Dead Air (Book One of The Dead Series) (20 page)

"Are you al
l right? Steve, answer me," Heather said, her voice filled with concern.

"I'm fine,
” he replied. “Hold on, I'm going to go see what that was."

Sprinting to the front of the building, Steve could see smoke coming from the direction of the marina as a series of smaller explosions shook the air. He was relaying this to Heather when she cut in, "
I’ve gotta go. My beeper just went off. Be careful, there's a lot of weirdoes out and everyone's on edge. A lot of people are going around armed."

"I was just going to say the same thing to you. And don't worry about me, I'm one of the armed
weirdoes," Steve replied.

"
Gotta go," Heather said in a rush and disconnected.

Steve watched the columns of smoke rise into the air for a moment before turning to leave. He already had enough on his plate and this was some
body else's tragedy.

Going down the stairs to the radio station,
he remembered that he’d left the November access codes for the building's doors in the storage compartment between the front seats of his Jeep. The numbers were changed every month for security reasons.

Knowing he had to have those to distribute to the station
’s staff, he started to exit onto the twelfth floor so he could take the elevator down. A scraping noise from the stairwell below caught his attention before he could exit, causing him to freeze with his hand on the door's handle.

The scraping noise was repeated, followed by a thump.

A chill went through Steve's body as he remembered that he’d left his pistol in his backpack and had left his backpack on the floor of his office next to his desk. The scrape thump came again, echoing in the enclosed space. The rational part of Steve's mind tried to dismiss the noise as someone dragging something up the stairs. But fueled by stories of the walking dead roaming around and dining on humans, it didn't take. All he could think about was getting his hands on his pistol.

Easing the thumb latch on the door handle down, he jumped slightly when it made a loud, sharp click. In the silence of the stairwell it sounded as if a bomb had gone off.

About to throw the door open and bolt through, he pulled up short when a voice called from below, "Little help here. Hello, anyone there?"

Shaking his head in disgust at his jumpiness
, Steve called back, "Yeah, hold on," before descending.

Three floors down he came across a man who seemed familiar
but Steve couldn't place where he knew him. With a shiny bald head and hawk like features, the man stood over six feet tall and had wide shoulders. Although he was impressive in size, the man's body was definitely going downhill. A large potbelly hung over his gray work pants and his shirt barely hid the man tits he was growing. He decided that this was what the high school football star ended up looking like twenty-five years after graduation.

Steve
started to introduce himself when the man said abruptly, "Grab that," and pointed to one of the two large, wheeled suitcases next to him on the stairs. Ignoring the man's order, Steve stuck out his hand saying, "Steve Wendell, KLAM Radio."

Looking annoyed, the man shook hands and gave a grunt in acknowledgement. Grabbing the handle on one of the cases, he looked from the other to Steve as if to say,
what are you waiting for?

Right then, Steve named him The Fat Football Fuck
, or Triple F for short. Although irritated at the man's brusque manner, he obliged by grabbing the handle of the second suitcase. Surprised at how heavy the bag was he asked, "What floor?"

A clipped, "Twelve," came in response.

That's how I know him, Steve thought. I must have passed him in the hall.

The wheels on the suitcase were too small to work on the stairs
so it was a matter of manhandling it up the incline until he reached the landing on twelve. Once there, Steve tried to turn over his burden, but fat football fuck ignored the proffered handle and said in a condescending voice, "It’s just down the hall."

Before Steve could protest, Triple F turned and went through the door.

Steve kept his cool as he followed him down the hall in the opposite direction from the station. Stopping in front of the last suite, Triple F unlocked the door and wheeled his case in before he came out, grabbed the other case and re-entered the suite, shutting the door behind him without a word.

"
You’re welcome," Steve said to the empty hallway.

The sign on the door read
: Brian Harrison, and below that, Money Market Specialist.

Steve decided to come back with a laundry m
arker one night, cross out the Money Market Specialist and write ASSHOLE in its place.

As he turned away,
he concluded that acting out by doing something like that would be petty and childish. With this in his mind, he vowed to do it that evening.

Walking back down the long corridor,
he spotted Jonny G coming out from the short hall that served the elevators and stairs. The intern caught sight of him and started talking a mile a minute about what he had seen and heard on the Internet, TV and on the streets.

Steve listened for a moment to see if Jonny had heard any new
information, but he was just rehashing old news. Holding out his keys, he told him to go down and retrieve the new security code from his Jeep.

"Where are you parked, boss?"
Jonny asked sincerely.

Thinking he was being put on
, Steve didn't answer right away. Then seeing the earnest look on Jonny's face, he finally said, "Same place I park every day, top floor of the parking garage in the spot with the sign in front of it that reads Steve Wendell, KLAM Station Manager."

Eager to please, Jo
nny G went off on his errand, leaving Steve to wonder how the kid found his way to work every day.

He
entered his office and sat down at the desk with a sigh. Glancing at his backpack, he thought about the pistol inside. He'd had two really good scares in the past few days where he could see himself pulling it out and quite possibly using it.

Years ago he had killed two men in Detroit who tried to carjack him at knife point. He had relied on his split second judgment as to whether or not to fire and had been right. Would he be right again in a similar situation?
He knew he couldn't take the chance of putting himself, or someone else, in danger by not reacting to a situation and pulling the trigger, so he compromised in making his second vow of the day in light of the current crisis.

