“And fry their brains that are giving these mother-fuckers life.” Sam interrupted.
“This is a crude overview but you’ve got the idea.” Confirmed Jayne.
“Bang! Fried brains. The Jayne bomb.”
“A seventy-seven dead pulse that can be adapted to be deployable in missile or bomb via a whole range of delivery vehicles.”
“Seventy-seven dead pulse. I like the sound of that.” Sam gave out a laugh.
“It was developed; no one really knows if it would have worked,” She shrugged, “forget it. It’s meaningless now.”
“... The dead will repent, and the living shall likewise perish.” Sam mumbled.
“What was that?” Jayne asked as she turned from the window.
“It’s something an old man said to me, before I got this,” he pointed to his scar.
Over the next few days, Jayne walked the corridors of her old school trying to remember some good times. Death was at the door. Waiting... wanting... waiting for them to make a mistake. Death could wait and want far longer than they ever could.
With the deathly silence that was now in the school hallways it was hard to picture those happy school days. The place seemed more like a ghost house these days. The school was however secured; the metal fences were quite new and well made. Turning, she walked back to room 12. Sam was packing his things into a bag. Jayne’s heart sank, she knew this day was coming.
“Are we the only ones here?” Jayne questioned Sam. She found it strange that no one else had thought of hiding here, especially with the protection of the oddly newly erected fences.
“Yes. I checked all the rooms. Everyone must have been evacuated because there was no sign of a struggle,” he held up the large blade of the machete, inspecting it.
Jayne knew what he was thinking, “There is nowhere to go, and there is nothing out there.” She stated frankly with her head in her hands.
“There has to be, armies, government people, communities, there must be real people still living and not just screwed up nomads, people like us,” Sam expressed optimistically. “I need to be a part of something. I need a goal; I miss the everyday rules, don’t drink and drive; pay your bills and taxes; don’t steal, don’t kill. Now there is no order, there are no consequences anymore.” He zipped up his bag. “There has to be more than this.”
The silence and the unruliness of it all had left him on edge and it had been playing on his mind. Meeting Jayne had helped, definitely, but over the last five days or so, he had concluded that her company was not enough. As comfortable as they were with each other, they were passing people with plenty of things in common but with different goals. Jayne Reed had seen what the world had become and needed protection. Sam had seen very little further than the supermarket food aisles and needed to find out for himself - whatever the danger.
“You can sit round here, with a tin up your arse all day! I’ve been doing that and it isn’t getting me anywhere.’ He bellowed pacing the room.
Calmly Jayne whispered, “I’d rather sit round here with a tin up my arse, rather than get bitten on it or shot up it. I’ve tried to warn you. There is nothing more to say other than...” She paused contemplated going over seventy-seven again, but stopped herself from giving false hope. “Stay Sam, don’t go out there.”
Soon after Sam left Jayne moved from room twelve, staying in a large storage cupboard on the other side of the school. She had covered up the window and blocked herself in with only the noise of the dripping cistern nearby to keep her company. No entrances, one exit, it was safer than an open room whilst she was one her own, she thought.
Covered with a dark blue woollen blanket around her shoulders, Jayne sat on a plastic gym mat hugging her legs, she rocked slowly back and forth, rested her head on her knees and drifted into an uneasy sleep.
Jayne and her family sat around a maple table waiting for dinner. They all were gaunt and pale apart from her. Then, she was on the table with an apple in her mouth. She was naked, paralysed and vulnerable. They began to banging the table hard with their cutlery. They were all dead. She tried to close her eyes and shake their blank looking faces from her mind. Her father stood up as the rest continued to pound the table. He plunged his fork into her thigh and began to tuck in. He stabbed and sawed with his knife and fork, and blood, her blood began to spray on their faces!
Jayne awoke in a sweat. Breathing deeply, she got her bearings back. Only a nightmare, she told herself. Nevertheless, she couldn’t shake the images, she missed her family so much but despite the nightmare being over the banging she had heard in her sleep continued! Shaking her head she realised that the sound was not in her head, these thumps were real.
