War of the Undead (Day One): The Apocalypse Crusade (A Zombie Tale)

by Meredith, Peter

  "Sir, you have to remain patient," Courtney said in her practiced bored-as-hell voice, she then put Dr. Milner on hold for the third time. She knew it wouldn't last; he'd wait five minutes, hang up and re-dial the emergency line just as he had the last two times.

  She waited the five minutes, drumming her fingers on her desk and staring at the switchboard. Lieutenant Pemberton's line was still active. In eight years as a state police dispatcher she'd had her share of bad days, but this was the first time she'd been asked to get the Governor's home phone number. That was huge and scary.

  Next to her, Renee was telling the owner of a trucking company that, yes, the state was commandeering his warehouses and no, there wasn't anything he could do about it. "Of course you can call your lawyer," Renee said. "Just make sure that neither of you are within two-hundred yards of the warehouse when you begin your protest. The State of New York thanks you."

  She hung up and gave Courtney a look. "This is so messed up," she said. "I can't believe Bill and Porter are dead."

  "And Bower and Heines and Brown," Courtney added. She had taken the call from Foster when he had finally reported in after his disastrous recon. That had been scary as well. He'd spoken listlessly, in a dull monotone, reading off the names of the dead like he was reading off an order for Chinese takeout.

  After that she'd been officially cut out of the loop. Foster had asked to talk to Pemberton. The second she'd transferred him, Courtney jumped out of her chair, raced down the hall to the station chief's office and stood outside the door, barely breathing. Pemberton's speakerphone was clear as day and she heard Foster repeat the same list of the dead in the same washed-out voice.

  "How did you screw this up so badly?" Pemberton demanded. "I’ve got eight men dead! Eight! Bower and Porter and...Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" The lieutenant's fury was so elemental that Courtney almost ran back to her place in the dispatch room. Her curiosity was too great and she stayed.

  "They're not really dead," Foster said, quietly.

  "What? You just told me they were torn to pieces. You said they had their throats ripped out."

  "Yeah, but they're not truly dead. They'll come back as one of them and then it won't be so bad...officially speaking that is. You'll only have to list them as casualties, not as KIA."

  Pemberton sat back, quiet for half a minute and the entire time Courtney thought he was going to go berserk, however he seemed calm when he said, very slowly, "Riiight, because they're zombies now."

  "Yes," Foster agreed.

  "Ok, Greg, Ok. I don't want you to take offence but I think we're going to need to authenticate this. You know, to make it official. Let me talk to Trooper Paul. We can send in another..."

  "No," Foster said. His tone was low and dangerous. "No one else is going in. You wanted me to reconnoiter the building and I did. You wanted to find out what the fuck was going on in there and I told you. If you don't believe me then go in yourself but you're not sending anyone else in. Pemberton, listen to me! This is real."

  "Greg, please. Listen to yourself. I can't go to Billups about zombies. You know what he'll say. I need proof. I need an objective observer to go in..."

  "That's what I am!" Foster cried. "I'm your eyewitness and if you don't believe me, try believing those people trapped in the building. They are trapped by fucking zombies. I shot eight or nine of them and they just kept coming like they didn't feel a thing. They just kept coming and coming and..."

  "Ok, Greg," Pemberton said in a softer tone. "I believe you. Just do me a favor and don't use the word zombie in anything official."

  Courtney had heard enough. She went back to her desk feeling odd; her reality had been severely tested, and it had failed. She took Milner's calls and, in between them, told Renee everything.

  "He said zombies?" Renee asked.

  Before Courtney could answer, her call light began blinking. "It's that jack-ass again. He acts like I'm his secretary or something. You want to take it?"

  "No, mine's going too."

  Milner's call was tedious: he demanded to know what was happening and why everything was taking so long, and when they'd be rescued. Courtney didn't have much more to tell him besides, "We're doing the best we can. Sit tight and a rescue team will get to you soon." She had no idea when "soon" would occur. Every trooper within three hundred miles was racing to Walton, while local police forces were being stripped of their men. She could expect sixty law enforcement officers to be on site by nine that night.

