Zombie Patrol (9 page)

“
Well, what do you want to do?” asked Jared.

Anna stood with her hands on her hips, taking in the trashed hallway, the empty rooms.

Something’s wrong,
she thought.

When she didn’t immediately answer, Jared said, “Hey, you got anything to eat?”

“
Are you kidding?”

“What can I say? I’m a growing boy.”

Anna tried to push away the need for caution that she was presently feeling. The two black-suited weirdos at the zoo had freaked her out a little. And now this...this mess. And where the heck were their house guests?

“Please,” whined Jared. “Anything. A Pop-Tart maybe.”

She hated when Jared got all whiney. Like a kid. Anna wasn’t a kid. She was almost an adult. At least, she felt like she was almost an adult.
She turned to him and forced a smile. “Fine. How about leftover spaghetti? I can nuke it.”

“
Sounds good.” He didn’t mean to say it so loud. The place was like a tomb; it seemed to call for silence.

The two headed down, where Anna placed a large portion of the leftovers into the microwave and hit START. Jared liked having Anna wait on him. It almost felt like they were a real couple.

As they waited, Jared said, “So, what were you expecting to find?”

“You mean here?”

“Yeah.”

“Well,
I wanted to see for myself what my dad told me,” she said. “I never thought my Uncle Joe could be dangerous to anyone. I’m glad my dad took them to the doctors’ office.”

“
If
he took them to the doctors,” Jared said, for reasons he didn’t entirely know.

“
Of course he took them,” she replied. “Just like you said upstairs. It makes sense. You have to make sense once in a while.”

“Ha ha.”

“Anyway, where else would they be?”

“
They could be howling at the moon,” Jared said lightly.

“
Stop it. Besides, it’s daytime.”

Anna was getting paper plates out for them when Jared, on a wild whim, reached around her and tickled her. Anna squealed and faced him. “You’re in big trouble now!”

She playfully pushed him as he grabbed her and held on, pulling her in close. The disorder upstairs momentarily forgotten, she lightly pushed him away and darted around the kitchen table. He chased her. Running around the table, laughing, he finally caught her and they ended up crashing to the floor. He rolled on top of her and locked her arms above her head.

“
Stop!” she laughed.

“
Make me.”

Anna felt a rush of passion, something she’d been denying for many months now. But with him on top of her, looking at her with those big puppy eyes, well, she finally gave in to him. She was certain he was going to kiss her. She welcomed it. Wanted it. Her first kiss...

* * *

That moment, sweet and pure as it was, was suddenly broken by sounds from below. Not just sounds but...grunts and growls. Wild animals? Anna instantly knew that the noises were coming from the cellar.

The romantic moment fled as quickly as it came.

“
What’s that?” Jared was suddenly alert.

“I don’t know,” said Anna, getting up. “But it came from t
he cellar.”

If I’d known Anna had gone home, and alone with Jared—a father’s greatest fear; that is, a daughter alone with a love-struck teenaged boy—I never would have gone with Carla. Anna’s actions set off a complex series of events that could have been avoided. But then again, maybe it was all inevitable.

Carla took me to her base station, the Sheriff’s Department on Hollywood Boulevard. It was a fairly busy station on the cusp of true Hollywood, but Carla had a small cubicle of her own, where she kept track of the goings on in her jurisdiction, mainly, the observatory and its surrounding neighborhoods. Carla had a pretty sweet beat, compared to some of the other deputy sheriffs. Sure, she was required to keep tabs on the local gang and vandalism activities, break up the ritzy Los Feliz noisy parties, and she occasionally worked with crime detectives in the never-ending violence that ensconced the area. But she maintained a fairly local region. She couldn’t have had it much better.

Carla inconspicuously led me to her cubicle and slipped out of her jacket. I sat in the small office chair meant for the occasional witness or colleague.

“
Okay,” she said quietly as she booted up her computer. “What do you need, specifically?”

“How about searching for an APB, for starters?”

“Your brother?” she asked, not missing a beat.

“Gee,” I said. “You must be a cop.”

“Shut up. What’s his full name?”

“
Joseph Bradford Carter.” I rattled off his birthdate and residence address as she entered the search.
“
Can you check his friend, Mike?”

“
What’s his last name?” She started typing again.

“
Mendoza.”

Carla looked at me. “Carter, do you know how many guys named Mike Mendoza there are? It’s like searching for John Smith.”

I sighed. I next asked her to check any alerts or bulletins that might be coming across her desk. It took only a few clicks before she started nodding. “Bingo. There’s a warning about scattered illnesses in the military. Quote: ‘Yellow alert: soldiers displaying flu-like symptoms. If found, keep distance and contact local military base. Medics will be dispatched to remove and retain any affected persons.’ Huh.”

“Flu-like
sounds about right,” I said.

“And keeping a distance.”

I nodded and felt sick to my stomach all over again. God, what had my poor brother gotten himself involved with?

Carla announced a discovery. “Here’s your APB.” She clicked a few buttons and picked up the freshly printed pages from a printer next to her desk. “The APB is not only for your brother but his friend Mike, too.”

She handed the pages to me. “AWOL,” it read, followed by another acronym: “A&D.” Which meant, of course, “Armed and Dangerous.”

I stood, hardly believing what I was seeing. Armed and dangerous meant, of course, that officers could shoot at will. “I need to see him—”

Carla wisely grabbed my hand and pulled me down. “Quiet, Jack.” She was right, of course. This was the last place to make a scene.

