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So. What happens when tonight's Tigers/Yankees game is interrupted by a little supernatural violence in the stands? Well, it goes a little something like this. I blame that goddamn zombie meme.
It gets no title, because that would imply that I intend to finish it or something, but I'll give it an R for violence and language, and as far as a disclaimer goes, I fucking hope to god that it's all the product of my twisted and bored imagination.
Willie Ledezma was having a rough game. He kept throwing balls, giving up doubles, he'd hit three guys by the fourth inning. He had no idea why he was still in the game. Maybe it was because when it wasn't him stinking up the mound, it was Mussina. Maybe Tram figured there was no point in using up the relief if the opposing pitcher sucked just as hard as their own did.
Or maybe he was as distracted as everyone else by all the fighting in the stands.
It was crazy. Had some sort of Yankees/Tigers rivalry sprung up while he wasn't paying attention? Were the Yankee fans bored with the Red Sox and experimenting with something new?
Willie carefully averted his eyes from the team of security rushing, rather wearily at this point, into the stands (but he couldn't help noticing that there were half as many of them as there had been in the first inning), and tried once again to concentrate on the player in front of him. Jason Giambi. He took a deep breath, collected himself, and proceeded to throw a nice gift-wrapped homerun ball right over the middle of the plate. Fuck.
Except that Giambi didn't take a swing, because he was staring at third, where Brandon Inge was screaming and pointing into the stands.
"HOLY FUCKING SHIT THAT GUY JUST BIT THAT GUY!"
Every head in the stadium turned to look where Brandon was pointing.
A fan had one of the security staff on his knees, and was biting his shoulder. No - chewing his shoulder. No - tearing nice big fucking chunks out of his shoulder.
There were maybe five frozen seconds of silence, then the screaming began.
**********
"Dude, are any of you guys watching the news?"
Kevin Millar would have liked to respond to Bronson's question with an incredulous stare, but Bronson was not there, and staring at the cellphone would not be a good enough substitute, and Kevin couldn't pronounce "incredulous" anyway, so he settled for raising his eyebrows at the dugout floor.
"No. Because we're playing a ballgame. I know it's been a while since you did that, but we don't usually watch the news. And why are you watching the news and not the game?"
"Because they pre-empted the game for a special report."
"What? On NESN?" Kevin raised his voice to address the the rest of the team. "Guys! They pre-empted the fucking game on NESN! Why the fuck did they do that?"
"There's this huge fucking riot going on at Yankee Stadium. It sounds like people are dead."
Kevin was about to laugh, ha ha, very funny, get a life and quit it with the lame pranks, but there was something in Bronson's somber tone that stopped him short.
The others were staring at him, waiting for further information, so Kevin passed it along.
Silence.
"Why?" Kevin asked.
"I don't know. Nobody does. But it's bad out there. They showed this clip, this one guy coming at the camera with blood all over his face, and then he grabbed the cameraman? And the camera fell. It was kind of like, did you ever see the Dawn of the Dead remake, where they have that extra feature on the DVD with the newscast? It was like they lifted it right out of that, only the guy was slow."
Kevin blinked. "Why the fuck would they show something like that? The FCC is gonna be right up their asses."
"Don't know that either."
"Bronson thinks it's zombies," Kevin announced.
"Hey! I didn't fucking say that!" Bronson protested.
The other guys were chuckling uneasily, and Tito was looking over at the Blue Jays' dugout like he was trying to figure out whether to pass the news along or let it go for now, but Youkilis -
"Zombies?" - looked like he'd just won the fucking lottery.
**********
It wasn't until the dust settled settled a little and Brandon started looking around that he realized that some of the players fleeing the field had gotten confused about where they were going.
Well, a couple of them had.
Well, he had. Because judging from the number of pinstripes surrounding him, he had ended up in the Yankees' clubhouse by mistake.
He hoped they wouldn't kick him out. It didn't look like they were going to, though, because aside from a couple weird looks, no one seemed to care.
The room was very quiet, players leaning nervously against walls and sitting tensely on benches. Brandon tried a wall, didn't like it, and took a seat instead, choosing an empty spot next to A-Rod with the vague idea that third basemen should stick together. Also, no one else seemed to want to sit next to him.
