Read DISEASE: A Zombie Novel Online
Authors: M.F. Wahl
Tags: #DRA013000 DRAMA / Canadian, #FIC015000 FICTION / Horror, #FIC030000 FICTION / Thrillers / Suspense, #FIC024000 FICTION / Occult & Supernatural, #FIC028070 FICTION / Science Fiction / Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic, #FIC000000 FICTION / General, #FIC028000 FICTION / Science Fiction / General, #FIC055000 FICTION / Dystopian
DISEASE: A Zombie Novel (6 page)
“Stop doing that, you’re making me uncomfortable.”
“Sorry.”
He looks at the kid instead. They sit in silence for a while, Casey beginning to feel a little guilty for snapping. Alex peeks over the high back of his chair and they watch the strange scene behind him. Two children, a bit older than him, kick a ball in the middle of the lobby as adults mill about on their day-to-day business.
“You two look like you could be brothers,” Casey says.
“Pretty sure I’d know if I had a dumb, mute brother.”
“He’s not dumb.”
“Oh.”
Danny glances over his shoulder, waiting for someone. “Lot should be here soon.”
“So, she’s your leader, right? That’s what your men said.”
“Something like that.”
The ambiguity isn’t comforting, but Danny is unwilling to elaborate. Casey can tell he’s on edge.
“How old are you anyway?” she asks.
“Why?”
“Just curious.”
“Twenty. How old are you?”
“Old enough to know better,” Casey cracks a smile, trying to ease the weird tension coming from him. Danny stares a moment before a shy smile touches his lips. He relaxes slightly and Casey’s glad. She thinks they’ve been building a rapport, maybe even an attraction, and would hate to lose it now.
She’s struck by how kind Danny looks when he lets his defenses down—young too, when he’s not mad at the world. She would even go so far as to say he’s handsome, but only in the classical, blond-haired, blue-eyed, tall, muscular, and broad-shouldered way. As if anybody would go for that kind of thing. God, he’s only twenty! Twelve years younger than her.
Danny suddenly tenses as an older woman’s hand slides over his shoulder. His half-shy smile drops away in an instant and his face hardens, darkens, ages. As his defenses come hammering back up, Casey is thrown out. The beautiful young man that sat before her transforms instantly into the hardened and grizzled killer she first met. The change in his demeanor is so drastic it raises Casey’s hackles.
“I hope Danny has been treating you well,” the woman says.
Casey doesn’t answer immediately, pausing to take stock of the tiny, woman with wavy grey hair that’s pulled back from her brow with bobby pins. This woman with the power to mutate men. This woman from whom confidence and mettle ripple away in waves.
“Of course,” Casey finally responds.
The woman seems curiously surprised, only for a split second, before it’s covered with a warm smile. Casey notices Opie is back, lurking in the background, listening and watching. Her stomach begins to knot.
“You must be Lot,” she says.
“You’ve heard of me!”
“In brief.”
“I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage then. What may I call you?”
“Casey.”
An older man with a withered face arrives, holding a tray with two steaming mugs. He quietly sets the mugs on the table and leaves without a word.
“And the boy?”
“I call him Alex. He doesn’t speak, or even write for that matter.”
But he sure knows what’s going on, Casey thinks, as Alex snags up the mug of hot chocolate with no attempt at politeness.
“He’s touched,” Danny pipes in.
“Interesting. Touched children are rare for this new world,” Lot says.
“Casey will more than make up for the kid’s burden here. She’s strong. She’s already saved my life—”
Lot shoots Danny a nearly imperceptible look and it shuts him down, silencing him. He’s like a puppy at her feet, Casey thinks,
a beaten puppy
.
“You’ll have to forgive Danny. He can be presumptuous, but I’m happy to see you were able to make it to us safely. Despite his—standoffishness, you and Alex could not have been in better hands. Ultimately Danny always does the right thing, but he’s had trouble with people ever since his father died when he was a child. I raised him myself, did he mention that?”
Danny is on his feet the second the words leave Lot’s mouth. Instinctually, Casey reaches for her bat, and then remembers it was taken from her when they entered the building.
“She doesn’t need to hear that!” Danny says, raising his voice.
Lot raises an eyebrow. “Stop being so temperamental, Daniel, and sit down.”
Danny crosses his arms like a pouting child. Alex jumps from his chair, suddenly interested and already finished with his hot chocolate. He copies Danny move for move. Danny turns and shouts at the boy, his anger finding a convenient outlet. “Stop that, would you?”
Alex continues to look fixedly at Danny, doesn’t bat an eye. It’s as if Danny’s yelling at a rock. Casey gently takes Alex’s hand and pulls him to her. “Quit that, honey, it’s not nice.”
