Elixr Plague (Episode 2): Infected Read online

  Her phone buzzed, startling her into almost dropping it.

  Mom: Don’t panic, cell service is getting spotty all over the county. Everyone freaking out at the same time. Txts are different and can work when calls don’t. I don’t know why, Clara is trying to lecture your father about it right now…

  “Mom!” Jillian replied as fast as she could type: Mom, is dad serious? This is crazy! Are you two okay?

  The reply was almost instant—her mother was much faster at texting.

  Mom: All safe and have plenty of everything. Do what your father said—get out of town. Find a hotel or something, buy food and water and *stay* there. Avoid people and crowds. You haven’t gotten the Elixr thing, have you?

  Jillian shook her head as she replied. Me: No, I wanted to, but missed my chance. Thank God. Okay, leaving work now. Txt you when I get home.

  Mom: Don’t waste time if you don’t have anything at home you can use like spare food and water already packed. Just go and buy what you need. Use credit cards as long as you can. Please, hurry. Love you!

  Jillian stared at the little smiley face kissing a heart and everything went blurry. “No, you are not crying right now,” she muttered to herself, angrily wiping at her eyes. Her nose started running but she didn’t care. She grabbed the box of tissues and jumped up from her desk, knocking over her chair in the process.

  She ran for the door. Seeing the empty office made her want to sprint and scream at the same time. At the main door she froze, spun, and ran back to her desk for her purse, backpack, and keys. As she ran by Frank’s office a second time, she heard his voice rising in anger.

  “…said I don’t care! That bastard Martin has a house out in Beacon Point—he’s got a big research complex there or something, too—I’ve seen it. I’m going there—he started this shit show, he’s got to have a way…”

  She didn’t listen any longer and burst through the outer door, blinking in the dusky sunlight. The sounds of traffic—crazy traffic—assaulted her ears. Cars packed the road and people clogged the sidewalks. She’d never seen anything like it in the Soo. Her father was right, there were only 15,000 people or so in the whole town, and it looked like all of them were trying to go somewhere at the same time.

  Over the incessant horns and occasional scream or shout, she realized what was happening. People were panicking. They were trying to get out of town or get to stores or gas stations—just like her father had advised her to do.

  “Head’s up!”

  Jillian jumped back into the doorway to avoid being run over by a kid on a mountain bike tearing down the sidewalk. He was a red and blue blur, then gone, zipping away to who knew where.

  Her office was close to the river downtown, and while both sides of the street were packed with cars, only the southbound side moved. No one headed north was going anywhere, except to turn around and crawl south when they got half a chance—which explained the majority of the screaming and honking.

  She looked at all the banners and signs hanging from light posts proclaiming the new Viking Days celebration scheduled for next month, another in a long line of events scheduled to bring business and tourists to Sault Ste. Marie. A sign on the shop across the street announced they had viking souvenirs for sale.

  The discovery of Nordic artifacts and a buried longboat down by the river was a huge deal and had been drawing tens of thousands of visitors to Sault Ste. Marie all summer, but even on the busiest days, she’d never experienced this level of craziness.

  Jillian frowned. “Okay. Wasting time, let’s get home.” She stepped out into the crush of people and shouldered her way to her car.

  8

  the dead walk

  St. Charles, Illinois

  Seneca was halfway across the covered foot bridge when he spotted the first sign of trouble. More smoke had appeared in the western sky and the fire that spawned it was close—he could see glowing embers floating on the westerly breeze, drifting overhead. His nose tingled with the acrid smell of incinerated tires.

  He doubled his pace and made it to the western side of the bridge with a minimum of jingling gear—a feat he was happy to still be able to perform in retirement. As he started down the long, winding ramp through the trees to street level, a man and woman rounded the corner, both dragging rolling suitcases. The man’s suitcase wasn’t fully closed, and a white shirt flapped—stained with dirt and mud—behind them.

