The Most Uncommon Cold I - Life in the Time of Zombies (24 page)

     “Let
’s head up to my office and talk.”

     We climbed the next flight of stairs without saying a word. At the door marked
Second Floor
, we stopped and listened again.  Not hearing anything, we hurried through the door and down the strangely deserted  hallway.

    
Once we got to the empty office, Lawrence pulled a blue plastic chair next to his desk and nodded for me to have a seat.   

     The detective began shuffling through some papers
that were on his desk. I glanced at the still-open office door behind me.  Although there was no activity in the hallway, I reached a point where I could no longer stand having the door open.  I stood quickly which took Detective Lawrence by surprise.  I am not sure if he thought I was trying to get away, but he watched me very closely as I closed the door. 

     “Look, I don
’t know if you believe me or not.  Hell, I wouldn’t believe this shit if I hadn’t seen it… But the truth is we’re in danger… I don’t--”

     “Mr. Turner
, come on and sit down.  Tell me what all you saw then we can decide what to do next.”

     The detective
’s calm voice had opposite effect on me.  “We don’t have time to talk!  Are you listening to anything I say?”  I was practically screaming now.  “I’ll tell you all about it but not here!”

      Detective Lawrence looked at me for just a second before lunging out of his chair.  In an instant, he was inches from my face. 
“Sit down like I said!”  I was amazed by the speed of the big man and did as directed.

     He watched me for a moment before returning to his seat behind the desk.  “Now you are gonna tell me about that video. Where did you get it?”  He leaned forward to show his intense interest in my answer.

     The question took my mind backwards.  For most of the last few days, my consciousness had only been focused on what was ahead. Not that what lay ahead was likely to be any sort of picnic.  The thing was the past was definitely full of pain.  I know they say that one should not dwell on the past, but the words took on new meaning when the only thing that mattered about  the past was the events of the last few days.  

     So much for this mental masturbation. The only results were streams of tears rolling down my cheeks as the faces of the dead flashed in front of my eyes.
Once again I was visited by the images of the people I had seen dead but somehow moving.  Bonnie’s beautiful smiling face as she looked when we first got married was suddenly wiped away to reveal a snarling creature reaching toward me.  Glen was standing at a podium in front of a group of men and in the next instant being ripped apart by those same men. The young Asian waitress from the airport café was filling my coffee cup and then being pinned down on the floor beneath a young man in blue airport coveralls who was biting into her throat.  I could see the spurts of blood pulsing with her heartbeat.

     “Hey, are you okay?”  The big detective was standing over me shouting. “Turner, you okay?”

     It took me a moment to react.  When I finally did, it was just to mumble, “Yeah, I am just fine.”

     He reached over to grab a paper towel from the desk and handed it to me.
  Detective Lawrence gestured awkwardly toward my face, and I realized he was offering the paper for me to wipe my tears. Once I had done so, he seemed more comfortable and said, “Look, it is clear to me you’ve seen some bad stuff, but I gotta get to the bottom of it.  I can’t do that unless you can tell me more.”

     E
ven though I had little hope of ever
getting to the bottom
of what had sent the world over the edge much less turning things around, I managed a twisted grin and said, “Sure.  I’ll do whatever I can.”  My voice came out much shakier and weaker than I had intended.

     “Great!”  Obviously, my response pleased the detective, and he continued, “So back to that video disc…”

     “I got it from a guy named Jerry Clark.  He was a customs agent at the airport.”  I saw the detective’s eyes widen at the words
was a customs agent
.  Clearly, he wanted to say something but remained silent. “I went to the airport, but he was home sick so I had to go to his house.”

     “Hold up.  I think we need to go back to the beginning here.  I
’m not hearing anything that makes sense.  So let’s start with why you were at the airport in the first place.”

     “I
’m sure you know that I am… was, I guess, a reporter for
The Marin Gazette
.”  Lawrence glanced down at a paper on his desk and nodded. “Anyway, I had an interview scheduled at the airport on Friday morning…that was…”  I suddenly realized that I was not sure what day it was.  “So much has happened since then… uh… What day is it today?” 

     The detective regarded me for a moment before answering, “It
’s Tuesday.”

    
“Shit! We don’t have--”

     My return to hysteria must have been clear to Detective Lawrence as he interrupted to say, “Let
’s focus on the disc.”  He waited to be sure his words calmed me before continuing.  “Okay, you got it from this customs agent Jerry Clark. And he was at home sick…I’m guessing with a cold.” 

     I nodded and took up the story. “Yes, he was one of the many home nursing a cold.   We were supposed to meet at the airport for an interview about the attacks.”  I looked but saw nothing on the detective
’s face to signal whether or not he knew about what had happened.  “So I was at the airport waiting but…”  Memories of all that had happened at the airport came flooding back, but I managed to push them back and stay focused on Clark and the video. “Anyway, I got Jerry Clark’s address in San Rafael and headed there to find out why he had missed our appointment.” I thought back on my meeting with the customs agent.  The term
conspiracy nut
came readily to mind.

     Lawrence appeared to be getting impatient.  “So you got the disc from this Clark.  How did he get
it? And why the hell did he have it at home?” 

     “Well, he said he planned to release the video to my newspaper in order to get the true story about what happened.  I guess he had some idea about how the story would get spun.  So he swiped the disc out of the office at the airport to prove what he was saying.”

     “And just what was he saying?  I mean I saw the thing and I’m still not sure what I saw!”

     “The only thing that Mr. Clark knew was the attack was not just some drunken passengers getting out of hand.”

