The Darkest Part of the Night

by David Spell

  “Come on! You guys need to speed it up. Get those pizzas ready. They’re almost out up front.” The loud commands came from Richard, Terrell’s supervisor. He was short, fat, and usually had the remnants of his lunch or snack on his shirt. He was always telling them to work faster. While he normally stayed in his office, he would come out several times an hour to check on his employees. In fact, the only time Richard came out was to yell at the staff about something. He never offered to help and he never had a kind or encouraging word for anyone. He just issued a few orders and then retreated back to his office. Today was going to be the last time that Hill had to deal with Richard and his disrespect.

  Terrell glanced at the clock on the wall and saw that it was time. He was working in one of the many concessions booths that were inside the stadium. Amir had instructed him to use the vials of the virus at 1330 hours and then make his escape. He had formulated his plan and knew exactly what he was going to do.

  The two instruments of infection were going to be pizzas. A pepperoni and a cheese pizza would be responsible for so much pain and death. Hill was wearing plastic gloves as required by the health regulations. Today, he was glad to have them on.

  He felt his heart start beating faster as he removed the pepperoni pizza from the hot oven and set it on the counter to cut it. The vial was in his left hand and the pizza cutter was in his right. He poured the deadly liquid onto the hot pizza in a circular motion and then quickly and professionally cut it up to be sold by the slice to hungry fans.

  Terrell repeated the procedure with the cheese pizza and then handed it to Shantella to take it’s place next to the pepperoni. Richard made another appearance to walk around the small concessions area, making sure that his workers were taking care of their many customers. He barked at Shantella and Terrell to keep up with the pizzas. After a few minutes, he disappeared back into his small office. I got something for you, Richard, Terrell thought.

  Step one was complete. He had used up his two vials of the virus. Now, it was time to make his exit. Hill looked around and saw that everyone was busy, either preparing food or serving customers. Both of the two pizzas that he had just put prepared were half gone. He wasn’t sure how long it took for the virus to take affect but it would probably be good to finish his business and leave.

  Terrell casually walked over to Richard’s office and tried the knob. Unlocked. He opened the door and slipped inside. The pregame ceremonies were showing on the television on the wall. The short man was scrolling through Facebook on his computer. He sensed movement and turned to see Hill pointing a small pistol at him.

  Richard’s eyes grew wide and he said loudly, “What do you think you are doing, Terrell?”

  Terrell swung the gun and cracked him on the side of the head, stunning him. “Shut up, Richard,” he snarled. “Give me your car keys and your wallet.”

  He started to get up and said, “You can’t do…”

  His words were cut off by another strike to the face with the gun. “Now, Richard. You disrespected me for the last time.”

  He was stunned and bloody. The second strike had ripped his right cheek open but he managed to pull out his keys and wallet and gave them to Terrell, who shoved them into his pockets.

  “Turn around and put your head on the desk,” Hill commanded.

  There was no more fight left in the man and he complied. Terrell grabbed one of the cushions that Richard was sitting on to give him a boost and laid it against the little man’s head. He pressed the Makarov pistol against the pillow and pulled the trigger, shooting him behind the right ear. The pillow muffled most of the noise and prevented any blood splatter. When he stepped away, the body fell to the floor underneath the desk.

  Hill decocked his pistol and slid it back into his waistband. He was about to turn away when he saw a blue bank bag laying on Richard’s desk. A quick check showed a stack of cash. This was what had already come in from the day’s sales. Richard should have locked it up but he hadn’t gotten around to it. Terrell shoved what looked like several hundred dollars into his pocket.

  He left the office, closing and locking the door behind him. He recovered the backpack that he had left in the storage room. Terrell walked out of the food stand without saying anything and headed towards one of the side exits.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Sucked into the Nightmare

  Georgia Square Mall, Athens, 1330 hours

  Corporal Matt Parker readied his AR-15 rifle. He was preparing to lead a four-man team into the mall. One of the other officers also had a rifle and another was holding a pump shotgun. The fourth officer drew his sidearm, a Glock 22, and held it by his side. A second four officer team would make entry, also on the upper level, on the far end of the mall and the two teams would converge on the food court. At least, that was their plan.

  Lieutenant Anderson had cancelled his plans to attend the football game, thrown on his uniform, and was driving with blue lights and siren activated towards the mall. He called the Chief of Police, Tom Morgan, and told him that he thought they had three officers down and possibly dead. Everything he had heard so far sounded like a bio-terror attack with the zombie virus. The Chief would have to be the one who requested help from the Department of Homeland Security.

  Chief Morgan considered himself cautious. His men considered him indecisive and more a politician than a cop. Either way, he wasn’t about to call the feds until he had something concrete to tell them. He told Anderson to call him when they knew something more definitive. Even though three officers were reported to be down and possibly dead or seriously injured, the chief wanted that verified as well. He told Anderson that he would be enroute to the scene but he lived an hour away.

