by John Russo
“Okay,” said the sheriff. “That sorta makes sense. Good luck to you. You’re sure gonna need it.”
Dismayed by this turn of events, Bruce Barnes grumbled, “Mark my words. Only good zombie is a dead zombie.”
And Jeff Sanders said, “Right on!”
CHAPTER 2
The sky was high in the sky, and the day was made even hotter by the huge fire consuming the bodies of the undead that had been shot in the cemetery. Deputy Jeff Sanders and an armed civilian, Dan Castillo, dragged the inert form of yet another vanquished ghoul from between two large ornate monuments and over to the fire. The dead thing was heavy, even for two strong men grabbing it by its legs and arms, and they grunted as they heaved it onto the fire, then stood back taking a breather as they watched the dead man’s clothes start to glow, then incinerate.
“This is definitely the craziest day of my life,” Dan said. “I hope I never see another one like it.”
“Well, it’s not gonna end today,” Jeff pronounced. “There’re more of ’em around here, that’s for sure.”
“I think we’ve got them just about cleaned out,” said Dan.
“Just about, but not totally, I don’t think,” said Jeff. He had been surprised two days ago when he found out that Dan Castillo had joined up with the posse because he had always pegged Dan as the bookish type. They had graduated from high school together, and Dan had entered law school while Jeff was being trained at the police academy. Over the past few years, there had been times when Jeff was unmercifully grilled by Dan in courtrooms where the defendants were scumbags who’d been arrested. They both said “no hard feelings” afterward and tried to sincerely mean it, but still they had remained wary while trying not to start hating each other. At first blush, it was hard for Jeff to imagine that the suave young lawyer could be an effective ghoul hunter, but it turned out that he had kept himself fit by playing tennis and handball and was actually a good shot. He liked to let off steam by target shooting, not hunting, and he spent quite a lot of time practicing at a shooting range run by the Evans City Sportsmen’s Club.
“What do you think is going to happen to Dr. Melrose?” Dan asked.
“Gonna die . . . then come back,” Jeff said. “Then he’ll have to be shot in the head by somebody, maybe one of those lab guys who wanted to try and save him.”
“Maybe they don’t all die,” Dan said.
“Never heard of one who didn’t,” Jeff scoffed. “Anyone bitten becomes one of those things. Then they have to be shot or burned.”
“I know that’s usually been the case . . .”
“Always been the case.”
“Yes, as far as we now know,” said the lawyer. “But think about AIDS, Jeff. A disease we totally did not understand, and it was always a hundred percent fatal. We all thought it was worse than the bubonic plague. But eventually we found ways to delay the worst symptoms even if we couldn’t defeat it. And now it’s not always a death sentence. Some folks even survive it and go on to lead normal lives.”
“Ain’t gonna happen to Dr. Melrose,” Jeff said. “He’s gonna turn into one of these thing we’re trying to hunt down and kill. I hope he doesn’t get to bite one of his lab guys first, before they wise up.”
“Why do you call them things when you know full well they’re human, just like us?”
“Because they’re not like us anymore. They used to be, but they’re not now. I keep that in mind so I don’t choke up when I have to shoot them. Especially the women and the kids. I hate having to kill them.”
“Well, it shows that you’re a sensitive person,” Dan said respectfully. “I like that quality in you . . . or anybody. You’re not just a hard-nosed cop.”
“Well, thanks, but you’re more hard-nosed than I am when you’ve got me in front of a jury.”
They both laughed, then Dan said, “We better move on and catch up with the sheriff.”
“Wait a minute—I hear some noises back there in the woods.”
“Just trees rustling.”
“Not enough breeze. Something’s moving.”
“I don’t hear anything. I’m moving on. Are you coming?”
“No, not till I check it out.”
“Don’t go in there by yourself. C’mon, let’s catch up with the rest of the guys and get us some hot coffee.”
“Something is in those woods, and I’m not letting it stay alive to chomp on somebody. I’m goin’ in there.”