As the dull bangs continued, a cold chill came over her and she reached for her handgun. The blanket fell to the floor as she half-heartedly got up to investigate. Cautiously, Jayne slowly walked down a long corridor towards the noise. Coming to the end of the corridor she began to walk down a flight circular plastic tread covered stairs. The banging became louder, so loud, thought Jayne, she wanted to cover her ears. Then the noise abruptly stopped. Only the creak of the stairs broke the silence.
Her mind raced. Had kind Sam locked someone in a room so he could have the school for himself? Was it someone who had locked their self in for protection? Was it the zombies? Gone were the times when a zombie was tall mixed drink. Jayne had decided that it was time to call them what they really were.
The noise was coming from a large metal double cellar door. She stood over the door with her gun at the ready.
“I’ll shoot, now tell me who you are!” she yelled.
There was no reply, she knelt down and put her ear close to the door. There was a pungent smell and she briefly backed away. She listened... silence, then... Bang! The doors pounded and she jumped back, it was quiet once again. Shaking with dread and fear, Jayne tried to compose herself. It can’t be living, she concluded taking a deep breath.
Her grip tightened around the gun in her perspiring hand. She was ready to blast whatever it was away, she placed her other hand on the cold steel handle. She yanked it back. The smell engulfed her first, death. Walking backwards the smell of decaying flesh, excretion and smells of other bodily secretions filled the air. Her spine arched and she retched, almost fainting with the pungent smell, she steadied herself up against a wall.
From the dark hole surfaced a bony dog, half-eaten. It ambled weakly past Jayne, whining. Its coat was torn exposing the flesh beneath, it was obviously in immense pain. Jayne killed the dog ending its suffering. As she looked up from the dog’s body her face filled with horror, and as the world seemed to spin in slow motion, nothing could have prepare her for what she now saw. Children, dead children, were emerging from the cellar. Quickly Jayne backed up the stairs looking down at the ten little rotting faces that made her hair stand on end. She wanted to shoot but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Their little pale faces gazed at her menacingly. Then a woman, Jayne presumed a teacher, in a white stained blouse and plaid skirt came into sight. Without hesitation, she fired off a round of ammunition sending the dead woman hurtling back down the tomb-like cellar.
The children clawed at Jayne with snapping fingernails as she quickly realised that these damned children were as dangerous as their adult counterparts were. They were not cute kids, but killers. Overwhelmed with fear the wake-up call came; Jayne Reed was going to die!
The dead walked the town of Farmore, infection and puss oozing from their bits and wounds. In spite of their rigor mortis, death no longer stopped them and they surrounded a house, attracted, and sensing the smell and energy of the living inside. Instinctively they organised themselves with strongest first, the weaker floundering, weakening less fed and lumbering pushing behind them.
The less decomposed pushed and pulled at the windows and doors looking for a weakness, a way in to get to their prize and strengthen their brains electric pulse on the living flesh inside. Rusted nails came away from the wooden frame an
d the metal sheeting fell from one of the windows. The dead began to bang at the windows terrifying the starving children and adults inside. The barking dogs added to the increasing yells and screams, and the dead’s moans became louder, as they beat on the single pane glass that smashed. A dog from inside leaped out at the dead snapping at its loose skin. However, it began to yelp as the zombies bit and tore at its fur.
The living tried to keep them out but weak from malnutrition the departed pushed their way in standing on each other to get through the window, falling into the house like wriggling maggots in a tin. More came through the opening as the adults tried to protect their young.
In time the yells, cries and screams stopped and the moans of the dead once again took precedence. Their bacteria ridden saliva feasted on the new dead, the young were quickest to come back to life, and joined the mob biting chunks out of the dying adults until they lost their lives and were reanimated. Subconsciously and even though the stronger dead had appeared to incapacitate the living allowing the weaker dead to feed first they still tussled for the remaining morsels of food.
