DEAD RAIN: A Tale of the Zombie Apocalypse (12 page)

30

Deputy Hayes drove slowly down the dark semi-rural road. There wasn’t a speck of light other than that from the lights of his cruiser. His spotlight cut through the rain, illuminating the driveways of the homes as he crawled by.

A figure staggered toward him down the street. He slowed to check it out, alarmed as he recognized the long dead face and raggedy clothes of a resident of the cemetery. He turned his wheel to steer around the shuffling corpse, then impulsively swung back and ran the cadaver down, not stopping until he felt its bones crunch under his tires.

“God forgive me,” he whispered contritely, not exactly clear about what he was repenting. He’d been wrestling with his conscience all night, ever since leaving the girl in the cemetery. He shifted into reverse, about to drive over the hapless corpse again, feeling compelled to crush it out of existence, but something caught his eye in the glare of his spotlight. He pulled forward a little further and angled the spotlight—illuminating the 1958 Ford sitting in a driveway.

He quickly scanned the area in all directions. The street seemed deserted. The only other being besides himself was the thing lying in the street, dragging its mangled body down the road toward his car. Putting the cruiser in reverse he drove over it again, crushing its backbone and flattening its ribs, pinning it under his car.

Turning off all but the emergency flashers he got out of the cruiser. Unholstering his gun and switching on his flashlight he crept around the shrubs and trees that lined the side of the property, keeping a wary eye out for unexpected company. Finding the driveway clear he hurried forward to check out the vintage Ford. His flashlight revealed it was empty; parked and locked in a normal manner.

She’s alive
, he thought, with mixed relief and trepidation. He’d witnessed people getting bitten and turning, and he knew it was a fast-acting process.
There’s no way she could have driven that car this far and locked it up like that. Not if she was one of them.

Hayes turned his attention to the house. It stood like a pitch black mirage, barely discernible from the dark woods flanking it. He felt like Providence had smiled on him. The fact that the Ford was parked outside and he saw no light inside the house—
not even a candle burning
—meant the girl must be inside and was probably sound asleep.

He switched off his flashlight and crept stealthily towards the house, his feet sinking in soggy puddles, doing his best to ignore the numbing rain. As he drew near his mind spun off on a perverse tangent, entertaining inappropriate thoughts about the girl and what she might be wearing when he found her.

His fantasy dimmed when a bright flash of lightning revealed the damaged front door.
Uh oh. What the heck happened here?
He thought of the thing he left squirming on the road, wondering if it had paid the girl a visit.
Oh Jesus.
Wouldn’t that be ironic? If she made it all the way home, only to be bitten by a midnight visitor?

He wondered if the thing had followed her home. Wondered if it could.
Did their brains function well enough to do that?
Based on what he’d observed over the years, he wouldn’t have bet on it. But what did he really know about them?

Maybe Sheriff Leeds is right. Maybe they’re being restored by Providence… brains first.

He moved closer to the house. Thunder rumbled from the heavens, followed by several quick flashes of lightning. His fantasy of capturing the pretty young girl in her bedroom was replaced by trepidation. He dreaded what he would likely find now. He knew the dead liked soft tissue.
Cheeks. Chins. Juicy lips.

His stomach tightened as he reached the door and found its window broken out. Streaks of blood coated the jagged shards of glass still in the frame, along with pieces of Russell’s shirt and fatty chunks of his flesh.

He peeked carefully through the busted window, straining to hear any sounds inside the house between distant grumbles of thunder. Nothing moved in the darkness. He heard no sounds. Turning on his flashlight he slowly swept the living room.

The place was a wreck, but it appeared to be vacant.

He tried the doorknob. It was locked. Leaning through the window frame he unlocked the door from inside—not noticing Russell, who had stepped around the side of the house and was staggering purposefully towards him.

31

“So these people you saw in the cemetery,” said Kerri. “What makes you think they started it? How do you know they didn’t just wander in there after being infected?”