“Suit yourself. I’d stick with you, but I’m sure you’re hearing things, Jeff. I’m sorry, but I’m cutting out.”
Dan moved off a ways but then looked back, hoping Jeff would follow. But Jeff didn’t. “Don’t go in there alone!” Dan shouted, but when he didn’t hear any reply from Jeff, he shrugged and reluctantly headed out of the cemetery toward the rendezvous point Sheriff Harkness had previously designated.
Slowly working his way into the wooded area, Jeff’s eyes darted around warily, and he stopped and scanned his surroundings. At first he saw and heard nothing, and he thought maybe his buddy Dan was right in arguing that he was making a mountain out of a molehill.
Then suddenly three zombies, two males and a female, came out from within some thick foliage. Both males were wearing shorts and T-shirts that revealed numerous tattoos covering their arms and legs. The female, in a lavender blouse and tight denim shorts, was a shapely teenage girl who probably used to be beautiful, but now her face was hideously ripped and scarred. All three were spattered with the blood and gore of people they must have attacked and devoured.
Startled by them at first, Jeff wheeled and hastily fired, blowing a hole in the young girl’s chest. She fell, knocked back by the impact, but started to get up again.
The two male zombies kept on coming.
Jeff took careful aim at the female’s head and blew her away. Then he worked his lever-action and swiveled his Winchester onto the closest male zombie.
With a loud rasping groan a fourth zombie suddenly lurched at Jeff from behind, grabbing him by the shoulders and making him drop his rifle. He tried to scramble for the dropped weapon, but now three zombies were upon him, and he had to scratch, punch, and claw at them to avoid being bitten. Pounding a hard blow into the flabby paunch of the zombie who had first grabbed him, he realized its belly was partially rotted and feared that his fist would penetrate into the decayed bowels. But instead the hateful being let out a whoosh of foul-smelling breath and crumpled to the ground, groaning and salivating.
Jeff backed away, yanking his service revolver from its holster. He managed to squeeze off three shots that echoed loudly but went wild as he stumbled backward through the trees.
Emerging into a weed-grown meadow, he found himself immediately in even worse trouble. Six ravenous adult zombies were hovering over the partially devoured remains of a human corpse, and as soon as they saw Jeff, they got to their feet and came at him. He fired his revolver twice, scoring two head shots and a wild miss. But when he pulled the trigger again he got only a click.
Still clutching the empty revolver, he took off running.
The zombies came after him.
He ran toward a small pond and frantically splashed his way in, deeper and deeper. In chest-high water, his hat gone and the rest of his uniform totally soaked, he turned and faced the pursuing zombies. Crazed with fear, he yelled at them, “You damn things! You’re scared of fire—but how about water? I hope you’re scared of water too, you ugly bastards!”
Two of the female zombies hung back, at least temporarily, which gave the lawman hope. But four others kept coming mindlessly forward as if the water made no impression on them. Two big males uncaringly, unfeelingly, slipped under the ripples, seemingly to drown—if zombies could drown. And maybe they could, because in short order there were bubbles gurgling around them, and then the dead things floated like driftwood on the pond’s surface.
But two female zombies kept after Jeff and waded deeper into the water. He clubbed the first one in the head with the but
t of his revolver, and then kept on clubbing her again and again till she stopped struggling and floated on the surface like the two others.
When the last remaining zombie lunged at him, Jeff managed to seize her by the throat. Pushing her head under the water, he choked her as hard as he could, terror written all over his face as he yelled at the top of his lungs. “Die, you bitch! Die! Die! Die! Die!”
But her evil, twisted face rose up toward him, and with all his strength, he tried to push her back underwater. Then, even though she was being choked, she somehow started talking to him, and he thought he must be going crazy.
“Jeff . . . stop . . . you’re hurting me . . .”
He choked her harder, trying to make her last rotten breath bubble out of her.
“Please . . . Jeff . . . you’re hurting me . . .”
