Apocalypse Atlanta (Book 1)

by David Rogers

  Peter opened his mouth, closed it, then closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. Exhaling very slowly, he opened his eyes and looked at the woman, who was still watching him awkwardly, sympathetically, and with no small measure of embarrassment. “Doctor, I’m just barely holding it together here. My wife is either dead, or she’s alive. So can we stop . . . whatever’s happening here, and you just tell me what her status is.”

  “Mr. Gibson.” The doctor said in a strained voice. “I assure you, I am not playing games, and I am not trying to make this any harder than it already is. But we honestly don’t know what’s wrong with your wife.”

  “Explain.” Peter said, only just barely keeping from snapping the word at her like an order.

  She thrust her hands into her coat pockets, and sighed. “The paramedics couldn’t find a pulse, and couldn’t hear a heartbeat, or breath sounds when they were transporting her. But they reported she was still moving. When we admitted her, we confirmed what they’d told us before arrival.

  “I thought they were just poorly trained, rookies or something. Or that they were missing something, or maybe in too much of a hurry. But I’ve had a number of medical personnel check your wife after I did, including other doctors. We’ve tried ten different stethoscopes and three different ECG machines, and they all tell us she’s dead.” She sighed again. “Or, she should be.”

  Peter said nothing, merely waited. He watched the doctor visibly gather herself, and after a moment she continued. “Your wife has been examined by three doctors now. Her body is not holding heat, and there are signs of lividity in her limbs. Her heart does not appear to be beating and she does not appear to be breathing.

  “We’ve tried a variety of drugs, and she’s not responding to any of them, not even adrenaline delivered directly to the heart. But she is clearly conscious and still moving. It’s . . . we don’t know what it is.” She sighed and shrugged her shoulders helplessly. “A doctor from neurology is on his way down, and technicians are bringing an EEG machine for him to check your wife’s brain patterns with. Beyond that, I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “Can I see her?” Peter asked.

  The doctor opened her mouth, but before she could answer Peter heard shouting. It sounded like it was coming from the waiting room, and he turned involuntarily. The doctor stepped out of the doorway of the office and peered down the hallway, just in time to see one of the admitting clerks appear looking wildly in all directions. The man’s eyes seized on Lambert’s white coat immediately.

  “Doctor, we need you out here, stat. The first units are rolling in from the schools, and …” He hesitated, seemingly searching for words, then finally shrugged. “We’re gonna need everyone. Doctor Paulson is on the way down, and he’s apparently calling a lot of other personnel out of the wards to help.” was all he finally said, his eyes flicking to Peter at the last moment as if he was editing himself because of Peter’s presence.

  “Mr. Gibson, I’ve told you all I can. You need to wait outside while we work on your wife, and all the other patients.” the doctor said as she took a step in the direction of the waiting room.

  Peter reached out involuntarily, then made himself stop as she hurried down the hallway. The shouting increased in volume outside, and he closed his eyes as he drew a breath, willing it to be a calming one.

  * * * * *

  Darryl

  Darryl was finishing the last beer he’d brought down with him when he saw the flashing lights. “Finally.” he grunted, crunching the can and chucking it into the garbage can with the others before standing up. He watched as the Gwinnett County Police cruiser rolled slowly down the street and turned into the little parking lot in front of his building. He tapped out a fresh cigarette and lit it with his silver Zippo as the cruiser stopped on the curb in front of him, and made sure he was looking as harmless as he could for someone of his size and build as the two cops got out.

  “Darryl Jacobs?” one of them asked.

  “That’s me officer.” Darryl nodded, taking a deep drag on the cigarette. “I work security at the Oasis, got a girlie who dances there upstairs in my apartment going crazy.”

  “And you ain’t the reason?” the cop who’d been driving asked skeptically.

