Gibson left the fire chief watching the burning house and continued north on foot, towards where Liam would have his feeder and blind set up. He walked at a quick jog, hand at his hip and ready to draw. While he didn’t want to kill the man, he wasn’t going to let Liam get the jump on him either.
After a few minutes, he saw the camouflaged blind sitting in the tree line and a feeder in the middle of the field a hundred yards away. Three white tails faded into the trees on the north. Staying just inside the trees, he snuck around to the back side of the blind. If Liam had a rifle, he sure as hell didn’t want to be shot, even if that wasn’t his MO. Twenty yards away from the blind, with a view of the back door, Gibson stopped, drawing his handgun. Fidel moved a couple of steps away from him, making it less likely that he’d be hit by a stray round aimed at his owner.
“Liam Dobendik!” Gibson shouted. “If you’re in there, come out with your hands in the air!”
He waited for a few seconds, but nothing happened. No movement or sound came from inside the blind.
“I just wanna talk!” Gibson shouted again, slowly approaching.
There was still no response. He was only a few feet from the door and there was no noise coming from inside. Quickly, he closed the distance and flung the door open. It was empty. He cursed. So much for his only lead.
The wind swirled at the edge of the trees and Fidel’s ears perked up. Gibson looked down at the dog. “What is it?” he asked.
Fidel was looking along the trees north of the blind, and Gibson lowered his handgun as he walked in the direction Fidel was looking. The dog’s ears stayed up the entire time, and after fifty yards he could smell what Fidel had—the stench of decomposing flesh in the hot sun. Just inside the tree line up ahead was a body, and as he slowly approached, the smell became stronger. This person had been dead awhile. No way was it Liam.
The body was that of a middle-aged female. Crouching down, he got a better look and tried his best not to throw up. The woman had a bullet hole in her head, along with three more in the chest. The strange part though was the shots to the chest almost seemed post-mortem. There wasn’t nearly as much blood around the wounds as one would expect, had it washed off somehow? It hadn’t rained in weeks, and there was still a decent amount of blood on the rest of her body. It looked as though she’d been dead for a couple of days; the more he looked, the more uneasy he felt. There was extensive bruising under the skin, almost as if the victim’s veins had burst prior to death. Her eyes were still open and bloodshot. Her chin and upper chest were covered in congealed blood that had oozed out of her mouth. In all of his years as a cop, he’d never seen anything like it. Pulling out a latex glove, he slipped it on one hand and held the body up to look at her back. There were no other visible wounds apart from the exit holes from the bullets. So if the shots were after she was dead, what had killed her?
Setting the body back down, Gibson pulled out his phone and scrolled through the pictures from this case. It was amazing what could be done with technology these days. He stopped at the picture of the missing person and held the phone next to the face of the corpse. Beneath the blood and abnormal discoloration of the skin, it was plain as day. This was his missing person; this was Jacinda Yotti.
This death didn’t have the same MO as the rest of the killings. This woman hadn’t been eaten, and she’d been shot. Another of Gibson’s leads had proven false. Jacinda wasn’t the killer because she’d probably been dead before the first murder had occurred. That left him with one suspect—Liam Dobendik—and he had no clue where to find him.
Thursday afternoon, two days before the official outbreak
Gibson sat at his desk with Fidel curled up at his feet. None of this made any sense. The pieces just didn’t fit together. His deputies were in town, looking for any clues as to Liam’s whereabouts, but nothing had turned up yet. Clover and his goonies had shown up right after he’d radioed into the office saying he’d found their missing person. They’d taken that body as well, carrying her back to their vehicle, hazmat suits and all. A few things were beginning to make sense, but, sadly, none of it was telling him how to catch Liam.
Vindex Corp. was involved with all this somehow, and that meant LifeWork was as well. But how? What did they know that he didn’t? An idea had begun to form in his head, but it was a wild one. Holly had said her dad acted almost like an animal, and all the victims had been chewed on—mauled actually, almost like a bear or something. What had Holly said her mother thought it was? Rabies? He got on his computer to look that up and the Wikipedia page told him all he needed to know. It was a deadly virus that was spread through the saliva of the infected creature. What if the reason his perp was eating it’s victims was a virus? It would make sense. He thought back to the signs on the different buildings on the LifeWork compound. One had been labeled Research and Development. Was that for drugs or something else? What if they’d created something that acted like rabies, driving the infected person insane and causing them to kill and eat others?
