that the night would be chaotic and dangerous for everyone.
Within minutes, Gordon had his answer as Janice walked into the department looking several shades paler.

All of the detectives rose and turned to watch her, and she cast her eyes slowly around the room before shaking her head. “Whatever those things are, they aren’t dead bodies. One minute after they arrived, the SWAT teams were overrun by people. They were all carried inside, and I believe that any further attempts to approach the building will get the same response. I’ve already called the mayor, and I imagine he’s probably… they’re going to be making an air strike.”

“You can’t be serious!” a detective shouted.

“The decision isn’t mine to make. I didn’t even suggest it,” Janice insisted. “We’ve got to-”

“Ma’am, they’re moving,” one of the technicians said as he ran in through the door. “It’s a flood of people, and they aren’t waiting for the middle of the night.”

“How fast are they moving?”

“They’re all running, and they’re scattering in every direction.”

“Get on the phone and try to get the choppers on them,” Janice said and went to her office. She turned at the door. “Everyone get into body armor. I don’t know what’s about to happen, but I think we need to be ready for a fight.”

Gordon had a question come to mind, and he couldn’t help but ask it. “How much chance did the SWAT teams have to fire?”

“They tried, but it didn’t appear to have any effect,” Janice said and stepped back into her office before she shut the door.

Gordon frowned at his partner. “So how will armoring up help?”

John shook his head. “What the hell are we dealing with here? Someone is gathering an army of dead people, and we can’t seem to stop them.”

Gordon dropped heavily into his seat. “Frank was right. This is Ebola, and we didn’t catch the first signs of the infection. Now it’s spreading out to the rest of the body, and we don’t have any ways to cope with something this rapid.” He looked at the phone and reached out to pick it up before he called his house. The line rang over and over, and in each long silence before the next ring, his stomach tightened further. When the answering machine picked up with a familiar hiss from the taped message, he set down the phone and stood up. “John, I have to leave now.”

“Who did you try to call?”

“Tina. She called me to say something was going on in the neighborhood.” Gordon started walking away from his desk.

“We shouldn’t go by ourselves,” John said, jogging to catch up with his partner.

“We won’t, but we need to hurry.”

***

John stared at the open back door while he listened to Gordon sobbing behind him in the middle of the kitchen floor. A pane of glass near the door knob had been shattered, and the broken shards on the floor were one of the few signs that anything was out of place in the house. The front door was left wide open, and there were no signs of a struggle.

Turning around, he stepped across the kitchen floor and leaned over to lay his hand on Gordon’s shoulder. “We… listen, I know this is going to sound harsh, but we’ve got to leave. It might not-”

The sound of a gunshot from the front yard caused both men to stiffen, and by the time they were moving, four other shots followed it. Gordon was only a few steps behind his partner, and when he saw John slide to a halt, his stomach tightened with apprehension. He stopped at the door and turned to see a group of the pale undead jogging up the street.

Though the four officers continued to fire on the advancing mob, the shots didn’t slow down their targets. Gordon saw a bullet slice through the chest of a zombie, splattering a thick white fluid over the light blonde hair of the zombie behind it. His eyes had barely flicked away to look at the zombie’s blood, and yet the wound was gone was gone when he tried to look for it again.
 
“Everyone get back to your cars!” Gordon ran toward his car and drew his gun, turning to aim at the head of one of the undead mob. The shot pierced the zombie’s eye and toppled the runner over, giving Gordon a single moment of hope before it got up again. He turned to drop into the seat. “So much for that theory.”

By the time he had shut the door, the crowd had converged on one of the two patrol cars. He didn’t wait for John to get in before he started the engine, nor did he wait for his partner to shut the door before he threw the car into reverse and started backing up the street. The engine whined at him, but he ignored it, focusing on keeping the car straight while he raced toward the intersection. “I’m going to shut the door for you,” he said in a tense voice. “Watch your hands.”

Just before the intersection, he spun the wheel to swing the car into a turn. The passenger door banged shut, and he straightened the wheel and slammed on the brakes before changing gears to shoot forward. He looked up at his mirror and found only one of the patrol cars pulled around the corner to follow them.

He looked back to the road, trying to push down the gnawing ache in his chest. But his mind repeatedly hurled questions at him that he had no answers for. He shook his head as face tightened into a scowl.

“Gordon, what are you thinking?” John asked.

“I’m trying not to think of anything, but it has just come to me that we’re going to lose the city if we continue to treat this as just another criminal investigation.  We’re already losing by reacting too slowly. Now instead of looking for the people behind this, we’re swamped with the effects of their victims.”

Well it sounds fine in theory, but we don’t have any leads.”

“We may still have one at least.”

***

Frank rubbed his wrists as he sat down in the interrogation room and watched the uniformed officers leave. “You aren’t strapping me to the table. Does that mean we’re due for another road trip?”

“What have you got to show us?” John asked.

“Nothing,” Frank admitted. “I’m out of evidence. I was just trying to guess based off of your expressions. Things have become quite grim if I’m reading the two of you right.”

“The mayor is preparing to evacuate the city,” John said. “Over the last four hours, there’s been so many abductions that our trunk line overloaded. Now it isn’t a question of if there will be a full assault, only a question of when.”

Frank nodded, turning to study Gordon’s eyes as the detective slumped into the chair. “Something more personal happened to you.”

John cleared his throat. “His wife is missing.”