  “Hey, I called Officer Prince because I need this sorted out calmly and peacefully.” Darryl said, still working hard at looking and sounding harmless. “You can check at the club, ask the manager or the bartenders or the other bouncers. Girlie goes by Bethany, real name’s Elizabeth. She rode home with me last night voluntarily, weren’t drunk or nothing. We partied some, went to bed, then went to sleep. No problems, didn’t bother the neighbors, nothing.”

  “So what’s the problem then?” the first cop asked. He was the black one, mid twenties and built like he was a runner, and Darryl tried hard to reach a connection with him as he shrugged and put on a confused expression.

  “Woke up, took a leak, and when I came back she was awake. She fell out of the bed trying to get up, then when she did get up, came at me. Tried to bite me.”

  “What’d she say?” the white cop asked, still holding that very cop expression of bored skepticism as he came around the front of the cruiser and joined his partner on the sidewalk. Darryl had seen that expression a lot, especially since he’d started bouncing at the O. Fortunately for him, it was usually directed at the drunks who he called the cops in to collect after they caused a problem. Having it directed at him was why he’d called Charlie.

  Darryl took off his sunglasses, hooked them into the neck of his t-shirt, and shrugged again. Four beers had done a good bit to drive away the hangover “That’s the thing, she didn’t say a word.” He took a drag on the cigarette and shrugged a third time. “We had a good time last night, no fighting. She slept here. Woke up, and was different.”

  “And when we go up there, we’re not going to find any marks on her, right?” the white cop asked, still wearing that dangerous expression.

  Darryl put up his hands. “Hey man, I ain’t touched her. We partied last night, like I said. There ain’t a thing wrong with that girlie that I done to her. Give Officer Prince a call, he’ll confirm I’m straight. I ain’t got no record, and I don’t have to beat the girlies to get along with ’em, ya know?

  “She came at me like I said. I fended her off, didn’t hit her. Swung her around, put her in the bathroom. On her feet, didn’t even knock her down. She started beating through the door. I backed off the door, it don’t lock, right? She still beating on it, still ain’t talking or nothing. So I got out, made the call. I don’t need no trouble, I ain’t done nothing.”

  “Alright, you stay here.” the black cop said, giving his partner a look after he leveled a cop stare at Darryl. “We’ll head on up and check it out.”

  “No problem, I’ll be here on the steps.” Darryl said, reaching very slowly to his belt and unhooking the carabineer with his keys. “Unit M-15.” he said, flipping through the keys until he found the one for the door. He got it off the ring and held it up. “That’s what you need to get in.”

  The black cop took the key from Darryl, gave his partner another look, and went past Darryl to the front door of the apartment building. The other cop eyed Darryl up a moment longer, then followed after the first one. They vanished through the door, and Darryl sighed. He sat down on the top step and put his shades back on, hurried through his cigarette fast enough to wince at the last few drags from the heat, then started another one.

  When he stubbed that one out, he sighed and glanced behind himself at the building. Whatever was going on in there, they were still dealing with it. He really hoped his pad wasn’t torn completely apart by the time this was done. Sighing again at that thought, he pulled his phone out and checked through his messages. Usual bullshit and hi-how-you-doing stuff. He tapped a few texts back, then sent one to Charlie saying the unit was here and so far things were good, thanks for looking out.

  He was just about to flip through some of the tracks he had on the pho
ne to find one he felt like listening to when he heard a heavy thump behind him, followed by another one. Standing up and turning around, he saw the cops emerging from the apartment building with Bethany held between them. She was handcuffed, stark naked, and silently struggling to lean her head at the men. They were holding her at arms’ length between them, their grip down on her elbows where she couldn’t reach.

  Her mouth was making motions like she was chewing, and her eyes still had that dead look he’d noticed earlier. And she wasn’t saying anything, not even grunting or gasping as the cops dragged her down the sidewalk. Darryl’s gaze flicked down to her feet, which were bare and scraping along the concrete, and he winced slightly. That had to hurt, but from her complete lack of reaction, you wouldn’t think so.

