The Dead Hunger Series: Books 1 through 5 (57 page)

The thing eating the dog never looked at us.  I pulled out my cell phone as I peeled out of the parking lot and headed back onto
Mahan Drive towards downtown.

I needed to get this woman to a hospital and fast.  I didn’t plan to wait there for an ambulance.

What I saw on Mahan Drive wasn’t much better.  I drove west as fast as I could, having no idea where the hospital was.  I knew I was heading in the direction of city hall from the signs I saw, so the police station would have to do if I didn’t pass a hospital along the way.

My head was spinning, and I couldn’t catch my breath.  “Ma’am, just keep calm, okay?  You’re safe now,” I said, dodging stopped cars and blowing through traffic signals.  “I’m taking you to get help.”

The screams from behind me were unrelenting.  Suddenly she sat up in the back seat and began pummeling me in the head and shoulders, yelling things that I couldn’t understand.

My heart was pounding at a speed that should have killed me as I ducked low to avoid her fists.

I couldn’t take it anymore.  I pulled the car to the right side of the road and slammed on the brakes, throwing her into the back of my seat.  Then I turned and hit her.  I hit her hard and she slumped back into the seat, unconscious.

I’ve never hit a woman before, and I never shared that with Charlie or Gem or Flex.  They’ll read it here, and I hope they understand.  It was suddenly about survival, and had she kept it up I would have crashed the car.

My heart had doubled speed by then.  No heart was made to produce that many beats per minute, and the blood was pumping through my veins so fast I swore I felt as though I’d rip the steering wheel right out of the console as I pulled the car back onto the road and floored it.

Almost immediately upon my return to the road, I saw a sign with a big “H” on it, and it directed me north on Magnolia Drive.  I cranked the wheel and floored the Camry for all it was worth.

The glow in the distance was the first thing I noticed at the top of the hill.  It wasn’t just a glow.  It looked like hellfire itself, and the smoke became so thick I closed off the incoming air and put it to re-circulate.  But by then it was too late.  My eyes watered and my lungs began to burn, but I drove faster, swerving around cars that had, for some reason, stopped in the traffic lanes, their drivers nowhere to be seen.

The arrow on the next sign said Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare, and it pointed directly to the mass of flames.

The road ahead was clogged beyond passage, and then I saw what was too horrible to be true.

The hospital was fully engulfed, and bodies lay everywhere among the wrecked cars and carnage.

I had to find a detour.  I cranked hard left up Doctor’s Drive, and came to a quick dead end.  Throwing the car into reverse, and checking on my unconscious passenger at the same time, I reversed until I found a small residential street heading in the general direction I needed to go to get to the police station, which was still supposed to be around there somewhere.

That street t-boned into
Miccosukee Road, and I turned left to distance myself from the burning hospital.  At the next available right I turned, finding myself on Marion Avenue.  The signs for the civic center and police headquarters appeared again, and I followed them at speed, turning left onto 7
th
Avenue.  I floored the car, but saw that I wouldn’t get far.  People and cars were everywhere ahead of me.  People running, staggering, all of them either like the crazed woman in the parking lot of the Antique Car Museum or like the victim in my back seat.

I kept the pedal to the metal and raced to the point where I’d have to devise another plan.

It happened at Mitchell Avenue.  A Volkswagen convertible was flipped over, and as far as I could tell, two teenaged girls were dead.  There was also an old Ford pickup, a newer Dodge Charger, and four other cars that were so smashed I wouldn’t wager a guess of make or model.

I slid the car to a stop, made sure I had my wallet, and pulled the unconscious woman from my back seat and threw her over my shoulder again.

Now I’m not a Flex-like strong man.  I work out moderately, and these days I’ve built up some pretty impressive muscle from all the heavy work we’ve been doing.  But at that time I was no muscle head. 

I’m  medium build and not even six feet tall, so while my physique is not what I would’ve ever considered one of my major strengths, the fact that I’m very analytical definitely is.  With that woman on my shoulder, I popped the trunk with my remote and grabbed the tire iron.  It was only about eighteen inches long, but I had a sneaking feeling I might be needing it as a tool of defense.

Wearing my Nike running shoes, which I preferred for walking such as I might have done had I ever made it to the Kennedy Space Center, I ran with that woman on my back.  I was surprised at how easy I found it.

One block.  Terrace Street.  I kept going, driven by natural epinephrine, feeling no pain at all.  I was almost to
Colonial Drive according to the sign, when two people charged straight at us from the trees that lined the side of the road.  They didn’t exactly say anything, but they
screamed
. 

Their screams echoed forth as though originating from a deep, dark cavern located in the bleakest part of a man’s soul.  And in this cavern, human beings were being torn apart limb from limb.  Distant, yet frighteningly close and terrifying.

I shook off the fear beckoned by their wails and raised my arm, slamming the tire iron into the temple of the first one to reach me.  I don’t know what the thing was at that moment, but it had once been a middle-aged man.  He spun around and staggered away as blood flew from his head wound.

You must remember that at this time I didn’t know anything about what had happened.  I knew something had gone terribly wrong; the first thought that entered my mind was that these were escapees from a mental institution, but such a facility would have had to have held the worst mentally deficient patients in the entire world, because they were seemingly all the same
crazy
.

As a scientist, I don’t use the word crazy very often.  I have respect for mental illness, because it’s as much a scientific mystery as any disease, and in fact, is in many ways related.  The difference is, it’s in you.  It is triggered by something.  It’s not a virus or anything else.  It’s fucking cellular, and an experience, either painful or terrifying, or just a damned biological clock that decides it’s cuckoo hour can set it in motion. 

And from that point, you’re unfit to be among the “normal” people.

