Dead Air (Book One of The Dead Series)

by Schafer, Jon

  When he was done, Steve looked down at the neat blue package he had assembled and wondered where he could put her. He mulled this over for a few minutes before coming up with an idea. Turning, he saw Tick-Tock at the door of the deli looking at him with a concerned expression. Believing Tick-Tock was bothered by the same question that he’d been puzzling over, Steve said in a flat voice, "Don't worry. I've got it all figured out. We can bury her in one of the planters that line the second floor of the parking ramp." Looking back down at the body, he added in a detached way, "I might need some help though."

  "It's not your fault," Tick-Tock replied softly. "I should have checked better. The outside door was locked and I didn't think anything could be in here."

  "I just need your help. I know I shouldn't ask because I made the mess, and my mom always said that when it’s your mess, you need to clean it up.”

  Believing Steve was in shock, Tick-Tock tried to get him to sit down but he refused.

  "After," he insisted.

  Retrieving a shovel and wheel barrow, they gently loaded Donna’s body and rolled it to the elevator. Once across the walkway, they found a planter overlooking the street at the front of the ramp and started digging.

  When Tick-Tock was done covering her with the last of the dirt, he put the shovel in the wheelbarrow and asked solemnly, "Should we say a few words?"

  Steve bristled in anger at this. "To who?" Waving his arm at the hundreds of walking dead in the street below, he demanded "Look around you at what's going on." Turning to walk away, he said over his shoulder, "There is no God." He then went to retrieve the body of the zombie so he could dump it from the walkway and go back to mop up the blood and black goo from the deli floor before it started to stink more than it already did.

  Going back up to the station in the elevator afterward, Steve noticed that there was no music. Wondering disjointedly if maybe Brain could wire a speaker in here to play a direct feed from KLAM, he pondered this to keep his mind off what had just occurred. After all, he thought, what was an elevator without elevator music?

  Entering his office, he left the lights off. He found the bottle of Jack Daniels in his desk drawer by feel and unscrewed the cap. Up ending it, Steve took three large swallows. With his eyes watering and throat burning, he hiccupped and set the bottle down on his desk. The booze brought him out of his shock in a rush. Without warning, as if a dam had burst inside of him, the past three days came rushing back. Overwhelmed for a moment, he hung his head and placed his hands over his ears, trying to keep the memory of shooting Donna from replaying in his mind.

  It didn't work.

  Heather, Donna, Ginny, Miss Carlson. They danced through his brain in a series of images he couldn't block out. Guilt racked him as he reran each final scene of his contact with them. After some time the pain ebbed. Finally able to lift his head, he looked at the bottle on his desk and the object that he had set next to it.

  His pistol.

  Almost casually, he thought of picking it up and using it on himself. One quick shot to the temple and no more pain. I know the pain will come back and I don’t want that, so let's just finish it.

  His brain screamed at him. Coward!

  Ignoring this, Steve reached for the pistol, but instead he picked up the bottle and took a sip. Determination suddenly flowed through him, and he made the conscious decision not to grab the Glock. Right then, he vowed that he would live. If he died, it wouldn't be by his own hand. Even if the dead surrounded him, he would take as many down with him as he could. Not even saving the last bullet for himself, he would die fighting.

  With that resolved, he stood up and went to turn on the light so he could get on with life, the living and dealing with the dead. He still had a dozen things to take care of, and he was due to take a shift on the radio in two hours. It was time to get to work.

  As he came around his desk, he saw a flash of illumination on his window from outside that was briefly repeated before disappearing. On a dead street, in a dead city, this caught his attention.

  Moving quickly to the window, he looked out. Thousands of zombies freely roamed the street and sidewalks below as he tried to discern where the light had come from. His eyes roamed the area trying to take in everything at once, so he almost missed the glow that flashed from the roof of the building across the street. Focusing in on where the light came from, he could make out a figure standing on top of the five-story structure as it slowly waved a flashlight back and forth along the front of the Garnett Building.

