Night Zero (Book 1): Night Zero

by Horner, Rob

  His mouth moved, teeth grinding, and a thought came to him.

  He could use his teeth to chew into their throats. He’d hear their screams right in his ears, would feel their blood gushing over him, spurting with arterial flow and spraying in front of air escaping a chewed windpipe, hands flailing, urgent and strong at first, slapping at his head and shoulders, then quickly weakening.

  It should have been unthinkable, but it wasn’t.

  Just as his hand should be scaring him to death but didn’t.

  His brain was turning everything on its head.

  The recognition of a problem held him back.

  The patient’s eyes were closed, and his wife only had eyes for her man, so neither saw the murderous rage that flashed into being on Danny’s face and held there for several seconds like a facial muscle cramp. The wife registered the movement but chalked it up to the nice white boy coming to help her husband in response to her request. They didn’t see the indecision, the silent war Danny raged with himself, his remaining humanity making a last stand against murderous impulses that sprang from somewhere deep inside.

  He didn’t understand why, so he didn’t act.

  The fury was strong this time, but it was a cover. It hid something darker from his thoughts, something that might make an honorable man worried enough to turn himself in.

  The next time would be different, as the need to propagate his sickness would override all reservations.

  He needed to share.

  Buck wasn’t quite sure what he saw when he opened the back door of the ambulance. The patient on the stretcher, the wife buckled in, and Danny just standing there, frozen in place. The scene lasted only a second, a picture flash seen through the widening crack of the double doors, not consciously registered until after it changed. Then Danny was moving to the wife, helping her unbuckle and opening the side door so she could climb out and wait on the sidewalk outside the hospital doors.

  There’d been something on Danny’s face. Something unpleasant, frightening even.

  Then the patient moaned, and Buck fell back into the role of paramedic driven to help by the need of his fellow man.

  He’d remember that look later, but it would be too late.

  The damage would already be done.

  Chapter 11

  Three hours ago, Mia Griffin found a run in her hose after checking her bags at the airport. It sucked, but she’d shaved the night before and had spent enough time lying out that her natural tan looked better than the tinting from the nylons. She ditched the hose in the bathroom and reapplied her makeup before getting on the plane. The man of her dreams waited for her in San Diego. And if he didn’t work out, she’d put up with him long enough to make friends at his advertising agency. It wasn’t prime time, but commercials might be just the kickstart she needed to break into acting. Thank you, eHarmony.

  Even the chatty brat talking a mile a minute in the seat behind her hadn’t completely shattered her mood. It was the price she had to pay, the pain of being delivered from this hotbed of Southern ignorance and to the enlightened lands of southern California, where no one would bless her heart, declare anything, or shut their own mouths. She could Uber and Lyft anywhere she needed to go, have groceries delivered, and never be confronted by a white supremacist wearing a MAGA hat again. She was beautiful. She was sexy. Any man would be proud to have her beside him (never behind). And she knew all of this with the same certainty that accompanied the rising of the sun or the eventual imprisonment of the current president for colluding with the Russians.

  Then the kid puked in her face and set her eyes on fire.

  She barely remembered the co-pilot’s declaration of a medical emergency forcing them to land in a dust-speck town in fly-over country, didn’t know if it was a cockpit whore who helped her off the plane or a fellow passenger. There might have been a hand getting a free grope on one of her tits, so maybe it was a man, though she wouldn’t put it past one of the butchier cockpit whores to get a quick lezzy-feel off her.

  It didn’t matter. None of that mattered but the pain.

  It wasn’t just a burning in her eyes, not anymore. Even when someone gave her a bucket and started handing her large cups of water to wash the acid off her face, the pain had already moved inward. No matter how much water she poured over her head, that pain wormed its way inward like a hot spike being driven into the center of her head. It didn’t come from the center, not exactly, but more like each of her eyes was focusing a laser beam toward the center of her brain, and where those beams met was the locus of her agony.

  Gradually her vision cleared enough that she could see red mixing with the water as it ran over her face. That wasn’t too alarming because the brat’s puke had blood in it. She remembered the baby-momma whining about that when she was calling for a doctor. As if a kid with blood in her vomit was somehow more important than her face! Little bitch probably bit her tongue when she hurled.

  A lot of the people from the plane were sick. Even absorbed in soothing the pain in her head as she was, Mia was aware of the number of cots spread out around her, could hear the anguished moans and the sounds of wet flatulence that would have been disgusting at any other time. Even if she couldn’t hear those sounds, the smell coming off those people, so many of them gathered in one place, was almost enough to make her hurl.

  But then the cups stopped coming. Mia called and waved, but no one put a new cup in her hands.

  The water in the bucket stilled enough that she could see her reflection.

  There wasn’t just blood in the bucket! It was all around her eyes.

  Hell, it was coming out of her eyes!

  Her fucking eyes were bleeding!

  Not just that. They were sunken in, making her nose look larger. They were red-veined, and those veins rose out from the skin surrounding her eyes like a special effect in a movie. And her blue eyes…her blue…

  The blue was gone, washed out as if by bleaching. Pale irises the color of corpse skin stared back at her from the rippling water in the bucket, twin miniature moons trapped in a blood-red sunset.

