Free Chapters!
Free Chapters!
Hello zombie and survival horror fans! Below you’ll find a handful of chapters from When the Dead and The Spread for your reading pleasure. If you aren’t quite hooked after them just remember it only gets better worse. Secured-access doesn’t mean safe and neighbor doesn’t mean friend in When the Dead and you never know where you’ll get the plague from in The Spread.
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When the Dead [sample chapters]
The Infection
It starts with a cold sweat then a swift drop in body temperature that makes the teeth chatter. The skin feels itchy and hot but the insides are dying from the cold.
Then the numbness starts in the extremities. Finger tips, toes, up through the feet and hands into the legs and arms and finally the core. It cannot be rubbed out as the hands do not work anymore.
It reaches the chest and the ability to control the breathing is lost. Just before the last breath of air escapes the lungs, numbness reaches the head.
The eyes go crazy, the tongue limp. One cannot call out for help as the head falls on the chest. There is but a single moment for the dying self to think a final thought . . .
Why me?
But then . . . you aren’t you anymore.
Fucked
“I can’t understand what they’re saying,” Edward said as he slammed a fist down on the radio.
“You could try another station. That sounds like French they’re speaking,” his wife Moira suggested. She had wanted a television for a long time but Edward preferred the way the voices came floating from the speakers into the apartment. This meant that in the current situation though, they had to rely on the radio show hosts graphic descriptions to give them any idea of what was going on in cities across the globe.
“The other stations keep replaying the same stuff. It’s not getting any better; only worse,” Edward grumbled.
“Then there’s nothing we can do but make some tea and wait to see what happens next.”
“It’s happening everywhere,” Isobel said to her mother over the phone. She had spent the morning reading news articles online. She had watched a clip of someone succumb to the infection on a CDC table, surrounded by plastic and strapped down like a criminal or lunatic.
“Things will be ok, Isobel! They have a carrier. It really is only a matter of time. If they can study it, they can find a cure or at least a vaccine. Try to keep this thing from spreading any further.”
“It’s too big already. The world is fucked. I’ve got to go.” She hung up the phone not knowing it would be the last time she’d speak to her mother.
“On and on for three days, man; can’t they talk about something else?” Vaughn turned off his television angrily. “Could have been aliens, maybe the government, maybe bio-terrorists? Shut up.” He chucked a drained beer can at the black screen. “Just fix it and forget it!”
Vaughn was alone, as he often was, unless he paid for company. He was talking to himself. He probably couldn’t even pay someone to listen to him. Especially when he was drunk and that was most of the time.
“Couldn’t be bio-terrorists, they’d a laid claim to it. Been proud of the trouble they were causing. Pretty fancy stuff making dead people come back to life. It has to be the government; only group with enough funding and closed doors to pull this shit off.”
The infection was quickly spreading. It had reached terrorist groups and government groups alike. It lay in thousands of sickbeds, it rode the bus, and it lived next door to many already. No one was immune from this unstoppable plague.
The number one cause for the spread of the disease was denial. It made no sense to anyone. News media could be blamed for the lies with headlines like It’s impossible!, Death is death, the final breath, and People don’t come back. They stay wherever it is that they went.
Willow Brook Apartments
Willow Brook is a three-story building, four if you count the basement. Each floor has six two-bedroom apartments with identical floor plans.
The kitchen is to the left of the entry. It has an island that looks out on the dining room and living room. The first room on the right down the hallway is a second bedroom. Next is the laundry closet with a stacking washer/dryer unit. The last room on the right is the bathroom. At the end of the hall is a closet and the master bedroom is on the left.
All of the apartments look more or less like this save for differences in décor and varying levels of tidiness. The Willow Brook building is controlled access, meaning that if you don’t have a key, someone has to buzz you in, or not.
The First Day
On the morning of the first day, the day that things would start to change for the residents of Willow Brook Apartments, things looked normal. When Isobel Shiffman looked outside it was almost too normal, right down to the happy thieving squirrel in the tree nearest her living room window.
Northgate is at the northern edge of Seattle and the nearest reports of the disease were further north in Everett and south in Tacoma, still far enough away for Isobel to brave the outdoors. Her mother had told her to stock up on food just in case things didn’t clear up as quickly as she hoped. Isobel had gone shopping on Sunday and it was only Tuesday but her mother insisted.
Like Isobel, the rest of the city driven by nagging mothers, packed into the grocery stores and left them in such a state of disarray that it was hard for her to navigate. The cart, even without the help of the wobbly right front wheel, kept running into things: cans of food, a bag of chips, some nylons, and other items strewn about. All of which were displaced far from their original aisle and shelf. She struggled with it until she found the secret to making the cart move was to put pressure on the left side of it with her foot. She went for some of the fresh food that everyone else was ignoring, figuring it could be eaten first and when it ran out or started to rot, whichever happened first, she’d break into the non-perishables (of which she had a lot).
She made it up to the only open checkout lane.
“How long did you buy for?” the nervous cashier asked.
“Um . . . I don’t know. A week?” Isobel wasn’t good at estimation or small talk. Her cart was full with what she knew was affordable for her budget and, more importantly, what she could carry up to her second floor apartment on her own. She hadn’t been thinking about timelines.
“That won’t be enough. The world is coming to an end.”
“Ok. Well how long do you buy for when the world is coming to an end?” Isobel snapped at the cashier.
“Don’t know,” the cashier shrugged. “Do you want your receipt?”
“Sure.”
On the way back home, the radio still reporting news from all over, documented the plague’s movement. It crept slowly closer. Isobel turned the radio up and listened.
“Early this morning, a ferry full of people trying to get home to their families left Whidbey Island alive and well and arrived at the Edmonds ferry dock infected with the mysterious disease we’ve been seeing. They had somehow contracted the disease on the passage over the Puget Sound. Ferry officials at the Edmonds Pier heard no reports from the captain of the vessel that anything was wrong on the boat. The captain routinely steered the ship into port and the infected disembarked and started attacking people in the parking lot. It is suspected that at least twenty of the infected passengers made it out of the ferry terminal and into downtown Edmonds. Efforts to locate and apprehend them in order to contain the spread of the infection have been unsuccessful. Several injured passengers made it safely onto lifeboats before the ferry made it ashore, but they did not survive their wounds. The captain of the vessel has been detained for questioning at this time.”
