When I reached Speedy Mart, I pulled into an empty parking lot. The door was closed, and a sign was hung on the door. Something must have happened that Ken had to go home early this morning.
Ken had never missed a day’s work since I’d started working at Speedy Mart. He always worked the late-night shift and would meet me at the door each morning and tell me about all the weirdos that had come into the store during the night as I logged in and counted the money in the cash register.
Maybe the note on the door would explain what had happened I thought as I parked my car behind the building and walked towards the door. I was shocked when I reached the door and saw a sign that said, “Closed until further notice.”
“Shit,” I said as I read the sign. “The damn company must have filed bankruptcy and closed all their stores in the middle of the night.” I thought about how many times I had heard that story over the last few years.
The job didn’t pay much, but with my military disability pension I didn’t need much. I just enjoyed the job. It was an easy job, there wasn’t much to it, but it occupied my day and gave me some mad money to do with whatever I felt like. I used the money to make my car payment, I bought a new stereo and a new computer. I bought lottery tickets, ice cream, Big Macs and anything else I felt like buying. I used my pension money to help my mother with the bills and bought food to make it easier for her. The only income she had was my dad’s U.S. Steel pension which didn’t go as far as it once did.
Feeling dejected, I turned and began to walk back to my car. Once again, the silence caught my attention. Besides all the traffic that was usually on Brownsville Road, I would always hear all the traffic five blocks down on Route 51. Bus engines roaring, car horns honking, people shouting, and sirens were part of the normal day out on Route 51, but today all I heard was dead silence.
As I turned the corner of the building, I saw a man standing with his back to me, staring at my car. My new Honda was a nice car, but I don’t remember anyone staring at it with such concentration before. The car was nice but not that nice.
“Well, I’m happy he likes my car,” I thought as I walked closer, then another thought struck me. “I wonder if he knows where everyone is today?” Feeling that apparently, I had missed something.
“Hey buddy,” I asked as I moved closer, “do you know where everyone is this morning? I’ve never seen it so quiet around here before.”
The man turned slowly to look in my direction.
When I saw him, I froze, stopped and just stared.
The man’s face was bloody as if he had been struck with a club. His one eye was red, filled with blood. His other eye was all white. A blue liquid ran from his greasy, matted hair, then ran down over his forehead and mixed with the blood in his eye.
It was then that I also noticed his clothes. They were covered with blood, they were also filthy and torn in many places. The man was only wearing one shoe and his right arm hung limp at his side.
When he started to move towards me, I began to slowly back up. When I saw how he was moving, slow and jerky, as if dragging his body across the parking lot, I started to get nervous. When he opened his mouth, exposing a mouthful of bloody teeth, then his teeth began snapping open and closed, just like the people I had seen down on the third level in Roswell, I turned and ran.
As I ran around the building, I could see down Brownsville Road and saw another figure, walking strangely down the middle of the road. The slow jerky motion told me that this was another person like I had just seen by my car.
I then heard the man following me let out a loud moan that sent chills through my body. The load moan was answered by the man out in the middle of Brownsville Road. If that wasn’t crazy enough, I began to hear other loud moans, apparently in reply to the man following me, coming from the buildings and alleys around me.
I stopped and listened, trying to locate the new moaning sounds to determine what direction they were coming from, but soon the moans seemed to be coming from all around me.
The man that had been following me staggered around the corner behind me and let out another bone chilling groan. I jumped, then turned my head to look back in his direction, the horrifying look on his face almost took my breath away.
As the other moans began to get closer, I decided that I didn’t want to try and go back home on foot, I had seen too many horror movies in my life to know how that would end. I continued to run, circling around to the other side of the building to where my car was parked, grabbed my keys, unlocked the door and jumped inside, slamming the door behind me.
I just sat for a few seconds and tried to catch my breath and to compose myself. As much as I had thought about something like this happening over the last few years, seeing it actually happening in front of me was so terrifying that I couldn’t think. I didn’t want to believe it. It was so much worse than I had ever imagined. Even after seeing the third level in Roswell half filled with these poor mutilated bodies, growling and snapping their teeth at me, staring at me with their empty eye sockets, this was worse. Seeing these horrible creatures, that weren’t tied down or restrained, on their feet and coming for me had added a new dimension to the nightmare that I hadn’t experienced before. Now, it felt personal. I was no longer just a spectator, I was the focus of this madness.
After seeing what I had seen in Roswell, I thought that if I ever saw anything like that again, it wouldn’t affect me like it did at Roswell. Let’s just say I was wrong, very wrong.
But what had me so confused, was why was this happening here in Pittsburgh. Assuming that Wilson was right and two thirds of the people that had been supposedly abducted by aliens would have their brain implant activated on today’s date, turning them into zombies, that didn’t explain what I was seeing here.