  Her chest heaved, too-fast breaths exacerbating the pain in her head, turning the laser beam into a drill bit, turning, churning, grinding bone into meal that sloughed back out along the bit channels. She could see it in the reflection, like flakes of white speckling her vision.

  A solicitous hand fell on her shoulder, the drill bit punched through the last barrier into her brain, and all but one thing ceased to matter.

  She grabbed the handle of the bucket with both hands and turned toward the hand, bringing it up with all the strength she had and turning as she lifted.

  There was a scream and a crunch—hard to tell which one came first—then the airport worker fell away.

  Other people screamed. Cots toppled and feet shuffled, trying to get away from her.

  She could see them, but they didn’t matter.

  All that mattered was spreading the pain.

  Something this exquisite demanded to be shared.

  She looked up.

  There, only a few feet away, was the little bitch who started all of this.

  Maybe there was one more thing that still mattered to Mia.

  Hefting the bucket, she took a step forward. Then another. There was something wrong with her balance, but she managed to stay upright.

  “No!” the bitch’s slut-mother cried. “Stay away from her!” She rose from her place by the sick brat’s side.

  Mia took another step.

  The kid moved, still hunching over herself but trying to rise.

  She wasn’t going to get away.

  “She didn’t mean to! It was an accident! I’m so sorry.”

  What the hell did the slut have to be sorry for?

  The woman moved between Mia and the kid’s cot, her hands out placatingly.

  More voices rose from around them, men as well as women.

  “She hit Kim.”

  “Somebody do something!”

>   “Where’s Security?”

  And Mia tried to take another step, but the brat’s slut-mother was there, hands grabbing for her arms, keeping her from swinging the bucket.

  Lips widening in a smile of anticipation, Mia drove her head forward, smashing it into the mother’s face, feeling a satisfying crunch of bone even as the brood mare dropped to her knees, her hands slipping from Mia’s arms.

  Mia stopped, torn for one second by indecision. She should end the mother, stop the whore from bringing anymore creatures into the world with the capacity to puke on someone and destroy their face.

  No, the brat was there, just two feet away, somehow coming up to her hands and knees, looking for all the world like a cat perching on a chair back.

  Mother or kid first?

  She raised the bucket to swing, still not sure who she intended to hit.

  And the brat who didn’t have the strength to get out of bed to take a shit just a moment before somehow launched herself off the cot. The force of her push sent the foldable bed sliding back several feet. Mia tried to bring the bucket down, but the kid was there first, her head not even as high as Mia’s breasts, pushing against her, driving her back.

  A new pain blossomed in her mid-section as the kid’s teeth tore through shirt and skin.

  “Bitsy?” the whore-mother said groggily, scooting, struggling to sit up, fighting to see past the pain of her broken nose.

  But the pain didn’t matter. The viral venom of the brat’s bite didn’t matter either.

  Mia was already infected.

  Dropping the bucket, Mia reached for the brat’s neck, ready to strangle, twist, and break.

  But other hands grabbed her. Strong hands.

  Twisting, snarling, swinging, and biting, Mia struggled to get free. Men and women who’d escaped the initial sickness, or those from this airport who hadn’t been exposed to it at all, felt the scratch of her nails or the nip of her teeth.

  Other men grabbed onto the brat, only to find that she was every bit as wild and crazy, flailing, frenzied and ready to bite.

  Someone got her hands behind her, and cold steel encircled her wrists.

  “Ma’am, you’ve got to calm down,” a man with a blue shirt said. He had patches on his shoulders with words, but Mia found that she’d lost the ability to read them.

  “Bitsy, calm down,” the mom said.

  Mia fought, wrenching her hands up and down, whipsawing her arms in and out, back and forth.

  “You’re going to hurt yourself,” the man said.

  Mia didn’t care. There was pain in her wrists and arms, but she knew she could get free if she kept trying.

  She had to get free. She had to spread it, and the vomit-spewing brat had shown her the way.

  “Everybody get clear,” the male voice said. Then, “this is for your own good, ma’am.”

  It meant nothing. Only being free mattered!

  Something slammed into her with the force of a truck. A roaring like meat sizzling on a grill filled her head. All her muscles seized. She fell, but had no way to protect herself, flopping onto the ground like a fish pulled out of a lake. The force holding her muscles pulsed, drawing everything tighter, then relented. The sudden release slammed head, hands, and feet into the floor.

  Then it stopped.

  Mia tried to rise but her muscles wouldn’t respond. A lethargy spread over her, pulling her down.

  It was close to ten pm by the time Austin crossed the state line into South Carolina, and ten-thirty by the time he finally took an exit to try to find some medical attention. He was driving much slower than normal, barely able to maintain pressure with his right foot without feeling like he was stretching his insides. The one time he thought to us the cruise control to accelerate and maintain speed almost resulted in a crash, as he found his consciousness dwindling if there wasn’t something dragging him back. The pain inside was awful, but it wouldn’t get any better if he didn’t get somewhere to get it better.

