A Glimpse Of Decay (Book 2): Staring into the Abyss

by Santiago, A. J.

  “Well, I don’t know if you know what’s going on with the city,” Dave replied in an agitated tone, “but everything is falling to shit out here. The city’s resources are stretched to the limit. We have stuff breaking out everywhere, and a whole crap load of units aren’t even responding on the radio anymore. We got fires burning all across town and nothing can be done about them because the Fire Department is tapped out. We got a report on this crash here, but we also got a report of a riot and another crash-and-burn up by Sontera and Stone Oak. And what really sucks is that me and John are the only two officers available around here right now. Everyone else is tied up…or they aren’t answering their radios.”

  “Well that crash and burn was my family—my wife and kid,” Trent said in a choked up voice. “And no one was there to put out the fire or help us…no cops, no fire…no one!”

  “Shit, they’re coming!” someone screamed out loud. A man was pointing up to the top of the hill where the ramp fed into Sontera.

  “Oh my God!” Trent exclaimed as a wave of people came rushing down the ramp. It was hard to make out, but he could see that some of them were screaming for help while others were just shrieking and howling.

  “Oh fuck, look!” Randy said as he pointed up to one woman who was savagely biting the arm of an unlucky man. “See, I told you!”

  Panicking at the carnage unfolding around them, a number of people began to flee, running past Randy, Trent and the officers—some running south, some running north and some crossing the median and running out onto the highway itself. Dave squinted as he tried to pick out what was going on in the crowd. He saw people running, fighting, tumbling and cursing. Several of them—the ones with torn and ragged clothing—had visible wounds and bloody trauma.

  “Thirty-One Seventy, I’ve got a large disturbance over at Sontera and Two Eighty-One!” Dave shouted into the radio mic on his lapel. “We’ve got infected up here, along with numerous casualties!” He drew his pistol and started making his way up the ramp.

  John, seeing his partner walking towards the fray, trotted back to his patrol car and retrieved a pump action shotgun. “Watcha got, Dave?” he yelled.

  “Fuck, I don’t know!” He still couldn’t make out what was going on in the crowd and the screaming and wailing was unnerving him. Several people went scurrying past him and one of them had a large chunk missing from his right bicep.

  One person came charging down the ramp—he was screaming and shrieking—and he seemed to be coming straight for Dave. The cop pointed his gun at the man and yelled for him to stop, but the enraged man ignored Dave’s orders and lunged at him instead. Dave—caught off guard—threw his hands up to deflect the attack. Mindful of his unsecured pistol, he quickly pulled in his right hand and tucked the gun up against his body. With his left hand he was able to plant his palm in the middle of the chest of his attacker, redirecting him to one side. The crazed man tumbled down to the asphalt, rolled for a bit, and then sprang back to his feet. He faced Dave and dropped his hands down to his sides. With a jerky motion, the man drew up his right arm and started slapping and grabbing at his own chest. His neck and head began to twitch uncontrollably. Dark vomit was oozing from the corners of his mouth and it was running from his nostrils.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you!” Dave yelled as he backed away from the convulsing figure. As he was about to yell something else at the man, he noticed that his eyes were bright red. “What the fuck!” Dave yelled out loud.

  The man shrieked out again, and as he began to make another dive at the policeman, the crack of John’s shotgun thundered out. A blast of buckshot caught the attacking man on his left side, shredding his torso and dropping him down to the ground in a bloody mess.

  “Watch out!” John yelled as he pointed to an approaching woman. She was headed right towards Dave. Her clothes were bloodied and tattered and her right hand was missing at the wrist. A second blast from the shotgun dropped the woman in her tracks as the lead balls sheered away the left side of her head.

  Gunshots began to ring out in the traffic jam on the ramp—somebody else was defending themselves.

  “Shit, look!” Randy yelled. He was pointing at one of the van’s occupants who had ended up on the access road. The dead and road-rashed man, his shirt all but torn off and his pants split open, was stirring and trying to get to his feet. Randy ran up to the man and yelled, “Help me Trent!”

  Trent, caught up in the scene unfolding on the ramp, turned and asked, “What do you want me to do?”

  “The head!” Randy replied as looked down at the reanimated man. He began to kick and stomp the head of the revived crash victim.

  Full of fear and adrenaline, Trent ran up to Randy and joined in with a series of devastating kicks and heel stomps to the dead man. Within a matter of seconds, the body was motionless; its brains smashed into the asphalt. They didn’t see that the second revived corpse had already made it up to its feet.

  “Get out of the way,” John yelled as he shoved Randy to one side. He raised up his shotgun and drew a bead on the head of the lumbering corpse. An elderly woman in a torn and bloodied jogging suit was slowly walking in the direction of the men, her arms stretched out towards them.

  With the squeeze of the trigger, the shotgun spit out an angry blast. Some of the buckshot tore through the neck of the woman, exposing bloody and jagged muscle and sinew. Two pellets tore through her forehead, ending her brief return.

