DEAD RAIN: A Tale of the Zombie Apocalypse (5 page)

10

Deputy Kyle Jurgensen took the dispatch and was en route to the scene of the attack in less than a minute. A recent transplant from Philadelphia, he was happy to get a little honest action after weeks of routine traffic stops and nuisance calls.

Kyle never thought he’d miss the raucous inner city precinct he’d patrolled in Philly, but his laidback South Jersey beat was downright boring at times. It was refreshing to go out on a real call for once. The last thing he wanted was a ho-hum job where he’d lose his urban edge.

Lenape Creek was a charming little Colonial era town. There was plenty of soothing greenery and the air was refreshingly clean, but the department was small and Sheriff Leeds ruled it like a despot. The other deputies were a bit standoffish, unlike the fraternity of officers he’d left behind. But Jurgensen knew he was lucky to get the job. Leeds made it clear that he was the first outsider they’d hired in forty years, and that if his own son had any interest in law enforcement there wouldn’t have been an opening.

The Sheriff made it clear he wanted Jurgensen to stick to the main roads, ticketing speeding tourists and generally making his presence known to scare away passing felons. He was ordered to go easy on the locals, many of whose families had settled the area long before the American Revolution.

Kyle quickly learned that there was a very distinct divide in the town. He’d met a few residents who told him they were still treated like newcomers decades after they’d moved in. But he could understand the old guard’s clannishness. It had been the same in the city, where the descendants of Fishtown’s old Irish families resented the influx of yuppies and hipster artists, who drove up their real estate taxes and ignored time-honored neighborhood traditions. And in Port Richmond and Bridesburg, the Polish and German and Italian families who’d swept their sidewalks and scrubbed their front steps for a century bemoaned the trashy immigrants from nearby Kensington, displaced by the expanding ghetto of North Philadelphia.

Despite his sense of isolation, Kyle had no regrets about his choice to relocate. His best friend on the force in Philly had been killed by a teenage pile of shit with a stolen handgun. The punk sat sneering defiantly all through his trial—obviously an unrepentant sociopath. But his lawyer got him off with a slap on the wrist, due to his “emotionally challenged” state of mind imprinted by poor parenting.

It was the last straw for Kyle. He knew he needed to get out of the city before he snapped and put a bullet in some cretinous judge’s brain. And so here he was, a big city cop patrolling a sleepy little town.

***

Kyle turned his cruiser onto the reporting party’s street and switched on his spotlight. It was a typical road in the area, with thick, scraggly woods on one side and single homes on the other. He slowed the car to a crawl, cursing softly. He knew he was close to his intended destination but the fog had him flummoxed. He could barely make out the mailboxes on their roadside posts, let alone the house numbers stenciled on their sides. His spotlight wasn’t much help. All it did was brighten the dreamy fog, already tinted surreal blue and pink by his flashing rooftop beacons.

The hazy glimmers of light from the house windows on the street were the only signs that he was still on planet earth. The eerie tableau was spooky, but was enchanting compared to the noise and grit of the city he’d left behind.

He stopped the patrol car and ran a
chamois across the windshield. The fog glowed in his headlights like a luminous cloud. In its midst stood a shadowy figure.

Jurgensen got out of the cruiser. “Good evening, sir. Are you the r
eporting party who called 911?”

The mysterious figure didn’t respond, but Kyle could see it turning to face him, moving with clumsy stiffness. The shape suggested a man. The awkward movement indicated a drunk. Or someone with some kind of handicap.

Kyle switched on his flashlight and held it high, creating a circle of light before him. “Step forward toward my car please, into the light.”

There was no verbal response. But the man shuffled slowly forward. Seeming to act in compliance.

“Are you alright?” the deputy asked, sensing there might be more to the man’s strange behavior than he initially had suspected.

The man loped int
o the street coming toward him.

Kyle felt suddenly threatened. “Hold it right there, sir. Show me your hands.”

The man continued forward, slowly raising his arms.

“Stop!” Kyle assessed the threat and pulled his pepper spray.
If he has a gun he would have used it by now,
he thought.
I don’t want to shoot an unarmed drunk. Especially not one with a handicap.
“I said hold it! Stop right there. This is your final warning.”