Suddenly, shimmering, he saw the face of his wife. It wavered like the ripples of the water, then it became clear.
It was Amy, and he was choking her in their bed.
Scared of what he had done, he let go of her, and she fell back, crying and holding her throat.
He covered his own face with his hands, his fingers still tight and sore with the effort of the choking. “Oh, god,” he lamented. “Amy . . . I’m so sorry . . . I’m so sorry . . .”
This was not the first time such a thing had happened. It was sixteen years now since the day that Dr. Melrose had been bitten in the cemetery. Jeff’s hair was gray now, his face lined and much older looking. He was only forty-one, but he was under the strain of posttraumatic stress disorder. He shook his head dolefully, his hands still covering his face in remorse.
Amy’s voice was hoarse from the damage he had done to her with his fingers, and she was overcome with sadness, a sadness tinged with ruefulness because she still loved him. “You say you can’t help it, Jeff. But I’ve stuck with you all this time, through all the counseling, all the rehab and the expensive medication . . .”
“I know . . . I know . . . and I’m sorry, Amy. I understand what you’ve been through. I understand that it’s my fault.”
“But you’re still flipping out on me, and I have no clue where or when it’s liable to happen. I have no idea what sets you off.”
“I didn’t start having flashbacks until three years ago. And lately it’s been coming over me less often. I’ve been having fewer and fewer nightmares.”
“Yes, but it only takes one, like the one you just had, that might kill me. How do I know that next time, or the next, I won’t end up dead?”
“I don’t think . . . I mean, I always manage to snap out of it in time.”
“Always?” Amy said softly. “I’m not so sure I want to keep betting my life on it.”
He started to cry. He couldn’t help himself. For most of his life, even when he was a child, he had prided himself on his ability to hold back tears, even when others bullied him or said nasty things about him, or when he tried out for plays or other high school activities, such as the football or baseball teams, and didn’t make it.
But now he cried. And Amy still loved him enough to wrap her arms tightly around him and try to comfort him.
But he was scared their marriage might be over.
PART TWO
THE MISSION
CHAPTER 3
Janice Fazio didn’t know that she was being followed.
And the person following her didn’t know that he was being followed also. He felt sure that she was an easy victim. She was obviously headed directly for where he already knew her car was parked. He had already checked it out, and he congratulated himself for his cleverness, his attention to appropriate detail. To his satisfaction, she had left the car in a sparsely lit lot on a murky side street that seldom had a flow of cars or pedestrians.
It was near midnight, and Janice had just left her friend Michelle in a dinky little cocktail lounge on the depressingly quiet main drag of Willard, a slow, boring little town whose sole claim to fame was that it had been a so-called “rescue center” during the zombie epidemic of sixteen years ago.
Big deal. Who really cared about that anymore?
Janice was disappointed in her friend Michelle because Michelle had such poor taste in men, as usual. She had hooked up with a distasteful young man that Janice wanted no parts of. He called himself “Chub.” No last name, no first name, just Chub, for God’s sake! He had quoits in his earlobes and a face-darkening stubble of black beard that he probably thought made him cool instead of proving that he was too damned lazy to shave. He wore three-quarter-length denim cutoffs with holes sliced in them, no socks, scuffed and dirty sneakers as big as barges, and a limp and faded dirty orange wifebeater shirt with a cartoon of a brown turd on it and big, dripping brown capital letters that said: I GOT MY SHIT TOGETHER. There were amateurish tattoos dotting his hairy, skinny calves, making them look even skinnier and hairier than they actually were.
Chub was the person who was following Janice.
Blake Parsons and Spaz Bentley were the two thugs who were following Chub.
They worked for Dr. Harold Melrose.
Blake and Spaz were two peas in a pod, two thugs in a pack, each feeding off the other’s mean attitude and easy disposition toward brutality. Both had rap sheets that included armed robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, manslaughter, and various lesser crimes and misdemeanors. They were big, beefy men with shaved heads, and they carried concealed handguns and leather blackjacks. They each had black teardrops tattooed under their right eyes, prison tattoos that were symbolic of the number of people they had killed. Blake had two teardrop tattoos and Spaz had only one, and Blake often ragged on Spaz that he’d have to hustle to catch up.