"Hey," someone said finally; Brandon twisted his head around to see that it was Tino Martinez talking. "Where's Jason?"
"Looks like we traded him," said Jeter, gesturing toward Brandon and getting the kind of laughter that always meets a lame joke in a bad situation.
"'Bout fucking time," Tino answered. "Forget the ball, kid, if you can hit the broad side of a barn with your bat, you're in." More anxious laughter. Brandon just grinned a kind of stupid grin, too keyed up to think of anything good to answer back with.
"You guys know what this is, right?" Everyone turned to look at Tanyon Sturtze. He was fondling a bat with worrying intensity. "You've seen the movies, right? Night of the Living Dead and those?"
". . . you're kidding, right?" Tino said. "There's no such thing as zombies, you douche."
Brandon thought about that guy in the stands, the way he'd been chowing down on the security guard. "Did you see that, though?" he asked. "That guy was eating that guy."
"This is New York," Tino pointed out. "He was probably a fucking nut case."
"Whatever you say, Tino." Sturtze shouldered his bat, raising his chin and squaring his jaw and probably thinking he looked pretty heroic instead of like a posturing dork with a bat on his shoulder. "I'm going out to find Jason."
Brandon could practically hear the cheesy John Williams music swelling as Sturtze stared resolutely ahead. Then it screeched to a halt as Jeter matter-of-factly reached over and plucked the bat out of his grip.
"Sit down, Tanyon. No one's going anywhere until we get the all-clear."
Sturtze deflated. "You suck."
"Sit." Brandon, who had only ever seen Jeter on the field with that calm face of his in place, would not have guessed that he could glare like that. Even though he sort of hoped, just on general principle, that Sturtze would grab his bat back and go storming out, he didn't really blame him for withering a little and sitting on the nearest available seat, which happened to be on the bench next to Brandon.
"It's probably not such a good idea to open the door anyway, man," Brandon told him, keeping his voice low. "You know what happens when you open the door." He was trying not to be heard, but A-Rod heard him and snorted.
"Jesus. Don't encourage him."
Sturtze shot right back, "Cram it, E-Five," which Brandon thought was kind of harsh.
"I don't think this is really the time, you guys, plus I'm sitting between you, so please don't kill me, and does either of you have a cell phone, because I wanna call Pudge."
A-Rod and Sturtze glared a little more, but subsided, and after a couple minutes of everyone rummaging, Brandon got both a phone and a nod of approval from Jeter. "Find out if Jason's there, will ya?"
The phone rang and rang; Brandon was just about to hang up and try Kyle or Tram instead when Pudge finally answered, voice tight and distracted. "Yes?"
"Hey, Pudge, it's me."
"Brandon. Thank You," Pudge whispered; Brandon could hear the capital Y almost as clearly as he could see Pudge crossing himself. "Are you all right?"
"Yeah, I kinda got mixed up so I'm with the Yankees," Brandon admitted. "But everyone's fine here. How's it over there? You guys got Giambi?"
"Giambi?" Pudge asked blankly. "No."
"Shit." Brandon shook his head at Jeter, who frowned, then reached out to push Sturtze back down onto the bench as he tried to stand. "Is there anyone else missing?" he asked Pudge.
"Just you." There was a pause, and maybe Brandon was just feeling paranoid, but it sounded an awful lot like a something-I'm-not-telling-you pause.
"And?"
A little more pause, then, "Someone grabbed Nook. It looks like he got bit. He doesn't look good."
Brandon was silent for a long time, then, "I'm coming over."
"No, Brandon, it's not safe out there -"
"I'm coming over." Brandon flipped the phone shut and handed the phone back to Jeter.
"Awesome." Sturtze clapped him on the shoulder. "I'm coming too."
"Do I have to tie you two to the fucking bench?" Jeter demanded. "No one is going anywhere until they tell us it's safe."
"They're not -" Oh, fuck it. Brandon was not going to have this conversation. He stood, or tried to, only to find that A-Rod had locked an iron arm around his waist. He turned to look at him incredulously. "Get off me."
