by Jones, K. J.
“Smuggling then,” she said.
His dark eyes only looked at her.
“Be careful, Julio. Y’all are in dangerous waters.”
“Take care of yourselves,” Julio responded.
Chapter Two
Tuesday
1.
At the campus library, Phebe splurged on a latte. She sat at a table just outside the coffee house area, still within smell of its tempting aromas. Opening her research books on the table in preparation, she glanced around. All the students at the other tables watched things on laptops and smart phones, earbuds in their ears. Some sharing earbuds. No one studied. They seemed excited by what they were viewing.
A hand landed on her shoulder.
She looked up to see the bright and smiling face of her other roommate, Virginian Rebecca Hightower.
“Did I scare you?”
“No, Becks.” Phebe calmed her heartbeat.
Rebecca sat at the table. “Jumpy a bit?”
“I’m fine.”
“Sure. Heard you went to the student health center. What’s wrong?”
“How did you hear that?”
Rebecca shrugged. “A friend of mine saw you the other day. I haven’t seen you since to ask.”
“Did your friend put it on Facebook?”
Rebecca chuckled. “No. Just texted me.”
“I’m fine. It was therapy. Not medical.”
“The thing that happened on the Commons?”
“Yeah. But I’m fine.”
“You always say that.” Rebecca looked around. “Wow. They’re all watching that stuff online.” She turned back to Phebe. “Have you been watching the videos?”
“No. Why would I?”
“Zombies through the South. That’s what people are calling it. Have you seen them?”
“No. I’m too busy.”
“Isn’t this all crazy? Aren’t you concerned at all? I’m starting to freak out a little.”
“I’m concerned about my thesis corrections. You know, they already set a date for my oral defense. I’m not even sure about this one part of my literature research.”
“There is life beyond your doctorate, Phebe.” Rebecca took out a compact and checked her makeup.
“Not as far as I’m concerned. My life is over if I fail. I’ll have to jump off the River Walk downtown. The Cape Fear River currents are strong there. It’ll be fast.”
“Put much pressure on yourself? You’ll be old before your time.” Applying lipstick while viewing herself, Rebecca pouted to the mirror for a second. Lipstick snapped shut. She took out a pouch of vitamins and proceeded to down them with water she carried.
Phebe cringed, watching horse pills going down her roommate’s throat.
Finished, Rebecca rubbed the back of her neck with a scowl. Then smiled as usual. “People are saying it’s the start of the zombie apocalypse.” She chuckled.
“They’re dumb asses.”
"Mais oui." Rebecca was a French language grad student.
Her face suddenly looked funny, not as happy. She slouched, something the workout maniac rarely did.
“What's wrong?”
“I don't know. I've been feeling crappy all day.” She felt her forehead with the palm of her hand. “Merde!” Phebe believed it was French for shit. “I'm hot.”
“Let me see.” Phebe reached over and pressed the inside of her wrist to Rebecca’s forehead. She felt hot. “You got a fever.”
“Merde! I've got a freaking oral report to give tomorrow. I work at the restaurant all week. I can't miss work. I just thought it was cold outside and not me.” Sunshine didn't look at all happy. She glared around at the library patrons. Then rubbed the back of her neck again. “My neck keeps aching. I feel like crap.”
“The flu.” Phebe moved her chair away. She pulled her shirt collar over her nose to act as a mask. “Keep away.” She pointed at Rebecca’s face and used a raspy Medieval voice. “Unclean. You have the plague.”
“Thanks for the nurturing support.”
Phebe pulled the shirt collar down and acted like a normal person again. She drew her tasty drink away from the unclean plague girl.
Rebecca rubbed her hand. “For like two days, my hand keeps having this stupid spasm right there on the edge.” She showed it.
A twitch was visible under the skin.
“That cat bite is barely a scar,” said Phebe.
She examined her hand, where the muscle twitched. “Yeah, it is. Wasn't much anyway.”
“You're falling apart.”
“Sacré bleu! I'm going home.” She began to gather her stuff. “Screw class. I'm on the clock until this gets worse. Freaking flu.”
“Puke in the bathroom downstairs.”
She had been pulling on her jacket when Phebe said that. She stopped and gave a sour look. “I suppose someone who works with dead people wouldn't have a great bedside manner.”
“Nope. You’re considered weird if you comfort skeletons.”
“You're hopeless, Pheebs.”
“Yup. Hope you feel better. We’ll get you chicken soup.”
“See you later … if I live.”
Phebe called after her, “There's positive thinking.” She pulled out her phone and texted Syanna about Rebecca’s health, asking her to pick up chicken soup.
2.
Young blogger Mullen followed emergency response vehicles in his hatchback. He wove in and out of South College traffic with them.
The police scanner told of action going on near 17th Street.
“You sure we should do this, dude?” his camera man riding shotgun asked.
“Of course. This is what is going to push our channel over the top, man. We’ll post it right on YouTube.”
“It’s like every cop in Wilmington is being called to this.”
Three more police cars joined the emergency vehicle convoy ahead of them. Mullen pulled back to let them into the line. He didn’t want to attract attention to the fact he was following.
