The Spread

by Damon Hunter

  THE SPREAD

  Copyright © 2018 by Damon Hunter

  All right reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  STAY UP TO DATE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

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  CHAPTER 1

  Chen’s Liquor and Bait - Oceanside, CA

  “What are you going to do about this?” Mrs. Chen asked Officer Simms. She pointed at the body of her husband. He was lying on the tile of his liquor store in a pool of his own blood. The top half of his head was mostly gone.

  Officer Simms bent down for a closer look and saw a bit of the man’s brains. He stood and looked at his partner, Sergeant Dinkins, a man with a decade and a half more experience than him. Dinkins looked at the couple, who had come with them to seek refuge in the liquor store. Mr. and Mrs. Wilson, still dressed for a day at the beach except for the bloody fireman’s axe Mrs. Wilson was holding, looked back and shrugged.

  Dinkins looked back to Mrs. Chen. “I think he is beyond help.”

  Mrs. Chen sneered as she pointed at the silver badge pinned to Dinkins’s chest. “You are the police. I asked you what are you going to do about my husband.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Dinkins said.

  “My husband was murdered. You are the police. I want the killer arrested.”

  Dinkins pointed out the big window in front of Chen’s Bait and Liquor. It was mostly covered with posters for beer, whiskey, and cigarettes, but there was enough clear to see the street. To make Dinkins’s point, a rot-infected woman stumbled by. Like the couple, she was dressed for the beach; she wore her bikini top better than the middle-aged woman standing next to Dinkins, except for the baseball-sized sores growing and popping on her back, sending milky green pus spraying onto the window. No one moved until she was out of sight.

  The foursome all looked back at Mrs. Chen, thinking the ambler walking by should answer her question as to why the two police officers had no interest in opening a murder investigation. They had all ducked into the store to get off the street. Until they saw Mrs. Chen, the four of them thought they may be the only people left in Oceanside who had not gotten the rot or been killed trying to avoid it.

  Mrs. Chen did not seemed convinced. “My husband was murdered in front of my son.”

  She pointed back to the counter on the far side of the store. Ten-year-old Gavin sat there, sucking on a lollipop he had taken from the display of candy by the cash register and playing a game on his tablet. He looked up when he felt everyone’s eyes upon him. He waved. After everyone waved back, he went back to his game.

  “He’s traumatized,” she told them.

  Simms started to say he was feeling a bit traumatized himself. He had just unloaded his shotgun into more human beings than he cared to count, taking out rotters who maybe seconds ago were just normal everyday people, including at least two kids Gavin’s age looking to put a bite into him. He was still holding the shotgun. Even though he had no more shells, the heavy gun made a good club. Seeing a headless kid drop to the ground over the barrel of his smoking shotgun made him wonder if he would have preferred getting bit. He held his tongue. Mrs. Chen either did not realize what was going on outside her store, or did not care.

  “They robbed us as well,” she said.

  “What did they take?” Dinkins asked.

  “Six-pack of beer. Bud Light.”

  Mr. Wilson, who was wearing a shirt with a Hawaiian print, swimming trunks, and flip-flops, looked at Mrs. Chen and asked, “They killed him over a six-pack of Bud Light?”

  “They took our gun as well.”

  “That it?” Simms asked as he looked around the fully stocked shelves of the store.

  “Yes. Does that not count?”

  “Just seems odd,” Dinkins added.

  “Was he infected?” Simms asked. Looking at the body, he saw no signs. The only good thing about the rot was it made itself obvious quickly.

  “No.”

  “They just came into the store and shot him?” Mr. Wilson asked.

  Mrs. Chen answered him with a glare. She did not want to go into details about the murder. She wanted to leave out the part where Mr. Chen was holding the gun they “stole” to a teenage girl’s head in an effort to get the group to give him their considerable cache of weapons. For this reason, she was not going to volunteer the video she had of the entire incident.

  “It’s kind of a legit question,” Sergeant Dinkins told her.

  “People came into my store and shot my husband.”

  “People?”

  “The girl did it—a high school girl whose shirt and shorts were not long enough, making her look like a little slut, shot him. The other girl, also a teenager but older, chopped him with an axe.”

  “So two teenage girls came in and killed your husband and stole a six-pack of Bud Light?”

  “No, two girls killed him. The fat man called Barnacle Bill stole the beer.”

  Simms was about to follow up when Mrs. Wilson interrupted. “Can you guys do this later? I think I saw one of the mean ones out there. If it sees us…”

  Simms nodded. “We need to get out of sight.”

  “My husband…”

  “Will still be dead later,” Sergeant Dinkins told her, “and unless we all want to join him, we need to get away from these windows.”

