Chương 451: Book Nine, Chapter 8: Coordinated Effort

All I could do was watch as the zombie plague overtook the Speedway. The attacks were relentless but never particularly cruel. The infected didn't act like raging murderers, which is often the case with viruses like this, such as in The Crazies, but instead they almost acted like it was a children's game. Okay, maybe not a children's game, but something like that. They matched the energy and tenacity of every human they tried to infect.

Humans with the instinct to curl into a ball rather than run or fight were the ones who lasted the longest. In fact, they lasted until they eventually decided to run. If a human fought back, the infected, the Sleep Talkers, as they were called on the red wallpaper, would take it as an invitation to surround them and go in for a bite. But they were never tearing off chunks of flesh. They weren't eating. They were infecting, biting through the skin and then biting somewhere else.

Instead of large wounds or rotting flesh, these zombies were transformed with broken blood vessels in their eyes and face, with fingertips worn down to the nub, to the point that they bled, with bitten noses and chunks of hair pulled right out of the scalp. But in truth, the violence by itself wasn't even the worst part. It was the talking. Whenever one of the scared humans yelled at them or tried to reason with them, the zombies would respond. But they weren't starting conversations.

They didn't seem to understand what was being said to them, and they weren't trying to convey information, as far as I could tell. They just talked back, and the things they said were so mundane I found it legitimately creepy.

"Back off," one large man said, wagging a foam finger at his pursuer.

"I have to pick up Monica after school," one of his attackers said.

"It's a hot one out here, don't you think?" another one said.

"Welcome to Eternal Savers Club, where you can have whatever you want," said a third. But it wasn't like they were actually saying those things. It was like a call from an animal. They weren't enunciating it correctly. They weren't emphasizing anything. They didn't ask questions like they were questions. It was as if there was information stored inside their sick brains that got accessed and repeated by whatever herd mimicry instincts the sleep talkers had.

The victims talked to them, so they talked back in these calm, not quite human manners of speaking. Luckily, I was high up in the tower, so I didn't have to hear much of that, but I observed it. The radio was going crazy with people calling for help. Luckily, our On-Screen and Off-Screen channels and Camden's security line were preserved. Movies have a long tradition of favoring the good guys when it comes to radios, as long as they're used to facilitate the storytelling rather than to assist the plot.

While Carousel was filming all of this, we were Off-Screen for long periods on the spotter's tower. The other spotters and their assistants were freaking out, making sure that the entrance to the tower remained closed even as NPCs begged to be allowed up.

"Did you get bit?" I asked Ramona.

"Yes and no," she said as she rolled up the sleeve of her dress to reveal a shallow bite mark. At first, I didn't know exactly what she was saying until I realized the position of the bite looked like she had done it herself.

"Are you nuts?" I asked.

"I was Off-Screen," she said.

"Nobody saw. I'm going to say someone in the crowd did it before you got to me." I looked up at her, and at first, I was a little freaked out because they say being able to bite yourself until you bleed is impossible unless you're insane. But I realized that wasn't a productive line of questioning, so I dropped it.

"An improvisation," I said. She nodded.

"Look," she said, "I volunteered to be First Blood, but when I started seeing those zombies in the crowd, the thought of them tearing me to pieces, or whatever they were going to do, was too much. So I figure I'll just improvise it. That's not too much to ask." I looked her in the eye, and I could tell that she was upset and scared. Who wouldn't be? We die all the time, but if there was an opportunity to make your death a little less miserable, who wouldn't take it?

"So you keep the wound hidden from everyone except the audience until you eventually turn," I said.

"All right. Now I know." It wasn't too much of a stretch as far as improvisations go. In a zombie movie, hiding a bite is super common, especially during the phase before you know for certain what spreads the disease. Not that we were going to be able to play dumb for too long after watching the massacre below us. If she wanted to be spared the torture that all these people were going through by improvising an Off-Screen bite, how could I blame her?

"This is good," I said. I didn't know if I should say any more. At the end of the day, it was her decision, and she had already gone through with it. Stolen story; please report. Besides, I had bigger things to worry about. I took my binoculars, and I looked out at the track where Antoine had squeezed a very docile Kimberly into his race car. Even though there wasn't a seat in there for her, there was enough room to put a person. Now he was out on the field doing his best to evade the zombies while On-Screen.

It was probably for the best. Later, he might have to pancake some of those poor souls, but if he did it from the get-go, it would make him look too callous. On-Screen. It looked like Carousel wanted me to talk to Antoine, so I pushed the button on my headset and said, "You have some clearance to the north on the far side of the lake. These things don't seem too smart. I wonder if they'll dive on into the water instead of going around it."

"Copy," he said.

"I'll give it a shot." He drove over to the decorative "lake" that was in the infield, absolutely tearing up the grass, and quickly went around the outside of it. A mob of zombies that was forming on the field followed him, and sure enough, instead of going around, they decided to swim across. That was useful information. I stood up from my seat and gradually walked forward. Ramona and Danny followed me. Carousel was ready for the spotter's tower scene, and we had to be too.

"Just keep evading them," I said.

"Find your way back to the pit lane when you can. Some of the others are holed up in the garage."