The program switched to weather and Isobel changed the station, desperate to find out just how close it had become.
“- determined that the perpetrator of a street fight in downtown Seattle, described by witnesses as a “drunken transient”, was actually a person suffering from the infection. Police shot the man after he attempted to attack them. It is unknown how he came into contact with the disease. Attempts to identify the individual are ongoing, as his body appeared to be in a state of decomposition. The flesh of his fingertips was gone, rendering fingerprinting useless. Investigators are working with dental records -”
Isobel changed it again, looking for another news story and its location.
“A group of students started a riot on University Avenue in the U-District just after eleven a.m. Over fifty college students were injured in the event, four fatally. The group seemed to have no agenda and was only intent on causing destruction and harm to individuals. Sources at the scene noted that the group was not involved in looting or property damage. Most of the students fled the scene before they could be arrested and interrogated. Campus police had great difficulty dealing with the problem and are not commenting at this time. It is still unknown whether the perpetrators were rioting in response to the disease, or as a result of being infected with it.”
Isobel’s heart beat faster.
“A bloody scene at the Helene Madison Pool greeted Shoreline Police investigators midday today. A lifeguard interviewed said that a man had emerged from the men’s locker room at the start of Public Swim and started attacking children in the shallow end of the pool. It took two lifeguards on staff to remove the man from the water and hold him while a third employee called the police. All of the children involved suffered only minor injuries. The pool has been shut down for investigation and sanitation reasons and will remain closed until further notice.”
“That’s just up the road,” she said to herself.
Initial reports thought the disease spread and made people psychotic and violent; that the infected were living people with altered minds and an inability to differentiate right from wrong. Whatever the process, it only took one infected person to ruin everybody’s day.
Approaching from all directions, the disease was soon upon Isobel’s neighborhood and suddenly it was right in front of her in the form of a traffic accident. Someone had destroyed a bicyclist with an SUV. A deep cut in his abdomen sat open, displaying his intestines. One of his legs had been almost completely severed near the hip joint. He had not survived his injuries. The driver of the vehicle, a pale young woman in hysterics and leggings, was leaning over the dead man when he sat back up, guts spilling from his body, and bit her face, taking a chunk out of her cheek as she screamed for help. Isobel wasn’t the only driver that swerved around the mess. She could still hear the woman’s yelling as she sped the last three blocks home. There was nothing I could do to help the man or the woman, she thought over and over again, trying to calm her nerves and her conscience. The world was feeling much smaller to her; the troubles of it more her own now.
She pulled her car into the parking lot of Willow Brook and quickly lugged her two bags of groceries from the lot to the front door.
“Whroah roah wroooah! Roah!” A giant black poodle jumped into her making her scream and drop her food.
“Kiki, no! Get down! Bad dog, BAD DOG!” Sheila Brown from apartment 201 yelled, tugging roughly on her dog’s leash and dragging it up the stairs.
“Oh, it’s ok. I can pick it all up myself. Really, don’t worry about it!” Isobel said to Sheila who was already out of earshot. “Thanks for the apology too, bitch.”
Upstairs she put the groceries away with what was already in the cupboards. Her food situation looked much better to her now so for the rest of the first day she sat alone in the living room in front of the television, eyes glued to news report after bloody news report; ears listening intently to the speculation. Several times she hopped up to check that the door was locked. She was still having trouble mentally digesting what she’d seen on the road earlier. Maybe the bicyclist wasn’t dead? Perhaps he was just knocked unconscious and when he came to, in all his pain and bewilderment, he lashed out? No story she made up explained how the man could be alive after suffering wounds so horrific, nor why he would want to bite the driver who shattered and shredded his body.
His guts were on the road, she kept coming back to this single sight, this undeniable fact. No one sits up with his guts on the road.
S.O.S.-less
Many people still had a very strong sense that things would be ok because they had no contact with the disease yet. They were viewing the plague on televisions and computer screens, not in person. Their faith in the police force, that the uniformed men and women in affected areas could get things under control, was strong. Stronger still was the idea that all of the world’s best scientists would be gathering in a sterile room at an undisclosed location, working day and night until they found the cause and then the cure. Hollywood had showed the citizens this response so this is what they demanded; what their minds had decided would happen – was happening. The population waited for quarantines and white-suited specialists with giant mobile labs but they didn’t come. Many CDC labs had already been overrun with the dead.
As the day disappeared and night came, things were falling apart fast as the spread of the infection continued from one complacent and unprepared house to another. In Northgate strange noises filled the air, mixed with relentless emergency response sirens. Isobel turned off the television, filled the bathtub with water just in case it stopped running, cooked some pork chops and drowned out the horrible cacophony with her mp3 player.
Slowly she fell asleep. Around one in the morning the gunshots picked up and tore her from her rest. Unable to regain unconsciousness over the noise, Isobel turned the television back on. The dead weren’t just coming back; they were definitely coming back hungry. Her mind returned to the bicyclist. He wasn’t lashing out in anger; he was trying to bite her! The confirmation was terrifying. The attacks had spread so quickly that the infection had reached uncontainable levels. With one eye open, Isobel barely slept at all the rest of the first night.
The Second Day
The second day of the plague was noisy. All this death is so much nosier than the daily grind of life, Rob Pace thought. Midday brought a motorcycle accident in the street out front of the building. He heard the bike speeding up the street, then a horn honk, some metal crashing on metal, and then yelling.
Rob looked outside. He saw the motorcyclist lying on the ground a few yards from his bike. He was dragging himself along the ground; his legs made useless in the crash. Rob noticed he wasn’t yelling from the pain. The dead people that had appeared on the street overnight were slowly moving towards the maimed man.
“Get away! Stay back!” Rob heard him yell. “I have a gun!” And he did. The biker pulled it from inside his jacket and started recklessly shooting into the growing crowd. He took two down easily but he realized he wouldn’t have enough bullets to kill them all. He turned the gun on himself.
“No!” Rob yelled from his apartment balcony. The man pulled the trigger before he was killed by one of the undead.
“What is it Dad?” Gabe, his seven-year-old son, had run to his side. Rob quickly threw a hand over his eyes.
“Something you shouldn’t see.”
“But I want to see it.”
“You are only saying that because you don’t know what it is.”