  The lieutenant knew that no amount of arguing would change Chief Morgan’s mind. He was the consummate politician who was slow to make a decision until he was sure about the outcome. The sooner Anderson got to the mall and confirmed what Parker had told him, the sooner they could get some help from the CDC. He had been following the news and knew that the response teams from the Centers for Disease Control had stopped some bio-terror attacks and kept others from spreading.

  There had been no further contact with any of the officers inside of the mall. Approximately two hundred citizens had managed to escape. Surprisingly, only a few of them had been bitten. Ambulances had transported seven possibly infected people to the closest hospital. There was no telling how many other shoppers were trapped inside or who had gotten too close to the action and were now zombies.

  Parker looked at the other three officers. He had ordered them to put on a jacket if they had it. They were going to need all the protection that they could get inside the mall. He had read all of the bulletins that the CDC, FBI, and the DHS had sent out. This situation sounded like the zombie virus. He found it hard to believe that terrorists would drive all the way out to Athens to launch an attack, but all the indicators pointed in that direction.

  “If this is the zombie virus,” Matt briefed his men, “we’re going to have to shoot some people. If we get bit, it’s over. There’s no cure for this and I don’t want to turn into a zombie. If anybody has a problem with shooting these things, you can stay outside.

  “If we’re attacked, let’s try and challenge them but the main thing is to not get bit. Let’s take our time and make head shots. I have point. Everybody stack on me. Let’s try and get to our officers but remember, we may to have to shoot our guys if they’ve been infected.”

  Matt’s team entered the mall and moved towards the area where they could look down onto the lower level. It was strangely quiet inside. That is, until a mall security guard stepped around the corner and came running towards them. They could hear him growling and saw that his white shirt was covered with blood and gore. His mouth was opening and closing and blood was dripping from his chin.

  The security guard was closing the distance fast. Corporal Parker challenged him, “Stop! Don’t come any closer!”

  Now the zombie was les
s than ten feet away and not slowing down. The gunshot was deafening inside the mall. Parker’s shot caught him in the forehead, dropping him at the team’s feet.

  “Good shot, Corporal,” one of the officers said.

  They watched the body of the zombie, not sure what to do next. Parker spoke up. “We need to keep moving. There are probably a lot more of these guys in here.”

  He told the dispatcher that they had shot a person who appeared to be infected with the zombie virus. The team stepped around the body and started forward again. A collective sound of a group growling seemed to be getting closer. As the team got to where they could see down to the lower level, they saw at least thirty infected people standing below them. Others were shuffling their way from the direction of the food court.

  “Look, there’s Cooper and Sarge,” one of the officers exclaimed.

  The two bloody, infected police officers were in the middle of the group of zombies. Everyone in the pack was growling and their mouths were opening and snapping closed. They all had various open wounds on their arms, faces, and necks. Their heads all jerked upward when they heard the officer’s comment and started moving towards the stairs. Some tripped as they tried to climb the steps but others had no trouble at all climbing to the upper level where police officers waited.

  The stairs were thirty feet from Parker’s team. He picked up movement out of the corner of his eye and started to swing his rifle over. It was the second police team. They had entered further down and were opposite of Matt’s team, also on the upper level.

  Parker’s first thought was to start picking the infected off. His men held the tactical advantage and could start safely engaging the infected people. But, what if they weren’t all infected? What if they could somehow help them, especially his fellow officers that were down there? What if they weren’t all zombies? He didn’t want to kill a bunch of people that didn’t need to be killed. And, two of those guys were his friends.

  He yelled over the side of the rail to the mass of bodies below him. “Police Department! Stop! Don’t go any further. Everybody get down on the ground. Sarge, Cooper, can you hear me?”

  His words, if anything, seemed to create more of a frenzy from the crowd. The growling got louder and they seemed to try harder to get up the stairs.

  Matt swallowed hard. “Get ready to start shooting,” he told his team. “When they get to the top of the steps, start picking them off.”

  He waved to the team on the other side. “Start shooting down into them and try to thin them out,” he yelled.

  Gunshots rang out as the officers began firing at the infected. Ten of them had managed to get to the top of the steps. Once they got to the top level, they all started towards the police, with four of the zombies breaking into a run. They began to drop as bullets and buckshot impacted their heads. Other infected pushed towards the police after negotiating the stairs.

  The officer with the shotgun, Miguel Sanchez, fired his last shell of buckshot at a running zombie, Officer Cooper. The blast missed his head but caught him in the shoulder, slowing him down momentarily. As the officer fumbled with shotgun shells, trying to reload his weapon, the infected officer leapt on him knocking him to the ground. He missed his neck but sunk his teeth into Miguel’s face.

  One of the other team members kicked Cooper in the side, knocking him off of his friend. He then put two rounds into the zombie’s head. Corporal Parker saw that Sanchez’s face was bleeding profusely where the skin had been ripped open. He pulled the officer to his feet and shoved him towards the exit.

  “Get out to one of the ambulances,” he ordered.

  The three remaining officers turned their attention to the growing swarm of infected people coming up the stairs. The team on the other side was still picking off a few, but they had to quit shooting because the zombies were getting closer to the police.

