Dead Air (Book One of The Dead Series) (7 page)

Steve couldn't believe that the kid was old enough to drive
, but he nodded his head in commiseration anyway.

"So
I show up and the whole store is locked up tight. I'm just getting ready to bolt when the night manager shows up and lets me in. He makes me and another guy load up his truck and then he hauls ass. Can you believe that shit?"

With his mind only on what he still needed, Steve ignored this and asked, "Where are the batteries?"

Stock boy led him to a stack of boxes in the storeroom and told him to take his pick. Ignoring the red, five foot high no smoking sign painted on the wall, the kid lit up a cigarette before continuing, "So then you show up. I was gonna blow you off like the rest of the people who came by but you flashed the cash. All those other lame asses just bitched about the store closing early. Can you believe that shit?"

Steve stopped and took a quick inventory of what he had on the pushcart. Coming up blank on anything else he needed, he wheeled to the back door with stock boy on his heels
, still talking. "So before the night manager split, he said to set up the store like we would for a hurricane sale. Said we were gonna be slammed tomorrow. Said we'd all have to work again even if it was our day off. I mean, I've got a life outside this place. Can you believe that shit?"

Steve stopped at the edge of the loading dock and compared the size of the pile on the cart against the available room in the Jeep. For the first time since buying the vehicle, he wished he
’d gotten a truck.

Jumping down to the ground, he dropped the canvas top while the kid talked. "That's a decent ride. I got me a Toyota. Guy who sold it to me said it would have great resale value. Now they come out and say that the accelerator sticks and kills your ass
, so I probably couldn't give it away. Can you believe that shit?"

Finished putting the top down, Steve turned and said, "Start handing that stuff to me, would you?"

Stock boy stood stock-still.

Steve was about to repeat his request when he realized what was going on. With a false smile plastered on his
face, he extracted another fifty from his wallet and placed it in the kid's outstretched palm, consoling himself that he had only paid one hundred fifty dollars for about six hundred dollars worth of food and supplies.

In a short time the Jeep was loaded. Steve squeezed himself in behind the steering wheel and keyed the ignition as stock boy looked on. Seeing the vehicle piled with enough food and water
to weather a siege, the seriousness of the situation seemed to sink in with the kid. With a worried look on his face now that he was being left alone, stock boy asked, "So do you think I should grab some stuff and haul ass? I mean, maybe this thing is way worse than what they're saying on TV."

Fed up with the kid
’s constant prattle, Steve put the Jeep into gear and replied, "It is worse than what they're saying on television. If I were you, I'd grab everything I could get my hands on and head for the hills. And you can definitely believe that shit."

Driving out from behind the store, Steve felt a chill
in the night air blowing against his skin. He had planned to put the top back up on the Jeep after loading it but wanted to get away from stock boy and on his way home.

As he pulled
up to the stop sign at the exit from the parking lot, the boxes stacked on the passenger seat started to shift forward. Bringing the Jeep to a complete stop with its nose a foot out into the deserted street, he leaned over to adjust the load, taking his eyes off the road.

Struggling to push the boxes of canned chili against the backrest of the seat, a resounding bang from something hitting the hood of the Jeep made him suddenly jerk upright and look around wildly. Expecting to see that another vehicle had run into him because he had stopped with the nose of the Jeep out in the street, he was unprepared for the sight which greeted him.

Standing at the front of the Jeep, with his palms laying flat on the hood where he had slammed them down, was a dirty looking, wild eyed old man who stared venom at him.

Steve felt adrenalin surge through his body before pooling in his stomach to make him feel sick and a little bit weak. This is one of
them, his mind screamed, as he sorted through the weapons at hand that he could use to defend himself. Realizing he had left the top down on the Jeep, he suddenly felt totally exposed.

The bowling ball entered his thoughts. It was too heavy to throw
, but could be used to smash his assailant’s head. As quickly as this idea entered his mind it was dismissed. The ball was in the passenger’s foot well with boxes stacked on top of it.

He could snap off the
antenna and use it as a flail, but then Steve remembered what Heather told him about having to destroy the brain, so this idea was also dismissed. The antenna would be too flimsy.

Without conscious thought,
Steve’s hand went to the gearshift as his foot moved to depress the clutch. A surge of anger brought on by fear shot through him as he decided on a course of action. He would just run the son-of-a-bitch over.

The man in front of the Jeep made a noise,
which caused Steve to pause for a second to process the sound as human speech.

"You're in the goddamn sidewalk asshole, people
gotta walk here you know!" The old man croaked out angrily before circling the front of the Jeep and moving on.

It was a full twenty seconds before Steve remembered to breathe
and another five minutes before he felt well enough to drive home.

He
was still replaying the incident in his mind when he arrived at his apartment. The one thought that kept repeating itself was; Thank God I didn't have a gun, or I would have blown that old fuck's head off.

Not seeing Ginny's car
in the lot as he pulled in, he quickly went inside to grab a canvas tarp to cover the contents of the Jeep before putting the top back up. He didn't want anyone to see what he had and steal it, and he also didn't want to have to explain to Ginny why it looked like he was preparing for nuclear war.

When he was done,
he checked his watch and saw that he still had five minutes before Ginny said she would be at his place. From previous experience, he knew this meant he actually had at least a half hour before she showed up. Probably more like forty-five minutes, he amended. Plenty of time to take care of what he had to do next.