“Do you really think the mainstream news is going to cover what is really happening?” Mullen asked. “Have they so far? Flu and drugs, is that really what’s going on?”
The hatchback followed the convoy west to an older neighborhood. The houses were mostly one-story bungalows with front porches. The emergency vehicles stopped at a run-down house. A blue barricade stopped traffic from entering. Ambulances waited just beyond.
“You see that. Get the camera. That’s a SWAT truck. They got snipers here.”
“Mullen,” said the cameraman. “We’re totally going to get arrested.”
“We have to report what’s really happening.”
“I can’t get arrested. My mom will throw me out of the house. I’m out, man. Sorry. This is too big.”
The cameraman bailed from the car and ran down the road.
“Fine. If you got no balls.” Mullen took up the camera. “I’ll do this myself.”
Out of the car, he hit record on the camera. He approached the barricade.
Mullen narrated, “I’m coming up on this quarterback-looking EMT and his partner who’s missed the seventies with his mustache.”
Matt Gleason turned around, seeing a young guy coming up on them with a camera. His ambulance partner, Rick, known as Mustache Rick for his bushy mustache, sneered.
“What’s this guy doing?” exclaimed Mustache Rick.
“Recording, apparently,” said Matt. He had a bit of a hangover from staying on the Molly too late. After Mazy and Jimbo left, he hung out with Peter and Julio, avoiding any questioning about the earlier dispute.
Gunshots rang out from the house. When Matt looked back, the kid disappeared.
Mullen cut through the backyard of a neighboring house. He climbed over a dividing fence overgrown with winter dormant vines. If he leaned forward with the camera, he got the shot.
On a rickety porch of the rundown house, an old black guy held a sawed-off shotgun to the head of a kneeling white guy. The barely dressed
white guy wore muzzle and arm restrains. SWAT approached the porch.
“Put down the gun,” a SWAT officer ordered.
“You don’t understand,” the old black man yelled. “This is a demon. He need to be destroyed or he’ll make more demons. He gonna kill.”
“Put down the gun!”
The white man on his knees struggled. The old black man held him well bound.
Mullen’s camera recorded it all.
On the rooftop across the street, SWAT Officer Ben Raven held the black man’s throat in the cross hairs of his scope. He aimed at the apricot, as snipers called it. A part of the throat that opposed the brainstem. A shot to the brainstem meant instant death: drop where they stood. With a calculation of wind and bullet drop over the distance, he aimed slightly to the left of the black man’s throat. But the order hadn’t come.
He scanned through the scope and saw a young guy with a camera hanging off a fence, recording the scene. Scanning further, he saw the ambulances waiting. Back around, uniformed police officers aimed their weapons from behind car doors in front of the house. He returned to the target.
In his earpiece, the order came to take out the target.
“Copy that,” Ben said.
Aiming slightly left, he smoothly pulled the trigger. A familiar buck against his shoulder, the bullet launched through a sound repressor. A microsecond later, the bullet entered the old black man’s throat. Animated one split second, dead where he stood the next. Blood splattered behind him on the house siding and a small pink mist around him. The shotgun dropped from his hands, then his body fell sideways onto the floor.
Mullen startled at the sudden death of the old man.
SWAT approached the porch and hostage. One man in the lead kicked the sawed-off shotgun away. In home raid formation, they moved into the house. Uniformed police crossed the yard and stepped onto the porch. One of them released the white man from his muzzle and restraints.
The white man rose up. He lunged forward and bit the cop on the cheek. Chaos broke out. The cop screamed. Other cops beat at the white man with batons. Legs. Back. He released his victim. Then lunged at the next cop.
Mullen caught it all on camera.
Ben Raven followed the white man in his sights and waited for the order. The wild man attacked one cop after another.
“C’mon. Let’s end this.” He said into his radio, “Awaiting orders.”
“Take him out,” a voice said through Ben’s N-ear piece.
Mullen watched as the side of the white man’s head blasted out. The crazy man went lights out. He dropped where he stood, on top of a cop.
Matt Gleason and his partner came in to treat the wounded. Matt looked around at the carnage. Cops sat on the ground, holding fabric to bleeding wounds.
He applied compression to a man’s torn open face. SWAT came out of the house, pale. One bowed and vomited on the lawn.
“There are bodies all over this place,” the SWAT leader said.
“Explains the stench,” said Mustache Rick.
Mullen recorded the paramedics treating the cops.
3.
On the other side of town, Mazy Baptiste responded to a call. A disturbance from a homeless man in a business complex. Seeing no activity from her cruiser, she parked and locked. On foot, she searched the business complex for the homeless man. A tiny body camera attached to her front. She wore a bulletproof vest under her uniform shirt. Her gun belt contained mace and a Taser, besides her service sidearm and cuffs. But since the call said nothing of gunshots or violence, she kept them stowed.
Searching the complex, she spotted a man in an outdoor stairwell. He was shirtless, crouched over an unconscious or dead man.
“Sir,” she authoritatively bellowed. “Wilmington police. Show me your hands.”
The man did not respond.
She repeated, to no avail, so she moved in.
“Wilmington police officer.” She ran closer and banked around to get a better view.
