Dead Air (Book One of The Dead Series) (23 page)

Permission was granted.

Fort Myers
, Florida:

Stephanie Lynn sat on the couch, oblivious to most everything around her. An hour earlier she had taken her
nighttime dose of psychotropic medication and then for good measure topped it off with two Klonapin and an Ambien. She was feeling no pain.

Originally told at age fifteen that she had mild bi-polar disorder, the great wastepaper basket diagnosis of the twentieth century, her doctor put her on a drug used to treat seizures. Stephanie found she liked the relax
ed feeling the medication gave her, along with the familial attention she received from being the injured child. She continued to play the poor me role to the hilt while staying buzzed.

Neither
of her parents had any history of mental illness in their lineage but each was sure that Stephanie's disorder had been passed down on their side of the family tree. Seeing this parental guilt made it easy for Stephanie to manipulate them into paying her bills, sending her to private school and generally letting her glide through life without taking on any responsibilities.

At the age of eighteen
, the medication quit giving Stephanie the good feeling she craved and she started having to deal with the average ups and downs of living life on life's terms. After doing a little research into different drugs, she immediately started having anxiety attacks and dangerous mood swings. After a quick trip to the psychiatrist, she came home with a bag full of samples to see which worked best to keep her on an even keel. It was not that her problem had blossomed into schizophrenia, though Doctor Jonstone believed it had, she was just looking for that nice warm cocoon to slip back into.

Two things happened that day
.  She found a medication that made her oblivious to all around her and she decided that to keep up with her new found way of life she needed to change her major to psychology.

With mom and dad footing the bill, Stephanie emerged years later with a master's degree, no real life work experience
and an endless future of bouncing from one psychotropic drug to another. After eight years of short-lived jobs (she was let go from three alone for falling asleep at her desk) and even shorter-lived relationships (six months was the max) Stephanie finally decided that enough was enough. Signing herself into a detox, she sought to free herself from her addiction. The meds were flushed from her system and her mind cleared, but an ugly truth soon became apparent. After years of altering her body’s chemistry by faking disorder after disorder, the lie had become the truth. She was now manic-depressive and schizophrenic. She actually needed the medications.

At around the same time
an unfortunate accident took the lives of her parents, which while heartbreaking, left her a substantial monthly income from their estate and no reason to get off her butt. This was feeding right back into the root of Stephanie's problem since she had been a teenager. She was just plain lazy.

In the following three years
, she ballooned to over two hundred pounds and was as active as a rock. She had been in one promising relationship with an architect before her final fall into gluttony and sloth, but when her boyfriend saw what he was getting into, he broke it off. When she asked him why, he simply said, "Being with you is like swimming with a brick. It'll take awhile, but in the end you'll pull me under.”

O
n her couch in Fort Myers, Stephanie whiled away the hours, alone and semi-comatose on psych-meds while watching pointless reality television and talk shows.

Earlier th
at day, she had gone to the Target store to pick up her prescriptions and was surprised to see Halloween decorations. Deciding this year she would give the good trick or treater’s an extra treat, she bought ten packs of full size Snickers bars and an assortment of smaller bite size ones. The larger candy bars would go to the children she deemed to have the most creative costumes while the kids with the average costumes would get the smaller treats.

By eight
PM, one whole pack of the Snickers bars was gone, but not from handing them out. Stephanie had methodically eaten her way through all eight candy bars while wondering why no one was knocking on her door screaming out a joyous Trick or Treat. Had she looked at a calendar, or watched anything else besides trash on television, she would have realized that Halloween was still two days away. But in her current state, this still might not have registered. By ten o’clock, she was starting to feel drowsy and was considering climbing into bed. Then she heard a scratching noise coming from her door.

Grabbing her depleted bowl of candy, Stephanie went to the
sidelight and looked into the entryway. Catching her breath at what she saw, she thought, oh my God they look so real.

A boy and girl of about twelve years old stood scraping at her front door with their fingernails. The boy
’s head looked pinched, as if it had been squeezed in a vice. One eye bulged grotesquely while the other dangled loose of its socket, attached only by a bloody stalk. His shirt and chest had been shredded, with strips of flesh and fabric hanging down and mingling together to make him look as if he wore a grass skirt. Bite marks, oozing black puss, decorated his arms as if he had tried to fend off an attack by something diseased.

The girl seemed in slightly better shape.
Although spotted with blood, she only had one disfigurement. A chunk had been taken out of her left cheek, exposing the teeth and gums on that side. As Stephanie watched, the girl’s tongue poked out through the hole to explore the gaping wound.

Oh
, they look so real, Stephanie said to herself. Definitely deserving of a full size candy bar. Turning the knob, she opened the door and stood expectantly, a Snickers bar held extended in each hand.

"What do you say?"
she asked.

Ignoring the candy bars, the two dead pre-teens let out squealing noises as they attacked
Stephanie’s hands, biting off six of her fingers in the initial assault.

Although
Stephanie's screams carried down the street, neighbors were reluctant to come to her aide. They had been following the madness on television for the past few days and were frightened of what they might encounter.

An hour later
, the man who lived two houses down from Stephanie finally talked himself into investigating. Finding her door open and pools of blood in the foyer, he called out, asking if she was all right but got no reply.

