Zombie Wake

Zombie Wake

By Storm J.
Helicer

Zombie Wake

Copyright © 2013 by
Storm J.
Helicer

All Rights Reserved. Apart from
fair use, no portion of this publication may be reproduced, stored or
introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any
means without prior written permission of the publisher. Contact us at
[email protected]

This is a work
of fiction. Incidences, names and characters are not factual accounts.

Plum Thumb

Vehicle Collision

Bear Hug

Refinery Emergency

Remember the Head

Night Dancers

Pulling the Trigger

Bullets

Red

Tilt Rotor

Testing

Infection

The Burn

What has transpired since I closed
the gates at sunset, since the light from the sun was replaced with the glow of
sodium lamps, is something I'm sure even the beady eyes of the bird to my side
knows as atrocity.

In my career as a park ranger,
aside from a feral pig eradication project, I have only discharged my weapon at
the range. I've been a park ranger for almost ten years now, all of it at
California’s
Gaviota
coast. I was looking forward to
having a full career here—life and family too. I didn't know it would end
like this. How could I know, it's been three hours. Today seemed normal. Now I
stand at the end of the pier, my only witness a brown pelican.

Earlier, as I patrolled the pier,
the familiar fish odor wafted in bursts. The pelican perched on the rail, as it
does now with tar smudged across its chest, eyed fishermen for handouts. I've
seen a thousand brown pelicans in this ocean park, but none with such a
prehistoric likeness. Its beak, on the shorter side of average, tells me it,
she, is female. Though, the tip looks like a curved tooth; like the tooth a
chick uses to emerge from its egg. This pelican, however, is fully mature.

I first noticed her this morning
when she outstretched her wings gaining an ominous stature. Lifting off the
railing with one flap she propelled toward the ocean, circling to make her way
to a new station. Positioning herself next to a yellow vinyl rope tied around
the splintered wooden beam, the bird pointed her tooth toward the rope's
origin, a black mesh metal basket containing three fish.

I stepped toward
Makimo
, who is nearly a resident here. Her hands, in yellow
rubber gloves, fed the rope one over the next, raising the dangling basket to
show me her catch. The fish gleamed blue and green along the top, silver on the
bottom. The largest lay motionless on its side, eyes bulging and glassy. The
two smaller fish flopped, arcing their spines like they were trying to keep
time with a high frequency wave.

“These are for the cat. I keep them
fresh,” she gusted. The water below was unusually murky-brown. Small waves
sloshed and foamed around the pilings. “I saw your son yesterday playing on the
swings. He’s tall for a little guy. He’s
gunna
be big
like you?”

“We'll see
Makimo
,”
I said.

*

But at this moment in the cold, wet
night air I don't—can't—take time to contemplate. My training, my
muscle memory, at the instant when I make my way to the end of the pier,
take
over.

The first one I shoot, I recognize.
Not his face or clothing, those are too drenched with blood, scabs and froth.
It's the thumb, the plum thumb as I had referred to it this morning that I
notice. Earl.

I had come into contact with him
twice in the last month. The first was for illegal camping. He was under the
pier, sitting on the sand, stick in hand, leaning against a piling, poking into
a small fire.

Four college-aged boys pointed him
out to me after a short conversation through my open truck window. They were
walking with fishing poles and chuckling. Their faces sobered as they noticed
my white truck. Three of them gave me what I call the straight smile, a slight
smile with a glance downward. I receive the look occasionally when off duty but
often while in uniform. I have a theory that it has to do with a primal male
dominance/subordinate behavior. Normally my height of six foot eight inches
attracts looks, questions and the like, but the vest adds a bulk, not intrinsic
to my body type, that must make me seem... intimidating. Since I generally make
a habit of telling goofy jokes and wild stories, rapport with the public has
never been a problem.

“How's the fishing,” I asked
through my truck’s window.

“Not so good today,” said the one
raising a green cooler to the tip of his index finger.

“Then, it
ain’t
the fishing that's bad, it's the catching. Besides, someone’s
gotta
make sure the pelicans have fish left to eat.”

And so it happened that the brief
conversation with the boys ended with the story of the man under the pier. He
had approached them trying to sell what he called Indian marijuana. They said
he was stubborn and wouldn't take no for an answer.

A few minutes later, I stood at the
foot of the fire, speaking into the radio, “R1122, I need a wants and warrants
check on one, ID in hand, first of Earl: Edward, Adam, Robert, Lincoln, second
of
Dunkle
, David, Union, Nora, King, Lincoln, Edward;
DL number CA0076487.” Earl had voluntarily emptied the contents of his pockets,
a crunched up paper bag filled with large white trumpet shaped flowers, toxic
Jimsonweed, a wallet, and a black comb.

While I waited for the response,
Earl inhaled his cigarette with force, which is often a sign of outstanding
felony warrants. I widened my stance and looked toward his hands. Seeing my
eyes on his thumb, he said, “Man, I'm just trying to make a buck. You know the
Chumash drink it as a tea. They're just flowers. Listen, I've had a pretty
shitty go of it.” Holding up the purple plum, he went on. “It's been nearly two
years, I wish they'd cut it off. I was up in Alaska on a crab boat. I went to
grab a cage and my thumb got caught in the winch. The thing took off all my
skin down to the bone. I didn't have any insurance and still the doctors
decided to save it—got an old doctor, treated guys on the field in World
War II. So they cut a slit here in my belly and sewed my thumb in it.” He
lifted up his shirt and ran his good thumb down the scar. “When they took it
out three months later, it was like this. Look.” He pushed the bulb toward me.
“There's a nail in there I can't even cut. I can't do a damn thing with it. The
whole hand hardly works and it's throbbing all the time.”