Entering the second
bedroom he used as an office, Steve went to the small safe he kept under his desk and dialed in the combination. He pulled out two boxes of .45 caliber ammunition and checked their contents. One full and one half full.  Deciding it would do for now, he next removed two empty pistol magazines and started feeding bullets into the first one. When they were both loaded, he slapped them on his palm to make sure the cartridges were seated correctly and wouldn't jam when they fed into the pistol.

Steve then moved
to the bedroom where he opened the drawer in the night stand next to his bed and reached all the way in back. His hand quickly found the familiar grip of the Glock he kept there for emergencies.

After ejecting the
magazine and clearing the pistol, he tested the spare clips to make sure they slid in and out without hanging up. Satisfied, he took one bullet from his extra loose ammunition and laid it aside. After loading the pistol, he chambered a round, extracted the clip and topped it off. Then he put the loaded spare clips, extra shells and a cleaning kit in the book bag he used as a briefcase.  It went wherever he went so it would be a good place for the pistol too, but not just yet.

He walked
back into the living room and placed the pistol under the cushion on his side of the couch. Feeling prepared for most anything that might come along, he turned on the television and switched to the news.

Steve noticed right off that the media was still down playing the crisis.
While the HWNW virus was the lead story, it only received a few minutes of airtime on each news cycle, with the talking heads skimming over any of the details.
Like people eating each other
.

He was about to switch channels to
hear what the other twenty-four hour news services had to say when he heard the sound of a key in the lock. Ginny had arrived. Steve switched to 'DVD' with the remote, causing the screen to go blue and cutting off an ad for investing in gold, and then took a moment to compose himself. He didn't see anything to be gained by scaring Ginny with tales of the dead coming back to life to chow down on people. Right now, things were still fairly normal in Clearwater and St. Petersburg. And if the feds got a handle on the problem, there wouldn't be anything to worry about. Resolving that he would sit down and talk to Ginny if things continued to go to hell, he stood up to greet his girlfriend.

Tonight he would carry on as if everything was normal and see what tomorrow brought.

CHAPTER FIVE

Washington. D.C.:

An
aide to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff handed a folder to each of the men seated around the table as his commanding officer spoke.

"The operation I'm about to brief you on was approved by the President at 1800 hours this evening. It's called
Operation Re-detente. As you know, the practice of detente, in relation to nuclear arms, means we don't have it and you don't have it.  This was brought about by the Nixon administration to relax tensions during the Cold War. In its new context, Re-detente means that since the United States now has dead people running around eating the living, every nation in the world should have them too. We've got them, and now you've got them. It helps to keep the playing field level."

A few men chuckled briefly at this explanation.

"Our lab located in-, " the Chairman turned to his aide for help on this.

"
Russellville, Arkansas."  The man prompted.

"Right,
Russellville, Arkansas, after we temporarily lost the CDC lab in Atlanta to contamination," and lost a good chunk of the city of Atlanta, the Chairman added in his mind, "and before they could reestablish their labs, the military took over research into the HWNW virus. Since the initial outbreak was in Little Rock, it makes sense that we position our resources nearby while trying to find a cure. Meanwhile, working off the initial tests done by the CDC, our people have managed to isolate the virus and replicate it. They say they're months away from any type of cure or immunization for the disease, which led to the President's decision to institute operation Re-detente.  Right now the disease is isolated in North America, with a few scattered cases in Europe and the Far East, so we decided it was necessary that we spread the disease to other countries that are openly or covertly hostile to the United States. We then ran numerous scenarios through our threat assessment computers and further found that if the virus were to go unchecked, it would weaken America to the point where any country with even a half-assed army could overrun us. Thus, we came to the decision to release the HWNW virus worldwide." The Chairman pressed a button on the counsel in front of him, causing the overhead lights to dim and a map of the world to be projected on a screen behind him.

"The red lights you see represent the target cities where
, by 0600 tomorrow morning our time, the virus will have been injected into thousands of hospital patients and other select individuals. The boys at the NSA put together a computer model on exactly who to infect so that an optimal spread of the disease could be accomplished in the shortest period of time."

He gave them a moment to study the map
, which showed specks of red light at every major and medium sized city in the civilized world. Two members of the Joint Chiefs asked questions about the safety of the men under their command. These inquiries were quickly answered to everyone's satisfaction so the Chairman cleared his throat and continued.

"We have quite a few items on the agenda today dealing with our armed forces around the world
, but first I want to go over a few domestic issues. It seems that we need to clarify the situation in the United States before moving on..."

***

Enid, Oklahoma:

Anton Washburn liked to drink. He liked nothing better than to go to his local tavern and down a few shots while he rolled dice with the bartender to see who would pay for them.

Although he drank nightly, and to excess, Anton considered himself to be a responsible drinker. He never drove his car, not if he'd had even one beer, and he preferred to frequent a local bar where he could have his shooters and when it was time to go home, walk the three hundred fifty paces to his own front door. Additionally, he never missed a chance to lecture his friends and neighbors on this and the many other civic duties that a man needed to be responsible for. Because of this earnest regard for the wellbeing of the human race, he was looked up to by those in his community, co-workers and drinking buddies alike.

It was once he passed through the front door of his house that Anton became a different person. Gone was the 'Hail fellow well met' camaraderie that he showed those around him. Gone was the kind
, considerate gentleman who would spend hours listening to other’s woes and work with them to solve their problems. Gone was the compassionate persona he displayed at work, the five-time winner of employee of the month. He won these awards because his fellow workers said he was the most amicable man they ever met. This disappeared like a fart in a dust storm.