  Neither did she seem to mind the marks Darryl could see on the side of her face, reddened patches that looked like she’d been hit. But most of her flesh had a sort of grayish pallor beneath her dark coloration. It looked unhealthy. And, when they went by him with her, he noticed her back and buttocks looked sort of bloated.

  “Damn.” he said mildly, stepping well off to the side, standing on the small patch of grass that bordered the sidewalk and the front of the building.

  “Bitch bit me.” the white cop said angrily as they went past.

  “Still trying to bite too.” the other one commented as they got her down the steps and headed for the cruiser.

  Darryl said nothing as he watched them slam her down over the trunk of the cruiser, and the black cop put his hand on the back of her neck to hold her there as she continued silently struggling, while his partner opened the rear door. They pulled her back up and tried to put her in the back of the car the usual way, by pressing down on her head to get her to bend enough to fit through the door, but Bethany wasn’t cooperating. The white cop cursed when she almost got her teeth into his arm again, and finally they managed to lift her between themselves and slide her in on the backseat horizontally.

  Darryl wondered why they hadn’t tasered her; that was usually what happened to anyone who didn’t instantly cooperate with police, but kept his mouth shut. The black cop slammed the door closed as his partner walked around to the trunk of the cruiser and stuck his key in the lock, looking really pissed. The black cop turned to Darryl and came up the steps, holding out the door key.

  “Sorry your pard got hurt.” Darryl said as he took the key back.

  “Let me see your hands.” the cop said. Darryl blinked, because that was usually the first line in an arrest. But the cop’s own hand wasn’t hovering over his gun, nor anything else on his belt. So Darryl held up his hands and spread the fingers wide. The cop looked at them for a long moment, then made a twirling motion with his finger. Darryl rotated his hands the other way so the cop could see the backs. “Make fists.” the cop said. Darryl complied, and waited while the cop examined his knuckles.

  “Okay, I think you’re probably in the clear.” the cop said finally, shaking his head and turning to the cruiser. The white cop was holding his arm out to the side, pouring a brown bottle of clear liquid across his right forearm, still looking angry. “Need your ID.” the black cop said over his shoulder as he opened the front passenger door of the cruiser and reached inside.

  Darryl pulled out his wallet and opened it to his driver’s license as the black cop came back with a metal clipboard. Flipping the top back, he pulled out a book of carbons, moved the cardboard divider under a fresh form, then snapped the clipboard’s holder down on the pad. Taking Darryl’s license and slotting it into the clip on the holder, the cop produced a pen from his shirt pocket and started writing.

  Darryl remained silent except to answer the occasional questions he was asked as the cop wrote, since he noticed the pad was not a ticket book, but a statement form. He glanced past the black cop, at his partner, who was now washing off his arm with water from a gallon jug. Inside the car, Darryl saw Bethany had managed to right herself in the backseat, and was now pressed against the window.

  Her mouth was making those chewing motions, and her attention remained fixed on the two men on the steps with rapt focus. She didn’t look away until the white cop finished tending to his arm and closed the trunk before walking to join his partner. Darryl noticed Bethany’s empty eyes followed the white cop’s progress as he passed by the cruiser and came up the steps.

  “Alright.” the black cop said finally, plucking the driver’s license out of the clip and handing it back to Darryl. While Darryl put it away, the cop showed the clipboard to the white one, who was silent as his eyes flicked down the form. Darryl waited, and finally the white cop nodded impatiently.

  “Read through this, tell me if there are any errors or omissions, anything you think needs to be in the report.” the black cop said, holding the clipboard out to Darryl. “She’s high as anyone I’ve ever seen right now, but once she sobers up she might decide to try and put this on you. So it’s to your benefit that everything that happened be listed here.”

  Darryl took the clipboard and removed his shades again, squinting at the form. The cop’s handwriting was a little sloppy, but his words were concise and easy to follow. Darryl took longer to finish than the white cop had, and he looked up when he was finished. “That’s how it went down.” he said. “Don’t see anything left out.”