Lot lightly laughs, completely ignoring Danny’s outburst. She reaches over and tenderly pushes Alex’s unkempt hair from his eyes. There’s something about the way she does it that sets Casey’s teeth on edge. Her eyes fall on Lot’s necklace, a blue, spiraled triangle. It makes her uneasy. She’s sure she’s seen the design before, but she can’t quite place it.
Lot smiles at her, catching Casey’s gaze. “Children are such treasures, aren’t they?”
Danny’s furrows his brow; he’s high-strung and Casey wonders how much of his bad attitude has to do with Lot. The woman seems cordial enough, but there’s something that doesn’t sit right. Maybe it’s the way everyone around the place kowtows to her, even Danny—especially Danny. Casey hasn’t known him long, but it’s odd to her that for all his macho grandstanding, he’s like a starved, neutered whelp when it comes to this woman.
The creeps leak down Casey’s spine and she curls her toes inside her shoes. She’s beginning to have serious second thoughts that can’t be soothed by the promise of a hot meal, conversation, and a safe bed to sleep in.
Voices rise above the low hum of activity in the hotel lobby. Shouting. There’s someone in the caged-in foyer, soaked in blood. Casey can tell, even from where she sits, that he’s panicked, calling for a nurse. The guards are jittery, the stocks of their guns held tightly to their shoulders.
The man in the cage is beside himself. Two guards take off, sprinting in different directions to find a nurse,
the
nurse, somewhere in the depths of the building. Judging from the panic of the caged man, someone outside has very little time.
Casey’s instincts as a first responder kick in and she jumps to her feet. It’s impossible for her to sit back and watch an emergency unfold without doing something about it. Lot and Danny both shoot her quizzical looks.
“I can help,” she says.
Danny shakes his head. “They’ll find the nurse.”
“I’m a paramedic. They need someone now.”
Casey is running for the foyer almost before the words fully leave her mouth. If this is a true emergency, and it certainly appears to be, then seconds count to save a life, and she isn’t going to have Danny, or this woman tell her what to do.
“Watch Alex,” Casey shouts back over her shoulder at Danny.
Danny ignores Casey’s command and follows her, leaving the boy behind with Lot. Alex attempts to follow but is held back gently. Lot strokes a calming hand down his cheek.
“Don’t worry Alex, everything’s going to be okay.”
Casey and Danny dash for the front entrance.
Casey bolted up a down escalator. It was utter chaos. She and her partner had stopped to eat lunch in the food court (he had excused himself to go “drop the kids off at the pool”), and then the screaming started.
People ran, shoving each other, stampeding like a herd of mindless animals. Casey’s feet pounded at the folding steps as they passed by. At the top, a little girl in a pink dress crashed to her knees and began crying. The girl’s panicked father wrenched the child to her feet and attempted to drag her away, but it was too late—the seemingly possessed man was too fast. A paper shopping bag was still wrapped around his wrist and his clothes were drenched in blood. Casey couldn’t get there fast enough—running toward what everyone else was running from. She pushed through the glut of bodies panicked to get away.
The girl’s father kicked the bloodied man square in the face. The man’s head snapped back with the blow and his nose exploded, but there was no reaction to the pain, and it didn’t slow him down. Damn tweakers. Meth, maybe bath salts, or some other drug. They were all bad shit, as far as Casey was concerned. Why couldn’t everyone just be content to smoke a little dope? The only thing a stoner ever attacked was a hoagie.
The rabid, drug-addled man lurched again for the girl as she sat on the floor, crying. A man from the crowd suddenly jumped into action. Finally, Casey thought, a Good Samaritan.
She felt like she was moving in slow motion.
The Good Samaritan tackled the tweaking son-of-a-bitch and the two struggled. They hit the glass railing and the druggie sailed over the side.
People screamed as the meth-head flew through the air, hitting a silvery, hanging decoration.
Sloosh
. One of its long, thin barbs impaled him. His heart and half his ribcage clung to the top of it as he slid down the shaft. The giant decoration swung in the air and the skewered man thrashed like a hooked fish.
Casey couldn’t believe her eyes. He should have been dead. There was no way he could survive, but contrary to all that was good and sane, he
was
alive—and angry.
The Good Samaritan dripped blood from several nasty bite wounds. He stared over the side with the rest of the crowd, in shock. Casey finally reached the top of the escalator. Good thing she was in great shape.
She yelled into her shoulder radio for her partner.
The Good Samaritan turned to face her, blood from teeth marks dripped down his cheek. He was going to need a lot of stitches. Casey reached into her pocket and snapped on a pair of blue rubber gloves.
“I didn’t mean too—” he whimpered.
“It’s okay,” Casey fell back on her training. “I’m here to help.”