Tightly gripping the pistol he carried, he side stepped the blood and moved into the house. A noise from the darkened hall on the right caught his attention so he stopped and called out again in that direction.

The door at the end of the corridor was open and light filtered in to silhouette a hunched over figure that came to the entrance. After a short pause, it started to shuffle toward him.

The good citizen had heard the stories on the news and had read the reports on the
Internet so he knew what to do, but first he had to make sure that the person coming toward him was dead.

As Stephanie advanced on him, she came into the light from the living room. Seeing the missing chunks of flesh on her
neck, the fingers that had been bitten off and an arm that had been stripped to the bone of flesh and muscle, this was all he needed.

Raising his pistol,
he took careful aim and squeezed off two rounds into Stephanie's head, throwing the now nearly decapitated body back several feet.

Taking a deep breath, he backed away while keeping his pistol trained down the hallway, deciding that whoever did this might still be
here. All he wanted to do was to get back to his own house and barricade himself inside. No more trying to help anyone, just look out for himself and the hell with everybody else.

He made it
all the way to the front door leading into the night and safety when he realized that he had been holding his breath. Letting it out in a rush, he had turned to go when he saw that two creatures from his worst nightmare blocked the way.

He didn't even get a chance to scream before the children were on him.

Clearwater
, Florida:

Five men from the Pinellas
County Sheriff’s emergency services unit formed up at the mouth of the storm drain to listen to a lecture from the City Utility Supervisor as to what to expect below ground. Their original plan had been to go in at nine in the morning, but due to the heightened activity in their jurisdiction it had been decided to move the operation up eight hours. The new briefing dealt with what they might encounter in the nighttime tunnels that crossed beneath the city.

Another reason for the early jump off time was because of reports coming in from all over the country
relating how the dead hid in sewer and drainage systems. After hearing this, the ESU supervisor had made the decision to be proactive and seek out the flesh eaters before they emerged in groups too large to be dealt with.

The utility supervisor,
a clip on necktie-wearing city executive named Gordon, called for everyone’s attention before speaking. "Okay, I know my assistant briefed you on what to expect during a daytime penetration of the maze, but since you're going in at night, I’ve got to update you on what's different."

Gordon cleared his throat before continuing. "The critters you'll run into during the day are the same ones you'll see at night but they'll be much more active. The rats will be out and feeding and the bats will be coming and going from their roosts.
We've got grills over all the outflows that go into retention ponds but occasionally we still get a gator in the system. As you know, a gator is more active at dawn and dusk, so if you're still inside come daybreak, be careful. You've got your maps, so you shouldn't have any problems getting around. The only confusing spot is the main junction underneath the downtown area. Thirty-two separate pipes flow in and out of there, so make sure you check the numbers painted at each intersection against the map. We haven't had any rain in a while and you're above the water table here, so it should be fairly dry down there. No rain is forecast so that’s a good thing too."

Gordon looked around at the hard
-eyed men to see if they had any questions. Seeing no quizzical looks, he finished up by saying, "I'll let you get on with it then. God bless and I wish I was going with you."

As Gordon was turning to leave, one of the ESU men stopped him by saying in a sincere voice, "We've got extra gear in the van. We'll wait until you suit up."

Gordon gave the man a tight smile and hurried off.

The team leader, Lieutenant Atkinson
, said, "Stow that shit, Two" calling the man by his designation number. "It's time to tighten up. Gordon's been very helpful and you wouldn't be able to find your own ass with both hands and a six man search party down there without his maps."

The rest of the men laughed at Two as Lieutenant Atkinson, designated One, continued, "There's not supposed to be any
one working down there but that doesn't mean we won't run into anyone. The homeless use these tunnels all the time so make sure of your target before you fire. And also make sure it's not one of us. Remember your fire control and put at least two rounds into its head. We won't have radio communication with the surface, but we’ll be able to talk to each other on our com-links. If you get separated, try to reestablish contact. If that's not possible, move to the nearest vertical shaft and exit the maze. Any questions?"

Five, the newest member of the team
, spoke up, "Do you think we'll find something down there?"

One gave him a serious look before replying
, "More than three hundred people have been reported missing in Clearwater over the past couple of days. It ain't the rapture, so they didn't go up. My bet is that they went down."

Five swallowed hard and nodded.

"Weapons check in ten minutes. Smoke 'em if you got 'em 'cause once we get below the smoking lamp is out."

U
nder normal circumstances, entering the subterranean network of tunnels beneath a city took a certain type of person. To do so with the threat of attack at any instant by something no longer human took a person with nerves of steel.

The ESU team advanced cautiously but rapidly through the
five-foot circumference tunnels that led into the maze. Their path crossed numerous smaller outflow and inflow pipes. When they approached anything big enough to conceal a human, they did so with caution.

At first tense, the team slowly relaxed and fell into a steady rhythm as they cleared these possible hazards. One man would approach a cross tunnel as the other man behind him provided cover with his MP5 machine gun. The man behind him kept an additional eye on the situation while
the other two faced the rear to prevent a possible ambush from that direction.

After hours of this, Two voiced the thought that was on a few of the
men’s minds, "This is a snipe hunt. There's nothing down here in this sewer except rats."

One turned to look at him saying, "And one
great big turd. That's why I call you number Two." A few of the men chuckled at this, including Two.