Epidemic of the Living Dead

by John Russo

  CHAPTER 35

  Darius Hornsby was driving his silver van emblazoned with satanic symbols and the name of his band. Riding with him were Brenda Kallen, Tricia Lopez, and two teenage boys, Ben Kerr and Hank Lawson, both African-Americans, who were members of Darius & the Demons.

  Ben was Brenda’s boyfriend, and her father didn’t know it; he would’ve disapproved of the long dreadlocks coiled like snakes all over the boy’s head. The other boy had an Afro so huge it made his head look small. The kids were chattering away and messing with their smartphones, taking photos of one another and playing Internet games like Candy Crush Saga, except for Darius, who had a penetratingly thoughtful look on his face as he kept glancing in the rearview mirror. Finally, he turned the volume down on a Slayer song blaring on the radio and said, “Tricia, why would your mother be following us?”

  “No clue,” Tricia said.

  “Better not mess where she don’t belong,” Ben Kerr said with a snicker.

  Darius didn’t think it was likely that Hilda would suspect them of anything. In his estimation, the woman wasn’t particularly bright. Besides, how could she have figured out, on her own, what he and Tricia had done at the hospital?

  They had made sure they looked like two nice, normal teenagers when they had stopped at the nurses’ station. He was purposely wearing plain jeans and a plain T-shirt, and Tricia was still coming off like a girl fresh from school, in her tartan skirt and white blouse.

  He hung back with an appearance of shyness as Tricia asked, “May we see my dad, Bert Lopez? He’s in the intensive care unit.”

  “Only for a few minutes,” the kindly gray-haired nurse said, “and only one of you at a time.”

  “We understand,” said Tricia. “I just want to pat his hand and say a prayer.”

  “Me too,” said Darius.

  “Aren’t you a cute young man,” said the nurse. “You’ll have the ladies head over heels when you get a little older, if you don’t already. Mr. Lopez is in room 312.”

  Darius and Tricia smiled sweetly, then went down the hall. Outside the room, they stopped and whispered as they peeped in on Tricia’s helpless father.

  “I have the syringe,” Darius said. “Lucky my mom is diabetic.”

  He took a hypodermic out of his pocket and unwrapped the clean white handkerchief that he had padded it with.

  “Wouldn’t poison of some kind work better?” Tricia asked.

  “They’d find it if there’s an autopsy. I’m gonna inject a tiny little air bubble. When it goes to his heart it’ll work just like a blood clot. He’ll flatline.”

  “Cool.”

  They went into the hospital room and hovered over Umberto, listening to the bleeps of the life-support system.

  “Just a little bubble, Daddy,” Tricia said to her father, getting off on the irony. “A tiny bubble, that’s all. A tiny bubble to put you to rest.”

  It had worked like a charm. But right now it seemed that Tricia’s mother was being too damned nosy.

  “Your mom has been behind us ever since we left town,” Darius said. “I’ve been watching her in the rearview mirror. That’s her in the black Lexus, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s what she drives,” said Tricia. “You saw her face, right?”

  “Caught a glimpse,” he told her.

  Ben said, “Cool.”

  Hank said, “Floor it—let’s lose her.”

  “It might be more fun not to,” Darius said slyly. “Know what I mean?”

  Ben said, “Yeah . . . cool.”

  Hank said, “Too much, man.”

  Tricia said, “She’s been on my case more than ever now that my father isn’t around. I think she might suspect something. I’m glad she had him cremated so he can never be exhumed.”

  Darius said, “We did her a big favor. She didn’t have to wait forever and ever to collect the insurance money. Half a million—and if she dies . . .”

  “I inherit,” said Tricia.

  The kids all laughed.

  Hank said, “Don’t worry, we’ll help you spend it.”

  And Ben said, “Way cool.”

  The kids laughed again.

  Darius pulled the van off the two-lane rural road onto a narrow one of dirt and gravel. After a mile or so, he parked in front of an old, dilapidated barn.

  Chatting and laughing as if they weren’t aware of anyone following them, the kids piled out of the van and entered the barn through a warped door that was hanging sideways on its rusty hinges.

