Read Cold Summer Nights Online
Authors: Sean Thomas Fisher,Esmeralda Morin
Cold Summer Nights (18 page)
Chapter Eighteen
“Now just slow down,
mam
.
You have to go
poddy
?”
Helen twisted in her car seat, the cell phone pressed tightly to her ear. “No! I said I found a body!”
“Okay
mam
, what’s your name?”
the dispatcher asked calmly.
“Ruth Carter,” she said, trying to catch her breath with her free hand on her chest.
“And your location?”
“I’m in Rock Cut State Park,” she said, listening to the man typing on the other end.
“North lot?”
he asked.
Ruth looked around. “I’m by the statue of Teddy Roosevelt,” she said, shoving her white poodle off her lap. The dog scampered into the passenger seat of the black Cadillac and looked out the window, its tail wagging back and forth a million miles an hour.
“South lot,”
the operator mumbled, still typing.
“Is it a male or female?”
Ruth opened her mouth, her mind flashing back to the grisly remains. “I…I don’t know.”
The man stopped typing.
“You don’t know?”
“I couldn’t tell. There’s not much left. Please hurry, this is
absolutely frightful
! Sasha had one of the bones in her mouth.”
The typing resumed.
“Sasha?”
“Yes, my dog. She yanked her cotton-
pickin
leash from my hand and took off running. I had a heck of a time finding her, and when I did…” She trailed off, sobbing. “Please hurry!”
“Okay
mam
, I’ve got a cruiser in the area now, he should be there soon. Just stay on the line with me and make sure nothing disturbs the area.”
“Sasha, get off me!” she said, pushing the pooch off her again.
Sasha yelped and crawled into the backseat.
Chapter Nineteen
The light on the door’s card reader was green. Neither Rusty nor Clark could see anyone through the narrow window running vertically along the door’s top half.
“Try the knob,” Clark whispered.
Rusty inhaled and turned the knob. It clicked open, so he pushed the door inward and quietly stepped through.
“Are there zombies?” the pudgy man yelled from his cell just before the heavy security door shut behind them.
It was dead quiet, that much was for sure. The guards’ desk was just as empty as the hallway.
“Okay, this is weird,” Clark said.
“My thoughts exactly,” Rusty replied over his shoulder. “I mean, why would grown guards have a calendar of wild horses?”
Clark glanced at the calendar hanging on the wall behind the desk. “That is weird,” he agreed. “But I was talking about the guards’ station
bein
empty.”
“Oh.”
“So what now?”
Rusty scanned the area with nervous eyes and started walking. “She said to keep going until we run into her,” he said, turning a corner and screaming.
The woman lurking at the other end of the hallway watched them with dark eyes, just like she had done in Nick’s kitchen. The fluorescent lights above flickered, making it look like she had moved even though she hadn’t.
“Oh sweet mother of Mary,” Clark gasped, stepping backwards. “What the hell is that?”
Rusty was too terrified to attempt a response. She looked just as dead and pissed off as before. He took a slow step backwards, bumping into Clark, which is when she started floating towards them. Rusty froze, his round eyes watching her colorless, cracked toes drag along the shiny floor below, leaving a wet trail in their wake.
“Let’s get the hell out of here!” Clark shrieked.
The woman drifted closer without effort. Her long dark hair pulled back just enough to reveal her determined hollow eyes.
“Summer!”
Rusty yelled.
She stopped.
He squinted at her face, masked in shadows from the flickering lights. “I know you’re in there.”
She stared back silently, as if contemplating their fate.
“I know you can hear me!”
Her head tilted to the right, observing him with the wonder of a curious child.
Clark gulped loudly and took a deep breath. “I take it that’s your ghost-friend?”
“Sort of,” Rusty said, not taking his eyes from the dark figure in the tattered dress.
“Don’t look too friendly to me,” he whispered.
Her head straightened and she resumed effortlessly gliding closer.
“Oh shit,” Clark muttered, stumbling backwards.
“Summer!
You’re supposed to get me out here!” Rusty
screamed,
his heart in his throat.
She stopped again, flexing her fists in the flashing light.
Rusty breathed in and out heavy gulps of sterile air. “We’re not the ones you want!” he said. “We didn’t do this to you!”