  “Hey, you got a—” Seneca began, pointing at the shirt.

  “Don’t go this way if you want to live,” the man said breathlessly.

  Seneca turned aside and watched them hurry past, their shoes ringing hollow off the wooden planks of the bridge. “What?”

  The woman looked over her shoulder, her wide, bloodshot eyes full of terror. “There’re monsters…zombies!”

  The man yanked her arm and urged her forward and the two ran off across the bridge. Seneca shook his head and continued his fast-walk down to the street. He had four blocks to go and had wasted enough time on Ward as it was. While his boots crunched on the gravel shoulder along Route 31, he pulled out his Martin Enterprises cell phone and tried Ward again. When it went to voicemail a second time, he put the phone away again and trudged on.

  Several cars raced north, making him jump off the path into the foliage along the road. The drivers were hellbent on getting as far away from St. Charles, but for the life of him, Seneca couldn’t figure out why. He’d seen no monsters or zombies—other than that one guy he’d seen on the road suffering from a form of hemorrhagic fever.

  There were plenty of people, but they were all in cars, though judging from the stopped traffic and honking horns, the pedestrian traffic would pick up soon enough. He clenched his jaw and frowned.

  Damn Ward, anyway—he’d made the entire team look unprofessional by not answering his phone. “Better be dead or dying…” he muttered.

  Main Street was at a standstill so it was relatively easy for him to pick his way between the cars. He tried to raise his hand and offer a ‘thanks’ or ‘sorry’ gesture, but the number of honking horns and flashing fingers made him decide to just get across the street as fast as possible and to hell with the drivers.

  Looking up the hill that Main Street followed through the western half of town, he spotted something troubling. A group of people crested the hill from the west, running. Not jogging, but flat out running as if their lives depended on how fast they could move their legs.

  “What the hell?” he asked the traffic all around him. Several others nearby spotted the group at the top of the hill and for a moment, the horns stopped honking.

  Then he saw three new figures at the top of the hill, following the screaming group of panicked civilians who ran along the sidewalks and weaved in and around the cars. The three people walked like their legs were stiff or asleep, with jerky movements and little coordination. They all had ashy, pale skin and he could see even from that distance their clothes were stained dark.

  Blood.

  As he watched, transfixed, one woman in the running group stumbled and fell, her purse and a few small items bouncing off the sidewalk in front of her. The fall caused a minor disruption in the group as people spread out around her, but for the most part, they ignored her and kept running and screaming. Several others dropped purses and backpacks to increase their speed.

  Seneca felt his chest tighten with the need to do something. He was much too far away to reach the fallen woman—who writhed on the ground clutching at her ankle—before the three…whatever they were pounced.

  She turned and screamed as the first one landed on her. It simply leaned forward and fell as it walked. Her scream faded as she struggled. The man on top of her pinned her shoulders with his hands and leaned in with his mouth open wide, teeth visible from the bottom of the hill.

  For a second, the victim looked like she might actually have a chance—she’d managed to get one leg up under her attackers’ chest and was madly pushing away, trying to force him off, but it was
too little, too late. The second one joined the fray, collapsing on her and the first guy. The last one, a woman by the looks of a torn sari, crashed into the first two, her long black hair flailing through the air. She crouched over the woman’s face and her desperate, high pitch keening was silenced forever.

  Seneca took an involuntary step back and bumped into a car as he watched the writhing mass of people on top of the woman. One of her arms waved as she struggled, then it flopped to the ground. All around her, a growing pool of dark blood spread out like oil and filled the gutter, running downhill.

  A man in the closest car opened his door and ran. The next person back wasn’t so lucky. The woman who’d finished off the screaming lady saw him exit his truck and in three quick steps had landed on the man’s back, driving him into the asphalt. The impact made him skid across the ground with a grunt, but it also jarred loose the creature on his back, who smashed into another car and scrambled with unnatural speed to her feet.

