by Shana Festa
"Thanks for the heads up. And if I hear anything more about the hospital thing I’ll text you." With that, she hung up.
I spent the next ten minutes pinging texts back and forth with Ollie about the hospital—both the patient we lost and the attacks. We both had the same thought about poor Mary Jennings’ fate and wondered if she could have been the one to go postal.
I cuddled up to Jake in bed and smiled at the thought of Mary beating people with her wallet. Jake rolled over and held me for a bit, kissing the top of my head. "It’s a good thing I didn’t see the news before you got home. I don’t know what I would have done. Wondering if something happened to you and not knowing would have torn me apart. I knew you were okay, and it still wrenched my guts into knots. Thank God you’re home safe. I’m sorry you had such a crappy night." He squeezed me even closer, and I melted into his arms. Exhaustion settled in, and I started fading.
"Why don’t you sleep in a little tomorrow? I’ll go to the gas station early and fill up the car and some containers for the generator. If the power goes off, I don’t want to let all that food in the fridge go to waste." That was one thing that hadn’t changed since his time in the army. Jake was still an early riser. If the sun was up, so was he.
* * *
A loud crack of thunder woke me from my slumber the next morning. I shot straight up in bed and watched as poor, unsuspecting Daphne bounced in the air like she was on a trampoline. Jake wasn’t in bed so I assumed he had made the trip to the gas station. I lay there for a bit and cuddled with my pooch. "Who’s a mommy’s girl? Who is it?" She got all excited and curled up like a teddy bear under my arms as I assaulted her with kisses. These moments were my favorite as I lay there snuggling my prized possession. I’m sure every psychiatric professional would tell me I supplemented the love I would show for children with puppy love. That didn’t stop me from showering her with hugs and kisses every spare moment. "Come on, let’s go outside and make a pee-pee."
The house was unusually dark as I walked to the back door, and it took me a minute to realize that Jake had pulled the hurricane shutters closed before he went in search of gas. I asked myself my daily question, "How did I get so lucky?" Jake had left one side of the back sliding door uncovered so we could take Daphne outside, and when I opened the door, a huge gust of wind hit me in the face. Rain was coming down sideways in blankets and the backyard looked like a lake. Oh the joys of hurricane season in Florida. Daphne stood at the door and just looked at me, her eyes saying yeah, I don’t think so. I made another attempt, this time punctuating it with now at the end. Not even that could make her go out in that weather.
"Okay, fine, then hold it," I told her and shut the door. The next two hours were spent getting dressed and filling the bathtubs with water. The weather had been getting progressively worse, and Daphne continued to be stubborn. I heard the garage door open and Jake slogged through the laundry room looking like a drowned rat.
"I have a feeling we’ll be stuck here for a while. It’s getting pretty bad out there," he reported while he dried his hair with a dish towel. We puttered around the house for a bit, making sure everything was secure and the generator was good to go. After lunch, we hunkered down on the sofa and played the remote war. I won of course.
From its charging station in the bedroom, my phone began playing the Super Mario Brothers theme song. I sprang from the sofa intent on answering it before it went to voicemail. Leaping across the bed with hands outstretched, I grabbed the phone off the nightstand and hit the connect button.
"Hello," I exclaimed, out of breath.
"This is an automated message from Jackson State College. Classes and all school activities have been suspended until further notice due to extreme weather conditions. To repeat this message, press one. Otherwise, disconnect."
I hung up the phone and did a little happy dance. There was a nasty exam scheduled for that afternoon and I was pumped to get out of it, even if it was for just a few extra days. As I did a little twirl, I caught sight of Jake smiling at me in the doorway. His eyes twinkled and he jumped in and joined my dance party.
"I don’t know why we’re dancing, but I like it." I doubled over laughing as he went old-school and pulled out his best running man.
"Snow day!" I said, following it up with a high five. Maybe rain day was more appropriate, but where’s the fun in that?
