EYEHEARTZOMBIES

The cop car could have made good time down the still-wet streets. Ruth kept it around twenty miles per hour, though, not wanting to miss anything that they’d regret later on. She had pulled off her soccer jacket once they were going, claiming the car was hot. Seth had turned off the heater, but the car really was heating up inside. He had stripped off his jacket not long after she had shed hers. They were both in t-shirts, now. The relaxed feeling, the comfort of being warm, was working on both of them. They were all smiles now.

“Hey, I think I see something,” Ruth said, leaning forward and squinting through the windshield. She put on the brakes and stopped as quickly as she could. She wiped the windshield with her jacket that had been bunched up in her lap and squinted out again. “Yeah, I do. But what the hell is it?”

Seth looked, but he couldn’t make anything of it either. With how this day had gone, though, he doubted it was anything he wanted to see. He rolled down the window and stuck his head out, trying to get a better look with no glass in front of him. It had stopped raining and the wind had stopped blowing, but it was foggy now, anything over a quarter-mile away was a ghostly mix of white and grey. He squinted a bit more and could finally make out what it was.

“I see the end of an ambulance, I think. Yeah, I see lights flashing now.” He looked over at Ruth who looked back at him, her eyes wide. “Why would an ambulance just be sitting in the middle of the road?”

Ruth shook her head. “I don’t like it. I don’t know why it’s there, but I don’t like it. I think we should try and find another way to the hospital.” She looked back out the windshield and squinted some more. “What do you think?”

Seth nodded, still staring out the window. “Yeah, I agree. Defintely not a good sign.” Flashes in the fog, bright yellow against the white of everything else, were quickly followed with banging sounds. The couple looked at each other again and then looked back out the window. “We DEFINITELY need to find another way around,” Seth said.

Ruth giggled, but her face didn’t look carefree and happy. She pulled the gearshifter into reverse and the car back up a half-block to the nearest side street. She turned left onto it and crept down the road. She didn’t go far, less than halfway down the block, before she stopped the car again. “Do you think it was the ambulance that came to the library?”

Seth hadn’t thought about that. What if it was? Should they go help? Elijah was in there, and even though he had been a complete ass earlier, Seth didn’t want to think of him dead or… not. “Maybe we should.” What about the flashes and bangs, though? Those had to have been gunshots. And where there were gunshots…. Seth didn’t know what had to be there, but he didn’t want to be there himself. Still, they had guns themselves, they could fight back. He hoped.

Ruth nodded and said, “Yeah, maybe.” She put the car in reverse again and backed out of the sidestreet. The police cruiser was sticking across the oncoming lane of traffic, but there wasn’t any traffic so it wasn’t much of a worry. They both looked out Seth’s still-open window. They didn’t see any more flashes or hear any bangs, but they couldn’t see the ambulance either.

“Well, if we’re gonna go, let’s go,” Seth said. He tried to steel himself as much as he could, but butterflies were still flittering around in his stomach. The idea of running into anything that someone else would have needed to SHOOT just… just turned his stomach into a quivering mass. He patted the shotgun that was propped in the dash-mounted holster. He knew he was a shitty shot, but it was comforting to have it around. Ruth had tucked the pistol under her leg. Neither was anxious to have to use them, though.

“Alright, let’s go,” Ruth said, sighing first. A flick of the stick from R to D and the car started to creep down Grand again. A minute or two later, the back end of the ambulance came into view again. Seth could read the hospital name from the back, now. Eden Medical Center. That was the hospital that had sent the ambulance before. Or the one it had belonged to, at least. The lights were still on inside, and the lights on top were flashing silently, white and red. Seth didn’t see anyone around it or in the back.

Ruth pulled the cop car slowly up behind the ambulance, but stayed back a quarter-block or so. They both looked out of the car at both sides of the street and tried to see around the ambulance. Ruth spotted something first.

“Seth,” she grabbed his hand, “there’s something over there. Something big and black. I can’t see what it is, though. Maybe a tent? Why would there be a tent in the middle of Grand?” She was still wide-eyed. Seth had no idea, and said so. She pulled the gun out from under her thigh and double-checked that the safety was on.

“Well,” Seth said, “I guess we’d better see. You want to drive up or should we get out?” He hoped and prayed she’d answer the former.

“I know it sounds stupid,” she started, and he felt his hopes fall, “but I feel safer out of the car. I mean, this is just such a big target….” She trailed off into silence. He wasn’t sure what she meant or what made her feel that way, but he didn’t want to argue with her on it. They’d just stay close, the best of both worlds.