She skidded to a stop.
The man was eating the other man’s face.
Mazy pulled her service weapon. “Get up and away from him right now. Right. Now.”
He kept eating.
“I will open fire!”
He leaned back on his feet and chewed on something he bit off the other man’s face.
“Get away from him,” she shouted.
The man looked at her. His face caused her heartbeat to skip. Eyes black as night. Mouth profusely drooled. And nose ran with gunk. The movies Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days Later, and Quarantine flashed through her mind. The man certainly didn’t look dead. That made him infected, and in the movies, the infected ran.
He stood, black eyes staring at her.
She pulled the trigger.
Her bullet struck his leg, a good, lawful shot.
But he only jerked with the impact, then continued forwards towards her. Now dragging his wounded leg.
“You gotta be kidding me.” She yelled, “Stop where you are!”
He did not. She fired.
The bullet ripped into his right shoulder. Recovering from impact, he moved faster towards her. He gave off a screech that bounced off the cement walls.
She pulled the trigger again. And again. He didn’t go down. Totally panicked. She kept firing. Until he dropped.
She reloaded and hurried in, keeping her gun aimed at him. There was no weapon to knock from his hands. His mouth had been the weapon.
She kept watch of his mouth as she bent and checked the other man’s pulse. Still alive. He lacked half a face, including an eyeball, but he was alive. On her shoulder radio, she called for an ambulance.
She looked up at the CCTV camera covering the outside stairwell.
4.
Police officer shoots cannibal zombie.
It was growing viral on the internet by midnight. Mullen had barely uploaded his edited footage when the news broke.
Wilmington Zombie, another site stated. Watch the CCTV.
Upstairs, his parents were in bed, sick with the flu. Their yappy silky terrier barked at something, probably the wind.
Chapter Three
Wednesday
1.
Banging.
Peter jerked awake and seized a .45 caliber handgun laying on the nightstand. As he hurried out of bed, throbbing shot up his leg. He proceeded aft of the trawler, out of his bedroom and up the steps to the salon.
“Sully.” He recognized the voice of Chris Higgins and relaxed. “Wake your ass up, man. Daylight's burning.”
He unlocked the door and whipped it open.
Chris wore a gray security guard uniform that made his tall, defensive lineman build look even bigger. He was coming off graveyard shift at an extended stay hotel. At the ends of his hands hung plastic shopping bags, and on his face, a big stupid grin.
Behind Chris, the blinding morning sun. Squawking seagulls. A brown pelican stood on the boat’s stern, watching rascal Dock Cat below.
“Got you your shit.” Chris lifted the bags.
“Thanks,” Peter mumbled, heading towards the kitchen. The gun clunked down on the counter. He rumpled his hair more and yawned, before yanking the glass pitcher out of the coffee maker and shoving it under the water tap.
Chris dropped the bags on the teak floorboards in front of the stove. He went to the refrigerator where he retrieved a beer. Holding the bottle to the counter edge, he knocked the flat of his hand against its top and the cap flew off. The cap hit the floor, where Chris left it.
“Don't do that!” Peter examined the counter edge, running his fingers along the fresh scar. “Do you know how long it took me to sand and seal this wood?”
Chris exhaled with long anticipated satisfaction from the pull on the cold hobs. He threw himself on a bench seat at the table.
“Were you born in a barn?” demanded Peter.
“That a redneck crack?”
“I don't know. Are all of you born in barns?” While he put the groceries awa
y, Peter retrieved the cap from the floor and threw it out.
“Ha ha,” Chris said wryly. “Feeling high and mighty, being a Boston Yankee.”
“We aren’t born in barns.” Peter heaped scoops of coffee into the coffee maker. “Maybe born in crack houses, but we’re thin on the ground with barns.”
Chris spotted a Xbox controller, with its ergonomic shape and colored buttons, and pulled it across the table to him. He pushed the green button, but nothing happened on the flat screen TV. The yellow button, then the red. “How you got this rigged now?”
“I'm not telling you.”
“Why not?”
“'Cause you'll break in and play my Xbox on my TV without me.”
“How can it be without you? You don't go nowhere. I even do your food shopping.”
All set, Peter pressed the On button.
“How you got this rigged, Sul?”
“You are so single minded. Guess you can't hold more than one thought in your head at a time.” He smirked, expecting an insulting retort.
Chris stared off as he drank, one pull after another, until the bottle was empty. “Chuck me another.”
Peter retrieved a bottle and used a bottle opener to pop the cap. He walked over and handed it to his friend. “What's with you?”
“Ain't nothing.” Too quick, too dismissive. Something was wrong.
The first cup ready, he poured the hot, dark brown liquid into a red-and-white Red Sox mug. He sipped, blew on it and tried to sip again. Sitting across the table, he tried to figure out the cause of his friend’s problem through the usual suspects. Nine times out of ten, the cause was Chris's ex-wife. “What did Amber do now?”
Chris pulled out his smart phone and purposely laid it on the table. He pointed to it several times. “Ain't a word from my kids. They supposed to be back from the mountains days ago. Not a dang word!” His big fist clenched tight like a pink potato. He banged the fleshy underside on the tabletop.