***
“HELP! SOMEONE PLEASE!” The man in the foyer is covered in blood and desperate. Casey turns to the head guard, the overly muscled military man that ran the foyer inspection. He swings his gun around to meet her. “Open the cage!” she shouts.
“Back away, lady, we have this handled. The nurse is being located.”
Casey doesn’t lower her gaze, doesn’t back down.
“I’m a paramedic. I can help,
right now
.”
Danny steps up behind her. “Just open the damn door.”
The man’s eyes turn to slits. With a grumble he opens the three padlocks that secure the gate. The surrounding guards tense with itchy trigger fingers.
“Don’t move a muscle, Abel,” someone says to the man inside the foyer.
Abel nods compliance.
Danny turns to the military man and holds out his hand. “Gun.”
Sourly, and with true distain, the man shoves his rifle into Danny’s hand. Danny points to a pouch on the man’s hip containing extra shells. Those also are handed over with displeasure. Casey raises an eyebrow at Danny.
“You want backup, or not?” he asks.
“Sure, no problem.”
They step into the foyer and sprint after Abel, who dashes outside.
The light of an oil lamp glows in the middle of the field surrounding the hotel. Nearby a behemoth of an apple tree rises over the flatlands. It must have grown there unchecked for decades, its massive, leaf-burdened limbs stretching toward the sky. Casey’s feet pound the ground. Something about the tree reminds her of an elderly nun casting desperate prayers to her Lord. She wonders what the hell people are doing out here in the dark anyway.
Incoherent yelling drifts toward them. As if it isn’t already bad enough to be out here at night, the yelling is bound to attract all sorts of unwanted attention.
Casey skids to a stop as they reach the tree where a man is pinned under a thick branch. The man screams as she throws herself down next to him, inspecting the situation. “I’m going to die!” he shouts. “I’m going to die! They’re going to get me!”
Abel slides in next to Casey and covers the man’s mouth with his hand. “Shhhhh, Lawrence! Shhhhh! You’ll get us all killed!”
This only panics Lawrence further.
Danny shoves Abel to the side. “You’re not helping.”
“Danny! Thank God!” Lawrence is genuinely relieved and it quiets him some.
Casey grabs the nearby lantern and holds it closer, assessing the damage—just like riding a bike. “It’s okay,” she says. “I’m here to help.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Casey, I’m a paramedic.”
“Thank God! Praise Jesus!”
Casey looks over Lawrence’s injury. He’s in bad shape. Skin and thigh muscle bulge out around a spear of broken tree branch and there is blood everywhere. The artery is probably nicked. What wouldn’t she give for a proper medic kit, or hell, even a crappy first aid kit?
“I need a belt.”
Abel snakes off his belt and tosses it to Casey.
Danny stands sentry, his rifle steadily trained on the night. Locked and loaded. “Hurry up.”
“I’m hurrying.”
“Faster.”
There’s far off movement in the field, near the woods. Casey slides her hands under Lawrence’s thigh. She loops the belt around it and pulls, straining her muscles. Warm blood squirts from his wound, making the leather hard to grip. She digs her knees into the soft ground and pulls again.
Lawrence is crying. “Hurry up. Oh my God, hurry up.”
“We need to push this branch off of him,” Casey shouts at Danny, without looking up. She ties the belt off and hopes it will hold.
More figures appear in the distance as Danny reluctantly lowers his weapon. “Alright, let’s do it.”
Casey fumbles around the massive, leaf-laden bough. She wedges her hands under it and on her count she lifts with Danny and Abel, trying to roll the branch off Lawrence. It doesn’t budge.
Lawrence screams at the top of his lungs. “Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!” His arms flail, beating the ground as though he were whipping a horse.
Danny smacks the screaming man across the face. “Shut-up!” But it’s too late. The figures in the field hone in on their strike position. They pick up speed.
Casey counts to three again. Her back cracks, her arms waver, but the branch moves. Wood tears away from Lawrence’s thigh. His blood-curdling screams fill the night air, a beacon for the encroaching enemy.
Casey jumps over the branch, back to Lawrence. Despite the Macgyvered tourniquet, blood pours from his wound.
Danny raises his rifle.
BAM!
A moonlit figure flies back and hits the ground.
“Let’s GO!”
The ghoul climbs back on its feet, despite missing a good chunk of head.
“He’s bleeding out!”
“No time!”
Abel rips off his shirt and tosses it to Casey. “Here!”
More figures appear from the night.
BAM!
Danny braces himself against the recoil of the gun and second bullet explodes the skull of the closest marauder. This time when the creature hits the ground it doesn’t rise again.
Abel dances around Casey worthlessly as she jams his shirt into Lawrence’s gushing wound and jerks the tourniquet tighter around it. Still more blood.
