Wheels and Zombies (Book 2): Brooklyn, Wheels and Zombies Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Part one: Undead departures

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Part Two: Wheels

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Part Three: The Lab

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  More

  Brooklyn, Wheels and Zombies

  M. Van

  Brooklyn, Wheels and Zombies

  M. Van

  Copyright © 2015 by M. Van. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events or locales is purely coincidental. Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.

  42Links Publishing

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  www.42Links.net

  Cover design by Shezaad Sudar

  Edited by Book Helpline

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-90-824472-0-0

  Part One

  Undead Departures

  | 1

  Welcome to America, that’s what the sign on the wall read. The red, white, and blue flag swayed with pride behind a beautiful eagle in full flight. I wanted to be that eagle. I wanted to glide beyond the clouds where my next dinner and the friction of the wind would be the only things to worry about. Unfortunately, my life was not a place for wishes, or hope, for that matter.

  Even my hope of getting out of there seemed to be a killer. God, I wanted to get out of there. I’d had enough of dealing with overfriendly, broad-smiling, too-fake hotel employees for too long. All I knew was that this thing had botched my vacation, and I was ready to go home. What did I know? How could I predict my life would never be the same?

  I sat in a makeshift airport infirmary with no chance of catching my flight. We had been forced into a two-by-two room after standing in line, waiting for what seemed like hours for the stupid gates to open, when an oversized, freaked-out customs officer took a bite out of my friend, Emily.

  The man lunged from out of nowhere, yanked Emily down by the arm, and sank his teeth into her skin. Several soldiers had to haul him off her before they slapped him into cuffs. I stood aghast, unable to believe what had happened until someone pointed at my friend. Blood gushed from Emily’s hand, but the wound didn’t seem that bad. When my levelheadedness returned, I grabbed a towel from my backpack, a last-minute souvenir from the hotel, and wrapped her hand. Emily stared at me with glassy eyes, and then her legs buckled. I managed to catch her before she went down. She seemed to go into shock. The tension at the airport had risen to similar levels as the hotel. This freaked-out customs officer had not softened the mood.

  This vacation was supposed to have been a gift from my parents. They’d thought I’d needed time to relax. Although I had wanted to go to Australia, I’d welcomed their offer if only to get away from them. The first day had been okay; we’d seen some of the sights, visited a museum, and eaten at a fine restaurant, but for some reason, without warning, everything had changed. The authorities had forced us to remain at the hotel for the rest of our stay. The military had declared martial law in the city and denied us the ability to leave the premises. Television had disclosed nothing, except for some vague news story about an influenza outbreak. The Internet went from terrorists to rabies with the click of a button.

  Ten days stuck in a hotel that served tension for breakfast hadn’t been my idea of a fun holiday, and relief had washed over me when they announced that tourists would be shipped out. That was me, a tourist from a little country called the Netherlands, known abroad as the land of windmills, wooden shoes, and tulips. Oh, and for some, we apparently were drugged-out maniacs who euthanized their parents when they got too old. I just blinked at that.

  Before the announcement, we’d watched the scenes outside from the windows. Guests had started to get anxious when armored vehicles had cornered the streets. Soldiers had guarded buses, ushering citizens to get on. So many buses that at one point, I’d stopped counting. They had driven on and off, filled to the brim with locals. However, for all who left, others had remained behind. New Yorkers who hadn’t been shipped off yet had watched the departing buses with the same awe as Emily and I had. Their body language had oozed uneasiness of when they had faced the soldiers, the New Yorkers’ arms flailing or held in front of their bodies, begging for information or ways to get onto the buses.

  Could this have been what it had been like after 9/11? What could have spooked New York in any way without it being big on the news? The city had been on lockdown, and it hadn’t taken a genius to recognize something had been very wrong in this place.

  Shortly after the announcement, they had packed my friend, Emily, and me onto one of those buses with a bunch of other tourists and had shipped us off to JFK. Officials had canceled arrivals, but departures had boomed with people. It had seemed as if these officials had tried very hard to get rid of us. I hadn’t cared as long as I was going to get to go home.

  Although the thought of home had had less appeal to me than it once had. It would have thrown me back into reality. A reality where I probably wouldn’t have been able to go back to my job or anything else that resembled a normal life.

  I had lived in and out of hospitals for most of my life but had been doing okay the past couple of years, had even started working for my dad, and although it hadn’t been my dream job, at least it had given me some purpose. No, strike that. I’d hated sitting behind a stupid desk all day, telling others what to do. Unlike my siblings who ran their sister companies exactly how they’d wanted, I’d had the honor of running the electronics department at our company headquarters where my dad could keep an eye on me. Sure, I’d had a high-end job, making deadlines with fifty people counting on me for job security, but compared to my executive brother and sister, I could have been the receptionist. It had been our dad’s way of pointing out that he had been afraid his fragile little girl couldn’t cut it. In the end, it hadn’t mattered; I would never be a part of running that place. I had just hoped that one day I’d be able to run my own life, if I survived beyond the end of this year.

