The Romero Strain

by Alan, TS

  THE ROMERO STRAIN

  By

  TS Alan

  “The Romero Strain. Best zombie book I’ve ever read. It should be a movie... or a mini series... or a game, or all of the above!” ~ Punchline Dvd OZ & NZ

  - BOOKS of the DEAD -

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters, events, dialog, and situations in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of reprinted excerpts for the purpose of reviews.

  Graphic Design by Derek Daley

  Edited by James Roy Daley & Paul A. Wiese

  Cover Art by Diego Candia

  For more information, contact: Besthorror@gmail.com

  Visit us at: Booksofthedeadpress.com

  THE ROMERO STRAIN

  Copyright 2014 by TS Alan

  For more information visit:

  BOOKS of the DEAD

  In Memoriam

  David DiMinni

  (1960 – 2003)

  Special thanks to friend and editor Paul A. Wiese

  And my wife for everything

  PART I

  WHEN DARKNESS FALLS

  I. Book of the Undead

  My name is J.D. and I am undead, or will be shortly. The virus that ravages this city has infected me, and I am about to enter into phase three symptoms, or so I have been told. By whom, I will explain shortly.

  My fever is high, and I can feel a chill running deep into my body with an accompanying pain that pierces my stiffening muscles. My recollections of earlier hours are a bit hazy, but I remember telling my dog Max to slow down and heel. Max is well trained, but he sometimes forgets his place and gets excited when he knows he’s heading home. I have to remind him, on those rare occasions, who the pack leader is. My loyal friend is here next to me as I document this chronicle of events. I write for history’s sake, if there is a future. Let this End of Days’ record enlighten anyone who may read it. Not all of humanity went out in a miserable whimper, but as the expressions goes, kicking and screaming.

  Or as I did, kicking and killing.

  II. A Virgin amongst the Living Dead

  It began like any normal Monday morning in April, just a few days past my 28th birthday. It was a mild day in New York City––sunny skies, a light, cool breeze, and a few fluffy, white clouds. I was coming back from a walk with Max, my three-year-old German shepherd. I tried to give Max as much exercise as possible so he didn’t become bored. Being a working breed, we always went for our daily walks with packs strapped on our backs. Max didn’t carry much, just some essentials. I always carried too many items, even with my minimal go-bag. Being the city that it was, I needed to be prepared, even if I was walking the dog.

  We had just come from the East Village Park along the East River, crossing over the pedestrian bridge at 10th Street and through the Jacob Riis Houses. As always, we turned north on Avenue D and headed toward 12th Street. There were other routes we could have taken, but that was the most peaceful, and in the spring, the most enjoyable. I liked to walk under the tall branches of the cherry tree that overhung the chain-link fence in front of Saint Emeric’s Church. I paused for a moment, looking up at the long limbs of the immense tree. Max, too, seemed to enjoy the tree, trying to catch a falling petal with his mouth. We cut through the Haven Plaza low-income housing courtyard which brought us to C Town Supermarket on Avenue C, known by people of Alphabet City as Loisaida Avenue; Spanglish for the Lower East Side. We were about to cross the street and head north when I heard a female voice screaming, “Help, help, he’s trying to kill me!”

  She was a young schoolgirl, made obvious by the school uniform she was wearing, though the uniform couldn’t hide her physical maturity. As she drew nearer, I could see her well-developed chest through her partly undone white Peter Pan collar blouse, bouncing vigorously on her slim frame. Her complexion was light brown. Her hair, a deep rich, shining brunette, was pulled into a ponytail.

  My fixation distracted me momentarily from her pursuer, until a twinge of guilt, slight as it was, told me she may look eighteen but was more likely thirteen. Her loud screams and pleas for help jolted me out of my schoolgirl uniform fantasy as she drew within feet of me.

  I saw him moving toward us as the girl grabbed my arm and hid behind me. His hurried approach was more borderline lumbering than running. Max’s fur along the back of his neck stood up. He was poised to lunge, snarling with his teeth bared, ready to protect me if necessary. But I wasn’t too concerned. I knew how to defend myself.

