"I hear you."
The two soldiers left the body of the tattooed man in the stainless steel examination room. They walked down the hall to the locker room and got out of their military gear. They hung their uniforms carefully and changed into pale green medical scrubs. Sheppard studied his partner. Taylor's hands continued to shake. He seemed pink-cheeked yet way too pale. Something was definitely wrong. Sheppard watched closely as Taylor led the way back into the hall. Outside the room, they both inserted Vick's scented cotton sticks in their nostrils. Exchanged nods. Sheppard opened the door and entered first, walked to the far side of the metal table. Together they returned to the dead test subject. They stood by the table. Taylor rolled a metal tray over to the corpse. He laid out scalpels, a bone saw and a variety of plastic and metal containers.
Sheppard unlocked the restraints. "Seriously, Luke, you look like shit. Just what the fuck is going on with you?"
"Nothing," said Taylor. "Just kind of a bad trip. I'll be fine."
Sheppard stopped short. "Shit. You telling me you came on duty roasted again? No wonder you were so slow. You keep doing this, you're going to get one of us killed—or get yourself court-martialed. Hell, maybe both of us because I helped cover things up. Man, we're in deep here. These bastards, they will have your balls on a plate if they find out you're high."
"Nobody is going to find out," insisted Taylor. "Come on, let's get this done."
They released the restraints from the tattooed man. Sheppard expertly cleaned up and disposed of the feces. He positioned the corpse. They began the autopsy and tissue recovery. As Sheppard began the Y-incision, his hands appeared steadier. He spread the skin apart. Taylor produced the bone saw and began cutting through the ribs. The thin howling filled the room.
"Word is we got a drug screening coming up this Friday." Sheppard said it casually.
"Oh, God." Taylor stepped back. "You have to help me. Get me some of that blocking agent again. I can't fail that test."
"Man, I'm so disappointed in you," Sheppard said. He worked and spoke without looking up. Cut through tissue and removed the gall bladder. "I really thought you quit doing that shit."
"I'm trying, bro."
Sheppard efficiently severed the windpipe to get better access to the subject's lungs. The tissue seemed normal, no trace of greenish residue. Sheppard typed some curt notes with a stylus gripped in his gloved fingers. He returned to work. Even through the nose filters the corpse had begun to stink in an odd way. The man reeked of something odd, something not quite normal, probably a scent related to the virus they'd injected. Poor son of a bitch.
"I met this girl," said Taylor quietly.
Sheppard barked a short, loud laugh. "Another one?"
"No, you don't understand. She's amazing. She's..."
"Let me guess. A stripper." Sheppard rolled his eyes.
"It's not like the last time," insisted Taylor. He removed the left lung. He deposited it in a metal tray with a slimy plopping sound. Taylor paused dramatically. "Dude, she really loves me."
Sheppard shook his head. "I'm sure she does."
"So, you going to help me out with this drug screening?"
"I don't see why I should," Sheppard said, honestly. "I've cut you way too much slack already."
Before Taylor could reply, the intercom on the wall screeched. "Sheppard, report to my office on the double."
"Oh, great." Sheppard stripped the gloves from his hands. "You going to be all right without me?"
"Fine," Taylor said. He was going for drama, always the spoiled child. Sheppard felt himself weaken. Maybe he should help one last time, give the kid a chance to clean up. Maybe? Taylor started working on the right lung.
Sheppard hesitated, standing in the doorway. He watched his friend work for a moment. Nice guy, big-assed problem. Sheppard sighed. He palmed the door and stepped into the hallway.
Taylor worked alone. While removing and bagging organs, he tried not to think of the new girlfriend. He tried not to think of her long legs, her large, perfectly formed breasts and that tight, shaved pussy. Taylor pulled the right lung from the body, noticed some oddly discolored patches in the wet tissue. He felt a tiny flicker of alarm. Not my problem. Why write it down? Taylor figured pathology would notice anyway. He didn't want to have to think, much less try to be precise. His mind was on getting out of the lab and seeing Summer again. Getting well and truly laid. He placed the misshapen lung next to its healthier mate. He sealed the clear plastic containers. Time to get to the heart of the problem... Taylor turned back to the body briskly, scalpel up, already preparing to sever the aorta.