  I narrowed my eyes at Emily’s still frame. She had stared at that same point on the floor since they’d placed us in this room. My gaze drifted to the clock on the wall that confirmed it had been about twenty-five minutes.

  The tiny room fitted its purpose. A stainless steel cart held some first aid essentials, Emily sat on a gurney, and I had confiscated the single chair in the room. Blinds obscured the view to the departure area that lay one floor down,
beneath our feet. The glass had to be thick, given the lack of noise, and it made the room feel isolated. I hoped they hadn’t forgotten about us, because I could have used a cup of coffee. I would wait five more minutes and then go find someone.

  Emily, who I had met about ten years ago as an exchange student at Oxford, looked pale. We had clicked from the moment we’d met as freshers as they say in England at the start of the first year. For our home trip, she had dressed casually in comfortable jeans with a white blouse, and she had her blond hair pulled into a ponytail. We had a long flight ahead of us. She sat unmoving and, most curiously, silent.

  Emily was the type of girl who would chat until your ears fell off. Born in London, she’d been a chatterbox dictionary for my English vocabulary. We had remained friends after my dad had cut his funding and forced me to drop out. Our friendship had thrived on the progress in technology. It hadn’t hurt Dad was a gadget nerd with more money than was good for him who’d provided us with all the latest tech. Emily and I had even watched old episodes of ER via Skype. The long-distant electronic friendship had served my needs perfectly. I had been able to reach Emily when I’d needed to talk to someone and then flip the switch when she’d gotten on my nerves. She had stuck with me through the miseries of my life, though she probably knew I would never return the favor.

  “Em,” I said, “you okay?” She didn’t respond. She cradled her bitten hand in the bloodstained hotel towel. An airport employee had given her something for the pain, but her unresponsiveness made me wonder if that employee might have switched the aspirin for Valium.

  The rattling of the air conditioner over my head, troubled with some serious clogging issues, started to drive me nuts. I rubbed a hand over my almost bare scalp. About a millimeter of fuzzy hair remained after my latest round of treatments. It could take months after the end of chemotherapy for hair to start growing, and mine was in no hurry.

  I sagged down in the chair. My long legs, dressed in cargo pants, lay stretched out on the floor. I tilted my head to watch the erratic flutter of the white ribbon tied to the vent. Then a thud on the door made me jump.

  I sat up to watch the door. The blinds that covered the window swayed in the aftershock. Emily hadn’t reacted at the interruption. I'd just let out the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding and then something that sounded like a scuffle reached our ears from beyond the door. Were those screams? It had to be my imagination. Curious, I stood up to head for the door when I directed my attention to Emily. I placed a hand on her shoulder to shake it.

  “Em,” I said. She didn’t move. A loud bang made me jump again, and I turned to the door. I paused when all sorts of wild scenarios crossed my mind. This was America after all. Instead of opening the door, I pushed the blinds to the side.

  My eyes widened at the sight. I released the blinds, blinked, and moved them again. The image remained the same. I shook my head; it could be some weird aftereffect from the medication I’d taken, but none of the blinking and head shaking changed what I saw.

  The makeshift infirmary was on the first floor down a long hall. Several travel agencies filled the office spaces on one side of it. The other side sported a balcony with an open view of the ground floor plaza. I didn’t know whether plaza was the right English phrase, but that’s what it looked like to me—miles and miles of white stone floors that carried unimaginable amounts of travelers each year. White pillars supported high, rounded ceilings. Rows of check-in desks filled the floor, partitioned off by portable fences to guide passengers into queues.

  The image of the plaza trapped my breath as my lungs became unwilling to release it. What had been a sea of people with thoughts of going home who had tried to avoid each other had turned into a sea of people who flew at each other. Instead of queues guarded by military personnel, a heap of bodies ran up, on, and over each other. Chaos had broken out like the riots I had been lucky enough to have only seen on TV. Between the running and stumbling masses, I saw several lifeless figures sprawled across the floor. From the amount of blood that pooled around their bodies, I assumed them dead. The savage images accompanied by the muffled sounds felt surreal. In places, the white stone floor had turned crimson.

  A woman looked as if she was screaming in victory after she ripped the ear off a man’s head with her teeth. I swallowed at the sight; what was happening? It made me regret skimming those articles about rabies on the net.

  “Em,” I said, my voice tight, “you should come see this.” I stood mesmerized for a minute and watched the scene unfold. Small clusters of soldiers entered the plaza from different sides and opened fire. I winced at the sound of gunfire. The soldiers used an efficient approach by targeting the heads of their victims. They didn’t seem fazed by what they witnessed. People dropped dead without distinction once the soldiers opened fire.

  The soldiers became targets themselves when people, most of them in cheerful summer garments, started to fight back. I might have stood in line with some of them a mere half-hour ago. As their aim faltered, soldiers started to fall victim to the onslaught. Bullets tore into the torso of a man wearing a colorful Hawaiian shirt and ripped out of his back in an explosion of blood. My whole body froze in shock. I kept hoping that someone would yell cut or reset. My heart stopped when the Hawaiian shirt stumbled but didn’t relent. He kept going, barreling forward until a bullet made his brain burst out of the back of his head.