He started to put the pieces together. Liam had been bitten and then turned on his wife and daughter. The other victims had been eaten alive. The Vindex Corp. men were burning the bodies while wearing hazmat suits, and they’d burned down the Dobendik house. That first sheet of paper from the governor had said something about the bodies being contaminated. And hadn’t Mrs. Henderson told him yesterday that the Feds were sending people in to contain the situation? They weren’t there to investigate the murders. They were there to stop a deadly contagion from spreading to the rest of the state!
The pieces fell into place and it all made sense in some twisted way. It was farfetched but explained a lot of what was going on. There were more questions he didn’t know the answers to, like how had it started? How exactly was LifeWork involved? Were others infected? Or was it all a cover-up for a killer who ate his victims? That last one didn’t seem logical. Too much evidence pointed to it being a contagion gone rampant for him to ignore. That left the most important question still unanswered. Where was Liam Dobendik? If he was indeed infected by something that drove him to kill, he may not be thinking properly, which meant he would be erratic and hard to track down. What would someone in that state of mind do?
A thought crossed his mind. What if Jacinda had been infected, killed her way south, and then encountered Liam and bit him. Liam killed her and then came home, unaware that he was infected with a deadly contagion. It drove him mad and he killed his wife and tried to kill his daughter. That meant the Jacinda had been the first one infected, but how had she looked so dead already? Had the contagion caused that too? Or had she only been there for a day? The coyotes and hogs hadn’t gotten to the body yet, so either they could sense the corpse was contaminated or she hadn’t been there long enough to attract them. Had Liam, in fact, killed her? He swore the bullet wounds looked post-mortem, but maybe he was wrong, because it seemed like Jacinda had been the first one infected and then spread it to Liam. Now he just had to find Liam and stop this from spreading further.
Picking his hat up off his desk, he exited his office. He couldn’t help but feel like he’d forgotten something—there was a nagging dread in the pit of his stomach. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was more to this.
“Off to find more bodies?” Mrs. Henderson asked.
The woman could be so heartless sometimes, or maybe she used her humor to cover a deeply buried pain, like he did.
“Nope,” Gibson said, walking by her and out the door. “Goin’ to find a killer.”
He was just about to climb into his truck when he heard something to the south that almost sounded like screaming. Glancing down Main Street to the clinic at the end of the street, he could see a commotion and wondered what it could be. Climbing into his truck, he started it up, and Fidel watched through the windshield. Halfway to the clinic, it hit him. How had he been such an idiot? Liam hadn’t just tried to kill his daughter, he’d bitten her. She could be infected. He stepped on the gas and the
truck lurched forward.
The scene that greeted him outside the front of the clinic was straight out of a horror movie, and he remembered why he didn’t watch those. Real life was much more terrifying.
Holly Dobendik, still wearing her medical gown and with blood leaking from her mouth, was crouched over Deputy Randall. The big man was lying on his back with his stomach ripped open. Gibson pulled the truck to a stop fifty yards away and Holly looked up, the intestines of his deputy gripped in her small hands. This was a lot worse than he’d thought. Climbing out of his truck, he walked forward a few steps, and Holly dropped Randall’s innards and stumbled towards him.
“Holly, stop,” Gibson said, resting his hand on his Glock.
If this was the work of a contagion, he couldn’t just kill the girl. She might not even be in control of herself. She continued to stumble towards him as a low groan escaped her lips. Her eyes were bloodshot and lifeless, just like Jacinda’s had been, and her skin shone with bruising. The awkward gait she moved with seemed completely unnatural, like she’d forgotten how to walk or couldn’t feel parts of her body. She was thirty yards away when he noticed something else. The handle of a scalpel was sticking out of her chest right where her heart was. She should be dead.
