Zombie Factor

by Timothy Stelly Sr

  Many of the displaced residents hadn’t needed to make a house payment in decades, and the money they were given was not enough to pay outright for a new home. Subsequently, many opted for apartment life. Those who did buy new homes found themselves with mortgages they could hardly manage. Meanwhile, the homes that replaced their old ones, sold for six times as much, and the access to the marina was available only to those newer, wealthier homebuyers.

  In short, a decaying neighborhood became a valuable city property only after it was established that it could be made into a playground for the well-to-do. The Willow complex, so long considered a nuisance by city decision-makers, was allowed to become overrun with weeds, garbage, broken glass, and concrete slabs where apartments once stood. Developers had already begun to line up, and they along with the city planned to make out like bandits.

  Before pulling out of the parking lot he called Graham and left the following terse message. “Come and get the DVD. It’s no good.”

  Jayson drove home bobbing his head to Walter Becker’s, Down In The Bottom.

  ***

  8:15 a.m.

  3,000 miles away, in the Federal Tax Court, Harmon Greenbaum and his sons Jeffrey and Alexander were charged with tax evasion. During the night the U.S. Department of Justice set in motion a series of steps designed to ruin the Greenbaum’s good names and their lives. The family’s assets were frozen and boxes of manufactured documents presented by the U.S. Treasury department showed that the family failed to report income on outside earnings totaling more than ten million of dollars.

  It was also suggested that the family matriarch Olivia Greenbaum underwent questioning by another federal agency and was released on her own recognizance out of respect for her position with the Government.

  The attorney for the government then made the announcement that, “We received a report less than an hour ago a woman fitting her description, boarded an international flight bound for French Guiana, a South American country that our government does not have an expedition treaty with.”

  “My wife wouldn’t…”

  “Shut up!” The Judge thundered, giving Harmon a look hot enough to raise the temperature in the room.

  Within an hour of being returned to his cell, the elder Greenbaum was alleged to have hanged himself. A deal was made so that the sons could be released on their own recognizance, but would have to surrender their passports and wear ankle monitors so that they could be tracked while under house arrest. Agents from the USDOJ fed the Greenbaum brothers a litany of lies in the hope that they would become convinced of their parents’ guilt.

  These included doctored financial documents affixed with the forged names of Harvey and Olivia Greenbaum, and included fraudulent bank and stock transactions. The boys, near tears, were offered an out: Plead guilty, surrender their family’s assets to the government, and serve an eighteen-month sentence under house arrest. The other option was take their chances in court and risk spending the best years of their lives in federal lockup. Not to mention the fact they would face the wrath of the federal court and of a public angered by numerous stories of greedy, shady businessmen and corrupt government officials.

  In return, they were to live quietly and accept the fact that their mother was an international felon. Benton and his cronies were sure that the boys would take the deal.

  ***

  8:00 a.m.

  100 miles off the east coast of the United States

  Olivia Greenbaum was beaten, waterboarded, deprived of rest and finally doped up with LSD, stripped naked and dropped in the middle of the forest in New Guinea. The plan had been concocted by Benton, who wanted to make sure that Greenbaum suffered and that if by the slim chance she was ever heard from again, her brains would be so scrambled she’d be locked away in a psychiatric facility for the rest of her days.

  He’d learned about the stealth recording Greenbaum made of her three-way talk with him and Crossfield after the young man who recorded suffered a crisis of conscience and feared being labeled a traitor. The young fellow was offered a choice between he and his family members getting “Colombian neckties,” or a cushy journalism assignment in Kuwait. Benton also promised that his student loan debt would be cancelled. .

  Within hours of landing on foreign soil, his throat was cut. The murder, however, failed to slow the surreptitiously unfolding Congressional investigation of “The SR-Seven incident.”

  T W E N T Y – F O U R

  10:07 a.m.

  The moment the newscaster finished with the details of the Pittsburg-Antioch quarantine, Duke and Noodles cringed, as they expected and received a new round of talk from Forrest, who pushed out his chest and crowed, “Now see, if we’d stayed in our house like you-all wanted, we’d be under quarantine, too.”

  “You might as well say the whole state is quarantined,” Noodles pointed out. “We moved from a run down quarantined area, to one with a shiny neon sign and better beds.”

  “You oughta be thankful to be outta that roach-infested hell-hole!” Forrest thundered.

  “Don’t start you two,” Darlene said, rising up off the bed.

  “Naw, let this little smart-mouth bastard have his say,” Forrest insisted.

  “Okay, so where do we go after all of this is over?” Noodles began. “We can’t return home because by this evening the Low will be swarming with scientists, cops, Haz-Mat workers and God knows who else. What, are we going to do, what we did before we got our Section Eight and motel-hop? Will we have to go back to the homeless shelter, you know, the place you said we’d never return to.”

  “I oughta do you like my dad did me,” Forrest said and he pointed at his son for emphasis. “I should put your little ass out on the streets at seventeen. Let you get a dose of how hard it is out there.”

  “I know how hard it is. I ain’t blind, and after what Duke and I went through last night nothing scares me.”