  Hands shaking, I remembered to breathe. Distracted by the unfolding scene, I’d almost forgotten about Emily until a deep, eerie moan filled the room. I swallowed as I shifted my head. Emily remained unmoving. Had she made that sound? A white mist swam across her hazel eyes.

  “Emmm,” I said, drawing out her name. It took a moment, but then Emily opened her mouth. Her jaw stretched as if she used it for the first time. A loud, guttural growl that sounded more fearsome than that of a grizzly bear exited her mouth. I raised an eyebrow, wondering whether it was possible for a frail human being like Emily to make a sound like that. She lifted her chin, sniffing the air, nostrils flaring before her milky white eyes fell on me. My head spun while my stomach sank.

  “Oh, shit,” passed my lips. I shook my head for good measure. Come on, this was not happening. Had she contracted this rabies thing? With a jerky motion, Emily shuffled from the gurney. Her high-heeled boots hit the linoleum with a tap. I pressed into the door, unsure of what to do. My eyes flew over the rest of the room. Emily snapped her jaw opened and closed as her hand reached out to me.

  “Em,” I said in an effort to get through to her. Then I shouted her name, but she didn’t react. In a panic, I grabbed the stainless steel cart and pulled it between us. Something was very wrong here.

  Gunshots on the other side of the door reminded me it wasn’t just in here. Emily, unimpressed by the cart, shuffled toward me. Her weight pressed against the cart, but she didn’t seem as crazy as the people below. A bloodied hand reached for my face. Heart pounding, I forced myself to unfreeze, pushed the cart backward, and kicked it. The momentum sent Emily toppling over the gurney to the other side.

  I glanced through the window. The hall behind the door seemed clear. Confusion roared in my mind when Emily groaned again. She struggled to make her way around the gurney. I shoved it, pinning her to the wall. As I strained to keep the gurney in place—and, with it, Emily—I reached for my backpack. My gaze shifted, unwillingly to see my best friend snap her teeth. Her milky eyes gazing at the door. They seemed soulless, as if nobody was home. Without any idea of what I was doing, I swung the backpack over my shoulder. Emily tumbled to the floor when I let go of the gurney. I opened the door behind me, stepped out, and closed it shut.

  The walkway was empty except for the carnage happening one floor beneath my feet. Desks with computers on top of them filled the adjacent rooms. Pictures of exotic places covered the walls. Noses stuck to the glass that looked over the plaza. Terrified eyes that represented how I felt filled the faces of the few office workers brave enough to watch.
/>   Pulled toward it like a magnet, I stepped closer and held onto the railing for support. My eyes whisked across the ground floor, unable to focus on a single spot, as if viewing an Escher painting. Human teeth sank into the flesh of other human beings. Skin ripped and tore, revealing the blood and tissue underneath.

  A soldier’s rifle clicked empty. Overcome by fear, he threw it at an unimpressed child, a boy who couldn’t have been more than ten years old. The child’s skull jerked when the rifle connected. Blood ruptured from the cut on the boy’s head, but he didn’t stay down. The soldier fumbled for his sidearm. He pointed it at the kid, who came snarling at him. The muzzle of the gun flared as the soldier tripped and crashed to the floor. I opened my mouth to scream. Go for the head, I wanted to tell him, as the soldiers had done when they first came in, but fear must have overtaken this soldier, and I knew my voice would never reach him. The kid remained unaffected while his shirt grew bright red. He threw himself on top of the soldier. I closed my eyes at the soundless scream that showed on his face.

  I had seen zombie movies, even read the books where they called the damn things everything except what they were. Those things beyond the railing beneath my feet acted like actual, proper zombies. Oh God, Emily, she had become one of them. I closed my eyes, wishing I was wrong, that this wasn’t real, that something had gone wrong with my medication. Because if this was real, I would have lost the only friend I’d ever had.

  “Hey,” a voice yelled. Wishing I’d wake up from the permanent imprint of a horror movie scratched onto my brain with nine-inch nails, I ignored the voice.

  When someone shook my shoulders, I looked up, blinked to shift focus, and saw a man in military gear. His gray-blue eyes blazed, filled with adrenaline, while his helmet hung low over his forehead. His jaw was tightly set.

  “Ma’am, are you okay?” he said. Stupefied, I contemplated him for a second.

  “Okay,” I said, incredulous, as I fought to find the right words. English wasn’t my first language, but it had become a solid second. Still, I had trouble voicing my thoughts, as if the scenes unfolding in front of my eyes had fried my brain. “Did … did you see …?” I stumbled over the words. Incomprehensible sentences followed. I sounded like an idiot, and I caught the soldier’s glare. I sucked in a breath to gather my thoughts. When I opened my mouth to speak, something crashed behind me. The soldier looked up, startled.