HOT ZONE: A Post-Apocalyptic Pandemic Thriller (The Zulu Virus Chronicles Book 1)

by Steven Konkoly

  “Shit. You’re right. Damn dog is clever,” said Jack. “Let me grab one of those.”

  She handed him one of the freshly charged lights, and he took off into the dark backyard again. With the flashlights finished, she started to stack the cans of food in their pantry on the counters. After her third trip back and forth from the pantry, she opened one of the kitchen drawers and removed a can opener, placing it on top of one of the piles, just in case they needed to open some on the way up to Jack’s parents. She couldn’t imagine how or why that might happen, but felt compelled to bring it.

  With the cans organized, Emma turned to the four-quart, airtight dry food bins containing loose beans, rice, grains and oatmeal. She lined all eight of them up next to the cans and returned to the pantry to start on the packaged food. They had a ton of stuff like crackers, oatmeal and pasta in assorted-sized boxes. None of it very practical on the road, but the plan was to transport it up to Jack’s parents’ in case the stores were emptied. She turned around with an unbalanced load of food packages, unexpectedly running into Jack. Most of the packages clattered to the floor.

  “Damn. I didn’t see you,” said Emma. “You scared me.”

  Jack just stood there looking through her, seemingly in a daze.

  “Jack, are you okay? Where’s Rudy?” she said, taking a step back.

  “We have to leave immediately,” he whispered, still looking spaced out.

  “Why? Where’s Rudy?” she said.

  He locked eyes with her, a deep sadness filling them. “We need to go now.”

  Emma tried to push past him, but he grabbed both of her upper arms and yanked her back. She tried to shake free, but he held her tightly, almost hurting her.

  “What happened to Rudy!” she screamed.

  “Shhhhhh,” he hissed. “Someone might hear us.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” she said, trying to shake free again with no success.

  “Trust me, Emma, like you’ve never trusted me before. We need to go. I’ll grab our packs and a few other things from the basement. Shove as much of this stuff into bags as you can and be ready to drive out of here in two minutes. It’s that bad.”

  Her lip started to quiver, tears flowing immediately. Jack hadn’t answered her question about Rudy. He looked directly at her, barely holding back his own tears.

  “Rudy—” he started, shaking his head involuntarily. “He’s gone. We have to go.”

  “What happened?”

  He continued to shake his head for a few seconds before swallowing hard. “Do you trust me?”

  She nodded, barely able to muster a response. “Yes.”

  “Do not go into the backyard. Do not look for Rudy,” he said. “I need to go into the basement, but I can’t leave you until I know one hundred percent that you will not go into the backyard.”

  “Is he in the yard?” she said.

  “Emma!” said Jack, his voice rising slightly. “He’s not in the backyard. Promise me you’ll stay inside. Please.”

  She tried desperately to process what he was saying, or more instructively—not saying. He still hadn’t said what happened to Rudy, so he clearly didn’t want to tell her. Finally grasping that, she was able to think clearly.

  “Promise,” she said.

  He kissed her forehead and let her go. “Two minutes. Something is irretrievably wrong with the world outside this house. Lock the slider and start loading up the Jeep.”

  “Okay.”

  “I love you, Emma,” said Jack. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  She didn’t know how to respond to the last part of his sentence, so she went with the obvious. “I love you, too.”

  Jack quickly kissed her lips before heading to the basement door. He disappeared before she could say anything, leaving her alone in possibly the most uncertain moment of her life. She glanced at the open patio slider, afraid to walk over and lock it. She didn’t trust herself to stay in the house.

  “Nothing good will come of that,” she muttered, forcing herself to walk to the garage to grab a stack of paper bags.

  Emma frantically filled several of the sturdy bags before Jack returned from the basement, shouldering both of their hiking rigs. He stopped next to the kitchen island and placed a small unfamiliar box on the granite surface. She directed her flashlight at the box, perplexed by the label.

  50 Rds .38 Special

  150 GR Full Metal Jacket

  “Is that some kind of ammunition?” she said.

  Jack pulled a dark pistol from his right pocket and set it on the island next to the box. “Yep.”

  Emma didn’t know much about firearms, but she knew enough to determine that it was not something they typically saw on TV shows. In other words, it wasn’t the semiautomatic kind with a magazine you inserted into the grip. It looked like a revolver. Where the hell did he get something like this? She wasn’t as mad as she was curious.

  “I didn’t realize we had a gun in the house,” she said.

  “It’s my grandfather’s service pistol. My dad passed it on to me. He never liked firearms. I kept it as an heirloom, mostly.”

  “I thought your grandpa retired from the water department,” said Emma.

  “He did. Twenty years as a cop. Twenty years with the water department. Double pension,” said Jack. “They had a decent racket going on in the city.”

  She shook her head, forming a reluctant smile. “Have you ever fired it?”

  “No. Never fired a gun in my life,” he said, lifting the pistol from the island and pointing toward the family room.

  “Careful,” she said. “Is it loaded?”

  “No,” said Jack, one-handedly working some kind of magic that opened the pistol’s cylinder.

  “You look like you know what you’re doing.”

