“Never let them come back.”
*
In his worst nightmares Derek never could have imagined that, in the next twenty-four hours, he would see thousands of his townspeople die in the most unusual, gruesome, and painful ways. Most of those people, Derek remembered, were not as lucky as poor Miss May.
Like Samantha Stern, the most beautiful girl in high school.
She was seventeen years old, blond, slender, tall, and gorgeous. Every guy in high school wanted to date her, Derek amongst them. She was petite and firm, and always flashed Derek a friendly white smile. Derek felt clumsy and uncertain in her presence. At night, he would fantasize about making love to her.
Soon after the death of Miss May, Derek, per the sheriff’s orders, went to the local gas station where help was needed. It was the only gas station in town and the owner was losing control over the station to the frantic townspeople.
Derek took account of the situation as he approached—car horns honked and drivers tried to cut the line, maneuvering and fighting for the pumps. It was another scene of chaos. Derek saw Samantha sitting in the backseat of her father’s black SUV. She looked out the window and Derek caught her eyes. They were large, confused, and red with tears. At that moment, Derek realized how much he truly cared for her. The strength of his feelings surprised him.
Yells of anger emerged from the gas station. Two men were fighting over a pump. The taller of the two men snatched the nozzle and swung it like a hammer. He struck the shorter man on the top of the head, and there followed a sickly crack and a spurt of blood. Bile rose in Derek’s throat. The nozzle sprayed gas.
The tall man swung the nozzle again, and then again, whipping the guy with the steel pump, which was still spraying gas. Even basic civility was gone, thought Derek, replaced by the worst of human nature, sheer animal instinct. All senses had been ripped and lunacy was illustrated by the man fighting with a gas nozzle which was spraying gas. It was an act which defied any semblance of sanity.
Samantha’s father got out of the driver’s seat, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. He was going to intervene in the fight. Derek’s vision narrowed down a dark tunnel. All he could see was the red tip of the cigarette. Then it happened. The gas station exploded into a blue mushroom of flames. The heat of the explosion singed Derek’s face.
Samantha.
Everybody at the gas station was good as dead, cooked alive. Pitched screams of those on fire pierced the air. Slowly, hesitantly, Derek looked. He couldn’t believe what he saw.
From out of a wall of fire Samantha appeared. Fire was eating her alive as she walked. Flames licked her face, torso, and legs. Derek could have sworn she looked directly at him, or maybe his memory just played cruel tricks.
She convulsed and collapsed. A ball of smoke and flames.
Derek wasted no time. He sprinted toward Samantha, taking off his jacket.
I’ll use it to smother the flames. I can still save her.
Flames belched from Samantha’s skin. The smell of her burning hair was wretched. Derek had never smelled anything like it. He gagged and bile rose from his stomach. He swallowed it back hard, regained his mental balance, and began to fight the flames. He batted down Samantha’s body with his jacket, again and again.
Derek didn’t realize that flesh actually melts. As the flames on Samantha finally smothered out, what he saw looked like a monster. Disfigured, twisted, and melted. He gave one last swipe with his jacket and extinguished the final flame. Tears stung his eyes. She was way beyond saving. She was dead.
Again, bile rose into his throat. This time he couldn’t hold it back. He vomited, again and again. When he had nothing left to throw up, he gasped for air. His ribs hurt, his legs wobbled.
In front of him, across the street, was the sheriff, whose expression was controlled and cool. He stared at Derek, not so much as blinking. Then Derek realized the sheriff wasn’t looking at him; he was looking at something behind him. Slowly Derek turned around and followed the sheriff’s gaze.
Samantha was standing up.
Impossible.
She took a step toward Derek. Her body was smoking, her legs could barely hold her own weight, and her right leg, in which the femur was exposed, almost gave out. But Samantha regained her balance. She extended forward, reaching for Derek. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Her skin was melted and charred. Her hair was gone, her face disfigured beyond recognition, and her skull was exposed. He wanted to throw up again.
