The Red X Chronicles (Book 1): Emergent Read online

  “Good work! Help me move this.” I heard Elizabeth say above me. I started climbing back down. I stopped to look up and saw both Elizabeth and Will moving the cover. The sound of it scraping against the concrete echoed in the tunnel that I was in, but not nearly as loud as the gunshots John was still firing.

  When the path was free they climbed down too. It wasn’t very deep inside, maybe six feet tall at best, and there wasn’t a lot of room either. We watched John step into the light of the hole and make his way in. He handed the gun down. “Someone take this!” Will grabbed it and John began moving the cover to seal the hole. “These things really are heavy.” He grunted as he pulled it back into place. It fell back into its slot with a metallic clunk.

  That’s when we heard the loudspeaker for the last time. “Open fire.” The sounds of gunshots and screams filled the night as they fired on the crowd to maintain the quarantine.

  “Oh my…” Elizabeth covered her mouth, or at least I imagined she did, there wasn’t enough light to tell for sure.

  Chapter 6

  We all took a second to breathe a sigh of relief and dread. “That was close.” John said. “Give me my gun back.”

  Will kept quiet a little longer than he should have. I could tell that he was reluctant to give up the gun. “Here.” He finally said. “But maybe I should keep it, I don’t see why one person should have both guns.”

  I couldn’t see the expression on John’s face, but I’m certain it wouldn’t have been a pleasant one judging from his response. “Ever shot a gun before?”

  Will was hesitant again. “Y-Yeah, once.”

  “You’re full of shit. As far as I can tell, I’m the only person who could shoot anything with either of these. I’ll be keeping ‘em.” None of us could argue with his assessment. “Ok…” John sighed again. “Ok, what now?” We were all quiet. “Don’t just stand there look for a way out of here!”

  We all shambled in the dark feeling around. “Don’t you have a flashlight officer?”

  “I told you, it’s John, and… I dropped it.”

  I cut in. “Hold on, my phone’s got one.” I pulled it out of my pocket only to feel shattered glass. “Fuck, it must have broke when I fell. Does anybody else have their phone?”

  “I left mine at work.” Elizabeth stated plainly. “What? It was in my purse, and phone’s don’t fit in girl’s pants. I’m lucky if I can fit chapstick in these.”

  “Don’t worry babe I’ve got mine.” We waited for him to flick through his menu and turn it on. When it did the flash revealed John rubbing his temple with a look on his face that screamed what have I gotten myself into? Will looked around the small concrete box we were in and found an opening. “Alright, let’s go.” He sounded frustrated.

  We all followed behind him cramming into the small opening, Elizabeth first, then me, and finally John. It was barely big enough for me to walk hunched over. I can’t imagine how uncomfortable it must have been for the others. Our shoes splashed lightly in the small amount of water that was at the bottom of the pipe.

  “Great, I have to crawl through people’s shit in my nice shoes.” Will wasn’t happy about the situation.

  “That’s all you care about?” John had anger in his voice. “We almost died how many times? And you’re worried about your shoes?”

  I spoke up. “Calm down both of you. Besides it’s not sewage Will.”

  “Um hello! We’re in the sewer.” His response was irritating.

  “No, we’re not. Take a breath, it doesn’t smell nearly bad enough for that. It’s just a storm drain. The sewer system doesn’t connect to it. This just catches rain water and drains it out to either a ponding basin or river.”

  “Oh… It’s still getting in my shoes though.”

  “Live with it.” John cut back snidely. “What the hell are we going to do now?” He asked himself out loud.

  “Beats me.” I said back.

  “See this is why I didn’t want to stop. Maybe if we had just left when I said to.” John’s irritation was showing.

  “Then where would we be?” Elizabeth interrupted him.

  “Well you wouldn’t be listening to him bitch about his sneakers.” John replied.

  “Seriously?” I asked. “We have to put our heads together here, what are we going to do when we get out of here?”

  “You mean if we get out of here.” Will said.

  “When!” I was firm. “Worst case scenario we can always go back in a couple of hours and get out the way we came when it’s safe. The real issue is what we’re going to do when we are out.”

  After a few seconds John spoke. “Well, the real chaos is setting in up there. I’m going to guess all of the quarantine checkpoints are going to be crowded deathtraps for a while. Our best bet is to hunker down somewhere and wait till we can get through easy.”

  “Ok.” I said. “Where’s a good spot to wait?”

  “Anywhere safe with food and water.” John’s answer was simple, but left us wanting.

  “Anywhere specific in mind?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Nope, and I’m not so sure it’s going to matter all that much.” John said back to her. “With things the way they are we aren’t likely to make it more than a couple blocks safely, so we’re going to go with whatever meets our needs at the end of this pipe.”

  He had a point. There wasn’t any good reason to be picky, anything with food, water, and study doors was good enough, and getting our hearts set on something too far away would just pressure us to get into more danger than we were equipped to handle, but not knowing was still uncomfortable.

  “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see…” I replied. We didn’t talk much after that, but it wasn’t as if we were quiet. John and Will kept cursing every time they stumbled or stepped in something disagreeable. It turns out even a storm drain has some pretty disgusting things floating through it, mostly garbage, but that can be nasty in its own right.

