“Leonard Fullman, CPA.”
Julie had been a part-time receptionist here. Dan had often visited her on her lunch breaks, taking her out to eat at the local restaurants or going for a walk through the center of town.
Before she had been infected. Before he had killed her.
Dan swallowed the lump in his throat. He clenched his eyes shut and reached for his daughter. She was right behind him, clinging to his shirt. He held up the keychain. Which one was it? He knew Julie had a spare key—she had opened the office on occasion. There were a few he didn’t recognize, and he tried one, then another, each without success. On the third try, he felt the key slip into the lock, felt the doorknob turn.
He stopped to listen. Looked behind him.
His companions returned his stare, their eyes red in the glow of the emergency lights. Quinn began to wheeze slightly. It sounds like her asthma is getting worse. He would need to get her an inhaler—if they survived long enough.
Hearing nothing, Dan inched open the door. It slid against the floor, finding resistance on the rug. He pushed harder. Still stuck.
“I need a little help,” he whispered.
Sam stepped to his aid, leaning his shoulder against the wooden door. It began to budge—but only a little.
“I think there’s something against it,” the storeowner said. “Maybe there’s someone inside.”
The two paused for a moment. Through the crack in the doorway, it looked like all the lights were out in the office. The red glare from the hallway trickled into the room, but they could only make out the outlines of desks and chairs.
What if someone had barricaded themselves inside—a survivor?
The others began to peer in, leaning over Dan’s shoulder to get a look.
“Stay back,” he said to them. “Let’s try again, Sam.”
Dan braced his feet on the floor, arched his back, and pushed again. The storeowner did the same. They heard a scraping sound from inside—the sound of a heavy object moving across carpet. After a few seconds, they had created an opening of a few feet—enough to admit them.
“I’ll go first,” Dan said.
He stepped inside and reached for the lights on the wall. He flipped the switch, but the room remained dark. For a split second, he thought about calling out into the room. If there were survivors inside, he didn’t want to alarm them. The thought of the creatures held him back. He strained his eyes in the darkness.
The office consisted of one large, windowless main room. Three private offices flanked the far wall, all with their doors closed. Through one of the office windows, he could make out a row of venetian blinds. One of the slats was open, as if someone had been peeking out. A narrow beam of light shone through the crack.
If they were being observed, nobody let on. The office was quiet.
Dan looked to his left and saw the object that had been obstructing the entrance. A shelf. Someone must be here, he thought. He looked behind him, holding up his palm so the others would stay put. Sam had already slipped into the room and was examining one of the desktops, searching for a weapon. He held up a wireless computer keyboard—the best weapon he could find—and nodded at Dan to proceed.
Dan surveyed the room, scanning for places a person could hide. There were several desks in the room, each with computers and various office supplies. File cabinets spanned the length of the walls on either side. Dan maneuvered to each of the desks and pushed the chairs aside with his feet, but uncovered nothing. He looked toward the far end of the room.
The offices.
He crept toward the first door, his feet padding silently on the carpet. The first office was pitch black. He tried the door handle. Locked. He reached for the keys again, but withdrew his hand—he doubted Julie would have had access. He moved on, pulled the next handle. The middle office was locked, as well.
Only one remained: the one with the open slat in the blinds. Heart stammering in his chest, Dan put one hand on the door. He tried the handle, expecting resistance from the other side. The handle turned freely.
He kicked open the door with his foot and aimed the pistol in front of him.
“Police!” he yelled out of habit.
Silence. The desk was unmanned, but the chair had been swiveled around to face the window. He saw a few objects on the floor, a pile of folded clothes on the desk. Someone had been here at one time. Hiding.
Perhaps they had found a way out.
“All clear,” he said.
Dan turned. The storeowner yelled suddenly.
“Behind you!”
Dan swiveled and saw a dark mass coming at him from behind the door. Fuck. He should have been more careful. The figure overtook him, hissing and spitting, and he fell to the floor. The gun flew from his grasp; he threw up his elbows, trying to protect his face.
The smell was awful. The thing’s chest heaved over him, and its fingers dug into Dan’s arms, searching for a handhold in his flesh. He pushed against it, but the creature had him pinned.
Why didn’t I check behind the door? He was starting to panic. With the gravity of everything going on, he was off his game.
The creature’s rancid breath was in his face now, and Dan felt a sudden surge of fear—not only for his own life, but his daughter’s. He saw a shadowed figure above them. Sam. The man rammed the keyboard down on the thing’s head. Once. Twice. Still, the creature did not let up.
“Sam! The gun!” he cried.
Sam scrambled away. Dan could hear him searching the floor for the pistol, frantic now. The others had run into the room, and his daughter was calling his name.
“Stay back, Quinn!” he yelled.
Delta hovered above him now. A shiny object gleamed in her hands and she thrust it downwards into the creature. It began to writhe in agony. Dan shoved it off and rolled sideways. He felt around the carpet, finally locating the pistol, and turned back in the direction of the thing.
“Everybody out of the way!”
