Dead Pulse Rising: A Zombie Novel

by K. Michael Gibson

  He watched as several black-clad agents exited the vehicle. The driver, a white man with graying hair, motioned to the rear of the SUV, and two men piled out half carrying a wounded black man.

  Marvin gazed down at the group of infected, the fencing obscured their view of the agents in the gas station’s parking lot, but slowly they began to take notice of the easier prey. Several of them began to shamble off in the direction of the noise.

  Marvin looked back up at the agents just as a massive man stepped out from the passenger side of the Ford Explorer. The shambling mass caught his attention, and he pointed toward the fence line. Marvin ducked down low, hoping they wouldn’t take notice of him. With any luck, these agents would draw away the infected, and he could climb down and escape before anyone was the wiser. He watched as the gray-haired agent and the large black man shouldered what looked to be MP5s; they took aim at the advancing horde and began systematically dispatching them. The remaining two men helped the injured agent toward the door of the gas station.

  One of the men, a white guy with a burly red beard, disengaged himself from the trio, and quickly opened the door to the gas station and stepped inside. Marvin watched from his perch, imagining the man sweeping the interior of the gas station. The man emerged, and Marvin saw him motioning toward his fellow officers, giving them the all clear and to get inside. The gray-haired man started barking orders, and Marvin had to assume that he was their commanding officer. The remainder of the agents scooped up the injured man and retreated into the interior of the gas station. Marvin exhaled with a sigh of relief not quite realizing he’d been holding his breath. He gazed down at the heap of bodies that lay in the parking lot; there were still a few figures shambling around, but the majority of them had taken a keen interest on the newly acquired meals under glass.

  Marvin knew he needed to act quickly if he had any hope at all of getting out of this shit-creek he had paddled himself into, but goddamn, his knee was throbbing. He swung his body around and draped his legs over the ledge and attempted to step down. He got to the first wrung of the ladder that led to the ground below, and felt fiery pain shoot out from his kneecap and up his thigh as he put all his weight on it.

  “Fuck,” Marvin said with a harsh whisper, gritting his teeth against the pain. A voice from below drifted up and caught him by surprise.

  “Hey, hey, you up there. What are you doing?” A deep voice floated upward toward him.

  “Shit,” Marvin cursed and closed his eyes, shaking his head. Marvin glanced over his shoulder down at the massive black man he spied getting out of the explorer just a few moments ago, apparently going back to the vehicle to retrieve supplies. He should have known better, Marvin thought.

  “Come down here, man!” the large man shouted up to him.

  Marvin rose up one hand in a placating gesture and nodded. “I’m working on that,” the old man said sardonically.

  The massive man leveled his weapon in Marvin’s direction. “I said get the fuck down here, now!” The large man said irritably.

  “I heard ya there, rib eye. I’ve got bad knees and an artificial leg. It’s going to take me a minute, prick.” Marvin did his best to work his way down the ladder. The man below him fired off a shot, killing another infected that managed to wander a bit too close. Marvin turned his gaze downward just as another man, an agent, ran outside. Marvin saw the big man turn in his direction.

  “What the hell’s going on?” the gray-haired officer said.

  “Hey, Cap, look what I found.” The big man pointed his weapon upward toward Marvin.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” The captain exasperated. “Get him down and bring him inside. We’re seeing to Jackson’s wounds, and then we’ll deal with him. You get the kit I asked for?” the captain said. The big man shook his head and pointed toward the SUV.

  “Sorry, Cap, I got a bit distracted.” The large man shrugged.

  “No problem. I’ll grab it,” the captain said and opened the rear door of the Ford Explorer, pulling out a large medical kit, shutting the door, and motioned in Marvin’s direction. “Hurry up with this one. I’m pretty sure he’s one of the ones we’re looking for,” and with that, the captain shut the car door and headed back off into the gas station.

  Chapter19

  Richard and I crouched low, going prone, hidden among a small grove of trees atop a hill, watching as a white SUV—the same type we had spied on the roadway earlier this morning—went roaring past our position. Richard and I looked at each other in wonder. The white SUV disappeared from sight just around a small bend in the road.

  Shrugging, I stood and began tentatively brushing dirt and twigs off my uniform. Richard looked at me as I did so, and I shot him a sideways glance. “What?” I asked as I felt his expectant stare upon me.

  “Don’t you want to see what their up to?” Richard asked.

  I cocked an eyebrow. “Do I want to go chasing after the assholes who just tried to vaporize us? Not particularly,” I said, still trying to brush the remainder of gray dust away from my pants.

  Richard sighed. “Well, regardless, the police station’s that way. If your plan is to get home, you’re going to need help and a vehicle, both of which are that way.” He paused for a moment, pointing in the direction the SUV had traveled. “Unless you want to hoof it through zombie land,” he said, finishing the outspoken thought. I grimaced and shot him a mournful stare.

  “Don’t call ’em that. That’s just stupid.”

  Richard looked at me with a confused expression. “Don’t call them what? Zombies? What the hell else would you call them?”