I assumed that if Wilson was correct, that two thirds of the people held at Roswell would become zombies. Then if they managed to escape Roswell, the situation would begin to spread out into the surrounding areas around Roswell.
It would be a slow process that would take months to reach Pittsburgh. Besides, I doubted that the situation would be able to spread very far before the military contained the damage to the Roswell area. I also had been watching the news closely and I hadn’t heard anything about something like this happening around Roswell.
This didn’t make sense to me, what I was seeing wasn’t what I was expecting to happen, but here it was. This was Roswell’s third level, somehow turned loose in my hometown of Pittsburgh.
When a body collided with the side of my car, ramming his face against the windows a few inches from my face, breaking teeth and smearing blood across my window, I started the engine, threw the gearshift into drive and hit the gas.
My car shot out of the parking lot, tires screeching as I drove back down Brownsville Road. All I could think was that I had to get home to my mother.
I hoped that she hadn’t started walking to Betty’s house, two blocks down Overbrook Boulevard.
Then another thought hit me as I drove down Overbrook Boulevard, dodging the staggering bodies that had begun to come out on the road. The man that was staring at my car had a blue liquid running out of his head. Was the government testing their version of the blue liquid from the so-called alien brain implants here in Pittsburgh. But why would they do that here? In the Middle East I could understand their motivation, but testing it in Pittsburgh made absolutely no sense. Where they transporting their samples and had an accident, was this what had happened?
Three years had passed and as Wilson had predicted, now it was starting. But my mind was barely able to comprehend why or how this was starting here and what it could mean.
All I could think about was that I just had to get home as soon as I could.
Chapter 21
I arrived home five minutes later, my car was dented and bloody, but I had made it home safely.
I parked the car at the side of the house, jumped out and ran for the door to the house.
It was comforting
to not see any of the deranged people staggering around my neighborhood. Maybe what I had just seen was limited to Brentwood, near Route 51. Maybe a military truck carrying the blue liquid had an accident on Route 51 near the Speedy Mart.
Then I started to be concerned that the people that were following my car, could end up coming this way. The car was too fast for them to know exactly where I had gone once I was out of their sight, but I hadn’t gone all that far. If they just kept going in a straight line, it was conceivable that they could end up here.
I had to find my mother and make sure she stayed in the house. If we were lucky, this would all be over in twenty-four hours.
I ran up to the front door and turned the handle, the door opened telling me that my mother was still here. She always locked the door whenever she left the house.
As I ran inside, stopping long enough to look over my shoulder to verify that there wasn’t anyone or anything watching where I had gone, I heard my mother.
“Did you forget something,” my mother asked as she was pulling on her sweater, preparing to go over to Betty’s.
“Thank God, you’re still here,” I sighed.
“I was just leaving for Betty’s house,” my mother said. “What’s wrong, you look like you just saw a ghost.”
“Call Betty and tell her you won’t be coming over and that she should stay inside,” I said breathlessly.
“Is that dog loose again?” Ma asked. “I thought you told me they caught him.”
“It’s not the dog, Ma,” I replied as I tried to think of how to tell my mother what I saw. “There is some kind of riot up on Brownsville Road.”
“Are the people rioting because they got bit by that dog and got rabies?” my mother asked.
“No, it doesn’t have anything to do with that dog,” I replied.
“Well, why can’t I go over to Betty’s house. She and I could stay inside at her house?” Ma asked.
“We need to stay inside so no one sees us,” I replied. “If they see us, I’m afraid they will try to break into the house to get at us.”
“Oh my,” my mother said then asked, “who are these people?”
“The people I saw up on Brownsville Road look like they will kill anyone that they find out on the streets,” I added.
I could see my mother’s body begin to tremble as she looked confused.
“I think we will be fine as long as we stay in the house,” I said.
“What kind of people are out there?” Ma asked. “Why would they do something like that?”
“I don’t know, Ma,” I replied. “All I know is that all the streets are deserted and what I saw up on Brownsville Road is scary as hell.”
“You won’t get into trouble for not going to work, will you?” Ma asked nervously.
“No, in fact the store has a sign on the door that they will be closed until further notice,” I replied. “It looks like everyone else has already heard about the riot and are staying inside. Why don’t you call Betty, then you and I will watch TV. Maybe when the news comes on, we’ll find out what is going on.”
“OK,” Ma replied and walked over to the phone to call Betty. I turned and pulled the drapes to the side of the window and began to scan the street in front of the house.
I could feel the tension leave my body when I didn’t see any activity outside, maybe the people that were trying to follow my car had turned down Maytide Street and were now on their way to Bethel Park. With a little luck, maybe Overbrook would be spared today.
My mother hung up the phone, then walked over to the couch and picked up the TV remote and hit the power button. I walked over and sat down on the couch and my mother came over and sat down next to me.
