DEAD: Onset: Book One of the New DEAD series

by TW Brown

  Zombies.

  Carl’s voice came back to me. “This ain’t no damn rabies. This is some gee-dee George Romero zombie shit. If’n you’re too stupid to see it…let me demonstrate further.”

  I’d been horrified by what I’d witnessed him do to that…man. Only, now I was surrounded by virtually irrefutable proof of exactly what he’d claimed. Sure, I knew all about the classic zombie of the older generation. In the newer renditions, many of the movies had the zombies coming after people at a full-on sprint. Thank God that wasn’t holding up, I thought.

  I pushed open the small gate that allowed me to exit the nurses’ station and started for the doors. I had to be careful not to step in and slip in the blood that was all over the floor, but at last I reached the way out of this terrible place.

  When I’d gotten far enough away from the closest zombie, there was an odd peace that settled in my mind as I came to grips with calling these poor souls by the Hollywood name of zombie. Of course, they were really much more than a simple zombie. I’d actually had a friend in my college classes at Portland State who came here from Haiti. One Halloween, he and I had gotten into a conversation about zombies. Needless to say, our ideas were greatly different on what made up such a creature. For one…his weren’t actually the dead come back to life. That seemed like a lifetime ago now.

  So much was happening so quickly that my mind was having a terrible time coming to grips. I knew that I would probably collapse into a ball and cry my eyes out once I got a few moments to let things sink in. I had just lost the woman that I loved with all my heart, yet, I could not mourn. It was as if my brain was overriding everything as it increased in focus on doing the things that I needed in order to stay alive.

  I burst through the double doors into the lobby of the emergency room area. If I’d thought that I was going to find safety or any sort of salvation, I was gravely mistaken. The lobby was almost as much of a nightmare. Just across and to my left, a little boy was on his knees over the body of what I was going to assume had to be his mother. He had a large chunk of something that was jelly-like and almost a purplish color dangling from his blood smeared mouth.

  A man was stumbling along between a row of the anchored plastic seats and promptly fell over them when he turned my direction and tried to lunge at me despite being several feet away. There were overturned plants whose dirt added in with the blood on the carpeted floor to create huge, dark stains of nightmarish mud. The entire area was littered with magazines and even a few purses that must’ve belonged to people who’d either fled in a hurry or become one of…them.

  “Say it!” I hissed out loud to myself. “It’s exactly what that crazy bastard Carl was saying. These are zombies.”

  My voice drew the attention of a few more of the undead that were wandering around the lobby. It was time for me to get the hell out of here. I could still hear the screams coming from behind me, but they were growing fewer and farther between.

  From where I now stood, I could look out the main entrance doors. I was stunned to discover that it was night. A car had crashed in the entrance and was doing a great job of blocking the way out. Darkness had thrown a blanket over the city and I’d spent the entirety of this day in the hospital at Stephanie’s side. I took a few steps toward the doors, my eyes darting around the open area to keep tabs on every one of the zombies present—there were currently seven—and make sure that they were not going to get ahead of me and cut off my exit.

  As I neared the exit, I could see a large SUV in the drop-off area. It was sort of parked at an awkward angle and the doors were wide open, but there was no sign of anybody. I glanced around wondering if maybe the driver and/or passenger might be one of the poor souls now stumbling after me. That look back also revealed that the mother who had just moments ago been on the floor being chomped on by that little boy was now struggling to her feet. She was just joining in the slow-motion pursuit of me, but oddly enough, the child appeared to be hanging back. It was clear he had his eyes glued to me, but he was just standing there.

  I snapped my head back around at the sounds of sirens coming from out front. No sooner did I refocus my attention on the exit when the red and blue strobes of police vehicles began to dance before my eyes.

  I think I’d been moving so slow because my unconscious mind was none too eager to step outside despite what was happening in this hospital. With the arrival of numerous Portland Police vehicles, suddenly my legs found a new speed. I made a run for it and scrambled over the car that was jutting through where it had crashed into the entrance. I was only vaguely aware that there was at least one occupant inside, but I didn’t care.