My head pounded. Worse, a wave of dizziness threatened to overtake me. I took in some air, and focused my breathing. What should have been a nice visit with my brother had spiraled completely and totally out of control. Into something unimaginable. An APB for his arrest? Armed and dangerous? AWOL?

“I don’t know what to do,” I heard myself say, and it might have been the first time I’d admitted something like that in a long time. I was good at my job. Busting up gang activity, drug activity and handling wild animals in my parks seemed to be right up my alley. Dealing with this...not so much.

“I don’t either,” said Carla. “But let’s get out of here and figure something out.”

I couldn’t have agreed more.

Anna and Jared tiptoed toward the cellar, ears attuned to the noises on the other side of the door, neither hardly daring to breathe. In fact, for both of them, making noise of any type suddenly seemed like a very bad idea.

Had a wild animal found its way into their basement? Anna wondered. Not unheard of, especially since their house backed up to the looming hill. She listened hard, but whatever had made the sound had fallen silent.

As she listened, her ear pressed against the door, she considered calling her dad. But then that would mean admitting she had come home, directly disobeying him, and she hated disappointing him.

So, for now, she waited and listened, with Jared pressing close to her. Maybe a little too close. And he was smelling kind of sweaty. She wrinkled her nose and pressed her ear harder against the wooden door, listening. The house itself seemed to be waiting, very still, as if preparing for a storm. Then again, her dad always told her she had an overactive imagination. Anyway, whatever had made the sound seemed be—

Wait, there it came again.

It was a grunt. A human grunt. Worse yet, it sounded like it could have been from...

“It’s my uncle,” she declared.

“
Wait, what?” whispered Jared.

She reached for the cellar doorknob.
“
Uncle Joe. I know it’s him.”

“What are you doing?”

“
I have to see. He won’t hurt me. He would never hurt me.”

Jared moved between Anna and the door, still whispering. “That didn’t sound like anything close to normal. You should wait for your dad.”

“
What, so he can forbid me to see what’s going on? Whatever it is, I can handle it.”

Jared understood her well enough to know her stubborn streak, and tried to be noble. After all, Jared would have done anything for Anna...even go down first into a creepy basement filled with strange and guttural but human noises.

He said, “
At least let me go first. Oh, and get a kitchen knife.” He raised a hand in peace at her protest. “Just in case, Anna. Maybe it’s not your uncle, or maybe he’s in trouble. Either way, we’re stupid to not have a weapon.”

Anna crossed to the counter, still tiptoeing, and retrieved the largest knife she could find. “Don’t you dare hurt my uncle. Maybe I should go first.”

“
Let’s go together. Side by side.”

It didn’t help that the door
creaked
open. They both jumped at the sound; indeed, the creaking seemed to reawaken the groans from below, too. Anna always hated the fact that the chain-pull for the light was at the bottom of the stairs. She hated it even more now.

Who the hell puts the light pull at the bottom of the stairs? she thought for the hundredth time.

And so they descended the shadowy stairs, afraid, touching shoulders, and very nearly holding hands. Only the ambient light from the kitchen above lit their way.

Halfway down the stairs, the shadows of two figures stopped the teenagers dead in their tracks. Now, in the faint light, Anna could see, amazingly, astonishingly, that the figures were her uncle and his friend.

“Oh, my God!” she said and, to Jared’s surprise, hurried down the steps to the dangling light chain-pull below.

Anna hadn’t taken the time to think of what she might find down here, but she sure as hell wasn’t expecting the horror waiting for her.

“Holy shit!” said Jared behind her when the light splashed across the square-shaped room made of brick and sporting various support beams.

And secured to two such beams was, to her utter shock, her Uncle Joe and his friend Mike. Both recoiled from the light, trying to shield their eyes, and neither showed any signs of recognizing her. Mostly, they looked horribly ill with skin that was a deathly gray, and vomit and foam dripping from their mouths and onto their clothing. Although shielding their eyes from the single bulbs, Anna noticed two things about their eyes: they were blood red...and angry.

So angry.

Additionally, both were handcuffed, which meant her dad had something to do with it. She was beginning to see why her didn’t want her coming back alone.

Yeah, she got it now.

“
Uncle Joe!” Despite her fear, Anna took a step toward him. He cocked his head. Listened for a second, then bared his teeth and lunged. Anna screamed and jumped back. If Jared hadn’t held her up, she would have fallen.

The chained men regarded the young pair and yanked on their handcuffs harder, the metal cutting into their wrists. Their eyes...so red, so filled with hate.

Not hate,
she thought.
They’re sick. Just sick...

“
Anna,” said Jared behind her, his voice barely above a whisper, “we’ve got to get out of here.”

“No!” she said loudly, tearing free of his grasp. “We’ve got to do something. Look at them!”

“
Oh, I am,” said Jared softly. He didn’t know Anna’s uncle or this other guy, and right now he didn’t care if Lady Gaga was chained only a few feet away. “Anna, you can’t touch them. Let’s get out of here. Now.”

“We have to help them! Look, the light is hurting their eyes.”

Jared grabbed her hand, tightly. “There’s something wrong with them, Anna. Something bad...and if they weren’t chained up...Jesus, look at how they’re looking at us. They want to friggin’ kill us.”

“I’m not leaving.”

“Yes, you are. I’ll turn out the light for them, but we’re getting the hell out of here and away from them.” He took her hand and pulled her back toward the stairs. She resisted, but not by much. Just then, one of the men—her uncle maybe, he didn’t know—literally lunged at them like a caged animal.

Jared didn’t like the thought of switching off the light, but he figured it was best to leave things the way they had found them—with the lights off.