“Well . . . yeah.”
“And you’ll never know.”
Rob found it within himself to laugh as he pulled his son away from the window.
Tissue Thin
It was easy to stay inside if you were anyone other than Jeff Brown. He hadn’t been out of the apartment for almost a week due to the combination of a nasty cold he’d caught and then the infection that everyone else was catching. His desk job, providing technical support for a major software company, always drained his energy. He should have felt rested from the time off but he was tired.
His marriage to Sheila was crumbling; if you could call it a marriage to start with. She’d forced him into it ten years ago and he’d regretted that every day since. There was no communication and his wife loved her dog more than him. All this he was ok with though. The issue lay with being stuck inside with her for a week and for an indefinite length of time to come. He blew his nose into one of the last tissues they had in the house.
“Do you have to blow your nose so loud? It’s disgusting!” Sheila yelled from the other room.
He could feel his patience grow thinner with every remark she made and every tense conversation they had; thoughts tugging at his brain of leaving or asking her to go instead. She could take her untrained dog with her, he fell asleep on the couch dreaming of it, used tissues scattered across his sick body.
The Devil’s Work
“We just have to survive this. Please be patient, Edward. Life has thrown us more difficult things in the past,” Moira tried to comfort her husband who had been pacing their first floor apartment for two days.
“Have you looked outside today? There’s blood on the street and people everywhere.”
“They aren’t people anymore. Maybe you should stop looking if you don’t like what you see.”
“Folks on the radio are saying we should try to get somewhere safe.”
“No place is safe! The army bases started turning people away and now they are dying at the closed front gates. The mega churches asked their congregations to gather for mass prayer in order to cast out the demons that possess everyone. Then they all got trapped in the buildings with the infection. The pews are covered in blood just like the street. NPR said the best course of action is to stay inside and lock the doors.”
“That isn’t action; that is inaction.”
“So we don’t change a thing then. Sit down and read your book.”
A Promise
Ben had been waiting for his girlfriend since yesterday. She lived a few cities away and he’d asked her to stay with him. He waited to hear the front door buzzer all day. He heard it a lot but when he answered the phone to see if it was Anna it was someone else. Today, all he heard was growling.
He waited without hearing from her the entire day. The sirens grew further and further apart. How many ambulances were still capable of responding? How many paramedics now needed medical help themselves? Ben imagined a lone ambulance racing from incident to incident; brave medics fighting to save lives and to stay alive themselves but eventually even that siren stopped wailing.
He hoped Anna made it safely to him. He had insisted that she come. She had made him promise that everything would be fine. He had.
Coping Mechanism
Molly Mathay was out of the program. She’d completed it and was eating healthily for almost six months. But she was still on probation in a sense. A mentor would come by once a week to check on her. Now things were getting more difficult than she’d ever imagined they could. The treatment center staff hadn’t trained her how to handle apocalyptic situations and she knew that her mentor wouldn’t be able to come by with the plague that was spreading.
She was alone with it and the thought of losing easy access to food made her anxious. Her anxiety made her more food obsessed. She started to binge and purge again to cope.
Her apartment wasn’t stockpiled with food; she wasn’t allowed to shop for more than one normal week at a time. She wanted to ask for help but she barely knew anyone in the building. She’d spent a small amount of time with Rob Pace and his son but that was an awkward situation for other reasons.
It would be difficult if not impossible in the new world to find either enough support or food to settle the urge.
The Plague in Pixels
Markus was left with his mind, filled with endless questions, all of the second day. He sat around and browsed the internet to try to distract his busy brain. The infection was everywhere though and he couldn’t escape it. YouTube had terrifying first-hand accounts:
A father’s hands trembled as he recorded his wife eating their son in the backyard. Two minutes passed by and his wife started to come straight at the sliding glass door for him. The double-paned glass protected him and she could only paw at the slider, desperate for her next meal. The video ended with a tribute to the consumed child: “R.I.P. Elijah.” Comments showed that viewers were touched by the heartache, others disgusted that the man posted such a violent video detailing the death of his child.
A video shot from a high window showing a street in Everett full of bodies. Someone with a sniper rifle across the street was taking out the infected as they wandered into the area. Markus watched the video until the end where he saw that the shooter didn’t discriminate between infected and uninfected people. Trigger Happy was the video’s name. A comment listed the street address of the shooter and a warning: “Don’t travel this street unless you want to die.” Comments included minute markers in the video for viewers’ favorite kills, mostly the headshots.
One of the last videos Markus watched was of two teenage boys, both around 15 years old, looking for the infected and then messing around with them. Pouring soda on them, taunting them to chase after one of the boys, tripping them, etc . . . It was kind of funny to him – almost like a prank show he’d seen on MTV- until the taller boy recognizes his mom in a nearby group of infected and the recording ends. Comments listed request after request for more “episodes” of “They’ve Got No Brains!” (Which Markus thought was a clever title they’d given the video). Many offered suggestions for content.
Twitter too had been infected. It was full of sad stories, told in snippets. Never before had 140 characters or less been so depressing, so full of the woes of a nation and world.
Markus didn’t feel so lonely and he felt much better off when he read what others were tweeting.
@ncallaway: My dad’s got a fever and his feet are numb. I looked it up on WebM.D. and it says he might have lupus. Anyone dealt with anything like that?
@Jen_is_Twenty: I went to class yesterday but half the kids stayed home. I wonder if anyone will come back. Should I even go in tomorrow?
@heismine43: stay away from the hospitals. My husband contracted the infection at one and never came home. It was a madhouse.
@lordLover2010: Jesus will come for me and my fellow Christians. Fear the rapture, praise the Lord! Your time is now, you sinners, burn in hell!
@margareet: I have a few extra swords and weapons if anybody needs them. I’m in McMahon Hall at the University. Safest place I know. Stay safe friends.
@haro_kitei: Trapped in my room because my sister is trying to kill me. I don’t know what to do. Can any of you guys send help? I can pay you.
How could anyone help? No one even knew where she lived, what her house looked like, who her sister was. And pretty soon, no one would care.
Twitter was full of tweets with the simple words: the infection is here. With a search for ‘#infection’ one could track its spread and if you really paid attention, you could tell when someone was exposed to it. They would tweet less and less, perhaps more desperately. Some would say their goodbyes and most would say their “fuck yous”. They’d end up typing gibberish as their hands went numb and then they’d disappear. The last tweet gathering digital dust as time continued without them.
