Ground Zero: A Zombie Apocalypse (2 page)

The footage ended abruptly. The woman reporter was back on the television. She had one hand
flat against the side of her face, her finger pressed to an earpiece. Behind her another ambulance raced towards the hospital’s emergency entrance.

The camera zoomed past the announcer
’s shoulder and focused on the ambulance as the driver leaped urgently from the vehicle and ran to the back doors. He flung them open. Then, suddenly, a blood-covered woman leaped from inside the vehicle. She was young and slim, her face and hair red with gore. She was wearing a blouse and skirt. The blouse had been ripped open. She attacked the ambulance man with an enraged roar, clawing at his eyes. Her weight drove him backwards and he crashed to the ground, flailing his arms and screaming in terror. The woman snarled at him and her eyes were wild and inhuman. She tore at the man’s face, ripping flesh from around his mouth and then gouged at his eyes. The man thrashed and kicked. The woman trapped one of his arms and gnawed the ambulance man’s wrist. The guy screamed – a blood-curdling roar of pain and terror, and clutched at the mangled wound.

The woman was hunched on his ches
t like a beast driven to maddened frenzy. She lunged at the ambulance driver’s neck and ripped at the flesh, then slowly lifted her head and looked around her. Her gaze was distant and mindless but when she saw the camera man and reporter, she became instantly alert.

The woman reporter screamed.

The ghoul spat the ambulance man’s flesh from its mouth and rose slowly to its feet. She was awash with fresh blood. It dripped from her hands and from her face. It clotted on her blouse and down her legs. She opened her mouth and moaned.

The camera pulled back until the woman reporter was in focus. She had her back turned, still staring at the bloody nightmare by the open doors of the ambulance. Slowly she turned back to face the camera.
Her face was bloodless white with shock. She was crying pitifully.

“Oh, God,” the reporter
sobbed softly. “Oh, my God.” She dropped to her knees, as though all the strength had suddenly gone from her body.

In the background the ghoul began to
stagger towards the camera.

Arthur
Harrigan heaved himself out of the recliner and went to the bedroom. He had a pistol in the bedside drawer – an old revolver. He loaded the weapon with fumbling, trembling fingers and tucked it inside the belt of his trousers.

Somewhere outside – maybe on the next block
– he heard a gun shot. Then another. He froze for a moment. Far away – the sound ebbing and fading on the breeze – was the familiar wail of a police siren. Arthur went to the bedroom window and ripped the curtains open.

The afternoon was bright and sunny, but there w
as a haze of dark smoke on the horizon, billowing black and rising up like an ugly scar into the blue sky.

Arthur went back into the living room.
He stood by the window and checked the driveway. The street seemed clear – almost eerily quiet.

The sirens in the distance were getting louder, coming closer. He took t
he gun from his belt. Somehow the comforting weight of the weapon in his hand made him feel better.

Safer
.

He locked the front door. Then went throug
h the hallway into the kitchen to secure the back door. When he came back into the living room, there was a grim-faced man on the television. He looked to be in his fifties. He had thinning grey hair. His eyes were dark and somber under bushy eyebrows. He was wearing a white lab coat, and sitting stiffly behind a table covered in a twisting nest of microphones and voice recorders. Behind the man was a blue curtain, with an embroidered white motif and the words ‘Centers for Disease Control’ beneath it. A thin red graphic at the bottom of the television screen flashed ‘Live from Atlanta’.

Arthur edged closer to the television.

“ – morning about one hundred cases had been reported,”
a journalist’s voice off camera was saying.
“Is there an update on the number of people who have now been infected?”

The spoke
sman stared stonily at the camera.
“Over a thousand,”
he said
, “and still counting.”

There was a murmur of voices, a flash of cameras, and then suddenly people seemed to be shouting at once. A single voice rose above the others.

“Do you know how the outbreak started… or where it originated from?”

The spokesman shook his head heavily.
“No,”
he admitted.
“The first suspicious report from Baltimore was of an Egyptian merchant seaman who was taken to Baltimore General late Tuesday afternoon. It remains unconfirmed whether that man was patient zero.”

“Unconfirmed?”
one of the journalists sounded incredulous.
“Why? Are you still running tests?”

“No,”
the spokesman said.
“We… the hospital cannot locate the body.”

A stunned pall fell over the room. The CDC spokesman blinked under the harsh lights and mopped sweat from his brow. The man’s hand was trembling.

“Does the C.D.C have the outbreak under control?”
a new voice asked.

“No.”
the spokesman said frankly.

Another
clamor of voices, rising louder, desperate to be heard.

“Do you know what we’re dealing with?”

“No,”
the man said.
“But it appears to be viral. An infection that is being spread through bites and bodily fluid contamination. It’s unlike anything we have ever encountered before.”

“Is it true these infected people are…
are coming back to life after being killed?”

The man said nothing.

“What areas are being affected? How widespread is the outbreak?”
another reported asked in the brief silence.

The spokesman turned his head and look
ed directly towards the reporter who had asked the question.
“Baltimore… but spreading quickly,”
the man said.
“We’ve already had reports from as far away as Virginia in the south and Pennsylvania to the north.”

The voices of the reporters became
riotous, rising in a roar of disbelief. A woman’s voice, sounding almost hysterical, shouted above the noise.

“What do we do? What
can be done to stop the spread?”

