Zombies! (Episode 4): The Sick and the Dead (8 page)

He knew he shouldn't enter the bedroom. Every sense he had was telling him to wait for Culph. Those senses told him how vulnerable he was, how traumatized he was, how sick he was. They reminded him about his wife and his little girl and what Stemmy's death had done to his family. And yet those senses weren't nearly as strong as the senselessness. Mechanically, he walked the three paces to the bedroom and stood in the doorway. Light spilled inside from behind him. He cast a long shadow. There was no light switch near the door and the lamp was on the bedside table.

Rooted to his spot, Heron took a quick evaluation of the room. There was a bed, bedside table, and chair, situated next to the bed as if someone had been comforting Suzanna in her final hours. There was a dresser. The bed sheets were rumpled and bunched up. There could be someone in the bed but it was too hard to tell.

"Where are you," he whispered into the dark.

It answered him with a low moan. It was almost but not quite the same as the moans he had heard previously. This one had less of a voice to it. The same mocking rush of air through the dead pipes was recognizable, but it was a mere whisper compared to the others. It came from behind the bed.

Finding his strength, Heron moved into the room. He held his gun close to his body, aware that there could be more than one zombie. Clearly there had been a struggle in the bathroom. But there was no blood anywhere else. There wasn't even a trail from the bathroom to the bedroom. He'd have noticed that right away. As he came around the side of the bed he noticed its feet. They were just shadows in the dim room. Bare, they protruded out as if the zombie itself were propped up against something. Giving the feet a wide berth, he swung around the side of the bed and took it in fully. Even in the dim light, he could tell that its head was badly ruined. The hair looked almost glued into a crazy pattern on the side of its head. Someone had bashed that head repeatedly against the side of the bathtub. Someone had left this zombie for dead. But it wasn't dead. It had dragged itself from the bathroom to the bedroom, the blood from its wounds so dried that it didn't even dirty the floor.

What was left of Suzanna DeForest tilted its head up toward Heron. He could tell that it wanted to move, wanted to attack him. But its wounds were severe. He wondered about the effect of the blows to the head. He wondered if it had actually healed.

He took aim and fired. The single bullet punched into its brain. It spasmed once and then lay still. Heron just stood there in the dark, staring at it until Culph came rushing in, rifle in hand. He was half done with his gear, no helmet, no pads. He wasn't wearing the belt. He looked once at the corpse on the ground and then looked up at Heron. There was a lot of anger in that look.

A lot of anger.

***

ABBY
was just about out the door when Whitaker called her back. He had the phone in his hand and told her with no attempt to disguise his contempt that it was her
boyfriend
. With a sour look, she came back into the gym and took the cordless phone from him over the counter. It was Heron.

"I have bad news," he said after they'd gotten over the pleasantries.

She went cold. "Is it Suzanna?"

"Yes," he said. "I'm sorry."

"Jesus," she whispered. "It…she was one of them?"

"Yes."

"It's not right," Abby moaned. "It's just not right?"

"There's more," Heron said. "There are signs that someone was here with her, but there's no one here now. They must have fought because Ms. DeForest was badly wounded. Does she have any other friends at the gym that we can question? We need to know who was here with her."

"Can't, I don't know, forensics tell you that?"

"Yes, of course," he told her. "We have a forensics team here now and there's plenty of evidence but it may not lead us to an identity. Is there anyone you can think of?"

"Sure," Abby said, moving behind the counter. "Sure, there's John. They've been dating."

"A boyfriend? I thought you said that she was carrying on with Larry Koplowitz?"

"And I thought you told me Larry Koplowitz had a wife and family."

"Right," he admitted. "Sorry."

Abby punched up the information on John Arrick and passed it to Heron. That made three addresses she had given out to the policeman. Somehow she had to believe that she was violating the privacy of her customers for doing that and opening up the gym to all sorts of litigation. Of course, the first two people were dead. And John. John didn't deserve this. Not John.

"I'm going to check it out as soon as we're done here."

***

WITH
twenty minutes to go until the announcement of the new public health alert, Lance Naughton arrived at
Arthur Conroy Memorial Hospital.
Denise was in her office working but with a very different perspective. The fact that her morning had gone well, coupled with her excitement over her new relationship had her running on high. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for Naughton. She could tell that something had gone wrong even without looking up from her microscope.

"What happened?"

There was none of the normal humor in Naughton's eyes when she finally looked at him. "The situation has escalated," he said. "I've spent all day on the phone and the computer fielding reports coming in from as far west as Iowa."

"We knew it was going to happen, Lance," she said, realizing that it was no comfort. She was bad at comfort. "After half of the city took off a few weeks ago, the disease was bound to spread all over the states. I'm surprised it took so long for the reports to come in."

Naughton shook his head. "You don't get it, Denise. I spoke with the
president
today. There's a small town in West Virginia called Bucksburg. Ever hear of it?"

She shook her head. "Should I have?"

"After today it will be a household name. The Bucksburg police kept an outbreak of the plague secret; no one knows why. Only when the state police didn't get a weekly report from their sheriff's office did they go and investigate. I read the reports and I saw the pictures. There's some audio from the state troopers who went to investigate."

"How many died?" she whispered.

Naughton looked directly at her. His eyes were sunken and his cheeks were pale. He was a shadow of himself. In the few weeks she had known him, she had never seen him so rattled. He handled just about every situation with this sort of casual nonchalance. In fact, it was one of the things she both envied and loved about him. Naughton was the kind of guy that, no matter how bad things got, he just
knew
that it was going to turn out all right. Not now, though. Not this. The fear that radiated from Naughton was almost tangible. And it was definitely infectious.

