by R. M. Smith
EVOLUTION OF THE DEAD
by
R. M. Smith
Also by R. M. Smith
Alive! Not Dead
The Wicked Game
Evolution of the Dead
Copyright 2015 by R. M. Smith
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover concept by R. M. Smith
Designed by Brandi Doane McCann.
www.ebook-coverdesigns.com
For my darling, Karen
Table of Contents
Overwhelmed
In the Thick of It
If All Goes Well
Bridgework
Tunnel Rats, Darling
Executive Decisions
The Walk of Hell
Sacrifices
Afterword
BOOK ONE
EJECTION
Overwhelmed
Twenty-one year old Carmen Mayfield sat on a park bench with her legs crossed and her arms folded. Two sub sandwiches in a bag from Jersey Mikes sat next to her on the bench. She was wearing an Atlanta Braves ball cap, a light brown jacket, a t-shirt and dirty blue jeans. Her cell phone sat next to her on the bench, too.
Palm trees overhead were laying down a cool shadow for her and her boyfriend John to enjoy while they ate their lunch together on the shore of Lake Eola in downtown Orlando, Florida.
He was working on a road crew nearby. They were resurfacing a side street. A smell of hot tar filled the air but it wasn’t very bothersome.
It was coming up on the long Fourth of July weekend. City officials wanted the roads to be perfect for the planned holiday festivities.
A kid rode by on a bike, a leashed dog chasing, barking. A baby cried nearby, a new mom sung a lullaby. Two kids were flying a kite along the lakeside.
Carmen took off her ball cap, shook out her long brown hair and raised her chin. Looking up through the palm trees, bits of sun splashing her skin, she smiled contently.
A car honked over by one of the streets John was working on. She turned her head to look, hoping to see John hurrying over to her, but he wasn’t there. A building across the park caught her eye instead. A window on the third floor of the hotel had a towel hanging, drying in the wind. A hotel bus was parked below on the street.
For a brief second, Carmen thought she saw a taxicab hovering, superimposed in midair in front of the window.
Her vision doubled on the edges. Her body temperature changed slightly. She was having another one of her weird visions. The feeling accompanying it made her feel as if a 500 pound weight had been set on her shoulders.
She closed her eyes. Lowering her head she thought, No, I don’t want anything bad to happen.
“You ok, honey?”
It was John. He had finally gotten off for lunch.
Carmen kept her head down. “I just had one of those weird feelings again.”
He sat down next to her, concerned. “Good or bad?”
“Really feels bad. It left a knot in my stomach.”
“You want to go to the doctor?”
“No.” She smiled in spite of the bad feeling. She knew he was joking with her. Anytime she had one of her “spells” he would ask her if she needed to go see a doctor. It was something he said to try to soothe her nerves.
In a way it hurt her feelings because she was deadly serious when these visions came to her. It really wasn’t a joking matter; at least, to her it wasn’t.
“Well, we’ve talked about these things before,” he said. He took her ball cap out of her hand and put it crookedly back on her head. He kissed her cheek.
“I haven’t felt one this strong, ever. It’s really got me worried.”
“It’ll pass. They always do. You took your medication, right?”
“The vision about Adam didn’t.”
He sighed. Did they really need to go over all of this again? He changed the subject. “You brought Jersey Mikes. Awesome, thanks babe.”
“You’re welcome.”
She gave him an honest smile. She loved him. They had been going out now for seven months. He was a great guy. Very loving. Honest. Had the cutest handlebar moustache. He cared for her deeply, she knew. He told her he had a surprise for her tomorrow night after the fireworks. She hoped it was going to be a marriage proposal. She would happily be his wife.
Her visions, though. She couldn’t explain them. Anytime she had them, her vision would peel back like the skin of an onion and a new image would overlay itself over her normal sight. It would last only milliseconds.
Sometimes there weren’t images at all, only feelings. When that happened, her throat would tighten slightly or she would get an odd taste in her mouth.
John was supportive of her. He would show genuine concern of course; but lately, he thought she was taking it too far. Sometimes it was downright silly. Maybe she was doing it for attention. She was getting these feelings all the time about everything. It got to the point where she would make him wait before he left his apartment to come see her. She wanted to make sure she wouldn’t get a bad feeling about him driving over to her place.
He rubbed her back. “Was a bad one, huh?”
“Yes.” She adjusted her ball cap, pulling her pony tail through the rear. He had given her the cap two days ago for her birthday. “It has something to do with a taxicab.”
He bit into his sub sandwich with a smile. “Well, there’s plenty of those around here.”
“I know.”
“Hey, listen. It’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”
“I can’t help it sometimes.”
“Eat your sub. Maybe you’re just hungry.”
She reached into the bag for her sandwich. “I keep seeing a taxi cab. Something’s not right about it.”
He asked, “Well, does it have to do with me? Do I get run over?”
“You know I can’t tell you what’s going to happen. I never know what it means until after the fact.”
“I know, I just thought...”