  Unfortunately, that didn't mean a rescue was going to happen immediately. After the last fiasco, Courtney didn't think there would be another attempt until the CDC team arrived, and she was sure they weren't going to spring into action either. They were notoriously pompous, officious, slow, and asinine. They did everything by the book and their book of Standard Operating Procedures was outrageously large.

  There was a story circulating around about a CDC Intervention at an elementary school in Havertown, where three cases of small pox were discovered, only it hadn’t been small pox, it had been chicken pox.

  The school was in lockdown for twenty one hours until one of the cafeteria workers realized the mistake. Everyone was relieved and the teachers and students had thought they'd be able to walk right out after the mistake was discovered, but no. Regulations were regulations and it was five more hours before they were let go. Twenty six hours for chicken pox. Who knew how long it would be before the "rules" would allow for a rescue.

  "Sorry, Dr. Milner," Courtney said. "They are working on setting up a rescue, however I don't know when it'll be. So, if you can please stop calling, I need all the lines as free as possible."

  The call Renee took was far more interesting.

  "This is Sergeant Thomas, from the Poughkeepsie P.D. We have a situation. We got a couple of guys in our drunk tank and they got some sort of black goo coming out of their eyes."

  Chapter 12

  //7:26 PM//

  1

  "This is so not worth it," Bailey Cook griped, slamming her tray down. She'd been called in to the bar on her day off because some bug was making its way through the staff. Bailey wondered if it was true; she had a suspicion that the regular staff had taken one peek at the morons slopping it up in the corner and had taken off.

  Next to her Danni Sparks rolled her eyes. "You haven't even been here twenty minutes and already you're whining. What the fuck?"

  Bailey’s eyes narrowed and she snapped back, "What's your problem, Danni? You should be happy I showed at all." Bailey wouldn't have bothered if it wasn't for the fact that her car was running on racing slicks. It had been four years since she'd bought new tires and now they were so bald that there were little zings of metal, looking like the bones of a snake, showing through the old rubber. Still, it wasn't worth it.

  As she'd been coming in, the Poughkeepsie police were hauling out two guys; both bleeding and spitting curses.

  This had been the third visit from the cops that night, a record for a Monday evening—Jack Cable, the front desk security guard at R&K, had been the first to be hauled off. He had driven his Mustang straight away from the Walton facility to the bar and plunked himself down, not realizing that he was practically coated in the mutated Com-cells. Soon his head was pounding, something he attributed to the cheap tequila he and the two gate guards, Randal and Wayne, had been downing shot after shot.

  When the pain became too intense, he ordered his own bottle and drank it like water. It helped for a little while. The alcohol dampened the worst effects of his disease, although nothing was going to stop the hate from building up. It made his head feel huge and bloated. He vented, in turns lashing out at the government, or the terrible service in the seedy bar, but mostly he complained bitterly about the scientists back at Walton, who he just knew were up to no good, experimenting on innocent people.

  The other’s at the table, Randal and Wayne, the two men who’d abandoned the gate and fled with Jack, and the other off-duty guards who’d decided to make themselves s
carce after word of a quarantine filtered down to them, listened to his story with varying degrees of incredulity—at first, but as the Com-cells spread and invaded their bodies unchecked, they came to believe as Jack did.

  Eventually, Jack’s endless diatribes and the retelling of Mr. Mumford and the circumstances of Earl’s death, reached the ears of a young tough at the end of the bar. His name was Ron Siltkis and he found joy in other people’s misery.

  “You were attacked by zombies?” he asked, elbowing the man on the stool next to him and giving him a wink. “Were you drunk then, too?”

  “Who said anything about zombies?” In Jack’s eyes, the bar was exceptionally dim and shady. There seemed to be more shadows than light; it was as if his eyes had aged forty years in the time since his alarm had woken him up that morning. He had to squint to see Ron. “I didn’t mention any fucking zombies.”

  “Yeah, you did,” Ron shot back. “You described them to a ‘T’ only you’re too stupid to realize it. No wonder your friend got killed.”

