Dead Air (Book One of The Dead Series) (38 page)

Running out of the clothing store, Tick-Tock grabbed the edge of its entryway to help him make the
corner at full speed and let the centrifugal force propel him even faster toward the deli door. Steve, being closer, entered the deli first. Scanning the shadows for a target, his eyes locked on an unfamiliar form directly in front of him bent over something in the aisle. He drew a bead on it, but before he could pull the trigger, the thing lunged downward. A second later, Donna let out another scream.

Suddenly Meat popped up from beyond the struggling pair and grabbed a plastic chair off the nearest table. Lifting
it up over his head, he brought it down on the zombie attacking his girlfriend. This produced no result so he lifted the chair to try again.

Not having a clear shot with Meat swinging the chair, Steve hesitated. In the darkness
, lit only by a few scattered night-lights, it would be too east to hit Meat or Donna. Moving forward a few steps, he called to Meat, "Get out of the way." Steve moved sideways, so that the spray wouldn’t hit Donna when he shot the zombie in the head, and took aim.

Meat sidestepped as Donna kicked out, straightening the
zombie up with the force of her blow. Steve didn't hesitate. Pulling the trigger twice in rapid succession, the pistol lit up the room with its muzzle flashes as he sent two rounds into the side of the thing’s head. Completely dead now, it fell toward Donna. In revulsion, she kicked out again, pushing it sideways where it landed a few feet away in a limp bundle of deceased deli owner.

Meat bent over Donna and tried to help her up
, but she flung his hand away and screamed frantically, "Don't touch me."

Approaching the thing lying on the floor, Steve kept his pistol pointed a
t Donna’s attacker. Ever since he had to shoot the zombie on Gulf Boulevard a second time to put it down, he was taking no chances.

Kicking the thing on the floor twice,
he was satisfied that it was out of the picture for good. Turning his attention to Donna, he saw her sitting up with her knees to her chest and her arms wrapped around them. At first he thought she was hugging them to herself in reaction to the attack, until he saw that she was pulling her pants leg up.

Slowly,
she lifted the denim of her jeans and revealed an almost perfectly formed bite mark on her shin, oozing blood even as she wiped her hand over it.

Steve felt his stomach drop as Donna lifted her eyes to his
. With a shocked expression on her face, she silently mouthed one word.

“
No.”

Meat saw the mark too and slowly backed away, a look of horror etching his features. He pointed to
Donna’s leg and started to say something, but couldn't get the words to come out.

With her eyes still locked with Steve's
, Donna pleaded, "I'm only thirty-two."

Not knowing how to reply, Steve stood silent. Eve
n if he could think of something to say, he couldn't trust himself to speak. Although he had only met her a few days earlier, he’d grown to like Donna. She was plain speaking and down to earth. She had told him how she had recently left her controlling husband when she found out he was cheating on her. They had married when she was seventeen and she confided to Steve that, after she left him, she set out to do all the things she had missed out on by being a seventeen-year-old, virgin bride. She had gone back to college, gotten a job and casually dated a variety of men. She had met Meat at a live remote he was doing on St. Pete beach and hooked up with him because he seemed fun. It was just a coincidence that they were seeing each other when the dead rose up, but they were together, so Meat invited her to come to the radio station.

Out of the co
rner of his eye, Steve could see that Meat had recovered from his initial revulsion and was moving back toward Donna. He crouched next to her and said, "I'm sorry, babe. I don't know what to do."

Without breaking eye contact with Steve, Donna replied in a
voice cracking with emotion, "It’s okay Meat, Steve's going to take care of it."

"But you've been bitten. H
e can’t –." Meat stopped suddenly. He looked from Donna to Steve and then to the pistol in Steve's hand, as he suddenly understood.

"Go out in the Galleria
, Meat," Donna said. "It'll be better that way."

Almost as an afterthought
, she said sadly, "Take care of yourself."

Without a word, but grateful to escape, Meat rose and brushed past the rest of the group who were now clustered at the door.

"Can we have a minute?" Donna addressed them.

Slowly, they turned away and moved back into the common area, leaving Donna and Steve alone. Tick-Tock was the last to leave, saying as he exited, "They're coming," then pointed out the rear window of the deli.

Attracted by the noise of the pistol and the flashes of light as it was fired, a scattering of shuffling, ambling figures approached the glass. The first one, dressed in a tattered, bloody business suit, noticed Steve standing inside and started pawing at the glass.

"How long do you think I have left?" Donna asked.

Steve shrugged hopelessly and shook his head as he turned his attention back to her. "Few hours, maybe more," He mumbled.

Pointing toward the window where three of the dead had gathered
, she asked, "And then I'll be like that?"

"It's an option."

Shaking her head, she finally broke eye contact and replied, "Not for me." Donna was quiet a moment before asking, "Does it have to be in the head?"

At first
, not knowing what she was talking about, his eyes went to the bloody bite on her leg. A moment later, Steve understood what Donna meant and he replied quietly, "I don’t think so. Not until you turn."

She nodded at this and then
, straightening her legs out in front of her, she leaned back on her hands to expose her unguarded chest. Steve knew what she was asking of him and felt trapped by it.

His mind whirled as he saw how calmly Donna was dealing with this. They only had one way of handling the situation
, and she had resigned herself to it without protest. Steve tried to put himself in her place and didn't know how he'd react.

Kicking, screaming, begging, pleading?

With a flip of her head, Donna threw her hair back over her shoulder and tilted her head to look up at the ceiling.

