Undead War (Dead Guns Press)

by Thompson, John

  The plague began on the eastern seaboard, gradually spreading west and barely mentioned in news reports. The Centers for Disease Control, Federal Communications Commission and Federal Emergency Management Agency activated the Emergency Alert System limiting information to allegedly prevent hysteria from stories about the disease, its crazed victims, and mass graves or burnings by National Guard units. Dr. Terry Francis Moore was interning at Our Lady of Mercy Medical Center in central California and living with fiancee Wendy Marie Duffy, a substitute bartender and full-time waitress at the Santa Carla Gulch Restaurant. The young doctor’s specialty was cardiology, but also recently participated in a drug trial authorized by the CDC testing their new vaccine ZIP-12.

  Thankful the growing undead plague had remained confined to larger California cities, Terry got Halloween off after pulling a weekend 40-hour ER shift, and Wendy arranged her schedule so they could attend a costume party at her close friend’s apartment. Terry dressed as the Grim Reaper in full black hooded robe, with prop scythe and plastic skeleton mask over street clothes. Wendy chose the naughty French maid costume, including fishnet stockings, black high heels and mini dress with plunging neckline and ruffled hem, sleeves and bust, a feather duster stuck through her belt.

  How many jerks here are eye-humping her in that getup?

  Terry swallowed discomfort about Wendy’s exposed sexy body in Celia Pike’s living room of sixty guests, realizing she was paying more attention to him, his skull mask raised onto crew cut brown hair and the robe’s hood down.

  “What’s the matter?”

  The 5’ 2” Wendy looked up at her lover with big blue eyes under the page boy cut dark hair and the costume’s white lace cap.

  “We always have fun on Halloween.”

  “Yeah,” the 6’ 4” slender intern rubbed gray eyes, wondering if the vaccine he volunteered for had unreported side effects. “I’m tired. ER’s been crazier than usual lately with the CDC’s precautions for dying patients.”

  “Right, you mentioned all that before at home.”

  Terry had worked around two National Guardsmen among a squad stationed in Our Lady of Mercy’s emergency room this weekend. Carrying live-ammunition in pistols and rifles in the event patients who died became infected and suddenly “reanimated.” Those soldiers were especially vigilant inside the morgue and other departments like the ER. It made the staff understandably edgy.

  “Hey, I went to a lot of trouble getting dressed up hot tonight,” she squeezed him harder as they danced close, “so forget sick people and I’ll not practice mixing drinks from Celia’s liquor cabinet. You remember fun, right Terry? Maybe I can remind you when we’re alone later.”

  Nodding as he leaned down to kiss her lightly-freckled button nose, they enjoyed the evening but left at 10:05 P.M. heading to their hilltop cabin for sexual relations, the property Moore’s mother entrusted to him after the well-off divorcee left for an Oahu condo apartment at Waikiki Beach. Since Terry had sampled two shots of schnapps tonight, Wendy was his designated driver in her cherry-red Ford Fusion for the winding roads into hills east of town. She was an excellent though fast driver, with occasional prior speeding tickets to prove it, but made good time once past the main intersections. Two miles from their home, Terry spotted the next danger before Wendy when the Ford rounded one sharp curve toward a minivan stopped diagonally on the road, its lights off and shadowy figures surrounding it.

  “Look out!”

  Moore almost grabbed the wheel, but his fiancee barely swerved across the yellow center line to avoid a collision, both occupants shocked to see the man at the other vehicle’s driver side with bleeding injuries to his body and ragged clothing; the neck hanged at an angle as if broken.

  “What was that, an accident?”

  Wendy glanced back for a split second as she swerved right again, seeing too late the white VW minibus crashed into a roadside tree also blocking the eastbound side 10’ ahead of the green Dodge Grand Caravan she avoided. The car spun 180 degrees and rolled twice to crash inside the drainage ditch at the road’s far side upright. After the Fusion’s front airbags had deployed, the figures at that Dodge began moving slowly toward the newly-wrecked car.

  “Oh my God,” Terry detected no personal injuries except a banged right knee against the dash and soreness in the right shoulder where it hit the window, “being stuck inside a clothes dryer by some frat boys once in college never hurt that bad. Are you okay, Wendy – WENDY?”

