DEAD: Snapshot (Book 3): Liberty, South Carolina

by TW Brown

  “Jeff, can you step over here,” the chief said, doing his best not to sound like he was about to explode from the frustration that was building exponentially with every new horrible discovery.

  The man edged past the others looking both confused and concerned. As soon as he stepped into a beam of sun that was fighting to get through the canopy of trees overhead, Chief Adam Gilstrap winced as if he’d just been punched in the gut.

  “Did you get bit by one of them things?” the chief asked, his eyes scanning the man for any sign of an injury. Unfortunately, the man was splattered with so much blood that it would be impossible to tell.

  “No, sir,” the man replied. He obviously picked up on the concern in the chief’s voice because he began searching himself frantically.

  “Just take it easy, son.” Chief Gilstrap reached into his years of training and dialed in the voice he used when talking to an accident victim. “I just want you to be still. We’ll get you back to town and get you cleaned up. Then we—”

  “Jeff’s one of them things!” Isaiah Newkirk practically screamed as he backed away from Jeff while tugging at the field machete that he had been using.

  “Shut up, Isaiah!” the chief barked. “You hear any of them things trying to talk?” The young man dropped his head sheepishly and shook it.

  “Why do you think I’ve been bit?” Jeff asked. He took a step closer to the chief who moved a step back out of sheer reflex before he could catch himself.

  “Your eyes, man!” Isaiah blurted. “They got them squiggly black lines in ‘em just like them monsters.”

  “I said shut up, Isaiah!” Chief Gilstrap barked, spinning on the younger man.

  He was immediately hit with a thought that gave his conscience a pang of guilt. In that instant, he’d wished it was this stupid, loudmouthed kid who was showing signs of being infected instead of a man like Jeff. His reasons were perhaps justifiable, but that did not make him feel any better about such thoughts.

  Jeff Tucker was a family man with a wife and three kids. He was a regular fixture at various town events and an assistant coach for the Liberty Red Devils varsity football team. He was a leader for the men’s group at his church and even volunteered during the holidays to deliver food and gift baskets to those who were having tough times.

  Isaiah Newkirk was nineteen if the chief’s memory served him. He wasn’t a bad kid, and hadn’t been in any real trouble that the chief could recall, but he would take one Jeff Tucker for every ten Isaiah Newkirks right about now.

  “Let’s just get back to town and have somebody take a look at you. It’s probably nothing.” Chief Adam Gilstrap swallowed the bitterness of that lie and felt his stomach churn. He thought he might be telling a lot of those sorts of lies in the next few days.

  The men waded out of the woods and emerged on the back side of the elementary school. Looking up at the sky, Chief Gilstrap guessed it to be around dinner time. The shadows were getting long and a damp chill was settling in the air. Clouds rolling in from the east looked to be carrying a lot of rain. It was going to be a long night.

  Like last night wasn’t? a voice in his head mocked.

  By the time they had reached the parking lot beside the school where they had all parked, he’d made another decision. He altered his course and put a hand on Jeff Tucker’s shoulder. “Why don’t you ride with me? I want to take you to get looked at.”

  “Ah, man, can’t it wait?” Jeff groaned. “Sheila and the kids ain’t seen me since this morning. That town meeting probably has her scared out of her wits. Let me at least stop in for a minute and see them.”

  “I can’t do it, Jeff.” Reaching over and opening the back door of the cruiser, he gave a nod. “This is for the best. We can see a doctor and then I will take you home personally.”

  Jeff glanced down at the back door that was open and waiting. He looked back up at the chief with eyes that almost appeared to grow worse in the span of a few seconds. There was a hint of sadness that warred with the fear that had pushed through.

  “You’re a lousy liar, Adam. That’s why we always invite you to card night.” Without another word, Jeff ducked into the back of the police cruiser and pulled the door shut.

  Chief Adam Gilstrap looked around. Liberty, South Carolina was a quiet town. Sure, there were dust ups and a few bad eggs, but for the most part, this was a good town full of good people. There had been lean times and plentiful; but what lay ahead was something so beyond belief that he wondered how these everyday men and women would fare. This would be a test that none of them had studied for, and he was certain there would be failures.

  He looked down at the bandage on his hand. Since nobody had reacted, he was certain that his eyes had not changed. But if his hadn’t and Jeff’s had, what did that mean? How would they know if Jeff was infected? How would he know that he wasn’t?

  “Something tells me this is going to go from bad to worse in a real quick hurry.”

  The chief opened his door and climbed in the car. He turned the key and his radio went crazy. He turned it down so that he could hopefully get a better grasp on what the voice on the other end was screaming.

  “…just tell my wife that I love her, and that I’m sorry!” a voice said through what sounded like clenched teeth.

  ***

  Clifton Martin pulled the phone from his ear and looked at it with a scowl. It had taken him almost an hour to get his call to go through. He knew that Sophie was going to be worried sick.

  If she’d seen even a fraction of what he’d already witnessed, she would be absolutely terrified. But if she had gone down to the highway, then perhaps she knew more than he was giving her credit for. She was a smart woman, and despite the improbability of what was happening, she would not take long to connect the dots and figure things out for what they were.

