Awake

by Edward J. McFadden III

  “The city’s emergency communication system is now down. All nine-one-one calls are getting dead air,” yelled one of Don’s men from the rear of the van.

  “That’s not good. People panic when there’s no voice on the other end of the line.” A fat raindrop plopped onto the windshield. Don frowned. He and water had a complex history.

  As a young boy, his father had cured his fear of the water by throwing him into the Atlantic Ocean. The undertow had sucked him under and rolled him like a stone, and it had taken his father and two others to fish him out. It was one of those memories etched in his mind, and one his close SEAL friends never let him live down. A moment of honesty while sitting in the shit, followed by a lifetime of good-hearted abuse. Then there was the virus that could live in water that got the better of him. Facing his fears had led him to the Navy, but lately, he was a SEAL out of water.

  Black nimbus clouds darkened the sky, moving fast east to west, and in the distance, thunder cracked. Southern Florida’s weather is unpredictable, and clear skies can turn into black cloud nightmares in minutes. The rain came in hard, turning the windshield into a blur. Wipers worked overtime to clear the water, and it was still hard to see the road. The area they drove through had seen better days; large plots and big houses that were now either abandoned, or broken up into apartments. It was a reminder of how fast things could change, and how falling rarely felt like flying.

  “A good washing never hurt anything,” the driver said, his voice rising above the sound of the pouring rain pelting the van’s roof.

  “Unless the pathogen is now in the water system,” Don said.

  The driver said nothing. They passed silent houses, and saw nobody on the streets. The van pulled to the curb in front of an old mansion with dilapidated grounds. A crumbling stone wall with rusted steel ramparts surrounded the place.

  One of Don’s men stuck his head into the front cab. “He’s in apartment six.”

  “How many others inside?” asked Don.

  “Unknown, but there’s only eight apartments in the place, so collateral damage should be minimal.”

  Don got out and waited for his men. “You and Driving Ms. Daisy here stay behind with the van. I’ll go in with the others.”

  The street was deserted and unnervingly quiet. He drew his Glock, pressed the trigger safety, and nodded for his men to lead the way as they jumped from the van, their MP5 machine pistols at the ready and loaded with 9mm parabellums.

  The old iron gate at the end of the driveway looked like it hadn’t been closed in years, and the four agents slipped through, holding to the brick wall, and staying out of sight. The rain was still coming down, but barely. Don was soaked, tired, hungry, and depressed at the thought of what was to come.

  When they reached the house, Don sent one of his men around back and tested the communication mic on his ear. “Rouge one, are you in position?”

  “Affirmative.”

  He checked in with the men in the van while he waited for the lock on the front door to be picked. No need. It was unlocked, and they entered the house like wraths.

  The foyer was dim, dirty, and reeked of mold and decay. One-dash-four was written on the wall in marker next to the stairs, with an arrow pointing upward. They passed through the foyer into what would have once been the living room, but was now a warren of hallways leading to different apartments. The opposite side was one door. Probably the biggest apartment. Nothing was numbered, but Don was pretty sure where Teapot lived. He pointed to the single door, and stood back while one of his agents knocked the door down, and rushed in, swinging his gun side to side as he passed inside.

  They all froze as they entered the apartment, weapons held level.

  Teapot was a big man. Bald, massively overweight. He sat on the couch in his living room, his face pale and drawn. In the corner was a female victim. It had long straw-like blonde hair, with eyes so big she looked like a fish. She growled at Don, but otherwise didn’t appear threatening.

  “Hey,” Don said.

  Teapot looked at him, but said nothing.

  “How long has she been like that?”

  Don inched further into the room, and his men fanned out around him. Nothing looked out of place. Teapot had returned his gaze to the wall, eyes focused on something Don couldn’t see. He appeared to be in shock and was afraid to accept what crouched terrified in the corner. Teapot’s girlfriend, or wife, or mother, had mutated into something he couldn’t process.

  “How long has she been like that?” Don asked again.

  When Teapot didn’t answer, Don turned, sighted his weapon on the walker’s leg, and fired. The boom of the Glock discharging filled the room, and the transformed woman screamed in pain. Teapot sprang forward, lunging at Don. He was intercepted by Don’s men and gave up the fight when he saw his woman.

