Dead and Dead Again: Kansas City Quarantine Read online

  Dead and Dead Again:

  Kansas City Quarantine

  By

  Dalton Wolf

  Copyright Dalton Wolf © January 2016

  Cover Illustration by Matias Trabold Rehren~aka Zicuta

  [email protected]

  zicuta.deviantart.com

  Cover Illustration Copyright held by Dalton Wolf

  All rights reserved

  FIRST KINDLE EDITION

  2016

  Copyright Note:

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the copyright holder, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

  Legal Disclaimer:

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Additional Disclaimer

  The information in this book is meant to supplement, not replace, proper zombie survival training. Like any activity involving speed, equipment, balance and environmental factors, Zombie Survival poses some inherent risk. The authors and publisher advise all readers to take full responsibility for their safety and know their physical and mental limits and to be aware of their real-world skill-level with selected weapons before placing themselves or their families in jeopardy. Before practicing the skills described in this book, be sure that your equipment is well maintained and do not take risks beyond your level of experience, aptitude, training and comfort level.

  Table of Contents

  An Innocent Flight

  Shadow over the Parade

  Doctor of Death

  Boomer and Brick

  Lucy and Lola

  El Supremo and the Alley Shufflers

  Of Knights, Armor and Friendship

  Don’t count your Zombies until they’re Dead

  Geeks and Goddesses

  Into the Northland

  The Toy Master

  The Red Tower

  The Liberty Memorial

  It’s Always Faster Coming Down

  A Touch of Madness

  Two Smiths

  City of Fountains

  The Plaza

  Nightmare within a Nightmare

  Let’s go to the Mall, Today

  Goodbye Doctor Death

  Raytown: My Hometown

  Meet the Rosenthals

  Some Must Fall

  S.O.S

  Cowboys and Zombies

  Confessions

  Escape from Kansas City

  Pitchforks, Torches and other Bad Decisions

  Agro and Bio Defense

  Flight to the Wall

  In the occasion of Human events, when a person or group experiences a protracted era of extreme good fortune, an equally potent cycle of bad fortune will be hovering just over the horizon, like a bad storm waiting to release its unwelcome torrent on unsuspecting victims. This cycle can affect cities, nations and entire civilizations. ~Translated Mayan Quote

  Sometimes shit just happens.

  ~Anonymous American

  An Innocent Flight

  Somewhere over the Midwestern United States a plain white Gulfstream G750ER sailed through the crisp morning skies with all the grace and beauty of a majestic eagle on the hunt. Within the luxurious passenger cabin most of the roar created by the 17,000 force-pounds of her twin Rolls Royce engines was drowned out by carefully-layered, sound-defeating insulation. Other than some quiet easy listening music, the cabin was as peaceful as a library. Including her two military pilots, seven individuals occupied the roomy jet. Two doctors sat comfortably in their padded seats, one animatedly chatting with a technician and a Nurse Practitioner while the other, a gray bearded man in his sixties, stared blankly ahead, lost in thought. All four wore flat white lab coats over colored scrubs, the classic décor of doctors and scientists on the job. The two women were clad in pink and purple scrubs, while both men had chosen a bland light blue. A military nurse in camouflage scrubs sat in a side-facing seat up closer to the cockpit. He had remained at eyes-forward for the entire flight.

  “Doctor MacGreggor, the plane seems to be turning,” the pretty blue-eyed blonde assistant the Institute had provided informed the gray haired doctor stiffly, nervously sliding her hands down her sides and flattening her lab coat for the third time before leaning across him to stare out the window.

  The not-quite-elderly doctor had been mentally running through procedures and plans and found it difficult to pull his thoughts back to the present until the woman invaded his personal space. A faint aroma of fruits and flowers from her long golden hair floated up to his nostrils, but it was the sight of two fleshy mounds trapped within a peach, lacy bra jiggling before his eyes from some minor turbulence that jerked his brain back to the present. Good God, woman. I’m old, not dead, he mused silently.

  Something she’d said had set off an alarm in his memories, but it was vague and fleeting. Apparently even his subconscious had been daydreaming this time. When his eyes finally moved up to meet the lovely blues of the tech, they found a question waiting in an upturned eyebrow, an unspoken desire for…something.

  “I’m sorry, my dear, could you repeat that?”

  “The plane,” she pointed out the window. “It’s turning. Look.”

  “What? That’s impossible,” announced the man confidently, his immaculately groomed gray beard darting back and forth as he looked from the woman to the window. But a deliberate and decided tilt of the plane argued emphatically against the impossible, as did the quickly repositioning panorama out the window.

  “Never-the-less, it is happening, sir.”

  “No, no. We are on a carefully designed flight path that takes us away from any populated areas. There is no need and certainly no room for adjustments.”

  “There’s a city out there just off the left side,” she informed him, still leaning over.

  The doctor felt the heat rise to his cheeks and knew it was from more than the scent of peaches and something unquestionably sweet wafting up from her inviting cleavage. If only I were twenty years younger, he lamented. But even forty year old me could not ignore protocols just to dally with a lovely. Damn!

