Waking The Zed (15 page)

Even with her headlights on
, the route was dark. Pam slowed, torn between making good time and maneuvering between the tight lanes safely. Steep rain ditches had been dug on both sides of the road so she had to stay within the lanes or she risked dropping down. This machine was sturdy, but she doubted it could survive the fall and then climb back out.

Pam also kept glancing in her rear view mirror, but did not see any other cars on this lonesome stretch of old road.
The sound of sirens had faded as soon as she turned onto the old road too. Pam figured the minute she saw or heard pursuit she would just have to stop the car, jump out, and try to run into the undeveloped land beyond the ditches.

That seems like a bad idea too
. If any of the Zeds lurked out there in the dark brush, she would be as doomed as if the soldiers caught up to her. Pam had no weapons. She had even abandoned her broken umbrella back at the infirmary. Perhaps she even had a better chance or survival with the military men. But then she remembered they had even botched protecting themselves back in the infirmary.
They still don’t understand the threat
. Right now, her best option just seemed to keep trying to escape in the vehicle as long as possible.

“Am I even escaping?” Pam asked herself out loud. “I could b
e heading right back to Ground Zero instead of towards safety.” Paul, still apparently unconscious, did not answer.

Despite her fear, Pam was still a sturdy farm girl at heart.
Her ancestors had fought on the Sioux side of Little Big Horn and both sides of the Civil War. There was nothing in her personality, natural constitution, or upbringing that would allow her to just succumb to her fear of the living or the dead.

The road was
very dark, and she took turns quite a bit faster than the posted speed. She had no way to see the two cars that had collided and blocked the street right at the end of a sharp right turn. With the sound of screeching brakes and tortured metal, she swerved and stopped the vehicle after plowing through a late model Ford Ranger. The momentum of her vehicle shoved the pickup down into the rain ditch. With her heart pounding, she threw the car out of gear and tried to assess the damage. Then it occurred to Pam that somebody might be injured in the pickup. She cursed beneath her breath.

Her leg ached from stomping on the brakes, and
her arms felt wrenched from grasping the wheel, but she did not seem to feel badly injured. More alarming, Paul simply slumped forward in his seat belt.  She turned on the interior light and saw a thin trickle of blood on his thigh. She wondered how he had sustained an injury like that belted to his seat.

“Paul, we have to get out now,” she said. She moved her hand to shake his arm. He suddenly jerked back in the seat and seemed to flop around in his seat belt. His eyes had popped open but he looked very disoriented and unaware of his exact surroundings. “Are you in shock?” she asked.

Just then she noticed two figures rising from the rain ditch. One appeared to be a tall man. The other looked like a slim young woman. Pam rolled the window enough to should at them for help. She saw them turn their heads and approach. As she watched them, she became convinced that there was something odd and jerky about their movements. Maybe they were injured, but neither figure replied. As the man crossed near her headlights she saw a shard of glass sticking out of his shoulder. Pam cursed and quickly closed the window and set the door locks. Why had it not occurred to her that they might be infected creatures?

She frantically looked around the vehicle for anything that could be used as a weapon.
All she saw was a hard laptop case on the floor in back. She grasped the handle but doubted it would provide much protection. Meanwhile, the two Zeds lurched and ambled towards her vehicle.

The vehicle still ran and it occurred to Pam that her best option would just be to try and creep away from them.
In fact, a better option might just be to plow into them as I drive away.
As she began to put the car into gear, she saw headlights in the mirror behind her. This was either an innocent driver or her military pursuit. She honked to get the approaching vehicle to slow down in either case. She hated to draw more attention, but she did not need to be rear ended by an unsuspecting driver right now.

It was then that
she saw Paul lurch towards her. Now the wound in his thigh was bleeding freely. How had she not noticed that he had a rip in the seam of his work pants before? George had succumbed to his wound very quickly. Dr. Klein and Dr. Lincoln had taken longer. But she had no time to ponder the question of why it had taken Paul so long to turn. In the dim light she could see his red rimmed eyes. He snarled.

She threw the laptop case up between them, fending him off with both hands.
His movements were uncoordinated and they lacked the power she would have expected from a tall young man. Still, she suspected that if he managed to get a good grip on her arm or her hair, she would be in trouble. Her breath came out in ragged gasps as she held the hard case up as a shield between them.

T
here was certainly no way she could drive while fending him off. She also doubted she had the strength to throw him out of the vehicle without risking a bite or scratch. He was still constrained by her seatbelts but his long arms could reach her. Her only option seemed to be to exit the vehicle. She managed to get her left hand behind her to crack the door open. Then she released her own seatbelt and dropped to the ground. The thing that used to be Paul, the medical student, roared in frustration as it strained against the seatbelt.

N
ow the two walking Zed were very close, and they seemed to be ambling up to her much more quickly, excited by the sight or maybe the smell of her out in the open and unprotected by a vehicle.

Pam really had no time to notice the approaching vehicle as she dropped to the ground and looked for an escape route. The brilliant doctoral candidate had been reduced the state of a primitive prey creature. But even then, her
agile mind kept frantically grasping for solutions.

She figured her best chance would
certainly be to make it to the brush and trees where she might find a large branch she could use to crack the heads of her undead pursuit if they got too close. The things could walk, but they did not seem very coordinated. She figured she could outdistance them easily if she sprinted. A few hours ago she had been using high tech equipment in a modern laboratory. Now she just needed a good solid wooden club.