Ben on the Third Day
The phone lines cut in and out on the third day or maybe, Ben thought, they were just flooded with calls. Ben had tried to reach emergency services off and on all day but he either got a busy tone or nothing.
Anna had made it to him in the late afternoon but she’d been attacked along the way and had a wound on her leg. She needed help but due to the spotty phone connection and his anguish at seeing her hurt, he wasn’t able to help her very well. He had her on the bed in the second bedroom of his place with the injured leg elevated and he kept trying to feed her but she was getting sicker and sicker.
A knock on his door pulled him from her side. He was surprised to see that it was Isobel, the neighbor from down the hall, because she was only an acquaintance.
“Hey,” Isobel said, looking lonely and hoping for an invite inside.
“Hi, Isobel. How are you holding up?” Ben asked her. He kept the door mostly closed. There was some blood in the entry from Anna’s leg that he didn’t want to explain to Isobel. Besides, Anna was a jealous person who’d get the wrong idea if she knew another woman was at his door looking for company. The blood loss and shock would only have made her more temperamental. Ben was about to give Isobel a gun and tell her to go back to her apartment when Anna stumbled into the living room.
“Who -” Anna mumbled.
Ben rushed to her as she collapsed. Isobel opened the door enough to see the blood on the floor.
“What’s wrong with her?” She asked.
“Stay there! Don’t come in! I’ll be right back.” Ben picked Anna up and carried her back to the bedroom. When he returned he gave Isobel a handgun.
“What happened to her Ben? Is she infected?”
“I don’t know yet. She’s not well, that’s for sure. Stay safe Isobel. Don’t come back here.”
He closed the door on her.
Anna was dying in front of his eyes. Ben had heard news reports of how bad the hospitals were and even though Northwest was just up the road, it would have been a death sentence for him. If he wasn’t injured on the way, there were bound to be hundreds of wounded on the hospital grounds, all seeking similar aid. Casualties there would be high. Ben decided that Anna would fare much better with his one on one attention in the secure environment of Willow Brook.
The topic of people-eating people is never very appetizing and the stress of taking care of Anna had kept Ben unaware of his growling stomach. He had some toast and juice. The television was the only distraction that Ben had from Anna’s moaning. That evening it confirmed to him that the infection was contagious. Bite wounds were fatal and the disease could be spread through saliva and other bodily fluids.
“Fuck,” he said aloud as a thought occurred to him, I have to find out if she was bitten.
There’s a lot more where this came from. It is a simple fictional fact: as the quantity of the dead goes up the quality of life goes down. You can buy the ebook here, from Amazon’s Kindle Store or you can like WtD on Facebook for updates about getting your mortal hands on a physical copy!
The Spread: A Zombie Short Story Collection [sample chapters]
Terrifying Findings
Martin Groveman, the county Medical Examiner, was having a productive day. His first autopsy had been an easy one; a domestic dispute had turned ugly and the wife of the victim shot him in the head. The second one was another gunshot victim, this time an elderly woman shot by her neighbor, the third body was more puzzling.
The man on the steel table before him had a unique story; Martin was already convinced of that. He just wasn’t sure of the details yet, as partway through the internal examination, the sheriff, Bill Deen, had let himself into the mortuary.
“What can you tell me?” the sheriff asked.
“He’s dead, Bill,” Martin answered with a half-smile.
“That some kind of morgue humor?” Bill asked without smiling back.
“Without a little fun, this job is just no fun at all,” Martin answered truthfully. “But I did find out something you’ll be interested to know.”
“Oh yeah?” Bill asked as he leaned a hip against the morgue table and folded his arms over his chest.
“He wasn’t in the water very long at all. The start of decomposition happened on land, not in the lake.”
“Are you telling me someone dumped his body there? It’d be a bit hard to move his deadweight,” the sheriff surmised as he pointed to the remains on the table. He’d been on the boat when the diver located the body and a specialized team recovered him. “Whoever killed and moved this guy must have left a trail. A drag path or something.”
“Another interesting thing that I found, he was in perfect condition when he died; with the body of an athlete and the internal health to match. Absolutely no trauma that suggests foul play. He had one open wound, a small mark that looked like a bite on his back. Nothing else,” Martin added.
“A bite mark? We’d usually find something like that on the perpetrator; made by the victim in an attempt to end the attack.” Bill furrowed his brow and stroked his mustache, deep in thought.
“There may be brain trauma that I can’t see. I still need to examine his head internally. So, maybe someone did kill him.”
“Why did you call me here before finishing the autopsy, Martin?” the sheriff asked with a shake of his head.
“I didn’t call you, Bill. You showed up, remember?” Martin reminded him.
Bill couldn’t quite remember. They’d been getting very strange phone calls at dispatch all day and there was a calm-before-the-storm type feeling in the air that really threw him off.
“You’re right, I did just come. Sorry ‘bout that. Give me a call when you know more.” Bill extended a hand to shake but Martin was still wearing dirty gloves. Bill tipped his hat to the medical examiner instead and left the building.
Martin had already pulled away the skin and soft tissues from the top of the head, exposing the man’s skull, just before Bill had arrived. Ready to pick up where he left off, he pulled down a large plastic mask to protect his face and picked up the Stryker saw. Martin placed the vibrating blade to the man’s skull and made a circle around the entire diameter. Once the cutting was complete he gently lifted away the top of the skull and set it aside.
He could tell without even removing the brain that it had suffered some form of blunt trauma but the injury looked recent and there was no bleeding around the impact area.
“This doesn’t make sense,” Martin said, fogging up his mask for a moment. He ripped the gloves from his hands and, with the mask still covering his face, looked through the list of numbers by the telephone attached to the morgue wall. There had to be a specialist somewhere that could explain what he was seeing, he just didn’t know whom to call.
What the Cat Dragged In
He was on a hunt for the annoying bird that always interrupted his afternoon nap. Last he’d seen the stupid thing, it was sitting on the fence mocking his two-inch long fur and his slowness. He’d hissed at the creature and it had taken to the sky like it always did when it felt threatened. That was yesterday.