Dan fired off a round, hitting his mark. The figure pitched backwards onto the floor, gave one last heave, and then grew still.
The sound of the gunshot resonated throughout the office. Dan covered his ears and waited for the ringing to subside. After a few seconds, he felt his hearing return. The creature was no longer hissing; it had gone silent.
All that remained was the frightened breathing of his companions.
Winters lay flat on his back, wedging a jack underneath the frame of the SUV. His face was red and covered in sweat, and he was swearing violently at no one in particular. Brown stood guard a few feet away, scanning the road.
They had broken down in the center of St. Matthews. Brown had never been there before, but he could tell by the signage. A white banner stretched between two lampposts overhead, announcing one of the town’s upcoming events: New Water System Ribbon Cutting, August 15th.
Winters noticed him looking at the sign.
“That’s how we infected most of the townspeople. Through their new water supply.”
If only they had known, Brown thought grimly.
Even if the people in St. Matthews had discovered the contaminant, it wouldn’t have saved them. The chemical been placed in several other food sources, as well. At least, that’s what Brown had been told. He surveyed the scene, shaking his head in disbelief.
Abandoned cars littered the sides of the road; their doors left open, windows smashed. One had been driven through the storefront of a commercial building, the driver nowhere in sight. The sidewalk was carpeted with newspapers and trash: old clothes left behind, books and papers cast aside, phones and electronics discarded.
Most of the buildings had been compromised as well. Almost every door hung open, and many of the windows had been unlatched on upper floors, curtains and shades blowing into the street outside. He wondered if anyone were holed up inside them.
Most were probably already dead.
In the beginning, the agent leaders had said that the infection was unavoidable�
�that there would be no survivors. The initial reports had been amended later. They had since learned that a small number of residents that may have escaped the contaminants—people who were thought to be resistant to the bacteria.
It was Brown’s job to flush them out and eliminate them. Clearly, Jameson and Winters were better suited for the job.
He glanced back at his partner. Winters had emerged from underneath the vehicle, cranked the jack. The car inched upwards, the flat tire now suspended in mid-air. Brown had a sudden vision that the SUV would come crashing down, somehow pinning his companion.
He could then escape this town and remove himself from all that had happened here. It sickened him to be a part of it.
“I’ll call Jameson in a minute. Maybe he caught up with them,” Winters said.
Brown was hardly listening. Movement up the road distracted him, and he trained his rifle on the source—a building about a block away. It looked like a convenience store. Something was moving inside. Something alive. Brown could make out a figure through the front glass window—one of the few that hadn’t been shattered.
He walked a few paces ahead, finger on the trigger. Winters didn’t seem to notice. Up ahead, the figure continued to pace back and forth inside the convenience store.
“Brown! Where the fuck are you going?”
Brown stopped in his tracks, swiveled to look behind him.
“I think somebo—”
The store window exploded, and shards of glass scattered across the sidewalk. Brown turned and saw a figure lunging toward him with its arms outstretched. It didn’t look human.
“Fuck!” he yelled.
The thing’s tongue dangled from its mouth, its face cut and bleeding from the glass, eyes wide and black. It let out a guttural screech as it hurtled toward him, closing the gap between the convenience store and the SUV. Brown began to fire.
Bullets punctured the thing’s chest and arms, but it continued, barely fazed. It was fifteen feet away now—close enough for Brown to see several gaping holes where its teeth had once been.
Brown aimed for the head and let off a volley of shots into its skull. The creature fell suddenly, its head slapping the pavement, pulverized. Its body slid several more feet before stopping, as if it were still trying to get to him.
“Holy shit,” Brown muttered. Words did little justice to what he had just seen.
He turned around to face the SUV. Winters was still on the ground cranking the jack. The two met eyes for a second, and then Winters returned to the tire.
Dan dragged the body across the office by the legs, leaving a trail of blood and innards on the carpet. As he did so, the storeowner cracked the blinds, allowing a stream of sunlight into the room. Dan looked down and recognized the corpse immediately.
The body belonged to Leonard Fullman, his wife’s former boss.
Dan could tell by the tweed jacket, the polished leather shoes. The man’s face looked like a warped version of what he remembered—wrinkled, ashen, covered in scabs. The bullet had penetrated his skull an inch above his brow-line. Dan’s shot had been accurate, even in the dark.
Even so, it didn’t make him feel any better.
He slid the body into a far corner of the main room behind one of the desks, hoping to spare his daughter further exposure to it. When he was finished, Dan returned to the office, where his companions had gathered.
From the looks of it, Leonard had been hiding here for a while—perhaps since the infection had started. A pile of neatly folded clothes lay on the desk, and the office shelves contained a small supply of food. A tire iron lay on the floor beneath the window. Apparently Leonard hadn’t needed to use it. He must have been infected before he got the chance.
The group scoured the room for anything else of use.
“I found something,” Delta said. She pointed to a piece of paper that had been affixed to the desktop, each corner stapled to the wood.
Dan leaned over her shoulder, reading the note in silence.
