Heroes of the Undead | Book 1 | The Culling

by Meredith, Peter

  Plinkett barked, “Shut your mouth. Griff, get him out of here. The nurse, too.” The doctor let out a cry of outrage as Griff shoved him from the room. He only had to look at the nurse to get her moving. When they were gone, Plinkett gave Bryce a strained smile. “What happened in there?”

  “We just talked. We didn’t do drugs, I swear.” He looked to Maddy and she nodded with tiny painful jerks of her head. “Everything was fine at first, then Magnus said he stole our work. Then he threatened to hold us there overnight.”

  “To keep us safe,” Maddy added. “But he never said what from.”

  Bryce nodded, then grimaced. “He said safe twice.”

  Plinkett looked from one to the other, waiting for them to go on. “And? Come on. I need something actionable.”

  “I don’t remember,” Bryce admitted. “He threatened to hold Maddy against her will. I remember that. I know I should’ve let him and continued on with the mission, but he was acting scary and I thought he was going to do something to her. Either way, I told him that I was working with you guys and he left…I think.” Everything from the moment Magnus had left was fuzzy and made no sense. “He said something about giving us a chance, and that’s it. Then I woke up here.”

  “That’s it?” Plinkett snapped. “There are terrorists attacking fourteen American cities. Concentrate! What was he keeping you safe from? What was the chance he was talking about?”

  Maddy felt a sudden shock of guilt. She had screwed up. Instead of holding in her temper, she had told Magnus to fuck off—and now there were terrorists attacking multiple cities. How the two were connected, she didn’t know.

  “He never said,” she answered. “Look, I can go back and try to talk to him. I can wear a wire if you want. He knows about Bryce working with you, but he knows I wasn’t.”

  Plinkett chewed his lip for a moment. “Maybe. It’ll be a long shot and we’d need a good excuse for you to go in. I bet we can get a warrant expedited. What do you think, Griff?”

  Griff was at the window, staring out in something of a trance. He had slowly become aware of a low mewling noise that had been constantly in the background for the last hour or so. Curious, he had gone to the window and was shocked to see dozens of flashing lights scattered across the small swath of the city that was in sight.

  There were police cars racing chaotically in all directions. The firetrucks were more orderly, moving in little squads towards a dozen plumes of smoke. On the street five stories below, a scrum of ambulances pushed around each other, cutting one another off in a hurry to unload their casualties.

  “I don’t know if we have time for any of that,” Griff said.

  Chapter 5

  As Griff watched, a police car careened around the corner, its siren warbling. It missed hitting an ambulance by inches and would’ve struck an EMT if the driver hadn’t yanked the wheel to the right, sending the cruiser onto the sidewalk.

  In the back of the car was a raving Bree McDaniels. Mad black eyes peered from a window that was smeared with God only knew what. There was blood in her hair and on her chin. There were curls of flesh beneath her fingernails. Her once pert nose was quashed and her lips were swollen and split.

  Five hours earlier, she had boarded the Number 7 Train in Queens and experienced a New York rarity when a rag-covered bum sat down next to her. Right away, she noticed that his hair wasn't crawling with lice. Even more surprising, he didn't stink like piss. As miraculous as this was, he still wasn’t normal.

  He rocked back and forth, muttering to himself and holding a thermos with both hands, treating it as if it were some sort of idol.

  Slowly, she eased as far away from him as possible, afraid that he would get angry if she simply hopped up and ran from him. Thankfully, he staggered to the door as the train pulled into the next stop. Bree let out a long sigh of relief, but then happened to glance down and saw he had left behind his thermos. For just a moment, she considered grabbing it and taking it to the bum. She even had her hand out to it, but her fingers recoiled as she pictured his lips on it.

  He left and she said nothing. She and the thermos were still there, gently rocking back and forth, five minutes later when the cap popped off on its own. It rolled away like a little wagon wheel. She watched it until it came to rest against the boot of a sleeping construction worker. Then her eyes were drawn to the thermos—would there be brown liquor inside? Murky questionable soup? The moldy, rotting remains of a child’s ear?