  Don’s shot had grazed her leg, and buried itself in the wall behind her, just as he’d intended. She was more afraid than hurt, but she was also awake. Her natural color was returning, and her skin had released its tense grip as the disease retreated like a spider when put under a light. Don nodded to his man, and he let Teapot go to the woman. They embraced. Don gave them five seconds.

  “She your girl?”

  Teapot nodded.

  “When was the last time she took ride?”

  “She didn’t.”

  Don looked at Teapot like he was a cockroach. “She didn’t take ride?”

  “Sherri don’t do that shit,” Teapot said. “I do. She gets it for me from a rich dude who wants to… ” He looked at his girl.

  Maybe it wasn’t a bad batch of ride, yet the drug chain had led him right to another victim. Unless Sherri was lying to her man. “You 100% sure you didn’t take ride?” Don asked the woman. “It’s important.”

  “Never,” she said, eyes clear. Unfortunately, Don believed her. She was infected, didn’t take ride, but her boyfriend did.

  “Tend to her injury and give her a caffeine pill,” Don said, and two of his men went to work bandaging Sherri’s superficial wound.

  There was an explosion outside, and Don went to the window. He gasped as balls of flame and smoke rose above the brick wall in the area where the van was parked. When his men didn’t come through the open gate toward the house, his heart sank. He tried to contact them, but got only dead air.

  Rouge One was still in position at the rear entrance, and Don ordered him to investigate the blast and report back. If the van was gone, he was screwed. He would have to pull out. Their chopper waited at Kendall-Tamiami airport, but the airfield and local military installations would be locked down tighter than a frog’s ass, and it would take time to convince them he should be let in, and longer still to get into the air. That all assumed there wasn’t a host of sleepwalkers controlling the airport.

  The faint sound of metal tapping on metal came from the second floor. Don put a finger to his lips, and everyone went silent. Someone was hammering on the plumping. Teapot and his girl jumped when the rhythm was answered by a louder, more deliberate tapping from one of the first-floor apartments.

  Don put his hand to his ear. “Go ahead, One.”

  The agent sounded worried and out of breath. “The van has been burnt out, and it looks like our men were in there. There’s a chain going around the van holding the doors shut. They were burnt alive.”

  “Any signs of who… or what did it?”

  “There’s a crowd of victims down the street, thirty or more, huddled together, watching me.” There was a pause and a scuffling sound. Then, “They’re coming up the street fast, and I’m trying to close the gates, but they’re broken.”

  “Forget it, Rogue One. Retreat to me at once.”

  “Copy that.” The comm channel went dead.

  Don looked at his two men, then at Teapot and Sherri. “You have any guns? Anything you can protect yourself with?” Teapot nodded and disappeared into his bedroom, then returned with a shotgun.

  The front door of the house slammed,
and they heard more tapping on the pipes. Don’s third man appeared in the open doorway, his eyes wide, panting hard. “They’re coming. Several are entering the house behind me,” he said. The agent entered and closed the door behind him. The two others placed the couch in front of the door.

  Don pulled out his sat-phone, dialed up his contact, and recited his number. “I’m in need of support. Grab the coordinates from my phone.”

  “You’re going to have to wait. The shit has hit the fan. You’re on your own for now.”

  Don clicked off and looked at his men. He didn’t need to say anything. They slipped into combat mode, positioning themselves and Teapot around the apartment at all possible entrances. Don ordered them to shoot for the legs and arms, but Teapot’s shotgun wouldn’t be that selective. The tapping pipes reached a fever pitch, then went silent. Everything was still, not a single creak.

  The room imploded.

  They came through the ceiling, the thin sheetrock partition walls, the windows, and the door. All at once, together in what appeared to be an action controlled by one mind. The walkers paused then, holding their heads in pain, as if the great exertion and commotion had hurt them. Don used their hesitation. He squeezed off eleven shots and woke eleven people. That cut the horde in half, though more were crowding together in the hallway outside the apartment.