"I can't end up like that,"
she stated vehemently. "I won't end up like that. You need to save me from that."

Closing her eyes tightly
, she said, "Whenever you’re ready, but make it quick."

Steve raised the Glock, aiming at her heart. He could see tears running down her face as she mouthed a silent prayer.

When she finished, two more muzzle flashes lit the interior of the deli.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Clearwater, Florida:

As he and Tick-Tock lifted Donna’s body into a planter filled with dirt, Steve was amazed at how heavy it was. Trying to keep his mind off what he was doing, he focused on running random song lyrics through his head. He knew his emotions had shut down, so he found it easier to let his mind latch onto the most inconsequential thoughts as he went through the motions of living.

After shooting Donna, Steve had gone out and found a plastic tarp in the maintenance area, his mind noting that there w
ere only three left in the stack. Got to find more of these, he thought blandly, we might need them. Letting his mind turn over the problem of where to get them as he retrieved the duct tape from where it had had been left in the foyer, he went about the process of readying Donna’s body for burial.

When he was done, Steve looked down at the neat blue package he had assembled and wondered where he
could put her. He mulled this over for a few minutes before coming up with an idea. Turning, he saw Tick-Tock at the door of the deli looking at him with a concerned expression. Believing Tick-Tock was bothered by the same question that he’d been puzzling over, Steve said in a flat voice, "Don't worry. I've got it all figured out. We can bury her in one of the planters that line the second floor of the parking ramp." Looking back down at the body, he added in a detached way, "I might need some help though."

"It's not your fault," Tick-Tock
replied softly. "I should have checked better. The outside door was locked and I didn't think anything could be in here."

"I just need your help. I know I shouldn't ask because I made the mess
, and my mom always said that when it’s your mess, you need to clean it up.”

Believing Steve was in shock, Tick-Tock tried to get him to sit down but he refused.

"After," he insisted.

Retrieving a shovel and wheel barrow, they
gently loaded Donna’s body and rolled it to the elevator. Once across the walkway, they found a planter overlooking the street at the front of the ramp and started digging.

When Tick-Tock was done covering her with the last of the dirt, he put the shovel in the wheelbarrow and asked solemnly, "Should we say a few words?"

Steve bristled in anger at this. "To who?" Waving his arm at the hundreds of walking dead in the street below, he demanded "Look around you at what's going on." Turning to walk away, he said over his shoulder, "There is no God." He then went to retrieve the body of the zombie so he could dump it from the walkway and go back to mop up the blood and black goo from the deli floor before it started to stink more than it already did.

Going back up to the station in the elevator afterward, Steve noticed that there was no music. Wondering disjointedly if maybe Brain could wire a speaker in here to play a direct feed from KLAM,
he pondered this to keep his mind off what had just occurred. After all, he thought, what was an elevator without elevator music?

Entering his office, he left the lights off.
He found the bottle of Jack Daniels in his desk drawer by feel and unscrewed the cap. Up ending it, Steve took three large swallows. With his eyes watering and throat burning, he hiccupped and set the bottle down on his desk. The booze brought him out of his shock in a rush. Without warning, as if a dam had burst inside of him, the past three days came rushing back. Overwhelmed for a moment, he hung his head and placed his hands over his ears, trying to keep the memory of shooting Donna from replaying in his mind.

It didn't work.

Heather, Donna, Ginny, Miss Carlson. They danced through his brain in a series of images he couldn't block out. Guilt racked him as he reran each final scene of his contact with them. After some time the pain ebbed. Finally able to lift his head, he looked at the bottle on his desk and the object that he had set next to it.

His pistol.

Almost casually, he thought of picking it up and using it on himself. One quick shot to the temple and no more pain. I know the pain will come back and I don’t want that, so let's just finish it.

His brain screamed at him.
Coward!

Ignoring this, Steve reached for the pistol
, but instead he picked up the bottle and took a sip. Determination suddenly flowed through him, and he made the conscious decision not to grab the Glock. Right then, he vowed that he would live. If he died, it wouldn't be by his own hand. Even if the dead surrounded him, he would take as many down with him as he could. Not even saving the last bullet for himself, he would die fighting.

With that
resolved, he stood up and went to turn on the light so he could get on with life, the living and dealing with the dead. He still had a dozen things to take care of, and he was due to take a shift on the radio in two hours. It was time to get to work.

As he came around his desk, he saw a flash of illumination on his window from outside that was briefly repeated before disappearing. On a dead street
, in a dead city, this caught his attention.

Moving quickly to the window
, he looked out. Thousands of zombies freely roamed the street and sidewalks below as he tried to discern where the light had come from. His eyes roamed the area trying to take in everything at once, so he almost missed the glow that flashed from the roof of the building across the street. Focusing in on where the light came from, he could make out a figure standing on top of the five-story structure as it slowly waved a flashlight back and forth along the front of the Garnett Building.

As Steve recognized the familiar form, relief and joy ran through him. His face lit up with a smile as he rushed over to his light switch and started flicking it rapidly up and down. After a minute of this he stopped, leaving the office in darkness.

The glow passed by the window again, so he hit the light switch a few more times and then left it off.

The beam of a flashlight cut through the window as it lit up the ceiling of his office before it was turned off and on rapidly.

In reply, he flashed the office lights again and then left them on as he walked over and stood in the circle of light coming through the glass.

Looking down at the figure across the street, he waved frantically with both arms and was greeted the same in return.