  At first, all she saw was a wisp of grey fog lifting from the opening. Then she saw an oblong chunk of ice…and that was it.

  Bree McDaniels essentially died right then.

  Yes, she felt fine for the next couple of hours as she worked the swing shift at a paleo juice bar, but gradually a raging headache sent her into the back room. The darkness helped, as did the weed and the oxycontin. But even these had their limits and soon she stormed out into the lobby, screamed in an incoherent rage at the room-full of customers and attacked the store’s sound system.

  With each punch, plastic flew. “It’s too…fucking…early…for…Christmas…music!”

  When Tenisha, the manager, shouted at her to stop, Bree launched herself on the bigger girl and tore flesh from her face before blinding her with her claws. Screeching at the top of her lungs, Tenisha tore herself away from Bree and flailed away, one hand clutching her face, the other out in front waving at the air.

  Next, two customers jumped in. She bit the throat out of one and got punched in the face by the second. Richie Orr, who had arms like twigs and a concave chest, had never been in a fight in his life and the only punch he'd ever thrown was when he hit his sister in the sixth grade.

  Bree didn’t feel the blow land. Nor did she feel him grab a fistful of her hair. But she tasted his blood when she bit down on his wrist. He screamed high and piercing and he began slapping at Bree with his left hand. Three other customers joined in the melee and held her down.

  “Someone call the fucking police!” Richie cried.

  The police were dialed, but they were dealing with a hundred calls much worse than one relatively small, crazy girl. Six blocks away, a man was rampaging through central park, stabbing anyone he came across. Another man burst into St. Patrick’s Cathedral and attacked nuns and school children. A third tore through Macy’s killing a half-dozen people and wounding a score more before being brought down in a hail of bullets.

  The moment the police dealt with one of these crazies, two more took their place…then five more…then ten. The calls about Bree varied between a cat-fight and someone freaking out on meth. Bree was given a low priority and then forgotten about.

  An hour passed. After such a long wait, one of the men holding Bree down relaxed his grip a little too much and she spun like a greased leopard, sinking her teeth into his bicep and tearing out a mouthful of meat.

  The shop was basically closed at that point. The blind manager had been whisked away by cab and other than the three men holding Bree down, there weren’t any other customers left in the building. The rest had since slipped away. One of the two employees left in the store suggested that they tie Bree up, using an electrical cord. This was agreed to without hesitation.

  The men bound her wrists and ankles, and cinched the cords down tight enough to bite into her flesh.

  Unfortunately, none of them had been in the scouts, and the knots weren’t as secure as they could’ve wished. Bree snarled and hissed as she fought her bonds, and it wasn’t long before she had one foot free, then, a minute later, a hand. By then, one of the employees had snuck out the back, and two of the customers had made excuses and left.

  “Fuck it,” the last employee said as she untied her apron. “This job was never worth this.” She chucked the apron at Bree and walked out the front door.

  This left only a bank teller named Andrew, who lost his nerve and rushed out as well. Once outside he summoned enough courage to put his shoulder to the door, thinking he could hold back such a small woman. The s
treet was crowded with people, all rushing back and forth. Things were getting weird and the sight of a man fighting to hold a woman in a juice bar just added to it.

  No one asked if he needed help.

  The door shuddered as the two struggled in their strange battle. Andrew prevailed and was just barely strong enough to hold the door closed. Inside, Bree raged, screaming so loud she shredded her vocal cords. She threw herself against the door, no longer wishing to open it. She wanted to destroy it, and for a moment, Andrew was afraid it would come apart.

  But it held and there was a pause.

  “Thank God,” Andrew whispered. His relief was honest and yet he knew better than to relax. The girl was something out of a horror film and he had seen enough of those to know you never relaxed until the monster/killer was reduced to ashes, and even then, it made sense to make a paste out of it with Holy Water. He was right to be afraid.