  Dave was able to catch sight of a runner approaching him from the ramp, and as he aimed his pistol, he fired off two shots—the bullets struck an unfortunate young woman who had darted between the officer and the runner. Within an instant, the runner had leapt over the shot woman and was pouncing on Dave. Panic stricken people continued to rush past the embattled police officers, fleeing the attacks taking place on the ramp. None of them heeded Dave’s cries for help as his attacker gnawed on his neck.

  “Help me!” screamed Dave. Trent turned to see the policeman on the ground with his crazed assailant on top of him. He saw that Dave had dropped his pistol and that it was lying on the asphalt just a few feet away from them. Fighting through his fear, Trent ran over and grabbed the gun and aimed it at the infected man. With a well-placed shot to the head, the runner fell to one side. Dave rolled out from under the body and clutched at the gapping wounds on his neck.

  The sound of screeching tires and a loud crash filled the air as a large pick-up with oversized tires came smashing down through the vehicles on the ramp. The driver was crashing into anything that was in his way, and even pedestrians weren’t lucky enough to avoid the heavy tread of the off-road tires. It was obvious that the truck—it’s faded blue paint job with a sticker of a Confederate flag on the back bumper—wasn’t going to stop for anything or anyone. Blood and gore were smeared over the headlights and heavy grill.

  “Let’s get out of here!” Randy screamed.

  “The patrol car…it’s still running!” Trent yelled as he pointed to Dave’s police unit. He glanced over at John and saw that cop was frantically swinging away with the butt of his shotgun as several runners piled onto him.

  “Hurry!” Randy yelled as he made a dash for the patrol car. He jumped into the driver’s seat and reached over, opening the front passenger’s door. Knowing there was nothing else he could do for John, Trent turned and ran over to the car, springing into the seat.

  “Go!” Trent screamed as a runner charged up to the car and began slapping at the window. Fearful that the glass was about to break, Randy threw the car into drive and raced south down the access road towards town. As he looked into his rearview mirror, he was horrified at what he saw. A mass of humanity was pouring down the ramp, and even the blue pickup had been overtaken. The truck—unable to drive any further due to the clogged ramp—sat idle as a mob of runners dragged the driver from the cab. Within a matter of seconds, he was torn to pieces and his body parts were being thrown out onto the highway.

  “Shit, where do we go?” Trent aske
d as he tried to catch his breath.

  “Fuck, I don’t know. See if anyone is listening on the police radio.”

  Trent looked at the dash for a radio, but all he saw was a laptop mounted in the center console. There was no radio.

  “This car doesn’t have a police radio,” Trent said in disbelief. “How can a police car not have a fucking radio?” He didn’t know that the patrol officers operated with portable radios and that none of the patrol cars for the city had fixed radios in them.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Randy asked. “No fucking radios?” After crossing under the 1604 overpass, he came up to an entrance ramp that fed onto Highway 281. As he sped down the ramp, he came across a small fender bender. The accident was beginning to clog up the ramp and a crowd was standing around the cars. As Randy tried to weave his way around the accident, several of the people began to wave him down.

  Randy pulled up to the crowd and rolled down his window. “Hey, don’t hang around here,” he said to the group. “It’s not safe.”

  A young woman looked at Randy with a surprised expression on her face. Seeing civilians in a marked police car caught her off guard and she wasn’t sure what to make of it.

  “What do you mean ‘not safe?’ ”

  “What I mean is that there are some of those infected people back at the Sontera ramp and folks are getting killed over there!” He clenched his fist and pointed with his thumb back over his shoulder. “We just came from there.”

  “And who are you?” she asked. “You aren’t the police?”

  “No ma’am, we aren’t,” Randy said. “The cop who was driving this car is dead…or at least I think he is.”

  “Look, we need the police here,” the woman griped. “We need some help with this accident or else our insurance companies won’t know who to put at fault.”

  “Lady, if you guys don’t get back into your cars and get the hell out of here, you won’t be needing any car insurance, that’s for sure.”

  “Can’t you call the police from the car, or don’t you have cell phones?” the woman asked. Trent instinctively reached for his waist to feel for his phone, but he quickly remembered that he had lost it in the accident.

  “They don’t work, lady,” Randy said. “It’s up to you, but like I said, I wouldn’t stick around here. There might be some more of those things close by.” He looked over at Trent and said, “Fuck it, if they don’t want to listen, it’s on them. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Yeah, they’re on their own.”

  “Now, if I can just figure out where to go,” Randy grumbled.

  “There’s gotta be more cops around here somewhere. I’m sure they would know what to do.”

  “You would hope so.”

  Randy pulled away from the cluttered ramp and made his way south down the highway. The southbound lanes were light with traffic, but the northbound lanes were backed up. He figured that the mess at Sontera had something to do with the absence of inbound traffic and he wanted to put as much distance as he could between them and the horror show they had just witnessed.

  “Let’s try to make it over to the police station on Jones Maltsberger,” Trent suggested. “It’s just down a ways off of Thousand Oaks.”

  “That sounds good. Hey, try turning on the stereo to see if they might be saying what’s going on or where we can go to.”

  “Good idea…didn’t even think of that.” Trent turned on the radio and tuned it to one of the stations that he was familiar with. The screeching tone for the Emergency Alert System was sounding.

