by Ricky Sides
“What’s wrong?” Herb asked.
“Jason just returned from his patrol with the team. He found something he wants Randy to see.”
“What did he find?” Herb persisted.
“You remember that woman you council members exiled?” the guard asked.
“Of course,” Herb responded.
“Well, he found part of her. Her head to be precise,” the guard reported.
“You’d better go see Jason,” Herb said. “And I’ll want a report as soon as you have all the details.”
“Now, Herb…” Erma began.
“This is Dana we’re talking about here. I need to know what the hell is happening where she is concerned.”
Erma nodded reluctantly. “Go ahead, Randy. Come back when you have the details, or he won’t rest all night.”
“I’ll get back as soon as possible,” Randy promised.
After the two men left, Erma said, “Sometimes I wonder if I did the right thing making her believe I had neutralized her nanobots. It just occurred to me that she may not have bothered to return if I hadn’t done that.”
“Don’t second guess yourself. The council agreed with the plan. We’d just had an assassination attempt. Your idea to make the people here believe that we can neutralize their protection was a good deterrent to others who might get similar ideas.”
“Do you really think so?” Erma asked. She felt relieved that Herb still believed she had done the right thing.
“I know so. It’s easy for us to take the protection your cure offers us for granted because we’re protected by it, but think back to the period before we had the injections. Remember how dangerous it was? Even a little bite was lethal. Now, unless they tear us apart, we have little to fear from the zombies. That’s the kind of insurance that a lot of people out there would do anything to obtain. And the people in here will think twice before they risk losing it in some half-baked scheme to take over the refuge.”
“I guess you’re right,” Erma conceded.
Randy returned a short time later looking pale.
“What did you learn?” Herb asked.
“Jason took the patrol out toward I-40. They were almost to the interstate when they came to a house on the left. Remember the two story white wooden home with the ugly black shutters?” Herb nodded that he knew the place Randy was referencing. “Well, someone put her head on a fence post out by the road. Here’s where it gets weird. We think zombies killed her and decapitated her. There was a chunk of flesh missing on her cheek, and her neck bore obvious bite marks. A lot of them.”
“How strange. That sounds like zombie damage, but I’ve never heard of them doing anything like that,” Erma said.
“You’re certain it was her?” asked Herb.
“I have a photo, but it’s pretty gruesome,” Randy said as he glanced at Erma.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Randy. You know better than most the sort of work I used to do. Do you really think seeing a picture is going to bother me?”
Randy shrugged. “I’ve seen her, or what’s left of her. You know the things I’ve seen, and I make no bones about how I loathed Dana, but this bothered me.”
Without another word, Randy drew a digital camera from his jacket pocket and handed it to Erma, who took a brief look at the picture, paled, and handed the camera to her husband.
Herb stared at the photograph of Dana’s head. The expression on her face was one of stark and unbridled terror. The photographer had zoomed in to a tight shot of Dana’s remains. A small amount of her blood had pooled and ran down the side of the fence post. Her face was dirty from the fighting, but there were traces of cleaner skin where her tears had washed away the grime. Herb shook his head. Dana had indeed died a horrible death. It was one that he wouldn’t have wished on her, despite the things that she had done. He and handed the camera back to Randy. “Bury her head,” he said.
“I will,” Randy promised, and then he left to handle that chore.
Randy was just returning to the gate with the rest of the team when a truck turned off the highway and headed down the drive to the refuge. He got the team inside the enclosure, where they waited for the vehicle to come to a stop near the pit made by the explosives.
The truck sat there idling for a few seconds, and then the driver’s side door opened and a man emerged. “Hello. Is this the refuge?” he asked.
“It is,” Randy responded.
“I’m here with my wife and our baby. A man named Big John tried to kill us and I was forced to shoot him. Before he died, he said he needed to redeem himself in God’s eyes, so he told me about this place and gave me a map. He said you were good people who might give us refuge. He mentioned a cure for the parasites.”
“He’s dead?” Randy asked.
“Yes, I didn’t have a choice. He would have killed us all,” the man explained.
