The Dead Series (Book 1): Tell Me When I'm Dead (13 page)

I was starving and stopped off at La Adelita to swallow a couple of pork soft tacos. It was almost six, and all I thought about was going to bed again.

When I got to Staples, I found that part of the glass front door was broken and plywood had been put up to cover it. Then I saw Fred as I came in.

“What happened?” I said.

“Some kind of weirdo. Went through the glass like it wasn’t there.”

“Anyone else hurt?”

“I cut myself,” he said, waving his bandaged hand. “I called 911 and the ambulance took the poor guy away. He was pretty wound up, I gotta tell you. You’d better get over to your station. Copiers are acting up again, and we have print jobs up the yin yang.”

“What about you?” I said.

“Oh, I cut my hand on the damn glass. EMT gave me a tetanus shot and fixed me right up. No big deal.”

This was typical Fred. Downplaying the whole thing so as not to worry the rest of us. What a martyr. But what if whoever that guy was who broke the glass was infected and his blood had spilled onto the door? Fred would be infected. No one knew how the undead were being created, but I had to assume that whatever the cause, it was transmittable through bodily fluids. That’s what Isaac thought. And as with other deadly diseases, blood and saliva were suspect.

“Fred, do you feel okay?” I said.

“I’m fine. Just a little tired. Guess I lost more blood than I thought.” He turned to go over to a cash register. I noticed that he was already walking stiffly. The jimmies. Not good.

“Take it easy,” I said, and went to work.

Twenty minutes later, Fred announced that he was going to the break room to lie down, saying he felt funny.

“It feels like a fever, but there’s this buzzing in my brain. I can’t shake it.”

He headed for the restroom. Having to pee myself, I followed him in. Without speaking, he went into one of the stalls and threw up.

“Shit!” he said.

I swung the door out as he straightened up and wiped his mouth. Whatever it was that he’d upchucked, the water in the toilet bowl was black.

“Fred, you need a doctor,” I said.

“Naw. Going to lie down awhile. I’ll be fine. Let me know if anything comes up.”

An hour later, Stacey came running, scared shitless. “There’s something wrong with Fred! He—he doesn’t look like he’s breathing!”

I followed Stacey into the break room and found Fred lying motionless on the brown Naugahyde sofa. His skin was greyish in the fluorescent lights. I ran and got a pair of the plastic gloves we use to change the toner in the laser printers. I checked Fred’s eyes and listened for any kind of breathing.

“Call 911,” I said.

Fred sat up and blinked like we weren’t there.

“Fred, you okay? You gave us a scare.”

He ignored Stacey and me as she waited on hold for the 911 dispatcher. When he tried to speak but couldn’t, I knew. He kept moving his mouth in an unnatural way, like he had awakened and found that he now had jaws. I recognized the symptom.

“Fred, we’re calling the paramedics. You’re going to be—”

He took a weak, angry swipe at my head, and I jumped back. “Stacey, get out!” I said. But she was frozen, unable to comprehend what was happening. “Stacey! Get out!” She snapped out of it and ran from the room.

Fred made another feeble attempt to claw me, then stopped and looked around the room and up at the ceiling lights. The brightness seemed to bother him. He tried again to say something, but instead ground his teeth so hard I heard the scraping of bone against bone. One of this teeth broke, and he spit the bloody pieces onto the floor.

Dear God, I knew what was coming. The urge to run away was overpowering. I didn’t want to die. What kept me going was the thought that I might be able to help Stacey and the others. I scanned the room, looking for a weapon. There was nothing. A coffee maker, a water cooler, several five-gallon plastic bottles of water lined up on the floor, a refrigerator and a push broom.

The broom was it. All the time looking at Fred, I backed away and grabbed it. Then I unscrewed the handle and held it in both hands as Fred watched me, unaware of any threat, like he was seeing an actor in a play.

Outside I heard Stacey scream, then someone grabbed me from behind. I tried to get away, but they had a firm lock on my head. I smelled sick, fetid breath but heard no breathing. Then I saw a hand. Bone was sticking out through ripped fingertips.

I dropped to my knees and rolled hard to one side. As I turned, I saw Missy staring at me. How did she get into the store without anyone seeing her? As I scrambled to my feet, holding the broom handle out in front of me like a lightsaber, something strange happened.

She turned and called to Fred in a series of short, piercing chirps that broke the stillness of the room. His ears seemed to prick. She directed her dead eyes back at me, and Fred came at me like a linebacker in sudden death. She was giving him commands!

I heard a siren. A moment later, two EMTs rushed in with Stacey.

“Careful,” I said. “They’re dangerous.”

Too late. Missy turned and swiped a ravaged claw at an EMT’s face, ripping it half off. Wailing and grabbing the raw flesh and bone, he fell back, blood gushing everywhere, while the second EMT tried to grab her.

Fred and Missy went after the second man. With the efficiency of wolves, they went to work on him, starting with his throat.

“What’s happening?” Stacey said.

As I jumped past, Missy grabbed me and sank her teeth into my shoe. But the bite didn’t go through the leather. Kicking her in the face, I grabbed Stacey and forced her out of the room.

In the main part of the store, I screamed for everyone to get out. The few customers we had didn’t know what was happening. All at once they tried to make it through the inner exit door, but panicked, they jammed it up.

