The Infected Dead (Book 7): Scream For Now

by Howard, Bob

  With the only infected safely tied to the bars, everything settled down. The celebratory mood after the capture of the thing subsided, and the people began talking about what was going to happen. The holding cells were only supposed to be temporary, so there weren’t even sinks or toilets. That posed a difficult question because the officers who had put them in the cells hadn’t returned.

  Because the young man had been the only one to take positive steps to deal with the infected, people asked him what they were going to do. He didn’t have a clue and told them as much. He said if it was up to him, he would have preferred to not be locked into a cage without food, water, or even a toilet. His resignation was a bad sign to the others, and a cloud of despair settled over the three cells. It was deathly silent until people began crying, some softly and some with wracking sobs.

  After an hour of feeling defeated, someone started screaming that they wanted out. A woman went to the door of her cell and yelled for help. She kept it up until a few people joined in, and before long all three cells were once again in an uproar.

  Something slammed against the outside of the wooden door that led to the main hallway of the station. The sudden noise made everyone stop yelling, but all eyes were on the door. There was a squeaking sound from the other side. Those closest to the sound tilted their heads, cocking their ears toward the sound as they tried to identify it.

  “We’re in here,” yelled an elderly woman who had been yelling for help.

  The door was slammed into again. This time they saw the door move in its frame, and there was no mistaking the fact that something had rammed against it. The squeaking sounded again.

  One of the men with his head cocked toward the door snapped his fingers.

  “I’ve got it. You know that sound that you make when you wash a window with a rubber squeegee? That’s what it sounds like. The other side of the door must be wet.”

  The man was satisfied that he had figured it out until the elderly woman at the bars asked, “Why would somebody be using a squeegee on the other side of the door?”

  She screamed when the door was slammed into for a third time, and this time it opened. It wasn’t the jolt of an infected hitting the door that made it open. The handle was the type that only needed to be pushed down far enough. The answer to the question about the squeegee was easy to see. The other side of the door was slippery with blood.

  An infected fell into the room, and it reached for the first cell even before it got up from the floor. The door had almost swung shut in time, but a second infected stumbled into the room and walked past the first one.

  The occupants of the first cell didn’t need to be told to back away from the bars, and just for good measure the occupants of the other two cells did the same thing. Everyone was packed against the back walls of the cells. Everyone was also screaming again.

  Both of the infected went to the first cell and reached as far as they could through the bars. The young hero in the middle cell yelled as loud as he could for everyone to be quiet.

  “Stop screaming.”

  He waited for everyone to settle down before he said in a much more normal voice, “Listen to me. Two of you take off your belts. Catch their hands and tie them together.”

  The occupants of the cell eyed the waving hands as if he had told them to grab snakes. The idea of touching a dead person who was waving his arms at you was revolting, and he could see them trying to time the grab. He understood that these were people who couldn’t put together a playground set without written instructions.

  He used a voice that was calm and almost soothing.

  “You don’t have to rush it. Take your time. Just move closer until you’re just out of reach and grab one by the wrist. Get control of it and then grab the other wrist. You can do this,” he coached.

  A tall man eased closer to the two infected until he was directly in front of the one on his left. The grimy hand was still wet with blood and waved only inches in front of his face. The man wrinkled his nose, clearly able to smell the stink coming from the hand. He glanced across the middle cell at the young man who was standing dangerously close to the infected that was in a straight-jacket.

  “You’ve got this. Get the first hand at the wrist with your left hand and the other wrist with your right. Pull in and then together. You…yes, you.” He was pointing at another man who was still hanging back with the group by the wall. “Get your belt off and put it around the arms when he pulls them together.”

  The second man hesitated but eventually forced himself to step forward while taking off his belt. He didn’t want to be close enough for the second infected to grab him while he helped to subdue the first one, so he squeezed around by the bars of the middle cell.

  The taller man made his grab and held on. What surprised him was how easily he was able to grab the second hand, and it was simply because the infected didn’t have the mental capacity to understand that the person that held its wrist was the same person it was trying to reach. He was also surprised by how easily the other man completed his assigned task. The belt was tossed over both wrists. He caught the loose end, pushed it through the buckle, and drew it tight.

  Everyone cheered for a second time. The taller man and his assistant threw a high-five at each other and missed. Neither of them had ever been coordinated enough to do a high-five, but they were too pleased with themselves to let it bring them down. They were both filled with so much bravado that they were ready to take on the infected.

  They got another belt from a cellmate and restrained the other infected. This time they had better aim for their high-five, and their hands slapped together. They had no sooner finished when there was another resounding thud at the door.

  “How many belts do we have?” asked the taller man.

  There was a nervous laugh from a few people, but it wasn’t loud enough to cover the sound of retching that came from the back of the group in the first cell. A woman was doubled over at the waist, and her hair was drenched with sweat. People moved away from her, but her husband moved between her and the others.

