DEAD: Snapshot (Book 3): Liberty, South Carolina Page 5

  “Just promise me that you will wait for me,” Jonathan insisted.

  “I won’t go any farther than the corner,” his mother said, sounding extremely inconvenienced and put out by the request.

  “NO!” he barked. “I want you to wait inside the house.”

  “But—” she started to protest.

  “I mean it, Mom.”

  “Fine.” The sigh at the other end of the line was overly dramatic.

  “Promise.”

  “I said—” she began but he cut her off.

  “I said promise.”

  “I promise, Johnny Cakes.”

  He didn’t wait for her to say anything else. He hung up and stared at his screen. Sure enough, he had two emails waiting for him. Both were from the same person.

  “Okay, Fumio, whadda ya got for me.”

  One of Jonathan’s gaming buddies turned out to be a fourteen-year-old from Tokyo. He’d been blown away when he’d learned that the guy he’d been going into the arena with for over six months was almost half his age.

  One day after his ass had been pulled out of the fire no less than a dozen times by this one person, he’d sent him a message of thanks and added his personal email. The next day he’d received a reply and learned the identity of his battlefield savior.

  Thirteen-year-old (at the time they’d met) Fumio Koguchi from Tokyo, Japan. The two became the modern-day equivalent to pen pals. It didn’t hurt that Fumio was oddly impressed that Jonathan was a manager at a pizza place.

  Last week, Fumio had missed their regular gaming session. The next day, there was an email from him with a file attached. It was a video that took his computer forever to download, but when he finally played it, he was initially confused. Why was Fumio sending him a clip from a Japanese horror movie?

  The video was taken in the hallway of what looked like a hotel to Jonathan. A man was on his knees in the middle of the hall and ripping the insides out of a young Japanese girl who was kicking and screaming her head off. Jonathan thought she might be overacting a bit.

  After a few seconds, the camera jerked around and a young boy’s face filled the screen. Jonathan recognized him instantly. Was Fumio in a movie? If so, that was more than a little cool. The boy began to speak in halted and very heavily accented English.

  “Jonathan-san, something very terrible is happening. They have tried to hide it, but it is now out of control.” The camera jerked again and things were blurry for a moment until the hand holding it steadied once more. The scene now was a long street. It looked like hundreds of people were wandering aimlessly. They did not seem to have any direction or actual destination and often changed their paths on a whim. The camera jerked again and Fumio’s face filled the picture once more. “I am afraid. It is impossible to leave my home. My parents have not returned in three days.”

  The sounds of screams could be heard in the background. A few were just like that one girl in that they were unlike anything Jonathan had ever heard before. Not even the old classic movie “scream queens” could match these poor souls. That was when it sunk in. These were the screams of real people being ripped apart.

  Once more the camera jerked around and the hallway came back into focus. The person that had been hunched over the poor girl had gotten to his feet and was staggering towards Fumio.

  “Get out of there,” Jonathan had whispered impotently.

  He breathed a sigh of relief when it was obvious that the boy was moving away. He paused, and the sound of a door being jostled could be heard. The creak of hinges almost seemed comical if not for the fact that this was really happening and not the trick of some foley artist to add tension to the scene. Just before the camera jerked away again, Jonathan had seen the girl on the floor begin to stir.

  The rest of the video consisted of scenes outside the high rise apartment that Fumio Koguchi called home. There were plumes of smoke rising into the sky in every direction. The streets were packed with people wandering about. Having no knowledge of Tokyo, Japan other than what he saw on television, he would have not seen anything out of the ordinary. Only, there was one thing that nagged at him about what he was seeing; he simply could not place it. After the third replay, it struck him.

  There was not one single motor vehicle moving in the streets below. The only traffic was that of pedestrians milling about.

  He had not known what to do with this footage. He was considering trying to sell it to one of those tabloid television shows. Then Kentucky happened.

  The government had to believe that the American public was nothing more than a bunch of idiots. Unfortunately, that turned out to be a fairly accurate assessment.

  When the first reports of the quarantine broke, it was not greeted with an overwhelming degree of alarm. After all, unless you lived in whatever the name of that Podunk town was, then it wasn’t your problem. In fact, Jonathan remembered his own reaction.

  “Sucks to be them,” he’d said when he had pulled into work that evening. And then he’d shut off his engine and walked in to start his shift.

  He had thought nothing of it until one of his drivers mentioned the next day that nothing further had been reported about that small town that had been quarantined. Even then he’d just brushed the comment aside. But that night as he watched Fumio’s video once more and debated between a tabloid and one of the big cable news networks, he had remembered.

  A quick search revealed absolutely nothing. There was not one single mention of a town in Kentucky or anyplace else in the United States having been quarantined. He popped into the lobby of his favorite game and typed in a single word: Kentucky.

  There were over a hundred rooms with Kentucky mentioned. He popped into one after another and read line after line of nutjob conspiracy theory crap. Only…maybe this wasn’t all a bunch of crazy talk.

  He’d finally weighed in and started recounting what he’d seen on Fumio’s video. He was deep into it when an instant message popped up on his screen. Whoever this user had been, he was obviously more than just some casual gamer, his user name was nothing more than a scrambled batch of bizarre symbols. The message was very direct.