  “I play with it from time to time. Never loaded it, though,” he said.

  “Do you know how to load it?” she said.

  “Seems fairly straightforward,” he said.

  “I’ll fill up the Jeep,” said Emma. “You figure out what to do with that.”

  Jack pressed the cylinder back into the pistol with his free hand and pulled the trigger; a deep metallic click filled the room.

  “That’s it,” he said. “I think.”

  “Except you have to load it.”

  “Right,” said Jack, glancing at the patio slider. “You didn’t lock the door?”

  “I didn’t trust myself.”

  “I don’t blame you,” he said, finally turning to face her. “Let’s get out of here, Emma.”

  He finally sounded normal again, or as normal as someone could sound under the circumstances.

  Chapter Twenty

  Joshua Olson paused at the top of the basement stairs, holding the key to open the deadbolt in one hand and his dad’s Glock 19 in the other. He knew he should stay in the basement, but someone had rung the doorbell several times throughout the evening, and he could still hear voices outside the western-facing basement windows. Something big had gone down nearby about a half hour ago.

  It had started with a bunch of screaming and yelling, which sounded a little like the way his parents argued before the divorce—but twenty times worse. He was pretty sure some of the neighbors intervened, because he heard at least four or five other raised voices. The police showed up about ten minutes later, the squawking of their radios clearly identifiable above the heated voices.

  Just a quick peek. Five minutes at most. Well, maybe a little longer. One of the frozen pizzas kept calling his name. He’d get that started first and be back in the basement in fifteen minutes. He unlocked the deadbolt and put the key in his pocket, opening the door slowly. Aside from the faint sound of voices outside, the house stood quiet, only the faint hum of the refrigerator detectable from the doorway.

  He waited a few more moments to be sure before stepping gingerly onto the hardwood floor in the foyer hallway. He wasn’t sure why he was tiptoeing. Nobody could see inside the ho
use through the shades, and they certainly couldn’t hear him walking around. As long as he didn’t make any ridiculously loud noises, like drop the pizza pan, his presence should go unnoticed.

  Joshua shifted the pistol into his right hand, mindful of the trigger, and headed deeper into the house, making his way to the stairs. Moving from room to room on the second floor, he’d get a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree bird’s-eye view of the neighborhood. The trees and bushes around the ground floor obscured too much of the street. He started with his bedroom, located at the front, northwestern corner of the house, which should give him the best view of the incident next door.

  After laying the pistol on his desk, he edged up to the window next to his bed and lifted one of the horizontal blinds a half inch—just enough to see outside. A cluster of five people stood in the driveway of the house across from his next-door neighbor. He could hear their voices, but couldn’t decipher what they were saying through the closed window. Nearby porch lights cast enough illumination for Joshua to determine they were all men, but he couldn’t identify them individually. None of them looked like a police officer. Whatever had happened here was finished.

  One of the men appeared agitated, his voice rising above the others’. He looked in the direction of the Olsons’ house and pointed repeatedly. Moments later, they were headed diagonally across the street—toward Joshua. Crap. Now he had to make a choice. Scurry into the basement or hang out up here until they left. He chose to stay put and lay in bed.

  Waiting for the doorbell to ring, he suddenly remembered that he’d left the door to the basement open, casting light into the foyer hallway. If any of the guys approaching the house right now had been to the door before, they’d notice the change. Stupid. Joshua shot out of bed and ran down the carpeted stairs, easing his footfalls as best as possible without slowing down. He reached the open basement door just as a flashlight hit one of the front door’s frosted sidelights, quickly shutting it before crossing into the dining room. He sat on the floor, out of sight of the front door, and caught his breath.

  The doorbell chimed, startling him. He pressed against the wall, making sure his feet were tucked in far enough behind the wall. Not that it mattered. They couldn’t see that well through the frosted glass, especially when the house was dark. He glanced across the hallway at the basement door, seeing little more than a dull glow underneath. The towel he’d placed underneath it from the inside probably eliminated all light, but he didn’t think it would be a problem. It wasn’t something that stood out, even sitting right across from it.

  An insistent, hard knock on the front door followed the doorbell. He didn’t like the way the knocking sounded. More like a fist pounding than a neighbor knocking politely. Did they see the light? Or maybe catch a blurred shadow moving inside the house while walking up to the door? No way. He could barely see his own way through the house. A second solid thumping against the door gave way to muffled voices on the front porch. Even though the men were right on the other side of the door, he couldn’t catch an intact conversation. What he did manage to separate from the noise froze him in place.

  The response was mostly muffled, but ended in, “Well, we can’t just break in and take them.”

  Take what? The three men talked over each other for a few seconds before a voice Joshua thought he recognized broke through the din.

  “We need to protect the neighborhood somehow. The cops can’t get here fast enough.”

  Shit. Joshua understood what they wanted. Guns. The swift realization brought on a panicked awareness. He’d left his dad’s pistol upstairs. Part of him wanted to dash up the stairs and retrieve it, but he knew that would likely give up his carefully crafted deception. He stood up and leaned as close as he dared to the edge of the dining room.

  “We need guns if the police can’t stop these people.”