“If we get out, I want to stay close to the car, alright? So we can jump back in if we need to?” She nodded. He popped the latch that held the gun to the rack and gingerly picked it up and sat it in his lap. “OK,” he said, and opened his door.

Ruth climbed out of the other side, the gun in her hand held down to her side. She looked grim now that they were both out in the fog, armed. They slowly approached the back end of the ambulance, still not seeing or hearing anything. Seth reached a hand up and tried to open the back door. The handle turned slowly and surely and he pulled the door toward him. No one was in there and he didn’t see anything that looked out of place. Not that he would have known, anyway. He was about to turn around and tell Ruth, when something small and brown caught his eye. It was a wallet, laying on the floor by the side-long bench. He scrambled partway into the ambulance and picked it up off of the floor, laying his gun on the seat first.

A quick flip through the wallet showed that it belonged to Elijah Powell. It held his driver’s license and his taxi driver’s union membership card. There were a few green bills in the largest pocket but Seth wasn’t a thief. He put the wallet in the other back pocket in his pants. He picked up the shotgun and climbed out of the ambulance. Ruth was standing on the ground, trying to look every way at once.

“Well, this is the same ambulance,” he said. She looked at him questioningly. “I found Elijah’s wallet. Unless you think there are two Elijah Powells that drive taxi cabs in this city.” She half-smiled at him. He felt the same way. It was hard to find anything happy or satisfying the world right now.

She pointed around the left side of the ambulance. “I think I saw something over there, but I’m not sure.” He shrugged his shoulders in that direction and pointed with the tip of his shotgun. She took the hint and started around that corner.

The ambulance seemed miles long as they slowly crept up the side of it. He was starting to wish he had put his jacket back on. After just a few steps along the length of the vehicle, he saw a large lump laying on the ground. A few more steps revealed that it was a man-sized green lump. A few more and they could see that it was a soldier. What was a soldier doing here?

Ruth reached him first and she knealt down next to him. He had his pistol in the hand that wasn’t curled up beneath his body. He had almost collapsed in on himself, as if all of his muscles had given away. He laid on the ground, breathing shallowly. “I can feel a heartbeat,” she said, smiling at finding someone alive. “It’s really fast, though,” she added.

Seth didn’t answer. He was looking around, trying to see further through the fog. It seemed to be increasing, getting thicker, more numbing. He could make out a few orange lines beyond the end of the ambulance, and the black shape that Ruth had seen earlier was definitely a tent. He couldn’t see much else, though. Well, one other thing, he added to his mental list. Another lump was on the ground several yards away toward the other sidewalk. Ruth looked where his eyes were pointed and let out a small gasp.

They could see this lump a little more clearly than they had the soldier. It was a white lump, stark contrast to the black pavement of the road. White except for a couple of slowly spreading spots of red on his back. Seth jogged over to the body to find that it was indeed Jones. He was laying face-down on the pavement, still holding onto life, though. He had some sort of hypodermic needle in his hand, the knuckles white with how tightly he was holding on. His hair was wet, making it curl more than it had the first time Seth had seen him. He looked up at the sound of steps approaching.

Seth knealt down next to him and Jones looked up, smiling when he recognized the face. The smile didn’t last, though. It was quickly replaced by a red cough. After he was through, he looked up at Seth again and Seth leaned in. He felt sure the man wanted to tell him something.

“Sa — safe out here,” he let go of the plastic tube and pointed at the ground. “Safe. The — They’re sca — sca –” he coughed and tried again. “Scared.”

Seth had no idea who “they” were, but he could guess what they were scared of. He patted Jones on the shoulder and Jones coughed up some more blood. “Soldiers. Army. Kee — keeping a secret. Disease.”

Seth couldn’t believe his ears. “Soldiers? What secret are they keeping? The secret of the disease? What disease?”

Jones nodded, once, weakly. He closed his eyes and rested for a second, then whispered, “Their disease. The one that brings out the –” The end was drowned in blood-red coughing, but Seth knew what he meant. He didn’t think Jones would make it much longer.

“What about Eden?” Seth asked. “Can I get to the hospital?” Jones shook his head a couple of times. He was coughing more often now, not able to breath or speak easily.

“Ma — martial law. They have it all blocked off.” He coughed again and moaned loudly when he finally finished. “I — ” another fit of coughing interrupted. When it had passed, he started again. “I remembered the secret, though.” He smiled a small smile at Seth, then his head fell and smacked into the pavement. Seth knew it was useless, but he reached with his hand and felt the neck of paramedic. Nothing that he could feel. So many people had died today, but if Jones was right, there might be hundreds more. Thousands. God, how many would die from this disease, whatever it was?