  “This ain’t about what might be make-believe monsters!”

  “Make believe? You saw the blood and guts!”

  “Am I to believe zombies, or whatever you want to call them, only attacked The Low?”

  “Regardless of what you believe, you make it sound like you delivered us from hell, when all you’ve done is taken us to a different version of it!”

  Forrest threw his hands on his hips. “So you think we should have teamed up with your friends?”

  “Yeah. At least we had back-up and were on familiar grounds. If something jumps off out here, who’s gonna help us?”

  “We don’t need nobody’s help! We can fend for ourselves.”

  “We’re out here with little food, one gun and a handful of shells,” Noodles reminded him. “You have access to an ATM, but what makes you think there won’t be a run on the banks? People are panicking.”

  Forrest laughed. “You’ve seen too many movies, son.”

  “What I saw last night told me that it’s going to get worse and it’s every man for himself. This won’t be an overnight thing, that’s for sure.”

  “Okay, okay, enough of this gloom and doom bullshit,” Darlene snapped. She looked at her son. “I think your father did what he thought was right to get us as far away from Pittsburg as he could.”

  “Damn right I did,” Forrest said.

  “At the same time, you didn’t think it out too clearly,” Darlene said curtly. “We’re working with limited resources and those people back in the Low had weapons. Nelson is right when he says we could have had each other’s backs.”

  Forrest turned his back to his wife. “That wasn’t the place for us.”

  “Why not?”

  “Like I said, I don’t need anybody’s help to protect my family.”

  Noodles tapped Duke on the shoulder. “Let’s go sit outside and talk.”

  “Talk about what? Me?” Forrest asked.

  “I already said what I had to say,” Noodles said, heading for the door.

  “Don’t wander off you two,” Darlene admonished.


  ***

  Duke and Noodles went down to the parking lot. When Noodles determined they were out of earshot of his parents, he turned to Duke and said, “That Valerie chick told me she and Pops are good friends.”

  “You called me out her for something like that?”

  “Think, man. Good friends drop by occasionally. Second, every time she and my dad would pass on the street, they would act as if they didn’t know each other. You’d think good friends would speak.”

  “What are you getting at?” Duke shook his head. “You don’t think Pops was hitting those, do you?”

  “He told me she was a ho. Why would he say that about a friend?” Noodles pursed his lips. “He didn’t wanna hang around because he thought there was a chance she’d let the cat out of the bag.”

  “Interesting choice of words,” Duke said with a chuckle. He mulled over his cousins accusation and after several seconds replied, “Naw, I don’t think your Pops would get down like that.”

  “Bullshit. When I argued that we should have stayed he had no counter-argument.”

  “That don’t mean shit.”

  “Look, Pops gets in bad moods whenever moms don’t give him any. I heard them argue about it enough times to know. The next day, Pop would always disappear for a few hours.”

  “Sounds like he’s a playa.”

  “I don’t want him fucking around on my mama. He might bring her something she can’t get rid of.”

  “Okay, so what if he poked that Valerie chick a few times? You see how fine she is. Hell, you tried to talk up on some of that funky stuff, too.”

  “I think I coulda hit ‘em, so I know Pops coulda, especially if he was kicking down.”

  “Yeah, right.” Duke chuckled. “The question is, whatcha gonna do with the information?”

  “Nothing. I just needed to vent.”

  “Good. You ready to go back in, because in case you haven’t noticed, it’s starting to rain again.”

  “We oughta steal the car when Pops falls asleep and go back to the Low.”

  “You r Pops would kill us.”

  “He might be doing the same thing by bringing us here,” Noodles said wearily.

  ***

  10:31 a.m.

  After hearing from Jayson that the robbery DVD contained twenty-seven seconds of video followed by more than six minutes of intermittent black space, Graham rushed over to Jayson’s house so he could see for himself. What aggravated the bank manager even more was Jayson’s lack of concern as to whether or not the bank recovered the money.

  “Looks like two people got away with our money,” Graham lamented. “It’s the first time in the sixty-three year history of Pittsburg Community Bank that we’ve been unable to capture a robbery suspect.”

  “What about the federal dick?” Jayson wisecracked.

  “The what?”

  “The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, FDIC.”

  “Yes, we are insured, but our reputation is something we don’t take lightly. People trust the PCB.”

  “And they will continue to.” Jayson walked over to his entertainment center, picked up the jewel case containing the DVD, and handed it to Graham. “Sorry I couldn’t be of more help. Now I gotta ask…”

  Jayson sat in the edge of the table. Graham, who was on the end of the sofa, looked as if he’d come from a funeral.

  “If the robbers had been white, would you have gone to the homes of Joe Gibson, Bart Henson, Schuyler Keddington or Madison Hood and asked them if they knew the perps?”

  Graham quickly headed for the door and called over his shoulder, “I expect that you’ll be at work Monday.”

  Jayson let the conversation die as he was filled with a sinking feeling. He’d been employed by PCB for 6 years and never had he and Graham exchanged a cross word, but now his boss revealed his true colors and Jayson was disgusted by the prospect of continuing to work for the man. After he heard the front door close Jayson sat at his desk, flicked on his computer and fished through his PageMaker program. Once he found his résumé, he began to update it.