"You heard him. You're not going anywhere." A-Rod wasn't looking at him, though, but rather past him at Jeter, with a weirdly hopeful expression that was seriously at odds with the situation. So much for third base unity. Brandon gave up on that and turned to appeal to Jeter, who had a similar grip on Sturtze's shoulder.
"Whatever he told you, there's nothing you can do about it," Jeter said, not unkindly.
Which was wrong, because Brandon was afraid he might be the only Tiger who understood what was going on, and "might be" was a more than good enough reason to get over there, because "might be" implied "might not be," and they needed someone who could accept what probably needed to be done about Nook, and who would do it.
**********
In the end, there was no need for Tito to sneak a message over to the Jays. A couple minutes after Kevin's zombie crack, while they were still all busy staring at Youks and making him turn crimson, Theo'd called and said that, because of the mess at Yankee Stadium, every game in the Major League was being suspended until further notice, and all the parks were being evacuated. There had been a little token grumbling, but overall no one really minded, and now they were all in the hotel, crowded around the TV in Kevin and Manny's room and watching the confused news anchors tell them the same things over and over. They'd seen the clip Bronson mentioned at least a dozen times, they'd seen shaky footage of the stands, they'd seen shots of the players running like hell for their respective dugouts and leaving the field unsettlingly still. They'd seen Nook Logan go down, and Pudge Rodriguez drag the attacker away and pick Logan right up off the ground and get him inside. They'd seen Jason Giambi not get so lucky.
But the worst, the one that made them quiet down and stop picking on Youks, was what the newsanchors said was the very last shot before all communication from the stadium was cut off. It showed the field, no longer empty, with slow figures stumbling across it, and Giambi, lying across home plate, beginning to stir. Then it went to static.
That was more than enough for Kevin, and he turned the TV off after that. No one argued. A silent moment or two passed.
"You think they know how bad it is out there?" Varitek asked. It was probably rhetorical, but Boomer answered, "Let's make sure," and got on his cell.
**********
Derek snapped his cell phone shut, frowning harder now. "That was Boomer. He says they've all been watching the news, and it's a fucking mess out there. No one goes anywhere." He didn't say what David had told him about Jason, or that he, too, had brought up the Z-word. Done it with a cynical chuckle, but done it nonetheless. Instead, he looked sternly at Inge. "No one."
Inge stared at him, angry. "Fine." He turned to Alex. "You can let go now." Alex ignored him, looking to Derek. Derek suppressed the now-routine desire to box his ears and just nodded. Alex withdrew, but gave Inge a warning look.
Which, considering that Derek didn't buy the fine-I-give act for one damn second, was probably not a bad idea.
Derek took a few seconds to think. The Tigers needed to be filled in, in case they didn't have an outside source, and Pudge Rodriguez's cell number would be in his phone's memory from Inge's call. So he would call, and because Pudge struck him as being sensible, the call would include the things Derek hadn't told his own team yet, so he needed a little privacy.
Decision made, Derek headed for the showers, pausing long enough to murmur to Tino, "If he tries to make a run for it, don't let him."
**********
This time, Pudge grabbed his phone the second it rang. It had been almost twenty minutes since Brandon's call and no sign of him. "Brandon?"
"No, it's Jeter. Inge is fine, he's not going anywhere, but there are a few things you should know."
Pudge listened, one eye on Nook, as Jeter explained about the call he got from his friend on the Red Sox. The news that it was dangerous outside came as no surprise, but the fact that it was bad enough for live coverage even in Canada disturbed him. "And there's - there's one other thing."
And as Jeter relayed what he had been told was happening, even as he stuttered uncomfortably over the foolish-sounding word "zombies," Pudge looked at Nook - unconscious, barely breathing, rapidly becoming cool to the touch - and believed him.
Yeah, I know, terrible place to stop, but that's probably about as far as it's going to get. Although, I will need something to do when I go to the laundromat this week . . .
By the way, why is is suddenly so damn hard to write in the past tense all of a sudden? I used to do it ALL THE TIME, you'd think I could switch back. I guess my brain has decided that that baseball fic = present tense and is going to resist being conditioned otherwise as hard as it can.