“The place was locked up when we got there, and they were already inside. And they were old,” replied Emma. “Really, really old.” She was seated on an old wooden rocker, feet drawn up, arms wrapped around her legs. It was comforting to have other living people with her, but the whole thing felt unreal, like some spooky dream, complete with flashes of lightning through the windows and demonic peals of thunder.

“Old?” Kerri asked, sounding a bit skeptical.

“Not just old,” Emma huffed impatiently. “Old! Antique old. In long dresses and old-fashioned clothes. And the Sheriff knew they were in there. He was trying to feed me to them.” Her voice grew more tremulous as she spoke. “On purpose.”

“That’s insane,” said Kerri.

“This whole situation is insane,” Ryan observed.

“He said, ‘granny has to eat too,’” continued
Emma, her nerves unraveling as she recalled the incident. “And his deputy was in on it with him.”

“Granny has to eat too?” Kerri asked skeptically. “Are you sure that’s what he said?”

“Yes! Granny has to eat too. He zapped me with a stun gun. He wanted to make sure she got me while I was down and couldn’t fight back. He left me there, paralyzed. If it hadn’t been for Russell…” she choked up again, recalling Russell’s heroics. Then she was sobbing outright. Sad sloppy hysterical sobs.

“This is all too weird,” said Kerri, rubbing
Emma’s back to soothe her.

“It’s the zombie apocalypse,” said Ryan. He didn’t mean to sound glib, but his mind had shifted into a strange automatic mode, distancing him from the tragedies he’d endured.

Kerri sighed and shot him a frustrated look. “Knock it off. All we know for sure is those things are contagious. And the contagion spreads quickly. My partner and I rescued a deputy who was bitten on the leg. And minutes later he was one of them. That doesn’t mean they’re zombies. It just means there’s a fast-acting pathogen in their saliva.”

“If it quacks like a duck…” shrugged Ryan. “It finally happened. We willed it on ourselves.”

“Don’t be fooled by appearances,” countered Kerri, determined to end his morbid speculation. “They might appear to be dead, but they’re not. Dead people don’t walk around. It’s just a disease. Some form of rabies or mad cow disease or something else that affects the brain. Something that stimulates certain drives while inhibiting other functions. Don’t make it worse than it is. A plague is bad enough.”

“The ones I saw in the cemetery were dead,”
Emma insisted, her voice quivering but determined to make her point. “They were corpses. Long dead corpses. Stinking rotten filthy dead corpses.”

“Okay,” snapped Kerri, wishing she’d run across adults instead of teenagers. “Calm down.”

But Emma was slipping down a rabbit-hole of terror, unable to stop her descent. “Their skin… their faces… the old lady didn’t have any hands. No hands. Just rotted stumps!”

“Okay, honey, calm down,” Kerri said soothingly. “Whatever they are, they’re clearly messed up. And dangerous. So right now we need to get to safety. If it did start in the cemetery like you say it did, then it couldn’t have spread very far. We just need to get up to Millville or Vineland and report it to the authorities. And we need to do it fast. Before it gets out of hand.”

“We should drive through to Philly,” said Ryan. “We need to contact the Feds. Or Homeland Security. Shit, we probably should call in the army.”

Kerri looked at
Emma, who was rocking mindlessly back and forth, obviously losing it. If they delayed any longer, the girl might be too far gone to lead them back to her house.

“Let’s just get to a car—now,” she suggested firmly. “We can decide where to go once we’re safely on the road.”

32

Deputy Hayes nearly jumped out of his skin when Russell grabbed him from behind. Losing his balance he stumbled forward into the door just as his hand turned the doorknob. The door swung open, pulling him off-balance. He fell to his knees and his jaw hit the busted window frame. A two-inch sliver of glass drove up through the tender flesh beneath his chin, impaling him through his tongue, and the opening door dragged him forward, skittering in an awkward crouch.