  Seneca looked back to the crime scene and saw the two men, now crouching over their victim, watching the woman jump a second time at the fleeing man. One of them stood, his face, chest and pants drenched in blood. He had something in his hand that Seneca couldn’t quite make out, but by the ragged remains of the woman’s chest on the ground, it looked like something that shouldn’t normally see the light of day.

  The kid driving the car he’d backed into opened the door and stared open-mouthed at the horror movie playing out right in front of them. He turned and threw up noisily into the street, while a girl still in the car screamed at him to get back inside and shut the door.

  “That’s probably a good idea, kid,” Seneca said, pushing off from the car and heading down 1st Street. He’d seen enough—it was time to get moving and get to Ward’s house. He could figure out what the hell was going on later.

  “Run!” the first of the fleeing group said around a gasp for air as he sprinted past, taking his own advice and heading for the Main Street bridge.

  The rest of the group pounded by, parents dragging crying children, everyone looking over shoulders, no one slowing down. The grisly scene halfway up the hill was motivation enough to keep even the most exhausted people moving.

  “There’s more of them! At the police station!” a woman shouted at people in the cars. “They’re coming out of the jail!”

  “Run! You can’t go any further, the road’s blocked off!” someone else yelled as they sprinted past.

  In seconds the pack was gone, weaving between the cars and spreading the word of panic across the bridge. Cars all around Seneca opened up and people took a long look at the carnage up the hill, then turned and abandoned their vehicles with alacrity.

  He turned south and jogged for the next intersection—Walnut Street. “This is not happening, this is not happening,” he muttered as he ran, his gear bouncing on his back with each step.

  The first gunshot rang out somewhere behind him. Someone wasn’t running. Another gunshot popped off across the river, followed by two more. A grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. It was time to go weapons free. Mid-stride, he ripped his pistol from its holster.

  He reached Illinois Street and crouched at the corner of a brick building. Chest heaving, he scanned the packed roads in every direction. There were people everywhere, most still sitting in their cars, craning their necks trying to see the cause of the traffic jam that blocked all the streets near the river.

  Up the hill to the west, a long figure shambled down the middle of the street, hands trailing along hoods and doors of the cars stuck in the road. He could hear muffled yells and screams as the man made his puppet-like way down the hill, right toward his position.

  His phone chose that moment to ring, loud and annoying. The man’s head turned and his face—blood streaked and pale—locked in on Seneca.

  “Shit,” he muttered, fumbling at his chest rig for the damn phone. He ripped it free, his pistol up and aimed at the man now making a shambling, stumbling bee line for him.

  “Send it,” he announced in a tight whisper.

  “Dude, where the hell are you?”

  Seneca frowned at Ward’s voice, glaring at the infected man working his way through the cars. “Kinda busy right now…where the fuck are you?”

  “Home. Why? What are you doing? It’s the zombie apocalypse out there, man!”

  “Didn’t you see my calls? Fuck it, going loud,” Seneca warned. He slapped the phone back on his chest rig, took the pistol in both hands and stepped around the building, slightly crouched forward. “Stop right there!” he yelled in his most commanding voice.

  If anything, the blood-red eyes of the man in front of him widened even further. He opened his mouth in a silent scream and leaned forward, picking up speed.

  Seneca didn’t hesitate—he fired a double tap that nailed the crazy bastard center mass. It didn’t slow him down more than a twitch.

  That didn’t make his day any better. Seneca backpedalled and fired three more shots, all center mass, all on target, and all on their own should have been enough to drop a man in his tracks.

  Seneca knew that a person high as a kite on PCP or bath salts could keep moving regardless of pain, but he’d never heard anyone having something like Ebola giving the same abilities. All that went through his head in the time his brain took to assess the situation and realize that people all around him were panicking and exiting vehicles, creating a chaotic environment full of potential collaterals that would hinder his escape if he needed to bug out quick.

  He needed to put this bastard on the ground and put him there fast.