It gets no title, because that would imply that I intend to finish it or something, but I'll give it an R for violence and language, and as far as a disclaimer goes, I fucking hope to god that it's all the product of my twisted and bored imagination.
Willie Ledezma was having a rough game. He kept throwing balls, giving up doubles, he'd hit three guys by the fourth inning. He had no idea why he was still in the game. Maybe it was because when it wasn't him stinking up the mound, it was Mussina. Maybe Tram figured there was no point in using up the relief if the opposing pitcher sucked just as hard as their own did.
Or maybe he was as distracted as everyone else by all the fighting in the stands.
It was crazy. Had some sort of Yankees/Tigers rivalry sprung up while he wasn't paying attention? Were the Yankee fans bored with the Red Sox and experimenting with something new?
Willie carefully averted his eyes from the team of security rushing, rather wearily at this point, into the stands (but he couldn't help noticing that there were half as many of them as there had been in the first inning), and tried once again to concentrate on the player in front of him. Jason Giambi. He took a deep breath, collected himself, and proceeded to throw a nice gift-wrapped homerun ball right over the middle of the plate. Fuck.
Except that Giambi didn't take a swing, because he was staring at third, where Brandon Inge was screaming and pointing into the stands.
"HOLY FUCKING SHIT THAT GUY JUST BIT THAT GUY!"
Every head in the stadium turned to look where Brandon was pointing.
A fan had one of the security staff on his knees, and was biting his shoulder. No - chewing his shoulder. No - tearing nice big fucking chunks out of his shoulder.
There were maybe five frozen seconds of silence, then the screaming began.
**********
"Dude, are any of you guys watching the news?"
Kevin Millar would have liked to respond to Bronson's question with an incredulous stare, but Bronson was not there, and staring at the cellphone would not be a good enough substitute, and Kevin couldn't pronounce "incredulous" anyway, so he settled for raising his eyebrows at the dugout floor.
"No. Because we're playing a ballgame. I know it's been a while since you did that, but we don't usually watch the news. And why are you watching the news and not the game?"
"Because they pre-empted the game for a special report."
"What? On NESN?" Kevin raised his voice to address the the rest of the team. "Guys! They pre-empted the fucking game on NESN! Why the fuck did they do that?"
"There's this huge fucking riot going on at Yankee Stadium. It sounds like people are dead."
Kevin was about to laugh, ha ha, very funny, get a life and quit it with the lame pranks, but there was something in Bronson's somber tone that stopped him short.
The others were staring at him, waiting for further information, so Kevin passed it along.
Silence.
"Why?" Kevin asked.
"I don't know. Nobody does. But it's bad out there. They showed this clip, this one guy coming at the camera with blood all over his face, and then he grabbed the cameraman? And the camera fell. It was kind of like, did you ever see the Dawn of the Dead remake, where they have that extra feature on the DVD with the newscast? It was like they lifted it right out of that, only the guy was slow."
Kevin blinked. "Why the fuck would they show something like that? The FCC is gonna be right up their asses."
"Don't know that either."
"Bronson thinks it's zombies," Kevin announced.
"Hey! I didn't fucking say that!" Bronson protested.
The other guys were chuckling uneasily, and Tito was looking over at the Blue Jays' dugout like he was trying to figure out whether to pass the news along or let it go for now, but Youkilis -
"Zombies?" - looked like he'd just won the fucking lottery.
**********
It wasn't until the dust settled settled a little and Brandon started looking around that he realized that some of the players fleeing the field had gotten confused about where they were going.
Well, a couple of them had.
Well, he had. Because judging from the number of pinstripes surrounding him, he had ended up in the Yankees' clubhouse by mistake.
He hoped they wouldn't kick him out. It didn't look like they were going to, though, because aside from a couple weird looks, no one seemed to care.
The room was very quiet, players leaning nervously against walls and sitting tensely on benches. Brandon tried a wall, didn't like it, and took a seat instead, choosing an empty spot next to A-Rod with the vague idea that third basemen should stick together. Also, no one else seemed to want to sit next to him.