Today he couldn’t find it anywhere in the backyard that he shared with his owner; the shriveled human that smelled like tuna fish and death. He spent all morning searching for the bird to no avail. Maybe on the other side, the feline thought. He approached the back fence and found the hole that led to a long alley behind the houses.
Usually, others of his kind could be found wandering here, but the air felt different. He smelled blood and decided to follow the trail. He hoped that he’d find a dead canine at the end of it. The terrier, the cat dreamed. He hated everything about that dog; the way it looked, the way it sounded, the smell of its breath and its stupid name: Teri. All of the dogs in the neighborhood were idiots, save for the white one with black spots. That dog knew more than he let on.
The cat followed the trail of blood down the alley, winding through garbage bins and on and off of the hard surface of the road and the grass that lined it. The blood took him through the back gate of a neighboring house. His sensitive nose was overloaded by the smell that hung over the yard. Animal bodies littered the overgrown lawn, gutted and left to rot in the sun.
He slowly walked through the yard, toward the deck where he could get a better view of the carnage. From there he could see the tiny body of the stupid bird and, to his surprise, the large body of the smart Dalmatian. Something had eaten them.
The strong scent of death had disabled his ability to smell danger as it approached from behind. He heard the creak of a board on the deck but could not break into a run for hands had already gripped his body. The cat struggled and managed to rotate within the clutches and secure his teeth around an arm. He bit down as hard as he could and dug his claws into whatever skin they hit. The hands instantly released him but his mouth tasted horrible, as though he’d eaten something that had been sitting for weeks at the bottom of a trashcan.
He ran back up the alley and scurried through the hole in the fence that took him to the safety of his own backyard. No matter how many times he tried to, he couldn’t really clean his tongue and now his fur smelled like decay as well.
The cat approached the backdoor of his human’s house and cried out loudly. Within moments the elderly woman let him inside.
“You smell disgusting!” she told the cat, holding her nose. “Let mommy give you a bath.” The old woman plugged the kitchen sink and filled it with lukewarm water. She picked up the cat and dropped him in the liquid.
The cat hated baths almost as much as he hated Teri and more than he hated smelling like death. He jumped from the water and onto the woman’s chest, nearly knocking her down. She gripped him but he clawed his way out of her arms.
“Ow! What a bad cat you are! Where did you learn manners like that?” She looked at her thin arms and the wounds he’d left on them. Her cat was making horrible noises on the kitchen floor, like he was crying. She comforted and towel-dried him as much as he would allow.
“Who loves her kitty? I do. Yes I do love you my big kitty,” Evelyn Berry cooed as she scratched the underside of her Persian’s tiny chin. The cat had forgiven her for the attempted bath and now purred heavily and rubbed his face against her wrinkled hand. “I’d be all alone without you Blue Berry.”
In cat years, Blue was as close to death as Evelyn herself was. At eighty-four she was lucky to still be living without assistance from either a nurse or an oxygen tank, let alone still living. She was mobile enough to do her household work and bathe but she had to utilize a few delivery services to get what she needed. Her legs simply wouldn’t survive a trek through the grocery store.
Today she was expecting her groceries from a local food delivery service. She sat in her living room, the television blared the noises of a game show.
“Buy a vowel!” Evelyn yelled at the woman on the screen. Blue Berry, who had settled his fluffy self down on her lap, jumped in shock from his owner’s outburst. “It’s ok, Blue. Mommy just got excited.”
“Are there any G’s?” the female contestant asked the show’s host. A buzzer rang out signaling that no ‘G’s’ existed on the board.
“I told you to buy a vowel,” Evelyn scoffed, petting her cat’s head calmly.
Ding dong
The doorbell rang, sending Evelyn’s cat flying off of her lap and scratching her legs in the jump. He ran to hide under the unused dining room table.
“Such a scared-y cat! I’m coming,” Evelyn said as she slowly shuffled to open the front door. On the other side stood a man with a hand truck that was stacked to its top with boxes of food; his work shirt embroidered with the logo of the company he worked for along with his name.
“Come in, Paul. The kitchen is straight back, end of the hall.” Evelyn pointed behind her and let the man by.
“I can bring it in but you’ll have to unpack the boxes yourself. Company policy,” the man said firmly as he walked to the end of the hall. He followed company policy, especially if someone read his name off his shirt.
“Oh, well, the other delivery man puts it away for me. I’m not very capable,” Evelyn lied because she wanted to get back to watching the game show. The contestants were about to solve the puzzle.
“I’m not supposed to and I’m really not feeling well, ma’am,” he said truthfully.
“Won’t you help out a senior citizen, just this once?” she pouted with extra frailty in her voice.
He looked at the boxes and guessed that it wouldn’t take him more than ten extra minutes to help her. Old women always had such a helplessness about them that cut through his stickler ways.
“Alright,” he complied, “but you can’t say I did.”
“Thank you!” Evelyn smiled. She left him in the kitchen, shut the front door and made her way back to her chair in front of the television. Shortly after she sat down, the deliveryman came into the living room, a can of soup in his hand.
“Where’d you like the soups?” he asked Evelyn.
“Second cupboard in on the left of the sink,” she said without looking in his direction.
He returned to the kitchen and found a cat investigating the open cardboard boxes on the floor. “Are you looking for food little dude?” he asked the cat, assuming it was male and hungry. He bent down to pet the friendly-looking cat and it swung a paw at him, its claws cutting shallow scratches in his palm. “You are not friendly at all!”
The pain in his hand reminded him of the overall crappy feeling his whole body felt. His head hurt and a layer of perspiration covered his body. He was sure at this point that he had the flu. Hopefully the old lady doesn’t get sick from me, he thought. Better hurry up and get out of here. He finished unpacking the groceries and went back to the living room.
“Ma’am? I’m all done in there. I’m heading out,” he said to the woman, but he could only see the top of her thinning hair above the high back of her chair. She didn’t answer.
“Ma’am?” the man asked again. He moved slowly around her chair, terrified that he was about to find a body. When he came to face her it looked like she was in fact dead. He put a finger on her shoulder, more of a prod than a tap and she sprang up from her chair.
“Oh my!” she yelled. “You frightened me! I must have fallen asleep.”
Paul had fallen back toward the television and caught himself on his injured hand. “Ahh!” he called out as he pulled his hand close to his body and clutched the scratch.
“Are you ok?” the old woman asked. “What’s happened to your hand?”
