The Zombie Plagues (Book 2)

by Sweet, Dell

  He had told her a story about her mother. How she was a whore too. How she had played around on him and gotten pregnant. How she, Lita, wasn't really his daughter. It had gone on and on. She had screamed and yelled, but no one had come. It seemed even the bodyguards were gone. She let the robe fall closed and headed to the door. It wasn't locked. She was in her parents’ bedroom. He had bought her to her own mother's bed. She opened the bedroom door and walked out into the hallway.

  When she was younger she and Mia used to play hide and seek in her father's study. All dark wood panels, potted palms, desks, a bar, chairs, couches, there were so many places to hide. She headed down the hall towards that study now, her robe falling open once again as she walked, but she didn't care.

  They had discovered a small hollow behind one of the desk drawers. She herself had discovered it while she had been hiding there and happened to look up. She opened the door to the study now and crossed to the desk: When she had looked up she had seen that the space had purposely been created to hold a gun. A small chrome plated gun. Almost toy like, but even then she had known what her father was, and she had known that the gun was no toy. She hadn't touched it, but she hadn't forgotten it either.

  She stopped in front of the desk now, walked around it, rolled a chair aside and felt under the desk with her hand. She came back with the gun and for the first time a smile touched her face.

  She left the study and met him coming from the living room. Her robe hung open, her hands dangled at her sides, the small pistol concealed easily in one hand. He stopped when he saw her, something about the look on her face, the set of her eyes.

  "Lita, what are you doing?" He asked harshly.

  "You hurt me," she said.

  "You whored... You whored just like your mother, Lita... Go back to the bedroom. I'll be in to deal with you in a few minutes," he said.

  She continued to walk until she stood directly in front of him. "No," she said.

  His eyes flashed, his hand pulled back to slap her and Lita raised the little gun and shot him in the head twice.

  She watched him fall in slow motion; he took so long to hit the floor. She looked down at him. One eye was gone and blood dripped from the socket to the floor. She watched, but he didn't move. She couldn't believe it had been so easy to kill him. She laughed, put the barrel of the gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger.

  Thompson Park

  Late Thursday night

  Ben Neo

  Ben was more than pissed off. He had planned things for months and now something had happened. He had no idea what and he had now waited far too long to call Tommy. In fact he was a little surprised that Tommy hadn't called him yet: Grateful, but surprised.

  He was waiting alone by the turnout; he'd sent Ed down the road to find them some fast food. He would probably be back soon. He had decided that was better than having Ed wait and have the guys show up to do the deal. That would really fuck things up. This was his well planned last deal. Well planned right down to the last item, or so he had thought. The only thing that he could figure was that Tommy had tumbled to the fact that he was going to disappear; it made no sense, yet it was all he could think. The piece that didn't fit was why would Tommy deliver fourteen and a half million dollars to someone he knew was going to disappear? Plus the items that only a few of them knew about: He, Tommy and two other men; that were hidden in the packaged pot. Were they really there? He had no way of knowing, would have no way of knowing until he had them in his hands. He didn't know what to think. He only knew that as the hours slipped by he became more and more concerned.

  He had spoken with Nikki and even that part of his plan had gone wrong. She was out there on Lott road waiting for him. She was his way out after he ditched the car, she would wait, plant the drugs in the cops' car, nothing more, but she had killed some girl that had just happened onto her where she had hidden. Ben had not listened to the radio or seen any newscasts, but he wondered now if it was a good idea to do what he had planned. Maybe the cops would be watching Lott road now. Nikki said no. Nikki said they had come and taken the body and that had been that, they were none the wiser.

  Nikki had taken it in stride. It was a bad place and bad things happened in bad places all the time, she had said. It was no reason to change their plans. She had gone so far as making herself up to look like the girl. She was convinced it could help them when everything else unfolded, and maybe it could, but it had not been something he had planned. Again something had gone wrong, changed despite his plans. The whole thing seemed to be falling apart.