  * * *

  Being the son of a police officer sucked. It did not earn me automatic respect. Having a cop for a father earned me less respect than being the fat sloppy kid in school. I was the skinny, dorky kid whose parents made him take ballet and piano lessons. It wasn’t that my fellow classmates disliked the police; it was the fact that when I first started getting picked on I used the My father is a cop and if you don’t leave me alone he’s gonna kick your dad’s ass card once too often. It wasn’t long before my tormentors realized I was full of shit. It was true; I was full of shit, and I was called on it on a regular basis.

  My father was not amused by my bragging, but was sympathetic to my dilemma. He decided I needed to be taught how to defend myself, and took me to the YMCA every Saturday for six months for kickboxing and self-defense lessons, which were taught by one of his commanding officers. I was twelve. Having successfully mastered the basics in kickboxing and self-defense techniques, my father enrolled me in a Jeet Kune Do academy, the same place the police department had sent him to train.

  Some kids get sent to summer camp to get away from the city, to enjoy nature, and so their parents can have some privacy. My parents sent me to summer camp at The Inosanto Academy of Martial Arts in Marina Del Rey, California, because they knew if they didn’t, I was going to make their lives miserable all summer.

  Having learned practical elements of Kali, Eskrima, Jun Fan kung fu, Silat, and advance elements of Jeet Kune Do, I returned home with a strong body and a stronger will—will, not mind. I had embraced the physical aspects of Way of the Intercepting Fist, but not the spiritual. Instead of being a perpetual victim, I became the constant bully. I garnered the wrath of my middle school teachers, and my father’s. He never allowed me to take another lesson while under his roof. My bad attitude would continue into my early twenties, when a fateful event brought upon an epiphany.

  * * *

  As the man approached I could see he looked ill. His face was pale, grey, and drawn with a few open sores. His eyes were sickly and glassy, but filled with a singular intensity of doing me harm. Max barked and growled wildly. I had never seen such an intensity of alarm from him. I gave his leash a tug and told him to be silent.

  The sickly man drew within yards. I shouted for him to stop but he kept steadfast in his intent to apprehend the girl. When he refused to yield and reached out for me; I side-kicked him above the larynx, hard enough to put him down but not hard enough to break the hyoid bone or tear any thyroid cartilage. I expected him to drop to his knees, but he staggered back and lunged at me again. I snap-kicked him square in the testicles, but nothing. I became concerned, very concerned. If those two places didn’t bring him to his knees, he must have been completely tweaked out. I was able to sidestep him on his third lunge and kick him in the left kneecap. He went down hard, not even trying to brace his fall with his hands. I had to do something quick, and kicking him again wasn’t going to do it. I had the girl screaming in my ear and Max ready-to-go on my command, but I wanted this guy for myself.

  “Achterzijde, blif,” I commanded, and Max stepped back. I stepped back a fe
w feet and grabbed a municipal green mesh garbage can, which stood next to the crosswalk light. I hoisted it up and swung it, slamming it in the middle of his back. He went down again; his face slammed on the sidewalk.

  As quickly as he fell he began to rise up.

  “Stay down!” I yelled, but he didn’t heed my warning. Again I slammed him squarely in the upper lumbar region, but for a third time his fall only momentarily impeded him. I raised the receptacle yet again, this time higher, and slammed it against the back of his head. Down he went once more, his head thumping loudly on the hard sidewalk. But like the previous times, it did not stop him from rising. I couldn’t believe he was getting up again.

  I lifted the can nearly above my head, and as he was almost upright, I slammed it into the upper side of his skull. The impact of the hard metal bottom support ring slamming against his cranium was so devastating that it split his parietal bone open. He finally collapsed. He lay twitching on the ground, brain matter exposed, hemorrhaging a deep purple color.

  “God damn it!” I yelled, and turned to the girl, who was still screaming. “Shut up!” I bellowed over her incessant, grating noise. I was pissed. My red ringer 10003 postal code t-shirt was ruined from all the shit that had slid out of the trashcan while I was defending her, and all she could do was scream in my ear. She stopped screaming and cried, which was a lesser irritation but still damn annoying.