  He’d almost exited at Lavonia, Georgia, but reconsidered at the last minute. They had a hospital there too, but it was small. Besides, at that point the pain in his stomach had ebbed to mere discomfort, and there hadn’t been anymore of the twisting cramps that said bathroom now or mop later. Just so long as he drove at a sedate fifty miles per hour. Any faster and the pulling started again.

  Then came the state line and exit 2, with its huge fireworks warehouse-store, a few more miles of sparse population, and finally the signs for Clemson and Anderson, and the pain returned. It didn’t build like an oven warming up but roared to life like someone opened the blast door on a cremator in mid-cycle, drawing a gasp of pain and causing him to double forward, striking the steering wheel with his head and blasting the Pathfinder’s horn. Luckily there was no one around to hear.

  There were hospital signs at exit 19, but his vision blurred as he neared the bottom of the exit, so he wasn’t sure if he turned the correct direction. A few minutes later and it no longer mattered. The urgency returned, a sudden burning liquid sensation, and it was all he could do to pull the SUV over at a gas station, parking sideways across three lanes in front of the small convenience store.

  “Bathroom,” he managed to gasp as he staggered in, past the little, nut-brown man behind the counter and a tall, skinny black man paying for a 40 oz bottle of beer.

  “In the back,” the man said in a musical accent, pointing to the right, past a mile-long aisle of chips, travel-sized medical supplies, and a hundred different brands of chewing gum. Austin kept both arms around his gut and both cheeks squeezed tighter than a runway model overdosing on laxatives as he shuffled down the aisle, spotting the unisex bathroom tucked in a small hallway between brightly-lit coolers full of Gatorade, Coca-Cola and Pepsi products, and more of those monstrous bottles of beer.

  The door better not be locked, he thought. And it wasn’t.

  Austin managed to get his shorts down but didn’t have time to lace the toilet seat with tissue paper before the explosion came. His naked cheeks had just touched the cold porcelain when his insides poured out of him with a sound like a faucet pouring water into a tub. The smell rising from the toilet was enough to make his eyes water but the relief…the relief that settled into him as the noxious liquid continued to pour out was so welcome that he relaxed back against the tank.

  Maybe everything would be okay now.

  We are an understanding and forgiving people, by and large, especially regarding our friends and loved ones. We don’t hold grudges against the old ladies at church who accidentally bump into our hips with their walkers any more than we maintain anger at the toddler who drops a toy on our feet when it slips out of their unreliable hands. We dismiss minor discomforts in the face of another’s anguish: the loving wife who gouges the arms of the husband who only wants to hold her as she shudders through a final spasm before falling still; the child who comprehends nothing beyond pain, teeth clenching in extremis on a parent’s shoulder as the body dehydrates faster than the IVs can compensate for.

  The first round of deaths happened around 7pm in Atlanta, the very old and very young succumbing quickly, often already in a hypotensive shock state before they ever presented to the hospitals. After all, who runs to the emergency department at the first sign of diarrhea? The deaths continued in a ripple that spread more east than north as the fallout drifted along the air currents. There didn’t seem to be rhyme or reason as to who was stricken, and who was spared. In some hospitals whole families would present with identical symptoms, while others would see an entire family gathered around the bed of a single individual.

  Some passed as quietly as could be expected, wracked with pain as their intestines liquified within their bodies, pouring out of rectum and mouth in a bloody mess. Healthcare workers treated the vile effluent as a biohazard, which it was, but far more dangerous were those patients who did not wish to go quietly into that great night. No way, no how. Those fought like demons, grasping, scratching, biting and clawing, fighting f
or survival.

  That’s how their families saw it. That’s how the sympathetic workers in the hospitals and urgent care clinics thought of it as well.

  The secondary exposures were more subtle, but far more troubling.

  They weren’t dying.

  They remained strong.

  And they were much better equipped to spread the infection.

  Take Sandy Campos, for example, stricken blind by a dying woman’s skunk spray and driven into a psychotic rage by the viral infection that followed the optic nerves directly into her brain. She scratched or bit four people in the initial confrontation that saw her carried back into her own hospital, then scored three more strikes on her fellow workers who just wanted to find out what was wrong with her. Finally, sedated and in four-point restraints in the lone psychiatric room in her hospital’s emergency department, she remained blissfully unconscious and unaware as evening waned into night, more patients died, and some of those she’d attacked began to experience their own surges of irrepressible anger.

  The two men who checked in with her were treated and streeted, as the saying goes. The ED had far sicker patients to deal with. A dab of Neo-Sporin and a Bandaid were completely inadequate to deal with the infection that passed into their bodies from Sandy’s, but no one understood that then. The other two went home and dressed their wounds themselves. One used peroxide on his arm while his wife hunted for the Finding Dory Bandaid box. The other poured a shot of vodka over his throbbing hand. By midnight all four men were on the hunt for other victims.

  As the news media continued to report the Puron plant explosion and downplayed the sudden rise in gastrointestinal complaints flooding the hospitals, as planes full of people who’d escaped the initial blast rode inside the cabin while luggage coated with the infectious particles traveled below it to places across the country and around the world, people continued to die. And for every person who passed from the bacteria, four or five others were infected with the virus.

  Chapter 12