*

He had changed significantly in the
two days since I last saw him. He was walking with both hands outstretched,
like the thumb was guiding him. Even though we're trained to shoot for the
heart and head, it was the hands my first bullet hit. Shooting the hands occurs
frequently in simulated gunfire trainings. The “victims” walk away from these
trainings with paint blotches all over the chest, head and hands. I didn't
notice it was Earl as an individual until I pulled the trigger and saw the red
spatter and flying fingers.

With the rest, distinguishing
anyone was next to impossible. They, more like
it,
was
one mass, traveling like molasses,
rolling down the hill through the campground. There were two groups, one from
the east and another from the west. In the parking lot, they merged. I knew the
campground was at capacity but it seemed like the number moving toward me was
more than the 450 person upper limit. I was too far away from my vehicle to
make my way through the sea of scabs and froth.

Just over a week ago, I dressed in
the dark to respond to a vehicle collision. Car accidents are too much of my
occupation these days. Because
the park is bordered by a
major highway
, California’s Highway 101, rangers are often the first on
scene arriving ahead of the highway patrol, fire, and ambulance. That day, just
north of the campground, during the first rain of the season, a bus slid off the
road. It was probably the most gruesome accident I have witnessed. Just south
of the
Gaviota
tunnel the road juts to the left. In a
depression where the road curves, a pool of water gathers every rain. Year
after year, cars speeding through that section of road hit the puddle and veer
off, sliding, spinning, and sometimes going over the edge. A similar sequence
of events occurred with this bus.

It was a short, blue and white bus
with thirteen passengers, the driver and twelve patients. Traveling north, from
Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital to Stanford Medical Center, the bus, the highway
patrol concluded later, hit the water, slid across three lanes of highway,
rolled as the tires made contact with the center clearing, slid on its side
taking two sedans from the southbound side and pushed them all over the
embankment. The bus itself stopped short of going over the edge. But two sedans
plunged twenty feet into the creek, which flowed fast with fresh mountain rain.
I was the first on scene.

I don't know if you need a certain
personality type to deal with these situations, or if the training we receive
teaches the detachment needed to get through them. Or if, eventually, there
will be some kind of ramification. Either way, I went into the deliberate mode
that I’ve also heard other peace officers speak about.

Bodies spilled out of the vehicle,
some on the ground and some partway through the window, with muddy skid marks
pointing over a twenty-foot drop, all reflected in the blue/red
strobing
lights of my patrol truck. Into the radio I said,
“R1122 on scene. I have an incident involving a full bus. It is a multiple
victim incident. We need expanded response, multiple AMR response. Call out
L855 for aquatic rescue. Begin critical incident notifications. I'm going to begin
triage and will provide updates as possible.” I heard the female voice respond
with a tone equally flat, “R1122, I copy. I will relay by landline to county.”

Feeling the rain on my head start
to run down the back of my neck under my green rain gear, I made a conscious
effort to keep my hands from flipping my hood over my head. I couldn’t spare
time. Instead, I unzipped the red first aid bag sitting in the backseat of my
truck, pulled two latex gloves over my wet hands and grabbed a handful of tags:
green, yellow, red and black.

By the time I heard Dylan's voice,
I had tagged everyone on the freeway and had scrambled down the embankment into
the creek. I was sliding knee deep in mud, looking down the creek where the
beam of my flashlight had fallen on a large woman's naked body half submerged
and pinned against tree roots when I heard a shout in the distance, “Storm.”
Slowing my forward movement, I grabbed a sapling and turned. Seeing that Dylan
and Joe were suited in their swift water gear jolted me back into my thinking
head. I wondered if I was going to let myself step into the water, a maneuver
that could be devastating and something I knew better than to attempt. But the
motion my hand made, reminded me of my current objective. “R1122” I said into the
radio. Dispatch didn't echo.

Reception was unreliable near the
tunnel and in the creek there was none. I started to reach for my cell phone
then turned toward Joe and Dylan, who were following a line, making their way
down. I could see the reflection of the bag, the source of the rope, which had
been thrown to a position in front of a large boulder nearly twenty yards from
me. Aside from their reflective yellow vests and helmets, they resembled
burglars with their dark wetsuits and booties. Waving to them with my
flashlight, I motioned up stream.

By this point I was amazed to see a
survivor. Up on the road, every person I evaluated was a black tag. Blood, and
grey fluid oozed from heads and noses. Two victims of the bunch appeared
completely intact but their
pulseless
necks secured
them the dark label. I spent too long searching one woman’s soft neck. Through
my gloves, the skin felt unusually warm—though my hands were icy cold.
She was one of the few remaining in the vehicle, buckled into the dark vinyl seats,
the backrest high enough to minimize neck injury. In that compartment's dome
lighting, her face looked too alive. I have heard of situations where the
physical impact of the accident is enough to sheer the aortic valve from the
heart leading to instantaneous, mark-free death. I wondered if this was the
case. Then reminded myself that I'm not a doctor, that my job is to show the
EMT which victims to start with, which victims have a chance. But there was
something about the lady that made me linger. Moving her hair from her neck, I
noticed that she had what appeared to be a reverse dye job, the roots were
black for inches, then the remainder of the hair, grey. After trying three
times to find any sign of life, I gave up and looped the elastic band with tethered
black tag around her head.