Before the spokesman could answer, a second voice cried out,
“Is this a plague?”

“There is n
othing we can do,”
the CDC spokesman said flatly in response to the first question. Then he paused for a long moment as though gathering his thoughts. When he spoke, his words were measured and deliberate.
“At this stage we are advising people to stay in their houses and avoid contact with anyone. Anyone,”
he said again to emphasize the point
. “Infection spreads through bite attacks. You should do all you can to ensure you remain isolated from anyone displaying symptoms of erratic behavior, or people with a clear disposition of anger or violence. Stay in your house … and pray.”

There was another
burst of camera flashes, and then a young man entered the picture. He clutched at the spokesman’s arm and bent close to his ear to whisper urgently. The spokesman listened. Then he looked up suddenly and sharply into the young man’s face. The other man nodded. The CDC spokesman screwed his eyes tightly shut for a long moment while the world watched on in silence. Finally, the man turned back towards the camera. His eyes were wet with tears and his face stricken with pure fear.

“In the time I have been speaking to you, another thousand cases have been reported to medical staff
across the north east of the country,”
the spokesman said.
“Officially… the virus is out of control.”

The room fell into
shocked silence. Finally one reporter asked almost fearfully.
“What… what are you calling the outbreak? Does it have a name?”

The spokesman shook his head.
“The infection is uncategorized,”
he said.

“Is this a zombie virus?”
one reported asked, and his tone was earnest and fearful.

“Yes,”
the spokesman said after a long agonizing pause,
“because quite frankly I don’t know any other terminology to explain it. The infected are bitten and die in agony. Then they rise again. There is only one other word for it.”

“Which is?”

“Armageddon,”
the spokesman answered.
“This is the end of days. The end of life in America as we know it.”

Arthur
Harrigan stared at the television in disbelief. He felt cold. A superstitious dread crawled like ice through his veins until his body trembled uncontrollably. He snatched for the phone. Suddenly he wanted more than anything else to hear the voice of his daughter.

He called the number
and stood in the hallway listening to the hollow tone as it rang out. He dialed again – then suddenly the front door exploded back against its hinges, and a blood-covered nightmare of horror burst into the house.

Arthur cried out in shock and terror. The phone fell from his hands.

It was a man. His left arm had been torn from his body, his clothes just dirty ragged shreds that hung from his broken shape in tatters. It groaned – a low vicious sound of rage in the back of its throat. It saw Arthur and its sunken yellowed eyes flashed. It snarled.

Arthur
Harrigan snatched up the pistol and fired once, hitting the ghoul in the chest. The beast reeled backwards. It crashed against the hallway wall and smeared long streaks of fresh dripping blood on the wallpaper. Then it regained its balance, seemingly driven to frenzy by the roar of the weapon’s blast. It snarled at Arthur and lunged for him, its fingers seized into blood-dripping vicious claws.

Arthur
jammed the pistol hard against his own temple. His last thought was of his wife. Then he pulled the trigger.

* * *

Tammy Scott died because she was young and reckless.

There was a place down by the river near her childhood home that
Tammy would hide when her father came home drunk and her parents began to fight.

It was a quiet place; somewhere she could retreat to when life seemed dark and uncertain.

She wished she could go there now.

She wished for that more than anything else. Because if she were there – in her quiet happy place – she wouldn’t be staring at herself in the mirror and contemplating the dreadful thing she was about to do.

“Haven’t you got higher heels?”

“No.”

Margie dropped onto the narrow bed and looked at her friend. “Turn around.”

Tammy
turned awkwardly, feeling acutely embarrassed.

“Mess your hair up. It looks too tidy.”

Obediently Tammy scraped her fingers through her blonde hair, letting it tumble over her shoulders.

“Is that denim skirt the shortest one you
’ve got?” Margie ran her eyes up to the tops of her friend’s smooth brown thighs.

Tammy
frowned. “Jesus, Margie. How much shorter can a skirt be? Anything with less material is called a belt!”

Margie pulled a face. She stood up. “You’ve
gotta give a glimpse of the merchandise,” she said. She unfastened three of the buttons on Tammy’s white blouse, revealing the lacy tops of her red bra. “Competition is tough. You’ve got really nice tits. You ought to show ‘em off.”

Tammy
took a deep breath and wished that she could stop her legs from trembling. She stood still while Margie pulled the collar of her blouse off her shoulder a little, pushed and prodded at her hair, and then painted her lips with bright red lipstick. “You’ll do,” Margie sighed. “But don’t overprice yourself. You’re not eighteen. You’re twenty-two. That means you’re old in this game.”

Tammy
nodded. In the background, she could hear some kind of an urgent news bulletin on the radio. She tried to focus on the sound of the reporter’s voice, but Margie was still talking. Tammy frowned, somehow suddenly uneasy. She leaned across to turn the volume up, but Margie slapped at her hand to get her attention.

“And try to pretend tonight tha
t you’re not a wide eyed innocent waitress from Cornpoke Arizona,” Margie insisted. “The reason you haven’t had a single date your first two nights on the street is because your scaring the business away. No guy wants to put his money down for a good time with the girl next door. They’re looking for Lara Croft.”

Tammy
turned her head sharply.

“What?”

“Girl, they’re looking for some action! When I worked the streets I done real good because I was nasty – full of attitude and up for anything. That’s what you’ve gotta do if you wanna actually make some money.”