Not possible.
He didn’t believe the people around town who declared that the dead seemed to be returning to life. After all, the news had rejected such bizarre statements. Mass psychology combined with the fear of the unknown generated ignorant and ludicrous ideas, said the experts. Scientists around the world wouldn’t give the tiniest bit of credence to such asinine theories. Instead, they promised answers were already coming that would explain this phenomenon.
Politicians and head scientists of the CDC disagreed on most things, but they did agree upon this same notion: Nothing had ever been seen like it, but any speculation that corpses were actually reviving was just downright stupid.
And Derek agreed. He was soothed by the reports. After all, he hadn’t seen any infected yet, and certainly didn’t see any walking “dead people.”
Derek was frozen in front of Samantha. He had never seen anything so shocking. She was once so beautiful, the town’s prom queen. Now she was mutilated beyond recognition—a freak. A voice in the back of his mind awakened.
She was dead.
A gunshot startled Derek. He ducked.
The bullet hit Samantha in the chest. Her body simply absorbed the bullet and didn’t flinch.
“Get away from her, Derek!” The sheriff stood a good twenty feet away, aiming at Samantha, the barrel of his gun smoking. It happened so fast. He fired again and two more gunshots cracked through the air, both of which hit Samantha in the plate of her chest. She keeled back for a moment.
“Do you understand, Derek?” the sheriff yelled, “She’s dead!” He squeezed off another round, hitting Samantha in the shoulder. Again, she didn’t fall. “Do you understand?”
Derek couldn’t believe his eyes. Burned, melted, shot four times, and there she was, still standing. She had a primitive, animal-like rage in her eyes. He didn’t want to believe it, but finally he had no choice.
The reports had been true.
Samantha was dead … and now she is back.
She reached out toward Derek, and another gunshot popped. This bullet struck Samantha between the eyes. Specks of jelly brain fluid showered Derek’s face. There was a frozen moment. Then, like she was simply unplugged, Samantha collapsed to the pavement with a wet slap. She was…deactivated.
“Do you get it, Derek?” The sheriff appeared. “They are not human anymore.”
Derek was stunned, fixated on Samantha. The sheriff grabbed him by the shoulders and spun him around. They stood face to face.
“You have to snap out of it, Derek, and face the truth, because I need your help and so do the people of this town.”
Derek blinked vigorously as reality drilled a hole into his mind with a fierce twisting motion. The world as he knew it was gone…forever.
“We have to get control of this town,” Derek’s voice trembled.
Derek finally got it, and the sheriff was satisfied enough. He pulled out a stainless-steel, six-shot, snub-nose .38-caliber pistol and extended it. Derek reached out and took the gun. The stainless steel caught a shimmer of light which stung Derek’s eyes. He squeezed the grip of the pistol and felt the weight in his hands.
The sheriff tapped on Derek’s forehead and stated, “Shoot them in the head. It is the only thing which stops them.”
Derek pulled his eyes off the gun and looked directly at the sheriff.
“In the head,” Derek confirmed.
As Derek watched the sheriff run away, he thought about old Miss May.
She was lucky indeed.
CH
APTER 3
Sounds from the TV pulled Derek back to the present moment.
He was scared and momentarily forgot where he was, but then the situation hit him. He wished what had happened in the past three days simply wasn’t true. That is was just a nightmare. But it was true, and he had awoken into hell.
Derek was soaked in sweat, and there were dark circles under his eyes from exhaustion. He realized he was back in the basement, cowering here with all the others. The TV had lost its signal, and all it displayed now was scratchy snow. Somehow, no TV signal was even worse than the news footage. He felt more isolated than ever before, as if the whole world had died.
His head was splitting, and the sound of the TV snow was like a sharp knife in his skull. He rubbed his temples hard, as if rubbing hard enough would make this nightmare go away.
Derek looked around, astonished that he had gotten this far alive. He and his townsfolk had fought hard to get down into this basement, against all odds, to the lower level of Mercy Hospital. Only some of the townsfolk had made it. Most died along the way.