  The undead creature that had once been Bree McDaniels couldn’t think as she once had, but her mind wasn’t completely destroyed. She still had murky memories and some part of her could reason out the very simplest puzzles. She fixated on the window and somewhere inside the darkness of her mind she saw a vision of glass breaking.

  Grabbing a chair, she hammered it against the window. It took six strikes before the glass shattered. By then Andrew was already gone. After the first hit, he fled into a city that had changed a great deal in the last few hours. There was panic in the air…and screams—these filled Bree with malevolent energy as she jumped through the remains of the window. Her dark eyes locked onto a woman across the street who was in the Thanksgiving spirit and wore a festive orange blouse and brown pants.

  Ignoring the cars filling the street and the people in them, Bree charged at the woman, who screamed at the sight of her bloody clothes and ran. The woman blazed past an old man with a cane, a yamaka, and no peripheral vision. He never saw Bree coming.

  “Watch where you’re go…” he started to say just before Bree crashed into him.

  He was dead in seconds.

  In the next hour, Bree killed three more people and infected seventeen, including the police officer who had wrangled her into the squad car which Agent Griffin Meyers saw trundling up the sidewalk towards the hospital. It was becoming clear that jailing people like Bree was the wrong tactic. All over the city, jail cells were turning into murder rooms painted in blood and decorated with the flesh of the dead. Someone thought it was a good idea to attempt to use chemical restraints instead of physical ones and now ERs were being flooded with murderous cannibals.

  Griff watched Bree smash at the car’s windows with her forehead. “It’s happening here. Whatever’s going on in L.A. and Chicago is happening here, too. We could go to a judge, but we both know that could take hours.”

  “We are going to a judge,” Plinkett barked. “And it’ll take as long as it takes. If we show up without a warrant, Magnus will just lock his doors. He’s under no obligation to do jack-shit if we don’t have a warrant. And if he is behind this, he might just have a small army with him.”

  “Look at this,” Griff said, jabbing a finger at the window. “Look out there. A judge’ll take too long. Do you hear that?” They all cocked an ear. Below the mewling could be heard a smattering of small arms fire.

  Plinkett nodded, making his soft under-chin bounce. “Yeah, I hear it.” He went to the window; his eyes shot back and forth, and as they did, his lips pursed until they disappeared. “Shit.”

  Maddy hobbled to stand next to him, and like Plinkett, her eyes zipped to every flashing light, and there were a lot of them. “Magnus said we’d be safe if we stayed. Maybe we should’ve.”

  Bryce tried to sit up far enough to look out, but it hurt too much and he wilted down. “I can go back. I’ll tell Magnus I changed my mind. He’ll take me. My work is important.”

  “No more than mine is,” Maddy said, sharply. “Besides, you may not come out again. You sound a little desperate if you ask me. A little scared.”

  “We’re in this mess because I was too brave,” Bryce answered her, glaring.

  Plinkett slammed his palm against the window. “Shut up, both of you. Why would they take you back, Bryce? They know you’re working with us.” He turned, hands on his hips. His gun was just visible beneath his jacket. “I’ll go get the warrant. Griff, you’ll stay here with them. Get a full statement and email it to my phone, asap.”

  When Plinkett left, Griff didn’t immediately start the interview. The three of them sat without speaking, listening to the city. Blaring horns and the wail of sirens were always something of a constant in the city, but now they were on a level that surpassed anything they had ever heard. With every passing second, the decibel level climbed and the sounds were merging into a strange rumble that was punctuated by the pop, pop, pop of handguns. These would come in short bursts. Interspersed, here and there, was the boom of a shotgun.

  “This is crazy,” Bryce said through gritted teeth. He had finally gotten out of the bed and stood hunched in on himself at the window. He couldn’t move without sucking in a gasping breath. “Magnus never said anything like this was going to happen. He said he could keep us safe. How? We’re going to be in the middle of World War 3 any moment.”

