by JJ Zep
Zombie D.O.A.
The Complete Series, featuring;
Dead City
Dead On My Feet
The Dead Men
Dead On Arrival
by
J.J. Zep
PUBLISHED BY:
JJ Zep
Copyright © 2012
www.jjzep.com
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced in any format, by any means, electronic or otherwise, without prior consent from the copyright owner and publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places and events are the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously.
____________________________________________
Dead City
(Book One of the Zombie D.O.A. Series)
by
J.J. Zep
PUBLISHED BY:
JJ Zep
Copyright © 2012
www.jjzep.com
Chapter One: Blue Monday
Monday morning started like any other. I left my apartment at 5.30 for my usual run. I had a fight coming up in Atlantic City that my manager assured me was going to get me noticed. Low down on the bill, but with a middleweight title fight as the main event, TV coverage, the whole shebang, as he liked to say.
And it paid well, which was what really mattered to me. Rosie was due any day now and even before the birth I was finding out just how much kids cost.
A lot of fighters I know hate roadwork, but I used to love it. I enjoyed being out when the air is crisp and the city is quiet. Stamina was an important part of my game plan because I’m not a big hitter. I’m a mover, a counter puncher and although I can take a beating as well as the next fighter, I just prefer not to.
When I got back from my run, Rosie was still in bed, propped up with 4 pillows, her belly prominent beneath the covers. The TV was on.
“Hey Sugar,” I said leaning over and planting a sweaty kiss on her cheek. “Sleeping in on a weekday?”
“Can you believe this shit?” she answered.
“What shit?” I said, stripping off my t-shirt and heading for the shower.
“This guy, this Japanese guy, gets attacked in Times Square.”
“Uh huh” I mumbled, thinking it must be a slow news day when a tourist getting mugged in New York makes the morning bulletin.
“No, wait honey, there’s more, you gotta see this.”
“I gotta take a shower, is what I gotta do.”
“No, seriously, you’ve…” Rosie started, before being interrupted by someone knocking at the door.
“What the hell,” I said, “At this time of the morning? You want me to get it?”
“Nah” she said, “Probably Mrs. Kranski, we can’t have her seeing you half naked now, can we? Her old man has a bad back.”
She slid awkwardly out of bed, pushed her hand into the small of her back and gave an undignified grunt. Her belly looked enormous under her nightdress. “Do I look fat in this?” she giggled.
The knocking at the door was louder, more insistent. “Yeah, yeah, keep your corset on Mrs. K.,” Rosie said and waddled out of the room.
I turned towards the bathroom and momentarily caught a picture on the TV of a hospital parking lot crowded with police cruisers and emergency vehicles. The news reporter was saying something about an unprovoked attack on hospital staff by a seemingly deranged patient.
I pressed mute on the remote, stepped out of my sweat pants and headed for the shower.
As I did, my cell phone started ringing, so I went back and picked it up. It was Blaze, my manager. Well, he could wait until after my shower. I set the phone down on top of the john, just like Rosie always told me not to.
I walked into the cubicle and turned on the water, fast and hot, the way I like it. The water felt good against my tensed muscles and I let it run that way for a minute before switching it to cold and letting out my usual “yee ha” rebel yell, at the sensation.
That little morning routine often had our neighbor Brad, who worked night shift, thumping on the wall. I’d apologized to him a number of times before, but I just couldn’t help myself – it felt that good.
A few seconds of the cold water and I shut the jet off, toweled myself dry and dressed.
Rosie was being awful quiet, which I remember thinking was unusual. Normally at this time she was rustling up some breakfast and I was used to hearing the clatter of pans and plates and cutlery over her tuneless singing.
Her favorite was “The Greatest Love of All”, and she used to enjoy belting it out with a spoon for a make believe microphone.
But this morning it was quiet and I reckoned she was probably watching the news story she’d been following. We had a small counter top set in the kitchen. I figured she was watching in there.
“Hey Hon, you about ready, we gotta hustle,” I shouted. No reply, she was definitely engrossed in the story. “Hey Rosie, our appointment’s at 9 remember, better get shaking.”
I said this walking from the bedroom down the short passage towards the front room.
The front door was open, and I recall wondering if Rosie had stepped out into the hall to speak with Mrs. Kranski. The old woman had some crazy ideas and phobias and it would be just like her to want to talk in the hall rather than come into our apartment.
That was when I saw Rosie lying on the floor, and my life as I knew it, ended.
“Jesus, Rosie”, I said running to her. “You okay? Did you fall?“ But immediately I knew that this was no fall, not with that much blood. Her nightdress was soaked in it. It was on the floor, the walls, the door. And yet somehow Rosie was still breathing, a harsh jagged breath, but a breath, a hope, nonetheless.
“Hang in babe, hang in, I’m gonna get you through this,” I said, then shouted out, “Someone call an ambulance, Mrs Kranski, call 911, we need help! Mrs Kranski!”
I suddenly remembered that my neighbor, Brad, worked at Lenox Hill and might know what to do. “Brad!” I screamed, “Brad, get the fuck in here, we need your help.”
