Part Six

Janice stepped out of the truck and cast a nervous glance over at Frank. “You aren’t just waiting for a chance to run away, are you?”

Frank shook his head and began removing nozzles from the pumps, laying them on the pavement one by one. “Where would I run to? Maybe I don’t agree with the details of the plan, but Gordon is right. If we want anyone to believe us, we’ve got to have more evidence.” He turned the levers beside each pump slot and started walking toward the station. Pulling a pistol from his shoulder harness, he shot out the glass door. Janice groaned and he smirked at her. “What? Do you have a lock pick?”

Janice shook her head, remaining silent as she walked to the door and opened it. “It’s a twenty-four hour station, and the attendant was probably dragged out hours ago.”

Frank stopped walking and stared at her angry expression before he shrugged. “Well, you didn’t know if… but I didn’t- oh, never mind.”

He walked into the station and moved around the counter to turn on all of the pumps. Glancing around the store at the four cameras mounted in the corners, he decided to search the office for the security monitor. He found the office in a hallway opposite the bathroom, and though the store was empty, both he and Janice moved with a creeping pace.

“There’s the monitor,” Janice said quietly.

“Yeah, but where’s the recorder?” Frank asked, nodding as he spotted it on the desk. “Right, and that’s one more piece of evidence.”

Janice watched him eject the tape before she stepped into the hall. She walked out of the store and holstered her gun before she started to pull empty two gallon gas cans from the back of the truck.

While she emptied the back, Frank filled the truck’s tank with one pump and used another to fill the metal cans. The more cans he filled, the more jumbled his nerves became. The zombies didn’t carry guns, but he knew even a single stray shot could send the truck up in a huge fireball.

He could see from Janice’s dour expression that she was having similar thoughts, but she was quiet while she started moving the full cans back onto the truck. She barely spared him a glance as she worked and instead her gaze darted to the intersections and the entrances of the buildings around the gas station. He could understand why. The fumes coming off of the cans prevented either of them from shooting their way out, leaving them no choice but to run if they were ambushed.

The pump filling the truck clicked off. Frank finished filling the last of the cans and settled both nozzles on the pavement before he started helping Janice to load the truck. Climbing into the cab, he shut the door and started the engine, heaving a sigh before looking over at Janice. “Are you ready for part two of our plan?”

Janice shook her head. “No, not really, but we’re going through with it anyway, aren’t we?”

“Yeah, I’m afraid so.” Frank put the truck in gear and pulled away from the station. At the next intersection, he turned the truck and slowed its speed to a crawl as he passed his own car. He gave a nod to Gordon and David, the uniformed officer who sat in the passenger seat, then sped up until he was going ten miles an hour. Four blocks crept by before he made another turn. Taking a shaky breath, he looked at Janice and nodded. “Here we go.”

Frank laid his hand over the horn and started tapping it every few seconds. He kept the truck at the same slow speed though the investigative unit’s building was still two blocks in front of them. Yet even as he pulled to a stop near the front entrance, there was no response. Beside him, Janice picked up the CB radio handset and checked the frequency. “Gordon, we’ve got no activity outside. Over.”

The radio squawked. “Keep acting according to plan. We’re circling the block to check for stragglers first. Out.”

“Copy that. Out,” Janice said and looked at Frank. “So should I drive or get in the back?”

“Which would you prefer?” Frank asked.

Janice looked down at the duffle bag and thought it over. “I’ll drive.”

Frank opened the door. “Be careful.” He moved to the tailgate, turning his head to watch the entrance of the building while he stepped up on the bumper. “You don’t suppose he’d try to get us to sneak in first.”

“He’s probably moved on to another building to keep working.” Janice laid her hand over the horn and waited, but nothing happened. Finally getting tired of the horn blaring, she dropped her hand to her lap and glanced back at Frank. “It would be a shame to have gone through all the trouble for nothing.”

Frank chuckled quietly while he unzipped the bag and pulled out a roll of duct tape. He laid out several grenades and began taping them to the sides of the gas cans. The sound of an engine drew his attention up, and he nodded to Gordon, who parked the car in the middle of the street. “Good luck.”

“Thanks.” Gordon stepped around the car to open the trunk. He slipped on an empty backpack for the video tapes then pulled on the refilled flamethrower. Watching David pull on the other flamethrower as he shut the trunk, he noticed the officer swaying. “Are you okay?”

David shook his head. “I feel like I’m going to throw up.”

“Well either get it over with or swallow it back until later.” Gordon started walking toward the entrance, noting that the lights were all on, and the blinds were raised. He wondered if it truly meant the building had been abandoned.

Though the walk through the building was unnerving, nothing happened. The bank of monitors were on, and the recorders were waiting on standby mode when they walked into the room. David was reaching for the eject button on a recorder when he noticed someone moving on one of the monitors. “There’s more of those zombies back inside the building.”