  Tequila was a poor substitute for an intravenous infusion of Diazepam. Jack couldn’t have stopped himself if he had wanted to. He stood, knocking the table and spilling drinks. Ron was almost gleeful as he came off his barstool. There was no stare-down or any more preliminary talk. Jack saw the young tough as a hulking blur. He seemed wrapped up in a cloak of shadows, and yet there was one thing Jack could see clear as day: the skin of Ron’s cheek.

  He had a bit of a baby face and his cheeks were high in color, like an apple turning in an orchard. The flesh was clean and fresh and for some ungodly reason it made Jack’s stomach rumble.

  It took five people to pull him off and when they did, Ron’s apple cheeks were more like raw hamburger.

  The police were back not forty-five minutes later to cuff the two gate guards and drag them out. They were just there to pick up Wayne who had inexplicably stormed into the kitchen and attacked the eight-person staff, bare-handed, however, Randal, who had been oblivious to the fight, assaulted the police on sight. He had no clue why they were there and really, he didn’t care. It was the blue uniforms that sent him into a killing rage. His head was cracked by a dozen blows from the batons the policemen carried and he barely felt anything. He bit, he clawed, he spread the Com-cells to every one of them.

  The rest of the Walton guards were asked to leave though it did little to make the bar a safer place. By that point, pretty much everyone in the place was infected to one degree or another. The patrons drank to cure the headache that gradually crept up on them. The employees didn’t have that option. One by one they clocked out and the manager struggled to replace them.

  Bailey was the last one to show and she was far from happy. The atmosphere in the room was edgy. The TVs were off and the music muted. People were moaning in the back along the wall where the booths were high, and it wasn’t the good sort of moan that occurred sometimes among the friskier clientele. It was the sound of pain. Bailey kept to her station.

  “The kitchen’s closed, we should just shut down for the night,” she suggested to Danni.

  “I already fucking asked and that fucking Roger just screamed at me," Danni seethed. “He just told me to get back to fucking work. Man, I’m so pissed, and if one of those fuckers thinks about touching me tonight I am going to…”

  “Spit in their drink?” Bailey suggested. She was also worried about the patrons touching her. Generally, it was annoying when it happened, but tonight the moody crowd skeeved her out. Most of them were pale or haggard, while some were downright nasty looking. Normally, she kept her uniform top zippered just above the sixty-percent line in order to maximize tips. Just then she had it at ninety percent, zippered almost to the soft cleft of her throat. She had also washed her hands four times since she’d walked in; touching anything made her skin crawl.

  “No,” Danni said, her lip sneering. “I’m not going to spit in anyone’s drinks. I’m going to fucking kill ‘em.”

  Danni seemed serious. Bailey took an apprehensive step away from her friend. “That’s probably not the best thing to…”

  “What do you know, you fucking goody-two-shoes?” Danni snapped. “Look at you all perfect, smelling like you’re a fucking virgin or something.”

  Bailey pulled her drink tray to her chest using it as a shield against the unexpected words. She was usually an aggressive girl who didn’t take much in the way of shit from anyone—she had to be, working in a dive like Baker’s, however this wasn’t a usual night. There was something very wrong going on.

  “Y-you want me to talk to Roger for you?” she asked, trying to put a smile on to cover up the strange fear that was quickly building up. “I can see if he’ll send us…”

  A bottle sailed passed her head. A regular at one of Bailey’s tables yelled, “What the fuck is taking so long? It’s just one beer!” His name was Bob Jenkins. He always ordered the same: Newcastle Brown Ale and always had exactly three each night. He always tipped five dollars, and Bailey had never heard him curse unless his beloved Knicks were losing.

  “I gotta take care of this,” Bailey said. “But I’ll talk to Roger, I swear.” She was eager to get away from Danni, and yet the idea of going out into the main room was unnerving. There was a brittle edge in the air and an invisible line that couldn’t be crossed without setting the twenty or so people gathered there off. She decided that speed was her best option. She would treat this as a Friday where she buzzed about without pause for six straight hours.

  First she sped to the bar where she grabbed a Newcastle for the regular and a Corona for a pony-tailed dude who had just downed his last. “Here, go…here, go,” she said to the two men. She then did a quick circuit feeling their hungry eyes on her ass as she passed. A shiver went down her spine as she made it back to the bar; those eyes were far hungrier than on any other day.