  Hilda gave them a few minutes. Then she got out of her Lexus and, to avoid the noise of the door slamming, she only eased it partway closed. She crept up to the rickety side door. The kids hadn’t bothered to shut it, just left it hanging. She listened for whatever she might hear. It was strangely silent in there, for a bunch of kids fooling around, doing something, but she couldn’t guess what. She moved toward the doorway and peered into the darkness within, but couldn’t make anything out.

  What the hell were they doing in there? Something sexual? Something weird?

  Summoning her resolve to find out, she cautiously stepped inside. She told herself that she was an adult and they were only kids and she shouldn’t be afraid to confront them.

  A match was struck, a candle lit.

  She gasped and nearly jumped out of her skin when she saw Darius sitting on a hay bale, staring at her. Smiling calmly, he said, “Hello, Mrs. Lopez.”

  “What are you up to?” she demanded. “Drugs? Booze? What? Where’s my daughter? I saw her come in here. I think you’re a bad influence.”

  Suddenly Tricia piped up. “I’m over here, Mom.”

  Hilda blinked her eyes, trying to peer into the deeper darkness. She finally made out an area with a bit of light from yet another lantern—and she moved toward it.

  Tricia called, “Over here, Mom.”

  And a boy’s voice said, “We’re all over here, Mommy.”

  “Stop playing games with me!” she shrilled. “I swear I’ll ground you for a month, Tricia! You’re all juvenile delinquents as far as I’m concerned.”

  Another unseen boy said, “Well, you’re an adult delinquent as far as we’re concerned!”

  The kids erupted in mocking laughter—but she couldn’t quite see them. They were hiding in the murky darkness.

  Then another match was struck and a third lantern was lit, casting spooky shadows. Now Hilda could see her daughter, Tricia, sitting on something, between two boys. Their laughter sounded incredibly evil, and Hilda angrily zeroed in on her own daughter. “Tricia, come on, you’re coming home with me!”

  “No, I’m not, Mom,” Tricia said with utter calmness.

  All of her friends brayed with laughter.

  “Stay awhile,” Darius said. “Have a seat, Mrs. Lopez.”

  “I certainly will not!” she snapped. “You kids are all hopped up on something, aren’t you? Tell me the truth, Tricia!”

  Tricia said, “We are telling you the truth, Mom. Look! Don’t you want to see Ron and Daisy and Amy?”

  Darius said, “They’re hungry to see you, Mrs. Lopez.”

  “Come forth! Come forth!” Darius called into the darkness—and three shadowy forms shambled out into the lantern-lit area, and Hilda backed away, a scream lodged in her throat.

  The three corpses—Ron, Daisy, and Amy Haley—were reanimated now, complete with the wounds and disfigurements that accompanied their deaths. They were wearing the clothing that they died in. Ron’s face was bloated and purple, and Hilda could see rope burns above the collar of his shirt. Amy and Daisy both looked a little closer to how they had looked in life, due to the fact that their faces hadn’t been shot and the bullet holes in their bodies were concealed by their clothes.

  Darius had been wise to the fact that he had to get their bodies out of the funeral home before they were autopsied. He had not wanted the medical examiner or anyone else to see the wounds, the puncture marks, that would have revealed that Ron and Daisy had been bitten by their own
daughter, Amy, who early in her childhood had been bitten by Darius and thereby set up to transform when she reached puberty. Which she now never would do. Having been killed by bullets, her ability to become a blood seeker had been aborted. Now she could only be one of the nearly brainless undead. Amy had bitten her parents while they were asleep in their bed. Thus she had revealed to them the terrible evil inside her. That was the truest and deepest reason why Ron had killed himself and his family.

  Darius had wanted to get the Haleys out of Kallen’s Funeral Home before their bodies could be undressed and washed. Kallen would have seen the bite marks from their daughter, even though much healing had taken place.

  Luckily, it had taken them quite a while to revive as zombies—because of the severity of their mortal wounds. Also, Darius had taken the precaution of giving Brenda Kallen a syringe full of morphine, and she had injected them with it in the funeral home basement to keep them inert and looking dead until they could be allowed to transform.

