Dead Stop (20 page)

“Who was it,
Marisa? Who was she?”

Marisa closed
her eyes for a second, then opened them and stared at the now still wraith in
the window. The pain in her face hurt for Rachel to see. She had been seeing
that look in her own mirror for longer than she cared to remember.

“That,” she
swallowed, then continued, “is my big sister, Vicki…Victoria.”

“Are you sure?”
Rachel looked from the girl to the dim, death-faced figure in the window. “Can
you really be certain?”

“Oh yeah,”
Marisa whispered and gave another wipe at her eyes. “My mom and I helped her
make that dress for prom. You see, Vicki and I weren’t just sisters, we were
best friends. I was going to wear it for my prom too, when I was old enough. But
instead, I ended up taking it to the funeral home for Vicki. She died a week
before the prom, and never got to wear it…so I didn’t want it anymore. At least
this way she got…”

The girl
swallowed and wiped her eyes again, unable to finish the thought.

“Marisa?” Rachel
reached across the table and took her hand, “What happened to her? Why did she
die so young?”

The waitress
swallowed and took another deep, shuddering breath. She stared somewhere into
the darkness past Rachel’s shoulder, and the doctor knew she was looking at a
scene somewhere in the past.

“School was
almost over for the year,” the girl continued, “and we were at a swimming pool.
Everybody was laughing and cutting up, and having a good time. It was just a
bunch of kids having a party, we weren’t doing anything wrong. We were just
having fun. But sometime during all that,” Marisa closed her eyes and took a
deep breath, “Vicki jumped off the high diving board…and didn’t come back up.”

“Oh, God…”
Rachel started, then faltered. She didn’t know what else to say, other than to
hold the girls hand and let her finish.

“Nobody
noticed,” the waitress buried her face in her other hand, “and by the time one
of our friends got up on the diving board and saw her laying on the bottom of
the pool, it was too late. She was dead. She had drowned right beneath our
feet, and none…and none of us…”

“Easy,” the
older woman stopped her, “I get the picture. You don’t have to say anything
more.”

 “Yeah. Yeah,
I do,” Marisa raised her head and turned her tear stained face back towards the
window. “
Te extrano, Vicki
,” she sobbed, “
Lo siento! Te extrano
mucho! Perdoname
!”

“Marisa,” the
older woman now grasped her by the shoulder, “that’s not your sister. It’s not
Vicki.”

As soon as
Rachel said it, she knew it was true.

Those
were
dead people out there. There was no way around it. And yes, those
were
the corpses of their loved ones standing outside in the driving storm, waiting
for a chance to rip them to pieces…there was no denying that either. But it
wasn’t
them
.

“Doc…I know her
dress…”

“No, listen to
me.” Rachel scowled at the windows herself, “It isn’t
her
. And my Matt
isn’t out there either. Those are their bodies, and something…something obscene…has
happened and has them doing this. But it isn’t
them
. Those aren’t our
people out there.”

“Doc, are you
sure? Are you completely sure about that?”

The desperation
in Marisa’s eyes almost broke her heart.

Damn, Rachel,
she realized with a shock,
Here you’ve been feeling sorry for yourself
and this girl has been living with the grief and guilt of thinking she let her
sister die…and now that dead sister is staring in the window at her. Guess
what, you don’t have a monopoly on grief in this world.

“Yes, I am
sure,” Rachel slowly stood up and stepped out of the booth. “Yes I am…and I
think I can prove it.”

###

Rachel stood up
from the booth and faced the windows.

Behind her, Deke
moved in and sat down in her place. Across the table, Stacey slid in next to
Marisa and embraced her without saying a word. That was a bit of a relief, as
Rachel figured the girl’s friends would probably be a lot more comfort to her
right now.

She looked down
the long line of dead faces that stared in to the diner, and for the first time
that evening…hell, in two years…she felt something other than depressed,
scared, or confused about life.

For the first
time in years, Dr. Rachel Sutherland got mad.

