Primus Unleashed

by Amber Wyatt

  Things did not go according to plan, possibly due to the amount of alcohol they had drunk beforehand in order to bolster their nerves. Nick and Anthony had both been bitten trying to get the damn thing out from beneath the freezer it was trapped under. Then they had panicked and all jumped into Qureshi’s truck to drive straight to the IDRC to get the antidote.

  Qureshi was not even sure that such a thing as an antidote existed, but Nick was screaming that of course there was, there was a cook who worked in his sister’s shop who had been bitten, and who had got the antidote and been cured. Nick had seen the scar of the bite on his hand. And Qureshi did remember something vaguely from the Galleria footage, showing that doctor guy with a gun and hypodermic syringe. Anthony was not contributing to the discussion. He was shaking and sweating and rolling his eyes. Nick and Qureshi had looked at each other and then they had stopped the truck, and Nick had helped him pin Anthony down and tie his hands together, just in case.

  The remainder of the drive to the IDRC did not go smoothly, and was punctuated by a great deal more cursing, screaming and yet another stop by the side of the road. By the time they arrived, both Nick and Anthony were tied up in the cargo bed and Qureshi was the only non-zombie in the truck. The clerk at the IDRC paid him four thousand dollars on the spot for both of his former friends. And Qureshi realized that he was sitting on a potential gold-mine.

  In an unusual moment of maturity, he decided not to spend the reward money on a massive shopping spree. Instead, impressed with his own newfound sense of responsibility, Qureshi made the decision to spend virtually every penny of his windfall at the tactical shop just around the corner from the ice-cream parlor. He considered this expenditure to be an investment in his new business scheme. Qureshi bought dozens of restraints and gags, a boar spear with a strong cross-guard halfway up the shaft, a heavy-duty net gun (probably the most expensive purchase), and the most important item for his business model, an extendable taser.

  That same night he claimed his first victim, one of Marisa’s most unpleasant and aggressive stalkers. A five-foot nine, two hundred and ten pound, forty-nine-year-old, diabetic dentist on his second divorce and his second coronary bypass, who thought that he had the right to touch whatever women he damn well wanted to, and who refused to take ‘no’ for an answer. The dentist had been in the car park behind the bikini bar, waiting for Marisa to finish work. He got Qureshi instead.

  The taser worked like a dream, but Qureshi nearly gave himself a hernia loading the bulky, limp body into the back of his truck. As an unexpected bonus he suddenly understood that he also now had access to his victim’s house and car. Qureshi made nearly forty thousand dollars from the valuables in the house, and from selling the dentist’s BMW to a chop-shop owned by his buddy Carter. In comparison, the two-thousand-dollar bounty for turning him into a zombie seemed like coffee money.

  Still, two grand is two grand, thought Qureshi. In truth, the actual process of pushing his victims into biting range of his pet zombie made him feel quite queasy, but he reminded himself that the whole purpose of the exercise was to stop them from ever bothering Marisa again. And if he simply robbed them and let them go, they would just return to the bikini bar. If he killed them, then the process of getting rid of the bodies was a major complication, full of the kind of overlooked and unintentional errors that got murderers caught and convicted by CSI. But the IDRC, ironically, was the perfect place to get rid of bodies. As long as your bodies were the right kind of ‘dead’, they asked no questions, expected no answers, and the bodies disappeared without a trace.

  Over the next six months Qureshi delivered thirty-eight zombies to the IDRC, and Marisa loved the fact that he made sure that anyone who ever hassled her, never came back to the bar. He also sold Carter a Jaguar, six BMWs, three Porsches and two Range Rovers. The rest of the cars he left at the owners’ houses, so as to avoid drawing too much attention to himself. But he helped himself to their collections of limited-edition Rolex watches, their golf clubs, cameras, high class booze and whatever else he could cherry-pick from their invariably unoccupied homes. In total he had made over a million dollars in cash.