  I slid across the hood and down the back. Coming to my feet on the trunk, I began to wave my arms wildly as over a dozen squad cars now occupied the driveway to Legacy Hospital.

  “Please!” I managed. Honestly, I was simply unable to think of anything else to say.

  “Step this way, sir!” a voice boomed from the PA of the closest squad car.

  As I did, I could see police officers piling out of the back of a huge van. They were all dressed like some sort of assault team with guns poking up over their shoulders as well as helmets that had little spotlights on them. One of them rushed past me and I could hear the tinny crackle of the radio in his ear.

  “Bravo Team assembled at the emergency room entrance and preparing to enter,” the man said as he broke into a jog towards the hellscape I’d just exited.

  I staggered past another trio of armed and armored personnel who were walking into something I did not feel any amount of training could prepare them for. In that instant, I regretted any and all thoughts I’d had about police officers and their media foibles when it came to the use of force. Suddenly, I thought that just maybe, these past few years, we had been taking the teeth out of the one thin veneer we had as civilians to protect us from the monsters—in whatever form they might appear.

  An officer in the standard blue uniform stepped to me and threw a blanket over my shoulder as he ushered me to the back of another open van with a huge Portland Police Special Response Team logo and shield on the side. A moment later, another person stepped up and shone a light in my eyes.

  “Are you injured?” a female voice said with clinical sterility.

  “What? No…I don’t think so.” I doubted they wanted to hear that my soul was shattered and my heart obliterated.

  “Are you certain?” came the clipped reply.

  I looked up in the woman’s face and was about to tear into her when my mouth actually snapped shut. I did not need a flashlight to see the black tracers in the woman’s eyes. It was not a trick of the lighting for her skin to be the pale and sickly color it appeared. My eyes tracked down to her left arm where a bandage peeked out from the cuff of her sleeve.

  “You’re bit,” I rasped.

  She glanced down at her arm and then back at me. “Just a little rip above the wrist. Barely broke the skin,” she said dismissively, but the squint of her eyes gave away her discomfort.

  “Maybe you should be the one sitting here,” I tried to joke, but her expression did not register even the slightest tinge of a smile.

  “No, we are understaffed as it is.” She gave a dismissive wave. “Now, if you are sure that you are okay, I will head over to the triage tent they are setting up. Looks like this is going to be a long night.”

  The EMT or paramedic or whatever she was turned and walked away. My eyes tracked her, and I saw her pause once and lean on the hood of a nearby parked car for a moment. Her head drooped and I waited to see if she would collapse. After a moment, she stood and continued on towards what appeared to be a white tent that was going up much faster than any tent I’d ever pitched while camping.

  I sat a few moments longer just to try and catch my breath. The first time that I tried to stand, my legs shook so bad that my knees started to buckle. I looked down at my hands and they were trembling in a way that cold had never caused. The more I tried to get them to stop…
the worse it got.

  The sounds of gunfire made me jump, and I decided that, shakes be damned, I was leaving. I forced myself to stand and started for my truck. I was briefly reminded of popcorn popping as the gunfire would come in waves of furious activity and then die down to a few random pops and bangs.

  When I climbed into the front seat, my nose was assaulted by the coppery smell of blood from where I had to imagine Steph had been slowly bleeding out. I shoved that thought away and rolled down my window. I pulled out of my space and wove through a parking lot that looked like a wrecking yard in places. I could see where numerous vehicles had crashed into or bumped off of each other in peoples’ haste to get here.

  As I made my way onto MLK Boulevard, I began to notice something. There was almost no automobile traffic. As for pedestrians, they were out in numbers that seemed way out of the ordinary.

  I passed by a pair that were on the sidewalk in front of one of those open bay car washes. The bright fluorescent lighting washed out their skin complexion, but it also made the dark stains on their clothing stand out all that much more. I did not need to get close to know that I was seeing bloodstains.