  “She’s fine. She just needs a little water. We both had to run so far to get here.”

  The other occupants spread out toward the sides of the cells and wore skeptical expressions on their faces.

  “She’s got a bite mark on her arm,” said one lady.

  A collective gasp went up from all three cells, and someone yelled from the third cell that they lied when they said they were okay before. An argument quickly arose from all three cells about hiding bites. Was anybody else hiding a bite? Was anybody else sick? Shouldn’t everyone have to take off their clothes so no one could hide a bite? And general shouts from people who valued modesty over their lives that they weren’t taking off their clothes for anyone.

  The woman in the first cell fell from the bench that ran along the back wall of the cell. She landed hard, but it was doubtful that she felt pain from the fall. She was too busy convulsing on the floor. Her husband tried in vain to hold her still, as if that would ease the minds of everyone in the cells. Some people began to cry, but once again it was the young man who intervened.

  “Put her hands through the bars, fast,” he shouted. He pointed at a pair of men in the middle cell and yelled, “You know what to do.”

  Since the woman wasn’t trying to bite anyone yet, the men in the middle cell made fast work of tying her hands together.

  “We can’t keep doing this,” said a woman in the middle cell. “We don’t have enough belts, and we don’t have enough room to tie everyone to the bars.”

  “I’m more inclined to be out of here before we run out of belts,” answered a man in cell number three.

  “Okay, Houdini. Let’s see how you do it.”

  The sound of a large number of people came from outside the door, and they knew they weren’t the infected because they were shouting. The door opened, and this time the man holding it open didn’t fall through. He stared in disbelief at the number of people
in the cells.

  “What did you all do to get yourselves arrested on a night like this?”

  “Nothing, get us out of here.”

  It seemed like they all yelled the same thing, and the man held up a ring of keys.

  “Got these from a policeman who was eating someone down the hall.”

  He avoided the two infected that were tied with belts to the bars of the first cell and quickly unlocked all three. The occupants poured past him into the hallway, and they ran even though they didn’t know which way they should go. Most of them just didn’t want to be in a jail cell any longer.

  Those who made it outside the doors of the police station found themselves to be in the middle of a dark nightmare. Those who stayed inside searched for places to hide, and none of them found what they were looking for. Every hallway had infected wandering around, and when some of the frantic survivors eventually found a group of armed police officers, they saw that one of the officers was bleeding from a serious bite on his neck, and his friends were trying to save him.

  The tall man from the first cell who had successfully tied the hands of the two infected hid for several hours in an office. He found some bottled water and power bars in one of the drawers and hungrily washed them down. He knew he couldn’t stay in the police station, but maybe the water and food would buy him the time he needed to get away.

  He slipped out of the office in the early morning and ran as silently as he could along a carpeted hallway. When he came up behind a man who was hiding behind a desk, his heart skipped a beat. He recognized the shirt and jeans the young man in the third cell had been wearing.

  “Oh, man. Am I ever glad to see you?” he said as he dropped to his knees next to him. His shoulder bumped against the young man.

  The young man turned away from a body on the floor. The body of a woman whose blood was smeared across his face.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Pandemic

  Zero Hour - Beginning of the Decline

  Contagion Extinction Level Event - CEL Day One

  “Are you one hundred percent sure?”

  Marshall Sayer had a habit of making people repeat themselves. It was his way of telling subordinates he didn’t believe them or that they’d better be right. Dr. Grace Williams didn’t appreciate his little tactic.

  “Of course I’m one hundred percent sure,” she answered. “That’s why I called you.”

  She thought to herself but didn’t say out loud, “I also called you to make you squirm.”

  Instead she said, “I hope you have a plan for how to deal with this.”

  “Of course I have a plan,” he snapped.

  For good measure he hung up the call and wished for the good old days when he could hang up on someone by physically slamming the phone into the cradle. He didn’t have a plan despite what he had said. All he had was a plan for how to survive it, not how to stop it from spreading. This was one pandemic that couldn’t be stopped. No vaccines, no quarantines, no cures. It was also supposed to be no exposure, but obviously something had gone wrong there.

  On the other end of the phone Dr. Williams considered calling him back. She hated politicians who were bosses over doctors. Some were smart enough to understand the complexities of medicine and were even reasonably able to converse with doctors on the same level, but they never seemed to realize the full scope of making a mistake in this business. Someone had made a mistake, and now this thing was in the wild. It was a virus that couldn’t be contained without eliminating a significant percent of the population, and after that was done, there would need to be fundamental changes to how the remaining population dealt with death. Everyone would have to die twice.

  Grace had found a corner in the building where she was out of the way and could make some calls without being interrupted. She had been wearing her white lab coat when she started for the city, and she didn’t bother to take it off when she abandoned her car. A pretty woman at forty, despite a few extra pounds, she was constantly being asked by men if they could help her with something, and she finally realized she looked somewhat out of place dressed like a doctor and wearing red high heels. Her auburn hair was loose and resting on her shoulders, so she drew plenty of looks from the men who rushed by.