  SHUT UP. IF THE GOVERNMENT SEES THIS, THEY WILL COME FOR YOU.

  Jonathan waited for anything else but nothing came. A feeling of paranoia crept over him and he logged off, shut down his computer, and turned off all the lights…as if that might help.

  “Yeah, Jonathan, that would stop a team of covert operatives. Just shut off the lights…that way they won’t be able to see you.”

  That had been two days ago.

  He opened on the first email from Fumio and clicked on the attached file. The second email did not have anything attached and so he opened it while he waited for his computer to do its thing.

  Jonathan-san, I apologize for how short this will be, but I know I don’t have long. They have been outside my door for the past day and I fear it will not hold up much longer. Plus, power has been going off and on the past several hours and I fear it will not last more than an hour or so. I hope my video reaches you. You must tell somebody. Do not let your country hide this as mine has.

  Fumio

  He looked at the bar that indicated the status of his download. The countdown timer declared that he still had over ten minutes. He knew very well that his mother would not wait that long. He would simply have to watch it after he went and picked up his mother.

  “And then what?” he asked himself out loud.

  He didn’t have the slightest idea, but he knew that he had to go get her. Once she was safe inside his home, he would figure out his next move.

  Grabbing his keys from the kitchen table, he hurried out the front door, locking it behind him and then hurrying to his beat up Toyota wagon. He paused and sniffed. Taking a look at first the sole of one shoe and then the other, he sighed in relief that wherever the nasty pile of dog shit might be, he hadn’t stepped in it.

  As he pulled away and sped down the street towards his mother’s house, something
moved in the bushes beside his porch.

  3

  The Dead Come

  Jamie stared out the window of her modest two-bedroom home on Clay Street. She was trying to remember the happiness that she’d felt the day she’d been handed the keys to her house. The green roof had been what first caught her eye.

  The fenced yard was just waiting for her to get a dog. She’d been meaning to look for a puppy, but she was always too busy and had kept putting it off. The chief and Mr. Deese were still out on her porch. They looked to be involved in a pretty serious conversation. If not for the night she’d already had, she might be curious. As it stood, all she really wanted to do was stumble into her bedroom and flop down on the bed.

  “Instant coffee all you got?” Sophie called from her kitchen.

  “Yeah, I ran out of the regular stuff yesterday. I keep the instant for emergency situations.” Jamie turned and headed into the kitchen to join Sophie and her son Lawrence.

  The boy was at the back door staring outside much like she’d been doing out the front. Surely there couldn’t be any of those things in town. Could there?

  “I have tried the hospital at least four times,” Sophie said softly as the two women took their cups and walked back out into the living room leaving Lawrence to continue his silent vigil.

  Jamie hadn’t seen Sophie in a few months. It seemed odd for that to happen in such a small town, but with her hectic schedule as she tried to get a grip on being a mayor as well as the office manager for a land developer based in Greenville that was now expanding out towards Liberty coupled with Sophie’s shifts as an RN over in Pickens at Cannon Memorial Hospital, the stars had just not lined up.

  Sophie looked better than ever. She’d always been beautiful, but there was something else. Her light brown skin was absolutely radiant and her hazel eyes practically glowed. Her tall, athletic body had a grace that Jamie had always envied. The two years that they’d played on the high school basketball team together had been the thing that built their friendship. Sophie was everything on the court that Jamie was not. In fact, after the first day of practice, Jamie had considered dropping out. It had been Sophie that sat beside her in the locker room and told her that she needed to use her speed and forget about how tall anybody else on the court might be in comparison.

  Her thoughts were broken up by the sound of Sophie’s phone ringing. She snatched it from the counter and thrust it out at Jamie.

  “It’s Clifton’s partner, Terry Gibbs. I can’t…” Sophie’s voice trailed off and the tears welled up in her eyes making them even shinier.

  Jamie took the phone and answered. “Hello?”

  “Sophie?” a voice said, sounding confused.

  “No, Cliff, it’s Jamie Burns.” She knew the man’s deep, rich voice and let out a breath that she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “She’s right here, hold on a sec.” She handed the phone to her friend and stepped back as Lawrence hurried in and put his head next to his mother’s so that he could hear.

  “I went to the highway. You weren’t there…I thought that was where they sent you…no…uh-huh…WHAT? Don’t you dare!...No, I can’t.”

  There was a long pause and Jamie could see tears start to well up in Lawrence’s eyes as well. She had no idea what was being said, but it was obviously not good news. She recalled her radio conversation with Private Cronin and how his voice had sounded so bad. It had been clear that he was sick. Clifton had sounded fine.

  “Clifton? Hello?” Sophie pulled her hand back and stared at her phone like it had committed the ultimate act of betrayal.

  “What is it?” Jamie asked. “Is he okay?”

  “No.” Sophie set her phone down on the counter and lifted an arm to allow her son to nestle in for a hug. The two stood clutching each other. Jamie wanted to know what was going on, but she didn’t dare ask and break up this moment for the mother and son.

  “He’s at Cannon Memorial,” Sophie finally said through a throat that sounded tight like she was fighting back a flood of tears.