  And now there was this part of the plan, slowly falling apart as he stood waiting. Something had gone wrong, that was the only thing that he could see. Maybe someone had found out that there was something even more valuable inside the pot. Something more valuable than the entire shipment: If so... If someone had found out, all bets were off.

  Whatever had happened, he knew it was over for him. It had to be, there could be no going back for any reason at all. He had gone too far. Everything was in motion, and he would be smart to be on his way, instead of hanging around to see what was going to happen here, if anything at all was going to happen.

  His phone rang.

  Thompson Park

  The Cop

  He had gone back, hung around long enough to be seen with the rest of the guys on the day shift and then he had left. If anyone had thought anything was strange or wondered where he had been all day, no one had said anything at all. He had stopped and picked up a sack of burgers and a couple of large coffees on the way back up to the park. Whatever the hell was going on, he intended to wait it out. He had too much invested in it now; he had no choice but to tough it out.

  He sat in his car in the parking lot, munching on one of the cold burgers. A clump of congealed condiment and pickle fell into the paper wrapping. He stared at it for a second and then tossed the whole mess back into the bag in disgust. He grabbed the coffee, also cold now, and washed the taste out of his mouth.

  He could hear one side of a conversation, had to be talking on the phone. He had panicked when he had come back up to the top. He had taken the opportunity to drive past the lookout when he had left and had spotted a green Ford Taurus parked there. It had been gone when he came back up. A few seconds later though, he had picked up the one sided conversation. Just grunts and a few Yeah that sounds good, or No that sounds bad, or I just don't know. But it proved to him that there was still someone there.

  Maybe they were as worried about why the deal wasn't going down as he was, or at least the side of the conversation he could hear suggested that. The other person must have left for some reason. He had no idea why, but he had gone with the car. Maybe they had gone for food; after all they've been up here all day long too.

  He had heard the two of them talking. Ed and Ben, and the fact that they were referring to each other as Ed and Ben meant they probably hadn't known each other long or only had a business relationship.

  The car came back a few minutes after he had gotten back, and it turned out the one called Ed had gone out for food.

  He fished his cigarettes from his coat pocket and lit one. He sat, smoked and waited.

  Adams

  State Park Area

  Danny and Daryl

  Daryl opened his eyes. He closed them, opened them again and then screamed in panic. The shit had blinded him.

  "I'm blind! I'm fuckin' blind! Poison! Poison,” he screamed. He lunged forward, slammed into the dashboard and then fell back, flailing around the front seat of the car.

  "What! What?" Danny yelled as he suddenly came awake to the screaming.

  "We're blind! We're blind! It was bad shit, Danny, bad shit and it blinded us." Daryl started to sob.

  Danny's hand shot past him in the pitch black and fumbled around on the dashboard. A second later the headlights came on, lighting up the outside and making Daryl jump and smack his head on the hangar book above the car door as the dash lights seemed to flood the interior of t
he car in light. He looked at the hook and rubbed his head. Who in fuck would put a hook there anyhow, he asked himself.

  "We're not blind, you goofy fuck," Danny said. "It's just dark; we must've fallen asleep or something."

  Daryl nodded... "The whole fuckin' day, Danny? The whole day?"

  "Or more," Danny said.

  Silence held for a few minutes.

  "Did we do the deal, Danny?" Daryl asked hopefully?

  "I don't remember doing it," Danny said. He reached over, pulled the keys from the ignition, got out and hurried back to the trunk. He unlocked and raised the lid. The light came on. It was all still there.

  "Motherfucker," Danny said.

  Daryl came up beside him. "We'll blame them, whoever they are... They... They did something... Right?" Daryl asked.

  "How in fuck do we blame them, Daryl?" Danny asked.

  "Are you stupid? We say they did it. They were late... Something," Daryl said.

  "But we're the ones who've been out of touch, not them. They probably already called their people wondering where we were. They got the alibis, we don't," Danny said.

