“Which apartment?” Elizabeth asked.
“C14,” I said as I read from my phone’s display.
She pulled into the visitor parking area and found an empty space, which was probably a miracle in and of itself. Maybe we were bound for good luck on this trip. Maybe we were on a fishing expedition. Honestly, my addled brain could have gone either way at this point.
The four of us piled out of the car and tried to appear casual, like we weren’t looking for a man who may have been attacked by a person who had a highly contagious disease, with the intention of kidnapping said person and taking them to an undisclosed facility. Nope, nothing to see here folks, look at that unicorn hiding in the clouds!
“Don’t we need, like, some precautions or something?”
“I have gloves and face masks in the back. However, the best thing we can do is avoid being scratched or bitten by Frank once we locate him,” Elizabeth said. “Oh, and please leave the axe in the car. We won’t be needing it and, quite frankly, it looks a bit odd to carry one around.”
“But we might need weapons if this dude has turned,” Mitch protested.
He’d brought along a black Kukri knife in a sheath with a belt. A handle stuck out of Mindy’s purse, and if I didn’t know any better, I would have guessed it was a hammer.
“Turned?” Elizabeth asked.
“I mean, we’re not exactly being subtle here. We’re talking about a potential zombie virus being unleashed right here in Atlanta. If we stand a chance of stopping it, we need to be prepared.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Elizabeth said and crossed her arms over her chest. “There are no such things as zombies, and our accident, while of a viral nature, does not kill the individual.”
“But you just said we should be careful so we don’t get scratched or bitten,” I interjected.
“Well, of course. Those sorts of wounds can quite easily become infected. Best to be on our toes,” Elizabeth replied.
“Also, because it creates rage zombies,” I said.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Elizabeth fumed.
Elizabeth took a Walmart bag out of the back of the Range Rover and looked inside. She pulled out a pair of blue gloves and a face mask and then pushed them into her pants pocket. She tossed me the bag, so I repeated her precautions and then handed Mitch the sack.
Elizabeth tapped something into her phone, then turned on her heel and proceeded into the apartment complex.
* * *
I followed Elizabeth up the exterior stairs, and Mitch and Mindy played grab-ass as they followed me. Mindy let out a little shriek, so I turned around and shot them a stern look.
“Whatever, dad.” Mindy smirked and then grabbed Mitch’s package.
“Gah!” Mitch’s eyes shot open in shock.
“Jesus.” I rolled my eyes.
The second floor contained doors opposite each other. C14’s doorway sat on the left and C15 was on the right. C15’s door had been left cracked open. I tried not to appear nosey, and looked out of the corner of my eye to see if there was anything happening in the other apartment.
A small head appeared as a little African-American girl stared at me with big eyes. She put her finger to her lips in the universal sign for “be quiet,” then she closed the door with a click. The deadbolt shot home a second later.
“That’s not scary at all,” I said under my breath.
Elizabeth glanced up and down the stairs, then across the parking lot. She tapped on her phone screen, and then waited for a reply. We were being the complete opposite of inconspicuous and it made me nervous.
Mitch pushed past us and banged on the door.
“Hey!” Elizabeth protested.
“Isn’t this what we’re here for?” Mitch pounded his fist on the door again.
The four of us stood around, waiting. After another minute Mitch held his hand up, index finger extended, and pressed his ear to the door.
“Well?” I said.
Mitch pulled away from the door, banged on it again, and then listened once more.
“I don’t hear shit. Looks like we wasted our time, unless this is the wrong address. Or maybe he’s fine and he’s at the park enjoying a picnic,” Mitch suggested.
“I can’t see Frank going on a picnic. All he does is bitch about everything. I mean. Every. Thing.”
The little girl opened the door again and stared at us with wide eyes. Then she stepped into the foyer and motioned toward her apartment.
“Hey, kid.” I greeted the girl.
She motioned toward her apartment again.
“Is your mother home?” Elizabeth asked as she dropped to a squat.