  The woman was slumped on the steering wheel’s airbag, a bloody smear where her head had impacted that door’s now-cracked glass. Carefully moving his fiancée backwards to rest in that seat, Terry saw the badly bleeding gash from temple to chin with surrounding bruises. Uncertain how much blunt trauma Wendy experienced, but knowing she would need medical attention – an x-ray and some stitches at least – the intern unbuckled their belts and found his door was jammed by a tree trunk.

  Great, the nearest hospital is five miles west. There are few houses along this bit of the road and we left our cell phones at the cabin two miles away so I wouldn’t get paged tonight.

  Fishing a flashlight he knew Wendy kept in her glove compartment and carefully crawling over the barely-breathing lady to exit the Fusion, Terry forced the door open and hurt his left ankle stepping into the drainage ditch. Cursing before regaining his footing, he shined the flashlight toward the two-car accident site they had passed, seeing the slow-moving people coming closer, their skin livid and containing gashes or bruises, some with strange bite wounds. Ignoring them, Terry gently lifted Wendy outside and cradled her, facing those others again.

  “HEY, any of you folks have a cell phone I could borrow to call 911?”

  The shambling half-dozen humans made audible moans, but none answered him. Recalling classified video footage shown his hospital staff by some CDC officials from the growing epidemic, Moore recognized these people exhibited signs and behaviors of the walking dead. Having removed his mask before leaving the party with the hood pulled down and abandoning the plastic scythe, the intern limped up the road headed to his cabin carrying Wendy and one flashlight.

  It’s finally here. I can’t leave Wendy. CDC said victims act like cannibals. They’d eat my baby alive.

  The young doctor found he was able to escape those pursuers even suffering a sprained ankle and left the roadside once spotting his familiar cabin’s silhouetted shadow beyond trees less than two miles later. Wendy was quiet during the last mile, no longer making occasional soft moans before he cradled her tighter.

  No, Oh God, I’m losing her. Stay with me, baby. Don’t give up – I’ll get you help.

  Unfortunately, Dr. Moore knew he had only first aid supplies at home and she needed serious attention for these injuries. Laying her on the porch across a swinging bench while he removed the Halloween costume to get at the front door’s key in the black denim pants’ right front pocket, Terry heard Wendy’s moans return, sounding similar to people they saw earlier on the road. Ignoring any danger, he cursed upon dropping the key ring in darkness but soon used the flashlight and found them. The man stood again and spun left with the light’s beam as Wendy lunged and bit him through his gray sweatshirt deep into his collarbone. They fell as he wrestled with her to keep from being bitten again, finally shoving Wendy back against a porch railing and scrambling toward the door.

  ARGH, it hurts like a bastard.

  Terry opened the door, having locked it earlier as a leftover city-dweller habit, and slammed the entrance closed as Wendy collided with it after scratching his left leg above a black sneaker. Inside, Dr. Moore relocked the door and hobbled to the bathroom’s medicine cabinet, pouring alcohol across the bite and scratch wounds after removing his blood-stained sweatshirt in the dark. The liquid burned his wound and he fell against the opposite wall in agony.

  No, have I got the disease? What about the vaccine I was given the other day?

  The physician slid to sit facing the bathroom’s sink, shivering from alte
rnating bouts of chills and fever, and curled into a fetal ball lying on his right side, unable to even bandage injuries. He heard Wendy pound at the front door and then apparently break in a front window to finally enter. Regaining composure for a few seconds, Terry slammed the bathroom’s door closed, bracing his weight against it after he reached to replace the sweatshirt over a bare upper torso. The man’s vision blurred and the wood-paneled room spun. He vomited once but could not prevent the violent reaction as his stomach regurgitated earlier party snacks. Wendy finally reached the bathroom door and pounded at it as Terry lost consciousness in his fevered haze.

  “Wendy, I love you ba-by.”

  Is this – death?