     The chuckle that rumbled out of Lawrence was surprising. “Well, I’ve got some experience drinking, but I’ve never been shitfaced enough to take a bite outta somebody.”

     Despite the strange and dangerous situation, I could not help but chuckle myself. The infectious nature of laughter I suppose.  Once I got started, the chuckling slid into giggling. From there, I am not sure exactly what it should be called.  Screeching is probably the best description.  Whatever it was, the sound clearly made the detective uncomfortable.  He sat behind his desk watching me for a few seconds before slowly standing and walking over to me.

     “You okay?” he asked, clearly wanting to hear a simple yes or no. 

     I took a deep breath and coughed a little before answering, “Look, I don
’t expect you to believe everything I’m telling you.  Shit!  I know I wouldn’t believe this crap if I hadn’t seen it for myself.” 

     I looked at the
big detective and was suddenly struck by the image of a big bulldog.  That mental picture brought another wave of screeching and discomfort to Detective Lawrence.

     Once the tremors stopped shaking my body, Lawrence said, “Okay, now that you
’ve had a good laugh, can we get to the video?”

     The detective
’s insistence on an explanation of what the disc clearly showed suddenly irritated me, and I snapped,  “You saw it!  What the hell else do you need to know?” 

     “Hell, I don
’t know, maybe something that proves the thing is not bullshit!”  Lawrence’s face was red and getting redder.  “I don’t know a lot about video stuff, but even I know that it can be faked.” 

     “Why the fuck would I want to--” The sound of something smashing into the closed door cut me off.

     I spun around to see the door shaking as whatever had hit the door repeated the collision over and over. My fingers gripped tighter into the armrest of the chair, but otherwise I was frozen.  I am not sure how long I stared at the door or if Detective Lawrence stared at me.  Before I realized it, the detective was at the door, yanking it open.

     “What the hell is--”

     On the other side of the door was the cop from downstairs, slowly pushing a wheelchair against the doorframe. 

     “Gleason!” 

     The thing in the police uniform raised its head in reaction to the sound.  The eyes stared blankly ahead for a moment before it began pushing the wheelchair into the doorframe again. 

     “Dammit Gleason! 
What the hell are you doing?”  The big detective was moving toward the wheelchair.

     “Look out!” I yelled.  My warning had the opposite result of what I had intended as Lawrence turned to look at me rather than paying attention to the thing lunging at him.

     “Now wha--” Lawrence started but never finished.

     The uniformed shell made a pretty
good upper-body tackle.  The move caught the detective completely by surprise, and he was on the floor in an instant.  From the way he froze, I guess he must have been in shock as he stared up into the snarling face of the thing straddling his chest.

     Without being aware of it, I had made my way next to the spot where Lawrence lay on the floor.  Suddenly, I had  a chair raised above my head.  In my mind, I pictured an old western movie.  I saw the chair coming down on the thing, shattering, and knocking it out.  The problem was the chair was plastic.  Instead of shattering the chair and knocking the thing to the floor, my action barely made a thud.  
The impact sent a shock that rattled to my shoulders and made it feel like my arms had been ripped off. 

      It was probably projection on my part, but the thing on top of Lawrence looked at me with what appeared to be amused surprise.  From what I had seen of the shells, emotions other than rage were not common
so it was probably projection. Anyway, the thing on top of Lawrence looked at me, and at the same time the detective rolled out from under it.  The result of all this was that the thing in the uniform got dumped on the floor. 

     Detec
tive Lawrence moved quickly and was standing over the shell before it had gotten to its knees.  “Gleason, what the fuck are you doing?” 

     The Gleason-thing said not
hing, instead it lunged at me – but missed. On reflex, I raised the plastic chair in front of me like a lion tamer.  As I was raising the chair, the shell sprang again and impaled itself on one of the metal legs.  The impact knocked me back.  As I staggered backward, the chair stayed put in the thing’s chest.

     “Gleason!”  Lawrence screamed in anger or horror or both.

     The Gleason-thing spun around to look at the big detective, and the chair sticking out of its chest bobbed up and down.  The image was somewhat comical in a completely bizarre way. 

      Lawrence did not find anything amusing in the situation and raised his gun at the shell. 

     “Gleason, get down on the floor!”  He screamed,  “Get on the floor or I’m gonna shoot!”

     “Shoot now!”  I yelled.

     The detective took a few steps backward until both the shell and I were within his sight.  “You too!”  he commanded.

     “Me too, what?”  I asked.

     “Get on the floor!  he barked at me.

     I started to argue but was cut off by the crash of the chair hitting the floor. 

     At the sound, Lawrence spun and fired in a single motion. The bullet caught the Gleason-thing in the left side of the chest.  The force threw it backward into a desk and then it collapsed to the floor. 

     Lawrence watched the motionless thing for a second before turning back to me and bellowing, “You
’re going to tell me what the hell is happening right now!” 

     His gun was still raised as if he might shoot me unless I supplied an answer that satisfied him.  He slowly started to lower the gun as he repeated,

     “What the hell is happening.”  This time his voice was without force.

     “You need to shoot it in the head!”  I yelled as I pointed to the shell which had begun twitching. 

     Lawrence looked at the shell to see its movements.  “Oh, Jesus!  Gleason, stay where you--”

     “It
’s not Gleason anymore!”  I was standing next to him watching the thing struggling to get back on its feet.  “You need to shoot it in the head,” I said in such a matter-of-fact tone that I surprised myself as well as the detective. 

     “Oh, fuck me!”  Detective Lawrence cried as he turned a
nd fired a bullet into the forehead of the shell shuffling toward him.