“I just see a taxi cab, John. And there’s this weird blur behind it, kind of like a water fountain or something…but it’s not a water fountain. Maybe it's a sprinkler?”
He said, “Carmen. There are taxi cabs and sprinklers all over downtown.”
She bit into her sub. “I know that.”
“It’s probably nothing.”
She nodded, chewing. She wished people would believe her. She knew John did, or at least pretended to. She was so tired of people telling her she was just having a hallucination or it was a coincidence or a premonition. She knew it went deeper than that.
Adam was her twelve year old nephew. One day after leaving work at her job as a shipping and receiving clerk at Rent-A-Center, she had to pull her car over to the side of the highway to stop because she felt something very bad was going to happen to someone in her family. She didn’t see a vision, she just had a strong feeling in her throat. It felt like acid reflux. The feeling had been overwhelming.
Later that night as she and John sat side by side in his apartment watching movies, she told him about it. He joked, asking her if she wanted to go to the doctor.
Her cell phone rang. It was her mom. She told her that Adam, her 12 year old cousin, had been hurt playing football. He broke his neck. There was no chance of paralysis – he would come out of it fine, but the little guy was scared to death.
Carmen didn’t know how she knew something bad was going to happen, but something did. John told her it was just a coincidence.
The feeling accompanying her vision of t
he taxi cab was much worse. She didn’t even want to eat. She wrapped her sub back up in its wrapper and dropped it into the bag.
John smiled at her. He really didn’t want to get into this again with her. It was starting to get old. He leaned over to kiss her with his dirt-covered face. His hardhat was cocked crookedly on his head. A few small dabs of mayonnaise were dangling from his moustache.
He stopped.
Carmen looked at him sideways, curious. Why would he stop coming toward her? Then she realized that out of the corner of his eye he had seen his boss running over to help some lady who was having a hard time getting out of a taxi cab across the street. The lady was coughing and gagging, leaning against the rear of the cab for support. Her back was arched as she deeply coughed and then threw up all over the sidewalk.
“What the hell,” John whispered. “Taxi cab…”
People on their lunch hour started to gather around, curious. The cabbie, a Mexican man, got out of his car to help. As John’s boss grabbed the lady’s hand to help steady her, the skin on his hand started turning a pale yellow. He jerked his hand back, looking at it dumbfounded. Stunned, the cabbie stepped back a step.
An odd coloring started covering John’s boss’ hand. It quickly raced up his arm, following the line of his veins, causing them to stand out. John’s boss didn’t look to be in any pain, just confused, until the vein swelling reached his shoulders and traced up his neck. He grabbed his throat, choking, instinctively grabbing onto the cabbie’s shirt for support. Bracing himself up, not wanting to fall down, he looked into the Mexican’s eyes, begging him for help as the pain drove him to his knees.
The cabbie backed up, confused. Shaking his head he jumped back into his cab. He squealed the tires as he fled the scene.
Concerned, John stood up next to Carmen by their park bench. The woman who had puked was lying on her back now, unmoving. From this distance, Carmen couldn’t tell if she had yellow skin or not, but on the ground around her, water was bubbling up. Had some underground sprinklers come on – or was that coming from the lady?
“Sprinklers,” she whispered. Her mouth was hanging open in shock. “Taxi cab and sprinklers, John. John!”
He set his sub on its wrapper next to Carmen’s cell phone. He needed to check on his boss. He ran over, pushing through the gathering crowd. Standing behind him he started to thump his boss on the back, trying to dislodge whatever had gotten stuck in his throat. As soon as his fist hit his boss’s back, John’s fist flourished in the strange yellow color, too, like a blooming flower under the skin. He looked at it much like his boss had, questions and confusion filling his mind. He glanced at Carmen who had run over to check on him. She was now on the other side of the street, frightened by the sight of the woman lying on the ground.
Her whole body was shaking as every liquid inside her body squeezed out through the pores of her skin. Blood and vomit went flying up into the air landing on the gathering crowd. Gasping in shock, disgusted, people wiped off their arms or shoulders only to immediately infect themselves. They ran, screaming in horror as their hands and arms broke out in the eerie yellow contamination.
On the ground, the lady’s eyeballs popped and spilled down the sides of her cheeks. Her nose was a spout of gushing mucus. Blood was pouring out of her ears. The clothing over her shoulders, breasts and stomach was covered in spewed vomit and blood. Her pants were soaked with urine at the crotch. Blood was covering her pants all the way down to her toes. Her arms were beating at the ground.
John mouthed the words, holy shit!
In seconds he was bent over choking, too.
His skin color changed right before Carmen’s eyes. It raced up his arms, expanding his veins as it travelled. His arms were quickly covered in blood. The blood in his own veins was squeezed out of the way of the infection. His shirt started to cover with blood from underneath.
“Stay away!” he yelled, bending over, choking and holding his hand out to stop her. Large strings of thick mucus started pouring out of his nose and mouth as he gagged. His back erupted in blood. His eyeballs burst. A large explosion of vomit erupted from his mouth and sprayed toward her. Quickly, she ducked behind a blue mailbox. The back of John’s pants exploded in shit. He fell onto his face right next to the dead woman.
