Book Nine, Chapter 9: Shelter |
I didn't know how long my strategy could keep up, but it seemed to be working. With the car distracting them, the zombies never sprinted around it toward us. In fact, they were having some real trouble navigating the slant of the track to begin with. Their movement was reckless, but they weren't supernatural. It wasn't a World War Z movie adaptation situation where infected people suddenly gained the ability to act as a fluid, moving mass of bodies.
They were people. Sick people at that. And while I would not have wanted to be surrounded by them, the danger they posed was that they were always there, not that they were superhuman.
As soon as we got around to where Camden and his group of NPCs were hiding behind the bushes, they quickly slipped out and joined us. Camden himself seemed to be amazed at how simple it was to trick the zombies.
But I knew that was only going to last for so long because, for us to get where we were going, we had to cross the track toward the field in the center, and that was going to be a whole ordeal.
Our best point of access was the pit lane, but a quick glance in that direction showed it was already inhabited by half a dozen infected, and that wasn't even including those victims who were currently comatose on the ground and might, narratively convenient, jump up and attack.
We crept forward toward the pit lane, dragging a conga line of zombies behind us who continued to lunge at the race car Antoine was driving.
“We need you to draw them away from the pit lane so that we can get back to the garage. Then you need to gun it back there yourself so that you have time to get out and make it over to us. You understand?” I said into the microphone on my headset.
“I understand,” he said.
My plan was working. And in fact, it was working so well that I suspected it had more to do with the nature of these zombies than it did the cleverness of the plan. These zombies mimicked the actions of the herd. While I didn't expect I would be able to rely on that forever, it did seem like a very calm, well-thought-out manipulation could do wonders in this storyline.
The entire plan seemed to hinge on none of them looking over toward us and changing their direction.
“Just be calm,” I said to those around me. “They seem to match the energy of the people they're around.”
But of course, there was no way Carousel was going to let me just figure out the zombies' nature and exploit it without any trouble.
One of the men Camden had brought along was getting a little too hasty, moving ahead of the group. He wasn't going in the wrong direction or anything like that, but he was moving too fast, with too much energy.
“Slow down,” Camden whispered.
Off to our left, where the trail of zombies started, whispers could be heard. I couldn't quite tell what they were saying, but they were mimicking us as we tried to get this NPC to fall back in line.
“Slow down. Stay with the group,” I said slowly and calmly. “Try not to rouse the zombies following Antoine's car.”
Those zombies that heard me whispered things like, “I have work on Monday,” and, “The doctor says it's normal,” things they must have been talking about shortly before their infections.
The whispers reverberated through the crowd of zombies. One of them heard me and then whispered, and those around them carried it on. It was quite strange that way. They were little mockingbirds.
And of course, the NPC didn't listen, even as Antoine was almost far enough away from us, with his following zombies, that we could break off and head toward the garage.
The man, whose name was Neil or something like that, I tried not to look because I knew what was about to happen, broke into a run toward the garage.
Two or three of the zombies noticed him, and soon afterward the zombies around them picked up on it. Within a few moments, Antoine's followers had thinned as a group broke off and began matching Neil's pace, running in the same direction he was, straight toward the garage.
To Antoine's credit, he was on the ball. He roared his engines and moved ahead of Neil, redirecting both the man and the zombies following him.
To someone in the audience, it would look like Antoine had just basically murdered the guy by dragging a line of zombies over in his direction. But I didn't think the audience would mind. The guy basically surrendered his life the moment he broke away from the rest of us.
With his path toward the garage blocked by Antoine and the zombies, the man began running around the track as fast as he could, as zombies began to pursue him.
In fact, most of the sleep talkers altogether abandoned their pursuit of Antoine, despite him sticking his hand out of the car trying to attract them, and began pursuing the NPC instead.
It was just as well. If Antoine hadn't acted, they would be pursuing Neil toward the garage, the exact place we were trying to go.
As Neil siphoned away all the zombies, we picked up our pace just a little, hopping over the small barrier between the road and the garages and fast walking toward the entrance.
Because Antoine's followers had already departed, he didn't have to run off and lose them as I had originally planned; instead, he was able to shut off the race car and start trying to pull Kimberly out of it.
I was nervous to see her up close. I didn't know exactly how far along she would be. I half expected him to pull a biting, thrashing zombie out of the car, but then I heard her voice.
“I'm okay,” she said. “I'm just a little tired.”
She was still conscious. Of course, Carousel wasn't going to make it easy on us. We were going to have to watch her transform into a monster, the very thing that we had worked so hard to avoid before by drugging her and abandoning her on the side of the river.