“Betty was really upset,” she said.
“I can imagine that she was disappointed,” I replied.
“She doesn’t know what to do with Bob,” Ma said. “After yesterday, he seems to think that he is supposed to go to the bathroom on her living room carpet now. He has already gone on her white carpet twice this morning. She is having a hard time getting the stains out of the carpet.”
“Well, hopefully after today, she can get Bob retrained to go back outside,” I replied.
“I don’t know, that Bob is the dumbest dog I’ve ever seen,” Ma said. “I don’t know how she was ever able to train him in the first place.”
The TV finally came on and the screen came into focus, it was an older TV that didn’t come on instantly like the newer ones did. I was tempted to buy my mother a new TV, but she had taken so long to get comfortable with this one that I didn’t want to complicate her life until her old TV finally gave out. My mother didn’t handle change well, in fact she was the only person I knew that still had a rotary dial telephone. It was a large black, 1950’s style monstrosity that amazingly still worked, but it made my mother happy.
When the picture focused, I stopped and stared.
Across the bottom of the screen in large red letters, a message scrolled across the picture. The message said, “National Emergency Declared. Stay in your homes until further notice.”
The word “National” is what first got my attention. How could this be a National Emergency already? Was what was happening in Pittsburgh so terrifying that the President declared it to be a national threat?
“Turn up the sound Ma,” I said.
She held the remote out in front of her and pointed it at the TV, then pressed a button and the sound increased so I could hear the voice of the man on the screen.
“For those of you that are just tuning in, let me recap what has happened and what we know at this point,” the reporter said. “Last night shortly after midnight, across the country, for some unknown reason people began to collapse and fall unconscious. The ambulance services were called to take the unconscious victims to the hospital.
When the news services began to see the same story showing up at all the major hospitals across the country, reporters started calling the hospitals to get an explanation for this rash of unknown incidents. All they were able to find out was that the doctors could not explain the reason behind the mysterious illnesses.
At that time, the news services put out a minor story about the mysterious events taking place and that more information would be released when available.”
“The story again began to attract attention around 3:00 AM when what would be described as riots began to breakout at the hospitals where the people with the mysterious illness had been taken,” the reporter continued. “Around 5:00 the police released a statement that people that had been taken to the hospital earlier in the night, had regained consciousness and had become violent. Numerous deaths and injuries were reported and efforts to contain the disturbances were being continued. At 6:00 AM, the CDC had been called in along with the national guard. Rumors began to be circulated that the police had been unable to contain the disturbances and the situation in the hospitals were out of control. Other unconfirmed rumors said that the people that had become violent, could not be controlled by any means used by the police. The people apparently could not feel pain and had been eating their victims and the unknown condition that they had been inflicted with was rapidly spreading throughout the hospitals.
At 7:00 AM this morning when the condition in the hospitals began to spill out into the cities, the CDC convinced the President to declare a national emergency.
All I can add at this point is that violence and mayhem are spreading throughout the cities. The President has ordered all citizens to remain in their homes until further notice. Anyone out on the streets will be arrested. If you come in contact with anyone who is acting strangely, do not approach them, get inside and avoid them at all cost. They are violent and extremely infectious.
When we have more information, we will break into your local programming to report the latest information.
We now send you back to your local station.”
I sat back and felt myself start breathing once again. This was definitely not what I had
expected to hear. How could this, even if Wilson had been right, have spread so far, so fast.
The screen on the TV switched back to the local station, the WTAE Pittsburgh emblem appeared in the lower righthand corner of the picture and Michelle Wright, the station’s morning anchor was speaking. The National Emergency Alert still scrolled across the bottom of the screen.
“We have lost all contact with our reporters at Allegheny General and Mercy Hospital. The neighborhoods around these hospitals have become a battle ground. We have had calls coming into our station reporting that the streets in these areas are littered with bodies. We have been unable to confirm these reports, but they are consistent with the numerous calls that have been received at the station,” Michell said. “If all the calls we have received are to be believed, again we are unable to send anyone to these areas, but our helicopter has flown over the city and has given us a visual confirmation. The entire north side of the city appears to be in total chaos. Bethel Park and Mount Lebanon areas are also experiencing extreme violence and the mobs appear to be moving towards the south side of the city.
The Hill District and the west end has been spared so far, but the violence looks to be moving in their direction. If you are listening to my voice, please get inside and lock your doors and windows. There is nothing you can do to stop the violence. All you can do at this time is to stay inside to keep yourself and your family safe. The Pittsburgh Police have called in all units in an attempt to control the spread of the violence. The National Guard is reportedly heading into town from the airport as we speak. Their convoy should be approaching the Fort Pitt Tunnel within the next twenty minutes.
Apocalypse- the Plan Page 16