  When there’s no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the earth. That classic movie line echoed in his head as Clifton “Cliff” Lawrence stuffed the phone belonging to his friend and fellow paramedic partner Terry Gibbs into his back pocket and took one more look around.

  He was outside the emergency room entrance to Pickens Memorial Hospital. The sun was just coming up and he knew it was going to be a long day. He tipped the paper cup to his mouth and downed the last of the absolutely repugnant hospital vending machine coffee and grimaced.

  A line of military trucks were filing into the parking area. Already a series of white tents were up and at least a dozen more were in various stages. The past several people to arrive at the emergency admittance area with bites or scratches had been sent over to the tents. That was not what was troubling Cliff. His eyes drifted over to the long, dark green tents with the big trailers in a row behind it.

  In the past ten minutes while he’d been outside trying to get his call to go through, he’d seen at least twenty people carted into that long tent. They had the sheets all the way up in that universal sign for being dead, yet he kept seeing movement at the far end that looked like people being escorted to the trailers by men in full HAZMAT gear. The ones being escorted were being goaded along at the end of those types of poles that you see alligator wranglers use.

  With a sigh, he headed into the hospital. It was almost like hitting a wall as the sounds of people crying and moaning and screaming came in a massive wave. The waiting room was absolute chaos. It was unlike anything that he’d ever witnessed in his life. This sort of thing might happen in the big cities, but in someplace rural like Pickens, South Carolina, that was just not the case.

  A soldier in one of the doorways saw him enter and waved him over. “You need to stay inside from this point on, sir,” the fresh-faced young man said.

  “I told the captain that I needed to let my wife know I was okay. He gave me the go ahead to go outside and use the phone.”

  “Yes, sir,” the soldier said curtly. “And now the new order is that all personnel are to remain indoors until further notice. There is a concern that this might be spread through airbor
ne vectors.”

  Cliff knew a line of bull when he heard it. There was absolutely no indication that whatever was causing this bizarre illness could be spread in such a manner. Somebody was reaching, fabricating an excuse to keep them inside. That meant they were starting to get scared. They damn well should be, he thought as he simply gave the soldier his most polite smile and nod before edging past and entering the emergency room.

  If the lobby was chaos, then this was perhaps a window cracked open to the pits of hell. There were doctors and nurses flitting about from one sectioned-off patient to the next. Many were splattered with blood and swapping out of their dirty gear and into fresh stuff with a speed of a super model backstage at a fashion show.

  The orderlies were doing their best to keep the supplies of fresh gloves, scrubs, and other assorted necessities as well stocked as possible, but it was a losing cause. Shouts for more gauze, gloves, alcohol and any other number of items echoed off the walls in a steady thunder. Interspersed under this madness were the sounds of heart monitors. Some were beeping, but others were sounding the “flatline” alarm.

  People were dying faster than the soldiers could wheel them out. Almost on cue, two soldiers in protective gear hurried past with a gurney. The body was fully covered with a sheet. The pristine white linen was marred by a huge, dark red stain near the left shoulder.

  “All I need now is Sarah Polley in a set of scrubs,” Cliff whispered as he stopped at the first curtained patient area on his left and glanced at the chart sticking out of the fiberglass holder with the corresponding number. He scanned the assessment.

  Patient reports being bitten by wife…

  He grabbed the next one.

  …injuries on left forearm consistent with human bite…

  The next.

  …three separate sets of teeth marks consistent with patient’s account of having been bitten by three young women…

  One after another they all told pretty much the same story. This was way too similar to the zombie movies that he’d seen over the years. People were being bitten by others and then becoming drastically ill, dying, sitting back up, and continuing the cycle. Add that to what he had seen with his own two eyes in the ambulance, and he was almost certain that he knew what was going on—despite how improbable or fantastic it might seem.

  This had all the makings of the zombie apocalypse. So why in the hell was he still here in the hospital? Why wasn’t he hauling ass for home to be with his wife and son? Did he think he was going to be the one person to come up with some magical answer and solve this fantastic problem, set the world right, and then become a global hero?

  Heroes die way too often in these little horror stories, he thought as he took a more sharp-eyed look around the emergency room. And that brought up another thought: he always hated when some father or parental type decided that it is more important that they try to help everybody else to the exclusion of his own family. He had always called bullshit on those moments.

  “No dad is just going to bail on his wife or kid to go help a bunch of strangers because he wants to set a good example in the middle of the freaking apocalypse,” he would argue.

  And yet, here he was. In the emergency room of the hospital getting ready to wade in and hold clamps for people that were going to either bleed out or just up and die only to reanimate in a few minutes and attack anything around them that was still living.

  He glanced at the door that led back to the waiting room. That was a bust. The soldier he’d had brief words with about being outside the hospital was standing there with his rifle slung over his shoulder and hands on his hips like he was something important.

  Turning away from the curtain, he headed past the nurse’s station and ducked around a corner that led to the x-ray and ultrasound area. He was amazed when he discovered gurneys lined up and down the right-hand wall. All of them had occupants with visible wounds in a variety of places.