  As Steve recognized the familiar form, relief and joy ran through him. His face lit up with a smile as he rushed over to his light switch and started flicking it rapidly up and down. After a minute of this he stopped, leaving the office in darkness.

  The glow passed by the window again, so he hit the light switch a few more times and then left it off.

  The beam of a flashlight cut through the window as it lit up the ceiling of his office before it was turned off and on rapidly.

  In reply, he flashed the office lights again and then left them on as he walked over and stood in the circle of light coming through the glass.

  Looking down at the figure across the street, he waved frantically with both arms and was greeted the same in return.

  Heather had made it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Clearwater, Florida:

  By flashlight, Steve and Tick-Tock dismantled the window washer’s platform that had been stored on the roof of the Garnett Bank Building. Brain had been the one to come up with the idea on how to get Heather across the no-man’s land of the street. Steve thought it was nuts. Tick-Tock, happy that his boss had come out of his shock, pointed out that the world was nuts, so they should just go with it.

  After scavenging all the rope from the rig, Steve tied a large granite paperweight to one end while Tick-Tock bound the loose ends of the rope together to form one continuous line. While they were doing this, Marcia and Susan watched with excitement. They had taken the loss of Donna hard, but with the arrival of someone bringing news to their now isolated corner of the world, they found themselves distracted by the activity of rescuing Heather and their grief was pushed aside for a short time.

  Steve had tried to call out to Heather when he first reached the roof but distance, and a strong sea breeze that had come up, made communication impossible. She would have to trust that he was working on bringing her over.

  Moving toward the parapet wall, Steve shined a flashlight down to where Heather waited and then pointed it at himself so she could see him clearly. Motioning her to move back and take cover, it took a few minutes of hand signals before she understood; she then crouched behind an air conditioning unit on the far side of the roof.

  Taking two steps back, Steve twirled the rope around in a circle until the weight at the end made a whirring noise as it cut through the air. He let it go at the upswing of the arc and the paperweight tied to the end of the rope sailed out over the parapet.

  Steve moved quickly to the edge of the roof but was disappointed to see that he had misjudged his throw. The paperweight had landed on the hood of the MRAP parked in the middle of the street and bounced off to land on the pavement.

  Worried that the line might get tangled in the legs of one of the dead wandering around below, he quickly retrieved the rope. He didn't want to have to drag a zombie up fifteen stories and then kill it before he could try again. An idea struck him as he wound in the line, so he stored it away for discussion later with Tick-Tock.

  His second throw was right on target, landing on the roof of the building across the street. Heather came out and grabbed the end of the rope, tying it off on a metal plumbing vent. When he saw that she was done, Steve turned to Marcia and said, "Go downstairs and tell Jonny to go ahead." He then motioned for Heather to wait, so she stood by patiently as he started to lower his end of the rope down the side of the building.

  Moments later, there was a repeated hollow thumping sound followed by a crash.

>   Steve saw Heather jump back so he motioned to her that it was all right. Looking over the side of the building, he could see directly below him to where Jonny G had smashed out a window on the fourth floor with a chair that now lay in the street below. Seeing he had let out enough slack so that the line hung down to the fourth floor, Steve started gently swinging the rope back and forth. He saw a hand reach out, grab it and pull it in. Letting out more slack but keeping the line taut, he was soon rewarded by a series of tugs from below.

  Tying off his end quickly, Steve raced downstairs followed by Tick-Tock and Susan.

  With Steve in the lead, they entered the office where Jonny and Marcia waited. As he looked through the smashed out window, he saw Heather was already halfway across the street. With her legs slung over the line, she was rapidly pulling herself across the chasm with her arms. Steve breathed a sigh of relief. In seconds she would be safe. When she reached the building though, a problem arose. Steve noticed that, although Jonny had tied the rope up high around the top of the office door at the far side of the room, Heather’s weight still pulled the line down onto the window sill. Now that she had reached the building, she was hanging below the opening with nothing to use to lever herself up.