  “Pilot!” he shouted, jumping up and running forward, white coat flowing behind him like a cape.

  “You!” the doctor pointed to the armed military nurse sitting across the aisle. “Get that noise-maker out and follow me!” The officer pulled out his side arm and both men darted up the short aisle in single file.

  “Pilot!” the doctor shouted again, approaching the cabin. “What the devil are you doing?”

  He exploded through the golden curtain as a cluster of twenty or thirty skyscrapers tilted into view outside the windshield, a pair of rivers running through and meeting at the heart of its industrial area.

  Kansas City; must be, MacGreggor thought, correctly.

  “I’m sorry, Doctor. I was just getting ready to call you. We’ve been showing an overheat in engine two and engine one is nearing maximum tolerance. I had to back down both engines to lessen the strain, but the numbers are staying significantly higher than specs allow for.”

  “Those for which the specs allow,” the doctor corrected.

  The pilot ignored him and pushed on. “That usually means a cooling problem. I’m going to stop at the downtown airport in KC and get it looked at.”

  “No, no, no. We can’t stop. This has to be a non-stop flight. Don’t you know what we’re carrying? No stops. Return to the plotted course.”

  “We can’t f
ly if our engines burn out.”

  “How did you even get this job? Didn’t they go over this before we left? We can’t afford to let this plane anywhere near the civilian population. There are people out there who would love to get their hands on what is in these containers, and any accident could be catastrophic. A public airport is the worst case scenario.”

  “This isn’t KC International Airport, Doctor. This one is just a small airport.”

  “I can see with my own eyes that it is right in the middle of a major metropolitan area!” the doctor shouted back, pointing out the windshield straight ahead.

  “Calm down, Doctor. Charles B. Wheeler is practically a government airport. They have full government facilities. Military, government and diplomatic planes along with their support equipment go through here all the time. They’ve got what we need and they’re used to special protocols.”

  “There must be another option.”

  “No, sir. Lt. Gibbons is giving them instructions to clear us a hanger.”

  “I do not think you understand the level of insulation we need between ourselves and the general populace when we transport these samples.”

  “Look, Doc. I’m sure you’re good at what you do. That’s why you’ve got that high clearance that lets you tell me where to go and what to do without filing flight plans. But I want you to understand that I’m really good at flying planes. I know how to keep them in the air and I know when they’re about to fall out of that air. I’ve been doing this since I was fourteen and I can tell you with ninety-five percent certainty that if we don’t get this problem fixed right now, we won’t reach our destination.”

  “What I’m saying is that perhaps it would be better that we crash in the middle of barren wilderness than come anywhere near a populated city. Get us out of here. Now!”

  “There is no barren wilderness in this part of the Midwest, Doctor. Anyplace we go down, civilians will find us before any of our people can. At least here we get to dictate the circumstances.”

  The doctor thought for a few minutes, but the captain appeared most adamant about their danger. “I don’t like this.”

  “Doc, I’m paid to get you there in one piece or go down in flames to keep the civs safe. This isn’t a panic decision. We’ve thought it all out. I’m making a controlled landing at a working airport that has facilities to help us out. I am making this decision to avoid an inevitable crash in the suburbs. But if you want us to crash instead…” he sighed. “There’s nothing but this metropolis, small cities and moderately populated countryside almost all the way to our destination. Just think how bad a crash in any of those areas could be. We’ll get her fixed up and be out of here in no time. Trust me.”

  The doctor eyed the dark-haired pilot speculatively for a few heartbeats. “Fine. Well enough. It sounds as if this is the only safe choice unless you have a self-destruct button located somewhere on that panel.”

  “Sorry, Doctor,” the man apologized.

  “You know the parameters we need?”

  “Yes, sir. Gibbons there has already transmitted them.”

  “Very Well. I’d better go make sure our cargo is locked down.”

  “Thanks, Doctor. Makes my skin crawl knowing it’s on the same plane as me.”

  “You’re lucky. Most drivers don’t even know what they’ve got in their hold when we move this stuff.”

  “I regret more and more each day that they decided we need to know the contents to ensure we perform the proper protocols.”

  “Ignorance is bliss, isn’t it?”

  “It is, Doctor MacGreggor. It really is.”

  Beep. Beep.Beep.

  “What’s that?” the doctor pointed, a hint of concern soiling his impeccable English as he eyed the blinking lights popping up all over the control panel.

  “Engine failure on one,” the co-pilot announced, hitting the fire suppressor switch. “Flame out. Probably got it fast enough. Fire suppressors have put the fire out.”

  The two pilots shared a significant look before both went into a frenzied state to hunt down the problem, each now clearly more worried about just keeping the plane in the air than mere safety protocols.

  “Run the checks.”

  “Bill, two is lit up. We’re gonna lose her.”

  “Shit. We’re not even half way around the city, we’re gonna have to cut across downtown to finish this turn and get down fast.”