But the man kept coming.

Kyle had no choice. He raised his pepper spray and shot an ample stream into the man’s face. It had no effect at all. The man didn’t even flinch. He just kept plodding forward, arms raised, fingers curled like arthritic claws.

Alarm bells went off in the deputy’s head. He flashed back to the night an interrupted burglar tried to stick him in the heart with a twelve-inch butcher knife. The same quivering sense of urgency nudged him into action. He took two
steps back and drew his baton.

This fucker’s on pcp or something.

Suddenly the man made his move, throwing himself at the deputy. Kyle finally saw his ghastly face, in the fleeting moment before he swung his baton. He smashed his attacker’s head with more force than he needed to stop him. He wasn’t sure why he overreacted as he did, but felt relieved as the man crumbled to the ground.

Kyle stood quietly for a minute, waiting for his racing heartbeat to slow. The man didn’t move. Kyle rolled him onto his back and checked his pulse. Nothing.

Raising his flashlight he studied the man’s face. Several open sores covered his cheeks, his chin and his forehead. Looking closer, Kyle realized they were gaping wounds. Big chunks of flesh were missing, revealing the bone underneath.
Jesus. They look like bite marks. Human bite marks.

The man’s gums were receded, his crooked teeth stained a rusty gray.
Meth head,
Kyle figured.
He’s lucky he has any teeth left at all in that ugly mug of his. Not that it matters now.

He gave the man’s chest a few perfunctory pumps, a token attempt to restart his heart. Then he climbed into his cruiser and picked up the radio. “E5 reporting. Requesting EMT assistance. Subject down as a result of altercation, also has prior injuries, possibly drug related. Subject not breathing. No response to CPR. I’m on Delaware Road, approximately two hundred yards north of 247.”

“Roger that,” came the reply. “Emergency services notified. ETA approximately five minutes. Continue resuscitation efforts until they arrive.”

“Roger, ten four.”

Resuscitate?
Yeah, I’ll get right on that. The world can’t afford to lose another scumbag.

Despite Jurgensen’s cynicism, he made an honest
if cursory effort to revive the dead man, pumping his chest for two solid minutes before giving up.
Well I tried. Maybe the EMTs can jumpstart him with their paddles. They don’t pay me enough to give him mouth to mouth. He smells like death warmed over.

With the imminent threat over, a new concern came over him.
What if this joker’s related to some local hotshot? This could come back to bite me on the ass.
He knew the odds were slim that the drug-addled vagrant was the darling son of some local politician, but you never knew these days. Plenty of rich kids got hooked on drugs. Even more likely, he might come from a family of criminal riffraff, and Kyle would lose sleep worrying about violent retribution.
Christ, he might even be mobbed up.

He walked quickly through the fog to the edge of the nearest driveway. Sweeping the ground with his flashlight he found what he’d hoped for—a row of whitewashed cobblestones marking the sides of the driveway.
He picked one up with his gloved hand and carried it to the dead man. Kneeling beside him, he pressed the heavy stone against the man’s open fingers to create possible prints, then dropped it near the man’s hand.
Nobody can blame me for defending myself against a rock-wielding madman.
Even his family would understand that I had no choice.

He thought about proper police procedure and realized he’d better wrap things up by the book.
Better place some road flares for the meat wagon to see. Show them my head was on straight.

He stood up to go grab the flares from the trunk of his cruiser.

The dead man grabbed his ankle and sunk its teeth into his calf.

11

Ryan stood at the window peering through the blinds, keeping a vigilant watch for police lights or the men who’d attacked his mom. It was hopeless. The fog was like a white curtain. Every now and then he caught a glimpse of some shadowy movement, but he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just his eyes playing tricks on him. He held his mother’s revolver at the ready. If the fog wasn’t blindingly thick he’d be out there n
ow, hunting the dirty bastards.

He’d helped Mary Ellen to her bed when she started feeling weak. When last he checked, she was lying semi-delirious on her back, her body cold but her face drenched in feverish sweat. Kevin was curled beside her on the bed, quietly so
bbing, holding her hand in his.

It broke Ryan’s heart to see his normally carefree little brother so distraught, but he didn’t have time to console him. He needed to stand guard in case the culprits came back to finish what they started.

