Dead Stop (18 page)

Neither man nor
beast ventured out in nights like this...

…but the dark
figures stalking the grounds of the Textro tonight qualified as neither.

They took no
notice of the rain.  And if the Furies screamed around their death ravaged
forms in the roaring night blast then they ignored them as well. The storm only
existed as an environment through which they moved. Wet, cold, darkness,
wind…all were just stimuli they uncritically accepted and disregarded. It meant
nothing to any of them.

Only their need
mattered.

Many clustered
around the fallen prey, still ripping and tearing, but now things began to
change. The feeding became less frenzied and more deliberate. Now that several
full size corpses had been devoured, and their initial hunger reduced, their
eating strategy began to focus more on the nutrient rich organs than just the
random orgy of consumption of before. Many even walked away, attracted more by
the lights from the front of the truck stop than the food at their feet.

The nature of
their need had begun to morph as well.

Their hunger no
longer drove them, but the desire to kill remained undiminished. Even gorged,
their need to drag down and tear at prey consumed them. None of them even
remotely possessed the ability of self reflection, so they made no distinction
between these drives. They simply waited for the opportunity to fulfill them.
It never occurred to them to doubt, or even wonder if that opportunity would
come.

More wandered
from the clusters of feeding dead and tramped through the deluge towards the
front. The bright fluorescent lights under the awnings over the gas and diesel
pumps attracted them first, but as they moved around the building their focus
began to change.

A softer, more
interesting light caught their attention.

As they slogged
around the sides and the front, the windows of the truck stop came into their
view. Yellow light from the indoor incandescent bulbs spilled out into the
night, creating golden rectangles on the asphalt. And the windows themselves
seemed to shimmer as they streamed with running rainwater, making this light
somehow more “alive” than the cold blue illumination over the pumps. This light
was warmer…more inviting.

It drew them in
like death-faced moths to a flame.

And once they reached
the glass, the hints of life and motion behind the distorting effects of the
running windows kept them there. Nothing came close enough to the pane to
trigger an attack, but just enough movement occurred to alert them that prey
was near. Somewhere in the shimmering light, their need could be filled again.

Their inability
to make out their victims confused them, rendering them incapable of decisive
action, so they did one of the things they did best…

…they waited.

###

Deluge -
Rachel

“Mmmph!”

Rachel paused in
the process of dabbing Deke’s wound with a soapy rag when the boy jerked with a
suppressed cry.

She stood next
to where he gripped the edge of the stainless steel sink in the truck stop’s
now crowded kitchen. The scene out in the diner proper had initially driven
everybody but the larger of the two local boys in here. The one called Harley
had elected to stay out in the diner, behind the counter, and let them know if
things out there changed for the worse. At least the crowd meant she would have
plenty of hands to help if she needed them.

At the moment
she would have traded all those extra hands for the lidocaine she had out in
her truck. Her work truck contained everything she would have needed to do this
right, and it would have been a lot easier on the people she was doing it to.

Cleaning wounds
was a painful business.

She knew it had
to hurt, and hated every second of doing it. And with almost everybody now
sitting in the kitchen and watching, Rachel figured the young man’s pride was
the only thing standing between him and tears. Since she couldn’t get to her
vehicle out in the parking lot, all she had available as a disinfectant was the
industrial strength anti-bacterial soap of the Textro’s kitchen, and while she
didn’t doubt its effectiveness she also knew it must be like pouring raw
rubbing alcohol into the wounds. Stacey had cried in pain at the same treatment
on her arm, and even the unconscious janitor had moaned aloud when his wounds
were being cleaned.

Still, one made
do with what one had.

At the moment it
wasn’t much…just a sink with scalding hot water, harsh soap, and all the rags
that Marisa and the others could rush around and scrounge up while Rachel
continued her fight to keep the janitor from bleeding to death. She had also
ordered the trucker, Grandpa Tom, to take a seat on a nearby plastic crate.
Something about his skin tone, and the way he kept rubbing his left arm,
bothered her.