“I’m pretty sure you’re right,” Randy said. “You’re at the right place. Leave your truck and bring your gear. We’ll get you in to see the doctor.” He then explained the procedure for gaining admittance to the refuge.
As the people at the refuge went about processing their new arrivals, Shaunna led her minions on another hunt. This time, she was seeking another pack of dogs. She had smelled some back at the farm where she had almost cornered Dana. Now, she intended to make a few anizombies to accompany her because their company brought her comfort of a sort.
You can admire a villain's prowess in battle, yet, still rejoice when they fall.
The End
Read on for a free sample of Start-up Z
Notes:
Roy Akins – Patient Zero
Corporal Herb Bennett – National Guard member and leader of the group.
Randy Lions – National Guard and group member.
Doctor Erma Langley – scientist from CDC who went to the National Guard Armory in Athens. Description: Erma was a thirty-one year old who had worked for the CDC for four years. At five foot three inches, she was a tiny lady with a petite frame. She wore her auburn hair cut short.
Jason Romine – Former Army sergeant. Served in Iraq.
Trevor Williamson – Gate guard at the refuge with anizombie complex.
Bill Wiley – computer programmer.
Dana Rainey – Bill’s former lover who abandoned him on the road.
Edward Rowe – security team member. Ed is the team medic.
Doctor Ezra Fielding – 47 years old.
Nancy Fielding – Nurse.
Ellen and Tommy Gunn – picked up in Hunter, Arkansas after Tommy was bitten by a zombie. (Couple in mid twenties.) Three year old daughter named Ruth. Ellen was an Elementary school teacher.
Henry and Martha Echols – Arkansas elderly couple rescued by Herb and Randy.
Amy Jernigan – Lone survivor of her family of 8.
Mrs. Clemmons – former High school teacher at the refuge.
June Simmons – old woman from Hunter.
Raman Chandler – leader of the Hunter community group.
Bernie Richardson – One of Raman’s two men. Attempted to murder Herb in book 2.
Robert Waller – 13 year old boy the team picked up in Hunter.
Hernando Garcia – 27 year old leader of the Newport survivors. Truck driver.
Jesse Colton – Newport survivor. Married to Ursula, one of the six women.
Janet and Willard Reagers – Infant daughter, Bethany was almost turned. Willard used a fake bomb to attempt to force the people at the refuge to cure the baby.
(Big) John Walters – Leader of the marauders Dana recruits.
Dagmar State Wildlife Management Area in Arkansas – Herb’s cabin is adjacent to it.
Hayti Missouri – Town of 3,000 where Shaunna became a zombie and spread the parasites.
Arkansas Refuge for Humanity – Agent Marx declared Herb’s property and that area around it to be a refuge.
06.2027
CHAPTER 1
“Albert Tinsdale, the last of the Chance Heari
ngs scientists still incarcerated, is being released this morning from the Pennsylvania State Penitentiary amid renewed protests by a group claiming allegiance with the Clergy Party. We have Alicia Farrah live at the scene–Alicia, good morning. What’s the mood out there?”
Alicia Farrah appeared on the television holding a microphone and nodding her perfectly coiffed blonde hair. The grim red line of her mouth served as both an acknowledgment of the anchor’s words and as forewarning of the utmost seriousness of the story that she was covering. “Yes, thank you, Bill, good morning. The scene here in Philadelphia is–in a word–chaotic.” Alicia half-turned and the shot widened out to include a small group of people milling on a curb across the street from a large stone building surrounded by double fences topped with razor wire. The group stood quietly, signs upside down and forgotten at their sides. One woman, dressed in the black robes of a nun, yawned.
A young man in a jean jacket leaned on his sign and watched the reporter with half-lidded eyes. When he noticed the camera had turned to include them, he straightened and nudged two people standing next to him, who in turn elbowed others. At this haphazard signal, the protesters raised their signs and began to wave them in earnest, their faces pulled into tight lines of manufactured-looking fury. Their signs read, “MAN PROPOSES GOD DISPOSES” and “SCIENCE IS GODLESSNESS” and “GOD HATES SCIENCE.” Behind them, a large stack of unused signs hinted at an unexpectedly reduced number of protesters.