  There were calls for more "shots"; Danni was simply pouring from the first bottle she grabbed and Bailey did as well. She poured a tray full of shots and then went back out. A hand grabbed her as she passed one of the tables; it wasn’t gentle or sexy in any way. Her flesh was pinched and then twisted. “Shit,” she said, through gritted teeth. She kept going, dropping off shot after shot, feeling that invisible line coming nearer and afraid what would happen when it was crossed. After the shots were dispensed she did another quick tour of the room and saw that everyone had a full drink in front of them. Her section was stable, at least for the moment.

  Danni’s was starting to get nuts. The waitress wasn’t pouring drinks in the traditional manner, with the little silver jigger that Roger insisted everyone use. Instead, she was filling every drink to the top of the glass and if someone said anything or touched her, she would splash the drinks in their faces, sometimes following it up by throwing the glass as well.

  Bailey watched for a few minutes and felt that her toes were just slipping over that invisible line. It was dangerous on the other side of the line, maybe even deadly. She went straight away to the office behind the bar.

  The door was shut. She raised a hand to knock, but hesitated. Was there a line here as well? Danni had said he’d been grouchy, but Roger could always be counted on to be grouchy. The man hated his job as much as he feared losing it. But what if this grouchiness was different? What if he was like the others?

  There was nothing she could do but try. Her knuckles rapped softly on the door and she said in a voice just above a whisper, “Roger? We need your help out front.”

  “Stop that hissing!” he screamed. “If you’re a snake come in and try to bite me, mother fucker! Cause I’ll bite the fuck out of you.” There was the sound of glass breaking and then she heard him come stomping to the door. She fled before he could open it. Clearly, he was like the others and maybe worse. Bailey was seriously afraid, now. She ducked into the kitchen and dug out her cell phone to dial 9-1-1.

  Unbelievably, the call went to voicemail. “What the fuck?” She dialed the number again. Someone picked up on the last ring.
r />   “Emergency, please hold.”

  “Wait! I need…” A pre-recorded voice started telling her about how important her call was to them. “Son of a bitch,” Bailey said. While the voice droned in her ear she cracked the door to the kitchen and stared out into the bar. Roger had Danni by the hair and was punching her in the face. Blood was splattering and her nose was bent to the side so that it looked like she was sniffing her own cheek but still she was cussing up a storm and vowing revenge. Bailey saw Roger had the face of a devil—his eyes were completely black.

  Quickly, Bailey shut the door. She even reached over and clicked off the kitchen lights. “Come on!” she hissed into the phone. “Come, on. Please answer the damned phone!”

  She was on hold twenty long minutes. “Thank you for holding,” a woman said, speaking so fast that Bailey hadn’t interpreted the first line when the woman spoke her second right over it: “What’s the nature of your emergency?”

  “Uh…uh, there’s something weird going on over here. I’m at Baker’s we’re off of Underhill road, right by the…”

  “I know where it is. What’s going on?”

  “There’s a fight. The manager is beating up one of the employees, real bad.” Bailey had to resist the urge to peek out into the main room again. Had the assault turned into murder yet? There was the feel of murder on the air; it was just a matter of time if it hadn’t happened already.

  “I’m afraid we won’t be able to get someone out to you for some time," the dispatcher said in a rush. "What I need you to do is find a safe place. Don’t put yourself in danger. Do try to remember any pertinent details of the assault. Write them down if you can.”

  It seemed like the dispatcher was just about to hang up. Before she could, Bailey asked, “How long ‘til someone gets here?”

  Six miles away, dispatcher Jenny McMann looked at her board and shook her head. The Poughkeepsie police department ran fourteen patrolmen on a Monday evening—nine officers and their cruisers had been lent to the State police and were on their way to Walton. Five off-duty officers had been called in to bring the number to ten, but six—the very six who had been to Baker’s earlier—had already gone home sick with dreadful migraines. That left only four patrolman, all of whom had left a few minutes earlier to deal with a spectacular brawl a half mile from Baker’s. The Walton guards had not gone far when they’d been kicked out. They went to a college bar and it wasn’t above a half hour before they were fighting eight against thirty…and winning.