Major Frank Marshal stood up from the mutilated maggot ridden female’s body, “Damn it, Reed,” he mumbled, controlling his disappointment as he held an overhead water pipe tightly.
Frank had aged well, he was sharp and still in good shape considering the injuries he had sustained during his career and the mental stress of perilous missions. His file was impressive, stationed in South Korea; Kenya; Iraq; Afghanistan; Malaysia; Oman; Ecuador; Puerto Rico and Kuwait to name a few, he was seasoned, well respected and he knew it. He watched Hardy take the hand of a tall woman in a blue tailored suit, as she was guided towards him.
“I thought you would never come,” she huffed, pulling her long loosely curled bright red hair into a ponytail.
As they emerged from an underground bunker into the sunlight, she wiped her forehead with a cerise neckerchief.
“Thankfully the emergency procedures were followed. You’re lucky to be alive.” Frank Marshal escorted the redhead towards two black suited agents.
“Obviously not as lucky as everyone else, since the fall of The Pentagon, nothing surprises me,” she stated, looking around at the litter of bodies.
“I was relieved my men located you in the strong room. Obviously, the Kill 204 mission you authorised, bio-warfare test seventy-two failed, um, and seventy-seven success is unknown. This is Agent Cole and Agent Emmanuelle Judge. You'll be safe with them Ma’am. I'm afraid your bodyguard didn't make it out.”
She glanced briefly at the bodies of the dead soldiers that lay strewn on the tiled floor hoping not to see her long time bodyguard.
“What became of Jayne Reed? She was here in this bunker, correct?” queried the red head.
“The very same, Miss Reed’s name tag has been found, along with a body, it’s been difficult to get a positive identification in the current circumstances though,” he hesitated, “the face, most of the teeth and all the fingers was missing. It probable it’s her though.” Frank gave a nervous shrug.
“So these two are going to look after me?” Her gaze flicked over Cole and Emmanuelle.
Cole was a well-built man in his mid thirties with black hair that had started to grey back from the temples. The female Agent, Emmanuelle, sported blonde shoulder length hair. Even in her suit, it was easy to tell that she worked out and was strong; she was younger, mid-twenties thought the Vice President. “Major I approve,” she stated.
Armed soldiers surrounded them and the entrance to the bunker. They let off shots causing the Vice President to jump. Through the wall soldiers stood with their back to her. She could see hideous looking people, some bludgeoned, some with limbs missing and clearly dead.
Another shot was fired and the Vice President felt faint as she caught a glimpse of a head exploding apart. She turned to Frank; he gave her a salute and made his way over to Hardy and awaiting his soldiers.
The Vice President nodded to the two Agents and was then lead to an awaiting unmarked black Mercedes. The car sped off, swerving around the dead as they aimlessly walked in the road.
A sudden smell of death hit the Vice President, “This evil is everywhere.” She stated gazing out of the window at piles of burning bodies that dotted the roadside.
“Sadly it is Ma’am,” answered Cole typing on his black Smartphone.
“Sue, call me Sue,” she leaned back into the rear leather seat. “We were so close,” she sighed.
They manoeuvred at high speed around abandoned cars. The long straight road stretched out in front of them, either side of it as far as the eye could see were fields of golden corn.
“Don't worry Ma’am, you’ll be safe. We’re taking you to a secure location in the Ravenswood for you to rest before we regroup. I should expect you’ll be asked to go through the seventy-seven code,” Emmanuelle said soothingly, as she drove glancing at Sue in the rear view mirror.
Sue smiled. “They found the data.”
“That’s my understanding Ma’am.”
In a blink of an eye, and with no time for Emmanuelle to swerve, the Mercedes hit one of the walking dead. It flipped from the road; missing one arm; just a fleshy stump and strings of sinew remained. Its head cracked against the windscreen with force and remained there as the car skidded colliding with a stationary horsebox. The rear window smashed into tiny squares of glass falling where Cole sat as the car veered off the road, before rocking to a complete stop next to a field.