  Now, in their fully undead state, they shuffled toward Hilda, hissing and salivating.

  She screamed at the top of her lungs.

  The kids chuckled.

  Tricia smiled in delighted anticipation as her mother looked at her imploringly and backed away from the three advancing zombies.

  Hilda screamed again and started to run, but Darius tripped her by reaching out with the tines of a pitchfork.

  Now that she was down on the ground, trying to crawl away, the three Haley zombies closed in on Hilda, rasping and drooling ravenously.

  The kids’ laughter became louder and more demonic as they watched her being torn apart.

  Tricia started shooting video with her cell phone.

  Darius said, “Way cool, babe!”

  CHAPTER 36

  Detective Bill Curtis went to Chapel Grove Hospital to see what he could find out about Umberto Lopez’s death. He spoke with the gray-haired nurse who manned the station outside of the ICU wing. She told him, “Yes, such a pity. His daughter loves him so. She and her boyfriend, I think he was her boyfriend, came to see him in the afternoon on the very day he died.”

  “Was the boy’s name Darius Hornsby?”

  “Yes, so polite and handsome. I sort of know him because we’ve treated his mother here.”

  “How did Tricia act that day?”

  “I felt so sorry for her, and I could tell Darius did too. She was very concerned about her father. She wanted to visit him and say some prayers, even though he was in a coma, and I let them both spend a brief time in the ICU.”

  Prayers? Bill asked himself. He had spent enough time with Tricia to be pretty sure she wasn’t the praying type. It seemed she was in Reverend Carnes’s youth group only for the social aspect. Same with a bunch of the other kids.

  “What did Umberto’s doctor say about cause of death?” he asked the nurse.

  “He suffered a myocardial infarction.”

  “What is it and what causes it?” asked Bill.

  “Basically, it’s a heart attack caused by a blocked artery. There are two large arteries that deliver oxygen-bearing blood to the heart muscle, and if either one is suddenly blocked, the heart will be starved of oxygen, and that’s what we call ‘cardiac ischemia.’ Unfortunately, if that condition lasts too long, the heart tissue dies.”

  “I know that cholesterol deposits can cause blockage,” said Bill. “But are there any other causes?”

  “There’s something doctors call ‘silent ischemia,’ which is a sporadic interruption of blood flow. It’s called silent because it’s pain free, and we don’t know why. It can be detected by ECG, and Umberto had that test, and it was negative. He wasn’t a diabetic, either, and we know that people with diabetes often have episodes of silent ischemia.”

  “So, if he wasn’t diabetic and he had a normal electrocardiogram, what else might you suspect?” Bill probed.

  The nurse thought for a while, then said, somewhat reluctantly, it seemed to Bill, “For instance, if someone screws up and gets an air bubble into an injection.”

  “You mean it could be a hospital accident?” he said with some incredulity.

  “Yes, or it could be on purpose. That’s what I hate to admit, because a case five years ago brought disgrace to my profession. Too many elderly patients were dying in a hospital in Miami, and eventually it was discovered that a male nurse was murdering them by injecting them with air bubbles. He confessed to forty-three murders. The authorities believe he might’ve done even more.”

  “There was an old murder trial we studied at the police academy,” Bill said. “Claus von Bulow, the husband of a wealthy heiress, was accused of killing her with an insulin overdose, but he was acquitted after a hung jury and a second trial.”

  “Sometimes diabetics do that to themselves by accident,” said the nurse. “But there have also been people charged and convicted for using insulin as their murder weapon.”

  “Were Umberto Lopez’s insulin levels checked during autopsy?” Bill asked.

  “No, because there was no autopsy. His wife didn’t want one, and his doctors didn’t think it was imperative. They felt that he wasn’t ever going to regain consciousness, so his death was merciful in its way and spared his wife from having to make the terrible decision to end life support.”

  “She or Tricia aren’t diabetic?” asked Bill.

  “No, neither one.”

  “You mentioned that you treated Darius Hornsby’s mother here. Do you mind telling me what for?”