  One of them turned towards me and stumbled out into the street. The entire front of him was darkened with blood, be it fresh or old, it was impossible to tell. His arms extended, and he was grasping at the air like he thought he could just grab my truck and capture it with his bare hands. I had to swerve at the last second to avoid hitting him. He passed by my driver’s side and I could see that his throat looked like little more than a big black hole underneath his chin.

  As I turned up Powell, I spotted a roadblock made up of large military trucks and a single police car. I did not feel like dealing with that just yet. I wanted…no, I needed to get home.

  I yanked to the right on my steering wheel and drove into the residential area. Streetlights were hit and miss in this neighborhood. To add to the eerie quality, many of the houses were shrouded in darkness. Whether it was due to the residents trying to hide their presence or because they were gone, I had no idea. Whatever the case, there was no lack of cars parked along the curbs on both sides making my navigating just a bit more precarious. Twice, something stepped out of the shadows and bounced or collided off the rear section of my truck.

  My instincts always caused me to take my foot off the gas for a few seconds, but the images of what I’d witnessed induced me to accelerate sooner rather than later. I turned left to try and make my way back to the main road and get out of the maze of confined spaces and found myself almost bumper-to-bumper with a large olive-colored troop transport truck.

  “Stop your vehicle!” a soldier called as I started to shift into reverse.

  For a split second, I considered slamming into reverse, punching the gas, and trying to escape. The biggest obstacles to that were the confined space I was already in which severely limited my ability to maneuver, and the fact that driving backwards looks really cool on TV and in the movies, but doing it well at any speed faster than a crawl is not in most people’s skillset. That would certainly include me.

  I rolled down my window and leaned out. “I’m just trying to get home, sir,” I called out. The soldier stepped forward, his features coming into better focus. I’d just called a kid that looked like he might’ve just graduated high school last year ‘sir.’

  “We can’t let you through this way,” the soldier said as he approached my window. “Nasty business up there just block or so.”

  “What sort of nasty business?” I asked.

  “Can’t really say,” the soldier replied.

  Can’t, or won’t, I wondered.

  “Also, you may want to turn on your radio, there have been announcements the past few hours about civilians getting off the streets.” The soldier took a step back and gave me a nod.

  I sighed as I backed up and crept further into the darkness of the Southeast Portland neighborhood. I punched the button and turned on my radio.

  “…reports now coming in from all over the city that more widespread violence…”

  I hit the button to another station.

  “…out of Washington that the president has sent a detachment to Ohio where his daughter is enrolled in college…”

  Another.

  “…that no communication has come out of Japan in the past several hours is certainly cause for speculation that…”

  And another.

  “…fires reportedly burning out of control as emergency crews are stretched beyond capacity prompting the mayor to issue a plea for citizens to refrain from using the 9-1-1 service until…”

  Click.

  I shut the radio off.

  My head was spinning. How could this happen so fast? And then I began to recall the little stories popping up over the past several days that told of illness spreading in a small town in Kentucky to the point where the CDC sent in a team and was shortly joined by a National Guard detachment. I’d simply ignored them. For one…they were in Kentucky. How did that have anything to do with me here in Oregon and the beautiful Pacific Northwest?

  At last, I pulled into my cul-de-sac. What I saw almost made me drive up onto the curb. The houses on either side of mine were dark and the driveways empty. The house across the street was in stark contrast with every single light on. The front door was wide open and it looked like the resident was moving with all the boxes loaded into the back of a trailer that I’d never seen before.

  I pulled into my driveway and shut off the truck, climbing out into the chilly spring air. That was the first time in a while that I could recall having been aware of anything so mundane as temperature.

  “Evan?” a voice called from behind me. That would be my across-the-street neighbor, Grady Simons. I think he’s lived in this neighborhood since the Seventies or something. He was always the first one outside to start cleaning up after a windstorm or show up at your door if he saw you doing something that might benefit from another set of hands.

  “Grady,” I said in greeting.

  “I heard that something happened to Stephanie earlier.”