They were alive, Derek knew, thanks to an unselfish military unit which had literally fallen from the sky, like a miracle, in their burning Black Hawk chopper. Just when Derek and the others had found themselves trapped, and near death, this random group of soldiers had saved them. The leader was a man called Commander Peterson. He had led them out of the grip of death and into the safety of this building. Derek knew for that, at least, he should be grateful. He was alive. Whatever that meant.
It was cold and damp down here, and Derek pulled his blood-caked shirt tighter around his shoulders. He looked around. It was dark, the room illuminated only by red emergency lights. The smell of body odor mixed with that of the slowly rotting dead bodies stacked in the corner was almost unbearable. Upon first entering this place, Derek noticed that the hospital must have stored their supplies down here. By the looks of it, they’d crammed everything in this basement they no longer had use for, or that was simply too old to use. In the most depressing way, it resembled a grossly outdated and neglected hospital floor.
Derek tried to focus as he observed his fellow townspeople. Almost all of them were in a bizarre state. Some sat hypnotized by the television snow, as if hoping it would change. Others ignored the television, lost in their own worlds. Some of them Derek knew personally, but most of them he did not. He noticed Roger, the hardware store owner, who sat on rusted stool crying. The manager of the floral store, Mage, who was hugging her daughter, rocking back and forth. And Derek noticed a fellow classmate, Don, who had a splatter of dried blood on his face. He was sitting on the floor with his head in his hands, trembling.
Derek saw himself in these people. It scared the hell out of him.
*
An earsplitting gunshot shook the room.
Derek felt his eardrums pop and quickly turned just as the mailman, Denver, slumped against the wall with a smoking shotgun in his hands. His blood and bones were splattered on the wall behind him.
He shot himself.
Another suicide.
The mailman was a friendly sort, and had taken pride in his job. He had four children, was happily married, and his grandmother lived with him. However, none of his family were in the basement, which meant only one thing—they were dead. Everybody in town had really liked the mailman. Voices of despair rose as the townspeople gradually realized what had just happened.
Derek saw Commander Peterson slowly emerge out of darkness and into the glow of the red emergency lights. Peterson walked slowly, deliberately.
At first, Derek thought Peterson was going to help the mailman. After all, maybe he was still alive. But Peterson didn’t. Instead, he stood over the mailman and just gazed down, scrutinizing the body with a professional eye. Then Peterson drew and pointed his pistol at the mailman.
Derek flinched and involuntarily raised his hands.
Peterson shot Denver in the head.
Derek looked up at Peterson, and Peterson looked at Derek.
CHAPTER 4
Commander Jacob Peterson, a man who had years of combat engraved on his hard-edged face, and piercing eyes which always took in his surroundings and calculated every last possible scenario, stood over Denver’s corpse. Peterson’s hair was buzzed close to his head, with some streaks of gray. Having not been shaved in several days, his facial hair was growing in. But it looked good on him. Few things didn’t. Most women considered him a catch.
Just having turned thirty-nine, he projected a maturity and wisdom that was considerably beyond his years. He had an attitude which could be both confident and kind at the same time. His voice was smooth, composed, and carried awareness.
A widening pool of blood flowed from the mailman’s exit wound. Peterson felt sick inside. He hated what he just did, but he had no choice. He had to make sure the mailman’s brain was destroyed.
He saw the civilian, Derek, sitting there, trembling.
“You OK?” he asked.
Derek’s face was pale.
Peterson reached down and held out a hand.
“Stand,” he said. “It makes it easier.”
Derek weakly took his hand and was pulled to his feet.
Peterson looked around, taking the situation once again into account. The shit had really hit the fan. He had lost more than half of his assault team in the past seventy-two hours. But, as much as he wanted to, he didn’t have time to mourn for them. He didn’t have the leisure to mourn for anybody, not even for the hundreds of millions of people who had died in the past three days. He only had room to care about one thing, and one thing only—completing his mission.