  Shifting his aim south, Seneca put a round right through the man’s left knee, a spray of blood and gore exploding out the side of the leg proof positive that he’d hit his mark. He grimaced at the sight, but knew that would put the guy down. Traumatic injury to major joints in the human body caused some of the most intense pain imaginable. Not to mention if a man can’t stand, he can’t walk.

  The guy stumbled but kept coming.

  Seneca, disbelieving what his eyes were seeing, took a step back and ejected the magazine from his pistol. He dropped it in an empty pouch on his vest, ripped a fresh one free, and slammed it home. He yanked the slide back, cursing. As soon as the slide clicked into place, Seneca lined up the sights.

  “Just fucking die already!” he yelled and squeezed the trigger. A red dot appeared between the man’s eyes and a puff of gore splattered the street behind him. The ghoul’s red eyes rolled up, he stumbled one last time and dropped face forward onto the street with a sickening splat.

  Seneca ignored the people rushing all around him, screaming and lugging kids and suitcases. He walked through the smoke from the fires on the other side of town and flicked away an ember that drifted near his face. He kept the pistol trained on the man and stepped forward until he could nudge the man’s shoulder with a boot. There was no point—the back of the guy’ head looked like a bowl of cherry cobbler—but he had to know. He crouched and grabbed an empty can off the street and hit the guy with it. The can bounced off and rattled on the street, without the guy so much as twitching. All he did was lay there and leak inky dark blood onto the pavement.

  “Fuck me…” Seneca said, finally starting to relax. He stepped back and looked around, needing to know if someone else had seen what had just happened. Judging by the screams and frantic running, they had.

  He moved back to the corner of the building—only ten feet away now—and pulled his phone from his vest again. The connection was still active.

  “Hey! You still there? Boss!” Ward was shouting.

  Seneca put the phone to his ear, his head on a swivel, his pistol out and covering everything in front of him. “The hell is going on in this fucking town?” he demanded.

  “Oh,” Ward replied. “You saw one, huh?”

  “Yeah, I fuckin’ saw one! I put six rounds in the bastard and he didn’t drop till I damn near blew his head off.”

  “That was you making all that
noise? Dude, you need some more range time.”

  “Yeah, listen, I’m coming to your place. We gotta bounce.”

  “Roger that,” Ward said slowly. “But…I’m kinda…” His voice trailed off and more gunshots echoed in the distance, making the speaker overload on Seneca’s phone.

  “Ward!” he yelled, running up the street, knocking people out of the way. “What’s your sitch?” He waved his pistol and people screamed and parted in front of him, clearing the way uphill toward 2nd Street.

  “I could use an assist!” Ward yelled. The phone sounded like it dropped on the floor and Ward’s voice seemed distant and hollow. “God damn it!”

  Seneca heard the sound of gunfire and breaking glass, then the line went dead. “Ward!” he yelled. “Ward!” He put the phone back in its place on his chest rig and shouldered into a man who didn’t want to clear a path.

  “You’re going the wrong way!” the guy yelled.

  “Move!” Seneca replied, throwing an elbow. He wasn’t making headway—there were too many people rushing toward the river. He raised his pistol in the air and fired two shots. The crowd parted like a river flowing around an island. “That’s better,” he grumbled.

  9

  A beacon of hope

  Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan

  The fifteen-minute trip home took almost an hour and by the time Jillian pulled into her driveway, she was exhausted. The roads were packed with people heading all directions. Southbound lanes heading away from the city were crawling, and people swarmed grocery stores, gas stations, the local Walmart, and even bait and tackle shops like locusts. It was like the worst parts of Black Friday and the panic before a blizzard all rolled into the traffic of a long 4th of July weekend.

  She sighed, resting her aching head on the steering wheel. Somewhere on the slow drive home her forehead started hurting and it wasn’t showing any signs of letting up. She wasn't surprised—she’d spent the entire drive hunched over the wheel trying to avoid an accident.