  Steve, Tick-Tock and Jonny G got under the rope and stood, lifting it so she could pull herself along and into the building.

  Looking down to make sure she was safe, Heather unwrapped her legs and let them drop to the floor while still hanging onto the rope. She loosened one hand and let it down to allow her CAR-15 to fall to the floor before quickly re-gripping the rope.

  Steve could see she was unsteady on her feet, so he wrapped his arms around her to support her weight and eased her into a sitting position with her back against a near wall. Finding themselves nose to nose as Steve gently lowered her to the floor, neither could say a word. They just looked at each other as goofy smiles spread across their faces.

  Everyone was talking at once and congratulating each other on their successful rescue, so it took some time for the noise to die down enough for Steve to say to Heather, "You got a weird way of requesting a song. You couldn't call it in?"

  With a smile so big it was hard to talk, she replied, "Don't you know? The phone's are out."

  Matching her grin, Steve asked, "So what do you wanna hear?''

  Expecting her to say ‘Freebird’, he was surprised when she reached out, pulled him to her in a hug and said, "How about Home Sweet Home?" Then she kissed him.

  Heather was so weak that Steve had to carry her to the elevator and down the hall to the radio station. She explained that she hadn't eaten much in the past two days but didn't go into detail. Steve didn’t press, instead he went about taking care of her in a contented silence. He cooked for her and then helped her to the bathroom where she could clean up. Heather's uniform was torn and filthy so Marcia took down her sizes. With Jonny accompanying her, she went to the clothing store in the Galleria to outfit her in the latest fashion.

  When Heather was clean and dressed in a khaki shirt and pants, Steve escorted her back into his office and onto the couch where he helped her stretch out and covered her with a blanket.

  "I don't know if I can sleep," she said when he was finished tucking the blanket around her feet. "I may never sleep again."

  "Try," he replied. "I'll be right here, so don’t worry, you're safe."

  She closed her eyes and seconds later opened then.

  "You promise you won't leave?" She asked.

  "Promise," he replied.

  Heather closed her eyes again, and in seconds was asleep. During the night and into the next morning, she would awake with a start, sitting up and looking around wildly until she spotted him. But true to his word, Steve never left the room. Reassured by his presence, she would then lay back down and go to sleep.

  Steve was sitting at his desk trying to find some news on the Internet about what was going on and only finding huge gaps. When he looked over to check on Heather, he found her watching him from the couch.

  "You're awake," he stated the obvious.

  "What time is it?" She asked.

  "Little after ten," he replied. "Sleep some more if you want. I'm here."

  "No, I have to get up," she said, and continued to lie where she was.

  Steve smiled and asked, "Would coffee help?"

  "It wouldn't hurt."

  Heather was still exhausted, so Steve didn't press her for information. Instead, he went and got her coffee.

  When he returned, they sat sideways on the couch facing each other, talking in fits and starts about inconsequential things like Steve's office and the radio station. Eventually, he got her talk about how she ended up on the roof across the street from him, in the middle of a city full of the walking dead.

  "Remember the last time I talked to you?" She asked.

  "Early Monday morning," he replied. "Three days ago."

  Looking slightly disoriented, she asked, "What day is it?"

  ''Thursday.''

  She fell silent as she took this in then said, "After I talked to you Monday, I went to the pier to meet up with the remaining deputies. The National Guard was pulling back to the relief centers to protect them because they ended up being magnets for the dead. With all those people grouped together, all they had to do was hang out a sign saying it was an all you can eat buffet."

  Steve nodded, "We lost contact with the last evacuation center yesterday morning. It was over in Safety Harbor. We lost phone service pretty fast and cell phones were hit and miss, so we went out to the parking ramp and took a CB radio out of a truck. Brain rigged it up and that’s how we kept in contact with the safe zones until they went off the air."