The rain pelting the windows sounded like someone was throwing pebbles at the corrugated metal. Jake and I went back to the living room and knelt on the loveseat with our arms on the back as I pulled the cord to raise the blinds. The rain was coming down sideways in thick sheets. Lightning lit the gray sky and was followed by a thunderous boom. It was moments like this that I fully appreciated adding surge protection through the electric company. If any of our electronics or appliances kicked the bucket during a storm, they were responsible for replacing them.
The electricity flickered, but it didn’t fail. Overhead, the sound of a helicopter flying low could be heard above the storm. The beast came into view as it traveled directly over the house. It was so low, the windows rattled in their frames. Jake and I gave each other looks of surprise and craned our necks to look up again. It was gone, but three more followed in its wake, flying just as low and fast.
"Where the heck are they rushing off to?" he asked, as if I would know the answer.
Shrugging my shoulders, I mumbled a phonetic sound close enough to an I dunno and jogged to the front windows in time to see them fade to nothing in the storm.
We spent the afternoon cuddled on the sofa watching DVDs. The unusually-heavy air traffic continued in spurts. At one point we were jarred out of TV Land by the sound of an explosion. Running to the front door, we huddled under the porch searching for the cause. Off in the distance, we could make out a plume of black smoke rising into the sky. Unlike inside, we could hear more than the rain and helicopters. Muffled pops could be heard from various directions. I closed my eyes and tried to make out individual sounds above the rain.
"Is someone yelling?" I asked.
"It sounds like it, but I think there’s more than one person."
Our efforts to remain dry under the small covered area were futile, and we squished back into the house with wet socks.
"Let’s see if the news is on. I want to watch the weather and see how things are looking," I said. "Maybe we’ll get lucky and it will peter out or skip us altogether." With Jake on one side and Daphne on the other, I tuned into the local news station.
* * *
Chapter 05
Buried Treasure
"In the midst of what is surely the worst storm Floridians have seen all year, we are getting reports of extreme violence throughout the community. Law enforcement officials recommend all nonessential personnel remain in their homes until what they are calling ‘civil disobedience’ has been contained. We have received news that St. Vincent’s Hospital has been overrun with crazed citizens. Reports state that there has been an outbreak of what medical professionals have determined is a form of the rabies virus. Highly contagious through transmission of saliva and blood, this pathogen has a one hundred percent infection rate and is believed to have originated from a female patient at St. Vincent’s Hospital. The hospital has been placed under quarantine, and we have been asked to direct anyone exhibiting symptoms of the infection to St. Mary’s Hospital on Metro Parkway in Fort Myers.
"We have received reports of similar activity from hospitals along the east coast, reaching as far north as Delaware.
"Early warning signs include fever, lethargy, and respiratory distress following contact with an infected individual. Those in the late stages of infection exhibit tonic-clonic seizures and a catatonic state, followed by severe violent episodes after waking. Folks, I realize this is going to sound crazy, but I have been instructed to tell you that these infected individuals are biting, and subsequently eating, victims. This is not a hoax. Once bitten, victims will become ill, and the infection will consume them wit
hin a matter of hours. If you come into contact with someone infected, make all attempts to isolate yourself and contact the authorities."
* * *
We sat in stunned silence for minutes until Jake broke the quiet. "Um…did he just tell us there is a zombie outbreak going on?" He stared at me and I watched his face go through a litany of emotions from shock to disbelief.
"I think so," I replied, unsure even as I spoke the words. "This is a joke, right?" Daphne had moved to the front door and began sniffing at the bottom corner. She backed away growling as a loud bang on the door jolted us off the sofa, and she began barking wildly. "Jake," I whispered, "I’m scared."
I snatched Daphne into my arms and continued to back away from the door. My heart was pounding in my chest. The fear gripped me, and I suddenly found it difficult to breathe. Over the years, Jake had played tricks on me and joked about my irrational fear of zombies. Was this it? Had my worst nightmare come to fruition? I remember hearing the news last year when a guy in Miami got hopped up on bath salts and ate some other guy’s face. Was this a street drug gone bad?