  What people? Neighbors? His dad had said things were getting dicey out there, but could it be that bad?

  Another round of pounding caused him to pull back.

  “Dave! You in there!” said the familiar voice, pausing for a response. “Joshua! It’s Mr. Aleman from across the street. We just need to talk to your dad!”

  Mr. Aleman was a good guy, from what Joshua remembered—always throwing neighborhood parties and barbeques. He really wanted to answer Aleman and get some information about “these people,” but his dad would be pissed enough to know he’d ventured upstairs after dark. Opening the door and chatting with the neighbors represented an entirely different level of “not following instructions.” Not only that—they wanted guns. Badly enough to knock on a police officer’s door. His best course of action was to sit here quietly until they went away, then make his pizza. Actually, he could get a head start on that right now.

  Ignoring their continued pleas and knocking, he slipped into the kitchen through a separate doorway and preheated the oven to 425 degrees. He liked his pizza crispy. Standing in the kitchen, farther removed from the voices, he took out his smart phone and checked his text messages. Nothing from his dad for an hour. He’d received a call or text every thirty minutes until about 9:30. The hour-long gap left him with an uneasy feeling. He typed a message and pressed send.

  Dad, just checking in. Something happened next door. Mr. Aleman at our door with a few neighbors. All is well. You?

  His phone rang a few seconds later, the screen illuminating the kitchen. Joshua fumbled to answer his dad’s call, finally pressing the phone to his ear.

  “Dad?”

  “Where are you right now?” said his dad.

  “I’m…uhhhh. Well, I wanted to get a better picture of what’s going on next door, so—”

  “So you went upstairs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Presumably with my handgun?”

  “Yes.”

  “I need you to get downstairs immediately,” said his dad.

  He peeked down the foyer hallway from the kitchen, seeing a flashlight just beyond the front door.

  “Mr. Aleman and two other neighbors are still on our porch,” said Joshua.

  “Do they know you’re there?”

  “No. I closed the door to the basement, and I got into the dining room before they reached the door,” said Joshua, knowing he was just digging his hole deeper.

  “How did you know they were on the way?”

  “I was in my room,” said Joshua. “It has the perfect vantage point!”

  “You might want to lower your voice,” said his dad. “Where are you now?”

  “I’m in the kitchen.”

  “All right. Stay put until you know for a fact they’re gone. You might have to sit there on the floor for a while. The shades covering our patio slider don’t go all the way to the bottom, so it’s possible for someone outside to spot you if they decide to look inside every door and window.”

  He’d forgotten that. Damn.

  “I’ll stay put. I’m cooking up another pizza,” he said, immediately regretting the statement.

  “I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear that,” said his dad.

  “I figured since I was already up here—”

  “Not making it any better, Joshua.”

  “Right. Sorry,” he said. “When are you coming home? Mr. Aleman said something about stopping these people. I don’t know what happened next door, but it really freaked out our neighbors. What do you think he meant by these people?”

  A long pause ensued. When his dad answered, he sounded exhausted.

  “I don’t know, Josh. All I know is everything is going to shit out here.”

  “Are you coming home now, Dad?” he said, frightened by his dad’s remark.

  “Soon. I need to get checked out by the paramedics. Our last call got a little rough.”

  He could tell his dad was holding back most of the story.

  “Are you okay?” said Joshua.

  “I’m fine. A little scratched up, but that’s it.”

  Joshua didn’t believe a word of it. His dad sounded li
ke he’d seen a ghost.

  “That bad?”

  Another long pause.

  “Just get in the basement and stay there until I get home. Lock the door. I honestly have no idea what’s happening out here. People aren’t acting right. Mr. Aleman might sound normal, but it’s no guarantee.”

  “What?” whispered Joshua. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know, but you can’t trust anybody. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long until your pizza is done?” said his dad.

  “I didn’t put it in the oven yet.”

  “Can you live without it?”

  “Yeah. I can crack open an MRE or something from your survival stockpile,” said Joshua.

  “Speaking of the stockpile, if you’re looking for something to do other than creep around the house, making pizzas and attracting the neighbors’ attention, I have a job for you.”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “There’s a fully loaded backpack next to the gun safe—”

  “Your bug-out bag?”

  “Right,” said his dad. “I want you to make a second pack for yourself. Take the first one apart and see what you need. I have duplicate supplies on the shelves. While you’re out and about in the house, grab two pairs of the pants from your room. Hunting or hiking pants with lots of pockets. A few pair of underwear and T-shirts. One waterproof shell from the closet by the garage. Socks. All that kind of crap.”

  “I got it, Dad,” said Joshua. “Do you think we’ll need to leave?”

  “I really don’t know, buddy,” said his dad. “But I want to be ready to drive out of here at a moment’s notice if necessary. When I get home, we’ll carry the rest of the supplies upstairs and load the truck. I have a lot of stuff down there. Enough to get us by for several weeks.”

  “What about Mom?” said Joshua.

  He’d called and texted her hourly since his dad left for his shift, not completely convinced by his dad’s explanation. She’d never ignored his calls for this long, even on trips. There was more to that story than his dad was telling him.