"Hey," someone said finally; Brandon twisted his head around to see that it was Tino Martinez talking. "Where's Jason?"
"Looks like we traded him," said Jeter, gesturing toward Brandon and getting the kind of laughter that always meets a lame joke in a bad situation.
"'Bout fucking time," Tino answered. "Forget the ball, kid, if you can hit the broad side of a barn with your bat, you're in." More anxious laughter. Brandon just grinned a kind of stupid grin, too keyed up to think of anything good to answer back with.
"You guys know what this is, right?" Everyone turned to look at Tanyon Sturtze. He was fondling a bat with worrying intensity. "You've seen the movies, right? Night of the Living Dead and those?"
". . . you're kidding, right?" Tino said. "There's no such thing as zombies, you douche."
Brandon thought about that guy in the stands, the way he'd been chowing down on the security guard. "Did you see that, though?" he asked. "That guy was eating that guy."
"This is New York," Tino pointed out. "He was probably a fucking nut case."
"Whatever you say, Tino." Sturtze shouldered his bat, raising his chin and squaring his jaw and probably thinking he looked pretty heroic instead of like a posturing dork with a bat on his shoulder. "I'm going out to find Jason."
Brandon could practically hear the cheesy John Williams music swelling as Sturtze stared resolutely ahead. Then it screeched to a halt as Jeter matter-of-factly reached over and plucked the bat out of his grip.
"Sit down, Tanyon. No one's going anywhere until we get the all-clear."
Sturtze deflated. "You suck."
"Sit." Brandon, who had only ever seen Jeter on the field with that calm face of his in place, would not have guessed that he could glare like that. Even though he sort of hoped, just on general principle, that Sturtze would grab his bat back and go storming out, he didn't really blame him for withering a little and sitting on the nearest available seat, which happened to be on the bench next to Brandon.
"It's probably not such a good idea to open the door anyway, man," Brandon told him, keeping his voice low. "You know what happens when you open the door." He was trying not to be heard, but A-Rod heard him and snorted.
"Jesus. Don't encourage him."
Sturtze shot right back, "Cram it, E-Five," which Brandon thought was kind of harsh.
"I don't think this is really the time, you guys, plus I'm sitting between you, so please don't kill me, and does either of you have a cell phone, because I wanna call Pudge."
A-Rod and Sturtze glared a little more, but subsided, and after a couple minutes of everyone rummaging, Brandon got both a phone and a nod of approval from Jeter. "Find out if Jason's there, will ya?"
The phone rang and rang; Brandon was just about to hang up and try Kyle or Tram instead when Pudge finally answered, voice tight and distracted. "Yes?"
"Hey, Pudge, it's me."
"Brandon. Thank You," Pudge whispered; Brandon could hear the capital Y almost as clearly as he could see Pudge crossing himself. "Are you all right?"
"Yeah, I kinda got mixed up so I'm with the Yankees," Brandon admitted. "But everyone's fine here. How's it over there? You guys got Giambi?"
"Giambi?" Pudge asked blankly. "No."
"Shit." Brandon shook his head at Jeter, who frowned, then reached out to push Sturtze back down onto the bench as he tried to stand. "Is there anyone else missing?" he asked Pudge.
"Just you." There was a pause, and maybe Brandon was just feeling paranoid, but it sounded an awful lot like a something-I'm-not-telling-you pause.
"And?"
A little more pause, then, "Someone grabbed Nook. It looks like he got bit. He doesn't look good."
Brandon was silent for a long time, then, "I'm coming over."
"No, Brandon, it's not safe out there -"
"I'm coming over." Brandon flipped the phone shut and handed the phone back to Jeter.
"Awesome." Sturtze clapped him on the shoulder. "I'm coming too."
"Do I have to tie you two to the fucking bench?" Jeter demanded. "No one is going anywhere until they tell us it's safe."
"They're not -" Oh, fuck it. Brandon was not going to have this conversation. He stood, or tried to, only to find that A-Rod had locked an iron arm around his waist. He turned to look at him incredulously. "Get off me."