  Simms looked at Mrs. Chen, remembering some things he knew about C
hen’s Liquor and Bait. This part of Oceanside was no stranger to crime, and the Chens were not shy about calling the police. He had been here more than once, usually for shoplifters or to remove some beach bum panhandling in front of the store.

  “You have an apartment upstairs,” he said to her.

  “So?”

  “I saw the stairway outside. Is there a way to go up from inside?”

  “Yes, but that is for employees only.”

  “Consider us hired,” Dinkins said. “We need somewhere defensible where we can hole up. The sun is going down, and I have a feeling things are going to get worse when it gets dark.”

  “That is my apartment. You are not welcome.”

  “We just need a place to hole up for the night. Somewhere where I can get on the radio without worrying about getting bitten and find out what the fuck is going on.”

  “What is going on is my husband was murdered and you need to do something about it.”

  “You know anything about martial law?” Sergeant Dinkins asked her.

  Mrs. Chen did not answer.

  Sergeant Dinkins pointed at his badge. “Well, I just declared it. Take us up.”

  Mrs. Chen glared at him.

  Dinkins put one hand on his nightstick and the other on the butt of his pistol. “I’m not asking.”

  Mrs. Chen took a few seconds before saying, “Follow me.”

  As Mrs. Chen began to walk toward the back of the store, Dinkins looked at the couple and said, “Grab a few six-packs and all the chips and beef jerky you can hold. No Bud Light, though—something with IPA in the title.”

  Chen stopped and glared at the sergeant. Mr. and Mrs. Wilson did not move.

  “Martial law. I’m hungry and I need a drink. In fact,” he said, looking at Mr. Wilson, “grab something with rum in the title as well.”

  “You sure that is a good idea?” Mr. Wilson said.

  “Yes, I am. Do I need to explain martial law to you too?”

  The Wilsons started gathering the requested items.

  Mrs. Chen kept her death gaze on everyone for a long second before continuing to the stairway.

  The cops followed Mrs. Chen up the narrow stairwell to a balcony over the top of the store. Once on the balcony, they had a good view of downtown Oceanside. The roads were mostly a mass of abandoned and wrecked vehicles. Scattered among the vehicles were dead bodies, mostly infected, but a few who had fought the rotters and lost. Scavenger birds of all types were descending upon the streets in droves, feasting on a smorgasbord of the dead.

  More than one fire had started among the overpriced houses near the coast. No one was coming to put them out. Simms hoped they would burn out before they got this far.

  Amblers, what they called those with the rot who became zombielike wanderers, were dispersed among the cars, moving through the lanes not clogged with twisted metal and/or corpses. The lone ones were not hard to deal with; they were slow, and in most cases all one had to do was go around them. They became a threat, though, when they gathered. In the distance they could see a mass of them descending on a building, looking more like a swarm of ants than a group of people.

  The cops and the vacationing couple had managed to escape one of these hordes. They did not want to have to do it again.

  It had happened by the pier where Officer Simms and Sergeant Dinkins were supposed to be clearing out the tourists and surfers who may not be paying attention to the news, letting them know an evacuation was in progress. The evacuation was at least a day too late. The beach was a madhouse of the infected by the time they started their shift. The substation by the pier was not immune.

  Sergeant Dinkins began his day beating to death with his baton the man he came to replace .

  Mrs. Chen went to the first door of three on the balcony and pulled a key from the pocket in her jeans. Before she opened the door, she pointed to the other two doors. “Those are my tenants. Please leave them alone.”

  Dinkins and Simms looked at each other; they both knew they would have to check on the other units. Last thing they needed was to be settling in for the night with a vampire rotter next door. They decided to go into Chen’s place first, maybe catch their breath before knocking on any doors.

  Mrs. Chen had put the key in the lock when Mr. and Mrs. Wilson came up the stairs. Mr. Wilson had a twelve-pack of beer in each hand, and Mrs. Wilson had found a bag and filled it with snacks. She carried the bag in one hand and had a bottle of dark rum in the other.

  “The boy is still down there,” Mr. Wilson said.

  “He will be fine,” Mrs. Chen told him.

  “No, he won’t,” Dinkins said. “He needs to be with the rest of us.”

  “Gavin,” Mrs. Chen yelled, and then she went back to unlocking the door.

  “Holy shit, lady,” Simms said. “Be quiet. They seem to be attracted to noise.”

  Mrs. Chen did not acknowledge him as she stepped through the door.

  They followed her in, and a moment later Gavin bounded through the open front door.