I tried not to get too excited at seeing her. After all, she wasn’t rescued yet.
Antoine quickly pulled her out of the car and helped her get over the barrier wall on the pit lane.
Meanwhile, the rest of us were just getting to the entrance of the garage. Obviously, we didn't want them opening up the garage door itself, but there was a side door.
“Does anyone hear me?” I said, pushing the button on my headset. “We're outside the garage. Please let us in.”
There was no response.
I was afraid to knock on the door, but Ramona wasn't. She knocked three times and then took a few steps back to try to look up at the owners' suites in the tower above.
This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.
“They're looking down at us,” she said. “They know we're here.”
“This is Riley Lawrence. Please open the door. We have a group of people here looking for safety.”
Still, the door didn't open.
I knew for a fact that Anna, Kelsey, Isaac, and Cassie were already inside. What could be taking them so long? This was part of the plan.
But then I knew what was happening.
Antoine and Kimberly were making their way toward us when I first saw them. The zombies. The horde of zombies, to be exact. I had to hope and pray that Carousel was just looking for a nice fake-out, where it looked like we wouldn't be able to make it to safety.
I began pounding on the door and talking into my radio even more desperately.
“Please let us in. We are not going to hurt you. We just need a place to hide out. Isaac. Cassie. It's me. Riley. Please.”
Now zombies were coming at us from both directions. At first, they were just walking, but then the ones in front would get a little excited upon seeing us, and that excitement would ripple through the mob until they were moving faster and faster toward us.
“Please let us in,” I said. “You're killing us if you don't let us in.”
We banged on the door once more.
And just before the zombie horde got to us, the door opened. Anna was there with a look of pure anger on her face.
“Come in quick,” she said.
And that's what we did. We flooded in through the newly opened door, and just as Antoine and Kimberly were about to be tackled by zombies, we managed to close the door behind us and lock it.
“What took you so long?” I asked, partly because that was what my character would ask, but also because I wanted to know.
Then it became clear. A man was slumped over on the ground near the door. He was a big guy. One of the pit crew, if my memory served. It looked like he'd gotten hit over the head with something.
He wasn't exactly dead. He was finding his way to his feet.
Anna looked at him with contempt and said, “It's nothing, boss. Sammy here just lost his nerve.”
I made a point of glaring at the man, but not for too long, because he was a very big guy.
Kelsey was standing there too. It looked like she and Anna had taken care of business together. I had to wonder, was Carousel really going to let us die there, despite the targeting order? In a way, it was like various traps and tricks that we had used before, like how sending a player off into an obvious ambush could change the targeting order. This was apparently no different.
We almost had a very similar experience trying to get up into the owners’ suite above. Kitty Lincoln didn't want us inside, but Cassie and Isaac were the actual owners, and they insisted on letting us into the tower.
“Sorry about that,” Isaac said, trying to excuse Kitty's behavior. “She seems to think she's actually in charge. All she does his sign her husband’s checks.”
Antoine and Kimberly had stayed down in the garage under my recommendation. They were hiding out in a far corner of the place. The truth was, we knew that Kimberly was not going to make it too long before turning, and it would probably be better if it didn't happen in front of a bunch of scared NPCs.
-
If there was a place to hide out during a zombie invasion, these owner suites were pretty great. Not only were they designed for comfort, but they also had plenty of resources. Food. Water. Alcohol. Everything you need to hold out until help arrived, if help was ever going to arrive.
Our group found a circle of couches where we spent our time, while some of the other NPCs dispersed in their own little groups. Because of the large windows spanning 270 degrees around the structure, we could see pretty much everything, though no one really wanted to look.
Carousel decided to entertain us, if that is the right word, with occasional survivor groups getting wiped out by zombies. We were getting more and more boxed in as the infestation grew, with those who had been infected earlier beginning to rise. Although they didn't all seem like zombies at first. They were like Kimberly. Just sick. Ready to snap at any moment.
Camden had one of the radios taken apart, along with part of the sound system that he managed to get ahold of from the owners’ suite. I was certain that he wasn't actually doing anything technologically sound, but he was doing well at making it look like he was trying to expand the signal, as he called it.
“I don't understand,” I said. “This equipment should be just fine. Why can't we reach out?”
“There are news crews out there,” he said. “The military is blocking our signal. They don't want us talking to anyone out there because they don't want us telling them what's happening in case things go south.”
I had hoped he wouldn't say something like that On-Screen, but he was probably right. The military was going to be at least a minor antagonist. We might as well accept it.