  "He'll kill us," Daryl said. "We damn well better have an alibi, something: Carlos is nobody to fuck with and we know who he works for."

  "Like it's my entire fault?" Danny asked.

  "No, man, it was mixing that cocaine with that heroin, that's what did it," Daryl said.

  "Great," Danny said. "We'll just tell Carlos, "Sorry man, that shit we stole from you fucked us up and we passed-out and missed the buy ... I'm sure he'll love that."

  "We really are fucked," Daryl said. "If we don't do the deal we can't say they ripped us off. It'll never be in their hands... We are so fucked."

  "Yeah? Well, start the fucking car and get us out of here before you kill the battery and then we're stuck out here in the sticks on top of everything else: Let's at least go see if maybe we got here too early or something," Danny said.

  Daryl looked at him. "But it's night-time," Daryl said as if talking to a child.

  "Yeah, but maybe this shit has us so fucked up that we got here before we were even supposed to be here, you see? Like it's not even Thursday morning yet, get it?" Danny asked.

  "No, man, I don't, 'cause, see, we got here in the morning."

  "Yeah? Well you better start remembering it different. We're going up there and take a look and if in the morning? If those guys aren't there? Well, they messed it up, not us, do you see that? Do you see how we waited and waited for those fuckers and they never showed up?" Danny asked.

  "Yeah... Okay... I see that," Daryl said. He reached down, started the engine and bumped over the rutted turn out and onto the overgrown dirt road. He turned back onto the main road a short time later and headed toward Watertown.

  Watertown

  Lott Road

  April Evans Trailer

  Nikki

  "Come on out, girl, I don't bite," John Porter said. He pounded on the trailer door.

  She moved behind the door and then slipped the chain, opening it slowly.

  "Hey there, Miss April, I don't bite: Although I could be persuaded to... Why you here all alone on a Thursday night?" he asked.

  "I was sleeping until you pounded on my door," she said.

  "Oh you got a little temper. Why don't you come on out and party with me, April? You won't be sorry," he said.

  "Not tonight, I gotta work tomorrow." She eased the door shut and locked it back up. She lay back down on the couch where she had been and tried to drift back off.

  Off Lott Road

  The car seemed abandoned, and she supposed that made sense. Her concern was whether it was truly abandoned of if it only looked abandoned. She made her way silently through the dark trees, finding her way by the weak moonlight.

  Lott Road

  Billy Jingo

  Billy sat up and scratched his head. It was late, he'd slept pretty well. He had awakened once when he heard an ambulance down the road, or cops, or whatever it had been. And that was it. He'd gone right back to sleep and slept straight through. Probably a fight in the trailer park again, he thought.

  He got up, padded through to the kitchen and turned the TV on, went back and got dressed. He was on his way back to the living room when a commercial ended and a news break came on. A pretty blond, probably not much older than he himself was, smiled into the camera and began to talk as he yawned deeply.

  "Good morning: Coming up on News Fifteen in ten minutes, your local headlines, sports and weather. Topping our local headlines this morning the grisly discovery of the body of a young woman earlier this morning on Lott road; police are releasing no details, but a source has told News Fifteen that they do suspect foul play. The body was discovered in a drainage ditch by a passing motorist. In world news, Mieka Petre, USGS lead seismologist tells us that everyone can release their collective breath over the news that DX2379R, the errant meteor that was said to be on a collision course with Earth early next month, will actually miss us by thousands of miles.”

  “Whew,” the lead anchor, a young man named James, with jet black hair said and laughed. “Had me worried.”

  “Had all of us worried, James” the female lead agreed. She returned the laugh before she began speaking once more. “Cable Corp has issued an apology for the wide spread internet outages of the last several days. They are blaming it on faulty satellite down feeds, hinting that maybe the government has been messing with their transmissions.” She nodded toward the handsome anchor somewhere off camera. “Cue the conspiracy theorists,” she joked. The anchor chuckled briefly off screen as she turned back to the camera with a serious expression on her face once more. “And this from a small village in Ecuador, the jungle of the living dead? The locals claim their relatives are returning from the dead. All that and more inside of 10 minutes: But first these messages from our sponsors..."

