Dead Air (Book One of The Dead Series) (15 page)

Cage moved quickly to the driver's compartment and climbed into the gunner's vacant seat. He adjusted the radio mounted on the dashboard so he could transmit to all three vehicles in his patrol.

"This is Lieutenant Cage and we're going to stage this withdrawal in a military manner. The MRAP will take the lead and we will not move faster than ten miles per hour. I will transmit a message to any civilians left in the area that they have two minutes to show themselves to be evacuated or be left behind. The two transport trucks will follow me at one hundred yard intervals
. All men will face outboard to look for survivors. You are to hold fire unless threatened directly or you witness non-combatants being threatened, over."

Affirmative replies came back to Cage
, who then organized the column and set off in the direction of the airport.

By the time they reached their destination, Cage was hoarse from calling out over the P.A. system. They had seen numerous groups of
zombies wandering the streets of Little Rock but hadn’t come across any human beings.

Lieutenant Cage had been transmitting his message to a city that now belonged to the living dead.

Dallas, Texas:

Pat was a street wino who was just trying to get by. He would panhandle, do odd jobs and occasionally sober up long enough to work as a dishwasher in a downtown restaurant for a few weeks until he received his first paycheck, and then was off to the races again.

Days earlier,
he had begun to see signs that something was wrong in the city of Dallas. A man went crazy in a soup kitchen and started biting and clawing the people around him. People were attacking each other for no reason and now the National Guard patrolled the streets. Even one of Pat's regular drinking buddies had been shot dead by the police. Pat found out, much to his horror, that the man had killed and eaten a couple on vacation from Muncie, Indiana.

The streets of downtown Dallas became deserted as people hid in their homes
, and even the vagrant population went to ground.

With all of this going on, the panhandling pickings were becoming slim for
Pat, and it was getting dangerous to even walk the streets. Deciding it was time for a change of scenery, he cleaned up as best he could in the washroom of the soup kitchen he frequented and caught a city bus out to the suburbs to what he liked to call his country house. This was a heavy-duty cardboard box covered by a plastic tarp he had set up in some scrub brush behind a strip mall.

There was a service station/convenience store at the end of the mall and Pat knew the owner would pay him a
few dollars a day to sweep up the parking lot and keep the b
athrooms clean. There was even a liquor store in the strip mall.

One
-stop shopping, he told himself.

Upon arriving at his destination, Pat was dismayed to find the gas station closed and that the Governor had ordered all liquor and beer sales cancelled until further notice. It was too late to head back to the city
, so as night fell, Pat started crawling into the scrub to his cardboard box with his last bottle of cheap wine.

He had barely made it a few feet into the thick bushes when he heard the sound of something crashing through them toward him. Worried it was a wild animal or a
dog; he backed out quickly and retreated to the rear of the gas station.

Within seconds, a figure crawled out of the thicket and looked around before spotting Pat and
began coming toward him in an aggressive swagger. Angry at having his area invaded, Pat stepped forward to challenge the other vagrant. This was his spot and the man was trespassing. As the interloper came into the light cast by a security lamp, Pat stopped in his tracks at what he saw. It took his mind a few seconds to make sure his eyes weren't playing tricks on him. When he was convinced that what he saw was real, he dropped the bottle that was still clenched in his hand and turned to run. The nightmare image of the other man forever burned into his brain.

Its face
was covered in scratches that oozed black puss and its scalp had been partially torn off and hung over in a flap, which covered its shoulder. There was no way the thing that emerged from the brush could be human. A small part of Pat's rational mind told him that it might be a hallucination brought on by the DT’s, but he ignored this. Real or not, he had to get away from this thing.

He
took off and ran along the back of the shops lining the strip mall, not even pausing as he glanced over his shoulder. To his horror, he saw that the repugnant creature was in hot pursuit. He looked around wildly for help, but the area was completely deserted. Already running out of breath, winos aren't exactly famous for their stamina, he knew he couldn't keep up this pace long enough to get away. When he saw an air conditioner set up high in the back wall of one of the stores, he came up with an escape plan. Pat used the last of his strength to climb on top of the A/C unit and started jumping up and down on it. He felt the air conditioner part from the wall right before it dropped out from under his feet, sending him tumbling down on top of it. Stunned by the fall, he nonetheless jumped up and climbed through the hole in the wall he had made. Dropping down inside the store, he found himself in complete darkness.

Fumbling in the pocket of his baggy pants, his hand closed around a disposable lighter he had dug out of a trash can the week before. Thumbing the wheel, it produced a weak glow
that exposed boxes stacked on the floor and shelves around him. He surmised he was in the storeroom of one of the strip mall shops but couldn't tell which one. A scratching sound coming from outside the hole in the wall made him whirl in fright, the movement making the flame go out. Flicking the wheel again, Pat couldn't get it to light but the small spark it produced gave him brief flashes of illumination to see by. In this way, he stacked two boxes under the A/C cutout and climbed on top of them.

Looking out,
he saw his antagonist standing directly below the opening and jerked in shock at its gruesome appearance. He drew back so quickly that he almost overbalanced and fell to the floor. Once stable, he risked another peek.

The
zombie noticed him and reached up to claw at the wall. At first flinching back again, Pat realized that the horrid creature could only stretch its arms up to eye level, just far enough to dig at the wall a foot below the opening. When the thing twisted its body in frustration at not being able to reach the food, the reason for the restricted motion became readily apparent. A dozen two inch wide trenches had been gouged out of its upper back, revealing torn muscles which bulged out of the wounds like meat trying to burst through a sausage casing.