Adrenaline shot through his system. He grabbed onto the window frame and hoisted himself to his feet, crying in pain as shards of broken glass sliced into the palm of one hand. Bubbles of bloody saliva dribbled from his mouth and blood rushed from his hand, inflaming Russell’s hunger with its coppery aroma.

Hayes twisted his torso, fighting to free himself as the zombie lunged into him, grappling him in a ham-handed hug. The deputy pressed the muzzle of his handgun into Russell’s stomach and fired several shots. The impact drove him backwards—just a few inches, but enough to give Hayes some leverage. He whipped his arms up and shoved Russell hard. Russell tottered uncertainly and slipped on the rain-soaked doorstep.

As he went down the deputy backed away—and was grabbed by
Emma’s mother.

Pivoting on his heels he found himself face-to-face with her mutilated countenance. The flesh was stripped from her face from her eyeballs down. A hot wave of fear coursed through
him as he imagined himself trapped in the midst of a zombie horde.  He jammed his Glock under her chin and blasted her brains through the top of her head.

She flopped to the ground, finished—but Russell was back on his feet, tottering toward him. The deputy turned just in time and fired two quick rounds into Russell’s head, putting him down for good.

Hayes stood trembling and hyperventilating, scanning the darkness around him, fully expecting to find a legion of walking corpses surrounding him. A flash of lightning revealed that he was alone, except for the two dead bodies lying at his feet. The freezing rain poured over him like a blasphemous baptism. Finally he gathered his senses and picked up his hat from the ground. An arrhythmic chain of lightning flickered across the sky. His gaze wandered past the autumnal trees lining the property to the empty road beyond, which seemed to beckon him to a new world—a bleak, apocalyptic domain.

“Dear God…” he gasped. “Forgive me. Please forgive me for all that I’ve done.”

33

The troopers perked up as they saw a set of red and blue flashers and headlights racing through the darkness toward their SUV.

“Must be one of the deputies,” said Cat. “And he’s in an awful hurry.”

“Let’s see what he has to say.” Bronski stopped their vehicle on the road and turned on his beacons. As the cruiser drew near he rolled his window down—and got slapped in the mouth by a cold splash of rain blown in by the heavy wind.

The cruiser shot past without even slowing down, heading towards Lenape Creek.

“What the hell?” Bronski scowled. Wiping his face he hastily rolled up his window.

“I knew it,” said Cat. “That was a Lenape Creek cruiser. Something hinky is going on down here. And that Sheriff was well aware of it. He was just a little too anxious to get rid of us. Why? We should go back right now and grill his ass.”

“What for? If he was lying we’ll only get more lies. We’re here to gather intelligence, not bullshit.” He shifted into gear and continued down the road. “Let’s hit our next contact point and find out what’s going on. Then we can get the hell out of Dodge, and let headquarters deal with it.”

Cat checked their orders. “County hospital on Route 9. If something is going on, we should be able to find out there. Unless they’re in cahoots with the Sheriff of Nottingham.”

“Take a breath, Cat. I know you’re dying for some action, but let’s not have our imaginations run away with us,” said Bronski. “Maybe that deputy just had the shits and was racing back to the station to take a dump. Let’s just hit the hospital. One look at the emergency room should tell us all we need to know. Either something is happening, or it’s not.”

“I’d still like another word with that Sheriff.”

“A word? Or an excuse to kick his ass?”

“B
oth.”

Bronski grinned but a minute later he slowed the vehicle as he spotted something ahead. “Jesus.”
He switched on the brights, revealing a massive puddle spread across the road. “Well, the old man wasn’t lying about the roads flooding out down here.”

“It should be better once we reach Route Nine. They have better sewage systems in town.”

“I hope you’re right,” Bronski replied. “But we’re getting close to the ocean. A lot of the storm drains fill with backwater from the flooded inlets.”

“We should have brought our rubber waders.”