A guard in a tan coverall uniform stood just outside a heavily reinforced gate across the street from the protesters. He eyed them with impassive boredom and cradled a machine gun across his chest. The machine gun was black and dull in the gray morning light. Another guard, the first guard’s dark twin, stood cradling his machine gun almost out of sight behind the first fence, his dark green coverall blending into the shadows. On the street along the building, three ambulances sat with their lights spinning.
Alicia turned back to the camera, rearranging her features to remove the frustrated disgust.
Sitting in her kitchen across the river in Marlton, New Jersey, Cassie Ramson caught the young reporter’s chagrin and snorted a laugh.
“Protesters aren’t what they used to be are they, Alicia?” Cassie said to the small television sitting on her kitchen counter. “Not since the Silence Rulings. What’s a reporter to do?”
On the screen, Alicia squared her shoulders as though deliberately ignoring Cassie’s snide question. She went on, “A source from inside the prison has informed me that some sort of food poisoning epidemic coupled with an unscheduled ‘blue-flu’ is going to cause a delay of hours, if not days, before Tinsdale is released, and that–”
The shot switched back to the anchor in the studio. His face had a flown-apart, confused look, as he listened to someone off-screen. He shook his head as if he didn’t understand, listened some more, and then turned his gaze to the camera. He cleared his throat.
“This is just in, all flights into and out of the Philadelphia airport have been cancelled and we’re now getting word that–”
The screen went to gray and a small wheel spun and spun. Cassie sighed with irritation. Internet down. Again. It was at least the third time this week. It failed regularly–but they couldn’t afford anything better.
Well, she didn’t need the distraction right now, anyway.
She switched the television off and pulled her hair into a low ponytail. She took the stack of towels she’d folded while watching the morning news, shoved them into the laundry basket, and checked the clock over the stove. Ten. Two more hours until she needed to pick Lucy up at the daycare center. What else could she get done in those two hours? A lot probably, if only the couch would stop calling to her. She yawned and tilted her coffee cup, stirring the dregs. Another coffee? She consulted her already slightly soured stomach and decided against it. As many times as she’d counseled people that coffee was no substitute for sleep, she found herself caught in the same bad habits, just like when doctors used to smoke. Which she had heard about, but never seen, of course. Cigarettes had been outlawed in 2020 when Cassie was just out of nursing school and the country–hell, the whole world–was stumbling faster and faster toward the financial abyss. Thank God, she’d gotten her loans paid off fast. When the Second Great Depression happened in 2024, she and Dan had been okay. Not great, no one was great anymore, but since she was a health professional, they’d at least been able to keep their small house, and they’d been able to have Lucy.
Cassie gazed at the couch with longing and then leaned against the back of the kitchen chair to peek through the half open laundry room door. Dirty clothes were stacked in three big piles on the floor. Waiting for her. She sighed. Well, she could put a load in and then close her eyes for a minute. Last night’s shift at the clinic had been rough. Some kind of mini-epidemic going on, or another flu running rampant.
She heaved herself up, stretched, and put her mug in the sink. As she began to turn away, movement from outside the window caught her eye. It looked like someone had just slipped behind her neighbor’s house. Had it been Mr. Shapiro? He was retired and home most of the time, and did a lot of yard work, but still, there had been something off in the movements. Something awkward and…unsettling. Cassie frowned and leaned closer to the window, going up on the toes of her canvas sneakers, her stomach pressing against the cold porcelain of the farmhouse-style sink. A long, misshapen shadow trailed out from behind the tiny tract house next door. Was it someone (something) standing just out of sight? Was it–
Her phone shrilled. She jumped with a small yelp and whirled toward the sound. Then she laughed at herself and put her hand at her throat. Her pulse beat hard and fast under her fingers–adrenaline rush.