  My mouth went dry and somehow I ended up sitting on my butt in the middle of the road. Hands were on my shoulders and I had to blink a few times before my vision cleared enough so that I could see. It took me a few seconds to realize that my eyes were filled with tears.

  “Jesus, kid, you okay?”

  “No…I’m not,” I managed. I looked up into the dark-skinned man’s face, not at all embarrassed about the fact that I was suddenly crying like a baby. “She’s…she’s dead.”

  “What?” I heard the incredulous tone, but it was fading to more of a buzz as he continued to speak. “Are you sure? Crap, of course you are, sorry.”

  It was like saying those words ripped off all the blinders that shock had put on me the past several hours. Somehow, I think I had simply managed to put that single very important fact out of my head up until now. The problem with that was that time seemed to have acted to concentrate my pain into something that stole my breath and reduced me to the blubbering mess that I was at this moment.

  “Let’s get you out of the road,” Grady said as he pulled me to my feet.

  I could hear an urgency in his voice that sounded totally foreign. Grady Simons was a lot of things, but I don’t think “in a hurry” had ever been used in a sentence with him for as long as I’d known him.

  As if to provide context to this abnormal behavior, a soft, low moan carried on the air. It was answered by a series of agitated barks from a dog somewhere close. I followed Grady to his house and looked over to see the neatly stacked boxes that had about two-thirds of his trailer full.

  Once inside, it looked like no kind of packing that I’d ever seen before. There were boxes everywhere, many partially full without any apparent rhyme or reason. The one closest to me as I took a seat on the couch was a perfect example. I saw boxes of bar soap, unopened packages of underwear, and several assorted canned veggies and tins of sardines.

>   “Goin’ on a trip?” I asked as Grady pulled his door shut and then peered out the open curtain of the huge picture window that dominated his living room.

  “You gotta know what’s goin’ on out there,” Grady said absently as he continued to look out into the relative darkness.

  “How bad?” That was all I could manage.

  “The reports are lagging, but it is on every channel. And when I say that, I’m talking all the way down to the Cartoon Network. They stopped running warnings about disturbing content a few hours ago because there was no longer any content that wasn’t disturbing.” Grady moved away from the curtains. “Funny thing is that the government is still in full denial mode. They got some prissy bitch named Linda Sing from the CDC claiming that we ain’t looking down the barrel of a zombie uprising.”

  I noticed he hadn’t used the word ‘apocalypse’ just now. Did that mean there was still hope?

  “I heard that Japan went dark,” I offered.

  “Heh…” He made a funny sound in his throat that could have been a laugh. “That’s the tip of the iceberg. Japan, China, Indonesia, and both North and South Korea have not returned any attempts at communication for the past several hours. Of course, the media isn’t making that a big part of what they are telling. That is mostly being shared on the internet…least it was ‘til the damn thing tripped offline. Supposedly you can still get on, but it is jammed up more often than not if you try, and all you get is anything from the page not being found to your little hourglass just turning over and over and over.”

  I glanced over at the television and saw the name Dr. Linda Sing on the banner at the bottom of the screen. I looked around for a remote but had no luck spotting one.

  “Can I hear that?” I asked.

  Grady turned to the television and made a disgusted sound in his throat. “They been running that clip since this morning.” Grady walked over to the television and pushed a button to send the volume bar creeping across the bottom of the screen.

  “… to address the issue of a peculiar illness that is apparently sweeping the country. While we are still in the preliminary stages of trying to figure this out, I want to make one thing clear.” The woman leaned forward at the podium a bit and made it a point to almost glare into the camera. Her mirthless face looked as if she had perhaps not allowed a smile to creep across her lips in many years. The bright lights only washed out her features that much more. “Those rumors of the dead coming back and attacking the living are beyond ludicrous. Ignoring the pure physiological impossibility, there is simply no way this can be considered with any seriousness.” A chorus of voices off camera began shouting questions, but the doctor held up her hands. “There is nothing further to report at the moment, but I assure we are working hard on the issue, thank you.”