Chương 373: Book Nine, Chapter 20: Escape Plan

I was back in the tunnels, but unlike the last time, I was stuck outside of the safe room. It wasn't a big deal, because while the bites I had received earlier did not appear to have infected me, the zombies around me acted as if they had. I wasn't quite sure how that all functioned, but I was glad to be ignored. I sat against a concrete wall and just waited, listening to the others in my headphones as they planned what they were going to do.

Antoine had switched to the Off-Screen channel we had established so that I could listen in while they were planning even if it didn't make the final cut. Whatever their plans ended up being, I wasn't going to be much help. I felt fine, but my body was in shambles. At the end of the day, blood loss could kill me. Not just light up the Dead status kill me, but actually kill me. My Dead Nerves trope may have gotten rid of the pain and the fear, but my body still did need to be alive for me to walk around in it.

I didn't know how long I had before kicking the bucket since my Dead indicator was already lit. There was no telling. But I was going to try to help the others for as long as I could. I sat and looked out into the darkness, observing the zombies in the underground. There were no speakers down here controlling them, so they were calm. And while it didn't appear that any of them had recovered from infection yet, they were the ones with the best chance.

I looked from infected to infected for signs that maybe they were getting control of their bodies back, but I didn't see any. What I did see were some familiar faces. Ramona was walking through the underground leading a group of around fifteen zombies. She wasn't going anywhere particular, and I couldn't hear what she was saying yet, but I noticed that both Cassie and Isaac were with her. Both were infected. She saw me, and I could tell that she recognized me.

"I am the queen of the damned," she said. But like all the other zombies, there was no character to it. It was just a plain statement, as if she had spoken in an alien language. But it led me to believe that she was still in there somewhere. That was going to be traumatic. We had hoped that giving her the Adverse Reaction trope would create opportunities to fill screen time, but it was a gamble that had not paid off. I listened as the others planned their escape. We always knew some of the details.

They were baked right into our trope selections.

"You know, it's funny," Anna said.

"Ever since I was a little girl, I always wanted to race here. It was the whole reason I got into the business, but right before it was finally time, this had to happen."

"All the obstacles you overcame. I bet you didn't expect this one," Antoine said with a laugh.

"There was a time when I wouldn't have been surprised," Anna said, matching his laughter.

"There's no place like Carousel Motor Speedway on a summer's day. When we were kids, my brother and I used to sneak in just to watch the races, and we would say that one day it was going to be us. I hoped that today he'd be able to look down on me from wherever he is and see me finally doing it." She started to cry. It sounded like she was doing a good job acting.

"He saw you all the other times you raced," Antoine said.

"You know that. I'm sure he would have been proud of you." Anna didn't respond for a time.

"I'm not feeling so good," Kelsey said.

"You may want to kick me out soon. Maybe I can take out some of these things before I go. Get some use out of me."

"You're coming with us," Anna said.

"Even if you're infected, you'll get better. Just like Kimberly." I hadn't seen them in a while, but it was true that the solid-colored Infected indicator on Kimberly had blinked once or twice, just a flicker, but an indication that she was getting better. If Anna was saying that, I had to assume that it was flickering much more rapidly now. I had yet to hear Kimberly speak.

"How did you sneak into the races?" Camden asked, cutting through the emotional bits.

"Just a professional curiosity. I was supposed to be in charge of security here, although I won't be putting that on my resume after all this."

"Oh, things were different back then," Anna said.

"It's been renovated a time or two. There was a gap between the grandstand support building and the ticket office. You know, the one that's a museum now. We could just squeeze through it if we were willing to get cut up by the rose bushes on the outside. But now, they moved the groundskeeping facility right in front of the gap. There's no way through. The back wall fits snug up against the other buildings."

"Suppose there was no back wall," Camden asked.

"Could we still get through?" Anna seemed to consider this.

"As far as I know, it should let out right on the outside. But I imagine that the secret military organization has someone with a gun standing on the other end."

"We can solve that problem when we get to it," Camden said dismissively.

"If we could get through that gap and out to the outside world? Well, I don't like our odds, but I like them a whole lot more than they are right now." This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"We'd have to get halfway around the track," Antoine said.

"And as things are now, they could easily send that crowd of killers after us."

"We'll need a distraction," Camden said, his mind at work.

"Now I know you're talking about me," Kelsey said.

"What do you have in mind?" I waited for a few seconds for someone to explain what they were going to do, but then what I heard was, "Riley, if you're still listening, we're Off-Screen. You can come in." I stood to my feet, but for reasons that I literally couldn't perceive, my legs were moving slowly, like they were made out of jelly. I was dying whether I could feel it or not. I tried to make it a few yards, and while I succeeded, there was no quickness in my steps.