"You heard him. You're not going anywhere." A-Rod wasn't looking at him, though, but rather past him at Jeter, with a weirdly hopeful expression that was seriously at odds with the situation. So much for third base unity. Brandon gave up on that and turned to appeal to Jeter, who had a similar grip on Sturtze's shoulder.
"Whatever he told you, there's nothing you can do about it," Jeter said, not unkindly.
Which was wrong, because Brandon was afraid he might be the only Tiger who understood what was going on, and "might be" was a more than good enough reason to get over there, because "might be" implied "might not be," and they needed someone who could accept what probably needed to be done about Nook, and who would do it.
**********
In the end, there was no need for Tito to sneak a message over to the Jays. A couple minutes after Kevin's zombie crack, while they were still all busy staring at Youks and making him turn crimson, Theo'd called and said that, because of the mess at Yankee Stadium, every game in the Major League was being suspended until further notice, and all the parks were being evacuated. There had been a little token grumbling, but overall no one really minded, and now they were all in the hotel, crowded around the TV in Kevin and Manny's room and watching the confused news anchors tell them the same things over and over. They'd seen the clip Bronson mentioned at least a dozen times, they'd seen shaky footage of the stands, they'd seen shots of the players running like hell for their respective dugouts and leaving the field unsettlingly still. They'd seen Nook Logan go down, and Pudge Rodriguez drag the attacker away and pick Logan right up off the ground and get him inside. They'd seen Jason Giambi not get so lucky.
But the worst, the one that made them quiet down and stop picking on Youks, was what the newsanchors said was the very last shot before all communication from the stadium was cut off. It showed the field, no longer empty, with slow figures stumbling across it, and Giambi, lying across home plate, beginning to stir. Then it went to static.
That was more than enough for Kevin, and he turned the TV off after that. No one argued. A silent moment or two passed.
"You think they know how bad it is out there?" Varitek asked. It was probably rhetorical, but Boomer answered, "Let's make sure," and got on his cell.
**********
Derek snapped his cell phone shut, frowning harder now. "That was Boomer. He says they've all been watching the news, and it's a fucking mess out there. No one goes anywhere." He didn't say what David had told him about Jason, or that he, too, had brought up the Z-word. Done it with a cynical chuckle, but done it nonetheless. Instead, he looked sternly at Inge. "No one."
Inge stared at him, angry. "Fine." He turned to Alex. "You can let go now." Alex ignored him, looking to Derek. Derek suppressed the now-routine desire to box his ears and just nodded. Alex withdrew, but gave Inge a warning look.
Which, considering that Derek didn't buy the fine-I-give act for one damn second, was probably not a bad idea.
Derek took a few seconds to think. The Tigers needed to be filled in, in case they didn't have an outside source, and Pudge Rodriguez's cell number would be in his phone's memory from Inge's call. So he would call, and because Pudge struck him as being sensible, the call would include the things Derek hadn't told his own team yet, so he needed a little privacy.
Decision made, Derek headed for the showers, pausing long enough to murmur to Tino, "If he tries to make a run for it, don't let him."
**********
This time, Pudge grabbed his phone the second it rang. It had been almost twenty minutes since Brandon's call and no sign of him. "Brandon?"
"No, it's Jeter. Inge is fine, he's not going anywhere, but there are a few things you should know."
Pudge listened, one eye on Nook, as Jeter explained about the call he got from his friend on the Red Sox. The news that it was dangerous outside came as no surprise, but the fact that it was bad enough for live coverage even in Canada disturbed him. "And there's - there's one other thing."
And as Jeter relayed what he had been told was happening, even as he stuttered uncomfortably over the foolish-sounding word "zombies," Pudge looked at Nook - unconscious, barely breathing, rapidly becoming cool to the touch - and believed him.
Yeah, I know, terrible place to stop, but that's probably about as far as it's going to get. Although, I will need something to do when I go to the laundromat this week . . .
By the way, why is is suddenly so damn hard to write in the past tense all of a sudden? I used to do it ALL THE TIME, you'd think I could switch back. I guess my brain has decided that that baseball fic = present tense and is going to resist being conditioned otherwise as hard as it can.
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but zombies are always cool and I liked this one.
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ZOMBIES!