Something thumped inside of the little girl’s apartment. Then it sounded like someone dropped a bunch of dishes.
Elizabeth rose to her feet and stepped toward the door.
“Is your mom okay?” I asked the girl.
The girl shook her head and backed toward the stairs.
A shape loomed in the doorway and then a body lurched forward with a scream of rage.
6
It wasn’t Frank Evans, and maybe that should have been even more concerning. I already had my phone in hand, so don’t think I’m an asshole if I tried to get a picture of the woman. Her eyes weren’t covered in slime, so maybe she wasn’t infected.
She screamed when she saw us. Elizabeth reached for the child and dragged her away from the doorway. Mitch turned even whiter than usual and let out a little yelp that might give a terrified seven-year-old girl a run for her money. Mindy backed up, grabbed the railing, and almost fell down the stairs on her ass.
I reached for my camping axe, but the woman seemed to center herself. She shook her head violently from side to side while she wiped her eyes.
“Miss? Are you alright?” Elizabeth held her hand up in what I assume was a peaceful gesture and took a step toward the woman.
“I’m fine. Just a bug. It comes and goes, but I’m feeling a lot better,” the woman said.
“Told you she’s got it.” Mitch pointed at the woman.
“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Elizabeth said.
“I’m going to the doctor, later,” the taller woman said. “I started feeling sick a few days ago.”
“Do you know the man next door? Have you been in contact with him?”
“Fuck off,” the woman said, her eyes suddenly clenched and mouth a grimace. She backed up as she dragged her daughter toward the door. “I ain’t seen him, I ain’t talked to him, and we don’t need your help.”
The woman slammed the door in Elizabeth’s face.
“That did not go as expected,” Elizabeth said.
“We could bash down her door,” Mitch said as he appraised the entrance.
“Leave her alone. She has been sick longer than Frank has had exposure. It’s a coincidence,” Elizabeth said.
“No. That was some shit that needs to be investigated, so call someone, or text a team, or whatever, so they can come look at this woman,” I urged Elizabeth.
She already had her phone lifted, but she gave me a short nod, and made a show of typing something out. Then Elizabeth deposited the phone in her pocket, brushed past me, put her hand on Frank’s door knob, and turned. She let out a little gasp of surprise and opened the door into darkness.
“We’re in luck,” she said.
“I know it’s open and all, but that’s like totally breaking into someone’s place,” Mindy pointed out.
“Frank?” I yelled. “Hey, man. You here? It’s me, Jake Turner, from work. We just wanted to check on you, and the door was open.”
A siren sounded in the distance, then faded as it raced away from us. Mitch turned toward the sound but he soon shrugged and rejoined us.
“Lotta that going on today,” he muttered.
I stepped inside and yelled for Frank again, figuring that if he had some kind of video camera or security system, we’d be in the clear since we knew him. Mindy was right. We were sort of doing a
little breaking and entering, but that’s what you do for your friends, right?
A noise in the back of the apartment gave me pause
“Frank?” I said, quieter this time.
I felt along the wall for a light switch.
Something made a loud thump.
I pulled the camping axe out of my belt and held it aloft as I moved into the room. A thump again. The hairs on my arms came to attention.
Elizabeth touched my shoulder and I let out a little gasp of surprise.
“Sorry,” she said.
“Frank!” I called out, louder this time.
Mitch or Mindy must have found the light switch because the overheads came on. Outside another siren lit up the air with its pealing wail.
“We should have checked out the riot, not this scary shit,” Mitch said.
The door to the back room, which I assumed was the bedroom, was closed. I once again put my head to the wood, but whatever had been thumping in there had ceased. I opened the door, hoping Frank was in there and that he was dressed, and perfectly fine, if very pissed about us breaking and entering, and hoped like hell he wasn’t sitting in there with a shotgun leveled at the door.
The room was dark, as the curtains had been drawn and the lights were off. A shape on the bed moved and I froze.