  “What that fuck is going on?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know,” she sobbed repeatedly, and began to mutter rapidly in Spanish. “Él intentó agarrarme. Él tenía ojos locos. Me separé de el y comencé a correr. ¡Pero él me sigio! Grité y grité. ¡Pero nadie me ayudaría! Entonces yo—”

  “Hey, hey. Inglés, chica. Inglés.” I interrupted. “No puedo entenderte cuando hablas asi.”

  I was surprised that a crowd hadn’t gathered. I looked around as I took out my cell phone to dial 9-1-1. It was only 7:00 a.m., but someone should have been sticking his or her nose into this.

  “I want to report an emergency on Avenue C and 12th Street, Manhattan… Nichols, J.D. Nichols… 646-867-5309… What? No, I’m not being funny.” The operator asked me to state the nature of emergency. “There was an attempted assault on a young girl by an aggressive and delirious male, in which I interceded using a garbage can… no, just the assailant who is unconscious, unresponsive, and suffering—what? Did anyone come in physical contact with the assailant?” I repeated the operator’s question, which was unusual response. “My foot to his balls. Does that count?” As usual, I was being a smart-ass. “What? Bit!?” I repeated, with astonishment and curiosity in my tone at such an unusual question. “Ah… I don’t know. I didn’t. Maybe the girl.”

  That was a fucking weird question, I thought. I looked at the girl who Max was comforting, or I should say, who Max was sucking up to. “Max, afstammen. Broeden op.” He moved from the girl to me and sat down. “Logeren.”

  The girl looked puzzled by what I was saying, and a bit pissed that I called the dog away from her. At least she had stopped sobbing.

  “Señorita. ¿Cuál es tu nombre?”

  “Marisol,” she said. “¿Por qué?”

  Why? I thought. Why the hell not! I just saved your life and most likely killed someone, and you ask me why I want to know your name? “9-1-1 wants to know if you were bitten,” I said, holding my tongue.

  “Él solamente me… on my arm. See,” she said as she revealed the small scratch on her forearm. “See. A small scratch, no bites,” she assured me.

  “No. No bites, just a scratch on her arm. Yeah. Yeah, all right.”

  “What did they say?” she asked, concern in her voice.

  “He said wait here for a patrol car.”

  “Why did he ask if I was bit?” Now she was being a smart-ass. A little spunk in her after all.

  “Yeah. Weird, huh? Didn’t seem to interested in the assailant, just if we got bit. That is kind of weird.”

  I could hear the police sirens growing closer.

  III. Good Cop, Dead Cop

  His name was Johnson, Lieutenant John Johnson from the 9th Precinct. He was tall with sandy-blonde hair, an attractive, well-groomed and well-built man in his thirties. His uniform held the regalia of a highly decorated officer. They had dispatched the patrol supervisor for me––a sensible, no thrills, by-the-book, cop. I’d known the lieutenant for years; he had been my CPR instructor. He was a dot your i and cross your t type of cop. Sometimes he could be a ball buster. He was tough but good-hearted, and I had admiration and respect for him even though he could come across as abrasive and curt at times.

  John taught me to recognize the signs, symptoms, and how to treat people who were in shock. He also taught me the procedure for dealing with an emotionally disturbed patient. Obviously, that was something I had forgotten. Not only was he a highly respected and qualified officer, but a highly qualified and respected emergency medical technician.

  What, where, how, why, when… had I seen the girl before, had I seen the assailant before… did either of us come in physical contact with our assailant? The charm of his personality was overwhelming. Meanwhile, Marisol was talking to a hot looking Spanish cop named Rodriquez. Just a patrol officer; no medals on her chest, but her uniform was nicely filled anyways.

  An ambulance finally arrived. It was a FDNY emergency vehicle. I expected the Beth Israel Hospital ambulance that parked on Avenue B between 13th and 14th Street, in front of Brother’s Candy & Grocery—the team I saw every morning as Max and I walked from 13th Street North on Avenue B to 14th Street—but it wasn’t.