They knew that Chub Harris didn’t have any teardrop tattoos because he had never done any prison time and had never been punished for any of his rapes and murders. The cops knew he was guilty, but they couldn’t prove it. Officially they had him down as only a “person of interest.” He had eluded a statewide manhunt for over a year, then he made a minor screwup and the cops got onto him. They wanted to make an arrest, but they needed more evidence. But Blake and Spaz were not under those kinds of constraints.
Chub had the hots for Janice Fazio, not her friend Michelle. He had pretended to be highly interested in Michelle only so he could hover close to Janice and study her. He had blandly and patiently concealed his anger over the obvious fact that she didn’t like him. Obvious because she took pains to make it obvious. But the smug little bitch was going to get her comeuppance.
As soon as Janice had excused herself with her series of dumb little lies so she could flee from the cocktail lounge and from his unwanted company, Chub had excused himself to go to the men’s room—but he never had any intention of returning to the table. Instead he ditched dumb little Michelle and slipped out the back door and into the alley that smelled of rotten garbage. Then he had speedily caught up with Janice, and now she was doomed. He smirked at the thought of it.
Blake Parsons and Spaz Bentley were smirking too. Because they knew that Chub was the one who was doomed.
Doomed to become zombie feed.
The main question in their minds was: How far should they let things go? Should they let Chub have his way with Janice first, and then take him when he was totally unsuspecting and satiated? Or should they save her by pouncing on him before she became aware of any threat to her?
In their philosophical discussions with Dr. Melrose, he had made the point sometimes that it wasn’t any of their responsibility to interfere with people’s normal destiny. Their mission wasn’t to alter history, either personal or political. Whatever was about to happen to Janice Fazio was not set in motion by them; therefore it was not in any way unethical to merely let it happen. They were not under any moral obligation to alter her fate. Ergo, they could not be blamed in any way for letting it unfold naturally.
“Maybe we should phone the good doctor,” Blake suggested in a whisper.
“No, it would just annoy him,” said Spaz. “He
expects us to make the right decisions based on what he’s taught us. And, really, we already know the right thing to do, don’t we?”
“Yeah, I just wanted to run it by you,” said Blake.
“What about afterward? Should we make any use of her?”
“Well, if it doesn’t get us caught . . .”
“That’s what I think,” Spaz agreed readily. “It’d be a shame to waste a perfectly usable dead human body.”
Meantime, Chub had quickly cut through a path between a poolroom and a beauty parlor and had run through an alley parallel to the main drag so he could outflank Janice Fazio and get into the parking lot ahead of her. Then, as she approached her little red Mazda, he was already lurking behind a blue grocery-market van only two spaces away from her. When she unlocked the driver’s side door and swung it open, he pounced on her. He just ran at her and delivered a hard body slam. He heard the breath whoosh out of her. She went down by his sneakers, and he stooped over her and punched her three or four times in her face. She was out cold quickly. He picked up her keys and unlocked her trunk. Then he lifted her limp body and put her in there.
Blake and Spaz watched Chub attack Janice Fazio, a fairly neat and easy job on his part as planned captures went.
They knew he was going to rape and kill her, probably by slow strangulation, which was his motif. Usually he would choke to the point of unconsciousness, then let up till the victim revived, then choke her again; he would do this six or seven times, till he ejaculated from the sheer thrill of it. He already had a string of six victims. Taking him out would be a service to the community, even to the nation, because he was a killer who liked to travel far and wide to spread terror.
Blake and Spaz were proud of what they were about to do to him. He didn’t know it, but he had met more than his match. They were going to do the honorable thing where he was concerned. They were going to take him out. And if Janice Fazio had to be sacrificed, well then, she was just collateral damage.
