Chương 450: Book Nine, Chapter 7: Pandemic

The key was not panicking, and to their credit, most of the crowd got that. They stood still with their hands on their head or over their mouths as they watched the smoke clear from the wreck. The entire race track was silent except for the dull roar of those few cars that idled in the distance, but somehow, they even seemed quiet. My heart was beating, my eyes searching for what was going to happen next. I expected a rampage. You don't just see one zombie.

Once they're revealed, you see dozens, or at least that's what I thought. But where were they? Where was the herd? The stampede? Even from my vantage point on high, I couldn't spot them. I saw hardly any movement except for the emergency crews running toward the wreck. I immediately hit the button on my headphones so I could talk to Kelsey. She was somewhere in that pile-up, although I knew she wasn't in the danger zone. My character might not.

"Kelsey, talk to me," I said.

"I'm okay," she said.

"Just waiting it out. Did you see what happened?"

"I saw it," I said. I continued watching until the smoke cleared and I could see that red-and-white Wimpaway Bandage car.

"I have eyes on you," I said. She was On-Screen and Off-Screen for a few moments at a time, but she wasn't the major focus. I had to be careful what I said. Once I got a good lock on her with the binoculars and I saw that she was Off-Screen, I motioned for Danny to cut his filming for just a bit so I could talk to her a little more freely.

"Stay close to the action for a moment so you can get some good reactions. Things are going to get hectic soon, I'm sure," I said.

"As soon as they do, I want you to take that exit to the left you've got between the yellow car and the black one and get out of there, On-Screen. Be ready to improvise. We're not getting out of this without some defensive driving. I hope you're ready."

"Gotcha," she said.

"Defensive driving is the only driving I know." I trusted that she would be okay. She was safe, narratively speaking, at least for a little while. I needed to think. The zombie showing up this soon was not a disaster. Nothing was going wrong. At the end of the day, they did have a trope that explicitly stated a zombie apocalypse was a setting. The bed bugs from Itch had the same trope. That meant the outbreak wasn't actually the emergency it looked and felt like.

We just had to let the transition be graceful, but I also wanted to get some footage of the before-and-after. I wanted to get eyes on things.

"Danny, you stay here with this radio," I said.

"Film the crowd. Try to get as much footage as you can, and don't stop recording. If I tell you to leave and come find me, well, obviously, that's what you do."

"I can handle myself," he said calmly.

"You don't have to worry about me."

"That's good to know," I said.

"I assume that you've seen the vulnerabilities of the spotter's tower." He glanced down at the stands we were sitting on, more specifically at the gaps between them and the structure beneath.

"That's right," I said.

"If push comes to shove, they're climbing up here. It doesn't matter if we can gate off the entrance or not. The safest place is up front because there's that lip they can't climb directly up, and the ground is covered, so they can't crawl beneath the stands. But I imagine there's going to be some ankle biters climbing up through the structure below at some point in time." Danny nodded in agreement. There were enough metal struts and crossbars underneath the seats that some zombies would be able to climb on up.

It wasn't safe, but if you knew the danger, there was a part of your brain that made you feel like you were safe anyway. It was a weakness of the human mind, but for a moment, I embraced it so I could free up my mind to think about other things.

"I'm going down to scout things out," I said.

"I have to go alone. If anything starts acting up around that path, where I'm going, tell me over the radio. There's something weird about these zombies." He stared at me and smiled.

"There's always something new in Carousel," he said.

"Try not to get bit." I nodded and then quickly moved my way to the stairs on the side of the tower. There was a gate, so it was a defensible location, at least for a time. I could already see the scene playing out in my mind as the spotters and other survivors felt safe up in the tower for a moment before the zombies started grabbing their ankles from beneath the seats.

I couldn't bring Danny with me because, unfortunately, having a dedicated cameraman who wasn't me was counter-synergistic with Oblivious Bystander. At the end of the day, the audience might be able to accept that I am not paying enough attention to see the bad guy creeping up on me, but if there's a guy there filming it, they're going to wonder why he's not saying anything. So I took to the stands and then climbed down to the crowd below. People were handling it quite well.