  The place was not big, but Mrs. Chen kept it neat. Between the sofa and kitchen table, everyone had a place to sit. Dinkins saw a laptop sitting on a coffee table in front of the sofa. He looked to his younger partner, who was better on the computer than he ever would be.

  “Get on that thing and find out what the hell is going on,” Dinkins said as he took the radio off his shoulder. “I’ll see if I can raise anyone on this thing.”

  Simms looked at Mrs. Chen, who was leaning against the wall with a sour look on her face. “Do I need a password?”

  “Yes.”

  Simms waited for more and didn’t get it.

  Gavin picked up the laptop and set it on his lap. After logging on, he went over to where Simms sat at the table and gave it to him.

  “Thanks,” Simms told the kid.

  “No prob, dude,” Gavin said before going back to the game he was playing on his tablet.

  A sound like a bomb going off got everyone’s attention. They all went to the window and saw what looked like a locomotive engine on wheels plowing its way through the street. The massive triangle-shaped steel bumper on the front tossed whatever was in its way to the side as the vehicle made its way down the clogged street below them. Two manned machine gun turrets sat atop the vehicle, but the gunner held his fire as the plow took out all that was in their path.

  Two more similar vehicles followed behind. Neither had the massive plow, but they each had multiple machine gunners.

  “What is that?” Mr. Wilson asked.

  Officer Simms pointed to the logo painted on the middle vehicle. “TMRT.”

  “What?” Mr. Wilson asked.

  “Tactical Medical Response Team. A combination of elite military and medical personnel put together to deal with the rot,” Dinkins said.

  “So we’re saved,” Mrs. Wilson said.

  “Only if we can get them to come back,” Officer Simms said as the three vehicle convoy kept moving down the street.

  “Maybe we need to make some kind of signal, a flare or something,” Mr. Wilson said.

  “Maybe,” Sergeant Dinkins replied. “Problem is we need something to get their attention without getting the attention of the rotters.”

  “The rotters don’t seem to be a problem for them,” Mr. Wilson said.

  “No, but they would be for us,” Simms told him.

  “They have to be looking for survivors,” Mrs. Wilson said.

  “I guess, but not at the speed they were going. The way they were going, I bet they would have passed us by even if we were down on the street waving signs,” Dinkins said as he left the window and found the bottle of rum Mrs. Wilson had brought up for him.

  “Why else would they be here?” Mr. Wilson asked.

  Sergeant Dinkins shrugged after taking a drink. “I don’t know.”

  Chapter 2

  Bo Deaver’s Apartment - Oceanside, CA

  Bo pulled back the curtains to watch his landlady let a couple of
cops into her place. He considered going out, telling Mrs. Chen he was okay, but did not move from the window.

  Neither she nor her husband seemed to give a damn about him or the old couple next door beyond getting the rent on time. Even if she did care, he was not sure he was ready to talk to people yet.

  He closed the curtain and went back to his chair. He picked up the knife he had used to stab Jenny to death and for the tenth time in the last ten minutes considered using it to slit his own wrists.

  The wedding ring he had bought was on the table in front of him. He never got to give it to her. Instead all he gave her was the sharp end of the folding knife he had stuffed in his pocket along with the ring as they headed for the evacuation point. He was hoping this call to evacuate would be like the others and would turn out to be a false alarm. This way he could propose back in Oceanside at their favorite restaurant. He wanted to be on the outdoor patio drinking wine and watching the sunset when he asked her, not in some refugee camp in Arizona.

  He had put the ring in his pocket to take along anyway. He figured proposing in some government tent city was better than not proposing at all. As it turned out, he did neither. The rotters reached them before the bus. He used the knife first to take out the vampire rotter that had leaped on Jenny, stabbing the infected man through the back of neck.

  He was asking Jenny if she was okay when he saw the first bubble grow just above her halter top. He stood there watching the whites in her eyes being replaced by a sickly yellow color as more fast-growing sores appeared all over her.

  He was still standing as they began to pop, spraying him with milky green pus. He reacted instinctively when she came at him with her mouth wide open. If he had thought about it for even a half second, he would never have thrust the blade into her throat.

  He regretted it immediately, pulling the knife out quickly as if he could take back the wound he had caused just by putting the blade away. All pulling the knife away did was open the artery he had severed, increasing the speed at which the love of his life bled out on the sidewalk.

  The worst part was it seemed he had done it for nothing. She had sunk her teeth into his arm before he sank his knife into her neck. For all he knew, being infected together could have been wonderful. No one ever asked the infected if they liked it. Sure it looked awful—they certainly didn’t look happy—but maybe wandering around in a catatonic state was wonderful.