  “Good, sign there then.” The cop said, handing over the pen and pointing at the bottom.

  Darryl signed, then surrendered the pen and clipboard. One of the carbon copies was torn off and given to him, and then both cops headed for the cruiser. Darryl watched them get in, shut off the lights, then reverse out of the parking lot. As they accelerated away, he heaved a sigh of relief and folded the report form before putting it into his wallet. Then he looked at the key in his hand, then back at the building.

  “Damnit.” he muttered, heading up the walk. As he mounted the stairs to the second floor, he threaded the key back into place on his ring. When he got to his door, he found it standing open, and stepped inside gingerly. The lights in the living room were on, and he looked around expecting to see a mess. But aside from the low table in front of his couch being knocked out of place, and the ashtray and remotes for his entertainment center having been spilled on to the rug, it wasn’t that bad. He closed the front door, then cursed again.

  “Fuck!” The inside of the door had a pair of wide depressions on it, just above chest height, where the painted wood surface was cracked and slightly cratered. He peered at the damage in dismay, finally deciding it looked like Bethany had been beating on it with her hands, repeatedly. From the looks of the door, she might have eventually gotten through, but it would have taken her awhile. And that was a solid wood door too, not one of those flimsy interior ones that had a skeleton framework overlaid with thin veneer.

  That thought caused him to glance down the hallway, and he hastened towards his bedroom, where he stared in dismay at the door there. “That whack bitch!” he cursed again, looking at the splintered mess of the door. Part of it was still hanging from the hinges, but the majority of the door was lying in the hallway where it had fallen under Bethany’s assault. He stepped over it and glanced at the bathroom, which was even worse. It had split into several pieces, all of which were scattered on the carpet just in front of the doorway.

  Darryl felt his fists clenching, and reminded himself to relax. He would have to get with someone to have both doors replaced; he knew better than to let the apartment complex do the work and add it to his rent. He’d end up paying enough to replace the doors in half the building if he did that, plus they’d keep his security deposit whenever he moved out. And there was no guarantee he’d be able to get the cost of the replacements out of Bethany, especially since she was going to be looking for work. He’d see to that; no way he was going to let her keep working at the club after this.

  “And this weekend was looking so good too.” he muttered angrily, turning away from his bedroom. Stomping down the hallway, he closed and locked the front door behi
nd himself. He pulled out his phone and glanced at the screen as he went back downstairs, then tucked it away after he was back outside. “I got me some time, need to get away from this crap.”

  Darryl strode angrily to his Harley Softail and dropped his leg over before settling into the seat. He pulled his key off the detachable ring on his carabineer, flipped back the cover on the motorcycle’s dash and unlocked the ignition. He set the switch to run, and turned to the oversized hard bag on the back right of the bike. It unlocked to reveal his helmet, which he pulled out and jammed on his head before flipping the lid on the hard bag back down.

  After buckling his helmet strap down, he put his hand on the engine cylinder and grunted. Warm enough. He fingered the ignition, and the engine rumbled to life, then blatted throatily as he revved the throttle. Pulling up the kickstand without looking, he backed out of the space, still venting his irritation by blipping the throttle to make the engine rumble, then dropped into first gear and roared out of the parking lot.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Three – Remain calm

  Jessica

  Jessica jammed her foot on the brake pedal and held on to the steering wheel as the Accord shuddered to a halt in the street. She’d nearly been broad sided at Sugarloaf Parkway when she’d slowed to a mere forty miles per hour before blowing through the red light where it crossed 124, and again at Moon Road when she almost didn’t see a UPS truck coming from the right side. But she’d made it, until this.

  She was a block away from Candice’s school, which was two blocks closer than the high school. There was a single police cruiser parked sideways across the middle of the road, lights on, and the police officer standing in front of the cruiser was looking at her with an angry expression as she stopped. Jessica jammed the gearshift into park and turned the engine off after the Accord’s right side tires bumped over the curb, but left the door open as she stepped out of the car with the keys in hand and ran at the officer.