It was then that we heard it. Above the droning of the wind and rain and the banging on the door, we heard a siren growing louder until it became so loud we were certain that it was nearby. The siren and the banging stopped all at once, and I beat Jake to the peephole in the door. A cruiser had pulled onto the front lawn, its door stood open, and a uniformed officer was standing in front of the car. He was shouting at something I couldn’t see through the tiny hole, and he raised his gun.
"What is it?" Jake asked me.
"It’s a cop. I think there’s someone out there with him. He’s got his weapon pointed at something or someone and he’s yelling at them. I can’t make out what he’s saying."
Jake nudged me out of the way to get a glimpse at the events outside. "This is ridiculous. I can’t see anything. I’m going out there."
I grabbed for him before he could unlock the dead bolt. "Don’t you dare open that door," I snapped at him. Overpowering feelings of fear and anxiety came over me, and I felt myself start to panic. My voice increased to an octave so shrill that I sounded like I’d been sucking helium. "Someone is pointing a gun at us. Why would you give him an easy target? Don’t be an idiot."
"Because," Jake said, "I want to know what the hell is going on. This is still my house, and I want to know why he’s pointing a gun at it." Jake yanked open the front door, the wind picking up the momentum and slamming it against the wall as it opened outward. The opening granted us a full view of the lawn, the cop, and the man approaching him. Daphne was squirming under my arm, growling with a ferocity I’d never heard.
"Stop right there, or I’ll shoot!" yelled the officer. For a minute, I thought he was talking to us. We both froze. But the man walking toward him kept moving, and I realized the gun was trained on him. The officer was visibly shaking. I could see the panic in his eyes all the way across the lawn.
I squeezed past Jake to get a better view of the scene. I hadn’t noticed while looking through the peep-hole, but there were chunks of something stuck in the car’s radiator. I realized it was hair and flesh. The rain caused blood to trail down the grill and end in a pink puddle on the lawn. I let loose a gasp of horror, my hand flying up to cover my mouth and muffle the sound while my eyes strained to take in the detail.
The man was still walking toward the cop. Not really walking, but sort of shuffling along like he was a baby taking his first steps. His arms outstretched, he shambled closer. His back was to Jake and I, and his white polo shirt and jeans were smeared with mud. The gunshot snapped me out of my shock and I screamed. The man stumbled back but regained his balance and kept going. Three more shots rang out in succession, and the man’s head snapped back as he went limp and fell onto the muddy lawn.
The officer lowered his gun, hand trembling, and walked closer to the man lying dead in our yard. He stared down at the body, emotion unreadable, as Jake and I crept closer.
The body lay still, creating a barrier between us and the cop. The top of the downed-man’s head was a mess of bone and shredded brain matter. The eyes, forever open, were clouded white, pupils radiating out with red spiderlike blood vessels, and the skin surrounding them was nearly black and sunken. His flesh was taut and mottled with death. His torso though, that was where I saw the real carnage. The front of the man’s polo shirt had been torn nearly the entire length of its flimsy cotton. It was held together only at the neck band and was saturated with blood. His chest cavity had been ravaged and was empty of vital organs. Flesh was flayed from bone and left his ribs exposed.
I backed away, feeling sick to my stomach, and I couldn’t hold back the vomit. I threw up until I was kneeling on the grass dry heaving stomach acid, one hand pushed into the wet earth to hold me up and the other clutching the dog.
Jake and the cop stood motionless, staring down in disbelief at what had once been a man.
"What’s going on?" Jake asked the cop.
Officer Donnelly, according to the name badge located over his left breast pocket, pulled himself together and said, "You need to get somewhere safe. The main parts of town have been overrun with…whatever this is." He waved his gun hand in the direction of the dead body. "Stay inside, lock your doors, and do not open them for anyone. And if you can’t stay hidden, if they get in, get in your car and drive."