“Start recording,” Gordon said as he leaned over the video board to look for the zoom controls for the camera. His blood froze when he saw a team of four zombies pulling a man over to a desk. The leader appeared next, and he leaned over to say something to the man, his thick lips pulling into a wide grin as his victim screamed.

Two zombies moved the machine close to the desk, while a third brought what looked like an empty five gallon water bottle. The top of the machine was opened to reveal a tray with multiple compartments and a set of four LCD displays in the lid. The leader grabbed a coiled tube from one the compartments on the tray and unwound it before he dropped one end into the bottle. Gordon realized that the other end of the tube was a catheter.

David seemed to realize its purpose then as well, and he made a soft groan. “We have to-”

“This is live, David,” Gordon cut him off, though the anguish was evident in the tone of his voice. “There’s nothing we can do for him, or for anybody else.”

The zombies holding down the victim started to rip away his clothing, and when he tried to struggle, a fifth undead guard stepped forward to lay both of his hands over the victim’s throat. His legs were pinned, and the leader sank the catheter high on his inner thigh. Blood began to fill the bottle rapidly, and the leader moved to set his hand over the victim’s chest to push down.

The victim went limp before the leader moved to the machine and took another clear tube down, one which was attached to the front of the machine. He slipped the catheter into the victim’s other leg and returned to the machine to begin pressing icons on one of the displays. Minutes passed before the body began to turn white.

Another undead worker arrived with a laptop, opening it and setting it up beside the body. The leader’s hand moved to the compartment tray at the top of the machine to grab a silver card with a cable and a long steel pin attached to it. Putting the card into the side of the laptop, the leader pried down the victim’s jaw and pushed the steel pin through the roof of his mouth.

Leaning over the laptop to type on the keyboard, the leader glanced up to watch the body every few seconds. He went to the machine again and opened a panel on the side to remove what look like a slender metal rod. He checked both the displays on the machine and the laptop before returning to the desk while the zombies rolled the victim over onto his stomach.

The leader closed his free hand over the back of the victim’s neck and set the rod at the base of their skull before pushing it down through the skin. Gordon corrected himself as he zoomed in the camera as close as it could go. The leader was pushing the rod down into the spinal column itself.

The body stiffened, and a second later, the leader’s hand started to spasm. Gordon zoomed the camera back out to watch the leader’s body twitch in time with the victim’s. The victim stilled, and the leader seemed to regain his composure. He removed the catheters, and the victim rolled over on their own. The leader unhooked the cable from their mouth, leaving the pin in place. He took the card back to the machine and replaced the pin before he began packing the machine up.

The leader walked to the window while the zombies moved the equipment out of sight. He leaned over by the to pick up what looked like a legal tablet. For several long seconds, the leader used a marker to write something. He paused, his head flicking up toward the camera for a moment before he started writing again.

Gordon felt ill suddenly at a stray thought that the entire event had felt staged. He reached into his pocket and took out the torch igniter slowly.

On the main monitor, the leader looked directly at the camera and grinned before holding up the tablet. He’d made the letters thick enough to read even from a distance: Look behind you.

Instead, Gordon opened the propane valve on the flame thrower, sweating as it began to make a low hiss. He scraped the striker, suppressing the instinct to cringe when David screamed. The propane ignited as hands closed around his shoulders, and Gordon tucked the bundle of copper pipes under his arm before he opened the kerosene valve. He heard David scream again and knew the officer had been caught in the blast.

The hands on his shoulders still would not release him, and he angled the wand under his arm before he opened the valve again. The backpack and tanks both caught fire, along with parts of his shirt,  but at last the hands loosened their grip.

Dropping out of the flamethrower and bag, he fell back onto the floor to smother the small flames still burning on his shirt and back. He used the backpack to slap out the fire on the side of the propane tank and crawled backward, dragging the tanks with him as the horde began to press in on him. Kicking a chair aside, Gordon crawled under the desk and pulled the flamethrower with him. Pushing the wand out as far as he could stretch, he used a few small bursts of fire to clear the room before crawling to the door to shut and lock it.

Gordon glanced back at the ruined bag, cringing as he tried to figure out how to store the tapes and still leave his hands free. He spotted the trash bin and nodded, taking out the plastic liner before he ejected the four tapes.

Gordon turned at thump sounding on the door. “Yeah, give me a minute here!”

***

Frank’s eyes flicked to the entrance of the building, but he quickly returned to checking the intersections. He wanted to see something, at least a stray animal or a wandering survivor, but the streets were deserted. “How long has he been inside?” he asked.

Janice checked her watch. “Fifteen minutes. I don’t like this.”

“Try his cell phone.”

Janice checked her phone and shook her head. “It says no service network detected.”

“Maybe I should-”

“You’re going to stay here. He told us to stick to the plan no matter what.”