Fuck!
We had wandered into the man’s bedroom and he was going to blow our heads off, and he would be perfectly within his rights. We’d be a footnote on the evening news, right after they talked about the zombie outbreak at Emory Hospital.
I motioned furiously, hands flapping, as I tried to usher the group right the hell back out of the room. I stepped on Elizabeth’s foot; she gasped in pain and we both almost fell down.
Frank groaned from the bed. Mitch and Mindy turned and made for the door. Elizabeth grabbed for the wall, got me, and together we bashed into the doorframe.
A flurry of blankets and Frank was on his feet.
I held my hands up, and said the most honest words I had ever spoken in my life. “I’m so sorry, man. This was a mistake.”
Frank must have thought it was a mistake too, because he launched himself at us with a growl. An actual growl! We got through the door and then I slammed it shut, but Frank’s hand shot out and he stopped it from closing. Then he wrenched it open and we got our first good look at him.
Much like the guy in the glass cage at Abraxin Corp, his eyes were covered in a film of slime, and he looked absolutely insane. He lunged at me and he would have caught my shirt but he slipped on his sheets and fell on his face.
We got the hell out of the apartment and were halfway down the stairs when I turned and looked at the apartment door.
“Hey!” I called to the others. “We can’t leave.”
“Come on, man. That dude needs an exorcist!” Mitch yelled.
“Jake is right.” Elizabeth became the voice of reason. “We have to bring him back to the lab.”
“Shit,” Mindy said. “Can’t we just, like, kill him?”
We could, but what if he was the only infected one, the riot we had seen on TV was unconnected, and we just broke into a man’s house and slaughtered him in cold blood? I have a feeling that no amount of talk of viruses and secret drug testing would get us off the hook.
“No,” I said. “The state of Georgia doesn’t take kindly to first degree murder.”
“Is it murder if he’s about to become a rage zombie?” Mitch asked as we huddled up.
“There are no such things as zombies,” Elizabeth admonish us. “They are a made up, and quite frankly, an absurd construct, and they can’t exist.”
“Sure,” I said. “Not a zombie, then. Just a really angry guy who wants to rip us apart.”
“Maybe we can lure him out and make it look like he jumped us. That way anyone in the other apartments would see him go crazy. Witnesses equal us getting off scotch free.”
“It’s scot-free, and the idea is idiotic,” Elizabeth said.
Before we could get into a larger argument about what to do about Frank Evans, or the origin of the term scot-free for that matter, Frank barreled out of the door, ran right into the railing, flipped over, and sailed off the side. He landed in a bunch of bushes with a thump that I swear I felt.
Mitch pulled out his kukri and approached the bushes while Elizabeth and I rushed down the flight of stairs. Above, the little black girl’s face poked out of the door once again so I shooed her back just in case Frank had broken his neck. No sense in a little girl seeing a dead body.
But Frank was fine. In fact, Frank was better than fine. He came screaming out of the bushes, face a mask of rage, eye boogers streaming down his face, hands out in claws, and mouth wide open.
Mitch acted fast; he had been a bouncer for a number of years and had dealt with a lot of drunks. He didn’t swing the knife, perhaps owing to my warning about killing people in cold blood, and instead bent at the waist. As Frank came at Mitch like a NFL linebacker, my friend stood as Frank hit him, used my bosses momentum, and threw the man into the air. Frank landed in a heap and that took the sails out. Elizabeth, Mindy, and I rushed to Frank’s side and each grabbed an appendage. I ended up with an arm.
“We need to tie him up with something,” Elizabeth said. “Someone get the rope from the back of my car.”
Mindy nodded and ran toward the vehicle while we kept a very angry, and quite strong, Frank from getting back to his feet. Mitch dropped on top of Frank’s legs while Elizabeth and I both held his arms against the ground. He was on his stomach, and as long as we worked together he wasn’t getting away.