Muffled sounds came from the bedroom. Ryan heard his brother cry out, a soft exclamation of surprise. Dropping the blinds, he hurried to check it out.

He found his mother on her knees on the bed, hunched over Kevin who was spastically twitching his legs.

“Mom! What’s going on?” Ryan called out.

His mother turned to look at him as he stepped to the side of the bed. His puzzlement turned to shock as he saw blood streaming down her chin… and saw Kevin clutching his neck, sputtering and burbling as blood pumped from his torn open throat.

Ryan stood numbly, trying to digest the hellish scene. He raised the handgun mechanically as his mother crawled toward him across the bed, but he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger.

The thing that had been Mary Ellen teetered forward and raised up
on the bed, trying to grab her son—but she lost her balance and tumbled off the side. She landed hard, face first on the floor—a fall that should have stunned her, at least momentarily. But there wasn’t a second’s delay before she starting moving again.

As she clumsily tried to right herself, Ryan looked at his dying brother sprawled on the blood-soaked mattress. With every agitated heartbeat a fresh spurt of blood shot across his twitching body. He was clearly beyond any aid Ryan might attempt to render.

His mother’s icy fingers gripped his ankle. A hungry growl rolled softly from her throat. Ryan looked down at her bloodstained face… and her cold glassy eyes. The warmth and love he always felt when she looked at him was absent. Her spirit was gone. All that remained was an empty animated shell.

Ryan kicked her hand away and fled, not stopping until he was outside on the lawn, gun in hand, shivering in the cold night air.

Whatever was happening to his family was more than he could deal with on his own. He knew that the cops were on the way, and he needed to find them, fast.

12

Deputy Jurgensen struggled to free his leg but the zombie’s jaws were clamped like a bear trap. Inflamed by the taste of fresh blood, it buried its teeth in the sinewy meat of his calf and shook its head like a rabid terrier, worrying the muscle from the bone.

A flash of searing pain shot through the deputy’s leg, racing up his spine to his brain. His mind went blank as the hot pain washed over him, and he toppled to the ground in a faint.

Struggling to stay conscious he hastily unsnapped his holster and drew his Glock, but it slipped from his trembling hand as he wrestled it out and clattered to the ground by his side. He clawed at the cold damp asphalt trying to find it, then gave up and tried to drag himself away from his ghoulish attacker. The pain dulling his mind gave way to empty blackness as he sank into merciful unconsciousness.

***

A minute later a boxy ambulance turned onto the road, crawling through the blinding fog. As it neared Jurgensen’s cruiser, the medics spotted the fuzzy red glow of its taillights, diffused by the dense white mist.

“That must be it,” said Kerri Rosada, grabbing her first aid bag. “Pull behind the cruiser. Close to the curb. We don’t want some idiot hitting us in this soup.”

An exotic mixed race beauty, Kerri had a laidback nature and a sassy sense of humor that made her a pleasure to work with. Her partner Hector Ramirez had a secret crush on her, but was intimidated by her supermodel looks. She teasingly called him Mr. Marshmallow, because he was “puffy and sweet.”

Hector parked behind the cruiser and they climbed out. Switching on their flashlights they searched for the reporting officer with their beams. They found him lying next to his cruiser, unconscious, with the zombie feasting on his leg. The emergency lights of the ambulance flashed over the scene, adding a hellish tint to the fog.

“Jesu Maria,” gasped Hector, trying to process what he was seeing. “Stay back,” he cautioned his partner.

Ignoring his warning, Kerri stepped up beside him. “What the—?” She’d seen a lot of disturbing things in her relatively short career as an EMT, but this was almost beyond comprehension. “Jesus, he must be on bath salts. Like that dude in Florida who ate the guy’s face. He doesn’t even know we’re here.”

“He’s in some sick world all his own, that’s for sure,” Hector whispered. “Go call it in
. We need backup. Tell them we need police assistance. Hurry.”

Kerri didn’t move. She was riveted by the ghastly sight. She felt her stomach turn and fought back the sour taste of bile in her throat as the zombie jerked its head back, tugging the remains of Jurgensen’s calf muscle from his leg. “We can’t wait for that,” she argued. “We have to do something now.”