Cole sat next to Sue startled, clicking his neck he drew his gun. “You okay Judge?” he brushed pieces of safety glass from himself and Sue.
“I’m fine,” said Emmanuelle sickened by the blood-covered windscreen.
Cole looked into Sue’s green eyes, she was filled with fear. He gave her a smile of reassurance and touched her arm.
Before Emmanuelle could take out her SIG P226 pistol, Cole had been dragged kicking and yelling out through the broken rear window by scores of cold and icy hands. His body disappeared into the fields of corn leaving Emmanuelle and Sue in silence.
Emmanuelle raced out of the car, adrenalin pumping she opened up the rear door and guided Sue into the passenger seat. She touched the shocked woman’s leg.
“I’ll be right back.”
Before Sue could protest, Emmanuelle slammed the door closed and disappeared into the corn after Cole.
Sue’s amplified breathing was broken by a strange noise. She listened hard and tried to stop herself hyperventilating. Suddenly the body on the windscreen rolled down onto the bonnet of the car. Sue stared at the body waiting for it to move, jump up, smash its way through the cracked window, and attack her, but there was nothing? No movement. The bloody body just lay there, dead again.
“Do something!” she yelled. She squeezed her legs with her hands trying to calm herself down.
What thoughts had gone through its head? Why did they want to eat her and the rest of the living? Her thoughts were quickly lost as the car moved. She felt it move, she was sure.
She turned her head and in a moment she found herself almost sitting on the dashboard, physically shaking with the back of her head pressed painfully against the cracked screen. In front of her a dead, naked woman dragged her face across the Perspex screen that divided the front of the car from the rear. The grey-skinned woman slowly scraped with her nails at the clear divider, her nails, soft flesh left the bones, and soon her skeletal digits were exposed.
Just then, Emmanuelle appeared frantically running backwards and slammed into the car. She shot her weapon into the corn as the dead once again emerged from the field. Momentarily the mindless crowd appeared to be organised, lining the corn like soldiers on parade.
Emmanuelle hit the floor scrabbling in the grit and dust around the car struggling to maintain her control she managed to get to her feet. Coughing, she yanked the bloody one armed man from the hood of the car sending the body spinning to the floor. She jumped into the driver seat, started the engine and sprayed cl
eaner onto the windscreen. The wipers flicked back and forth, smudging the amputees blood. She crunched the car in to reverse and knocked over some of the dead that were now reaching for the car. With her foot firmly on the accelerator, they sped off leaving the waiting dead.
“Belt up Ma’am,” breathlessly she instructed the startled Sue. “They tore him to pieces!” Emmanuelle gasped looking in the wing mirror, “As I went through the corn there were just bits of my friend, bits of Cole everywhere!”
They drove for a minute or two in silence then Emmanuelle adjusted the rear-view mirror. Catching a glimpse of their new but unwanted naked female passenger, she slammed on the breaks of the now dented car. The dead woman’s face hit the Perspex glass hard, leaving a bloody smear as its teeth hit the floor.
Sue’s stern face of earlier was lost, the only emotion registering on her face was now deep shock. She tried to speak but incomprehensible murmurs came out.
Emmanuelle walked to the window through which Cole was dragged to his death. She dealt the same fate of death to the female ... with a single bullet.
On the empty road Emmanuelle dropped to her knees, her blonde hair was stuck to her face as she tried not to cry. With her gun in her hand, she rested the side of her head against the dirty car.
Aware that she was now alone in the car, Sue looked around to see where Emmanuelle had gone. Noticing that she was now sitting on the ground, Sue joined her and they comforted each other in an embrace.
“Your time and the time of Presidents, Prime Ministers, Kings and Queens are over Ma’am.” Emmanuelle shivered and stared blankly.
The sound of the wind and the distant wails and moans of the dead made its way through the fields of corn onto the road filling the air around them.
Emmanuelle and Sue, two women, shells of their former selves staggered back into the car and drove wearily into the unknown.
Dead Pulse Page 4