  However, he had started to worry that he was pushing his luck. In a second, uncharacteristic outburst of maturity, he had decided to shut his money-making scheme down. This was his last delivery. In the cargo bed of his truck behind him were two zombies. One was his last victim, a middle-aged geography teacher, who was hassling not just Marisa, but three other girls at the bar. The second zombie was the original one that he had caught that first night with Nick and Anthony, the owner of the ice-cream parlor herself. Thinking that he should take some professional pride in his last job, he had also bagged them up in the government-issue body-bags, just like Taylor had asked. However, he had not managed to get a gag on to the woman. Fuck it, it’s not worth the risk. The bitch damn near managed to bite me! Besides it’s those guys’ job to deal with these things anyway.

  In truth, Qureshi would be glad to be rid of the monster. There was a dark intelligence behind those eyes that was creeping him out lately. In fact, on at least a couple of occasions he had actually caught her trying to escape from her constraints. The last time she had nearly got her hands free. So, for a number of reasons, it was with a feeling of profound relief that he went through the familiar security checks at the entrance to the IDRC, drove around to the service entrance, and pulled up for the last time inside the red painted box next to the loading bay.

  He looked up in his rear-view mirror. An ambulance had followed him all the way up from the highway, come into the IDRC behind him, and also pulled into the loading area. Two techs in full biohazard suits waved it into a neighboring parking lot. He wondered idly what kind of delivery they were making, but he did not really care. His days of dealing with the IDRC were over as far as he was concerned.

  Taylor waited for him, as usual, clipboard in hand. Unusually though, he was not wearing a biohazard suit. Instead he was simply wearing a white lab coat over normal street clothes.

  Qureshi hopped out of his cab, and helped an anonymous tech pull the body bags out of the back of his truck and on to trolleys, whereupon the other man wheeled them both off to place them next to a gurney with an identical body bag that had come from the ambulance. The ambulance driver was arguing with the other techs, trying to get them to sign some form so that he could leave.

  Qureshi gave the driver a friendly wave, and turned back to his Raptor, feeling a contagious good cheer, which evaporated quickly as a squad of black-clad soldiers in full tactical gear suddenly ran out from behind the decontamination bay. They spread out around his Raptor, with each man aiming a taser at him.

  “Taylor?” Qureshi asked, raising his hands slowly. “What’s going on, buddy?”

  “Mr. Qureshi, we know what you have been up to. You have been a very bad man.” Taylor shook his finger at Qureshi. “And now, unfortunately for you, it is time for you to join your victims here in our cells.” The fat man smiled evilly, “Don’t worry, these men have orders to take you alive. We wouldn’t want to waste a potential research subject after all.”

  They have orders not to kill me? That’s interesting, thought Qureshi. That might buy me a few seconds. “It’s a shame, Taylor. Because today I actually did you a favor and brought in a female zombie, just like you always wanted. And she’s gorgeous too.”

  Taylor’s mouth opened stupidly, and in that moment of distraction, Qureshi struck. He had had a great deal of practice over the last six months, in slipping the extending taser prod out of his jacket sleeve and Taylor was taken completely by surprise. Qureshi jammed it into the greasy folds of the other man’s neck and squeezed the trigger. Taylor squawked like a chicken going into a blender and toppled over rigidly, with all of his limbs in spasm.

  In one swift leap, Qureshi bounced back into the cab of his truck and switched on the engine. You should have waited until I closed the door, you fuckers! His window was still rolled down though, so he kept ducked down
as low as possible, while he slammed the gear stick into reverse, spun the steering wheel and floored the accelerator. He heard shouts from the soldiers as the Raptor surged backwards and then suddenly there was a huge bang, and he was thrown back dazed in his seat. Fuck! I must have hit the ambulance. That was his last conscious thought. Qureshi was still groggily trying to shift the gear stick, when the Lazarus trooper leaned in through the window above him. Then there was a bright flash of pain as the taser hit him in the back of the neck.

  Corporal Avis swore, and helped the other men to drag the bounty hunter out of his truck and put him in restraints on the ground. That nearly turned into a total clusterfuck. He gave Qureshi another taser blast to the back of his head for good measure and looked up at the waiting medic. “Okay, get over here and sedate this fucker.” Jesus what a mess. “Turn the engine off,” he said to the soldier standing right next to the driver’s door. The Raptor had reversed straight into the raised edge of the loading bay, knocking over a pile of crates and all the trolleys. There were boxes and body bags flung all over the place.