  It must have been nearly a mile. My back was killing me, and it wasn’t hard to tell that no one thought it was a charming life experience. We finally saw just a hint of light at the end of the tunnel, and it was more than just a metaphor for us. Although when we got closer we found our way into another box like the one we had entered from. When I looked up I saw the same little speck of light peeking its way through the small hole in a manhole cover above us. “Look up there.” I said.

  “Oh, my fuckin’ back” John was just happy to stand in a position closer to straight. I started to climb up the ladder. “Hold on.” He stopped me. “There might be some of the bastards up there, let me go first.” We shuffled out of the way for him to get to the ladder. His shoes squeaked and clanged against the bars as he climbed, he realized it and stopped. “We should be more quiet, if they are up there we don’t want them to know we’re here.” He whispered back to us. He climbed the rest of the way carefully and tried to lift the cover. “How the hell did you get one of these open? It won’t budge.”

  “I climbed higher, and used my legs to push it open.”

  He did the same, his shoes slipped letting out a long squeak. “Damn it.” He adjusted his footing and tried again. “Fuck it’s really stuck. Hold on.” He pounded against it with his back. It was loud. “I felt it budge.” He hit it again, to which it popped free bouncing up and slamming down on the concrete, which made a horribly loud noise that echoed throughout the tunnel. “Shit… and here I said to be quiet.” He took a few steps down so he could lift it out of the way. He cautiously put his head out into the open and looked around. “Phew, we’re good.”

  We climbed out of the hole one at a time and out into the fresh air, each one of us stretching our backs from the cramped journey. We stood on the bank of one of the town’s canals, there was very little light, and it was backed up against the fences of people’s backyards. The canal went on for about half a block in either direction before it connected to the main streets where it went underground.

  “Alright, where are we?”
John asked looking around for any distinguishing landmark.

  “I have no idea.” I said back to him.

  “This way… I guess.” John took the lead and we followed behind. The sounds of gunshots and screams filled the night, even from the houses we were walking by, but the waterway was clear of any zombies, which made traveling fast enough. When we got to the end of the canal it went under the street where it connected to the road. There was a small fence to keep people from climbing inside, but it was meant as more of a deterrent rather than a security fence, as such it was easy enough for us to hop over.

  We took a left jogging down the road, but it was a nightmare all around us. “Where are we? Does anyone recognize this street?” John asked, but no one answered. We kept running until we saw a street sign. “Maple and Brooks huh?” He looked up and down the street. “I know where we are now, there should be a grocery store back the other way.” We ran for about a quarter block together before John slowed down. He was panting, and it wasn’t a surprise, while he wasn’t in bad shape, he definitely wasn’t the fittest of our bunch. “Let’s slow down a bit.” He said between breaths. “We need to be able to fight if we have to.” We kept to a slow jog, which was still more than John was comfortable with.

  Some woman, she must have been in her early thirties came running out from one of the houses toward us. “Oh thank goodness! Officer! You have to help my husband!”

  John pointed the end of the shotgun right at her. “Stay back!”

  “What?” She was shocked by his behavior. “No, officer, he needs your help! Please!” She started to take another step forward.

  John fired a warning shot over her head. “I said stay back!” She screamed.

  “John I don’t think she’s one of-“ but I was cut off.

  “Have you been bitten?” His question was forceful.

  “N-no! B-But my husband he got bit on the arm trying to fight off one of those things.”

  John winced. He didn’t like the response he was going to give, and he knew it wasn’t going to end well. “He’s already dead Ma’am. You can come with us if you like, but we’re leaving now.”

  “What are you talking about? He’s not dead, it was just a little bite!” John turned from her and began moving toward the grocery store.

  “It’s your last chance Lady…” He kept walking.

  “O-ok! Just let me get my husband!”

  “No…” John’s words were cold.

  She was hesitant to talk at first until we kept moving. “You bastard! How can you call yourself a police officer! You piece of-“ She trailed on in the night behind us.

  “What kind of cop are you? That’s not the first time you’ve pointed a gun in someone’s face tonight.” Will ended hinting at himself.

  “The kind that’s going to live… We’re getting close don’t fall behind.”

  It didn’t take much longer after that. John had to shoot a few zombies on the way, but we were able to get to the intersection where the grocery store stood. Seeing it though didn’t inspire much confidence. The glass doors had been shattered in, and the lights were out inside. But the worst of it was the zombies pouring through the front door.

  “It looks like someone else had the same idea… and it didn’t work out too well.” I said.

  “We can’t just stay out in the open.” John was trying to figure out what to do. “I wish we hadn’t left the car.” He muttered to himself.

  “Hey I know where we’re at.” Will chimed in. “We’re only like a block away from the mall.

  “That’s… not the best plan.” I commented after realizing the mall he was thinking of.

  “Why not?”

  “Sure there’s water, but there have to be a lot of people that thought to go there, and to make things worse it’s got entrances all over it. Barricading them is going to be a nightmare. It’s also not very big… There isn’t going to be a lot of food there.”