During the onset of the epidemic, the Department of Defense had given Peterson a tremendous responsibility. He was put in charge of an elite team of soldiers, Shadow Team Alpha One Pride. He was ordered to rescue a scientist named Doctor Winthrop who was, apparently, a genius who had terrifically valuable information about the source of the epidemic, and, probably, even a solution. There was a problem, however. Dr. Winthrop was holed up in his laboratory, which was located on Plum Island, a small, classified place out of the way of the probing eyes of civilization. Communication had been lost with Dr. Winthrop and the laboratory.
Straightforward; a rescue mission.
If Peterson’s helicopter had not crashed in this Long Island town, he probably would be on Plum Island already. Maybe his mission would already be completed. As luck would have it, down his chopper went, and the rest was of the story was now laid in front of his eyes.
Peterson’s mind wandered. It’s not like the number of people who had died in the recent days could really be grasped by the human mind. It would be like trying to count every star in the sky. Nobody was sure exactly how many were dead. A quarter of the world’s population? Half of the population? More? The numbers were just too staggering.
This was why Peterson was so clear. In control. He wasn’t mourning because he wasn’t trying to grasp it. He had the strength of mind to shut it out. And that was good, because most of the remaining townspeople were in the process of losing their minds, or already had. It was like they simply ceased to function, immovable within a reality which was harder than counting all the stars in the sky.
The civilians were randomly spread everywhere the basement, in various states of shock and disarray, sharing the space with outdated and dilapidated hospital equipment, such as beds, gurneys, an X-ray machine, operating tables, old surgical equipment, and more. It was a storage junkyard. In some odd way, Peterson thought, the civilians seemed like the dying equipment around them. Beaten, bruised, and worn down.
They were barricaded in a hospital basement which was big, probably three thousand square feet. There was still a source of energy. Red emergency lights hung intermittently from exposed wires throughout the basement, casting an eerie glow upon the surviving civilians, forty-four to be exact. Aside from the poor lighting situation, it was damn hot down in this basement. There was no circulation and the heat wa
s becoming a problem for everyone. Another unneeded environmental stressor.
A horrible sound was coming through the ceiling. It made Peterson’s skin crawl. Those things, those creatures, made moaning sounds which were tormented and frightening. Were they somehow communicating? Peterson didn’t know. In any case, their moans were an ever-present reminder that the massive population of zombies that surrounded the hospital weren’t dispersing. If anything, it sounded like the population was getter larger.
Peterson looked at the corpse of the mailman, Denver. His glassy eyes were still open and staring into the abyss. Respectfully, Peterson kneeled down and gently closed his eyelids.
Peterson closed his own eyes too, and lost himself in thought. Before the outbreak, he had engaged in so much combat over the span of his lifetime, it was hard for even him to believe. When he joined the military he expected to see some combat, but never did he think he would have been engaged in so damn much. Before this infection spread throughout the world, something was starting to bother Peterson. Increasingly, he became overwhelmed with moments of surrealism and odd sensations, as if what was happening around him was not real—he became detached. And memories flashed through his mind. They were always the same images—people he had killed, dear friends he had lost—the death of his youngest brother.
His former girlfriend, who was a psychologist, had told him that he was exhibiting signs of post-traumatic stress disorder. Peterson was insulted by the idea. He would not acknowledge that anything was wrong with his mind.
Suppress the memories.
Before the shock of Denver’s suicide shook the room, the townspeople were already in disarray. Now there was an empty silence, and everybody was turned toward Peterson, as if asking him for answers. He heard himself breathing.
Fear was in the room, crackling like static electricity. But that was not what bothered Peterson the most. Fear could be like gold. It could keep a person alive, if they knew how to control it. What scared Peterson was the undercurrent of hopelessness and despair. Without hope there was nothing left. No purpose to fight for. No reason to live.
Dead and Back (The Zombie Crisis--Book 2) Page 2