  He looked up and saw the ambulance driver looking at him, jaw hanging open, with eyes as round as saucers.

  “Who the fuck is that guy?”

  “He’s from the prison,” answered one of the techs. “Says he’s here to deliver a corpse. He thinks this is the morgue or something. Security at the gate let him in, because the vehicle is on the approved list.”

  “He what?” Avis was stupefied. “He’s brought a dead prisoner here?” He looked back and forth between the body bags and the ambulance driver.

  “It was the last destination on the GPS,” Steven offered miserably.

  Avis looked over at the ambulance again, more closely this time, checking the license plate. Sure enough, it was the one that Lazarus had been using for their ‘special’ transfers from the prison. Then he looked back at Taylor who was still lying in a twitching mound on the concrete. Shit.

  “Just get the hell out of here kid. Take your body back to the prison and get someone to tell you where the hell you’re supposed to take it.” Avis jerked a thumb at the techs. “You two give him his body back, and get him out of here while I clean up this mess.”

  Steven watched, mouth hanging open again as the tough looking soldier went back to his men, shouted some orders at them and then disappeared through the back door of the loading bay into some offices. Back in the loading bay the soldiers lifted up both the guy they had just tazed, and the fat scientist in his white coat, and slung them both on to the loading deck. They were none too gentle with either of them. What is going on here?

  The two techs looked over at the pile of crates and overturned trolleys, and then struggled, cursing, to drag the ambulance gurney back out on to its wheels.

  “Which one is his?” said the first tech, looking at the tumbled body bags.

  “Top one,” sniffed his colleague. “It’s the closest. Come on, let’s just get it on the trolley and get him out of here. Hurry up. It’s going to take ages to clean up this mess, and the canteen stops serving lunch in twenty minutes”

  The two of them each took an end of the nearest body bag and swung it up on to the gurney. Then the first one turned back to the ambulance driver who was still goggling at the scene in front of him in disbelief.

  “Hey!” One of the techs clicked his fingers in front of Steven’s face, snapping him out of his daze and making him jump. “Come on, you heard the man. Let’s go.”

  “Right. Sorry, sir,” Steven gulped and ran around to the back of the gurney where they had loaded his body bag. They helped him wheel it around to the back of the ambulance, where he depressed the red locking catch, carefully put his hands on top of the rear bar and gave it a strong push. The gurney legs folded up as it slid in smoothly, and he secured it into place before shutting the doors.

  Then Steven ran around to the driver’s side, jumped in and started the engine. A glance out of the window showed him a row of hard-faced soldiers giving him grim looks. He did not bother to wave goodbye, but just drove out of there as quickly as he could, away from all the craziness that he had just witnessed.

  Lying on the loading bay, limbs twitching spasmodically from the after-effects of being tazed, Qureshi watched as the IDRC techs opened up the two body bags containing his zombies. The first one, the geography teacher jerked against his restraints as the techs photographed him and wrote down a few details on a clipboard. As they reached for the zipper on the second bag Qureshi opened his mouth to warn them that the cunning, old female zombie was not gagged. After all he did not want any accidents to happen when he himself was lying helpless, only a few feet away.

  Before he could get a word out though, there was a blinding flash of pain as a Lazarus trooper tazed him again. Qureshi spasmed and writhed on the concrete as thousands of volts surged through his nervous system.

  “Shut up and don’t try anything stupid,” snarled the soldier. “I’ll taze you all fucking day if you try a single thing.”

  Still breathless from his electrocution, Qureshi could only stare in mute, puzzled bewilderment as the tech peeled back the top of the body bag to reveal the face of a dead man he had never seen before. Who is that? And where the hell is the old witch? Qureshi wondered.

  “Hey,” shouted the tech. “This isn’t a zombie. It’s just some dead guy. The bounty hunter’s trying to pull a fast one and rip us off.”

  The furious face of the Lazarus soldier loomed over Qureshi’s face again. No, it wasn’t me! Qureshi struggled to open his mouth and form the words. The techs must have mixed up the body bags and put mine into the ambulance. But then the tazer plunged down, and blinding pain prevented him from thinking anything else for a very long time.