***

Another thump shuddered the door, though it showed no signs of giving in. Gordon could guess that one of the zombies had begun serving a double duty as a battering ram. He went to the door and cringed while he settled the straps of the flamethrower onto his burnt shoulders. The door thumped again, and he waited another second before he opened it and squeezed the valve handle all the way open, roasting the four zombies along with David’s body, which was serving as the zombies’ battering ram.

Gordon took a step forward and waved the wand around the doorway. He stepped out of the room and set fire to the carpet before finally lowering the valve to make quick bursts in front of him. He staggered through a maze of blackened bodies, barely able to breath for the thick smoke in the air.

Stepping into the main hallway, he fired a short burst at the zombies who tried to close in on him. One of the zombies went to reach for him when the door blasted off of frame and slammed into the zombie. The door shoved aside another two zombies before crashing them against the wall. Gordon was baffled over the cause until he remembered David’s full flamethrower.

Checking to make sure the bag was still tied to his belt, Gordon jetted out a wider flame to ignite the zombies blocking his way to the front entrance. His progress was becoming slower while he worked to clear the path ahead and fend his back using much shorter bursts from the wand. He was almost at the end of the hall when he saw Frank, and he waved a gesture for the vigilante to go back outside.

He turned and sent another surge of fire behind him, his heart moving up into his throat when the wand sputtered. Laying an arm protectively around the bag of tapes while he raced toward the lobby, Gordon looked up to see something whiz past his head. He began running even faster to get out of the range of the grenade.

Frank still waited, only moving to the door when he saw that Gordon would make it out as well. “Where’s David?”

“He’s dead,” Gordon said and slowed to a jog as he got closer to the car. “Have Janice head for the building that’s been under surveillance. The rest of the plan is still valid, but we’ve got to draw off more of the horde before we can move in.”

“You’re running out of bodies to guess with,” Frank said and ran out toward the truck.

Gordon shrugged out of the straps, hissing as he dropped into the car and slammed the door. He started the engine and put the car in gear, running down two of the zombies as he turned the car around. Reaching down for the CB radio handset, he pressed the button. “I’ve got the tapes, so it’s up to you to get rid of his security. Over.”

***

Janice picked up the handset. “Just get out of here. We’ll let the horde tail us. Out.”

She tossed the radio aside and looked back at the small group of zombies who were running after the truck. She was keeping the speed low to let them follow the truck easily, and soon more zombies began appearing to join in the chase.

Janice looked in the mirror to check on Frank, who was carefully moving cans to the back of the truck. Using the roll of duct tapes to bind them together, he dropped the tailgate and sat down. He looked over his shoulder and nodded to Janice, who began honking the horn every few seconds.

The crowd behind them swelled, and Janice started to speed up a little to stay ahead of the zombies who were emerging in front of the truck. She looked up to the mirror just as Frank stripped a pin off of one of the grenades taped to the cans. He kicked the cans over the side of the tailgate, and she eased the accelerator down to avoid sliding him out of the back. Without warning a woman ran out in the path of the truck, screaming loudly for Janice to stop. She had jumped out into the street before Janice could react, and her head splattered on the hood as her body was pulled under the truck.

Janice screamed, but the sound was lost under the loud roar of the explosion in the street. The mirrors were filled with a light intense enough to burn spots in her vision. She heard the tailgate slam shut, and though she had trouble seeing though the flickering afterimages of the blast, she saw Frank had begun to throw individual cans over the side. She slowed down to turn the corner, and the horde waiting in the street stole the air from her lungs.

“You’ll have to punch through!” Frank shouted.

Janice swallowed and nodded. “Hold on to something!”

Steeping the accelerator into the floorboard, Janice tightened her grip on the steering wheel. The truck lurched with the first impact, and the wheel jumped in her hands as bodies crunched under the tires. She fought to keep the truck in a straight line, and even after passing through the horde, she was still spinning the steering wheel to keep the truck on the road in spite of the gore slicked tires.

Frank resumed his pattern of throwing gas cans rigged with grenades while Janice cast a sideways glance at the building. Her mouth fell open as she made eye contact with the leader, who was standing outside the entrance smiling at her. “Frank!”

He sank to his knees and drew his pistol. Janice let her foot off the gas, coasting the truck while he tried for a shot. His pistol roared and the leader’s hand flew to his shoulder before he fell back. Janice stopped the truck. “We did it.”

It took her only a second to notice the hissing sound that was beginning to rise in the air. Frank opened the passenger door and climbed from the side of the truck into the cab before he fastened his seat belt. “Move. That didn’t work.”

“How can you tell?” Janice looked into the mirror at the horde converging on the truck. The placid expressions of the zombies were replaced by masks of pure rage.

Frank coughed and glanced over his shoulder. “Oh, call it a hunch.”