“Deke,” she
tried to keep her voice calm and professional, “I know it hurts and I’m sorry.
Your trapezius muscle has been punctured in three places, and I’m having to
clean deeper.”

“How deep is
that?” the boy groaned between clenched teeth.

“However deep it
takes,” she replied. “That monster was filthy, and I don’t even want to think
what some of these specks I’m cleaning out of these wounds could be.”

“Which is why I
said we should lock the injured people in the storeroom,” Gerald’s voice cut in
from where he sulked at his place on a nearby countertop.

Rachel closed
her eyes in an attempt to keep her temper, and could feel Deke stiffen next to
her.

Gerald had
indeed brought the same idea up about ten minutes ago when the veterinarian had
been treating Stacey, and it had not gone over well then either. Marisa had
practically exploded in a directed stream of obscenities from where she knelt
on the floor next to the wounded janitor. She held a baseball bat she had
retrieved from Big Earls office that some joker had branded with the words,
“Tipping Is Its Own Reward,” and had leveled it at the out-of-towner in a
rather meaningful way. On top of that, Rachel had thought for a second that
Deke was going to physically assault the obnoxious redhead as well. She could
tell he felt protective of Stacey, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out
the two were on their way to being a new couple.

But clearly such
social complexities were lost on Gerald, and she wondered how he managed to get
through life in one piece. Any idiot could have told him bringing up the
subject again wasn’t going to accomplish anything but possibly anger Deke, or
get him a date with Marisa’s bat. She could see he didn’t use his girlfriend as
an advisor on such matters either, since the pale blonde’s only response was to
try not to look so mortified it might embarrass him in front of others.

“In case I
didn’t make it plain the first time,” Rachel snapped while simultaneously
laying a calming hand on Deke’s uninjured shoulder, “getting injured isn’t
contagious. Why don’t you let me worry about the medical problems and you just
focus on trying to get though to somebody and get us some help. There is only
one cell phone tower servicing this entire area, and it’s famous for going out
during storms. So how about you keep trying to get through to the police before
that happens.”

It turned out
Gerald and Holly were the only two with available cell phones left alive in the
Textro. Rachel’s still rested in the lab coat in her office, and Marisa had
left her’s in the restroom when she rushed back to help Stacey. There was a
landline in Big Earl’s office but it was dead, either as a result of Deke
falling on it or the lines were out. Since the only other landline had been at
store-side checkout, there was no way to check.

Holly dutifully
began punching buttons on her cell phone again, but Gerald must not have been
ready to let his point go.

“I hate to pull
Hollywood on you, Your Sorta-Docterness,” the dumpy redhead sneered, “but it’s
common knowledge that when a zombie injures somebody, they become a zombie too.
I know it’s ‘just the movies’ but this is a pretty unreal situation and I think
it’s only common sense to take precautions.”

Rachel tightened
her grip on the young redneck’s shoulder while starting a mental ten count of
her own. She wondered if she would really put much effort into stopping Deke if
he decided to go after the little jerk. In the end, medicine decided that
question for her because it simply wasn’t worth the risk of him tearing his
already damaged shoulder muscle. She didn’t like violence, but had come to
realize over the years there were some people in this world who would really
benefit from a thorough butt kicking…and Gerald struck her as a prime example
of one of those people.

To her surprise,
Deke didn’t respond with anger at all.

“Zombies?” he
mused aloud, “These things don’t seem much like the zombies I’ve seen in the
movies. Those just groaned and shambled around in slow motion. These things are
fast, focused, and vicious as hell.”

“Hah!” Gerald
scoffed with a dismissive wave of his hand, “Those were the old zombies from
the black and white days. Those were due to some silly signal from outer space
and never really realistic in the first place. The new zombies are faster, and
are the product of a virus.”

“Yeah,” Deke
agreed amiably, “but the zombies in those movies come from living people being
infected. These guys are obviously dead from the beginning. How do you explain
that?”