“Your cat, it scratched me when I tried to pet it,” the man explained.
“I’m sorry about that. I don’t know what’s gotten into him today. He hurt me too,” she apologized, showing him her own scratches. “You make sure you clean that! Cat scratches can get really nasty if you don’t.”
“I’ll be sure to. Have a good day,” he said.
The old woman followed him to the door and watched him walk back to his still-running truck.
“He doesn’t look so good,” she said to Blue Berry who had joined her at the door.
The cat looked up at his human. The old woman’s skin color had diminished to a deathly pallor. She didn’t look too good either.
The Price of Convenience
After the healthiest snack he could find at a mini mart – a snack pack of apples and grapes – Paul was back to his delivery route. His health had not improved and he was looking forward to finishing early. When he checked his clipboard for his final stop, he felt like going home immediately instead: it was Thea Mathes.
“I have to get rid of this route,” Paul said to himself as he pulled his vehicle to the curb. Before he had even loaded his hand truck with her groceries, Thea was at her window watching his every move.
Even if Paul could forget about this crazy woman, her doormat would remind him whose house he was at. It read “Wipe your feet three times before you hit the chime!” As he did, he could swear that Thea was counting. What would you do if I only wiped once? He wanted to ask her.
Once his feet were clean she allowed him in. The entry hall was long and Thea had installed a large hand sanitizer dispenser on either end. She pointed to the one closest to the front door.
“I have gloves on!” Paul protested.
“I saw you blow your nose out there, Paul. What’s wrong? Are you sick? You know I don’t allow sick people into my house,” Thea said nervously.
“No, I’m fine,” Paul lied. “I just had a tickle in my nose. It’s from all the cardboard boxes.”
“Gloves off, sanitizer on.” Thea crossed her arms and stood watch until he’d done as she asked.
“Ok, I smell like I’ve been drinking on the job now. Can I finish this up?” He nodded in the direction of the kitchen.
“All right, but if I hear so much as a sniffle from you, you’re out and I’m calling your manager,” Thea declared. “It is a biological hazard to be sending sick people all over the city.”
He pushed his hand truck down the hall, eyeing the second hand sanitizer dispenser as he passed by. “Hey Thea, this one’s running a little low,” he snickered.
Thea appeared immediately with a refill bag but was disappointed to find that Paul had lied. “I knew I’d just refilled that one! Public health is not a joke, Paul!”
Upon hearing his name used so casually once again from the mouth of a near stranger he became more irritated. “New company policy,” he said to himself in the kitchen, “no wearing nametags in crazy people’s houses.”
Back near the front door, Thea was on her hands and knees wiping the wood floor where the hand truck had rolled with a cloth and a disinfectant spray. “Paul, I can’t allow you to bring that cart in here again. It tracks too much dirt.”
Her voice was sounding distant to him and his balance was wavering again, but with more intensity. Paul moved quickly to unload the boxes. This was more than a cold, possibly the flu. He pushed his hand truck into the hall and quickly slipped on a wet puddle of the spray that Thea had laid down. His head hit the floor with a thud.
“Oh my word!” Thea yelled and rushed to his side. His eyes were closed. “Paul! Paul, wakeup!” She shook his shoulders and gingerly grabbed his chin and moved his face side to side in an attempt to rouse him. She put her face close to his chest. He wasn’t breathing and she could hear no heart beat.
Thea stood up and ran to the dispenser on the wall. She filled her hand with a small pool of the sanitizing goo. She smeared some around his mouth and on his lips and for good measure, smeared some on her own face. “Ok, Thea. As soon as he starts breathing you can stop,” she comforted herself.
She checked again with the hope that he had started to breathe on his own, but he hadn’t. Thea leaned toward Paul’s face; her lips approached his slightly parted set.
Maybe it was the touch of skin on skin or just part of the reanimation process but as soon as she’d made contact, Paul returned to life. Thea screamed as his arms gripped her in a hug and he bit her lip.
With a strength she didn’t know she had, Thea struggled free of his hold, opened her front door and ran from her house.
This time Thea was absolutely certain that something was wrong with her. Others had called her a hypochondriac in the past, but this was different. A man had drawn her blood with his mouth, a mouth that had been god knows where.
Two years prior she had a cancer scare, that no one else (not even the doctor!) thought was real. She had the weird looking mole removed just to make sure. Seven months ago she suffered severe burns to her lower legs, brought on by a close call with spontaneous combustion. The paramedics told her she had been sitting to close to a space heater. In between those two major incidents she was sick all of the time with any number of sneezes and sniffles that were floating around the neighborhood. That is why she had the dispensers installed and why she carried facemasks in her purse.
Blood ran from her cut lip and she was panting heavily after running three blocks. I must look insane, she thought. She pulled one of the masks from her purse and put it on. It would at least cover the wound; whether it made her look more psychotic she didn’t care.
She neared the police station but kept walking. Before she could report the attack something had to be done to protect her body. There was a drug store just a few more blocks down the road; she could get what she needed there.
The door glided open for Thea and an employee in a red vest immediately greeted her.
“Can I help you find anything?” he chimed.
Thea felt she couldn’t answer the question. Small talk would only allow the disease to spread faster through her body. Ignoring him, she grabbed a cart and moved with purpose to the personal health and hygiene aisle. She watched him out of the corner of her eye. When she was certain he’d moved on, she started chugging bottles of cough syrup.
Next, Thea picked up a bag of cough drops, ripped it open and unwrapped no less than ten of the herbal lozenges. She put the entire handful in her mouth and dropped the wrappers to the floor.
A security guard appeared at the end of the aisle. The man was bulky and an entire foot taller than Thea. He walked confidently but slowly toward her.
“Ma’am, I need you to put the merchandise down and follow me to the office,” the guard calmly stated. Thea looked up at him in terror and shook her head in declination.
“I haf ta be helfy!” she cried out, cough drops spilling from her overstuffed mouth. “Healthy!” she yelled more clearly, collapsing to the ground amid the scattered lozenges, wrappers and empty plastic bottles.
The guard mumbled something into a radio he’d unclipped from his belt. Without warning he grabbed Thea and escorted her to the office. Thea was made to sit at the worn, Formica-topped table in the middle of the room while the guard called the police.
