In movies, you hear all about engineered viruses and bioweapons with world-ending potential. It sounds cool, and it certainly ups the stakes, but at the end of the day, you're not supposed to really think about it too much. Who would actually create a mutant virus that would wipe out the whole planet? No matter what bad guys are out there, most of them still want to be around whenever their enemies are defeated. Nobody's perfect world is a giant cemetery.
So when it was explained that the zombie virus from Dead Pursuit was an engineered bioweapon, I largely dismissed it. Sure, there might be a subplot about finding a cure, especially if we had a doctor or a lab we could put Camden in for the first couple of acts to do research, but we didn't have either.
I assumed this secret military-weapon zombie virus was just called that to sound cool. That it could never actually be a viable weapon. It was too silly, too unpredictable. Carousel would never actually push the plot in a direction where that descriptor would matter.
These were just zombies, and Carousel needed some generic explanation for their existence. I was certain of it.
And I was wrong.
-
To say that I was without pain as I lay at the bottom of the grandstands from my big fall would be underselling it. I was without sensation altogether. I could see and hear, of course, but when it came to pain, there was just nothing there. My wound still leaked, and I suspected that I was slowly dying from blood loss. Not movie dying, but actually dying. Didn't matter to me. Dead Nerves took care of everything. The pain, the worry, the anxiety, all gone.
I was clear. All that remained in my mind was logic and control. It was truly a wonderful, if morbid, trope, giving me all the good parts of being dead and none of the bad parts.
Not too far from me, Bruce lay dead too, but he was better at it. They had shot him up good, which was what I was hoping for, even if I was annoyed at how poorly they conserved the ammo.
I was slow to sit up and stare out at the racetrack. Because I had equipped Intermission, which gave me access to Deathwatch even though my body wasn't literally dead, I could see the movie playing on the Red Wallpaper. It wasn't the final cut because I wasn't sitting in the theater, but it was nice to have the knowledge that my supposed death had bought me.
Zombies were spread out throughout the stadium and various fields. It was a total nightmare, but I wasn't afraid.
I sat and thought about where the plot was going and what might happen next. I believed I had a good handle on things. So when I heard the voice come over the loudspeaker, I wasn't exactly surprised.
"Hello, survivors of the Carousel Speedway disaster. This is Commandant Caster, commander of TOMB. I apologize that it has taken so long to set up a line of communication."
He was right. It had taken a while. I slowly realized that the sound I was hearing wasn't coming from the stadium's speakers but from large padded boxes that had been dropped into the stadium at some point. They were all over the place, evenly spaced, about the size of a microwave, but covered in padding. I hadn't really noticed them before. They must have come when we were underground.
"As I'm sure you understand, we are taking every precaution necessary to protect those lives in Carousel that we can. It is regrettable that we have been unable to rescue you. We applaud your intrepid survival. Plans have been made to evacuate the survivors, but as you have observed, the disease that has ravaged this Speedway is incredibly contagious, and we need to confirm that you are in good health before we take any risks. Stand by, and I will relay to you the procedure for your imminent salvation."
His last word was followed by a dry echo that turned into a screech. His voice sounded like that of a professional voice actor, the kind cast to play a character who is only heard over the radio. That was more or less confirmed because, as I watched the movie on the Red Wallpaper, the commandant's face was never shown. He was always shot from behind, or he was just out of frame with only his shoulder in view.
He was a man in the shadows, and Carousel knew not to show him. No human face could carry the gravity that this character was meant to portray. While it was our first run-in with him, I got the distinct impression from the language of the film that the audience would have known him by now. They would have seen him operating, manipulating things from behind the scenes.
I couldn't reliably reach the others on the radio because I didn't know whether they were On-Screen. The camera kept cutting among everyone listening, and while most of the people listening to the broadcast were random NPCs hidden around the Speedway, some of them were my friends. Antoine and Anna were down below with Kimberly. Camden, Danny, and Kelsey hid up in the broadcast booth.
No camera followed me. I was free to roam around as long as I stayed hidden, and in this storyline that was going to be important, because I had no idea whether zombies would attack me. Normally, I could get a sense of how an enemy would treat me Off-Screen, and the fact that I had the Dead status should have enhanced my protection, but these things were all instinct. I would need to be careful.
First, I needed to get up and move my way down below the stands where I could operate in the shadows, just like our newly introduced opponent, Commandant Caster. I wasn't sure about his name, but that was mostly because I'd never actually looked up what the word commandant meant. I assumed it meant "captain" or "admiral," something like that.
Walking with Dead Nerves gave the sensation of levitation. My body didn't register that my feet were under me at all. I felt like I was floating around, and when I moved fast, it was like going warp speed. I would need to get used to this. I almost forgot to move my arms when I walked. It simply wasn't a thought.
Nonetheless, I traveled forth, ready to do what it took to protect my friends and get us to the finish line.
Once I had a better vantage point beneath the stadium seating, still with a view of the field, the commandant came back on over the loudspeakers that had been spread around.