She did believe she could run a lot faster than the Zed seemed to lurch along, but the dark and steep rain ditch made her way hazardous. Fear of falling slowed her down but the Zed just kept coming. She would have to operate by instinct more than sight. Pam hoped that the isolated road might work to her advantage as it may not be heavily populated with creatures yet. She thought she had a way to evade the two Zed, and Paul still seemed stuck in his seatbelt. She doubted she could hold off against a crowd of the things though.

She hurled the laptop case at the
head of closest Zed and took off running. As Pam sprinted, she did not notice the low road guard. Her right foot connected with it, and the force sent her tumbling down the ditch. She ended up in a heap at the bottom. Winded and shaken, Pam felt a sharp pain as she rolled onto her back. She did not believe she had broken anything, but she had landed on a sharp stone. She forced herself through the roll and saw the tall male Zed above her on the road. He stumbled over the same road guard that had tripped Pam.

As he seemed about to fall on
top of her Pam frantically rolled out of the way. She had no way to see the thirty pound stone stuck in the earth by her head. She simply felt the sharp blow as the heavy rock connected with her skull. Then the darkness seemed to become more intense as her vision grew cloudy. If not for her high levels of adrenaline, Pam would surely have already been unconscious.

Only just then, she could not resist the urge to turn her head and vomit. The creature that used to be a tall young man hit the ground
with a loud and mindless thump. Pam was certain she heard something crack as one bone or another broke within the young man’s body. Oblivious to his injury, he raised his head. Within seconds she heard him began to wiggle towards her without bothering to regain his feet.

Pam knew she needed to find one of the heavy stones to crush the thing’s head, bu
t her body seemed to dissolve with weakness. She tried to move her legs to get them underneath her but the action sent another wave of dizziness through her head. She felt the thing’s cold fingertips brush her arm. The sensation felt distant, and the solid world seemed as if it had dropped out from under her.

For a moment, Pam pictured the kitchen in the large old farmhouse where her parents still lived and worked. She guessed they would both be peacefully asleep now, resting after an active day and preparing for another. Instead of feeling panic, she simply regretted not being able to tell her folks what happened or warn them about the catastrophe.

Both her mother and father
had been so proud of her and supportive of her education. She remembered how happy her mother had been when she had gotten to tell all of her friends at church that Pam had been accepted to graduate school and was going to become a famous scientist someday. Now Pam figured she would either become a meal for this thing or a murderous creature that only elicited fear and revulsion until it could finally be put down like a rabid dog. The image of her parents sitting in the large and cluttered farmhouse kitchen filled Pam’s head. She whimpered with regret, pain, and fear.

Her ears rang.
She did not even hear car doors slam or men scrambling out of the car that had been approaching from behind her own vehicle. She had totally forgotten about her human pursuit. A light shone on her face, but it just blinded her more than her blurred vision.

As she turned her head to look into the crawling Zed’s red eyes, bloody face, and snarling open mouth, it was finally Pam’s turn to scream. But all she could manage was a shrill whine as consciousness became unbearable and faded out. A shot exploded near Pam’s ear but it seemed distant, like the echo from another universe.

Hercules Onassis stood five feet five inches in his stocking feet, though he normally wore expensive shoes with cleverly inserted lifts to help him appear a couple of inches taller. The last time a doctor had weighed him, he had tipped the scale’s balance bar at over two hundred and fifty pounds. He had promised that doctor to lose weight after that last visit and then never returned. This extra girth sat mostly around Hercules’s middle, and from a certain angle he seemed almost as wide as he was tall.

Hercules had risen slightly later than normal, having lost electricity sometime during the night. The old electric alarm clock he had relied upon since his school days was still and dark. He had overslept a couple of times in the fifteen years since his parents had retired and
moved to Florida, but Marina the morning prep cook usually called up to his apartment after she arrived to begin the morning prep work in the kitchen. Most days, he was already showed, dressed, and working in the kitchen when she arrived.

This morning, he dressed quickly, forgoing his usual morning shower, and found the ground floor café
kitchen empty.  Marina had worked for his parents before working for him, and he could not remember her ever missing a day at work without calling in. Even the days when she called in to explain an absence were rare.

Concerned, but not angry, he tried to call her. The phone went through to voice mail immediately. Then he tried to c
all her son. The young man helped with The Mediterranean’s evening deliveries after attending a full day of classes at the local university. But now he could not make a phone connection at all. The café’s kitchen phone was dead too. Hercules’ cell phone just beeped when he tried to dial out. He tried to use the cell phone to access the Internet to see if there was news.  Maybe the power outage was all over the city, and Marina was just held up somewhere. Even the omnipresent Internet was down by either trying a Wi-Fi or 4G connection.

Hercules
fiddled with the phone for a few minutes trying to get a connection and finally gave up. Something was amiss. He was certain that as soon as the situation cleared up, Marina would contact him.

Right now, Hercules tried to figure out how he could handle the morning’s usual rush by himself with no electricity.
A frugal man, he could certainly afford to close the popular café for the day, but he hated to disappoint his regulars. Some of the older folks had been coming here for breakfast or lunch several times a week since his parents had opened the place three decades ago. Hercules felt a duty to be ready to serve them strong coffee, sweet pastries, or a hearty country breakfast.

Within an hour, the place could be full of breakfast customers, and he still had no power, much less a selection of pastries to serve them. The two waitresses and the morning cook had not appeared yet either. While Hercules was happy to pitch in to help with any job in his small café, there was little chance he could handle food preparation and serve customers. Without electricity he would not be able to collect credit card payments either. If the situation did not improve quickly, he might just have to close the café for breakfast for the first time in his memory.