  “Ah, what the hell,” she said as she hit his number again. “You better answer.”

  Grace was about to say something about personally doing something surgical to him when he answered.

  “I don’t need you hanging up on me when I call with bad news. I want to know what kind of plan you have to contain an outbreak of this thing.”

  Sayer kept the phone to his ear, but he pinched two fingers together between his eyes and across the bridge of his nose to relieve the pressure he felt there. He had already lied by saying he had a plan ready if this contagion got loose. Grace would recognize the lie as soon as he tried to make it up. A plan on this level needed a lot of funding, but most of all they needed permission to make the hard decisions that no politician could make.

  He was just about to admit as much to Grace when he had an epiphany. If they were right about this disease, there wouldn’t be anyone left to blame it on him.

  “We take shelter until it burns itself out.”

  Grace couldn’t believe she heard him correctly. What he was proposing was that they just sit back and let the population of the world go back to levels before the Stone Age. The only survivors would be people who could be so isolated that they were self-sufficient and unable to be exposed to the pathogen. It reminded her of an article she had read about a guy who believed the only way to survive an apocalypse was to have a shelter that was impenetrable, and that you should go inside that shelter, lock the door, and never come out.

  “What do you plan to tell the President, Marshall? My bad?”

  Sayer paused just long enough for her to guess the answer.

  “You don’t plan to tell him, do you? While Washington melts down in the chaos you created, you plan to escape to an island somewhere.”

  “Face the facts, Grace. You said it yourself. The only way to stop this thing was to eliminate all of the potential hosts. People are the hosts, so if we’re going to survive this thing that we haven’t even had the chance to give a decent name, we have to look out for ourselves first. Once it burns itself out by eliminating most of the population, we can rebuild by living off of the supplies and manufactured goods left behind by an overpopulated world. The more people it eliminates the less we have to share with.”

  Grace was appalled by how insensitive Sayer was, but it wasn’t like she didn’t think this was going to happen. Once they discovered this virus and recognized it for what it was, she knew it would show up outside of containment and couldn’t be stopped. They barely had time to start looking for a cure when Salem Townsend practically gift wrapped and delivered the virus to Miami. Along the way he gave it to fellow travelers and people working in airports. Before anyone even discovered his body and what had killed him, there were probably over a thousand people cultivating the disease like human test tubes.

  “We’re calling it Brachyura CEL,” she said.

  “What?”

  Sayer was expecting Grace to tear him apart, not get on board. With smug satisfaction he realized that she was facing reality, and he could think of worse people to survive the apocalypse with.

  “I get to name it,” she said. “I should name it after you because you’re as uncaring and heartless as this disease, but you’d take it as a compliment. Brachyura is the biological name for crabs, and the contagion is an extinction level disease, so Brachyura CEL.”

  “Nice. I like it. Are you still in Charleston?”

  “Where else would I be? This thing is spreading like wild fire. The news stations hardly know where to start because emergency reports are coming in from everywhere. They’re opening shelters. Hospitals are announcing that they can’t take anymore patients. The airport has canceled flights that are sitting on the runway full of passengers. I just left my ho
use in Mt. Pleasant and was headed for MUSC in Charleston, but traffic is already sitting still on the bridge.”

  “Where are you right now?”

  “Well, I already saw a guy carjack a family’s SUV, and I might be the only person without a gun, so I stopped at the Mt. Pleasant Police Department. I remember you did a briefing last week and you mentioned this place for some reason. It’s getting crowded fast, but I can hold out for a bit. Can you send someone to get me?”

  Sayer had a special barking laugh when he was feeling particularly pleased with himself, and even though it grated on her nerves, something told Grace that this time as she listened to him laugh it was for her benefit.

  “Already got that covered, Darlin’. Find the Desk Sergeant and tell him you want to speak with Alex Reeves. He’s the public relations guy for the Police Chief there. Tell him to look after you, and we’ll take him under our wing when we get there for you. Now, let me get out of here while I still can. See you soon.”

  Being from the South, Grace had been called ‘Darlin’ her whole life, but she still didn’t like it when Marshall Sayer said it. He made her feel dirty. Nonetheless, he was going to pull her out of something that was starting to take on a strong resemblance to a third world civil war. She wasn’t exaggerating about the guns. People used to grab the family photo albums when they were told to evacuate. Now they grabbed their gun collections.

  The Desk Sergeant was behind something more like a counter at the bank, and he ignored her despite the attention she was getting from everyone else.

  She cleared her throat and said, “Excuse me, could you…”

  “I’m busy, Ma’am. Take a number and have a seat over there.” He gestured toward a packed waiting room where at least a hundred people sat with little numbered tags between their fingers. He called a number, and at least half of the people checked their numbers, probably for the tenth time or more.