Pat watched as the thing tried to reach up and grab the lip of the opening and failed. Satisfied that it couldn't get to him, he retreated into the storeroom.

Dropping to the floor, he collapsed with his back against a stack of cardboard boxes. His breathing slowed as did his heart rate, and his senses came back as the fear of imminent death left him. Since his vision was limited by the dark, the first thing he noticed about his refuge was the smell. He knew the scent well, as he had wallowed in it for years. It was the aroma of oblivion. It was the smell of stale booze.

Pat's heart rate and breathing picked up again as he spun around and knelt before the boxes he had been leaning against. He fumbled the lighter out, dropped it, and ran his shaking hands back and forth across the floor until he found it. Holding it close to a box, he spun the wheel.

In the brief spark he read the label on the cardboard box. Bombay Gin.

Suppressing a whoop of joy, Pat looked at the dim shapes surrounding him. Cases and boxes piled high with the very nectar of life.

His excitement dampened momentarily as the thought came to him that there must be a burglar alarm hooked up to the opening for the A/C unit along with motion detectors in the storeroom. Right now, the alert would be going off at the security monitoring office and they would be sending the police.

Crestfallen, Pat decided to make the most of the little time he had before the law showed up. He consoled himself with the thought that as soon as the cops saw the reason for his breaking into the liquor store
, he wouldn't be arrested for burglary. But it was little consolation for having to leave the dream of a lifetime. Scanning the boxes, he ripped one open and extracted a bottle of Chivas Regal.

Twenty minutes, and a quarter of a bottle later, Pat realized that the only sound he could hear was the scratching noises coming from the thing on the other side of the wall. There were no sirens, no cops calling for him to come out with his hands up
. Nothing.

Hope and pain flooded
his body as he climbed to his feet. The pain from running, jumping and falling was there but was forced back by the hope that his wildest dream was being realized. With a rush of excitement coursing through him, he set off to explore his new domain.

Using the tiny bursts of illumination from the lighter, he navigated across the storeroom and eventually found a swinging door. Locating a light switch
, he flipped it up. Nothing happened, the power was off.

Maybe that was why no alarm went off
, he thought.

Chuckling to himself, he pushed through the door into the liquor store. Going behind the counter,
he found a display of disposable lighters and took one. After a moment’s hesitation he took two more and pocketed them.

Why not, he rationalized. Tonight it's all free.

Moving to the glass front of the store, he looked out over the parking lot and to the road beyond. Both were completely deserted.  No cars went by and there were no people in sight. It felt like he was the last person on the face of the Earth.

Turning,
he surveyed his new kingdom as he tried to decide what to do first. Pat went back to the counter where took a carton of cigarettes from the shelf behind it. Normally he couldn't afford such luxuries, but now he could smoke as much as he wanted.

A sudden urge struck him
for something he had always wanted to try. Using his new lighter to guide him, he went up and down the aisles until he found what he was looking for. Popping the cork on the bottle of Dom Perignon, he waited for the foam to subside before drinking straight from the neck. Grimacing at the taste, he dropped the bottle onto the floor. Wondering how people could enjoy drinking something that tasted like goat piss, he vowed to stick with Chivas. Moving back to the counter, he took a quick inventory. He had smokes, light and plenty to drink. Deciding he would eventually get hungry, he rummaged behind the counter. While doing this, he came across an iPod that he set aside. Now, thanks to the clerk, he also had entertainment.

After he found
a jar of beef sticks, Pat looked around for something to carry all his booty. He grabbed a shopping basket and started throwing things into it. More cigarettes, a few more lighters, some individually wrapped pickles, two bags of chips and a half melted bag of ice from the cooler. Without so much as a glance back to see if he had missed anything, because he knew he could come right back and get it, he reentered the storeroom.

T
he first order of business, he decided, was to block off the hole he had climbed through so he stacked more boxes on top of those he had already placed under the opening until the gap was covered. When he was finished, he could still hear the scrapping noise of the things nails dragging down the wall but it was much fainter.

Moving and stacking more cardboard boxes, Pat created a sort of throne
he could sit in. A stack of shipping blankets was piled up behind some boxes, so he used these as padding to line the seat.

Satisfied that all was ready,
he fixed himself a drink in a coffee mug he’d found and settled into his new chair. Donning the headphones and turning on the radio, he scanned past the newscasters and country music singers until he found an all music station that was playing 80's music.

Outstanding, he thought as he turned up the volume.

He calculated that it was around eight PM. Since the Governor had banned all liquor and beer sales until further notice, and Pat was sure that was going over just swell with the Texans, he should have at least a few days before anyone showed up. Maybe longer if whatever was going on continued.

H
e had a suspicion that the thing outside, and many more like it, were the cause of all the trouble and decided to listen to a news station later on to find out what was going on. But in the mean time...

Lighting up a cigarette,
he took a sip of his drink and lost himself in the nostalgia of the 80's. The days when he still had a job, a wife, two cars and a life.

Pat awoke sometime later
with a start and rubbed his gummy eyes as he tried to determine where he was. A feeling of satisfaction came over him when he saw the cartons around him and remembered stumbling into heaven. He realized that he’d passed out but wasn't sure for how long. Sticking his index finger into his drink, he noticed it was still cold and decided he’d only been out for a short time. Topping off the mug from the bottle next to him, he drank it down in three gulps, relishing the burn of the alcohol. Given his low tolerance as a chronic alcoholic, he felt the blackness start to close in on him again when a series of gunshots caused him to jerk upright in his seat. Voices floated in from outside as they called to each other with excitement.