“Holly, you’re sick,” Gibson said. “Just calm down and I’ll get you help.”
He glanced past her to Randall’s body. The man was dead, killed by a teenage girl. More than likely, he’d been drawn there by the same screams Gibson had heard. Randall had been doing his job, trying to help her, yet he lay dead on the pavement. Anger rose within him—not at Holly for what she’d done but at the people who’d set this loose on his town.
“Shoot her!” Dr. Hart yelled as he ran out of the clinic’s entrance. “She’s already killed three people!”
Gibson cursed. Three? Fidel growled next to him, picking up on his tension and the threatening way Holly continued towards them, closing the distance to twenty yards. He drew his handgun.
“Holly, I can get you help,” Gibson said.
Her gown was covered in enough blood around the scalpel in her chest that she shouldn’t be walking. Maybe that was why she was stumbling, yet why wasn’t there more blood leaking from the wound? If her heart was beating, she would still be bleeding. Holly groaned louder as she closed the distance to ten yards. Fidel growled back and then lunged forward, heading straight for her.
“Fuss!” Gibson yelled, raising his handgun.
Fidel listened and came to a stop, growling menacingly at the girl. He was only a couple yards from Holly, who now had her gaze locked on the dog. Gibson didn’t know if the contagion could be transferred to animals from a human host and he wasn’t about to find out. Firing twice at her chest, he watched as the bullets smashed into her. She kept coming, arms stretched for Fidel.
“Hier!” Gibson yelled, but Fidel stayed between his owner and the threat.
He opened fire on Holly, hitting her three more times in the chest to no effect. He didn’t stop firing. She had leaned down to grab Fidel when one of his rounds took her in the top of the skull and she dropped. He ran up and grabbed Fidel’s collar, hauling him back a few feet, all the while keeping his eyes and gun on the girl. She didn’t move. Dr. Hart approached him, wide eyes locked on Holly.
“What the hell was that?” Gibson asked, looking up at him.
“I have no idea,” Dr. Hart said. “She flat-lined and one of the nurses tried to resuscitate her, but Holly woke up and bit into the nurse’s neck! Holly then killed another nurse on her way out. Your deputy heard the screaming and ran up to help, and she attacked him. I don’t understand how this happened.”
“It’s some kind of contagion,” Gibson said. “Her father was bitten. He contracted it and then bit her.”
“I’ve never heard of a virus that potent before. She couldn’t have been bitten more than a few hours ago,” Dr. Hart said, motioning to the body on the ground.
“This morning, but—” Gibson cut off as he heard the sound of gunfire from the northern part of town.
He cursed. This wasn’t over yet. He ran back to his truck and jumped in, turning it around and heading toward the gunfire. Turning on Second Street, he saw one of the black armored vehicles parked outside one of the houses. He pulled up next to it and jumped out, grabbing his shotgun. Two of the men were walking up to a body that had the same bruising as the others. It wasn’t Liam Dobendik, it was Bruce Bacmen.
“What the hell is goin’ on?” Gibson yelled, walking up to the men, who turned, shouldering their rifles. “Easy now!”
“This is none of your concern,” said one of the men. “Move along.”
“None of my concern!” Gibson stormed up to the young man. “Kid, this is my damn town. Everything that happens here is my concern! Where’s that asshole in charge?”
“Right here,” a voice said from behind him.
He turned to see Clover climbing out of the armored vehicle. Gibson stomped up to him, his anger at everything that had happened boiling over.
“You son of a—” Gibson began but was cut off as Clover punched him hard in the face.
The last thing he saw as blackness closed in around him was Fidel lunging for the man, followed by a gunshot.