I found myself shuffling, my legs stiff, my feet unresponsive. This plan, or at least my involvement in it, only worked if I could move quickly to stay Off-Screen. I hit the button on my radio and said, "You may not be able to rely on me. I'm about to go to the grand old theater beyond the mountain, if you know what I mean." And they did know what I meant.

"Thank you for everything," Anna said. Antoine and Camden joined in. Kelsey was either too preoccupied with her infection or just didn't go in for the whole sentimental thing. I shrugged it off. Never in my history of running storylines in Carousel did I ever feel I had done enough. Now go bring it home, I was going to say as I brought my finger to the button. But then I heard her.

"Thank you," a voice I had not heard in quite a while said. It was Kimberly. She sounded hoarse and sickly, but it was her. I felt so guilty for not being able to help out more. If I had just foreseen that that big thumb of a man was going to shoot me, I would have been healthy enough to actually be of use. Instead I sank back to the ground against my own will so that I could watch my friends finish the story on the Red Wallpaper.

-"Just give me thirty seconds," Kelsey said when they were back On-Screen after emerging quietly from one of the tunnel exits nearby. They had to find one without a crowd of zombies outside it, so it took a minute.

"We'll be listening for the roar of your engine," Camden said. Kelsey nodded. It was clear that she was fighting off an infection, but she was going to give it her all to do her part. She ran out quickly, sneaking her way through the various obstacles between her and the track. I wasn't actually sure how much she needed to do that, since she was infected. It was possible the zombies would just leave her alone as they did me. But not guaranteed. It was clear where she was going.

The pile-up of cars caused by the initial zombie stumbling onto the field came into view, and she quickly made her way over the wall onto the track, where she found one of the abandoned vehicles. I had no idea how race cars worked. Was there a key in the ignition, or was she claiming to hotwire it? The cameras didn't show it, but within a few moments, Kelsey was inside and had the car's engine roaring. She quickly circled back around to where Camden, Antoine, and Kimberly were.

They exited the underground and ran out onto the track. This was a basic part of the plan. Kelsey was going to block for them in much the same way that I had suggested many scenes ago. There was one major difference. Camden was carrying one of the microwave-sized speakers that the military had dropped everywhere. As with the radio he improvised, there were all kinds of wires and computer chips exposed, showing that he had hacked it. That was part of their plan.

He quickly duct-taped the speaker to the back of the race car, and they were off on their way toward the secret exit that Anna had spoken into existence using her Tight Squeeze trope. We always knew we were going to use it. After all, the plot was going to be about getting out of this Speedway, one way or another. The problem was explaining why she didn't mention it at the beginning of the outbreak. Luckily, the building that was put in the way stood as a reasonable obstacle.

Camden was going to get through that back wall to expose the secret way out of the Speedway, and then they would make a run for it while Kelsey distracted the zombies. It was a simple plan, and possibly a rewarding one. It involved an explosion and, presumably, a race car running over zombies, so Carousel might like it. But of course, the really important part of the plan was what would happen after that. The horde was already making its way toward the race car, following the group as they went along.

But with the right pacing, they managed to stay ahead of the wall of teeth that followed them. I doubted that Carousel was going to give them much trouble yet. It would be a rehash of something that had already happened earlier in the story. Kelsey managed to get them all the way to the groundskeeping supply building that they had to make a giant hole in to escape. They peeled away, jumped over a barricade, and entered the building, their weapons at the ready to take out any zombies that happened to be inside.

The camera followed them, but only long enough to scan the room and show what Camden's next play was. He had to build a bomb. Luckily, the groundskeeper's supply building had all the ingredients he could ask for, including fertilizer for the inner fields. The camera then flipped back to Kelsey as she pressed a button on her radio, and the speaker on her car blared an alarm. The zombies took to it like cats to catnip. Kelsey managed to lead them away from the groundskeeper building, and they followed her in masses.

Literally thousands of infected, all honing in on the noise she was making. And the military had yet to respond. I didn't know how I felt about that. They could easily see what was going on, and I couldn't figure out why they wouldn't do something about it. Commandant Caster seemed like a smart enough guy, and he would be able to interpret what had happened. Why were they not doing anything? It turned out the reason had nothing to do with how smart the military organization was.

It was because Carousel already had plans. Because Kelsey was a little bit worse off than she had allowed the others to believe. She managed to make it a quarter of the way around the track before she had to start weaving in between the cars that had been left behind, and it was there that her diminishing capacity became most evident. She gently crashed into one of the abandoned cars and passed out.

She had given it all she had, and while she had completed the first part of her mission, she had not completed the second part. Distracting the military. She was supposed to lead the zombies on a chase all the way up to the other side of the track, where she would crash through what Camden reasoned was the most vulnerable part of the outer gate, sending the horde of zombies out into the world. But instead she passed out and woke back up as one of the Sleep Talkers.

Without the military distracted, Camden, Antoine, and Kimberly were going to be shimmying their way through the exit only to find themselves at gunpoint. And I could do nothing to save them. I could only watch.