The metal table was empty. Taylor closed and opened his eyes again. Nothing there, except for some odd fluids and a few chunks of discolored tissue.
The fuck?
Taylor felt the flesh on his neck tighten. He spun around, the scalpel now held loosely in his right hand.
The tattooed man stood over him, those wide eyes clouded, yellow teeth bared, hands reaching out. He grabbed Taylor by the left arm, jerked it towards him. His lips snarled. Those vacant orbs rolled back in his head like the eyes of a feeding shark.
He bit deeply into Taylor's flesh.
"Son of a three-toed motherfucker!" shrieked Taylor. Without thinking, he drove the scalpel blade deep through the man's eye, into his brain. Just like that, it was over. The tattooed subject dropped heavily to the floor. Shit, now he had to be even deader than before.
"Fuck!" Taylor said, softly. He clamped his hand over the bite. He backed rapidly away from the now inert body, bumped into a tray table, almost lost his balance. His mind raced in circles, slipping while seeking purchase. The drugs. Has to be. He used his shoulder to edge the door open, exited, and locked it behind him. He yanked the plugs out of his nose. Swallowed bile.
The air conditioning hummed nicely, and those hidden little bottles of air freshener made the hall smell like lilacs. All was normal. Freaked out, Taylor stood in the anteroom, still breathing in short, shallow gasps. He paused to get his bearings. That did not just happen, he thought. It's got to be the drugs. No way that freak got up and bit me. I cut myself. Taylor examined the wound again. It could have been a cut, but the damned thing sure looked like a small bite mark, with blood seeping out. A drop hit the clean tiles below. But that guy couldn't have bit me he was deader than Lee Harvey Oswald. Taylor pressed his hand against his greens. He went into the decontamination spray careful to hide his injury. You're still fucked up, and they catch you slicing yourself while high you'll get tossed in the stockade.
Careful…The bored orderly on the other side of the thick glass didn't look up from his magazine.
Once outside, Taylor hit the civilian locker room. He waited until he was alone, turned his back to the security camera, opened a nearby first-aid kit and efficiently bound the wound. Yup, the scalpel slipped. You cut yourself. That's all that could have happened back there and you know it. A distant voice in his head told him to turn himself in, whispered that he'd been exposed to something unknown, but Taylor didn't listen to that voice. He was wired and excited and had a hard-on the size of a flashlight. Besides, the drugs were fading. He needed to blaze up and get seriously laid. Everything will be all right. I'm going to be fine...
Quickly—or at least, as quickly as he could with fear and drugs fighting for supremacy in his clogged bloodstream, Taylor changed into civilian clothes. He splashed water on his face and headed topside. Up the ramp, into the elevator. Two guards rode up with him, but they were talking football and didn't catch his expression. They stopped on two different floors to get off. Taylor rode on alone, heading for the surface. That took a while.
Once out of the Top Secret medical area, Taylor blinked as the fluorescent lighting faded. The overhead doors were rolling open, choppers coming in to land. The underground military complex was larger than two football fields side by side. Soldiers and medical personnel raced up and down hallways on secret assignments, rarely speaking to one another. Taylor stepped
onto the long electric walk running along the side of the huge concrete drive, a space wide enough for three transport vehicles at one time. Soldiers bustled about shouting and laughing. Taylor walked on.
His mouth felt dry. His head hurt. Taylor pressed on, heading for the exits buried in desert rock next to the giant doors. Once, Taylor though he heard Sheppard's voice calling after him, but he ignored it. The last thing he wanted to do was stop and explain why he'd stabbed the guy's eye, just left the corpse there on the floor split open. That never happened, nobody bit me, the guy was chopped to pieces. I finished the autopsy. I cut myself. That other shit was all a hallucination, something in the weed. PCP. Something. All the shit I've been doing lately, no wonder…
Taylor signed out. The sentry told him a joke and he smiled without understanding a word. Outside, green shuttles buzzed back and forth. Taylor caught one back to his section of the parking lot. Beyond the electrified wire fence, miles and miles of open desert. Taylor stepped down onto the asphalt. The shuttle rolled away.