  He was about to strike the keyboard when he thought, Before I start typing, let me put that copied DVD in my safe. He walked over to the entertainment center and scanned the shelves for a jewel case marked with an asterisk indicating that it was the original that Graham had given him. When he located it, he opened it and stared at the empty space where the DVD was supposed o be.

  Fuck, fuck!

  His heart rate accelerated, as he hit the OPEN button on the DVD player. When the tray opened and he saw it empty, he froze. It dawned on him that the DVD he showed Graham was sitting on top of the device.

  Hell naw, I didn’t put the wrong DVD in Graham’s jewel case!

  He reloaded the DVD and hit the PLAY button. He watched as several seconds of robbery footage unfolded, then the screen went black and intermittent flashes of robbery scenery popped onto the screen. Jayson’s heart fluttered as he staggered back to his desk, looked at his résumé on the computer screen, and palmed his head as if he were in great mourning.

  He looked at his resume on-screen and thought that under the heading OCCUPATION he should have inserted the word “Moron.”

  ***

  10:45 a.m.

  Lionel Mays moved his muscular frame up the steps of the Pittsburg Museum where his small force gathered for their morning briefing. In his hand was a stack of papers, but before passing them out he updated the men on the situation taking place at the state border.

  “According to information sent directly from the Pentagon, in what is being called The Zombie Factor, forty-five such attacks have been reported across the northern United States. We have been instructed to enforce the quarantine using martial law if necessary. We have also been ordered to serve as the local police force until further notice.

  “We have four primary duties here. One, to prevent looting and the threat of rioting. In this regard we will be backed up by the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s department. Two, we are to reinforce our checkpoints as the east and west ends of the city. Anyone attempting to leave the city is to be instructed to return home, or to go to one of the safe centers currently being set up in three parts of the city. Those who refuse to follow orders are to be shot, beheaded and burned.” He paused before adding, “The regional shoreline is being manned by the Coast Guard.”

  He looked into the eyes of his troops, who sat impassively. He handed the stack of reports to one soldier and asked him to distribute them among his mates, before he continued.

  “Our next order of business is to assure the citizenry they are safe. We’ll use bullhorns to issue a shelter in place advisory. We will also distribute flyers encouraging them to stock up on food, water and batteries and to gather with family members and neighbors. They are to report any unusual behavior to nine-one-one.”

  “What about the power outage?” One soldier asked.

  “According to Pacific Gas and Electric, power will be restored to all sectors of the city within four to eight hours.”

  He shoved his hands into his rear pockets. “Men, if any of these unusual beings are seen, our procedure for eradication is to take them down by gunfire, followed by beheading and the thorough burning of their bodies. We have a central location for the latter part of that protocol, the main baseball field at City Park, which is the area directly behind the museum.”

  “What’s going on in Antioch?” A female recruit asked.

  “We will remain in constant contact with the city of Antioch, whose police force is still intact. In both cities, an eight p.m. curfew is in effect. All alcohol establishments will be closed at 4 p.m. until further notice. Now there is another guard unit assisting the city of Antioch and they’re manning the three roads between the two cities, which includes Highway Four. We are being further assisted by County Sheriff’s deputies who are manning the railroad tracks in each direction. Essentially, there is no way in or out of either city.”

  Mays saw that the reports had been dis
tributed to each man. It was to reinforce what he’d told them and contained the wording for the announcements that were to be made via bullhorn.

  “Any questions?” Mays asked.

  A black kid with cornrow braids raised his hand.

  “Yes, Private King?”

  “The area known as the Low, that is, the Willow Apartment complex, located in—”

  “I’m familiar with the name and locale, private. Now do you have a question?”

  “Yes, sir. I was just inquiring about the rumors of gunfire coming from the area last night. Also I’ve heard reports that two bank robbers and their hostage might be holed up there. What are our responsibilities in affecting an arrest?”

  “It is not our job to contend with criminal acts that took place before we arrived. Our job is to prevent arson, looting and rioting. Any crimes that occur in front of us, we are to deal with. The Willow Apartments deserves no more of our attention than any other sector of the city.”

  A blond woman with braces raised her hand and when Mays called on her, she asked, “What about people attempting to enter the city?”

  “Determine what their business is and search their vehicle. Let them know that once they enter the city limits, they will not be allowed to leave. Anyone who is argumentative or physically combative is to be put down according to the Zombie Eradication Protocol attached to your briefing.”

  Mays felt awkward for using such verbiage, thinking the words sounded like something out of a 1960’s B-movie. “By the way, all necessary commerce or vehicular traffic—emergency vehicles, utility maintenance personnel, U.S. Mail and County vehicles are to be given a cursory search, but for the most part are allowed to enter and exit the city limits freely.”

  Another man inquired about medical care. “In particular, care for pregnant women or abandoned children.”

  “The county has set up a medical team, including several surgeons at the health clinic in town. All abandoned children are to be brought to that facility, where they will remain until County social workers can develop an effective plan for them.”