Whether her
clients were human or animal, it didn’t change one very core fact that defined
who she was. The one thing she had always dreamed of, and worked hard to be,
long before she had ever met Matt.  She was a doctor of medicine…a woman
of science, by God…and it was about damn time she started to try and understand
what was going on here. If this was something new, something outside all prior
experience and wasn’t in the books, then it was her job to figure out what it
was.

It was about
damn time for the world to start making sense.

But where to
start?

She raked her
memory of the past hour for clues. She called to mind her encounter with the
creatures in the back door, and then what she witnessed of the fight in the
back hallway. She compared those to the actions of Marisa’s dead sister at the
window, seeking any commonality that might give her an insight into these
things.  It didn’t take long.

What first came
to mind was the posture these things assumed, almost without fail, right before
they attacked. The gaping jaws, the clawlike position of the hands…a posture
bearing no resemblance to the stance a normal man or woman would assume in a
fight or flight situation.

Stacey had said
they were like animals. Rachel was starting to think the girl might be more
right than she knew.

“Stacey,” she
called softly over her shoulder, “is there a way to turn off the lights in
here?”

“Sure,” came the
doubtful reply. “You want to turn off the lights?”

“Just here in
the diner,” Rachel answered, “Not in the kitchen or the store. Can you do
that?”

“Yeah, no
problem. Deke, stay here with Marisa a second. I’ll be right back.”

The little
waitress got up and moved briskly towards the back. Rachel watched her go, then
glanced over at where Harley once again lounged on a bar stool. He watched her
intently and she got the definite feeling this guy didn’t miss a single thing
going on around him, but at the same time he seemed relaxed almost to the point
of being irritating. He was pouring himself another coffee as she watched, and
gave a reassuring grin at her over the cup.

A second later,
the lights went out.

“Whatcha got in
mind, doc?” Harley’s drawl cut through the dark.

Hell, Rachel
grumbled to herself, the guy even
sounded
relaxed. Everybody else was in
different degrees of panic, fear, or despair, and the only thing she could pick
up from this guy was mild curiosity about what she was doing. At the same time
she realized she might be being a bit churlish, and should probably be grateful
there was at least one cool head in the place.

“Something you
said earlier got me thinking,” she replied “How the water running down the
windows seems to blind them.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, I think
that means something.” She cautiously approached a window. “And I intend to
find out if I’m right.”

“Be careful, doc.
We just got them calmed down again, remember?”

“I remember,”
Rachel murmured as she fished her keys out of her pocket and found the little
LED flashlight attached to her keyring. “But I’m betting it’s going to be
different this time.”

She considered her
choices. She found herself faced with the decision of sliding into a booth next
to a window, or going over to the fire door where she would be right in front
of one of these horrors with nothing but a glass door between them. The
veterinarian looked from one option to another.

“I know I’m
right,” she muttered and set her jaw.

Squaring her
shoulders, she approached the fire door.

It was filled
with the hulking silhouette of what must have once been a very large man. It
towered over six feet, and the desiccated hands that hung down on each side
could have easily palmed a basketball in life…now they were talons that could
quite likely gut her with one powerful slash.

“Doc,” Harley’s
voice sounded a little tight now, “Be careful. You’re getting awful close.”

“It’s okay,”
Rachel murmured as she edged in even closer. She concentrated on the large
deaths-head that stared blankly at the door. “It can’t see me yet. And even if
it could, I’m not sure it would make sense of what it sees.”

“Pardon?”

“Just watch,”
she shushed…and clicked her little flashlight on directly in the dead man’s
face.

The powerful
little light illuminated the dripping skull. A terrified shriek and a
suppressed yip of fear came from behind her as the horrible face jerked
downwards to peer at the light source. The monster shifted stance, and leaned
to bring its awful face down level with her little light.

Rachel didn’t
budge.

Instead, she
leaned forward herself, careful to stay behind her light, until she was only
inches from the monsters face.”

“See the pretty
light?” she muttered at the thing while giving the light a little shake.
“Suuurrre you do. And that’s all you see, isn’t it.”