Taylor sighed and grimaced. He clutched his arm. His face began to stream sweat. The wound hurt now, the burning clouded his mind. It was far worse than anything he'd experienced, even when he was in interrogation training and they'd been fucking with him to get him to talk. Taylor kept walking. He managed to ignore the pain until he got to his leased Range Rover. Then he started the engine, cranked up the Beastie Boys, threw back his head and screamed.
It made him feel a bit better.
Taylor dug his cell phone out of his glove compartment. He dialed Summer.
"Hey, baby," she said, responding to the caller ID.
"I... need to see you," Taylor said. He stuttered a bit.
Summer reacted to the tone of his voice. "What's wrong, angel?"
"Nothing. I'm all right. I just need to see you."
"I'm shopping right now. You want to meet me at the Starbucks at the outlet mall? Maybe buy me something nice, huh?"
"Fine, perfect. I'll be there in thirty minutes." Taylor hung up. His clothing hung limply, soaked with sweat that had taken on an odd odor. Taylor closed his eyes, ordered himself to focus. He drove out of the parking lot, half expecting an AR-15 to be shoved into his face. When he got to the front gate, they didn't say a thing, didn't try to stop him. Relieved, he sped away and onto the empty desert highway. Behind him the giant facility seemed to vanish into the low rock face from which it had been carved.
Taylor headed for Elko at eighty miles an hour.
As Taylor drove, his mind whirled. He became more and more agitated. I can't believe the scalpel slipped and I cut myself, what a damned fool move. That other shit? Forget it. Nobody would believe me. This doesn't make any sense. In fact, the whole thing pissed him off. It shouldn't have happened. It wasn't fair. Music blared. Taylor screamed again, this time loud and round and ragged like the tattooed patient that had bitten his arm. The man they had murdered. The wound continued to burn. Taylor felt his heart pound in his chest, his lungs constricted. He decided with what was left of his mind that this was just stress. Just stress. Just stress…
The Range Rover sped on through the desert to the outskirts of town. Someone else seemed to drive. Found he mall. The garage. After almost killing a woman and her kids in their minivan, Taylor found an open parking spot. His footsteps echoed through the garage. His breathing was ragged. Taylor kept moving, but his mind had dimmed like a dying flame. He staggered toward the Starbucks where he knew Summer would be waiting. Taylor licked his lips. Summer was the only thing that mattered anymore. He had to find her, be with her. That would fix this whole thing somehow.
Taylor went up the row of steps, past the crowded glass elevators. He didn't even see the Santa Fe colors and sandstone design. Shoppers gaped at him. They stepped back as Taylor stumbled by like a man with a bad case of flu. Women ushered their kids out of the way. Men scowled. Children refused to face him head on. Taylor stumbled into an empty glass elevator and rode it up one floor. He exited and started the wrong way. Some faint instinct made him turn back. As Taylor approached the Starbucks, more people took notice of him. A smallish, muscular man with a military haircut, pasty faced and red eyed, lower lip curled down, drooling like a bulldog. Everyone shrank away, turned and tried not to stare. Someone grumbled something about how he should take his country ass home instead getting everyone else sick. Taylor never saw or heard them.
Still moving, but no one home any more—the lights out and the rooms empty upstairs. A walking dead man—almost. Taylor passed the tables outside, the green awning and familiar logo. There she was. Taylor spotted Summer. What was left of him thought she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Would ever see again. He wanted to be with her. To touch her. To consume her. It never happened, I'm fine.
"Luke!"
Summer waved. She stood up as he approached her, a practiced smile on her face. But as he neared, stumbling a bit, the smile slipped. It was replaced by a look of genuine concern, with a touch of revulsion. Her pretty nose wrinkled in disgust. "Luke," she said. "You stink. Why are you so green?"
Taylor didn't answer. Couldn't answer. He was dying and knew it. Taylor felt his heart slowing down, slowing down, down…and finally it stopped. The world went black, then white. It came back again. He saw pretty little Summer. But now Taylor stared at her through clouded, milky eyes. All intelligence had dimmed away to be replaced by a ghoulish avarice. Summer tried to run. Taylor grabbed her, his mouth opened wide. A terrible, mindless hunger gripped him. Shoppers around them recoiled as his teeth found Summer's lovely throat. Taylor bit down, tore it open. Tasting the blood was wonderful, but the chewing? Pure ecstasy. Yards away an off-duty cop raised his weapon. The rest of the crowd reacted, shrieking and running away, tripping over one another, trampling two children playing with an iTouch.