  "By the way, Brain is the one who figured out how to get you over to our side of the street," Steve added.

  Heather smiled, "Point him out so I can give him a big hug. When that rope dropped down I looked up and knew I'd never be able to climb it. Then, when that chair came crashing out the window on the fourth floor, I realized what you were up to." She fell silent as she seemed to gather her thoughts, so Steve waited patiently. He wanted to know how she got here but knew not to push. She would tell him in her own time.

  "That first night we probably lost half of our patrol units," Heather finally said. "Everyone who could drive was put in a car and sent out on the road, but it didn't make a difference. There were too many of them and not enough of us. By Monday night we had quit going on calls and were just trying to survive while we ferried people to the pier and a couple other secure locations along Tampa Bay. We were hoping to have them evacuated by boat but it never happened.

  "Why the pier?" Steve asked.

  "Easy to defend," She replied. "We threw a barricade across the mouth of it and turned the building into a refuge."

  Steve could picture the huge inverted structure at the end of the St. Petersburg pier and had to agree it was a good idea.

  "Is it still open?" He asked.

  "Last I saw of it Tuesday, as I was hauling ass across Tampa Bay, it was. The Sheriff called all the remaining deputies together that morning and told us it was up to each individual to decide what they wanted to do. It was too dangerous to continue going into the city on rescue missions, and he wouldn't risk any more Deputy's lives by ordering them to."

  "How many of you were left?" Steve asked quietly.

  "Eight," she replied. "Eight deputies and maybe twelve St. Pete cops. The city guys were guarding the pier and keeping the peace inside the building. There might have been others but they were in the city, cut off from us."

  Shaking her head with disgust, Heather said, "You wouldn't believe it, but in the midst of all that was going on, we still had to deal with rapes, robberies and a couple murders in the so called safe zone. The strong were still preying on the weak. I talked to one of the St. Petersburg cops who said they were going to start publicly hanging the worst offenders to try and restore order. That’s when I decided to come here."

  Heather sipped some co
ffee before continuing, "I drew some ammunition from the supplies we had stashed there." She saw Steve giving her a curious look so she explained, "After the riots back in the mid-nineties, the Sheriff stashed ammunition, tear gas and riot control gear at different spots across Pinellas County."

  Steve nodded and motioned her to continue.

  "So I made my way along the beach into Kenwood, hoping to find a boat." She laughed a little and said, "All I could find were these huge cabin cruisers. I climbed into one but couldn't figure out how to start it. Eventually, I found a little Zodiac lashed to the back of one of the big boats and managed to get it in the water."

  "How did you keep from being noticed by the dead while you were doing all this?" Steve asked, amazed.

  "They congregate around the food, so I was able to move about pretty easy. The hardest part was getting away from the pier. I had to swim out into the bay a few times to avoid them."

  Now Steve understood that when Heather had said she'd made her way along the beach, she hadn't meant it was a Sunday stroll. Then he realized one of the things he found attractive about her, she was tough.

  "So my first thought was to come here," she said, looking at Steve with a raised eyebrow. "I knew it was a long haul so I hit a couple more docks looking for gas. I didn't find enough, so I headed out across the bay to McDill, hoping I could get some from the guys at the air base. It was still light out, so I had no problem finding it, but when I got close I could hear a lot of shooting. I used a pair of binoculars to see what was going on, and I saw those things coming out of the water right onto the base. The fence kept them out on land so they just went around it. Once I saw that, I turned back and headed for St. Pete again. I hit a few more docks as I headed down the bay and figured I had enough gas to make it."

  Heather swallowed hard and said, "I had a real close call at one place and that kind of helped me along on my decision to get moving." Heather looked into the depths of her coffee mug, so Steve waited patiently for her to continue. After a few seconds, she said, "You know those plastic dock boxes that people store all their junk in?"