  This turned out to be a wild over-exaggeration. No one, on any level of government, knew what was going on. They were as blind, and as blind-sided as the average person. Terror attacks was the fallback guess most people had, but that didn’t jibe with the footage being broadcast on every channel. The talking heads at the networks were all over the board. They had “experts” who were also arguing that the water supply had been drugged by the government, that aliens were attacking, that the Chinese were using advanced mind control, and that the South had risen again!

  Nothing made sense and that included the answers Maddy and Bryce gave to Griff. They spoke over each other, snarked back and forth, sat in sullen silences, and generally had no idea what had happened to them.

  Griff was in the middle of writing what felt like a useless report when Bryce frantically grabbed the television remote and aimed it at the TV. “Read the chyron! Area hospitals and police stations are believed to be the focal points for the attacks. Mayor warns citizens not to…”

  The current feed jumped to another expert, this one on the psychology of climate change, and the chyron changed to a report on the crashing markets.

  “What?” demanded Maddy. “What did the mayor say?”

  “Does it matter?” Bryce asked in a whisper. “Listen.”

  There were screams coming from down the hall. It sounded as if someone was being eaten alive. Griff hurried to the door and snatched it open just as the two nurses flashed past. They charged into a room three doors down and were followed by a pair of burly orderlies dressed in all white. Two more orderlies stood across from Bryce’s room. They were big, thick men and looked more like wrestlers than anything else.

  “No one out of their room,” one growled.

  “I’m not a patient,” Griff explained. “I’m FBI.” He flashed his badge, but neither man bothered to look at it.

  “You’re a patient now. This floor has been quarantined. Get back in your room.”

  Griff noted how loose their white coats were and how each man had their right hands held close to their hips. It was an unnatural stance unless they meant to pull a gun. These were not orderlies.

  Chapter 6

  For a moment, Griff thought about going for his gun. He was fast and his aim was deadly, but…

  There were a number of “buts” that stayed his hand. Was the quarantine real? Were these men trained to a higher standard than a couple of bored bank guards? And where were the other two orderlies? Were they armed as well? He had to assume they were.

  “Quarantine, huh?” Griff said. “That makes sense. I guess.” He gave the man a friendly nod and received a cold stare in return. Shutting the door behind him, he paused for a moment staring at the faux wood, unable to answer any of the question
s that had popped into his mind. When he turned, he saw that Bryce and Maddy were frozen in place, gaping at him; he didn’t need to ask if either had heard.

  “Magnus did this,” Bryce said in a frightened whisper. He was so quiet that they had to lean in to hear him. “He did something to us and now he’s trying to keep us locked up here so he can keep an eye on us. Or…or to study us.”

  “You think he’s using us as guinea pigs?” Maddy asked. Her hands went to her damp gown. Beneath it, her stomach was starting to churn in fear. Together, their fear was like an electric current running between them and as that current went back and forth, it grew.

  Bryce had never considered himself an overly brave person. The one flash of courage he’d shown in Magnus’ tower had come with the full backing of the FBI. Now all he had was one young agent. It didn’t feel like near enough.

  Maddy had a shrill courage that relied almost wholly on the civilized nature of her fellow man. Deep down, she was sure that no one would ever really hurt her. For her, true evil was a rarity, a threat for those in the hood or the trailer park, but not to someone firmly ensconced in the top 2%, and certainly not someone with an Ivy League education. This thinking was a gossamer shield that she pretended didn’t exist.

  The horrid screams sifting up through the building were beginning to erode that imaginary shield. The TV caught her eye. The news station was showing footage of a small woman attacking an old man. The flesh of his neck was loose and sagging, and when she bit into it and pulled back, it stretched like taffy. “Is that going to be us?” Maddy asked.

  Bryce stared at the TV in horror. “God, I hope not.”

  When another expert replaced the bloody footage, they all looked away. Griff went to the window. There were even more flashing lights, strobes of red and blue in the darkness. People were running on the street. A few blocks away, there was a building on fire. It was a rectangle of steel and glass jutting thirty stories into the air. Around its waist was a belt of flame and smoke. How many people were trapped inside?