Rosie’s fingers tightened on my wrist and I looked at her and just knew she wasn’t going to make it, not even if the ambulance arrived this very minute, not even if the world’s best surgeon was cradling her head instead of me.
I started to speak, but she widened her eyes as if to tell me not to, and she said, in a whisper, “My baby.”
“Yes hon,” I said, “I’m going to pull you through this. You and the baby, you’re going to be okay.”
Inexplicably, Rosie smiled at me. A knowing smile, that said she knew I was bullshitting. Then she lifted her hand and put a finger to my lips and her eyes glazed. She let out a breath that seemed to go on forever, that seemed to sound in my ears even after it was gone.
I knelt there on the floor with my wife’s blood on my hands and held her like a broken toy. I must have cried, although all I can remember was a deep, dark emptiness in my heart and a maelstrom in my head as I tried to deal with both my loss and confusion at how this had happened.
I saw that Rosie’s nightdress had hitched up and out of some sense of modesty, I guess, I straightened it. It was then that I noticed the flatness of her belly.
My baby, she’d said. Had she miscarried? Is that what she’d meant? Where? How? What had happened here?
I slowly lifted the nightdress. There was a lot of blood, but even so I could clearly see the terrible injuries.
Rosie’s stomach had been ripped open leaving a jagged wound. There were deep gashes on her thighs where it appeared chunks of flesh had been ripped from her. Jesus Christ, were those bite marks? Holy mother of God, how was this possible?
Someone knocks on the door of my apartment at 7 o’ clock on a Monday morning and ri
ps my unborn child from my wife’s womb? How could such a thing happen? How?
Outside I could hear sirens and suddenly realized I had to call the cops. The phone in the front room was dead. I tried to remember where I’d left my cell, but for a moment I blanked.
Then it came to me, on top of the john. I sprinted for the bathroom, getting there just as the phone started to ring. The ring tone was set to vibrate, and as I reached for the phone it slid across the porcelain, and dropped into the bowl.
“Fuuuckkk!” I screamed at the top of my voice and ran back down the passage and across the hall to the Kranski’s.
I banged on the door. “Mrs Kranski, it’s Chris Collins, I need help. I need to use your phone, there’s been an accident. Mrs Kranski! Please, call 911, there’s been an accident!”
If Kranski was there, she wasn’t answering. “Fucking old witch,” I spat. I was going to have to try and find Rosie’s cell, or go down to the call box on the corner. Or I could try Brad.
I reached his apartment door in four long strides. The door was ajar, and I noticed something that looked like blood on the doorframe and handle.
I realize now that it should have struck me as strange, but at the time I was frantic and the reality of the situation was starting to cut through the haze of shock and adrenalin.
For a brief moment I totally convinced myself that this was all a dream and a sensation of calmness swept over me, like the way you feel when you waken from a nightmare and realize it isn’t real. But if this was a nightmare, it wasn’t letting go just yet.
I entered Brad’s apartment, without bothering to knock. “Hey Brad!” I shouted. “I need help. I need your help, man. My wife. There’s been an accident!“
There was no answer.
“Brad, I need to use your phone, I need to call the cops, so I’m just going to do that, okay!”
I picked up the phone. Dead.
“Hey, Brad. I’m gonna need your cell. This is an emergency. This is a fucking emergency, you understand!”
There was a sound from the kitchen, a faint bubbling sound. “You in there Brad,” I shouted. “I need your cell”.
Again I heard the distinctive bubbling sound from the kitchen. I headed in that direction.
Brad was standing with his back pressed up against the counter. He wore his Hospital Security Guard uniform. The front of his shirt was blood stained and there was blood on his hands, one of which dangled a large kitchen knife, also dripping blood. A cigarette hung between bloodstained teeth, which seemed impossibly large. His mouth was curled into an insane grin.
On the stove, a pot of water bubbled merrily away. Next to it, on a cutting board, lay the tiny corpse of my unborn daughter.
Now you need to understand what goes on in a person’s mind at a time like this. There’s a moment when you feel like a puppet, suspended on strings. The puppet master has just yanked you in a direction you don’t want to go. But you go anyway, because you have no choice.
I should have been heading across town with my wife for her obstetrician appointment. Instead, my wife was dead, my daughter was dead and I was standing just feet away from the man who had killed them both. Butchered them both for some insane idea that I didn’t understand.
I’m not sure how long I faced off against Brad across his kitchen. It could have been a second. It felt like an hour.
It was he who broke the standoff. He allowed the cigarette to drop from his lips, stubbed it out with his shoe, then looked up at me and grinned. Then the grin seemed to charge, to morph into anger, into rage, into something more primal. He made a gagging sound as though trying to clear something unpleasant from his throat and then he charged me.
He crossed the eight feet or so that separated us in an instant, and it was only my fighter’s instincts that saved me. I’ve fought lots of guys like Brad in my career. Big, bull-necked guys, who think their power makes up for a lack of skill. I used his momentum to my advantage, shuffling out of the way at the last moment and catching him with a solid, fight-ending right behind the ear.