“Hi, uh, non-emergency. Yeah, I’d like to report a theft. Yes, the suspect is in custody. Yes, that’s the address. Ok, thank you,” the guard said into the office phone. He hung up and turned to face Thea. “The police are on their way.”
Out in the drugstore, a manager and employee surveyed the scene of the crime. “Stanley, grab some gloves from the sales floor and clean these up,” the manager directed as he nudged one of the sticky lozenges near his left foot. “And take this cart back to the front.”
The employee did as he was told. With gloves hugging his hands he picked up the discarded cough drops and then found a mop to get rid of the tack they’d left on the floor. Just as he put the bucket and mop away, the police arrived to escort the woman to jail. He followed behind them, pushing the cart back to the front.
She struggled against the handcuffs and yelled at the policemen to wipe off the backseat before putting her into the car.
Free Candy
“This isn’t preschool, mommy.”
“I know. Mommy forgot to pack you something to share for snack time. We’ll go to preschool next, Maia,” Annette explained.
She pulled her station wagon into the drugstore parking lot. After parking, she walked to the back door to help her daughter out of the car.
As they crossed the lot to the entrance, Annette noticed a police cruiser parked parallel with the curb in front of the store. Stupid shoplifting kids, she thought. But, as they walked into the store, two cops staggered by with the struggling culprit in their arms. Annette was surprised to see that it was a middle-aged woman with something red smeared on her face.
“Do you need a cart, ma’am?” a sales person asked as he approached, pushing one.
“Do you want to walk like a big girl, or ride in the cart?” Annette asked Maia, though she knew what her daughter’s answer would be.
“Cart!” Maia screamed a bit too excitedly.
“Inside voice,” Annette calmly reminded her daughter as she accepted the cart and lifted Maia into the child seat.
Annette walked aimlessly around the aisles. She maneuvered around a ‘caution, wet floor’ sign near the Band-Aids. “Hmm, what happened here?” she thought aloud.
“Something got spill-ded,” Maia answered.
Annette smiled and focused on finding shareable foods. In the snack section she quickly passed by the pretzels because every other mom always brought them. Coming up with nothing suitable, she went to the refrigerated section to pick up some yogurts.
While Annette left the cart to hold open the door to the cooler, Maia found something stuck to the child seat next to her. It was red and round and looked like candy. “Mommy, can I have this?” Maia asked with the sticky cough drop already in her fingers and nearing her mouth. But Annette couldn’t hear her daughter over the noise of the refrigerator, especially since the yogurt hadn’t been restocked, forcing her to climb halfway inside to reach anything.
Maia put the cough drop in her mouth and was happily sucking away on it when Annette returned to the cart.
“What’s in your mouth?” Annette asked.
“Candy,” Maia said quietly.
Annette held out her hand and Maia knew that meant she had to spit it out. The cough drop fell onto Annette’s hand. She searched her purse for a tissue to wrap it in but had to settle for a gum wrapper that barely encased it.
“Where’d you find it?” Annette asked, but she didn’t really want to know the answer. Kids were always putting objects in their mouths, no matter how dirty they appeared to be.
“Here,” Maia touched a tiny finger to the seat. Her finger stuck a little to the residue as she pulled it away.
“Uuugh,” Annette moaned. “What have I told you about eating things?”
“Ask mommy first,” Maia recited. “I did.”
“Well Mommy has to hear you ask the question and she has to answer you, ok?”
Maia nodded and Annette pushed the cart to the checkout lanes.
“Just the yogurt for you, ma’am?” the sales person asked from behind the register.
Annette nodded and smiled. She didn’t want to sound rude so she said as politely as she could, “Do the shopping carts ever get cleaned?”
Stanley wasn’t sure so he thought for a second and replied, “I could ask my manager, if you like?”
“No, that’s ok. She’s late for preschool. Could you throw this away for me though? My daughter found it in the cart and put it in her mouth.” Annette handed him the partially wrapped cough drop.
“Oh, I’m so sorry about that! Sure thing. Have a good day, ma’am.” Stanley smiled his best smile as the woman and her child left the store. He looked down at what she’d given him. He could see the red of the cough drop peeking out through the silver of the gum wrapper.
“I sure hope that crazy lady wasn’t sick or anything. That’ll be a lawsuit right there.”
Locked Up
“Stand away from the bars,” Officer Bo Barrett ordered the six men locked in the station’s only holding cell. He’d finished booking Thea Mathes for theft and resisting arrest. She would spend the night in jail and have to go to court if the drugstore’s manager decided to press charges.
“Yeah, a new friend!” a drunk man yelled as Thea was pushed into the cell. Her legs were weak and she fell to the cement floor. Another man, less drunk but more frightening looking, approached her and helped her to her feet. He could see the skin around her mouth was stained a cherry red and she smelled strongly of alcohol.
“You had a bit too much to drink, like this guy,” he said pointing to the heckler. “Maybe you should take the bench.”
Thea allowed the man to walk her to a long, wooden seat that spanned the back wall of the cell. Too ill to care about the grime, she lay down and closed her eyes. The men around her talked as she drifted in and out of consciousness.
“She’s not too bad looking,” one man commented.
“Yeah but she can’t hold her liquor,” said another.
“Think she’ll give me her number when she wakes up?” the drunk man asked loudly.
“You don’t want to call her. She’ll drink all your booze,” a fourth man pointed out.
“Yer right,” the drunk replied.
Things in the cell quieted down until Thea started to die. She began kicking her legs wildly, forcing the men on the bench beyond them to get out of the way.
“What’s wrong with her?” the drunk slurred.
“She’s just dreaming. Running from something,” another man suggested.
“Ha! The police,” a third man said, which sent chuckles around the cell.
Thea’s movement stopped as abruptly as it started. Her body lay prone on the bench for sometime as the men around her shared stories and the toilet.
Officer Barrett walked by the cell to check on its occupants. He noticed that Thea was as still as a corpse.
“She doesn’t look right. Did one of you do something to her?” he asked accusingly.
A gangbanger approached the bars, his face full of anger. “Are you calling me a murderer?” he asked the cop.
“No, I’m not. But, since you said the word, I’m volunteering you to check on her. Go give her a shake, make sure she’s ok.” The officer folded his arms on his chest and waited for the thug to do as he was told.
