DEAD AND BACK
(THE ZOMBIE CRISIS—BOOK 2)
GEORGE MAGNUM
About George Magnum
While George Magnum has been writing for many years, THE ZOMBIE CRISIS is George's first zombie series. Among George's many influences are stories such as Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days, Resident Evil, and more. George lives in New York City.
Please visit www.zombiecrises.com to find links to stay in touch with George via Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, his blog, and a whole bunch of other places. George loves to hear from you, so don't be shy and check back often!
Books by George Magnum
THE ZOMBIE CRISIS
TWICE DEAD (BOOK #1)
DEAD AND BACK (BOOK #2)
Copyright © 2015 by George Magnum
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 1
The light of the television flickered and danced on Derek’s face as he watched the news broadcast. A lower-third graphic scrolled across the screen: Emergency Broadcast System. Tense, he leaned closer to the television. In the days that surrounded his own survival, Derek had seen very little news footage, and only local news at that. For the first time, he was getting a look at the crisis from the national level—and he was stunned.
A malnourished man with deep eye sockets pushed himself up next to Derek. He had bitten his fingernails down to the flesh, and he was still biting. Everybody knew him as the neighborhood mailman.
“Oh my God.” The mailman trembled. “It’s everywhere.”
The network news desk was a disaster. Papers were scattered across the floor. Ted Storm, an anchorman in his mid-thirties, was slumped over the news desk. His blue dress shirt was wrinkled, patches of sweat staining his armpits. The visage of the well-groomed and civilized journalist was gone, replaced by the stark reality of an everyday man whose eyes were watery with shock.
Seated across from him was the show’s guest, an overweight man of about sixty years old, with a gray beard and eyeglasses. Neatly groomed, he wore a three-piece suit and bowtie. He crossed his arms snugly against his chest, calm and assured. A flashy graphic bounced on the screen: martial law declared … epidemic spreads globally … FEMA emergency shelters overrun …
The surrounding television crew and staff had fallen apart. The television image shook, and a guy’s voice, somewhere out of frame, shouted, “Keep the camera fucking steady, asshole!”
Ted Storm’s eyes darted as he patted his hair and did his best to appear presentable. It was useless. He started the broadcast with a weak and shaky voice.
“Our guest is Dr. Christopher, consultant to the Centers for Disease Control. Dr. Christopher, you have been repeatedly saying that this event is viral. What known virus can have such effects upon a human corpse? To make a corpse get up and walk? To attack and devour people?”
Dr. Christopher’s voice had a deep southern drawl.
“I did not say this was viral. You keep putting words into my mouth.” He turned and looked into the camera, as if to directly address the viewers. “What I have said, and I have said one hundred times, is that there is a reasonable explanation for all of this.”
“What reasonable explanation can there possibly be?” Ted Storm demanded.
Dr. Christopher remained calm.
“I’m tired of you interrupting me, sir. If you want answers then remain silent and listen.”
“You call yourself an expert?” Ted Storm challenged. “You’ve been saying the same damn thing for three days straight. I don’t even know why you’re still on this damn show.” There was severe desperation in Ted Storm’s voice. Ignoring Dr. Christopher, he took matters into his own hands and made a statement. “To any authorities who may be listening to this broadcast, we are trapped in the ABC studio in New York City. Many of our crew have died, or abandoned us. We are low on food and water. We are in desperate need of help.”
Dr. Christopher continued, simply ignoring Ted Storm’s cry for help and picking up where he left off.
“We are facing a phenomenon never before seen in human history. However, the speculation that these are somehow dead people who have magically come back to life and started walking around is a theory for only the weak-minded.” He pointed his finger at the anchor. “There is a scientific explanation, a rational explanation. We can be confident that the world’s scientists are working on a solution as we speak.”
“BULLSHIT!” Ted Storm cried with a burst of anger. “This is just more crap, the same type of government propaganda which has been distributed since this epidemic started. What do you think we are, stupid?”
“Perhaps because you are acting stupid,” Dr. Christopher snapped. “This is exactly what I’m talking about. It is the doubt, the fear, which is our enemy. And you media people started this fire with your sensational bullshit. You refuse to listen!”
“Go screw yourself!” Ted Storm shouted. “You and your bullshit propaganda!”
“You are a bottom feeder,” Dr. Christopher calmly replied, “just like every other so-called reporter. Anything for ratings but no truth involved. The very essence of what was wrong with society.”
Ted Storm snapped: he reached over and grabbed Dr. Christopher’s shirt collar, spit flying from his mouth.
“You low-life cocksucker!”
A voice from outside the camera’s view screamed out:
“Cut to different footage!”
Derek couldn’t believe what he was watching. It scared the shit out of him. The mailman was crying.
How Derek had found himself barricaded inside the basement of his town’s local hospital was a long story.