  The newly woken people were dazed, and in shock. They sat, or lay prone on the floor, clawing at the wounds that had woken them. One of Don’s men was yelling, attempting to get them together so he could protect as many as possible, but it was like trying to herd cats. Sheetrock dust filled the air, and Sherri was screaming. Teapot positioned himself in front of her, his shotgun held before him. There was a loud wail, and one of Don’s men got ripped from his feet and thrown across the room. His MP5 fired, and left a ribbon of holes in the wall, and across two walkers. The gun tumbled from his hand and skittered across the floor, coming to rest in front of a sleepwalker.

  The walker picked it up, and studied it closely, turning the barrel toward his face. The weapon discharged, and blew the walker’s head from its shoulders in a hail of bullets, leaving a lump of flesh, brain, and blood on the wall as the body fell. The fallen agent shook his head, and started to get up, but was pounded across the face with a length of pipe, cracking his temporal bone and driving the shattered fragments through his brain. The sleepwalker stood over the agent’s lifeless body. When it bent over to start taking bites of the man, Don lost it.

  His Glock barked four more times, emptying the magazine. The clip dropped from the gun, and he snapped another one home before the four walkers hit the floor. “We need to get out of here!” Don yelled.

  Teapot pointed toward the bedroom, and Don nodded for him to go for it. As soon as he moved, two of the walkers dove for Teapot as he pushed Sherri before him. The fat man stopped short and let loose with four shots at point-blank range. None of those four victims would ever wake.

  Don’s remaining two men were firing into the crowd of sleepwalkers as they pushed into the apartment in a sleepy haze. But they were coming through the walls, and from above, and soon his men were drowning in a sea of bodies, the rattle of the machineguns fading beneath the pile of walkers. Don followed Teapot and Sherri into the bedroom.

  Don’s last two men had joined the ranks of the sleeping dead. They came after him, all recognition gone, any trace of humanity hidden. They fired, and bullets tore through the door as Don slammed it shut, locked it, and dove for cover. The MP5s stopped discharging.

  Teapot tossed a desk chair through what was left of his bedroom window, and pumped another shell into the shotgun’s chamber. He fired. Pumped again. Fired. The path cleared, he helped Sherri out the window, and followed. Don heard screaming, the shotgun boom, and then silence. Seconds passed while Don waited, breathing heavy. The walkers pounded on the cracking door. Two others were creeping toward him from above.

  Teapot, Sherri, and their new friends were coming through the window. Teapot fired at Don, who only had to avoid one shot before the gun clicked empty. The sleepwalker that had been Teapot continued to pull the trigger, the dull clicking sound as the hammer struck nothing oddly clear amidst the turmoil.

  Then they were on him.

  Don emptied his weapon, but there were too many. The walkers covered him like ants on a candy bar, ripping off his clothing, pulling at this hair, taking his weapon and phone. As Don struggled, he saw a young girl, standing well away from the melee, her brown hair drenched with sweat and matted to her face. Her eyes burned, and her lips were pulled back in a wicked grin.

  Chapter Six

  A heron with a patch of yellow feathers atop its head screeched like an alarm, insects large and small buzzed, the wind rattled a million leaves, but the pounding of Maureen’s heart was louder than them all. She steadied herself as she came to terms with the fact that things had just gotten real. Vacation was ruined, and instinct told her that was just the dressing on the turd sandwich. Tim looked like he was about to go down, his eye sockets and cheeks white against his sunburned face. Maureen stared at the severed finger, hesitant to go near it. The fingernail was painted pink, with a small rhinestone glued near the cuticle. The island went still, and the trees whispered and sighed as a gust of wind pushed down the path. She looked to Tim for guidance, knowing she’d find none.

  “Hey,” Raul yelled, as he came up behind them. “Did you hear a scream? What are you…?” He stopped short when he saw the finger. Wendy arrived, stood behind her husband, and said nothing. Saura and Ping followed.

  Raul looked up the path, his eyes following the thin trail of blood. The others were dazed. Raul had processed what he’d seen, drawn conclusions, and developed a plan of action. He wanted to follow the trail of blood, like her.

