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There’d be time to explain once we started moving again. I wasn’t really an agent, anyway. Officially, I was a government asset. Like, in the same sense a laptop or a car was an asset.
“What happened here?” I asked.
“Weren’t you briefed?”
“No.”
“Jee-sus,” he repeated. “Agent, we’re under attack.”
“Terrorists?” The idea sent a chill through me, but at least with a human antagonist we should be able to regain the upper hand with relative ease.
“No, ma’am.” For a long time after that he was silent, and I was about to ask if he was still on the line when he spoke up. “We seem to be under attack by…well, by zombies.”
“Zombies?” I had to be sure I’d heard him correctly. This was the same thing Nolan had said in his voicemail to me. I’d dismissed it then, but it was hard to brush it off a second time. “That’s impossible.”
For a half-vampire/half-werewolf to be dismissive of any supernatural entity might seem strange, but the fact was zombies didn’t exist. Not in the Romero Night of the Living Dead sense anyway. The dead did not rise up of their own volition and feed on the flesh of the living. It was one hundred percent impossible.
“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. I didn’t believe it either. But I’ve got literally thousands of bodies blocking the Midtown Bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge and every other goddamn exit out of this town aside from the one you’re parked in front of. You understand me. Bodies. And they’re walking.”
I wanted to reiterate the impossibility of a zombie invasion, but this guy didn’t sound like the type to make up stories.
“When did it happen?”
“Most of this is just in the last two hours.”
“Two hours?” So this had only begun as our plane was coming in to land. How could an entire city fall apart in two hours? “Is there some sort of plan?”
“Yeah. Don’t fucking die.”
Static reigned on the radio, and I glanced to my friends, wondering if they found this entire thing half as mind-boggling as I did.
“Zombies?” Genie asked.
“Evidently.”
Holden snorted. “There’s no such thing.”
“Says the vampire,” Desmond countered.
“No, he’s right,” I said. “Zombies aren’t real. There has to be another explanation for what’s happening.”
“The dead have risen, and they’ve invaded New York. It’s a pretty clear-cut explanation,” Genie answered. “We really should go.”
“No.” I got out of the cruiser, wondering if I shouldn’t wait for more details, but it didn’t sound like my cop buddy was coming back. “There’s more going on here, and we need to figure out what it is. The dead don’t rise on their own.”
“Your plan is still to get to Keaty’s? You think he’ll even be there?” Desmond asked.
“Keaty has a frigging fallout shelter built inside his brownstone. He’s prepared for the actual apocalypse. If there’s anywhere we should go first, that’s it.” I checked my guns again to remind myself I had them. “The isn’t like The Walking Dead, okay? Their bites won’t turn you into monsters, but don’t think that means you won’t
get bitten. I don’t know what these things are, but they managed to take over the city in two hours. We have to be careful. And remember—they’re dead. Don’t feel bad about whatever it is you need to do to them. Do not hesitate. Understand?”
Genie gave a tight nod.
“I don’t like this,” Holden added.
“What’s to like?” I checked the car one last time, and since no one seemed to be abandoning ship, I reclaimed my keys and locked the doors. If we managed to make it through this whole ordeal in one piece, I liked to think the car might still be here waiting when it all blew over. Though it wasn’t like we’d get the rental deposit back.
I knew it was a long shot, but I was no stranger to those. Sometimes things went in my favor.