First vow
, find marker for graffiti on Triple F's door.

Second vow
, if in doubt pull the pistol out. I can't apologize to someone for pointing a gun at them if I’m dead. I'll just have to use my best judgment if I put that last half-ounce of pressure on the trigger when the time comes.

Satisfied with his decision, Steve accessed the
station’s news provider in New York but couldn't connect. A message came on screen informing him that the web site was down. Trying their alternative site out of Los Angeles yielded the same result. Giving up and switching to a search engine he typed in: Doctor Lyonel H. Hawkins. Before he could hit the fetch button, his cell phone rang.

Seeing it was Heather again, he felt slightly worried that she would be calling back so soon. Instead of his usual greeting he answered, "This is Steve."

"Listen, don't freak out when I tell you this and go running home because there's nothing there that needs you tear-assing through town to the beach."

Shit, Steve's mind screamed, Ginny.

Keeping his voice calm, he asked, "What's going on?"

"We had a
n attack out on Indian Rocks Beach by one of the dead."

For an instant
, Steve thought she meant The Grateful Dead but quickly grasped what she was really saying. He almost laughed at his own idea of Jerry Garcia eating people on the beach. His mind wandered for a second, questioning whether those who had been dead for a long time could come back to life. Maybe he could take a trip to Paris and watch Jim Morrison rise from the grave. Maybe ask him to sing ‘The End’.

"How bad and who?" Steve asked
as he focused back on Heather.

"One of our divers got killed
.  It happened about two blocks from your place and I asked –." Heather hesitated.

Relief flooded Steve. It wasn't Ginny. His concern now turned to Heather and he asked, "Are you al
l right?"

"I'm fine," She quickly replied. "It's just that I know you're seeing someone and I don't want you to think I'm butting into your life." She added with a laugh, "Even though I am."

Steve laughed and said, "Welcome to my nightmare."

"Well, I asked one of the deputies on scene to swing by and check your place because I know you have overnight visitors," Heather said. Hearing no immediate reply from Steve, and thinking he was mad at her for sticking her nose into his private life, she suddenly blurted out, "I'm not stalking you, I just remembered that you mentioned a while back at Seminole Lanes that your girlfriend was staying over a lot."

Steve laughed, "Its okay, Heather. If I could pick someone to stalk me, it’d be you. Was everything okay at my place?''

"No one was there is what I'm trying to say. I wanted to call and let you know about the incident because I didn't want you running back down to the beach when you heard it on the news. That's why I had someone go by your place."

"Thank you for checking. Knowing Ginny, she's out trying to find an end of the world sale," Steve said.

There, I said her name and made her real Steve thought. Ginny. Now it'll either stop between
Heather and myself or move to the next level. And I don't know what I want to happen.

"I don't want to complicate things," Heather said softly, "but I just want you to know that I find you interesting. I like talkin
g to you and –."

"It's okay," Steve cut in
. "I feel the same way. Let's go easy and see what happens."

"We can do that," Heather agreed
and said, "Listen, I've got to go but I want to call you later."

"Al
l right, I'd like that. Call me tonight," Steve replied, the idea appealing to him more that he wanted to admit. That would also give him time to try and sort out what was going on inside him.

"
I’ll call later when I get a break. Right now I've got to get down to the Marina. Someone accidentally set fire to his boat while he was refueling it and it blew up and set some others on fire. I've got to work traffic control."

They said their goodbyes and hung up.

Not wanting to think about what he was getting into with Heather, Steve clicked the Fetch button on the computer screen and lost himself for hours in what Doctor Hawkins and the rest of the world was doing. Although the pictures and stories were disturbing, what bothered him the most were the huge chunks of the Internet that seemed to be disabled or simply gone.

***

Steve looked at the gas gauge again as he pulled into the parking spot at his apartment. "Damn, and I thought I had everything covered," he said to himself.

After going up on the roof to check that the automatic overflow for the water tank had shut off,
he’d decided to call it a day. Noticing he was low on gas when he cranked up the Jeep, he spent the next hour going from service station to service station looking to fill up. Nothing. No one had any fuel left or they were keeping it for their own use.

One of the first things they tell you in preparing for a disaster is to make sure you fill up on gas, Steve told himself,
and you blew it. How many gas stations did you pass in the last two days and not even give it a thought.

Although
his plan didn't call for an excessive amount of driving once he put it into effect, he still needed to be able to get around until then. With under a quarter tank left, he wouldn't be getting around much.

Looking
around at the cars in the parking lot, he didn't see Ginny's car parked anywhere so he wouldn't be able to siphon gas from her. He’d spoken to her earlier to remind her about the staff meeting the next day and to find out her plans for the night. She wasn't sure whether she was coming over or not since she had the day off after she showed up for his stupid meeting, as she called it, and wanted to spend it with her friends.

He’d
asked what they expected to do with all the malls and stores shut down, to which Ginny replied that everyone was all worked up over nothing. Things would be back to normal in no time. Besides, she said defiantly, the clubs were still open. Seeing an argument looming, Steve made an excuse about having to check on Brain in the control room and said goodbye.

Reaching over to the passenger seat, he undid the flap on his backpack and extracted the Glock. Grabbing the bag with his other hand, he looked around before exiting the Jeep. Holding the pistol close to his thigh to conceal it, he walked quickly to his door and let himself in. After bolting it behind him
, he felt slightly more secure and let himself relax.