Then a flash of light caught my attention. A car rolled into the parking lot and my stomach lurched.
“Oh shit,” I said.
It was a police vehicle.
7
The cop flashed his car lights one more time and hit the siren for a split-second, I guess they did that to get our attention, or to scare the shit out of us. Smart, because the second I heard the police car I wanted to make a run for it. Over the last few years, I had played Grand Theft Auto for about a hundred hours, and in the game I had stolen thousands of cars. Game logic dictated that I get my feet pumping under me in order to evade the police.
Sadly, this was real life and I wasn’t going to be able to car-jack my way out of this situation.
I started to get up, but Elizabeth motioned for me to hold up.
“We can’t let him go. I’ll try to talk to the police officer,” she said. Her face was flushed and I could almost feel the urgency in her voice.
“That’s not how it works here. Christ, look at us,” I said almost in a panic. “We’re in the process of trying to kidnap Frank. But they don’t know he’s in the process of becoming a rage zombie. We’re likely to end up as a couple of corpses on the nightly news if we’re not careful!”
“They’re not zombies!” Elizabeth exclaimed in frustration.
The police officer got out of his car, adjusted his belt, secured his dark shades over his eyes, and stepped away from his vehicle. His female partner spoke into their radio while she tapped away at a laptop secured to the dash. Beyond them, cars slowed as they passed the apartment complex. “Looky-loos” leaned out of windows and broke out phones to hopefully film some violence for YouTube.
“Get off that guy,” the officer ordered.
“Officer, it’s alright. I work for the CDC and this man may be carrying a dangerous disease,” Elizabeth tried. “I have identification in my car if you’ll allow me to retrieve it.”
“I don’t give a good goddamn if he’s about to turn into a zombie,” the officer said which got a chuckle out of me and Mitch. “Let him off the ground. I won’t tell y'all again.”
I shrugged, let go of Frank’s arm, and then backed up and put my hands in the air. I’ve seen enough news to know that things could go down the tube real fast if I didn’t comply with the officer’s commands, but I also thought I should back up Elizabeth, because honestly, we had seen Frank in action
, had just witnessed him falling off a second-story building and bouncing right back up like a psychotic Jack-in-the-box.
“Sir? Sorry, sir?” I said. “That guy’s name is Frank Evans and I work for him at The Abraxin Corp. He’s in a bad way and might do something crazy. Please don’t shoot any of us. Or him. Even if he goes crazy. I mean, I guess you can wing him.”
The cop gave me a bewildered look, but I couldn’t help but notice that he kept his hand on his pistol in its holster. At least he hadn’t drawn his weapon. Yet.
Elizabeth and Mitch released Frank and joined me by raising their hands in the air. The cop took a step toward Frank while yelling, “Sir. Are you okay? Can you hear me, sir?”
Frank lifted his head and growled. His mucus-covered eyes couldn’t have been able to see, but they focused on the approaching cop anyway. Frank’s lips drew back to reveal his teeth. Something red and pink caught my eye. Was that a chunk of flesh in his mouth or some leftover BBQ ribs? Oh my god. Fuck me running, but this was getting too real.
There was a sense of peace that the police were here, but it was quickly offset by a dose of panic at the sight of meat in Frank’s maw.
The police officer held his hand out in a gesture of peace, but Frank didn’t have any kind of peace in his heart. He leapt up onto all fours and let out another growl before jumping toward the cop.
The police officer pulled his gun but it was too late. Frank barreled into him and both men went sprawling. The female officer came out of her car with a can of pepper spray. She circle the combatants, yelling the entire time. “Get off of him. Get off!”
Frank ripped at the male cop and got punched in the face for the effort, a resounding blow that had some serious heft behind it. Frank’s head snapped back and the female cop shot him right in the face with the pepper spray.
I really wish she had shot him in the face with her gun. Live and learn, I guess.
I don’t think she lived much longer.
Dawn of the Rage Apocalypse Page 5