There had been wrecks in the history of racing. It was something nobody wanted to see, or at least they didn't want to admit they wanted to see it. I could see people praying that everyone was safe and uninjured. It was a good group of people. They didn't deserve what was about to happen to them. I wondered if these were the same NPCs that, in some world on the far-distant edge of the multiverse, had been victims of the technopathic alien pencil shavings that turned all the machines into raging robots.

If so, it would probably be quite jarring to wake up in a dream state where, instead of giant rampaging alien robots, you were beset by rage zombies. At the end of the day, it didn't do the mind any good to focus on NPCs' perspectives. It would bum you out. Luckily, I had a perfectly valid excuse to be wearing headphones. I didn't even have to pull mine out of my pocket. I could just wear the big ones that fit over my ears and constantly played a little bit of radio static.

Since there was a microphone attached, I could be talking into it if I wanted. That, combined with the noisier crowd under the stands, meant Oblivious Bystander was at its strongest. Was it strong enough to prevent me from getting attacked by zombies? I didn't know, but since we weren't quite at First Blood yet, I still had time. The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

The people below the stands were much like those above, very somber, although most of them were trying to buy beverages or watching the various TVs set up along the walkway beneath the stadium seats, which broadcast footage of the wreck. I tried looking to see if there were any zombies around. It was a silly thought because surely if some fast zombie were mixed in this crowd, I would see or hear evidence of it, but I didn't get any of that. Not with my eyes, at least. There were zombies mixed in.

Perhaps one out of every ten people registered as a zombie on the red wallpaper, and if I watched their behavior long enough, it would be clear that this was some sort of dazed infected monster, but it wasn't the monster I had seen in Twenty-Eight Days Later or any other zombie flick with similar creatures. The zombies were super chill. For a moment, I thought maybe this was just a pure comedy because these zombies were walking in crowds, drinking from water fountains, standing around, staring at the television.

I was absolutely amazed. The only explanation I could think of was that they just weren't fully infected yet, but that didn't seem right either from the way they were moving. These weren't undead zombies. They were sick people. I knew that, but still, they acted too calmly. And then it struck me what was happening as I watched a zombie near one of the pretzel stands repeatedly press a big plunger on a yellow mustard dispenser.

He took turns with customers who would come by and squirt mustard on their hot dog or their pretzel, but after they left, he would squirt the mustard. He wasn't even looking at it when he did it. He was just copying what the people were doing. He was imitating them. If no one came up and got mustard or ketchup, he wouldn't press the plunger. It was only when he saw someone else do it that he would immediately copy them, squirting the yellow condiment out onto the ground.

As I looked around at the other zombies, I noticed that they were doing the same thing. They were blending in incredibly well because they were copying the humans around them. Not intelligently, but in a crowd of people, how intelligent do you have to be to blend in? Large swaths of people moved beneath the stadium, almost like a herd. It's what people do in big events like this. At Disneyland, concerts, or even the mall. They had herd instincts.

People were talking about the event that they had just seen out on the track, staring up at televisions, and the zombies stared too, their mouths moving as they quietly repeated what they heard around them. Their eyes were dead, their eyelids not even fully open, as if they were sleepwalking, and yet they mimicked those around them to such a degree that most people didn't seem to notice there was something weird going on.

While this was definitely preferable to violence, it was something so alien to me as a film buff that it disturbed me. I couldn't acknowledge that I saw any of this. I was On-Screen a fair amount of time because every once in a while, Oblivious Bystander would activate when I walked too close to a zombie, and they looked over at me for a split second. They were thinking about taking a chunk out of my neck, but their better instincts prevailed, and they just went along with the crowd.

I continued walking as if I was heading toward the overpass so I could go back to the pit lane. As I did, I reached down to the radio on my belt and switched it to the channel Camden had shown me for the security line.

"Hey, Camden, how are things looking from your end?" I was On-Screen, and I assumed he was too, as the camera traded back and forth between us.

"I'm a little busy right now," he said. He was trying to tell me he was On-Screen. We had worked out a few little problems, like knowing whether you could break character over a radio before.

"I imagine that's right," I said.

"Are you down there at the site of the accident?"

"No," he said.