Kitty Lincoln certainly didn't mind involving the military. She was using the telephone in the owners’ suite. She had the speakerphone on and was constantly trying to get through to the police or to anyone else who might be able to help, but no matter what she tried, all she would get was a recording from the military telling us to stay in place.
“I don't understand,” she said. “Don't they know that there were some normal people in here, not just those freaks?”
It became clear that Carousel wanted us to play this as if we didn't know what a zombie was or even what an infection was. The NPCs were talking about this like it was some sort of terrorist attack, where the thousands of zombies in the stands and out on the field were just extremists of some kind.
“Maybe this is judgment day,” Kitty said.
“If so, you read a different Bible than I did,” Isaac said. “I'm pretty sure that judgment day affects more than just the people trapped in a racetrack.”
He was doing a good job of beating down all of her suggestions with humor. That was, after all, the comedian's job. We didn't want her getting extremist herself if we could help it.
“I got it,” Camden said, after he twisted enough wires and smacked enough pieces of electronics together for Carousel to allow his invention to work.
I walked back over to where he was working. Wires and tools covered the table.
“I thought you said they were blocking our signals from getting out.”
Honestly, I was hoping not to dwell on that because I wasn't sure if it made sense for radio.
“Well, they can't block this one,” he said.
He brought a small radio mouthpiece up to his face and pressed the button on it. “Hawk's Nest, this is Mississippi Kite, looking to roost.”
The rest of us looked at each other because whatever we were expecting him to say, it wasn't that.
For a moment, there was no response.
“Mississippi Kite, this is Hawk's Nest. Can you give us an egg count?” a voice came over the other end of the radio.
I didn't know how much of this was improvised by Camden, but it was really helping maximize the comedic aspects of the storyline.
“Twenty. Forty. H-six niner,” Camden said into the microphone, casting a glance up at me.
“Camden, is that you?” a voice called back. A different voice than the original one. “I didn't think I'd hear from you ever again.”
“I didn't think I'd be making contact ever again,” Camden said. “But I'm in a little bit of a fix.”
“Well, damn. Last I heard, you were retired. What kind of fix could you be in?” the other voice asked.
“I retired to working a cushy security job at Carousel Motor Speedway,” Camden said, letting the name of his employer hang in the air.
“That's some bad luck,” the voice on the other side said. He clearly knew something bad was happening.
“Do you know something about this? Do you have any contacts in the Department of Defense?” Camden asked.
By now, pretty much everyone in the room was gathered around to listen.
“Camden, buddy, you're in a bit of a pickle if you're inside that stadium,” the man on the other end said.
“I've noticed. What's going on?”
There was no answer at first.
“Damn it, Jeremy. I've got some scared people here, and I'm starting to be scared myself. Tell me what's going on. You owe me,” Camden repeated.
Camden had a background trope that gave him some strange, mysterious security clearance, somehow related to the storyline. He was using it to get military intelligence.
“Camden,” this Jeremy person Camden had made up said, “when you were on the job, did you ever hear anything about the Tactical Outbreak Mitigation Bureau?”
“Sure. They clean up oil spills and coordinate with the CDC when malaria breaks out.”
There was another pause on the other end.
“Well, not exactly,” Jeremy said. “That may be the story they leave behind, but that's not what they do.”
Camden let that hang in the air for a bit before asking for clarification. “What is it that they do then?” he asked.
“Well, whatever it is that's going on inside that stadium, I don't know, and I don't want you to tell me, but let's just say a year from now, people are going to say it was smallpox or an outbreak of diseased mosquitoes. Whatever it actually is, they're there to clean it up and contain it.”
“What does he mean by contained?” Kitty asked, alarmed.
Camden did not repeat her question.
“Tell me that we have somebody inside that organization who can talk to you,” Camden said. “It might be valuable to them to know that they have an asset on the inside.”
“A retired asset,” Jeremy said.
“Not today,” Camden said.
Jeremy laughed.
“I'll look into it,” he said. “You hang in there. I don't know what's going on, but they've grounded all air traffic over Carousel. They don't want anyone looking inside that stadium.”
“No,” Camden said. “No, they wouldn't want that.”
Outside, a roving herd of zombies was walking past. One of the zombies, a leader of sorts, was calling out, “Yoseph. Yoseph, come here,” without really understanding what she was saying. Her screams were mimicked by the zombies around her as they all converged on her.
“It's like a school of fish,” Ramona said.
“Something like that,” I said.
It was certainly coordination. One zombie was dumb, but what about a thousand?
More zombies crawled out from under the stands and out onto the track as the group spread around. Searching. Searching. Searching.
Eventually, they would find what they were looking for.