"Where? If town isn’t safe, where can we go?" I was shaking all over as Jake helped me to my feet, and my words came out as a stutter.
The cop looked up at me sullenly. "I don’t know."
He walked back toward his car and was about to say something when we heard a blood-curdling scream coming from down the street. We all whipped around to face the noise and scanned the neighborhood. The screams continued for a few seconds, then nothing. I squinted to see in the distance and could make out a group of three people huddled on the ground in front of a house at the end of the street. I wiped the rain from my eyes and squinted again as the scene came into focus. They were eating someone. Possibly someone we knew. They ripped at their victim like they were digging for buried treasure.
A scream escaped me as I raised my hands to cover my mouth. One of the attackers in the huddled group snapped its head in the air, cocked it to one side, and appeared to be listening. It angled its neck back, and lifted its nose in the sky. A short scream sounded further down the street and the head snapped to the left like a bird seeking prey. The zombie—I couldn’t think of them as anything else—lumbered awkwardly to its feet, and began moving in the direction of the new noise.
The radio squawked from the police car, pulling us all from our rubbernecking trance, and I turned back to Officer Donnelly.
"Watch out!" I screamed.
Four figures had crested the embankment behind him. They were close enough to him that they would be on him in seconds. The first—a female—looked as if she had lost a battle with a wild animal. She wore nothing but, what once had been, a pink negligee. Her lower jaw had been torn from her face. Blood dripped down her neck, staining the negligee, and her tongue, now black, was stuck to the side of her neck, protruding from the place where he lower jaw used to be. She emitted a dry rasping moan as she reached for Donnelly. He managed to get one shot off, taking her down, before the other three were on him.
He turned sharply only to trip and land on the hood of his car. He pled for help as he attempted to scratch his way over the hood to safety. His grip on the gun failed. It fell to the hood like a brick and slid off the front of the car into the mud. One of the monsters managed to get hold of his kicking legs and dragged him back. Jake and I ran toward him, but it was already too late. Officer Donnelly let out a howl of pain as teeth sunk into the meaty skin of his calf. I saw his eyes then, staring straight into mine, begging with an unspoken appeal for help. Jake tried to maneuver toward him, but froze when Donnelly’s nails dug into the paint of the hood, and he disappeared from view as they yanked him to the ground and began to feast.
I stumbled and nearly fell over Jake as I backed away from the grisly scene. My head moved side to side like a yo-yo, and I heard the splash of feet in a puddle to my right. Coming around the house was another one; it was leaning on the house, dragging itself along the stucco, as it walked toward me. One of its arms had been torn off at the elbow and its face was so mangled that I couldn’t decipher gender.
I grabbed Jake’s hand and ran to the front door. I practically dragged him inside before slamming it hard and locking the dead bolt. I slid down to the ground with my back to the door. I was hyperventilating. My vision was blurry and I saw spots. I realized I was sobbing, and Jake had his arms around me, making soft cooing noises to calm me down. He held me close and told me everything would be okay.
I shoved him away, fueled by a panicked rage. "Nothing is okay, Jake. A man just got eaten on our front lawn. There are zombies running around eating people. So tell me, how the fuck will this be okay?"
Pushing him aside, I stood up and looked through the peephole. "Oh, God, no," I whispered. A pack of them were heading straight for the door, trailed by a reanimated Officer Donnelly. The lower half of his leg had been ripped off, and the bone looked like someone had picked it clean. He dragged himself across the lawn. Daphne started to bark again, only this time she focused on the back of the house. I picked her up and turned to see a man standing at the sliding glass door. He didn’t try to open it with the handle. He just kept hitting the glass with his head, leaving smears of blood across the clean glass.
Spider web cracks appeared in the glass and spread with each impact. At the same time, the group at the front door was causing the door frame to bow with the sheer force of their weight.