"Look, I can't talk right now. Something weird is happening. The military is outside. I'll reach out to you in a bit." He must have been busy busy, or else he would have hinted that I needed to get to where he was. I changed my channel back to the dedicated On-Screen channel we had chosen, and as I did so, I interrupted midway through a message from Antoine. It was one I had heard before.

"Does anyone know where Kimberly is?" he asked. It really was weird that we hadn't seen her yet, and seeing as keeping her alive, infected or otherwise, was basically the goal of the rescue, we really did need to get eyes on her. Luckily, since no one had any clue where she was, the truth was flexible.

"I got a glimpse of her over at the Winner's Circle," I said.

"She's working with some of the reporters down there. I imagine she's a bit distracted at the moment." It was a little piece of improvisation, but I felt pretty confident it would work. There was no good reason for Carousel to keep Kimberly from us, and if there was, I was sure that it could find a way to tell us. As I walked along, I noticed that the crowd became thicker and thicker. The only reason was that there was an exit up ahead, but somehow, a traffic jam had developed.

There was a big, heavy iron fence that separated the speedway from the surrounding land. I could see that the giant gate that was the main entrance to the speedway was closed. They weren't letting people out. I knew where that was going. I could almost feel the tension growing in the crowd, and if the zombies were imitating the people, what would happen when the people started to panic?

"Hey, Danny," I said after switching to the Off-Screen channel we had chosen.

"Switch over to On-Screen." He did as asked because when I switched back to the On-Screen channel and started talking, he was there to hear me. I didn't know if Carousel was going to film our conversation, but the On-Screen channel on the radio was more of a "stay-in-character" channel.

"Hey, Dan," I said.

"Can you tell me why there's a big crowd up by the exit?" There was a pause on the other end before he answered.

"I think I see a military blockade," he said.

"That's what it is. I swear they've got trucks backed up. They're dumping bags of sand next to the gate so it won't swing open. They've been blockading the entrance for a while. Most of the crowd never made it inside." He was a good actor. He sounded very worried and surprised. I could feel what was coming in the air. I needed to reach a relatively safe zone and get my teammates into position as well. I switched to the Off-Screen channel and said, "We need to accelerate our paranoia.

Close the garage doors and disable them. Draw in on defensive positions, but don't panic and don't say the Z word." I started making my way back to the spotter's tower quickly when I ran into none other than Ramona. I could tell she was getting nervous. It was almost her time to shine. I almost felt guilty that I didn't want her around me when it was time for it to happen. As I got close to her, I went On-Screen because she was.

"Do you know what's happening?" she asked.

"No one will tell me anything, and Cassie keeps saying that I should just calm down."

"Something weird's going on with the military," I said.

"There are army trucks outside. They're blocking off the exits. Explains the small crowd. Come with me. You don't want to be down here when the rioting starts." I reached out and grabbed her hand, and she grabbed mine as we walked forward, back toward the spotter's tower. People started to get more restless, which meant the zombies were, too. Oblivious Bystander was firing off left and right. I didn't get any major tag-alongs, but some zombies seemed interested for a bit at least. I just ignored them.

Luckily, Ramona didn't point anything out, if she noticed it. We were up the steps to the spotter's tower when the screaming started. People poured over one of the barrier walls near where the accident had been and began racing out toward the crowd of drivers and emergency workers. I closed the gate at the top of the tower stairs. I wasn't sure how useful it would be, but at least it was heavy and had a lock. I made my way back to where Danny was waiting for me nervously.

I took the binoculars and stared out at the wreckage. The smoke had cleared, and the zombie infections were about to start. Luckily, Kelsey had done exactly as I asked and gotten back to the pit lane so she could go hole up in the garages with Anna and Antoine. Unfortunately, Antoine called an audible as soon as Kelsey was out of the race car. He was back in it. The tires were squealing, and he was headed his way toward the Winner's Circle, where I told him Kimberly was.

I quickly glanced ahead to see if she really was there amongst a crowd of people. She seemed a bit out of it. I didn't see her face for more than a second, but I knew what I was looking at. She was already infected. To top things off, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Ramona seemed to be nursing her forearm. She was doing it repeatedly right in front of me, like she wanted me to see, but couldn't tell me because we were On-Screen at the moment. It was as if she had gotten some strange wound there.

Things were already getting hectic, but First Blood was still a few scenes away.