  Meanwhile in the ambulance, Stephen floored it the whole way back to the prison. The twelve-minute return journey back to the federal penitentiary only took him nine, sweaty-handed, nervous minutes. He parked the ambulance back in the same spot in the staff car park and sat there for a few minutes collecting his thoughts. Steven realized that he was still badly shook up about what had happened at the IDRC.

  How am I going to explain this screw-up to Doctor Lyons? He wondered. Well it’s not really my fault. I just used the last destination on the GPS. He had actually scrolled through a few of the previous destinations and it had always been either the prison or that same address at the IDRC. Oh shit, here she comes. Steven looked up through the windscreen at the approaching figure of Doctor Lyons, a lit cigarette held between two manicured fingers. She’s probably wondering why I’ve just been sat in here for the last five minutes. Shit, I hope I don’t get fired on my first day. Mom’s gonna kill me.

  Lyons took another drag from her cigarette and sighed to herself, seeing Steven’s white face fill with dread as she approached the ambulance. Oh God, now what’s he done? I bet he forgot to get the form signed before he left the mortuary, she shook her head in resignation. Then Lyons frowned, puzzled, as she saw the shadow rising up behind Steven in the back of the ambulance. Who the hell is that in there with him?

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Prison Blues

  Federal Penitentiary, Fort Lauderdale, Quarantine Zone.

  Dwayne shuffled along patiently with the other prison inmates through the cramped corridor that led from their prison block into the exercise yard. He squinted against the bright sunlight as he walked out into the yard, and stifled a sigh as he tried to enjoy taking in a deep breath of fresh air. Three years. Three goddamn years. His thoughts returned unbidden to that fateful night outside the Galleria, when he had tackled the zombie to the ground and saved Doctor Indika’s life.

  After the full story of the Galleria outbreak had hit the news, the police had dropped the manslaughter charges against Dwayne, and thanked him for killing the rogue zombie that had jumped from the mall upper windows into the crowded carpark. But running his details through the system had triggered an outstanding warrant against him for an almost forgotten minor felony from h
is teens, and he had immediately been re-arrested. After the brief moment where their paths had crossed in the Galleria carpark, Doctor Indika had set off on a successful career as the world-famous expert on the Lyssavirus. Dwayne, on the other hand, had been convicted, lost his job, and been sent to prison.

  For the thousandth time Dwayne wondered where his life would have led him, had he not made the split-second decision to save the other man’s life. Not here, anyway, he grimaced, looking around at the yard, full of orange-clad prisoners. Maybe I should have just let that zombie take him out. It’s just like they say, ‘No good deed goes unpunished.’

  Then his attention was drawn by a sudden commotion amongst the inmates just in front of him, and his thoughts of the past disappeared in a flash of adrenalin. In prison, a man who was not always and instantly ready to fight, rarely lived to a ripe old age.

  “Get back into the wing and get back in your goddamn cells!” screamed Friedman. The young guard had a high-pitched voice, and when he was stressed, as he was now, he sounded far more like a teenage girl than the strapping prison warder that he was. Normally a source of amusement for both his fellow guards and the convicts alike, today nobody was laughing at him.

  Yellow warning lights rotated high up on posts at each corner of the yard and the alarm klaxon wailed throughout the entire prison, echoing across the top of the vast complex, and far out into the surrounding scrubland.

  “This is fucking bullshit, man,” shouted one prisoner that Dwayne could not see. “We just got the fuck out here. I get my afternoon exercise in the rec yard, that’s my constitutional rights, bitch!” Dwayne recognized the voice immediately. It was Jayant, a loudmouthed Indian prisoner with a pronounced Mumbai accent. Dumbass was always bitching and whining, going on about his constitutional rights. But he was not alone. Close to two hundred, orange-clad prisoners were squabbling and shouting their displeasure, and refusing to move. Dwayne was quiet but he was just as pissed. The week before, a guy from C block had left a bottle of hooch in the prison library for him and today, as payment, Dwayne was due to hand over three packets of ramen noodles he had just picked up from the commissary.