  “Yeah, that sounds like a dumb idea alright…” John said. “I can’t think of anything better though… Anyone else? No?” He waited for our response, when there wasn’t any he spoke again. “Let’s get going then.”

  The next block was harder than the last. There were more zombies, more piled up cars, and less living people. It was dangerous to move through that many with so little means to defend ourselves, so we had to keep moving fast. Stopping would have been a death sentence. When we finally got to the end of the street we could see it, Mountain View Shopping Mall… It was a mess, but there was no turning back.

  Chapter 7

  The mall was in shambles. Cars and trucks were parked and crashed on the east side blocking the entranceways. The lights above showed the masses of zombies trying to get through them. Most of the doors and windows were broken out to the west, and the lights were out. Though even in the dim moonlight we could tell the number of zombies to the west weren’t even a hundredth of that in the lights.

  “We’ll have to get in that way.” John said. “If we’re lucky they won’t get us.”

  There were still too many of them for that, and we all knew it. “Hold on!” Elizabeth stopped the group. “I come here all the time. A lot of people don’t know this, but there’s extra parking and a smaller public entrance around the other side. It’s walled off back there, so there should be less of them.”

  “Good thinking.”

  “But… the doors might be locked.” She added. “They close them early.”

  “I can break a glass door.” John replied.

  We ran to around the edges of the parking lot, trying to attract as little attention as possible. It didn’t work as well as we should have liked. John kept having to stop to shoot a zombie to clear the path, and we were getting more and more surrounded the closer we got to our destination. If this plan didn’t work it was the end for us.

  When we finally got around the corner of the building we found the back side almost empty. We ran past the shutter doors which closed off the loading bays. It wasn’t too much further when we had our eyes on the entrance. It was small, just one glass double door, and not even an automatic one at that. John grabbed the handle and gave it a tug. “Yup locked.” He looked around. “Hang on.” He grabbed the concrete ash tray and swung it like a battering ram through the glass. It shattered into a million little pieces but didn’t make a hole big enough to crawl through. John used the barrel of his shotgun to clear out the broken glass, and we were in.

  We couldn’t see any zombies from where we were. It was a long hallway that led out just behind a small clothing store and into the main strip of the mall. On the right there was a closed shutter door, it was the spot the cars had been used to block. We looked to the left. “Shit they’re coming!” Will spouted.

  We could see them in the distance maybe a hundred feet off moving our direction. “We have to get this shutter open!” I yelled looking for a control panel.

  “I hear people over by the big door.” We heard someone say from somewhere in behind the metal mesh.

  “We’re here! Someone open up the gate!” I yelled and pounded on the screen. We could hear people mumbling to each other until finally a young security guard approached. “Yes! Open the gate those things are right behind us!”

  “Sure let me…” He looked at my shirt. “You’ve got blood all over you.”

  I reached down and pinched my shirt between my fingers to look at it. “Oh yeah, it happened earlier.”

  “We don’t have time for this open the damn gate!” John was justifiably impatient.

  “I’m not letting anyone in that’s been bitten!” He shouted back.

  “What? No, I haven’t been bitten, it’s not my blood!”

  “I can’t take your word for it. It’s too risky…”

  John hit the butt of his gun on the gate to get his attention. “Hey! You see my uniform? I’m a cop, I picked him up like this, but he wasn’t bitten. Now open this fucking thing up before we die!”

  “Are you sure?” He waited for a rep
ly while the zombies got closer.”

  “Yes! And if he’s lying I’ll shoot him myself!”

  His response was delayed while he thought things over. “Ok I’ll open it, but only enough to crawl through.” He walked out of sight to the control panel, and we heard the motor starting to whir. The steel wall creaked as it started to rise. True to his word he only opened it about a foot and a half so we could crawl inside. It was wide enough that we all crawled under at the same time.

  “Alright close it close it!” Will shouted.

  “I’m on it.” The wall came down slowly, and it was just in time. The zombies started grabbing at it not a moment after it was fully closed. “I don’t suppose anyone else is getting through this way.” He walked over and locked the gate down to the floor. He jumped back when he looked up to see a zombie drooling over him on the other side of the gate.

  We all collapsed on the floor. We had just run maybe three or four miles without taking a break, and it was hard on all of us. “Thanks kid.” John said between heavy breathing. “This part of the mall is completely sealed off right?”

  “Yes Sir. We were able to seal off the other entrances by pushing vending machines, benches, you know, whatever was heavy and sturdy in the doors.”

  “What about the cars out front?” I asked.

  “Oh those didn’t stop them all that well, also they weren’t really intended to be a barricade, people just wanted to get close to the door before they got out of their cars.”

  “People? How many are there?” John asked.

  “Nobody’s sure yet. It’s a lot though.”

  “Great…” John was not excited to hear it. “You can go back to doing whatever you were doing, give us a minute to rest here.” The guard nodded his head and walked off. As soon as he was out of earshot John started talking again. “I know I should be grateful more people lived, but this isn’t good. There likely isn’t a lot of food here, and depending on how many people a lot is, we could have problems.”

  “Like what?” Will asked.