"Check to see if there are keys in the van,” Donna said. “We might be able to just take it if there are."
Jack motioned her to be quiet, and he pointed down the hill. Donna opened her car door and stood up to get a better view over hill. Hundreds of zombies milled about on the banks and in the creek.
Jack leaned halfway in the van and started its engine. Donna thought about what its driver must have done. The bridge was out when they arrived, but they could see police lights up the hill. They must have ditched the vehicle thinking they could cross on foot underneath the bridge.
I bet he’s down there with the undead looking at us right now, she thought. Donna grabbed the cat and moved her into the van. "Did you check the back of this thing?"
"Hell yes," Jack whispered, "Do you know how many horror movies are running through my mind right now about something being back there. It’s empty, but I keep looking back there anyway. I think the driver must have tried to hot foot it under the bridge only to meet the welcoming committee down there."
Jack closed the driver's door and waved for Donna to get in. He looked past Donna at his car. "Throw my car keys back at my car, someone might need them."
Jack turned the wheel in the direction of the side road and pushed the gas. There were a few bodies in the way of the vehicle, but the van pitched back and forth as it ran them over.
"That makes me sick," Donna said.
She saw Jack’s face twist in revulsion as the sound of crunching reached their ears.
Chapter Eight
Officer Bill Eason had moved to Pittsburgh five years ago to take a job with the city police. It was his first job in law enforcement, and every stop made his heart pound. Eason didn’t have a wife or kid to support, so he spent all his energy on the job. After a couple of months, he adjusted to the role and earned the respect of his fellow officers.
His particular beat was the North Side of Pittsburgh, which had major drug problems. Eason worked with some area residents to create a neighborhood watch program. He encouraged the adults of the community to spend an hour a night sitting on their porches. They would take notes if they saw something amiss. For his part, Eason would stop by the volunteer’s homes once every couple of weeks to chat for a bit and make sure everything was alright. The first 6 months of the program led to 132 arrests and 90 convictions. In the second 6 months, the arrest rate dropped to 20, this worried Eason at first, but it caught the attention of several special investigation units. His neighborhood watch had earned a reputation with drug dealers. They no longer wanted to push their product in the area.
Eason won a citation from the Mayor’s office. He won the Outstanding Officer of the Year award. He got promoted and was assigned to expand his program to other troubled areas of the city.
That was all over now.
The past 15 hours made Eason feel like a rookie cop again. He was called in on his day off because of what he thought was civil unrest in the Oakland area of Pittsburgh. Within a couple of hours, everything he thought he knew about the world abruptly changed. They lost half of the city’s finest before he could even report in.
Eason sat in his squad car gasping for breath. He had just run several city blocks to make it back to his vehicle. A woman ran by his car crying as she fled on foot, her breath was visible in the first morning chill of the year. Eason held his 9mm service pistol in his hand and closed his eyes. The metal end the barrel felt cold on his shaved head.
His radio crackled with reports from all over the city. Downtown Pittsburgh was fairly quiet as very few residencies were located there. Oakland on the other hand housed a number of intersecting universities including the University of Pittsburgh. By the time Eason arrived at the rally point in Oakland, they’d figured out you had to shoot them in the head.
They thought they had the dorms locked down but injured kids died and then spread the carnage inside after they came back. Hundreds of zombies swarmed over Oakland tearing into anything that moved. By midnight, hundreds of dead turned into thousands.
Eason never imagined he would have to shoot kids. He could still picture them tearing at each other. One minute he was putting down the dead and then there were too many to deal with. His night was spent surviving each block.
Command ordered them out of Oakland around 3 A.M. and told them to rally back downtown. Less than half the police left alive in Oakland made it to the rally. Eason knew several officers who got in their car and drove off never looking back.
Eason could see the University’s Cathedral of Learning from his squad car. The building was a towering inferno lighting up the dark morning sky.
"Command to all units, the Mayor’s office is now ordering an evacuation of the city. A military response is expected in the next few hours. We are going to try and establish a safe zone around the football stadium. Helicopters can land inside the stadium and evacuate civilians as well as land troops to reestablish order in the city. All fire stations will be sounding air-raid sirens non-stop after this broadcast. TV and radio are now broadcasting evacuation instructions based upon areas in the city.
On a final note, good luck to you all. God help us."
Eason dropped the gun away from his head. He knew he would still have friends heading to the stadium to help out. He couldn’t let them down.
Down the street, he could see a zombie trying to break into a building to get at someone. Eason started his car and drove in the opposite direction leaving whoever it was to their fate. In the distance, air-raid sirens started their slow whine.
Eason arrived at the stadium 15 minutes later in a line of emergency response vehicles. Police and firefighters were rushing around on foot in an attempt to get logistics in place for civilians who would be arriving soon. Eason parked his police cruiser right in front of the stadium.
“Eason!” a man shouted. “Over here, we got C gate.”
Eason looked to see it was his station Captain Shane Fennel.
“What’s the plan?” Eason said.
“We push the civilians into the stands,” Fennel said. “Then the choppers come in and drop troops off and take the civs away. Separate out anyone who’s injured.”
“Where do we send them?” Eason asked.
“The military wants them over in the baseball park across the parking lot,” Fennel said. There was a loud thumping of helicopters in the distance. “Sounds like military equipment. You can always tell because they have bigger power-plants than the civilian equipment; it gives them deeper base.”
Flying up the Ohio River came four Apache gunships visibly loaded with missiles. They flew side by side at a leisurely pace up stream to the confluence of the three rivers. At the point, they broke off by twos, one group heading up the Allegheny and the other the Monongahela. They continued to watch the pair of Apaches on their side of the river heading up the Allegheny.
The choppers elevated above a series of bridges and turned to the side facing Oakland.
“Must be scouting the situation,” Eason said.
In the distance came the sound of static crackling that rolled in long bursts. The Apaches had opened up with their chain guns.
Fennel shook his head, “Indian wars all over again.”
“What?” Eason said.
“Lots of fighting took place here back in the 1700’s,” Fennel said. “You’re standing on the Indian side of the river right now.”
The Apache chain guns cut out and the chopper engines whined up in pitch as they shifted position.