Someone bumped him from behind.
“Crisis symptoms show themselves in horrible ways.”
Derek turned to see Loony Johann, the town’s homeless man, who had matted gray hair, an unkempt beard, and was malodorous. In town, he never bothered anybody. It was just his presence which offended people. He was a stain on the otherwise beautiful town of Coram Long Island. Somehow, Loony Johann had survived this far, though, and made it down into this basement.
When he was a child, Derek and his friends threw stones at him. This would have made Derek seem cruel if it weren’t for the fact that it was a coming-of-age ritual. Everybody else growing up in the town did it as well. When Derek’s mom found out she punished him, telling him that Johann was mentally ill, and to leave him alone.
Johann leaned in a bit closer to Derek and lowered his voice.
; “Crisis takes its toll on the human mind in many ways. Some people will start to feel more and more confused, indecisive, and unable to make any major decisions. Prolonged crisis can also often cause obsessive thinking. This is when a person can’t stop worrying or thinking horrible things. Other people may not be able to sleep, and when they do, have terrible nightmares. Irrational fears can begin to develop, phobias, and sometimes, in the worst-case scenarios, auditory or visual hallucinations.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Derek was unsettled by Johann’s words. “Leave me alone.”
Johann responded by leaning in closer.
“Continuous fatigue or exhaustion, depression and despair, feelings of detachment and indifference, feelings of hopelessness, feelings of not being able to cope, and, finally, suicide.”
“Look carefully”—Johann gestured at the TV screen—“and watch.”
The television image was shaky until the camera finally focused on the mouth of a bridge, barricaded by law enforcement and the National Guard. The camera panned across a formation of cops who stood ready, wearing helmets and wielding riot shields and nightsticks.
The TV screen flickered. A frantic mob of hundreds of civilians stood at the mouth of the bridge: families, mothers and fathers gripping their children, the elderly, and teenagers—all everyday people. They were shoulder to shoulder, squeezed together with no room to breathe. They were yelling, afraid, bordering on panic. They swayed as one, back and forth, with simply nowhere to go.
A blonde news reporter with short cropped hair and red lipstick appeared on screen. She stood within the crowd. Derek thought she looked like a journalist who followed hurricanes for her career. The crowd shoved, and the reporter caught an elbow in the ribs. On the television screen, a graphic appeared: Manhattan Bridge … recorded earlier.
The image zoomed on her face as she tried to yell over the noise of the crowd.
“This is Patricia Surefire reporting for ABC, live from the scene on the Manhattan Bridge. As the final bridges, tunnels, and transit have been shut down, effectively quarantining New York City and barricading all exits, the public has grown outraged. The tension is reaching a breaking point as residents and visitors alike are attempting to flee the city for safer grounds, or to return home, or to connect with loved ones. As you can see all around me, a terrible situation may just be turning worse.”
Another TV camera projected a blurry image, and there came into focus a formation of National Guard soldiers. They were overwhelmed and afraid, like everybody else, and pointing rifles into the crowd.
Johann said, matter-of-fact, “You can see it in their eyes, can’t you, Derek?”
“Please,” Derek snapped. “Shut the hell up.”
The TV image was oblique. All that could be seen was the insignia of a colonel. Then the image righted itself. The colonel’s posture and expression were odd, like he was enjoying the power which the situation had afforded him. He raised a bullhorn to his mouth. His voice was aggressive. “Any individual violating the quarantine will be shot.”
“You are NOT going to fire live rounds upon these civilians,” a voice shouted from out of frame.
“I have my orders,” the colonel shouted back.
A crowd member’s voice boomed: “This infection has already spread throughout our entire damn nation and you know that, you son-of-a-bitch! The quarantine has already failed! Let us out!”
Yells and hollers of agreement followed.
Behind the crowd, suddenly, there was a large explosion. The boom was deafening. A red fireball and shrapnel sailed through the air. Fire spread throughout the area. Like a starting gun, chaos then erupted.
The crowd charged the bridge.
The NYPD riot police raised their shields like Roman soldiers, waiting for the swarm of charging people to reach them. The impact of the crowd was much greater than they could have anticipated. The panic turned the masses into a tidal wave, which slammed the NYPD riot shields with such force that the cops were simply smothered and crushed, pulled down and disappearing, drowned in the crowd’s undertow.
The colonel raised his bullhorn and screamed: “FIRE!”
The formation of National Guard soldiers hesitated. They didn’t want to fire upon civilians.
This isn’t really happening, Derek thought.
The colonel shouted: “OPEN FIRE!”
The National Guard opened fire and their assault rifles crackled. Shrieks rang out from the crowd as the front line of civilians fell like dogs, mauled by the bullets. Derek thought the soldiers looked like a firing squad, simply murdering everybody in front of them.