  “Hey, mister?” a scared voice called him from the second gurney that he passed. Looking down, he saw a girl who looked to be around ten years old.

  Cliff stopped. The girl was strapped down to her gurney and had two very nasty bites on her left shoulder and right forearm that had been cleaned and bandaged. However, there was something else about her that grabbed his attention. The girl’s eyes were shot full of black tracers that gave her a sinister appearance despite her being just a child.

  He took a step towards the girl when a scream from back in the direction of the emergency room snapped his head around. A moment later, that scream was joined by others. The sounds of pain were nothing new to Cliff. His years as a paramedic had helped him become accustomed to such things but this was different. The person—people, he corrected himself as other such screams begin to join the first—doing the screaming were expressing a level of pain he’d never heard in all his time in the field.

  He looked back down at the girl and staggered back a step. Her eyes had shut and she was now coated in a greasy looking sweat that had her blond hair stuck to her forehead. Her breathing was coming in short pants and the pallor of her skin was unhealthy and waxy.

  “I have to get home,” he stated out loud more to convince his own feet to start moving.

  Stepping his speed up to a jog, Cliff Martin wove through the windowless maze of this section of the hospital and came to one of the other lobbies. He skidded to a stop when he saw a pair of military trucks parked right outside the series of doors that opened to an area that was curiously empty.

  This was the general reception lobby of the hospital and would never be empty during normal weekday working hours. Of course it wasn’t technically empty at the moment. He counted ten soldiers stationed in the open lobby. A pair of them were heading his way and he ducked back down the corridor he’d come down to reach this point.

  Stopping at the stairwell, he gave the door a tug and sighed in relief when it opened. He stepped inside and started up. He was now on pretty unfamiliar ground. Sure, he’d come to this hospital countless times, but he certainly had not been wandering the corridors.

  When he reached the second floor, he opened the door and stepped into a long hall that was lined with rooms on either side. He spied the nurse’s station and felt his heart sink. Two soldiers were already there and one of them had looked up when he opened the door. There was no chance for him to get away without being seen.

  “You aren’t supposed to be up here,” one of the men said, getting up from his seat behind the desk.

  “I was—” he began, only to be cut off.

  “Save it, pal. You and I both know that whatever was about to come out of your mouth was a big lie.”

  Cliff raised his hands when both soldiers brought up their rifles and aimed them in his direction. As they started toward him, he noticed that one of the men had an arm that was bandaged up. His heart came up to his throat when the man came close enough that Cliff could actually see the man’s eyes clearly. They were just like the girl’s downstairs.

  “Were you bit?” Cliff asked trying to keep his voice as calm as possible.

  “Barely broke the skin,” the soldier scoffed.

  “You may still be infected,” Cliff pointed out. “How long ago, and are you feeling okay?”

  “It was a couple of hours ago. Like I said, barely broke the skin. Damned thing got my hand as I was changing out magazines.”

  “So you have already been fighting with these people?” Cliff asked

  “Stow that comment, private!” the other soldier barked before the private could answer. “This is still need-to-know material.”

  “Why would you think I am infected?” the private’s voice showed just a hint of concern. His companion and apparent supervisor moved around in front of the agitated private, effectively turning his back on Cliff.

  “I said stow it, Private Fenton!” The man put a finger under the other soldier’s chin and started to say something else when he apparently noticed what Cliff had been pointing out. “Our orders…Jesu
s Christ! Okay, I need you to set down your weapon and hand me your radio.”

  “What? Why?” the private practically whined. He took a step back and started to shift his weapon.

  There was a very loud report as the other soldier acted first and shot the private in the forehead. From his angle, the entire scene played out in a surreal slowness as he saw the flash from the muzzle, a sudden dark circle appearing just a bit off center of the private’s forehead, and then an explosion of brain, bone, and blood as the bullet exited the back of the private’s skull in an explosion of gore.

  Cliff started back a few steps, but the remaining soldier spun on him with his weapon raised. “Don’t you move an inch.”

  “Look, I don’t want any trouble. I don’t know anything, I didn’t see anything, I—” Cliff babbled, his mouth suddenly dry and his need to urinate growing by the second.

  “Shut up!” the soldier barked, jabbing his gun forward for emphasis. “And you could tell anybody you damn well please, but it wouldn’t matter. We have standing orders to put down anybody we encounter that might be infected.”

  Cliff heard the emphasis on the word ‘might’ and felt his stomach tighten. If he wasn’t careful, he would have a very unfortunate accident. Only, at the moment, that was way down on his list of things to be worried about. The barrel of the gun pointed at him seemed like the mouth of a cannon.

  Do cannons have mouths? he wondered briefly. That thought filled his mind with the most peculiar images, and now he started to laugh. He was pretty sure that his sanity was cracking under the pressure and he was losing his mind.

  The soldier cocked his head to the side as he regarded Clifton Martin. “You think this shit is funny?”

  “Not at all,” Cliff managed as he struggled to get his hysteria under control. “I think we are screwed seven ways to Sunday. My question to you is how long are you going to just follow orders blindly. You have to be seeing what is going on. Hell, you probably know better than me.”