  Billy closed his mouth. Well, he thought, it wasn't the first body to be found out here. Just before he had moved here they found the body of a local prostitute whose throat had been cut. She'd been dumped nearly in front of his house.

  He headed back toward the bathroom. Probably the same thing again, he thought. Welcome to your night off, Billy.

  THREE

  Friday morning

  Public Park Turnout

  Mistakes

  Ben Neo

  The headlights swept the area of the lookout and then flicked off. Ben waited to see what would happen next. The car had parked right next to their car, but they had not been in it: They were a hundred yards up, just inside the tree line, waiting.

  The door opened and a light came on. A voice: "It's the right color, maybe it is them," the voice said. A young, thin black man stepped out into the circles of light cast by the headlights and stretched his legs.

  The driver, a shorter, even skinnier white kid, got out and looked around. "I don't see them," he said. He lit a cigarette and then shut the car door. "Yo ho," he said loudly. "If you're here speak up. We know we're late."

  The silence held. Ben put one finger to his lips so Ed wouldn't be tempted to answer.

  "Told you: They're fuckin' long gone," the black kid said.

  Ben made a follow me motion and headed over to the car. Not really sneaking, but walking quietly. He held his gun at his side and Ed did the same.

  Both men were smoking now and looking out at the city lights. Ben walked right up to them and then purposely ground his foot into the gravel to make a noise. Both of them screamed and jumped.

  "Where the fuck have you two been?" Ben asked. He actually was mad, but he was even more relieved and trying hard not to laugh at the way they had screamed.

  "What's that supposed to mean?" the black kid asked. He seemed to recover the quickest. "We don't know you."

  "Yeah?" Ben asked. “Do you know Carlos by any chance? Are you two sorry looking fuckers Daryl and Danny? Huh? Would that be you two?"

  "Man, there ain't no call to cuss," Daryl said.

  "No? Then explain
why you're almost twenty-four fuckin' hours late?" Ben asked.

  "Car broke down. Carlos only gave us enough for this shit box and it broke down," Daryl said.

  "For twenty-four hours?" Ben asked.

  "Hey, man, we had to get a part, okay?" Daryl asked.

  "What part?" Ben asked.

  "The mother fuckin' alternator, okay, white man?" he asked.

  "No need to go in that direction," Ben said.

  "Yeah? Then get off my fuckin' back," Daryl said. "And put those guns away unless you're gonna use them." He pulled a gun partway out of his own pocket. It looked like a Chinese made 9 mm to Ben.

  Ben was tempted to shoot the kid just for the threat, but he slipped his own pistol back into his jacket pocket, walked over to the Ford's trunk, unlocked it and swung up the trunk lid. "You ready or what?" he asked.

  Up The Hill

  The Cop

  It felt like he broke his kneecap when he slammed it into the bottom of the dashboard. He must have dozed off, he told himself. When he had come awake, he had heard them talking and realized the deal was finally going down. He had sprung suddenly forward and rammed the knee right into the lower metal lip of the dashboard. He had jumped out of the car, rubbed the knee for a second and then started down the hill at a quick pace.

  It was maybe a quarter mile and he wasn't in bad shape, but he wasn't in great shape either: And the knee was not helping at all. It was the goddamn cigarettes, which was what the worst of it was: Killed your wind; heart, lungs, bad shit. He had to stop soon before they fucking killed him.

  By the time he got close to the lookout he had to stop and catch his breath. He didn't want them to hear him breathing heavy; he meant to sneak up on them. He finally caught his breath and crept forward into the woods that surrounded the lookout area.

  The Turnout

  The Deal