Friday night, day before the “official” outbreak
Darkness engulfed Hill City to the point where it was almost palpable. Gibson lay on his stomach behind a house on the south end of town, waiting for one of the patrols to pass. He couldn’t believe what’d happened in just over twenty-four hours. A three-man patrol passed his position and continued on their way, and he rose to a crouch, running to the heavy-duty fence Vindex Corp. had put up last night, surrounding the town. Pulling the wire cutters from his belt behind his back, he snipped a hole big enough to get through, then held the cut edges open for Fidel to get through as well, thanking all of his lucky stars that the young mercenary had missed his dog. It was a blessing that Fidel had only been lunging to stand over him and that those pricks had spared him after the first shot. They’d opted to leave Gibson lying on the street under guard until he regained consciousness and then he’d been escorted to the school where they were gathering all the townspeople.
After going through the hole in the fence, he entered the trees and disappeared into the night. They wouldn’t find him now, even if they did get one of those choppers in the air to look for him. Hopefully, they wouldn’t worry about finding him; it wasn’t as if he was infected like some of the others, although that didn’t seem to matter since they wanted to keep everyone who knew anything about what’d happened under lock and key.
Not that he really knew what had happened. Clover’s boss—the man in the gray suit named Mr. Smith—had told them just enough to keep them scared and compliant. It wasn’t much, just some horse crap about an accident with an experimental drug and that they were all safe as long as they complied with the blood tests and stayed in the school. Mr. Smith had made it clear that anyone caught trying to escape would be dealt with accordingly. That was why Gibson made sure to take down the two guards who’d tried to “deal” with him. After that, it’d been easy to avoid the patrols throughout town.
He felt kind of bad for leaving behind all of the people he’d interacted with over the past decade. In one day, both of his deputies had been murdered by a father and daughter high on some drug—if Mr. Smith’s story was true, which he didn’t believe for one second. The man was lying through his teeth. Even his name was a lie. Mr. Smith? Yeah, right. Gibson knew he should feel bad for leaving them at the hands of those mercenaries, but he didn’t. He and Fidel were a team and that was all he cared about. If he could save the whole town he would, but he knew he couldn’t. His plan probably wouldn’t have worked if he’d taken even one other person with him. They were on their own now, just like he was.
After bushwhacking through the brush and trees for two miles, he thought it’d be safe enough to take the road south. He hoped he remembered how to get to his destination, but i
t’d been a few years since he’d last visited.
The call that day was easy to remember—a mother claiming that her ex-husband had kidnapped their daughter. When he arrived at the ex-husband’s house and saw the mother, Jane Hashen, banging on the door, screaming, he decided there may be more to the story. There was. The teenage daughter, Alexis, had run away from the mother’s home to be with her father. After defusing the situation and begrudgingly sending the daughter back home with the mother and step-father, he’d sat down with the ex-husband. The man had lost his son years before, something Gibson could relate to, and then lost custody of his daughter. He’d then left the Corps to spend more time with his daughter. Gibson’d had a good talk with the man that day.
Hours later, he turned a corner in the dirt driveway and came upon the house. It was almost as he remembered it, except now the windows were boarded up and the souped-up Ford was missing from the driveway. After going around the house twice, he confirmed that all the windows were boarded up tight and the doors were locked. Emmett Wolfe had skipped town, probably getting ahead of whatever was about to happen. He sat down on the front steps and Fidel rested his head on Gibson’s knees. The dog knew him so well, more so than anyone had in years—not since the death of his family. He scratched his dog behind the ears, knowing he loved it.
His best chance to get answers was gone and wasn’t coming back. Yet, not all was lost; he still had his trusty companion. The name really did suit his dog—faithful. He’d have his back no matter what might be happening. How did that saying go, again? Dogs were a man’s best friend? Yeah, that was it.
Gibson stood up, patting his dog on the side. “You ready, boy?” Fidel looked up at him, giving him that same look he always did. “Yeah, me neither.”
He gazed to the south. His best bet was to hit US-257 and get as far away from there as possible. Yet his eyes kept being drawn back to the northwest. He didn’t owe those people anything. They stood just as good a chance on their own as with him, maybe even better. It was Fidel and him against the world. He stood there for a while, a war waging within him. Finally, he cursed and turned back the way he’d come. He couldn’t just leave them there; he’d sworn an oath to serve and protect. Disappearing into the night, he headed back to Hill City with Fidelis at his side. He couldn’t shake the feeling that this was just the beginning.
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