  What had originally been around thirty zombies was now over fifty. The noise of the gunshots had them stepping on each other at they tried to get at the police on the upper level. The officers had shot at least twenty but now they were down to three officers on their side of the mall.

  The other team of four officers started running towards Parker and his team. There was a scream of pain from another one of Corporal Parker’s men. Matt had paused to reload his empty rifle. He looked over and saw that Sanchez had not made it out of the mall. He had become infected after getting bit and had come back to bite Officer Jeff Patterson on the neck. Jeff continued to scream as he tried to push Miguel away but his teeth were digging deeper into the side of his neck.

  Matt’s remaining two officers turned to look at their partner. Twenty more growling zombies had made it to the top of the stairs and were surging towards them. Patterson fell to the ground and stopped screaming as blood continued pouring out of the wounds on his neck. The corporal started towards his teammate but there was nothing that he could do for him. He shot Sanchez in the head and then saw the large group was almost to his men.

  “Pull back!” Parker yelled.

  Corporal Parker’s two surviving officers started backing up but they had no chance. They were both knocked to the ground and quickly ripped apart. Matt was shooting them in the head as fast as he could pull the trigger. More of the infected got to the top of the stairs and charged him. He was making good shots but there were just too many of them. Parker turned to run but was grabbed by his infected sergeant and a Hispanic man wearing a UGA sweatshirt and pulled to the floor. Within seconds, he was dead.

  The second team of officers stood transfixed twenty feet behind the remains of their friends. They all began firing into the swarm. Now that the officers were down, they weren’t worried about hitting one of them by mistake.

  They were so focused on eliminating all of the infected in front of them and in getting some vengeance for their friends, they never saw the four infected men and the two infected women who came up from behind them. These zombies had come upstairs further down the mall and were also drawn to the noise of the shots. The four officers never heard the growling because they were shooting so fast. The officers were overpowered within seconds.

  In less than ten minutes, eight more police officers had been killed and infected by the virus.

  Parking lot, Sanford Stadium, 1340 hours

  Terrell found Richard’s black Ford Explorer in the employee parking lot. His heart was pounding inside his chest. Strangely, killing Richard and infecting two pizzas with the bio-terror virus had not bothered him. As he was leaving, though, he saw a middle-aged black man assaulting a black woman. Both were clad in Bulldog fan gear. They were standing at one of the many high tables in the pavilion area at the top of the steps leading up from the mid-field seating area. Many people would stop here and eat the food they had just purchased before going back to their seats.

  As Hill was passing by, making his way to the exit, he heard a growl and saw the man grab the victim, probably his wife, and dig his teeth into her neck. She began screaming and flailing her arms and he saw the blood began to spray. One of her arms swept across the table and knocked a paper plate and a half-eaten piece of pizza towards him. The pizza landed at Terrell’s feet.

  Several fans jumped in to try and save the woman. The infected man quickly turned his attention to other victims and bit a young white man who was trying to help. It was all he could do to keep from running but Hill kept walking quickly towards the exit. The sound of growling and yelling increased behind him and he felt a powerful sense of relief when he finally got to the parking lot.

  Not surprisingly, Richard’s vehicle was a mirror of the man. There were empty fast-food wrappers, pizza boxes, and soft drink bottles scattered throughout the interior. It even smelled like Richard. Well, you can’t argue with free, Terrell thought.

  He put the key in the ignition and started it up. The gas gauge showed less than a quarter tank. Thanks, Richard. You stuck it to me one last time, he thought. Let’s see how much money you have for me. Terrell flipped open the de
ad man’s wallet and found a hundred and twenty-seven dollars and several credit cards. He would count the rest of the money later.

  His first stop was a convenience store on the edge of town. He pulled out one of Richard’s visa cards and inserted it into the gas dispenser and filled the tank. The card worked without a hitch. After getting gas, he walked inside and bought a hundred dollars worth of food, water, and beer. The credit card worked again and Hill was soon heading out of Athens towards the interstate.

  University of Georgia, near Sanford Stadium, 1345 hours

  Chuck, Rebecca, Melanie and Brian paused for pictures in front of the stadium. Sanford Stadium is one of the most iconic stadiums in all of college football. It first opened in 1929 and after many renovations over the years, it is one of the largest in America, seating almost one hundred thousand fans for the University of Georgia’s home games.

  This was a special day and they all sensed it. Chuck and Rebecca posed with their arms around each other as Melanie snapped the shot. Chuck got a picture of her and Brian. Melanie and Chuck posed for a photo together. Another Bulldog fan offered to take a group shot of the four of them.

  Sanford Drive was packed with fans hanging out before they entered the stadium. The atmosphere was festive and everyone was excited to see their Bulldogs play. The Tate Student Center was right across the street from the stadium and many of the faithful were going in to get something to eat or a cup of coffee before the kickoff. Some fans and students who didn’t have tickets would watch the game on one of the many televisions inside the student center.

  “I really like her, Daddy,” Melanie told Chuck. Rebecca and Brian had taken a few steps away and were talking. He was telling her a little about his family.