The last thing Taylor heard was their screams.
ONE
"Say that again?" Sheriff Miller slid worn boots from the edge of the desk, slammed them down on the messy floor. The antique office and jail were stuck in the middle of yet another round of remodeling. Paint cloth whispered. Dust rose, spread and slowly settled. The old style radio crackled with static. Outside, night was spreading like a dark blanket over the little town that crouched further down the road.
"I said, he killed Miss Barbara by the library, Sheriff," Deputy Bob Wells said. He spoke rapidly, that drawling baritone voice thick with panic. "He killed her with his bare hands, so I shot him."
"Slow down. Shot who, damnit?"
A long pause. More static. "It was old man Grabowski, Sheriff. Sure as shit."
Sheriff Penny Miller blinked and straightened her long legs. She leaned forward over the desk, stomach tingling. "You okay, Bob? You been drinking?"
"I ain't had a drop, Sheriff, I swear. It was the strangest damned thing I ever saw. Old Grabowski came out of the bushes while I was talking to Miss Barbara. Looked like shit, some sorta zombie. He tackled her and started... biting. I tried to pull him off her, but his arm came right out of his shoulder. Miss Barbara was screaming. Jesus, blood come out of her quick as a double-dicked bull pissing on a flat rock. He wouldn't stop, so I shot him. He kept on biting anyway. I shot him again, in the head this time, and then he quit."
"And Miss Barbara?"
"Bled out like a pig. Then I saw some more of 'em coming and I ran."
"Some more of what?"
"Of them," he repeated, as if that explained everything.
I've got a lunatic in uniform out on the township streets with a loaded gun. Great.
"Deputy Wells, where the hell are you?"
"I'm in the car, on the way back. Sheriff, this gets worse. All kinds of people are out on the street tonight, kind of stumbling around all drunk-looking. They look like… well, zombies. And, yeah, I do know how this sounds. I wouldn't believe it either if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes."
"Zombies?" Sheriff Miller said. She sighed into the radio. "Come on, Wells, what's really going on?" She stretch
ed the microphone cord, went around her desk, stepped over some lumber to put on her gun belt as she spoke.
"I'm serious as liver cancer, Sheriff," came the static-clouded voice through the speakers. "Dozens, maybe a hundred of them. A handful attacked Mrs. McCormick's store, clawing and chawing. They flat-out ate her alive. I shot two or three with the Remington, but they just kept coming, so I had to light out for base."
The sheriff heard Wells sounding panicked as hell, so she knew that whatever was happening, the deputy thought it was real enough. "What's your position?"
"Like I said, in the cruiser. I'll be back at the station in two minutes tops. Leave the prisoners locked up. We got to get out of here. Shit!" The radio popped. Wells stopped transmitting.
Miller wasn't sure she bought the story. Maybe it was a prank, but that wasn't like Wells at all. Big old serious redneck sonofabitch like him wasn't prone to joking around. So something was going on out there. But freaking zombies? Come on! Whatever it was, Miller knew she had only a few minutes to prepare. She was the Sheriff and had her duty. She rounded the desk and grabbed her broad-brimmed hat off the rack. Out of her office, past the construction mess and into the small, old-fashioned western jail. The big key turned smoothly in the brand-new lock. The barred door swung open with a creak. The two prisoners looked up as she approached the cells.
"Get up," Miller said.
"Time for my strip search, darlin'?" The closest prisoner swung his feet off the edge of his cot. Scratch was busily tattooed; a large biker with long, stringy hair, a scraggly beard and a darkened bandage on his head. He hefted his sweaty bulk off the cot and approached the steel bars. "I'm sure I've got something in here you'd like," he said. He leered and began to paw at his crotch.
"Shut up." Miller produced a pair of handcuffs. "That little thing wouldn't scare a gnat into buying a diaphragm. Now get over here and put your hands through the slot." She indicated the large rectangular hole in the barred door. "Move it. We got us somewhere to go."
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