“Shit, I’m not touching that ho. She jus’ came in off da street!” he replied and returned to sitting on the floor against one of the cell’s walls.
The officer was searching his keys to open the cell door when Thea rose from the bench. She moved slowly and her face was no longer relaxed. Her cough syrup stained lips were parted, showing equally reddened teeth.
“Yo, Barrett,” the gangbanger said, “she look ok to me.”
Officer Barrett looked away from his keys and at the woman. Her arms hung slack at her sides and she was drooling. “She still doesn’t look right,” he said.
The drunkest of the men approached her and touched her shoulder. “Lady,” he said. Thea turned toward him and pounced. The inebriated man fell to the floor with Thea on top of him, her teeth tearing flesh from his neck.
“Ms. Mathes, step away from him. Put your hands on your head!” Bo yelled as he stuck his baton between the bars, attempting to get her attention. He put his baton away and pulled out his gun but she ignored the firearm and continued to make a meal of the prisoner. The men inside the cell had a moment of shock before realizing that they too might be in danger. The men started begging the officer to open the cell.
“Let us out!” they yelled, but Bo didn’t move for his key ring. He couldn’t allow six men and a deranged woman to wander the halls of the station.
“I’ll get some help, just stay away from her!” he directed.
The five remaining men were huddled in the corner opposite the blood bath, fighting to be closest to the wall and furthest from Thea.
“She ain’t drunk. I think it’s that bath salts shit,” one of the men said quietly. He didn’t want to attract Thea’s attention.
“I don’t care what it is, I’m not going near it,” another commented.
“That was almost my neck,” the gangbanger reflected.
Just as Thea started to move away from the carnage she’d made of the drunkard and toward the huddled men, Bo returned with two more officers. One of them immediately drew his gun and shot her in the head.
“What the fuck?” Bo yelled.
“You should have done that in the first place, rookie. She just attacked a man and you let her,” the cop explained, shaking his head.
“I’ve never seen someone eat another person. They didn’t train for this in the academy.”
“It’s called thinking on your feet; making fast decisions. They taught you THAT.”
“What are we going to do with these bodies?” Bo asked.
“Yeah man, get them out of here. This is inhumane, leaving them in here with us,” one of the prisoners said.
“We can’t move them until the medical examiner comes,” the cop replied. “I’ll go call him. Bo, keep an eye on things here until I get back.”
The angry gangbanger stepped forward. “What choo think man, think I’m gonna defile a corpse?”
“We don’t think anything about you, Darnell,” Bo retorted.
“That’s emotional police brutality, man!” Darnell walked up to the corpse of the drunkard and leaned close to get a better view of his wounds. “She really chewed his neck up good!” He touched a finger to the man’s blood-covered neck.
“Don’t touch the body. The man could have AIDS,” Bo told him.
“He don’t have shit no more,” Darnell said as he pulled his gore-covered finger from the wound and wiped it on the dead man’s shirt.
Post Mortem
With all the bodies piling up, it was proving to be an eventful day for Dr. Martin Groveman, especially now that he had a body with a bullet from a policeman’s handgun in its head.
He had a hard time believing the officers’ story but they insisted that they had no other choice in the matter than to shoot the woman before she did any further damage. They claimed she had mostly decapitated a man with her teeth and nothing else.
“The head nearly severed from the body…from a supposed bite wound? Far fetched,” he mumbled as he unzipped the body bag of the executed woman. “Looks like you had a hell of a day, honey. Let’s get you opened up and have a look at your insides.”
Swesh! A noise came from the direction of the other body bag that had been picked up at the jail.
“Ladies first,” Martin said, often speaking to the dead as if they were still living. “You’re just going to have to wait in line, mister.”
Whoosh! More noise came from the corner of the room.
“Looks like we’ve got a live one over there,” he joked to himself as he examined the woman’s body for injuries.
Picking up his voice recorder he documented his observations. “The damage sustained appears only to be to the face. A single bullet has entered into the forehead, no exit wound. A two-inch gash is present on the bottom lip. The lower half of the face is a deep cherry red; officers stated it was a mixture of cough syrup and blood. I’m taking a sample for analysis.”
He cleaned off what he could from her face to better view the lip wound and then proceeded with the autopsy, making a long incision from the top of her chest down to her lower abdomen. “It’s a good day for a little internal investigation,” the examiner chuckled.
Whish! SWOOSH! The noise grew suddenly, much louder than before.
“Oh you found that funny did you? Nice to get some reaction, the crowd’s usually dead in here,” he joked as he turned toward the table where the body of the man lay. A small movement from the lower portion of the bag made it seem as though a leg had shifted, almost in reaction to the doctors voice.
“If you’re alive in there then it’s got to be some sort of miracle! This lady put a pretty big hole in your neck,” he said as he pointed back toward the woman. “Maybe you can tell me what you did to piss her off so much? That would make my job a whole lot easier. You know, ‘case closed’ easier.”
The bag started wiggling and areas of it poked out where the man’s elbows and knees bent with each jagged movement. Seeing this, the doctor became worried that the man was in fact alive and most likely panicking from being zipped in a large plastic bag. How could he be alive? The doctor thought to himself as he walked closer to the table.
Martin opened the bag about half way to allow the man to breathe but was not prepared for what he saw looking back at him. The man sat up and stared blankly at him, his body a deathly bluish-white and his head set crookedly on what was left of his neck.
“Eek,” Martin jumped as he screamed. “You are most definitely not alive.” Not knowing what to do, he pinned the man down, zipped up the bag and took a few steps back. “Well, this complicates things,” he said as walked to the phone mounted on the wall to dial the sheriff’s number. “Better see what Bill has to say about this!”
The phone rang twice before it was answered. “King County Sheriff’s office, this is SusAnna, how may I direct your call?”
“Um, yes, this is Martin Groveman from the Medical Examiner’s office. I uh…have a…uh…situation over here,” he said gesturing to the slithering body bag as if the receptionist was standing next to him.
“A situation, at the morgue?” she laughed. “Did someone come back to life or something?”
“Well YES, but I’d feel more comfortable talking to Bill about this.”
“Is this some sort of joke, Mr. Groveman?”
“NO, I wish it were. Now, can I please talk to the sheriff?” Martin asked, frustration growing in his voice.
“Yes sir, sorry, right away. Please, hold.”