  “Is he hurt?” Jamie asked as delicately as she could manage.

  “No. The big dummy is fine. They transported an injured girl who seemed to code just before they arrived at the hospital. Just as they pulled in, she started trying to get free from her restraints. She managed to bite Terry. That is why Clifton called on his partner’s phone. The army had already arrived at the hospital and I guess they grabbed the girl from the bay and then insisted that Terry go to some special quarantine wing that was being set up. Terry gave Clifton his phone and asked him to call his wife and let her know that he was okay.”

  Sophie was quiet for a moment and Jamie started to fidget. There was obviously more going on. Cliff had said something at the end of the call that had upset both Sophie and Lawrence.

  “He is apparently helping in the emergency room. I guess they are already so overwhelmed with people being brought in that he felt it was important to stay and help,” Sophie said at last.

  “How did this get so bad so fast?” Jamie asked nobody in particular.

  The front door opened and Mr. Deese stuck his head inside. “Mayor Burns, you need to come out here.”

  Jamie heard the tone in the man’s voice and her stomach twisted into a knot. Taking a deep breath to steady herself for whatever fresh hell was about to ruin her morning just a bit more, she walked to the front door. The large man stepped back and she joined him and the chief on her porch.

  “Oh, my God,” Jamie gasped.

  ***

  Stephen kept looking at the chief. He seemed as healthy as always. He wasn’t sounding tired or sick in any way, shape, or form. In fact, that run had reminded him that this was the year he’d promised Terri that he would quit smoking. And so what had been the first thing he’d done after they had taken down all those people (he kept going back and forth on completely accepting them as zombies)? He’d lit up. And then after they had run from that mob that was coming up the highway, he’d had a smoke in his mouth before the truck had even left the lights of the Spinx station behind.

  “I don’t see how this has gotten so out of control so quickly,” the chief was saying.

  “Easy,” Stephen replied with a shrug, crushing out the half-smoked cigarette he’d been dragging on, “nobody wants to believe it. I just saw it with my own two eyes and already my brain is trying to find something that will help me make logical sense of it.”

  “But there is no way a person can take a magazine full of .45 caliber slugs to the chest and keep walking. And while not all of them were torn up, I saw a few that had their insides dragging on the ground or hanging out.” Chief Gilstrap took off his hat and rubbed his stubbled head. He jammed the hat back on and then glanced down at his hand. “You think I’m gonna turn into one of them sumbitches, don’tcha?”

  Stephen looked away and pressed his lips together tightly. That had been almost exactly what he’d been thinking. Still, he wasn’t going to say it; no way in hell. Then his eyes lit on something and he stood up a bit straighter.

  Coming up the road was a single figure. That alone wasn’t a big deal, but he’d seen that limping drag-step walk before. It was one of them. He stepped down off the porch and felt his skin pebble for what seemed like the hundredth time that morning.

  From the direction of the water tower he could make out at least twenty or so more shadowy figures. It was like a scene from an actual horror movie. The sun was rising at his back and the shadows were being chased away; the morning mist that swirled a few feet above the ground was winding around the knees of these horrific individuals.

  For a moment, he had to wonder if perhaps he’d driven past some of these things on the way home from work. Southern Vinyl Window was not far past the trees. He’d driven right by the water tower on his way home. As slow as these things moved, they couldn’t have come from all that far away.

  He sighed and reached for his shotgun which had been set on the rail of Mayor Burns’ porch. The chief put a hand on h
is shoulder.

  “Let’s try not to use our guns. We don’t really know what is bringing them. If they are attracted to sound, we will just be ringing the dinner bell.” He looked around and then pointed back to the house. “Go ask the mayor to come out here.”

  Stephen did as he was asked and escorted the mayor out to her porch. She seemed confused until he pointed.

  “Oh, my God,” she gasped.

  “Yeah, well, we need weapons to go and deal with them. The chief thinks it would be best if we tried to avoid using our guns.” He wasn’t entirely enthusiastic about that idea. At the moment, his top priority was staying alive and getting home to his wife.

  He’d called her on the way to the mayor’s house. Apparently she was already up. She had been watching the television and was less than pleased that he had gone out to the highway. Considering what he knew now, he saw her point. When he’d asked if he should hurry home, she told him that she would be fine as long as he didn’t take too long. She had access to his wide selection of pistols, rifles, and shotguns, and said that she was more than capable of holding down the fort.

  “What sorts of things do you need?” Mayor Burns asked.

  “Well, since it looks like we have to go for the head like in the movies, something that will bust a skull would be nice.” He noticed that the mayor got a funny look on her face when he’d mentioned the thing about this being sort of like the movies. He wondered briefly if perhaps she had come up with the same idea.

  The mayor pinched her lower lip for a moment and then her face brightened. She bounded off the porch and ran to the small metal shed beside the house. She fiddled with the combination lock and then threw the doors open wide with a clang.

  Stephen was right behind her and following her in when the chief called out, “I think we can safely assume they are drawn to sound.”

  “What?” He turned to regard the older man who had come down the first step of the porch and would not take his eyes from the approaching danger.