“Call for back-up!” Hector insisted. “And hurry. We can’t handle this maniac alone. He might have superhuman strength, he took down a cop for Christ sake.”

Deciding there was no time to waste bickering, Kerri ran back to the ambulance to call it in.

Hector reassessed the situation and realized they’d be in jeopardy if the madman grabbed the deputy’s pistol. He crept closer, and slowly traced the beam of his flashlight over the lawman’s prone body, careful to keep the light away from the cannibal’s eyes. It was clear that the cop was out cold. He focused the light on his holster and was dismayed to find it empty.

A surge of panic knotted Hector’s stomach… but quickly subsided as he spotted the pistol on the ground nearby. He weighed his odds of reaching it before the lunatic saw him coming. The cannibalistic psycho seemed engrossed in his gruesome repast, but the EMT had seen drug-crazed loonies react with unlikely speed. And the gun was less than two feet from his blood-smeared face.

If I make a play for the gun and he beats me to it…

Kerri returned, clutching a heavy steel pry-bar.

“Did you call it in?” Hector asked quietly. “Please tell me help is on the way.”

“I spoke to Glenda,” Kerri said, her voice uncharacteristically fretful. “She said she’d put out the SOS, but everyone’s out on calls right now. Must be the fog causing accidents. She said the switchboard started lighting up an hour ago and hasn’t stopped buzzing since. Said it’s like a full moon on steroids.”

“Wonderful.”

“Hector, we can’t wait, we have to handle this now. He’ll bleed to death if we don’t get him to the ER. If we act fast we might even save his leg.”

“Okay, you’re right,” Hector said, seizing the chance to impress her. “First we have to secure the officer’s gun, before that lunatic sees it. You circle around the cruiser. On my signal I want you to distract him. Don’t try anything stupid. Just get his attention and back off fast to a safe distance. I’ll grab the officer’s gun. It’s our only chance.”

Kerri wasn’t sure she liked that plan, but
she knew every second was precious and they needed to act immediately or the trooper would probably bleed out.

“Okay
,” she said. “But if that loonie comes at me, put a bullet in him fast and don’t stop shooting until he’s down. I don’t want to end up as dessert.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t hesitate. Just get clear of the line of fire as soon as you get hi
s attention. I’ll do the rest.” He took a position near the back of the cruiser and checked to make sure the gun was where he’d last seen it. It was.
Just a quick dash and I’ll have it,
he thought.

Kerri snuck stealthily around the side of the deputy’s cruiser. Her heart was pounding, the image of the psycho chewing on the officer’s leg meat fresh in her mind. Every step she took felt like it would be her last.

She crossed the front of the vehicle and gazed down at the perp. He was still absorbed in his bloody feast, munching on flesh and gristle with sloppy wet sounds that seemed amplified by the foggy air.

Hector crouched anxiously at the back of the cruiser and gave her a vigorous nod, poised to spring forwar
d as soon as she made her move.

But Kerri hesitated, reconsidering her options. As she watched the back of the zombie’s head bob up and down and heard his gluttonous chewing she decided her best chance was to make an aggressive strike. Hefting the steel pry-bar she rushed forward and clobbered the ghoul with all her might.
His skull cracked loudly and he slumped to the ground, twitching once or twice before he lay still.

“Jesus, Kerri!” Hector exclaimed as he hopped forward and scooped up the gun. “I told you to distract the pendejo, not kill him.” His heart was thumping fiercely but he was secretly relieved. Kerri had spared him from making a life-or-death decision. He’d fired guns at paper targets but never into a live human being.

“I saw an opening,” Kerri replied. “I had to take it.”

With the danger over, they switched into EMT mode. Afraid the deranged perp might make a miraculous recovery while they were working on the officer, Hector dragged his unconscious body several feet towards the curb. He was shocked when he examined him for signs of life. The man’s face was severely mutilated, wounds that he couldn’t have inflicted on himself. And more disturbing, when Hector felt for a pulse, the man’s body temperature felt like that of a corpse.

With an involuntary shiver he dropped the man’s wrist and blessed himself with the sign of the cross.