The woman looked down to her legs and bare feet. Jagged cracks ran throughout her pasty skin. Suddenly, she twitched like a scratched DVD.
Clark screamed, horror flickering across his face.
“We can help you find whoever did this to you,” Rusty said in a drained voice.
The woman looked back up to Rusty and Clark, then to her gray hands. She twitched again and began sliding closer.
“We just want to help you,” Rusty pleaded, ready to accept his fate.
Ready to put an end to this madness, one way or another.
Her murky eyes widened and dropped to her feet when she realized she was suddenly floating backwards, as if someone else was controlling her. Her dead arms reached for Rusty, desperate for something to hang onto to stop her motion. Her hands smacked against the walls, leaving trails of broken fingernails as she disappeared into a room at the far end of the hall. Rusty looked back to Clark, who had gone white as a ghost.
The lights flickered a few more times and then gained strength, jerking back to life like an unconscious swimmer at a summer camp.
“You still coming?”
Clark glanced to the door leading back to their cell behind them and exhaled.
Cautiously, they continued down the narrow hall, making their way to the open door she had disappeared into. Rusty stopped just before the entrance and took one last look over his shoulder to make sure Clark was still behind him. Clark nodded lightly and Rusty stepped into the doorway. His eyes nearly popped out of his head when he saw all of the dead guards littering the modest sized break room. Blood was everywhere, even on the ceiling fans.
Chapter Twenty
“Holy mother of pearl,” Clark gasped, surveying the room with horrified eyes.
Some of the guards looked like they were simply taking catnaps at the round tables with their heads resting on folded arms. The blood seeping onto their beige colored sleeves, however, said otherwise. Others were slumped on the floor beneath the tables, like they had been taking cover from an EF5 tornado, terrified of even seeing a finger of God, let alone brushing up against one. A younger looking guard sat leaning up against a pop machine, a look of absolute panic frozen across his face and purple rings circling his twisted neck. His bulging eyes stared blankly at a foosball table across the room, where a heavy set woman in uniform lay face down, folded over it. Her gun was still in its holster.
“Not one of
em
drew a single weapon,” Clark said thickly. “That’s impossible.”
Rusty could only stand there, trying to convince himself this hadn’t really happened. He was getting good at doing that lately. A thin river of blood reached his orange shoes and suddenly there was no denying the carnage in front of him. The carnage that
was basically
his fault. His intestines wormed into knots while beads of sweat ran down the sides of his face. He fought back the urge to vomit and lost, spraying the floor with macaroni and cheese from the night’s dinner.
“What the hell is going on here?” Clark asked, his large eyes hopping from body to body.
“She said she wouldn’t hurt anyone,” Rusty whispered to himself, wiping his mouth with his hands.
Clark glanced behind them, like he had just heard something out in the hall.
“That fucking bitch,” Rusty sneered.
A guard sitting with his head down at one of the round tables on the far side of the room suddenly sat up. The slumped guards on either side of him gently slid to the floor with his movement. Blood oozed from his hat and face to the table below. Rusty and Clark simultaneously gasped in horror.
“Holy shit, Tubbs was right! It’s a fucking zombie!” Clark shrieked, backpedalling.
Rusty watched the guard slowly get to his feet. He stared at Rusty through dark eyes, hidden in the shadow of the black visor. No one moved. The next few seconds seemed like hours. Rusty tried to run as the thing began shambling closer, but couldn’t. His shoes felt glued to the sticky floor. At this stage of the game, what was the point anyway? There was nowhere to run. His chest heaved and he briefly wondered how much more of this his heart could take before it literally exploded.
The guard leisurely limped closer, stumbling over bodies as he went.
Clark bent down and snatched a gun from the holster of a guard who looked like Dr. Phil. “Stay back!” Clark yelled, proficiently clicking off the safety and pointing the gun at the lumbering guard.
The guard only moaned in return, raising a heavy arm and pointing a bony finger at them as he kept coming.
Rusty’s eyes narrowed, studying the approaching figure. “Wait a minute,” he said faintly.
Clark fired two rounds into the guard’s chest, jerking him backwards and knocking off his hat. Long dark hair spilled out from beneath, spiraling through the air as the guard fell over a plastic chair and dissolved in front of Clark’s eyes.