"I'll try my best," Antoine said. And just as the mass conversion ended underneath the stands and in the open areas where the crowds had tried to flee, the carnage began up in the spotter's tower. It was just as I predicted. One of the spotters cried out as a zombie, who had climbed up through the structure of the tower underneath, sank its teeth into his Achilles tendon. The metal lattice of the stands was just big enough to get a small zombie through. Some openings were even bigger.

This zed had brought friends with him. Zombies started to crawl out from beneath the bleacher-style seats and absolutely ravage the NPCs who had been hiding there with us. Ramona, Danny, and I were safe because we had gone up toward the front of the tower seating where there was no access for those climbing below. But that wouldn't save us once they had made it up through the stands and could just walk down to us where we stood. A couple of NPCs had gotten wise and joined us.

By no coincidence at all, they were the only NPCs who had both first and last names on the red wallpaper. Garrett Pike, who worked security and held a gun but only fired the occasional bullet when someone got really close, had moved away from the entrance after seeing that the section we were standing on was the safest from those climbing up beneath us. Marilyn Tobey didn't have a gun, but she did have a taser. She was a hardened older woman who looked more annoyed than scared.

They were both welcome additions to the party.

"We need to climb down," Garret said.

"I bet we could make that free fall. What is that, just ten feet?" That was a conservative estimate, but I was betting we could make it too. If we climbed over the railing on the front, we would be able to drop down onto the grandstands below. I would hate to be in this position in real life, but with even the slightest amount of Grit, it was survivable in Carousel.

"Riley, are you still on the spotter's tower?" a voice came over my headset. It was Camden.

"Not for long," I said.

"We're being overrun."

"It was the same at the security office," he said.

"We had to escape through a window. Most of us didn't make it. Can you see me? I'm out by the security building across the track." I turned with my binoculars and quickly looked to see Camden and a small group of NPCs hiding behind a bush, wary of a group of zombies who were seemingly patrolling the area in the front of the building. We weren't to the phase where the newly infected had all risen from their feverish comas.

In fact, most of those who had been infected in this wave were still lying on the ground twitching, being completely ignored by the zombies, either out of some instinct to keep their newly infected alive or simply because they were no longer moving and thus no longer interesting. But that wasn't to say there weren't enough of them to make travel dangerous.

"Just a second," I said.

"I have an idea. You have to do what I say when I say it. You got me?"

"I've got you," Camden said.

"We're on our way to you." Knowing that radios followed no sort of logic, I immediately pressed the button on my headset and said, "Antoine, you hear that?"

"I heard it, but I can't fit any more people in here," he said.

"I don't need you to. Here's what I want you to do. Drive around the track slowly, just about human running speed. We're gonna come out to meet you, and I want you to keep your vehicle between the attackers and us. You understand? You need to block for us."

"I'm on it," he said as he gunned his engine, moving closer to us and losing all the zombies that had been following him while he was driving at a snail's pace. He was on his way over to us.

"That's our cue," I said.

"For what?" Ramona said.

"We gotta go down there to meet him," I said as I began climbing over the rail. We were seconds from being overrun if we stayed. Danny and the new folks, Marilyn and Garrett, quickly followed. Ramona shook her head and did as I said. The zombies had now made their way up from beneath the stands and were finishing off the other spotters, who had all tried to flee in different directions, including opening the gate that had once protected us from those in the grandstands.

I looked over and tried to time things so we could get down into the stands, climb down, and jump out onto the field right as Antoine was passing.

"Now," I said. And we all fell. It was more than ten feet, and we didn't exactly manage to land on our feet, but as we stumbled forward down the bleachers, none of us were injured except for Garrett, who seemed to have broken his leg or hurt his bum knee. I didn't really check. I just knew he was limping and grimacing. To tell the truth, I didn't mind having a hobbled meat shield with us as much as I hated thinking about another person that way.

I myself managed to fall almost all the way down the stands, head over foot. I stood up and acted for a moment like I was sore, but then I stretched and quickly dropped the act because I didn't want to seem feeble on camera. Thanks to movie magic, Ramona, Marilyn, and Danny were just fine, although Ramona was rubbing her arm.

"Did you hit it on something?" I asked.

"Yeah, I hit it on the edge of the seat over there," she said.

"I'm fine. Nothing's broke." I nodded as if I wasn't suspicious at all of her mysterious injury, and then we all, as a group, turned to run down the remains of the stands and jump over the barrier wall to make it out onto the track just as Antoine was passing. He slowed down a bit so we could keep pace with the car as the zombies on the field rushed toward us. The plan worked.

They were so distracted by the car that they didn't try to go around it to get to us, and as we picked up speed, we left some of them behind. The hardest part was the track's incline. I didn't realize how slanted those roads were. We managed to move without falling only by the grace of our Hustle. Garrett Pike managed to keep up with us, although it was clearly causing him a lot of pain.

Antoine continued to stay between us and any zombies that tried to make it go in our direction as we made our way toward the security building, where Camden and his group of NPC survivors were waiting. We were still in the party phase, as the zombies were being dispersed, so I thought we would get lucky and our plans would work out pretty well until later on. But then again, I wouldn't be surprised if Carousel decided to throw a curveball.