"They all died, Denise. There wasn't a person left in Bucksburg. One of the troopers managed to get into the car and drive off but he had been bitten."

She didn't say anything. What could she say?

"I wonder…" Naughton muttered. "Anyway, the president ordered a unit of National Guard to go in and clean out the town. Full body armor and automatic weapons. Eleven hundred people, Denise.
Eleven hundred
!"

With still nothing to say she grabbed him in her arms and hugged him close. Naughton had to bend down to receive her and he buried his head in her shoulder. His body shuddered once and she would have sworn that he was crying.

"There's going to be an announcement on the news," she said awkwardly. "About
Head Shot
."

As much as she wanted to hold him forever, for herself as much as for him, she let him go and swiveled over to the computer. Deftly, she opened up her internet browser and went to the local news site. Streaming video was already showing an announcer.

"As much as the government and the public have been trying to move past the zombie panic of several weeks ago, it appears that the threat is something that we must now accept as part of society. The glorification of the crisis in the form of sensationalized television shows and commercial advertisements has eased our minds but it is clear that we must take some very real precautions in the coming days. Earlier today, the state health department released a statement disclosing some detailed information about the infection that causes zombieism and the measures that have been taken to forestall its progress. His statement also indicted the use of medications such as
Head Shot
which is designed to treat a viral ailment and apparently provides no relief whatsoever from the infection. This comes on the heels of the announcement that a small town in West Virginia was decimated by the plague. Details are sketchy on that story but the president himself is expected to make a formal statement later this evening."

After a bit more, they cut to the footage of Lochschenborg's announcement, which was presented in its entirety. He spoke with vigor, his eyes intense and his jowls shaking as he described the
Ward
. He began with a list of symptoms and warned that symptoms may not be readily apparent if the infection was caught from a living person. In fact, the person who transmitted the disease may not even be symptomatic himself. A bite or scratch from a zombie transmitted the disease one hundred percent of the time. As deadly as the infection was when caught from the living, it was deadlier still when caught from the dead. Symptoms, mostly the same, would occur within an hour, probably in a much shorter time span. The average victim succumbed in just under five hours.

"There are two very important points that everyone needs to know," Lochschenborg cautioned. "The disease is a bacterial infection. Cold medicine, such as
Head Shot
may slightly reduce the discomfort from the symptoms but will have no effect on the infection itself. Doctors have been treating it with an aggressive round of antibiotics. If you become infected, you must go to the hospital right away. The other thing people need to know is that victims who have died and risen as a result of the infection are still
dead
. There isn't anything left in the brain that constitutes memory or even rational thought. Don't try to talk to them and don't try to soothe them. Mourn them. Grieve for them. But remember that they are dead and gone."

A slew of hands shot into the air after this last bit. Lochschenborg did his best to answer questions but Luco thought that they all sounded inane. She could read the frustration on his face. At last, he ended the conference abruptly and the view cut back to the original announcer.

"The president's going to speak tonight," Lance whispered to Denise. He seemed to have regained his composure. "He's going to tell the world about Bucksburg."

"It'll start another panic," she whispered back.

He shrugged. Could they really stop that from happening anyway? "Are you staying here tonight?"

She didn't answer right away. It had been her intention. The news of Bucksburg only motivated her all the more.

"Will you come out with me?" he asked. "For dinner, at least?"

"Okay," she said, but absently, as the light on her phone suddenly blinked to life. She hit the button for the speaker so that Naughton could listen in. It’s not that her call was any of his business but she suddenly got the impression that it would make him feel better to hear it rather than stand by and watch her talk. It meant something that she cared enough to even make that observation.

"Yes?" she said.

"Dr. Luco, there’s a phone call for you from a Dr. Ludlow," a man said in a hushed voice.

She looked coldly at the phone. Every researcher in the country was scrambling for information on the infection. If the research wasn't enticing enough, the promised federal funding would be. "So what? Is he more important than any of the others?"

“I don’t know,” the man answered. “He says he’s a geneticist. From London.”

She and Naughton looked at each other. “Okay,” she said. “Put him through.”

"Hello, hello?" came a new voice.

“This is Dr. Luco.”

“At last!” the man on the other end shouted in exasperation. He was definitely English. He had a very proper London accent. “It’s taken me two weeks to get your name and track you down.”

“And who are you?”

“Oh, pardon me. My name is Dr. Rudolph Ludlow. I’m a geneticist with…well, I suppose it’s not important. I haven’t been with anyone in almost a year.”

“Okay.” Luco rolled her eyes. “Do you want to tell me why you’ve been trying to find me for two weeks?”

“Of course!” he cried. He was a very enthusiastic man and didn’t seem to even notice, let alone take offense at, her cold tone of voice. “I’ve heard you’ve been having some trouble with zombies.”

“That’s not news, Dr. Ludlow.”

“Perhaps not in the States, but over here in England it’s news. May I ask, is it a bacterial infection as opposed to a virus?”

“Yes it is,” she said, still unimpressed.

Now his breathing changed and he became deadly serious. “Dr. Luco, I think I need to come to the States right away. Can you arrange that?”

“Wait a minute. I don’t even know who you are, and, no, I don’t have any sway with the government.”

“It is essential if we hope to beat this infection before it becomes epidemic.”