  “I’m afraid that would violate patient confidentiality.”

  “Even to tell me if she’s diabetic or not?”

  “You’d have to ask her son or her husband, or else obtain a subpoena for the hospital to release her medical records. That’s the only way the hospital wouldn’t be exposing itself to a lawsuit.”

  “I don’t have sufficient grounds for that,” Bill said. “I’d just like to know, if she used hypodermics, who else might’ve had regular access to them?”

  “If she did have any in the house, and I said ‘if,’ I imagine it would be her husband or her son,” the nurse said with an intentionally coy look on her face. And Bill caught the hint. He was pretty sure she was telegraphing the answer to what he wanted to know.

  The thought that a child may have committed not only a homicide but a patricide on his watch and in his own community sickened Bill. As mean as his father was, he’d never thought of killing him, except maybe if he had to defend his mother. From about ages nine to fourteen, he used to sleep with his hunting knife under his pillow. He was that scared. A hell of a way to grow up. And a wonder that he made it without any long-lasting hang-ups, as far as he knew.

  When he was little, there were times when his mother would run away and not take him with her, and he wouldn’t see her for several weeks, not knowing if she were alive or dead. His father would be sickeningly nice to him and give him his loose change and make him say what a “good daddy” he was. If Bill asked about Mommy, his father would say, “Don’t worry, she’ll be back.” But Bill thought she may have killed herself. Then finally she’d come back one fine day, and he’d hug and kiss her, and his father would treat them both a lot better for a while, till his next binge and her next beating. He ruined every Christmas. He’d fly into a rage every time he had to put the tree up. He’d curse Bill’s mother for buying a tree that shed needles. Then he’d work himself into a fit, scream at her and beat her up, and she would throw stuff into a suitcase and run out the door.

  Now that all of it was in the past, Bill looked back on himself as a kid and saw the pathos in some of the things he resorted to. When he was in the fifth grade and knew how to use a hammer and nails, he’d go to where they sold Christmas trees, gather up fallen branches, and take them home and nail them to a wooden broomstick, making his own “tree” and standing it up by putting the end of it into a toy bucket full of rocks. He’d make paper decorations and color them, or pick broken ones out of the garbage and hang them on the bran
ches. Then he’d spread a white cloth underneath and place his toy cars and stuff on it. It was his way of having his very own tree without any fights over it. As a kid, he wasn’t aware of how sad and pathetic it all was, but later, as an adult, he came to realize it.

  Through it all, he loved his parents in spite of their faults and in spite of the misery they had caused to him and to each other. He was terrified of losing them, by accident or by their own hand. He could never have wished them dead and certainly could not have done anything to harm them. But it seemed, even though he couldn’t prove it, that something of that nature might have occurred in the Lopez household.

  Families had always and forever been besieged by terrible problems and insidious evils, all the way to the beginning of time. The Plague of the Living Dead was only the latest horrible manifestation.

  Because of his tormented childhood, Bill Curtis had always hungered for a normal and loving family. He remained committed to that goal and hoped he would always keep striving toward it, in spite of his wife’s deep-seated anxieties and his daughter’s trials and tribulations. All of it weighed heavily upon his psyche. But he was not only a staunch former soldier and a dedicated lawman, but also a person who would not give up in the face of the many challenges that life could throw at him. He was determined to love his wife, stand by his daughter, and save his marriage.

  CHAPTER 37

  Lauren was tense and jumpy but making a great effort to calm herself while she listened to Dr. Miller on her cell phone.

  “Believe me, I totally understand your concerns, Mrs. Curtis. I’ve seen the same symptoms before, and I’ve dealt with them successfully. Jodie will come out of this just fine.”

  “Her temperature is a hundred and two, and even dim light hurts her eyes. She’s all upset, acting strange.”

  “Strange in what way?”

  “She snaps at me, even uses curse words. That’s totally not like her.”

  “People sometimes get irrationally angry when they’re in pain. I don’t think she has to go to the emergency room. But pull the shades. Let her stay in a darkened bedroom. I’ll phone a prescription to your pharmacist.”