  I looked off down the road in the direction we needed to travel, and then off into the woods in the direction of my home and my wife. Looking back at Richard, I said, “I don’t know. Not zombies, though.” I shivered a bit even in the summer’s oppressive heat at the thought.

  “Why not? What would you say they were? They sure as hell look like zombies to me,” Richard said, his eyebrows raised.

  I got angry. “Have you ever seen a zombie movie or ever read a zombie novel? What always happens in those, huh? Dead people walking. First thing, I haven’t seen a corpse rise up out of the ground yet. You? Second, in every single one of those books or movies, the human race ends up completely fucked. I refuse to believe that whatever this is, ends up meaning our extinction. Not if I can help it. So let’s not give into tempting fate by calling them fucking zombies. Let’s just say infected or something.”

  Richard sighed and smiled. “Okay, infected land. Are you done?” He shook his head.

  I nodded satisfied.

  “Come on, we need to get moving if you want to get home before dark,” he said, eyeing the sun, which still set high in the sky.

  It would be a good eight or so hours before night fell, and I hoped like hell that I would definitely make it home way before then.

  Richard and I descended the grassy hill away from the woods and walked out onto the street, following the path Homeland’s SUV had traveled. I wasn’t too keen on the idea of catching up to them, which, being on foot, I doubted was even going to be possible anyway until I heard what sounded like a volley of gunshots just up and around the bend in the street.

  Richard and I paused and looked at each other for a moment, and then as if on cue, we set forth in a jog to the side of the road and up an embankment, and once again made our way into the tree line. We followed the roadway from atop the forest-covered hill, doing our best not to trip on storm-blown branches. The ground was still wet from this morning’s rain, and it was a struggle to keep upright as we occasionally slid on slippery leaves. We caught up to the source of the noise as we overlooked a small mom-and-pop gas station, complete with convenience store, and garage. A group of infected bore down on Homeland’s goons, and we watched as they quickly dispatched the majority of them.

  We saw two of them gather up a man whom appeared to be wounded and usher him inside. The remaining two men, a large black man and a white-haired guy
decked out in full body armor, retreated inside of the convenience store moments after the other three.

  Several of the infected still remained and began to wander around a small wooden fence that set to the rear of the gas station.

  I looked over at Richard. “What do you think they’re doing here?” I asked.

  Rich gave me a puzzled look. “Hell, if I know, maybe they’ve got a hankering for Twinkies. Probably best if we stay out of their way, though.”

  I nodded in agreement. A rather large hairy tree spider decided to take that moment to crawl up and over my hand. “Shit,” I exasperated as I shook the little devil off my exposed hand.

  Richard cocked an eyebrow at me. “All this crazy shit going on, and you’re freaking out over a little spider?” He grinned ear to ear.

  “Did you see that motherfucker?” I said in a harsh whisper.

  “Yeah, I saw him,” he said in a condescending tone. “If you thought that one was big, you should see the one on your back,” he said and glanced up and cocked his head at my backside.

  I spun my head around to try to see if he were telling the truth or just full of shit.

  As I was inspecting my shoulder, a loud booming voice caught my attention from below. I turned my gaze back toward the gas station to see what was going on. The large black agent that we had spied only moments ago had returned to the parking lot. It seemed he was shouting at someone. He pointed his weapon, what I knew to be their standard-issue 9 mm machine gun, in the direction of a cell phone tower. I followed his line of sight and let out a resounding gasp.

  “What?” Richard said, adjusting his position and narrowing his eyes to try to make out what I was seeing.

  I took in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “That’s Marv,” I said in disbelief. I’m not sure what shocked me more, the fact that he was still alive, or the fact that he had actually managed to climb a freaking cell phone tower. I guess the threat of being eaten alive can be in itself a powerful motivator. Seeing the asshole in the parking lot holding my elderly partner at gunpoint made me wish that I had some kind of sniper rifle instead of my little pea shooter. “We’ve got to do something,” I said aloud, sending a glance at Richard.

  He returned my gaze and furrowed his brow in thought. “What do you suggest?” Richard said.

  I studied the parking lot for a moment, eyeing the large soldier, then glancing between the gas station, and then to my partner. I rolled over onto my side and began patting myself down. Richard seemed to stare at me with some confusion. After several moments of fishing around my pockets, I located what I was searching for. Reaching into my top-left vest pocket, I extracted about three dozen rubber bands that I used daily to bind packages together. I removed them along with several cigarette butts, a few paper clips, and some scribbled notes. Underneath it all was my trusty black-and-silver Zippo lighter. I grinned over at Richard as I flipped it open and struck the wheel, igniting the expected flame.

  “These assholes tried to blow us up. Let’s return the favor,” I said and flipped the lid closed, snuffing it out.

  “And how do you propose we do that? Do you know how hard it is to set that shit on fire? It doesn’t just take a simple little thing like a lighter to make it go boom. If that’s all it took, it would happen all the time,” Richard said, shaking his head. I took a moment to think it through, gazing once more down at the gas station. Marvin was still struggling to climb down the ladder’s lengthy rungs, the soldier still holding a gun on him, ordering him to move faster. It’s a wonder he didn’t just come tumbling down.