“Let’s go!”
Casey ignores Danny.
“NOW!”
“One minute!”
Danny fires his gun again. Another figure drops. More rotten faces are in the distance, many slow and stiff, but others are fast and agile, very close, and undeterred.
Danny can’t keep the monsters at bay any longer. He shouts over his shoulder. “Abel! We’re out of time!” He fires his gun, dropping another creature.
Abel grabs Lawrence’s wrist and rips Casey’s patient from her hands, dragging him toward the hotel. Lawrence screams as a creature attacks them from the other side of the tree. Abel dodges, pulling Lawrence away from its menacing teeth. The thing’s spoiled face and bulging, oozing eyes crank toward Casey. It’s time to run.
Casey jumps up and a jagged burning sears her arm. The spear-like wood from the broken tree tears through her flesh.
Damn it!
It’s deep, bleeding, but she has no time for pain. The wasted corpse lunges for her and she scrambles backward. Moldy, froth covered teeth specked with blood click shut mere millimeters from her face. Skeletal, decaying fingers seize her clothing and the thing drags her to the ground. She can’t get away.
Casey screams. Since the time she understood what these monsters were, she knew this was how it would end: with one of them. But she didn’t expect to be so scared. When one imagines their own death it’s always with a certain amount of disconnection. It can be believed that the end will be met with stoicism, or even with a modicum of benevolence. Everyone thinks they can meet The Reaper with their head held high, but in the end few do. Casey thinks she may meet him having soiled herself.
Danny’s slams the butt of his rifle into the creature’s face and it keels to the side. Unadulterated relief threatens to overtake every ounce of Casey’s being. She watches as Danny kicks the thing to the ground and wallops its skull until it resembles a grotesque, smashed watermelon.
The scene is terrible, and violent, and wonderful.
Danny gives Casey his hand. She grabs it and he hoists her to her feet without effort. Half a second later they are running, horror on their heels and he still holds her hand. Ahead of them a delirious Lawrence struggles against Abel.
Danny and Casey close the gap and she releases his hand—dashes for Lawrence. She grabs her patient’s arm and tries to sling him over her shoulder, but he bucks, swatting her off. His eyes bug in fear and he topples himself and Abel to the ground.
“She’s been bitten!” he shouts.
Casey is shocked. What the hell is this lunatic talking about? His accusing finger points directly at the torn flesh on her bicep.
“What? No, I’m not!”
Abel lifts Lawrence to his feet and Casey steps toward them.
“She’s bitten! She’s bitten!”
Creatures close in from all sides. Casey bites her tongue, restrains herself from screaming back at Lawrence. They’ve run out of time and they need to move.
BAM!
The sound is ear splitting. A beast flies backward, shot in the face. It’s not a kill shot, and even without eyes and a mouth the thing still attempts to find prey.
CLICK.
The sound of an empty gun is enough to send waves of sickness through Casey.
A second creature flies out of the gloom and tackles Abel, tearing into his flesh. Another attacks and Abel’s oil lantern flies from his hand, smashing to the ground, it’s fuel flaring up and igniting the area around them. He screams.
Casey darts for Lawrence and grabs an arm, trying to pull him away. Abel wails in pain as ghouls rip the flesh from his bones. Casey fights against the dying man for Lawrence, but he won’t let go of his friend’s wrist. Flames rise around them, attracting more creatures, like moths. She kicks one away and dodges another.
BAM!
Music to her ears, Danny is finally reloaded and a ghoul’s head explodes like an over-ripe cantaloupe. Abel continues to scream as Casey tightens her grip on Lawrence’s arm and pulls. She leverages all her strength, groaning with effort, but Abel just won’t let go.
BAM!
The screaming stops. Abel’s head caves in from the front and surges out the back. His hand goes limp, sending Lawrence and Casey flying backward. She stumbles to her feet and scoops Lawrence under the arms, dragging the wounded man from the pile of creatures that feast upon Abel. Danny lowers his gun and grabs Lawrence’s legs. The growing fire illuminates eyes, too many sets to count, quickly approaching in the dark.
“Run!” Danny shouts at her.
They dash madly for the hotel, lugging Lawrence. He swings between their arms, a delirious dead weight, while the creatures pursue.
The door of the hotel slides open as they approach, revealing a bank of armed guards beyond the caged foyer. Danny and Casey rush through the entrance with Lawrence dangling between them. They are sealed safely inside as the door slams, leaving the monsters behind them to claw at it, growling and screeching at the top of their decayed lungs.
Outside the fire from the broken oil lantern burns on the lawn, attracting more and more of the horrid walking corpses that populate the surrounding area. The creatures gorge on Abel’s flesh, even as their own chars without notice.