“So it’s a virus
that infects dead people,” the aloof urbanite shrugged.

This was getting
ridiculous.

“It’s not a
virus,” Rachel sighed. She couldn’t believe the twist this conversation had
just taken. Zombies? Seriously? She consoled herself with the thought that at
least it wasn’t turning into a brawl.

“Oh really? Why
not, Dr. Doolittle?”

Was this guy
for real?

“Because,”
Rachel answered sweetly while wondering if things were going to end up with
Deke and Marisa holding
her
back from the abrasive twerp, “a virus
requires a living cell with a functioning DNA process to splice into. A corpse doesn’t
have those. The DNA process stops and the strands break up soon after death.
That’s why dead people don’t catch the flu.”

“Really?”

“Really. So I
think you can relax and stop worrying about Stacey over there tearing her face
off and trying to eat your brains.” She felt it was a lame attempt at levity,
and regretted it as soon as she said it.

The veterinarian
gave an apologetic wince at the wounded waitress.

“I don’t think
these things care about brains, Doc,” Stacey’s somber face was still tight in a
haunted way that worried the veterinarian almost as much as the old truck
driver’s condition. “They seem more like animals or something.”

Rachel had
pieced together that Stacey had been the first to encounter these things and
survive, and whatever scene the girl had encountered out there had shaken her
badly. Unfortunately, psychology wasn’t a big part of veterinary science and
the doctor had no idea what to say to her. Instead, she resolved to hurry and
finish up on Deke so he could get over to her and provide a shoulder to lean
on.

“Okay, Deke. I
think I’ve done all the damage I can do here, so I’m going to put a pressure
bandage on you just like I did the others. Then I’m going to put you in a sling
to keep you from tearing your shoulder even worse. You need stitches…hell, all
three of you need stitches…but that’s for the hospital guys to handle if they
ever get here.”

“Thanks, Doc,”
the young man’s thanks didn’t sound very enthusiastic…not that she blamed him.

“Just be glad my
needles and sutures are out in my truck,” Rachel quipped and handed him a
folded towel. “Now hold this down against your shoulder while I try to figure
out how to tie it on.”

“You mean you
don’t know?” he looked at her in surprise.

“Well, I would
if you were a Rottweiler. You aren’t exactly built like most of my clients, you
know.”

“Oh, right.”

 Rachel
settled for wrapping his ribs almost like she did Stacey’s, then running a
strip of towel over his shoulder from there to hold the pressure bandage down.
The system seemed to work, which was all she cared about. She then grabbed a
nearby apron off a wall and fashioned it into a sling.  Deke carefully
pulled his bloody shirt back on, and then let her fit him with the impromptu
sling.

Rachel surveyed
her handiwork then nodded in satisfaction.

“Okay, young
man. I officially pronounce you ‘treated.’ There are to be no more heroics out
of you. You are to protect that shoulder. Got it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good,” Rachel
then leaned close, nodded towards Stacey, and whispered into his ear, “Now go
over there and hold that girl. She really needs it right now. She’s a tough
little thing but she’s hurt and she’s been pushed way too far.”

“But I just
asked her out tonight,” Deke wavered.

“Trust me on
this,” she hissed. “Now step up and be there for her.”

The young man
looked unsure, but nodded and headed over to where Stacey sat huddled next to
the grill. The doctor watched him go while wiping her hands on a hot rag. He
bent over and said something to the girl softly, and whatever it was must have
been the right thing for she gave him a wan smile and offered the spot on the
floor next to her. Rachel had a feeling he was going to have a girlfriend on
his hands long before their scheduled first date took place.

Assuming any of
them lived that long.

“Okay,” Rachel
surveyed the grim faces around the kitchen, sighed, and tossed the rag into the
sink. “Is that everybody? Are there any other injuries I need to know about?”

Nobody answered.

“Anybody?” she
repeated. “Bueller?”