  “We interrupt your programming to bring you the following important message. This is a national emergency. This is not a test. Important instructions will follow.” A long single tone then sounded and was followed by: “The following message is transmitted at the request of the Unites States Government. There has been an outbreak of an unknown contagious disease where infected individuals are carrying out acts of violence, including assaults and murder. The infected are displaying symptoms of delirium, confusion, anger, rage, uncontrollable violence and aggression. People who are showing symptoms of infection will not respond to any form of communication and must be considered dangerous. Also, the bodies of the dead who have passed away within the past 24 hours are returning to life and are attacking the living. The United States Government is working closely with state and local authorities to ensure the safety of the general populace while the cause of the outbreak can be determined. Civil authorities do not know how the disease is transmitted, but there are reports that infected individuals are spreading the disease through the transfer of blood and body fluids. If you cannot receive help from civil authorities, it is important that you secure food, water and shelter for you and your family members to live on for at least seven days. A dusk to dawn curfew will go into effect for the following cities: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Detroit, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Denver, Miami, Cleveland, Philadelphia, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and Boston. Anyone caught violating the curfew will be subject to arrest and confinement. Please refrain from using your telephones, both landline and cellular, unless you have a serious emergency. It is important that communication lines remain free from overload as the civil authorities attempt to coordinate a response to this national emergency. Continue to monitor your local radio and television stations for further updates and information. This station will continue to serve the Southeast Texas region, including Corpus Christi and the southern coastal areas.”

  Randy and Trent were speechless as they attempted to comprehend what they had just heard on the radio. Finally, Randy broke the silence. “This can’t be happening…no way on God’s green earth can this be happening.”

  “Holy shit!” Trent gasped. “Basically, they’re saying that…zombies…zombies are here. Just like in the movies.”

  “Shit man, I wouldn’t go that far. There can’t be no such thing as zombies. That would be impossible.” Randy increased his driving speed as he pondered Trent’s words. His stomach was gnawing at him as he clutched at the steering wheel. Zombies…no way.

  As the patrol car turned onto the street where the police substation was located, the men were greeted by a scene of sheer chaos. The road was choked with vehicles and hundreds of people were filing down the street towards the station. Seeing that there was nowhere else to drive, the people had simply abandoned their cars on the congested road. The two men realized that they too couldn’t drive any further and Randy stopped the car. Several other vehicles were already pulling up behind him and he was now blocked in.

  “Guess let’s make our way down to the cop station,” Randy sighed. “Seems like all these other folks are trying to do the same.”

  “Yeah, looks that way.” Trent cautiously exited the car and looked around at the restless crowd. He tucked the pistol into the back of his waistband and covered it with his shirt. As the men walked down a tree-lined sidewalk, they could see that there was some sort of checkpoint set up at the main entrance to the station. Yellow police tape, orange traffic barrels and two police cruisers formed an access point to the front parking lot. Two other officers and a third patrol car blocked the entry into the employee parking lot that sat behind the station. A half-dozen worried looking cops stood around as they tried to calm the crowd. One officer, his dark uniform drenched in sweat, was standing on the hood of a patrol car as several other officers stood guard with assault rifles. As the two approached the cop car, they could hear the panicked conversation that was taking place.

  “I’m telling you, we don’t know any more than you do when it comes to what’s causing this,” said the officer on the hood. The three yellow stripes on the sleeves of his uniform led Trent to believe that he was a supervisor of some sort.

  “Well then, what do you know?” asked a large burly man who had a frightened wife and two small children huddled around him.

  “Whatever you have heard on the radio or T.V. is the same thing that we’re hearing. The state hasn’t t
old us what’s going on, the feds haven’t told us what’s going on…and the only thing that the mayor is telling us to do is to form safety zones for the people…so that’s what we’re trying to do.”

  “Safety zones?” Trent said to Randy.

  “Yeah, safety zones,” a woman said. Apparently she had overheard Trent’s question. She was carrying a small green backpack and she was wearing denim shorts and hiking boots. From the tone of her tanned legs, Randy could tell that the woman was physically active.

  “What have you heard?” Randy asked her.

  “Well, I guess the same stuff you guys have probably heard…the public announcements on T.V. and radio…the president’s speech. One of the T.V. stations said that if you could, you should report to your nearest police or fire station for assistance, so I decided to try to make my way here. I had to leave my car down the block because of all of the traffic. What have y’all heard…or seen?”

  “Damn, we just heard an emergency broadcast on the radio, and it was telling people to seek shelter, but it didn’t mention anything about heading to a cop station or a fire house. I bet you that no one really knows what to do or how to handle this. Anyway, as far as what I’ve seen, well…I was up at work on the north side…off of Sontera, when we heard a commotion going on outside of the office. I went to check it out and I saw some people fighting and looting the corner store. Then someone started shooting… and I saw a car crash.” Randy paused and looked down at the ground.

  Trent, caught off guard by Randy’s recollection, cleared his throat and took a deep breath. It had only been an hour or so since he had lost his family, and with all that was going on around him, he hadn’t even had the time to process his loss. He looked away for a moment as his eyes welled up with tears. The woman immediately noticed Trent’s pain.