"We will be flying a helicopter above the Speedway in order to rescue you a few at a time. For us to access you, you will need to be in an open area with nothing obstructing the space above you. I'm sure that you are all curious about your situation, and we will be more than pleased to explain things to you once you are outside these walls. Please be patient. We intend to save every one of you."
I had trouble reading his voice. He didn't seem downright deceptive. If anything, he almost sounded like an ominous narrator of a stage play. His voice was very clear. His emotions were hidden. But at the same time, anyone who fell for this would be a fool.
A helicopter flew overhead, but I didn’t see it lower a ladder for rescue.
Unable to radio my friends, I had to trust that they would have better sense than to fall for this. I had to pray that this wasn't a Moxie check, or else good judgment wouldn't be enough. Surely Carousel wouldn't play that dirty.
No, I didn't think that any players were in immediate danger. We were about to witness something terrible, and as I looked around the Speedway, I saw NPCs begin to crawl out of their hiding places. There was no shortage of buildings and tunnels for people to close themselves off in.
Here and there, two, maybe three people would emerge and do their best to stay away from the zombies while waving their arms to get attention from the helicopter.
I wondered if Kitty Lincoln would fall for it. As a Defiant, it would be a very strange move. It was no surprise then that when a few NPCs emerged on the roof of the owner's suite down on the field, Kitty was not among them.
Survivors climbed out of every hole and hideout they could in the Speedway until their numbers were in the dozens.
Myself, I climbed up some metal struts under the stadium seating. Not only was there a little nook I could hide in, but I was up away from anywhere that the cameras would look too closely. I had a great view of the field and some of the long corridor behind this part of the stands.
With my dead sensations, climbing felt very much like flying. I realized that I wasn't breathing automatically. Sometimes I would just stop and have to remind myself to start back again.
I tried not to get too freaked out by that. I needed to clog my wound. I was getting blood everywhere.
The next voice to come over the loudspeakers that had been placed around the Speedway was not Commandant Caster.
It was that same old voice we had heard before, back when the military poured zombies from the metal container into the Speedway, ringing out over the speakers.
"It's just my size!"
"It's just my size!"
"It's just my size!"
It was high-pitched and excited, specifically chosen because it excited the zombies, no doubt. All at once, the massive herds of people began to converge on an area over by one of the main concession stands. I didn't see where they were going. They poured back behind the stands on the opposite side from where I was.
What I couldn't see with my eyes, I saw on the Red Wallpaper. A small group of survivors had made the mistake of falling for the commandant's offer, and soon a flock of zombies converged on them.
The message in that area was louder and different. Instead of "It's just my size!" it changed to an animalistic cry from some old movie I had to imagine. It said, “You have no right to be here.”
The angry, monstrous tone triggered a change in the zombies, turning them from instinctual flocking droids into absolute killers.
They didn't just infect those people. They tore them apart.
But then they were off. The speakers placed around the Speedway each played different notes meant to guide the herd, and soon the zombies were off in a dozen different directions, hundreds of them per group, seeking out all who had revealed themselves.
One such group of about three hundred zombies, I had to imagine, converged on the owner's suite, where some of the NPCs had come out on the roof.
The zombies didn't do the World War Z thing where they just climbed on top of each other. No, they still had enough of their old humanity to understand how a building worked, especially when they were being compelled to enter it.
I didn't see the speakers that they were listening to the commands of, but whoever had studied these creatures had it down to a science. The three hundred zombies absolutely flooded the entrance of the owner's suite, knocking down the door and quickly filling it. They worked like a colony of ants at hyperspeed, each repeating the tone and urgency of the message on the loudspeaker.
These zombies had the Hive Mind trope, but it wasn't literal. Their ability to share one mind came from each acting as a transmitter and receiver of whatever tone was drilled into them by the speakers. They were like a fluid that filled the owner's suite, searching for and finding humans within to infect.
It didn't take long for them to be up the stairs and into the room that I had first met Kitty Lincoln in. Nothing could stand in their way, and while the survivors in there had weapons, what use were they against hundreds of organized zombies pouring in, climbing over anything in their way, and attacking anything and everything that looked remotely human?
Even a cardboard cutout of Antoine in his driver's uniform that I hadn't even noticed was torn to pieces by the zombies.
All NPCs were shredded or infected within moments. Eventually, the horde made it onto the roof with the three NPCs who had sought help from the military, and they, too, were taken out.
There was no defense against this.
I had wondered why you would ever want to engineer a massively contagious virus as a weapon, and I had my answer. If you could control it to this degree, if it could spread this fast, and if it would go away in a matter of days, it would be the ultimate eradicator. A weapon of genocide.
Even if these zombies were cured of their affliction, their bodies weren't going to hold up much longer. Antoine had been right. They were breaking their own bones, following their instincts, following their instructions.
Kitty had done her job. She had stolen screen time from the military, and as I watched her get torn to pieces by zombies, I was thankful for what she had done. She put in a great performance from beginning to end. There was no way we could survive an entire film against this foe. She had provided us with a minor antagonist as a distraction.
But now her help was gone, and we faced the horde.