  ***

  Awakening with a start sometime later, Terry Moore heard nothing outside the bathroom’s door, Wendy obviously having moved on. The man slowly regained balance and crawled to the sink before using it for standing. He turned on the lights and they briefly hurt his eyes, but Terry squinted while pulling the sweatshirt’s collar off the left shoulder to see Wendy’s bite wound had already stopped bleeding, the skin around it sallow and bruised. Pulling up that left pant leg, the doctor found his scratched, bleeding ankle in similar condition. He then viewed his haggard face at the mirror, seeing gray eyes having luminescent traces around each iris. The suntanned skin was also a shade paler.

  Oh my God, I could almost pass for a cadaver. But I’m still breathing and moving, so I can’t be dead – right?

  Scratching at brown hair and shaking his aching head once, Terry listened at the door and heard nothing in the hallway outside again. Through the one tiny window above the shower stall he spotted it was still nighttime and overcast. The doctor felt normal despite his body’s cooler skin temperature and the faint pulse detected at the neck and wrist.

  “Funny, I don’t feel any worse right now than from some choice hangovers.”

  Exploring other rooms, the doctor found no one else around inside. He then spotted and heard movement across the front porch through the broken-in large front window and crept toward the door. Terry unlocked it and peered outside, recognizing Wendy now leaned against one of the porch’s support posts facing the road. Exiting the cabin, he oddly no longer felt afraid of what she had become tonight, despite not knowing why. His left ankle free of pain now, he strolled up behind her after retrieving the dropped flashlight. Moore turned her around slowly counterclockwise to face him, shined the light on Wendy’s pale, blank expression and discovered the woman’s pulse was in fact nonexistent.

  “Aw, baby, I’m sorry this happened to you. I’m pretty sure you’re dead.”

  He hugged her closer with confidence, the walking corpse making no effort to resist or attack her fiance now, before stepping back and keeping his hands on her costume’s puffed shoulder sleeves. Terry sat her on the swing at his right before he moved it slowly back and forth under still night air. The man recalled she was wearing a silver wristwatch and raised her left arm. The working watch’s face under his flashlight’s beam read 11:55 P.M. He turned the light off and left it between them on the swing. Taking her cold, delicate hands and holding them inside his, Dr. Moore pondered what had happened to them tonight.

  It must be the vaccine I got, one the CDC code-named Zombie Inhibitor Pathogen-12?

  He had read basic literature on the drug with its few facts and generalized claims. The Zombie Inhibitor Pathogen trial formula 12 was touted as preventing full clinical brain death for infected subjects and maintaining minimal sustainable biological function. The conclusions were based on testing in lower animals – rodents, felines and canines – all reported susceptible to zombie infection.

  Whoa, I’m a living dead man? That’s – freaking amazing.

  Looking toward Wendy as she sat unmoving, Terry hugged his late girlfriend closer with his right arm and stroked her dark silky hair straightening the bangs. She made no reaction.

  I must not be living enough anymore to serve as food, or whatever reason the disease makes all its victims go crazy and eat people. I guess the other walking dead will act as though I’m some sort of kindred thing.

  The doctor delighted at being neither completely dead nor truly living based on observations and some later self-tests administered in the future, but realized unless other vaccine candidates were also bitten and survived, he was now unique.

  Can Wendy or other victims never vaccinated be saved or possibly restored?

  Relaxing as he caressed his dead lady’s face, Moore recalled another experimental compound from the CDC’s restricted literature, something intended for already-infected persons.

  The ZX-90 drug – meant for testing on walking corpses – it was listed as partially classified. Did Our Lady of Mercy get any samples?

  Terry kissed Wendy’s cold nose once before standing to lead his fiancée into the adjoining small barn serving as their garage where both cars had been stored before losing the Ford earlier. Loading her inside a black Toyota 4×4 truck’s passenger seat, replacing the robe from his Halloween costume concealing the bite wound, putting on sunglasses to hide glowing eyes, and wrapping a large patchwork quilt around Wendy hiding her condition, the intern sped toward town, fully believing the ZX-90 might even restore his lady’s mind, even though brain death had already occurred.

  ***

  Dr. Moore drove past the zombies from earlier on the road, knocking two aside without even stopping. He was an undead man on a mission – saving Wendy Duffy from the grave or current FEMA radical disposal protocols by any means necessary.