“Doc?” Harley
warned.

“It’s okay,” she
snapped, “Just watch.”

Rachel slowly
moved the light to the right, concentrating on making the motion smooth and
steady.  The skull turned just as slowly to track it. She brought the
flashlight to a stop and held it motionless. As she suspected, the monster
didn’t move for a second, then shifted once again to bring its face near the
light.

“Lizard brain,”
she muttered, “that’s what I thought.”

“Doc?”

“It can’t
reason,” she spoke a little louder. “It can’t make the simple leap that there
must be somebody behind this light. If I were to move it fast and make it act
like prey, it might attack, but it would be attacking the light. This thing is
running on pure hindbrain.”

“Say again?”
Deke spoke up.

“Hindbrain,”
Rachel repeated, now drawing the monster back across the door with the little light,
“or Lizard brain. It’s a small part of our brain near the back, that’s a
leftover from before the time our ancestors came down from the treetops. Hell
it’s from before the time they went up the trees in the first place.” She hoped
she wasn’t stepping on any religious toes here but decided to press on. “It’s
not very smart…as a matter of fact it’s pretty much just pure instinct.”

“So they’re like
wolves?” Stacey’s voice meant she must have returned from the kitchen.

Rachel frowned
and stared at the dead man only inches away.

“I don’t think
so,” she mused while watching its shriveled eyes follow the light. “Not wolves.
I’m betting they’re on a lower level, somewhere between piranhas and
sharks…which in its own way is worse.”

“Worse?”

“Yeah,” the
doctor muttered. “You can scare off a wolf.  Not these things. I’m betting
once one of these spots prey, it doesn’t stop attacking until it either kills
or is distracted by other prey.”

“Christ,” Deke
growled, “that sounds just like the one that jumped on me.”

“Yep, I
remember.” Rachel snapped off the little flashlight.

 Taking
what she was now sure was unnecessary care, she backed a couple of steps away
from the door. She didn’t move again until the dead thing in the doorway
resumed the same waiting stance of its brethren, then she turned and returned
to the booth with Stacey, Deke, and Marisa. Their faces could just be made out
in the dim yellow light that filtered in through the windows from the sodium
vapor lamps in the parking lot.

“But the
important thing is,” she nudged Deke over and eased into the booth beside him,
“is that those
aren’t
human beings.”

“They’re not?”

“No,” Rachel
emphasized, “Not even close. As a matter of fact, think of them as what the
dork in the kitchen called them…zombies.” She ignored Gerald’s outraged
exclamation from the direction of the kitchen door and continued. “It doesn’t
matter who they were when they were alive, these things are just the bodies
that have somehow had their basic nervous system jumpstarted and are running on
some kind of killer instinct. Most of the brain, especially all the higher
parts that make a person who they are, or even a person at all, doesn’t seem to
be functioning.  They don’t even have the frontal brain power to put a
coherent picture together when it’s being distorted by running water on
glass…at least not until it moves and gets close. They barely qualify as
animals.

“So then…”
Marisa haltingly started. “You mean…”

“That’s not
Vicki,” Rachel finished for her. “It’s the body she left behind, and now it has
been taken over by something else. And if she loved you half as much as you
love her, and I can tell she did, then wherever she is she would be horrified
to see it’s become a threat to you. So don’t confuse that thing out there with
your sister…don’t give it that edge. It’s a zombie, and all it wants to do is
kill and eat. It doesn’t matter what dress it’s wearing. Understand?”

She could see
the girl staring at her in the dim light, needing to believe this with every
fiber of her being.

“It’s not her,” Rachel
repeated. “Vicki is at peace…that thing is just a monster that stole her
dress.”

That seemed to
settle it.

Marisa looked at
her a moment longer, her dark eyes huge in the dim light. Then slowly, she
began to nod. She brushed the hair back from her face, continuing to nod to
herself, then pushed up from the table and turned towards the window. The girl
wobbled slightly, steadied herself against the table, then made her halting way
towards the center of the room…where she once again faced the nightmare looking
in through the glass.