Frank grimaced and looked away. “I’m truly sorry. I know what it feel like to lose a loved one.”

“To one of these things?” john asked.

Frank sighed. “No, my mother was killed by a plain old fashioned bank robber.” He sighed and leaned back. “I was there, and after they shot her, the robber hit me with the butt of his rifle.” He pointed to a faint scar running along the side of his temple then dropped his hand back into his lap. “Two weeks later, my dad checked out by hanging himself. Guess who found him swinging from the rafter in the garage?”

“I don’t mean to seem cold to your problems, but we do need to talk about other things,” John said.

“No, its all right. I can understand your problem, but there isn’t anything else I can tell you. I’m sorry if you thought I was a fount of knowledge, but I gave you what I had. I assume you will eventually decide to use a show of force against these animated corpses?”

“We already have,” John said. “It was a disaster, and I think it’s going to be the same thing once the national guard locates a pocket of these things.”

Frank whistled. “So we’re at that stage already? I knew I was out of my league, but I’d hoped you could catch this in time if I turned myself in.”

“Everyone is out of their league,” Gordon said in a low, emotionless voice. “The more often I think about how you described this as a disease, the more I find myself agreeing with you. It was already too late when you noticed it, and it was only just beginning to spread. I think the pile you found was one of several around the city. The leader behind this plot kept us distracted and watching one stockpile while he used another to keep making new converts.”

“How is it that this guy is able to make converts so quickly?” John asked.

“I don’t know. Frank’s version of events suggests that the leader didn’t have the means to change anyone with him at the warehouse. But he did convert the SWAT teams inside the building.” Gordon stood up suddenly. “Frank, you’ll have to excuse us. I assume we can leave you alone without you trying to walk out.”

“I’m not going anywhere without an armed guard.”

John waited until they left the room. “What have you got?”

“Let’s check the surveillance tapes to see if the undead army took the leader or any equipment out of the building. When they scattered-”

***

Gordon watched the tapes back and forth, reversing them and fast forwarding, but not one of the crowds which erupted from the building had been carrying anything. More troubling was the fact that the tall dark skinned man who had gone into the building had never left.

Gordon got up and walked out of the room, his brows knit tightly together in thought. He almost didn’t notice Janice until she was standing in front of him, and her grim expression  did little to ease his nerves. “How bad is it now?” he asked.

“We’ve had to pull back our patrols after losing units across the city,” Janice said. “We’re losing the city block by block, and nothing we’ve got works against…” She shook her head. “Hell, I don’t even know what to call them now. I know they’re victims, but once they’ve been turned, they’re like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I want to say zombies, but that doesn’t sound right either.”

“Listen, I think we may have another problem. I know we don’t need any more troubles, but that guy who was carried into the building with the crowd of … well let’s say zombies, okay?” Gordon watched her nod. “My point is, he didn’t come out during the flood. We don’t know that all of the zombies left the building either, and it’s probably not a good idea to send anyone to check.”

“But you want to anyway,” Janice said.

“Yes. The only theory I’ve got right now is that somehow, this one man is controlling all of these zombies himself. I think if we can get to him, we’ll find that he can be killed, and then everyone else will end up collapsing.”

“You can base this wild guess on what?” Janice asked in a dead pan tone of voice.

“I don’t know what else we could try, really. But we’re not even on the defensive at this point. One person has us running to avoid their army, and for every second that we hide, he’s recruiting more zombies.”

“This is crazy,” Janice said.

Gordon shook his head. “Not half as crazy as what I’m about to suggest.”

***

Frank shot up out of his chair. “What? No! Absolutely not!”

“Bad news, Frank. You don’t really get a say in the matter.” Gordon sat down on the edge of the table and crossed his arms as he watched the vigilante pacing. “Someone has to go check that building, because there may be a chance to track down the man behind this army of zombies.”

“Oh good, you’re calling them zombies now.” Frank shook his head. “I would suggest you stop and think about how every B movie ends where the undead are involved. Everybody dies, man. Every-fucking-body.”

“Yeah, but in every one of those movies, there’s no cause for how they rise from their graves. These people aren’t rising. They’re fresh kills, and everyone is being raised by one man. Oh, and for the record, head shots don’t work. Yes, I tried.”

“Right, so you want to travel outside into an army of zombies who can’t be killed to look for someone who is undoubtedly surrounded by enough bodies to form a solid shield.”

“We don’t exactly have many options here.”

“Hey, I’m trying to exercise my option to live, okay? I told you, I saw enough to know what will happen to me if I mess with this guy. There’s a big difference between a hero and a vigilante, and we’re well into the territory where I‘m ready to quit and leave this up to more qualified people. Obviously, that’s not you either, because your plan stinks.”

“So, here’s what we’ll do,” Gordon said. “First, we’re driving to your house, and you’re going to suit up.”

Frank slumped his shoulders, giving a short nod. “Fine, and then you want to storm the enemy HQ, right?”

“No, I want to sneak in very quietly,” Gordon said. “We can’t use an assault no matter how large the force we send, so we need to work the opposite route with a small team to move in covertly.”

Frank nodded. “Yes, I’m sure this sounds like a good plan in theory but-”

“The discussion is over Frank,” John interrupted him. “You lost the moment you walked through the front door to confess.”

“You volunteered to offer your help less than three hours ago, so we’re just taking you up on the offer for another road trip,” Gordon said.

Frank looked back and forth at the detectives and groaned. “That’ll teach me to trust the cops.”