Her phone shrilled again and vibrated, chattering aimlessly across the kitchen table. She snatched it up. The insectile buzzing seemed too loud and the phone’s erratic movement reminded her of something dying. She pressed her thumb to the screen and it glowed to life.
A picture of Donna’s face appeared, smiling under the fuzzy bunny ears she’d put on last Easter for a joke. Cassie’s best friend. She’d probably been watching the news just like Cassie. They liked to make fun of the overly earnest Alicia Farrah.
“Hey, Donna!” Cassie said. “Did you see Alicia’s report from the prison? Ha! She–”
“Cass…you have to go get Lucy,” Donna said, her voice flat, like someone in shock. Reflexively, Cassie looked at the clock again. Ten fifteen.
“It’s only a little after ten,” Cassie said and started back to the window. “Girl, are you already drinking? Listen, I get it…it’s five o’clock somewhere, right?” Cassie grinned in anticipation of her friend’s good-natured groan, but the line stayed silent. She tried to get the conversation back on track. “Hey, I just saw that goofy Alicia Farrah doing a live report from Philly and she–”
“Cass…go get her. Go now before–”
Cassie pulled the phone away from her ear and looked at the screen as though the picture of Donna could give her some clue as to Donna’s confused words. Her friend smiled at her, one ear up, one ear down as the counter counted the call time above her. Cassie and Donna had been coloring eggs with the kids when Cassie had snapped that picture; Lucy’s little elbow was just in the frame. Although the holiday was no longer federally recognized, she and Donna had still gotten together mostly out of habit and for something fun for the kids to do.
She pushed the video call button and waited for it to switch over. She had to see Donna’s live and actual face. Something was wrong. As she thought that, her mind cross-patched and she remembered the weird shadow behind Mr. Shapiro’s house. She looked out the window again. The shadow was gone. “Hey,” Cassie said, the word a faint protest. She looked back to her phone. The call had dropped. She pushed redial, turned, and leaned against the counter with her back to the window. It somehow made her feel better. Once again, her mind cross-patched to a picture of herself as a little girl, pulling the covers over her head.
The monster unseen was the monster defeated.
The phone burred twice, clicked to an open line. Cassie said, “Donna? Hello? Donna?” A faint hiss, interrupted by a gurgle. Cassie had heard that gurgle before, but she shied away from the association. “Donna! Donna? Are you okay? Listen, I’m coming over there…Donna?” Cassie headed for her front door with her stomach knotting, but glad she was dressed, and glad her best friend lived only one street away. “Donna? I’ll be there in ten seconds. Hold on, girl, hold on.” She opened the front door.
A man in a colorless suit stood on the edge of the shallow front porch, his back to her, swaying gently. Cassie nearly dropped the phone. “Hey!” she said and took a startled non-step, almost a stomp. Her hand tightened on the doorknob. A strange man on your front porch was something to be cautious of. Very cautious. Since the depression, homelessness had become rampant, despite the many laws restricting it.
The man’s head jerked as if he’d heard a loud but distant sound. For a brief second, Cassie had trouble reconciling the man’s flat profile, and then her synapses finally interpreted what her eyes saw: his nose was gone. Car accident, her mind supplied with relief and the explanation appealed deeply to her. It was a concrete problem with a concrete solution. It was probably this man’s shadow she had seen next door. Most likely, he’d suffered a head injury and was wandering aimlessly. Looking for help, but confused. Of course.
Despite her mind’s authoritative assurance, her hand–ruled by an older part of her brain–began to push the door closed. The man turned and stumbled toward her, his arms coming up. His nose was gone, yes, and one of his ears. Black, coagulated blood slicked his neck, but his eyes were…aware. Not sharp, but…
Cassie pushed the door, dropping her phone in order to use both hands. The man’s weight landed against it with a dull thud and she screamed. She pushed harder as her stomach contracted in panic. The door thudded again and yawned a few inches wider. “No!” Cassie screamed, unaware that she did so. “No! NO!” She pushed, throwing her shoulder and all her weight against the door, her sneakers digging into the hardwood. It finally closed, but with a click that seemed unreliable. She turned the deadbolt and jumped back.