Sorry about the F word.  Spending too much time with Gem and Flex.  It had to happen.   I am beginning to understand their usage of street vernacular, and believe me, it will happen again.

So I had dispatched the first crazy who approached us, and hefting the woman back onto my shoulder so she wouldn’t fall to the pavement, I ran harder to avoid the other one.  But it didn’t matter, because as I approached North Gadsden, they were everywhere.

And then the woman awoke.  Looking back, I’m surprised it took that long.  She began pounding me on the lower back, and I took it as long as I could before I had to drop her.

Her short red hair falling over her eyes, she stared up at me and screamed, “Where are you taking me!  I’m bleeding!  Oh, my God!  What are you doing to me!”

More of the creatures were coming.  If I ran now I could prevent myself from being surrounded, and the tire iron in my hand wasn’t going to hold them all off, I knew.  I looked down and said, “If you don’t get off your rear end right now and run to save your life, you’re going to die.”

I held out my hand.  “Now!” I shouted.

She stared at it.  I took another glance to my sides.  No more time.

“Get up and run,” I pleaded, looking into her eyes.  All I saw there was confusion.  I reluctantly dragged my gaze away from her and took my own advice. 

I ran.

Zigzagging through them, swinging my tire iron like
I
was the insane one, I wormed my way through the scattered, frenzied group of wild men and women along 7
th
Avenue.  When I chanced a look back, the woman I had tried so hard to help was buried beneath a pile of the relentless attackers. 

It tore me apart, but I kept running.  I came to a large flyover bridge, ran beneath it, and immediately saw the steps to the police station on my right.  I ran faster as tears rolled down my face, the first ones in as long as I could remember; maybe as far back as when my wife and baby died. 

I had almost saved this woman.  I had been so close.  Instead she died back there in the most horrible way.

I should have hit her harder, but that’s not me.

I ran up the steps, turning my eyes from the bodies strewn there, bleeding.  I knew I was being followed, but I didn’t take any more time to look back. 

When I got to the top of the steps, an officer was just inside, having just turned the key in the lock to secure the station.

“Officer, no!  Let me in, please!”

He stared at me, then behind me, his eyes wide.  His name badge said Sgt. Petrie.

I didn’t follow his gaze.  I didn’t have to.  I knew they were there, and I needed to regain eye contact with this man, my only hope of staying alive.

Then I had an idea.  I pulled out my wallet and fumbled to get my shaking fingers on my Center for Disease Control access badge.  I slammed it against the door and said once more, “Please, Sergeant!  Please open it!”

He stared at the ID, looked again behind me, then twisted the key in the lock and pulled the door open.

“Hurry, now!” he shouted.

I didn’t hesitate.  I practically dove in the door and he slammed it just in time for three people to hit the glass, creating an incredible shudder as the entire front of the entrance shook in its frame.

I closed my eyes and slid to the floor, leaning against the reception desk inside.  I stared at those outside, bloodied, horrible.

And terribly sick, or so I thought.

How could I have known they were beyond sick?  How was I to know then that they were dead?

I sobbed as I sat there, for the moment, oblivious to the screaming and running people inside the very building I’d wanted into so badly for salvation.

I simply watched the horror unfolding outside those glass doors, not realizing it was also happening within.

****

I don’t know how much time passed before I realized that things were dangerous inside as well.  My first real indication of it was when another uniformed officer, looking ashen and gray, appeared from behind the desk and charged the officer who’d opened the door for me.

He went straight for the officer’s throat, and with a quick, strong arm, Officer Petrie pushed him away just before his teeth clamped down on his skin.

“Jerry!” he shouted.  “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Hungry!” screamed Jerry, although I wasn’t sure exactly what the word was at first.  I deciphered it later, as I did many things sitting in the cell in which Flex and Gem found me.

Jerry charged again, once more screaming “Fucking starving!”  His voice was a stiff growl, distorted as though his vocal cords were partially paralyzed.  His arms flailed as he got to within grabbing distance of Sergeant Petrie again.

This time Petrie didn’t hesitate.  His gun in his hand, he screamed, “Jerry!” and shot him in the chest almost simultaneously.

The explosion rocked my senses.  I smelled the gunpowder immediately, and blood and tissue ejected from Jerry’s back.  Petrie’s fellow officer flew back against the desk and I scrambled out of the way just before his back slammed into the counter top.

He looked dazed, but he should have looked nothing more than dead.

And of course, I know now that he was, because he pulled himself from against that counter and looked down at me.

Petrie saw immediately that I was the new target.  He moved forward fast, put the gun to Jerry’s head and fired a single shot into his brain.

I was lying on my stomach, my face in my hands, flat on the floor.

“Get up, pal.  We’re going somewhere safe if I can find a place.  Let’s go!”  He reached down and pulled the dead cop’s gun from its holster.

I strained to get up on my shaky legs.  “But we’re in a damned police station!  What’s happening here, officer?”

“I don’t know,” Petrie said.  “But try to keep up with me,” 

He ran down the hall and I followed. 

“It came on fast,” he huffed.  “Some complaints of migraines, several officers called in today.  I thought it was the blue flu, but there wasn’t any dispute that I knew of.  Now this.  I’m saving my breath for now.  Listen to that shit.”

Screams echoed from the hallways on both sides as we ran.

He stopped suddenly and turned.  “Can you handle a weapon?” he asked, a calm urgency in his eyes.

“Yes.  Absolutely.”

Petrie handed me Officer Jerry’s gun.  I wiped the blood from the butt and checked it.  Fully loaded stainless steel .45 automatic.  I wondered why Jerry didn’t just shoot Petrie if he wanted to subdue him so badly, but all of my questions would eventually be answered, one way or the other.