Carmen screamed, falling onto her knees, holding onto the back of the mailbox. She burst into tears.
Scared, shaking, she stood up. People around her were gagging, leaning down, vomiting all over everything. Screaming for help she ran across the street towards a group of people who were leaning against a building puking. One of them had long strings of snot running from their nose. It went all the way down to the ground. Overcome with grief she turned away from them. She stumbled out into the street, almost getting hit by a car that had come tearing out of a parallel parking spot. The car was speeding out of control, the driver choking, his hands flailing at the steering wheel as he tried to flee the scene. His car smashed into the group of people puking on the sidewalk. It burst into flames. The driver jumped out of the car only to fall into another mound of puke that had spattered across the cement from someone else.
Caught in a trampling group of panicked pedestrians, Carmen was shoved through an open door into a Metro Coffee shop. Breaking free, she searched for a phone. She needed to call 911. She needed help! Someone help! Please! Inside, people were vaulting vomit or had passed out. She ran through the shop, almost bumping into a man standing right in the way. His back was turned to her. He turned. His eyeballs were blown out. He reached for her.
Shaking her head at him, her eyes blurring with tears, she ducked out of the way before he could touch her. Crying, she ran out a different exit back out onto the panicked street. Skirting through the crowd, careful not to let anyone touch her, she entered the front entrance of a hotel.
Behind her, screams echoed through the park. Inside, she frantically tried to remember where she had left her cell phone. She needed to call for help! People around her were gagging, choking, leaning on the walls, bending over chairs hacking. The clerk behind the desk was coughing, snot pouring out of his mouth in a long thick string, pouring all over the fine marble of the reception desk. His back was covered in blood.
Carmen ran into an open elevator. She ran her finger up and down all of the shiny brass floor buttons not really caring where she went just as long as she was away from this nightmare. When the doors opened again she was on the third floor. No one was in the hall other than a hotel cleaning cart standing outside an open white door of a hotel suite.
Down the hall, a lady in a blood covered white frock was lying in a large pool of blood next to another man who was leaning against the wall choking. Blood was running out of his ears. A little further down, a man turned to look at her. His clothing was covered in blood and vomit but he wasn’t struggling or begging for help. He stood there reaching for her like the man inside the coffee shop had been. His skin had a cracked pale yellow color. Under his skin, his veins had turned orange.
Carmen stared at the man before she ran into the open suite. She slammed the door shut, locking it behind her.
Now, sitting in an open window overlooking the city below, Carmen had her legs tucked under her chin. Tears rolled down her cheeks. Carmen was afraid to go back into the hotel room because she thought the man out in the hall might break the door down and come in after her. John and hundreds of others were standing down on the street. All of their skin had gone yellow. All of their veins had grown and now stood out through their broken cracked skin like orange spider webs. Dried blood covered their clothing. Long strings of mucus hung from their noses. Their pants were soiled with urine and drying shit.
In the grass, on the street, on the brick walls of buildings, bodily fluids were splattered after erupting out of people’s bodies.
This is the window I was looking at when I had my vision, she thought, tears dropping from her cheeks.
A hotel bus sat on the curb below her.
It’s not th
at far down to the bus. I can make it. It won’t hurt. The fall won’t hurt, she kept telling herself. I can make it to the car.
If she got down onto the roof of the bus, where would she go from there? The street around it was packed with people. John was off to one side, his arm reaching up, trying to touch her. The expression on his face was blank, his eyes were gone.
She didn’t think she’d be able to get through the group if she jumped down. Her car sat on the side of the road not two blocks away. If she could only get there…she could find a better place to hide.
She grabbed her knees a little tighter.
“I’ll wait here,” she mumbled, crying, her chin shivering. “I’ll wait here a little longer.”
After exiting a hair salon downtown, Diane Patterson yelled at her five year old daughter, “Don’t touch that!”
Her daughter, Reesa, had just seen a five dollar bill lying on the sidewalk. She was reaching to grab it.
“Money!” she said looking up at her mother. “It’s money momma!”
“Well, be careful,” Diane said. “You don’t know where it’s been. It could be dirty and we just got prettied up.”
Reesa picked up the bill. Handing it up to her mother, a long string of wet snot dripped from the edge. It landed on the top of Reesa’s sandaled foot on a leather strap.
Diane jerked her hand back, stunned by the disgusting look of the bill. “Honey, put that thing down!”
Reesa let it drop to the ground.
A man with deeply cracked dry yellow skin stepped on it. He had no eyes. His clothing was covered in blood. Long strings of dangling snot hung from his mouth and nostrils swinging there as he went past.
He reached for Reesa. Diane tried to grab her out of the way in time but she was too slow. The dead man simply rested his hand on Reesa’s shoulder as he walked by.
Behind him, four others, all yellow, all with deeply dried cracked skin, large orange veins and bloody clothing came walking up the sidewalk from the direction of Lake Eola.