  “We might be gliding it in,” the co-pilot informed him in a strained, trembling voice. “Oh, man., Colonel, we’re losing shit all over the board. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

  “Easy, Gibbons. I’ve seen everything before, that’s why I’m here. I’ve got this.”

  “Sorry, Colonel.”

  “It’s ok. That’s why they put you with me, Noob. Doc, you better go back there and get everyone locked in. This might get rough real quick,” the captain said in a rush. “And if you have any pull with the man upstairs, now is the time to make the calls.”

  “Send the Failsafe codes,” the doctor ordered.

  “Message?” asked the co-pilot.

  “Give the fail code. Spilled milk. Status unknown until further contact. MacGreggor has the carton,” the doctor ordered.

  “Roger that, Doctor.” Despite the troubles he faced keeping the flight in the air, the co-pilot transmitted a pre-arranged emergency voice code…

  “Charlie Delta Charlie Zero Zero One. Priority Flash. NBAFCOM. Protocol Eleven. Kansas City: Possible Code Q.” The co-pilot then stated the doctor’s fail codes and repeated the message until a shaky female voice broke over the other radio traffic.

  “NBAFCOM, Charlie Delta Charlie Zero Zero One. Roger that. Protocol Eleven. Possible Q. What’s your status, Over?”

  “We are making an uncontrolled descent into downtown Kansas City. Oh shit. No time for coordinates, lighting up a ping now. Touching down less than a quarter mile south of Wheeler—”

  * * * * * *

  Eleven hundred miles away in a tiny room two-hundred feet under the sands somewhere in the middle of a desert, a tiny short-haired blonde Air Force Lieutenant just over twenty years old sat by the radio wiping tears away with a uniformed sleeve and desperately trying to restore contact with the missing bird.

  “Charlie Delta Charlie Zero Zero One, do you copy? Over. Charlie Delta Charlie Zero Zero One. Are you receiving? Over.” Please God, let them answer.

  The anxious lieutenant had been trying for three minutes longer than protocol allowed, however. Hope fading like fog after a clear sunrise, she knew it was time to make some calls.

  “Oh my God,” the girl whispered, stifling a whimper. “Oh my fucking God!”

  The phone clicked and a deep, throaty woman grunted something unintelligible into her ear.

  “Colonel Batmouche’?” she spoke haltingly into the phone.

  “Yes?” a woman’s deep, crisp voice snapped.

  “This is Lieutenant Jenson in the NBAFCOM Tower.”

  The tower was actually twenty miles to the south and not at all buried beneath the rolling plains like her bunker was; Jenson hated that no one ever got the irony in that.

  “And?”

  “Ma’am…we have an Interrupted Protocol Eleven with a possible Q code.”

  “Verified?”

  “They sent all the right codes before going dark.”

  “Jesus. Where?”

  “Downtown Kansas City, ma’am.”

  “What the fuck are they doing there?”

  “They had called in an emergency reroute for repairs.”

  “God Damnit! There are no reroutes on Bio Courier Flights.”

  “It was an emergency, Ma’am, I called them off, but their primary used an override code.”

  “But…they’re having a parade today…”

  “Yes, ma’am. A big one. I was watching it on my way in. Oh my God, ma’am. What if…?” the Lt. stifled a sob.

  “You’ve tried to reinitiate contact?”

  “Long
er than I should have, ma’am,” the young officer sniffled. “I’m sorry. Maybe I should have called you first.”

  “No, you’re good. I would have done the same thing. My God, a parade…this could be a worst case.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Are you ok, Lieutenant?”

  “I’m scared, ma’am.”

  “You and me both, Jenson. You know the procedure?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Can you handle it?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Make the calls on my authority. The code to the box is Seven, Five, Three, Two, Nine, Nine, Six. I’ll be there in ten minutes to verify and take command.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” the lieutenant breathed in relief.

  Her frightened eyes stared in at the simple, classic, heavily clichéd red hard-line phone on the end of her desk, the one everyone who had ever sat in this chair prayed daily that no one ever had to pick up, unless they were cleaning it or running a com check. The Lt. took another, deeper breath as reinforcement for the first and entered the code into the black metal box on the edge of the desk and pulled out a red card with codes on it. One shaking hand brought the receiver to her ear and held it there until she got a response.

  “This is Lieutenant Jenson at NBAFCOM. We need to post an alert immediately.”

  “What party?”

  “The top,” she ordered with authority.

  “What is your pass?”

  The lieutenant read off the code on the card in a shaky voice.

  “Holy shit,” came the surprised response. “Ok, we are recording. Give me the status for the Sit Rep.”

  “We have had an Incident in public. The Midwest is compromised…”

  Shadow over the Parade

  The sun shone brightly from an ideal blue blanket that covered the busy metropolis in a dazzling perfection only nature could create. A beautiful late fall day in the Heartland and the biggest parade in history, The Greater Kansas City Sports Appreciation Parade, was in full swing with thousands of floats, bands and convertibles carrying notables, half of whom had no good reason to be there other than the need to be seen and appreciated.