Brad plowed on past, his impetus carrying him into the living room, where he crashed face first into a glass topped table.
He lay there in a crumpled heap, his arm bent back at an improbable angle. The kitchen knife lay a few feet from him, and for a moment I had an almost uncontrollable urge to pick it up and plunge in into his back until there wasn’t an inch of skin on him without a knife wound. The only reason I didn’t, is because I had more important business to take care of.
I sprinted down the passage to fetch a towel for wrapping the baby’s body in. I heard a sound behind me and turned to see Brad getting up from the rubble of his coffee table. He stumbled down the passage towards me, dangling his shattered arm. There were shards of glass in his face, the largest of which protruded from an eye socket.
It seemed impossible that he should be walking, let alone be alive, but I’ve heard of guys on drugs like PPC who take an incredible beating and still kept going. Is that what had happened? Had Brad killed my wife and daughter in a drug induced frenzy?
He was only a few feet away when I closed the bathroom door on him. This guy was going to take some stopping and I needed a minute to think, to find a weapon. He crashed into the door, stepped back and attacked it again. By the forth charge the door started to splinter.
I searched hurriedly for something I could use as a weapon, but found nothing except a plumber’s mate and a tube of Drano crystals.
Brad charged the door again and it just held. The next hit would surely bring him through.
I pulled down the plastic shower curtain with the idea of throwing it over him to disorientate him while I made my escape. There was a large bottle of Avalon shampoo on the rim of the bathtub.
I grabbed the bottle and quickly emptied it on the tiles in front of the door, using my hands to spread it around.
Brad made his final charge and the door gave, his impetus carrying him into the bathroom. The minute his feet hit the shampoo patch they slid from under him and he was thrown into the air, landing on his back like a character in a cartoon.
I stood over him and brought my foot down slowly on the glass shard that still protruded from his eye. The sensation as it slid slowly into his brain should have sickened me, but it didn’t. If I could have killed him a million times over it would not have been enough to sate the rage I felt towards this creature. He twitched once or twice and then was still. And the whole time, that insane grin remained plastered to his face.
In the end, as much as it hurt me to leave Rosie and the baby where they were, I figured it was best not to touch anything until the cops arrived. I had just killed a man, and while I had a good reason for doing it, my story sounded crazy, even to me. To a cop it might sound like a triple homicide, with me as the perpetrator.
I had to call the cops and I decided to give Mrs. Kranski another try. “Mrs. Kranski,” I shouted, banging on the door. “Mrs. Kranski, you in there? I need to call the police. There’s been an accident. Mrs. Kranski. Please.”
This time the old woman did answer. “Go away,” she hissed from behind the door.
“Mrs Kranski” I said. “My wife, my baby, they’ve been…hurt.”
“Go away,” she repeated. “Leave us alone.”
“I’m begging you, my wife, Rosie, you know Rosie.”
“You think you’re the only one. Don’t you watch TV? People are dying.”
Now, Rosie had always been on reasonable terms with Kranski, but I never had an opinion of the old lady one way or the other. Except right now she was seriously pissing me off.
“Look, cut the shit old woman, I need your phone. Now. My wife is dead. You hear me. Dead. Brad, you know your favorite tenant Brad, he killed her. Now I need to call the cops and I need your phone so either you open this fucking door or I break it down. Are you listening to me, Kranski?”
“Are you listening to me? The phone’s not working. Are you deaf? Can’t you hear the sirens outside? When
last you hear sirens like that? 9/11? This is worse.”
She was right. With all that had happened I must have shut the sound out, but now that I stopped to listen there were sirens. Lots of them.
“What’s happened?” I asked. What’s going on?
“They’re everywhere.”
“They? Who are they?”
“Go away. Leave us alone.”
In the end, I decided to move the baby’s body back to our apartment. I laid her out on the bed next to Rosie, washed them both down and covered them with a fresh sheet. I had to do it. I just couldn’t leave them like that.
Whatever consequences came of it, whatever explaining needed to be done, whatever penalties for tampering with crime scene evidence I would deal with later. Right now I needed to take care of my family.
Besides I didn’t think the cops were coming any time soon. I turned on the TV, but all I got was static on every channel. It wasn’t entirely dead, though. Along the bottom of the screen there was an info bar, with a message running on a loop. It said, STAY IN YOUR HOME… STAY OFF THE STREETS… DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR TO STRANGERS… THE POLICE AND NATIONAL GUARD HAVE THE SITUATION UNDER CONTROL…
Outside the sirens seemed to grow more and more strident. I heard helicopter rotors, and screams and gunshots. Something was happening out there. Something big, and by the sound of it, something bad.
There was a commotion in the street. I went to the window and saw a young woman being chased by a man in a greasy pair of overalls. He caught her by the hair and pulled her to the ground as she screamed. Then he seemed to bite into her neck while she shrieked in agony.
A man came out from one of the houses over the road, approached them and then shot the assailant twice in the back of the head. He then examined the victim’s wounds.
While he was doing so, the woman grabbed hold of his arm and bit him. The man shot her in the face then emptied his revolver into her corpse before staggering home clutching his wounded arm.