“God, please forgive me for what I have done. I had no choice. Helen, I am so sorry. If someone finds this letter and I am dead, please bury me next to my wife. Signed, Leonard Walter Fullman.”
Dan swallowed the lump in his throat. He tried to dispel thoughts of Julie. He knew all too well what Leonard must have gone through.
He found himself wishing he could heed the dead man’s request—that he could bury Leonard next to his wife, wherever she was. At the same time, he knew that it would be impossible.
In this new world, there would be no last meal, no dying wish.
The only reward left was to survive another day.
Dan took his daughter’s arm and led her to the window. He peered out into the tattered street, holding her at his side. There was no movement outside, save for a few rustling newspapers and cans—no sign of their pursuers in the SUVs.
Not yet, anyway.
Even so, the gunshot he’d used on Leonard must have drawn someone’s attention. If the men in the SUVs hadn’t heard it, the creatures certainly had.
They needed a plan.
Dan turned and motioned to his companions. The group huddled around the desk in a half-circle, and Dan began to speak.
“What do we know about our situation?”
“Whatever is happening here is happening beyond the mountains as well,” Sam said. “Things are just as bad in New Mexico.”
The storeowner began to recount their journey: their run-ins with the creatures at his store in White Mist, their narrow escape at the Arizona Visitor’s center, the chaos that seemed to prevail among the survivors they had come across. Noah shared the information they had heard on the radio broadcast—the warnings about the contaminated meat.
“It’s not just the meat. I think it’s our entire food and water supply,” Dan said.
He told them what he knew about the creatures and that his former partner on the force, Howard, had been in on the plan to contaminate the town.
“He had a stockpile of food in his house. We took it all and stashed it in the backseat of our car. I wouldn’t trust drinking or eating anything else.”
“If everything has been contaminated, why haven’t we all turned into those things?” Sam asked. “What makes us so special?”
“If it’s a virus, maybe we’re immune to it somehow,” Dan said. “We’ve all had plenty of contact with the creatures, but none of us seem to have caught it. It doesn’t seem to spread through cuts or fluids—at least from what I can tell. Maybe it needs to be ingested.”
Delta held up her arm and pointed to a large scratch.
“This happened to me last night, but I still feel ok.”
“I’m not counting my blessings just yet,” said the storeowner. “Who the hell knows how long it takes for this thing to kick in? For all we know, we could all be ready to turn at any minute.”
The others nodded. Dan looked back out the window again and pulled his daughter close.
“As much as I’d like to stay, I don’t think we’re safe here,” he said. “And from what you’ve said, it sounds like the White Mountains aren’t any better. I think we should continue south towards Tucson. Maybe try to catch a radio broadcast somewhere. With the power out and those creatures everywhere, I think we need to keep moving. Those men will be looking for us in town.”
His companions nodded their heads in agreement.
“I know a place we can stop at on the way. There’s a wrecking yard at the other end of town. It’s surrounded by barbed-wire fence on all sides. I happen to have a spare key.”
Sam forced a smile. “That’s probably the best news I’ve heard all day.”
5
WINTERS HAD ALMOST FINISHED WITH the tire when a single gunshot rang out in the distance. The noise was muffled, as if the weapon had been discharged indoors, but it didn’t sound far.
“Should I keep going on foot?” Brown asked.
Winters scoffed. “Don’t be stupid. We need this vehicle—you know that. The a
gent leaders are keeping an eye on us. Besides, I’m not leaving this thing behind for shit. Especially with those things around.”
Brown didn’t answer, just held his rifle in front of him. He looked at the cars on the street, but none appeared drivable. Taking another vehicle would be a major risk. If it broke down, they could be surrounded in minutes. The agents had cameras inside the SUVs, helping them keep track of what was going on in town; they were ready to send in reinforcements if needed.
At least, that’s what Brown had been told.
“Besides, Jameson may have found them already. That gunshot could have been him finishing the last one off,” Winters added.
Brown looked down at the dead creature in front of him. He wondered what sort of man it had been—if it had had a family. The thing’s eyes were half-closed, empty. A pool of blood blossomed outward from its head, staining the street.
Footsteps rang out in the street, and Brown snapped to attention. His hands began to shake as he gripped the rifle. Within seconds, downtown St. Matthews had sprung to life, and he felt a surge of terror course through his veins.
A horde of creatures had emerged, moving bodies spilling out from broken windows and alleyways. Each was a different size, a different shape; some in suits, some in dresses, some half-naked and screeching. They fell over each other as they spotted him, each clambering for a piece of his flesh.
He aimed the rifle, wondering how many he could hit before he ran out of bullets. There had to be fifty of them, at least—too many to count. He would never be able to stop all of them. He opened his mouth, his brain struggling to form a sentence.
“Are you almost done?”
“Yes! Just hold them off!” Winters yelled.
Brown took aim and squeezed the trigger, peppering the mass with bullets. A few of the front-runners stumbled and fell, but the others kept coming, climbing over the bodies of their fallen companions. He looked back at the SUV. Winters was lowering the jack, attempting to pull it out from underneath the car.
Contamination (Books 0-3) Page 19