  “Like, should we pick it up?” Saura asked, as she twisted her hair around a finger. She was a slight woman, with a big presence. “If we leave it here, it will get eaten.”

  “She’s got a point,” Tim said.

  Maureen snickered. He supports the attractive young Asian woman who he hasn’t even met, but not his wife.

  Raul was staring at everyone like they were nuts. “We need to go after the rest of the person or they’ll be too many body parts to pick up, Tila Tequila.” He didn’t wait for approval, or agreement. He left the crowd, and headed back toward to the kayaks, following the drips of blood. Wendy fell in line behind him like a child, and Ping, Saura, and Maureen trailed behind. Tim stood over the finger, then bent down to pick it up, but couldn’t.

  “For Christ sake, use a leaf,” Maureen yelled, and Tim’s face lit up like he’d been thrown a life preserver. He ripped a large green leaf off a tropical plant and rolled the finger in it.

  As they jogged down the path, Maureen’s mind ran through the possible scenarios they might face ahead. It could have been a wild animal, a croc or bobcat that attacked either Lilly or Sheryl. A snake or turtle could have bitten the finger off, and Sheryl or Lilly ran back toward where they thought they’d find help. The problem with these scenarios was that she’d seen no animal prints around the finger, no signs of a struggle at all.

  Hawk had been in business for years, and his likeness matched the one on the tour website. She couldn’t see Geoff biting off anyone’s finger, so that left Conrad. All the others had been deeper in on the island than her and Tim. Another gust of wind scattered the insects, and the path opened up. Through the cypress the bright colors of their kayaks stood out against the dark brown peat. There was yelling ahead, and Maureen ran faster.

  Saura screamed, a thin wail that would have broken glass had there been any within thirty miles. Maureen’s first thought was the woman was being a drama queen, but she was wrong.

  Maureen and Tim cleared the cypress trees, and the path ended on a peat shore. Sawgrass ran off to the right, and a patch of cypress trees to the left. What remained of Hawk was pinned to a cypress tree with the broken shards of his classic wooden paddle. Both arms were gone, one leg had been h
acked off at the knee, and half his head was missing. Deep red blood covered the remains, and the way the body was nailed to the tree made it clear this hadn’t been done by a wild animal, at least not one indigenous to southern Florida.

  Trauma shock ran through the crowd, and everyone but Maureen froze. When others stepped back, she stepped forward. She examined Hawk’s remains. His pistol was gone, and she looked toward his kayak and saw that the rifle was still strapped to the deck. She called to the group. “Tim, come help me get him down. Raul, go find Lilly and the rest. They can’t be far.” She paused, then added, “And take the rifle.”

  Raul looked at her, at the thin path that trailed into the tall grass, then at the rifle, and nodded his head. “You got it, Katniss.”

  “Hello. Looking for me?”

  Everyone jumped. Conrad strolled from the cypress, seemingly oblivious to the crisis unfolding around him. He looked tired, but was otherwise unharmed. There was no blood on his clothes, and he carried his pack over one shoulder like he didn’t have a care in the world. When he saw Hawk’s remains he froze, his eyes glazing over. Conrad vomited, undigested eggs and bacon from his breakfast sandwich reentering the world with a flourish. He leaned against a tree and wretched again, his body shaking. Every few seconds, he looked at Hawk, then jerked away his gaze like two people fought within him.

  Maureen and Tim finished cutting Hawk down, and laid him on the soft peat. That done, Maureen went to Conrad. He whimpered like a child, his body racked with pain. He mumbled and yelled like something unseen was attacking him, and then she remembered the ride. She guessed he hadn’t planned for his ride to include their guide getting ripped apart. That stirred Maureen’s memory; where were Hawk’s two arms and half a leg? They weren’t on the shore or around the body.

  Thin white lines crisscrossed Conrad’s face like scars, stretching across his cheeks and forehead. They stood out against his black skin, which was beaded with sweat. Ping produced a canteen, and Conrad drank deeply, water spilling down the front of his shirt. He appeared not to notice what was happening around him. Maureen figured the scar-like white lines were from the sawgrass, which scraped, poked, and cut anyone who was brave enough to wade through it.