  “Look, Lieutenant. I’m fine,” I repeated for the fourth time. “Can I go now? I have a job I need to go to.”

  I lied. I didn’t have to go to work. I was on medical leave for several months due to a job related injury I suffered during a collision when responding to a call. No, I wasn’t a cop. I wasn’t the heroic type. Well, let me rephrase that. I wasn’t heroic enough to constantly put myself in harm’s way, like my father, who had been a patrolman and later worked in the NYPD Ballistics lab. I was an EMT-P for Saint Vincent’s Manhattan.

  * * *

  I loved working as a paramedic, especially at Saint Vincent’s. I worked the 4 p.m. to midnight shift, drove around in a state-of-the-art paramedic ambulance and helped people. Saint Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan was a member of the EMS Emergency Ambulance Service and responsible for ambulance and emergency services in a four and a half square mile area of the lower Westside. Saint Vincent’s was also a New York State designated Level I Trauma Center, the only trauma center on the lower Westside of Manhattan.

  The trauma center was the reason I chose to work at Saint Vincent’s. Seven years ago I ended up in their emergency room. The how and why wasn’t important; just say it was a lack of any kind of judgment in my youth which brought me there via ambulance. After that incident I had a life altering revelation, and needed to get my shit together. I tried applying to the Paramedic Education Program at Saint Vincent’s Institute of Emergency Care, just to find out that I could only apply if I was an EMT-B—B for basic. I had my mind set on being a paramedic, so I applied to the EMT-B program and was accepted. Knowing my grades were less than stellar in high school and community college, I was only accepted because of the great recommendations my father’s friends wrote—all cops. As a thank you, I proved my worth by graduating at the top of my class in both EMT-B and EMT-P, a paramedic.

  * * *

  “No, not yet,” he sternly said. “I need to let the paramedics look you over first.”

  Since he helped train me, I wanted to say, Lieutenant, are you saying a Beth Israel EMT are more qualified to render a diagnosis than me? I didn’t. Instead, “I’m fine.”

  “You’re not fine until Beth Israel gives you the clear. Once—”

  He stopped speaking when he heard his radio. There was a disturbance a few avenues away.

  “10-34… 10-34. 14th Street and First Avenue in front of the McDonald’s. All avai
lable units please respond. Possible—”

  He turned his radio down.

  A few people had finally gathered around while one ambulance attendant covered the body. Officer Rodriquez commanded the small crowd of onlookers to stand back. God she was hot when she was forceful.

  Marisol was getting bandaged, a lot of gauze for such a little scratch. With all the weirdness going on, the Gestapo insisted that I be examined for a non-existent injury. The fact that the lieutenant was more interested in what the perpetrator may have done to us, instead of what I had done to the assailant, should have given me a clue.

  I was wasting my time arguing with him. After all, he was a cop and I was the guy who just smashed someone’s head in. If he wanted me examined for an injury I didn’t have, I should have shut up, before getting myself in real trouble… for killing someone.

  As I approached the ambulance, I saw what appeared to be a man and woman briskly approaching the scene. I wasn’t sure if the man was chasing the woman or if they were advancing together. They were a block away, moving from the east toward us. Perhaps more gawkers; after all, accidents attract the morbidly curious. I waited for the paramedic to finish with Marisol. Rubber gloves, a mask and eye goggles? That was certainly overkill.

  I looked again toward the on-comers. “Oh, fuck,” I said in disbelief. “Hey, hey Johnson,” I yelled and pointed. “Two more!” I grabbed Marisol and pulled her away from the back of the vehicle. Max growled. He could smell them.

  “Wait! She has to go—”

  They came toward the ambulance. The woman knocked Marisol’s paramedic down like a wolf bringing down its prey. He never had a chance to finish his sentence. She tore at his larynx with wild abandon and voraciousness. He screamed, but his screams quickly turned to muffled gurgles as his throat was ripped away from his neck.