  “There.” I pointed down to the edge of the parking lot just beyond the gas pumps. On the edge of the lot set a large tanker truck obscured behind several trees and hidden partially by the pumps. The tanker must have been in the middle of restocking the gas station when the shit hit the fan. The door to the truck still hung open as if the driver had beat a hasty retreat. I could see various hoses still attached to the ports that lay recessed in the concrete slabs imbedded in the parking lot.

  “There what?” Richard said, not quite getting the gist of what I was saying.

  I rolled my eyes. “Dude, the tanker. We blow up the tanker.” I pointed down at the tractor trailer again, looking at my companion as if to say duh. “If we can manage to disconnect one of those hoses, or even cut the damn thing, fuel will leak. If the fuel leaks, it evaporates. When it evaporates, its explosive,” I said and made a gesture with my hands mimicking an explosion while making a boom noise with my mouth.

  Richard nodded, finally getting the idea. Richard seemed to perk up. “We could manage that, I think. What about the incredible Hulk down there?” Richard said, motioning to the large and intense-looking figure standing in the parking lot below. We saw another man exit the gas station briefly. It was the commander, I believe, but my attention was on Marv at the time, watching as he slowly descended the cell phone tower.

  “We need a distraction,” I said matter-of-factly.

  Richard nodded in agreement.

  Chapter 20

  Bishop stepped through the doorway to the gas station, glancing over at Vindetti as he passed; Vindetti covered the parking lot from the interior of the store watching the area around Jones intently lest something sneak up behind the big man. Bits of broken glass crunched underfoot as Bishop made his way toward the back of the store where two of his men tended to his wounded communications officer. One of the men looked up to greet him.

  “Where’s Jones?” Scotty asked as he reached a handout expectantly.

  Bishop passed the medical kit over to him and looked back toward the front of the store.

  “Jones managed to find one of our lost armored car guards. An elderly man stuck up in the cell tower out back, probably the driver, doesn’t look like he could do much else.” The captain shrugged. “He’s getting him down, so we can question him.” He plucked a bag of beef jerky off one of the fallen shelves and ripped it open. He savored the salty meat snack as his communications officer groaned in pain. “Jackson, hey, Jackson, stay with us, man,” Bishop said, snapping his fingers and handed him a thick strip of beef. “You might want to bite down on something,” he said eyeing the crude tourniquet wrapped around Jackson’s injured arm.

  Jackson tried in vain to bite down on the tough piece of meat, but he cringed in pain, and it merely slipped out of his mouth and stuck with drool to his cheek.

  Bishop looked down at the two men attending to him. “You know what needs to be done, right?” he said to the two men, looks of confusion crossing over their weary faces. Bishop sighed and knelt next to Jackson’s squirming form. “Jackson,” Bishop said softly, the man did not respond. “Desmond.”

  Jackson’s eyes flickered open at the sound of his first name, something that the soldiers seemed to never use unless the situation had gone from bad to worse. Desmond’s pained gaze fell on his commander. “Yeah, Cap?” he said through gritted teeth.

  Bishop looked down to Jackson’s arm, and then came to look into his officer’s eyes. “We need to remove that arm,” the captain said softly.

  Jackson shut his eyes and nodded, trying his best to stifle a sob.

  The other two men stared at Bishop with shock.

  “We have to cut his fucking arm off?” Hoop asked with disbelief.

  “Yes,” Bishop answered coldly, “it’s the only chance he has.” Bishop reached over and grabbed the medical kit from off the floor where Scotty had laid it. He fished inside and removed the standard scalpel that came with the kit, along with a vial of morphine, and a syringe. Bishop unwrapped the syringe and withdrew it from its cellophane packaging. He plunged the tip of the needle into the vial of morphine and drew back the plunger, filling the hypodermic to what he believed was the proper dosage for a man of Jackson’s size. He thought about it for a moment, and then added a bit more. He removed the needle from the container and tapped the end as he depressed the plunger to remove any trapped air that lay inside. Bishop rolled up the remainder of Jackson’s slee
ve and located his humeral artery; quickly, he plunged the tip of the needle into Jackson’s arm and injected the liquid painkiller in one fluid motion. Looking toward his men, who currently were looking in the other direction, he snapped his fingers, and they quickly looked toward him.

  “I’m going to need one of you to find me something I can use to break his arm,” Bishop said as his men looked at him dubiously.

  Unbeknownst to most, removing a limb was not as easy as one might think. It wasn’t like in the movies where a quick flick of the wrist with a sharpened sword would lop the appendage off. Normally, under hospital supervision, in order to remove a limb, it took two things: one: a skilled surgeon, and two: a saw or, in some cases, a scalpel to disconnect the tendons that held the joint in place. In this case, however, Bishop intended to break the bone, allowing him to remove only the infected portion from his comrade’s arm, thus hopefully saving at least part of the man’s limb.

  The two men nodded and went in search of something Bishop could use.

  Several moments passed when Hoop appeared, carrying what looked to be a crowbar and a block of wood. “Found these behind the counter. Hell of a mess back there, though,” he said, referring to the body of the gas station attendant that lay ruined on the floor behind the counter.