  It serves them right – causing our wreck earlier.

  Driving faster once on the state road into town, the man saw a roadblock ahead. Terry briefly considered running what was probably another Halloween sobriety check point that had not been in place on their way home, but remained uncertain of immunity to gunshots. He pulled Wendy against him and kept her head and body well-covered under the quilt, thankful the lady’s wound had stopped bleeding hours ago.

  “Evening, Officer,” the intern carried a hospital ID badge along with the driver’s license he brought from the cabin, having also gargled with minty mouthwash to hide lingering alcohol odors, smiling for the highway patrolman at the driver’s side window. “Is there a problem?”

  “We’re just checking for drunks celebrating Halloween, sir.”

  “Unfortunately, I have a minor medical emergency,” Dr. Moore showed the tall helmeted, tan-uniformed patrolman his hospital ID; “my girlfriend had too much to drink at a party and needs some treatment. Could I drive on through, officer?”

  Staring at the man and his passenger while examining the ID from a cruiser’s headlights, the policeman motioned one colleague to move the temporary blocking sawhorse and returned the doctor’s badge with a nod.

  “All right, try to have a good evening and drive carefully, Dr. Moore. There’ve been reported gang incidents in a few downtown neighborhoods. Some people were fighting and even biting each other. You might be needed at your hospital.”

  “I’d better get there ASAP,” Moore pulled his truck forward, “before Dr. Lee pages me to come in on my night off anyhow – thanks.”

  The plague’s arrived here, the bluffing physician realized, heading away. And if the feds find me out, I’ll become a lab rat or be destroyed.

  ***

  Terry Moore carried Wendy Duffy through the Emergency Room area, his badge gaining him access to secured doors with magnetic card readers, keeping her quiet and wrapped in the quilt so no one would notice she was already dead. Taking his lover into the immunology department laboratory containing the CDC’s project where he had been injected earlier with ZAP-12, Moore found the locked refrigerated vial cabinet, but was unable to pick the lock and possessed no key.

  Damn their security protocols.

  He had left Wendy on an exam table nearby, but she wriggled inside the quilt after Moore set her down. The intern left the lab’s lights off, able to see in darkness with changed eyes and removing those wraparound shade
s here. Applying new strength, the doctor soon forced that door with audible sounds of twisting metal, and then retrieved a sterile syringe and cardiac needle for one vial of the ZX-90 drug. Suddenly, overhead lights came on, activated by a man wearing camouflage fatigues standing in the doorway. Moore quickly replaced his sunglasses and faced this arrival.

  Who the hell is—?

  “You’re not supposed to be here. Step away from the cabinet. Don’t move.”

  Wait a second – I know him – Colonel Lawson, right the creep is Max Lawson, M.D., attached to the CDC.

  “Sorry, colonel,” Dr. Moore smiled and faced the CDC/Army officer in charge of emergency medical measures at Our Lady of Mercy since America’s zombie problem became epidemic in many major cities, “My fiancee needs a shot. I’m Dr. Moore from cardiology.”

  Taking a careful look at the tall young doctor in sunglasses and black-robed costume, Colonel Thomas R. Larson’s graying black hair almost bristled in its crew cut, the hawk-like hazel eyes never distracted and the .45-caliber chrome automatic pistol in his left hand pointed at the physician.

  “And you’re not authorized to administer or decide on resources under CDC control, doctor. I am. As an on-staff test subject, you received a vaccination to prevent contracting the contagion while at work. The protocol never included family or loved ones, if you’d read all the materials carefully.” The lean-muscled middle-aged Larson glimpsed that quilt-wrapped woman sitting up. “And it looks to me like she got here too late for vaccination anyway.”

  “I’m going to save Wendy,” Moore filled the syringe before moving to her side, “with this ZX-90 if it can help those who’ve already been infected.”

  “Don’t be a fool, son,” Larson stepped into the lab cocking his pistol, “the compound is to be tested under controlled conditions once we receive suitable subjects from the field. That doesn’t include her.”

  I must try, the undead intern almost declared, piercing Wendy’s chest with the cardiac needle and injecting the compound directly into his girlfriend’s heart while holding her down.