“Kinky, Cat. I didn’t know you were into latex.”

“Only on rainy nights,” she replied
coolly. “Whoa. Stop!”

Bronski stopped the vehicle and they sat gazing through the windshield.

“What the hell is that on the road?” Cat asked.

“You tell me,” he shrugged,
and switched on the spotlight.

“Oh Jesus,” Cat said softly. “That can’t be what it looks like.”

Pulling up the hoods of their ponchos they got out to investigate.

“Jesus Mary and Joseph,” exclaimed Bronski.

The corpse run over by Hayes lay in a deep puddle, its crushed body half-submerged. Its limbs were twisted and broken, with bones jutting through torn flesh. Its rib cage and hipbones were flat as a tapeworm. But its head was relatively intact, and it wriggled and squirmed like some monstrous bloody worm. Barely recognizable as human.

“Oh my God,” said Cat, her normally assertive voice anemic as a frightened child’s. She averted her eyes. She’d seen carnage in war, but nothing this grotesque, and here on a sleepy American street it was doubly unnerving.

“Try the radio,” Bronski said. While Cat ran to the vehicle to call for help he ran to the back and grabbed a spare poncho, then draped it over the thing on the road. Lighting a handful of emergency flares he planted them on the road to mark the spot and protect what was left of the man, then climbed into the driver’s seat.

Cat was slumped forward
with her head on the dashboard.

“Any luck?”

She sat up and shook her head. “No. No response. I don’t even know if we’re getting through.”

“Shut your door. We have to go,” said Bronski.

“What do you mean, go? We can’t just leave him out there like that.”

“Jesus, Cat, you saw him. What can we do for him, other than send an ambulance?”

Cat didn’t move. The image of the abomination was burned in her brain. The hideous flattened body. The blank staring eyes. The mouth opening and closing, emitting garbled hisses and whines.

“
Who could have done that to him… and then left him alone to die in the rain?”

“Cat.” Bronski was firm. “He’s obviously in shock. He’s not feeling anything at this point. We need to go and get an ambulance out here now. Get your head on straight.” He lowered his voice, “If we wait any longer the only thing he’ll need is a shovel.”

Cat leaned out the door and vomited.

“You alright?” he asked.

“No,” she replied, without looking up.

“If we hurry we can have an ambulance back here before those flares burn out.”

“Hold it,” Cat said, grabbing the steering wheel. “I’ll wait here. He shouldn’t be alone.” She turned to hop out but Bronski grabbed her arm, stopping her.

“No way. There’s nothing you can do for him and I’m not leaving you alone out here. You were right. Something is going on down here. And until we know what it is, we better stick together.” He picked up the mike and tried the radio
,
“Radio check, this is state police unit One Alpha Two Four Seven, does anybody read me? Come in if you copy.”

He repeated the call but aga
in got only static in response.

“
Come on, Cat. We have to go get help. There’s nothing we can do here.” Cat finally closed her door. Bronski started driving, speeding around the monstrosity on the road before Cat could steal another look at it. “Here.” He handed her a pack of gum.

Cat popped a few pieces in her mouth and
sank back in her seat. “That deputy had to pass by here. He had to have seen—”

“Maybe that’s why he was in such a hurry. He might have been going for help.”

“Why would he go that way? If his radio’s out like ours is, he should have been headed to the hospital. There’s no hospital in Lenape Creek.”

“Good question.” He glanced at Cat. She looked a little shell-shocked. He knew she felt guilty about leaving the injured man on the road and was probably pissed at him for dragging her away.

“Don’t worry. We’ll send help from the hospital,” he said gently. “They’ll be with him in a few minutes. For whatever it’s worth.”

***

Several blocks away, a handful of zombies caught sight of the fiery red flares. They stood staring for nearly a minute, the remains of their brain matter struggling to process what they were seeing… then they gave up trying to think and plodded towards the beckoning light.