Patricia Surefire fought hard not to get swept away by the crowd. Her blouse had been ripped, her eye bruised. Behind her was the flashing and the crackling of machine guns. The soldiers were slaughtering the mob.
Civilians died en masse, falling under the military attack. Bullets whizzed by Patricia Surefire and almost hit her. She didn’t care. This was the biggest media event of the moment, and she intended to get the credit. She bellowed into her microphone, “They have opened fire! They have opened fire upon the crowd!”
A large-caliber bullet suddenly hit the back of Patricia Surefire’s head, exited through her face, and ripped it off, leaving remnants of her flesh and blood on the camera lens. The reporter’s body dropped like a sandbag.
Derek blinked in horror, wishing he hadn’t been watching.
Even worse, the footage brought back recent memories he had been trying dearly to suppress. Before he could fight his own thoughts, they came rushing back to him, flashing before his eyes.
CHAPTER 2
It was hardly forty-eight hours ago, back in his hometown of Coram, Long Island, population sixteen thousand, of which only forty-five remained alive. It had been a wholesome town, once hosting all-American parades with cheerleaders lining the streets, Mickey Mouse floats, and school marching bands. But it had all changed dramatically in the past few days. Now, Derek’s final glance of his town was burned into his mind: raging fires, mass death, blood, corpses, and madness.
An honor student and all-star athlete, Derek had a stellar reputation around town. His neighbors believed Derek was someone to be counted on. During the first hours of the outbreak, Derek lived up to his reputation.
Derek ran, fueled by adrenaline and anxiety, and helped people wherever he could. He tried desperately to speak sense to those who had lost their senses. He succeeded in calming some because he had actually kept his own mind straight. He simply did not believe the local news reports of what was taking place. His clarity of conviction had a calming effect on others on the verge of hysterics. There had to be a rational explanation for all of this, pronounced Derek. A solution would be found, and an end to the situation would come soon.
But it didn’t.
When the reality of the situation finally set in, mass panic followed. Coram’s townsfolk became half mad. They smashed through store windows, looted and hoarded supplies. It became every person for him- or herself, and, even worse, the strongest began to prey off the weak.
Derek couldn’t believe what he was watching as Jameson McBroom, a local red-faced drunk, ran down Main Street waving a twelve-gauge pump shotgun.
Even more shocking, Jameson McBroom pointed his rifle at elderly Miss May, who was pushing a cart filled with bottles of water, a valuable asset at that moment. Everybody knew Miss May for her homemade chocolate pudding, which she sold on Sundays at the local flea market. Derek was frozen at the sight. He couldn’t breathe. Jameson McBroom was pointing his shotgun at Miss May for a cart filled with water?
People were losing their minds, law was collapsing, and so was basic human decency. The worst and most primitive of human nature was taking control. How did this happen so quickly? Derek wanted to scream out, to tell Jameson McBroom to stop. He believed for sure that McBroom was going to shoot Miss May. But Derek’s voice got stuck deep inside his gut. Nothing would come out.
Out of Derek’s peripheral visio
n a figure appeared. It was the sheriff, who shielded himself behind his patrol car. Derek liked the sheriff—everybody did. He came across as a guy who was stern yet fair, a man of principle who, when he let his guard down, was a downright jokester; he had a knack for making people laugh. At this moment, the look in the sheriff’s eyes was something Derek had never seen before: a hidden side to the man.
The sheriff drew his handgun from his holster with a single smooth motion, aiming carefully at Jameson McBroom. The sheriff didn’t even give the man a warning.
The sound of the pop of the sheriff’s pistol was still clear in Derek’s head, as was the sight of Jameson McBroom’s final, surprised expression. The bullet passed through his head and exited out the back of his skull, taking brain matter with it. McBroom was the first person Derek ever saw killed. It was surreal, as if he watched it on a movie screen, in slow motion.
Blood sprayed on Miss May’s face and she stumbled backwards. Her delicate head absorbed the entire blow of her fall, cracking into the cement. Derek’s stomach knotted.
Derek felt weak as he walked over to Miss May, who lay still on the ground. Blood pooled from underneath her head, wetting her gray hair, spreading out on the sidewalk. It appeared to Derek that her head was split opened. Her face was splattered in Jameson McBroom’s blood, and her eyes were white, rolled back in her head.
The sheriff appeared next to Derek. He kneeled down and felt Miss May’s neck for a pulse. “She’s dead,” he said sorrowfully. Then the sheriff stood up and aimed his pistol at Miss May.
Derek covered his eyes.
The sheriff pulled the trigger and shot Miss May point blank in the head.
“When someone dies, you can’t let them come back,” whispered the sheriff. Derek opened his eyes. The sheriff was staring at him, and his expression sucked in the light.
Dead and Back (The Zombie Crisis--Book 2) Page 1