“One at a time!” I said.

Now Missy and Fred were there. I looked back as the customers went out. Then I grabbed Stacey by the hand and dragged her towards the inner door, but there were still people going out the door.

“Come on,” I said.

I tried the manager’s office in the front. I could lock us in there till more help arrived. As usual, the door was locked. I tried finding the right key as Stacey whimpered behind me.

“Dave, hurry!”

Before I could get her into the office, Missy leapt ten or twelve feet over the checkout station and brought Stacey down like she were a gazelle.

“Dave!”

I tried hitting Missy with the broom handle, and it snapped in two. Missy feasted on Stacey’s eyes, tongue and throat. She must have hit an artery, because a jet of hot blood pumped rhythmically onto the front windows of the store like an automatic sprinkler. This excited Missy even more, and she washed her face in it as Fred joined in.

Repulsed, I tried to make it through the outer exit doors, but Fred grabbed me, screeching. Pulling back for a second, I gripped the broken broom handle and shoved the jagged end hard through his open mouth. It stuck there, and as he staggered in circles trying to dislodge it, I saw it protruding from the back of his neck.

I made it outside, where a cop stared in horror at what was happening. It was dark out, and the parking-lot lights cast everything in a sickly orange glow.

Missy came out, hungry only for my blood. The policeman drew his gun and fired at her, hitting her in the arms and chest and driving her back.

“The head!” I said. “Shoot her in the head!”

But he was out. He tried to reload as Missy straightened up and continued towards us. She was three feet in front of us when two more cop cars screeched to a stop. Seeing them, Missy fled around the side of the building. The cops in those cars went after her.

I sat on the ground, covered in Stacey’s blood. I didn’t think I was bit, but I felt like passing out.

“I don’t understand,” the stunned officer said.

“Can’t you see what they are?” I said. “They’re
all dead
.”

Fred, still trying to dislodge the broom handle, stumbled outside, lowing like a cow that had fallen into a pit.

“Holy shit!” the cop said.

“You need to kill it.”

“But he’s still …”

Disgusted, I grabbed his gun, took aim and fired repeatedly at Fred’s head. God help me, it felt good. A bullet tore through Fred’s left eye and he dropped, his body propped up at an unnatural angle on the broom handle.

The two other cops came jogging back over to us, their guns still drawn. I recognized one of them as Norm, the one who had arrested me. The scared cop took his gun back and pointed it at me. “You’re under arrest!” he said in a high, Barney Fife voice.

“Put the gun away,” Norm said. “Can’t you see it was self-defense?”

It was late when I found myself sitting on the curb, mourning Fred. How could I have shot him? But it wasn’t Fred, another voice said. It was a dead thing that looked like Fred. A monstrosity that tried to kill me.

When my dad was alive, he liked taking me to the shooting range. Though I had a talent for it, I’d never killed anything in my life, not even a deer. I felt sick as I replayed the scene over and over in my head. Grabbing the policeman’s gun, taking aim and blasting a baseball-size hole in Fred’s face. What made it worse was that no one did anything about it. It was self-defense. I was a hero.

I looked around, imagining I saw Missy lurking in every shadow. Another two ambulances arrived to wipe up the carnage. I didn’t know if those bodies were coming back as the undead, but I guessed we’d know in a few hours. Fred was gone. Stacey, mauled and bled out.

After the last ambulance left, Detective Van Gundy came over and sat next to me. “How are you holding up?” he said. “The guys told me what you did. It’s okay, you did what you had to.”

“Whatever this is, I think it’s mutating.”

“What do you mean?”

“I found Jim days before Missy killed him. I know, I should have told you. Whatever. He was in this trancelike state for a long time. Days, weeks—I don’t know. He was harmless. I noticed that after Fred cut his hand on the contaminated glass he turned much quicker. In hours, not days.”

“So if someone gets infected—”

“Those bodies they took away, they need to make sure the brains are destroyed.”

The detective nodded. “It’s spreading,” he said. “We’re getting reports that these things—what did you call them, the undead?—have been seen in Mt. Shasta. Maybe even farther north.”

I felt for my keys and walked away fast.

“Where are you going?” the policeman said.

“I have to get to my wife.”

“You can’t leave town.”

I stopped and stared at him. “Then shoot me.”

He looked at me for a few seconds. “It’s not that,” he said. “Security forces are on their way. All the main roads will be blocked soon. They want to contain this thing.”

“I have to try,” I said.

“Right. Good luck, Dave.”

I didn’t wait around to wish him the same.

What would I say
to Holly when I saw her? Beg her forgiveness? Convince her I was a changed man and not a coward? Whatever happened, I needed to find her and protect her.

Though I was anxious to get on the road, it was after midnight when I arrived at the motel. I was exhausted and afraid of falling asleep behind the wheel. So I decided to catch a few hours’ sleep and leave in the morning. Holly would be safe tonight at her mother’s.

As I lay sleepless in bed, the thought of Fred Lumpkin—or what used to be Fred— made me feel sick, not heroic. My eyes closed, I saw Stacey writhing on the floor, bright blood shooting from her neck, that horrible screeching ripping at me as Missy and Fred ate her. In that moment I vowed to kill Missy but had to settle for Fred. The way things were playing out, there was more killing to come.

People talk about survival. What they mean is killing the other guy.